The real Blyk story
In the past 24 hours I have read two pieces of horrendously incorrect information from people who should know far better.
The first is that Blyk was allegedly closing its UK operation, this is absolutely FALSE – The story seems to have been first published by NMA and as JMac rightly states in his piece offering clarity, this seems to be the latest in a long string of events whereby the industry tries to kill itself.
There is an article written by David Murphyfrom Mobile Marketing Magazine with comment from Ann Sarimo, Blyk’s Head of Communications – read it here.
The second piece of absolute rubbish was included within the aforementioned article published by Mobile Marketing Magazine and it centred on the mobile agency YOC not returning to Blyk because it did not have enough REACH!
The excerpt reads as follows:
Christian Louca, UK Country Manager and Head of Publishers at YOC, told Mobile Marketing:
“When the idea first emerged, it seemed like a really interesting concept, a clever idea with lots of potential, but the problem is reach. In order to be able to give brands value, they need to have reach, and an extensive strategy in terms of acquiring customers and then retaining them, and this is always difficult. “We ran a campaign with Blyk for Coca-Cola, which was a relatively OK experience, but we did not go back, because as a mobile marketing agency using Blyk, it’s a great place to run a test campaign, but it comes back to reach. It’s a good place to test the marketplace, but it doesn’t seem to have come out of that space.”Why does any media activity need reach?
Because many of the communication recipients will not interact/be interested in what they receive.
Why will they not be interested?
Because the communications will not be relevant.
So, with most forms of media the ‘reach’ argument is valid but the reason why Blyk was considered so pioneering, the reason why it raised all the tens of millions of dollars of funding and the reason why it attracted some of the best brains in the business to work there is if you use the power of Blyk’s offering correctly, communications become totally relevant and reach is ABSOLUTELY 100% IRRELEVANT.
ASK people what they want to receive. Deliver what they have requested. Simple.
In short, YOC either knowingly used Blyk for the wrong reason or did not understand how to use the platform in the first place – either one is an absolute waste of everyones effort as well as the clients cash.
Not great in times like these.
Russell Buckley replied:
Whoa! I think you’re being a little over-the-top here. Alex Farber spoke to Blyk before breaking the story and just wrote what they told him. I’ve worked with Alex for a long time and he doesn’t make things up. He is rather adept at getting things out of his subjects, but that’s an admirable skill for a journo.
It makes a lot of sense to go the partnership route to achieve scale and good luck to Blyk with that approach.
They also still haven’t (as far as I’ve read) denied that they’re closing their MVNO or if they’re (for instance) porting them across to their UK partner, assuming that’s the plan.
By the way, it’s also not a journalist’s job to big-up a company or a sector, but to report facts. So the idea that the industry is killing itself is a little misguided.
As far as YOC is concerned, it seems a little bit of an odd stance to take they don’t know what they’re doing. After all, Reach is a valid objective of a campaign and it’s one that many ad industry professionals use today. Ironically, it’s because they don’t have Reach that Blyk are pursuing the alternative strategy. “Go Big or Go Home” as you put it.
In this particular case, Coca-Cola is the biggest brand in the world are one of the most sophisticated marketers you’ll ever work with. If their target audience consists of millions and a media channel can only reach a few hundred thousand, you can see why it doesn’t meet their criteria for further investment until more Reach is offered. I’ve been there myself back in 2000 with exactly the same problem.
You can argue until you’re blue in the face that a whole industry is wrong about Reach as a valid metric. But it’s not going to get you very far. Much better to accept it and react accordingly, which is exactly what Blyk have chosen to do.
So this whole conspiracy of Blyk bashing, like most conspiracies doesn’t bear any scrutiny. What Blyk does is news, which is understandable as they’re pioneers. No one wants them to fail any more than normal people want any startup to fail.
I, for one, wish them good luck with the new approach.
Russell
May 14, 2009 at 4:42 pm. Permalink.
alfro8 replied:
Hi Russell,
Thanks for taking the time to make a decent comment.
I agree with many of the points you make but also see some things from a different perspective.
The vast majority of articles I have read by Alex Farber were first class, I do not question his ability to craft copy, I also understand that he worked with Blyk to get much of the information he published.
Having sold a print media business, I am acutely aware of the power of a headline and felt that writing ‘Blyk scraps consumer offer to concentrate on operator partnerships’ did not accurately reflect the state of the situation, instead it caused much mixed communication and controversy – An entirely different result to just reporting the facts.
With reference to the reach debate, this is something that has been running long before I started blogging and one that is evolving – In my opinion, anyone who says ‘agencies buy reach, that’s just the way it is’ may find themselves in an interesting position should that change (and I believe it will).
Reach can be considered as an objective but needs to be followed by another action – Think about a personal journey, you don’t just want to ‘reach’ your destination, once you get there you want to actually do something – eat, play , sleep… whatever it is, you want to take action, Blyk has a rich list of interaction options.
I completely agree that Coca-Cola have a tier 1 marketing team, what I was questioning was the use of Blyk for the campaign objective – If all they wanted to do was contact people in a one-way, broadcast fashion then they would have been far better off buying something with limited interaction as the 29% average response rate of Blyk would have been wasted when a 1-2% response rate would suffice.
I don’t think people just pick on Blyk but I do see people watching for failure rather than hoping/encouraging/contributing to success – Not the best way to take things forward.
Anyway, I am delighted to get your feedback, certainly most valid comment from someone who has scaled a successful business on reach and frequency – Kudos indeed.
Onwards and upwards,
Al
May 15, 2009 at 9:58 am. Permalink.
Russell Buckley replied:
Yep, but reach doesn’t preclude action – you’ll just get more people taking that action. On a simple level, why engage with one person when you can engage with 100?
Obviously, there’s a little more to it than that and totally agree about the importance of the customer journey and engagement. It’s something we spend a lot of time thinking about at AdMob and helping clients with.
You may also be right that reach as a metric will become less important. But, believe me, we all have loads of time to adapt our offerings if it ever happens. The ad industry changes surprisingly slowly.
Any successful new business has to get its timing dead right and follow the zeitgeist. Today that’s reach and tomorrow too.
Russell
May 15, 2009 at 10:23 am. Permalink.
alfro8 replied:
Certainly interesting.
Wise words for anyone – whether you are in a startup or legacy business.
May 15, 2009 at 10:41 am. Permalink.
David Murphy replied:
For what it’s worth, my take on Christian’s comments when I was interviewing him was that what Blyk delivered was great, in terms of showing the sort of targeting and relevance that the network can offer, but that what it was then looking for was for Blyk to come back a little later to say that the targeting and relevance were still there, but guess what, we’ve grown our subscriber numbers 4, 5, 6-fold. That’s where their disappointment stems from, and I think it would be interesting to know how many big advertisers have used Blyk once only and how many have come back for more. Perhaps Blyk can shed some light on this.
And despite running the denial story, based on a 1-2-1 conversation with Blyk, I second Russell’s comments about Alex.
May 15, 2009 at 12:52 pm. Permalink.