Wow.  The whole social marketing scene moves pretty fast doesn't it?  Quick post here on an excellent slideshow I came across from Shiv Singh ( Razorfish SM guru).

You know how last year a lot of your time was spent on finding "key" alpha outdoor consumers?  Guess what, there is more to this than you may know.  Enter social influencers....which by the way you find in a large part on public forums.

Where do you find those?  Here.  The outdoor channel.  Namemedia has these members and they weigh in on over 30,000 new conversations in forums each day on our sites. Now that you can find them, read on to learn how to calculate your SIM.

Yes indeed, it's about that time.  Winter OR.  Seriously...this event for me is like better than eating bacon.  I love all the gear and the vibe is always super jazzed.

Not sure if you remember, but last show I ran a little contest where everyone I met with dropped a card into my BailyWorks bag and then three winners were chosen for some swag -- in this case 100,000 unique impressions on our media sites = 100,000 eyeballs for your brand whenever you want to use them.

For this seasons Winter OR show I'm going to make it easier.  Spot me, spot the bag, tap me on the shoulder and say, "...Hello MOJO..." and you win.  I'm going to take the first 5 Companies that spot me.  So here it is:

100,000 Unique Impressions on our Outdoor Channel
Ad size of either 728x90 or 160x600
Frequency Capped at 3/24
Run time from the show through the end of year
You can geo-target as needed
Prior winners are not eligable
Approx media value on this is $850. 00
Only one winner per company

So good luck happy hunting and I hope to run into you at the show.

Interesting trend that is happening over here in my vertical.  Last year, I spent the majority of my time building a base line of data, reaching out to endemic advertisers and doing anything I could to "attract" the larger more national advertisers to our outdoor audience. 

In that order, you go from a pat on the back to bringing home the bacon.  And to really nail it on the head, you have to have budget and data.  Like comScore data.  Super expensive and reserved for only the elite of outdoor brands.

Not so fast.  We own all of our sites and we have the data as well.  So in case you are curious as to what makes the "extreme sports outdoor enthusiast" tick, comScore has over 5,300 data points that they measure on this audience.  Its exhausting looking through it all ( this is why media planners quit after like a year on the job).

But indeed, as you know I'm a geek.  And I like data.  So I sorted the entire list and captured the top 10 things that is the Raison d'être for for Outdoor Enthusiasts.  Take a look at the list and see where you fit in. 

Just so you know what you are reading above.  With the sample size that comScore acquired from "outdoor" and "extreme sports" sites, the members most often cited the above as things they've done.  Thus in the industry we call this their lift index.  Some of this stuff is a no brainer, but anytime data can back up a hunch you are on to something.

Check it out:

#1 favorite thing for outdoor folks to do?  Shop online.  They crank in a 13.1x more affinity for spending money online.  Their #1 item is not gear, its software and electronics.

They are buying dog food like its going out of style.  Seriously.  A huge chunk of their budget goes for Spot and his four pals in the garage.

Skin cancer is on the rise, they are concerned about it and some are already on meds for it.

Our groups hits concerts like its their job.  Makes sense.  Let's hear it for Dave Matthews right?

Lots and lots of folks in the outdoor space are saving for weddings.  Wow.  How much?  $10K - $20K.  For who?  Not the outdoor dude or dudette, but for someone else in their family  Too funny.

When we go on International Business trips, its Swiss Air all the way.  Hmmm...funny how there is decent skiing over there as well.

Lots of nail fungus.  I'll stop there.

We love our drinks, and we love seeking counseling for it.

And then on an odd note, lots of issues with Alzheimer's Disease.  Not to sure about this one.

We're all trying to get to the same place right?  More sales, more visitors, more branding.  Yet why does it seem like we're all taking different trails down the mountain?

I've brought up this point a couple of times, but when it comes to marketing to outdoor enthusiasts you have to be on point, on time and certainly on your best behavior.  And this is where I think we see the divergence in the pack of advertisers as to why they all come at this a different way.  Not everyone is doing all of the above, but some are doing one or close to all.

Instead of trying new routes, maybe a point from our social media guru at Ogilvy can shed some light on this:

The More Better Mandate

January 05, 2010 
by Kelly Stephenson, New York 


2. More Better Introducing the More Better Mandate – not a grammatical sin but a business imperative. I thank Joel Makower for summing it up so clearly on his Two Steps Forward blog: “The bar keeps rising [for businesses]: What seemed cutting-edge 10 years ago — carbon neutral products and companies, zero-waste factories, green chemistry, life-cycle analysis, green buildings — is now mainstream, or at least warrants a so-what? response when trumpeted by companies. Things that used to make headlines — or, at least, good promotional copy — are now business as usual.”

Which means it’s time for brands to start thinking of sustainable credentials as customer-expected instead of value-added. The logical next step: figure out what’s the next value-add. Time Magazine reported that 40% of Americans purchased a product in 2009 because of the social or political values of the company that produced it. And we expect this number to grow. So, while you may have launched a mostly-green product in 2009 as a one-off nod to sustainability within an otherwise “normal” portfolio of goods, this year you probably need to make that product – and its entire supply chain – 100% green. But don’t stop there. Back up the effort with a commitment to make the rest of your portfolio greener, too… not to mention the chairman of the board’s POV and the CEO’s voting record.  More better.

Looking at web stats all day long can get old real fast, so there are a few things I do around here to keep myself on my toes. 

One of them is watching the top exit points for our sites.  Yeah I know, total geek move.  But it is interesting.  Basically it shows you, in a wide fasion, where your uber cool visitors are headed now that they have had their daily fill for your content.

So what can you, as the advertiser, learn about the people that make up say Rockclimbing.com?  Accroding to comScore, here is where they went after they visited the site:



2,912 907 BACKCOUNTRY.COM

2,673 846 DISPATCH.COM

2,516 1,068 REVOLUTIONHEALTH.COM

2,467 1,401 SHOPSTYLE.COM

2,409 1,208 JCREW.COM

2,333 1,111 TECHNORATI.COM

2,326 1,101 HOWTODOTHINGS.COM

2,226 1,000 SIERRATRADINGPOST.COM

1,967 843 MSU.EDU

1,757 1,295 BUZZFEED.COM


This kind of information changes each month, so staying in tune with the type of people who you plan on advertising with is a good plan of action for 2010.  I'm actually amazed that JCREW made the list ( and not prAna or Kuhl ), but you get the point.