Nick Burcher is a super star… but I didn’t know that when I first met him.  We had coffee together and he gave me very early advice on setting up this blog and since then I’ve followed his work.

Nick’s latest views are about the integration of advertising, marketing and social media in the context of the internet being the central plank of a brand’s marketing, recommendations and opinion-formation with audiences.

This is a really important part of comprehending how the “Old” marketing techniques are migrating to the “New”.  For example, do you know how to change your communication methods so that your “old” customers are not alienated by the “New” tools and so that the “New” tools can sit comfortably alongside “Old” styles?

Nick Burcher's Paid:Owned:Earned

Take a look at the image here.  This is Nick’s thesis.

There are websites whose purpose is based on payment (brands pay to advertise on them); there are others where brands own the information up there (mainly content-led) and lastly there are others where brands have earned the right to be listed.

Note that some sites (Facebook, Twitter) are listed in all three categories…. this is a really important part of the paradigm.

Your Brand needs to have communication strategies that work in all three contexts, and uses the feedback arrows at the top and bottom as well as in the ones middle of the diagram.

Here is the strategy we use for a client, Rowperfect.  They sell rowing sports equipment.

Paid: Google adwords and other sports sites who carry banner adverts.

Owned: Blog content, You Tube videos, forum discussions, Twitter feed, Facebook page.

Earned: followers on FB, Twitter, YouTube and others linking back to the Owned

I was delighted to watch this video where Nick sets out the lessons behind the simple headline “Paid-Owned-Earned”.

Does this have resonance for your brand strategy?  Where do you think there may be issues or conflicts with traditional brand-led marketing?

New Trends in Digital Advertising [exclusive video] from Hayko on Vimeo.

Related articles

• Paid Owned Earned – how it works [image and video] (nickburcher.com)
• Paid Owned Earned: Paid Owned Earned on Star Wars Day – VW The Force and Blackberry (huguesrey.wordpress.com)
• Advertising’s Future Is 3 Simple Words: Paid. Owned. Earned. | Story Worldwide (huguesrey.wordpress.com)
• Separate content from platforms (beingpeterkim.com)

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Nick Burcher has done a good job comparing different search engines results f or the phrase "Michael Jackson Died". 

The one that comes up best is Hakia (pity you didn't put that at the top of your list, Nick give it some more publicity).

Hakia bills itself as a 'semantic search' engine that understands more about what the user is looking for. The Hakia results served up for 'Michael Jackson Died' are definitely more relevant than the other search engines referenced above. Hakia note the existence of Michael Jackson the writer, but seperate this off into a top section with the label 'would you consider this answer?' Impressive.

I also like his skill at tracking down the source of some of the confusion – Wikipedia who, since 2007, has had the exact phrase in an article referencing the 'other' Michael Jackson.  

Indeed Wikirank shows that visits to the profile of Michael Jackson the writer increased by 31,995% on June 25th. This 'other Michael Jackson' Wikipedia profile was visited 83,134 times on 25th June – even though it has nothing to do with the King Of Pop. 

However, the real answer to the search string could be provided by "real-time" search.  The Online Marketing blog summarises this in the context of the Iran + Electrion search string.  This is a small holy grail that has been on the cards for a while. Take a read of OneRiot's nice summary (although it is a rather a strong sales pitch for his work).

But the 'rumours' of the internet activity spikes causing Google news to think it was under attack by malware are more entertaining…. and Alan Patrick has a good graph summarising the reasons for the 'attack' – this really made me smile!

And of course this has clear implications for your own company / brand / name.  Check yourself out on all the search engines Nick lists for obvious search phrases and see which one 'finds' you.  If not, back to the SEO drawing board to refine the natural search phrases.

Thanks for a great insight, Nick and starting my researches into this great topic. 

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