Prior to joining Pheedo’s management team, Dana VanDen Heuvel worked in Internet marketing, sales-force automation, and sales operations. He also founded BlogSavant, one of the nation’s first, and most influential, Weblog marketing consultancies. Recently, Dana was a featured speaker at the AMA’s Hot Topic series, “Blogs: Marketing Beyond the Web Site.”  He will be a presenter at Mplanet 2006, where he will discuss "New Media Channels: The View from the Consumer."

What are some of the topics that you will cover during your Mplanet session?
There are some industries that haven’t really been exposed to the onslaught in consumer generated media that others have seen, in which the consumers essentially becomes their own media planner through E-mail, RSS, mobile, and other formats. Some marketers have lost touch with what customers doing with media.

During this session, we are going to talk about what are customers are really doing and look at some of their behaviors and habits. By “really doing”, what I mean is that we’ll look at the tool from the perspective of consumers and how they’re interacting with the media. For example, marketers are not really sure what to make of Second Life, yet from the consumer perspective, millions of people have ‘avatars’ on the Internet and more still play online games and immerse themselves in role-playing worlds.

What we’re looking for are disconnects where marketers can become more aware of the technology and things that customers are using and how they can better meet customers in their medium. We’ll also talk more about social networking and things like MySpace and Second Life during the session.

What industries have caught onto using these technologies?
Certainly, when talking about areas that have seen strong adoption and adaptation, you would have to include electronics. Companies such as Sony and Nokia have realized the ways in which word of mouth, buzz, and changing consumer media habits affect their businesses. Also, verticals that sell products online, such as clothing and books, are realizing the importance of user opinions on sites like Epinions and Amazon.com.

Why are some companies lagging behind?
One of the reasons is that we simply get used to doing a certain type of thing. We might see customers (or interact with them over the phone) every day, but what we don’t see is what they are doing outside of the business that we could potentially tap into, like reading RSS at home, playing online games, engaging in social yet work-related online groups, and the like.

Some companies fail to realize that there are a huge number of people who have adopted media in their personal lives who expect to interact with companies with the same convenience that they experience in their interactions in other facets of their lives.

How can marketers get themselves up to speed on new media channels?
Events like Mplanet are a great way to get out there and immerse yourself. And there is no shortage of books and Web sites out there (and no shortage of techniques available). If you look at blogging and social media, there are many marketers from large companies publishing their thoughts online. This is first-hand knowledge that would not have been accessible before. It’s almost a window into the world of other markets. Five years ago, these same marketing leaders were doing the same kind of innovative stuff, but there wasn’t anywhere that you could get access to it.

What are some of the emerging channels that will especially influential in coming years?
Things like RSS and podcasts, where you’re allowing people to receive info in micro chunks are very powerful and are not going away.

Another area that I think is going to be overwhelmingly influential for marketers is video, because it is so engaging: You have sight, sound, and motion. People read blogs, but you won’t see blog postings forwarded around the Internet to the same extent that you’ll see video circulate.

Take the most popular thing going on any given day on YouTube and you’ll see hundreds of comments, which likely led to thousands of forwards and hundreds of thousands of views. Sure, blog posts and text media items get some viral activity, depending on the event, but video often gets orders of magnitude more activity on any given topic. Of course, Google bought YouTube for a lot of money. Its evolution struck a cord, because people want that level of media enrichment.

Will new media channels eventually overtake traditional ones?
We have seen studies that show the decreased influence of traditional advertising and the increased influence of word of mouth. So, there are pointers that are showing that change is afoot. But it will never be an either/or situation—these things compliment existing marketing efforts.

But where a company might have spent x million on TV advertising five years ago, today they might ask, “Is there a better way to reach this demographic?” It might be a demographic that you can better reach using other media. Or you might use something like YouTube as an ancillary method, instead of just television (or other “old” media). Television is not a viral media, you can’t click “send this to a friend,” like you can with online video.

When dealing with consumer-generated media, isn’t there a risk of giving customers too much control?
One of the truths behind that thinking is this: Customers have control, whether you like it or not. Increasingly, customers are given tools that give them an all-powerful voice in what we call the participant economy, such as selling products over eBay or reviewing them on Amazon.com. So, the choice is not whether or not to hand over control. The choice companies have is whether or not to engage in conversation with customers (regardless of whether it’s about something positive or something negative).

Having negative things published about your company is something that is going to happen at some point. But companies that are into full disclosure and listening to what their customers have to say will win. These companies or brands are willing to engage in Web-based conversation and understand where and how customers have control. And they are willing to insert themselves into the conversation, not with the intent of squelching customers in the face of negative feedback but to understand what customers are saying and to make sure that the company has an opportunity to be seen as being useful, helpful, and ethical. This communication is important, especially in the age of corporate scandal... and just general mistrust.

You mentioned MySpace and Second Life. What do you think the future holds for these sites, which have achieved staggering popularity in a short time?
Is MySpace a fad? It could be. More importantly, people are looking for ways to connect with each other online. Is that a fad? I don’t think that it is. People are voyeuristic and vicariously interested in what other people are doing, and they are communicating with each other and to their networked groups by recommending products and posting blogs. Sites that facilitate that human-to-human interaction, these things will succeed; companies that put themselves in the middle of the stream of consumption will be successful.

Second Life is something that has a number of really avid followers, but will it become a second (virtual) Internet? Possibly. I don’t know that it has the same inevitability as some things, like RSS, have. Right now, companies involved with Second Life are making headlines within a tight demographic. In the future, it might potentially be a cool place to do market research. People who go on Second Life tend to be early adopters. This virtual, de facto futuristic world may be a viable place to engage them (e.g., virtual car shows, virtual fashion shows).

Any closing thoughts?
From a marketing perspective, companies have a lot more stuff to experiment with now, but we still need to heed the basics of marketing. It's easy to get caught up in all the whiz-bang new media. But to be effective, we still need to ask the same basic questions. "Who is the customer?" "What segment are they in?"

Whether you're putting out a billboard or putting a billboard up in Second Life, the fundamentals remain the same. You still need to have the marketing basics to make decisions in new media.