eLink Media

Yes Social Media Can Help Your Company

2011-05-04T09:00:00.000-07:00

Still think social media may not be for you? Well it is time to re-evaluate that thinking. Social media is constantly changing the way companies do business as well as the way that customers search and find products. Now is the time to capitalize and get a step up on your competitors. Check out socialmediadigest.info for a great article regarding an industry report that may surprise you. Also visit eLinkmedia.com and SMInetwork.com for help handling all of your companies social media needs in a manner that is simple to understand and will help save time and energy so you can spend more time on other parts of your business.

Web 3.0

2011-04-04T08:29:00.000-07:00

The buzz around the office last week: Web 3.0 and how it affects our future and the future of our customers. eLink Media is always striving to be ready for anything new and Web 3.0 could definitely be a game changer. Web 3.0 generates data from "intelligent" web applications in turn making searching more specific, as well as using data entered from users making searching more personalized. This is just an insight to what the future of internet could be. To read more about Web 3.0 visit our website at socialmediadigest.info or join our newsletter for up to date information on all your social media interests.

The War Against Hemp Rages On....

2011-02-04T07:47:00.000-08:00

The Hemp Industries Association (HIA) only recently came to know about Mostafa Soliman, a U.S. resident and owner of Healthy Harvest, who only narrowly made it out of his prison cell at the last minute because protesters had attacked and set the jail on fire. Now the organization is launching a campaign to get him out of Egypt, but as one might guess, the U.S. Embassy is a bit swamped right now and the fact that Soliman was in jail on drug charges doesn't make his quest to get out any easier.

"This is a tragic mistake that could be solved with a simple drug test. Mr. Soliman is being falsely accused of importing 'hash oil' when it fact it was healthy hemp food," said Eric Steenstra, Executive Director of the HIA. "The HIA and Votehemp.com are launching a campaign to free Mostafa Soliman that will hopefully jump-start action at the U.S. State Department. We recognize that the unrest in Egypt will make it more difficult for U.S. authorities to act, but this terrible mistake by Egyptian authorities was made well before the recent protests began and in many ways symbolizes the corruption the protestors are resisting."

The dram in a can: Scottish whisky the way South Americans like it...

2011-01-21T06:01:00.000-08:00

By Mark Howarth
Last updated at 9:12 AM on 17th January 2011

A Panama-based company believes outdoor drinkers would prefer to crack open a tin rather than lug round a bottle of whisky

It is a sight that will have whisky connoisseurs spluttering into their drink – a dram in a can.

A Panama-based company believes outdoor drinkers would prefer to crack open a tin rather than lug round a bottle of their favorite tipple.

Now bosses at Scottish Spirits – which retains an office in Glasgow – is testing out the novelty on its Caribbean and South American markets.

But last night the Scotch Whisky Association said it would try to ban the cans for breaching international labeling rules.

A spokesman for the body said: ‘We are concerned that consumers may be confused whether or not the product is real Scotch and we will be investigating the matter further.’

Scottish Spirits launched the tins last week, the first time straight whisky has been sold in a can.

Chief executive Manish Panshal said: ‘We are really thrilled with the idea – it’s going to be a part of every lifestyle and occasion.

‘The can is the perfect size to be shared between three people who can mix it with other things like cola.

‘It’s lightweight and portable and entirely recyclable, which is good news. It will be one of the hot picks for any outdoor activities.’

World-renowned expert Jim Murray – author of The Whisky Bible – admitted he was intrigued.

He said: ‘Obviously, this is not the traditional way to sell a dram but I’ve seen it on draft in Chicago and out of plastic sachets in Uganda, so it might catch on somewhere. It will certainly be cheaper than buying a big bottle and Scotch spends some of its life in metal containers during the distillation process anyway.

‘But you probably wouldn’t want it in aluminum cans for too long, because it would affect the taste.

‘And my biggest problem with the idea is that there’s no way of knowing what it is you’re buying – and this isn’t proper Scotch.

‘I taste around 3,000 types a year and I can honestly say I have never come across these brands.’

He added: ‘I can’t see it taking off here because a can would cheapen a product that Scots are rightly proud of. A tin of whisky could never make your heart skip a beat like a fine Scotch.’

Whisky in its more usual container. Scottish Spirits launched their tins last week, the first time straight whisky has been sold in a can

Scottish Spirits – which is canning its own-brand tipple and a blend called Sir Edwin’s – was censured by the Advertising Standards Agency last September.

The watchdog ruled that its advertisements wrongly suggested it was a home-grown company selling Scotch.

A rival company made a complaint after spotting Scottish Spirits’ ads in a trade magazine.

Scotch whisky exports are big business, with global sales three times those of its US rivals.

But when it comes to the home front, the picture is less rosy for the spirit, whatever container it comes in. UK whisky sales slipped by 11 per cent between 2005 and 2009.

There is little respite in sight. Sales are predicted to stay static at 6.5million cases until 2014, data from industry analyst International Wine and Spirits Research reveals.

The UK is the third biggest market for Scotch, after the US and France.

But industry insiders claim there is no cause for alarm.

Paul McLaughlin of food export quango Scotland Food and Drink said: ‘I don’t think this is a cause for concern because the key focus is on exports. The home market is not the be-all and end-all.’

Digital expertise: Is your agency faking it?

2011-01-18T08:06:00.000-08:00

In the rush to reinvent themselves and better lead their clients through the new marketing landscape, some agencies are changing profoundly; and some are just faking it.

According to Forrester, 78 percent of clients don't believe their lead agency does digital well. And this for good reason: Given the state of the economy, it's been increasingly hard for agencies to turn away any opportunity to earn some revenue. And as client interest and budgets have increasingly turned towards digital, the response within traditional agencies has been to tell their clients, "Yeah, we do that," and then try to figure it out. It's no surprise that the results are often dissatisfying. Agencies discover that digital isn't just another medium like television. And clients discover that "Yeah, we do that," means their key digital tasks are being outsourced, mismanaged, or improperly staffed.

Is your agency faking it? Next time you ask about digital capabilities and your agency's response is "Yeah, we do that," here are few questions that should separate the true digirati from the poseurs.

Which panels did you vote for?
The digital world thrives on conferences, where really smart, interesting people show each other really cool things. If no one in the room has been to SXSW, OMMA, f8 (or knows what those acronyms stand for), they're certainly voting with their feet about their commitment to embracing the new world.

Who leads the charge?
Does the agency have a CTO? No, not an IT guy. A CTO. As it becomes harder to separate creativity and technology, does the agency's ECD have a peer on the technology side?

Where's the beef?
Are the agency's developers in-house, or do they outsource? Maintaining an in-house development capability is expensive and requires learning how to manage people who are completely different from typical ad folks. It's also essential to delivering high quality digital work on time and on budget.

When agencies outsource coding and development, they lose control of the process. They also lose the ability to keep refining work and making it better. It's a daunting proposition to build a new department where the average salary is in the six figures, but it needs to be done, and it needs to be done with a department. An agency that can't develop across multiple commercial and open-source environments (PHP, Java, .net, etc.) can't truly provide complete solutions for its clients.

Digital-only clients/projects
Does your agency have any digital-only clients or projects, or is all of its digital work coming from long-standing clients that simply don't know better? The RFP process for a significant web development engagement does a pretty good job of identifying agencies that have genuine digital chops. Make sure you know what kind of enterprise level digital development your agency has done, and whether other clients trust them with their online business.

Who advocates for the consumer?
We no longer think of account planning as revolutionary; it makes perfect sense that the consumer should be the primary consideration in the development of compelling, effective advertising. Account planning ensures that advertising constantly achieves maximum relevance. Well, user experience design achieves the same thing online, keeping the usability and functionality of online experiences front and center. If your agency doesn't have a user experience practice, you're unlikely to be creating optimal consumer experiences, online or off.

Analytics
Every agency will tell you they're "into analytics," in the same way that they assure you they're digital. But what does your agency measure to optimize campaigns and to determine success? Hopefully the answer is more than click-through rates and web hits. Because every client's business situation is unique, each should have its own dashboard that the agency uses to measure success. Analytics software is getting increasingly sophisticated, allowing the integration of data from multiple sources -- like online display advertising, social media, mobile and website behavior -- to paint a comprehensive picture of how your customer is behaving online, and your marketing impacts that. Once again, this requires an investment in tools and people. But it's a better investment than really expensive desk chairs.

Unfortunately, most clients have had at least one bad experience with digital marketing or web development, often at the hands of their current agency. Trust is the most valuable commodity in any client-agency relationship. And faking digital expertise is a surefire way to erode that trust. As clients become increasingly smart about digital, agencies are going to have to stop creating digital window dressing and realize that becoming truly digital requires changes and investments that are time consuming and expensive. But they are not nearly as expensive as being caught faking it.

Be Careful Where you TwitPic....

2011-01-17T12:54:00.000-08:00

Apparently privacy and being able to track your movements in easier than anyone ever thought:

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/video?id=7621105

What, a Jewish Groupon?

2011-01-14T10:06:00.001-08:00

Discount site aimed specifically at Jewish consumers.

Jan 14, 2011

- Mike Shields

A pair of New York-based entrepreneurs have launched the Jewish equivalent of Groupon.

Allen Ganz and Jodi Samuels, co-founders of the Jewish-mom-aimed site MetroImma, have rolled out jdeal, a new discount aggregation site/community aimed specifically at Jewish consumers.

Jdeal, which launched quietly just before Hanukkah, features discounts from New York merchants selling everything from Kosher food to restaurants and hotel deals to entertainment packages designed to appeal to Jewish users, such as a comedy club (Stand Up|NY) that offers Kosher wine and dessert.

According to Samuels, the thinking was the company would need 3,000 to 5,000 members to get merchants interested. Thus, to get jdeal off the ground her team tapped the MetroImma audience as well as a nonprofit networking group in which Samuels was involved.

It’s early, but jdeal has seen its memberships swell from about 1,000 users to 5,000 in just six weeks. The company has attracted merchants ranging from butchers and dry cleaners to upscale realtors and yoga studios. “We have a full month of deals already set up going forward,” said Samuels.

Like Groupon, jdeal relies on its members to spread its potential deals across the Web—usually through social media—until they reach a preset number of committed buyers. Once a deal reaches its tipping point, Jdeal shares any associated revenue with its merchant partners.

The plan going forward is to introduce versions of jdeal in seven other cities in the U.S. and Canada over the next year to 18 months. The company has also just launched an affiliate program, through which various Web publishers will get incentives to promote jdeal offers.

But why does the Jewish community need its own version of Groupon? “Groupon does not necessarily offer deals that are relevant to Kosher consumers, for example,” said Samuels. “And other Jewish businesses don’t necessarily want to offer 50 percent off discounts to people that are not likely to become repeat customers.”

Mobile is HOT for 2011...Mmmm, maybe not...

2011-01-12T07:16:00.000-08:00

Car Warranty Robocaller Shut Down by FTC

Serial robocaller Fereidoun "Fred" Khalilian has been banned from telemarketing for life and fined more than $4 million to settle Federal Telecommunications Commission charges he used robocalls to sell consumers bogus auto service contracts.

Khalilian and his company, The Dolce Group Worldwide, LLC, are the latest robocall scam to have its plug pulled under the FTC's ongoing crackdown on deceptive prerecorded telemarketing calls.

The robocall scheme, which did business under the name My Car Solutions, bilked consumers into paying thousands of dollars and led them to believe the company was affiliated with auto dealers and manufacturers and authorized to sell extended auto warranties.

Khalilian is a former Paris Hilton business partner, and his Miami-based business received a failing grade from the Better Business Bureau.

Khalilian is also no stranger to the FTC, thanks to a 2001 settlement that banned him from all travel-related telemarketing and forced him to compensate consumers $185,000 for promoting deceptive holiday plans. In June 2010 the FTC filed a new complaint against Khalilian, alleging that since 2009, he and his company marketed "extended" auto warranties by carpet-bombing consumers with pre-recorded robocalls.

These robocalls warned people their car warranties were about to expire and advised them to speak with a representative. Consumers were then transferred to telemarketers who said they were from the "service contract department," and they would "verify" information about the consumers' cars and "confirm" other information, including their zip code.

The telemarketers then transferred consumers to a "senior specialist" who also made false statements to elicit information from the unsuspecting victims. Only after consumers bought the supposed warranties did they discover that:

My Car Solutions wasn't affiliated with their car manufacturer.
The contract didn't cover "the entire engine."
The contract didn't provide "bumper-to-bumper" coverage.
The contract excluded certain "pre-existing conditions."

Consumers who tried to get their money back -- typically between $1,300 and $2,485 per warranty -- found it nearly impossible to obtain a refund.

The court order settling the FTC's charges bans Khalilian and The Dolce Group from telemarketing or helping others to telemarket, and prohibits them from making any misrepresentations or omissions when selling any goods or services.

The order includes a penalty of more than $4.2 million, the amount Khalilian and The Dolce Group fleeced from consumers.

Under the order, Khalilian will satisfy part of the judgment by turning over corporate and personal property totaling approximately $50,000. The FTC is authorized to take action to collect the remainder of the outstanding judgment from the defendants. The settlement order also contains provisions to ensure the defendants comply with its terms.

Khalilian, a neon-green Lamborghini-driving nightclub owner, has had more unsavory brushes with the law as well, including three arrests for sexual misconduct or rape, the Orlando Sentinel reported in 2007. According to the Sentinel, the Iranian-born Khalilian also claimed diplomatic immunity.

"I'm a diplomat. You can't arrest me. I own Club Paris," a police report quoted Khalilian as telling Sgt. Rhonda Huckelbery, who was investigating a report by a passer-by that Khalilian tried to rape a woman outside the nightclub on Nov. 18, 2005. "You work for me."

The "Club Paris" in question was a Khalilian-owned nightclub that promised regular appearances by jet-setting party girl Paris Hilton, who he reportedly paid seven-figures to show up twice a month. But the club closed after three years and only sporadic appearances by Hilton.

MySpace now means MyUnemployment....

2011-01-11T11:09:00.000-08:00

MySpace CEO confirms heavy layoffs

by Caroline McCarthy

MySpace CEO Mike Jones today announced a "significant organizational restructuring that will result in a 47 percent staff reduction across all divisions globally and impact about 500 employees," confirming many rumors that the News Corp.-owned social network would be going through heavy layoffs before possibly seeking a new buyer.

Formerly a social-networking sensation, MySpace lost more and more ground to Facebook over the past few years until it finally underwent a massive redesign that focuses on pop culture media-sharing for young users rather than attempting to be a universally appealing social network.

"Today's tough but necessary changes were taken in order to provide the company with a clear path for sustained growth and profitability," Jones said of the recently redesigned MySpace. "These changes were purely driven by issues related to our legacy business, and in no way reflect the performance of the new product."

The statement had some bits of slightly sunnier news: "Since the worldwide rollout of the new MySpace, there have been more than 3.3 million new profiles created," Jones' statement announced. (OK, but does it offset users who continue to desert the site?) "We have already seen a rise of four percent in mobile users just between November to December, now totaling over 22 million."

Jones also announced that there will be some partnerships for MySpace in the U.K., Australia, and Germany to handle advertising sales and content, which hints that layoffs overseas may be particularly heavy. He said that the company "will retain a core, dedicated international team to work with partners in order to ensure users, content partners and advertisers continue to be served."

There was no mention of News Corp.'s rumored plans to shop MySpace to other buyers.

Hate Flying for the Holidays? So does the TSA....

2010-12-22T07:12:00.000-08:00

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Getting a pat-down at airport security may be uncomfortable for holiday travelers. But life for the blue-shirted officers of the Transportation Security Administration isn't much fun either.

"We just want the passengers to understand: Look, we're not perverts or anything like that; we just have to search everything," said Rick McCoy, the senior TSA officer at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. "We're not here to be abused. We're just here to help you get on your flight and go about your business."

McCoy has been a screener for the TSA for nearly nine years. That means he's been with the federal agency since its inception in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

"The work life here is horrible," said McCoy, president of his local union representing officers. Turnover is like a "revolving door" and health benefits are "atrocious," he said. Morale is low and so is the pay, he added.

Officers typically start at $29,000, but that's only if they're working full-time. New officers often start as part-time workers, said McCoy, at about $14 per hour. He said that part-timers, who make up 37% of the screener workforce at O'Hare, typically have to work four-hour days for at least three years before they're considered for full-time.

"I can't sugar coat this to these guys," said McCoy, who described many of the new employees as young students. "I tell them, 'Whatever you do, don't leave school.'"

McCoy says he makes about $42,000 a year in base pay, which is near the top of the officer pay scale. He said he relies primarily on overtime to support his family, especially since he pays nearly $500 a month for the TSA's healthcare plan.

The relatively low pay, particularly with the new part-timers, might be contributing to problems with the professionalism of some of the officers, said Anne Banas, executive editor at www.smartertravel.com.

"They're not paid a very high wage and they're not necessarily trained in customer service," said Banas. She said that some of the officers she's encountered are "great and gracious," while others are "power-tripping and controlling," with a "not my problem" attitude.

The best way to deal with stressed-out screeners, said Banas, is to "be as polite as you can. Don't make demands. Try to keep a cool head if you get pulled aside for pat downs."

Things have gotten extra-tough for the officers lately, since the TSA initiated its controversial pat-down procedure ahead of the Thanksgiving travel season. This new method of screening passengers is meant to detect explosives hidden in clothing, like the underwear bomb carried by a suspected terrorist on a Christmas Day flight last year.

Pats downs are implemented when passengers choose not to go through the advanced-imaging body scanners, or when they set off the scanners or metal detectors.

The pat downs result in some embarrassing contact between officers and passengers who consider the procedure to be too intrusive. Airline security blogger Steven Frischling has been posting anonymous complaints from officers on his blog, www.flyingwithfish.com, including this one:

"It is not comfortable to come to work knowing full well that my hands will be feeling another man's private parts, their butt, their inner thigh."

Frischling said that screeners tell him they're "demeaned" by the pat-down procedure, which they describe as "ineffective."

But in a recent statement, TSA administrator John Pistole stood by the new procedure as an effective way of weeding out terrorists.

"We cannot forget that less than one year ago a suicide bomber with explosives in his underwear tried to bring down a plane over Detroit," said Pistole. "The terrorists allegedly behind the thwarted cargo attempt last month are out there bragging about how they will strike again."

"We all wish we lived in a world where security procedures at airports weren't necessary but that just isn't the case," he said.

The pat-down procedure resulted in about a half-dozen incidents at O'Hare where travelers hit or pushed officers, said McCoy. He said these events don't always result in arrest, which further undermines morale.

"We're reminding people that these agents didn't create the policy," said John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing 600,000 federal workers. "Taking out your frustration on them is inappropriate."

Gage and McCoy said that 12,000 of the 50,000 officers are currently union members, but they don't have the power of collective bargaining. They said that conditions might eventually improve for TSA officers if a majority of them vote to unionize with collective bargaining in the coming months.

For now, despite the poor morale and work conditions, McCoy said the screeners realize their jobs are important and the stakes for failure are high.

"If something happened to a plane coming from any one of these TSA airports, there would be a lot of distraught people," he said

How Social Media Boutiques are Winning Deals Over Traditional Digital Agencies

2010-12-21T07:03:00.000-08:00

Categories: Social Media Posted on December 21st, 2010 (WebStrategist.com)

Research Findings: While Traditional agencies clinch up to $162,000 per client from beginner, experimental and formalized companies, yet when corporations become advanced, boutiques earn an average of $238,000 per brand. Expect traditional agencies to glean new skills or start M&A, and expect boutiques who have vision to stand the test of time.

Social Media Boutiques are Emerging to Threaten Traditional Agencies
It’s been a long time coming since we’ve seen major disruptive in the agency space. 10-15 years ago we saw the rise of internet agencies, digital agencies, and web marketing boutiques, and then a fast consolidation during the downturn. Now, we’re seeing the rise of social media boutiques, and we have telling data that shows they are threatening the budgets of traditional digital agencies in a particular type of client. This is a massively growing space, at Altimeter we were tracking the many agencies on a wiki, but stopped updating it due to overflow of submissions.

Above: 2011 Budgets: Social Media Boutiques Overtake Traditional Agencies Among Advanced Buyers

Companies that are just getting started and are formalized naturally lean on their traditional agency partners
In the novice through mature level brands, the traditional agencies are the first go-to. Corporations rely on them, as they have existing relationships and have purchase orders set in place. Yet we know (see engagement DB and our Facebook marketing research) that most corporations are not even engaging with their customers –they are doing it wrong. They often rely on traditional agencies for education (often a loss leader) research and strategy and implementation.

After Traditional Agencies Have Laid Groundwork Boutiques Swoop In, clinching revenues
Once corporations realize that social business is not about short term campaigns, they give $ to boutique agencies. The data from the buyers indicates there’s a significant jump in spending on boutique social media firms when the buyer is advanced and sophicaiated in social business. They know their traditional agency lacks flexibility or doesn’t have a business model for social engagement and relies on them. This is a great opportunity for the boutique agencies, who let the traditional agency do education, set plans in place, experience a few failures letting boutiques swoop in.

In my LeWeb keynote, I stand by my convictions not to hire social media “Ninjas, Gurus, and Samurai” and received audience applause. Instead, I offered, corporations should hire business program managers, in other words, people that put business goals first –tools and technologies second. This also applies in selecting your boutique agency

Why Social Media Boutiques Differentiate Successfully from
Social Media Boutiques are taking the budgets away from Traditional Agencies as corporations become mature. Corporations know they need these specialists for the following reason

Offer a specialized skillset in new media and social business that traditional agencies may not offer
They can do deep change management within the corporations –traditional agencies have a reputation for layering social media on top of existing campaigns.
Are not shot term ‘campaign’ focused, instead are more long term focused such as building a community with customers for the long term.
Are ready to roll up sleeves to assist with deeper customer engagement –not just deploy traditional advertising (one of the top spends in social business)
Are more agile within smaller teams and can quickly maneuver as the technology space changes over time.
Fundamentally are geared to measure differently around engagement –not just top line and bottom line measurements

Yet social media boutiques are limited by their size –and must partner
Despite their strengths, Social Meida Boutiques have weakenesses. They are often unable to scale as engagement is difficult to roll out to all product units and around the globe, are quickly finding that traditional agencies are catching up by training staff (see how Edelman has an internal black belt education program) and often lack the ability to achieve an integrated marketing approach

Industry Analyst Perspective: What the Future Beholds

Traditional agencies will adopt these skills, or be forced to content with options.
Expect the traditional agencies to generate revenues outside of engagement in brand monitoring, education, measurement, and leading an integrated approach
Traditional incumbants will acquire these young startups. Expect this data to be cascaded to the upper echelons of traditional corporations who know they need to quickly get a strategy on M&A activity (see today’s Dachis news)
A handful of these agencies will grow into the next digital agency. Not wanting to sell and enjoy the fruits of their hardwork, many of these agencies will stay
Brands will rely on traditional for education –boutiques often can’t afford to this unless it’s a loss leader for a sale.
While specialization and competition is good, buyers will demand that their agencies work together. The previous HR block marketing team rallied 5 agencies together to work on a single social media effort, for a holistic customer experience
We’re already seeing a few traditional agencies like Edelman (in the lead, in my opinion with Rubel, Armano, Carfi, Brito), Oglivy (Bell, Rohit) build strong internal teams on social business using blogs, thought leadership, and hire social media practitioners.

If you found this helpful, please forward on to your agency partners, and internal teams. Or if you’re an agency and want to share your perspective, I look forward to your comments below.

Twitter Tweets Big With $200 Million in Funding

2010-12-16T07:47:00.000-08:00

Twitter is putting to rest any doubts it is taking a shot at being one of the Web’s next big platforms with a $200 million funding round that values the company at a staggering $3.7 billion.

AllThingsD.com reported details of the round, which will also bring former DoubleClick CEO David Rosenblatt and Flipboard CEO Mike McCue to its board of directors. (Twitter has confirmed the funding round and new board members.)

The funding round comes after Twitter reportedly spurned acquisition feelers from Google. It is a huge bet for investors, led by Kleiner Perkins, that Twitter can grow to become a tech platform alongside Google, Facebook, Apple and others. With its 175 million registered users posting short updates, Twitter could theoretically build “ the communications graph” to operate alongside Facebook’s social-connectivity graph.

Rosenblatt, who served as president of Google’s display ad business, will bring to Twitter his deep knowledge of the online ad business. He’s been a director at other companies, including GSI Commerce, where he joined the board last month.

The question is whether Twitter can build a big enough ad business to justify its high-flying valuation. To date, it’s run very few ads, choosing instead to create ad products in-line with how its service is used. Rather than display ads, Twitter is offering promoted tweets, trends and accounts.

Dick Costolo became CEO of the company in October with an eye to turning it into a formidable ad business. Its sales force, under Adam Bain, remains tiny; and Twitter does not yet have an office in New York.

Is it Time for Time (Inc., that is)?....

2010-12-07T08:54:00.001-08:00

In his first big shakeup as Time Inc.’s new CEO Jack Griffin announced two major promotions he said were aimed at speeding decision-making and creating clearer lines of authority.

The big winner is Paul Caine, who adds the new title of evp, chief revenue officer to his current duties as president of the Style & Entertainment Group, which includes People, InStyle and Entertainment Weekly. In his new role, he’ll oversee corporate sales, with Leslie Picard and Kirk McDonald reporting to him.

Stephanie George, evp, who previously led corporate sales, was moved to a new position at the company of chief marketing officer, which could be read as a diminished position, because marketing services represents a relatively small part of Time Inc.'s overall business, although one where Griffin sees big growth potential. In her new role, she’ll oversee Time Inc. Content Solutions, corporate communications and Time Inc.’s partnership with American Express Publishing.

Both will report to Griffin, as they currently do.

One insider said Caine’s promotion is a recognition of his success running SEG, which is said to contribute at least 50 percent of Time Inc.’s revenue, and a way to reduce his overlap with corporate sales.

“It’s a lot cleaner and easier for him,” this person said. “If he’s negotiating with P&G, and there’s corporate sales and marketing also negotiating, it gets complicated.”

“This organization will drive faster, more coordinated decision-making and better align our resources against our goal of creating and delivering unmatched value in the marketplace,” Griffin said in an announcement.

What a Long, Slow U.S. Ad Trip it's been...

2010-12-06T06:33:00.000-08:00

Forecast: Long, Slow U.S. Ad Recovery

ZenithOptimedia predicts 'disappointing' ad growth between 2010-13

Adweek: Dec 5, 2010

For the U.S. ad economy, it’s going to be a long, slow climb to full recovery, according to a new forecast that Publicis Groupe’s ZenithOptimedia will present at the UBS
Media conference in New York on Monday (Dec. 6).

Two other shops will also offer new global ad forecasts at the conference: Interpublic’s MagnaGlobal and WPP’s GroupM. Headlines from Magna: China will soon overtake Japan to become the second-largest ad market, while the Internet will surpass newspapers within two years to become the second-largest ad medium after TV. GroupM predicts that global ad spending will reach $500 billion for the first time next year, up 6 percent.

According to the ZO forecast, ad spending in the U.S. will grow just 2.5 percent next year to $155 billion, and a total of just under 9 percent between 2010 and 2013 to $164.8 billion, an increase that the agency termed “disappointing.” The Olympic-Election year of 2012 will see growth of just 3 percent to $159.6 billion.

Meanwhile, the global outlook is a little better, with projected spending for the same period up about 5 percent annually to $521 billion, per ZO.

“It’s a muted recovery,” said Steve King, ZO’s global CEO. “While the recovery is underway, it’s just not as dramatic”—or as rapid, compared to the recoveries that followed other recent recessions, he said. The severity of last year’s economic downturn partly explains the slow rebound, said King. It was also more widespread in terms of its geographic reach.

Of course, the sluggish growth projected for the next few years in the U.S. is better than the performance of the recent past. In 2009, spending dropped 7 percent. And 2010 growth is expected to total an anemic 1.5 percent to $151.5 billion, per ZO.

Factors stunting near-term growth in the U.S., ZO said, include corporate concerns about debt, unemployment and government spending.

That said, some growth is better than none, and GroupM chief investment officer Rino Scanzoni noted a “significant rebound in spending” in the U.S. during the second half of this year, compared with the depressed spending levels during 2009. Most of that growth was fueled by TV and Internet spending, he said.

ZO predicted that near-term worldwide spending growth will be driven by emerging markets. Brazil for example, is projected to grow 31 percent next year.

According to MagnaGlobal, China and India will show “standout” growth over the next several years. China will overtake Japan to become the world’s second-largest advertising market by 2013, Magna predicts, with ad revenues exceeding $54 billion. India’s ad economy should rise 21 percent next year to over $5 billion, with annual growth averaging more than 19 percent over five years.

“Until advertisers are fully confident that the economic recovery will be sustained, we expect growth to remain below its long-term trend rate of 6 percent,” said King of ZO.

Globally, ZO said that newspapers and magazines will continue to be the biggest media laggards, with spending in those sectors down another 2 percent between 2010 and 2013 as circulations continue to fall and readers migrate to the Internet. By contrast, Internet ad growth will spurt 48 percent during the same period. TV spending will be up 19 percent and radio will be up 10 percent.

According to Magna, Internet advertising will overtake newspapers as the second largest ad medium globally by 2013. It said that annual Internet ad revenue growth would top 7.5 percent over the next five years to $117 billion.

Everyone look out...here comes the FTC!

2010-12-02T06:44:00.000-08:00

Federal Trade Commission Proposes 'Do Not Track' for Internet Advertising

Chairman Liebowitz Says Self-Regulation Efforts Well-Intentioned, but Not Enough

Published: December 01, 2010

The stakes for online privacy just got a little higher.

The Federal Trade Commission revealed its proposal for a universal "do not track" mechanism on Wednesday that would allow people to choose whether they want internet companies to collect information on their browsing habits. On Thursday, a House subcommittee is holding a separate hearing on the matter. Online publishers and advertisers have come to rely on such data, and any significant alteration of current practices would have deep implications for the internet industry.

The FTC's report stated that despite numerous attempts at self-regulation, the industry has not done enough to protect consumers' privacy online, and that they need to work faster and improve their efforts.

"We're sending a clear message that self-regulation of privacy has not worked accurately," FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a call with reporters Wednesday. "The industry as a whole needs to do a far better job."

A coalition of advertising industry trade groups calling itself the Digital Advertising Alliance initiated a self-regulatory effort a few weeks ago that would allow consumers to choose to prohibit marketers from targeting them with advertising. The DAA, which is comprised of the 4As, the American Advertising Federation (AAF), the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), represent more than 5,000 corporations.

This initiative had been met with some praise from officials at the FTC when first launched, but it has not progressed quickly enough, according to Chairman Leibowitz.

"I think the people who are doing that are very well-intentioned," he said, "but it has been in pre-beta development for quite some time -- I think for more than two years. We'd like to see them move faster." Chairman Leibowitz did indicate, however, that the industry group appears to be taking proper steps and that its efforts could lead to a "more comprehensive" system.

Stuart P. Ingis, partner at Washington law firm Venable and counsel for the DAA, said that the online ad industry has delivered the kind of choice the Commission has asked for, and that the business community is in the best position to execute these plans. "We've built a very good framework," he said of their consumer opt-out program, which launched a few weeks ago. A significant component of the industry's program includes an icon that will appear on ads, which will lead consumers to an opt-out page. "In the next months, this will be ubiquitous," Mr. Ingis said.

Stopping collection, not just targeting
The Commission had expressed concern that the industry program does not allow people to keep online marketers from collecting data on their surfing habits, but only prevents marketers from serving, or targeting users with more relevant advertising. "We support the opt-out of collection not just targeting," Chairman Leibowitz clarified.

But according to Mr. Ingis, the industry program does stop marketers from collecting data once they choose to opt out, underscoring a larger question over what purposes the Commission defines beyond the scope of advertising. "We've had dialogue with them on this issue before, and we've met that goal," he said, "but if they want to extend the opt outs to include collecting data for purposes other than marketing, I don't know how that will work." He pointed out that third parties collect data for purposes other than advertising, such as email log-in authentication, as well as traffic data such as Google Analytics, which is widely employed across the web.

"That's why 'Do Not Track' is such a misnomer," he said.

The Commission's guidelines are preliminary, and it underscores the FTC's limited authority. A Do Not Track law could only be enacted by Congress, suggesting that this report is an appeal to whichever party -- industry or Congress -- will act more quickly. A subcommittee is holding a hearing called "Do-Not-Track Legislation: Is Now the Right Time?" on Thursday.

How it would work
A sticking point is how exactly a Do Not Track feature would work. The Commission's report spells out a specific example whereby a web browser, such as Firefox, would install a piece of software such as a cookie onto the user's browser that would signal to online marketers whether that consumer has chosen to make available his or her browsing habits in return for targeted advertising. But such a mechanism would only be specific to that browser and not to the specific person, as the Do Not Call legislation offers.

A browser-enabled Do Not Track feature would also have to differentiate between data collected for marketing purposes, or other reasons, whether for traffic data or log-in authentication, such as online banking.

But privacy advocates have largely approved of the Commission's report, and argue that a Do Not Track program is technically feasible. "The browser-based mechanism is simple and very generalize-able," said Peter Eckersley, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "It could apply to mobile platforms without changing much. There is some flexibility on this proposal."

Chairman Leibowitz also said that despite the specific Do Not Track example outlined in the report, "it's not the only way, and that's why we're seeking comment. We're big believers in transparency and process, and if someone has a better idea, we want to hear it."

Cyber Monday is the new Black (Friday)?

2010-12-01T06:56:00.000-08:00

Associated Press

Cyber Monday sales top $1 billion for first time

Associated Press, 12.01.10, 09:28 AM EST

NEW YORK -- Americans jumped on deals and promotions offered online on Cyber Monday, spending $1 billion and making it the busiest online shopping day ever, according to new data.

Research firm comScore Inc. says revenue rose 16 percent from a year ago to $1.03 billion on the Monday after Thanksgiving. Since the beginning of November, online sales are up 13 percent to $13.55 billion.

The improvement is welcome for retailers hoping that Americans start spending more freely. But shoppers are still holding out for bargains and spending cautiously as unemployment remains high.

According to ShopperTrak figures, revenue at brick-and-mortar stores was flat over the weekend following Thanksgiving, but traffic rose 2.8 percent.

A clearer picture of spending will come Thursday when the nation's retailers release revenue figures for November.

An Interview with our VP of Operations, Jeff Roach with B2B Online...

2010-12-01T06:51:00.001-08:00

Are opt-in lists worth the extra money?

Jon VanZile

Story posted: April 26, 2010 - 6:01 am EDT

When it comes to “opt-in” email lists, things can get confusing pretty quick.

A true opt-in list is one created by your company with subjects who specifically invited emails from your company. But b2b list vendors frequently advertise “opt-in” lists that are targeted at your market category or product mix and are designed to yield better results. In some cases, these lists may contain records that were obtained by your competitors—or records that your competitors may have already targeted if they have access to the same list database.

This less-than-ideal scenario raises a good question: Do these more expensive opt-in lists really yield any benefit in the sometimes small world of b2b email marketing or are third-party opt-in lists little more than a marketing distinction used by list vendors?

“Opt-in lists are definitely more valuable than general lists,” said Christine Crandell, senior VP-marketing for Accept Software Corp. in Fremont, Calif. “Having said that, just because the list is opt-in doesn’t necessarily mean the list members will be interested in the product being offered.”

That sentiment was echoed by Peter Burke, CEO of Mavington Group in Wayne, Pa.

“I understand the premise of opt-in lists, but I don’t really see how they apply in executive contacts,” Burke said, adding that he rarely uses opt-in lists in his company’s marketing efforts.

So beyond their greater perceived value, if the feeling is that opt-in lists may not increase leads, what’s the point of using them?

This is where price comes in, said Jeffrey Roach, advertising operations director at eLink Media in West Palm Beach, Fla.

“I find there to be a mixed opinion from my clients on whether site- and product-specific lists are more effective than general opt-in lists,” Roach said. “Price is a huge factor, in that opinion.”

In Roach’s view, the ultimate value of a list isn’t whether it’s opt-in or not, but the return on investment the list yields during a campaign. Naturally, because opt-in lists are more expensive, they have to yield better business results.

“This game is about ROI, and if you’re priced out of your metrics, does it really matter where the list came from?” Roach said.

They key to extracting value from opt-in lists (or any lists), Crandell said, is to do your homework: Make sure the list matches the campaign, including its price.

“Marketing needs to carefully match list profiles, demographic and psychographic, with the desired target audience,” Crandell said. “A good match and a credible opt-in list are an essential foundation for productive marketing campaigns. As we implement our marketing plans, we may secure additional opt-in lists for campaigns that are targeted to a different audience, industry or geography than what is addressed by our marketing database.”

Opt-in lists have one additional benefit: Emails generated from an opt-in list are less likely to trigger spam filters and result in your email being blocked.

There is a new personality at play in the marketing world...

2010-11-29T07:43:00.000-08:00

As reported on Adweek.com 28-November 2010

Focused on marketers, WME aims to replace shops

Ari Emanuel

Ari Emanuel wants your lead agency status.

With the launch of Lverage, WME Entertainment’s latest venture into brand marketing, Emanuel, co-CEO of WME, has set his sights on replacing, not supplementing ad agencies, said sources who’ve discussed the venture with him. To that end, he has surrounded himself with partners like former Omnicom Group vice chairman Michael Birkin who knows the ad game and is well connected with marketers.

Birkin is chief strategist for Red Peak Group, a New York-based specialist in brand consulting and experiential marketing that WME acquired for Lverage, said sources. Red Peak’s CEO is Jay Lenstrom, former CEO of Omnicom’s Radiate Group. WME also acquired the Red Interactive Agency in Santa Monica, Calif., and forged ties with Marc Byron, founder of Trivergance Business Resources, a direct marketing firm in Fort Lee, N.J., that remains a separate company.

In conversations with other potential partners, Emanuel has positioned WME as “more connected” than chief rival Creative Artists Agency and its more established marketing arm, which opened in 1998 after CAA shocked the ad industry by (briefly) overtaking McCann Erickson as lead agency on Coca-Cola. CAA Marketing today operates largely as an added resource for marketers who already have lead shops. As one source put it, “It doesn’t feel like CAA is trying to disintermediate advertising agencies. These guys (at WME), really their goal is to get some big accounts and be the AOR.”

The broader ambitions represent a break from WME’s past efforts in this space via Endeavor Marketing and its chief, Mark Dowley. While Dowley this summer helped introduce Emanuel to players in the ad world, he may not play a role in Lverage, said sources. Endeavor Marketing is now part of Lverage. Dowley could not be reached, and Emanuel, through a representative, declined to comment.

The simple reason, of course, why Emanuel’s marketing goals are bigger this time is that his agency is bigger. WME is the product of last year’s merger of the William Morris Agency and Endeavor, the shop Emanuel opened with three colleagues from ICM in 1995. Additionally, WME now has access to fresh capital via a $300 million private equity fund at The Raine Group, in which the agency has a minority stake. The fund will enable WME to make investments that, in turn, could aid efforts to link talent and brand marketers.

Marketers are particularly alluring to WME these days because their dollars represent a potentially sizeable source of revenue for the agency’s clients. As WME co-CEO Patrick Whitesell said of his clients at Google’s Zeitgeist 2010 conference in September, “We know what their value is to consumers. We know what they are to advertisers. So, the next step is for us is, how can they economically benefit from those things that are out there and happening?” At the same conference, Emanuel added: “We’re having more conversations with advertisers every day, whether it be the P&Gs, the GMs of the world. Almost on a daily basis now, you’re having those conversations.”

To move beyond transactional deals with such marketers and build brands long term, however, WME will likely need more strategic and creative firepower, said sources. That may explain why Emanuel approached former JWT North American president Rosemarie Ryan -- a strategic planner by trade -- and ex-JWT chief creative officer Ty Montague before the duo launched Co: in September, according to sources.

“There’s absolutely merit in finding a way to bring that kind of creative pool together with advertisers and marketing companies,” said a source. “What that (also) entails is really understanding brands, how they get built and all of that stuff. I think they see it solely as a creative endeavor and not necessarily a strategic endeavor as well. And I think you have to do both.”

NBC...It's Must House Clean TV!

2010-11-19T06:11:00.000-08:00

As reported on Adweek.com...

Comcast Reveals NBCU Leadership Structure

Steve Burke

It was the worst-kept secret in the history of worst-kept secrets, but after weeks of leaks and speculation, Comcast at long last announced the new executive lineup at NBC Universal.

The cable giant detailed the roster in a memo from Comcast chief operating office and incoming NBCU CEO Steve Burke. Given the volume of leaks pouring out of NBCU, there were few (if any surprises), though a few new positions were introduced.

As Mediaweek previously reported, all but a handful of the bold-faced names at NBCU will retain their posts. (CEO Jeff Zucker in September announced he would leave after the deal closes, while NBCU entertainment president Jeff Gaspin was shown the door earlier this week.)

Moving to the top of the broadcast heap is ex-Showtime mastermind Bob Greenblatt, who will assume the role of chairman, NBC Entertainment. In his new role, Greenblatt will oversee NBC's prime-time and late-night programming, as well as business affairs, West Coast research, marketing, public relations, scheduling and NBC Universal Media Studios.

Joining Greenblatt (and moving back East) is current Comcast entertainment group CEO Ted Harbert, who joins NBCU as chairman of the broadcast flagship. Harbert will keep his eye on advertising sales, affiliate relations, research, domestic syndication and the NBC station group.

On the cable side of the ledger, Bonnie Hammer will become chairman, NBC Universal Cable Entertainment and Cable Studios. In addition to her current charges, which include USA Network, SyFy, Chiller, Sleuth, Universal HD and Universal Cable Productions, Hammer will add oversight of Comcast's E! and G4. Neil Tiles will remain president of G4, reporting to Hammer, as will an as-yet unidentified new E! topper.

Lauren Zalaznick will become chairman, NBC Universal Entertainment & Digital Networks and Integrated Media. Bravo, Oxygen and iVillage will continue to report to Zalaznick, as will the Integrated Strategic Marketing Group, which includes Green Is Universal, Healthy at NBC Universal and Women at NBC Universal. Zalaznick will also manage the digital properties Daily Candy and Fandango, as well as the Spanish-language network Telemundo; moreover, she'll add cable nets mun2, Style and PBS Sprout to her roster.

Telemundo will continue to be led by president Don Browne and COO Jackie Hernandez, while Salaam Coleman Smith will stay on to lead Style.

In the early going, ad sales will take on a bifurcated structure, with Marianne Gambelli taking on the broadcast duties as the new president of NBC Network Advertising Sales and Dave Cassaro assuming oversight of all cable network and digital sales. Along with prime time, Gambelli will be responsible for news and sports ad sales.

Gambelli will report to Harbert, while cable ad sales president Cassaro will report to Hammer and Zalaznick. Steve Mandala, Peter Naylor and Mike Rodriguez will remain, reporting to Cassaro.

NBCU president of sales and marketing Mike Pilot will leave upon completion of the acquisition, which could close as soon as late December. In his memo to staffers, Burke addressed the departure of Gaspin and Pilot by noting, "These transitions are often difficult, and at times, people who have made great contributions end up leaving."

Pilot took the reins at the NBCU sales unit in 2006, after being shifted from his previous post as chief executive of the equipment finance group at GE.

Among those staying on at 30 Rock are: NBC News/MSNBC president Steve Capus, CNBC president Mark Hoffman and NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol. The veteran deal maker will add the Golf Channel, Versus and the Comcast Regional Sports Networks to his plate; Jon Litner (RSNs), Jamie Davis (Versus) and Earl Marshall (Golf) will report to Ebersol.

Jeff Shell will move to London to become chairman of NBC Universal International.

"The team described above will not begin to operate the company until after the transaction closes, which will occur following regulatory approval," Burke said. "Between now and then, each business will continue to be managed by its respective leadership team, and NBC Universal will continue to be led by Jeff Zucker, whose talent, hard work and commitment have been instrumental in building NBC Universal into the company it is today."

Burke said employees could expect further announcements before the $13.8 billion transaction is wrapped up. He signed off with a brief forward-looking statement: "I hope you are as excited as I am by the prospect of what we can accomplish together in the future."

Zucker earlier today said that NBCU and Comcast are now in the final stages of the regulatory review, adding that issues having to do with online video were of paramount concern to Washington lawmakers.

Yogurt anyone?...courtesy of Mullen

2010-11-16T10:44:00.000-08:00

As reported on Adweek.com...

Interpublic Group's Mullen has picked up U.S. advertising chores for the Fage Greek yogurt brand, succeeding WPP's Ogilvy & Mather, which worked on the account for three years.

Fage spent almost $4 million on ads during the first two-thirds of 2010, almost as much as it spent in all of last year, per Nielsen.

Boston-based Mullen will handle traditional and digital chores including creative development, media planning and buying and social media outreach.

All told, domestic Yogurt sales tallied $4.97 billion in the 52-week period ended Oct. 2, a 7.6 percent increase vs. the same frame in 2009, Nielsen said. So the win gets the agency into growing category.

Ogilvy two months ago launched a major push for Fage online. One ad showed a woman's necklace pressed into a bed of "ridiculously thick yogurt." The tag: "Fashionably low in fat." Three blueberries -- dangling as pendants -- added a splash of color to the creamy white background.

The client called that effort one of its largest ad pushes ever, but the Ogilvy relationship apparently soured. The first fruit of its association with Mullen appears early next year.

Mr. Goodwrench is filing for unemployment benefits...

2010-11-11T06:46:00.000-08:00

As posted on November 11, 2010 in Adweek.com

Why GM's Scrapping Mr. Goodwrench

After 38 years, the automaker plans to discontinue the long-running campaign in February

After 38 years, GM is sending its iconic "Mr. Goodwrench" to the junkyard. The automaker plans to discontinue the long-running campaign in February, as part of a de-emphasis on GM as a brand and a greater focus on the "new GM" -- meaning its roster of brands that include Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC.

Despite the fact that GM is in the midst of a road show with institutional investors to promote its initial public offering this month, there is little appetite at GM for any marketing activity, outside of investor relations.

"It is ironic that most companies doing an IPO would do anything they could to promote their corporate brand, but GM is . . . [calling] attention to the stock and the IPO, and then changing the subject as quickly as possible to Chevy and Cadillac," said independent marketing consultant Dennis Keene.

Dating back to 1972, the idea behind Mr. Goodwrench was to embody in a single character a set of standards that all GM dealerships adhered to in providing good service with GM certified parts. The tactic was born out of an advertising tradition of conveying a product or service attribute through a fictionalized character. (Other examples are Mr. Clean, Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben and Mrs. Butterworth.)

The original Mr. Goodwrench was a bald, nerdy looking guy with black-rimmed glasses; he looked more like a high school science teacher than a mechanic. The idea back in the early 1970s was to use an image that would engender trust -- a father-figure who looked like he had knowledge and would never hoodwink a customer or take advantage of a woman. The campaign surrounding Mr. Goodwrench gained significant awareness among consumers throughout the decades.

The current embodiment of Mr. Goodwrench on the Goodwrench.com website is a buff-looking younger man, holding up a clipboard that displays completed service on a vehicle. For reasons beyond knowing, Mr. Goodwrench is on his knees. He also has shockingly clean and manicured hands, despite his profession.

But that's also part of the reason why Mr. Goodwrench is out of favor. There isn't actually a lot of grease and wrench-work going on with new cars today. If something goes wrong on a vehicle, it usually requires fixes to the on-board computer. "Goodwrench" doesn't quite reflect the technical sophistication of today's vehicles. Maybe "Mr. Goodchip" would be more appropriate.

Starting in September, each of GM's brands will advertise its own branded certified repair work with no connection to GM. De-emphasizing GM has been an ongoing campaign for the last few years. Small GM badges on the outside of cars, inside cars, on safety-belt buckles and keys have been disappearing.

The company's bankruptcy and government bailout last year is most associated with the GM brand, not with the individual brands, according to the automaker's research. It's no wonder GM wants to steer clear of that tarnished image.

Except for this month, when the company starts trading shares again. It's ticker symbol will be GM.

Mmmm...spam...just what I want on my vacation...

2010-11-10T07:04:00.000-08:00

Spam and a slow tow for thousands on cruise ship

By JULIE WATSON, Associated Press Julie Watson, Associated Press –

SAN DIEGO – The former fun seekers of the Carnival Splendor are cruising again — but just barely.

In a scenario likely none of its more than 3,000 passengers pictured when they planned their seven-day jaunt on the Mexican Riviera, the disabled cruise liner was being towed to San Diego by tugboats. Instead of a lavish seafood buffet, passengers were subsisting on Spam.

After two days adrift, the ship began moving again Tuesday when the first of several Mexican tugboats arrived. Rocking gently with the waves, the ship was pulled along slowly with a Coast Guard boat along one side and the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier on the ship's other side. There were no visible signs of damage.

The 952-foot vessel was expected to arrive in San Diego on Thursday night, Miami-based Carnival Cruise Lines said in a statement.

The ship was 200 miles south of San Diego and about 44 miles off shore when an engine room fire Monday morning killed its power and set it adrift.

No one was hurt, but the nearly 4,500 passengers and crew were left without air conditioning, hot water, cell phone or Internet service. The ship's auxiliary power allowed for working toilets and cold water.

U.S. Navy Seahawk helicopters were ferrying supplies, including Spam, crab meat, croissants and Pop Tarts to the ship from the USS Ronald Reagan, an aircraft carrier that reached the Splendor after it was diverted from training maneuvers to help.

The Splendor only had enough food to last through midday Tuesday because refrigerators on the ship stopped working after the power was knocked out, Navy Commander Greg Hicks said. But thousands of pounds of food was delivered by Tuesday night.

The U.S. Coast Guard and Mexican Navy also sent resources to the ship.

The tugboats were originally set to take the Splendor to Ensenada, Mexico, but the cruise line changed its plans and will attempt to have it towed to San Diego, where hotel and flight arrangements would await the passengers, Carnival said.

If the process moves too slowly, it may still be taken to Ensenada, the statement said.

As of 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, the Splendor was about 190 miles south of San Diego, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

The ship was being towed by one Mexican tugboat while a smaller counterpart helped the ship maneuver. A third tug boat, the U.S.-based Monterey Bay, was scheduled to arrive late Tuesday night, the paper said.

Toni Sweet, of San Pedro, Calif., was frustrated when she couldn't reach her cousin, Vicky Alvarez, aboard the ship. She said she called her cell phone and did not get an answer.

"We know everything is fine, but we're just worried," Sweet said. "She was nervous about going on a cruise ship even before this happened and now with this, I don't think she'll ever go again."

Carnival spokeswoman Joyce Oliva said the ship's command is able to communicate with outsiders on a backup system.

Carnival Corp.'s stock was down about 1 percent Tuesday.

The situation will be costly for Carnival, which is refunding passengers, offering vouchers for future cruises and may have to dry dock the ship if the damage is extensive.

"We know this has been an extremely trying situation for our guests and we sincerely thank them for their patience," Carnival President and CEO Gerry Cahill said in a statement.

Accidents like the engine-room fire are rare, said Monty Mathisen, of the New York-based publication Cruise Industry News.

The last major cruise accident was in 2007 when a ship with more than 1,500 people sank after hitting rocks near the Aegean island of Santorini, Mathisen said. Two French tourists died.

In May, a machine room fire in a cruise ship off the coast of Norway forced 607 people aboard to evacuate.

"The ships have to be safe, if not the market will collapse," Mathisen said.

Have No Fear -- the Social Water is Fine!

2010-11-09T06:45:00.000-08:00

As posted by Sarah Fay on November 5th, 2010 at 9:36 pm on iMedia Connection:

A resounding message came through to me at the ad:tech conference this week and that is: Social Media Programs are moving the needle for big brand marketers. And not just a little bit -- a LOT. But companies who implemented these programs had to let go of some major hesitations before jumping into what Lauren Zalaznick, President of NBC Universal Women and Lifestyle Entertainment Networks described as “brackish waters”. In her keynote on opening day, Zalaznick made note of her reasons to be wary of new technologies that are disruptive to her business, changing the rules and undermining her revenue streams. And yet her mantra is “No Fear”, while focusing on the consumer, and creating the content that will win. She sees technology as an enabler to give consumers what they want, when they want it, so they can become more deeply involved in programming. In fact, she pointed out that there is a direct correlation between consumer involvement in social spaces and programming success.

In one instance, on Oxygen Live, a mobile marketing component for “The Bad Girls’ Club” turned viewers into marketers, and ratings jumped 87% on the east coast and 119% on the west coast on a season over season basis. Zalaznick also noted research that confirms 96% of women saying if they like your product, they will recommend it to everyone they know. It is no wonder that the NBC Universal Is weaving in all kinds of opportunities for audiences to interact with programming and has been first to execute with such new technologies as Foursquare and Groupon.

Jeffrey Hayzlett, the former CMO of Kodak, and keynote on Day 3 of ad:tech had a similar message that is drawn from his recently released book, “The Mirror Test – Is Your Business Breathing?” He talked about the need to innovate and to move quickly. In his hilarious and fast moving speech, he illustrated a brilliant use of Twitter: Kodak was on its way to market with a fantastic high resolution, waterproof product with a lackluster name, which was some combination of letters and numbers – Kodak style. In his frustration, Hayzlett sequestered his team until they came up with a better name. They thought of tapping Kodak’s huge Twitter following with a contest to come up with the best name. Great idea, but what about the legalities – all contests at Kodak have to be vetted through its vast legal department and there would not be enough time to make the launch deadline. Hayzlett calculated that the cost of a suit would be outweighed by the value of what was gained (not to mention the agency costs circumnavigated) so they did it – without Legal. What did they get? 28,000 submissions and a great name: “Play Sport”. Kodak brought the contest winners to CES and their pictures were inserted inside the product box, showcasing Kodak’s consumer involvement. Hayzlett went on to say that fear hobbles a company’s culture, and you have to fail at some things – he gamely made note of one opt in program that got just two responses. The good news: “No one died.” And the Kodak team was able to tweak the program and turn it into a winner.

Examples of harnessing the voices of influencers on behalf of brands are everywhere. I moderated a panel where Michele Sweeney, CRO of Netshelter demonstrated how marketers like Verizon and Microsoft garnered exponential returns on budget by immersing content into highly focused technology sites where influencers are engaged and actively weighing in with their opinions. High level executives on the panel, such as Lily Chakrabarty, an SVP of Starcom who heads up the Samsung account, and Stephanie Agresta, Managing Director of Social Media at Weber Shandwick are dedicated to creating long term social strategies for their clients.

This is happening! Why do I keep hearing reports of how hard it is to find people in the marketplace who believe in social media? The evidence is clear. For those who want to learn more about why social media is important, and how to go about creating successful programs for your company, you might want to read the recently released, “Perspectives on Social Media and Marketing” co-authored by Bonin Bough of Pepsico and Stephanie Agresta of Weber Shandwick.

Hopefully you will realize the water is safe – or at least worth the risk!

CP+B apparently better like slacks for Christmas...

2010-11-04T11:40:00.000-07:00

As posted on Adweek.com 4 November 2010:

Though Best Buy's creative assignment stays at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the MDC Partners' shop was stung today by the retailer's decision to consolidate its $300 million media business at Publicis Groupe's Starcom. That shop, meanwhile, is enjoying a week of riches.

The assignment had been shared by the two agencies, with Starcom handling media buying and Crispin overseeing planning chores.

That marks two wins (MetLife and Cadbury's Milka brand) and a loss of note in the brief CEO tenure of Crispin's Andrew Keller, who was promoted to chief executive as October drew to a close after serving as the shop's creative leader. He has big shoes to fill, supplanting industry star Alex Bogusky as the agency's most visible human asset.

For Starcom, Best Buy was the second huge account acquisition this week. On Monday, Darden awarded the shop media duties for its Red Lobster, Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse restaurants, with spending of about $300 million. Darden also cited integration as a key factor in its decision.

Along with Starcom, sister shops Razorfish and Tapestry will handle some duties on Best Buy as well. Razorfish is digital specialist while Tapestry focuses on multicultural assignments.

In a statement, the client said, "We regularly review all of our agency relationships and activities. In an effort to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our media investments, we recently made a decision to move our media planning and buying to Starcom, in an integrated partnership with Razorfish and Tapestry under the Publicis umbrella. In addition, this move supports Best Buy's objective to drive an integrated marketing model."

With this consolidation, all four remaining shops are surely hoping this is sufficient "integration" for now.

Tapping Into Email and Social Media Addictions

2010-11-03T06:49:00.001-07:00

As Posted in iMediaConnection 3 November 2010:

Let's talk about how brands are approaching social integration in email marketing. I will be the first to admit that I (might) have an email and social media addiction. In fact, while we are on the topic, I might as well admit my addiction to digital media as whole. Once I acknowledged my condition, I did the natural thing: I Googled "addiction." According to the 12-steppers:

Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over our addiction -- that our lives had become unmanageable.

And after reading Step 1, I might argue that my life has become more manageable thanks to my addiction. In fact, my friendships, especially those that are geographically distant, seem to have been strengthened through email and social media. Alas, I have an addiction and might not be seeing the whole picture clearly.

Yet, as I walk through hotels, airports, office parks, schools, soccer fields, high school football games, and any other venue where people gather it seems that we are all sharing this addiction. We are looking for connectivity with brands, people, friends, heroes, and news sources 24 hours a day. A recent study put average time spent on social media at 4.6 hours a day and email at 4.4 hours a day, with the percentage of people doping it daily at 46 percent and 72 percent respectively. No other activities came close to social media and email -- so if you can effectively combine and harness these two forces, your marketing programs should soar.

On that same note, 30 percent of brands used social sharing in their holiday campaigns last year. This year, look for social integration in email campaigns to not only skyrocket, but also to truly impact sales.

So, when it comes to brands using social media in their email marketing, which ones are doing it right? And which ones are still figuring it out? Let's take a look at programs using the social-email combination in interesting ways -- both good and bad.

These first few examples are well-executed campaigns coming from our own team, after which I'll discuss some outside examples of brands that are making waves at the intersection of email and social media.

Wacom Pen Scrappers
If you have read my past articles, seen me speak, or worked with me on campaigns, you know how important I consider welcome emails. So why not integrate social media into these important messages? If social media is a prime part of your overall digital marketing, you need to make sure it is out in front of your audience. And adding -- not forcing -- social media introductions in a welcome campaign works well. Of course, choose your focus wisely. If you have other campaign goals, do not make social media front and center -- but do introduce it.

In looking at the Pen Scrappers community site we built for Wacom (now three versions in), we made sure social media was incorporated into the email template in a way that stood out but did not steal the attention from the goals of getting started and exploring content. In this way, social media becomes an expected element in future emails.

Banfield
Banfield wanted to use email to introduce its subscribers to what the company was doing in three social media channels. Instead of just saying follow us/friend us, the company chose to add some value by providing a glimpse of what it is doing in each channel -- yet still leaving a little bit behind the curtain to engage the click.

By providing context and showing subscribers what they might be able to add to the social media conversations, Banfield helped build value and a story around its brand. People love their pets. Providing content that nurtures these relationships helps to solidify the brand's connection with subscribers.

Starlicious.TV
After building a new branded entertainment game show and interactive game for Starlicious this year, we waited to engage with social channels until we had published a majority of the shows. We needed the content to support the marketing effort. When introducing a new brand or property, it is important to first build the relationship before asking your audience to take steps that might not make sense. If you simply tell people to jump in and engage in social channels without proving the value of your content, you create a reason for churn. The goal is not to battle for new points of engagement, but rather prolonged engagement that supports the building and continuing of relationships.

We also did something a little different by introducing one of Starlicious' partners, Gain, as the channel for the Facebook relationship, as the brand already had a commitment to the channel and content to support it. Why bite off more than you can chew? Sometimes it is better to focus on building and supporting an existing network than to try to start your own. If you're fortunate enough to have a partner that ties into your brand, promoting and supporting that partner can benefit all parties.

OK Magazine
Publishers are starting to get it as well. Social is about sharing, and a majority of people who are sharing content are not simply sharing deals and sales. We worked with OK Magazine and other publishers to incorporate social tools into their weekly and daily emails. We have experimented with many formats of sharing and found that people really love to share content from emails in this way. We live in an information society where people gain some social credibility by telling people first and being in the know. What amazes me is how often we see people simply scan and share content from an email -- at times more so than from the web page on which the full story resides.

Yet with some layouts, we like to pull the sharing elements into the stories that are the most likely to be shared. Some publications do better with this, as they have an ad model that needs to be supported from the website and not just from the email. If you are in publishing, you need to find the right balance between social sharing in emails and meeting your business goals.

Brands 5-7

Up next, I'd like to highlight some brands that I have developed mild crushes on lately due to how they are using social media as a driver and connector for their marketing goals and customer engagement.

Levi's
My top crush is a close tie between Levi's and Barneys. Over the past six months, the 100-year-old Levi's has done an impressive about-face when it comes to using social to lift its email programs. The company has done a great job in testing the location and content of its social-sharing elements as well as how those elements function within the overall context of the emails.

A recent example in which the company used email to launch its own community site called "Shape" demonstrates the importance Levi's places on email as an immediate impact channel. Notably, the company continues find a good mix with its email campaigns. Certain campaigns look to move the sales needle, while others are heavily focused on social-following incentives.

Barneys
Barneys has been one to watch this year. One stand-out campaign used email not to sell things (but do note that there is still a navigational shopping header in the email), but rather to showcase an interview of the people behind Barneys' social media work. This is a great idea for breaking up the monotony of the buy buy buy, sale sale sale, now now now retail approach. Being that it was a long holiday weekend, it gave people a chance to relax, enjoy, and become closer to the brand through email and social.

Nike
Stepping away from the fan-follow-friend-stalk technique employed by many marketers out there, Nike took a great approach when it used one of its Nike+ emails to get people to connect social accounts in order to inspire and reach more people about running. I see posts across Facebook and Twitter all day long, and it is quite motivating to see all the people you know getting out from behind their screens. In fact, just seeing these posts reminds me to pack my shoes when I travel so I can get out of those conference rooms and hotels for a run.

Nike keeps it simple yet makes a big impact. Social is not about the brand; it's about the users. Same with email, right? It is about the timely, relevant communications that users want, and that strategy works in both places.

6 Social Sharing Best Practices for Driving Traffic

2010-11-02T07:02:00.001-07:00

As posted on iMedia Connection 3 November 2010:

Wondering when to use the Facebook "like" button on your site and when to use "share"? You're not alone. Used together and in the right combination, "like" and "share" are powerful tools for driving referral traffic from social networks, opening new communication channels with customers and prospects, and building relationships with your best advocates.

Driving referral traffic is the first significant benefit of social sharing, as shared activity, content, and products are now pushed to the user's network of friends, enabling them to discover what's new and worthwhile with little effort. But sharing technologies have evolved significantly in the last several months, making social sharing a renewed area of focus for most companies. In this article, you'll learn the best practices for "like" and "share," and how to put them to work for your business.

Best practice 1: Create a balanced "like" and "share" button strategy
Rather than choose one or the other, sites who combine "like" and "share" into the user experience see the greatest level of success in terms of driving referral traffic, building relationships, and learning more about their customers and visitors. Why? Not only do "like" and "share" have different strengths and different applications, they actually drive the most value when used in concert. Let's drill into the specifics.

The "like" button has many benefits. When clicked, an item is published to the person's Facebook feed, driving referral traffic to the website. If the user is already logged into Facebook, this is a one-click process. "Liking" adds data to the user's profile on Facebook: It is an easy way for users to make a connection with the things for which they have affinity -- just a single-click user experience. "Liking" also opens a new communication channel for the site that can subsequently publish news items to the feeds of Facebook users who have liked that item on their site.

Facebook recently released data on the value of a "liker," which provides compelling reasons for engaging them: "People who click the Facebook Like button are more engaged, active, and connected than the average Facebook user. The average "Liker" has 2.4x the amount of friends than that of a typical Facebook user. They are also more interested in exploring content they discover on Facebook -- they click on 5.3x more links to external sites than the typical Facebook user."

So where does the next generation of "share" functionality fit into this picture? Enabling share in addition to "like" enhances both the overall user experience as well as the power of the "like" button for the site. Sharing provides a way for people to express themselves and share with friends when "like" (or "recommend," which is another form of the "like" button) is not the appropriate sentiment. People typically "like" things or "social objects," but share activity. For example, if someone makes a comment on an article or reviews a product, they are more likely to want to "share" their point of view with friends rather than "like" it.

When a Facebook user clicks the "like" button, the website hosting the button does not get access to information about that user or about the "like." Adding sharing to the site effectively closes the data loop, as current social technologies -- including Facebook's Graph API -- ask a person to connect with a website the first time he or she chooses to share something. Once a user connects, the site then can access that specific user's "like" data and apply it to its own site to personalize the user experience.

Here is an example of an effective application of both "like" and "share."

Best practice 2: Enable sharing to multiple social networks
To drive the most referral traffic, enable your users to "share" to multiple social channels. Not only do people want choice when it comes to connecting and sharing, but many social channels have feeds and are quite effective at driving referral traffic. Facebook is clearly an important option, but the data below illustrates why providing multiple options matters when it comes to applying second-generation social technologies.

You can also help maximize referral traffic by enabling your site visitors to "share" to multiple social channels simultaneously, as New York Daily News and American Eagle Outfitters do in the examples below.

Best practice 3: Make sharing dynamic
There are two primary ways to make sharing an active, dynamic, and more social experience for your website. The first is to build sharing into key activity flows where appropriate so that it becomes a natural extension of the user experience. For example, when someone takes a poll, completes a quiz, makes a comment, or rates an item, it is natural to add the option to share as the final step in the process. You can also create a frictionless user experience by giving your users the option to "always share this type of activity" or "never share this activity" as YouTube has done effectively with video sharing. The YouTube user dashboard is shown below:

The second way to use sharing to create a dynamic site experience is to publish sharing activity to an on-site activity feed. In this example, The Home Depot brings a sense of activity and community to an otherwise static page by publishing the shares and other key actions of their users from all social platform to a site-specific feed.

Best practice 4: Use sharing to build relationships
Today's sharing technologies are based on the concept of first establishing a relationship between the user and the site, wherein the user connects their social identity to the website via an explicit permission or authentication step. This is an enormous win for both the site and marketers because it establishes the foundation for a relationship. Most people associate authentication with registration or log-in, but the process can be woven into a variety of social activities, from sharing to community features, creating far more opportunities for any site to make that connection. This is an enormous win for marketers, as a connected user typically comes with rich social network profile data, including a pre-validated email address, and that user's "likes" across the web, which can help the business personalize the site experience and communicate with that person more effectively.

The "like" button also provides an opportunity to build relationships. While the site does not have information on any individual user, the entity that was "liked" can publish relevant activity to the "likers" as a group. For example, a children's apparel retailer could promote an end of season sale to "likers" of its winter coats. A publisher could publish pieces by op-ed writers to people who "like" a particular op-ed piece.

Best practice 5: Optimize shared content for the feed and user profile
While some content might be intrinsically more interesting than others, one thing is certain: Presentation counts when it comes to driving referral traffic. Optimizing all the elements of what is published to a user's feed is important for both "likes" and "shares."

There are two different "like" button implementations, and while the iFrame version is easier to implement, the XFBML version gives you more opportunity to optimize. According to Facebook, "The XFBML dynamically re-sizes its height according to whether there are profile pictures to display, gives you the ability (through the Javascript library) to listen for Like events so that you know in real time when a user clicks the Like button, and it always gives the user the ability to add an optional comment to the Like. If users do add a comment, the story published back to Facebook is given more prominence."

Prominence on Facebook means it's more likely that the Facebook algorithm will actually display a "like" to people in the user's network, or to more people in their network, so taking the time to use the XFBML version and enable commenting is highly worthwhile. Optimizing "likes" for the feed also involves adding Open Graph tags with information that Facebook can pull when someone clicks the "like" button. To optimize for the feed, in addition to information that categorizes each item within the Open Graph, sites should also be sure to specify the image and text that will show in the feed item:

Shared items should similarly be optimized for maximum exposure. One of the advantages of the latest generation of sharing technologies is that you have full control over the image and body text for shared content, as well as the hyperlinks that appear at the bottom of the feed item. In this example, the item published includes a photo that supports the content, text that moves a user to take action, and a link at the bottom that specifically drives more people to the original site to take the poll:

Best practice 6: Track referral traffic from sharing activity
Capturing referral traffic data is a key part of optimizing your site for social referral traffic, not unlike how web analytics is applied for search engine optimization. If you are working with a social technology vendor, it should at a minimum provide consolidated cross-network analytics, and ideally more granular and actionable detail. Online businesses should track and act on three key areas:

Area 1: The percent of "shares" and referral traffic coming from each of the social networks. Including a shortened URL with each shared item enables tracking at this level. Key metrics include: monthly and yearly growth in traffic referred by social networks; referral traffic by users sharing content from the website, as differentiated from marketing efforts originating on social sites; and number of referral clicks per shared item and by referring social site.

Area 2: The specific site content and activities that drive the highest volume of sharing activity. Ask vendors if they are able to track sharing and referral traffic by content ID so that you can determine where to focus your efforts on both dynamic sharing activities and content development.

Area 3: Key influencers: When sharing is tied to authentication, you should be able to track which of your customers or visitors are sharing the most, which are driving the most referral traffic, and even which are driving sales. Businesses can then engage these key influencers with special offers, elite status, and by providing even more opportunities to spread the word.

You can read Marie Claire...unless you're obese

2010-10-29T10:51:00.000-07:00

Mike & Molly characters

Maura Kelly, contributor to popular women’s magazine Marie Claire, provoked 1200 angry comments, Twitter outrage and blogger fury after posting a controversial piece called Should “Fatties” Get A Room? (Even On TV?) earlier this week.

Kelly slammed CBS sitcom Mike & Molly, which follows two obese characters who meet at an Overeaters Anonymous group and fall in love. She unabashedly offered her opinion of the show (“implicitly promoting obesity”) and took what many called an insensitive tone. Without having watched the show, she wrote, “I’d be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other … because I’d be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything.” She then compares obese people to drunks and heroine addicts.

Readers called the post “ignorant” and “hate-speech.” Many called for Kelly to be fired and were angered that she was given a platform on Marie Claire. “Dear Maura Kelly, I sincerely apologize for my disgusting body and all the various rolls of fat on my person,” writes one reader sarcastically, who was later applauded by women’s blog Jezebel.

Kelly apologized in update to the post, but the magazine’s editor in chief, Joanna Coles, offered an unapologetic response to Fashionista. “Maura Kelly is a very provocative blogger,” Coles said. “She was an anorexic herself and this is a subject she feels very strongly about.”

“Marie Claire” has been trending on Twitter today, and some women reported mixed feelings about the post. “The Marie Claire “Fattie” blog post was a slippery slope, yes, but obesity is an epidemic,” tweeted New York stylist @PalomaPatron. “Belligerent or Brilliant?” asked Cleveland blogger @MadMomMission, suggesting it was a PR ploy.

The controversy brings up some interesting questions. In an age of fast, provocative blogging, should Marie Claire admit fault for posting an insensitive piece? And are Kelly’s points about the show promoting obesity and an unhealthy lifestyle justified? Was she being unnecessarily insensitive or has she sparked debate that has previously been lost to political correctness?

Here we go again....good luck Economist Ad Network

2010-10-27T06:48:00.001-07:00

The Economist has an audience of global elites that advertisers salivate over, but its print and online reach fall short of making it a mass-reach media vehicle.

Today, the British-based newsweekly is trying to remedy that situation, with the launch of an online network composed of sites that reach Economist-like readers, but on a bigger scale.

The Ideas People Channel is the umbrella name for the network, which comprises Economist.com plus about 30 niche sites like those of Christian Science Monitor and The Nation whose content spans politics, culture and ideas. Executives said the channel would launch with 11 million monthly unique visitors in the U.S., with a goal of reaching 21 million globally.

Such premium content ad networks were all the rage a few years ago, as media companies like MTV Networks, Forbes and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia put together networks of their own and similar sites to extend their online reach and better compete with online giants.

The Economist’s Paul Rossi, managing director, evp, Americas, said the Ideas People Channel is different, because its audience is defined not by demographic traits like age, income or education but by their mindset. “Ideas” people are intellectually curious, opinionated and influential, he contends.

“It builds around the Economist audience,” he said. “We call it the Ideas People, because when you put a group of Economist readers in a room, there’s very little that ties them together.”

The IE Business School based in Madrid, Spain is the first advertiser on board, and Rossi plans to pitch the network to corporate advertisers that he says are moving dollars online in their quest to build their brands or promote a positive image.

“I wouldn’t use this network to sell cheap tickets to London, but in building a brand, introducing a new product, introducing people to a new idea, this is an efficient way of doing it,” he said.

The effort comes as the core print publication’s growth has slowed. Year-over-year ad page growth is flat so far this year after falling 20 percent in 2009. Circulation grew 1.5 percent to 822,695 in the first half of 2010 after stronger growth of 3.3 percent and 8.5 percent in the previous two six-month periods.

It makes sense that The Economist would want to grow the reach of its online site, which currently reaches less than 1 million monthly uniques, per Compete.com, and to publishers like Jonathan Wells of the Christian Science Monitor.

“While we have a large number of people in our audience, we don’t always have the scale advertisers are looking for, especially those involved in corporate image and advertising campaigns,” Wells said. “In the aggregate, we can provide a useful audience for advertisers.”

But it will need to convince ad buyers that the network’s audience matches that of The Economist, whose sought-after readers command a premium from marketers, pointed out Scott Daly, evp, executive media director of Dentsu America, who handles print and online buying.

“I would be skeptical of their ability to do that,” he said.

CP+B = SO+L?

2010-10-25T08:05:00.001-07:00

Miles Nadal likes to describe his MDC Partners as a place “where great talent lives.” These days, however, the CEO of the smallest of the major holding companies is grappling with talent leaving, principally Alex Bogusky, co-chairman and creative soul of MDC’s most valuable agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

Bogusky, who also briefly held an MDC role, left abruptly in July, nine years after MDC took a stake in Crispin and after Nadal, a self-made businessman from Canada, reportedly offered him $15 million to stay. In many ways, Bogusky, an articulate and visible leader, personified the agency, which in turn raised the profile of MDC. His absence creates a void across both.

It’s against this void that Nadal seeks to put his imprint on his crown jewel agency, with the goal of turning the largely domestic Crispin into a bona fide global player. This summer, Nadal rechristened MDC’s Zig in Toronto as “CP+B Canada” -- a year after buying Swedish digital shop Daddy and rebranding it as “CP+B Europe” -- and he’s now searching for a global CEO, sources said. The shop is also said to be seeking a top strategic planner. In his CEO recruitment efforts, Nadal has said that current CEO Jeff Hicks, whose purview has been U.S. focused, may shift to another role, said sources.

Getting the leadership right at Crispin is no small matter: Nadal, in his pitch to potential CEOs, has said that the agency generates some $200 million in annual revenue, or more than a third of MDC’s 2009 total of $550 million, as reported by the company. More broadly, Nadal faces the challenge that confronts any company whose most valuable asset is talent.

Also, without Bogusky, Crispin has lost some of its “public sizzle,” said a source, who added:
“There’s no focal point at that agency right now.”

When contacted about his global plans for Crispin -- including talk of a CEO search -- Nadal was uncharacteristically mum. In response to e-mails sent to Nadal and Hicks, a representative for both MDC and Crispin denied that a search for a new top exec was under way and said of Hicks: “He’s the CEO and I believe he’s the CEO going forward,” adding that “there are going to be promotions at CP+B.”

Crispin calls itself an “advertising and design factory” and it’s likely that few of its notoriously workaholic staffers would disagree, with the agency churning out creative at breakneck speed. Bogusky’s influence can’t be understated: When he decided to move to Boulder, Colo., for lifestyle reasons in 2006, there was upheaval in the Miami agency’s creative department as its staffers and strategic planners followed him west. Now with Bogusky gone, some of the 600 in Boulder, who toil in a huge former cattle shed, are migrating back to Miami.

Bogusky, meanwhile, is holed up in his “FearLess” cottage in Boulder, where he blogs about issues like obesity levels and advertising to children, the kind of morality questions that weren’t quite so troubling while he awaited his final MDC payouts and worked on accounts like Burger King. It was those marketers, after all, who helped him retire as a multi-millionaire in flip-flops before the age of 50.

Nadal, who heaps praise in his approaches to potential hires, displays the indefatigable optimism of a college dropout who has the requisite badges of success, including a home in the Bahamas and an 80-foot yacht.

In tweets and blog posts, Nadal seems to have a driving need to share the pearls of wisdom that presumably helped him get to where he is today. In a tweet last week, Nadal offered a reminder he may well keep in mind as he seeks to set a future course for Crispin: “I use this Quote 1-5 times Daily!!!” he wrote. “‘You are what your record says you are’ -- Bill Parcells.”

How to Use Social Media to Unite Lonely Consumers, Build Brand Loyalty

2010-10-21T06:56:00.001-07:00

The current burst in social-media use seems to address a fundamental human need: the need to interact with other people. While it may seem that sitting online leads to less human interaction, consumers actually feel they are more connected to people than they were before they joined social networks.

New data from the Harris Poll finds that 54 percent of consumers have had less face-to-face contact with friends recently, but 57 percent feel more connected than they did before. An amazing 60 percent of consumers on social networks say they know what's going in friends' lives, even though they do not personally interact with those friends.

One surprising revelation is that social media makes consumers -- especially those 18 to 34 years old -- feel "very connected" or "connected" to friends of friends or casual acquaintances. Amazingly, 59 percent of consumers in this age range prefer to interact with acquaintances via social media rather than face-to-face, showing how consumers are using social media to maintain these loose ties, rather than let these people slip away.

Given that, examine your own social network. Some of the people I'm connected with are people who share a common interest, and that's it. I'm loosely tied via Facebook to a guy in a Van Halen tribute band because we both love the band's music. I'm loosely tied to people on Twitter who have common interests like ATVing, marketing and home recording.

Now, what if those loose ties could be brought to bear on brands? Instead of connecting loosely over guitar heroics or shared occupations, can people come together because of a connection over a brand? Here are three brands that are strengthening consumer loyalty by connecting like-minded consumers in interactive communities and creating a strong sense of community, both online and off.

Starbucks
Coffee shops like Starbucks have a built-in offline community element and are gathering places for socializing, working, and dining. But Starbucks is also fostering a very unique online community, one that lets consumers collaborate on the brand they love. The brand's My Starbucks Idea website solicits consumer ideas and suggestions, both large and small, and lets the community discuss them, vote on its favorites, and see the ideas put into action.

The consumer-generated ideas range from thoughts on rewards cards, ways to foster community within the bricks-and-mortar Starbucks locations, and requests to revive drink flavors. The brand keeps the community in the loop with its Ideas In Action blog, where staffers write about new developments and announce community contest winners. One recent post announced the return of salted caramel hot chocolate after several members expressed disappointment at its discontinuation.

You don't step into a Starbucks location in the first place unless you like coffee, and the brand is finding a way to unite coffee fans online as well. The Harris study also found that more than half of the respondents value the opinions others share; Starbucks has created a platform for posting opinions and uniting like-minded coffee fans.

Dell
Like Starbucks, Dell's IdeaStorm website is built on serving a community of brand advocates. Consumers can post their ideas for Dell products, improvements, and feedback on new products. The community votes to promote or demote the ideas and, just like with Starbucks' platform, Dell responds to the ideas that generate the most interest from the community.

The website also includes "Storm Sessions," which are Dell-moderated discussions around a specific topic. Unlike the "ideas" part of the website, Storm Sessions run for a limited time before they are closed and reviewed by the brand. Dell's been running its service since 2007, and the community has contributed more than 14,000 ideas with 90,000 comments. IdeaStorm is already responsible for new computers that run on the Linux operating system, as well as Dell's use of bamboo to replace plastic wrap for packing its products.

Again, this taps into the idea of uniting fans with common interests. Linux is far from the most popular operating system in the world, but fans came together on Dell's website and voted the idea toward the top of the ladder, where Dell took notice. Social media did two jobs in this case: it brought Dell fans together in a branded environment where they could communicate with one another, and it also showed Dell that there was a very unique, passionate audience it was not serving.

Mountain Dew
The soft drink has done a great job in the past appealing to a consumer base looking for high-caffeine beverages -- namely video-game lovers and extreme sports enthusiasts. Yet the brand sought to unite all of its customers into one community with its Dewmocracy contests, which let consumers pick the newest flavor.

Several brands have used social networks like Facebook to help pick new flavors, but Mountain Dew added a new wrinkle to the formula. The brand spent more than a year on its latest Dewmocracy campaign, slowly expanding its scale from the most-dedicated fans to the public-at-large.

The first step involved sending seven flavors of soda to 50 Dew fanatics, who were also given cameras and told to debate and show their love for the brand on video. The cameras were a great idea because it made the social-media effort more personable. Rather than just looking at static images or Tweets, Dew fans could see like-minded fanatics in action. One young man proved his allegiance by brushing his teeth with the soda.

After narrowing the seven flavors to three, Mountain Dew turned to its Dew Labs Community, a 4,000-person group of passionate soda fans. Those fans then created nearly every element of the three sodas, including color, name, packaging, and marketing campaigns. After that process was complete, the three flavors were made available in stores for a limited time, with the general public electing a winner via online voting.

What Dew did was a little different from Starbucks and Dell. Where those two brands set up sites soliciting ideas from all consumers, Dew began its promotion by reaching out to its most dedicated, loyal consumers offline, and then gave that offline community a place to assemble its testimonials and feedback. The Dewmocracy campaign used Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube just like the other brands used these social networks to unite consumers through a common interest.

Building community, uniting fans
Consumers are using Facebook and Twitter to stay in touch with close friends, but also to keep tabs on casual acquaintances or people with common interests. As seen here, consumers are more than willing to come together when that shared interest is a brand, and marketers should be looking for ways to bring their fans together in a branded environment.

All three of these brands were able to successfully unite consumers via social media, connecting them to each other through a shared common interest. At the same time, the brands were able to use the communities to improve their offerings -- through reinstating products, developing new software, or new flavors of pop -- which strengthened the brand in consumers' eyes.

IPG/Universal McCann launch Rally

2010-10-20T07:14:00.002-07:00

One of the world's largest media agencies is investing in social media marketing in a big way with Universal McCann's launch of Rally, a new social media division at the disposal of all UM's clients. Called Rally@UM in a nod to modern parlance, the social media division is headed up by Heidi Browning, a former MySpace executive, and is intended to help clients integrate social media into their long-term marketing and communications strategies, in part by helping them tackle communications planning and creative optimization.

In announcing the new launch, UM said Rally was created "to alleviate some of the confusion that exists about what social media means and how it can best be used," adding that Rally will demonstrate the viability and importance of social media with easily understood metrics for ROI.

Rally@UM's disciplines include "Listening, Insights & Measurement," consisting of social media monitoring, earned media reporting, and conversation mining; "Strategy & Ideation," covering content and communications planning, among other strategic services; "Community Activation and Consumer Relationship Management" (CRM), for community development and management for social media strategies; and Social Organizational Consulting, helping clients develop organizational models, processes, and best practices. With headquarters in New York, UM maintains offices in 130 countries, and employs about 3,600 people.

This news comes not long after Publicis Group's Vivaki digital group announced its intention to launch a social media consulting practice by the end of 2010. Meanwhile, social media ad spending is poised to boom, according to a number of independent forecasts. One recent report from Borrell, "The Social Networking Explosion: Ad Revenue Outlook" has social network ad spending increasing 68% from $4 billion in 2009 to $7.5 billion in 2010, then continuing to grow every year to about $38 billion in 2015.

Dell's New Product Push

2010-10-20T07:14:00.001-07:00

Dell is about to launch a new global advertising campaign from Young & Rubicam that features new products that are designed to appeal to different consumer segments.

In a preview of the effort, Dell's Paul-Henri Ferrand today showed examples of new ads bearing the tagline, "You can tell it's a Dell." Each ad had a headline, a few lines of copy and an image of a product -- be it a laptop, tablet or some combination of both.

"Perfect day for a convertible," said the headline of one ad, which focused on a tablet that opens out into a small laptop with a keyboard. The head for another ad, featuring a laptop with a JBL sound system, read: "Turn it up to 11."

Ferrand described the new work as "more arresting" with "very crisp copy" and a dash of humor. Broadly, Dell is moving away from price-focused, transactional ads and toward ads that develop the company's global brand image. More specifically, the new campaign illustrates how Dell's range of products offers something for everyone.

"We believe there's a real space for us to become the most loved PC company in the industry," said Ferrand, global chief marketing officer for the consumer, small and medium business unit of Dell, during an hour-long presentation at the Soho Grand Hotel in New York. "[It's a] tall order, but this is what the marketing strategy is aiming at."

Ferrand did not disclose spending behind the campaign but said it was designed to run in local markets around the world. In the U.S alone last year, Dell spent around $135 million in major measured media, according to Nielsen.

"You can tell it's a Dell" marks the first significant effort from Y&R since the New York office of the WPP Group shop assumed lead creative duties on Dell in August 2009. Y&R succeeded Enfatico, the shop WPP built from scratch after the holding company won Dell's global marketing services account in December 2007.

The new ads arrive as Dell reviews global creative duties on advertising directed at consumers, small and medium-sized businesses and public institutions.

Dell, through search consultancy Select Resources International, has narrowed its focus to about a half-dozen shops for each customer segment, said sources.

Dell executives plan to visit each shop before narrowing each list to four finalists, according to the company's initial request for proposals. The primary incumbents are WPP's Wunderman in New York (ads for consumers, small and medium-sized businesses) and Y&R in San Francisco (public institutions).

The Plugged-In College Life

2010-10-19T06:55:00.001-07:00

Looking back on their own college days through a haze of nostalgia, adults tend to view that phase of life as carefree. But this isn't necessarily how today's students experience it, according to an mtvU/Associated Press survey. And new technology is a mixed blessing for many of them.

When asked about "how things are going in your life in general," 40 percent said they're "very happy." But 41 percent gave their lives a more muted grade of "somewhat happy," while 8 percent are "neither happy nor unhappy," 6 percent "somewhat unhappy" and 5 percent "very unhappy." (The polling was fielded last month among undergraduates age 18-24 at four-year colleges.)

Though severe unhappiness is rare, stress is not. Sixty-three percent said there has been at least one time in the past three months when they were "so stressed that you couldn't get your school work done"; 62 percent said there has been at least one occasion during that period when they felt "so stressed that you didn't want to hang out with your friends or participate in social activities."

Of course, there are friends and there are "friends" for today's students. Ninety percent said they've visited a social-networking site in the past week. Among those who've ever used one, 70 percent report having at least 200 social-networking friends. And yet, 51 percent said they would feel comfortable sharing very personal details of their lives with "very few of them."

More broadly, 28 percent said increased use of technology "has made it harder to feel close to people," while 54 percent said this has "made it easier." (Most of the rest said it has had no impact.) It's partly their own fault, judging from the number of students who confessed they have used technology to avoid face-to-face conversation with others (see the chart below).

What about "unplugging from technology" altogether? Taking that drastic step would make 57 percent of respondents feel more stressed and 25 percent feel less so.

NBCU: Cable Soars, Broadcast Sinks

2010-10-15T10:34:00.000-07:00

Another strong showing by NBC Universal’s cable networks wasn’t enough to offset declines at the broadcast network, as the media conglomerate’s operating profit dropped 15 percent in the third quarter.

NBCU’s Q3 profit added up to $625 million, down from $732 million in the year-ago period. Revenue was flat at $4.07 billion. Excluding impairment charges and adjusting for a $283 million gain from the deal that merged A&E and Lifetime, profit was up 5 percent.

During a Friday morning earnings call, GE vice chairman and chief financial officer Keith Sherin trumpeted the cable unit, which boosted revenue 8 percent to $1.2 billion and grew profit 22 percent. The group includes top-ranked USA Network, Bravo, Syfy and Oxygen.

Despite gains in NBC ad sales dollars, broadcast revenue dipped 2 percent to $1.4 billion, while profit dropped nearly $80 million as the network made significant investments in propping up its prime time programming lineup. Unfortunately, NBC has spent good money after bad, as new dramas like The Event and Chase have failed to catch on with viewers. Freshman legal drama Outlaw was canceled after four episodes, after flat-lining among the all-important 18-49 demo.

NBC’s biggest draw is also its most expensive program to produce -- although it also commands the network’s fattest CPM. Sunday Night Football is averaging 21.8 million viewers through the first five weeks of the 2010-11 NFL campaign, marking the biggest turnout for prime time football since 1996, when ABC had the rights to MNF.

Scatter dollars continued to roll in throughout Q3, as NBC and the cable nets commanded premiums of around 20 percent over upfront pricing. Fourth-quarter premiums are trending in the double-digits, Sherin said. Local advertising was up 18 percent year-over-year.

In a memo to staffers, NBCU president and CEO Jeff Zucker characterized the Q3 results as “excellent ... given that the economy, although improving, is still far from robust.” Zucker last month announced he would leave NBCU upon completion of the deal that would give Comcast a 51 percent stake in the business. He will be replaced by Comcast chief operating officer Steve Burke.

“We’re on track for a close of the transaction with Comcast, hopefully by the end of the year,” Zucker noted. “As I’m sure you know, the timing will ultimately be determined by the FCC and the Department of Justice. We’ll have a clearer idea about timing as we get into November.”

Bringing the Peacock back into the black will be one or the first orders of business for Burke and his Comcast crew. Last month, Wunderlich Securities analyst Matthew Harrigan rated USA Network as the most worthy piece of the NBCU puzzle, giving it a valuation of $11.7 billion. Harrigan priced the entire NBCU cable unit at $32.7 billion; in contrast, the analyst estimated the NBC broadcast network’s worth at negative $600 million.

Tracking Social Media

2010-10-15T07:10:00.000-07:00

Tracking social media metrics: Is it worth it?

Social media measurement is far from an exact science. Watch as a handful of brand marketers discuss what tools they are using and how useful those metrics have proven to be.

How Ad Network Affiliates Shoot Themselves in the Foot

2010-10-14T09:27:00.001-07:00

If you're not working for an ad agency that handles media planning and placement, pretend that you are for a second.

You send out Requests for Proposal for a new product campaign. The proposals come back. Some proposals are from content sites and some are from ad networks. In looking at several of the network proposals, you find that many of them look similar. That is, you see that several ad networks are recommending similar ad inventory on some of the same sites.

Now, pretend that you're a site owner or chief revenue officer at one of the sites that has been duplicated across multiple network proposals. Your site might be in that critical stage where it's not yet generating the revenue to support its own direct sales force, or it might have been a conscious decision to avoid employing sales reps (for whatever business reason).

Many content sites you might be competing with have direct sales forces, and they sell around a third of their inventory (typically, the contextual and sponsorship inventory considered "premium" by media buyers) through that sales force. The rest is farmed out to networks and exchanges. But your site doesn't have a direct sales force, and you're in a situation where a number of potential sellers can offer your inventory to ad agencies.

This can become problematic. Put yourself in the agency's shoes again. You've seen a single site show up on five network proposals. If you use media partners that execute on the exchanges, you might even be getting access to that site's inventory through an exchange buy, in addition to the inventory offered on any proposals you might accept. As an agency, you don't want your buys duplicating with one another. This is usually the case regardless of the goal (awareness, direct response, engagement).

So, as an agency media buyer, your approach to putting that site on a media plan will be to zero in on the lowest-cost proposal and buy the site through the network that is able to get you the inventory at the lowest price.

A site owner might think that using multiple networks and exchanges will expose their inventory to the widest possible range of potential buyers. And it will. The problem is that the inventory will almost always go to the lowest bidder, so your attempt to mitigate risk by using multiple sellers is undercutting your ability to sell at the highest possible CPM.

Media buyers scratch their heads when they see several ad networks pitching the same site. They understand the need to mitigate risk, but they don't understand why inventory is served up to them with different pricing. What's more, they don't understand the factors that would cause two networks to price the same inventory differently.

In this way, sites that use multiple ad networks can run into monetization issues if the ad networks aren't actively kept from cannibalizing one another's business.

Women Still Not on a Level Playing Field...

2010-09-30T07:53:00.001-07:00

A new government report found that women have made few inroads into management positions over the past decade and still face a persistent pay gap with their male counterparts. The findings, released today by the Government Accountability Office, and reported in the New York Times, showed that in 2007, the latest data available, women accounted for about 40% of managers in the U.S. work force. That number is up just slightly from 2000, when women held 39% of management positions.

Meanwhile, the pay gap between male and female managers-–especially those who are parents–still remains strong. Among the managerial ranks, women full-time managers earned 81 cents for every dollar earned by male full-time managers in 2007. However, female managers fared worse if they were mothers; managers who were mothers earned 79 cents of every dollar paid to managers who were fathers, after adjusting for things like age and education. This gap has stayed the same since at least 2000, the Times reported.

Perhaps as a result of this “motherhood penalty,” female managers are less likely to have children—or even be married– than male managers. In 2007, 63% of female managers were childless, compared with just 57% of male managers. Of those managers who did have children, men on average had more children than their female counterparts.

And female managers were also less likely to be married than male managers, at rates of 59% vs. 74%, respectively.

“When working women have kids, they know it will change their lives, but they are stunned at how much it changes their paycheck,” said N.Y. Democratic Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, who requested the report, to the Times.

How do women fare in the managerial ranks at your employers? Are the female managers you know less likely to have children or be married than their male counterparts?

Because Ads in College Newspapers make college students drink more....

2010-09-23T06:07:00.001-07:00

Advertisers: Allow Booze Ads in Campus Papers

Advertisers today called on the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the state of Virginia's ban on most alcohol advertising in college newspapers, saying the law restricts free speech.

The court should "step in to stop the growing trend of government regulators to censor more and more speech directed to adults because those at the threshold of adulthood might see it," Dan Jaffe, exec VP for government relations for the Association of National Advertisers, said in a statement.

The association is joining the 4A's and American Advertising Federation in asking the court to overturn a recent appeals court ruling that upheld the long-standing regulation. The ad groups argue that the ruling runs counter to the Supreme Court's trend of "increasing protection for commercial speech," according to a brief filed with the Supreme Court, which also points out that many students are of legal drinking age.

Virginia prohibits student-run campus publications from running alcohol ads unless they are "in reference to a dining establishment." The exempted ads cannot refer to a particular brand or price and instead must use generic phrases such as "beer," "wine" or "cocktails."

The Cavalier Daily, at the University of Virginia, and the The Collegiate Times, at Virginia Tech, each blame the law for $30,000 in lost advertising revenue annually.

The newspapers say the regulation violates their First Amendment rights and they won an initial case before a district court. But the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond overturned the ruling, finding the government has a "substantial interest" in keeping the ban in place.

The appeals court sided with the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, which asserts that "history, consensus and common sense support the link between advertising bans in college newspapers and a decrease in demand for alcohol among college students," according to court filings.

The college newspapers countered that the ban on alcohol advertising is ineffective because students will still see ads for alcohol in other non-student-run publications.

2010-09-22T06:02:00.001-07:00

Branding Grows as Online Ad Objective

While online advertising has been primarily a direct-response-focused space, brand-focused spending is growing, according to a new report by eMarketer.

"Many of the largest advertisers have shown little interest in the internet ads often most suited to branding," said David Hallerman, eMarketer senior analyst. "But that trend is changing -- and with it the spending focus of many brand marketers."

By 2014 nearly 42 percent of online ad dollars in the U.S. will be spent on branding, compared to just 35.7 percent today, the firm reported.

"Some of today's greatest success stories in online branding blend ingredients from three kinds of marketing media: paid, owned and earned," Hallerman said. However, "marketers must learn to construct campaigns that rely on all three types of media to engage with consumers and amplify brand messages. Paid, owned and earned media all contribute to the whole and to one another."

Overvaluing vs. Undervaluing Online Media

2010-09-22T05:58:00.001-07:00

Digital media measurement is a mess, and we're all responsible for it. There are multiple vendors producing ever-growing quantities of data that often do not agree with each other, even directionally. There is no "currency" that governs the planning, buying and delivery of guaranteed audiences for advertising flights. What's more, as an industry we have contributed and created the faulty perception that online advertising is not brand hospitable because of the way we have allowed online advertising to be evaluated and bought on direct response metrics like clicks and actions.

For too long, we as an industry have fueled the problem and done little to suggest solutions. As a result, it has created a complex and costly supply chain and compromised the ability of marketers, ad agencies and publishers to be accountable for advertising expenditures.

A solution is possible
The IAB, the ANA and the 4As have joined forces in an effort to solve the measurement mess and live up to the promise of being the most accountable medium.

We need you -- the industry's best and brightest. For the good of the industry, we need to put aside competitive differences in order to find a radical rethink for digital and cross-platform measurement. We are forming a cross-industry coalition of experts drawn from consumer marketing companies, advertising agencies and media companies that will identify and create consensus around the metrics and systems that are needed to run our businesses. The coalition will identify a solution that embraces the needs of all digital media in a platform agnostic fashion.

In addition to creating the solution, we need a pervasive and ongoing system of accountability. We must create a governing body -- an industry-wide body that sets standards and ensures that measurement will consistently address the evolving needs of the industry. For example, the Media Rating Council (MRC) could play the role of the governing body, but it would need to be empowered to do so across media, which would take broader support from marketers, agencies and media organizations.

Time to stop scapegoating
Measurement must be approached as a business process that incorporates research science rather than as a research process that seeks support from the businesses. And that business process must be one that incorporates a vision and a structure for change management, innovation and quality assurance. Discrete research RFP's alone cannot fix the problem.

It is mission critical that measurement and metrics stop being the favorite scapegoat of the media business. Media, both traditional and digital, have long blamed measurement for multiple revenue maladies. As an ecosystem, we must stop talking the talk and begin walking the walk.

The structure, process and objectives of the proposed solution are a distillation of many voices of many thinkers throughout the ecosystem and inspired by the findings of a report ("Digital Marketing Metrics: How Can Innovation Unlock More Dollars?") done for the IAB and the 4A's by McKinsey & Co.

And for industry to take control
It is time for the entire ecosystem to take control of measurement. That includes defining and using metrics that matter -- metrics that take us from counting exposures to valuing exposures to contributing to brand health to putting paid and earned media together in creative cross platform campaigns -- and providing easy to use post-buy analyses. Yes, you just read that long bombastic sentence. And you will read it again because it captures the dire needs we have today. They will be exacerbated if we do not solve them now.

The ANA, the 4As and the IAB together with any sensible businessperson who wants to follow consumers in a digitally transformed world are waiting for you.

I can't wait to hear from you.

How to effectively mix email marketing & social media...

2010-08-31T05:58:00.000-07:00

In a challenging economy, the instinct to reach for the marketing option with the lowest impact on your budget can be strong, especially for small businesses. And with the range of online services and social media sites growing larger by the day, it's tempting to want to choose between powerful options like email marketing and social media marketing. But it should not be a choice of one over the other. In fact, it's the two working together that will result in the strongest and most productive connections with your most passionate customers.

Complement and contrast
It might sound funny to say, but email marketing and social media complement each other well. For example, the primary strength of email campaigns is that they allow businesses to build deep, trusting relationships with customers through regular, direct contact. Social media, on the other hand, empowers users to interact with businesses at their leisure and in their own style, and leverages the power of the trusting relationship to attract even more fans.

Your most passionate customers -- who are often your most valuable customers -- are the ones who are reading the email you send, connecting with you via social media sites, and telling their friends about you. They are the ones you need to focus on to build a vibrant community because they will pave the way for you to make brand-new connections with the people in their networks.

Completing the virtuous circle
The New England regional burrito chain Boloco is a great example of how this plays out. It all begins with a positive interaction, whether it's a customer enjoying a great burrito, a Boloco email newsletter landing in the customer's inbox, or a someone posting on a social network about the restaurant's great service. These interactions cause a ripple through the customer's social media networks -- when people see their friend saying good things about Boloco on Yelp, Foursquare, or Twitter, the compliments can easily be passed across other social networks and connections to spread the good word from passionate customers (and trusted friends) to potential new customers.

In turn, when these new customers experience their own positive interactions with Boloco, they sign up for the business's email newsletter, post their own praise on social media sites, and spread the word even further. More friends then visit the store, have a good experience, and decide to sign up for newsletters, thus completing a virtuous circle of customer engagement.

Extend the spend
Linking between email newsletters and social media goes beyond the circle, though. It's not only synergistic, it also extends the marketing spend across multiple channels, maximizing its value. For example, archiving email newsletters online and posting links to them on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn can extend the reach of that communication. On the other hand, including links from blog posts or YouTube videos in an email newsletter can encourage subscribers to explore social media efforts they might not have otherwise known about.

Find more followers
Another way to get email marketing and social media to work in sync is by using each channel to drive adoption for the other. For example, businesses that insert links to their various social presences in their email newsletter templates can easily make their presence known to loyal customers and subscribers. Likewise, there are easy ways to add email newsletter subscription links to social networking sites through blog badges, Facebook applications, or even HTML code.

Back to basics
To excel in social media marketing as a small business you need to go back to the same values that helped build your business: You need to provide a fantastic customer experience that builds up a group of dedicated and passionate customers, who you then need to keep in touch with so you can keep that passion alive.

Use social media marketing tools and email marketing to organically build your audience and perpetually maintain an effective marketing mix.

Mitchum goes Benjamin Button style....

2010-08-30T06:12:00.000-07:00

How do you revitalize a 40-year-old brand with flat sales and diminished shelf space in some of the biggest retailers? If you're Revlon's Mitchum, you team up with not one but two Hollywood directors, host a contest and let consumers tell your brand's story for you.

For its first brand campaign in five years, the deodorant/antiperspirant brand teamed up with CAA Marketing as well as director Brett Ratner ("Rush Hour," "Red Dragon") for a branded-entertainment program that played up its heritage as one of the "hardest-working" brands in its category (some may recall its tagline from back in the day: "So effective you could skip a day.").

Filmmaker Albert Maysles' documentary profile on Chad Pregracke, winner of Mitchum's Hardest Working Person in America contest, will premiere on the Sundance Channel on Oct. 22.

Mr. Ratner liked the idea of finding a person whose own work ethic matched the deodorant's, and tapped his friend and mentor, Albert Maysles, the documentarian behind "Grey Gardens" and "Gimme Shelter," for a contest to find the "hardest-working person in America." The contest was promoted through TV spots, print and social-media ads, culminating in the marketer's biggest push in years (in 2009 Mitchum spent only $668,000 on measured media, according to Kantar Media).

"Our marketing had taken on more of a maintenance role for a couple years. This is a sign of strong equity for us," said Thomas Lauinger, Mitchum's VP-marketing. "Mitchum has a lot of heritage that still resonates today as a strong and efficacious brand. But we wanted to reinvent it as well."Entrants were encouraged to create short films nominating an individual for their hard work, which viewers could then vote for via YouTube. The winning nominee would earn a $100,000 cash prize and the chance to be the subject of a short-form documentary directed by Mr. Maysles, with an accompanying photo shoot from celebrity photographer Brigitte Lacombe.

The program gained enough traction to attract the interest of Mike Rowe, host of Discovery Channel's "Dirty Jobs," to nominate his own unsolicited candidate, Chad Pregracke from East Moline, Ill. Mr. Pregracke is the founder of Living Lands & Waters, a nonprofit organization dedicated to cleaning up and preserving the nation's rivers.

More than 150 submissions and 3 million views later, Mitchum has two winners -- Mr. Pregracke, who won with more than 50,000 votes, and the product itself. Since the program's May launch, Mitchum has seen the largest sales gains in over two years, and also earned some prime incremental shelf space in retailers such as Walmart and Target.

Mr. Ratner was lured by the challenge of creating a creative concept for a package-good brand, having previously worked with Activision's "Guitar Hero" and luxury marketers such as Paradise, Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas through his Brett Ratner brands division.

"I'm looking for things that are alternative ways to market a brand. I avoid coming up with the idea for commercials because that's something outside my expertise. What was exciting was creating a concept that is reachable in many formats," Mr. Ratner told Ad Age.

With the contest complete, Mitchum is gearing up for the Oct. 18 premiere of Mr. Maysles' documentary profile on Mr. Pregracke, airing on the Sundance Channel. Mr. Lauinger said the two months leading up to the film's premiere will be a key opportunity to keep the brand's newfound 25- to 40-year-old male fans engaged with the program through social-media dialogue on Twitter and Facebook as well as email blasts, couponing initiatives and in-store trials. After the Sundance special airs, the Mitchum team will evaluate the aggregate impact on the brand's awareness and product sales to determine the next phase of its first branding effort in half a decade.

"It feels like there's a lot of opportunity here," Mr. Lauinger said. "We're really off to a terrific start, and we've already put some renewed energy and focus behind the brand."

More Turnover at Chevy, GM?

2010-08-20T05:59:00.001-07:00

General Motors Co. today named Chris Perry its new Chevrolet marketing boss, replacing Jim Campbell.

Chris Perry

Mr. Perry, 50, Hyundai Motor America's VP-marketing, will be the third Chevrolet marketing leader in 13 months and will be reunited with Joel Ewanick, GM's top U.S. marketing executive, who held the same post at Hyundai.

Mr. Campbell, 46, was named VP of GM's performance vehicles and motorsports unit.

In March, Mr. Perry was named Hyundai's top marketing executive when Mr. Ewanick joined Nissan North America. Weeks later, Mr. Ewanick moved to GM.

"Chris brings 25 years of marketing experience -- more than 20 years in the automotive industry -- to the Chevrolet marketing position," Mr. Ewanick said in a statement.

"I have worked with Chris in the past and know he will use his unique ability to integrate strategic and creative marketing activities across all communications disciplines to reconnect consumers to the Chevrolet brand," he added.

Chris Hosford, Hyundai's executive director of communications, confirmed that Mr. Perry had resigned from his marketing post at Hyundai, effective immediately.

Mr. Hosford declined to comment about a successor to Mr. Perry, or the timing in which his successor would be named, saying "it's too early to talk about a potential successor to Chris."

Meanwhile, the churn of executives continues at GM.

In the past year, at least 17 of the company's marketing leaders have changed jobs or left. Three of GM's four remaining U.S. brands underwent major ad campaign changes -- Buick more than once. Mr. Ewanick is GM's fourth U.S. marketing chief in the past year.

Mr. Perry has been with Hyundai since 2000. Before taking the interim job, he was director of marketing and advertising. He has been credited by Hyundai dealers with being a key player in developing the company's attention-getting marketing efforts -- including the Hyundai Assurance program, which guarantees customers that they can return their purchases if they lose their job. He will report to Mr. Ewanick.

GM said Mr. Campbell, in his new role, will integrate the engineering and marketing of performance versions of current GM models and will be responsible for all of GM's motorsports activities. He will report to Mark Reuss, president of GM North America, and to Tom Stephens, vice chairman of global product operations.

2010-08-13T06:03:00.000-07:00

With its more than half billion users and privately-held status, Facebook's revenue has long been a favorite guessing game for observers from Silicon Valley to Wall Street. But a new estimate from eMarketer says the company will book $1.285 billion in global advertising alone this year, almost double the estimated $665 million the company took in last year. That figure doesn't include Facebook's so-called virtual currency trade, which would nonetheless account for a fraction of the company's overall business.

Interestingly, Facebook's fastest growing area comes from its self-serve ad platform, which launched in August 2007. "We believe it accounted for about half of all ad spending on Facebook," eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson said. "It's really become a tremendous business for the company. We didn't account for the size of that business last year in our estimate, but we found that it's become a great tool for direct-marketing advertisers."

The eMarketer analysis stands as a significant third-party verification against some of the provisional numbers floating around in the media. A July Bloomberg article, for example, cited two anonymous sources indicating Facebook would book $1.4 billion this year. A March report from the Wall Street Journal pegged the company's 2010 revenue at a wide range of $1.2 billion to $2 billion, also citing anonymous sources. In both articles, it was unclear whether the information came from inside or outside the company itself.

Like Google, Facebook's self-serve advertisers are largely local, coming from marketing dollars once spent on yellow pages listings. If those advertisers perform anything like Google's, they won't be as cyclical as national brand advertising, giving Facebook a buffer against future ad slumps.

Naturally, the other half of Facebook's revenue comes from display advertising, which the company recently ramped up after Microsoft's deal to sell Facebook's banner advertising ended in February. The site now serves all its own uniquely sized units; they are smaller and come at a lower price point. That may also explain, despite their hefty revenue, the very low average ad rate of 56 cents for every 1,000 impressions Facebook brings in, compared to the $2.43 average for the internet at large.

In part driving those bottom-dollar ad rates is the fact that Facebook accounts for a significant percentage of all display ad impressions on the web -- 16.8% of all impressions the U.S. in May, according to ComScore. That makes Facebook responsible for almost a fifth of all ad traffic in the country.

While Facebook is ramping up ad revenue, MySpace can barely hang on to the budgets that remain. The News Corp.-owned social site stands to bring in $347 million this year, a 26% drop from the estimated $470 million from last year, according to eMarketer. Further, its going to get worse before it gets better: EMarketer estimates MySpace will come in under $300 million in 2011. The ailing company recently hired ad agency Pereira & O'Dell for its first consumer brand campaign this fall.

Domino's Pizza sees the value in eMail Marketing...

2010-08-10T08:30:00.000-07:00

Domino's Pizza launched an e-mail marketing push August 5 to promote its “Show Your Pizza” contest.

The company worked with e-mail marketing services provider YesMail on the effort. Crispin, Porter & Bogusky, the brand's national creative agency of record, worked on the photo contest portion of the campaign.

Domino's is encouraging consumers to make their own pizzas and submit images of them for the chance to win a spot in a print advertisement. The pizza chain is also giving eight consumers $500 in the second installment of the Show Your Pizza contest, which runs through August 23. The overall initiative launched June 28 with online, print and TV components.

The campaign's e-mail marketing push is targeting customers who have opted in to receive information from Domino's. This group includes the approximately six million active customers who have opened an e-mail from the company within the last six months, said Chris Brandon, spokesperson at Domino's Pizza.

The brand is using the e-mail marketing component to remind consumers that it is accepting submissions, said Brandon.

“We are always looking to maximize participation and interaction with our consumers on things like this,” he said. “Most of all, we are trying to drive home the fact that we are now using real food photography in all of our national advertising.”

Is this good or bad for Newsweek? At least they're relevant...I think....

2010-08-04T06:21:00.001-07:00

It's official: Sidney Harman, the businessman who made his fortune selling stereo equipment, has secured a deal to buy Newsweek from the Washington Post Co. and will announce the deal later Monday afternoon.

Sidney Harman

The New York Times and others have previously reported that Mr. Harman was the front-runner to come away with the news weekly, but have cautioned that no deal was certain. Politico's Playbook e-mail newsletter this morning said a deal with Mr. Harman was imminent, but also cautioned that "no deal like this is done until it's done." The deal is now done, according to people familiar with the process.

Mr. Harman and the Washington Post Co. declined to comment.

The Times quoted one person briefed on Mr. Harman's bid who said his plan would retain 250 of Newsweek's employees. Newsweek counted 379 full-time staffers at the end of March, according to the sale book posted by PaidContent, but a significant number have left in the time since. Losses at the magazine could approach $70 million this year, this person told the Times. Mr. Harman reportedly bid $1 for the magazine but agreed to assume the magazine's liabilities; those details could not be confirmed on Monday.

Post Co. Chairman Donald E. Graham put the long-running and iconic newsweekly on the block in May, saying it would lose money again this year and "might be a better fit elsewhere." The Post Co. sold its other magazine, Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel, last December. Despite the legacy of the flagship Washington Post newspaper, the Post Co. now finds the majority of its revenue in educational test-prep services, prompting Mr. Graham to reposition the Post Co. as an "education and media company" in 2007. The company decided to sell Newsweek one year after the title introduced a major redesign to its print edition's look, editorial mission and business model.

Newsweek has been cutting spending, but revenue has been falling as well. Newsweek's ad pages fell 9.6% in the first half, compared with a narrow 0.4% gain at Time, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.

Other once-mighty magazines have sold for astonishingly low prices, such as the $1 deal for TV Guide, but those prices don't look quite so minimal once you factor in the losses and liabilities -- such as the obligation to keep serving millions of subscriptions that may or may not be profitable -- attached to such acquisitions.

Bidders that were rejected or dropped out include Fred Drasner, Avenue Capital, OpenGate Capital, Newsmax and the hedge fund manager Thane Ritchie.

Interesting News or Morbid Curiousity?

2010-07-23T06:49:00.000-07:00

Gulf Spill Lifts Live Viewing for CNN.com

Site delivered a total of 13 million live video streams in June

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill has fueled a heavy flood of live video viewing for CNN.com, as viewers flocked to the news site last month for its ongoing coverage of the disaster.

CNN.com delivered a total of 13 million live video streams in June, during which it provided a constant live feed of the spill from an underwater camera. That’s up from the 8 million video views the site served in May and way up from the roughly 2-3 million live views per month the site averaged earlier in the year.

Overall, according to Nielsen Online, CNN.com generated more video streams in June live or otherwise -- 118 million streams -- than any other site in the category. Close behind CNN in total video streams was MSNBC.com, with 115 million streams, and Yahoo News, with 71 million.

Due in large part to users ongoing interest in the oil spill and its aftermath, the news category had a strong June overall. Yahoo topped all news sites in terms of reach with 39.2 million uniques, trailed by CNN.com's 36.6 million uniques, MSNBC.com (31.6 million) and Fox News (15.8 million).

However, CNN.com bested its competitors in page views (1.3 billion), time spent per person (23.4 minutes) and total minutes (850 million), according to Nielsen.

Dr. Pepper Makes Me Feel Special...

2010-07-20T07:56:00.000-07:00

Coca-Cola is facing flak for using porn to attract children on Facebook in a promotional campaign gone wrong.

Coke has withdrawn the ads and apologized for its Dr. Pepper promotion, where users allowed their Facebook status box to be taken over by the company. More than 160,000 people signed up and allowed Coke to send "embarrassing" messages posted under the users name, which would be seen by all who viewed their Facebook profile.

But Coke ran into trouble when the parent of a 14-year-old girl in the U.K. complained her daughter's profile had been updated with a direct reference to a hardcore porn flick notorious for the obscene practices it depicts, according to the Telegraph, and the girl searched for the porno on the Internet.

The message, according to Mrs. Rickman: "I watched 2 girls one cup and felt hungry afterwards."

Mrs. Rickman wrote on the parents' networking site Mumsnet.com: "I am absolutely fizzing with rage and disgust, and want a full apology and explanation." Get it, fizzing? Ha, ha.

Coke says it's investigating what went wrong. "It has been brought to our attention that the Dr. Pepper promotion on Facebook posted an offensive status update. We apologize for any offense caused. As soon as we became aware of this, we took immediate action and removed the status update from the application. We have also taken the decision to end the promotion. We will take all steps necessary to ensure this does not happen again."

Coke offered Mrs. Rickman a night in a hotel and theater tickets for the West End, but the gesture was not well received: "Fat lot of use to me, we live in Glasgow," she wrote.

Other examples of status updates posted by Coke included, according to The Guardian:

* "Lost my special blankie. How will I go sleepies?"
* "What's wrong with peeing in the shower?"
* "Never heard of it described as cute before."

Great piece of insight....

2010-07-19T06:33:00.000-07:00

From the Small Agency Summit:

Think of new business pitches like dates. If you go in talking all about yourself, a marketer is probably not going to be that wowed, but if you ask them about their business, they're more likely to want to keep talking. Industry experts have said one of the biggest mistakes they see agencies make is spending disproportionate time talking about their credentials when they could be getting a better insight into the client's challenges.

Want to Sell Issues?...pick your covers carefully...

2010-07-15T06:56:00.000-07:00

When Vanity Fair Editor in Chief Graydon Carter put Paris Hilton on the cover in 2005, a smart aleck accused him of using the heiress like "newsstand crack." Times have changed. According to a new analysis of various traits on 11,161 magazine covers between May 2006 and this April, Paris Hilton has become a cover "don't."

Issues with the starlet on the cover attracted smaller-than-average audiences for the magazines in question more often than they attracted above-average crowds, according to the analysis by GfK MRI, which looked for traits with statistically significant correlations to audience swings either 15% above or below average.

Any given issue with the cover trait in question might have attracted a below-average audience, an average audience or an above-average audience, but GfK identified traits that on the whole proved more likely to either hurt or help. Audience figures encompass not just copies sold at newsstands but all readers, including subscribers, people who read friends' or relatives' copies, and readers who pick up a copy in a waiting room or other public place.

Some public figures still have juice, such as Jennifer Aniston, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, according to the GfK MRI research. But Ms. Hilton and former MTV reality star Lauren Conrad aren't drawing readers.

Broader cover traits matter too: The economy, beach bodies, and "best of" treatments all help magazines draw bigger audiences than usual. But "green" coverage, negative emotions and -- perhaps surprisingly -- celebrity scandal are more likely to hurt than help.

The findings only suggest trends, not immutable results, said Anne Marie Kelly, senior VP for marketing and strategic planning at MRI Starch, which plans to make the data available to its clients soon. "We're not saying that no celebrity scandals drive readership," she said. "I think it depends on who the celebrity is. They're not all Tiger Woods."

FourSquare Frenzy?

2010-07-12T06:04:00.001-07:00

Dennis Crowley, co-founder of hot location-based social service Foursquare, addressed a roomful of marketers in June. He asked for a show of hands of how many had tried to work with the company but didn't hear back. A lot of hands went up. The simple message: the still-small company is struggling to further develop its service while responding to the avalanche of requests.

Now, with $20 million in new funding, agencies are hopeful the digital world's new belle of the ball will build tools to help them use the service in deeper ways.

Adweek spoke with several agencies that report frustrating experiences with Foursquare. Some have found it both hard to contact and unwilling to come up with marketing ideas. One agency representing a major package-goods client said the company put the onus on the brand and agency to find the best way to use the service.

"They're not responsive and extremely hard to work with," said a digital agency exec who asked not to be named. "It's hard to bring campaigns to life. Nobody knows how to create a badge or ask [Foursquare how] to enable behavior. It's black magic." In general, he said, "it's pretty much unworkable."

One sticking point is Foursquare's strategy of initially limiting advertiser participation. Pepsi, for instance, has an exclusive lock on the soft drinks category. Additionally, Foursquare has identified one "charter advertiser" for some major categories, which it then works with to better understand what works before taking on other advertisers. While less formal than exclusive contracts, it nonetheless leaves some competitors out in the cold, if only temporarily.

"There have been a number of things we've been told we can't do because it's already being done in some markets," said Adrian Ho, a partner with Zeus Jones. Working with Foursquare, he noted, is in some ways similar to working with Facebook in its early days.

Foursquare doesn't "have the infrastructure that makes clients comfortable," Ho added. "It's a bit like the Wild West. It's hard to get meetings in person. It's hard to get time on the phone."

There is the danger the hiccups will sour relationships. Mark Drapeau, Microsoft's director of innovative social engagement, left a scorching comment on a blog post about Foursquare. He said he tried everything from e-mailing to calling to stopping by Foursquare's office in the hopes of doing a partnership for a Microsoft event that would include a custom badge. He said he eventually gave up.

"They're creating a new marketing opportunity," said Andrea Harrison, social media lead at Razorfish, which has yet to work with Foursquare on a program. "They don't have the packaged media kit ready to go."

Many startups, of course, experience growing pains. The company's smaller competitors, for instance, are also still figuring out how to work with businesses. Gowalla, for one, does not yet have self-service tools for businesses. Josh Williams, CEO of Gowalla, said it's working to develop them.

"There's a lot of hype in the space," he said. "There's promise of great things that will happen, but right now it's really fledgling."

Google's Market Dominance or Arrogance?

2010-07-08T06:31:00.000-07:00

For a company that has made a big business of indexing third-party websites, a substantial part of Google's display success hinges on its ability to milk YouTube and its other owned and operated properties such as Gmail and Google Finance.

Google Finance did not initially feature advertising, but it now runs rectangle-sized ads.

In fact, those areas were two of the three big priorities outlined by VP Neal Mohan at a press briefing last week where a parade of Google executives described the company's plans to expand its ad business beyond search keywords.

"Display is truly at a tipping point," Mr. Mohan said. "We think it can be substantially larger than the $20 billion it is today, whether [it's] $40 billion, $60 billion, or $80 billion, but there are a lot of challenges that remain."

Mr. Mohan said there were gross inefficiencies to the display ad buying process. As an example, he said it takes 30 days or more to get a creative advertising unit up and running. "That process should be much more streamlined," he said.

Display in Gmail
But perhaps the more significant strategy on display was Mr. Mohan's presentation of what he called the Google Display Network, which included YouTube as well as Google properties Google Finance, Google Maps, Google Books and even Gmail. Mr. Mohan did not detail what a display unit might look like in Gmail, and a company insider said it has yet to work out the specific ad requirements against those properties. Google Finance, for example, did not initially feature advertising, but it now runs rectangle-sized ads.

Beyond Mr. Mohan's remarks, the company last week made a couple more moves that could affect its owned and operated inventory. First, it acquired ITA Software Inc., a software company that specializes in organizing and searching flight information such as ticket prices and flight times, for $700 million in cash. ITA licenses its product to a broad array of websites and airlines, such as Hotwire, Orbitz, American Airlines and Continental Airlines.

Though the deal is sure to draw close scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission, the acquisition could help the search giant fill out its owned and operated pages as well as further dominate search. Although a company insider says there are no plans at the moment to monetize the flight-travel search pages generated by the purchase of ITA, the deal will no doubt increase Google's lineup of owned properties.

At the Guardian's technology conference last Thursday, CEO Eric Schmidt added more fuel to the rumor that Google is launching a social network called Google Me, which could increase its owned pages. When asked if Google Me is fact or fiction, Mr. Schmidt equivocated in his response, saying, "That would be a product announcement, and I won't say."

Facebook's display dominance
Creating a service to rival Facebook could help Google boost its distant rank among display advertising publishers. According to ComScore, Google sites (including YouTube) place sixth among web publishers for display ad impressions at 25.8 billion, the equivalent of 2.4% of the total impressions for the first quarter of 2010. Facebook easily dominated the display ad market for the same period at 16.2% or 176.3 billion impressions.

Facebook's top spot in display advertising suggests that any attempt by Google to grab more of the pie will surely have to include growing out its own properties. At the same time, the Mountain View-based company plans to also grow its share by better connecting its current crop of publishing partners, which include CNN.com, WashingtonPost.com, RollingStone.com and About.com, to advertisers. The idea there is to serve as a one-stop-shop for both parties, effectively making Google the main go-between for the display business, a role it already owns for search advertising.

"Our publishing partners asked us to help them build out better display buying tools," Mr. Mohan said. "They wanted more control, more streamlining, and that's what we're giving them."

Apparently Social Media has trust issues...

2010-06-28T07:05:00.000-07:00

Apple, Google and Microsoft are trusted about equally by consumers, according to a Zogby Interactive poll this month, while Twitter and Facebook lag far behind in that respect.

Forty-nine percent of respondents said they trust Apple "completely" or "a lot," matching the number who said the same about Microsoft and Google. Apple's "trust a little" or "not at all" total (36 percent) was lower than that of Microsoft and Google (both 46 percent), with a higher "not sure" tally for Apple making up the difference.

Thirteen percent of respondents said they trust Facebook completely or a lot, vs. 75 percent trusting it a little or not at all. The numbers were similarly negative for Twitter (8 percent completely/a lot vs. 64 percent a little/not at all, with another 28 percent not sure).

The numbers were noticeably different for the survey's 18-29-year-olds, who've come of age with these brands.

Google fared a shade better with this cohort (51 percent trusting it completely/a lot, 43 percent a little/not at all) than it did among adults in general. But Apple's ratings were significantly worse (41 percent completely/a lot, 51 percent a little/not at all). And Microsoft scored even more poorly among the 18-29s (34 percent completely/a lot, 60 percent a little/not at all).

You'd expect Facebook to be held in higher esteem by young adults than by their elders. But while its numbers were better among the poll's 18-29s than among all adults, the difference wasn't' dramatic. Twenty percent of the 18-29s said they trust Facebook completely/a lot, vs. 72 percent trusting it a little or not at all.

As for Twitter, 15 percent of the 18-29s said they trust it completely/a lot, vs. 66 percent saying they trust it a little/not at all.

Communication should go both ways...until it doesn't

2010-06-24T06:26:00.000-07:00

Have you ever received the call? You know the one where the client tells you how much they love you, respect you and the contributions your agency has made to their brand but ...

That's not a fun call. You've just been dumped and while sometimes you have an inkling it's coming, so often you hear agencies say that they're totally surprised and often I believe they are.

But why? Why is it that a client-agency relationship can unravel right beneath our noses and we don't see it coming? I think it comes down to human nature. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. Isn't that what your mother taught you? I know mine did. And therein lies the problem.

Dissatisfied clients don't want to be mean. They don't want to tell you your creative product has been lackluster or that they're underwhelmed. They don't want to tell you that your interactive capabilities (or lack thereof) is unacceptable.

They like you and your team. They want you to like them too. So they sit and say nothing. Until it's too late. Another agency catches their eye with compelling work or a truly innovative idea. So they let that agency continue to whisper in their ear and they agree to have lunch or to stop by the competitor's shop for a free "What's Around The Corner" presentation. And slowly, step-by-step they find that they like you, but they love the other shop. And then it happens. You get the call.

So if that is the story, how do we rewrite the ending?

How about this?
Don't wait to be told what to do next. I remember talking to the head of an agency one day and asking why the firm wasn't doing more to understand and educate its clients in the art of conversational marketing (aka social media). He responded, "Well our clients aren't asking for that kind of stuff yet." While they may not be asking, does that mean they are not curious or interested or just assuming you shouldn't need to be asked? Or maybe someone else is educating them for you.

What if you hired a scientist? Well maybe not a real scientist but a person that thinks like a scientist. Hire or redeploy an internal asset that enjoys experimenting and is comfortable with failing, because they value knowledge more than victory. What if you had a person like that on staff that was constantly focused on "what if" instead of "what was"? Would that create a chance to have unique and interesting dialogues with your clients?

Ask how you're doing. This one is such a no-brainer but you'd be surprised by how few do it. There are tons of easy-to-use, low-cost online survey tools on the market. Get a license to one and start a client feedback survey. Issue it once a year, quarter or week if you think you need to. But seriously think about having one because anonymity breeds truth. Sure you may get a client to give you the cold, honest facts over lunch, but you can almost guarantee you'll get the unvarnished truth via a truly anonymous survey.

Be honest with yourself. Ask yourself if you're truly doing all that you can for every client. And if you're not, ask yourself why. Often the answer will be compensation driven but that's ok. Write it up. Create a "new business" presentation for your client showing them all the things you could be doing for them but then explain the financial implications of your ideas. Use the presentation as a chance to start a dialog. Who knows, they might decide to incrementally fund your ideas, shift focus and budget from existing programs or just do nothing because their budgetary hands are tied. But even if they choose the last option - you still get credit and you still get dialog.

And if you're talking, then you're one step closer to communicating.

Targeting just got that much more difficult...

2010-06-21T08:45:00.001-07:00

Starting this week, AT&T, American Express, Microsoft and dozens of other major marketers will pull the veil off their web ads and show consumers what's inside.

It's the first trial of what some hope will become the online ad industry's long-promised self-policing system designed to stave off the growing forces for regulation in Washington, as well as give consumers more control over how they are targeted by advertisers.

The system, deployed by a start-up called Better Advertising, will place an icon in the upper right-hand corner of the ads that looks like a cross between an eye and power button called the "power eye." Consumers who mouse over the icon will get a view of all the data that was used to target the ad, as well as the option to opt-out of future targeting by those companies.

The system is one of several competing to get the endorsement of a coalition of organizations representing the ad industry, as well as the Council of Better Business Bureaus, which has been tasked by the industry and regulators to come up with a system of disclosure for consumers. Several online ad vendors also have proposals before the organization, but executives close to the process say Better Advertising, founded by former About.com chief Scott Meyer, is close to winning the deal.

Better Advertising's system has been endorsed by units of all the major ad holding companies, WPP, Havas, Publicis Groupe, Omnicom Group and Interpublic Group of Cos. Those rolling out the system this week include Interpublic's audience-buying platform Cadreon, Publicis' Vivaki and WPP's MEC Interaction.

"Ultimately the data belongs to the consumer -- we are being allowed to use it," said John Montgomery, chief operating officer of Group M Interaction, the digital-buying unit of ad giant WPP. "If the consumer is uncomfortable, then they will not allow it to be used that way."

Opting out

Many of the largest web publishers such as Yahoo and Google, data providers like BlueKai, and ad networks like Audience Science currently allow consumers to opt out of targeting. But those require consumers to continually opt out on many sites and the industry has been seeking a solution to allow consumers to opt out of the ad itself, wherever they happen to encounter it on the web.

"This is the first to provide consumer notice and a compliance service that is independent and works across platform," Mr. Meyer said.

Part of that is a subtle PR effort for online advertisers: the term "behavioral targeting," in use since late last decade, is getting a makeover as the softer, gentler "interest-based" advertising, terminology they hope will sound less sinister.

The system will also provide advertises with a new kind of feedback mechanism from consumers. While today they measure effectiveness of ads by the rate at which people click or interact with them, soon they will also get data on how many people found the ad objectionable enough that they decided to opt out of the targeting behind it.

Consumers won't be able to opt out of the ads, mind you, just the targeting. But the opt-out will give marketers a new view into how their ads -- and their brands -- are perceived. The prevailing hypothesis is that greater transparency will lead to greater trust among consumers. But even the most enthusiastic supporters of the project also see risk.

"If people start to opt out it makes our targeting less effective and it becomes more challenging to sell to people," said Steve Governale, executive director-digital marketing at AT&T. "But, long-term, transparency can only do us good."

Behavioral data

Mr. Governale said the icon would apply to AT&T's ads selling products such as mobile phones, where third-party behavioral data is used. AT&T's brand ads -- "more bars in more places," for example -- don't generally use behavioral data.

The self-regulatory system will only apply to ads that use data from third parties; a brand ad aimed generally at readers of a website won't apply, nor will it apply to publishers using their own data.

About 12% to 15% of online-display dollars go to ads that employ third-party targeting data, according to Kantar Media, and a recent Ponemon Institute survey of 90 marketers said they're spending 75% less than they would on targeted ads due to privacy concerns.

Execs say the brands themselves have been the silent hand pushing the issue, part out of fear of regulation and in part to forge more authentic connections with consumers. "It's definitely something that will differentiate us from the folks not doing it," said Brendan Moorcroft, CEO of Cadreon.

Backed into a corner, the online ad industry doesn't have much of a choice. A privacy bill from Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) is likely to be introduced later this year, and the Federal Trade Commission has made it plain that the online ad business has a narrow window to show it can pull this off.

Welcome to the end of Twitter...

2010-06-17T13:11:00.000-07:00

Since April, Twitter users have grown accustomed to Twitter’s first ad revenue play: Promoted Tweets. Today, the second phase of that strategy is starting to be tested: Promoted Trending Topics. The first such topic? Toy Story 3, promoted by Disney/Pixar.

As you can see in the right hand toolbar of Twitter.com, at the bottom of the Trending Topics area there is now an 11th topic, “Toy Story 3.” Next to it is a big yellow box letting you know that it’s a promoted Trending Topic. Just as with Promoted Tweets, the functionality for these Promoted Trending Topics is the same as the regular Trending Topics — clicking on it takes you to a search results page to see what people are saying about Toy Story 3.

“As we have always said, we plan to test different advertising and promotional models in these early stages of our monetization efforts for both user and brand value. As part of this effort, we are testing trends clearly marked as “promoted” for an undefined period of time,” a Twitter representative tells us.

And along with buying the Trending Topic, Disney/Pixar gets a Promoted Tweet at the top of the stream, Twitter confirms. Twitter also says that just as with Promoted Tweets, the Promoted Trending Topic “has to resonate” or it will disappear.

Two more things of note here. First, it’s interesting that Twitter is putting these at the bottom of Trending Topics rather than at the top. Still, the yellow badge draws your eye naturally to it. Second, the Promoted Trending Topic appears no matter which city or country you set your Trending Topics to. In the future, you can imagine these Promoted Tending Topics being even more highly targeted to just certain regions/cities.

Audi is Up for Grabs....

2010-06-16T07:52:00.001-07:00

The account for Audi of America, a marketer noted for its digital experimentation, is up for grabs and a number of agencies are circling the business.

Audi of America

Perhaps Audi's biggest play to date in the digital space was its saturation of the coverage of President Barack Obama's inauguration, reaching 50 million people with a news-hour takeover of major broadcast networks and websites streaming the event. That push was captained by Audi's agency of record, Venables Bell & Partners, which is unaffected by the review.

The automaker's digital account has been parked at interactive agency of record Factory Design, Denver, but that shop's three-year contract is up. The brand is reviewing digital shops to handle brand advertising, retail and collateral. Jeri Ward, Audi general manager of customer advocacy and launch strategy, said the incumbent is in the running.

Audi follows Chrysler, Mitsubishi and Mazda in its search for new agency partners. Most recently, under new leadership, Mitsubishi selected Omnicom Group's 180, Los Angeles, for creative work; WPP's Schematic for digital work; and Triaville Communications for public relations. Mazda is also said to be close to selecting a holding company agency team.

What's a Facebook fan really worth?

2010-06-15T07:16:00.001-07:00

True to form, many of the technologies showcased during New York's annual Internet Week wowed, but what really generated attention were efforts to answer the $64,000 question: How do we measure the value of a Facebook fan, especially since Facebook is a dominant part of a marketer's toolkit?

Two clever social-media technology companies, Syncapse and Vitrue, took a crack at answering this seemingly simple question. I say seemingly simple because, in reality, the "value" of a fan can mean lots of things such as actual sales value or value as evangelists or value as a research resource in a crowdsourcing campaign.

And given the ad hoc nature of measurement today, it's no surprise, therefore, that we see wildly divergent answers from these two companies. Syncapse, for instance, assigns the average value of a fan at $136.38, and Vitrue pegs the value of a Facebook fan at $3.60. The wild differences, of course, lies in what you are measuring. Let's take a closer look.

The Syncapse approach
I got to hear Syncapse CEO Michael Scissons present the findings from a joint, proprietary research study his company did with Hotspex. It was designed to calculate the value of a fan based on a set of attributes as described by Synapse in the study:

Product spending -- Facebook fans spend, on average, $71.84 more than non-fans over a two-year period.
Loyalty (meaning ability to influence and promote brand loyalty within a target audience) -- Facebook fans are 28% more likely to continue using a brand than consumers who are not fans on Facebook.
Propensity to recommend -- 68% of fans are "very likely" to recommend a product to family and friends (as opposed to 28% of non-fans).
Brand affinity -- 81% of fans feel a connection to the brand (versus only 39% of non-fans).

Together these attributes (and a few others) roll into a sophisticated formula which yields an average value of $136 per fan. Now, I love the idea of these metrics. I love the scope that these attributes reach for. I appreciate how cleverly they assigned a dollar value to intangible attributes such as brand affinity. And rightly, the study spends a fair amount of time acknowledging that the value is highly dependent on lots of variables.

Yet, the study requires us to take some pretty big leaps of faith since the data is self-reported -- not behaviorally tracked. This somewhat stacks the data deck – after all a fan means they are already favorably predisposed.

But even if one is willing to take these leaps of faith, what are the practical applications of this information? Does a marketer then use this measure to justify shifting dollars from one media into Facebook? Is it a "dollar for dollar" shift? Or is this information best used as a theoretical baseline for some objective measure of progress? While I like this approach because it is innovative and ambitious, its practical application remains to be seen.

The Vitrue approach
Vitrue's approach to the question, "What's the value of a Facebook community?," is to associate fan value to the value of impressions generated in the Facebook news feed. It then applies display banner advertising pricing to the number of Facebook fans (at $5 per CPM) for a value metric. The results of the study are based on Vitrue's own client data that had a combined 41 million fans. With this approach, one can theoretically increase monthly media impressions significantly so that, for instance, a marketer with a large Facebook fan base that posts twice a day can deliver 60 million more impressions/ month. Here is a recap of the formula: 1M impressions x 2 posts x 30 days = 60M impressions 60M impressions / 1000 x $5 CPM = $300,000 $300,000 x 12 months = $3.6M $3.6M / 1M fans = $3.60

This approach is valid and similar to the methodology used to assign media value to publicity received in the news. "It's important to understand that once you build that fan base, you want to make sure you're leveraging it," said Michael Strutton, chief product officer at Vitrue, and they provide a nifty tool to help you measure your value Facebook fan page.

While this approach is more focused than the Syncapse approach (though less strategic), even within the more limited scope, here too we must be willing to take a leap of faith, which is that all impressions perform equally irrespective of environment within which those impressions are delivered. And then the inevitable "Now what?" problem also raises its head because we are not clear on how to apply this learning in the real world. Does this suggest that a wholesale dollar shift will deliver comparable results? (I'd love to hear from the Vitrue folks on this point.)

Conclusion
I fully appreciate the need to put an ROI face to the question (pun intended), and I much applaud the efforts by these companies to give guidance. But it seems fair to step back for a moment and ask ourselves a bigger question: "What is our Facebook marketing investment worth?" The way to answer that bigger question might be, in fact, to reframe it within the context of specific marketing campaigns like direct marketing rather than looking at this problem in a "monolithic" sense. As David Armano, senior VP, Edelman Digital, observed in a session on Facebook; we would do well to think of Facebook as part of a larger marketing "ecosystem" where there are practical and actionable set of measures like customer lifetime value, acquisition costs and sales.

The way forward
There is a rising chorus of voices demanding a coordinated industry approach to metrics and methodology used in the measurement of social media that integrates the disparate trade organizations' efforts while introducing the best thinking from innovative companies like Syncapse and Vitrue. This will allow the industry to come up with an accepted standard set of metrics that provide true actionability.

So what did I learn about the value of a Facebook fan in the last week? At least I learned enough to say, "It all depends..."

Will Retro Imagery & Messaging work in today's economy?

2010-06-11T06:46:00.000-07:00

Chrysler is calling upon themes of American craftsmanship and engineering to market its new Jeep Grand Cherokee in a 60-second commercial from Wieden & Kennedy that breaks tomorrow on network and cable TV.

The ad is heavy on industrial imagery, with scenes of people welding and images of skyscrapers and railroads. A voice-over declares: "This has always been a nation of builders. Craftsmen. Men and women for whom straight stitches and clean welds are a matter of personal pride. ... This, our newest son, was imagined, drawn, carved, stamped, hewn and forged here in America."

The campaign gives Jeep a new tagline: "The Things We Make, Make Us." Wieden, which also does creative work for Chrysler's Dodge car line, appears to fast be becoming a favorite of the automaker; the previous round of Jeep advertising was handled by roster shop Globalhue, Southfield, Mich.

"Chrysler Group has made a radical change in the way it functions and creates products and, it is very apparent in the 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee," Oliver Francois, the carmarker's lead marketing executive, said in a statement today. "The campaign is the company's way of making it clear to our current and potential customers that we have that personal pride back and we are creating quality products."

The new Jeep is the first car to roll out since Chrysler's alliance with Fiat and it hits showroom floors later this month.

Welcome Back to Advertising Sales, Mr. Gates...

2010-06-09T06:40:00.001-07:00

It's been nearly two years since Microsoft has had a global head of advertising sales. During that time, losses at its internet division, which includes MSN, Bing and all its other ad-supported properties, ballooned to $713 million in the most recent quarter from $411 million a year ago.

Microsoft's latest executive hire, Carolyn Everson, former MTV Networks' COO and exec-VP for strategy and operations, is expected to change that. Ms. Everson has worked at Viacom since 2007, but she has an internet pedigree, having managed web operations for Primedia and Zagat, combined with cable TV experience. She also knows Microsoft, having spearheaded Viacom's $500 million multi-year advertising deal with the company at the end of 2007. Microsoft has always had an identity problem when it comes to selling advertising, but it comes to the party with a few unique advantages. It is one of few media owners of any type with a truly international footprint; it has a portal with scale, a gaming platform in Xbox, a nascent search brand in Bing and a collection of complementary online ad technologies. It is also the only global ad player that is also a huge buyer of advertising, spending close to $1 billion on measured media in the U.S. alone.

Kids Marketing Dollars both Up and Down...

2010-06-07T07:15:00.000-07:00

How many kids' TV networks are too many -- and are there enough ad dollars to go around? As Hasbro and Discovery's The Hub gears up for an Oct. 10 launch, and with Disney readying a preschool network, Disney Junior, for early 2012, more networks are going to be clamoring for an increasingly limited pool of ad dollars.

Analysts predict this year's kids' upfront will pull in 5% to 10% higher than last year's take of $850 million. That haul was down 10% to 15% from 2008 as food marketers such as General Mills, Kellogg and Kraft had to stem the flow of ad dollars while redeveloping their sugary cereals and snacks to meet new Food & Drug Administration and Federal Communications Commission standards. The kids' marketplace lost an estimated $100 million to $120 million last year alone, according to two executives, and is only expected to recover a fraction of those dollars this year as reformulated products start to hit shelves and roll out ad campaigns.

"With these new restrictions it becomes more difficult to increase the pie, so to speak," said Drew Crum, a children's-marketing analyst for investment firm Stifel Nicolaus. "With an increasingly more competitive landscape and a number of new entrants, that makes it harder for everyone to grow."

That's why mainstays such as Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and Disney Channel are increasingly turning to older kids, tweens, teens and even parents to boost their bottom lines as their core marketing categories wrestle with government pushback. Jim Perry, Nickelodeon's exec VP-brand sales, recently told Ad Age that movie studios had surpassed food marketers as the network's biggest spender as a direct result of the FCC-mandated cutbacks.

Mr. Crum predicts cost-per-thousand-viewer rates to be up flat to low single-digits for kids' networks, with ad volume increases in the 6% to 8% range for this year's upfront. With so many moving parts and different players, Ad Age takes a look at how each of the networks are poised to do and how their ratings and revenues are holding up as they head into this year's market.

Don't Drink & Drive on your way to your next shop...

2010-06-02T06:16:00.001-07:00

Pernod Ricard has shifted global creative duties on its Kahlua brand to Omnicom Group's TBWA/Chiat/Day, New York, from Publicis Groupe's Publicis.

The win further expands TBWA's relationship with Pernod. Absolut Vodka -- acquired by Pernod in 2008 -- is one of the agency's longest-tenured clients, and the shop also works on brands such as Martell's and Jameson Irish Whiskey.

The shift continues a strong year for an office that's occasionally been a trouble spot within the TBWA global network. The agency has added brands such as Twix to its portfolio this year, and secured a spot on McDonald's global agency roster. A special unit it created under Omnicom called Media Arts, New York, also won duties on Planters recently.

Pernod doesn't break out results for Kahlua, but it failed to include the coffee liqueur in a list of brands that were growing or had proven resilient when it shared its half-year results in February. TBWA brands Jameson, Martell and Absolut were all singled out as growing.

"TBWA/Chiat/Day, New York, has a proven ability to help reshape brands on a global scale," said Mathias Westphal, Kahlua's global managing director.

Added TBWA office President Jamie Gallo: "We look forward to delivering disruptive strategies and creativity for one of the most iconic spirits brands."

Omnicom Drives Away in a Porsche...

2010-06-01T12:09:00.001-07:00

Porsche has awarded its $80 million global media planning and buying account to an Omnicom Group unit headed by Omnicom Media Group, which beat out Publicis Groupe siblings Optimedia and Starcom; WPP's MediaCom and Havas' MPG, the automaker has confirmed.

The U.S. incumbent, Cramer-Krasselt, Chicago, did not take part in the review. The independent Cramer-Krasselt manages Porsche's creative account, which was not part of this review.

In 2009 Porsche spent $27 million on measured media in the U.S., according to Kantar Media. The review was handled out of Germany and covers North America, the U.K., China, Germany and Italy. The automaker merged late last year with Volkswagen, Europe's largest car manufacturer. Volkswagen's media account, which was not part of this review, is handled by MediaCom.

For OMG, which currently has the $1 billion Nissan-Renault account under its umbrella at OMD, Porsche helps fill the gaping hole left by Chrysler, which moved from Omnicom's PHD to Interpublic Group of Cos.' Universal McCann last December. People familiar with the Chrysler pitch said OMD put together a similar OMG-run unit to try and retain the Chrysler business but was unsuccessful.

PHD currently handles the Porsche account in Germany.

Your TV's URL address....

2010-05-24T07:12:00.001-07:00

The Digital World Goes Out and About

Marketers need to figure out how brands can participate in conversations beyond the computer

Integration used to mean your microsite looked like your TV and print ads, and your TV spots were tagged with a URL.

The notion was solid at the time: TV really was the best starting point for most campaigns, and a Web site was the best place to send your potential customer for the next, or last, part of the marketing experience. The process was nice and clean and linear. The Web site was just an extension of the commercial. It was 60 seconds of extra consumer attention you couldn't afford to buy.

Integration is starting to mean something very different. It's not just about making sure there is a cohesive story across media, but about how one medium interacts with another. Does it make sense to serve up the same Web experience on a laptop and an iPhone? (Google doesn't think so.) Increasingly, we're looking at how to use digital experiences to create (and augment) physical experiences and interaction.

Last year, everyone focused on the augment part of that, and it meant one combination in particular: QR codes and Webcams. This year, we seem to be augmenting larger swaths of the world, a smearing of digital bits across everything. Some of the ideas use the sensors we have in our pockets (GPS, camera phone, etc.) to interact with the world around us. Things like Foursquare, Yelp, Google Goggles and Stickybits let you comment on the real world, which is the first wave of apps making things very different. In all these cases, the medium with which the mobile is interacting is a physical one: locations for Yelp and Foursquare, and "stuff" for Goggles and Stickybits.

What all these services are getting at is allowing the world around us to speak back. For Foursquare, that currently comes in the form of tips and deals. For Stickybits, it's content attached to a product (via the bar code). It brings a whole new meaning to the phrase, "If these walls could talk."

And that's just it. Increasingly, these walls and cartons and soda cans will need to talk. But what will they say? And what else should be talking?

It's clear that mobile is going to be one side of the conversation. But the other end is limited only by the imagination. What if your commercial talked to your iPhone app? What about the store? (It could tell your mobile device where you are and what's available nearby.)

Even more powerful is when there's a computer on the other end for your mobile device to talk to that makes something new possible. Which is cool, because we've spent years programming computers all over the place, mostly Web sites, but also computers for events, malls and even places like Times Square. When there is a computer on both sides of a conversation, things get interesting and rich and fun because you're not just playing back the same thing over and over. It's interactive.

If that's where our medium is going, how do brands participate? To start with, it seems like we should be thinking about each and every touch point and how our experiences can bend and adapt. It also means that a piece of functional technology could be more effective than a tagline at tying together your marketing experiences. It might mean you've got to act like you're in the software business even if you make soda, because interacting with your customers, more often than not, will need a computer interface.

More than anything, though, it means brands have to get more interactive. This could mean getting more social -- not just having a Facebook page but looking at the tools available to make sure every touch point with your audience is actually interactive. Stop thinking of interactivity as a siloed category where you only converse with your customers online. Think more along the lines of how you can create interactive experiences around retail and on air and in print and on package and on premise and whatever else you can think of.

We've got to figure out how to take the best of the Web and bring it to wherever our audience is, so it feels like we are right there, like magic, when they want or need something from us. Which is what it's supposed to feel like in the future, right?

Brace Yourselves for the World Cup of Advertising...

2010-05-17T07:14:00.000-07:00

Global marketers such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Nike are describing the 2010 FIFA World Cup as a larger event than even the 2008 Beijing Olympics. That scale -- combined with the intensity of interest in the sport, the national pride of fans and the fact that it's the first major global sporting event ever held on the African continent -- figures to sell a lot of sneakers and soft drinks.

ON THE BALL: Adidas is working with the overarching theme 'Every Team Needs,' and is heavily investing in new ball, footwear and apparel launches tied to the tournament.

"It's the No. 1 event in all of sports," Trevor Edwards, Nike's VP-brand and category management, recently told the company's investors, adding that the World Cup will be viewed by "half the world's population."

And it's why FIFA sponsors -- a group to which Nike doesn't belong, by the way -- spend up to $40 million for the privilege.

Coke, for instance, says its campaign for the World Cup will be the largest in the company's history, as well as its most integrated. The company's entire platform is built around the ebullient goal celebrations of soccer players, which Coke easily links to its long-held "Open Happiness" tagline.

The marketer's TV commercials, from Argentinean agency Santo, chronicle the history of goal-scoring celebrations. Coke has a 120-country, 17-language deal with YouTube to encourage viewers to film and post their own goal dances, and it even has persuaded FIFA to condone the awarding of a fan-voted trophy for the player with the best goal dance. There's also a celebration-themed anthem from Somali-born artist K'naan that is already charting on iTunes, and celebration-themed packaging and retail work, among other things.

Breaking through
"Consumers today are so connected and brands are talking to them in so many ways," said Emmanuel Seuge, Coke's group director of worldwide sports and entertainment marketing. "We need to be super-focused and super, super clear if we expect to break through the clutter."

Mr. Seuge said the roots of Coke's one-idea approach stemmed from a meeting between 13 agencies and Coke executives in South Africa in 2008, when executives presented the celebration concept and said they were only interested in approaches that utilized it.

That's a distinct shift for major sports sponsors, who traditionally assemble myriad programs around an event that sometimes have little apparent thematic connection to each other beyond the advertisers' logo.

Other marketers attempting to link their activities under a big, overarching idea this year include Visa and Anheuser-Busch InBev. Visa, a top-level FIFA partner, is conducting all of its activities under the same "Go Fans" platform it uses for the Olympics.

Its World Cup plans include a mobile app that lets fans monitor the match schedule, track scores and standings, chat with each other and even connect with the FIFA store. The "Visa Match Planner" app is part of a campaign that also includes TV, out of home, retail and social-media facets, all under the "Go" umbrella.

A-B, for its part, is operating off a platform called "Budweiser United," which emphasizes the brand's general ubiquity in sports while nodding to its new owners' even more global aspirations. One key component of A-B's effort, which also includes extensive advertising, is a digital reality show that will feature fans from all 32 participating countries living together in a "Big Brother"-style house.

Epic campaign
Nike is rolling out a new campaign called "Write the Future," which it describes as an evolution of its "Next Level" soccer campaign that focused on improving as an athlete and getting to an even higher level. Mr. Edwards said that the World Cup represents the ultimate level, and that all of Nike's work around the event will revolve around that idea.

The campaign includes an epic TV spot, from Wieden & Kennedy, that Mr. Edwards said is one of the best the company has ever produced, as well as a digital and mobile app called NikeFootball Plus, which features some of the best players in the world offering tips on tricks and training to get better. Nike isn't an official FIFA sponsor, but it sponsors several top teams and players, which gets it onto the field.

Some other major sponsors, such as Adidas and McDonald's, are taking a somewhat more piecemeal approach. Adidas has an overarching theme called "Every Team Needs" that it's emphasizing heavily in digital work featuring soccer stars describing different types of players, but it's also investing heavily in new ball, footwear and apparel launches tied to the tournament that are under separate platforms.

McDonald's, meanwhile, is operating a dizzying number of programs on the ground, including one sweepstakes that lets kids escort their favorite players onto the field, and another that gives South African women the chance to be part of an on-field dance routine. There's also a McCafé for the on-site press and a handful of digital programs meant to encourage fan interaction.

But, unlike Coke, McDonald's is deploying its activities at the games differently in each market.

Dean Barrett, McDonald's senior VP-global marketing, said the company's focus on utilizing the sponsorship in its stores trumps any desire to take a more homogeneous approach. "There are always some things that we can do globally, and digital is something that can be global," he said. "But the reality is that the World Cup is team-driven and local-market driven."

Leave it to Havianas to come up with a great grassroots strategy....

2010-05-10T07:40:00.000-07:00

As marketers everywhere are gearing up their World Cup-related efforts, Brazil's Havaianas has come up with a simple approach –- these are the flip-flops you should be wearing to watch the soccer matches this summer in comfort and style.

The maker of trendy Havaianas is launching the Teams collection, with a pair of flip-flops for each of the 32 countries competing in the World Cup. Each pair looks like a brightly-colored team jersey in flip-flop form.

In Brazil the spot "Closet" broke this week, in which a well-known pair of actors, who are married in real life, try to decide which national team's flip-flops the husband, Daniel de Oliveira, should wear that day. Standing in a walk-in closet with dozens of pairs of Havaianas to choose from, Mr. de Oliveira ponders the merits of different countries -- Italy? Germany? Uruguay?-- based on how well they've done in previous World Cups. Wearing the Brazilian team's flip-flops would be too easy, almost cowardly, he reasons. Finally his impatient and hugely pregnant wife, Vanessa Giacomo, appears and grabs Serbia because that team's flip-flops are red and match the color of her husband's shirt.

The spot is by Almap BBDO, Sao Paulo, Havaianas' ad agency since 1993, and is in keeping with a strategy of using Havaianas-wearing celebrities in commercials in Brazil.

Even in less soccer-mad markets than Brazil, the Teams collection is part of Havaianas' strategy. In the U.S., where the company opened its own office almost three years ago as part of an international expansion that has seen sales outside Brazil grow from 1% a decade ago to about 14% of total sales last year, Havaianas will send about 400 mailers with Teams flip-flops to opinion formers. Cleverly playing on the idea that Brazil is often a soccer fan's second favorite team, after his own country, each mailer will contain a Brazil pair and a carefully-researched second pair. Mexican-American actress Eva Longoria Parker, for instance, will get Teams collection flip-flops from Mexico and Brazil, said Jim Anstey, marketing director of Alpargatas USA/Havaianas. Sao Paulo-based Alpargatas is the parent company, with about half of its sales coming from the Havaianas brand.

In the U.S., where the matches played in South Africa will air around lunchtime due to a six-hour time difference, Havaianas is also working with bars that will show World Cup games live starting June 11 to introduce a Havaianas theme. In New York, Brazilian bar Felix will put jerseys from the different World Cup national teams on the wall, next to the corresponding pair of Havaianas, Mr. Anstey said. And an Italian bar is painting a World Cup-themed mural on the wall that will include the Italian team's flip-flops.

Oh GM....back to your old, slick ways so soon?

2010-05-05T06:44:00.000-07:00

A wave of criticism that started two weeks ago reached a crescendo this morning when Washington-based advocacy group Competitive Enterprise Institute filed a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, charging General Motors with deceptive advertising.

CEI claims the Detroit car maker misled the public when it said in a national TV ad it has paid back its Troubled Assets Relief Program bailout loan from the government. The spot, which was created by McCann Erickson, Detroit, ended its run last week. A McCann spokeswoman referred calls to the automaker.

The commercial featured GM Chairman-CEO Ed Whitacre walking through an assembly plant and saying that "we have repaid our government loan in full, with interest, five years ahead of the original schedule."

Critics, however, argue that the ad is somewhat disingenuous, saying the repayment came from another government bailout account provided by TARP -- or as one TV pundit described it, "paying off your MasterCard with your Visa."

In the complaint filed with the FTC, CEI says the ad "gives the false impression that GM has used its own funds to pay back all the bailout money that it received from the federal government. In fact, GM has only repaid a fraction of those funds -- barely 10%. Moreover, GM apparently repaid its loan by using other federal funds."

"GM might argue that its ad is literally accurate, but the fact is it's completely misleading," said Hans Bader, senior attorney for CEI, which describes itself as a "public interest group dedicated to free enterprise and limited government."

A phone call seeking comment from GM was not returned at press time.

The ad has created something of a firestorm since it first aired two weeks ago. Republican members of Congress were among the first to jump on the scenario that the commercial was misleading. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said GM was engaged in "a TARP money shuffle."

In an April 29 letter to Mr. Whitacre, Reps. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, wrote that "your statements and the slick marketing campaign built around them constitute a lie to the American people, who have spent over $50 billion to bail out GM and currently own over 60% of the company. We are concerned that GM, under your leadership, has come dangerously close to committing fraud, and that you might have colluded with the United States Treasury to deceive the American public. ... GM's false advertisements are counterproductive and shameful, and they should stop."

Blogging IS serious business....

2010-04-30T08:56:00.001-07:00

The Federal Trade Commission has made public its first investigation into a company's relationship with bloggers, and while the federal agency took no action, the decision provides some insight into how it is viewing marketers' relationships with online communities.

The FTC informed Ann Taylor that, following an investigation, it has decided not to take action against the women's retailer over an event held earlier this year. The retailer had invited bloggers to preview the Loft division's summer 2010 collection, offering a "special gift," and promising that those posting coverage from the event would be entered into a "mystery gift-card drawing," where they could win between $50 and $500.

The invite explained that bloggers must submit posts to the company within 24 hours in order to find out the value of their gift card.

The event and the unusual request for posts to be submitted for a prize received media scrutiny and caught the eye of the FTC. "We were concerned that bloggers who attended a preview on January 26, 2010 failed to disclose that they received gifts for posting blog content about that event," Mary Engle, the FTC's associate director-advertising practices, wrote in a letter dated April 20 to Ann Taylor's legal representation.

Although the agency decided not to take action against Ann Taylor, the case serves to let marketers know that the FTC is keeping a close eye on their interactions with bloggers.

Getting the message out
"This tells me that [the FTC] is looking, and that's important to know," said Douglas Wood, an attorney and head of Reed Smith's Media and Entertainment Industry Group. "They're probably throwing a little fire-starter into it, sending some messages out. The message this time is somewhere between $50 and $500 requires a disclosure."

Last year the agency began cracking down on bloggers, issuing new guidelines requiring bloggers to clearly disclose any "material connection" to an advertiser, including payments for an endorsement or free product.

The FTC said it decided not to take action against Ann Taylor, because, according to the company, the January preview was the first and, to date, only such event. Also, only a small number of bloggers posted content about the preview and several of those disclosed the gifts. A sign posted at the event directed bloggers to disclose the gifts, though the FTC says it's not clear how many bloggers saw the sign. Finally, Ann Taylor's Loft division adopted a written policy regarding its interaction with bloggers in February.

According to a spokeswoman for the FTC, the retailer was cooperative during the process. Ann Taylor declined to comment.

Industry watchers have widely expected the FTC to make an example of a company, in its quest to give the new guidelines teeth. The FTC declined to comment on any additional investigations that may be underway.

"I'm speculating, but what the FTC is doing is not being aggressive intentionally, so they can set up a standard they think is appropriate. Maybe they'll do this a few more times," said Mr. Wood. "It's not an unusual way to begin the educational process. In a way, it's always good to be the first one looked at. The second one might not fare so well."

Words of Wisdom....

2010-04-27T07:32:00.000-07:00

Director of Marketing, SOBE:

"Those relationships that allow for change as culture and climate evolve should be fine. I am a firm believer in flexibility in this economic environment and in this consumer-led environment. The agency-marketer relationships that build in flexibility have a greater chance for success."

Happy Birthday Coke 2....that concept is still number 2.

2010-04-23T06:33:00.000-07:00

Today marks a quarter century of one of marketing's biggest blunders -- and the sixth biggest moment in 75 years of advertising, according to Ad Age: New Coke.

Still smarting from the 1975 "Pepsi Challenge" taste-test battle, Coca-Cola Co. launches "Project Kansas," a top-secret mission to reformulate Coke. President-Chief Operating Officer Robert Goizueta appoints Coca-Cola USA head Brian Dyson, who taps marketing chief Sergio Zyman to head the endeavor. Mr. Zyman and company test a new, sweeter version of the flagship cola with 190,000 nationwide taste tests at a cost of $4 million.

At a bottlers' meeting in Atlanta back on April 22, 1985, Mr. Zyman announced from the stage that Coke was changing its taste. The next day Coca-Cola revealed the new, sweeter taste to financial analysts and the media. But word of the new product finally leaks out and Pepsi dispatches its own press assault on the same day claiming victory. "The other guy blinked," Pepsi says in ads saying Coke reformulated its brand to taste "more like" Pepsi.

The press hammers at Mr. Goizueta, now chairman-CEO, to explain the difference and what will happen to the old Coke, which 39% of consumers still favor. When Mr. Goizueta admits it will do away with the old formula, consumers revolt. Dazed by the backlash, management on July 11, 1985, just 79 days later, agrees to bring back the original formula, renaming it Coca-Cola Classic.

Some in the industry counterintuitively suggested the blunder was actually good for the beverage giant -- that its fans' reactions to the idea of their beloved Coke going away, along with the reintroduction of the cola as Coca-Cola Classic, have created a fantastic new marketing strategy. But we think the lesson is pretty clear: Don't tinker with success. Or at least think very, very carefully before you do.

How advertisers are following your purchase pattern...

2010-04-19T07:11:00.001-07:00

Imagine signing in to your online-banking account and finding promotions linked to your transactions. Underneath a transaction for a restaurant, there's an offer from that eatery for $10 cash back when you spend a minimum of $20. And underneath a purchase at an apparel chain, a rival offers 15% cash back for shopping at its store or website.

REWARDS: Cardlytics offers take the form of consumer rewards.

It may seem intrusive, but Cardlytics, the company behind the program, claims that advertisers, consumers and financial institutions are fast embracing this new advertising model. So far, major marketers such as McDonald's, Macy's and Staples have signed on with Cardlytics, while half a dozen financial institutions have implemented the service and are touting it as a rewards program for their customers.

In all, Cardlytics, a privately held company that officially launched the program last November, says it has run more than 100 marketing campaigns reaching nearly half a million customers. By the end of the summer, the company expects to have 50 to 70 financial institutions on board, reaching some 10 million customers by the end of the year.

"It's a whole new channel," said Hans Theisen, chief revenue officer. "It eliminates so much waste. I don't care whether it's digital, TV or print. You're not guessing about who your audience is. I can guarantee you're reaching a fast-food customer or apparel shopper or moviegoer."

Mr. Theisen can guarantee that because Cardlytics is privy to transaction data: the name of the merchant, date of the purchase, how much was spent and the customer's ZIP code. But it does not have access to personally identifiable data like customer names, account numbers or home addresses, which are managed by participating banks. Because of that, he downplays privacy concerns, noting that Cardlytics goes through "lots and lots" of regulatory steps in order to work with financial institutions. Customer information remains behind the bank's firewall.

Privacy "is always the first question we get, and it's the easiest to answer," he said. "We don't get privacy information. We don't cookie customers and follow them around the web. It's less infringing upon a customer's privacy than many behavioral-targeting companies."

Opt-out
Though customers have the ability to opt out of the program, opt-out rates across Cardlytics program have been less than 5%, said Mr. Theisen, about two-thirds less than the 12% to 15% opt-out rate the company modeled for.

Here's how it works: When a bank customer signs in to view his or her online statement they can see various reward offers in three places, alongside transactions, in a column on the transaction page or on a rewards-summary page. To activate the offer, they must click, and once the reward is activated, it is automatically converted when the consumer uses his or her debit or credit card at that merchant and the transaction is processed by their bank. No special software or interaction is necessary on the part of merchants. And because the program uses transaction data from debit cards and credit cards, the ads on the online statement are applicable to transactions made online or offline.

Cardlytics operates under a pay-for-performance model, so it gets paid only when consumers redeem an offer. Payment to Cardlytics varies based on client category and the type of offer, though advertisers receive a projection. Cardlytics declined to offer specifics on advertiser fees and said it could not legally share details on its financial arrangements with banks.

Aaron McPherson, an analyst focusing on payments and security technology at IDC Financial Insights, said that, from a security perspective, the Cardlytics program is not any riskier than other card-based rewards programs. Banks, he added, have always had the ability to target consumers based on the transactions they're making, they just haven't done it.

"Are consumers going to be freaked out by this? It's one of the reasons why banks have not historically been willing to go there," he said. "Banks have to be careful to position this as an opportunity."

"Full Service" Ad Agency is a Meaningless Phrase

2010-04-16T07:14:00.000-07:00

So you want to be fast, agile and digital? Jason Fried suggests agencies take a page from his Jason Fried's book.

Mr. Fried, co-founder and president of software company 37signals, let loose on agency folks today at the Ad Age Digital Conference in New York, addressing one of the biggest issues facing agency adaptation to the digital world: specialization. Too many agencies, in trying to be all things to all marketers, and getting bogged down and doing a disservice to themselves and their clients.

Mr. Fried was interviewed by Ben Malbon, executive director of innovation for Bartle Bogle Hegarty, New York, who pointed out that "from an agency point of view, there isn't a good agency out there that isn't working out how it can be better." Out of the discussion came five tips for staying nimble in the digital age.

Focus on what works

While it might be tempting to take on a client's entire business, there's no way one agency can do everything well. "It's really easy to do too much," said Mr. Fried, who often echoed the book he co-authored, "Rework."

"Agencies listen to their [clients] too much. When you listen to your [clients] you starting wanting to do too much. That's when you start doing things you don't believe in."

Stick with what you know

Instead of trying to manage "full-service end to end" -- a term Mr. Fried finds somewhat meaningless -- he urged focus and specialization. He pointed to 37signal's history, as it started out as an agency and web-design firm and ultimately evolved into a software shop. "We were going to 'underdo' everybody else," he said.

"I don't think people should do things they don't understand," said Mr. Fried, in response traditional agencies' attempts to add digital. Even digital agencies, such as SapientNitro and R/GA, have been adding "traditional" services to their already strong digital offerings in the last year. "Companies end up hiring people to do these things they don't know how to do, they get really big and then they slow down. That's how you get big and slow and expensive. What's wrong with doing just a few things really well?"

Don't sell the steps

Mr. Fried pointed to multiple approvals as another culprit that slows down the process. While it's lucrative for agencies to get big fees for big projects, does a client really need so many steps?

"If you stop promising things, you don't have to deliver them," he said. "All people care about is the end product."

Grow slowly to deliver faster work

When it is time to grow, Mr. Fried cautioned against staffing up too fast. "It's important not to hire in anticipation of work," he said. "Feeling like you want to do more and not being able to, I'm okay with that. You are better hiring to alleviate pain than to hire for pleasure."

Bite off only what you can chew

To keep projects on schedule, Mr. Fried suggests breaking up a giant project into manageable pieces. When one $100,000 project is broken up piecemeal, each chunk has a better chance of being on time.

"It's the agency's fault when projects run long; I don't think it's the clients fault," he said. "Work on short-term projects. What can you accomplish in two weeks?"

He points to a project that his company cut down into one-page, $3,500 per piece chunks. "Instead of doing the big huge mega-product like agencies, do one page in one week."

He added: "Cut it down as small as you can and price it piecemeal. ... Have confidence in your work. [Clients] are going to keep wanting it because it's good."

Yes, Media Spending DOES actually work....

2010-04-13T06:30:00.000-07:00

When one thinks of the largest marketing spender in the U.S. food industry, Kraft easily comes to mind. But when it comes to naming No. 2, the answer might come as a surprise: General Mills.

The marketer of Cheerios, Pillsbury, Yoplait and Betty Crocker has become a stalwart of the Great Recession, thanks to increased spending, but also product innovation and its ability to capitalize on the trend toward in-home eating.

For the third fiscal quarter of 2010, General Mills saw sales rise 3% to $3.6 billion, and in the U.S. sales rose 4% in the first nine months of fiscal 2010 to $7.9 billion.

The marketer posted an impressive 33% jump in advertising and media spending. Stifel Nicolaus analyst Chris Growe noted that "General Mills has quickly reached a critical mass in its marketing spending that vaults it up to the second-highest marketer within the food industry" behind only Kraft. And it might even be closing in on the leader: According to an Ad Age estimate, General Mills spent $1.2 billion on advertising alone during 2008, a 23% increase over the year before, just below the $1.3 billion Kraft spent on advertising during 2008, a 16% decrease from 2007.

"We are first and fundamentally about brands," CMO Mark Addicks said, "and I feel good about the brands and the growth ideas about each [of them]."

The real challenge in this recession, Mr. Addicks said, has been to demonstrate each brand's value and purpose as well as versatility. To wit: The company's new chocolate Cheerios, for instance, are proving popular not only as breakfasts, but as snacks and desserts.

These days, he said, consumers are asking, "What role do you play in my life, and what value do you give me? I'm proud of our business teams and the ways they're answering that question and playing more of a partnership role with our consumers in their lives."

Uh-oh...someone got caught with their hand in the media cookie jar...

2010-04-12T07:39:00.000-07:00

Ad Network And Publishers In Mediaweek

Following last week's article in which Mediaweek reporter Mike Shields identified several publishers who claimed that ad network, InterCLICK, had misrepresented their inventory, this week, each is given the Mediaweek microphone to state their case. Read more. InterCLICK quotes Razorfish VP of search marketing, Matt Greitzer, who says that many of the publishers mentioned in the article are available through the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Among the publisher responses, theStreet.com claims their inventory had been misrepresented by InterCLICK, and Todd Haskell, VP of sales and ops at The NY Times says, "It is impossible for an ad network to deliver any impressions [against NYT inventory]. Any assertion otherwise is incorrect."

What Will Social Media Look Like In the Future?

2010-04-07T06:18:00.000-07:00

It's easy to get caught up in today's trends or even focus on the next six months. Some of 2009's biggest trends included an increased emphasis on real-time search and information distribution, while distribution of marketing content in widgets and other pieces of portable content that worked across devices and social spaces also saw its stake rise. Plus, there were great improvements in social-media monitoring and analytics. And most notably, marketers finally acknowledged that social media was more than just a fad, with almost complete adoption by all major marketers.

Here are the top 11 predictions for what social media will look like in 2012. Some of these items exist today in their early stages, but this list is about what I believe will become the norm in 2012. Ultimately, share of voice, point of view and community influence will be more important than brand ownership -- and marketers will need to get over it if they want to stay relevant in 2012.

1. Privacy expectations will (have to) change
There will be a cultural shift, whereby people will begin to find it increasingly more acceptable to expose more and more of their personal details on different forms of social media. Sharing your likes, dislikes, opinions, photos, videos and other forms of personal information will be the norm and people will become more accepting of personalized experiences, both corporate and personal, that are reacting to this dearth of personal information.

2. Complete decentralization of social networks
The concept of a friend network will be a portable experience. You'll find most digital experiences will be able to leverage the power of your social networks in a way that leverages your readily available personal information and the relationships you've established. We're already seeing the beginnings of this with Facebook Connect and Google's FriendConnect.

3. Our interaction with search engines will be different
Real-time information in Google search, e.g. from Twitter, blog results and user reviews, will be more prominent. Google's Social Search will change the way we interact with search engines by pushing relevant content from our personal networks to the front of search results, making them more personalized. The importance of digital-influencer marketing will increase significantly.

4. Rise of the content aggregators
The amount of content online is growing at an exponential rate, and most online users have at least three online profiles from social networks to micro-blogging to social news sites. Our ability to manage this influx is challenging, and content aggregators will be the new demi-gods, bringing method to madness (and make a killing). Filtering and managing content will be big business for those who can get it right and provide easy-to-use services.

5. Social media augmented reality
Openly accessible information from the social-media space will be used to enhance everyday experiences. For example: the contacts book in your phone links to Facebook and Twitter to show real-time updates on what the contact is doing before you put in the call, real-time reviews from friends and associates will appear in GPS-based mapping services as a standard feature, and socially enabled CRM will change the way companies manage business relationships forever.

6. Influencer marketing will be redefined
As social media continues to permeate more and more aspects of not only the way we interact with digital media but also other channels such as digital outdoor, commerce or online TV, we will see the significance of influencer marketing grow dramatically. As a basic example, the inclusion of Twitter in Google search results or Google's soon-to-be-released Social Search will permeate search results with content that will not be managed by Google's infamous PageRank but by social influence and relevance to your social network. Discovering people that can help you to reach your desired consumer will become exponentially more effective and important.

7. Ratings everywhere
In today's world, having a commerce site that doesn't have user ratings could actually prove to be a detriment to sales. In the near future, brands and businesses will more frequently place user ratings and accept open feedback on their actual websites. User ratings will become so common that marketers should expect to find them woven into most digital experiences.

8. Social media agents
Managing the customer experience offline and online is already a key concern for marketers and customer-experience advocates. As businesses continue to support customers by monitoring and engaging in the social media space, tools to optimize this experience will become more important. Expect to see a certain percentage of responses handled by natural language engines that can respond to basic commentary such as "my service is down" or "I never received my package."

9. Riding the (Google) wave
It's still early days as Google Wave is still primarily limited to developers but it has the potential to revolutionize collaboration and engagement. Wave offers marketers a unique way, at minimal cost, to allow consumers to engage with each other in way that is miles beyond anything we're currently using. Savvy marketers will develop extensions for Wave that evolve its unique communication toolset into a rich brand experience that is immersive but allows for new levels of interaction from crowdsourced storytelling to crowdsourced product design.

10. Thinking beyond "nowness"
In 2009 we became very focused on the real-time nature of social media. The implications behind consumer feedback and interaction around brands using tools like Twitter or Facebook's news stream caused marketers to re-evaluate the power of social media tools in parallel to "traditional" digital-media channels such as search. Looking into the future we'll need to try and evaluate what's next and the likely answer is based on the next evolution of the web as we know it: the semantic web. In a semantic web world, search engines, for example, will anticipate the best search results we're looking for based on what they know about us (such as all our public social networking profiles). There will be an opportunity for marketers who push the limits of their imagination to anticipate what marketing will look like in this next stage of the web and creating new and compelling experiences that we're only touching the surface of now.

11. Social media everything and the return of digital media
Social functions will become so commonplace in digital experiences that the thought of not having socially-enhanced experiences will seem illogical. Digital media by its very nature is inherently social. I hope we're not talking about social media in 2012, and we just refer to everything as digital media again.

Even the biggest get it wrong sometimes....

2010-04-02T07:04:00.001-07:00

Yahoo is closing down its text-advertising network, ceding the market to already-dominant Google, as it retools to focus on premium display.

The Yahoo Publisher Network Beta, a text-ad service for small sites and blogs, will shut down as of April 30, according to a memo sent to publishers, which were directed to the Chitika ad network, which set up a welcome page for former Yahoo clients.

Yahoo's Publisher Network, known as YPN, is the company's version of Google's AdSense, one of three types of ads it places on third-party sites including search ads and display ads through Yahoo Network, which includes premium Yahoo inventory as well as inventory from third parties such as eBay and Comcast. Yahoo also operates display ad server APT, which serves many large U.S. newspapers.

Small publishers could sign up for the beta program on an invite-only basis, and get text ads targeted to the content on the page, as well as some ad revenue. Compared to display, text ads are a tiny business for Yahoo, one that most brand advertisers won't miss.

"That was the poor man's AdSense, and something brands generally avoided so for them this is a nonevent," said Bryan Wiener, CEO of 360i, now a unit of Dentsu.

A Yahoo spokeswoman said a "small group" of publishers were using the service. Yahoo under CEO Carol Bartz has been trimming back its portfolio to focus on the premium display ad market, including repositioning the Right Media exchange on the high end by eliminating some ad network inventory.

Yahoo declined to say how much revenue was associated with the network, but the program still carried a "beta" moniker even though it had been in existence for years.

"After conducting an extensive review of the Yahoo! Publisher Network beta program, it was determined that the resources that would be required to advance the program to the level expected by our publishers would be better utilized in other areas of Yahoo!'s business," Yahoo said in a statement.

Web's Big Boost to Magazines? Selling Print Subscriptions

2010-03-31T07:07:00.000-07:00

The magazine business is getting lots of attention for its push to build digital editions for the iPad and other shiny electronic devices. But magazines' biggest digital success right now may lie in a very different arena: selling print subscriptions through the web.

Just five years ago, big magazine publishers were still struggling to wring legitimate subscription sales out of the internet, while embarrassing, unauthorized one-cent subscription offers on eBay undermined their efforts. A variety of changes, however, have now improved both the cosmetics and the substance of online-subscription sales, giving magazines another reason to look more kindly on digital.

Selling print through the web, after all, is usually cheaper than traditional tactics and can even help publishers sell ads, where the industry finds most of its profits. "The subscriptions we sell to people online generally bring in people that are more educated, make more money, are younger in age and have more of the desirable traits that a healthy advertising offering is based on," said Chris Wilkes, VP-marketing and audience development at Hearst Magazines Digital Media. Hearst Magazines, for one, increased web-generated subscriptions from just 5% of its new subscriptions in 2005 to 45% last year. Earlier this month it sold its 10 millionth new print subscription through the internet.

"The other engagement is an engagement benefit," said John Phelan, associate VP of consumer marketing at Rodale. "When someone subscribes online, we typically get their e-mail address. Then we send them e-mail newsletters, promotions for other products, so it's a much more engaged relationship we have. The lifetime value of the customer tends to be much higher if we get someone through electronic means."

Rodale titles, which include Men's Health and Prevention, now get between 15% and 25% of their new subscriptions through digital means, up from single digits a few years ago, according to Mr. Phelan. Runner's World, the company leader in this area, is getting 40% of its new subscriptions online.

Holding steady
Print subscriptions, what's more, are holding steady. They slipped 1.1% in the second half of last year, compared with the second half of 2008, but increased in each of the three six-month periods before that. "There's been no diminishing of consumer demand," said Rodale's Mr. Phelan. "Consumers are no less interested in our magazines than they were five or even 10 years ago."

And while magazines lost one potential channel for online sales last year when eBay banned subscription sales, citing sellers' inability to start delivery within 30 days, at least the policy shift got rid of those unsightly penny subscriptions. More importantly, however, a combination of new organizational structures, technology and content partnerships with outsiders have started allowing the industry to generate many more subscriptions online.

Hearst, for example, empowered Mr. Wilkes to bring in outside expertise. "In prior years you'd take your existing traditional circulation department and have them try to apply what they were doing in direct mail to online," Mr. Wilkes said. "That was not a successful model. You had people learning on the fly."

Hearst also syndicates a lot of its content to MSN.com -- baking subscription offers into the content it sends MSN to share with web surfers. MSN's Life/Style channel, for example, recently displayed an article from Cosmopolitan, "Five Secrets to Keep From Him," below which appeared a come-on to get "more like this" by subscribing to the magazine.

Driving sales
New technology platforms are also proving beneficial by, among other things, centralizing companies' databases of consumer names and information. That helps them make the right offers, via e-mail or its own websites, to the right people.

At Condé Nast, whose titles include Vogue and GQ, a quarter of its new subscriptions come from online, up from 10% in 2005. The company is working on making impulse buys easier by enabling one-click purchasing and adding payment mechanisms such as PayPal. "These are the key things that drive sales on the web," said Robert Sauerberg, exec VP for consumer marketing at Condé Nast.

Not every online innovation, of course, is a success from the bat: Time Inc.'s Maghound service, meant to work like a Netflix for magazines, is not generating significant subscriptions after a year and a half in action. But there are more ideas on the way, too. The digital storefront that a coalition of five publishers is planning won't sell just tablet editions; it will also sell print subscriptions.

Our Biggest Brands Can No Longer Be Controlled by Nerds

2010-03-23T06:20:00.000-07:00

There's something desperately wrong with consumer brand marketing. We all know it. The brand-building talent and expertise that created the CPG manufacturer are gone. Marketers with the ability to identify an unmet consumer need, develop a product to meet it, create a brand, and then lead it to market dominance are missing. Product managers with a fear of ambiguity have replaced the creative, forward-thinking brand builders. Our biggest consumer brands are now managed by nerds.

The crisis has been building for years and is now unavoidable. And because the wounds are self-inflicted, we cannot rely on the patient to heal itself. A quick review of industry news confirms this:

General Mills has identified their future growth. They're "anticipating a rise in multicultural consumers, particularly Hispanics." Apparently, they've also discovered that baby boomers are aging, and boomer children are more tech-savvy than their parents. Breathtaking, breakthrough stuff.

Kraft Foods is touting their "bold," "top-to-bottom" "marketing makeover." But the enduring images from the article are of Kraft executives wandering Cannes, contented dinosaurs and vanilla creative.

Industry researchers and academics have also recently weighed in with their diagnoses and prescriptions:

In "Adaptive Brand Marketing," Forrester Research first suggests brand "managers" be renamed brand "advocates." Then, the authors also recommend restructuring the brand manager role to better accommodate the "real-time digital world." To better fit less than 10% of a CPG brand's marketing budget, we should revamp the entire brand-management system?

In "Call to Action," authors Carl Johnson and Henry Rak contend that weak brand-building skills have forced the CPG industry to a critical juncture. They offer several very logical prescriptions. But like so much of the brand marketing they're despairing, their solutions are half measures, completely "by the numbers."

We don't need a "call to action," we need an intervention.

More data is not better data
Marketing departments used to be the creative engines powering successful corporations. Now they're overrun by number-crunching nerds. As a direct consequence, despite all the conspicuous focus on "change management," the way brands respond to change in the marketplace has deteriorated. A McKinsey Quarterly article several years ago argued that the key to "better branding" is to build brands "more scientifically." If managers would combine "forward-looking market segmentation" with structural-equation modeling, they could "build a better brand more efficiently." In short: more data, more regressions and more conjoint analysis mean the "brand crisis" is solved.

But fluency with buzz words and expertise with spreadsheets do not guarantee brand-marketing competence.

No one would argue with the objectives and need for consumer research. But brand marketing is not a science. It requires analysis, discipline and detail. Even more, it requires intuition, flair and vision. Great marketers are visionaries, not bean counters. They succeed by defying conventional wisdom. They see over the near horizon, envisioning products and ideas long before the average consumer even senses a need for them. Nothing captures this principle better than the adage, "If Edison had done market research, he would have invented bigger candles."

That statement restated for today: "If Howard Schultz of Starbucks had done market research, he would have invented ... Pepsi A.M." Consider what the "numbers" would have told you in 1987 when Starbucks began its national expansion: Per capita coffee consumption was in the midst of a continuing 25-year decline; conversely, soft drinks were experiencing uninterrupted growth. Consumers were "time-starved." Brand manager dogma was "convenience is the new currency." But Schultz had a vision and a big idea. By making Starbucks a special experience, he knew he could get time-starved consumers to make a separate stop on their way to work to buy high-priced fancy coffee drinks.

There are really only two successful business models. One is cost leadership: Deliver your product to an existing market with lower prices and/or higher quality (Dell, Walmart, Southwest). The second is creating and satisfying a completely new market (Starbucks, eBay, iPod). Effective brand-building is a critical component of both, but the two models require very different managerial thinking. The cost-leadership model requires a highly inward, focused skill-set; the new market model is more focused on the external consumer environment. Companies with large product portfolios should have brands in both situations, and a given brand's position must evolve as the external marketplace changes. It's hard to quantify, but clear to anyone who has spent any significant time with a major corporation, nerd skills and thinking are most valued in CPG corporate America. Setting the budget, revising the budget, gaming the system, improving existing margins, and controlling costs all exhaust a brand manager's time and require an internally focused skill-set. External-looking activities are confined to the third afternoon of the key executive golf retreat. Companies need both skill-sets, but currently value only one.

Pendulum has swung too far

The quantitative "MBA aspects" of brand management are vitally important. Ignoring the numbers and just "going with our gut" can be an even worse sin, and result in ... frankly, almost every one of this year's Super Bowl spots. But the pendulum has clearly swung too far. The result is today's brand manager who (paraphrasing David Ogilvy) uses data, "the way a drunk man uses a lamp post, for support rather than illumination."

Magnifying the problem, as the pace of external change increases and as margins are improved in smaller and smaller increments, the need for creative, imaginative thinkers and problem-solvers increases. Unable to conjure up anything new or compelling to say about their brands, the "numbers" managers chose to compete on price and promotion: defeatist short-term tactics. Instead of creative strategies yielding a new Marlboro Man, we have the UPS whiteboard guy. Instead of bold new brands, we have "flankers," "line extensions" and "brand expansions."

"The Research Paradox" explains some of the mediocrity. As market-research techniques have gotten better and more elaborate, the insistence that marketing decisions be thoroughly backed by the "numbers" has become even more pervasive. This requires ever more quantitative managers who spend even more of their time and energy poring over the data. The result is a crop of quant-jock brand managers just like the McKinsey authors who lean on the data to tell them how to build their brands. Theodore Levitt warned us about this possibility in 1960 in his seminal article "Marketing Myopia." Describing the risk of a technology-oriented management structure, he predicted "the bias in favor of dealing with controllable variables." Engineer-managers want to focus on "what they know and what they can control." Consumer behavior is not a controllable variable. Instead, he wrote, consumers can be, "unpredictable, varied, fickle, stupid, short-sighted, stubborn and generally bothersome."

Great brand marketers are comfortable with ambiguity. They realize marketing is a balancing act -- it's numbers and detail, but it's also flair and vision. It's qualitative and quantitative; analysis and intuition; perspiration and inspiration. Great marketing requires the balance of both sides of the brain. But the balance has been lost.

Be like Luke Skywalker

So how do we wrest control back from the nerds? I offer two terrifyingly intuitive solutions. First, we can break the current self-perpetuating nerd cycle by hiring and promoting different people -- it's a proven fact that managers tend to hire people just like themselves. Second, every once in a while, even when the numbers don't quite line up, we can promise to trust our gut and intuition. Be like Luke Skywalker. At the end of the original "Star Wars" movie, in order to make the "impossible shot" and destroy the Death Star, Luke shuts off his computer and chooses to trust his intuition. The nerds at headquarters are horrified. But the Death Star explodes, the audience cheers and we learn a life lesson we all promptly forget. Let's resolve to "use the force." Or something nerdy like that.

Ad Spending Dropped 12% in 2009, but Things Are Looking Up

2010-03-18T06:48:00.000-07:00

Overall ad spending in the U.S. fell 12.3% in 2009, according to a new report from Kantar Media, triple the rate of decline from 2008. But last year's ad-sales drop was moderated somewhat by a fourth quarter in which nearly all media improved on their performances from earlier in the year. And things seem to be looking up further still -- depending on what happens with consumer spending.

"The advertising recession began to ease in the final two months of 2009 and preliminary figures from the first quarter of 2010, when compared against the abyss of a year ago, indicate many sectors are experiencing growth," said Jon Swallen, senior VP-research at Kantar, in the report. "Given the restraint in consumer spending, it appears marketers have more confidence right now than their customers. As we get deeper into 2010, the pace of consumer activity will be a key determinant of the strength and durability of the advertising recovery."

A forecast from Magna in January predicted recovery wouldn't arrive until the second quarter of this year, anticipating that the first quarter would deliver the last ad-spending decline of the downturn.

Last year, however, the troubles were still raging. Some of the worst suffering was by local magazines, which saw ad revenue plunge 27.7%; business-to-business magazines, where ad revenue fell 26.2%; spot sales of national radio commercials, where revenue sank 24.6%; spot TV commercials, down 23.7%; local radio, down 20.6%; and local newspapers, down 20%.

Internet display advertising managed to improve its ad revenue by 7.3% last year, on the other hand, while free-standing inserts distributed in newspapers improved ad revenue by 3% as package-goods companies targeted shoppers with coupon programs.

And cable TV only lost 1.4%, while network TV slid 7.6% -- not bad in the scheme of things.

Among the top 10 advertisers last year, No. 1 Procter & Gamble cut its ad outlay by 15.6%, according to Kantar, followed by No. 2 Verizon with a 6.9% reduction and No. 3 General Motors, which expanded spending by 1.3%.

Three of the top advertisers boosted spending dramatically: Pfizer was up 32.7%, Walmart up 35.4% and Sprint Nextel was up 29.9%. Overall, the top 10 marketers by spending reduced their outlay by just 0.9%.

Among the major advertising categories, three out of seven increased spending last year: telecom, food and candy, and pharmaceuticals. Others posted double-digit retreats, including automotive, financial services, local services, miscellaneous retail and direct response.

OMD Keeps Coty Media

2010-03-17T06:28:00.001-07:00

OMD Keeps Coty Media

Maxus and MPG also contended for the business

March 16, 2010

International cosmetics giant Coty has opted to retain OMD in the U.S. for media planning and buying, per sources, after a protracted review that began 10 months ago.

In addition, the client awarded the Omnicom shop Canada, U.K. and Ireland duties in a competition that was expanded to include the four English language countries in one package.

Like many marketers, New York-based Coty slashed its ad spending during the recession.

Last year it spent $75 million in domestic measured media, down almost 40 percent from approximately $120 million in 2008, per Nielsen. Those figures exclude digital.

OMD successfully defended against two contenders: Havas' MPG and WPP's Maxus. MPG was a finalist, while Maxus was eliminated in an earlier round.

All of the agencies declined to comment, referring calls to the client. A Coty rep did not immediately return calls.

Along with the U.S. review, the client has been reviewing media assignments in other markets as well. It could not be determined whether Coty has made decisions in any of those markets yet.

In a separate creative review, Coty in February selected Laird + Partners to handle global creative duties on its Sally Hansen, La Cross and N.Y.C. New York Color brands, sources said.

In addition to those brands, the client markets fragrances, cosmetics and toiletries under many labels, including Marc Jacobs, Calvin Klein, Joop!, Davidoff, Rimmell and Kate Moss.

Coty reported net sales of $3.5 billion in fiscal 2009, down 12 percent from the previous year.

From a be-leaguered advertiser...thanks for all the good work, you're fired.

2010-03-11T06:25:00.000-08:00

Activision Blizzard has yanked creative duties for its "Guitar Hero" franchise from MDC Partners' Crispin Porter & Bogusky, tapping Omnicom Group's TBWA/Chiat/Day to market the games going forward.

The decision was made late last week, said Activision Blizzard's top marketer and chief creative officer, Brad Jakeman. He noted the move to TBWA, made without a review, wasn't because of dissatisfaction with Crispin's work but was "principally based on the outstanding work that [TBWA] did with us last year in launching 'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2,' which was one of the biggest entertainment launches of all time." (Though, leading up to launch, shops other than TBWA did a substantial bit of the advertising for the game.)

The game publisher claimed "MW2" brought in $550 million in software sales worldwide, enough to best the previous five-day global sales record holders from both the movie and gaming industries; "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" grossed $394 million in global box-office sales, and "Grand Theft Auto IV" snared $500 million.

But people familiar with the situation say the agency change was spurred in part because the Crispin work didn't deliver the desired brand positioning for the franchise. A spot released last fall for "Guitar Hero 5" that featured Hugh Hefner and Playboy Playmates playing air guitar was directed by Brett Ratner. It was one of a series of ads that spoofed a scene from the Tom Cruise movie "Risky Business" that also featured various sports celebrities and heavy-metal band Metallica. Crispin could not be immediately reached for comment.

Under Mr. Jakeman, Activision Blizzard assembled an all-star roster of agencies, including BBDO, Crispin, TBWA, Droga 5 and Toy. The majority of the work this year is expected to be handled by TBWA and Droga 5; TBWA will handle "Guitar Hero" and "Call of Duty," while Droga 5 will handle the marketing of yet-to-be-released titles that are likely to be unveiled in the run-up to the gaming industry's E3 Expo event in early June.

BBDO doesn't have any assignments scheduled for this year, Mr. Jakeman said, and the work that was being handled by Toy was for licensed properties such as "Wolverine," which doesn't have a launch this year either. Activision Blizzard's global media agency, WPP's Mediaedge:cia, remains unaffected by the changes.

According to Kantar Media, Activision spent about $84 million on domestic measured media in 2009, up slightly from $79 million in 2008

Is it Time to Rewrite the Digital Playbook?

2010-03-08T06:29:00.000-08:00

There's a struggle with defining "branding" in digital. Some people claim that brands should be about utility, others that we need to build brand platforms and yet others think that brands should entertain us and give us something to talk about.

Yet overall, surprisingly little has changed in the actual branding strategies in the industry.

Something is wrong here.

This is like exploring new territory with an old map.

While Landor's entire survival depends on telling brands that digital media are just business as usual, a lot of marketing professionals also tend to forget that brands have always been the products of their media. When there was only print, logos were important. With radio, slogans (in jingles) took center stage. With TV, it became all about brand image communicated through the 30-second spot. Simply put, branding strategies have always been connected to specific media technologies.

Change this technology, and the rules of branding crumble. That's why we need to stop asking the wrong questions.

First wrong question: How to use digital tools to build brands?

This reveals that we are still dealing with the strategy vs. implementation dilemma. The question should be: How can digital tools challenge what we call the brand? Instead of simply wondering whether we should spend more time and effort on developing strategy or focusing on implementation, our challenge is to address branding online simultaneously as behavior and technology. Judging by how they use Foursquare, some smart brands like HBO or Zagat or Bravo seem to already know this. Rather than simply advertising on the location service, HBO is encouraging users to visit real-world locations related to its program "How to Make It in America." They are not creating something new; instead, they are using technology to simply curate information and reward certain behaviors. And, because both behavior and technology are quite unpredictable in digital, this situation prevents definition of a particular brand strategy in advance. Regardless of whatever a brand promised offline, in digital there's no template. There's always an opportunity to choose anew how a brand is going to behave online.

Second wrong question: How does technology apply to the principles of branding?

The branding industry of the past worked by coming up with an idea that they handed off. In the branding industry of the present, it is not easy to hand things off. Rather than retrofitting today's technology with yesterday's formulas, we should ask: How can digital create new ties between people and products? Here, we deal with the campaigns-vs.-platforms challenge. More often than not, there is no way of knowing in advance what our digital solution will be or how it is going to unfold in reality. For example, instead of a simple branding campaign, which extends delivery of the brand promise to the digital space and ends after a short period of time, PepsiCo decided to build its Pepsi Refresh project with the main requirement of maintaining a longer-term change in people's behavior.

Third wrong question: How should we use the internet to build brand value?

By asking this, we reveal that we still think of digital media as yet another channel of communication to be added to the already existing roster of mass-media channels traditionally used for branding. Instead of treating digital as an additional venue to display brand messages, you need to ask, "What is valuable on the internet?" Twitter CEO Evan Williams likes to say that many of the great businesses of the next decade will be about making information about our behaviors more visible: How fast you run, how many followers you have, who you know, where you go, what you buy -- everything is visible these days. But digital does not stop there. It also reveals the non-obvious and unexpected relationships between people and products and technology. Because our thinking about branding has been based on our awareness of the obvious relationships, digital media are much more than a simple evolution of branding. Think of Lufthansa's MySkyStatus or Whole Foods on Twitter or branded tips on Foursquare or Blippy. By making more and more things connected via information, brands in digital can increase chances for serendipity.

Fourth wrong question: How should our brand promise be brought to life online?

Traditional branding deals with extending the brand promise to the digital space and integrating go-to-market tactics with digital tactics to support the brand promise. Of course, brands realized that they needed to appropriate their message to the new media, according to McLuhan's "medium is the message" idea, and now everyone is talking about brand experiences online. But they rarely think about them as designers do. Instead of talking about image, message, trust, expectations and perceptions, designers talk about experience, services, functionality, usefulness, interaction. They are focused on exploring all the ways that brand interfaces communicate the brand. They know well that people's behavior in digital is shaped by a simple trade-off between expected gains and expected costs of interacting with a brand. That leads to the pertinent question, "Does digital remove the need for brand promise in the first place?" In this situation, our job is to design digital brands so that we enhance expectations of gains and reduce expectations of costs. Smart shops, like Huge or R/GA, are already doing this. Others still claim that "digital is boring." It may be boring, but it delivers.

Every new media technology has its own rules of branding to go with it. Instead of simply appropriating everything that we know about branding to digital media, it may be time to focus on how digital media change branding. In particular, we may want to get rid of some of the old branding concepts (brand promise), redefine some (brand equity, brand value) and replace others (brand image). We can now change how we answer tomorrow's brand challenges. And in order to do so, we need to ask the right questions first.

Finally Banks have learned!!!

2010-03-01T06:24:00.000-08:00

Finally banks are getting why consumers hate them....check out ING's new strategy. I hope this catches on industry-wide!

ING Direct has positioned itself as the Southwest Airlines of the banking industry. It's got low fees, dynamic employees who tweet often, thousands of devoted fans on Facebook and cool places to hang out. And it's zigging in another area where other banks are now zagging: overdraft coverage

And it's zigging in another area where other banks are now zagging: overdraft coverage.

With the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act going into effect this year, financial institutions are scrambling to figure out how to hold on to income from overdrafts that totaled $38.5 billion last year. Among the act's consumer-friendly provisions is one that requires customers to opt-in for overdraft coverage (and the resulting fees.) It also disallows interest-rate increases on fixed-rate accounts until an account is 60 days past due.

ING, however, sees the transition and customer confusion as an opportunity to market its terms. "We think that with the new regulations and things like banks pressuring customers to opt-in for overdraft coverage, that the market is really coming to us," said Todd Sandler, ING Direct head of product strategy. "We've seen a real shift, even in just in the past 45 to 60 days ... our business is up 70% to 80%."

Instead of a fee, ING's overdraft charge for its Electric Orange accounts is an "overdraft line of credit" system that allows customers to write checks or use a debit card for more than their balance (up to a preset amount usually no greater than $500) and pay back the overage with interest, which is the ING Direct prime rate plus 4% (currently 7.25%). While ING customers do pay for overdrafts, it's not a flat fee, but interest paid on the amount "borrowed." For example, on $100 at the current 7.25% rate, a customer would pay about 60 cents for one month.

Some of ING's new business is likely coming from people like this one online: @caitlin_thomps wrote on Twitter last week, "I just quit you @Citi/@INGDIRECT doesn't charge me arbitrary checking-account fees. Thanks for rewarding my 10 years of business with suck."

Who Would You Rather Work For?

2010-02-22T06:28:00.000-08:00

Who would you rather work for, a talented jerk or a sweetheart hack?

I saw this posting on Facebook over the weekend. Apparently, I'm not the only one who dislikes assholes. Almost immediately, folks ranging from CEOs and professors to newbies and retired stars were joining in to criticize obnoxious leaders. No one, it seems, enjoys working for nasty people.

So it's unanimous: No one wants to work for a jerk, under any circumstances. That's settled. Right? Well, hold on. Not so fast. After getting such emphatic responses, I asked a question: "Would you rather work for a talented asshole, or a sweetheart hack?" And this is where it started getting interesting. Of the dozens of ensuing comments, the response was startlingly clear: When forced to choose, the talented asshole wins. Nothing, it seems, is worse than working for a hack -- even a sweet one.

Why? Comments ranged from "respect" and "better opportunity to grow," "higher quality of work," but the main sentiment was the one expressed by freelancer Robert Manley: "Talent trumps nice."

Helayne Spivak, exec VP-chief creative officer of Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness, pointed out, "Sweetheart hacks? I don't want to sound heartless, but ... can we afford nice people who aren't good at their jobs? How's this: We pair every talented asshole with a sweetheart hack who just walks around all day apologizing for the asshole's behavior. Problem solved."

What's so bad about being a sweetheart hack? Most cited either weak leadership, or inability to create and support great ideas. Sam Harrison, speaker and author of "IdeaSelling," remarked, "Looking back on my career, I've loved the pats on the back. But I've grown most from the people who were willing to look me in the eye and say, 'You're a good person, but your work needs work.'" Bart Cleveland, creative director of McKee Wallwork Cleveland, weighed in: "Both are equally dangerous and helpful to one's career. ... You may learn something from the jerk. A sweetheart always erodes potential."

This need to learn from genuine talent became a recurring theme, especially when I asked the question on Twitter. Copywriter Jenn Totten tweeted, "As a young person in the biz I'd rather work for a talented asshole than a hack ... but if you're a talented sweetheart, I'll work even harder." Anthony Kalamut, professor and program chair of creative advertising at Seneca College in Toronto, asserted that the "biggest killer of young fresh talent is 'the sweetheart hack.'" Deborah Morrison, a professor of advertising at University of Oregon, wrote, "Transparency is a beautiful thing. ... There's probably a blog and Twitter feed on 'here's an asshole' updates." Hacks, the group surmised, are not only untalented, but also insecure.

The most dreaded combination, it seems, are the leaders who are both hacks and assholes. Nasty behavior can become part of the culture in some marketing departments and ad agencies, as mercurial behavior seems to get confused with genius.

If we can all agree that nasty leaders are bad, then why do they so frequently seem to rise into management positions? In this environment, a less forceful personality can unfortunately be perceived as less charismatic, or even weak. Kathy Hepinstall, former creative director at TBWA Chiat Day, wrote, "The sad fact is, assholes break through. They're colorful. They are spoken of. Like sound over water, assholism travels far."

Do some bosses unfairly earn this reputation? Talented leaders must make tough choices, fight for innovative ideas, advocate for their team, and refuse to settle for average. They're unafraid to ask questions, and don't pander to the committee. They push everyone around them to work harder and go outside the comfort zone, and along the way, they'll occasionally step on toes. (Do you think Apple's Steve Jobs is a sweetheart?)

The most dominant or polarizing brands -- a.k.a. the talented assholes -- tend to overuse certain traits. They gorge on the power, alarm and vice triggers, taking these traits to an extreme. Sweetheart hacks, on the other hand, become so hyper-reliant on the consistency of the trust trigger that their creativity and passion takes a back seat.

As a result, the asshole/hack debate is highly subjective. What appears to be brilliant leadership to some people might feel like power-mongering or ego-run-amok to others.

True talents can do great work and support others. Cathy Austin, president at Loop9 Marketing, advised, "The talent lies in being able to tell someone (honestly) their work sucks and it serving as inspiration, not condemnation." The best leaders keep their focus on the organization, rather than making it personal. Mark Trueblood, copywriter at Turkel, says, "Being a leader means serving something greater than yourself. This requires a firm hand and an open heart."

In a tough economy, pressures run higher, tempers are shorter, budgets are smaller and deadlines more unreasonable. Stress and insecurity run high, and intolerance for jerks runs low. Larry Tolpin, chief creative officer of Y and former chief creative officer at BBDO and JWT Worldwide, adds, "The same goes for hiring people ... don't settle."

Bob Kuperman, former president-CEO DDB Worldwide, New York, quoted the ultimate source, Bill Bernbach: "We have two requisites for people working at Doyle Dane Bernbach. Number one, they have to be nice people. And number two, they have to have a lot of talent. I'm sorry for the nice guy who doesn't have talent, but that's bad for my business. And I don't give a damn how much talent the son-of-a-bitch has. I don't want him. Life is too short."

Next week, we'll continue on the debate with a closer look at asshole brands, hack brands and the pursuit of the talented sweethearts. In the meantime, if you're curious to know which triggers you're using to persuade others, check out the F Score personality test in my book.

Agency Reviews for the sake of having them...

2010-02-12T06:57:00.000-08:00

Patron Spirits Co. has launched a fast-moving search for a new creative agency to handle its premium tequila brand's $40 million to $50 million ad account, according to people familiar with the situation.

The incumbent agency, Richards Group, Dallas, is not expected to participate in the review. The shop doesn't defend accounts that go into review unless they are periodically scheduled or government mandated. An agency spokeswoman referred calls to Patron; a request for comment to the marketer wasn't immediately returned.

The review seems to be moving at a clip. The Las Vegas-based marketer is in the process of compiling a shortlist of shops to pitch the account, and presentations are expected to take place next month, people familiar with the situation said.

The review is a bit curious as data published by the national Distilled Spirits Council earlier this month suggest Americans have been trading down to cheaper liquor brands during the recession in every category -- with the exception of top-shelf tequila brands.

Privately held Patron doesn't release sales information, but last week, its chief operating officer, John McDonnell, told MarketWatch that Patron was up 6% last year on a hike in its ad budget of 10% as "every other major spirits company cut their ads by 10%, 20%, 30%."

At the same time, people familiar with the review note that Patron -- the first tequila brand to enter the ultrapremium-spirit set -- might be having a tough time keeping market share as it faces competition from newer brands.

The current campaign from Richards focuses on making the bottle the hero of ads and avoids showing people. It carries the tagline "Simply Perfect," and the executions, which have been largely outdoor, print and online, have copy noting that the alcohol is made by hand using 100% blue agave plants.

Between January and November of 2009, Patron spent $40 million on domestic measured media, according to Kantar Media figures. The full-year figure when available will probably be slightly down from 2008; it spent about $52 million in 2008 on measured media. More than half of the total has been devoted in the last two years to ma

Innovative Marketing by Advertisers, not their "Creative" Agencies

2010-02-04T06:38:00.000-08:00

Hopefully this will be the start of something different in the restaurant industry. The buzz alone is something very special. This is something that advertisers should do MORE of....

Smith & Wollensky in Steak-for-Stock Deal

Fat-Cat Bankers Low on Cash Can Still Get a Suitable Lunch

You know things are bad when bankers start bartering. But Smith & Wollensky put out a proposition in a full-page New York Times ad today: You can use blue chips to pay for your black-and-blue. The chain, which does a significant chunk of its business with financial professionals and for corporate lunches, is keenly aware of its clientele's evolving cash flow status -- and its trickle-down effect on the service industry.

The ad, from agency Walrus, New York, puts it to the suits in appropriate tongue-in-cheek fashion: "This bonus season has taken an unexpected turn, with the large banks paying out their bonuses not in cash, but in company stock. Its effects on the local economy could be catastrophic, leaving large tracts of land in the Hamptons and Martha's Vineyard undeveloped, legions of real estate brokers, personal shoppers and pet psychiatrists unemployed and massive amounts of steak and lobster uneaten."

Alan Stillman, founder of Smith & Wollensky and Fourth Wall Restaurants, said the response has been "over the top." He's already taped TV interviews with major networks and spoken with reporters representing "thousands of newspapers." Mr. Stillman said the idea came to him last week. "I got a little bit annoyed that business will be a little off at restaurants, not due to anything but politics," he said of Wall Street's revised bonus strategy. "I don't mind being off [because of] the economy -- that's part of the business, but this one bothered me because it's more or less politics, and it's bothering everybody and wasn't helping anybody." Of course, the promotion is about business, not making a political statement.

But the company is serious. The ad is accompanied by an appropriate amount of legalese. For instance, the stock's registered owner must be present, and must surrender the original certificate and a separate stock power with a medallion signature guarantee. At the moment, this offer only pertains to the chain's New York City location.

A company spokeswoman said the restaurant has been flooded with inquiries to make sure the offer is legit, but participation isn't the point. "Even if people don't come in with stock, we've created enough of a buzz that we'll get people coming in that would normally have come in and that's what it's all about," Mr. Stillman said.

And a promotion so closely tied to news that's deeply meaningful to the restaurant's core customers was sure to generate interest. "Don't forget, restaurant advertising is not very cutting-edge; I think that's something that's lacking for the entire genre," Mr. Stillman said. "When we do our advertising, we consider the fact that if you can get it to be cutting-edge, then you're doing something different from everybody else, and you don't have to worry about people copying your advertising." It's important to note that Mr. Stillman is a legend in the restaurant industry. He founded TGI Friday's in the 1970s with a $5,000 loan from his mother.

Deacon Webster, chief creative at Walrus, said that client Fourth Wall Restaurants, which owns Smith & Wollensky, brought the idea to the agency last week. He noted that the timing couldn't have been better and added that the agency is hoping the restaurant will create faxable menus that adjust based on stock prices, so, for instance "you can see what you can get for 10 Citi shares."

Mr. Webster's agency represents all of the Fourth Wall brands, including Park Avenue restaurant, which changes its décor every season, and Maloney & Porcelli, which got its own tidal wave of press last year with the "Expense a Steak" effort. Walrus built a tool on the chain's website for consumers to enter a dollar amount, and they were then able to print out fake receipts for the requisite figure.

Simple Steps (You Would Think) for Effective Internet Advertising Campaigns...

2010-01-28T07:30:00.001-08:00

So many advertisers make the same mistakes over and over again. For the umteenth time, here are some things to avoid when you are planning your online campaigns:

Here are seven mistakes that, research tells us, afflict so many digital ads today.

1. They are too complex.
To digital advertisers: Most people aren't as interested in your products and services as you are; avoid the details. To interest them, attract their eye with uncluttered visual displays and concise, to-the-point headlines and body copy. In short: Keep it simple.

2. They take too long to get to the point.
Yes, the viewer is watching a screen. But they're not at the movies -- they're not waiting for the credits to roll and the good stuff to start. Effective internet advertisers register their brands, post their messages quickly and avoid the long build-up with teaser words and images, which irritate and, worse, alienate the audience.

3. They are ambiguous.
Americans don't go to advertising to raise questions. They want answers. When internet ads generate thoughts that begin, "I wonder what..." or "Why are they..." or "What the hell...," they've missed their opportunity. Some digital advertisers believe that ambiguity arouses curiosity and product interest, but the research indicates that advertising effectiveness and uncertainty are usually mutually exclusive.

4. They are visually bland -- or, worse, ugly.
The research demonstrates that the eye is drawn to sharp, clear, colorful pictures; yet many digital advertisers offer muted, abstract photography or a visual cacophony of verbiage and images. With photographs, present one clear focal-point to entice the eye; employ strong, primary colors; and, if possible, heighten contrast by using black for the background.

5. They use Flash for the sake of Flash -- not for a clear purpose.
Static ads often perform better than flash ads. Why? The online world is divided into two kinds of advertisers: the quick and the dead. Effective static ads don't have the luxury to distract the visitor with Flash; rather, they're forced to rely on simple images to attract the eye and on simply-stated messages for the mind, exactly what most online travelers are looking for.

6. They are often difficult, if not impossible, to read.
Some digital advertisers unwisely borrow from some of the most egregious print ads, which were created by people who are not aware that uniformity of font size and style, not VaRIabIlitY, is the key to legibility. The most effective digital ads use one font style, in one size, well spaced and in lower case. (All-caps copy demands too much effort.)

7. They are bereft of benefit statements.
The vast majority of advertisers in all media are more comfortable listing features not benefits. The importance of this point cannot be overstated: There is one primary question that drives purchase interest in any product in any medium, and it is, "What's in it for me?" Clearly and concisely answer that question, and you'll win their hearts and minds.

One last point: The internet traveler usually has a clear purpose: to read e-mail, to get medical information, to book a flight to Bermuda ... Time moves quickly for people on a mission. Distract them without a quick payoff, and you're likely to irritate them -- rarely a goal of any advertising campaign.

Bands you've never heard of....

2010-01-26T06:19:00.001-08:00

A band you've never heard of -- AC/DC cover band AC/db -- made over $32,000 from music sales in November.

How is that possible?

Under the old business model of music sales on physical media, it wouldn't be. For a band to end up with that much money in its pockets after the distributor and record label had taken their cuts, its music would have to have posted gaudy, unmissable sales numbers.

AC/db, on the other hand, just had to do around $45,000 in sales at the iTunes store. After Apple took its 30 cents on the dollar, that left $32,000, of which the band's distributor -- TuneCore -- took nothing at all.

TuneCore is one of a few digital distributors that have turned the music business model on its head, treating distribution as a service. The company charges an up front fee to process recordings and upload them to music stores like iTunes -- which won't deal with individual artists. The band retains all rights to its music and keeps all the revenue past what the stores keep.

This model is obviously appealing to musicians. CEO Jeff Price says TuneCore, a startup with a mere $7 million in venture funding to date, distributes more music for sale than any company in the world -- and by a wide margin. In 2009, TuneCore processed and uploaded more than a song per second; its iTunes sales were good for $32 million after Apple took its cut.

That doesn't seem like a large sum in the context of a $10 billion industry. But as most of TuneCore's customers are unsigned ("whatever that even means anymore," Price says), that is mostly going straight to musicians; in that context, $32 million is serious money.

And it's not just music -- TuneCore put a collection of Halloween-themed sound effects on iTunes, which sold for around $20,000 in November.

The barriers to entry are low -- TuneCore charges around $10 for a single, $40 for an album, pretty much in line with its main competitor, ReverbNation -- so anyone can record just about anything and offer it to the masses on a whim. And if they happen to catch a viral wave, they can end up making a decent living.

Why Brands Should Embrace Technological Change

2010-01-20T06:28:00.001-08:00

This is the most well-stated summary of what we preach at eLink Media to our clients:

It took the telephone 45 years to penetrate half the homes in America; radio, less than 20; color TV, 15; computers, 10; cellphones, eight; and the internet, a mere six years. The speed of change is accelerating. Five years ago Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Hulu and the iPhone didn't exist. Today Facebook has 350 million members; Twitter boasts 30 million; and Hulu is the second biggest "channel" in America, having surpassed Time Warner Cable.

Technology now has profound impact on consumer behavior. Take brand loyalty, for example. Smartphones enable consumers to comparison shop on the basis of price at the point of sale. The democratization of information may result in commoditization of brands as consumers make purchase decisions by searching for the lowest-priced product. Technology may also alter the purchase cycle and give rise to powerful third-party influencers, counterbalancing paid media's "management" of the purchase cycle. These are transformational shifts for brands.

Yet while consumers and retailers embrace these innovations, one group seems to be conspicuously lagging behind the rapid technological evolution of the marketplace: marketers. Consider this: Ten years ago, at the beginning of the decade, consumers spent 30 minutes online. Today it's four hours, according to Media Metrix, twice as much time as they watch TV -- and that time spent does not include e-mailing. In this decade broadband expanded from 3% to two-thirds of American homes. Yet marketers barely adjusted their approach. While investment in digital advertising has crept up some, roughly 90% of budgets is still spent on traditional channels like TV.

Change is always difficult, but marketers should be more aware of the new marketplace or run the risk of consumers disengaging, rendering their marketing programs irrelevant. The marketing narrative needs to be rebooted and the architecture of brand building re-engineered.

CMOs must recognize that the speed and scope of change are so overwhelming that they need to dramatically revamp their marketing ecosystem. A good place to start is reviewing the scope of their relationships with their agencies. CMOs must demand that all of their agencies, and not just the digital shop, become technologically savvy. Procurement also needs to evolve its scoring of intellectual-property vendors and consider technical expertise as part of the value proposition. Second, marketers should strive for mutuality and non-partisanship in brand stewardship. Today, it is ensconced with the "traditional" agency, while other disciplines play a supporting role. Of course, if you spend 90% of your budget with traditional agencies, that makes sense, but it also leads to silos and makes integration hard. As the landscape is changing, the digital agency, the PR firm and especially the media agency should play an equal role in brand stewardship. The media agencies in particular can play a unique role in that they are at the intersection of creativity and technology and can best assess how to calibrate them and help marketers through the challenges of a technology-driven marketplace.

CMOs must lead a number of internal changes as well. The first is to recognize that technology is no less a marketing tool than, say, market research, and appoint a "marketing-technology czar" to champion it. That person's responsibility will be to act as a cross-functional facilitator and identify technology that can enhance marketing activity and brand building. Further, as consumers adopt technology at the speed of light, CMOs should act as innovation evangelists, pushing technology into all facets of company operations, to ensure that the company is customer-facing and that brands maintain relevancy. And as all employees and the company culture are significant marketing tools, one of the areas that marketers should have greater involvement in is the human capital of the company, working closely with HR on hiring and firing standards. In the 21st century companies should hire people who are inclined toward technology and accept change as a given. That does not necessarily mean that those people are IT experts, but rather that they are curious, adapt easily and are inclined toward collaboration and social media.

Interestingly, the best technologies reinforce very old-fashioned values of brand building. Zappos, Comcast, JetBlue and Virgin America use Twitter to reinforce their image of delivering exceptional customer service (interestingly, and perhaps, therefore, so effectively, in categories that are not known for it -- retail, cable and airlines). But that is exactly the point of technology and marketing. As new technology replaces the obsolete, a brand can continue and hold its positioning while modifying the technological delivery platform.

The problem CMOs face with mastering technology, and with the internet, is very simple: There is so much going on simultaneously and things change so quickly that no one, absolutely no one, can know everything that's going on. Ten years ago a marketer needed to know maybe 100 things to be effective: some aspects of positioning, some aspects of media, some media research, some pricing, some distribution. Now that number is in the thousands. And whereas technology used to advance incrementally, it now evolves exponentially.

As marketing tasks mushroomed and time became compressed during the recession, CMOs found themselves in a position of having to do more with less. To navigate through the added complexity of the technological eruption, they have to go beyond just tolerating it to become active participants and advocates of the new marketing ecosystem. They ought to embrace the speed of change and view it as brand asset.

Changing Agencies just for the sake of changing them....

2010-01-18T07:34:00.000-08:00

Here at eLink Media, we stress to clients (whether brand new, or long existing) to be consistent. Consistent messaging, consistent focus, and staying on point is what make campaigns strong and relationships strong. Changing providers or agencies simply for the sake of changing them never allows for partners to get engaged with the brand, or the focus and instead leaves them feeling scared of the inevitable departure of the client. Case in point?....see below...

Hmm, It's 2010 -- About Time for Chipotle to Switch Up Ad Agencies

For some marketers, a new year means a new agency. If that's your company's annual resolution, you should know that line of thinking will lead to a bad reputation in adland.

Agency new-business executives and industry search consultants report a growing blacklist of sorts, composed of marketers that tend to put ad duties into play every year or two. Thanks to rapid turnover in the chief marketing officer seat (a CMO's tenure averages 28 months, according to the most recent figures from executive search firm Spencer Stuart) and pressure to perform amid the troubled economy, long-lasting agency-marketer relationships are becoming more rare.

"I have a huge disagreement with people changing their agencies like they change their underwear," said Jane Bedford, partner at the Bedford Group, a consultancy based in Atlanta. "Our clients tell us it takes them about three to six months for them to get fully engaged with their agencies. It's very difficult for an agency to get up and running, and totally please the client, within the first year."

And that's coming from an exec who actually benefits when accounts go into review.

Take Chipotle: In January 2004, the burrito chain tapped Mother, New York, to be its first advertising agency. Six years later, that account has cycled through four different shops: After Mother came TDA Advertising & Design, Boulder, Colo.; Devito/Verdi, New York; Butler Shine Stern & Partners, San Francisco; and, its latest, hired this month, Compass Point Media, a division of Campbell Mithun in Minneapolis.

Apparently "The Shack" isn't happy with the nickname either...

2010-01-12T07:33:00.000-08:00

Having an innovative marketing plan that includes referring to yourself in slang is one thing...but then blaming that on the wrong agency is another entirely...

Radio Shack has announced a review of its $215 million U.S. media planning and buying account currently handled by Aegis' Carat. According to a release issued by the marketer, the incumbent is expected to take part in the review.

The company said it intends to select an agency by the end of March. The assignment will include media planning and buying across all channels, including digital and new media.

In a statement, Radio Shack said the review is part of its regular procurement process and has hired Select Resources International to manage the review. Radio Shack said its advertising expenses for 2008 totaled $215 million.

"We are constantly adapting our media strategy as the changing landscape -- driven largely by digital media -- continues to create dynamic opportunities for our brand. This review is part of a regular practice intended to ensure that we have the best resources focused on leveraging those opportunities," said Lee Applbaum, chief marketing officer for Radio Shack.

As Much Marketing as you can do, you can't fix stupid....

2010-01-11T07:56:00.000-08:00

We advise clients (as do other agencies) that while we constantly improve our service, products, and technologies, they must do the same. When you have a bad product, offer, or service the inevitable will eventually happen....even to Jay Leno.

NBC confirmed Sunday that it will end the run of its much-scrutinized and oft-criticized "The Jay Leno Show" in prime time as of February 12th, just as its broadcast of the Winter Olympics ends. The network also said it will make other moves, reversing its tilt away from the traditions of the broadcast TV business.

NBC

Jay Leno

In a presentation to TV critics, Jeff Gaspin, chairman of NBC Universal Television Entertainment, confirmed the much-anticipated move, saying that the show's low ratings had hurt affiliates' ability to garner ratings -- and thus ad dollars -- for their late local newscasts. He said NBC hoped to put Mr. Leno in place at 11:35 p.m., move Conan O'Brien and his "Tonight Show" to 12:05 a.m. and run Jimmy Fallon's "Late Night" at 1:05 a.m. Those plans could be altered, however, depending on whether or not deals can be struck with the hosts and their management teams.

NBC also suggested it would reverse its reduced investment in prime-time programming, a strategy that left it trailing most of its broadcast rivals in the ratings. NBC said it was preparing a "large slate of dramas" for the 2010-2011 season. In a press release, the network said it had struck deals for pilots from such well-known producers as J.J. Abrams, Jerry Bruckheimer and David E. Kelley. The network also said it would consider a pilot for a remade version of TV-classic "The Rockford Files" from "House" producer David Shore.

Zicam Makes a Move....

2010-01-07T07:32:00.000-08:00

While this is a big win for C-K...will digital distribution finally become a focal point for the Pharmaceutical industry?

Drug maker Matrixx Initiatives has named Cramer-Krasselt's Phoenix office the new ad agency of record for its over-the-counter cold remedy, Zicam.

The brand, which spent $30 million on measured media in 2008, moved to Interpublic Group of Cos.' Lowe Worldwide just last May, but it was forced into play after Interpublic merged Lowe with Johnson & Johnson agency Deutsch, creating a new conflict of interest. At the time of the merger, Interpublic indicated it intended to move the Zicam account to another shop within the company, but Matrixx apparently had other ideas, putting the account up for grabs.

"We'd like to be supportive, but we'll ultimately make a decision that's best for our business," VP-Marketing Tim Connors told Ad Age at the time.

At C-K, Zicam will join a growing medicine cabinet of brands that includes the Takeda Pharmaceuticals' sleep aid Rozerem, Boehringer Ingelheim's ulcer drug Zantac, and GlaxoSmithKline's prostate treatment Avodart -- all of which have been won by the agency since 2005.

Few shops manage to balance so many different drug makers on a single roster, but Matrixx didn't hesitate to tap C-K for brand strategy, creative, digital and consumer engagement chores.

Classic Example of What eLink preaches to clients....

2009-12-18T06:36:00.000-08:00

General Mills Sees Profits Climb 49%

Marketing Outlay Increased 37% in Most Recent Quarter

General Mills confounded Wall Street this morning, with profits up 49%. Part of the food company's secret sauce is meaningful marketing increases, about 37% for the most recent quarter. Augmenting its well-worn strategy of supporting big-name brands, General Mills has focused ad dollars on "high ROI areas," such as multicultural consumers and the digital space.

During the fiscal second quarter, U.S. retail sales grew 5%, with Big G cereal sales up 10%.

Chris Growe, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus Equity Research, estimated that the 37% increase translates to an additional $40 million on marketing during the quarter, and a 20% increase on year-to-date spend.

"Consumers are shopping our categories and appreciate the nutrition, the convenience and the value of our leading brands," CEO Ken Powell said during a call with analysts. "We continue to reinvest in our businesses at increasing levels. Advertising spending was already planned to be up by double digits and we're adding more."

General Mills' results are particularly impressive given the tough comparison of a year ago, when the company's U.S. business grew 11%. During the fiscal second quarter, U.S. retail sales grew 5%, with Big G cereal sales up 10%. Pillsbury and other baking sales increased 4%, as did Yoplait and other snacks.

During the fiscal second quarter ended Nov. 29, General Mills profits soared 49.5% to $565.5 million, from $378.2 million the year before.

Chief Financial Officer Donald Mulligan vowed to continue General Mills' reinvestment strategy. While media spending grew 37% in the quarter, he said General Mills is targeting at least a double-digit increase for the full fiscal year. That's a relatively conservative estimate given the rates of increase already on the books, but spending can vary dramatically by quarter. For instance, the holidays usually represent a tough comparison because that's when most consumers do the bulk of their serious cooking.

"We're focusing our spending on high ROI ideas with particular emphasis on multicultural consumers and digital marketing, and we're investing strongly in international markets to build our global brands," he said.

It will have to increase elsewhere as well. After four years of decreases, General Mills will have to modestly increase its in-store merchandising spending. Jeffrey Rotsch, exec VP-worldwide sales and channel development, said the company has worked hard to keep a lid on promotional spending. General Mills has leaned on its marketing to support necessary price increases, but the company's trade cost per case, related to retail promotions, has fallen in each of the last four years. Now, Mr. Rotsch said, there are areas where the company will have to gin up merchandising activity "in order to protect market share."

Mr. Rotsch also conceded that General Mills' advertising support for Progresso dropped off during the most-recent quarter, and sales slipped. He added that the company tried to spread its soup spending evenly throughout the year, rather than concentrating it more heavily into soup season. Less spending on a category that is down as a whole, he said, explains much of the difference." He also hinted that the brands' comparative ad battle with Campbell's Soup may still be weighing on sales.

"There may be also be some overhang from the negative advertising that we saw on the category last year and we expect that to recede over time," he said. "We view this as a big category and a great consumer category and so we're quite optimistic going forward." Shortly after the ad battle with rival Campbell's Soup Co., both marketers reported increasing soup sales. The increases were, however, driven primarily by price increases.

For the next two quarters, General Mills will be focusing on its "Biggest Loser" integration and supporting the movie sequel "Shrek Goes Fourth" in a variety of tie-ins with its cereals and snacks. In early 2010, the company will launch Wheaties Fuel, Chocolate Cheerios, Greek-style Yoplait yogurt and a Nature Valley Dark Chocolate granola bar. Mr. Powell said the company has not held launches back during the recession, when consumers are less likely to take chances on new products.

What your Search guy is basically telling you....

2009-12-17T06:17:00.000-08:00

Most products & services that are marketed online leverage some kind of search channel. With some kind of SEO/SEM initiatives always being dubbed "the best source of traffic" or "the life-blood of our online traffic."

Here is an article that gives a couple of excuses why you should just not bother with any other forms of online advertising. Apparently if your genius Search Director can't make your online marketing work, it's no one else's fault but yours. Your content sucks, or your design sucks, or the best is...your product sucks and you should close the company. Read below...

Don’t Beat Up Your SEO for Slow Sales

When you finally reach that point where you want to introduce search engine marketing and optimization in your overall marketing strategy it is important to understand how SEO fits into your overall marketing equation. Even though there are many different approaches and SEO service providers out there, it is important to understand that SEO is a form of inbound marketing.

If your website visitors do not convert you have to realize that this is not a direct problem from SEO service provider. Remember you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink. If your website is set up poorly than all the SEO in the world will not help you become successful. Unless you hired a firm or a person to do more than just search engine optimization this should not be looked at as the problem. The problem is most likely many other factors.

Take a look at the following factors that might be affecting your website conversion:

1. Design: When was the last time your website has been updated? Is the design on par with your audience? Put yourself in their shoes for a moment and try to anticipate what you would like a website to look at. Does yours look this way? You cannot not be in denial here, if you are targeting a young demographic and your website hasn’t been updated since 2001 than it might be time to freshen things up a bit. Good design elements keep people engaged and wanting to know more.

2. Conversion Aspects: Does your website traffic need to figure out how to use your website? If your website makes a visitor work on how to contact you than you are already loosing the race. If you are an e-commerce site you have to make multiple entry points into your store from every single page. If you are a service based business you should have a phone number and lead form located almost everywhere so that you pave the way for that visitor to create some sort of action. The goal of your business needs to reflect immediately in your design otherwise you might lose that visitor forever.

3. Products: Everyone wants to think their service or products are the best but at some point you have to ask yourself if people really want what you’re selling. It might just be that your product isn’t cutting it. If this is the case you are better off to realize this at an early stage than spending a lot of money marketing a product people might not really be interested in.

4. Content: Remember your content should be written for the visitors that come to your website and should not just be written for the search engines. If your website content is poorly written (with weak call to action) then this could be a major reason why people are leaving your website and are not converting.

To close out here, make sure you take a moment to properly analyze your website if you start to see organic visitors (from your SEO efforts) are not converting as much as they should.

Holiday Advertising Effectiveness

2009-12-16T07:53:00.000-08:00

In Holiday Retail Sales, the Best Ad Doesn't Always Win

New Survey Says Favorite TV Campaigns Have Limited Influence on Consumer Spending

Retailers shell out big bucks on holiday ads. And while consumers like them, that doesn't mean they're influenced by them. A new survey has found that half of consumers say they're not inspired to shop at the retailer whose holiday TV commercial or online promotion they liked best.

TOP TEN MEDIA INFLUENCERS
Coupons	45%
Word-of-mouth	27%
Advertising inserts	27%
Broadcast TV	23%
Newspaper	22%
Direct mail	21%
In-store promotion	18%
E-mail advertising	16%
Cable TV	12%
Magazines	11%
Internet advertising	11%
Radio	10%
Source: Retail Advertising and Marketing Association

"It goes along with the old adage that I know half my marketing dollars are wasted, I just don't know what half," said Mike Gatti, executive director at the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association survey, which was conducted by Big Research. "[Consumers] probably still get a kick out of the commercials, but there are a lot of brand loyalties out there. ... [But it] does position [retailers] in the minds of people whether they shop there or not."

When asked to choose their favorite holiday TV commercial, 26% of consumers chose one from Walmart, upsetting Target's holiday-ad dominance. Target had taken the top slot on the survey for the past three years, but this year it only garnered 16% of the vote. Perhaps that's not surprising, considering that consumers took to Facebook to complain about one commercial that seemed to cast doubt on the existence of Santa Claus and another that put a damper on Christmas morning with talk of finances.

The Martin Agency is Walmart's creative shop, while Wieden & Kennedy handled Target's holiday ads. Crispin Porter & Bogusky had the best showing of any agency, as it works with three of the retailers found on the Top 10 list: Best Buy, Gap and Old Navy.

Still, only 17% of consumers said their favorite ad motivated them to shop at a particular retailer, while 50% said it did not. One-third of consumers said their favorite ad didn't have an impact, because they already shop at that retailer.

Walmart again took top billing online, with 20% of consumers saying it had the best online holiday promotion. Amazon came in a close second, with 18% of the vote.

Again, half of consumers said the promotions didn't influence their shopping, while 22% said the promotion they deemed best caused them to shop at that retailer. About 28% of consumers said they weren't affected, because they regularly shop at a particular retailer.

When it came to what does influence holiday shoppers, coupons emerged as the most influential, with 45% of consumers citing them. Word of mouth and advertising inserts influence 27% of consumers, while broadcast TV and newspapers influence 23% and 22% of shoppers, respectively.

"Shoppers aren't only relying on traditional advertising to find the best deals," said Phil Rist, exec VP-strategic initiatives at Big Research. "Whether they were saving on shipping or using an in-store coupon, shoppers dug through every avenue of potential savings before choosing to commit."

RETAILER	AGENCY
Top ten holiday commercials
Walmart	Martin Agency
Target	Wieden & Kennedy
Best Buy	Crispin Porter & Bogusky
Gap	Crispin Porter & Bogusky
Macy's	JWT
Old Navy	Crispin Porter & Bogusky
Kmart	DraftFCB
Sears	Y&R
Hallmark	Leo Burnett
Kohl's	McCann Erickson
Source: Retail Advertising and Marketing Association

Direct mail, radio and outdoor billboards were all deemed more influential this holiday season, while newspapers, advertising inserts, broadcast TV, word of mouth and in-store promotions were less influential with shoppers.

"There's so much more out there to decide from," said Mr. Gatti, explaining why more areas fell in influence than gained. "This could also be due to the shift over the last year away from some traditional media into a lot of the new media."

In terms of the rise in direct mail's influence, Mr. Gatti suggested that retailers could be doing a better job of targeting consumers or they could be offering attractive pricing incentives and promotions through direct mail.