ART + science: the PARTNERS+simons Blog

Media Roundup: 10/10/08

Stephanie Rogers — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:17:05 -0500

Hello, Readers ~

As usual, there were a lot of interesting media headlines this week - airline ads taking off, Google playing games & ranking influence, and those wired Millennials forcing companies to revamp their customer experiences .

The delete happy, non opt-out crowd

Kara Tierney — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 13:43:49 -0500

How many emails do you receive every day that you delete rather than read? I'm not talking Spam – these are emails and newsletters that at some point you deemed the content valuable enough to opt-in to. CAN SPAM requires you to be able to opt out–and it's relatively easy to do.

Yet I continue to delete rather than opt-out. It's clear that I'm a "delete happy, non-opter-outer." Is it simply human nature? Perhaps laziness on my part because it takes less time to delete than opt-out? Or is it fear that some day I'll miss out on an extremely important piece of content so I don't want to opt-out?

Regardless of my reasons, I'm not the only one who exhibits this behavior. There is a crowd of "delete happy non-opt outers" and herein lies a CRM opportunity.

Media Roundup: 10/3/08

Stephanie Rogers — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 21:58:03 -0500

My apologies for the delay in posting the Media Roundup…here are the stories that caught our eyes last week:

Is there room for creativity in a measured world?

Bruce Patteson — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:20:16 -0500

With all the metrics and formulas that inform marketing communications these days, it might seem like there's little room for a laugh.

After all, there's nothing funny about making sure you're armed with a solid ROI when walking down the hall to justify advertising expenses to the board of directors.

The devil may be in the details, but today so is success. From rules on how subject lines of emails are worded to quantification of purchase intent.

But what about the value of a message that stirs emotions and makes it memorable? Are the days of advertising and marketing that rely on gut-instincts only viewable in the rearview mirror?

Methinks not.

Get Radical -- Radically Customer-Centric, That Is

Jennifer O'Connell — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:04:00 -0500

When we say radical we're not talking about doing something crazy, so put away the funny hats. We're talking about doing something different, doing something with such focus and organizational rigor that it becomes a rallying point for all of a company's marketing efforts.

Sure, lots of companies talk about being "customer-centric," but what's that really look like? And how do you start? My colleague, Ken Dec, has boiled it down to 5 key elements that contribute to greater customer centricity - and, as a result, contribute to a company's success.

The piece ran in MediaPost and with Ken's permission the article is republished below.

Get Radical -- Radically Customer-Centric, That Is

Leading technology marketers -- faced with product offering parity/commoditization, intense global competition, and stagnant budgets -- are seeking every way possible to improve the performance of their marketing programs.

One strategic approach is the adoption of radically customer-centric marketing -- allocating significant resources toward developing the deepest possible understanding of customers' roles, responsibilities, communities, hopes, dreams and aspirations -- moving far beyond the "title targeting" that has defined technology marketing for decades.

Here's how.

Metrics as Ammunition

Jennifer O'Connell — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:03:59 -0500

I recently read that luxury apparel and accessories company Louis Vuitton and global management services company Accenture are keeping their marketing budgets intact despite the economy.

How can they justify continuing to spend on marketing even during waning market conditions - especially for such "high ticket" products and services?

Interestingly, one executive pointed to something very simple – metrics as ammunition.

While the world of Louis Vuitton and consumer marketing may be concerned with a slightly different set of metrics (brand perception, consideration and preference) than those in the B-to-B world, arming marketers with data seems to be something each can use to their advantage.

Media Roundup: 9/26/08

Stephanie Rogers — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 08:59:22 -0500

This week, the Roundup takes a break from media headlines to focus on two local events we attended: BIMA’s 4th Annual Cross Media Forum and the MITX panel discussion, How to Measure Brand Impact Online.

The Hurricane and the Canoe

Todd Baird — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:45:35 -0500

9.15.08 what a week it was for financial service marketers. News alerts hit my email inbox like twigs hitting a house in a hurricane. One after another, the bad news kept coming – each email having more ferocity than previous. Not since 9/11 or the Great Depression have we seen so much turmoil in our financial markets.

It felt like a tornado ripped through Wall Street, but instead of trees being uprooted it was financial institutions. Some of the industry’s best-known brand names are gone or going. Bear-Stearns. Lehman Brothers. Merrill Lynch. Three other well-known brands needed the government to bail them out. Fannie Mae. Freddie Mac. AIG. And while not as well known, the IndyMac failure several weeks ago sent shudders through the banking community.

When huge institutions like these fail or are sold for pennies on the dollar it makes everyone wonder about the strength and stability of their financial partners. How do you know your money or investments are safe? Who can you trust? I expect we’ll see confident brands start to promote their safety and soundness in advertising campaigns. Some, including Wachovia Securities and AXA Equitable, already have. There will be more.

Media Roundup: 9/19/08

Stephanie Rogers — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 12:38:25 -0500

Topics we've bookmarked for this week's Media Roundup include the growing online health category, physicians online, LinkedIn's new ad network, Banking 2.0, and a must-see event that’s happening next week. Read on for more info!

Where Advertising Meets Art

Jane Roper — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:20:48 -0500

For this post, I was originally planning to write something about banner ads, and how great they are when they make use of their context, like this recent ad for Mac masquerading as an op-ed in the New York Times Online.

But on the day I had planned to write it, I found myself preoccupied and deeply saddened by the news that writer David Foster Wallace had committed suicide after a long struggle with depression. He was 46 years old.

I haven't read a great deal of Wallace's work, but I've always regarded him as an immensely innovative and thoughtful writer — one who has had a major influence on many of my writer friends and the literary world at large.

In hopes of finding some sort of connection between Wallace and the task at hand – writing an entry for this blog – I Googled "David Foster Wallace" and "advertising." The Web never disappoints: I found my way to an essay of Wallace's, published in Harper's in 1996, about his experiences on a luxury cruise.

What marketers can learn from Obama: Part 2

Matt Fishbein — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 10:40:10 -0500

It was 3:19 AM on Saturday, August 23. My iPhone lit up: "Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee." The now-famous text message from the Obama campaign was just another in a long line of communications during this groundbreaking political – and marketing – campaign.

I wrote a post in January about how we, as marketers, can learn from Barack Obama's team. Obama has wisely used web and mobile marketing in an attempt to grab the share of young voters. It’s still working, and it might just be the key to victory.

Here are a few more lessons learned from what Obama's team has done right and wrong less than two months before Election Day.

Know your audience. It's not a secret around our office that I support Obama. Yet as much as I think he's done right, I sometimes feel neglected as a customer. I always donate online, and have even ordered an "Environmentalists for Obama" organic t-shirt, yet I still receive 4-5 direct mail pieces every week that go right into my recycling bin. It's a waste of paper that risks alienating a brand loyalist.

Timing is everything. Announcing a Vice Presidential choice via text message? Bold. Waiting until the middle of the night to do it? Bad. Imagine Apple revealing the latest iPod at 3 AM. It's simply not smart. Then again, the strong buzz created before the pick, plus all the new mobile number sign-ups they collected, made it a noteworthy event for future candidates and marketers alike.

Media Roundup: 9/12/08

Stephanie Rogers — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 11:51:55 -0500

As promised, we've bookmarked some more media-related news stories for you in this week's Media Roundup:

Have you incorporated blogs into your media plans yet? If not, they’re definitely worth consideration. You see, blogs are now considered mainstream media, and with about 184 million blogs worldwide, collectively, they can rival traditional channels. eMarketer reports that 67 percent of the U.S. online population - 104 million people - reads blogs, showing that blogging has become a truly mass media. While the majority of blogs are personal in nature, many can work for marketers - even B2B ones – and a variety of blog ad networks have sprung up to help streamline the buy (examples include the Forbes.com Business and Finance Blog Network and Seed Media's ScienceBlogs.com). Take some time to investigate the blogosphere; there may very well be conversations about your brand or category taking place, and related opportunities to connect with your audience.

Like blogging, social networks have really entered the mainstream. The recent Entertainment Trends in America study by The NPD Group confirmed that sites once considered the exclusive domain of teenagers are now being adopted by baby boomers aged 44-61. In fact, 41% of baby boomers have visited social networks like MySpace and Facebook (consistent with other age-related data we’ve seen for social networks). While some business marketers have opted to test these more mainstream sites (e.g., Visa’s Facebook Business Network), we're following the growth of very niche, vertically-focused networks like SERMO, ITToolbox, American Express' OpenForum, CareSeek, and LabMeeting.

Not to be overshadowed by all this new media, good old broadcast was in the headlines this week, thanks to a renewed interest in national television advertising for the fourth quarter and beyond. AdWeek reports that despite a troubled economy, rising retail prices, growing unemployment and record home foreclosures, just about every marketer on the national TV front is planning to spend what they committed in the May upfront (and in some cases, more). Q4 primetime upfront advertising orders will total over $2 billion, with a paltry 2% cancellation rate (it’s been 3% in recent/more prosperous years). The TV high was further buoyed by news that NBC has already sold more than 80% of its available Super Bowl ad inventory, securing $3 million per 30-second spot (an increase from the $2.7 million Fox charged for the ’08 Bowl). Let’s hope the ads live up to the hype.

In other NBC news, NBC Universal has signed a multi-year advertising, research and technology deal with Google, allowing cable TV inventory from Sci Fi, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC, among others, to be sold through the Google TV Ads platform. While we’re eagerly watching the convergence of digital and traditional channel planning, Google’s lack of geo-targeting abilities in the TV realm may hinder its widespread adoption by anyone but national advertisers.

We'll leave you with this fun print+digital (prigital?) execution from Esquire: to celebrate its 75th anniversary issue, the magazine created the first-ever digital magazine cover, merging print with electronic technology from local company E Ink, the same company that developed the technology used in Amazon.com's e-book device, the Kindle. See a video of the cover (and the corresponding, blinking Ford ad on the inside cover), here.

Enjoy the weekend!

Previously:
Media Roundup: 9/05/08
Media Roundup: 8/29/08

Reading the Tea Leaves

Chris Demakis — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:10:11 -0500

In this article, published in part by BtoB Magazine, Tom Simons makes a few predictions, otherwise known as "wagers" PARTNERS+simons has made.

Are these sound business bets? Let us know what you think.

Reading The Tea Leaves

I guarantee only this: there is little certainty and few safe bets for those marketers charting a course into the future. That said, here are a few of the wagers I've made.

Change will continue to be the only constant. Those who are looking for some sort of status quo or normalization will be disappointed, and ultimately, marginalized. Build in a change competency to your culture and your organization -- put someone or some committee in charge of change.

Deep domain expertise and genuine specialization will be recognized as having much more value than field generalism. Marketers who don't have an area of expertise should find one – quickly.

Creativity will have much of its currency restored. We were all distracted by the concept of optimization and the disposability of ideas. We learned that, in practice, optimization requires both an enormous investment in message inventory that few clients have been willing to make, and a tolerance for wasted effort that good agencies abhor. Good creativity is just that -- it's "right" the first time. It delivers ROI out of the gate, there are no false starts or non-starters.

There is more pressure to unearth the fresh idea (big or small) that can cut deftly across integrated campaigns. And there is the realization that without this media/method-agnostic idea, there can be no true integration. And there is the recognition that there has been, in fact and in practice, very little true integration.

Media Roundup: 9/5/08

Stephanie Rogers — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 10:02:17 -0500

It was a very short, post-Labor Day week, but as usual, the media news just keeps on coming.

Here are some of the items we bookmarked for this week’s Media Roundup:

Google was all over the news, primarily due to the launch of its new Chrome Web browser, but also thanks to ongoing commentary around its aggressive moves into more traditional media planning. Chrome is also Google’s latest move to thwart its rival Microsoft in a space the latter has historically dominated: Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser has about 72% market penetration. Why should this matter to (online) marketers? The latest version of IE reportedly gives users the option to “surf in private" – essentially blocking advertisers from collecting the browsing data they use to target ads. The same data (and targeting) that is at the core of Google’s business model. I’m anxious to play around with Chrome and see if it gets any traction (also looking forward to working with the new Google AdPlanner tool, to which we recently received beta access).

In video news, David Carson penned a great article in AdAge about Capitalizing on Online Video’s Strengths. The basic gist of it is that while online video now boasts a bigger audience than cable television, its $1 billion in ad dollars is a fraction of the $70 billion broadcast pulls in. Carson argues that these kinds of comparisons aren’t fair; in particular:

"The two media are so fundamentally different that making comparisons in format and language will eventually stunt the growth and impact of online video for creators and marketers alike."

He rightfully points out that "TV attracts watchers, while online video attracts users." This fundamental difference should not only impact the type of video produced for each medium, but the advertising model integrated into it. The best online videos allow viewers to interact with them – comment, download, forward, mash-up, etc. – perhaps the online video ad models need to morph from the passive, broadcast approach being forced upon them.

Exciting news in the world of out-of-home advertising: this week marks the preliminary rollout of the new "Eyes On" audience-measurement system. It uses a combination of computer modeling and eye-tracking to determine how many people actually look at billboards throughout 200 U.S. markets. OOH is a $7 Billion market that’s suffered from an accountability problem and has historically been sold on placements (versus viewers, as more measurable media is). The new measurement protocol is great news for the growing number of marketers turning to out-of-home and place-based media to find new and innovative ways to reach their audiences (see our previous post, Outdoor 2.0).

Lastly, we’re intrigued by Phreesia, a NY-based startup that provides doctors’ offices with touch-screen pads intended to replace the clipboards and paper forms patients receive at the reception desk. The pads are provided free-of-charge to physicians and the company makes money by selling on-screen ad inventory and surveys which the patients view while filling in their information. It remains to be seen whether this tactic can work for brand building or direct response (it’s a digital device, so imagine patients could opt-in for more info if desired). Phreesia bills it as a way to provide patient education…patients respond to a series of questions regarding the reason for their visit, and then relevant patient education materials are presented on the device (and available for print out). Watch the demo here.

That’s all for now; stay tuned for more Media Roundup next week, and let’s us know what you’ve been bookmarking!

Previously:
Media Roundup: 8/29/08

Visitor Engagement: Is it Worth Measuring?

Doug Ellinger — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:05:18 -0500

There is so much talk by marketers about visitor engagement and what it means, but there appears to be no universal definition for it. There certainly seems to be little to no agreement in the marketplace on if and how engagement should be measured. Sounds like something we should avoid altogether, right? Well, if you are a traditional direct marketer who is used to analyzing and optimizing your marketing efforts based reams of hard, undeniable response and conversion data, then the idea of measuring engagement might seem unwarranted or maybe a bit scary. I mean, what's the point in measuring something that requires bias, judgment and creativity?

An interesting argument I just read by Matt Belkin of Omniture suggests that there is no place for subjectivity – let alone, creativity – in the arena of measurement. His post on Omniture's blog in July called the whole notion of measuring engagement a "fad." Having played in the web analytics space for several years now, I can appreciate Matt's position because tools like Omniture, WebTrends, and Google Analytics provide robust reporting on the traffic sources coming into your site(s), as well as the activities taking place on your site(s).

However, the problem with having so much visitor data available at your fingertips is that it can be difficult to determine the value of all of the variables. Many, if evaluated in isolation, do not appear to represent any tangible business value.

So, should you just ignore them? Should you avoid analyzing the behavior of a visitor that spends several minutes on your site watching video, reading content, or completing a series of seemingly trivial tasks. Absolutely not! I agree with a large population of marketers and analysts who believe that you just need to get creative in how you measure this activity. This is the point at which you create your engagement scoring model.