There are many changes affecting the way content is being delivered and monetized. I recently presented this at a conference of Latin American Free-To-Air TV executives in Costa Rica. The changes affect all players in the content value chain: Consumers, Marketers, Agencies, Content Creators and Producers ..and content distributors.  Slide 46 summarises the issues facing each player and gives some top-line implications.

To access the presentation, click on the image below.

Original Article

AgênciaClick: 365 reasons to have a Fiat Linea Digital campaign will last for one year and will be hosted in various news portals and YouTube 09 October 2009 18:30

The 365 reasons to have a Fiat Linea

In an attempt to prove that every day of the year you can find a new advantage of having a Fiat Linea, the company invested in a digital campaign to promote its luxury sedan. Called the Fiat Linea – 365 Reasons, the action will start this Friday, October 8 and will last for next 365 days.

Every day, a different feature will be published in the format of 3D videos on portals like Globo.com, Ig, YouTube, Yahoo and Abril.com, highlighting particular item, accessory or tool of the Fiat Linea. The action was developed by AgênciaClick. All videos of the action will be hosted on a dedicated channel on YouTube.

11 reasons I love the ‘Fiat Brazil 365 Days of Linea 3D Video Vignette Program`

1. Core idea centric:  To be successfully integrated across all channels, the core communication idea must be aligned. It looks like the program is integrated across forms and ambiences (can be used at POS, Mobile, PC and at home). Integrated marketing isn’t just about visual synergies.
2. Progressively building capabilities: This shows a maturing of the Brazilian digital market from tactical awareness building campaigns into strategies and tactics that will drive customers / prospects to purchase.
3. Spend concentrated in digital for cars: Focussing the expenditure to reflect rightfully reflect the digitally disrupted car purchase decision process. Consumers have moved from reactive ‘accidental’ content exposure to ‘proactive’ content search. The first place they go now is the internet..and web based tools.
4. Always-on content architecture: For this category, gone are the days of mass commercials that just highlight a few key features. Always-on content has disrupted consumers expectations.
5. Long-term commitment to online video:  Critical mass to gain efficiencies / bring down production prices, volume to gain negotiation efficiencies and help establish online video standards.
6. Segmented messaging searchable content architecture: By segmenting issues topics and indexing / tagging the videos by relevant terms and words, it naturally makes it easier for prospects to find the information they need.
7. PR worthy innovation: 3d video is a nice touch. I’m sure that the learning experience will help develop industry standards. It’s definitely newsworthy now, but I do doubt it’s relevance beyond a launch gimmick. If Fiat want to maintain PR, they may need iterative innovation enhancements over the year.
8. Video is a rich and user friendly content form: People naturally gravitate to content that stimulates more senses. Video isn’t as powerful as impartial one to one / live interaction, but with todays bandwidth restrictions it’s a huge advancement on text / image based communication.
9. Decentralised content distribution: Content now needs to exist in many lengths and forms to aggregate people to our longer form detailed messages. At the same time, 100% focused and controlled destination sites will always be an essential part of our communications mixed, but in the current fragmented content world, consumers are now accustomed to content coming to them, in contextually or bahaviourally relevant environments.
10. Constant new news:  Spreading the program across a long period makes the program sustainable and allows Fiat to measure individual topic response. The tricky part of the process will be the sequencing of the topics to 1) balance between different stages of the purchase process and 2) isolate actions to properly measure effect.
11. Potential for program extensions:
    1. Outside the client firewall, I obviously don’t know the success metrics. But given the above, the program has every chance to have a consistent, cascading set of brand aligned metrics (both brand health and executional)
    2. Research tool to monitor customer conversations – Facilitates individual comments about each discrete topic
    3. Fiat could extend it’s social media relevance to include consumer generated or expert journalist / blogger vignettes / vox pop. Content doesn’t need to be professionally produced to be relevant. Could also be extended as an endomarketing tool to include dealer comments
    4. The campaign could be extended to after sales / CRM to positively reinforce the customers Linea purchase.

Below is a list of recent articles that we found very interesting. Definitely worth investing 30 seconds to scan:

July 2009

1. Stupid Brands Will Destroy Online Product Reviews | Adotas
2. Trust, Social Media And The Purchase Funnel | Adotas
3. Should Online Brand Metrics Go Traditional? | Brandweek
4. Russia and Brazil Top Social Network Engagement Rankings | ClickZ
5. Getting Back to Basics – Why Web Advertising Needs Traditional Media Metrics | Microsoft
6. Forrester Revises Interactive Outlook, Will Account For 21% Of Marketing By 2014 | Mediapost
7. Forrester Not Predicting Year Of Mobile In 2009 (or 2010) |Mediapost
8. P&G Rethinks Production Houses | Brandweek
9. Advertising Does Not Create Demand, But… | ClickZ

June 2009

1. Changing The Rules Of The Sports Endorsement Game | Mediapost
2. Sorrell sees “tough times” ahead | WARC
3. Optimizing Your E-Commerce Site: Three Levers for Success | ClickZ
4. The Power of “Now” in Digital Marketing | ClickZ
5. Changing Roles Within Direct Marketing | Mediapost
6. Interpublic, Microsoft Team To ‘Re-Invent’ Media Planning, Buying: MOMS Is Not Your Father’s Processing System | Mediapost
7. Emerging Marketing Tools | ClickZ
8. The End of Ad Agencies as We Know Them | ClickZ
9. The Ultimate Payback On ‘Enterprise’ Marketing | Mediapost
10. Fox In The Henhouse: Should You Trust Your Agency With Analytics? | Adotas
11. An Emerging Direct Digital Marketing World | Adotas
12. Stop Wasting 50% Of Your Marketing Budget | Mediapost
13. The 10 Online Ad Formats People Hate Most | BusinessInsider
14. Re-Thinking Sports In The Digital TV Era | Mediapost
15. Sorry, There’s No Way to Save the TV Business | AdAge
16. Marketing Execs Distrust Metrics In Cross-Channel Campaigns | Mediapost
17. MRI Launches Magazine Ad Effectiveness Ratings | Mediapost
18. What Does “Semantic Web” Mean? | ClickZ
19. 7 Ways to use Text Messaging in Your Business | ClickZ
20. Get It Or Die: Online Is Your Core Business | Mediapost
21. Razorfashion: The Challenges Of Introducing Digital Experience To Retail Space | Razorfish
22. Why Walmart Is Getting Serious About Marketing: Giant Attributes Success to Segmentation, Market Research and Advertising | AdAge

May 2009

1. Bridging the Gap Between Online and Offline | ClickZ
2. News Corp. creates content-sharing unit | Businessweek
3. Does Content Matter? | Mediapost
4. Study: Media Ads Affect Consumer Purchase Considerations | TV week
5. Making the Most Of Customer Complaints | Wall Street Journal
6. What Becomes Of Talent In A Tough Economy? | Online Spin
7. Lever’s CMO Throws Down the Social-Media Gauntlet | Adage
8. Performance Ad Metrics Slowly Shifting | Mediapost
9. Digital Shops Embrace Cheap Chic | Adweek
10. Ad Networks Are For Idiots — And Here’s The Math To Prove It | Mediapost
11. Holding-company directors have plenty to answer for in this season of annual meetings | Adweek
12. Online branding in the age of performance | Adotas
13. Online advertising: Time and engagement beats CPM | Adotas
14. Wave Riding Over Bing | Mediapost

April                 – 30 Article links

March              – 58 Article links

February          – 40 Article links

January           – 31 Article links

A review of the issues surrounding Sustainability and 8 tensions marketers need to manage to get closer to a balanced `Brand Conscience Ecosystem`

1. Consumer values
2. Mass vs Molecular
3. Art vs science
4. Innovation vs infrastructure
5. Talking vs Listening
6. Integrated communication
7. Proprietary vs collaborative / open source
8. Talking the talk vs walking the talk

Click here to view in English or here in Portuguese

Creds: AQUARIUM Marketing and Communications: Planning for efficiencies

Other Oxygen

Aquarium In the news

Articles we’re reading

April                 – 30 Article links

March              – 58 Article links

February          – 40 Article links

January           – 31 Article links

Social Marketing is still relatively undisciplined. The majority of activity is confined to superficial campaign tactics. Our challenge is to build our capabilities beyond transient, `speed dating` to foster longer-term relationships and deeper more meaningful brand relevant conversations. Those clients that can align their marketing ecosystem capabilities ahead of their competitors can gain a sustainable competitive advantage. Here are a few tips that can help you fast-track your strategy development:

1.      Social Marketing strategy is more like warfare than tactical campaign planning

Marketers should be wary of social strategies that are just based on superficial guerilla tactics, viral or word-of-mouth clichés. Tactical campaign tactics that stimulate buzz or hotsite traffic have a place, but they create little lasting value if not planned in the context of an overarching social marketing strategy.

In general, there are three pillars to a communication strategy:

a.      Awareness building

                                   i.      Traditional mass interruptive outbound messaging: one-way brand to consumer

                                   ii.     Usually, campaign based

                                   iii.   Objective: Stimulate demand and brand consideration

                                   iv.   Social Networks are providing alternate forms of both mass and segmented message distribution or

b.     Conversation architecture

                                  i.     Ongoing two-way interaction, either brand to a cluster / group of consumers or between consumers

                                  ii.   Objective: Build affinity, consideration, intent to purchase and repurchase consideration

                                  iii.  Social Marketing can either be a direct conversation engagement or a tool to stimulate, monitor and collect intelligence.

                                 iv.   By seeding, then observing conversations, marketers can tap into the power of collaborative conversation threads – iterative thought formation and uncover links between concepts, gain insights into how conversations form / develop

c.    Transaction architecture

                                 i.      Molecular exchanges e.g. Brand with individual customer

                                 ii.    Objective: Commerce – drive intent and purchase

                                 iii.  Proactive customers now look for brand related content to solve purchase decision related problems. Brands with a complex purchase decision process need to establish a searchable content infrastructure so that customers can find your branded message e.g. branded content , peer recommendation. Brands that don’t have this proprietary content lose the power to influence decisions. i.e. customers will find content to facilitate a decision, but it probably will be either produced by a third party or by a competitor. Social Networks are helping feed this content demand.

Often clients find that these three pillars are so different that they require discrete specialist agency suppliers. Once separated, clients then need some sort of centralized conversation idea planning to coordinate / align actions.

2.   Content creation always starts with an idea

Whether it’s a book, a film, a political speech or a piece of art, successful content always starts with a clear guiding idea. In the digital era, this idea could be initiated by either the brand or the customer. The idea usually is a result of either deep insight research or intuition. Credibility and trust in the source of the idea remain critical. The important thing is that the idea creates sufficient motivation to for its audience to engage with it.

3.    You can’t hide an elephant in a small room

In the days before instantaneous global content distribution and hyper-connected social networks, brands could afford to ignore and hide their `dirty little secrets`. Once an issue was released, Brands usually had time to react and formulate a response before major collateral damage was done. In the digital era, spin control has changed from reactive to proactive. Obama showed us exactly how to stop the viral / snow ball of a potentially damaging negative rumor. By aggregating special interest clusters around key issues, he used his grass-roots early warning system / radar to monitor potential threats & opportunities. His analysts connected the dots to project conversation threads to be proactive in publishing fact-based responses before mass media had a chance to spread unsubstantiated, damaging rumors.

4.     The challenge of content creation is to then connect the idea to its audience.

Connection normally involves creating an engagement mechanic, content forms and interfaces to distribute the content. Traditional marketing communications methods are outbound one way conversations. Whether the mechanic be an incentivized offer, a challenge, entertainment e.g. humor etc. etc., many existing engagement mechanics act to interrupt another content environment with a broadcast branded message.

Social Networks, like many emerging content vehicles are very different. They are their own content destinations, have few standard content forms or durations, are based on interaction and are very much user controlled rather than edited or published content environments. The most common engagement mechanics in Social Networks are exchanges, debates or conversations, but sometimes the mechanic can just be a stimulus or accelerant for an interaction / chain reaction.

5.     Conversations are not just limited to words

We are used to either verbal or written conversations. In the digital era, transactions, information, entertainment, communication or any type of brand interaction is a branded conversation. Social Networks challenge us to expand our communication skills and experiment to include other diverse combinations of content / expression forms, in a diverse array of duration for use in different distribution environments.

6.     Content distribution / access networks  - don’t let the vehicle drive the strategy

Over time, to build sustainable business models, traditional content distribution mediums have developed standardized formats and forms. They have developed tried and tested formulas for their given content form / pipeline e.g. Long form articles for magazines, sound bite news for CNN, headlines for newspaper etc.

Broadband driven pipelines and devices are now providing viable, more free-form alternative branded communication channels. Enhanced tools, applications and varying interfaces allow more room for proprietary connections and different content forms and durations. Opt-in / preferred networks provide a more receptive context.  Search networks and content tagging are facilitating access to segmented content that fills consumer need niches. The down-side of content form liberation is that a different skill set, a lot more work, research and patience is required to develop interfaces and content.

7.     Why all the noise about Mobile?

The mobile platform is inherently social through text messaging or voice forms. Improved interfaces, intuitive applications and broader bandwidth are facilitating richer content interactions. Richer content enhances the stakeholder’s ability to monetize the environment, hence the increased buzz. Our marketing challenge is to adapt these rich content forms into digestible sound bites that can be consumed on the run. Micro-blogging (e.g. Twitter) is a popular short-form of content and for marketers it is allowing iterative, collaborative conversation / thought threads.

8.    Social marketing approval stakeholders are different

One of the greatest barriers to approval of social marketing initiatives is confusion as to how client customer related communication decisions are made. In smaller or well integrated companies, the brand marketing director has broad influence over the decision process. Normally though, other stakeholders have significant influence over approval decisions / compartmentalized budgets e.g. Directors of: Corporate Communications, PR, Sales, Relationship Marketing, SAC, Search Marketing.

As a consequence, advertising agencies often naively try to either sell to the wrong person or reinvent the wheel, ignoring that many areas other than marketing already have sophisticated business aligned success metrics and process that can and should be easily reapplied to the Social Marketing space e.g. SAC conversation planning and PR and Corporate Communications key messages measurement.

9.     Metrics and measurement tools are imperfect, but are developing

Much of the monitoring of the social marketing space is automated. Generally, there is some order to filtering the results to draw insights, but most current analysis is reactive and subjective e.g. sorting comments into positive, negative or neutral.

There are a large number of sites that block automated data collection, so at best monitoring covers only a part of the social space. This means that many results need to be manually collected – a less dynamic, expensive and relatively inefficient process. Additionally, privacy concerns may soon result in more sites blocking current automated (bot and cookie) collection methods.

Summary: The keys to Social Marketing success:

·       Marketers need to understand the gap between what type of conversation their category / customer base warrants and what they are currently prepared to undertake.

·       Ideally, a Social Marketing strategic architecture should align objectives, messages and encompass integrate all three pillars: Awareness, Conversation and Transaction

·       This architecture should also be integrated across all internal client stakeholders / departments

·       It’s not enough to be reactive. Ideally the Social Marketing architecture should project the conversation and closely monitor conversation thread evolution

·       Our ongoing challenge to is to roll-up results into usable insights

·       Social Marketing is much more than tactical actions. It requires continuity & commitment to maintain conversation / relationship

·       If a brand wants to engage in a conversation, it needs to add value to be a participant / earn it’s seat at the conversation table

Creds: AQUARIUM Marketing and Communications – Planning for efficiencies

Articles we’re reading

Other Oxygen

Aquarium In the news

March              - 58 Article links

February          - 40 Article links

January            - 31 Article links

Creds: AQUARIUM Marketing and Communications – Planning for efficiencies

Articles we’re reading

Other Oxygen

Aquarium In the news

In a world of disruption and an ever increasing amount of new information, this quick 20 min presentation explores how digital affects consumer / customer expectations. Click here to view presentation or on the image below to see a summarised video.

AQUARIUM Marketing and Communications: Planning for efficiencies

This presentation is an attempt to explain what is wrong with the current advertising business model and to highlight the gaps in strategic planning services that Aquarium is attacking. (click here or on image below)

This a work in progress – we’d love to hear your feedback ..start a conversation.

AQUARIUM Marketing and Communications: Planning for efficiencies

“We Have Been A Very Comfortable Industry”

In New Orleans, there’s a popular saying: “Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler (Let the Good Times Roll).” MPG’s global CEO Maria Luisa Francoli said, however, that’s no longer the case in the agency business…more

AQUARIUM – Babelfish translation:
Self explanatory…at least someone is vocalising the tensions between investing for the future and hanging onto a profitable, though limited agency model. Aquarium can help agency partners (maintain a seat at the decision table) by filling some of these serive offering gaps – particularly in the areas of integrated marketing and deriving marketing efficiencies.

Study: 45% of CMOs See Agencies as a Time Suck

A tough economy is forcing marketers to defend their marketing, which is leading to less satisfaction with their agencies and even more emphasis on ROI, per two separate studies…more

AQUARIUM – Babelfish translation:

With healthy top line revenue growth, agencies have historically not felt threatened by business consultancies encroaching on their turf. The economic crisis, is forcing a reevaluation of which supplier has the power (models and credibility) to best advise clients on how to best spend their marketing budgets? If the door is left open…be sure that someone will enter.

The Future Agency Of Record Will Be Social

There is a quiet battle raging in the advertising industry over who will become the Agency of Record (AOR) for marketers’ social media efforts. With traditional media for delivering advertising declining in reach and effectiveness, and an even greater call for advertising efficiency in a down economy, becoming ….. more

AQUARIUM – Babelfish translation:

Great article to understand the varying discipline POV’s about social and conversation planning.

The once ubiquitous and powerful ad agencies have struggled to, or refused to adjust their structures to an increasingly complex mix of channels and message segmentation.

As fragmentation of mass audiences and economic pressures on staffing and budgets force communication to becomes more complex (and efficient), Clients have suffered.

In response, there has been a separation of (horizontal) strategic integrated planning and (vertical) discipline planning and new types of marketing suppliers / agencies have emerged to fill the service void.

Critical strategic marketing functions that provide valuable proprietary insights will most probably fall in the domain of an internal client department or be within the scope of a specialist horizontal strategic planning partner.

AQUARIUM Marketing and Communications creds: Planning for efficiencies

by Joe Marchese, Mediapost Tuesday, February 3, 2009, 2:30 PM

There is a quiet battle raging in the advertising industry over who will become the Agency of Record (AOR) for marketers’ social media efforts. With traditional media for delivering advertising declining in reach and effectiveness, and an even greater call for advertising efficiency in a down economy, becoming a marketer’s social media AOR can be a huge win and provide a map to a much-needed new business model and revenue stream for agencies.

Further complicating matters, as technology improves and the proliferation of social networks continue, all media will eventually be considered social media. So those agencies that win the title of social media AOR today, may very well simply evolve into a marketer’s overall AOR, acting as the central point of all of a client’s marketing initiatives.

The battle for the social media AOR title is even crossing what was once well-defined lines within the advertising industry. It seems to make just as much sense that a marketer’s social media initiatives are handled by a public relations agency as it does to enlist a media buying agency. Maybe the creative agency is the right lead for social media efforts? Would it be better to have a small company focused on social media in its DNA, or a holding company, with its expansive resources? All seem viable, and all likely are. It will come down to who can evolve to meet the demands of stewarding a client’s social media efforts. Here is a brief look some of the players and what makes them a potential fit as social media AOR:

PR – Because success in social media is more “earned media” than “paid media” — and isn’t earned media what great PR companies deliver? It is obvious to nearly every advertiser that to be effective they need to be in people’s social content, rather than simply being placed next to people’s social content. It’s like the difference between being covered by the New York Times vs. buying an ad in the Times. Buying ads is just fine, and there will be a place for it, but it’s not the holy grail.

Media Agencies – Because “free media” is a bigger fairy tale than unicorns. There will be significant capital outlay to earn people’s attention in social media, which will need to be spread across various social media vendors and creative partners. It will be incredibly important to track real costs and measure ROI.

Creative Agencies – Because nothing is more important in social media than the idea and execution. With bought media, marketers were at least guaranteed reach even for bad ideas and bad execution; with social media, bad ideas and bad executions are over before they start. Additionally, social media is going to demand creative iteration and evolution based on real-time consumer feedback.

Research/Consultancies – Because “listen to the consumers” is the buzz phrase of choice for good reason. Social media provides as much, if not more, value as a way to listen to people’s needs and wants. Marketers can finally have the one-to-one relationship they have been looking for and do a better job of creating and distributing products people want. They just need a way to hear people, and be heard, through all of the noise.

Independent Focused Agencies – Because managing social media efforts requires not only a unique skill set, but a unique relationship between a client and its social media agency. Independent agencies focused on social media have the advantage of structuring their offerings, relationships and organization to maximize return on a client’s social media initiatives.

Holding Companies – Because if you think about it for a second, they have all of the above, all of the pieces of the puzzle; fitting them together seems to be the tricky part. But if the holding companies can pull from their various resources to provide an overarching social media solution, it might be hard to compete with them.

Search Engine Marketing Agencies – Because their DNA is based on the type of ongoing, iterative relationships (re: partnerships) necessary to allow success in social media. SEM firms redefined ROI for marketing initiatives, and while social isn’t search, it’s not broadcast, either.

In the long run, marketers will need agencies that possess all of the above skill sets — or at least one agency proficient in coordinating a seamless effort across all of the disciplines required to activate their brands in social media. Who do you think wins? What else will they need? Leave your comment here and/or @joemarchese (www.twitter.com/joemarchese) me on Twitter, to continue the conversation.

AQUARIUM – Babelfish translation:

The once ubiquitous and powerful ad agencies have struggled to, or refused to adjust their structures to an increasingly complex mix of channels and message segmentation.

As fragmentation of mass audiences and economic pressures on staffing and budgets force communication to becomes more complex (and efficient), Clients have suffered.

In response, there has been a separation of (horizontal) strategic integrated planning and (vertical) discipline planning and new types of marketing suppliers / agencies have emerged to fill the service void.

Critical strategic marketing functions that provide valuable proprietary insights will most probably fall in the domain of an internal client department or be within the scope of a specialist horizontal strategic planning partner.

AQUARIUM Marketing and Communications: Planning for efficiencies