The company is 99designs.com, and it's crowdsourcing the design process. Logos, web pages, business cards, you name it. Clients post a project -- it takes about 10 minutes -- and members of 99designs' database of 5,000 plus designers will submit their designs over the next week. It's a winner-take-all game and the fees start around $200 for a logo.

Sound potentially disruptive? It sure does to me. And as you might expect, when the story of their funding hit the press, some of the conversations blew up. Understandably, designers are concerned.

Why I tried it
While the news of 99design's funding initiated a lot of conversation around crowdsourcing, the practice has actually been around in various forms for a number of years. But the combination of a major crowdsourcing tool coming to the design world in addition to the company getting $35 million in funding for a pretty simple site structure was enough for me to take a closer look.

But the decision wasn't without a little anxiety over what crowdsourcing can do to just about any creative process. I've spent over 20 years making a living coming up with creative solutions to business problems. Many of my friends are in the same business. When sites like elancer.com started popping up, it was easy to say, "Well, that's coders dealing with ones and zeroes. With creative jobs, it's different."

Or is it?

After all, ideas are perhaps the easiest forms of data to exchange. Entire ad campaigns can be presented as a written paragraph with some visual references. For visual projects like design, you could argue the language issue isn't nearly as problematic.

Even the argument of cultural relevance is shrinking amid an increasingly connected world.

Seeing the potential for very big industry disruption, I decided to do what I've been recommending clients do when facing down a similar change in their industry's way of doing things. Get first-hand experience. One of the best ways to deal with change is by becoming more familiar with the source of that change.

My crowdsourcing project
In searching for the right project to try crowdsourcing on, I decided to use it for a logo for Zuum, a Facebook Page strategy tool I'm launching with a developer. There were several key factors in that decision.

One is that the logo is for a personal project, and I knew we had a certain amount of flexibility in case the crowdsourcing didn't pan out. Given that I really didn't know what I'd be getting for design results, that was key.

Another factor was that I had a clear idea of what we were looking for. I liked that you could write "Zuum" without picking your pen up from the paper, and that fluidity is something I wanted incorporated into the design

Related to that, we knew we wanted a word mark -- a way of handling the text in "Zuum" so that the design elements would be the word itself.

We also had a specific color palette in mind, which eliminated a lot of potential exploration, and would allow us to focus specifically on the word mark style.

Also, we launched Zuum with the idea of getting a working model up, and making tweaks as we gathered early user feedback. We decided that we would also apply that approach to the site design, and even the logo if needed.

Lastly, I have quite a lot of experience writing creative briefs and communicating with designers, sometimes working with people half way around the world.

The crowdsourcing work process
Before I get into the workflow process, keep in mind this is the only creative crowdsourcing system I've used. Given their funding and base of 5,000 plus designers at 99designs, I was confident it would be a representative crowdsourcing experience.

Sign up is easy, and within minutes you're already into the Creative Brief. As I mentioned, I think my familiarity with this part of the process helped considerably. The site does a good job getting to the core of what creative briefs are about, using a slider process to guide the novice brief writer through the key emotional drivers they'd like the logo to convey. You could argue that this is taking sandpaper to a very nuanced process, and I'd agree, adding that I think that's necessary to ensure that users with little brief-writing experience can get through it.

One other key option is the dollar amount for your contest. The site suggests prices of $195, $295, and $495, with the number of expected designs you'll get back for each being 25, 40 and 80 respectively.

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Today, campaign development has evolved to include much more, especially for interactive rich media that crosses multiple platforms. A standard creative agency could realistically utilize an art director, copywriter, print designer, interactive designer, and a developer. But you start to have the problem of too many cooks in the kitchen.

Now throw in another variable: Media agencies. I'd say that 80 percent of the meetings I've been in over the last few years ended with some head scratching when we realized the media agencies aren't even thinking about the new creative process at all. I won't name any names, but there are still agencies that don't even have an online initiative ramped up. This is 2011, people! Come on.

The problem is that many media agencies haven't evolved their strategy, and a lot of campaigns get muddled as they are passed along from one group to the next, resulting in creative that isn't designed to support the original campaign goal. In this equation, it's often the interactive designer who gets pushed aside and curtly told to "make things look interesting," and that's really where the biggest problem is introduced.

In these situations, I'll try to get access to some of the designers and developers to ask about the intention of their design and build. I start with simply asking "What is the goal?" Often, they'll stare back blank-faced and say something like, "What do you mean by goal?" For an interactive designer to not understand a campaign's end goal is absolutely crazy, and it's probably why consumers ignore their campaigns.

With interactive advertising, everything needs to be designed and developed with the end goal in mind, whether it's a completion rate, call-to-action, or even a (prehistoric) click-through-rate. A huge portion of achieving that goal relies on the designer and/or developer, but they are oftentimes left in the dark.

Why? Because while media agencies have evolved to include digital teams, they're still running everything in a siloed approach. Sure, you could boil everything down to a one-man show and have one employee design, animate, and art direct your entire rich media or video campaign. But the truth is, there aren't many people out there who can do everything well, and they often come at a price.

If "Mad Men" has taught us anything, it's that if you lock two people in a room for long enough, they'll emerge with a groundbreaking idea. One of them might leave with a black eye, but at the end of the day everyone will sip Scotch and laugh about all those billable hours getting passed on to the client.

The best way to develop campaigns that hit your end goal is to keep everyone involved in the loop. You don't need four or five people all sitting in a room to brainstorm the campaign because that could be a long, grueling process. But because interactive creative teams must contemplate copy, design, usability, development, pricing models, and technical expertise, you need get everyone involved early.

Truly empowered creative and development team members are the new warlords of advertising strategy. The concept of functionality relies on design -- if your copywriter and art director aren't working with a digital designer, many items are lost in the mix. Don't force everyone to sit in one grueling meeting, but keep constant contact and bounce ideas off different team members. Once you have a concept, talk to the developer. They can tell the art director very early on that a campaign execution is not possible, but it's also likely they can take the original idea in a new direction.

When everyone on the chain is aware of the campaign's end goal, you start producing digital advertising that actually takes advantage of the medium. Digital strategy is evolving, and creative agencies had better follow suit.

David Sanderson is director of creative services for Tremor Media.

On Twitter? Follow iMediaConnection at @iMediaTweet.

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I've been in the advertising business for 20 years, and I know the disconnect and distrust between media and creative run deep. So, while this comment wasn't surprising -- I've heard it fairly often -- it still feels shortsighted to me. Advertising involves both art and science; therefore considering just one-half of that equation returns a fraction of the potential. Imagine the results we could deliver if both media and creative were optimized in concert.

One of the benefits (or curses) of working in digital display advertising is the fact that we straddle the two disciplines and must operate fluently within both. This article is my attempt to bring the two sides closer together. I believe the exercise of using data as a catalyst to synthesize media and creative will benefit all parties involved, it will reinvigorate the medium of display advertising, and, yes, it will improve results for our clients.  

First, a disclaimer: I'm a creative/tech guy, so to media teams, I will channel Howard Gossage and say, "No amount of targeting and optimization will make an ad interesting -- creative still has a huge impact on viewers." (Study after study has shown that clever, creative advertising improves persuasion measures, such as recall, brand attitude, and purchase intent.) And to creative teams, I advise that denying data is like denying global warming. It's our reality, like it or not.  

In the good old days of broadcast television, one ad was delivered to everyone, regardless of whether they were the right target for the product being marketed -- and it worked. As this medium evolved, networks began dicing up their audiences by demographic, offering more relevant (and responsive) targets to marketers. But, even today, those targets are none too specific, so the advertising has remained demographically hit-or-miss as well; everyone still gets the same ads on TV. For example, this weekend my wife, 11-year-old daughter, and I were offered the opportunity to learn about Viagra, Budweiser, and pickup trucks during an evening in front of the tube. 

The digital space has followed a similar trajectory. Since the 1990s, we have created essentially the same experience. Though during the intervening 15 years vast amounts of audience data were brought to bear, and we have become able to display ads to narrower and more focused bands of viewers consuming the same content, we have still delivered one-size-fits-most creative executions. Despite that, data-driven placements have improved response and efficiency, so media got the credit for the recent boom cycle in display advertising. Those of us on the creative side of the fence worked on our screenplays and acted all emo about it.  

Part of the reason creative teams have been left out of the display advertising strategic loop is that we are naturally resistant to data, analysis, and critique. Another part is that it is very difficult to create template advertising that's interesting and engaging. Yet another part is simply that data can be very prescriptive and restricting. I propose a truce using my favorite Einstein quote: "Not everything that counts can be measured. Not everything that can be measured counts." Translation: Those on the creative side should use the data that makes for interesting and relevant advertising. Like all creative enterprises, ours is a reductive process, but we must include past performance, audience analysis, and predictive targeting in our tool set. We want to connect with people, and these are powerful tools. 

I advise the media side that the data marketplace is fairly saturated now. Everyone is bidding on the same audiences, and we are starting to see a plateau in both media performance and efficiency -- even with behavioral data. At the same time, creative display technology is mature -- we have tools, processes, and mechanisms to develop adaptive, dynamic, and multidimensional ad units. I believe that the next display cycle, starting now, will be about the merger of data, media, and creative. Given the ability to know who is looking at our ad, where the ad is placed, what content that page contains, and its sentiment, our technology will deliver the most appropriate creative version of an ad to those audience members targeted by ad exchanges. It optimizes the creative based on past performance -- and given enough social lubricant between creative and media teams, it could just as easily trigger optimization routines in the media as well.  

So, what's the process? I propose the following schema:

When the campaign is initiated, determine appropriate KPIs.

Every vertical, client, campaign, medium, format, and creative execution has a different set of benchmarks by which to judge its success. Are we delivering a user to a landing page? The KPI could be a "click." Are we calculating CPO or CPA? The KPI might be form completion or order completion. If the goal is to influence purchase intent, the KPI to consider might be interaction rate or brand time. Determining these KPIs allows both media and creative teams to calibrate to the client goals, and develop the most appropriate plan of attack.

Creative and media plan together and agree on appropriate initial "best guess" segments, developing each strategy in concert.

In my experience, creative and media look at target insights quite differently. Given the opportunity to develop a response without being constrained to a pre-approved media plan, creative strategists are more able to find unique and varied message opportunities. Of course, media will bring their recommended target set to the table, though the two overlap to a good extent. By distilling them into the best, most efficient target-set, we can provide the client with the best of both worlds -- and with group ownership of the total plan.

Form a communication matrix based on the creative/media strategy.

The creative teams can use this to develop multiple executions under their conceptual umbrella. This matrix is probably foreign to all but the most direct mail-experienced creative teams. More importantly, it is also foreign to some more traditionally minded clients that are used to approving only one target for any given campaign. So, present these clients with the matrix and the logic behind it -- this will keep the program on the rails as the campaign progresses.

Develop and program technical frameworks that allow for flexible content within each ad.

The ability to create flexible creative "shells" -- or the ability to create multiple versions of standard Flash ads at scale -- is crucial to being able to deliver customized creative without breaking the bank. This part is easily managed with just about any rich media vendor. But without a creative solution that allows a certain level of flexibility, the ad creative nearly always suffers from "template-itis."

Deploy the ads, and after a delivery threshold has been met, begin regularly scanning the DSP audience reports.

Reports that show how creative versions are over or under-indexing (broken out by audience) provide valuable insight not only into how a creative version is performing against our presumed target, but also what new targets may exist. If an ad version is successful with a target that hadn't originally been anticipated, place and weight that creative with this new audience segment. Conversely, if a message version is underperforming, tweak it if possible, or remove it from rotation.

Rinse, repeat.
Again, studies have shown that the combination of relevant targeting and relevant content is symbiotic. If we are to meet the ever-increasing challenge from our clients to improve efficiency and ROI, we must be willing and able to work together to systematically develop and deploy interesting, engaging, and effective display for all of our potential audiences, dynamically and at scale.  

Michael Lowenstern is managing director of digital advertising for R/GA.

On Twitter? Follow iMedia at @iMediaTweet.

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Ever since we first picked up a crayon as a child, we've been creating content. Sure, we didn't care about the ROI of coloring pages or the SEO of finger painting. We created because it was fun and we enjoyed doing it. Somewhere along the way, too many of us forgot this.

Ever since my book "Content Rules" hit store shelves, I've found myself talking about how to create content more than ever. People hope and pray for a silver bullet solution to the "mystery" of a content strategy, and while I'm here to tell you that there isn't one, I do want to give you tools to get started immediately.

I want to take my time this month to give you the basic steps that you can do this week during your lunch hour to begin embracing and using content in your company.

I don't care if you are a church looking for new parishioners, a singer-songwriter looking for more fans, or a small business looking to sell more widgets. Over the next five days with only an hour a day you can get started. Where you go from there is up to you.

Yes, this is only the beginning, but every journey begins with a single step.

Day 1: Take a content inventory
Talk to the other people in your company about anything they have that might be able to be leveraged as content moving forward. Every company I've ever walked through this exercise always finds something they can use. Don't worry about how you are going to use this content at the time, but rather focus on finding out what you have and making a list of it all.

I want you to start here because unless you are just starting up your business, you've got assets of some sort that we can start with even if you are not thinking of them as content right now.

Places that content might be hiding:

• If you have ever had a booth at a trade show or conference, you must have created brochures, video demos, or have some left over swag that you were giving away.
  
  
• Your marketing or sales departments must have slide decks that they work from on a regular basis.
  
  
• If your executives or other staff members speak at events or in the office there may be a video of it.
  
  
• Intranets and shared file servers often have more than you'd imagine on them. Click around and you never know what you might find lurking.

Now I can't say if you'll find coal or diamonds; but you've got to start with something and so an inventory of what you already have is a critical starting point. Then, examine what you turned up, and start thinking of ways you can reimagine that content and share it with others.

Day 2:  Check out what others are doing
There is no better way to determine the type of content you want to create then to look at what others are creating. This can serve, as both research and inspiration, so don't write it off as a waste of time.

If you are not sure where to look, start on your competitors' websites. Look at what they are creating and sharing with their customers. This is also important because it sets a benchmark for where you are right now, and often you may discover that you are not as behind as you might have thought. Take specific notes on what media they are creating for, and where they are sharing their content. If they are sharing on a particular platform, than it's more than likely you want to be there as well.

Also, go out to your personal Facebook and Twitter accounts and see what your friends are sharing and commenting on. While this may not represent how your customers will share and react, it will help you appreciate more how people share content they find interesting. Understanding these behaviors will increase your chances of creating engaging content.

Day 3:  Establish your footprint
One of the rules in my book is to "create wings and roots," and what you'll be doing today is setting up the roots for where your content will live.

Now, if you are a small company or have an IT department that is ok with you experimenting, this may mean setting up WordPress or another blogging platform on your servers. But, what I'm really hoping for is that you'll go out and set up accounts on the major social media networks. At a minimum, you should have accounts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr. Now, I don't know if you'll be actively using these in the future, but having them established is never a bad idea so go ahead and get them.

The goal is to set them up, but also to poke around and see what you can do on each. Most allow you to hide your actions so you can play in peace. Yesterday, you looked at your competition and more than likely asked a couple of times, "How did they do that?" See if you can find the answers as you investigate each platform.

Keep in mind that today isn't about making your Facebook page perfect or uploading a batch of photos. It is really about getting to know the technologies better. It is critical that you understand what can and can't be done on each platform so that you can use them to the fullest when the time comes.

Day 4:Walk and daydream
How many of you just read that and softly screamed, "What?"

At this point you've spent enough time in front of your computer, and it is time to get away from the office for a bit so that you can think with a clear head. Want to be really successful? Leave the phone and any other devices at the office when you leave.

Take a notebook (the old fashion paper kind) and get out of the office. Now that you've seen what others are doing and have looked at where you might be putting content, I want you to focus today on thinking about the kinds of content you'd love to create.

Do not let important things like resources, time, and budget get in the way of your brainstorming because there are always ways to get around those later. Right now, if you had no constraints, what would you love to create?

As you come up with ideas, write them down. Be as specific or generic as you want. Not sure where to start, or need a nudge in the right direction? Try some of these questions on for size:

• If I could show only one aspect of my product, what it would be?
• What 10 things questions do my customers always ask us?
• Wouldn't it be great if our customers knew ______ about us?
• What did you notice that your competition was lacking in?

Don't over-think this walk, because the goal is to have a laundry list of possible content topics. You'll have plenty of time to flush them out in more detail, but hopefully at least one on your list seems like it would be an easy one to write a post about or film a quick video about.

Save this list because you now have the starting point of an editorial calendar, and the content to fill it with.

Day 5: Create!
It is now Friday and the end of the week, so it's time to have some fun and put all those previous lunch hours to the test. It is time for you to stop thinking about doing it and actually create a piece of content.

Take one of those ideas that stood out to you yesterday and create a single piece of content around it. I'm not sure if you are more comfortable with photography, video, or writing, but pick a medium and don't over-think it. Just create it and don't focus on trying to get it right -- focus on getting it done.

Once you've written your blog post or filmed your video, go back and look at it to determine how you can make it better. Remember that if this is your first time, it will not be perfect. We all start somewhere and get better as we repeat the process. Our parents were right when they told us practice makes perfect.

Feeling good about what you created? Now work with the powers that be and publish it so others can see it. Remember those roots you created on Day 3? Now you can plant them and let them grow.

I'm not trying to make light of how much work it can take to develop and execute a successful content strategy, but I also want to show you that anyone can get started today, and that instead of putting it off, you can start creating content in a week's time.

You can walk through this exercise by yourself or you can have your department go through it with you to see what emerges from the group effort. You never know, you could be on the journey to making your content rule before you know it. Safe travels!

C.C. Chapman is the author of "Content Rules" and the founder of Digital Dads. 

On Twitter? Follow C.C. at @cc_chapman.  Follow iMediaConnection at @iMediaTweet.

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In early 2010, the NCC had a small budget and a 12-year-old website that couldn't even be utilized within campaign efforts because of its outdated content and functionality. The NCC had no real connection to its consumer audience and no cost-effective options to communicate with chicken consumers on a national level. A website redesign was just the tip of the iceberg, though. The NCC wanted to improve consumer engagement with its brand and everything it stands for.

To increase awareness levels and ultimately chicken sales, The Cyphers Agency (TCA), NCC's advertising agency of record, created "chicken for the win," a consumer-generated media contest designed to spark conversation about chicken.

Challenge
The National Chicken Council's biggest challenge was budget. It needed to reach a national audience, but did not have budget for a full-blown national media campaign. The NCC therefore opted for a more cost-effective social media campaign for increasing top-of-mind awareness for chicken, with the broader goal of increasing chicken consumption. The council wanted consumers to be talking and thinking about chicken, and ultimately buying more chicken. With its old website languishing in obscurity, the NCC needed to get consumers engaged and active.

Strategy/solution
To keep chicken top-of-mind among the competition (beef and pork), the campaign leveraged the NCC's extensive recipe database to show the versatility of chicken. With the recipe database housed on an out-dated site (and a site redesign underway), TCA decided to use social media marketing vehicles as the platform for sharing recipes and ultimately creating buzz. It was able to reach chicken consumers where they were already spending time and felt comfortable interacting: social networking sites. To create some online buzz and impactful impressions to increase top of mind awareness, the campaign started with social network development. It used low-budget Facebook ads and online outreach to build an audience on Facebook and Twitter. 

The social sites became a source for recipes, cooking tips, news, fun videos, pictures, and polls along with chicken gear and gift certificate giveaways. A newly redesigned website with a searchable chicken recipe database, cooking and nutritional information, videos, and other valuable content was yet another resource for the growing audience.

While the audience was extremely engaged, the NCC wanted to raise the bar to ensure the fans would stay engaged by providing relevant and interesting content on a consistent basis. With the top-of-mind awareness objective set before them, TCA began to consider new mechanisms for creating buzz. Being connected to the audience, and really listening as fans expressed fun and quirky responses to questions about how and why they loved chicken, inspired the "chicken for the win" video contest.

The NCC decided to challenge the fans to prove how much they loved chicken. TCA created a microsite to house the contest information and video entries as they were submitted. Each entrant was required to push out his or her own video and garner votes on the contest site to make it to the finalists' round (the top 10 videos made it to the finals). A panel of judges chose the top three winners -- with a top prize of $5,000. The contest was promoted through social networking, low-budget Facebook ads, blogger outreach, Facebook fan page outreach, YouTube outreach, and brand partnerships with El Pollo Loco and Athens' Phyllo Dough.

The results
The NCC realized that there was a core group of people who are fanatical about chicken. The contest received 34 video entries, which garnered more than 16,000 votes and more than 3 million impressions on social media networks. On Facebook, the campaign resulted in doubling Facebook fans, garnering more than 4,000 interactions through 2010. On Twitter, the campaign grew followers by more than 200, with more than 60 retweets, mentions, and other forms of engagement.

Numbers aside, the level of engagement was intense. At the height of voting, fan comments on the Facebook page and Twitter reached an almost fevered pitch. Perhaps most telling is that fans continue to interact with the Facebook fan page and Twitter account to this day, months after the contest ended and the winner was announced.

Lessons learned
The NCC was extremely pleased with the level of participation in the contest, and the ongoing reverberations the campaign has had with consumers. It's clear that this campaign required a few key components to be successful:

• A great concept: Creating a concept that will mobilize the target audience doesn't have to get complicated. The concept shouldn't be so narrow that only a small niche of people want to participate, but it should still hone in on what the audience cares about. The true balance is making the contest easy to enter, but also specific enough that you get great user-generated content to use long after the contest ends.

• A huge prize: People need a reason to enter. Money is always a great prize, or something worth a lot of money (think tropical vacation getaway). Personal promotion is also a good incentive.

• Sharing options: Give participants the option to share their entry with everyone they know on their social networks. It will be easier for them to pass the contest to their friends and relatives, and ultimately drive participation in the contest. Additionally, enabling sharing greatly widens the audience that will connect with and participate in the contest and the brand. When contestants can easily spread the word and get votes for their entry, they become invested in the outcome of the contest and are empowered to do something about it, making them even more excited to be ambassadors for your business.

• Crisis communications plan: Too often companies shy away from social media because they have to give up control of the message. Regardless of how well the contest is planned and executed, there will be some sort of problem or question. If the contest is a great concept that is married to a huge prize, people will do pretty much anything to win -- meaning that they will also find anything to call into question or complain about. Having a crisis communications plan will help to prepare for these often headache-inducing inquires. Draft messaging with the proper responses, tone, references to the rules, etc. While it won't eliminate issues, it will make it much easier to respond to contestants in a consistent and professional manner.

Darren Easton  is VP and creative director of The Cyphers Agency.

On Twitter? Follow iMedia Connection at @iMediaTweet.

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In addition, social media has come to be a powerful tool for research and planning, acting as a vast online focus group to measure people's tastes and preferences. Social media can also help bring a more objective process to selecting the entertainment property or personality that your brand should partner with. As Dan Neely, founder of CEO of Networked Insights, puts it, "Use social media to size up the talent pool that makes sense for your brand so you can have an intelligent conversation about building both brands."

Four top brand strategists who specialize in working in entertainment partnerships spoke to iMedia about their process, their top tips, and the most common mistakes to watch out for.

Gary McCormick, immediate past chair and CEO, Public Relations Society of America. 

Top tips

• Research is key -- not just to ensure that the overall brand values fit with each other, but that both products/ divisions being marketed complement each other as well.
  
  
• Entertainment properties such as celebrities are often inherently less stable, and social media adds that touch of uncertainty to the consumer response.
  
  
• Partnership is a difficult process, with a heavy investment and potential risk to your brand equity. It should be entered into carefully.

iMedia Connection: You've worked in partnership development for a long time. What's the most important thing to keep in mind when seeking out a brand or celebrity to partner with?

McCormick: Most importantly, it's that initially to make sure that the brand equity is similar to yours, and that the brand values are similar. Once you commit your marketing funds and your brand awareness and your consumer touchpoints, you're risking some of your own investment and equity if you don't pick the right partner.

iMedia Connection: So research is very important.

McCormick: Yes, and secondly, it's important to understand what their priorities and commitments are. What is their media schedule? Who are they trying to reach, and how? Even if your brand equities are similar, they maybe marketing a part of the company that's a disconnect with the audience you're trying to reach.

iMedia Connection: There may also be power imbalances when trying to make this work...

McCormick: Absolutely. When you try and partner with a larger brand -- a popular brand getting asked to the dance by everyone -- as a smaller brand, you won't really have a lot of say or control over what you get from them. So often it's either live with that or don't play at all.

iMedia Connection: But when there's a good match...

McCormick: When two brands much up, and the equity is good, the delivery is good, the messaging is good -- they really can gain access to their target audience quicker, and ensure that transference of credibility. But it's a long-term initiative, and a heavy investment to make it work.

iMedia Connection: What about celebrity endorsements and partnerships?

McCormick: If you look at the celebrity genre over the last several years -- think Tiger Woods and Lindsay Lohan -- any number of celebrities who had very strong endorsement deals, the minute their brand becomes diminished, you have some impact on the consumer partner as well. You may see celebrity endorsement value diminished in the consumers' eyes more than it used to be. Of course, I say this, and the Kardashians continue to get $100,000 for an appearance...

iMedia Connection: Well, they're very smart.

McCormick: Exactly. But when you deal with an individual and their brand, as opposed to a business' brand, I think there's a higher risk there.

iMedia Connection: There's unpredictability.

McCormick: We've been so used to buying media, and controlling media from a marketing standpoint where it's black and white, so I think now that we have social media, and appearance value, and are leveraging co-branding, it's a different mix.

iMedia Connection: What do you think of social media's role in that mix?

McCormick: The interesting thing is that two years ago, we didn't hear much about it at all, while now social media's become a primary way of having a conversation with the consumer. Best Buy's monitoring and response of consumer comments is a great example of active engagement. But it's very resource intensive, so you have to pick the best times and means of engagement to ensure that it is benefitting the brand.

iMedia Connection: Consumers are increasingly savvy, so how do you ensure they get the most value out of these partnerships?

McCormick: The consumer is much savvier. They have to see the benefit, or there is no good reason for it. For instance, some of our partnerships in the past couple of years have been in the retail segment with our programming and talent -- we partnered on some makeover and design opportunities for consumers around some of our shows. It put us in a retail environment we couldn't purchase, but it also gave consumers something that was relevant to their retail experience, by giving them an opportunity for design consultation. You have to find what's strategic between the two brands, and it has to deliver some sort of special offer for it to really resonate with the consumer.

iMedia Connection: So that at the very least, they don't feel exploited.

McCormick: If they feel that way, then everybody wasted their money.

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It's gotten to the point where, on an alarmingly frequent basis, we find ourselves fielding questions from clients like, "Do we really need a website?" or "Why pay for an online ad buy if we have a Facebook and Twitter account?"

As media fragmentation gets further amplified by the aggregate pull of Facebook, the value of the traditional online campaign is constantly being challenged. Sure, people are spending more time than ever online; but in that time, they are visiting fewer places, and their conversations increasingly revolve solely around one topic of their choice.

In addition, how these types of conversations start is increasingly becoming intertwined with the role brands, agencies, and audiences play in creating that spark of conversation. To say that the audience is no longer passive is an obvious understatement. But it is how the narrative of that conversation is seeded, moderated, and fed that represents the biggest opportunity (and challenge) for agency marketers. And it is this vital life blood of social media that rescues the digital agency from irrelevance and obscurity in the branding process, even as it would seem to be making it obsolete.

The agency was, is, and always will be tasked with telling a story that captures the essence of a brand and places it into the public consciousness as if it had always been there. The tools with which agencies tell that story have changed over the years -- from handbills promising cure-alls to contests, sweepstakes, print ads, radio and TV spots, online campaigns, and social media conversations. And at the Tootsie Roll-like center of every one of these campaigns is a story.

It has been said that America's greatest export is the story, which makes Hollywood and Madison Avenue, arguably, our greatest natural resources. As we cede steel, dry goods, agriculture, and technology to globalization, we remain the world's largest exporter of story... both in the traditional sense, and in the marketing definition.

Here's an example: A movie is a passive experience. But video games have brought the Hollywood-esque full-length narrative story into the hands of the audience, letting them direct and guide it at will. The brand story has changed in a similar fashion. Talking at your customers rather than with them is so last-century. And it's no longer a given that the audience will passively absorb a brand's message. Audiences now fully expect the brand to participate and invite them into the conversation; to be acknowledged as an integral part of that story and critical to its success, because the reality is... that's what they've always been.

We've been saying this since the internet was in diapers. We have created, controlled, and directed -- to great success -- the stories of some of the world's biggest brands. Over the last decade, we've seen trends come and go, companies rise and fall, and we're still here to tell the tale. Now, with the advent of the social web, we have new tools, new audiences, and new methods and best practices with which to tell our brand stories.

The truth is, more than ever, brands need the digital agency to craft their stories by harnessing an ever-increasing array of social media tools to optimize the conversation and direct it to meet their goals. By building a symbiotic relationship between the brand and customers through the careful seeding of the conversation, the digital agency stewards awareness of the brand's personality and, by doing so, helps shape its legacy.

Beyond creating and refining the natural tone of a brand's story and conversation, the digital agency's role is to coordinate that message from a 360-degree / transmedia perspective through ongoing engagement on a variety of platforms. Print, online, mobile, TV, social... it's all equally important. And in today's hyper-connected environment, each channel can tell a different, inter-related part of the story. The digital agency's responsibility to the brand is to select the best tools to tell the story. For that to work, of course, the brand must trust the digital agency to recognize that communication trends shift, evolve, and adjust.

As the lines continue to blur between entertainment and marketing, some agencies will organically evolve into hybrid studios that produce "branded content" to further service their brand(s). Programming with the brand message baked in, marketed by the content creators who have limitless tools at their disposal is something that forward-leaning agencies are working toward. For example, our agency has been actively creating original branded content for theatrical, home video, and brand clients. And, more recently, we began producing our own original projects to pitch to brands in a reverse-engineered take on the traditional model. 

In this future that we are all writing together, we are the story. You, me, the brand, and the audience are all creating it. Where it goes is anyone's guess. But, to borrow a metaphor from the Titanic, it is the agency's responsibility to create an "iceberg," then point frantically and shout ICEBERG, and help the audience "change course," thus creating a dramatic hero moment for the brand, and a memorable chapter in an ongoing saga.

And no, the ship doesn't sink in this version.

Russell Scott is CEO and creative director at Jetset Studios, where Matthew Wayne Selznick is a producer.

On Twitter? Follow Matthew at @mwsmedia. Follow iMedia Connection at @iMediaTweet. 

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1. Personalized site experiences that drive to purchase

Amazon continues to be one of the best examples of developing and refining personalization of the online customer experience. Everyone is familiar with the Amazon landing page and its personalized recommendations, but Amazon has also developed a robust set of tools to provide consumers with a highly personalized overall experience. Tools include community settings/public profile, tracking product reviews, registries, shopping lists, gift lists/ideas, and personalized content.

An addition to note is the Amazon recommendations engine, which provides many ways for users to manage and control how it works. Since Amazon provides details on why a product is being recommended, users can elect to have products removed from future recommendations, designate products that are already owned, and treat items that one bought as a gift differently than those bought for oneself.

Amazon is the largest online retailer for numerous reasons, but it is clear that users value and appreciate the personal touch.

2. E-commerce sites with communities that allow users to customize their experience

Another brand taking an innovative approach is Vitacost, an online retailer specializing in vitamins and related health products. Vitacost provides customers the ability to join the Vitacost community. As part of the community, users get a dedicated page, photo section, progress blog, and place to track product reviews. The site allows the user to define one of four personal objectives (general health and wellness, weight loss, weight gain/muscle mass, or specific health concern) and then connect with friends and other people with common interests. A forum is provided to chat with other members, to see what products other group members recommend, and to share in discussion boards. By allowing customers to express their own preferences and enabling a site experience that reflects these preferences, Vitacost has leveraged the power of social networking to create discussions focused around its products. This personalization serves to drive better, more relevant engagement and promote loyalty to the site's e-commerce/shopping experience.

3. Personalizing shopping across channels

Yoox is a premium apparel retailer that focused on mobile commerce in 2009. They launched an iPhone and Android application offering a selection of fashion and design gifts and allowing users to ship gifts worldwide. The application also engages consumers in a questionnaire about gifts and tastes and then personalizes the mobile shopping experience.

4. Personalized customer relationship management (CRM) programs

Not only is it important to personalize the consumer's on-site experiences, but it's also equally important to customize the communications sent across channels. Kohl's asks users for their department preferences upon registration so that they can personalize and prioritize offers and products. Diapers.com tracks the ages of each customer's child (or children), enabling customized emails to be sent with specific products and offers based on the ages. Amazon.com goes a step further and sends follow-up emails based on a registered user's site activity. While such personalization requires user-level tracking across site and web analytics, such coordination enables re- targeting of customers who were much earlier in the purchase process than the traditional shopping cart abandonment email. No matter how sophisticated your CRM program is today, it's important to remember that email, mobile, and social networking sites offer tremendous opportunities to personalize messages in a cost-efficient manner.

These results demonstrate that developing a more personal approach to engaging consumers with your brand is a compelling value proposition.

So how can marketers begin to engage consumers using a more personalized approach?

Insights drive business impact
Marketers generally claim that consumer insights are at the center of all of their marketing efforts. Yet, when asked about how products, messages, and offers change based on these insights, studies show that only 30 percent of marketing efforts are leveraging these insights. This means consumers are engaging with brands that provide no differentiation or personalization of the site experience: cross sells, emails, promotions, and content 70 percent of the time.

Developing an approach for practically leveraging existing insight can be challenging. Being relevant to customers requires more than simply versioning content on-site and through communications. It requires developing a personalized experience map that shows how target segments interact with the brand at all phases of the purchase path. Only then can a strategic roadmap be developed to translate the overall experience into the day-to-day marketing tactics that are critical for future growth.

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That said, when you analyze the buzz and ultimate results of some of the most successful viral campaigns one tactic seems to pop up time and time again.

Personalized branded media.

You'll know it as the concept behind OfficeMax's long-running Elf Yourself holiday campaign, created by Toy NY and Evolution Bureau in 2006 and powered by JibJab from 2008 to present. But this kind of user-generated media has been employed to promote brands within every vertical, from consumer entertainment to consumer electronics, fast food to pet food. It's also been the bread and butter of companies like JibJab, which has seen over 150 million heads uploaded to its Starring You platform, with e-cards viewed over 400 million times to date.

Brands have given consumers the ability to slap their virtual photo on Christmas ornaments, insert their best friend (or worst enemy) into a clip from "The Dark Knight," or turn themselves into a character from "The Simpsons." But despite the apparent popularity of image-based experiences, avatars are, in fact, only a minor consideration when it comes to personalizing media.

"The majority is taking social information and creating media on the fly, using audio recordings and any kind of mash-up that's audio-visual," says Adi Sideman, CEO of Oddcast, which developed CareerBuilder's Monk-e-Mail and Minion Dominion for the film "Despicable Me." Last fall's much-hyped interactive film "The Wilderness Downtown" provides an example. The experience was conceived by Montreal-based band Arcade Fire, music video director Chris Milk, and partners at Google Labs to promote the band's new song. It pulled data from Google Maps and Street View to create a highly personalized and emotional video for each individual user.

According to Oddcast, media that's personalized is shared an average of 30 percent, compared with 2 percent for non-personalized marketing.

Social media has changed the game
For the consumer, there's something about seeing parts of themselves and their lives within videos and animation that's highly compelling. These types of efforts have traditionally played themselves out on stand-alone microsites. Five hundred million users have changed all of that. Increasingly brands choose to leverage Facebook Pages and applications for their personalized branded media campaigns, taking advantage of existing fans and networks of friends to facilitate distribution. 

The Frenzied Waters campaign from Discovery Channel used Facebook Connect to personalize its creepy promotion for the network's annual Shark Week event. The personalized, interactive tool -- developed by digital firm Campfire -- featured fictional videos of shark attacks from a first-person point of view. It pulled in data like the user's name, occupation, and photograph to build a personalized obituary, as if the user was the shark attack victim.

To promote the application marketing kits containing customized newspaper obituaries and various items related to the supposed attack were sent out to popular bloggers. According to Campfire, the 2009 campaign resulted in the most watched week ever on the network.

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If you're like most people browsing the internet, you're going to skim this. You might read the first paragraph; you will probably glance at the sub-headings; and you may just hit the back-button before you reach the end of the first page.

That's how everyone interacts with your textual content as well. Whether it be website copy, a press release, an email newsletter -- and in this day of ever-shrinking attention spans, even your Twitter account -- web users rarely use the internet for reading. They skim, flick, and click. There is a way, however, to game the system so that the content you need to communicate gets across to the user in the most efficient manner.

The "F-shape" of reading: Front-load your message
These graphics should tell you all you need to know about how people read on the internet-

The above images are the results of an eye-tracking study conducted by Nielsen Norman Group. Looking at how 232 users scanned thousands of web-pages, the study found that users primarily read in a pattern resembling the letter "F". The red areas indicate the areas they focused on the most, followed by yellow and blue. The grey areas were not noticed at all.

What does this mean?
Readers will focus first (and often only) on the top paragraph of your content. They will then skip to the top of your second paragraph to see if content retains their interest. Then they will quickly skim through the rest of your content, not reading, but barely glancing at the beginnings of your sections and sentences.

Therefore, the opening few lines are crucial to get your message across -- make sure that everything you have to say is communicated in those lines.

Readers on the internet have little patience for beginnings containing fluff. Keep your message short, simple, and at the top.

Headlines headlines headlines
Headlines are crucial to pull people into your content -- a strong, intriguing headline makes them more likely to click on your links, as opposed to the hundreds of others vying for their attention. Headlines also enable you to break up your text into easily readable chunks, allowing the reader to easily skim the content.

Here are some basic rules to follow in crafting the perfect headline:

• Keep it under 65 characters to optimize search engine indexing.
  
  
• Use the active voice, strong verbs, the present tense, and the most important words up front. The subject-verb-object structure is a good format to follow.
  
  
• Think like the audience you want to reach -- what terms would they type into the search engine when looking for your content (or your competitors')? Use those keywords.
  
  
• Headlines indicating numbered lists (e.g., 5 ways to get more clicks) are surefire ways to draw in your audience, as you're setting up a clear expectation on the length and readability of your content up front.

Make your content universal -- readable at any time, any place
It's easy to get caught up in hyper-targeting your audience, and using phrases and buzzwords that you think will get the right kind of attention. However, the web is a truly international space. Over one billion people are surfing the internet, so don't miss out on an opportunity to communicate with new users/customers just as well as you do with your target audience.

For starters:

• Make sure your language is as clear and simple as possible. Forty-three percent of Americans have basic or below-basic literacy skills (according to the U.S. Department of Education).
  
  
• Clear and simple language also enables translators (robotic or otherwise) to easily render the copy in other languages.
  
  
• Avoid slang terms, idioms, irony, overly descriptive, or potentially misunderstood phrases. Don't let your language unintentionally turn off a potential client or customer.
  
  
• Eliminate bias from your copy -- use gender-neutral pronouns. Invest in a stylebook to make sure you are using proper spelling and capitalization, and always aim for neutrality.

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In "The Buying Brain," Dr. A.K. Pradeep discusses the marketing implications of the fundamental differences among the brains of different groups of people. In conducting his research, not only did Pradeep find significant differences between the brains of men and women, but he also found that the brains of mothers are significantly different than those of other women.

Based on the unique characteristics associated with the brains of mothers, Pradeep found that certain creative elements are more likely to receive a favorable response from moms than other demographics. These include:

• Creative showing relaxing activities between a mom and baby, especially grooming activities



• Ads where people make eye contact with the audience



• Humorous, less-than-perfect situations regarding motherhood, children, or everyday life



• People enjoying the scents of products



• Pleasant, soothing sounds (no screeching or screaming, even if it's supposed to be funny)

Some brands have mastered the art of connecting with mothers, while others are still trying to figure out what makes this lucrative demographic tick. At this year's ad:tech New York, digital marketing specialists showcased stellar digital creative executions targeted to moms across four key verticals:

• Entertainment
• Consumer packaged goods
• Food and beverage
• Services

Take a look at these evocative case studies and learn how you can deliver uniquely relevant messages that drive moms to action.

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Sound can be an important part of the consumer experience, as it creates an additional sensory perception -- beyond the look and feel of a product -- to emotionally connect the consumer to a brand. Think about the famous Intel jingle, or Windows' well-known startup sounds. Even Harley Davidson tried to patent their engine sound. Those iconic noises promote brand loyalty and help bond consumers to your product.

So how do you create a sonic identity for your brand? Take a look at the following steps:

Co-author Mike O'Connor is the sound expert at Product Development Technologies (PDT).

Step one: Develop the interface
Designing a user's experience encompasses a number of elements -- one, of course, being sound. That said, the process has to begin with the design of a great graphical interface. Once the flow of data and interaction is designed, you can identify where sound can be used to enhance the complete user experience. 

Step two: Study the audience
It may sound obvious, but marketers often forget to consider the target user when building a sound identity. Ask yourself some basic questions about your audience; for example, do you create tech products or medical devices? Is your audience primarily comprised of kids or adults? A product for kids might have a simple but fun tone, while a product for the elderly may call for something soft and basic. If you're appealing to the technical world, a more complex and impressive sound may be the way to go. The audience should drive the entire user experience from visual design to sound appeal.

Step three: Determine the consumer's environment
Beyond identifying who your audience is, you need to identify how and where they will be experiencing the sound. For example, when charged with creating the sound for a medical product, one company created a peaceful and uplifting sound that  helped ease a patient's concern. A more technical sound with a lot of bells and whistles could have made patients nervous or irritated, fostering a negative reaction to the product. So ask yourself questions about how the sound will be experienced in context. Will it be in the home, or maybe in a busy subway station? The environment will further drive the type of sounds that will best suit your brand.

Step four: Experiment with a wide variety of sounds
Once you've identified the sound's audience and environment, and you move into the development phase, make sure you experiment with a lot of sounds. You might start with standard instruments like a keyboard and acoustic guitar, but move on to experiment with other, everyday sounds as well. The right sounds can be created by doing everything from dropping a can of paint on the floor to taking a sample of a lion's roar. Much like when you're creating the visual identity for your brand, building a sound identity is a trial and error process.  However, if you use the previous two steps to guide you, you'll be able to better identify exactly the right sound for your brand through experimentation.

Step five: Begin with the start-up sound
The start-up sound is by far the most important, and the it's sound that you should spend the most time on. Think of it as the first impression -- it's the very first thing the consumer hears, whether it's the sound that plays when they turn on your product or when they power up your app. This is not only the first impression, but also usually the sound the user will hear the most. Therefore, it's your best opportunity to deliver an iconic sound and bond the consumer to your brand. The start-up sound should be finalized first in order for the rest of the sounds on the device to work with it.

Step six: Roll out to the rest of the sounds
Consumers might not realize it, but the best brands use sound as a subtle clue to reinforce behavior and guide the user experience. For example, you're probably familiar with the TiVo "bump" that occurs when the user pushes a button that isn't effective. It guides them in how they can and cannot use the product. These "beeps" and "buzzes" used throughout the user experience are what we call the "sound library." It can include clicks, indicators, warnings, errors, connections, shut-downs, and more. While these may not be as recognizable as the start-up, they all affect the user experience and need to be kept within a sound brand family. If you've used a keyboard and guitar for the start-up sound, for example, you should use similar instruments and effects for the rest of the tones as well.

Step seven: Make sure the sound transfers to the product's speakers
Now that you've dedicated time, money, and resources to creating your brand sound, you need to make sure that the user will actually be able to experience it as you intended.  In the studio, sounds are being created in a high-quality file. However, the speakers specified for the product may not be able to deliver the sound quality needed to effectively convey the sound desired. During the sound creation process we use an equalizer tuned to the speaker's frequency range to ensure the sounds we create are the same sounds the user will experience. Full frequency, high quality versions of the sounds can then be easily output for use in other media applications by simply turning off the equalizer.

Many companies are becoming increasingly inventive when it comes to the sounds that consumers hear while using their products, and it's important to stay in step as consumers become more sound-aware. Some sounds will reach the level of inspiring Facebook groups and YouTube videos, but the truth is that most sounds won't -- and they don't need to. They just need to bond the consumer to your brand and keep them on the right path throughout their product experience.

George Guffey is the user experience manager at Product Development Technologies (PDT.)

On Twitter? Follow iMedia Connection at @iMediaTweet.

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Of course, to many in this business, that's all more nuisance than deterrent. And while selling innovative work is rarely a breeze, how it's presented and the point of view it comes from can have a big impact on whether it dies in the desert or makes it to the promised land.

So if you're having trouble pushing an idea through, here are a few things you might want to consider.

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There are several approaches and methodologies to consider when moving toward what's next. Why is it that some people are able to 'land' within six months of leaving/losing their job and others are out of work for years? I've spoken with dozens of candidates who are seeking a new career and my first question is, "What's your personal value proposition?" Basically, what do you have to offer a company that will add value for them toward building their business? After all, the main reason someone will or won't hire you is whether or not you can make them money.

The next question I ask these individuals is, "Why should a company hire you especially if you're on the outside of their industry?" It is vital for anyone making this transformation to have a crystal-clear, impactful response to this question, or else most of their interviews will end very quickly, assuming they get any. The ability to transfer skills, networks, (value!) from one industry to another is a skill that requires research, networking ability, and smarts. If you are not preparing yourself with answers to just these two questions, perhaps you need to re-evaluate your search process.

The most successful job seekers -- even if they've been in the same position for more than 10 years, in an industry that is shrinking -- intuitively understand that they need to reacquaint themselves with today's business environment. They create a business plan for their search. This is how to start.

First and foremost, focus on value proposition
One of the people who transformed his career along the lines described herein moved from advertising to film production. I'll call him Matt.

Matt recently transitioned his career in advertising and marketing to lead a division for one of the largest documentary and film production companies in the U.S. Matt saw an opportunity for his new employer that leveraged his existing skill set and network from his former job, and brought it to them directly in his interview. In analyzing his new potential employer's business model, Matt recognized an opportunity to work with advertisers that were seeking new and exciting ways to entertain and reach their consumers. He leveraged his marketing and advertising experience, and is now the managing director of a newly created branded content and entertainment division of the production company. He went from being unemployed to running a division of a large company that is focused on developing long-form video for both television and the web for advertisers.

Keep an open mind -- and the end in mind
I asked Matt, "What were the most important things that you needed to do to make a career change?" He replied, "An open mind, and being able to look for opportunities in chaos." When Matt found himself downsized from his position at a major advertising agency, he immediately put out his "shingle" as a marketing consultant. Matt began by developing a business plan, then implemented that plan, and brought on several clients. It was out of his consulting practice that the branded content and entertainment concept evolved, so without that experience as a solo practitioner/consultant, he would have never created the opportunity he ultimately landed.

What's the lesson? Don't be afraid to exert your creativity when translating your former dossier to your new opportunity. Many would-be employers will be impressed with your creativity, even if the specific skills or ideas don't translate directly. If you aim high, and they do, you may win big.

Stay on top of the marketplace
Another candidate I have worked with recently leveraged her abilities and network in Washington, D.C. legislative and regulatory circles toward a great position at a digital media company. Two or three years ago, privacy matters were hardly on the radar for digital media firms. But, this candidate, who I'll call Michele, was close enough to the Beltway scene to anticipate what was to come. Today's digital media landscape is rife with privacy concerns, debates and, therefore, opportunity for Michele, since she recognized the kind of value her insights could add for companies here. By translating her understanding of the byzantine D.C. environment for the benefit of a major media company, Michele became their first-ever privacy officer -- a position conjured by her, with some creative thinking.

Keep learning, be different, and know your why
You need to commit to developing keen personal insight before you make a commitment to your search. Know definitively how you will differentiate yourself and what value you can add to a company -- you won't get hired unless you can add value in some capacity. Will it be through selling something for them, or being smarter about something for them? It has to be one or the other.

The people who are landing the jobs communicate their uniqueness, their value proposition, and what they bring to the table. They are not afraid to break the rules and set themselves apart from other job seekers. They don't let their past experience dictate their future lives. These individuals who are open minded -- both to opportunities and to meeting people and learning from them -- will be the ones who grow in their careers in the years to come.

Erika Weinstein is president and co-founder of Stephen-Bradford Search.

On Twitter? Follow iMedia Connection at @iMediaTweet.

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The interactive portion of Austin's annual South by Southwest (SXSW) has become a paradise for the tech savvy, and where a crowd like that goes, marketers are not far behind. But making an impact in one of the most promotion-saturated events can be difficult.

The challenge
ESET, a leading global antivirus software company, planned a large-scale immersion campaign targeting downtown Austin during the annual conference, with tactics ranging from radio, billboards, and a fleet of wrapped cars, to more unconventional "experiences." These experiences included installations such as an interactive wall display that reacts to passers-by on the sidewalk, and a plexiglass-enclosed laptop covered in hundreds of live cockroaches. One of the more popular elements of the campaign was sure to be a photo booth which unexpectedly produces fake IDs using a likeness of the visitor. But one key question remained: How could we drive traffic to these experiences during SXSW?

The solution
Red Door Interactive devised a mobile scavenger hunt in which participants could use their mobile devices to locate and decipher simple, but engaging clues designed to drive foot traffic to four of the campaign installations and provide concentrated exposure to the brand. The prize? The first 200 to complete the hunt received a retail version of ESET's NOD32 antivirus software, and were entered to win a $2,000 Sony VAIO laptop.

Participants could either decode the clues using a mobile app, or receive their next clue via text message.

The 2D barcodes seen here are called QR codes. We choose these codes we believe they are becoming more viable, and this emerging technology matches our segment. After planning the scavenger hunt, we learned that SXSW organizers were planning to integrate QR technology into the event credentials, further reinforcing our direction.

Each clue card in the scavenger hunt included a QR code, as well as alternate instructions. As outlined in my previous post, participants could either read the barcode using a mobile app, or simply receive their next clue in a text message after sending the clue keyword to an SMS short code.

The best way to experience the scavenger hunt is to watch the following YouTube video documentary of two contestants going through the hunt.

The results

• 501 SMS interactions
• 70 percent of participants completed the hunt
• 67 percent of overall participants at any point were from Austin
• 55 percent of the people who completed the hunt were from Austin
• 78 percent of Austin participants completed
• 62 percent of participants from outside Austin completed
• 53 percent of the people that completed using QR were from Austin
• 55 percent completed using QR

We were pleasantly surprised to see that more than half of the finalists using QR were from Austin, as we expected that segment to be dominated by people in town for the conference. We did not gather any data that suggests that those groups are exclusive, and it stands to reason that many of the Austin finalists were also conference attendees. We were able to attract the attention of tech-savvy Austinites, which was a campaign goal.

During a test run in Austin, prior to SXSW, we discovered that only 7 percent of the finalists were using the QR codes. The SXSW event showed a much better response to QR, with more than half completing the hunt in that fashion.

Tips and learnings
If you are considering doing a similar promotion with QR codes, here are some challenges, solutions, and key learnings we found in executing the scavenger hunt.

Tracking: Without requiring a proprietary reader app, you cannot directly track the number of people who scan a QR code, and you will need to pass the interaction through another layer.

Limited reach: While QR codes are becoming more popular, the majority of people do not know what they are, nor do they know how or if their phone can read them.

QR codes and mobile web pages: Although up to 4k of text can be encoded in a QR code, there are three key advantages to simply encoding a URL, and using the subsequent mobile web page to deliver content. The first reason is flexibility: QR codes are static, and once they are created, the encoded information cannot be changed.

The second reason is measurability: As mentioned, we cannot directly track scans of QR codes, but we can measure resultant page views.

The final reason is simplicity: While the QR format can support a fairly large block of content, the codes become more complex. This results in reduced readability, particularly for print applications and situations where lighting may be less than ideal.

In short, QR codes can be very powerful as an option, but are horrible as a requirement.

Reid Carr is president of Red Door Interactive.

On Twitter? Follow Carr at @icowboy. Follow iMedia Connection at @iMediaTweet.

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Well, here's the good news: Sure, some of these rock stars are naturally gifted at storytelling (visually or verbally), but the reality is, good storytelling is not relegated to the cool kids. It's an inherent skill we all posses and have always possessed since the beginning of civilization, across literally every culture in every country. It's practically in our DNA. It's just that we've forgotten the fundamentals. In the spirit of restoring each of you to your storytelling greatness, here is a reminder of the five secrets "rock star" presenters know:

1. Be devoted to your audience
We all have a dangerous tendency to look at things through the prism of "What do I want to say? What do I want to show them?" And no offense to those of us in the digital marketing field, but we loooove to talk about our ideas and our work. Instead, try asking, "What does this group of people need to know, do, and feel as a result of this presentation?" and "How can I help this group of people do their jobs better? How can I help them become smarter?" By working backwards using your audience as the point of departure, a very different presentation will emerge. If you meet your audience's needs first, yours will be met ten-fold. Just don't forget what I affectionately call the Cheap Trick Principle: "Surrender, but don't give yourself away." Don't lose track of who you are and what your style is, in the pursuit of pleasing everyone, which leads me to...

2. Be you
The digital space is filled with some of the smartest, funniest, and most irreverent people in the world. Yet, you would be hard pressed to find humor and irreverence in most presentation situations. I've sat through presentations featuring some of the industry's top creative minds at big conferences, and have been bored within an inch of my sanity. But know this: Whenever a presentation feels low energy and dull, it's because the presenter is not actually presenting themselves. They are trotting out their "serious grown up" personas or the "we really have to win this pitch" personas. If you're not sure who you are exactly, or what your authentic voice is, you're not alone. Just think of how many dull presentations you sit through in a given week. There is a reason for this pervasive problem: Boring feels safe. It takes guts to be fearlessly yourself. But as an audience, we deserve the real you -- especially if you're trying to convince us of a new idea (or to write you a really big check).

3. Use PowerPoint/ Keynote, but do not rely on them
While books like "Presentation Zen" and "Slide:ology" have been a God-send, they have also sparked an almost religious devotion to developing the "perfect deck." As a result, I'm seeing quite a bit of what I like to call "Keynote narcissism." This happens whenever you see someone pouring hours into developing a gorgeous presentation, when the audience really just wanted a 10 minute update.

If your audience values time above all, pour your creativity into cultivating a sense of elegant but purposeful restraint. Having said that, PowerPoint and Keynote are powerful tools when they are used to help your audience to remember the content. John Medina's fantastic book, "Brain Rules" tells us that our visual sense trumps all other senses. This really does explain why we all go into zombie mode when someone throws up a slide full of text. High quality imagery, when used properly can create a mood, and help you make a deep impression into people's minds and memories. If you feel you must use lots of words, best to rely on a handout or leave-behind. 

I'll never forget the time I saw someone present a case study on her work with a major technology brand (think big, beloved consumer brand). She was incredibly proud of what they'd accomplished, and wanted the rest of the agency to see what her team had done. She then marched up and did the usual "Challenge, Solution, Result" slides in a 14-point font with a few supporting visuals. I always look at audiences to gauge the energy level during presentations, and what I saw was a group of people trying to be polite while checking blackberries and yawning behind their fists. Trust yourself. The truest part of you has a damn good sense of what will move an audience. 

(For those of you saying, "Yeah, but I deal in ROI and metrics. I'm not a creative!" I suggest you watch this little gem, courtesy of TED. Hans Rosling has showed beyond the shadow of a doubt that statistics and numbers can be made visually compelling).

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"It's time to leave the pessimism behind. This represents an unprecedented opportunity for agencies to become indispensable marketing partners," said Weiner in his Agency of the Future address at last week's IAB Ecosystem conference in Carlsbad, Calif. 

So what's holding agencies back from reaching their true potential? For starters, Weiner explained that the industry needs to get better at keeping up with customer and technology demands; yet, the current agency structure hasn't evolved at pace with media innovations, which makes it difficult for even the most innovative of marketers to push new ideas through. "The advertising holding company structure hasn't changed; it's still a television-centric advertising model," he said. This leaves marketers with two sub-optimal choices -- work with traditional agencies that don't necessarily have the necessary skills to deliver on digital campaigns, or work with a plethora of specialized agencies, which is difficult to coordinate and align across multiple platforms and projects. 

Beyond the internal factors are challenges coming from the audience itself. As we all know by now, consumers have taken over the direction of brand communications on many platforms. On top of that, the media platforms themselves have also changed in both form and function, fragmenting more and more as new media come onto the scene. These behavioral and technology shifts are causing a dire need for innovation; yet, as Weiner points out, the system wasn't built to be adaptable. "The interactive agency model disincentivizes greatness and fails to penalize mediocrity," he says.
 
Yet the fact remains: Advertising is about getting consumers to be product and service advocates. To be able to do that today, agencies need to find innovative solutions, and do so at reasonable prices.
 
To illustrate the need for affordable, consumer-centric innovation, Weiner related the example of "Amanda," who was shopping in a Barnes & Noble store. Amanda found a book she wanted, but before purchasing it, she took a look at a shopping comparison app on her iPhone. After finding a better price online, Amanda purchased the book from Amazon.com through the app while she was still standing in Barnes & Noble.
 
"This is happening increasingly every day. Consumers have near perfect access to product and price information," Weiner explained. "There now needs to be a value exchange between consumers and brands through advertising. Think about how your property can serve as a conduit for deeper interactions between brands and consumers; otherwise you just become an interesting way to interrupt them."
 
A view of the future agency
As Weiner sees it, the model for the agency of the future doesn't exist yet, but marketers can help create it in their own environments by focusing all their efforts toward meeting client needs. In turn, all business will need to play their part in allowing new digital technologies to take center stage in all strategic endeavors. Digital would be front and center, though there wouldn't necessarily be a bias toward it. "The new agency would need to have traditional buy and plan capabilities, but these don't have to be the centerpiece of every campaign," he said. "As agencies we should be focused on providing value and staying true to our special sauce, by asking what our clients need today, and determining what we need to do to provide it. What we do for brands is too core to the brand's future to remain on the periphery for much longer."
 
In reorganizing priorities to create this agency of the future, a few core capabilities will emerge:

1. Agencies must excel in using the internet as the world's largest focus group/research tool.
   
   
2. Search, social, and mobile must be integrated into every agency's DNA.
   
   
3. Agencies need to be platform agnostic, and brands provide the freedom for us to do so.

How to get started
Weiner outlined three communication behaviors that are vital to refocus all agencies on the goals at hand:

1. The best defense is a good offense. Today, individuals have power over shaping brand perception, and these brand reputations are being affected for the long term -- not just short term. Marketers need to embrace strategies that touch consumers where they are and in an ongoing way. "A brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room."
   
   
2. Build committed relationships; not one-night stands. Continuous conversations must trump one-time brand campaigns. Establishing an emotional bond is critical for success.
   
   
3. The agency of the future needs the client of the future. The siloed model just doesn't work anymore. If marketers want to rapidly and radically impact change in the marketing ecosystem, it starts with how you allocate dollars. "Marketers can force this change with their pocketbooks."

Being a winner in today's marketing space will require innovation. Regardless of how intimidating that can seem, the penalties for not being flexible and opportunistic might be severe. Weiner motivates his team to constantly innovate by reminding them of the famous quote from General Eric Shinseki, (former) chief of staff of the U.S. Army: "If you don't like change, you will like irrelevance even less."

Jodi Harris is senior editor at iMedia Connection.

On Twitter? Follow Jodi at @Joderama. Follow iMedia Connection at @iMediaTweet.

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For those of us who work in client services, we understand this juggling act and are challenged by it daily. How do we manage client requests and expectations, make our contacts look like rock stars within their own organizations, and contribute to our own agency's revenue? The recent economic challenges and the perception that advertising agencies will do anything for the client make it difficult to feel we can say no, and our clients may know this.

But at the end of the day, we should feel empowered to say no. It doesn't do our clients any good for agencies to be nothing but yes men. In fact, this practice can backfire with lackluster results and relationships that go stale. While it is our job to make our clients look good, it's also our responsibility to challenge their thoughts, motives, and objectives. At the risk of sounding cliché, we're on a journey together -- one in which we work to achieve common goals. It's also our job, no matter the discipline, to push the creative envelope and keep our clients asking questions. 

The following are a handful of scenarios and how you can work within these situations to gently push back and achieve a healthy balance between agency revenue and strong client relationships. 

Burning the midnight oil. Or, as it's commonly referred to, "quick turnarounds" or "fire drills." Long hours and advertising agencies go together like peanut butter and jelly (well, maybe not that satisfying, but there's no question that agency executives haven't had one without the other).

What do you do with a client who's constantly asking for more time? How many of these last-minute requests are the result of the client communication funnel or the client's procrastination? All of the "quick turnarounds" can actually do more harm than good. Projects that are rushed or pushed through quickly are prone to errors, and let's face it: The agency is likely to shoulder the blame if there's a mistake.

There will always be fire drills, but you can minimize them by sitting down with the client to establish expectations, set realistic deadlines/timelines, and determine if additional resources need to be made.

Kill 'em with kindness. If we've done our jobs right in client services, we've built relationships that will weather most storms. We call more than we email, we know birthdays and anniversaries, kids' birthdays, and favorite adult beverages. We try the best new restaurant in town, and may even fight over who picks up the check.

It is in these relationships where saying no or pushing back might be more challenging than ever. You may very well run into a situation where you know the client is wrong, but telling the client so could jeopardize what you've worked so hard to build. Think about the open, honest, trustworthy lines of communication you have with friends and family, and try to approach this situation the same way.

The bottom line is that we're looking out for their best interest, and above all, it is our responsibility to arm our clients with the necessary research, strategic thinking, and recommendations that make sense for them. Trustworthy relationships (the ones built on those critical open and honest fundamentals) have a much better chance of surviving differences of opinions.

Torn between two agencies. In the digital world, we frequently find ourselves in a position where we are handling one aspect of our clients' business while another agency (in many instances, a competitor) handles another part. What happens when we run into a situation where we think our way is the right way?

These are golden opportunities to showcase what we know. Advertising is a brutal business, and not taking advantage of an opportunity to showcase what we know -- even if it means venturing into another agency's territory -- can mean the difference between being a trusted client advisor or not. Just remember, in these situations, baby steps always trump bulldozers.

BOGO (buy one get one). Tough economic times definitely call for drastic compromises. Maybe we shave time off of a project or throw in a campaign at no cost. With these situations, clients can get accustomed to this type of behavior and expect this treatment long after the economy rebounds. The problem with this situation is that you've established a pattern of behavior. Throw one project in at no or reduced cost, and before you know it, well, you know how this works.

First, if you're not budgeting on a regular basis and getting SOWs signed, sealed, and delivered, you should be. Second, it's about business, and at the end of the day, clients should pay for work. Desperate times may have called for desperate measures, but don't let your agency fall prey to freebies.

Oldies but goodies. We all have them: the great clients who have, when all else fails, provided us with stability. The problem may be that they are reluctant to change, try something new, or may even recoil when we approached them in the past with out-of-the box ideas. The way to deal with this client -- and get past the rebuttal -- is to keep the ideas coming. The point is to step up your game and avoid falling into a trap of complacency. Everything changes: client contacts, client C suites, and client business. When the changes happen, you won't be in a position where you're playing catch up. You and your ideas will be right where they need to be.

There you have it -- a few of the age-old scenarios and how to get past a client who's got you between a rock and a hard place. Say no -- say it nicely and say it smartly -- but empower yourself and your teams with the tools that keep "no" from ending your relationships.

Laura Long is director of client services for Nurun.

On Twitter? Follow iMedia at @iMediaTweet.

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In 2009, Vibram (best known as the makers of the "five-finger" running shoe) worked with AMP Agency's integrated media unit, AMP Media, to initiate a campaign that aimed to engage core consumers across relevant online spaces and create a direct dialog with avid trail runners. For Vibram, this campaign represented a marked shift from its previous media strategy and a move into somewhat uncharted territory for the brand -- but a move it was finally ready to make.

Historically, Vibram relied on 100 percent print advertising. After three years of working with AMP Agency, Vibram took the full plunge into the digital pool by investing all 2009 funds online -- and the company currently has no plans to turn back. Through its digital efforts, Vibram was able to effectively leverage the power of the web and, ultimately, make the connection with consumers it was seeking.

Vibram soles are a prevalent component among top running shoe brands, but the company is not well known by name for its distinct technology. The company wanted to increase awareness among hard-core trail runners about the superior performance of Vibram-soled running shoes across multiple brands in which they are a component (e.g., Saucony and Patagonia).

The company shifted its full media budget online, and, by utilizing a strategic mix of paid and earned media for the first time, the results paid off.

It's all in the mix

Vibram used a combination of digital tactics to surround hard-core trail runners with a comprehensive Vibram message across the digital spaces they frequent.

Ads ran on top running sites (e.g., Runnersworld.com and Trailrunnermag.com) to reach target trail runners at destinations where they were most likely to be considering shoe options. The company employed interactive and engaging creative that was lifestyle relevant and piqued readers' interest. Ad placements were targeted within gear sections and trail-running shoe guides. Rich media banner creative included 60-second custom video featuring a unique magnifying glass interaction.

The brand also got social. Vibram identified a core group of trail-running bloggers and online writers and provided them with Vibram-soled Patagonia and Saucony trail running shoes for trial and review. Select giveaways to readers were also provided. Vibram gave bloggers access to company representatives for more-detailed product information and was able to directly engage and build a relationship with this influencer group. Vibram kept the conversation going throughout the trail-running season and opened doors for future interactions.

The results

The media campaign ran for five months beginning in February 2009. It garnered a total of 3.1 million paid media impressions and 100,000 social media impressions

Return on relationship: Pre- and post-campaign survey results tell the story:

• Pre-campaign: 57 percent surveyed had limited brand awareness prior to campaign
• Post-campaign: 100 percent surveyed said Vibram components will play a determining role in purchase decision in the future; 100 percent surveyed are more likely to recommend and buy Vibram soled shoes in the future

Bloggers told an average of 31 others about Vibram soles, in addition to their blog reader base. Here's a sampling of their powerful words:

• "I had heard of Vibram before and have had some shoes with Vibram soles, but didn't know about all the sports related shoes they were associated with."
• "I have mentioned Vibram to probably about 50-100 people. If you own a running website everyone wants to talk to you about running."
• "I never considered purchasing a pair of Patagonia running shoes prior to this shoe test. Now, I will be giving them strong consideration when purchasing a replacement pair in the future."

Return on engagement: Consumers saw the banner message six times during the course of the campaign. There were more than 39,000 interactions with ad units (including banner, expansions, and video). Vibram-soled shoes were sampled by 24 bloggers, and 24 product reviews were garnered (including photos and/or video and testimonials).

Lessons learned

Track them on their turf: Hard-core trail runners are spending a lot of time online. They are active readers and participants on a handful of select websites and running blogs, and they turn to these sources regularly for recommendations and reviews of products. By leveraging these spaces with information relevant to this core audience, Vibram was able to get into the online conversations and convert consumers.

It's worth a try: Vibram's confidence in its technology proved to be vital in getting core consumers to start buzzing positively about the brand. Vibram had never engaged bloggers directly but found that this type of dialog was immensely powerful for brand awareness and spreading word of mouth. By sticking to a topic of expertise for the brand -- trail running shoes -- Vibram was able to lend value to the consumer conversation and was welcomed by the blogger community.

Jump in the digital pool (head first): Using a one-pool approach to surround target consumers pays off. A paid media presence increases general brand awareness and legitimacy. Social media mentions give niche consumers a reason to engage with and believe in the brand on a deeper level.

Be real -- patient: It takes time to identify and engage the "right" influencers and to cultivate meaningful relationships with them, but that time will pay off. Niche audiences are serious about their passions and might also take more time to thoroughly try a product and review it. These passionate groups can sniff out "false camaraderie" from a mile away. So be authentic, provide the most relevant information to help them make an informed decision, and don't live by a deadline.

Karen Macumber is senior vice president of media services at AMP Agency.

On Twitter? Follow iMedia Connection at @iMediaTweet.

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To promote the launch of its new Dunny Series toys, Kidrobot worked with creative studio We Are Plus to develop a non-traditional marketing campaign using social media, mobile technology and apps, and guerilla street teams.

Coined the Dunny Hunt NYC '09, the five-day campaign took place one week prior to the formal launch of the toys. The campaign guided participants on a virtual and physical scavenger hunt across downtown Manhattan. Hunters used their smartphones to scan quick response (QR) codes on specially designed promotional materials to become eligible for daily prizes and the grand prize (a full set of the 2009 Dunny Series).

Kidrobot collected numerous online media impressions that spanned from niche titles to global mainstream marketing publications. Meanwhile, on the streets of NYC, the Dunny Hunt '09 campaign engaged more than 500 hardcore Kidrobot fans and played a significant role in driving sales at the company's ecommerce site and retail store.

The challenge
We knew that Kidrobot's trendsetting first-adopter culture would not react to a typical direct response campaign. With more than 20,000 subscribers on Twitter alone, Kidrobot fans are part of a generation that uses the internet, mobile phones, and word of mouth to communicate with each other and the brands they follow.

With the annual Dunny Series release, Kidrobot has continued to put a lot of energy and thought into finding fun, intriguing promotions that engage its fans and invite active participation. "Kidrobot is known for its toys, clothing, and store design," explained Budnitz. "But more than anything else, Kidrobot is a community and cultural experience. We're constantly finding new ways to involve our community in what we do."

For We Are Plus, the biggest challenge was working across the blend of different platforms to bring a new mobile technology into the final creative and strategic solution.

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Marketers may wonder why some online campaigns perform, while others don't provide the anticipated results. Often the answer can be found in the ad's basic design and layout.

When designing and considering the usability of an ad, we have to take into account the desired actions and how we translate these to consumers. Are those desired actions easily apparent and readily accessible to the average user?

Regardless of whether the campaign is niche, segmented, or skewed toward a particular demographic, it should take the consumer into account. This is what I call the "Ellen Effect." That is, will Ellen, my mother, be able to give you the desired results, or will she call me complaining that an ad broke her computer? (Sadly, this is something I can envision happening.)

Simplicity is key when it comes to designing a successful ad. Think of your mother trying to print out a coupon from an ad unit, and getting so flustered that she keeps filling out the form, accidentally rolling off the ad when she goes to click "submit," and ultimately giving up -- it's a major failure of the creative.

Everyone knows that an ad unit is only as good as its results. For great results, the creative, media, and user all need to be in harmony, and the seemingly small elements -- such as pinning an expanding panel open or increasing the call to action -- can make a big impact on performance.

If Ellen is surfing TMZ.com to see which celebutant is in rehab this week and sees an ad for a product she really likes, that ad needs to be compelling enough to pull her away from the edge-of-her-seat gossip. It needs to engage her by grabbing her attention and then presenting clear, simple, and direct instructions that tell her what to do.

Most important of all, the call to action needs to tell her why she should do anything. Is there a coupon or a rebate offer? Can she get a free sample of a new variety of her favorite product? Regardless of the incentive, the ad must first pique her attention, so that she wants to take action, and then clearly indicate what the action is, such as "roll over for a $1.00 off coupon or free sample." Always keep the payoff in mind.

When a consumer rolls over a rich media ad unit, the desired end result should be the first thing he or she sees. If your goal is conversion, acquisition, or lead generation, present the form first. For increased response rates, avoid asking Ellen to complete more than four text fields within the unit; as much as she may want that product, she wants to know who's in rehab this week even more. After all, that's why she's on the site.

If you need a longer form for legal reasons, have the conversion process begin within the banner, then click through to the website/microsite with those variables pre-filled so she can finish the form there. The panel should also pin when she starts filling in the information. As long as there is an obvious close button, and the panel unpins after submission, it will meet site specifications.

Ultimately, as great as the creative or the media may be, an ad has to effectively communicate with the user and make a memorable and measurable impression. When designing ads, think of your own mom, and apply the Ellen Effect. Will she be able to easily interact and use your ad the way you and, ultimately, your brand want her to? Or will I get a phone call about how she wants a $1.00-off coupon that ends with her asking me to get it for her?

Keep these tips in mind for your next campaign and remember, above all, to balance creativity, targeting, and technology with simple and clear directions for the greatest success.

Chris Baughman is AVP of creative strategy at PointRoll.

On Twitter? Follow Twitter at @iMediaTweet.

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As more brands embrace social media, it has become apparent that there is a tendency to focus first and foremost on the technology, the platform, and the apps --the "shiny trinkets"-- rather than starting out with a strong, strategically based, unique campaign that embraces (or even invents) the correct technology as a part of the overall creative idea.

I speak of "creative," the noun, in a broader sense than its usual advertising world definition because social media is forcing a rethinking of the term and everything that goes into it. Great creative is single focused and speaks in a tone or voice that befits the brand. It pushes the envelope, challenges our senses, and forces us to engage with it. Great creative makes us talk about it, impels us to share it, and makes us anticipate when and where we'll see more. Great creative accomplishes goals.

In this article, we'll take a look at some of the most compelling (and least compelling) applications of creative thinking within the social media marketing realm.

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Some things have evolved so quickly in digital advertising that it can be a challenge to notice shifts in our medium that have taken place at a slower rate. One of these "pokier changes" has been toward genuine traditional/digital marketing integration. Oh, sure, there have been fabulously integrated campaigns almost since the days of "You've got mail." But they sure weren't the norm.

Co-author Christopher Filly is an account coordinator at Catalyst: SF.

Looking back on 2009, it's clear that marketing has made a great deal of progress in genuine integration. Perhaps it is the tough economy forcing brands to make fewer dollars work to their fullest. Or the advent of new models that recognize that digital creative and media services cannot be provided under the same financial models as traditional ones.

For whatever reason, genuine integration has happened a lot this year. Here are five brands that did it well in 2009.

1. Levi's goes forth to change attitudes

Levi's has been struggling for years to get Americans to take ownership of the brand again. With its latest campaign, it just might achieve that goal. The campaign works to encapsulate all the best parts of Levi's pioneer heritage.  

Some online pundits have questioned whether the use Walt Whitman's inspiring poetry -- and voice -- is contemporary enough for the brand's target. But the campaign's extension into the digital space is as fresh as it gets. Levi's is clearly banking on a highly involving digital component to reach young, trendsetting consumers.  
 

Yes, other brands have asked users to take ownership of campaigns before. But the campaign's website provides a visually unique forum for users to post their version of "The New Declaration." People are responding in words, pictures, and vids.

This multimedia experience leverages a broad range of new media types to drive additional credibility and impact. Most provocative of all is the Go IV Expedition, which is an intricate treasure hunt with cryptic clues and puzzles that lead to $100,000 of American explorer Grayson Ozias IV's buried treasure. Staying true to millennial passions, the campaign also includes a charitable overlay that asks visitors to identify a charity to get an additional $100,000.

  
Will it stick as a campaign idea? Time will tell. But what is clear is how well conceived the integration is for this campaign.

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By now, marketers know that brands cannot fully control their own message anymore. Consumers now have a diverse set of channels through which they can interact with their digital world, and they've taken rightful ownership of their own destiny when interacting with brands through those channels.

In an effort to be heard and to increase engagement, brands are turning to new, innovative ways to approach the digital marketing landscape, from social environments such as Twitter and Facebook, to blogger outreach and global alternate reality games. Like anything else new and innovative, the risk of failure in these approaches runs high, and the payoff is unknown.

But failure, if done early and often, can be more instructive than success. Let's look at four new and innovative ways that brands attempted to engage with their consumers through digital, and see what lessons we can learn.

Lesson 1. Tell a story, but make it your story
In February 2008, 50 bloggers and gamers received mysterious packages in the mail containing clues to an online alternate reality game (ARG) with a clear call to action: Find "The Lost Ring." These packages kicked off a six-month effort across the globe by more than 150,000 players in seven languages to uncover a lost Olympic game. The game officially ended at the Beijing Olympics, and it generated more than its share of accolades in marketing circles.

But that's only half of the story. The game is a classic example of what's known as "dark marketing" -- a viral campaign in which the sponsoring brand (in this case, McDonald's) is barely, if ever, acknowledged. The theory is that mentioning the brand would turn potential gameplayers off when they realize that they're simply playing a part in a larger marketing campaign. In this case, it wasn't revealed that McDonald's was participating until months after the game began.

ARGs have proven to be successful in the past and are an incredibly viral method of participatory storytelling on a grand scale. Yet in most cases where measurable success was achieved, the ARG told a story that was at least tangentially related to the brand that sponsored it. Consider ABC's "Lost Experience" and "Find815" ARG campaigns, which gave rabid fans of the hit show something to do during its hiatus while simultaneously telling some of the show's back story -- all without diminishing the experience of watching "Lost" for consumers who didn't participate. 
 


BMW created an ARG surrounding a fictional town, "Oberpfaffelbachen," that built a huge ramp up to launch the BMW 1-Series in America. In each of these cases, the story of the game tied back to the story of the brand, even if the tie-in was slight or tongue-in-cheek.

Lastly, in order to measure the success of an ARG, it's important to understand how the brand is perceived before, during, and after the game. Using sentiment analysis tools to continually measure what people are saying about the brand can identify the baseline sentiment and the brand lift during the campaign, as well as any lingering effects after the game has ended.

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Their world now moves faster than the speed of thought, and the brands that were once household names now vie for their fragmented attention. As brands scramble to "reinvent" themselves, the length of time between said brand's reinventions can outpace the average desk stay of your garden-variety CMO. This thought is hardly comforting for those trying to decipher the tea leaves before the next technological gust of wind scatters their plans like so many abandoned MySpace pages and microsites.

With so much at stake, more brands are finally realizing the potential of the dormant brand equity that they already have, and are actively seeking ways to cash it in and spend it -- like George Bush famously said of his newfound political capital, back in '04.

One need look no further than Hollywood to see the enormous upside of this strategy. Look at some of entertainment industry's biggest recent success stories and where they came from: "Transformers" were mere toys with an animated series that peaked a quarter century ago; Marvel superheroes were all the rage in the '60s, as were the venerable "Star Trek" and G.I. Joe brands. All of these brands had one thing in common: loyalty bred from positive childhood association. Hollywood stumbled upon a not-so-new formula for success. Well-known brands are the new A-list stars. Next year, we can look forward to feature film adaptations of Monopoly, Candyland, Battleship, and Stretch Armstrong, which is good news if you are a toy or board game -- but what about the rest of us?

If Hollywood treats legacy brands like movie stars, then why don't agencies put more faith in the legacies of their brands? If focus groups, market research, and box office receipts are any indications, the path of least resistance surely must be to carefully reinvent, recalibrate -- reboot, if you will, a brand while remaining true to the core legacy that the brand has to offer.

In this light, let's take a look at the following brands and take a "legacy" snapshot of their current strategy:

Ford Mustang
For the 45th anniversary of America's favorite muscle car, Ford (with Wunderman/Team Detroit and Firstborn) unveiled a new microsite for its prize pony.

Long before you could customize a web page, you could customize a car -- and the Mustang has long been a staple of custom culture.

With a heavy emphasis on community, users have been able to customize together, watch others customize their cars, and even vote on the ultimate 'Stang. With a very targeted strategy aimed at the most passionate and loyal of audiences, the campaign embraced the 45-year reign of the iconic car with a user upload contest featuring fans' fond memories of their Mustangs, webisodes with Queen Latifah talking Mustang with Nascar drivers, and the unifying theme of the whole campaign: celebrating a classic design -- with a need for speed.

Lesson 1: One of the most effective (or at least popular) automotive campaigns in recent memory, the social media/community aspect of the Mustang customizer has performed as well as the car it celebrates. And I quote the venerable Muscle Car Blog: "One week after launch, almost 52,000 cars had been built with over 16,000 of those saved into the site gallery. And more than 30 forums and blogs were sharing their own creations -- all without a single dime put toward advertising."

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As the economy starts to rebound, creative agencies and technology vendors are welcoming scores of new clients. At Buddy Media, we are adding new clients at a rapid pace while carefully growing our team. We have worked hard to build a culture that works efficiently -- on time and within budget -- and delivers unique social campaigns that not only excite our clients, but also engage our clients' consumers.

Our system for handling an emergent client list is based around four basic principles. Maybe some of these will work for your company as well.

Listen
When working with a new client, avoid multiple rounds of iteration and guesswork by asking questions and listening early. At Buddy Media, we are immersed in the world of Facebook pages, Twitter management, app-vertisements, widgets, and mobile applications, and we have a deep understanding of the social marketing tools that have worked well for other brands.

When we meet with a prospective client, we immediately begin thinking of innovative ways to launch the brand in the social marketing realm. However, each client is different, and all of our knowledge and expertise won't matter if we don't listen carefully to their marketing objectives. If we run with our initial ideas without truly listening -- not only to what is explicitly said about the objectives, but the unspoken wants as well -- our plan would be inadequate and only half-baked. Instead of spending valuable time pursuing what we think will work, success for us is about listening to the client's objectives and using that, along with our expertise (from listening to social networkers and observing their behavior), to best meet their needs.

Understanding your client's audience and voice is critical. We have a standard set of questions we review with all new clients -- questions we've developed over time and continue to add to. Those questions have one simple goal of truly learning a client's brand and message. Learn to think like they do and understand their objectives from the inside.

As we've grown, we have continued to refine our listening process. For example, we discovered that we were spending time designing sites and apps for clients, but just weren't hitting the mark every time. Learning the unspoken wants of our clients was a challenge. Our solution, however, proved to be quite simple.

In meetings with new clients, we now ask them to provide us with an extensive list of sites and apps they like and don't like. With this simple process, we've been able to focus much more clearly on a client's and brand's aesthetic. Ultimately, that saves us valuable time in the design process so that we're not spending our energy proposing and designing campaigns too far afield of the brand.

Summary: By listening early on, you can streamline the process by cutting down on multiple iterations.

Focus
Most agencies know this already, but good products are elegant. Feature bloat is a recipe for disaster, as well as wasted time and effort. Cramming too many features into one product, campaign, or app ultimately leads to a weak, muddled final product. With every added feature, more time is spent making all the parts work together when the primary focus should be quality and functionality.

If you are a brand or marketer, what is the ultimate goal for any website or application? To engage an audience of users. Yet with every added feature, you're creating a distraction for the audience. If you want your customers and/or potential customers to have one central experience, keep it simple. Less is more.

This is usually easier said than done. There can be multiple, competing desires from a client. You may have to marshal all your diplomatic skills and argue your point-of-view. In the end, simplicity wins.

A great example of this is the Food Fight! page we launched for the "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" movie promotion. We defined one simple goal for the page: We wanted users to virtually throw food via the virtual gift module. We focused on that one goal in our design, and 80 percent of the users who came to the page threw some virtual food. That audience participation number is much higher then we see on typical pages.

Summary: Cut down on features to save time and build more effective products. If feature requests or suggestions don't directly contribute to the goal of the product, don't implement for launch. 

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Then the "cloud" rolled in, and suddenly staying on top of new apps is like trying to keep track of celebrities on Twitter.

The biggest challenge is finding the time to give them all a real trial. And sometimes, I'll come back to a tool months after my maiden voyage, as both the tool and my needs have changed over time.

One key point about these tools I'm reviewing is that context is everything. Your job title, your company, your location, and your work habits -- all are key factors in determining which tools will work best for you.

Some context for me: I run an interactive agency and serve as creative director. I use a Mac with Firefox. Because I use multiple computers, and don't like having to try and sync files across all of them, I'm a big fan of web-hosted services in virtually every area of what I do, from email to presentations.

Also, in this review, I'm also going to bypass some of the heavyweight tools that have been around a while and with which most people are familiar. They include Basecamp, Compete, Google Docs, and Google Reader, all of which I use frequently.

So given that, here are some of the more recent apps that are showing me some love.

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Gretchen Hyman is executive editor of iMedia Connection.

On Twitter? Follow iMedia Connection at @iMediaTweet.

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Over the years, digital agencies have come up with some extremely creative methods to present their unique value proposition and convincingly communicate the benefits of working with them. One approach that's increasingly visible is using the client presentation as a way of showcasing the organization's skills. Instead of creating yet another sleep-inducing PowerPoint deck, agencies with a web development arm might create an entire website for the pitch. There is no limit to how elaborate these pitch sites can become; they can mirror the look and feel of the client's brand, incorporate video and audio of the agency staff, and even include sample projects or a "big idea" concept that serves to demonstrate the quality of the thought and work the client could expect to receive.

This is not to say that unorthodox methods are guaranteed to work. It's certainly possible for agencies to take the creative license given to them by the client -- and the desire to impress that client -- a little too far. Perhaps you remember Agency.com's 2006 effort to take over the reins of sandwich chain Subway's interactive advertising business. The original idea was to document Agency.com executives as they endeavored to learn all they could about the Subway brand, post the resulting video to YouTube, watch it go viral, then use the experience as a testament to their creativity and the power of the web.

It was a big risk, however, for the agency to upload its pitch for the world to see, and plenty of criticism ensued. Ultimately, the video did go viral and generate buzz -- including over 80,000 views and over 400 comments on YouTube alone. But many of those remarks were negative, and the agency ultimately withdrew from the race to win the Subway business, due to a "conflicting account."

YouTube, YourPitch
Despite its shortcomings, this example should inspire agencies to develop a unique approach to their pitches for new business. YouTube certainly remains a tool that can be used to this end, as recently evidenced by another advertising shop. Earlier this year, Charlotte, N.C.-based ad agency BooneOakley built its agency site entirely on YouTube. The custom channel includes everything an agency site normally would, from featured work to contact information, and it is all navigable via links embedded within the video.

This approach could also be used by agencies in lieu of a microsite when you are asked to provide potential clients with an overview of your business and body of work. You might not make use of YouTube's full feature set, as your objective is to make an impact on the client (not the general public), but the service is still a viable, and unexpected, choice for an agency pitch. You might, however, consider disabling comments so as not to enable unsolicited feedback that you may not want to expose your potential business partners to.

A higher education in agency pitches
As far as the vehicle for a pitch is concerned, Microsoft PowerPoint might remain among the most common, but it certainly isn't the only option available. A new product on the market is perfectly suited to the task of showcasing an agency's grasp of a potential client's business.

A multimedia communications platform originally founded in 2007, Faculte has since completely redesigned its product to meet the changing needs of marketers and the evolving digital space, launching anew this past September. Faculte allows agencies to produce broadcast video using a self-serve online interface; users can customize their layout and theme, insert text, images, and video into an online tool, and play the content like an interactive video. In upcoming iterations of the product, the company plans to also facilitate access to acting, voiceover, and graphic design talent, allowing businesses to outsource some of this work directly through Faculte.

Because presentations created using Faculte reside online, they are portable and can be imbedded as supplementary material on social sites like Facebook or LinkedIn, as well as on an agency's own pitch site. An online RFI response or pitch for an agency-of-record account, for example, might include a Faculte-created video of the team that would work on the new campaign or account. The video could introduce agency executives, account managers, and creative and media folk, and offer some insight into their personalities and individual experience within the agency to demonstrate how these specifically relate to the business opportunity at hand.

This product might also be used to present media plans in a more engaging fashion than the Excel or PowerPoint standbys. It's particularly helpful for those who don't have video content to speak of, as virtually any collection of images (e.g., site screenshots and sample banner ads) and text (e.g., snippets of site content or testimonials from previous advertisers that have worked with the sites your agency is recommending) can be transformed into a multimedia presentation.

Your objective when developing business pitch materials doesn't vary much from client to client: Deliver the requested information in a way that isn't as stale as day-old bread. Use the opportunity to showcase some of the innovation that differentiates you within the industry -- the same that incited other desirable accounts to select you above your competitors -- and demonstrate why your shop is, bar none, worthy of the win.

David Rossiter is creative director at Enlighten.

On Twitter? Follow iMedia Connection at @iMediaTweet. 

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Serving customers in multiple languages has long been the practice in Canada, where both English and French are the official languages. Thus, at MTS Allstream, fully bilingual websites have been the norm since the mid 1990s. This includes the company's external-facing website as well as its intranet.

As one of Canada's leading national communication solutions companies, MTS Allstream is constantly looking to forge a closer link between the company and its customers -- and eventually inject customer perspectives very early in the product development lifestyle. Additionally, following the 2004 merger between MTS and Allstream, the company has looked to open up information sharing and break down departmental silos.

To accomplish these goals, MTS Allstream established a presence on a number of external social media sites, as well as built new internal mechanisms to increase collaboration across the company. However, the addition of the social media components created a new set of questions for MTS Allstream regarding the translation and implementation of generated content. MTS Allstream uses Vignette Content Management from Open Text, which enables the company to easily propagate translated material between sites. However, the company learned that the need for translation is not always a hard rule; rather, it's often a very fluid process.

Getting closer to customers' hearts and minds
Imagine being able to address a group of customers with the questions: "What are the five biggest problems you're facing today? And what if you had a technology that could do this, this, and this?" Having answers to those questions would identify your value proposition well in advance of a product release, strengthen your marketing strategy, and create additional customer advocates.

With the aim to inject customer perspectives early in the product development lifecycle, MTS Allstream set up Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts with oversight from a social media working group. A cross-functional committee representing all three sides of MTS Allstream -- corporate, enterprise, and consumer -- established legal terms and conditions of use, a language policy, and the appropriate security measures. This team also addressed the issues of whether to create a single profile/username to represent the company or propagate several different personas. Ultimately, the decision was made to keep it simple and stick with a single account for each channel, rather than immediately jumping in and populating the channels with multiple personas.

Because MTS Allstream's different customer segments interact using different social media tools, the company handed over control of these channels to different business groups. After the committee set up initial ground rules to accommodate these dynamics, it turned the social media accounts over to the marketing departments of each division to determine how to engage with their particular constituencies.

In all cases, though, MTS Allstream's external social media tools are available in English only. For instance, translating every tweet into French would be both time consuming and a potential turn-off for the company's followers, who would receive an extra, redundant post. Deciding on a single language enabled the MTS Allstream to deliver a single company voice that could be maintained with efficiency and an appropriate number of touchpoints to the company's followers.

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There's been considerable debate recently about image use on the web. With the increasing numbers of designers, marketers, advertisers, and bloggers using the internet as a resource for images and videos, inevitable questions about copyright and proper use laws are being raised. While most commercial businesses are conscious of these issues, there is still confusion among companies and bloggers about the use of third-party images.

The ultimate question is: Are photos on the web really just free for all users, or are there strings attached? And the answer is yes -- and no.

Basically, there are lots of sources available online to obtain images for a website or blog. And, the prices span the spectrum, from expensive to moderate to free. The challenge lies in understanding how and when to use these images and the potential implications of those choices.

Let's look at blogs, since they play a major role in this discussion. Typically, blogs fall into two categories: editorial and commercial. Blogs considered purely editorial in nature -- those that are non-commercial and related to events that are newsworthy or of public interest -- have a different set of rules that may apply with respect to model and property releases and licenses.

If your blog or website has a commercial purpose, that is, you're trying to sell stuff rather than just talk about your life experiences, a new set of rules comes into play.

"Free" license use
Images licensed using Creative Commons or another "free" license site may be fine for some blogging uses, but you need to be aware of the license limitations. Many of the images, by request of the artist, are available only for non-commercial use. If you are making money from your blog or are using the image in any way to sell something, and the artist has specified that his or her license does not extend to commercial usage, you may be in breach of the license agreement and could face serious legal ramifications. There are other limitations to Creative Commons licenses, and it is advisable to confirm that your use is in compliance with the specific license agreement.

Image inspection
Importantly, there is no inspection process at Creative Commons with respect to trademark, copyright, or privacy compliance. Virgin Mobile Pty Ltd (Australia) found this out the hard way. The company used an image of a young girl licensed under Creative Commons in an ad campaign but, unbeknownst to them, that girl had never agreed to allow her likeness to be used by Virgin in the manner that it was used. Virgin used the image as per the Creative Commons license but, because there was no model release by the subject, was sued by the girl's family for libel and invasion of privacy.

Trademarks/copyright
Pay close attention to images that contain logos or trademarks from other companies. If you're using them for your own gain, you can expect a call, at a minimum, to remove the image. Some companies are very litigious when it comes to trademark issues.

When looking for an image with people or a specific place, you should definitely license the image from a reputable source with an inspection process that looks for copyright, trademark, and privacy infringement. Images with identifiable people or places need appropriate releases! Using an image without one is asking for trouble.

What about the images you took yourself for your blog? Are they safe? And what if someone else uses them? In order to protect yourself, always ensure that if you have recognizable or identifiable people, buildings, restaurants, businesses, or logos in images, and that you have a model or property release.

Check your own work online
Chances are, if you are ripping other people's images to use on your blog, others are doing the same to you. You can find out if your images are being used on the web without your consent. Try TinEye. Submit your photo, and it will scan the web for you. If someone else is using your images without your consent, you may have a right to demand they remove the image, credit your work, or pay you damages.

Use a service
Royalty-free microstock sites are designed to help locate the image you want quickly. Unlike Flickr and Google, a photo uploaded to a microstock site has individual keywords attached to it, describing the subject, composition, elements within, and broad ideas associated with the photo (such as an emotion). Some companies even goes as far as offering a feature that allows you to search based on blank areas of the photo available for text or branding.

These are some basic but necessary guidelines, whether you are planning to use images on your website, blogs, or in marketing materials. These tips should inform your decision-making process both in terms of images and sources to avoid costly and time-consuming copyright or licensing issues.

Kelly Thompson is chief operating officer at iStockphoto.com.

On Twitter? Follow iMedia Connection at @iMediaTweet. 

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When Aflac decided to expand its horizons by branching into new media, two things were certain. First, it is a solid company with a great corporate icon. That's the good news. Second, it needed a plan to reach the millions of people whose exposure to information increasingly comes through social media and the internet. That was the challenge.

And what a challenge it is. With the Aflac Duck, the company has a marketing rock star that can sit comfortably at both the pop icon table and in the board room. The Duck has personality, verve, and is more than ready to bring his pluckiness to places he has never been before.

There is no debating the effectiveness of the Aflac Duck campaign in traditional media. Surveys show that more than 93 percent of Americans are aware of Aflac. Yet far fewer can tell you that Aflac is a leading provider of guaranteed, renewable insurance in the U.S., that its policies are different from major medical, or that it gives you cash benefits when you're injured or become sick. Aflac's new CMO, Jeff Charney, has made clear his mandate to transform brand identification into brand education by using both new and traditional media.

In terms of social media, Aflac had been relatively absent from the conversation, leaving customers without a venue to tell their stories, and the company without a way to participate in the conversation. There had been ongoing discussions for years about bringing the brand into the social space, but for every supporter, there was an equal number of differing opinions on what to do and how to do it.

Aflac CIO Gerald Shields brought in Josh Bernoff, author of "Groundswell," who reinvigorated the discussion around which venues to utilize, including blogs, RSS, wikis, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.

Facebook emerged as an early match for the Duck, because it was a fast-growing community that had gained traction well beyond a limited audience. Around this time, The Zimmerman Agency came in to pitch a wide variety of campaigns, including print, outdoor, and Facebook. The agency's perspective of the Duck on Facebook brought the idea to life, and the Zimmerman team's grasp on the execution indicated it would be the right partners.

A "duck's-eye view"
The initial production went like many creative productions do: crafting concepts, stories, and guidelines for the brand. There were lots of great ideas and a few stinkers, but on the whole everyone loved the idea of a "duck's eye view" of the world. We soft-launched the Duck's Facebook page a few days before announcing it at a field sales conference, then watched as the fan base took off far beyond our (and Zimmerman's) expectations.

Nearly 120,000 fans joined the Aflac Duck Facebook fan page in the first 12 weeks. In fact, the Aflac Duck's fan page was the No. 1 weekly gainer for pages with less than 1 million users for two weeks following its launch in April, according to the Inside Facebook blog. More importantly, the site receives more interaction per fan than any of the top 10 fan pages on Facebook, including those of pop icons Ashton Kutcher and Miley Cyrus.

Consumer engagement has been genuine, with many Facebook fans sharing micro-testimonials, comments, experiences, and observations about Aflac. The most motivating part for me has been the testimonials coming from customers whose financial futures have been preserved by Aflac's help in hard times. One woman posted that she would have lost her house when she was diagnosed with cancer if it had not been for her Aflac policy.

As every marketer knows, there is no stronger praise than third-party endorsements, and the Duck's fans are truly engaged. The Aflac team works hard to keep things fun, while at the same time reminding consumers that Aflac is a product that can be a wonderful asset to protect one's financial future. The Duck's fans interact with the Duck and one another, all taking part in a fun conversation.

But leaping into unchartered territory is never without risk. Prior to Facebook, the Aflac Duck's vocabulary consisted of a single word -- "Aflac" -- and that strategy had worked in the past. But new media, and Facebook in particular, have presented new platforms for the Duck to express itself. So, does the Aflac Duck hunt and peck, or type with wings?

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When I was a kid, my mom sold Tupperware. She spent most of her time trying to arrange these get-togethers, where one of Mom's friends would invite all of her friends into her living room for a "party" -- and then Mom would sell burping sandwich holders to all of them by the station-wagon load.

And that's the exact theory of creating a niche social network for a product: Gather similar-minded people in a central location for social purposes, and let the selling take care of itself.

As a Broadway producer, I have two very different problems -- one short term and one long term -- that I obsess about every day.

1. The short term: How do I speak to my customers?

Broadway tickets are sold through third-party ticketing agencies, which means we don't have the ability to communicate directly with our customers. In fact, we don't even know who our customers are.

2. The long term: How do I develop the audience of tomorrow?

For better or for worse, I'm married to Broadway, which means I need to make sure that my livelihood is nurtured and protected not only tomorrow but 10 years from now. With the National Endowment for the Arts reporting a 10 percent decline in attendance for musicals and a 21 percent decline in attendance for plays over the last 25 years, what can I do to make sure today's youth grow up with a passion for attending live theater?

Two birds, one stone
Incredibly, developing a niche social network for Broadway theater lovers was the solution to both of these seemingly different issues.

While message boards and chat sites existed for some of Broadway's passionate fans (the "Trekkies of Broadway"), nowhere on the web was there a Tupperware party atmosphere where fans could identify themselves, share what they loved about Broadway, and be proud of being a fan.

By building BroadwaySpace.com, a social network developed on the Ning platform, I was able to provide all of these fans a place where they can share their passions with other people just like them.

In 18 months, we had 15,000 of Broadway's best and most talkative fans on our site (13 percent see more than 13 shows per year). We now have permission to speak to our most passionate customers, or our "missionaries" as I call them, anytime we want, which enables us to address problem  No. 1.

At the same time, whenever you gather a group of people in the same room, the volume of the chatter increases. Mom's Tupperware parties used to keep me up way past my bedtime, thanks to the volume of those 14 ladies and one guy. By creating a social network, the sheer volume of the conversation about Broadway and Broadway shows is amplified electronically. The louder the conversation, the more top-of-mind the subject, and the more it becomes part of the fabric of one's everyday thought process. Many of the members on BroadwaySpace are now engaging in multiple conversations about Broadway every day, whereas a year ago, they may not even have had one. And Broadway, as a brand, benefits, helping address my second problem related to developing tomorrow's audience.

The monetization question
So great, BroadwaySpace.com was a terrific solution to my two plaguing concerns -- but in solving those two problems, I had created a third.

Now that I had created BroadwaySpace.com, how was I supposed to pay for it? Could I find a way or ways to monetize this niche social networking site?

The answer was yes, but frankly, we didn't spend one minute developing a sales strategy on the site until more than a year into the life of the site. Why did we wait so long? Social networks are like nightclubs. It's not about where they are, or what they look like, or what they're called. It's all about who goes. They don't even have to be big. They just have to have the right type of people.

Instead of trying to sell BroadwaySpace.com, we spent the majority of our time and resources on building our members so that our site consisted of highly qualified leads that convert at a much higher rate than other more generic sites.

Simply put, we put faith in the Tupperware theory. If we could assemble a group of similar-minded and passionate people in a room, the money would follow.

On the following page, we'll take a look at three initiatives we used to build our membership.

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Consider the view from Diane Slayton's seat. As the VP for consumer and member marketing and communications for United Healthcare, Slayton finds herself evaluating agencies as fast as Silicon Valley can invent new digital channels and users can populate them.

"The dynamic world of digital marketing changes in warp speed," Slayton says. "It has been our experience that digital agencies typically have expertise in a few core areas. Our role is to identify the arena where they're out front."

Of course, being "out front" isn't the only criteria for hiring an agency, because reputation can only tell a CMO so much. And while there are no absolutes when it comes to predicting agency performance, there are a lot of things a savvy CMO can do during the search process to help avoid disasters and pick a partner that can make the brand shine.

Start with honesty
There are a number of places a CMO can start when hiring a new agency, but one basic question should always come first for a CMO in such a position, says David Wiggs, the founder of Hitch, a consulting firm that helps advise brand clients on hiring the right digital agency.

"Start by asking, 'why do we need a new agency?' Maybe you've inherited them and you just can't work together -- you've tried, but it's a chemistry thing," Wiggs says.

According to Wiggs, that basic question -- why do we need a new agency? -- will always lead to some rather profound insights, if the brand can be honest about its own corporate culture as well as what's gone right (and wrong) with the relationship at hand. While that may sound like simple advice, it's a pill not easily swallowed by many clients.

"Often, many clients believe that my agency should just know they're not happy," Wiggs says. But for those clients, Wiggs has a blunt answer: "Don't assume!"

The assumption that the onus is on the agency to make its client happy won't get a CMO very far in the long-run because it obfuscates the possibility that the client may share at least some of the blame for what went wrong. If that's the case, it's rather difficult for the CMO to make an informed decision about the next agency, because their problems may just carry over to the next vendor.

"Consider if the issues in the partnership are their fault or yours," Wiggs advises. "Likely, it's a bit of both. So what kind of clues could you look for to take the pulse of this marriage? Broadly speaking, ask yourself if your company culture supports the changes the agency is trying to make? Examine your relationship to see if it allows for shared risk. Is the agency forced to stay inside a box or are they given some freedom?"

Those answers may not always be available because in some cases, the relationship may have become so bad that it's nearly impossible to see the forest through the trees. However, CMOs who take the time to reflect on their own corporate culture and how it interplayed with their previous agency stand a much better chance of getting it right with their next hire.

Beware of the specialist search
Scan the tech blogs and you'll quickly see that digital creates new communication channels faster than advertisers can figure out how to use them. But CMOs who want to integrate their media strategy face a difficult dilemma: Do you opt for a "specialist" agency -- a social media shop, for example -- to work in a highly technical area, or do you hire one agency that can bring it all together at the risk of sacrificing some key knowledge in an emerging area?

The answer depends more on your own organization's strength and weaknesses than anything else, says John Padgett, who directed the agency of record for numerous brands on behalf of Coca-Cola and Minute Maid before leaving to become the VP of media at the Hauser Group.

"It's all about orchestration," Padgett says. "If you have the time and staff to orchestrate across multiple specialists, then you have the option to spread the love. If you're like most organizations, however, and you're short-staffed and time-crunched, then you should find and assign a lead agency and have them sub-contract for the specialists."

Padgett says he prefer the latter approach, in part because of his brand experience.

"If you try to have a specialist for every niche, you'll constantly be searching for a specialist for the next new thing," Padgett says. "If you have a lead agency responsible for bringing holistic thinking, then they will have the responsibility to be constantly searching for those specialists and providing you with thought leadership and success."  

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Brian Kalma is director of user experience and web strategy at Zappos.com.

As head of user experience and web strategy, it is Brian Kalma's job to cultivate the fun while making sure customers can find the perfect boot, blouse, or blender. Kalma joined the company in 2003, to head the image processing and photography department. On his watch, the company has continued to innovate, testing -- and sometimes abandoning -- new features. 

Its most recent twist is a beta version of My Zappos, which lets people save items to a personal closet, share them via Facebook or Twitter, and get comments from friends.

iMedia: As head of user experience and web strategy, how do you interface with other marketing execs at Zappos?

Brian Kalma: User experience isn't technically in the marketing group, it's a standalone group. We have a director that handles search, affiliates, etc., and a brand team that handles identity work. Our team has to be keenly aware of what's happening in direct marketing, and, from a brand perspective, we have to make sure the site looks and feels like what we want the brand to look like. Keeping an open line of communication is probably the biggest area of operations we can improve upon, making sure we are a unified, aligned group. It's tough, but I don't think the solution is putting us into one big ball of a group.

iMedia: What is a typical day in your job like?

Kalma: I almost always start my day by looking at the previous day's site performance, making sure nothing alarming is happening, just a basic analytic check. I manage the team, and have a weekly touch-base meeting. More often, it's making sure I'm communicating with the merchandising group, the customer loyalty group -- putting it all into the washing machine, making sure everybody's needs are being translated into a positive experience. I wish I could sit and do design work -- I have passion for it -- but we have a team for that. I try to be a conduit for information instead.

iMedia: What are the challenges for online retailers in this economy?

Kalma: Improving your brand. Right now, there are lots of price-sensitive shoppers. We're not a discounter, we're full margin. Our challenge is making sure that the emotional connections with our customers are secure. In hard times, people will stick with companies they know and trust.

iMedia: I think your free shipping in both directions makes people feel more comfortable about ordering from you.

Kalma: We invest as much money in customer service -- that being one piece of it -- as massive companies do in advertising. That's what's going to get customers to try us. It's a huge expense but paramount to what keeps customers loyal. There's no better time than now to prove how much you want to please the customers.

iMedia: Zappos was a very early adopter of social media. For example, you've always let customers rate and review shoes.

Kalma: When we started our onsite tools, there wasn't the thought that it was social media. It was just useful. A lot of the stuff that happens on our site, it just made sense. It was not about a social media strategy.

iMedia: So, as head of web strategy, what is Zappos' web strategy?

Kalma: We're experimenting with a lot of things. Now that Twitter and Facebook are big, we're trying to give people tools to integrate with them better. We're also trying to capture the emotion that happens when you shop offline and translating it into the online experience. A lot of brick-and-mortar retailers who come online try to create fancy Flash applications to replicate this emotion. I think the emotion is derived from interacting with people while you shop. "Does this look good? Does that not look good?" The question is, how do you bring that online -- literally? We created My.Zappos.com to find out if the direction we're going in works. Our goal is to still let people browse, with a single sign-in to allow them to share products with their friends. It's a little clunky right now, but we're learning a lot.

iMedia: What are some early insights from the beta?

Kalma: People don't like to go too much out of their way. That means we need to find a better way to integrate not only with the social media sites people use every day but also our site. I don't think people want just another place to go to.

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That's the latest drumbeat from the interactive claque. But is it so?

They love half my advertising
Hernan Lopez, president and managing director for the  National Geographic Channel-CanalFox Latin America, wrote a July op-ed in Ad Age saying, "The industry's obsession with click-through rates, despite evidence of their small correlation with total sales, results in messages that are rarely entertaining or amusing and are overly reliant on verbal hard sell."

Lopez is a fan of John Philip Jones, a former J. Walter Thompson exec who now teaches at Syracuse University and writes scholarly books about advertising. "He found that the single biggest factor separating campaigns in any medium that drive sales in the short term and branding in the long term was the quality of the creative," Lopez told iMedia Connection. "Media agencies around the world have gotten so good at what they do that there isn't much variability in CPMs -- nor in the media plans in television. Where there's a big variability is in the quality of the creative."

There are plenty of other voices in this choir. Geoff Ramsay, CEO of eMarketer, bylined a report accusing marketers of an addiction to clicks, citing a Forbes survey in which 70 percent of the 110 CMOs surveyed said conversion, or sales, was the most important metric for measuring a campaign's success. Well, duh. In this survey, the sales metric was followed by registrations (52 percent) and click-throughs (49 percent).

Gian Fulgoni of comScore wants brand advertisers to use the company's new Brand Metrix norms database, which uses a panel -- a system developed for television -- to gauge the impact of exposure to online ads. Microsoft and comScore have teamed up on the Reach and Frequency Planner, to apply the old-media metrics of reach, frequency, and audience composition to digital brand advertising.

In an April 2009 survey by eMarketer, respondents said that a myopic focus on direct response and a lack of focus on creative for online were among the obstacles to the growth of the online advertising industry.

And Randall Rothenberg of the IAB called for a creative revolution in interactive advertising by quoting Leo Bogart's 1967 book, "Strategy in Advertising."  Bogart writes, "Advertisements may be evaluated scientifically; they cannot be created scientifically." Rothenberg added that the internet's direct-marketing culture "devalues creativity and its long-term effect on brands." 

Whoa, Nellie! For 12 years, they've told us that the genius of the interactive medium is its measurability and accountability. Wasn't that why we've seen phenomenal growth in online spending, year after year? Now they're asking us to forget it?

It's understandable if traditional agency folk pine for the "Mad Men" days, when the only person you really had to sell was your client. But why are these internet luminaries asking us to abandon digital metrics in favor of old-school brand play?

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To see either of those, you'll have to turn off your TV and get online.  

They're called branded web series, and they're becoming more polished, more sophisticated, more engaging, and nearly on par with network television when it comes to production value and star power. Like any series, they're by no means a sure thing (Bud.tv, Anheuser-Busch's now-defunct online channel devoted to AB-branded content, immediately comes to mind). Yet, every day more and more brands are taking the plunge to sponsor a web series. 

We asked three leading players in the arena of creating, and marketing, branded entertainment for their thoughts on making a successful web series. And what's in it -- both the benefits and challenges -- for a brand thinking of sponsoring one.  

Why spend precious ad dollars on a web series?   
"One of the things the internet is revolutionizing is this idea of branded entertainment," says Jonathan Small, VP/editorial director of The Creative Lab for Break Media, which owns eight entertainment websites, most notably their flagship entertainment site for 18- to 34-year-old males, Break.com. "On television, you see 15- or 30-second commercials. On the internet, you see web series that are entertaining but, at the same time, pushing a brand's message. It's a more subtle approach to advertising."
 
"While the audiences might not be as big as network TV, the level of engagement and the targeting you can do is much better," says Miles Beckett, co-founder and CEO of the social entertainment firm EQAL, which has produced some of the web's most successful series, including "lonelygirl15", "KateModern", and "Harper's Globe", a companion series to CBS' "Harper's Island".

Targeting is currently aimed primarily at younger viewers, and for good reason. This younger demographic has more free time to spend online, and they're typically more willing to engage in the social-media components built around most web series, which include commenting on episodes, playing games, participating in polls and quizzes, making plot suggestions, and remixing videos, to name but a few. 
 
"What we've seen with the shows that we've produced, and the brands that we've worked with," adds Beckett, "is that, because of the two-way communication of the internet, there is so much engagement and so much more mindshare the brand gets from the audience members."

Of course, a viewer isn't obligated to take his or her engagement to the next level. But if the web series is doing its job in engaging the viewer, participation is, hopefully, a natural byproduct. 

Is deep engagement essential?
"We wouldn't be doing it if we didn't really provide the deep level of engagement," says Karla Geci, director of marketing for Bebo, one of the world's largest social media networks and a leader in branded online entertainment. "The user on Bebo is not there for the advertising; they're there for the content. But they also really like to engage with the brands that are important to them. That's why it works."

Beckett, who credits the social aspect of a web series as the main reason "lonelygirl15" became such a hit, believes that, without the engagement and interactivity from the viewers, "It's just TV on the internet." Not that he's against that; he confesses to watching most of his television on the web. "But it's definitely not an interactive show or, as we call them, a 'social show,'" he adds. "That's what makes a web series special and different." 

But are brands taking full advantage of this engagement by talking back?

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When Rare Method was invited to participate in the iMedia Entertainment Summit's Agency Shoot-out, we jumped at the chance. We're used to making pitches, but this crowd -- more than 130 senior marketing executives from across the entertainment industry -- presented a unique and irresistible challenge.

The fictional assignment was to create a digital campaign for a modern reboot of the classic TV western, "Bonanza." For the Shoot-out, we would be pitching our proposal against that of the highly talented team at Los Angeles' Visionaire Group.

The judges for the contest were Len Fogge, EVP of creative, marketing, research & digital media for Showtime Networks; Chad Harris, VP of special projects & new media for Hallmark Channel; and Patricia Galea, executive director of digital marketing & strategy for Disney ABC Media Networks.

Despite a tight timeline and an impressive presentation from the Visionaire team, we were fortunate to come out with a win, which we credit to a solid strategic base that would give viewers and fans an unprecedented level of access to the show.

The challenge
The fictional project we pitched was for a relaunching of one of TV's all-time great shows, "Bonanza." To get an idea of the assignment, here is the creative brief:

The CW Television Network is relaunching the classic, long-running TV western "Bonanza" as part of its prime-time lineup during the fall 2009 season, to air Tuesday nights after "90210".
A youth-and-family targeted one-hour "dramedy," the new "Bonanza" will air against ABC's "Dancing with the Stars", CBS's "NCIS: Los Angeles", Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance", and NBC's "Biggest Loser" on broadcast.

Relaunched with an attractive young cast and aiming for a combination of adventure, romance, and comedy, the new "Bonanza" will premiere on Tuesday, October 6, 2009.

The original "Bonanza" was the story of 1860s Nevada rancher and cattle baron Ben Cartwright (Lorne Greene) and his three sons: Adam (Pernell Roberts), Hoss (Dan Blocker), and "Little" Joe (Michael Landon). In the new version, Ben and Joe are given sex changes to balance out the genders of the main cast.

• Gwen Cartwright (Heather Locklear): The matriarch
• Adam Cartwright (Chad Michael Murray): The heir
• Eric "Hoss" Cartwright Smith (Jonah Hill): Gentle but accident prone
• Josephine "Little Jo" Cartwright Sullivan (Ellen Page): The youngest

The challenge: As with all tune-in campaigns, the goal is to generate excitement for the show and build a fan base of dedicated viewers. This particular campaign, however, is focused primarily on the October 6 "Bonanza" premiere. The CW wants to use the internet to drive and retain real-time viewing of the first episode in order to create an eventful first night, drive engagement with the series, get high Nielsen ratings, and provide value for the show's advertisers.

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Imagine if that 1957 audience had what today's audience has -- computers, TiVo, iPhones, Xbox, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, MySpace, and about 100 digital channels of TV programming, many of them advertising-free. CBS and the Cleavers would have had a hard time finding their audience. Advertisers would have been struggling to figure out where best to put their messages to reach that audience -- much like they are today.

It's no secret that consumers are now migrating away from traditional advertising platforms to new digital social networks and ad-free, watch-it-when-I-want delivery systems; technology is quickly changing the way the game is played. In this digital revolution, advertising agencies that have been lingering in the comfort zone of the traditional advertising model are going to be left behind.

To complicate matters further, the recent economic downturn will speed up this migration as marketers become acutely more budget conscious and ROI focused. Movement from the old to the new model is difficult for agencies that have consistently profited from charging a mark-up on producing and placing 30-second spots.

Surely the buggy-whip makers were not embracing the advent of the automobile; traditional agencies have every reason to fight change if they can continue to make money the old way and aren't quite sure what to do with the new way. But if advertisers want to keep their audiences (and if agencies want to keep their clients), they better come up with something and fast.

Hence the scramble to crack the code on what agencies must do to engage digital-faring brands. Most have realized that reliance on unwanted interruption of the consumer's media experience with a brand message is not long for this industry: There are too many alternatives, too many media and too many ways for consumers to avoid it. Consequently, brands and agencies need to develop their messaging in ways that actually attract the consumer -- and ideally call for repeat performances.

The simplest way to gather an audience -- dating back to ancient times -- is good storytelling.  And when the story is popular, make it longer and add to it. To clarify: "Good storytelling" is a story that makes people sit up and listen. It is worthy of their attention, worth remembering and retelling. It can be as short as a joke or as long as Homer's "Odyssey," but the storyteller must engage and captivate an audience. It must be entertaining. You can spot a good storyteller in any crowded room. He or she is the person surrounded by a group of captivated listeners.

While Madison Avenue has been able to spin a few good 30-second yarns in the last 60 years, consumers have turned to Hollywood when they want to be entertained. With a greater focus on story and content, brands should even be able to connect with the consumer unlike ever before. Content that attracts -- and does not interrupt -- consumers establishes a far more positive relationship.

Because consumers can shut out advertising and choose what they want to watch, the quality of branded content is crucial. The best content can flow from one medium to another seamlessly, captivating the audience through the emotional attraction of the story and not the technology distributing it. This, if exploited, develops the brand-consumer relationship far more than the TV model ever could.

Once you have entertained your audience -- with comedy, with drama, with story -- you have made a connection, and the better the comedy, the drama, or the story, the stronger that connection becomes. It is no longer sufficient to deliver a message -- audiences don't care about the advertiser's message. They want to be entertained, so a smart advertiser must now embed the "message" within entertaining content.

Remember, however, that even the great television networks and movie studios had as many flops as they did hits -- even Seinfeld only became popular through promotion and network tenacity keeping it alive the first year.

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Together, these companies' online campaigns reflect the ways in which brand perception is tied to gaming, movie tie-ins, video, and social media, and how these channels, in turn, help refine brand perception. Here are some profiles of recent candy campaigns that provide a lesson for companies both in and outside of this unique niche.

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In this video:

• Russell Scott
• Kalpana Sehwani
• Doug Schumacher
• Dea Lawrence

   

   

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"Consumers have developed a banner blindness," says Lars Bastholm, chief digital creative officer at Ogilvy, North America. "The dilemma we're facing ranges from everything from static banners to viral videos. It's all encompassing."

What Bastholm and the other executives we spoke with realize is that every form of digital content is tarnished by a wave of bad creative that diminishes its value.

In this article, we span the digital horizon to identify the creative problems each form of digital content has experienced. Read on to learn where the problems in each area lie and determine what you need to do to avoid the creative mistakes that have been made in the past. By reviewing and acknowledging the bad creative, you can ensure your next execution will be fresh and vibrant.

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In this video:

• Kevin Ryan
• Kent Speakman
• Michael Rosen

   

   

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This article is about the traits and practices I've observed in other creative directors that I have tried to integrate into my own career. Something I find interesting is that after taking inventory of what they've taught me over the years, I realized that despite an immense amount of change in the business, the central themes remain the same. It's about working with the people around you to create the best pieces of communication possible. And that transcends any era or medium.

So here's what I've learned -- in no particular order.

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Savvy marketers know engaging creative increases interaction rate, time spent, and engagement, but still only 5 percent of online ads today include some form of rich media.

Although a recent comScore study shows that less than 0.1 percent of users click through standard online display ads, the web is flooded with static GIF and JPEG ads, as well as basic Flash that only allows consumers to click through to a site. This is a missed opportunity for marketers investing significant dollars on what are often irrelevant impressions -- media sitting on the periphery of content that goes unnoticed and un-clicked.

There are several myths and debates about when and why brands should use rich media, with measurement, conversion, reach, and cost being key considerations. Is an interaction equivalent to a click-through? How does it ultimately relate to conversion? What are the benefits of rich media, and why should you incur the additional creative costs to produce it? Consumer expectations for online advertising have changed, and so have the possibilities for high-performing, creative executions. As marketers struggle to provide content consumers want, what was once the standard no longer applies, and so marketers should adapt to new strategies and capabilities that rich media offers for engagement, reach and measurable campaign success.

Myth 1: Click-through alone can measure the success of rich media
Although click-through rates for rich media exceed those of standard and Flash formats, using click-through as the key metric of success is outdated.

It is important to think of rich media as a "traveling microsite" and evaluate success as you would for your website: measuring views, interactions, activities, time spent, and clicks on key activities. You would base the success of your site not only by how many users land there, but how they interact with and consume site content. Rich media creates an extension of your site and integrates activities that engage and influence versus flat images that simply point consumers to other destinations.

CVS Pharmacy created an in-banner circular that enables users to browse local product and pricing information, create and print a shopping list, and find their nearest store without requiring a click-through. This rich, interactive ad experience extends the reach of the CVS circular site and has been successful in driving consumers to the store.

Radio Shack also effectively illustrated this notion with a holiday campaign that enabled consumers to create a recipient-specific shopping list and email it to themselves or a friend, creating a brand reminder and second touch point post-interaction and without requiring a click-through.

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Marketing and brands are relationships between consumers and products, and relationship building is a two-way conversation. It is not the one-to-many broadcast commercial that defines a customer's relationship with a brand. Rather, it's the more informal -- often personal -- interactions with a product or company that result in long-term brand engagement. Technology, specifically the social web, has transformed marketers' ability to run lower cost, targeted marketing campaigns with measurable return on investment. The result is a new category of marketing: social marketing.

Co-author Bryan House is director of marketing for Acquia.

Social marketing is conversational. It's focused on facilitating interactions that are more directly connected to the process of relationship building with customers. And social marketing is, in all cases, propelled by social publishing technologies that turn spectators into member and contributors, and transform websites into community platforms for engagement with customers and future prospects.

Enterprise software vendor JackBe offers an example of this new strategy in action. JackBe sells enterprise mashup software to developers that enables them to use web services to connect internal and external data to create new, loosely coupled (or "mashed up") applications. Because this is a new approach in software development, part of JackBe's marketing agenda is to educate developers about mashups -- what they are, how to build them, and what applications are a good fit for this approach.

To do this, JackBe adopted a social approach in its education strategy by building the JackBe Mashup Developer Community, which targets the developers who will potentially be using JackBe's software to build their own mashups. The community is not about JackBe -- it's about mashups in general. Most importantly, the community is all about the members themselves. They can connect with one another; share ideas, experiences, and even best practices; and ultimately help move the enterprise mashup industry toward maturity.

Technology considerations
In researching available technologies that could be used to build its community website, JackBe considered a number of options, including traditional proprietary software, software-as-a-service, and open source products such as Drupal. Because JackBe is a small, venture-backed startup company, the project's budget was finite, and the company needed to get the most bang for its buck. But JackBe also needed to move fast, with less than two months to deliver a member-ready community.

After much deliberation, JackBe ultimately chose the open source option and built its website on Acquia Drupal, a commercially supported distribution of the open source Drupal social publishing system. Keeping its budget well within range, JackBe spent only 25 percent of what a comparable proprietary solution would cost and was able to implement 90 percent of desired functionality within the same period. Such a project could easily have cost six figures for the software alone if purchased from a traditional software vendor.

The results
JackBe's community site provides the framework to establish a deeper dialogue with customers. The developer community is a place where software developers can converse with each other, ask questions, share code samples, research mashup solutions, and educate themselves and their peers on how best to build and deploy mashup applications.

For example, one community user was researching mashup technologies on the site in preparation for a proposal to his boss. He used the JackBe community to educate himself on the market space in general and JackBe's products specifically. Not only did he use a number of the presentations and videos available on the community, but the community member felt comfortable enough to call JackBe to ask specific questions as he prepared his proposal. While only a certain percentage of members will get to this level of conversation, such interactions are only possible within a social marketing environment like JackBe's community.

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In this age of transparency, it's no secret that college kids aren't big fans of brands that are "fake." Most of the time, that is.

Last fall, Adobe, the maker of popular software titles such as Photoshop, Acrobat, and Flash, worked with interactive advertising agency Traction to create a social media engagement initiative. The core of the campaign was a game that asked fans of the Adobe Students page on Facebook whether they thought a series of images were "Real or Fake?"

And users responded, with more than 11,500 plays in the first two weeks -- 6 percent of which culminated with the user clicking "Buy Now" for the product promoted on the final game page.

The challenge
The business problem Adobe was addressing was very clear: It wanted to increase awareness of Adobe discounts for college students. We wanted students to know that Adobe offers college students up to 80 percent off the full retail prices of the Creative Suite 4 products with Adobe Student Editions.

Adobe already understood the popularity of Facebook among college students and had established a company page on the network about a year earlier. The page had attracted 11,500 fans, but a static message and lack of interactivity did little to encourage return visitors.

To drive page traffic and overall awareness for the new pricing offer, Adobe and Traction set out in late 2008 to engage the student market with a more interactive user experience.

Real or fake?
Adobe products like Photoshop are great tools for modifying photos, so we created a game in Facebook called "Real or Fake?" Each week, five images were provided, and users were challenged to decide whether they were original photographs or whether they had been doctored. Of course, the entire game was designed and developed using Adobe Creative Suite products -- Photoshop, Illustrator, and Adobe Flash.

Answer screens for the Photoshopped images included links to tutorials, which showed users how the effect was achieved using Adobe's product.

At the end of the game, users were presented with a promotion for Adobe Creative Suite 4 Student Editions and a button to "Buy Now," as well as options to "Play Again" and "Share" the game with their friends. In-game and end-of-game messaging further encouraged return play by letting users know that five new images would be posted each week.

The game was prominently featured on the Adobe Students Facebook page, and a discussion board post on the page encouraged users to share their scores and talk about the game.

In addition, during the first two weeks after launch, Adobe placed a Facebook engagement ad, which targeted students by major and demographic, linked to the game, and allowed users to become fans of the Adobe Students page directly within the ad.

The results
The campaign results surpassed all of Adobe's expectations. "Real or Fake?" -- which launched in November 2008 -- ran for one month. During that time, the game was played more than 14,000 times, including 5,469 in the first week and 6,160 in the second.

During the first week, 40 percent of players returned to play again that same week, 22 percent checked out the tutorials, 6 percent clicked the "Share" button at the end of the game, and 6 percent clicked "Buy Now" at the end of the game.

The Adobe Students Facebook page also received 3,000 new fans and more than 53,000 page views that week, compared with an average of 5,057 views per week prior to the campaign.

Numbers also remained high in the second week, with 21 percent of players accessing the game tutorials, 4 percent sharing the game with friends, and another 6 percent clicking "Buy Now." Week two also brought in an additional 2,500 new fans to the Adobe Students page and almost 50,000 additional page views.

Lessons learned
Engage, engage, engage. The Adobe Students page had featured the student pricing message for some time before the game was launched, but the engagement factor just wasn't there. Having engaging content on the page was a way to bring students to the page and clearly communicate this, and to support the launch of the Adobe Student Editions. By deploying the application, Adobe not only generated new awareness for its offer but also introduced a fun, interactive feature to the page. The game itself was particularly effective because it captured user attention with an interaction that clearly demonstrated the value of the product.

We also crafted game-related messaging to appeal to the student population and draw users in, often challenging them with gritty wording -- such as "Can you spot the real from the fake?" on its engagement ad and "Gotcha! This image is fake. Mother nature doesn't do mohawks" on one of the puzzle answer pages.

We wanted to engage students where they are and in a way that they enjoy -- not just push the product out to them. With any company, when you're going out and trying to talk to a segment like students, who see through corporate-speak and deal with a lot of media, the challenge is how to be clever and still be true to the corporate brand. We were able to do both.

Use an integrated push strategy. Another key reason the game was successful was because we allowed one of our social ads to be dedicated to promoting the game. Simply launching an application does not guarantee engagement, no matter how cool the application.

Many companies spend a lot of money building the coolest widget, game, or application. However, if they don't actively do something to drive traffic and awareness of it, then they are not likely to be successful. That was an important learning for us.

With so much competition for user attention on the Facebook network, it's important to take a multi-pronged approach to let users know what you've put out there. For Adobe, this was achieved by using targeted ad placements in combination with key placement on the Adobe Student page, where the company already had around 11,500 fans.

Encourage return visits. Adobe was able to further increase engagement by giving users a reason to come back to the application each week. It ensured users knew that new images would be available each week by posting messages throughout the game. Having the ability to "share" was also critical to the campaign's success.

See for yourself
Adobe's presence on Facebook is always evolving. The "Real or Fake?" campaign is no longer live, but we've posted it on Traction's extranet so you can play the game by clicking here.

Adam Kleinberg is CEO of Traction, and Elisa Haidt is senior marketing manager for Adobe.

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Above all else, getting serious about digital means getting serious about creative, whether you're talking about a simple banner ad or a cutting-edge viral campaign. After all, big ideas move successful campaigns in any medium, and the web is no exception.

But as larger agencies struggle to redefine themselves in the lean-and-mean digital ecosystem, a grassroots army of smaller, specialty shops is raising eyebrows. Some work on assignment from larger agencies, but others have begun taking ownership of the client relationship for themselves. While this is by no means an exhaustive list, these are some of the independent agencies that made us stand up and take notice with campaigns and ideas that push web creative forward.

Last Exit

Agency Details:
Based in New York and London, Last Exit splits its clients evenly between agencies like McCann and Dentsu, as well as directly with brands.

Something Cool:
There are a lot of campaigns that run on Facebook. Frankly, most of them miss the big idea of the platform, which is to add value to users, not distract from what people prefer to do on the site.

But Last Exit's work on the Canon "My Story" campaign illustrates what brands can do to enhance, rather than detract from, the user experience on social networks.

Through the power of a simple Facebook app, Last Exit helped Canon inject itself into an activity that is practically a Facebook pastime -- uploading, tagging and viewing photos.

Biggest Challenge Facing Digital Right Now?
"The most challenging thing about digital now is to keep existing and prospective clients off the track of following hype and pursuing cool for its own sake, and [instead] keeping them on the path of delivering long-term value," says Last Exit partner Nuri Djavit.

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Hardly.

Sadly, falling budgets, especially in the area of production, are a challenge a lot of companies in this business are facing.

Complicating that challenge is the push for more integrated campaigns. That means more assets spread across a broader range of media environments -- not exactly the route to lower creative costs.

But the best way to maintain quality with a smaller budget may not be by producing assets in less quantity, but rather by doing things differently. As campaign planning becomes more integrated, the increased awareness of how all media are interconnected can open up new opportunities for improved efficiencies.

Here are seven ways that an integrated approach to campaign development can help you accomplish better results with the creative assets you develop.

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Every night, in children's rooms around the world, the words "tell me a story" precede tales that amuse, educate, and engage. The art of storytelling has transcended time, culture, even medium, taking the form of carvings, paintings, the written word, television, and film.

It is also beginning to live on the web. Consider the "digital fiction" that's being produced by book publishers like Penguin Books in the U.K. Its most current feature is told entirely through Google Maps. New applications, tools, and technology are allowing authors to tell vivid tales for consumers on the web.

As marketers, we can do the same.  

Our job can be bewildering, though. As we focus on the minutia of web and banner ad development, it's easy to get caught up in the execution of our projects and forget there's something behind all of that: the story of the brand. Think of a website or online ad campaign as a book. If you were writing that book, you wouldn't jump directly to the ending (or in marketing terms, your ultimate objective). You would progress through the chapters one by one and dutifully craft a procedure for how to take the reader there. 

In storytelling for interactive marketing and advertising, it's not about the destination. It's about the journey. 

Storytelling in cross-media campaigns
Sometimes, that story is a journey in the true sense of the word. Think about the Banana Republic holiday ad campaign that ran a few years back. Consumers were invited to watch fictitious stories like "Lost Mitten" (which incorporated the brand's winter apparel) unfold through print ads. The ads acted as teasers for a microsite at holidaystory.com, where consumers could go to find out how the narratives played out.   

This year, the brand launched a new series of stories to promote its spring line. Through its new "City Stories" campaign and related microsite, it delivers audio and video clips of up-and-coming musicians, and tells the true accounts of how each artist -- clad in Banana Republic clothing -- is inspired by the city in which he or she lives.

The stories told by the American Egg Board's new campaign are also true, and highlight the health benefits of its product as almost a secondary mission. The cross-media campaign and new section on brand site incredibleegg.org tell incredible stories of people like Luke Myers, world record holder for sport stacking, and Luci Romberg, a gymnast, free runner, and stunt woman. The site also invites consumers to tell their own stories of incredible physical and mental skill, and participate in skill-testing online games.

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Last month, the Online Publishers Association announced an initiative that it says is designed "to help stimulate a renaissance of creative advertising on the internet that meets the needs of marketers by better integrating their messages into the fabric of the web." As a part of the new initiative, a group of OPA members will be implementing new -- and significantly larger -- interactive display advertising units across their sites.

Following last month's iMedia Breakthrough Summit in Florida, iMedia asked a group of interactive marketers what the OPA's proposed new advertising units will mean for the future of online display. The response, though generally optimistic, was peppered with words of caution.

Lauren Boyer, partner and chief global strategist at Underscore Marketing, LLC, says she applauds the OPA for trying to solve for the waning engagement rates that the industry has been experiencing. "The notion of increasing impact and enabling stronger metrics is worthwhile, but will bigger ads really be better?" she asks. "While it's not the first solution that comes to mind, we're willing to trust their collective judgment and test."

Similarly, creative marketing strategist Adam Broitman says he applauds what the OPA is trying to do -- but he has little confidence that innovation can be driven by ad unit sizes or functions. "Bigger, more disruptive units do tend to have higher clickthrough rates, but they do not provide for a better user experience (per se)," he says. "If I worked for the OPA, I would make my rounds to various agencies and showcase best-in-class ads that leverage standard units and encourage creative thinking.

On the other hand, Brian Hadley, partner and media director at Cole & Weber United, says he's looking forward to the new display advertising units. "It is a great opportunity for advertisers and agencies to really create engaging experiences that connect with consumers," he says. "I think this also has implications in how sites are designed and how users experience their favorite content.

"Shifting away from the visually sub-fractional and classified nature of online advertising helps to provide the necessary real estate for advertisers to communicate effectively," Hadley adds. "The proposed formats generate a visual dominance which more closely aligns with other media like newspaper, magazine, or television."

As an example, Hadley points to magazines, in which the back-of-the-book classified ads and content look very similar to most web experiences today. However, the new OPA display units will be much more akin to the full page, half page, and one-third page ads found accompanying the front-of-book feature content in a magazine. "The difference will be night and day both in experience and performance," Hadley says.

Similarly, Jordan Berg, co-founder and chief creative officer for Questus, says that the bigger ad units will enable brands to tell a more complete story. "The future success of online ads hinges on these larger placements with enhanced features such as video, sound, and interactivity," he says. "Real creative breakthroughs for online ad creative will flourish under these new sizes. Brands and agencies will create 'ad experiences' that will rival the content they sit next to."

Hadley notes that the transition to the new ad units will be slow as publishers redefine their revenue structures, as well as their value on the media plan, with proposed units. "I don't foresee existing ad sizes disappearing any time soon, but I can see a potentially problematic period of realignment with consumers as expectations are reset about how online advertising is delivered through these new formats," he says. "I hope it will be a welcome change, but consumers are a fickle bunch -- just look at how consumers responded to the Facebook redesign."

In conclusion, when it comes to display ads, Broitman says the interactive industry needs to take a lesson from Lance Armstrong, who famously points out that it's not about the bike, it's about the rider. "In our case, it is not about the ad unit, it is about the message and experience," he says.

Lori Luechtefeld is editor of iMedia Connection.

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Editor's note: This article originally ran in VentureBeat. 

Not much about the future of advertising looks certain right now. Will newspapers become a niche medium? Will advertisers stop footing the bill for network TV if they don't get more control over content? Will Google find a way to monetize YouTube before Hulu steals its whole audience? And in the short term, what's going to happen to those of us who rely on marketing budgets to keep our companies afloat?

Amid the chaos, a few certainties have emerged. Among them is the idea that, at least over the next year, advertisers will try to make the most of their smaller budgets by putting their money into digital media. They're doing this not only because advertising dollars go further on the web, but because those dollars are more easily tracked, measured, and accounted for online. Which means now is as good a time as any to talk about why that's such a bad idea.

Don't get me wrong -- as vice president of strategic development at Tribal Fusion, the fifth largest global ad network, the last thing I want to do is discourage advertisers from investing more of their money on the web. Indeed, I'm thrilled at the prospect of major advertisers increasing their investment in digital media, where they can indeed accomplish much more for considerably less.

But if all you want to do with your advertising dollars online is track them, you might as well keep them under your mattress.

What makes for great advertising on the web is no different from what makes for great advertising in a magazine, TV show, billboard, or the underside of a Snapple bottle cap: creativity. If your web advertising doesn't start with that, it won't end with the results you're after.

But too often I see web campaigns that start and end with an obsession over a single thing: impressions. Advertisers want to know how many clicks, how many eyeballs, how many unique views they can rack up through the placement, far and wide, of their ad units. What they want is the banner seen 'round the world, rather than the idea that electrifies it. And while it's surely easier (and perhaps temporarily better for your job security) to count millions of impressions and claim you're making a difference, the fact remains that impressions or clicks will never measure whether you're having an actual impact on your audience.

In short, it's time to stop counting impressions and start making them.

Look at what marketers like Burger King have done online. Subservient Chicken, the bizarrely entertaining site that let consumers issue demands to a giant chicken in what appeared to be real time ("chicken your way," get it?), changed the way we look at what is possible with digital media. It's hard to imagine anyone arriving at such an inspired idea if all they were focusing on was how many clicks or impressions they could get, yet that site was seen by so many people it qualified as a bona fide phenomenon, one of the first in interactive marketing.

But I fear that as the economy worsens and marketers grow even tighter-fisted with their ad dollars, the industry's obsession with safe, easily distributed banner ads will only take a firmer hold. But we have to move past that obsession and get on a path to creativity, the thing that inspired all of us to get into this business in the first place.

I say this not to disparage the banner ad. Banner ads were first and are ubiquitous and will probably continue their dominance as the most popular ad unit for some time. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as the banner ad does have its place in the marketing mix. It can provide reach and frequency and creates a visual signpost for your brand that can be replicated easily all across the web.

But what we have to realize is that this format is not the be-all, end-all, and that we can use the banner to supplement and bolster different objectives and strategies. The web lets us do so much more with the same amount of money and just a bit more creative effort.

The creative energy that attracted us to this industry needs to be reinstated within our culture. I started in the business at one of the most legendary creative shops, DDB Needham. From the revolutionary VW "Think Small" ads of the 1970s (which still adorn the walls of my home today), to the Budweiser "Wassup" ad from the late 1990s, that agency's work started out defining an era and ended up defining an industry.

With the exception of a handful of instances -- such as Apple's Mac vs. PC campaign, we have yet to deliver consistent creative innovation like we did during the rise of television and print, even though we now have more tools to do it. We as marketers need to use those tools to tell a better story than we're telling right now, or our own story won't have a very happy ending.

Donnovan Andrews is VP of strategic development at Tribal Fusion.

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Featured in this video:

• Hilary Weber
• Melissa Hudson
• Michael Hong

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While some are bemoaning a lack of creativity in the interactive field, Lars Bastholm begs to differ. According to Bastholm, co-chief creative officer for AKQA, there's plenty of inspired thinking and creativity waiting to spring forth -- restrictive formats are just damming the creative flow.

Staunch regulations for banners and overbearing mobile carriers are stopping agencies from flexing their creative muscles and developing truly great campaigns. When it comes to mobile, the U.S. is a third-world country, and it's simply the carriers that are holding it back.

"Once they realize what the rest of the world has realized, then we're going to see leaps and bounds in creativity and the possibilities for doing interesting stuff online and on mobile phones," Bastholm said.

A respected member of the interactive community for 14 years, Bastholm has won dozens of international awards for his campaigns. After starting up Grey Interactive, he served as creative director for Framfab in Copenhagen and has been an integral part of AKQA since 2004. iMedia recently caught up with him to discuss his creative process, the fields that limit creativity, and how he keeps AKQA at the head of the interactive pack.

Lars Bastholm is co-chief creative officer for AKQA.

iMedia: AKQA has been named "agency of the year" by several publications in the past. Do you see the agency as frontrunner in the digital space? How do you stay ahead of the pack?

Bastholm: I guess so. We're always trying to imagine what will happen two to three years in the future and how we can best prepare ourselves for that eventuality. So far, that's worked out fairly well for us in terms of being on the right beat and finding which technologies to use and which sectors to kind of gamble on.

I think one of the big advantages of AKQA is that we're basically a collection of people who are really into what we're doing. We talk amongst ourselves all the time about what's next, how we need to change in order to adapt to what's next, and how the work is going to change. And how do we do that? Obviously we read a ton of blogs and a ton of stuff that's going on online. Everybody spends a good amount of time online just to see what's happening, what's changing, and what's starting to emerge.

iMedia: You mentioned taking gambles on new technologies. Are there any gambles that have or have not paid off?

Bastholm: We started AKQA Mobile almost five years ago. Nobody was thinking of mobile as a marketing tool, and we could kind of see that, obviously, something would happen eventually on the mobile platform. We started thinking about how, even then, we could become a preferred vendor for our existing clients and maybe even start a practice of its own.

Then there are things, like interactive TV, that we've dabbled in but have never really taken off, yet. Who knows -- maybe one day someone will come up with a good solution for how [interactive TV will] play out across different channels and different types of TVs. We've done some very successful stuff in the U.K. with interactive TV, but that's because they have Sky TV over there, which seems to have cracked TV and interactivity, at least to a certain degree.

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Say what you will about the creative (and the freakish ability to generate buzz), but Crispin, Porter + Bogusky's work for Volkswagen, Microsoft and, most recently, Burger King speaks to an innovative and well-balanced execution of medium and message. Eliciting taste tests in somewhat natural environments, the "Whopper Drive-Thru" and "Whopper Virgins" campaigns seek to blend what amounts to user-generated content with traditional channels such as broadcast. Online activations have further leveraged buzz around these initiatives and, if nothing else, have optimized search results. More importantly, people are talking about the brand offline, bringing new insights back online -- and the brand is listening.

"Whopper Sacrifice" was an interesting follow-up initiative as it played on the behavioral characteristics of user generation and turned the phenomenon of "acquiring friends" on its head -- before it was shut down, of course. But was this a failure in the end? Just the opposite. Nearly 234,000 Facebook users were "de-friended" in the pursuit of a Whopper. That amounted to more than 23,000 coupons for free Whoppers (the cap was set at 25,000), and participants who deleted 10 friends before the application was closed down still received their coupons via snail mail.

Traditional advocates of "ROI" take note: social media and DM vehicles worked together to provide results that were not only measurable, but that also equated to direct sales.

The real takeaway here is that everything is "user-generated" when you really think about it -- from your TV spots, to your print ads, to your more obvious social media applications and utilities. The question is really whether or not you recognize this collaboration and are willing to combine resources to actually do something with it.

Droga5's brilliant work on The Tap Project for UNICEF -- in which millions of people will commit to using tap water in lieu of energy-wasting bottles -- is a great example of how very little, if any, paid media is being used to create widespread engagement, vis-a-vis real-world experiences that have a higher purpose. And how is this being done? Primarily through social media and good ol' word-of-mouth. This also suggests that discerning tastes and common interest can rule the day, all the while showing potential for profit.

However, there are two sides to this coin. Take Honeyshed, for instance, Droga5's extensive foray into a platform that would "reinvent shopping for the digital generation" (and a project that parent-company Publicis supported for some $25M before it was announced that it would be shut down). The idea was definitely intriguing -- use real consumer voices to create an intersection for commerce and common interest.

The core issue, it seems, wasn't a lack of ingenuity or even technology expertise, so much as it was the development of a solid, multi-channel media strategy. The folks at Droga5 know as much as anyone that "just because you've built it doesn't mean they'll come." Not only did the company not follow its own successes in conversational outreach, but it seems they also slipped into more of a traditional mindset that assumes certain things about our audiences instead of simply asking them what they want or what they think they want before enlisting them to develop content or collaborate on product.

This is precisely why brands like HP, Dell, Starbucks and, more recently, Pepsi, have used microblogging tools such as Twitter to create highly effective consumer feedback loops. According to a recent study conducted by Twittermaven, consumer relationships are quite powerful through the use of Twitter; 60 percent of respondents would recommend a company based on their presence on Twitter, and 80 percent of Twitter users will reward those brands they have key relationships with by being more willing to purchase from them. What this means for creative and media folks alike is that your hard work doesn't have to go to waste -- you now have the ability to complement, even optimize, your integrated marketing efforts.

That said, it will be interesting to see where Pepsi takes its new and existing consumer relationships, particularly with respect to integrated strategy. Its "Refresh Everything" campaign presents broadcast, print and interactive work that is certainly polished, interweaving some interesting historical elements that may or may not actually be relevant to the brand's legacy. Additionally, the brand seems to embrace the idea of "experience sharing", predicated on the notion that we don't necessarily need better messaging, we need better stories and ways to tell those stories. Perhaps one thing Pepsi might be overlooking in this sense is in using social media to better educate its audience on how to actually use these tools in order to tell better stories. This goes beyond the simple use of social bookmarks or encouraging people to upload videos and much further into the concept of developing strong utility. This would entail providing useful tools that customize brand experiences based on personal preferences. And those toos should be promoted not only on endemic platforms (social utilities themselves), but also through the use of traditional channels such as broadcast and print, or even more progressive platforms such as mobile.

Storytelling, then, seems to be the thread that we've taken for granted as proponents of one camp versus another, media against creative and vice versa. Further, the reality is that, nowadays, no type of content or related message can have impact or influence without understanding its potential delivery mechanisms and how it courses through veins of the media landscape, viral or not.

So, here are some takeaways for the taking:

1. As media and technology continue to blend more harmoniously, creative is empowered through more innovative methods of expression.
2. Conversely, media have the benefit of being closer to the development of measurable touch-points and "micro-messaging," in turn, fostering an environment for targeting and placement that is transparent and based more on consumer collaboration than consumer acquisition.
3. Social media can be utilized more as a business solution relating to a return on intent, rather than investment; the current emphasis is on direct sales correlates, instead of brand awareness or advocacy first (which then activates purchase intent).
4. Finally, product development will benefit from these closer communication threads and will undoubtedly take on new life within consumer communities; it may not be long before people rely almost entirely on themselves to create and share their own products, using resources licensed from the brand and distribution tools given to them by their peers.

Amidst all the chaos surrounding our global economic collapse, these are actually very exciting times. Adversity will force us to innovate, and empathy will force us to better understand and improve the consumer experience -- a human experience that we build together, and one that can be shared by all.

Gunther Sonnenfeld is a digital brand strategist and independent consultant with specialties in social media marketing and interactive development.

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Antidote to a downturn
Cute is almost universally appealing -- after all, it tends to produce feelings of good cheer and comfort. But cute is enjoying a particularly high level of popularity right now. Sites that feature animals in cute poses, like cuteoverload.com, are getting millions of hits a month and have garnered mass media attention.

In a no-holds-barred tribute to these sites, a video ad produced for the Samsung Ultra Touch phone  features various baby animals mimicking human activities on sets built to scale. It even includes an "evil hedgehog" scene that shows, in the background, cutesy lingo created on ICHC.

Meanwhile, the ad's strong cute factor earned it a free spot on ICHC's competitor site cuteoverload.com.

Nick Malis, founder of cutethingsfallingasleep.org and the spin-off cutethingslaughing.com, said his original site suddenly took off in December, about the time the economic crisis was deepening. Since then, it has become the 15th most-searched term on Google and currently attracts a quarter million hits a day.

"The world is kind of screwed up right now... and people want to see cute, happy stuff when things are scary," said Malis, who started the site in 2006 as a collection of YouTube videos he found showing animals and babies falling asleep. Malis has landed on so many television shows recently -- including "The Today Show" and CNN -- that he's now a self-proclaimed expert on "cute."

Cute has even become a world of its own, evidenced by the slightly snarky, cliquey icanhascheezburger.com. Something of a cult site for cat lovers, ICHC has its own grammatically hybridized language and inside jokes. The site claims to have millions of users per month. "Our fans (aka 'Chzfrenz') savor their escape to ICHC everyday," the site notes.

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The good news is that innovative output is driven by creative thought, and leapfrogging is doable even in challenging circumstances. By exploring the creative process, this article will discuss how marketers can use the tools they have at hand to succeed under even the most challenging circumstances.  We'll review some examples of game-changing campaigns, and explore how a marketing team can set the stage for low-cost, high-impact innovation.

Think small, in a big way
Drew Breunig makes a great argument about innovation. Often, consumers have trouble seeing beyond their current world, or adapting to things which are totally foreign. It's not always about the epic change that blows their mind, but more about the smaller tweaks that can change everything. Think about online social networking. Social graphs are not new phenomena -- they have been around for ages -- and the web, as a tool to share information, has been commonplace for a decade at this point. But new combinations of existing technologies and functionalities provided the consumer base with new opportunities to communicate, and new ways for brands to reach their constituencies.

Another example would be rich internet applications; revolutionary applications like GoogleMaps leverage technologies that have actually been around for some time. But how does this translate for a marketer with a limited budget and a stressed executive team? In a few different ways.

For example, leveraging best practices from other fields can provide a competitive advantage when upgrading a website or other digital promotion. Consider that insurance companies don't have the best brand perception among consumers. People find them intimidating, and think that the service provider is out to get them. By adopting a rich interface more commonly seen in a retail site, insurance provider HumanaOne managed to surmount these challenges and create an award winning experience.

Don't win the game, change it
Innovation isn't always about finding a solution to a particular challenge so much as changing the context of the problem. In this economic environment, risking a new approach may well prove to be more successful than embracing a known challenge. Think of gaming, for example. 

Forced to compete with the consumer electronics giant Sony and the software behemoth Microsoft, Nintendo was faced with a costly, grueling deathmatch with no guarantee of success. Instead of running a risky approach to create costlier machines with better graphics and compelling gameplay for the typical console audience, it developed a platform with a different, kinetic style of play -- the Nintendo Wii. This of itself would not have guaranteed the raging success that the Nintendo enjoys, but a sophisticated marketing campaign tailored to a whole new audience played a large part. By promoting console gaming in a whole new way, Nintendo managed to dominate market share and create a growing niche for itself.

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Late in 2008, iMedia was approached by Sandra Kumorowski, a professor at Loyola University in Chicago, with an interesting opportunity. Sandra wanted to find a way to incorporate some of the resources on iMedia Connection into a graduate class she was teaching on integrated marketing communications.

We developed the cooperative project as a creative case study/competition, presenting the class with a fictional challenge that reflects a very relevant marketing concern: develop an integrated marketing campaign strategy that will serve to bolster the American automotive category, which has been challenged by international competition, economic, and environmental factors, as well as by ever-changing consumer behaviors.

The resulting campaigns were reviewed by a panel of interactive marketing experts, who judged the proposals based on key points in the digital campaign process: originality/creativity; effectiveness of media integration; appropriateness for the target audience; ability to be executed; and potential for a strong return on investment.

Though all the proposals showed the talent and skill of this group of future marketers, the panel ultimately found one that stood out from the crowd. The winning campaign, What's Fresh in the American Auto Industry, follows, along with some comments from the panel on what made this campaign worthy of sharing with the marketing community.

We hope that the project shines some light on the next wave of talent in interactive marketing: students, who will soon be offering up their skills to an industry that is always looking for the next big idea.

The panelists:
Doug Schumacher, president/creative director, Basement, Inc. 
Hilary Weber, director of internet marketing services, Kaiser Permanente
Adam Broitman, director of strategy/ringleader, Crayon 
Adam Kleinberg, CEO, Traction 
Chad Beasley, VP of sales, Jumpstart Automotive Media 
John Gray, VP of interactive media, Enlighten 
Liza Hausman, VP of marketing, Gigya 
Eric Druckenmiller, VP of media, Deep Focus 
Dea Lawrence, VP of West coast sales, Pointroll 
Keith Pape, VP, After10Studios
Jay Friedman, partner, Goodway Group 

The winning team:
Sinya Wu
Kimberly Galitz
Christina Martinico
Kris Slaboszewski
Jamie Kuntanarumitul

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The lessons of the "rags to riches" Obama campaign continue to inspire marketers of all disciplines, even those involved in corporate rebranding and launch events. This article applies the Obama playbook to the launch of a new corporate brand and is based on interviews conducted with communications leaders at major corporations, including Xerox, ArcelorMittal, Grant Thornton, and Thomson Reuters, among others.

Stand for something
Obama combined a simple, rational message -- Change -- with an emotional and empowering call-to-action: Yes we can. Competing candidates quickly adopted the change mantra, but Obama's status as an outsider, and the fact that he was there first, rendered his positioning unassailable.

Drew Neisser is president and CEO of Renegade.

Allen Adamson, managing director of Landor Associates writes, "The most successful brands today are based on ideas that are not just different and relevant, but simple."  Johnson Controls, in its 2007 rebranding, adopted a simple tagline, "Ingenuity Welcome" -- a signal to customers, prospects, current, and future employees. And they followed this up with an annual Ingenuity Day devoted to new product brainstorming by all employees. Smith & Nephew, the British medical products conglomerate, restructured and identified its mission as "helping people regain their lives by repairing and healing the human body." And when Canadian-based Thomson acquired U.K.-based Reuters, it identified the simple and clear goal of becoming "One Company in one Year."

Capture and empower your fan base
Obama broke new ground for a political candidate by his use of the web to build a database of supporters and to engage them in a conversation, ultimately using his disciples to spread his message. In a similar vein, Deloitte Touche recently encouraged employees worldwide to create short videos on what Deloitte means to them. The Deloitte Film Festival resulted in 370 videos, created by employees at all levels of the firm, engaging more than 1,200 participants. This initiative substantially strengthened the firm's global community. Released on YouTube, the films introduce the firm to potential young employees in a uniquely relevant way.

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In the interactive marketing industry, we have access to a much richer and broader range of data than our offline media counterparts, yet traditional marketing still remains far ahead in implementing and executing campaign testing measures. Part of this is because of the tendency within online advertising to focus purely on the standard suite of performance metrics, which drastically limits the ability to optimize and leverage key aspects for a particular campaign. 

Conversely, the utilization of simple, classic testing methods provides more useful performance metrics and allows for a proper analysis of how your marketing efforts are truly expanding your sales and brand. Practices such as systematic testing, maintaining control groups, and establishing "A/B" splits have been leveraged for decades. In fact, John Caples -- the famous copywriter and a cornerstone of testing methods in advertising -- speaks of instances where ads can perform at 19 times the conversion rate by making only the slightest adjustment. What does Caples say is the key to good advertising?

"The answer is testing, testing, testing... Based on proven results, they [marketers] then spend the bulk of their advertising dollars on tested copy in tested media," Caples wrote in his book, "Tested Advertising Methods."

Without running well-planned, methodical testing on your campaign, how will you know the true gains in your marketing spend? How are you justifying your media plan? And when was the last time you actually executed a test campaign, used a control group, or ran an A/B test with different creative, offers, or even target audiences? If the recent economic downturn isn't enough to incite your interest, here are just a few more reasons why you should put these practices in place.

1. Test campaigns
These are critical for developing base-level metrics for all marketing activity -- measures that will be used as benchmarks for your future campaigns. Since the aim of marketing is to create a larger, more-engaged audience for your products and services, we need to find out how large and engaged that audience was prior to the latest campaign. By running a simple campaign, with a basic creative or logo, we can estimate what results your brand experiences on its own. This is a basic principle, and gives you a benchmark to compare against the success of future campaigns. Is it compelling enough to tell your CMO that a recent campaign drew 1,500 sales with a 0.5 percent conversion rate, or would you rather report that your latest ad wizardry resulted in a conversion increase of more than 500 percent?

2. Control groups
Yet another underutilized tool. A well executed control group will consist of a segment of people who will not be exposed to the marketing elements you'll be testing. Our marketing predecessors would previously identify key localities on which to perform these tests, selecting one region to remove from their campaign's exposure. There are many challenges in maintaining "clean" control groups, as people freely move from region to region, but this is easily solved and implemented by the very nature of online advertising. Many ad servers can quickly define control groups, and they are much more effective at preventing errant exposures, as opposed to geographically constraining campaigns. This control group will show the natural performance and behavior of your customers. By keeping your control groups "clean," you have a yardstick against which you can compare results and confidently tout your marketing prowess to the rest of your team.

3. A/B split testing
A key testing method. A/B split testing is a highly versatile yet powerful method which can easily be adapted to test anything, including calls-to-action, targeting, placement, offers, creative, etc. By first comparing different creative layouts and then seamlessly integrating different creative into the same placement, you allow a pure performance comparison to take place.

Minor changes, such as headline placement or copy length, can produce drastic differences in engagement, even for creative executions that are the same size. Even small alterations to color schemes or fonts can make the difference in grabbing your audience and pulling them to a sale. 

Interactive marketers also gain a significant advantage over other media when performing A/B split testing on creative. Not only are performance metrics confidently derived, but these creatives can be optimized to increase the exposure of the winning creative, all within the same media buy. Now you can be sure that you're not wasting any spend, in near real-time, with no additional effort required from your publisher.

These three testing practices can best be summed as: Simple tools and simple concepts with simple steps to execution. So why aren't more marketers implementing them? As budgets tighten over the next year, the need to prove the value in a media buy is extremely important. This is one concern Caples knew first hand -- having joined BBDO in 1927, he pioneered these testing methodologies during the Great Depression and eventually published the first edition of "Tested Advertising Methods" in 1932, just in time to help guide BBDO through a drastic period of reduced spend and tightening budgets.

The parallels between the time when Caples developed and proved his methodology and the current economic downturn are clear. Good marketing is just as important now as it was then to help turn sales around, lift your brand above the fold, and demonstrate that your plan is actually performing stronger with the same budget allocation.

By using the above methods for systematically using a test campaign, control group, and A/B split tests in every plan, you can determine what works and show that the resources and creativity you devote to your media plan are as successful at winning awards as they are at growing your company's revenue.

Rodney Webster is director of product management, Mediaplex, a division of ValueClick.

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What happened to schmaltz? And maudlin? And "slice of death"?

Digital happened. Since the advent of digital, the number of brands using humor to deliver their messages has grown markedly. One can only surmise that this is because humor "works." It works at both connecting brands to audiences and at reshaping brand imagery in powerful ways.

Of course, humor doesn't always deliver results for brands. Many have tried to "do" humor and have flopped. Sometimes the jokes get overshadowed by the ferric fist of brand identity. Sometimes we laugh at the ad and forget the brand. And sometimes the humor is gratuitous -- a way to attract attention, but not shaped to serve brand messaging goals.

Humor is hard to do, but perhaps even harder is crafting funny programs and messages that deliver real brand benefits. As we all know, assessing the impact of any creative on brand strength is pretty squishy science. But we can identify creative programs that drove buzz and virality online, and through this identification process attempt to tease out some core principles of brand beneficial humor.

So let's begin, shall we?

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More often than not, Renny Gleeson's attention is captured by content developed by people working in a proverbial basement than by brand-funded campaigns. The global director of interactive strategies at Wieden + Kennedy thinks that's a good thing, but it's also a challenge because of what it exposes. Most brands are pledging time and money to interactive because they simply think they should, whereas average social media sensations do it because they care. The motivation factor and differences between the two is exponential, he says.

iMedia connected with Gleeson at his home base in Portland, Ore., to ask what keeps his creative juices flowing, and how his passion for motorcycles and rock climbing might play into his charge to lead all things digital at W+K.

iMedia: What disruptive technologies are you most interested in?

Renny Gleeson: From a technology standpoint, I'd say that the things I focus on are mobility and the impact of it -- social media, but not from the standpoint of how I can get banners out so much as how it's changing us culturally. And then the third big bucket I'd say that I look at a lot is gaming... those are probably the three that keep me up at night.

Interestingly, there's this sort of "Revenge of the Nerds" thing where there's a belief that by playing role-playing games and video games and by using social media, which almost by definition means you couldn't get a date, that somehow those three are now the core curriculum required to have any chance of success in the medium. It just so happens that those are all qualifications I have, but it does feel a little shaudenfreuder.

iMedia: Can you give your basic elevator pitch for a good campaign? What's your most valuable pitching tip?

Gleeson: At the end of the day, it's showing how your work connects with people's hearts... If there isn't any insight that connects people's hearts to your brand, then you kind of wasted it.

iMedia: How has W+K's digital strategy changed since you came on board?

Gleeson: I like to flatter myself by saying I've helped focus the strategy and expand it. I think the pieces have been here. I mean, think back to what W+K was doing in the early 2000s. I don't know if you remember the whole CK1 campaign, where you could sign up for this soap opera by email. Or maybe you remember the Beta-7 campaign for Sega, where the beta tester was having epileptic fits as a result of the intensity of the action in the football game, and Sega was trying to cover it up. I think there has been some pretty interesting work that has come out of W+K. It's both a challenge and an opportunity that what people seem to remember most is some of our most iconic TV work, but that's certainly not the only thing that we do by any stretch.

To be fair, W+K was not going as fast forward into this space as it was willing to do in others. It was just a matter of focus, effort, time, staffing, discipline, and mind share -- things like that. So my job has really been three things: You need to make sure you've got the structure that can throughput the kind of work that you need as well as have people with conceptual cojones and thoughts to bring great ideas to life.

The second thing I do is work with specific clients. I have a particular group that I work with directly, and I'm helping roadmap ways to grapple with the opportunities and challenges of the space. And a third thing I do is looking forward, because the amount of work you have tends to blot out the daylight quickly. I try to keep my feelers out to ensure that we're up on what the latest technologies are, the latest capabilities.

In other words, a lot of companies in this space are doing what they're doing out of fear, not out of love. And if you've ever been in a situation where you've worked from a position of fear, you know that it shuts down most of the creative capability, and you shift to survival mode. That's when you start to just get the banners, and the buttons, and crap... This isn't a matter of a new channel being added to the mix, this is an opportunity, a cultural shift that allows me to reinvent what my brand means to you. And that doesn't just mean what you do online. It seems there's a lot of opportunity there as well, a real connective tissue that can link other things that haven't been done before.

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Plop, plop, fizz fizz.
Candy coated popcorn, peanuts and a prize.
What walks down stairs, alone or in pairs?

Once upon a time...there were jingles: catchy little sing-songy tunes that immediately embedded themselves in your brain, and then stayed there... forever. If radio created the jingle, then TV surely perfected it; matching the invasive earworm with irresistible eye candy to create the perfect pop culture confection: the much-maligned, yet still viable 30-second spot.

It is a tempting oversimplification to think that people weren't nearly as evolved or as pop-culture savvy back when there were only a handful of radio stations, three networks and some local TV stations. The truth is that consumers were captivated largely by a strangely compelling combination of novelty and repetition, and it worked like a charm... and still does today.

By creating irresistible melodies with clever messaging (and later actually co-opting pop songs to enhance a brand) marketers were able to tap into a very basic human behavior...the simple act of mimicry. This Pavlovian call/response pattern immediately burned new and lasting neuron pathways in the minds and hearts of consumers, with the true value of them yet to be even realized. Our pioneering Madison Ave predecessors had stumbled upon the marketing equivalent of the "Manchurian Candidate." Those simple jingles had and still have the lasting ability to reach across time to trigger what I like to call "dormant brand equity," activating vast legions of consumers at anytime, just like Laurence Harvey's programmed response to seeing the Queen of Hearts� except, of course, that the call to action here is to pull the trigger on a purchase instead of a politician.

In most cases, the jingle was not only catchy... it actually described the product, what it did, and why you need it, in a bite-sized mantra that was as fun as a Mother Goose rhyme, or as addictive as a schoolyard taunt.

Today, things are very different... or are they? We have at our command greater reach; the ability to micro-target; miles and miles of documented psychographic research and the cold, hard data to back up any campaign... so why is it still hit and miss to use a memorable tune to get consumers to dial into your brand?

In our never-ending quest to try the latest, greatest new technology and jump feet first into the ever-fragmenting consumer universe, we must not forget the lessons that Mother Goose, Dr. Seuss, and the late Johnny Cochran taught us: keep it simple, make it memorable, and surgically attach it to the consumer like that pesky face-hugger stuck to John Hurt in "Alien." 

Remember: "If it does not fit, you must acquit."

Nostalgia can only be understood in reverse

The tagline for the recent film, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is this: "Life is lived forwards, but can only be understood in reverse." As consumers and as humans, we are informed by a catalog of experiences that form our memory -- be they misty water-colored or blindingly high contrast. We are reminded of something we felt long ago, and then we are compelled to recreate the feeling. When a group of similarly aged people gather at a party, they often wind up singing TV theme songs, ad jingles and ultra-lame pop songs from their collective past. Is it a ritual catharsis, or is the ritual itself a demonstration of the true origin of the modern viral campaign... an ad jingle so annoying, so easy to remember and so easily passed along that it becomes immortalized in the minds of its target audience?

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1. Brokeback Snickers

TBWA\Chiat\Day's Super Bowl commercial for Snickers, in which two grimy car mechanics are horrified at finding themselves unexpectedly lip-to-lip, was arguably a spoof of macho attitudes. But neither the Human Rights Campaign nor the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation thought so, calling it demeaning -- and calling for a boycott. Snickers' online component of the campaign made things worse.

Viewers could go online to choose alternate endings, which were darker and more violent than the TV version, in which the guys pull out their chest hair in an effort to "do something manly." Online, you could watch one mechanic slam a car's hood down on the other's head or hit a brutal belly blow with a wrench. Ouch! Bonus content included candid videos of the Super Bowl players going, "Eeeoouuu" when the mechanics' mouths touch.

Activists called for a boycott, amid global press coverage of the company's homophobia, not the yumminess of its product. Mars took down the website.

Okay, so the offending Super Bowl spot was way back in 2007, right? Lesson learned, right? Nope. Mars was back this past July with a TV spot in which a slender male race-walker in teensy yellow shorts is harassed by Mr. T and told to "run like a real man" and "get some nuts." The ad was promptly pulled following a new swell of protest. However, thanks to the miracle of viral media, the spot lives on via YouTube.

What we can learn

1. If you're going to engage in conversation with your customers, listen to what they say.

2. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.

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According to Stefan Olander, global director of brand connections at Nike, the quintessential big idea isn't what it used to be. "We used to start with an ad, and then we'd build layers of interactivity," he said. "Now it starts with the need to solve a problem, and that forces us to think differently. The entertainment layer will never go away, but now it's applied in a different way."

Indeed, digital technologies have transformed all media. Today, advertising is no longer about crafting a concept and pushing it out to the masses. It's about sparking a conversation -- or giving consumers the ability to talk amongst themselves. On Wednesday during ad:tech New York, Olander joined a panel of other industry experts to discuss how successful brands are reenvisioning how they connect with consumers in a digital world. In doing so, they highlighted the following five roles that successful brands are playing in consumers' lives.

1. Brands as entertainers
"We all thought, in the old days, that brands bought media," said moderator Paul Woolmington, founding partner of Naked Communications. "But brands can actually become the entertainers." 

Not only that, but brands can also enable consumers to entertain themselves. Among myriad examples, Woolmington pointed to Cadbury's Gorilla campaign, in which an extremely expressive gorilla drums to the beat of Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight." The wildly successful and entertaining campaign not only scored millions of YouTube views, but it also inspired hundreds of mashups and reinterpretations by viewers.

2. Brands as mavericks
Jessica Greenwood, deputy editor of Contagious Magazine, pointed out that, although McCain's failed presidential bid may have soiled the word "maverick," the idea behind the word is still something that brands can and should aspire to.

"The fact that you can be subversive and be mainstream right now opens up many possibilities," she said. Among her examples, Greenwood pointed to Method hand soap, a brand that sprang up as an environmentally safe alternative to other toxic cleaners. In spite of its defiant roots, the brand has achieved tremendous widespread appeal.

3. Brands as schizophrenics (two-track branding)
Brands today are not limited to a single persona. "You can be lots of different things to lots of different people," Greenwood said. "You can target the masses and the niches to really create hysteria."

As an example, Greenwood pointed to the marketing genius behind "The Dark Knight." In addition to standard mainstream media materials promoting the film, its marketers created a tremendous underground phenomenon through vehicles such as Harvey Dent's campaign website.

4. Brands as benefactors
Branding isn't always just about the brand. Companies today are realizing that their campaigns also need to be useful and relevant to their consumers. Greenwood pointed to the UPS package tracking widget as a prime example of a brand putting its customers' needs first.

But being a true benefactor goes even further. "An increasingly important factor is how you take the virtual world and have it meet the physical world," said Nick Law, R/GA's executive vice president and chief creative officer for North America. As an example of these real-world connections, he pointed to the Nokia viNe, a GPS-based application that enables users to record the sights and sounds of their journeys and upload them for all to see.

As an example of another brand that is creating goodwill with its advertising, Andy Berndt, managing director of Google Creative Lab, pointed to a simple print ad for Tylenol. The ad instructs consumers on how to resize the text in their browser, thus reducing eye strain and, possibly, headaches. Additional tips for relieving common aches and pains without pills can be found on the Tylenol website. Berndt noted that on the surface such an approach may seem counterintuitive. After all, if people don't have headaches, won't sales go down? But it's precisely that kind of problem-solving and goodwill that can build brand loyalty.

5. Brands as innovators
The need for brands to innovate may seem obvious, especially to digital marketers. But it bears repeating. "If you don't innovate, you're going to die," Woolmington said. As examples of brands that have taken this lesson to heart, he mentioned Speedo. Through its Olympic alignment with Michael Phelps, the brand finally managed to do away with a legacy that for years had revolved around the image of an overweight man in a too-small swimsuit, Woolmington noted.

Lori Luechtefeld is editor of iMedia Connection.

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Shelly Lazarus is CEO and chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide.

After joining Ogilvy in 1971, Lazarus quickly climbed the ranks of powerful ad men, setting a new course for professional women in a male-dominated industry. In short order, she became known as one of the most powerful executives in advertising.

As the head of a $2 billion company, Lazarus has guided successful campaigns for most of the largest brands that Ogilvy handles, including American Express, Dove, Ford, Kraft, Kodak and IBM. And her reputation for winning and keeping the world's top brands became a valuable and irreplaceable asset for Ogilvy.

Lazarus reached the pinnacle of Ogilvy's management hierarchy in 1996, when she was appointed CEO, and chairman the following year. But a little more than 10 years later, in January of next year, Lazarus will relinquish her coveted CEO title to Miles Young, a 25-year veteran of Ogilvy who has spent the last 13 years as head of its Asia Pacific region.

Lazarus will still have her hands in the game, of course, retaining her chairman title and continuing to keep Ogilvy on course as one of the most high-profile agencies. But how the digital medium will transcend the advertising world is anyone's guess at this point.

Lazarus had a few key pointers to share with iMedia on what Ogilvy is doing to conquer the web, and what she would have done differently in her career -- if anything.

iMedia: You were once quoted as saying, "Don't underestimate the value people place on authenticity." How has this translated to helping brands gain success in such a media-saturated environment as the internet?

Shelly Lazarus: I've always believed that a brand is a relationship. And like all good relationships, it is built on trust. If a brand violates that trust by doing something that its customers consider false or inauthentic, it risks serious and sometimes irreparable damage to its reputation. If a brand makes a misstep, it is always best to own up to it and address it head on, because it will be revealed. Today, consumers are in charge, and able to quickly communicate to their network. Better they talk about how trustworthy and authentic a brand is, rather than how it evaded responsibility.

iMedia: Do you still ascribe to your theory of 360-degree branding? Has it become harder or easier to accomplish this in the digital environment?

Lazarus: At Ogilvy, we believe that brands are built by a whole range of influences. With the advent of the internet, digital media and interactivity, we recognized that connecting with consumers on multiple platforms when it counted would be the formula for success. 360 Degree Branding means taking a big brand idea and tailoring it for the media that are most effective with consumers -- whether mass marketing, branded entertainment, or customer experiences at retail or on the internet. Today, because of digital and interactive technology, we know a lot more about what people want, and we have so many more ways of reaching and engaging them with relevant communications when they are most receptive. 

iMedia: What is your best piece of advice for building an engaging and profitable brand experience online?

Lazarus: We believe that great brands are built through great ideas, however they are expressed. David Ogilvy said, "Unless your campaign contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night." That is as true today as it was when he said it 40 years ago. When you have big, compelling ideas, connecting with people is easy. When you get down to the universal truths of a brand, you know what the brand experience should feel like. You know how the brand can be best expressed at every point of contact, anywhere in the world.

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"Advertising is based on one thing� happiness. Happiness is the smell of a new car. It's freedom from fear. It's a billboard on the side of the road that screams with reassurance 'whatever you're doing, its ok, you are ok.'" (Don Draper, "Mad Men")

I am trying to find my happy place. We are at a hotel in Portland, two days into a much-needed family vacation.

Write the byline

First a diversion. I've queued up the first season of "Mad Men." I am a bit late to the show, but now it's time to gorge. I'm on vacation, after all. Maybe it will inspire.

Writing the byline. Would kill for a cigarette. Did people really smoke that much? Too bad we can't make it healthier.

People in the ad biz always talk about advertising as culture creation. Like all good vocationally-based TV series, the creators of "Mad Men" understand the business. And they have created a hero true to the craft. Don Draper has a gift indeed. He understands what moves us. He has a sense for what we need from advertising.

I've thought about online advertising a whole lot over the past couple of years. I've participated in countless panels debating the future of advertising and the importance in remaking it for a social web. The refrain is familiar and, quite frankly, exhausting: "Social media doesn't monetize." "The banner is dead." "Advertising needs to become a conversation." "Marketers need a social media strategy."

All true perhaps, but one thing is missing� joy. Online advertising is no fun. It's no fun for consumers. The banner has a very hard time making us feel anything at all. For all of the excitement around ad innovation in Silicon Valley, fun has not been at the top of the list.

It seems to me that Silicon Valley doesn't really like advertising; it likes efficiency. Efficiency drove the first wave of advertising, and the medium was successfully colonized by direct response dollars. But if we are going to chip away at brand budgets, we are going to have to do a much better job at making ads fun.

When was the last time you enjoyed interacting with an ad online? I loved the Mac vs. PC ad I saw a couple of months back; I've seen some really cool IBM ads recently too. But these are exceptions. For online advertising to reach its fullest potential for brands, it has to make people happy. And it has to be way easier for people to get something out of it.

Next time you plan a campaign, try thinking about three things: the user's happiness, how to extend it and how to use the countless resources the web offers to make this happen.

Happiness
Focus less on the immediate action and more on immediate enjoyment. After all, isn't this is what brand advertising is all about? The biggest single change the internet has brought to brand marketing is user empowerment. In a demand-based world, consumers elect to spend time with commercial messages. Good ads are content or utility, or both. How are you making a prospect enjoy the interaction?

Time
We�ve found that most consumers will spend about 10 seconds with most video ads, but we�ve been able to extend that time by creating more choice in the ad experience. Remember, TV spots are designed for captive environments. Demand-based environments need to pull consumers in quickly and give them control over what they can consume. Push your team to think about how to get users to spend more time with your content. Most importantly, change the metrics. Lose the urge to evaluate everything by the click.

Resourcefulness
I am at the Ace Hotel, and it is making me think about doing more with less. The Ace is a case study in resourceful design. It's not fussy, but is exceptionally thoughtful about its travelers' needs. Next time you are in Portland, visit the hotel or come by for an exceptional cup of coffee. The point is this: Web 2.0 has given advertisers an incredible set of tools to create portable, localized media experiences. Video, rich media, feeds, games, maps, polls -- the tools are available. Push your team to innovate quickly. Find cool ways to syndicate your brand experience, just as the Ace Hotel has done.

Advertising used to be pretty simple. Innovation was less about how we delivered a message and more about the message itself. A lot has changed. Addressability is improving relevance. The network is removing friction and enabling virality. Interactivity changes narrative and creates new open-ended creative opportunities. More accountable compensation models designed for the medium, cost per engagement (CPE) are emerging.

However, for more brands to move into online, or to create a greater presence there, we've got to find ways to make the experience more enjoyable. People love to be entertained. Let's not forget what made brand advertising work in the first place.

Troy Young is chief marketing officer of VideoEgg.

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I was watching "Mad Men" last night (if you're in advertising or marketing and aren't watching, start tuning in) and I came up with a concept that may be prescient: sex doesn't sell.

What? Am I crazy? "Sex sells" is one of the most pervasive memes in advertising. Hike up a women's skirt, show some cleavage, throw in a volleyball and voila, beer commercial. It even seems as though the phrase is used by clients and account people everywhere simply as a way to justify the usage of scantily clad women in advertising. But why do they do this? Because the subtlety of what is happening in that ad is lost on them.

What's the real draw in a campaign that uses sexual imagery? It is the feeling you get from the advertisement that sells the product -- not the sex itself. The subtlety, nuance and innuendo; the allure. Tying the idea of sex in with a product works very well in the good ol' US of A because we are an amazingly sexually repressed nation.

Don�t think so? Well, then, let me venture into territory that is going to make you feel a little uncomfortable, a little dirty, a little naughty... a frank discussion of your sexual desires...

You didn't think I would go there, did you? And yet, you stuck around to read more, just in case. That, my friends, is advertising: the ability to manipulate.

It's ok, though. You're alone. No one is watching you. And that, my new-found frustrated, annoyed friends, is the beauty of the internet (as well as one of its most powerful assets) -- the anonymity of consumption. Our sessions are private -- well at least from the standpoint of the initial consumption (it's all being tracked somewhere, but not having to be with other individuals in-person during consumption somehow opens us up to permissiveness). Online, we will consume, take in and absorb that which would be considered offensive in polite company. It is the duality of our public and private selves.

What is permissible online is not permissible in other media because those media are often consumed communally. Reading the paper on the train or bus or even at breakfast in front of your wife or husband; watching football at a bar, "Dexter" with friends (now that is one sadistic program) or reading a magazine on the subway -- these are all communal environments.

For example, I ran across a banner ad for a hotel; I won't say which one, but let's just say the ad suggested some uses for their hotel rooms as a couple's getaway and what great beds they had... complete with very suggestive imagery. Needless to say, I glanced left and right when it came up, and I was at home alone. I was not on a "sex" site. Just a mundane cooking blog in the "recipes for dates" section.

I thought for a second. Could I imagine that ad on TV for that brand? I think not. The calls from irate mothers "protecting" their children from the smut on TV would be monstrous. The far right machine would move into action.

A little while ago I wrote on why TV is more potent for branding. Now I'll tell you an advantage online advertising has: singular consumption permissiveness to push boundaries.

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The concept was direct enough: two agencies compete in a head-to-head pitch for a fictitious project based around the film "Casablanca." What gave it a reality-show spin was the pitch environment -- live in front of several hundred people at the Summit.

Five prestigious judges (Don Buckley, SVP, interactive marketing, Warner Bros.; Dwight Caines, EVP, Worldwide digital marketing strategy, Columbia TriStar Marketing Group; Hilary Hattenbach, VP, digital marketing, Twentieth Century Fox; Doug Neil, SVP, digital marketing, Universal Pictures; Amy Powell, SVP, interactive marketing, Paramount Pictures) were on hand to deliver critiques of each team's approach. Pretty naked stuff.

And pretty fantastic results, from both Basement and our competitors, MindComet. Thanks to a fantastic effort from my ace team at Basement, we won the pitch. Thus, I'm here to share the marketing strategy and creative thinking that brought us victory.

But before we get into what we did, let's review the challenge.

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Are you rational? Most of us like to think of ourselves as rational beings making logical choices. However, there's a raft of evidence telling us we are far more motivated by emotions. And who knows this better than the advertising community? If emotions rule, does it matter if advertising copy makes little sense? Does it matter if it's original? Does it matter if it confuses us?

There's much talk about delivering ads, but less about writing content. Here are some common mistakes.

Sloppy copy
Occasionally, attention to writing meaningful copy gets ignored -- and this can lead to confusion if not outright hilarity.

This is from a print ad that recently appeared in the Economist: "SDA Bocconi is Italy's number one business school, the sixth in Europe and the twenty-first in the world for the executive education, by the Financial Times."

The ad makes it sound as if the Bocconi School of Management in Milan is located in a building next to the Financial Times. The last time I looked, the Financial Times was in London.

Does it instill confidence? How much would it have cost to rewrite this clearly?

Here is an example from the American Translators' Association (ATA) of how it can all go wrong.

"�Lina's a pricy French sandwich chain, advertised for franchisees abroad�The slogan: 'Tomorrow we will expect on your dynamism.' Response: zero."

Translation matters now that companies are extending their global reach. When this slogan was translated, it became meaningless. So keep in mind that if you're translating from another language into English, the translation should be done by a native English speaker.

Of course we shouldn't laugh at people genuinely trying to communicate in English when it isn't their first language. But you'd think a business would have the budget to get this sort of thing right.

Grand confusion
The rather grand sounding "Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme" from the Saïd Business School claims that, "Leadership cannot be taught, but leaders can be educated."

Why can't you teach a leader anything? Is it a case of you can't teach an old dog new tricks? And, what does education without teaching look like?

Confusion can be intentionally used to influence. When people are perplexed they search for meaning and grab onto anything that they can understand.

I put this question about an education without teaching to a number of people who are smart. Eventually, someone suggested the philosopher Hannah Arendt had written on the subject. This may be true. But will prospective graduates get it -- smart though some of them are?

Seeking to ignite the imagination
Whether advertising sets out to be straightforward, or create a hyperventilated fantasy, it's supposed to create desire and point to a better imagined future. All too often, efforts strain toward the superlative and become farcical or mind-numbingly repetitive. 

Here's some frenzied copy from the Infiniti website: "The thrill of effortless exhilaration." It sounds positively orgasmic. Of course sex and cars have always been the stuff of fantasy. Infiniti plays it to the limit. There are lots of references to effortlessness on the luxury car's site (except the effort you need to put in to buy the car), seduction and performance.

"An epic sculpture of sensation, an Infiniti G Sedan reshapes performance beyond the mere thrill of horsepower."

What's wrong with horsepower? Elsewhere the company seems to think horsepower is fine. Look at that word "mere." It has an air of insufferable snootiness about it. You can denigrate anything with mere. How about: beyond a mere sculpture of sensation?

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Words are important. Some words fully and accurately capture the scope of their subject in year one as well as they do in year one thousand. Others become outdated and can actually limit those that hinge their identity on them, hindering growth and unnecessarily leaving a lot of opportunities on the table.

Such is the case for the term "rich media."

Why is the term no longer working for the interactive ad industry? How can it? "Rich media" was first coined in late 1999 by publishers looking to define any online ad with a file size larger than 30 to 40K, (the standard file size that most publisher ad serving platforms are limited to handle). Since that time, third-party providers like EyeWonder have risen to prominence with new technologies and serving capabilities that enable advertisers to deliver far more compelling and interactive ad campaigns than publishers' ad servers could ever handle on their own.

Accordingly, Wikipedia has more recently defined rich media as "a broad range of interactive digital media that exhibit dynamic motion, taking advantage of enhanced sensory features such as video, audio and animation." Unfortunately for our industry, definitions like this can also be applied to any rich media that appears online, including on websites. In fact, most current interactive industry award events utilize the term rich media to describe their websites, not interactive advertising, and instead lump advertising into one big "display advertising" bucket.

It's clear that rich media is a term that is not clearly defined and understood (even within the industry) and is at best a catch-all for an ever-widening array of interactive media.

Findings of an anonymously fielded online survey of online advertising influencers conducted by EyeWonder in March 2008 highlights the inadequacies and confusion within the industry. The survey revealed that:

• 62 percent of the respondents agree that the term "rich media" is too "generic and meaningless."
• 66 percent of industry execs surveyed did not believe that "rich media" accurately defined today's online video ads.
• 76 percent of agency executives did not believe it to be an adequate term to cover "emerging platforms" -- mobile, IPTV, etc.
• 68 percent agreed that a new category name for "rich media" is needed (term "rich media" doesn't capture where digital advertising is headed in the next five years; it is too generic/meaningless).
• 92 percent of agency influencers had a positive to neutral opinion of the term "Interactive Digital Advertising," finding it more accurate than "rich media."

One of the foremost problems with rich media is that it is at once limitless and limiting. This was strongly supported by our research: No two people define it the same way, even within the interactive advertising industry. Expectations of its outcome and impact differ, creating tension among the brand development, marketer, publisher, and creative and media agency stakeholders. A lack of clear and consistent communication among all of the stakeholders often leads to confusion, which can hinder forward progress and growth. I think all the stakeholders would agree that this is bad for business!

The more questions you ask surrounding what is and what is not rich media, the clearer the answers become. Is in-stream a part of rich media? Are video ads delivered to mobile devices rich media? Will new custom ad formats developed by companies like Yahoo, Google or EyeWonder automatically fall under rich media? Does rich media include interactive ads delivered to other digital devices? (I'm guessing that your answers are probably identical to ours.)

We are no longer in 1999. Interactive advertising's creative, delivery and measurement opportunities have all dramatically evolved and improved; it is time for the category's name to catch up with the tremendous capabilities it now offers.

As we move into the next century of advertising, let's dump that which hinders creativity and embrace Interactive Digital Advertising.

John Vincent is CEO, EyeWonder.

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The agency believes that its sales people are brilliant. But does the client? At the iMedia Agency Summit, we were reminded of that disconnect. So what is causing that divergent perception? And is it real? Unfortunately, yes, it is real.

Once again, the explosion of our industry and cost cutting has forced agencies to hire the newbies... again. And, once again, due to time constraints, those newbies get relatively little training and are supposed to survive trial-by-fire, thrown in at the deep end to see if they survive.

What's the problem this time?

Clients are no longer the dullards they were the first time this happened, and they're noticing it now more than ever, big time. Something needs to change drastically.

Every agency in our space, and every vendor for that matter, should require a three-week training course on the nuances of our industry -- the terms, the needs of that client, the competitive space. It should start with SEM, banner advertising, rich media, email, microsites, etc., and work its way all the way through ad serving limitations, measurement and research.

Often what these newbies don't know when you send them out to a client meeting is stunning. What's worse is they think they are in complete control. Even worse than that? You don't even know what they don't know when you send them to that client. Fine if they don't know all the aspects of the client's business, the client understands that. But not knowing more than the client about capabilities and options in the online space, especially with the level of competency at most clients, is unforgivable.

First, create an interview test for all potential new hires. Test them on everything from various media to the space in general to business models, etc.

Google gives a test to all potential engineering hires, and many other companies have basic competency barometers before an applicant can even be considered. An electrician has to get certified, but in our industry? Sometimes it feels as if you only have to have a warm, attractive body to qualify for the job. Typically, the in-person interview is about personality, about their fit with the agency or vendor, and it's not about assessing competency -- since the process is only as good as the competency of those interviewing. And often, even if the interviewer is competent, they don't ask the right questions to assess whether the potential hire is able to really do the job well.

The next step would be to construct a training program for all new employees after they're hired. Look, you basically only have to do it once and then just augment it with a follow-up test. In fact, everyone at your agency should take that course and have the test results posted. That will spur learning real quick, I guarantee. And don't cop out and do the test online. Treat it like a lecture series, a classroom. It is the interaction and debate among carbon-based life forms where learning actually happens, and of course the fear of looking foolish in front of their peers will get them to focus.

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Way back in time, when the human race was, arguably, living in caves, man spent all his time satisfying his basic needs, like food, air, water and sex. And while some of these pursuits were as satisfying as their eventual attainment, even our primitive ancestors realized there had to be more to life than just the day to day struggle to prolong it.

Then man created tools. These tools, including the old standbys like the wheel, fire and sharp rocks, afforded man the luxury of free time to pursue other interests -- like communication and artistic expression (language; cave drawings), the culinary arts (wooly mammoth tastes much better when cooked than when raw)� and probably more sex.

Thus, the human race evolved.

Kind of like how internet advertising evolved. At first, it focused on basic forms of communication (email and websites). Gradually, it grew more sophisticated, moving from providing basic information to improving the quality of marketing communication (behavioral targeting; search) and enriching life itself (MySpace; YouTube). This, in theory, has led to today's golden age of online marketing � where people gather in their modern "caves" and use electronic tools to interact, express themselves and acquire goods like fast food, carbonated beverages, and sex.

Maslow culture
Fundamentally, viral campaigns rely on marketers' ability to tap into these basic human needs and wants, as well as their means for achieving them. In his hierarchical theory of human needs, Abraham Maslow outlined many of the key principles that marketers embrace in their efforts to engage audiences in the name of this goal.

If we extend his psycho-social theory of needs and wants to the practice of marketing, we get an idea of the innate drives that dictate the purchase process. For starters, there are the basic needs like, "I need to eat every day or I'll die, so I'm going to buy a sandwich at Subway," or "it's cold outside, so I�m going to buy a pair of Ugg boots to keep my feet warm." But thanks to online tools, human beings of the marketing persuasion have moved beyond satisfying basic consumer needs, and now have the free time to appeal to individual and collective desires on a more evolved level.

So what do humans desire when communicating about a product or service? Well, connection is definitely on that list -- we want to connect with others, and often we do so based on shared interests. And if someone shares our interests, we want to share our discoveries on those interests. Thus, the viral marketing campaign was born.

When it comes down to it, marketing is nothing more than matching people to the things they need, and then to the things they desire. And when you don�t have the chance to connect with the right people on an individual basis, the next best thing is to connect with what makes people, well, people.

Therefore, if it is true that the most effective advertising is based on a knowledge of human nature, then it is in the satisfaction of desires that the secrets to viral success must lie.

What else are humans interested in while on the path to actualization (psychological, spiritual or consumer)? Here are some common themes, and how they may affect your campaign's viral viability.

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Why comedy is the new currency
If you can make people smile�.you have just disarmed them. If you can make people laugh out loud, you have just made them feel like they're in on the joke, and there's a good chance you left them feeling better than they did before you got to them. But most importantly, by using comedy you have created a positive association between the users and whatever brand, product or concept you are representing. Make 'em laugh and you can make them do anything.

Rule #1: Be as funny as you need to be
In our increasingly fragmenting 2.0 online world of all-you-can-eat distraction, unlimited customization and a seemingly endless parade of "apps," the comedic marketing campaign that really clicks is the Holy Grail to which we all aspire. Something memorable that makes people laugh and want to share it with their friends is about as good as it gets. And online, even though we have far more latitude, the same basic real world rules of comedy apply: Make 'em laugh and you can make them do anything. But if it's not funny, you're dead.

So, how funny do you really need to be in order to be heard, be seen and be taken seriously�or at the very least, have an impact for your brand?

The answer is as simple as it is deceptive: as funny as you need to be�and then some.

Rule #2: Don't be a fool  
Once upon a time, brands weren't always willing to take a pie in the face in the name of comedy. Serious institutions like banking, insurance and law were treated with the same gravity as a life-threatening illness. To have fun with a "serious" brand was to somehow cheapen it, or at least weaken it in the eyes of the consumer. But the online world is much more forgiving, not to mention starved for distracting entertainment. Here, a new car can be a toy, an insurance premium can become impenetrable video game "armor" and even the once staid world of banking is now cheerfully irreverent. Why? Because online, brands can take more chances and experiment like a curious college student who suddenly finds himself alone for the weekend with his girlfriend's hot older sister, a fully stocked wet bar, dad's credit card and Timothy Leary's chemistry set. Those brands that have thrived have seen the paralyzing, stagnating effects of resisting change take its toll on their lesser evolved competitors, and they jump into the pool fully dressed and ready to make fools of themselves. In this brave new world, the only real fools are those who remain dry.

Rule #3: Even serious topics can use humor
So, the only real guideline for an online comedy campaign is how far is too far? Can you have fun with anything? 

Personal hygiene? Certainly. Axe leads the way. Household products? Yep. Brawny reinvented itself with its now legendary Brawny Academy. Food and beverage? Burger King is edgier than ever online and the efforts have given it a level of street cred that few brands in its category have ever enjoyed. Insurance? Absolutely. Remember, at one point, Geico even had its own sitcom based on its funny hit campaign (ok, so the execution of the sitcom wasn't very funny, but Geico can't be blamed for that).

How about if your brand is a funeral home? Can that be funny? Probably, if handled correctly. It could look something like this: 

When Gramps passed on, we were faced with a choice we couldn't make. So, much like a reality show, we decided to let YOU, the American people, decide. 

• To inter Gramps, press 1.
• To cremate Gramps, press 2.
• To make Gramps dance madly to "Dance Dance Revolution", press 3.

Everyone would press 3 first. Everyone. Even Gramps, if he could, would want to see himself dance like a mad skeleton just one last time before the big sendoff.

Now I'm not suggesting that a funeral home actually do this� but it does familiarize the audience with the whole burial vs. creation dilemma in a light-hearted and somewhat engaging way. Because eventually, even the most diehard of gamers will tire of DDR's repetitive commands and address the need to put Gramps to a peaceful rest and take care of his final wishes.

So how can you inject a little humor into your brand the right way, without falling flat or, worse, betraying your brand identity?

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I come from an old-school, direct-sales background where leads are precious and few. It's been engrained in me to make sure that once a viable prospect expresses an interest in your product or service, the real work begins.

In creating and executing online advertising campaigns over the last 10 years, I have kept this philosophy in mind. I always try to build the user flow in an ad to lead the consumer to making a purchase decision. This hasn't always been easy, since many of my clients have hired me for "awareness" campaigns. But does an "awareness" campaign preclude us from bringing the consumer closer to an actionable commitment? If the bottom-line purpose of advertising is to generate sales, at what point do we stop focusing on sales as an ROI metric?

One of the challenges with online advertising is tracking a conversion to sale when the consumer ultimately buys through brick-and-mortar retail channels. While some online advertising successfully crosses the offline sales barrier, many brand marketers have simply given up on taking the consumer all the way through the sales funnel when advertising online. In fact, it would seem that the internet has killed the need for campaigns that have no more targeted function other than to make you aware of the brand.

This mindset has lead to many brand marketers to think of interactive display advertising as a "luxury" item that, while sexier than more-direct online advertising, doesn�t deliver the hard numbers. This, despite years of high-profile case studies that show the opposite is true.

The great majority of online advertising ads have the ability to convert and track users to a sale. Typically, we rely on third-party ad serving to help us determine whether our online ads are converting. This is certainly an important part of the process, but we also need to effectively build the user flow to make it easy to get consumers into the sales funnel.

Here are three tips in establishing a user flow that helps you better guide consumers into purchasing your products when experiencing your online ads:

TIP 1: ask for the sale
This homepage takeover ad has one glaring problem with it. There are approximately 786,000 pixels visible above the fold and this ad occupies more than two-thirds of the pixel space. Despite the graphic appeal and the high level of interactivity here, the ad has very little salesmanship going on. In fact, there isn't a visible call-to-action to click to a website, or even to buy the game.
 

In this ad, the marketer is relying on the game's content to do the selling. Not a bad strategy, but surely a more focused call-to-action to buy the game would help lift not only click-through rates, but conversions to a sale. With this much real estate, the ad needs to take advantage of the attention and create "intention" to click and to buy.

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But beware: those new, hip marketing opportunities are fraught with peril. Because in a marketing context "new" means untried, untested and unknown longevity or impact, and "hip" means so cool that by the time you're aware of it it's no longer cool. In fact, the conscious decision to try to be hip is in itself the definition of un-hip and can make you look like a fool.

When it comes to new media campaigns, don't let yourself get so pumped up by the exciting ideas that you forget the fundamentals of Marketing 101. We all want to run successful viral video or social media campaigns, but there are factors in play that can make some brands an unnatural fit for them. Our responsibility as marketers is to ultimately create a unique message that resonates with consumers, but to be successful we also have to make sure that message produces results.

We're going to take a look at some new media marketing campaigns that have clunked like the proverbial lead zeppelin to see if we can find some common threads and lessons to learn.

Know your brand� and your other brand
It's critical for marketers and brand managers to avoid insular tunnel vision. It's no longer prudent to simply be aware of what our adversaries are doing; it's necessary for us to know what our parent company's other brands are up to, because we cannot assume that consumers don't know whose umbrella our product is sitting under.

The most notable recent example of inadvertent mixed messages is probably the Dove Evolution campaign. Dove Evolution was a time-lapse video of a perfectly average young woman transformed, after a brutally long session of hair and make-up, lighting, airbrushing, etc., into an incredibly beautiful billboard model. Through deconstruction, it vividly underscores its tagline, "No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted." It was followed up by Dove Onslaught, which had a similar theme of female image perception. The spots generated millions of hits, garnered a lot of publicity for the brand, and tied back to Dove�s overarching theme of female empowerment in its Campaign for Real Beauty and the Dove Self-Esteem Fund.

What was the problem? Well, Dove is owned by Unilever. Unilever also owns Axe Body Spray. And Axe Body Spray runs some of the most misogynistic commercials on TV. Don�t get me wrong, I�m not so high and mighty that I don�t get what Axe is trying to accomplish with their campaign -- I am, after all, a man, and we all know that sex sells. The ads also are clearly meant to be interpreted humorously. However, they do exploit women as sex objects that have little going on between their ears beyond tearing men's clothing off. While there are certainly a fair number of women who write those ads off as harmless and ridiculous, there are many others who find them offensive. And when the Axe campaign was revealed to be run by the same company that orchestrated the Evolution and Onslaught ads� well, it was all too easy for someone to lambaste Unilever for hypocrisy. Which is precisely what happened.

Dove�s campaign was still, at the end of the day, a highly successful example of effectively using new media to propagate a message. And regardless of Unilever�s other products, it's hard to argue that that message is in any way negative. But the lesson to be learned is that if you're going to pursue an iconoclastic, grassroots or cause-related marketing campaign in order to differentiate your brand (and then utilize a delivery mechanism with a public message board) you'd better thoroughly check under the hood so you can proactively prepare to neutralize potential backlash.

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"We try not to get a lot of clients, but to develop the best work for the client that we can."

That philosophy, according to Nurun CEO Jacques-Hervé Roubert, has led the Montreal-headquartered company to land and retain some of the same clients for 12 years. Roubert points out that has been no small accomplishment given that the digital landscape of the past decade included the steep cliff of the dotcom bust.

Nurun, a Quebecor Media company, which employs approximately 800 people in 13 cities including New York, Shanghai, Madrid, Paris and Turin, posted revenues of $82.8 million in 2007, up from $74.7 the previous year. Since its formation in 1985, the company has worked with clients from L'Oréal and Groupe Danone to Home Depot, Microsoft, Equifax, Renault, Telecom Italia and Louis Vuitton.

Roubert attributes his company's success to its willingness to reevaluate and reinvent itself; a process Roubert says takes place on an annual or biannual basis. The idea, he says, is to be flexible -- and prepared. "I can't tell you what the most important thing is going to be in three years, because it's always changing. But I can tell you that we have to be ready," Roubert says. To that end, Nurun has formed a global laboratory research team consisting of 12 employees across North America, Asia and Europe. The group also partners with research institutions such as Georgia Tech's Mobile Technology Lab.

While Roubert admits his company's standing is relatively weak in the United States when compared to other, more established domestic digital giants, he describes the American market as "a priority" for 2008 and 2009. Roubert clearly expects that his company's international expertise will pay off in New York. After all, the company estimates that at least 70 percent of its work is bilingual, meaning Nurun adapts its campaigns for at least 23 languages, translating its sites as well as striving to make them culturally appropriate.

Roubert also looks to Nurun's work in China and France as key to understanding the global digital market. With an office in Guangzhou in addition to a base in Shanghai, Roubert says Nurun has learned a lot about the mobile market from China's hundreds of millions of mobile users. And in France, where Roubert says the emphasis is less on ROI and more on creative, Nurun has gained insight on how to drive a brand rather than just encourage sales.

Nurun's 2007 highlights include: W3 Award (Silver, retail microsite: Home Depot Canada Father's Day Dad-Alyzer), Webaward (Shopping Standard of Excellence: Home Depot Canada Father's Day Dad-Alyzer); Webaward (Outstanding Website: Frontier Airlines Best Low-Cost Carrier Campaign Landing Page); IAC (Best Retail Email message campaign: Home Depot Canada Perfect Home Email Campaign); IAC (Best Retail Online campaign: Home Depot Canada Welcome Email & Site).

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I recently judged an online advertising competition and I found a very clear distinction between the great work and the rest of the work. The great online ads were few and far between -- even in a competition in which agencies submitted their best efforts -- because doing great work is difficult (no surprise).

As I looked at the best ads, here's what I noticed: The very best ads surprised me. And while they were unexpected, they were not irrelevant or unfocused. Most were inventive without being obtuse. They were approachable and appropriate for their target audience. And finally, the very best ads engaged consumers by putting them in control of interactivity.

So those are some simple tips, right? Easy peasy! Just go out there and invent a campaign that's surprisingly relevant and approachable while being fun and engaging. Unfortunately, that's only the beginning.

The beauty of online advertising is that it encompasses so much. But this can also be the ugly part. Many media plans are presented with an emphasis on rich media. All the "other stuff" like newsletters, contextual content and keywords are often treated like value-adds, because they cost less or require less time to produce.

By emphasizing the most expensive online media, it's easy to mistake the "other stuff" as unimportant. But each component of a comprehensive online media plan is an important piece of a puzzle that can help bring consumers from awareness to purchase. Taking time to map each piece to the purchase continuum can help your creative teams craft messaging that resonates with consumers right where they are, both emotionally and in terms of how much information they have about your brand.

It seems like common sense, but I don't see it done that often. I imagine media plans as road maps for consumers. If I get each piece of communication right in a comprehensive online media campaign, I give consumers driving directions from where they are to where I want them to be.

So let's start with the first turn on the map: awareness.

Run-of-site and run-of-network display ads can help build awareness of your brand through multiple impressions. These ads shouldn't be complicated. If a consumer doesn't know about you yet, he's probably not going to drill down into multiple tabs of an expandable rich-media ad unit. Focus on a simple, compelling message that catches the attention of consumers and leaves them with a good impression of your brand.

Now as for relevance, section placements and e-newsletters place your brand in the context of something consumers choose to view. For instance, say they're reading a home furnishings blog. You could serve a geo-targeted display or text ad for your brand that tells them "hey remember me? You just met me. Guess what, I'm in your area -- funny huh? Yeah I'm totally relevant now." This is also the point at which to share more of your brand with consumers. Splurge on the rich-media ads with more interactivity and information for these types of media placements wherever possible.

Moving along the purchase continuum, consumers eventually get to preference. They know you, they know you're relevant to them and in their area now, but they have other options. When they search for products like yours, the search results they get should give them a reason to prefer your brand over the others. Are you better, cheaper, faster, more exclusive or more fun? Make sure your search results tell consumers why you're the best option.

When consumers are interested in you and your brand, you're in a great position. Unfortunately, many brands drop the ball at this point. A media plan doesn't normally include what happens after consumers click, so it's easy to get caught up in planning and forget to fulfill your end of the deal. Give consumers a compelling, relevant landing page to take the next step towards purchase. Make sure they're glad they met you, and then make it easy for them to get what they want.

Lastly, once you've made it easy for consumers to purchase, utilize that success by putting measures in place to analyze your website. Make sure you're set up to track results so you can garner the most learning for next time. Remember that a consumer's first purchase can be the beginning of a long-term relationship, or it can also be her last purchase. Strong analysis is key to turning more first-time buyers into lasting, loyal customers.

By mapping creative executions and your media plan to the purchase continuum you can get the most out of every bit of your media budget while giving consumers a great online experience with your brand.

Tiffany Young is executive creative director at Smashing Ideas Inc. Read full bio.

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Let's face it, marketing is about relationships. If you strip away the channel, the creative, the format, the demographics and all else, marketing can be simply defined by how an individual consumer feels about you and your brand. 

That feeling, and the relationship that ties you together, is the foundation of your brand. It influences purchase intent, repeat visits, loyalty, pass-along and virtually every other meaningful measure we have for our businesses.

The fundamentals of relationship-building for our business brands are really no different when it comes to our personal brands. Whether you're an independent consultant, an active job seeker or simply a smart marketer in a large organization, how you build and manage your brand -- and hence the relationships with those around you -- is the foundation of your success.

The skills we develop as marketers with customers and their influencers can have a dramatic effect on not only how we build and manage our personal brands at work, but also among friends and family.

So, if relationships are the foundation of our professional and personal success, why as a whole are we getting lazier and more uniform in how we approach our relationship-building and networking? Why do we put so much focus on commoditized tools that fail to differentiate us as individuals, and fail to create the deep, personal ties with those around us that have for generations been the building blocks of the most successful people in the world?

We rely intensely on tools such as Facebook, Plaxo and LinkedIn to build and foster our extended professional relationships. It's far easier and faster to work via email and through our online social networks to stay in touch with each other.

But these tools, by their nature, are shallow. By their ubiquity, they leave us largely undifferentiated. Sure, a sample of your personality and unique personal brand can be portrayed in a Facebook account or in your email copy, but that impression pales in comparison to how we used to build relationships.

As these tools become more and more ubiquitous, they fail to differentiate us and create the powerful business relationships we need to do our jobs and further our careers. They clearly have value, but if used exclusively, their impact on our jobs and careers will continue to be marginalized.

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Consumer confidence in online advertising has eroded to an all-time low. We package clever, but elusive, copy and flashy graphics inside of a display ad and buy up every available impression on the internet only to wonder why no one is clicking. What are we exchanging with consumers that gives them the confidence to interact with our message? Simply broadcasting a message to the masses doesn't necessarily leave consumers with enough information, or the confidence, to act on what they see.

I've often likened this confidence-building process to asking someone out on a date. I haven't been single for a number of years, but I remember the delicate dance of trying to engage a person in conversation as an entrée into spending some more quality time together.

A long time ago in a pub far away, I happened upon an attractive woman who was chatting with some mutual friends of mine. Aside from the occasional comment directed to the group, this woman and I said very little to each other. Still, she seemed nice and she was a knockout, so at the end of the evening, I sidled up to her and made some wise comment -- I can't remember now what it was, but it was probably related to the band Hanson and how important they were to modern American music. Whatever I said was enough to make her smile and nod which, for me, was a real bonus. And so, I asked her out.

She said "no." Not, "I have plans." Not "I have a boyfriend." Not even "Hanson. Are you kidding me?" She just said "no."

I eventually got over the rejection, but a few years later, I bumped into this woman again at a party. We struck up a more direct conversation that lasted most of the night. I finally worked up the courage to ask her about that fated evening and why she didn't go out with me. She told me that she had no clue about who I was and what I was about, and she didn't want to invest her time and energy based on a two-second conversation. She said that she needed more to go on before making that kind of a decision. I asked her out again, and this time she said "yes." We've been together ever since.

I learned two very valuable lessons that night. Never, EVER bring Hanson into a conversation with the opposite sex. It only serves to prove that you are, in fact, a moron. More importantly, I learned that the less you allow a person to engage with you, the less likely you are to get that person to do what you want. The same works with online advertising; the more you commit to engage the consumer, the more of a commitment you get in return.

As online marketers, we underestimate the level of commitment involved when a consumer clicks through to a website. The consumer is making several assessments in the blink of an eye -- will this be a waste of time? Will the site I click to be safe? Will the information I seek be relevant? Will I get what I need efficiently? There is a risk vs. reward scenario that we all play out when deciding to interact with an online advertisement. If we rely too heavily on the website destination to do our talking, we will likely find that no one will be around to listen.

There are a dozen or more practical applications of this for online advertising. Let's take a look at banner ads and use three examples to determine the level of information that is shared prior to making a commitment to act or, in this case, to click. 

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A tale in everything -- William Wordsworth

Stories have been around since humans began to walk the earth. From cave paintings of a thrilling hunt to Homer's immortal "Odyssey" to today's Harry Potter sensation, stories have shaped who we are, what we know and what we do. Indeed, stories engage us. Want to engage customers? The art of narrative offers time-tested lessons you can apply in new, interactive ways.

Defining engagement
As far as official definitions go, the Advertising Research Foundation has developed a working definition of engagement:

Engagement is turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context.

In her iMedia Connection article "Cracking the Engagement Code," Mollie Spillman interprets this definition as an "indicator of the propensity of a brand message to resonate and connect with a prospect and ultimately drive some kind of meaningful action."

What better way to create context and resonate with customers than to tell a story? A story brings a message to life in a compelling way by giving context, adding dramatic action and more. It's the difference between saying that your brand's wireless service is more reliable and presenting the story of a customer whose work or personal life depends on your brand's reliable wireless service.

How stories engage -- and persuade
Let me explain further. I see five key ways in which stories can engage -- and thereby influence -- customers.

1: Giving context, showing relevance
Story elements include characters (who is in the story), setting (where the story happens), plot (what happens) and more. These elements create a clear context that makes a brand message relevant to customers.

For example, Cingular Wireless illustrated its message of "fewer dropped calls" with a series of humorous stories showing the impact of dropped calls in everyday life. In one story, a happy couple is casually talking on the phone when the guy comments how glad he is to be "the only man" in his girlfriend's world. As his girlfriend replies, the call suddenly drops -- as does the commercial audio -- so the guy hears only silence. We watch the guy panic. We also think about all the inconvenient times our own wireless calls have dropped, and the message resonates. In fact, people found the message so relevant they created their own versions and posted them on YouTube.

2: Adding dramatic action
Another benefit of using story elements is dramatic action. Remember that plot structure you learned in English class? Well, it works. Whether or not you can identify the five elements of plot structure (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution) you know when you experience it.

One famous example is Apple's 1984 commercial to launch Macintosh. Tapping into the literary classic "1984," the ad's exposition showed a huge TV image of Big Brother brainwashing people -- alluding to IBM and Microsoft dominance. The rising action shows the Thought Police chasing an unnamed heroine (representing the Macintosh) through the dark Orwellian world. The climax? The heroine throws a sledgehammer at the image of Big Brother, destroying its control with a flash of light. The falling action shows the astonished people washed in light, and the resolution is this on-screen message:

"On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like '1984.'"

Although the commercial aired only twice, its drama prompted much media attention and gave the message far-reaching impact. 

3: Following natural memory patterns
So let's throw a little science into the mix. Stories quite simply are the way we remember things. Which do you remember more easily: statistics about an Olympic athlete or the story of how an Olympic athlete overcame obstacles to live his or her dream of competing in the Olympic games?

Our minds use stored narratives of past events whenever we plan and predict future events. IBM Research has devoted a project to Knowledge Socialization that explores narrative and intelligence. The project references several cognitive psychologists who identify strong connections between storytelling and memory, such as Robert Schank in his book "Tell Me a Story: Narrative and Intelligence."

So if you want customers to remember your brand message for the long haul, turn it into a story.

4: Appealing to emotions and intellect
A story appeals to our emotional and rational sides at the same time and therefore boosts a message's persuasive impact. Stories give context to and impart feeling to facts. It's the difference between memorizing facts about the invasion of Normandy and experiencing it in the movie "Saving Private Ryan."

A simple branding example is the MiniUSA website, which weaves the story of the Mini's history -- a tale of addressing post-World War II gasoline dilemmas through innovation and becoming a cultural phenomenon -- into its description of specifications and features.

5: Making the abstract tangible
In an age where brand differentiators may seem more abstract than ever, stories can help illustrate concepts in concrete ways. For instance, when AT&T acquired Cingular Wireless (the second merger), AT&T launched a campaign to promote concepts such as the largest network. Under the theme "more bars in more places," one of the commercials illustrated larger network coverage by showing a montage of different types of customers in remote places using their cell phones. The concept of a large network could be vague, but the commercial makes it tangible.

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"I hate those shoot the monkey ads," replied my doctor when I explained to her what I do as the creative director of Advertising.com. Not the nicest bedside manner, but I've heard worse when I tell people that my team creates online ads.

With all the complaints about rich media, some advertisers wonder if it's worth it, especially when you consider the additional hassle of dealing with temperamental creative departments. Before answering, however, it's important to define exactly what it is.

Many publishers consider an ad only to be rich media if it automatically takes over a page, with the user having no control over initiating the intrusive message. But because users will only put up with so much of that intrusiveness, publishers limit the amount of this kind of impression and charge accordingly. 

The technical definition of rich media is anything beyond a static .gif or .jpg. Creative folks, though, have their own definition: any cool flash banner that makes people notice (or as our strategists say, "engage the user"). And unlike auto-initiated rich media, regular rich media only expands or starts playing sound when the user approves it with a click or mouseover.

Now that we've defined rich media, here's the answer to the question, "Is it worth it?" Of course it is. In the past month, you've probably seen thousands of online ads. Do you remember any of them? How many did you actually spend more than a nanosecond on? And how many did you click? I'll bet you real dollars to Second Life ones that the ads you interacted with were flash. How big a difference can it make?

Look at the two ads below. Guess which one had a clickthrough rate 14,600 percent (not a typo) greater than the other?

This is not to imply that simply putting something in flash is going to make people say, "Ooh! I've got to click on that and get myself a puppy, a cell phone or a new mortgage." To get users to do that, you need to do the following:

1. Make the design simple and intuitive. Don't design something that rivals Playstation 3. Users don't want to work that hard.
2. Make sure the message is simple. If they can't figure it out in literally one second, they're moving on.
3. Make it work organically with the product. The concept should be in line with what you are selling. Shooting monkeys for a refi loan doesn't make sense. Shooting hockey pucks against the Capitals' new goalie does.
4. Don't look desperate. Migraine-inducing graphics only tick people off. Like dating, subtle and attractive works better.
5. Build on what has worked before. No need to reinvent the wheel. What worked really well before? What was a complete waste of time? The creative team should have all that information close at hand when concepting a new campaign.

Remember: "Build it and they will come," might be great for a field of dreams, but it does not apply to online ads. You can't assume that just sticking anything up there is going to work. You need to ask yourself if you would, honestly, click on it.

Of course, the greatest ad in the world isn't going to work if it's not seen by the right eyeballs. Conversion and clickthrough rates for the same ad vary wildly from website to website. And while you can make some educated guesses, the only way to really find out what works is to run it on a wide network of sites that optimizes for the metric you're looking for.

Conversely, you can buy the best online real estate out there, but if you're running a real snooze of an ad with a fuzzy message, you're just wasting money -- or even worse, ruining your brand image.

So while getting strong, well-conceived rich media ad banners take extra effort, isn't a 14,000 percent increase in clickthrough rate worth it?

(Note: No digital monkeys were shot in the making of any of these ads.)

Susan Kim is creative director, Advertising.com. Read full bio.

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When MediaVest Director of Digital Connections and Senior Vice President Amanda Richman makes this kind of statement, she's not exaggerating. To date, the New York-headquartered media agency has dropped more than $17 million on targeting and media usage research alone. That's a lot of tinkering, including working with digital content site Hulu, in the mobile space, and across social networks, games and virtual worlds. Of course, that's all to the benefit of new 2007 MediaVest clients Wal-Mart and Wendy's, as well as old clients such as Proctor and Gamble (on most of its North American brands, including Vicks, Prilosec, Clairol Herbal Essences, Crest, CoverGirl and Tampax), Coca-Cola and Mars (Pedigree).

Despite its vast research, MediaVest, which also has offices in Los Angeles, doesn't play favorites with technology. While others may intend to go whole-hog for mobile in 2008, Richman says MediaVest plans to remain tech-neutral. Whether focusing on mobile or social networks, "We need to understand and embrace all technologies, including being knowledgeable about traditional media as it evolves," Richman says.

Of course, digital is still the core of MediaVest's Digital Connections business. Richman says all client teams include digital experts who provide input throughout a campaign's conception and execution stages; these experts help interpret consumer behavior, gain customer insight and work with media across all channels. "Versus the traditional approach, where digital is just an extension of initiatives happening across traditional media, here there really is integration of it from the start of the consumer experience," Richman says. 

Clients in 2008 can expect to see MediaVest's digital and metrics accountability practices continue to expand. The idea, Richman says, is to focus less on traditional impression measurements and more on the actions consumers take after viewing a campaign.

Founded in 1929 as Benton & Bowles with a focus on radio broadcasting, the company was renamed MediaVest in 1999. MediaVest formed its digital practice in 2003 and last year the digital team grew from 60 to 90 people. MediaVest does not reveal its revenue numbers, but Richman describes the increase in employees as a "direct reflection of business growth" over the past year.

Agency highlights from 2007 include: Creative Media Award in New/Emerging/Experimental Media (Coca-Cola/Sprite Obey); MIXX Silver Award in Mobile Platforms (Coca-Cola/Sprite Obey); Google Marketing Machine Award; Vice President, Digital Director Mohan Renganathan dubbed an OMMA "rising star" of the digital media world; MediaVest named co-winner, with sister agency Starcom, of OMMA's Media Agency of the Year designation.

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Point is, we are at the driving range and as I walk to our spot on the range, I am stopped by a rep for a golf club manufacturer. He has in his hands the latest and greatest driver that is guaranteed to improve my distance, my accuracy� and to re-grow my hair. He invites me to step onto the mat and take a swing or two. I do this and am immediately, if not painfully, reminded that it�s going to take a lot more than this golf club to improve my game, not to mention my hairline -- both are pretty much lost causes.

I thank him for his time and tell him that spending $250 on a club for my game is more than futile; it�s actually kind of sad and pathetic. He chuckles at this and hands me a discount card good for 10 percent off the club. He invites me to give it to a friend.

I walk up to my own mat to see my son is rocket-launching balls 250+ yards with an old, banged up driver -- those who can�t do, make children and hope that they can. As I see him blasting balls into the stratosphere, a little light goes on: the light of purchase intent. I walk my boy back to this fellow and have him take a few swings with the new driver. He does and $250, minus 10 percent later, my son�s game is better than ever.

This story demonstrates the power of experiential marketing. Most of us have only recently heard of this discipline, but it�s been around for ages. Anyone who goes to Costco knows all about the army of employees waiting to add items to your cart, and pounds to your waistline, by way of the free samples they hand out.

The point of experiential marketing is simple -- play with the product or brand in such a way as to increase purchase intent. The rules are even simpler:

1. Attract attention from targeted consumers
2. Gauge their intention to listen to what you have to say
3. Get them to interact with your product in some way
4. Get their commitment to buy said product

Whether you are a golf club salesman or a free sample hander-outer guy, you know that when people have a chance to experience your product before they buy it, the chance of making a sale is greater.

The same set of rules can work online. While we don�t have people stuffed into your computer monitor waiting to pounce, we can still drive product and brand interaction online in an effort to increase purchase intent.

Let�s look at how we would do this by way of display banners. The great thing about display banners are that we can get a lot of stuff into them -- video, audio, mini-games, email, database functions and much more. We can use this functionality to give consumers a stronger relationship with the brand before they click through to the product website. If and when they do, they become much stronger candidates to convert to an action � a sale, registration, etc.
 
How do we do build this stronger relationship within the banner? Bottom line: design is critical. There are four components that go into designing brand experience banners. They are, in order:

1. Get attention 
The ad needs to stand out in the crowded space of content and other ads competing for the �eyeshare� of your target consumer. Eye popping graphics are important, but balance that against the other three dimensions to ensure you don�t burn the consumer�s confidence in your message. The ad should be attractive enough to get the consumer�s attention. Nothing more. Nothing less.

2. Get intention
Intention and attention are not the same. Just because an ad is big and flashy, doesn�t mean it deserves or will provoke a qualified response. Pop-ups and interstitial ads get loads of attention, but we have trained our brain to ignore them where intention to click is concerned. The consumer must make a conscious decision to interact. That conscious decision is �intention�.

3. Get interaction
A clickthrough is not enough these days. A flashy graphic and an offer to �click here� can still leave consumers guessing. This leads to wasted clicks and lower conversions. Interaction with branded content drives product knowledge. This allows consumers to have a greater understanding of your product prior to the clickthrough.

4. Get the commitment
It�s true that information leads to consumers making a commitment to click through. But there needs to be more. They need to be confident that clicking will get them what they want, so copy is crucial. Tell them WHY they should click through. Incentives are also important. Creating urgency by way of a limited-time discount or bonus content will go along way, especially with consumers who are already familiar with your product.

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Speed worship
We love speed. We have speed dating, speed networking and fast food. Microsoft tells us to "Do more, faster." And who would want to argue? When it comes to connectivity or processing speed, I wouldn't.

We want our products to get to market faster. After all, competition is fierce. We'd better be efficient, get there first -- be a winner. How do we do this? We forge ahead. We speed up.

The less time we have, the more we try to cram into it. Time is a non-renewable resource.

The defining realization of time-compression for Carl Honoré, author of "In Praise of Slowness," came when he discovered the one-minute bedtime story for children. Honoré, a self-confessed rushaholic, paused to think about the impact of continual accelerated time. Honoré's book brought an awareness of "slow" to thousands as it flew off shelves. The irony is Honoré still rushes around the world speaking about the benefits of slowing down. He says he is a victim of his own success. But at least he aspires to slowness.

Time poverty
Many of us complain of not having enough time. Civility suffers. Attention spans decrease. Patience vanishes. Mistakes mount.

Efforts to speed up often backfire. If you're like me, you waste hours trying to figure out your latest gadget's instructions written by someone with less mastery of English than a baboon. I really want to save milliseconds promised me by the speed-dial function. I've got plans for that time. A millisecond here, a millisecond there, it adds up.

Seth Godin wrote on his blog recently that inbound customer service agents are rewarded for getting rid of customers fast. An agent who slowed down enough to spend time and respond appropriately to a complex call wouldn't be thought of as successful. Complexity needs time and patience.

And when we can't speed up anymore, we work longer hours. We'll outwork the competition. Brilliant thinking!

James Glick, author of "Faster, The Acceleration of Just About Everything" says time is used as a status symbol. Working long hours is a badge of honor. It shows our commitment. Busy-ness is good. Increasingly, the pressure is on for employees to be seen to come in early and stay late. But are we more effective by working longer hours?

Economist Juliet Schor ("The Overworked American," 1991) calculated that Americans had worked a full month more than they did two decades earlier. New studies show Americans now work 350 hours a year more than their European counterparts. Are those Europeans lazily wasting their time with long vacations and family life?

Question: Where do all these extra hours come from?
Answer: sleep.

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Perhaps that's not how you'd expect the heads of Organic to describe their initial approach to new campaigns, but that's exactly where things begin at the 14-year-old digital marketing agency, says Chad Stoller, the company's executive director of emerging platforms. 

And the folks at Organic just might know what they're talking about, having worked with clients from iVillage to Warner Bros. International to Barnes & Noble to Nike to Sony to Sprint.

The idea with empathy, Stoller says, is to better understand customer behavior in order to produce campaigns that actually bring results. This process takes its fullest shape during the company's quarterly employee events, dubbed "Camp Organic." At the Las Vegas trips -- estimated by Forrester to cost Organic well into the six figures to pull off -- employees from Organic's San Francisco, New York, Detroit and Toronto offices band together to investigate consumer behavior on the ground or, in this case, on The Strip. As the groups prepare mock-campaigns, they meet real potential customers and try to glean not just demographic data, but also behavioral data.

"What we like to do is to figure out how new technologies change peoples' lives," Stoller says. He adds that the best way to use technology in interactive campaigns is to do so judiciously and only when it fills a customer's specific, identifiable need.

Ten years after Organic's inception, the company was acquired by Omnicom Group, which forbids its companies from releasing revenue and employee data. But some estimates place Organic's earnings in the $70 million range.

The company has also raked in more than a few awards. Highlights from 2007 include seven awards from the Web Marketing Association (from Outstanding Website: Jeep Patriot Factor and Warner Bros. International 300 the Movie to Best Bank Website: Bank of America No Fee Mortgage Plus), one OMMA Award (Best Rich Media Campaign: Warner Bros. International Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) and several others.

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We've all done it. We've been on our cell phones or PDAs when our conversation is interrupted by a bad connection, or the call is dropped, and we've uttered: "Can you hear me now?"

Verizon's tag line is the most recognized and repeated, often inadvertently, telecom communications advertising campaign in the last five years. 

It's a great campaign, but Verizon is more than a telecommunications brand -- and wanted consumers to know that.

With the success of Verizon's telecommunications brand eclipsing its other market segments, American consumers have not associated Verizon with its other offerings as widely. While it is a consumer brand, it is not one that consumers would necessarily think of in terms of engaging with until it is time to pay their cell phone bills. 

It is no small task transforming a well-known Fortune 100 brand in a tightly regulated industry from a brand with strong name recognition in a single vertical to a brand that consumers personally align with across multiple technology media. 

The challenge: How to move Verizon from a telecom utility brand to something consumers associate with leisure, entertainment and enjoyment.

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This is especially true when a brand scores a viral hit. Whether by chance or design, campaigns that span the globe with friends telling friends about them raise the bar for the brands and agencies that produced them.

So how can a brand capitalize on its viral success?

Here are some examples of brands that have attempted to keep the buzz, using different tactics.

Dove pushes real beauty
A few years ago, Dove Soap launched a new advertising campaign touting the principle that everyone, without regard to age, shape, height or nationality, is beautiful. Real women replaced the customary statuesque supermodels as Dove forged its new society benchmark of beauty.

"Campaign for Real Beauty" initially launched with an ad during the 2006 Super Bowl featuring preteen and teenage girls with commentary stating what they don't like about themselves. The call to action was to check out the Campaign for Real Beauty website.

The website, full of information and resources for improving one's self-esteem, became a viral hit.

So what has Dove done since then to keep the momentum? It launched a non-profit foundation, the Dove Self-Esteem Fund. At this site, young women, their moms and mentors are invited to play a role in supporting and promoting a wider definition of beauty.

The truly dynamic element of this is that Dove has taken a concept and built upon it. Granted, not every company is going to start a foundation, nor should they, but Dove created a new element, which has continued to keep the audience engaged.

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It has been said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But in the advertising game, there is often a fine line between imitating an idea and downright stealing it.

Agencies and creative teams face a unique dilemma throughout the business development/RFP process: they are charged with the task of putting their best foot forward prospectively, generating and presenting big ideas and execution strategies to a potential client, before they have actually been hired to do the work.

For example, when 20th Century Fox's "The Simpsons Movie" was being promoted this past summer, one of the most buzzed-about marketing tactics for the film was the temporary transformation of select 7-Eleven convenience stores into Kwik-E-Marts. FreshWorks, the ad agency for 7-Eleven, made the partnership happen, but was the agency the first to come up with the idea? Ad agency Leo Burnett says no, claiming that the idea was part of a pitch it had made to 20th Century Fox in 2006. After the 7-Eleven promotion was announced, Leo Burnett went public with its claims of idea theft, resulting in professional and consumer responses that ranged from sympathy to cries of sour grapes.

Even more recently, Sony debuted the latest in a series of innovative spots to promote the sharp, high-resolution picture of its Bravia line of HD televisions. The campaign, Sony Bravia Bunnies, conveyed its message with colorful clay bunnies running amok in an urban landscape. But did the spot's producers, Passion Pictures, crib the creative idea from a panoramic by Los Angeles-based artists Kozyndan?

Kozyndan claims that it provided samples of its work to Passion two years before Fallon (Sony's ad agency) hired the production company to create the latest Bravia spot. The similarities are striking. But was this truly a matter of sneaky appropriation or innocent inspiration? Furthermore, did Kozyndan and Leo Burnett do the right thing by taking their gripes to the people? Or should they have sucked it up, chalking the experiences down to a lesson in the pitfalls of the RFP and the necessities of building industry relationships?

The standard proposal process is far from the ideal -- for agencies and clients alike -- and from time to time, you may have the best ideas, but you may not get the job. Every agency can likely tell its own big fish tale about the one that got away. But can these traps be prepared for, or even avoided altogether? Here is what some of our experts learned from their time in the RFP trenches, and some tips to help you stay out of the creative foxhole.

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In the early days of interactive advertising, interaction was a matter of clicking on an ad. The click was king. Ads were designed and evaluated based on their ability to induce a click. It was a pass-fail exam, and consumers adapted accordingly.

Fortunately, the industry proved as adaptive as consumers. Today's web ads are truly interactive; their capabilities extend well past choppy animation and primitive interaction to full-featured content, high-quality video and complex interactivity. They have more in common with marketing-oriented microsites than with the animated GIFs of yore.

Robust back-end XML enables advertisers to deliver specialized content and tailored messaging based on geographic, demographic and behavioral information. These personalized ads engage users in ways that earlier ads couldn't, and more and more users are clicking on ads.

Anything that makes ads more personal will get a better response, and XML accomplishes this in several ways:

• Geo-tagging detects users' locale and can reconfigure text or select creative iterations that relate specifically to them. It's well-suited for campaigns that are location-specific or appeal on a local basis.
• Behavioral tagging (or Sequential tagging) "marks" the user with a cookie and can deliver a series of ads in their proper order to build a message or adapt to user behavior. It's effective in building engagement or trust with consumers and moving the audience from lead to close. 
• Data capture ads do what they say they do: collect information and transmit the data to the advertiser. This can be email information, product preferences, et cetera. Data collection ads are a favorite for lead-generation campaigns.

As expected, this technology resulted in a performance breakthrough. We have seen a marked improvement among advertisers who use XML tagging.

One client, a leading health and beauty brand launching a new product formulated for city life, used geo-tagging to target users in major metropolitan areas. The company produced 10 creative variations, each featuring the skyline of a U.S. city. Users residing in those cities were exposed to imagery of their hometown. There was also an eleventh variation, with default creative that the company delivered to users outside of those geographical targets. The campaign performed fantastically well, and user interaction with the geo-targeted creative doubled that of the interaction with the default image.

Another advertiser used sequential tagging to deliver creative based on individual users' prior exposure to the ads. The major credit card company wanted to develop leads for its card products. The campaign qualified consumers in the first round of messaging and funneled users into different product tracks based on their responses to each message. Sequential tagging proved highly beneficial for the company's purpose, as it was able to drill down to individual consumers and build their messaging accordingly. The specificity and personalization not only helped the credit card company develop leads, but it resonated well with consumers, who felt valued and engaged.

One last case in point, from the other end of the spectrum: We had another advertiser who, rather than identify leads, launched a campaign to promote brand awareness and positive engagement. The client integrated tagging, video and rich media features into one campaign. The campaign consisted of three ads, beginning with a short video.

Using analytics and dynamic tagging, we were able to identify which users had viewed the whole video, and followed up by sending those users two synchronized banners. Of those two banners, one contained a text entry box, and the other displayed the user's response, along with other user responses all over the world. This interaction set the stage for the third engagement, in which the advertiser was able to collect user information.

The campaign took users on a "journey" from passive viewer (nearly 50 percent watched the video), to engagement with the premise (more than 5,000 people submitted answers), to interaction with the brand itself.

These ad units are revolutionizing online advertising, taking several more steps toward fulfilling its promise of being truly interactive. Tagging takes the guesswork out of identifying niche markets and moving consumers toward a sale.

What's more, the increased functionality brings a new dimension to interactive advertising. When users can experience content and engage with the brand directly in the ad itself, they don't fear clicking on the banner as much. Attrition drops, and the engaging experience grows.

The old distinction -- static ads vs. rich media -- is nothing compared with the new interactive landscape, where dynamic advertising rules.

Yoav Arnstein is VP/general manager, North America at Eyeblaster. Read full bio.

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I recently came across a banner ad for LowerMyBills.com. The sequence depicts a young Black woman in an office setting. She's dancing in her work area -- yes, dancing at work -- supposedly unaware of the camera that's capturing it all. We see the surprise on her face as she realizes she has been caught on film.

Is this a poor, stereotypical attempt to reach a niche? Or is it just good fun in a banner? Why is this Black woman shaking her thing at the office? Shouldn't she be focused on work? Is that why she needs to lower her bills?

As a Black man in the advertising industry, I find myself struggling with the ethnic marketing question. In today's era of consumption, most consumer needs (both retail and beyond) are cross-cultural. Sure, there are products produced for specific ethnic groups; when you're selling relaxer designed for African American hair, niche marketing is appropriate and necessary. But even then, such campaigns don't have to revolve around tired clichés and lowest-common-denominator stereotypes. And in broader consumer marketing, there's just no excuse.

Consider a typical, general market minivan ad: a Caucasian soccer mom dropping kids off at the game. Now replace the White faces with Black ones and insert an R&B soundtrack. Instead of a soccer game, let's have that van pull into a huge family reunion with fried chicken as far as the eye can see. Voila. Now you have an "African-American" minivan ad. Starting to feel uncomfortable? You should be.

Beyond the shades of minstrelsy in such campaigns, the problem is that this approach assumes consumers are incapable of any kind of empathy for those of a different ethnicity; that people cannot move beyond depicted scenarios involving a product to envision scenarios more suited to their own lives. If you want to reach Black consumers, you'd better make sure your ads are "good and Black;" likewise for Hispanics and Asians.

These are bad assumptions that lead to bad advertising. Nonetheless, they have clearly driven strategy and creative direction on countless campaigns, from the typical monochromatic fast food ad to tire commercials featuring, once again, dancing Black people (and dancing is relevant for tire buyers because ...?)

Of course, no one ever apologizes for success. At some level, right or wrong, enlightened or retrograde, ethnic niche marketing seems to sell product. This approach started in our fairly recent past when Madison Avenue acknowledged the spending power of minority groups and the need to tailor messaging to those groups.

In theory, ethnic marketing could give a voice and a face to the disenfranchised; in theory, it might even have addressed the specific cultural needs of a particular ethnicity. In practice, though, it more often than not reinforces cultural stereotypes and puts the spotlight on differences; differences that feed back into those stereotypes. And on a practical level, maybe these ads aren't as effective as we think they are, or as the alternative might be.

Think of the large Hispanic family, complete with matriarchal abuela and manly, authoritative papa seated at the table for a Sunday family dinner. Does this cultural stereotype actually reflect the Hispanic community in America? Yes and no. Yes, differences do exist across cultural lines, and the image of a large, tightly knit Hispanic family seated at dinner did come from somewhere. But many Hispanic consumers today would tell you that their dinner table landscape looks a lot different, and they resent being shoehorned into the same old tableau time and again, instead of being addressed through campaigns that acknowledge both the diversity within their own community, and the many commonalities they share with other Americans across ethnic lines.

So how do marketers of niche target products, as well as marketers of mass target products, avoid the ethnic marketing trap? Someone might raise a hand here and say "focus groups." I think the solution is a lot bigger than that.

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People will involuntarily look where someone else is looking, and you can use this hard-wired, prehistoric response to your advantage on your website. On the other hand, not paying attention to this response can make viewers click away from where you want them to go, even though they might not realize why they're doing so.

This need to look where someone else is looking is easy to demonstrate. Next time you're talking one on one with someone, casually and without warning gaze over their shoulder and focus on something behind them. Then just as quickly bring your gaze back to them. Do this once or twice and the person will either turn around to look where you're looking or ask you if there's something he needs to be aware of.

(Note: If this sounds familiar to regular readers, I talked about something similar in "Pavlov's eyes: get users to respond.")

It's in the wiring
The reason this little game works is because human beings started off as herd and prey animals. Not only that, we were secretive little creatures for several million years of evolutionary history and all of this makes itself known in how our brains are wired to respond to, internalize and use information in our environment.

Our ancestors had to be constantly on guard for lions, tigers and bears. If Og the caveman was talking with me and suddenly looked over my shoulder, he might be seeing a predator. That was extremely useful information to our ancestors, so following Og's gaze and looking where he looked was a good survival skill.

Good survival skill? Heck, it's so good let's wire it into the brain! Evolution dictates survival of the fittest, and eventually the only ancestors left were those who followed the gaze of their peers because they knew when predators were coming and got away rather than being eaten.

Nature is excellent at finding new uses for things that work. It will take something that works well in setting A and then see if it works in setting B. This time it took "looking for predators" and used it to find food or things precious to us.

There is a Sherlock Holmes story where Holmes feigns a house fire so he can see where a woman looks before fleeing her house. He knows she will check to see if precious things are safe before she leaves, so he knows where she has hidden a valuable document he was sent to find.

In evolutionary settings, if Og sees me staring at some tree or continually checking a rock, he'll go investigate because he knows I'll keep looking to make sure my precious things (usually food in these cases) are safe.

The big learning from this is a simple one: people will look where other people are looking because they're wired to. This is part of our evolutionary heritage, and it isn�t going away any time too soon, so make use of it in your marketing website designs.

Follow my eyes

Take a look at this image:

The purpose of this image is to demonstrate community building and trust relationships. The image foreground does this well. The woman is shaking hands with the man, leaning into him, and because the target audience for the site is analysts, motion is implied to the right.

What about the background? Notice the two men standing in the background and looking away from the action and out of the frame?

The mind pays attention to what's in the foreground, while a different part of the brain signals what's in the background. When foreground and background information are incongruent the brain-mind system sends a signal that there's a problem and that the information -- the picture and whatever content is around it -- is at worst dangerous and at best questionable.

That's what's happening here. If those two gents in the background were looking at the folks shaking hands there'd be no problem. The brain-mind would decide the information is good, relevant, meaningful and useful. Instead the two men in the background are looking away from the foreground action.

Are they seeing a problem or maybe food?

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Rapid advances in personal and home electronics and the evolution of Web 2.0 are accelerating the emergence and influence of prosumers. Loosely defined as both "professional-consumers" (a hobbyist in a particular field, but who is knowledgeable enough to require and desire equipment that has professional features) and "producer-consumers" (a person who influences the design of products, and increasingly a producer of content using new channels and technology), these two groups are increasingly becoming one in the same. 

Nowhere is their growing influence greater than in the consumer electronics industry. In fact, comScore recently reported that personal technology sales are driving ecommerce in the United States. The research firm says that the $200 billion consumers will spend online in 2007 will be driven by consumer electronic purchases, especially video gaming products.

The availability of advanced personal technologies, and the rise and proliferation of channels for producing and delivering content, are stirring the passions and helping to give voice to prosumers. Given their sophisticated use of new technologies and influence, "supersumers" may be a better term for this group. New tools for content creation and distribution, channels and technologies are converging and empowering prosumers looking for professional-quality products and intent on influencing their design, development and marketing.

In this new environment, marketers and brand managers of consumer products, especially electronics, need to understand and work together with prosumers. 

Take a look at the recent heightened market anticipation and early adoption of the iPhone. Not only did technology enthusiast blogs (such as Tech Crunch and Engadget) engage in heated debate over the impending launch and what it would mean, but well before the final design and functionality were determined, prosumers were in discussion over what would work best and why, and how their expectations could be met in the final product design and applications. In the weeks leading up to its availability, it is estimated that nearly one million blog entries discussed the iPhone, with additional dialogue appearing on social networking sites.

New converged technologies, channels and devices are unleashing a dynamic market opportunity enabling and expanding the reach and influence of prosumers. With prosumers serving as powerful advocates and detractors, as well as early adopters and buyers of new products and services, their stake in how products and technologies are designed, developed and marketed is growing exponentially.

What is driving this influence? What does it mean for marketers? To answer these questions, we need to first look at the tools and channels prosumers use and their motivation.

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That brief statement from Alan James, CEO of the U.K.-based Outdoor Advertising Association, best sums up how this market sector appears to be on the cusp of an explosive expansion.

"It's creating added communication opportunities and is making advertisers, creatives and media planners want to look at outdoor again," said James.

The digital outdoors has faced some hurdles -- price, lack of infrastructure and bandwidth constraints -- but these are being surmounted. In fact, according to Indianapolis-based WatchFire Digital Outdoor, by the end of 2007 there will be about 1,000 digital billboards in operation throughout the U.S. While this represents only a fraction of the total number of billboards nationwide, usage is expected to grow considerably.

"It used to be small projects, with companies putting up a screen in their reception room to welcome guests," said Iain Campbell, sales director at True Colours Distribution, another U.K.-based organization. "The fog is lifting and it's no longer seen as a golden art. Firms are realizing that they need to get their message across and this is a platform for doing that."

Digital displays advertising goods and services that can rotate frequently, so messages can be fresh and regularly updated for targeted customers. The technology is far enough along, noted Darrin Friskney, director of WatchFire, that digital billboard artwork is now similar to art created for traditional vinyl billboards, "only it's delivered via high-speed internet connection as a .jpeg file."

Author notes: Neal Leavitt is president of Fallbrook, CA-based Leavitt Communications, an international marketing communications company with affiliates in Brazil, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, and the United Kingdom. Read full bio.

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The way we communicate with each other continues to change at light speed. Over a billion people are online globally. Two thirds of the U.S. population now has broadband. More than 2 billion blogs are registered. Web 2.0 is ballooning. And mobile handsets are ubiquitous.

The effect that this has had on full-service communications agencies has been profound, and Y&R is no exception. Ad critic Bob Garfield calls it Chaos 2.0: the end of the full service agency as we've known it. I wouldn't go quite that far, but there's no question that as the world changes, so must we. And we have.

Water cooler conversations at our shop are as likely to be about viral videos, social networks, SMS, podcasting or search as they are about branding and :30 second TV spots. And you see it in our work: for Cadbury Schweppes, or the NCAA, or the campaign we're about to launch for Palm -- all campaigns built around integrated communications strategies reflecting the new world order. Toto, we are not in Kansas any more!

But even though our playing field is far wider and mostly digital, our fundamental approach to solving clients' problems creatively remains the same. It still starts with the clients' business objectives, and a profound understanding of the target audience we're trying to influence, including how the audience behaves offline and online. And, yes, it's still about the "Big Idea." That's where the energy -- the spark -- comes from that gives a brand velocity, and captures the attention and engagement of the audience.

But if we had to boil it down to five key principles (which is what iMedia asked for!) then this is what we'd say:

1. Understand the business objective
   Our first priority is developing a creative concept that is on-brief. A good brief starts with a clear understanding of the client's business objectives and what metrics will be used to measure success. As advertisers become more online savvy and understand the enhanced interactions now available, they have become more confident in expanding branding campaigns beyond traditional media. Many of our customers are relying less on CTR and more on interaction rates to judge the performance of a campaign. That means the creative challenge extends past breaking through the clutter to encouraging trackable behaviors that are grounded in the strategy.
   
   
2. Understand the audience
   Who is the target audience, what do we know about that audience's buying habits and what other insight do we have that we can leverage? Our strategy guys spend a lot of time understanding consumers: the way they buy, and the behavior we want the creative to stimulate. Do we want them to click for more information? Or click to buy? Do we want them to laugh and love us? We need to know how our communications will be received, and knowing our target audience usually determines the way we craft the call-to-action of the campaign.
   
   
3. Create a single-minded message
   Develop a clear and concise message that can be communicated from a single ad to the entire campaign. This message must be on brief and fully take into consideration the media buy. With regards to distribution channel and ad format, at Y&R we drive the creative concept and the media buy through the same consumer lens. How do consumers search for information? Where on the web are the conversations in the category taking place? How can the brand naturally become part of that ecosystem? How can we engage with the customers and start a conversation with a deepened engagement?
   
   
4. Match the message with the audience
   At this point, we circle back around and ask ourselves why the target audience should believe the message. It is not enough to deliver a message through a single ad; our creative goal is to make the message really resonate with the target. It's about engaging the consumers in a conversation that moves them through the entire process of becoming a customer. So when we think about a campaign, we're thinking more of a series of mini-campaigns placed wherever our target congregates, which more and more tends to be on the web.
   
   
5. Match the message with the medium
   How does the message connect to the other elements of the campaign and the brand in all its channels? We want our creative teams to have a broad sense of the total campaign, even though they may be only working on one part of it.

When working online, more and more we're developing rich media placements where possible. The ad units and technology provide a high level of engagement with consumers and allows us greater creative freedom. A recent example of this is the Texaco campaign that we teamed with Eyeblaster to produce. Within the ad unit we were able to replicate an old school arcade game that encourages longer time spent with the brand. This obviously is something that we could not attempt to do with a standard banner.

Only after considering these five priorities do our creative teams pull out the napkins and start working on the "Big Idea."

Aaron Bart is interactive producer, Young and Rubicam. Read full bio.

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We've always really prided ourselves on building sites that are "usable." If a user can get through a site unobstructed from Point A to our goal page, then we've done a good job. 

When I get into new business meetings, it is invariable that the prospect will ask how familiar we are with the "best practices" in their industry. What have we done for someone who looks like them?

Most often, we find a relevant example that proves our knowledge of the space, our knowledge of best practices and, ultimately, our ability to build usable sites. I believe that is a problem. Those three things combined, to most, sound ideal, however, I believe that those three combined can produce results that are, to use a metaphor, vanilla. A lot of people like vanilla and I'd say that vanilla is definitely the safest of flavors, but it is tough to get passionate about vanilla. You can put toppings on it, you can mash other things into it, but it is still vanilla.

I think that this is the difference between usability and user experience. I know that many people in the industry, particularly those in the field of user experience, have been working to better define the difference, however, that definition has failed to reach the client-side decision-makers. They continue to ask for usability and for in-industry best practices.

In my opinion, user experience is focused on ensuring that the targeted user gets the best experience possible based on the desired outcome for that user. So, for one example, a user gets through a shopping cart without obstruction (in this case, it would be easy to say that the cart was "usable"). That is pretty straightforward and common; we optimize regularly to tighten a checkout process.

Another example is the case of a client, Garden Fresh Restaurant Corp. (owner of Souplantation & SweetTomatoes); a user looking for a particular menu item at a particular location has to be exposed to all other nearby locations in his quest for the desired menu item. There is nearly zero drop-off in the user's path, as a usability purist might expect, but as a result of this experience, the user may be educated about a new, nearer location. With a usability focus, we might provide our users with a different function that pairs them with their desired menu items much more quickly, but we know, from analytics, that they're going to get there and we need them to know something that may improve their experience with the restaurant in the future. Ideally, that is user experience.

I was speaking at an event a few months ago and I was highlighting some of the design elements of another site we'd built for Turning Technologies. I had defensible statistics for just about everything; however, there was an audience member who simply could not break away from "best practices." On the site we'd chosen to put the logo in the top right corner and do a few other things that break with conformity. We'd made those decisions deliberately to, among other things, illustrate that this company is different from the rest; we had seen no adverse effects from doing so (though, of course, we could definitely deepen our testing of the site). But, again, this audience member could not let it go; it was not "best practice" to do some of the things we'd done. And I couldn't agree more. But, by being different (and they do a lot of things differently), this company was ranked the 14th fastest growing company in the U.S. by Inc Magazine and the seventh fastest by Entrepreneur Magazine. The company certainly didn't achieve those ranks exclusively by its site, but it has done so by not allowing itself to be vanilla.

The concepts provided above are most definitely open for debate, simply because this work is so rarely done. The experience can always be improved, and there is definitely room for usability improvements in all work. However, we need to step back and ensure that a usability enhancement doesn't diminish the brand, nor does it minimize the experience. If we simply focused on in-industry best practices and pure usability, we would end up with sites that mirror one another rather than deliver an experience that best reflects the company. Consumers would find it difficult to differentiate a brand best connected with on a more personal or emotional level.

Think about the real-world and notice the unique feel of each of these brand experiences: Target compared to Walmart, Best Buy to Circuit City, Starbucks compared to just about every other coffee shop. These, I think, are pretty obvious examples of how experience differentiates a brand; there are hundreds of others. My request to those of you who manage a company's web channel is, Know your customer and consider his experience and what you want his branded takeaway to be. How do you want your stakeholders to feel?

Reid Carr is president of Red Door Interactive. Read full bio.

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While attending ad:tech San Francisco, it seemed to me that people had a lot to say about Millennials. "Millennials are tech savvy; Millennials know advertising," et cetera. Every time I heard the term "Millennials," it made my skin crawl. It was as if people were talking about my generation like we were a newly discovered species they didn't quite understand. But when I thought about it, I realized just how different my generation really is.

I got my first computer when I was 11 and my first cell phone at 13. By 14, I was building web pages, using instant messaging programs, downloading music from Napster and text messaging on my cell phone.

We grew up in an environment that didn't know what it was like not to have the internet and have grown to become the most influential and knowledgeable group of individuals today. And there are a lot of us: The recent Frank N. Magid presentation to OPA, "Generational Media Study" counted 79 million Millennials compared to 48 million Generation X-ers, with an average of those Millennials spending 2.5 hours online daily.

Millennials have developed the rules of conduct for interactive marketing, and if you break them, you risk the chance of doing significant damage to your brand identity. The OPA report mentioned above found that 70 percent of Millennials find internet advertising annoying and a huge factor towards that number was attributed to them feeling that companies don't know how to create internet ads for their age group.

Ouch.

With that said, you're probably wondering, "How do I reach the members of this demographic in a way that will engage their interest without harming my brand or campaign?"

Editor-in-Chief of iMedia Communications Brad Berens likens Millennials to "four-year-olds on crystal meth." Now I, myself don't twitch uncontrollably when I sit in front of my computer but I get his meaning. Usually I'm listening to music, with the television on, six tabs open on Firefox while instant messaging. If you want me to see your ad, you need to do it in a way that will capture my attention.

As iMedia's resident Millennial, I will give you the lowdown on exactly what we look for in a campaign, and ways to ensure you'll not only get our attention but get us excited about your brand as well.

Step one: get our attention
A recent CNN Money/Fortune article titled, "Attracting the twentysomething worker," highlighted the hurdles of working with Millennials. It brought up a point I find relevant for this conversation which is, Millennials are confident and have since they were young been told they were "special" and "unique," which is a nice way of saying we are very centered on ourselves. We've even been called "needy" and "entitled," and a group described to have one consciousness. I don't deny this allegation; the mere fact I began this article talking about myself proves this statement true, so what does that say to marketers?

It says, we like to think, talk and work on things that are centered around ourselves and our interests. So to get our attention, your campaign needs to be relevant to whatever content we are interacting with. Not only that, we want to interact with you on our terms.

Non-intrusive interaction
There is nothing more off-putting to a Millennial than something that gets in her way of completing the task she has at hand, whether that task is listening to music, watching a video clip or reading a blog. Millennials don't mind advertising but it is important to find a way to advertise with them, not to them.

Pandora, an online radio project, has found a way to market to youngsters in just that way. "It's important to us to make sure our advertising isn't getting in the way of the user's experience," Cheryl Lucanegro told me. "We make sure that our ads enhance our user experience rather than interrupt." And Pandora's listeners have seemed to respond very well to this model. Pandora users tend to listen to their customized radio stations two to three hours everyday and clickthrough rates are through the roof.

The way the ads work on the site is that they "skin" the site based on 400 character traits of the music a person is listening to as well as geographic, gender and age targeting. The advertising skin stays stagnant until a user interacts with his radio station. Once the user skips a song, or clicks on his play list, the skin will change to reflect a new brand or campaign. Pandora even has branded radio stations (big players such as Blackberry and Budweiser have participated in this program) that play music chosen by those brands. When users listen to one of these stations, the skin of that brand stays on their background.

On average, a user will participate with the site 7.5 times per hour, ensuring that the advertising on the site is actually being viewed by the user. It never interrupts the flow of music or the user's experience. Pandora currently has 7 million subscribers.

So what is Pandora doing right? It's customizing the user's experience with the ad based on heavily researched targeting methods, which means the advertising being exposed to the users is relevant to their interests. When users click on the ads, it's because they are interested in the product, and, because they choose to interact and are not forced to.

Now, let's say you developed a campaign that's not intrusive and relevant to the user; the time has come to get Millennials interested in your product.

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A new advertising trend is emerging which, if it proves popular and cost-effective, could compel ad agencies to rethink their business model and methodology. Many organizations representing a wide variety of vertical markets, particularly publishers and broadcast companies, have opted to create their own in-house ad agencies. Some of these have included Conde Nast, Hearst Magazines, Meredith Corporation, NBC and Reader's Digest. 

What does this trend portend to traditional agencies? Are there any strategies and tactics that need to be implemented to keep abreast of these evolving changes?

iMediaConnection asked three ad industry executives to voice their thoughts and concerns. Andreas Roell heads up San Diego, CA-based Geary Interactive, an online marketing agency. Jeffrey W. Hamill, based in New York City, is senior vice president of advertising & sales for Hearst Magazines and manages Hearst Integrated Media, the company's corporate sales arm. John Miller is chief marketing officer for NBC Universal TV Group in Los Angeles.

Here are excerpts from a recent roundtable discussion:

How long have companies been creating their own in-house ad agencies?

Roell: Publishers have always had these types of capabilities since their inception. It mostly started with the fact that some marketers (mostly smaller businesses) did not have any creative solutions available, either because their agency was not focused on a particular media placement or because they may have been too cost prohibitive. So they created in-house agency services to fulfill their specific client requests. The difference now is that some publishers have either created or bought full-service agency capabilities with the objective of taking care of clients beyond their own publisher service offerings.

Hamill: At Hearst we began doing custom marketing and creative work for our clients almost 10 years ago. We were one of the first to approach corporate advertising sales in this manner. I would say that the practice has accelerated since 2003.

Miller: We started the NBC Agency (which now has 225 employees) in the late 1990s and initially did work for MSNBC, CNBC and also created a relationship with Snap.com, which became NBC-I. Our account group also does work for Bravo, Telemundo and other digital properties.

How has this affected ad agencies' business?

Roell: There is an added piece of education and confusion that has been created. We don't mind having to compete with additional agency organizations, yet over the past few years, it has resulted in an additional layer of time that needs to be spent on educating the clients about why we work with a company for their services while they are pitching the account directly, what the value of the agency is, what they get from an agency versus a company-led agency, and how the company attempts to provide services beyond their own offerings. It is an added effort that we are facing as the rate of innovation and complexity about competitive differentiators has already increased tremendously. It is hard for clients to identify the differences from one interactive agency to the next and now we have an additional set of service providers.

Hamill: I think this is more of a reaction to changes in the ad agency business than anything else. As agencies unbundled media buying from strategy and creative there was often a disconnect between communication strategy and media. Publishers, for instance, who have great knowledge of their readerships, are in a strong position to offer insight and advice on how to communicate most effectively in their space. Agencies are now formally asking media companies to help them with strategy and tactics.

Miller: There is plenty of work for traditional agencies and I really don't see too many media companies creating in-house agencies. Every cable and TV operation has some level of in-house work; this mostly relates to on-air promotions or on-air branding because it's easier and cheaper to do this yourself and it is daily and immediate. We do 30,000 spots annually; no outside agency could handle that kind of volume. But it can be quite effective to go outside for certain types of campaigns.

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"Create and sustain real connections between people and brands."

That has been the philosophy at imc2 from the gitgo. President/Founder Doug Levy's knack for melding people from varied disciplines and expertise has grown into what is now America's largest privately held, independent digital marketing agency, with more than 500 employees and annual revenues in 2006 exceeding $64 million. Company headquarters is in Dallas; additional offices are in New York City, Philadelphia, Cincinnati and London.

Levy got his first big break shortly after graduating from the Wharton School of Business in 1995. He created Internet University, an online information/resource tool for college students. ABC Sports liked what it saw and retained Levy to develop the network's Monday Night Football website.

Over the years, the agency has expanded its focus and now provides interactive solutions for these industries:

• Automotive
• Beverage
• Consumer goods
• Energy
• Financial services
• Pharmaceuticals/healthcare
• Retail
• Travel & hospitality

Key clients include Coca-Cola, Eli Lilly and Company, Pfizer, Nestlé, Shire, Pizza Hut, Procter & Gamble, Sam's Club and Omni Hotels.

imc2 recently moved to a 99,000-square-foot headquarters, and Advertising Age designated the company as a top 10 agency for the third time. The company has won gobs of awards over the years; in 2007 some of these included the Webby Awards (People's Voice Winner-Pharmaceuticals: Cymbalta Real Stories); DFWIMA EIMA Awards (Most Effective Non-Profit Campaign: Being-A-Hero (beinggirl.com); and In Awe Awards (Interactive/Digital: Website corporate: Myalli.com).

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Coca-Cola has embraced social networking, expanding its online strategy with a new Cherry Coke MySpace campaign. Shane Steele, Coca-Cola's director of emerging media and online advertising, discusses the company's new approach to Web 2.0.

Shane Steele is Coca-Cola's director of emerging media and online advertising.

Krisserin Canary: The new Cherry Coke campaign  is indicative of a move towards more interactive and involved MySpace campaigns. How did you approach creating this campaign? What were your priorities?

Shane Steele: Our main priority was to generate awareness and excitement with the relaunch of Cherry Coke and launch of Cherry Coke Zero amongst today's multicultural youth. Social networks offer an amazing opportunity to engage our target audience and communicate with them on their own terms. We needed to break-through the clutter and contemporize the brand by speaking to our consumers in a relevant and meaningful way. We understood the influence of the MySpace community and we wanted to give one lucky teen the chance to own it. We wanted to empower self-expression, inspire creativity and enable teens to showcase their passion for the Cherry Coke brand.

Canary: The recent redesign of Coca-Cola's brand site, MyCokeRewards, has shown a heavy reliance on user-generated interaction with the brand. What are you hoping the outcome of the contest will be with users?

Steele: While companies create brands, consumers can make or break them. Today's move to user-generated interaction and consumer-generated content represents an understanding of the role consumers play in defining and shaping brands. The Cherry Coke tagline, "Rediscover Cherry," encourages consumers to rediscover the brand's uniqueness. We hope this contest enables users to express themselves and to define what the Cherry Coke brand means to them. We are excited to see how Cherry Coke fans make the most of the opportunity to creatively express themselves with the branded assets.

Canary: How do you plan to incorporate the brand site with the MySpace campaign? Will there be future campaigns for other Coke products?

Steele: MyCoke.com is our Coca-Cola brand site devoted to the teen audience. Within the site, there is a section dedicated to Cherry Coke/Cherry Coke Zero. On some of those pages, we implemented banner ads to increase awareness of the MySpace program with our target audience. The banner ads message the Cherry Coke MySpace application and encourage users to go to MySpace to design their own Cherry profiles. And on the flip side, we do have links on the Cherry MySpace page directing to both MyCoke.com and MyCokerewards.com.

We are always looking to create unique and engaging marketing programs so there could definitely be opportunities for other Coca-Cola brands to have similar immersive campaigns.

Canary: After the contest is over, is there a long-tail plan to keep users interested in the MySpace campaign?

Steele: Once the contest concludes, users can continue to design their pages and save the code to the "About Me" section within their personal profiles. The Cherry Coke profile will remain a permanent feature within the MySpace community and we are considering additional avenues to sustain long-term interest.

Canary: What's your favorite part of the campaign?

Steele: We are positively overwhelmed by the creativity within the MySpace community. It is really amazing when you consider the variety of the individual entries and the creative talent behind each of them. We're glad that rules forbid us from voting as I'm not sure we could decide on just one winner. So, perhaps my favorite part is that the MySpace community gets the difficult task of selecting the winning design. And, the Music Visualizer widget on the download page is a work of art unto itself. Be sure to check it out!

Krisserin Canary is associate editor of iMedia Communications. Read full bio.

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A note from Editor in Chief & Chief Content Officer Brad Berens: It's worth pointing out that at the time of publication EyeWonder is sponsoring our Creative Best Practices coverage, but Ryan's  byline is in no way a part of that sponsorship. You can find a more detailed explanation of our editorial policy here or contact me directly with questions.

Rich media has changed in oh so many ways in recent years. Limitless creative has begun carrying the weight of successful online video advertising. Rich media's interactivity and the ability of imaginative campaigns to engage end users have resulted in a steady migration of advertising dollars. Rich media and video ads have proved themselves as immensely effective and interactive marketing vehicles for brand and product campaigns, and through constant innovation and user friendly technology it's getting better all the time.

Creative agencies, publishers media buyers and planners have come together to deliver highly successful and imaginative ad campaigns. Creative's success is no magical mystery. Brands and advertisers began to embrace interactive ad campaigns once rich media was validated as the gold standard for driving brand recognition, ad awareness and intent-to-buy for end users. The next tier of advancement centers on creativity. Here are some words of wisdom around creative priorities that could fix a hole in any campaign. With that in mind, and with a wink to John, Paul, George and Ringo, we've dubbed them the "Fab Five" priorities for creative ad units. See how they run�

1. Tomorrow never knows: Design campaign objectives before launch
"You say you got a real solution, well you know we'd all love to see the plan." Know what your campaign goals are and ensure you are developing and measuring for achievement of those goals throughout the campaign. Today's rich media has infinitely more creative options than the static banner ads of yesterday. Rich media options should be geared toward campaign specific goals. First, develop campaign goals and objectives, then select the appropriate creative rich media tactics that best execute those expectations. It sounds obvious, but many campaigns are deployed without clear and quantifiable goals and run the risk that they may fall apart before too long.

2. Instant karma: Shorter instant play video ads and animations
Ironically, longer video ads usually mean shorter interaction rates. For every ad unit EyeWonder delivers, we measure end-user time spent on the pages where these ad units run. We've gauged the average interaction rates on those pages at eight seconds. Accordingly, we recommend that rich media ads engage users with compelling creative and a call-to-action within those first eight, pivotal seconds. Long and unexciting rich media ad units can leave users sleeping like a log. Create the most enticing and interactive ad unit possible while keeping the duration of the video under eight seconds long and you will guarantee interactions eight days a week.

3. Imagine: Rich media is an interactive medium, make it interactive
Put the user in control through video or photo galleries, in-banner games and customizable user-generated elements within the banner. Allow them to share their experience: how they score and what they enjoy. Advertising is no longer one-way communication; rich media offers a "brand experience" and a dialogue opportunity that can provide invaluable user information for brands and advertisers to create even more customer tailored campaigns.

4. That's what I want: Strong specific call-to-actions
End users are suspicious enough of new forms of advertising. Online banner ads have a reputation of being misleading. Ad units that are ambiguous about what the ad unit interaction will entail often deter end users from engaging. Be clear about the message and what the ad is offering, whether it is a download, movie show time or a funny video. Applying specific text can not only relieve apprehension of a negative interaction (like multiple pop-ups), but can better attract users who are interested in particular information or interaction.

5. Don't pass me by: Reward the user
Allow your viewers and users to take something away from the banner, either the feeling of being entertained by exclusive video clips, a funky song they performed through their keyboard to share with friends or digital, tangible downloads like screensavers, games or ready-to-be-redeemed coupons.

Revolution No. 9: rich media is evolving, so should your processes
So you say you want a revolution, well rich media is staging one: the creative revolution. Rich media is finding new ways to creatively engage audiences. In the midst of rampant industry consolidation, limitless creative cannot be left out in the rain. The evolution of rich media is dependent on the ability to advance the creative process. As creativity expands, advertisers and brands will be able to produce highly strategic and specific campaigns. Don't be left the fool on the hill, evolve your rich media campaign work flow to drive cutting-edge creative on-time, on-budget, and uncompromised in creative scope.

Ryan Manchee is the Client Solutions Director of EyeWonder, Inc. Read full bio.

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According to legend, Jasper Newton "Jack" Daniel put his now-famous whisky in square bottles so that customers would know that he was a square-shooter. Honesty, it seems, was not a common virtue among early American whisky distillers, who often turned out a questionable (and sometimes deadly) product.

If the myth is true, Newton may have discovered an early form of "infotainment." While a square bottle doesn't offer much in the way of entertainment (despite the fact that the contents can be quite thrilling), the message is an important one. Newton distinguished his product by giving his customers what they needed to know in the form of an easily-digested folk tale that they could share and discuss during a long night at their local saloon.

Square bottle = square-shooter = whisky that you can trust to get you drunk and not kill you.

While it's a simple message, it is wholly applicable to the digital age, where well-educated, savvy consumers often know more about a brand than the people marketing the product.

Think your customers don't know better, ask Pepsi
Less than a month earlier, PepsiCo, which makes Aquafina, faced a public relations meltdown when news spread like wild fire that it was changing its label to reflect the fact that its product is tap water.

While pressure to change the label came from a public interest consumer group, Corporate Accountability International, the case illustrates the speed and force with which the internet can rapidly remodel a brand's persona. Not only did the internet provide a super-fast engine for consumers to spread the word that drinking Aquafina was akin to drinking from the tap, it also provided a fertile classroom for those who wanted to learn anything and everything (whether accurate or not) about the water company.

While a well-structured infotainment campaign may not have saved Aquafina from a black eye, the experience demonstrates how vital it is to remember the consumer's thirst for information when marketing your brand.  

So what is infotainment? 
If you're having trouble figuring out what infotainment is, you're not alone. In researching this article, more than a few sources pushed back with questions of their own. Namely, which definition of infotainment do you use?

For the record, there probably is no hard-and-fast definition of infotainment. Dave Wilkie, who operates Green Hammock and is the blogger behind Where's My Jetpack, says the depth and reach of the ad or website generally distinguishes an infotainment ad from a regular ad.

"To know all there is to know, in a fun and unique way, with links to more company-affiliated sites, is generally the goal of infotainment," Wilkie says. "It's about education."

While Lana McGilvray, VP of marketing at Datran Media agrees that education is important, she wonders if the proliferation of digital media hasn't blurred the lines between infotainment and just about everything else you see online.

"It is increasingly difficult to differentiate infotainment, information/education-centric marketing and entertainment for [the sake of] entertainment because the lines have dramatically blurred, especially across interactive channels," McGilvray says.

One reason for the blurred lines, according to McGilvray, may be the popularity of user-generated media, which doesn't have to follow the same regulatory guidelines that advertisers do.

"We are likely to see an increase in infotainment moving forward for all the same reasons that are motivating changes across all media," McGilvray says. "As media channels continue to converge, viewers are less willing to spend much time with media; more and more brands compete for the interactive consumer, and infotainment becomes a much faster and more compelling way to get messages to the ultimate destination."

In other words, ads need to up the ante if they are to penetrate the cluttered media landscape. But that's where the fun begins.

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Dynamic Logic recently announced the most effective online advertising campaigns, based on research that evaluated how well each campaign achieved its branding objectives. Reviewing the campaigns measured in the United States during 2006, we determined the top overall campaigns, which successfully generated the greatest branding impact. 

Top U.S. campaigns
The top campaigns were led by CPG products, including four Kraft campaigns: Oreo, Honey Bunches of Oats, Kraft Singles and Crystal Light On-the-Go. Other brands that also achieved high scores were BMW, Dove, McDonald's and Ray-Ban. Online Ad Awareness scores for these campaigns ranged from 18 to 43 percentage-point increases after exposure to online advertising. The ads were also highly persuasive, generating the highest scores in Brand Favorability and Purchase Intent. 

The advertising campaigns included a combination of ad formats including rich media elements that captured visitors' attention, but did not disrupt their experience enough to have a negative impact on the brands. The top performing campaigns tended to find the right balance between grabbing and holding people's attention and having a positive effect without harming their user experience.

Many of the top online campaigns were well integrated with their offline campaigns.

The value of video
Interestingly, most of these campaigns utilized some form of video ads as part of their online campaign. Previous Dynamic Logic research has shown that video ads can provide a successful format to communicate to consumers. Many of the video ads appearing among the top campaigns happened to be repurposed TV spots that were adapted for online, and also implemented a variety of video formats, including pre-roll, in-banner and interstitial ads.

Companion units were placed near the video, allowing viewers to interact with the ads and maintaining constant brand presence while the videos were playing. Placing repurposed TV spots may not be the best way to take advantage of video ads for the online medium; however, early indicators show that marketers should at least be looking at the web as a way to get more mileage from their TV investment. They should consider exploring video elements that maximize the uniqueness of the web, engaging viewers and allowing them to interact with the brand. 

These campaigns illustrate smart media strategy and clever creativity, providing some excellent examples of online advertising that is working well. They also illustrate some guidelines in creating successful online brand advertising that other marketers may be able to learn from and apply. Some best practices that can be gleaned from the top performing campaigns:

• Keep the message simple. Don't try to convey too many messages with your online advertising
• Be sure the brand is intrinsically linked to the creative assets
• The online campaign should be synergistic with the offline campaign
• For products, make the product shot the "hero" of the ad. Showing the prepared product or people using the product helps to demonstrate its benefits and also grabs viewers' attention
• Leverage the unique capabilities of the internet, such an interaction, layered roll-over units and precise targeting.

The research was conducted using AdIndex while each campaign was running live across the websites that made up the actual media plan. Comparing people who were exposed to the ads to those who were not, we were able to quantify the impact as a result of online advertising exposure. The survey results were uploaded into MarketNorms, Dynamic Logic's online advertising effectiveness database, thus allowing us to determine which campaigns performed best across key criteria. These campaigns were the most noticed, generating the highest Online Ad Awareness scores after exposure to the online campaign; they resulted in positive increases in awareness of the brand or product being advertised and were also highly persuasive. 

Christina Goodman is director of global marketing & business development at Dynamic Logic, A Millward Brown Company. Read full bio.

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In it, we invite agency execs to share the pitches that they've been secretly mulling over for months or years� the pitches they've always WANTED to give, but for whatever reason (their agencies aren't inside the brand's holding company umbrella, they've never gotten into the right room at the right time, et cetera) the chance has never come.

iMedia brings these agencies a different sort of chance: make the pitch in public! Share your ideas with the world in order to show the industry your dreams, how you think and how interactive advertising can continue to move forward.

I'm pleased that Questus is continuing the series with its dream pitch for Virgin America, a new U.S.-based low-cost airline. And if your agency would be interested in sharing your dream pitches with our readers, our editorial team would love to hear from you.

Virgin America recently launched its pilot program with flights from San Francisco to New York�s JFK airport. With our home base in San Francisco and offices in New York, everyone at Questus is eagerly anticipating what new travel experience Virgin will offer because when Richard Branson and Virgin Airlines are involved, consumers know to expect a best-in-class travel experience. That�s why we decided to make our dream pitch to Virgin America.

Jeff Wagener is creative director at Questus. Read full bio.

How will Virgin improve the American travel experience? How can Virgin America convince weary business travelers to switch airlines in spite of fat frequent flyer accounts with competitors? The previous campaign, "Never Forget Your First Time," introduced America to the always fashion-forward, occasionally irreverent Virgin brand while providing an opportunity to put Questus� methodology for successful Trial and Switch programs through its paces.

In this pitch, we propose a new flying experience, with comfort and conveniences that will lure today�s jaded traveler away from airlines for whom customer service is simply an empty promise or vague concept. The goal of our campaign is to move consumers through the four phases of brand recognition and self-identification -- awareness, association, acceptance and adoration -- with an ultimate goal of turning the most loyal consumers into Virgin America evangelists or what Virgin can call "Virgin Americans."

Author notes: Rebecca Hill is account director at Questus. Read full bio.

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"The future of advertising is that there isn't any."

That's quite an audacious statement, but even more eyebrow-raising when you learn it comes from the mouth of Jeff Hicks, CEO of Miami-based Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CP+B).

Those remarks were just a few snippets of wisdom offered by Hicks in Chicago at last October's Forrester's Consumer Forum.

But since the company's inception in 1965 (started by Sam Crispin; his name is still on the door even though he departed in 1991 and his son, Charles, sold out in 1993), and especially in the past few years as CP+B has consistently rolled out a number of award-winning campaigns that have spanned a wide variety of media platforms, shaking things up has become a key part of the creative mix.

The full-service ad agency now has annual revenues of more than $1 billion and more than 600 employees in Miami, Boulder, CO and Venice Beach, CA. Services include creative, media, research, planning and print/broadcast production. Big name clients include Burger King, Coca-Cola, Sprite, American Express, Haggar, Geek Squad, Nike, American Legacy Foundation and Volkswagen. 

CP+B's philosophy, noted Hicks, "is turning great marketing into great results for clients."

Hicks said the role of advertising is to push consumers towards products.

"At the center is the product. Advertising is at the periphery, with packaging and customer relationship management and distribution as the layers between it and the product. Our job is not to interrupt but to create content that's entertaining."

Hicks added that marketers should get comfortable with consumers messing with their brand.

"The best marketers are realizing this is a foregone conclusion. We encourage our clients to participate."

Many of CP+B's clients would add that the content has also contributed to the bottom line.

Next: Here are three capsule campaign snapshots.

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1. Know your audience
Before you can begin to put together your online campaign, you need to know how your client's target audience interacts with technology and with the brand online. Think of it as a two-sided coin: You've got your audience on one side, and your brand on the other. For a successful outcome, the two must come together.

Questions you should be asking are: What level of technology experience does your client's audience bring to the online space? What kind of technologies do they use? What are the expectations of the people who will be consuming the campaign?

As an example, an audience composed primarily of men, ages 18 to 24, will have a specific set of technology skills, while male baby boomers will have different expectations; from technology requirements to knowledge of how to react to technology. These two groups will have a different experience with navigation systems, design systems, response styles, and even attention spans, and this will set a different requirement for how to convey information to them.

2. Understand your brand and how it lives
It is important to be clear about what the client's brand means in the online space and what it brings to that arena. Some things you should think about: Do you know exactly how the brand transfers across technologies? Is the brand forward-thinking? Does it lend itself more to clear navigation or unstructured exploration? If the audience is more conservative about how it receives technology, how does your brand reflect this attitude?

It's crucial to understand how the brand personality translates over to the use of technology. Using a certain technology simply to create something that's in vogue may miss the mark completely if it doesn't match the brand. Nike.com focuses on innovation and performance and therefore makes use of technology and design differently from, say, Keds.com. The two audiences have distinct expectations, and the technology used must reflect this difference.

3. Extend your campaign beyond the expected campaign elements
You can do a lot more than simply deliver a landing page and a banner. Expand your thinking beyond web or display advertising, and consider creating pieces that people can easily share with others or take away, such as video, widgets, mobile content and RSS feeds. As an example, baby.com offers a widget that you can put on your Google.com home page to receive up-to-the-minute tips on baby care.

Creating collateral that is both reusable and expandable is smart. Your campaign can, and should, reach wherever the audience is looking or may have technology. Just be sure to stick to the original vision and keep the messaging consistent across all campaign formats.

4. Create a conversation or relationship
With interactive technology today, you've got the opportunity to build a real relationship with consumers. You're no longer limited to websites and interactive space that merely invites people to read materials, buy products online or engage with others on message boards. You've got live chat, video blogs, wikis and user-generated content as tools for creating conversations.

Great advertisers and brands understand the importance of moving from one-way monologues to full-on discussions about the brand. Technology has changed to enable companies and consumers to interact in a much greater way, and it's important to take great advantage of this development.

5. Establish your metrics
Many clients seek the strong ROI that interactive and digital can bring to campaigns. This being the case, you must set up in advance exactly what you're going to use to measure success; for example, clickthroughs or interaction rates. Once you have those parameters in place, you can build and design your campaign to easily track results. Whatever form you use, make sure you can easily measure your results, and make sure your team understands the metrics requirements right from the beginning.

Making these your top five priorities before your creative team gets started can help you create a successful interactive campaign.

Kalie Kimball-Malone is VP/creative director for Worktank. Read full bio.

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More outlets are leveraging targeting technologies for a reason, because more than ever, today's consumer brings significant influence over marketing strategies: the choices he or she makes on where to spend time online are increasingly likely to determine the success or failure of a campaign.

From the consumers' perspective, we all know that media saturation has led them to feel bombarded; multitasking between devices, receiving tons of messages, yet having the same amount of time and energy with which to consume them. BIGresearch, a market intelligence firm providing analysis of consumer behavior in areas of retail, financial services, automotive and media, found in its ninth annual Simultaneous Media Usage Study this year that 67.9 percent of consumers surveyed use other media while watching television, while 70.7 percent use other media while going online.

Consumers now decide instantly -- based on the design of a page alone -- whether or not to consider your message. Individual elements on their own will not do the job; a compelling visual is not enough, clever copy may cause more harm than good, relevant benefits and incentives may never be read, and a strong call-to-action can fall flat. Rather, these elements need to be measured and combined into a design that resonates instantly with the consumer, similar to the way a great pastry chef combines just the right amount and type of ingredients to bake the perfect, mouth-watering cake: It's a skill and an art.

So, what does it take to get this overloaded consumer to click through? How do you break through the noise and prompt the user to take action?

Meaningful design: reducing anxiety and friction
The web has matured to the point at which consumers come to a site with a set of expectations, and in designing a campaign that requires a response, those expectations must be met. Good design creates a compelling, accessible user experience that leverages professional design and elements of behavioral psychology to ease the burden of the consumer, making it inviting for him or her to move from Point A to Point B.

In doing so, it's critical to strike a balance between too much information and too little, and to order the elements on the page properly to create the desired user experience, ultimately reducing two key impediments to conversion: anxiety and friction.

Consumers don't arrive at your site trusting you; they're going to be skeptical. One of the goals of good promotional design is to reduce the anxiety the user feels when he or she comes to the page by communicating credibility and familiarity. The more comfortable a consumer feels looking at the page, the more likely he or she is to provide information or make a purchase.

What communicates familiarity and credibility? A toll-free number, for example (knowing there's a real person on the other end of the website, even if they never call). Accreditations, like those offered by VeriSign, are another way to build trust with the consumer. Customer testimonials, "learn more" pages so they feel in control, consistency of design elements if being driven to the site from another piece of creative; these are all visual cues that this is a legitimate site, which ultimately reduces anxiety. These types of concepts are particularly important in reaching consumers who may not be familiar with your brand.

Reducing the visual "friction" consumers feel when they come to the site raises the chances that your message will get through. But in order for your message to be delivered, the page must meet certain expectations. For this reason layout is important: you expect login upper right corner, expect navigation down left or across top, expect logo to be upper left and clickable to home page, expect store locator to be at the bottom, expect search somewhere up top, upper right, et cetera.

While this is not news, what is news is that your layout is more important than ever. Due to the speed of online behavior, people don't have the luxury to decide to come back and read something later. You must think critically about how elements are designed in a way to create the eye path you want the consumer to follow, and this eye path must not only be visually appealing but also inviting. Too much clutter or visual roadblocks will cause visitors to pause, or worse, abandon the experience; not enough information or a scattered design may leave them feeling unfulfilled.

Bottom line on design
While there are elements of promotional design that are formulaic in nature, there is no cookie-cutter approach to designing a promotion that controls and guides the consumer's eye through the experience. Each audience is different; consumers receive and process information differently. Every pitch is equally as different, requiring information to be rolled out in such a way that it's understandable to its specific target audience.

The trick is to make it as clear and simple as possible for the audience the promotion is trying to reach.

Brooks Bell is the founder and president of Brooks Bell Interactive. Read full bio.

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In a perfect world, designers would have a finalized media plan and complete ad specs just as they started to design concepts for the next ad campaign. But we don't live in a perfect world, and many designers can't even remember the last time everything went according to plan and they received all the relevant details in time to customize ads for a given media environment.

More than likely, their last campaign was designed in a vacuum, with little direction given as to where ads would run.

Designing in a vacuum is always a less than ideal situation, but the following are some tips that may help keep the process friction-free. If you're not designing for specific environments because the media team doesn't have the media plan nailed down yet, look at the bright side: you have the opportunity to gain more control over what ends up running.

While that doesn't mean you can create whatever ad size or format you want, you have a lot more influence over sizes and formats than you might if the media plan were fully baked.

Stay Within Expectations: Obviously, the client is going to have a heart attack if, at the end of the creative approval process, they have a bunch of 30-second pre-roll videos and the media plan ends up calling for IAB standard banners. Even if a plan isn't finalized, the media folks should be able to give you an idea of what you should be producing. When we know we're buying standard ad units, we generally tell our creative teams to produce concepts that won't incur additional fees to run, so...

• Steer clear of third-party rich media vendors
• The same goes for ad formats that cost extra from a placement perspective, such as pre-roll or standalone video (in-banner video is okay), page takeovers, roadblocks and peelbacks
• Any rich media should stay in the banner space and be servable through the agency's ad server (think DoubleClick's Motif or Atlas Rich Media)

Always check with your friendly neighborhood media guy if you're concerned that something you want to produce might cost extra to run.

Push Toward Effective Sizes: While you might not be able to produce specific ads for specific environments, you can still draw some conclusions about the variety of ad sizes available on a typical ad-supported site.

One of the variables we've been examining closely is the typical proximity of different ad formats to content. It's a working theory here at the office that the closer an ad placement is to the actual content of a web page, the more effective the ad placement is at driving both response and brand impact.

We see this notion play out when we look at rectangle ads, such as the 300x250 and 336x280. Generally, these ad sizes tend to enjoy close proximity to content, since text is often wrapped around them.

Even when pages don't wrap content around rectangle ads, they tend to feature them in places where they're tough to ignore.

Leaderboards and buttons are often in the same spot on many pages, thus making it easy for people to tune them out. You'll see a lot more variety in how rectangles are placed on a page, and this helps them get noticed.

Speaking of the leaderboard, the single most popular ad format on the web has been experiencing declining performance for quite some time now. Perhaps it is because the ad format is typically separated from content -- running at the top and bottom of pages -- and it is often separated from content by vast expanses.

Many sites run the leaderboard format at the very top of the page, above all the navigational elements.

This puts the leaderboard at a disadvantage. Not only do people tune it out because they see it at the top of every web page, but they also find it easy to ignore because of its lack of proximity to the page elements they're actually looking at.

While it's true these are generalizations, as a designer, you can surf through some of the sites under consideration on the media plan (or sites that make sense for the target audience) to see if there are any commonalities in how different sites use the same ad size.

Don't Forget Rich Media Standards: If you are producing Flash to be served through your agency's server, don't forget about the standard specs for tracking, and the various standard methods for streaming, click commands, expansion and other ad functions.

In my experience, there have been numerous times over the past few years when creative and media teams working in parallel failed to communicate effectively and the ads didn't work properly in the ad server test environment. Or the publisher rejects ads that don't use the proper code specs. It happens.

Don't forget those click commands and standard methods. It's no fun to be re-coding Flash ads on a Saturday.

Tom Hespos is the president of Underscore Marketing and blogs at Hespos.com. Read full bio.

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This fall, 42 college students will go to work on 21 campuses around the country with a simple message: Fly JetBlue. Using blogs, Facebook profiles and on-campus events, the students will spread the message that JetBlue is a cost-effective, customer-oriented airline that's fun to do business with.

The CrewBlue program -- an innovative viral marketing initiative -- makes use of incentives and word-of-mouth promotion to reach future business travelers just when they are making choices about their preferred brands.

"The power of it has been remarkable," says Tara Ryan, JetBlue's manager of national promotion. "We get much more response from student recommendations than we would from banner ads."

In the hyper-competitive market for air travel, budget-busting advertising campaigns are a luxury few companies can afford. That's one reason JetBlue's experiment is drawing so much attention. Although the airline hasn't tried to quantify the results of the campaign, company research has found that 81 percent of JetBlue flyers recommend the airline to someone else.

It's no secret that customers are the most powerful marketing vehicle a business or organization can have, and a new breed of marketing program that enlists the power of "brand advocates" is showing early success.

People instinctively trust the opinion of a customer -- even someone they've never met -- over a marketer or even a published review. In a 2005 survey by research firm GfK NOP, 92 percent of U.S. consumers cited word of mouth as one of the best sources of information about products and services.

The internet -- and the new class of so-called social media sites and functionalities in particular -- offers marketers some powerful new ways to lasso and engage brand advocates, turning them into de facto extensions of your sales force. Let's look at what's working.

Next: What's a brand advocate?

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In This Article: 
Challenge Defined 
NextStage Methodology Part 1 
Methodology Part 2 
Methodology Part 3 
Entering New Markets via Creative Best Practices 

Challenge Defined
A client once told me that they really didn't have to hire NextStage because I explain how to do what NextStage does in my columns. I tend to balance comments like that against the other comment I hear a lot: "What exactly does NextStage do?"

A client, Emetrics Summit, came to NextStage with a wonderful challenge. Emetrics has been incredibly successful in one market -- website analytics conferences -- and wanted to expand into new markets. The challenge? They're very well known in the web optimization world and either not known, or known unenthusiastically, in other worlds.

Remember John Travolta's "Michael" character facing the bull and breathing out, "Ah...Battle!" That's me when offered something like this, except it's more like "Ah...Challenge!"

Emetrics Summit is synonymous with web analytics for several reasons, the least of which is that Jim Sterne and Matthew Finlay, the folks behind the Emetrics Summits, took it upon themselves to promote the web analytics industry and founded the Web Analytics Association (WAA).

These same folks are aware that the world is changing and that the Emetrics Summits need to change with it in order to remain competitive. The web analysts attending expressed interest in attracting other members of their marketing team to the event, and the analytics vendors sponsoring were repositioning their products as critical business process solutions, not simply measurement tools.

While this presented a threat to the event as it existed, it also provided an opportunity to develop with the market. Stated differently, when you've captured as much of your current market as is possible, it's time to expand your market.

This is what Jim and Matthew realized regarding the Emetrics Summit brand. One part of this challenge is that the Emetrics Summit has become too synonymous with web analytics. Their very dominance of the web analytics field is a concern as they redefine their market. The audience they're targeting has existing players that already claim sizable market share. Entering new markets too boldly can negatively brand Emetrics as "those web analytics folks."

A challenge that falls directly from the above is the rebranding of the Emetrics Summit so that it will be recognized as the parent organization to the Emetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, in addition to being premier web analytics conference providers.

The shift from doing to providing is subtle and critical. It is the shift from service to product and is a demonstration of scalability of that product, in this case excellent conferences. Regular readers know that their website is their brand, so the Emetrics' site design going forward became critical elements to their success.

There are several lines of action that come to mind immediately. Recognizing that different audiences expect different presentations leads to design issues and concerns. How does a company retain brand recognition while simultaneously demonstrating a new brand in a new market? Does the strategy involve micrositing, and is a portal concept the best to use?

Next: NextStage Methodology Part 1: The Audience Is...?

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According to a recent report by Media-Screen, consumers today spend nearly half of their spare time on the internet. As this number continues to rise, consumer brand marketers have more opportunities than ever to reach their target audiences online. But, to make it worth their while, marketers need to be sure they are reaching out to consumers with effective messages and great creative that catches and keeps their attention.

You only have a few seconds to capture consumers' attention; then there's the challenge of keeping them engaged as they click through and begin the online registration process that will provide you with valuable consumer profile data for future marketing campaigns. So, when creating any type of online media -- including polls, emails, landing pages and banners -- it's critical that your copy, messaging, graphics and call-to-action are not only clear and concise from a messaging standpoint, but also visually enticing. To get the best results from your online creative, follow these six tips:

1. Strategy: It's easy to jump right into the creative design, but you need to analyze and brainstorm first. Before getting started, ask yourself these questions:

• What am I trying to accomplish?
• Who am I trying to target?
• What am I trying to get my target audience to do?

2. Message: Your messaging needs to be concise and easy for the consumer to understand. It's important that the call-to-action is clear with no room for confusion. If consumers don't understand what is being asked of them, they are likely not to click through.

3. Graphics: Use dynamic imagery that is relevant to the offer. Always use:

• Your brand and logo.
• Product shot.
• Image that relates to the product or offer. For example, if the media is a poll asking consumers to weigh in on their favorite movies, the relevant image might be a box of movie theatre popcorn.
• Shots of people are also very effective.

4. Content: Don't overwhelm consumers with too much copy, color or graphics. Only incorporate the necessities since you only have a few seconds to convince consumers to click through and provide their valuable contact data.

5. Make it interactive: Whenever possible, make your online media interactive for the consumer. This will help grab and keep their attention. Here's one way to make your online media more compelling and active for your audience:

Include rich media video or flash demonstrations, commercials or promotions -- complete with audio -- to your registration forms, emails, et cetera. This enables marketers to deliver interactive branding messages at precisely the moment they are collecting valuable consumer contact data and product preferences.

6. Keep it simple: When designing any online media, while it needs to be dynamic in design, be sure to keep it simple, consistent and attractive to your target audience. Always remember to:

• Keep use of fonts to a minimum.
• Stay consistent with color throughout your design.
• Make sure copy, messaging, call-to-action and images all relate to each other.

Jere Doyle is president & CEO of Prospectiv, a provider of online customer acquisition solutions. Read full bio.

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In this article:
Introduction 
Buzz launch 
Tactical roll-out 
Visual strategy map     

A note from Editor in Chief Brad Berens: I'm excited to announce the launch of a new feature here at iMedia Connection: the "My Dream Pitch" series.

In it, we invite agency execs to share the pitches that they've been secretly mulling over for months or years� the pitches they've always WANTED to give, but for whatever reason (their agencies aren't inside the brand's holding company umbrella,  they've never gotten into the right room at the right time, et cetera) the chance has never come.

Now, iMedia brings these agencies a different sort of chance: make the pitch in public! Share your ideas with the world in order to show the industry your dreams, how you think and how interactive advertising can continue to move forward.

I'm pleased that B. Bonin Bough, executive vice president of screengrab, is kicking the series off with his dream pitch for Diageo, the wine, beer and spirits company with brands including Bushmills, Guinness, Dom Pérignon, Hennessey, Tanqueray, Baileys, Captain Morgan, José Cuervo , Smirnoff, Sterling Vineyards and many more.

So, Bonin: take it away!

The drink for you
The chance to have a special drink tailored specifically for you? How? By answering a series of questions developed by behaviorists, mixologists and tasteologists and plugging them into a software program that can run on multiple devices, Diageo -- the world's leading premium drinks business with an outstanding collection of alcohol brands across spirits, wine and beer categories -- will deliver a drink recipe tailored to each consumer's taste buds. This is a drink they will have for life�The drink they were meant for.

Building a case around taste
Few things in this world have the complexity and simplicity of human taste. While taste buds allow us to experience tastes that are sweet, salty, sour and bitter, each person experiences taste differently. The combination of socialization, culture and preference all drives our concept of what tastes good.

In a world where individualism is celebrated and personal preference is defended, everyone should have the right to find out exactly what drink tastes best to them. Unfortunately, this individualism is non-existent when it comes to alcoholic beverages. The majority of people�s drink options are limited to staple drinks, trendy drinks, selections that friends choose and the occasional recommendation by the bartender.
 
Think about it as liberating your taste buds. To make this possible we must first understand how people make decisions about beverages. Then map a mental model against a series of questions to help steer a drinker to the right drink.

Next: Buzz launch

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While developing a roster of MySpace friends may seem like a solid marketing goal (X number of friends equals Y number of sales, awareness, lift, et cetera), the truth, like real-world friendships, is a little more complicated. In the digital world, many marketers and brands are discovering that having a ton of MySpace friends isn't all it's cracked up to be.

But when the glue that binds the relationship between user and brand is as tenuous as a single mouse click, it shouldn't come as a surprise that marketers have a long way to go if they want to be true MySpace friends.

"I have brands that are MySpace friends of mine, and I've been very disappointed as to what they've done to cultivate me as a friend," says Paul Santello, SVP at Carat Fusion. "They have not gone out of their way to monetize the relationship. I don't spend more because I'm their friend. Shame on us for simply checking MySpace off the list; we aren't done just because we have the page up and running."

While Santello cites great media, widgets, wallpapers and killer downloads as excellent tools for making friends, he believes brands will have to look deeper to find value in having MySpace friends. Or, as Santello bluntly puts it: "Our next step on MySpace is to learn how to be better friends; that's what I told adidas. That's where the magic is."

Santello was referring to a World Cup Soccer campaign the shoe maker ran on MySpace that was since reviewed by Rex Briggs of Marketing Evolution in "The Momentum Effect," a joint research effort by adidas, Isobar, Electronic Arts and MySpace.

In the campaign, adidas built a community around World Cup Soccer with a green and a red team. Members of the community were asked to pick a team based on their preference for one of two adidas products. Users not only got the opportunity to align themselves with an adidas product, they got to comment on the brand, expressing why the shoe meant so much to them. 

According to Briggs, the choice presented to members of the adidas community was a key factor in generating the momentum effect, the phenomenon that occurs when one consumer uses the brand as a reference point in their personal profile. That effect accounts for more than half of the value of a social networking campaign, Briggs wrote in "The Momentum Effect."

"One of the most sophisticated aspects of the adidas custom community is the way that consumers can align their own personality with the choice of adidas brands," Briggs wrote. "Once a brand is picked, the consumer is locked in with the brand experience."

According to Santello, a brand's true friend on MySpace works in a dynamic not unlike friends in the physical world. Brands needs to provide something of value just as a person seeking to cement a friendship needs to be perceived as fun or trustworthy.

Next: But enough about me, what do you think of me? 

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1. Subscribers get a headline summary in their email
2. Subscribers weren't clicking on the headlines
3. Because fewer and fewer subscribers were opening the online, fewer and fewer advertising dollars could be sold

I offered that the disconnect was between steps 2 and 3. The online magazine knew when the emails were opened, hence knew that that's where readers stopped.

This is an easily solvable problem that deals with how the mind accepts and responds to information. Yes, I know that's a NextStage-y thing. Explaining how clients can make their audiences respond more favorably to marketing and other material is what we do, and it is the basis for this column.

Familiarity breeds freedom
I've written before about making sure you've alerted regular site visitors when a site redesign is about to occur.

This was demonstrated on the Emetrics Summit site. Jim Sterne and his crew let visitors know ahead of time when a redesign would be online. Three major results came from this:

1. The day the redesign went live the site experienced huge spikes in traffic, level of interest and navigation
2. People emailed that they'd been on the Emetrics Summit site and noted the update announcement.
3. Other emails demonstrated that people had returned specifically to discover what had changed since their last visit.

The wording in that last line is intentional. People didn't return to "see", they returned to "discover". They were on the site thinking, evaluating, analyzing, interpreting. In other words, they were engaged (something I'll be writing about in a future column).

One take-away from this is that familiarity is a good and useful tool. Changing a little at a time allows visitors to continue doing their thing rather than wasting time figuring out how to do your thing.

Another take-away is that providing visitors with a familiar interface allows you to highlight what has changed. Come home some day to find all your old furniture gone and your walls painted rainbow and you'll probably go back outside to make sure you entered the correct house. Come home some day and be greeted at the door by your significant other saying, "Hi, Sweetie! When you're ready, I want you to take a look at a new chair I bought for the family room and tell me what you think" and you're most likely to accept the new furniture without a thought.

Headlines can push or pull
After you've made sure your subscribers are navigating a familiar interface, make sure your headlines -- your invitations to explore deeper content -- pull readers in rather than push them away. Let me give you some examples.

A recent iMedia cover story on behavioral targeting has this headline: "Why Your Creative Needs to Catch-Up."

This is a good, challenging title. It's going to attract some readers, but not others, because not everyone wants a challenge.

The word "Why" is, in western culture, a defensible word. This means people being asked "Why...?" feel they need to defend themselves. All you need do is look at someone and say "why" with no inflection and their blood pressure goes up, their pulse quickens, their breathing shallows out and their irises go wide. 

The physiologic responses are fascinating and are flight or fight based, not good when you want someone to accept information you're providing them or inviting them to explore your content further.

So, while "Why Your Creative Needs to Catch-Up" is good, "Your Creative Needs to Catch-Up Because..." is better because the "Because" is a promise that the answer is coming. The reader doesn't really need to respond. There's no reason to defend, thus energy spent unintentionally raising blood pressure, et cetera, can be spent intentionally exploring the content.

You can even up the ante by adding "(Five Experts Speak)" or something similar. "Your Creative Needs to Catch-Up (Five Experts Speak)". Understand your audience and you'll know whether "Your Creative Needs to Catch-Up Because..." or "Your Creative Needs to Catch-Up (Five Experts Speak)" will drive your numbers heavenward.

Another recent iMedia cover story is "What's Hot in Automotive Sites Today." Again, a good headline if your target audience is in automotive.

A simple way to expand the audience is "What's Hot in Automotive Sites Today And How to Use It." The "And How to Use It" part lets the reader know that the content behind the headline is going to inform regardless of vertical.

The take-aways from these are simple enough: headlines can pull readers into deeper content or push them away from exploring that content. Understand your audience's cognitive, behavioral/effective and motivational drivers and you'll know how to pull them into deeper content.

Next: Headlines that are relevant to your readership

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If you're like many creative directors who have gone kicking and screaming into the digital age -- still focused on the TV campaign but knowing there's new inspiration out there as a digital immigrant -- here are some tips on how to jump in with more than your big toe.

The truth is, whether you're already working as an interactive creative or still holding out for the next shoot as a traditional agency creative, if you have strong conceptual and storytelling skills, you already have most of what it takes to be successful in both.

Next: Algorithms don't feel, people do

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Here are some lessons about pick-up lines that I learned in college. Surprisingly, later in life, they have become equally applicable to landing pages.

Lesson No. 1: Don't sit back and wait
There are two likely outcomes to any pick-up attempt: you make a good impression, and thus get the opportunity to continue trying to impress her. Or, you get blown off.

Website landing pages are just like this. You've got a single, very short moment in which to make a good impression. If you screw it up, you very likely won't get a second chance.

The point of the landing page, like the opening line, is to not lose the prospect. You want them to stay with you a little longer.

I had a good friend growing up who believed that the best way to meet girls in social situations was to sit in the corner and look thoughtful. He wasn't willing to risk anything, so he hoped that his thoughtful face would look interesting enough that the girls would come to him. Most of the time, he came across as simply boring (or -- worst case scenario -- menacing and antisocial). 

Like my friend, many, many marketers have, in the past, behaved as though the best way to attract a prospect is to simply show him/her an internal page and hope that it is interesting enough to get them to seek out more information. If there was no logical page to send a prospect to, we sent them to a homepage or a search results page. We didn't want to put ourselves out by investing in landing pages.

Today, we have realized that spending money to drive traffic to an only slightly relevant page, which the prospect immediately leaves, not only wastes money but damages the brand. So, many of us have built landing pages using "best-practices," or generic guidelines, that were understood to be the most successful for getting prospects to click.

But that approach is like a witty, intelligent and nimble-minded guy using a standard and tired pickup line like, "What's your sign?" Using an untested landing page -- one that has been built based on what others have done -- doesn't give the prospect a clear picture of what your fabulously individual website is really about.

Lesson No 2: Size up the prospect
Remember the movie "Hitch" with Will Smith? There's a scene in a bar where a series of men try to get a beautiful woman's attention by delivering their best lines, only to get shot down.

Then Will Smith approaches and talks to her in a way that reflects real thought and understanding based on what he has noticed about her.

Will Smith would never have used the line he used with the woman in the example above on another woman because it wouldn't have made sense. He would have learned something about the new woman based on what he could see and targeted his pickup line specifically for her. 

That approach is exactly what the best marketers are attempting to do with landing pages today. Smart marketers are segmenting and qualifying users, offering different content (or "lines") to different prospects based on what they can learn about them through their first and subsequent visits.

We don't always have a lot of information about the prospect, but we often have more than we think. Usually, we can determine connection speed, browser type and screen size. We know if this is their first visit, or if they've been here before. We know the originating source of their visit (Google, MSN, an ad on another site), their geographic location and the time of day. These are all clues that might help us tailor our message. 

Once we qualify the prospect and target them with content specifically of interest to them, we appear as relevant and useful and therefore worthy of a prospect's continued interest.

Lesson No. 3: Try out a variety of good lines
Did you ever wish in college that you could try out several different approaches at a bar to see which one got the best results? It stands to reason that by testing your technique and improving it based on the reaction you receive, you can get improved results.

It's the same with landing pages. Smart marketers come up with a couple of good ideas for each major type of "opportunity" or prospect and try them out. They let the audience show, by their reaction, (clicking deeper into the site, making a purchase, filling out a form, dropping out immediately) which works best and for whom. They can even show when one of the landing page ideas seems to not be working as well as it used to.

The days of one size fits all, marketer-knows-best, best-practices-dictated landing pages are as gone as the days of women waiting to swoon at the feet of the first man to approach with a clever line.

It is now possible to quickly and inexpensively show different things to different people in order to create a more relevant and compelling experience. And technology history has taught us over and over that when it is possible to do something that makes life better for the customer, it quickly becomes mandatory.

Jamie Roche is president of Offermatica. Read full bio.

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Cross-channel, advertising integration. Everyone seems to want it. But as the quote suggests, we may all be after something simpler.

What I'm talking about here is message and concept unity across traditional/offline and non-traditional/online channels (read traditional as print, TV, radio, outdoor, point-of-sale; read non-traditional as interactive). This won't be a rant on the antiquated nature of traditional advertising. This will be an exploration of the current online/offline paradigm (yes, I said paradigm) and how it might be shifted to better serve our collective marketing efforts. All the answers aren't here because no one has them. But there are considerations that help us as we move down the path to smarter, synergized communication.

Here are five things we at Organic consider as we develop interactive experiences for our clients, while partnering with their traditional agencies with the goal of "advertising unity."

1. Ads are merely an entry point. TV, print, radio, outdoor and banner ads should intrigue more than inform. Too much information in your ad? You'll lose people. Ads are merely the door. We create them to invite consumers in to something bigger. We provide just enough information to create a desire to know more. Why? Because the web allows for delivery of robust information via landing pages, microsites and full-blown websites. The same should be true of traditional advertising, so long as it also points a user to that same landing page, microsite or website. When a web experience is well designed and crafted with relevant content, this is where consumers will actually spend time with a brand-beyond fifteen, thirty or sixty seconds. So, create intrigue, and point the consumer to a URL for "more." Sounds simple so far, right? Good.

2. Clients sometimes need guidance when it comes to process. Production lead times in the offline world are longer than those in the online world. We can move, produce and deploy faster. That means the offline advertising assignment for a given project is probably in the hands of the traditional agency long before it gets to the interactive agency. If there's a microsite being developed for the effort, this creates a problem. Let's consider the issue. We've established that the microsite is an interactive (vs. passive, e.g. TV) place where consumers will spend the most time with a brand, if you can get them there. Before that microsite concept has been developed, the traditional agencies are off and running, developing scripts, print headlines and outdoor boards. For true advertising unity to occur, the interactive agency needs to be involved from the outset, getting briefed on their portion of the assignment at the same time as the traditional agency. In fact, when a microsite is involved (or even some of the more robust landing pages) I'd go so far as to say that offline work should not begin until the online portion has been thought out, because the offline effort should really be advertising in support of the microsite. Okay, that may sound extreme. I'll explain�

3. Microsites and websites (and even some landing pages) are more than marketing communication. They are PRODUCTS. Your clients say they want an integrated online/offline campaign that includes a robust, unique, interactive microsite experience to demo, tout and sell. Ultimately, offline (we'd hope), and online ads will direct users to this experience, this microsite, this final pre-purchase destination. We in the ad world would typically call this marketing communication; we would be better served however, if we thought of the microsite as product. We want consumers to spend -- not money (just yet) -- but time. And they will, if we can get them there. Rather than focusing on selling, both offline and online ad units should focus on using intrigue (or humor or whatever) to direct consumers to the microsite, using elements and aesthetics of said site. A well-designed microsite experience will do the selling better than any ad ever could.

4. We need to check our own egos. Good ideas can come from anywhere. 

5.  Communication. If the online/offline agency relationship is adversarial, problems will occur. Traditional ad guys still believe TV reigns supreme. But in the age of the DVR, common sense says this can't be so. We in the online world recognize the power of TV, but we know it must now be harnessed in a new way-one that points consumers to the online space.  We all need a better understanding of how our channels can work together, because in the end, it's about getting it right for our clients. This often begins simply-with a conversation.

Gary Nelson is associate creative director at Organic. Read full bio.

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Age hasn't slowed the most popular brand mascots. After 25, 50 or 100 years of diligent salesmanship, one of the defining characteristics of so many popular brand icons seems to be their stunning longevity. Not only have the strongest brand mascots proven their effectiveness for several generations, they've been around so long they're now an indelible part of the American cultural landscape. As long as their icons have some life left in them, the issue isn't replacement but representation, making the most of a powerful asset. That includes giving old media icons new lives online.

We're checking in on some of the most famous brand icons to find out how they're currently featured on the web. Each of the media icons is an established media pro, but how have they been translated for an online audience?

Author Notes: Brent Marcus is a freelance writer. Read full bio.

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Welcome to the Age of the QR Code. Now in Japan and coming to other regions of the world soon. What's a QR Code?

Per Wikipedia, "A QR Code is a matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code) created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. The 'QR'stands for 'uick Response," as the code allows its contents to be decoded at high speed. QR Codes are most common in Japan, where, as bar codes became popular and their convenience became more universally recognized, the Japanese began to experiment with codes capable of storing more information and more character types that could be printed in a smaller space.  QR Codes emerged in response to this need and began appearing on posters, packaging and printed goods in Japan in early 2000.

 © www.QRCODE.COM

A few years later, Japanese cellular carrier NTT DoCoMo made a deal to embed the code recognition functionality on its i-Mode mobile phones. Suddenly,  Japanese i-Mode subscribers were able to activate QR codes from the likes of NIKE, McDonald's and Northwest Airlines, all offering place-based information enhancements instantaneously via shooting a picture of a simple QR Code. 

Want to know the nutritional information on a McDonald's cheeseburger? Just snap a shot of the QR Code on the orange wrapper. Want to know where to find LeBron James' NIKE sneakers in Japan? Just snap a shot of the QR Code off the poster on the street. Want to know what flights are leaving on Northwest Airlines daily from Narita Airport today? Just snap a shot of the giant QR CODE on the billboard outside Shibuya Station in Tokyo.

What quickly becomes apparent when you consider the creative possibilities around QR Codes is their ability to jumpstart everything from outdoor billboards and print advertising to point-of-sale packaging and even guerilla marketing.

Imagine a giant QR code randomly placed on a lightpost in Times Square. Who could resist the temptation to discover who's behind it? Or a QR code stuck on a bottle of shampoo on the shelf of your neighborhood drugstore. You snap the picture, press send, and suddenly a short Flash movie from the brand's website gets pushed to your cellphone to help give you more information and a coupon code that the cashier takes to save you 50 cents on your more informed purchase.

The possibilities seem endless, and potentially, a very effective enhancement to traditional print and outdoor media, where the ability to acquire and convert new customers has been among the costliest mediums to date. But who knows, with the addition of QR Codes, those gloomy prognosticators who predicted the death of print advertising page effectiveness might suddenly find themselves shot down� by the camera phone.

In fact, the addition of QR Codes on Japanese business cards is now also becoming commonplace, greatly simplifying the task of entering the personal details of your new contact into the address book of your mobile phone.

What's even more impressive is that the patent owner, Denso Wave, has left the code spec open for all. According to the company's website, "QR Code is open in the sense that the specification of QR Code is disclosed and that the patent right owned by Denso Wave is not exercised." You gotta love that.

But then, of course, there's Microsoft's latest challenge to QR Codes.

According to the tech blog Engadget, "Microsoft looks to be trying to change the QR game with the company set to roll out its so-called High Capacity Color Barcode (HCCB) later this year with the assistance of the International Standard Audiovisual Number International Agency (ISAN-IA). While their use will apparently initially be limited to DVD media, Microsoft eventually sees the codes being used on TV, in magazines, and on billboards (among other places), from which you'll be able to scan 'em with your cellphone to get additional information about a product. Of course, good looks are the codes' only selling point, with Microsoft also promising that it'll make anything tagged with them harder to counterfeit."

If you're up for more on QR Codes, including everything from QR Tattoos to QR coded movies, checkout Scott Shaffer's blog, The Pondering Primate, or visit All About Mobile Life. They go deeper into the potential opportunities behind mobile codes like QR Codes. 

From a creative perspective, what might seem like just another geeky scanning matrix, could actually become the next frontier in sending something surprisingly cool to your cellphone, courtesy of a brand near you. 

Alan Schulman is chief creative officer of Brand New World. Read full bio.

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For example, with website design, marketers often find it hard to focus on just one thing. The site draws so many different types of users, not only prospective customers but also media, prospective employees, investors and others. So, how do you design for focus when you're talking to many different people each with individual needs or expectations?

First, it is critical to prioritize your company's or division's business goals. With a website, it is easy to initially lay out priorities solely by marketing focus. However, in the earliest stages, you need to retreat and open your mind to the priorities of the entire organization. This activity should include considering functions such as employee recruiting and customer training, not just customer acquisition. By first broadening your influence, you may begin to hone in on critical aspects of success to the entire business that will help you accommodate the various internal stakeholders' interests (which may help you defend a decision you make to exclude "a priority" from the homepage).

Once you've ranked the business' overarching goals, you should prioritize the stakeholders that influence your most imperative business goals. Get to know those important stakeholders and map their respective needs and habits with what you need from them. Give extra weight to stakeholders that need the most convincing and detail how you intend to position yourself to get them to take action.

From your various positioning statements and user action-plans, you need to silo content in a few clear ways. This practice is like master planning a community where you have to zone real estate for different uses; certain things need to be placed next to others. This work needs to be reflected in messaging (the key phrases that will relate well to your search engine optimization goals), the site map and wireframes to effectively communicate the plan through design. Through this process, your final design should reflect careful attention to your business and stakeholder goals by exhibiting careful allocation of real estate.

Ultimately, on the homepage you carve out real estate dedicated to your most important goals and their respective stakeholders. The real estate that you carve out should be proportionate to the importance of your goals. In other words, if your domestic sales goal for a particular product line is more important than establishing an international presence, then you need to dedicate greater visual priority to achieving the sales goal. It seems obvious that this should be the case, but all too often clear expectations are not set for the user because internal resources, in essence, fight for real estate for their individual or departmental goals.

The goal, beyond the homepage, is to re-establish to your content silos user-action plans to craft clear courses and conversion funnels for each stakeholder. It is critical now to focus on holding each user's hand to a completion of a goal. While developing the layout and design, each user's goals should be apparent to the user. You need to enact a call-to-action on every page and maintain singular focus on that call-to-action. Where should they go next? How do you convince the user to take the next step? The better you are at exercising this tactic, the more likely your users are to do what you want them to do.

Now, the great thing about our job is that nothing is as formulaic as I present here; this is more or less a guideline and the execution is unique every time you set out. Your approach each time, however, requires research and creative thinking to define the core statement of feeling that is going to convert your target. From there, planning and execution will need to remain focused on the original intent with a firm dedication. It is easy to highlight such seemingly important things as news, product features and other "highlights." Be bold and focus on what will truly drive results.

Reid Carr is president of Red Door Interactive. Read full bio.

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The example I'm going to use in this column is the Emetrics Summit website. This means my examples will be based on making an "event" website friendlier and stickier to people interested in coming to events. However, the information in this column is applicable to just about any website, brochure, TV spot, et cetera, whether it's promoting an event or not. For that matter, what I'm writing about pertains to communicating, period, because what I'm really writing about is basic human nature.

Hammers, thumbs and needs
Most people know about Maslow�s Hammer: if all I have is a hammer, everything looks like my thumb. Some people know about Maslow�s Hierarchy of Needs. That Hierarchy of Needs can be stated as a series of questions. These questions are the great questions of life:

• What am I going to do? (will I be okay?)
• Where am I going to stay? (will I be safe?)
• Who will take care of me? (will I have food/shelter?)
• Who am I? (will I be accepted and respected for who I am?)

Non-consciously, people are constantly asking themselves these questions. They're asking these questions of themselves, people around them and whatever else is in their environment. They'll ask their dog and their cat these questions if they can't get them answered anywhere else.

They ask these questions in order to understand themselves, those around them and their place in the world in which they perceive themselves.

We're going to look at a before and after of the Emetrics Summit home page to demonstrate how these questions can be easily answered and how they can lead to increased visitor satisfaction and engagement.

Goals versus events
Consider the befores and afters of a piece of the Emetrics homepage, as shown in these figures:

Before:

After:

The two images convey the same message differently, and that difference is important. The Before image states a goal, "Optimize the Value of Your Online Marketing". This is an excellent goal. It is followed by a paraphrased quote (the traditional version is usually attributed to John Wanamaker) that most people have felt -- if not stated -- regarding their online investment many times, "I know half my website investment is being wasted, I just don't know which half."

Again, it's an excellent goal and a truthful statement. The problem is that it doesn't really drive any visitor action. Both are good; yet, the desire is to craft something that gives visitors a reason to explore more and to engage with the site. Our concern is attracting those visitors who meant to be on the site and to make them stick long enough to take a desired action.

To generate that desired outcome, we say the same thing differently. We create a message that includes an actionable event in the After image, that message being that by attending the Emetrics Summit, you will be more valuable to your company and clients, and this will allow you to make your website more useful to your visitors.

A slight change in phrasing and we've answered "What am I going to do?" and inferred that you will be even more "okay" after than when you started.

Next: Changing a negative into a positive

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Yet the fact that these processes are handled, on our end, by different silos actually causes problems for the consumer; the lack of communication between silos gives a disjointed feeling to a web user's experience. And, whether he realizes it or not, it keeps him from having the best experience possible.

Most of us in online marketing have come head to head at some point in doing our jobs with this problem: there exist several silos of responsibility within the online world, and communication across silos is desperately lacking.

There are the site people, who handle any necessary changes to the site. They work on, among other things, promotions and merchandising.

There are the ad guys, who create and place ads, the search people, who plan the search campaigns, and the people who handle affiliates.

To make it all more complicated, each of these groups often work with outside agencies, and within those agencies exist different silos as well.

These silos sometimes make it difficult to do our job, but for the most part they seem to work pretty well: it makes sense to have different departments handle such different things.

What we don't always realize is that these different silos can also make it difficult for consumers to do their jobs. And their ability to successfully do their job -- that is, find the product or information or content they are searching for -- is what pays our bills.

Why do silos cause problems?
Here are two ways in which these silos cause problems for potential customers (and thus for us as marketers):

Example #1. Search ads: Imagine a customer searching for a new car stereo. He types "car stereo" into his Google browser and sees a number of search ads. He clicks on one because the ad offers free shipping on orders over $99. The ad takes him to a category page that has no sign of the free shipping offer.

He is confused. Will free shipping happen automatically at checkout? Was there a code he was supposed to enter? Bear in mind that the consumer sees no difference between the search ad and the site. He is focused on his goal: finding information about a car stereo and perhaps purchasing one. Does he care that there are two or more groups of people managing his experience?

No. He simply wants his experience to be a useful one, whether he is looking at your ad, reading information on a landing page, or navigating your main website. In fact, he likely doesn't even know that the search ad he clicked on is an ad.

If the ad people and the site people had talked about the fact that free shipping was touted in the search ads, they could have given a small amount of real estate on the category page to reiterate the offer. That may have been enough to make a motivated consumer click to the next level of interaction with the site.

As it was, he would likely return to his original search and try another retailer.

Example #2. Email offer: A financial services company sends an email to its house list with an offer for a home equity loan. The email includes a lifestyle photo of a man, a woman and a golden retriever cavorting on a green lawn in front of a white house. The aspirational picture entices the prospect to click through. The resulting page, a loan request form, is an institutional gray and maroon, with no hint of the happy family that seduced the consumer to click. The consumer bails.

Again, a little communication between silos, and a willingness to work together, could change the results dramatically.

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One of the most incendiary barbs came from P&G CMO Jim Stengel in his now legendary AAAA speech in mid-March.

Then came a late February report from Forrester research titled "Help Wanted: 21st Century Agency." It showed that in Q4 2006, Forrester surveyed both client-side marketers and advertising agencies to measure attitudes toward agency effectiveness. Marketers in this survey gave their agencies a Net Promoter rating of 21 percent. That means that most marketers would not recommend their agencies to a colleague.

While most of the industry was whispering about the Sorrel libel trial and the latest Wal-Mart fiasco, the evidence of future trouble kept piling up. A study in March from Evalueserve for Sapient found that only 10 percent of the more than 100 CMOs and senior marketers surveyed in the United Kingdom and United States "seek to partner with large advertising agencies for their online marketing."

For now, the anti-legacy agency movement is not measurable on any kind of factual basis. But the groundwork has been laid for future problems for the big holding companies and their various agencies. A closer look reveals two huge reasons for this, and two potential solutions.

Author notes: John Gaffney is executive editor, publications for 1to1 Media. Read full bio.

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First, please understand what I'm presenting here is at the 10,000 mile high level. I'm going to start with something I received in an email (all names are changed, of course): a flyer from a tobacconist:

I'm not promoting the use of tobacco products here, just good marketing practices. I'll stay with the tobacconist theme because that provides a concrete base to work with.

The suggestions I'm making are meant to be examples only. Use them at your own risk.

Author notes: Joseph Carrabis is CRO and founder of NextStage Evolution and NextStage Global, and founder of KnowledgeNH and NH Business Development Network. He is also author of the Biz Media Science blog. Read full bio.

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Maybe global product launches aren�t conceived in quite that simple a fashion but when considering a global interactive product launch many companies have no idea of the complexity and logistical planning required. The sheer variety of demographics, along with technical and cultural considerations, make this a little more daunting a task than just designing some banners and posting them.

The following are some tangible and intangible considerations effective marketers need to address before launching a global online campaign. Many of these considerations can also apply to the complex, multicultural society of the U.S. market.

Remember: Osama don�t wear Prada.

Author notes: Mike Yapp is executive vice president, national creative director at Carat Fusion. Read full bio.

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I'll start by writing that I may not respond to emails the day I receive them. People who correspond with me regularly know I may not get to my emails for weeks at a time and then they'll receive five or six responses from me in a day. However, respond I do, so keep those cards and letters coming in, folks.

Pavlov's Eyes
Many thanks to the several readers of my "Pavlov's Eyes: Get Users to Respond" column. I received several wonderful comments both on that column and the whitepaper on which it was based. Angie Brown, strategic services consultant for Coremetrics, was amazed at the breadth of the research; Susan Prager couldn't stop herself from following the eyes; and we even had kudos from the online community folks at the BBC on our research. Many thanks to all.

Building Super-Sticky Homepages
My In Focus article, "How to Build Super-Sticky Homepages" also got its share of readers with questions and good wishes. I was flattered to learn that my writings and NextStage's websites are heralded as "astoundingly excellent" by Purdue University's emarketing professors and that both my articles and websites are used in their classes as examples of the way things should be done.

Several readers asked about the predominantly male-orientation of the pages and what criteria NextStage used for determining gender orientation for marketing material. I answered those questions on my blog in several threads, one spanning social networks to rich media, another spanning super-sticky web pages to gender-based loyalty, a third spanning gender-based loyalty (part 2) to who's shopping where, and finally from male-oriented pages to page orientation et al.

One reader asked if we have data in our system on gender browsing differences in the professional services. Unfortunately, no, as I explained in a post on gender-marketing differences. However, if you're in professional services and are interested in either taking part in research or becoming a direct client, we'd love to hear from you. I'm also happy to report that one of NextStage's partners, Codestorm, will be guiding us into the professional services market and hopefully we'll have data to report on soon.

Another reader suggested a future column or two on specific elements to include when designing for men or women or both, and when not to mix gender elements in design. Excellent idea. My thanks for the suggestion and I'll put it in the queue.

And another reader wrote asking for instructions on how to actually build super-sticky web pages. I wrote in "More About Building Super-Sticky Homepages" that people interested in training can contact NextStage and view our current trainings. We will be offering more classes, trainings and seminars, and more of that at the end of this column.

Mapping Personae
Several readers wrote about the "Mapping Personae to Outcomes" article to let me know that they enjoyed it and that they learned a great deal about what personae are, how to use them and what to expect when talking with consultants about them.

One reader wrote, "As usual, I learn something every time I read one of your articles-- thanks for sharing. It's about as real-world application as you can get (I'm one of those analytical thinkers-- no use for theory until I see how it's applied!), and I appreciated seeing how you use the personas once you've defined them." Many thanks. You flatter me, one and all.

Another reader wrote, "...that's some useful, quick primary research with a solid, actionable conclusion. I used persona modeling to redesign sites with some expensive consultants at prior jobs. Your work here would've stood on its own in there." Many thanks for that. Again, it's nice to know NextStage's work and my writing is appreciated.

Moving Your Brand into New Markets
I also had a reader let me know that I really screwed up in my "Moving Your Brand into New Markets" column. My apologies to any readers who feel, as this reader did, that I'm... um... anatomically challenged. I still don't know where to go with that one. But I like to keep myself honest and it's important to let you know I both succeed and fail with my readership.

On the other hand, another reader wanting to move their brand into new markets patiently waited while I traveled until I could finally call them uninterrupted. We had a wonderful chat about some of their challenges and, with a little research, NextStage will be able to help them.

The iMedia Agency Summit
Also thanks to the participants in my seminar on "Gender Based Marketing Discoveries." Many people stayed after the presentation with specific questions and I did take notes so I'll be addressing their concerns in future columns. Also, a special thanks as noted in "Follow Up to 'On the road again...'".

Final Thanks
To the publishers around the globe who contact me asking to reprint my iMedia work, many thanks. It truly is flattering and I hope to continue producing useful material for several years to come.

Lastly, to readers who requested NextStage research papers, we appreciate your patience. NextStage became quite popular this last quarter and it threw off our publishing schedule by three full months. We've hired more staff for the new year and hope to get ourselves caught up soon.

Again, my thanks and happy holidays, all.

Joseph Carrabis is CRO and founder of NextStage Evolution and NextStage Global, and founder of KnowledgeNH and NH Business Development Network. He is also author of the Biz Media Science blog. Read full bio.

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Human first impressions have an analog on the web. The first impression a website or marketing material creates leaves a lasting impression that influences all future transactions. Visitors might shop a site but not convert on it and not know why. If they do convert, they might spend $20 here, but $200 somewhere else.

We're going to learn what first impressions some homepages may be creating and how to fix them as necessary in this article via a simple, two-step process:

1. Analyze the homepage to determine what demographic it reaches most easily, and what first impression it gives that demographic.
2. Suggest simple corrections to increase each site's effectiveness within that demographic based on the results.

Three sites were chosen in each vertical section by iMediaConnection and NextStage. The homepages were downloaded with IE 6.0, Firefox 1.07, Netscape 7.2, Opera 8.51, SeaMonkey 1.05 and Flock 0.76 on Saturday, Oct. 28, 2006. Analyses were performed by NextStage's TargetTrack tool and research staff. Nothing below the fold was considered; first impressions are just that-- once the visitor begins to interact with the site the first impression is finished. Each section concludes with a table overview of the gender and personality types that vertical's sites will appeal to most strongly.

Let's begin!

Author notes: Joseph Carrabis is CRO and founder of NextStage Evolution and NextStage Global. Read full bio.

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In this world, campaign planning may consist of four steps:

1. Develop a basic understanding of your target audience (e.g., women 25 to 44);
2. Make certain the brand/product value proposition fits with the audience profile (e.g., our product makes you feel sexy and alluring);
3. Plan a media campaign that maximizes reach and frequency of the target audience over a given period (e.g., execute a three-month media buy composed of television and print to reach our target when and where they're most likely to be receptive);
4. Use a combination of clever copy and/or compelling and beautiful imagery to engage prospects and get them to consider our product.

However, in today's world of highly targeted, measurable marketing, creativity becomes infinitely more complex. In the "new" world of targeted marketing, return-on-investment (ROI) rules the day and informed creativity is the only means to achieve ever-increasing campaign goals.   

Informed creativity demands that marketers be creative and innovative but that they do so within parameters set by:

• Analytic strategies steeped in deep audience understanding
• Continued program testing and measurement
• Use of the most up-to-date data management technology
• Multi-channel customer analyses

What does this all mean? It means creatives have to work more closely than ever with their colleagues in data analysis and market/media planning, which makes their jobs more challenging than ever. Collectively, marketers and their creative partners must learn how to "back in" to the proper creative elements to generate better results.

Let's look again at the four steps of campaign planning, but with the perspective of informing the creative process: 

Step 1 -- Develop an intimate understanding of your target audience
First and foremost, get to know your audience-- and well. 

Referring to the example above, instead of women 25- to 44-years-old, we want to target mothers 25 to 44 in Orange County, CA with three or more children. We can further hone our approach by appending lifestyle data to this demographic profile to get some insight into how our target group thinks and behaves, for example:

• Do most women who fit this description have broadband internet access at home?
• Do they have some form of mobile internet technology? 

Adding this transactional data helps provide a more complete view of the target, their daily media habits and their spending behavior, which gives us a much finer view of how to deliver our message. 

Step 2 -- Define a highly relevant value proposition
The value proposition we define must map appropriately to the needs and/or desires of our target audience. 

For our mother of three, whose primary concern is the well-being of her family, offer a product that creates value in the form of peace of mind. Establish value by convincing her that the product enables her to focus on the needs of her family, removing worry about things that are out of her control. 

AAA does this well. For about $50 per year, members join AAA clubs for Roadside Assistance, which promises assistance for nearly any road emergency, including jump-starting batteries and towing after an accident. It is seen as highly dependable and reliable. For our target customer, the knowledge that she has someone to turn to and depend on if her car breaks down at a price that's very affordable provides a great sense of security and peace of mind.

Tapping into emotional need -- and delivering rational features and benefits to meet the need -- is the key to defining a highly relevant value proposition.

Step 3 -- Plan an effective contact strategy
Is our target best approached online? Is she more likely to respond to an offline direct mail campaign? Will a combination of both be most effective?

We may establish that mothers aged 25 to 44 in Orange County, CA regularly go online to help their children with homework and check personal email, that they spend a significant part of the day in the car shuttling family between home, school and after-school activities, and that when they have time for themselves, they regularly shop from catalogs.

Given these behaviors, our media plan should include a combination of online display and text ads, direct response radio and direct mail-- all geo-targeted in Orange County and designed to reinforce our core value proposition through multiple exposures, but delivered in media that allow for immediate response via click, call or mail.

Creating a contact strategy that provides measurable results that can be reviewed, analyzed and continually tweaked and re-tested ensures the opportunity to optimize performance and maximize ROI.  

Step 4 -- Create messaging that engages and motivates
This last, but incredibly important, step requires creative teams to synthesize all the information gathered in the previous steps and turn it into words and images that speak to our target in a meaningful, effective way.

This is not an easy task. Getting the message right requires a deftness with copy and design that grabs and holds our target's attention. With direct mail, that means the value proposition must "pop" in the two seconds it takes to scan the front of the envelope; online, that time is even less.

The key to success is authenticity. More than ever before, consumers are aware of marketing and they are quickly turned off if it feels like they're being sold something. To be viewed as authentic, we need our message to quickly answer WIIFM -- what's in it for me? -- and to do so without hyperbole or too many exclamation points. For our mother of three, authenticity is a prerequisite for our message to be heard-- no matter how well-informed the creative may be.

A creative marketing campaign can help a product stand out from the pack, or build awareness for a service that fits an entirely new demand, but creativity for creativity's sake is not effective any more. It is critical to build a campaign that appropriately approaches the target audience in a new and interesting way, grabbing their attention, while also conveying information that delivers on WIIFM and urges them to take action.

Dave Wilson is president of Wilson RMS. Read full bio.

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I think simple questions are the best. They interest and excite me because there's more room for exploration and discovery and that turns into richer, more robust solutions. In this case, I thought for a minute then offered that the question was answerable and involved three steps, which I elaborate below:

1 - Determine the Emetrics Summit's audience's characteristics
2 - Create personae based on those characteristics
3 - Map those personae to specific, desired outcomes

It would take about an hour of my time, about one minute of NextStage's computation time and about a day to write up the results. With Jim Sterne's permission, I'd like to share the methodology behind this because it's both replicable and can be applied to all aspects of reaching a desired audience, whether it's web, print, TV or whatever.

Background: What is the Emetrics Summit?
The Emetrics Summit, founded in Santa Barbara in 2002, started with fifty attendees, half of whom were vendors. The theme of the 2002 Emetrics was "Misery Loves Company - We Are Not Alone." Web Analytics Association (WAA) members might know that the 2004 Emetrics Summit was the birthplace of the WAA. Emetrics has since grown to some 500 participants, about 50 or so vendors, and will be held in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, London and Dusseldorf in 2007. Themes have matured as has the industry. The 2003 theme was "My Page Tags Can Whoop Your Log Files," in 2004 "Ask Me About My Conversion Rate," 2005 "My Managers Don't Understand Me," and now it's "Web Behavior is Changing Our Offline Business." Originally a single-track affair, the Emetrics Summit is now offering multiple tracks well beyond traditional web analytics.

1 - Determining audience characteristics
I've written before about how anthropologists and behavioral ethologists will create blinds to study cultures. The culture under study -- the group upon which we'd base our personae -- were the conference attendees. Creating the right blind is very important to the information gathering process. I didn't have months to study this culture, I only had an hour in which to collect rich data and the direct approach is known to fail in such situations. Eric Drouart, former VP, international operations, Bristol-Myers Squibb, said, "Marketing research methodologies that rely on questionnaires and standard surveys are inherently loaded with biases and errors related to the sampling frame, the survey instruments, the interviewers and the fact that the respondents know that they are being evaluated. NextStage is truly a non-biasing research tool with a lot of validity and reliability because it is based on non-conscious responses to information."

I presented Jim Sterne with some preliminary findings after utilizing the blind for about an hour. The DC Emetrics attendees fell into two distinct groups with the following characteristics:

• Group 1 (primarily web analysts) - Physically oriented, problem orientation in the past, solution orientation in the future, present tends to be either for pleasure or for transition, strong social component, digital thinkers, high process orientation, observe things but not visually unless they're observing activity or process.
• Group 2 (primarily marketers) - Visually oriented, no or little concept of past, strong future orientation, present tends to be something moved through on the way to somewhere/something else, strong social component, observes things and especially activities and processes.

I shared some of NextStage's previous findings regarding WAA presenters over dinner and everyone agreed the previous findings synched up well with the results from the blind. The next step was creating personae with which to develop future Emetrics Summit marketing material.

2 - Creating the right personae
Several companies use personae; one of the best is FutureNow. According to FutureNow's Bryan Eisenberg, "The power of personae (done properly) is to build a predictive model that helps companies focus on the customer and their needs, by empathizing with the varying buying modalities that exist in their diverse customer segments and enabling marketers to present to these personae the way they prefer to be presented to."

NextStage's concept of personae is (surprise!) a little different from most. NextStage recognizes personalities. A given personality may show up in both a truck driver and a chief research scientist. What you sell them might be different (different education levels, income levels, vocations, �) but the way you sell them will be the same (same motivations, same characteristics, same decision methods and drivers). In addition, recognizing group characteristics allows clients to isolate and target specific behaviors and motivational drivers in their marketing materials.

What Jim Sterne needed to know for marketing the Emetrics Summit was that a single website and marketing material could address both groups quite well by designing for the personae overlap. This means the Emetrics Summit home page and related material could

• Attract both groups equally well
• Guide each group to a specific, unique and highly attractive product

Next: Mapping personae to outcomes

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NextStage was researching how different age groups respond to branding efforts when I received some jokes that closely duplicated our results.

What we discovered shouldn't be shocking to anyone: different logos appeal to different age groups. When I write "logos" I mean, literally, the combination of logotype, icon and slogan that make a complete logo. Not all companies use all three elements and� you get the idea.

What I don't mean is the company, the product, or anything else. Just the logo itself.

Again, this shouldn't be surprising. Different people respond differently to different words and different colors; different images imply different things to different people, and so on and so forth.

What was surprising is this: how people are getting branded is changing. How it's changing has some interesting implications for how products are going to be perceived in the marketplace.

First, the numbers
NextStage's research tested three age groups: 19 to 34, 35 to 54 and 55 to 75 year olds. Individuals were given logos from products marketed starting in 1925 through to the present. The products chosen covered breakfast products to automobiles, telecommunications providers to household goods, fast food vendors to farm equipment.

The rules of the game were simple:

1) Name the product
2) Name the product's promise (i.e., what would you get if you purchased this product that you didn't have before?), and
3) Give a reason for your score.

The results are summed in the chart below and shown in figure 1:

The numbers alone demonstrate that there's a change in how people are being branded. Three generations of people and logos and the ability to name a specific product really changed very little: 39 percent to 46 percent to 40 percent. That's pretty much the same number, give or take a standard deviation or two.

But the ability to remember a product's promise in the marketplace? Those numbers have more to do with changes in the marketplace than with the fading memories of Boomers and beyond.

How social technology is changing markets
Most people appreciate that technology changes marketing, and some people are realizing that technology is also changing markets. The internet, for example, is a great democratizer. People get to tell their stories and each person gets to state his (or her) case.

How do you know if someone's case is valid and if their story is true? You don't, not directly. You rely on your social network to vet the individual and the information they provide.

But what about links that come to you from outside your social network? How do you know you can trust the information at the end of that link?

Side note: I explain how trust grows online and how businesses can create an atmosphere of trust between their website and visitors in Reading Virtual Minds, volume one.

There's not a lot involved but what's involved is important.

Persuasion versus interaction
The old model for marketing and hence branding was one of persuasion.

The new model is highly interactive.

Customers are tuning out promotions and spin and looking for the input of peers -- real or imagined -- to help them make sense of the competitive landscape.

One such company-provided solution was decision-making tools. Such tools help consumers select computer components, stereo components, automotive accessories and are, as NextStage learned in its research on new branding methodologies, "...so 20th century." NextStage's sizer tool, as a counter-example, doesn't help you decide what to buy. Instead it helps you determine strategies for getting more out of what you already have. The goal isn't to sell, it's to help, and such altruism is proving a very effective online marketing strategy.

New technologies are changing the marketer's burden. "Push versus pull" now means that marketers cannot simply push product at consumers: they need to pull consumers to products. The way to do that is by first understanding consumer behavior online then by responding to the consumers performing those behaviors-- preferably in real-time. A problem with true democratization is that everybody is equally important in their own eyes. The person with $10 in their pocket wants the same level of sales interaction as the person with $10,000 in their pocket.

The only way to treat both people equally well is to have interaction technologies that scale.

The new branding
What NextStage discovered in its research was that new technologies are making it increasingly difficult for brands -- even established brands -- to take a firm hold in consumers' collective non-conscious.

Marketers, struggling to increase customer trust and loyalty, are learning that if they demonstrate that their marketing content is personally relevant, then consumers will put the marketing message into a larger context.

But here's the problem. Marketers want to evoke a feeling of partnership with the consumer, but consumers don't know that they can trust the marketers.

The solution to the problem is demonstrated by the numbers in this chart: Don't promote product, promote concept.

The new branding demonstrates the paradigm shift in push versus pull.

Next: How to change push to pull

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If you're a marketer who just witnessed Google's $16.5 billion purchase of YouTube and News Corp's recent purchase of MySpace, you're probably left wondering� what do I do with this? Is this just another place I have to be, thing I have to sponsor, trend I have to follow quick�or Sumner Redstone might fire me?

Strip away the hype and the HTML and you might discover that, creatively, there's some very interesting opportunities for your brand to appear alongside user-generated media (UGM).  But not in the manner you've been accustomed to appearing. By this, I'm not referring to the video pre-rolls, rich media banners or page-takeovers du jour. I'm referring to something much headier:

Brand attribute matching. Sound like an excuse to write another branding book? It's not. It's really very simple.

Let's say your brand essence or core attributes, as defined by your brand platform, are Classic, American and Exclusive. Nowhere in your most recent campaign online or off does it mention those words-- because they're the DNA behind your brand� not the campaign idea. 

Enter the world of tagging. By carefully embedding meta-tags in your online content around those (three) linked core brand attributes, site-based or distributed, you can put your brand in a position to let the aggregating algorithms push you into lists of user-generated destinations chalk full of Classic, American and Exclusive oriented content you otherwise wouldn't have a chance of finding for yourself. 

Think about it. There are some communities out there where brands just naturally find themselves aligning, like a hand fits a glove. And yet, they're nowhere near each other online. Take Harley-Davidson and The Allman Brothers Band. They just go together-- well, maybe Jack Daniels belongs in there, too. But let's not advocate drinking and driving, let's just say the consumer profile AND the conversation fit.

Take it one step further and you can match attributes of Tylenol (pain reduction) with Airport Security. Connection strategies like these are too infrequently driven by those media planners creative types who are able to smartly match brand attributes with content attributes. And being in the midst of a wave of consumer tagging, it's just one deeper layer of opportunity agencies have to evolve online creative efficiency from pure message optimization to deeper, smarter placements propelled by tagging. Try explaining that to your client.

As a creative director, I never thought mastering the art of tagging was something I would need to aspire to. But as user-generated media begins to dwarf that of the major media companies, very soon we'll need to serve our messages and our consumers in wholly different ways. And we need to begin now� before the engines themselves decide they can serve our clients better than we can.

Which brings me to my last question: How well are you being served?

Alan Schulman is chief creative officer of Brand New World. Read full bio.

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I sometimes reference Dr. Robinson's work in my research because our worlds often overlap. One such overlap involved hindsight bias. Our worlds overlapped again when NextStage began researching the use of mirror neurons in website navigation. I've written about mirror neurons in "Shared Traits of Great Web Design" and in the NextStage whitepaper "Learning to Listen, Learning to See."

Mirror neurons are what cause person A to mimic the motions or actions of person B without person A realizing they're doing so. In the great John Ford classic "The Quiet Man," Ward Bond's Father Peter Lonergan bobs, weaves and throws punches while watching John Wayne's Sean Thornton duke it out with Victor McLaglen's Squire "Red" Will Danaher. That is mirror neurons working at their best. Another excellent example is seeing someone dance and starting to move yourself. Other examples include babies mimicking the motions of their mothers, wu shu training... . The literature is replete with examples of mirror neurons and how they're used to teach us to do things people want us to do...

... like clicking on a web link.

From streets to style sheets
The Florida Dept of Transportation and several others have published studies on the use of animated eyes as an aid to traffic and pedestrian safety. At crosswalks, above the "Walk/Don't Walk" sign, a pair of animated eyes reduces fatalities because walkers follow the animated eyes' gaze and look for oncoming traffic. Another street-wise use of animated eyes is at the exits to public garages. A pair of animated eyes at the exit stop sign reduces accidents because drivers follow the eyes' gaze to look both ways before exiting the garage into traffic.

But the use of eye images doesn't stop there. Bateson, Nettle and Roberts report in the September 22 edition of Biology Letters on the use of non-animated images of eyes as a way to police social settings. It seems that people behave differently -- are indeed more willing to conform to some indeterminate social standard -- if they suspect they're being watched.

So a little over a year ago, during a conversation with Dr. Robinson and some others about getting people to look where you want them to and do what you want them to, I formed an experiment. The timing was excellent. NextStage had just finished a long study on getting site visitors to follow desired action paths. I discussed those findings in "What Comes Next?" Getting visitors to look where you want them to is something I've also written about often ("Directing Your Customer's Gaze" is a good example). This research involved combining these two elements:

1. Getting people to look in a desired direction and
2. Perform a desired action.

Let me take you through the experiment.

Look into my eyes
We enlisted a few of our research partners to place a non-animated image of eyes on their home page (something I know isn't appropriate for all sites out there). The goal was to learn if a simple set of eyes would change online behavior and if so, how.

Figure 1

The image used is shown in Figure 1 (different sized figures were used in the research. Figures shown here are for example purposes only). The results were definite and undeniable: Time on page dropped by almost half. Navigation became erratic, what might be called "anxious." The results echoed the Biology Letters paper referenced above-- people acted differently when they felt they were being watched. As one person explained, "...eyes on a page creeps me out a little."

The pair of eyes was moved to different pages. Browsing behavior changed each time the eyes were shown. We performed some modified A/B testing to determine which navigation types were most affected by the image. The results were expected and still exciting to learn; highly visual people, especially those who tend to frame things in the negative and make decisions based on past experience, didn't like being watched. We also noticed that the size of the image affected navigation inversely.

Next: Response when you animate the eyes.

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But as any smart media person will tell you, the creative execution plays at least half the role in determining the effectiveness of any interactive advertising-- it's the creative that intrigues, involves and hopefully, persuades you to act. This balance between interactive medium and message has been well documented in the noted XMOS advertising study conducted by MSN and Marketing Evolution. If you really want the deep dive on how it works, you can check out the new book "What Sticks" by Rex Briggs and Greg Stuart.

My point is, that despite how much more sophisticated the algorithms get at search, contextual and behavioral ad serving, the advertising still has to move you. And that comes down to the kind of creative that makes you feel� not just think.

This means the narrative craft of drawing you in� getting you involved�. and making you react emotionally is just as important online as it is in the craft of the :30 TV commercial. Creatively, this has been the challenge for the banner, the pre-roll, even  the next wizzbang expandable rich media application. These units may drive our ad-supported model, but they have not adequately proven their ability to make the consumer feel.

Conversely, too many big name creative directors use this emotional requisite, otherwise known as the "Big Idea," as the holy grail of real advertising currency. My experience with my creative peers is that it's just an excuse to hide behind their lack of knowledge and practice in the interactive space. And this is precisely where creative agencies and cultures go left while our interactive media brethren go right. 

By using these sophisticated algorithms for near-real-time metrics and learning, we too are forced into things like dynamic optimization of creative messages -- churning out dozens of copy versions and banner executions for one campaign; changing layouts on the fly and cramming the call to action into the ad from beginning to end -- in many cases before we've even gotten the consumer's attention. 

Is this the interactive advertising we are destined to produce? Turning our creative departments into cookie cutter banner factories?  

In case you were wondering, there's a reason most creatives opt to work in general advertising rather than succumb to the formulaic methods of Direct Marketing: It's about making someone feel before they act.

As a creative community, it's challenging to see how the increase in processor speed, storage and connections can enhance the way we can make consumers feel online. And there are some great examples of work that really does do so. 

Check out:

• http://www.lifecomesatyoufast.com/
• http://imagery.gettyimages.com/gestalt/?country=usa
• http://us.heineken.com/headlines/

... to name just a few. 

The bigger task we all face is how to join hands and get great emotive creative, being served to just the right people at just the right time. 

We have the technology. We have the talent.

Now we just need the teamwork to do it hand in hand, or should I say, "mouse in hand?"

Alan Schulman is chief creative officer of Brand New World. Read full bio.

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For years, one of our only options for increasing traffic was to purchase more ads. More display ads, a wider network buy, a broader range of keywords on which to bid-- all have been used by advertisers and marketers as tactics to bring more traffic to a site. But with everybody in the online space engaging in the same tactics, the goal of increasing traffic has remained elusive.

The other option, improving ads, has proven difficult as well. We have tried innovative design, video ads, contextual targeting. It has worked, to varying degrees. But we ran into the difficulty of not knowing which element of a new ad was helping the ad's performance, and which might be hurting it. There was, until now, no accurate way of testing the elements within an ad.

Improving site performance proved easier than improving ads
In the meantime, of course, we've learned to optimize our sites. When the coveted traffic does arrive, we know how to improve our performance. We test our messaging, our images and our offers. We improve our registration forms and checkout processes, and we increase conversions.

Still, eventually we hit a ceiling. There's only so much we can do with a finite amount of visitors. Purchasing more ads simply raises the amount of money we spend on advertising and keeps ROI the same or worse since the additional traffic generally costs more or converts less.

In order to actually increase ROI, we knew we had to do something to improve the performance of our ads. Testing elements on a website was one thing, but it was site constrained.

Ad testing is here
Now, however, the ability to test a variety of elements online has moved beyond the website. Advertisers and marketers are actually able to test different content within a single ad unit. When the test results return a winner -- that is, the ad that generates the most clickthroughs -- the ad can be optimized with the winning elements, and the marketer can be certain that the ad he is running is the most effective ad it can be.

How? I'll describe it on two different levels:

Testing and optimizing display ads
Imagine you want to run a skyscraper ad on the home page of CNET. But you're not sure which headline, creative treatment, call-to-action and offer will motivate your potential customers.

Your creative team comes up with eight different skyscraper ads, each with a different combination of elements (as you would for any multivariate test on your website).

You give the banner a name, but add a snippet of code which tells the ad server that the image actually refers to several possible images rather than a single one.

Visitors are then served one of the eight ads your team has created. If a visitor returns to the site at a later date, he or she is served the same ad.

This means that you are now able to run a multivariate test further up the acquisition funnel. You can test the creative in your ads, and you're optimizing what potential customers see before they even reach your site.

You learn that one call-to-action works better than another, that your offer should be a 30-day trial instead of a 60-day trial, and that the line drawing of the product works better than a photo.

You create the optimized version of the ad that includes all those elements and run it, and you see a significant increase in clickthrough rates. The results? More conversions and a drastically improved ROI.

Testing and optimizing text ads
You can take this same tactic and use it with your keyword buys on Google, MSN or Yahoo! In fact, Offermatica is doing exactly that for a company called Toolbarn.

We're helping them test the headline and the body copy of their text ads. Each of eight different combinations of elements is shown equally to users who type the keywords that Toolbarn has bid on. (Note that, if you're experimenting with this, you must un-select the option to "optimize" with Google. Otherwise the search engine will automatically optimize the ad it thinks is working best, and the rest of your options will not be shown.)

In preliminary tests, the clickthrough rates we're seeing for the eight different ads range from 3.2 percent to 5.5 percent!

Now, imagine if Toolbarn weren't testing the ads, and had simply chosen the one they thought would work best. They may have picked one that returned a 3.2 percent clickthrough rate, with the result that they would be leaving a whole bunch of money on the table for some other competitor to snatch up, and they wouldn't even know it.

Interestingly, the leading copy, so far, is not the copy that would have been an intuitive first choice. For example, Toolbarn is finding that the best performer is the one that lists brand names of tools rather than the one that includes the phrase "huge savings on huge selection, guaranteed lowest prices" or the third which promises "100% satisfaction or money back, Guaranteed lowest prices."

This can be a tactic of enormous importance, particularly if you're putting limits on your ad spend. If you decide you're not going to spend more than, say, 75 cents per click, you may not be able to achieve higher than the fourth or fifth listing. Your ad had better be more compelling than the ads of your competitors.

With keyword buys, optimizing the ad has another benefit. If, for example, your ad is appearing in fourth place but it gets more clicks than the other ads, Google may boost it higher. Then you've got a better performing ad in a better position than your competitors.

Everyone in the online space fights for more traffic on a daily basis. It's our daily bread, and without it, we are lost. By moving from a focus on optimizing our bids and placements into optimizing our creative, we can continue to outpace the competition.  The next round will be not what you pay, but what you say.

Jamie Roche is president of Offermatica. Read full bio.

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7 Principles

Principle 1 

Encourage the visuals to stand out and be visually aggressive.

Principle 2 

Avoid exaggerated cartoons.

Principle 3 

That old devil, sex, still attracts attention but it�s not always enough.

Principle 4 

Follow the flow -- give them something to look at.

Principle 5 

Beat them up with benefits first.

Principle 6 

Keep it simple.

Principle 7 

Brand early and often.

---

Conclusion 

---

 Back | Next

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Phase 1: Strategic Foundation
	Welcome to Open Source Marketing The Sugar Shots Case Study Overview
	Creating a Compelling Message Introducing the Test Dave Chase on the Case for Open Source Marketing Tracking Results
	Finding the Target Audience Introducing the Test Doug Weaver on Open Source Marketing�s Potential Tracking Results Eric Porres on Targeting Challenges
Phase 2: Tactical Drivers
	Determining the Best Visual Introducing the Test Doug Wintz on Building the Brand Tracking Results
	Designing a Clickable Campaign Introducing the Test Tracking Results Dave Chase on Improving the Campaign
	Assessing Ad Units Introducing the Test Brandt Dainow on Reading the Data Tracking Results
Phase 3: Emotional Drivers
	Determining the Best Visual (part 1) Introducing the Test Tracking Results Reid Carr on Creative
	Determining the Best Visual (part 2) Introducing the Test Tracking Results
	Finding the Optimal Ad-Website Combo Introducing the Test Tracking Results Matt Schow of Sugarshots
	Gauging Animation's Effect on ROI Introducing the Test Tracking Results Amy Auerbach on Flash

Phase 4: Expanded Analysis
	Ad-Website Presentation Consistency Introducing the Test Tracking Results
	Optimization's Efficacy Introducing the Test Tracking Results
	Revisiting Flash Introducing the Test Tracking Results
	Looking Back The Take Away

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Recap of past tests 

View entire campaign 

 

 

Editor's Note:

We are delighted to launch our iMedia Case Studies with Basement, Inc. and Sugarshots. We have also been extraordinarily fortunate to have widespread industry participation in this project even before its official start. 24/7 Real Media has generously -- and at great pains -- donated all the ad inventory for this test. Think Metrics in the U.K. has pitched in with the Web Analytics package. And Atlas DMT has contributed the ad serving and tracking tools.

As Doug explains, we're calling these case studies "Open Source Marketing," and we mean that sincerely. Over the next quarter, you'll see a chorus of contributors to this project, and we invite you to lend your voice to this chorus. If you would like to participate, please send email to iMedia Associate Editor Emma Brownell.

The series of tests we'll be running over the next 12 weeks are really about trying to gain a deeper understanding of one thing: which ads work and which ads don't. Not what a focus group thinks works. Not what the client thinks works. Not what the creative director thinks works. It's about what a million or so potential customers think works.

To achieve that, we'll be viewing ads in the nakedness of their own performance metrics. Like people, most ads don't look good naked. But online has a definite knack for stripping away everything but the grisly truths, like cost and acquisition-based metrics. So that's what we're going to show you: grisly truths, in plain, up-front detail.

This is what Dave Chase of the Altus Alliance has so aptly tagged Open Source Marketing. In actuality, it's what we go through in online marketing every week. Only instead of 10 people looking at the charts, this time we're inviting the entire interactive marketing industry.

Why test creative online?

This approach to testing wasn't possible a few years ago. Or at least it wasn't practical. While online advertising metrics have been around since the first banners, the big change came in the past several years with post-impression tracking.

At its inception, post-impression tracking was expensive -- prohibitively expensive, given the ravaged state of online advertising in the early 2000s. But now it's de rigueur.

The remarkable thing is that there are companies that still don't use it.

Granted, there are multitudes of ways to test almost anything. And I'm not slamming other research methodologies. Most of them provide good insight at varying levels of relevance. But strategic and creative concept testing has never really worked well in focus groups, the predominant method for testing them. That's my opinion, and the opinion of many others.

(I recently reviewed Gerald Zaltman's book, "How Customers Think" for the iMedia Book Club. If you use focus groups to test concepts, read that book.)

Online testing provides what focus group testing doesn't: a natural test environment. Online advertising happens in real time, in real life. It's real, and so the results are more likely to be real, too.

Online advertising is also relatively inexpensive. From producing the creative to generating a small media plan, the costs are marginal compared to most advertising budgets. Ironically, you'd probably spend more on focus groups than on an entire online test. And at the end of the online test, the campaign will already be up and running.

To be fair, no test is ever perfect. It's tough to test for a campaign that simply has to be shot with a supermodel on a remote beach in Antigua. However, there's a lot that can be tested with online. And if approached methodically, the results just might lead back to that photo shoot anyway.

Sugarshots: the company and the product

To launch iMedia Case Studies, we've selected a liquid sugar product called Sugarshots. This is a real, new CPG product in a new product category. While launching new products and categories can be tough, there are several reasons why Sugarshots is a good product for testing.

For one, we don't have to worry about past brand experiences weighing on the product.

Also, liquid sugar is a low-involvement purchase. It is conceivable that at least a few people will be willing to make an online purchase without previous brand or category experience.

Lastly, while there's little known demand for the liquid sugar category, this is a product that should appeal to a broad number of consumers across a range of demographics. We can therefore use a broad media plan, while more narrowly defining the target audience through monitoring response rates.

The testing construct

Theoretically, a test should start at whatever point your confidence in your research drops off. For a new product in a new category, that happens pretty quickly. So while we have some historical data on sweetener advertising -- as well as some Sugarshots research -- we're essentially starting from square one.

As such, we're going to be doing 11 different tests, divided into four phases.

• Phase 1: Strategic Foundation
• Phase 2: Tactical Drivers
• Phase 3: Emotional Drivers
• Phase 4: Extended Analysis

Phase 1: Strategic Foundation

Our goal is to determine which of several foundational strategies will get the best reception. We'll cover more on each of these areas in the weeks to come. At this stage, however, our goals are to determine core messaging strategies and, with luck, to identify how different market segments respond.

Phase 2: Tactical Drivers

Tactical drivers are the blocking and tackling components of the campaign. What size of media units work best? Do the ads need a strong call to action? Will a visual of the product in use be more effective than a straight product shot?

Phase 3: Emotional Drivers

This stage builds heavily upon the campaign intelligence that's been gathered to date. It's a little more abstract, as it gets into the emotional aspects of the message. We'll pit an ad promoting a positive experience against one promoting the avoidance of a negative experience. We'll test polar lifestyle approaches. The idea in this phase is to cover a broad range of styles, placing much greater emphasis on the creative execution.

Phase 4: Extended Analysis

Once we've finished Phase 3, we'll take an additional look at using some of the optimization tools that the sponsoring network -- 24/7 Real Media -- has to offer. While these optimization tools are very effective, they could skew our early results. So we'll introduce them after we've established our strategic and creative baselines.

Once there, though, the optimizers can really boost a campaign's performance.

Methods of evaluation

We'll monitor a lot of data points throughout this campaign, but here are the key points:

• Visits per 1000 impression
  This factors in both near-term and long-term impact by combining click response rates with post-impression visits to the home page.
• Site visits
  Comparing site traffic levels before and after the campaign is another way to evaluate the campaign's overall impact.
• Visits to purchase page
  Driving traffic is one thing, but this will enable us to qualify the traffic by monitoring what percent went to the purchase page to look into the price.
• Product purchases
  As we've mentioned, we want to approach this realistically, and while under these conditions we don't expect runaway sales, monitoring purchase data will help evaluate expected ROI for this and future campaigns.

Final notes on the testing model

There are many ways a test like this can be structured, depending on a number of issues related to the product or brand's situation. This approach is designed to address questions pertinent to Sugarshots.

Although this is a 12-week test, in actuality, monitoring the performance of campaigns and trying variations of creative should be an ongoing practice.

There are a number of details to be considered with an online test: The creative presentation, frequency caps, the network or media plan employed, the sequence of the creatives. Those are but a few factors that can skew your results one way or the other. As long as they're accounted for, the results should provide reliable results.

Lastly, this is about audience participation, and our aim is to strike a dialogue with people in the industry and get your thoughts on this and other testing methodologies. The potential for online testing is enormous, and we're interested in any input that can further enhance and demonstrate the capabilities of online advertising.

Thanks for reading, and we hope you enjoy the next 12 weeks!

Doug Schumacher is the President of Basement, Inc.

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In the Interactive space this is certainly nothing new, however, for the most part, marketers have used it primarily with direct response-oriented objectives. But one of the unique attributes of the Web is the ability to marry both push and pull techniques when it comes to identifying prospects or leads, with a view towards bringing them to boil on the pressure cooker known as the engagement funnel. The standard toll-free number and more recently, a URL, have both helped marketers provide some kind of distribution point that enables interested parties to find out more. Often times, this includes some kind of call-to-action to entice the visitor.

And then along came online advertising, which provided a seamless and seemingly instantaneous way of rewarding interest with some kind of immediate fulfillment. Through the process of self-selection, users are able to self-qualify themselves to receive the most relevant content/information to meet their precise needs. Immediate fulfillment can be interpreted on a basic informational level as a series or sequence of views, clicks, interactions, interactivity and time spent. Other forms of fulfillment might include the ability to download a White Paper or PDF; view a Webcast; opt-in to receive future communications regarding new releases, launches, events or specials; enter a competition or sweepstakes; and yes�.even receive the security blanket of all CPG marketers, the coupon or free sample.

What truly makes this one of the Web�s best practices is the process of being able to perform combinations of the above fulfillment paths to conversion simultaneously. More traditional forms of media communications are often constrained by time (such as 30 seconds) or space (limited copy to preserve the integrity of a clean and slick look and feel), and therefore a singular means of fulfillment is usually the norm.

�It�s not just plain vanilla anymore,� muses Charles Ruderman, VP Strategic Initiatives at Point.roll. �The ability for the Web to reward interest with immediate fulfillment is not hype. It offers both hope and tangible results. This is an important best practice because it enables the marketer to develop a relationship with the consumer (whether potential or loyal) while maintaining the focus on driving transactions.�

This one-size-fits-all approach tends to resonate strongest with a specific consumer at a specific stage of the consumer-adoption process. An auto ad for example will tend to cram as much me-too 0% APR, cash back, and similar information into the final 5-10 seconds of a commercial. But what about the consumer just entering the buying cycle? How does this information help him or her decide what kind of car is right for them? How will this help the person customize the car that fits his or her unique lifestyle? How will this help the consumer identify the local dealers that happen to be running a local promotion based on coming in for a test drive?

The answer is it doesn�t.

There�s a Toyota commercial right now that drives (excuse the pun) me mad. It involves a clearly defective man driving his Toyota like Mad Max through the deserted highways of a big city � wheel spinning, handbrake turning and 360�ing his way into some kind of euphoric state of delirium. While I get the aspirational benefits of such a state, the warning message at the bottom of the screen that reads something along the lines of �we strongly recommend against you doing anything like this with your car,� coupled with the 20-mile bumper-to-bumper reality of rush-hour commuting, causes a giant-sized disconnect with me.

Keeping it in the category, I�m beginning to see much smarter advertising coming from the auto-segment right now, utilizing multiple tactics such as color-swatching (Chevy Tahoe), Advergaming (Chrysler�s �Get up and go� travel profile game) and demonstration/visualization type walkthroughs (GMC dual-climate control).

Companies like Point.roll, Unicast�s Enliven, and Bluestreak got the ball rolling with multi-tab modules that allowed for marketers to communicate multiple proof points or calls-to-action based on varying stages of consumer adoption. Today these kinds of functionality are more widely practiced by a larger number of vendors.

Take the case of Benedryl.

The campaign goal was to generate interest and drive immediate response.

The strategy involved developing an online campaign in which the creative incorporated several places for interaction:

Once the user typed in his or her zip code, the ad expanded into a full allergy forecast, providing the reader with details on pollen levels in the area. By entering an e-mail address, the consumer was able to get additional product information and promotional offers.

The campaign proved to be a success with an overall response rate of 12%. The interactivity made significant strides in key brand metrics: ad recall, brand favorability and purchase intent.

Here�s another great case study from 1-800-FLOWERS:

In 1-800-flowers.com�s �Valentines Day� online campaign, the �reward� was a sweepstakes that offered the opportunity for the consumer to win a Pioneer Home Theater package.

The multiple panels and linking functionality allowed 1-800-flowers.com to support multiple promotional initiatives including the sweepstakes entry and the regular revenue generating commerce opportunities.

According to Mary Rider and Jeanine Ricci of 1-800-flowers.com, �The ability to satisfy multiple objectives in one banner allows us to broaden our customer awareness of different product lines.�

In the past (with a regular GIF banner) 1-800-flowers.com would have had to focus on one aspect or benefit. In this case, the company was able to promote Valentine's Day, Same Day Delivery plus Teddy Bears, Flowers and the Valentine's Day Card Contest.

�The power and potential of self-selection within the banner enabled the customer to further refine his or her shopping decision prior to coming to the site," explains Rider and Ricci. �When finally arriving at the 1-800-flowers.com Website, the customer was one step ahead of where he or she would have been if the person had just clicked on a "Teaser" Banner with one catch-all message and a generic product image.�

The ability to fulfill immediate interest is a mutually beneficial process � consumers are rewarded through some kind of benefit, while marketers are rewarded with the clear identification of a prospect or lead.

A classic win-win situation.

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