Archive for the ‘Advertising Industry’ Category:
Facebook places
Facebook just announced Location Based Services integration, with Facebook Places. This is required viewing for any marketer or agency professional, or just about any entrepreneur. But from a marketing perspective this is going to require those who are looking at retail, ooh, POS or any environmental marketing to consider the social media, mobile and digital impact of what they do.
From a user perspective now you can not only provide your status update but incorporate the location, context and ideally the people around you.
But this is very significant for our business, while LBS isn’t new (its been around for years – the wireless company I started was one of the first to create Location Based Services – 1999), this is the first time its available at scale. While Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and others have been in place the scale has never really been there. Now that Facebook has integrated LBS into its platform 500m+ people have access to this tool’s capability and over 150m people using Facebook mobile can begin to be using it directly. Users can now share where they are, see which friends are in the local area, and discover new places by following where others from their social network have checked in.
Some interesting things to think about:
- Retail, POS, OOH, Experiential have a new requirement and that is mobile and the digital/social experience. How do you want your audiences to engage with your experience on the mobile platform while they are there and what will they be talking about?
- How will you reward customer loyalty? Provide customers a reason to keep coming back and “checking in” to places, as well as share that with their networks
- Places will be a wonderful tool for promoting business and experiential marketing as well as providing special offers.
- APIs and data of facebook places will be a great resource for applications, start thinking about how to leverage this resource of information – Marketers should be thinking about this as well as entrepreneurs.
There is a Facebook Places FAQ for Advertisers here http://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=places#!/help/?page=1159
As well as a user guide for Facebook places here: http://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=places
My interview today on Bloomberg
About the new contact less transaction platform that AT&T, Verizon and others are launching in the US
Integrating creative, social and production to deliver true sales results – Old Spice
If you haven’t had a chance to see the amazing Old Spice Campaign by Weiden and Kennedy look anywhere on the internet and you will find it. The campaign, which did include the usual print, tv and other traditional media, really built its buzz around digital and social media. It wasn’t just the creative idea which was brilliant, it was really the execution, production, distribution, and ultimately the ability to create and deploy almost real time high-quality content efficiently and I am sure cost effectively that makes it so amazing.
The campaign, staring the spokesman Isaiah Mustafa, a former football player, now turned smooth talking spokesman, responded to over 186 social media comments with funny videos including responding to Demi Moore and Alyssa Millano, as well as this one to George Stephanopoulous:
Re: @GStephanopoulos | Old Spice
and the entire campaign had over 40 million views of the responses, 94 million views of the youtube channel and over 120k subscribers.
The most important part of this entire campaign is this paragraph burried deep in this article:
According to Nielsen data provided by Old Spice, overall sales for Old Spice body-wash products are up 11 percent in the last 12 months; up 27 percent in the last six months; up 55 percent in the last three months; and in the last month, with two new TV spots and the online response videos, up a whopping 107 percent. “Our business is on fire,” Moorhead says. “We’ve seen strong results over all of our portfolio. That is the reward for the great work.” (See also: “OId Spice Campaign Smells Like a Sales Success, Too.”)
Spice It Up
The Old Spice campaign has certainly garnered attention, but did it work?July 26, 2010
- Eleftheria Parpis
Isaiah Mustafa, the buff, bare-chested Old Spice guy in the shower, may be the man of the moment. But it was Bruce Campbell, the B-list cult movie actor, whose droll humor introduced the world to the 73-year-old Procter & Gamble brand’s cheeky new attitude in Wieden + Kennedy’s “Experience is everything” campaign back in 2007.
Rather than throw out all the old, Wieden embraced the heritage of the brand, including its seafaring theme, but gave it an ironic twist to repackage it for the modern young man who might remember Dad’s cologne and appreciates a satirical take on that ancient history. The Portland, Ore., agency, which won creative and media duties on the brand in 2006, kept the cursive script logo, the clipper ship from the fragrance bottle and the whistle from the jingle.
Campbell was the first of many Old Spice men. Tony Stewart did “Armpit Marketing.” Will Farrell sported Old Spice in a 12-spot series as his Jackie Moon character in a cross-promotion with the movie Semi-Pro. As a former TV doctor, Neil Patrick Harris recommended Pro-Strength antiperspirant. And LL Cool J found his cool with Old Spice Swagger.
Google opens the door of mobile to the masses and pushes their platform
http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/
Google is opening up the mobile platform to the masses by providing a set of tools that lets give everyone from six graders to lit majors tools for building mobile applications and being able to launch them on the Android platform. Using a GUI the application lets anyone build applications without the need for a PHD in C++ or an engineering team of HTML 5 developers. The application system also allows users to create “disposable” applications, simple solutions that fit an immediate need, can be built quickly, launched on the mobile device, used for a few hours and then disposed of.
Not only is this a direct shot at Apple, which is known as a walled garden on the application and content to their iOS4, but it continues to position the mobile device as a fully functioning consumption and creation device.
I am looking forward to seeing the new content available, the new marketing opportunities that become viable and the continued success of this mobile, personal, portable and highly targeted platform
Looking at the world through these 3 charts adds a unique perspective to advertising
My friend Niel Robertson wrote this article about how he looks at business through these three charts: Distribution Curve/Bifurcated Distribution, Sigmoid Curves, and Network effects. Its interesting to apply these different charts to current and future business models: Search, DSPs, Media consumption.
He also makes an interesting analysis of the professional services business as how it is counter to the Network Effect, in fact its much more of a linear effect – therefore takes considerable time and effort to grow and scale since adding each additional customer requires almost as much (sometimes more) costs as the previous customer. This is very relevant as the advertising industry begins to look at potentially finding network effect solutions for the marketing and advertising industry for scale – a great example is Demand Side Platforms and their effect on the media buying and planning industry. Once you have established your DSP, your next primary cost is data, with some staff costs, but the incremental cost of adding an additional customer is lower as the business scales especially if you can gain economies of scale around data and audiences. . .
Everything I learned in business I learned from these 3 charts | VentureBeat
Everything I learned in business I learned from these 3 charts
July 8, 2010 | Niel Robertson(Editor’s note: Niel Robertson is the founder and CEO of Trada. He submitted this story to VentureBeat.)
I’ve been building venture-backed businesses for over 11 years now. In that time, I’ve seen a sea change in how businesses are put together. Engineering approaches, marketing approaches, pricing, service delivery … they’re all dramatically different than what they used to be.
But what I’ve come to appreciate is that, ultimately, businesses live and die on three simple dynamics: Distributions, network effects and sigmoid curves (s-curves). Almost all problems (and most opportunities) come from understanding how to take advantage of these functions – rather than fight against them.
Distributions – A distribution is a measure of how tightly grouped something in your business is. For instance, if you plot all of your customer deal sizes in a distribution, you’ll identify some interesting observations. You might see a tight packing around the mean (average), which indicates that most of your deals are about the same size.
You may also see a bifurcated distribution – which means you have two types of customers. (For discussion’s sake, let’s say one has a peak value of $1,000, while the other’s peak is at $100,000). If you find yourself in this scenario, you’re likely heading towards a problem.
Got a big idea for an agency? MDC Partners is listening with our wallets open.
The advertising industry was built by people that didn’t believe in the status quo. They were sitting in their current jobs and believed that they could do it better, smarter, more creative and deliver more value to their clients. They pined, they collaborated, they worked at midnight when their current jobs ended, they sometimes took jobs as fry cooks putting it all on the line, until the moment that their business finally began. . .and then they put their name on the door and changed the industry.
MDC wants to make it just a little bit easier. With an idea and a brilliant submission, MDC will invest $1 million in starting up the next new transformational marketing communications business and own 51 percent.
I am excited! oh and just in case you didn’t know the email address is startup@mdc-partners.net
‘Million-Dollar Challenge’ for New Marketing Firms – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.com
Venture Capital
‘Million-Dollar Challenge’ for New Marketing Firms
June 25, 2010, 2:29 amThe TV quiz show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” is about to get a Madison Avenue version, “Who Wants a Million Dollars to Start an Agency.” MDC Partners, the holding company based in Toronto that owns agencies like Crispin Porter & Bogusky and Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners, plans to announce on Friday what top executives are calling the “Million-Dollar Challenge.”
Would-be entrepreneurs will be invited to submit business plans for agencies in any area of marketing communications. MDC will review the submissions, choose at least one plan from among 10 finalists and invest $1 million in starting it up in exchange for a 51 percent stake in the new shop, Stuart Elliot reports in The New York Times.
The proposal is to be described by Miles S. Nadal, chairman and chief executive of MDC, at a seminar at the 57th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in Cannes, France. The seminar, titled “How to Build an Agency From Scratch,” is to feature Mr. Nadal as the moderator and Chuck Porter, chief strategist of MDC, as a speaker.
“It’s a great time, as we come out of the recession, to back entrepreneurs,” Mr. Nadal said in a telephone interview from Cannes on Wednesday. “There’s such an amazing amount of talent in the world today, to not capitalize on it would be a lost opportunity.”
GE is Crowdsourcing their next campaign
Congratulations to Judy Hu, Linda Boff and all of GE for taking this big risk. They reached out to the community and asked the consumer to not only participate, but create the next campaign for the brand. What a wonderful way to create brand advocates and brand loyalty, it also takes such a huge brand and connects it directly to consumers (where it has typically been a very B2B business).
This is not only a very forward thinking move by GE Marketing, but it is also a true justification that real brands are looking at the crowdsourced model as a potentially viable way for sourcing creative ideas. . .
The proof will be in the execution. . .
Btw if you read here it says that the program is open to advertising industry professionals or startups as a way to win GE’s business. . .
GE + YOU = AWESOME – Google Moderator
GE + YOU = AWESOME
Let’s face it – when large companies enter the digital space, they are not always met with the warmest reception. (Translation: they tend to blunder in, mess it up, and get torn a new one.)To make sure GE continues to succeed in new media, we’re going straight to the experts – you.
We want your best ideas for how to engage an online audience. Got a great idea for an ad campaign? A creative concept for a killer contest? A truly innovative social media program? With your help, we can avoid the lame and embrace the awesome.
Enter your suggestions for the next great new media initiative in the space below, or email us directly at ad.ideas@ge.com.
Before you post, please take a quick look at our submission guidelines at http://www.ge.com/adideas_terms/.
Google Tv Just announced
The TV screen is the best screen for watching Video. . . most curious about the boxes that are going to be needed to execute. But all in all I believe that the opportunity here isn’t about the on-demand HD lean back video experience, its about delivering more IP enabled media, targeted, focused, data driven and built on ROI. I would say “TV just got interesting” but I think we will wait and see. I do love the idea of using Real-Time Bidding across multiple channels (Display, Video-youtube, Search, and now TV) to deliver the right ad at the right time to the right user for the right price.
This won’t be fun for the big media companies when true supply and demand for audiences dictate the price of premium television advertising on programming. . .
Google TV turns on at I/O — Engadget
Home Entertainment, HD Industry, HD Set Tops
Google TV turns on at I/O
By Nilay Patel posted May 20th 2010 12:23PM
Breaking News
As expected, Google just announced Google TV at I/O. There’s four billion TV viewers worldwide, making it the biggest market in the world, and Google’s after it in a big way — it’s a $70 billion ad market in the US alone, after all. According to Google, “video should be consumed on the biggest, best, and brightest screen in your house, and that’s the TV.” The idea is to merge the web and TV without compromising on either the web experience or the video experience, with a focus on discovery and personalization. Of course, since it’s Google, the interface is search-driven, so you can just type in things like “30 Rock” or MSNBC” to find channels and content — including upcoming content to record and content from the internet. Yeah, it’s kind of like the TiVo Premiere’s swivel search, but prettier — and there’s a Hulu logo on the screen, which is extremely intriguing.
A good primer for basic knowledge of DSPs
Here is an interesting simple primer on the value and importance of DSPs for the ad space. Worth a read.
DSPs: What they really are and why you should care – iMediaConnection.com
DSPs: What they really are and why you should care
By Eric Picard
May 12, 2010Article Highlights:
* DSPs are advertiser/agency facing systems that let buyers do self-service media buying from publishers, aggregators, and exchanges
* Premium publishers fear there could be issues with real-time bidding on display inventory due to asymmetric bidding and low bid density
* It’s likely that high value impressions will go up in yield, while there will be a drop on the rest — the two should balance outRecently on the Internet Oldtimers List, someone posted a link to a video mashup where someone had taken a clip from the movie “A Few Good Men” and replaced the famous “You can’t handle the truth!” dialogue between Nicholson and Cruise with a farcical semi-humorous debate about demand-side platforms (DSPs). What was interesting about this clip was that its central argument was that DSPs lower the CPM of premium publishers’ impressions (with Cruise arguing for the premium publisher and Nicholson arguing for the DSP).
The video is cute — pretty well done, and worth a view if you’re someone on the inside of this particular space online. But what really surprised me about it was that very few people seem to really understand what’s happening with DSPs in general — and there’s obviously misinformation going around. This particular debate about DSPs lowering the yield of publisher impressions was one I hadn’t heard articulated before.
So let’s get started digging into this by discussing what a demand-side platform really is. These advertiser/agency facing systems let buyers do self-service media buying from publishers; publisher aggregators (sometimes now being called sell-side platforms, or SSPs) like PubMatic, AdMeld, Rubicon, and others; and ad exchanges. The most important part of these mechanisms is that they enable real-time bidding against inventory on these sites. This is really important because in real-time bidding, the DSP can let the buyer specify business rules describing the value of impressions based on their audience attributes. That means the buyer can assign monetary value against specific audiences, and the DSP can bid on every impression in real time based on its actual value to the advertiser.
HBR Followers vs. Influence, a popularity contest
An interesting article from Harvard Business review that compares “popularity” with “influence” on Twitter. The article illustrates that follower count is not a sufficient metric in defining influence. This is very important for marketers who are looking to reach “influencers” and are thereby focusing on finding those with the most followers for which to engage a strategy or leverage the ability of said user to sway the opinions of there followers. In actuality followers only shows how popular the user is (i.e., the size of her audience).
It does state a bit of the obvious that marketers/businesses, rather than trying to put emphasis on the follower count, could try to increase audience responsiveness and level of engagement by creating “conversations” around topics.
It is a shame though, and much like many academic research programs – which must have a very focused/limited thesis, the article only focuses on debunking the “influence vs popularity myth” vs creating a quantifiable answer to the real question of “how should one measure influence?”
Here is a kicker though, of the 52 million twitter accounts only 6 million are active. . .
On Twitter, Followers Don’t Equal Influence – Research – Harvard Business Review
On Twitter, Followers Don’t Equal Influence
9:30 AM Friday May 7, 2010
by Scott BerinatoIt could be that Twitter research is popular because Twitter data is free and so accessible. That’s okay. Gift horses are just as good for riding.
The best, latest entry in Twitter research is the handiwork of Meeyoung Cha from the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Germany. (Co-authors are: Hamed Haddadi, Royal Veterinary College, University of London; Fabricio Benevenuto, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil and Krishna P. Bummadi, also from Max Planck Institute.)
Cha called her paper, “The Million Follower Fallacy,” a term that comes from work by Adi Avnit. Avnit posited that the number of followers of a Tweeter is largely meaningless, and Cha, after looking at data from all 52 million Twitter accounts (and, more closely, at the 6 million “active users”) seems to have proven Avnit right. “Popular users who have a high indegree [number of followers] are not necessarily influential in terms of spawning retweets or mentions,” she writes.