Posts filed under 'Non-traditional advertising'
November 12th, 2008
Previously on ADWire, we talked about blogging and whether or not it was a good idea for your business - answering that question with a “yes, but.” (Read the whole post here.) Like every other marketing strategy, blogs will get you results depending on how you put it to use and how much energy you devote to it. Blogging and social media are here to stay, and today’s consumers are morphing into beings that require a “relationship” with a brand before becoming loyal customers.
Here’s a satire on the changing relationship between marketers/business and the consumer that makes a good point. If this is how customers are feeling, there is definitely a need to re-engage:
Social Media can be defined as “activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction.” Some of the major players in social media are FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, and other online communities such as Ning, LinkedIn and Plaxo. They range in focus from business networking to social sites that let people share their lives online to video sharing…and there are hundreds of more out there.
So why should you and your company engage with social media? In a broad sense, social media can benefit your business by:
- Embracing Gen Xs, Ys and Zs, both in your consumer group and within your organization.
- Engaging an audience – social media is the equivalent of extending the conversation started with other electronic and traditional advertising. Dialogue with your customers is a good thing.
- Giving instant updates to your followers, and you can follow their updates so that you are engaged with and aware of new movement
- Creating events and gathering RSVPs with little manpower in terms of compiling lists, etc. Plus you can capture all of that user information (emails, etc.) and reach out to them with electronic communications and special offers.
- Improving your website’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and increase traffic to your site.
- Getting the chance to listen to what’s being said about your business online and to say something back.
These days it is usually less about “sell, sell, sell” and more about developing a relationship with your customer first, with sales to follow.
September 25th, 2008
What do you do for an online presence if your new national ad campaign centers on getting people offline and into face-to-face conversations? You have the campaign’s micro-site shut down on users after 3 minutes and tell them they need to get off their computers.
Counter-intuitive? Maybe. But with tight content and an eye on the message they’re promoting, that’s exactly what Dentyne is doing with its new “Make Face Time” campaign. The website - www.makefacetime.com - lets you “find face time” by searching for hang-out spots near your current location; “request fact time” by sending a notice to your friends and has a devilish little feature called “Smiley Chamber of Doom” that shows animated emoticons meeting their bitter end.
I tried to see everything in 3 minutes but couldn’t quite get it done. And then I went back to post a link to that Emoticon video - which if you only do one thing on the site, do that - but the site is not letting me in for more fun. So they are serious about shutting down the site to visitors after 3 minutes. (Though you can sit and read about Dentyne’s product line “all day long if you want to” - the time you spend on the product pages does not count towards your 3-minute limit).
Here’s a glimpse of some of the supporting ad creative:
Read the New York Times’ deconstruction of the campaign here.
August 21st, 2008
Viral Marketing. Seeding. Buzz (pun intended). Haagen Daz, that purveyor of bliss, started a campaign to raise awareness of honey bee colony collapse, and, for an estimated $75,000 paid to a company specializing in viral campaigns, the “Bee Boy Dance Crew” received 2 million hits on this video in two weeks:
Haagen Daz used the services of a company called Feed Company, which specializes in creating viral campaigns (or, as they call it, “seeding”). They use viral video, word of mouth and search engine optimization to get their results. The Bee Boy Crew was promoted through traditional media - including TV and print ads that say “Plant this Page, Save a Bee” - and through the video-sharing sites like YouTube. The site links to a microsite at HelptheHoneyBees.com where users find out more information and how they can help.
Here are details about the campaign as posted by MediaPost’s Marketing Daily.
Here’s another one about “Projectile Dysfunction” Feed Company seeded for videogame maker Activision (note: video rated “Teen”)
It’s not too terribly difficult to think that a local company, with a few well-chosen clicks and a clever campaign that will appeal to the Internet culture, could do the same thing. The Internet is very democratic that way. But you have to make sure it’s consistent with your brand, your other marketing efforts and your business goals.
Maybe the Rockford Area Convention and Visitors Bureau could make some waves with that goofy video of Ald. Doug Mark on Geo’s blog.
August 6th, 2008
Hard to believe that Back to School is here. For “Tweens” (kids 10 to 14), that means online search. If you’re advertising your back-to-school products, your ads must be online and your site must be optimized.
Tweens are most vocal in purchases of apparel, electronics, telecommunication services and products and other consumer packaged goods according to Performics, a market research firm (see their survey results here). More than half reported using the Internet to compare products and prices before suggesting back-to-school purchases to their parents.
In addition to online advertising, you would be well-served (regardless of your industry) to get your website optimized via process called “search engine optimization” or SEO. This process uses key words and other programming tactics to ensure a better ranking on the search engines.
Pet Loader, a client and local company that manufactures and sells portable dog stairs, told me last week they saw TRIPLE the traffic they did prior to doing SEO on their site.
I let our web gurus worry about how to actually do this; all I know is that it’s effective, essential in today’s marketplace and our clients swear by it. Here are two sites to get you started:
A prior ADWire post about how search engines work.
Google Ranking’s “Basics of SEO”
August 4th, 2008
I’m just going to step aside on this one and let the folks over at Brand Week explain the specifics behind the following “Top 10 Bright Ideas for 2008” in marketing:
- Dark Marketing (unidentifiable advertisers)
- Web Serial Branding (viral video serials)
- The Fake Action-Flick Pitch (LG’s “Scarlet” campaign…see below)
- Text Messaging (Motorola’s airport campaign)
- PetroMarketing (free gas!)
- Lickertising (mmm…ads you can taste)
- Break-out Store Brands (Safeway brands leaves home)
- Mob rule (StumbleUpon.com lets you vote up or down on ads)
- EBay as ROI (tracking brands in Joe Six-Pack land)
- Greenrating (Green marketing quantified)
Did you like any of these examples? What do you think are some of the best new advertising strategies you’ve seen in 2008?
As far as “Dark Marketing” tactics, I hate it when I realize the video I just shared with a dozen people was actually a plant by a company who wants my money….thereby shattering my romantic notions of creativity and open-source content. But that’s me.
July 30th, 2008
Web-based TV is shoving traditional TV aside quite rudely. A new study on media habits reported in today’s Ad Age is the first that gives real evidence to the theory that people are migrating from traditional TV to Web-based streaming video for entertainment. The study indicates audiences are not “supplementing” but rather replacing the new media for the old. Whoa! That’s huge.
The alarms have been sounding in media shops about the Web, VOD (video on demand) and streaming video for a while now and, the reality is we can no longer count on 3 networks to provide a common American experience or, more to the point, a tremendously huge audience for the product or service your advertising.
And while fragments are bad when it comes to grammar, a fragmented advertising audience means good and bad things.
The good thing about fragmenting an audience is that you can target your message to those people who are really into your message, versus the old-time “Spray and Pray” advertising that only had to promote their products on the 3 networks, on the radio and in newspapers and in magazines.
Example - You’re more likely to see a high ROI for an ad promoting San Diego’s Comic Con if you placed it prior to an exclusive Battlestar Galactica podcast (and as an aside, BSG was seriously robbed by those Emmy people) than you would if you ran it on the evening news or during an episode of “America’s Got Talent.”
The bad thing is that we ad professionals need to work harder. It takes more time, more research and more creativity to reach an audience these days. The other negative with a fragmented audience is there is little chance you or your advertising agency can keep up with all the different niches. You will, be definition, be missing some. The web and its real-time communications also means that a chat board that LOVES your product at 10 am may be in full revolt by 11:35 am because a few negative posts by unsatisfied (or just malicious) customers.
It’s a whole new frontier, one where herding the audience will make or break your ad campaign as much as your message and your creative.
Giddyup!
July 17th, 2008
They say in fashion that everything comes back in style sooner or later, if you just hang on to it long enough, but does it work with ads as well? McDonalds seems to think so, well, actually retro with a new twist. They are stepping back to 1974 to revive the lyrics of the well-known Big Mac jingle, “two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese…” you probably know the rest. What you won’t know is the new beat, since no one knows it yet, because the company will choose from competitors on MySpace through its page called the ‘Big Mac Chant’ (http://www.myspace.com/bigmacchant).
User-generated appeal campaigns are popping up everywhere thanks to YouTube, and for this one McDonald’s is not even offering money as a prize. Apparently, merely the “fame” appeal of having your jingle become the track for a TV commercial is payment enough. Yet another way to take advantage of the viral nature of the web and free press- sounds like a pretty good idea for any company.
“For companies, reviving a campaign through user-generated submissions can appeal to older consumers’ nostalgia while introducing a classic campaign to a younger set,” says Stephanie Clifford of the New York Times. If it works, it could be argued that McDonald’s successfully bridged the gap between generations. But isn’t part of the fun of revival lyrics to be able to sing along because you know them? Unless you are a rapper, you may be out of luck on this one. McDonald’s has to wade through the bad and the good in submissions, but finding a gold nugget could prove worth it. The outcome for the campaign is yet to be seen, but the public in general is more aware of, and willing to participate in user-generated appeals, and any size company can take advantage of the favorable environment for this type of campaign.
July 16th, 2008
Summary from post on Advertising Lab~
Imagine: You find something you like, reach into your pocket for a small device, scan the barcode, and the device tells you whether and were the same product is available for a lower price.
This future just got one step closer with the release of an iPhone app Checkout SmartShop, “a shopping assistant meant to help you find online and local prices when you’re out and about shopping.” For now, you still need to type in the UPS code; they are working on converting the iPhone camera into a barcode scanner.
In a post on industry blog Advertising Lab last January on online experiences and offline expectations, the author writes, “Retailers gotta act quick if they want to have some control over the converging experiences. In a few years, people will be carrying web browsers in their pockets and won’t be needing all this retail innovation. Then they would go to Barnes & Noble to browse books and order the ones they like on Amazon right from the store.”
That part about “a few years” was probably too optimistic. Not only can we now browse the internet with small devices, such as our phones, these same devices can assist us with where to get the best deal.
June 25th, 2008
Next year, Sapporo, a Japanese beer company, will start labeling its beer bottles with the amount of carbon emissions associated with production and disposal. Japan’s is also working on standardizing how carbon can be measured and labeled on consumer products.
In the UK, the Carbon Trust, a government-funded independent company, is developing a similar scheme, set to launch in the coming months. According to their site, companies like Coors and Coca-Cola will add the carbon label.
Will this added transparency provide a competitive advantage? Are these figures meaningful to the consumer? And will people really track their carbon impact? We shall soon see.
According to the Carbon Trust’s research, reported in an Independent article, 66 percent of UK consumers want to know how much carbon is associated with their consumer goods. The UK labeling program will have a one year trial period, so we will hopefully find out how accurate that statistic is.
June 12th, 2008
Imagine a site that you frequently visit, let’s say amazon.com. Given the exhaustive amount of information you initially find that it is difficult to navigate. But over time, you realize you’re finding the Web site is easy to navigate, more comfortable, and it gives you the information you need. Almost second nature. Is this a result of you simply learning how to navigate the site? Maybe not…
Here’s an article from MIT Tech review about websites that recognize the cognitive style of visitors by the way they click around and adapt their interfaces accordingly:
“The researchers’ initial studies show that morphing a website to suit different types of visitors could increase the site’s sales by about 20 percent. While quite a few sites, such as Amazon.com, offer personalized features, many of those sites adapt by drawing information from user profiles, stored cookies, or long questionnaires. The Sloan system, however, adapts to unknown users within the first few clicks on the website by analyzing each user’s pattern of clicks.
In addition to guessing at each user’s cognitive style by analyzing that person’s pattern of clicks, the system tracks data over time to see which versions of the website work most effectively for which cognitive styles.”
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