If you want to engage your audience on the web, you need to create engaging content. That means taking risks and creating work that makes your palms sweat a little. Sometimes you win. And sometimes you don't.

Here are three engaging experiences that caught my eye recently. For better or worse. You decide.

Modernista 2.0

In an effort to capitalize on all things web 2.0, the Boston based ad agency recently launched a very different kind of web site (more of a non-site really). When you type in Modernista.com a small navigation bar appears, redirecting visitors to a host of the best-in-class Web 2.0 services. Click on the agency's 'about' section, and you're taken to its Wikipedia entry; 'work' displays a TV reel via YouTube, print examples via Flickr and web executions on Del.icio.us. Agency news is delivered through Google News, and a 'contact' section lets users get in touch via AIM or Skype.

Whether you think this idea is a huge hit or a gigantic belly flop, depends on your point of view. But you have to give Modernista credit for taking a risk in engaging its audience. Not to mention getting plenty of buzz. 

Banking in the park

Check out this mesmerizing site for Japanese corporate entity SoftBank. The initial load time is a tad long, but it’s worth the wait. The scene opens on a park in Japan and you are floating high above a sea of people to a hypnotic music track.  One click lets you zoom in on any character and learn more about SoftBank’s different offerings. You don’t have to speak Japanese to appreciate this engaging little site.

There is no reason why a B2B site couldn't employ a similar device. I can imagine a medical device company site letting users hover over a convention of scientists or a crowded lab. All it takes is a little imagination and the willingness to take a chance on something different.

Toyota pranks

Toyota is currently running a campaign for its 2009 Matrix that allows you to prank a friend. The site and the online advertising that drives you to it is highly unusual. Toyota opted for an unbranded campaign featuring faux companies like this one for Sakura's Animal Lingerie! No mention of Toyota at all. Instead the media buy is all on sites targeting the Matrix customer demographic in an attempt to lure prospects. Crazy? Maybe.

Once you get to the site you are asked for some personal information (which you are assured will not be used for marketing) and some information about a friend you want to prank over the next five days. Then you choose a character and that character starts emailing and calling your friend, telling him or her that he or she will be coming to visit. The stalking continues for five days until its finally revealed that it was you.

While this is a pretty gutsy idea, it's also a little misguided. Still, you have to give Toyota credit for trying to engage with its customers in new ways.

So what's the lesson learned from these 3 examples? Experiment. Test something so you can learn something. And don't be afraid of failing. After all we learn as much from our failures as we do from our successes.

Posted by Steve Lynch at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you're a marketing professional, then you're likely all-too-familiar with the concept of media fragmentation, or the continued splintering of our target audiences as they move away from a handful of large media publishers/sites towards many smaller, niche ones. It makes finding and communicating with our audiences a lot harder, as the number of media outlets through which to reach them has grown exponentially. The phenomenon has given rise to the Long Tail, as well as a new breed of providers that claim to have the solution: ad networks.

Contextual advertising provider ContextWeb, together with BIMA, hosted an invitation-only roundtable in Boston last week to discuss this very topic. Titled, Media Fragmentation: Wandering Audiences and What Advertisers Can Do About It, the session featured Jay Sears, SVP Strategic Products at ContextWeb, and Steve Ustaris, Group Media Director at Carat, discussing the market response to fragmentation and the pros and cons of ad networks.

"Daunting but Exhilerating" Times

Sears opened the session with some pertinent quotes from IAB Chairman and ContextWeb Board Member, Wenda Harris Millard, who noted at the recent IAB Conference that these are "daunting but exhilerating" times - where consumers are calling the shots and the market bears witness to many strange bedfellows.

Consider that portal page views have declined in the last few years (below chart courtesy of ContextWeb), while blogs are growing at a rate of 120,000 per day (Technorati currently tracks 112 million blogs).

Yet 75% of media spend is still going to the top 10 Internet properties...perhaps out of habit, perhaps because planners don't know how to penetrate the Long Tail.

Think about the top sites - Google, eBay, Yahoo - they continue to be popular because they allow users to do a deep dive into the tail. As search engine activity has grown, we've seen more traffic entering sites through deep linking - often times bypassing the home page altogether in favor of directly linking to the deeper, niche content. ContextWeb illustrates this point with a great Long Tail-esque curve for TheStreet.com (or, as ContextWeb describes it, the Passion Tail):

While the Home Page continues to get a high number of visits (like the broad-reach portals), we're seeing more people going directly to specific sections of the site for niche content (like sites in the tail).

Networks to the Rescue 

In an effort to maintain share and continously aggregate audiences, the portals have shelled out enormous sums of money to acquire ad networks: Yahoo! bought Right Media and Blue Lithium; Google acquired DoubleClick; Microsoft picked up aQuantive; and AOL brought together Tacoda and Advertising.com to form PlatformA. And just last week we saw rumors of an $800 million asking price for Tribal Fusion.

But it's not just the portals rushing into this space. Branded sites like MarthaStewart.com and Forbes.com have created extended vertical networks (Martha's Circle and the Business and Finance Blog Network, respectively). There are vertical networks like Travel Ad Network and Burst Family Traveler who aggregate the best of category-specific tail sites, making it easier to buy innventory across them. And traffic data suggests that these niche sites in aggregate will outrank even the better-known category sites:

The opportunities for advertisers are seemingly endless. There are blog aggregators like Chitika and Technorati; profile-based data targeting networks like 33across and Lookery; ISP data targeting networks like Front Porch and Phorm; contextual networks like ContextWeb; and many, many more. There's an uprecedented number of partnerships, alliances, co-opetition, and frenemies.  Microsoft owns AvenueA, which buys media from DrivePM, which is also owned by Microsoft (so, Microsoft is buying media from itself). Google is selling print and radio ads. SpotRunner is selling search inventory. Daunting but exhilerating, indeed.

While the options can be overwhelming, the truth is that ad networks can help marketers and their agencies plan and buy brand-safe media (meaning, placements on quality sites) across niche sites in a manner that provides both scale and control. In this way, ad networks help planners manage highly fragmented inventory with one buy and still reach a high volume, incredibly targeted audience.

The downside of networks? Often times, inventory from top tier sites and/or premium placements is not available (as inside sales reps prefer to sell that themselves), and the dynamic nature of the network buying process may be antithetical to planning engagement that require long lead times.

In some cases networks may be better suited to direct response programs, while brand campaigns still warrant publisher-level negotiations. But they can certainly be a fantastic way to round out your buy, and tools like Compete's Behavior Match can help identify the deep-level pages that will make the most sense for your particular campaign.

For those interested in reading more, there is a good Mediapost article on vertical networks (including what to look for when selecting them), and ContextWeb has made their presentation available on their blog (plus pictures from the event on Flickr). And of course your fearless Contact Planning team here at PARTNERS+simons is always eager to discuss these things - give us a call! 

Posted by Stephanie Rogers at 06:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

On March 29th, millions of people from Albania to Zimbabwe, Atlanta to Phoenix, turned off their lights as part of Earth Hour 2008.This global event was intended to make a statement and act as a call to action for countries everywhere to find new ways to reduce their impact on the environment.

While the idea of joining like-minded individuals together to champion a cause is nothing new, when momentum really starts to build and awareness increases, companies start to take notice. Today it seems like every company is anxious to "go green," from Wal-Mart's experimental concept stores, which have a goal of using 100% renewable energy, creating zero waste and selling products that sustain resources and the environment, to GE's ecomagination campaign. While its nice that companies are recognizing the social benefits of going green, they’re also probably hoping that, in addition to making them a good corporate citizen, green will sell.

And buyers know that.

In the technology space green data centers are getting a lot of attention. Automobile companies have been adding greener models to their offerings. You can practically feel the judgmental stares when your checkout cashier asks, "paper or plastic?"  and then diverts her eyes to the green reusable bags for sale on the rack next to the check-out line. The pressure to go green is huge, so it's no wonder we're seeing company recycling efforts (Sony), corporations seeking ways to reduce their carbon footprint (IBM), even truck fleets running on vegetable oil (Safeway).

But companies have a fine line to toe between doing what's right because it makes sense and doing what's popular because it makes them look good - what could be called the greening of marketing. Can a company or brand create awareness for its social responsibility without coming across as patting its own back - or worse, merely jumping on the green bandwagon to capitalize on a growing trend?

Can a green message be integrated into promotional campaigns or will customers view the mixing of commerce and social responsibility with skepticism?

Honda's direct mail campaign for its lawn and garden equipment is a great example of how to balance the need to promote products with the desire to establish a brand as environmentally conscious. Sure, they could have printed the promotional piece on recycled paper and called it a day, but Honda took it one step further. They printed the dm piece on a specially made paper containing seeds. All the recipients had to do was plant the piece in their gardens and watch the flowers grow.

Honda got its point across – both the gardening message and the green message - and recipients got to literally make the Honda brand a permanent part of their garden. Not to mention planting a piece of direct mail in your yard is pretty darn memorable compared to the stuff that usually lands in your mailbox.

As brands go green there's more to consider than where to put the new green logo on their products and corporate communications. It's a delicate balancing act that requires authenticity and commitment, not to mention creativity. Because today's savvy buyers know the difference between self-serving and serving the greater good. It's up to marketers to make sure they know the difference, too.  

Posted by Jennifer O'Connell at 08:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)