With all the metrics and formulas that inform marketing communications these days, it might seem like there's little room for a laugh.

After all, there's nothing funny about making sure you're armed with a solid ROI when walking down the hall to justify advertising expenses to the board of directors.

The devil may be in the details, but today so is success.  From rules on how subject lines of emails are worded to quantification of purchase intent.

But what about the value of a message that stirs emotions and makes it memorable?  Are the days of advertising and marketing that rely on gut-instincts only viewable in the rearview mirror?

Methinks not.

Smart marketing doesn't have to, and shouldn't, be guided solely by new conventions in measurement.  Because there will always be power in a message that makes an emotional connection as well as a measurable one. 

The new world doesn't have to forsake the old. It's not one or the other.  It's "and".  As in science and creativity. Metrics and a knowing smile.  ROI and "OMG".

It's a combination that makes for messages that are stronger and perform better.  With hard numbers to prove it up and down the line.  And an ending you won't forget.

Posted by Bruce Patteson at 02:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

When we say radical we're not talking about doing something crazy, so put away the funny hats. We're talking about doing something different, doing something with such focus and organizational rigor that it becomes a rallying point for all of a company's marketing efforts.

Sure, lots of companies talk about being "customer-centric," but what's that really look like? And how do you start? My colleague, Ken Dec, has boiled it down to 5 key elements that contribute to greater customer centricity - and, as a result, contribute to a company's success.

The piece ran in MediaPost and with Ken's permission the article is republished below.

Get Radical -- Radically Customer-Centric, That Is 

Leading technology marketers -- faced with product offering parity/commoditization, intense global competition, and stagnant budgets -- are seeking every way possible to improve the performance of their marketing programs.

One strategic approach is the adoption of radically customer-centric marketing -- allocating significant resources toward developing the deepest possible understanding of customers' roles, responsibilities, communities, hopes, dreams and aspirations -- moving far beyond the "title targeting" that has defined technology marketing for decades.

Here's how.

Know Your Customers
Personae are hot - but they are not new. Direct marketers have been using attitudinal and behavioral segmentation for decades. What is new is that the web enables more efficient development of personae based on how prospects interact with brands online -- and the use of personae is more efficient due to the hyper-targeting capabilities of online message delivery.

Additionally, the best technology marketers have added role-based profiles to their segmentation strategies - building profiles of multiple IT decision makers, capturing and leveraging understanding of each person's role in the purchase process and varying messaging based on their role.

Effective personae and role-based profile development requires a combination of approaches including:

• Primary research - qualitative and ethnographic "day-in-the-life" research

• Data analytics - utilizing sales, campaign and engagement data to understand the actual behavior of customers and prospects

• Sales force engagement - talking with your best salespeople to understand "deal dynamics" and translate that knowledge into targeting and messaging

Combining research, data analytics and sales engagement is a proven approach to building actionable personae that informs hyper-targeting and hyper-messaging for optimal campaign results.

Corporate Brand Matters - More Than Ever
Decades of research continues to prove that companies "buy" companies first, then products and solutions.

The web can trigger the hyper-development or hyper-destruction of brands. So given how quickly digital technology is changing marketing dynamics, how quickly people learn about the differences between one brand and another, and how quickly word spreads, getting the positioning of your brand "right" has never been more important.

Additionally, in a transparent and sharable environment, there are more ways than ever before to find out what matters to your brand constituencies. The best marketers listen to what audiences think and feel about the brand's products and services.

Smart brands collect and use this learning to build brand promises that are both different from competitors and optimally relevant to the customers they want to attract.

Maximize The Mix
One of the most challenging tasks is identifying how to allocate finite resources (i.e., budget) into what increasingly feels like an infinite number of marketing channels.

A radically customer-centric approach helps identify the likely highest yielding channels through better understanding how customers collect information about competitive products and services.

Social media monitoring is increasingly playing a valuable role as peer recommendations remain among the most trusted sources of product information. Understanding where customers congregate and monitoring those conversations, is aiding in the development of more relevant channel plans.

Social media monitoring combined with traditional media consumption research and analytics is creating radically customer-centric, high performance media plans.

Drive Leads That Drive Sales
Still surprising are the number of organizations who value lead quantity over quality - unfortunately, they appear to remain the majority. Best of breed marketers view this differently.

The goal of any demand generation program should be generating the largest number of most highly qualified leads possible, generated at the lowest possible cost.

Optimally targeting high potential value customers is best achieved through applied data analytics of current customers to understand; what are the key characteristics of my best customers? What did they buy? When? How much are they worth?

Data analytics helps greatly narrow the population for promotion, but unless you combine this effort with customer-informed messaging your effort will be efficient but not optimally effective.

Which is the reason we need to get to the "why of buy". The best marketers understand why customers buy from you or from others. It's easier than ever to learn. Again, social media monitoring, complemented by qualitative and quantitative research intent on understanding why we buy, leads to radical customer-centricity that can more effectively and efficiently drive demand.

Measure, Optimize, Repeat
As companies execute radically customer-centric marketing programs it's easier than ever to learn more and more about customers and prospects with each campaign. Leaders are measuring three key metrics:

• Perception - how do customers and prospects "feel" about the brand?

• Performance - how are they responding to marketing campaigns? (campaign metrics)

• Value - what incremental revenue are your radically customer-centric marketing programs contributing to the company?

Get Radical - Today
The best technology marketers understand that radical customer-centricity results in more efficient, effective, revenue-generating marketing campaigns.

Taking the time and applying the resources necessary to deeply understand customers behaviorally, attitudinally and communally makes the results of their finite budgets infinitely successful. 

Posted by Jennifer O'Connell at 01:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently read that luxury apparel and accessories company Louis Vuitton and global management services company Accenture are keeping their marketing budgets intact despite the economy.

How can they justify continuing to spend on marketing even during waning market conditions - especially for such "high ticket" products and services?

Interestingly, one executive pointed to something very simple – metrics as ammunition.

While the world of Louis Vuitton and consumer marketing may be concerned with a slightly different set of metrics (brand perception, consideration and preference) than those in the B-to-B world, arming marketers with data seems to be something each can use to their advantage.

B-to-B marketing is ripe with opportunity for measurement – or, in this economy, opportunities to demonstrate the value of marketing when budgets are being slashed left and right.

Want to show that an investment in customer segmentation and profiling is worthwhile? Then you better be able to demonstrate how improvements in customer understanding impact pipeline depth and quality – and, ultimately, conversion.

Having the metrics (or proof?) to support incremental spending and its impact on performance improvements can go a long way to getting marketing initiatives funded. Just as demonstrating how cost cutting creates performance declines may save a program from falling victim to a tightening of the budget belt.

What started as data that was nice to have is fast becoming a means of marketing survival.

So where's your ammunition?
 

Posted by Jennifer O'Connell at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

BIMA’s Cross Media Forum is an annual event where local marketers discuss the challenges, successes and realities of executing across multi-media platforms. Moderated by Shar VanBosKirk of Forrester Research, representatives from Carat, Hill Holliday, and Mullen – along with Cindy McKnight of PARTNERS+simons and Brooke Tyson Hynes of Tufts Medical Center – joined together to share their experiences developing effective multi-platform campaigns with seemingly infinite media opportunities, decreasing attention spans, and often, limited budgets.

Nick Johnson from NBC Universal Digital kicked things off with a keynote presentation highlighting the network’s lessons learned from its broadcast of the 2008 Summer Olympics (or, their “$1 Billion research lab”). With 214MM users on the network (and 51.8MM uniques online), it was the most viewed event in US history, providing a rich data source to assess media consumption habits.

The highlights? TV is still king in terms of reach: 90% of Olympic content was consumed on TV, and 82% of poll respondents confirmed TV is their preferred channel for watching the games. It stands to reason that viewers would favor the large screen for watching this content, but a closer look confirms that digital played an important role in the overall Olympics experience. Viewers expected multichannel content, and heavily took advantage of broadcast, Web, and mobile offerings. In fact, multichannel viewers watched twice as much Olympic programming as TV-only viewers. Those who experienced both the TV & Web together had increased brand and message recall. Additional NBC research revealed that 83% of viewers expect to see their favorite shows online, and 68% report watching more television programming now that they can access it online.

NBC’s experience is one we’re seeing everywhere: consumers have integrated a variety of media channels into their lives – not necessarily at the expense of any one channel, but more often in a highly-customized mix that accommodates their own research and entertainment needs.  As content gets distributed in this multi-stream fashion, so too will advertising.

What ensued was 3 hours of case studies, creative presentations, and dialogue – about channel selection, creative execution, click through rates, offline’s impact on online, and viewer engagement. For our part, Cindy and Brooke shared a rather compelling case study of work we developed for a recent Tufts Medical Center  brand campaign, and the impact it had on brand awareness. Some of the key points we tried to drive home, which we leverage with all client work, are as follows:

• Start with your audience. Only by understanding their state of mind, motivations, and receptivity can you create really compelling programs. For Tufts Medical Center, we developed a detailed persona of the working mom who makes healthcare decisions for herself and her family. Once we understood her channel habits, information needs, and sources of health and wellness information, we had a framework for considering media and message.

• Don’t simply execute in multiple channels – make the channels work together. We make a conscious effort to have media and creative teams work together. It’s not about slapping a :30 TV spot online, but rather understanding the strengths, weaknesses, and interplay among channels and then developing a plan that lets them work together as a whole.  Synchronize your broadcast with your search marketing. Entice viewers with snippets of video on TV or in banners, and drive to the Web for longer form, more engaging video. You get the idea.

• Involve your brand community. This can be customers, prospects, shareholders, or employees. Find ways to allow them to both shape and promote the message, through tools like commenting, forwarding, & downloading, or engaging them in the content development. For Tufts Medical Center, we involved the Doctors at the institution to showcase the faces (and brains!) behind the brand; in this way, employees became brand ambassadors.
  

• Measure outcomes. Never before has it been more important to show an ROI for marketing expenditures. It needn’t be difficult, but it does require a commitment to measurement. We start every engagement with a conversation about outcomes; why are we doing this program? What do we hope to get out of it? How can we put a framework in place to measure progress? For Tufts Medical Center, the core measurement framework involved a brand study, but the approach to measurement is as varied as our clients and projects. The key is to plan for measurement…early and often.

For more info, check out Shar VanBosKirk’s coverage of the event on the Forrester Blog.

And speaking of measurement…earlier in the week, MITX put together an engaging panel moderated by Megan Burns from Forrester Research, which covered the latest tools and techniques for measuring brand online. The explosion of social media has added additional challenges to a Brand Manager’s charge: if brands are defined by what people say about them, then tools for measuring consumer sentiment should be part of the marketer’s toolkit.

Panelists shared tactics for moving beyond click through rates and action metrics in favor of Internet tools (e.g., Blogpulse, Technorati) that can help marketers understand – by monitoring consumer sentiment - the impact of both online & offline marketing activities on the brand. Of course, insights gleaned from these sources are rarely in the form or volume that would make them statistically valid research findings, but when monitored regularly, they can go a long way towards providing directional insights for the Brand (Note: there are companies, like TNS Cymfony and Nielsen BuzzLogic that take a more scientific approach to this). 

Forrester talks a lot about Brand Action, or what a company does to deliver on its brand promise, and how one reacts/responds to consumer sentiment is a great example of this. It can be a struggle to engage with brand activity on a daily basis, but the first step is listening…a brand action in the Web 2.0 world that speaks louder than words.

Until next week…

Previously:

Media Roundup: 9/19/08

Media Roundup: 9/12/08

Posted by Stephanie Rogers at 08:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

9.15.08 what a week it was for financial service marketers. News alerts hit my email inbox like twigs hitting a house in a hurricane. One after another, the bad news kept coming – each email having more ferocity than previous. Not since 9/11 or the Great Depression have we seen so much turmoil in our financial markets.

It felt like a tornado ripped through Wall Street, but instead of trees being uprooted it was financial institutions. Some of the industry’s best-known brand names are gone or going. Bear-Stearns. Lehman Brothers. Merrill Lynch. Three other well-known brands needed the government to bail them out. Fannie Mae. Freddie Mac. AIG. And while not as well known, the IndyMac failure several weeks ago sent shudders through the banking community.  

When huge institutions like these fail or are sold for pennies on the dollar it makes everyone wonder about the strength and stability of their financial partners. How do you know your money or investments are safe? Who can you trust? I expect we’ll see confident brands start to promote their safety and soundness in advertising campaigns. Some, including Wachovia Securities and AXA Equitable, already have. There will be more.

For now, we're left to wonder who is next to fall? WAMU, JP Morgan? When will all this bad news end? Certainly, only time can tell, but consider the following.

One of my colleagues here at P+s put a canoe he made up for sale earlier this year. This labor of love is really a hand-carved work of art – a sculpture that floats.

At $5,000 this certainly represents a luxury item purchase, but I did expect some wealthy outdoor enthusiast to buy it by now. The fact that the canoe hasn't sold connects to the instability we're seeing in the financial marketplace. People – even the affluent – are being a little more conservative with their money in these uncertain times.

Don't let the market rally on Thursday and Friday of last week fool you either. There will be more market volatility, but maybe one of the indicators that good, stable times are here again will be the sale of my friend's canoe.

Posted by Todd Baird at 11:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Topics we've bookmarked for this week's Media Roundup include the growing online health category, physicians online, LinkedIn's new ad network, Banking 2.0, and a must-see event that’s happening next week. Read on for more info!

• ComScore released data indicating that the online Health Information category is growing at a rate 4 times faster than the total Internet, with visitor counts increasing 21% in the last year. This is not surprising, as people increasingly to turn to the Internet as a primary source for healthcare information – not only for factual data on conditions, medications, and healthcare providers, but also for shared experiences and advice from people going through similar experiences. 

• Health professionals are online, too. Manhattan Research reports that about 45,000 U.S. physicians use eDetails, or online product sales pitches, and more than 300,000 have shown interest in interacting with sales reps online. As it becomes increasingly difficult to get in front of these busy professionals, eDetails can be a cost-effective way to reach them, and physicians enjoy the flexibility and interactive features the sessions offer.  Online video is another way to communicate your message in an engaging way, and this week we saw the launch of The Doctor's Channel Newscast, a joint venture of the Doctor’s Channel and Reuters Health. The site offers educational video content covering Reuters' top three health news stories each day – all designed to be short and concise, so they’ll fit into a busy doctor's day. And of course there are advertising opportunities for healthcare marketers looking to reach this desirable audience. 
  

• LinkedIn, the popular social network for business professionals, partnered with Collective Media to launch the LinkedIn Audience Network. Now, in addition to targeting users on LinkedIn.com (by industry, seniority, job function, company size, gender or geography), advertisers can reach LinkedIn users when they visit select partner sites.  With CPMs ranging from $30-$76 the network isn’t cheap, but LinkedIn is banking on the fact that they have a desirable and engaged membership (with an average HHI of $110K, and 49% being decision makers), making them a leading B2B network.

• In other social media news, there is a great debate going on regarding Banking 2.0, including Banks not ready for Web 2.0, Web 2.0 holds promises and threats for online banking, and Online banking comes to Facebook. The open source nature of social media has held many banks back from experimenting with blogs, widgets, RSS feeds and the like, since their businesses are predicated on highly secure (i.e., closed) environments. Yet Datamonitor just released a report highlighting a new generation of bankers that grew up online and expect even their financial services content to be customizable and interactive. And there are numerous examples of banks entering this space with some success. It’s time for banks to at least investigate 2.0, and think about ways to incorporate it into their brand experiences. Chrisophe Langlois of Visible Banking has a great, tongue-in-cheek series of posts called Banking 2.0: 10 "good" reasons not to embrace social media, in which he tackles each of the perceived threats in an effort to convince banking professionals that they must embrace 2.0. 

• Lastly, MITX hosted an engaging panel discussion this week titled How to Measure Brand Impact Online, which in the interest of time, we'll review in a separate post. But I do want to highlight an upcoming event that’s worth checking out if you’re in the Boston area: next Thursday morning (9/25), BIMA hosts its 4th annual Cross Media Form. One of the organization's most popular events, the forum brings together leading agencies, marketers and publishers for an open dialogue on the challenges, successes and realities of executing across multi-media platforms. This year, representatives from PARTNERS+simons and Tufts Medical Center will jointly present insights from the brand campaign we launched earlier this year. Please join us if you have the chance.

Enjoy the weekend!

Previously:
Media Roundup: 9/12/08
Media Roundup: 9/05/08

Posted by Stephanie Rogers at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I haven't read a great deal of Wallace's work, but I've always regarded him as an immensely innovative and thoughtful writer — one who has had a major influence on many of my writer friends and the literary world at large.

In hopes of finding some sort of connection between Wallace and the task at hand – writing an entry for this blog – I Googled "David Foster Wallace" and "advertising." The Web never disappoints: I found my way to an essay of Wallace's, published in Harper's in 1996, about his experiences on a luxury cruise.

In it, he describes an "essay" by the author Frank Conroy that's included in the cruise line's brochure. Although Conroy was paid by Celebrity Cruises to write the essay, it is formatted to look like an excerpt from some other, non-commercial work. This prompts Wallace to write the following: 

In the case of Frank Conroy's "essay," Celebrity Cruises is trying to position an ad in such a way that we come to it with the lowered guard and leading chin we reserve for coming to an essay, for something that is art (or that at least is trying to be art.) An ad that pretends to be art is -- at absolute best -- like somebody who smiles at you only because he wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what's insidious is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on us: since it offers a perfect simulacrum of goodwill without goodwill's real substance, it messes with our heads and starts upping our defenses even in cases of genuine smiles and real art and true goodwill. It makes us feel confused and lonely and impotent and angry and scared. It causes despair. 

Strong words for a little bit of marketing smoke and mirrors, yes? But it got me thinking about ads that pretend to be art – or anything that they're not. On one level, as a marketing professional, I can't help admiring it when a marketer finds a clever and unexpected way to reach their audience. But as a consumer – and someone who values honesty and authenticity – I'm not impressed.

I don't like to feel like I'm being duped. (Who does?) Like Wallace, I agree that there's something dishonest and insidious about advertising that tries to make us think it's not really advertising — product placement in movies, advertorial inserts in magazines, and especially pseudo art.

I'm certainly not trying to argue that advertising can't be artistic. (I'd better not be, on a blog called Art + Science!) Lord knows there are some gorgeously designed and beautifully written ads out there; TV spots that should win Oscars for their directing, acting, and cinematography. But the good – and ethical – ones don't try to trick you into thinking they're anything other than what they are: a way to sell a product or strengthen a brand. Which is a perfectly legitimate – and honest – thing to do.

So, what about those Mac ads disguised as Op-Eds that I mentioned before? Aren't they ads trying to look like something else – journalism, specifically? Yes, but with one important difference: the reader is meant to catch on to the joke. From the content of the text, to the familiar  "Mac" and "PC" characters to the way the whole conceit is set up (from a second banner at the top of the page, the Mac guy looks skeptically down at the PC guy’s attempt to get into the NYT), it's clear that we’re looking at something "meta" — an ad consciously pretending not to be an ad, with a wink and a nudge to the reader. You could argue that it's intrusive, but you can't say it's deceptive.

Here's to honesty in advertising, and to a writer who made the pursuit of truth his life's work.

Posted by Jane Roper at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It was 3:19 AM on Saturday, August 23. My iPhone lit up: "Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee." The now-famous text message from the Obama campaign was just another in a long line of communications during this groundbreaking political – and marketing – campaign.

I wrote a post in January about how we, as marketers, can learn from Barack Obama's team. Obama has wisely used web and mobile marketing in an attempt to grab the share of young voters. It’s still working, and it might just be the key to victory.

Here are a few more lessons learned from what Obama's team has done right and wrong less than two months before Election Day.

Know your audience. It's not a secret around our office that I support Obama. Yet as much as I think he's done right, I sometimes feel neglected as a customer. I always donate online, and have even ordered an "Environmentalists for Obama" organic t-shirt, yet I still receive 4-5 direct mail pieces every week that go right into my recycling bin. It's a waste of paper that risks alienating a brand loyalist.

Timing is everything. Announcing a Vice Presidential choice via text message? Bold. Waiting until the middle of the night to do it? Bad. Imagine Apple revealing the latest iPod at 3 AM. It's simply not smart. Then again, the strong buzz created before the pick, plus all the new mobile number sign-ups they collected, made it a noteworthy event for future candidates and marketers alike.

Use your channels for good. When Hurricane Gustav bore down on the Gulf Coast, both Obama and John McCain reached out for donations to the Red Cross. Obama sent a text message, making it quick and easy to send $5 to those in need through your wireless service. Even more recently, supporters could send a Grandparents Day e-card from barackobama.com as a way to share both your love for family and Obama. It was a fun, outside-the-box promotion that stayed true to Obama’s overall brand message.

Don't overdo it. In this intense, seemingly never-ending political season, candidates risk burnout. Just like brands, over-saturation can have a negative impact. TV viewers in battleground states have had enough with the inundation of political ads. And in my email inbox, I now receive duplicate (and frequent) messages from Obama and the DNC. Even in a busy campaign – political, brand, or otherwise – it's important to manage your lists properly to ensure you don't upset loyal customers.

Posted by Matt Fishbein at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

As promised, we've bookmarked some more media-related news stories for you in this week's Media Roundup:

• Have you incorporated blogs into your media plans yet? If not, they’re definitely worth consideration. You see, blogs are now considered mainstream media, and with about 184 million blogs worldwide, collectively, they can rival traditional channels. eMarketer reports that 67 percent of the U.S. online population - 104 million people - reads blogs, showing that blogging has become a truly mass media.  While the majority of blogs are personal in nature, many can work for marketers - even B2B ones – and a variety of blog ad networks have sprung up to help streamline the buy (examples include the Forbes.com Business and Finance Blog Network and Seed Media's ScienceBlogs.com). Take some time to investigate the blogosphere; there may very well be conversations about your brand or category taking place, and related opportunities to connect with your audience.

• Like blogging, social networks have really entered the mainstream. The recent Entertainment Trends in America study by The NPD Group confirmed that sites once considered the exclusive domain of teenagers are now being adopted by baby boomers aged 44-61. In fact, 41% of baby boomers have visited social networks like MySpace and Facebook (consistent with other age-related data we’ve seen for social networks). While some business marketers have opted to test these more mainstream sites (e.g., Visa’s Facebook Business Network), we're following the growth of very niche, vertically-focused networks like SERMO, ITToolbox, American Express' OpenForum, CareSeek, and LabMeeting.
  

• Not to be overshadowed by all this new media, good old broadcast was in the headlines this week, thanks to a renewed interest in national television advertising for the fourth quarter and beyond. AdWeek reports that despite a troubled economy, rising retail prices, growing unemployment and record home foreclosures, just about every marketer on the national TV front is planning to spend what they committed in the May upfront (and in some cases, more). Q4 primetime upfront advertising orders will total over $2 billion, with a paltry 2% cancellation rate (it’s been 3% in recent/more prosperous years).  The TV high was further buoyed by news that NBC has already sold more than 80% of its available Super Bowl ad inventory, securing $3 million per 30-second spot (an increase from the $2.7 million Fox charged for the ’08 Bowl). Let’s hope the ads live up to the hype.

• In other NBC news, NBC Universal has signed a multi-year advertising, research and technology deal with Google, allowing cable TV inventory from Sci Fi, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC, among others, to be sold through the Google TV Ads platform. While we’re eagerly watching the convergence of digital and traditional channel planning, Google’s lack of geo-targeting abilities in the TV realm may hinder its widespread adoption by anyone but national advertisers.

• We'll leave you with this fun print+digital (prigital?) execution from Esquire: to celebrate its 75th anniversary issue, the magazine created the first-ever digital magazine cover, merging print with electronic technology from local company E Ink, the same company that developed the technology used in Amazon.com's e-book device, the Kindle. See a video of the cover (and the corresponding, blinking Ford ad on the inside cover), here.
  

Posted by Stephanie Rogers at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In this article, published in part by  BtoB Magazine,  Tom Simons makes a few predictions, otherwise known as "wagers" PARTNERS+simons has made.

Are these sound business bets? Let us know what you think. 

Reading The Tea Leaves 

I guarantee only this: there is little certainty and few safe bets for those marketers charting a course into the future. That said, here are a few of the wagers I've made.

Change will continue to be the only constant. Those who are looking for some sort of status quo or normalization will be disappointed, and ultimately, marginalized. Build in a change competency to your culture and your organization -- put someone or some committee in charge of change.

Deep domain expertise and genuine specialization will be recognized as having much more value than field generalism. Marketers who don't have an area of expertise should find one – quickly.

Creativity will have much of its currency restored. We were all distracted by the concept of optimization and the disposability of ideas. We learned that, in practice, optimization requires both an enormous investment in message inventory that few clients have been willing to make, and a tolerance for wasted effort that good agencies abhor. Good creativity is just that -- it's "right" the first time. It delivers ROI out of the gate, there are no false starts or non-starters.

There is more pressure to unearth the fresh idea (big or small) that can cut deftly across integrated campaigns. And there is the realization that without this media/method-agnostic idea, there can be no true integration. And there is the recognition that there has been, in fact and in practice, very little true integration.

Web video will continue its rise in prominence. It is admittedly the pre-eminent marketing channel for all marketing communications -- consumer, B2B and professional -- and its role will become even more critical. The text-based content emphasis that has been the default web strategy will continue to lose its prominence.

Agencies will have to develop their own comprehensive video production capability. This should not be viewed as either entrepreneurial or enlightened -- it's nothing more or less than table stakes.

Audience engagement with web video will become a measurement standard. Session length and involvement will become key metrics with a value that is equal to, or greater, than the transactional, conventional metrics of responses, leads, calls, etc.

We will continue to see the erosion of advertising sponsored print media. And it's not coming back. That said, some forms of well-executed direct mail will enjoy a restored prominence.

I am continually stunned by the number of companies we see with warring marketing and sales tribes. It is seductive to think that in this era of execution and Six Sigma, organizational performance assures truly complementary efforts, but it is rare. If marketing and sales don't shake hands regularly, they will all fail and move on.  

That's what I've read in the tea leaves.

Posted by Chris Demakis at 04:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It was a very short, post-Labor Day week, but as usual, the media news just keeps on coming.

Here are some of the items we bookmarked for this week’s Media Roundup:

• Google was all over the news, primarily due to the launch of its new Chrome Web browser, but also thanks to ongoing commentary around its aggressive moves into more traditional media planning. Chrome is also Google’s latest move to thwart its rival Microsoft in a space the latter has historically dominated: Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser has about 72% market penetration. Why should this matter to (online) marketers?  The latest version of IE  reportedly gives users the option to “surf in private"  – essentially blocking advertisers from collecting the browsing data they use to target ads. The same data (and targeting) that is at the core of Google’s business model. I’m anxious to play around with Chrome and see if it gets any traction (also looking forward to working with the new Google AdPlanner tool, to which we recently received beta access).

• In video news, David Carson penned a great article in AdAge about Capitalizing on Online Video’s Strengths.  The basic gist of it is that while online video now boasts a bigger audience than cable television, its $1 billion in ad dollars is a fraction of the $70 billion broadcast pulls in. Carson argues that these kinds of comparisons aren’t fair; in particular:
  

"The two media are so fundamentally different that making comparisons in format and language will eventually stunt the growth and impact of online video for creators and marketers alike."

He rightfully points out that "TV attracts watchers, while online video attracts users."  This fundamental difference should not only impact the type of video produced for each medium, but the advertising model integrated into it. The best online videos allow viewers to interact with them – comment, download, forward, mash-up, etc. – perhaps the online video ad models need to morph from the passive, broadcast approach being forced upon them.

• Exciting news in the world of out-of-home advertising: this week marks the preliminary rollout of the new "Eyes On" audience-measurement system. It uses a combination of computer modeling and eye-tracking to determine how many people actually look at billboards throughout 200 U.S. markets. OOH is a $7 Billion market that’s suffered from an accountability problem and has historically been sold on placements (versus viewers, as more measurable media is). The new measurement protocol is great news for the growing number of marketers turning to out-of-home and place-based media to find new and innovative ways to reach their audiences (see our previous post, Outdoor 2.0).

• Lastly, we’re intrigued by Phreesia, a NY-based startup that provides doctors’ offices with touch-screen pads intended to replace the clipboards and paper forms patients receive at the reception desk. The pads are provided free-of-charge to physicians and the company makes money by selling on-screen ad inventory and surveys which the patients view while filling in their information. It remains to be seen whether this tactic can work for brand building or direct response (it’s a digital device, so imagine patients could opt-in for more info if desired). Phreesia bills it as a way to provide patient education…patients respond to a series of questions regarding the reason for their visit, and then relevant patient education materials are presented on the device (and available for print out). Watch the demo here. 
  

That’s all for now; stay tuned for more Media Roundup next week, and let’s us know what you’ve been bookmarking!

Previously:
Media Roundup: 8/29/08

Posted by Stephanie Rogers at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There is so much talk by marketers about visitor engagement and what it means, but there appears to be no universal definition for it.  There certainly seems to be little to no agreement in the marketplace on if and how engagement should be measured. Sounds like something we should avoid altogether, right?  Well, if you are a traditional direct marketer who is used to analyzing and optimizing your marketing efforts based reams of hard, undeniable response and conversion data, then the idea of measuring engagement might seem unwarranted or maybe a bit scary.  I mean, what's the point in measuring something that requires bias, judgment and creativity?

An interesting argument I just read by Matt Belkin of Omniture suggests that there is no place for subjectivity – let alone, creativity – in the arena of measurement.  His post on Omniture's blog in July called the whole notion of measuring engagement a "fad."  Having played in the web analytics space for several years now, I can appreciate Matt's position because tools like Omniture, WebTrends, and Google Analytics provide robust reporting on the traffic sources coming into your site(s), as well as the activities taking place on your site(s).

However, the problem with having so much visitor data available at your fingertips is that it can be difficult to determine the value of all of the variables.  Many, if evaluated in isolation, do not appear to represent any tangible business value. 

So, should you just ignore them?  Should you avoid analyzing the behavior of a visitor that spends several minutes on your site watching video, reading content, or completing a series of seemingly trivial tasks.  Absolutely not!  I agree with a large population of marketers and analysts who believe that you just need to get creative in how you measure this activity.  This is the point at which you create your engagement scoring model.

Essentially, an engagement scoring model requires that you prioritize multiple variables within a group and assign a weight to each one.  Bill Bruno, a principal at Stratigent, a web analytics consulting firm, wrote a very nice primer on how to develop an engagement score. 

The subjectivity is that you may have to determine your weighting or value assignment of variables without too much understanding of their individual importance.  Hardcore direct marketers and web analytics experts may not approve of this approach, but if you understand your business well and are confident in how your campaigns are planned and how your site is designed, your engagement score may begin to tell you a story that will enable you to optimize your programs and site in new and meaningful ways. If you feel your engagement scoring model is ineffective or is not clarifying anything for you, you may need to consider reassigning values or combining different variables altogether. 

The creation of these models is not an exact science, hence the reluctance by some to construct them.  But, if you are delivering compelling content and feel it provides value to the user despite not being a part of your conversion funnel, why not assign an engagement score to that activity?  For example, if a visitor plays a video on your site, watches a full minute of it, replays it and then forwards it to a friend, why not assess the value of those activities and consider using them as part of an engagement score.  In this case, each successive activity may represent more value than the previous action (e.g., viral/forwarding is more valuable than a replay which is more valuable than watching the video in entirety).

Measuring visitor engagement can be an important step in improving your web analytics capability.  If you feel you are lacking some key insights, try building one.  If it fails, try reworking it.  If you are still having trouble gleaning any meaningful insights out of the model, please tell me about it below.  Or, be sure to comment on Matt Belkin's post and tell him how you got caught up in the fad.  

Posted by Doug Ellinger at 01:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)