hypnoticmedia

Abbreviated dialing codes have been around for a while and are...

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 13:32:49 -0500

Abbreviated dialing codes have been around for a while and are about to get very popular with the rise of StarStar technology. StarStar comes to you by The Zoove Corporation, with whom hypnoticmedia is very proud to be associated.

This is direct response at its finest. Consumers simply dial ** and a short code, e.g. **coke (2653), then they get a link to branded content. Very simple, quick, and effective.

You should try it out from any AT&T mobile. StarStar is scheduled to go live across all major carrier networks by this summer.

We heard this week that Sports Illustrated published some of...

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 13:15:41 -0500

We heard this week that Sports Illustrated published some of these JagTag codes in their latest swim suit edition.

Only time will tell how consumers will respond to these codes, hypnoticmedia for one is sticking with 2D.

One click, one content load, and that’s that.

Be on the look out for 2D code readers, coming to your mobile phone and all new devices released from here on out.

Burst of Mobile Giving Adds Millions in Relief Funds

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 00:03:43 -0500

Old-fashioned television telethons can stretch on for hours. But the latest charity appeal is short enough for Twitter: “Text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 to @RedCross relief.”

In the aftermath of the earthquake many Americans are reaching for their cellphones to make a donation via text message. And plenty of them are then spreading the word to others on sites like Twitter.

The American Red Cross which is working with a mobile donations firm called mGive, said Thursday that it had raised more than $5 million this way.

“There is an enormous outpouring for this effort,” said Wendy Harman, social media manager at the Red Cross. “It’s such an easy way to give and pass around through social sites on the Web.”

The mobile donations are part of a larger surge of money flowing to the relief effort. The Red Cross said it had collected nearly $35 million as of Thursday night, surpassing the amounts it received in the same time period after Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami.

“When something like this happens, it’s incredibly frustrating because there isn’t much that we can do,” said Laura Fitton, a media consultant who has raised money for charity on Twitter. “It helps to be able to at least make a gesture, and that is what is catching on.”

The Red Cross expects that donations made through more established channels — writing a check or on the Web — will still far outweigh text-message giving. But the cellphone campaign may be reaching people who might not otherwise have made the effort to get involved.

Convenience is one factor in the campaign’s success. People simply send a designated word to a five- or six-digit number and then confirm that they want to give, and the donation is charged to their wireless bill. At the end of the month, the carriers transfer the contributions to a service provider like mGive, which passes them on to the charity.

Survey On The Spot recently got some air time on CNN. Their...

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:50:00 -0500

Survey On The Spot recently got some air time on CNN. Their super cool iPhone survey app. has been used by the TSA in airports around the U.S. to get well needed traveler feedback. hypnoticmedia strategized with Survey On The Spot and helped with the overall implementation of this app.

TV Remains the Screen of Choice Americans may choose to consume...

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:24:22 -0500

TV Remains the Screen of Choice

Americans may choose to consume video on the “best screen available,” yet traditional TV remains the screen of choice. The recent results of Nielsen’s Three Screen Report a quarterly analysis from Nielsen’s Anywhere Anytime Media

The measurement initiative (A2/M2) shows that the average American watches approximately 153 hours of TV every month at home, a 1.2% increase from last year. In addition, the 131 million Americans who watch video on the Internet watch on average about 3 hours of video online each month at home and work. The 13.4 million Americans who watch video on mobile phones watch on average about 3 ½ hours of mobile video each month.

In addition, Nielsen data shows that consumers’ time with TV, Internet and Mobile video continues to increase across the board. Online video grew 13% in Q1 2009, driven by both strong brand marketing and large media events including the Presidential inauguration, the Super Bowl and March Madness. With broadband levels increasing in the U.S., online video audiences will continue to grow as consumers begin to upgrade their PCs to support increased video consumption.

Mobile video viewing has grown a significant 52% from the previous year, up to 13.4 million Americans. Much of this growth continues to come from increased mobile content and the rise of the mobile web as a viewing option.

Out of all different age groups, 18-24 year olds show signs of watching DVR and online video the same amount of time timeshifting 5 hrs, 47 minutes per month, and watching video online 5 hrs, 3 minutes each month.

Perhaps the merging of web and TV will begin to drive the growth of true interactive TV with Google leading the way.

Jump Page

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:21:54 -0500

Another useful term for Mobile Marketers is the “Jump Page”

The page or view to which a user is directed when they click on an active link embedded in a banner, web page, email or other view.

A click-through lands the user on a jump page.

AMOE

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:44:10 -0500

By necessity, the thriving mobile marketing industry has yielded a multitude of new terms and acronyms to describe the various nuances unique to its business space. However, much of this language is not widely understood and, depending on the source, holds various meanings and interpretations.

hypnoticmedia will try and point out some of the key terms from time to time as we encounter them. This is a very popular one with mobile taking off.

AMOE (Alternative Method of Entry)

A no cost or low cost means for an individual to enter a sweepstakes or contest.

Are Digital Agencies Ready to Replace Traditional Agencies? Any...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:08:56 -0500

Are Digital Agencies Ready to Replace Traditional Agencies?

Any conversation about digital marketing these days includes at least one mention that traditional agencies just “don’t get it.” Heck I have said this dozens of times myself. Coming from the traditional agency side I think I can say it with some authority.

While this may be correct, it is equally true is that digital agencies are not ready to take the lead.

Ana Andjelic a freelance strategist at Barbarian Group doing her Ph.D. dissertation on digital branding had these observations. I think she is right on the money.

Look at the typical digital agency. It excels in exploring new horizons. It supports a flat and loose organizational structure in which a developer has access to the CEO. And it makes sure everyone’s opinion is heard. It’s one big crazy family.

Digital agencies are having a ton of fun experimenting with ideas, technologies and strategies to find new alternatives superior to obsolete ways of doing marketing. That’s what they do best.

The problem is, this is the only thing they are doing.

When they are asked to actually follow through on their ideas, they often come up short. It is because they don’t know the business of marketing (or want to know it, for that matter), and they rarely have the organizational structure or past practices to guide them.

This comes at a cost. Digital agencies impress clients with their passion, drive and technology know-how. Clients then say: “You gave us a lot to think about.” Which often means that the account is awarded to someone else.

Where digital shops fail is giving confidence to the client that all this momentum will be indeed executed in a well-led marketing campaign.

All of this is not new. It is already described in organizational theorist James March’s exploration vs. exploitation dichotomy. The best companies have the optimal balance between the two; those less successful are doing too much of either.

There certainly are places around that represent an uneasy mix of exploration vs. exploitation: Digitas, Razorfish and AKQA. They are sort of stuck in between recently acquired marketing knowledge and their digital savvy, trying to combine them to sometimes embarrassing results.

If digital agencies excel at exploration, traditional agencies thrive on exploitation. A traditional agency is risk-averse, accountable and systematic. It knows its business inside-out. It knows its clients’ businesses and executes campaigns reliably. Its people hang out with the CMOs. A typical traditional agency has decades of experience.

This, too, comes at a cost. A traditional agency, organized around exploitation, ends up doing the same thing over and over again.

For every marketing challenge, their solution is “better creativity.” This is not surprising: If an agency spends all its time making sure that everything goes efficiently, that leaves it with little time to experiment. And then, even if it wanted to do things differently, it would be met with its own organizational inertia.

How is the exploration/exploitation gap closed?

Like most things in marketing, it comes back to the client. As much as people like to talk about the agency of the future, it will never happen until the client gets there first.

Shorter client-agency alliances, smaller budgets and faster review cycles create a more competitive environment that forces everyone involved to be more alert. When relationships are unstable, shifting and temporary, it’s the balance that counts. That means not only having innovative ideas, but also executing them swiftly and flawlessly.

Until digital agencies show they can strike this balance, we are also the ones who don’t get it.

Can the “Droid” dethrone the iPhone? With Apple...

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:49:00 -0400

Can the “Droid” dethrone the iPhone?

With Apple posting record profits last week, thanks in large part to brisk sales of its iPhone, it may seem downright crazy to mount a smartphone challenge at all, let alone one that takes direct aim at the iPhone. But that’s just what Verizon, Google and Motorola are doing.

With a teaser ad from Verizon zeroing in on the device’s perceived shortcomings, such as its lack of a physical keyboard, the triumvirate is beginning a big push for Droid, the flagship device of the Google-backed Android operating system. So far, industry observers are unmoved by the buzz and give the Droid long odds in its bid to become the next ubiquitous handset.

So far, Verizon and its partners have kept a tight lid on Droid, but the few early reviews have been effusive, with the influential gadget blog Boy Genius Report calling Droid “the most impressive phone we’ve used since the iPhone. It’s positively amazing.” TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington, who famously chucked the iPhone because of AT&T’s spotty network service, also gushed: “According to people who’ve handled the device, the Droid is the most sophisticated mobile device to hit the market to date from a hardware standpoint.”

The praise notwithstanding, analysts say it’s doubtful that Droid can dethrone the iPhone — even if the handset will live on what is widely perceived as the best wireless network in the country. The Blackberry Storm, and most recently the Palm Pre, both of which have been held up as credible iPhone challengers, came and went without incident to Apple, which just reported its most profitable quarter after selling the most iPhones in that time.

“There is a graveyard littered with iPhone wannabees, so the bar is pretty high for any new phone, no matter how good it might be,” said wireless analyst Chetan Sharma.

For Verizon, a lot is at stake. The No. 1 U.S. wireless carrier needs something of a super-marquee phone to counter Apple’s iPhone, which has put millions of consumers on the network of its exclusive carrier, AT&T, many of whom are left to regularly carp about dropped calls. Thanks largely to the iPhone, AT&T last quarter added more contract customers than Verizon for the first time in recent history.

Others say Droid will post solid sales, but don’t expect a blockbuster.

“It’s going to be successful within the Verizon network, but it’s not going to come at the expense of the iPhone,” said Matt Thornton, an analyst at Avian Securities. “This device will slow subscriber attrition, but it’s difficult to woo subscribers to another network just for the phone. The iPhone has been the only one that’s able to do that.”

And once those customers settle on the Apple handset, it’ll be tough to tempt them to switch: The iPhone was the top-ranked brand on measures of user loyalty, according to a survey by Brand Keys that looked at 63 product categories. Moreover, for the first time in 12 years since the survey’s inception, three cellphone brands made the top 10 list of brands garnering the most loyalty — Samsung came in after the iPhone, and BlackBerry was ranked fourth.

“This says that cellphone brands are able to meet consumer expectations more than ever before,” said Brand Keys President Robert Passikoff, who also noted that consumer expectations towards smartphones are also higher than ever. This means it’s all the more critical for Droid to live up to the hype, which is partly being manufactured by Verizon. The carrier recently launched a teaser ad attacking the iPhone for all the things it can’t do, but Droid can, leading some to call the strategy risky.

Polo Embraces New Mobile Technology

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:26:46 -0400

Polo Ralph Lauren has long been out in front of its luxury and...

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:20:00 -0400

Polo Ralph Lauren has long been out in front of its luxury and fashion peers when it comes to technology. The brand was among the first to embrace e-commerce, and, in more recent history, it has been aggressive in its use of mobile marketing.

Last year alone, the company went live with a mobile commerce platform, began using QR Codes and launched its first iPhone app (this month it launched its second app around its Rugby brand). The “Make Your Own Rugby” iPhone app allows users to personalize rugby and polo shirts, as well as upload their photos to virtually try on the shirt. Leading the charge is David Lauren, senior VP-advertising, marketing and corporate communications. He also happens to be the son of chairman-CEO Ralph

Lauren. The 37-year-old took on the marketing role at Polo Ralph Lauren in 2001 and has held his current title for just over a year.

Mr. Lauren admits it’s a challenge to stay on the cutting edge while maintaining the brand’s timeless, lux image. Likewise, many competitors have been tentative when it comes to taking advantage of technology and social media.

But embracing technology gives Polo Ralph Lauren a competitive advantage, Mr. Lauren said. Quick response (QR) codes, which are bar codes that can be scanned with cellphones to get content associated with the product, for example, might not yet be widely used in the U.S., but in Japan they’re just another way to shop. When the U.S. catches up, Polo Ralph Lauren, which spent $171 million on advertising in fiscal year 2009 — down 9% from fiscal year 2008, according to the company — will be ready,

Mr. Lauren said. “We want to be exploring [technology] right now, so that our learning puts us ahead of the curve,” he said. “Each learning is a brick in the wall, and we want to be at the top of the wall when the floods come.” Why are so many fashion and luxury brands lagging behind when it comes to digital innovation? Mr. Lauren says for some brands, technology is not a natural extension of what they do. They’re trying to create a brand based around the technology that’s in front of them, and that’s doing it backwards. For many brands, their resources and talent are really not optimized to take on these new challenges, but they’re learning quickly, and that’s the beauty of technology.

Technologies that help us tell our story are interesting to us. We created something called 24-hour [window] shopping, which was interactive windows, which we launched with our efforts to promote the U.S. Open in 2006. The idea was that we were sponsoring the U.S. Open, and we wanted to make sure to explain the authenticity of our relationship with tennis.

We wanted to allow shoppers to shop the product in our window, but also to get tennis tips, learn about the U.S. Open and our relationship, read articles about the events and to even learn how to hit a backhand. It’s fun and entertaining for a customer that wants a new way to communicate with us. Ralph Lauren has been aggressive in mobile marketing and the success they have had over the last year has encouraged us to invest more. It takes our brand to a new place and opens up a new field of business.

When we launched our app [related to the fall 2008 collection] a year ago, there were two luxury brands, and now there are probably hundreds. Macy’s is going to be selling on mobile phones. It’s great to see all these brands innovating on the phone. It takes shopping and really makes it a part of your life. A single ad in a magazine with a dress or two is powerful, but being able to show 52 looks to someone standing on a corner in Texas [using their phone] is another way to touch them. We’re actually selling rugby shirts and sweaters and jackets and all kinds of products [using mobile technology].

We’re feeling very good about our efforts there. We know that we’re early, but that’s OK because we’re building a sensibility that is unique, and we’re exciting our customers.

Lauren felt it was necessary to embrace QR Codes. QR technology is something we discovered when we were opening our store in Japan about four or five years ago. It was very cool. We thought that it seemed so natural in Japan, where more people shop on their cell phones than on their computers. When we launched it, we got a lot of credit for being innovators, and many people have followed suit. There are early adopters and there are other people that will wait for the cell-phone explosion to come.

Mobile Marketing is a must for movie studios Mobile has become a...

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:35:00 -0400

Mobile Marketing is a must for movie studios

Mobile has become a go-to channel for film and television studios looking to build buzz for a new movie or show.

To promote Frank Miller’s film “The Spirit,” Lionsgate launched an iPhone application letting consumers project themselves photo-realistically into the digital realm.

“Mobile is always part of 360-degree marketing strategy for any new-release film that comes out, and increasing for new TV shows as well,” said Curt Marvis, president of digital media at Lionsgate, Santa Monica, CA.

“Our mobile strategy involves providing new, original content based on existing brands such as ‘Mad Men’ or ‘Weeds’ and figure out how to extend that through mobile channels,” he said. “We introduce new content via Web or via mobile or both, which encourages consumers to come back to traditional programming such as a theater or their TV.

“Mobile video is still in the early days, but we see a lot of potential.”

In addition to iPhone applications, Lionsgate has run SMS initiatives, mobile advertising campaigns, mobile sweepstakes, free mobile content and mobile video.

The studio is also working on releasing several gaming-based applications for the iPhone.

Overseas, Lionsgate has launched shows that were financed exclusively through revenues generated from mobile, and Mr. Marvis believes that in two-to-three years the mobile commerce ecosystem may be mature enough in the U.S. to generate massive mobile content sales.

“Definitely we’re huge believers in the mobile channel as a video channel, and the bandwidth will have a lot to do with that, but the concerns about the small screen-size are bullshit,” Mr. Marvis said.

As evidence he cited the “incredible” number of TV episodes consumers have bought via iTunes to watch on their iPhone.

Mr. Marvis also believes that mobile payments using one’s handset will be a game changer. He was excited about ARL/VRL audio-based location technology that integrates voice recognition and mobile coupons.

“You’ll be able to say a brand name or movie title, find where the closest retailer is or the closest theatres that are showing that movie, also giving you a $1 off coupon,” Mr. Marvis said. “There are some of the things we see going forward becoming really valuable for us.”

Also, better devices and better networks will mean more opportunities for brands to reach consumers via mobile and provide better content and a better experience.

“Once bandwidth starts to expand, five years from now the mobile channel will be a massively important contributor to our revenue,” Mr. Marvis said. “It will probably revolve around the forward-going notion among consumers that everything’s free, and the entire entertainment business is faced with different models to cope with that.

“There will be subscription services such as TV anywhere, where cable is also available on subscribers’ cell phone wherever they are, and it will be much more ad driven than it will be transactionally driven—brought to you by brand X, Y and Z,” he said.

Video

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:20:00 -0400

Mobile Marketing, The Big Picture

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:28:00 -0400

Years from now, when the mobile phone really is the remote control for life, historians will best be in position to gauge the 2007-09 contributions of Steve Jobs and Apple’s iPhone.

One may argue that the iPhone did more for the advancement of mobile marketing than any other piece of hardware.

According to a recent survey from Crowd Science, 38 percent of smart phone owners who don’t own an Apple iPhone would “probably” or “definitely” switch when making their next purchase. That article isn’t looking to demystify the iPhone, but it does aim to highlight an important point: Despite the unbounded enthusiasm for the device and the mania surrounding its mobile applications, the iPhone represents only a small fraction of today’s opportunity for marketers.

As of the end of second-quarter 2009, Apple had sold “only” 26 million iPhones, according to Apple (I agree the number is incredibly impressive, but let me finish). What this means is that there are approximately 244 million mobile phone subscribers in the U.S. who are not using the iPhone, according to statistics provided by CTIA.

Translation: If you are dedicating a significant amount of your marketing budget and effort to targeting just 9 percent of your potential audience, you’re selling yourself short.

The reality is that mobile marketing is not a one-hit wonder, but rather a robust pyramid comprised of several layers that individually and collectively can elevate a brand’s awareness and drive positive consumer action. At the bottom is SMS. According to CTIA, more than 160 million people in the U.S. are on a text plan and the average age of a “texter” is 38. Taking these numbers into account it should surprise no one to discover that SMS gives brands the greatest reach and taps into the behaviors and interests of hundreds of millions, all through a simple 160-character message. SMS is a proven mobile-marketing weapon that is driving brand awareness right now.

As you move up the pyramid, the next layer introduces mobile Web/WAP sites. According to the Kelsey Group, there are 54.5 million mobile Internet users on a regular basis. Add to that the fact that more than 172 million phones are capable of browsing the Web and it’s easy to the see the value these sites can bring to a brand.

Moving up the pyramid, you come to the social networking tier. Did you know that in January alone, comScore reports more than 27 million people accessed a social networking site from their mobile phone? Furthermore, experts from CCS Insight recently released the results of “Report on Mobile Internet Usage, 2009,” which found that a third of young adults are regularly accessing Facebook and Twitter from their mobile phones. By creating a branded Facebook page, companies can connect with this audience, giving them a chance to engage with the brands they care about as well as other brand devotees, all from their mobile phone.

On the next tier of our pyramid resides the mobile banner ad. The banner has been a core component of online advertising campaigns for years and now is making its mark in the mobile world. One example is Wiley Publishing. As part of its mobile marketing campaign, the makers of the For Dummies series launched a series of banners ads that in about three months delivered more than 1.3 million impressions and produced a 1.4 percent click-through rate, which is four times that of the more traditional online component, according to Wiley. This superior click-through rate agrees with findings from Verizon Wireless, which at the 2009 Mobile Advertising Degree conference shared its experiences. Specifically, Verizon found its mobile banner ad click-though rates to be 2 percent, compared to the .3 percent achieved from the online counterparts.

The final layer of the mobile-marketing pyramid ironically brings us right back to where we started — the mobile application. While it’s true that the number of iPhone users pales in comparison to the total number of mobile users, the fact is that adoption is growing and the power and influence of these applications will undoubtedly follow suit. Add to that the emergence of the BlackBerry App Store, the Google Android Application Store and the upcoming releases of the Windows Marketplace for Mobile (the new application store for Windows Mobile) and it’s easy to see how mobile applications will become more pervasive and influential. In fact, Jupiter reports that revenues from mobile applications will top $25 billion by 2014.

The mobile phone may fit nicely into your pocket, but mobile marketing’s limits reach much farther. Whether your brand taps into one layer or all layers, the opportunities exist to drive your brand to new heights, and the iPhone is just part of the equation.

Which Websites Widened Your World

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:43:23 -0400

Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, at least when speaking about the fast paced growth of the Web.

The first web page, ever,was published by Tim Berners-Lee in late 1990. The server on which it was hosted has long gone the way of obsolete computers. For those of us who did not know it was Berners-Lee who launched the first version of the World Wide Web…not Al Gore.

His first page…yikes!

In thinking about web sites that changed our world, you can go to the wonderful Wayback Machine, the site of Brewster Kahle’s Internet Archive project, to see what’s still visible from the early Web.

Since the archive project only got rolling in 1995, there’s little (if anything) from the early days. The first Amazon page that was archived is from 1999, for example; the first eBay page is dated June 14, 1997.

What’s striking about early web pages is how naive and under-designed they are by today’s standards. Not so surprising perhaps, but that was because in those days, websites were the province of techies, not designers. And bandwidth was scarce, so the graphics-intensive pages that we now take for granted were viewed as bad form because they stretched users’ dial-up links.

Another thing that is striking about my list is that the overwhelming majority are US-based. Friends Reunited is the only British representative. This isn’t really surprising it reflects a deep cultural divide. Americans tend to be early adopters of most things technological,

Anyway, 15 years on, we’ve a wide world of pages to choose from for the most influential sites to date.
Top of my list is,
eBay.com - the auction and shopping site
wikipedia.com - online community encyclopedia
napster.com - the music file sharing website
youtube.com - the video-sharing network
blogger.com – weblog publishing system

The next five rounding out my top ten are friendsreunited.com,drudgereport.com, myspace.com, amazon.com, slashdot.org, salon.com, craigslist.org, google.com, yahoo.com

Photo

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 13:22:15 -0400

Pay for your Big Mac with your phone.

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 13:20:00 -0400

Visitors to fast food outlets in Japan are able to pay for their burgers with their mobile phones. Dial “F” for fat! Japanese mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo has teamed up with McDonalds to offer electronic payments and special promotions for mobile users.

Some comments from the public reveal the consumers are certainly ready for this, “I’m excited that my phone company not only knows where I am at all time, they know that I like to super size my Big Mac!”

“度も有賀と五歳増す McDonalds!”

“This is so much easier than money!”

“バカイェン!”

Five marketing trends that will emerge from the recession.

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 16:19:00 -0400

I’m sure I’m not the first one to tell you: We’re in a recession.

The doom has advertisers pinching every penny and ad agencies continue to face facts and figures like these, from Forrester’s 2009 Global CMO Recession Survey: 71% of marketing budgets have been reduced this year, and more than half reported reductions greater than 20%.

But I have a unique take on the situation…well at least an optimistic take on it.

I think this might be the best thing that has happened to our industry in decades. Yes, you read this correctly. While I have empathy for those that have lost jobs and the extra pressure many of us are facing, it’s also forced us to innovate, reinvent ourselves, think more strategically, and most importantly bring a level of sophistication and maturity that has been desperately missing from digital advertising throughout most of the industry.

There are five trends I believe are reshaping the face of marketing.

1) We’re moving away from short-sighted, highly sales-driven marketing campaigns in favor of long-term brand platforms that use evergreen content to add value to your day.

Examples include Nike+, whose latest effort serves as an enabler of self-discovery and health and delivers a sense of community within the running world.

Bank of America’s Small Business Online Community is also a great example in that it helps business owners to share knowledge.

A final example is Kraft’s iFood Assistant iPhone app, which adds convenience to recipe planning.

All these initiatives gave something while asking for little or nothing in return. But they’ll ultimately help foster a relationship with the consumer that builds brand value, loyalty and engagement for less money than the cost of repetitive ad campaigns.

2) Distributed Content moves us more in line to the modern digital ecosystem. It’s fragmented and complex, with consumers interacting through many devices and sites. Modern digital marketers have recognized that in terms of the consumer, the center is everywhere. As a result, digital content is now designed to be syndicated, re-skinned and reformatted while still remaining relevant.

This evolution is pushing advertisers away from building million-dollar micro-sites and toward smart, tactical ideas that revolve around specific needs or even communities.

Now consumers can access similar content across primary websites, partner sites, widgets, applications, social presences, blogs and mobile devices. They can even enjoy entire rich experiences without ever visiting a primary brand site.

3) Customer service as marketing. While a great product or service backed up with great customer support or service remains your biggest asset in achieving success, never before has the vehicle of customer service become one your best methods for connecting with consumers in a social-media-driven web.

Big business is taking notice, with brands like Comcast and Dell changing consumer sentiment around their brands and engaging them in the communities in which they reside. Better yet, they are doing so in a way that feels natural and adds value to the conversation, all while driving additional sales, boosting loyalty, and lowering operational and marketing costs.

4) The increased us of next-generation listening and targeting. As the way people spend their time becomes increasingly fragmented and marketers continue to face growing pressures to demonstrate the value of our services, the tools we are using to do so have undergone a significant evolution.

More than 100 technology firms are offering variants of social-media-monitoring tools that measure not only references to key search terms but also the sentiment of the messaging around them. In doing so, these tools not only provide insight into customer behavior that extends miles beyond surveys and focus groups, they help to inform media strategies that include both media buying and influencer marketing.

5) As an industry we have moved beyond basic web and campaign analytics. Marketing firms are now able to monitor the entire customer life cycle with significantly more accuracy and then track the correlation between traditional, digital and commerce channels and customer conversion.

Metrics with deeper analytics and tracking are enabling meaningful insight. As a result, in its ongoing path to full maturity, digital marketing is finally adopting meaningful metrics that we can equate back to real business value. Now marketers are moving beyond digital-campaign measurement standards such as traffic and are instead mapping key performance indicators back to metrics and ultimately the conversation funnel, which includes the different levels of engagement — awareness, consideration, purchase intent, purchase and loyalty.

A massive recession is never a good thing, but it’s safe to say that someday we will find that some good came from it.

Ford Launches New Car on Facebook and Twitter?

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:26:29 -0400

Ford Motor has high hopes for Fiesta, a popular model abroad launching in the U.S. next year.

So how does it introduce the subcompact car to Americans? A massive ad blitz on TV? In-house promotions at dealers nationwide?

Nope.

In April, Ford tapped 100 top bloggers and gave them a Fiesta for six months. The catch: Once a month, they’re required to upload a video on YouTube about the car, and they’re encouraged to talk — no holds barred — about the Fiesta on their blogs, Facebook and Twitter.

“It’s extremely important to this company’s history,” says Scott Monty, whose job as head of social media at Ford was created about a year ago to take advantage of the growing social-networking wave. “It’s about culture change and adapting to this ongoing way of communicating. The bloggers are fully free to say what they want.”

Social-media services, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and countless other websites, have had a profound effect on how millions of Americans — especially those under 35 — interact with others (or don’t), shop and view brands. It’s a real-time digital lifestyle, powered by smartphones and netbooks, that often colors what products they purchase, how they view brands and where they spend most of their waking hours.

Marketers have noticed. Social-networking services increasingly are indispensable business tools, says Forrester Research. According to its survey of 1,217 business decision makers worldwide late last year, 95% use social networks to some extent.

And 53% of more than 300 marketers planned to increase social-media marketing spending this year, according to Forrester.

Clicks to Bricks

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:42:20 -0400

The economy is ripe for integration. Brick-and-click integration, that is.

Experts did not really predict it to happen quite this soon, and consumers did not seem willing to cooperate immediately, but all indications are that the various shopping channels are finally beginning to integrate.

Catalog users are leaning more heavily toward online shopping. Web retailers are beginning to understand the necessity of having a “real world” presence. And the public is increasingly flexible about where it is willing to shop.

A new report from Goldman Sachs, Harris Interactive and Nielsen//NetRatings offers the encouraging news that consumer online spending has increased 34 percent since the beginning of last November.

According to other analysts, consumers will spend US$10.25 billion online in this quarter, up 12 percent from one year ago.

In contrast, the word from brick-and-mortar retailers is that retail business is down when compared to this time last year.

All of the data adds up to the fact that American consumers are starting to make the online shopping channel part of their lives.

Mainstream retail operations are reporting surprisingly strong online sales. Williams Sonoma for example, reports its online sales are three times higher than a year ago.

Why? According to Bob Pittman, who recently was tapped to become the sole chief operating officer of AOL Time Warner, it is because Internet access has reached a “critical mass,” with two-thirds of American homes now online.

Speaking at a recent industry conference, Pittman said that “the Internet revolution is in full force,” and that despite a sluggish economy, online shopping is steady. Still, e-tail sales continue to make up just 1% of total retail sales, based on figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The key to pumping up that figure could be more aggressive attempts at integrating all channels, a process that is moving at a snail’s pace.

For example, a survey conducted by The E-Tailing Group, a Chicago-based Internet strategies consulting firm, revealed only 12 percent of e-tail sites allow consumers to pick up their purchases at brick-and-mortar locations.

On the plus side, 65 percent of the sites surveyed do offer Internet buyers the opportunity to return merchandise at stores, instead of through the mail or shipping companies.

In addition to making things easier for the consumer, merchants could benefit from more aggressive integration by using their already high-traffic offline operations to drive consumers online.

So far, although retailers are willing to publish the address of their Web site in ads and on shopping bags, they rarely feature Web promotions that would aggressively drive consumers to the site.

Additionally, those brick-and-click retailers that do manage to encourage shoppers to sign on could make the consumers feel more comfortable if the Web site looked more like the store. Familiarity helps.

The E-Tailing Group suggests retailers should promote features that the Web site offers that other channels, such as mail-order catalogs, cannot offer. For example, why not play up the advantages of online real-time inventory and instant checking of order status? Most Web sites now have these capabilities.

It appears a number of retailers are still hesitant to over-promote their Web sites, fearing they might kill the cash cow that fuels the rest of the machine. That probably stems from a traditional self-contained profit-center mindset.

Perhaps if their channels were more effectively integrated, retailers might capture a greater market share and generate increases in all profit centers.

Companies that have taken this type of approach are already seeing results. Land’s End for example, a company that has done an above-average job in integrating its channels, reports that nearly 20 percent of its sales now come from the Internet.

Lands’ End may emerge as one of the poster children for successful online selling, and its achievements will likely be the result of the power of integration.

What do you think? Let’s talk about it.