Posted by truecreek on July 20, 2009 under Opinions. Everyone has them. | 
By Seth Godin.
The bike shop is busy in June. If you bring your bike in for a tune up, it will cost $39 and take a week.
A week!
What if someone says, “I have a bike trip coming up in three days, can you do it by then?”
At most bike shops, the answer is a shrug, followed by, “I’m sorry, we’re swamped.”
The problem with telling people to go away is that they go away. And the problem with treating all customers the same is that customers aren’t the same. They’re different and they demand to be treated (and are often willing to pay) differently.
So, why not smile and say, “Oh, wow, that’s a rush. We can do it, but it’s expensive. It’ll cost you $90. I know that’s a lot, but there you go.”
Outcome: Maybe they’ll still leave. But maybe they’ll happily pay you for the privilege of doing business with you. Why should this be your choice, not theirs?
If you do tax accounting for mid-size businesses, why not offer a special last-minute service? A service in which you process shoeboxes filled with unsorted papers? A service that costs less but happens during your slow season?
There are two really good reasons to turn down special requests:
1. Because you’re marketing yourself as extremely busy and perfectly willing to turn down good work.
2. Because you want to market yourself as someone who is a rigid artist, a stick in the mud or a crotchety perfectionist. This works great for pizza places.
Posted by truecreek on July 1, 2009 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
By Carmine Gallo
It’s the best way to grab potential customers’ attention and warm them to your pitch. Here are some tips:
During a business trip in Reno, Mario Moretti Polegato took a walk in the Nevada desert. His feet began to hurt in his rubber-soled shoes, so he took out a pocket knife and cut holes in the soles for ventilation. When he returned to his home in Italy, he manufactured a special insole that lets perspiration out without letting water in. Polegato is now the chairman of the Geox shoe company. Polegato recounted that story in a recent interview in The New York Times. The same story is told on the Geox Web site, along with a photo of Polegato and the shoes he cut holes in during that fateful walk.
Most business communication is dry, writes David Meerman Scott in his new book, World Wide Rave. “People love to share stories. When someone says: ‘Let me tell you a story…’ you’re interested, right? When someone says: ‘Let me tell you about my company’s product&’ is your reaction the same? It doesn’t sound like a way you want to spend your valuable time, does it? Stories are exciting.” Tell more stories to create excitement. Consider employing the following tips in your next business presentation:
Tell stories about yourself. Stories can be incorporated into almost any business communication—blogs, Web sites, and especially face-to-face presentations where you have the best opportunity to make a strong emotional connection with your audience. In September 2007, Brad Nierenberg, CEO of RedPeg Marketing in Alexandria, Va., pitched a project to Gaylord National, a massive new resort outside Washington, D.C. He, along with several other members of the team, competed for the account to publicize the hotel’s hiring event the following year.
Nierenberg told me the team members told stories about themselves in the first slides of the pitch, connecting those stories to the roles each would play on the account. For example, the account lead showed a photo of herself as a young cheerleader and discussed how her role is to lead with precision and to keep spirits high. Nierenberg brought a picture of himself as a 6-year old in a cowboy outfit. As the “sheriff” in town, he might not be on the account every day, but he would be available to make sure “all was right in the town of Gaylord.” Nierenberg knew the stories were making on impact on his audience from the smiles on their faces. “They couldn’t wait for the next story,” he said. The attendees even asked for copies of the photos to show the other decision makers. RedPeg won the account.
Tell someone else’s story. “In a mental world, it is ideas that shape behavior, and it is the transformational leader’s job to package the right kind of ideas into a story and to effectively communicate it to the organization,” according to Charles S. Jacobs in Management Rewired. Note that Jacobs doesn’t say that a leader’s job is to tell his story. Personal stories work best in some cases, but not all. Sometimes your clients’ stories are more relevant than your own. For example, Eastcastle Place is an independent living complex for seniors in Milwaukee, Wis. Chicago-based Celtic Marketing, Eastcastles’ advertising agency, decided to use storytelling in its 2008-09 marketing plan. According to Celtic President Marlene Byrne, research demonstrated that seniors were interested in independent living but feared making the move. They assumed the transition would be stressful financially and emotionally. “We felt the best way to show them that moving doesn’t have to be overwhelming was to share stories of Eastcastle residents who already made the move and were happy they did.” Stories of real residents (along with their photographs) appeared in direct mail and public advertising.
The purpose of the Eastcastle ads are not to make a sale over the phone but to inspire prospects to visit the community. More often than not, a story doesn’t make the sale. Stories open the door, making a prospect more receptive to the message. Although I’ve never owned a pair of Geox shoes, on my next visit to Nordstrom, I will probably look at a pair and think about the guy who poked holes in shoes in the Nevada desert.
If you want to connect with your audience, inspire them, and motivate them to action, start telling stories.
Posted by truecreek on June 23, 2009 under More Dam News |
1. As for what potential suppliers shouldn’t do: “It’s the basics. Never lie or cheat us. You shouldn’t make a promise and not be able to keep it. Nothing disappoints us more than have an empty shelf and have to explain that to a customer.”
2. “We are really in the business of taking care of our customers.”
3. He suggested that the CE industry should “focus on simplicity [and] get away from bells and whistles. The majority of customers not tech-heads. They just want a good experience and good things to happen.
4. Categories that are introduced which are too complicated,” he noted, “won’t come into market.”
5. “Commoditization does not mean sameness to me. It isn’t a four-letter word. For the customer it means ‘I can afford it and understand it.’ This industry thrives on innovation … and the faster consumers understand technology the faster it reaches more people.”
6. “Our model is not to become a high-cost A/V specialist. Everyone has their place and the mass customer is more educated than ever before.”
7. And when it comes to new technology in the near future that will drive business, Severson said “the digital shift in media,” flat-panel TVs that feature IPTV, 3-D TVs and mobile video should all be standouts.
8. Looking back, Severson was pleased with the relatively smooth DTV conversion. “The industry, in conjunction with CEA, retailers, government and broadcasters, did a great job.” He said the biggest surprise for him was that “converter-box sales would be a big blowout item. We were really wrong and underestimated what the government and the broadcasters would do on awareness to see how much it would happen. It was a big surprise and a phenomenally successful item.”
Posted by truecreek on May 29, 2009 under More Dam News |
We’ve been discussing this exact same thing with clients for several months now and it seems like we’re almost there. Brand advertising on TV will once again be back in vogue, with some nice budgets behind it.
By Mark Dolliver
Will ad agencies need to wait until the recession has certifiably ended before they see a rebound in their clients’ spending? A survey released today by the Association of National Advertisers gives a glimmer of hope that marketers’ expenditures will turn upward sooner than that.
In online polling last month among members of the ANA’s Brand Marketer Leadership Community panel, 68 percent of respondents said they plan boost their media budgets as the economy recovers; 41 percent said they’ll increase their spending on social networking/word of mouth. As for the timing, 73 percent said “they would ideally implement these increased marketing activities three to six months before the recession ends, and an additional 16 percent as soon as it ends.”
A renewed focus on long-term brand-building will represent a shift from what many marketers have been doing as the recession deepened. The ANA’s report of the findings says two-thirds of marketers “have shifted their emphasis to more short-term strategies in the last six months.” Such a shift is reflected in the answers respondents gave when asked to cite the areas in which they’ve cut back. Fifty-six percent said they’ve cut media budgets, and 41 percent said the same about sponsorship/events activities. The activity most likely to have been increased amid the recession: “pricing deals,” cited by 47 percent of respondents.
For all the flux in marketers’ use of media, TV remained atop the standings when respondents were asked to say which media are effective for building brand equity. Sixty-four percent cited TV. Though down from 80 percent in a similar February 2007 poll, that still put TV ahead of online (61 percent) and “guerrilla/word of mouth/buzz marketing” (57 percent). Lagging farther behind were magazines (51 percent, down from 67 percent in 2007), radio (30 percent, down from 36 percent), outdoor (26 percent, down from 35 percent) and newspapers (19 percent, down from 36 percent). Social media garnered the most mentions as “the media channel that marketers would like to use but have not yet been able to implement.”
Elsewhere in the survey (conducted in conjunction with marketing-services firm ‘mktg’), respondents were asked about the factors they watch most closely as indicators of “brand health” — i.e., the degree to which brand equity is increasing or declining. “Customer experience/satisfaction” was cited by 48 percent of respondents — up from 37 percent in the 2007 poll. “There is less focus on traditional metrics such as brand image and awareness, which tend to be lagging indicators of brand health,” says the ANA report of the findings.
Tags: Ad Business, Advertising, advertising agency in alexandria virginia, advertising agency in DC, advertising agency in northern VA, advertising agency in Northern Virginia, brand, brand strategy, Commercials, Research, strategy, television advertising
Posted by truecreek on May 27, 2009 under More Dam News |
By Jonah Bloom
There are many ads today from our imperiled banks, insurance companies and automakers telling us that we can still trust them and should still buy their products. But there’s one word consumers haven’t heard much that might serve these companies better than their current dirges: sorry.
That thought came to mind as a rash of “We’re sorry” ads broke out recently across the pond in the U.K. As a native of Britain, I should note that being sorry is our national pastime. (My parents, who are always profoundly apologetic, often on my behalf, fondly recall the time I briefly knocked out my 10-year-old self by walking into a parking meter and came to fuzzily apologizing to said inanimate object.) I’ve often wondered whether this propensity has anything to do with some deep-seated national guilt at the many atrocities committed by our former empire.
Regardless of its origins, these days it manifests itself in nothing more serious than an underwear manufacturer apologizing for charging bigger-breasted women more for bigger bras. Yes, Marks & Spencer recently ran a national campaign apologizing for this. The headline, of course: “We boobed.”
This mea culpa hit more or less at the same time London’s Evening Standard newspaper, relaunching under new ownership, ran a major outdoor campaign saying sorry: “Sorry for Losing Touch,” “Sorry for Being Negative,” and so on.
Sunny Delight also decided to confess its sins. It’s running ads in a number of U.K. women’s weeklies, with the wording: “Britain’s mums told us where to stick the artificial ingredients. And it wasn’t in the bottle.” The drink has been relaunched as a healthful option.
Apologizing in ads isn’t new. Under fire, it’s crisis 101. In the auto industry, we’ve seen many variations, from Renault apologizing to the French people for its various missteps in the early ’90s to various apologies alongside product recalls to GM’s semi-apologetic “Road to Redemption” campaign.
Yet despite a mountain of evidence that American people feel they’ve been let down by car companies, banks, insurers and, indeed, corporate America as a whole, we haven’t heard a whole lot of sorry.
Doug Wojcieszak, author of an apology-strategy book called “Sorry Works!” and founder of a company by the same name, says it’s not a cultural thing, and that, in fact, sorry works in the U.S. “It works very well here because of our immigrant culture. Many of us screwed up elsewhere, that’s why we’re here. Americans get mistakes — they just don’t get or like coverups.”
Perhaps the problem is CEOs and lawyers don’t want to admit culpability for anything that’s gone wrong. But even that doesn’t stand up as an excuse, according to Mr. Wojcieszak. Most of his work has been in the litigation minefield of health care, where he’s building a growing body of evidence that failure to apologize is often a key factor in malpractice becoming a lawsuit, and, conversely, that apologies defuse more potential legal situations than they create. “Even senior health-care executives are starting to understand that apologizing actually takes away the urge to litigate,” he says.
Of course, as any savvy marketer, or properly-adjusted human being, knows, there are two conditions that have to be met for contrition to mean anything. You have to mean it, and you have to be able to show meaningful ways in which you’re changing whatever it was you’re apologizing for.
But assuming that many of the people at America’s bailed-out banks and automakers probably are pretty sorry about way they mismanaged their businesses about now, I can’t help thinking that it’d be a valuable start for a bunch of companies generally regarded as having been too arrogant to see the mistakes they were making to share their regrets with the public.
Posted by truecreek on May 22, 2009 under More Dam News |
By Eliot Van Buskirk
TuneCore is poised to partner with Amazon’s on-demand CD-printing-and-distribution service, Wired.com has learned. It’s a deal that could put powerful new physical publishing options in the hands of musicians, even as the world goes increasingly digital.
The service is expected to be announced Thursday, linking Amazon with TuneCore, a novel digital distribution startup that’s made waves signing the likes of Trent Reznor, Keith Richards and other stars seeking a way out of the label system, as well as slews of garage bands and hopefuls on their way up.
Tunecore will charge just $31 a year in upfront fees to handle a 10-track CD from pressing to delivery, passing all other costs through to the buyer. In other words, the service promises to remove nearly all of the risks of short-run CD manufacturing, which can cost musicians hundreds or even thousands of dollars for discs that rarely sell enough to cover expenses.
“As an artist, you have unlimited physical inventory, made on demand, with no upfront costs and worldwide distribution to anyone who orders it at Amazon.com,” said TuneCore CEO Jeff Price, formerly of indie label SpinArt Records (Pixies, KaitO, Apollo Sunshine).
The deal comes as physical music sales are tanking and as major CD distributors like Amazon seek to evolve to a digital model. Yet Price suggests that there may be life left in good old physical storage media, with a slight twist. Why would people buy music on CD if it’s also available in iTunes, Amazon MP3 and other digital stores?
“Why not?” responds Price, who says he believes the costs are so low it will makes sense for lots of bands to try it out. “Let the music fan decide how they want the music.”
In addition to competing with downloads and streaming, one obvious drawback to this model is that you can’t sell an on-demand CD at shows, where enthusiastic fans are most likely to pick one up. But Price says labels wondering why artists still need them now have yet another thing to worry about. When you can sell CDs on Amazon for 30 bucks, who needs a label? Certainly not Reznor, an early TuneCore adopter who once paid the service 38 bucks to distribute a quadruple-length album through Amazon MP3.
Amazon already offered on-demand CD printing through its CreateSpace acquisition, for a flat fee of $5 per disc. TuneCore’s massive footprint means far more bands will use that service, because it’s now just another checkbox in the system they already use.
For TuneCore, the deal expands its primary business helping indie artists get digital distribution through online outlets such as iTunes, Napster and Amazon MP3. TuneCore will now compete directly with CDBaby, the current leader in low-volume CD manufacturing and distribution. CDBaby charges $278 for 100 discs, although it recently lowered its minimum order to just five copies.
Brooklyn-based TuneCore gave us a peek inside its accounting system, which shows the most successful artists on the service regularly earning upwards of $20,000 per month. Chump change this is not.
As with its digital distribution service, TuneCore passes 100 percent of Amazon’s payout to the artist — about 40 percent of the retail price. If one of Amazon’s 80 million customers buys your 10-song CD on Amazon for $8.98, you’ll receive $3.59. After selling just nine discs, you’re in the black. TuneCore takes care of the UPC code, artwork, bar code, CD label design and so on, so that artists can concentrate on writing songs — and cashing checks.
The on-demand CD partnership with Amazon is just the latest in a long string of successes for the 2006 startup, whose distribution catalog dwarfs those of the labels.
“There’s more music released in one day on TuneCore than there is on a major [label] in the course of a year — in three days, more than all the majors combined, and within a month, all the majors and indies combined,” explained Price. “TuneCore artists have generated over $32 million in revenue from music sales over the past 22 months.
“Some of the artists, frankly, have been selling more than the Billboard Top 40 artists,” he added. “It’s just not being picked up by the mainstream places [like SoundScan] that track sales.”
As their label contracts expire, some fairly heavy hitters are signing up for TuneCore. In addition to Reznor and Richards, the service now handles distribution duties for Joan Jett and other luminaries. But unsigned bands are always found among TuneCore’s top sellers. For instance, Never Shout Never sold over 250,000 songs in 60 days, as well as 30,000 T-shirts (also handled by TuneCore).
Universal Music Group — the biggest record label in the world — has also partnered with TuneCore to offer additional services to its indie artists. For $50, Universal’s Grammy-winning producers will master your music for CD before it gets distributed. And for another as-yet undisclosed fee, Universal’s art department will also design the high-resolution PDF that iTunes now requires with each album submission — all they need is four images and the names of your songs.
Posted by truecreek on May 21, 2009 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
By Maki
I’ve signed up for a Twitter account a long time ago and used it sporadically because it never really did appeal to me. Last week I decided to give it another chance and installed Snitter, a desktop application for Twitter.
I started using it actively and gradually developed an avid interest. I think Twitter is a manageable process that can be adopted for all types of lifestyles, busy or inactive. You’ll just need to integrate it within your normal workflow. It’s addictive but once you understand how to use it, it’ll be a very effective tool indeed.
Having read a great deal of other articles on Twitter, I decided a do a quick summary of all the ways you can use Twitter for both your professional or personal life. Some of these methods go beyond the use of Twitter as a lifestreaming device:
1. Personal Branding. Twitter is a social media platform you can use to build your personal brand. It has the primary benefit of developing a casual persona and establishes you as a social personality that is connected and approachable. As Twitter adoption increases, new users will be drawn towards well established Twitter personas.
2. Get Feedback. Need an alternative perspective on how a website looks or the right course of action to take? Blast out a message asking for advice and you’ll receive replies from other users. This collective intelligence can be used as fodder for articles or projects.
3. Hire People. Need a good logo designer, marketer or programmer? Send out a message asking for recommendations. This is a very quick and easy way to hire freelancers or even companies based on familiar recommendations.
4. Direct traffic. Twitter can be used to get traffic to your websites or the sites of friends. If you ask your friends to tweet about it, the message will spread faster and further as other active users pick it up. There is a viral nature to all types of news, even on a site like Twitter.
5. Read News. Twitter users often link to useful sites or articles and can be a source of scoops and alternative news. You can also subscribe to Twitter feeds for specific websites/conferences, which allows you to receive and view content quickly. This is very useful for active social news participants.
6. Make New Friends. Like any other social network, Twitter has a built-in function for you to befriend and track the messages of other users. This is an easy way for you connect with people outside of your usual circle. Make an effort to add active users you find interesting. A Twitter acquaintance can be developed into a long lasting friendship.
7. Network for benefits. Twitter can be used as a socializing platform for you to interact with other like-minded people, especially those in the same industry. It can be used to establish consistent and deeper relationships for future benefits such as testimonials or peer recommendations.
8. Use it as a ToDo list. Use Twitter to record down what you need to do while you are away from the computer. Mark the tweet as a favorite to file it for referencing. Another alternative is to use an Online task management service that is synced with Twitter. One example is Remember The Milk.
9. Business Management. Twitter can be used as a company intranet that connects employees to one another. Workers can liaise with each other when working on group projects. Particularly useful when certain workers go out often in the field. Updates could be set to private for security reasons.
10. Notify Your Customers. Set up a Twitter feed for the specific purpose of notifying customers when new products come in. Customers can subscribe via mobile or RSS for instant notification. Twitter can also be used to provide mini-updates for one-on-one clients.
11. Take Notes. Twitter provides you with an easy way to record important ideas or concepts you want to explore further. Include links relevant to ideas you want to explore. Note taking can also be done offline via mobile applications.
12. Event Updates. Businesses can use Twitter as a means to inform event participants and latest event happenings/changes. This is a hassle-free way of disseminating information, especially when you don’t have the means to set up a direct mobile link between you and the audience
13. Find Prospects. Twitter can be used as a means to find potential customers or clients online. Do a search for keywords related to your product on Twitter Search and then follow users. Tweet about topics parallel to your product and close prospects away from public channels by using direct messages or offline communications. Discretion and skill is needed in this area.
14. Provide Live coverage. Twitter’s message size limit prevents detailed coverage of events but it can allow you to provide real-time commentary which may help to spark further discussion or interest on the event as other Twitter users spread the message. Very useful for citizen journalism.
15. Time Management and Analysis. Twitter can simply be used to keep a detailed record of what you are doing every daily. This might be boring for others but this type of usage is useful when you want to analyze how you spend and manage your time.
16. Set Up Meetings. Twitter can help you organize impromptu meetups. For example, you can twitter a message while at a cafe, event or art gallery and arrange to meet fellow users at a specific spot. It’s an informal and casual way of arranging a meeting.
17. Acquire Votes. Send a link to your stories you’ve submitted in other social news sites like Digg. Sometimes your followers will vote up the stories because they agree with it. This allows you to acquire more support for your efforts on other social media websites.
Posted by truecreek on May 4, 2009 under More Dam News |
By Seth Godin.
Most marketers are busy trying to persuade people to buy their product. Confusion sets in, though, when you compare a pitch designed to get someone to buy any product in the category (you need an mp3 player because you can listen to music) vs. buying your product instead of the competition (ours is cheaper and bigger and better).
Are you trying to make the market bigger, or just grow your share?
When competing against a market dominator, your marketing generates more bang for the buck when you try to steal people who have already been persuaded to enter the category by the other guy.
This is the Newton running shoe story. Nike sells fitness, running, camaraderie, effort, glory. Newton sells “buy us instead of Nike.”
It doesn’t pay for an insurgent energy drink to sell “thirst” because much of that marketing will just get people to go buy the brands they’ve always bought. The opportunity instead is to provide leverage at the last possible moment in the buying cycle.
Getting new people to enter your market is hugely expensive. There’s no way I can persuade a non-book buyer to start buying books–I don’t have enough time or enough money.
This thinking rarely grows the market, though, so it falls on the market leader to figure out how to market well enough to get people into the category itself. The critical issue is to decide which one you’re doing. Are you working on whether or not someone should buy, or on which one they should buy once they realize a need? Do your employees have the same answer?
Posted by truecreek on April 25, 2009 under The Work |
Some nice card design from Pete Buttecali. And a nice tagline from Mike Matson. Of course.
Posted by truecreek on April 23, 2009 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
General Motors — facing a deadline to restructure its beleaguered operations — will shut down 13 of its 20 North American plants for several weeks this summer to allow its dealers to sell down overstuffed inventories. The shutdowns will reduce GM’s planned North American output by 190,000 units.
As I said in my previous post on the topic, “If Retailers Can Do It, Why Not the Automakers?”, it’s time for a sale.
According to CNN, GM has about 767,000 vehicles in U.S. dealer stock. While that’s 12% lower than the inventory last year, GM sales are about half what they were last year at this time. So they have a lot of cars on the dock. Even more on dealer lots and on the tarmac. The need to get rid of all that excess inventory is now the rationale as to why they are shutting down 13 plants this summer.
To me, that inventory is an asset that can, and should, be sold. At a price that will MOVE THE MARKET. The company should be doing everything in its power from a pricing standpoint to move those vehicles to add cash to their bottom line. Instead, we get ‘value add’ satellite radio for a year and an extended warranty.
Does anyone really believe that the margins for the automakers are so minute that they cannot develop an aggressive retail sales strategy based on percentage discounts? We’re in the midst of a virtual depression in the auto industry, so it just seems to me that now is the time for GM to whip out the big guns.
This is a company that would rather put thousands of people out of work over the summer rather than offer up their product at a sales price.
Think about it.
Posted by truecreek on April 22, 2009 under More Dam News |
By Wayne Friedman
Not all TV teen viewers are into new TV technology — at least not the ones that delay gratification.
According to a new study by Pangea Media, an online quiz technology company, and Ypulse, a digital youth media company, 65% of tween and teen users prefer to watch TV shows live. This contrasts with 25% who say they will view it using a DVR, and 10% who watch online.
Traditional TV genre programs also play better than new-style TV formats. Tweens/teens prefer scripted series 64% of the time versus reality TV, at 36%. They like programming on cable TV, at 77% of the time to network TV’s 23%.
But some prevailing trends seem to follow tweens/teens. Asked to forgo either TV or the Internet for a week, 77% of respondents overwhelmingly said it would be television. While 60% say they have seen an original Internet video series, 85% say they have never visited a TV show’s social-networking area. Most of tweens/teens online video viewing goes to YouTube, with a 50% score. Some 40% of the time, they go to a channel’s Web site, and 20% of the time, they head to iTunes.
Multitasking is still big among this group. They watch TV and are online 78% of the time, while TV and texting is at a 66% rate.
Television still influences their buying decisions. Sixty-six percent say they downloaded music because they heard it on a show; with 30% saying they purchased clothes because they were seen on a TV character.
Posted by truecreek on April 8, 2009 under More Dam News |
By DEBORAH YAO
WASHINGTON (AP) – You’re watching Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show,” when suddenly you see a commercial for the Mustang convertible you’ve been eyeing – with a special promotion from Ford, which knows you just ended your car lease. A button pops up on the screen. You click it with the remote and are asked whether you want more information about the car. You respond “yes.” Days later, an information packet arrives at your home, the address on file with your cable company.
This is the future of cable TV advertising: personal and targeted.
Cable TV operators are taking a page from online advertising behemoths like Google Inc. (GOOG) to bring these so-called “addressable” ads onto the television. “It hasn’t really been done on TV before,” said Mike Eason, chief data officer of Canoe Ventures, a group formed by the nation’s six largest cable operators to launch targeted and interactive ads on a national platform starting this summer.
They’re betting they can even one-up online ads because they also offer a full-screen experience – a car commercial plays much better on your TV than on your PC. As such, they hope to charge advertisers more.
The stakes are high: Cable companies get only a small portion of the $182 billion North American advertising market. Eason said the cable operators, which sell local ads on networks like Comedy Central, get roughly 10 percent of the commercial time on those channels. With targeting, they are hoping to expand that. But they have to tread carefully. Privacy advocates worry the practice opens the door to unwanted tracking of viewing habits so ads can target consumers’ likes or dislikes. They also fear it could lead to discrimination, such as poorer households getting ads for the worst auto-financing deals because they are deemed credit risks.
“You’ve got to tell people you’re doing it and you’ve got to give people a way to say no,” said Pam Dixon, executive director of World Privacy Forum in Carlsbad, Calif. “Otherwise, it’s just not fair.”
By the end of the year, Canoe will start rolling out ads that let consumers request information, such as the hypothetical one for the Mustang, industry executives said. Cable operators involved are Comcast Corp. (CMCSA), Cox Communications Inc., Time Warner Cable Inc. (TWC), Charter Communications Inc. (CHTR), Cablevision Systems Corp. (CVC) and Bright House Networks.
Initially, over the next two months, they’ll tailor ads by demographic profile of a community, such as age and income. So households in a youth-oriented neighborhood might get pitches for concerts, while those in higher-income areas might get exotic travel ads. Previously, cable could only target an entire metropolitan area or town. Ultimately, cable will target down to the ZIP code and individual household, although when that will happen isn’t clear.
That means eventually, while you and your neighbor could be watching “Iron Chef” on Food Network at the same time, you might see a commercial for golf clubs, because you had tuned to The Golf Channel earlier, while your neighbor would see an ad for Disney vacations, because she has young children who like to watch Nickelodeon.
Experian, a data collection and credit scoring company, will cull profile data and match them with information advertisers have on their consumers. The advertiser won’t know who will get the ads. Advertisers can also provide a customer list to Experian, which then can make a match. So an ad can be targeted toward someone who just ended a lease with Ford.
Niche ads aren’t new to television. Advertisers have long pitched beer and cars on sports programs and cosmetics on the female-heavy Hallmark Channel.
But cable hasn’t been able to get more specific until now. With better targeting, advertisers might pay more to run the same ad, but they’ll be reaching the audience most likely to buy, increasing the effectiveness. Advertisers will also be better able to measure how wisely their marketing dollars get spent, by keeping track of who responds. These are areas TV hasn’t done as well as online.
Canoe says it has already developed the technology and will start deploying it in May. The cable companies’ movement toward standardizing their systems on a common platform will aid in the deployment of these ads. What remains to be worked out are financial issues such as how cable operators and cable networks will share revenue.
There are signs that targeting works. Cablevision has just completed an ad trial involving 100,000 homes in Brooklyn, N.Y., in which it sold additional services to its own customers. For instance, someone who only subscribes to cable TV might get ads for adding phone and Internet services. Cablevision said it saw a double-digit percentage increase in sales in areas with targeted ads.
The company will roll out targeted ads to 500,000 homes in the New York area this summer. But privacy advocates such as Dixon worry that customers might not have a way to disable cable’s tracking of their viewing habits, and won’t likely have the option of another cable operator to buy from.
“If you’re sitting at home watching a cable TV box, you’re stuck,” Dixon said. “You’re looking at a version of television that no one else is getting. That’s a big deal.”
But Eason said despite its flaws, this is where TV advertising is heading – measurable ads. “This is the future for measurement on television,” he said.
Posted by truecreek on April 7, 2009 under The Work |
A pretty nice example of how a set of great headlines make for a compelling and effective direct campaign.
Posted by truecreek on April 6, 2009 under More Dam News |
By Heidi Dawley
Mar 19, 2009
Mobile internet may have taken time to find its footing with consumers, but now it is powering along, gaining users at a fast clip.
What’s more it has moved beyond just an occasional toy for a rapidly increasing group of people.
The number of people who access news and information on the internet on a daily basis more than doubled in the last year, rising to 22.4 million in January from 10.8 million in the same month in 2008, according to a new study from ComScore.
“It is now more than a novelty. It is something that is a utility,” says Mark Donovan, senior vice president for mobile at comScore.
The transformation for mobile stems directly from improved web technology and a dramatic improvement in content.
In many ways the change is similar to what happened with internet access via the PC some years ago. In the early days, when dial-up ruled and content was limited, people might surf a bit each month. It was still a novelty. It became a daily habit as more content became available and fast internet connections gained over dial-up.
“You saw how the computer became knitted into the fabric of their lives. That’s now happening with the mobile phone,” says Donovan.
Another factor is handsets that are handier for surfing, but as comScore points out, it’s not just smartphones like Apple’s iPhone. It found that 70 percent of people accessing mobile internet content were using phones with lesser features.
The big draw for mobile surfers is news and information. ComScore found that the number of mobile users who visited such sites on a daily basis has more than doubled, rising 107 percent, to 22.4 million, by January as compared the prior January.
But the fastest-growing category in terms of the number of daily users is social networks and blogs. The number accessing these sites was up 427 percent to 9.2 million.
The third-biggest category was financial services, trading stocks, and accessing bank accounts and the like. That was up 188 percent, to 3.2 million daily users. This is also a category that Donovan believes is likely to continue growing rapidly.
For advertisers the rapid shift to accessing the web via mobile phones makes this area far more appealing, says Donovan.
“We have shown that mobile is sizable audience, it is frequently used by 35 percent daily. Plus a big portion of those people are additive, in that advertiser wouldn’t get them by just advertising on the PC web,” he says.
He is referring to some previous comScore research that showed that light PC internet users are 30 percent more likely to be using the mobile internet. So mobile is a key way to reach them.
What’s more, the people who are surfing from their phones are a nice sweet spot for advertising, believes Donovan. They tend to be men ages 18-35, who are highly connected and highly distracted. The mobile phone is their connection to the digital world.
Posted by truecreek on March 28, 2009 under More Dam News |
Adult Americans spend an average of more than eight hours a day in front of screens — televisions, computer monitors, cellphones or other devices, according to a new study.
The study also found that live television in the home continues to attract the greatest amount of viewing time with the average American spending slightly more than five hours a day in front of the tube.
The figure drops to 210 minutes a day of average TV viewing time among 18-24 year olds but rises to 420 minutes a day among those aged 65 and older.
The “Video Consumer Mapping” study was conducted by Ball State University’s Center for Media Design (CMD) and Sequent Partners for the Nielsen-funded Council for Research Excellence (CRE).
For the year-long study, observers recorded the exposure of 350 subjects to four categories of screens: traditional television, computers, mobile devices and other screens such as store displays, movie screens and even GPS navigation units.
The study found the average amount of screen time for all age groups was “strikingly similar” at more than eight-and-a-half hours although the type of devices and duration used by the respective groups throughout the day varied.
It found that people aged 45 to 54 averaged the most daily screen time at just over nine-and-a-half hours.
The study did not include anyone under the age of 18.
Among other finds:
– computer video consumption tends to be quite small with an average time of just over two minutes a day.
– Adults spend an average of 6.5 minutes a day with videogame consoles with the number rising to 26 minutes a day among those aged 18-24
– Adults spend an average 142 minutes a day in front of computer screens
– Adults spend an average 20 minutes a day engaged with mobile devices with the highest usage — 43 minutes a day — among the 18-24 age group
“What differentiates this study from all other attempts to measure video exposure at the consumer level is its scale, the range of media covered and the fact that it is focused on consumers first and the media second,” said Mike Bloxham, director of insight and research for Ball State’s CMD.
“It’s not a study about TV or the Web or any other medium — it’s about how, where, how often and for how long consumers are exposed to all media.”
Posted by truecreek on March 27, 2009 under More Dam News, Research |
Well, it’s in. TV watching is still KING, by a long shot.
By Gary Levin, USA TODAY
Despite the quick spread of video to computers, cellphones and iPods, their use is more hype than reality, and TV watching hasn’t suffered.
Those are among the findings of a new $3.5 million study out today from the Council for Research Excellence, a group of top media researchers, funded by Nielsen. The study confirms similar findings in earlier reports but uses a more statistically reliable method of observation in which researchers followed 476 people for two 14-hour days and recorded all of their media usage and daily activities.
“If you ask people how much time they spent online yesterday, they’re going to give you a wrong answer; they don’t remember,” says Steve Sternberg, chief analyst at Magna Global, a major ad firm, and a member of the Council. “The idea of doing a study where you actually observe the user and keep track of all the media they’re using is compelling.”
The research, conducted in five cities last year by a team from Ball State University, showed adults ages 45 to 54 were the heaviest users of all electronic media, spending an average of 9.5 hours a day. All other adults spent about 8.5 hours on a combination of TV, computers, mobile devices and other screens.
That same crowd of Baby Boomers also spent more time on e-mail, instant messaging and DVR playback than other age groups.
But while 43% of TV viewers in the study watched some form of online video, they spent only a few minutes a day doing so.
Adults 65 and older spent seven hours a day watching live TV, by far the highest amount for any age group, though they were far less likely to use computers or cellphones. That TV usage is double the time spent by the youngest adults, ages 18 to 24, who conversely were the heaviest users of online video, cellphones, console video games and computer software.
Yet even that younger crowd spent just 5.5 minutes a day watching computer video.
Michael Bloxham, a Ball State researcher, says that since the study was conducted last spring and fall, “you might slowly be seeing growth in online video,” especially after sites such as Hulu began aggressive promotional campaigns. BlackBerrys, iPhones, DVRs and social-networking sites also have increased in popularity.
Those under 55 spent 27% of their time with media multitasking, researchers found, though TV was more frequently viewed by itself than computers. Adults were exposed to about 72 minutes of advertising a day across all media.
Posted by truecreek on March 24, 2009 under More Dam News |
eMarketer
Worldwide communication in the future will be done through mobile devices.
According to TNS Global, 74% of the world’s digital messages were sent through a mobile device in January 2009, a 15% increase over the previous year.
In emerging markets, the trend is even more dramatic; nine out of 10 messages are sent via mobile.
Some of the growth can be attributed to mobile instant messaging. Thirteen percent of all mobile subscribers used the feature, but 41% of smartphone users did so.
Other increases in mobile usage can be attributed to the abandonment of fixed-line telephones.
“As mobile devices slowly take away usage share from fixed services in developed markets, in emerging markets consumers are more likely to by-pass fixed communications altogether and go straight to mobiles,” said Sam Curtis of TNS.
As for developed countries, the PC e-mail remains the most popular message method, but its use is waning.
In Japan, 40 out of 100 e-mails sent are from a mobile device. In North America, 69% of those using e-mail on their mobile phone use it daily, high compared with 43% worldwide.
The trend will increase, TNS says, as smartphones such as the popular iPhone enter the marketplace and gain share.
Posted by truecreek on March 20, 2009 under More Dam News, Research |
By Mark Dolliver.
NEW YORK Not so long ago, a report on Hispanic Americans’ Internet usage would likely have been focusing on a “digital divide,” with Hispanic and other minorities lagging far behind the general population in online access and activity. The title of a Scarborough Research report released today, “The Power of the Hispanic Consumer Online,” gives a quick hint at how times have changed. The report finds Hispanic Internet users to be “avid downloaders of digital content,” thanks in part to a broadband adoption rate mirroring that of the nation’s overall online population.
Scarborough says 54 percent of Hispanic adults are online, vs. 69 percent of total U.S. adults. (If anything, the gap is likely to be narrower now, as the national data for the report were gathered between February 2007 and March 2008.) Among Hispanics who are online, 68 percent have a broadband connection in their household, as do 71 percent of U.S. Internet users in general.
In Scarborough’s polling, 42 percent of Hispanic Internet users (vs. 35 percent of Internet users in general) reported downloading some sort of digital content in the 30 days before being questioned. And what have they been downloading? As with the total online population, Hispanic Internet users are most likely to be latching onto music. Thirty-two percent of wired Hispanics reported having done so in the previous 30 days, vs. 24 percent of Internet users in general. Seventeen percent of online Hispanics (and 14 percent of all wired respondents) reported downloading something in the catchall “other video” category within that period.
Fewer Hispanic respondents said they’d downloaded audio clips (11 percent), movies (9 percent), TV programs (8 percent), video games (6 percent) or podcasts (3 percent) within that 30-day period. Aside from podcasts, the incidence of downloading in each category was slightly lower among Internet users in general than it was for the study’s Hispanic respondents. Scarborough (a joint venture between Arbitron and AdweekMedia parent The Nielsen Co.) notes that younger Hispanic adults were, as you’d expect, more likely than their elders to have downloaded digital content in the previous 30 days, with 51 percent of the 18-34-year-olds saying they’d done so.
Another section of the report notes that mobile devices are “an important point of Internet entry” for Hispanic adults. Among Hispanic cell-phone subscribers, 55 percent use it for text messaging, 28 percent for picture messaging, 22 percent for instant messaging, 15 percent for downloading video games, 15 percent for e-mail and 11 percent for “other” Internet usage. Here again, the polling finds Hispanic respondents more likely than cell-phone users in general to use the device in these ways.
When it comes to buying online, Scarborough found Hispanic Internet users lagging behind the total online population — but not by much. Sixty-two percent of online Hispanic adults reported having made at least one online purchase in the previous 12 months, vs. 70 percent of Internet users in general. Among those who did make such purchases, the average spent in the previous 12 months was $762 for Hispanic respondents and $861 for Internet users generally.
The report also took a look at some metro areas that have disproportionate numbers of Hispanic adults. Among the findings about these markets: The incidence of broadband access among online Hispanics was particularly high in Miami (76 percent), San Francisco (75 percent) and New York (72 percent). The incidence of past-30-day downloading among Hispanic Internet users was highest in Phoenix (60 percent). The average amount of online spending, among Hispanics who’d made any online purchase in the prior 12 months, was highest in New York (at $883), San Francisco ($879) and Phoenix ($831).
Posted by truecreek on March 19, 2009 under More Dam News |
From Knowledge@Wharton:
Heartland Payment Systems, a credit card processor, may have had up to 100 million records exposed to malicious hackers. Payment processors CheckFree and RBS Worldpay, and employment site Monster.com have all reported data breaches in recent months, as have universities and government agencies. Experts at Wharton say that personal data is increasingly a liability for companies, and suggest that part of the solution may be minimizing the customer information these companies keep.
Indeed, according to Wharton marketing professors Eric Bradlow and Peter Fader companies should deploy a technique called “data minimization.” The concept: Keep the customer data a company needs for competitive advantage and purge the rest. “I think there is a fear and paranoia among companies that … if they don’t keep every little piece of information on a customer, they [can't function],” says Bradlow. “Companies continue to squirrel away data for a rainy day. We’re not saying throw data away meaninglessly, but use what you need for forecasting and get rid of the rest.”
The problem with the data hoarding approach is that companies can’t use most of the information they keep, adds Fader. Meanwhile, they become data pack rats, chasing an illusory dream of one-to-one marketing, which he says “is a myth. The best thing to do is aggregate information so companies can predict something like, ‘Among all people who bought five times or more, how many times are they likely to buy in the next year?’”
Fader and Bradlow discussed data minimization concepts when they presented papers at the recent Wharton Information Security Best Practices Conference. Their papers illustrate how companies can still predict customer behavior even if they minimize the customer data they keep.
However, data minimization isn’t a panacea, argues Wharton operations and information management professor Eric Clemons. Some industries — such as insurance or credit card companies — may need to collect detailed customer data for competitive advantage. Meanwhile, companies that serve as pack rats for customer data are focusing on installing better defenses and procedures to protect information.
“The dominant argument of the day is that more data improves the accuracy of targeting,” says Andrea Matwyshyn, a legal studies and business ethics professor at Wharton. “But there are additional risks associated with storing that information. More may not always be better.”
Indeed, the cost of a data breach in 2008 was $202 per compromised record, up 2.5% from $197 per record in 2007, according to the Ponemon Institute, a Michigan group that researches and consults on privacy and information security issues. Ponemon’s estimates are based on interviews with companies that have suffered breaches to customer records that include credit card numbers and, in some cases, personally identifiable information. Following a data breach, companies often must hire security consultants, engage legal counsel and offer credit monitoring services to affected customers. The Institute also found that companies will lose customers in the year following a data breach. For example, health care and financial firms lost 6.5% and 5.5% of customers, respectively, after such incidents.
Fader and Bradlow argue that companies are taking on undue risk to their reputations by hoarding data with little business benefits. While companies generally disclose what data they keep in little-read privacy statements, consumers can still be surprised when breaches occur. “Companies are actively collecting data without realizing the work involved,” says Fader. “And given how companies are stretched thin, they can’t manage the data correctly. Keeping detailed data is a blessing and a curse.”
What to Keep?
The real challenge for companies is assessing what customer information they need to retain, says Fader, who adds that firms may be keeping an excessive amount of data because they can’t pinpoint what they actually want. “Data minimization involves more than just the data. You can’t minimize data until you know what to do with it. What data elements do you need to predict customer behavior?”
The inability to answer those tough questions, says Bradlow, could be one reason why companies default to storing as much data as possible — not the best strategy when it’s clear that many companies don’t know what to do with this data even when they have it.
Fader and Bradlow recommend a simple approach to data minimization. First, companies should figure out what information they need to track consumer behavior. Then, aggregate that information — including, for example, grocery bills, shopping frequencies and e-commerce sales for a retailer — over a defined period such as two to four months. With that aggregated information, a company can create histograms — graphical representations of aggregated data –and throw away original data.
Fader suggests that histograms offer accuracy rates close to individual targeting — without the risk. Purging individual information lowers costs because companies don’t have to secure information in transit, store and analyze data, and navigate a bevy of regulations across the globe. “Maintaining data warehousing is costly because the minute you keep data, you have to protect it,” says Bradlow. “Most firms realize they can’t do one-to-one targeting so why not only keep data that’s relevant?”
According to Matwyshyn, the discussion by Fader and Bradlow was an eye opener for privacy and legal experts at the Wharton security conference. What remains to be seen is whether privacy experts, marketers and security professionals can agree that data minimization is an important step. “The key is that there is discussion on the issue,” says Matwyshyn. “Marketers and privacy experts may not be as far apart as people presume.”
Fader and Bradlow acknowledge that the argument for data minimization is only just beginning. For data minimization to become the norm, a company’s management, privacy officers, legal counsel and marketing team will have to reach consensus on customer data collection. Legal and privacy experts are likely to support data minimization, while marketers will argue for keeping all the data they can collect.
Poaching Profitable Customers
In addition, data minimization practices will vary by industry. Clemons says that data can be a competitive advantage for many companies. For instance, Capital One used customer data to better segment its most profitable customers and poach similar ones from larger rivals. In this example, customer information led to varied pricing models — such as interest rates that varied by customer credit ratings — that maximized the profit from the top decile, or 10%, of customers. “Under the uniform pricing models of the mid 1990s, the top decile of customers produces 150 times more profit than average,” says Clemons. “Capital One found a way to attract the best customers away from other issuers.”
In a co-authored study, Clemons found that Capital One used what it calls an information-based strategy that allows the company to try varying approaches based on differences between itself and rivals. This strategy allowed Capital One to deploy a mass customization model. That model also generated returns, says Clemons. Capital One sustained double-digit returns on equity and double-digit increases in sales and profit growth due to its approach.
Clemons argues that storing customer data in bulk could lead to new pricing strategies. He agrees that one-to-one marketing is illusory at best, but a move to precision pricing — or figuring out exactly what an individual customer will pay — may warrant being a data pack rat. “I am not talking about pursuing some sort of illusory one-to-one marketing relationship with customers,” says Clemons. “I’m talking about making the transition to precision pricing, which does indeed require understanding your customer.”
Meanwhile, there’s another conundrum companies face: Data purged today could be valuable tomorrow. “Ten years ago, one of my clients wanted to purge his database. It was an insurance company, but once you purge your database, you know no more about your customers than a new entrant,” says Clemons. “That was okay under existing pricing models, but after any form of insurance deregulation, the information they were purging would have been enormously valuable.”
Ultimately, the choice to follow data minimization practices boils down to one question: What will a company do with the data?
“If you are collecting data just for its own purposes, follow a minimization approach,” suggests Matwyshyn. “If a company is doing something else with data, like selling it, then there’s no incentive to minimize the risk.”
Bradlow says data minimization has the potential to be one of the key security tools used by companies, even if it remains largely an academic concept today. “Security professionals will buy [data minimization]. Next, you have to convince the marketing world and begin giving talks outside the ivory tower. I think firms will start buying in.”
Posted by truecreek on February 10, 2009 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
Here’s a good start for your next creative brief.
Background/Overview: Why are we advertising?
Target audience: Who are we talking to?
Target audience: What do they currently think?
What is the objective, the purpose of the ad?
What do we want to say?
What distinguishes us from the competition?
What are the supporting rational and emotional ‘reasons to believe?
What type of relationship do we have with our customers, stated in human terms?
What have we done in the past that has been the most productive?
What do we need and when do we need it?
