2009. márc. 23.

European Online Marketing Spend to Hit 16B Euros, 2012

Spend on online marketing in Europe will double in the next five years, from around 7.5 billion euros in 2006 to more than 16 billion euros in 2012, according to a new Forrester report, "European Online Marketing Tops €16 Billion In 2012," reports MarketingCharts.

Online marketing - email, and search and display advertising - will account for 18 percent of total media budgets in Europe in five years, according to the projections.

The reason for this shift in spending is that audience and attention are moving online, according to Forrester:

  • Some 52 percent of Europeans are regularly online while at home, and 36 percent of online Europeans say that they watch less TV because they're online.
  • On average, they spend three hours per week more online than watching TV.
  • Consumers' reliance on online services is growing:
  • 36 percent of online adults have recently downloaded music online, and 20 percent have downloaded games
  • 35 percent have bid or sold in online auctions
  • Trust in many types of advertising is eroding: 67 percent of online consumers say advertisers don't tell the truth in ads.
  • 34 percent of online consumers say they don't mind ads if they relate to their interests.
  • 40 percent of online consumers trust price-comparison sites.
  • 36 percent of online consumers trust online product reviews from other users.

2009. márc. 16.

A book with a bit of me - Instead of Advertising

Foreword:

In a world of 'faster' and 'more', a new and formidable competitive force has emerged: the overhelming noise and clutter of the marketplace.
As a result, the mental walls customers erect to keep this clutter out have become one of the most important barriers for businesses. Barriers that are - for the first time - controlled by customers, not companies.

At the same time, traditional advertising approach is in a death spiral, Advertising has become too much, too intrusive, too artificial for people. Customers are faced with one-way, sales pitch conversations they don't like and information they don't trust any more. They are faced with too many products with too many - often irrelevant - features and too many messages over too many channels.

But as people turn their backs on intrusiveness, the advertising industry fights back with more of the same.
If there is too much noise, it shouts louder to be heard. To break through the clutter it overpromises and produces more empty claims.
All of this, however, only reinforces mistrust and evasion - the death spiral of diminishing effectiveness.

But is there an alternative to advertising? Can the industry reinvent itself? How do we break through the new barriers?
By finding ways to genuinely connect with customers. By building dialogues and trust.

Interaction Design for Marketing is all about how to create competitive advantage by meaningfully connecting with customers in a new reality using both old and new tools with a new approach. Instead of just advertising.

About the authors:
Mr. Csaba Mányai an economist and a historian who also holds a degree in tourism and in web marketing, has been providing marketing-strategy consultation for more than 10 years.
The book has been written with special contribution from Attila Bujtas, group creative director and strategy planner of Arcus Interactive Group. Mr. Bujtas is well known for his digital solutions that  has roots in classic advertising. He has worked on a number of award-winning image campaigns, including the Golden Drum Golden Watch-winning ElectroWorld opening campaign.


The book:

Content Strategy: The Care and Feeding of Your Biggest Brand Asset

How are we communicating - and demonstrating - our brand promises online? With our branded content, of course. In fact, our content is often what makes or breaks our customers' online experience. So why are agencies and their clients constantly forgetting to consider their online content until the eleventh hour?

Content strategy plans for useful, usable content. What should you publish, and why? Where? How? Who will own the content, both before and after launch?

Let's look past today's "bright shiny objects" towards a future where a company's (and their customers') content is treated like an asset, not an afterthought.

Do YOU Make These Internet Marketing Mistakes?

Short, simple, understandable.

Presentation to explain common mistakes and how to take an integrated approach to internet marketing. Topics include website design, search engine optimization, social media, pay per click advertising, and email marketing.

2009. márc. 12.

Google Privacy: Interest-based advertising

Shuman Ghosemajumder explains how Google shows interest-based ads and demonstrates how to edit your ads preferences or opt out of interest-based ads.

2009. márc. 8.

A must have book - The Brand Bubble

A best selling book by John Gerzema and Ad Lebar



Customer surveys show that the number of high-performance value-creating brands is diminishing across the board. Yet at the same time, businesses and financial markets keep raising brand valuations. The result? A brand bubble that could erase large portions of intangible value in your company and send another shockwave through the global economy.

The Brand Bubble provides both analysis and solution.

Excerpt

The Impending Brand Bubble

Now, another bubble is hiding in our economy. This bubble represents $4 trillion dollars in S&P market capitalization alone. It’s twice the size of the subprime mortgage market. And it accounts for over one-third of all shareholder value. Credible evidence suggests that financial markets think brands are worth more than the consumers who buy them. The constantly rising valuation of major brands is creating a brand bubble, one that could erase large portions of intangible value in firms and send a shockwave through the global economy.


Figure 1.1 illustrates the typical value exchange between brands and consumers. In essence, the multiples that markets place on brand value overstate actual consumer sentiment, so the value creation that brands bring is greatly exaggerated. That is, Wall Street is long on brands; consumers are short on brands.


Fissures are forming in the pillars of brand equity. This conclusion is based on our research of fifteen years of brand and financial data from Y&R’s BrandAsset Valuator (BAV), the world’s largest study of consumer attitudes and perceptions on brands. Working with professors from several leading business schools, we’ve identified a growing divergence between brand valuation and brand speculation. Our data indicates that investors are irrationally overvaluing brands, and that if leading companies don’t take steps to change their approach, more than a few of them might soon experience dramatic declines in market value.


Of course, this is not to suggest that some stellar brands are not genuinely outperforming the market and setting new standards in customer loyalty and financial performance. But in most cases, these are precisely the brands that serve as examples of what other companies must do to inject value back into their own brands. These are the brands consumers swoon over, tell their friends about, and buy time and time again. These are the brands that drive a company’s stock beyond the estimates of financial experts. These are the brands that create surprise earnings quarter after quarter.


The problem is these stellar brands are becoming fewer in number. In today’s changing consumer climate, exceptional brands are just that — exceptions. Most of the brands lining our supermarket shelves, hanging from department store racks, or touting their superiority on television are experiencing a rapid diminution of perceived value. Consumers are simply falling out of love with a majority of brands they buy.


This warning about the prices of assets such as brands being in decline is, without doubt, contrary to what most people believe. Just as with equities and property in past bubbles, the market values of brands have been consistently rising for decades. Even in today’s recessionary climate, brand valuations reports continue to proclaim consistently rising brand values each year. How then is a brand value collapse possible? Thousands of brands have experienced large and long-term successes driving their corporate stock in a continuous upward pattern, enriching executives and investors alike. What exactly is the nature of this bubble? Are we talking about a simple market correction that will be forgotten in a few months or a year? And, if that is so, then why bother with it?


In reality, this is not a simple market correction. Our research foretells a significant loss of value for many brands that will jolt business and investors alike. Markets, being about expectations, have pushed brand values to unsustainable levels, where the earnings potential imputed to thousands of brands far outstrips their value to the consumer. These expected future cash flows that brands are expected to account for have grown to become a dominant force in driving total business value. But their future value is unsustainable when we uncover and analyze the true state of most brands today.


As CEOs search for future pathways to growth, their brands now account for a growing proportion of total enterprise value. This means their brands are making bigger promises of future earnings. Are those earnings going to be there in the future? Have most companies properly discounted the risk on their rising brand values?


When future earnings are in question, it’s more than a brand problem; it’s a business problem. Most of the discussion surrounding the tectonic shifts in the digital, consumer, and media landscape has been held at the marketing and brand level. By examining these phenomena through the lens of brand value, we can see how new consumer behaviors are causing widespread perceptual damage to the values of all but a handful of brands. Let’s begin by examining the origins of the brand bubble . . . .

2009. márc. 7.

CMO Survey: Traditional Branding is ‘Broken’

An overwhelming majority (87%) of US CMOs and marketing managers believe that branding initiatives need to be more flexible today than in the past, and 63% think traditional brand positioning and advertising are losing their effectiveness and are “broken,” according to a survey from the Verse Group and Jupiter Research.


The research found that marketers believe the current economic crisis is accelerating their need to innovate to find new ways to position their brands across delivery platforms, at a time when marketing ROI is getting increased scrutiny from company management.

Key survey findings:
  • 62% of marketers say that traditional advertising efforts are no longer as effective as they once were in attracting new customers.

  • 62% are seeking breakthrough methods that are more effective than brand positioning.

  • 89% say that marketing is under greater scrutiny than ever before.

  • The top three trends marketers see are a shift to non-traditional media, the need to adopt brand stories and a growing use of design for competitive advantage.

As a result of the findings, Verse Group said that companies that adopt narrative-based branding strategies that cut across many delivery platforms have greater success potential than those who don’t.

“If companies such as GM, Dell and Sony are to regain their competitiveness, they have to retool their approach to marketing, not just their products,” said Randall Ringer, co-founder of Verse Group. “They need a compelling narrative to engage the hearts and minds of customers.”

Top Priorities for 2009

The survey also asked the same group of marketers about their top priorities for 2009, and uncovered two major themes that echo marketers’ views about branding initiatives. First, an across-the-board push for greater marketing accountability is adding increased pressure on marketers to prove the worth of their marketing dollars.

Second, as media consumption shifts online, marketers must find a better way to manage brands across multiple platforms in order to create a coherent brand experience across all platforms and customer touchpoints.

The following are the top priorities CMOs and senior marketers have for 2009:



  1. Achieving measurable ROI on marketing efforts.

  2. Developing marketing programs that integrate online and traditional media.

  3. Translating brand experience across different touchpoints.

  4. Cutting marketing budgets without cutting performance.

  5. Optimizing portfolio of brands.

According to Verse Group, the study highlights a sharp divide between marketers’ priorities and their current perceptions of existing branding tools. Nearly three-quarters (71%) say that managing their brand across multiple platforms is a big challenge for their organization and that there is a large gap between need and capability.

About the survey: This report is based on a quantitative research study designed by Jupiter Research in partnership with Verse Group. The study was fielded online among 101 marketing decision-makers between November 1 - 10, 2008. Respondents met the criteria of being either a CMO, VP of marketing, marketing director or marketing manager. All respondents are at companies with revenues of $250 million or greater, with 72% having revenues of $1 billion or greater. A wide range of industries were represented. The research study includes companies that market to B2Band B2C audiences.

Microsoft Advertising - Beyond the banner

Presentation on marketing possibilities that go beyond the banner.

2009. márc. 6.

2007 October(!): Dell Turns Up the Volume of the Customer Voice

Join Michael as he announces two new digital media tools designed to foster two-way communications with customers ...and have fun too!

Dell IdeaStorm allows customers to participate in the development and enhancement of Dell’s products and services by sharing their ideas online, and Your Stories now lets customers upload their own home-grow videos to StudioDell.

2009. márc. 2.

Web Overlay Sites: So hot right now

Posted by Ashley Ringrose @ bannerblog.com


Two new sites launched today and both utilize the browser in a unique way.




Skittles.com takes a nod from Modernista and Girl Smiles and goes site less. The site uses Youtube, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter search and Wikipedia for its content. All navigated by an interface that floats over the top. It might not be the best fit for the brand but it's different for such a big brand to take this route.

Note than when you click to Girl Smiles it takes you back and loads the site over the top. Genius

Adrants talks about Skittles site and how Modernista had to alter theirs when news of layoffs made it to the homepage. Will Skittles stick with this idea or change it up once the novalty wears off?


To promote the latest Ps3 game Killzone 2 (which looks awesome) Sony has taken the fight to the browser with the cleverly titled Killzone 2 Web Game

Battles triger randomly based on the sites you visit (myspace.com, Flickr.com both had attacks) and it's a simple shooter game which lets the sites take damage. If another friend logs in you play multi-player although this didn't seem to have the same enemies viewable. It's an interesting idea and the Firefox plugin was tiny (45k) and installed easily.

I do feel that a few more community or social elements to this could have made it more of a winner. And while the gameplay and vosual polish doesn't do the game justice the idea of a browser game is an interesting one.

Our squad is called "TRUFFLES" FTW ya bastards!

Browser Based Games (Passive Multi-player Online Games)

There are actually two companies with Browser Based games. That is games that inhabit your browser and play across the web.

Rocket On and PMOG have both been around for a year or so and both in BETA. Check them out they are an interesting twist to how you normally work with games and social networks.

Rather than read a bunch of stuff just watch these videos





I look forward to seeing these develop. If they only put Twitter in there as part of it you'd see many more people talking about them.

original post

Brands go Social

Posted by Ashley Ringrose @ bannerblog.com

Two sites launched last week for two brands that could not be more opposite. XXXX and Air NZ both releached sites that had previously been promotional focused and both had been full flash. Now they both go the HTML rouite and more importantly both have refocussed to become more "social" with content shared from Youtube and Flickr and AirNZ touting a forum.

Home Sweet As is the 3rd reinvention of the site. The original and Show Us Your Sweet spot both winning many awards and driving up a member database with interesting promotions. This version is more focussed on content or the social aspects with a forum for Expats.

Here's what Bob from HOST had to say;

In HSA #1 that was messages from home. In #2 (Sweet spot) it was about places/locations back home. Now it's more about content.

The first two promos were about building an audience through promotions (really high opt-in rates). Now we have an audience, we need to create a 'channel' to speak to them regularly. There are some classic vids on there which should resonate with kiwis.

A key bit of content (and only selly bit) is 'grabaseat' which has been live in NZ for a while now and is quite well known and popular. They're basically super cheap fares from unsold inventory. This'll be live on the site every few weeks and although anyone can get them ex-pats sorta get first dibs if they're part of home sweet as.

On the opposite side we have XXXX. Rebuilt by Holler Sydney the site


For those that don't know XXXX would be one of the lower end beers in Australia. However the work they are doing online and offline you'd hardly know this.

Between the Beach Cricket series, the boat making comp, the XXXX angels, and their V8 promotions you'd be hard pressed to say they aren't promoting theur brand than any other beer out there.

The Youtube Channel is well stocked, the tumblr blog is regularly updated, the Flickr account is a little barren and the Facebook fan page isn't rocking yet but it's much better than the other beer brands are doing online in Australia.

I wonder how many other brands will ditch their full flash site and start focussing more on content and the social aspects. They both have pros and cons, especially when your brand doesnt produce any content or there is no real plan to stoke the fires of the community and engage them.



I personally am working on sites for two major video game releases for Activision, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine Official Video Game. While it was tempting to create a big flash bang flash website the focus was definitely on the community and the fans. And compared to an airline or a brand of beer a video game has a much stronger and more vocal fan base. Which is seen by the 30,000 posts in the first month on this forum.

Activision are also looking beyond the single promotion for a game and looking at it as long term solution. HeroHQ is the official forum for the two releases and many more to come. So rather than setting up a promotion site for a game which dies 2 months after the release HeroHQ will allow the sites to snowball for each new release.

While I don't think we should get rid of the full flash site I think brands need to start thinking longer term about their marketing initiatives online. And it's not all about going social it's about fwd thinking 1-2 years in advance and maximizing your spend for longevity rather than a tiny spike that requires you to spend again.

I saw Mark Pollard talk about viral marketing as "Crack Marketing". You get a quick hit, it feels good but then a month later you need to get that buzz again. You end up in this vicious cycle of spending for short spikes of attention that in the end leaves you at ground level each time.
So get off the crack and start doing some low GI thinking with online marketing.

original post