September 24, 2007 - by Todd Alchin
All roads lead to Rome ... dot com
Continuing on from my recent rant about how difficult a seduction is in 30 seconds (or 15, if you're particularly confident) I'd like to suggest the new call to action is the website visit.
And not necessarily to immediately close the deal, but to continue the courting ritual ... or to work the analogy, the "cup of coffee back at my place".
It suggests a new role for mass communications: to steer your date (or customer) to a place where you can charm the pants off them away from the din of the crowds and other potential suitors.
Far too often a brand's URL is treated as a mere mandatory inclusion in a TVC or print ad - like an ugly strapline, difficult to art direct, and worthy of only a fleeting moment of exposure, or 8 point font. The campaign is then evaluated against web traffic and disappointingly remedied by "more frequency" or some even less direct course of action.
A better approach might be to treat the ad as the invitation and the web experience as the date. Many single people will agree - a date at a bar is safe territory compared with the dinner date at home - which is tantalizingly more serious.
Obviously this has implications to ad messaging. There is an extra, more influential, step between the ad and the sale and communications should really do more direct people to it - not as a side effect of the ad, but as a main outcome.
Failure to take this step could mean a long, lonely walk home for many brands.
This article is posted in BRANDS / DIGITAL
September 13, 2007 - by Katie Chatfield
Mobile Messaging
I've been recently asked if mobile will ever be considered a serious channel by marketers...
Right this minute the mobile phone is bigger in its reach than the car, TV or internet.
Already in China, Japan and South Korea the majority of internet access is via mobile phone. In total over 750 million people access internet content via a mobile phone today
The Communities Dominate Brands post Putting 2.7 billion into context puts forward some great stats: There are 800 million cars, 850 million personal computers, 1.3 B fixed landline phones, 1.4 billion credit cards, 1.5 billion TV sets and at the beginning of 2007, 2.7 billion mobile phones. That's three times as many mobile phones as automobiles or personal computers. About twice as many mobile phone owners as those of fixed landline phones or credit cards. And almost twice as many mobile phones are in use as TV sets.
Australians love their mobile phones and there are more than 16.5 million mobile services in use in Australia, according to the Australian Communications Authority (ACA). We spend, on average, an hour on the mobile phone every day and 35 minutes of that is spent texting
It is inevitable that the mobile phone will become an important part of the communication mix. While the Australian telco's walled gardens and premium content focus have restricted advertising innovation, the times are changing.
It's important to keep reminding ourselvers that we are in the message delivery business. The ability for marketers to deliver timely and targeted messages to specific audiences is one reason that media planners still knock on the telco's doors. This, in addition to the mobile phone's ability to provide a procrastination destination and information a service for the 3.5 million people browsing the mobile internet in this country, means that there is a large and growing opportunity for brands to connect with their consumers by using this channel.
This article is posted in DIGITAL / TRENDS
September 11, 2007 - by Matt Perry
IKEA Hacker: A real world 'mash-up'
About six years ago, in the UK, IKEA launched a campaign called 'Throw Out Your Chintz'...it was a brilliant way of getting the UK to strip off the flock wallpaper (obviously flock is now inhenrently cool again but hey), throw out the chair and sideboard that you inherited from Nanna (again de-mob utility furnishings are de jour) and get yourself down to IKEA.
That was cool but this is even cooler. Now that those $15 stools and $50 shelving units are looking...well, decidely 2002...someone has come up with this little beauty. IKEA Hacker is brilliant! It's ingenious, it's creative and it ticks the box of sustainability too.
This article is posted in CREATIVITY / DIGITAL / TRENDS
September 10, 2007 - by Matt Perry
Nokia invents new marketing sub-genre
Nokia has followed up it's innovative N95 launch earlier this year with another ground breaking piece of marketing communications. They have supported the launch of the new N81 by rolling out an entirely new approach to music sponsorship called 'Spons-Pop'. Perhaps inspired by Hugh Grant the film Music & Lyrics, Nokia have launched Pop4Real. Cheesey certainly...however will it flog lots more plastic for those clever Norwegians?
This article is posted in BRAND EXPERIENCE / CREATIVITY / DIGITAL
September 5, 2007 - by Matt Perry
2007 WebTrends V2
The Communication industry really has become over complicated these days....
This article is posted in DIGITAL / TRENDS
September 4, 2007 - by Katie Chatfield
Return on Innovation
One of the most difficult questions for brands is: I know I need to be online...but how much do I need to spend?
Of course there is always a need for hard numbers, particularly around how much do you need/ can you get away with shifting online to get results.
A great question to ask is:
- if you took 5% away from the ATL TVC media budget
- what would you need to spend online to create the same reach and frequency to the conquest audience?
For one of our clients, bellamyhayden was recently able to evidence:
- that we could gain almost 3 times the exact target audience we needed to reach to make up the budget shift
- with less than half the budget
- delivering 4 times the time with brand
- and articulate the product benefit in a way the would also increase packaging recognition in channel.
Trying new channels needn't be a huge risk, and one of the underexplored benefits of digital engagement is the insights that can be gained.
For example at KraftFoods.com, the strategy is to empower the consumer with relevant information such as recipes and nutrition information; to demonstrate the values and attributes of Kraft's brands in interactive ways that can't be achieved offline; to involve consumers in the brands, and to help them integrate Kraft's brands into their everyday lives.
One involvement initiative that targets "millennials," young adults born between 1979 and 1994, is the Kraft Cooking School. Since many of these young adults haven't learned to cook at home, Kraft addresses their need with on-demand videos that explain basic tasks and methods needed to cook a meal. As many people in this group are online, it's an ideal way to reach them and involve them in Kraft's brands.
Insights Kraft wants to learn, and address, about its consumers include things such as which consumer behaviors Kraft wants to change or reinforce and whether the experience should be emotional or functional.
Kathleen Olvany Riordan, VP of global digital marketing strategy at Kraft Foods, explains: "In traditional advertising, the rule has always been 'think of one thing you want to say.' With digital marketing, it's 'think of one thing you want the consumer to do. It's not whether we gain the consumer's attention -- it's whether they give it to us."