ANA Marketing Maestros

Everyone is Talking Social Networks

While out recovering from surgery, I got to catch up on my giant stack of The New Yorker magazines (Dad gets it for me every Christmas). I was surprised to find an article (quite good too) on Facebook, the quickly growing social networking site (and virtual goldmine). When asked about the role of advertising in their business model, the founder of Facebook, said it had a place but was not relying on it heavily. Nice to see these new poster children from Silicon Valley are not following the steps of their predecessors.

'New Social Networks Mean Business' on the cover of the latest Fast Company and their bloggers are talking about a Marketing BlogJam. Great to see two of my favorite magazines talking about one of the most interesting topics in business innovation.

ANA Advice and Case Studies on Measures and Metrics

As advertisers ponder new media metrics such as engagement, and question why media has evolved but the measures and metrics have not, ANA members are beginning to experiment in this new space. 

But we caution our members to beware the results of one-off tests that may not be integrated into corporate objectives. We also counsel them to have a clear business case for new media tests.  At the ANA we present our members successful new media case studies. 

ANA members can view one such presentation on June 13 from 2:30 – 5:00 when Kevin George, VP Unilever,  will present the Unilever business case for new media at an ANA committee meeting.  ANA members can visit ana.net/committees for more information.

The Right Time for the Upfront!

Johnson & Johnson made news last week when they announced that they would not participate in the upfront. According to reports in the press, J&J is realigning its media planning and buying process to be more inalignment with its budgeting and planning timelines. The company is putting off making its TV buying deals until September; its commercial time from those deals will run January to December.

The timing of the upfront has been a source of frustration among other advertisers as well. At this year’s ANA Television Advertising Forum, clients were asked the question: How satisfied are you with the upfront in its current format? Only 33% were satisfied, while 56% were dissatisfied (the remainder were ambivalent).

When asked, “Would you prefer the upfront to move to a calendar year in order to more closely align with most client budget cycles?” a whopping 83% said yes.

In other ANA survey work we asked, “For your company’s business needs, what would be the ideal month for the upfront to take place?” 20% said September and another 21% said October; meanwhile only 8% said May and another 8% said June. Time and again we hear that the upfront timing is not aligned with corporate planning cycles and that a shift to later in the year, putting the upfront on a calendar year basis, would be desirable.

A classic principle of business is that the customer is always right.

Marketer Seeks "Collective Wisdom of the Blogosphere"

HP's VP of Global Marketing Strategy & Excellence Eric Kintz writes in his superb blog:

A Google search on Marketing Excellence ranked my blog #8 out of 72 million sites! A decent start after 4 weeks.... I now need the collective wisdom of the blogosphere to educate me on other search techniques to climb to #1.....

The post has insights on why he has made it to the top so fast and asks to keep helping him get to #1. It is great to see another client-side marketer in this space. As you can see from Constantin's NewPR Wiki, there are not a large number of corporate advertisers active in this space.

What Happened April 25th?

I was experimenting with a fantastic tool from Nielsen BuzzMetrics called Blogpulse, thanks to a recommendation from Max Kalehoff at AttentionMax. The tool tracks trends in blog post topics. I did a search using the general terms 'Marketing' and 'Advertising' and came up with this graph:

What happened April 25th? We posted on happenings at NAB that day, but did something else happen we weren't aware of? I love the chatter on these great subjects, but that is a pretty big jump in one day.