ANA Marketing Maestros

Freshly Squeezed Video

by Mark Fogelberg

Now that I've spent some time on Joost, I must say "Holy Moly". Combining top-tier television content with the on-demand advantages and great tools & technologies of the internet, Joost has game changing potential.

Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström aka "The Skype Guys" (and also the Kazaa Guys) have found a completely legit way to distribute FREE peer-to-peer video across the web. The fact that content is secure has allowed Joost to woo strong players such as Viacom & CBS. Anyone in the know about Sumner Redstone's dislike of that pesky, little free video site, YouTube, will be happy to find old and new content freshly served on the Joost platform.

Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Someday quite soon, TV as we know it will be completely changed. A platform which allows consumers to take control, interact and share has great potential to play a part in the metamorphosis of TV. For marketers needing to retain an ability to offer advertising messaging to future customers, ad friendly outlets like Joost give hope in this brave new world.

"I saw it on the radio"

By Irina Skaya

Since streaming radio and MP3 file trading emerged as the new medium champions, advertisers became less hopeful about the future of radio. “Radio is the Cinderella medium,” said David Ogilvy, comparing radio to the poor stepdaughter of media.  

Unlike its stepsisters, radio continues to be a unique medium because:

1. It has a greater and a more immediate impact on its listeners because all of the attention is devoted to one sense: sound.

2. It fosters imagination and produces active and intellectual listeners.

3. It offers the opportunity to be with the consumer at the right time to cue behavior and purchase - flexibility which TV and print may not offer.

While television is a powerful medium, it gives consumers the freedom to turn their heads away and to close their eyes. According to Erwin Ephron who presented at our last Integrated Marketing Committee meeting, TV Reach requires at least two exposures, which may be unaffordable. Radio is more cost-effective than TV in delivering that second exposure that is required to reach light-viewers missed by television ads. Thus, TV/Radio schedule will easily out-perform TV alone in reaching consumers.

Some of today’s most successful radio stations use digital components and drive their listeners to the web for additional information, such as photographs, videos, and blogs in order to incorporate saliency. With the great amount of radio stations streaming their programming via the Internet and satellite radio, radio is enjoying a true resurgence.

Radio advertisers need to recognize new technologies, such as digital HD or online streaming as future growth opportunities. But the industry must be able to work together as a group to affect that change, and do it in an expeditious manner. Radio advertisers must embrace entrepreneurship, collaboration, and communication in order to revolutionize the industry. By wearing the right pair of glass slippers, radio like Cinderella can sparkle in its own light.

What Makes An Award Winning Multicultural Ad?

By: Irina Skaya

With the Multicultural Marketing Conference around the corner, this is a great time to lend my two cents on multicultural advertising and this year’s submissions. 

By no means am I a connoisseur of multicultural advertising, but I believe there is often a misconception that the higher the production cost, the greater the production value and, thus the better the commercial.  In the past, it was challenging to judge print and television ads in the same category due to disparate production values (according to our judges). With the fast-growing media technologies, it is even harder to judge flash banners and digital billboards with traditional television ads.  It is especially hard for smaller agencies to compete with larger agencies that may have bigger budgets to produce high-tech ads. 

Good news for small agencies - having been directly involved with the judging of the Multicultural Excellence Awards for two years, the winning campaigns have been agencies with the most creative messages and in-depth consumer insights that were successfully executed, not the ones with the most complex medium.  John Hibbs would pat me on the back when I say, “Medium is NOT the message!” At least, not according to our judges (the majority consists of client-side marketers) – the message (content) and executing against this message to produce relevant ads for the targeted audience are the secrets behind top multicultural campaigns. 

I particularly like the Anheuser-Busch ad campaign for Bud Light that is amongst the finalists in the General Market category. I know some of you must be thinking I am either a heavy beer drinker or have stock options in the company, neither – I honestly appreciate the sense of humor and creativity in their ads.  Take a look yourself and I guarantee you will laugh your socks off.

Another suggestion that I’d give to agencies is - for a brand to be successful, instead of directly translating ad copy from English to another foreign language or recording a voice-over in a foreign language for an already existing TV commercial, focus on your demographic and make your ads resonate with and relevant to your consumer.  I’ve also seen ads that evoke emotion and thought succeed the most.  Speaking of relevancy and thought-provoking, here is a Black History Month television ad from a Verizon Communications campaign (African American category) whose premise was to acknowledge those who are creating a change and impacting the lives of African Americans today rather than only highlighting the Black History Month icons. Their second creative was even more hip – an audio ad with J. Ivy’s spoken word embedded in a brochure.  Although I can’t show you the brochure, take a look at the ad below – one of my favorites.

The point I am trying to make is: new media is impressive, but if you are a small agency with low funds, you can win too! It’s still about the consumer insights and the message. I encourage all advertisers and agencies to enter this competition next year - small, big, those who have adopted the new media model and those who are still creating ads using traditional media. To check out this year's winners, click here.

For the 2007 Multicultural Marketing Conference photos, click here.

Watching for the Commercials

by Mark Fogelberg

For everyone who looks forward to the Superbowl for the commercials, a little bit of salvation has arrived.

Firebrand, a TV, web and mobile platform promises to deliver full screen live video and full web functionality for advertising content. Yes, it's a commercials only "multichannel" of content delivering over 5,000 spots.

This could prove a quite amazing tool for marketers. One gets a captive audience that has actively sought out a marketing message. The marketer is then given the opportunity to engage and reward this viewer. The demo shows a Levi's ad which links to a promotion which the viewer can enter while still watching the chosen spot. (Quite cool tech.)

With nearly every session at our Annual Conference touching upon digital's role at the marketing table; with the needs for ROI measures of marketing activity; with the permeation of marketing and brands on daily lives of individuals, here's an idea whose time has come.

Tune in on your TV/browser/mobile.

A Consumer Generated...Climate?

By Kaitlin Villanova

The "post-Gore-buzz" at the Annual Conference seemed to omit a feeling of dissatisfaction from the audience. I overheard one attendee exclaim "he said nothing about the Nobel Peace Prize!" and his cohort proclaim they were hoping he would discuss environmental issues. At this point I wanted to kindly tap these people on the shoulder and remind them THIS IS A MARKETING CONFERENCE!

I think Mr. Gore (we're not on a first name basis just yet) did an excellent job of presenting Current TV and the role of consumer generated content to advertisers. Current TV is solely dependent on participation by consumers so there is no one better to share insights on this subject than the owner and creator Al Gore himself. If anything, I think the consumer created ads for Verizon, Toyota, and Sony might have shook up a few of the agency folks in the audience. Current TV reminds advertisers that all you need to create a 30-second spot is a creative mind, a hand-held camera, and Final Cut Pro!

Mr. Gore eloquently communicated to the audience using pithy anecdotes that shed a light on his sense of humor and some of the incredible life-experiences he has had. From these experiences he was guided to make an impact on society starting with the environment and then onto the most empowered audience: the youth!

I think the "recovering politician" did an exceptional job of reiterating the importance of consumer content to an audience of people who fit the category of "advertising ostriches" (a term dubbed by Lauren Rich Fine at a ANA Senior Marketer's Think Tank), those who stick their heads in the sand hoping when they come back up these new media platforms will disappear!

Thank you again to Al Gore for allowing the ANA Annual Conference be his first public appearance after being awarded the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize . The award was given "for [his] efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change." 

Technorati tags: current tv consumer generated content Al Gore

Jeff Jones, President, McKinney

By Rachael Adler

The final speaker for the 2007 ANA Annual Conference was the president of McKinney advertising. He discussed the Coldwell Banker Case Study.

There is a fundamental shift taking place in the expectations of the American home buying/selling consumer.

- Average of home buyer is 33 years-old and getting younger

- Average of realtor is 52

 

McKinney’s research showed Coldwell Banker that the Web is more broadly used in shopping for real estate than shopping many other categories. Coldwell Banker’s challenge is about relevance, taking its history of leadership and innovation and making it relevant given today’s consumer needs and the landscape.

Objective: Reposition Coldwell Banker all starting with the consumer and quantifying the opportunity.

Key consumer for Coldwell Banker is the future builder; they embrace tradition and agents, but also moving to the online space. Into empowerment, not to go it alone, but to work with an agent in the process of buying or selling their home.

Today, the top 10 real estate websites accumulate over 200 MM unique visitors per month.

Five key steps to new process:

Dreaming – begins 6 months before consumer enters the marketing

Initiating – must begin taking tangible action

Shopping

Negotiating

Ownership

Kris Hart, Vice President of Brand Marketing, Harrah’s Entertainment, and Kevin O’Donnell

By Claire Dean

Kris started her session by setting the context for the Gaming industry. It’s growing quickly because it’s become a legitimate form of entertainment in most consumers' minds. And the local governments are seeing great income because of taxes.

Only 5 or 6 years ago, Harrah’s owned only 5-6 properties. Today, it own 42 properties in 5 countries. They went through the 7^th largest LBO in history.

In 2003, 2004—MGM purchased the Mandalay group, which was a big play in Las Vegas. Then Harrah’s bought Caesar’s—which was another big play.

The acquisition gave Harrah’s half the strip. The reason for the acquisition wasn’t driven from cost perspective, but a revenue perspective. Caesar’s was a great brand name, and Harrah’s got amazing real estate—360 acres of contiguous space on the strip.

They faced some big challenges, in that they had a huge portfolio of brands. They had to reassess each one and decide which brands to reflag, retire, or rebrand. It was not a small task.

The complexion of the gaming industry was changing. It was becoming more sophisticated. New offerings were coming into the market with a lifestyle orientation. In 2000, the non-gaming revenue out grew the gaming portion—60% of the customer’s budget is spent on non-gaming amenities. That’s a significant shift.

The new properties had some significant challenges. The question for Harrah’s was how do they step back and unlock the intangible brand assets that they have? Harrah’s has an incredibly successful model of operations—they knew gaming operations, but they didn’t know how to think about the branding issues quite as well. They decided to hire a good partner, and chose Prophet.

Kevin O’Donnell explained that they had to start with doing their homework. They had to gain an enlightening view of the customer. Harrah’s had 40 million customers in their database, and some at Harrah’s felt they could just focus on those 40 million and get solid insights. Prophet felt that was an incomplete view because non-gaming was becoming more important and Harrah’s expertise was on the gaming side. Prophet saw two primary weaknesses—Harrah’s was gaming centric, and had no idea what customers were doing outside of Harrah’s. And Harrah’s knew their own customers in depth, but they didn’t know their new customers that went along with their new properties.

 

Prophet surveyed 15,000 people across the country in feeder markets. They had to cross that information with Harrah’s own database to validate some of the responses. As a side note, Kevin shared that those who are “low worth gamers” lie about 350% more than “high worth gamers.”

Jocelyne Attal, Chief Marketing Officer, Avaya, Inc.

“From Utility to Cool”

By Drew Clausen, Segment Marketing (USG) www.usg.com

Who is Avaya? What do they do?

Avaya is a global leader in intelligent communications. They supply business communication solutions to more than 90% of Fortune 500 companies, including The Home Depot, MasterCard, Dell, Google, AOL, Microsoft, Nike and more.

Recently evolved from “Lucent” to “Avaya”.

There products/services they offer include:

• Avaya IP Telephony
• Avaya Contact Centers
• Avaya Unified Communications
• Avaya Communications Enabled Business Processes

Avaya value proposition: They help businesses:

• Reduce costs
• Increase effectiveness and productivity
• Increase customer satisfaction

B2B Marketing Challenge:

Cutting through the clutter and differentiate Avaya in a sea of the highly competitive players in the business communications industry. This is certainly a challenge all Marketers face.

So, how does Avaya compete with a relative small budget?

Do the basics very well

• Know your audience better than thee competition
• Focus on brand awareness, demand generation, sales enablement
• Metrics, metrics  and more metrics (measure based upon business)
• Integrated marketing (unified communications)

Out think the competition with “intelligent marketing principles”

• Go where the competition isn’t (brand in unique places and in context)
• Be where your customer is (Initiate event marketing)
• Leverage technology (host Webinars featuring case studies and white papers)

With a budget that is ten times less than their competition, Avaya utilized “viral tactics” have been used to educated business consumer. The results were impressive.

Intelligent marketing results online:

• 800,000 unique visitors monthly to web site
• 160,000 looking for new products and services
• Experts give instant answers 15,000 each month
• Top briefers delivered 252 presentations in a single month

Note: I believe the creative we witnessed during this presentation was some of the most compelling we’ve seen during the conference. I highly encourage everyone to visit their web site or You Tube to view the extremely creative way Avaya communicated their value proposition to customers in the B2B space. It’s inspiring to see this kind of creative energy/communication in a category like business communications.

Microsoft's Steve Berkowitz and StarCom MediaVest's Laura Desmond

How to reach the elusive “Ad Avoider”

By Rachael Adler

Microsoft and Starcom conducted research on outreach to ad adverse consumers. Here are the results:

1 out of 3 people age 17-35 avoid ads all together

Nickname: Elusive customer / Ad adverse

What can marketers do about these consumers? How can we reach them?  How can we connect with them?

Facts:

- Today’s consumer is all about open sources

- One third of 17-35 year olds surveyed admitted to never paying attention to advertising

- Currently 4 million ‘wikepdedians’

- $13 billion in mobile content by 2009

- Need to feel engaged and stimulated all the time

- There are more cell phones than PC’s

Two distinct groups:

1. The can’t be bothered – least interested in advertising, tend to be parents,

2. Be good or be gone – willing to let you in, but it better be worth their time

These consumers actively adopt media to meet their interests – adept at managing, manipulating media. Tend to be younger men, who are willing to spend money to avoid advertisers. They are fans of relevant, creative messages, but are intolerant of bad advertising.

How can we reach these ad avoiders through existing avenues or new ones?

How do we get their attention – dialogue rolling…

Key Learnings:

1. Don’t be an MOS (marketer over the shoulder); Fit into Content
2. Don’t expect something for nothing
3. Whatever you want to say, do say it well
4. Do be a welcome surprise
5. Do let go

Pam Hamlin, President, Arnold Worldwide

Pam Hamlin, President, Arnold Worldwide

By Carl Steffens, Adobe Systems

Theme: How to get a decentralized organization with multiple offerings to work more effectively together by going to market as one unified brand.

Fidelity has 6 different lines of business, each with a President and P&L:

Fidelity Management Research

Fidelity Brokerage

Fidelity Life Insurance

Fidelity Employee Services Co

Fidelity Institutional Investor Services

Fidelity Estate & Wealth Management

Fidelity engaged Arnold to help unite the six different businesses in their go-to-market around a single campaign

Issues in designing campaign:

• No unified approach in marketing and communications (shared samples of marketing assets and programs to demonstrate)
• Despite the disconnect, business was going well. Given that, how to get people to make a change? Answer: focus on the opportunity

 

Fidelity and Arnold identified seven principles to guide the effort:

1) Demonstrate the upside – lifetime customer relationships

- Given the multiple businesses, Fidelity had a chance to engage with customers throughout their lifetimes. Different offerings/vehicles apply at different times

- Opportunity was to help customers move through their financial management “lifetime” by utilizing the various Fidelity products

- Fidelity has significant position in 401k management; this represents a feeder opportunity to the other products where Fidelity’s share was lower

- Industry trends for next 10 years will cause shift of investment products to “income” orientation (such as annuities) from “growth” given aging of boomers

- Social value was also a driver: by helping individuals adequately plan for and provide for retirement, Fidelity can help society. Do good while doing well. Helped people rally around the opportunity.

2) Make it an executive priority:

· Executives were briefed to help reinforce the need for change and the opportunity