ANA Marketing Maestros

What Can Advertisers Learn from TV?

By Susan Burke

CBS’s hit show How I Met Your Mother is not only funny, but also a great example of how a sitcom has extended its life beyond a 30 minute time slot. Fans of How I Met Your Mother can visit the show’s homepage to access character blogs, trivia games, full episodes, and desktop apps. Many other shows offer this type of content on their homepages, but How I Met Your Mother has raised the bar by also designing separate websites to house the videos “created” by characters from the show (and they make a lot of them!), such as Marshall’s “Best Night Ever” video, Barney’s video resume, or the now expired SlapBet countdown clock.

These videos allow the show to remain a part of viewers’ lives after Monday night has come and gone. They also can be easily forwarded to friends who may not even watch the show. Additionally, NBC’s The Office has gotten into the value-added video game with their new “Subtle Sexuality” music video, featuring characters from the show.

   

These videos help TV shows reach and excite their biggest fans. They also give the people who work on the show a chance to push the envelope beyond what can be shown on TV because of time restraints or content issues. Why aren’t more advertisers doing the same? Value-added, entertaining, online content is a great way to turn a casual consumer into a brand loyalist.

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.

Holy Chip

By Kaitlin Villanova

Apparently Doritos had the right idea when they gave consumers the opportunity to create there own chip commercial for the Super Bowl (although Bob Garfield wasn’t impressed), now Pringles is up to the same thing with their jinglesforpringles contest. In this contest they are giving the consumer the chance to write a Pringles jingle hoping to spark some brand awareness and engage the chip-loving consumer.

At the TV Forum on Tuesday, Beth Comstock of NBC Universal talked of the “viewser” those who live in an “always on world,” they are connected, engaged, and in control. This brings me back to my point on the Pringles, in this contest they are hoping to reach this group of techy viewsers who, may or may not eat Pringles, but certainly watch American Idol (most likely on a 20 minutes delay so they can skip the commercials with their DVR), cast their vote via text, and are savvy enough to whip up a witty, comical skit about potato chips on their Mac computer in under an hour. This viewser is going to see the value in participating in a community activity such as the jinglesforpringles contest.

I know we are all getting tired of hearing about “user generated content” but I was perusing my bloglines when I came across an article in The Opine:

“The User Revolution [is] largely driven by the proliferation of media options, the emergence of    the Internet, and the growing sophistication of consumers. If you have been keeping up with the web and consumer trends, this is no surprise. Consumers no longer have to succumb to brand clutter and noise. They know what they want and they know how to get it. The niche is king and the choice is theirs.”

Okay, now what do you guys think about jingles for…..Pfizer??

Is It Too Soon to Talk TV?

By Will Waugh

A survey went out this week to ANA members on the future of television. No, it is not asking about the medium's demise. Instead, it is on their take on the commercial ratings issue. Yes, this has been an annual debate for some time. In 2007, expect there to be some official lines drawn.

Advertisers love TV. The ratings issue and network integration fees are problem areas; but otherwise, I have heard nothing this year but how valuable TV still is to marketers.

So that leads me to our TV Forum in March. Joe Tripodi, Chief Marketing Officer of Allstate, Jan Thompson, Vice President, Marketing, Nissan North America, and Beth Comstock, President, Digital Media and Market Development, NBC Universal headline this year’s  annual get together.

Tripodi, CMO of the nation’s largest publicly held personal lines insurer, discusses who’s doing TV advertising right, who’s doing it wrong, and how to avoid wasting advertising dollars by yielding to this trend. He will share "Tripodi’s Pet Peeves" which promises to call out advertisers, agencies, and media alike.

Nissan's Thompson has spearheaded the evolution of Nissan’s media mix to include Webisodes, blogging, consumer-generated content, branded entertainment, and more. Nissan’s newest campaign features comedian Marc Horowitz living out of a Sentra.

According to Mediaweek, NBC Universal’s "broad and fast-paced digital strategy" has pushed the company back into the race for new-media mind share. Beth Comstock is driving the bus that has transformed NBCU into a digital leader. Offerings include programs streamed on www.nbc.com, original Webisodes (e.g., The Office), a YouTube partnership, original broadband programming and channels (StarTomorrow and dotComedy.com), iVillage, and social networking.

Technorati tags: television advertising beth comstock joe tripodi jan thompson commercial ratings

Branded Entertainment- $7.5 Billion by 2010

"So where is advertising going with all this stuff like Tivo? Is it going to be just a bunch of product placement in our TV shows?"

That is what a friend asked me this weekend. Branded entertainment purists should rejoice, the business is only going to continue to grow regardless of whether the executions are good or not. A hot off the press ANA publication, Best Practices in Branded Entertainment, reviews how to do this right, as well as some of those who have succeeded (IAG contributed tracking and ROI for many of the case studies). Go here for a breakdown on a Ten Point Plan for Better Branded Entertainment which expands on the questions below:

• Is it brand relevant and brand positive?
• Does it build brand awareness?
• Does it break through advertising clutter?
• How long is the integration on-screen? Is it long enough for viewers to notice?
• Is it organic?
• Can the integration build buzz?
• Is there a demonstration of your product or service in the program? Or, can the program highlight key brand attributes?
• Will the program generate positive publicity and media coverage?
• How does the program relate to the rest of your brand marketing? If it’s an event, does it have a beginning, middle, and end?
• The prize is ROI. What’s the return on investment? What results do you plan to measure – and how will you do it?

Technorati tags branded entertainment marketing

Branded Entertainment to Triple

Brazil and Australia follow the US in spending on branded entertainment. China is on track to outspend the U.S. by 2010. These are but a few of some intriguing insights reported by the BBC on the spending trends expected for branded entertainment. The research, orchestrated by PQ Media, also says to expect over $7.5 billion in spending by 2010, largely due to the evolving media environment of ad skipping and fragmentation.

New Branded Entertainment Survey Findings!

Saturday Night Live studios is an interesting place for a conference. It makes sense in this case as we are talking branded entertainment and NBC (which houses this HD enhanced facility) has a sizeable investment in this space.

So we had a survey on this topic and the findings are a reinforcement of what we have been hearing.

Highlights of the survey include: 

• Sixty-two percent of marketers’ branded entertainment funds are currently being shifted from traditional television budgets, up from 52% last year.  Thirty-five percent are funding their initiatives incrementally, which is up from 18% funded incrementally last year.*

• Sixty percent of marketers are initiating their own branded entertainment projects.

• Eighty-seven percent of those who responded feel that existing research methodologies do not effectively measure the ability of branded entertainment integrations.

• Among the marketers who have not participated in branded entertainment projects in the past year, the top barriers to this space include: brand doesn’t lend itself to meaningful integration (40%); lack of measurable results (37%); regulation (27%); branded entertainment is too new (27%).

• Marketers surveyed are participating in the following types of branded entertainment:  commercial television programming (80%); sporting events / venues (46%); theatrical or movies (45%); magazines (26%); video games (26%); Internet films (15%); and non commercial television programming (15%).

*This post was corrected on April 20th due to a statistical error.

New Branded Entertainment Survey Results To Be Announced

To all those curious about branded entertainment, new ANA survey results with some intriguing findings to be announced at the Forum for Branded Entertainment at Saturday Night Live studios this Wednesday.