ANA Marketing Maestros

To Twitter or not to Twitter, that is the question…

By Barry Garbarino 

As a former employee of AOL and a few other hi-tech companies, I have always felt the need to be on top of whatever new technology that comes my way.  It could be said that I wanted to be an early adopter from an early age (well, as early as I could get, considering that I typed my last senior high school English paper on an IBM Selectric typewriter, but I digress.)  Social media and user generated content seems to be all the rage now.  I will fully admit that I do the occasional status update on Facebook and give a peak (to my friends) on what is happening in my life at that point in time.  From time to time I will also post the lyrics to certain songs (or YouTube videos) that I know will get stuck in people’s heads – it’s a public service that a few of us started a few years back and believe me, there are some whoppers that will take weeks to get out of your head.

For example the following was posted some time back on my Facebook page.  See if it gets stuck in your head (you got to love digital technology!)

That brings me to Twitter.  Some people absolutely love it and others have no idea why people would want to share all this information.  Many companies are jumping on the Twitter band wagon and are utilizing this tool to inform, entertain and connect to their consumers.  Consumers are utilizing Twitter to stay informed and to connect with a larger audience then they may have on other social media sites like Facebook and MySpace.

I came across the following videos on YouTube and thought that anyone who has an opinion about Twitter would get a kick out of them.  Let us know what you think!

Meatball "Mon"dae - Embracing New Media

By: Irina Skaya

Last Thursday, I attended Seth Godin’s presentation at NYU based on his latest book called, “Meatball Sundae Is Your Marketing Out of Sync?”  I always knew that the owner of the world’s most popular marketing blog site and the best-seller author of nine marketing books is smart, but hearing from him in person was invaluable, inspirational and enlightening.

What’s a meatball sundae?

“[The combination of] meatballs and sundae are meant to be disgusting. If you use new marketing, the topping [the fudge, the cherry] just as a spin, you will fail,” Seth said as he slammed out one sound bite after another.

The Meatballs represent the 100 year-old marketing model which means interrupting the market and selling average products made for average people. The fudge and the cherries of the sundae are the toppings, which represent new marketing: blogs, YouTube, Google, Facebook, Wikis, widgets, etc. Meatballs and sundae are two things that don't mix, like just like new marketing and old marketing.

Seth raised some thought-provoking questions:

In the 1980’s, TV Guide sold for more money than ABC, CBS and NBC were worth all together. Today, how come when I go online to look for video - I go to YouTube and not TV Guide?

In the 1990’s America Online became popular because of e-mails and chatrooms, how come when I go online to find friends I don’t go on aolbook?

He then cited Josiah Wedgwood, an English potter who built an efficient factory organization during the Industrial Revolution, to emphasize if you change the media, and the organizations will change too.

Lessons learned:
• To drive sales revenue, marketers must restructure the marketing organization from top to bottom. 
• Embrace the medium, [referring to SEOs] NOT fight the medium.
• If you can own a variety of choices - you win. For example, iTunes get their reveunue from titles that cannot be purchased at any record store.
• Marketers need to establish a direct communication between themselves and the consumers-the more the consumer interacts, the better the company does.
• Authentic stories matter! Stories that work spread, stories that spread are true; stories that are true are authentic.
• If a marketer is trying to solve a problem people do not have, they are INVISIBLE. You cannot spam yourself to success!
• In the Internet Age, it doesn’t matter how many viewers will see your ads, but who the viewers are.

Got Meatballs?

Technorati tags: Seth Godin new media meatball Sundae

How-to's Video Hyperlink Advertising...The Next Consumer Hot-Button

By: Irina Skaya

Have you ever wondered how to prevent a double-chin or redeye when you are being photographed for your executive portrait? Or wondered how street performers earn their living from the coins and bills dropped in their hats or instrument cases?

Instructional videos are nothing new, but online video hyperlink advertising in the how-to space presents a new and exciting opportunity for advertisers. In a consumer-centric world where consumers have the ability to skips ads and time-shift content, advertisers are forced to come up with unique ways to engage them more effectively. Some advertisers heavily depend on word-of-mouth marketing and others are turning to in-game advertising as affective ways to captivate the consumers’ attention. Video hyperlink advertising embodies the benefits of both: it features brands as experts in the field (builds trust) and since the consumers already chose to view this content, they do not see ads as intrusive. Imagine how persuasive and effective an ad that's advertising a whitening teeth product to a consumer who is looking at How To Whiten Your Teeth video would be.

So now you found that consumer whose interest is relevant to your product, what about reach? Relevance and reach are equally important. With statistics like an average person spends 1.4 hrs/per day on the Web compared to 4.4 hrs/per day watching television, who has time to dedicate all of their spare time to watching online videos? Well me! But for the rest of the population, to be a successful video sharing website, you need to offer your content across multiple platforms.

So who is doing it? Howto.TV is an instructional video website that contains video hyperlink advertising, but they have not yet offered consumers the ability to watch their content in different formats. Howcast.com, on the other hand, a recently launched website that encompasses both user-generated content and the quality of professional video studio, offers its content via online, broadcast and mobile. If the two would combine the idea of video hyperlink advertising and the high quality videos that available across various mediums, how-to video advertising has a high potential of becoming the next consumer hot-button. The variety of topics such as the practical “How To Dress For A Job Interview” video or the bizarre “How To Deal With A Smelly Coworker” offer advertisers who may have thought that their product did not fit into the social media space a chance to taste buzz marketing.  With a similar production and business model (in terms of producing cost-effective videos) to Current TV, Howcast.com will succeed in the advertising space. I am excited to see what their advertising model will be and how the ads will impact the website.

Check out one of my favorite Howcast.com videos, "How-To Public Speak:"

The Future of Sports

By Bill Duggan

It’s March madness time and sports is everywhere.  Not just college basketball.  We are coming off the most watched Super Bowl of all-time. The baseball season is right around the corner. And all eyes are on China as the country prepares for the summer Olympics.

At the recent ANA TV & Everything Video Forum, we used polling devices to survey the audience of advertisers, agencies, media companies, and various consultants and some of the questions focused on sports.  Here’s what we found.

What’s the Score?
Overwhelmingly, respondents first go to the internet for sports news and scores.  TV is second, while newspapers and radio are far behind.  Who hasn’t gotten up in the middle of the night or logged onto to the internet first thing in the morning to catch a score?   And the internet’s dominance is only expected to increase in years to come.

Sports Highlights on the Internet
While the internet is the “go to” place for sports scores and news, it is still gaining traction as a destination for sports highlights.  Only half of the respondents in our survey currently go to the internet for sports highlights.  But as internet video overall increases in popularity, so will internet video viewing of sports highlights.

Is it live or TiVoed?
Sports still very much remains a live viewing experience as only 8% of respondents often TiVo a live sports event and watch it at a later time.  However, new technologies do provide us all with the option to TiVo sports and lots of us occasionally do that.

Who would have dreamed, as recently as ten years ago that, (a) there would be a new place to get sports news and scores – the internet and (b) there would be a new place to watch sports highlights – the internet?  And while the option of taping your favorite show, including sports, has been around for a while via the VCR, digital video recorders like TiVo now provide a better way of doing that. 

How has technology changed your sports experience?

My Departure and a Quick Review

By Will Waugh

This will be my last post for this blog. I am moving back to the ANA member side and joining SAS Institute in Raleigh, NC. I love New York but it is time to take my accrued skills and knowledge to a locale that is more tempered to my Southern sensibilities. I look forward to utilizing the vast resources of the ANA as marketers, from the client side in particular, continue to be challenged by this evolving landscape.

I do want to make a brief mention of David Verklin's new book (which he co-authored with Bernice Kanner, ANA author of The Super Bowl of Advertising). Watch This, Listen Up, Click Here was written for the masses and may be too "general" for this sophisticated media audience, but is an excellent summer read on what is going on with the media and marketing world. Due to my new role in the business intelligence field, I was engaged with the chapter titled Data Mining: Why Your TV May Think You're Gay where the authors talk about how the "datasphere" will help companies predict behavior on a grand scale. "What-if modeling" will allow marketers to make even smarter decisions based on data mining and the various tools available. I feel relatively versed in the media business, but was engaged with this book's foresight in to the transformations taking place around us.

This blog has been a blast and a tremendous personal learning experience. I look forward to following all the great minds and community leaders I have met in this space in my new role. Cheers blogosphere. 

Great Ideas Will Create Relevancy

By Barbara Bacci Mirque

A recent ANA survey highlighted that integrated marketing now tops the list as the issue that keeps senior marketers up at night. You have heard me say before that ANA members tell us that the best way to tackle this is to start with the idea and let the idea be the media channel integrator. That was emphasized at the recent 2007 ANA Advertising Financial Management Conference. Bob Lachky, EVP, Global Industry Development & Chief Creative Officer, Anheuser - Busch Inc., talked about how the “Wassup” campaign (here are few of the ads along with some interesting consumer generated versions) began online then spread virally, eventually running on television.

Jeff Hicks, President, CEO and Partner, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, told a similar story for Coke Zero and its very funny campaign with Coke attorneys (again, thanks YouTube). Great ideas will create relevancy so the media should be an outgrowth of the idea, not the other way around. Both of those campaigns were extended into television once they were picked up in the conversations occurring online and it was the consumers who said these campaigns should also run on television. So once again, advertisers should be aware of and participate in the conversations happening around and about their products and services. Start with a terrific brand idea and let that determine which media channels you use. This is great learning from some very smart advertisers.

Technorati tags: budweiser marketing coke creative

Bookstore News

By Kaitlin Villanova 

As some of you may know we are now successfully operating our ANA Bookstore through print on demand service lulu.com. This is all very exciting because it eliminates us sitting on thousands of dollars of inventory, and having to spend a few hours each week neatly packing up the books so they arrive at your office in the same condition they left ours.

With this transition now in full-effect, we are left with a few hundred books gathering dust in our book closet. We are looking to find a book liquidator or a company interested in purchasing a large quantity of these proprietary insights for a very small fee. These publications are written by marketing practitioners covering key topics ranging from marketing accountability, brand building and integrated marketing communications to issues on advertising law, agency relations and compensation structures. 

Some of the available titles:

Best Practices in Branded Entertainment by Richard Sutton and Barbara Zack

Trade Promotion Marketing by Bob Houk

Inside Advertiser and Agency Relationships by Melvin Prince and Mark Davies

The Power of Nice by Linda Kaplan Thaler

What Sticks by Rex Briggs

And many others.

If you are interested in purchasing a large quantity of these books for your organization, or if you know of any book liquidators please contact me at ([email protected]).

Visit our new ANA Bookstore to learn more (sorry for the shameless plug but I had to do it).

Technorati tags: lulu marketing content

Microsoft and Yahoo?

By Will Waugh

I don't normally rely on the New York Post for much more than Page Six, but they  are announcing Microsoft is talking to Yahoo! about a potential $50 billion bid (thanks Forbes.com) Funny, I was just meeting with Microsoft on Monday and Tuesday and they didn't mention a lick of this to me (I feel slighted). The pressure, the Post says, is coming from Google's continued domination of search and online advertising, particularly with the recent purchase of DoubleClick.

If it is true, why not for Microsoft? I don't see this as a sign of desperation, rather a desire to expand it's capabilities online.

What this would give Microsoft:

• An expanded search reach with Yahoo's #2 position in the field.
• The #1 portal with some of the best brands in online media.
• Expanded e-commerce capabilities in spaces like cars and jobs.
• More content (I love content).

That's just a start. Looking forward to seeing how this develops.

Technorati tags: microsoft marketing yahoo

Lulu - Changing the Way We Publish Content

By Will Waugh

I have recently shifted our publications business to a print-on-demand/digital download model. We are using Lulu, an open source technology solution founded by Bob Young (Wikipedia) of Red Hat fame. I love the model - it allows a small publisher to expand their offerings without taking on debilitating inventory and overhead expenses. I will talk more about them later.

The real point is we are selling out our bookstore inventory and offering 2 ANA titles for the price of 1. It only runs until Monday (the end of April). Check it out at our Bookstore or call Kaitlin at 212-455-8004.

YELLOWBALL Shines Light on Advertising

By Kaitlin Villanova

So often we hear of the marketing and advertising industry getting bad press and being held responsible for the rise in childhood obesity.

At yesterday’s Integrated Marketing Committee meeting, it was a breath of fresh air to listen to the Arc Worldwide presentation on VERB YELLOWBALL. The impact this viral advertising campaign had on the health and well being of youth ages 9-13 was remarkable.

They dropped 500,000 yellow softball size balls at parks and schoolyards across the country, leaving no demographic, ethnicity, and economic class untouched.

The YELLOWBALL campaign had three simple rules (printed on each ball):

1. Play with this ball
2. Go to verbnow.com, enter the code below and tell us what you did with it
3. Pass it on to another kid

The incredible response and engagement reaffirmed my personal belief in the power of advertising. This campaign got 5 million kids “moving” in a time where childhood obesity is at an all time high. It also encouraged blog participation, an act these kids are already engaged in.

The results of the campaign:

• 21% of balls were passed on
• 6,500 Schools visited
• 168,000 videos made on micro site
• 16,980 blogs received

As U.S citizens, advertisers are protected by the first amendment, so you might never see an end to those ads dangling chocolate pastries on your television, but it is nice to know advertisers can encourage healthy and positive changes in society.

Technorati tags: VERB Yellowball, Viral Marketing