ANA Marketing Maestros

Social Media is Not a Paine in the Butt!

By: Barry Garbarino

It seems that lately more and more people are re-connecting on sites like Facebook, Myspace and BeBo. Gone are the days that we wait until our 10^th, 20^th or even 50^th class reunion to reconnect with friends from the past.  Unlike the awkward experience of trying to catch-up in three hours or less (at the dreaded reunion, which is sometimes held in the gymnasium of one’s alma matter), individuals are able to re-establish relationships and build on them through social media. 

I know this from daily personal experience.  There are numerous people that I have reconnected with over the past year that I have had little to no contact with for many years.  It seems like it only takes two or three days to recount the memories, bring each other up to speed and resume a “virtual” friendship all over again.

In many ways, social media is a very American institution.  I know that it might sounds crazy, but back in the late 1700’s there were many people blazing the trail of social media.  In a way, Thomas Paine produced some of our country’s earliest social media.  As the author of Common Sense, Paine helped start the long tradition of media produced by the people for the people.  He would later write The Crisis, which helped inspire the Continental Army and assisted to swell its ranks!  It was such a popular pamphlet, that as a percentage of the population, it is estimated that it was read by or read to more people than today watch the Super Bowl. 

Ok, so while most people today use social media as away to connect with friends, families and new people, many companies and organizations are also utilizing it to reach out to their audiences in new ways. 

(Insert shameless plug for ANA’s social media.)

Well, if you haven’t joined the ANA as a fan on Facebook or visited us on Slideshare, or Linked-In with one or more of us, or even Twitter’d, you should check us out!

We’ll see you in the cyberspace!

Inauguration in the Age of Social Media

By: Irina Skaya

January 20, 2009

7:00 a.m. - Woke up and turned the television on to watch continued inauguration coverage by Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson.

8:00 a.m. - Picked up the NY Daily News newspaper to read the schedule of upcoming inaugural activities.

9:00 a.m. - Logged on to www.abc.com/news to watch live coverage of Barack Obama's swearing-in as the 44th President of the United States.

9:15 a.m. - Updated my Facebook status to share my enthusiasm with friends.

My day was not atypical. For decades, people have passively set in front of their television sets to watch historic events like the inaugural celebrations or the Watergate hearings. The historic inauguration of Barack Obama, the 44^th President of the United States and the first social media President, flocked viewers to the online live nation-wide celebration coverage and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter where users actively updated their “statuses,” and microblogged to share their reactions with the rest of the world.

When I logged-on to the Facebook Web site to update my own “status,” I was pleasantly surprised at the exorbitant number of status updates I’ve received from friends—and how much more enhanced the experience became for me. Some of my friends were reporting live from the event, uploading photos almost instantly via the use of their mobile devices. Others who celebrated the historic moment elsewhere also uploaded our own photos and videos to the social network. I, myself, have uploaded a couple of photos and video (to Facebook and Barack Obama’s online photo album) from Times Square where a small group of ANA co-workers and I witnessed the inauguration of the first African-American president. In minutes, I edited the video using the editing software that came with the flipcamera and posted it to the Web. In a way, we were all reporters for the day with the help of mobile devices and pocket-size camcorders. It felt great to be able to actively participate in the inauguration (the non-traditional way) and share my impressions with friends in real-time.

Even for those of us who weren’t in Washington, we still felt the camaraderie and unity within the social community. I am looking forward to the new administration and to further explore the power of the social media.

TV widgets...upcoming trend of 2009?

By: Irina Skaya

Apparently, widgets are taking on a new life--they are now coming to a TV near you! And who is behind this revolutionary thinking? Yahoo! in partnership with Samsung, Sony, LG Electronics and VIZIO announced their launch of an internet widget-based function for the TV, this week at the CES conference. The idea behind this Widget Channel is to develop mini-applications that can complement TV viewing with information from the Internet, providing viewers with relevant and targeted information while enhancing their television watching experience. Widget Engine combines key attributes of the Internet, including openness, community, and personalization, with the power of television.

This is great for advertisers because the widget could allow users to purchase products advertised on TV from online store. There are several applications planned such as MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, eBay, CBS, Netflix, Blockbuster, New York Times and various Yahoo! widgets.

We all know that despite the rise of the Web, TV is not going anywhere. People still spend more time watching television than they do on the Internet. TV widgets is a great way to converge the two. For instance, MySpace users will be able to access the widget using a remote and type message to their friends using an on-screen keyboard. Flickr users will be able to share photos with family and friends or watch a slideshow on their TV screen. Many of the widgets are still in the development process, but you can preview them here.

Don't Drink and Email: Google Prevents EWI

By: Irina Skaya

It’s Friday night, and what began as happy-hour sangrias at a local tapas bar turned to a few pitchers.  After a long night out with friends, you stumble home and plop down in front of the computer to find a not-so-nice email from your ex or boss.

While firing off at your ex or boss may sound like a good idea in the wee hours of the morning, “drunken dialing” may be mortifying the next day. Like a good friend who’d stop you from making a fool out of yourself, Google’s new Gmail service called Mail Goggles, active only on weekends and between midnight and 5 a.m., (when you’ll most likely need it) will now prevent EWI (emailing while intoxicated) offenders from sending remorseful and flamming late-night emails.  How? Mail Goggles will ask you a series of five elementary math questions that you must answer within 60 seconds—the questions may be easy to someone sober, but after the fifth drink, can become a bit of a challenge.

The program is simple and unique. Google establishes itself as a reliable friend to the consumer, and will become quite popular among bar regulars and party goers. I am looking forward to see how this new feature will play out among consumers.

If you're ever in need of EWI intervention, call Mail Goggles to the rescue! Simply go to the settings tab under Gmail, select lab, and then the Mail Goggle feature.

Building Brands with Widgets

By: Irina Skaya

Everyone is talking about these, many are creating them, and very few understand their purpose— widgets. If 2007 was the year for companies to join social networks like Facebook, 2008 is the year for advertisers to adopt widgets. What are widgets and how can you use one?

A widget is a bite-sized piece of portable web content, allowing anyone to personalize their web experience exactly how they want it to be. Widgets can live in a privacy capacity such as personal portals, wikis, private blogs, or publicly in areas such as social network pages, Web sites and public blogs.  Widgets can be used as a marketing tool, but they different from ads. You can’t force someone to take your widget and put it on his or her web page the way you can guarantee views of an ad. In order to entice people to subscribe to your widget, it has to be compelling. When you have a compelling, dynamic widget that speaks to the right demographic, your widget will do most of the work for you.

What kind of widget can you make? Well, there are two kinds of widgets: lifestyle and functional.

Lifestyle widgets are used primarily for marketing purposes in viral marketing campaigns. Facebook applications are examples of lifestyle widgets. For instance, an Obama badge is a lifestyle widget that can be placed on its supporter’s personal page. A StyleSlam widget on Bebo.com allows one to make an avatar that resembles the creator and dress it up. There are thousands of applications ready to appeal to a wide variety of interests.

Functional widgets help users interact with the brand in a relevant and useful way. Examples include Google maps, clocks, converters, ANA insights widget, Travelocity's widget to search best rates for flights, hotels and car rentals and RSS readers.

As the popularity of widgets grows, so does their potential as a source of revenue. Ads on social networks are expected to rack in $1.9 billion this year. If you haven’t explored the options of a widget, you should. Check out www.widgetbox.com and start making your own widget! 

Generation Y Marketers

By: Irina Skaya

If you grew up during the MTV era, love everything digital, and began exercising your financial power early, you’re probably an echo-boomer.  We’re also known as Generation Y, millennium generation or baby-boom offspring. As an extremely diverse group with a lot of buying power, advertisers are naturally attracted to us. As a tech savvy group, we refuse to purchase anything if we’re confused or have unanswered questions, which makes it challenging for advertisers to engage with us.  We usually have short attention span and get easily bored or frustrated with ads- many of us are now marketers ourselves.

ANA is conducting a survey on brand management. We are looking for Echo Boomer client-side marketers (born after 1982) to participate in this survey. Preliminary survey results can be viewed here. 

The survey addresses three major themes:

• Technology usage and media habits
• Attitudes towards brands and marketing
• Attitudes towards careers in marketing

To participate in the survey, click here.

Technorati tags: Generation Y echo boomers

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:"

What if the Bottom Fell Out?

by Mark Fogelberg

It wasn't too long ago that Google's revenue growth trajectory seemed comically cosmic. Quarter over quarter increases in excess of 40% were the norm. Revenue from Sponsored Results and AdSense have allowed the company to fund its entry into a number of areas.

Were it not for its motto, "Don't be evil", I would wonder how Google would allow an entity such as CustomizeGoogle to exist.

CustomizeGoogle (CG) is a Firefox browser add-on that basically allows the web browser to take full control of their Google experience. This includes removing all of the ads on search results pages! While I understand that Firefox represents a minority share of the browser market and CG has a small(ish) user base, Google is walking away from respectable numbers of ad impressions (and potential clicks).

Yes, ad avoiders are ad avoiders but TV commercial audio follows you to the kitchen; magazine ads switch from left page to right page opposite editorial; DVRs require button pressing to skip commercial pods. This technology completely removes the ads. Period.

(a search for a color laser printer with ads on)

(and without the ads - check out the white space)

So, what if in the future Firefox ended up with a majority share of the browser market and CG were a built in? How could Google cope? I can't answer those questions but I would imagine that the brains at Google must have answers on how to capitalize on lost revenue opportunities.

It would be jarring to most interactive marketers if the bottom fell out of Adwords. But since Google owns little, old YouTube (59 million monthlies and counting) and, as of today, Doubleclick (see the press release), it seems likely a sturdy, new floor could be built.

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?