9 campaigns that won with humor 0
Humor is one of the hardest things to do well in digital advertising. These nine efforts of 2011 succeeded in a whole range of ways. Take a few minutes and give them a look. It will be good for you to laugh. You see, laughing builds up endorphin levels that help us deal with the stressful situations in our hectic workdays. Better stock up now, you’re going to need them today. Because in 10 minutes, you’ll be getting a call about how all your click tags are redirecting to the wrong site. Just kidding.
Axe: Clean Your Balls
No brand stands more erect than Axe when it comes to consistently thrusting itself inside. Our popular culture, I mean. This is a brave brand — as brave as a Trojan — with a ménage à trois formula including pretty woman, double entendre, and impeccable comedic timing. Millions stalked this video on YouTube, Yahoo, AOL, and more. “Clean Your Balls” is just another notch on the headboard for this hot playa. But don’t expect this campaign concept to last long. Axe’s MO is to come and go, scoring new themes, formats, and executional styles while always leaving us wanting more. Let’s all hope this brand’s edgy character never gets put to bed.
Office Max with JibJab: Elf Yourself 2011
It’s simple, customizable, G-rated fun. Every year the action gets better and the tools even easier to use. The Elf Yourself concept is a new Christmas tradition everyone looks forward to. And it makes Office Max come to mind right when people begin to get their holiday shop on. My favorite part of this effort is…no edge or snark required. This is something everyone can enjoy.
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TomTom: Bert and Ernie
Driving gadget sales with something other than tech talk — that’s the road TomTom took with this viral campaign. When you’re facing a traffic jam of devices and competitors, sometimes it makes sense to change lanes and leave all the performance factoids behind. The new Bert and Ernie voices for TomTom devices put a little fun in the shotgun seat — at a time when work commutes are getting longer, and people need a little chuckle. Say Chuck + Ull. Chuckle.
Audi: Slider
Audi: Slider
Every day, ads appear in new places. Airline trays. Urinal cakes. Golf balls. Golf cups. Just when you think there is nothing left to use for marketing, along comes a stroke of brilliance. Make the slider into a race car. Who could resist unlocking the Audi magazine delivered in tablet editions of leading magazines! OK, this is more fill-you-with-smiles versus yucks, but it’s just too brilliant not to highlight!
Lanvin: Dancing
The democratization of…well…everything, is perhaps the biggest trend of the last decade. It seems even to be affecting the couture fashion business, if this Lanvin video is any indication. The genius of it is that the clothes continue to be defined by a design elite, but the approachable execution makes the brand more contemporary and relevant. Sort of…exclusively inclusive. Either that or that last sentence was a complete pile of crap. Either way, it’s fun to watch models that lack rhythm.
The last Testament of God: The Tweet of God
Verily I say unto thee — scratch that. Verily He says unto thee. To support the release of the book “The Last Testament: A Memoir by God,” Yahweh and his able acolyte David Javerbaum provide bits of sage wisdom that are at once biblical and hilariously un-PC. Writing a very funny book is one thing, but offering up a stream of consistently funny tweets every day…for weeks…shows a tremendous commitment to Twitter and its power to drive buyers. It’s a darned popular Twitter account. Of course, the slogan “Follow God. Or be smited.” may have something to do with that.
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Jimmy Kimmel: Hottie Bodies Humpilates
Millions seek out Jimmy Kimmel’s promotional parodies the instant they hit the web. It’s a brilliant strategy, because it captures the essence of what makes the show different in a very crowded late night talk show market. And because celebrities need to be good sports to be on the show anyway, Jimmy makes the most of their good nature in these excellent uber viral promos.
Jameson’s: Jameson’s1790.com
This complex and engaging brand experience asks the user to identify the thief of a barrel of Jameson’s. What makes ‘er inneresting is that the thief is one of your friends, and the game asks you to determine which one by revealing clues based on their Facebook activity . These clues are seamlessly embedded in high quality videos starring eccentric Oirish folk. In addition to the concept and the watchability, the experience also incorporates great little dexterity games. When you identify the crook, the experience goes viral on your Facebook page and that of your criminal friend.
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Toddlers and Tiaras: Miss Ultimate Sexy Nevada
Reality TV’s biggest train wreck was beautifully spoofed in this parody featuring Tom Hanks and his daughter. Was it an official Toddlers marketing effort? Dunno. But clearly they garnered a lot of cooperation from the pageant circuit for this send up, and I am certain it got more than a million extra people to park their middle-aged rumps on the couch for the season premiere. There are so many superb lines in this masterpiece of tight writing, physical comedy, and spot-on timing. I think the best is when Tom tells his daughter “Don’t be a hooch.”
My Predictions For 2012 (Mediapost 12.7.11) 0
Every year about this time I sit down and try to play Nostradamus for next year. It’s not that exciting, and I’m batting about .500 over the last 10 years, but its fun and its worth a shot and gets me thinking proactively rather than reacting to what I see day in and day out. Lots of smarter people will come up with far more intelligent predictions than I , but hopefully you find these to be interesting!
So, without further adieu, my predictions for 2012:
1. Apple and Amazon Will Own The Web: Google and Facebook may own your data, but Apple and Amazon will own how you get on the web. The burgeoning tablet space is where the growth is, and Apple and Amazon are there. The iPad is the top selling tablet by far and the third version is coming out this year (along with the iPhone 5). The Kindle Fire is easily going to jump into the number two spot, especially after this holiday season (and just wait until the Amazon phone comes out). It’s like the old days, when AOL owned your access and Yahoo owned your experience of the web, however this generation of players knows what to do with that attention. In related news, Apple is steadily increasing its percentage of the standard PC market, so things do not bode well for the likes of HP, Lenovo and Acer or the other PC manufacturers. It’s a short list of players these days, and Apple and Amazon are clearly in the driver seat for access to the web.
2. A Major Brand Will Fire Their Agency, And Bring ALL Digital In-House: I may have said this before, but I predict that this will be big news this year. Someone in the top 25 of online ad spending is going to get fed up with their agency relationships and they’re going to decide to do it themselves. This is the year where the agency business gets a rude awakening, and they finally start trying to mend their own fences. For the last 5 years we’ve heard the “agency is broken”, but no-one has offered up a solution. I think this year, someone will be forced to find a solution, or risk the onset of extinction.
3. The Occupy Movement Will End (And Nothing Will Have Changed): Unless that movement finds a voice, provide direction, and can push an agenda of solutions rather than sheer complaining, it will become a footnote in historical textbooks of how not to foster a revolution. I said it before and I will say it again; when you “protest” something but don’t offer a solution, you’re just complaining and nobody likes a complainer. There’s a point somewhere down deep in the story of Occupy, but its being missed. It’s a wasted opportunity for change. The reason I bring this up is that a whole generation of people are either going to become exceptionally motivated to be involved, or will further descend into lackadaisical malaise. That can have an effect on marketing, because a dull consumer base can easily affect consumer spending, and therefore marketing. If this generation is motivated for change, they have energy, and energy translates into action, and action is a good thing. If the 99% can increase their share of the pie, then they increase their share of the economy, and that means consumer spending can increase as well. For a marketer, that’s a good thing.
4. The Privacy Bubble Is Going To Burst: We’ve been dreading it for a few years, but this is an election year and someone in the various senate races is going to latch onto and dramatically push the issue of Internet privacy. And people are going to listen. There’s a lot of money being spent to debate and discuss the issue of internet privacy, and in the next 12 months something is going to pass in Congress that will either limit or regulate the use of cookies online. They will not be banned, but they will be managed in some way, and that is actually a good thing. Identity theft is on the rise, and more people are becoming victims of malware, so obviously there’s a problem there. We’ve taken steps to regulate ourselves, but the people we need to regulate, the black hats, are not playing by the rules, so someone is going to step up and enforce them. It may take a few years to be implemented, but this is the year that something is going to pass.
5. Social Media Marketing Will Hit The Tipping Point: This is the year when marketers shift substantial dollars into social media marketing campaigns, whether they use social graph data, social ad placements, or social sharing as the vehicle of choice. The last 4 years have seen the social strategy evolve and mature, and many marketers are testing it successfully, but I think 2012 is the year when social becomes a standard line item for marketers, in much the same way that search did. It’s an always on line item; an always functioning piece of the marketing pie.
And just for fun, a few random predictions that may or may not come true…
- Pearl Jam will release an amazing new album (fingers crossed).
- The elections will see the worst voter turnout of the last 24 years (unfortunately).
- The NBA will see a significant decrease in ticket sales this season, as a result of the lockout and negative press associated with it.
- Yahoo will be purchased by someone (I predicted this last year too, and have to stick with it this year, again).
- The new Spiderman movie will be awesome and the new Batman movie will be amazing, but won’t beat the gross revenues of The Dark Knight.
- The world will NOT end in 2012 (sorry Mayans).
And one last prediction – I predict that many of you will have a wonderful year, so enjoy yourselves and have a toast to 2012!
Thanks for reading this past year!
With Maturity Comes Simplicity (Mediapost 10.5.11) 0
The Internet advertising business is approximately 17 years old, depending on who you talk to. You’ve heard that with age comes wisdom, but I also think that in an industry sense, with maturity should come simplicity – when is that going to happen for us?
When the business was growing, and growing rapidly, you heard the phrase “building the plane while flying it”. That phrase referred to the frantic nature by which we were creating standards and norms for a business that didn’t previously exist and for which the blueprint was illegible at best, and relatively incoherent at it’s worst. Now that substantial budgets have come to online, and more marketers are treating the medium as a core component of their marketing mix, its time to finally simplify the business.
Simplification may not be easy, but if we are to elevate the business to that next level of respect and spend, it has to be done. Spending money online is not an easy task, especially when compared to other media (simple fact – its easier to spend $20 million on TV than it is online). The system for implementing an online campaign, which includes tracking and reporting with site-side tagging, creative trafficking and manipulation of inventory is a very time-consuming, difficult undertaking. Ask any brand manager what they don’t understand about the online ad business and they will uniformly say “implementation”. It’s a difficult process and it almost always creates issues.
Agencies are probably the one area where this can be fixed, because they have the leverage to create simplicity in this process. Agencies are the trusted advisors for most brands when it comes to online advertising, and agencies do almost all of this by hand. That is not scalable, it is not practical, and it is not a recipe for success.
Of course, agencies are not solely to blame here. There has been created a cluttered mess of vendors, partners and solutions for marketers to execute online ad campaigns, with more popping up every day. There is only one partner who has made it easier for marketers to spend their money online and that would be Google. Google is effectively a one-stop shop for all your online advertising needs, so it’s no wonder they’re the “800 pound gorilla” in an otherwise chaotic, zoo-like landscape. Companies like AOL and Yahoo have an opportunity to present themselves as “easy” to marketers with their cross-platform solutions and mix of content and audience targeting, but they need to jump on that bandwagon quickly.
We need to make it easy for an advertiser to commit a multi-million dollar budget to online. Right now, that’s just not the case. In traditional media like TV, a single media planner/buyer can easily manage $10-20 million in spend. In online, a $10-20 million budget typically requires at least 7 people to plan, buy, execute and manage that campaign, and that can be considered conservative. Anything less, and the team becomes overstretched and the work suffers.
How are we going to achieve this simplicity that should come with maturity? The industry itself has to step up. We have more than enough conferences and governing bodies to address these issues, and I think it’s time to do so. We‘ve been hyper-focused against privacy for the last year or so, and we may have taken our eyes off the ball of simplification. I think we can get back to that now. Whether its events where everyone is together in a room, or whether its groups like the AAAA’s and the IAB, someone should take a look at the process of implementing online media buys and begin to simplify the process, maybe offering endorsements of companies that make it easier, or even creating an industry task-force to address simplification from a single platform integration. In TV, there is Donovan. In online we have Google and DoubleClick, but the free-market has made structural integration with them a pipe dream. For those of you who remember the Aspen Group’s efforts to address Terms and Conditions, or the FAST group to address reporting and other items, it’s time for a similar effort. It’s time for a Simplification group to address the business.
If you’re reading this article, please talk to those around you and help me try to create a groundswell around this idea. Share the article, forward the article and let’s see what we can do to make it easier for advertisers to engage with online.
Trust me – you’ll be happy that you did!
The Future Of The Virtual Scrapbook (Mediapost 8.10.11) 0
Sometimes, on a Saturday morning when my son wakes up a little earlier that I would like, I bring him into bed with my wife and I and we crack open the iPad and look at pictures. My son will swipe the pictures to the side and we’ll reminisce over the fun days we’ve had, and he’ll ask questions about places we’ve been. It’s fun, and it’s sentimental, but it also gets me wondering what his future “scrapbook” experience will be like?
When I was kid we made physical scrapbooks. We collected pictures from friends, threw them into albums and put them in the closet to check out again when we got old. Nowadays creating the family album is far more immediate with tools like a laptop, Flickr and YouTube. Even Facebook becomes a virtual family album for generations to come. The immediacy and ease of access to those images makes it more likely that we spend time perusing those pictures on a regular basis. I sometimes find myself thumbing through my iPhone, reviewing images and the fond memories that come along with them.
I think my kids will have fun viewing and sharing those images with their families when they get older, but I wonder just how that will happen? What format will it take? Will Facebook still be a tent pole of the Internet? Will Flickr and YouTube still be around? These questions seem silly, but remember it wasn’t so long ago that you may have had Excite as your homepage, or you communicated primarily with your AOL account. You may still have that email address, but you probably have 3 others as well. As for Excite, well, that’s just history (it’s there, but it’s not the same).
I imagine the virtual scrapbook will be a cloud-based account that houses all of your personal information; your pictures, movies, music and even personal documents that you want to share with your family for years to come. Maybe your virtual scrapbook will simply be an email address that you use as a compendium of all that same content, in a chronological order that reflects when it was created? Maybe it will be a digital safe deposit box, housed at a bank, and backed up on international servers based on Switzerland so that no one can have access unless you want them to?
I can see something with a Flipboard-like interface that creates the same experience we see today when we sit with our grandparents and go through old photo albums. A page-by-page interface that tells a story, and offers insight into how our families were born, how they were raised, and how they laid the groundwork for who each of us are today. I hope someone finds a way to make it smell like Old Spice when I peruse that album, because that will equal the same wonderful memory I have of sitting on my grandfather’s lap and looking at pictures.
I know people who create email addresses for their kids, or Twitter accounts, as early as possible and they use those accounts to store personal messages to them, passing along a library of tips and advice to help them become the adults that would make their parents proud.
No matter what it looks like, the experience will be the same, but even easier than it is today. I just hope that when I’m old and grey, that I still know how to use all this technology the right way!
Start-Up Watch COD: New West and the next generation of local media 0
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
We live in an era where newspapers continue to fall in circ and close. We sorely need a new media model that can fill the void in local and regional news coverage. While on some level we all have access to more news than ever through the Internet, there really isn’t a proven model yet that can perform the vital public service that local media once provided.
There are certainly some being tested. AOL’s Patch, for example, provides local news via a special page each for hundreds of communities – each with a local editor in place in the community it serves.
Another model I’d like to tell you about is that of , a start-up based in Missoula, Montana which has just received its second round from Flywheel Ventures of New Mexico. New West was formed to serve the local and regional needs of the Rockies by combining professional journalists, bloggers, photographers, and community members in a digital offering that serves local news and information needs as well as those of the region at large.
It couldn’t come at a more opportune time. Lots of small local papers in the Rockies have gone under – and with them the important community information and advocacy that newspapers have traditionally provided to the communities they serve.
The editorial remit of New West is to analyze the top news in a six-state region with a focus on stories that affect the region as a whole, and deliver these in a manner that shows a unique regional perspective. Soon, the publication will debut six state-specific pages to cover the issues unique to each of those areas. Finally, the publication is working in partnership with FWIX to deliver localized news feeds for a reader’s location.
Sharing content across media outlets is of course nothing new to the newspaper business. AP and UPI were built on this very concept, and continue to provide an important set of news and information for offline and online media alike.
But New West is vertically integrated, based upon the compelling idea that there are news and issues unique to the Rockies that are best covered by people who are part of the region. Essentially, that there are a Rocky Mountain outlook and lifestyle that are unique, and fundamentally underserved by the national and international news syndicators. That there are critical regional issues of great importance to residents. Issues like:
• Regional politics
• Development
• Tourism and the “snow industry”
• Agriculture
• Water
• Energy
The Rockies are fascinating socioeconomically, and certainly the realities of daily life are rather different from those I experience in urban Oakland. By celebrating and working to protect that daily life, New West hopes to drive greater cohesion in a ruthlessly independent population.
In addition, New West seeks to help advertisers reach and connect with the demographically comfortable, culturally aware, and fundamentally active readership. Further, the audience stats for the site are rather impressive:
• 84% College grad
• 93% vote in local and national elections
• 20% CEO/President/Chair/Owner
• 31% Manager/Director/Supervisor
Stats better than many of the “go-tos” we traditionally choose when we want to reach an elite audience. Indeed, you would probably be shocked at the number of VC leaders that call Montana their second home.
In addition to IAB standards, the site offers interstitials, rich media experiences, sponsored content, and deep brand integrations.
One of the things that is clear based upon their editorial mix is that Westerners are anxious to be a part of this new company and model. The number of authors who post to the site, the number of business leaders who contribute, and the number and depth of community participation in the content are remarkable.
In addition to the website, the company has wisely chosen to develop multiple revenue models, including an events business and a web development shop that helps supplement revenue and incomes as the publication continues its growth trajectory.
The site itself has received a great number of industry accolades, including this from the New York Times.
By just about every measure New West, the online magazine, is a success: It features great writing and reporting, presented via a smart blend of magazine and bloglike articles covering the Rocky Mountain states. Traffic is growing. Critics are raving.
I like their pluck, and their commitment to doing well by doing good – helping community members and advertisers capitalize on the unique attributes of Rocky Mountain life.
Cheers? Jeers? Tweet ‘em to @CatalystaJim.
If It Looks Like A Bubble, And Smells Like a Bubble…? (Mediapost 2.16.11) 0
We’re now well into 2011 and it’s starting to look and smell a little bit like 2000. Once again we have M&A activity, consolidations and IPO’s taking place on a weekly basis that generate mass coverage. The news is out there, led by the Huffington Post being acquired by AOL, and followed closely by news of Linkedin and Pandora filing for IPO’s. Meanwhile we see angels and VC’s once again throwing money at companies with a vengeance not seen since… well… mid-to-late 2000! But does this wave of hype and excitement signal an impending collapse based on overvaluation, like we saw in the dot com bubble?
For what it’s worth, I don’t think so. Back then the hype was just hype, and the over-inflation was based on prospective value in the marketplace rather than real revenues. These days the growth and investments are based on real revenue, though some may argue the value of some of these companies are slightly exaggerated, but that means the floor is more stable than it was in 2000. These companies are generating real revenue, they are growing, and the investors and speculators are betting their futures on real companies rather than vaporware.
Companies like LinkedIn and Pandora offer real value to consumers. These companies generate real money and going public makes sense because they’ve paid their dues and they can continue to grow. The speculation on their respective futures may drive a minor bubble at some point, but the fact is if there were another “margin call”, the value of these businesses would only go down so far, they wouldn’t drop to zero. They could decrease to the point where their actual revenues reside, but that’s far better than most companies in 2000 and 2001. You can certainly question their multiples for valuation, but you can’t question that there is value in and of itself.
The investment dollars that are going into these businesses to create value are also better placed than they were in 2000. Leading up to the last dot-com bubble there was a period of irrational expenditure, and that’s not the case this time around. We’re coming off the worst recession in a very long time, and there are still signs of instability in the economy. Housing is still down, and unemployment is still higher than we would like. There’s still conservative optimism. There’s minimal inflation of value because most other markets are artificially being held down right now. If anything, the tech sector may actually begin to lead the growth of the economy and create more value as a halo effect for the US. These companies are creating jobs, and that’s what we need to see more of right now, in order to sustain continued economic growth.
On the flip side, the entrepreneurs these days are scrappier than they were in 2000, and I’ll go out on a limb and say they’re even smarter. I can’t foresee any more examples like what happened with Boo.com, when they spent $188 million in 6 months. The people behind the money are more cautious and more watchful, and if anything they are more conservative than anyone was back then.
No – I don’t see another bubble, per se, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still be cautious. If you’re looking for money in this environment, be sure to do your homework. If you’re investing in this environment, be sure to do your homework. If you cover the companies on either side of this relationship, be sure to do your homework. If we can maintain a base of rationale thinking we could see some very interesting, and very valuable, growth over the next few years and that growth could lead the rest of the country into a new age of digital and/or industrial renaissance. Enjoy the ride everyone!!
4 Companies Making A Difference In Your Quest For Engagement 0
Teaser: One thing that’s apparent in the rush toward engagement — there is no one way to drive it. But here are just a few of the solutions that can help you sustain the vital marketing relationship.
Highlights:
- Solve Media’s Type-In replaces captchas with relevant brand messages
- EXPO TV leverages consumer insight to create a video community that advice seekers and brands can join
- AOL’s Project Devil enables consumers to explore brand messages and information on their terms in a low-distraction environment
- The Meebo Bar gives publishers an easy way to make their content social and drive incremental viral traffic
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Gigabytes of speeches, articles, and blog posts have pointed to the need to drive deeper engagement with consumers. It’s a topic that goes right to the heart of digital media’s advantages — two way communications and the opportunity to deliver bona fide experiences. But in all of this discussion, the definition of engagement quickly gets squishy.
• Is a click engagement?
• How about a “like”?
• Is there a minimum time threshold required to qualify as an engagement?
• Do we need engagement standards across the industry?One thing that’s apparent in this rush toward engagement — there is no one way to drive it. Both new and established companies are taking different approaches to the goal. Today I want to discuss four companies with that are making distinctive in-roads toward helping marketers forge deeper connections with audiences. Each company’s product is designed to create ongoing brand impact — a rich real-world experience, or greater message recall, or delivery of deep and compelling information to drive brand choice.
Solve Media: Engagement inspired by your third grade teacher
What do you do if you want to make sure you don’t forget something? Solve Media hopes we remember the advice of our third grade teachers (in my case Mrs. Briggs): You write it down, or type it into something. (disclosure, a Catalyst S+F client) was founded to leverage that idea for marketers.
The core offering is the Type-In — a unit that replaces the frustrating “captchas” that confront us when we want to register or gain access to content. Every day, almost 300 million of these exasperating captchas get filled out; many more than once because they can be so difficult to decipher. Enter Solve Media.
See the ad, type in the message, and you’re done. Here’s a short vid that makes it all clear.
“Type-Ins are dead simple,” says Ari Jacoby, co-founder and CEO of Solve Media. “Lots of companies are focusing on layers of technology and data sets to coax higher response rates. All of that is important work. But we took a different road. Our platform offers a genuine and guaranteed value exchange, without new infrastructure or privacy issues for clients. The consumer gets what she wants, and the client and publisher get real value.”
Does it work? Solve commissioned a third-party that showed a 111 percent higher level of brand recall from Type-Ins versus banners, and 12 times the level of message recall. Further, it appears that people are at least as likely to complete a Type-In versus a captcha in order to get what they seek. Internal Solve Media data indicate that 40 percent of consumers who encounter a Type-In engage and type the information correctly.
Mrs. Briggs from third grade was right.
Type-ins are sold by pay-per-completed-type-in. You only pay for those instances when consumers type the message correctly. Many large publishers are implementing this new platform because it creates new inventory, reduces customer frustration, and gives advertisers impact. Some pubs are also exploring the platform as an alternative method of paying for content. For example, a major metro newspaper could deploy a Type-In instead of charging a monthly fee for content. Since so few consumers are willing to pay cash for content, this technology offers a way to get consumers to pay attention and for publishers to monetize their product.
Solve is newer than the other companies discussed in this piece, but they have already garnered an impressive client list, including Toyota, Microsoft, Expedia, Universal, and Dr. Pepper.
EXPO TV: Engagement through personal endorsement
We’ve all seen the data that consumers trust the recommendation of a regular person — any regular person — more than ads. More and more consumers are turning to the web to find consumer POVs before they buy. EXPO TV http://www.expotv.com/, a New York based start-up, is leveraging this consumer insight to create a video community that advice seekers and brands can join. In just a couple years, they’ve cultivated a remarkable client list.
Endorsements online aren’t new. But EXPO TV has created a community of product fans and reviewers who volunteer to deliver their thoughts in stand-up-presenter videos. Consumers appear onscreen to discuss the merits (and issues) of products.
Here’s an example:
See all at Expotv.comThis video and several others were tested in a measuring the effectiveness of consumer word of mouth videos versus commercials. The study found that these homemade creations, despite their decidedly unslick production values, have comparable persuasive power to professional ads.
It’s easy to see why so many consumers find this sort of video compelling. So compelling, in fact, that some progressive brands, like do, have made these the centerpiece of their brand web presences.Consumers can rate any product that they like, but brands can encourage consumers to rate their offerings in a variety of ways. You can sponsor a contest, use their Tryology program to send out samples in exchange for honest reviews, even build dedicated brand pages on the site. Additionally, EXPO can distribute videos directly to retailers, who use them as an aid to sale, as in from Amazon. By partnering with EXPO, you get rights to use consumer videos whenever and wherever.
All videos are transcribed and matched to products, right down to the SKU. One result is that when you look up consumer products in Search, EXPO videos are often among the top 10 results.EXPOTV lets consumers speak freely. They ask consumers for honest opinions. Fans praise freely. And consumers that have questions or issues are welcome to respond and add videos to the EXPOTV site as well. But what’s interesting is that the tenor of video is almost universally positive — 85 percent.
EXPO TV has more than 75,000 regular video-making participants, and its vids have garnered more than 40 million views since the platform was launched.
AOL Project Devil
A major new engagement initiative from AOL, called Project Devil http://advertising.aol.com/creative/projectdevil, has just been launched with a premier list of charter advertisers including General Mills, Unilever, Lexus, Sprint, and Procter & Gamble.
This new creative execution enhances consumers’ experiences as they interact with content, and drives significantly greater engagement. Devil does this by enabling the consumer to explore brand messages and information on their terms in a low-distraction environment.
Devil ads are larger units, 400×1200 compared to the standard 300×250 units. That gives brands a 100 percent voice on the page and offers a multitude of content in a single, unbroken space. The modular unit enables the brand to insert virtually any form of content into one of the template unit zones.
These zones can include video, interactivities, choosers, store finders, deep product information, and the like. In essence, they treat the product and the process of learning more about it as “news”. Here’s an explanatory video:
The Devil offering also makes significant changes to the overall page experience. Rather than competing for attention with a bunch of sponsored messages, Devil ads are the only paid marketing offered on those pages.
To really see the experience, you need to look at a Devil ad in the context of a web page on which it appears. This view gives you a sense of what they are going for — genuine content integration rather than garish, blinky “click now” annoyances at the periphery of the screen.
According to AOL, Devil is a paradigm shift for digital advertising, where ads have historically been designed to distract users from the content they sought. Their website puts it this way:
Most online ads today are designed to distract the user. So as ads have proliferated, the user experience has suffered — along with the user, of course. In many other media, ads are part of the experience. Far from detracting from the writing or programming, they contribute to it. Nowhere is this more possible than on the internet. Project Devil is our first step toward realizing this potential.
A nice vision and a cool unit.Meebo: Connecting brands to my social graph
Given Meebo’s http://www.meebo.com/ heritage of making social sharing easier, it’s only natural that their solutions for brands focus there as well. Last year the company launched the Meebo Bar http://www.meebo.com/websites/. It gave publishers an easy way to make their content social and through that functionality drive incremental viral traffic.
Meebo users that arrive on the participating sites automatically see the toolbar at the bottom of their browser, in front of a small strip over the site content. As the user scrolls down, the bar is persistent, moving with the user’s field of vision. It’s polite yet intrusive — let’s call it “poltrusive.”
The toolbar offers brands several ways to communicate with consumers, drive engagements, and spread messages virally. Here’s a picture of the “unopened” toolbar, which features what they call a “media alert.”
The user hovers over or clicks on the alert, which opens a large 900×400 window. What appears in the window is up to the marketer — video, Flash, static images, interactivities, advergames, store finders — virtually anything a brand might find useful.
Engagement times average 30-50 seconds. Advertisers only pay for engagements, not impressions; the settings on the bar are such that accidental rollovers are not counted.
Consumers can also drag and drop marketing messages into their social media platforms — Facebook, Twitter, AIM, email, and more. The sharing feature encourages both longer and stronger interaction by the user, as well as free distribution of brand messages across users’ social graphs. A recent program for Hershey’s Kisses invited users to customize the wrapper on a virtual kiss and send it to friends and family through their favorite social channels. It gave Hershey a presence on lots of social networks through a single buy on their platform.
Of course, consumers’ willingness to take a message viral depends upon the creative, and Meebo offers advice to marketers on how to make messages more viral. Additionally, because the platform is a permanent part of participating sites, it affords the opportunity for dayparting. Said Carter Brokaw, CRO of Meebo:
“One way in which we differ in the marketplace is that because we have a platform that is persistent on websites, we can serve impressions based on time, and that drives engagement.”Targeting naturally improves response rates. Marketers can choose demographic as well as psychographic and interest based targeting, or a combination of these techniques.
Conclusion
I like what these four companies are doing because their approaches start with a consumer insight and use it to create something unique.
For Solve, that insight relates to how human memory works. With EXPO TV it’s our innate desire to understand what others think. AOL’s Devil uses size, functionality, and low distraction to break through our distraction filters, while Meebo leverages our desire to interact with friends to drive advertiser value.
Leveraging consumer insight is surely essential to driving sustained engagement, and it’s great that these and other companies are taking such distinct approaches to realize the same goal.
Looking Forward to 2011… (Mediapost 12.8.10) 0
It’s that time of year once again! The time of year when pundits such as myself get up on their soapbox and make pointless predictions for the coming year that are little more than rehashed and half-baked versions of the same predictions their peers are making right now.
Nobody wants to read those.
I like my predictions to be a bit more provocative, so with that I give you my thoughts (some rational, some requiring a bit more explanation) for the next 12 months as we drive into 2011…
First off, following a post I made two weeks ago, I predict that some major Fortune 500 brand will drop its agency in favor of a DSP solution combined with dynamic ad generation for a 100% automated online presence. They will fully remove customized, integrated placements and rely solely on targeting and machine-based learning and analytics. This will signal a wake-up call for the agency business that they need to start training their staff and using technology the right way or they will be battling their own extinction for years to come.
I also predict that a major magazine (i.e. ESPN the Magazine, Cosmopolitan or Details) will go 100% online and tablet (iPad, Galaxy, etc.) due to decreased ad page revenue and the costs to maintain a printed version. Their subscribers will be given total access as a shifted subscriber and the quality of the content will remain very high as they also move to integrate more with technology like that of FlipBoard.
Speaking of FlipBoard, I have to assume that their business model is more than just technology so I predict that sometime in 2011 we’ll see them begin to make publisher acquisitions and start to amass a collection of owned and operated assets beyond just their technology platform. This move will begin to position Flipboard as the precedent for a 21st century content network. Flipboard could become the model for companies like Conde Nast; at the core technology driven with a content-centric revenue model.
Speaking of the app space, I predict that Nielsen and Comscore will start counting apps as a media vehicle and applying these to the overall numbers for publishers. Apps are overlooked in many cases, but if these syndicated tools can begin to track them as a stand-alone medium, I think most brands would be surprised at the volume of activity they represent.
Outside of the media and advertising space, I foresee some of the following:
- iTunes will release a cloud-based storage mechanism allowing us to share our music library anywhere at any time rather than having to copy files from one computer to the next and authorize those computers.
- The iPad2 will release as a thinner version of itself, with a camera.
- The Amazon Kindle will come out with a color version (for the pictures).
And while standing on a very thin sheet of ice, I predict the following will happen in 2011:
- Google will buy Yahoo.
- Microsoft will buy AOL, but no-one will really care.
As tends to happen in the space, Google’s moves will outshine that of everyone else. Google will buy Yahoo just to stop Microsoft from doing so, and to stop AOL and Yahoo from merging. Google will mine the various pieces of technology that Yahoo owns, and integrate Google search back into Yahoo.
Microsoft will acquire AOL, but Microsoft won’t really know what to do with AOL and will pretty much leave them alone until someone comes looking to buy up some of the pieces later in 2013.
By then we’ll all be surfing the web on the iPhone6 and iPad3, both of which will fully integrate Flash and HTML5 easily and integrate with the dashboard of your car allowing you to dictate all of your email while commuting to work.
Some of these services are already available, which makes it even more interesting since these predictions don’t really feel too far off! Until then, please have a wonderful holiday season and enjoy the final weeks of 2010!