As some of you know I’m currently in the USA. Since I’ve been here I’ve attended AdTech NY ‘09 and am now in San Francisco visiting Efficient Frontier, our tech partner.
Trip has been great so far & plan to post a few new articles coming out of AdTech covering:
- WPP’s view on the state of the industry, trends and emerging markets.
- The rise of the Second Channel digital ad market as the growth driver of the market.
- The state of the digital economy from a US perspective, with views from UBS & Pubmatic.com
- The outlook for Search Marketing, Local Search, Video Search etc.
I’m fortunate enough to be off to NYC next week to attend AdTech NYC 2009. I attended AdTech SFO earlier in the year and found it hugely beneficial, mainly in terms of getting a wider perspective on digital trends from the USA from both leading advertisers and major agencies.
I hope to post interesting updates and views from each day, stay tuned if you are interested or as always drop me an email & I’ll send an update or session pack if I get one.
There is a battle royal on between the post click & post impression camps in digital advertising & media. Clients are increasingly becoming aware to the metrics that make a difference to their marketing efforts and in a time when all marketers are demanding more from their investments, it looks like the post click camp is clearly winning.
If you’ve read my blog in the past, you will know what I think of post view conversion metrics. Generally I think they are BS and trying to find any link to a conversion from post view cookies that have been sprayed indiscriminately is clearly based on trying to prove value where value does not exist. Anyway…..if you’d like to review that post you can check it out here.
Today I came to work & logged on as I usually do, part of my morning ritual is to read the news online before they day starts and demands kick in. Today I experienced a new form of ad format developed by Fairfax & the smh.com.au. The format is a home page, page surround where the advertiser owns all space that surrounds the news content. Let me say I think it’s an ok idea for digital branding purposes, especially on a high traffic home page like the SMH.com.au. My problem though is if you unintentionally click anywhere outside the main content area, you end up on the advertisers destination site / page, like I did.
Post click cookie spraying maybe?
What SMH.com.au have been able to engineer is the spraying of post click cookies ( yes hard to think really), where the site will record an inordinate amount of post click cookies and hence conversions within a reasonable cookie window. Again it raises the debate of data rules, last click attribution, consumer journey’s, cookie deduping etc. Personally I believe that post click is the ONLY way to determine online value creation, in combination with well-defined data business rules.
I see this as a way that the publisher community MAY, be fighting the post click / post view battle in a way that is attempting to build value back into online display advertising and stem the tide from display into Search. Is it right or wrong? You be the judge. My view….the only clickable area should be the ad itself.
I’m just back from a week’s leave, mostly spent enjoying my home and surrounding environs, but that’s another story.
As part of catching up on general industry news first day back, I stumbled across Craig Davis’s (Chief Creative Officer and Co-Chairman of Publicis Mojo Australasia) keynote address at the 2009 Caxton Awards in Noosa. For an industry that is fighting to stay relevant in the ever changing communication, marketing and economic landscape I think his take on our collective role, is incredibly insightful and relevant.
His keynote address is attached for any of you that have a good 20 minuets or so to get enlightened. Congrats Craig on a great keynote address…..
Sorry for the delay & silence between posts, I’ve only just returned from a few weeks holiday in Italy & Scandinavia.
During one of my flights I randomly pick up a copy of the London Times and found a story that caught my interest. It was about loyalty in the times of the GFC and changes in consumer behaviour. The story details a USA based brand study, sponsored by the USA CMO Council from 2007 to 2009 that focused on consumer loyalty and retention across 685 brands. The study used data from 32 million consumer loyalty cards, similar to a Woolworth’s Every Day Rewards program.
The study found that in 2008, during the height of the GFC the average brand lost a third of its highly valuable customers – a staggering and frightening reality for direct marketers. This defection came from a group that habitually bought a specific brand for more than 70% of their purchases in a category. Brand measures of affinity, esteem and loyalty collapsed under price and promotion pressures. The study also found that in times of economic pressure, customers once loyal to premium brands in a category could be easily shifted to private-label house brands. The shift downwards was found to rapid, however the upwards shift to return to premium brands took far far longer. Over the two years of the study & data analysis, on an aggregate basis 52% of customers deemed as highly loyal either reduced their loyalty or completely defected from the brand.
The findings raise big questions for marketers and agencies (both creative & media). These include:
Is the current strategy of hope, that deploys a spray & pray approach of TV, print, outdoor etc still relevant?
How do we target more effectively through digital media? What is the impact of Search, Social Media, Blogging etc on purchase behaviour and intent at a retail level?
What is the role and effectiveness of current loyalty programs? It would seem that they don’t influence behaviour as much as we all would hope. Do they need to be better planned and executed using dynamic behavioural data in an almost real-time way?
Loyalty as we all know is a key driver of revenue for brands and most marketing activity and investment are focused primarily on customer acquisition metrics with some form of loose LTV ascribed to a business case that justifies the campaign activity. As the above study indicates, in the majority of cases loyalty and retention programs lack structure, data insights, don’t track consumer behaviour and engagement and from the customer perspective lack relevance. Most programs at best follow a strategy of HOPE, where a single digit response rate is deemed successful and everyone involved slaps each other on the back and we as an industry celebrate flawed success.
Mark Buckman, the CMO of the Commonwealth Bank in Australia loudly shared his views on the role of direct communications and customer relevance at the 2009 ADMA Forum and in the Sydney Morning Herald. Simply put he believes its time for marketers to lift their game, become smarter and more insightful about engaging in a relevant way with consumers. I couldn’t agree more, most marketing is executed here in a lazy laissez-faire way with a “good enough is good enough” attitude.
Here at Downstream, we’ve also seen the rapid change in consumer behaviour. Search query volume is up significantly across almost every category and especially across banking, finance and travel, consumers are increasingly benchmarking brands against each other. The biggest rate of change we’ve also observed is in retail where Search has been traditionally shunned by bricks and mortar businesses in favour of mass media. This disconnect in the marketing equation unfortunately is consumers are increasingly turning to Search price check and either buy online or being driven to a retail outlet. Unfortunately brands that aren’t found aren’t relevant and are losing share of mind and wallet to their more dynamic, insightful and nimble competitors.
I’d love to know what has happened here in Australia over the past 2 years, how have customers defected from brands they once loved regardless of the price differential. Have the DM & eDM programs held off customer defection, how are the biggest brands in Australia thinking about the more effective use of data, segmentation, evaluation and brand engagement? What is the future of loyalty and how will it be executed more effectively than it is today?
While not strictly advertising or economics I’ve been inspired to write a quick short post.
It is a lazy Sunday morning in Noosa (taking a short break from Sydney) & I’m currently reading a great book by Michael J Fox titled “Always looking up”. It details his personal journey from world famous actor to Parkinson’s Disease sufferer & inspirational foundation patron. Great stories about challenging conventions, common place thinking and inspirational stories from Muhammad Ali, Lance Armstrong et al who faced massive challenges to achieve something in the face of adversity. I’m a huge fan of Lance Armstrong, not for just his super-human cycling achievements but what he has done with his fame and recognition for the good of all people.
I will write a more detailed post on this soon. A great read if you are looking for positive thinking, inspiration and considering creating something new in both your personal and professional life.
I’m lucky enough to currently be in San Francisco, eagerly awaiting the kick-off of SFO AdTech for 2009.
Moscone Center - Ad Tech San Francisco
The thing I’m most excited about is seeing & hearing new ideas on digital performance marketing and general new on-line trends from North America, the biggest and most progressive digital country. Hopefully I’ll come back with a head full of new ideas & perspectives, ready to challenge the status quo even more, and yes beyond just Search Marketing.
So I’ve been thinking about what happens when like things collide.
The most interesting thing I could come up with is a big social media trend & technical collision between Google & Twitter, think Toogle or Gitter…ok maybe not on a brand front. But seriously lets think about the two most potent forms of digital marketing on the planet today, Search & Twitter (Social Media).
Twitter - the new social tool
Google - the new Master of the media Universe
In order:
Search
Fastest growing media on the planet (Australian est 60% year on year compound growth)
Search network – larger scale than any ad / publisher network
Media with the highest level of accountability & conversion
Performance related media – no click, no pay
Live media auction based market driven by relative pricing mechanic
Investment based on conversion yield
Media with the shortest conversion latency
Highest integrity media – only deals in post click metrics and avoids the BS of cookie spraying, post impression conversion & analysis
A CONSUMER DRIVEN MEDIA THAT MAPS CONSUMER THOUGHTS WHEN THEY ARE IN AN ACTIVE MIND STATE
Twitter
Twitter Mobile
Twitter - the real value is the searchable content
Collaborative social media tool
Growing exponentially fast
Maps social groups & connections
Maps social conversations about content & brands
Combines desk & mobile functionality
Has indexable content / conversations / links
Has location based functionality in mobile devices
Easy to execute algorithm based analysis on conversation value & stickiness of content or users
A Consumer driven media – WHEN IN AN ACTIVE ENGAGED MIND STATE
QUESTION : What if you combined the power of them both?
A performance based, digital media super power
Advertising at the speed of thought (or conversation)
Behaviorally targeted advertising based on a collective combination of conversations and connections / social media groups
Location based advertising & ad serving based on real-time geo-targeting
Two sticky, lean forward, consumer engaged media channels
IMPACT
Immense revenue scale for both Google & Twitter.
On Google’s side an inordinate amount of live, actively engaged impression inventory to serve ads to based on conversations (past & present), combined with consumer clustering (birds of a feather flocking together etc) and search & surfing history. For Twitter a ready made ad revenue stream of either text ads, by making Twitter effectively part of the content network ( yes some tweaks to algorithms required) or make it a part of the biddable display market from a content placement perspective.
Twitter would have a ready made, low or no cost sales channel at their instant disposal. Google would have the most valuable and dynamic digital inventory available.
Together they would be unbeatable, together they’d own social & performance media, together they’d have scale and momentum that couldn’t be broken. Together they’d provide a one stop, easy solution for brands to capitalise on both in terms of performance media, social media and mobile media.
Short & sweet today. I’ve been talking with a new on-line music portal www.bandit.fm being pioneered by Sony BMG here in Australia. Downstream are looking at potentially partnering with Sony to help build an audience for their new service.
Now anyone that knows me, knows how much of an Apple fan I am. I think anything Apple touches, generally turns to gold. Apple have successfully become the trail blazer in almost every product category (think iMac, iPhone, iPod, Mac Books of all types and descriptions). They’ve also revolutionised the consumer software market with easy to use intuitive applications (think iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD and before anyone cans me the whole iWork suite, awesome productivity suite for $99! Let’s also not forget iPhone apps – just brilliant way to build and scale your mobile platform).To date no brand really comes close to Apple’s innovation and foresight.
But when it comes to music, I think there is a true challenger that could really take it to them. Sony have developed what I believe is the BEST music site / portal on the market today.
New iTunes killer
I think it is the best for the following reasons:
Great content – they’ve developed the site intuitively with a mixture of channels, artist specific pages, video, news feeds etc. You can engage in specific genres like R&B, Hip-Hop, Rock, Pop or you can navigate to specific content rich artist pages like N.E.R.D, John Legend, Duffy etc etc.
Great site build – mixture of indexable HTML & interactive flash elements, URL structures, title tages, H1 tags etc
Downloads are easy after simple registration process
Music & videos are DRM free
Great experience – you can listen to a whole song or view a video in high quality full screen mode vs. Apple’s 30 second preview function
Not constrained by an app like iTunes – you can access it from any browse
Easy content network integration (PPC) into YouTube & Myspace. They are “THE PLACE” to view music related content.
Specific Music Genre Channels
Usher on Bandit.fm
The site will work very, very well for Paid Search / PPC campaigns, the site structure allows you to deep link to exact content as well as being able to achieve great quality scores which impacts highly on economical bid prices and as content is more compelling than iTunes, I believe with a much higher conversion process too.
The site also has very high potential to work very very well for Social Media, as the site structure let’s consumers be very specific about their Tweets, blog postings etc and create specific interest in genre based content communities. One area they could approve is allowing their content to be aggregated and syndicated on other sites, think embedding audio files or video files to MySpace or Facebook profile pages with pre & post roll Bandit.fm ads promoting their service – very economical way to drive new subscriptions, downloads or cross sell new artists / releases / albums.
So the product I think is truely world class, if this is release 1.0 I can’t wait for new versions updates. Bandit.FM can successfully take on iTunes and Apple in the market they really pioneered and commercialised (on-line music), and hopefully give consumers a compelling reason (safety – no viruses / Trojans, reliability ets) to BUY music rather that steal it from sites like Limewire.com. They only have to carve out small incremental percentages of the on-line global market to create real value & high return for their pioneering investment in on-line music. Congrats to the whole team at Sony BMG!
Wow… hasn’t everything changed. I think that change isn’t only constant, it is increasing at an exponentially rapid rate when it comes to marketing and consumer connections. TV is one of those mediums that is changing at a breakneck pace, being driven primarily by the web, cheaper broadband, processor speeds and more importantly by human behaviour and the hunger to have it all now. It seems though that the only ones fighting this technological and social trend are the TV networks, somehow trying to hold back change like that boy who put his finger in the dike, trying to hold back the pressure of a tidal tsunami.
Lets define what has changed though…
Humans desire for visual entertainment hasn’t changed, we still want to see great content, be entertained, informed, learn etc. All the usual stuff we know & love in our existing inefficient model of liner TV transmission. Actually, all the stuff we do offline (Read, listen, communicate etc) is what we NOW want to do on-line, the web has just become a faster more efficient means of content dissemination and connection. There is a fascinating book on it it if you are really interested – Convergence Culture. Back to TV….
So what the web has allowed us to do is no longer have to experience video content or TV in old world speak in a linear fashion (wait – start – stop – wait, repeat cycle, repeat cycle etc.) Now we can experience content in a multi-dimensional model where prime time is anytime, and we are no longer at the mercy of the television networks to dictate content and programming schedules to us. With the advent of TV shows on iTunes, Hulu, Video Ninja, etc etc we can watch whatever we want, whenever we want. In my home we see shows like Damages, Entourage, dare I say it Gossip Girl, The Mentalist, Flight of the Concords, Mad Men etc within hours of it airing in the USA. We stream it, download it and watch it all ad free on a schedule that suits our lives, rather than that of the networks. Actually we watch 3 or episodes all back to back, it is a much better experience.
www.Hulu.com
Video Streaming site - Ninjavideo.net
So I ponder the question, what will the future & Economics of TV be? Is there a better way? (yes obviously) Who will hold the balance of power, will it remain with the networks who still today are scratching their heads, wondering if they can fight it the same way the music industry did or will they embrace the change that is being thrust upon them by a technical and consumer lead revolution? Should they look to the pioneers of the web (gambling & porn), watch & listen carefully and adapt and commercialise their models or put their heads in the sand, only to come up for breath & see that everything has moved on without them? So I hear all you naysayers saying the IP TV market is small and nascent, but so too was the wireless broadband market, the 3G handset market and yes our old friend the Music market. Believe me it is sooner than we all think, and much much sooner than the guys paid to believe the old system won’t change.
So whats the new model then….
I think, predict, believe that Goggle will become the biggest TV network in the world in the very near future….here is why:
All TV based content ( that and everything else – Radio, Books etc) will be digitised ( fact is it already is!)
All TVC’s will also become digitised and stored on a TVC Ad Server System (similar to current ad digital display ad servers)
TV’s will be increasingly connected to media centers ( think Windows Media Center, Mac Mini or next Gen Apple TV), or co-exist in harmony with hand held devices like an iPod Touch or iPhone.
Google will be able to behaviorally understand a consumer / household based on a myriad of data sources (web surfing history, Search history, IP TV viewing history etc) & serve TV ads directly into a program that has been legitimately downloaded or is being streamed in realtime. Ad serving will be served on the basis of complex algorithms in a live auction model where market forces set pricing, similar to Paid Search today. Think Google’s recently announced “interest-based” ads on the content network with the mechanic applied to TV. Media planners & network sales forces will be a thing of the past.
Consumers will decide how much advertising they are willing to bear and will trade the cost of ad free convenience off against receiving free TV, where & when they want it. So if I want no ads, I’ll have to pay a higher cost than someone who is willing to see say 8 or 10 ads an hour who may pay nothing.
TV schedules & post campaign analysis will be more like digital campaign analysis than the current pay, hope and pray approach (what I like to call the Strategy of Hope) to accountable effectiveness reports. Advertisers will be able to understand who they’ve connected with vs. what shows they’ve bought and most importantly how the consumer has reacted within different latency periods from viewing TVC’s embedded into the content (no time shifting of course). Did they visit the site,buy the product, subscribe, buy something else in the clients product portfolio, did churn drop etc etc. The opportunities are endless. Will all TV in the future be more like DR / internet based campaigns – yes I think so at least.
Content producers / companies may distribute their content or shows directly to their audiences over the web and get a larger cut of ad revenue thereby dis-intermediating the networks.
A new breed of KPI’s will evolve based on value & yield, rather than TARPS and average spot cost.
Creative agencies will need to think of new mechanics to engage their clients audience meaningfully. No longer can they solve marketing challenges 30 seconds at a time, in the same linear fashion as the traditional TV networks serve programs.
I’d really appreciate alternate view on this, either from a Television network’s perspective or from the digital industry’s perspective. All I know is TV is going to change faster than we know it and become more like a Search market than the current state we all know and love ( or hate?).
Below is a brilliant example of creativity in social media. UBank is the new online banking offering of NAB in Australia. Three Drunk Monkeys have created an irreverent, straight talking TV series explaining complex economics in easy to understand terms for most people baffled by currency movements, interest rate movements, balance of trade and how it effects them. And yes it is only available to the online generation…great brave thinking UBank & Monkeys, congrats on doing something different.
We all know the Superbowl is famous for advertising, it is the single biggest event or forum where the great North American ad agencies can flout their talent strategically and creatively to a reported audience of over a billion people. Clients like Pepsi, E-Trade, Sony Pictures, Budweiser and Audi (to name but a few) spend upwards of USD$3M (AUD$4.651M) a spot to engage an audience and create an impact for their brand or product. With an audience of well over 100m alone in North America, cost (think USD$3M+ for the TVC, plus media) and you’d think in today’s world of integration every brand would be seeking to leverage the event and extend the engagement potential of such an expensive and potentially high yield opportunity…yes?
Well unfortunately the answer is NO for some of the brands that took part in the Superbowl. Some major brands missed the opportunity to drive people on-line and extend the brand experience from TV to digital, one of the easiest forms of integration that delivers a significant punch for an advertiser.
A cost of entry in the “Big Ideas” business is a micro-site these days, at least a 2 second URL at the end of the TVC, or if you’ve woken up to the consumer of the 21st Century maybe even a Search program with a simple keyword that relates creatively to the idea.
The benefits:
Extended brand immersion / experience / time with the brand
Extension of the creative idea into a more personal self directed environment
A captured profile, conversion or viral element etc – you choose
A proxy for the effectiveness of the media placement / creative idea (i.e. what % of the audience did you engage within 24 / 48 / 72 hrs etc)
An amplified campaign with a greater ROI for a marginal increase in investment.
Adage reports only one in five (circa 20%) of advertisers directed viewers with a specific call to action in the TVC, miraculously the highest in the past five years. Conversely, Gartner reports 65% of advertisers did construct specific Search strategies to leverage the opportunity (up around 20% on last year).
The reported Search integration winners included E-Trade, Cash4Gold, Frosted Flakes, CareerBuilder, Diet Pepsi Max, GoDaddy and Pepsi. The losers; Budweiser, Chase Bank, Denny’s, Pixar, Vizio, “Year One,” “Angels & Demons,” Taco Bell, Bud Light, Bud Light Lime, Heineken, “Transformers 2″ and Coca Cola, they missed it by a mile.
Here’s how Super Bowl advertisers ranked based on the change in Daily Reach on Super Bowl Sunday.
Download the full TNS report on Superbowl effectiveness here.
In simple terms the failure to think of constructing a Search strategy around a specific creative idea / execution had a high probable opportunity cost. Think of driving just 0.5% of your available audience on-line – 500,000 users @ est. $0.45 / click is a small additional marginal investment of $225k. Maybe less than 2.5% of the total TVC program cost. Scale this at 1%, 1.5% and the opportunity cost is significant and the potential ROI is off the chart. The equivalent cost to generate that audience through traditional digital media would be 20 to 40 times the cost.
Here in Australia, this level of thinking hasn’t even yet started to permeate advertiser or agency thinking. Connecting Search to ATL activity is seen as bleeding edge, let alone including a specific keyword as the CTA in an execution. Google’s research indicates on average only 2% of consumers can recall a campaign URL as a CTA , vs. 55% from a specific keyword. Good news is there is a massive first mover advantage in this space.
View the winners & losers below and just think how easy it would have been to construct a great Search program & maybe even incorporate a keyword as a CTA. Lets hope we see this soon in Australia.
Bad ideas come along all too often, we see them in all shapes and sizes and they can take many different forms. Usually though they are just shades of gray between average, ordinary and pedestrian that make no impact on a consumer that cause no real harm. Their biggest crime is wasted potential or the opportunity cost of doing something properly and making a significant impact on consumers minds and ultimately the clients revenue.
Every so often though we see ill conceived ideas that are cataclysmic and create a negative sentiment towards a brand. The problem usually rests in either an average strategic idea being poorly executed in the extreme, or a horrendous idea so strategically or creatively flawed that never should have made it passed a tissue session.
Two such ideas made it to market in Australia in the last few weeks.
The first was a recent integrated campaign for Tourism Queensland. They were running an on-line campaign where consumers from around the globe were invited to apply for the dream job of becoming a professional blogger based on Queensland’s Hamilton Island. If selected, the successful candidate has the opportunity to earn AUD $150k and live rent free on a tropical paradise 5 star island, reporting on all the great things Australia, Queensland and the Whitsunday has to offer.
Tourism Queensland - Island Caretaker
The agency tripped across the all not so new idea of consumer generated content, where potential candidates submit their video applications for the coveted island assignment, where the public can vote on who wins after a series of rounds and tasks that contestants undertake on the island – think Tourism meets Biggest Loser . Not so new in mechanic, but somewhat successful in generating some valuable PR and non-paid media coverage. Usually ideas like this get some interest at the start but interest wains over time as the campaign progresses. The agency reports the kick start to the campaign has been very successful with thousands and thousands of consumers interested in the role from across the globe. Well done I say for choosing a tried and true mechanic with an “ambitious” budget for the task. PR was great receiving media coverage across the globe.
What was ill conceived though was seeding the site with contrived content. To “get the audience started” the agency decided to shoot their own video application where an agency staffer posing as an every day citizen had a not so real “real tattoo” inked onto her arm as part of her application. In today’s connected society of Search and Social Networking, it took consumers and the media about 4 nano seconds to discover the fraud. While it created no real harm to anyone, it did though plant a seed of doubt in hundreds of thousands of consumers minds about the integrity of the campaign and the “brand of Queensland”. One simple, but obvious mistake of misleading consumers took the shine of what was otherwise a 6/10 creative idea, but maybe a 7/10 from an effectiveness perspective using finite funds. While everyone involved has been talking this indiscretion down, no one has stopped to count the economic cost of the bad PR and loss of trust this mistake has created. I estimate it in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Looking at the effort that went into this single misguided execution, I beg to think what could have been created with the same energy, resources and time. I’m at a loss to think though that the normal safety values on the client and agency side missed this on the way through the approval process.
Tourism Queensland - Tatoo Application
The second bad idea though created much more of a controversy in the eyes of the creative world, media and unfortunately the world of the consumer is a campaign for Witchery. Witchery, a leading mainstream brand for woman’s fashion decided to launch a “teaser campaign” for their entry into the world of man’s fashion. A hard task at the best of times, compounded by the fact the brand’s heritage and existing success was squarely based with women. No one denies the impact required for such a task.
The agency’s answer though wasn’t the right weapon for the task. The campaign was centered around creating a modern day version of the fairy tail, Cinderella where the quintessential Eastern Suburbs girl, exchanges a glance with her unknown Prince Charming in a Sydney CBD cafe. As a once in a lifetime chance for love looks like it is going to slip through her fingers, she creates a video based site asking the public to help her track down her mystery man, who surprise surprise has left his jacket in a cafe.
Here is where it all starts to go wrong. Initially this story is leaked to the media as a genuine case trying to find love Cinderella style. After a serious of TV interviews and wider news reports, momentum builds and interest grows across Australia about a modern day love story. Bloggers & surfers visit her site in the thousands, which contains contrived wooden performances by a desperate but lovely girl trying to convince us her plight is true and enlist our help in her quest to find her man. Media smells a rat and decides to investigate the story, said media quickly finds the entire story is a lie, created by an agency to sell a line of men’s clothes using the power of influence from the brands existing target audience. Media discovers said girl hasn’t used her real name, profile created on face book isn’t real either, nor is the profile on You Tube. Which hunt commences to find which brand and agency concocted such a lie.
The good parts of the campaign:
Campaign used media outlets to tell a modern day love story in low cost / no cost environment through innovative approach to PR and creating buzz
Used existing target audience as key influencers on potential new audience ( a good mechanic if executed properly with right strategic fit)
Exploited insights into societal trends of using social networking environments to spread story and create further chatter
Drove critical mass of audience to engage with story
The bad parts:
This story was a lie, a lie a lie – never lie! You can’t lie in any other advertising medium, in fact depending on the product category in some cases it is against the law. How a lie could be approved by agency staff and a client is beyond me.
Great advertising is grounded in a human truth. A lie can never be a truth.
The execution wasn’t the best, the content was contrived and see through.
There was no insight into fashion forward men (the primary target audience) that don’t need to be, and won’t be told by their partners where to shop and what brands to buy.
The negative PR created about this is significant and the economic cost is high. For a brand that hadn’t launched even one product line yet the damage is significant. I believe that the lie has negatively impacted brand awareness and consideration for Witchery Man so significantly that it will be permanently off the radar of the target audience. This has probably cost Witchery tens of thousands of dollars in revenue and opportunity cost even before the product line ever hit the stores.
Witchery Man - Hoax
Lessons:
Never lie – consumers are smarter and more nimble than we give them credit. They’ll look for the truth instantly and have it at their finger tips through Search Engines, Social Networks etc . Everyone loves a gag and story telling is the essence of any engaging campaign, just do it in smarter creative ways. The above two campaigns demonstrate a laziness strategically and creatively.
Trust is everything – never, ever lose it. It is harder to earn than lose. It has been lost here in spectacular fashion and will probably take the respective brands 10 times longer to earn it than lose it.
Use social & viral media with the same level of professionalism and diligence you would any other medium. Remember it is still advertising, just in a newer form and it demands more thought and rigor, rather than less.
All PR isn’t good. Understand your risks and impact in financial / economic terms. Just because you get PR it doesn’t necessarily make it valuable or beneficial. What is the opportunity cost of getting it wrong? What is the cost to fix it? What is the lost revenue opportunity by losing trust from your primary target audience?
Pressure check everything before an idea becomes an execution – regardless how small it may be as part of a large campaign it still needs to go through a proper filtering process strategically, creatively and in some cases morally.
Don’t let Gen Y juniors completely run digital / viral / social media campaigns. Just because they are digitally proficient from a user perspective with the an eager energy for diverse campaign mechanics, it doesn’t mean they’ve got the experience, skill or judgment call to do the right thing every time. Sometimes a little gray hair is good throughout the process!
Today it seems every integrated campaign has a micro-site, as it should. Having a great digital experience that consumers can navigate to increases brand engagement, understanding, preference, consideration and should provide entertainment or a compelling experience that enhances a brand or products success. On-line success can be defined by a multitude of different metrics or on-line success events. The real question is how to create a disproportional impact from a creative idea, media budget or campaign mechanic.
What I find surprising though today are the number of sites that can’t be found by consumers through Search engines. The offending culprit all to often is bad site design, a lack of understanding in how the Search engines index and rank sites and more often then not a digital creative directors complete obsession with flash, justified by “creative priorities” outweighing effectiveness goals. The truth of the matter though is creativity and consumer experience does not have to preclude a sites ability to found and indexed.
Why is Search so important?
Like it or not, Search is the primary way consumers choose to navigate the web. In Australia more than 90% of consumers find new sites through Search engines, not expensive banner ads or sponsored emails with very high CPC’s and low CTR’s. Having to rely on expensive, low yielding digital media makes a campaigns life span finite and limits reaching the heights of ROI.
Search engines are also the easiest point of interaction for consumers, “I see an ad (TV, print, outdoor, on-line content, work of mouth – WOM etc) and I go straight to a query box and get exactly what I asked for. Search engines provide engaged, relevant results for engaged consumers when they are actively seeking out specific information. Search (both SEO & SEM) is also the lowest cost channel to engage consumers. Effectiveness studies, has proved time & time again that Search is 10 to 15 times more cost efficient and creates more value than digital display or other types of digital media.
Even if the channel planner has been insightful enough to include paid Search (SEM / PPC) the campaign will suffer from a low quality score as the site will not be able to be spidered, indexed etc and this leads to a poor quality scores from the Search engines. This then results in artificially high CPC’s and will burn budget very quickly. The whole quality score issue though is a topic for post, so more on that later.
The Answer
Ensure any new site build is built in a HTML with flash elements embedded within site. Also make it a mandatory for the site have a full HTML back up version for non flash users (even though flash penetration is 97%+). Also ensure all sites have HTML site maps the spiders and bots can read and index.
This will allow:
Site to be indexed properly for natural Search purposes, if it is full flash it NEVER will be indexed. Take advantage to the low / no cost traffic available. Remember around 70% of consumers click on natural Search rankings and 90%+ of all consumers use Search engines to navigate the web. You do the math, this is a big audience you can’t neglect through bad process, development skills, creative priorities and decision making.
Better SEM / Paid Search results as the site will be awarded a positive quality score – your budgets will go considerably further, resulting in larger more engaged audiences and better ROI for your total campaign. Great for effectiveness case studies and your client will think your working in their best interest, not yours or the media agency’s.
Take advantage of the massive trends in mobile device web surfing. As devices such as the iPhone get better and better, penetration increases and mobile data costs fall more consumers will be both Searching and visiting sites away from the desktop. Complete flash sites can’t be read on any mobile device currently. Take advantage of this huge consumer trend and don’t neglect your traffic.
You to justify larger creative / development budgets because your campaign will be more effective. Break the 80/20 rule where the majority of a client budget goes into costly inefficient media. The fact is you can probably do an even better job with 50% of the budget going into performance media and Search, while allocating the remainder to a better more engaging site.
Great examples of Campaign Micro-sites
Optus Broadbandmenu.com
Optus Broadband Menu
Optus Broadband Menu
What the Search Engines can see
Optus Broadband - Search Engines can index content
Macquarie Bank - Platinum Credit Card
Macquarie Bank - newformofcurrency.com
Macquarie Bank – discoverable by Search Engines
What the Search Engines can see
Room for Improvement
The Lynx Effect
Search Engine – Google Snipett (no site description)
Lynx - Googles page description
What we see
The Lynx Effect
What Search Engines can see & index
Lynx Effect - Search Engines see nothing
Rexona Million Balls
Search Engine page description
Rexona
http://millionballsmission.com.au/
What the Search Engines see
millionballsmission.com.au - Invisible to Search Engines
You be the judge on what makes more sense from a marketing ROI perspective.
Today no one can run from the economic downturn we are all facing. As the credit crunch continues to tighten its grip on the economy we are seeing advertisers demand more from every dollar they invest. In recent years we’ve seen the rise and rise of digital marketing as an effective way for brands to invest their dollars due to two key factors; the channel is the fastest growing on the planet and perceived level of accountability it offers. What is beyond me though is the lack of transparency and understanding most clients have around their digital investments and the blind faith they place in the reports they get from their media agencies. Without wanting to be alarmist most acquisition and engagement focused clients could save upwards of 30% of their digital display budgets with little or no impact what so ever on their campaigns performance. Even worse they can in most cases reinvest this wastage into performance based media and Search for a 50% – 200% increase in campaign performance.
The problem…
The primary problem is most (not all) campaign performance reports delivered by media agencies use blended metrics of post impression vs. post click success events (CPA etc). In some cases I’ve seen this blended metric as high as 95% post impression and 5% post click. With cookie windows of up to 60 days this introduces a high level of bias into reports. But today the problem goes deeper, some digital media plans are unethically designed to introduce a cookie spraying methodology into the media plan. Cookie spraying is a deliberate tactic to buy as much low performing, low placement, cheap remnant digital inventory as possible. This type of media strategy can ensure upwards of 70% of an available Internet population ( e.g. Australian internet users) ALWAYS have a cookie on their machine. In some instances I’ve seen a single client drop 4 billion post impression cookies in a 12 month period, with only 13 million active Internet users in Australia you do the math. So a user may never ever click, engage or even see a brands ad, navigate to the brands site either by direct entry of another medium ( e.g. Search) and the value is attributed on a post impression basis to an advertising / media plan that had little or no effect on consumer behavior. Think how many times a consumer may visit a social networking site (www.facebook.com and www.myspace.com), use an IM program ( Microsoft Messenger, AOL Chat etc), use a free email service ( sponsored ad email) (Yahoo mail, Hotmail etc), or check the news or stocks from their favorite site. Every time they do this a cookie is dropped on a users machine.
The economic impact:
Clients are relying on false or skewed data to make digital media investment decisions
Clients are double paying for performance in some instances ( i.e. paying an affiliate commission, the cost of an impression or a Search click) – lack of ability to de-dupe
Clients are missing their true value creation opportunity as their campaigns are being optimized and planned on fictitious data sets and not investing in high yielding digital media
Some media agencies are falsely claiming media rebates and commissions they are not morally entitled to
Some media agencies are doing this by deliberate design to meet their contract commitments to networks and publishers to gain OMI (other media income) and discounted wholesale rates that they mark up due to a group buy – all in the face of not operating in a clients best interest and not disclosing this as part of their strategy ( why would they?)
The impact on performance numbers
The impact on this practice on a clients performance numbers is significant. In some cases I’ve seen digital success metrics overstated by by to a factor of up to 20 times.
Example
Industry Blended Metric Post Click Metric(actual CPA)
Telco $86 CPA $679 CPA
Credit Card $54 CPA $1894 CPA
Homeloan $205 CPA $29,452 CPA
The Solution
Base all value attribution ONLY to last cookie (last cookie should win in all circumstances)
Understand the difference both post click & post impression metrics. A post click engagement is worth SIGNIFICANTLY more than an impression.
Have a common cookie window policy across all digital mediums (display, affiliate networks, search etc)
Understand conversion latency (time from click to conversion – they differ greatly between digital mediums)
De dupe conversions / cookie pools etc
Understand the consumer journey and what exposure a consumer has had to all digital advertising (what has lead to what)
In the case of post impression metrics attribute value only within a very finite window ( i.e. 6, 12, 24 hrs from LAST impression)
Apply a universal set of data business rules to digital value attribution
Break down your media buy in transparent terms. Understand what components of the digital media buy is CPM, ROS (run of site) CPC, Remnant inventory etc. This will allow you to understand cookie spraying if it is going on. Also get all performance reports broken down on the same basis, the results may shock you.
Optimize a campaign investment on your value creation terms, not the agencies hidden objectives of OMI, media commissions, groups deals etc.
Examples of Cookie Spraying – you placement / low yield inventory
Woolworths Everyday Money - Ad at bottom of page below the fold, little or no post click value
Low yielding HSBC ad - significantly below the fold, little or chance of engagement or a click
Europcar - Display ad at bottom of page significantly below the fold
If you are interested about future of web, social media, adnetworks on a Saturday, here is a good read http://bit.ly/8LltKF4 hours ago
Run club 10k-done!,Breakfast at 4th Village of flat white, 2 poached eggs on rye toast with smoked salmon and roquet-done. I love a Saturday 4 hours ago
