Home » Chicago ad:tech to Offer Insight With Collection of Case Studies
Chicago ad:tech to Offer Insight With Collection of Case Studies
During the Chicago ad:tech conference, several case studies will be presented to help illustrate what companies are doing online, what works and what results they are seeing. First, Stardoll Senior VP Glenn Ginsburg and EVP and GM Matt Palmer along with Universal McCann SVP of Digital Mike Racic will talk about how a major clothing retailer took advantage of Stardoll for a back to school campaign.
Amtrak Senior Director of Loyalty Marketing Michael Blakey and Carlson Marketing Interactive and Mobile Global VP Doug Rozen will share with attendees how Amtrak and Carlson teamed to create a multi-platform customer loyalty program. And Wall Street Journal Digital Strategy & Operations Executive Director Richard Trumble and Action Engine President and CEO Scott G. Silk will explain the strategy they used and the results seen from taking the Wall Street Journal mobile.
Other case studies include work done for FTD a dn ox News Mobile. Check out the details here.
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Home » Fulton’s and Rock Bottom Replaced by Enclave for Chicago ad:tech
Fulton’s and Rock Bottom Replaced by Enclave for Chicago ad:tech
Not that a few won’t end up atop Rock Bottom at the end of the night anyway but it’s nice to know that, for the first time in, like, forever, there will be a party at the Chicago ad:tech that won’t be held at Rock Bottom or Fulton’s. Nope. This year, it’ll all be happening at Enclave, a swanky nightclub where Kim Kardashian has been know to appear - not that that matters to anyone, of course.
ad:tech has a sponsor or two for the party but companies looking to tap into the creme de la creme of online marketing would be wise to contact ad:tech to get in on the action. After all, let’s be blunt, someone has to pay for all those expected free drinks. We can’t have conference attendees actually paying for drinks. That, as you know, just isn’t done in this business! Contact to get in on the action.
Related topics: CH 08 Parties
Home » What Happens in Miami…Can Also Happen in Chicago
What Happens in Miami…Can Also Happen in Chicago
Whoa. Weren’t we all just in Miami getting our interactive (and, um, other things) on at ad:tech? Indeed we were but now it’s time for the Chicago version of ad:tech. OK, OK, so it’s not hot, sunny, sand-filled Miami Beach but it is Navy Pier and Lake Michigan which provides an awesome skyline view of Chicago. That is, if you have a friend with a nice big sailboat who’s kind enough to take you out.
Someone will have a booze cruise. Someone will have a party at The W. CIMA will have a party at Fulsom’s. And, no doubt, one night we’ll all end up atop Rock Bottom at the end of the night. Aside from that, there will keynotes from author Clay Shirky and Google CPG Industry Director Kevin Kells. There will be three panel tracks covering Media and Branding, Tactical Marketing and Emerging Platforms.
Conversational Branding will be explored as will mobile, search, viral, the death of he banner, new media economy and, yes, of course, social media.
Home » ad:tech Miami May Not Be Forever, but Boy, Friendship Is.
ad:tech Miami May Not Be Forever, but Boy, Friendship Is.
I was in the hallway late yesterday, typing between sessions and recharging my computer at one of ad:tech’s precious outlets, when a shadow fell across my monitor.
It was Paige Dzenis of Brand Infiltration. She towered over me, smiling expectantly.
“Hello,” she said. We made small talk. Suddenly she cried: “Wanna go to the beach?!”
No one in the last five years has asked me to go to the beach. I don’t like sand, and I also don’t own shorts or flip-flops. (These were decisions based on principle, not convenience.)
I contemplated this in a moment of brain-lapse as the silence grew uncomfortable. “Suuuure,” I said slowly. We exchanged numbers and Paige walked off.
A few hours later, Steve Hall, Brent Terrazas, Paige and I—a small, proud ad:tech-blogging cult—went to the beach. Paige had absorbed a $14 mojito and was festively dressed in a blouse and tiny shorts. She reminded me of Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina—you know, when she goes sailing with Bogey.
Steve and Brent made a conscious effort to look J. Crew casual: big canvassy man-shorts, slippers and button-downs. They did a lot of foot-shifting and standing-around with their hands on their hips.
For the repugnant walking-through-sand part of our journey, I took off my high-heeled boots, peeled off my socks, rolled up my jeans and followed gingerly behind the others. The air was salty, the sun low in the sky, and the horizon looked clean and empty.
“We have to touch the water, right?” Steve said.
“Yes!” Paige exclaimed. Far in the background I made a scornful noise, which Brent humored with a sympathetic glance.
The water drew near. Topaz waves slid back and forth with almost exaggerated regularity. “Look at the WAVES!” Steve shouted.
“You call these waves?” said Brent. “You sad East Coasters.”
Paige plunged her feet into the wettest part of the sand, waiting for the waves to come back. I put down my shoes and inched toward the water.
Toe dip. Ooh. Warm. It was nothing like the beaches in Northern California, where icy water makes swimming an agonizing waffler-fest of will and terror.
I put my feet in.
“You can get to Cuba in two hours from here by boat,” Brent said.
“I think I can see it,” I kidded.
The waves got meaner as the wind picked up, and I’d waded too far to avoid the ones crashing toward me. I tried stumbling back, but it was useless. I was soaked.
And It was amazing! I raced back up the shore, then down again and up again, playing tag with the sea like a puppy sorely inept at playing “catch.” More than once the waves attacked with success, and I almost fell over, screaming with psychotic glee. Steve, Brent and Paige froze and watched.
“You’re like a kid who’s never been to the ocean,” Brent said. Then he made some sort of palsied gesture, coupled with shrieks, that I think were supposed to pass for me.
“You guys hungry?” Steve said. “Let’s go have dinner.”
“No!” I exploded. My hair was soaked, my blouse clinging to my skin and my underpants almost certainly waterlogged. I couldn’t go back to the way things were. But I did feel hungry, so I waded reluctantly out of the water and followed the others.
The ocean had become my friend.
We went to Jerry’s, whose menu is so overwhelming that you long to push Alt+F. Steve and Brent had sandwiches, Paige got a pizza crust salad and I had steak and lobster. At some point during the meal Paige made a sound like, “Ohhhhh kyooooooooote!”
A pair of homeless kittens had approached the table, nosing for scraps. One was small and gray; the other was black and had cheeky eyes.
“Don’t feed them,” said Brent.
Paige fed them. Brent glared. “I’ll stop now,” she said, splashing two more man-sized crumbs onto the concrete.
We resumed dinner, then one of the kittens leaped onto a ledge beside Paige and drew close.
“It’s so cute!” Paige exclaimed. She reared back, met eyes with the cat and made this long happy noise. I froze to watch; she kept going, and the volume kept escalating. She was SCREAMING with cute overload.
“You’re screaming at the cat,” I said. And with admirable effort, Paige ceased.
“I’m such a fan of animals,” she said. I love Paige.
We ended the night at a club called Dream. The party was sponsored by Terra, which Brent doesn’t like for reasons he’ll explain in a different post. It had an ‘80s theme—Flashdance playing on a projector, “Let’s Hear it for the Boy” blaring overhead—and at some point, channeling an earlier incarnation of myself, I leaped up and down and did the cute-overload shriek.
Around 1am the musical selection devolved into pure bomba. Brent seized me and tried twirling me into submission, which was a terrible failure, then we all decided to go home.
Brent, Paige and I walked off into the humid night, arms swinging, all chummy and whatnot. (Cue Flashdance soundtrack music.)
Related topics: Miami 08 Parties
Home » SEM is a Tool, Not a Divining Rod
SEM is a Tool, Not a Divining Rod
Here’s a taste of what I heard at ad:tech Miami’s The State of Search in Latin America.
How do you think search fits into the marketing mix?
“Research suggests AdWords placement impacts brand recognition,” said commercial director Andreas Huettner of Google in Brazil.
Do you think LatAm is behind [in terms of search marketing’s maturity]?
“We are definitely behind. Which is why we were on an evangelization mission.”
The Google director’s “evangelization” comment sparked a condescending panel-wide lament about how “traditional marketers” just don’t get search and are reluctant to try it.
These men talked of traditional marketing like it was some backwater village ritual. And, like overzealous missionaries, they failed to see the logical fallacies in their brave new religion.
Search advertising, the pay-per-click (PPC) component in particular, is presented to hesitant marketers as a direct marketing tool we all just have to “master.” The pitch is deceptively simple: play your keywords right, and you’ll invest a little and get a lot back.
As the popularity of PPC search increases in Latin America, saturation will drive prices up, admitted Alexander Kavinsky, director of New Products and SEM at Midiadigital. “But as of today, search is quite effective and quite cheap in LatAm.”
What he’s saying is, Get in now. Those clicks are waiting to be plucked off the vine.
But what happens after saturation? Prices go up—and as they do, the likelihood of making a profit on your investment goes down. In the American market, no amount of “optimization” conducted with a Google or Yahoo consultant can motivate a PPC campaign in a saturated industry to so much as break even.
I’ve experienced the panic that comes with realizing great keywords no longer convert well. And even if click-through can be cajoled into improving, prices climb faster, absorbing any profits I could hope to cull from PPC.
When my company slipped into high monthly negatives in on their PPC campaigns, I approached my employers, who told me not to worry. As long as they go negative no more than $10,000 per month in search, they can afford the loss.
“Why is it okay to go negative at all?” I had asked.
They attributed it to branding. “Seeing us at the top of the sponsored listings sends a strong message” to rivals, affiliates and customers, my bosses argued.
The company already shined in organic listings; we were always among the top 3 results in our sector, so we hardly had to throw cash at a “branding” problem that didn’t exist.
“Search is definitely helping branding and branding is definitely helping search. A number of published studies have been done, where you can see how they interplay,” Kavinsky crooned, echoing something we heard repeatedly in that short hour: Search helps with branding. Trust us. There’s been research.
But when the panelists pulled the “branding” card, they never made a distinction between sponsored and organic search; neither did they give us data or names from this valuable “research.”
“Look it up,” they kept saying.
Here’s one report I managed to find on branding and SEM. Like our panelists, it claims there is a correlation between SEM and branding.
And, like our panelists, it fails to draw a distinction between organic and paid search, but puts all the weight of branding on keyword selection—which suggests paid search is what helps your brand, organic be damned. “What is an effective SEM campaign based on? Yep. Keywords. Choosing them is both an art and a science,” it reads.
Unfortunately, no amount of keyword selection will help you fare well in sponsored search if your market is saturated.
In direct marketing, a marketer conducts a campaign under the cutthroat impression that he will spend X and yield 2X. If he fails to break even, he either makes a measurable change—or he simply stops.
This is the beauty of the backwater approach: it’s results-based, and nobody’s trying to pop philosophize otherwise. You spend, measure and judge the quality of a program by the result. If you don’t realize a profitable response in a certain window of time—say, between 2-4 weeks of sending out a mailer—something is wrong.
You don’t keep doing the same thing every month because it’s “good for branding.”
“Pay-per-click is a direct marketing tool,” snapped Jolie O’Dell, an armchair social media consultant. “And it should be treated like one.”
So why do search experts ask us to treat PPC advertising differently?
If a PPC campaign stops pulling its weight because of market saturation, you can tinker all you like; it won’t make a damn bit of difference. My advice to the branding-obsessed is to get SEO-savvy. Whatever searchers might feel about sponsored listings, we know for sure they trust the sites that rank well in the organic listings. (As an added perk to merit-based means, organic won’t cost you $10 per click.)
If you can afford to “brand” indiscriminately across both sponsored and organic, more power to you. I hope you’re making the on-paper losses up elsewhere.
Because frankly, I’ve never heard of anyone who managed to create Apple or Google-caliber brand equity with ostentatious sponsored search buys. This is marketing, not alchemy.
Home » Hispanic Acculturation an Important Element in Marketing Toolbox
Hispanic Acculturation an Important Element in Marketing Toolbox
The ad:tech conference in Miami this week provided some great insights on U.S. Hispanic acculturation. Felipe Korzenny, Professor of Hispanic Marketing at Florida State University, John Gallegos, CEO of Grupo Gallegos, and Natasha Funk, Director of Research for Terra Networks US, discussed the topic during the ad:tech session “Hispanic Audience Segmentation: The Complexities of Acculturation.”
Felipe Korzenny provides an excellent definition of acculturation in his book Hispanic Marketing: “the process by which individuals acquire a second culture in addition to their first culture.”
During the panel, Felipe highlighted the evolution of acculturation models from a linear model, which assumed movement from being unacculturated to acculturated, to a bidimensional approach composed of four quadrants - Hispanic Dominant, Culturally Unique, Bicultural and Assimilated. He shared research that indicates that the Hispanic audience skews toward bicultural, and that more often than not Hispanics acculturate but do not abandon their original culture. He also talked about a multi-dimensional model, which breaks segments down by acculturation level and life stage to better understand the makeup of the U.S. Hispanic audiences.
John Gallegos, used “Beto” a bi-cultural Latino from Southern California to illustrate that it is not easy to quantitatively measure an individual’s level of acculturation. In the first clip, Beto, speaking fluent English, talks about his use of technology, including his Verizon cell phone and his plans to purchase the most recent dual -operating system Mac, and his entertainment preferences, going to the movies and to clubs to meet people from multiple cultures, both behaviors that are widely shared with the general market. In contrast, in the second clip, Beto is speaking fluent Spanish with a strong Mexican accent and talking about the importance of his Mexican heritage, making numerous music and cultural references that show his in-depth connection with his Mexican culture.
John pointed out that we should see acculturation as just one of the tools in our toolbox to understand the Hispanic audience, not see it as a silver bullet that will provide us with all the answers.
Natasha offered a first glimpse of the results of a study conducted by comScore for Terra that highlight an excellent online target for digital marketers: the highly connected Latina. The results of this research are coming soon. Stay tuned!
Home » In a Multiplatform World, Brands Must Be Present, Relevant
In a Multiplatform World, Brands Must Be Present, Relevant
Multiplatform marketing is about saturating the consumer’s world with the brand’s message.
As noted by GM’s Jaime de Valle, the old advertising adage “Fish where the fish are” has been flipped 180 degrees. Consumers are now the fishers, casting hooks to find the products, services, and brands they need, when and where they need them.
It is the marketer’s prerogative to swim where consumers are fishing, to be present and relevant at every touch point and tipping point in the decision-making process.
This is where the multiplatform approach becomes necessary.
In a world replete with marketing messages, the most competitive brands must use traditional media to place themselves before consumers before the decision becomes a priority. They must be present and relevant when research begins online. They must provide channels for response, interaction, and dialogue through nascent but omnipresent platforms such as mobile and social media. And they must send a consistent, persuasive message all the way to the point of sale.
Ok, I really only chose to cover the multiplatform sessions because I knew there’d be some talk of mobile, my one true love.
And talk there was. Carnival’s Jordan Corredera (with Susan Kidwell of Avenue A | Razorfish) and GM opened up the conversation Wednesday afternoon, echoing the industry-wide sentiment that mobile testing (WAP sites, search, etc.) is important but that the U.S. is too far behind other territories and right now is not the time for venturing beyond SMS text marketing. The good thing is, they’re testing.
Carnival’s case study on their Avenue A | Razorfish-created Funship Island campaign highlighted the mobile downloads they offered, including wallpaper and ringtones. GM’s mobile concentration seemed to revolve more around search.
Mobile, because of its everywhere-all-the-time nature, is the best medium for achieving the goal of any multiplatform campaign, as stated by de Valle: Being everywhere, all the time, at every tipping point for consumers in the decision-making process. Increasingly, he said, that process is being conducted almost entirely online, particularly for the automotive vertical.
Mobile aside, Carnival’s highly (read: insanely, borderline overwhelmingly) interactive microsite allowed users to virtually romp around an SL-like cruise ship. Their goal was to dispel common myths held to be true by cruise skeptics. Highly lauded by the digital ad community and cruise enthusiast community alike, the site was a hit.
Not only did they achieve critical success; by tracking user behavior on the site, they were able to optimize their other marketing channels. For example, they found that the section at which users spent the greatest amount of time was the stateroom page. As a result, they beefed up their coverage of stateroom features/benefits on the main Carnival page.
Most impressively, Carnival displayed a deep understanding of their brand ambassadors and partners using existing online communities. They used their advocates on cruise-related social nets to promote the new microsite, and they created a special subsection for travel agents to make sharing the Carnival Fun Ship experience easier.
They clearly understood that these days, consumers begin and end their buying decision on the Internet.
GM’s Andreas Huettner made that statement very clearly when he said that consumers are buying cars online.
He clarified that by the time consumers walk into a dealership, they, inmost cases, already know the exact make and model of the car they want, the price they want to pay, the kind of financing they expect and probably even the kind of warranty and insurance coverage they want. All the decisions have been preordained through hours of intense online work; they truly come to dealers to sign the papers and pick up the keys.
And although Internet is topping every other purchase-influencing medium, including word-of-mouth, the growth of mobile usage outstrips the growth of Internet usage. Hence, multiplatform advertisers need to very quickly figure out how to increase their presence and relevance in that medium.
A couple hours after the Carnival/GM awesomeness, Latin American portal Terra took the stage to talk about their approach to online marketing of music. Their presentation left me tweeting, “Where is the English-language version of Terra Musica?!?”
With artist sites constructed with building blocks of videos, blog feeds, UCG, photos, and every imaginable kind of social-media-friendly content acting as portals to more content and interactivity than was previously imaginable, one pities the technologically impoverished musicians stuck with MySpace Music.
Realizing that the best distribution is wide distribution, the folks at Terra have made most of the widgets portable across most social networks. They’ve also allowed for a great deal of user interaction and even submission to artists’ content.
And they understand that the best part of a content-rich site is incredible SEO, which is very likely where the user experience and direct artist-consumer interaction begin.
All these factors are what forward-thinking U.S. musicians have been struggling to define and realize. All in all, if there’s one thing I wanted to take away from ad:tech Miami and the world of Hispanic and Latin American marketing, it was to find one standout use of technology that marketers were getting right and from which the rest of us could learn and benefit.
Terra Musica may or may not get it entirely right, but it gives us some amazing clues as to the direction we should take for using rich, social media to market music directly to consumers.
Home » Hispanic Mobile Marketing Filled With Txting and Testing
Hispanic Mobile Marketing Filled With Txting and Testing
The ad:tech Miami panel on mobile marketing for Hispanic cultures in North America kicked off with a tasty amuse bouche of Universal Truths About Mobile, courtesy Jose Villa, CEO of digital ad shop Sensis:
1. Mobile and SMS texting are part of life.
2. Mobile marketing must be permission-based.
3. Mobile is not the Internet, but the user experience is improving.
4. Mobile marketing programs should be tested and optimized starting now.
5. Mobile initiatives must be integrated with other media campaigns.
6. Mobile campaigns, at least right now, need to be simple.
Some may suggest the above statements are, in the spirit of Hooters’ tagline, painfully obvious yet delightfully apparent.
Still, that’s what universal truths need to be, no? What goes up must come down and all that. And once the above statements are taken as obvious and apparent facts of multichannel marketing, then we can all start getting somewhere, mobile-ly speaking.
Perhaps it makes sense that these truths come from the Hispanic mobile marketing community. As moderator Michael Bayle noted at the outset, the majority of Hispanic Americans, when polled on what devices or technologies they’d have a difficult time relinquishing, said they couldn’t or wouldn’t give up their mobile devices.
And, according to several panelists, not only do Hispanics in North America spend more money on better devices than their non-Hispanic counterparts; they spend more money on mobile downloads, as well, and are more receptive to mobile advertising.
Still, with all these factors in place, the session showed that marketers still struggle to get ROI from mobile media.
The answer to this persistent question?
Test, test, test.
For example, the Army and Sensis tested a mobile campaign targeting Hispanics in San Antonio. They spent a relatively small amount to buy OOH media at bus stops, radio spots, and short codes for text message responses.
They got sixteen responses from the campaign. One-six. You read that right.
So, they figured the numeric short codes weren’t as memorable as a branded keyword could’ve been and the call to action wasn’t prominent enough to grab consumers’ attention. On to test two.
Still, according to Jeff Hasen, Chief Marketing Officer at HipCricket, around 80% of consumers who respond to a shortcode campaign end up taking financial action. Hasen called mobile a one-to-one, open-ended dialogue with consumers and said that, considering technology’s current state, SMS is the best channel for reaching users. Still, he noted, ROI and measurability are top-of-mind for advertisers. How much should they spend, and what results should they expect?
It’s a loaded question that is, indeed, on everyone’s mind. Larry Upton, founder and CEO of Edioma, Inc., said that he’s found the key to successful campaigns and happy advertisers lies in the accumulation of eyeballs.
He reminded the audience that relatively few U.S. Hispanics have proprietary Internet access; for these consumers, mobile IS their key to unlocking the Internet.
So, his company develops culturally relevant games built around teaching to functional needs such as language, banking, and healthcare. Although some of those needs were unanticipated (who would have thought that 70% of Tejanos needed to learn Spanish because they grew up in English-only households?), ad sponsorships have followed as downloads have risen.
The key now is to work with advertisers to find more and better ways to create and deliver branded content.
Home » Terra Rocked Dream the Second Night of ad:tech Miami
Terra Rocked Dream the Second Night of ad:tech Miami
With an 80’s theme - because, well it’s supposed to be cool or something - Terra hosted a party at the Dream Nightclub in Miami on the second night of ad:tech Miami. It was crowded and everyone was dancing so it seems 80’s music is good, at least, for something.
There was a dude dancing on a couch, a dude dancing on a pole, beautiful people posing for shots and the ubiquitous booty shot. Oh and let’s not forget the stupid “arty” shots the photographer simply had to include to somehow illustrate his photographic ineptitude. See ya next year, Miami.
See all the photos here.
Related topics: Miami 08 Parties
Home » Digital Marketing Strategy--are you a modern agency?
Digital Marketing Strategy--are you a modern agency?
In every panel, there always seems to be one person who dominates the conversation, mentioning great ideas that the rest expand on. At “The Modern Agency” seminar, that person was John Santiago, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Media 8 Digital Marketing. The main indication he was in charge? He dropped the word “agnostic” about a half-dozen times at the beginning and by the end everyone else on the panel was trying to work it into their comments.
I was interested in this session for two reasons. First of all, any lecture that is based on “introducing” new concepts to traditional marketers always has a great audience dynamic that I can’t help but observe. Case in point: when discussing the integration of digital media John stated “There isn’t going to be a ‘Traditional Media Buyer” and a ‘Online Media Buyer’ at your agency in a year--it’s just going to be ‘Media Buyer’.” Half the audience started to clap while the others recoiled in nervous shock.
The second reason I liked it was more personal--my agency, Espresso, is in the middle of a huge overhaul and we’ve been actively questioning and implementing a digital media strategy that’s in close parallel to this afternoon’s discussion. So it’s nice to see that we’re on the right track while grabbing tips from the other early-adaptors.
The one talking point the session kept coming back to was how to make your agency more effective. The dominant answer? Integrate everyone--from the intern to the CEO--in processes which allow them to really learn about new technologies and marketing strategies. From sales pitch to production, digital marketing only works when everyone is educated. At Espresso, we hold bi-monthly lunch seminars on specific digital and social media topics. (You’d be surprised at how many people didn’t even understand Facebook 3 months ago...)
Linda Jackson, Director General at OgilvyOne Mexico shared that the New York office has a program where the CEOs are paired up with entry-level employee “mentors"--the 23-year-olds talk about how they exist in this new digital landscape and the CEOs take note. Certainly different than the agencies of twenty years ago. She explained that everyone wants their office to be like Google--and why not? The new agency employee is so digitally savvy it only makes sense to have a work environment that’s complementary to their lifestyle.
John also echoed the importance of integrating the entire office in the digital marketing landscape--because in a few years it is going to be the only landscape. If knowledge about the new advertising platforms isn’t threaded throughout the entire company, you won’t be able to pull off successful digital campaigns or attract big-name talent. He suggested finding the youngest, most connected kid in the office ("the one with a MySpace account and an iPhone!") and sitting them down to learn about their consumer behaviours.
And what about the consumer?
Max Petrucci, CEO and Founder of Garage Interactive made a good point when he stated that all agencies are really just service providers. “We provide ideas and the platforms to execute them,” and the consumers take over the rest. The modern agency has to be able to know where the consumers are engaging with content and what they are doing--or want to be doing--with that content.
Home » Agencies take note: Hispanic Cutting Edge Creative
Agencies take note: Hispanic Cutting Edge Creative
Best way to kick off a discussion about cutting edge creative? Play YouTube’s “dramatic chipmunk” clip--which is exactly what Luis Miguel Messianu, Chief Creative Officer with Alma DDB did to prove his point that content is everything and the modern audience is like nothing we’ve seen (or been part of?) before.
There’s huge focus in all of the workshops at ad:tech Miami on convincing agencies and clients that digital media is the way to go. Of course, the Cutting Edge Creative: Hispanic seminar was no exception. After playing the chipmunk clip, Luis explained its popularity with a consumer term I haven’t heard before but was thrilled to learn about: Swarm Behaviour.
Forget herd mentality--the idea that viewers are passively ingesting content we force in front of their eyeballs. Swarm is the new behaviour of consumption, with consumers flocking to the places where brands engage them. If you want your brand to be successful, it’s got to be influential and interactive. Otherwise no one is going to swarm over to you.
At the same time, it’s all about a never-ending dialogue. Gustavo Garc√≠a, Executive Creative Director at Media 8 Digital Marketing emphasized that this 24-hour media landscape means it’s the end of an era for 30-second spots with a beginning, middle and end narrative. Keep the lines of communication open by creating creative that gives consumers some control. Because when it comes down to it, no matter what you do consumers are going to control your brand--so at least give them something they’ll like.
So what’s the agency to do? Consider the new model proposed by Gustavo for the Creative Department of the digital era.
Creative Strategist - coming up with ideas, the big picture
Online Copywriter - must be bilingual!
Visual Designer - making it aesthetically pleasing
Implementation Designer - making sure your big ideas, copy and visuals come together
Technologist - working the backend of your big ideas
Content Producer - developing video and online content
The Consumer - that’s right, they’re included as they now control how others see your brand
Andr√©s Fernandez, Creative Supervisor, Integrated Marketing with Zubi Advertising had some great tips about what is and isn’t cutting edge creative.
But first thing first--before you assume that the audience isn’t listening, it’s important to note: they’re just getting better at tuning out anything that doesn’t interest them. Keep that in mind when planning your next big strategy.
Cutting edge creative should be fun to work on, and get the whole agency excited. At the same time, if you’ve done something cutting edge, try it again but don’t expect it to have the same impact. Best line of the workshop: “If your account executive wants you to do it again, it’s not cutting edge, it’s ‘learning from and improving on past executions’.”
And what about cutting edge creative metrics? Isn’t that what every suit really wants to know anyway? Andr√©s suggested that your metrics can be as creative as the creative itself (whew, that’s a mouthful!) as long as you get the client on board before the project really gets under way and explain the limitations of the new project.
Home » Brands Discuss Representation in a Digital World
Brands Discuss Representation in a Digital World
In the session entitled Brand Nation: Leading US Marketers Discuss Best Practices moderated by Real Branding Senior VP Susan MacDermid with panelists P&G Director of Interactive Innovations Ted McConnell, ESPNdeportes senior Director Carlos Caban and Coke Media and Interactive Integrated Communications Director Karna Crawford, the notion of best practices for brands was discussed.
Ted McConnell brought up the though that brands can be represented online not only by fancy ad graphics but also by functionality. He related that notion to the use of an undo button to represent a paper towel brand.
While many have already said this, McConnel said mobile is the next killer app for brands. With location-based technologies improving, more and more it will become possible for brands to better target product advertising based on a person location. The classic example is the pizza sms message that arrives on your phone when you walk past a pizza parlor or the ability to buy a Coke from a vending machine with a few clicks.
McConnell, however, cautioned, it may not be the panacea everyone believes it to be., For example, it may not be the best thing for a retailer if a brand messages a customer walking by the brand in a grocery store when the grocery store , for their own sales reasons, needs to push a different brand. The retailer may not take too kindly to having another entity decide which brands should be moved off the shelves.
Home » Learning LatAm By Osmosis: Three Different Sermons for the Price of One!
Learning LatAm By Osmosis: Three Different Sermons for the Price of One!
Each ad:tech Miami session I’ve seen follows the same painful format: a moderator introduces himself, then steps aside as each panelist gives a mini-presentation.
It’s like watching antsy children read book reports out loud. But unlike their grade school counterparts, each presenter stretches his time allotment as long as possible.
This afternoon I livetweeted Social Media and Consumer Generated Content in Latin America: Exploring the Value Proposition.
Here’s a synopsis of what each panelist had to say, taking into account these three operating generalities:
- Latin Americans (LatAm) are social people. Possibly more social than the rest of the world. (This struck me as more of a cultural conceit than a verifiable fact, but nobody in the audience contested the stance. Possibly because they were all either of Latin origin, or very eager to cozy up to those of Latin origin.)
- User-centricity is the new fetish. Each panelist cited his company’s user focus at outset. (Anton Chalbaud, pictured at left, emphasized Sonico’s user-centricity by attesting to his company’s ”INSANE” focus on real people.) Gone are the days when a quick buck, whatever the means, was a virtue.
- Mastering the elusive art of interactive media, especially digital, is considered crucial to taming the LatAm audience. (Especially now.) As Lucas Morea put it, “The audience is receptive.” Marketers should teach users how to create and publish content.
Now. On to the meat of the matter.
LUCAS MOREA, CEO, Latin Edge, Inc.
Content and users perpetuate one another. Content leads to users and users lead to content: profile data, blogs, messages, comments, or photos. A site focused on static content is 1.0; user-manipulated content is 2.0.
Morea’s website, monografias, has 50,000 content pages across 40 categories. The most-viewed page has over 138,808 visits; the least viewed, merely 1. He admonished us to keep the longtail in mind. Then he paused. “Marketers hear that word at a lot of conferences lately,” he said. And being by nature a thoughtful man, he defined “longtail” for us:
Longtail: n. The theory that the sum of the consumption of all unpopular content is equal to, or greater than, the sum of consumption of the top 30.
Then he passed us a few useful stats on the Latin-American internet user:
- 20-40% of them have been online for less than 2 years
- Many have been able to skip dial-up and go straight to broadband (a sign of times a-changin’)
- 43% of internet users value their online world just as much as their “real” one
- Audience members are receptive. A brand opportunity lies in teaching them how to become content-creators.
“Don’t just facilitate; teach them how to do it!” he preached. “Such a branding/business opportunity.”
God bless you, Lucas Morea.
ANTON CHALBAUD, Chief Revenue Officer, Sonico
There are three key issues in social media advertising: What is my brand? What about CTR? What are my banner opportunities?
I had trouble following Chalbaud’s train of thought. With regard to maintaining brand integrity on social media, he said contextual advertising needs to be improved. “I know a lot of you out there don’t want your brand next to a naked boy,” he teased the audience. “You laugh, but it happens.”
While discussing click-thru on social media banners: “Users can show who they are by the brands they use. When I wear this watch, I’m telling you something about me. Same idea with banners.”
Um ... all right.
Of value: he mentioned an “unintrusive” online video format being tested in Latin America. The ad appears as a bar above the video, like a Windows title bar. “Very good click-thru ratio,” Chalbaud said. “We have had success with it in Latin America, maybe you in the United States should try it.”
He closed his presentation with a very strange statistic: Online ad budgets are increasing across Latin America. But in Mexico, and according to the IAB, they are approaching 100%.
JUAN PABLO GNECCO, Founder and CEO, Studiocom
“How can the brand facilitate, or take advantage of something positive going on between users?” Gnecco asked. Crickets in the audience.
No worries; we were in the midst of an excellent speaker. He managed to answer this question, or at least show us how Studiocom did it, with one sound example.
He began by observing that commuters traveling alone always look serious and somber. (Sorta like this guy.) But when a person they know approaches, they brighten and reanimate. Brands can light those human sparks by creating outlets for developing relationships.
“Coca-Cola came to us and said, ‘We want to connect Coca-Cola to teenagers,’” Gnecco began. But teenagers, when asked, associated Coke’s brand with money and big business. Studiocom contemplated this, then came up with MyCoke: a virtual world where you can build an avatar and make your own beats.
“But what good is making your own music if you can’t share it?” he asked playfully. Teens were then empowered to “play” their music in public spaces within the virtual world: at Subway stations, on another continent, or in their own studios. Nearby listeners could comment on their music. And if they liked what they heard, they could give the musician points.
Musicians were also invited to create personal studios and throw parties there. One million personal studios were created; and across that number, eight million pieces of furniture were sold.
“There was very little branding at first, because teens said they didn’t want Coke in their faces,” he said soberly. But Coke-branded furniture—including vending machines—sold the most often because they were the most expensive. And parties always included a few crates of Coke.
“Kids were crazy about [generating] points ... and buying Coke was the easiest way to get a lot,” he explained.
As a result, MyCoke evolved from a summer promotion to a six-year effort. Ka-ching! for Coke, I guess.
Gnecco closed with a quick mention of BarbieGirls.com, whose objective—to sell USB music devices—wasn’t well-met with the MyCoke model. It turns out BarbieGirls.com fared better with paid subscriptions.
And then there were facts:
The current global online population is divided thus:
- North America: 246.4 million out of 334 million.
- Latin Americans: 137.3 million out of 552 million.
- Rest of world: 1,024,022,037 (72.7% of the estimated total.)
Social networks in LatAm grew 103% last year. In LatAm alone, Facebook users bloomed from 52,000 to 2.2 million between 2007 and 2008.
Chew on that. Though I suppose Gnecco’s talk, which was virtual world-focused, wasn’t terribly helpful in terms of strategy. Philosophically, though, A+.
Home » Why Buy A Dog But Do The Barking Yourself?
Why Buy A Dog But Do The Barking Yourself?
Latin America Media Strategy and Planning, a session held Wed. afternoon at miami ad:tech, moderated by Bruno Almeida (Managing Director for US Media Consulting), kickstarted a barrage of great comments regarding the current state of online media buying/selling.
Panelists included Guilderme Gomide (CEO and Founder of Midia Digital), Juan David Pinzon (Founder and CEO of Ariadna), Denise Colella (VP International of Rich Media) and Ignacio Roizman (Managing Partner of Jumbo Exchange). They represented both the agency side as well as the publisher side, giving us an insight into the different perspectives each brings to the table when discussing current strategies/trends in online media.
As the technology expands, there is an ever-closing gap between what was traditionally seen as advertising networks and advertising exchanges. With advertising exchanges, it provides the agency with a way to more directly target their demographic rather than the typical advertising network approach of “blanketing” your brand messaging across large platforms. With companies like Google expanding the capabilities they offer with their content network systems, advertisers are increasingly moving towards targeting their select consumer groups rather than opting for larger, portal sites which, although give a larger reach, result in lower click-through-rates.
A question that was raised was what type of strategies are used when conceptualizing new media campaigns with the over-all consensus being the usage of not only historical data (previous analytics/campaign metrics), but also new user research data (typically from 3rd party research companies). Guilherme stated that a big goal of his is to have his agency better educate their clients to stay away from generic portals and aim for more specific advertising networks/segments.
An interesting thing that was brought up was that most “large-sized-agencies” sometimes tend to be lazy when it comes to online media buying. Sometimes it seems, to him, that the would rather spend all their budget on 3 large portal sites than 40 smaller marketing channels that were focused on the desired consumer. This type of attitude is why a lot of smaller brands, who don’t have the multi-million dollar budgets that many corporations can afford, tend to fair better in using online media to boost sales/conversions.
Juan David Pinzon agreed that it is up to the agency to educate the clients on what their various options are, as well as the benefit from specifically targeting their desired market rather than blanketing popular sites with their brand messaging. They need to understand that it is not just about traffic and click-throughs, but rather conversions/sales.
Denise then pointed out that clients who ask for CPM type media strategies need to understand that there are now better ways of reaching your target audience. Rather than looking for a needle in a haystack (thousands and thousands of impressions for only a few conversions), they should focus on finding marketing channels that, although might not bring in the same large number of traffic, would be a better match for the client’s goals. Ultimately this would bring in an increase in the conversion rate, making the ROI well worth it.
Ignacio then brought up a very interesting trend that I’ve seen before at agencies that I’ve worked at myself - Clients should trust their agency. By telling their agency what media outlets/sources that they would like to see in their media plan, they are taking away the creativity, research, and planning that the agency was hired for in the first place. “Why buy a dog but do the barking yourself?”
Following that clutch observation, Juan David added that today there is a very fine line between where media ends and creativity begins. The media planners need to understand their clients goals as well as continually research new methods of advertising so that they can present their client the best possible channels for them to market in. It is only then that the client will see the benefit in hiring an agency rather than doing it all in-house.
Home » Press Room Faux Pas
Press Room Faux Pas
Open power outlets are rare, and rarer still in the press room. Never, ever monopolize an outlet to charge your computer and cell phone at the same time—while you, Considerate Guy, attend sessions.
It’s evil.
Home » ad:tech Miami Exhibit Hall Full of Activity, Requisite Distraction
ad:tech Miami Exhibit Hall Full of Activity, Requisite Distraction
After you’ve walked through the exhibit of just about any conference you begin to think you’ve seen everything. Thankfully, the intellect and sense are never let down. While the Miami ad:tech conference is a smaller conference compared to its Big Brother New York, Big Sister San Francisco and cousin Chicago, if you’re not actually from somewhere in Latin America or Mexico, you feel a bit like you are in another world.
OK, so it’s not that extreme but it’s far different than being at a New York, San Francisco or Chicago conference and in a very good way. Anyway, enough blather. On to the pictures.
Home » Some Nights at ad:tech Top All Others
Some Nights at ad:tech Top All Others
OK, so why write about it when you can just look at the pictures? So...go here and you’ll get to wallow in the social activities of ad:tech Miami’s first night. But if you’re more the type of person who just wants to read about it, here’s the rundown…
There was food. There was alcohol. There were lots of beautiful people. There was a pool. There were people in the pool. Drinks were dropped. Drunk-speak was the only language spoken. And then there were the...[redacted].
Related topics: Miami 08 Parties
Home » Mobile Marketing in Latin America: Be Patient
Mobile Marketing in Latin America: Be Patient
The state of Latin American mobile marketing is incredibly complex, with brands clamoring to use a marketing medium that few truly understand and mobile experts such as yesterday’s panelists struggling to find the best ways to deliver content, integrate the media, and monetize the platform across a geographic territory that is anything but hegemonous.
The session on Latin American mobile also revealed many of the key differences between mobile marketing and technology in that territory and North American markets.
First, the sheer number of carriers in most South and Central American countries far outstrips what one would see in other areas; Eugenio Velasco , mobile services director at Grupo Televisa, mentioned that the number of carriers in Mexico had recently dropped from 90 to 40. Raul Aristud of Ansible Mobile speculated that this factor is the reason single-carrier countries such as Japan are so relatively advanced; the on-deck software becomes universal and allows for universal adoption of technologies such as 2D codes, mobile ticketing and commerce, etc.
And the carriers in Latin America operate very differently from North American or European companies. All of the panelists mentioned the difference of carriers’ attitudes in these markets, stating a need for diplomacy and patience when trying to acheive mobile marketing initiatives.
Rene Rodriguez, senior director of business development for WWE, noted the operational challenges of scaling and adapting mobile marketing across a wide range of Latin American cultures with different languages, idioms, celebrities, brands, etc. “Just be very, very patient,” he said.
Rodriguez was also the first panelist to mention the WAP issue. “The reality,” he said, “is that the technology is not there yet.” For the present, in Latin America, WAP sites do not work for mobile marketing. Rodriguez stated that because WAP site traffic is low, brands will not put money into advertising in that space. He sees standard SMS as the best way to reach consumers with a message. The other panelists all voiced similar assesments with varying degrees of condemnation, the most optimistic being “Maybe WAP will happen next year.”
Overall, there’s incredible growth in content consumption for music, video, and promotions. Mobile Is being used to foster interaction and create communities around brands that are well-established in traditional media. Javier Mary, head of online products for Yell Argentina, showcased some exciting, forward-looking offerings in local marketing/search, such as previews of shows, photos of restaurant interiors, mobile ticketing, proximity marketing using Bluetooth technology, and some really innovative ideas for using 2D codes to retrieve records and other information.
Ultimately, said Aristud, the big global brands and agencies want to create rich, “juicy” mobile content; the main challenge for marketers in Latin Amercia is working with mobile carriers, which takes a lot of time and which may involve a lot of refusals and rejections before a new technology or strategy is adopted.
Home » What to know from the Online Video Workshop
What to know from the Online Video Workshop
First big question: Is content still king? Unanimous panel agreement that it’s no longer the most important aspect of a media strategy. What is crucial is the user and the user’s experience. The internet allows so much more than TV currently does, such as interactivity and participation with the content. Pedro Rolla, Media Director at Terra Latin America adds that without the users, content is not important--people want to be able to spread something they’ve watched and enjoyed by posting it on a blog.
Borja Perez, VP, Market Development of Telemundo, Yahoo! Telemundo Alliance Leader makes a great point when he states that it’s in the best interest of networks and other content creators to make their product available online. Because users will do this anyway and, as he put it “I’d hate to have 16 million people watching my [high-production value] show on YouTube, that’s a bad user experience.”
Currently 70% of the content we watch online came from somewhere else offline. Meaning: it was produced with high-quality viewing portals in mind. At the same time, this pre-existing content is what drives people to UGC sites and encourages them to produce their own.
The concept of adapting production quality across media is echoed by Daniel Alpert, Client Director and Digital Marketing Services Lead at Avenue A | Razorfish. He states that the notion of analog TV is dead--it’s nothing more than a distribution channel. To really build your brand and drive consumer engagement you need to be able to work with media sites and create content strategically that will accommodate your consumer’s lifestyle.
Next big question: the role of advertising across different video distribution channels.
On Mixplay.com, brands can buy a simple banner ad or brand an entire channel, states Patricia Tomasini, Mixplay’s Sales, Product and Content Regional Director. The discussion then quickly turns to webisodes and methods of integrated product placement.
How about layered videos for online marketing? Daniel explains a concept where viewers have control over when they will be exposed to advertisements (bonus on the user experience side) by clicking on products or people within an online video. For example, click on a character of Grey’s Anatomy, and the original video will pause while a branded video starts running, informing the viewer about the clothing and products shown and where to buy it.
Borja concludes that branded webisodes work well, but the problem is that most clients aren’t educated about online advertising beyond the banner ad. So, dear agencies, the number one thing to take away from this workshop is to teach your clients about upcoming marketing trends so that they’ll start requesting them. The technology and strategy is already there, we just have to put it to use.
Home » The User-Centric Approach To SEM & eCommerce
The User-Centric Approach To SEM & eCommerce
With Search Engine Marketing and eCommerce both being large segments of any corporate interactive arsenal, miami ad:tech featured a session moderated by Tamara Barber from Forrester Research entitled: “The Art of Persuasion: The New Laws of eCommerce Marketing.” Included in the panel were Matt Spengler (Media Executive for Revenue Science), Ignacio Vidaguren (VP of Business Dev. for Mercado Libre) and Colleen Aranda (Manager of Interactive Advertising for Continental Airlines).
Key topics for the talk were User Research, Setting Appropriate ROI Goals & Objectives and the importance of Usability Testing.
With Mercado Libre being a major player in the hispanic eCommerce market, Ignacio talked about how they designed the site to focus on its’ users. He then went on to say that what products appear on the site, which new features are implemented as well as what keywords they target for SEM are all determined by their users. As for comparing paid search vs. organic search, he said that by making his site optimized for organic search results, they made the cost associated with implementing paid search minimized.
Colleen then went on to describe the way in which she and her company have established positive search engine ranking, all of which starts with determining your goals and objectives. From there you develop a strategy and “test, test, test!” To compliment that Matt added that in any campaign, especially one involving behavioral targeting, you may not achieve positive results at first. Only after implementing the first strategy and seeing the results can you properly determine the audience’s use behavior, allowing you to modify your campaign to better target your intended demographic.
From using a blend of various tactics, always analyzing how and why your users are on your site, and continually adapting towards new trends, you can maximize your ROI in both a hispanic and non-hispanic market.
An example of this was given by Colleen who said that a new version of the Continental Airlines website would be launched in Fall of this year which will be optimized for mobile browsers, while at the same time still giving them the same behavioral (and geographical) marketing content that they’ve already incorporated into their current site.
Ignacio revealed to us that all new features of the Mercado Libre site, including any new mobile tactics, are typically shown to the users in a scaled-down version, inviting feedback from their consumers. Using this feedback, they are able to roll out new ideas faster without making it’s core user-base feel like they have been left out “in the cold.”
Overall, they all seemed to stress that user research is an important, ongoing tactic that must be used if you expect to be able to adapt your marketing campaigns to compete in today’s fast-paced global community. In addition to testing campaigns, features, and all other strategies before rolling out any massive campaigns, focusing on what your user’s goals are first is the best way to achieve a positive consumer user-base.
Home » Metrics and The Rise of Participation Marketing
Metrics and The Rise of Participation Marketing
“This is the sexiest ad:tech crowd I’ve ever seen!” And with that remark started the introductory address by miami ad:tech moderator Cynthia Nelson, CEO of Todobeb√©, Inc, for a session entitled “Digital Insights: Reaching The Hispanic Community.”
Now that the crowd was paying attention, she quickly moved on to introduce herself and the two panelists for this session’s talk, Natasha Funk (Director of Research, Terra Network) & Adam Chandler (Executive Director, US Sales, Yahoo! Partner Network). Natasha would be speaking about the metrics discovered through a recent, yet-to-be-released study while Adam would be touching upon various methods that his company has used to better engage their hispanic consumers.
With Natasha going up to bat first, we were shown statistics pulled from their recent survey with comScore breaking down hispanic users into three major use categories:
Heavy - The top 20% of online users.
Medium - The next 30% of online users.
Light - The remaining 50% of online users.
Their research has shown that heavy hispanic users will remain online 2.5X longer than the average user will in the general market. Their favorite sites? Personal and community-focused sites ranked amongst the top answers given. Comparing that to what the majority of the light users responded with, Portal Sites, could show that the heavy user is more embedded in the “digital culture.” Being a participatory member of a social community would result in the user spending more time online when compared to someone who only uses it as a way to quickly gather information. This could also be explained by the age breakdown given in the same study, showing the majority of online hispanic use coming from the target demographic for social-media sites like MySpace:
43% were under 25 years old.
20% were between 25-34.
21% were between 35-44.
16% were 45 years or older.
According to their survey, the internet is the #1 source of media used on a daily basis.
Stemming from this, Adam Chandler presented on the rise of “we media” and how TV advertising is starting to follow digital. By that he went on to describe how traditional TV advertising was based on hope. With no certainty that the consumer was viewing your ads, any type of analytics provided were based on estimates unlike digital advertising, where site analytics provide more legitimate metrics to better enhance your understanding of who’s viewing your content.
With their partners, Yahoo! has created various User Generated Content promotions which have attempted to bridge the gap between the spanish and english speaking markets. Examples given were Pepsi M√∫sica, Nissan Live, as well as a promotion they produced for a Shakira single.
His explanation of what he refers to as “we media” is that in their own personal studies, they have found that for every one content creator, there are 10 users who will synthesize the data and repost it, as well as 100 users who will then read and enjoy it. So for this one post, ten people will most likely comment on it, reference it in one of their own articles, and/or repost it. Then there will be at least 100 users who will read this and think, “wow, I really enjoyed that article.” Following Adam’s theory, to those 100 of you out there, “you’re welcome.”
Home » Creating Value for Hispanic User Generated Content
Creating Value for Hispanic User Generated Content
Not to sound trite, but I’d like to steal a line from US Weekly to summarize today’s ‘Social Networking and Consumer Generated Content in the Hispanic Market: Has a Value Proposition Emerged?’ roundtable: Hispanics! Just like us!
While the session started with Zia Daniell Wigder, VP and Senior Analyst, Jupiter Research, presenting chart after chart of stats revealing that Hispanics are consistently over-indexing non-Hispanics in terms of online social networking usage, the rest of the panel was spent discussing reasons for engaging in social media and methods used to do so. And guess what? There’s no fundamental difference between how Hispanic and non-Hispanic people take part in all things online.
(Also, as one audience member pointed out, Jupiter’s study was based on results gathered from English-speaking Hispanics--so it can be assumed that we’re still missing data about the online activities of those who only speak Spanish.)
Jose Rivera-Font, VP and General Manager at Yahoo! Hispanic Americas kicked off the discussion by explaining that young Hispanics turn to social networks as a way of identifying with “tribes” through self-expression. Music is an essential part of this identity, as well as one of the main forms of engagement for social networks and user generated content. As the users get older, social networks are still important but the purpose changes to a focus on building more meaningful relationships as well as achieving professional notoriety.
I wasn’t familiar with the online music portal Batanga before coming to ad:tech, and so I’m glad the panel included its Chief Marketing Officer Rick Marroqu√≠n--and not only because he delivered some pretty great one liners throughout the discussion.
Batanga hosts over fifty radio stations all dedicated to the twenty-six different genres of Latin music (including “mood channels” where listeners can hear music that complements their current emotional state) and also hosts over 50,000 user-created radio stations. This is engagement way beyond the “I uploaded a clip to YouTube” level--in order to host a show, you have to commit to playing at least sixty songs from twenty different artists. And out of those 50,000 user-created stations, ¬æ of them air English and Spanish songs. Batanga is literally helping Hispanics redefine Spanish culture by creating new cultural binds.
The question of value in user generated content came up, and immediately Facebook’s failed Beacon initiative is mentioned. Finally, a good summary of what went wrong:
- Users expect everything online to be free, but still recognize there’s inherent value to all content online.
- The value of sharing basic personal information, such as where I went to high school, is a fair exchange for being able to connect with people from said high school, so users feel okay giving that kind of data away.
- But to just share that I bought a pair of shoes at Bloomingdale’s for the sake of sharing? Nope, no thanks, not worth the barter.
The value proposition question turns to Lee Vann, Founder and CEO, Captura Group, who is pretty candid in announcing that Captura’s current project, an American government-owned social media portal for Hispanics, really needed to be “cool” to be valuable to its audience. (Cue audience laughing.)
But he’s quick to explain that Hispanics are over-indexing in social media because they’re culturally inclined to network and make connections with friends and family, while also being a younger population overall. So the Hispanic audience is there and it’s up to us to create relevant methods for generating and sharing digital content. Just like the non-Hispanic audience--it’s all about authentic communication and not being pushy or obvious in your marketing message.
Home » Potentially Useful Data on Latin American Internet Culture
Potentially Useful Data on Latin American Internet Culture
From ad:tech Miami’s ”Latin American Consumer Habits and Online Behavior” panel. Information was provided by CEO Fabia Juliasz of ibope/NetRatings.
Percentage of internet penetration:
- Brazil, 22 percent (42 million internet users)
- Mexico, 22 percent (22.7 million users)
- Argentina, 26 percent (10.3 million users)
- Chile, 41 percent (6.7 million users)
Use varies by age, location, cost of resources and economic status. According to Juliasz, the trick is to target them locally.
Latin America consists mostly of verdant land and small communities. Cities are heavily concentrated and burdened by technology demand. This means most people in those cities can get online, but how they do it depends on what they can afford.
Where users are too poor to use a computer at home, most will use public access spaces. Free wifi and internet cafes proliferate Brazilian and Peruvian cities.
Juliasz further divided Latin American users based on four criteria:
- The Included, or users that can access technology at will. (Most Brazilian internet users go online at home, for example.) They compose 11 percent of Latin American multimedia use.
- Wannabes make 22 percent of Latin American multimedia users. Like yuppies, Wannabes are young professionals who feel appearance makes a major impact on success. As a result, they seek to be up-to-date with technology, whatever the expense. (They cannot always afford their tastes, but—as is the case in America—if they want something enough, they will find the money.)
- Keep-It-Simples (KIS), 30 percent. These people are upscale but disinterested in technology. They are mainly preoccupied with family.
- The Excluded, or users who have no proprietary access to technology. They hardly exist any longer and make up a whopping 37 percent of Latin American multimedia users.
During Q&A, she added most users check email upon first logging in, followed by extensive social media activity across sites like MySpace. (My opinion: they’re probably checking for messages.)
Meaningfully, she also said there isn’t much ecommerce activity yet, likely because of security concerns. In any event, young (in terms of internet experience) users DO NOT transact online; it is for more seasoned ones.
Overall, Juliasz applauded the growing irrelevance of the “Digital Divide” and said Latin American students no longer suffer from lack of available information.
The question is whether they will use that information positively in their communities, she said.
Home » Hispanic and Latin American Acquisitions Examined
Hispanic and Latin American Acquisitions Examined
In the ad:tech session entitled “The Internet Economy: Start-ups, Bubbles, and Buyouts,” moderated by Milbank Roy Co. LLC Managing Director Pierre-Georges Roy with panelists Global Mind CEO Marcello Montefiore, Internet Media Services Founder and CEO Gaston Taratuta, Fox Networks VP of Global Business Development Damiam Voltes and Publicitas VP of Digital Media Paul Meyer, the key takeaways were specialization and Brazil.
Not that it’s a surprise, but the panelists all noted that a company with a very specific focus - or “low cost center of excellence” as Meyer labeled it - and purpose is a better candidate for acquisition than one that’s not. Voltes strongly recommended anyone considering selling their company use an adviser, one who is separated from the operation and one that can provide an unbiased view into the deal.
Mobile was noted by all panelists as a key segment to be explored especially in Brazil where there are 135 million cell phone users. Brazil was termed by Taratuta as a country on the verge of expanse making it ripe for acquisition opportunities.
While blind ad networks were cited as a category potentially ripe for acquisition, Meyer noted these companies may have surpassed their window of opportunity having become overvalued.
While it may be a default mentality among marketers to categorize all Latin American countries having similarities akin to individual states in America, all panelists made it clear Latin American must be viewed for what it is; many different countries, each with their own cultural and economic make up. Ascribing one label to the entire region is, at best, short sighted.
Home » Focused Content, Targeting and Research Key Elements to Hispanic Marketing
Focused Content, Targeting and Research Key Elements to Hispanic Marketing
Delivering the opening keynote ay the Miami ad:tech Conference, SMG Multicultural CEO Monica Gadsby shared some findings regarding the Hispanic audience online. According to Gadsby, 19.5 million U.S. Hispanics are online, fifty percent view video (an index of 241 compared to the general market) , 70 percent of Hispanic women are online and Hispanics make up ten percent of all online users.
Gadsby addressed the full house audience and focused on three areas as they relate to Hispanic marketing: Content, Targeting and Research. Beginning with content, Gadsby cited the need for more content options for Hispanics. While Hispanic content has certainly increased, more is needed and it must be easier for Hispanics to access.
While it would have been very odd even just five years ago, Gadsby cited the prevalence of Spanish language content in mainstream television including Scrubs, Disparate Housewives and Ugly Betty.
For Miller Brewing, her agency created an online soccer game for Miller Lite directed at the Hispanic audience which, like many online games, wasn’t all that special but was very successful with most users spending between 15 and 25 minutes with the game.
Leveraging the Hispanic audience’s high usage of mobile, social media and video, Gadsby’s SMG Multicultural created a teen-focused campaign for Cover Girl. The campaign incorporated a partnership with the band RBD and the full gamut of online media elements such as, in part, a branded MySpace page, tie-ins with music sites and a sweepstakes. The campaign was designed to be bilingual and provided the user to choose the language in which they wished to experience the elements of the campaign. this choice, according to Gadsby, played into Hispanics’ shifting use of language depending upon their mindset.
In terms of targeting, Gadsby didn’t say much other than to note AOL’s acquisition of Tacoda which helped expand behavioral targeting to some Hispanic sites.
Regarding research, Gadsby urged research companies to dig deeper into the Hispanic market and provide more stable, reliable research. There are companies, such as BIGresearch and Experian, already providing some research but Gadsby says pressure needs to be put on the big guys such as Nielsen and comScore to get a bit more into the game. Agencies need to ask for it and publishers need to push for it.
At the end of the keynote in answer to a question posed by ad:tech Chair Drew Ianni who cited his own experience working on a $320 million Cingular budget of which none was allocated to Hispanic efforts, Gadsby said patience is required when finding and convincing those with budget control to reallocate budget. Rather than assuming Hispanic agencies or digital agencies are the place to go, Gadsby advocated identifying Hispanic marketers and those who control their budgets no matter where they work. It sounds simple but many assume the only place to access Hispanic budgets is whithin Hispanic agencies which according to Gadsby, is not a good assumption.
Home » ad:tech Miami Speaker Line Up Continues to Gel
ad:tech Miami Speaker Line Up Continues to Gel
The speakers are lining up for ad:tech Miami. Already, we have keynotes from SMG Multicultural CEO Monica Gadsby and Mercadol.com Co-Founder and CEO Marcos Galperin. Now, from the brand side, we have MsDonald’s Ethnic Brands Senior Director Pricilla Jamison, Proctor & Gamble Interactive Innovations Director Ted McConnell and Best Buy Hispanic Initiatives Director Jeff Weness.
From the agency side, we have Vidal Partnership Managing Partner Alberto Ferrer, BBDO Argentina Creative Director Fernando Barbella, Batanga Chairman and CEO Rafael Urbina-Quintero and Terra Networks COO Mark Lopez.
If you haven’t yet registered, you can do it here right now.
Home » ad:tech Heads to Miami for Some Hot Marketing Goodness
ad:tech Heads to Miami for Some Hot Marketing Goodness
So ad:tech San Francisco has come to a close and sights are now set on Miami which will be the location of the next ad:tech conference June 3-4. The conference will be held at the Miami Beach Convention Center with keynotes from SMG Multicultural CEO Monica Gadsby and Mercadol.com Co-Founder and CEO Marcos Galperin.
The conference will be separated into three tracks: US Hispanic which will focus on U.S. Hispanic marketers, Latin America which will focus on top trends in Mexico and South America and Universal which will cover the broad spectrum on online marketing topics, trends and tactics.
While conference will be presented in English, every session will be translated live to Spanish and Portuguese.
Home » Adteractive Party Publishes Pictorial
Adteractive Party Publishes Pictorial
Pictures from the Adteractive party which took place Wednesday, April 16 during ad:tech San Francisco are in and the hotness of the party was definitely captured. Check them all out here.
Related topics: SF 08 Parties
Home » Photos from ad:tech’s SF ‘08 Exhibit Hall
Photos from ad:tech’s SF ‘08 Exhibit Hall
This year I got to visit the exhibit hall at ad:tech. Come share my experience, starting with this winning number from the AKQA /Search booth.
I am hipster. Witness the sulk-age against bleak existential black, and my awful white chairs.
o Content is the best ad. Can’t wait for that to catch on.
o Leadqual salesguy: “Get it? He’s HOMELESS.” Me: “Why?” Salesguy: “Because he needed real estate information and nobody called him back. WE WILL CALL HIM BACK.”
o On a quest for Swag That Would Change My Life (SWAGTWCML), I found cotton candy that turns teeth blue. It was such a Reptar Bar moment.
o She has orgasmic-tastic Herbal Essences sex hair. And she knows.
o Homie in the background does not look turned on. Maybe it’s because he has radar coming out of his back.
o Reply(.com)! Please! Because it’s lonely, and its PR woman spent all day harassing us in the press room.
o We cannot promise you conviction, but we do have pie. Lots and lots of pie.
o AdShuffle gives me defective Rubiks Cube, looks alarmed while I photograph it, offers new one. You sick people and your broken toys.
o The British came, bearing scarves made of Union Jacks. This trooper walked over to talk to me, even after her boss waved his hands and shouted, “She’s just press!” That bastard.
o Casale has balls. Ultra bouncy red ones. Hijinks ensued when mine bounced down the convention stairs. I was bummed, but probably not as much as the people in the way.
o Watch this dude strive to be more normal than normal, which is actually a psychological disorder. Also, I don’t think normal people spell “extra” that way.
o Steve is not a team player. “What are you WEARING?" I shouted. “I ran out of clothes,” he said.
Home » Tactical SEO: Welcome to the Google Show
Tactical SEO: Welcome to the Google Show
The most informative session I attended at ad:tech was the Tactical SEO Workshop—which isn’t really saying much.
Panel stars included Bruce Clay, the most talkative moderator I’ve ever seen, and Aaron D’Souza of Google—who, Clay anxiously pointed out, was also on this panel last year. There were two other people on board—but as Aaron Batte snippily Twittered, it was pretty much The Aaron D’Souza Show.
To kick things off, here’s something you probably didn’t know: Of all sites that commit the icky mistake of using it to point to a URL, Adobe ranks highest for the phrase “Click here.”
Do yourself (and whomever else you link to) a favor. When linking, use relevant anchor text instead of the generic sort.
While we’re on the topic, here are ways to encourage linkbacks (not to be confused with “things you didn’t already know"):
- Write a list ("Top 10 Biggest Mistakes in [insert industry here]"). It will contribute to the perception you’re an expert. (Sez them. This may help a bit, but people are critical of new “experts,” especially in online content development, until they demonstrate staying power and street savvy. Expect to invest at least a year of hard labor building that.)
- Create a page that harnesses valuable content. (Thank you, Bill Macaitis of Fox Interactive, for this glowing contribution.)
- Submit retail listings to Google Base.
- Submit your business in a local search index.
- AJAX and content management systems are great for users; not so much for spiders. Avoid building barriers to indexability. Is your content hidden behind a form? If so, consider cloaking for spiders.
- Take advantage of PR. Stacie Ito said AT&T generates a pressie for every device launched. Each product has its own page with detailed info, proper metadata, adequately tagged imagery (so people know what they are), titles and links.
Something Ito said that nobody else would admit: you DO NOT need to be relevant to a keyword to rank well on Google. One of the top results for “iPhone” is a promotional video for BlendTec. All they did was put an iPhone into a blender to see if it would blend.
D’Souza looked put-off by the blender story. I laughed.
On Google Universal:
“Universal” search results include pictures, maps, book reviews and video, which typically appear at organic location four—just above the fold—and locations nine or 10.
The best way to serve a searcher’s needs is not necessarily always serving what the Google Algo thinks is most appropriate. If what they queried recently made headlines, a Google News story may appear atop the results. If “pictures” is added to the query, Google “knows” to be more generous with image inclusion.
“We increasingly found that even if people were on Google, they would put a street address into the search box, even though they weren’t on Google Maps,” said D’Souza. Google decided people shouldn’t have to keep a checklist of where to go for different information.
D’Souza also defended the reason YouTube videos are almost always used as the top video in a search. He took jabs on this throughout the panel from audience members and even fellow panelists, particularly Macaitis. There is no favoritism, D’Souza insisted. Google picks the most relevant video.
“But if you’re a small site, your ability to accommodate the bandwidth could be a factor.”
On Social, Behavioral and Local Search:
Over time, personal bias shall rule the day, even in search. A search for “java” could potentially generate programming, coffee or travel results. Depending on who you are, behavioral search will give you what it thinks you’re most likely looking for.
Phorm, which works directly with ISPs, is working on advertising that incorporates across-the-’net habits, and that can appear on any participating website.
This means if you are a participating website, you don’t have to generate lots of traffic just to get an advertiser to look in your direction. The person who visits will determine the ad you serve. And if click-thru happens, you get a cut for providing the real estate.
But behavioral terracing isn’t all about search habits; it can also be geographical. A UK-based user seeking banking assistance may get results for Barclays, while a US-based one may see Bank of America.
Things you may not have known (most of which were gleaned from Q&A):
- Community is smiled-upon by Google. Take advantage of video and (properly tagged) imagery. Incorporate reviews, forums, tutorials and tech chat if you can.
- Get over ranking reports. Clay calls this “behavioral bias.” In the future, how well you rank on a keyword won’t help much, as query results change based on who the user is. “The longtail consequence you can never measure from a ranking report anyhow. Your rankings can hold steady and your traffic can go up 50 percent. You’re still a winner.”
- It is possible to change the URL for your site—updating from HTML to PHP, for example—without losing Google cred. Create a 301 redirect from each old URL to its corresponding new one. This tells Google your page was moved. Over time, it will transfer your site rep.
Clay advises expediting this process with a site map. “Helps Google find the 301s about three times faster.”
DO NOT use a 302 redirect instead. There was a big explanation about why you shouldn’t use them, but to make a long story short, they confuse Google.
- Javascript-based tracking codes do not impact your SEO ranking.
- Consider cloaking. This grey hat tactic was tut-tutted by audience members (D’Souza said nothing, but he did look constipated). Clay insists there are proper uses for it: Bacardi, for example, cloaks so engines can freely view pages that are normally blocked to users under 21.
On duplicate content issues:
There are plenty of legit reasons for duplicate content. “PRs published on many sites, for example. The one that gets the most links will probably win in the end,” said Macaitis.
Part of indexing is figuring out what is legitimately duplicate and abusively duplicate. This is why creating 301s is important if you move your site to a new URL.
You will not run into duplicate content issues if someone comes to your site via http://www.yoursitehere.com and someone else comes to your site from http://yoursitehere.com. D’Souza: “Typically we realize that’s the exact same page because the content should be identical. We’ll pick up the www version.”
D’Souza: “Diversity is something Google cares about in search results. We definitely don’t like to have the exact same content in 4 or 5 results.” Google makes an effort to reflect just one copy of something that has been duplicated across the web. It uses the page with the strongest site reputation or most linkbacks.
This is more difficult with video/images and other richer media. Context helps, but not completely.
Says Clay: You can have the same content on multiple domains or locations within your domain. The search engine will pick the most authoritative page and filter the rest. This isn’t considered a reason to penalize you.
Don’t hide text. Google considers it malicious because there’s no way users can read or interact with it.
Avoid wordsmithing! When you repurpose content and make a trivial change—as if you want to fool Google into thinking the content isn’t the same—that’s considered spamming.
Finally, here are other offpage factors (besides linkbacks) that can contribute to site cred:
- How often do your listings get clicked on? (Write a good description tag.) How quickly do they typically bounce off?
- How long has the URL existed?
- Is there an absence of clicks when your site appears for a given keyword? “Absence of clicks can suggest there’s something wrong with a search result,” D’Souza says.
Related topics: SF 08 Sessions
Home » ‘Internet Superstars’ Take Stage at Best ad:tech Session Ever
‘Internet Superstars’ Take Stage at Best ad:tech Session Ever
ad:tech very much needed the so-called Internet Superstars, four “internet famous” types who were the center of the closing keynote at this year’s San Francisco conference. The name, a bit cheesy for a panel (buy, hey, it’s the name of the Revision3 show), was apt for the ad:tech crowd, a very different crowd than the SXSW crowd to whom, internet stardom is the norm.
The panel, more of a Tonight Show-style presentation juiced with a dose of post-hipsteresque, Web 2.0 irony than your typical ad conference panel, was tremendously entertaining and captured the audience’s attention perhaps better that any other panel at the three day event. OK, so it was heavy on entertainment and “internet famous"-fueled energy but the panel, by demonstration, offered up some important learnings without resorting to a PowerPoint snooze-fest.
Taking the stage with hosts Martin Sargeant and Jay Speiden of Revision 3 were Wine Library TV host Gark Vaynerchuk, Tiki Bar TV Creator and Star Jeff Macpherson, Digg Founder and Chief Architect Kevin Rose and AskANinja C-Creator Kent Nichols.
Had you attended the session, you would have learned wine experts need not be pompous stuffy types, that wine tasting and drinking can be appreciated by “regular people” and that “fakey fake” is an acceptable descriptor. Oh, and it can be funny. You would have learned money can be made by dressing like a Ninja and answering questions. You would have learned creating a video podcast entitled Tiki Bar TV can get you onstage with Steve Jobs during a keynote. OK, not in real life but your show.
And, had you attended the session, you wold have learned (OK, I found out through another source) that boy-faced Kevin Rose is a not-so-boyish 31 years old.
Catch all the photographic drama here.
Related topics: SF 08 Sessions
Home » Mobile Advertising: Does Adidas Show it’s Already Here?
Mobile Advertising: Does Adidas Show it’s Already Here?
“This year is the year of mobile marketing.” That statement always raises chuckles among advertisers, but the “Exchange Series V: What Can Mobile Do For You?” shows that in the US Market, mobile advertising has been done with success. And yes, with actual case studies to boot not the “vagueness” that Alisa has described as being the theme of other ad:tech sessions.
On the panel included David Gale (Vibes Media), Gene Keenan (Isobar Communications) and
Chris Murphy (adidas USA). Their case studies focused around Transformers, Adidas and Verizon. Beyond the QA session provided for a pretty good best practices introduction to mobile advertising.
The Adidas case study was by far the most impressive. It demonstrated that a coordinated campaign - from TV commercials to in-store retail placement - can be all tied together with mobile tactics to create a campaign that can engage with their audience on personal level.
Introduction: Mobile Usage in the US
Before launching into the case studies, David Gale (Vibes Media) and Gene Keenan (Isobar) gave a quick walk through the state of the mobile landscape for the US:
- Mobile phone users with SMS is nearly universal
- MMS usage (SMS with photos or video) has never taken off
- QR Codes are taking off outside the US, but only limited in the US. I’ve seen QR codes used in San Francisco, but only in small campaigns.
- Voice: There are lots of examples of adlib-like voice-based campaigns. Snakes on a Plane, Transformers and Adidas are all examples of this. A person an send a customized message, say of Optimize Prime from Transformers or Samuel Jackson from Snakes on a Plane, created and have that message played to a friend via a phone call.
- Location Based Service (LBS): LBS is “lots of talk, little action”, but there a Range Rover application that will automatically detect the location of the user and show a map of the nearby dealers.
The panelist gave one example of a Valentines Day themed marketing campaign where a person can either choose to download Valentine’s Day wallpaper, enter to win a trip to Cancun with their date or send a virtual “kiss”. When polling the audience, surprisingly the vast majority of the attendees thought people chose to enter a trip to Cancun.
If the attendees remember anything about Facebook and the ability to “poke”, send virtual “gifts” and virtual “kisses” to a Facebook friend ...they’d know the actual answer. And yes, the answer was the virtual “kiss” was the most common choice with the Cancun sweepstakes being deadlast.
Case Study: Transformers the Movie
Sadly, when the panelist polled the audience, I appeared to be the only soul who have watched Transformers (not once, but twice). This probably reveals a generation gap I have with most of the attendees at ad:tech.
Transformers and Adidas both ran a mobile campaign that followed the Snakes on the Plane model. Customized via a website, Optimus Prime can call one’s friend with a custom message along with a call to action to both create their own message or buy the Transformers DVD.
Results
- 1.27 million unique recipients in 20 days (63.5k people per day)
- Re-transmission rate of 2.21:1 (Meaning for every 1 message sent, ~2.21 people sent another)
- When the campaign ended, people posed as movie execs to turn the campaign back on
I was genuinely excited about the idea of receiving a call from Optimus Prime and wish the campaign was still one. The rest of the attendees, while probably impressed by the results, were decidedly less enthusiastic.
Case Study: Adidas’ “Basketball is a Brotherhood” Campaign
Next up was the Adidas’ “Basketball is a Brotherhood” campaign. While mobile was a large component of the campaign, Adidas emphasized that mobile is best used a a tactical part of a larger campaign.
The campaign consisted of bringing in 6 major NBA players (Gilbert Arenas, Chauncey Billups, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Dwight Howard and Tracy McGrady) down to a personal level and have them interact with NBA fans. The interaction was similar to the Transformers campaign, but a far more sophisticated, immersive and personal level.
The message of the campaign to emphasize the team spirit of basketball - hence, the “Brotherhood” - and featured television, print, mobile and in-store retail components. It touched on whereever and whenever there was an opportunity to interact with Adidas’ target audience.
- Adidas ran both television commercials and billboard campaigns asking people to text adidas
- All creatives were tagged with a different 5-digit SMS code for tracking purposes
- Person would receive a call from one of the athletes every 7 to 10 days:
David notes that having people engaged, “If you do it as a one time thing, you’re doing people a disservice”. Over 4-6 weeks, the person would receive a pre-recorded message from all of the 6 NBA players. Only tiny portion of people opted-out of the campai |
