Big Pharma Shifts Bucks and Attention to Direct

The FDA approved DTC in 1997. The shift in DTC is an unbelievable opportunity for online. DTC will not go away, there will be a shift to more appropriate communication. The doctor-patient dialogue is essential. Facilitating the dialogue is critical. The current model doesn't work. This panel explored what needs to be done.

TV Is Changing And TV Companies Better Follow

Facts and figures were prevalent in this ad"tech Chicago 2006 TV 2.0 panel with Denuo SVP Tim Hanlon and Points North Partners Founder Peter Storck. Both spoke of the dramatic changes TV is undergoing right now and where they thought it was heading. Storck began with a numbers-heavy presentation that revealed many insights from various studies about the use of TV and the DVR:

1. 33 percent want TV-like features of their PCs
2. 15 percent want them on their cell phone
3. 46 percent use their DVRs to skip commercials
4. 58 percent use their DVR to record programming
5. 35 percent use their DVR to pause live TV
6. 49 percent use their DVR every day
7. 63 percent use it once a week
8. 55 percent fast forward through commercials
9. Interestingly, 15 percent use thir DVRs to rewind and watch commecials
10. 42 percent use free video on demand
11. 59 percent use the DVR to access free local information

AdSpace on MySpace - Advertising with Social Media

Any discussion about social media and social networking is going to involve MySpace. This session did exactly that with some aspect of MySpace being included in just about every speaker's contribution to the session.

Rather than a presentation format, moderator David Carlick of Vantage Point Venture Partners introduces "Social Media: The Dynamics of the Genre and the Opportunities for Marketers" as a Q and A session.

Waiting for Your Cat to Bark

This session, "Waiting for Your Cat to Bark - Persuasion Architecture - Persuading Customers When they Ignore Marketing" with Bryan Eisenberg of Future Now is titled after the book of the same name. Basically this session was about marketers getting poor results because they are using old Pavolovian rules of marketing and that consumers buy differently than in the past. Customers are less like compliant dogs and more like finicky cats. Hence the title.

Developing an Integrated Local Media Strategy

Developing an Integrated Local Media Strategy talked about many components of an integrated local strategy, but left out one important thing: what that strategy might be. The main problem was that all of the panelists represented a local media/marketing vendor, but there was no one to represent the strategic position that would utilize them. Each of the speakers could clearly explain the value proposition of their individual products and really tried to tie into how it would fit into an integrated strategy, but in the end there wasn't a single discussion about how one might go about developing a strategy or examples of an integrated strategy presented.

Local Integration

"You can't buy out the homepage of MSN in Denver, but you can buy out the homepage of the Denver Post or Rocky Mountain News," said Shawn Riegsecker, Founder and President of Centro on the panel "Developing an Integrated Local Media Strategy."

He cited Hitwise numbers that 21% of newspaper site visitors are coming from a portal or search engine. Though that concerned some, he thinks that's great for newspapers. "It's a pretty sad statement on a couple levels today that if you mention geotargeting to an interactive agency, they call a portal and see how many impressions they can get in that city." He said at Centrohttp://www.yahoo.com, they believe local targeting must begin with local publishers.

Making Search Even More Efficient! Increasing Your Search Ranking Via PR and Search as a Branding Mechanism

I approached this session with a Comic Book Shop Guy attitude. I truly expected to walk out thinking, "worst session ever," and commenting on obscure facts that the panelists got wrong. While the panel covered mostly familiar ground for me, I know that it was new information to a lot of people, especially in-house marketing teams. Before the session, I had the chance to chat with someone near me who also turned out to be an Analyst for an agency, and he mentioned how surprised he was to see so many frantic note-takers at various sessions. He was hopeful about the session we were attending, but also a bit skeptical. I checked in with him after the session, and he agreed that it was very well done and worth attending.

Customer Analytics and Marketing Dashboards - The Gift that Keeps on Giving

The session on marketing dashboards was in full swing when I walked in about two minutes late. Not only was the moderator well into things, but the room was jam-packed. Luckily, I was able to find a seat because it ended up being standing room only. I had high expectations for this session. As an analyst my job is to find better ways to bring context to data - so this session was the one I was looking forward to the most, and I was not disappointed. You may be wonderng what a marketing dashboard is, and the simplest answer is that a marketing dashboard is like the dashboard on your car. It gives you all the information you need to make an informed decision without having to take your eyes off the road very long, as one of the panelists described it. Marketing dashboards provide high-level data that allows people to make decisions without spending hours pouring through data.

Moderator Stephen DiMarco deftly moved from introduced the session and challenged the panelist to answer these "silver bullets" about marketing dashboards:
1. What are the defining elements of the best dashboards?
2. How do you get people to take action on the information?
3. How do you balance insight with overload?
4. Where do I find the best data?

Mastering Your Domains

What's a domain worth to you, and what should it be worth? A few panelists at Ad:Tech offered some answers in "Domain Power - The Value, Tools, and Trade of Domain Marketing," moderated by Chris Bowler, VP at Agency.com.

Ari Lee Bayme, VP, Milbank Roy & Co, focused on the US healthcare industry, a $1.7 trillion business. As an example of domain names in action, GlaxoSmithKline bought asthma.com. One of the biggest benefits from the site, far beyond type-in traffic and even search engine optimization, is that GSK can track where the site's users are coming from so it knows where to target its marketing efforts. GSK also knows what issues matter most to the target audience, which is invaluable competitive intelligence.

What about doctors? Dr. Ott bought Texasheartsurgeon.com and Houstonheartsurgeon.com. He now has a memorable calling card, and no one has to remember how to spell his name. Another doctor bought gastricbypass.com, a high ranking site that's easy to remember. He now sends lead on to others through his site.

Link Building - It's All About Quality

I came in 5 minutes late to a room that was two thirds full. This session included just two speakers: Rob Garner of iCrossing and Dan Perry from Career Education Corporation. Jessie Stricchiola from Alchemist Media was to speak about organic site optimization but was not in attendance. Most of the interesting info in this session was in the Q and A and moderator Fionn Downhill from Elixr Systems offered some of the most valuable insight.

Bullets 'R Us: Best Practices in Design

The session "User Experience - The Latest in Design & Best Practices" was so riddled with bullets, even Superman wouldn't have survived them. All the bullets are summarized below, but the best were the first six, and they were also the best delivered.

Jared Spool, founding principal of User Interface Engineering, actually made best practices fun. He threw some head-scratchers out there: Why does Pfizer need to completely change its links every two weeks? Why did Avis have an online form with asterisks denoting optional information (as opposed to mandatory)? Why do most airlines have ticketing policies that are incomprehensible?
His six lessons:
• Know why people come to your site.
• Have the content they're looking for.
• Have all the content they need.
• Know the language of the Web.
• Write stuff people can read.
• Have something to say.
"That's 10 years of research in 11 minutes," he concluded.

Creative Blather Concludes 'Creative Is Non-Linear'

Apparently, as indicated by the very sparsely attended session, not many people are interested in listening to creative types hyping their most recent creative endeavors. Moderating the collection of creatives, Click Here ACD Brian Linder, DesignKitchen CD Sam Landers, Arc Worldwide Group CD Tim Irvine and AvenueA Razorish Disciplne lead (whatever that is) Brooke Nanberg, was Program Partners SVP David Hutchinson.

Landers, the most "creative looking" of the bunch, took the audience though the very Flashtastic work he had done for Motorola to promote the brand and, well, I'm not sure what else. The most telling bit of education here was the utterance by Landers, "oh, it's still loading." Linder shared the work his agency did for high end tequila Patron. Unfortunately, the campaign consisted mostly of low brow humor - not exactly the approach to position a high end brand. His agency also created a site, simplyperfect.com, that carried the campaign's theme of debate but enabling people to take two side of an issue and post it for others to comment upon.

Lessons in Podcasting and RSS

With a slight delay, this standing room only session started off with Moderator Henry Copeland of blogads.com introducing the speakers which included: Michael Moore of Nestle Purina Pet Care, Robert Claypoole "Consumer and Professional relationship marketing" for Johnson and Johnson Vision Care division, Heather Sefcik of Henkel Consumer Adhesives (Duck Tape) and Brian Bloom of Ligget Stashower a marketing PR firm that works with the Duck Tape brand.

Managing Ultra-Complex Search Campaigns

The session started off a bit slowly and oddly, with moderator Kevin Ryan trying to crack a joke by saying, "I come not to praise the search, but bury it." Rather an odd way to begin discussing complex search marketing, although all roads do seem to lead to Google these days. It took a bit to move beyond the introductions and into the actual presentations, but we did eventually get to our main speakers.

The first speaker from the four panelists was Patricia Hursh, president and CEO of SmartSearch Marketing. Her presenation approached ultra-complex search marketing from a strategic perspective and used Time Warner Cable (TWC) as an example. Definitely a good choice, just the abbreviated organizational chart of the marketing department of TWC is enough to bring home how complex everything there must be. The main focus of Ms. Hursh's presentation was that search isn't just for direct marketing. Search can be used for branding, competitive campaigns, bundled services, and more. While this all may seem logical, I'm sure it was revolutionary to many people. The most enlightening part of the presentation were the actual ad examples she shared. The exact choices of wording and structure were great examples of how to implement this type of integrated campaign.

How to Think Creatively, or Why Severed Fish Heads Sell

The session "How to Think Creatively," didn't offer too much insight into creative thinking. Rather, TaguchiNow founder Robert Cringely regaled the audience with examples of why shock value often works in marketing.

His big idea: The Taguchi method, a fancy version of multivariate testing, doesn't work as it's traditionally applied. The creative examples he showed tended to be counterintuitive, controversial, and meant to shock viewers, such as a pile of severed fish heads promoting travel in Cancun. These ads increased responses several times over. He calls them "interruptive images," and he notes they not only motivate click-throughs but purchases. Still, I'm not convinced that the attitude expressed works for all companies, even if it would deliver a short-term sales boost.

Warm and Cozy SEO

While there was no fireplace, there certainly was a good share of chatting in this session on organic search engine optimization. Introductions were handled by Fionn Downhill of Elixir Systems (I love her accent) to a room that was surprisingly 1/2 full. Perhaps search marketing is losing some of its luster with the ad:tech crowd? The need for SEO certainly hasn't abated as Dana Todd of SiteLab and Bruce Clay of BruceClay.com were able to attest in this mostly Q and A formatted session.

It's Hard Out Here for a Traffic Pimp

This session, How to Build a Profitable Affiliate Channel, suffered from a problem that seems to have been shared with several of the other sessions. The panelists didn't cover a single thing mentioned in the description. The conference program claimed attendees would learn "essential techniques for you to launch, re-launch and grow your affiliate network." It promised discussions of how to use everything from blogging to phone techniques to grow a profitable affiliate network. While these panelists may have had knowledge of all these topics, they neglected to share them with their audience.