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How to Neglect Your Prospects

Many companies become slaves to their "top 20%"--the customers who provide 80% of the revenues. But we should always inspect or biggest customers to make sure they have the profits and the future we want, as Ian Brodie points out.

Lighthouse on Sales Excellence: Challenging the 80:20 Rule. 2008-Mar-5, by Ian Brodie

In all three cases the key is to look beyond the simplistic 80:20 rule to check:

• Does it really apply in my business?
• Does it persist over time - or do I actually need to focus on “rising stars”?
• Will extra effort on my top 20% really increase sales - or are they already being fully served?

Now don’t get me wrong - the 80:20 rule can be very helpful as a simple guide to where to focus your effort. But thinking beyond the simple rule will pay big dividends for sales people willing to invest their brain power and challenge the accepted norms.

Sea Change in TV Advertising

Unless your business is big enough to devote millions of dollars to television advertising every year, or you're into direct response TV (it's own unique marketing system), using television to market your business has always been very problematic. Houston's Gallery Furniture figured how to avoid prohibitive TV production costs by building an image of being cheap and cheesy, but most companies can't roll with that image. By avoiding production costs, Gallery could afford to run frequently with new messages all the time. So it was a system, not a stunt.

Now a totally new television advertising system is being developed by a company called Spot Runner. I assumed they were always going to be targeting local businesses like dental practices and small retail chains, but now many national advertisers are starting to get involved. I suspect this is the beginning of television micro-targeting. If worldwide luxury marketers can use this system, surely local designers are going to benefit as well.

MediaPost: LVMH Runs With Spot Runner, Luxury Marketer Backs Online Ad Firm, 2008-May-7, by Joe Mandese

The addition of Group Arnault, he says, is consistent with Spot Runner's push to broaden from a long tail to a solution for bigger advertisers looking to develop better and more streamlined means of created highly targeted advertising and media buys on the fly. "[Group Arnault] LVMH brings a different perspective, that of an advertiser," says Grouf. "It gives us a richer understanding of what that will be as we move into a more fragmented environment. ... It brings entirely different categories of advertisers in the market, not just small advertisers, but advertisers who are looking to be much more targeted and focused in the messages they are serving."

How to Sustain a Fair Price

E-Commerce systems now allow most companies to test and find optimal prices that will maximize either volume or margins, but even more important is developing a pricing system that feels predicatable and fair to your customers. When The National Academies Press, the book-publishing arm of the National Academy of Sciences, began making PDF editions of its books available, many members felt the PDF version should be free. Fortunately for the long-term health of the organization, they decided to run tests of different pricing models.

Knowledge@Wharton: Marrying Marketing Science with the Front Lines. 2007-Dec-12

Pope said that because of the success of the pricing model, NAP decided to offer free downloads for users in developing countries and free downloads of titles which were lagging in sales. As Internet downloading popularity has increased, the PDF pricing was raised last year to 85%, Pope said. "The fact that I am still employed and standing in front of you means that we have been financially self-sustaining," Pope noted. "We have taken out profits and invested in the web site." Page views have soared to 18 million a year. Pope has been sharing the NAP findings with other leading booksellers, including Amazon.com, at industry conferences.

How to Create a Listening Lab

Keeping your ears open in hard work. We tend to put our nose to the grindstone and let our ears flop down. So companies have to put a listening system in place. Recently these systems have moved away from customer surveys and into "labs" where the target audience can experience a product or service and the marketers can observe them, or even ask questions. Such labs are, of course, very expensive.

Proctor & Gamble has been using what's called "pop-up retail" to run labs where people can actually take samples or even, in this case, make a purchase. Swash is a new test store across the street from Ohio State University where P&G is testing new laundry concepts. (The Columbus Dispatch: Procter & Gamble's new spin on laundry. 2007-Oct-24, by Amy Saunders)

How can you integrate listening and observing customers into your business? Is it as simple as sending executives to serve every now and then? Is your challenge more collecting and tracking data? Maybe your partners just need to set aside and analyze what they've learned recently. Are you using what you've heard to keep your business on the leading edge?

How to Bill with Interest

Do not let your invoices go out the door unadorned with marketing messages. The cost of printing these messages has gone through the floor, but if your small business doesn't have the resources to merge-print marketing messages on the bill, consider adding a personal message or a clipping of a new item or offer to the invoice. To the big ones, anyway.

Wall St. Journal: Bills Make Room for Advertising, 2007-Oct-16, by Christopher Lawton

Humana Inc., a health-benefits company in Louisville, Ky., began using transpromotional marketing last year by including specific messages in the health and benefits statements it sends out to its 4.5 million Medicare members. In the past year, the company's customer retention rate has jumped 17% thanks to its new statements, says Chris Nicholson, Humana's strategic communications director.

How to Track Your Reputation

Communications can only take you so far. At some point the "user experience" of your product and service will catch up to your brand image. So how can you measure "customer satisfaction"? A few years ago, Harvard professor Fred Reichheld suggested a magic bullet, the Net Promoter Score. All you have to do is ask your customers "Would you recommend us to a friend or colleague?", then add up the number of your "promoters", subtract the number of "detractors" and Voila!--you have a number to track from month to month. As long as that number stays steady or moves upward, your reputation is okay.

Real life, of course, is seldom so simple. To review the advantages and disadvantages, read NPS - Valid or Not? - Think customers: The 1to1 Blog, 2007-Aug-22, by Don Peppers: NPS costs very little to deploy as a metric, and can easily be handled in-house, without the intervention of a professional survey research firm. And in my opinion one of the biggest benefits of NPS is that it is educating business people to the very important fact that customer dissatisfaction almost certainly drives more defection than customer satisfaction drives loyalty.

How to Brand with Annual Reports

Now here's system synergy: connect your branding system with your accounting system. If you've got to send an annual report, it may as well communicate the brand. Origin Design has a new study on best practices for Annual Reports: The first in an annual series, this study analyzes a number of energy-related annual reports with two objectives in mind: disclosing 10 best practices for energy annuals and passing along collected metrics that enable IR professionals to benchmark their annual reports against those of their peers.

How to Avoid Wasted Mail

I believe that communication is not achieved without a system of repetition. In the advertising business, the rule of thumb is that an advertisement must run three times in order to be effective. In speech-writing, we have the old adage "Tell 'em what what you're going to tell 'em, then tell 'em, then tell 'em what you told 'em."

This rule does not fail for direct mail, no matter how elaborate the package. In fact, if you're mailing an expensive package, the best approach may be to mail a heads-up piece, the big package, and then a reminder postcard, all carrying the same message.

MarketingSherpa: New Direct Postal Mail Results Indicate Re-Mailing Works Even Better in the Internet Age. 2007-Aug-20 (paid subscription required), by Anne Holland: Here's what startled me: in both cases, the results for Rab's second postal mailing were far closer than I expected to the response rates for the original wave....For example, one original wave got a 1.90% response rate with the follow-up achieving 1.46%.... Rab actually mentioned he had tested a campaign last year with both a multipage catalog-style self-mailer as well as a follow-up postcard. He got far less than 1% response rates from people who got either the postcard or the self-mailer. However the people who got both resulted in a 3.78% response rate.

Search Marketing for Information

For all the money that's being spent on paid search advertising, it's amazing how little of it is being used for marketing intelligence. Some people are testing different benefit statements to see what appeals to their customers. If your business is spending a lot on search marketing, you need to make it work as hard as possible to build your understanding of your audience.

iProspect's Search Engine Marketing Advisor Newsletter: Learning to Share: Consumer Insights and Search Marketing, 2007-May, by Ron Belanger of Yahoo! Search Marketing

Why are all of us in search marketing so bad at sharing? No, I don’t mean the box of doughnuts at the Friday staff meeting. I mean sharing the pearls of wisdom we stumble across in our jobs on a daily basis. Is it because we are not asked, or because we do not know how valuable what we know is to the rest of the organization? It’s time that digital marketers – and search marketers in particular – start taking a seat at the marketing strategy table.

Fewer Emails, Better Communication

Too many organizations just keep sending an email every time they want you to "know" something, never stopping to think how half-a-dozen or even a dozen emails all swim together in your inbox.... Now companies are starting to realize they need to help people get a handle on all that information.

ClickZ: E-mail Overload: A Solution, 2007-May-2, by Karen Gedney

Sysco, the giant food-service corporation, found a solution for communicating with its 10,000 marketing associates in a more targeted way. The company has over 80 business units. As a result, marketing associates' inboxes were jammed with innumerable messages from corporate, unit managers, and vendors -- sometimes with contradictory information. No one had time to plow through all these messages, so many were unopened.

To solve the problem, Sysco used an application from Performance Communications to [create a special place to information.] The site, called Sysco Blue Cube to reflect the company's branding, has 10 tabs that correlate to Sysco's main business lines, such as frozen food, beverage, and dairy. ...Marketing associates need only check the tab for their product lines -- and, in fact, are required to as part of their regular job responsibilities -- to find new information relevant to their work.

Hard Decisions need Web Support

Working as a marketing manager over the last few years, I had become increasingly aware that the selling process seems to revolve around a company's web site. The web site has to reflect or amplify every other marketing communications effort. Now Mark Kingdon, CEO of one of the biggest agencies which design commercial web sites, explains why that's so, and you can see his understanding illustrated at this Jeep web site.

WSJ.com: Questions for…Mark Kingdon, CEO of Organic. 2006-Nov-8, by Emily Steel

...WSJ: As the digital space matures, some suggest that interactive work will drive all marketing communications -- both online and off. Do you agree?

Mr. Kingdon: I think that particularly for considered purchases, where people think and learn before they make a decision, the Internet is going to be central to their decision-making process, and increasingly other media will drive much more explicitly to the Web, and that the Web will be core or central in those marketing campaigns.... (highlighting added)

Major E-commerce Sites take Ads

Browsing an e-commerce web site reveals a lot about your interests and intentions. If the site owner can't get you to buy something, maybe they can hand you over to another advertiser. I didn't have to browse for long on the Home Depot web site before I found a General Motors ad. (See right.) Although I can see the connection between a business radio and a pickup truck in which to carry it, the possibility of advertising more complementary and add-on products sounds very attractive for both profit and for the consumer experience.

ClickZ News: Amazon.com Launches Self-Serve Ad Beta, 2006-Nov-3, by Ryan Naraine

..."[We are] beta testing an advertising program that allows businesses to buy sponsored links that appear on Amazon.com, next to search results and on product detail pages," the [Amazon] spokesman said in an e-mail exchange with ClickZ News. "These ads will feature products and services that complement products sold on Amazon.com. ..."

Smart-Aleck Shopping Carts

If you knew what everyone else was buying...in the grocery store?

Technology Review: Driving Impulse Shopping with a Smart Cart. by Duncan Graham-Rowe, 2006-Nov-2

Impulse buying currently accounts for about 40 percent of all supermarket purchases, says Ronaldo Menezes, an expert in swarm intelligence at the Florida Institute of Technology, in Melbourne, FL. But his research suggests that impulse buying could be significantly increased if information was fed back to shoppers about what others are buying.

Guerilla Truck Marketing

Car manufacturers used to drive demand with the mainstream network TV. Now that mainstream demand seems to be evaporating, they have to intercept truck buyers where they're using trucks. GM Fleet and Commercial has "Hard Day's Work Tour" going around to Lowe's stores.

Marketing Daily: GM Sets Up Work Sites At Lowe's Stores, 2006-Nov-2, by Karl Greenberg

Frank Jenkins, incentives and promotions manager, GM Fleet and Commercial, said the program is meant to reach consumers who don't have a lot of time to visit dealerships. "We thought we'd create our own job site, let them have a little fun, grab something to eat and see our products in a relaxed environment where they can learn about the trucks on their own," he said.

Borrowing a Brand Image

Using celebrities can be a crutch for a brand, but recent research shows that choosing the right celebrity can give your brand image a kick-start. You have to do more than choose someone who's beloved, you have to choose someone whose ability to introduce your brand makes sense to the audience. The "My Life. My Card." campaign features celebrities like Wes Anderson who flaunts his card to get what he wants on a movie set. Is there someone well known to your audience who can capture their attention and explain your brand?

...Marketing Management Analytics, a unit of the Aegis Group, developed a method four years ago to calculate how much particular celebrities contribute to advertising campaigns. The company has found that stars often add significant value to commercials, but that value can differ based on the pairing of the celebrity and the company, said Ed See, chief operating officer of Marketing Management Analytics. Companies must carefully choose the celebrities they work with to make sure the celebrity’s image adds value to the company, he said. “The stars are a brand,” Mr. See said. “Now you’re managing the confluence of two brands. You have the core brand and then you have the celebrity brand, and, when that confluence is positive, the impact can be tremendous.”...

from NY Times: Seeing Stars. 2006-Oct-12, by Louise Story

Commercials Tied to TV Shows

Instead of sneaking into viewers' awareness by placing products in TV shows, American Eagle Outfitters is going the other direction, airing commercials where their customers comment on the shows in which the ads are placed. The marketer is betting heavily on the appeal of Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars to their customers by airing exclusive clips promoting the shows on video screens in their stores, having cast members visit the stores, and running a contest for a walk-on role in Veronica Mars. I'm not sure many other companies will run the risk of committing to shows that might lose popularity, but the commitment to customers and their interests and aspirations is admirable, and I hope that catches fire.

MediaPost: American Eagle Ties Into Plotlines To Launch New Line, 2006-Oct-4, by Sarah Mahoney

Last night, the company aired what it says is a TV first: a series of 30-second 'episodes' in which six real-life customers, sitting on a wraparound couch wearing the apparel, talked about themes inspired by the plotlines of "Gilmore Girls" and "Veronica Mars." The company says ongoing "aerie tuesdays" will chronicle actual experiences and emotions of these girls throughout the season, as well as their take on the shows' characters and plot twists.

Harnessing the Words of Others

Recently, the rise of "word-of-mouth" campaigns has opened up new territory for marketing communications. Although we can't control what other people say about our products, we can supply them with ideas and words they can use in emails, blog postings, and conversations. BzzAgent recently studied their most successful agents and found that these people enjoy helping others make shopping decisions right in the store.

Brandweek: Report: Word-of-Mouth Agents Should Hit Stores, 2006-Oct-2, by Todd Wasserman

Marketers who are looking to make their word-of-mouth campaigns more successful should deploy some of their "agents" in-store, a new report argues. The white paper, from the Keller Fay Group, a New Brunswick, N.J., research firm, also says that the most successful agents are more likely to approach strangers and to use multiple forms to communicate, including e-mail, instant messaging, blogging and the phone.

Media Both more Creative and more Accountable

When they wanted focus on a specific, younger audience for the Nissan Sentra, the marketers decided they better start experimenting with the type of media being used by younger people. To their surprise they found it was not only less expensive than network TV, but easier to track in terms of performance. Their only complaint was that now the campaigns have many moving parts to keep up with--which will hopefully lead to more engaged customers as well.

NY Times: Living the Promotional Life, 2006-Oct-6, by Stuart Elliott

These days, the media plan must be as creative as the creative part of the campaign — if not more so. “We’re looking at how people consume media, not how we think they should consume media,” said Jan Thompson, vice president for marketing at Nissan North America in Gardena, Calif., part of Nissan Motor of Japan. “We’re inviting them, not interrupting them.”

Do Something for your Readers

Canadian firm Ariad Custom Communicaitons helps independent financial consultants market to their customers, usually with newsletters. So they believe their own newsletter has to be a role model. The first decision they made was to avoid using articles to tell their audience what to do. Instead they show and assist their audience in four sections of the bimonthly newsletter. I highly recommend the whole Sherpa article which includes tips about headlines and graphic design.

1. Tools
2. Research
3. Examples
4. Action items

MarketingSherpa: How an Email Newsletter to Ultra-Busy Execs Gets up to 73% Clickthroughs (Hint: No Articles), 2006-Sep-22 ($9 after Oct 2)

"Our mantra is no long and boring articles. They don't need theory. They need tools." ...

• Tools might be pre-written sales letters (in word) for specific situations, or a pre-created survey to use with clients.
• Research ...[is not a white paper but] a pie chart highlighting a single useful factoid of immediate impact on their business....
• Real-life examples [show] what works in marketing from their own peers
• Action items [will spotlight an industry trend and recommend how to use it or handle it.]

"Depending on the issue, our unique opens range between 50%-70%. Over the last four issues, unique clicks have bounced around depending on topic, from 25%-73%." [says Senior VP Mark Michaud.]

Sony Offers Buttons on Commercial

So far as I know, Sony is the first to add interactive "alternate endings" to a major broadcast commercial. Of course, only DVR users who are replaying the commercial can access extra footage. Sony is supposedly putting $12 million of media behind this commercial spot, so we should get a chance to see how it works!

WSJ.com: Sony Tries to Lure DVR Ad-Skippers, 2006-Sep-20, by Suzanne Vranica

Sony hopes that ad-zappers, who usually have to pay close attention to what's on screen to avoid overshooting when the program resumes, will be intrigued enough by the buttons appearing on the screen to stop.

More Films for Marketing

InterContinental wanted to market their hotels based on their attractive settings, but they could never have afforded to create 140 short films about the locale of each hotel. So they recruited filmmakers from TurnHere, which already posts short films about exciting places to visit and hopes to match all their artists with sponsors. InterContinental is having custom films made that feature the concierge of each hotel, and they hope to have the first 40 done by the end of October. TurnHere will host the films which will also appear on InterContinental's web site and in its newsletters.

ClickZ: InterContinental Hotels Books TurnHere for Branded Web Films, 2006-Sep-14, by Kate Kaye

"The main objective of this is that we want to provide our guests with authentic and local knowledge of each destination," said Jennifer Ploszaj, global director of brand communications for InterContinental Hotels and Resorts. "[TurnHere's] business model allows us to scale this across the world," she stressed. "We'd never be able to do this on our own."

Mobile Entertainment

New cell phone service Amp'd Mobile is apparently doing better than ESPN Mobile. Service is targeted at 18 to 34 year olds, contracts range from $30 to $150 and prepaid service is available. With such a young demographic, prepaid service is key to lowering cost of trial. But here's the phenomenal part...so far their revenue per user per month is $100, twice the national average, according to IDC. Of course, the business is still losing money and raising capital, but they are starting to get awareness for the original programming they are commissioning, including an edgy comedy series called "Lil' Bush."

NY Times Are You Breaking Up? A Cellphone Original Comedy Is Calling, 2006-Sep-11, by Fred Bierman

“When we started the company it was more along the lines of being a mobile entertainment company rather than being solely a cellphone company,” said Mr. Cummings, the senior vice president of Amp’d Mobile and one of its founders.

Transferring Shoppers from Web to Phone

When I hear about "click-to-call," I think of search advertising, but click-to-call buttons are popping up all over the internet, including email and web sites. In most cases, the retailer is calling back the prospect rather than answering an inbound voice-over-internet call. Of course, this also increases the appeal to database marekters, because now they have the prospect's phone number.

WSJ.com:Marketers Embrace Click-to-Call, 2006-Sep-7, by Suzanne Vranica

"We were looking for a strategy to increase sales efficiencies," says Jeanniey Mullen, senior director of email marketing at OgilvyOne, a direct-marketing unit of WPP Group, which is behind the Six Flag's push. OgilvyOne, which has been promoting click-to-call, says 10 of its clients are using the technology.

Negotiating Shoppers' Attention

Mediacart is carefully testing and slowly launching the next generation shopping cart, with a healthy respect for the brutal environment it will enter: the grocery store and the parking lot. The ruggedized video display (no audio) will show no more advertising than the company has verified can be absorbed by most shoppers. They realize they have to improve the overall shopping experience.

Advertising Age: Research Team Develops Shopping-Cart Ad System, 2006-Aug-30, by Mya Frazier

One of the company's findings: 87% of the 150 shoppers surveyed said they would choose a retailer equipped with Mediacart over one without the carts. The reason: "They enabled them to get out of the store more quickly," Mr. Kramer said, because an on-screen navigation tool allowed them to find the aisles where, say, anchovies, ketchup or razors were stocked.

Contagious Marketing

The limitations of viral marketing are starting to be recognized by some of the technology companies who've been on the band wagon. So, of course they need a new piece of jargon: contagiousness. In the same issue, Alice LaPlante also has a good interview with the people at Sun Microsystems about what they've done to attract more members to their online communities. To get consumers, as opposed to developers, more involved with promoting Java, they set up a web site where all the games and utilities which use Java can be showcased. Golf Solitaire, for instance.

InformationWeek: Beyond Viral: Using The Web To Nurture 'Contagious Behavior' Among Customers, 2006-Aug-23, by Alice LaPlante

"Contagiousness takes viral marketing a step further by paying attention to the conversations between people, nurturing them, and using them to develop collaborative communities," says Perry Klebahn, a consulting professor at Stanford who was formerly the head of sales and marketing at retailer Patagonia. Rather than being the flash-in-the-pan that most viral campaigns are, contagious conversations "significantly affect the general customer experience over the long term," he says.

Getting People Used to Paying

Visitors to the Habbo Hotel (mostly young teenagers) don't pay to enter, but the economic model requires that users become sufficiently engaged to buy both low-cost items and access to paid areas to improve their experience. The marketers at Habbo have been very inventive in finding ways to get teens to try out the purchasing experience and making sure their parents are happy with it, too. Marketing Sherpa interviewed the marketing team at Sulake, based in Finland.

MarketingSherpa: How to Get Teens to Pay for Virtual Content, 2006-Aug-18 (paid after August 28) ($5 article)

They used the scratch cards at promotional events to distribute coins to give teens a taste of what they could do in the Habbo Hotel, like iTunes giving away a song. Habbo recently tested a $10 prepaid card with CVS. The card had to be swiped at the cash register to activate... “we set a limit purposely on every payment method, anywhere from $20 to $30 per payment method.” .... Habbo quickly reacted to any problems with parents upset over their children charging payments without their permission, offering partial refunds and banning teens from the site for periods of time.

Stores are Communication Platforms

Despite my focus on communications, I frequently find myself talking about the retail environment. So when I was reading this article, the trend suddenly became crystal clear. Apple, Nike, adidas and all the rest of these brands are now using stores as communication platforms where a lot more happens than purchasing. Even if you don't actually go to the store, you hear about the store and form an opinion about the brand.

News Today (South India): New adidas Store in Town, 2006-Aug-21

Spread over 5,700 square feet with two floors, this sports performance centre would act as an important platform for communication and to showcase the breadth and depth of its product offerings, said Andreas Gellner, managing director, Adidas India Marketing Private limited.

Billboards Connect to Individual Phones

Outdoor advertising used to be a one-way medium, but now billboards can actually connect with the cell phones of nearby pedestrians, allowing them to download music, ads or video clips. The bluetooth technology currently being used doesn't work with cars driving by, and many of the initial implementations are in mass transit centers.

WSJ.com: CBS Touts New Shows in Video Clips, 2006-Aug-24, by Emily Steel

Like the addition of neon lights and three-dimensional fiberglass extensions to billboards, the marrying of mobile devices with outdoor advertising is yet another flourish in the booming outdoor-ad business. ... "This is a way to take the message off the billboard and literally place it in people's hands and into their lives," says Stephen Freitas, chief marketing officer for the Outdoor Advertising Association of America.

Marketing with Bloggers

With all the internet traffic that bloggers are getting, marketers would really like to get exposure, and maybe even a favorable product review, on a popular blog. However, promoting products with bloggers is still the frontier of advertising. Where the world of traditional publishing has a lot of well-recognized rules, the blogosphere is full of unpredictable people. Fionnuala Downhill (what a great name!) has some excellent advice.

Fort Wayne Journal Gazette: Marketers hope to generate buzz by seeking out bloggers, 2006-Aug-14, by Kim Hart of The Washington Post

Marketing firms are advising companies to have conversations with bloggers rather than simply pitching a product and giving free samples. Follow the blogs carefully and join the dialogue by responding to posts only when it’s appropriate, suggested Fionnuala Downhill, chief executive of Elixir Systems.

New Age in Advertising?

The new age in advertising may have arrived. YouTube will create space for advertising but no one will be required to view it. There will be ads people can select to watch on the front page, and if people are interested, they can click to a sponsor's dedicated YouTube page. I hope it works, but I guess I should say I hope the ads work. I hope they are enticing, people enjoy them and people who want to know more about the product click on through.

NY Times: YouTube Ads to Market CD by Paris Hilton, 2006-Aug-22

Chad Hurley, the site’s co-founder, said he opposed one of the main existing models for Internet video, used on Yahoo, America Online and other popular sites, in which viewers must watch a commercial before seeing a clip they have selected. “It’s not very effective to force somebody to watch an ad,” Mr. Hurley said. “We feel it’s a much better experience to have somebody opt in,” as they would with the ads on YouTube’s front page.

Reaching Out to Mobile Phones

What better analyst than a privacy expert like Alan Chapell to review the challenges facing advertisers who want to reach people on their mobile phones? I've been puzzled by what's holding them back, but Chapell does a great job of clarifying the issues. The carriers (Cingular, Verizon, etc.) face legal constraints on using data collected for non-marketing purposes. So Chapell says, and I agree, that the marketers that break through into this space will do so by coming up with great opt-in offers. Check out Virgin Mobile's new Sugar Mama program. They also have a text-message novella called Ghost Town.

iMedia Connection: Reach the Mobile Consumer, 2006-Aug-18, by Alan Chapell

Of course, many different marketing techniques -- from email to behavioral targeting to CRM -- have promised advertisers that elusive one-to-one relationship with their customers. Why should mobile fare any better? First, mobile marketers are showing a real willingness to focus on "doing the right thing." By emphasizing user opt-in, being aware of legal requirements (such as CPNI), and learning from past examples of where things went wrong, mobile may have a better shot at success. And second, armed with the right data, mobile marketers seem ready to make ads relevant to individual consumers.

Brands Ought to be Tools

Smirnoff has a new viral video out on YouTube, but that's not so unusual. However, a creative director from Smirnoff's ad agency, Kevin Roddy, said something really interesting. He says that brands need to stop being advertisers and become tools. Really, I swear, see below! Actually, I think this whole video was designed as a place to use the line "Raw Tea in the parlor makes the ladies holler." I have a product shot here which is a lot clearer than in the video.

WSJ.com: Yo! Smirnoff Raps for Malt Beverage, 2006-Aug-16, by Suzanne Vranica

WSJ: So the lack of branding is supposed to make people think it's not an ad?

Mr. Roddy: It's not that people don't know it's an ad -- it's just that it doesn't feel like an ad. People give it more room. If it feels too much like a commercial, they won't pass it along because they don't want to be seen as becoming part of the advertising game. If it's done right, they see it as fun.

WSJ: How did the lack of the Smirnoff name or the product sit with Diageo?

Mr. Roddy: The client bought into it. They understand that advertising is no longer about talking at someone, it's about engaging with the consumer. To do that, you have to play by different rules. It requires you to be more entertaining. Brands aren't advertisers anymore. ... At their best, they're tools, something consumers can get involved with, experience and take part in.

Hispanics to Get Magazine Directly from General Mills

Although General Mills spent over $10 million on Spanish-language media in 2005, according to TNS Media Intelligence, this year they are launching their own magazine for Hispanics, which will come out three times a year. Two possible explanations come to mind: 1) General Mills believes they have better access to more Hispanics in their database or through their outlets than the current Hispanic media can offer, or 2) General Mills wants to capture proprietary information about the performance and responsiveness of the Hispanic market. No mention of a web site, yet, although that would be natural.

Advertising Age: General Mills to Launch Hispanic Magazine, 2006-Aug-6, Laurel Wentz

"Que Rica Vida has content we know is important to Latinos, about education, meals, and health and wellness, with recipes by the Betty Crocker kitchen," said Rudy Rodriguez, General Mills' multicultural marketing director. Almost 2 million copies will be mailed to consumers or given away by retailers in top Hispanic markets. The version mailed to consumers is entirely in Spanish, while the 32-page retail version is bilingual.

Complex Ad Campaigns Common, Finds AdWeek

Adweek rounds up 12 major advertisers who are using "emerging media" to improve the effectiveness of their advertising. I think the only unifying trend here is the exodus from traditional media. Well, they're not abandoning it, but they sure don't depend on it anymore. I've provided links to as many campaigns as I could find.

• Acura's launch campaign for the RDX encourages viewers to snap ads with their camera phones and send in tagged images to compete for loot. (See Amy Corr's report at MediaPost newsletter Out To Launch.)
  
• Johnson & Johnson "Spotlight Presentations" started as original programming sponsored on TNT but has now moved out to include content for AOL, Time Inc. and CW Network. Said an executive from their agency Ogilvy & Mather: "It's gotten to the point where everything is content....the only criteria is whether it's interesting and relevant to me."
• McDonald's is testing mobile phone coupons in select markets, and a company representative says they tell their agencies, "Stay ahead of the emerging technologies, but don't forget traditional media."
• Coca-Cola marketers acknowledge that all media have to work together to convey the message.
• Proctor & Gamble says that customers are demanding more personalized information. They consider their "Tolerate Mornings" online video campaign a success with plenty of news coverage, hundreds of thousands of video viewings and 100,000 visitors to the microsite.
• Chrysler has incorporated many "guerilla tactics" into their Dr. Z campaign, and leads are up 31%.
• Hewlett-Packard has a component for user-generated advertising in its campaign, The Computer is Personal Again.
• The American Legacy Foundation filmed the Vans Warped Tour and is airing it on Fuse TV with their employees in the Truth Van discussing facts about smoking with kids at the music event.
• T-Mobile has found that the social features of the Sidekick phone play better on the web and they've pulled back from TV, investing in local events with MySpace and Teen People.
• Foster's beer will have The Massive Mating Game on Heavy.com where guys can view their videos, answer questions via text messaging and maybe win a date with a hot chick.
• Audi is launching their Q7 SUV in the U.S. with a very narrowly targeted campaign on Plum TV and Travel+Leisure. An editor from T+L made seven short videos of places to visit in New England (in the Q7) and their airing locally. Viewers are encouraged to go to the web site and download the videos for trip planning.
  
• IBM now has 12 podcast series and 350 individual blogs, which they hope will make them the thought leader in self-publishing.

AdWeek: Progressive Strategies Enter the Mainstream, 2006-Aug-7, by Andrew McMains and Brian Morrissey

...said Ben Edwards, IBM's manager of new media communications. "The reality we all face is that communications are increasingly going to be by individuals to individuals rather than some kind of corporate or institutional communication. People prefer that because they trust each other."

Book Commercials

Now that commercials don't necessarily air on TV, publishers are developing little films to promote books. Art students are entering contests to get funding to produce these little videos, and the good ones are getting plenty of free exposure on video web sites like YouTube. I would be surprised to discover that books haven't been promoted via TV commercials before, but probably only blockbusters. It seems to me that the current craze for making short amateur videos is a good opportunity for many marketers to try and get some exposure for their products, but in the long run, you'll have to pay for advertising. You can see a bunch of videos at Expanded Books.

New York Times: Publishers Try to Sell Words With Moving Pictures, 2006-Aug-3, by Claudia H. Deutsch

The Web sites have been running the videos as content, not advertising, so the publishers do not have to pay for every click. And unlike ads, the videos often have an afterlife in searchable archives, long after they have left the main home page. “It’s so affordable that publishers are trying it for all different kinds of books,’’ said Skye Van Raalte-Herzog, a producer at Expanded Books. The video formats vary as widely as the books being pitched.

Games for Educating Decision-Makers

Some people look at sharing games as a viral activity, but Arbor Networks is actually using a game for education in their integrated campaign for computer security systems. The game by itself is just an ordinary shooting game but the targets are categories of major security threats. If a network administrator is trying to get higher-level executives to sign off on a security system, he can email them a link to the game and maybe even educate them about the scale of the threats. Arbor Networks is helping the network administrator do his or her job--that's useful marketing.

iMedia Connection: 6 Successful Integrated Campaigns: Geeks like to play games, 2006-Jul-31, by Russell Shaw

The game, which involved targeting network security risks discussed via tutorials offered in the podcasts, promoted downloading and distribution of the podcasts-- incentivizing network administrators who downloaded these podcasts to forward them to non-technical decision-makers at their company.

Hispanic is an Urban Market with Unique Interests

Instead of posturing about the need to serve Hispanic audiences, movie makers are discovering tactics for effectively marketing mainstream movies to Hispanics. Religious themes get played up, and Hispanic cast members are pushed to the front of the publicity. We don't find stereotyping here but a real search for an efficient way to connect. It'a all about the ticket and DVD sales.

Variety.com: Marketing to Hispanics, 2006-Jul-30, by Chris Gardner

It appears to be a demographic that is easy to reach, since 80% of the U.S. Hispanic population is concentrated in the 10 largest markets. Within those cities, marketers can lean on traditional yet useful tools such as ad buys on Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo or newspapers. But marketers are trying to come up with better hooks than just cutting a new trailer or changing the language...

Shell Tools Useful to Gas Buyers

During the last oil-price crisis, Shell rolled out the Answer Books. Now they are focusing on activities that help consumers help with high gas prices, including FuelStretch tips, a Fuel IQ quiz, and this gasoline giveaway promotion.

Promo magazine: Shell Pumps $30 Million into Summer Marketing Campaign, 2006-Jun-26

"We know this is an extremely relevant promotion for consumers because we tested a variety of innovative concepts," said Karen Wildman, brand and communications manager for Shell in a statement, "and winning a lifetime supply of gasoline was by far the most compelling." It's thrilling to have such tremendous buy-in from wholesalers and retailers because it means they agree that this promotion will drive traffic to their sites, she added. The summer promotion is part of an overall marketing plan, in which Houston-based Shell is focused on giving consumers the necessary tools to get the most out of gasoline purchases.