Web 2.0 Permission-Based Marketing

Every day I talk with at least five global brand marketers; in the course of a week, I exchange emails with dozens, and in the course of a month, upwards of 300 of the most senior marketing gurus in America and their new media agency reps are telling me what their needs/goals are. This group represents a wide cross-section of industries, products and services; telecom; entertainment; financial services; media/publications.

As a result, I've become a clearinghouse of information..That's why people like to hear from me and talk with me. Everyone likes to know what their peers are thinking about or plotting.

And if you take 30 seconds to keep reading, you might think that I'm on to something..and will want to forward this to the people on your team that are overseeing Internet-related marketing/advertising.

The theme is the same; each one is looking for the 'holy grail" application---

• entertains and informs in a place and time that the recipient is most receptive
• a completely captive, but non-intrusive application
• that delivers rich media content
• incorporates a call to action that can be acted upon
• one that can deliver subliminal third-party advertising
• track-able; easy to gauge recall, performance, and ROI
• proven; other major brands have employed it, and have used it successfully. Yes, references are available--see attached.
• but most importantly--an application that the consumer has asked to receive.

On-line advertising, opt-in email newsletters, and more recently, blogs are the most favored tools that "on-line" marketers employ to drive their audience to their cash registers or info centers, whether in a real world store, or on-line.

Woo. Woo. as my 20-yr old daughter would say. Virtually all of these apps still depend on a customer drilling down to locate the specific promotion; the hot item that I'm interested in knowing about--the one that is today's most popular.

Few of those applications are customized based on demographic profile, and fewer still are delivering entertaining and informative content tailored to the recipient. Yes, many of my friends are spending tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars on email-centric strategies that incorporate very sophisticated, quant-based programs that are purportedly sending tailored messages based on the customer profile. Keep laughing.

Now you can stop laughing--and think about this--an application that meets all of the criteria described above, and costs a rounding point* of what you are spending to implement and deploy:

• a 'top listing' in a Google Adwords campaign
• implementing and managing an email-marketing campaign
• direct mail
• OOH mediums (from billboards to in-store, to direct mail to the wide selection of guerilla strategies)

* Rounding point means that for those spending six, seven or eight figures annually for a dedicated Internet strategy that targets tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions---this is a barely five-figure enhancement that could prove to not only complement those efforts, but can be more effective, more durable, and more long-lasting than anything you are spending on today.

What is it?

• Its an application that automatically launches on your customer's desk top--when he/she has asked to receive it--or simply launched via a desktop icon.
• It occupies 75% of the user's screen, and can be closed by one click of a mouse.
• It can be easily customized (by you or by Synovativ's programmers) to look like a mini-website, a digital billboard, a static billboard, or a condensed newsletter. It can be multi-paneled, or single paneled. It can even incorporate a pre-downloaded video app--which means that the user doesn't have to launch the darn thing, wait for it to load, and than view on his/her PC etc.
• It can be updated with fresh content and automatically display once a day, twice a day, three times a day--whatever. However frequently you want to update content--and however frequently your user wants to see--he/she will set his timer accordingly. Or, the user can launch it via the desktop icon.
• Installing it takes 30 seconds. Your customers will appreciate that it won't impact any on the computer, and more importantly--he/she is assured that there are no cookies, no adware, no spyware--no gremlins running around in the background. They don't need to provide any personal information, email address in order to download it.
• Its as clean as a newborn baby's tushy.

On your side--its plug and play; uploading content is a cut and paste process. The admin module tracks viewership data, and performance links to your existing transactional platforms.

Licensing/Delivery: Customized to your needs. 6 or 12 month site licenses; capped flat rate, or based on per user. You can have a turnkey service, where the vendor takes care of everything--we drive the entire program, and you sit back and watch the viewers come to your cash register--you just upload the content. Full reporting module included.

Or you can have a self-administered agreement where you get the keys to the car and let your IT team own the entire platform. The user manual is less than 4 pages long.

This link http://www.addiem.com/download.html will allow you to download a demo application, just to get a feel for how it would work for your clients/customers.

I'm happy to facilitate a conversation to talk about how you would incorporate this.

Almost Too Good; Template TV commercials

I'm a sponge for business periodicals, whether its Forbes or Fortune, and most especially Inc.com. There's an element to print magazines that the 'Net isn't going to replace. I absorb print articles while having coffee on the deck, and when digesting a favorite bottle of wine and watching the sun set. These are quiet times that my laptop isn't designed for, and for me, never will be.

With that said, the latest edition of Inc.com includes a great profile by Darren Dahl of Spot Runner, a company that has been getting lots of traction and deserved buzz for the past year. They've built a brilliant app that any half-witted brick and mortar retailer should embrace---pre-constructed TV commercials AND a menu for media placement in local, regional and national channels, network and cable. Its the idiot's version of Register.com---and is the perfect solution for anyone that aspires to advertise their business via television. And by way---TV advertising is far from dead. TV viewership remains intact, and its going to stay that way, albeit in different structures. So, advertising on TV makes good sense. Do I need to repeat myself? NO. Am I going out on a limb and making this statement, which will be forever memoralized in the world of digital information. NO.

Run the newstand to purchase the June edition, or you can wait until the 20th to access the article on line. If you wait until the 20th, read the article by simply clicking on the link. But don't wait.

If you run a small business, brick and mortar, brick and click, or even just click..this will fit right into your marketing program. If you don't have a marketing program, this is a good way to start!..

By the way, if you get INC.com's latest edition, Norm Brodsky's commentary is inspirational.

Pay Per Call Outranks Pay Per Click on AOL

Absolutely. The internet bubble imploded back at the turn of the century simply because 999 out of the 1000 'ground breaking' companies had no idea of how important the concept of 'customer service' is.
Arguably, too many of those operating e-businesses still don't 'get it' i.e. the importance of having a means where customers can actually speak to a human being, and even more importantly, a human being that is properly trained and capable of providing that personal connection and addressing the needs of the customer ON THE PHONE.

As archaic as this idea might sound, anyone operating a business via the internet MUST build a customer service component into the business model. OK..it costs more...OK...lots of people are getting the hang of shopping carts, click to buy...yadayadayada...and just as many people are being reluctant to do exactly that because of internet security concerns. And don't discount those concerns..for every story you ready about identity theft, there are thousands..yes thousands more that go unpublished.. After all, which website or credit card company wants to publicize the fact that ID theft is a big big problem?? ...Anyway, getting back to pay per call...duh!...I'd much rather pay $1, or even $5, or depending on the price of what I am selling, $10 or $20, for the opportunity to get a trained salesperson on the phone with a customer and close the deal...as opposed to paying .25 or .50 cents to lead someone to my website and hope to God they actually make a purchase.

OnLine Gambling-Las Vegas is ready to deal

duh....of course everyone was waiting for this...if you can't beat them (with lobbyists), join them and then conquer them....Let's be real--every major US casino enterprise have invested plenty of money in R&D over the past few years, and each one is ready to launch their own branded online casino...but they've been standing pat...until now.....and their opportunity is immense--for every dollar wagered on line, there are 5-10x the amount of potential players, only being held back one big concern--the integrity of the website they are gambling on...when major brand operators enter the marketplace, dozens of smaller, off-shore companies will be hit with a tsunami..bet on it and bank on it

U.S. Casinos Relax Opposition
To Gambling Over the Internet

A WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE NEWS ROUNDUP
April 28, 2006 11:52 a.m.

The main trade group for U.S. casinos called for the creation of a Congressional commission to study whether the online-gambling industry should be regulated, in a move that appears to relax opposition to the practice.

The move by the American Gaming Association comes at a time when Congress is considering several bills that would explicitly ban Internet gambling. The group said that while it officially remains neutral about the pending legislation, it now "strongly supports" a one-year study that would evaluate whether legalizing and regulating the industry would be "a more viable option" than a ban.

Experiential Marketing: Microsoft Case Study

For every one that looks to poo-poo MSN--first hand knowledge of how they seamlessly and studiously executed a brilliant on-site marketing campaign (at NY Auto Show---an event that had a captive audience of 1 million+ )--here's the news flash: 200 other brand marketers had the same opportunity, but were so dysfunctional--they snoozed and MSN scored.

1. Through an alliance with the show's ticketing system vendor (WalkUp Systems) MSN Autos secured the front door at the Jacob Javits Center and had the exclusive right to place use 'human billboards'..ostensibly serving as Show Ambassords at every entrance way...and the ability to interact with the 1million+ as they were standing on line to purchase tickets.

2. Once having this strategically incomparable physical placement, they leveraged the opportunity by age-old favorite of handing out premiums with a prize element--in this case...'collectible key chains' with MSN Autos and NY Auto Show logo--driving recipients to a special website where they could enter to win a Ford Mustang.

3. Complementing the greeting and key chains, MSN Autos 'wrapped" the ticketing kiosks with billboard signage and ran a montage of MSN Autos video spots (15-second spots ran 4x every 5 minutes) on the ticketing platforms' 9ft video screens---a trifecta approach ensuring high recall and participation in the promotion.

4. Bottom Line Results: 60% of the visitors polled on exit had immediate recall i.e. "who the ambassadors at front door were representing"---and at last count, 50% of the 100,000 key chains distributed have submitted their sweepstakes entry ticket to a special web site.

5. Cost--1/2 price of one (1) 30-second commercial on SNL..

Okay, not everyone has 50k to leverage a 10-day live event with a demographically-targeted audience...but I can count off 20 companies that do have that kind of budget, (duh...Yahoo! and AOL auto divisions, but their heads are so far up their butts trying to justify the impact of highway billboards and low recall tv commercials...they just ain't getting it...yet....

Product Launch Case Study: OnLine/OnPhone

You love the net, but you embrace real-live customer interaction..your brand name isn't famous yet and you can't afford to advertise on TV.

To get the word out, this marketer put 75% of his budget into off-peak radio ads and 25% into paid search ads with Google and Yahoo.

Every single ad had to pay for itself in incoming converted sales. "We go for direct ROI measurement -- always." Brand building would be a side benefit. Click on to see the full story! Combines innovative thinking with common business sense.

Marketing Metrics --Using a Dashboard

Great article to help you determine if you need an oil change, or if you need to fill up your tank..Its about creating a dashboard...what too many people automatically interpret as a software application...but it can simply be a "thought process"..read the whole article!

oes your company suffer from any of these symptoms?

• Marketing is not seen as having a direct impact on the organization's financial performance.
• Functional silos within marketing seem to be operating independently and fighting for budget dollars and attention.
• With the swarm of marketing initiatives, no one is clear on which ones are really contributing the most to the bottom line.
• Marketing budgets are set on what was spent in the past year, not on what was achieved in the prior 12 months or on new company goals.
• Finance isn't buying into the ability of the marketing mix model to link brand attributes to revenue or profits.

If so, you might want to think about how a marketing dashboard can help build marketing's alignment with organizational goals and increase marketing's accountability to enhancing the bottom line. A good dashboard reflects what's going on in marketing, what resources are deployed, to what end, and what ROI is expected for each initiative.

$5 million idea in three sentences

Business Week tripped over this blog posting and republished it in the May 1 edition. They have no idea out prescient they are.....but I'm betting my own $$ that MSN Autos takes notice and forges a deal with NY Auto Show, to be a follow-on to the sponsorship deal that yours truly put into place for this week's 2006 NY International Auto Show... (see www.newyorkautoshowwalkup.com for details of the deal)

NOTABLE POST
Even without considering the cost of an auto-show stand or the expense of going to one, the Internet is 175% more efficient... If the organizers of the New York International Auto Show could suck a buck from every one of the Web heads who check in on their vapid display of automobiles-in-aspic, they'd make enough money to pay for post-traumatic show disorder therapy -- for everyone!"

Whats In Store...

A must read for any media buyer or consumer brand marketer..but it only makes sense for those that know how to do basic math....

Today's article: Where do ad agencies stand with at-retail media?

If April's AdAge article has told us anything about how ad agencies feel about in-store marketing, it's that many firms have not given it the respect it deserves. And if the responses to the original article (including the letter from POPAI President/CEO Dick Blatt) tell us anything else, it's that people in the retail marketing industry are working to remedy the problem. While it's unlikely that one little article will derail the in-store marketing movement (in both static and digital forms), it still seems like the big agencies have done very little to establish their position one way or the other. Sure, all of the big conglomerates have agencies that focus exclusively on below-the-line tactics (including in-store, direct mail, data mining, etc.), but there's no clear powerhouse in the industry as of yet. This is especially surprising given that some of the biggest advertisers in the world, like P&G and Unilever, have conducted extensive surveys on the effectiveness of in-store marketing and stated that they will be spending more marketing dollars on in-store media, while research firms like Arbitron have found that shoppers are receptive to at-retail media. And the trend isn't just limited to the US. Just the other day, one Canadian newspaper noticed that while "TV advertising showed the slowest growth, increasing just 1 per cent, according to Nielsen... spending on out-of-home advertising grew by 14 per cent....

Inventive Ways to Use Place-Based Media

Great update from industry pro Kim Gordon!.

When was the last time you left home and were in a truly advertisement-free environment? Think about it. Now advertising messages go anywhere and everywhere people do. Go to almost any U.S. beach and you'll be greeted with a plane towing an ad banner. You may even be exposed to "beach sand impressions," which are ad messages imprinted into the sand and regenerated overnight. How about a ball game? Every conceivable stadium surface is covered with advertising, from signage to food snack packs, and some stadiums even have video screens built directly into the seat backs. Feel like going for a bike ride surrounded by nature? You may find your local biking trails are named after businesses, thanks to the new availability of naming rights for everything from nature trails to neighborhood swimming pools.

The industry calls this alternative out-of-home or placed-based media, and it's a bonanza for small businesses because there's literally something for everyone. While there are virtually limitless places to put your ads, here are just a few ideas to get you thinking: