News

Found this great little bit in one of my feeds this afternoon; 5 easy ways to post to both Twitter and Facebook at the same time.

Social media is fun, but it can be a bear to maintain with updates. Take a look here and see if you can gain any efficiencies.

How do you handle multiple accounts, either for your personal or business life? What are your favorite update tools?

Here is an example of using your ads medium as a method for communicating your message. Very cool.   Read the full details here

Back in the Go-Go 90s and 00s – remember those? – Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City and her ilk inspired designer-label dreams among middle-class housewives across the Heartland. From Cristal and Cosmos to Tiffany and Manolos, everyone felt entitled to luxury goods.

Advertisers took pains to ensure their advertising screamed “upscale” and “you deserve this” … even if it wasn’t quite the type of item that you’d see Carrie and the girls envy. For example, think Target’s designer labeled household goods and clothing items. You got the label at a price that was reasonable.

Enter the “Great Recession.”  Now it’s chic to be cheap. “Recessionistas” have replaced “Fashionistas.” How much you saved at a resale shop has become the new brunch conversation topic, and getting a deal or good value is the new social currency.

Advertisers have quickly adapted too; women still make the majority of the purchasing decisions within the household. If your business hasn’t tweaked its advertising yet to take advantage of this trend, here are 9 tips for how to target these new Recessionistas and make the sale. 

The number of people who use search engines such as Google or Yahoo! as their number one source for purchase decisions has increased drastically over the past few years. Next inline is the opinion of other people (blogs and social media for example). Wrapping up the top three is the retail store.

To stay competitive in this new environment, you must constantly (and aggressively) nurture your online footprint. Your online footprint is everything your organization does online that is available to the public.  For example; your Web site, blogs, social media, etc. As your footprint grows so will your ranking in search engines, resulting in a competitive advantage.

It’s almost a holiday weekend, and a lot of people are pretty bummed out reading all the bad news lately…so here are a few ads that have caught my eye recently. Hope they make you smile, at least for a moment:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bJOIqVAD-s[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5mM7EGR1oI[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7vI-L4Lfmc[/youtube]

At some point, we have all printed content from a Web site only to find we end up printing a lot more than what we wanted. Graphics, navigation, advertisements, etc. A new free online service helps eliminate all the extras, allowing you to print only the content you wanted in the first place.

PrintFriendly, is a Web based application that lets you enter the URL and get a printable version: just the content and inline images, in a very readable font. If you want, you can go one step further and remove the images from the post. You can also download the content as a PDF. Neat!

It seems like every time I log into FaceBook it asks me to take a quiz or allow access to a new application.  Online quizzes and applications can be fun, The other day I found myself partaking in a quiz to see how my IQ compares against Matthew McConaughey (I am not saying who scored higher…). I know one thing is for sure, the developer’s behind these quizes and apps are smarter than both Matthew and I. By even just opening the application to take this quiz, I allowed the developer access to my entire FaceBook profile. I do not mind in this case, since I never put sensitive data in any online profile. But let’s look at RealAge, a detailed quiz that assigns you a biological age based on your family history and health habits. The site, a recent investigation revealed, takes your most sensitive answers — those about sexual difficulties or signs of depression — and sells them to drug companies looking to market medications.

Ultimately, deciding whether you should take an online quiz or allow an application access to your profile comes down to a question of trust: Are you comfortable putting your information into hands of others? Remember, even if you don’t directly input data, it can be passed along.

You may read an article for more information on this topic at PC World

During a recession it is imperative to continue brand-building efforts. We have written many blogs about Branding, Value, and Perception. In a recent Advertising Age blog post, by Jonah Bloom, Brand Advertising was the focus.

Bloom states that in a survey that the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) plans to release next week, 74% of senior marketers who responded believe “brand equity” is very important to their company’s success.

In tough times investing in marketing and advertising that helps to builds brand equity is one of the most important things a company can do. You want to show that you are stable and steady by staying out there where consumers can see you. You must convey the value of your brand to consumers in order to earn their loyalty and trust.

According to Bloom, Richard McDonald, senior VP-global marketing of Fender, the musical instrument brand, says “The cost of raw materials is going up, and marketing is the only thing that offsets those increases. You have to build brand value and spend on marketing.” 

Cutting your marketing budget may lead to a decrease in your brand equity – especially if you are a smaller or new business. This is not to say that you can’t be more economical you just need to explore your options and do what works best. There is a lot going on right now with social media, for example Twitter, and it might be a good time to try something new and/or create a better marketing plan.

When building your brand just remember that top-notch products and services are the building blocks of a solid brand foundation.

Brand Advertising Poised to Rebound?

Cheap. Plentiful. Good Foot Traffic. Sounds like the perfect advertising medium, doesn’t it? Some enterprising advertisers are taking the economy’s lemons and turning them into lemonade by plastering vacant storefronts with eye-catching outdoor advertisements.

In today’s New York Times, marketers talk about these new opportunities in glowing terms, saying these new billboard locations cost comparatively little ($500 for a 3-month term vs. tens of thousands for a traditional billboard in a nearby location) while delivering excellent exposure for their clients – after all, there’s a reason retailers located their stores there in the first place.

Plus the rents landlords charge these new advertisers help cover expenses such as taxes, utilities, etc., for which they’re not reimbursed while the store sits empty.

Crain’s Chicago Business‘ mid-day report puts real numbers to the retail vacancy story: CB Richard Ellis Inc. reports today that retail vacancy in the Chicagoland area is at a six-year high, spiking at 11% for Q1 ‘09. A year ago, the vacancy rate was 7.9%. Currently there is 10 million square feet of vacant “big-box” retail space in the Chicago area.

Here is a before and after look at a campaign put together by Inwindow Outdoor:

Before

After

We recently had a discussion on what metrics matter the most when evaluating electronic media. A common practice, that comes up in most metrics conversations, is user engagement. User engagement uses various formulas to estimate the depth and degree of user interaction within a media, most often a Web site. Fair enough. But then what? Is the goal to then create more engagement? Why?

End of the day, there are two basic calculations that you should be utilizing. 1) Conversion Rate: How many people performed a desired action. 2) Brand Awareness: How many people remember what you want them to remember.

We find that too many organizations track no metrics at all. As budgets become tighter and justification is needed for spending “n” amount of money on interactive media, metrics will inevitably become a necessity. When choosing what metrics to use, stick with the two I suggest above to start. They are easy to track and you can set clear goals from the data for making future improvements.

Yesterday, KMK Media Group staff attended a webinar about new marketing technologies which was an exciting look into mobile platforms, emerging 3-D technologies and a good primer on how to use – and not use – social media to expand customers’ experiences with your brand.

You can watch the webinar recording here.

Presented by Adobe, the American Marketing Association and marketing group The 1st Movement, the program offered a good overview of these non-traditional channels and offered up tons of real-world examples.

Take a peek – it’s worth the time to peer into the future of marketing. (These technologies are not being used as widely locally as they are with national brands, but they are beginning to be leveraged here for marketing purposes).

An article I recently read asks the question, “Should Your Company Have a Social Media Policy?.” The answer is yes. Even if your organization does not allow employees to use the internet during work hours, they are using it during their personal time. At minimum you should develop a plan that is communicated to the entire organization as to what social media is and what the rules are pertaining to anything company related. Whether a single page or a book, the plan should be integrated into the organizations communications strategy. Social media is here to stay and will only continue to grow. It is easier to plan ahead now than to scramble once something negative happens.

Read the article for more ideas: http://mashable.com/2009/04/27/social-media-policy/

One of the under-reported aspects of Chrysler’s Chapter 11 is the huge amount of advertising the auto company books in markets all over the country.

Typically one of the biggest advertisers in the world, Chrysler has $300 million booked in media and one of its agencies – Omnicom Group’s BBDO Detroit – is listed as the company’s second-largest unsecured creditor at $58.1 million.

So who’s left holding the bag for Chrysler? The agency or the media outlets? The answer, of course, is “it depends.” First, let’s examine the two ways media is purchased:

1. Direct purchase of media by business. In this scenario, small business owners buy their own media time directly with the rep from the station.

I don’t generally advise this course of action; using an agency doesn’t cost more than booking the time yourself because the vast majority of media outlets build in the agency commission in their rates. Agencies can also save you money by knowing what to buy at what price point and when, which also makes your advertising more effective.

2. Agencies purchase time on behalf of their client. This is where it gets tricky. Agencies sign contracts “on behalf of” their clients every day.  This is a legally binding contract between the client/agency and the media outlet.

Some agencies sign the contract and then have the client pay the bill directly. Other agencies sign and then pay the media bills themselves while billing the client on the back end. Regardless, agencies get paid via a commission on the media they purchase.

The generally accepted way of doing business says that media companies should go after the client first and then the agency, if the agency has already been paid for the media time by the client.

What’s left to be determined with Chrysler is if they owe the agency for the media buys or if the local TV stations where they booked spots will be left empty-handed.

According to this piece in MediaPost today, numerous local TV outlets have been  requiring cash upfront for some time for GM and Chrysler buys. This is rarely the case locally (except for political spots).

These days, cash on contract might be the smartest move an agency or media outlet could make.