News

How we consume information has changed so much over the past few years we often fail to realize just how far we have come. Until yesterday. A side story of the Jackson and Fawcett events will be how quickly information spreads around the world via the internet and that traditional media is no longer our first source of awareness.

A few examples: www.tmz.com origonally broke the news before any traditional media. The massive level of interest caused the site to go down temporarily but that did not stop the news spreading via blogs and social networking sites. Google servers thought the “Michael Jackson” requests were a denial of service attack for over a half hour. 22.6% of twitter posts were about Jackson. The BBC News website reported UK traffic was 48% higher than usual at 4am.

Take for a moment to think how you consume news. What is your first source of awareness? Have you noticed that you often become aware of an event before it is picked up by traditional forms of media such as CNN or BBC News?  Share your stories.

Doug Burton

Kit Kat won this year’s Cannes Media Grand Prix with their new campaign based in Japan. With an unlikely distribution channel, the post office, Kit Kat stood out at the 56th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

According to Ad Age, in Japan there is a tradition of sending students good luck wishes before they take higher-education entrance exams. JWT Japan, Kit Kat’s ad agency, was surprised to find that the Japanese translation of Kit Kat — Kitto Katso means “surely win”. So Nestle created ”Kit Kat Mail,” a postcard-like product sold only at the post office that could be mailed to students as a good-luck charm.

Reminding us to be innovative – even in tough times!

Kit Kat Wins Cannes Media Grand Prix for Edible Postcard

Back in January or February, I came across this 2-minute video of a flash mob that descended on London’s Liverpool station to promote T Mobile’s “Life’s for Sharing” campaign. I rediscovered it this afternoon when reading an article about some of the best creative of the year so far. Take a look; it’s a lot of fun.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ3d3KigPQM[/youtube]

What impresses me is the impact it has in the station itself – notice everyone recording it with their cell phones – and the 12.7 million views it’s had on YouTube…all with a relatively small group of dancers, a little creativity and sweat equity in putting it together.

Which leads me to the question: How can your business advertise differently?

Something that is lighting up the blogosphere is whether or not Apple is quietly changing the name of the “iPhone 3G S” to the “iPhone 3GS”.

A blog on Mac9to5 writes, “iPhone 3G S” is an uncharacteristically awkward name for an Apple product.  Do you pause between the G and the S?  How do you make it plural?  Is it iPhones 3G S iPhone 3Gs S or…   In the logo, there is also the question of whether or not the “S” is capitalized (it is certainly smaller), or is it lower case like the iPod touch.”

In today’s Apple press release, Apple switched up the language and is now calling the hit device the “iPhone 3GS”.

While these types of small changes may seem trivial, companies with strong brands spend countless hours mulling over every minute detail of naming, fonts, sizes and such.  Switching the iPhone 3G S to iPhone 3GS is a big deal. Let’s watch and learn how this all plays out.

Doug Burton

In a study conducted in fall 2008 by consumer-data giant Experian, Americans need 38 hours in any given day to complete our tasks.

Now, you and I both know that we are limited – frustratingly so most days – to a measly 24 hours every day. So where do we make up the other 14 hours that we need to get stuff done? We multi-task our media habits.

Raise your hand if you watch TV in the evenings while replying to email. Or listen to the radio while surfing the web. Or scanning the paper while talking on the phone.

These types of media overlaps happen every day, which means your advertising on these channels faces an tough uphill climb if it wants to grab consumers’ attention.

Some tips on how to make your ads at least stand a chance at being noticed:

1. Keep it simple. Stay with one clear message in your ads.

2. Use clean creative. Whether it’s for television, radio, Internet or print, keep your design and copy clean and uncluttered. Again, focus on one clear message.

3. Tell them what to do. Be sure to include a strong “call to action” with your ad and provide clear, concise directions on how consumers can take you up on your offer.

About that Social Networking Thing

Another interesting tid-bit from the study: 54 percent of adults had visited a social media site like Facebook or MySpace in the past 30 days. That’s TRIPLE the percentage of users since the study was last conducted a year ago.

Social media is the new darling of the advertising world, but there is mass there in terms of users…how to use it to your company’s advantage is the tricky part. We’ve done social media campaigns for a few clients, and one thing I’ve learned is that social media is a conversation that takes on a life of its own.

So if you’re ready to have a multi-way conversation with your customers – or potential customers – then dive in. But if you or your CEO are still stuck in the 20th-century midset of “pushing” your message out, social media probably isn’t where you want to be. My advice in that situation – get unstuck and start talking.

 In tradition with keeping the Friday blog light and fun, I came across the Summer of Social Good campaign and thought I would share. It is a unique way of running a charitable campaign, entirely through social media. Although your organization may not choose to go this route, it is worth learning more about how you might be able to incorporate social media into your next campaign.

Here is a quote from their site about who they are and what they hope to accomplish. “Summer of Social Good is the first large scale online charitable campaign to raise funds strictly online through the power of Social Media and the Internet. The goal is to use the power of “Social Influence” via Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Blogs and other online media to raise an unprecedented amount for our fund benefiting The Humane Society, LIVESTRONG, Oxfam America and WWF from June 1st until August 28th, 2009.”

Doug Burton

If you haven’t yet discovered Hulu.com, get thee hence and change your viewing habits. It is now my platform of choice for viewing NBC content like The Office and Comedy Central shows like The Daily Show. And while reports of its death are greatly exaggerated, broadcast TV certainly is undergoing major changes.

On Hulu.com, the ad load is low, and I can call up a show nearly instantaneously anywhere I have my laptop and broadband. It is the future of broadcast TV, and that’s what is worrying TV executives and advertisers.

Calling Hulu “heroin,” Joe Earley, a marketing exec at Fox, said that he’s concerned Hulu’s success at getting eyeballs on programming is cannibalizing regular broadcast television. Once viewers tune in and see the shows with significantly fewer ads, they get spoiled and turn to Hulu for their regular viewing.

While the audience numbers who view their broadcast TV online are still low in comparison to the traditional model, advertisers are struggling to figure out how to get their message in front of consumers as things change.

Talk of paid membership for Hulu and other ideas are being floated, but broadcast TV – like all media outlets, including print and radio – is going through a nasty transition to a revenue model that no one has figured out yet.

As they say in the boardroom, it’s a “paradigm shift” that the market should sort out in due time…but not without some pain for newspapers, TV and radio stations and advertisers in the meantime.

Interesting story in the paper today…

Twitter, at the request of the State Department, postponed scheduled offline maintenance in order to keep information flowing from inside Iran.

Officials: Twitter remained online

FaceBook now allows usernames, which is huge for marketing purposes. It will be much easier to incorporate facebook.com/kmkmedia into advertising than a long querystring that no one would attempt to type.

A quick note on implimentation. Many companies have fan pages as apposed to a user account. Fan pages with less than 1000 fans have to wait until June 28 to register their username.

From a marketing perspective, here is why it is so important:

We are now: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rockford-IL/KMK-Media-Group/71817963589?ref=ts
We will be: http://www.facebook.com/kmkmedia

Doug Burton

Another fun Friday blog… I came across a match making site the other day that promises to match partners based on their DNA. Regardless of whether or not it works, I started thinking, how long will it be before marketers have the ability to target consumers based on their DNA?  Drug companies would love this ability.  “Mr. Burton, our analysis shows that you have a 75% likelihood of developing male pattern baldness by the age of 23. We would like to offer you 25% off a one year preventative prescription for…” Now that is something that would get my attention.

Interesting topic for discussion on a sunny Friday afternoon. What do you think about the idea?

Doug Burton

Everyone experiences bad news differently. Some may cry, wail and yell about injustice and others may just go into a hole for a few days and feel sorry for themselves.

Similarly, many of us are “experiencing” the recession in different ways. Some of us are passing on extraneous purchases and others may be feeling that a “splurge” every now and again keeps us going. Still others are cutting back in dramatic and fundamental ways.

The trick as an advertiser is to identify which of these types of consumers are best for your business. M&C Saatchi in London recently released a ‘Reacting to Recession’ study which qualifies consumers in the following ways:

• Crash Dieters… 26%
• Scrimpers…13%
• Abstainers…15%
• Balancers… 9%
• Treaters … 12%
• Justifiers… 12%
• Ostriches… 9%
• Vultures… 4%

(Based on data gathered worldwide from Fall 2008 through Spring 2009)

The “treaters” and “justifiers” offer the best opportunity for sale and more than likely are the type of consumer for whom you should be tailoring your advertising.

Click here to read more about the study and what distinguishes one type of consumer from another.

One of the many benefits of using twitter is the ability for business to micro-target. For example, you are having a sale at your Rockford, IL location and want to target individuals within a 5 mile radius. One way to do so would be to use Twitters search and type, near:Rockford within:5mi. You can also use Twitters advanced search to even further narrow your results.

Here is an article on 8 more ways to use Twitter search to your advantage.

Doug Burton

Microsoft recently re-branded it’s Live Search search engine into what is now known as Bing. Since, the media has debated non-stop which search engine provides better results. So which is better for you? You have the opportunity to test yourself with a new tool called BlindSearch. While there are a few tools out there, none take the scientific approach quite like BlindSearch does. The experiment, formed by Michael Kordahi, provides search results from Google, Bing, and Yahoo and asks you to vote on which results are best. However, BlindSearch takes your biases out of the equation by stripping away the branding and logos. Give it a try and find out which search engine is best for your needs.

So overall, who provides better results? BlindSearch says, “Google is in the lead with 44%, with Bing in second at 32% and Yahoo last at 24%.” This is not a complete random sampling, given the small sample size. But it does provide us with an  approximation and will only increase in accuracy as the sample size increases.

Doug Burton

Twitter has found its way into our classrooms, and so far it has been for the better. As a means of engaging students and keeping parents informed teachers and administrators have turned to Twitter as a means to communicate their message. You can read a little more about this as well as watch a couple videos on the topic here.

Thank you Jeffrey Stewart for originally Tweeting about this topic. 

McAfee’s recent Stop H*Commerce campaign uses a fear marketing approach. Using video McAfee, an antivirus software creator, presents “episodes” which depict the rising cybercrime problem and how these crimes can affect your life. The site http://www.stophcommerce.com, a viral marketing campaign, is rather intriguing.

By positioning themselves as the experts and offering valuable information to consumers, McAfee hopes that the fear of losing your money and/or credit will help to sell their services. Using fear as a persuasion tactic is useful only for certain industries, in this case it seems fit.

A great story line and wonderful real-life testimonials help to pull in viewers and create a strong campaign. Another key part of keeping people “tuned-in” to the site is the e-mail alert. This notifies those that sign up when a new episode is posted.

Stop H*Commerce

With yesterday’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing of GM, it’s becoming clear just how much is owed to the the car manufacturer’s ad agencies and media-buying companies.

• Starcom MediaVest, a subsidiary of super-agency Publicis that handles media for GM, is the sixth-largest unsecured creditor to GM, to the tune of $121.5 million.

• Publicis itself is owed $25.3 million, putting the company on the hook upwards of $146 million altogether.

Agencies like Publicis are clamoring for the bankruptcy judge to grant them “critical vendor” status, which would put their claims at the top of “to-pay” pile.

And it’s likely to work.

Advertising and marketing is critical for any organization that hopes to rebuild itself after a bankruptcy, from the GMs of the world to Bob’s Crab Shack down the street.

Without agencies willing to provide it creative and media services after it emerges from bankruptcy, GM should just shut down completely and go home. They could emerge stronger, with better products, but if no one knows about them, their financial future will be short-term indeed.