If advertising on social media is like going to a party uninvited, or even as a friend of a guest, marketers really need to see a good tailor. For their digital strategy, that is. Because while advertising on social media is more annoying than on other digital areas, Nielsen and NM Incite, a joint venture between Nielsen and McKinsey, find that a lot of people actually don't mind the ads if they are at least relevant to them. While about a third of social media users find ads on social networks more annoying than ads elsewhere online, the firms report that more than a quarter of users say they don’t mind seeing ads that are tailored based on their individual profile information or shared by a social connection. Furthermore, 26% don't mind ads that are ID'd based on profile information and 17% feel more connected to brands seen on social networking sites. And there are cultural differences. The firm notes that, arguably, the most engaged with social advertising are Asian-American consumers, who are most likely to share, like, or purchase a product after seeing an ad on a social network. Asian-Americans and Hispanics are both more likely to make any type of purchase after seeing a social ad, with the most popular purchase being a coupon through a daily deal or retailer site (28% and 19%, respectively). White consumers are the least likely to take any action after seeing these ads. They are slightly more likely to share an ad (13%) than to make a purchase (12%), and African-Americans are equally likely to share an ad or make a purchase (18%). The Social Media Report 2012 also found that nearly half of social media users engage with global brands for customer care via social. A third of social media users prefer that channel to the phone for customer care, or "social care." The use of apps accounts for a third of social networking time, and consumers have increased that channel usage by 76% this year versus last. On PC's Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, Wordpress, LinkedIn and Pinterest are the top social channels. For mobile apps, it's Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Google+ and Pinterest. "Asian Woman Using Cellphone from Shutterstock"
Dunkin’ Donuts is running two simultaneous Facebook promotions around the holidays. In a “Top of the WorlDD” contest, Dunkin’ is encouraging fans to submit photos or videos with happy New Year messages for their friends and families, through a tab on the brand’s Facebook page. The grand-prize winning video and photo entrants will each receive two round-trip JetBlue tickets, and their entries will be featured on Dunkin’s electronic billboard in New York’s Times Square on New Year’s Eve and into New Year’s Day. In addition, 10 first prize photo and 10 first prize video submission winners will each receive a $50 Dunkin’ Donuts Card. In the second, “Dunkin’ K-Cup Packs K-ountDDown” sweeps, Facebook fans can play once per day for the chance to win a prize pack that includes a Keurig K-Cup brewer, a six-month supply of Dunkin’ K-Cup packs and a $20 Dunkin’ card. The sweeps also offers a grand prize of $2,500 to be used toward the winner’s mortgage or rent during 2013.
Writing a letter (or sending an email) to Santa seems so quaint in the 21st century. To bring Santa into modern times, Verizon’s FiOS fiber optic service is giving people a direct line video chat with the big guy. Created by agency B-Reel and B-Reel Films, the interactive program sets up an interface that looks like a video chat with Santa, where they can type in their side of a conversation with Santa about what gifts they want for Christmas (and other questions). Depending on the gifts, Santa responds accordingly before being called away for a toy-making emergency. “We wanted to do something more designed and story-driven than the more direct marketing they had in the past,” Patrick Ehrlund, creative director at B-Reel, tells Marketing Daily. The goal of the campaign is to capture 25,000 FiOS-eligible addresses during this holiday season. So, users are required to enter their address before connecting to Santa (those who could use FiOS are shown an animation of the connection being made, while those who can’t use the service are just connected). Once the connection is made, users are given the opportunity to tell Santa whether they’ve been naughty or nice, ask for a gift and ask Santa any question they’ve always wanted, but have never had the chance. “He’s meant to be a simple playful character,” Ehrlund says. “If you ask him for a basketball, he tells this story about how he used to be quite a baller before his body turned into a basketball.” To accommodate the wide range of requests they seem likely to get, B-Reel created 300 scripts for Santa to use to answer any foreseeable questions. Though the company considered using voice-recognition for the interface, the technology isn’t developed or widespread enough to support it just yet, says Nicole Muniz, executive produce at B-Reel. “We did some prototyping, but the speech recognition isn’t available [on all formats],” she says. “We wanted this to be as broad as possible.” The company is promoting the Direct Line to Santa through FiOS’s social media channels and on Facebook and YouTube. The company is also offering a $200 gift card (packaged as a present from Santa) to help spread the world virally.
A new campaign for Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield talks directly to consumers in the wake of the forthcoming marketplace shifts, prompted by health care reform mandates. The “Promises Matter” effort from Campbell Mithun is an example of how insurers will have to change their marketing game due to the looming 12/14 deadline for states to decide how they will create their health insurance exchanges. A changing business landscape is an important time for Wellmark to be very clear in how the company is doing brand communications, said George Hanna, executive vice president, sales and marketing. “Regardless of the upcoming shifts in the health care industry, continuing to demonstrate our value and strengths to our members and consumers is always important -- especially given the increased choices many consumers will face as our industry moves toward a more retail marketplace,” Hanna tells Marketing Daily. The campaign -- which includes brand video, TV, print, digital banners, out of home and radio -- is running in South Dakota and Iowa. The campaign will run regionally with a variety of related executions through 2013. “By showing our belief in and respect for the power of promises, this campaign brings the company’s core belief of integrity to life in a very human way,” Hanna says. “When people are managing something as important as their health, that really does matter.” The campaign showcases everyday scenarios of real-life promise keeping, from a dad who catches his jumping daughter in a pool to a couple celebrating decades of marriage. Other executions actually personalize Wellmark by featuring real employees: Laura, from claims, promises “I will see a face behind every claim”; Dennis, from customer service, promises “I cannot cure pain, but I can ease pain.” Eight staff members are featured in the brand video, whose voiceover says: “At Wellmark, we believe the promises a company makes are no different than the promises people make.” “You can’t bring an idea like Promises Matter to just any client. The company has to believe it,” said Reid Holmes, executive creative director at Campbell Mithun. “Our research proved that consumers who put their trust in Wellmark aren’t just putting blind faith in a company, but in people who believe integrity is fundamental to how they work.” The integrated campaign debuts the first work created by Campbell Mithun since winning the Wellmark business late in 2011. The agency maintains a substantial health practice and has served clients including Airborne, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Easter Seals, Eli Lily, Kimberly-Clark, The Mayo Clinic, Novartis, Pfizer and Sonovion brands (Xopenex, Lunesta).
Not only were last month's sales the best in over four years, but people bought cars with lots of features. Web-based sales and research firm TrueCar says the average transaction price for light vehicles in the United States was about $30,832 in November, up $335 (or 1.1%) from the month last year and up the same amount from the prior month. The firm said that number constituted an all-time high for the industry. General Motors spent the most on incentives in November, across its brand lineup -- rising from $2,915 to $3,720 -- while Hyundai spent the least at just $1,586. Chrysler, which led automakers in the amount of incentive money spent to move metal, also enjoyed a 22% drop in incentive spend this November versus last, and a 17.5% drop between October and last month per the firm's estimates. Meanwhile, the automaker’s transaction prices improved 2.2% versus the month last year. Ford was second for incentive-spend declines, with a 21.1% drop versus last year and an 8.5% drop versus October. Hyundai and Kia spent 29.2% more on incentives versus last year and General Motors spent 20% more versus last November. Toyota enjoyed the largest gain in transaction price, at 3.5%. Across all automakers, the firm estimated that the average incentive for light-vehicles was $2,764 in November, up $117 (4.4%) from November 2011 and up $447 (19.3%) from October 2012. As widely reported, last month sales lifted 15% versus last year, which meant a huge increase in the month's contributions to total year's sales. Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen and Chrysler led in percentage increases in November sales. TrueCar argues that the aftermath of Sandy contributed a minimum of 30,000 additional sales to November sales totals and those numbers will increase for December sales. Jesse Toprak, TrueCar.com senior analyst, says December sales will continue to be driven by some 30,000 to 40,000 purchases of replacement vehicles ruined in the storm, year-end deals and great products. Toprak tells Marketing Daily that incentives are down less because of recent strong demand for vehicles than because manufacturers are optimizing their mix of incentives versus financing and leasing, which helps lift the residual value of vehicles being resold. And he adds that the biggest incentive spend was against traditional pickup trucks, which are being sold now with $4,000 on the hood. Transaction prices are up, per Toprak, because, even though consumers are buying smaller vehicles, they are going for highly contented ones. "Shoppers' attitudes are changing; when you drill down, people are switching, but they don't want to give up the amenities they had in larger vehicles. They will buy a Civic, but load it up." "Car Salesman from Shutterstock"
Just days after President Obama was re-elected to a second term, media outlets seemed somewhat surprised by the record turnout of Latino voters and the impact that Latinos had on this year’s presidential election. No doubt, it was an amazing, eye-opening, historic moment for all of us. After all, the Hispanic population is a formidable U.S. demographic segment: 50 million + or (23 million eligible voters) with a purchasing power of $1.5 trillion. In fact, a newly released study published by Pew's Hispanic Center underscored two facts that speak to the size of the voting opportunity: • There were an estimated 12.5 million votes cast by Latinos this presidential election -- with 23.7 eligible Latino voters • U.S. Hispanics will account for 40% of the growth in the eligible electorate in the U.S. between now and 2030, at which time 40 million Hispanics will be eligible to vote. Similarly, leading marketing organizations understand that targeting the U.S. Latino demographic drives their growth in sales -- including McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, General Mills, and most recently, Walmart. Days after the election, the media discussions took a demographic and geographic focus: Where do Latinos live? How many are there? By state? By county? By age? By language? But unlike our politicians, corporations are at a great disadvantage. Leading CMOs have all sorts of valid demographic, psychographic and behavioral data about their consumers. Describing and understanding their users is usually not an issue. Measuring their ROI as it relates to their brand, however, is the issue. In fact, measuring ROI for the ethnic population is the single biggest challenge facing corporate America, today and in the future -- as echoed in Isabel Valdes’ fifth marketing book, WIN! The Hispanic Market: Strategies for Business Growth. Here is why: CMOs rely on syndicated consumer purchase data to measure how much of their product is being bought by a given demographic group. When it comes to Latinos and African-Americans, the data is not very reliable -- because there is a significant “undercount of the data.” By data undercount, I mean that transactional data in key channels for Hispanic and African-Americans are not accounted for. No scanner data exists. In fact, in some categories up to 30-60% of transactional data is not tracked. In other words, companies ship their products to retail locations, but they don’t know who is buying the product! Can you imagine a political system in which candidates were running for office with insufficient data? I can’t! So why should we allow this in the business sector? Writing to your elected official will not solve the data undercount issue. The solution lies in the hands of corporations -- which need to come together and demand change to a measurement system, which has hurt the bottom line of organizations -- far too long. Will we see change in four years? If enough companies stand up to the data undercount issue, everything is possible.
Remember when marketers were only responsible for small amounts of branding content that they distributed via print, TV ads, and radio spots? Times are rapidly changing. Today there are a growing number of social media channels -- Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn -- to consider as a marketer, in addition to the traditional channels. According to a recent study, social media accounts for only 16 percent of customer engagement today, but is expected to increase to 57 percent within five years. Today's brands are accumulating an enormous amount of visual content that they are struggling to manage. The combination of these factors has become an obstacle for brands to effectively engage with customers. First, it can be difficult for marketers to know the right piece of content to share with the right customers -- especially now when many of them are grappling with the globalization of their brands while still providing localized and targeted interactions. They are creating the animated graphics, images and videos that are being retouched and reused in numerous locations across an organization. The inability to accurately manage this workflow properly can cost millions of dollars in rights management lawsuits, redundant work, unbillable time and weak brand reputation. As a result, brands are facing a serious challenge: how to accurately track, distribute and manage all their digital content. Second, marketers must address countless media channels, from direct to social. A brand’s method of interacting with consumers is becoming more dynamic and consumers now have more of a say in how they want to be approached. Today’s consumers are liking Facebook pages, following company Twitter handles, subscribing to email newsletters, and overall sharing brand content like never before. As a result, marketers are constantly looking for new ways to grab customers’ attention and maximize the impact of the content they are sharing across every channel, in real-time. The solution in most cases is better brand management. Marketers today need to consider investing in rich content management solutions to address their massive amounts of media assets in an organized fashion. Understanding the benefits of these solutions, beyond IT, will help brand stewards better reach their marketing goals at a global level and also protect the reputation of their brand. These solutions provide a way to move visual content, like a video, through a creative process workflow and then efficiently store and manage that finalized video for easy use throughout an organization. Marketers can also quickly respond to changing content demands and avoid duplicating efforts by quickly locating assets in a centralized repository for reuse. Imagine the time and money saved when a marketer does not have to recreate a graphic for use on a Facebook page, but can quickly pull up the stored graphic they used on the Web site, knowing it’s the most up-to-date version and they have the right to use it. Having fresh, timely content at the fingertips of all authorized, customer-facing employees all over the world is crucial, given the real-time demands of consumers. The key for marketers is delivering the right message through the right channel to the right people at the right time. It’s about connecting with your customers and today, it’s about doing that visually. This fundamental strategy will not change -- but how marketers achieve it will. Brand stewards need to understand the benefits of creating, tracking, monetizing, and distributing visual content in an organized manner. Doing so will help them more effectively meet business needs -- and more importantly, will also improve their opportunities for meaningful engagement with consumers.
To reach the fast-growing audience of smartphone owners, Omnicom's PHD isn't afraid to pump up the noise. For five days in October, Omnicom media agency PHD staged an experimental theatre production called Mobility Week in its midtown Manhattan offices. Cast and crew included most of its staffers, more than 20 of its client companies, and 40 industry thought leaders representing all things mobile: technology, inventory, analytics, audience, and apps. On each day of this mini-conference, PHD presented panel discussions and hands-on demonstrations on a different mobile theme. The purpose was to do in one place what the agency had done all over the place last year — explaining, promoting, and inspiring the growth of mobile advertising. Agency chief Monica Karo is on a mission to redefine the medium. The word “mobile” refers to phones; “mobility” describes what consumers do with their phones. “It’s about all the ways your content goes with you, everywhere you want,” says Karo. “The behavior is to be mobile all the time.” She’s not kidding. A 2012 study by the Pew Research Center shows that “connected viewers” can’t part with their smartphones for anything — including watching TV. According to the research, 38 percent of cell owners used their phones to amuse themselves during commercials, and 23 percent texted friends who were watching the same show — while it was on.Karo, like many other industry prognosticators, believes 2013 will be the year that mobile explodes — and she’s determined to ensure that PHD and its clients are front and center when it does. “We’ve been talking about mobile for a few years, but mobile wasn’t ready for us,” says Karo, who joined PHD from Omnicom sister agency omd in March. “Consumers weren’t ready for what the industry has to offer, but in the last six months, a lot of things have been coming together.”As smartphone users got into the technology, marketers increasingly embraced the idea of allocating dollars to an unproven and complex medium that’s literally in the hands of 50 percent of American consumers. From the user side, the numbers look great. Research firm eMarketer expects total mobile penetration to hit 77 percent this year, with nearly half of those consumers using smartphones. That equals 120 million people who can receive ad messages anywhere and everywhere they go. Ad support is gaining, too. Mobile spending is expected to rise 80 percent in 2012 to $2.6 billion, according to eMarketer. But the numbers are still out of whack. Mobile only accounts for 7 percent of the marketing pie, even though smartphone users drive more than 12 percent of Internet traffic, according to data firm StatCounter. Clearly, a sizable gap remains between opportunity and investment, and PHD has been out there trying to close it as fast as possible.Between August 2011 and July 2012, the agency hit the road to meet with 15 clients in categories where mobile was, or would soon be, disrupting their business. It made detailed mobile landscape presentations to each one, outlining marketing opportunities, competitor initiatives, and immediate testing recommendations. The deep-dive approach worked; all but one of those clients boosted their mobile budgets.“We don’t have any feet-draggers,” Karo says of the agency’s clients. “They just don’t know where to start. They don’t have the expertise.”Guiding clients through the mobile mazeFor PHD, that’s been a key part of the lesson plan this year — helping clients figure out the skill set and organizational structure they need to have internally in order to navigate and own the mobile space. “Hearing from us about what we look at, and the conservations we’re having with mobile vendors, gives them a sense of what they should have on their side,” says Karo. By the time clients are talking about in-house competencies, however, they’re already in the space to some extent. Many marketers aren’t even close, according to Alexis Rask, Vice President and General Manager of Brand Partnerships at Shopkick, an app that dispenses offers and rewards to shoppers, and a Mobility Week participant. “Ten percent of marketers we talk to are really making mobile a huge priority, and 25 percent are acknowledging that it’s an important channel,” she says. The rest, it seems, are waiting to see how it goes.What they are most likely waiting for is someone to come up with a standard measure for ROI — an issue that plagues most digital media. “Next year I think the desire is there to really make it game changing,” says Karo, “but one of things that may hold mobile back is having a common currency by which we measure. The money’s coming from somewhere, and clients are asking, ‘what am I losing over here and gaining over there?'”To try and answer some of those questions, PHD and Omnicom Media Group’s Data Policy and Privacy Group commissioned an audit of more than 75 mobile technology companies to determine the best mobile measurement and tracking solutions. It examined everything: technology, scalability, customer service, business analysis, data security and privacy. The audit led to at least one piece of new business: The Economist hired PHD to acquire app downloads and to drive subscriptions. During the year, PHD has helped launch more than 15 other apps in various app stores, with nearly all making it into the top 25 in its category.If PHD’s mobile clients are more evolved than most, it’s partly because their agency is, according to Rask. “We see a huge appetite among clients to better understand what to do in mobile, and how to measure. Some agencies are proactive, some less so. There are a few players in the space that really get it, and PHD is one of the ones I put on that short list.” Not only does the agency regularly head to Silicon Valley to meet with technology providers, it brings clients there to have very specific dialogues surrounding their business — a critical move, as far as Rask is concerned. “There isn’t a one size fits all approach to mobile. Each consumer is so connected to their device, but that means there are so many ways for marketers to engage,” she says. “There needs to be a robust dialogue between agency, client, and technology.”Breaking ground with technologyWhen PHD wasn’t wearing its tutor hat last year, it produced innovative award-winning campaigns for such clients as Foot Locker and GlaxoSmithKline. For Foot Looker, PHD created a summer campaign called #kickstagram, which used the social media site Instagram to drive consumers to the retailer’s page. By uploading photos of their favorite kicks, and tagging them with #kickstagram and @footlocker, users had the chance of having their photos showcased on Foot Locker’s page and website, and in store windows. The creative was fun, the social media platform was new, but it was the technology behind the mobile banner ads that really broke ground.“Foot Locker asked us to do something with Instagram, and we knew we needed to simplify the 'following' process,” says Sal Candela, PHD’s Director of Mobile. “We knew if we made it more efficient, we’d increase the following.” The agency, along with one of its technology partners, came up with a procedure that shrank a time-sucking five-step process into two quick clicks. Tapping the banner once opened the Instagram app and directed users right to the Foot Locker page. A second click on the “follow” banner, and users were in. That technological advance “increased the number of Instagram followers six-fold in two-to three weeks,” says Candela. Pioneering, yes. Surprising, no. Not to Foot Locker, at least. “PHD constantly thinks outside the box and excites us to introduce integrated and innovative programs to support our Foot Locker brands,” says evp of marketing Stacy Cunningham. “They take the time to deliver opportunities that engage our customers in relevant and meaningful ways. Our customers were excited to upload pictures of their sneakers for all to see.”Leveraging geo-location for TumsFor GlaxoSmithKline, the agency’s mission was to support the launch of the Tums Freshers by driving shoppers to the shelf. The antacid/breath freshener comes in a small portable container that’s hard to find on the shelf, so PHD turned to Shopkick come up with a mobile geo-targeting program aimed at people already in the store. “When consumers walked into one of our selected retailers, we served a full-screen ad, and also prompted them to pick up the product and scan it to learn more about what made Tums Freshers unique,” says Candela. “On paper the idea made sense, but the proof was in the results.” Three months after the launch, the purchase intent among Freshers scanners was almost equal to that of the 82-year-old standard Tums brand.“From my end, PHD and GlaxoSmithKline both recognized the power of mobile to drive engagement…physical engagement between a person and a product,” says Rask. The need for both clients and agency staffers to understand that power prompted Candela to develop and moderate a panel discussion called “Using Location and Proximity to Drive Commerce” on day four of “Mobility Week.” For Rask, one of the panelists, the event cemented her view of PHD as a true industry leader. “I was struck by how invested they are in making mobile work for their clients across the board — doubling down on making sure that they’re as educated and cutting edge as they can be. It was awesome to see the engagement level in the audience.”To Karo, Candela, and agency cdo Craig Atkinson, the small, informal conference that clogged PHD’s hallways for a week was as critical to the education of agency staffers as it was for clients. “The main buzz for the teams internally was, ‘How can you use mobility in a way that’s outside what you’re doing,’” says Candela. “Five or six teams scheduled time to meet with me to talk about they could do. It was not theory any longer.”The daily hive of activity, as 50 to 100 people moved from the common space where the panel discussions took place to the boardroom where experiential labs were set up, created a buzz for clients, too, according to Candela. “To hear questions being asked by clients in other categories, and talk about best practices and what others are doing in other categories — it was just really interesting. And the partners that came to the panels were more candid than at general industry events.One partner-panelist came away from the session with a very vivid and long-lasting image. “The audience was using their phones while we were talking, and I don’t think they were answering email,” says Rask. “They were looking at what we were discussing right there, checking out the technology. It was really, really cool. And it speaks to the importance of the medium.”If the mark of a great show is the number of people who mill around after it’s over, hashing and rehashing what they’ve seen and heard, Mobility Week was a runaway hit. After the last presentation, PHDhosted a cocktail party. The audience stuck around for two hours.