In a big to bolster its data and analytics capabilities Omnicom’s BBDO New York has appointed MEC veteran Sharona Sankar-King to the newly created role of EVP, Head of Marketing Science, effective Sept. 12. In this new role, Sankar-King will work closely with Tina Allan, EVP, Director of Data Solutions, along with sibling agency Annalect and BBDO’s modeling group “The Worth,” and others to hone the shop’s data and analytics offering. Sankar-King was most recently Managing Partner, North America Practice Lead of Digital & Advanced Analytics, at MEC, part of WPP’s GroupM. “We believe that creativity can be an economic multiplier for our clients,” said John Osborn, CEO, BBDO New York. “Data can help inform this creativity by helping us to uncover those behavioral insights that can drive behavior change. In Sharona, we have an industry leader steeped in experience integrating data, analytics, media and measurement with the people part of the equation. She will help us get to those insights more quickly, better anticipate our audience’s response and make the stories increasingly personalized and predictive.” Sankar-King brings more than 20 years of experience to her new role, including working with clients and products in telecommunications, retail, travel, financial services, healthcare, pharma, automotive, packaged goods, eCommerce, energy, and technology. Prior to MEC, Sankar-King served as VP, Strategy and Analytics, at Rapp Collins Worldwide and Group Director of Digital Analytics at Experian.
Peer-to-peer payment service Venmo intends to raise awareness with its first national ad campaign. Ad agency Preacher was responsible for the creative, while Noble People handled all media strategy, buying, planning and activation. This effort represents a new marketing direction for the PayPal-owned platform which has primarily relied on word-of-mouth since it was launched in 2009. "The growth of Venmo has been very much a personal and social activity," says Kasia Leyden, director of marketing, Venmo. "Venmo has become ubiquitous primarily through word-of-mouth marketing. In a recent survey we conducted, three fourths of users said that someone from their inner circle, like a friend or family member, referred them to Venmo. We very much want to support those people by giving Venmo a louder voice and in the process, providing content for our users to help them recruit more people to Venmo.” The "Pony Up" creative uses humor to reach Millennials. The 60-second Rally Cry spot shows friends arguing over splitting a bill after happy hour and one suggests 'ponying up' with Venmo. Then, the ad cuts to actual ponies to depict different scenarios where people would be splitting the bill, before the actors go on to settle between them. Per the younger audience target, ads will run across networks including MTV and Comedy Central as well as online properties such as The Onion, Hulu, and YouTube. A "Pony Up" filter will be available on Snapchat on Sept. 19. Venmo will also concentrate on specific cities, Austin, Chicago, Portland, and Nashville with branded pizza boxes, coasters, Venmo tattoos, pony-themed pedi cabs and out-of-home advertisements. Venmo continues its rapid growth, says PayPal. In Q2 2016, Venmo processed some $4 billion in P2P payments, an increase of 141% year over year.
Dentsu Aegis Network has acquired Brazilian consulting firm Cosin Consulting, the companies have confirmed. Terms weren’t disclosed. DAN said that the firm, based in Sao Paulo with about 200 staffers, would become part of Isobar Brazil Group and is being re-branded “Cosin-Linked by Isobar.” Consultants and agencies are increasingly getting into each other’s businesses. The acquisition is designed to bolster Isobar’s growing business transformation and strategic consulting service offering across the Americas. Cosin Consulting was established in 2005 by Co-Founders Arnaldo Cosin and his brother Alessandro Cosin, who previously had worked at major consulting companies Accenture, IBM and CapGemini. Post-acquisition, Alessandro Cosin will take on the role of CEO of Cosin -—Linked by Isobar, while Arnaldo Cosin will assume a new advisory position. Cosin Consulting’s services include Business Consulting, IT Consulting and Project Management. Clients include Kroton Educational, Itaú, GPA, AB Inbev, Walmart, Bradesco and O Boticário Group. “With the addition of Cosin Consulting, Dentsu Aegis Network Brazil is able to work with clients to both redesign their business model and brand development, as well as deliver the right strategy, implementation and execution to excel in today’s omnichannel world,” stated Abel Reis, CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network Brazil.
With the rumored forthcoming announcement by Microsoft that it is discontinuing Microsoft Paint, Grolsch, an SAB Miller beer, and its agency Wunderman Phantasia decided to pay homage to the 20-year old software in a new campaign. “Unconventional by Tradition” uses Paint 95 exclusively to design and illustrate all of the digital assets for the campaign. Peruvian artist Xomatok created 12 unique illustrations using an old PC computer as a way to take viewers back two decades into the software’s prime. Other major urban artists involved with this project include Elliot Tupac, Orlando Aquije and Samuel Gutierrez. The campaign resurrects such iconic images as a Hitchcock-inspired digital billboard, an Andy Warhol banner and a man emulating Freddie Mercury in a striking disco pose. Individual illustrations will be released weekly online and all of the original files will be available for fans and followers to download and customize in Paint. While the campaign is intended for Peru, given the widely used and recognized Paint component, the creators believe that the images will resonate globally.
The shift in ad industry market share from so-called “analogue” media to “digital” media is accelerating, and the latter is now expected to surpass television’s historically dominant share of U.S. ad spending by the end of 2016 -- months sooner than expected, according to the statsmasters at eMarketer. Putting aside that television is a digital medium too, eMarketer's estimates categorize it separately from things like online and mobile digital media and based on its calculations, the sum of those categories will reach $72.09 billion by year end -- a smidgen higher than the U.S. TV ad marketplace’s projected $71.29 billion. “That means digital will represent 36.8% of total U.S. media spending, while TV will represent 36.4%,” according to an eMarketer spokesperson, noting that the firm's original projections -- made in March -- called for TV vs. digital's market share tipping point not to happen until sometime next year. What makes digital’s ascendance so remarkable is that it occurred during a so-called “quadrennial” year in which TV ad spending benefitted from incremental spending from both a Summer Olympics and a presidential political season. The eMarketer report notes that TV is, in fact, continuing to expand -- it's just not growing as fast as digital ad spending. “The strong performance of the digital ad market is being driven by several factors, including, not surprisingly, mobile and video,” eMarketer notes, adding: “Mobile ad spending will grow 45.0% this year to reach $45.95 billion. As it grows, it will represent an increasing share of overall ad spending. By 2019, mobile will represent more than a third of total media ad spending in the US. Google is the undisputed king of mobile and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Google will capture 32.0% of the mobile ad market -- its closest rival Facebook capturing 22.1% this year.”
When an ad agency loses a client, it's not usually cause for celebration or the genesis of inspiration that leads to the creation of a full-on farewell video but that's exactly what Maine and Maryland-based agency, Rinck did when it lost the Gorton's Seafood account after handling it for ten years. For over nine years, Rinck handled the Gorton’s website, social media, public relations, promotions and digital media and prides itself on an average agency-client relationship of three years. Of note, the agency, now in its sixteenth year, still does business with its very first client. In June, when the client team would have otherwise been in Gloucester, Massachusetts, at a Gorton’s planning meeting, nearly every member of Rinck’s staff of 38 gathered inside the Bates Mill – a supplier of blankets to the Union Army during the Civil War – in Lewiston, Maine, and filmed their own rendition of “We’ll Meet Again” with live instruments. The song, with music and lyrics composed and written by Ross Parker and Hughie Charles, was made famous by Vera Lynn in 1939 and was covered by Johnny Cash in 2002 for his final album “American IV: The Man Comes Around.” Of the performance, Rinck President Laura Davis said, “We wanted to honor a relationship and collaboration that we had for nearly a decade, and the friendships that came along with it, with not just the client, but agency partners, vendors, and others. The split was due to agency consolidation and completely amicable. I wanted to use the opportunity to set an example on how to end a business relationship well and leave the door wide open.” The three-minute music video features Neal Jandreau, Rinck’s Director of Digital Content and Strategy, on lead vocals and guitar. Outside his agency role, Jandreau is a professional musician who plays in the acoustic duo, Stealing North. Davis and Director of Dynamic Integration Kristy Phinney were featured in the video with spoken word solos, and Public Relations Director Katie Greenlaw led a female a cappella verse. Rinck CEO Peter Rinck played violin and Production Artist Melissa Simmons played ukulele to accompany Jandreau. What have you done following the loss of a client?
The most important recent change in search advertising is the personalization and enhanced targeting that search engines give advertisers, according to Brian Valentini, group director at DigitasLBi. He says that while search was always intent based via targeting keywords, now advertisers have more control over which audiences to buy, how to target them, what to pay for them, and how to message them. Using first-party cookies, advertisers can segment their search buy based on what they know about their audience, such as purchase history, order preferences, and order frequency. The result is that advertisers can be smarter, more strategic, and more efficient with their search buy. Consumers get a more targeted, seamless experience on their purchase journey. This also requires advertisers to have well-maintained CRM lists to fully take advantage of targeting options. Valentini says most Web sites also offer this type of targeting. But what makes the targeting through search engines unique is that agencies and brands can take a highly qualified, captivated audience because they are searching for keywords, and overlay these targeting segments to either message them different and/or buy them differently by adjusting the cost-per-click bids, Valentini says. So I asked Valentini whether advertisers really know their audiences' existing and potential customers. He saidthe story is changing. It used to be that Brands had a target -- a mixture of some demo- and psychographics along with some behaviors made up a target. While that might be true for traditional advertising, data and analytics is often telling Brands that a different “target” is visiting their Web site and shopping with them. So while I think that brands know their core, that group is most likely getting smaller, but the overall audience is growing larger as the landscape fragments. By mining and honing in on Big Data and analytics, advertisers can get a much better grasp for who is actually their online target audience and who is most likely to buy, advocate for, and share them online. Search Blog: What are the smart ones doing to get to know them better? Brian Valentini: Leveraging multiple data points and resources and analytics to get a better understanding for who this audience is. But this can’t be done in a silo. Brands and advertisers need support and buy-in from multiple parts of their organizations and from senior levels in order to get dedicated resources. SB: When did audience segments become available to search advertisers and how are they being used? BV: It's slowly been rolling out over the past two years, with Google leading the charge. Google first came out with RLSA – Remarketing Lists for Search Ads, the ability to do search remarketing based on specific actions and pages viewed on Web sites. They then upped the ante with Customer Match, the ability to do search remarketing based on first-party email lists and data on customers. Microsoft Bing has RLSA, but not equivalent to Google's. Advertisers are using both tactics as a way to enhance their search buy. For example, if I know that someone searching has previously purchased from me in the past and they are searching with non-brand keywords, I'm typically willing to pay more for that customer and increase the bid. Or if someone has recently been to my product detail pages and they are still searching, I might update the ad copy for that product to get them to add a rating or review, or entice them to make a purchase from me rather than another retailer. On the flip side, it’s also about suppression -- if I know that a customer has purchased from me before and left a very bad review about their buying experience, I might choose to negate that searcher from seeing my ads. The idea is that if they’re not going to purchase from me, so I shouldn’t try to attract that traffic. SB: How should advertisers take advantage of having more control of their search buys? Does it mean rethinking strategies? BV: Yes, it means rethinking strategies. As advertisers have more control they should deploy unique strategies for each segment. This will lead to a better experience for searchers, but also a more efficient buy and spend of resources for the advertiser. Advertisers should take advantage by leveraging as many CRM segments as possible. Often the best success when advertisers segments by frequency, order size, recency, order specifics, and conversion rate. The more granular an advertiser can slice their segments, the more positive return they’ll see and be able to measure. SB: Are advertisers paying more attention to accurate CRM lists, and what are they doing to achieve this? What's the importance? BV: I think so. By working with their tech team and resources they’re mining as many data points as possible so they can have maximum control over their lists, and go deep with their targeting strategies. The importance is that as much data as they have, as many unique ways to target -- that gives more control over their audience and their investments. SB: When you wake at 2 a.m. and cannot get back to sleep, what type of customer experience or advertising strategy are you thinking about as it relates to search, fragmentation, data and IoT? BV: Innovative ways to message advertisers, how to scale, test, and iterate. With all the new technology available to search advertisers, such as remarketing, scripts, bid strategies, and more. It’s paramount now, more than ever, that we’re always serving the right message at the right time, at the right cost SB: What is the future of search advertising? How do you see your role as agency rep for your brand clients evolving? BV: Keywordless bidding. As Search Engines evolve Shopping Campaigns and create new Campaign types such as Dynamic Search Ads they’re going to give advertisers the option to map their products and landing pages into keywordless bidding. This will allow advertisers the ability to quickly scale their campaigns, but will also allow for the return of search investment to be tied to the channel, vs specific segments of Keywords -- brand vs non-brand, for example. In the agency we see our role evolving in two main ways -- speed to market. As the digital media landscape continues to fracture and continues to evolve targeting options, we have to be nimbler, quicker, and more on target with our recommendations to help our clients activate as quickly as possible. I also see us going deeper with our publisher relationships so that we’re better equipped to not only answer questions and optimize, but also to go deeper with our partnerships to deliver service and ROI for our Brands. SB: What is the best piece of career advice you ever received? BV: Stay above the line. This means to assume and act on positive intent; lead; don’t live at the effect of others; and don’t absorb negative energy. The idea is to maintain and build on positive energy vs focusing on negative things that are often out of our control.
In the past few weeks, via the comments I’ve received on my two (1,2) columns looking at the possible future of media selection and targeting, it’s become apparent to me that we’re at a crisis point when it comes to advertising. I’ve been fortunate enough to have some of the brightest minds and sharpest commentators in the industry contributing their thoughts on the topic. In the middle of all these comments lies a massive gap. This gap can be triangulated by looking at three comments in particular: Esther Dyson: “Ultimately, what the advertisers want is sales... attention, engagement...all these are merely indicators for attribution and waypoints on the path to sales.” Doc Searls: “Please do what you do best (and wins the most awards): make ads that clearly sponsor the content they accompany (we can actually appreciate that), and are sufficiently creative to induce positive regard in our hearts and minds. “ Ken Fadner: “I don't want to live in a world like this one” (speaking of the hyper-targeted advertising scenario I described in my last column). These three comments are all absolutely right (with the possible exception of Searls, which I’ll come back to in a minute) and they draw a path around the gaping hole that is the future of advertising. So let’s strip this back to the basics to try to find solid ground from which to move forward again. Advertising depends on a triangular value exchange: We want entertainment and information, which is delivered via various media. These media need funding -- which comes from advertising. Advertising wants exposure to the media audience. So, if we boil that down: We put up with advertising in return for access to entertainment and information. This is the balance that is deemed “OK” by Doc Searls and other commenters. The problem is that this is no longer the world we live in -- if we ever did. The value exchange requires all three sides to agree that the value is sufficient for us to keep participating. The relatively benign and balanced model of advertising laid out by Searls just doesn’t exist anymore. The problem is the value exchange triangle is breaking down on two sides -- for advertisers and the audience. As I explained in an earlier Online Spin, value exchanges depend on scarcity -- and for the audience, there is no longer a scarcity of information and entertainment. Also, there are now new models for information and entertainment delivery that disrupt our assessment of this value exchange. The cognitive context that made us accepting of commercials has been broken. Where once we sat passively and consumed advertising, we now have subscription contexts that are entirely commercial-free. That makes the appearance of advertising all the more frustrating. Our brain has been trained to no longer be accepting of ads. The other issue is that ads only appeared in contexts where we were passively engaged. Now, ads appear when we’re actively engaged. That’s an entirely different mental model, with different expectations of acceptability. This traditional value exchange is also breaking down for advertisers. The inefficiencies of the previous model have been exposed, and more accountable and effective models have emerged. Dyson’s point was probably the most constant bearing point we can navigate to: Companies want sales. They also want more effective advertising. And much as we may hate the clutter and crap that litters the current digital landscape, when it works well, it does promise to deliver a higher degree of efficiency. So, we have the previous three-sided value exchange collapsing on two of the sides, bringing the third side -- media -- down with it. Look, we can bitch about digital all we want. I share Searls' frustration with digital in general and Fadner’s misgivings about creepy and ineffective execution of digital targeting in particular. But this horse has already left the barn. Digital is more than just the flavor of the month. It’s the thin edge of a massive wedge of change in content distribution and consumption. For reasons far too numerous to name, we’ll never return to the benign world of clearly sponsored content and creative ads. First of all, that benign world never worked that well. Secondly, two sides of the value-exchange triangle have gotten a taste of something better: virtually unlimited content delivered without advertising strings attached, and a much more effective way to deliver advertising. Is digital working very well now? Absolutely not. Fadner and Searls are right about that, It’s creepy, poorly targeted, intrusive and annoying. And it’s all these things for the very same reason that Esther Dyson identified: Companies want sales, and they’ll try anything that promises to deliver it. But we’re at the very beginning of a huge disruptive wave. Stuff isn’t supposed to work very well at this point. That comes with maturity and an inevitable rebalancing. Searls may rail against digital, just like people railed against television, the telephone and horseless carriages. But it’s just too early to tell what a more mature model will look like. Corporate greed will dictate the trying of everything. We will fight back by blocking the hijacking of our attention. A sustainable balance will emerge somewhere in between. But we can’t see it yet from our vantage point.