List-obsessed news and pop-culture publisher BuzzFeed just raised $19.3 million led by NEA. Michael and Kass Lazerow, co-founders of Buddy Media, joined the round as new investors, while existing investors RRE, Hearst, SoftBank and Lerer Ventures also participated.With the investment, Jonah Peretti, founder and CEO BuzzFeed, said he is determined to build “the next great media company.” What does that mean? For starters, one that is “socially native, tech enabled, with massive scale,” according to Peretti. In December 2012, BuzzFeed passed 40 million unique monthly visitors, according to the company, citing Google Analytics data. Peretti attributes its growth to close social integration with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and its strong mobile focus -- as mobile now makes up over one-third of all BuzzFeed traffic. The company also grew revenue more than threefold in 2012, exclusively from content-driven, social advertising, Peretti said. The company now boasts 180 employees, 70 of whom are part of its editorial team led by Editor in Chief Ben Smith. BuzzFeed also recently hired Jeff Greenspan from Facebook and BBDO as its first chief creative officer. Greenspan was brought in to keep the focus on sharable branded content for partners such as GE, Virgin Mobile USA, Campbell’s, Microsoft, Pepsi.
Facing requirements to increase minority representation in its officer corps, the U.S. Army is launching a campaign targeted toward the African-American community, showcasing the leadership qualities and elite status becoming an Army officer yields. “The minority population in the Army’s officer corps is not representative of the total population even within the Army,” John Myers, director of marketing for the U.S. Army Marketing and Research Group, tells Marketing Daily. “We need [officers] to be representative of the total force that they lead.” A new television commercial, produced by McCann World Group and Carol H. Williams advertising, features Major Myles B. Caggins, III. In the spot, Caggins tells of his reluctance to initially join the Army (“I was one of those guys who didn’t think the Army had anything for me,” he says at the beginning of the spot), before showcasing his success as a leader within the organization and a mentor outside of it. He also mentions that less than one-tenth of 1% of Americans become Army officers. “It’s a small group of us, but we’re among the most highly educated, compared to many other corporations or institutions,” he says. “Through the use of testimonials, we’re putting the face of excellence in front of our prospects and their influencers. Major Caggins is not an actor,” Myers says. “He tells his individual story of choosing the career path and explains the tangible benefits through it.” The commercial, which will run in conjunction with a Hispanic-themed ad released last October, will make its debut during the U.S. Army All-American Bowl on NBC on Jan. 5. Both ads target not only potential recruits, but also their “influencers” (in this case parents), Myers says. “If parents are not convinced the Army is a good recommendation for their son or daughter, the challenge becomes even deeper,” Myers says. “We are using all the tools to get the key messages out.” The commercial is part of a larger, integrated effort to increase minority officer recruitment. The campaign will also include video ads on YouTube, Facebook and GoArmy sites, rich media ads and updates from Major Caggins and Captain Ricardo Romo (who appears in the Hispanic-targeted campaign) on the Army Strong Stories blogs. The campaign will also include localized multicultural print and radio ads. “We have a number of platforms to showcase our messages,” Myers says.
Getting noticed amid the deluge of weight-loss ads at the start of each new year is tough, but Medifast and its agency, Minneapolis-based Solve, believe they’ve come up with an approach that’s hard to ignore. On Jan. 1, Medifast launched a national TV campaign in which the overweight and now-slender versions of weight-losers are shown conversing with each other. To create the effect, Solve worked with director John Haagen of New York-based Assembly Films. Each of the three individuals featured in three different spots was filmed in Los Angeles in January 2012, then shot again at the same location in September, after eight months on the Medifast weight-loss program. Matching the scenes and dialogue to create a believable conversation video was “a painstaking effort,” notes Hans Hansen, Solve creative director. The approach was designed to enable the brand to stand out from the celebrity endorsement and “vanity appeals” used by the three major weight-loss programs, and go beyond the physical aspects to dramatically portray the aspirations and emotional and lifestyle payoffs of weight loss, says Eric Sorensen, also creative director at the agency. “Instead of using the typical one-dimensional before-and-after approach, we set out to capture a deeper, more compelling story,” Sorensen says. “The idea was to show the true, unscripted feelings” that people experience as they evolve into the individuals they want to be, he adds. The content is undeniably emotional. For example, after the “new,” slender version of one of one woman, “Tina,” says “This is us -- this is who we’re supposed to be,” the “old,” overweight Tina chokes up as she says that she “can’t believe it.” A second woman, “Kimberly,” is also tearful as she confesses to her new self that she wanted the weight loss “so bad,” adding: “You look beautiful. We look beautiful.” The third subject, Joseph, expresses his pride in how great he now looks to his old self, adding: “No offense, but I hope I don’t see you again.” His old self responds: “You know what? I don’t blame you. I don’t ever want to see me like this again either.” The campaign’s tagline, “Become Yourself,” reinforces the message that achieving and maintaining a healthy weight can enable individuals to be who they truly are and open up their lives. Each of the three spots has 60- and 30-second versions. The campaign, to run through 2013, also includes a Web site trailer, digital content and social and print components.
Honda is heralding the arrival of its U.S. market icon, the 2013 Civic, unveiled at the Los Angeles auto show last fall. The campaign -- via long-time agency RPA -- comprises four TV spots, one of which debuted in the Rose Bowl on Tuesday. The new ads have "found" video content to talk about entrepreneurial spirit of inventors and Honda’s engineers. There are more than 10 different inventors portrayed in the spots. The effort, which also has print and digital elements, mixes product messages with the company's corporate mantra around innovation and continuous improvement (the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen). Three of the TV spots are for the Civic Sedan, Si Coupe and Hybrid, respectively, and a 60-second spot -- which aired during the Rose Bowl -- features all three of the vehicles. Ads showing both ersatz and commercial innovations (the Brompton folding bike, the laser keyboard, the 4moms origami stroller) are paired with Honda's own corporate content that tout the 2013 Civic, and the Honda racing program, but also Honda's ASIMO robot, and the manufacturer's foray into the wild blue yonder with HondaJet. “We wanted to not only showcase Honda's latest example of [its innovation philosophy], but embrace the other...dreamers and doers out there who share our way of thinking," said Jason Sperling, SVP, group creative director at the agency, who adds that the campaign is a kind of innovators "group hug.” Ellen Kuras, who was behind the lens for films like “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “Blow,” is director of photography, and the ads are set to the music of Santigold. The agency says the new ads will air during prime-time rotation on ABC, CW, Fox, NBC, cable and during NBA and NFL AFC Wildcard and Divisional games, as well as in nearly 60 markets during the BCS Championship. Honda is also going with spot buys during the broadcast of the Grammy Awards on Feb. 10 on CBS. The company will air the 30-second ads in its 60 top markets during the show, and Honda will run a gatefold print ad in “Entertainment Weekly” and a YouTube masthead takeover is scheduled the day after the show. Not least is a social media vector to get people talking about the cars and the innovations featured in the ads on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram to help create buzz and curiosity around the innovations and the new Civic. Print will run in ESPN The Magazine, Elle, Food Network Magazine, InStyle, GQ and People. Online ads include home-page takeovers on Yahoo and MSN, full-episode streaming and within “March Madness on Demand” and “NFL Everywhere.”
Some 35% of digital consumers will spend $25 or more per month on New Year’s resolutions, presenting an opportunity for marketers looking to reach specific segments, according to survey results released Thursday. Some 8% of SocialVibe survey participants said they would spend $51 to $75; followed by 6%, between $75 and $100; and 8%, more than $100. The SocialVibe survey, conducted in December 2012, and designed to gauge attitudes and behaviors around New Year’s resolutions for those spending time online, suggests 52% of consumers plan to improve eating and physical fitness habits -- women more so than men. Improving finances at 21% took the No. 2 most popular category after diet and exercise. Improving stress levels and well-being at 20% took the No. 3 spot. Compared with women, males are much more likely to quit unhealthy habits such as drinking or smoking, at 19% versus 11%. Consumers, however, have become more ego- than eco-focused -- and resolutions focusing on outreach, volunteering, recycling, and carbon footprint reductions were the least popular among the 19 measured, according to the findings. About 44% of consumers spending time online are likely to make New Year’s resolutions for 2013, compared with 38% who recall making one last year. Most don't follow through. Only 28% accomplish or get close to their goals. Some 26% are goal-oriented but fall short; 46% never get started. Still, 78% make one resolution, compared with 14% at 2, and 8% for 3 or more. Digital and social community support help to accomplish goals. In fact, one in 10 consumers feel that sharing goals with their social network and competing against friends, family and online groups improves their New Year's resolution performance and chances of accomplishing the goal. Overall, 39% of digital consumers feel that sharing, competing, combining and contributing to charities are highly likely to improve their New Year's resolution performance. Some 9% think sharing their goal on a social network like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn improves the outcome, another 9% think competing against friends, family or an online group helps them make the most progress, and 8% think recruiting a group of friends or family to participate works well.
List-obsessed news and pop-culture publisher BuzzFeed just raised $19.3 million led by NEA. Michael and Kass Lazerow, co-founders of Buddy Media, joined the round as new investors, while existing investors RRE, Hearst, SoftBank and Lerer Ventures also participated.With the investment, Jonah Peretti, founder and CEO BuzzFeed, said he is determined to build “the next great media company.” What does that mean? For starters, one that is “socially native, tech enabled, with massive scale,” according to Peretti. In December 2012, BuzzFeed passed 40 million unique monthly visitors, according to the company, citing Google Analytics data. Peretti attributes its growth to close social integration with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and its strong mobile focus -- as mobile now makes up over one-third of all BuzzFeed traffic. The company also grew revenue more than threefold in 2012, exclusively from content-driven, social advertising, Peretti said. The company now boasts 180 employees, 70 of whom are part of its editorial team led by Editor in Chief Ben Smith. BuzzFeed also recently hired Jeff Greenspan from Facebook and BBDO as its first chief creative officer. Greenspan was brought in to keep the focus on sharable branded content for partners such as GE, Virgin Mobile USA, Campbell’s, Microsoft, Pepsi.
Facing requirements to increase minority representation in its officer corps, the U.S. Army is launching a campaign targeted toward the African-American community, showcasing the leadership qualities and elite status becoming an Army officer yields. “The minority population in the Army’s officer corps is not representative of the total population even within the Army,” John Myers, director of marketing for the U.S. Army Marketing and Research Group, tells Marketing Daily. “We need [officers] to be representative of the total force that they lead.” A new television commercial, produced by McCann World Group and Carol H. Williams advertising, features Major Myles B. Caggins, III. In the spot, Caggins tells of his reluctance to initially join the Army (“I was one of those guys who didn’t think the Army had anything for me,” he says at the beginning of the spot), before showcasing his success as a leader within the organization and a mentor outside of it. He also mentions that less than one-tenth of 1% of Americans become Army officers. “It’s a small group of us, but we’re among the most highly educated, compared to many other corporations or institutions,” he says. “Through the use of testimonials, we’re putting the face of excellence in front of our prospects and their influencers. Major Caggins is not an actor,” Myers says. “He tells his individual story of choosing the career path and explains the tangible benefits through it.” The commercial, which will run in conjunction with a Hispanic-themed ad released last October, will make its debut during the U.S. Army All-American Bowl on NBC on Jan. 5. Both ads target not only potential recruits, but also their “influencers” (in this case parents), Myers says. “If parents are not convinced the Army is a good recommendation for their son or daughter, the challenge becomes even deeper,” Myers says. “We are using all the tools to get the key messages out.” The commercial is part of a larger, integrated effort to increase minority officer recruitment. The campaign will also include video ads on YouTube, Facebook and GoArmy sites, rich media ads and updates from Major Caggins and Captain Ricardo Romo (who appears in the Hispanic-targeted campaign) on the Army Strong Stories blogs. The campaign will also include localized multicultural print and radio ads. “We have a number of platforms to showcase our messages,” Myers says.
Getting noticed amid the deluge of weight-loss ads at the start of each new year is tough, but Medifast and its agency, Minneapolis-based Solve, believe they’ve come up with an approach that’s hard to ignore. On Jan. 1, Medifast launched a national TV campaign in which the overweight and now-slender versions of weight-losers are shown conversing with each other. To create the effect, Solve worked with director John Haagen of New York-based Assembly Films. Each of the three individuals featured in three different spots was filmed in Los Angeles in January 2012, then shot again at the same location in September, after eight months on the Medifast weight-loss program. Matching the scenes and dialogue to create a believable conversation video was “a painstaking effort,” notes Hans Hansen, Solve creative director. The approach was designed to enable the brand to stand out from the celebrity endorsement and “vanity appeals” used by the three major weight-loss programs, and go beyond the physical aspects to dramatically portray the aspirations and emotional and lifestyle payoffs of weight loss, says Eric Sorensen, also creative director at the agency. “Instead of using the typical one-dimensional before-and-after approach, we set out to capture a deeper, more compelling story,” Sorensen says. “The idea was to show the true, unscripted feelings” that people experience as they evolve into the individuals they want to be, he adds. The content is undeniably emotional. For example, after the “new,” slender version of one of one woman, “Tina,” says “This is us -- this is who we’re supposed to be,” the “old,” overweight Tina chokes up as she says that she “can’t believe it.” A second woman, “Kimberly,” is also tearful as she confesses to her new self that she wanted the weight loss “so bad,” adding: “You look beautiful. We look beautiful.” The third subject, Joseph, expresses his pride in how great he now looks to his old self, adding: “No offense, but I hope I don’t see you again.” His old self responds: “You know what? I don’t blame you. I don’t ever want to see me like this again either.” The campaign’s tagline, “Become Yourself,” reinforces the message that achieving and maintaining a healthy weight can enable individuals to be who they truly are and open up their lives. Each of the three spots has 60- and 30-second versions. The campaign, to run through 2013, also includes a Web site trailer, digital content and social and print components.
Honda is heralding the arrival of its U.S. market icon, the 2013 Civic, unveiled at the Los Angeles auto show last fall. The campaign -- via long-time agency RPA -- comprises four TV spots, one of which debuted in the Rose Bowl on Tuesday. The new ads have "found" video content to talk about entrepreneurial spirit of inventors and Honda’s engineers. There are more than 10 different inventors portrayed in the spots. The effort, which also has print and digital elements, mixes product messages with the company's corporate mantra around innovation and continuous improvement (the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen). Three of the TV spots are for the Civic Sedan, Si Coupe and Hybrid, respectively, and a 60-second spot -- which aired during the Rose Bowl -- features all three of the vehicles. Ads showing both ersatz and commercial innovations (the Brompton folding bike, the laser keyboard, the 4moms origami stroller) are paired with Honda's own corporate content that tout the 2013 Civic, and the Honda racing program, but also Honda's ASIMO robot, and the manufacturer's foray into the wild blue yonder with HondaJet. “We wanted to not only showcase Honda's latest example of [its innovation philosophy], but embrace the other...dreamers and doers out there who share our way of thinking," said Jason Sperling, SVP, group creative director at the agency, who adds that the campaign is a kind of innovators "group hug.” Ellen Kuras, who was behind the lens for films like “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “Blow,” is director of photography, and the ads are set to the music of Santigold. The agency says the new ads will air during prime-time rotation on ABC, CW, Fox, NBC, cable and during NBA and NFL AFC Wildcard and Divisional games, as well as in nearly 60 markets during the BCS Championship. Honda is also going with spot buys during the broadcast of the Grammy Awards on Feb. 10 on CBS. The company will air the 30-second ads in its 60 top markets during the show, and Honda will run a gatefold print ad in “Entertainment Weekly” and a YouTube masthead takeover is scheduled the day after the show. Not least is a social media vector to get people talking about the cars and the innovations featured in the ads on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram to help create buzz and curiosity around the innovations and the new Civic. Print will run in ESPN The Magazine, Elle, Food Network Magazine, InStyle, GQ and People. Online ads include home-page takeovers on Yahoo and MSN, full-episode streaming and within “March Madness on Demand” and “NFL Everywhere.”
Some 35% of digital consumers will spend $25 or more per month on New Year’s resolutions, presenting an opportunity for marketers looking to reach specific segments, according to survey results released Thursday. Some 8% of SocialVibe survey participants said they would spend $51 to $75; followed by 6%, between $75 and $100; and 8%, more than $100. The SocialVibe survey, conducted in December 2012, and designed to gauge attitudes and behaviors around New Year’s resolutions for those spending time online, suggests 52% of consumers plan to improve eating and physical fitness habits -- women more so than men. Improving finances at 21% took the No. 2 most popular category after diet and exercise. Improving stress levels and well-being at 20% took the No. 3 spot. Compared with women, males are much more likely to quit unhealthy habits such as drinking or smoking, at 19% versus 11%. Consumers, however, have become more ego- than eco-focused -- and resolutions focusing on outreach, volunteering, recycling, and carbon footprint reductions were the least popular among the 19 measured, according to the findings. About 44% of consumers spending time online are likely to make New Year’s resolutions for 2013, compared with 38% who recall making one last year. Most don't follow through. Only 28% accomplish or get close to their goals. Some 26% are goal-oriented but fall short; 46% never get started. Still, 78% make one resolution, compared with 14% at 2, and 8% for 3 or more. Digital and social community support help to accomplish goals. In fact, one in 10 consumers feel that sharing goals with their social network and competing against friends, family and online groups improves their New Year's resolution performance and chances of accomplishing the goal. Overall, 39% of digital consumers feel that sharing, competing, combining and contributing to charities are highly likely to improve their New Year's resolution performance. Some 9% think sharing their goal on a social network like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn improves the outcome, another 9% think competing against friends, family or an online group helps them make the most progress, and 8% think recruiting a group of friends or family to participate works well.
So the year begins with us not driving off the fiscal cliff, due to a quick left turn at the very end. Phew! But only hours later, online advertising was effectively thrown under the bus by my favorite blogger, Andrew Sullivan -- and for online advertising, and social media types, this might end up being a cliffhanger. (Argh. Sorry. Had to go there.) Sullivan, and the small band of editors and interns on his Daily Beast-hosted blog, The Dish, started 2013 by saying they were breaking from the Beast and going to a subscription model. More importantly for those in digital advertising, the new andrewsullivan.com will be a subscription-only model, $19.99/year. No advertising. Period. Sullivan said in a lengthy post yesterday: “The decision on advertising was the hardest, because obviously it provides a vital revenue stream for almost all media products. But we know from your emails how distracting and intrusive it can be; and how it often slows down the page painfully. And we're increasingly struck how advertising is dominated online by huge entities, and how compromising and time-consuming it could be for so few of us to try and lure big corporations to support us. We're also mindful how online ads have created incentives for pageviews over quality content.” For those of you who don’t follow The Dish, a quirky mix of politics, poetry and threads on topics such as “The Weed Gender Gap” and “The Hobbit’s Unanswered Violence,” this may sound like folly. But the Dish has a devoted, large following. During the almost two years that the Dish was connected to the Daily Beast, the Beast’s overall traffic more than doubled, from 2.8 million to 5.7 million, per comScore. But the more impressive figure to me is that the average Dish reader spends 17 minutes per day on the site, a stat that advertisers will soon be unable to exploit. Readers, meanwhile, seem to be responding. In the first 24 hours, even though only 12,000 people – or roughly one percent of its monthly audience -- have bought subs, the site is closing in on a gross of $350,000. I’m both someone who wants to see online advertising be worth the space it takes up, and an Andrew Sullivan fangirl (or Dish-head, as the site’s rabid followers are termed). But even when I put my ad-wonk hat on, I can’t argue with, well, Sullivan’s argument about eschewing advertising. I’m not as myopically focused on my own personal enjoyment of the Internet to deny that advertising usually needs to be part of the mix; but I’m also painfully aware of how lacking the model is on so many levels – particularly for consumers and for most publishers. In the three-legged stool that is supposed to be the advertising ecosystem, two of the legs are shaky. If you’re reading this column, you’re probably wondering when I’ll get around to discussing what this has to do with social media. Well, it’s fascinating to ponder the ramifications of unplugging from the traffic imperative, and how, suddenly, social media doesn’t matter as much if you’re no longer looking it as an essential distribution channel that leads to more pageviews that leads to more ad revenue. Before I go on, I should point out that Sullivan is not doing a full disconnect here. The subscription-only blog really follows a Times-ian model in which outsiders can freely link to the blog and regular visitors who don’t pay up will find it’s a metered approach, which essentially means content is free -- until it’s not. Still, when ad revenue isn’t the goal, the importance of social media is still desirable, but diminished. Social-media-fed traffic may have a small, and hard-to-measure, impact on subscription revenue, but there is no direct transference, as there is with pageviews to ad dollars. The focus moves more profoundly to pleasing the users who want to pay for the site, and expanding in a more thoughtful, and dare I say, organic, way. It should be obvious that if Sullivan’s subscription-only model works, it won’t kill online advertising or social media. But what does it say when a subscription-only model is potentially the best way for a popular blogger to make money? Nothing very good about the industries in which so many of you spend your time, I’m afraid. (I left one question unanswered in this column: am I going to pay my $19.99/year? You betcha! The only question is whether my husband and I will buy separate subs to support our dual Dish habit; we haven’t had time to discuss it yet.)
Maybe it has been like this forever, but I’m just noticing now that when I visit Facebook, there’s virtually not one poster who’s not including content with their comment--usually a video or just a photo that has come from some Website. The plain fact is that online video and social media are a perfect match. A new report from the Boston-based online news and content marketing agency Brafton, made that same point eloquently a few days ago when it advised its content marketing clients to add video—heavily---to the mix of what they provide to their end users because it will inevitably be re-circulated on social media. In short, their report gives three reasons businesses should rely increasingly on video marketing. People watch it. People share it. And, presuming your brand provides good video, making it adaptable to social media sites sets your brand apart from competitors. As proof of the first point—that we can’t get enough video—Brafton notes the phenomenal fact that the average viewer watched 1,182 minutes of video in November alone, according to comScore. Brafton reported another poll that found Web video ads have impacted purchases for half of all American consumers. (It’s easy to check the Truth-o-meter on that one today, a day before Christmas. That stat works for me.) Secondly, social media sites are a showcase. If you make it, folks will share it, like crazy. The Brafton report notes that last month, Facebook users watched more than 340 million videos, again according to comScore. And according to data from AddThis, sharing on Facebook grew by 18%, and an even more astounding 55% on Twitter. As a final point, Brafton says marketers are missing big fat opportunities by not providing video that is likely to be drift along to millions of Facebook and other social media users. It quotes Nielsen’s State of Social Media Report to note when that PC are on the Internet, they’re on Facebook 17% of the time. Obviously, that’s a place marketers want their videos be hanging around. A fun companion read to this number-based essay is a thoughtful piece by Brafton’s Andrew McDonald who notes that while social networks make us feel part of a community, they also force a user to come to realize that “although we may be connected in unfathomable ways to the biological and physical world around us, our singular kind of puny perspectives always sets us apart.” That, McDonald also theorizes, is why silly videos catch on. He reflects on the comic style of Jerry Seinfeld who made millions of us laugh with observations that begin, “Don’t you hate it when…” followed by a humorous perception of common quirks. Odd viral videos have the same attraction. That's what makes them viral. “The more inane something is, the more it seems to be shared….The dumber the content is, the more empowering and humanizing it is to participate and admit that you like it, ” McDonald says. He might have a point. I can’t get over a friend’s post yesterday of an artist’s depiction of Kevin Bacon--made out of bacon. I’ll send you a link. Then pass it on. pjbednarski@comcast.netThis article initially appeared in VidBlog on December 24.