• Fraud Prevention Will Tip The 'Scale' Of Online Video
    James Akhbari, VP and digital media director at Havas, told the audience at OMMA Video at Internet Week New York that he is "old school" and wants to buy premium ad inventory that he knows isn't fraudulent, and that the best way to do so involves avoiding automation.
  • MINI Defends "Jumbo" Model
    Arguably betraying the MINI brand -- and the environment -- not everyone loves the company's 4-door Countryman, a.k.a., "the Big MINI." Tom Salkowsky, Department Head for MINI Marketing at MINI USA faced one such critic at OMMA Video on Thursday. Salkowsky, however, was prepared to defend the "jumbo MINI" -- noting that, since its debut in 2011, it has become the company's second best-selling model. "It was a natural evolution for [the MINI] brand," he said. What's more, "That segment [of smaller crossovers] is exploding globally ... so I think we timed [the Countryman's] launch perfectly." Oh, and relatively speaking, …
  • MINI Tells Other Car Brands To Chill
    How does MINI USA cut through the clutter, and really connect with consumers? "We're just not that serious," according to Tom Salkowsky, Department Head for MINI Marketing at MINI USA. For the most part, "car companies are just so goddamn serious," he told attendees of OMMA Video on Thursday. That meant letting Tony Hawk skate around with -- and ollie over -- the new MINI Cooper hardtop to promote its U.S. launch. That also meant letting drivers use their imaginations to dream up their very own "final test" test drives, all of which you can check out here. At the …
  • Mini Marketing: About being feisty, family.. and motoring
    Non-traditional, off-beat campaigns have been the mark of BMW’s Mini’s marketing efforts since its launch in 2002. Speaking at OMMA Video at Internet Week, Tom Salkowsky, department head of Mini Marketing, Mini USA, said the auto brands media efforts started modestly — with print, radio and out-of-home. Now it is has grown to include a wider variety of media — but still keeping somewhat unusual marketing efforts, which includes the likes of creating a massive consumer Mini ride across country, as well as special modest and hopeful viral videos. “We don’t spend that much [on marketing]”, says Salkowsky. "We build …
  • What Would Satan Do? (Lean In, Of Course)
    Few brands are more wholesome than Honey Maid, right? Think s'mores around the campfire, or dunking them straight-up into a glass of milk. Family-bonding, nurturing, nostalgic. Attributes many brands would kill for. So what happens when you're a senior marketing guy who conceives a campaign to showcase the brand in connection with non-traditional families: gay, bisexual, multi-racial, tattoo fetishists, you name it? You get called, "Satan," explained Gary Osifchin, senior marketing director of the Wholesome Sweet, Entrepreneurial Brands and Channels at Mondelez International, during a keynote presentation at OMMA Video.
  • Can Honey Maid's #Thisiswholesome Campaign Go 10 Years?
    What's next for Honey Maid's groundbreaking #Thisiswholesome campaign, which featured a wide array of modern American families from single dads to gay families to liberally-tattooed families? For one, continuing to highlight the fact that the original work inspired a "10-to-1 positive response" from consumers, according to Gary Osifchin, Senior Marketing Director for Wholesome Sweet, Entrepreneurial Brands and Channels at Honey Maid parent Mondelez International. As for the haters, Osifchin told attendees of OMMA Video on Thursday: "We'll let people deal with their own emotions ... we'll stick with what we know to be true." That includes efforts like Honey Maid's …
  • Yelp Venturing Into Video
    Making a big move into video, Yelp will soon let users upload short clips to show off their businesses. "The idea of the new feature is to help reviewers fully capture the atmosphere of a restaurant, store, or other small business, better than they could with photos alone," Business Insider reports. Videos will be able to run as long as 12 seconds, but, as yet, there are no plans to work advertising into the mix. Yelp is expected to give its "Elite users" first crack at the video feature in early June, after which point it plans to roll out …
  • Is Targeted GRP a Good Fit For Facebook Video Buys?
    Facebook’s video ads are to be bought using Targeted Gross Ratings Points (GRP), but is that the right currency for buying video on a social network? Speaking on an OMMA Video panel, Megan Black of media agency Piston acknowledged a need to have a unified metric across screens to help streamline media buying, even though advertising on Facebook has long been focused more on targeting than reach. Lesley Pinckney, VP of interactive at Walton Isaacson, added she’s looking to see how much earned media Facebook can deliver from sharing of video ads—the type of amplification social networks offer that differs …
  • What Would You Ask Zuck?
    That's what OMMA Video moderator Ari Zoldan asked his "Facebook Premium Video Ads" panel to answer. "My question to Mark [Zuckerberg] would be, 'Is what are you doing to do that's innovative -- that's more engaging within the video format," Mike Walker, senior director of strategy at BLiNQ Media said he would ask. "What can you do to innovate or differentiate your video ads from sort of the other video ads that are playing across the Internet?"
  • Do Facebook Video Ads Stifle Creativity?
    No offense to top brands, but no one expects them to break the mold with Facebook video ads -- or, at least, not the marketing pros at OMMA Video on Thursday. Lesley Pinckney, Vice President of Interactive at Walton Isaacson, said we likely won't see any truly innovative work until Facebook video ads become more affordable, and smaller businesses are able to join the party. That's because, according to Pinckney, the smaller guys are free of the "oppressive [corporate] infrastructure" and constant creative "watering down" that so often stifles the big boys. Presently, however, Facebook isn't making it easy for …
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