Archive for April, 2008
Thursday, April 24th, 2008
During my senior year of college, I was part of an intensive journalism program where I had to show up Monday-Friday from 9-5 to further develop my skills before entering the scary real world. It was almost like a forced internship, if you will. My concentration within the school of journalism was print, rather than broadcast, multimedia, advertising or public relations.
It was a rather sunny day in South Carolina, as I raced across campus for the first day of my new program. Hung-over, disheveled, and now awkwardly sweaty, I made it through the classroom door with just a few seconds to spare.
“I don’t know why you’re even here,†professor Fisher said to the class. “You’ve spent four years learning about a dying industry.†Wow. Not what you want to hear while calculating your looming student loans in your head. I thought I was just going to receive the syllabus and call it a day! He went on to explain dwindling advertising revenues and circulation rates for newspapers as the reason for his dark humor.
Things have changed even more dramatically since that spring day a few years ago. Newspapers have continued to fade, and TV has begun to fade as well, as the Internet continues to gain steam as our society’s main platform for entertainment and news. The ad spend budget for the Internet is now poised to surpass TV in the UK. As with popular music trends, it’s only a matter of time before that’s the scenario in the U.S., as well.
That same South Carolina professor once read a quote from Molly Ivans that I still have trouble shaking. “I don’t so much mind newspapers dying—it’s watching them commit suicide that pisses me off.†As a magazine focused on educating multichannel marketers, we urge those in traditional media spaces not to be the next medium to meet their demise. With the research, webinars, seminars and conferences that ERA and Electronic Retailer put on throughout the year, you can be sure to remain relevant and viable in this ever-changing media landscape.
If you think a world without newspapers seems likely down the road, check out this hilarious clip from South Park that highlights a world without Internet, and what effect it has on our behavior and media consumption.
Pat Cauley is Electronic Retailer Magazine’s eMedia Editor
Tags: doug fisher, Electronic Retailer, ERA, molly ivans, newspaper industry, pat cauley, south park, university of south carolina
Posted in Advertising, ERA, Electronic Retailer, Just for fun..., Online, Research, Video | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
After talking with clients and mobile advertising firms over the past year, I wasn’t surprised to see that, in addition to its mobile website, Amazon will now offer a more interactive buying experience. In the new TextBuyIt program, customers text Amazon (262966) with the item name, UPC or ISBN code of a product they want to buy and Amazon replies with product information and prices.
What really caught my eye about Amazon’s new program is the method used for order completion—a phone call. While mobile is all the buzz, the challenge for direct marketers has been how to translate that buzz into real sales activity. Amazon’s approach is similar to one AIS uses with its mobile marketing partners and clients, which blends the ease of the mobile’s “click to call†with our IVR platform to allow prospective customers to complete their transaction quickly and easily via a phone call. (Please note that mobile Click-to-Call is NOT the same as online CTC.)
Research shows that customers are already using mobile as a way to respond to ads they see on TV and that number is growing. For certain age groups, mobile texting far surpasses traditional phone and e-mail as the primary method of communication. But when prospective customers try to buy, they are often directed back to the online website or to a mobile website transferred directly over from an online site, with little consideration to the size limitations of the mobile screen. And almost always, there’s no clear and easy way to buy.
Amazon’s introduction of a phone component to its mobile offering and feedback we’ve received indicate that the nascent mobile e-commerce component is still a work in progress. That’s where the direct response industry can take the lead—bringing clarity and years of acquisition experience—to help mobile marketing deliver sales, not just buzz. With higher click-through rates than online and a captive audience, mobile has great potential to capture customers at the moment they want to buy.
Mike Ferzacca is CEO of Advanced Interactive Sciences
Tags: advanced interactive sciences, aisvoice, amazon, click to call, Direct Response, mike ferzacca, mobile marketing, textbuyit
Posted in Direct Response, Marketer, Mobile, Online, Retailer | No Comments »
Monday, April 21st, 2008
Pick up the newspaper: Our country and the world are in a state of anxiety about the economy, especially in light of a potential recession. What does that mean to us as marketers? Just how does the recession affect direct response advertising? Recessions are different from other economic downturns and need to be approached differently, but there are ways to weather the storm.
History teaches us that recessions reward the aggressive advertiser and penalize the timid one. Indeed, firms that maintained or increased their advertising expenditures during the 1981-1982 recession averaged significantly higher sales growth, both during the recession and for the following three years, than those that eliminated or decreased advertising.
By 1985, sales of companies that were aggressive recession advertisers had risen 256 percent over those that didn’t keep up their advertising. Why? One reason is that a recessionary market can provide an opportunity for businesses to build a greater share of market through aggressive advertising. Sometimes, we need to remind ourselves about the short-term benefits of advertising: It creates sales immediately; it generates added business from current customers; and it brings in new leads and prospects. In short, as one marketer pointed out, “When times are good, you should advertise. When times are bad, you must advertise.â€
One trait of a true recession lies with shifts in consumer patterns. We can no longer expect even our core base of customers to behave in ways familiar to us and comfortable to them. Preparing for changes in consumer behavior will allow us to jumpstart new messaging, platforms and technologies—when this makes strategic sense—to capture the attention of both loyal and new customers. One false assumption is that it’s safe to reduce the advertising budget if the competition is reducing theirs. Research shows that companies maintaining or increasing advertising during periods of economic slow-down will boost market share. (more…)
Tags: Advertising, creative commerce, Direct Response, ed garrubbo, ERA, recession
Posted in Advertising, Branding, Direct Response, ERA, Infomercials, Marketer, Research, Retailer, Social Networks | 3 Comments »
Thursday, April 17th, 2008
If you’re an events manager with a death wish, invite Jason Calacanis to deliver the keynote address at your next conference. Sure, Calacanis—a serial Internet entrepreneur who made the bulk of his fortune with the sale of his company Weblogs, Inc. to AOL—will deliver an engaging, thought-provoking and sometimes flat-out inspirational talk. But then again, he might just start a riot.
After all, this is the guy who, at SES Chicago in 2006, announced—to a group of search professionals—that “SEO is bullshit!†and compared those engaging in SEO to “snake oil salesmen.â€
It didn’t go over well.
Having escaped Chicago, living to speak another day, Calacanis recently addressed a room full of affiliate marketers at the Affiliate Summit West. Apparently unruffled by the flap and furor over his SEO comments, Calacanis explained to the affiliate folks that the rest of the industry saw them as the bottom rung of the food chain, wired to make the quick buck.
There was no standing ovation.
But to be fair to Calacanis, he’s not some sort of egomaniacal misanthrope who gets a perverse pleasure out of standing on a stage and belittling the audience. (Actually, he might just take a little pleasure in it.) In fact, the point he’s trying to make is a valid and intriguing one.
First of all, Calacanis was over-generalizing for effect: he sees value in ethical SEO and understands that there are legitimate best practices to follow in designing, maintaining and promoting a site that will allow it to rank higher in search results. And he certainly doesn’t see anything wrong with the fundamental concept of affiliate marketing: engaging a group of websites to help sell product or generate leads as a sort-of extended sales force.
Calacanis has a problem with those interested in gaming the system to make a quick buck—whether it’s the black-hat SEO firm that exploits a weakness in a search engine algorithm to garner a temporary high rank for an undeserving website (until the search engine closes the loophole and the site plummets off the search results page) or the affiliate who steals content to game the search engines to generate more traffic and commissions, or the marketer who floods blogs, message boards and social networks with paid posts.
According to Calacanis, it’s all borne out of a misguided ethic that has pervaded the Internet since the mid-’90s: if one is technically capable of doing something, then it’s OK.
But he—and others—see reason for optimism. As more and more black-hat marketers exploit the various systems, these systems eventually break down, to be replaced by ones that are more resistant to gaming. Consumers are helping to drive change, too. We leave MySpace to go to Facebook and then to LinkedIn as policing technologies are developed that help eliminate spam or fraud. Sites like Angie’s List—a ratings and reviews site for home-improvement contractors—take off because they are curated to ensure the reviews’ (and reviewers’) legitimacy. In other words, because they earn our trust. Calacanis himself has developed Mahalo.com, a search engine that uses human beings to find and organize the best links for given search terms—and to filter out irrelevant or spam results.
A new ethic is evolving: trustworthiness is good for business.
Tom Dellner is executive editor of Electronic Retailer Magazine and editor of its supplement, Online Strategies
Tags: affiliate marketing, affiliate west summit, angie's list, aol, Electronic Retailer, facebook, jason calacanis, linkedin, mahalo.com, myspace, search engines, sem, seo, ses, weblogs
Posted in Advertising, Marketer, Online, Research, Social Networks, Web Analytics | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
After Omniture’s acquisition surge last year, the web analytics industry has just been made even smaller by Yahoo’s acquisition of IndexTools. What does it mean when a relatively high-end tool like IndexTools is turned into a free offering like Google had done for Urchin?
Mostly, it means that Yahoo will be able to compete head-on with Google and Microsoft as they offer measured proof that advertising on their properties is a good investment. But how does this shrinking vendor landscape play against growing customer demand?
In these rocky economic times, upper management wants to know that a dollar spent online will result in two dollars earned. The online budget is not getting cut, but it is getting scrutinized like never before. They are looking for all the tools and best practices they can lay their hands on.
As free tools get better, the pay-for-play tools do as well. I look to Omniture, Coremetrics and WebTrends to step up to the challenge and help their high-end clients with even more systems, methods and consulting services. They are incorporating multi-campaign attribution in their tools so more of their clients are learning the ropes. Soon, there will be case studies and best practices.
Until then, I turn to people like Jim Novo and his post on Marketing Attribution Models. I look to Eric Peterson and Avinash Kaushik to keep holding up the lamp so the rest of us can see. I look to the Web Analytics Association to be the collective wisdom of the industry and for the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit to be the gathering place, where we can all learn from each other.
Will Google, Microsoft and Yahoo want to play at the enterprise end of the spectrum? Things move fast in this industry. Don’t blink!
Jim Sterne is president of Target Marketing and Chairman of the Web Analytics Association
Tags: avinash kaushik, emetrics optimization summit, eric peterson, Google, indextools, jim novo, jim sterne, microsoft, omniture, target marketing, urchin, Web Analytics, web analytics association
Posted in Advertising, Marketer, Online, Research, Social Networks, Web Analytics | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
Is your company trying to make a more concerted effort to look outside for new products? These days, most businesses are. Fact is, not all good ideas come from inside your company, and it’s smart practice to be on the lookout for innovations available to license. Not only does this strategy help you discover fresh ideas, it also can lead to a more cost-effective way of finding new products.
Unfortunately, new product ideas probably aren’t going to fall into your lap. Your company needs to take a proactive approach, methodically seeking out new ways to find product ideas. One good place to start is at trade shows and especially an invention trade show. Trade shows provide businesses with a lot of new ideas in one place. Many of the innovations exhibited at trade shows are available to license, so in the span of a day or two, you can view hundreds of potential new products.
Many of these types of events are actually specific to inventions seeking licensors or manufacturers. You never know…you just might find your next hit product.
Nicole Hait is director of INPEX
Tags: inpex, inventions, inventors, nicole hait, patent, product license, product manufacturers, trade show
Posted in Direct Response, Infomercials, Marketer, Retailer | 1 Comment »
Friday, April 11th, 2008
In preparation for our upcoming May “Green Issue,†we have just one question for you: What has your company done to go green? From retailers to suppliers, if there is an element of your business that’s done something positive for the environment, we want to hear about it! Simply click the comment link below or e-mail Vi Paynich, editor-in-chief, at vpaynich@retailing.org. We may include your story in the issue.
Vi Paynich is Electronic Retailer’s editor-in-chief
Tags: Electronic Retailer, green, green marketing, vi paynich
Posted in Advertising, Direct Response, Electronic Retailer, Just for fun..., Marketer, Retailer, Support Services | 3 Comments »
Thursday, April 10th, 2008
I admit it…I get my news the old fashioned way—reading the newspaper. Today was no different than any other, except I was struck by a very small blurb in the business section of The Washington Post. The chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI), has introduced a bill called, the “FTC Reauthorization Act of 2008,†that would double the FTC’s current budget over the next seven years! That’s right, if the bill passes, the FTC’s budget will grow from its current $244 million to $468 million by 2015.
If the bill is successful, you can expect the following changes:
1. Expands the Commission’s authority to litigate civil actions involving the FTC act. (The FTC act establishes the FTC’s authority—what they can pursue). Currently, the majority of these cases are brought by the Department of Justice who rely on the FTC for technical expertise;
2. Expands the Commission’s authority to recover civil penalties for violations, where it is currently limited to recovering civil penalties for violations of a rule or final cease and desist order with respect to an unfair or deceptive act or practice;
3. Allows the Commission to hold entities accountable that aid or abet another in violating any law enforced by the FTC;
4. Allows State attorneys general (AGs) to bring cases and seek civil penalties; and
5. Allows the Commission to streamline the rulemaking process by a majority vote instead of the lengthy procedure set forth by the Magnuson-Moss Act.
Fortunately, as good corporate citizens these developments should not alarm you. However, now more than ever you need to understand the rules of the road.
Barbara Tulipane is ERA’s president and CEO
Tags: barbara tulipane, ERA, ftc, ftc reauthorization act, Government Affairs, legal series, nyc, sen. inouye
Posted in ERA, Government Affairs | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008
Tags: avatars, comedy central, Electronic Retailer, jon stewart, pat cauley, second life, south park, the daily show, youtube
Posted in Advertising, Branding, Just for fun..., Marketer, Online, Retailer, Social Networks, Video, Web Analytics | 2 Comments »
Monday, April 7th, 2008
Breaking it down, I will try to provide a brief explanation on what all this talk concerning credit card compliance is about and what it means to direct marketing companies, now and in the future, and most importantly, how you can tell who is and who isn’t compliant.
First, the acronym PCI DSS stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. The standards inherent are set and endorsed by Visa, American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB and MasterCard Worldwide. In other words, ALL OF THE MAJOR CREDIT CARD COMPANIES.
The simple goal is to safeguard consumer credit card information and personal data by developing rigorous security standards for all LEVEL 1 processing companies. What is the definition of a LEVEL 1 processing company? Boiled down, it is any company that handles and stores your credit card data. So, your fulfillment company, your telemarketing company and any database company that falls within that definition needs to be certified. The company needs to be LEVEL 1 certified, 3rd Party assessed. Being self-assessed does not make a company compliant. Go to Visa website www.visa.com/cisp to see if your vendors are compliant.
It is your obligation to ensure your vendors are LEVEL 1 compliant, certified and on the list. If not, you’re exposing your company to BIG $$$ FINES. Any breach by any of your non-compliant vendors will cost you and in the future, all non-compliant companies will be levied hefty fines. Call your merchant processor and check your merchant agreement for details. All compliant companies must be validated by Trustwave Trusted Commerce or a PCI-approved auditing firm. Once validated, they will prominently display the validation seal on their website and other media.
George Fanolis is vice president of business development for Fosdick Fulfillment
Tags: , credit card compliance, data security, dds, fosdick fulfillment, george fanolis, pci compliance, visa
Posted in Direct Response, Online, Payment Processing, Retailer, Support Services | 14 Comments »
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
I recently heard a statistic that 76 percent of consumers don’t trust advertising. Ouch, that’s gotta hurt. This means that your industry’s credibility is only slightly more viable than Hillary’s sinking odds at snagging the Democratic nomination.
Just when you think the direct response industry, or the advertising industry at large, have finally gained some street cred, we get sacked with more FTC complaints against Kevin Trudeau or revelations that Lipitor ads featuring Dr. Robert Jarvik are misleading.
There’s a reason why “Saturday Night Live†has consistently come up with relevant material to ridicule the ad industry…we practically spoon-feed it to them.
All jokes aside, enough is enough! Join ERA and Electronic Retailer at our upcoming events, where you have the power to learn about and change the course of your industry.
April 30, NYC – ERA Legal Series: Practical Knowledge for the New Technology Landscape
The seminar will shed light on the most recent FTC developments and offer practical insights and in-depth legal solutions in the area of emerging technologies, notably behavioral advertising.
April 31, NYC – Electronic Retailer LiveEdit Lab
Discover the fate of paid programming at our Executive Media Summit, followed by a day of relevant sessions geared to keep your business ahead of the game and afloat in times of economic uncertainty.
May 20, Washington, D.C. – ERA Government Affairs Fly-In
Finally, if you truly want to be involved and have your voice heard on behalf of the industry, join with your colleagues as we teach you the legislative issues facing your business. You’ll then be paired into groups with a seasoned lobbyist to meet with your elected representatives in Congress on Capitol Hill to voice your concerns.
It’s your industry; perhaps it’s time to take some ownership.
Pat Cauley, eMedia Editor, Electronic Retailer Magazine
Tags: Electronic Retailer, ERA, ftc, Government Affairs, hillary, jarvik, kevin trudeau, legal, lipitor, pat cauley, saturday night live, snl
Posted in Advertising, Direct Response, ERA, Electronic Retailer, Government Affairs, Infomercials, Just for fun..., Marketer, Online, Research, Video | 2 Comments »
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
According to ERA’s most recently commissioned paper, Mapping the Path to Purchase, Forrester Research suggests that television drives online sales. Indeed, 44 percent of the study’s respondents went to retail to find a product they saw on an infomercial or home shopping channel and more than one-third of consumers visit engines (eBay, Yahoo, Google, etc.) to compare prices, with more than 50 percent of those making a purchase.
But wait, there’s more; now it’s the consumers themselves who are creating pathways and signposts. It’s interesting, looking at the apparent quick rise of the “consumer influencer.†It seems just yesterday when branding was king and PR, marketing, research and agencies pushed sales. But today, through the power of blogs, online communities, forums, boards, videos on YouTube, Facebook and more, customers are definitely in charge.
I wonder what retailers think about how this will all shake out? How do retailers leverage those consumer influencers?
Sieglinde Friedman is ERA’s vice president of strategy
Tags: consumer influencers, consumers, ERA, facebook, forrester research, Infomercials, purchase, retailers, sieglinde friedman, youtube
Posted in Direct Response, ERA, Infomercials, Marketer, Research, Retailer, Social Networks, Web Analytics | No Comments »
In the past few days, Comedy Central has taken a brazen approach to some of the issues we deal with day in and day out. The virtual world Second Life is one of those buzzwords often thrown around conferences by people trying to sound like they know what they’re talking about. Many well-known companies have spent lots of money jumping into Second Life to have a virtual world presence, but I think they were simply jumping the shark.
