Hailing from Pittsburgh, or should I say Sixburgh, I’m obviously still ecstatic at the outcome of this year’s Super Bowl. But for our purposes here, I’ll spare you the Steelers fan gloating. There were other winners on Super Bowl Sunday and they come from the advertising and marketing community.
According to USA Today, the Doritos crystal ball commercial was the favorite of the evening. I literally remember sitting in a room full of people before the first commercial break and someone managed to crack the joke: “Here come the blatant marketing pitches.†Maybe my sarcastic friend spoke too soon. As the now infamous crystal ball Doritos commercial ensued, the entire room erupted into laughter and one of my friends even said, “That makes me want to buy some Doritos for sure.†Mission accomplished.
During another part of the evening, a commercial played for an upcoming feature film. My friend who interns for the studio made sure to hush everyone as the spot played. Being that it was a preview for a comedy, the room’s continued silence was not a good sign. “Damn, that cost a lot of money,†my friend said to disapproving stares. On the up side, she used our live, informal focus group the next day during a meeting to let her supervisors know that the preview did not go over well with our crowd.
But if anything, the Super Bowl proved that there is still a place for advertising and marketing in a fast-forward world. From 3-D glasses, to impressive strides in mobile campaigns, marketers are still cleverly rising above the clutter. In industry specific news, the Super Bowl even had a DRTV spot for Cash4Gold that played to rave reviews and even rivaled Doritos as the night’s favorite.
“Super Bowl 43 was memorable for several reasons, so much so that the media world is still buzzing about it a week later. It was arguably one of the best games ever, and certainly one of the most exciting fourth quarters in recent history. A record number of viewers tuned in as well — Nielsen’s final report put it at 98.7 million, up a full million over last year. Unprecedented economic times meant no ads from perennial sponsors General Motors and FedEx. But despite the loss of these brands, NBC successfully sold all 65 spots for a record $206 million, with in-game ads running at $3 million apiece. That is up 11 percent from last year’s Fox rate for the game,†according to Video Insider.
Furthermore, a recent study actually shows that watching ads increases the pleasure of the TV viewing experience. Maybe consumers are especially willing to watch ads during the Super Bowl because they know that ad execs are at the top of their game. Perhaps the lesson for advertisers should be to act like it’s the Super Bowl every day. As a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, I can assure you I certainly will.
This week’s Time magazine cover story is about the death of the traditional ink and paper newspaper and the threat of its extinction/replacement by online versions that rely on a shaky, single advertising revenue stream. Written by former Time managing editor Walter Isaacson, it suggests that, like the migration from illegal downloading of music on Napster to the iTunes model where consumers willingly pay a small fee for content, that a similar model is imperative for the survival of professional journalism. Given the degree of competition and the sheer volume of content available from sources that include citizen journalists on the web, do you think this construct is viable?
As an avid user of Wikipedia, I’ve been among the thousands who have willingly contributed money to their cause. Why? Because, as a writer, I value it as a resource and I rely on it daily. It is also a not-for-profit enterprise and does not rely on advertising and I acknowledge that if avid users like me don’t donate, it can’t possibly survive without some other major funding source. So, in a way, their cause really feels like it is our cause. I can’t say I feel the same way about The New York Times, which just required a $250 million cash infusion from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu to stay afloat, but should I? With the sea change in generational media consumption habits, is it realistic to think that we can migrate away from a feeling of entitlement with regards to free and easy access to content to a model where we pay a nominal fee to access articles?
Sounds like a tall order to me, but what do you think?
Rick Petry is a freelance writer who specializes in direct marketing. He can be reached at rick.petry@me.com.
As some of you may be aware, the National Advertising Review Council (NARC) recently announced a board expansion to include representatives from the Electronic Retailing Association (ERA), the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). These associations now join the flagship members of the NARC Board, namely: the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA), the American Advertising Federation (AAF) and the Council of Better Business Bureaus (CBBB).
The expansion of the board is an unprecedented step in the history of advertising self-regulation and represents the board’s first move in this direction since NARC was founded in 1971. Last year I had the good fortune of being part of a NARC Strategic Planning Committee along with ERA’s Bill McClellan, NARC President Lee Peeler, his predecessor Jim Guthrie, among others, and we were able to persuade the NARC Board of the significance of ERA’s voice in the advertising industry and its importance in being “ahead of the curve†in identifying the pivotal issues facing the industry. The NARC Board sets policies and procedures for advertising industry self-regulation, and ERA’s well deserved addition recognizes the association’s longstanding support of self-regulation and the expertise that they bring to addressing the challenges of self-regulation.
As if I haven’t used my allowed allotment of acronyms already, this may be a great time to reacquaint everyone with where the Electronic Retailing Self-Regulation Program (ERSP) comes from and what we do. In 1971 ANA, AAAA, AAF formed an alliance with the CBBB to create an independent self-regulatory body, NARC. To ensure the credibility and impartiality of the self-regulation system, the advertising review process was set up to operate under the administrative purview of the CBBB. In 2004, the ERA and NARC partnered to form ERSP, and the recent expansion of the board to include Ms. Coons further solidifies this relationship.
ERSP’s mission is to enhance consumer confidence in electronic retailing by providing a quick and effective mechanism for resolving inquiries regarding the truthfulness and accuracy of claims in direct response advertising. ERSP inquiries originate from competitor challenges, consumer complaints and ERSP’s ongoing monitoring program. To date, companies working with ERSP have modified or discontinued nearly two hundred advertisements in an effort to foster more accurate product information to consumers. ERSP is a recognized example of how industry self-regulation can improve industry standards and the consumer experience, a benefit for all parties involved.
By expanding the NARC Board to include ERA, its members are now going to be ensured an advocate within the advertising community at large, and will be part of the discussion on the future of advertising regulation. So with the heartiest of welcomes, we applaud ERA’s appointment to the NARC Board, which means that this organization now literally has a seat at the table and its rightful place amongst the advertising industry at large.
Peter Marinello works for the National Advertising Review Council and spearheads ERSP.
Retailers are facing one of the toughest economies in recent history. Experts predict that the first half 2009 will be dismal in regard to consumer spending. Therefore, retailers need to work even harder to engage their existing customers in order to stay top-of-mind during what is likely to be a difficult first quarter. Now, in the wake of a challenging holiday season, businesses must re-think, revamp and reinvigorate their marketing mix in order to succeed in the coming months.
Budgets are tight, so begin by finding free or low-cost ways to engage new customers (particularly those acquired over the holiday season) and give them incentive to return again and again. Among the freshest new tactics are social networks, gadgets/widgets, and community toolbars, which can be used to distribute coupons, release “how-to†videos, announce sales, deploy online surveys and more.
The key to success with this “Web 2.0 marketing†is to increase the amount of interaction you have with your customers and they with each other. For example, one retailer, Incredible Technologies (makers of the Golden Tee golf game), is using a branded community toolbar to activate community building by sharing specials and promotions that they think will appeal to their customer’s interests. They also showcase their customer forum, user international tournament stats, and their Golden Tee YouTube channel where users can post video of their best golf shots. Golden Tee did all of this for no cost.
Not a techie? Don’t worry about it. All this stuff is really easy to use. Give it try? What have you got to lose but customers?
The world of affiliate marketing is immense. Those who are already in the affiliate marketing space know that breaking into this world can be a challenge, especially if you’re trying to promote a product or service that thousands of others are already promoting.
Many successful affiliates have found that if you really try to promote your “niche,†you will have greater success in driving sales. However, now that many current and prospective affiliate marketers know this trick of the trade if you will, it’s time to take it one step further.
What we are talking about comes from the idea of nano-niche marketing. Just like the Apple Nano is the smaller version of the iPod, a nano-niche is a smaller, more specific version of your niche.
Everyone has a niche, whether it is a hobby, or a sport, or simply some topic you know a lot about. For example, common hobbies include crafts, art or music. A nano-niche is breaking the hobby down one step further — a craft could be knitting hats, art could be painting landscapes, music could be the clarinet for beginners, etc.
The point is, the smaller you can focus your niche, the more focused you can make all of your affiliate marketing efforts (i.e. your blog, your video, etc). By honing in on a specific audience group, you can tailor your efforts and really engage with your audience. And the fact of the matter is, the more targeted your niche can be, the more likely it is that there will be an audience out there that has yet been reached.
Ultimately, successful affiliate marketing relies on driving sales through promotion. Therefore, if you are able to target and drive very specific traffic to your website, your conversion rates will be higher than just marketing to a huge general audience – driving your sales up immensely.
Although many people new to the affiliate marketing industry think to go big right off the bat, it is in fact more likely you will find success in the nano-niche, in the targeted and specific areas that others have yet to discover. So instead of going big, take that one extra step to go small – right to the audience that really wants and needs your product or service.
Dush Ramachandran is vice president of sales and business development at ClickBank.
WASHINGTON—On the cusp of the Electronic Retailing Association’s (ERA) self-regulation program (ERSP) completing its 200th case and a DRTV spot playing during the Super Bowl, ERA president and CEO, Julie Coons, has been named to The National Advertising Review Council’s (NARC) Board. Coons, who was brought on the board simultaneously with DMA CEO John Greco and IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg, recognizes that the perfect storm of the wary economy, the Obama administration and the broader acceptance of direct response marketing all played a significant role in the updated board appointments.
“The convergence of the decision by NARC to welcome ERA to the board and the economic conditions and the continuing evolution of this industry is incredibly synergistic. It gives us an opportunity as an industry to work more closely with the well established organizations representing the advertising community, which will definitely increase our prominence both with the government and industry players alike,†says Coons.
The Better Business Bureau, NARC and various associations are eagerly waiting to see how the recent changes in Washington will affect advertising regulation, which up this point has been widely self-regulated. “We must be vigilant to see what changes are made at the top, particularly with the FTC. We need to be vigilant in this era in which there’s clearly going to be a focus on greater business regulation, but we do have a very good track record. I am not overly worried today, but again, we must be very vigilant to ensure that these new policy makers and appointees understand the tremendous success of ERA’s self-regulation program,†says Coons. Currently, ERA’s ERSP program independently reviews direct response advertising claims and then refers cases to the FTC when its recommendations are not acted upon.
Coons is eager and excited about ERA’s newly positioned role and believes that in the end it will be a major win for the consumer who can expect a greater level of comfort in remote transactions. “This is a result of the electronic retailing industry working with NARC and pursuing a dialogue with them about the changing landscape of reaching the consumer. To their great credit, it also serves as a recognition on NARC’s part that electronic retailers are a very important marketing channel and should be appropriately represented to ensure consumers are protected against false claims,†she says. Coons sees her role as ensuring that the direct marketing industry has an equal voice within the advertising community. For more information on ERA or its government affairs initiatives, please click here.
First, I’m honored that ERA asked me to blog about the mobile commerce space in advance of the upcoming eRetailer Summit. I promise to keep my blogs short. I will do my best to keep them pithy and relevant.
I know we have all heard so much about the mobile channel over the last few years. There has been a lot of hype. There have been several false starts. But, I can tell you in all honesty that mobile is here, now. A lot of research will be published over the next months that detail how important multichannel marketing has become in terms of customer retention, conversion rates and ROI. Best-of-breed retailers all have multichannel strategies in place and are myopically focused on how to expand the scope and efficacy of that strategy. Mobile has become a critical component of such a strategy.
I thought I might offers some great statistics, each released over the last few weeks, that can help as you think about your mobile strategy and allocation of marketing budgets. In these extraordinary times, cost/benefit analyses are a must. Every dollar spent will be scrutinized for ROI and necessity. Still, there seems to be little doubt that mobile has arrived in a big way. Retailers who do not incorporate a mobile solution as part of their multichannel strategy do so at their own peril.
• Mobile is a trillion dollar business! Some context here… automobiles are a half trillion business, IT is a half billion dollar business, TV and radio combined, half a billion, advertising, half a billion
I could go on for a long time like this, but I hope we all get the picture.
You can meet with David Gould of mShopper live at the eRetailer Summit’s Solution Zone on Sunday, March 1, from 12:00 p.m.—3:00 p.m. Register here!
Make no mistake about it, the 2009 economy is doing no one any favors and there are few bright spots to find. One good result is that poor economies force us to become more efficient with our resources. We need to get the most out of what we have at our fingertips.
Over the past few years, multichannel retailers have been forced to purchase systems to help optimize their channels. One system manages email, another manages direct mail, a third manages your web data, and still a fourth manages your search engine optimization and search engine marketing tactics. In the end, we have a number of disparate operations that have no understanding of the big picture in your marketing strategy. Now is the time to consolidate those efforts into a single source of truth.
For those of you who market across multiple channels, integrating the full customer view is a key to understanding the efficacy of your efforts. Take, for example, search engine marketing. Using just the data that you get from Google or your web analytics team, you can determine which search terms drive the most traffic or the most conversions and continue to invest down that path. But, is this really the right investment? A search term may drive more traffic, but is it the most desirable traffic that you are seeking, and what percent of offline transactions are affected by the search engine marketing? Now, if you were able to overlay the search information into the marketing database, you can see how many offline transactions were affected by search and apply lifetime value and profitability analysis to the keywords to make a more informed decision.
Here comes the good news- as customer interaction channels have proliferated, there has also been an explosion in integration technologies such as SOAP based web services to underpin our ability to programmatically pull together these new channels. The vendor community has done a pretty stellar job of using web services to create application programmatic interfaces (API’s) to aid in the integration effort. Now is the time to apply your energy and efforts to using those capabilities to create a comprehensive view of your customer and your marketing activities around that customer.
For those of you with IT departments to handle this opportunity, congratulations and consider yourself lucky! Those of you who do not have that luxury might be considering outsourcing; look for a solid marketing automation provider that offers a good hosting option. You’ll want a database structure that supports online and offline channels as well as an extensive capability to integrate with downstream execution engines such as email, behavioral targeting, POS and call center applications. Your goal? A single source to manage your entire marketing eco-system - consolidation that can cut your marketing infrastructure budget by 35-50 percent.
In the end, this economy is forcing organizations to adopt new ways to become more efficient. Often adopting new technologies to help consolidate decisions and efforts into one source does this. If there is a bright spot to the economy of 2009, it may be that it helps to usher in a new era that empowers marketers to make better decisions across their channels and become more efficient with their marketing budget. The knowledge and technology to accomplish this is within reach; now’s the time to find it and use it.
Jeff Hassemer is vice president, product management of Entiera.
Hailing from Pittsburgh, or should I say Sixburgh, I’m obviously still ecstatic at the outcome of this year’s Super Bowl. But for our purposes here, I’ll spare you the Steelers fan gloating. There were other winners on Super Bowl Sunday and they come from the advertising and marketing community.
This week’s 
As some of you may be aware, the 
Retailers are facing one of the toughest economies in recent history. Experts predict that the first half 2009 will be dismal in regard to consumer spending. Therefore, retailers need to work even harder to engage their existing customers in order to stay top-of-mind during what is likely to be a difficult first quarter. Now, in the wake of a challenging holiday season, businesses must re-think, revamp and reinvigorate their marketing mix in order to succeed in the coming months.
The world of affiliate marketing is immense. Those who are already in the affiliate marketing space know that breaking into this world can be a challenge, especially if you’re trying to promote a product or service that thousands of others are already promoting.
WASHINGTON—On the cusp of the 
First, I’m honored that 
Make no mistake about it, the 2009 economy is doing no one any favors and there are few bright spots to find. One good result is that poor economies force us to become more efficient with our resources. We need to get the most out of what we have at our fingertips.
