January 27, 2006

Read All About It

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"NEWS is what someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising.” - Reuven Frank, former head of NBC news

The Economist has a very interesting survey of the PR industry. You should take a look.

As all of us in the start up business know, outside of online or DR advertising, the most impactful way to get your brand and message out there with less resources is public relations. Now it seems the rest of the world is taking notice of this as well. Including P&G. Just like everyone else they are increasingly turning to alternatives to big media advertising because they want a measurable return on investment from their campaigns.

"In a recent internal study, P&G concluded that the return was often better from a PR campaign than from traditional forms of advertising, according to Hans Bender, the firm's manager of external relations. One reason is that in comparison with many other types of marketing, PR is cheap. In P&G's case, it can represent as little as 1% of a brand's marketing budget."

Spending on PR in America has been growing strongly and reached some $3.7 billion last year. PR spending will grow by almost 9% a year. This is faster than the overall market for advertising and marketing. Wow.

Other commentators on this trend are Laura and Al Ries. Their book, “The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR” asserts “PR has credibility... Advertising does not.” Their advice, much like that we give to most of our portfolio companies, is that a marketing campaign should start with publicity (or online marketing) and shift to advertising only after the PR objectives have been achieved.

Good food for thought. But here is a counter

"The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper." - Thomas Jefferson

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October 30, 2005

Scary Smart Want Ad

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Just saw this full page ad in today's New York Times:
"Top of your class? An innovator in your field? Wicked good at what you do? If so, maybe we should talk. Right now Google is looking for the brightest minds in..."
...technology? programming? math? How about Sales Management? Yep, you got it, this is a media company looking for ad sales people.

I have to say really admire this ad on multiple levels.

It's striking/noticable. It's playful and casual, both in visual approach and in it's tone. As such it's really consistent with the company's image and positioning. It's also consistent with this image and culture in that it is a tad bit arrogant - all about being super smart - in all parts of the organization.

I love that they use their own product as the call to action. Not a url but a suggested search entry "scary smart" and then clicking on the sponsored link on the side. Or you can email scarysmart@google.com.

I also like that it's timely - playing off the Halloween theme - even in saying that they want to "create and almost spookily entreprenurial environment."

Frankly, I think that it is a bit eerie that it was in response to a very similar want ad almost 15 years ago that I got my real job in technology. The ad was from the scrappiest, coolest, most successful, most irreverent company of the time... Microsoft.

The ad back then started with a big bold headline (right next to a then very boring IBM ad):
"NO ONE WANTS TO BE A COG IN A MACHINE"

It was an ad for a technical evangelist, a job for which I had no qualifications. But I sure did not want to be a cog. So I told Microsoft that I was not at all qualified but that I wasn't a cog and that they should talk to me anyway. And they did just that, overlooking the details and hiring me on smarts (fooled 'em) and attitude.

I wonder what they would do today.

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July 08, 2005

Gotta love a premium

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OK. This is a shameless promotion of one of our portfolio companies but so what. It is a very good offer. And I love good offers.

Judy's book is giving away $5 Starbucks cards if you write 5 reviews of local services, venues etc.

Huge response. Lots of good reviews. Go ahead and get writing. Hey, you may not add to the page rank of your blog, but with this typing you get a free frappicino or two!!

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May 04, 2005

Watch out, it's raining iPods

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A few weeks ago, I noted with mild surprise that the Economist was using iPods as an online subscription promotion tool. Since then I've seen more free iPod giveaways, promotions and sweepstakes than I can count. Pretty soon you've get a whole matching set when you buy some Ginsu knives.

Here is a very cursory, random round-up of the promotions I found - the range of companies and offerings is striking:

  • Of course, Apple gave them away at some point.
  • Citibank has "Shuffle your songs, control your money," get a free iPod shuffle when you open online banking.
  • Exact Target (an email marketing company), gives you a chance to win an iPod if you provide customer referrals.
  • FrontZone, a helpdesk company for Act and Goldmine, will give you an iPod shuffle if you buy five licenses of their software.
  • Eclispe, a plugin marketplace, will give you an iPod mini if you write a product review.
  • There's a whole review of giveaways in the UK.
  • Some mysterious company that wants your email is giving them away.
  • Midcom, a seller of all kinds of retailer and other technology, gives you a chance to win a mini in return for promoting printer, barcode scanner and other discounts.
  • Branch, a nightclub in NYC, is offering a chance to win a party with "10 iPod shuffles, 10 friends and 100 open bars"
  • Pepsi did a promotion in Canada giving an iPod away every hour until Christmas (lucky Maple Leaves). And Pepsi may have done another one before. Keep an eye out.
  • TripMania, an online travel marketplace, has a contest for subscribing to their Top 10 Travel Deals weekly newsletter with weekly giveaways including iTunes.
  • Consumer Survey Group, has a giveaway offer for an iPod (in return for your email of course)
  • Survey Networks has a similar sweepstakes (and of course lots of other chances to win cash too!!!! ;-)
  • Consumer Incentive Promotions is offering a Photo iPods to "qualified consumers who participate in marketing promotions and surveys" (wonder what that means beyond having a pulse, credit card number and email address)
  • On a nicer note, Action Medical Research, the UK's "most forward thinking charity" is offering a free Apple iPod to every runner who raises £3000 or more on our behalf in the Flora London Marathon 2005.
  • Duke generated a bunch of controversy by giving every student an iPod, stopping the practice and then starting again.
  • There's even a blog dedicated to iPod contests.
  • Look on iPod Hacks for more as well.
  • And to help you control all the companies using iPod promotions to create more spam, Proofpoint has a promotion to giveaway an iPod when you buy their email security appliance.

We'll really know that we've arrived when these guys start giving away copies of the Marketing Playbook (or maybe that will just mean there are a lot of surplus copies?)

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April 12, 2005

It sure beats a plastic digital alarm clock...

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Boy, this iPod thing sure has hit main street. The Economist of all things is offering the chance to win an iPod as an incentive to sign up for online subscriptions.

I used to do circulation for Amex publishing and compared to the stuff we used to try on prospects (like 5 year old surplus Food and Wine Recipe of the Year cookbooks), this promotion has all that a bang you over the head direct marketing promo ought to have:

  • "Free"
  • "A $300 value!" (nice juxtiposition)
  • "Last Chance"
  • "Just one week left"
  • "Now"
  • And of course a very, trendy, not boring premium.

Click here to sign up for your own chance. BUT ACT NOW! LIMITED TIME OFFER!! EXPIRES IN A WEEK!!!! FREE FREE FREE NOW NOW NOW

Oh yeah, and COOL COOL COOL.

Can't wait for the Economist Podcasts.

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March 17, 2005

Horse vs. Cart (bone before dog?)

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Susan Getgood picks up an old saw of ours about strategy vs. tactics:

"so-so creative will still do all right if the fundamental strategy is sound. But the slickest promo campaign cannot save a crappy strategy. And you should always strive for excellence in both."

I sometimes hate to admit it, but as a former "marcom" guy at Microsoft, I found this statement to be totally true. Compared to many of our competitors we very seldom did more inspired creative. But because the core strategy, understanding of our market/segmentation, positioning and play was correct, we won with "so-so" creative.

Remember the Pets.com Dog sock puppet? Very cool creative, and memorable too. Where is he now?

That said, let's not knock marcom too hard. A lot of times it's the marcom folks who force a true strategic rethink, because they are trying to translate all the technical or business logic of others into a compelling communication that regular people can understand.

As Bruce DeBoer notes it's a balance between strategy and execution. Brains and the guts to follow through.

It's a balance, can't do one without the other:

"Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."
- Sun Tzu (Chinese General, circa 500 BC)

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March 06, 2005

And speaking of....

ahem, "relationships", Jon Strande recently posed the question of whether sex really sells anymore (and in fact how much image really matters).

Reminded me of an Economist Article from last year, "Sex doesn't sell" that actually shows evidence of how "though life may be increasingly
exciting for the sex-obsessed, in the wider population advertisers are
finding that sex no longer sells the way it used to."

"Commercial and academic research supports the thesis. Only 6% of
consumers surveyed by the CIM said they were positively influenced by
sexual images in advertising. D_Code, a study of young consumers by
HeadlightVision, another bit of WPP, concluded that they found
sexually explicit advertising boring and repellent."

Hmmm....

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January 17, 2005

The Physics of Bookselling

An interesting article from physicist Didier Sornette about the physics of book sales and, in my opinion, also the sales of lots of other products. He highlights the importance of "exogenous shocks" such as great reviews from big sources causing spikes in sales, vs. "endogenous shocks" such as positive word of mouth that cause a gradual rise in sales. Kind of traditional product PR (analyst tours, reviews, testimonials) vs. grass roots or guerilla marketing under the radar. Wonder where he thinks blogs fit in?

Given that we had only few exogenous shocks (big name reviews), but a seemingly growing positive word of mouth, it is nice to hear that he thinks the latter generally builds more enduring sales.

From Scott Loftesness and Johnlu.

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October 30, 2004

Sitemeter

One of the most interesting things to do when you are doing web promotions is to look at your referrer logs. These tell you how folks got to your site. Now our hoster, Mark has a huge number of tools that tell you everything and nothing.

Like most marketing things, the best tools are the simplest. In this case, Sitemeter is simple enough to understand. You can look at referrers and see where folks are coming from.

This lets us figure out where the various online reviews are so that we can link to them and participate in discussions of like minded folks.

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Our Book as a sales study

OK, this is not boastful or anything, but like anyone else, we are always curious about sellthrough and competition. Its interesting to see how this works with Amazon since they are so transparent. I wish all markets were so easy to analyze

Net, net, Amazon tracks best selling marketing books. We've been in the top 10 since we released (actually hit no.1 when we shipped).

Rough history has been as of each Saturday the book has been out.

Week 1. No 1 for marketing (#199 overall for against all 250K or so books)
Week 2. No 15 for marketing (#2,049 overall)
Week 3. No 5 for marketing (#1,045 overall)

The most interesting trend so far has been the bounce back in week 3. This is a little bit unusual, but it could be that the original splash were influentials, then there is a digestion period and then the word of mouth spreads. Right now, we have 33 reviews on Amazon for instance and that number seems to be growing well.

Any authors out there have similar sellthrough curves. We didn't talk about it in the book, but knowing the sales by time can tell you a lot if you have a history.

Some products have a slow burn and then exponential growth, others pop and then fizzle. One topic we missed in the playbook because there was limited space.

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October 08, 2004

New site design

Well some pro's redesigned our site. What think about it. Have to say they did some strange things to movabletype so I'll have to figure out what all these statics they added are. Let me know what you think.

Main things you'll see are some static pages that are attached to our blog. It goes to show just how blog like I've gotten that when I look at a static page that I can't understand why this isn't just a blog entry with a different template.

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October 04, 2004

Best Sellers

Since we're about to launch our "future" best seller, Johnza and I were interested to know how all these best seller lists work. Fortunately google:"business best seller book list" makes it easy to figure this. Here were the top hits and some notes about how good you have to be. Kind of interesting since the book itself is a mirror of its own marketing problem. With thousands of books being published how do you get ahead of the pack:

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July 06, 2004

PPC to PFP

MediaDailyNews 07-06-04. The web is becoming more direct marketing oriented than ever. First there were banners where you paid from banner shown (the so called CPM) model.

Then, we hit the Pay-per-click model where a site only gets paid if someone clicks through.

Now, we are on the next trend which is Pay-for-performance. This means you only get paid if someone actually buys a product for your site.

Some also called it affiliate marketing. The big players are networks of sites like ValueClick, 24/7 Real Media and AOL's advertising.com. LinkShare is another example.

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July 01, 2004

PestPatrol's information service

MediaDailyNews 07-02-04 - PestPatrol Unveils Center For Pest Research . This is a great idea for promotions that we're seeing so much more of. The market for anti-spyware is vast and growing. Dells says 20% of their tech support is devoted to getting rid of the stuff. So, in the classic promotional sense, how do you get on top? Well, the miracle of google means that if you provide useful information people will come to you. Probably the greatest service Google has provided is that useful information remains the best way to get a good pagerank. You can obviously game it, but its still mostly true. The smart companies like PestPatrol or Applied Discovery work hard to provide information that is useful. So check out your category page rank and instead of just buying keywords, ask how could I be the #1 site in google:"home networking" or google:"anti virus".

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June 30, 2004

Lance Armstrong Promotions

Well, the Tour de France is starting and its Lance's try at winning six times. Its hard not to get excited, but from a marketing point of view, folks seem to be really revving up. I was actually amazed last year that only Suburu really seemed to do much around Lance. Could be because no one in America knows what cycling is. Sure not true this year. "Armstrong lack of endorsements":http://ad.doubleclick.net/adi/N339.tribuneinteractive.com/B1107884.3;sz=468x60;kw=noinitial;ord=2004.7.1.4.1.31.0?. It is one of those interesting blind spots in promotion that Lance won't do it. And again it might be that Nike has figure this out given how much they are pushing. Checkout Nike: See Lance Ride. Nike has really done a great job. First with livestrong, their cancer promotion that ties into the yellow jersey (symbol of winner in the Tour de France) to their latest TV spots. There are others like "Dasani":http://www.beverageaisle.com/beverageaisle/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000531989. Armstrong will star in a new Dasani commercial entitled "Can't Live Without a Challenge," which highlights his non-stop competitive spirit. In the spot, Armstrong takes on a stronger rival in a chin up contest and shoots hoops with opponents who tower over him, replenishing himself with the refreshing taste of Dasani throughout each uncharacteristic activity. The ad, which debuts this week, closes with Lance on his bike next to a motorcyclist, his eyes shining at the opportunity to race.

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June 21, 2004

The mundane can be remarkable

Brand Autopsy: The Soup Peddler – A Case Study in the Art of Being Remarkable This story about a guy who sells soup from his bike reminded me of an amazing marketer that I knew when I used to live in Brooklyn. The guy was a Russian imigrant who had a laundry. He got a local neighborhood directory and started sending everyone a note saying he was new to the neighborhood and to come in and get some free shirts. Everyone who came got free shirts and some Russian cookies. Each week he kept track of who came in from the list. And each week he sent a little reminder saying hey, why haven't you come yet, my wife and I are waiting for you. Then finally, he sent notes to the people who hadn't come saying "Hey, what's wrong with you? You sick? You don't want clean shirts? You don't like to meet new people?" People came and he gained total neighborhood market share dominance. No anti-trust suits have been filed yet as far as I know.

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June 11, 2004

Behavioral Targeting

Well, one of the great trends in marketing is how to target users. There are two great families of promotions. The first is brand, that means, get the name out for my more recognition. The second is direct mail where there's an offer. The internet has really been mainly about direct. That is, see something, click on it and then get an offer. The current state of the art is optimization. That is, churn the actually copy of a banner or whatever and the time. Measure response rates and then you can switch to the most effective ad. Now we are headed toward behaviorial targeting. That means, knowing the target segment that clicks. That way, if you were to search for google:"Iraq" you now get banner ads for the GSA contracts to bid on in Iraq. As opposed to an ad for Tiffany's because you are probably wealthy. You get the picture. A few companies are in this area and its the hot new thing. Some of them: * MediaDailyNews 06-12-04. Tacoda to Publishers. These guys are letting publishers of sites identify their customers by segment. * "RevenueScience":http://www.revenuescience.com/home.asp. These folks are around the corner and are doing the same thing.

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May 24, 2004

More on simplicity

Frog Blog: Simplicity. And another article on Maeda's Simplicity Workshop. Nice to see someone else with a simplicity soapbox.

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Advertising Trends

Lots of interesting changes happening in advertising right now:

  • Advertising is everywhere. Great points about how folks are moving beyond traditional media to naming, Internet, product placements, etc.
  • Forecasters see strong growth in ad spend. A good overview of how much rebound there's been. 5% in 2003 and 7% in 2004
  • Promotions growing rapidly. Promotion budgets are growing more rapidly brand advertising in traditional markets gets stale.
  • "Advertisers are not where the consumers are":
  • Kagan Says. A great researcher of media trends. Their reports cost a forturne, but they have one place where you can see their quotes and news releases.

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May 23, 2004

Advertising Trends

Lots of interesting changes happening in advertising right now:

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May 19, 2004

Creative has at least something to do with it

gapingvoid: the best advertising strategy is one that gives a damn Here's super, super creative Hugh Macleod's take at his super, super cool blog Gaping Void. We've talked a lot about media issues etc. contributing to the decline of standard advertising. Maybe the the value proposition is just off? But clearly creative has something to do with it. Too much is just plain boring, repetitive, pandering, forced, vapid, cloned from someone else's efforts, or just bad. If you never notice an ad, it's pretty hard to be effective no matter where it's placed. doormat.jpg

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May 18, 2004

Beyond "your logo here." Way beyond.

Boing Boing: I, T-shirt: wearable movie trailers at NextFest nextfest-tshirt.jpg Another really interesting forray into going beyond standard broadcast media for reaching grabbing people. Pretty darn cool, movies on T Shirts. Talk about positioning. I've heard of people wearning thier hearts on thier sleeves, but now how about running your demo on your, ahem, chest. What's next? Maybe instead of blogging or posting listing on the web, you'll create a cool flash movie promoing your stuff and post it to specific, targetted people's clothes.

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May 17, 2004

Why Direct Response doesn't work all the time

GrabTheMic. Here's a great example. On this bloggers site are a bunch of comments about Iraq. The net result is that his Google Adsense bar is filled with things that are a little ridiculous when you consider what the Economist, Washington Post or other publication would carry next to a piece about the war there. * Iraq Revenue Watch. Monitor reconstruction funds. * Iraqi Reconstructions. Get the GSA contract data * Leave Iraq? Get a $50 gift card from captainbargains.com * Articles archived on Iraq from Keepmedia.com * Need help on Middle East JV legal creation So that's the different between DR and branding. The only data Adsense has is what's on the page, not about who is viewing the page. Here's what the economist carries as banners as a result of a query on Iraq articles that lead you to the latest "catastrophe":http://economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2683671: * Man Financial. Every future is personal * Chicago Merchantile Exchnage free seminar on investing * "Smith Barney":http://www.smithbarney.com/cgi-bin/ad/jump.cgi?page=brandsite&RedirectID=ECO_120&Creative=cs99br4b citigroup on getting a financial investor * "Tiffany & Co.":http://ad.doubleclick.net/click;h=v2|310f|0|0|%2a|b;7950626;0-0;1;7046742;237-250|250;5126934|5144830|1;;%3fhttp://www.t-57.com introducing a new watch. See the difference. Three brand ads and there is one direct response, but not for someone who wants a GSA contract contact for Iraq, but for trading hog futures. Net, net, knowing who is reading vs. what they are reading is pretty important in the world of advertising and promotion.

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What's the Value of Brand Advertising?

John Battelle's Searchblog: What's the Value of Brand Advertising?. A great question. Most of the stuff on the Internet is all about direct response, but that's not the way lots of purchases work. It's not like you think I need Tide and then you click on it 90% of the time. More like, you see Tide a bunch of times (frequency) and lots of people see it (reach) and eventually when you buy a detergent, you see it and say, yup I like it. That would be like car guys blitzing people just in the 1 month they want to buy a car. It is often way too late by then. That's what image is all about. That's not to say direct response and brand don't live together. They just have different purposes. Depending on the play you are running and the playfield of course :-)

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May 14, 2004

Whither Click Rates

Click Rates to Head Downward Again MarketingVOX. I remember when click throughs were 5%. Now, people cheer at a 10 basis point increase. Interesting. Also someone told me that only 30% of people ever clickthrough on anything. What does that tell you?

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The master of Point B

Monkeymagic:: thoughts on thinking :: Write like you speak archives We've written alot about the ABCs and driving killer campaigns. But as Piers Young notes, Jerry Weissman is a master of teaching you how to tell your story compellingly. He is also the author of the concept PointB(tm) - the desired state you put out there to generate interest. Awesome guy. Awesome teacher. Author. Mentor. Friend. Here's what some other folks are saying too: Brendon Wilson: "Best of all, I managed to attend ... a seminar/workshop on "Pitching to Win" - complete with Jerry Weissman, the legendary pitchman who has helped numerous CEOs tune their IPO roadshows, giving tips from his new book, "Presenting to Win". Cool! Chris Anderson: "a book I recently read, and loved: Presenting to Win, by Jerry Weissman." Dennis Kennedy: "I've just finished the highly-praised Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story, by presentation guru Jerry Weissman. Add me to the list of fans." And FastCompany - which had a good article on 5 Ways to Talk to Money

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