Keepin’ the day job

Had a great time at the first annual Gateway Interactive Marketing Association (GIMA) golf tournament this week. Unfortunately my golf game is right up there with my slam-dunking skills. My foursome was (left to right) Hafiz Huda (CD extraordinaire @ MomentumWW), Nate the “permalancer” (designer in indentured servitude @MomentumWW), and Paul, a newbie @Outrider. Our score? Ummmm…we didn’t break anything valuable.

What will change the game for digital creative?

I attended iMediaConnection Breakthrough ‘08 back in March and participated in some taped Q&As on a number of topics. This video was just posted and includes thoughts on the future of digital creative from a variety of perspectives. My segment begins @7:22.

Sorry, WordPress can’t accomodate Brightcove embeds.

Guitar Duo

Fripp and Belew of King Crimson fame is the best rock guitar duo I’ve ever seen.

Generational brand loyalty

My family now owns a fleet of five Hondas and it occurred to me that I don’t really consider myself an emotionally invested loyalist. Hondas and Toyota are both in my consideration set – price and availability are the tie breakers. Honda just happens to be on a winning streak lately.

So why are Hondas and Toyotas always in my (and the country’s) consideration set? They consistently deliver on the basics: reliability, durability, and low cost of operation. Change their oil every 3,000 miles and they seem to run forever - my Civic has 245,xxx on the odo.

When our friends in the media report on the woes of the domestic auto manufacturers, they always surmise the salvation is a breakthrough product, unusual styling or whiz bang gadgetry. Honda and Toyota built their kingdoms on none of this.

Automotive brand loyalty is a powerful thing. Families pass down their brand preferences to their kids, so delivering value on high ticket, low frequency products is incredibly important. Advertising and promotion is less significant because “trial” is not in the automotive marketing vernacular.

Broadband video ad guidelines released

The IAB’s Broadband Committee just released guidelines for broadband video commercials online. Unfortunately they punted on the question of optimum length and ad effectiveness per content category.

I would also like the IAB to establish some guidelines regarding minimum interactivity options: clickability, video hot spots, and links to additional info. Leaving so much to publisher discretion isn’t going to do much to enhance production efficiency or ultimately drive user engagement.

Listen and watch because they talk

Pete Blackshaw of Nielsen Online wrote an excellent article for ClickZ summarizing the issues that should be top of mind for CMOs. You’ll notice a few common threads that run through a number of these.

• It all starts with listening to your consumers
• Conversation (including CGC and social media) is more important than ever
• Authenticity matters

The age of steamrolling brand ideas into a consumer’s head with glossy print ads and :30 second spots has come to an end. Brands have to stop pretending to be what they’re not. It’s time to get real.

Landing Page Optimization

Rarely do I recommend books after reading only the first half, but Landing Page Optimization is an exception. Tim Ash of SiteTuners takes the reader on a thought-proking journey that addresses the key issues surrounding the design and testing of “landing pages”. The take-away from this book sounds quite obvious: let your users determine the best design. Unfortunately most of us (self-described “experts”) fall into the trap of believing we know the right answer, only to be humbled by our users.

This book also confirms my belief that online marketers and their agencies would be well served by having some knowledge or experience in user-centered design and usability testing. Agency folk are familiar with focus groups and panels, but few have ever witnessed first hand a consumer trying to use one of their designs.

 

 

Social Networking and Brand Affinity

After a long hiatus I’ve decided to start blogging again, albeit not as frequently as I had previously hoped.

Our agency just completed an ambitious project for Nestle/Purina called Petcentric Place. It’s a social network for pet owners and their pets, with all the features you would typically expect from a social network: profile pages, media galleries, friending, activity feeds, blogs, private messaging, and a robust profile search/filter. The branding of the site is subtle, but provides a foundation for Purina cohorts to offer useful tools and activities to the community without doing so in a instrusive way. The site also cedes content creation to the community - breaking from the Web 1.0 model of brand as publisher.

Stop by, visit, and let me know what you think.

 

Tee time

You might catch a glimpse of me at the USGA U.S. Junior Amateur golf championship finals this afternoon in Augusta Missouri. I volunteered to hold a microphone for the Golf Channel and will be following one of the players on the course throughout the day. These kids are fantastic golfers - check it out.

Tiger Woods won this tournament 3 years in a row.

The price is…wrong

There’s nothing worse than watching a 30 second TELEVISION AD on the Internet…except to be forced to watch it as a pre-roll to 2 minutes of video content.

Let me re-phrase that for publishers and advertisers too dense to understand what they’re doing: I’m not really watching your ad. Yes, I see it. Yes, I hear it. But I’m not watching or listening to it. My brain is busy processing a string of adjectives as each second goes by: disrespectful, bad-mannered, boorish, brusque, discourteous, graceless, impolite, inconsiderate, insulting, intrusive, ungracious, unmannerly, etc. You should feel lucky your brand isn’t registering in my grey matter because its not going to leave any fond memories.

The aggrevation of sitting through 30 seconds of incontextual and irrelevant television advertising isn’t a price I’m willing to pay to watch 2 minutes of video content. Sure, every few months I’m stupid enough to click on a sponsored video link, but it only takes a ten seconds or so before I realize the horrible error I just made. Apparently media buyers and online publishers are slower learners than me.