From AdAge (original article)

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — For some marketers, a new year means a new agency. If that’s your company’s annual resolution, you should know that line of thinking will lead to a bad reputation in adland.

Agency new-business executives and industry search consultants report a growing blacklist of sorts, composed of marketers that tend to put ad duties into play every year or two. Thanks to rapid turnover in the chief marketing officer seat (a CMO’s tenure averages 28 months, according to the most recent figures from executive search firm Spencer Stuart) and pressure to perform amid the troubled economy, long-lasting agency-marketer relationships are becoming more rare.

“I have a huge disagreement with people changing their agencies like they change their underwear,” said Jane Bedford, partner at the Bedford Group, a consultancy based in Atlanta. “Our clients tell us it takes them about three to six months for them to get fully engaged with their agencies. It’s very difficult for an agency to get up and running, and totally please the client, within the first year.”

And that’s coming from an exec who actually benefits when accounts go into review.

Take Chipotle: In January 2004, the burrito chain tapped Mother, New York, to be its first advertising agency. Six years later, that account has cycled through four different shops: After Mother came TDA Advertising & Design, Boulder, Colo.; Devito/Verdi, New York; Butler Shine Stern & Partners, San Francisco; and, its latest, hired this month, Compass Point Media, a division of Campbell Mithun in Minneapolis.

Thinking twice
The regularity with which Chipotle changes its agencies is more than most. But it’s hardly the only marketer with a penchant for flitting from shop to shop. Retailer Ikea and luxury automaker BMW are known for frequently reviewing their creative and media accounts, and Mitsubishi Motors North America moves its ad business around a fair amount as well.

Too many reviews could also mean that, over time, the very best shops will think twice before going after those accounts. “Agencies do a risk assessment when deciding whether to pitch an account, and there’s definitely a toxicity factor they look at. If [a client] does a lot of reviews, the client gets blacklisted,” Ms. Bedford said.

Even at a time when agencies are hungry for more revenue, such flip-flopping has consequences: Two different new-business executives said two accounts they wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole are 1-800-Flowers and Quiznos, as the businesses seem to be too volatile, regardless of their billings. The marketers did not respond to requests for comment.

Another consequence is cost: Constantly opening reviews can be incredibly costly and disruptive to both the marketer — for whom travel and other fees associated with agency reviews racks up — and the agencies, which shell out thousands of dollars in the hopes of crafting the perfect pitch that could win the business. If they do land it, there’s often an added cost of having to quickly ramp up freelance and full-time staff to work on the new account.

Michael Houston, chief marketing officer at Grey, New York, said the window for agencies to prove themselves has lowered dramatically.

“Results in our business are no longer evaluated on a semi-annual or quarterly basis, but on a monthly, weekly and sometimes daily basis,” Mr. Houston said. “Couple that with the level of dollars attached to the advertising line item on a client’s balance sheet, and we find clients forced to justify their marketing ROI in a way never seen before. In that process, agencies sometimes become the scapegoat, with the easy solution being to call an agency review.”

Consistency
What’s more, “serial reviewers” risk damaging their brand with inconsistent marketing messages.

“Clients shouldn’t be constantly jumping ship,” said Lisa Colantuono, managing partner at AAR Partners. As communication between consumer and client evolves, “they need to work together with their agencies. If that foundation is constantly changing, the marketer is hurting themselves in the long run in terms of building brand loyalty with the consumer.”

The Association of National Advertisers, the marketer’s trade group, doesn’t exactly see it this way. The ANA’s position is that conducting formal agency evaluations on a regular basis offers the best chance for fixing problems before frustration sets in. It believes that the companies that have two-way assessments at regular intervals have the most-productive relationships. “Having a formal agency evaluation process is always imperative but even more so at a time of heightened focus on marketing accountability,” Bob Liodice, president-CEO of the ANA, has said.

Said Grey’s Mr. Houston: “Desperation may be something new to many industries in the recession, but it’s something the agency business has known, embraced and perpetuated for decades. Agencies only have themselves to blame by playing right into the hands of these serial agency-review ‘players’ [and] making it too easy for the client to bully us.”

Endeavour Marketing and Media – A Murfreesboro, TN Advertising Agency

From Ann Handley (of MarketingProfs.com) for American Express Open Forum:

Dec 29, 2009 -

What do bacon, Bogota, yumberries and Foursquare have in common? They are all on the list of 100 Things to Watch in 2010 by the marketing communications company JWT.

Certain trends on the list suggest clear implications for businesses. JWT’s Ann Mack says that many items on it reflect broader shifts, like a growing action around health and wellness and environmental issues, to crazy-fast developments in the tech space.

There are also a number of trends tied to the so-called Great Recession (“trip bundling,” for example) and those that speak to various demographic, political and economic power shifts (“East Africa Wired,” and “TV for Tween Boys” among them). Interestingly for business, Mack says, the list “points to the way industries are redefining or reinventing themselves to survive or to fully leverage these power shifts.”

What trends might affect your small business in 2010? Here a subset you might find worth watching (as well as a few I found just plain interesting). The full list is in alphabetical order, below.

1. 3D at Home
3D is the new HD. Having successfully invaded the big screen, it’s on its way to the small screen: James Cameron, director of the new 3D film Avatar, will promote Panasonic’s 3D sets, out next year, which will compete with versions from Sony and Samsung.

See Rest of List

From Kunur Patel for AdAge

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — While coupon mailers clutter the recycling bins of digital-oriented millennials, one startup has revived couponing for the Facebook and Twitter generation.

Chicago-based Groupon has amassed 2 million subscribers to its website, and begun adding big brands such as Zipcar, the NBA and Blockbuster to its regular stable of local businesses. Only one year after launch, it has sold 1 million coupons and received $30 million in second-round financing from Accel Partners. According to a counter on its site, that’s translated to more than $45 million in savings since November 2008.

Groupon e-mails a daily deal per city and consumers opt-in to buy a restaurant gift certificate, a health and beauty service, or entertainment offer at typically 50% off face value — say $30 voucher for $60 dinner or $50 for a spa package. Once the deal has hooked a predetermined number of people, everyone who has opted in then “buys” the deal, and the marketer gets the money minus Groupon’s cut, which is usually 30%-50%, according to Groupon founder Andrew Mason. It only works if the deal attracts critical mass, however — if the offer doesn’t reach its threshold, the deal is canceled and no one pays, not even the provider. (The threshold varies by advertiser; some deals require only 50 people to buy in, others need 500.)

Since launching in Chicago, Groupon has expanded to 28 cities — most recently San Antonio — and has built an audience primarily of affluent 18- to 35-year-olds, 70% of whom are female. Mr. Mason claims Groupon was profitable in June and anticipates $100 million in revenue for 2010, though he did not share projections for this year.

Small businesses use Groupon to attract new customers, drive product trial and cross-sell. For Endeavor Personal Concierge in Chicago, 25% of Groupon users became repeat customers. For MindBody Fitness in Washington, 85% of Groupon users purchased additional services. Other local businesses have reported spikes in website traffic on the day Groupon offers go out.

By using Groupon during the last six months, Zipcar gained about 1,500 new members in seven cities. (By comparison, the car-sharing service reported 325,000 members through September.) “They’re a great local partner in many of our cities,” Stephanie Shore, Zipcar VP-marketing, said via e-mail. “The viral nature of their community plays to our strength as a word-of-mouth brand.”

The buy-in-bulk online concept is not exactly new. Pittsburgh-based OnlineChoice launched a group-buying site in the late 1990s, struggled through the dot-com bust and failed to break through. But social networks such as Facebook and Twitter provide a vehicle for consumer incentive to share deals to make quota, and today’s web climate — not to mention economic climate — is more favorable for group buying.

“I think what’s different today is that the communication mechanisms are so much greater than they were with mobile, Facebook and Twitter,” said Scott Silverman, executive director of Shop.org, the digital division of the National Retail Federation. “You have a population that is comfortable with participating in the internet, not just reading things. It seems like the perfect time for this idea.”

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Reporting by Yinka Adegoke for Reuters

YouTube, which is owned by Internet search giant Google, is already known to have held talks with several major movie studios about renting movies.

Google’s vice president of content partnerships, David Eun, said in an interview that some full-length shows would not be available to YouTube under its current advertising model.

“We’re making some interesting bets on long-form content; not all content is accessible to us with the advertising model,” Eun told Reuters, who said content partners will be able to choose what works best for them.

YouTube is keen to bulk up its licensing of full-length programs alongside the popular short clips uploaded by users that currently dominate the site.

But Hollywood studios and TV companies are reluctant to cannibalize revenue streams, such as from cable TV and DVD sales, by offering premium programs for free viewing on the Web — even under an advertising revenue-share model.

Some of the options being considered by YouTube include variations of monthly subscription models such as those seen with cable TV providers.

Another option is a movie rental model similar to Apple Inc’s iTunes or Amazon.com. YouTube has held talks about rentals with Lions Gate Entertainment, Sony Pictures, and Warner Bros,

Though YouTube is easily the most visited video site in the United States with more than 125 million users a month, many analysts see rival Hulu, which carries full length shows, as the future of the Web video business.

Hulu, owned by NBC Universal, News Corp, and Walt Disney, has rapidly become the No. 2 video site in the United States and has sold out on key ad inventory.

Eun insisted that advertising revenue would continue to be YouTube’s mainstay and said that its content partners would start earning meaningful ad dollars in 2010. “If we just continued to focus on our advertising model that would be enough opportunity to create meaningful revenue,” said Eun.

“The biggest opportunity today is advertising and we’ve just begun to scratch the surface,” he said ahead of a presentation to analysts on Tuesday.

YouTube has short-form videos from a range of partners including CNN and TNT, ESPN and ABC; and full length-programs from partners including the UK’s Channel 4 and Channel 5.

VEVO

YouTube is also backing an advertising-driven business in partnership with the music industry for a new site called Vevo which launched earlier this month.

Late last year the Warner Music Group and YouTube fell out over fees, leading to videos from artists like Madonna and Red Hot Chili Peppers being yanked from the site. The two sides came to an agreement in September. However Warner Music has yet to join Vevo, which is backed by Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, Sony Music and music from EMI.

YouTube had previously been required to pay upfront licensing fees in the tens of millions of dollars to secure rights to carry the videos, according to people familiar with the talks. The new Vevo partnership is purely an advertising revenue share, according to Eun.

He said of the previous YouTube relationship with the music business: “Our interests weren’t aligned. There wasn’t as much downside for the labels but there also wasn’t as much upside for them.”

by Garrick Schmitt for AdAge

ust a few short years ago, if you had asked most marketers about the future of mobile, their nirvana most likely would have been a consumer strolling down the aisle of her local grocery store receiving text messages offering 50 cents off a bottle of ketchup or jar of peanut butter.

But not so much today, as industry heavyweights and upstarts like Google, Facebook, Twitter and SimpleGeo are racing to map out a digital, geo-tagged future where our physical and virtual worlds will increasingly collide. Soon a simple coupon delivered via SMS or Bluetooth will seem like an idea from a different era, like Pong or the Hula Hoop.

Everyone, it seems, is looking to take advantage of the demand for location-based services created by GPS-enabled devices, such as Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android 2.0. Even desktop operating systems, such as Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard will soon contain location-awareness features — so too will browsers, as we’ve seen with the latest Firefox releases.

Now come the services. Just this week, Google launched What’s Nearby, a location-based search that’s part of Google Maps on Android and will soon be more widely available. The service allows consumers to simply access a list of the ten closest places of interest near their physical location via their mobiles.

And that’s just to start: Google Latitude allows users to share their locations with friends and view their friends activities on a map; Facebook has rewritten its privacy policy, foreshadowing its entrance into location-based services; and Twitter has rolled out its Geotagging API, which will allow popular Twitter apps like Tweetie and Tweetdeck to display the location from where a tweet was posted.

But geo-location APIs and GPS-enabled mobile devices are just part of the “location equation.” Here’s a look at the most promising geo players who are making location-based marketing a reality for brands today.

FOURSQUARE AND GOWALLA: Foursquare and Gowalla are the two most buzzed-about leaders in location-based services. Both companies provide game-like experiences for their users that allow them to “check-in” at various locales (bars, restaurants, etc.). But it’s Foursquare that has recently made the first play for advertisers. The company recently debuted its Foursquare for Business program, which enables retailers to provide offers to their users and track the success of location-based campaigns. Industry analysts are understandably enthused.

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Endeavour Marketing and Media, A Murfreesboro Advertising Agency

By Dean Donaldson for AdAge

The recent surge of research around creative variables like ad shape, format and video puts online creative into the hot seat, and size, it seems, doesn’t necessarily matter. We’ve been groomed to judge online display ads based on aesthetics alone as opposed to trying to match the physical elements with performance to see patterns. This has shown certain assets can positively impact campaign results, but it often overlooks one critical factor — the online environment.

Historically, we create ads in an assortment of shapes and sizes and stick them everywhere, only to find ourselves surprised when the same creative generates a range of results across many environments. It’s relatively obvious, actually: Surely the impact of a piece of creative that works effectively in one in environment will differ — sometimes radically — when placed in another.

That’s largely due to the consumer experience and level of activity found in each location. It may seem obvious that a portal homepage would differ to a social media site, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. As consumers spend more and more time online, the environment in which they find themselves matters more and more to them — and not matching the right creative against the right environment can be toxic. As they say, looks will only get you so far; for advertising, it’s location, location, location.

Since the first display ad 15 years ago, a variety of environments have become amenable to online advertising. Take the mega sports homepage portal ESPN, or the opening to news sites like New York Times and Forbes where users skim headlines for few seconds before clicking on various links. Then, contrast destination pages found within these homepages, where the user explores athlete stats or reads specific news articles. Although homepages have mass reach, they also have short attention spans compared to destination pages, which are more likely to retain re users for extended periods of time as the absorb information and content.

Next, consider price-comparison pages versus web mail, let alone desktop messenger ads and entertainment content. Each of these online destinations creates different experiences for audiences, and if we seek to drive better results, today’s online creative should be carefully mapped out to fit the area surrounding it.

We’re wasting data from ineffective advertising if we’re not using it to determine how to improve creative concepts against the actual consumer data shown in the various environments. We see the same mistakes repeatedly, such as expecting users to click away when writing emails or hiding enticing content behind static images on fast-paced homepages. Here’s what we know:

For example, homepages typically call for high impact creative that can distract users very quickly before they move-on to another destination. Recent examples include the Chanel No5 ad or Fedex Paper Crumble.

However, destination pages require something more subtle and less intrusive that can be afforded by time, such as the Virgin Bets, often catching people who are rolling through to navigate, provided the pay-off is fun and rewarding like Ikea’s Set the Table.

In web mail, users continually refresh the page while checking emails and habitually return. Here, they’re unlikely to click away, but may be distracted to play with an ad while they chat with others online or prepare to type an email. An ad that rewards data capture like Snickers Mr. T is a great example for a web mail environment.

Also, in communication environments, marketers should use the ability to re-target users and sequence messages, which is much of what contributed to the success of Levi’s Moon bathing campaign. Sharing content with someone that users are chatting with, like in the case of the Universal Pictures’ Bruno ad is a great way of exploiting desktop messenger or facilitating social media.

If reading reviews or looking for information, affording the search within an ad itself drives people closer to the information they’re looking for and can enhance their brand experience as seen in Travelocity.

With budgets under threat, assuming all creative is equal and underestimating the environmental nuances will deliver catastrophic results and could start to destroy the digital atmosphere and threaten agencies just as global warming has melted the ice caps. Credibility comes from environmental awareness and developing a strategy for change. By learning how consumers respond across environments, marketers may consider spending less time looking at format innovation and more time looking at campaigns holistically.

From Brian Morrissey at AdWeek:

The run-of-the-mill holiday sweepstakes is getting a social twist with the addition of sharing features brands hope will extend their reach.

Brands like Microsoft, Sephora, Nascar and Comcast have kicked off Twitter sweepstakes promotions this month, in the hopes of luring customers into chatting up their brands on the hot social network.

Microsoft this week is promoting the launch of its new line Windows Server 2008 R2 with a competition for users to Tweet haikus about them. The R2Haiku takes submissions via Tweets entered on the contest Web site that are then broadcast to a submitter’s network.  Read Remainder of Article

To complement its dominance in the search ad market, Google is unveiling a new tool for display ads that goes beyond the traditional metrics of impressions and clicks.

The tool, dubbed Campaign Insights seeks to, “crunch data from thousands of users to figure out how many searches a campaign caused post-viewing, as well as how many visits to the marketer’s Web site. It then compares this with a control set of users not exposed to the display ads. By comparing the two samples, Google believes it can isolate how much of search and site traffic increases can be directly attributed to banner ads as opposed to other marketing efforts.”

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Social media giant, Facebook, sees the future of their revenue in Social Ads.  They are so confident in this new advertising platform that they are claiming to rival the text ad strategy that made Google billions.  Net revenue was up in the 3rd quarter for Facebook, exceeding expectations, but don’t they remember the Beacon platform?

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A recent study showed that Females are less likely to engage with mobile advertising.

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