Digital

What it Takes to be the Best Digital Campaign: Speedy’s Road Trip

At the November 2009 CMA Awards, Alka-Seltzer won a Gold Medal for the top digital campaign. It’s an impressive comeback from a mature brand (75 years old) which was experiencing tough competition from rivals Pepto-Bismol and Tums. The root problem was that Alka-Seltzer was losing relevance with their key audience of 25-35 males (who often over-eat and over-drink). Alka-Seltzer needed to reposition itself as a more fun and relevant brand.
The strategy was to leverage online marketing to breakthrough and recapture the male market.

A mass media approach would have been too expensive and less targeted. Research indicated that the core target segment spent more time online than watching TV. The big creative idea was an online reality event called the “The Great American Road Trip”. Alka-Seltzer hired an internet comedy/music duo (Rhett and Link) to travel across the United States and report on various events and gastronomic delights. Their unique music videos were posted on You Tube and went viral with 2 million views. The brand mascot “Speedy” (a 60’s retro icon) was their trusted road companion in their 1970’s Gremlin! Their quest for the classic road trip experience and good times took them across the US. Talk about product placement and brand involvement packed in a fun campaign (relevant to the target audience). Alka -Seltzer extended the program to banners, blogs, microsite and of course social media.

The microsite also provided other value added offers such as: bumper stickers (Honk if you Eat), interactive games (Where’s Speedy) and recipes. Alka-Seltzer also created ongoing content assets . Their “City Guides” will provide unique city tips for the tourists, business travelers for years to come.

The traditional direct marketing rule of thumb states that the success of a campaign is 40% targeting, 30% offer, 20% creative and 10% timing. The campaign was a big win on all the factors.

The proof of success is ultimately in the results. For less than $250,000 they obtained unbelievable PR but also strong website engagement with 2 million views, with an average 8 page views per visitor (4 minutes 15 secs). Their 21 YouTube webisodes (2-4minutes each) were a big hit. One of the biggest spinoff benefits is that the “Classic American Road Trip” also attracted significant local and national media coverage in the US. The dynamic duo was interviewed on CNN, late night talk shows and numerous local news broadcasts. More importantly they received mention on blogs and targeted male websites such as sportsillustrated.com, CollegeHumor.com and VH1.com. Overall the campaign generated millions of dollars in PR media exposure.

Creating a top campaign takes: focusing on a clear business problem, a bit of research, knowing your target segments, finding what resonates, a great creative idea to link the program, and an integrated marketing communications (IMC) plan.

Geoff Linton

Consumers Are Ready But Is Your Brand Ready?

You have decided to build an online brand community and are now ready to get started. Before you begin developing a communication strategy and pulling the appropriate resources together, you will have to take a step back and evaluate what your company is ready for. In doing so, you will essentially save yourself some of the unnecessary headaches and aggravation that you would encounter if you were to skip the step altogether.

What is “social media”, “web 2.0”, “new media” and what is the ROI?

These are the questions that many in your organization may and will be asking. To present a comprehensive community development strategy to a team who may not be as well versed in the space will ultimately result in roadblocks, dilution of strategy and resistance that could quickly put a halt to any “knock ‘em out of the park” solutions that you may be able to put in front of them.

If they don’t get it, they won’t buy it.

Remember that the social web is growing rapidly and may be intimidating to some. The advertising industry is realizing a major shift and marketers are being forced to not only give up control to consumers but also to their subordinates who may be better versed in the channel and may be considered a threat to their own job security.

As a result, you may choose to follow these steps:

1. Conduct an organizational readiness test. Begin by assessing your current organizational culture. You can use this simple Readiness Quiz to help you identify existing gaps that may pose a challenge to your efforts while allowing you the ability to set realistic expectations to how quickly your vision can be realized.
2. Identify key stakeholders and understand their fears and concerns. To advance your mandate forward you will need the support and approval from various stakeholders across different departments. Due to the nature of the social web, legal, marketing, customer service and other groups will want to ensure their interests are being addressed. To neglect any one of them could result in costly delays and unnecessary friction.
3. Create an internal communication plan. You will need to define a champion who can lead this initiative and can see it to fruition. That person will be required to educate the various teams not only on the benefits of developing an online brand community but also on how it will impact their roles, department and the company at large.

   This will need to be a collaborative effort and will take time. Some will jump on board immediately while others will take time to come around. Patience, perseverance and consistent messaging will be the key ingredients to realizing success in this stage.

4. Identify and recruit champions. Similar to dealing with consumers, you will find your early adopters, influencers, mavens as well as your detractors when dealing with co-workers. Recognize who the engaged ones are and assign them a contributing role. Encourage those who are motivated to help as they will recognize the career growth opportunities and will serve as a much needed support in your efforts towards converting the cynics.
5. Define Rules of Engagement. This stage will require multiple departments at the table. Any action, role, responsibility as it relates to how employees, partners and associates engage online should be clearly defined. When someone posts a negative comment about the brand, how does the company respond, who is responsible for reaching out and where will the communication be made?

   Answering these types of questions will provide a feeling of comfort to parties throughout the organization and creates clear lines of responsibilities which will ultimately calm any concerns about job security should any issues arise.

6. Crawl, walk, run. Once you have been able to build a team with the appropriate top level support you may begin testing the waters. To jump into the social web with both feet right out of the gate may not be the best move while moving too slowly may result in a competitive disadvantage depending on the industry and category that your company plays in.

   Depending on your organization’s comfort level at this stage you will have to gauge how aggressive you should be at first before building momentum and handing control over to the consumers at large. Don’t forget to set the expectation that it takes time to build trust with your consumers although the payoff in the end will provide better business results if done properly.

7. Measure, learn and build momentum. At this point you will need to demonstrate quick wins while staying on track towards achieving the greater vision. Make sure to clearly define the key performance indicators and track them throughout the process. Such metrics could include engagement levels, net promoter score, brand sentiment, sales and even volume of brand chatter in social circles.

   These should be customized based on your objectives and should serve to provide a snapshot of how your communications are performing. Take what is working and build upon it while recognizing where the gaps lie so that you may work on filling them in.

   As you can see from above, the development of an online brand community involves much more than strictly creating a strategy to connect with consumers online. There are many moving parts with several different perspectives and interests that need to be addressed in order to move things forward. It truly needs to become a team effort to be done well!.

   Jeff Pontes

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Customer Insights and the Qualitative and Quantitative Mix

Word of mouth is likely the oldest form of advertising and traditionally one that has been nearly impossible to target and measure. But that is changing, and changing quickly. In addition to web analytics and third party audience measurement data, there is an increasing wealth of information available for organizations to measure and mine. Consumer feedback sites, social networks, blogs as well as on-site tools all provide a wealth of information that companies can use for product and service improvement. With these opportunities come new challenges, as success is a measure of more than just numbers and percentages.

The eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit (April 6 – 9) is a good place to go to really understand how far eMetrics has come. One of the panel presentations, that includes Lisa Lloyd of Microsoft (who will also be wearing her CMA hat) will address this very issue.

On a related panel, named Predictive Analytics and Digital Marketing - Paul Tyndall of RBC (also wearing his CMA hat), will be discussing how RBC and other marketers are utilizing predictive modeling in the online space.

Full disclosure – CMA is one of the association sponsors of the Summit.

.... if you are a member of CMA, you can save an additional 15% off the regular attendee rate by using discount code CMAPARTNER15 when registering for the conference.

Elizabeth Harvey, Manager of Councils and Self Regulatory Programs, CMA

Search Engine Marketing for Beginners

In my current role at a home and auto insurance company, we sell our products exclusively through independent brokers. That said, we are keenly interested in providing value add services to our broker partners to ensure they are both growing and retaining the right customers.

Like many businesses today, brokerages know they need to have an online presence but often lack the technical know-how. As a result, our marketing department has put together a series of marketing best practices for our brokerages to help them get started. To compliment Jim Estill’s blog post here late last month, SEO - Search Engine Optimization Basics , I thought I would share one such piece that attempts to demystify Search Engine Marketing. In our Introduction to Search Engine Marketing we tried to simplify SEM and provide some tangible tips for businesses trying to get started in the SEM space.

What SEM strategies and tactics have worked for your business, and which have not?

Martha Turner, AVP Marketing Services and Campaign Management, Aviva Canada Inc.
& member of CMA’s Direct Marketing Council

Digital Wild West

I’ve had the fortune of blogging here since the inception of this blog and deliberately never wrote anything marketing-related with regards to my current employer. Today is one exception I hope you will grant me.

So I’m not accused of 'ambush shilling' or taking 5 minutes of your time that you will never get back - I’m warning you now. You can close this browser and get out of Dodge. I won’t take offense. I promise.

Still here? Thank you. So let’s saddle up ‘pardner’ and we’ll mosey on out for a little ride!

Some may know I have the fortune of working at Harlequin Enterprises. Yes, that Harlequin. The Harlequin that is one of the leading publishers of women's romance and fiction around the globe.

Recently we launched a new campaign promoting our HQN imprint series ‘The McKettricks’ by author Linda Lael Miller. So what's so special about this online marketing campaign?

Last fall our Creative Director Margie Miller teamed up with our Director of Digital Content & Social Media Malle Vallik to create a unique behind-the-scenes video that shows the making of a Harlequin cover. We had never done anything like this before. Take a look.

Now I’ll admit I’m not a big cowboy fan but I appreciate good content. And although I’m biased, I think this documentary is terrific. As Malle points out in her blog, it gives you a greater appreciation of the work that creative directors and photographers do on a regular basis.

How has the campaign done? We’re very pleased with the response so far. We took some excellent content and promoted it via various online marketing and social media channels by directing people to Take A Cowboy Home which features the video content, sample editorial, cool contest and (most importantly) where to buy the books.

We also got some great support from the fine folks over at MSN who created a unique section promoting this campaign. Not to mention many friends/fans/authors/bloggers who spread the word via various social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook.

So everything is perfect and we ride off into the sunset, right? Not so fast. There were a few things I learned from this campaign. Call them the '3 Cowboys' like the McKettrick brothers:

1. Many companies work in silos. Often campaigns are created and other teams such as Social Media, PR, IT and/or Legal are left out until the end and then added like a check-box. Do not make that mistake. Involve key groups from cradle (so they become stakeholders) to the grave (so they share in the successes and learnings).

2. It will not always be utopia. There will be hiccups. The issue is not ‘if’ they happen but ‘when’ they happen. And how your team reacts to quickly address them and ensure they don’t happen in future. We started creating a ‘list of oops’ so we include them in our campaign post-mortem report.

3. This is my biggest takeaway. Regardless if you sell books, lotion, laptops or luggage - it's my view you must have a good combination of strong content and promotion for your digital campaigns. They are not mutually exclusive and together make them all the more stronger. Especially in the digital wild west.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization Basics

Do you want to get first page on Google? If you have a web page or blog, you likely already are first page for some searches. With a bit of SEO, you can gain first page on more searches. And its simple.

The first and most obvious step is think about what words or phrases you want to be first page on.

Once you have that list, determine how many people are searching for those terms. To check how popular a search is you will need a tool. I use Wordtracker (there is a free online version). The higher the number, the more popular the search.

No point in trying to optimize for a word or phrase that is rarely searched. There is also no point in trying to optimize for a word that is too popular because getting a high ranking there will be almost impossible. So this is a "just right thing". You want to optimize for words that you have a good chance of ranking for. I suggest choosing 10-20 words and phrases.

Think about "long tail"

Think about how people will search. People often search with a question. EG where do I find X? Or where do I find Y in Canada. The longer the string, the less competition you will have for it so the easier you will get ranked.

So make the list of phrases you want to "own" and ones that are realistic to "own".

Now it is simple. Just put these words and phrases in your titles, picture descriptions, videos and in your text. The titles are the most important. That is why a blog called "Vegetable Lentil Soup Recipes" will get good Google juice on all 4 words. So searching "vegetable soup" will get first page. Or "lentil soup recipes" or "vegetable lentil recipes" etc.

Yes you want to repeat your words and phrases often in the text. This said - write naturally. Never let SEO be a substitute for good content.

So you do this and you still are not first page. That is because you do not have enough credibility with Google. You need another free tool to check this. I use a free Firefox plugin called searchstatus. It gives me both the PageRank and the Alexa rating of any web page. Higher PageRank numbers are better. High credibility is your ultimate goal as that is what gets you ranked first and Alexa tells you traffic (a lower number is better)

My blog (www.jimestill.com) has a pagerank of 5 and Alexa of 493,052 (meaning it is the 493,052th most popular site in the Internet). CMA blog has a pagerank of 4 and an Alexa of 587,900. This means if I SEO on the same phrase as CMA blog, google will list me before CMA Blog.

How do you increase your PageRank?

It is all about quality inbound links. You want people with a high credibility (PageRank 4+) to link to you - eg Globe and Mail would be great. More is better and link rank is almost logarithmic so a PageRank of 6 is worth 10 times one of 5 etc.

The best inbound links are contextual. So someone blogging and saying I heard time management guru Jim Estill speak and hot linking from "Time management guru" is great for me. Second best, hot link to "Jim Estill". Third is just having a link on a blogroll without any context or a link to click here.

You get a higher rank if you update your content regularly. That is why having a blog on your site is a good way to increase your ranking.

Moderate cross linking within your own material will also increase your rank and clarify for google what it is that you do.

3 ways to get links to your site:

1 - Ask politely. You might not always get a link but it never hurts to ask.

2 - Comment on other relevant blogs (and have your PageRank on so you ignore low PageRank and high alexa). Note that most comments in themselves do not constitute a link. But being out there gets people to look at you. You need people to look at your stuff for them to be inspired to link to it.

3 - Have good material. People link to quality. But of course they have to see it so promote your content

4 - Have your URL on all your print material, cards, letterhead, email sig file etc.

5 - Write guest articles and blogs in the right (high traffic) places (check the pagerank and Alexa).

6 - Contribute to other sites. EG write reviews on Amazon, join the conversations.

And a word of warning. Never play games (like buying links).

In the end it is about having good quality material. And being out there so people look at your material. People link to quality without you asking as long as they know about it.

Jim Estill

The iPad has arrived. Now what?!

Today, as I was riding in on the subway, reading the New York Times on my new iTouch, I stumbled upon an article about Apple's launch today (Wednesday Jan. 27) of its tablet product, or iPad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_zI21XEo0Q

Being an Apple fan from way back I couldn't help but feel a sense of real excitement. It got me reflecting on how much the Apple brand has meant to me over the years. And I'm not alone. The excitement that's building up in the media and among the Apple Faithful is almost palpable and very real.

I bought my first Mac (Mac Classic II) back in 1993ish. I was working at an agency and wanted a way to be able to work on those weekends when I was going back home to Kingston to visit the folks. The idea of a portable computer was exciting. Imagine, being free to take your computer anywhere. It was only 14 or 15 lbs. Oh, you PC people chained to your desks. How quaint.

Then when the first Apple notebooks came out, I was fortunate to be working on the Apple account and helped develop a launch campaign for them. (Best. Account. Ever.) The objective, as outlined in the brief, was to get the public over the mental hump of being able to work anywhere. Imagine sitting in a park or in a coffee shop clicking away on your laptop computer. Why, you could even work from home!

Then of course, the iPod changed everything. The recording industry, advertising, interaction (or lack thereof) between people in public places...everything. The iPhone then revolutionized how we think of what a phone is and what it can do. People could earn money and express their creative by developing Apps. We were now all working for Apple.

Walk into any mall where an Apple store exists and you'd think they were giving stuff away for free in there.

And now the anticipation for the iPad is reaching a fever pitch. People can taste it. The article in the NYT suggests that it's going to do for newspaper publishing what the iPod did for music. They're counting on it because we all know where the newspaper industry is headed. But will our collective love for all things Apple mean that we'll be willing to pay for things like the Star or the NYTs online through the Slate, when so much of the same information can be found on free sites elsewhere.

That's just one fascinating question we as marketers should be watching and reading about -- probably on our iPads.

Bryan Tenenhouse

Once Upon a Time

Every story begins with one word; and with this, I begin to tell mine. This is my first of what I expect to be many more entries as a contributor to the CMA blog. It will be a place where I will seek to share and gain knowledge from the marketing community at large.

As a member of the Digital Marketing Council I am tasked with supporting the association’s efforts in closing the knowledge gap that exists in the marketplace as it relates to the digital realm. The space is changing so rapidly that it becomes difficult for marketers to keep focused on all of the moving parts while translating it back to how it impacts their business. Understanding these inherent challenges, I will attempt to address some of the pressing issues and look to shed light on how to tackle others.

Traditionally blogs are based on the views of one, the contributor, yet I will seek to incorporate industry guests when relevant and possible. Their inputs and perspectives will provide valuable insights within the context of true case scenarios aimed to provoke thought and spur dialogue. I will be leveraging social media where appropriate to gain insights, feedback and contributions from other industry professionals and will serve as the content facilitator and filter to ensure that readers are able to gain value from the content being delivered.

The first topic of discussion will be how to develop successful online communities. With the explosion of social media and technologies enabling consumers to evangelize and share their views with their peers, marketers are looking for ways to nurture and build off this type of consumer behaviour which has resulted in an increased demand for the development of consumer based communities online.

As much value as they may provide the challenge of understanding and developing one raises a series of questions such as:

1. What is a community?
2. Why does my brand need one?
3. What type of community should we create?
4. What resources are required (financial, human, technology, etc.) and who will be responsible for managing it?
5. How do we create one?

I will be providing different perspectives into the answers to these questions over the next several posts with input provided from conversations with industry leading brands. I encourage you to participate in the discussion and to become engaged.

I look forward to creating a great story with you!

Jeff Pontes, Director Digital Strategy, FUSE Marketing Group

The Year Of Online Branding

With all the buzz of social media last year, its sure to be part of marketers plans for 2010, if not already. But social media might just be a piece of the pie to a much larger picture. Online branding hasn't received all that much acknowledgement just yet, but I suspect that's about to change.

If offline branding is about creating top of mind and becoming synonymous for a product, service, or category, then marketers will want to pay particular attention to what the web holds for them. The conventional branding process is about building a consumer relationship and can often take a decade to build that kind of rapport. But online branding provides the potential to shave years off your strategy.

Using social media, search marketing, and social media, marketers now have the ability to reach larger more targeted markets, often for less money, and be able to track and measure their success in a fraction of the time of offline marketing and branding strategies. Appearing within the top 10 for your preferred phrases, coupled with engaging in online conversations, sharing, using social media tools, and of course advertising, can have a powerful effect. When using a triple threat such as this approach, the repetition begins to build the brand online and creates perceived value. And much like its offline counterpart, Internet branding is a process that isn't turned on like and advertising campaign. But once you've invested 6-8 months in social media or search engine optimization, the value begins to be self-evident.

Online marketing budgets continue to receive greater attention, primarily in Internet advertising. And as more marketers adopt social media within their plans, there still seems to be the matter of utilizing natural search results. This is one of the larger slices of the proverbial pie mentioned earlier. With Internet advertising, you have more control over tracking and creative. You can even split test and measure results the same day in many cases. The verdict is still out on social media, although there are numerous arguments made regarding its effectiveness. But it seems still early to measure. Not things like followers or how many joined your fan page, but real metrics that show value. In a recent study by Gartner, it said that over 75% of the Fortune 1000 companies are using social media, and over 50% of them will be classified as failures. This probably goes back to how successes are measured, but its likely that the one size fits all approach doesn’t work for everyone when developing a social media campaign.

For the year ahead, consider the value your online marketing offers. Social media is still debatable. Internet advertising is more measureable, but still a challenge to work with as the web is so fragmented that a big campaign can eat profits with a media buyer coordinating the entire buy.

Did you know that typical click rates on banners are under 2% and contextual ads in search results are less than 20%? That leaves the large slice of pie, to appear in natural search results when searching for a given topic or phrase. The bad name seo has received with its infiltration of snake oil salesmen has left a bad taste in the mouths of many, but passing it over is like leaving money on the table. In fact, it’s the most likely source of traffic and stands to be one of the biggest contributors to your online branding efforts. Borrowing from the old adage of using a three-pronged attack, the big 3 described above are your path to diversifying and capitalizing online.

Engage!

By Mark Nicholson, president, reactorr online branding

Watch This...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8

Are you in?

Surprise

Not many things surprise me after so many years in this business, but I have to admit, this did:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

Since starting my own creative consultancy two years ago, I've written many websites for clients who think that key words actually matter. So you can imagine my surprise when I learned that Google doesn't use the "keywords" meta tag in their web search ranking. Obviously this isn't as earth-shattering as learning that cigarettes are bad for you or that Balloon Boy was a hoax, but it does raise an eyebrow given that Google hasn't exactly advertised this news. Thoughts?