Marketing: 11/01/2004

CBS Internet Daily

"Online shopping visits reached a record high this year on Thanksgiving Day, with the ensuing 'Black Friday' coming in second, according to HitWise, an analysis firm that monitors Web traffic. Shopping and classifieds Web sites claimed 11.39 percent of all U.S. visits on Thanksgiving Day, breaking the 2003 high of 8.96 percent set on the holiday last year, according to Bill Tancer, vice president of research."

Bambi Francisco, CBS.MarketWatch.com reports in depth on the shopping stats concluding that " Online shopping revenue is forecast to grow by 25 percent this year, and it appears to be on track".

She notes that "Last year, more than $300 million was spent on the Monday after Thanksgiving. The reason consumers spend so heavily on that Monday, according to comScore, is that they've "returned to the workplace -- long a favorite location from which to shop online."

These reports on holiday spending (Thanksgiving) indicates increased confidence and use of online transactions. It will be interesting to see if there are similar spikes in travel related figures on boxing day - traditionally the day when the UK targetted travel marketing campaigns kickoff....

www.adbrands.net Company profiles for leading advertising agencies, marketers and brands worldwide....

Reuters

"EBay uses snail-mail to hook new users" Wed 24 November, 2004 05:36 By Lisa Baertlein"
Details various online businesses turning to traditional offline forms of advertising...

iMediaConnection: The Good Word on Word of Mouth

Links to white paper which studies the effect of paying employees or others to post on message boards etc...conclusion that only very first few may gain advantage before readers tune out..

The " industry group, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), that is dedicated to developing best practice standards."

The article concludes "There are positive and negative ways to influence consumer perception of your product, brand or service. The key is to do so in a responsible manner. Word of mouth works best when it is openly and organically created. Messing around with that formula without knowing what you’re doing is kind of like throwing a knuckle ball -- you’re never quite sure where your message will land"

The New York Times > Fashion & Style > Building a Brand by Not Being a Brand

Consumers may like Mr. Charney's management style, but industry insiders are more impressed by his marketing skills, which they say are in tune with a cultural shift. "There is a highbrow stand against commercial culture right now," said Alex Wipperfürth, a partner in Plan B, a marketing firm in San Francisco. "People are sick of being walking advertisements for clothing. By stripping brands of logos and of pretense, by being more subtle in your cues, you are saying that you are more about quality than image."

The peril, he warned, is that a company may put off consumers by too insistently tooting its own horn. "When you overexplain, it kills the magic," Mr. Wipperfürth said.

But Mr. Charney is still avidly promoting his social responsibility, and opening stores at a rapid clip: one in Vancouver last week, two in Miami not long ago, one in downtown Brooklyn this week, one in Chicago on Friday. And he is spawning competitors: No Sweat Apparel, a Massachusetts company, is describing itself as an ethical maker of shirts, sneakers and jeans in unionized factories abroad. But Mr. Charney is not looking over his shoulder. "If we can be the brand of the next generation of adults," he said, "then I know I have done my job well."

PhoCusWright

Research report: Online Travel Advertising: Success Factors And Recommendations For Improved Effectiveness.

Concludes: "Online advertising is an integral part of almost every travel marketer’s strategy and while it’s working well for most companies, there is still significant room for improvement. Those companies that have benefited most from the medium have committed resources and dollars to thoroughly understanding ROI and performance metrics, and test and optimize their campaigns meticulously.

While driving sales is the most popular objective of online travel campaigns, branding is finding a place among the plans of more sophisticated advertisers willing to measure awareness and recall beyond click-throughs and sales. While the simplicity and clarity of an offer is paramount to a campaign’s success, smart targeting and creative interactivity can further improve performance and ROI. Many travel marketers have found success with point-of-purchase and destination targeted campaigns on travel-oriented sites. And while pricing models have swung heavily towards CPA in the past year, pricing will become less flexible as a few powerful ad-supported sites take hold of the market."

HBS Working Knowledge: Marketing: The Problem with Viral Branding

Want to build a long-lasting brand? A viral strategy is too short-lived to get the job done, Douglas Holt argues in this excerpt from a new book, How Brands Become Icons.

Case study: Snapple: concludes:

"What sticks are stories that affect how people think about themselves in the world. The problem with the viral model is that it assumes that any communication is good as long as it's retold. Much more important, however, is what people remember and use symbolically in their everyday lives. Snapple didn't just get people talking. Instead, the brand served as a role model, a rather absurd one, which provided a silly but meaningful critique of corporate life in the early 1990s"

Marketers Take on Spam

"spam AND 11 other roadblocks are the issues facing permission e-mail marketing "

“These are the biggest ways of pissing money away.” by "sitting on a boatload of data that puts all other media to shame" and not acting on it...

Taddy Hall, Chief Strategy Officer, ARF referring to the study Booz Allen Hamilton conducted a study among 370 firms and found that 66% of executives say true ROI analytics is marketing’s greatest need. However, most firms are still using surrogate measures,such as advertising and brand awareness. From what see, corporate
CEOs no longer get excited about those soft-measure proxies.

.... a study by the CMO Council, conducted among 1,000 marketing executives, 80% of respondents said they were “dissatisfied” with their ability to measure ROI. Finally, in a joint ANA/Forrester survey, 70% of marketers said that even gaining agreement within their company for the definition
of ROI is “somewhat” or “very difficult.”…

Search Will Continue to Expand in Every Way

No matter how you slice it, search is taking off. It’s growing because it works – it’s measurable and efficient. Paid search capitalizes on many of the trends I cover in this newsletter; the consumer in control, the advertiser’s need to justify ad spending with ROI and the growing use of the Internet as a shopping and buying channel.
The consumer perspective is equally compelling. Search answers their needs because it delivers relevant information exactly when they need it.

Marshall Loeb's Daily Money Tip: Save on holiday travel costs - Airlines - General News - Travel - Transportation - Personal Finance

Example of type of short, topical article for syndication, links.....

"A new report from eMarketer predicts that rich media will overtake search to become the dominant form of Web advertising by the end of the decade."

Driven by consumer uptake of broadband...

"On the advertiser side, Yahoo! reports that its 200 largest brand-advertising customers spent 38% more on branding ads in Q1 2004 than in 2003...By presenting ads capable of swaying emotions, not just generating clicks, rich media will break down barriers and draw in large traditional advertisers...

A recent Online Publishers Association report titled "Generational Media Study." ... asked 1,235 US adult Internet users to choose two, and only two, media outlets (and jettison the rest), 45.6% made the Internet their first preference. As the clear-cut second banana among the respondents, 34.6% picked TV as their first choice, with every other medium in single figures. . .

the survey reflects the fact that Internet users are making the Internet their first choice among media, it also indicates that once people get accustomed to going online, they tend to make it primary in their lives — or at least secondary to television..."

eMarketer: Rich Media: Online Advertising Statistics: "Price $695.00 "

Cross marketing example:
Thomson capitalises on best- seller - 16-Nov-04.: "Thomson is planning to capitalise on the success of best-selling novel the Da Vinci Code with a range of deals to Paris in its new Cities and Short Breaks programme. "

Surveys catch data other methods miss...Description and white paper download - samples and case studies using web syrveys

WebSurveyor: Website Survey - 800-787-8755: "
Specific demographics of your site visitors, such as job title, department, and more.
Visitors reasons for visiting your site and why they return.
Publications or industry websites that site visitors also use or frequent.
Specifically what visitors like or dislike about your site."

How to Benefit by Carrying out a Responsible Email Marketing Campaign & Can Spam Act: "make sure that you abide by the Can-Spam guidelines passed by the Federal government. There are many good sites that offer in-depth information on this subject. For instance http://www.bizbrim.com offers information on all aspects of responsible email marketing. To get information about the Can-Spam Act you can visit http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/108s877.html "

Web Advertising: Branding Tops Clicks, Up to 80% : Culture and Community News- Home Finance And Loan Approval News and Guide Onlypunjab.com: "advertisers can accomplish branding and get immediate response via the Internet, why not do more of it? A case can be made that the side benefit of branding is actually more powerful than the main benefit of a direct response. Estimates are that clicks and immediate response account for 20-30% of the value of a web ad. That means that between 70 to 80% of the return for an advertiser comes from increased awareness, recall and purchase intent otherwise known as branding."

UpSNAP! Selects LookSmart to Sell Premium Listings on FREE 411 Service for Text-Enabled Cell Phones: "First-of-its-kind advertising model allows local and national advertisers to reach mobile consumers...

Source: Yahoo Finance - The agreement between UpSNAP! and LookSmart will offer merchants the opportunity to reach more than 160 million mobile consumers. For the first time, advertisers have a performance-based revenue model via text-messaging on cellular telephones."

iMediaConnection: Mobile Marketing in 2004: "Mobile Marketing in 2004" discussed...

Online ad types analysed: iMediaConnection: Face Time, or in your Face?: "What have become among the most outstanding formats for online advertising are the Home Page Takeover and the Roadblock."