This shows an increase (red plus blue bars) in paid digital media and earned/owned media at the expense of paid traditional media.  The most interesting message comes when they also report,

Monies continue to be shifted from traditional, expensive tactics toward digital—especially earned media —though it’s rarely a one-to-one exchange. More often, a dollar or euro lost from TV and print budgets becomes 20 cents of digital. 

This happens in large part because Facebook is free of media costs, as are so many things digital.  So advertisers are creating their own media channels without paying media costs.  Their budgets naturally move toward earned/owned media where creating content is the key to success.

I think this especially holds true at the local level.  It’s now a good idea to encourage retailers to use digital media where the barrier isn’t money, it’s process.  Save 80% when you shift dealers to digital media spending and apply the savings to providing the tools retailers need to promote themselves digitally… for free.

A good example would be to customize and host epromo pages for your retailers.  Much like a dealer builds a newspaper ad in a traditional ad builder, now also let them build an html  epromo page.  It’s co-branded by the brand, customized with local promotions by the dealer and ready to be distributed throughout the Internet for free.  It can be used in your brand’s dealer locator, linked from the dealer’s own site, part of the retailer’s Facebook page and becomes the landing page for very inexpensive local banner ad campaigns.

In our system we host the epromo page so the brand has complete knowledge of the results.  It’s not about media spending in 2012, it’s about taking advantage of free digital syndication.

]]> http://www.jgsullivan.com/2012/02/22/today-brand-data-syndicates-without-media-costs/feed/ 0 http://www.jgsullivan.com/2012/02/20/the-message-is-the-message/ http://www.jgsullivan.com/2012/02/20/the-message-is-the-message/#comments Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:53:42 +0000 John Sullivan, CEO http://www.jgsullivan.com/?p=5465 As much as the Internet has changed advertising and marketing these last 15 years or so, sooner or later the technology had to become a commodity and the message, not the medium, had to move back to the forefront.  Maybe we’ve hit that point.

This came to mind because of an article I was reading on Search Engine Land, “Landing Pages 3.0: How Content and Context Plays a More Meaningful Role.”  It’s a great article and the takeaway can be summed up in this excerpt,

Whereas the height of Landing Pages 2.0 was an ever-expanding list of rules and rubrics for implementing good landing pages, marketers who have graduated to a Landing Pages 3.0 mindset have outgrown such checklists and cheat sheets.

Instead, they’re now driving conversion programs from a higher set of principles:

1. Deliver meaningful, context-relevant content
2. Present that content with an engaging, affective design
3. Offer a compelling, but not coercive, “next step” to take

This reads a lot more like advertising 101 then landing page 3.0.  The author attributes to this new thinking in large part because,

It was also motivated in part by senior marketers — not just the paid search team — realizing that landing pages and websites were becoming the primary touchpoints by which prospects and customers assessed their brands. The rally of digital “customer experience” has brought much needed executive attention to the proverbial online marketing funnel.

I say it’s about time that the technology of the Internet gets accepted as commonplace and the message becomes King, again.

The basic idea for Pinterest is to pin what interests you to their electronic bulletin board and share your interest with others.   And, see what your friends have seen, that may be of interest to you.

With 4.9 million monthly visitors right now  and “products” being one of the subcategories to browse, this may be something as a brand manager you may want to keep your eye on.

In the New York Post I read this quote,

“Pinterest’s monetization strategy isn’t in the oven and it’s not even off the baking table,” said Jeremy Levine, a board member of Pinterest and a venture capitalist at Bessemer Venture Partners. “We have one hundred ideas but no execution as of yet.”

Like most of these sites, get the eyeballs first and the monetization will follow, they hope.

From a local marketing/advertising perspective it can change the landscape by becoming another free media outlet if they can segment consumers by geography.  That can happen with simple geo-coding or by allowing retailers to create a sizable local following.

We’ll keep an eye on them.

 This chart highlights the next challenge retailers are facing because of the power of  the Internet.  It used to be retailers worried about consumers buying online and never coming into the store.  Now they have to worry about consumers coming into their store, learning about the product, then buying the same product for a lower price online.

Short of the buying online scenario (12%), consumers are using smartphones to replace the sales rep as consumers do their own comparison shopping (34%) while they are in the store.

What’s a retailer to do?

How about getting ahead of the curve and give all of the sales reps a tablet computer that can access the retailer’s site that is loaded with great information, videos and testimonials.  A tablet computer makes for a better sales presentation then what can be delivered on a smartphone, and the retailers stays in control of the process.

If you’re a brand manager, your first step is to make sure your retailers have all of the digital assets they need to deliver a great product presentation on your behalf,  on both the fixed and mobile web.   And, you have to make it attractive to your retailers and even better for your consumers by allowing your retailers to add their sales pitch to your product presentation.

You’re probably doing it today for print media in your online ad builder.  Now you need an ad builder that also has digital templates that deliver html output for use online.   Better yet, host those html pages so you can track and react to every offer, every day.

Luxury consumers still rely on the brand and dealer to get the majority of their information and only about 12.5% interact on social media sites with the brand, before making a purchase.

What’s not clear is what causes this low level of interaction.  Is it that luxury consumers don’t trust social media or that luxury brands and their retailers haven’t populated social media sites with enough good information to make it a go to resource?

Even without knowing the answer to why the percentage is so low, I would still consider social media a viable medium to communicate with consumers and I would try and get better at it, not ignore it.   My reasoning is simple, social media is popular and free of publication cost, so the cost of reaching 12.5% is worth the effort.  And, if the content improves on social media sites, so too will the number of  interactions with consumers increase.

Make sure your marketing portal/ad  builder is loaded with social media tools.

We’ve written a lot about the explosive growth of smartphones and tablet computers and how they are  moving consumers to use the mobile web in addition to the fixed web to do their shopping research.

How to display your message to these very interested mobile shoppers is a little more complicated.  Do you build apps?  Apps for every platform out there?  Or, do consumers use a browser, even from their smartphone?

The results in the chart above gives us a simple plan of action.  Have an e-promo page system for your dealers so when they advertise one of your products in print, they also get a landing page (hosted in the system for tracking purposes) to reach both fixed and mobile  shoppers. (Or, skip the print part.)

Secondly, also produce and host a brand-friendly mobile landing page for the dealer, to address the large number of smartphone users who are using a browser to find out about your product.

And, finally think about an app.  Apps are cool but will they really work for your product?

Steps one and two should be high on your list for 2012.

It’s easy to see the downturn in the industry over the last several years as more and more information is moving online and therefore less need for printed brochures, not to mention the rise in e-readers, tablet computers and smartphones.

In the blog entry accompanying this chart, the author makes this point:

Last week, Facebook announced its long-awaited IPO, and reports indicated that the company was valued at $100 billion. To put that value and the shift in digital media in perspective, the commercial printing business generated approximately $4 billion in profits in the four quarter period of Q4-2010 to Q3-2011. At a generous 20x earnings, the entire US commercial printing would be worth $80 billion. The printing industry has about 475,000 employees, and Facebook reports its number of employees as “3000+”.

Recognizing the media shift, and getting out ahead of it on behalf of customer objectives, is becoming a critical strategy for commercial printing businesses.

All I can add is that recognizing this media shift is critical to all of us and especially to brand managers.   It’s not the good old days, nor will local marketing ever be the same again.  Make sure you’re providing your retail channel with the modern tools they need to promote and protect your brand digitally.

Showrooming is meant to describe the use of smartphones and tablet computers by consumers while in a store to buy the product they are interested in online, for a lower price then what the retailer is offering.  We wrote about Amazon’s app that does just that a few weeks ago.  Online retailers have an advantage of not charging sales tax (in some states) and, of course, they aren’t burdened with the expense of a show room.

Target wrote a letter to their manufacturers asking them to prevent this from happening.

“What we aren’t willing to do is let online-only retailers use our brick-and-mortar stores as a showroom for their products and undercut our prices without making investments, as we do, to proudly display your brands,” according to the letter, which was signed by Target Chief ExecutiveGregg Steinhafel and Kathee Tesija, Target’s executive vice president of merchandising.

Target would prefer that manufacturers provide them with products that are unique to Target and therefore can’t be shopped online.  While that might be a good idea for Target, what about the small independent retailers out there who you rely on for your brand, can you realistically give them their own models on a national basis?  No.

Showrooming effects the age old  relationship between consumers, brands and retailers and therefore needs to be addressed.  Retailers can’t be in business to demonstrate and service products that online retailers can sell at such a discount.

One idea worth considering is providing your retailers with their own online product catalog that allows retailers to include their price, service offerings and  promotions in a mobile friendly format.   Technically this isn’t that difficult to do and will give your retailers a chance to sell their service and promotions against the service challenged online competitors.

Just imagine if your car told you about a fuse about to blow; your furnace called a service person about a malfunction; or your garage door told you it was open in the middle of the day. 

We’re seeing more smart applications like this and getting involved in helping manufacturers connect their “things” to local dealers and consumers using the Internet.  Here are some recent articles that illustrate what smart companies are doing in this space:

1) Control my home thermostat via mobile and desktop browser.  I saw this last week from Nest Labs at the AHR (Air Conditioning / Heating / Refrigeration) show in Chicago last week.  Very cool.

2) Alert me and my dealer about a part failure on my farm equipment, or if my equipment might be stolen.  John Deere FarmSight is the service offering that helps keep our farmers at peak productivity.

3) Did I forget to close my garage door or turn the lights off?  The LiftMaster MyQ service provides online access to control — and ultimately peace of mind.

We’re excited about the possibility of a world where we have control of our things — and we give them permission to alert us and our trusted service professionals to potential trouble ahead.  It’s one more logical extension of Web technology to connect your local dealer and consumers.  One more opportunity to create customer loyalty, provide great service and sell more.

Now, if you’re in the agency business this is a bad story because P&G is talking about laying off people who are working on paid media.

However, if you’re a brand manager you should take note that the traditional way of thinking about advertising is rapidly changing and if you change with it, you can save a lot of money.

From the article:

P&G said it would lay off 1,600 staffers, including marketers, as part of a cost-cutting exercise. More interestingly, CEO Robert McDonald finally seems to have woken up to the fact that he cannot keep increasing P&G’s ad budget forever, regardless of what happens to its sales.

He told Wall Street analysts that he would have to “moderate” his ad budget because Facebook and Google can be “more efficient” than the traditional media that usually eats the lion’s share of P&G’s ad budget.

We see our client’s reacting in much the same way as they are adding more and more ways to help local retailers advertise online beyond paid media in their marketing portals.

From the same article P&G’s CEO Robert McDonald says,

In the digital space, with things like Facebook and Google and others, we find that the return on investment of the advertising, when properly designed, when the big idea is there, can be much more efficient. One example is our Old Spice campaign, where we had 1.8 billion free impressions and there are many other examples I can cite from all over the world. So while there may be pressure on advertising, particularly in the United States, for example, during the year of a presidential election, there are mitigating factors like the plethora of media available.

We think the logic that P&G is using works even better for local advertising where retailers need to watch every penny.  Now it’s time to think more about online media, especially social.  Another big advantage besides FREE media is that digital is much easier to change, control and monitor.  If you’re spending a lot of money on co-op administration, imagine how much you can save if every item is pre-approved and automatically tracked.

Change is good.