One-on-One Exclusives September 28, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a comment| One-on-One Exclusives |
| by Staff Writers, Friday, Sep 28, 2007 6:00 AM ET |
 OMMA New York Emcee Nick Nyhan of Dynamic Logic talks about the big trends emerging from this week’s show. |
R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Why Market Research Just Doesn't Get It September 26, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentR-E-S-P-E-C-T: Why Market Research Just Doesn’t Get It
Marketers Continue to Ignore an Industry They Need Now More Than Ever
Published: September 24, 2007
It’s a weird dissonance some believe is at the heart of marketing’s malaise. Marketers need good research more than ever but either can’t get it, can’t understand it or can’t accept it. Market research, in other words, has never been so important. Yet market researchers are as unimportant as ever — at least within their organizations.
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Like moguls with trophy wives, marketers keep collecting them and keep ignoring them.
The research industry is struggling for respect even as it races to fill vacancies. Fragmentation, complexity and demand for accountability have been a boon for researchers — to the point that their pay and bonuses are rising 10% or more annually, according to recruiting firm Stephen-Bradford Search.
On the other hand, few researchers ever move beyond their staff functions into top marketing or management roles at marketers, agencies or even leading research companies. When the private-equity owners of Nielsen Co., the biggest research firm of all, needed someone to turn the company around, they turned to David Calhoun, one of the hottest products from General Electric Co.’s general-management mill, who spent most of his career in finance.
“Marketers generally distrust research and data,” said Greg Stuart, former CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau and co-author of the book “What Sticks,” who’s in the process of launching an undisclosed new business.
Punch in the gut
That attitude helps keep the industry driven largely by gut instinct and what Mr. Stuart calls “tribal custom.” But tradition and gut are increasingly impractical given the complexities of modern marketing, he said.
He cites a relatively simple marketing plan with five elements — positioning, segmentation, TV, print and online media plans — and five choices within each element. It amounts to more than 3,000 permutations. “We’d have to be out of our minds to think we could know what to do in our gut,” he said.
Researchers’ relatively low status within companies and agencies, he said, leads to marketers ignoring their advice or never seeking it in the first place. At the same time, many marketers’ inability to understand the methodology and calculations behind data they get, Mr. Stuart said, “allows research to be abused, sometimes by researchers but also by people trying to sell things.”
Just as marketers often don’t understand research, the researchers often don’t understand why they’re doing it.
Utility
“There is a general belief [among researchers] that over 50% of the research done at companies is wasted,” said Bob Barocci, CEO of the Advertising Research Federation. “They’re asked to do things that, even if the research project is perfect, won’t be useful.”
He attributes much of that to research done purely for defensive purposes to support decisions already made. “It’s covering-your-butt kind of thinking,” he said.
But he also blames research departments for much of the disconnect with marketers. “Often all we do is present numbers,” Mr. Barocci said. “We don’t present insights.”
To be sure, researchers have sought to fix that image by no longer calling research by its old, academic-sounding name.
“I can’t stand the term ‘market research,’” said Alison Zelen, director of consumer and market insights for Unilever’s deodorant business. “I don’t consider myself a market researcher at all. I really consider myself a marketer, which is why I like the [insights] title.”
She termed market research “this huge industry of billions of dollars that anyone basically can do.”
Self-sustaining problem
That outlook has found its way into industry economics, encouraging procurement departments to drive down costs and, in the process, research quality, which in turn undermines marketer confidence in research. It’s a classic vicious circle.
Years before marketers set their procurement officers loose on ad agencies in the 1990s, they did so on research, and with much less hand-wringing.
“The perception is that the only thing important here is price, because any one of these companies will deliver the same results,” Mr. Barocci said. “That’s the cause of procurement getting involved early and quickly [in research buying]. I don’t think anybody ever really believed agencies, on the other hand, were a commodity.”
Research companies are to blame too, he said, for not pushing back, or at least not disclosing what the quality trade-offs will be from low bids.
Quality control
Online research has been a key factor driving down research costs and increasing speed, but some believe it’s also driving down quality. Procter & Gamble Co., the biggest buyer of research in the world, last year disclosed that some online surveys from the same vendors weeks apart delivered significantly different results, as well as online surveys whose results differed significantly from those obtained by mail surveys.
Partly in response, the ARF launched an effort to develop new online-research quality standards by next year. At the same time, Mr. Barocci said the ARF hopes to “start a dialogue on procurement” practices in 2008.
But he said the single biggest issue facing the industry is: “How do we get better data?” He added that continued concerns about the quality of research data in many areas may play the biggest role in undermining the industry’s image.
Research produced as part of the ARF’s online-quality initiative isn’t necessarily a confidence builder. A study recently presented by Knowledge Networks found in some cases substantial divergence from known benchmarks established by the U.S. Census or elsewhere both in online and phone surveys. The sample populations in seven online surveys and one phone survey ranged 10 percentage points or more from the norm in areas such as race, education, income range, movie viewership and travel habits.
A separate study by Burke found an average of 14% of survey takers across 20 online panels were fraudulent or “mentally cheating.” Depending on the panel, between 11% and 20% of respondents contradicted themselves by — at different points in the surveys — saying the same brand both was and was not worth paying more for.
Innovation needed
Kimberly-Clark Chief Marketing Officer Tony Palmer said survey research itself may be part of the industry’s image problem.
“It’s becoming harder and harder to get people’s attention to do research,” Mr. Palmer said. “It’s becoming clearer and clearer that what people say and what they do is different. So there’s a real need to drive research to newer techniques, toward research that deploys anthropology and observation.”
Of course, if more senior managers at marketers or agencies came from research backgrounds, they might be better at sniffing out research-quality issues, understanding quality trade-offs for cheaper research and recognizing how research could be improved. But for many reasons, that isn’t happening and may never.
“When you get to a senior level, it’s about leadership, inspiring people, direction, decisiveness, handling ambiguity,” Mr. Palmer said. “My guess is that the skill set required to make you a really good researcher may be a little different. You tend to
be a little more introverted. … But the industry also needs to ask itself the question: ‘Am I developing people the way I need to be?’”
Susan Gianinno, chairman-CEO of Publicis USA, is a rare senior agency executive from a research background — a former University of Chicago research psychologist who spent several years in or running agency research departments before moving into account management. But she, too, thinks most researchers are ill-suited to run businesses.
Detached researchers
“To move a business forward, you have to come to a judgment and move on pretty quickly, and a really rigorous researcher knows too much about what he doesn’t know,” she said. “Some of the best researchers are better served by being the objective spokesperson for truth and not having to worry about some of the pragmatic aspects of our business.”
But because researchers have become increasingly detached from the creative process, she said, many “don’t know how to take their insights and convert them into actionable, inspiring briefs.”
Unbundling of media from creative agencies over recent decades has widened the divide of research from creativity, she said, because the media agencies took most of the best researchers with them. And research lost favor within its remaining stronghold at creative shops — account planning.
“The whole era of British-imported planning,” she said, “did a huge disservice to strategy and planning because it became too qualitative in the sense that if somebody could just think up an idea or put on a good presentation, they were deemed a good planner.”
While it’s rare for researchers to move into senior marketing and management positions at marketers, too, it’s not unheard of. One example is Irene Rosenfeld, chairman-CEO of Kraft Foods, who after getting a Ph.D. in marketing and statistics from Cornell University started in the General Foods research department in 1981.
Success story?
Research executives believe the relative clout people from research backgrounds had at Kraft and General Foods in decades past probably contributed to Kraft becoming the leading adopter of now widely used marketing-mix modeling to evaluate advertising effectiveness.
Gregg Ambach, VP-analytic services at ImmediateFX and a veteran both of Kraft and Campbell Soup Co., said Kraft was well ahead of Campbell in developing marketing analytics. “Certainly there was no one with a career path similar to Irene’s in the Campbell organization,” he said. “Some of that is probably recognizing the value of the staff function.”
Of course, the Kraft experience hasn’t always been a glowing endorsement of the power of analytics. With sales growth stuck, around 3%, Kraft has been lagging behind some of its big peers, such as Kellogg and Nestlé. And in one of the more extreme forms of procurement hardball in 2003 (before Ms. Rosenfeld took over), Kraft asked some market-research firms to rebate money they’d already been paid.
Even the biggest proponents of research don’t necessarily believe putting more researchers in charge is the answer. But putting more researchers into C-level roles, perhaps as chief strategy officers, may help.
Bringing data to the table
“I like to have a quant jock or a researcher by my side in running a business,” Mr. Stuart said. “I like to have direct access to that expertise.”
The other solution, he said, is to make research a bigger part of general marketers’ training.
He said he sees hope for more “fact-based decision-making” taking hold in marketing through such parallels as Major League Baseball, where the numbers-driven “Moneyball” talent development of Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane has gained a growing foothold in recent years.
“That kind of change is generational,” Mr. Stuart said. “It’s going to be a long, slow slog.”
If baseball’s any indication, he’s right: The A’s are playing under .500 this year.
Online Video: Short-Term Hype Or Long-Term Brand Builder? September 24, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentOnline Video: Short-Term Hype Or Long-Term Brand Builder?
Posted September 24th, 2007 by Nigel Hollis
Why is online video attracting such interest right now? Doesn’t it seem odd that a marketing world that is apparently shifting from “show and tell” communication offline to “engage and interact” communication online should focus so much attention on video? After all, most online video content still offers a passive viewing experience that fails to capitalize on the interactive nature of the Web. I believe it is exactly this more passive experience that makes video an effective brand-builder online, now and for years to come.
Before going further, let’s just remind ourselves that referring to “online video” as if it is a homogeneous entity is totally misleading. Recent analysis by Dynamic Logic confirms that, just like TV ads, online video ads vary dramatically in their effectiveness. According to Dynamic Logic’s MarketNorms the best online video ad creates over twenty times more brand-linked awareness than the worst. Higher ad awareness typically translates into a difference in purchase intent. This varies from a difference between exposed and not-exposed cells of +6.9% for the best ad tested, to a drop of -1.5% for the worst.
While online video may suffer just as many successes and duds as its TV counterparts, its effectiveness compared to other online ad formats is certain. Currently video creates twice the average lift in ad awareness compared to all ads in MarketNorms database, and nearly twice the lift in purchase intent.
So what does the future hold for online video? I believe it will become an important means to build brands in an online environment, allowing advertisers to reach out to and communicate with people who are not yet thinking of buying their product or service category.
Most online ad formats are neither engaging nor interesting unless the person seeing them is actually looking to research or buy the category. Some, like the dancing silhouettes used to advertise cheap mortgages, are not only irrelevant but are actively distracting and irritating to those of us not looking to refinance our homes. Online ads that are engaging in their own right are few and far between, and the rest are easy to ignore. Therefore, response depends more on good targeting and placement — ensuring that people who might be in the market see the ad at the right time — than on good content. By contrast, video offers a far better chance to engage people who may not be interested in making an immediate purchase, provided the content is judged worth watching.
To online marketers who are used to using the Web as a direct response medium, this rationale must seem crazy. Surely, the whole idea is to reach people when they are actively engaged in researching or making a purchase? Not to brand marketers intent on developing a real relationship between their brands and consumers. If you seed ideas and preconceptions before people even think about buying a product or service, you can gain a head start over the competition. If you do this well enough, then, when people do experience a need, your brand will be more familiar and desirable than the competitors.
Video advertising on TV has always been the bedrock of long-term brand building. As online video becomes more prevalent, I expect it to perform just the same role.
Ad Spend:Net Up 23%; National Mags Show Nice 8.4% Gain September 21, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a comment| Ad Spend: Net Up 23%; National Mags Show Nice 8.4% Gain |
| by Karlene Lukovitz, Friday, Sep 21, 2007 5:00 AM ET |
| TO NO ONE’S SURPRISE, INTERNET ad spending again leaped by double digits in this year’s first half–rising 23.2% to $3.7 billion, according to The Nielsen Company. But national magazines also had a notably strong period, growing 8.4% to reach $9.5 billion. The 250 magazine members of the Magazine Publishers of America’s Publishers Information Bureau (PIB) service gained 17% in drugs and remedies ad revenue in the first half, to reach $1.1 billion. Last year, drug advertising in PIB magazines increased 19%. Toiletries and cosmetics, food, apparel, retail and media are among the other categories showing significant spend growth in PIB consumer magazines. “Marketers are recognizing that magazines excel in areas critical to success: building purchasing intent, increasing traffic to advertisers’ Web sites and stimulating search activity,” says MPA’s EVP/CMO Ellen Oppenheim, citing recent data along these lines from Deloitte and Touche, BIGResearch, Jupiter, Dynamic Logic and Marketing Evolution. However, Nielsen reports that local magazines were down 5.2% (to $254.8 million), a result of declines in spend among print media companies, realtors, restaurants and tourism, according to Brian Lane, SVP/client strategy and development for Nielsen Monitor-Plus. Also, B-to-B magazine spend decreased by 5.7%, to $2.1 billion. (Travel, media and building magazines were among the hardest-hit.) Other media experiencing ad growth in the first half were national Sunday supplements (up 6.5%, to $548 million); outdoor (up 5.1%, to $1.8 billion) and spot TV markets 101-210 (up 3.2%, to $621 million). However, 10 of the 16 media tracked saw declines. In addition to local and B-to-B magazines, these included: network radio down 8.5%, to $525.3 million; local newspapers down 8%, to $6.4 billion; national newspapers down 5.9%, to 880.6 million; local Sunday supplements down 4.7%, to $28 million; spot TV 1-100 down 4.6%, to $10.9 billion; network TV down 3.8%, to $12.1 billion; spot radio down 1.8%, to $3.4 billion, and cable TV down 0.3%, to $11.5 billion. Spanish-language TV was flat (up 0.2%, to $1.5 billion). Overall spend was down 0.5%. Spending was down in most major categories: automotive (-10%), department stores (-7%), automotive dealerships (-5%), and quick-serve and standard restaurants (both down 2%). However, pharmaceuticals and direct response products each grew by 7%, and wireless telephone services grew by 6%. Furniture store spending was flat. In the automotive category, Ford’s slight increase in spending (up 2.1%, to $871 million) did little to offset a nearly 28% decrease at General Motors (down to $954 million), a 5.2% decrease at Toyota (down to $628 million) and a 4.4% decrease at Chrysler (down to $588 million). Outside of Ford, Kraft was the only other Top 10 advertiser to increase spend (by just 0.4%, to $608 million). (Check the related chart on Marketing Daily’s home page for details.) Product placements continued to thrive, at least on broadcast TV. Nielsen reports 17,731 PP occurrences in this year’s first half among the top 10 users, versus 14,643 during last year’s first half. “American Idol” was again the #1 show for placements, with 4,349 for the period (versus 4,086 in first-half 2006). “Fast Cars and Superstars,” which premiered in June, holds second place, with 3,231 occurrences. Other favorite placement venues include “Amazing Race All Stars,” “Pussycat Dolls Present” and “Extreme Makeover Home Edition.” Coca-Cola (3,054 occurrences) was the largest user of broadcast network placements. Others among the top 10 were Nike apparel (511), Dell (396) and Hewlett-Packard (315). Placements on cable networks declined, from 107,792 in first-half 06 to 92,925 in this year’s first half. “American Chopper” (29,476), “Dog the Bounty Hunter” (12,321), “Miami Ink” (10,892) and “Overhaulin” (7,556) were the placement shows of choice. Top users of these shows included brands like Orange County Choppers (apparel and motorcycles) and Oakley Sunglasses, although Nike also made the cable top 10 list. |
Top performing online campaigns need branding objectives September 20, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentTop performing online campaigns need branding objectives Article here
Dynamic Logic recently announced the most effective online advertising campaigns, based on research that evaluated how well each campaign achieved its branding objectives. Reviewing the campaigns measured in the US and the UK during 2006, Suzanne Moorey-Denham, managing director, Europe of Dynamic Logic discusses the top overall campaigns, which successfully generated the greatest branding impact.
Top UK campaigns
The top UK campaigns, which evaluated over 100 campaigns that also included some European advertising, represented a wide variety of brands and categories, including travel, FMCG, automotive and entertainment. Brands included two cinema campaigns for Adrift and The Sentinel, which utilised video as part of the campaigns’ assets. Also among the top performers were online travel site Opodo, Colgate’s Palmolive for Men, Philips Streamium Wireless Music Center, Sheila’s Wheels, Kraft’s Tassimo, Volkswagen Jetta and Yahoo! Search. On average, advertising for entertainment brands, such as films or television programmes, consistently generate higher average branding scores as compared to other categories. This is partly due to the very nature of these campaigns; they are fun to watch and often include clips of the film and celebrity actors as part of the adverts. However; the mix of product categories represented within the top campaigns, shows that many brands are successfully using online advertising.
These campaigns produced Online Advertising Awareness scores ranging from 8-20 percentage-point increases, which, interestingly, is notably lower than the scores for the top US campaigns. This may not be surprising, and may partly explain the difference in performance, since a majority of the top US campaigns used online video as a creative unit.
Previous Dynamic Logic research has shown that online video adverts can effectively cut through the clutter, yielding higher awareness for brands on average compared to other ad formats and online advertising in general. As online video becomes more commonplace on sites in the UK and across Europe, more agencies may begin to implement video elements as part of their campaign, driving higher average ad recall increases.
Many of the top online campaigns were well-integrated with their offline campaigns, including Sheila’s Wheels, allowing people to more easily recognise and connect with the brands.
The adverts also included a combination of rich media elements and various ad formats, including some lively home-page placements which captured visitors’ attention, but did not disrupt their experience enough to have a negative impact on the brands. The top performing campaigns tended to find the right balance between grabbing and holding people’s attention and having a positive effect without harming their user experience.
Top US campaigns
Among those ads measured in the US, the top campaigns were led by FMCG products, including four Kraft campaigns: Oreo, Honey Bunches of Oats, Kraft Singles and Crystal Light On-the-Go. These campaigns dominate the top performers partly because they have had a particularly innovative approach to online over the past few years. By conducting research and testing campaigns, marketers can learn and refine their process, incorporating learnings from one, informing and improving the creative and planning aspects of future campaigns.
Other brands that also achieved high scores were BMW, Dove, McDonald’s, and Ray-Ban. Online Ad Awareness scores for these campaigns ranged from 18-43 percentage-point increases after exposure to online advertising. The ads were also highly persuasive, generating the highest scores in Brand Favourability and Purchase Intent.
The value of video
As noted earlier, most of the US campaigns utilised some form of video ads as part of their online campaign. Video ads can provide a successful format to communicate to consumers. Many of the video ads appearing among the top campaigns happened to be repurposed TV spots that were adapted for online, and also implemented a variety of video formats, including pre-roll, in-banner and interstitial ads. Companion units were placed near the video, allowing viewers to interact with the ads and maintaining constant brand presence while the videos were playing.
These campaigns illustrate smart media strategy and clever but simple creativity, providing some great examples of what online adverts are working well. They also illustrate some guidelines in creating successful online brand advertising that other marketers may be able to learn from and apply. Following are some best practices that can be gleaned from the top performing campaigns:
- Keep the message simple. Don’t try to convey too many messages with your online advertising
- Be sure the brand is intrinsically linked to the creative assets
- The online campaign should be synergistic with the offline campaign
- For products, make the product shot the “hero” of the ad. Showing the prepared product or people using the product helps to demonstrate its benefits and also grabs viewers’ attention
- Leverage the unique capabilities of the Internet, such an interaction, layered roll-over units, and precise targeting
The research was conducted using AdIndex while each campaign was running live across the websites that made up the actual media plan. These campaigns were the most noticed, generating the highest Online Ad Awareness scores after exposure to the online campaign; they resulted in positive increases in awareness of the brand or product being advertised and were also highly persuasive.
The Online Advertising Conundrum — More Metrics, Less Meaning September 11, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentThe Online Advertising Conundrum — More Metrics, Less Meaning
Posted September 11th, 2007 by Joe Marchese
Last week’s Metrics Insider, by ComScore Chief Research Officer Josh Chasin, does an excellent job of laying out one of the major issues facing online advertising: the lack of measurement standardization. Time and again it has been a topic discussed in this Spin: you can’t build a sustainable, advertising-supported marketplace if you can’t establish a meaningful unified currency for exchange. Trying to build a marketplace without a unified currency is like trying to build a house (the Internet) on a poor foundation (advertising). There are many ways to build the house in the short-term (VC, PE and other sources of non-sustainable capital), but the more you try to expand the house, the more likely it will crumble to the ground due to the weak foundation. And I think we all know how the house in our analogy reacts when faced with poor weather (economy).
And the issue goes beyond just a lack of standardization. The greater issue is that, regardless of efforts to standardize measurements, money (advertisers) is still seeking the wrong metrics!
Let’s take a quick look at the lack of standard metrics first. In our house-building analogy (which I promise to beat into the ground over the course of this article), this lack is analogous to trying to build a foundation when every tool you use gives you a different reading.
It’s not easy to create unanimously accepted standards when there are five people in a room. I am not sure how we have even come this far given the magnitude of self-interest among the many participants interested in defining online measurement standards.
The larger problem for the entire online eco-system, including advertisers, is that standardization of measurement won’t matter if advertisers continue to demand meaningless, and even harmful, metrics. Going back to our housing analogy, building the online advertising marketplace on the “wrong” metrics, is like building our foundation with the wrong materials altogether. Instead of concrete, we’re using silly putty — destined to collapse our house.
I have written before about how creating a market for impressions is corroding the entire Internet eco-system (re: “Advertising’s Role In Crippling The Internet As A Medium”). The basic gist is that if money demands impressions, then online publishers (and ad networks) will do what’s necessary to generate impressions.
The problem is that, unlike with television, the impression is not an efficient proxy for quality online. Television could only generate impressions by providing value to people, thus the impression-based market facilitated a solid foundation for television’s house. Online, there are a number of ways to generate and increase impressions without actually benefiting the people. Worse, most of these unscrupulous methods for achieving impressions make the impressions worthless, or of negative value, to brand advertisers.
So we have a flood of poor quality product in the marketplace, degrading the quality of our foundation and creating a massive misalignment of goals between content viewers and content producers. Even among quality content, not all impressions are worth the same to all advertisers. In the end the advertisers are forced to take an average value of impressions, which accounts for the deceptive methods for generating the metric they demanded and the inability to define which quality impressions will deliver the most value. This average is obviously well below what would be necessary to support quality content producers trying to produce impressions without “cheating,” and so our house crumbles.
For the sake of space we won’t get into the misalignment among advertisers, publishers and consumers created by utilizing clicks as a foundation metric. I will simply refer you to just a few of my favorite examples of the ads currently polluting the Internet seeking clicks: “Win a free _____” “Shave Britney’s Head” “System Error, Click Here.” And those are just the ads themselves; I’m not mentioning the various techniques online content publishers use to “trick” visitors into clicking.
My new favorite saying is, “The goal isn’t to connect brands to impressions, the goal is to connect brands to people.” What’s needed is a new system of measurements based on a true and solid “foundation metric” that actually means something to each advertiser, can’t be faked by publishers, and won’t incentivize the continued pollution of our online eco-system for the people. But how do you measure this? The foundation metric will have to be a proxy for content quality, account for content type and be a measure of volume delivered. Finally, as discussed in the Metrics Insider piece, the foundation metric will have to be standardized for exchange. What are your thoughts on what would be included in a proper “foundation metric”?
Media Post People On The Move September 11, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a comment| Opt-Intelligence hired PAUL FUSCO as chief revenue officer. Fusco most recently served as vice president at Oberon Media in New York. |
Active Athlete Media appointed MARTI FUNK as vice president, client solutions and insights. Most recently, she served as vice president, digital distribution and partner strategy for Real Branding. |
Moroch Partners opened a Rochester office and hired HEIDI BAUMER as senior supervisor. Baumer previously worked as a management supervisor for Arnold. |
| Riot/New York added CHRISTOPHER “PINK” BONNSTETTER as the company’s new CG supervisor, responsible for expanding the New York CG/visual effects operations of the company. |
YASH EGAMI was promoted to editor-in-chief of one. a magazine. Egami will continue to oversee the planning, assigning and writing for each issue, in addition to taking over chief editorial tasks from founding editor WARREN BERGER, who will now assume the role of editor-at-large. |
JEAN CLAUDE CANCEDDA was hired as creative director, print and broadcast design, Sundance Channel. Cancedda will oversee all on- and off-air creative design and execution for Sundance Channel and all key elements related to the Sundance Channel brand. Cancedda served as design director for the Food Network where he supervised the creation and execution of all on and off air network campaigns including new series launches, show packaging, and tune in spots. |
Azoogle.com named MICHAEL SPROUSE chief marketing officer. He joins the company from Playboy Enterprises, where he served as senior vice president of marketing. |
MONEY named PAUL LIM a senior editor and JANICE REVELL a senior writer. DONNA ROSATO was promoted to senior writer. |
| Heavy named ERIC HADLEY as CMO, SCOTT PENBERTHY as CTO and TODD SLOAN as CFO. |
| Carat promoted MEGAN HORNE to account supervisor, up from account executive. |
SCOTT WILLARD joined FUSE/ideas as account executive. |
Toth Brand Imaging promoted TYRONE SAYERS to group account director, up from account supervisor. |
Strategis named MICHAEL SAVAGE as an account coordinator. |
MARK JANNOT, Editor of Bonnier Corporation’s Popular Science, has been promoted to editor-in-chief of both Popular Science and the soon to be launched Science Illustrated. |
Glam Media named RALF HIRT as vice president, International. In this position, Hirt, formerly the vice president of operations & strategic partnerships for DoubleClick, will drive Glam Media’s international development strategy. |
| Powered named DAVID SETTLE as chief financial officer. He most recently served as co-founder and CFO of Mirage Networks. |
STEPHEN A. THORPEY was promoted to advertising sales manager at CBS Television Stations Digital Media Group, up from advertising sales coordinator. |
CHRIS COLAROSSI was promoted to director of business development, Entertainment Group at MTV Networks. |
Adamson Advertising named idea director JASON PARKS a principal in the agency. Parks is the agency’s fourth current principal. |
BARBARA HAMILTON joined R/GA as executive creative director on the Johnson & Johnson account. Most recently, she was vice president, associate creative director at Digitas, where she worked for eight years on a variety of accounts including American Express. |
CHARITY CURLEY joined Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia as vice president, editorial director for Internet. Prior to joining the company, she worked for several years at HGTV.com, where she served as vice president, responsible for all content development, strategy and business initiatives for the Home & Garden category Web site. |
CHRIS JOHNSON joined Zillow as the advertising operations campaign manager. AMY BRAZIL joined the company as an account executive. She previously served as the national advertising sales manager at Move.com. Lastly, JASON ROSS joined the company as advertising solutions manager. Previously he was a sales planner at Microsoft. |
BRIAN KASTELEIN joined Euro RSCG Discovery as general manager. Most recently, he launched and grew the Integrated Analytics practice for Arnold Worldwide. |
GLEN CARUSO joined TACODA as director of southeast advertising sales in Atlanta and CARY GOSS was named director of Midwest advertising sales in Chicago. |
BRIAN STEEL, former president of Yahoo!’s international search marketing, was named chief executive officer of Podbridge. Additionally, JEFF KARNES was named vice president of marketing & products. |
Topix hired MICHAEL LINTON as vice president of sales. Linton joins the company from Technorati, where he served as director of sales. |
| RICHARD BENNINGTON joined Digitas, Chicago as general manager. Bennington joined the agency from Ignition Advertising, where as president and chief executive officer he led daily operations for the startup agency. |
OLIVIA DUPUIS was named director, corporate communications for Rainbow Media. Previously, Dupuis was an account director at Goodman Media International, where she planned and executed communication campaigns for television and media clients. |
Deutsch New York promoted CECELIA BLOCK from associate director of benefits and training to vice president, associate director of benefits and training. |
| TODD STANLEY joined Digitas as senior vice president, marketing. Stanley joins the agency after 10 years at Lowe Worldwide, where he was most recently president of the Toronto office. |
Media Post Accounts On The Move September 10, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a comment| Checkers |
| ML Rogers |
| ML Rogers was named creative agency of record on the $35 million Checkers Drive-In Restaurants account. A new TV campaign will launch this fall. |
| Panera Bread |
| Looney Advertising |
| Panera Bread added Looney Advertising to its roster, handling all corporate communications, including strategic planning, creative development and media planning and buying in New Jersey. The agency is developing an integrated campaign slated to launch this fall, which will include TV, print, online, OOH, radio, branding, in-store and promotions. Looney originally worked with the company on a project basis. |
| U.S. Census Bureau |
| Draftfcb |
| The U.S. Census Bureau awarded Draftfcb New York its 2010 Census communications contract, worth $200 million over four years. In addition to serving as the lead agency, Draftfcb will handle all online and offline general market media planning and will partner with Initiative for general market broadcast buying. Partner agencies will handle media planning and buying for their market segments. The agency will work with partner agencies including Draftfcb Puerto Rico, GlobalHue, A to Sí, IW Group, G&G, Allied Media, Initiative, Weber Shandwick Minneapolis, Jack Morton, Booz Allen Hamilton, the Marcom Group and Zona Design. |
| Porsche North America |
| Cramer-Krasselt |
| Cramer-Krasselt was awarded creative and media duties on the $40 million Porsche North America account. Other finalists included incumbent Carmichael Lynch, The Martin Agency and SS&K. |
| New Balance |
| In Review |
| Arnold Worldwide, BBDO Worldwide, Element 79 Partners, Bartle Bogle Hegarty and Cramer-Krasselt are the five finalists in the running for creative and media duties on New Balance’s $20 million account. Boathouse previously handled the work. |
| Clear |
| Optimedia U.S. |
| Verified Identity Pass tapped Optimedia U.S. to handle media planning and buying duties for Clear, which provides its members with fast-pass lanes at airport security checkpoints. Optimedia has purchased 250 Clear memberships for its five U.S. offices. Clear provides members with access to faster lines through airport security checkpoints by using an identity card containing their encrypted fingerprint or iris images. |
| Monster.com |
| BBDO |
| Monster.com consolidated its global creative advertising work at BBDO Worldwide. BBDO New York and Atmosphere BBDO will lead the effort on the $150 million account, succeeding Brand Content. Work will debut in early 2008. |
| General Nutrition Centers |
| In Review |
| General Nutrition Centers placed the creative portion of its $30 million advertising account in review. |
| Bahamas Ministry of Tourism |
| In Review |
| The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism placed creative chores for its $12 million account in review. Fallon previously handled the work. |
| Starz Entertainment Group |
| In Review |
| Starz Entertainment Group placed creative duties on its $10 million account in review. |
| Samsung |
| In Review |
| Samsung placed its global media account, estimated at $500 million, in review. |
| Sony PlayStation |
| In Review |
| Deutsch Los Angeles, Publicis West, RPA, Venables, Bell & Partners and incumbent TBWAChiatDay are the five finalists vying for creative duties on the $150 million Sony PlayStation account. |
| dealnews.com |
| Kastner & Partners |
| Kastner & Partners was named advertising agency of record for dealnews.com, a deal-publishing Web site. The agency’s first campaign combines online advertising with guerilla marketing and selective outdoor concepts. The first part of the multi-million dollar campaign will launch during the Christmas season. |
| McDonald’s |
| Moroch Partners |
| Moroch Partners won the McDonald’s Rochester, N.Y. Co-op advertising duties, a market that previously worked with Arnold Worldwide for 30 years. The addition of the Rochester market brings the number of U.S. McDonald’s markets handled by Moroch Partners to 53. The agency will handle strategic planning, development and execution, along with media planning and buying. |
| Seabrook Island |
| Erwin-Penland |
| Erwin-Penland has been awarded creative, media, interactive, direct marketing, promotions and PR duties for the billion-dollar South Carolina resort developments Seabrook Island and Poplar Grove. |
| Allstate |
| Various agencies |
| Lapiz was awarded creative duties on Allstate’s $35 million Hispanic account and Tapestry picked up media duties. La Agencia de Orci y Asociados previously handled the account. |
MediaPost, People On The Move, September 5, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a comment| Captivate Network named HUGH FLANIGAN as creative director and SARAH NASTASI as research director. |
| MIKE JONES was promoted to director of business & audience development for The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. JAMES BUTCHART was elevated to senior account manager for the WSJ Digital Network, and TRENT HUFFMAN joined WSJ Digital Network as director of sales development. |
| JEFF GRIFFING was named group publisher of Transworld Media. |
| EPrize named GABE KARP as senior vice president, general counsel and ROBYN MARCOTTE as senior vice president, talent. |
| ROSS DOBSON joined Mullen as a managing partner responsible for leading the digital, direct marketing and analytics groups and fostering company-wide integrated marketing initiatives. He joins the agency after serving as managing director for strategy and enablement at Stone Ward. |
JOHN FORD rejoined Discovery Communications as president and general manager of Military Channel and Discovery Times Channel. He recently served as executive vice president, programming at National Geographic Channel. |
LevLane, Philadelphia, hired LARA DIPIAZZA as account director, handling the Sunoco and Beneficial Bank accounts. Most recently, DiPiazza was account supervisor at SFGT, working on Tylenol. |
DEENA GREENBERG was named fashion/jewelry advertising director of O, The Oprah Magazine. She most recently served as accessories director for Vogue. |
| MICHELLE L. TARR was named senior vice president and NICOLE H. DOSTIE and CAROL A. PUCHALA were named vice presidents at Campbell-Ewald. |
IDG List Services promoted ANDREW SAMBROOK from vice president of IDG List Services to general manager. Sambrook will replace DEB GOLDSTEIN who is retiring. |
The Harlem Globetrotters named PETER LAPOINTE as the team’s senior vice president, partnership marketing & sales. He joins the company from the National Football League, where he spent the past eight years working on the development of the NFL’s international business. |
| MARC USA named ALEX YOVANOVICH group account director. |
MIKE TAKAC was promoted to senior vice president, sales for Warner Home Video. Takac will continue to oversee sales integration with the added responsibility of leading WHV’s domestic field sales group. |
| Katz Media Group hired DAVE BISCEGLIA as vice president and general manager of the American and National Divisions of Millennium Sales & Marketing’s Chicago office, a division of the Katz Television Group. He joins Millennium from Blair Television, where he spent more than 20 years in various sales management positions in New York, Dallas and Chicago. |
| JEFFREY FILASETA was promoted to vice president national content sales at IAC Entertainment Publications. |
DAVID TOTH, former president, CEO, and co-founder of the NetRatings, has joined TubeMogul’s board of directors. |
MARK BARRERA was named eMarketing program director for Franklin-Spirko Media, responsible for creating campaigns that encompass all aspects of Internet marketing. |
MSG Media appointed ERIC SWANSON to the newly created role of vice president of programming and acquisitions. Prior to joining MSG Media, Swanson was the vice president of International Program Sales and Consulting for IMG Media. |
KYL BOGGS and ALISON LANGENBAHN joined Empower MediaMarketing, Cincinnati, as media innovation strategist and digital strategist, respectively. Most recently, Boggs was a media buyer and planner for Starcom Los Angeles and Langenbahn previously served as an account executive at Whittmanhart Interactive. |
Harley-Davidson promoted JACKIE TIMM to director of business development for the upcoming Harley-Davidson Museum. |
Milner Butcher Media Group hired JOHN WILSON III to oversee business development. He most recently served as senior partner, west coast business development for Mediaedge:cia. |
Did-it hired GLENN HERRERA as regional sales manager, expanding its west coast sales team. |
TargetSpot named ANDREW EISELE as chief operating officer and chief financial officer. MIKE DUDAS will be the company’s new director of business development. Lastly, JOHN DECASTRO will serve as director of sales. |
JANA FRIEDMAN was promoted to senior director of interactive ad sales for Electronic Arts — Pogo. In her new role she will be managing the ad sales and sales development teams on a national level. |
Critical Mass named CELIA JONES as director of marketing. She previously held the position of the director of content and lead copywriter at Des |
JEREMIAH OWYANG joined Forrester Research as a senior analyst focused on Social Computing and Interactive Marketing. He recently served as director of corporate media strategy for PodTech.net. |
| Discovery Communications named JOSHUA FREEMAN as executive vice president, digital media. Freeman was most recently senior vice president, operations & planning, AOL Products. |
Cross Media Approach works best for Apparel and Electronics Marketing September 5, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentCross-Channel Sales Suit Online Apparel
SEPTEMBER 5, 2007
Finding the proper fit for Web shoppers.
How can shoppers get a sense of how clothes feel? The answer for most shoppers is simple: Go to the store. A January 2007 Accenture survey found that two-thirds of online consumers prefer to buy clothing in stores rather than online. “Apparel is a big cross-channel shopping category,” said eMarketer senior analyst Jeffrey Grau. “Traditional retailers who understand the consumer purchase process will develop strategies for driving online shoppers to their stores.” Despite a preference for buying apparel in stores, many online consumers like to research their prospective purchases on the Internet. In fact, the apparel category is second only to electronics in the percentage of adult online consumers who practice this form of cross-channel behavior, according to a 2006 holiday season survey conducted by BIGresearch on behalf of the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association. All together, 32% of online consumers indicated they had cross-channel-shopped apparel versus 51% of online electronics shoppers. Shopping across channels for apparel was most prevalent among female online consumers (36%). Thus far, visiting apparel and accessories sites is a pursuit for young people. Just under one-half of visitors to clothing sites in June 2007 were under 35 years old, according to Hitwise data provided to eMarketer. Only 30% of apparel site visitors were over 44. By contrast, 39% of visitors to shopping and classified sites were younger than 35. As for income, 51% of online apparel and accessories shoppers had annual household earnings of $60,000 or more, and 24% had even higher income of $100,000 or more. By comparison, 50% of visitors to shopping and classified sites had an annual household income of at least $60,000. Learn more about cross-channel clothes marketing. Please read eMarketer’s Apparel E-Commerce report.
