Learning to Work with Social Networks December 2, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentDECEMBER 2, 2008
A developing medium offers new targeting options.
While many marketers want to use social networks as part of their strategies, they still have no clear list of best practices for the medium. Getting friends to spread a marketing message to each other is a great goal, but how is that best done? A November article in Ad Age detailed efforts to use the connections between social network users. Paul Moore, director of insights at Yahoo!, found that targeting friends of a given sports fan led to more reach than targeting fans who did not know each other—even if the fan’s friends did not identify an interest in sports themselves. Read The Rest—>Learning to Work with Social Networks
Axl Rose Wants Dr Pepper to Apologize for Giveaway Stunt December 2, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentSays Marketer Bungled Free-Cola Offer and Violated Rocker’s Rights
Published: December 01, 2008
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — That Axl Rose kept Guns N’ Roses fans waiting 17 years for “Chinese Democracy” didn’t seem to bother the corn-rowed rocker all that much. But when Dr Pepper was unable to deliver a free can of soda to everyone in the country upon the album’s release, that was more than Axl and his lawyers could stand.
Read The Rest—> Axl Rose Wants Dr Pepper to Apologize for Giveaway Stunt
‘Ad Age’: Top 100 media companies saw 4.6% revenue growth in ’07 September 29, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentLos Angeles—The nation’s top 100 media companies had total revenue growth of 4.6% last year, the slowest growth since 2001, according to a report from Advertising Age, a sibling publication of BtoB.
According to the Ad Age report, “100 Leading Media Companies,” the top 100 U.S. media companies had revenue of $299.1 billion in 2007, including money from advertising, subscriptions and fees.
Time Warner topped the list, with net U.S. media revenue of $35.6 billion last year.
In terms of media categories, digital was the growth leader, with revenue up 10.8% over 2006. Cable network growth was close behind, at 10.6%, while newspapers were down 6.8%.
Cable systems and satellite services accounted for a record 31% of 2007 U.S. media revenue, according to the report.
The full report is available at www.adage.com.
—Kate Maddox
Harsh Times Demand (Even) More Concrete Evidence of Effectiveness September 2, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentBATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) — Want to know if advertising works? Or how it works? Or what consumers think? Chances are, you’re about to find out as much as or maybe even more than you ever wanted.
A slew of media companies, agencies, research firms and even marketers themselves have ramped up efforts to churn out elaborate studies or research results as selling tools. Reasons vary from the obvious need of media to prove themselves, particularly in tough times, to the fact that data-based pitches have gained currency with the public at large.
By the numbers
+25%
Direct-response TV may be accountable, but it doesn’t always work as planned.
+160%
Average increase in unaided awareness for brands in seven package-goods and fast-food categories in a Yahoo study based on ComScore data
+31%
One-week lift in sales of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup in April 2006 from a Parade ad in an analysis released late last year from Information Resources Inc.
Of course, it also helps to have the numbers handy because media, agencies and marketers alike are facing a much tougher audience: finance executives.
Only a decade ago, the biggest marketers were run by executives who started their careers in marketing. Today, CEOs of such marketers as Unilever and Kimberly-Clark Corp. come from finance backgrounds. And their joint rival, Procter & Gamble Co., recently has named executives who spent most or all of their careers in finance either as global marketing officers or senior managers over more than a third of the business.
For anyone who wants to crunch numbers, plenty are available.
Parade of data
Parade, after last year commissioning Information Resources Inc. to use marketing-mix models to show sales lift and payback from advertising in the Sunday supplement, is now preparing its third wave of IRI analyses of various brands’ ads and the second wave of using health-care-research firm IMS to do similar analyses of prescription-drug ads, said Mike DeBartolo, exec VP-advertising.
Parade keeps paying for expensive analytics it never used years ago because they help sell ads. Mr. DeBartolo said Parade’s page volume from consumer package-goods, food and over-the-counter drug advertisers is up 36% through July compared to last year after a similar gain in 2007.
Likewise, digital media are finding they have to produce new data to tap a huge pool of media spending that up to now has been largely beyond their grasp, particularly from CPG advertisers.
Direct-response advertisers who’ve been the bread and butter of online media, particularly search, didn’t need studies. They had their sales results.
Not so with CPG advertisers, who generate relatively few sales online and whose abysmally low click-through rates don’t do much to prove effectiveness. So Yahoo, Google and MSN all have ponied up for third-party research this year to prove they’re relevant to the brand marketers.
Searching for results
Google earlier this year released research from Nielsen/Net Ratings and ComScore of an online display and search campaign for Unilever’s Dove deodorant estimating a $530,000 sales lift and 13-percentage-point increase in favorability ratings.
Yahoo recently set out to prove that search had a brand-building impact beyond the clicks, joining MediaVest in a study of 6,000 consumers showing that search ads generated an average 160% increase in unaided brand awareness.
Of course, media have always used data to prove impact. The difference now is that media are having to come up with new types of studies to prove they do more than just reach people, said Joel Rubinson, chief research officer of the Advertising Research Federation.
“Yahoo knows that just focusing on clicks and having an advertising model based on that may be shooting themselves in the foot,” he said, “because there are these other kinds of [branding] benefits.”
He pointed to Microsoft’s “Engagement Mapping” study launched earlier this spring, that works with marketers and agencies including Citi Cards, Sprint, GSD&M Idea City, MindShare and Initiative to demonstrate the cumulative effect of online display or search ads in driving sales rather than just assuming the “last ad clicked” is responsible.
Publishers’ data
For media where marketing-mix models and clicks don’t apply or aren’t practical, proving effectiveness can be harder.
Still, Brenda White, VP-director of print investment at Starcom, is seeing a growing number of publishers come to her with studies from third-party research firms, something the agency has been demanding based on client wishes.
“With the economy the way it is,” she said, “publishers are going to have to do this to hold onto budgets. They’re under increasing pressure from other media, too.”
Since most individual titles aren’t big enough to practically use marketing-mix models, Ms. White sees more publishers using studies from Dynamic Logic or Marketing Evolution that base effectiveness analysis on other metrics, such as changes in brand perceptions.
Similarly, MTV Networks has been looking to build deals around Marketing Evolution’s “return on marketing objectives” system, offering guarantees based on how well campaigns deliver against marketer-chosen objectives such as increasing brand favorability.
Mind candy
Yet it’s not just media getting into studies. So are agencies — such as Ogilvy Action, which recently completed a 14,000-shopper study globally to buttress its standing as a global player in shopper marketing and build interest in the discipline.
CBS Radio in Web Video Push July 23, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentPlatform to feature videos, interviews, live performances, breaking news and original programs
July 23, 2008
NEW YORK Moving radio one step closer to a visual medium, CBS Radio said it would launch a new video platform for its stations’ Web sites.
The platform, powered by WorldNow, gives CBS’ 140 radio stations the ability to create personalized branded video players to feature station content, such as music videos, artist interviews, live concert performances, breaking news and original programming. It also allows stations to syndicate content or embed clips to be shared via social networking.
The video platform debuted Wednesday on four of the company’s New York stations: WWFS-FM (www.fresh1027.com); WCBS-AM (www.wcbs880.com); WXRK-FM (www.923krock.com); and WFAN-AM (www.wfan.com).
For advertisers, the platform creates new advertising and sponsorship opportunities, including branded players, content, advertorials and in-video advertising.
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P&G Global Marketing Chief Stengel Steps Down July 15, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentBATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) — Procter & Gamble Co. Global Marketing Officer Jim Stengel is stepping down, the company announced, to be replaced by Marc Pritchard, 48, former head of P&G’s cosmetics business and who most recently oversaw a stepped-up global restructuring effort for the company.
Mr. Stengel, 53, has been P&G’s global marketing officer since 2001 and oversees the company’s $5.3 billion marketing budget. He will retire Oct. 31 after 25 years at the company. Until that time, effective Aug. 1, Mr. Stengel will work on special projects, continuing to report to Chief Operating Officer Robert McDonald.
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YouTube: You Created the Content, Now Sell the Ads June 9, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentGoogle, Looking to Monetize Video Site, Is Letting Content Producers Sell Advertising on Their Branded Channels
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Published: June 09, 2008
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Google has struggled to find the best way to monetize YouTube. The latest idea: Let content creators sell ads.
Professional content producers — those who come equipped with their own ad-sales teams — are now able to sell advertising on their YouTube channels. That includes the click-to-expand overlays that run across the bottoms of YouTube videos and display units on the page that hosts the video player. The revenue is split between the content creator and YouTube, just as it would be if YouTube sold the ads.
YouTube is by far the largest video site, with more than 4 billion videos viewed in March, according to ComScore, but it has not been able to translate that audience into significant dollars. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said better monetizing of YouTube is priority No. 1 in 2008. Bear Stearns analyst Robert Peck pegs YouTube’s revenue at about $90 million this year; other estimates have it as high as $200 million. Even at the high end, that would be just a touch more than 1% of Google’s total revenue. (YouTube’s head of monetization, Shashi Seth, recently left the company to join a Silicon Valley start-up.)
For many professional content creators and producers, being able to control the inventory that surrounds their videos is an important factor when they consider where and how to distribute content online. Revision3, the online-video-production company behind shows such as “Diggnation” and “Techzilla,” is selling advertising on YouTube, starting with GoDaddy, a sponsor that’s regularly integrated into the content of its shows. Many Revision3 shows have integrated sponsors, and the company’s CEO, Jim Louderback, said the ability to pair companion YouTube advertising in and around the videos is appealing.
Targeting
For YouTube, such deals give the site’s sales force additional representation within ad agencies and a carrot to dangle when trying to get high-quality-content creators to distribute on the site.
“They’re really interested in packaging together all their distribution potential, including YouTube, and using that to surround their anchor and tell a story just like our sales force would sell on our platform,” said Shiva Rajaraman, product manager at YouTube. “So we’ve started to work with these partners that do have that capability, essentially enabling them to sell their own inventory on YouTube.”
YouTube targets advertising by channel or vertical, such as comedy or music, rather than around specific videos. Because of that, there should be less channel conflict, Mr. Rajaraman said.
“We tend to do the bundled-audience sell,” he said. “They tend to do more sponsorship sales.” He wouldn’t address specific deals.
It’s easy enough to envision where YouTube could go from here: Content creators could not only sell ads that would appear next to their content but also extend the reach of those ads to third-party-created videos on YouTube. One hypothetical: Revision3 sells ads to GoDaddy to run not only on YouTube pages showing “Diggnation” videos but also on other third-party, tech-focused videos. Under such a deal, revenue could be split three ways: among Revision3, YouTube and the producers of the third-party content where the ad ran.
Good partner
60Frames CEO Brent Weinstein, who produces online-video content that is syndicated across a variety of partners, including YouTube, said the Google property has been a “very collaborative” partner that has helped video producers discover nuances in the environment and see trends. He didn’t elaborate what kinds of distribution deals he’s struck with the site, other than to say it has been easy to work with. “With their market leverage, you’d expect them to have diva quality, but they don’t,” he said.
Mr. Rajaraman said YouTube will conduct a series of brand-effectiveness tests, and it’s not finished experimenting in the ad space.
“We’ll be trying new formats, new ways to engage users,” he said. “No one knows quite how to crack video advertising yet.” Get more great content at Adage.com
Revenue Grows 8.6%, Propelled by Digital May 6, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentOur Agency Report Finds the Business in Surprisingly Good Health
Published: May 05, 2008
CHICAGO (AdAge.com) — Revenue for U.S. agencies — advertising, marketing services and media — jumped 8.6% in 2007 despite a tepid ad market. And for that, you can thank digital.
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Ad Age estimates that the Big 4 ad firms — Omnicom Group, WPP Group, Interpublic Group of Cos. and Publicis Groupe — last year generated 12.3% of worldwide revenue from digital services. | ||||
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While it comes as no surprise that revenue at digital specialty agencies rocketed last year (up 26.8% in the U.S.), it’s clear that digital services have become a way of life (or a way to avoid death) for agencies of all disciplines. In fact, U.S. ad agencies reported an average 10.2% of revenue from digital in 2007.
And in some cases, it was a lot more. Goodby, Silverstein & Partners — Ad Age’s 2008 Agency of the Year — said digital services last year generated 52% of its revenue. The San Francisco agency works for such digitally connected clients as Hewlett-Packard Co.
Of the more than 860 agencies that participated in the 2008 Agency Report, 60% broke out digital revenue.
Digital helps explain the solid growth experienced by major media agencies despite flat spending in traditional media. WPP Group said worldwide digital revenue for media unit Group M last year soared 53% to $238 million. Ad Age DataCenter estimates that digital accounted for more than 11% of 2007 revenue for Group M, the world’s largest media-agency group.
Digital has reshaped direct marketing, and that has turned top-tier direct shops such as Rapp Collins and Wunderman into some of the biggest digital agencies.
Ad Age estimates that the Big 4 ad firms — Omnicom Group, WPP Group, Interpublic Group of Cos. and Publicis Groupe — last year generated 12.3% of worldwide revenue from digital services.
Digital is about technology and platforms; it’s not a narrowly defined discipline. For the U.S. digital ranking, Ad Age tracked agencies’ digital revenue regardless of discipline, resulting in an eclectic list of agencies — digital pure plays as well as advertising, marketing-services and media shops — all dialing for digital dollars.
Digitas tops that digital list; Publicis bought Digitas last year and is moving fast to make it a global agency brand. Avenue A/Razorfish, acquired last year by Microsoft Corp., came in second. New to the list: IBM Interactive, a rebranded rollup of IBM’s digital-marketing services.
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How $13B was spent last year |
Last year’s U.S. revenue growth rate for agencies of all disciplines — 8.6% — was slightly below 2006 growth (8.8%). Agency revenue grew 7.2% in 2005 and 8.6% in 2004. Revenue for U.S. ad, marketing-services and media agencies in 2007 reached $31.1 billion, according to Ad Age estimates.
Marketing-services agencies — direct, promotion, branding, healthcare and public relations as well as digital specialists — accounted for 47.1% of U.S. revenue for marketing-communications agencies analyzed in this report. The rest came from advertising and media.
Key points from the report:
- Omnicom’s BBDO Worldwide topped Ad Age’s new ranking of U.S. agencies across disciplines. The ranking shows how agency brands stack up regardless of whether an agency gets revenue from advertising, marketing services, media or a combination of the three.
- WPP’s Group M ranks No. 1 in worldwide media revenue. Omnicom’s OMD Worldwide is the world’s largest media agency, while WPP’s MindShare is tops in the U.S., according to Ad Age estimates.
- WPP’s CommonHealth leads the ranking of U.S. healthcare agencies. This is Ad Age’s first broad ranking of healthcare agencies since major holding companies opted to limit disclosure after passage of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
Dell Picks WPP for $4.5B Marketing Account December 3, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentAim to ‘Jointly Develop Greatest Agency in the World’
Published: December 02, 2007
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — WPP Group has triumphed over Interpublic Group of Cos. in the seven-month holding-company shootout for Dell’s highly sought after three-year, $4.5 billion account and will be tasked to build a new agency staffed by 1,000-plus to serve the computer-maker’s global marketing needs.
Dell and WPP will “jointly develop what we hope is the greatest agency in the world,” Casey Jones, VP-global marketing at Dell, said in an interview. “This will be a nontraditional relationship and the purpose of it is to achieve marketing objectives of Dell’s that are simply not achievable either with our current roster of agencies or with a patchwork quilt of shops stitched together.”
The Dell Agency
That Dell agency, yet to be given its own name, will have its own profit-and-loss statement and will handle marketing functions from creative to media-planning to CRM and PR. Only media-buying duties will handled separately, to continue to allow Dell to take advantage of the economies of scale that come from working with a buyer that handles many large media budgets. The new agency will even be able to work for other marketers.
“We’re delighted by the appointment and we think it’s an endorsement of our geographic and functional strategy,” WPP CEO Martin Sorrell said in an interview. “Dell’s needs are very much in line with our capabilities.” (Representatives for Interpublic could not be reached on Sunday as the news broke.)
$150 million a year in revenue
Round Rock, Texas-based Dell’s marketing account is one of the most coveted pieces of business to go up for grabs in years. The three-year contract has a total billings price tag of about $4.5 billion, around $1.5 billion being spent every year, with annual revenues of around $150 million going to WPP.
The pitch was so big, in fact, that Dell gave it its own moniker: Project DaVinci. “We have been looking for an agency that is both an artist and a scientist,” Dell CMO Mark Jarvis said.
Dell, Jarvis and Jones Oversaw Review
The seven-month review process began with an e-mail from the computer-maker’s chairman-CEO, Michael S. Dell, personally reaching out to the heads of various marketing organizations. Thereafter the search was championed by the company’s new marketing leadership: Mr. Jarvis, Dell’s first-ever CMO who previously spent 14 years at Oracle, and Mr. Jones, onetime exec VP-global strategy director at McCann Erickson Worldgroup.
Dell this summer parted ways with Omnicom Group’s BBDO, which handled its U.S. consumer advertising. A number of agencies were also on Dell’s roster, including independent Mother, Aegis’ Carat, Omnicom’s DDB, Chicago, Omnicom media shop Prometheus and Interpublic’s MRM.
Simpler Marketing Solution
On a global basis, Dell was working with more than 800 different marketing firms, and realized a simpler marketing solution that integrated various marketing disciplines was necessary.
The new strategy would also help the PC maker turn around after a tumultuous period — which included a massive battery recall, top management changes and delayed filings with the Securities & Exchange Commission.
Unusual Review
As far as holding-company pitches go, Dell’s wasn’t typical.
For one thing, there weren’t only holding companies involved. While some of the biggest marketing organizations in the world vied for the account –including Omnicom, Publicis Groupe and Havas — smaller, independent agencies such as Mother also participated in the review. (Mother, which handles creative for Dell’s Inspiron laptops, today launches the first campaign for Dell’s new all-in-one desktop, XPS One, featuring model Karolina Kurkova.)
And familiar elements of an agency search, like requests-for-proposal and the presentation of “spec creative,” were absent. Agencies were instead invited to devise a strategy for the creation of all-in marketing entity to serve Dell’s needs.
Jarvis: Analytics are vital
“Our interest was much more in the science and the analytics behind the agency. … We expect every agency to be creative, but the analytics was extremely important to us,” Mr. Jarvis said. “Shareholder value to us is far more important to us than winning awards in marketing.”
That shareholder value will have to become an immediate priority. Once a tech-stock darling, Dell has in recent years fallen on hard times, a symbol of which was the loss of the mantle of the world’s largest computer-maker last year to Hewlett-Packard. It also suffered a marketing-communications embarrassment when high-profile blogger Jeff Jarvis (no relation to Mark) chronicled his nightmare with the company’s customer service in his “Dell Hell” posts.
Since founder Michael Dell in late January reassumed his post as CEO, the company has rolled out a few important social-media efforts to help it better listen to consumers. Among them, the Direct2Dell customer service and product blog, and the IdeaStorm website, where Dell fans and critics alike can post suggestions for improvements. The latter almost immediately yielded changes in how the company’s line of desktops and PCs are designed.
Even Jeff Jarvis relented in a largely positive BusinessWeek article that chronicled Dell’s change of tune when it comes to dealing with customers.
But none of that yet has translated into financial performance. In an earnings call last week, Dell reported that its profit margins are being squeezed, prompting many to questions whether Mr. Dell’s turnaround is taking too long to come together. Investors responded by driving the share price down almost 13% on Friday.
For WPP the celebratory party will be a short-lived affair. The new agency must be up and running on March 1, 2008. That’s the date by which Dell expects the agency to handle all of its marketing across the globe.
Wanted: 1,000 staff
A hefty talent search will also be on WPP’s to-do list, as the marketer estimates its new agency will be staffed by more than 1,000 planners, creatives and other marketing experts.
Surprisingly, Dell isn’t demanding exclusivity from the new agency that’s being created to handle its account. Other marketers (provided they’re not in the same category) will be free to tap the new shop to work on their accounts. Mr. Jones even described the newly formed agency as a chance for the holding company to develop a “new SKU.”
The agency will also be allowed to contract with other entities. So, for instance, it is possible that Mother will remain on Dell’s roster.
By September, it was clear that Dell had narrowed the field to WPP and Interpublic for the final round. But, for the past two months, the ultimate winner was anybody’s guess.
The win justifies WPP’s long-touted belief that all of a marketer’s needs can be served under a single marketing conglomerate’s umbrella. These kinds of holding company-based structures are still controversial within the ad agency world, as they subjugate the agency brands to the conglomerate’s brand — and make clear that those operations, once termed “holding” companies, are far from simple financial vehicles today.
Reward and Risk
Marketers that demand them typically do so to get best-in-class services and to drive cost efficiencies. However, some agency and holding-company executives believe they can have negative effects because they often involve upsetting existing agency structures in the quest to create a type of all-star team. Another risk, of course, is that the agency created is dependent on one marketer, and marketers, as everyone in the industry know
s, are prone to change their minds about agency relationships, particularly when senior personnel change.
An example of a marriage that didn’t work: Bank of America recently announced it’s decision not to renew its contract with Omnicom Group, citing a desire for more flexibility in the agencies it works with.
For Interpublic, the loss is a major disappointment. Scoring Dell’s business would have been a boost to its sagging earnings and might even have provided a lift to its stock price.
How the Ad World's Dealing With the Decline of the :30 November 12, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentProduction Houses and Agencies Are Forced to Slash Costs and Find Unique Ways to Leverage Online Video
Published: November 12, 2007
The 30-second spot isn’t dead yet, but it’s taken a turn for the worse.
As marketers continue to embrace unmeasured media and funnel fewer dollars toward TV-production budgets, 2007 will go down as the year the 30-second spot’s health took a noticeable downturn. Faced with ever-more-powerful procurement departments, clients clamoring for return on investment and a general consumer movement toward interactive ad environments, agencies can no longer cavalierly bill multimillion-dollar commercial extravaganzas to clients as in years’ past.
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THE (NOT SO) REAL WORLD: To create this recent Honda ad, shop a52 relied on computer-generated graphics, a method much less expensive than live action. |
And while it hasn’t yet shown up on the bottom lines of most traditional agencies, it’s increasingly clear that Madison Avenue isn’t the Easy Street it once was. Shops are being forced to make do with less, forcing wholesale changes in the TV-commercial- production business.
“This year has been hard,” said Mark Tobin, managing director and executive producer at a52, a visual-effects and design company that has serviced clients such as Lexus, EA Sports and Nike. “Budgets have been seriously cut and reapportioned into different areas. We have to find ways to make more with less.”
Tightening belts
For commercial producers, that’s meant tacks such as outsourcing, filming in less-expensive locales and using less-costly film and computer-animated graphics. For agencies, it’s meant thinking more outside the box and developing expertise in online video, new formats and lengths — and when the slick sophisticated :30 is called for, bringing it in less expensively.
“It’s not about whether TV is coming or going; it’s about where are the best places to put ideas to reach consumers,” said David Lubars, chairman-chief creative officer of BBDO North America, the shop most synonymous with the splashy Super Bowl commercial. “The [30-second spot] is still a viable form; it’s just not the only viable form.”
Indeed, many marketers and their ad agencies are rethinking their approaches. Long gone are the simpler days when agencies used to “fill boxes” — two :60s, five :30’s and so on. That system has been replaced by a more rigorous, focused process. “There is this pull toward video and other media placements,” said Ann Green, senior VP-marketing solutions at market-research firm Millward Brown.
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