INTERESTING...!!!

AN EXTRACT FROM

An Open Letter to the CEO of WPP
July 7, 2008
-By Scott Brinker

Dear Mr. Sorrell,

I read your comments from Cannes in The New York Times article "Ad Leaders See Web's Threat and Promise" [June 23]. While I appreciate the competition you perceive from online ad networks and technology providers such as Google and Microsoft -- and why you'd like to acquire a position in that space -- I'd like to suggest an alternative strategy.Up until now, agencies such as yours have provided value to clients in two main ways: the strategy, design, and production of creative and the distribution of that creative through media channels.You didn't own the radio, TV or print channels through which ads were distributed, but their fractured structure gave you an opportunity to coordinate media buying -- and earn nice fees doing so, which largely subsidized the creative.The problem now is that companies such as Google and Microsoft offer Web services to let any marketer manage the distribution of ads -- and not just for online vehicles. These ad platforms are siphoning money from your media coordination cash cow, as well as double-dipping from the channel.But will ad networks be the center of power in marketing's future?Ad networks are intermediaries, matching publishers, advertisers and audiences. If there's one thing the Internet has been, it's the ultimate disintermediation machine. Especially when it comes to data. And the heart of any ad network is really just data.Google may always have a gold mine in its search engine (which is more of a "publisher" itself), but will it be able to monopolize how other publishers and advertisers connect with each other? Not as likely -- at least not for envious fees. As marketers and publishers get savvier, and as more competitors flood that space, more downward pressure will be exerted on intermediary prices. There are simply too few barriers to entry.To be sure, networks connecting advertisers and publishers will always be important. But similarly, just because the underlying fiber optics of the Internet are important, that doesn't mean the telecoms have been able to extract great economic value from them. In fact, I believe that the dominant ad network will eventually be an "open source" model, with no single corporation controlling it.This can be very good for you.You want ad networks -- along with technologies for targeting and tracking audiences -- to be standardized and commoditized. You're not alone either: Publishers and in-house marketers want the same things, to bring order to the confusion of overlapping marketing technology vendors and to have full transparency in the costs and distribution of ads.Instead, you want value to accrue where it arguably should have in the first place: with compelling strategy and creative -- and its seamless execution.This is where the Internet can shift the balance in your favor.For most online marketing initiatives, you can now prove the quantitative value of great strategy and creative. Anyone can buy a keyword. But put a mediocre ad and an amateur landing page up against truly masterful creative, and the outcome will be 100 percent to 1000 percent higher conversions for the professional version.This is clear, measurable and a source of major competitive advantage. And unlike the mechanics of placement and distribution, it can't be boiled down into an algorithm.You face three big challenges though:First, you need to expand the scope of Internet marketing. Three lines of text in search engine ads is not a large enough canvas to deliver value. Although you can -- and should -- push the envelope with more innovative ad formats in banners and video, the real battleground is what happens after the click.You need to open up new space between ads and corporate Web sites. That space is post-click marketing. It consists of landing pages, microsites, widgets, etc. These devices have the capacity for real substance -- to lever not the cost of a click but the value of a click -- and the people who are leveraging them creatively are achieving phenomenal results. But only a tiny fraction of marketers are doing so today.You must take post-click marketing mainstream.Second, you must absorb marketing technology savvy into your DNA. Although creative cannot be bottled into a computer program, the nature of creative is changing. More than ever the message and the medium are fused together. You need to wield targeting and tracking software as part of the creative mission. To do this, your companies need to be populated with marketer-technologists -- a new career track tightly integrated into your core business.This is the key to competing with technology companies: You must show that the real value is not in the tools themselves but in the way in which they are employed as part of marketing strategy, creative and execution.Third, you need to rally your industry -- both agencies and in-house marketers -- to push ad networks and technology vendors to greater standardization and transparency. Metrics and methods for advertising and audiences in the digital landscape need to become open standards so that strategy and creative can transcend the grasp of any one proprietary vendor. This is how the Web itself was able to thrive -- shifting value to people creating awesome sites, far more than to the companies building routers or HTML editors.These won't be easy standards to forge. The dynamics of Internet marketing are complex and subtle, and they're evolving rapidly. You will need to cooperate with your peers and allies to a degree you haven't had to before. The technology players will resist, mostly in passive aggressive ways. And there will be standards wars.But if you pool the collective influence of your industry -- hundreds of billions of dollars of marketing -- and encourage competition among ad networks and technology vendors wherever possible, you can tip the balance of power.Marketers everywhere will thank you for it.I know these are big challenges. But who else can do this? Google isn't going to be the next-generation creative services empire. Instead of losing your time and money fighting it directly, play the game that draws upon your strengths and the spectacular kaleidoscope of talent in your portfolio.In the future, where everything is networked, automated and optimized ad infinitum, intellectual capital and creativity -- and the organization to exercise it effectively -- will be the dominating source of value.Remember that transformation IBM made from proprietary hardware to open services? There's inspiration.

Good day and good luck.

Sincerely,

Scott Brinker

Chief technology officer

Ion Interactive

5 Step face pack 4 FACEBOOK

This is about how to leverage facebook to position your brand into this social medium and make people talk about it.
Mantras for launching a brand in


Phase1: Know what’s on Facebook regarding your eco-system
Before doing hard work recruiting and leading any Facebook community, stop a moment and get used to Facebook implicit rules, organization, Facebook chaos management (it’s a real chaos inside, but an arranged one).
Then have a look at what’s being written on your eco-system: your brand reputation and awareness, your competitor presence and activity on Facebook, the groups related to your brand or your business,your traditional targets, and have a check on people who included your brand or related info into their profile (interest, music, TV shows, books, or activities) to know who’s already in your business scope (and double check your target is the right target on that platform)

Phase2: Choose your Facebook strategy and select relevant communication and marketing Facebook tools to implement it
3 different ways to market your brand are at your disposal: Facebook guerilla marketing, branding and communication around your brand equity, or application development. For explanation on each way, read this post from InsideFacebook.
My advice would be not to use the application development method to market your brand since after having done your application you need to spread it while people don’t use them anymore (or at least find the fact to “install” the application too much intrusive). Prefer guerilla marketing or brand equity leveraging approaches; they’re way more engaging and creating conversation. Which is why you’re on that platform (thought you could generate direct sells using Facebook?)
To implement your strategy (I now only speak about brand equity and guerilla ways to market your brand) you’ll have to choose how to. Social ads seems to be interesting and somehow competitive, but don’t do that alone, it’s “old school” and above all won’t work by itself. You have to generate an echo within the community that tells people they can click on your banner/ social ad because it worths it. You should have a look at fan pages like Victoria Secret, MSN, NBA, Oreo, or (RED) ones to see what’s in it and why there are so many people visiting and returning and collaborating to this page (whether there’s activity or not from the fan page owner).

Phase3: recruiting and leading your community
That’s the big part of leveraging and growing a Facebook community but also a great opportunity to engage more people with your brand and turn them into fans and brand ambassadors. Here some advice on how to recruit and leverage your soon to be vibrant community:

• Invite your already existing community to join the Facebook community (don’t tell me you don’t have any community around you because you definitly have one, think about your friends, your partners, your employees, your CRM program members)
• Look at online influential people and connect with them online & OFFLINE (if possible, or reach them through phone to create a “physical” connection) to explain your goals and start a conversation that you can continue online
• Use social ads to create point of interest among Facebook users
• Create ready to share marketing material like Youtube video, Slideshare presentation, HTML badges, T-shirts, and any other goodies that can expand your community awareness (here you can think about developing a Facebook application), but think twice about recruitment vs. cost vs. time consuming before starting anything
• Sustain conversation (i.e activity) around your community and within it by creating and continiously feeding a dedicated blog about the main communty’s subject (bear in mind a community is always related to a specific topic), suggesting and managing online/ offline events (whether you are 5 in your community or 200, starting is a good point, waiting for more people before moving forward a bad idea - people did take time to join you so be respectful, that’s the first milestone to glory)

Phase4: maintaining and leveraging the community
After developing your community using tips and tricks you eventually find on the Internet, you’ll see the community would stop growing. Don’t be afraid it’s ok with it; it means you’ve done quite a job and now can start the 2nd part: maintaining pressure and interest to keep members visiting and returning.
At that time, loyalty is the keyword: continiously creating content won’t be enough, you need to create a federative event, whether online or offline, to generate a strong belonging feeling to the community and pride. Pride to speak about it, pride to collaborate and attend events, pride to spread the word. And that ability to create pride would definitly be the key to a successful community; when members are proud to belong to a community, they just become your best ambassadors (by ambassadors, I mean best sellers/ awareness vector/ influencers/ representatives) and would now recruit for you.

Phase5: don’t limit your community to Facebook
Go beyond the bound of Facebook and create a dedicated community platform using social software platforms, invite your community members engage more and more with your brand by developing business related activities like Dell is doing with its whole new websites (managing different kind of targeted communities), Amazon offering to pay fees for sells generated through users, launching a co-creation operation like Google with its favicon contest, and anything else that involves users and keep them proud to be your “friend” (traditional advertising is a good idea).
What about you? Are you willing to embrace your community to move forward smarter and faster or will you stay out of the conversation and hope your consumers would stay by your side because of you (which they will until they find better than you and go without saying anything)?

Sex actually Sells

See for yourself.

Perceptual Mapping - Deciding What Image to Project

A very effective practice which when used beforehand while concieving the idea for any brand campaign.

A very simple process. Using a survey of the market, you measure the image of your company and your key competitors using a series of image "attributes." These "attributes" are dimensions measuring such items as "speed." "low prices," "courtesy," "high tech," "accuracy," etc. You also measure how each company rates on a "best for people like me" scale. This enables you to calculate the relative importance of each attribute by establishing the mathematical relationship between the attributes and the "best for people like me" scale.
You can then plot the performance of each company and importance of each attribute in two-dimensional space. A typical plot would look similar to the below. Each letter represents one company. (We've plotted only five attributes for illustrative purposes. When you are measuring four competitors, you could measure and plot as many as ten or twelve attributes if you desire. To measure more attributes than that would be to extend the survey to an unreasonable length.)

After you have plotted the importance and performance ratings, you can begin to formulate a "desired image." In doing so, you need to consider several things:

• Your competitive position on each attribute


• Whether your "strengths" are recognized in the marketplace,


• Your corporate mission,


• Your perceptions of how feasible it would be to move an attribute in perceptual space,


• The uniqueness of your desired position.

Suppose you are company B. Your though process might go something like this.
"My company is highly accurate, and we could move to the right of company A on accuracy with the right advertising campaign. However, accuracy is the lowest attribute in importance, so the benefit would be limited. We won't worry about promoting accuracy."
"All five companies are about tied in consumer perception of speed, and we all do rather well, so there isn't much potential benefit there. Scratch speed."
"Our rating on high tech is pretty good, but I could still move up perception on that. Let's check out the other two attributes before we make a decision."
"There seems to be a lot of opportunity to improve on low price. Nobody does well on this attribute.We are more efficient than our competitors, and could afford to lower price a little. I don't want us to be viewed as being "cheap," but we could do better on this attribute."
"Look at the opportunity on courtesy. We know we have high customer satisfaction scores -- and it's the most important attribute. There's our opportunity."
From this train of thought, you may decide to develop a campaign with a theme like the courteous service you deserve, at a price you can afford. If your campaign is successful, the next time you measure image the plot may look like the one below. Notice how company B has moved to the right (toward the high performance side of the scale) on the two most important attributes.