Monday, January 16, 2012

A hook

A Hook is a single phrase or sentence that describes an offer’s primary benefit. - http://book.personalmba.com/hook/


My company develops a complicated technical solution aimed to bring transparency and efficiency to audience buying, a new way of identifying consumers and buying the right impressions. The solution has shown to work 3x better then similar solutions when it comes to brand awareness - another marketing term. I'm trying to come up with a great hook. Do you have any ideas? How about:


'Out of sight, out of mind'? - 'Top of site, Top of mind" 
or
'300% increased awareness to report on '
or
Top of mind
or
3x more likely to remember you
or

The right way to get awareness to your brand
or
Beat brand awareness benchmarks 3x 

Monday, October 24, 2011

Purchase Consideration

There was a time where your purchase consideration relied on information from friends and family. These days it's all about where Google takes you. Tomorrow it will be about how Marketers follow up. 


But the day after tomorrow, we'll be back to information from friends and family. Watch out for the day social media gets it right. The day Social make it easier than a google search, to quickly get the purchase consideration data points that you not only trust - and will also get you closer to your circles of friends.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

The ability to run a display advertising campaign that can match the ROI of my search marketing spend is a potentially game-changing proposition



What is Marketing? Is marketing about tricking the mind to pay attention to a brand, or about delivering content that is relevant. Is it about finding out of green or blue works best to have the call-to-action stand out? Or is about bringing value to the customer and establishing a conversation?
New Technology from Yahoo apparently deliveres 20x ROI on Display campaigns, and is similar to Search campaigns for HP ... let's for a second assume that this is true. This means that we have users that are not actively searching for a brand becoming 20 times more likely to stop what they are doing and click on a display ad, a trick of mind I say. People that search are the very bottom of the purchase funnel, and anyone that claims display is close to that have misunderstood the value of a display campaign. On the other hand, standing out from the clutter is of outmost importance.
Here's how I think it works. Premium inventory equals brand awareness, and brand awareness equals conversions of paid or organic Search.

I do believe in and applaud the Yahoo Smart Ads as they are likely to help their ROS and DR clients, but HP?

Thanks,
Troels Smit - http://bizmondo.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

iPhone and Blackberry apps, how to create adoption

An interesting story on MediaPost today talks about whether or not marketers should be developing apps as part of reaching certain market segments.

The question is, how do you create adoption? A good answer might be: Run a mobile display campaign to create awareness and installs. However:

How do I measure and optimize my mobile campaign with regards to installs and downloads?

The issue here is that mobile devices don't cater for the same cookie technology as online. So custom solutions must be developed for the mobile market. 3rd party ad servers have made little progress on this front, but the first one to solve this and package a solution will have a big advantage in taking over the mobile market.

Who will be the first ad server to provide conversion based optimization technology for mobile?

Send me an email if you want to partner with EB on developing this solution.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

If print is not dead now ... I'll buy you a beer



Amazon has announced their new Large-Format Kindle. Looks like the price will be more than $450.

Will it be 2009 or 2010 that we see a free ad based version ?

Thanks for reading, Troels Smit
http://bizmondo.blogspot.com/

Monday, May 4, 2009

That almost gets us to what people thought computers would be able to do 50 years ago

Just had a chance to read up on Wolfram Alpha, the new Search Engine.
Link: http://www.wolframalpha.com/



Doubt that it works, if it does then it needs to be combined with Augmented Reality ASAP. Geeking aside, this might be a great opportunity for contextual and low funnel, high ROI, advertising.

How can they differentiate themselves from Google in terms of advertising?

-Troels Smit

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Are you ingesting mass quantities of low-quality information?

Speaking about Twitter, the starting point of a powerful global conversations relevant to your network of followers, I today noticed the majority of AdAge articles mentioning this service.

The reasons I don't like twitter are many, more than anything the high amount of infobesity brought to the internet through the service.

"Ingestion of mass quantities of low-quality information"

In addition the fact that there is nothing innovative or new about the whole ordeal makes my toes twitch. For example see the screenshot of BBS services doing the same thing 15 years ago.

What other "soups cooked on old bones" opportunities VCs will bring the internet?
On this note I would like to mention a campaign from "Dentyne" - The Times. The campaign talks about the value of interacting and having a conversation, not in the midst of autonomicity and infobesity, but face to face.
Going back to the roots, this is new, this is hot, and we know it works!
-Troels Smit

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Don't watch this at work




Creativity at is finest including quite a leap of faith from the brand, have to love those guys down in Brazil.

The ad won't do anything until the video plays, upon play the video is so hot that it heats up the banners. Linking content and ad makes a lot of sense.

http://www.bannerblog.com.au/2008/07/nissin_hot.php

Is there a way to scale out these ideas?

-Troels Smit

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

How Coke's new compensation system works

http://adage.com/article?article_id=136266

BEFORE: Agencies and Coke negotiate in advance how much profit the former will see on a given project.
AFTER: Agency is guaranteed only recouped costs, with any profit coming only if certain targets are met.

BEFORE: Agency decides what Coke should pay for a project based on the time it expects to expend on it.
AFTER: Coke tells agencies how valuable a project is based on strategic importance, whether other agencies could deliver the same outcome, and other factors.

How do they expect to accurately measure the success of offline, cable, display in building a brand "other factors" doesn't seem like a business I would involve my best talent with?

-Troels Smit

Ad Retargeting Misunderstood

Interesting article from FetchBack comparing the ROI of Search to Display.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=104840

Very relevant when looking at how marketing dollars are spent but also completely missing the point.

The mindset of someone seeing a display ad and a search ad is simply not comparable, it belongs in completely different parts of the purchase funnel.

If a display ad can change the user from consuming content to clicking and converting then it is doing 10x the job of search which is ... honestly mostly used as a navigational tool for consumers ready to buy.

Marketing 101:
When targeting people already aware of your brand and product and with purchase intent use Paid Search.
When targeting consumers unaware or uninterested in your brand, use a display channel to change this perception.

Why are we comparing Search to Display, shouldn't we be asking our selves how much the channels support one another, and how to optimize across channels, instead?

One comment to the article nails it:
"research that suggests a push medium outperforms a pull medium defies basic logic"

-Troels Smit

Augmented Reality for Media

Augmented Reality has a ton of opportunities for Marketers.
Consumers all want to be able to turn on extra information - where is the nearest starbucks, what is that monument, is this product green? Most consumers are already using these technologies, especially when shopping for expensive goods such as Plasma TVs, Ipods, etc - we tend to googled the price in other stores using our mobile phone. The next natural step in this cycle is barcode integration, which has already been done with the google phone and marketers now need to be on top of the results.
Looking forward, I think this will soon turn around and it will be the monuments and products that will recognice us! When walking into a random super market...

"Hi Troels, I'm your favorite chocolate, you haven't bought me in 2 days, are you ok?"

A version of Augmented Reality ... that I to be honest don't see the full purpose of, other than being extremely cool is what I call "positioning based creativity". Carmichael Lynch recently developed a version of this for "Jack Links": http://adage.com/digitalnext/article?article_id=136287.
When a standardized app for using this technology comes out it will be more interesting. Imagine this, you point you mobile phone's camera on a Target Store - on the phone a 3D Store Clerk comes up, showes you around the store and points to good offers that will match you. If standardizing technology hadn't been a constant issue over the last 200 years, I would have invested heavily in this technology.

Take care,
Troels Smit

Monday, April 27, 2009

The bottom of the purchase funnel

Sometimes it surprises my how much focus the bottom of the purchase funnel is getting. The IAB released a study stating that paid search owned 45% of the digital budget in 2008. Add to this Organic Search optimization and you are looking at +50%.

I wonder if you wouldn't get better results from focusing on "why do people search"?

-Troels Smit

The display ad opportunities you’re overlooking

A couple of very decent insights from Dean. More than anything I agree with the need to differentiate between how you measure Display and Search. Using and measuring display advertising on it's abillity to build brand awareness and purchase intent is key.

Is standardizing the metrics the real challenge?



"Discussions around Digital Advertising from iMedia’s Branding Summit in Florida, February 2009. Looking at innovative campaigns and conversions in trying times."

-Troels Smit

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Following a brand

I think most of us have been using Google Alerts for a while to follow the brands we are the most interested in. The newest evolution on this tree is "Google News Timeline", it allows you to see the development of the PR around a certain brand and topic. Great for research, great for helping brand managers knowing whats going on, and awesome for following a news story.

Will these technologies move beyond "news" and allows you to follow a person?

Read more on http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/
Have a great week,

-Troels Smit

Monday, October 20, 2008

Useful Advertising Newsletters

eNewsletters:
Advertising Age - http://adage.com/emailprefs
Bannerblog - http://www.bannerblog.com.au/subscribe.php
Brand Republic - http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/Bulletins/
ClickZ - http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=subscribe
Convergence Conversation - http://www.convergenceconversation.com/register
eMarketer - https://www.emarketer.com/Newsletter.aspx
iMedia - http://www.imediaconnection.com/news/index.asp
MAD - http://www.mad.co.uk/Logon/Logon.aspx?
MarketingVox - http://www.marketingvox.com/
MediaPost - http://www.mediapost.com/publications/
NewMediaAge - http://www.nma.co.uk/Register/Options.aspx

Organisations:
Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) - http://www.iabuk.net/en/1/newsletter.html
Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) - http://www.cim.co.uk/home.aspx
Association of Online Publishers (AOP) - http://www.ukaop.org.uk/cgi-bin/go.pl/newsletters/register.html
Digital Strategy Consulting - http://www.digitalstrategyconsulting.com/digitalbriefings/
Institute of Direct Marketers (IDM) - http://www.theidm.com/
Intellect UK - http://www.intellectuk.org/
Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) - http://www.ipa.co.uk/
IDG Connect - http://www.idgconnect.com/

People:
Seth Godin - http://www.sethgodin.com/
Marc Bresseel - http://www.marcbresseel.com/
Sharon Jaffe - http://sharonjaffe.typepad.com/jaffeblend/
Dean Donaldson - http://www.deandonaldson.com/

Sharon’s also compiled a list: Useful Sites for Media Insights
http://sharonjaffe.typepad.com/jaffeblend/2008/09/useful-digital.html

And the AOP has a really useful list of Industry sites:
http://www.ukaop.org.uk/Links/52

Friday, May 9, 2008

Danish Values

Travelling a lot and living abroad naturally means that you will spend time talking to people about the values of your country. I find it most disturbing to read news like this:

Danish link: http://politiken.dk/indland/article506962.ece
English translation:
http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fpolitiken.dk%2Findland%2Farticle506962.ece&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=da&tl=en

Wouldn't it be wonderful to swim and dive with porpoises?

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Security and stolen ipod


So I did a red eye back to Europe, only to have my ipod stolen in Frankfurt Airport security.
It all came together from a combination of a redeye with multiple security checks in the arriving airport, a connecting flight and a delayed airplane ... but how come you need to treat airport passengers like cows in long lines, and do multiple strips. Should it not be possible to:

- Only have one security check for the full travel
- Upgrade the security checks so we don't need to strip or unpack
- Avoid having long fingered underpaid security personel

Picture from: www.cagle.com

Conspiracy to Change Advertising


Interesting concept, bring together a group of clear headed individuals thinking new thoughts in the advertising industry and see what happens.
A number of interesting concepts came up, I liked the idea of creating an offline/online currency and exchange rate, why not?!
Picture from SuperGeekery.com


Advertising

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising - Wikipedia, never stops to impress

AMPs

Whats New? AMPs are New! Are they useful?

AMP - http://www.adobe.com/products/mediaplayer/
AMP - http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/press/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=303352

Likeable blogs

David Berkowitz - http://www.marketersstudio.com/

Monday, April 7, 2008

Top Gadgets and tips

Here are my top gadgets and tricks to make my working life easier:

1. Extra battery power for my laptop
2. Google Earth for my mobile
3. Company dictionary downloaded to my mobile
4. Skullcandy noice cancelling earphones

Top 10 Airline improvements

Why does Airlines suck so much? Because they don't have the following:

1. Electricity in the coach cabin
2. Mobile phone access
3. Internet
4. Personalized Media
5. Gym at the Flying Club
6. Headrest that works