WHEN OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS .. OPEN THE DOOR

The digital world is moving at such a rapid pace that many marketers simply do not have the bandwidth to keep up with, or take advantage of, opportunities and innovations in the marketplace.

One such underutilized digital tool is the BDA (Branded Desktop Application). You might even have it installed on your own desktop in the form of the widely distributed WEATHERBUG…..83 million users do! Another successful BDA is Southwest Airline’s DING …. a desktop alert mechanism that matches a user with special offers that meet their criteria. Since 2005 it has generated over $80 million in direct revenue for the airline.

BDAs have bee around for quite some time. Advances in software development raised the BDA to a higher level, creating the “stickiness” that so many marketers hold dear. As a CRM tool, it’s a marketers dream. BDAs can report on a wide range of usage behavior, tied back to any number of databases that serve up “alerts”…. and generate revenue in the process. Flu Alerts, developed for Roche, tie back to a national database that tracks the spread of influenza and warns users when certain levels are reached.

BDAs can take many forms or morph into others. They are becoming viral and develop as social networks, both public and private, to communicate with other users that maintain similar interests. Gadgets and Widgets are part of this growing trend.
This is not a passing phase. Don’t let the marketing opportunity slip by.

SINKING THE DIGITAL ISLAND

Digital media has come a long way. Today it represents fifteen to twenty percent of all advertising dollars and will continue to grow, albeit at a slower rate, but still outpacing traditional media growth.

As traditional or “analog” media converges with digital media, we will see the need for agencies and marketers to take a hard look at their media investment strategies. Actual measures of performance and accountability will rein where AC Nielsen program ratings and pass-along readership were the hard currency for “projected” delivery.

But in order to best take advantage of both worlds, it will be necessary to sink the digital island. Why?

I recently attended a meeting at a digital agency where digital strategies flowed like the Euphrates. Following two hours of digital discourse I could not contain myself any longer.

Yes, the digital world is growing. It’s sexy and it’s bold and new and promises a rosy future. But …. eighty to eighty-five percent of the world’s media is NOT digital. If you want to make an impact in that world, you need to reach out and understand the analog space. Today it drives your business…. digital does not drive theirs.

There has long been a disconnect between these two worlds. If both are to grow, they need to collide and become one. This makes it difficult for agencies steeped in tradition to accommodate change. Staffing resources that can play in both worlds are limited. And the vision to make it one world is not easily articulated.

My mission is to sink that digital island and bring its people back to the mainland.

GARMIN SEZ TURN RIGHT, TURN LEFT!

As GPS devices move into the mainstream and prices drop, look for marketers to secure positions with “soft” advertising.

GPS devices can integrate with points-of-interest (POIs) that make driving from point A to B a more pleasurable experience. The key to successfully integrating locations for service-oriented stops (Dunkin Donuts, Preferred Gas Stations, Fast Food Eateries, Banks, Hospitals, etc.) is for the user to request or “opt-in” for location downloads to the device. This direct personalization can be a boon to marketers.

Today, roughly twenty percent of online users own a GPS device …. And that number is exploding with shipment revenues tripling over the last twelve months. The market is expected to generate $5.4 billion by 2008 and is expanding to hiking, walking, biking and more.

The next phase is for the technology to be embedded into more common devices …. the cell phone or PDA, driving traffic to retail outlets.

While GPS devices are positioned to enhance the consumer experience, B to B applications have also taken off.

Partnerships developed today between advertisers and service providers are sure to reap benefits in the not-to-distant future.

"You're travelling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound ... That's the signpost up ahead - your next stop, the Twilight Zone!

YOU CAN'T "HOLD MY HAND" ONLINE

In the mid-sixties it was the Beatles that drove teens wild. What are the most popular raves for teens today? It’s not MySpace and it’s not YouTube or even Google.


According to a recent Nielsen Report (June 2007) US teen’s online preferences are moving away from instant messaging and towards sites offering social networking tools, music lyrics and photo sharing.
The lesser known sites are unique in that the teen composition of their audience is three times that of the larger social networking sites – although their penetration of the audience is much smaller.

Sites ranking in the top ten include:

CreateBlog.com: Takes the number one slot as a community driven one stop resource website for Myspace, Xanga, Blogger, Livejournal, MoveableType, Wordpress and more, where you can find Myspace layouts, Xanga layouts, avatars and icons.

PLyrics.com: Reflecting the favored music taste of online teens, this database of punk and punk-derived song lyrics is the number six most popular site among teens right now. Posting song lyrics on profiles and as comments is a common activity among social networking teens.

WhateverLife.com: The number five most popular site among teens is actually a blog operated by a single 16-year-old girl. Seen as the authority on MySpace page customization, WhateverLife offers all the codes, tools, layouts, links and detailed step-by-step tutorials for users to personalize their profile pages.

While these sites are all the rage with teens-in-the-know today, be forewarned that the audience is fickle and can make or break a site overnight. But for the moment, they are the sites that readily resonate with the teen audience. Because these sites reach a relatively small number of teens, they are the perfect testing ground for creative concepts in a highly focused environment.

If your objective is to reach a broad number of teens, then a best bet is Photobucket.com. Although lower on the composition measure, it reaches about twenty-five percent of the audience on a monthly basis with staying power.

A CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT

Every so often a programming concept comes along that develops as a perfect fit for a number of sponsors. In this case, the BBC is producing a documentary on “A Year With The Queen”. The documentary camera follows preparations for the Queen's 80th birthday and a visit to the United States. Cameramen had unprecedented access to the royals for a year.

Unlike its U.S. counterpart (PBS), the BBC is not permitted to carry advertising or sponsorship on its public services. This keeps them independent of commercial interests and ensures that they can be run instead to serve the general public interest. The BBC is financed instead by a TV license paid by households. This guarantees that a wide range of high-quality programs can be made available, unrestricted, to everyone.

PBS, in the United States, is supported by funding outside the traditional advertising realm. It accepts sponsorships and identification breaks for those marketers wishing to communicate “on a higher plane”.

Brands and products like Chuck E. Cheese's, Intel, McDonald's, and Lipton Noodle Soup have taken advantage of the new guidelines to create livelier sponsorship segments with traditional trappings, including jingles and corporate slogans. Did I say “a higher plane”?

Nonetheless, without some sort of commercial adaptation, PBS would likely not survive in the U.S. The import of syndicated BBC programming reduces the need for original PBS programming, reducing the need for funding.

And who better to sponsor “A Year With The Queen” when it arrives on our shores than Hallmark, Seagram’s Crown Royal, Crown Publishing or ….. Dairy Queen?

IT'S NOT YOUR GRANDMOTHER'S GAME ANYMORE

If you’re over 40, chances are good that you’ve had first-hand experience with the game of BINGO. It’s no secret that the centuries old game that started in Italy in 1530 (it was called BEANO then) has entrenched itself in the US market and that it has had a resurgence online.

Today, an estimated 1.6 billion people play the game at bingo halls across the country annually. To put things in perspective, that staggering attendance number is almost more than the amount of people who attended movie theaters and bowling alleys, combined. Add to that, the number of visits to the online version of the game and the statistics become mind-numbing.

So why aren’t smart marketers leveraging this craze to gain access to countless numbers of consumers? Many believe that the age group that plays the game is 65 plus. Not so online. The average age of a player is 41 and 70 percent of them are female …. Many are moms.

Half of the online players are addicted and play every day! That kind of loyal market is gold for any marketer.

Here are the online age stats from one study:

• 18-24-14%
• 25-34-16%
• 35-49-25%
• 50-54-15%
• 55-64-7%
• 65+3%

Online Bingo is decidedly a younger person’s game. Sponsorships of Bingo games, chat rooms and communities is an under-utilized outlet that can be easily dominated by a first-to-market advertiser.

EMAIL FRAUD ALERT - HOW MUCH FOR THAT CREDIT CARD?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27, 2007

WASHINGTON – The Department of Justice has recently become aware of fraudulent spam e-mail messages claiming to be from DOJ. Based upon complaints from the public, it is believed that the fraudulent messages are addressed "Dear Citizen." The messages are believed to assert that the recipients or their businesses have been the subject of complaints filed with DOJ and also forwarded to the Internal Revenue Service. In addition, such email messages may provide a case number, and state that the complaint was "filled [sic] by Mr. Henry Stewart." A DOJ logo may appear at the top of the email message or in an attached file. Finally, the message may include an attachment that supposedly contains a copy of the complaint and contact information for Mr. Stewart.

THESE EMAIL MESSAGES ARE A HOAX. DO NOT RESPOND.

These spam email messages are bogus and should be immediately deleted. Computers may be put at risk simply by an attempt to examine these messages for signs of fraud. It is possible that by "double-clicking" on attachments to these messages, recipients will cause malicious software – e.g., viruses, keystroke loggers, or other Trojan horse programs – to be launched on their computers.
Do not open any attachment to such messages. Delete the e-mail. Empty the deleted items folder.
If you have received this, or a similar hoax, please file a complaint at www.ic3.gov. Within the complaint, please list "DOJ Spoof Email" in the "Business Name" field of the complaint.

How much do hackers sell your identity for?

UK Credit Card $6, US Credit Card $3, Compromised PC $8, Complete Identity $16

FOLLOW THAT BANANA !!

A new trend is emerging that suggests marketers start mapping out their product(s) life stories strategy. This trend is especially important to food companies where the ability of a consumer to trace the origins of a product will soon play a role in product credibility.

In the case of Dole Bananas, for example, “traceability” starts with the ubiquitous and low-tech sticker that you find on the banana. Each banana’s sticker will identify the origin of the product with a three digit farm code.

Go to Dole’s site (http://www.doleorganic.com/ ), text in your farm code … in this case “776” … and you’ll be taken to “Don Pedro’s Farm” complete with photos, a description of the farm, it’s certification and a link to Google Earth for a birds-eye view.

Driven by the lowly banana sticker, the integration with high-tech internet capabilities allows the consumer, for the first time, to become one with the product. As the number of food recalls increase, this application will be in high demand … and eventually be expected of firms operating in the food chain.

Companies already on the bandwagon are coding Eggs, Olive Oils, Fruits, Vegetables, Meats, Wines and more. It’s only a matter of time before the origins of the cotton in your shirt will carry a traceability code.

Take the process one step further …. integrate it with barcodes, QR codes and RFID tags, and using the scanner capable phones now prevalent in Japan, we will have the ability to call up, on-demand, more information than we ever thought possible.

And now for a bit of levity ….

YOU'RE FIRED! NO, WAIT! ...YOU'RE HIRED!

In a bold move and in anticipation of an industry caught in the throws of a revolutionary upheaval, US News and World Report fired its editorial staff writing for the printed edition several months ago.

It promptly rehired them to write exclusively for the online edition. What is so remarkable is that the printed edition is now an offshoot of the online edition. Faster to market, news on the fly … the consumer has a wide choice …. a printed version of the news is no longer the choice.

This week, following in the footsteps of US News, in a move heralding the importance of the online edition, BusinessWeek moved its top editor, John Byrne, from its print publication to lead www.businessweek.com . The company’s site registered a 22 percent increase in monthly users during the past year with 6.7 million unique users per month. By contrast, the printed edition registered a 10 percent drop in ad pages during the same period with a 900,000 circulation rate base in North America.

The difficulty the magazine business faces stems from a business model that cannot easily translate from a printed page to an online page. The face of the buyer has changed and the sellers need to cope with that change in an effort to understand how their new model fulfills the needs of the new online market mentality.

The change is permanent and growing. In the scramble to monetize the online versions and the millions of inventory impressions (many of which go unsold), publishers cannot afford to stray from their compass … that of editorial integrity and relevance.

What looms on the horizon? Independent networks that will categorize the news genre and offer a “network” of competitive online news sites with relevant content and sold, in part, through an online auction based model.

When Will The Other Shoe Drop?

Launch date for the iPhone: June 29, 2007

Waiting with baited breath, we can expect campers to line outside the Apple Stores the evening before it goes on sale …. for the privilege of spending $499 to $599 for the 4GB or 8GB models.

Oh! Did you want a carrier for that iPhone? Both AT&T and Apple have yet to announce service plans for these phones. Just 15 days to launch and millions of callers don’t know what to expect to shell out on a monthly basis to stay connected.

To take advantage of all the services and communication applications, many have estimated an annual cost of $850 before taxes on the low end. Buy-in will likely require a 2-year contract. Total entry cost: At best, $2300 including the phone.

This from a fellow blogger: “iPhone users will expect their new whizzy phones to work as they do in the advertisements. When you want to surf the Web, press the Safari icon and be on your way. When you need to get in touch via text, email or an SMS message is the way to go. When you want to find directions to the local pizza shack, Google Maps takes you there. The last thing you want is to access one of these options and discover it doesn’t work because you haven’t signed up for the correct data plan or that it does work but, whoops, you’ve exceeded your data limit for the month and it’s going to cost you a buck fifty to check the baseball score."

Before you put on your running shoes to get to your local Apple Store, understand what it’s going to cost you to be “cool” for a few months.