Tsana Associates: Marketing

Point of Service Marketing - The marketers last captive revenue generation opportunity

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:37:42 GMT

Delivering marketing messages to customers and prospects is becoming increasingly difficult for marketers. With aggressive spam filters blocking emails and phone, postal mail and email opt-outs made easier through national registries. The chances of an organisation getting its message delivered and read is minimal. The majority of consumers donâo[dot accent]t open direct mail, whether this is via e-mail or post. Statistics show that only 0.4% of all marketing emails are opened..... More

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 09:19:01 GMT

Facebook's Zuckerberg: 'We simply did a bad job' handling Beacon. The company's young CEO has come out and apologized for the advertising program's cringeworthy debut, and has agreed to allow users to disable it entirely. [CNET News.com]

Ad targeting improves on Web sites

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 08:10:28 GMT

Facebook is mining friends' buying habits, and major Internet portals have bought companies to expand their reach and capabilities for "behavioral targeting" - all so advertisers can try to hit you with what they believe you're most likely to buy, even as doing so means amassing more data on you. "When you are online today, you've been labeled and tagged as this type of consumer in milliseconds," said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. "All of a sudden you are exposed to a vast number of invisible salespeople who are peering over your personal details to figure out the best way to sell to you."

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 07:48:09 GMT

Feeling Betrayed, Facebook Users Force Site to Honor Their Privacy . Sean Lane's purchase was supposed to be a surprise for his wife. Then it appeared as a news headline -- "Sean Lane bought 14k White Gold 1/5 ct Diamond Eternity Flower Ring from overstock.com" -- last week on the social networking Web site Facebook. By Ellen Nakashima. [washingtonpost.com - Technology]

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 07:45:45 GMT

Facebook revamps new advertising system (AP). AP - Seeking to keep the peace in its popular online hangout, Facebook Inc. has overhauled a new advertising system that sparked privacy complaints by turning its users into marketing tools for other companies. [Yahoo! News: Technology News]

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 08:10:39 GMT

Nailing down the model for online video ads. At the Dow Jones Consumer Technology Innovations conference, industry leaders butt heads on which approach is the right one. [CNET News.com]

Marketers have a poor understanding of UK law

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 17:37:22 GMT

The majority of Britain's marketers are failing in their understanding of laws that govern their profession, according to the latest findings from The Chartered Institute of Marketing. And it is the under 35s that that faired worst. The Institute's latest Marketing Trends Survey showed that the percentage of marketers having a 'good' understanding of a number of marketing related legislation ranged from 23% for the Unfair Commercial Practice law to a meagre 7% for the London Olympic and Paralympics Games Act. Most worryingly for the profession, it was young marketers who had the worst grasp of how the law affects their work. Though the average understanding of Unfair Commercial Practice law was 23%, among the under 26s it was only 14%. The 26-35 year-olds faired little better, registering a 15% understanding of the law's implications for them. This compared to 26% of 36-55 year-olds and 45% of 56-65 year-olds. From Creative Match

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:11:09 GMT

Conversation 2.0: Social marketing and you. Marketers and brands have always had conversations, but at a much slower pace and mediated by professional parties. That's no longer the case. Conversation 2.0, that is, the web 2.0 enabled conversation, shifts places and times. [CNET News.com]

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 09:34:54 GMT

MySpace, Facebook Expand Targeted Ads . MySpace yesterday expanded options for advertisers to target consumers based on the information they provide in their social-networking profiles. By Catherine Rampell. [washingtonpost.com - Technology]

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 09:25:02 GMT

AOL Adds to Its Advertising Makeover . AOL yesterday said it is buying its fourth online advertising company of the year, part of an ongoing effort to transform itself into an Internet advertising concern. By Zachary A. Goldfarb. [washingtonpost.com - Technology]

Kaspersky and Me

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 07:37:45 GMT

Russian security vendor Kaspersky turns to YouTube for funny, edgy advertising campaign.

Excellent use of viral advertising from Axe

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 13:29:17 GMT

New ad campaign for Axe products is a mini movie entertaining enough to attract its own audience, and an example of how advertisers should offer Net users more than standard commercials. If it wasn't good we wouldn't be telling you about it. That's why it's good.

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 08:43:48 GMT

Advertising: The View From Your Airplane Window Was Brought to You by .... A start-up called Ad-Air said it had created the “first global aerial advertising network” — giant, billboardlike ads that will be visible from the air as planes approach runways. By ERIC PFANNER. [NYT > Business]

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 07:47:04 GMT

Can marketing be conversational?.

Not long after Cluetrain came out, Jakob Nielsen floored me by pointing out something that should have been obvious but proved easy to miss: that the authors “defected” from marketing and took sides with markets against it. When we wrote "we are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers, and our reach exceeds your grasp. deal with it" … the first person "we" was individuals seeking to escape marketing’s grasp. The second person we were addressing was marketing itself. I think this is a very big reason why Cluetrain still resonates today. Marketing is hardly any less graspy and barely more conversational, except in a few places. Such as, presumably, the Conversational Marketing Summit.

In the weeks leading up to the Summit my friend Peter Hirshberg urged me to provide helpful input for a white paper he was writing with others, including Steve Hayden of Ogilvy, a legendary copywriter (Apple’s “1984″, among countless others). The white paper was to frame its thinking around Cluetrain, eight years after marketing began not to get its points.

Here’s what I sent him, which now runs at the front of the White Paper (warning: it’s a .pdf)…

The framing for conversational marketing should be conversation, not marketing. Think about what you want in a conversation, and let that lead your marketing.

The purpose of conversation is to create and improve understanding, not for one party to “deliver messages” to the other. That would be rude.

There is no “audience” in a conversation. If we must label others in conversation, let’s call them partners.

People in productive conversation don’t repeat what they’re saying over and over. They learn from each other and move topics forward.

Conversations are about talking, not announcing. They’re about listening, not surveying. They’re about paying attention, not getting attention. They’re about talking, not announcing.

“Driving” is for cars and cattle, not conversation.

Conversation is live. Its constantly moving and changing, flowing where the interests and ideas of the participants take it. Even when conversations take the form of email, what makes them live is current interest on both sides.

What this means for conversational marketing is that brands must be living things too. Not just emblems. Those that succeed will be as liveas open to the flow and diversion of ideasas the market conversations they participate in.

Live brands participate in market conversations in a manner that is:

Real. Conversational marketing is carried out by human beings, writing and speaking in their own voices, for themselvesnot just for their employers.

Constant. Conversational marketings heartbeat is the human one, not some media schedule. Brands need to work incessantly to be understood within the context of the market conversation and to earn and keep the respect of their conversational partners.

Genuinely interested. Intellectual engagement cant be fakedat least for long. Current interest is what keeps conversations going, and its the key to sustained brand presence.

Intent on learning. Every participant who stays with the conversation learns. Humans are distinguished by their unlimited capacity to learn. This should be no less true of brands than it is of individuals.

Humble. The term “branding” was born in the cattle industry and borrowed by advertising and mass media at the height of the Industrial Age. In those days the power to inform was concentrated in the hands of a few giant companies. Now it’s in everybody’s hands.

Attentive. In the old days, brands wanted everybody else to pay attention to them. Now brands need to pay attention to everybody else.

Personal. No individual outsources their conversation or their education. This is no less true of brands than of people. Because brands today are people. Smart brands reward individual employees for engaging in market converstions.

Can marketing be all those things? I have my doubts. So does this blog (not sure who the writer is), which offers a paragraph that makes me wince:

‘There is no audience in a conversation.’ I agree with this, however there is an audience for a blog. Labeling people in a conversation a ‘partner’ suggests equality. But as this applies to marketing it is the wrong suggestion. A partner doesn’t try to get you to buy stuff you don’t need/want. The implication that the blogosphere is a conversation; that we are all partners; therefore people marketing to us in this ‘conversation’ are our partners is creepy. Another point to note is that there is a backchannel in the blogosphere. Many of us get emails requesting this that or the other get some exposure. Conversations are transparent to all participants.

I remember struggling with a term that wasn’t “audience” and was truly conversational. “Partner” was the best I could come up with at the time. What else do you call someone you’re in conversation with? Maybe one of you can come up with a better answer. In any case, point taken. In fact, it’s a point I’d make as well. The jury is out on whether marketing can be truly conversational. Peter and Steve believe it can. I’d like to help them try, which is what I’m doing here. If anybody can do it, they’re the ones. But the jury is still out. That’s the rest of us.

[Doc Searls Weblog]

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 10:04:49 GMT

Google AdSense for Mobile puts contextual ads at your fingertips. Google brings its contextual ad program to the mobile market. [CNET News.com]

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:44:18 GMT

Oh, if only we knew what these ads are trying to say.. The recently-released ad campaign (left half of image) for Tom Ford's new fragrance for men is anything but ambiguous. But what's funniest about this is an oddly similar internet site (at right) hawking "Vulva" perfume with identical 'product placement' ("ha, ha". ed).

The name, the ad copy (a "beguiling vaginal scent"), and the url, (smellmeand.com) all scream "hoax." Now that I've seen the Ford ad, though, sheesh, I'm not so sure.

Link to Adrants' blurb about the Ford campaign, and here's the other vajayjay ad (NSFW, contains nudity and stuff).

Bonus: Don't miss the super cheesy video on that "Vulva" site, and take a peek at the html keywords in the header if you want to learn a ton of dirty words in Italian, German, and other languages I can't recognize. I don't know what the hell "bacak arasi," "koku," "insankokusu," or "yarak" mean, but I have a feeling they'd make the pope blush. (thanks, Susannah Breslin!)

[Boing Boing]

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:25:36 GMT

By grace of Starbucks.

I'm back home in the U.S., getting online in the wee hours over a wi-fi access point that's my wife's laptop, which is on the Net at the moment using a Verizon EvDO card. The connection is highly asymmetrical (fast-enough downsteam, slow-as-dialup upstream), but it's serving as our home connction until Verizon FiOS (fiber optic) cabling and service arrives on Thursday. Then we'll have 20Mb downstream and 5Mb upstream.

Anyway, I spent my week in London at the Thistle Kensington Park, which lists high-speed Internet access among its amenities. It either failed completely or was slow beyond measure. I spent hours on the phone with tech support at the company that provides the service, and ended up refusing to pay the charges that the hotel manager insisted were not his to take off the bill. I've never had a heated argument with a hotel manager before, so this was a milestone experience for me. It was also the latest lesson in a series that keeps me coming back to Starbucks, where the Internet access experience is as predictable (and expensive) as its coffee. I hate to say its worth it to me to pay the monthly T-Mobile fee, but it is. Getting a fast-enough and reliable Net connection at pretty much any Starbucks one encounters is a mark of civilization, at least to me. (Though I do await the time when we look back on wi-fi access charges as a breed of extortion akin to that of the pay toilet. Meanwhile I do understand the economics involved.)

I'd give kudos to T-Mobile as well, but they charge 18¢/minute roaming; fee for using their network at Starbucks in the U.K. But I am grateful that Starbucks goes to the trouble of making sure that customers get Net access, somehow. And that the access is reliable.

My experience in hotels is highly varied. The worst by far was the Thistle Kensington Park, but I can't say what the best is. Nothing stands out for me. Anybody know if there's a Starbucks equivalent among hotels? After this past week of zero Net access from the Thistle, I'm ready to limit my patronage to hotels that have known reliable Net access for guests.

[Doc Searls Weblog]

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 15:43:32 GMT

Lean and Media Companies?.

I received an email from Norway, asking a question I couldn't answer, so I'm turning it to the blog readers:

[ I work for a] European media group based in Norway . We have around 8.500 employees and operations in 20 countries.
We have for some time experimented with Lean in our company, mainly through a few pilots.

Our main learning from these pilots is that our top managers lack the necessary knowledge and commitment to move into a larger Lean transformation.

To confront this we are now including our top managers in a Lean Best Practice study. During the study we aim at visiting (already transformed) Lean companies and Lean research communities.

I've been reading through your great blog, but canâo[dot accent]t seem to find anything about media companies going lean.

You wouldn't by any chance know of any? We would be very eager to visit them.

And since I'm already bothering you with this email, which other companies and research companies would you recommend us to visit?

What do you think or suggest? Click "comments" to let us know. What Lean companies (in any industry) would you suggest touring in Scandinavia or Europe?

Here is part of my response back:

"... you might not find another "lean" company exactly like yours to study and learn from. I hope that wouldn't stop you from trying Lean. Think of the excitement if we had been at the first hospital to use Lean? They didn't have anyone exactly like them to model themselves after. But, it can be done. I'd recommend doing your best to understand the basic high-level lean concepts then start doing experiments. What business problems need solving? Try what you think will work in rapid experiments and learn as you go. That might take longer and you might make some mistakes along the way, but you might end up with better results by going that route."

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[Lean Blog]

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 09:07:02 GMT

Want to 'converse' with advertisers? Me neither. 'Conversational marketing' smells like a new spin on old advertising techniques, just on the Web. [CNET News.com]

The viral that has everyone asking: Is it Phil Collins?

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 15:28:02 GMT

The latest viral gaining cult status features a drum kit, a Phil Collins song and it's for Cadbury's Dairy Milk. We think you should take a look. 16th September - Comment from Emily Pincher: Dad, it's an actor called Garon Michael who specialises in doing gorillas.

Subliminal Advertising by Derren Brown

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 09:01:11 GMT

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:33:06 GMT

USA Today distributes news by 'widget' (AP). AP - USA Today is plunging into a hot new Internet technology, offering its online users the ability to install "widgets" on their blogs and personal Web pages that contain news updates and other information from the newspaper. [Yahoo! News: Technology News]

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 10:47:49 GMT

Yahoo takes on Google on ads. Yahoo strengthens its service to advertisers by buying online advertising business BlueLithium for $300m. [BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 07:42:57 GMT

Advertising: Breathless Pitches for Penny Stocks, Now in Newspapers. The promotion of penny stocks, for years a staple of Internet spam, has recently burst forth in splashy full-page ads in major daily newspapers. By LYNNLEY BROWNING. [NYT > Business]

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 07:42:35 GMT

The Ad Campaign: Battle Over Iraq Strategy. As the nation awaits next week’s report on the status of the Iraq war, the battle for the hearts and minds of Americans is escalating on the airwaves. By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE. [NYT > Business]