Moving Fast, Testing and Being Clever

I was just reminiscing with a friend about a technology platform we developed 10 years ago called Streetbeam.  If you lived in NY, San Francisco, or London at the time, there is a good chance you saw one of Streebeam’s “beaming” outdoor media displays. Phone Kiosks, Bus Shelters and Subway signs were deployed with infrared hardware that enabled consumers to point their Palm Pilots (the hot mobile device at the time) at an advertisement and get more information downloaded on the spot.

There is actually a short flash movie showing the technology in action still posted on a random web site.  The clip was shown at an ADWEEK awards ceremony.

Viacom Outdoor (now CBS Outdoor), one of the largest outdoor media companies in the world, invested in the business and provided distribution. They recognized that emerging technologies could make their static media assets interactive and provide greater value to advertisers.

Streetbeam was an immediate hit. Banana Republic, Warner Bros, HSBC and American Express were among the A-list marketers that developed campaigns, using the technology to offer consumers the opportunity to download everything from coupons, store locations, and games. Simon and Schuster, for the release of a new Stephen King book, offered a sneak peak at one of the stories. Stuart Elliot wrote about the campaign in The New York Times.

Some applications were more popular than others, but in every instance, a forward thinking marketer pulled their creative and media team together and identified a compelling way to extend their brand into this new media stream (or beam.)

The budgets were small, as was the media reach, but it taught marketers how important it was to be able to react quickly to new technologies and media platforms and test them out.

Although infrared technology quickly ran its course in mobile devices, (I do miss the famous Palm Pilot digital “hand shake” used to exchange contact info.), Streetbeam helped usher in many new interactive forms of out-of-home media.

We see the same responsiveness from many marketers today as they develop applications for the iPhone. The best of the lot are just plain clever and imaginatively deliver user value and sales opportunities.

My favorite is the Ben Color Capture App from Benjamin Moore. Take a picture of anything and it identifies a Benjamin Moore paint color to match. Using the iPhone's GPS it then locates the nearest Benjamin Moore retailer.  You can see a demo here.

Why do some media companies and marketers seem to move so much quicker than others?

TV Everywhere Takes On New Meaning

We have gotten used to seeing TV screens just about everywhere - taxis, airplanes, airports, sides of buildings, stores, gas stations, elevators, etc. Seems the media industry has been on a tireless mission (“No Screen Left Behind?”) to place screens in so many places that we are never more than just a few feet away from our next video exposure.

Considering the amount of video we already view on our computers and phones, is it now possible, with an extraordinarily well crafted media plan, for an advertiser to reach someone every step of their way throughout the day? In essence, follow them?

Here is a list of places, in chronological order, where a video screen flashed an ad message at me during a 5-hour journey from my office in NYC to a hotel room in Detroit:

Office computer
Elevator
Taxi
Billboard on Long Island Expressway
LaGuardia Airport Gate
Plane
Detroit Airport Gate
Taxi
Hotel Lobby
Hotel Room
Computer

Certainly a big job to research, plan and buy all these media outlets, but not very difficult.

Coming home from my trip I arrived at LaGuardia and hopped in one of the few cabs in NYC without a video screen. I enjoyed a few video-free moments until I noticed something floating high above the nearby National Tennis Center where the US Open Tennis Championships were in full swing. Hanging from the side of the DIRECTV blimp and filling the night sky with TV programming and ad messages was the largest HD TV screen in the world.

An influential media executive once said that "the future belongs to those brands who are able to travel wherever the consumer is moving."

The Direct Response/Brand Advertisting Connection

MTV received a fair amount of press last month from a study they commissioned to identify the most effective ad format for short form online video. The 5-second pre-roll combined with a 10-second lower third overlay was officially declared not only most effective, but most consumer-friendly as well.

Reading about the study, I immediately recalled a terrific guest column in Online Media Daily titled “Beyond Advertising, A Strategic Path to the Digital Consumer.”  The columnists, both partners at IBM Global Business Services, argue that every contact an advertiser makes with a consumer in a digital environment should impact the brand as well as drive an action - direct response and brand advertising should always be wrapped together.

“Traditional boundaries are fading, creating opportunities for innovative business models for content platforms. Thus advertisers that previously focused on delivering either ROI-driven marketing or brand-oriented advertising can cater to both sets of objectives. The result is what we call "brands-actional" advertising.”

What better way to accomplish this than an online video campaign with a brand oriented pre-roll and a follow up call to action in the overlay?

As online video providers frantically look for ways to effectively monetize their fast-growing traffic and finally move closer to some industry standards, it appears they could find themselves center stage for a new ad model that is embraced by the industry and fundamentally changes outdated marketing practices.

Marketers and their agencies need to move quickly to seamlessly connect their traditional/digital and brand/direct response efforts. Surprisingly most agencies still do not create a short, pre-roll version of their standard 30-second TV commercials.

And shouldn’t overlays and other call-to-action ad units (hot spotting, post roll, etc) be part of a unified and integrated TV creative and media plan? After all, TV and online video viewing are coalescing.

Seems this is just one more example of the immediate need for marketers to centralize multiple disciplines that still often exist in different silos and often different agencies. At the recent Chicago Ad Tech Conference many of the CMOs in attendance were outspoken in their preference for bundled, do-it-all approaches.

The Most Powerful Media Entity on the Planet?

We all have our Facebook stories; here is mine:

Just about 3 months ago I was "friended" by a former classmate from my elementary school days in the mid-70s. It was the first such social media connection from this chapter of my life and brought back a flood of memories. Within a few weeks 7 or 8 more classmates connected, one posting a picture of our class from the fourth grade that I am sure I haven’t seen since I was in the fifth grade. Within a couple of months, the group had grown to over 40, many participating in conversation threads about ferocious nuns and a planned reunion this coming September.

Many of us have similar personal stories about the stunning connectivity power of Facebook and other social networks. Some media experts claim Facebook is the most powerful media entity on the planet and will only continue to grow in reach and influence.

A compelling video titled “Social Media Revolution” started making the rounds last week: http://bit.ly/RTzPe. It opens with a bold question that might have seemed far-fetched a few years ago but not today: “Is Social Media a fad or the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution.”

The video then goes on the present a list of eye-popping data points that support a social and media phenomenon if not a revolution. One example:

Years to reach 50 million users:

Radio - 38 Years
TV -13 Years
Internet - 4 Years
iPod -3 Years
Facebook - Added 100 million users in less than 9 months

So, the multi billion dollar question: How can Facebook and others monetize this extraordinary usage and why are there still questions about their ability to do so?

There is no doubt that advertising is more effective accompanying search results than in social media environments, but there still must be significant value and a considerable measure of effectiveness in placing an ad message along side a stream of 47-year-olds reminiscing and interacting with each other.

And what other ways can Facebook monetize all the data revealed by their 250 million users? Just the other day they announced plans to move aggressively into e-commerce including physical goods from third-party companies. Imagine 1-800-Flowers targeting friends of people who have a birthday coming up. (Most Facebook members include their birthday in their profile.)

The monetization opportunities seem endless when you consider Facebook’s reach and depth of connectivity. I keep waiting to see a local party planning company's ad to show up on the pages of my elementary school classsmates.

Newspapers Can Still Deliver

This reprint of a famous New York Times headline story dropped out of my home-delivered paper over 3 weeks ago, providing immediate delight to my entire family. It has been sitting on our living room coffee table ever since, often picked up and browsed by visiting friends.

The reprint is sponsored by Louis Vuitton and their latest “journeys” ad celebrating the “greatest journey of all” occupies the entire back page. This particular ad placement was a keypart of a broader association with the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.

It’s been discussed ad nauseam how difficult it has become for advertisers to stand out and effectively reach and influence their target audience. Here we have one of the oldest media properties in the country, the flagship of a media category deemed by most to be on it’s last legs, delivering a truly compelling offering that serves ongoing value to itself, its readers and a large advertising partner.

A recent forecast by Borell Associates actually shows newspaper ad revenue rebounding next year. http://bit.ly/14D5zd The forecast points to better and more innovative ad selling.

The Power of Traditional Advertising, Part One

With marketing budgets inexorably moving to all things digital and the teams that manage them barely able to keep up with the pace of change, sometimes the most effective advertising relies on the oldest forms of media.

Advertisers have been painting their messages on the sides of buildings in NYC for over 200 years. One of the largest such ads covers the entire side of a 30+ story building on 23rd street and Park Avenue. Warner Bros has had the exclusive rights for many years and uses it to promote new film releases. Every few weeks, a new image is hand-painted over the previous one. The process and the subsequent showing is seen by hundreds of thousand of people walking and driving north on Park Avenue.

What makes the ad so effective is the sheer size, but also the painting process that creates a near photographic image. Most importantly, it is also the only building-size, outdoor ad in this part of Manhattan giving it a particularly impactful placement in the urban landscape.

New zoning laws make it unlikely any new ads will appear nearby. (During the past 15-10 years, NYC somehow lost control of the outdoor ad business resulting in complete overload in certain commercial areas like Times Square and the Queens side of the Midtown Tunnel. They have made a 180 degree turn and are now aggressively regulating.)

This dramatic recurring ad in a relatively ad-free environment gives Warner Bros a unique marketing franchise on one of the oldest ad platforms, a platform that does not appear to be weakened by the digital revolution.