Marketing Has Changed

1-800-Flowers.com goes mobile for Mother’s Day

Written by John Ellett on June 12, 2009

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As smartphones get smarter, they are increasingly becoming the “go to” device for consumers and business people who need to make something happen “now.” And if you are like me, one of those procrastinating gift givers on special occasions, some of the new mobile applications from gift marketers are quite useful.<

I caught up with Vib Prasad, Senior Director of Web Marketing and Merchandising for 1-800-Flowers.com, one of the innovators in the mobile commerce category. The company’s smartphone ordering system was developed with Digby, a leading mobile commerce platform and service provider based in Austin. According to Vib, the key to effective mobile commerce is integrating it with the rest of the offline and online marketing mix and not treating it as a separate mobile-only initiative. Much of 1-800-Flowers.com’s mobile success leading up to Mother’s Day was a result of newspaper advertising by Apple, which featured the 1800Flowers application as part of its App Store advertising.

Vib began testing mobile commerce in 2007 after hearing customer feedback of wanting the convenience of shopping for gifts on the go. The company’s promise of “getting it there when you thought it was too late” led it to look for ways to improve its responsiveness to anxious customers. Creating a mobile ordering app for the Blackberry was the first step. But Vib acknowledges that the Apple iPhone and App Store have certainly accelerated the popularity of mobile commerce.

What’s next for 1-800-Flowers.com on the mobile front? Vib plans to focus on three things: increase the “discoverability” of the company’s mobile applications, enhance the usability of its applications for those with short attention spans and expand the use of mobile devices for customer service and loyalty-building efforts.

Have you used a mobile ordering app yet? Which one is your favorite? I encourage you to use these apps to get a better sense of how mobile commerce could fit into your marketing mix.

With social media, act now and plan later

Written by John Ellett on May 27, 2009

This is not normally the advice I offer to clients, but a recent article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Who owns your name on Twitter” reminded me that this is a time to act now. Many companies are trying to determine their social media strategies and, given the complexities and organizational implications, it may be a while before specific implementation plans are in place. We are encouraging and assisting clients to lock down their rightful names on multiple networks, much as we did many years ago with domain names. While they continue to plan their activation strategies, they’ll be confident that no one has usurped options that they would like to have.

How secure are your brand names in the social media world?

What can we learn about PC’s comeback vs. Apple’s Mac?

Written by John Ellett on May 20, 2009

Ad Age just reported that the latest BrandIndex survey shows the PC has extended its lead on value perception relative the the Apple Mac. After an extended period of being pummeled by Apple and its brilliant attack campaign, Microsoft came to the defense of the PC with a campaign of its own. While the work done by Crispin Porter & Bogusky is not likely to win any traditional creative awards, it does remind us of what makes advertising effective. That is: the clear expression of a strong value proposition. Too many marketers (and far too many agencies) lose sight of this in the quest to be creative.

What makes the Microsoft effort effective is that it finally distills a sound positioning that meets three critical tests. It is true. It is different. And it is meaningful. These same criteria were met by Apple with its campaign, which is why it was so successful when it was not being contested. Now that both camps have honed their arguments and expressed them well, we’re in for a fair fight.

Who do you think will win in the long run?

Lenovo experiments with virtual reality website

Written by John Ellett on May 14, 2009

How does a marketer in a highly competitive category distinguish itself online? Lenovo is hoping its eLounge will provide a unique and engaging experience for its visitors. According to Ajit Sivadasan, VP of Global eCommerce for the company, early results of the site launched at 2009 CES have been positive. Compared to other sites used as benchmarks, time spent by visitors to the Lenovo site has been longer.

The site utilizes Nortel’s Web.Alive platform to provide a virtual exploration of Lenovo products and its partners’ supporting technologies. These partners, such Intel and Microsoft, helped provide funding for this experiment. The visitor can stroll through kiosks, interact with product information in multiple formats and even request a live chat with a human representative.

While the site resembles Second Life in its use of 3D avatars and virtual spaces, Ajit is quick to point out that Lenovo hopes to provide an experience that offers real value to the visitor.

What do you think? Will this type of Web experience prove the new norm? Or is it just an experiment in being different? Let me know your opinion.

Good resource for insight into digital marketing issues

Written by John Ellett on May 6, 2009

I ran across this site today and thought I’d pass it along. Much more fact-based than many other sites.

Pew Internet & American Life Project

If you have others to suggest, please send them along.

Integrated media planning shouldn’t be so difficult

Written by John Ellett on April 27, 2009

The ANA and AAAA just released a survey indicating marketers could be doing a better job of planning media in an integrated manner. The headline in Adweek read “Integrated media plans face obstacle course. New survey shows agencies need more metrics, better grasp of Web.”

I believe these are excuses from agencies that don’t really want to change. What the article doesn’t address are the reasons I believe clients are still being underserved by most agencies. It boils down to three fundamental problems.

1. Lack of a cohesive framework for evaluating different types of media: It’s true that there are few established systems that allow a marketer to input criteria into a model and get an integrated recommendation. But that doesn’t mean that different media types with their different measurement systems can’t be reduced to some common evaluation metrics. It takes a new perspective on framing marketing objectives and associating appropriate media metrics. It is hard work, but the results we are seeing as we do this for clients is worth the effort.
2. Media departments are fragmented: We hear this all the time from marketers and media companies that offer both traditional and digital options. The traditional planners are usually in a different department from their digital counterparts. They may be in a different building, a different city or even a different arm of the holding company. And you wonder why media plans aren’t integrated?
3. Media departments are incomplete: The biggest missing piece is search marketing. Few agencies make PPC campaigns part of their media plans, and for many marketers this is one of the most effective options they have. Even fewer view search engine optimization as a media discipline, though it can drive visitors to a client’s website more efficiently than almost any other form of paid media. It’s not that agencies don’t “grasp the Web” as the article proclaims, it’s that they aren’t even trying.

It’s taken our agency about three years to address these three problems, but we know now that they can be overcome. We have learned that it takes a culture that is oriented both to integration and to change. Sadly, many big agencies have neither.

If you have a perspective on this challenge, drop me a note. Or if you’d like to discuss what we’ve learned about what it takes to do integrated media planning, let’s talk.

Will marketing organizations ever “learn?”

Written by John Ellett on April 15, 2009

Building a learning organization is tough work but extremely valuable. According to Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, one of my favorite books of all time, “Learning organizations are where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to learn together.” When this happens in a marketing organization it can have a transformative impact on an entire business.

With the pace of change in marketing, the need for marketers to learn and to share what they learn with their peers has never been higher. In a recent conversation with Randy Gier, former CMO at Pepsico’s FritoLay business and then at Cadbury Schweppes, I was reminded of the simple things that lead to solving complex challenges. Randy was responsible for building an internal learning system that was used by his marketers around the globe. It helped marketers learn from their peers the things that worked and those that didn’t work when it came to launching new products or executing new campaigns. I believe there were three keys to what made this system work:

1. The input process was simple but meaningful. All programs had common information, such as the business objective, the key activities and the final outcomes. So if a product manager in Brazil wanted to test-market guacamole-flavored potato chips, she could learn from her peer in Mexico, who had already tried such an effort.

2. There was trust within the organization that the information was to be used for shared learning and not as a punishment system for failed experiments. Building such a culture takes time and the commitment of management to reinforce the desired behavior (shared learning) and minimize the undesired behavior (public floggings).

3. There was peer pressure and management support to make the system work. If personnel in a marketing office were not contributing effectively they would hear about it from the other offices at their annual marketing summit. Effective contributors were recognized, which further encouraged participation.

Most of us could learn from Randy that the key to effective marketing is learning. If you have implemented approaches that help your organization’s IQ, please send them my way.

How eBay gets the most from its online advertising

Written by John Ellett on April 3, 2009

In a recent conversation with Daphne Liska, a six-year eBay veteran who manages the company’s online display advertising, I gained some new insights into what makes eBay’s program so effective. There are three keys applicable to online merchants and marketers of all types.

1. Improved results have come from rigorous testing using the right metrics. Beginning in 2005 the company moved from evaluating online ads purely on click-through results to incorporating passive response metrics. To capture the passive impact, control groups are served charity ads or some other non-eBay message, then they are compared to a test group that is served an eBay display ad. Through this process a view-through multiplier is established by market and by campaign, allowing eBay to better hone its online display ads, leading to increased revenue for the company.

2. eBay’s best-performing banners incorporate live auction items to increase relevancy and urgency. This process of linking to real-time data, while technically a challenge, has led to ads that consistently outperform those with general messages or calls-to-action. Roll over the sample ad included here to get an idea how the concept works.

3. eBay’s most efficient media buys are retargeting campaigns based on the behavior of visitors who have previously viewed the company’s sites. The sophistication of eBay’s cookie-based program is impressive and incorporates relevant customer data. Customers always have the option to opt out of being cookied, but so far the customer experience has been positive enough to maintain a low opt-out rate. This retargeting approach has been superior to other forms of behavioral targeting, which carried too high a CPM premium.

Keep an eye on what eBay is up to in the next year. While it has an advanced program now, the company is not finished innovating yet.

Are you innovating with online advertising creative or media approaches? Let me know what you are learning.

Facebook for Granny?

Written by John Ellett on March 30, 2009

I must be getting old. In a recent conversation with a senior executive at Facebook I learned that one of the fastest growing groups on the social networking site is boomer grandparents. It makes sense. Their kids, the first generation of Facebook users, are growing up, getting jobs and having families. Thus making many boomers (which I am) grandparents (which I’m not). More and more families and family friends are dispersed geographically. Facebook makes it easy to keep up with what is happening in the lives of those who are dear, but not near. The bragging about “my grand kids” that used to happen around a kitchen table is now happening in the virtual world.

What does this mean for marketers? With the millions of users on Facebook, think about the sub-segments that can be reached and target them effectively. Boomer grandparents are just one example. Boomer golf fanatics, travel buffs, foodies and about any other interest group can be reached on this site. We’re finding that targeted pay-per-click campaigns executed on Facebook can be extremely efficient for these (and other) markets.

Marketers should also reassess their assumptions about “granny” and “gramps.” Our generation is healthier, more active and more technologically sophisticated than the stereotype would lead one to believe. Engaging boomers though digital media is a smart move whose time has come.

Which approach to improving ROI of online ads works best?

Written by John Ellett on March 27, 2009

Breakfast with Robin Joy, Director of Marketing for Quicken, is always a thought provoking occasion. Recently we were discussing our experiences in optimizing the return from online ads. One approach that I have advocated frequently is to place ads in contextually relevant environments with appropriate creative to break through the banner burn-out phenomenon. This can help improve click-though or rollover rates and thus improve the “return.” The other end of the spectrum is to use networks that aggregate remnant space and to buy ads  cheaply. This lowers the “investment” but somewhat limits control of targeting. It can be an appropriate approach for broad-appeal products such as free credit reports.

Robin shared her experience with a technique we have also used for clients called retargeting. It has been one of the best performing strategies for Quicken, as well as for some of our clients. This approach combines the best of both previous alternatives. By tagging visitors to your website who did not conclude the ultimate action (order online, register their interest, download your software…) you have identified a relevant target. Then by serving display ads through a low-cost aggregator to them wherever they happen to be on the Internet, you can reach them at a low cost per impression. This combination of a good target viewer and a low-cost impression yields a great ROI.

Retargeting programs take some sophistication to set up and run, but they can be profitable. Have you tried this as part of your marketing programs? What was your experience?