When I was looking at my gmail I saw this google ad word link showed up in the top navigation area which was link to a "Dunder and Mifflin" press release . This press release was for a promotion to VP of one of their "employees". I did a double take, as I realized the name of the company was the one where the TV show, 'The Office', takes place.
For those of you who are not familiar with the TV show, 'The Office', it is about this paper supplies company named "Dunder and Mifflin", and the quirky team of people that work there.
When you clicked on the link it takes you to the press release page with the announcement of the promotion of one of the characters on the show to VP at Dunder and Mifflin. Once there you can browse through the entire "corporate" site, and even go into the company's intranet site.
With references to the cast of characters on the show through out, those familar with the show, will get a big kick out of it. One option on the intranet site is to generate your own ad you can post on your blog or website to promote Dunder and Mifflin.
Overall this is a great campaign to keep the existing viewers happy, and also a great way to bring back viewers who have stopped watching.
The "intranet site "also acts as a viewer forum and social networking about the show. They can build and personalize their own page, with favorites, post photos, design and share what their desk looks like, and more. Forum participants are challenged to accomplish different tasks each week. Everyone who has a profile on the site can compete and get ranked according to how well they did. The intranet site is highly interactive and with clear call to actions to take viral actions to promote the show and the website.
The campaign viral goals appear to be:
+ Provide an interactive personalized social forum to encourage people to keep talk about the show
+ Encourage loyal viewers to use their word of mouth to drive awareness of the show and the sites
+ Increase web traffic and time spent on site
+ Support and encourage loyalty of TV show viewership
I think this is a fun viral campaign for The Office!
Of course maybe I am biased because I really like the TV show.
Great site to check out for its viral tactics!
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Print marketing - why include it in your marketing plan?
Print marketing has been around for hundreds of years. Some of the most early common examples include newspapers, in the seventeenth century, which included line or classified advertising. Now we have so many forms of advertising, but all are not equal in their effectiveness on your target audiences.
There are two main ways for you to effectively implement print marketing:
Press releases / PR
Costs : As little as $80; Can include PR agency time or your time spent writing and distributing an optimized press release
Distribution:
Paid print advertising:
Costs: Much higher than PR; On the cheap end, for a post card mailer (with a very small distribution) you may only have to put out about $300 dollars. On the average it is more likely to run in the thousands of dollars, depending on the form of collateral (can include advertisements in direct mail pieces, catalogs, print ads in magazines, newspapers and fliers, point of purchase materials in stores etc).
How print compares to other forms of marketing tools:
Longer lifespan
Print mail has the potential of a longer lifespan than a TV commercial or radio. For example, people tend to re-read their magazines and even pass them onto other people.
Clear vertical market targeting
With all the market segment specific cable TV channels (SPIKE for men, Lifetime for women) out there, you can get some level of a vertical market focus. When using print marketing, you can find even more specific vertical marketing opportunities, whether it is an industry or hobby specific magazine or direct mail piece to a carefully selected group.
There is every type of magazine, newsletter and newspaper out there you can imagine. Topics can range from: Fly Fishing, Real Estate Investments, Stock Market Investing, Food and Wine, Scrapbooking, Hawaii, Monster Trucks, Science Fiction, etc. All of these print media's have all done a lot of research on their demographics to help them sell ads, and they are all willing to share this info with you for free.
For your direct mail pieces, you can build, purchase or rent vertical specific databases made up of your target audiences. You can even do A /B testing of different pieces offering different discounts, or different layouts and messaging, to see what is most effective.
Must have in your strategic marketing plan:
All in all, it is important to make sure you include some component of print marketing in your strategic marketing plan. At the very least you should build an optimized press release which has the potential of showing up in market specific magazines and newsletters, or even online in forums and blogs. You should also evaluate closely any print advertising opportunities.
And don't forget to think outside the box. I recently saw a print ad for a high end mattress in Food and Wine, and I understand they have received quite a favorable response from that placement.
There are two main ways for you to effectively implement print marketing:
Press releases / PR
Costs : As little as $80; Can include PR agency time or your time spent writing and distributing an optimized press release
Distribution:
Paid print advertising:
Costs: Much higher than PR; On the cheap end, for a post card mailer (with a very small distribution) you may only have to put out about $300 dollars. On the average it is more likely to run in the thousands of dollars, depending on the form of collateral (can include advertisements in direct mail pieces, catalogs, print ads in magazines, newspapers and fliers, point of purchase materials in stores etc).
How print compares to other forms of marketing tools:
Longer lifespan
Print mail has the potential of a longer lifespan than a TV commercial or radio. For example, people tend to re-read their magazines and even pass them onto other people.
Clear vertical market targeting
With all the market segment specific cable TV channels (SPIKE for men, Lifetime for women) out there, you can get some level of a vertical market focus. When using print marketing, you can find even more specific vertical marketing opportunities, whether it is an industry or hobby specific magazine or direct mail piece to a carefully selected group.
There is every type of magazine, newsletter and newspaper out there you can imagine. Topics can range from: Fly Fishing, Real Estate Investments, Stock Market Investing, Food and Wine, Scrapbooking, Hawaii, Monster Trucks, Science Fiction, etc. All of these print media's have all done a lot of research on their demographics to help them sell ads, and they are all willing to share this info with you for free.
For your direct mail pieces, you can build, purchase or rent vertical specific databases made up of your target audiences. You can even do A /B testing of different pieces offering different discounts, or different layouts and messaging, to see what is most effective.
Must have in your strategic marketing plan:
All in all, it is important to make sure you include some component of print marketing in your strategic marketing plan. At the very least you should build an optimized press release which has the potential of showing up in market specific magazines and newsletters, or even online in forums and blogs. You should also evaluate closely any print advertising opportunities.
And don't forget to think outside the box. I recently saw a print ad for a high end mattress in Food and Wine, and I understand they have received quite a favorable response from that placement.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Winner for Best Microsite
I always love finding great online ad campaigns, and in my browsing the web I found this award winning mircrosite generated by an ad agency I admire a lot, Avenue A Razorfish.
This is the perfect website for the virtual holiday gift giving season. On this microsite, you click on an unopened wrap present to reveal your virtual gift. Once you see the gift you can either save it as a wallpaper, re-gift it (send it onto a friend for them to open) or pick a new one.
I am openly admitting I had a lot of fun clicking on present after present. I even found some that I forwarded onto friends because they either fit their personality perfectly or they were just hilarious.
Each present comes with some silly message, and "gifts" range from a beer stein gun (??) to a rubber ducky, action figures, and even food.
Overall a very nice online viral campaign! And if the time I spend clicking through hundreds of gifts and forwarding to my friends, also a very successful one too!
Hope you enjoy as much as I have!
This is the perfect website for the virtual holiday gift giving season. On this microsite, you click on an unopened wrap present to reveal your virtual gift. Once you see the gift you can either save it as a wallpaper, re-gift it (send it onto a friend for them to open) or pick a new one.
I am openly admitting I had a lot of fun clicking on present after present. I even found some that I forwarded onto friends because they either fit their personality perfectly or they were just hilarious.
Each present comes with some silly message, and "gifts" range from a beer stein gun (??) to a rubber ducky, action figures, and even food.
Overall a very nice online viral campaign! And if the time I spend clicking through hundreds of gifts and forwarding to my friends, also a very successful one too!
Hope you enjoy as much as I have!
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
A cool online jargon Dictionary for everyone
As we all know, the online environment is changing every nano-second, and so are the terms and abbreviations used on it. So how do we keep up? Try using an online jargon dictionary.
One of my favorite sites is netlingo.
Using an online dictionary will help you keep up to speed with your generation X and Y, and how they are commicating on the web, which will allow you to speak in their language in your content and messaging to them.
In the case of netlingo, they cover a wide range of areas and terms (and I have included examples of each below):
Texting Abbrevations (good for online chat or texting) -
2G2B4G -Too Good To Be Forgotten
ASLMH - Age/Sex/Location/Music/Hobbies
BTDTGTS -Been There, Done That, Got The T-shirt
GIWIST -Gee, I Wish I'd Said That
Smileys (good for online chat or texting)-
:-{ - Angry
:-.) - Cindy Crawford
%) - Confused
>:-l - Klingon
Online jargon -
Angry garden salad - Slang for a poorly designed Web site graphical user interface (GUI) with incorrect code behind it (so that if you click on one thing it launches another).
Cappuccino cowboy or cowgirl - A nickname for a person who just has to have a Starbucks coffee or other type of roadie on the way to work. It refers to men and women (cappuccino cowgirls) who live in the suburbs and commute to the city each day to work in the industry.
Siliconia -Nicknames for cities and areas with a heavy concentration of high-tech firms. "Siliconia" began as appropriations of names beginning with "Silicon" in areas outside of Silicon Valley; the names are meant to capture something unique about the area's regional character.
Online Business Terms -
Backlink (incoming link) - One of the most important and challenging factors in promoting your website is encouraging other Web sites to link to yours. The more sites that link to yours, especially if they have similar or related content, the more of an "authority" you become in the eyes of the search engines.
Chortal - Known primarily as a Chinese portal , the largest "chortal" is Sina, created by CEO Wang Zhidong
Collaborative Filtering - The process by which a software program sifts through user profiles or usage patterns and makes recommendations based on purchasing habits. For example, if you go to a Web site looking for a book on vegetarian cooking, and you click on the profile of that book, collaborative filtering technology kicks in and recommends a list of similar books....(though many see it as a cross between capitalism and big brother).
Online marketing -
1% rule - An emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online, then one will create content , ten will interact with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it (also known as lurking). Earlier metrics garnered from online community sites suggested that about 80% of content was produced by 20% of the users, but the growing data due to social networking sites and blogs creates a different picture. The lesson? A website that demands too much interaction and content generation from users will see nine out of ten people just pass by.
Coolhunting (aka innovation scouts) -A market research technique in which a researcher goes out into the real world to see "what's cool" among the younger generation (Generation Y). A person who knows how to unearth new ideas and spot trends before others do is known as an "innovation scout."
CPA - aka -Cost per action -An online advertising payment model in which the publisher is only paid when a user takes a desired action (such as filling out a form or making a purchase).
White Hat - "White hat" search engine optimization seeks to work with the search engines' strengths, rather than their weaknesses. By creating valid HTML code, well-written and keyword-rich content, and a carefully organized website, white hat SEO specialist seek to create the kind of site that search engines are looking for. White hat SEO is more difficult to pursue because it relies on many "soft" factors (such as high quality content, effective site organization, building strong link relationships, regular blogging, etc.).
Also on netlingo you can find terms for Net hardware, Net software, Net technology, Net programming, Net organizations and other technical terms.
So don't be surprised one day if you see in high schools and universities, kids taking online language classes instead of french or Spanish! ;-) LOL - TTYL
Links to some additional online term dictionaries you may want to also look at:
Webopedia -http://www.webopedia.com/
Internet Marketing Dictionary - http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/
One of my favorite sites is netlingo.
Using an online dictionary will help you keep up to speed with your generation X and Y, and how they are commicating on the web, which will allow you to speak in their language in your content and messaging to them.
In the case of netlingo, they cover a wide range of areas and terms (and I have included examples of each below):
Texting Abbrevations (good for online chat or texting) -
2G2B4G -Too Good To Be Forgotten
ASLMH - Age/Sex/Location/Music/Hobbies
BTDTGTS -Been There, Done That, Got The T-shirt
GIWIST -Gee, I Wish I'd Said That
Smileys (good for online chat or texting)-
:-{ - Angry
:-.) - Cindy Crawford
%) - Confused
>:-l - Klingon
Online jargon -
Angry garden salad - Slang for a poorly designed Web site graphical user interface (GUI) with incorrect code behind it (so that if you click on one thing it launches another).
Cappuccino cowboy or cowgirl - A nickname for a person who just has to have a Starbucks coffee or other type of roadie on the way to work. It refers to men and women (cappuccino cowgirls) who live in the suburbs and commute to the city each day to work in the industry.
Siliconia -Nicknames for cities and areas with a heavy concentration of high-tech firms. "Siliconia" began as appropriations of names beginning with "Silicon" in areas outside of Silicon Valley; the names are meant to capture something unique about the area's regional character.
Online Business Terms -
Backlink (incoming link) - One of the most important and challenging factors in promoting your website is encouraging other Web sites to link to yours. The more sites that link to yours, especially if they have similar or related content, the more of an "authority" you become in the eyes of the search engines.
Chortal - Known primarily as a Chinese portal , the largest "chortal" is Sina, created by CEO Wang Zhidong
Collaborative Filtering - The process by which a software program sifts through user profiles or usage patterns and makes recommendations based on purchasing habits. For example, if you go to a Web site looking for a book on vegetarian cooking, and you click on the profile of that book, collaborative filtering technology kicks in and recommends a list of similar books....(though many see it as a cross between capitalism and big brother).
Online marketing -
1% rule - An emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online, then one will create content , ten will interact with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it (also known as lurking). Earlier metrics garnered from online community sites suggested that about 80% of content was produced by 20% of the users, but the growing data due to social networking sites and blogs creates a different picture. The lesson? A website that demands too much interaction and content generation from users will see nine out of ten people just pass by.
Coolhunting (aka innovation scouts) -A market research technique in which a researcher goes out into the real world to see "what's cool" among the younger generation (Generation Y). A person who knows how to unearth new ideas and spot trends before others do is known as an "innovation scout."
CPA - aka -Cost per action -An online advertising payment model in which the publisher is only paid when a user takes a desired action (such as filling out a form or making a purchase).
White Hat - "White hat" search engine optimization seeks to work with the search engines' strengths, rather than their weaknesses. By creating valid HTML code, well-written and keyword-rich content, and a carefully organized website, white hat SEO specialist seek to create the kind of site that search engines are looking for. White hat SEO is more difficult to pursue because it relies on many "soft" factors (such as high quality content, effective site organization, building strong link relationships, regular blogging, etc.).
Also on netlingo you can find terms for Net hardware, Net software, Net technology, Net programming, Net organizations and other technical terms.
So don't be surprised one day if you see in high schools and universities, kids taking online language classes instead of french or Spanish! ;-) LOL - TTYL
Links to some additional online term dictionaries you may want to also look at:
Webopedia -http://www.webopedia.com/
Internet Marketing Dictionary - http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Innovative marketing for tv shows focusing on Generation Y and Z
I was out on the web, searching for articles how other companies are implementing innovative marketing plans, and I googled upon this article about Cartoon Networks /POGO. They are getting ready to launching several new show and the article discussed their innovative marketing plan they are implementing to insure a successful launch.
Naturally since we are talking cartoon shows, their main target audience is some Generation Y but mostly Generation Z. Their pre and post launch efforts are being supported by on air, off air, online and trade.
Their objective: Acquiring audiences that are not currently present watching their network and creating a massive pull for them through a series of major marketing activities and events, in essence their goal is to turn their new cartoon show, ‘Ben 10’ into phenomenon.
Something I had never heard of for a cartoon show, a Green Carpet premier.
Also planned are:
+ School contact programs to build character familiarisation and create hype around the show (200,000 kids across four cities).
+ Cinema branding and advertising tie-up is on the anvil (leading multiplex chain across 8-10 cities).
+ An interactive micro site for ‘Ben 10’ was launched on October 10th, 2007 - with all marketing efforts appearing to also drive traffic to this site.
+ Video Game with 'Ben 10' theme called Savage Pursuit (POGO tie in)
Something innovative about the banner ad campaign:
On the article web page, are 3 banner ads, and all of them were for the 'Ben 10' show. It is the first time I have run into a web page, where one product, one promotion has monopolized the ad content areas. I actually think this could be a highly effective way to make a strong message about your promotion or product. Generally a lot of web pages are saturated with information and ad overload. So by locking in all the ad spaces on a single web page, definitely helps drive awareness and probably will increase your click through as well.
What do you think? Let me know?
Naturally since we are talking cartoon shows, their main target audience is some Generation Y but mostly Generation Z. Their pre and post launch efforts are being supported by on air, off air, online and trade.
Their objective: Acquiring audiences that are not currently present watching their network and creating a massive pull for them through a series of major marketing activities and events, in essence their goal is to turn their new cartoon show, ‘Ben 10’ into phenomenon.
Something I had never heard of for a cartoon show, a Green Carpet premier.
Also planned are:
+ School contact programs to build character familiarisation and create hype around the show (200,000 kids across four cities).
+ Cinema branding and advertising tie-up is on the anvil (leading multiplex chain across 8-10 cities).
+ An interactive micro site for ‘Ben 10’ was launched on October 10th, 2007 - with all marketing efforts appearing to also drive traffic to this site.
+ Video Game with 'Ben 10' theme called Savage Pursuit (POGO tie in)
Something innovative about the banner ad campaign:
On the article web page, are 3 banner ads, and all of them were for the 'Ben 10' show. It is the first time I have run into a web page, where one product, one promotion has monopolized the ad content areas. I actually think this could be a highly effective way to make a strong message about your promotion or product. Generally a lot of web pages are saturated with information and ad overload. So by locking in all the ad spaces on a single web page, definitely helps drive awareness and probably will increase your click through as well.
What do you think? Let me know?
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