Archive for the ‘Electronic Media’ Category

Baltimore Ad Week 2011

Friday, September 16th, 2011

Baltimore Advertising Week gives us an excuse to talk about one of our favorite things in this town – advertising. After 15 years of working with small to mid-size businesses, government clients and non-profits struggling to get their message out, it’s refreshing to discuss new and innovative approaches with our peers downtown and experts from across the country alike.

Sure, the art of marketing still relies on the basics of research and strategy and budgets can still be a big piece of the puzzle. But with the rate of emerging technology coupled with the rate of adoption, the options and opportunities for engaging with your audience are simply exciting.

Now we can target our audience wherever they go, right through their own mobile devices. Marcus Startzel of Millennial Media provided some insight on “How to Succeed in Mobile.” A few take-aways we found interesting:

  • Mobile advertising hones in on demo, geography and immediacy, even day-parting ads
  • Mobile traffic patterns – low between 3-4 a.m., increasing through 11 p.m. and highest on weekends. PC traffic dies at 5p.m., Monday- Friday.
  • Digital/mobile advertising holds 8.1% share of voice against other mediums
  • Who’s spending in mobile? Retail, restaurants, finance, directories
  • How are mobile advertisers targeting? Broad reach, local market, demo, pay scale
  • Types of mobile advertising – text, direct response, click to call, point-of-sale
  • Geo-targeting focuses on physical location of cell phones, not registered location of user
  • 59% of mobile ads go to touch screen phones, allowing more creativity of ad
  • Ever notice an ad appearing after you searched on the same topic? That’s not coincidence; it’s geo-targeting
  • eReaders are ripe for advertising, however there needs to be enough in the market for advertisers & developers to invest
  • Smaller businesses who may not have the client list or funds to support a large mobile marketing campaign are encouraged to stay on top of other mobile trends such as utilizing QR codes.

Even as organizations continue to take the leap into social media, there are legal considerations – not necessarily from transparent communications, but based on ethical communications. A discussion led by Jim Astrachan, Principal of Astrachan, Gunst Thomas, P.C., explained the new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rules and guidelines concerning social media and those favorable reviews an organization craves:

  • Social media marketing accounts for a $4 billion market in 2011
  • Abuse/deception under the FTC rules includes paying employees of a company to post favorable reviews and comments about that companies products; employees hyping a companies products; and paying employees to pose as street teams to enhance a product. All of these practices are not illegal if you disclose the people work for the company—but this discredits the value of the endorsements.
  • Advertisers are now obligated to monitor and police the endorsers.
  • Even if employees are truly satisfied about a company product, they cannot post and praise the products if they do not disclose their relationship because they have a financial interest.
  • If an employee lists their employer on their Facebook or Twitter page, that is sufficient disclosure.
  • Companies can encourage others to tweet about their products, but cannot reward them later, i.e. ‘Show us proof of your tweet and receive a discount on your next visit/purchase.’
  • Facebook vs. MaxBounty – a case involving alleged misleading advertising on Facebook by MaxBounty. The company is said to help create fake Facebook campaigns, providing advance payments if its clients agree to participate. MaxBounty also tells the company’s Facebook approves these campaigns. A result is yet to be determined.
  • All in all, the answers aren’t always clear—be conscious of your social media interaction and use.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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iPhone Apps and Marketing

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

Popular iPhone Apps

It seems that everyday someone new jumps on the iPhone or iPad bandwagon; talking about their new apps and the innovative and exciting capability they just acquired. Companies and agencies recognize this new medium to reach consumers, and some even created their own apps. But the true question is – how to do it effectively?

How can an organization reach their target audience through an app? It must be useful and optimize the brand all at the same time.

When contemplating the best way to launch an iPhone app, consider these suggestions to boost its success.

1) Clearly identify the target audience, and expectations
Like any marketing plan, identify the target audience and outline the expectations and objectives. Creating an app reaches an entirely new audience, and this form of mobile marketing is interactive, driven to cause consumers to act. Most importantly, do not confuse your wants with your target audience’s expectations. Ensure that your app clearly adheres to your brand.

2) Optimize your App’s Name
Recognize the importance of creating a concise name that communicates the purpose of your app to your target audience. Be clever and creative to cut through the static but hold true to what your app delivers.

Incorporate keyword phrases into description copy. Because pages get indexed within iTunes and then ranked by major search engines, do not use the app or company in the keyword descriptions. Utilize auto-suggested keywords since these optimize the search functionality.

3) Blog about it
Create buzz around the new app by blogging. Bloggers create a cyber environment that discusses the functions of the app, what it does and why they like it. Try and get ahead of the curve and start your own blogs before others begin writing about it. Create positive messaging and lay the groundwork for other bloggers and traditional media outlets.

4) Plan, Plan, Plan
Plan how to measure success of your app. Whether this involves financial success or overall awareness and recognition of your brand, a carefully crafted plan must be implemented and results monitored.

Now that we’ve shared our thoughts about creating apps, check out some of A. Bright Idea’s favorites:

• Trover
• Photosynth
• Facebook
• Pandora
• Fooducate
• Mashable!
• WalletZero

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Posted in A. Bright Idea, Electronic Media, Marketing/Advertising, Social Media | Comments Off

How to improve your social media efficiency

Wednesday, January 19th, 2011

Melissa Mauldin, Senior Marketing Specialist

While many businesses have decided to get their feet wet in the realm of social media (and yes, some are still hesitant), it’s apparent that some businesses do so without proper planning. Lack of planning causes wasted time and often includes inefficient methods. Social media, like any form of marketing for a business, must involve strategy.

As we all learned from the popularization of social media in 2009 and the enhancement of the medium in 2010, social media can be a truly efficient and effective way to communicate to stakeholders on a different level. It’s no longer a “new” medium, rather it is broadly being incorporated into business marketing plans and is a sought after resource in communicating businesses key messages, events, and product news and promotions directly with customers.

I recently came across a blog on socialmediatoday.com indicating the 12 reasons why businesses will fail at social media in 2011. Overall, many of the issues stemmed around businesses not incorporating social media as part of their strategic marketing plan. Rather, businesses attempted to use the medium because they thought they should get on board. Wrong. Below are a few tips to keep in mind to help businesses utilize this popular medium efficiently.

Understand the medium.

Social media is not a tool that’s going to fix a broken business or be the answer to down sales or a poor reputation. Social media will actually enhance these issues, if not conducted properly. Businesses need to have a true understanding of the medium and have a strategy in place before engaging.

Plan, plan, plan.

Businesses without a plan will fail. Otherwise known as Random Acts of Social Medial, or RASMs, no one can afford to waste time. Avoid the randomness and develop a strategy and appropriate messaging for utilizing this tool as part of your overall marketing plan. Think about the big picture as well as the logistics involved in the strategy. (i.e. What is our key message? Is our messaging appropriate for the audience? How much and how often? Will we develop any special events/promotions for this audience only? Who will manage our presence on social media sites? Who will have access? Do we have the manpower to devote one person to manage social media activity? If not, how can the workload be divided?)

Don’t expect too much too early.

Certainly, online resources provide data and feedback immediately upon entering this world. However, it takes time to understand the environment, engage with the audience and build a following that will respond, before determining the success or failure of this resource.

So, have you planned your social media participation strategically? This year, get on board with a strategic goal and action plan that’s in line and in support of your marketing efforts. Social media can help contribute to building your brand, as part of your overall marketing plan. Ensure you’re messaging correctly and devoting the resources needed to be successful in this ever-changing and continuously evolving medium. Don’t waste time.  There never seems to be enough anyway!

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Don’t count the holiday shopping deals as over yet; it’s Cyber Monday

Monday, November 29th, 2010

David Wells, Junior Marketing Specialist/ Photographer

If you are an avid online shopper, you’ve probably heard about Cyber Monday, or at least see it splashed across the subject lines of emails from your favorite stores. Cyber Monday falls on the Monday following Thanksgiving and Black Friday, and refers to an online shopping day on which stores offer great online deals and discounts. A shopper who saw his or her favorite gifts in the stores over the weekend, but didn’t wake up early enough to snag one, can hit online sites to place their holiday orders – without all the lines and maybe even with free shipping.

While Black Friday allows stores to generate millions of dollars from the crazy amount of shoppers that bombard their stores, major retailers recently began to acknowledge the online shopping habits of their customers to get the real boost in revenue on Cyber Monday.

According to comScore, Inc. – a global leader in measuring the digital world – last year Cyber Monday alone generated $887 million, a five percent increase from 2008, and a number that matched the heaviest online shopping day ever- December 8, 2008. Since 2005, online shopping on Cyber Monday has increased over $425 million.

What’s funny about this, at least to me, is that 52.7 percent of Cyber Monday shopping was from work computers, a gain of 2.3 percentage points from the previous year. According to CareerBuilder, employers lost $580 million in productivity on Cyber Monday in 2008. They estimate that 43 percent planning to shop on Cyber Monday will spend at least one hour doing so from their workplace computer.

Some companies believe this is a moot point to try to stop employees from shopping from work, and some even encourage it. Employers would rather let an employee shop from their computer for an hour, then spend an extra long lunch break fighting the shopping crowds and traffic in the stores. Also, some employers believe it improves morale in the workplace by allowing employees to spend a little work time for personal use.

Online shopping and e-commerce sites have only been around since the mid 1990s and rapidly continue to grow. E-commerce and online sales sold more than $160 billion worth of merchandise in 2009.

We’ll have to wait and see if the trend for online shopping continues to grow this year as more and more consumers utilize new technologies and the Internet. This year, will the greatest volume of Cyber Monday shopping come from smartphones? Enough about the numbers, time to shop!

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My love and hate of modern technology

Monday, October 18th, 2010

David Wells, Junior Marketing Specialist

I recently returned from a 10 day whirlwind trip to Europe with visits to Dublin, London, Paris and Rome. Although I could write about a million different topics or events, including the crazy drivers and insane amount of mopeds, people knowing how to speak more languages than I could wish for, how everything is just plain older, how Europeans travel way more than Americans, how Europeans work way less than Americans, or how I probably looked like an idiot sprinting through Kings Cross Station in London to catch my train to Paris. Instead, I really want to write about my love and hate of modern technology.

I am a photographer by nature. I love taking pictures, and I take pictures of anything and everything. I started taking pictures many years ago using film cameras, and have used all kinds of cameras since then. I’m pretty savvy when it comes to technology, especially cameras, so figuring out how to use each one is never a hard task. I’m the person my friends come to when they are having trouble with their camera or want to know how to shoot a picture on a certain setting, or which setting would work best. In the days of film and disposable cameras, you thought about each and every shot you took and spaced out your clicks because you had a definite limitation to the number of pictures you could take. I didn’t really have such a limitation on my 10-day trip, but probably could have used one.

Ten days. How many pictures do you think I took? If you guessed in your head, you’re probably wrong, and you probably underestimated.

I took more than 2,600 pictures on my Canon SLR. That does not include the pictures and videos on my Kodak waterproof camera or the images I deleted on the fly if I knew I didn’t like the shot. This amount of pictures used over nine gigabytes of memory. I know… I have a problem.

I encountered lots of interesting things to take pictures of in these incredible cities, but, it was still too many pictures.

Modern technology is great because you can sort of take an unlimited amount of pictures and don’t need to worry how many pictures of the same thing you take (ahem, Eiffel tower), because you can just choose your favorite one later and delete the rest.

Thankfully, with all the advancements in computers, cameras and the internet, I can take this amount of pictures, not worry about the cost of prints, and share over the internet via multiple social media outlets including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, blogs like this and more.

While I still appreciate an actual printed photograph, accessing all of your old pictures is becoming a lot easier with a few clicks of a mouse without digging through boxes, piles or albums of photographs.

Now we get to why I hate modern technology. It takes an incredible amount of time to download, sort and edit all of these photos! And, who wants to look at that many pictures anyway? Even I got sick of going through them and I was the one on the trip! I’m still working on narrowing this number down to a manageable amount so I can share with my family and friends, and by that time, no one will care about my trip anymore.

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Do you really “LIKE” me?

Friday, October 8th, 2010

Melissa Mauldin, Sr. Marketing Specialist

I recently saw a news report that discussed how the public is becoming increasingly aware and more concerned about their online persona than their “real-life” persona. While it was shocking to hear this at first (“hello, we live in the real world!”) as I thought about it more, it made more sense. Your online persona can be potentially viewed by millions of people, whereas you may only interact with a few hundred or so. How you appear to millions of people versus how you appear in your immediate interactions might allow for some additional pressure.  This obviously not only affects one’s personal image online, but has potential risks and opportunities for businesses to take note.

An article on American Public Media’s Marketplace discussed how consumers are getting more and more accustomed to providing businesses information about themselves and their friends through that ubiquitous little “Like” button on Facebook. Who wouldn’t want to give a “thumbs up” to their favorite salon, soft drink, clothing store, politician, bank or dare I say it…advertising firm!

The “Like” button is a tremendous tool for businesses. When you as a consumer “Like” something, you are endorsing that company or product. You’re notifying the business that you are someone interested in what they have to say, you like what they sell, not to mention that you’re informing all of your (thousands) of closest friends that they should take note and interest too. One example mentioned a scenario that sounds not hard to believe:

“Say I’m searching for an Italian restaurant…If I see seven of my friends all like one restaurant, I’m going to go there and I don’t care what else is on a search engine.”

While Google may not like this, this is an important opportunity for businesses to take note. Social media is continuing to encroach on our world. People are turning more and more to social media for referrals. Your online presence will continue to be an important aspect of your business persona and should be an increasing focus of your marketing strategy.

While we all still live in the real world and relationships have and will continue to drive business, how we utilize the marketing tools available to spread the message and build relationships in new ways will help businesses move the needle and evolve in this ever-changing and competitive market. The online accessibility through social media allows us to communicate to our potential audiences and their “friends.” However, it’s worth noting that in order to be successful, our online persona must match our “real-life” persona.

Reference: Marketers like that you “Like,” American Public Media, Oct. 1, 2010, http://bit.ly/bpXrtv

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Multitasking or Focusing – do we have to choose between the two?

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010
Sarah West

Sarah West serves as A. Bright Idea's Government Public Affairs Specialist.

“OK, at 9:00 tonight we have to stop what we’re doing and talk about the wedding,” I said to my fiancée last night, who was studying the muscles of the shoulder online, in between refreshing the Oriole’s game to check the score, while he played with the cat. Meanwhile, I was breading a pork chop according to the healthy recipe I had pulled up on my laptop, holding a highlighter in one hand, ready for the proposal I was reading, all the while taking breaks to listen to the evening news and keep up on email. As the clock approached 11 p.m., I said we’re going to have to reschedule wedding planning to tomorrow night – he grunted his acknowledgement.

According to a recent article in the Chicago Tribune “Researchers studied 1,100 workers at a British company and found that multitasking with electronic media caused a greater decrease in IQ than smoking pot or losing a night’s sleep.”

Maybe that explains why I have completely expunged the process of long division from my brain?

In today’s media world, you have to multitask. There is no getting around it. According to a recent study by Ball State University, “The average American spends more time using media devices —television, radio, iPods and cell phones — than any other activity while awake.”

I have found myself very annoyed lately by people who insist on vigorously thumbing through their Blackberry or iPhone while we wade through a lengthy conversation, peppered with “What was that you said?” or “Huh?”

Sometimes, we can be our own worst enemy in our quest for constant information. Although the workload won’t change, our approach can. I felt refreshed today putting an actual pen to real paper to capture my “to do” list and stopped skimming my email to focus on a live conversation with a colleague and noticed not one “huh?” kept the conversation to a few minutes instead of several.

Although the mantra “one thing at a time” may be dead in today’s society, perhaps we can all at least try just two things at a time.

Now I’m going to go practice a few long division problems.

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