Chase Commercial Bank is advertising above electrical outlets in the Indianapolis International Airport! Now here's a placement that is unusual, eye-catching and useful.
Via Media in Canada
« December 2005 | Main | February 2006 »
Chase Commercial Bank is advertising above electrical outlets in the Indianapolis International Airport! Now here's a placement that is unusual, eye-catching and useful.
Via Media in Canada
31 January 2006 in Innovation & Imagination, Marketing | Permalink | Comments (0)
Shel Israel complains about McDonald's initial foray into public blogging with their new corporate responsibility blog, "Open for Discussion". He also offers them further (unsolicited) advice in a later post. Jim over at One by One Media joins in by admonishing their "feeble attempt" and says "I will use this as an example of how not to conduct a company blog".
I was astounded by the arrogance of the tone:
Oh by the way. Welcome to the Blogosphere. I know you have internal blog champions. I do hope you continue your blogging effort. I hope you get blog smart enough to actually find these postings I, and others are doing but I suspect that has not yet happened. Don't just take us as negative voices. Listen to what we are saying. Really listen.
Holy crap. Will people just get over themselves? If they had hired B.L. Ochman or Hugh from Gaping Void would you then cut them some slack? If they ordered copied of Naked Conversations for everyone would that change your opinion?
Have any of you ever worked for a company larger than your little consulting firm or start-up? No big corporate entity is going to do it RIGHT the first time out. Or the second. Or maybe even the third. But they are trying and they will contribute to the evolution of the blogosphere.
I work for a big oil and gas company. And trying to get anything launched that is new, untried, untested and has a less-than-perfect business case is pretty darn tricky. I'm guessing its like that for McDonald's too. I'm guessing that every post has to be run through about 3 layers of legal and PR. Hopefully that will change. And that's not just McDonald's being obsessive ... that's the litigous-happy climate in US business. And I'm guessing that the guys who post are already doing day jobs, so they likely have added this onto their current workload.
But McDonald's, like GM, is at least trying to help pave the way. And I applaud them for that. I appreciate the comments that David Carter from iUpload (the software the McDonald's uses):
I think a lot of corporations do not want to commit to blogging specifically because of this kind of criticism. If there is one person in a corporation that can share some relevant information with me.. I want that person sharing it, rather than wait until they can commit to blogging regularly.
...
Lets embrace every person that decides to blog. Styles will vary.. some will have advertising.. some will allow comments. Some will say things we disagree with. If you still want to change things.. go recruit part of that 99% of the planet that isn't blogging.
I feel like "A-listers" are often speaking out of both sides of their mouth. "Companies should be in the blogosphere. But they should stay out unless they are perfect." It makes it really difficult for people like me who are trying to encourage their own company to blog. I don't need Shel or Steve or Jim or whoever to LOVE what McDonald's is doing, but the tone has got to go. The self-importance needs to stop. I saw a lot of this at BlogOn back in October. There were a number of marketers and PR folks in that audience who were trying to keep up with advances in social and consumer-generated content, and try to figure out how to use the tech to *connect* with audiences. And, sure, some were their to figure out how to exploit the medium .. but isn't that what is already happening? But instead of being welcomed and *authentic* conversations being conducted with them, Jeff Jarvis and others shut them down.
The point is get over yourselves can we not find a more civil tone of discourse to encourage (and advise, if appropriate) the *people* at these companies who are trying to wrestle a behemoth and change a monolith that doesn't necessarily want to change.
Technorati Tags: mcdonalds, corporate+blogging, a-lister+arrogance
29 January 2006 in Blogs and Blogging, Marketing, Ranting, Technology & the Internet | Permalink | Comments (5)
Maybe it's unfair of me to be suspicious.
Maybe my 15+ year advocacy of the online/digital channel(s) has robbed me of my perspective, and I simply can't appreciate facts for facts.
Maybe.
See, this came across my inbox today via Marketing Mag's Marketing Daily (sub required):
A new survey from the Television Bureau of Canada concludes that TV advertising remains the most effective way to reach consumers.
Hmm ... so the TV people say TV is the best! Do tell!
The Media Attitudes 2005 study, conducted by ComQuest Research, a division of BBM (Bureau of Broadcast Measurement), reports that on every variable, consumers report that television advertising has a greater impact on them than advertising they see or hear in any other major medium.
For variables such as effectiveness, influence, power, persuasiveness and engagement, TV advertising leads the pack, ahead of newspapers, radio, magazines and the Internet. In most cases, according to the phone survey of 1,000 respondents, carried out in three waves last summer, newspaper and Internet advertising rank second and third behind TV ads.
Key results of the survey of adults 18+ include:
•80% said television advertising is the most influential, with newspaper ads trailing at 8%;
•75% said television advertising is the most powerful, with newspapers advertising 65 percentage points behind at 10%;
•71% said television advertising is the most persuasive, easily eclipsing newspaper ads at 12%;
•69% said TV ads are the most engaging, far ahead of the 9% rating of newspapers;
•68% said television advertising is the most effective medium, surpassing newspaper advertising at 15%;
•59% said television advertising is the most relevant, more than twice newspaper’s 25%; and
•53% said television advertising is the most authoritative, some 31 points ahead of newspaper ads at 22%.
I'd actually never heard of the Television Bureau of Canada. So I went to their site (http://www.tvb.ca/). Reading the copy was like sitting in McMann and Tate's offices on Bewitched.
Welcome to TVB! If this is your first visit to the Television Bureau of Canada's Web site, you're in store for some excellent information about the powers of commercial television advertising and the broadcast industry in Canada.
OK, so .. cheesy writing. A lot of "bureaus" have cheesy writing. But then I found their TVBasics [pdf], "the ultimate compendium and reference guide on television, including viewing trends, statistics, station information and industry composition data, Canadian advertising revenues, market and regional facts about television along with many inter-national comparisons." And in its section on "2005-2006 Key Strengths of Television Advertising in Canada" I found these gems:
- Television has an aura of importance. It is a prestigious medium, enhancing advertisers' image by its use
- Television appeals to more of the consumers' senses than any other medium
- Television gets closer to one-to-one communication than any other mass medium
And (AND), in this 2005-2006 update, they have the nerve to tout data from 2000 as current!
The thing is, I like TV. Really. But we got a PVR for the holidays and we will never go back. I know I'm an "early adopter" but Canadians overall are early adopters. And it won't be long before those silver boxes are everywhere. And with them we're only spending 129 minutes to watch 129 minutes of content, instead of spending 180 minutes to watch 129 minutes of content. (Jaffe has a great chapter on the impact of "On-Demand Viewing" on the TV watching habits of Americans in 2005 in Life After the 30-Second Spot).
In the interest of fair and balanced coverage of Canadian's media choices, I went to trusty Ipsos-Reid. In a release entitled "The Internet Continues To Impact Consumers' Usage Of Other Media" (sub required) from August 2005, I found some interesting data ...
The recent Ipsos Reid study Online News and Information Seeking: What the Future Holds1 shows that the amount of time Internet-using Canadians are spending actively using the Internet is on the rise, averaging 12.7 hours per week (up 46% from 8.7 hours in 20022). This increase appears to have come at the expense of radio as the typical Internet-using adult spends 11 hours per week listening to the radio, down from 16 hours per week in 2002. While weekly Internet usage has surpassed radio listening, television retains the number one position among media sources with Internet-using Canadians averaging 14.3 hours3 of TV viewing per week. Still, the gap between Internet and TV usage is closing (a difference of 1.6 hours per week compared to 4.5 hours in 2002), with the Internet threatening to overtake television should these trends continue.
Cool. So TV, still very important. What about younger generations. Our *future*. Oh, and me.
Younger Internet-using Canadians (18-34) are particularly enthusiastic users of the Internet, spending more time actively using the Internet (14.7 hours per week) than they do with any other medium, including radio (11.7 hours per week), television (11.6 hours per week) and reading newspapers (2.5 hours per week). [emphasis mine because I simply couldn't resist].
Hmmm ...
OK, but what about *news* specifically? What medium is the King of News?
While Internet use is on the rise, Internet-using Canadians turn to different sources depending on their news and information needs. For example, the Internet is used more to look for specific or ‘niche-like’ news and information such as health (48%) and travel information/guides (45%) whereas television tends to be used more for general news and information such as weather (70%) and national and international news (70%).
Ahh ... interesting. So where there is a particular need (say, a personalized, one-to-one kind of need) the Internet is used. But where it is more general, TV is preferred. So, what's a broadcast medium to do?
“Traditional sources for news and information are facing stiff competition from the Internet as seen by the high growth of Internet use compared to other traditional media,” says Catherine Rogers, a Senior Research Manager with Ipsos Reid’s Media Practice. “In order to combat this growing threat, traditional media sources must continue to find innovative ways to use the Internet as a complement to their total offering.”
So ... it's not this TV RULES THE WORLD situation as described by the TBC. It's more of an integrated offering that is required. More of a choosing the right channel for the right audience at the right time with the right offer and supplementing that offer in other channels.
Ladies and gentlemen ... welcome to 2006. It is not your father's marketing mix. That pretty blue chart above? If those were the only 5 marketing channel choices, we'd be lucky. The list is more like:
Agencies, advertisers and bureaus need to recognize that our customers have surpassed us in sophistication and media-channel savvy. And if we're going to ever have a meaningful conversation with them, we need to throw away our planning grids and start paying attention to them. And that attention can't come with an aura of importance about how prestigious we are. It's time to get over it and get real.
Technorati Tags: dinosaurs, self-importance, marketing
26 January 2006 in Marketing, Seriously? | Permalink | Comments (0)
I was speaking with a colleague at work last week. We were dicussing blogs and their mix of original writing vs commentary on other writing. She told me about a scrapbook that her father keeps. When he finds an article in the newspaper or in a magazine that interests him, he cuts it out and puts it in a scrapbook. Then, when she visits, he will show her the updates to his scrapbook and they'll talk about some of the articles, why they are interesting, why they matter, etc.
She says the scrapbook is a catalyst for some great conversations. "The scrapbook is really my dad's blog."
Exactly! He just happens to have a more limited (exclusive?) distribution channel than those of us who use Typepad, Blogger or other means to share our writing and our commentary. But at the core of it all, it's really just people talking about stuff that matters to them.
Bonus Link: The code for the Technorati tags at the end of this article were generated by Eric Myers' Tag Generator. He's built a little app that will generate technorati, delicious, flickr or furl tags. Via Micropersuasion.
Photo copyright Smithsonian Institute. Original available.
Technorati Tags:
blog, scrapbook, conversations
22 January 2006 in Blogs and Blogging, Musing | Permalink | Comments (3)
This week, I wrapped up my series on the Canadian political parties' use of Social Media over at One Degree. Links to the articles:
Some great sites I discovered while undergoing this research:
You can check out my full list of political bookmarks at delicious.
I want to give a special shout-out to Paul Summerville, NDP candidate in St. Paul's. Now Paul is not my candidate, nor am I necessarily voting NDP, but of all the candidate sites out there (and I looked at quite a few), Paul is the one who is using social media to the hilt. He is blogging and podcasting original content for the web. Also, he gets the impact that technology has on society. He has a great podcast entitled The Five Democratizations, a discussion about the technological changes that are reshaping the global economy and implication for the Canadian economy. Great stuff!!
20 January 2006 in Blogs and Blogging, Marketing, Politically-minded | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sean Lerner is the brains behind the TTC Subway Rider Efficiency Guide - a guide to the Toronto subway system that tells you where to board a train so that you're as close as you can be to the exit you want at your station destination.
Perhaps even more interesting, Sean is also the author of So Ya Want To Be Famous: 26 Media Lessons Learned, a comprehensive account of his experience with the media while promoting the TTCSREG and the lessons he learned. Sean shares his marketing and promotions plans for the guide (including a great idea for a guerilla marketing stunt that unfortunately didn't go as planned) as well as his interactions with radio, print and TV outlets. It's also a pretty entertaining read.
Now, I'm not a PR professional (though I *would* like to play one on TV), but Sean really seems to have it all covered. Plus, he *learns*. AND writes it down. His "lessons learned" are good for newbies who are working on projects that might get some media attention, they're good for start-ups who are new to the PR game, and they're probably good for some old-school PR flaks who might need a refresher course or a new perspective on media.
A couple of examples ...
The only thing I didn’t like about the Globe article was a miserable photo of me taken at St. George station. How was I ever supposed to get the chicks with a mug like that? In fact, I’m not happy with any of the photos of me that appeared in print. Media outlets weren’t necessarily looking to make me as attractive as possible.
Lesson #3: Get your photographer friend to take a bunch of photos of you in the context of your project. Put them online in a nice webpage where media outlets can view them quickly and download hi-res versions for publishing. This way you get to control what’s published, whoever’s covering you is happy as there’s less work for them to do (though some media may still want to take original photos), and it may also mean the difference between a photo accompanying an article about you vs. no photo at all.
and
The Town Crier story revolved around a section I have on the TTC Subway Rider Efficiency Guide website called Quirky Stations which lists a unique quirk about each subway station. This was the first of many media pieces to draw most of the content for their story from this section.
Lesson #9: Try to make your project multifaceted. For example, add interesting trivia that relates to what your main project is about. These things can require minimal effort and give the media much more to report on – which may mean longer articles about your project. There’s only so much to say about standing at the correct door on the train so you’re lined up at the escalator.
Sean has 24 other tips that are definitely worth the read.
Bonus link: On the TTCSREG site, Sean has a collection of transit links. One of them is a link to Toronto design firm Quadrat Communications. Quadrat has created a Toronto Subway font; there is also a brief history of the evolution of the font on their site as well. Very cool, for you (us) typography geeks!
Technorati Tags: TTC, PR, sean+lerner, subway+efficiency
12 January 2006 in Innovation & Imagination, Marketing, Toronto | Permalink | Comments (0)
Things have been quiet here lately, a bit too quiet ...
Oh, that's right, it's because all my non-work energy has been put into a 5-part series that's running over at One Degree - Elections 2006 and Social Media. In the series I look at each major party in the current Canadian national election (Conservatives, Bloc, NDP, Liberals and Green Party) and evaulate their use of social media. The Conservatives are the first article; the rest of the parties will follow this week and early next. Check it out. Some interesting things going on.
One thing I discovered while writing it, is Stowe Boyd's definition of Social Media:
Social Media are those forms of publishing that are based on a dynamic interaction, a conversation, between the author and active readers, in contrast with traditional broadcast media where the 'audience' is a passive 'consumer' of 'content'. The annotations or social gestures left behind by active readers, such as comments, tags, bookmarks, and trackbacks, create an elaborate topology resting on the foundational blog posts, and this enhanced meta-environment, the blogosphere, is the context for and the realization of a global collaboration to make sense of the world and our place in it.
And something else .. I'm wondering if the election can be predicted by who's using favicons on their sites. Look at a snap shot of my Firefox tab bar:
Hmmmm ...
Technorati Tags: Canada, election2006, Canadian+politics, social+media
11 January 2006 in Blogs and Blogging, Marketing, Politically-minded | Permalink | Comments (1)
I like a highly visual presentation of information. I'm more attracted to it; I will spend more time with it. It appeals to the magpie in me. I tend to assume that other people are like me. However, I'm wondering if this is or is not actually the case, as well as when the context of the information directly impacts our preferred consumption.
Two things got me thinking about this.
The first prompt: Arieanna on blogginghelp.com recently conducted an (informal and unscientific) efficacy test of the Google referral program. She came to the conclusion that the text ads were more effective than the banner ads. Intuitively, this seems correct to me, especially her comment that people tune out graphic banners. We all do it when we're surfing - especially flashing emoticons, flashing "you've won!" proclamations, hell, flashing *anything*. If we bother with ads at all, text ads *appear* more trustworthy (or, we couldn't distinguish between an ad and content - something that can easily happen). OK, so graphics "less-good" in ads? Though I don't know if I would really call this a "graphic heavy" graphical ad.
The second prompt: the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Bloggers Rights campaign. They have a great image (the first image) for this campaign. I love this picture. Not just the style of it (which is something that appeals to my asthetic), but the combo of the patriotic admonishment and the URL (which I view as an implicit Call to Action - some may disagree). Once you click through to the campaign, you are able to add a badge to your blog to advertise the campaign and drive some traffic/membership to the EFF. My issue is that these badges (the second one is an example) are, well,
ugly visually uninteresting. As a blogger, I'd much rather use the first one as a badge/banner on my blog. It's sexier *and* it gives my blog a bit of visual cachet. Now, the second one may embody the EFF's ethos a bit more, but, if I don't know who the EFF is to begin with then my motivation to click is lower; the EFF's logo is a prominent part of this message. So, in this case (where, as a marketer, I want to get individuals' personal blogs engaged in my cause), is more graphics "more-good"? Personally, I'd much rather put the prettier one on my blog.
So then, as a marketer, if I want to target bloggers to take up my cause and devote a portion of their space to it, what kind of "badges" should I be creating? The Red Cross does a bang-up job of providing a number of options. They offer at least 8 different sizes of ad. And in one of their most popular sizes, there are over a dozen different creative executions appealing to different points on the "visual information" scale. When a specific disaster campaign is running (e.g. Katrina), there are even more choices. All geared towards making it as easy as possible (both operationally as well as from a design sensibility perspective) to get bloggers to put a badge on their blog. Bono's ONE Campaign is another example of a non-profit that does a good job providing various options to bloggers.
So, why aren't marketers doing more of this? If I were doing any kind of viral promotion, I would absolutely create a series of sexy, fun, visually interesting blog badges that would allow bloggers to participate/promote my campaign and dress up their blogs at the same time. But not something with a corporate logo and tagline on it. Something like the first EFF graphic (which isn't actually intended to be a blog badge). Something that *isn't* corporate shilling, but rather something that speaks to the idea behind the campaign and lets individuals engage in the idea.
Bonus link: Signal vs Noise (whose interface is so simple and elegant that it brings me to tears) has a quasi-related article on the positive effect of big text on a page.
Technorati Tags: eff, marketing, advertising, prettyads, causemarketing
02 January 2006 in Blogs and Blogging, Design & Typography, Marketing | Permalink | Comments (3)
First off ... Happy New Year!
So, there are a few changes around MNIK for 2006. After much agonizing about whether this is a personal or a professional blog, I've decided to take the plunge and split the content. So, MNIK now has two components: "The Digital Dramaturge" (the professional site (www.mynameiskate.ca)) and "The Dramaturge at Home" (my more personal site). [I know you're thinking, "WTF is a 'dramaturge'?" Hang in there, we'll get to that.]
Why the split? Well, because I want to write about marketing, branding and tech stuff, BUT, I also want to write about Canadian politics, the new goldfish tank and a review of Fire on the East side. And not *all* of my readers are interested in both. However, for those of you who want to keep complete track of my bi-blog existence, I've included a new "recently posted" module in the left hand side. You'll be able to see what the latest posting was on the other blog. Fancy!
OK, thanks for waiting, you "WTF dramaturge" folks. As you know, my significant other is a playright. I've been picking up quite a bit of dramatic theory and theatre-lingo during our relationship. Recently, when working on her current play, Roro explained the concept and role of a dramaturge to me. Apparently (and this is much contested in dramatic circles) the role of a dramaturge is to work with a playright, director and other members of a theatrical production to enhance the experience of the play for the audience. Whether this is doing research on the setting of the play, working with the playright to edit the text of the play, working with the director and actors on *actualizing* the vision for the play. Three definitions I like of dramaturgy:
A dramaturg's task is to help the production remain in line with the vision for the production. [Winston Neutel]
"The word text, before referring to a written or spoken, printed or manuscripted text, meant 'a weaving together'. In this sense, there is no performance which does not have a 'text'. That which concerns the text (the weave) of the performance can be defined as 'dramaturgy', that is, dramaergon, the 'work of the actions' in the performance." [Eugenio Barba and Nicola Savarese]
The main job of a dramaturg is to keep asking why. Why are we doing this play? Why this season? Why here? Why does our theatre exist? Why do we exist? [Peter Hay]
Essentially, this is what I do. For my clients, for my team.
So, in the fine tradition of "cyberspace" professions co-opting offline metaphors, I have christened myself a Digital Dramaturge. And I have the gapingvoid blogcard to prove it!
01 January 2006 in Self-Referential | Permalink | Comments (1)
Header & Footer Illustration by Shannon Chiraenza | Icons by ProductiveDreams.com
About Kate ~ My Pitch Policy ~ LintBucket Media ~ Funchico.com - My Laptop Bag Reviews
© Copyright 2019 Kate Trgovac