The digital era has redefined what it means to create and sustain a brand, writes Bob Greenberg, CEO and chief creative officer of R/GA in AdWeek. The challenge is to create engaging experiences across multiple digital touchpoints that cultivate the company’s branding goals and respond to the user’s needs. 

For example, Greenberg notes the role that Nike’s  Ballers Network Facebook app has played in facilitating engagement between the Nike brand and its consumers. The team at Nike looked for opportunities to better serve basketball players, and found the role of facilitator to help connect players and find open courts. Similar to their work to connect runners, it’s a great move by Nike to identify opportunities to build engagement through facilitating connections with their core basketball audience.  

Continue reading "Cultivating Brands in a Digital World"

Ryan and I recently returned from ad:tech Chicago, and I thought I’d add my two cents to Ryan’s summation. As a warning, this post has two parts which, although related, could be completely separate posts. Accordingly, I’ll save you the pain of attempting to create a lame analogy in an effort to connect the two topics and just split it up.

Part 1) Clay Shirky Was Awesome.

Part 2) Case Studies.

Continue reading "“If It’s Being Discussed, It’s Marketing” & Case Studies from ad:tech"

With the Olympics in full swing, Nike has gone all out to promote their vast new lineup of products and the innovative technology behind them.

But rather than rely solely on classic Nike advertising with hardcore athletes doing their thing to a rocking soundtrack, they’ve rounded out their advertising strategy with an impressive, in-depth collection of conversations with the people behind the Nike magic - product designers, engineers and scientists in the Nike Lab.

Continue reading "Nike’s Branded Storytelling"

Nearly 60 percent of the respondents to a recent McKinsey global survey reported satisfaction with Web 2.0 initiatives and see them as a driver of competitive advantage. The McKinsey Global Survey Results on Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise (free with registration) also reported that these same companies expect to increase their efforts inleveraging these tools.

The report also highlights that this is bigger than just PR or marketing - companies are adapting their organizational structure and process to better take advantage of social tools.

This isn’t always an easy task for traditional companies; but some are recognizing that increasing their use of collaborative tools both internally and externally is a valuable endeavor.  Peter Kim puts it well: "Social technologies are bigger than just marketing and PR campaigns.  They’re helping to reinvent the organization.  Companies satisfied with their experience with Web 2.0 technologies are applying them within change management practices and organizational structures. Companies are using new tools to reconnect with customers for co-creation and collaboration. ‘Reconnecting,’ you ask?  Yes, the way businesses started and survived long before advertising as we hate it existed."

Digital marketing is at an unprecedented stage today. Never before has such a rich and immersive set of tools spanned across media to allow companies and consumers to interact. And where marketing was once segregated to individual media - print, television, radio - digital marketing has smashed these silos to allow a new kind of persuasive digital storytelling to emerge. 

This transition is not without it’s struggles, and for two days in Chicago last week, digital marketers from across the country gathered for the latest AdTech conference to discuss what’s working and what still needs to improve.

Continue reading "Blending Creativity and Technology in Digital Marketing at AdTech"

Another great thing about working at Viget is that we each get a conference budget of $100k every year. Kidding, it’s not $100k--but old man humor lives on.

Anyhow, Ryan and I will be using said conference budget to attend this year’s ad:tech in Chicago. And when it comes to digital marketing, it’s the only place to be, when you think about it. The conference begins next Tuesday, August 5 and lasts all the way until August 6 at ye olde Navy Pier.  The list of speakers looks great, and I’m really looking forward to cramming as much into my head as possible.

ad:tech seems to be past the "What is social media?" stage and instead—judging from the talk titles—it looks like the discussion will require at least a "New Media 101" prerequisite. I’m sure we will learn a lot!

If you’re going, let us know--or email Josh when you’re there, or feel free to follow all the conference goodness on Ryan’s Twitter stream, which will be on overdrive during the event. We’re looking forward to letting you know how it goes!

Two important reports were released today with enlightening perspectives on social networking and online communities. Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research released their Best and Worst of Social Networking, 2008, and Deloitte release the 2008 Tribalization of Business Survey, where the WSJ reports on the study’s findings of why most online communities fail.

The Forrester report has some of the more interesting results, with a great report card of notable case studies:

Forrester applied its Social Network Marketing Review methodology to programs run by 16 firms in four industries: automotive, media, technology, and consumer products. Only the BMW Series 1 received a passing grade, and half of the firms scored a zero or lower. But even with these dismal overall results, we found examples of specific best practices: The Dell/Microsoft (Red) program provided a rich media theme that was easily sharable, Sony’s BMG page for Alicia Keys was personable and interactive, and Kraft’s DiGiorno Pizza delivered a unique interactive experience with its members. To improve social network marketing, brands must develop community-centered content and activities, measure success based on new criteria, and be prepared to participate.

Continue reading "Reporting on the Best and Worst of Online Communities"

If it’s an 8am meeting with eager conversations about Twitter and measuring ROI, it must mean the Middle School Marketing crew was back in action yesterday morning at the Lab.

We gathered again this month to continue our conversation about bridging traditional best practices in online marketing with the latest trends in social media marketing.  As so many marketing conversations do lately, ours quickly focused in on Twitter (proud new owners of the local startup Summize). When it comes to the bottom line, one person asked if it is worth investing the time and energy into Twitter. (And for that matter, what about the rest of the social media utility world?) While the group had various perspectives on how they used Twitter, without a doubt it’s biggest value was in providing a radically improved tool to help companies do a better job of listening. Nicholas was even kind enough to put together a spreadhseet of helpful services.

Continue reading "Middle School Marketing Talks Twitter, Strategy and Twin Tech"

What do you do if you want to track how often a link on your site is clicked? How do you see those links in Google Analytics (GA)? What filters and profiles should you create to accurately track this information? Hopefully, I can accurately answer these questions—some of them in this post, some in the future. *Warning* if you don’t care about web analytics, reading this post may produce seizures and a strong desire to fall asleep on the job.

First, why in the world would you want to track internal links? Isn’t that stupid idea?

• If I click the “go here now” link on my site, and it takes me to another page on my site ( www.example/go_here_now.html ), why do I need to track the link? Wouldn’t I just check the navigation path report for /go_here_now.html? Yes, you could do that. But what if you have multiple links on Page 1 that link to Page 2? How do you know what links brought someone from Page 1 to Page 2? Was it the blue link? Or the green button? The navigation path simply tells you what page people came from and to, it doesn’t tell you exactly how they got from page to page

Second, which method of link tagging should you use? _trackPageview or utm? 

Continue reading "How To Track Internal Links in Google Analytics"

This is my first time referencing, and being referenced by, an Inspire blog post. Cross-pollination delight. Frankly, I’m honored. Hopefully the designers will let me sit at their lunch table now.

In case you didn’t know, Adobe & Google have teamed up to make Flash content SEO friendly. For as long as I can remember anyone interested in SEO has steered clear of Flash – which in my mind is unfortunate as Flash can provide a web experience that non-Flash sites cannot replicate. Erik covered everything really well, so I’ll just throw in a few additional thoughts.

Yahoo! Too: First, it’s worth noting that Adobe also passed along their technology to Yahoo! and while Yahoo! has not yet implemented the technology, Yahoo! said , “Yahoo! is committed to supporting webmaster needs with plans to support searchable SWF and is working with Adobe to determine the best possible implementation.”

Meta data and cache: As Erik mentioned, this step forward is still only indexing any text and links within a Flash piece, it won’t be indexing photos (even if they are ALT tagged) or other non-textual content.

The same goes for meta data. These algorithms (I just pushed my glasses up) will not index meta data nor will Google cache the indexed information. I know there are debates on whether meta data even matters anymore; but when your site is Flash and needs all the help it can get – meta data could be helpful. But, moot point. Also, the lack of cache means we won’t be able to discover what exactly Google has indexed.

Fail, Google.

But that’s not all folks. I have, of course, saved the best for last…

Continue reading "Google is Indexing Flash: Hooray for SEO!"

Just a few days after launching Google Website Trends, Google revealed the real purpose of all that nice new data: Google Ad Planner. Launching just yesterday, it is "a research and media planning tool that connects advertisers and publishers." In plain English, Ad Planner enables you to find websites for placing your ads based on behavioral ad targeting and demographics. Figuring out where all that data is coming from has people—including me—scratching our heads. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

How does this thing work? Well, it’s still in private beta, but from what I can gather, you give Ad Planner the demographics or favorite web sites of your target audience and, according to Google, the tool will…

...return information about sites (both on and off the Google content network) that your audience is likely to visit. You can drill down further to get more detail like demographics and related searches for a particular site, or you can get aggregate statistics for the sites you’ve added to your media plan.

This also sheds some light on how Google is planning on integrating with the recently acquired Double Click.

Continue reading "Does Google Ad Planner = Privacy Concerns?"

Banner advertising has long been the bane of web surfers around the world.  Garrish, annoying and ineffective, it’s rare that a campaign actually expresses any level of creativity or effectiveness.

As social networks entered the scene - ripe with rich, detailed demographic data about each and every user - advertisers simply couldn’t resist. But, an odd thing happened on the way to targeting users in online communities. No one clicked on the ads.

It seems once inside the walled garden of Facebook or among friends on MySpace, users weren’t in any mood to search for new mortgage rates or purchase airline tickets and avoided the ads at all cost. In the latest attempt to earn more clicks through banner advertising on social networks, the social media advertising firm SocialMedia launched "social banners," which create banner ads that incorporate you or your friends into the ad. CNet writes:

For example, instead of a banner advertising The Incredible Hulk movie, a social banner would ask which of your close Facebook friends, among a short list, you’d like to invite to see the movie. Or a social banner might inform you that a friend Jim just ranked Iron Man with three stars, and it might ask to "click here to buy tickets at Fandango."

While the intent may be, "to make ads suck less in social networks," said Seth Goldstein, founder of San Francisco-based SocialMedia Networks, this move could bring a backlash similar to the Facebook Beacon uproar from last year. The privacy issues that arise are incredibly complex.

Continue reading "Social Banner Ads Continue to Frustrate"

Dave Balter of BzzAgent published a must-read book about Word of Mouth Marketing earlier this week that is definitely worth your time. You can either pick your up your very own copy at Amazon for $45, or you can grab the free e-book version right here. While it may seem like a no-brainer, the purchased version does at least include a limited edition original piece of artwork by Seth B. Minkin.

I read Balter’s Word of Mouth Manual Volume II last night - it’s a quick read at just 119 pages - and it’s chock-full of helpful case studies and ideas about how brand and marketers can be a part of their customers’ conversations without doing what they usually do: absolutely destroy any meaningful dialogue. Even the strategy for promoting the book itself is a strong case study on how to work with bloggers in marketing a book. Balter worked with 20 top bloggers to distrubte the e-book for free and get folks talking about the book and his ideas.

Continue reading "The Word of Mouth Manual"

One week after the new iPhone’s debut, some of the most intriguing buzz centers around the development of native mobile applications. For marketers and brand managers alike, this poses one the best opportunities in a long time to create meaningful brand engagement.

Up until now, the excitement over mobile marketing had been trying to deliver relevant ads to various handsets. But the iPhone offers up a more relevant and useful platform for brands to develop applications that provide a real value for their users (And for those of you who track this blog, you know we love marketing ideas that provide a service for customers).

Continue reading "iPhone Helps Turn Marketers into Problem-Solvers"

For those of you who think Google is set on taking over the world, add this to the list: Google pay-per-click ads will now show up on Yahoo! search engine results. The two companies signed a 10 year deal thus further increasing Google’s dominance in the paid-search world.

AdAge put together a great article summarizing a few of the details and I would encourage you to read it.

While this deal is causing fear of rising CPC costs, increased government scrutiny, and Yahoo! becoming more reliant on Google; there are also a few pros such as small business being able to advertise on both Google and Yahoo! from one platform and Google learning from Yahoo’s successful display advertising techniques (especially with Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick).

This won’t affect the consumer for at least another 3 months as Google and Yahoo! have agreed to delay implementation to allow the Justice Department to read the fine print. Hopefully, it wont be Senator Ted Stevens doing the reviewing (see below).

 

Continue reading "Google and Yahoo! Join PPC Forces"