Brands, social, clutter and the sundae

Source: Seth's Blog

The Times reports that traditional brand advertising on Facebook is a total failure. If you've been doing this for a while, this is no real surprise.

Mark Drapeau asks whether brands belong on Twitter [I apologize to Mark for initially misunderstanding his post. My fault.]. Venture Beat says that Twitter made Dell a million dollars. That's nuts. Did the phone company make Dell a billion dollars? Just because people used the phone to order their Dell doesn't mean that the phone was a marketing medium. It was a connecting medium. Big difference.

Inventory Up & Costs Down–Are Mobile Ads Worth it?

Source: Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

According to an article in AdAge last week - the CPM for advertising on mobile phones is dropping. At work is the economy of course, but also the inventory and available inventory - which climbs exponentially as more phones are able to display ads - and more brands are striving to capture that market.

Advertising Creep Update: Playgrounds | News | Animal

Source: Animal Newyork

Mobile Ad Rates Begin to Drop as Inventory Increases

SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) -- It's getting cheaper to advertise in mobile as cost-per-impression ad rates hits single-digit pricing in some cases.

Source: Advertising Age

If you are buying loyalty, the price apparently went down

Our favorite microcosm of loyalty experiments, the airlines, have apparently devalued their currency. At this rate they will beat the British Pound when it comes to debasing their currency, and that's saying something.

The WSJ reports that "plunging value of fliers' miles saps loyalty".

From this middle seat, this confuses loyalty with discounting. I'm not loyal to an airline because of frequent flier miles. I get an effective discount on my ticket, which attracts repurchase. Perhaps this basic confusion is at the heart of poor customer relationships in that industry.

Source: Satmetrix

Apps Are the Newest Brand Graveyard

Facebook apps from brands like Coca-Cola, Champion, Ford and Microsoft are as popular as desolate Second Life islands.

Source: Brandweek

Demographic-Based TV Buys Not Enough

For decades the major TV networks have based their sales pitches to advertisers on demographics—primarily age, sex and income characteristics of the audiences that watch their programs. But that's no longer enough, said David Poltrack, chief research officer at CBS.

Source: Mediaweek

PR Agencies own Social Media Marketing

The best post I wrote this year is the Social Media Marketing Framework, it helped to get my job at The Population and is something that I keep referring too (if you are lazy check out the 5 min video).

After the Paul McIntrye article in the Sydney Morning Herald about Social Media and the focus of PR Agencies owning Social Media, I thought it would be good to look at the model and see who was best set up to help a company with this discipline.

Source: Adspace Pioneers

A new low in Twitter spam

Check out this post for a detailed description of how Guy Kawasaki’s startup Alltop has taken Twitter spam to a whole new level.  By enticing 450 people to sign up to retweet Alltop news he reached their 140,000 followers with what sounds like lots of messages.

Source: The Equity Kicker

A Funny Thing Happened When I Cut My Ad Spend -- Nothing

The current economic crisis will undoubtedly leave a lasting imprint on how all business gets done from this point forward and undeniably be a catalyst for unprecedented change in the advertising industry. And we had better be ready for it.

Source: Advertising Age

Death By Zero

This week I discovered one of the best uses of Facebook for a marketing cause.  Well, it’s more of an anti-marketing cause, I suppose.  It’s a group called Stop Playing Toyota’s “Saved By Zero” Commercial, and it is the center of an interesting battle in the front lines of new marketing.

Source: Marketing with Meaning

Ad Nauseam: Repetition of TV Spots Risks Driving Consumers Away

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Think how many times in the past few weeks you've been subjected to Christie Brinkley in a scene from "National Lampoon's Vacation," speaking in dubbed lines about DirecTV; or seen Sprint CEO Dan Hesse sitting in a diner talking about his company; or heard a reworked version of The Fixx's 1983 hit "Saved by Zero" used to alert you to Toyota's no-interest payment options. The ubiquity of these and other ads have consumers fed up.

Source: Advertising Age

Consumers Bugged by Many Ads

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The addition of Citigroup to the list of powerful institutions begging for government rescue last week only reinforced the impression that everything has changed. But it might not have changed as much as you think, according to a Gfk Roper online survey of 2,000 American adults, which was weighted to reflect the demographic characteristics of the total online population. The survey, conducted Sept. 11 through Oct. 10 -- just after the government started pushing the panic button over the economy -- suggests that consumers may be responding a bit more coolly than anticipated.

Source: Advertising Age

Failed Alternative Marketing

Yall. I was watching my favourite television channel, pitchfork.tv, and I saw a gimmick called ‘Faces in the Crowd’ which was sponsored by an alcohol company called Southern Comfort. The video was intended to be an authentic portrayal of the ‘hype’ and ‘anticipation’ which alternative concert-goers experience when they attend a music festival 2 see their favourite band. The video features the opinions of meaningless/random Alts who are attending a music festival, and the climax of the video comes when 3 meaningful post-entrylevel alts get to interview their favourite band, Justice.

Source: Hipster Runoff

How To Treat A Guest: The Stupidity of Autoresponders

Let’s say you have a dinner party.
You send out invitations.
You arrange for the catering.
You have the finest wine.

And when the guest knocks on the door, what do you do?
You send your ‘personalised robot’ to say hi and welcome the guest through the doors, right?
Just like you do with your autoresponder message every single day.

Source: Psychotactics Zingers

How About Some Free Money?

Handing out free money and branded vouchers was the latest tactic adopted by fast-food outlet Burger King as it left apparently lost wallets on streets around America. For a more in-depth look at this Idea of the Week and other case studies, visit Ad Age and CMDglobal's Inspiration site.

Source: Advertising Age