Materazzi's steel chest

I think that fo the 1st time, I am seriousy doubting Nike's advertising smarts. A great positive brand like Nike should try to distance itsef from such a moron as Materazzi. Obviously hype is hype and this ad will work itsef into the notoriously-popular ads of Nike in the end. Maybe this raises the question of popular sports brands associating themseves with professional athletes, be them coke-sniffing wife beating basketball players, gambling hockey players, and dopped up cyclists. They make for good entertainment but bring down the positive image of the sport. Nike, you messed up on this one despite the tongue in cheek tone.

Seven Deadly Sins of Advertising Via Viral Video

Show me a marketer without “viral” on her marketing plan and I’ll show you an online video site that’s profitable. Advertising offline is getting harder with time-shifted television and declining viewership, and online advertising is getting more complex with paid-search prices rising and banner click-thru’s dropping. Given the low variable cost of viral, it’s natural that advertisers would want to experiment with it. “I want a piece of Web 2.0,” they say.
Advertisers beware. Getting people to promote your product by forwarding a viral video is not as easy as it appears. Save you and your clients some money and consider the “7 Deadly Sins of Advertising Via Viral Video.”

1. Make a white and brown cow. Seth Godin has a term called “Purple Cow,” which refers to marketing that is “remarkable” and worth paying attention to and talking about. Your viral video better be Technicolor Purple if you actually expect it to break through an increasingly crowded space. What is remarkable? Take a look at the Volkswagen “Fast” series featuring Jim Meskimen. (Jim is a comedian and impersonator, and you’ve heard him as the voice of Messing With Sasquatch” series. Would you view this content more than once, and show it to a co-worker or forward it to a friend? I would, and have.
2. Pretend you’re not advertising. Nothing quite irrates a consumer like being secretly persuaded. “Al Gore’s Penguin Army” is a classic example of a “funny video” that was exposed as having a PR agenda. Transparency is a ticket in the viral video door, friends. No ticket, no ride.

3. Spend a fortune on production. It pains me to see companies throw around huge production budgets on online video. I’ve seen it payoff only once. Here’s Smirnoff’s Ice Tea Partay (which was featured yesterday as one of YouTube’s top 3 on Good Morning America). Clearly this cost north of $300K to produce. But even if you pay that much, you might be better off giving it a “rough around the edges” look. Improv acting, sloppy camera moves and poor production can actually give your video that “consumer generated video” feel. There’s going to be a huge market for individual directors that can shoot viral videos for around $20-$50K, and it makes it much easier to get an ROI on viral video when you’re not having to recoup a big fixed-cost investment in production. When Yahoo featured on its homepage my “Lay Me Off” video (which I’ve temporarily pulled down at the request of some of the actors), I got a number of e-mails from people asking how much I’d charge for a viral video for their clients. Since I have a day job and I do videos as a hobby, I declined. But they’ll find someone who is quite happy to take a low fee for a video that’s powerful. Of course an advertising agency will probably mark up the director’s fees by 500%.
4. Tell consumers instead of engage them. Don’t think of your viral video as an adaptation of a 60-second spot. Obviously it’s got to be irreverent, weird, funny and different. But more importantly, the web has the ability to make the viral event a dialogue. Contests are a good example. There have been plenty of online video contests, but Mentos Geyser Contest is already shaping to be one of the most successful. Check out all of the consumers creating buzz around a candy that was a 7-11 relic 6 months ago. Seventy to date! Production costs for Mentos on those videos? Zero. (By the way, vote this Mentos Jet Pack one 5 stars and I’ll send you some cheese). BarterBee’s contest created buzzz for a CD and DVD exchange. The CEO wore a bee suit to promote it. Brave.

5. Do a video contest because everyone else is. This online-video “contest fad” will continue, and it will become more difficult to activate consumers to promote your product. Do a search for “video contest” on Google and you’ll see four or five different ads for contests. The David Chappelle video contest is a good example of a nice idea with some executional flaws. First, it didn’t initially promote the contest on its own website because it wanted to focus people on buying the DVD. Second, it petered out. Contest winners weren’t announced and insufficient media budget promoted the contest. To give you an idea of how abused contests are getting, there was a summer promotion for a mayonnaise manufacturer looking for videos about may recipes.

6. Set unrealstic conversion metrics. After someone watches your video, what do you think they’ll do? Will 30% come to your site? Will 10% buy your brand in two months? Give me a break. Viral video is one of the most difficult-to-measure parts of your marketing mix. Sure you can count views. But none of the online video sites are yet able to track the viewers so you can conduct your DynamicLogic unaided recall and awareness study. And very f people will take an immediate and measurable action. Sorry to sober you.

7. Throw in the towel and decide to just advertise around viral videos. Please don’t give up and decide that it’s easier to simply advertise around videos. There are certainly products and services that can do well through this, but it’s the lazy way to approach online video. The online video sites are mostly new, and there is an unlimited possibility for creative partnerships. Even YouTube (which has been slow to embrace commercial interests) has a homepage advertising feature for advertisers. As I write, it’s a trailer for Beerfest. Yesterday it was Paris Hilton. Revver has run a few contests, and has married EepyBird to Mentos in probably the best case study for viral video marketing yet. For best results, don’t think you have to decide between getting your videos seen on sites for free OR advertising on them. Do both in partnership.

Book Preview: Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernovitz

I highly recommend this book because it was so practical, tactical, and hysterical. Here are the ten ideas, stories, and recommendations from the book that I liked the most:

1. Companies could hire a customer service rep to cruise the Internet looking for kudos and complaints. When the rep finds kudos, he should thank the person. When the rep finds complaints, he should get it fixed. This is such a simple, effective idea—I doubt, therefore, that many companies will do it! :-)

2. Commerce Bank has a free change-counting machine in its branches that anyone can use. This beats the hell out of the machines in markets that take 7%.

3. A study by the Verde Group showed that people who heard about a bad shopping experience are less likely to go to the same store than the person who actually had the bad experience.

4. The most powerful word-of-mouth advocates might be the customers who have only done business with you once so far. They are the most excited; repeat customers are probably accustomed to the great product/service and therefore, ironically, less likely to talk about it.

5. The Prostate Net, a not-for-profit educational organization, contacted 50,000 barbers to talk to their clients about prostate cancer detection and prevention.

6. Incentives and rewards are likely to reduce word-of-mouth advertising because motivation becomes suspect. You can’t “buy” word-of-mouth advertising.

7. The Wynn Las Vegas resort gave free rooms to cabbies to generate word-of-mouth advertising via this very influential part of the transportation infrastructure.

8. Henkel Consumer Adhesives, the manufacturer of Duck Tape, sponsors a contest for college scholarships called “Stuck at Prom.” Is this funny or what?

9. A word-of-mouth campaign, brought back “Family Guy” from the dead (that is, cancellation). How many tv series have you heard of coming back from the dead?

10. Zappos has a one-year, no questions asked return policy for shoes. This boggles my mind although I’ve never heard of any woman return anything to Zappos.

College Students Wired from Dorm Room to Classroom @ Media Buyer Planner

College Students Wired from Dorm Room to Classroom @ Media Buyer Planner: "These essential tools tether students to a sophisticated, wired campus, where connectedness extends from the dorm room to the classroom; and friends, professors, and troves of digital music are rarely out of touch."

Data released this week from the 2006 Alloy College Explorer Study, powered by Harris Interactive, shows that mobility is among students' highest priorities. Students are spending a total of eleven hours of each day engaged with media and are constantly on the go.

The role of desktop computers is down 13 percent this year, with 50 percent of students going to class with a laptop. That 8 percent gain over the previous year may indicate students' preference for mobility.

Students also hit wifi hotspots on campus to enjoy the nearly 3.5 hours of email, instant messaging, and web surfing they put in daily.

Campuses nationwide have ramped up to meet student demand for mobility and networked interaction. Twenty-nine percent of all schools provide blanket coverage, with 64 percent reporting such plans in the works.

The classroom lecture has gone digital as well, with a growing number of students utilizing their portable MP3 players to catch up by podcast.

As for cell phones, an additional 1.3 million students now own them and are spending nearly 20 minutes each day sending and receiving text messages. Of the 41 percent of students who own an MP3 player, 85 percent are plugged in to their portable MP3's daily.

The role of "friends" has also evolved within the online world, empowered by the widespread adoption of social networking sites among students. Fully 85 percent of students who visit social networking sites use them to see what their friends are up to. On average, 18-24 year old students are hanging out on these sites for 6.5 hours a week. Students claim to have an average of 111 friends across many profiles online, changing the definition of today's peer group and the way in which students connect with each other. And 61 percent of students on social networking sites say they are interacting with people they've never met in person.

The survey was conducted online by Harris Interactive on behalf of Alloy Media + Marketing among 1,793 U.S. college students between April 14 and May 2, 2006.

Cannon in D (Rock Version)

Survey: Users Support Ad Supported Video

Survey: Users Support Ad Supported Video: "We think the Internet becomes just another way for people to get this programming, as opposed to a zero-sum battle with other media,' said McIntyre."

By Enid Burns | September 6, 2006

Over half of all U.S. Internet users watch and download online video, according to a survey conducted jointly by AP and AOL. Close to three-quarters of viewers prefer ad-supported content to paid.

Clips and full-length video are watched by 54 percent of Web users in the U.S., and 32 percent of that group says they watch more online video than one year ago.

Interestingly, online video users exhibit a preference for ad-supported content. Seventy one percent prefer to watch an ad for free video while 23 percent said they would rather pay for ad-free video.

Demand for ad-supported video still hasn't provided enough inventory. "Right now there's not," VP of AOL Video Fred McIntyre told ClickZ News regarding inventory availability. "As we get more and more people finding video through AOL, we'll create more inventory through that process."

News is the highest-watched category of video online. Seventy-two percent watch clips reporting current events and other news, whereas 59 percent of users watch TV and movie clips on the Internet.

"We think the Internet becomes just another way for people to get this programming, as opposed to a zero-sum battle with other media," said McIntyre.

About 69 percent search for online video; 61 percent are often notified virally by friends; and 58 percent regularly search sites which host video.

The survey examined the habits of 1,347 online video users.

Bypassing the Search Engine: Using Direct Navigation to Your Advantage | MarketingProfs.com

Bypassing the Search Engine: Using Direct Navigation to Your Advantage | MarketingProfs.com

Bypassing the Search Engine: Using Direct Navigation to Your Advantage
by Matt Bentley
August 22, 2006

Marketers assume that "googling" for information is an automatic response the instant a Web surfer opens a browser. And the theory holds true for many Internet users.

But for a number of reasons, and with increasing regularity, many people bypass search engines altogether in favor of a technique called direct navigation. Simply put, direct navigation is when a user directly types a Web address into a browser.

The concept of direct navigation is as old as the Web—Internet users frequently key in their favorite sites stored in their personal memory. To put this into context, WebSideStory's StatMarket division notes that more than two-thirds of daily global Internet users arrive at a Web site via direct navigation, compared with just 14 percent from search engines.

But the phenomenon of direct navigation to generically named sites with an "intent to search" is a relatively new concept that shifts how marketers must think about their own Web site traffic and how consumers are finding information about the things that interest them.

Marketers are turning to direct navigation programs to compliment their search campaigns for a number of reasons, including the emergence of programs like AdSense and other technologies that can populate unused Web domains with information to create mini-portals. Online consumers are turning to these "parked" Web sites—pages populated mostly by relevant keyword ads—because they can sometimes produce better, quicker results that avoid the manipulated listings that increasingly clog search engine results for highly commercial keyword terms.

n fact, it is estimated by several organizations that traffic to "parked" pages drives about 10% of the pay-per-click (PPC) ad market. Even more interesting, WebSideStory found that direct navigation had a 4.23% conversion-to-sale rate, while search engine clicks on average lead to a 2.3% conversion-to-sale rate.

With that much quality traffic heading to these generic sites, organizations are now considering how to capture that traffic directly. Consider that a parked page like Wifi.com, for example, captures 15,000 monthly targeted visitors. Purchasing this volume of traffic through a pay-per-click search engine would cost nearly $10,000 per month (based on the current top Yahoo bid price of $0.66 for the term "Wifi"). Yet we have the domain name currently listed for sale at domain marketplace Sedo.com with an asking price of $350,000—an investment that would pay for itself in under three years—even faster if current trends of rising traffic and click prices continue. So instead of writing a hefty check to Google or Yahoo every month, why not purchase the domain and secure this traffic for life?

Marketers can use generic targeted domain names as a traffic source in three primary ways:

1. Simply re-direct the domain to your main site. Examples: Books.com (Barnes & Noble), PC.com (Intel), Loans.com (Bank of America), Website.com (DotEasy), RentalCar.com (Enterprise)
   
   
2. Use the domain as a targeted vertical portal to drive traffic to your main site. This method requires more effort but is more likely to lead to increasing traffic over time, generate higher conversion rates, and strengthen your position as a leader in a given market category. Examples: Baby.com (Johnson & Johnson), Meningitis.com (Chiron Vaccines)
   
   
3. Re-brand your entire operation on the new generic domain. Obviously, this is the most extreme example, but there are many advantages to branding your company on a premium generic domain: You instantly gain credibility as a leader in your space, and you generally garner higher conversion-to-sale ratios with less expenditure on marketing and brand-building. Examples: DealTime and Epinions become Shopping.com; Ice.com becomes Diamond.com.

Finding the Right Domains for Direct Navigation

There are a number of things to consider when determining which domain names to acquire in your direct navigation initiatives. Much of it gets back to marketing basics: Who are your audience and how can you reach them?

1. Taken from a customer perspective, what are they looking for that you have to offer? Don't just think of which "category" you position yourself in, but how do your customers describe you/your product? Acquiring the .com version of your most productive SEM keyword terms is usually a good place to start.
   
   
2. Keep it simple. One-word domains or very short phrases offer the greatest value and highest traffic.
   
   
3. Choose the right extension. Generally .com domains are the best choice as they receive a magnitude more type-in traffic than other extensions. However, if you're interested in traffic from a particularly country, you may be better off acquiring the country-code version of the domain name—for example, .co.uk for traffic from the United Kingdom.
   
   
4. Keep it generic. Registering a variation of your competitor's site or products rather than generic descriptive terms could put you in conflict with trademark law.
   
   
5. Research traffic volume before buying. Some domain sellers or domain marketplaces will provide guidance as to how many visitors the domain currently receives. Otherwise, a handy rule of thumb is that direct navigation traffic volume is generally correlated to search query volume for that keyword, which you can research using Yahoo's Keyword Selector Tool (http://inventory.overture.com).

Once you identify the domains you'd like, there are a variety of ways to acquire them. If you're lucky and the domains are still available, you just need to choose a domain registrar and pay an annual registration fee of $10 to $35. If the domains are already taken—and most good traffic domains are— you still have options: you can try researching the domain owner and making an unsolicited offer, or browse the listings at a domain name marketplace where you'll find thousands of high-traffic domain names that are definitely for sale.

If all of that sounds like a bit too much work, you can always hire a domain broker to do all of the legwork, including tracking down owners, negotiating a price, and assisting with the ownership transfer.

Direct Navigation as a Marketing Investment

As a marketer, investing in direct navigation generally pays for itself within a year or two, dependent of course on the quality of the domain and how well you can convert the traffic into sales. However, instead of being an expense as with purchasing clicks from a search engine, acquiring a domain (or portfolio of domains) for direct navigation purposes becomes an asset that retains its value (possibly even increasing in value) and can even be re-sold in the future should your marketing objectives change.

Domain name prices have risen dramatically over the past years as the supply of quality names becomes ever smaller; with more and more businesses coming online every day, that picture is unlikely to change.

Only a few very savvy firms have already discovered that in this click-hungry era, when many companies blow tens of thousands of dollars each month on PPC advertising, that purchasing targeted generic domain names delivers the same type of high-quality targeted visitors at a much, much lower cost.

ClickZ Internet Marketing Solutions for Marketers

ClickZ Internet Marketing Solutions for Marketers: "One of America's major direct marketers has a new value proposition 'Get Information How You Want, When You Want.' Cardholders can opt to receive awards program news, travel offers, and offers targeted to specific geographical regions."