Advertising | Dave Duarte

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Good Times for Digital Marketing

Published

on February 14, 2009

. 2 Comments

With the looming global financial recession, many businesses are being more cautious about where they spend their money. One of the first budgets that tends to be slashed by big businesses is Advertising and Marketing.

In light of this, more Marketers are investing a higher proportion of their budget into digital marketing solutions – online and mobile.

There are a few key reasons for this:

1. It’s easier to track the results of digital marketing, with simple analytics tools, or pay-for-performance pricing on many channels.
2. Well executed digital campaigns gather momentum and can become marketing assets.
3. Digital campaigns can simultaneously inform consumers, while gathering insight about them
4. Digital channels are two-way, so the call-to-action can be more immediate – leading to higher ROI.

Media owners whose traditional advertising earnings are on the decline are also taking alternative and innovative approaches reader engagement more seriously. See, for example, what the New York Times are doing with their “Prototypes“.

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Online Advertising Case Study – IBM in the NY Times

Published

Dave

on February 11, 2009

in Advertising and Case Study

. 8 Comments

We’ve heard for years that online advertising generally isn’t credible, is an annoyance, and that people are becoming adept at ignoring it. The ideal, we’ve heard (and, admittedly, preached) is to engage people in conversations about your company.

Largely, I’d say that the reason for this is that advertisers are treating online advertising as they would print advertising, very little difference in format, except that it clicks through to a landing page.

IBM is doing something interesting with their online advertising though, which I thought would be useful to model if you’re handling the advertising for a large company that often appears in the press: they’re combining the credibility of PR with the control that advertising offers.

As you can see in the ad below (from the NYT online), the advert basically aggregates some recent articles about IBM:

IBM Advert

This innovative ad format takes PR and recycles it into a paid advertising that is quite effective. However it competes with more current editorial a reader is likely visiting the site to consume.

Like similar programs from Google, efforts like these unlock the hidden value in thousands of articles deep inside archives. It takes what’s old and makes it monetizable.

Essentially they’re turning archived content into a form of advertising that’s more credible than static, generally poor-performing banners.

(via)

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Why FMCG brands should be marketed on the web

Published

Dave

on June 11, 2008

in Advertising, Media and Nomadic Marketing

. 3 Comments

Why would you market a consumable on the internet – isn’t this a niche medium that targets approximately only 10% of the South African public?

Lindy Upson from Artefact Online sent me her ideas on this:

You need to market FMCG products on the internet because these are brands that rely on the relationships they have formed with their consumers.

When you buy your favourite brand of peanut butter, yoghurt, milk, washing up liquid it is because you feel a familiarity with your chosen brands – it is a relationship based on trust developed out of years of quality delivery. You might say these brands have become like familiar friends you wouldn’t want to lose.

The challenge is for FMCG marketers to develop and maintain these relationships with their loyal market base and not to let them stray to other, more innovative, maybe new, brands on the block.

Artifact Advertising’s digital marketing company, Artifact Online, views the integration of online marketing activities into a typical FMCG marketing mix as such:

TV/ radio/ print – selling your product to a mass audience that fits your demographic, driving the consumer to the store.
Instore Marketing – making sure you grab the consumer in the aisle and close the sale at point of purchase
Online marketing – a tool to establish, reward, and revitalise the relationship your consumers have with your brand. A tool to encourage those consumers to interact with you and entrench their loyalty to your brand.

Apart from the obvious big players, for example Coke and Nike who have been active on the internet for years, it was interesting to see a recent example of a South African brand effectively using this channel as part of their marketing mix.

Pyotts Pro-vita recently launched an interactive website with a “build a sandwich” and useful BMI calculator. www.provita.co.za. Pyotts has also launched a fun party website which invites you to create your e-vites online and manage your RSVPs to any party – see www.partywithpyotts.co.za

Pro-vita consumers should be impressed by their innovation and would hopefully remember to visit the party site to create e-vites for their next function as this is a tool worth using.

If other brands were to concentrate efforts instore, using traditional media, email campaigns and sms communication to drive consumers to an interactive fun site and reward them for doing so, then they would be entrenching loyalty amongst a significant segment of their consumer base.

A solid online media campaign on South Africa’s high traffic sites would also ensure they reach a significant number of new consumers. The reach of these sites should not be underestimated.

Says Lindy:

So that’s why you would market a consumable on the internet – a “not that niche” medium that has the potential to reach over 5 million of your South African consumers.

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