By: Susan McCarthy (www.wineries.ca)
Our event on September 30th, The Power of Advertising Online and Offline discusses how local companies can implement a successful integrated advertising campaign, from concept to execution to end results, showing how online and offline-marketing techniques can best work together.
Given the emergence of the "multichannel consumer", how can marketers today communicate with their customers?
TV producers and networks spend large sums of money to create web sites for their shows, without generating significant revenue from the sites. Loyal viewers are often drawn to unofficial fan sites that offer more features. (See the Bell Fund report). Meanwhile, networks are scrambling to do a better job of coordinating offline and online strategies.
An example of marketing re-alignment occurred when Frito-Lay abandoned Super Bowl TV advertising altogether, to test new online marketing initiatives aimed at teenagers. With the money saved from the television budget, Frito-Lay was able to forge new marketing strategies to better reach their target demographic.
According to a Jim Nail Forrester Report, June 2002, online advertising can boost brand impact at 60% less cost than piling on more offline ads -- under the right conditions. Marketers should use new technologies to plan an online/offline mix to increase brand impact.
"Cross-Media Advertising: The Dove Nutrium Bar Case Study" developed by Rex Briggs, principal of Marketing Evolution, with MSN, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), and Unilever supports the premise that online ads can enhance the overall effect of an ad campaign. The study also reveals in what cases the Net is better than other media channels in moving four brand metrics: unaided awareness, aided awareness, knowledge of brand attributes, and purchase intent.
Media combinations create synergy. The study confirms marketers' belief that using multiple media together has greater impact than an individual medium on its own. But not all metrics are affected equally -- purchase intent benefits the most from the TV/print/online combination, with a 21% lift over pre-campaign level of intent.
As more consumers make the Internet a part of their daily lives, marketers struggle to understand how to use online ads in their overall media mix.
Discover which current marketing strategies reap the greatest rewards, and learn how outsourced suppliers can work with in-house teams to deliver a consistent marketing message, at the IIMA's September 30th event "The Power of Advertising Online and Offline."
By: Chris Bradshaw (www3.telus.net/wetcoast)
E-commerce consultant Dr. Ralph F. Wilson describes viral marketing as, "any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence." He lists six basic principles of viral marketing:
A good example of viral marketing lies in the explosive success of Hotmail.com, a pioneer in the free e-mail service industry. By combining a free service with a promotional tag and URL at the bottom of every email, Hotmail was able to use consumers' own communication networks to spread their commercial message. The result… Hotmail signed up over 12 million subscribers in its first 18 months online.
One UK agency, The Viral Factory, created a successful niche in the marketing industry by adopting viral marketing principles as their core doctrine. Testimonials point to successful campaigns that catapulted a video game expansion pack to No. 3 on the gaming charts, among others.
Even with the obvious strategic advantages of viral marketing, not everyone shares web marketers' giddy embrace. Infoworld.com reader advocate Ed Foster points to ethical issues raised by the strategy.
"Perhaps the day is coming when most of us will get more unsolicited commercial e-mail from friends than from strangers," Foster says. "If so, I fear the epidemic may prove fatal to the Internet."
Marketing panacea or epidemic? Either way, the era of viral marketing
has arrived, and we all benefit from learning how it affects our
bottom line.
A recent Ipsos-Reid poll on Canadians' car-buying habits reveals that we are increasingly turning to the internet for advice when considering a new or used vehicle purchase.
The July 18 press release by Ipsos-Reid reveals that "a full 63 percent of online Canadians are reporting that they have used the Internet to search online for vehicle prices, features or other information". This figure rises to 80 percent for internet users who have purchased a vehicle in the past two years.
The poll also reveals that researching vehicle purchases online
rates higher than looking for real estate information (51 percent),
comparison shopping (49 percent), or online banking (53 percent).
According to respondents, the advantages of online searching include
price comparison, researching features, and "not having to
deal with salespeople".
Vancouver IP targeted by AOL as spam 'portal'
Vancouver internet provider Peer 1 Network Inc. has become the target of a lawsuit by American giant AOL as a "portal to send millions of unsolicited e-mails", according to a July 11 article in the Vancouver Sun.
The Sun reports that the company has been ordered by the BC Supreme Court to provide information on clients who are alleged to be sending millions of email messages, trying to sell everything from "pornography and on-line college degrees to penis enlargers."
Geoff Hampson, president of Peer 1, says their company is co-operating
with AOL, and provided the name, contact information and IP addresses
of a customer at the center of the AOL legal action. Vancouver lawyer
David Edinger, who represents AOL in Vancouver, says he will review
the information provided by Peer 1 and then decide on further action.
AOL's lawsuit is part of a much bigger industry-wide campaign to
fight spam, which is congesting e-mail systems and servers world-wide.
Summer is behind us and it is time to prepare for the fall season ahead. The IIMA kick starts its fall season by showcasing the The Power of Advertising Online and Offline ~ how local companies can implement a successful integrated advertising campaign, from concept to execution to end results.
Join us on Tuesday, September 30th as TELUS, along with Web Solutions, presents creative from its integrated high-speed campaign. TELUS will be joined by its two agencies that assisted with this campaign; Palmer Jarvis DDB, Canada's top creative communications agency, and Go Direct, one of Canada's leading full-service relationship marketing agencies. This event will feature how TELUS combined the best of both worlds - online and traditional advertising strategies - to deliver effective results.
Sign up now to get a front row seat, and tune-in for more details to follow. This event will offer excellent networking opportunities, door prizes, and insightful marketing perspectives. Members can attend for $35 and non-members for $45.