POST DIGITAL

ON: My Space, Google and the opprotunity in front of us

As new online content, communities and commerce offerings emerge at a dizzying rate, Brand New World's creative chief suggests that we need to get busy developing new ad units.    

In my most recent intervieiws and meetings with fellow CMO's and CCO's, there is enormous buzz  from the cable marketing industry as well as the MySpace community sites recent reveal of the impact of their 100-plus million and growing subscriber experience. 

From time spent online by MySpace subs versus television at virtually every demographic level, you can feel an undertone of fear among programmers that something very dramatic was happening on those broadband pipes that the Multiple Service Operators (MSOs) are providing-- more eyeballs are leaving. 

Follow that closely with last week's stunning news of Google's continued growth and revenue performance and one thing becomes very clear: This stuff is moving fast.

As a CCO with a slew of  20-something interactive buddies that are highly in tune with these new dynamics, the call for new kinds of ad units and experiences couldn't be louder. The sheer velocity of new experiences and enhancements being introduced online -- including everything from del.icio.us to YouTube to Windows Live -- suggests that as an industry we've got to break out of the confines of the HTML publishing grid that got us here and start crafting new kinds of messaging for our brands.

A scan through a dozen MySpace sites indicates that perhaps the bright minds at News Corp. got the business strategy right, but haven't yet arrived at the most elegant ad solutions. Lots of old school banner units (which are frankly more discouraging than encouraging) populate the myriad of personal web pages on MySpace and, according to the 20-somethings in our studio, are destined to drive users onto the next big thing if MySpace can't get to more innovative adjacencies and contextual serving.

My interative instinct tells me they don't have a lot of time given the exodus we saw from sites like Friendster. 

Meanwhile, Google continues to innovate their offerings.

The challenge for us as interactive creatives is to start looking beyond enhanced banners and pre-rolls and start developing new ad experiences, dashboards, widgets and advergames that can live adjacent to these environments and become more encouraging to viewers. As much as the ad models for these new experiences are challenging traditional media planning and buying, so too do to the large agencies who serve the brands.

Building relevant contextual messages that live within or adjacent to personalized content or search results isn't rocket science. We just have to get past the traditional penchant for serving the same stuff we have been for years. Evolving our creative from banners to rich media to broadband video has still been a challenge for the interactive industry to standardize-- and we haven't got that right yet. 

But there's more.  It is not on the horizon... It is already here… and given the sheer velocity of innovation that's coming at us every week, we have to stop being reactive and get in front of our brand partners with work for these new environments that makes them uncomfortable-- because that's what great creatives should do.

Is the change of wind speed in our business a problem or opportunity?

It depends on your state of mind.   And your abilty to get top talent to make it happen.
From where I sit, bring it on. These are exciting times and stuff is moving fast. 

ON: Verizon's New Smart Phone Promo

While reading Jennifer Leuzzi's story on the 4 star farm in the NY post,  I was blinded by the page bling.  It was the New Verizon Smart Phone promo. 

The ads were sublte, loaded nicely and gave me lots to play with and more importantly...drove me to the product site.  On the product site, I was suprised and delighted with all the information on the product features.

This was a sexy, eye catching promo site that had amazing interface architecture.

See more at:

• http://www.nysun.com/article/36560
• http://estore.vzwshop.com/q/

 

On: The Agency Evolution Revolution

The agency landscape has evolved significantly since I first ventured into advertising 10 years ago. Gone is the ubiquitous 15 percent media commission, the three martini lunch and the simplicity of set methods of reaching your consumer. Thanks to a evolution in outdoor; radio consolidation; collapse of print and traditional classifieds; cable, satellite and channel proliferation; event marketing, word of mouth and product placement emergence have all greatly impacted the advertising landscape. It was, however, the advent of digital that has caused the major shift in the functional structure of advertising agencies.

Interactive versus traditional
Interactive agencies are different than traditional agencies. They are different in the way they are structured and their models for profitability. But at the end of the day you hire both to come up with great ideas-- ideas that move your brand forward.

Types of agencies
There are several types of interactive agencies. The most common is the integrated interactive agency. These interactive agencies are great for companies that don’t have the time or inclination to separate their offline advertising from their online advertising. You get it all through one agency and you get an integrated and consistent message across both media.

The other type of interactive agency is the specialist shop. Such shops work with your offline agency, but they are totally focused on online advertising and the digital channel. If you think online is critical to your brand's success, then these are the agencies for you.

But both agencies are very different from your ad agency. Their budgets are smaller and thus, they have very few, if any, resources totally dedicated to one brand. The effectiveness of their work can and should be measured much more stringently than traditional media advertising.

Online agencies can show ROI to their clients, much more so than traditional agencies. Clients should be using measurement tools to judge the effectiveness of their interactive agency and to constantly improve the effectiveness of their ads.

With that said, here are some tools to measure how well your interactive agency is working with you. If you need to replace your agency, ask yourself some of these questions.

See Full Article at:  http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/10502.asp

ON: Getting A Jiggy Resume

Emurse.com is a sweet example of a "web 2.0"  application, used for resume sharing and generation. This public beta is being used to deerminenew features in the near future.

When first logging in Emurse, you will be presented with an overview page. This page lists all of your existing resumes, recent statistics in a nice bar graph showing views and downloads, and even an area on the right that lists jobs you may be interested in, powered by Indeed, for those of you on a job hunt. First, I love being able to login and instantly see the statistics for my resumes - something you don’t see to often in services with resume builders. Secondly, I want to continue on the job results. Emurse uses a unique method that reads your existing resumes and extracts your skills from each to find jobs that are most relevant to your experience. It’s a neat feature, one I’m sure will be very helpful for anyone on the search, although I’d like to be able to view more results instead of only the two being listed. Also, if results don’t appear to be all that relevant, Emurse also allows you to go into you account settings and add keywords for more accurate searching.

ON: Pac Man Fever

Like many of you out there I came of age in the 80's.  Back in the day,we spent our early digtal lives in dark arcades pumping quarters in to our favorite games.  Evidently some of us have never grown up. Here are a couple links for you to enjoy. 

Click below to see video tributes online at:

• Space Invaders
• Pac-Mac
• PacManhattan
• Pac-Man: The Movie

ON: American Airlines User Video Ads

The goal of the American Airlines campaign was to conceptualize why people travel. The uniform theme throughout the campaign was people fly to “connect” with family and friends. Temerlin McClain developed a series of creative that captured the emotions of specific consumer roups such as grandparents, old friends, family reunions etc. This was accomplished through PointRoll Tomboy unit that contained streaming video.

For authenticity, the videos mimicked real family home videos. Along with streaming video, there was a viral email component where users could share the video with friends. In addition, users could replay the movie, see other video clips or book a flight. This creative did an excellent job at pinpointing the emotional triggers of their audience. This type of ad also allowed users to experience the creative fully without ever having to leave the page.

View Ad At: http://www.imediaconnection.com/creativecompetition/02/swf/AA/yahoo_finance_lrec.html

ON: Nintendo Old School

Sedgwick Rd. helped Nintendo Start Mayhem by building an integrated campaign around the idea that different color Game Boy’s have different personalities. Turning Nintendo’s “Who are you” theme towards the device itself, the creative effectively positions the GBA as a true icon.

The Start Mayhem website is the centerpiece of the campaign. The site features online videos for each of the Game Boy’s new colors, allowing consumers to experience the “personality” of each color and ultimately identify with one or more of the devices. New videos are launched every few weeks, encouraging consumers to check back in and meet new members of the Game Boy SP family.

The site has great old school sound effects on roll overs but would be more interesting if you could create your own cover. Some type of feature where you pimp your Game Boy.

View Site: http://www.imediaconnection.com/creativecompetition/02/swf/flash_content/index.html

ON: A Raging Good Time

This has great UI. 
The design leaves something to be desired but this offers a great experience.
Right from the get-go, this site for Arkansas Valley Adventures makes me want to go exploring and be adventurous.

Using the GPS device as a navigation menu was a great idea. It says to the user, "Don't worry, you wont get lost," which is a great message because the whitewater rafting, fishing, rock climbing, hiking and hot springs leaves a lot to explore here.

View At http://www.coloradorafting.net/

ON: Britsh Airways Cheeky Animated Vignettes

British Airways, the official airline sponsor of Wimbledon, asked Agency.com to develop a fun, engaging interactive campaign that shows British Airways knows London better than anyone. Agency.com created online ad units featuring cheeky animated vignettes that display proper etiquette while among fellow Wimbledon spectators. A voice-over narrates the action, and a viral component lets visitors forward the episodes to friends directly from the ads.

After an episode plays, visitors can scroll through the ad units and play additional etiquette advice while a voice-over encourages users to scroll through more of the vignettes. By interacting with the ad units, visitors can find the recipe for a Pimms Cup, a popular drink served at Wimbledon, and learn that one of the best ways to attend a match is to ask a departing guest to pass along their "debenture" tickets.

ON:Dynamic Ad Engine For Podcasts

Ever wished you could listen to, instead of read, content on your favorite Web sites? Ever wished you or your client could sponsor such podcasts? The New York Times Company's International Herald Tribune (IHT) is attempting to fulfill those wishes for its readers and advertisers, by beta testing a service that lets users choose which articles to instantly transform into an audio format.

"We are excited because this is a scaleable way to advertise in audio, as opposed to doing a one-off podcast, which can be fantastic, and we'll look into doing that, but this is scaleable," said Meredith Artley, editor & director of IHT.com.

The company hasn't yet signed up advertisers, but has pitched some on the offer, which would put :05 or :10 audio ads at the beginning and possibly the end of articles. Creative could either be a produced, radio-style ad, or text that could be read by the same automated system that reads the articles. The company envisions putting spots on every third, or every fifth, article, to avoid bombarding listeners with the same message over and over.

"We want to make sure that the advertising experience is varied and not overly repetitive and not getting in the way of the news," said Artley.

The IHT is offering the new service at audionews.iht.com using technology from Swedish firm ReadSpeaker. The company hasn't released the details of how its system works, but professional readers apparently record a dictionary of words in advance, and the technology assembles them on the fly. Users can select stories they want to hear immediately, or customize a feed of content that could be imported into iTunes or other podcasting software.

Roy Lindemann, managing director of ReadSpeaker France, said the service is, "a very convenient way for [the IHT's] readers to listen to vast amount of news text when traveling, commuting, doing sports or simply at home or at work."

The service seeks to tap into the tiny, but growing, population that's interested in podcasting. A Nielsen//Netratings study released yesterday finds that 6.6 percent of the U.S. adult online population, or 9.2 million Web users, have downloaded an audio podcast in the past 30 days. Artley said she expects early adopters to be a tech-savvy audience that's keen to try new technology.

There's potential that, should the test be successful, it could be rolled out across other New York Times Company properties like NYTimes.com and Boston.com.

"We're the guinea pigs on this one. We wanted to experiment with this one and push it out, but we're all part of the same family," said Artley. "This happens all the time in smaller ways... we share information internally and tweak and evolve."

According to the company's citation of a DoubleClick stat, IHT.com receives 2.7 million unique readers monthly.