May 9, 2008

A view from my window:

The CMO Council released a report on the Power of Personalization. In short a) it works and b) not everybody does it anyway. The most scary figure was that nearly 50% of the marketers reporting 'having fair to little knowledge of customers.' A lot of that was related to beliefs that the issues were data or systems related., Best quote in the expert commentary section: "Influence the entire value chain for communications and follow the money!!" Gina Testa, Xerox. This means understanding the conversations involved in the purchase decision.
AOL still finding its way. They plan to debut 12 sites this year, "mostly for advertising" according to MarketingVOX(Forbes). And I thought content was king.
Spot Runner and Google continue to broaden the automation of media buying with the apparent goal of tactical carpet bombing. Both are expanding rapidly across the media buying landscape. What remains in the minds of planners however is what to say to whom (for the moment.)
The last technology people will throw out of a sinking ship: cell phone, surpassing the land line. And nearly two-thirds have accessed digital data and tools.
Product idea of the month: integrating commonly related needs across technology (and often departments.) For example Lyris HQ covers email, analytics, landing page, and PPC management - for the average company.
Social media - still widely misunderstood and abused. Advertisers see it as a potential blast furnace for outbound messaging when the reality is that it is not a medium which can be interrupted for 'a word from our sponsor'. It is way too dynamic. See any of Cathy Taylor's posts on Social Media Insider.
Army vs. Air Force: and not on the football field. A definite difference in advertising strategy here. Army is taking the positive 'strong' approach while Air Force is taking the 'scare tactic' approach, as in 'who's going to protect the Pentagon' when s**t happens next.
Are product reviews being bought - Reviewola? A trend seems to be incenting people to write reviews with sweepstakes and other offers. I personally know that having an affiliate account with the likes of Amazon affects how I think about book reviews; wonder what happens next - a bot that generates random reviews in order to win prizes?
The "Branded Entertainment" category of events, sponsorships, placements, advergaming and webisodes has doubled in the last five years to $22b. Events and sponsorships are the largest category and used to get face time. (Center for Media Research)
From Adweek's Digital Editor Brian Morrissey's twitter library: "the PR world is just as much spray and pray as the ad world. I'm doused every single day." (via OnlineSpin)