Stephen Crooks Experience Economy Blog » Advertising

A peak at the Ad Agency of the near Future (and it’s Scary)

Stephen Crooks — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:37:10 +0000

: Don’t tell us what you think, we’ll tell you.

9:30 AM. Man walks into the office. He’s greeted by an executive. Offered a glass of water and is lead to a screening room. The guest positions himself comfortably on a chesterfield in a simulation of home living room. Once sat down the visitor is asked to put on their head a device that looks like a bike helmet.

The room is darkened and and a Television commercial is played. As quick as takes to play the 30 second spot, the meeting is over and our guest is free to leave with a 10$ cheque in hand. That’s it. And in those 30 seconds more is learned about the performance of a television commercial than 20 hours worth of group panel discussions.
Welcome to the future, welcome to the neuromarketing age. An era where all commercials will be hyper-optimized to generate some of the most manipulative consumption propaganda the world has ever seen.

For those who don’t know what neuromarketing is, it basically is analyzing brainwaves to see what areas of the human brain responds well to various sensory elements. For get what people say (as they often mislead or don’t truthfully express their likes and desires), by pass the bias of communication and go straight to source.

Ad agencies will in record time be able to get feedback on whether their targeted demographics like or dislike a campaign. Think of the power, think of the abuse of such a system.

Advertising to the reptilian brain. I have a lot to say on this subject – so watch for more posts.

Mass Awareness still Lives (and thrives) Online

Stephen Crooks — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 05:14:28 +0000

: People still see your ads, even if they don’t respond by visiting your website.

Modern Advertising has been dependent on the concept of mass awareness – dumping ads to a wide audience hoping their key demographic is paying attention. And it works. Yet something peculiar happens for some clients (especially those with limited resources) when they enter the world of online advertising – they seem to think conventional advertising techniques no longer apply.

Just because people aren’t clicking on your ads doesn’t mean your campaign is a failure. Depending on ad placement (did the people see your ads?) your campaign may have effectively reached your target audience even with zero interaction with your site.

I can recall ads such as Sony’s e-reader (which I see on the Toronto Star mobile site), University of Arizona, amongst others – yet have never visited their website.

But when I do a search for digital books or online university and I see either organization in the search results – I’m more likely to respond to their ads because of my familiarity with the brand.

Yet a client who analyzes results strictly on a click by click conversion basis will not see the value (and long term value) of the impressions they generated. So take advantage of Cost per Click (CPC) campaigns

Sony: Exclusive ads and content are the new battleground (destructoid.com)

Release the Ads

Stephen Crooks — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 07:31:34 +0000

Sample of a Canadian Tire banner ad which allows in banner browsing.

I’m a big proponent of shifting the concept of the sole purpose of an online banner ad to drive traffic back to it’s mothership – a website.

Attached to the right is an example of an ad that lives on it’s own (not the greatest in design) but I really like the execution. You can navigate through the ad viewing a basic buyers guide, seeing a few products and an the ability to sign-up for their flyer – all from the comfort of your webpage.

All while being branded. The ads are non-threatening, passive and allow me to interact without disrupting my “mission” – whatever the purpose was of me to be on the same page as the ad was displayed.

We need to work to shift from the concept of ads being nothing more than providing support to a website, rather being an extended arm of it. These interactive ads can help widen the net of a campaign.

THE BOTTOM LINE

- Ads need to maintain the trust of the user for them to catch on – no fake arrows or tabs that don’t function the way you’d expect.

- Keep the message short.

- You don’t always need to drive traffic back to your website as to repeat a message that can be equally relayed in the ad.

Are Banner Ads Dying? (marketingpilgrim.com)
Why Web Ads Suck (karenmcgrane.com)

Why Reputation Management Matters.

Stephen Crooks — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 05:25:58 +0000

In a five year period Domino’s Pizza spent over $1.5 BILLION (US) in advertising in the United States alone. So how can a company that spends so much be at the mercy of a $200 camera with video recording capabilities and the free website YouTube?

Below: $200 can harm a billion dollar investment.

The world is flat, the control brands exhorted over the general public have all but diminished in just a few short years. The rules have changed, and it’s time that corporations change their ways. The tipping point is for companies of the scale of Domino’s to deploy a Social Marketing team to monitor, and defend the brand in cyberspace. For the cost of a few people working at $80k a year is a small price to pay to protect the investment in the the billion plus dollars spend in other channels.

I’ve over the past while become the biggest proponent of Reputation Management. Which is essential for any brand of substance.

So what is Reputation Management? It’s ongoing (near real-time) monitoring of what’s being said about your brand and what people are posting. The internal team of Social Marketers can defend the brand by utilizing tools appropriate for each situation. Could be as simple as providing a comment reply to correct the falsehood, to more escalated scenarios involving contacting ISP owners, or even involving corporate lawyers. But if you don’t have anyone monitoring what’s being said? How do you expect to quickly invoke damage control measures?

When you spend billions building your brand, the least you can do is put some levels of protection.

So companies spends millions in advertising and building up their brands yet spend nothing on protecting their brand online.