Posts Tagged "Creative"
If popular websites were people, what would they look like?
Mashable’s Stan Schroeder recently posted this short blurb and image from comic artist elontirien on deviantART. The image truly captures the essence of these websites… so now you can put a face to the name!
Who’s the Bigger Nerd: Wikipedia or Google?: “If popular websites were people, what would they look like? If you’ve ever wondered, an artist’s rendering gives a really cute answer to the question.
Portrayed in the image, created by comic artist elontirien on deviantART, are Wikipedia (Wikipedia), Google (Google), Facebook (Facebook), Twitter (Twitter), MySpace (MySpace), deviantART and YouTube (YouTube), the last of which brought a smile to my face. Interestingly enough, Twitter is portrayed as a small kid; does that mean it still has a lot of room to grow?
[img property of elontirien; via thenextweb.com]“
Read MoreHow Branded Entertainment Is Holding Up Amid Recession
Madison and Vine’s Andrew Hampp recently spoke with Ogilvy Branded Entertainment honcho Doug Scott about branded entertainment’s place in the new econonmy.
PQ Media curbed its projections for branded entertainment as early as last February, saying the category’s growth would slow to the high single digits this year after increasing 13.9% to become a $25.4 billion business in 2008. Product placement and integrations accounted for 15% of that business in 2008, with the rest going to events, sponsorships and other branded projects.
However, according to Scott the category has solidified it’s importance and continues to prove itself as a necessecity in the new media landscape.
Read the full article here:
http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=134580
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Q&A: Ogilvy’s Doug Scott on His Favored Metrics and Why Single-Channel Beats Product Placement
Published: February 12, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — As marketers rein in spending on everything from national TV to the Super Bowl, whither branded entertainment?
PQ Media curbed its projections for branded entertainment as early as last February, saying the category’s growth would slow to the high single digits this year after increasing 13.9% to become a $25.4 billion business in 2008. Product placement and integrations accounted for 15% of that business in 2008, with the rest going to events, sponsorships and other branded projects.
Helping lead the growth in recent years is Doug Scott, head of Ogilvy & Mather’s branded-content division. Since joining Ogilvy in 2006, Mr. Scott has guided a diverse client roster through all aspects of the entertainment industry, from scripted TV (Unilever’s Pond’s on USA’s “The Starter Wife”) to music (a just-launched campaign for Kraft’s Crystal Light featuring a new song from R&B songstress Estelle) to cable news (IBM’s “The Business Of Innovation” on CNBC).
Although product placement and integrations have been the fastest-growing sector of branded entertainment, Mr. Scott has been similarly focused on single-channel entertainment programs such as microsites, branded video content and custom-created cable TV sponsorships.
“The need for accountability in marketing expenditures is greater than it’s ever been, and I think the way that we’re approaching branded content is somewhat unique in that it’s a holistic approach,” he said.
A more narrowly targeted model also enables Ogilvy to track a program’s direct affect on sales. The agency was able to show, for instance, that Hellman’s Mayonnaise doubled its year-over-year sales growth after launching a microseries, “In Search of Real Food,” on Yahoo Food in 2007. Last summer, Dupont paint saw a sales boost after sponsoring a rebuilding initiative of Greensburg, Kan., that aired across Discovery Communications networks such as Discovery Channel, TLC and Planet Green.
Mr. Scott is aiming for similar results with new efforts such as “Digital Cribs,” a microsite recently launched to drive sales for Cisco’s consumer-products line and Estelle’s new single, “Star,” recorded exclusively for a new Crystal Light campaign that premiered last Sunday during E! channel’s pre-Grammy red-carpet coverage.
Madison & Vine recently spoke with Mr. Scott to find out where branded entertainment is prioritized in clients’ budgets for 2009; what’s happening with the evolving metrics model; and why product placement should no longer be the focus of advertisers’ branded-entertainment strategies.
Madison & Vine: How is branded entertainment holding up at a time when advertisers are looking to cut any kind of budget regarded as experimental or off-strategy?
Doug Scott: Clients are definitely looking to include it in their overall marketing mix, and we’re getting a lot more interest in entertainment initiatives than I’ve seen in the past. There’s still experimentation taking place, where clients are dipping their toe in before they make larger investments … in entertainment marketing. But a larger part is due to the fact that brands are looking for alternatives to traditional measured media to find more effective ways to engage the audience in an environment where you have screen-shifting and time-shifting and viewer control.
M&V: Because of the heightened demand for incorporating entertainment into all parts of a brand’s strategy, what metrics are you favoring these days?
Mr. Scott: The first metric for us obviously is sales. That sales metric is really driven by two other metrics, one of which is a brand metric: What was the brand awareness, the brand lift, the brand shift? How are you making that brand more culturally relevant in an environment where the engagement with brands is floating to an audience much greater than it’s ever been?
Then there’s the media metric. We firmly believe that branded content really establishes this idea of working content, which can deliver more reach or impressions than that of working media because of digital distribution channels. So if you have really good content that can live in a multiplatform environment, the consumer you can target within an overall audience will both passively view the content and actively engage with a brand, thus moving the consumer up on the brand’s consideration line.
M&V: Some of your clients, such as Hellman’s, are reinvesting as a direct result of sales impact. What steps are you taking at the creative level at Ogilvy to help measure that relationship for clients?
Mr. Scott: The nature and the approach of the programs themselves are all about the underlying ROI. We’re not just looking at the entertainment itself in a silo. It’s about how it can be incorporated into advertising, the PR strategy around that, promotionally how that can be activated at retail, how online can be used to engage the audience and subsequently qualify that audience into a subset of consumers. Then it’s about: Where are the natural retail partnerships to extend from a [consumer-package-goods] standpoint? And, of course, distribution: How do we go mass, narrow-cast and single-cast? And across all that, recognizing there is an entertainment asset that can be extended in a lot of different ways.
M&V: Pond’s was one of the biggest success stories for brand integration after “The Starter Wife” in 2007, yet you’ve been focusing a lot more on single-channel, narrowcasted programs such as “Digital Cribs” for Cisco lately. Are scripted integrations such as “Starter Wife” just more difficult to execute now, or are they proving to be less effective as they become more commonplace?
Mr. Scott: Product placement, to me, is an easy-to-have, not a must-have, especially in the context of a story. It’s a very crowded marketplace to be able to cut through, to be able to resonate when the receiver of that message is entertainment. If you really look back into the early days of television, the soap opera was an exchange the brand was making with the audience, in this case the housewives who were watching as they ironed their husbands’ shirts. In return the brand got their time or attention, and in doing so began some kind of brand relationship, so the next time Mrs. Smith went to the market, she was more prone to buy P&G because she felt value exchange there.
I think we as marketers have lost that exchange because of the amount of things vying for our time — and extent of the disruption we all experience on a daily basis. When you get into a taxicab today, the minute you tell the driver where you’re going and he starts the meter, the TV goes on, and you have to take a second out of your time and, in essence, take a second out of the conversation you’re in to press “off.” We live in a world of disruptive media. What value do I get from people infringing upon my space with their message?
M&V: So which networks are doing a good job managing that disruption?
Mr. Scott: NBC has been the most progressive network out there, in large part to [NBC Entertainment/Universal Media Studios co-chairmen Ben] Silverman and [Marc] Graboff in understanding what’s old is new. The distribution platforms they have out there, with Hulu and a few other NBC digital channels, really give you the single-cast environment to take advantage of that. What that model does is it exhibits the changing economics of the business — and really assists the network to offset some of its risk with these programs, and develop unique marketing partnerships from the ground up where the brand really gets greater value than just 30-second spots.
Big Fuel Names Holly Pavlika as Executive Creative Director
Award-winning Creative Visionary Joins Top Consumer Engagement Agency
NEW YORK, Feb. 9 /PRNewswire/ — Big Fuel, the consumer engagement agency, today announced that noted marketing industry guru Holly Pavlika has joined the company as its executive creative director. She’ll work closely with Big Fuel President Ian Baer and company Founder and CEO Avi Savar, as well as the rest of the creative team to develop consumer engagement programs that take brands from Content to Commerce.
As Big Fuel’s first-ever executive creative director, Pavlika will both set the vision and drive the process for creative concept development and execution at the agency. Pavlika will also utilize her passion and enthusiasm for her work and her team by playing a critical role in new business and mentoring others within the creative department. A well-known and accomplished creative director in the industry, Pavlika brings her award-winning creative style and builds on Big Fuel’s solid foundation of audience-driven strategic leadership, brilliant project execution across the whole media spectrum and the ability to cost-effectively deliver content to the audiences that demand it.
“Having known Ian from within the industry for a number of years, I was excited at the prospect of finally being able to work with him, and after meeting the rest of the partners at Big Fuel, I felt like I’d entered creative heaven,” Pavlika said. “This agency really is all about the big idea, and everything the company does reflects that. The energy, enthusiasm and drive at Big Fuel are contagious, and I can’t wait to be a part of the team.”
Among her creative notches, Pavlika has developed campaigns for leading brands like Xerox, Kraft, Crown Royal, BMW MINI, 3M, Sotheby’s, Bloomberg Radio, SunTrust, JPMorgan Chase, Bloomingdales and Rite Aid. Prior to joining Big Fuel, Pavlika served as the executive vice president and executive creative director at G2 Direct & Digital, where she managed a 45-person creative team and oversaw the agency’s new business team and production department. During her time at G2, Pavlika was also directly responsible for developing and building the pharmaceutical practice and creating award-winning campaigns for companies like Proctor & Gamble, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb and Pfizer.
Read MoreIs Branding Dead?
An interesting roundtable of digital, direct and traditional marketers weigh in on the growing debate. How have the rules changed for brand marketers and where is this all going?
A short excerpt is below, be sure to read the full article here
With the nation facing major economic issues for the foreseeable future, and marketers tightening budgets across the board, direct response marketing in all media appears to be in position to take another major step forward. With measurable marketing and ROI now taking center stage more than ever, it begs the question — is traditional branding dead?
Ken Murray, chief marketing officer, J.G. Wentworth: No, traditional branding is going through a metamorphosis, where the borders between branding and DR are less defined. What that means is that messaging needs to be memorable, but also have a clear call-to-action in order to be effective. Budgets are tight and marketing investments need to be measurable to the extent possible, but branding is alive and well.
Ian Baer, president, Big Fuel: The biggest shift is that branding has become a mutual proposition. It’s no longer sufficient for a brand to develop a set of messages and rely on frequency and spending to burn those messages into a consumer’s mind. Now, the consumer has taken an equity stake in every brand, at least when it comes to the emotional side of the equation. Direct marketing has moved from optional to mandatory for most brands.
Darren Beck, senior vice president of marketing, http://Tree.com/: Brand advertising isn’t likely to ever “die.” However, the line between brand advertising and direct response advertising continues to blur. I view brand advertising and direct response advertising as opposite ends of a spectrum. Many highly successful companies recently have found a sweet spot somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. “Branded-response” advertising has become a buzzword for this approach, and companies from Capital One to LendingTree have successfully leveraged a branded response approach to drive their businesses forward.
Ronald Pruett, chief marketing officer, Liberty Medical: No, because brands ultimately need to stand for something. They need to be positioned properly or be reduced to a commodity with averaged returns. I actually view DR as a flight to efficiency more than a departure from branding. Here’s a more personal example: online classified job sites. People are using them in droves, putting their own personal brand out there for many to see because they are interested in a specific opportunity. The advertiser for the position is thus allowed to pull or “buy” individuals with their own unique experiences and, in essence, “brands” from an assortment. This process is fast and efficient. Richard Stacey, president and CEO, Northern Response Intl. Ltd.: The return on brand as a component of the marketing mix has diminished relative to other components of the marketing mix. In some categories, such as housewares or health-and-beauty, traditional branding has been under attack for a long time. Brand is certainly one component of competitive advantage, but an increasingly less important one. It just so happens that if you have an innovative and feature-rich product, then DRTV may give you a competitive advantage in explaining it to consumers so you can get it to market sooner and at the same time give it the support and drive required for retail and/or other channels of distribution.
Timothy R. Hawthorne, founder and executive creative director, Hawthorne Direct: Traditional branding will remain alive and well as long as there are brick-and-mortar retail outlets — which is forever — or until we de-evolve to the flat-screen obsessed world of “Wall-E.” Branding is about building an enduring association between your brand and an image/feeling that dominates the competition when confronted with purchase choice. Direct marketing is based on striving for an immediate purchase decision while seeking to eliminate any thought of choice. But, in fact, there should be no barrier between ROI and branding. All it requires is a deeper understanding and quantification of how branding efforts translate into sales — the “Holy Grail of Brand Marketers,” which may be as achievable as the Grail itself.
David Savage, executive vice president/managing director, R2C Group: Traditional branding is not dead, nor will it be any time soon. But direct response marketing is no longer the redheaded stepchild. It’s more of a competitive sibling. Fortune 500 companies and emerging brands are embracing DR strategies and media opportunities more than ever, and some of the largest advertisers are utilizing DR both strategically and tactically to complement their branding efforts.
Doug Garnett, president, Atomic Direct: Traditional branding is not dead — and it shouldn’t be. All advertising has a role to play and that includes the impression-measured media of traditional branding. But impression-measured media needs to become the exception rather than the rule. Why? Impression-measured media operates on the theory that getting our message in front of the “right” audience will achieve the results we seek. However, audience measurements like Nielsen or Arbitron are entirely incapable of measuring whether a demographic is likely to take action any time soon based on messages. Response-measured media’s operating theory is a much more likely one: that the communication and media that generates the highest immediate phone or Web response will also be the most persuasive to the most people.
Big Fuel Helps IKeepSafe and the Department of Justice
Launching “Know Where They Go” Public Service Campaign
Integrated, Multimedia Initiative Aims to Educate Parents About Internet Safety
NEW YORK – Nov. 17, 2008 – Big Fuel, the consumer engagement agency, today announced its work with IKeepSafe and The Department of Justice on a PSA (public service announcement) campaign to promote parental involvement in online safety. The PSA, which hits national airwaves and Web sites this month, is an urgent call-to-action for parents to visit KnowWhereTheyGo.org and take a proactive role in protecting children on the Internet by talking to their kids about their online activity.
The Department of Justice and IKeepSafe, the Internet Keep Safe Coalition, worked with Big Fuel to develop the edgy, unique campaign as part of the Project Safe Childhood initiative that supports an ongoing taskforce aimed at combating Internet crimes against children and increasing public awareness. The “Know Where They Go” PSA illustrates how, in the digital world, children can travel anywhere and why it is important that parents monitor what sites their children visit, what they are doing and above all, who they are talking to.
“The decision to team up with Big Fuel again was an easy one,” said Marsali Hancock, president, IKeepSafe. “We received such an outstanding response to our initial work on Internet safety with the team and MySpace last year, and we knew that success could be repeated. This time around Big Fuel delivered again, providing us with quality work and a flexible, quick-thinking team that helped us achieve our deadlines and goals.”
The “Know Where They Go” campaign consists of print and online ads, a radio spot and a 30-second commercial currently airing on national networks in demographics with high percentages of parent viewers, especially mothers, including Fox News, Fox Business, MSNBC, CNN, Oxygen, Lifetime Movie Network and Lifetime. The PSA focuses on parental education and encourages parents to visit KnowWhereTheyGo.org, a Web site dedicated to providing parents with resources and tools to help them approach their children about online safety.
“What we learned in our initial research was that parents felt they needed permission to find out what their kids were doing online,” said Ian Baer, president and managing partner, Big Fuel. “Our strategy was to create a campaign that showed parents that starting the dialogue is the first step in protecting their child online, and by utilizing the resources available to them, they could start that conversation, even if they don’t think they fully understand the technology. Kids can be protective of their online behavior, and we wanted to tell parents that inserting themselves in the conversation is the best way to break the barrier and protect their kids.”
The PSA campaign is the first introduction to an initiative that will eventually take to the street with regional events planned across the country, aimed at encouraging U.S. attorney generals and top community employers to work together to help parents and children.
“To us, this was more than just a marketing or advertising assignment – it was a mission,” said Avi Savar, founder and chief creative officer, Big Fuel. “We were excited to be trusted with the responsibility of creating a mantra for such an important cause. Keeping children safe online is a huge mission, one all parents need to participate in, and for us it was a privilege to build on our previous partnership with IKeepSafe and The Department of Justice to bring awareness to this cause.”
To view the PSA campaign and learn more about this cause, visit http://knowwheretheygo.org/en/.
About Big Fuel
Big Fuel, the consumer engagement agency, is a full-service marketing and communications company based in New York that takes brands from Content to Commerce.
The agency’s unique approach bridges “people stories” to “product stories” through branded content and messaging that speaks to the real-life needs of consumers. Big Fuel is one part marketing agency, building brands through consumer insight; one part entertainment company, creating content that people love; and one part distribution company, driving results by delivering that content to targeted audiences.
Big Fuel works with major brands – like MySpace, FOX, The U.S. Department of Justice, NBC-Universal, Neutrogena and Colgate-Palmolive – along with leading publishers and platforms to help marketers achieve true consumer engagement.
Read MoreAbout Me
Proud father, devoted husband, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Big Fuel, a full-service marketing and communications company based in New York that takes brands from Content To Commerce.
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