Hasta La Creative!

Grace Park Knows the Deal

In early May, the IAB held its Digital Content Newfronts. And today, it has released an attendee survey providing some insight into the digital upfront marketplace. The survey revealed one in three buy-side attendees felt the digital upfront marketplace positively impacted their plans for digital video advertising buys, with 78% stating they walked away with at least one new opportunity for their company or a client.

And in the no-brainer category, 70% of agency and marketer attendees also said they think it is likely that buyers will shift more budget away from television and into digital video over the course of the next year.

Of the seemingly star-studded event, which we did not attend, the very verbose IAB President Randall Rothenberg said, “This year’s Digital Content NewFronts not only shined a spotlight on the depth and breadth of original online programming available in the marketplace – but also provided a pivotal turning point in the minds of many media buyers, who now grasp digital videos’ power and reach. Presenters brought out major talent, and showcased comedy, documentary, news, reality, music, games, and services programming of such originality and impact that major advertisers realized they have to get involved.”

But does any of this really matter when, it seems, all television buying will eventually be done with an algorithm?

The American Historical Association caused a stir by asking universities to allow new Ph.D’s to keep their dissertations from being circulated online for up to six years.

– A new study finds too much social media usage causes low self esteem in teenaged girls? How about in us grownups who can’t stand reading about the latest and greatest accomplishments of their peers?

– Joe Jaffe’s Evol8tion has acquired Bob Knorpp’s Beancast podcast. Bob will continue the podcast and become SVP Chief Analyst of Evol8tion’s BrandWatch product.

– A grounded viewpoint on inbound marketing that doesn’t trash inbound marketing.

– This is just funny. To promote the 2013 Wiener Nationals (a dog race), Orange County-based DGWB shot a promo using GoPro cameras.

– Chloe Hilfiger goes to college in the new Tommy Hilfiger ad campaign.

– If Tanay Jackson, daughter of Tito and niece of Michale endorse your company, that’s kind of awesome, right?

Here’s some interesting news from video technology company Unruly. A recent study the firm conducted found humor just might not be the ticket to viral success any longer as consumers have become numb to the many attempts by brands to employ humor in their video and social media efforts. That is not to say that humor does not work. According to Unruly, “brands need to be extremely funny” to succeed virally.

The study, entitled Science of Sharing, limited its research to 12 commercials which aired during this year’s Super Bowl.

Other findings from the study include:

– Wednesday is the best day to launch a campaign. This is based on two factors: 1. On average, half (48.3%) of the weekly video shares occur between Wednesday and Friday, with the peak of shares occurring on a Friday and the lowest point being the weekend. 2. A quarter of a video’s total shares on average occur in the first three days of launch.

– Ads must also give viewers a strong reason to share – and ideally more than one emotional trigger – to generate earned shares and views. Ads that offered weak social motivations, even when paired with strong psychological responses from viewers, had very low share rates.

– Year-on-year sharing of Super Bowl ads grew by 118% from 2012 to 2013, with Super Bowl teasers and ads generating 7,739,917 shares in 2013, up from 3,546,560 shares in 2012.

The report was compiled using 2,699 survey responses, plus data from the Unruly Viral Video Chart, which has been tracking videos on the web since 2006, Unruly Analytics, Unruly MEME (Media Engagement and Measurement Engine), Unruly’s cloud-hosted platform for social video distribution & tracking and Unruly ShareRank, which analyzes over 329 billion video views and over 10,000 data points to predict the social impact of video content. Unruly says the Super Bowl 2013 ads were used to provide a level playing field of campaigns launched around the same time and aired on the same day.

Well it wasn’t all glamour and glitz last week in Cannes. It seems some actual work was completed, at least among 60 CMOs who participated in the Adobe-chaired Marketing2020 round table which examined the role and creation of purposeful brands, the structure, role and capabilities of marketing, how to analyze big data in marketing, the role of the CMO and collaboration with agencies. The group also discussed findings from the Marketing2020 Study which found:

• Fifty-eight percent of marketers work closely with their CEO to establish the company’s strategic growth agenda – a 20 percent increase from 2006
• Seventy-three percent of marketers believe brands with a societal purpose drive business growth
• Ninety percent of marketers expect the size of global marketing departments to remain the same or increase over the next five years
• Sixty-five percent of senior marketers (SVP+) expect marketing and communications departments to merge in the next five years
• Only 20 percent of marketers feel their teams receive adequate training, even though increased marketer training correlates with increased business growth

Of the study and the round table, Association of National Advertisers President Bob Liodice said, “Marketing2020 – and the impressive group of senior marketers that gathered at Cannes to discuss it – represent a burgeoning breakthrough in our industry. The results of the study, including the Cannes discussion, will provide senior marketers around the world with clear pathways to business growth. This is the most ambitious, significant research and leadership initiative the ANA has ever taken part in.”

Less numeric results of the study revealed:

• Technology developments drive massive change in the way marketers develop value propositions and connect with consumers
• Data mining and analytics are the capabilities marketers most want to develop over the next five years
• The role of brands will increase significantly despite increasing consumer information and global transparency
• Marketing leaders of organizations outgrowing their competition tend to be closer to consumers and focus more on developing people in comparison to their peers
• Creative and agency partners will play a more important role in marketing organizations in the future

Over the past three months, 350 CEOs, CMOs, CMO peers and agency leaders and several thousand marketers from around the world have contributed to Marketing2020. The Marketing2020 online survey can be taken here.

iStockphoto, you know…that service you pour over hoping to find the perfect imagery for your creative machinations, is out with an infographic that reveals the inners working of designers’ minds.

Findings include the fact* designers have the attention span of a goldfish, equate finding the perfect image to finding $1 million, have a thing for unicorn deathmatches and have a really, really intense propensity for the color blue.

Check it all out below.

* Word used in the loosest sense possible. Though experience shows, it’s really not all that far from the actual truth.

Social media is, of course, all the rage these days but did you know integrating email and marketing automation into your social media efforts can increase your revenue 6X? Did you know triggered emails that are part of the marketing automation process can yield 75% higher open rates and 115% higher click through rates? And how about the fact incorporating video with email can increase the performance of traditional direct mail by 280%?

Yea, it’s all true. Download this guide from Stream Send now and learn how to incorporate social, video, remarketing and marketing automation into your marketing strategy.

– Crispin Porter + Bogusky aims to redefine #FML for Jell-O. Ignite community managers debate the move.

– ComScore announced the launch of its Digital Analytix Multi-Platform on Monday. The goal of the new offering is to help clients drive brand loyalty and increase revenue by applying multi-platform measurement expertise to digital business analytics.

– In a recent survey, IBM found 39% of “leader” companies (defined as those in the top 20% in terms of cross-channel integration and use of technology for customer outreach) are employing real-time marketing based on customer context. Just 15% on non-“leader” companies do the same.

– Facebook, The Musical? Hmm…

– Hot models dance in bikinis to promote fashion brand.

– How do you get kids in China to wash their hands to prevent hand-foot-mouth desease? You make the whole thing into a video game.

– Nobody seems to have a problem with Blockbuster Video’s biracial ad.

– Talking pets wonder what the hell is going on inside AT&T Digital Like homes.

Creating a strategy to deal with the rise of mobile devices comes down to three primary options: Developing a native app, designing a separate mobile site, or re-working your primary website with responsive design.

Using insight from industry experts and research data, this eBook from Bridgeline Digital, “7 Reasons to Consider Responsive Design for Your Company’s Next Generation Website,” explores the advantages of using responsive design to take your web presence into the mobile era. Responsive design is a fancy term to describe a website layout that works on all devices seamlessly. You create the site once and the layout adapts to and renders properly on different screen sizes. An extremely important consideration given the dramatic increase in usage of mobile devices to access the web.

Download the whitepaper now and make sure your website is appropriately designed for mobile devices.

Because these things actually matter and because there’s a guy who love to dig into this stuff, we now know that tweets that include exclamation points get more retweets. However, thanks to Dan Zarrella’s examination of 2 million link-containing tweets sent by accounts with at least 1,000 followers, tweets with exclamation points get fewer clicks.

Why is this data important when it’s usually all about the click? Because sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes all a brand wants to do is make it known something relevant to the brand and of interest to consumers is interesting. JCPenney hyping a sale. Southwest touting discount flights. Or CNN just trying to get a breaking story widely disseminated.