Blog360 - The Blend360 Agency Blog - Advertising, Branding, Web Design, SEO and Web Analytics

Consumers: The New Breed of Ad Agency

Natasha Lewis

It wasn't long ago, that creative advertising dictated what you watched, bought and played with. However, everything is different now.  In today's advertising world, it is the innovators that set the pace and dictate which brands will come out on top. Changes to the communication landscape have put the consumer in the driver's seat.

Since the advent of the Internet, companies can no longer market at their consumers. Instead they are required to work along side their consumers in order to create impact messaging and garner strong relationships, in hopes of gaining a realistic visual window into the consumers buying behavior.

Just as consumers have a choice in the products they purchase they also play a huge role in the creative thinking process. Which poses an interesting question: Is the consumer the new breed of ad agency?

Many creative agencies might argue no. Although in an environment where the consumer now has control over the medium they consume, it’s not too far fetched. It is possible that soon company brands will hire groups of consumer communities to come up with answers to complex brand strategies and creative questions as oppose to hiring a high priced agency.

Since the dawn of the first ad agency in the U.K in 1812, ad agencies have been dedicated to creating, planning and even handling the promotion. However, it could be this very ability to come up with "The Big Idea" that over shadows the agencies inability to evolve with such emerging trends such as: user-generated content, social networking, and word of mouth marketing.

The pertinent information hasn’t changed, it’s the way we collect it. In the past consumer information was collected through expensive market research studies. Companies have learned the hard way that spending thousand of dollars on traditional media with the intention of creating something clever and witty does not always yield instant brand impact.
 
These days, it doesn't take a group of creative directors and account service managers to come up with the “Big Idea” or solve a problem. Just build or become part of a consumer community and ask them the questions; you'll have all the answers you need. This type of communication advertising not only helps companies, but helps creative agencies to provide their clients with their needs and wants.

"Smart marketers have discovered that the old way of advertising and selling products isn't working as well as it used to, and they're aggressively searching for a new, enterprising way to increase market share and profits."  Seth Godin – Permission Marketing

Online relationships that have been forged are now becoming more meaningful. They give marketers an open access card to the once closed micro-aggregate community. The power of consumer communities has changed the traditional way of advertising because the only groups who know what makes the consumer tick are the consumers themselves.

The minds of the many will contribute to great changes. However, it’s minds of the producer in combination with their consumers who will sprout new concepts and processes. Only companies willing to evolve with this new way of brand innovation will be on the road to developing a successful & strong brand imprint.

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Implied Consent Softens Canada's New Anti-Spam Law

Jon Cogan

Canada's new anti-spam legislation, referred to as FISA - the Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act - was passed in mid-December and is expected to come into law later this year. Most expected new anti-spam laws to require marketers to obtain actual expressed consent before adding any email address to their marketing lists. Pardon me if this sounds confusing, but in some ways FISA requires this, but in some circumstances, it allows for implied consent, which, when read into further, actually seems to create a much more liberal approach. Allow me to explain:

While the new law does describe the necessary protocol for obtaining expressed consent ("clearly and simply" setting out the purpose of future email communications), it also lists the circumstances when consent to receive messages may be implied. Included in these circumstances is the following:

"The person who sends the message, the person who causes it to be sent or the person who permits it to be sent has an existing business relationship or an existing non-business relationship with the person to whom it is sent;"  - Bill C-28 Sec. 9a

While the "non-business relationship" has been described by some lawmakers  as "membership in a club", for instance, a business relationship can also be interpreted as any business-customer relationship. It can therefore be argued that anyone who buys from a website's e-commerce store is implying consent to receiving messages. Does this mean that we no longer need to include the opt-in to email marketing communications check box on e-commerce checkout forms?

While the business-to-consumer circumstances above can be interpreted and debated in different ways, the door is left much more open for implied consent in business-to-business marketing communications:

"... the person to whom the message is sent has disclosed, to the person who sends the message, the person who causes it to be sent or the person who permits it to be sent, the electronic address to which the message is sent without indicating a wish not to receive unsolicited commercial electronic messages at the electronic address, and the message is relevant to the person’s business, role, functions or duties in a business or official capacity."  - Bill C-28 Sec. 9c

So in b2b communications, as long as you have sent the message to the appropriate person (eg. a promotional message about an accounting software to the IT Manager and the CFO) - which is always a recommended practice from even strictly a marketing sense - and the recipient has disclosed to you their email address and not indicated an objection to receiving such messages, you are in the clear.

It is clear that the intent of the proposed law is to deter the most damaging and deceptive forms of spam from occurring in Canada and help drive spammers out of Canada. Please keep in mind that I do not practice Internet Law. I'm not even a lawyer. I am simply sharing with my readers how the "Implied Consent" clauses are being interpreted by marketers going forward toward this legislation becoming active later on this year.  As marketers, weneed to understand how FISA – the Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act – will affect our marketing campaigns. There are requirements set forth in this legislation we must all be aware of, so I encourage all marketers to familiarize themselves with the entire Act.

For more insights form the President of Blend360 Communications, check out his own blog at: http://www.joncogan.com

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Major threat to e-commerce – compulsory do-not-track picking up speed

CMA Watching Brief

The creation of a compulsory, universal do-not-track mechanism that would threaten e-commerce by giving consumers the type of control they gained over marketers with the national do-not-call registry is picking up speed. Most recently, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission this week called for the implementation of a universal do-not-track option that would allow consumers to opt out of all online tracking and interest-based (behavioural) advertising. Noting in their opinion that online companies have failed to protect the privacy of Internet users, the FTC specifically suggests the do-not-track mechanism take the form of an add-on to browsers, similar to a cookie. Consumers would then be able to check a box that would transmit their preference to opt out of tracking to websites as they surf the web. Such a mechanism, notes Thursday’s New York Times, cou! ld directly affect the billions of dollars in business done by online advertising companies and by businesses that collect highly focused information about consumers that can be used to deliver personalized advertising to them.

Here in Canada, the Federal Privacy Commissioner has consulted CMA and other business and consumer groups about the tracking and collection of data when consumers are online. In an effort to prevent unreasonably restrictive legislation or regulation, CMA has also worked with a coalition of trade associations to develop principles that would govern such practices in Canada. Enhancements to the CMA Code of Ethics have also been drafted that would serve to guide marketers in this area. These will be tabled for approval at the CMA Board of Directors’ meeting in December.

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Black Friday Sees Big Increase in Online Spending

Jon Cogan

The initial Black Friday reports are in from Coremetrics. Online shopping saw a huge boost with spending increasing 15.9% from a year ago. The average order was also up 12.1% from $170.19 to $190.80.

Health and beauty saw some very encouraging numbers on Friday, with a rise of 73.1% of new consumers completing their first purchase on their sites and 53.4% jump in conversion rates (number of visits where consumers completed an order). Jewelry retailers saw a 17.6% increase in online sales indicating a boom day for luxury goods.

The way consumers were shopping online this past Friday indicates a shift in how purchase decisions are being made. The benchmark report revealed that consumers are viewing 18% fewer products on sites than they did last year.  This suggests that online shoppers have done their research and know what they want to buy and where to get it. Department store sites seem to be the research resource of choice, as the report shows a 17.7% increase in the amount of time being spent on these sites from the same period a year ago.

Mobile shopping had a breakthrough day this Black Friday. 5.6% of online consumers logged on to a retailer site using a mobile device. That is a 26.7% increase from a year ago!

The report shows a modest increase in social shopping. More and more consumers are turning to their favourite social networks to learn about deals and inventory levels. Just under 1% of visitors to retailer sites came from social networks. This is to be expected as people are not usually in a shopping frame of mind while on social sites, but even this modest increase indicates a possible shift in that attitude is starting to take shape. Facebook is leading this charge.

For more insights form the President of Blend360 Communications, check out his own blog at: http://www.joncogan.com

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Email Marketers Need to Pay Attention to New Facebook Messaging

 Jon Cogan

There is no doubt that Facebook's unveiling of their new messaging system, revealed yesterday, will ripple through the business world. We're just not quite sure yet exactly how. But email marketers should be the first to take notice, as their world is very likely to feel some seismic effect from this change.

Facebook has this uncanny way of changing the way we interact with other people. Changing the way we communicate. I see Mark Zuckerberg's latest announcement as a potential revolution in the way we send and receive messages with one another. If this announcement from Facebook signals the beginning of the social inbox taking over the conventional inbox, email marketers better be prepared to find a way into it.

That starts by re-evaluating what is being communicated in overall email marketing programs. At the very least, there should be a shift away, and at the most, a complete abandonment of the promotional, offer-based content as the social inbox will most certainly favour those messages that can be interacted with, or even responded to with some form of engaging activity. What shape and form that will take is firmly in the hands of those who click send.

For more insights form the President of Blend360 Communications, check out his own blog at http://www.joncogan.com

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Is Your Content Strategy Engaging?

Jon Cogan

(from joncogan.com)

I was speaking with a client the other day who wanted very badly for us to create him a business page on Facebook. The first question I ask a client who asks for this is "what is it for?" Invariably, the response is "you tell me, you're the expert and everyone seems to have one. I feel like we're missing out."

I'm not going to lie. While Facebook can and should be a very useful medium for most if not all brands, Facebook, or any other social network you may want to utilize in a social media marketing plan needs a real engaging content strategy and a budget to go with it.  In conversations with clients, it is important for us to stress the difference between what is content and what is engaging content because many clients think that providing multiple status updates on their Facebook page everyday is considered engagement.

Don't get me wrong. It is important to keep social pillars current with relevant updates, be it original content, or links to third party material. But to truly engage, you need to provide something much more profound than a bunch of bit.ly links.  True engagement comes from empowering, involving and inspiring your audience to perform an action that they otherwise would not perform, all under the guise of your brand. That is not easy to achieve, which is why agencies such as mine (shameless Blend360 plug) can charge fees for putting a cohesive interactive strategy together.

Take a look at some of the most engaging social case studies and you will find some truly creative, unique and revolutionary executions. But you don't need the "best idea you've ever had" to be engaging. Just be smart about what content and activities you are serving up and ask these questions to put your content strategy to the engagement litmus test:

1) Does my content strategy provoke the user to provide their own insights?
Be purposefully controversial in a status update or tweet, ask direct questions by crowd sourcing your audience or find ways to otherwise tap into what you know your audience to be passionate about. It is vital that the content you put up for discussion will actually spark a discussion! Being preachy, promotional or uninteresting to your audience will not just fall short of engaging with them, it will actually serve to disengage.

2) Do I have any contests, games or applications in my content strategy?
Give your audience something fun to do and tap into the competitiveness of humankind. A sweepstakes here and there is great, provided it's relevant to your brand, but your content strategy should recognize that social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are now and have always been pastimes, as in "passing the time." It is a place where people go to escape, even for a minute or two. Keep them there longer by giving them something to do! But be careful. This part of your overall content strategy is the most complex and most costly to execute. So make sure you get your money and time's worth. Don't ask your audience for something that doesn't in any way connect to your brand and what it stands for. Make sure there is that connection to avoid false engagement. This is where some of the most talked about initiatives are born, and doing it right can send your brand through a viral thunderstorm that can keep your brand top of mind for years to come.

3) Is my content exclusive?
If I can find the content you are providing on Wikipedia, chances are you need to re-think your content strategy. It's fine to link to brand relevant content around the World Wide Web, but that should just be for keeping your pages fresh and rewarding in that they provide some interesting information resources to your audience. It is imperative that the majority of your content be unique. It is also a good idea to provide some content that is not available anywhere else, like an interview with the CEO.

4) Do I invite my audience into my brand?
I like to call this one a "customer empowerment strategy". This  is the biggie for me. Whatever is being done in any aspect of any marketing communications plan must recognize that the consumer is now in charge. Anything done in the social media space must at least attempt to put the consumer in the driver's seat. Embracing the consumer taking control of your brand will take you a lot further than trying to fight it. A LOT FURTHER! Crowd sourcing, inviting customer reviews of your product and/or service, customer service discussions in an open forum, live chats with key executives in your company should all be considered in any effective engaging content strategy.

Building a Facebook or Twitter page for your business can literally take less than a minute. The real work starts by building up qualified  fan / follower base and the feeding that base with an engaging content strategy that can lead to a viral and infectious affinity for your brand.

For more insights form the President of Blend360 Communications, check out his own blog at http://www.joncogan.com

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Designing for the Web in 2010…and What to Expect in 2011 (Part Two)

Brandon Gasner

If you’re reading this and you haven’t read Part One, please click here to catch up, otherwise let the ranting continue! :)

In part one I mentioned the importance of designing for resolutions over 1024x768. In Part Two I will talk about how today’s top browsers are helping deal with the transition from 1024x768 to 1280x1024, and how they are better prepared this time around to deal with multiple resolutions.

Let’s start off with what we know. When it comes to the Web’s market share for OS platforms, Microsoft’s Windows products are found on 87.8% of the computers surfing the World Wide Web. Compare these numbers to Apple’s ever increasing popular Mac OS (6.5%) and the techie loved Linux OS (4.8%).

Why is this important to know? This tells us that 87.8% of the computers to hit the web have a copy of Internet Explorer installed on their machines. Up until about 6 years ago those numbers were almost equally matched by the 76% of web pages being viewed on one of the several available IE versions. This is no longer the case. After years of complaints over the inability to display websites without errors, Internet Explorer users make up only 30.4% of the web’s traffic, while Mozilla’s Firefox has become the leader with 46.4%, followed closely by Google’s Chrome, at 16.7%. These numbers are huge for Google and Mozilla. With HTML5 creeping up, these two browsers are bound to become even more popular, unless Microsoft can get their act together – it may be too little, too late.

With only 30% of the Windows users actually using Internet Explorer, we find ourselves struggling to develop a cool site that can still work on IE. It has got to the point where designers and developers are no longer concerned with websites working perfectly in IE, forcing annoyed users to find a new browser; like Firefox or Chrome. And although Safari comes with Apple’s OS, the same trend is apparent with almost 50% of Mac web users using an alternate browser.

I know, that all sounds great, but how does any of that affect the way websites are viewed? How does it change the fact that someone viewing a 1280x1024 site at 1024x768 can’t see the entire page without scrolling left and right? Well, that answer is rather simple. People like Mozilla and Google (yes, Safari and Microsoft too), have decided to add a feature to their browsers that allows users to Zoom In and Zoom Out of web pages allowing all sites to appear the way they were designed.

With talks of HTML5 becoming ever more popular, the whole resolution debate might finally meet its end. However great that may be, it is speculated that HTML5 won’t be perfected until 2020. So in the meantime, don’t be the one to help hinder the way your client’s websites look by designing-down for lower resolutions. Design for the 76% of users, not the 20%, and if you’re still not sold these last couple numbers may help change your mind.

Date	Higher	1024x768	800x600	640x480	Unknown
January 2010	76%	20%	1%	0%	3%
January 2009	57%	36%	4%	0%	3%
January 2008	38%	48%	8%	0%	6%
January 2007	26%	54%	14%	0%	6%
January 2006	17%	57%	20%	0%	6%
January 2005	12%	53%	30%	0%	5%
January 2004	10%	47%	37%	1%	5%
January 2003	6%	40%	47%	2%	5%
January 2002	6%	34%	52%	3%	5%
January 2001	5%	29%	55%	6%	5%
January 2000	4%	25%	56%	11%	4%

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Canadian Internet Shopping tops 15 Bil!

Canadians ordered $15.1 billion worth of goods and services on the Internet last year, up from $12.8 billion in 2007. Stats Canada says about 39% of Canadians aged 16 and over used the Internet to place more than 95 million orders in 2009 -- up from 32% and the 70 million orders in 2007, when the survey was last conducted. The top 25% of online shoppers spent an average of $4,210 during 2009, accounting for almost half of total orders and more than three-quarters of their value.

Source: Canadian Press/Toronto Star

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Paid search gaining respect, but not enough

How do those holding the purse strings perceive paid search marketing when it comes to allocating budgets? About 44% of organizations believe it’s an effective tool for producing a measurable ROI, and 33% say it's a promising tactic to eventually produce returns, according to MarketingSherpa's latest report. Another 15% and 8% said paid search marketing is either unknown or not on the company's radar, respectively. Increased lead generation topped the list of goals.
Source: MediaPost MarketingDaily

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Designing for the Web in 2010- And What to Expect in 2011 (Part One)

Brandon Gasner

 Today we (designers) are faced with a reoccurring dilemma when designing websites, and that is “What resolution should we be designing for?” Before I answer this question with my personal opinion, and some data to back it up, I’d like to take a look back to 1996.

1996 was the year Photoshop 4.0 was released. It was also the year my father bought me my first PC equipped with a 15” CRT monitor. At the time most resolutions were set to 640x480, but mine was set to 800x600 because I wanted to use as much of my monitor as possible while designing. A few years later I purchased a 17” monitor and bumped my resolution up to 1280 x 1024 while most were catching up to the 800x600 setting.

From 1996 to 2000 the web received a huge boost that triggered the Web Boom, welcoming sites like Ebay, Hotmail, Google, Amazon, AskJeeves, and About.com, amongst many others. The creation of Macromedia’s Flash had companies like Coca-Cola spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on their websites, trying to be the first to integrate innovative and interactive flash components to their site to enhance the user experience.

While the web was growing, the standards for display resolutions began to come up in discussion. The same question we ask today was asked then “What resolution should we be designing for when visitors are viewing sites on anything from a 13” laptop to a 19” monitor with resolutions from 640x480 to 1024x768?”

Back in 2000 the average resolution was set to 800 x 600. This made the answer for most agencies very simple, “Design for 800x600!” By 2004 47% of visitors set their resolutions to 1024x768 and 10% were even higher.

It is now 2010 and people are still designing for 1024x768! There is something wrong about that when 76% of monitors are set to 1280x1024 and HIGHER. So why are we still designing for the 20% of users who haven’t got the memo? It’s not like their graphic cards won’t run 1280x1024 (or the equivalent for wide screen), which was actually the case in the 90’s. There was something wrong with designing websites in 2005 for people viewing at 800x600, so why is it okay now to design for the ever diminishing 1024x768? My opinion, its NOT! With more than three quarters of users viewing OVER 1024 x 768 and iMacs being sold with 24”+ screens, it’s time we moved to the next phase, 1280x1024 and up!

PART TWO to follow.

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