DOmedia

Is Google the Future of Advertising?

by DOmedia on June 6, 2008 in Advertising, Google, Technology, Trends with No comments

Just ran across an interesting post on TechCrunch profiling the latest addition to Google Analytics…TV ad measurement. This enhancement to their previous offering of Adwords TV Ads promises marketers instant access to key performance indicators:

impressions delivered
number of ad plays
cost
CPM

Additionally, since all of this information is loaded into the familiar Google Analytics interface, you can view your TV campaign performance right next to your online campaign reports, and even view website traffic and television impressions on the same graph.

Unfortunately, Google’s TV distribution is pretty limited right now, given that their ads can only be fed through Dish Network boxes. However, I have no doubt that this glimpse of what measurement is possible will cause marketers to pressure their other media providers for better data faster. Heck, with an average CMO tenure lasting less than 2 years, they need all the ammunition they can get.

Of course, only time will tell what impact this latest offering has on both the success of Google’s TV Ads product and the industry as a whole, but I think the trend is pretty clear…in the age of ROI, data is king.

Indiana Jones and the Outdoor Campaign

by DOmedia on May 27, 2008 in Advertising, Billboards, Branding campaigns with No comments

The entertainment industry has long been a staunch proponent of the outdoor advertising industry, creatively incorporating the medium to promote everything from movie premieres to Broadway openings. Hollywood’s “Man with the Midas Touch,” Steven Spielberg, continues the out-of-home legacy, once again calling on alternative out-of-home to promote the long-awaited return of Indiana Jones. Given the successful use of alternative media to promote Spielberg’s Transformers movie last year, Paramount decided to turn it up a notch for Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

According to the article from Reuters, the Indy campaign comprises about 2,000 billboards, wall messages, bus-side promos and other out-of-home messages nationwide. Talk about a glowing testimonial.

And the promoters of Indiana Jones like billboards so much, they’ve decided that two are better than one. In target areas such as Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, multiple billboards are being used for a single message for the blockbuster. (In fact, several dozen photos of just the billboards are already on Flickr.)

While it’s hard to say exactly what portion of the $126 million opening weekend can be directly attributed to outdoor, there’s no question that the tight integration of all the campaign’s channels helped deliver the hype studio execs were banking on.

Integrated HTC Campaign Sets Your Fingers Free

by DOmedia on May 22, 2008 in Advertising, Alternative advertising, Branding campaigns with No comments

Flying US Airways back from Boston yesterday, I lowered my flight tray table to reveal an interesting ad for HTC. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera handy (so unprepared for a former Girl Scout…), so I missed a shot of the dancing fingerprints in situ. Fortunately, MediaPost covered my faux pas by including the entire campaign elements in yesterday’s Out to Launch e-newsletter. From what I could tell, each of the three tray tables in my row demonstrated a different dance and featured different products.

Watching the TV effort definitely gives the tray table execution more context, although the in-flight advertising on its own is clever. It certainly made me want to learn more about the company and their products. Not bad, given that I had never heard of the company before.

Kudos to creative agency 180 Amsterdam and Work Tank Seattle (media buy) for giving my fingers something to do in-flight.

Creative OOH executions

by DOmedia on May 20, 2008 in Advertising, Alternative advertising, Branding campaigns with No comments

As promised, here are a few of the creative examples from Jeremy Gutsche’s (trendhunter.com) opening presentation at the HOW Design Conference. You may have seen some of them before:

This stop action viral film for MTN used 1,000,000 Post-It notes and 96,314 digital photographs. Check out the number of people watching the process…

CBS used eggs to announce their upcoming Fall line-up last year… Yes, I know this is old news, but it’s just a reminder of the range of options out there.

This campaign for Blush swimwear promoted it’s stand against nudism, dressing Berlin (Germany) statues in its latest collections.

Greetings from Boston: Part I

by DOmedia on May 19, 2008 in Alternative advertising, Branding campaigns, Events with No comments

I’m writing this week from one of my favorite cities outside Ohio, Boston. I’ve made the trip east for this year’s HOW Design Conference…an amazing collection of designers and others associated with the business of being creative. For a few days, we get to disconnect (at least a little….full disconnection in an age of wireless internet and PDA’s seems virtually impossible, but that’s another topic) from the day-to-day tasks and learn new skills, refuel our creative tanks and think of our businesses in a while new way.

The event officially opened last night with a keynote presentation by Jeremy Gutsche, the brainchild behind TrendHunter (incidentally, if you haven’t paid the website a visit, I highly encourage it). As you might expect, Jeremy is in the business of scouring the globe, interpreting the trends and predicting what will be cool next. His topic to kick off the next few days was Creating a Culture of Innovation. I won’t even try to regurgitate his presentation here, but it covered a lot of the things we typically know, but rarely get around to implementing.

But one of the things that really struck me while I was listening to his presentation was the number of times he used out-of-home executions as examples of breakthrough ways to engage your customers, creating a memorable link to your brand’s message. While we all tend to hear so much about the power of the Internet to deliver highly targeted, personalized messages (which is absolutely true), viewing Jeremy’s examples last night reminded me of the power our physical medium possesses, when applied in a creative, relevant way.

I’ll post as many of the examples from last night as I’m able to find. Hopefully it will help drive some conversation, provide some creative inspiration and give us yet one more reason to be glad we’re in the business we’re in. Cheers!