Seems like the luxury Brand debate is coming to an end. Luxury Brands often do have a problem with the transparency and accessibility of the web. Because they do have a reputation to protect. And they need to stay exclusive.
However this does not mean luxury Brands can ignore the the fast evolving changes in digital branding. Research shows that the luxury consumer is ready for 2.0 and they do have very high expectations.
Not meeting this expectations will definitely harm your brand. For a luxury brand, just ‘keeping up’ is not enough. You have to be outstanding.
Beth Uyenco, Research Director for Microsoft Advertising comes with the following Luxury Brand Engagement Model:
‘Awareness’ To stay in line with the offline communications, and to deepen the brand experience with interaction, your web presence needs to be of top quality.
‘Admiration’ Luxury Brands need to exceed expectations and do also have to communicate on an emotional level.
‘Exploration’ Similar to the in-store communications. Luxury customers will want a personalizes way of exploring the Brand and its products.
‘Consideration’ After the exploration phase, it is important to create engagement. In this stage it is very important to know who your future customer is, to deliver an exceptional service and to invite the customer to join the Brand.
‘Purchase’ Integration of offline and online will give the possibility to enrich the purchase experience. It is about helping to buy more efficient and/or making the purchase a remarkable moment.
‘Ownership’ There are many digital ways to keep and strengthen the relations with your exclusive customers.
I do believe performance based marketing has a bright future. For anyone involved in advertising it is very attractive to pay per sale, per lead etc. in stead of just buying reach without any further guaranties.
Publishers have the opportunity to place ads while sharing the revenue. Customers get to see more relevant ads because ads that don’t pay will disappear.
Affiliate networks will however face a hard time to stay relevant. As tracking software will become free and available for everyone. Affiliate networks will have to compete with affiliate managers within the advertising companies to find and built relations with relevant publishers.
Why would you still pay the affiliate network if you can do it yourself.
Google is already offering Pay per Action advertising in beta and I guess it is just a matter of time before Google starts offering this tracking solution for non-Google ads as well (similar to Analytics campaign tracker). By then anyone can start his/her own affiliate program for free.
If the tracking software is for free. Affiliate networks will need to show their relevance by delivering better tracking and/or better publishers then we can find ourselves. In this situation they can’t afford to charge monthly fee’s. They will probably have to work performance based themselves.
Asking IAB Europe about it, they confirm that IAB Europe is in conversation with a group of people about opening an IAB here. They hope to make a formal announcement about it before June. That is in about 10 days!
Mission of IAB is accelerating the growth of e-commerce, interactive advertising and online marketing.
When you look at the structure of digital companies you often see something like a ‘labs’. Nice thing about these labs is that you create a platform for innovation and that you share this process with the outside world. If done properly it is a great tool in product development and it also has growing involvement as a side effect.
A good ‘lab’ is more than just asking people to send in ideas. It is about sharing information and asking for feedback from experts or consumers.
10 examples of labs:
TBWA has a Media Arts Lab, you can find it on TheBigWhatAdventure.com. Besides that the website is a sleep (last update from 24 January 2007) I do not really consider this a Lab. It seems more a ’send in an idea’-thing like openad.net. Unfortunately it has nothing to do with product/advertising innovation. Sharing the process of innovation in advertising could give TBWA (or any other traditional agency) some valuable feedback and involvement from digital experts.
The famous Google labs now has a sister called Google creative lab. It is all about Google trying to serve the Branding market. And, as you can read, it is looking for collaboration with advertising agencies. Interesting project, curious when we get more insights.
Advertising Lab. More like a blog about The future of advertising. But the blogger is working for an ad agency which gives it a lab function.
American express is doing nice things within their Labs. They are even transparent in their discontinued experiments.
Nokia Trends Lab. Typically a consumer lab. Inspiring project. Urges creative thinkers to use mobile technology.
BBC Innovation labs. Series of creative workshops for interdisciplinary teams of professional creative technologists, application designers, software developers and interactive media designers, working across both Future Media & Vision platforms.
Mobile marketing is getting serious. Admobs.com launches a Google Adwords-like service for easy mobile banner advertising. Including a mobile landing page, if you need one. Google offers Mobile image ads since April 23.
This is just a first step. Bannering on mobile is nice but not really intelligent and engaging, unless you target very well. And also then you tend to forget about the specific value of a mobile device for the consumer.
More on this in the following presentation from Mobile Monday Amsterdam
Following my post on Saatchi2.0 I would like to talk more about the subject of agency2.0.
What does a future advertising agency look like? What is its role, its structure? What can we learn from pure digital agencies and other online businesses in general? What can a traditional agency do to stay alive and revive?
In the Businessweek interview I mentioned earlier, I read that Saatchi & Saatchi has tried to buy a digital agency Blast Radius. It didn’t work out since Blast Radius merged with Wunderman, a large direct marketer. What is the real reason behind this? Was it a cultural difference or a pure strategical decision?
After some short research (I will come back to this subject). I found some well known insights digital agencies come up with:
stop annoying customers, start engaging
stop delivering ads for clients, start delivering strategies on advertising
get insights through data, customerinfo and testing
I my opinion the field of advertising is only getting more interesting since agencies must and can focus on their core business “ideas”. And they get more means to generate and spread these ideas.
Looking at how this could look like in practice. I did check the Nitro website. What do they do for a living? As they say, they deliver:
April 18th there was the Innovative advertising awards 2008 gala in New York City. Formerly known as the Interactive and New Media Awards.
In their own worlds:
New York Festivals was the first to create an international competition recognizing the importance and marketing value of innovative media.
Some of the categories in this competition include: Advergames and Viral Advertising for products or services; Online Advertising, including integrated campaigns that include online elements; a wide selection of categories for Guerrilla Marketing and Alternative Media, such as ambient, event and mobile marketing, blogs, short message systems, and street teams; and CD-ROM applications.
To be honest the New York Festivals website is a bit user unfriendly with all the winners info in pdf-format. But I understand that Stella Artois is the big winner.
There where three Swiss winners. DRAFTFCB got a Silver Worldmedal for their viral campaign (see picture above).
Most of us still have the presumption that with online marketing you only reach youth. The European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) now published a report about Digital Families. It is interesting to see that Digital parents engage in a wider range of digital activities than those that live without children.
The research also shows that the websites visited by digital parents and their online activities vary according to the age of the children. If you are planning on targeting this online audience this information is really useful:
People living with very young children (between nought and four) are increasingly visiting health and film websites (+24% since 2006) while those living with children between five and nine are going to games sites (+32%). Price comparison sites are seeing a boost amongst those living with children between ten and fifteen (+31%) while those with older children (between 16 and 18) are enjoying more TV sites (+77%). Users living with older children also seem to be more technically advanced – almost half (47%) of those living with children aged 16-18 use instant messaging services compared to 37% of people living with children aged nought to four. A similar trend is seen when comparing film, TV or video clip downloads (30% vs. 22%) and music downloads (36% vs. 32%).
Research from Isobar
found that around 90% of the French online audience ages 15 to 49 had seen at least one video ad in May 2007.
Over half (55.5%) of the respondents to the Isobar survey went on to visit a brand’s Web site, one-third searched online for further product information and over 22% requested further information. What’s more, one in five bought a product as a direct result of seeing a video ad.
