How to be a good client

Branding Strategy Insider

The wisdom of David Ogilvy lives on in this reminder to client side marketers

How to be a good client:

01. Emancipate your agency from fear.

02. Select the right agency in the first place.

03. Brief your agency very thoroughly indeed.

04. Do not compete with your agency in the creative area.

05. Coddle the goose who lays the golden egg. (Provide enough time and resources to do the job well.)

06. Don’t strain your advertising through too many layers.

07. Make sure your agency makes a profit.

08. Don’t haggle with your agency.

09. Be candid and encourage candor.

10. Set high standards.

11. Test everything.

12. Hurry. (Profit is a function of time.)

13. Don’t waste time on problem babies (Back your successes and abandon your losses.)

14. Tolerate genius.

15. Don’t under spend. (The surest way to overspend on advertising is not to spend enough to do the job properly.)

Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy

Filed under: Articles, Intelligence , David Ogilvy

Building brands online: Marketers want triple-play from media

Interactive Advertising Bureau / Bain & Company

Al Haqq Society edit

The online advertising marketplace has changed dramatically in the past 12 months. Market growth slowed, and prices eroded as advertisers shifted to lower-cost inventory. And overall, there is the risk that online advertising may be viewed increasingly by advertisers as a “performance” medium opposed to a brand-building medium.

The IAB and Bain & Company launched the market-making research project Building Brands Online: An Interactive Advertising Action Plan. The research combined a survey of over 700 leading marketer decision makers or influencers with in-depth interviews with senior executives from leading companies throughout the interactive advertising ecosystem.

The study creates a road map for interactive publishers, pointing out changes in both value proposition and go-to-market strategy in order to win more brand advertising spend and grow the interactive advertising market as a whole.


Key findings:

• Online ad formats and creative have not evolved to meet marketers’ needs.

• Media companies lack category expertise and engage too late in the planning process.

• Marketers want integrated campaigns instead of platform-specific media programs.

• Marketers see value in digital and believe it could be effective at all stages funnel but current online media industry practices inhibit greater investment spend.

• Marketers express needs for differentiated services and believe that media companies and agencies have to meet those needs for online to grow.

“Unmet marketer needs create a major opportunity for media companies to collaborate directly with marketers,” said John Frelinghuysen, a partner in Bain & Company’s media practice and lead author of the study. “But few media companies currently have the capability to fill the gaps in online sales and service.”


The path forward for media companies consists of six steps based on the needs expressed by marketers:

01. Create segmented offerings to meet the separate needs of advertisers who are focused on building brands and those who are looking for direct response.

02. Make brand-focused marketers a priority by building a sales force of category experts who respond directly to those marketers’ specific needs.

03. Develop a full range of solutions with more engaging options and formats, including social networks, video and other rich media.

04. Offer deeper service and support customized to vertical industries, to help advertisers plan, create and measure the brand impact of online ads.

05. Optimise the ways that ad inventories are sold, with a range of approaches from full-service to self-service to partnership with ad networks and resellers.

06. Enhance organisational effectiveness by setting the right priorities, clarifying internal roles and accountability and investing in sales staff skills and incentives.

“Ultimately, marketers are looking for media companies to offer a true triple-play service model from direct response to awareness to high impact brand engagement,” said Frelinghuysen. “This model is the key to staving off continued price erosion of online inventory.”


Building Brands Online: An Interactive Advertising Action Plan (Summary)
Download (713 Kb .pdf)

Filed under: Articles, Intelligence, Internet , Bain & Company, Building brands online, Interactive Advertising Bureau

Deep brand engagement creates customers

Razorfish / eMarketer

From awareness to consideration, purchase and recommendation

The power of online brand interaction is not to be denied: A solid majority of connected consumers have had their opinion of a brand swayed, either positively or negatively, by an online experience.

More than 97% said that experience influenced whether they purchased a product or service from that brand.

Razorfish’s “2009 FEED” survey polled US broadband users who had visited a community site, consumed or created digital media, and spent at least USD 150 online in the past six months.

These connected consumers were also connected to brands. About one-quarter had produced content to participate in a contest held by a brand, and close to the same amount had followed a brand on Twitter. Two-fifths had friended a brand on Facebook or MySpace.

Brand followship and friendship

The main reason to follow or friend a brand was to get exclusive deals or offers, followed by general fandom—because the user was a current customer, or because of interesting or entertaining content.

An impressive 64% of connected consumers told Razorfish they had made their first purchase from a brand because of a digital experience—be it a Website, microsite, mobile coupon or e-mail.

And friending, following and content creation spurred upticks across the marketing funnel—from raising awareness to consideration, purchase and recommendations to friends.


“Digital experiences not only build a brand, they can also make or break it. For those brand marketers still neglecting (or underestimating) digital, it’s as if they’ve shown up to a cocktail party in sweatpants,” according to the report. “Invariably, consumers will choose to converse with a savvier—and hopefully more stylish—partner.”

Razorfish FEED Digital Brand Experience Report 2009
Download (2.8 Mb .pdf)

Filed under: Articles, Intelligence, Internet , eMarketer, Razorfish

Investors turned off by poor GCC corporate websites

Arabian Business

GCC companies are losing out on international investment due to the poor performance of their websites, a new study has found.

The report, which analysed the performance of 85 publicly listed Gulf firms, warns that the region’s corporate websites rank significantly lower than their peers in Europe and elsewhere in terms of providing essential information.

The report, by Hallvarsson & Hallvarsson (H&H), found that while European corporate websites scored an average of 50.3 points, those of their Gulf counterparts scored just 18.5. “This indicates that the level of website performance differs substantially, with some companies performing poorly,” said the report.


“A corporate website, rich with information in English, is now one of the most single most important ways to attract international investors,” said Staffan Lindgren, executive partner of H&H.

“Many GCC companies are failing to use their corporate websites as their principle communication channel to the same degree as companies in other international markets,” he added.

“In order to communicate effectively to the key audiences in the capital markets, they need to adapt to international norms and standards of corporate communication.”

The findings are based on H&H Webranking GCC Survey, which ranked the region’s websites based on an annual survey of business journalists, analysts and investors who identified what information and functionality they valued most from listed companies’ corporate websites.


Hallvarsson & Hallvarsson: Press Release
Hallvarsson & Hallvarsson: GCC Webranking

Filed under: Articles, Intelligence, Research , GCC, Hallvarsson & Hallvarsson

What consumers want websites to remember about them

Shop.org / BIGresearch

Store associates have long known to cultivate relationships with their most frequent or otherwise “best” customers by remembering information such as the customer’s name, his / her family members, birthdays and anniversaries, past purchases, and the like. When it comes to remembering information about online customers, however, retailers know that they tread a fine line.

In trying to somewhat emulate the trusted store associate experience online, retailers have to determine what is helpful and acceptable to the customer, while avoiding the semblance of over-zealous record keeping. So – what do consumers want online retailers to remember about them, if anything?

In the July 2009 American Pulse survey, conducted by BIGresearch on behalf of Shop.org, asked consumers, “When you click on a link in an eMail to which you have subscribed (e.g. from a retailer), how helpful is it for the resulting web page to…” followed by a number of options that consumers were asked to rank from 1 (very helpful) to 5 (not at all helpful).


Key Findings

Know my language preference.

Almost two-thirds of consumers surveyed said remembering their language preference was helpful. 40% of respondents actually rated this as “very helpful”, with women finding it somewhat more helpful than men.

Log me in automatically.

Not quite two-thirds of respondents rated automatic log in as helpful: 32% as “very helpful”, with women again finding this more helpful than men.

Recognize which country I’m in.

Just over half of consumers find this helpful, and, once again, women noted more frequently than men that this is “very helpful”.

Show me items that I left in my cart.

Just over half of consumers also noted this feature as helpful to them, women somewhat more so than men. While differences of opinion on this varied negligibly depending on income, almost one quarter of younger consumers (ages 18 to 34 years) noted this feature as “very helpful” compared to just 15% of older consumers (ages 55 years and older).

Alert me to new items or events and remind me of / provide suggestions based on my preferences.

Almost half indicated that both of these would be helpful, though approximately two-thirds of that group noted each would be “somewhat helpful” (vs. “very helpful”).

Show me / remind me of items that I looked.

44% of consumers ranked this feature as helpful, though again more heavily weighted towards “somewhat helpful”.


Only about a third of consumers said that they found it helpful for retailers to show them items that complement items that they’ve bought in the past (usefulness of this would also depend on the type of retailer and product category in question). Ditto for retailers to remember them upon their return to a given site and greet them by name.

What struck in the list above is that the top three items are very much fundamental – log me in, remember my language preference, know where I’m based. If they don’t already do this, retailers should work with their IT groups to determine how these fundamentals can be done without onerous development work.

The next layer – and more directly pertinent to retailing – could be more complex development endeavors, but could also prove a step in the direction of translating online the best features of the traditional star sales associate.

Filed under: Intelligence, Research , BIGresearch, eCommerce, Shop.org

Executive Summary: What is the most trusted form of advertising?

Business Intelligence Middle East / Nielsen

Personal recommendations are the most trusted medium.

Recommendations by personal acquaintances and opinions posted by consumers online are the most trusted forms of advertising globally, according to the latest twice-yearly Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey of over 25,000 internet consumers from 50 countries.

The Nielsen survey, the largest of its kind, shows that nine in every 10 internet consumers worldwide (90%) trust recommendations from people they know, whilst seven in every 10 (70%) trust consumer opinions posted online.

In the U.A.E., the survey shows 95% of internet consumers trust recommendations from people they know, making word of mouth the most trusted medium.

Editorial content came in second place, with 84% of U.A.E. respondents trusting it completely or somewhat, ahead of newspaper ads (78%), brand websites (72% each), brand sponsorships (68%) and consumer opinions posted online (66%).

Magazine ads, billboards and other outdoor media, radio ads, ads before movies and on TV came behind online in the U.A.E. list.

Tahir Khalil, Head of Nielsen Online for MENA, said: “It is clear from the survey that online is a medium on the move and the trust levels in it as a category are building momentum, not only here in the UAE but also globally.”

Full article


eMarketer / Nielsen

What advertising do consumers trust?

Online advertising trust is on the rise worldwide. However, internet users trust some online media more than others. Seven in 10 users said they “completely” or “somewhat” trusted brand websites and consumer opinions posted online — a higher rate than for editorial content, brand sponsorships, and TV, newspaper and magazine ads.


eMarketer / TNS Global

Does Anyone Trust the Media?

According to TNS online news scores surprisingly high. The good news for internet content producers is that people now trust the information they get from online news — roughly to the same degree as news from television and information from friends.

Globally, the most trusted information source was friends, with 42% of those surveyed saying that they trusted word-of-mouth recommendations. About an equal number trusted TV news (41%), online news (40%) and newspapers (39%).

Filed under: Intelligence, Research, Summaries , Business Intelligence, eMarketer, Global Online Consumer Survey, Middle East, Nielsen Online, TNS Global

Marketing & Media Ecosystem 2010

Association of National Advertisers / Interactive Advertising Bureau / American Association of Advertising Agencies / Booz Allen Hamilton

Marketers, agencies, and media companies today face a changed environment. Consumers are now media producers, programmers, and distributors.

The convergence of media and technology, combined with the fragmentation and personalization of media, is affecting the connection between marketers and consumers in unprecedented ways. The mix of media channels has shifted from a one-way broadcast model to a set of dynamic two-way media forums.

Now, consumers not only talk back to marketers and interact with marketing messages, but also reshape and distribute those messages through global communities.


The Marketing & Media Ecosystem 2010 study highlights six key trends:

01. Marketing as Conversation

Listen, facilitate, and create advocacy. Marketing is less about pushing messages at consumers and more about co-creating
experiences with consumers.

02. Media: The New “Creative”

Marketing message distribution — timing, context, and relevance — is as important as creative execution.

03. Marketing + Math

Data quality, quantity, and accessibility have brought math to marketing. New digital tools, predictive models, and behavioral targeting will
turn insight into foresight.

04. Mind the Gap

Marketing spending in digital media is far from commensurate with consumer behavior shifts — when will the divide between traditional and nontraditional media end?

05. The “Digitally Savvy” Organization

Technology without an aligned organization, the right talent, and a progressive culture is inadequate. Functional skills are rising to the level of brand strategy.

06. The Network Effect

Partnerships and collaboration among agencies, media companies, and marketers will grow in number and depth. New players will
assume important roles and continue to reshape the value chain.


Download the white paper and presentations from IAB’s website

Filed under: Intelligence, Research , AAAA, ANA, Booz Allen Hamilton, IAB, Marketing & Media Ecosystem 2010