Our castle is taking a distinct shape and the refinements are looking good! What is our next step on the final touches you may ask – wiring our new castle so it too can be integral in communication. What cooler environment could there be than one where you can talk to your home. By just the sound of your voice you can activate the lights, turn on audio components, regulate the temperature, make a cup of java or just surf the internet. Your castle is your wireless link to the outside world and you want everything to work together.  This is the same way you should run your client’s media campaigns. Where all avenues, i.e. print, display, digital and search, all work together as one to run a cohesive campaign.

By having a consistent and distinct message across all media buys, you double the chance your product has to be at the top of the consumer’s mind. A great example of successful advertising is ads for Anheuser Busch products. Currently, they are running a “superior drinkability” campaign for Bud Light. So when a commercial is aired, a magazine ad is printed, a banner ad is displayed, the messaging remains consistent and top of mind with the consumers. By making the messaging fun and interesting, while at the same time maintaining consistency, it sparks an interest and remembrance with the consumer. They start talking about it to their friends and co-workers and bringing it up in their Facebook wallboard or they search the internet for your ads or commercials – the messaging is easy to remember. The goal of any successful campaign is that the message being sent remains top of mind with the consumers.

Memorable Messaging

When building your campaign’s message, remember that you have to talk to a varied audience. Use consumer friendly language and do market research, which will enable you to relate to your target consumer. Memorable messaging is one that is short, simple and appealing to the product’s audience.

In closing, use memorable messaging across all media. When we head out to get our wiring needs for the castle, we are going to remember from advertising and word-of-mouth that “Monster” cable is the best, and we only want the best for our castle.

For a campaign that includes, TV, search, display and print, it is so important that all parties come together to talk about how budgets should be spent. No one is more important than the other. The bricks are no more important than the mortar, the water or the labor involved in construction. I could go on here, but you get the idea. Any one specific aspect of a campaign is just as vital as the other.

So here is where our learnings from our other posts kick in: communicate, plan and play together. Share those shovels and wheel barrows so that everyone comes out ahead. Talk about what budget your campaign needs to succeed, but listen to what others are asking for at the same time and learn to compromise for the benefit of the client.

The key is to focus on the synergy that is created when the different arms of advertising are integrated into one plan.  Recent advertising studies show a direct correlation between TV and online – specifically search.  Traditional advertising draws awareness to your product, prompting searches to get additional information/offers online.  Home page takeovers and banners can often lead to a growth in the search campaign.  It is important to incorporate as many advertising formats as your budget can hold.

Testing each medium also provides insight into how to allocate the budget.  It may take longer to find the right mix, but the benefits of working together to find that mix will be well received by the client and go a long way to showing the client how well all of our teams work together.

To get an initial budget, we suggest putting together a 3-tiered estimate that includes all ad venues.  The first is the efficiency plan – the bare minimum required to start the campaign. Secondly, a mid-range plan – which shows a more optimal budget.  Finally, an opportunity plus plan – this represents a budget that includes additional funding opportunities that may come up over the course of the campaign.  By presenting three levels, the client can better see what the dollars from each medium will provide.

Budgeting may be the hardest area to work through in your design plan.  Keep your mind open and try not to build so many walls that you don’t have an open floor plan. Be sure to remember that each medium benefits from the other! Above all else, remember teamwork to meet client goals is the focus – we’re still trying to build the ultimate sand castle together.

Next time, we will tackle the next stage of our castle – picking paint colors and fixtures, or in layman terms ­­– setting our campaign goals.

When building your sand castle or your campaign, integral to your success is communication.  In our last post we touched upon the first step in a successful campaign – planning. Working hand in hand with planning is communication. One does not effectively exist without the other.

A foreman has to communicate with the vendors on building materials and permits. He has to work with his crew to make sure the castle is stable and up to code.  Elect a foreman to keep the conversations (and the project) flowing. In this day and age, so many agencies can do it all. The threat of competing agencies learning too many of your processes only to pitch a more streamlined plan to the client to add to their business is high on many minds.  Avoid this problem by working as a cohesive team to stay ahead of the competition and deliver a successful product to the client

Keep the conversation going…too often a hard stop occurs when the rest of the team is waiting on one portion, or when calls and emails start going unanswered.  When one of the team starts missing the regularly scheduled meeting or will not respond, it is up to the foreman to get to the bottom of the problem.  Do they have other clients/projects that are taking up more time than expected?  Are they not getting the necessary response from one of their vendors, thus holding up their ability to respond? Whatever the reason, getting to the bottom of it quickly, through communication, will allow you to solve the issue and continue building.

Discuss timelines and deadlines.  Manage the team’s expectations.  If we know the production and approval for television ads take the longest to plan, start there and plot according to each team’s different needs.  Make the overall timelines readily available to all team members with access to updates so everyone knows when there are hang-ups and what may fall behind due to it.

Ongoing communication is the only way to successfully complete the project.

Communicating is talking, exchanging information and ideas, notifying, corresponding – or any other means of relaying a message from one person to another.  The point is to share with your team. Without this intercourse among the team our moat may leak, our walls will crumble and the campaigns will not succeed.

We have a great team to build the castle, let’s have open communication amongst the builders…Time to get a blueprint.  Stay tuned for our next post after the holidays about the mud and rocks of it all – budgeting.

Last month I wrote a column about integration in media. Everyone loves the concept of integration. Advertisers love to tout an integrated effort, agencies love to sell the integrated model to those same advertisers and consumers theoretically love the cohesive nature of which their day is infused with oh so pertinent marketing.

Then, being the contrarian that I can be, I suggested that in fact integration was more hype than substance. I would suggest that integration today is more about making sure that when a TV spot runs, that the banners or search listings you have show the same creative. Almost two years ago, I wrote a column for Search Insider about search relevancy when viewed through the eyes of the television viewer who happens to be online while watching a sporting event. The results were not good to say the least. And yet, two years later, we are still touting that type of integration as a success.

A few weeks ago, one of our business units, Outrider, was recognized with two awards from the DMA as part of the International ECHO program. One of the awards was for Showtime Networks for Best Use of Digital Media. The campaign for their series, “The Tudors,” did a few unique things including offbeat keyword buys and drive to social experiences, amongst its many attributes. The campaign won its first award nearly 14 months ago so, for it to still be recognized and in such a prominent non-search category is a testament to its strategy and success.

However, it got me wondering about this notion of synchronicity. One of the hallmark elements of the campaign was the real-time management of the program during two key periods. One was naturally while the show was airing in real time. Keyword buys and creative were focused on those doing just what the NBC Olympic viewers I mentioned in my integration in media column were doing: watching TV and surfing the web at the same time. This segment of audience has a very different level of interest and intent because they are being primed by the most expensive selling tool an advertiser has, their brand owned content. Supplementing that experience and continuing it with more brand-owned content is a fulfillment that extends beyond integration.

The second, more opportunistic area of success for the Showtime campaign was in the conquest nature around other shows and events which might be seen as both relevant and competitive. By targeting viewers who may be engaging in similar intent-induced searches created while watching a different TV show, Showtime’s search campaign produced a perceptual compliment. Clearly someone watching “The Sopranos,” a competitive show with a similar demographic audience, isn’t going to be confused when shown an ad for “The Tudors,” but will rather experience an Amazon.com correlation experience. In this case, the suggestion that “The Tudors” might fit their viewing interests is another means to synchronize beyond the search and even ignore the other ad mediums to get deeper into content as a connective force.

Synchronization can come in many forms. In the not too distant future of addressable TV, synchronization will reach new heights. The promise of a properly done single digital ad platform becomes the ability to target your TV, print, radio and digital buys to all align. For everyone’s sake, I hope that all parties involved don’t confuse integration of a buy within synchronization of message.

Image taken from usatoday.com article on olympic swimming by Marcio Jose.

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Integration.

If you are keeping score at home, it’s the buzzword bingo center square. You know, the free one that everyone claims before the game actually begins. 

Next week, I’m on a panel at SMX East titled “Ad Agencies & Search Marketing.” The panel’s construct is to take three agency-employed leaders and tout the merits of search marketing inside an agency. The teaser line for the session off the SMX Web site is, “Do traditional agencies ‘get’ search?”

This is part of a series of panels that will attempt to validate or dispel the notion that agencies get it. And all will talk about integration. Everyone should agree that a causal relationship exists amongst media, but many will disagree on whether or not the search agency sitting inside the traditional media agency is the right tool for fulfilling the goal of integration.

In thinking about this question, I was struck by a statement made last month at an event I attended. At this event, someone made the following comment. “50% of all people watching the Olympics on NBC were also online at the same time. 10% of those people said this is a common behavior.” And this ongoing behavior shift forces us to redefine integration, cause and effect and how we manage or buy search. It might even help answer the question of my panel at SMX. (For the audience’s sake I hope it helps; otherwise, I’m just a guy in a brightly colored shirt.)

Let’s start with the common viewpoints on what is integration and what role does search play in the causal relationship of media. I think most see the two as inextricably linked. Search is the effect to the cause created in other media. TV advertising runs, display advertising shows and THEN people search. Engagement mapping and attribution of credit exist to ensure no one vehicle gets the credit. Search is discredited because it’s the bottom of the funnel and is able to be tracked — suddenly two bad things when the objective is to measure the less measurable. Thus, other media creates a cause and search delivers the effect of fulfilling interest. And here comes integration.

Integration is typically presented from the search point of view as ensuring you are running ads at the same time as your other media.

One of our strategists recently wrote a post on the lack of presence and reaction from the financial institutions during this deep economic crisis. Even those marginally affected, and with positive stories, seemed unable to engage in a valuable manner with existing and potential customers. Every year search marketing and the Super Bowl are touted as a highly integrated vehicle. A 30-second spot runs and then companies are expected to buy search ads that connect consumers with further experience on a Web site. Every year people get better at covering the basics. Yet, the always-on nature of search tends to do a disservice to what I think is the hidden nugget in the quote about NBC’s Olympic audience.

In an always-on search environment — where you never pay unless someone clicks and you know if you have the proper, read 100%, share of voice, and you can always be seen — it would seem that integration is a simple thing to accomplish. And it can be. With a minimal amount of communication and messaging change, the call to action goes from everyday support to event-specific. But that’s like shooting fish in the proverbial barrel – a minimum bar to be cleared. Always-on lets us feel like we can always make a connection with the vast majority of people who experience cause through other media and act on the effect through search.

But what about those NBC viewers? It seems that causality is being replaced by a greater need for synchronization. The trouble with TV critics is that they just watch the show. They watch it in prepared installments that remove commercials. They also now do not have the synchronization effect at their disposal. TV shows like “Lost” and “Heroes” are changing the interactivity that exists and thus opening opportunities for the experience to be more than just watch and react. It also changes the notion of interaction. AMC has done a phenomenal job with “Mad Men,” its hit show about the ad industry circa the early 1960s. This show has a unique “DVR proofing” component, where advertiser-specific facts precede the commercials, thus negating the fast-forward element.

So, what comes next? Next month I’ll explore synchronization in media and how that, not integration, should be the square that helps win the bingo game, not just get in the game.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…