Community Focusing on the people behind the headlines

About this blog

M&M’s Blog goes behind the headlines to offer a running commentary on the business dynamics within the international media and marketing industry. The M&M editorial team joins forces with industry experts and local market heroes to balance a bird’s eye view of global trends with the importance of local insight.

• Tell Me Lies…..

  29 September 2011

  …. Sweet little lies. Am I surprised that my Reebok Easy Tones do little to banish my flabby thighs or my dimply bum? No, not really. And did I need to be told by a regulator that Reebok peddles dreams and just tying my Reebok shoe-laces will hardly shift those calories? Again, no, not really.

  The US consumer watchdog the Federal Trade Commission has forced Reebok to pay out $25m (£16m) to settle its false advertising claims of “slim and slender legs” and refund thousands of people who bought its  EasyTone and RunTone shoes, because Reebok failed to substantiate its claims that the shoes could strengthen hamstrings, calves and buttocks “just by walking.”

  This is not the first time that a regulator has come down on an advertiser selling impossible notions of beauty with such force. In the UK, the Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson was able to convince the Advertising Standards Authority to clamp down on L’Oréal for featuring overly airbrushed images of Pretty Woman Julia Roberts and supermodel Christy Turlington.

  The problem with this kind of heavy handedness is that the consumer seems to have been forgotten. I do know that buying a pair of toning Reebok does not mean that I can forgo my gym membership. But I don’t want someone to shout that out loud to me. As a punter I consume beauty magazines, spend all my hard earned money buying dreams that help me sleep easy. Because I dream that I will one day wake up, look in the mirror and find myself morphed into the next Kate Moss. I might be a slave to the idea of unattainable beauty, but I am also aware that it is all a lie.

  Just, tell me more.

  Comments (0) | Permalink

  Posted by: Sonoo Singh

  Tags: Reputation, Branding

• Why brands should focus on non-English speaking consumers

  29 September 2011

  New research from Populis and Cebr reveals that advertisers are failing to tap into non-English speaking consumers online and should be re-directing their marketing efforts accordingly. This infographic explains why...

  

  Comments (0) | Permalink

  Posted by: Jenni Baker

• The show must go on

  28 September 2011

   

  Some time ago I remember reading about the decline of trade shows, that visitor numbers were falling, companies were investing less on their stands and their validity was being questioned.

  One exception to this must be dmexco in Cologne which I (and 19,000+ other people) attended last week.

  Having visited the event for the last four years (the first two when it was called OMD and took place in Dusseldorf) what has been interesting to me is to see the event evolve from being very much a German show into a more European, even international, event in terms of speaker, exhibitors and attendees.

  Every major player in the digital space was there and investing a considerable sum based on the size of their stands. The number of British visitors who made the journey to Cologne is a testament to the fact people are still willing to travel and will find the budget to do so if they think there is real value in being there. The facilities, the exhibition space, the quality of the conference sessions (all free) and the level of people who were in attendance really show that when it comes to events, the Germans really know what they are doing.

  In the past Europe seems to have lacked a ‘must-attend’ event for the digital industry, most being simply country specific affairs. However, it does seem that dmexco may have all the right ingredients to become this. I know that my American colleagues were very impressed with the whole event and more and more people outside Europe are becoming aware of it. I’m already looking forward to an even bigger and better event next year. 

  M&M has set up a dedicated page with highlights from the Dmexco 2011.

  Stuart Colman is managing director, Europe at AudienceScience and chairman of the IAB UK’s Behavioural Targeting Council.

  Comments (0) | Permalink

  Posted by: Stuart Colman

  Tags: dmexco, exhibitions

• Facebook introduces timeline

  28 September 2011

  For those who like change, then read on; for those who don’t, you might want to look away now.

  Do Mark Zuckerberg et al ever take a break to sit down for a cup of tea and a Kit-Kat? It appears not. They are at it again: The ever-expanding and ever-changing Facebook is about to undergo a complete revamp with a new profile format known as Timeline.

  Timeline moves away from the reverse chronological Wall that users experience in its current format. And instead, all Facebook content – posts, photos, apps – will be integrated onto one page. 

  Gone are the early days of a name, profile picture and wall, with timeline everything shared over the years now has its own home and won’t disappear when new updates are made. Timeline is much more visual than the traditional profile – a large photo acts as a cover and as you scroll past the cover, users can see posts, photos and events as they happened via a timeline.

   

  From a marketing perspective, Facebook’s Open Graph will enable consumers to share internet content beyond the ‘Like’ button. Companies will be able to customise the ‘Like’ button to ‘listen’, ‘watch’ or ‘read’ depending on the service they offer eg. Listen to music on Spotify, watch movies on Netflix or read The Wall Street Journal. When a user shares content via the new buttons, others can access the content within Facebook if the content provider has created a compatible Facebook app.

  Now I’m usually one for embracing change but what happened to the good old Facebook where you could see what your friends were up to, where they’d been and with whom. Facebook is changing more and more by the day and it appears that is driving more people away than it is attracting. [Check out this blog from Cream editor Mark St Andrew, who took the leap and removed himself from Facebook]

  Zuckerberg described the features as two of the best ideas they’ve had, but why put all this effort into the desktop version; Facebook Mobile chief Erick Tseng revealed this week that Facebook is planning a mobile takeover!

  Comments (0) | Permalink

  Posted by: Jenni Baker

• Should you pay consumers to ‘like’ your brand?

  21 September 2011

  By Richard Jackson, director, Session Digital

  
  

  Social commerce is the new buzzword in e-commerce, and many new companies are offering tools that facilitate incentivised referrals to online customers at checkout. Although in principle I would applaud any effort to help retailers increase sales, this type of paid advocacy could in reality end up doing more harm than good to premium brands that really value their reputation and their relationship with their customers. 

  
  

  To really achieve strong advocacy, the entire ecommerce activity should be focused on the customer from its core, delivering an engaging and positive experience that is easy-to-use, rewarding and enjoyable. Brands need to have a valuable proposition for their customers to react to. It’s too facile to assume you can attain true brand loyalty from a simple offer incentive. Being a Facebook fan doesn’t necessarily mean you’re engaged with the brand itself – you’re probably just hanging around for the next offer. That’s not active engagement, it’s passive, and this type of relationship is much harder to convert into brand advocacy than one based on an engaging experience with an applicable reward structure. 

  
  

  Naturally as socially-connected human beings it is an inevitable part of the process that we share our great experiences with friends and family and encourage them to participate too. By all means make it easier for your customers to do this, but is paying them for it really the answer?

  
  

  Where does the real value of ecommerce lie for a brand online? Multiple sales at a discounted rate, which may ultimately cheapen your offering? Or genuine, lasting advocacy that arises from a high quality, personal shopping experience? And what are consumers most likely to respond to? With the ubiquity of social networking, consumers are increasingly web savvy and desensitised to the strength of a ‘like’ referral. They are also fiercely protective over their personal social network – it’s a network of trust and brands tread a perilous path if they assume they can just intrude in this space.

  
  

  Having said all this, there is no doubt there is still a place for group loyalty schemes and some retailers will benefit from the discounting model. But taking the concept of ‘social commerce’ too far and violating this personal aspect will ultimately upturn the values that social networking is built upon and online retailers will have to think again.

  Comments (0) | Permalink

  Posted by: Session Digital

  Tags: Social commerce, E-commerce, Branding

• There must be an easier way ...

  20 September 2011

  A couple of months ago there was some chatter in our office about “how fun it would be to jump out of a plane for charity” – this is not my definition of fun!

  However it appears that 13 people at Arena Media disagree with me and they are going to be doing this to support Breast Cancer Care.

   

  The team is looking to raise £3,000 via a number of fundraising events at the agency over the coming few weeks, including a sponsored silence from chief strategy officer Dan Clays and a ‘general dogs body’ auction where the lucky bidder will have a dogs body for the day to make tea.

  The dive is planned for October 9^th and if you want to support them in their madness visit http://www.justgiving.com/Arena-Media-Sky-Dive

  You can keep up to date with how the fundraising is going and follow all the antics on Twitter @ArenaSkyDiving and don’t forget to follow @mandmglobal as well!

  Comments (0) | Permalink

  Posted by: Martina Lacey

  Tags: Agency Developments

• How far should you extend your brand?

  20 September 2011

  One of the most powerful ways to generate additional profits from a strong brand is simply to extend it to new items, product categories and countries. The rewards seem obvious. Now you can sell more stuff to more people, more often. But there are risks as well. When it comes to line extensions, one of the risks is that new items will simply cause confusion and hinder people from choosing the brand at all.

  The fact that too many items can actually reduce sales is highlighted by Barry Schwartz in his book, The Paradox of Choice – Why Less is More. Evidence from multiple sources finds that when people are faced with more choices they either don’t make a choice or are unsatisfied with the choice that they do make. A broader issue arises when the brand loses clarity because it is available in a wide variety of categories, unrelated to the brand’s original reason for being.

  Of course, it helps if your brand actually stands for something in the first place. A recent report by SymphonyIRI finds that in the U.S., brand loyalty declined in 55 of the top 100 consumer packaged goods (CPG) categories during the past three years. The biggest drop was observed in the refrigerated salad/coleslaw category. With more than 100 brands of refrigerated salad/coleslaw available today, consumers purchased an average of 2.5 brands during the course of the year, and there was a marked increase in the proportion loyal to private label products.

  I don’t know about you, but I do not see much difference between products like these. I suspect many people apparently loyal to a brand of refrigerated salads are, in fact, simply buying the same one through habit, and that more choice simply makes finding their usual brand more difficult.

  

   I find a similar thing when it comes to buying toothpaste. This time it is not a matter of which brand to buy, but which variant. There are just too many versions to choose from. When it comes to most product categories, I invariably resort to the “same as last time” heuristic. The trouble is, that’s tough to execute when last time's purchase is not immediately obvious. It forces me to consciously consider what I am buying. Do I want whitening, breath protection, gel or paste? If I am that engaged with the decision, it is only one step further to consider whether I want Colgate or Crest.

  Over the last few years, several brands have discovered that less is more when it comes to line extensions. In the crowded confectionary category, both Nestlé’s Kit Kat in the UK and Hershey’s Reese’s in the U.S., cut back the number of extensions and saw an improvement in sales and equity. In the two years after Kit Kat simplified its line-up in the UK, sales grew by 19 percent overall. A recent report by Landor suggests that Reese’s equity improved dramatically following its simplification.

  It seems likely that the benefits of simplification are twofold. First, it makes the consumer choice easier and more satisfying. And second, it allows the company to focus its resources behind a limited number of items for advertising and sales promotion. So the question is, how come some brands go too far in extending their brand? How might a brand figure out how much is too much?

   

  This post was spotted on Straight Talk with Nigel Hollis

  Comments (0) | Permalink

  Posted by: Nigel Hollis

  Tags: Reputation

• Why Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft are all still better than AOL

  16 September 2011

  Tomorrow marks the four year anniversary of AOL, once the largest ISP in the US, announcing plans to become an online advertising business. Here is a quick look at what AOL has done over past few years to mark this rebranding effort and a benchmark of how far they have got to go:

  ...

  September 17, 2007: AOL announces plans to relocate its corporate headquarters from Dulles, Virginia to New York City and combines its various advertising units into a new subsidiary called Platform A. AOL acquires Advertising.com.

  October 15, 2007: As part of the impending move to New York and the restructuring of responsibilities at the Dulles headquarters complex, AOL CEO Randy Falco announces plans to lay off 2000 employees worldwide by the end of 2007.

  October 16, 2007: 750 employees are laid off at Dulles in a bid to refocus on online advertising. 400 more were laid off a few months later.

  2008: AOL creates animated cartoons to explain behavioural targeting to its users, showing how a user’s past visits to other websites could determine the content of advertising they would see in the future.

  February 6, 2008: Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes announces that Time Warner will split AOL's internet access and advertising businesses into two, with the possibility of later selling the internet access division.

  April 14, 2008: AOL signs online advertising deal with Verizon. 

  April 2009: Tim Armstrong, formerly with Google, is named Chairman and CEO of AOL.

  November 23, 2009: AOL unveiles a sneak preview of a new brand identity which has the new logo Aol sumperimposed onto figures (for example, a goldfish, a rainbow, a tree, a postcard).

  December 10, 2009: The new logo is enacted onto all of AOL's services, just as Time Warner splits from AOL.

  September 28, 2010: AOL signs an agreement to acquire TechCrunch to further its overall strategy of providing premier online content.

  December 2010: AIM eliminated access to AOL chat rooms noting a marked decline of patronage in recent months.

  February 7, 2011: AOL buys the Huffington Post for $315 million.

  March 11, 2011: Staff cuts continue at AOL. Just two days after finalising its purchase of The Huffington Post, AOL plans to cull almost 20% of its 5,000 strong global workforce.

  March 16, 2011: AOL repositions itself as a key destination for women, as part of a shift in strategy that will see it put the brands of recent site acquisitions above its own.

  March 2011: AOL steps up promotion of new ad-serving platforms

  April 11, 2011: ADTECH, AOL Advertising’s global ad serving platform, announces a new addition to its suite of ad management offerings, ADTECH Lite.

  September 16, 2011: ADTECH, a leading provider of ad serving technology and part of the AOL Advertising.com Group, announces that the company will be using the forthcoming ad:tech London event to present its latest ad serving product, ADTECH Canvas, to its customers.

   ...

  Despite AOL's effort, online display ad publishers Facebook, Yahoo, and Microsoft remain well ahead of AOL. In effect, according to comScore figures in the US, AOL's 3% market share of display ad impressions in Q1 of this year pales in comparison to Facebook's 31.2%. Clearly, AOL has failed to make an impact in the past four years, where does it go from here?

  Comments (0) | Permalink

  Posted by: Juliet P. d'Arguesse

  Tags: Reputation, Display

• How acting is not so dissimilar from content marketing

  15 September 2011

   

  I used to be an actress. Most people don’t know that about me now since it’s been six years since my last performance. What I particularly loved about acting in the theatre versus film was feeling the audience and reacting to them. When it was a comedy, whenever I’d hear the audience roar with laughter, I knew that they had not only understood the joke, but were also fully engaging with the comedy of the play. I could then stretch that joke a bit further and play along with them. I had the audience on my hook.

  Even when the play was a tragedy, I could sense whether the audience was with me or not. That is... except for the time I played the role of a hysterical mother who had lost her baby, and in the midst of my tears, I overheard my brother crack up in the middle of the audience....grrrrr.

  As an actress, sensing my audience was crucial in terms of determining how I'd play a certain comedic or tragic moment. Gaging the energy of the audience was the art and the thrill of acting on stage.

  I was nostalgically reminiscing with my fellow thespian colleague about those days, when it dawned on me that what I do now is not so dissimilar to acting on stage. Everything about content curating and marketing has to do with “feeling” or engaging with the audience. I know that if a solid piece of content from my brand is well received by my audience (many retweets and page views, positive comments, etc) , then perhaps we should produce more of that type of content and ride off of the energy of our audience. When a piece of content gets no reaction, it’s much like a joke that gets no laughs. 

  Another reason why acting is not so dissimilar to content marketing is for the very essence of what actors do. When playing a charcter, actors must rid themselves of their own motives and learn the world from the character's perspective. Sound familiar marketeers? Drew Davis, Chief strategy officer and co-founder of Tippingpoint Labs says “as marketers, we need to spend more time seeing the world from our consumer’s perspective.” We need to understand the psychology behind our consumers decisions, what they find funny, what they find entertaining, what they need, want, their dreams, hopes, and desires... what makes them tick!

  Drew Davis wrote a blog post comparing content marketing to the Muppets. We will decidedly all be comparing content marketing to the entertainment/theatrical industry, but I have a suspicion that I might not be the only one who started out acting...

  In his post, Davis urges us as marketers to “see what they see.” Apparently, every puppeteer had their own video monitor so they could see what the camera sees…

  In this video (a behind the scenes of the Muppets on 30 Rock) you can see Joey looking at his monitor to see what they see.

   

  Any other actors, turned marketers out there? I'd be curious to hear if you feel the same way!

   

  For Drew Davis’s full post on “4 Marketing Lessons I learned from the Muppets” read here. Follow Drew Davis on Twitter @TPLDrew

  For more on content marketing see The 3 biggest mistakes that CMOs make by Gilad de Vries from Outbrain.
  

  Comments (0) | Permalink

  Posted by: Juliet P. d'Arguesse

  Tags: content strategy, Content

• It is no longer about costs. It is about costs.

  14 September 2011

  Are agency rosters getting harder to manage or easier? 

  (the picture is not a clue btw, honest)

  

  Earlier this month I heard again another very senior marketer ask a room of people (other very senior marketers) how to best manage a large roster of agencies. This is a big question, and in our experience becoming increasingly frequently asked. It's advisable (for sanity's sake)to consider this a simple problem rather than a complex one. 

  I believe the issue has two elements, firstly to get agencies aligned and focused enough to be able to collaborate in a constructive way that does not become a distraction for the business, second to avoid serious duplication of resource and therefore duplication of non-working marketing budgets (that is the bits that get paid in fees rather than actual marketing to customers for example).

  The first thing that strikes me is that as a general rule, we still hear more negative than positive remark about agency-land. Perhaps much of that is unjustified but however much evolution, collaboration and modern thinking exists in agencies now compared to five years back, there are still some fundamental, huge issues which sit on marketers desks and are not being addressed by their (often handsomely paid) agency execs.

  For many years marketing clients have been working through a process of rationalizing costs, whether by interrogating production budgets (and agency production income) or by leveraging down mass media costs and overall agency fees. For many marketers that process has reaped many positive rewards and costs have been reasonably managed to an appropriately competitive level (usually based on volume). However now the language is more commonly about value creation (or variants thereof) which is charged directly at a specific agency "we want more value from our contract with you" or at the roster as a whole "you guys need to work better together to create greater value". Both are valid. 

  We believe that marketing will be the next frontier of corporate productivity gains. Those gains won't come from cost cutting, they will come from a strategic approach to sourcing marketing services partners ("what do we need, who can supply that, how will we measure success and how shall we pay for that success"). Its about cost-management rather than cost-cutting. In the coming months and years we expect to be advising clients how to cut (yes, I said that out loud!) their marketing budgets by designing and organising their roster more efficiently around a business marketing strategy. 

  So, in short I think the recent era of cost-cutting in marketing (the naughty procurement) will be replaced with an overdue era of diligent cost-management (the smart strategic procurement), based mainly on a roster's ability to demonstrate value delivery.

  See, I told you it was simple....

   

  Comments (0) | Permalink

  Posted by: Tom Denford

  Tags: consulting, Agency/ client relationships, Business models, pitches, Remuneration, Measurement, ROI & effectiveness, media costs, Ad Spend

2. 1
3. 2
4. Next page