Friday, 1 April 2011

Searching for your +1

Today, Google launched their very own version of the now ubiquitous “Like” and “Tweet” buttons that have become such familiar features in our socially connected world.

Google +1 is a small button that will reside next to each and every Google Search result. If you like the result, you click the +1 button and it gets shared with your social circle — and the public. The button also works on the ads that appear in Google Search. If you like those and think they can be useful to friends, you can also hit the button there to highlight them too.

A big aspect of +1 is sharing results with your social graph (Gmail, chat contacts, Reader, Buzz friends etc). More than that though, it’s about adding a huge amount of social meaning to Google’s massive search database – meaning better results for everyone.

You’ll be able to +1 any Google ad you see in results just as if it were a regular result. Of course, it’s most like the way that you can “like” any ad on Facebook as well. And at the end of day, that’s what this really all comes down to. Whether they’ll admit it or not, Google is at war with Facebook for control of the web. Facebook is coming at it from a social perspective, Google from a data perspective. But the two sides have been inching closer to one another in their competition for users and advertisers.

The key idea that Google isn’t really touting yet is that +1 data can be used to make ads social not just on Google Search result pages, but also across the whole web, so if you have a site that runs AdSense ads, it may now feature +1 data in addition to the ad.

And that makes a lot of sense to clickDM.

Tuesday, 15 March 2011

The new reality – it’s a conversation age

I feel special. I’ve spent my working life in direct marketing, digital marketing and advertising during a time of enormous change in the communications industry.  

If we compare the media landscape today with 40 years ago you get a real sense of the proportion of that change– my mother bought the brands her mother bought (or those friends recommended) and perhaps those she saw on TV and in the newspapers. It was an easy media buy – only one, maybe two commercial channels.

Today there are probably a dozen channels that come together through your mobile phone alone. It’s a constant challenge to be able to coordinate and manage all these channels to most effectively deliver value for our clients marketing $.

And key to all this change is the customer. They have always been the target but today they control the terms of their relationship with brands – our world is now customer centric.– we are in the conversation age and if we don’t listen to our customers we’ll lose them. So when we are creating our media plan, it has to take account of the customers preferences. It’s no longer good enough to just throw a couple of million dollars at a TV schedule that broadly reaches the audience.

At THE DM GROUP we work in many areas of communications and as a full service agency we take it as being our responsibility to keep our clients at the forefront of the new thinking in media. So, I was fascinated therefore to read about the work BIG Research has been doing with Martin P Block and Don E Schultz in defining consumer use of media – by media generation.

This is an ongoing (twice yearly) and evolving research study that informs agencies, clients and media strategists about media use by customers, grouping them into media generations. It’s about how audiences use different media, how many they use, in what combinations, at what time of day.

THE DM GROUP is also working hard to evolve communication strategies for our clients that gives us the best opportunity possible to engage their customers, so we too go out of our way to understand what your customers are reading and responding to. If you’d like to know more, why not give us a call.

Thursday, 24 February 2011

Bright future for channels old and new

Here at THE DM GROUP we invest a lot of time assessing and analysing what our clients do and what is happening in the market place in general. We see it as our role to stay at the forefront of what’s happening in the communications world, what’s in and what’s out.

So I read with interest from the US that JCPenney has announced its spring fashion marketing program will include direct mail, TV, radio and social media. As well as celebrating its Spring collection, it will also use the campaign to unveil its new logo. It’s all part of an initiative to make the iconic brand more appealing to a younger audience.

It’s fantastic that JCP are using this approach for both brand and sales initiatives.

That’s a great endorsement for the continued use of some tried and trusted channels, mixed with new social media alternatives and supports two strands of evidence that have been emerging from media analysis over the last two years.

First is that direct mail is growing still (and being read).

 Second is that  the use of a combination of channels in a campaign (TV, DM and social as opposed to just TV and DM as an example)  creates significant lift  in brand awareness and intention to purchase. 

If you’re as excited about what’s happening as we are and would like to talk about how we can make a real difference for your organisation why not give us a call.

Malcolm Harvey , Client Services Director ….and communication obsessive

Monday, 10 January 2011

Polaroid cool?

Not anymore, most would argue but Lady Gaga begs to differ given she is now on board as creative director. Not content to be merely the face of Polaroid, she insisted upon being heavily involved in development and design of their specialty range known as the grey label.

At a recent media conference, she unveiled three new products which include camera glasses, an instant digital camera and a portable printer.

Lady Gaga is certainly not the first celebrity to be bought on board to reinvigorate brands considered dated and redundant. It will however be interesting to see if this unlikely pairing of celebrity and technology, and fusion of innovation and fashion can give new life to Polaroid.

Will they be able to reengage consumers who previously owned a Polaroid camera and then lost interest? Or will their success lie predominantly with the younger generation whose purchasing habits are influenced by celebrity?

Wednesday, 13 October 2010

Going gaga for Gaga!

Love her or hate her (we mean you Craig!) Lady Gaga is leading the social media wave with over 20 million Facebook friends (Barack Obama has a measly 14 million friends).

People in this office average 200 Facebook friends so imagine the pressure of updating your status knowing that 20,124,040 fans will not only see it but most likely comment or ‘Like’. A recent status update was ‘Liked’ 39,522 times with 6923 comments. And this all happened within hours of being posted!

This constant attention and continued popularity allows her to not only publicise upcoming tour dates and increase music and merchandise sales but push her political agenda. Using social media Lady Gaga has received overwhelming support for her fight to abolish the ‘Don’t ask, Don’t tell’ law. Her message is probably reaching more people via Facebook than traditional political forums.