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Should Marketers Use Celebrity Endorsements?

This topic comes up at home every time a celebrity does something incredibly stupid (shoots someone, falls down drunk, crashes a car, gets involved with dog fighting, etc.).  Reporters then question marketers on their decision to use said celebrity as endorser of their product/service/business.  Will they continue to support the celebrity?  Will they drop him/her?  Will they look for someone new?  Will there be fallout for the marketer in way of decreased sales?  These are all things that marketers must thing about BEFORE signing up a well-known celebrity 'cause ya just never know what they might do in the real world.

That's why I was intrigued by some stats on this very topic that came out earlier in the week.  Turns out business leaders rank higher than athletes, tv/movie stars, singers or former political figures in being "most persuasive."  See below:

 
This bit of research begs the question "does persuasiveness translate to sales."  Regardless it's just another thing marketers should think about when determining who the best person is to endorse their company.

Being Social - 6 Brands Doing It Right

Good article in iMedia Connection by Kent Lewis, President of Anvil Media today.  He touts 6 well-known brands (ok...5 of 6 are well known) that are using social media in effective ways.  Top 6 include:

1. Blackberry on My Space - sure My Space has taken it's knocks but it's still a big play in social and Blackberry uses a custom-skinned profile page, interactive banner with promotions, free wallpaper and a discussion board on My Space to better and engage with its fans

2. Hewlett Packard on Linked In - HP taps Linked In to post jobs, as questions and create groups which helps to not just promote the company but connect with it's members

3. Kodak on it's own Blog - a number of Kodak employees write on the blog, update content, post interesting photos and drive interaction via contests 

4. Lion Brand Yarn on Facebook - gotta admit I've never heard of this company but Lewis' agency helped LBY create a presence on Facebook in all the regular ways - industry info, status updates, q&a, getting fans to share knitting patterns, etc.  And believe it or not LBY has over 41,000 fans!

5. Zappos on Twitter - it's tough for corporations to find a good fit on Twitter so Zappos encourages all its employees to use Twitter and engage in the social media experience, even Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh has over 1.5MM followers and that's gotta be good for business

6. Nike on YouTube - Nike has created its own SB (skateboard) channel on YouTube and the 9 videos posted there have already generated over 1.4MM views, plus the channel has north of 14,000 subscribers, great way to allow consumers to interact with the brand

Although I think Lewis plays it safe with the social media properties listed these are all good examples of brands using social media to boost customer engagement and interaction.  

  

5 Ways to Manage Like A CEO

If you are anything like me you believe the learning process in business never ends.  That's why I always like reading about news ways to engage customers, improve my win/close rate, manage better, and lead more effectively.  Along that line of thinking I enjoyed the BNET article by Steve Tobak yesterday on 5 new ways to manage like a CEO, especially because a few of the 5 are contrarian and will cause debate. Here's the list:

1. Focus on critical, trouble areas and leave everything else alone - others might argue that you should focus on areas that are succeeding and help make those even better or identifying new opportunities to grow the business but it may makes sense to leave the good alone and tackle the trouble spots

2. Hire functional experts who are also solid, upcoming managers - the point being that you can coach people to be good managers but it's much harder to find the right people to fit the roles in the first place

3. Business comes first - this one will likely cause the most debate (and did if you look at the comments posted by readers of Tobak's article), yes the focus of business is business which means taking care of customers and driving sales but in the business world today I believe it's essential to take care of your employees, too

4. Manage up - this becomes more and more important as you move up the ladder and critical at the CEO level (heck he/she has to manage the BOD), I've learned the hard way that when you only focus on your team and don't properly manage the expectations of your boss you soon find yourself looking for a new job, another way of saying it is "make your boss look good and you look good"

5. Help to "manage the company" - most of us put the blinders on, head down, get the job done, and go home, but you need to look beyond your own little world, when you look at things wearing the big company/corporate hat you've got a great opportunity to be be recognized and move up

I've never been a CEO but there's some good nuggets here on how to manage like one. 

  

Ad Age Marketer Of The Year Is...HYUNDAI

Really?  Hyundai?  That little auto maker from Korea that makes those inexpensive cars?  Yes, THAT Hyundai.  And they won "handily" according to Ad Age beating Walmart, Mickey D's, Lego, and Amazon by getting 40% of the reader vote. 

A big reason was Hyundai's Super Bowl campaign which went right to the heart of the American economic problem: if you buy a Hyundai and lose your job/income you can return the car with no impact on your credit.  That was one bold claim and it got a lot of folks who were going through tough times to take a first, second, or even third look at Hyundai.  Clearly the campaign worked:

- Hyundai market share surged from 3.1% in '08 to 4.3% in '09 (first 10 months)

- In September Hyundai increased new car sales by 27% (the industry average was a drop of 22%)

Best quote from the article in Ad Age came from Scott Fink, chairman of Hyundai's national dealer council. "These same people that never would have been caught dead in a Hyundai...now they are very comfortable because the brand has been elevated.  We used to be a price player, but now we're a mainstream player."

I've got to admit...that new Genesis is a good looking car (dare I say it looks a lot like a Mercedes Benz?) and if I was in the market for a new vehicle I wouldn't certainly take a test drive.

Congrats Hyundai.

  

Google Buying Mobile Ad Network AdMob for $750MM

Google agreed to acquired AdMob for $750MM in an all stock deal yesterday.

Google's purchases are always interesting since they have enough cash buy just about any company and usually make good decisions.  This one is especially interesting for a number of reasons:

1. AdMob is a mobile display ad network - meaning they serve ads on mobile devices like your iPhone or Blackberry device - that was only launched in 2006 (nice payback for the investors and employees in short order)

2. Google is betting on the future of mobile and with this purchase will now have 30-40% market share in the mobile ad business 

3.  Without deep knowledge of AdMob's revenue I've got to believe they are paying north of 30X revenue which is quite a premium 

4. Google will now have a strong play (if not the strongest play) in search, display (thanks to acquisition of DoubleClick), and mobile.  King of the mountain status for sure.

It wouldn't surprise me to see other mobile companies get snatched up by the likes of Yahoo and Microsoft in order to keep pace with Google.

   

AOL's Outlook Way Up...Revenue Way Down!

If you attended the roundtable discussion on the "State of the Industry" last Wednesday at Ad Tech in NYC you would have thought this was boom time in the online advertising business.  Jeff Levick of AOL, Carolyn Everson of MTV, Amy Banse of Comcast (all representing the sales side of the house) and Joe McCarthy of Publicis (representing the buy side) all gave such rah-rah commentary on the state of the industry in general and their specific businesses in particular I thought I was at Ad Tech 1999, not 2009.  All 4 players talked up the need for relevant, trusted, and valuable content (especially video) along with better measurement tools to see advertising dollars continue to make their way online.

MTV's Everson said her company is seeing strong ad sales growth from retail, studios, games, and auto (yes, auto).  AOL's Levick mentioned auto (yes, auto) and cpg as 2 of their hotter categories.  And Comcast's Banse touted entertainment and local as strong areas for sales improvement.

Unfortunately it was hard to appreciate Levick's bullish comments as AOL's Q3 earnings came out the very next day and it was not the rosy picture he was painting.   Let's look at the stats:

- 18% drop in year over year ad revenue from $507MM in Q3 '08 to $415MM in Q3 '09

- 21% drop in ad revenue on AOL's own sites (including display and search) $288MM

- 12% drop in ad revenue from 3rd party ads sold through it's network to $127MM

On Thursday Jonathan Miller, CEO Digital Media Group of New Corp gave the keynote interview (by Drew Ianni), one day after News Corp's own disappointing news:

- 26% drop in digital revenue from Q2 to Q3 '09 (due to lower search and display ad revenue, the ongoing economic downturn, and much transition going on at the digital unit).  

I was a bit surprised that Ianni failed to ask even one question about the earnings report during the interview.  Meanwhile Miller projected double-digit online ad growth in '10.  Let's hope the reality of online ad revenues in 2010 match up to the hype heard at Ad Tech last week.        

   

Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP, Speaks @ Ad Tech

Sir Martin gave the keynote address at the Ad Tech conference yesterday morning.  It was his first time attending the big Internet conference and my first time hearing him speak.  Although Sorrell thought he would be presenting to a "small intimate group" the auditorium at the Javits Center in NYC was packed.

Sorrell spoke without the use of PPT slides (which was a nice change), walked among the attendees, and discussed a variety of topics relating to the agency business ("we're not an agency anymore"), the Internet ("big change is coming"), the impact of the economy ("never in all my years in business have I seen clients so focused on cost") and the road ahead.  The Big 3 things on his mind (and therefore what should be on the mind of everyone of WPP's north of 100,000 employees) are:

1. New Markets - there is a "shift in power" to markets like China (China Mobile has more than 500MM subs), Brazil (just picked up the Olympics), and India (big numbers)

2. New Media - 25% of WPP spending is going to New Media which includes web, mobile (needs to be a shift in spending to mobile but so far it's been a "big disappointment"), video ("video content is going to be the most powerful force"), etc.

3. Consumer Insights - WPP spends $4B per year on data, analytics and measurement, this is one of the reasons WPP acquired TNS last year

A few other sound bites:

- Very few companies are making money today and those that are have done it "ugly" (cost cutting)

- In the future there is going to be an overcapacity of product and an under-capacity of people

- Watch out for retailers like Wal-Mart, Tesco and Home Depot (they are fastest movers)

- Internal company communication is critical ("robotic control doesn't work, control is a very un PC word")

- "Doing good is good business" (in talking about corporate social responsibility)

Sorrell spoke eloquently and provided a great deal of "food for thought" which was just what was needed at the beginning of a conference like Ad Tech.   I, for one, was engaged and impressed.