In the business world a company will often declare something as "The Next Big Thing" and say they need it without really understanding what it is. Enter today's latest marketing revolution - social media. Companies are jumping on the twitter bandwagon because everybody else is doing it. We know what you're pushing against - getting left behind by the competition. But what exactly are you pushing for?   Instead of taking a "leap before you look" attitude to social media, USA Networks is rising above the pack by offering two social media applications with genuine value. First is Character Arcade, a collection of minigames that tie-in to USA Network shows and offer fans a cute way to spend time with their favorite character. Second is USA's recently launched iPhone app, Letter Matrix. Letter Matrix isn't tied to any TV shows, but rather builds of the network's impressive progress in the casual games space to create a new franchise and revenue stream. Most importantly it adds another critical touchpoint for USA Network to interact with the consumer.   USA Networks was ahead of its time when it launched Character Arcade in 2007; now the top games on Facebook get more than...

Advertising. Public Relations. Marketing. Investor Relations. Employee Communications. Each function working independently with little interest or concern for the efforts of their colleagues has been the business norm for years.  But I think I hear the proverbial fat lady singing!. New integrated communications dashboards and new data showing the impact of Public Relations on the effectiveness of paid advertising are beginning to demonstrate how much money marketers are leaving on the table by not integrating their activities.  But as significant as these changes are, what may be having more impact is the emergence of social media.  The need for cohesive messaging and two-way communication with stakeholders is becoming more urgent for each of the traditional silos. Integration and collaboration among departments seems unavoidable. Technology is clearly the catalyst for achieving a fully integrated communications strategy.  Integrated communications tools provide visibility to valuable data "owned" by multiple departments, enable sharing of customer and stakeholder data, and results in vastly improved messaging for all stakeholder groups without loss of core brand identity. The fragmentation of media and the multiple vehicles for communicating will continue to put pressure on old ways of doing things. Marketers won't be able to cope without new...

Perhaps the reason we have difficulty determining ROI from our advertising investments is because we tend to view all ads as if they are equally effective.   You only have to watch a dozen TV commercials or leaf through a dozen magazine ads to confirm that all ads are not created equal.  The chart below shows just how differently ads perform to create brand awareness, generate a call-to-action, or communicate a benefit. As we currently evaluate ROI, if each of the ads in the graph above received the same ad spend we would expect each to have an equal impact.  The reality is that the Ad Index is a good predictor of how much impact each ad will have and those with a higher Ad Index will be far more impactful than those with a lower Ad Index.  Weighting ad spend by an ad index based on the effectiveness of the creative is a significant advance in calculating ROI. Since often it is not just your advertising investment, but also that of your competitors, you need to know competitive ad spend for each creative and the effectiveness of each competitive ad.   While challenging, following this approach promises to make...

More and more, we see the need to measure the impact our editorial coverage has on our advertising (and vice versa). But what about the effect other organizations' PR and advertising have our companies' and brands' communications? If recent events across the pond are any indication, it's time to start peering beyond our garden walls.   Last week, Heathrow Airport triumphantly opened the new, $8.6 billion Terminal 5 - which Heathrow touted for its aesthetic charms and state-of-the-art baggage handling systems. Heathrow's hope: to repair its image as a shabby and overcrowded hub. But, from initial triumph Heathrow has quickly experienced tragedy of epic proportions. To wit: Terminal 5 crashed and burned on take-off - spectacularly.   Just how bad was it? England's aviation minister called it "a blow to national pride," as almost 300 flights were cancelled and at least 28,000 bags unexpectedly misplaced. Blimey! Here's the full AP story on CNN.    As fate would have it, the following Monday, Cadbury and agency Fallon launched their much-anticipated follow-up to last year's award-winning "Gorilla" spot, which featured an oversized ape behind a drum kit, banging out the Phil Collins classic "In The Air Tonight."   Cadbury's new spot,...

The Argyle CMO Forum in New York was fascinating  The audience was comprised of 150 CMOs and other top level marketing and communications executives.  I was, by far, the least famous presenter.  Richard Pilnik, Group VP ad CMO from Eli Lilly & Co., Ken Keller, EVP and CMO from Motorola, and Maryam Banikarum, CMO for Univision Communications were the keynote speakers and made great presentations that talked to the current challenges facing marketers and provided some glimpses of where they are heading in the future. I'll try to obtain copies of their presentations and share them with you. I was joined by Pete Wengryn (CEO of VMS), Tom Stein (President of Stein Rogan + Partners), Bonnie Carlson (President of the Promotional Marketing Association), and Tom Collinger (Associate Dean of Medill's Integrated Marketing Communications program at Northwestern). We presented some preliminary data on how news coverage impacts business outcomes directly, but also exerts significant influence on the effectiveness of paid advertising. You'll hear lots more on this in future posts as we refine our data. Tom Collinger was great and had the very best sound bite..."AND."  We are in a world where it is not PR or advertising, not qualitative or quantitative, not traditional media or new media,...

A recent study by McKinsey & Co. cited "the most important corporate resource over the next 20 years will be talent." The search for talent in advertising, promotions and marketing has become a real challenge. Dell is perhaps the most high profile company to create an integrated agency, but many others have seen the wisdom of integrated communications. One of the real challenges of creating integrated agencies is finding the talent able to work across multiple media and platforms.While the overall market is tight right now, it is even more challenging to find the relatively few creatives with integrated expertise. Tom Collinger, Associate Dean of Integrated Marketing Communications at the Medill School at Northwestern, was a recent panel member at the CMO Forum in New York. He said a number of really smart things, but a key comment was the challenge marketers will face in finding talented employees with the background and training in multiple marketing disciplines. Tom and Medill are at the forefront of training the next generation of communications professionals. More and more, companies are voting with their salary dollars and competing for the school's talent. Medill also publishes the Journal of Integrated Marketing Communications which is available...

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the Promotions Marketing Association (PMA), better known for its core focus on sales promotions, wants to help their members achieve measurable brand-building goals by becoming a primary source for integrated marketing techniques.  This effort will be led by PMA's new President, Bonnie J. Carlson.  Bonnie is no stranger to integrated marketing. She served as vice president of integrated marketing for ConAgra Foods until 2005, creating an integrated marketing plan and launching the shopper marketing program across all four divisions--a product range of approximately 70 brands, such as Hunt's, Peter Pan and Reddi-Whip. PMA's programs offer a host of options to learn more about integrated marketing. They are: Consumer Promotion, Trade Promotion, Advertising, Public Relations, Database or Direct Marketing, Loyalty Marketing. Experiential Marketing, Sponsorships, Celebrity Endorsements/Product Spokespersons, Shopper Marketing, Cause-Related Marketing, Grass Roots Marketing, and Corporate Communications, such as incentive programs and employee communications. In-store signage that electronically transmits product information to cellular phones and marketers experimenting with giving consumers perks for engaging at online sites like Facebook are just two of the new opportunities to integrate incentives and promotion into an integrated campaign. Kudos to PMA for recognizing this opportunity and developing tools to...

I love this comment from Nick Brien, CEO of Universal McCann. It's not about new media. Trying to make every new medium a magic bullet will fail. It's about the way we interact with our customers and stakeholders. It is about new marketing. Marketing has always been about communicating with our customers. But new tools and capabilities let us tell our stories in a richer and more relevant fashion than ever before. "In this new marketing model -- where media enhances personality -- brands have to become experiences and destinations and consumer insight has to be smarter."  In his keynote address at Ad Tech in New York, Mr. Brien further states, "A brand is ultimately a promise..." and this promise is not ownable by a corporation any more. We need to integrate all of the ways we can interact with our customers and reinforce that promise. Sometimes that will be traditional advertising. Sometimes it will be an event. Other times it will be a PR or image campaign. More often it will be all of these. And each of these activities has to be coordinated and carefully orchestrated to communicate our messages. And measured in their entirety. Ads for celebrity fragrances that conjure up images of cool and...

As Rick Bird from the Cincinnati Post says, "We have seen the future of TV and it is...'Gossip Girl.'" The CW teen soap is symbolic of how the traditional networks will judge hits and misses in the new media age.It also shows how the "traditional media" are learning how to use the "new media" and the power of integration. As Rick points out, "'Gossip Girl' became the first new series to be picked up for a full season 22-episode order. At first glance that seemed mighty curious. It was averaging just 2.41 million viewers, one of the lowest-rated new shows, even below average by CW standards." So why was it picked up?...

Welcome to An Integrated Perspective, a forum for all aspects of integrated marketing and communications. My personal focus has been on correlating the impact of news and editorial coverage on business outcomes. Since late 1999, I have been developing tools and metrics and the concept of Share of Discussion, which has shown significant relevance in correlating earned media / PR with business outcomes such as sales, preference, loyalty, awareness, etc. There are two white papers that do a good job of explaining most of these findings on the Institute for Public Relations website. They are also attached below. IPR_#1 IPR_#2 We have been able to prove that news coverage drives outcomes, but we have had less success in demonstrating the same types of correlations for paid advertising. We believe an advertising effectiveness metric is needed and are actively working to incorporate one into our research and analysis. While we have specific beliefs on what is needed, how paid and unpaid media intersect and support one another, or the impact of one form of communications over another, our core belief is that an integrated approach, combining all forms of media communications, is key....

A recent study of the fragrance industry demonstrates the value of viewing communications in an integrated fashion. The fragrance market is highly seasonal with the majority of sales made at Christmas, Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. Paid advertising is clustered around these buying periods with the majority of ad spending in the pre-Xmas time period. Celebrity brands, such as Sarah Jessica Parker's Lovely or J-Lo's Love at First Glow, because of their significantly higher levels of news coverage, have generated higher ROIs and their sales have been somewhat less seasonal than non-celebrity brands. News / Editorial coverage...

Thought leaders around the country are relatively unanimous in their belief that integration is a key to effective communications with our customers and stakeholders. A series of "Thought Leader Roundtables" was held around the country earlier this year, sponsored by VMS, PR News, and Media Industry Newsletter (min). Senior level participants from PR and advertising agencies, corporate communications, brand management, or other marketing functions discussed all aspects of integrated communications. There was near universal support for abandoning silos and looking at advertising and public relations from a unified perspective. PR News covered each roundtable. A compilation of their coverage is listed here. One of the participants, Rose McKinney, president of Risdall McKinney, suggested that one way of integrating communications effectively is to remove the labels that organizations place on what PR does, what marketing does, etc. The focus, as she and the Roundtable participants agreed, should be on the goal of the particular campaign or initiative first and the communications tools second. Marketing, advertising, and PR - whether they're in-house or outsourced - need to be comfortable with a little ambiguity of roles and more fluidity in how internal departments and outside teams work and interact for the end goal....