Dell Uses Social Media to Promote Brand

By Dave Fidlin

Once upon a time, not all that long ago, companies had one primary method of connecting with consumers, and that was through advertisements within the traditional forms of media: print publications (newspapers and magazines) and broadcast outlets (television and radio). The Internet, of course, has altered the playing field, and social media has become a prevalent method many companies have been using to reach out to new and existing customers.

Computer manufacturer Dell is among the companies that have been embracing social media to market new products. In fact, the company employs a chief blogger, Lionel Menchaca, who is responsible for a swath of sites under the banner name Direct2Dell.

DMB’s Dave Fidlin recently spoke with Menchaca, a 17-year Dell veteran, about social media, and how the method will continue to shape the company’s marketing and outreach efforts in the future.

Can you explain your role as chief blogger for Dell?
My role is to keep things moving with our external network of blogs. Direct2Dell now exists in five languages. Direct2Dell is our main corporate blog. Beyond it, we have 7 additional blogs. Our latest is Direct2Dell India, which focuses content on one of our fastest-growing countries in Dell’s business.

How is Dell marketing beyond established, traditional methods? Is the company getting the word out about its products through such avenues as Facebook and Twitter?
Yes, very much so. We have two main pages in Facebook — Facebook for Home, which focuses on product and service information for consumers and Facebook for Business, which focuses on reaching business customers there. We’ve been very active on Twitter as a company since 2007. We use Twitter in 4 main ways: 1) to keep our customers informed 2) to engage our customers from different areas of our business 3) to sell to our customers who opt in to sites like @DellOutlet and 4) to support our customers. We now offer 24/7 support to customers on Twitter via @DellCares. See Dell.com/twitter for more details

Aside from the two big companies — Facebook and Twitter — how else is Dell using social media?
Our core strategy in social media is to go where our customers are. That means we maintain a Dell presence in many other social sites like LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, SlideShare, Scribd and outside the US in Sina’s microblogging service. Beyond our own blogs, our forum site and all of our presence on outside social networks, we’re also focused on responding to comments on other places on the Web, like third-party user forums or blog sites.

Can you quantify, percentage-wise, how much of Dell’s marketing and outreach efforts go toward social media (versus traditional marketing) in 2010?
Our social media marketing budget is very small compared to our traditional marcom spend. Outside of some ad credits to drive awareness to the Dell Facebook for Home pages and drawing attention to some of our social media efforts via Dell.com, we spend very little to promote our social media activities.

Do you have an idea of what the ROI (rate of return) is for Dell’s social media efforts?
Yes, we do, and that’s an area where we are still working on. In the early days, we measured social media’s impact on customers’ perceptions and found a pretty strong correlation—at the low point in 2006, about 48 percent of what was said about Dell was negative. We were able to get that into the low 20+ percent range. Today, we’re able to track all the basic traffic numbers you would expect, but beyond traffic, we’re looking at things like reach, engagement, brand reputation and more. We’re also starting to use more of the same tools on the social media side that we’ve been using to measure Dell.com like Omniture. There’s still more work to be done, but we’re making progress.

Where, in your opinion, is social media heading into the future, and how is Dell going to stay on the pulse of this still-growing method of communication?
I really think over the next several years, social media will become an integral part of how companies in many industries will do business. To me it’s a natural progression to add from things like telephones, e-mail, the Internet, chat and beyond. Just like many other aspects of business, it all comes down to execution. In my view, companies who learn to use social media to really connect with their customers will have a huge fundamental advantage over companies who don’t.

Do you envision a day when social media might completely replace traditional marketing methods, or is that an extreme statement?
No way do I think that social media will ever replace traditional marketing methods. I do think that social media can and will continue to augment traditional marketing methods. I think social media will make companies smarter in how they market to and engage with customers, and I think that’s a good thing. Like many others in social media today, I’m glad to see the era of one-way push marketing giving way to something different – a place where customer feedback shapes the direction of the company.

A Good Chew: Orbitz’ Dirty Shorts Go Viral

By Ken Liebeskind

Product integration is the technique used to incorporate a sponsor’s product into branded videos, but the Wm Wrigley Jr. Company has gone over the top with the product inserts in the Orbit Gum Dirty Shorts, which debuted June 10. The Prom Date, a five minute video starring Will Arnett and Jason Bateman, incorporates the gum into the humorous video as it’s passed from the characters on numerous occasions, sparkling at one point to indicate an attitudinal change that prompts the parents to accept their daughter’s vile teacher as her prom date.

Actually the product integration in the dirty video is emblematic of the brand, which has been “cheeky and over the top on purpose,” according to Jeff Adkins, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Energy BBDO, the agency that has incorporated the dirty videos into its campaign for Orbit. “It breaks the fourth wall and allows you to have fun in the story, making the transition from a dirty situation to a clean one. It’s goofy fun.”

Prom Date is the first of three dirty videos for Orbit that will star Arnett, Bateman and other comedy stars. They are produced by Electus, Ben Silverman’s new media company that is partnering with celebrities to create branded content. Arnett and Bateman formed DumbDumb, the production company that created the Orbit videos.

The videos are playing at Youtube and Collegehumor.com, with 196,099 views recorded so far.

The dirty shorts are the first branded videos from DumbDumb and represent a driving force in contemporary marketing. “Major brands recognize that the media landscape is changing quickly and their success relies on their ability to expand well beyond traditional advertising,” said Drew Buckley, COO of Electus.

Adkins said Orbit gum is a favored brand among teens and young adults, so branded videos should be popular. “We’d been hoping to do something entertaining with Orbit for online content. We’ve done 25 TV commercials over the past nine years. This was the way to extend what we do in long form stories.”

AOL, Google: Searching for the Benjamins in Display Advertising

By Sheila Shayon

The first online advert ran on Oct. 24, 1994, on HotWired, the forerunner of Wired Magazine. It was 468 x 60 pixels and asked:

“Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You will.”

And we did. The click-through rate was 42 percent. (For the record, Global Network Navigator ran the banner two or three weeks earlier, but HotWired garnered the coverage.)

Today’s display ads are virtual micro-sites, replete with interactive, social elements, animation and video. An example of an award-winning rich media ad:

In three days, this campaign earned 170 million impressions, 50,000 clicks and 17,000 hours of brand engagement, according to Google.

JPMorgan analyst, Imran Khan, predicts an $8.3 billion display advertising economy in 2010. The name of the game in the digital space has moved from search to advertising as the big brands step further into open access platforms with suites of tools and metrics to make it easier for advertisers and agencies to create and ’self-serve’ display ads and track and measure their effectiveness.

DMB spoke with Jeff Levick, executive vice president, AOL Advertising; and Rachel Nearnberg, Global Communications & Public Affairs, Google, about their advertising platforms.

AOL
AOL recently launched a beta version of Advertising.com Ad Desk. Levick was on the floor of Ad Tech San Francisco, where he said AOL’s presence in the middle of the exhibition was attracting traffic and attention. “It’s the most exciting experience at AOL you can imagine. We’re still testing Advertising.com Ad Desk, and learning as we go. It’s a huge leap forward, as it opens up all the inventory we have as well as gives access to a massive number of properties across the web through Ad.com.”

The AOL network has 78 of AdAge’s Top 100 advertisers and 70 of comScore’s Top 100 publishers. ‘Lead-back targeting’ is a distinguishing feature for AOL’s new platform, which allows advertisers to target their ads, and once it’s seen, re-target the same ad across the web. AOL’s suite of tools allows for retargeting consumers who have:

• Visited your website (Advertiser LeadBack)
• Seen or clicked on your ad creative (Creative LeadBack)
• Visited a webpage that you’re sponsoring (Sponsorship LeadBack)
• NOT visited your website - a great way to reach more unique visitors (Reverse LeadBack)
• Searched for a relevant word or phrase on AOL Search (SearchBack)

Formats include rich media, video and widgets, and AOL Advertising’s ad serving platform, ADTECH, manages campaigns across multiple platforms for web publishers, ad networks, agencies and advertisers.

“Transparency and control are the future of online advertising,” Levick says. “Providing clients with a greater level of personalized control over digital marketing campaigns is paramount as organizations continue to look for innovative ways to promote their brands and evaluate their ROI when planning campaigns.”

The build-out of Advertising.com Ad Desk over the last 10 months has deep-dived into technology to create the ‘lead-back targeting’ capabilities. Ads uploaded by the users are virus scanned and monitored as they run, as well as reviewed for ad spec compliance, quality and content.

Next up, Version 2 will deliver increased Reporting and Insights tools and metrics. “We’re connecting the advertising experience to the publishing side of the house. Church and state are talking,” Levick added.

Google
We all heard Eric Schmidt’s prediction that display advertising would be Google’s next billion-dollar business. According to Nearnberg, “In such a fragmented media landscape today, with users on social media sites, e-commerce, blogs or online games, the challenge is where best to reach people and how to tailor ads across thousands of sites and track performance.”

According to Google data, US users spend 12 hours online per week, about 32 percent of their media time. But online advertising comprises only 13.6 percent of US advertising spend. “Scale and reach are the key challenges, and serving display ads is a more sophisticated and complicated process than search,” Nearnberg says. “Our Content Network enables keyword, contextual targeting between ads and content.”

The Google Content Network serves hundreds of billions of ad impressions to more than 500 million Internet users worldwide every month. It includes several Google properties including Google Finance and YouTube, and reaches 100 countries, with ads in 20 languages. Major publishers include New York Times, LinkedIn, Univision, About.com, and Food Network. “94 of the top 100 Ad Age advertisers have run campaigns on Google Content Network - display not search,” added Nearnberg.

For smaller businesses, Google’s Display Ad Builder, offers designed templates that enable the creation and distribution of an ad in minutes. The goal is to make display advertising as simple as search, those functions being complementary. “20,000 advertisers using Display Ad Builder are first-time users. We are adding the science of search to display advertising,” commented Nearnberg.

According to Comscore, “average lift of search activity when display was added to a campaign was 155 percent.”  Douglas Anmuth, a Barclay’s Capital media analyst, predicts that display ads will account for $1 billion in revenue in 2010, or about 4 percent of Google’s total sales.

Experts agree that the gold rush towards display advertising is still early stage. Predictions for the advertising landscape in the near future include: data will be more valuable than awards; ROI will be the metric of success; engagement will trump creativity; and the technology deep dive will continue - with those who can afford to own their own - in the driver’s seat.

In April 2005, DoubleClick released a white paper, “The Decade in Online Advertising (1994-2004) - Online Advertising.” The summary included: “Advertisers still lag consumers in their adoption of digital media. As broadband reaches more American homes, as entertainment companies develop more digital content, and as televisions, mobile phones and other devices further blur the distinction between “online” and “offline,” all advertisers will be forced to adapt faster to the new media environment or struggle to stay relevant.”

Five years later, the struggle continues - but advertisers are adapting faster, listening more to their consumers, and making online engagement a more worthwhile endeavor.

Addressable TV Ads: More costly, Less Waste

By Rebecca Henely

Like most industries, advertising has suffered in the economic downturn. Yet a new study from digital research firm Parks Associates indicates most advertising agencies are looking to direct more money toward developing better-targeted and more interactive ads in 2010 – particularly addressable TV ads.

“Traditional media is now digital media,” says Heather Way, research analyst for Parks Associates. “… We’re seeing advertisers want to target better. They’re testing and they’re looking for a way to reach consumers in different venues.”

Way says 96 qualified candidates answered Parks Associates’ anonymous online survey. Qualified candidates included those employed at a media agency with more than $10 million plus annual billing revenue, as well as planners, buyers or top-level executives for companies involved in television, internet or mobile – with a focus on advanced TV formats and platforms.

Of those who answered, 50 percent or more said they would increase the amount of their budgets dedicated toward addressable and interactive advertising. The most popular investment was technology utilizing requests for information, or addressable TV ads, which are broadcast to certain households depending on specific demographics. These were followed by interactive overlay ads, interactive tag ads and banner ads on interactive program guides.

“We’re clearly seeing some major shifts from the traditional, passive advertising to advanced forms,” Way says.
Interactive forms of advertising are usually integrated into the set-up of the displays for digital television providers, such as TiVo’s interactive tags or Comcast’s IPG banners. Way said the advantage of these is they encourage the viewers to click on them and request more information from the ad, making them more active participants.

“I’m able to move the TV viewer to request more information from the product,” she says.

However, those surveyed were more interested in addressable TV. Way said advertisers have always been able to select where and on what channels to run their ads based on demographics – usually age, gender and geography – taken from surveys such as Nielsen ratings. Yet addressable TV can reach a larger survey sample and allows advertisers to be even more specific about what audiences to reach.

Mark McKee, vice president of marketing for online video network TidalTV, states that these more specific demographics could be anything from the age and gender to the behaviors and interests of the set-box owner.

Way says the set-top boxes, while usually specific to a certain multiple system operators/cable companies, also draw on from a wider sample than a typical Nielsen rating, which draws from 25,000 metered households a day, according to Nielsen’s web site. In contrast, cable companies have a digital TV customer base that can number in the millions.

Chris Allen, USA vice president/video innovation director for Starcom, a media service agency, says addressable advertising is done through extensive surveying through a third party of data of interest, such as household ownership or number of children in a household. This data is matched with the billing address records from the cable company’s database, then with the set-top boxes. Each set-top box is numbered and the demographic data is linked with the box number, not the name of the homeowner, so as to protect the owner’s privacy.

“They’ll basically bucket the households into diff groups so everything is kept anonymous,” Allen says.

From there, advertisers can work with agencies such as Starcom to match their ad to certain audiences, Allen says. More data can then be taken from the set-top boxes such as how long the viewer watched the ad, and this can measure the ad’s overall effectiveness or the ad’s ability to reach its audience.

“It’s worth paying some type of premium in return for reaching our target,” Allen says is the mentality of most of the advertising clients who use this.

Collecting the data is an expensive process, Allen says. Multiple organizations are involved in the process, and some of the labor is still done manually. In addition, not all MSOs are widely deploying addressable TV, although Cablevision hopes to start by the end of the year.

Nevertheless, McKee states the potential is worth the cost now, particularly because more focused advertising will allow companies to save later.

“One of the key outcomes of advanced targeting is less waste of ad dollars against undesired audiences, making the brand’s media dollars work harder and more efficiently,” McKee states. “The economic slump has accelerated the need to do more with less… drive more sales with the same of smaller ad budgets, and that has really been an important factor in driving awareness, attention and adoption of advanced targeting.”

Way also named waste reduction as a boon for advertisers.

“You’re reaching a smaller audience, perhaps, but a more active or more engaged,” she says.

Allen also says it is possible that by allowing advertising clients to have the potential to reach a smaller, more specific audience, new advertisers could enter the marketplace at a smaller scale.

“I think it could encourage economic growth because it could allow brands that could not participate in television could come on board,” he says.

However, Way said while this new advertising technology will help retain money flowing through the advertising industry, and some new dollars will come in from venues like mobile TV, it will most likely not bring new money into the industry. Any rebound will be to levels before the recession.

“I think it’s going to replace, it’s going to more cannibalize traditional, cable and broadcast revenues,” she says.

Allen says addressable TV will also require more development, particularly this year.

“We’re still kind of waiting to see what the opportunities are going to be,” he says.

Rebranding: Digg Digs Deeper

By Sheila Shayon

DMB recently checked back in with Digg, the user-driven social content brand. Things are buzzing at Digg as they prepare a new website, now in private beta, which will go public in a few weeks.

Six months into Digg Ads, the company has just switched CEOs as founder Kevin Rose takes over the reins from acting CEO Jay Adelson. Rose’s first official act - killing off the DiggBar. A bold move in itself, Rose added to the transparency integral to his brand, and made the announcement on his blog, candidly.

“Framing content with an iFrame is bad for the Internet. It causes confusion when bookmarking, breaks w/iFrame busters, and has no ability to communicate with the lower frame (if you browse away from a story, the old digg count still persists). It’s an inconsistent/wonky user experience, and I’m happy to say we are killing it when we launch the new Digg (sign up for the beta here). That said, we will continue to iterate on our browser extensions for Firefox, Chrome, and IE. Look for seriously revamped versions of those in a few months.”

DMB spoke with Bob Buch, Digg’s VP of business development about the latest developments at Digg. “The general feeling is one of excitement; we are on the precipice of launching the new Digg, and getting back to our roots of innovation, entrepreneurial vision, and moving at light speed in the online media space.”

Digg will be ‘unbanning’ previously banned websites. Personalization is the key. “It’s not as critical to curate specific interests for the user. What defines spam is an individual choice. If you are interested in McDonald’s, or Toyota, or Coca Cola, you may want to follow them, it may be interesting content for you,” Buch says. “No one size fits all Home Page anymore. It’s a natural evolution of the product.”

“Input from 40 million readers combined with Digg’s curation algorithm will always be a better filter than policies enforced by a small staff of humans. It’s another way we’re welcoming brands into the Digg conversation. More ways are coming soon,” comments Chas Edwards, chief revenue officer.

As for Digg Ads, they have exceeded expectation. “In addition to being fun to work on, each day brings new performance records. More people are engaging, more revenue coming in, and more advertisers - a broad range - are signing up. And 50% are repeat advertisers,” Buch says.

The Digg plan of transforming ads into worthwhile content is a trend that seems to be working - and the company plans to accelerate efforts in that arena. Two recent examples cited by Buch:

“During Toyota’s recent crisis, instead of pulling back on their marketing plans, they increased their investment, getting their critical messages out in Digg Ads, like, “What to do if your accelerator gas pedal sticks,” or “Is your Toyota on the recall list?”

“Newegg used Digg Ads for their pre-release of the Avatar DVD with a simple message: “Avatar, pre-order today.” They treated it as newsworthy, the benchmark being, would you e-mail and share this item with a friend?”

Asked about syndicating the Digg Ad model, Buch commented soon, but not yet, as they are still working on fine-tuning targeting capabilities. Through a daily auction process, Digg sets a market price for all advertisers in the system. “This auction has unique, inherent fairness, avoids buyer’s remorse and encourages advertisers to bid their utility - or what the click is truly worth to them.”

Digg then uses the “wisdom of the crowds” to adjust the pricing for each ad by rewarding the most popular ads with free bonus impressions so they are seen more at a lower average cost per click. Digg’s second stage plan is to increase the relevancy of ads by allowing advertisers to more granularly target their audiences. To do so, Digg plans to shift from single daily auction to a real-time auction model.

Buch and his colleagues have been pleasantly surprised by how positively the community has responded to the ad model. “Users recognize Digg needs to make money, and they also recognize we are working to be innovative and customize messages to the community. Our ad system empowers users, impacts price, and rewards quality. We’re building an eco-system around it. It’s a game-changer for the ad industry; there are agencies now developing expertise in writing Digg headlines.”

Digg’s current mantra: “Listen to users; collect feedback; keep building and iterating.” Occupied fully with the redesign and delivering apps for iPhone and Android, Digg looks to the future with great expectations.

As everybody in the social media space is trying to gain equilibrium amidst the Facebook and Twitter tsunami’s of success, Digg is confident.

“Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. Digg is a first mover and innovator. The online ad market is so huge, the rising tide will raise all the boats,” Buch concludes.

Building A Brand Across Multiple Channels For Premium Ad Experience

By Ron Callari

From broadcasting to broader-casting, the NAB Show has evolved over the last eight decades to continually lead the industry. From conception through distribution, the NAB Show proudly serves as the incubator for excellence - helping to breathe life into content everywhere. More than 85,000 audio, video and film content professionals from 157 countries will convene at the Las Vegas Convention Center April 10-15.

Celebrities will include Emmy nominated actor Jim Parsons from “The Big Bang Theory” and Emmy winning actor, author Michael J. Fox will be honored with the NAB Distinguished Service Award for his significant and lasting contribution to the broadcasting industry.

Ivan Askwith is Director of Strategy at Big Spaceship, an award-winning creative agency based in Brooklyn, N.Y. As the head of the strategic practice, Askwith works to help clients navigate the digital landscape and understand emerging behaviors

He is a frequent speaker and lecturer on digital strategy, transmedia engagement and online communities at both academic and business conferences, and an occasional contributor to magazines like Slate and Salon.

Ivan Askwith will be sitting on the “Unboxing Advertising and Entertainment: Building a Transmedia Experience,” which will drill down on how top advertising and entertainment creatives design media worlds across multiple mediums over time. I had an opportunity to interview Askwith in advance of the conference to discuss his perspective on advertising and entertainment in this immersive, convergent and interactive age.

Push vs. Pull Marketing has changed over the years, as Web 2.0 has become an accepted means of engaging with the customer. How do you see pull marketing today versus five years ago?
To some extent, I think this depends on your marketing goals. If you’re trying to launch in the market and have no awareness, there’s still a clear value in push marketing and advertising: no one is likely to engage with your product or service until they know that it’s available.  But in a best-case scenario, push marketing functions like a spark or lighter — it gets things going.

The “pull” approach, on the other hand, is a lot more sustainable for brands that hope to grow, maintain and deepen relationships with both active and potential customers.  Moving forward, at least online and in interactive channels, it seems to me that Web 2.0 isn’t just an accepted means of engaging with customers — but one of the only viable means for engaging with customers and consumers.

There’s just too much value available on the Internet — content, social connection, utility, all the usual suspects — for us to assume that consumers will continue tolerating interruptive “push” messaging, except when it occurs in very specific (and useful) contexts.  There’s really a third concept in play: if push refers to brands trying to capture attention, and pull refers to brands being available when consumers choose to engage with them, the third option is closer to “magnetic” marketing — where the consumer and brand are drawn together, at the right time, without either side needing to take an aggressive action.

That’s where we see the importance of context.  Whether that means a Google ad that gives you a link just when you need it, but before you ask for it, or a location-aware ad that gives you a reason to grab lunch in the diner you’re just about to walk past.  You didn’t pull it, and it didn’t exactly push itself on you — the consumer and the brand just get drawn together at the right time, and everyone benefits.

Since Skittles was one of the first CPG brands to transform its home page into an online portal for Twitter (March 2, 2009), what were some of the positive and negative results of that initiative? Do you recommend this approach for brands in 2010?
I cannot comment on the campaign from last March.  However, in response to the second part of your question, I’m not sure there’s a single, reliable approach that I’d recommend for “brands in 2010″ for two reasons:

First, because in many ways 2010 is not so different from 2009, and I think we often find ourselves trying to always do something new, rather than figuring out what people want — which may well be something they’ve wanted for years — and just trying to get it right.

Second, and more important, because brands benefit the most from figuring out what works in their unique situation, with their unique value proposition and identity, and for the people that it’s most important they connect with.  For some CPG brands, it may be valuable to find a deep and aggressive use of Twitter, while for others it may be a waste of time and effort.

Here’s what I will say: if you’re going to turn your own home page into an online portal for Twitter, or any other community platform, it’s probably valuable to go farther than just appropriating a popular service (whether that’s Twitter, Foursquare or next year’s emerging buzz platform) and putting it on your site.  Again, it comes down to basic social skills: if you want people to value you, you have to give them something of value, rather than simply appropriating something they already value.  So can Twitter be valuable on a brand’s site?  Absolutely, so long as you can find a way to make Twitter better, more valuable, more interesting or more useful than it was to begin with.  An easy example is Best Buy’s Twelpforce, which lets consumers seek tech-support from the chain’s entire retail floor workforce — a brilliant way of integrating Twitter.

2010 has been earmarked as the year for Location-Based Social Networking and Augmented Reality. How can these two services be harnessed together to produce a higher degree of engagement with customers? Can you provide an example?
A quick distinction: augmented reality (AR) is often used to describe two distinct trends.  The first involves using webcams and visual triggers, so that people sitting at their computers can see themselves on screen, along with things that aren’t there — e.g. a dancing unicorn, a robot head on their own shoulders, etc).  In almost all cases, this version of AR has been used as a novelty gimmick, without creating much tangible value.  The second (and, I’d argue, more important) involves using cameras, usually on mobile devices, to augment the world with layers of information.  This version of AR, I think, has incredible implications for just about everything, including customer engagement.  So that’s the version of AR I’m referring to here.

For both location-based social networking and location-based AR, there’s a simple, powerful value proposition: these tools actually help change our experience as we move through the world.  And in both cases, they come back to the concept I mentioned earlier: rather than push or pull marketing, these location-based services are “magnetic,” and focused on connecting people with information at the right time, and in the right place, for it to be useful and actionable.  In essence, location-based services are the ultimate form of contextual marketing: capable of reaching people at the right time to influence (and assist) their behaviors and decisions.

Some of the best examples are also the best known: take Foursquare.  Even before their current slate of big-brand partnership “experiments” (e.g. Bravo, Zagat), the Foursquare team was striking deals with local businesses.  If I’m trying to decide where to grab a drink, and Foursquare can tell me (a) that my friends just arrived at a bar a few blocks away, or (b) that the bar across the street is offering a special deal to Foursquare users, those aren’t just advertisements: they’re useful offers.  And while AR hasn’t yet infiltrated the physical world in a massively useful (and branded) way, it’s not hard to imagine the opportunities: take a grocery store, where you can find deals, compare local prices, and get recipe suggestions for any product, just by pointing your phone at it… that, in and of itself, becomes a more compelling reason to consider shopping there.

You will be contributing to a panel at the upcoming NABSHOW (National Association of Broadcaster), April 12-15 titled, “Unboxing Advertising and Entertainment: Building a Transmedia Experience.” How do you define a ‘Transmedia Experience’ and why is it important to incorporate this approach in an advertising campaign in 2010?
For a full answer to that question, your best bet is to attend the NABSHOW panel on April 13, where we’ll be digging into the details. But the quick answer is that transmedia experiences are ones that take brands, entertainment properties or stories, and roll them out across multiple media platforms.  It’s still a pretty vague definition, so examples tend to be more effective.

The oldest fall-back example is The Matrix, which consisted of three movies, but also used comic books, two console video games, short animated videos, websites and a MMOG, with each of those elements contributing unique details, plot points and characters to the larger fictional world where all of these stories were set.  In the second film, Jada Pinkett-Smith’s character, Niobe, walks off-screen to pursue her own mission, and doesn’t re-appear onscreen until the third movie.  In the case of The Matrix, anyone interested in what happened during that period of time was able to follow her entire mission — because it was the plot of a high-profile video game released alongside the film.  Characters appeared in the second and third movies that audiences knew nothing about — unless they had already met those characters in one of the Matrix comic books, where they were introduced.  Transmedia experiences are ones where there are many different ways to access and engage with the stories, and some form of meaningful connection exists between all of them.  And, because transmedia experiences and stories are so much bigger than any individual film, game, television show or advertisement, they leave a lot more room for the audience — and fans, in particular — to participate.  They don’t answer all of the questions, or suggest that there’s a single “correct” way to engage; instead, they offer a huge range of official and unofficial opportunities for interaction.

As for advertising campaigns in 2010: the truth is that whether we design advertising campaigns to be “transmedia experiences” or not, they often are.  Audiences and consumers are used to engaging with the brands, stories or topics that interest them across the full range of channels that exist, and you could argue that brands that advertise in print, television, digital, OOH and so on are already transmedia experiences — they’re just not good experiences, because they don’t always put a lot of thought into how all of the components that make up a brand, or a franchise, work together.

Often, these things are still separate line items in budgets, and that fools us (as marketers and brand representatives) into thinking that they are different things.  We come up with our basic brand platform, we assign that out to all of the different teams involved in our brand marketing, and then leave it up to those teams to decide how their individual projects turn out.  A smarter approach to transmedia would be to look at each of those components, and ask how it contributes back inward to create the central meaning of a brand.  Because from a consumer perspective, that’s how it works: consumers don’t understand, or care enough to think about, the varying messages that a brand might present in each channel.  In our own lives, brands are brands, and stories are stories, and whatever pieces of brand messaging we encounter as we go about our lives become part of our overall experience of the brand.  So the result, in many cases, is that consumers experience brands as disjointed, inconsistent and self-contradicting. In some ways, it’s important to incorporate transmedia strategy into advertising campaigns now because consumers are way out ahead of us.  Not thinking about our work in transmedia terms just means we’re not concerning ourselves with the overall user experience of our brands.

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