Virtue, » traditional media

A Mad Approach to Advertising

Tela Kayne — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:43:48 +0000

I just started watching Season 3 of the show Mad Men, which offers a glimpse into the life of an ad agency on Madison Avenue during the 1960′s. While the “Mad Men” of the show are quite interesting to watch as they smoke heavily, cheat on their wives, and drink throughout the day, I find the most compelling character to be the lead woman of the show. She’s Peggy Olson, the Secretary turned Copywriter at the Agency, and she has a knack for understanding what it means to know your audience. The agency is pitching a new product for Pepsi called Patio, a diet drink for women. Their campaign involves casting a sweet and sultry woman to sing Bye Bye Birdie while sexily sipping her diet drink…appealing to a man but that’s not their target audience. Peggy Olson questions this approach in favor of something more relatable. The “Mad Men” of the show insist that it’s the right way to go…women will buy the soda because they want to be just like the sexy woman in the commercial.

Celebrity endorsements and the idol approach are effective for large companies with big marketing budgets. However small or medium sized businesses need a more cost effective approach which leads us to the grass roots movement that social media propels. When we examine social networking, you are achieving something much more valuable than advertising. You are creating referrals, testimonials and endorsements, which gives you instant credibility and a level of trust that traditional advertising simply cannot achieve. Social Media allows you to leverage your existing customer base and create real world champions of your brand. While we may be entertained by a pretty woman singing Bye Bye Birdie while sipping her diet drink, we are more likely to purchase something based upon the positive experiences of our like-minded family and friends.

Advertising Times They are A-Changin

Tela Kayne — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:35:54 +0000

A recent article in Advertising Age, “Advertising Will Change Forever” suggests that companies will double their digital spending over the next 5 years, leaving ad budgets to at best remain the same and at worst disappear entirely.

In this recession, marketers have learned that interactive marketing is more effective, and advertising less effective, per dollar spent. While budgets for online have decreased, they decreased less than other budgets. Six out of ten marketers we surveyed agreed with the statement “we will increase budget for interactive by shifting money away from traditional marketing.” Only 7% said “we have no plans to increase our marketing budget.”

And it means that social “media,” which will account for $716 million this year between social network campaigns and agency fees, will generate $3 billion in five years. And this doesn’t even count displays ads on social networks (which are in the display ads category.) Of all the parts of digital marketing, social network marketing one is poised for the most explosive growth.

How are you marketing your business? Are your marketing dollars being used most effectively? Is it time to change with the advertising times? Get Started with your new interactive marketing and social media plan today!

What’s Your Social Media Success Story?

Tela Kayne — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:06:19 +0000

Not long ago, I read an article published in USA Today about a cake decorator whose business increased by 15-20% as a direct result of her Twitter presence. Today I’m reading an article published in AdAge about an unnamed company who saw a 28% return on their $1 million investment in a social media contest campaign that ran last year on MySpace. According to that article the positive results can be seen in all scales of implementation:

Particularly by package-goods standards, that $1 million digital outlay with one site was large. But Dunnhumby has run similar studies with smaller digital campaigns.“Just about every one has seen some positive results,” Mr. LaRocca said. “And the ones that have had negative results … just had a poor message or poor targeting.”

Success stories related to social media and how it has a direct correlation to increased revenue are becoming more and more common . And the return on investment is usually high, considering that social media has little to no hard costs associated with it, and is more of an investment in time and strategy. Even for those companies who opt to have a third party manage their social media on their behalf, the ROI is still high as compared to traditional advertising methods.

That leads me to the point of this post. What’s your social media success story? Please respond with a comment if you’ve had any improvement to your business as a result of using social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter. Whether it be a single new customer, an increase in revenue, improvement in your customer service, positive testimonial or all of the above, please share your story!

You can also share your story in the discussion section of the Kayne Interactive Facebook Page, so your friends can see and pass along the good news to their network!

Interaction is the Key to Success

Tela Kayne — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:04:52 +0000

This morning I read Seth Godin’s lastest blog post, The Panhandlers Secret“. He’s a marketing genius in my book (his success is evidence of it) and he has a way of presenting his message in a very succinct way and even better…his message leaves an impact. His post today includes the following story:

When there were old-school parking meters in New York, quarters were precious.

One day, I’m walking down the street and a guy comes up to me and says, “Do you have a dollar for four quarters?” He held out his hand with four quarters in it.

Curious, I engaged with him. I took out a dollar bill and took the four quarters.

Then he turned to me and said, “can you spare a quarter?”

What a fascinating interaction.

First, he engaged me. A fair trade, one that perhaps even benefited me, not him.

Now, we have a relationship. Now, he knows I have a quarter (in my hand, even). So his next request is much more difficult to turn down. If he had just walked up to me and said, “can you spare a quarter,” he would have been invisible.

Too often, we close the sale before we even open it.

Interact first, sell second.

After reading the above, I started thinking about how this applies to Kayne Interactive and what we are trying to achieve for our clients. We are after all an “interactive” company, so interaction is key to our business. And with the rising popularity of blogs and social networking, there is no better time than now to evolve your marketing campaign into an interactive format. Traditional media is one-way communication. You broadcast your message to a limited audience and receive little to no feedback as to who was reached or the impression that was left. Interaction on the other hand is two-way communication. Blogs and social networking encourage a community of people to interact with one another from the comfort and convenience of their homes and offices. The reach of your message is global, the potential size of your community is limitless, and your reader is engaged and ready to listen to your pitch (and provide feedback if they are so compelled). All this for less than the cost of running a traditional newspaper ad!