- This week CNN money had an informative article “Why all Smart Phones are $199” that set out to demystify what appears to be a consensus price for smart phones. In short? It is the lowest price they believe they can get most consumers to pay while still making a profit on the sale of the phone. Simple yes, but how it all comes together is still somewhat interesting.

- If you have a Facebook Fan Page, A Beginners Guide to Facebook Insights is a must read!

- Twitter now has 145 Million registered users! Still much smaller than Facebook but a growing force to be reckoned with

- One of the best sources of information on different countries is the CIA World Factbook which now comes with a very cool dashboard to display all of that data. Fun to play around with but also heavy on good data and best of all, free.

- The 6th version of Google’s web browser Chrome has been released

When reviewing our options, we often find eNewsletters as a viable vehicle to reach a niche target audience. Because the audience has opted in to receive these emails, we can be assured that our message is reaching the right people.

So the targeting is great, but is there enough reach to justify the cost? Most publishers have decided to price display ads within their regular email correspondence based on the number of recipients. It’s not uncommon for a publisher’s pricing model to look something like this:

                62,000 recipients

                $30 CPM

                Total Cost – $1,860 (62k / 1000 * $30)

There is a major flaw with this pricing model: Open Rate. Most eNewsletters have an open rate between 20% and 35%. Even on the high end, right off the bat you’re almost tripling your CPM. Revisiting our pricing example above:

                62,000 recipients

                35% open rate

                21,700 actual opens/views

                Effective CPM ~ $85 ($1,860 / (21.7k / 1000))

Chances are the media buyer who purchased the eNewsletter based on the $30 CPM would have found a more cost effective solution if presented with the effective CPM of $85. The current pricing model would be akin to a radio station determining their pricing based on how many people have a radio in their car.

The open rate issue also decreases our reach dramatically which is usually the objective of this tactic. Banners in eNewsletters do not receive a high click rate and shouldn’t be used in a media plan where direct response is desired.

Another concern is the confines of running display advertising within email clients. This isn’t a web page, even though we often group our eNewsletter placements in with our web placements in the media plan. Limitations include no ability to run Flash ads or any type of rich media. Limited to GIFs and/or JPGs, the ability to engage the user and drive response is limited.

Even with these drawbacks, eNewsletters are still a tempting media vehicle and one that should be analyzed and scrutinized carefully.  I’ll give more consideration to eNewsletters as a viable tactic in my digital media plan as soon as publishers start pricing them based on how many people will see the ad, rather than the absolute potential of the newsletter.

Karl Heberger
Digital Media Supervisor

ColorZilla

Have you ever been to a Web site and seen a color you loved and wanted to know what it was? Colorzilla adds a tiny eyedropper to the browser. Click on it, then hover over the color you like and click. Colorzilla gives you all the information you need to add that color any creation.

Screengrab

Easily one of the most useful plugins. If you ever need to take a screengrab of an entire Web page this add-on lets you do it.

FireFTP

Need a well featured FTP client but don’t want to leave your Web browser? FireFTP allows you to connect to servers and transfer files without ever leaving firefox.

Downthemall

This add-on is a different kind of download manager, giving you the ability to easily grab and store the content off a page. This is a very handy tool if you are looking to grab a lot of images off of a page or download multiple pages of content from a Web site.

Webdeveloper

If you do any Website development this is a must have. The add-on gives you the ability to inspect the many different parts of a page including its structure, CSS, cookies, images and forms. You can easily turn off features of a site to see what happens, validate its code, resize the window to see how the site scales and do much, much more.

There are several different Web sites and dozens of smart phone applications offering the ability to track workouts and keep food logs. The best tools connect users with a social graph to share progress around the topic of staying fit. My favorite is DailyMile where I have been keeping track of workouts for about a year now. (Note: There is no food log on DailyMile so I would recommend the calorie counter at About.com or one of the many apps available on Smart Phones.)

On DailyMile users can monitor circuit training, cycling, running, swimming, weight training, Yoga or any of a number of other popular activities. If you are someone like me who prefers to be outdoors and outside of the gym, you can chart your miles using the sites Google Maps integration.  Then you can store frequently used routes and even see other users who follow similar routes in your area.

Once you log your activity, the time and your distance, DailyMile uses your profile information to calculate the calories you’ve burned. You can see your progress over the days, weeks, months and years. This is great for watching the miles add up and the pounds come off. Of course the site also shows those “not so great” weeks when you didn’t quite make your goals.

DailyMile offers a set of badges you can send as motivation to friends and followers. You can also leave encouraging comments. In the past, there have been times when kind friends have sent me motivation as a gentle reminder to get back on track. It worked and I often do the same for others.

On DailyMile you can elect to automatically post your workouts to your Facebook and Twitter feeds. You don’t have to do this, but it makes the process much easier to expand your friend-base. I have been greeted with wonderful, motivating comments from friends, family and Twitter followers who aren’t using use DailyMile.

In addition to motivation, the most important benefit for me has been the invaluable amount of information I have learned from using the site. Watching how other people train helps remove what sometimes can feel like insurmountable hills when you take up a new regimen. Reading their workouts have reminded me that everyone struggles and stumbles.

The site also helped me find the best workout for me. I had been running and struggling because of complications from asthma. As hard as I tried I could just never build a consistent routine. Watching the success others had with cycling, I decided a few weeks ago to buy a mountain bike.

In four weeks I have already logged near 100 miles. Best of all, biking allows me to accomplish more than I was achieving from running and with far less stress on my lungs. I now look forward to coming home, working out and logging the routes!

If you are looking for motivation, or even just a way to keep track of a workout, DailyMile is an invaluable resource. I highly recommend joining. You can always see my profile and connect if you are looking to get started.

There’s something refreshing (excuse the pun) when a large corporation can launch a successful marketing campaign complete with a charming, burly man catching large fish in his bathroom. The charming man I’m talking about is former NFL wide-receiver turned actor Isaiah Mustafa who is winning the hearts and minds of  Twitter fanatics and YouTube junkies all over the country for his work as pitchman for the company Old Spice.

Wrapped in a white towel in front of a shower, Mustafa is “talking with the Internet,” responding to questions and comments from Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook users. Whether he’s having a conversation with tweeting actress Demi Moore or asking user @Jsbeals’s girlfriend to marry him in front of a YouTube audience of nearly one million, he’s got social media users hooked.

So, what can marketers learn from the Old Spice campaign? The company’s been around since 1938, but there’s nothing old school about how they are reaching a new audience. With that said there are some key marketing fundamentals that Old Spice has brilliantly mastered.

1. Consistency in the Brand – Consistency is the Holy Grail of branding. If you don’t have stability in your campaign messaging, then you should go back to the drawing board. That’s what is so compelling about Old Spice. From their Twitter bio (I’m the man your man could smell like) and location (I’m in a bathroom) to the overall reoccurrence of anything that screams “MANLY;” they know their brand inside and out.
2. Harnessing the Social in Social Media – A big piece of the social media marketing puzzle that many companies are missing seems simple, but actually takes hours of management and strategic planning to grasp. What is it? The social part of social media. The reason I, along with many others, have fallen in love with this campaign is because Old Spice is actually responding to, not talking at, their audience. Both star blogger Perez Hilton and Joe Schmo can both get a response in the same day. And if you know it’s a possibility that you’ll be spoken to, aren’t you more likely to engage in conversation?(Side Note: I must admit: I may even be guilty at mentioning @oldspice in my tweets, in the hopes of getting a YouTube response. No luck yet, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed!)
3. Targeting Influencers – Old Spice didn’t just respond randomly, as it may appear. They strategically had a mix of both influencers in society (celebrities, bloggers, etc.) and everyday people in the Twitterverse who had outrageous requests. Old Spice took advantage of the celebrity influence that people like Alyssa Milano, the NHL Blackhawks, even @twitter itself have in order to ensure that content will continue to be created.

Before this, I’ve felt that no company really understood new media. With most corporations skimming the surface of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, there hasn’t been a campaign that has really harnessed the potential of these sites…until now. Old Spice has set the bar high for Twitter/YouTube viral campaigns, and I challenge others to step up and let their brand shine through as they have.

Katie Shill
Interactive Media Intern

One of the first steps is determining what your brand scorecard is today and then setting goals for where you want it to be in 1 year, 5 years or even beyond. Some questions you’ll need to ask yourself (or your marketing team) are:

•    Do you really know how your brand is perceived by your customers and the market?
•    What customer metrics do you have in place? Do you know what your customer satisfaction level is? Are your products and services viewed as quality and a good value
•     Are you the preferred brand? If not, why?
•    If you haven’t looked at your competitors recently, now is time!  Do you know what your share of market and share of voice is?  This information is invaluable in developing marketing budgets to meet revenue goals.
•    When was the last time you took an in-depth look at your industry?  Staying on top of market trends can have an effect on your business short term and long term.

Once you have a handle on your customer and market metrics, you can then put together value metrics including profitability analysis, sales and margin analysis, and revenue from brand advertising.  Sample scorecard follows.

Check out this link for other scorecards and metrics.

Advertising investment generates sales volume and strengthens brand. Advertising adds value short-term through sales uplifts – and long term by increasing equity in the brand. Sales volume improves market performance. Brand building strengthens the brand in the eyes of the customer. All elements contribute to brand equity which converts into profit by feeding back into product innovation, and marketing investment

You can learn more about the financial value of brands at Brand Channel.

So, are you investing enough in marketing to take market share, combat competitive encroachment and meet revenue and sales objectives?

If you are going to participate in social networking, you have to contribute.  Once you realize that Twitter is not just people replaying their daily activities and that LinkedIn isn’t only job seekers and new college graduates, you realize that there is valuable information out there.  In fact, there is so much content available that you have to be very creative to compete. 

Content for social media can come from:

1. Links
2. Self-created content
3. Other social media users

Fortunately, if you don’t have time to write a blog everyday, there are lots of ways that you can find and organize content to use for social media and keeping up to date on your industry. In addition to industry specific publications, here are twenty sources that will aggregate content for you based on your interests and preferences:

Alltop- organizes RSS feeds organized by content category

Cnet- technology news aggregate

Delicious- content directory that organizes information by tags

Digg- Directory of content by category based on site user preference

Drudge Report- linkage to many national, international and industry publications in a “river of news” format

Facebook-business pages and applications that incorporate content that can be searched through the platform

Fark- aggregate of multiple local news and information sources

Google Blogs-searchable blog content by category based on Google Search results

Google News- find directories from hundreds of different news categories

Huffingtonpost- aggregate of news and cultural content

I-Google-personalized Google page where you can organize content from all over the internet

Mashable- technology and internet industry news aggregator

Slide Share-collection of presentations

Social Mention- searchable information by keyword through social media

Stumbleupon-recommendation engine which shows your internet content based on your interests and preferences (need to set up an account)

Technorati- aggregator of blog content searchable by category

Topix- local news information aggregate, that is searchable by geography

Tweetmeme- organizes content by different category and popularity on twitter

Twitter Search- searching twitter for content, keywords and themes

Yahoo News- organizes top stories and trending topics many topics

YouTube- allows you to search for content areas and recommends videos based on your viewing habits

Because it’s the world we live in.  We love Facebook and the ability it gives us to stay in touch with family and friends, especially those we don’t interact with on a daily or even weekly, monthly or yearly basis.  But who else is secretly interacting with us on Facebook?   Our information is a hot commodity these days and Facebook is the place we store and share it.  So how do we keep our info safe?  Nothing’s ever truly safe once you post it anywhere on the internet, so if you don’t want everyone to know something, then don’t post it.   However, if you’re comfortable sharing, but still would like to try and manage who sees it, then this post might have a helpful tool for you.

www.Privacydefender.net
It’s simple to use and only takes a few minutes to get the hang of and implement.  It’s courtesy of www.ReputationDefender.com, one of the world’s leading comprehensive online reputation management and privacy companies.   It will evaluate your privacy settings and in a simple graphic, layout for you who is seeing what, and what can be shared with whom.   With a click of the mouse, your privacy settings on Facebook will be automatically updated based on your choice of who you want to see what.  Below is a screen grab of my initial evaluation.  My Facebook privacy settings were pretty much where I wanted them, but not quite.  I thought I had adjusted my privacy settings, but it can get confusing.  PrivacyDefender.net made it a bit simpler to actually see how private my info actually was.  It even showed me that advertisers were able to share my info with friends in ads.   This option has now been set to “off”.  I am still not sure how to turn this option on/off, but PrivacyDefender.net does it for me.

I’ve checked this out on Snopes.com and “Googled” it to see how dependable it actually was and that it wasn’t just another scam.  I’ve found nothing to lead me to believe that this is anything but a helpful tool in the world of Facebook privacy.  Unless someone can prove to me otherwise, I would recommend giving this a try.  It only takes a few minutes and it’s no hassle.

Sean Magin
Account Manager

The 36 women were wearing outfits designed by a Dutch beer company.  The dresses were sold in the Netherlands with Bavaria Beer packs prior to the World Cup, according to foxsports.com.  FIFA, short for the Federation Internationale de Football Association, which is the governing body of soccer across the globe, accused the women of participating in an ambush marketing campaign.

The women were sitting close to the field dressed as Danish fans making a lot of noise.  According to ESPN.com, at one point during the match, they removed their red and white clothing to be sporting only an orange mini dresses with a small beer logo.  During in the second half of the match, they were escorted out of the stadium, where they were questioned for hours.  The orange mini dresses were controversial because Budweiser is the official sponsor of the World Cup.  This sponsorship means that it is the only beer company that is permitted to advertise in the stadiums at the World Cup.  At this point, no one has been arrested, but legal measures are being explored.

Talk about out of the box marketing.  Next time you have a crazy idea like this, check with your Tipping Point Media  account executive, I am volunteering  Kristen and Sean to dress in orange, and blue, and red, or… well maybe not, but it would be fun to watch, right?

“I think we just had an Earthquake,” Katie said “people are talking about it all over Twitter.” I immediately loaded up Tweetdeck, skimmed my collection of #ROC Tweeters and then added a new column, “Earthquake”. Within seconds I had a flood of Twitter users reporting what they were experiencing. Without knowing where the epicenter was in those moments, I could approximate. First I saw Toronto, then Rochester, Buffalo, then Central New York, then large chunks of Ontario Canada. Somewhere near Toronto seemed likely but as more tweets came in they suggested all of Ontario was feeling tremors. I figured  a little more to the East was the likely candidate for the epicenter. Then it was confirmed by the USGS, 5.5 magnitude north of Quebec.

I have blogged previously about mapping “trends” on Twitter and how location information attached to data might enhance our lives and understanding of the world. Putting the two together is an online application, Trendsmap and if you looked around the same time I did on Wednesday, this is what you saw.

Trendsmap watches what people are talking about and matches the  data to the location of Tweeters who are using devices with location data turned on. While this is a small number of overall Twitter users at present, the site still gives an amazing live insight into what is happening in a given area. Major sporting, news and weather events turn up as they happen. Elections, political scandal, government revolutions, coups and Wars appear too.

As the number of people posting data with location information increases, so will the accuracy of Trendsmap and services like it, giving us all a live picture of what is important to people at any given moment or over time around the world.