Buying advertising has always been a bit of a shot in the dark.
Digital media ads haven’t improved things much. But a new initiative announced last week by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a cooperative non-profit comprised of more than 375 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States, may improve things.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau has engaged Media Bank, a leading think tank determined to quick march all media buyers towards a cross-platform efficiency, to see if we can set some common advertising standards for E-business. As might be expected, there aren’t even uniform standards on what the elements in interactive advertising are called.
You’ve certainly heard the old cliché in the advertising industry that half of all advertising money is simply wasted – and nobody can ever reliably figure out which half is wasted. That dilemma lives on in trying to calculate the exact impact of an online banner or a video roll – whether it appears on the CNN homepage or the MySpace page of a 13-year-old obsessing on the latest download from Pink. And just try putting a reliable marketing value on a product placement in a straight-to-DVD movie.
Exasperated corporate communicators often compile a rough and dirty cross-media traffic report to appease their bosses. But a sales campaign’s impressive report of multi-million “impressions,” for example, may be nothing but a sloppy and unreliable tally totaling up the alleged and inflated circulation of print publications ... plus the dubious audience numbers that broadcasters brag for a program on which a televised commercial might have appeared ... plus the so-called “eyeball” projections that web publishers claim when their hidden meters and snares detect a webpage visitor.
In the end, measuring techniques for advertising in digital media are still as flimsy as those in other, more traditional media – although what numbers there are come more instantaneously online.
At its most fundamental, however, no one knows exactly what really has happened whether a reader has opened a print edition of Forbes to a Lexis ad or “viewed” a MySpace website pushing a Wal-Mart holiday guide – let alone whether the consumer has even truly paid attention to the ad. We humans have such a facility for tuning out the most outlandish distractions.
Of course, you can certainly and reliably log things like how many people actually opened a digital online “page” on which a banner is running – whether it is a corporate website, the CNN website, or a YouTube page featuring a cat watching squirrels. And you can set real digital tripwires so that the folks that click through the banner to dedicated websites are reliably counted. But in the end, client comfort will come the old fashion way – when sales go up and revenue flow swells.
So keep an eye on both MediaBank and IAB’s E-business subcommittee to see how this all turns out. That old challenge about wasting half of the ad dollar comes from the late, great Philadelphian John Wanamaker who founded one of the first and greatest department stores – long since absorbed by Macy Inc. which also now principally does business as either Macy’s or wholly owned Bloomingdale’s.
By the way, Macy’s online business at www.macy.com is quickly becoming its strongest sector, according to its February financial reports. But if old John Wanamaker, the father of modern advertising, were still alive, he would still be pounding the desk and demanding to know which half of his money is being wasted by the damned on-line ad department.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
BEST PRACTICES IN PR
The Strategic Public Relations Center at USC Annenberg has released its fifth study of generally accepted practices in public relations. I had the honor of acting, in effect, as senior editor on the project. Professor Jerry Swerling, who heads the Public Relations Studies program, directs the GAP studies.
The GAP V report is the most comprehensive survey of PR professionals done in the United States.
This latest study incorporates views and information provided by respondents representing 520 different organizations – a 4.8% increase over the previous survey done in 2005 and published in 2006.
The organizations represented in this year’s survey ranged from the very smallest local charities and companies to global corporations in the highest reaches of the Fortune 500. Overall, respondents participating in the survey reported PR budgets averaging $4.4 million, average budget increases of 7% in 2007 over 2006, anticipated budget increases of 5% in 2008 over 2007, staff sizes ranging from 2 to 60, and fees to outside PR agencies that averaged 30% of their PR budgets.
The full report is available at no cost at annenberg.usc.edu/sprc.
Best Practice Communications
The study identifies, for the first time, best practices in public relations and organizational communications that the USC Annenberg researchers believe apply to all organizations.
“The term ‘best practice’ tends to be thrown around a lot, often referring to practices that are frequently used or used by respected organizations,” said Swerling. “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time correlations have been used to identify best practices with a reasonably high degree of certainty.”
After five surveys completed over a period of seven years, the GAP V report concludes that statistically sound correlations from various survey responses can now reliably be used to identify true best practices.
As just one example, respondents who report to the C-Suite – to the chairperson, the chief executive, or the chief operating officer – also are significantly more likely to report that PR has a relatively larger budget. The study also notes that reputational considerations, which are central to the PR/Communications function, are now commonly factored into organizational strategic planning by the C-Suite. Putting the two together, the report concludes with a reasonable degree of certainty that reporting to the C-Suite benefits the communications function.
“Those elements are more than enough to conclude that reporting to the C-Suite is a best practice. The profession has long assumed this to be true based on survey and anecdotal findings, but to the best of our knowledge this is the first time that a true pattern of interrelated benefits has been identified through correlations. While at this point we can’t literally prove scientific causality, the value of this reporting relationship is unmistakable. In future studies, we’ll drill down on causality, based on the hypothesis that there is, to some degree, a cause and effect relationship at work,” said Swerling.
More Non-Profits and Government Agencies
The continuing growth in survey participation by not-for-profit and government organizations is particularly significant in the GAP V report. These influential charitable and governmental agencies together make up nearly half of all respondents in GAP V.
One of the ways in which GAP V stands out from earlier GAP surveys is the evidence it provides that these non-commercial organizations are now structuring their communications functions and measuring their performance on par with the public and private commercial corporations against which they compete for awareness and public influence.
Measuring Effectiveness
The survey continues to show a characteristic of a public relations practice that has been in evidence across all five of the GAP reports: a significantly low funding level for evaluating PR effectiveness.
“Among the most sophisticated organizations – whether they’re Fortune 100 companies, major not-for-profits, or large government agencies – the most significant activities are carefully measured and evaluated based on broadly accepted metrics … except for public relations,” said Swerling.
From the first GAP survey completed in 2002 to this year’s GAP V, the study’s research team has noted that the profession lacks the tools, the resources, or the will to develop and adopt sophisticated forms of evaluation that would test the effectiveness of its activities.
The team continues to believe that this year’s reported 6% average expenditure for PR evaluation is still too low, and that the traditional aggregating of circulation or broadcast reach into a simple totaling of “impressions” or “advertising equivalency” is becoming less and less credible.
“We need to find, fund and apply reliable and widely-accepted measurement tools of our own,” said Swerling. “Until we do, we will not see the kind of generous funding that sister-disciplines such as advertising and marketing regularly receive. Communications practitioners know the power and impact of their profession, as do most CEOs. Nonetheless, we do a disservice to our discipline by measuring it solely in terms of media-related outputs and asking that our effectiveness be accepted on faith.”
Reporting Relationships
This year’s findings also confirmed the conclusion of previous GAP surveys on the direct correlation that reporting relationships have on PR budgets and reputation inside the organization. Communications organizations that report directly to what is called the “C-Suite” – either the chairperson of the organization, the chief executive, or the chief operating officer – consistently enjoy higher budgets relative to organizational gross revenues, greater control of the enterprise’s broader communication activities and an influential place at the table for the most important strategic and directional deliberations of senior management.
The study confirms that the profession has what it has long sought: C-suite reporting relationships, which are now the most common of all at 64% according to GAP V respondents. The second most popular reporting relationship reported this year was to marketing at only 23%. Although marketing-dependent PR organizations are sometimes lavishly funded, they do not enjoy the kind of internal influence and access to the top that C-Suite-reporting PR teams take for granted.
Much less desirable reporting relationships among all those explored by the study are those where PR teams principally report legal, finance, human resources, strategic planning or to the heads of business or operational units. When an organization’s PR teams do not report to the C-Suite, the results, almost uniformly, are diminished overall budgets and reduced cognizance of reputational considerations.
“The finding suggests that an organization that permits its PR people to report anywhere but to the chief executive or president is a leadership that does not recognize, and is not taking full advantage of, the benefits of a more strategically driven, fully integrated approach to organizational communication,” said Swerling.
Outside Agencies
PR agencies might define an ideal relationship with a corporate client as one in which they are a so-called ‘agency of record’ – a position in which a single agency has the client’s entire outsourced PR business. GAP V shows that this practice is increasingly a rarity. More than 60 percent of enterprises responding to GAP V use outside agencies, and large enterprises use them almost universally. However, the most common model now is to spread the work around multiple agencies, most probably to customize the work based on an outside agency’s unique strengths and skills.
Despite a sharp decline in the agency-of-record practice, PR agencies should take heart that well over three-fourths of those using agencies maintain continuing, multi-year relationships with those agencies. This situation is definitely not the constantly turning carousel of hiring and firing that most agency heads fear.
Global Reach
Up to this point, the GAP surveys have focused principally on organizations within the United States – but that may change next time.
Since more than a quarter of respondents in GAP V reported having international or global responsibilities for their U.S. based organizations, the USC Annenberg researchers intend over time, to significantly expand outreach to PR colleagues outside the United States. This outreach will gauge the state of the profession and assess the differences in practices on a more global basis.
“We all know that around the world the playing field for institutional messaging is changing at lightning speed, driven by the Internet, mobile telephony, and the broader digital universe that encompasses us all,” Swerling concluded. “Accordingly, our most important challenge as we prepare for a GAP VI will be reaching out to PR professionals working within the borders of other countries, as well as those working in transnational organizations, because they will play increasingly important roles in shaping the social, political and economic issues of our times.”
The GAP V report is the most comprehensive survey of PR professionals done in the United States.
This latest study incorporates views and information provided by respondents representing 520 different organizations – a 4.8% increase over the previous survey done in 2005 and published in 2006.
The organizations represented in this year’s survey ranged from the very smallest local charities and companies to global corporations in the highest reaches of the Fortune 500. Overall, respondents participating in the survey reported PR budgets averaging $4.4 million, average budget increases of 7% in 2007 over 2006, anticipated budget increases of 5% in 2008 over 2007, staff sizes ranging from 2 to 60, and fees to outside PR agencies that averaged 30% of their PR budgets.
The full report is available at no cost at annenberg.usc.edu/sprc.
Best Practice Communications
The study identifies, for the first time, best practices in public relations and organizational communications that the USC Annenberg researchers believe apply to all organizations.
“The term ‘best practice’ tends to be thrown around a lot, often referring to practices that are frequently used or used by respected organizations,” said Swerling. “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time correlations have been used to identify best practices with a reasonably high degree of certainty.”
After five surveys completed over a period of seven years, the GAP V report concludes that statistically sound correlations from various survey responses can now reliably be used to identify true best practices.
As just one example, respondents who report to the C-Suite – to the chairperson, the chief executive, or the chief operating officer – also are significantly more likely to report that PR has a relatively larger budget. The study also notes that reputational considerations, which are central to the PR/Communications function, are now commonly factored into organizational strategic planning by the C-Suite. Putting the two together, the report concludes with a reasonable degree of certainty that reporting to the C-Suite benefits the communications function.
“Those elements are more than enough to conclude that reporting to the C-Suite is a best practice. The profession has long assumed this to be true based on survey and anecdotal findings, but to the best of our knowledge this is the first time that a true pattern of interrelated benefits has been identified through correlations. While at this point we can’t literally prove scientific causality, the value of this reporting relationship is unmistakable. In future studies, we’ll drill down on causality, based on the hypothesis that there is, to some degree, a cause and effect relationship at work,” said Swerling.
More Non-Profits and Government Agencies
The continuing growth in survey participation by not-for-profit and government organizations is particularly significant in the GAP V report. These influential charitable and governmental agencies together make up nearly half of all respondents in GAP V.
One of the ways in which GAP V stands out from earlier GAP surveys is the evidence it provides that these non-commercial organizations are now structuring their communications functions and measuring their performance on par with the public and private commercial corporations against which they compete for awareness and public influence.
Measuring Effectiveness
The survey continues to show a characteristic of a public relations practice that has been in evidence across all five of the GAP reports: a significantly low funding level for evaluating PR effectiveness.
“Among the most sophisticated organizations – whether they’re Fortune 100 companies, major not-for-profits, or large government agencies – the most significant activities are carefully measured and evaluated based on broadly accepted metrics … except for public relations,” said Swerling.
From the first GAP survey completed in 2002 to this year’s GAP V, the study’s research team has noted that the profession lacks the tools, the resources, or the will to develop and adopt sophisticated forms of evaluation that would test the effectiveness of its activities.
The team continues to believe that this year’s reported 6% average expenditure for PR evaluation is still too low, and that the traditional aggregating of circulation or broadcast reach into a simple totaling of “impressions” or “advertising equivalency” is becoming less and less credible.
“We need to find, fund and apply reliable and widely-accepted measurement tools of our own,” said Swerling. “Until we do, we will not see the kind of generous funding that sister-disciplines such as advertising and marketing regularly receive. Communications practitioners know the power and impact of their profession, as do most CEOs. Nonetheless, we do a disservice to our discipline by measuring it solely in terms of media-related outputs and asking that our effectiveness be accepted on faith.”
Reporting Relationships
This year’s findings also confirmed the conclusion of previous GAP surveys on the direct correlation that reporting relationships have on PR budgets and reputation inside the organization. Communications organizations that report directly to what is called the “C-Suite” – either the chairperson of the organization, the chief executive, or the chief operating officer – consistently enjoy higher budgets relative to organizational gross revenues, greater control of the enterprise’s broader communication activities and an influential place at the table for the most important strategic and directional deliberations of senior management.
The study confirms that the profession has what it has long sought: C-suite reporting relationships, which are now the most common of all at 64% according to GAP V respondents. The second most popular reporting relationship reported this year was to marketing at only 23%. Although marketing-dependent PR organizations are sometimes lavishly funded, they do not enjoy the kind of internal influence and access to the top that C-Suite-reporting PR teams take for granted.
Much less desirable reporting relationships among all those explored by the study are those where PR teams principally report legal, finance, human resources, strategic planning or to the heads of business or operational units. When an organization’s PR teams do not report to the C-Suite, the results, almost uniformly, are diminished overall budgets and reduced cognizance of reputational considerations.
“The finding suggests that an organization that permits its PR people to report anywhere but to the chief executive or president is a leadership that does not recognize, and is not taking full advantage of, the benefits of a more strategically driven, fully integrated approach to organizational communication,” said Swerling.
Outside Agencies
PR agencies might define an ideal relationship with a corporate client as one in which they are a so-called ‘agency of record’ – a position in which a single agency has the client’s entire outsourced PR business. GAP V shows that this practice is increasingly a rarity. More than 60 percent of enterprises responding to GAP V use outside agencies, and large enterprises use them almost universally. However, the most common model now is to spread the work around multiple agencies, most probably to customize the work based on an outside agency’s unique strengths and skills.
Despite a sharp decline in the agency-of-record practice, PR agencies should take heart that well over three-fourths of those using agencies maintain continuing, multi-year relationships with those agencies. This situation is definitely not the constantly turning carousel of hiring and firing that most agency heads fear.
Global Reach
Up to this point, the GAP surveys have focused principally on organizations within the United States – but that may change next time.
Since more than a quarter of respondents in GAP V reported having international or global responsibilities for their U.S. based organizations, the USC Annenberg researchers intend over time, to significantly expand outreach to PR colleagues outside the United States. This outreach will gauge the state of the profession and assess the differences in practices on a more global basis.
“We all know that around the world the playing field for institutional messaging is changing at lightning speed, driven by the Internet, mobile telephony, and the broader digital universe that encompasses us all,” Swerling concluded. “Accordingly, our most important challenge as we prepare for a GAP VI will be reaching out to PR professionals working within the borders of other countries, as well as those working in transnational organizations, because they will play increasingly important roles in shaping the social, political and economic issues of our times.”
Sunday, March 16, 2008
TEN QUESTIONS FOR MARY WELLS LAWRENCE
I spoke today with an immortal of the advertising industry, Mary Wells Lawrence. Wells Lawrence was president of Wells Rich Greene, which she founded in 1967, and is now an active partner in launching one of the newest websites on the Internet, WoW (it stands for “Women on the Web”). WoW was launched with great fanfare on March 8, International Women’s Day.
WoW is fielding one of the classiest teams of contributors imaginable: among them Candice Bergen, Joan Juliet Buck, Joan Ganz Cooney, Joni Evans, Whoopi Goldberg, Judith Martin, Sheila Nevins, Peggy Noonan, Julia Reed, Liz Smith, Lesley Stahl, Marlo Thomas, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Wagner.
Mary Wells Lawrence, who will be a regular contributor to WoW, was the first woman CEO of a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. As it turns out, she is also an immortal and something of a “foundress” in our new digital universe – Atari was an early client of her agency in the 1970s and she created for Atari one of the first national advertising campaigns ever for a personal computer.
(The interview with Mary Wells Lawrence was posted first on a sister site, Digital Spritz, which features thought leaders and future-speak about the digital universe.)
___
Where were you – and who finally persuaded you – when you decided to become part of the WoW Women network?
I was meeting with Joni Evans and a few friends at a Manhattan restaurant called Nicole’s in my neighborhood. We were talking about the Internet and the web and how it really didn’t have much to offer for sophisticated women …for women who have seen the world, who have run or founded companies as we have … or for women who would like to do those things.
The idea for WoW began to come into focus at Nicole’s that afternoon … as did the notion that we should be the ones to start such a site.
How often will you be posting something to the WoW site?
I already am posting to the site. I have a 156-foot-long motor yacht that I really live on these days and it is equipped with two computers, an iPhone, and other devices so I can communicate from anywhere in the world and post to the site from there. I spend most of my time moving around internationally.
Will you be focused on any particular issues or subjects in your own WOW postings?
I’ll be commenting about what I see and hear as I travel. I will spending more time now in New York to help my partners at WoW, but I will also continue moving around from country to country with my ship. It’s a small Feadship yacht called “Strangelove” and very roomy, but short enough to get into almost any port I’d want to visit. It was built in the 1980s but refurbished, and I normally have a crew of 12 and any number of family members and friends who join me on board when they can. You’ll see me commenting on what is said and seen from wherever I might be that day.
How do you expect the business of advertising to change now that the web and web posting are such intimate parts of our daily lives?
Advertising in general is, as it always was, about storytelling. The kind of stories you tell – and the way you tell them – changes as the medium changes. That was true when radio and television were first introduced and it is true now. But the telling of stories as the principal tool of advertising will never go away.
What academic and employment advice would you give to a young woman headed to college this September who wants to pursue a career in advertising?
I have actually already given the advice in my book, A Big Life (in Advertising), published in hardback by Alfred A. Knopf in 2003, and now available in paperback. There is even more advice on the WoW website in a section that tells a woman how to become a millionaire … if she isn’t one already.
I can tell a young woman headed for an advertising career what I did to get ahead – I simply worked as the men around me worked. I didn’t preach feminism. I did it. And it didn’t hurt that I had some theatrical training. Being able to attract attention is at the heart of advertising and some training in stage work or public speaking surely helps.
When was the very first time you used e-mail … and what did you think of it then … and what do you think of it now?
My agency was early into the computer age. We had Atari when it was the pretty much the only company in the computer games industry.
Alan Alda was our spokesman for our Atari computer campaign and he explained for the first time how to put a personal computer together and how to make it work. I think the Atari personal computer itself was only about 64 K back then.
And then we had the IBM account. When we had IBM, we were linked into their new PROFS system which was one of the first e-mail systems that companies could efficiently use.
How best can web-based advertising effectively reach women?
The women we are after tend to get on the computer in the evening and they want something really engaging, classy, and really interesting to them. The most important thing our contributors offer is quality and experience, and I think it is critical that you know that the advertisers that you find at WoW will also be at that level.
So many visitors to our site are saying that they are relieved to finally find a place on the Web where the women who are posting columns and comments have had successful careers, have had substantial and real life experiences, and are capable of writing about things experienced women want to read and hear about.
We are attracting some extraordinarily bright women coming onto the WoW site and they are themselves very high tone in what they say back to us. I think, in fact, we have the absolute cream and that is making it possible for us to already attract quality advertisers. We have agreements now with Tiffany, Sony, and Citigroup, among others, and they are all certainly at that level.
What aspect of the digital world worries you the most?
I think there is always the pressure to keep up with the technology. It doesn’t really worry me, but I recognize that you need to be always upgrading and learning in a digital world. You also need some redundancy, I think, at this stage in our development. I rely on four computers at the moment – two on the ship and two in my Manhattan apartment – plus my iPhone.
Is there any particular individual in the advertising industry that you think provides reliable leadership on where web and on-line advertising are headed?
I don’t look so much to people in the advertising industry for that vision, but I would love to have Martin Sorrell, who is chief executive of WPP, in the same room as Ray Kurzweil, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs. I think then you would get a sense of where the future of advertising lies.
Martin’s company owns the largest media buying group in the world which includes J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy and several other global ad agencies. Everybody knows Bill Gates and Steve Jobs – and Jobs and Gates certainly know of Ray Kurzweil who is a brilliant futurist, scientist, and inventor. Ray probably has the best understanding of what’s coming in the digital universe. He is the author of book The Singularity is Near which I keep nearby wherever I am.
Is there any future for print advertising – or will it just fade away?
I love to read. I always have a book nearby and am never without newspapers. Fortunately, I even have a machine on the ship that will print out newspapers from anywhere in the world for me.
But I do think that print will fade in importance. It already has. We do most of our reading already on electronic screens and that will continue and grow.
A dear friend of mine said that eventually we’ll all have our own tents pitched wherever in the world we want to be and inside that tent, through the magic of an electronic screen, you can be anything you want to be – a tulip, a sky diver, whatever. It will deliver a virtual experience on demand and carry you away.
I can’t think of a lovelier future for us all.
WoW is fielding one of the classiest teams of contributors imaginable: among them Candice Bergen, Joan Juliet Buck, Joan Ganz Cooney, Joni Evans, Whoopi Goldberg, Judith Martin, Sheila Nevins, Peggy Noonan, Julia Reed, Liz Smith, Lesley Stahl, Marlo Thomas, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Wagner.
Mary Wells Lawrence, who will be a regular contributor to WoW, was the first woman CEO of a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. As it turns out, she is also an immortal and something of a “foundress” in our new digital universe – Atari was an early client of her agency in the 1970s and she created for Atari one of the first national advertising campaigns ever for a personal computer.
(The interview with Mary Wells Lawrence was posted first on a sister site, Digital Spritz, which features thought leaders and future-speak about the digital universe.)
___
Where were you – and who finally persuaded you – when you decided to become part of the WoW Women network?
I was meeting with Joni Evans and a few friends at a Manhattan restaurant called Nicole’s in my neighborhood. We were talking about the Internet and the web and how it really didn’t have much to offer for sophisticated women …for women who have seen the world, who have run or founded companies as we have … or for women who would like to do those things.
The idea for WoW began to come into focus at Nicole’s that afternoon … as did the notion that we should be the ones to start such a site.
How often will you be posting something to the WoW site?
I already am posting to the site. I have a 156-foot-long motor yacht that I really live on these days and it is equipped with two computers, an iPhone, and other devices so I can communicate from anywhere in the world and post to the site from there. I spend most of my time moving around internationally.
Will you be focused on any particular issues or subjects in your own WOW postings?
I’ll be commenting about what I see and hear as I travel. I will spending more time now in New York to help my partners at WoW, but I will also continue moving around from country to country with my ship. It’s a small Feadship yacht called “Strangelove” and very roomy, but short enough to get into almost any port I’d want to visit. It was built in the 1980s but refurbished, and I normally have a crew of 12 and any number of family members and friends who join me on board when they can. You’ll see me commenting on what is said and seen from wherever I might be that day.
How do you expect the business of advertising to change now that the web and web posting are such intimate parts of our daily lives?
Advertising in general is, as it always was, about storytelling. The kind of stories you tell – and the way you tell them – changes as the medium changes. That was true when radio and television were first introduced and it is true now. But the telling of stories as the principal tool of advertising will never go away.
What academic and employment advice would you give to a young woman headed to college this September who wants to pursue a career in advertising?
I have actually already given the advice in my book, A Big Life (in Advertising), published in hardback by Alfred A. Knopf in 2003, and now available in paperback. There is even more advice on the WoW website in a section that tells a woman how to become a millionaire … if she isn’t one already.
I can tell a young woman headed for an advertising career what I did to get ahead – I simply worked as the men around me worked. I didn’t preach feminism. I did it. And it didn’t hurt that I had some theatrical training. Being able to attract attention is at the heart of advertising and some training in stage work or public speaking surely helps.
When was the very first time you used e-mail … and what did you think of it then … and what do you think of it now?
My agency was early into the computer age. We had Atari when it was the pretty much the only company in the computer games industry.
Alan Alda was our spokesman for our Atari computer campaign and he explained for the first time how to put a personal computer together and how to make it work. I think the Atari personal computer itself was only about 64 K back then.
And then we had the IBM account. When we had IBM, we were linked into their new PROFS system which was one of the first e-mail systems that companies could efficiently use.
How best can web-based advertising effectively reach women?
The women we are after tend to get on the computer in the evening and they want something really engaging, classy, and really interesting to them. The most important thing our contributors offer is quality and experience, and I think it is critical that you know that the advertisers that you find at WoW will also be at that level.
So many visitors to our site are saying that they are relieved to finally find a place on the Web where the women who are posting columns and comments have had successful careers, have had substantial and real life experiences, and are capable of writing about things experienced women want to read and hear about.
We are attracting some extraordinarily bright women coming onto the WoW site and they are themselves very high tone in what they say back to us. I think, in fact, we have the absolute cream and that is making it possible for us to already attract quality advertisers. We have agreements now with Tiffany, Sony, and Citigroup, among others, and they are all certainly at that level.
What aspect of the digital world worries you the most?
I think there is always the pressure to keep up with the technology. It doesn’t really worry me, but I recognize that you need to be always upgrading and learning in a digital world. You also need some redundancy, I think, at this stage in our development. I rely on four computers at the moment – two on the ship and two in my Manhattan apartment – plus my iPhone.
Is there any particular individual in the advertising industry that you think provides reliable leadership on where web and on-line advertising are headed?
I don’t look so much to people in the advertising industry for that vision, but I would love to have Martin Sorrell, who is chief executive of WPP, in the same room as Ray Kurzweil, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs. I think then you would get a sense of where the future of advertising lies.
Martin’s company owns the largest media buying group in the world which includes J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy and several other global ad agencies. Everybody knows Bill Gates and Steve Jobs – and Jobs and Gates certainly know of Ray Kurzweil who is a brilliant futurist, scientist, and inventor. Ray probably has the best understanding of what’s coming in the digital universe. He is the author of book The Singularity is Near which I keep nearby wherever I am.
Is there any future for print advertising – or will it just fade away?
I love to read. I always have a book nearby and am never without newspapers. Fortunately, I even have a machine on the ship that will print out newspapers from anywhere in the world for me.
But I do think that print will fade in importance. It already has. We do most of our reading already on electronic screens and that will continue and grow.
A dear friend of mine said that eventually we’ll all have our own tents pitched wherever in the world we want to be and inside that tent, through the magic of an electronic screen, you can be anything you want to be – a tulip, a sky diver, whatever. It will deliver a virtual experience on demand and carry you away.
I can’t think of a lovelier future for us all.
Monday, February 25, 2008
INTERNET ADVERTISING STILL A “BUY” AMONG WALL STREET VENTURE CAPITALISTS
Is the shift by merchandisers to on-line advertising media going to continue? Two privately held investment funds certainly think so.
Kevin Delaney and Emily Steel of the Wall Street Journal report today that two bellwether internet media companies, Glam Media and Adconion Media, are having no trouble completing funding rounds that may fuel additional expansion in online advertising. Each company manages a very healthy on-line advertising network.
California-based Glam controls its own websites and a lively U.S. ad cooperative that includes as partners other Web publishers. Adconion, headquartered in London, is principally an on-line ad network expanding from Europe into the North American market. Both companies have turned to venture funds to continue their expansion.
But is investment in online marketing schemes still a go-go, given reports of weakening consumer demand around the globe?
It would certainly seem so: Glam, which is hardly two years old, is boldly projecting revenues for 2008 of $100 million. That’s enough market confidence to draw venture capital – to Glam and to its competitors.
According to Glam chairman and CEO, Samir Arora, the company’s equity-financing round gathered up $84 million and is led by Huber Burda Media. Others along for the ride include GLG Partners, Duff Ackerman & Goodrich Ventures and existing investors Accel Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Walden Ventures and Information Capital. All have a track record for bold investments in Internet networks. Hercules Technology Growth Capital will provide the debt financing.
Says today’s release from Glam: “The new funding will fuel Glam Media’s aggressive global expansion in 2008 across new territories and categories, focusing on transforming brand display advertising on the Web as the market shifts away from the dominance of portals and destination sites to the distributed media network model that Glam Media helped pioneer. The funding will also be used to make strategic acquisitions, invest in technology to grow the distributed media model and further global growth.”
Delaney and Steel this morning scooped Adconion’s own announcement, formally made later in the day, that it is also in motion in financial markets, enticing Index Venture and Wellington Partners to invest a combined $80 million in its growth plans.
We all know that Google, Microsoft, Yahoo are continuing to pour money into expanding the online ad-network business. But we probably pay too much attention to those giants rumbling around in this still-young market … and perhaps too little attention to the little guys like Glam and Adconion who can constantly tweak their business models inexpensively until they hit pay dirt.
Glam and Adconion are still both privately held companies, but keep a close eye on these two. I think they are what the ad world and Wall Street are coming to.
Kevin Delaney and Emily Steel of the Wall Street Journal report today that two bellwether internet media companies, Glam Media and Adconion Media, are having no trouble completing funding rounds that may fuel additional expansion in online advertising. Each company manages a very healthy on-line advertising network.
California-based Glam controls its own websites and a lively U.S. ad cooperative that includes as partners other Web publishers. Adconion, headquartered in London, is principally an on-line ad network expanding from Europe into the North American market. Both companies have turned to venture funds to continue their expansion.
But is investment in online marketing schemes still a go-go, given reports of weakening consumer demand around the globe?
It would certainly seem so: Glam, which is hardly two years old, is boldly projecting revenues for 2008 of $100 million. That’s enough market confidence to draw venture capital – to Glam and to its competitors.
According to Glam chairman and CEO, Samir Arora, the company’s equity-financing round gathered up $84 million and is led by Huber Burda Media. Others along for the ride include GLG Partners, Duff Ackerman & Goodrich Ventures and existing investors Accel Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Walden Ventures and Information Capital. All have a track record for bold investments in Internet networks. Hercules Technology Growth Capital will provide the debt financing.
Says today’s release from Glam: “The new funding will fuel Glam Media’s aggressive global expansion in 2008 across new territories and categories, focusing on transforming brand display advertising on the Web as the market shifts away from the dominance of portals and destination sites to the distributed media network model that Glam Media helped pioneer. The funding will also be used to make strategic acquisitions, invest in technology to grow the distributed media model and further global growth.”
Delaney and Steel this morning scooped Adconion’s own announcement, formally made later in the day, that it is also in motion in financial markets, enticing Index Venture and Wellington Partners to invest a combined $80 million in its growth plans.
We all know that Google, Microsoft, Yahoo are continuing to pour money into expanding the online ad-network business. But we probably pay too much attention to those giants rumbling around in this still-young market … and perhaps too little attention to the little guys like Glam and Adconion who can constantly tweak their business models inexpensively until they hit pay dirt.
Glam and Adconion are still both privately held companies, but keep a close eye on these two. I think they are what the ad world and Wall Street are coming to.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
GOLIN HARRIS IS THE SECRET SAUCE AT MCDONALD'S
I don't know if you noticed, but just before the turn of the year, that corporate senior citizen, McDonald’s Corporation, communicated it was boldly going up against Starbucks with the selected addition of expresso counters.
Starbucks quickly blinked in January and revealed it was selling cheaper cups of coffee for as low as $1 in markets where frisky McDonald’s is already pulling away caffein customers with a quality brew sold for $1.39 a pop.
Then, in global results announced February 8, McDonald’s Corporation delivered more feisty financial news, reporting an unexpected rise in January sales worldwide of 5.7 percent.
Is there some sort of magic rejuvenation formula in the secret sauce at Mickey Dee's?
We all know the destructive side of capitalism that makes even the mightiest global company prey to innovative upstarts. But how come some companies like McDonald’s just soldier on, going through several generations of leadership – this company is more than 50 years old now – and can somehow still find fresh competitive formulas to serve the public?
McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc is long gone from this planet and even his generous wife, Joan, has passed on, leaving Ray’s hamburger billions to the Salvation Army. There is, surprisingly, still a single and continuing individual who has played a key role in creating the community-facing persona of McDonald’s … and who keeps that engagement alive even today, half a century and more later.
Maybe the secret sauce is Al Golin, founder and still CEO of the GolinHarris PR firm.
GolinHarris is now itself a global company, with more than 30 offices from Beijing to Tehran and Jeddah. But Al, who signed up Ray Kroc in 1957 when the Burger Master was operating out of a tiny office in Chicago, is still providing personal counsel to a current generation of McDonald’s leaders half his age.
Ray Kroc was not Al Golin’s first client – Al began as movie flak for MGM – but Ray was one of the first. It all started with a cold call to Ray by the largely unknown upstart PR guy ... and together they took on the world.
Take a few minutes and watch the video of McDonald’s own salute to Al, done last year, that honors that relationship and shows Al bounding up the stairs like a gazelle to accept the audience’s applause.
Is there any other client-agency relationship in the PR industry that comes close this enduring partnership? I think not. When Ray invited Al to come by the office those many decades ago, he gave the young publicist a daunting mission – make McDonald’s a household word. Ray was willing to pay Al $500 a month even though Ray and his top managers weren’t yet taking full salaries themselves.
If McDonald’s is today a trusted face in communities around the world, it is largely because of the brand trust work recommended to McDonald’s year in and year out – and done over time for McDonald’s – by GolinHarris.
GolinHarris, guided by the boss, did then and still does the block and tackle of marketing PR for McDonald’s – store openings, product launches, and the like. But Al also introduced McDonald’s and its franchisees to local community service.
Al Golin was the first to suggest its continuing relationship with Jerry Lewis’s Muscular Dystrophy telethon. Al was also behind the idea for a McDonald’s All-American High School Band and the annual All-American High School Basket Ball Game. He named Hamburger University.
But if Ray Kroc has moved up a seat or two in heaven, it is because, after Ray’s death, Al Golin recommended and then nurtured the development of the Ronald McDonald House Charities. These safe homes, where parents can temporarily stay, keeping close to the remote hospitals treating their desperately ill children, have transformed the health care experience for hundreds of thousands of families around the globe.
Another secret to the long client-agency relationship? In the words of one McDonald’s executive last April: “Al, you’ve always treated us like you just got us. You never took McDonald’s for granted.”
You can thank Al Golin for that.
As for me, I still thank Ray Kroc for the lasting quality and consistency of the food – which is nonetheless more different than you might imagine around the world.
I have traveled the globe as a publicist to some of the most remote and exotic ports of call imaginable. But I am far from a sophisticate in cuisine.
My constant comfort and my joy – whether I am in Shanghai or Saratoga or Saint-Tropez – is a quick visit to McDonald’s ... to see what’s on the menu.
Starbucks quickly blinked in January and revealed it was selling cheaper cups of coffee for as low as $1 in markets where frisky McDonald’s is already pulling away caffein customers with a quality brew sold for $1.39 a pop.
Then, in global results announced February 8, McDonald’s Corporation delivered more feisty financial news, reporting an unexpected rise in January sales worldwide of 5.7 percent.
Is there some sort of magic rejuvenation formula in the secret sauce at Mickey Dee's?
We all know the destructive side of capitalism that makes even the mightiest global company prey to innovative upstarts. But how come some companies like McDonald’s just soldier on, going through several generations of leadership – this company is more than 50 years old now – and can somehow still find fresh competitive formulas to serve the public?
McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc is long gone from this planet and even his generous wife, Joan, has passed on, leaving Ray’s hamburger billions to the Salvation Army. There is, surprisingly, still a single and continuing individual who has played a key role in creating the community-facing persona of McDonald’s … and who keeps that engagement alive even today, half a century and more later.
Maybe the secret sauce is Al Golin, founder and still CEO of the GolinHarris PR firm.
GolinHarris is now itself a global company, with more than 30 offices from Beijing to Tehran and Jeddah. But Al, who signed up Ray Kroc in 1957 when the Burger Master was operating out of a tiny office in Chicago, is still providing personal counsel to a current generation of McDonald’s leaders half his age.
Ray Kroc was not Al Golin’s first client – Al began as movie flak for MGM – but Ray was one of the first. It all started with a cold call to Ray by the largely unknown upstart PR guy ... and together they took on the world.
Take a few minutes and watch the video of McDonald’s own salute to Al, done last year, that honors that relationship and shows Al bounding up the stairs like a gazelle to accept the audience’s applause.
Is there any other client-agency relationship in the PR industry that comes close this enduring partnership? I think not. When Ray invited Al to come by the office those many decades ago, he gave the young publicist a daunting mission – make McDonald’s a household word. Ray was willing to pay Al $500 a month even though Ray and his top managers weren’t yet taking full salaries themselves.
If McDonald’s is today a trusted face in communities around the world, it is largely because of the brand trust work recommended to McDonald’s year in and year out – and done over time for McDonald’s – by GolinHarris.
GolinHarris, guided by the boss, did then and still does the block and tackle of marketing PR for McDonald’s – store openings, product launches, and the like. But Al also introduced McDonald’s and its franchisees to local community service.
Al Golin was the first to suggest its continuing relationship with Jerry Lewis’s Muscular Dystrophy telethon. Al was also behind the idea for a McDonald’s All-American High School Band and the annual All-American High School Basket Ball Game. He named Hamburger University.
But if Ray Kroc has moved up a seat or two in heaven, it is because, after Ray’s death, Al Golin recommended and then nurtured the development of the Ronald McDonald House Charities. These safe homes, where parents can temporarily stay, keeping close to the remote hospitals treating their desperately ill children, have transformed the health care experience for hundreds of thousands of families around the globe.
Another secret to the long client-agency relationship? In the words of one McDonald’s executive last April: “Al, you’ve always treated us like you just got us. You never took McDonald’s for granted.”
You can thank Al Golin for that.
As for me, I still thank Ray Kroc for the lasting quality and consistency of the food – which is nonetheless more different than you might imagine around the world.
I have traveled the globe as a publicist to some of the most remote and exotic ports of call imaginable. But I am far from a sophisticate in cuisine.
My constant comfort and my joy – whether I am in Shanghai or Saratoga or Saint-Tropez – is a quick visit to McDonald’s ... to see what’s on the menu.
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