On a recent trip from Seattle to LAX, I noticed two notable avenues to the way passengers are exposed to advertising. The first was listening to a co-branded message between Alaska airlines and VISA credit cards, broadcasted by the pilot. It didn't seem to evoke much interest among the coach passengers. I'd say that it's more like we were too tired to care about another credit card offer. The second was a $20 coupon of a restaurant I'd never heard of which was handed out by a stewardess.
It's not surprising though. The Nov 2005 press release from UK-based Ink Publishing (ink-publishing.com) notes that "global inflight advertising revenues are predicted to grow from US $685 million in 2004 to US $832 million this year and will exceed US $1,010 million in 2006, with increased general advertising spending plus the opening of niche markets by point-to-point airlines taking credit for the growth." These sales figures are based on their own portfolio data of inflight titles they publish. You can imagine how tremendously large this market really is.
What is surprising is how late-to-market some airlines are with capturing their share of this revenue stream.
It is what it is
Yes, I am opinionated, especially about marketing and a lot of what goes on in this blog seems to look down upon many practices within the industry. I call it how I see it, with both an agency-side and client-side perspective. I recommend any marketing student fresh out of college to get experience from both sides of the fence. It really helps with perception and anticipation of client needs. If you ever come across a marketer without an opinion, turn around and walk away quickly.
Here're my new year's wishes..
I wish that people would be more honest and open about how they interact with other people, both on a social and business level.
I wish that corporate nirvana wasn't so boring. I recently left a job where I was in total control of the direction and scope of market strategy for the company. I reported to the CEO, and occassionaly to the Sr VP of Sales and Marketing for sales related issues. I had one direct report. I created and managed marketing campaigns. I developed and launched two new marketing services. I revamped the sales lead generation system to be entirely paperless. I negotiated vendor prices for data acquisition projects. I did legal compliance for telemarketing data and email marketing, eventhough we had inhouse corporate counsel. I built a website to generate ad revenue for the companies partnered and doing business with ours. I did a lot of things. But, I got bored and frustrated that I couldn't do more. How could I do more? Well, for one I would have liked a set, quantifiable, spendable budget instead of having to pick and choose between projects that I thought would be good to enhance the brand image of the company instead of ones that would gain the CEO instant gratification on short-term benefits.
Yes. I have issues. Everyone has issues. I thrive on making the world better, making marketing a legitimate science, making health defying desserts, and ranting on about what can be done to make this a better place.
My holy grail of marketing is to learn and know everything there is to know about marketing in each of the four marketing segments (business, consumer, non-profit, and government) and become more aware of industry trends affected by marketing. The ultimate test of a marketer is not the job itself, but what you do with that knowledge. Anybody can work for a living. That's no sweat. Validation comes from the outside.. from writing journal articles that aren't meant as sales pitches for your own company, from teaching college courses, from revitalizing the way people think about marketing. The best thing of all is that learning is a continuous process and marketing is always evolving.
Here're my new year's wishes..
I wish that people would be more honest and open about how they interact with other people, both on a social and business level.
I wish that corporate nirvana wasn't so boring. I recently left a job where I was in total control of the direction and scope of market strategy for the company. I reported to the CEO, and occassionaly to the Sr VP of Sales and Marketing for sales related issues. I had one direct report. I created and managed marketing campaigns. I developed and launched two new marketing services. I revamped the sales lead generation system to be entirely paperless. I negotiated vendor prices for data acquisition projects. I did legal compliance for telemarketing data and email marketing, eventhough we had inhouse corporate counsel. I built a website to generate ad revenue for the companies partnered and doing business with ours. I did a lot of things. But, I got bored and frustrated that I couldn't do more. How could I do more? Well, for one I would have liked a set, quantifiable, spendable budget instead of having to pick and choose between projects that I thought would be good to enhance the brand image of the company instead of ones that would gain the CEO instant gratification on short-term benefits.
Yes. I have issues. Everyone has issues. I thrive on making the world better, making marketing a legitimate science, making health defying desserts, and ranting on about what can be done to make this a better place.
My holy grail of marketing is to learn and know everything there is to know about marketing in each of the four marketing segments (business, consumer, non-profit, and government) and become more aware of industry trends affected by marketing. The ultimate test of a marketer is not the job itself, but what you do with that knowledge. Anybody can work for a living. That's no sweat. Validation comes from the outside.. from writing journal articles that aren't meant as sales pitches for your own company, from teaching college courses, from revitalizing the way people think about marketing. The best thing of all is that learning is a continuous process and marketing is always evolving.
Pay for Pixels
Have you been approached by an SEO expert pitching this: Hello, we have a great offer today for exclusive ad positioning with our partner sites. You get to pay for dots!
Fortunately, I have not.
I read an absurd article in DM News about pixel advertising; then I did a search on it and found PPC sites selling pixel ad space from $0.05 to $1.00 per pixel. How dumb do advertisers think people are? For those of you unfamiliar with computers or pixels for that matter, pixels are the smallest unit in a graphical image, typically a single dot by most definitions.
Let's say that the average webpage has the dimensions to fit a 1024 x 768 screen, without requiring its users to use the arrow keys to scroll off the page to view more content. Theoretically you can make your webpages as long as you want, provided that you paid for enough bandwidth for that information to be sent from your web server to a user's screen. Unfortunately, the more traffic your site receives, the more you'll have to pay for bandwidth usage unless you host your own web server.
A problem with this new fad is that many of these new pixel ad websites have a graph paper display of squares with the bought pixels displayed as text advertising. Bloody useless. No content. Why bother putting up ad space if there is no content? It's another outcropping of link farming, only worse, people are paying for it. You might as well put up a sign in the desert saying "Eat Here" when there're no restaurants around for hundreds of miles.
Fortunately, I have not.
I read an absurd article in DM News about pixel advertising; then I did a search on it and found PPC sites selling pixel ad space from $0.05 to $1.00 per pixel. How dumb do advertisers think people are? For those of you unfamiliar with computers or pixels for that matter, pixels are the smallest unit in a graphical image, typically a single dot by most definitions.
Let's say that the average webpage has the dimensions to fit a 1024 x 768 screen, without requiring its users to use the arrow keys to scroll off the page to view more content. Theoretically you can make your webpages as long as you want, provided that you paid for enough bandwidth for that information to be sent from your web server to a user's screen. Unfortunately, the more traffic your site receives, the more you'll have to pay for bandwidth usage unless you host your own web server.
A problem with this new fad is that many of these new pixel ad websites have a graph paper display of squares with the bought pixels displayed as text advertising. Bloody useless. No content. Why bother putting up ad space if there is no content? It's another outcropping of link farming, only worse, people are paying for it. You might as well put up a sign in the desert saying "Eat Here" when there're no restaurants around for hundreds of miles.
List types - Buyer Beware or Be Aware
A standard list has one or more components that makes it marketable to businesses, consumers, nonprofits, or government. These components are what we call list selections, or selects. Data pricing varies by retail/wholesale vendor, by price per thousand (/M) or flat fee (/F), and by client need. On the wholesale side, pricing can vary from as little as $0.02/record to $0.15/record, depending on how selective (or targeted) the list is. On the retail side, pricing can go as high as $3/record (or higher, say $25/record for mortgage/real estate leads, or $45/record for custom lead generation. Pricing by need is based on whatever markup exists when buying through an agency like a marketing/advertising/or PR firm or directly through a list owner.
A list contains at least a respondent's name, job title, company, address, and phone number. Some direct mail lists lack selects like phone number. Some telemarketing lists lack job title, company, and address, giving a business only the person's name and a telephone number by which to reach them. As a general rule, if you're picking selects on a datasheet, you should require your list vendor to export those selects instead of furnishing you with the basic name/address/phone repertoire. This allows you to verify the integrity of the list. If you buy business list, you can segment them in your inhouse database by SIC code.
Selects can be by:
* demographic: race, religion, political position, gender, age, household income
* industry: automotive, banking, Internet, high tech, manufacturing, consumer products, etc.
* region: north, south, east, west, Americas, Europe, Asia, by state/province, etc
* other identifiers: number of employees, number of branch locations, subsidiary, HQ, public/private company
On the agency side of marketing, list brokers often give each other discounts if they are in the same business, providing services and list products to their customers. This discount can be up to 20% of the base price of a list. The markup can be as high as 30% on top of that, which is how agencies make the bulk of their money. Regardless of which side of marketing you work on, agency or client side, there's always an average, industry-acceptable price for something.
Biggest bang for the buck does not exist in marketing. It only exists as an unfounded, preconceived notion that such a thing is possible. What really ends up happening is what is conveyed during a sale between the customer and the agency. The client believes they are getting a good deal, the list is satisfying a need, a mailing goes out, and the client gains feedback or an increase in customer activity as a result of it. The agency believes the client is getting a good deal because research was done on a list to ensure that it met a client's specifications and fit within a stated budget. Biggest bang for the buck? Not likely.
Unless you own a list brokerage business, there's no trickle-down theory when it comes to wages in the industry. The bulk of one's income comes from that 5% to 20% commission that one typically gets when buying a list, plus whatever markup is passed to the customer. Many brokerage houses see a high turnover in list brokers because of the low salaries or when demand decreases for lists. You may end up with working with more than five reps in a single year from a large brokerage firm like Experian, InfoUSA, or D&B. Why be concerned as a list buyer? Because it is very likely that at some point, you will be sold a list that isn't up to par and fails to meet your specs; and you won't be able to get a refund.
Ain't nothing in the list industry that's free. Everything comes at a price.
A list contains at least a respondent's name, job title, company, address, and phone number. Some direct mail lists lack selects like phone number. Some telemarketing lists lack job title, company, and address, giving a business only the person's name and a telephone number by which to reach them. As a general rule, if you're picking selects on a datasheet, you should require your list vendor to export those selects instead of furnishing you with the basic name/address/phone repertoire. This allows you to verify the integrity of the list. If you buy business list, you can segment them in your inhouse database by SIC code.
Selects can be by:
* demographic: race, religion, political position, gender, age, household income
* industry: automotive, banking, Internet, high tech, manufacturing, consumer products, etc.
* region: north, south, east, west, Americas, Europe, Asia, by state/province, etc
* other identifiers: number of employees, number of branch locations, subsidiary, HQ, public/private company
On the agency side of marketing, list brokers often give each other discounts if they are in the same business, providing services and list products to their customers. This discount can be up to 20% of the base price of a list. The markup can be as high as 30% on top of that, which is how agencies make the bulk of their money. Regardless of which side of marketing you work on, agency or client side, there's always an average, industry-acceptable price for something.
Biggest bang for the buck does not exist in marketing. It only exists as an unfounded, preconceived notion that such a thing is possible. What really ends up happening is what is conveyed during a sale between the customer and the agency. The client believes they are getting a good deal, the list is satisfying a need, a mailing goes out, and the client gains feedback or an increase in customer activity as a result of it. The agency believes the client is getting a good deal because research was done on a list to ensure that it met a client's specifications and fit within a stated budget. Biggest bang for the buck? Not likely.
Unless you own a list brokerage business, there's no trickle-down theory when it comes to wages in the industry. The bulk of one's income comes from that 5% to 20% commission that one typically gets when buying a list, plus whatever markup is passed to the customer. Many brokerage houses see a high turnover in list brokers because of the low salaries or when demand decreases for lists. You may end up with working with more than five reps in a single year from a large brokerage firm like Experian, InfoUSA, or D&B. Why be concerned as a list buyer? Because it is very likely that at some point, you will be sold a list that isn't up to par and fails to meet your specs; and you won't be able to get a refund.
Ain't nothing in the list industry that's free. Everything comes at a price.
Repackaging, a new look for an old brand
What is a brand? A brand consists of the values, both emotional and psychological, that a consumer associates with a company and/or its product/service. Branding is the process of creating a brand.
The public image that any professional association wants to project to the general audience is that it is reputable, law abiding, holds its members to strict, ethical standards, and gives you that feel-good impression that it exists to make it better, at least in the way companies market products and services.
The Direct Marketing Association ("DMA") released their "new" logo via an email campaign in an effort to get members to adopt it for display on their websites and other related marketing collateral. The new logo has lost all of its discernable features where members and non-members alike could recognize it as the logo of the Direct Marketing Association. It's new logo is horrid, flat, and plain. It evokes images of nothingness and uncertainty, which is disasterous for an established association like the DMA. It's now only one color with three typefaced letters spelling "DMA" with a right-facing arrow above it. The DMA president John A. Greco, Jr, says the new logo suggests that the DMA is forward thinking.
Somehow, I highly doubt this is why it was changed. Why now after all these years with the old logo?
It comes to one metric. Cost. Cost of printing thousands of personalized letters and envelopes to members every week. Members typically get 3-5 mailings a week from the DMA or on behalf of other DMA members about all sorts events, local chapter activities, conferences, specific subject seminars, etc. Multiply that by 4300 member companies, the anticipated rise in USPS postal fees, and the multicolor print costs skyrocket.
The public image that any professional association wants to project to the general audience is that it is reputable, law abiding, holds its members to strict, ethical standards, and gives you that feel-good impression that it exists to make it better, at least in the way companies market products and services.
The Direct Marketing Association ("DMA") released their "new" logo via an email campaign in an effort to get members to adopt it for display on their websites and other related marketing collateral. The new logo has lost all of its discernable features where members and non-members alike could recognize it as the logo of the Direct Marketing Association. It's new logo is horrid, flat, and plain. It evokes images of nothingness and uncertainty, which is disasterous for an established association like the DMA. It's now only one color with three typefaced letters spelling "DMA" with a right-facing arrow above it. The DMA president John A. Greco, Jr, says the new logo suggests that the DMA is forward thinking.
Somehow, I highly doubt this is why it was changed. Why now after all these years with the old logo?
It comes to one metric. Cost. Cost of printing thousands of personalized letters and envelopes to members every week. Members typically get 3-5 mailings a week from the DMA or on behalf of other DMA members about all sorts events, local chapter activities, conferences, specific subject seminars, etc. Multiply that by 4300 member companies, the anticipated rise in USPS postal fees, and the multicolor print costs skyrocket.
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