by Next Wave Team | Mar 26, 2007 | Advertising, Brand Relevancy, Differentiating Your Brand, Everything You Want to Know About Advertising, Marketing & the Web, Practical Marketing 101, Public Relations in the Web 2.0 world, Search and Business, Web strategy
I wish my associate had kept the receipt, but, Taco Bell needs to work on their site integration with their stores: there’s nothing worse than a broken promise.
I text messaged Richard to pick me up three items off the “Big Bell Value Menu” where all items are .99- of course I can’t send a link, because they build their site in Flash- just like all the rest of the big chains- not searchable, not bookmarkable- and really, not that useful with it’s “pop-a-mole” navigation system. Never mind there aren’t actuall descriptions of what are in any of the items. There are so many things that a site for a national fast food restaurant could do- but unfortunately, none of them understand web 2.0
I ordered the Zesty Nachos, Grande Soft Taco and the Double Decker taco. When Richard got to the register- the girl had no clue. I ended up with three items that were similar to the items I ordered, but they came to $3.79.
Taco Bell just failed me over .82 cents- and now I remember why I don’t make a run for the border very often.
by Next Wave Team | Mar 21, 2007 | Change the world, Creativity, Everything You Want to Know About Advertising, Future of advertising, How To Select An Ad Agency, Marketing & the Web, Practical Marketing 101, Public Relations in the Web 2.0 world, Secrets of Great Advertising, Viral Marketing, Web strategy
Advertising is usually delivered in what we call “paid media” - which would include TV, Radio, Print, Direct Mail, Outdoor, Internet etc. It’s usually your company talking about yourself.
There is also what we’ve come to know as “unpaid media” which is usually described as Public Relations- where your press release, guerrilla stunt, amazing feat, etc. is actually newsworthy- and you appear in the media- usually print, radio, TV or Internet. This could be defined as others talking about you.
Then we have the new media form, and by that, I don’t mean web, Internet, etc. and it’s new name “earned media”- this is where something is so interesting that it gets circulated and watched out of fascination. It is the basic building block of a viral campaign. It is becoming the most valued form of advertising- but there is no price tag on it. You can’t just pony up money and get the eyeballs. Earned media is the result of the new currency in advertising (which really has always been the true currency) creativity. Creative solutions, creative executions, interesting, funny, informative and unexpected messages can take your brand message places that conventional (paid and unpaid media) can’t and won’t.
This creates a huge problem in advertising agency compensation - are you as a client, willing to pay for the value of a good idea? Or are you still basing your compensation plan on the size of your media buy or on hours worked? If you want to earn eyeballs instead of pay for them, the first thing you need to eyeball is what you are trying to buy from your ad agency.
And then decide what kind of media is going to get you what you want.
by Next Wave Team | Mar 19, 2007 | Ad Agenices in Dayton, OH, Everything You Want to Know About Advertising, Future of advertising, Great Ad Agencies, How To Select An Ad Agency, Marketing & the Web, Practical Marketing 101, Public Relations in the Web 2.0 world, Search and Business, Web strategy
In our effort to bring you the best, most useful, and interesting insight into advertising, ad agencies, and getting the most for your marketing dollar- we stumbled upon this post by “Gerry McGovern” in a non-web 2.0 site- but was right on:
Web design: never let an ad agency near your website: January 19, 2004 issue of New Thinking by Gerry McGovern
The average advertising agency fundamentally doesn’t get the Web. Saatchi & Saatchi, BBDO Worldwide, J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy are great advertising agencies. When it comes to managing their own websites, however, they are rank amateurs. They bring their print and TV thinking to the Web with embarrassing results.
Well worth a click over - where he rants about the stupidity of the Flash intro, and the innane copy which makes every agency sound- well- alike. He doesn’t actually give your real stats on why big ad agency sites suck (we do that quite aptly here: ad agencies seek diversity) but he does describe some sites- that when you visit today- will realize haven’t changed or updated content in 3 years (we just went to LeoBurnett.com the other day- only to leave totally frustrated with the most worthless web navigation ever- and no search function).
We’re not saying that all big advertising agency sites are boring, or ugly- just that most of them aren’t actually useful.
Here are some key ways to evaluate an ad agencies web competence:
- Is the text selectable- and copyable- so you could easily put together their brilliant ideas for marketing into a memo for your boss on why to hire them? (This also means you can read the content with a text-to-speech reader for blind people- and that the site will be indexable by google).
- Are there separate pages for each piece of content- in other words- can you send a link to the exact spot that you think is relevant to your boss- “Hey, look at this brilliant marketing strategy” - I think it applies to our company.
- Is the content current- and changing? Google rewards fresh new ideas and content. If thy don’t update their content, how can they suggest you do it? Practicing what you preach is important on the web.
- Can you view the site without having to turn off noise, or have video start without you telling it to? Good for not disturbing the boss- or letting him know that you are secretly looking for a new ad agency because your current one isn’t very web-savvy.
- When you go to Google and type in: site:bigagency.tld you actually get more than one page. Try it for this site- site:thenextwave.biz and look at how many pages are indexed!
- Another key to finding out if your prospective agency is web 2.0 compliant- look for links out, and links in. Although not perfect- going to Google and type in link:thenextwave.biz will show you a smattering of what links to us. We know many more link to us, because we watch our web stats- a very informative tool to gather information about who is saying what about you.
There are a whole bunch of other questions to ask before hiring an ad agency- but we try to cover that in our topic “how to pick an ad agency”- as opposed to here- where we’re just talking about web 2.0 web skills.
If you have questions on how to analyze your ad agencies web competence, feel free to give us a call.
