What a fantastic game! As an agency in Upstate New York, there were enough New York City and New England loyalists to make game-day trash talking interesting for all of us Buffalo Bills fans still waiting for some post-season excitement out here again…someday…

But since we work in the advertising field, we also had the ads to look forward too, right? This year, surprisingly, many of us were bored with the 30-second versions of the two-minute ads that had coursed through social media over the previous four days. Not only did we get the typical heads-up about which companies had ads running, but we were able to watch them, over and over again, and comment, and share, and watch them again.

Some folks (including the advertisers I’m sure), felt that the 11.8 million pre-game views (as of mid-day Friday) of Honda’s “Ferris Bueller” take-off was worth the lack of interest (or even disappointment) in the shortened version during the game. Personally, I tried not to watch the ads or listen to the hype beforehand. Unfortunately, given the business I’m in, it’s impossible not to have my expectations impacted.

So my expectations were high. And I was disappointed.

Sure, there are always the typically bad ads. The entire team at Tipping Point Media had to agree (and yes, there were men in the room) that once again, GoDaddy.com invested in forgettable ads in continued bad taste. Hands down, GoDaddy’s ads were rated the worst by our internal team.

Then there were the ads that combined so many different celebrities you weren’t sure who’d pop up next. You’d forgetting the brand the spot’s supposed to advertise while trying to figure out which ’80s metal band was that? (Thanks for the sign, hello Motley Crue!) The hands-down favorite among those large-celebrity-budget ads was the promotion for “The Voice” starring Betty White. I hope she was the highest paid among the scores of Super Bowl ad celebrities – is there nothing Betty can’t make funnier?

But this year there were the good ads that had already been overplayed. I hadn’t watched the Honda ad with Matthew Broderick, nor had I seen Acura’s Jerry Seinfeld/Soup Nazi/Jay Leno spot. I enjoyed them both, but felt cheated when my bored party colleagues pointed out that the two-minute versions online had been so much better.

In the end, even among us jaded ad types, a few spots rose to the top. Funny usually wins big during the Super Bowl, so it’s no surprise that the Doritos Great Dane spot was voted tops, along with the M&M’s “I’m Sexy and I Know It” ad. Other favorites included the “Apocolypse” spot featuring the rugged durability of Chevy trucks, and the Audi/vampires spot.

But perhaps the most surprising top-rated spot among Tipping Point staff was the Chrysler mini-movie starring Clint Eastwood. It was my favorite as well – not only did the ad stop me in my tracks and keep me riveted, I remembered the spot and the four brand logos associated with it. It was different than typical Super Bowl fare, it was heartfelt, and it was memorable. Never mind that they wrapped the front of the USA Today this morning in a four-page, full-color spread reiterating their message: “And our second half is about to begin.” (Cue national anthem…)

We’re keeping the conversation going today on our Facebook page and in our Twitter discussions. Which ads were your favorites? What do you think of unveiling “Super Bowl” ads before the big game itself? Does a compelling ad without a lot of online, pre-show hype pay off as well as a spot jam-packed with miscellaneous A-listers that’s been seen by 90% of the market before it officially airs?

Let us know what you think!

According to the latest report from eMarketer, this year online video penetration surpassed 68% of US internet users and is expected to top 75% by 2015 (internet users who watch video content online at least once per month). The same report shows that 49% of US adult online video viewers are watching full-length TV shows on the web at least monthly and 37.1% are watching full-length movies online at least once a month.

This presents a huge opportunity for advertisers to take the TV assets they already have and engage their target audience online.

One of the most effective tactics for repurposing TV assets for online consumptions is utilizing pre-roll video; :15 and :30 spots that play just before a user can view the video they are loading.

This can be especially effective based on the ability to reach specific audiences across premium content sites. Tipping Point Media now has the capability to target online viewers based on a number of demographic attributes including age, location, marital status, household income, home-ownership and children. Other capabilities include the ability to target geographically, contextually, by site, or by re-targeting viewers who have recently visited the advertiser’s website.

While television is still the most effective mass-reach medium, premium online video (includes pre-roll) has proven to be more impactful than television ads in affecting key brand metrics. Because users of online video are typically more engaged than television viewers, premium video was found to be more effective increasing memorability, brand recall, message recall, and appeal in a recent Nielsen study (pictured).

Online video capabilities also include robust reporting. Views and clicks are measured against the specific audience that interacted with the advertising. Complete demographics can show who saw the message and how they responded. Because many pre-roll videos also include companion banners, viewers have the chance to click through to the advertiser’s website to learn more.

Online video is a powerful tool for any marketing campaign providing a rapidly growing audience of actively engaged users. Our agency can connect our clients to this audience across the Internet in a highly targeted way. If you would like to learn more about online video advertising and how we can leverage the assets you may already have or create a new campaign, make sure to contact us for more information.

Cross-posted with iMedia Connection

As marketers, we strive to ensure that our messages capture our prospect’s attention, encourage them to consider our offerings, and in the end make a purchase. But sometimes we lose sight of what’s important to the very people we’re trying to motivate and our ads cross the line between interesting and irritating. While this phenomenon isn’t relegated to just the online world (the Las Vegas strip is a good example of how to cross the line in the traditional world), there are several key things to avoid to ensure your ads are well received.

Interruption
The clearest example of interruption in the online space was the pop-up ad. For those of you too young to remember, these ads opened a new browser window on top of the content you were reading and you had to close the window in order to continue. In their day (late 90′s, early 2000′s), pop-up ads were highly sought after. While response rates were huge and advertisers were happy, web users complained — and complained loudly enough that the industry finally took notice. While some publishers proactively stopped offering pop-up ad space, the real reason pop-ups went away was browser developers built pop-up blockers into the system. However, the reason behind the blocking wasn’t based on offensive messaging, but rather the fact that it really impeded the flow for the end user. Imagine if while watching a television program the channel changed to play a commercial and the only way to get back to the program was to change the channel back. Sure, your remote is probably close by and it’s easy to click, but it would have interrupted the flow for the consumer and, in turn, annoys more than engages.

Of course, you’d think we learned from this lesson, but we still frequently see examples of interrupting ads 10 years later. The most notable of these is the interstitial. The interstitial ad takes over the full screen, plays a message, and then automatically takes you to the content once the message is complete. The interstitial ad is based much more closely on the TV model — in essence you view the ad to get the content for free — and it’s acceptable in limited doses. In this case, the industry has done a good job of relegating this type of advertising. On most sites you’ll only see the ad once per day, so if you spend time browsing the site’s content, you don’t get interrupted again. In addition, most interstitials have an option to click to go straight to the site content (if this were ever measured I’d guess that this link would have the highest click through rate of any online advertising). So while interstitials are interruptive, they’ve come a long way in improving the experience for the end user.

One final note on interruption is that we do still see pop-under ads today. These ads are just like the pop-ups from 10 years ago, but instead drop to the background. You probably recognize pop-unders when you close your browser and see windows still open on the screen. Pop-unders do a good job of getting your message across, but they lose the context of the content the browser was looking at (the ad may have been sitting on their screen for a long time before they realize it’s there). So while I won’t go so far to say never use a pop-under, I encourage all advertisers to consider the value and annoyance balance before placing this type of buy.

Distraction
Distracting ads rank pretty high on the annoyance factor. You may recall the dancing people ads, punch the monkey and a variety of other ads that have gotten attention in the past because they were so kinetic. Of course you want your ad to capture the attention of your prospects, but when an ad is so active it distracts the viewer from being able to focus on the page. This idea however started in the very early days of the web with the html <blink> tag. Thankfully this tag is no longer supported by most browsers (and rarely used by developers). The tag used to make the text on the page turn off and on, which needless to say isn’t a particularly enjoyable reading experience. While the <blink> tag didn’t survive, there have been a lot of ads that generate distraction on the screen, flashing colors, moving images and even auto playing sound. I think a lot of these ideas and creatives came to be because we could create them with the current technology, not because we should have created them. Many times rich media gets the blame for being the source of these annoying ads, but the reality is it you can be just as annoying with animated gifs.

Once again publishers have done a good job trying to limit the annoyance factor — limits on the looping, length of animation, etc. help a bit — but it’s still pretty easy to cross the line.

Intrusion
A less obvious component of annoyance comes from running your ads in the wrong places. Normally when this topic comes up we reference the extreme examples like airline ads running next to stories about plane crashes, tobacco ads next to lung cancer articles, etc. But there are a lot of other less extreme situations where improper placement of ads can generate outrage, concern and customer annoyance.

Email is one area that factors high in consumer annoyance. And this annoyance level was the primary reason behind the CAN-SPAM act, legislation designed to reduce the amount of “junk” email we all receive. Just like the pop-up blockers that are in most browsers today, spam filters are becoming commonplace to prevent delivery of mail we didn’t request. Over the years, I’ve been consistently surprised at the level of outrage consumers express when they believe they’ve received spam messages. Believe me; those angry customers aren’t afraid to reach out to company’s senior management to complain. It’s never a fun meeting when the CEO’s office calls the marketing department on the carpet to discuss a consumer complaint.

Invasive
My final example of how to annoy consumers comes in the form of invasiveness into a consumer’s private life. Invasiveness can be generated in many forms, when you ask for too much information, when you ask for sensitive information and probably the most extreme example when you cross the line and let the consumer you know more about them than they expect. The first scenario, asking for too much information can be easily seen in form completion rates. The more information you ask for, the fewer number of people fill it out. One of my clients used to have a form on their website that was literally three pages when if printed out the form, and they couldn’t understand why 98 percent of visitors left without completing the form. Over several months we refined the form to a much shorter form, that still collected the most relevant information, and response rate grew five times without any loss in lead quality! While most people have shied away from the really long forms, it’s surprising to me that we haven’t learned to cut out extraneous data collection. For example, when you want to understand the geography of where your prospects are coming from, why not ask just for zip code instead of asking for address, city, and state ( better yet just ask for area code) — it’s less personal and more people are willing to share. In talking about personal, we get to the second point — asking for sensitive information. Forms that require social security number, credit card, etc. don’t get filled out easily. You need to earn their trust before they are willing to share that much. A rule of thumb when asking for information is to only ask for what you really need and are going to use. Otherwise, you’re just lowering your response rate for no reason. The final example of invasiveness can best be seen in retargeting. With retargeting ads are shown to people who visit your web site in an effort to get them to come back. Often times when we discuss retargeting we get requests to run ads that say things like “thanks for your recent purchase” or do something that leads the consumer to believe you know who they are. While no personally identifiable information (PII) needs to be shared to retarget a consumer, this type of message can really annoy the recipient. You’re much better off to re-engage this prospect with messaging more along their interest areas than tipping your hand to how you’ve reached them.

What do I do now?
The moral of this story is that as a marketer you should never forget that you’re talking to consumers and you need to do it in a way that makes sense to them and meets their needs. Don’t let the technology we have sway your advertising decisions.

I am more than a little tired of hearing about Google+, the brand new social network from Google that is the obsession of the day in the tech and marketing worlds. The service, a mix of Facebook and Twitter, is compelling, offering something fresh and different for those who are feeling the limits of other social networks. With that said, the list of features currently offered on the service are anything but revolutionary and the fact remains, everyone you and I probably already know are on Facebook or Twitter, so why should we stray and take on the burden of yet another social network to update?

One argument is the power of the Google brand and expertise. The company name attached to this network and its widespread and growing integration with “search” seems powerful, but the company has been here before. Google Buzz and Wave were launched with great hype but became ghost towns littered with dead accounts. Each had their own individual faults, from privacy concerns to confusing user interfaces, but together they stand as evidence that there is no guarantee Google will be able to “get” social any better this time around.

Meanwhile despite a slick interface and the addition of “Circles”, a friendlier way of creating lists and groups than on rival services, I have yet to find anything on Google+ that warrants all the intense media hype. For example, this week gaming was added to the platform. While a nice addition, it marks yet another feature pioneered by Facebook now mirrored but not innovated or reinvented by +.

Right now the big appeal of Google+ seems to be that it is a blank slate. I can sympathize with those who see the network as a fresh start for their digital social lives. For a couple of years I had let my Facebook friend list get out of hand. A follower of thousands of accounts on Twitter, I started using Facebook the same way, accepting the friend requests of not just people I really knew but a wide variety of acquaintances. I also connected with different brands and web sites, music groups and television shows that began bombarding my newsfeed. It was like walking into a room with a blaring TV, radio, CD player, police siren and my mother all vying for my attention at once. My connections grew, unwanted noise grew, but the relationships behind them did not.

Even though I utilized lists and privacy features, all this connecting lead to a feeling that my unmanageable newsfeed was also becoming a privacy nightmare. I went to great lengths to cull the herd and clean out my account. The site became enjoyable again but not just because it was clean but because it put the friends and family I wanted to see back in view. This was only possible because these people were already on the service and ready to connect.

While not perfect, Facebook is where the people I want to be social with are. That is an enormous hurdle for Google+ and will take more firepower packed features and a much larger list of users than it currently has to lure my family and friends away. Some are already there but the majority of those who excitedly setup Google+ accounts have already abandoned them or found ways to just mirror their Facebook content with little real effort to embrace or create a culture there. At this moment I too have largely abandoned my account and will wait for a compelling reason to come back to it.

The greatest benefit of Google+ that I can see to the consumer is that it may provide true competition in the social marketplace. Facebook is a behemoth and hasn’t always been the most responsive to user concerns. With that said, being new and even innovative is still an easier achievement than reaching widespread adoption. That is what Google+ needs in order to truly be a competitor to Facebook. I am skeptical it will reach this mass adoption and believe it is likely Google will run into the same large walls it did with Buzz and Wave, serving a much smaller and fragmented audience than Facebook instead of reaching the critical mass it seems to need to fit the service into its larger objectives.

This blog cross-posted at iMedia Connection.

As online marketers, we’ve long touted the benefits of online marketing as being the most measureable form of advertising. While in theory there is some validity to the argument, the reality is we spend most of our time focused on a relatively insignificant data point — the click. The click was the metric touted in the very first paid banner advertising when AT&T asked: “Have you ever clicked your mouse right here?” At first glance, clicks seemed like a metric that made sense, but when you dig in, you realize there’s a lot more to be looking for.

Reason 1: 99.9 percent of banner ads don’t get clicks
What other industries base their success on a metric where the industry average response rate is 0.1 percent? My best banner campaign ever had a 5 percent click-through rate. Now this was in the early days of digital marketing (1998), but it’s been a long time since we saw response even close to that. Ad networks tout success at a 0.05 percent click-through rate. It seems to me that the impact we have on the other 99 percent of the audience is going to be much more important.

Reason 2: As cost erodes, so does content quality
Using clicks as a core measurement has driven down the value of online media. A long time ago, I paid $50-plus CPMs to reach highly targeted niche audiences. In hindsight, perhaps we paid too much, but we also saw a benefit in a higher level of quality content. Those destinations had dedicated web reporters, new content came online first, and many sites started to shine as the best place to get news and information. But with clicks as the primary success metric, publishers were forced to lower their rates and in turn they have fewer resources to provide quality content.

Reason 3: Clicks and sales are not the same thing
Low click-through rates have killed many successful campaigns over the years. I’ve seen many campaigns get pulled because of low click-through rates and then months later seen shifts in sales trends during the timeframe the online campaign was running. The problem stems from the fact that sales data typically don’t have the immediacy of online ad data. So decisions get made based on what’s available immediately instead of looking at the whole picture.

Reason 4: E-commerce is not the center of the economy
Online sales account for roughly 7 percent of U.S. retail sales. So, unless you’re selling airline tickets or books, there’s a pretty good chance that more than 90 percent of your business occurs in the offline world. It’s hard to track click response to offline sales, so we tend to align our impact with e-commerce sales and miss what’s happening at retail. People research online, determine their product interests and needs, but then go to retail to buy.

Reason 5: Cost-per-click comes at the cost of targeting
Since the early days of online advertising (late 90s), there’s been a lot of interest in only paying for response — thus, the advent of cost-per-click (CPC) marketing. After all, what marketer wouldn’t want to only pay for response? But the problem with this approach is that all too often, CPC ads end up being targeted to people who click the most, instead of being targeted at your desired audience. The typical outcome of this type of effort is a sudden increase in response, but no noticeable increase in sales.

Now, I must admit that, at times, I use cost-per-click for my clients. But as a general rule, I do believe that CPC is the sign of a lazy media buyer. It’s a media buyer’s job to make sure that that our ads don’t end up on an uninhabited island, but with cost-per-click, we sometimes end up on an island full of people offering a Caribbean vacation. Sure, they’ll show interest because there’s nothing else to do, but the last thing they need is a week at the beach. We’re supposed to do the research and determine the best way to reach our audience, not turn to the publishers to let them decide.

Reason 6: Did Google put us on the wrong track?
OK, so I can’t malign CPC advertising without talking about the king of CPC advertising: Google. CPC is actually a pretty good model for paid search — when you have an active audience researching a specific topic and an opportunity to gain response from a page that’s built to click on. Search engine results pages are all about providing searchers with the opportunity to find the next place to go. But the model should be different for display ads that most often appear next to content designed to inform and engage the visitor.

Reason 7: Clicks are contrary to every other media effort
Expecting advertisers to click on a banner ad is like expecting an magazine reader to turn to a page and suddenly get up and run out to buy a burger. TV ads interrupt the flow of a program, but they don’t expect an immediate response. Why is online held to a different model?

Reason 8: We lose focus on what’s important
When we focus on clicks, we lose sight of the other 99.9 percent of the audience that’s been exposed to the ads. Advertising is about building awareness, consideration, purchase intent, and — yes — sales. We need to reorient our thinking around how digital advertising helps our clients’ businesses find true success.

Reason 9: Engagement isn’t any better
When many of us recognized that clicks weren’t the best measurement, the term “engagement” came to the forefront as a metric. Rich media ads allowed us to track more than just clicks, and there was a big push to talk about “engagement” metrics with clients. We talked about expands, time spent, videos played, etc. But the reality is that “engagement” had as much meaning as clicks. In order to be successful, we need to stop creating our own terms and instead focus on metrics that marketers understand and embrace.

Reason 10: Are branding studies the solution?
Marketers are used to age old brand metrics – brand awareness (aided and unaided), favorability, purchase intent, etc., and we can measure the impact of these efforts online as well. But there’s a flaw in the system we’re using. How do we recruit responders to the studies? By showing banner ads and surveying the folks who… yup, you guessed it… click on the recruitment ads. We all know the click rates, we all know that clickers are not a representative audience, but still this is the “best we have.” You don’t run a TV awareness study by running ads on TV; we shouldn’t be using this approach for online.

Conclusion
Now, let’s think back to the original AT&T campaign that launched this industry (and started this article). AT&T’s You Will campaign was about the potential that technology provided for the future. It was aspirational. It talked about what “you will.” It made you think, wonder, and dream. But instead of asking, “What if you could carry the entire Library of Congress in your pocket?” or “What if you never had to ask for directions?” the banner asked, “Have you ever clicked your mouse right here?” Well, now we have 15 years of history that proves you won’t.

While ROI seems elusive in any advertising effort, there are ways to demonstrate the impact. It’s time to stop focusing on the click stream and instead on other metrics that indicate interest and awareness. And surprisingly enough, the data isn’t that hard to find. Take a look at your web analytics — the shifts are pretty easy to see. Over the years, I’ve seen increases in search volume and website traffic with pretty much every online campaign I’ve run, and the numbers surpass the reported clicks. More people searching for your products or services and more traffic to those product or service pages sure sounds a lot like awareness and interest to me.

We also need to stop the knee-jerk reaction when we see a week of low click rates. Changing consumer perception takes time and frequency. Yes, it’s true that the first time a person sees a banner ad is the time they’re most likely to click. But ad recall happens after five impressions, and changing purchase habits takes even longer. When you build out campaigns, make sure you allow adequate time to measure what happens in the market. After all, isn’t that what’s really important?

So stop focusing on clicks and instead work a little harder to demonstrate business impact. It’s there. You just need to look a little harder.

After nearly 20 years in the Public Relations business, it’s time I admit publicly and in writing: sometimes I hate the Press Release.

Many of my friends and colleagues know this already – I bemoan the Press Release often and for one key reason: Public Relations = PR. But PR ≠ Press Release.

A Press Release is like an aspirin. (Bear with me, I love my analogies!) Back in the day, people treated practically everything that ailed them with aspirin. But over the years, new drugs were invented to address specific ailments more effectively and efficiently.

Imagine heading into your physician’s office today with allergies (or intestinal distress or migraines or…) and demanding she treat you with aspirin. Of course, that’s not to say it’s not useful. Think you’re having a heart attack?? Grab the aspirin! That stuff is magic in certain situations. But otherwise, let your specialist prescribe the right answer for your symptoms.

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The media people consume continues to get more and more fragmented. With the exception of the Super Bowl, which will hopefully next air in February 2012, it’s difficult to reach a large television audience now that there are literally hundreds of cable channels to choose from. When consumers are driving, AM and FM are just two choices that include your iPod, satellite radio, CDs, internet radio from smart phones, or, in my girlfriend’s case, silence.

Now there’s a new media device that’s quickly seeing a flood of consumer options. Less than 18 months ago Apple’s iPad created the tablet market that’s seen a host of competitors enter and jockey for position. The rise of the tablet market is exciting for marketers because of the rich experience it provides for the user. When interacting with a tablet, consumers are highly engaged in rich forms of media and web surfing.

The advertising options on tablets range from traditional text ads to high definition, interactive video. While many consumers choose to fast forward through prime time television advertising, a recent Nielsen study found that 46% of iPad owners enjoy ads that have interactive features. The “wow” factor offers an opportunity for marketers with 39% of iPad owners reporting that ads on the device are new and interesting and 37% saying they like to see what ads can do.

With the fragmentation of the market, there are potential hurdles to effectively reach your target audience. There are currently four different operating systems running on tablets. Creating ads for multiple operating systems means building multiple versions of creative with various technologies, an expensive and often problem-laced task. Most tablets that have come out this year run Android OS; RIM (makers of Blackberry) launched the Playbook with their own proprietary OS; HP just launched the Touchpad using webOS previously utilized on Palm smart phones; and of course Apple has two tablets (iPad and iPad 2) that run iOS. On top of this, Microsoft is poised to have their own tablet running Windows 8 in 2012 (though I don’t think anyone is holding off on their tablet purchase in anticipation of this).

Fortunately, when you look at tablet and iPad sales statistics there’s a clear winner now and for the unforeseeable future. There were 15.7 million tablets sold in 2010, 85% of which were iPads. eMarketer predicts 34 million and 56.1 million tablets will be sold in 2011 and 2012 respectively. Over the next year and a half its predicted that iPads will make up 74% of the total tablet market.

While competitors continue to create tablets with specific and important competitive advantages to Apple’s tablets (i.e. ability to run Adobe Flash), they all have the same problem: content. There’s a chicken and egg situation that is causing a huge barrier for Apple’s rivals. Until they have a large enough user base, content creators maintain their “wait and see” approach. Meanwhile, consumers are attracted to the thousands of apps and content options only available on iPads. Marketers should be aware of the opportunities available to reach their target audience via this engaging platform and not be scared off by the dozens of devices currently on the market.

I feel it’s important to note that I am in no way an Apple fanboy. I own an iPad and an Android smart phone; each have their advantages/disadvantages and overall I’m very happy with the performance of both.

Links for more information on iPad sales statistics and information about the iPad like consumption by state.

This month we released a new version of our Web site. I had the pleasure of being involved in bringing the site from initial concept to final product, working with everyone in our office to integrate their ideas into the design and add the features they wanted. It was a fun and at times challenging process, mainly because different people can often have radically different ideas about what makes a good Web site and what it should do.

I am by no means a prolific programmer but I have been building Web pages since 1995, when it was still a pretty rare skill. It is an ability that has been utilized in nearly every job I have held since, usually after someone in the office says, “You know what would be great? If we had a Web page! Does anyone know how to build one?” Before you know it that one site turns into five or ten and I start being known as “Jeff, the Web Guy.”

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What are the best ways to engage your Facebook community? We agree with Lauren Friedman at Context Optional. Recently she broke it all down into six (6) easy tips that will escalate your brand presence and give your clients a reason to interact.

1. Stream Applications – give fans a chance to interact with your brand on their terms. Utilize polls or incentives to provide a quick, easy channel for community engagement.
2. Fan Recognition – take participation to the next level and acknowledge fans who take an interest in your brand. Taking the time to recognize or respond to comments shows that their opinion matters, keeps the conversation going & encourages others jump on the bandwagon.
3. Promotion – Entice fans to get in on the action by using creative content to “get the click.” This is your chance to draw attention to your brand, incentivize fans and ultimately drive them to your promotional offer in a way that’s fun and non-invasive. Cornell’s Jewelers has done just that with posts featuring their Diamond Dash event –a scavenger hunt in which the winner receives a $13k Tacori diamond ring – who wouldn’t want a chance at that?
4. Personal Touch – Humanize your presence; break the barrier between brand and fans. Relationships are fostered by an informal connection that makes people want to engage on your page. Expose them to internal happenings, photos and scenarios that promote a favorable user experience. We use our Tipping Point Media fan page to showcase our “Mojo Moments”, featuring the employee with the most votes for their efforts and contributions that week.
5. Open-ended Questions – Step out of your comfort zone, make fans feel as though they can relate and give them a chance to tell you what they want.  Include them in the decision process and make them feel as though they have influence through active engagement. The Healthy Hero campaign has put a creative twist into the open-ended question strategy with their Family Fun Fridays. Whoever has the most “likes” for their answer to that day’s question receives a free 5-2-1-0 grab bag.
6. Integration – Crossover between platforms like Facebook and Twitter is a way to broaden your reach. Where possible, and appropriate given the differences in audience, maintain a consistent voice and content on both platforms. This lets fans access your brand on either platform, allowing them a choice of how to follow you while facilitating greater engagement.

Key objective: Engagement. If you want to know what makes consumers tick, ask them. If you want to draw their attention to your brand, entice them. And if you want to take interaction to the next level, develop and nurture a relationship that provides you both with something valuable – engage them.

Michelle Ashby
CEO

Here in the US we’re seeing QR (Quick Response) codes popping up in more places every day. Already extremely popular in Japan and Korea, the two-dimensional bar code is finally starting to become widely recognized by American consumers. In order to take advantage of all the QR code has to offer (that’s only semi-sarcastic) all you need is a smart phone and QR reading software.

Marketers are beginning to embrace the use of QR codes for a number of reasons. I think the most attractive feature is that they’re immediately measureable. Place it on a billboard or in a print ad, two mediums that have notoriously been difficult to attach meaningful metrics to, and now you can see how many people are pro-actively responding. This can allow for benchmarking responses and trialing different messages and calls to action.

Another obvious reason for the recent surge is the large increase in smart phone ownership. According to comScore, the three-month average of cell phone owners who had a smart phone in Q4 of 2010 was 27% (over 60MM Americans), a 10% increase just from Q3 2010.

Beyond the tracking capabilities and growing user base, the functionality and capabilities of QR codes are attractive to marketers. The simplest (and unfortunately most widely adopted) use is to link people to a web or WAP page. Other uses include distribution of coupons; connecting users to video content; downloading an app, contact, or ringtone; entering a sweepstakes; and launching social media platforms.

Beware of the cool factor. As soon as there’s something new and shiny, marketers are excited to be early adopters. However, if you decide to utilize this technology without considering the user experience, you may sour your audience on scanning your codes. A QR code is like a scratch-off card — people have to apply some effort to engage, so the payoff better be worth it. Content emanating from a QR code needs to be useful or an easy redemption of an exclusive reward. Linking people to a general page on your website might not be the payoff your potential customer was hoping for.

QR codes are the soup du jour; I hear it brought up in marketing meetings on a weekly basis. Personally, I think they’re ugly. I feel for the creative director who now has to find a way to shoehorn in a QR code to their perfectly laid out print advertisement. Soon, these bar codes will be replaced with image recognition software, already available on smart phones. Wouldn’t it be better if consumers could download your app just by pointing their phone at your company’s logo or the product name? This reality is not far away.

Karl Heberger
Digital Media Supervisor