Marketing Thoughts by Domus Inc.

Recently, Rich University’s Department of Psychology released a study, “The Effect of Content Desirability on Subjective Video Quality Ratings”, authored by Philip Kortum. In summary, the study showed that people’s perceptions of video quality is correlated to how much they enjoy what they’re watching. So, if the content of what is being watched is captivating enough, people not only overlook poorer video quality, but actually perceive it to be higher.

Similarly, in advertising, the effectiveness of ads is primarily dependent on the content. The more captivating, interesting, memorable, identifiable, and relevant you make your ads, the more effective they will be – whether shown on TV, on the internet, in print, or heard on the radio. Look at any effective advertising campaign today, and the ads will score highly in each of these five adjectives.

Let’s look at each of these individually.

• Captivating – If something about the ad doesn’t jar your attention away from whatever else you were thinking about, and doesn’t hold your attention, then whatever message is conveyed throughout the ad will be lost.
• Interesting – An annoying ad can be captivating, but that doesn’t make it effective. Once captivated, you must also want to keep watching – and also to share and talk about it. This adjective is critical to making an ad go viral. Note that “interesting” can encompass intellectually stimulating, funny, emotional, or other.
• Memorable – For how many ads do you recall part of the jingle or visuals, but can’t remember what brand the ad was for? So ads have to be memorable both for the brand and message being communicated. However, they also have to be memorable in and of themselves. They should pop into people’s heads during the course of the day, during conversations, and especially when shopping.
• Identifiable – This is related to the above, because if the advertised brand is not immediately and clearly identifiable, then the chances of it being memorable are small. In today’s age, though, “identifiable” has more facets than in the past. For example, the brand should still be identifiable if the viewer is fast-forwarding the ad on TV with a DVR.
• Relevant – This is somewhat related to “identifiable”, but is more focused on the message. In addition to being identified with a brand, the ad needs to support and enhance the brand position.

If you are creating ads – display ads, videos, print ads, or whatever – measure your work-in-progress along these five scales. The higher you get on each, the more effective your work will be.

Domus is an exciting marketing agency, combining classic marketing principles with state-of-the-art digital execution to continually deliver effective strategies and campaigns for our clients. For more information, visit us at http://www.domusinc.com or visit our digital and social media site at http://www.domusdigital.com.

In an environment where traditional marketing is overshadowed by technological methods, equipping yourself with the newest and greatest digital capabilities is essential for any business to thrive.

Domus has upped the ante with the launch of Domus Digital, its leading edge digital marketing unit.  In addition to common digital capabilities, the agency can now harness scalable enterprise technologies such as cloud computing, as well as leading-edge technologies like augmented reality, computer vision and face recognition. We’re talking the latest and greatest in digital technology.

Not every Tom, Dick or Harry can pull this off.  Domus has armed itself with a team of high tech visionaries who built the digital marketing unit to provide clients with web service development, application development, technology envisioning and more.  Have you heard of computer vision?  If not, Google it.  Domus can integrate this scientific technology into client advertisements to augment reality, utilize photosynth integration, implement optical flow and face detection. It looks like sci-fi stuff, but the claims and capabilities of the technology are legit.

If you want to remain at the forefront of the marketing/communications industry, then you must adopt the newest digital capabilities available.  And if you don’t have the capabilities or you’re not looking to invest, then let us show you what going digital is all about.

Domus is an exciting marketing agency, combining classic marketing principles with state-of-the-art digital execution to continually deliver effective strategies and campaigns for our clients. For more information, visit us at http://www.domusinc.com or visit our digital and social media site at http://www.domusdigital.com.

Yesterday Twitter announced on its blog a new feature, “Fast Follow”. This allows people in the US to receive tweets on their phones even if they have not signed up for Twitter. It’s sort of a teaser to get people hooked on Twitter so they’ll eventually sign up.

How many people are interested in getting tweets (as SMS txt messages) from their favorite vendor or brand, but have been reluctant because of the requirement to sign up with Twitter? There might well be quite a few, which means that tweeters will start seeing more followers soon.

Domus is an innovative marketing communications firm that incorporates state-of-the-art technologies and classic marketing principles into effective marketing campaigns. For more information visit us at Domus, Inc. and Domus Digital.

Printer manufacturers have long since given up most of their profit margins on the actual printer hardware. Rather, they make most of their profit on the continuing sales of ink once the printers have been purchased.

When ebooks were first introduced, they were relatively expensive. Both Sony’s and Amazon’s were over $300. Now there is a version of the Barnes and Noble Nook for $149 and a version of the Amazon Kindle for $139. At these price points, they’re starting to make very little on the hardware itself, but hope to make longer term profits on the subsequent ebook sales.

The major implication for the market is that dedicated ebook readers that don’t have an integrated ebook distribution system are not going to fare well. In fact, most of the ebook readers that were announced earlier this year have already folded. The only major player other than B&N or Amazon that is left is Sony and, unfortunately for them, they don’t have a (book) content distribution system that compares with the other two.

Of course, the wild card in the race is the iPad and other up-and-coming non-dedicated ebook readers. And a big wild card it is. Of course, neither Amazon nor B&N are hurt too much by the iPad because both have iPad apps that let their customers read their books on it, but it does damage their exclusivity and force more price competition on the books themselves.

The next twelve months should be interesting.

Domus, Inc. is an integrated digital and traditional marketing communications agency. For more information, please visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

GM is hoping its Chevy Volt will become a huge success, and from a product design perspective they might well have a great car. It certainly is the only car that competes in its exact category. From an energy perspective, there will be four basic kinds of cars on the market by the end of this year – the traditional internal combustion engine cars, the hybrids like the Prius and Fusion Hybrid that run primarily on gas but switch to electric at times to improve gas efficiency, the pure electric like the Tesla and the upcoming Nissan Leaf, and the Volt. The Volt runs as a pure electric car until the battery is drained, at which point it seamlessly switches over to its gas engine. So GM is positioning the Volt more directly against pure electric cars like the Leaf, but for people who are nervous about the battery dying on a longer trip.

Compared to the Leaf, which will also be sold in the US by the end of this year, the Volt has a lower capacity battery (40 miles vs. 100 miles) and is more expensive ($41,000 vs. $33,000 – although each qualifies for tax breaks). So, unfortunately for GM, consumers are forced to trade better electric milage and significantly more more money for the peace of mind afforded by the gas engine. It won’t be an easy sell, although it’s possible.

The Volt’s price, though, presents GM with a much bigger sales problem because of Chevy’s brand positioning. Chevy has always been GM’s lower cost, every man’s car (separate from the iconic Corvette). Virtually all of its car models have starting prices of between $10,000 and $20,000. People expect Chevy’s to be less expensive. So the Volt’s price will be its albatross – it doesn’t fit Chevy’s brand positioning. Moreover, people don’t associate the Chevrolet brand with leading edge technology and innovations, which clearly GM is trying to do with the Volt.

GM would have been much better off if they had launched the Volt under the Buick or Cadillac brand. In addition to better lining up the car with the brand’s established position in people’s minds, GM could even have raised the price a little to include a larger electric engine. It would then have a car that beats the competition on all fronts.

The time is coming soon, though, when we’ll see how well GM’s strategy worked. By the end of this year the Volt will be on the market, along with competitors like the Nissan Leaf. As an early indicator, though, consider a few interesting statistics. The Nissan Leaf is significantly ahead of the Chevy Volt in terms of internet search volume (Google Trends) and Facebook fans (Nissan Leaf Facebook page vs. Chevy Volt Facebook page).

Domus is a marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. For more information, visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

Google’s Nexus One phone was an interesting marketing experiment – introduce a new, self-branded phone that Google sold directly, not through the wireless carriers. Unfortunately, sales never reached high enough targets and this week Google announced that it has ended production of the phone (through its manufacturing partner, HTC) and is closing its web store.

The questions of why the phone failed and even whether the phone failed are even more interesting, though. We’ll never know for sure, but here are some thoughts.

First, assuming the phone did fail (which we’ll come back to later), one possible reason is that Google did not pay enough attention to its four marketing Ps – product, price, promotion, and place (distribution). Let’s assume that the phone itself was good, so that leaves the other Ps.

First let’s look at the distribution channel (place). Cell phones – more than most other products – are inextricably entwined with their service provider, so attempting to bypass the service provider was already a daunting gamble by Google. Even Apple, which garnered enough interest in its phone independent of the network, still chose a service provider with whom to partner.

The cell phone distribution channel is especially important because of the marketing effort that the service providers put into their phones. First, there’s the next P, price. As everyone knows, you can always get phones for less than the retail price when you buy from the wireless carrier (as long as you accept the two-year commitment). So why buy outside of the wireless carrier? We’ve all been conditioned to think that way.

And finally, let’s consider the last P, promotion. Google didn’t just introduce a branded phone. More importantly, it also introduced a phone operating system (Android) that it hoped to induce others to use in their phones. One of those manufacturers who immediately decided to do so was Motorola. They, in conjunction with Verizon (as opposed to Google’s approach of going it alone), launched a huge advertising campaign for the new Droid phone (“Droid Does”) at the same time that Google started selling its Nexus One. With Verizon’s massive marketing push, everyone knew about Droid, everyone got a good price for Droid, and everyone associated the name, “Droid”, with “Android”. Where did that leave Nexus One? Apparently nowhere.

However, all of the above was based on the assumption that Google did fail with the Nexus One. What if, though, the primary purpose of the Nexus One was to generate enough buzz about the Android operating system to propel all Android-based phones (i.e., Google-based phones) to mainstream success? Once the buzz did its work, the Nexus could happily be retired. In that sense, maybe the Nexus One was an outstanding success. Android-based phones are quickly challening the iPhone for smartphone market share. Google never was in the physical product business anyway.

Domus, Inc. is a marketing communications agency specializing in integrating the digital and social media worlds with classic marketing principles to deliver high returns on investment for our clients. For more information, please visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

So many companies put extensive resources and budgets on search engine marketing and brand building advertising. But how many of those same companies apply effective resources to monitor and address online reviews and complaints about their products and services? In reality, “buzz” about you on these sites might well be more important than the number of page 1 Google rankings or any display metric. Today, shoppers regularly go to sites like yelp.com, epinions.com, and others to find out what experiences others have had with companies they’re interested in doing business with. If the comments written about you are predominantly negative – especially in comparison to your competition – then increasing the public’s awareness of you will just increase the number of people who get a negative opinion of you.

So, if you’re not already monitoring these sites and honestly addressing posted concerns, you might want to think hard about your current marketing allocations.

Domus is a full service marketing communications agency that combines classic marketing experience with digital marketing expertise to effectively deliver improved business performance for our customers. For more information, please visit use at http://www.domusinc.com.

Apple has officially announced their iAd development kit, “iAd JS”, which enables agencies to develop interactive ads for their clients. As explained in Apple’s technical documentation, it gives more interactive capabilities than any other existing interactive media, including Adobe Flash.

First, it can accept a user’s gestures, not only on the touch screen but also by motion. For example, you can create a banner ad showing a soda bottle, allowing users to shake it until it explodes. Using the kit, you can also develop ads that detect orientation.

Next, the iAd JS provides for integration with social media. When iAd is activated, the user is online; therefore, it can connect to a social network and download dynamic content to the banner. It’s also possible to update real-time status of an advertising campaign, such as competitive or ranking information.

Based on user interaction, it can also store an image generated by the banner to the iPhone’s photo gallery, so users can see ad images on their albums. For example, by utilizing social media integration, an iAd banner can create and save a user’s future baby photo with campaign copy based on a photo identified by Facebook ID.

Domus has full iAd creation capabilities and is actively involved in development projects for our clients. For more information, please visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

BP’s oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico might be the first true national calamity to occur during the social media era. As such, exploring what BP has done and has not done, along with the unfolding consequences, offers the rest of us an illustrative case study on how best to act before, during, and after events such as these – even if on much smaller scales.

Here’s one initial observation. Prior to the spill, BP’s overall reputation was generally neutral – relatively evenly split between people who had positive, neutral, and negative opinions about them. However, since the spill opinions are strongly skewed to the negative.

Also, prior to the explosion, BP had very litle presence on major social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. They did a lot of advertising (“Beyond Petroleum”), but not much engagement with the public, especially the online public.

So, whatever they have tried to do since then cannot be effective because they have no initial base of fans from which to draw help and support. As a counter example, consider what would happen if some disaster involved a company such as Starbucks. Excluding all discussions of the nature of the disaster itself, Starbucks would at least have a couple of million people with whom it has established an online relationship and who could (and would) join the discussions from an initially positive perspective.

So, one lesson to be learned is that engagement in social media is not just for ongoing brand strength; it’s also an insurance policy against unanticipated problems – even on scales much less than BP’s disaster.

Domus is a creative and digital marketing agency based in Philadelphia. We combine expertise in classic marketing, social media trends, technology, and business acumen to provide effective short- and long-term solutions for our customers’ marketing needs. For more information, please visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

Google recently released a new advertising feature called “Remarketing”. Basically, it allows you to create an AdWords campaign that targets people who’ve been to specific pages of your web site.

This opens up a whole new area of online marketing segmentation. Previously, you could target people who searched for your keywords or who visited other sites, but without knowing much more about them. Or you had to wait until they explicitly entered their email address for you to contact them directly. Now you can focus some of your effort on people who, by their own actions, have clearly indicated some interest in you specifically but haven’t yet given you direct contact.

Consider the possible conversion rate performance improvements by offering something special to previous visitors. It’s not quite the same as email marketing directly to people who have left you their email addresses, but it has the potential to be more than marketing blindly to everyone who meets a generic demographic.

If you haven’t at least begun to explore Google Remarketing, you’re probably doing your brand a disservice. Check it out at Google Remarketing.

Domus is an innovative advertising agency and digital marketing agency based in Philadelphia. For more information visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.