Why Sign Up?

Why NOT sign up? Get on there and check it out. For the most part, people are going to sign up – after all it’s Google. People like Google, people are familiar with Google, Google has a lot of money and a lot of expertise, and Google+ is already growing…rapidly.

Gaining Momentum

While 50 million users is a far cry from Facebook’s 1.8 billion users, it’s still 50 MILLION users (and growing) since its launch in August, making Google+ the fastest growing platform EVER. This presents a small problem in that Facebook users are used to Facebook’s features and activities. Facebook has set the precedent, but user activities on Facebook don’t necessarily correlate to similar activities on Google+. This can be a bit confusing. For example and in general terms, if you “Like” a company page on Facebook, you then become a subscriber to the page’s status updates. On Google+, you can “+1” a page; however, in order to subscribe you must add the page to your “Circles.”  This difference may be minor, but it can pose an issue for members’ ease of use.

Differences with Facebook

Interestingly, one of the first things a user will realize is that a company’s Google+ page and Facebook page don’t seem any different. If your audience is already on Facebook and your Google+ page isn’t bringing users anything new, why would they create a Google+ page just to view your brand when everything they need is already on Facebook? Logically speaking, they wouldn’t, but a ComScore survey estimates that 22% of U.S. adults will be on Google+ by August 2012. Hopefully, Google execs are active Google+ members by then. All joking aside, can you or your business afford to ignore 22% of the United States’ young, affluent, early-adopter audience? Or even if you could, why would you?

A big feature within Google+ is the “Hangout,” which is being pegged as something ideal for businesses. Essentially, it’s a chat room which users can visit whenever they want. It allows users and companies an opportunity to interact with one another, and may be a great relationship-building tool. Current limitations do not permit participation in a hangout on a mobile device. Ouch…really Google? But I assume that it’s just a matter of time until mobile capabilities for the hangout feature become available.

Bottom Line

Sign up. I know, I know – ANOTHER page to update?! Between Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Foursquare (and so on), you have enough to manage. You might think you’ve got all your audiences covered – and you just may – but you don’t want to be the only company that’s NOT there. It’s obvious, or should be obvious, that managing your company’s social media effort is a full time job. If it’s not, you’re just not engaging as effectively as you could (and should) be. Might as well cover all your bases and add one more to the mix.

Saving the best for last…

With Google analytics finally within the social media mix, Google+ could (maybe, possibly, HOPEFULLY) offer businesses some hard data on the holy grail of social media: social media metrics and ROI.  Halleluiah! It’s a holiday miracle!

Kate Toy is a Senior Account Manager at Domus, Inc., a marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. For more information, visit http://www.domusinc.com. For new business inquiries, please contact CEO and founder of Domus, Inc. Betty Tuppeny at betty.tuppeny@domusinc.com or 215-772-2805.

Take social media, for example. Consumers are increasingly relying upon social media for their information – going to a company’s Facebook page, for example, before visiting a company’s website. And consumers demonstrate their brand preferences (and loyalty) by following and liking their brands of choice on Twitter and Facebook. In fact, a recent Nielsen report states that 53% of active online adult social networkers follow a brand, that social networking and blogging now account for nearly a quarter of total time spent on the Internet and that Americans spend more time on Facebook than they do on any other U.S. website. Pretty compelling statistics…and pretty valid reasons why public relations professionals need to include social media as part of their overall communications tactics.

Naysayers may dismiss these statistics, but I recall a similar conversation about the World Wide Web nearly 20 years ago. Enough said.

But beyond B2C communications lies the evolution of “media.” Media is ever-increasingly an online vehicle as printed media – printed news media, most especially – fades away. Writers and editors rely on social media platforms to magnify their voice and reach in the hope that it will (1) increase their reach and (2) drive traffic back to their articles/website, thereby increasing their readership and the value of their advertising.

Even what we consider “media” sometimes comes into question: are bloggers considered media, for example? In my opinion, creating online content does not a member of the media make; however, those with the forum and the voice may not be afraid to use it. So we as public relations professionals must manage these relationships just as we must consider social media platforms as media relations tools – platforms for engaging with the media and platforms for communicating with our various publics.

Does your company need assistance navigating the evolving world of social media? Do you have the tools necessary to harness the power of social media in order to communicate your messaging in a cohesive and an articulate manner? Domus does! Put our expertise in public relations and social media to work for you. Visit www.domusinc.com today and be an active part of the conversation that’s taking place in the world of social media.

For more on this topic, see “Public Relations in a Social World” posted on COMPREHENSION – PRSA’s blog: http://comprehension.prsa.org/?p=3557.

Amy Whilldin is an Account Director at Domus, Inc., a marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. For more information, visit http://www.domusinc.com. For new business inquiries, please contact CEO and founder of Domus, Inc. Betty Tuppeny at betty.tuppeny@domusinc.com or 215-772-2805.

It’s so important that some people will do anything they can to increase their followers. But there is a right and wrong way to attract followers. Politicians have taken to Twitter to spread their campaign messages (some have ulterior motives, but we won’t name names in this blog). In the early stages of the GOP nomination process, Newt Gingrich boasted that he had 1,325,842 followers, whereas Mitt Romney and Michele Bachman have not even cracked the 100,000 mark. However, it was later learned that more than 80 percent of Gingrich’s followers were dummy accounts and were obtained by an agency that is paid to bolster Twitter followers for a fee http://gawker.com/5826645. As you can see, this is the wrong way to attract Twitter followers.

There are numerous ways to legitimately increase followers. Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg.com, discusses 10 ways to increase followers in the following TechCrunch article: http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/25/kevin-rose-10-ways-to-increase-your-twitter-followers/. Here is one excerpt that specifically caught my eye:

“Start a contest. @jasoncalacanis offered a free macbook air if he reached the #1 most followed spot. That never happened, but Jason added thousands of followers…brilliant.”

Domus has developed and implemented numerous Twitter contests for its clients. A recent Dacor contest included various product giveaways and successfully increased the company’s followers from under 700 to 3,366.

The most important aspect of attracting followers is that a company’s Tweets should fulfill some need. Dacor’s Twitter feed is populated by useful information regarding the company’s products, money-saving deals, recipes and the occasional contest/giveaway. Contact Domus to learn more about our Twitter strategies and how we can help your company.

Greg Smore is a Senior Account Manager at Domus, Inc., a marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. For more information, visit http://www.domusinc.com. For new business inquiries, please contact CEO and founder of Domus, Inc. Betty Tuppeny at betty.tuppeny@domusinc.com or 215-772-2805.

With a discount offer, the business is probably appealing to customers that purchase on price. It is unlikely customers will come back to the business in the future to purchase products and services at full value. In a column on AdAge.com, Al Ries, the famous marketing consultant, states:

“Presumably, all those consumers who bought products and services for 50% off are going to be happy to return to their local retailers and return to buy those same products and services at full prices. That’s not going to happen. What is going to happen is that those same consumers are going to go back to Groupon and wait for the next 50%-off sale.”

I’m sure many of you have used Groupon, Living Social or one of the other local daily deal sites. Of those of you who have, how many of you have returned to that business to purchase the same product or service at full price? My guess is not many.

The trouble with only focusing on new customers is that it costs much more to the business to market to new customers than to sell to current customers. A business is also sacrificing its profitability on sales to new customers using a Groupon offer since the business splits about 50% of the revenue with the company.

Filippo Caffari, owner of The Butcher Store, a restaurant in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was quoted in BusinessWeek saying that when using Groupon “A lot of people just come for the deal, and very few become repeat customers.”

In The Wall Street Journal, David Wachs, president of Cellit, a marketing firm that has collaborated with small businesses on Groupon deals, argues that small companies need “ongoing conversations” with customers, not coupon offers. Groupon is best used “to drive new customers in their door.” He’s right about the necessity of ongoing conversations with customers. In order to be a worthwhile marketing tool, business owners need to capitalize on the Groupon or other deal tool. Ask customers to leave their email address when they redeem their deal and contact them with additional coupons, invite them to follow the company’s Facebook or Twitter, and share news about new products and services that would be of interest to them.

With Groupon and other deal sites, a business is reducing profitability as it markets to new customers and by using the deal alone, they are unable to build a relationship with these new customers for repeat business. When considering Groupon as a marketing tool, a business should first evaluate the effect on its profitability, brand and relationship with customers before joining in the daily deal trend.

Ed Samide is a Senior Account Manager at Domus, Inc., a marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. For more information, visit http://www.domusinc.com. For new business inquiries, please contact CEO and founder of Domus, Inc. Betty Tuppeny at betty.tuppeny@domusinc.com or 215-772-2805.

Recently, we’ve all seen endless debates about who should “control” social media in ad agencies. And that “someone” should be the PR professional – often the eyes and ears of the agency.

PR and Social Media – “Both About the Relationship”

The social space is about quick connections, as well as real and strong relationships. We can no longer isolate social media from public relations – it just can’t be avoided. Savvy journalists and bloggers use Facebook and Twitter like their own personal newswire services and constantly search online for stories and trends. Any way you look at it, the social aspect represents just one more way to get a journalist’s attention.

After all, PR and social media share the same qualifications:

1)         Who is your audience?

2)         What do they care about?

3)         How will your “announcement” impact their lives and help enhance your client’s’ message?

PR Pros – Time to Go Where the Action Is!

PR practitioners cannot expect audiences to come to them; rather – they must go to where their audiences are. So if these targets are online, the PR pro must be online too. This is where the PR/social convergence begins. Think about it: social media goes perfectly with PR – it allows PR pros to engage with audiences and target markets like never before! But yes, there are those in the PR world who consider this imminent change to be one giant annoyance because – it requires that they learn new techniques, while abandoning some old ones.

To many, this overlap presents tremendous opportunity – new technologies and communication channels are available and have changed the PR profession. Yes, PR practitioners must change the way they write, and responding and thinking must be done in real -time. Yes folks, it’s time to know your way around the social world as well as a newsroom! It’s about immersing yourself in the social culture as a way of better understanding its inherent advantages. It’s about participating, interacting and sharing.

PR and social media are now completely intertwined. Both feed on public interest, and neither means making that “sell” right then and there. Both are catalysts for eventual business and should go arm in arm. PR professionals are now realizing that the traditional PR skills that they’ve used so long are perfectly suited to our new social world, they just need some 2011 modifications. Any PR pro that who isn’t becoming a social media expert should get on board…quickly.

Do you agree that the line between PR and social media is now too fine of a line to separate? Should the PR person on your staff take the lead in social media? Please share your thoughts and join our discussion. Thank you.

Lynette Byrnes is a Senior Account Manager at Domus, Inc., a marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. For more information, visit http://www.domusinc.com. For new business inquiries, please contact CEO and founder of Domus, Inc. Betty Tuppeny at betty.tuppeny@domusinc.com or 215-772-2805

This week, Coca-Cola announced that it will be making a $4 billion investment in China over the next three years. Coca-Cola’s sales in China grew 24% in the most recent quarter; in addition, China is Coke’s third largest market. Coke CEO Muhtar Kent stated, “We don’t see China only as a great growth market. We see China as a future market for further innovation that will benefit our business globally.”

Proctor & Gamble is also looking to emerging markets including Africa, Brazil and India to grow its business. This year, Proctor & Gamble plans to enter Brazil with products like Oral B toothpaste and Olay skin cream. According to the Wall Street Journal, “In Brazil, P&G employees pore over maps that document demographic trends and pinpoint stores that don’t yet sell the company’s products.”

Pepsi has taken the strategy of growing its business internationally through acquisitions. In April 2011, Pepsi announced it was purchasing dairy products and fruit-juice maker OAO Wimm-Bill-Dann for $5.4 billion. The acquisition makes Russia the largest market for Pepsi outside of the United States.

Even ad agencies are capitalizing on emerging markets. Ogilvy & Mather launched a division in its New York City office to help Chinese companies with marketing and public relations in the United States. Ogilvy has plans over the next few years to expand this service to Africa, Brazil and India.

If it is right for their business model, U.S. companies should strongly consider growing their business internationally as a way to balance the slow growth predicted for the domestic economy.

Ed Samide is a Senior Account Manager at Domus, Inc., a marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. For more information, visit http://www.domusinc.com. For new business inquiries, please contact CEO and founder of Domus, Inc. Betty Tuppeny at betty.tuppeny@domusinc.com or 215-772-2805.

Domus’ approach to crisis management is strategic and disciplined, yet flexible enough to deal with any crisis; we plan for both the expected and unexpected alike.  This approach includes five key strategies: 

Prevention
Domus specialists extensively research the client’s industry, then analyze key vulnerabilities, quantify and prioritize the risks, and outline steps to mitigate those risks.

Containment
When a crisis occurs, Domus takes action swiftly and works with the client to assert control over the message and events. This includes creation of an on-site “War Room” that acts as a command center to address the crisis as it unfolds.  Experts with decades of crisis management experience are on site with our clients throughout the crisis situation.

Immediate Damage Assessment
Domus prepares the tools to manage the situation, including a Crisis Outlook Grid, which states the current situation, and presents all possible scenarios. The grid is constantly updated and outlines formal action with the media, interpersonal action with the community, and details next steps for each scenario. Accompanying the grid are shell statements that contain basic details that are easily customized when a crisis occurs.

Media Monitoring and Inquiry Management
Domus monitors all broadcast and print coverage, as well as fields all media calls to analyze and process their requests while key decisions are made with our strategists and our client’s decision-makers.

Rebuilding and Repairing by Refocusing
When we have controlled the immediate crisis, Domus will begin to rebuild relationships by shifting the public’s focus back to the positive aspects of the brand. The Domus team works with clients to rebuild the potentially damaged relationships with the public, media, community, or even their own employees and associates.

While overwhelming and stressful, a crisis situation can be contained – and public opinion restored –  when it is handled properly from the start.

At Domus, we believe in a collaborative team effort. This includes complete immersion in our clients’ business. Our responsibility is to constantly evaluate market dynamics as well as client data and translate that understanding into strategies and recommendations that builds our clients’ business.

We think like you, work like you, and take your marketing objectives as seriously as you do. When clients and agencies partner in this manner it leads to overall marketing success. This team approach is the essence of what we do every day for the life of our relationship with our clients.

Domus, Inc. is an integrated digital and traditional marketing communications agency that delivers unconventional thinking and out-of-the-box strategies that help our clients sustain growth and demand brand awareness.  For more information, please visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

For those of you who don’t know, KBIS aka the Kitchen & Bath Industry Show, is the premier event for those in the kitchen and bath industry; designers, manufacturers, architects, dealers – they’re all there. This year’s event took place April 26^th – 28^th in Las Vegas, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.  Everything is very high high-end and high quality. The best of the best go to KBIS, and I was proud to be there with Dacor.

For a PR person, the actual trade show only takes up a small portion of the work and effort we put in. We usually begin about 3 – 4 weeks ahead of time by hitting the phones to schedule booth appointments with editors. We then worry about the press releases and press kits. (Dacor’s press kits were 4gig USB drives made to look like miniature cooktops. Very cool.)  From there, we finally get onsite at the actual event and our job is to make our client’s day go as smoothly as possible.  As with most things, it’s much easier said than done. However, Dacor runs their marcomm efforts like a well-oiled machine and, along with the Marketing Manager and VP of Marketing, we successfully fielded over 25 media appointments, three video shoots, one radio broadcast, and countless other inquiries. Not too shabby.

While quite important, trade shows are not just about the media. Dacor had a steady stream of customers visiting their booth, and to give something back to those who stopped by, every visitor received a blue Dacor pin. If the visitor was seen on the show floor wearing the pin by Dacor’s mystery spotter they won a set of cookware.  One of the winners even offered to have Dacor use his home as a case study! Sometimes a worthy case study can be hard to come by. It’s a great opportunity for Dacor to document a customer’s experience with their products – and it fell right in our lap.

Some companies elect to save their new product announcements for trade shows, others hold a press conference to release company news, while some have an event that’s more about fun with some company messaging weaved in. Dacor chose the latter, and it was an overwhelming success. They commissioned Jeff Lewis, reality TV star on Bravo’s “Flipping Out,” to come to the booth for a two hour meet and greet with show attendees and a customer cocktail event at the end of the day. Visitors were lined up around the booth the entire two hours waiting for their chance to chat with Jeff and snap a photo or two. The response was so positive that Jeff even stayed a bit longer and came to the afternoon event early so he could greet even more guests.  The late afternoon cocktail event was also extremely well received, with over 100 guests who noshed, drank, and mingled until the very end.

Events like this are a ton of work but the results are well worth it. Dacor instantly saw a spike in media coverage on the days surrounding KBIS and they now have coverage lined up for the next couple of months. More than coverage and media hits, Dacor made an impact on customers and media, which created a lasting impression that will continue to serve and benefit the brand long after the trade show is over.

Web 3D is a technology that enables 3D graphics to be displayed on a website. This technology is becoming more popular and is rapidly developing. This article will explain the recent technology trend of Web 3D and how to prepare for a 3D advertising future.

Figure 1. Web3D Body Explorer by Google

History of 3D advertising

Table 1.Chronicles of Web 3D

3D advertising was born during the 2^nd generation of Web 3D. Wildtangent and Viewpoint created several experimental advertisements for Nike, Coke, Ford, and Toyota[4]. However, there was no standard for 3D graphics, so companies created their own format using ActiveX control. ActiveX control often irritated users due to features such as installing additional toolbars in a users’ browser or monitoring users’ information without their knowledge[5]. It was unfortunate that the success of these early 3D advertisements was limited due to being built black hat and without a standard. Also, at the time, another factor limiting the success of 3D advertising was that most computers didn’t have enough computing power to run 3D graphics in a browser.

Figure 2.Viewpoint Hyperview Banner Ad.

Recent Trends

Microsoft announced their new web browser IE9 on March 14, 2011. This is Microsoft’s first browser partially supporting the HTML5 standard. Recently, Microsoft has also announced their new IE10 preview 1 at a MIX 2011 event just a month after launching IE9.[6] One of the major updates for IE10 is faster GPU acceleration. GPU acceleration handles most graphic effects including 3D rendering (but, Microsoft doesn’t include the WebGL context, yet.) Microsoft also announced Silverlight 5, a rich media platform (even richer than HTML5[7]), which now has a 3D API derived from XNA, Microsoft’s game framework.[8] It is clear Microsoft is joining the Web 3D race.

Adobe has announced “Molehill” which is code name for a new 3D API that will be a subset of the Adobe Flash platform. This API allows rendering of 3D graphics and shaders using GPU. Molehill will be published to a new version of Flash player. Since 99% of internet-enabled desktop users have flash player, you can expect almost all desktop users will have Molehill.[9] HTML5 is changing the rules of the entire web world, but did you know that Web 3D is one of the major changes in HTML5? On March 3, 2011, Khronos group, an open standards consortium, released a final WebGL 1.0 Specification.[10] WebGL is a web standard for a low-level 3D graphics API based on OpenGL ES 2.0, exposed through the HTML5 Canvas element as Document Object Model interfaces.[11] Currently, recent versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari support WebGL, and eventually Internet Explorer will support it. The iPhone and iPad, don’t support WebGL for now, but the devices will in the future due to Apple’s strategy of supporting HTML5.[12]

Comparing  Web 3D technologies

Comparing Web 3D technologies could be confusing for advertising agencies since the offerings have different specs and support from various web browsers across different platforms. Right now, it is hard to predict who will become the leader in 3D advertising.

Table 2. Comparison of Web 3D technologies

WebGL

WebGL is now a web standard and will dominate the 3D advertising world, but not in the near future. If you think about HTML5 as an advertising platform, you might consider including WebGL in your long term plan. Microsoft has not announced their support of WebGL officially yet, so Microsoft’s plans could be a decision point for you.

In mobile, few devices such as Nokia N900[17] support WebGL, but HTML5 is becoming a major platform for mobile advertising[18] rather than Adobe Flash, and it’s highly possible that WebGL will be added to a current mobile advertising platform such as Apple’s iAd.

Silverlight5

Silverlight is becoming popular in the RIA (Rich Internet Application) platform and WMV streaming container. Silverlight’s new 3D feature will extend the UX (User Experience) and interactivity of advertising. However, Silverlight doesn’t have many benefits compared to the Web Standard WebGL and Flash which is everywhere. Silverlight is a poorer choice than Flash in mobile devices since Silverlight only works on WP7 (Windows Phone 7) devices.

Silverlight is useful though for creating an advertising campaign around an RIA app that requires heavy UX and high performance such as face detection or augmented reality.

Molehill from Adobe Flash

Needless to say, Flash is still the number one solution for rich media advertising. Once Adobe expands 3D capabilities to Flash, a creation pipeline could be smoothly transitioned to handle 3D assets and animations.

Backup plan for unsupported systems

Although recent systems can handle cool technologies like Web 3D, there are still many computers that only run IE6. In most cases, a page can detect whether a browser supports Web 3D using JavaScript, and switch content to a compatible substitution. WebGL context could be switched to 2D context, which will handle 2D graphics within the same <canvas> container. 2D context profile is supported by most recent browsers including Android and iOS devices. Silverlight is a plug-in, so you can put backup content in <embed> and <object> tags. In Flash, you can run a 3D API check ActionScript, which detects if the current version of Flash supports 3D API.

The Future of 3D Advertising

If you are still unsure about the future of 3D advertising, here is a summary of why 3D matters.

• 3D is more interactive than 2D, especially rendered video reel. Characters and objects are dynamic and react based on your action.
• 3D leads new interaction. Smartphones have new sensors that detect motion, rotation, and your face, and 3D advertising is ready to react.
• 3D content could work with 3D TVs – a fast growing segment that will probably become mainstream.[19]
  • Importantly, advertisers can easily repurpose 3D TV content for Web 3D – since the content is already made 3D for television little additional work would be needed to use the same content on the web
• One Source Multi-use – Disney could repurpose their 3D character assets for 3D advertising; Hyundai could repurpose the 3D models of their cars so users could explore their vehicles in a 3D environment
• Augmented Reality (AR) requires 3D. AR is a fast growing advertising platform.[20]

In business, building solid personal relationships is key to success.  Personal interaction promotes effective and collaborative teamwork and builds strong relationships, which keeps clients happy.  Domus credits much of its success to building personal relationships with its clients; relationships that have, in some cases, led to friendships, on top of successful business partnerships.  In addition to regular phone and face-to-face contact, we have gone as far as setting up a permanent office in our clients’ offices in locales across the country  in order to provide constant face-to-face interaction.  It doesn’t get much more hands on than that. Sure, we could save money by virtual communication; but nothing has more value than an on-site presence.  It simply makes good business sense.  When you’re visible, your client will look to you first.

Domus is a leading edge internet marketing agency that brings its full range of classic marketing expertise to its hi-tech digital capabilities. For more information on how Domus can help you accurately analyze your internet presence and develop effective strategies to further your brand, visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

BUT, if you have the confidence of a branding vision, you can maximize your short-term and long-term return on investment by shouting more loudly than your competition and investing in a down economy.

The Back Part:

Marketers tend to pull back spending at the first signal of the economy weakening. While it was groundbreaking in 1986, the McGraw-Hill Laboratory of Advertising Performance Report 5262, showed that when the economy was down during the 1981 – 1982 recession, brands benefited from an increased share of voice. Not only did brands’ short-term sales increase but companies that maintained or increased their advertising “…could boast an average sales growth of 275 percent over the preceding five years.”

The proliferation of media vehicles and the ability to micro-target via technological solutions makes this study’s findings truer than ever.

As the current economic factors reinforce that this is a correction in some categories and a down cycle in others, now is the time to evaluate:

1. Who in your category is spending and how much; and
2. Is there a business case for your brand to scream more loudly even with a selective investment now?

• Dacor Luxury Appliances, a six-year Domus client, has chosen to promote its latest products at the annual Kitchen & Bath Industry Show this April. With its competitive noise level down, our client will dominate the share of voice among the key specifier and designer audiences. ROI will skyrocket.

The Future Part:

Strategically positioning a brand and ensuring consistency of messaging in all traditional and online communications are paramount to building brand equity. But, unlike in the mid-1980s, the addition of internet marketing as part “glue,” part “measurement system” and part “conversation facilitator” allows you to test and measure to whom and by which media you should be investing in your brand.

Learn from the DeLorean, (one of the most memorable product placements in marketing history) – use the proverbial time machine to capitalize on proven marketing principles from the past. Then deliver them with state-of-the-art mechanisms and measurements that are present, not future, at Domus, Inc.

Oh, and you may want to skip the jail part too. While Martha Stewart made it sing, John DeLorean’s antics had a Lindsay Lohan destruction effect on a promising brand.

If you want to discuss the implications of this, email betty.tuppeny@domusinc.com or call me directly at 215-772-2805.  For more information on marketing in a down economy, you can refer to additional Domus blog posts here!

Betty Tuppeny is the CEO and founder of Domus, Inc., a marketing communications agency based in Philadelphia. For more information, visit http://www.domusinc.com. For new business inquiries, please contact Betty directly at betty.tuppeny@domusinc.com or 215-772-2805.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Consider the following statistics from Sirius Decisions:

Only 20% of leads are followed up on

• 70% of leads are disqualified due to budget, lack of timing, etc
• 80% of “bad leads” do go on to buy within 24 months
• 73% of companies have no process for requalifying leads
• 80% of sales occur after the 5^th contact

Where most companies focus on lead generation, or, generating leads into the “top of the funnel,” most companies do not have an adequate system to handle non-sales ready leads. With the emphasis on new sales-ready leads, those leads that are deemed “not-qualified” now can very easily be qualified within 6 months to 2 years provided they are nurtured through their individual buying cycles.  By nurturing, we mean communicating problem-solving content on an ongoing basis through email and or social media channels.  When prospects engage with a vendor by downloading content or viewing webinars, for example, they inch closer to their buying decisions and their “lead score” increases.  Once the lead score reaches a defined threshold, those leads are sent to sales for closing, because they are deemed sales-ready.  Without nurturing, leads leave the funnel, and those leads engage with competitors who provide value and content consistently.

What is described above is the concept of Marketing Automation, a “software as a service” platform that manages the entire leads-to-sales funnel.  Visitors are attracted to a website or landing page because of their needs or research (pay-per-click, SEO, internet ads, blogs, social media content). Once there, landing pages need to be optimized for lead capture (ideally a web form so emails and relevant data are captured). Once the initial email is received, those leads are sent relevant emails that link to additional content.  Email campaigns are customized based on lead activity and engagement, then scored, then sent to sales.  The entire process is measured for success or improvement.

The benefits of lead nurturing are:

• Increase in qualified leads
• Decrease in sales cycle
• Decrease in cost of sales
• Improved conversion rate
• Increase transaction size
• Increase marketing ROI

A fairly new technology, Marketing Automation systems are not just being utilized by fortune 500 companies, but can be used effectively by smaller and mid-size companies as well. There is a pre-conceived notion that marketing automation is overly expensive, but that is not the case.  There are many systems that are quite moderate in pricing, yet still perform well.

The main benefit for replacing manual lead generating processes with marketing automation is that it allows companies to reach out to potential customers in a timely, more efficient, manner.

Here’s a more detailed look at how marketing automation works:

• A sound advertising and social media strategy is developed, and tactics like SEO and valuable content bring visitors to your website.
• The website or landing page offers strong benefit copy and valuable content, and visitors fill out forms to become leads.
• Based on the questions asked on the “contact us” web form AND website behavior (downloads, pages viewed), leads are automatically scored (a model defined before the system is in place).
• Leads are segmented based on their score and enter various tracks for follow-up.  Following up with leads through email is called lead nurturing and includes links to additional valuable content such as white papers and webinars. Nurturing allows increased engagement of potential customers.  The more engaged they are, the more likely they will become customers.
• Higher quality leads are turned over to sales immediately.  Lower quality leads remain in the system until additional engagement occurs.  In essence, salespeople receive less total leads, as they only receive the quality leads. When they can spend more time with quality leads, their time is spent more efficiently, they close more deals, and the revenue per deal increases, thus overall ROI increase.
• By integrating with Salesforce and other CRMs, salespeople report their deals and win values, which then are reported within the marketing automation system, which in turn allows us to evaluate what media sources, messages, events or other tactics generate the most efficient quality leads and sales, thus an analysis of “cost-per-deal” can be done.

Marketing Automation is more than a glorified email program.  By tracking website behavior of prospects and putting them into lead nurturing sequences, you can truly provide them with unique messages based on their behavior. When messages are relevant, increased engagement occurs and the likelihood of sales increases.

The key reasons to adopt marketing automation into your business are plain and simple:

• You have a need to increase new customer revenue
• You have an opportunity to resell/upsell existing customers
• You have the ability to engage with prospects with relevant marketing messages

Marketing automation won’t work properly if you don’t take these steps to make sure you’re ready:

• Have an ideal customer profile
• Know what the customers’ needs and issues are
• Have a content strategy that maps out messages toward all levels of your prospect’s buying cycle
• Understand the customer buying process
• Map the content towards a “drip process” whereby the content is distributed throughout various touch points and delivery channels in a timely, ongoing manner
• Ensure your current database is cleaned and optimized for the newer system
• Have a specific editorial calendar grouped for each audience segment
• Have a pipeline of content ready for implementation- white papers, case studies, webinars, newsletters, surveys, etc.  all written and designed.
• Assignment of roles to those responsible for the activities- managing the platform, the content, and the measurement.

Does your company wish to stay in the past, or move into the future, and utilize your website as “another salesperson” designed to engage, nurture, and close prospects who visit your site because of what you have to offer and the trust you build?

Contact us for more information on marketing automation- what the systems are, what they cost, what the preparation is, and how it could help your business.

Companies that have recently started adopting social media marketing to advertise their products should look beyond Facebook and Twitter depending on their target audience. This becomes more relevant when the product is being marketed globally. Any social networking website with over a million users is not something to ignore when it comes to marketing on the social web. You never know if the potential customer has all his loyalties set with a particular website that is not Facebook or Twitter. Some of the most popular social networking websites, that one may have missed, around the globe are:

• Badoo – Over 86 million registered users. Popular in Europe and Latin America.
• Bebo – Over 117 million registered users. Popular in North America, Europe, India, China , South East Asia and Australia.
• Bigadda – Over 3 million registered users. Popular in India.
• Black Planet – Over 20 million registered users. Popular amogst African-Americans.
• Caring Bridge – Around 10 million users, connecting family and friends during serious health event, care and recovery.
• Classmates.com – 50 Million users. Popular among students in schools and colleges.
• Cyworld – Over 24 million users. General social networking, popular in South Korea
• Douban – Almost 50 million registered users. It also the largest online Chinese language book, movie and music database and one of the largest online communities in China.
• Friends Reunited – Over 19 million users. A popular UK based social networking site targeting school, college, work and sports.
• Friendster – Over 90 million registered users. Largely popular in Southeast Asia.
• Habbo – Targeting Teens. Has over 162 million users.
• Hi5 – Over 80 million users. Popular in India, Mongolia, Thailand, Romania, Jamaica, Central Africa, Portugal and Latin America. Not very popular in the USA.
• iWiW – Over 4 million users. Popular in Hungary.
• LiveJournal – Over 18 million users. Mainly for blogging. Popular in Russia and among the Russian-speaking diaspora abroad.
• Netlog – Over 70 million users. Popular in Europe, Turkey, the Arab World and Canada’s Québec province. Formerly known as Facebox and Redbo.
• Nexopia – Around 2 million registered users. Popular in Canada.
• Odnoklassniki – Over 45 million registered users. Popular in Russia and former Soviet republics.
• Orkut – Over 100 million users. Owned by Google, Inc. Popular in Brazil and India.
• Qzone – Over 200 million users. Popular in China.
• Vkontakte – Social Network for Russian-speaking world including former Soviet republics. Biggest site in Russia. Over 110 million users.

For an extended list , you can visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites on Wikipedia.

Even though Facebook is popular in most of the world, the other vastly popular websites should not be overlooked, especially when a company’s target demographic makes up a majority of the social network’s audience.. The demographics of the targeted social networking website, thus play a pivotal role in deciding when and where to market your products and services .

The worldwide connections amongst social friends cannot be ignored either. It’s undeniable that the most trust worthy form of marketing is word of mouth, so you never know when a customer in the USA may be referred to a product, by his friend who saw your ad in India. There are tools all over the web that find out connections and demographics for social media websites. Very recently, Facebook released a cool visualization of the ‘Facebook world’.

Source: Mashable.com

This is what the world looks like according to the connections amongst a sample of 10 million Facebook users. Facebook intern Paul Butler was interested in locations of friendships, and thus came up with the idea of developing this visualization.

The power of social media marketing is enormous. A better planned global strategy, a better targeted audience, and a wisely chosen set of websites to start with, will add more worth to the buck invested.

In the past 2 years, the percentage of consumers who are using smartphones to access the web has skyrocketed to more than 49 million¹. A recent study by Morgan Stanley predicted that by 2015 there will be more mobile web users than there are desktop users².

As the mobile audience continues to grow, our mobile devices continue to shrink in size and increase in functionality. They’ve gone from oversized “Crackberries” we used for constantly checking email to organic extensions of our hands and minds that nearly do everything for us. Need to pay a bill, make a dinner reservation, turn off your house lights, video chat with a customer service representative or kill zombies? There’s an App for that.

These increasing mobile web users want access to immediate, valuable information. Whether they’re commuting to work, in a meeting or waiting on dinner, their time is valuable and they expect to find the information they want and need instantaneously. As mobile platforms are rapidly becoming the dominant web venue, your business needs to compete effectively in this 24/7 marketplace and you can’t afford to be “out of pocket” when a transaction is on the line. You need to think, listen and act like a mobile user.

Here’s the good news

Although your existing website can be searched and viewed via mobile devices/smartphones (e.g., iPhone, iPad or Android), it doesn’t mean it’s mobile-ready. However, converting and optimizing your site for smartphones is probably faster, easier and less expensive than you expect. Here are a few things to consider when approaching a mobile-ready website design:

Develop a strategy. Approach it the same way you do your current website, with your customers’ user-experience and objectives in mind.

• Analyze your existing website, identify existing high-value content in short, digestible chunks to fulfill end user needs.
• Think about usability and how you will organize it. Keep it simple, easy to read and navigate, and above all, design it to fit mobile devices/smart phone specifications.
• Identify and evaluate the need for bells and whistles beyond news and copy text: video, graphics, form fields, instant calling, SMS message sending, etc.
• Determine how you will deploy your mobile site. It may be better to use a separate domain to display the site such as “m.” or “/mobile” instead of an adaptation of your current website domain.
• Test your designs on various mobile platforms to ensure site optimization and expandability.
• Execute an effective SEO strategy ensuring your mobile website appears in a search on any mobile device/smartphone or search engine.

Leave it to the professionals.

Have a web designer or interactive agency handle this project. Depending on the level of customization required, it’s not a difficult undertaking, and the rewards are potentially great. At Domus, our staff of enterprise-level designers and developers can convert an existing web site simply and easily, or we can customize a dynamic and effective selling environment to work on every major browser and handheld device. Our advanced knowledge of online and mobile communications will give you a significant competitive edge in exchanging information between consumers and your brand as well as identifying and reaching new mobile prospects.

Making your website mobile-compatible is just the beginning. With more than twenty years’ experience in the marketing and communications sector, we will assure that your marketing strategy is sound and your message has been crafted to deliver optimal content and drive sales.

Sources: ¹Comscore, Inc.; ²Morgan Stanley. Mobile Internet Report, December 2009.

Domus, Inc. is an integrated digital and traditional marketing communications agency that delivers unconventional thinking and out-of-the-box strategies that help our clients sustain growth and demand brand awareness.  For more information, please visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

Beyond traditional media to promote these holiday ticket sales, is there more that state lotteries can do to creatively promote tickets as gifts?  One idea is to create holiday cards pre-inserted with an instant lottery ticket allowing consumers to kill two birds with one stone.  It’s all about convenience and one-stop shopping at this time of the year.  Another idea is to create a stocking or a special holiday-themed foil pouch stuffed with multiple lottery tickets for that lucky person who deserves a little extra.  And lastly, lottery tickets make great employee incentives.  Domus worked with the Pennsylvania Lottery to develop the Golden Opportunities Challenge Program, an unprecedented program encouraging the Commonwealths’ 350,000+ businesses to use lottery tickets as rewards and incentives.

The promotional program encouraged businesses to purchase packs of lottery tickets as employee incentives to boost productivity.  Many of Pennsylvania’s leading companies put the power of Pennsylvania Lottery tickets to work for them. In fact, one company purchased $17,000 in tickets over a one year period!

But why limit lottery tickets as gifts just during the holidays?  They make great gifts all year long for any holiday or special occasion.  By promoting and communicating this message to consumers, state lotteries can benefit from increased sales throughout the year.

Domus Digital is an integrated digital and traditional marketing communications agency that delivers unconventional thinking and out-of-the-box strategies that help our clients sustain growth and demand brand awareness.  For more information, please visit us at http://www.domusdigital.com.

Businesses know they can’t ignore the Internet as a channel for reaching consumers, but a new study released by Pew sheds light on the value of Internet marketing strategies to potential sales. Pew’s Online Product Research report reveals that more than half of Americans research products and services online prior to making purchases. The report also found that the commercial use of the Internet by American adults has grown since the mid-2000s, with 58% of Americans now reporting that they perform online research concerning the products and services that they are considering purchasing compared to 49% in 2004.

Focus on three aspects when conducting an audit of your website: technical integrity, communication clarity and search engine utility.

Technical Integrity

The monitoring and maintenance of your website by a qualified team, with extensive experience is how Domus Digital can insure the continued technical integrity of your most valuable sales tool.

Through our knowledge of how technical integrity impacts the quality of websites, the affordability of making changes, and the ultimate goal of customer satisfaction we can assist clients with website makeovers that will ultimately lead to increased ROI.

Technical integrity is an assurance that we can provide as a result of the mature process we use in all of our website makeovers.  With our process we can accurately predict technical performance, find and correct issues early, provide timely access and updates to information, give clients accurate cost modeling, and quantify and analyze performance.

The combined result of our technical integrity process is quality, affordability and customer satisfaction.

Communication Clarity

There are few things more frustrating than landing on a website that is confusing in its form and function and few things will cause consumers to go to the competition’s sites faster. Today, when people have less time to spare, succinct and clear communication is very crucial. Communication is the act of conveying information – its sole purpose is to convey the right thought and avoid miscommunication and to convey the right thought, there must be clarity. Clarity is of prime importance throughout the communication cycle for effective transfer of information. The goal is effective communication. This means no misconceptions, misrepresentations or misunderstandings.

Clients often have complex messages for consumers but this does not mean the message cannot be presented in a clear and effective manner.  Through a website makeover Domus Digital will focus your message or messages to achieve your goals.  Often organizations will attempt to accomplish too much through their website without evaluating how this will effect the user experience.  By creating a website that has clear communication within a focused delivery model our makeover will improve the user experience of your website.

Search Engine Utility

Utility is the quality of being of practical use.  This is important because in order to benefit from a website makeover the website must be found easily by consumers. Of utmost importance when making a website over is SEO and SEM.  Domus Digital has been providing these services for our clients for many years.  In doing so we ensure that a search for services or products results in consumers being presented with our client’s sites at or near the top of the results.  Without SEO and SEM a beautiful and functional site will be lacking in traffic to achieve improved ROI.  We will not let that happen, we provide the search engine utility required to move you to the top of search results.

Don’t let your most valuable avenue of promotion become lost in the multitude of competitor’s websites.  There has never been a more important time to update your website.  Consumers place a high value on the information they find on the Internet and your website must be able to perform to consumers’ expectations or you will lose sales.

Domus Digital will conduct a thorough audit of your existing website, identify the problems and opportunities your company has and provide you with a clear plan for a website makeover that will improve your site’s performance along the three most important axes: technical integrity, communication clarity and search engine utility.

Domus Digital is an integrated digital and traditional marketing communications agency that delivers unconventional thinking and out-of-the-box strategies that help our clients sustain growth and demand brand awareness.  For more information, please visit us at http://www.domusdigital.com.

Who really knows what good creative is?  Something so subjective is difficult to quantify.  Are there really any new ideas out there or is it a matter of presenting historically good ideas in new and fresh ways?  One of the most difficult things creative minds have to do is keep their ideas fresh.

A successful creative professional must possess, beyond talent, a zeal for the work they are generating and a general curiosity about all things life presents. Success is less about the nuts and bolts of creativity and more about the passion one has for producing work that is truly creative. The required inspiration will not come from sitting in an office attempting to force creativity to reveal itself in an exciting way.  The moments of inspiration will often result from the life we lead.  The connectivity of life provides unrivaled inspiration that needs to be captured and channeled into fresh creative ideas – it’s all connected; the sources for new, engaging ideas are all around us. Look at the art of movies, music, galleries, fashion, and interior design.  What’s hot in books, what commonalities do traditionally revered books share? Take a lesson from some geeks – study up on tech innovations. Social settings are filled with information about what inspires others; lively debates can create and change ideas that can then be converted into creative concepts. Creative derived from nature will innately touch the observer in a real and meaningful way.  Nature is never wrong in its design and can be a powerful and unending source of creativity.

When looking for some inspiration:

Know your audience – research, research, research.  Knowledge is power and you can never assume to know your audience without doing some serious ground work.

Check out popular blogs and read the feedback.  Sometimes the comments are more stimulating than the blog post itself and this is where you see the ideas of the post challenged or, sometimes, agreed upon.

http://www.brandflakesforbreakfast.com/

http://www.damniwish.com/

http://beautifully-webdesign.net/

http://crenk.com/

http://ifitshipitshere.blogspot.com/

Like the great TV series Law & Order, rip it from today’s headlines.  Stay current on the news.  National and world news are noteworthy because they are of interest to the masses.  Use current events to develop fresh creative ideas.

Be social media engaged.  What is trending on Twitter? What is the Buzz on Google?  What information are people sharing on LinkedIn.  What posts are getting the most comments on Facebook? Much like the news, these are things that people are interested in.

Trends are hip. Trends are cool. Trends are a surefire way to engage an audience.  Translate a trend in one industry into an idea for a completely different industry. Play off what’s hot right now or what is trending to be hot in the near future.

The ever-evolving world of technology is a vast resource for new ideas.  Stay current and use new technologies to enhance and expand creative ideas.  Use technology to reuse good ideas in new ways.

Don’t let your skills get outdated.  Stay current on your programs. Learn all the new facets of your tools like InDesign and Photoshop and experiment with them. Check out http://creativelive.com/courses/ for some free live courses.  Search for tutorials on YouTube.

Go green – recycle.  Had a great idea that lead to a great campaign before?  What was at the core of that idea that was so good?  Find it and reuse it (just in a new way).

Be a radical – always develop a concept that’s way out there. Think of some big, crazy ideas and let them settle into the confines of your project.

Use shock and awe to get a reaction.  Not all good creative is good because people like it.  Sometime the offensive or repugnant can elicit more interest than a safe idea.

Look at what is bad and think of how you would fix it.  Now take the good ideas from your fix and apply them to your project.

Team up with someone to work on a project.  There is strength in numbers and the pay off could be tremendous.

Seek the support of friends, especially those that are not in the business.  Have an open mind in social situations and let your friends and family be a source of ideas.  They are, after all, consumers.

Take a break.  Clear your head.  Sometimes you must unclog the pathway so that new information has a way in. Get out and play.

Domus, Inc. is an integrated digital and traditional marketing communications agency that delivers unconventional thinking and out-of-the-box strategies that help our clients sustain growth and demand brand awareness.  For more information, please visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

The New York Times published an article today on sentiment analysis tools and how politicians are using the technology to see which messages are resonating with voters by monitoring their social media posts. As a previous Domus Dish post explained, sentiment analysis technology has a long way to go – but it’s getting better and giving those using it an edge.

Read the full article here.

Domus is a leading edge internet marketing agency that brings its full range of classic marketing expertise to its hi-tech digital capabilities. For more information on how Domus can help you accurately analyze your internet presence and develop effective strategies to further your brand, visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

While you drink your morning coffee and peruse the newspapers, you’re likely to find at least one news story on a company facing a crisis.  Some examples to refresh your memory: Toyota, BP, the recent egg recall, energy-efficient windows that melt vinyl siding and even a hospital employee who lost a laptop containing private patient information.  That can’t be good.    The increasing frequency of natural disasters, man-made disasters and business interruptions has made it absolutely critical that organizations quickly and accurately communicate with all stakeholders during an event.  No one wants to be the “last one to know” in these situations.

A crisis is any situation that is threatening or could threaten to harm people or property, seriously interrupt business or damage reputation.  In a recent survey conducted by BtoB magazine, about 53% of marketing executives said they have experienced a business crisis resulting in negative news coverage, declining sales or reduced profitability.  But just about the same number (57%) said their company does not have a crisis response plan currently in place.  Talk about rolling the dice.

Every organization is vulnerable to crises.  Therefore, every organization from Fortune 500 companies to mom-and-pop shops to nonprofits should have a crisis plan.  This is critical now more than ever thanks to the 24-hour news cycle with endless blogs, twitter feeds and video clips that help keep a crisis alive.

Crisis management is critical in protecting a brand’s positive perception as well as the business interest that may be damaged in the long term, short term or both.  Top-notch crisis communications strategies can greatly improve a company’s ability to plan for, respond to and recover from a wide variety of crises.  Are you prepared?

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.

Commodity retailers aren’t feeling the pinch as much as retailers of higher-priced, considered purchases such as automobiles and luxury appliances.  These retailers face an uphill climb as the battle for the almighty dollar persists, and consumers continue to settle for less expensive options versus status.  Some retail brands saw the writing on the wall more than a year ago and made the decision to develop what we’ll call a “2^nd tier” product line (fewer bells and whistles and less expensive) that could be marketed to a wider range of consumers – AKA lower household income.  The trick here is to develop this new product line and market it to the masses without losing your brand cache and, ultimately, the consumers who’ve been willing to pay top dollar for that cache.  BMW has done this successfully with its 1-Series, launched in March of 2008.  They’ve managed to capture a younger, less affluent audience while still maintaining their core, wealthy consumer.

In the luxury appliance category, Dacor has done this successfully with the launch of its Distinctive™ Series – a new, more affordable line of appliances that offers fewer high-end features while maintaining the core style and innovation for which Dacor is so well known.  The Distinctive Series includes a Range and Rangetop, Single and Double Wall Ovens, a Dishwasher and a Cooktop.  The new line launched at the beginning of 2009 and is currently being sold through Dacor’s traditional, independent retailers as well as Sears.  The partnership with Sears is a first for Dacor.  And what better way to reach the masses with a premium appliance line than through a partnership with the leading mass merchant in the country. The bonus is that while only the Distinctive Series is on display at Sears stores, consumers have access to all Dacor appliances through the retailer.  As a result, Dacor has seen significant revenue through Sears from both its Distinctive and its non-Distinctive, higher-end appliances.

To sum it up…Dacor did it right.  The company did not choose to simply slash prices or offer deep discounts in an attempt to win the battle against its luxury appliance competitors.  We know – again by watching the car industry – that this strategy does not work.  Instead, Dacor did its due diligence and spent the R&D money to develop a line of appliances that would appeal – in performance, style and cost – to a new group of consumers.  Bravo, Dacor.  Nicely played.

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.

Needless to say, the myriad of new apps and online and in-store visualization tools that are available are sparing me from poor design choices. For all home décor-challenged folks out there these tools will show you how furniture, floor coverings, different paint colors and more will look together by mixing and matching from a variety of pre-set colors and textures.  The easy-to-use tools help consumers channel their inner Martha Stewart and feel more confident in purchasing decisions, in addition to saving time and money by not having to re-do décor or hire a professional designer.

Some of the most popular iPhone home design apps are Colorsnap, Colorchange and Ben Color Capture.  With Colorsnap, you simply take a photo of a swatch you are using.  This can be anything from a close up of your sofa to a print on your lampshade.  Once you take the photo, the Colorsnap app will find a paint color that best matches your swatch.  Colorchange lets you see your interior with the finished product and Benjamin Moore’s Ben Color Capture app matches paint swatches with your interior.  With the snap of your camera, you’ll receive paint recommendations within seconds along with a dealer locator.  All this, and you didn’t even need to leave your couch.

Home furnishing retailers and manufacturers can take advantage of these latest technologies to develop interactive visualization tools that will help make the sale and deliver more satisfied customers.  With a world of people strapped to their phones, not utilizing these app opportunities would be a very poor decision. Like my hot pink bathroom.

Domus, Inc. is an integrated digital and traditional marketing communications agency that delivers unconventional thinking and out-of-the-box strategies that help our clients sustain growth and demand brand awareness.  For more information, please visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

However, with U.S. sales of 3D TVs projected to be in the range of three to four million, this represents merely 10% of overall TV sales.  Not necessarily worth it when you consider the expense to create a 3D commercial – typically 10 – 50% more than a traditional ad.  Cinema networks, which also accept 3D commercials, have a limited number of 3D screens available, only about 8%, according to the National Association of Theatre Owners.

So, with budgets under the microscope, will marketers sacrifice dollars to jump on the next big thing?  It’s hard to tell.  Marketers must constantly be looking for new ways to make products stand out and build brands, but cost always remains the number one issue.  Will seeing a product in 3D actually sell more of them?  Time will tell.

For those advertisers who can use 3D technology to enhance their products, 3D commercials may be an ideal opportunity to get an edge over their competition.  Even just a few years ago, many advertisers were leery of producing ads in HD due to the increased cost and today, the majority of ads are shot in HD.

The true indicator will be how quickly consumers adopt 3D technology for their home.  A 3D commercial playing on a traditional television is essentially worthless. Therefore, advertising agencies will need to closely monitor this trend and advise their clients when, or if, it even makes sense to produce a commercial in 3D. Sure it’s cool, but if only 10% of the population sees it, is it really building any business? The answer is a big, FLAT “no.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, 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.

Now, “Kinect” is actually a good name for the product, and the device has the potential to be incredibly successful, but that’s not the point of this blog post. Rather, I’d like to muse about the strategy to use one name for the many months leading up to the actual launch, and then change the name just before the launch. Microsoft has always done that with its operating systems. For example, Windows Server 2008 was referred to as “Codename Longhorn” from early 2005 through August, 2007, when Bill Gates announced its official name in anticipation of its February, 2008 release.

Although that might be fine with operating systems, especially those designed for the corporate server market, Project Natal – er, uh, Kinect – is different. It is a consumer product, not a corporate one. And 2010 is not 2005. When Microsoft announced Project Natal in 2009, it released a video showcasing its capabilities. That video has been on the Top 10 viral video charts every month since then. It has received millions of views, and virtually every gamer has heard about it. Moreover, forums and social media sites have been abuzz over it non-stop.

In other words, social media is the name of the game in 2009/2010, for those companies who know how to use it well. Microsoft certainly did use it well this past year, getting the whole gaming world knowing about and discussing their upcoming product. But they didn’t hit a home run because of their naming tactic. Some of that branding value will now disappear because the word “Natal” no longer exists for Microsoft. They absolutely can – and will – spend lots of money to imprint the new name in people’s minds, but a more nimble and cost-conscious company might have come up with the final brand name a year ago. Then they could have gotten their branding done for them without a massive advertising campaign (allowing that money to be used more effectively elsewhere).

Domus is a marketing communications agency specializing in integrating social media, digital, and traditional advertising and PR into effective brand strategies. For more information, please visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.

“We’d ask that whether you’re talking to a dealer, reviewing dealer advertising, or speaking with friends and family, that you communicate our brand as Chevrolet moving forward,” said the memo, which was signed by Alan Batey, vice president for Chevrolet sales and service, and Jim Campbell, the G.M. division’s vice president for marketing.

“When you look at the most recognized brands throughout the world, such as Coke or Apple for instance, one of the things they all focus on is the consistency of their branding,” the memo said. “Why is this consistency so important? The more consistent a brand becomes, the more prominent and recognizable it is with the consumer.”

Every once in a while some piece of news leaks out that just offers so much opportunity for fun. Everyone is talking about how stupid this is. Just as a few examples:

• Do they truly think that Chevy is made or lost as a brand by refusing to use the name that most of the public regularly uses?
• Might the GM executives have considered that the inconsistency of using “Coke” as an example of why they shouldn’t use a brand nickname?
• If they wanted to tell their employees not to use “Chevy”, might they have also considered changing their web sites, TV, and other advertising? All of them still use “Chevy” throughout. (In fact, tonight every TV commercial that I saw referenced “Chevy” exclusively – not a single mention of “Chevrolet”. And the web site presented was chevydealer.com, not chevrolet.com.)

Did Alan Batey and Jim Campbell not think that in today’s internet-based social media world, their ridiculous directive wouldn’t be discussed by everyone around the world? Did they not realize that they would be mocked and that Chevy’s (and GM’s) brand image would be hurt>

Isn’t the internet fun? Too bad not everyone knows yet how to play in it.

Domus is a digital agency and a full service marketing agency that combines expertise in marketing and technology to effectively communicate brand platforms. For more information visit us at http://www.domusinc.com.