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A traditional agency friend asked me today about reaching men online as opposed to through print. I put together a very quick synopsis and thought I would share it on our blog.

Men are hyper-connected and spend more time online. While men and women are drawn to the same interactive activities-connecting with friends, family, and colleagues through email and social networks, finding information through search and content sites, and seeking entertainment-men spend more time online than women. In fact, the average time spent on a computer over the period of a month was one hour longer for US men than for women.

There are 60.9 million men online age 18-49. Men in this demographic are active, driven, and like to be in the know. They use the Web for sports, entertainment, and to get things done. They tend to be heavy Internet users and are avid online shoppers. These men are also connected on their mobile devices, using them for Web browsing and to be productive on the go.

They Get It Done

• 82% agree one of the best things about the Web is being able to get more things done quickly
• 57% like the challenge of doing new things
• 33% willing to make personal sacrifices for financial success

They’re in the Know

• 44% say they tend to be more informed about current events than others
• 30% say it’s important to stay up-to-date on what’s hot and what’s not

They Shop

• 44% bought consumer electronics online in last month

They’re on the Go

• 36% say it’s important to be able to access the Internet on the go

They Enjoy Offline Activities

• 45% play video games
• 34% exercise
• 26% go to the movies
• 19% play sports

Online Radio

Radio is now an interactive medium, engaging millions of consumers online and via mobile devices every week. eMarketer estimates nearly 80 million internet users will tune in to internet radio stations weekly in 2011.

Video Games

More than four out of five male adults ages 18 to 29 said they played video games, while 23 percent of respondents 65 and older said the same. You can reach more men than ever with the innovative experiences that solutions like Xbox and Xbox LIVE advertising offer.

Mobile

Thirty-two percent of men had made a mobile purchase in December 2010, double the 16% who had done so in November 2009. A substantial portion of this growth had occurred by July 2010, when 29% of men had made a mobile purchase.

I really enjoyed my visit to the American Advertising Federation-For Worth luncheon this week. It has been several years since I was there when I worked for Harris Methodist in Arlington. I flew up to give a speech on the trends in digital media using the latest Pew Internet, Nielsen and comScore research about how media consumption is changing.

The, mostly traditional, agency attendees could not have been a more welcoming crowd. We talked about not being seduced by the shiny new object, how to tell a client they don’t have to have an iPhone app and how not to paint yourself into a corner of measurability of online campaigns. I like to tell them, “How many of you that buy television and radio tell your client that you can measure exactly how many people see the ad and then take action on that particular ad and at what time of day they do it?” The laugh I get equals my reply….”Stop telling clients online advertising is all about the measurement.”

Online is about the branding, it’s about the good creative (don’t just repurpose a print ad for a banner or a TV commercial for pre-roll) and it’s about the overall good stewardship of your client’s media dollars.

The day did start off a little strange for me. We drove right through the really neat Fort Worth Stockyards and historical district towards the restaurant where I was to give the speech and my cab driver dropped me off somewhere on a back alley with a closed road next to an abandoned building. I was a little unsure if I was being setup, but just around the corner was a great venue, Joe T. Garcia’s and boy was the lunch good!

But just to be safe, I did wait inside the restaurant for my cab to pick me up and take me back to the airport.

I’d like to give a virtual standing ovation to this article I read last week (April 27) in City Unlisted’s Pattern Recognition column on consumer relationships in uncertain economic times and the trend towards a “feel good” association with home and Americana during times of trouble. It reminded me of the stiff upper lip “Keep Calm and Carry On” message produced by the British government during World War II intended to raise the morale of the British people.

It is a prevalent media message that we’re seeing these days when our country needs reassurance and a reminder that America has always been able to pull itself up by its bootstraps. For example, the recent Chrysler campaign, “this is Detroit,” “we’re not going to ask you to lower your expectations; we’re asking you to raise them,” speaks exactly to that message. Chrysler is clearly messaging its consumer base that is anti-outsourcing and pro-America: We’re here, we’re not going anywhere, and we’re better for it.

Full disclosure: One of the sites mentioned in the column, Social Primer, is a client of our agency. The style and etiquette site launched an online store to promote products fitting with its brand. We created a very successful campaign called “Shop Like a Gentleman,” designed to drive sales for products targeting the blog’s audience. We love the description of the site, as well as its inclusion in a column about the message of home, comfort, manners, and consumer relationships.

When working with our clients on messaging-at least since 2008-the economy is something we
certainly take into consideration, as well as the necessity of having a narrative as part of an advertising campaign. As the column says, “the declining buying power of the American dollar, concern about carbon emissions and the trend for locally-grown food all feed our fondness for the home fire.” Consider the example cited in the column about J. Crew’s CEO Mickey Drexler and the resuscitation of American heritage brands-making it as much about selling a product as it is telling a story to the consumer about the brand.

Another great illustration of a new return to Americana was in a spontaneous eruption of the National Anthem outside the White House when the news of the killing of America’s number 1 villain, Osama bin Laden.

We’ve worked with retail brands that are extremely smart about their message, particularly those
climbing out of the recession. Are people still spending money on expensive clothes and jewelry?
Absolutely, but branding is key in driving consumers to make that choice. Brooks Brothers is a “comfort” brand. Nearly 200-year-old jewelry retailer Bailey Banks & Biddle actually built a new kind of shopping experience for its customers-but not by ditching its rich history. We were lucky enough to work with both and can vouch for the success of their brand narratives in the results of their online ad campaigns. With retail clients, this type of narrative isn’t just interesting-it works.

While I agree with many of the points of the recent iMediaConnection article, “The Shortcomings of Facebook ‘Likes’,” particularly the idea that campaigns-social or otherwise-shouldn’t put all of their faith into one medium or another, I think comparing SMS to Likes is like comparing apples to car batteries. They are completely different.

SMS costs money, requires engagement and has a definite “ask” for the consumer, unlike a “like.” SMS wants the end user to do something and gives them something in return, usually a coupon or special offer. A “like” is nothing like that. Additionally, the “value” when social media is combined with mobile is unpredictable and faulty. Social media can be an important part of an advertising campaign, but should not be its entire focus.

Consider what social media provides the end user: In some cases, interaction with a brand. What exactly xactly does that mean? Unless companies are taking advantage of Facebook deals or offering Facebook-only coupons (there are some large national brands that do this well, such as Gap and CVS), SMS is going to have a higher value-and a higher ROI for the campaign.

I also agree strongly with this statement in the article: “Brands are winning fans, but without mobile marketing they are losing a generation of buyers. SMS provides five to ten times increased conversion rates over social and traditional campaigns. If your brand is still on the sidelines as it relates to mobile, the best place to start is with SMS. Tying it in with your other media is a sure way to determine if your collective campaign’s efforts are winning conversions. ‘Likes’ alone will only get you half-way there.”

“Half-way there” is a little too optimistic in our experience. We’ve had much better results with mobile to date than with Facebook-only campaigns, though we’ve done them at a client’s insistence. Luckily, the “shiny new object” appeal of Facebook isn’t quite as shiny after we provide clients with end-of-campaign detailed reports and cost-benefit analysis. Once we demonstrate that the conversion rate on a Facebook portion of a campaign is a ROI nightmare by comparison to display, mobile, and other aspects of the campaign, our clients tend to join us on the side of caution when it comes to putting all of their ad dollars into garnering “likes” on Facebook.

While many companies still rely heavily on email marketing to reach out to customers, there’s no question that new communication channels (like social media and online display advertising) and consumer habits (anti-spam sentiment) have contributed to a decline in traditional email marketing. A recent comScore study found that “in November, 2010, the number of visitors to web-based email sites declined 6 percent compared to the previous year, while email engagement declined at an even greater rate.”

In the new digital market of mobile usage and smartphones, how can companies successfully use email as a marketing tool? Email is still the least expensive method of reaching and engaging with customers (and potential customers). But how do you ensure that you’re reaching (a) the right demographic and (b) users that are likely to convert to customers? In our campaigns, we have found that incentives are the key to consumer engagement. The best example is the product we launched earlier this year for our clients that allows them to build a contest campaign as a self-serve product. Our clients can easily build out a contest for their audience, populate the imagery in a customizable HTML form, use standard contest rules or customize their own rules in just a few easy steps. Our agency hosts the campaign, as well as prepares a custom display campaign to drive entries to the contest.

Marketers are increasingly using web-based sweepstakes and contests in their integrated marketing campaigns, bringing a classic direct marketing tactic to consumers via the Internet. Contests are great ways to build valuable email databases, which companies can market to over and over. Few things are as valuable as the “warm lead” of a contest entrant-and the ROI is high for any budget, from local businesses to national brands. Contests generate excitement and build interest about a product, event, grand opening, sale, or a brand.

Our clients can log in and see entrants and download email addresses or have Broad Street Interactive manage a reply email campaign with a special offer. Most importantly, this “client controlled” product allows companies running contests to view statistics, manage their own campaign, and own their content and leads from the entries. The result? Incentives for consumers-and new leads for our clients.

Learn more about our MyBSI Contest product here (PDF) or contact us directly!

With many experts predicting a huge downturn in TV and print advertising and a surge in online ad spending, ad agencies have been breathlessly awaiting the coveted massive digital media budgets and
staffing up their online ad departments. Should they? Yes and maybe.

We shouldn’t rule out television anytime soon, considering that those experts have been predicting the
death of television advertising since TiVo and DVR products were introduced to mass markets. Years
later, advertising spending for television has continued to increase annually.

Source: eMarketer

Research group eMarketer recently came out with a new forecast for major media spending, which predicts that U.S. television ad spending will account for over 39 percent of all spending by advertisers in 2015, slightly higher than its current share, but as steady as it has been for the past five years.

The big change is in the shift to online spending. eMarketer’s report says it is expected to grow considerably—from $29 billion this year to a whopping $46 billion in 2015 and making up 26 percent of
ad spending overall. Contrast that number with 2005, when online spending was around five percent,
and it makes sense that agencies are expecting continued growth in that arena.

Who is the loser in this picture? Newspapers, radio, and magazines—and possibly outdoor. These markets have decreased gradually over the past five years and are expected to continue to drop to all-time lows by 2015.

Advertisers are seeing the bigger picture about where their audience gets information: The coveted
21-35 year-old market is unlikely to have ever subscribed to a print newspaper and if they pick up a
magazine, it’s in their doctor’s waiting room (unless they have their smart phone in hand). Customers
with disposable income are becoming more and more technologically savvy, regardless of age, and advertisers are much more focused on buzz , social media, and online display ads than they were five
years ago.

As a digital agency, this is great news—not just for our company, but for our clients. As spending in the online arena grows, so does its reach. In the past five years we have made the shift from convincing clients to put a toe in the water with online spending to responding to multi-channel, multi-tiered and targeted large online campaigns with measurable and stellar ROI. Online, their ad dollars go much farther than with other advertising platforms and new tools and technology make it easy for us to show them just how far!

Opt-in email marketing communications is a great way to stay in touch with your customers. Large companies use, surprisingly, mostly one vendor. Epsilon–the largest distributor of permission-based email in the world–revealed that millions of individual email addresses were exposed in an attack on its servers.

While the good news is that it was only email addresses and not passwords or other identifiable information, it is still a serious breach.  It reminds us that email is not a secure source of communications and we should all keep a schedule of changing our passwords to protect against these increasing number of breaches.

I have an email I use for signing up for opt-in programs and my contact email for my credit cards and reward programs. This keeps this type of mail out of my daily email box and gives me the luxury of reviewing these emails at my leisure.

When I checked that email box today, I have several messages just like this one:

Hilton Worldwide, its brands and loyalty program will never ask you to e-mail personal information such as credit card numbers or social security numbers. You should be cautious of “phishing” e-mails, where the sender tries to trick the recipient into disclosing confidential or personal information. If you receive such a request, it did not come from Hilton Worldwide, its brands or its loyalty program.

I am thankful I don’t have to worry about any more spam making it through to my personal or work email addresses.  This should not discourage users for signing up for marketing emails from brands they do business with already. I enjoy receiving special offers from most of the companies I receive these communications from and it gives me an opportunity to save money through special offers that the general public might not receive.

Bottom line for me is, don’t open emails from unrecognized senders, don’t open attachments and never reply to an email asking you for information. Just delete it!