This week, in yet another effort to save sagging circulation figures, The Boston Globe Launched Sidekick, a new, tab-sized section billed as "your guide to a better day." The section will be inserted in the main paper appear Monday through Friday. The section will include an enhanced television review section, more comics and puzzles and an interactive feature which will publish Boston.com reader-submitted content, including pictures and message board commentary. Capitalizing on the poker craze, Sidekick will feature two poker columns. The section is being distributed within half priced editions of the Daily Globe in an obvious bid to build readership and subscriptions for the main daily.
Earlier this week, the Sidekick was promoted with a bit of street distribution activity. Though in a completely different category, we have to wonder what T-Mobile and Danger, make of the Sidekick mobile device, think of the Globe's choice of name for its new paper.
McDonald's is doing the Neopets thing again. Beginning July 8 and running until August 4, 2005, twelve Neopets species from Netopis will be placed in McDonald's Happy Meals and Mighty Kids Meals. This is the second annual Neopets promotion with McDonald's.
Neopets is the online youth community where members can "explore new worlds, play games, enter contests, and interact with each other in an entertainment environment." The McDonald's Neopets Happy Meal and Mighty Kids Meal collection has twelve new species of Neopets in seven different colors. Each Neopet that comes with a McDonald's Happy Meal features a virtual prize code, which can be entered online in exchange for prizes, such as "fuzzy slippers" or Neopoints. Each Neopet also includes a "Petpet" clip.
As ad:tech Chicago wound down, exhibitors disassembled booths faster than a prima dona diva account director whisks in and out of a status meeting. While there were 2,500 attendees at this year's Chicago event, up from 2,000 in 2004, the exhibit hall never seemed crowded. Perhaps, we have dmg world media conference planners to thank for perfect crowd flow control.
In the end, the hotel bars, hallways and lobby were full of people making deals, swapping contact info and planning their next product or campaign launch. Chicago might be over but before we know it, we'll be in New York in November for the next ad:tech extravaganza.
While we're sure this has been done before though we're not sure how effective it was since a friend had to point it out to us, Datran Media sponsored the hotel room key cards at the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago during the ad:tech online marketing conference. Every attendee who was staying in the hotel was given a Datran-branded version of the hotel's room key card.
Whether it was the Pampered Chef conference attendees cackling like hens in the elevator or simply the innocuous nature of a hotel room key, our attention was not drawn to the card. Perhaps it was the design. Perhaps it was our weary, conference-addled brain. We just didn't notice the card. What we did notice, disturbingly, was our car keys missing from our briefcase upon arrival at Logan Airport in Boston and the hundred dollar cab ride we had to take home while knowing those Massport folks would be collecting $29 for each day we had to wait for our keys to be FedEx'd back to us from Chicago. Who said conferences where uneventful?
Yesterday, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) held their first Metrics conference, called "Measuring Word of Mouth," at the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago. The conference, which sold out in 20 days mostly due to word of mouth and followed the organization's founding conference several month ago, focused on the the measurement aspects of word of mouth marketing including the introduction of metrics terminology.
The genesis of the conference was the organizations acknowledgment that everyone in the industry was talking about word of mouth but had no common terminology. The groups three goals for the conference were to develop a common language of word of mouth related terms and definitions, figure out how to measure and track word of mouth and learn how to integrate word of mouth with other forms of marketing media. In developing these goals, WOMMA CEO Andy Sernovitz the measurement framework must "avoid pre-existing marketing terms, avoid bias towards online media and avoid bias towards active word of mouth campaigns versus organic, day-to-day word of mouth."
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This afternoon, a tipster told us the the New York office of Minneapolis-based Fallon Worldwide would be closing and the New York Time wasn't far behind reporting the news. The two principals of the agency, Anne Bologna and Ari Merkin are leaving to open their own shop and the 25 employees left behind are being offered jobs at the Minneapolis office and New York Publicis agencies. Two month ago, Fallon Chairman Pat Fallon was told by Bologna and Merkin they'd be going out on their own. Client transition plans are being discussed for the client roster that includes Brawny, SoBe, MPA, Starbucks, Time Magazine and Virgin Mobile. If any clients stay, a small New York office may remain open.
Word of Mouth Marketing firm, BzzAgent Inc., has announce the launch of the "Hispanic BzzChannel," a new destination within BzzAgent dedicated to the US-based Hispanic Community. This channel will provide members with the opportunity to generate buzz about specially-selected products and services while providing marketers the ability to build brand evangelism within the Hispanic community. This site will be bilingual, with all content available in both English and Spanish. It can be viewed at http://hispanic.bzzagent.com.
Word of Mouth Marketing Association CEO Andy Sernovitz opened the session, "Word of Mouth Marketing: Create a WOM campaign in five easy steps," by suggesting five steps needed to make a word of mouth campaign successful: - Find the right people
- Give them something to talk about
- Create tools to make it easy to talk about
- Participate in the conversation
- Track and measure
Sernovitz also clarified that word of mouth marketing can involve other advertising tactics (other than true word of mouth) such as buzz marketing, viral marketing, product placement, grassroots marketing, referrla programs and brand blogging.
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Led by Jupiter Media's Gary Stein, the ad:tech Chicago 2005 panel entitled "Blogevertising, RSS and Podcasting Opportunities for Marketers," provided session attendees with an overview of how blogs can be used as an advertising medium. Weblogs Inc. President Shawn Gold began with a bit of blogging 101 explaining that blogs are an empowering and efficient means through which marketers cab deliver advertising. Along with blog publishers, blog advertisers benefit from weblog's propensity to climb high in search results for topics covered on a given blog thereby helping to insure increased, targeted eyeballs for blog advertisers.
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Led by Intelliseek CMO Pete Blackshaw, the Chicago ad:tech panel, held Tuesday, called "What Blogs Are Teaching Us About The New Rules of Marketing," provided the audience with a broad over view of the issues companies need to consider when debating the launch of a corporate weblog or marketing-related weblog. The recurring theme throughout the session centered on the need to stay true to the brand and to live within the company guidelines both legal and otherwise.
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