Giant Balloons Company

As you may have heard, Google will shut down Reader on July 1. Yes, you heard that right. If you use Google Reader to read Adrants (or any other site for that matter), you will need to find another way to consume our content. Never fear. We have suggestions.

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Despite the fact that most Americans have embraced social media, recent studies show that as many as 72% of businesses that have a social media presence do not have a clearly defined social strategy in place. Without a clear social strategy, building a successful social presence that inspires customer loyalty and engagement is nearly impossible.

Is your business one of the 72%? The good news is you are not alone. If you’re just starting to develop your social media strategy, or taking a second look at a strategy that just isn’t paying off, here are some best practices to make the most of your company’s social presence.

1) Pick One Social Channel And Do It Well

If you don’t already have a social strategy in place, it can be daunting to figure out where to start. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, Blogging, Slideshare, Tumblr… there are hundreds of social media engagement platforms. First, determine one social media channel that will best suit your business goals, and the level of engagement you are looking to achieve. Choose the channel most popular with your customer demographics. You can always grow your presence further in additional channels, but picking one, and investing the time and resources to get it right, is a great way to get started without being overwhelmed.

2) Being Social = Engagement

Companies that have a beautiful brand presence on a social channel, but do little to interact and engage with social fans and followers are not doing themselves any favors in the long run. If potential customers are coming to your brand’s social pages with questions, comments or stories and are not receiving any response from the company, they will not remain loyal customers for very long. Someone from your company needs to be manning the virtual service counter and actually providing the same level, or better, of service customers would expect to find in stores. Simply stated: when people ask questions on your social page(s), it’s rude to ignore them. If you don’t have the resources to engage in social conversations with the fans you’re cultivating online, you’re not ready to put a social strategy in place.

3) Are You Listening?

We take social listening seriously at LivePerson and we think you should too. There are a number of social monitoring tools available with varying degrees of cost and sophistication. Deploying a comprehensive social monitoring tool is critical for a social strategy. A good tool should be able to track mentions across a variety of digital channels including online articles, blogs, press releases, forums and public social channels. Look for a tool that also tells you who your key audience members/influencers are, provides sentiment analysis and audience demographic details as well. What should you be listening to?

The first monitor to set up should be for keywords associated to your brand name(s). You will find tremendous value if you extend your listening further by monitoring keywords common in your industry, competitor names, product keywords and other relative terms. Knowing what conversations are taking place online can help you understand your customers and their needs better, which means you can sell to them more effectively.

4) Establish an Internal Policy

Whether or not your industry or organization requires you to have an internal policy governing employee participation in social channels, it is important to have one in place. I have seen social media policies that range from a few paragraphs to many pages– different businesses will have different requirements. Independent of any regulations your business may be required to adhere to, it’s a good idea to spell out not just what employees should refrain from talking about on social channels, but, more importantly, spell out how employees are encouraged to participate.

Some of the best social advocates for your business are your employees and they should feel empowered to participate in the social conversation, with a clear understanding of the acceptable boundaries. The business will benefit from employees helping spread corporate messaging across their own networks since this creates increased social reach and engagement opportunities.

5) Eliminate the Noise

As we’ve already seen, many companies rush to the social conversation without a plan, which can frequently lead to accounts that are created then quickly abandoned after priorities fluctuate or internal ownership for social accounts changes hands. If your brand has dormant social accounts, take whatever steps necessary to remove them from social sites. An excess of inactive accounts can create confusion to customers who may be trying to find your real brand presence.

Similarly, it’s important to carefully consider how many corporate accounts your company needs to be effective within the each social channel. For example, some companies have multiple branded twitter accounts to address specific audience needs. Perhaps one for marketing messaging, and another for support messaging, and yet more to target various international audiences.

In most cases, multiple accounts are simply not necessary and should be avoided unless you have specific business goals that warrant multiple communications channels. Streamline your social presence into as few accounts as absolutely necessary to keep communication lines consistent and easy for your audience to find.

6) Be Human

Customers love brands, but they want to communicate and connect with people. Even when posting social messaging in the voice of the brand, it’s good to let your social audience know who is behind the logo. For example, some companies have tweets signed off with a name or set of initials, especially if a number of representatives manage the company’s social stream.

This helps customers feel like they are truly connecting with an actual human being and gives them a better sense of connection with the company’s representatives. It also helps the customer know they have some consistency in their communications, and that they are being taken care of by the same individual over multiple communications. If you are using social for customer service inquiries, adding an element of human touch is particularly useful.

7) Don’t Ignore Social in a Crisis

Things happen. None of us like it, and we all do our best to avoid it, but sometimes things go wrong outside of our control. If you have active social channels, it’s important to have a plan in place as to how social communications will be managed in a crisis situation– before the crisis actually happens. You can’t leave it to chance, as it may only make a bad situation a lot worse. A recent example of success can be found in Con Edison’s Manager of Public Affairs, Kate Frasca’s handling of ConEd’s twitter account during Hurricane Sandy. Their crisis plan won them a lot of points with their social audience, which grew from 800 to 22,300 twitter followers in the span of a week. Again, having a social media monitoring tool in play (tip #3) is essential to managing a crisis successfully.

8) Protect The Brand : Be Careful Who Has The Keys

It is all too easy to accidently tweet something from the corporate account thinking that it’s your personal account, which can lead to disastrous consequences for the brand. It seems like every week the media is highlighting some dire social media blunder. Check out The 20 Biggest Brand Disasters to see how things can really go wrong. Some companies are savvy enough to turn these kinds mistakes into PR wins– check out this Red Cross blunder— but those cases are rare so its best to avoid at all costs. Hire seasoned social media professionals to handle your communications. For more junior staff, put tools in place that require tweets and other posts to be approved before being published to add an extra layer of protection.

9) The Mobile-Social Revolution is Upon Us

If you don’t have a mobile-optimized website or app, having a strong presence on social channels is even more important for your business. According to Nielsen’s State of the Media: Social Media Report 2012, time spent on mobile social apps is up 76% in 2012 from 2011, and 30% of the total time spent on a mobile device is consumed by surfing social networks.

As a result, make sure your social presence addresses the needs of mobile customers. Include maps, directions, phone numbers and other geo-location services on your social sites. Also, since 73% of consumers say they have used their mobile phone in a store for things like product information and assistance with buying decisions, you should offer content through your social sites that cater to in-store consumers.

10) Stay Current

One thing that’s guaranteed about social media is that change is always on the horizon. Sites gain and lose popularity very quickly, new features are popping up all the time, which is both exciting but also a little unnerving. Take a look at Pinterest. A year ago very few of us had heard of it, and now it’s the fastest growing social media site in history, and enjoying as much as a 400% month-over-month growth. Before setting up a branded page on any social site, first try it out as a regular user to get the hang of it.

Then take time to identify business reasons for setting up a branded page and ensure you have the resources to maintain the new account once you get it started. Also, existing social channels are constantly evolving and adding new features for brands– if social channels don’t evolve they will be left stagnating in the dust in a matter of a year or two. Check often to see what new features or plugins might be available to you on channels you’re already using. For example, consider how Citi has brought chat to Twitter to outstanding results. Take a stroll around other brand pages every once in a while to get inspired by the possibilities. It’s fun to learn from others to see how cool features are being implemented.

Social media is undoubtedly still in it’s early stages and continues to rapidly evolve. What the social landscape will look like in one year, 5 years and 10 years from now will be very different than what we see today. Will Facebook and Twitter still be the reigning social king and queen? Understanding this means that all social media professionals have to keep one eye on the present and one eye on the horizon and have a commitment to always be learning.

This guest article was written byTerra Mrkulic, social media manager at LivePerson

TBWA\Chiat\Day New York Head of Planning, Ed Castillo, attended a SXSW panel entitled Anarchists to Sell-Out: Punks Make Better CEOs and had these thoughts to share.

The presentation I enjoyed most at SXSWi was “Anarchist to Sell-Out: Punks Make Better CEOs” by Deep Local CEO Nathan Martin. Martin’s candid account of his journey from skate punk, to electronics anarchist, to metal front man, to tactical-media artist and agitator, to design professor, to creative technologist for hire (my characterizations, not his) was a provocative and inspiring story about embracing the disruptive force of creativity and living strictly on one’s own terms. In a career punctuated by hacking the Nintendo Gameboy, trading sex for votes, and Nike Chalkbot, Martin has apparently found a way to participate meaningfully in the circus that is brand marketing while staying true to the idealism of his art and the hacktivism of his youth.

Of particular interest to me is his role in metal/punk/grindcore/noise outfit Creation is Crucifixion. As Martin recounted his experiences touring with this band of developer and technologist types, I couldn’t help but think about my own metalhead friends, and their tendency to be gear-heady, catharsis inclined jonesers who are fond of making things. And just hours after hearing Martin’s presentation, the idea that ‘metal and making’ may be linked in some fundamental way presented itself again while having drinks with colleagues from TBWA\Digital Arts Network (I was with an Aussie, a Brit, and two Finns; all of whom are metal heads). As we prepared ourselves to attend the Metal Monsters of Texas Unofficial SXSW Showcase, the conversation moved effortlessly from the latest double-bass-drum techniques by Meshuggah’s Thomas Haake, to isolating video game music soundtracks from their gameplay context for iPod listening, to admiring the new Fractal Axe-FX II guitar amp emulator, to sussing out how we might share Pro Tools and Cubase files to collaborate remotely on original music, to describing the joys of listening to metal while writing code; all ostensibly conversations about making stuff.

…So what is the connection – if any – between making “stuff” (which, for the purpose of this article means “creative expressions for commercial gain”) and loving metal?

The most obvious connection may be the roles of technique and gear/tools in the making of stuff, and in metal. Many metalheads are musicians, but even if they aren’t, they can typically distinguish a Marshall from a Mesa/Boogie, or a Fender from a Gibson. More generally, they’ll likely also have an appetite for discussing the hardware, software, operating systems, and programming languages used to make video and audio content (and they might even want to discuss the power, control, microelectronics, and signal processing that goes into making even more tangible “stuff”).

[In case you hadn’t noticed, the Creation is Crucifixion song I posted above is called “Antenna Builder (aka Engineer an Inverse Cellular Network).”]

Looking deeper, though, I see something more interesting in the preponderance of creative minds being drawn to what the masses experience as cacophony. Hard/heavy music fandom (from metal to industrial to punk and beyond) can be characterized as being made up of “subcultures of alienation” which have their own sets of unwritten rules (distributed tribally across the sub-groups that make up the larger hard/heavy musical taxonomy). These rules compel tribe members to oppose mainstream, established…popular means of expression.

That is to say that these rules compel metalheads to be disruptors (which is near to my heart as an employee of TBWA).

If you’ve never experienced a discussion of metal’s sub-generic classifications, you might be surprised to learn how fragmented these sub-genres can be, which in turn can lead to wildly over-thought classification schemes (e.g., I recently argued with a friend for an hour about whether Poland’s Decapitated is “ultra-technical death metal” or simply “modern math metal”).

What’s more likely the case is that you just don’t care, which is precisely the point. Subcultures of alienation thrive on being alien, at least in comparison with the larger population (even if they demonstrate a remarkable uniformity within their own tribe [think black concert T-shirts and long hair on men]).

At the center of all this tribalism is freedom from convention (well, those not imposed by the tribe, at least) and a constant opportunity for cathartic expression. And these are the very roots of creativity.

Every one of us is born creative, expressive and comfortable with ourselves. But over time, schools, churches and other institutions force us to focus on the “right” and “wrong” answers, and this fades.

(An idea quickly and elegantly represented here http://youtu.be/n3EQT-TYv_0)

I can’t know whether any of this armchair anthropology is manifest in Nathan Martin’s creative work, his sense-of-self, or in the work or senses-of-self of any other of the creative metalheads who seem to surround me. I can tell you, however, that Martin’s SXSW presentation compelled me to take notice and think about these issues, and for that I’m thankful.

Nathan Martin is “still metal,” even if he is no longer screaming and growling on performance space stages.

In a rousing SXSW Interactive pop-up panel hosted by Expion and moderated by Advertising Age’s David Teicher, the subject of real time marketing was discussed. On the panel were Mondelez VP of Global Media and Consumer Engagement Bonin Bough, Oreo Senior Associate Brand Manager Steve Doan, Expion Chief Innovation Officer Albert Chou, 360i VP of Emerging Media David Berkowitz and Vayner Media Co-Founder Gary Vaynerchuk. Held at Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar on 6th street, the panel shared theories and practical advice for brands navigating the ever-quicker stream of media that now rules our daily lives.

The fact the panel was held at Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar was apropos. To see Bough and Vaynerchuk share a microphone was both comical and practical. Comical because the two couldn’t comment enough on each other’s commentary. Practical because had each had their own microphone, it would have much like, well, a pair of pianos dueling each other.

Doan began by explaining that nine months ago, OREO made a concerted effort to figure out how to communicate with consumers “in a new social space.” The brand realized there was a huge opportunity to engage with millennials instead in addition to the brand’s core audience of moms. And social media was the perfect place to do so. While Oreo certainly did plan to engage during the Super Bowl, much to the chagrin of conspiracy theorists, the brand did not pull the plug at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome

Bough pointed out that brands must have the “willingness to prepare” for events that may present opportunities to engage with customers. Learning how to respond in real time will be an important new skill for brands to master and fear must be left at the doorstep.

To the point that brands must be willing to engage, Berkowitz noted that if everyone involved with a brand marketing team isn’t on top of large live events that may present opportunities to engage, “odds are you aren’t doing your job.” It was also noted the the mentality of the campaign is still far too ingrained in the minds of marketers. There is no beginning, middle and end any longer. While planning will always play a role — Berkowitz shared that his team had several “dry runs” in advance of the Super Bowl — brands have to be nimble and ready to act on a moments notice when an opportunity presents itself.

Vaynerchuk joked he had some real time marketing ideas for the Super Bowl as well but didn’t receive approval until two days after the game. Bureaucracy doesn’t fly in what has become an extremely faced paced practice.

When Teicher mentioned the lemming-like roundup of “best uses of realtime media at the Oscars, Vaynerchuk jumped in and made note, “This world is predicated on campaigns and f%$king winning awards in France – dumb shit that doesn’t matter.” Vaynerchuk argued that much of the “real time” content brands posted during the Oscars did far better from a sharing standpoint (retweets, etc.) than the average activity those brands see on a daily basis. In his mind, those brands, even though they weren’t Oreo’s Dunk in the Dark, over-performed compared to a brand’s baseline.

Bough agreed with Vaynerchuk saying “number matter, dude” and urged brands to take note of “the cultural moments around which we know conversations are going to happen.” Bough’s point speaks to the controversy surrounding real-time marketing. Purist believe for marketing to be real-time, there should not be preparation. More practical marketers realize a little preparation — even if it comes in the form of Twitter image templates — isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s just smart.

On the broader topic of brands creating content akin to the content media companies create, Vaynerchuk argued owned media is a platform every brand should adopt, if not, at least explore, because brands should no longer have to “rent with dollars” space from other media in the form of banners, print ads or TV commercials. As content marketers already know, brands do not need to rely on media companies to spread their content.

Bolstering Vaynerchuk’s point, Bough argued skeptics of so-called “non-working media” (owned, earned) should ask themselves what Oreo-related content they recalled from the Super Bowl, the ad or the Dunk in the Dark real-time ad. By far, the discussion surrounded “non-working media” which all the panelist agreed is a pretty stupid term to describe something that actually works.

In terms of Big Data management, something the panelists acknowledged is extremely important when managing real-time marketing programs, Chao explained the Expion offering. Hey, it was a sponsored panel. You think these things happen for free? Anyway, here are the eight points behind Expion’s Real Time Marketing Technology:

1) Flow – Identify all relevant activity streams
2) Integrate – Connect all streams with common topology
3) Find – Search for topical conversations
4) Influence – Determine the importance of the conversation
5) Relevancy – Is the conversation important to the brand
6) Alert – Notify the right marketer to engage
7) Frame – Provide a snapshot brief of the conversation underway
8) Engage – Brand engages with relevant content at the right moment

So, yes, just months after real-time marketing became a “thing” –although Bough would argue he’s been doing real-time marketing since he worked on Gatorade four years ago — there is a process and technology to make it all happen.

But that’s not the important take away here. The most important issue the real-time marketing trendlet has brought to the forefront — much the same way Twitter and other social media did — is that the campaign is dead. The notion a brand can neatly package an on-brand message with all elements predetermined is flawed thinking in a world where reacting in seconds can make or break a brand’s perception.

It will most certainly not be easy for brands to make the transition to a real-time mentality. It’s just not the nature of things in a corporate world with layers of bureaucracy and endless approval cycles. But in a world where brands don’t control what’s being said about its products, let alone even be able to define it, there really is no choice. Brands have to move at the speed of social conversation. No, they don’t have to join – or even acknowledge every conversation — but they do have top have a clear handle on what’s being said and have a plan in place to act quickly if need be.

That’s all realtime marketing is. Having the ability to think and move faster than ever before. We son’t get there overnight but we will. We have to. The greater public’s already there. There’s really no choice but for brands to get their RTM act together. Yes, I did just say that.

NFC – near field communication – is a relatively new technology that has the potential to revitalize the direct mail marketing sector. It enables marketers to deliver content via an embedded NFC chip that allows wireless communication when a user touches a smartphone or mobile device to a piece of marketing collateral or brings the device into close proximity with an NFC tag.

Although NFC technology has been around since the 1980s and marketers are increasingly using it today, the technology was slower to catch on in marketing than QR code technology. QR codes – two-dimensional matrix codes that are often printed on direct mail marketing material – have found a ready user audience in the marketing realm for several years now. QR codes appear on everything from movie posters to fast-food restaurant drink cups to ketchup bottles. With QR codes, consumers can scan the printed code with their smartphone’s camera to be connected to online digital content.

Both NFC and QR codes serve a similar function: They are a bridge between the physical and digital worlds. NFC codes create a digital bridge to physical collateral, and unlike calls to action that require consumers to type in a URL or scan a code to get redirected to an online message, with NFC, all the consumer has to do is touch their smartphone or mobile device to the collateral for an instantaneous connection. It’s a unique way to connect the physical and digital spaces. This makes both technologies highly attractive to marketers.

But despite the current popularity of QR codes, many analysts believe that NFC technology is poised to replace QR codes as the marketing tool of choice. That’s because NFC is generally easier to use: Depending on the scanning application, QR codes can take seven or more steps to direct users to the digital marketing content. NFC codes don’t require any action on the part of the user other than bringing the device into close proximity to the tag.

However, QR codes got a huge head-start over NFC, mainly due to the fact that popular smartphone manufacturer Apple has been slow to embrace NFC technology. But other tech giants like Google have recently rolled out new products that use NFC, such as the Google Wallet, which uses NFC to transmit payment details to merchants for wireless transactions. Additionally, Samsung and other mobile smartphone makers have paved the way by incorporating NFC technology in their smartphones since as early as 2006.

NFC and Direct Mail

The use of NFC as a marketing tool is on the rise, but it’s not yet pervasive. That means marketers who use it now are early adopters. This is a unique opportunity for marketers such as direct mail specialist to get ahead of the curve. It is also an opportunity to build a digital bridge for consumers with a tool that eliminates the need for the target audience to take multiple steps to reach online content.

In the past, one obstacle to widespread NFC adoption was the need to embed chips or tags in the call to action material, which could take many forms, including letterhead paper, poster stock, business cards and virtually any other material on which a marketing message can appear. However, the development of NFC-enabled papers and plastics eliminate this barrier, opening up many new NFC applications, including use of the paper to create direct mail pieces of all types.

Developments like NCF-enabled paper, creating cheaper methods of tag production and technology adoption will help push NFC usage rates higher, as will Apple’s embrace of the technology since it is becoming more commonplace. The technology’s applications are practically limitless. Proximity marketing applications can allow merchants to convey messages to any smartphone within range of a particular product, allowing marketers to precisely target messages to consumers and gauge reactions to offers in real time.

Marketers who are early adopters of this emerging technology tool can differentiate themselves from competitors by developing analytics around the technology. This can provide a major strategic advantage. Marketers can also use NFC to improve their tactical approach by eliminating the need to create short URLs, relying instead on proximity to complete the connection between the direct mail marketing piece and the online offer.

By giving marketers a new way to bridge the physical and digital gap, NFC technology offers unprecedented opportunities to brands that want to convey a tech-savvy image while delivering valuable offers and collecting vital consumer insights. NFC is positioned to revitalize the direct mail marketing sector, enabling instantaneous delivery of relevant messages affordably and effectively.

This guest post was written by Jacob Beckley, vice president of Innovation at Fusion92

Your customers all have mobile devices. Most walk around with Androids and iPhones. You have built your killer application, but your customers do not download it, and when they do, they do not use it. So how can you best engage your customers in the mobile channel?

Directly. SMS remains the best medium marketers use today to reach customers. But too many use SMS as an ax and not a scalpel. Marketers are flooding their customers: SMS traffic will approach 10 trillion messages this year, thanks mostly to SMS campaigns.

How do you effectively engage customers without drowning them? Smart marketers build geofences around key physical sites: stores, arenas, airports, schools, even competitor outlets.

These fences create zones that trigger an SMS message or other action when a customer enters or leaves. It is called geofencing, it is new in mobile marketing, and there are some important secrets to getting right.

Over the past three years I have helped hundreds of companies integrate location and geofences into their apps, their platforms and their campaigns. Here are a few secrets learned along the way.

1. Fish where the fish are. Build geofences where you believe your customers are, not necessarily where you want them to be.

“When you know where your customers are, you can improve your marketing ROI,” said Jeff Hasen, chief marketing officer of Hipcricket. Which means maybe you do not build them around your store. Perhaps another location – airports for busy travelers, schools for soccer moms – are better geofences than your own lonely outlets.

2. Big fences do not work. By definition, a geofence can be any size or shape. But would you rather know if your customer is in an attractive DMA, or when she is passing by your retail store?

Construct geofences that are small and thus more relevant. Use this rule of thumb: the distance should equate to approximately four minutes travel time to your doorstep.
If your store is in a mall, that is a four-minute walk. If along the road, that is a few blocks. Anything larger and you are reducing relevancy in your “local messaging.”

3. Bland messages do not work. If your message is an ad versus an action, you will not drive the customer behavior you desire. You are not alone in your geofence aspirations.
Today more than half of U.S. mobile ad spending is local. Your message must be brief, be locally-relevant and prompt action. And money always drives action: do not be cheap.

4. Make it important. The Starbucks latte coupon message magically appearing on your iPhone has been cited as the Holy Grail of location-based services for a decade.

Technically, the capability is beginning to emerge with some – albeit spotty – location sources, but persistent handset location on the handset is too costly in terms of its toll on battery life.

Besides, which customers want to receive dozens of coupon texts as they stroll through the mall? If you build a geofence, have it trigger an important action.

Saving a quarter on a cup of coffee is not important, but redirecting a high roller away from a competitor’s casino is important. Choose your geofence purpose wisely.

5. Watch the clock. A geofence is not just a place on a map, it is also a place in time. When you take action on a trigger and when you notify a customer to do something is just as important as where.

Mobile marketing platform provider Vibes knows this very well.

“Location, location, location” has always been the real estate industry’s motto, but today, it’s especially important for brand marketers to connect with their customers whenever and wherever they are,” said Brittany Clotfelter, vice president of business development and strategic partnerships at Vibes.

6. Measure everything. Even if you are unsure of how certain metrics directly impact your campaign ROI, record them anyway.

A geofence combines the physical world with the data world, which adds up to a brave new world for marketing analytics.

Insight from the data comes from surprising places.

American Eagle found that location-enabled geofence campaigns demonstrated that location, coupled with time of day was hugely predictive of interest and intent for consumers considering the purchase of any real-world product or service.

Do you know what time of day marks the highest propensity for spending among your customer segments? You should.

For American Eagle, geofences demonstrated a measureable shift in customer behavior. Location-relevant messages sent at the most opportune time in a consumer’s day drove purchase behavior as high as 65 percent.

Mobile ad spending is exploding. Geofencing is your best weapon to staking your territory in the mobile world to engage your customers.

These six simple truths about geofencing and mobile location will help you drive the returns and engagement you desire from the mobile marketing channel.

This guest article was written by Rip Gerber, CEO of Locaid Technologies. You can reach him at rgerber@loc-aid.com.

OK, so she’s not in a neglige and her pendulous boobs aren’t spilling out of her top but there’s no need for that. Jennifer Love Hewitt looks hot no matter what she’s wearing and that’s the case here in this Old Navy commercial. Along with Julie Hagerty, who appeared in another new ad from the brand, JLH introduces new hoodies and crews.

The ad follows the brand’s most recent “style upgrade” theme which takes place in a tricked out airplane cabin.

We could rail on endlessly about yet another usage of Harlem Shake to sell something but we think you’ll feel a bit differently after watching this one from a Netherlands-based Parkinson’s Desease foundation. In the video, we see the foundation’s founder (who has Parkinson’s) do his best to Harlem Shake.

The video, created by Saatchi & Saatchi Amsterdam, ends not as you would expect and with the tagline, “Shaking. Fun For Some…Daily Struggle For Others.”

Touting its U.S. edition, UK-based newspaper The Guardian has launched its first U.S. ad campaign. The paper is well known for its Three Little Pigs and Own the Weekend ads.

The Guardian partnered with BBH New York to launch #VoiceYourView, a campaign that merges the Guardian’s editorial voice with its strategy of open journalism.

The outdoor ad campaign uses the illustrations of Noma Bar to show both sides of a political issue. For example, individual freedom versus government regulation. The campaign also addresses internet privacy, gun control, women in the military and the use of condoms in the adult film industry. These illustrations will appear in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco as outdoor ads and mobile billboards. Each illustration represents one side of an issue and along with a second illustration which represents the opposite view.

People are encouraged to take a photo of the side they support and upload the photo to Instagram and/or Twitter using the hashtag #VoiceYourView.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Chief Executive Officers hired Chief Marketing Officers to make sure all their ads looked pretty and their television commercials were shot by really cool Hollywood directors. And maybe they hoped for a few sales leads as well, but that was asking a lot.

Flash forward to today, and CEOs are demanding much more from their CMOs. Both because they need to, and because the tools and services available to a CMO make it possible.

In an article on CMO.com, Stephanie Overby outlined the ten things CEOs want from their CMOs. They range from being a focused financial steward, to being the voice of the customer, to being data analysts, among other things.
In another article written by Laura Patterson for The CEO Refresher, she posited that every CMO should be able to answer ten questions asked by their CMO. Among the questions: How are customer needs evolving? What business outcomes will marketing directly impact? And what investments need to be made to improve Marketing’s ability to measure its contribution?

The gist here is that CMOs are being required to think more like a CEO. To be successful and to properly contribute to the success of a brand, a CMO must not only ensure that the brand’s marketing programs are performing well on their own, but they must also be able to indicate how those marketing KPIs contribute to the KPIs that matter to the boardroom — namely revenue, growth, and profit.

In a Kuno Creative post, John McTigue shared a list of top marketing KPIs that matter to C-level management. HubSpot CMO, Mike Volpe, wrote a post entitled “The 6 Marketing Metrics Your CEO Actually Cares About.” Clearly, there is a groundswell of acknowledgment around the need for CMOs to supply CEOs with numbers that support their KPIs, and to do it on a regular basis. But how can CMOs put systems in place to gather and quantify the information needed to support these KPIs?

How Inbound Marketing Can Feed Boardroom KPIs

Chief among Overby’s list of the ten things CEOs want from a CMO is that they act like a data analyst. They must have an in-depth understanding of the KPIs that are of importance to the CEO, and how maketing can serve those KPIs. It just so happens inbound marketing can form the basis of information that feeds boardroom KPIs by focusing on Return on Marketing Investment versus Return on Campaign Investment. Take sales revenues. The entire inbound marketing chain from content creation to lead management to marketing automation all serve to deliver specific, measurable data that can be linked to sales.

More specifically, with an inbound marketing solution that has sources reports, you can determine exactly which channels (organic search, referrals, social media, email marketing, paid search, etc.) brought in traffic, leads, and customers. And when connected to a corporate CRM, you can map this information directly to new customers and sales. This speaks to Patterson’s point that CMOs must be able to clearly point to the factors that have the greatest effect on revenue targets and be able to prove which metrics and KPIs can define the degree to which those factors affect outcome.

With conversion analysis, you can map the path your customers took from first contact through final sale and determine which content was most effective in keeping the pipeline filled. Most importantly, this type of reporting allows one to look backwards through the funnel to see how and when inbound marketing touch points affected buyer outcome.

In addition, if you have access to an inbound marketing system that allows for the aggregate analysis of its customer base, you can set goals for visits, leads and customers to help determine which elements of inbound marketing will help you hit those goals. In this way, you can also determine the necessary resources you will need to implement the tactics to meet those goals thereby arriving at an overhead figure that can be factored into your customer acquisition costs. And you will be able to address Patterson’s suggestion that CMOs need to be able to inform their CEOs which marketing resources and content customers use to make buying decisions.

If your inbound marketing solution offers social media analytics tools, you can easily determine the business value of your social media activities by tying the time it takes to manage those social media programs along with which leads are responding to your social content to sales through the above mentioned conversion analysis. This data can then feed into the marketing metric’s our CMO, Mike Volpe, put forth to arrive at something a bit more relevant to the CEO than, “Hey, we just topped 100,000 Likes on Facebook.”

Campaign metrics are, of course, very important. After all, as a CMO you need to know which marketing tactics are working and which are not. But when it comes time to speak with your CEO about how marketing is effecting the bottom line of the company, inbound marketing practices can provide you the necessary information you need to wow your CEO and the boardroom.