Google TV Ads are finally here!

It’s been more than two years since this started but…Google’s expecting services of providing space to the advertising companies and to the sponsors themselves in order to present their advertising efforts on the screen, are finally here!

According to Google, the companies can finally use Google TV Ads to launch their commercials on TV. The interest is focused on the future of this utility, which is interactive campaigns, but what’s more important is that the fundamental step has happened since Google can now ‘drain’ advertisements in many TV channels in a nationwide level.

The expenses will be deriving from specific situations in which a campaign will be launched and there will be a report illustrating all the networks in which it appeared.

The next video is only indicative; an introduction to Google’s TV Ads.

Interamerican’s new online campaign

OgilvyOne keeps expanding by being assigned to very important and creative moves. This time, it designed two lines of interactive video banners for the communication and promotion of Interamerican’s programmes on retirement pension and residence. I would be more than happy to show you the video banners I found, but unfortunately they are only available in greek, so there’s no point. The key message of the campaign is ‘when you have Interamerican looking after your pension and housing facilities, then you have less important things to worry about yourself’. The campaign is accompanied by an online competition and there will be a draw in which the winners will be offered 10 GPS Navigators Mio C 230. The online media planning and buying, as well as the promotion of this campaign in Search engines has been organised by OgilvyOne. I am not quite sure for this campaign’s success yet, time will tell…

Direct e-Marketing as part of Webmarketing 2008

I recently read an article on an online source about a list that constructs webmarketing for 2008. I was very interested when I saw direct e-marketing in that list, defined as the method that uses all available media in the internet to get the message across to the customer via emailing, newsletter, and so on. It’s pretty well-known that during 2006 and 2007 the rage of customers was increased, mostly because of spammers and excessive advertising that can become disturbing. So for instance, when the popular French website www.rueducommerce.fr, which was very appealing in the begginning because of its low prices in electronics, computers, and so on, but after a while it was characterised as causing ethical disturbance to its customers as it kept sending about 15 adverts to each one of them on a daily basis. In my opinion, the ethical lesson from this could be that bad use of e-marketing is suicide for the user.

The new world of Social Media Release

We’ve been working in a group as a part of a module’s assessment (PR & New Media) on a presentation about Social Media News Releases and I thought I’d use that as an opportunity to share a few things we came across. But lets start from the beginning…what is SMNR and what’s its future?

That is a definition we found and I believe it’s best to use it as it is: ‘A new kind of press release aimed at both journalists and bloggers. It does not include the ’spin’ of the traditional press release, but provides multimedia content in an accessible format that can easily be repurposed and shared on blogs, websites and social networks’.

SMNRs were first launched by Todd Deffren, who also sent one to PR Newswire in order to launch it. That met great success as within a week more than 2500 templates have been downloaded.

The following video shows how Webitpr people see SMNRs, what they make of it, their expectations, and so on. Of course i need to mention to this point, like we did in the presentation, that this is not necessarily the global way to utilize SMNRs, but one single company’s opinion.

But why do we need SMNRs? Why is it advised for companies to adopt it? First of all, they work absolutely great in accordance to traditional press releases, without being binned by journalists. They are sent via email and even if you don’t use it, you can always get back to it anytime you want. Plus you have the choice to read or not to read the whole of it, to open more links that appear in the release if you are very interested in the story covered, and so on. It’s really useful as important news are spread around the world very fast, and also shared with people, whether journalists, bloggers or customers. Since it works as a catalyst for the socialization of news, conversations should be continuous and have updates to keep the people engaged. 

We also came up with some negatives, for instance how SMNRs can be ignored by search engines, such as Google, if they are not published through a social platform (e.g. WordPress, Blogger, etc.), or the fact that since it’s still a new tool, greater effort should be made in order to write interesting and newsworthy stories, so that their importance will be recognised and will finally be adopted by more companies. We shouldn’t forget that SMNRs are only 2 years old and lots of companies aren’t savvy enough to use them. It is estimated that in its 5th birthday it will be more widely used. 

An issue of great controversy appears to be the fact that sometimes news reach the journalists before becoming official. That’s considered as a positive feature of SMNR as who wouldn’t love to have the release beforehand? Still, we should consider the case in which the news never becomes official, something that could possibly cause problems and builds bad reputation because of the unreliability of the source.

An example of a successful social media news release follows in the link below in order to illustrate what it looks like and what it contains.

Web2.0…are we all ready?

YouTube and MySpace, which are the most popular pieces of the new internet’s era, the so-called web2.0, have been redeemed for billion dollars and led marketeers, advertisers and the media to become delirious for the User Generated Content (UGC) explosion. But there are much more types of web2.0 such as Flickr, Bedo, Faceparty, and even before those, Habbo Hotel, as well as all those dense forums that are as old as the Internet (at least in USA) and comprise representative pieces of internet communities.

A useful video follows, which I believe clearly identifies web2.0 and helps for a better understanding of its tools and functions.

Everybody is trying to understand what exactly happened with the low budget companies such as Google and YouTube that have become number one in the world of commercial business? And why do people use Google instead for examle Yahoo or MSN, which merit great support?

I think the secret lies in the internet’s nature, which started as a free, non-commercial communication channel among communities and later among users. Apart from the advanced technology, the simplicity and the speed of user interface, the answer lies in the politics of Google’s services, which present objective search results.

Thus, in order to approach the web2.0 phenomenon as well as the future of the internet, regardless of its name or version, we should at last understand the nature of its medium an audience, contrary to the market communication that seems to have difficulties in acting, no matter the increasing budgets in the internet. Obviously web2.0 is not like television or brand site. The users  respond, sometimes harshly and always in public…Are we all ready for this?

Event Marketing, Arts & Blogs

I recently read an article on event marketing and I found really interesting the way it was connected to the arts. It is true that the world of events has many similarities to the world of arts and there are plenty of times it borrows elements in order to be successful. At the same time, Arts seem to borrow tools commonly used by events communication, for instance professionalism in organization, which has increased their sensation. Video art, multimedia installations, happenings and performances include similar elements in both worlds that are exchanged without any discernible limits. In my opinion, this exchange and experimentation are in favour of both sides. Blog generation is a reflective and challenging generation.  It easily distinguishes the setup from the impulsive, the affected from the authentic, and so on. That differentiation, that choice or rejection include for the new generation a type of ‘political piece’. So, event marketing’s professionals would better take into consideration that new cuture. 

Viral communications’ fever

There’s at least one viral element in everyone’s inbox, isn’t it? The term viral marketing or even viral advertising is all about marketing techniques used by existing social networks in order to gain reputation through the viral process. Same as a virus infecting a computer.

Viral can be a video clip, an online game, sms, books, and so on. According to B. Winterton, of the Barbarian Group, there’s a tension for emotional approach. Timeliness has given us examples of both successful viral campaigns and failing ones. Failing comes from copying and imitating existing campaigns’ concepts believing the ourcomes will be similar.

A key to success is being original and use fresh and creative ideas. It’s also important not only creating something entertaining but also giving the users reasons to promote our ideas further. Another part of a viral campaigner’s strategy is hiding some fundamental pieces of history in order to challenge the public to fill the gaps and make an effort to put them into place because of their curiosity to know more.

But how ‘high’ or ‘low’ can viral marketing be on a list of so many other communication methods? It is a fact that viral communications is a recent tool.I wouldn’t want to give an evaluation by placing it either high or low on a list, simply because it’s a necessity. Personally, I feel it’s a unique method of establishing a brand directly, combining humour, the public’s participation, the media and the word of mouth process.

One of the most successful virals of last year is the following video of Wilkinson called ‘fight for kisses’, distributed in France and became very popular in Europe in a short time.

Big Brother is watching us…

As long as trade exists, the desire for running further research on consumers’ preferences won’t stop. That’s exactly how social networks make profit; by taking advantage of that desire. Social networking sites offer their services and at the same time ‘build’ consumers’ profiles, violating their private life and most of the time without their knowledge.

For instance, Facebook’s users reacted against Beacon application when they realized that everyone could watch their online activities as they were all available in their profile - e.g what they bought for whom, how much it cost them, buying a ticket, booking flights, events attended, and so on. Some of them were really upset, even deleted their facebook accounts in order to get their privacy back.

One of the creators of Facebook, Mark Zuckenberg, apologized and supported that their initiative goal was to share selective activities of the users’ choice, not all of them. Unfortunately, they didn’t manage to do it straight away, they needed more time to achieve this.

Lets be honest…facebook is fun and it’s a very interesting way of communication between friends and family. Somehow we are partly responsible for that violation of privacy as we never get to read the ‘fine print’ on anything, therefore how can we be sure we enhance security of our data at all times?

New World of WiKi

Some people would not approve of it even if it’s becoming more and more recognised worldwide. Some other believe it’s genius coming up with a software that allows you to create, edit and link pages so fast and easily.

I was ‘officially’ introduced to WiKi today in the Public Relations & New Media module. Before that, I didn’t know exactly what it was but I’ve used it several times when conducting online research.

Wikipedia is a characteristic example of a WiKi and how good it can be. Most academics would look at it as an unreliable source of information, but in my point of view, it’s a really good ‘tool’ for those who know how to judge what they read. You don’t have to agree with what is written there and you can always have the option to contribute to this effort in order to improve its quality.

The most challenging thing is that each one of us can begin a WiKi, giving it the style we want and in collaboration, because that’s what it’s all about, with students when it come to education, employees when it comes to business, etc (http://pbwiki.com/).