AARP pleased with NASCAR sponsorship
Sports Business Journal

In the first season of its multimillion-dollar sponsorship of Jeff Gordon, the AARP Foundation claims it raised $14.1 million and donated 4 million meals to local hunger relief operations.

AARP Foundation President Jo Ann Jenkins said the deal exceeded the organization’s expectations and achieved its two main goals: to raise money and awareness of hunger among elders. She declined to say how much the organization spent on its sponsorship and promotion to achieve those goals. The three-year, 22-race-a-year deal is valued at $10 million to $15 million a year.

“I can’t tell you how pleased we are with the outcome of our relationship with Jeff [Gordon] and Hendrick and NASCAR,” Jenkins said. “For both of those goals [of raising awareness and funds], we really hit it out of the ballpark.”

Jenkins said that 20 to 25 percent of the $14.1 million raised came from individual donations generated through requests for contributions to the AARP Foundation’s Drive to End Hunger campaign at speedways, online and by text message. The organization had more than 122,000 fans visit its displays at tracks this year.

The other 75 to 80 percent of money was raised from corporations. Chase Card Services and United Healthcare were two of the companies that contributed to the campaign. Chase was the only sponsor to agree to contribute to the campaign in exchange for exposure on the hood of the No. 24 car. Its AARP Visa Card appeared on the car at the Richmond and Dover races last fall.

Jenkins said the organization expected more corporations to sign on to support the campaign and help underwrite the cost of the car sponsorship. It didn’t have a specific goal for the number of corporate supporters it wanted last year and doesn’t have one for next year, but the organization did look for corporate support and plans to continue to do so in the future. Jenkins said part of the reason the car didn’t receive more corporate support last season was because the AARP wanted to be sure that partnering corporations were truly committed to combating hunger and weren’t looking for a business-to-business relationship.

Ten Issues Marketers Should Have On Their 2012 Agenda
AdAge

A crucial missing element of marketing is the value of the brands that we work so hard to create and strengthen. We need generally accepted brand valuation standards that can be applied across the industry. The ANA is collaborating with the 4A's, Advertising Research Foundation, Marketing Accountability Standards Board and our brand-valuation partners at Interbrand, Core Brand and Millward Brown have begun an effort to address this.

Ensure Integration Across Expanding Media Platforms
Interactive TV is one of the newest and most dynamic opportunities for marketers. BrightLine's 300-plus campaigns prove that marketers are leveraging interactive TV to raise the effectiveness of traditional-TV investments while advancing digital goals. Nationally scaled ITV has the potential to create another caliber of integrated advertising. The ANA will work with Canoe Ventures to enable programming networks to enhance content and advertising, and to energize them with interactivity.

Improve Processes With Efficiencies
There is a simple way to replace antiquated processes: common asset coding. Ad-ID produces an identifying code for each advertising asset, helps manage workflow, improve supply chain operations, and increases productivity and cost savings. Most important, it provides a foundation for industry-wide measurement across media platforms. Endorsed by all major trade groups and used by more than 700 brands, Ad-ID makes it easy to streamline the supply chain.

Optimize the Agency-Client Relationship
Two steps have been taken to close the chasm between brands and agencies. On the procurement front, a task force will work on the gaps in understanding, knowledge and value with clients, client marketing groups and external agencies. Agency search has also become a hot-button topic. With the 4A's, we developed the Agency Search Principles and Best Practices white paper to improve the process for client marketers and agency leaders.

8 Bold Resolutions For Marketers
Fast Company

Here’s a trivia question for you: What was George Harrison’s last released single? The answer, as it turns out, is Any Road, a song that reminds us, “if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” This poignant parting gift from the youngest Beatle is worth singing right about now as we plot our annual resolutions for our brands, if not our lives.

Of course, singing is one thing, and resolving to do things is quite another. To get us all on the right track, I first consulted with trailblazing marketers at Cablevision, Eloqua, Fandango, IBM, PetCo, SAP, and the Grammys. Their insights, based on longer separate interviews, form the basis for these 8 “must do” resolutions for marketers seeking a clear direction on the road ahead.

Social Networking Left Without Strategy
Marketing Daily News

Sure, many U.S. marketers have a Facebook page, or a Twitter account. But the number of them who have truly integrated those social networks into their overall strategy is still surprisingly small.

According to research from InSites Consulting, less than a fifth (16%) of U.S. marketers feel they have fully integrated social media into their company’s overall strategy—despite most having a Facebook page (66%) or a Twitter account (51%). (Forty-four percent have LinkedIn pages.) Of these companies, 42% said they are still only in the experimental stage when it comes to social media.

“I have a feeling we’re living in a ‘check-list’ mentality,” Steven Van Belleghem, managing partner at InSites Consulting, tells Marketing Daily. “Many companies have started social media in a tactic way. They rapidly created an account on a popular network without it being a total strategy.”

One of the main obstacles for companies to fully integrate social media is still an uncertainty about the financial returns. Many companies have also not yet invested in education and training when it comes to social media and social media strategy.

“For a lot of companies, it’s unclear what the [financial] outcome will be,” Van Belleghem says. “Everything is due to a lack of knowledge, and they tend to make wrong or limited decisions.”

Still, there are some sectors that have been early adopters when it comes to social media—specifically those involved with technology, telecommunications and media. A full quarter of those companies said they had fully integrated social media into their company processes. Meanwhile, about a third of companies in the pharmaceutical and financial industries have just begun to experiment with social media—mainly due to legal and privacy concerns, according to Van Belleghem.

For those companies looking to deepen social media integration, he has three tips: Invest in social media education and training for employees; create small pilot programs that are feasible and can show short-term benefits, and include consumers—particularly those who have indicated an affinity to the brand—in the integration.

“The real challenge is to become more consumer-centric,” he says. “[Companies] need to listen and understand their consumers.”

Twitter Redesign Emphasizes Simplicity, Brand Friendliness
AdWeek

Twitter executives unveiled a new version of the company's website and mobile apps today in San Francisco, one that should make the messaging service friendlier to both casual users and advertisers.

CEO Dick Costolo said one of redesign's big goals was to "bridge the gap between awareness of Twitter and engagement on Twitter." In other words, more and more people are becoming interested in Twitter (Costolo said in September that the service has 100 million active users), but it can be a challenge for new users to wrap their heads around concepts like the "@" symbol and the hashtag.

With the redesign, Twitter is now divided into four main areas. There's the Home section, where users see tweets from the accounts that they follow. There's the Connect section, where users can interact with and search for other users. In the Discover section, users can search find all the tweets around a specific topic, as indicated by hashtags, and view personalized news recommendations. And the Me section is where they'll find their own user profiles.

None of these are new features, exactly, but Twitter's co-founder and head of product Jack Dorsey said they should make the site's capabilities clearer to new users.

"At the core, there's less places that you have to click and less places you have to learn," he said.

This could also help with Twitter's efforts to turn accounts and hashtags into what Dorsey called "the new URL." If Disney, for example, ran a TV commercial and wanted to direct viewers to its website, in the past it would include "www.disney.com" in its ad. These days, the ad is more likely to include the @disney Twitter account or a campaign hashtag, said Dorsey. With the redesign, the ability to search for those accounts and hashtags has moved front and center.

Twitter is offering new brand pages, too. With the ability to add a larger header image to their profile pages and to highlight a specific tweet, brands may feel comfortable treating these pages as their main presence on the Web. A few partners have already created brand pages, and they will eventually become available to anyone, Twitter said, free of charge.

Beyond the new navigation, Twitter is trying to enhance the tweets themselves. The company took a step in this direction with its previous redesign, which allows user to view images and other media included in tweets without leaving Twitter, by opening those links on the side of the screen. However, Costolo said, that navigation still makes the additional content feel "disconnected from the tweet itself," so now, those links open directly within each tweet.

Hi-Lo: How You Can Target Both Ends of the Market
AdAge

In certain circles, "Hi Lo" is a popular poker game. One particularly good Hi Lo strategy is to try to scoop the pot by winning at both the high end and the low end.

Not a bad strategy in marketing circles either. Developing two brands, one at the high end and one at the low end, is probably an easier task than trying to take on the market leader in the middle of the market.

Procter & Gamble has been playing this game for a number of years. "As the middle class shrinks," reported The Wall Street Journal recently, "P&G aims high and low."

At the high end, P&G is moving its Olay skin-care brand upmarket. In 2009, the company introduced Pro-X with a starter kit costing about $60. Previously, the Olay line sold for no more than about $25. At the low end, P&G launched Gain dish soap last year. It sells for half the price of Dawn, its premium brand.

Where I would differ with the Journal is the reason for the developing opportunities at the ends of the spectrum. It's true, the middle class is shrinking. But that's only a partial reason for adopting a Hi Lo strategy.

Every consumer is an individual who doesn't necessarily buy what he or she is supposed to buy. Typically, a consumer might buy an expensive automobile, but then the cheapest brand of paper towels. It's a category issue, not a branding issue. Some consumers care an awful lot about what brand of automobile they drive. Others don't.

As a glittering generality, if you care about the category, you want the "best" you can afford. If you don't care about the category, you want the "cheapest."

Nobody says, "I want something mediocre. Not too cheap. Not too good."

That's why at the high end, you want to load your brand with as many goodies as you can think. And at the low end, the opposite is true -- you want to strip your brand to sell at a low price.