How to Reach Your Mobile Customers
Welcome to the mobile revolution.

The first screen—television—made it possible for brands like Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola to reach millions of consumers. The second screen—the PC—allowed interactivity between companies and customers. But the third screen—the smartphone—takes marketing into a new dimension.

Mobile is in the process of revolutionizing the way companies big and small interact with consumers. Rather than the broadcast model of television and to some extent the internet, marketing to the untethered, mobile consumer is different in many ways.

First, the mobile phenomenon is massive and global, with roughly 5 billion cellphones in use, or 73 percent of the entire world population. In the US, the percentages are even higher, with about 297 million people owning a cell phone, or 94 percent of the population.

Tale of Two Marketers at Cannes: P&G Outshines '10 Champ Unilever
AdAge
Procter & Gamble roared into Cannes this year, its Lion count blasting past its previous high mark and that of last year's Advertiser of the Year, Unilever, which was tracking well behind its 2010 total at press time.

"We've been coming here for nine years," said a relaxed-looking Marc Pritchard, P&G's global marketing and brand building officer, sitting at a quiet table at the opulent Majestic Barriere. He said he was particularly pleased that the awards were coming from a range of work, from print to PR, and that P&G topped the Effie's Effectiveness Index, unveiled at Cannes Thursday night.

P&G was Cannes' Advertiser of the Year in 2008, but though it might seem to deserve it next year, the nod is given well in advance of each festival and is based on a marketer's track record rather than who won the most Lions. Only Nike has won the honor twice since it was introduced in 1992, and that was a decade apart, in 1994 and 2003.

Why Brands We Know Partner with Start-Ups That We Don’t
AdAge
Could a CMO discover the next Facebook? Marketers are becoming increasingly entrenched with digital-media startups, often kicking the tires on a new service or social network even before consumers have had a chance to give it a spin.

It's a mutually beneficial arrangement. Startups bring marketers in to help imagine ad products, forging relationships early and gaining credibility by wrangling big brands' involvement. Marketers, in turn, get a peek at what's new and next in digital media, often at a bargain rate, and a chance to stay a half-step ahead of their consumers and rivals. That's not to mention the good chance that they'll look pretty cool in the process.

Over the past few years, some progressive marketers have popularized the model. PepsiCo was an early partner of location app Foursquare, and American Express ran a pilot program in March and subsequently launched a nationwide rewards program tied to check-ins on the service. Virgin America, one of the first advertisers on Twitter, also launched the first deal with Loopt for the reverse-Groupon, in which consumers-pick-the-deal discounts on flights, just last week. More conservative marketers are now scrambling to partner with the next hot digital things before anyone else has read about them.

Social Media Delivers — But Multichannel Integration Delivers More
Media Post (Performance Insider Blog)
Marketers are tuned into social media. According to a recent BtoB Research Report, nearly all (93%) of B2B marketers are engaged in social media marketing. Likewise, another study revealed that the vast majority (84%) of the Fortune Global 100 is active on at least one social media platform.

Why all the interest and activity?

Because social media produces results. New data shows that social media is delivering solid, proven ROI. What's more, it's cost-effective, too. In fact, one report concluded that organizations using predominantly newer inbound marketing tactics (blogs, search engine optimization and social media) now experience a cost per lead 62% lower than organizations that use mostly outbound marketing techniques (print, direct mail, etc.).

Without question, social media is proving itself increasingly valuable as a way to reach out to and connect with consumers. Plus, it's easy to measure and provides nearly instant gratification—for both our online audience and for us as marketers, too.

In Search of the Golden Metric
Marketing Daily News
"We know our digital advertising works," a client recently said, "because when we stop running it, our site traffic and revenue drop." His company spends over $100 million each year on digital advertising; they are sophisticated marketers who want to use data to improve results. If you ask him what the stacks of reports on site traffic, ad impressions, etc. he gets actually tell him, he'll tell you, "not much." Why? Because he and most digital marketers are accountable for getting results, they want specific, actionable information—what to run with and what to change—about creative, site and page placements, position, size, frequency, and other factors they can control.

Measuring web sites and online marketing campaigns has kept marketers, agencies, and others busy for years. Web analytics report visits, page views, visits and other counts of site activity. Ad server analytics report impressions served, clickthroughs and other silo-specific measures. Once upon a time, each delivered the "hot metric." But, as soon as we begin to understand what each "hot metric" tells us, we begin to understand where it falls short, and we begin again to search for the "Golden Metric" that we can confidently use.

Bonnier Revs Up Magazine Licensing Efforts
Ad Week
Bonnier Corp., publisher of Popular Science and Parenting, has been buying up print in recent years, absorbing Time Inc.’s enthusiast magazines and smaller acquisitions like Working Mother Media and then-Hachette Filipacchi Media’s hobby titles. Now, it’s joining many of its print brethren in trying to wring more money out of its titles and overcome sluggish growth in print revenue.

Along those lines, on Friday Bonnier announced that it has hired Sean Holzman as its first-ever chief brand development officer. In his new job, Holzman will look for ways to license the company’s various brands, and will report to CEO Terry Snow.

In an interview, Holzman said he saw the chance to create product certification programs using Bonnier’s brands like Popular Science and Parenting, similar to an initiative he led at Source Interlink Media, where he had a similar role until 2009. One of his legacies there was a Motor Trend certification program for used vehicles. Another idea he has is leveraging Bonnier’s Outdoor Life to develop camping products and apparel.

“The great thing about Bonnier is they have a portfolio of incredible brands and content that really have not been mined,” Holzman said.

GMA/PwC: Digital Key in Driving CPGs’ Recovery
Marketing Daily News
Despite rapidly rising commodities costs, the consumer product goods industry is clearly in recovery mode, with international expansion—plus digitally enabled consumer insights and operating efficiencies—chief among the growth drivers, according to the new edition of the annual industry financial benchmarking report from the Grocery Manufacturers Association and PwC.

The value of total CPG-industry shipments rose 6% last year, to nearly $124 billion. Improvement over 2009 was seen across the key metrics, including strong median one-year shareholder returns of 15% for the manufacturing sector. In addition, overall growth of median earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) improved from 4.3% percent to 12.9%, and EBIT growth for the bottom quartile improved significantly (from negative 25% to negative 1%). Both margins and liquidity showed strong overall performance.