The Onion Lampoons Viral. Tide Runs With It.

Last week, The Onion ran a wonderfully fictitious article by “Fred Hammond, Director of Digital Video and Social-Media Ad Integration, Tide Detergent.” Onion, you had me at hello. The desperately hipster editorial promotes his own low-involvement brand, and all of the cool (yet faux) social-media programs that try to engage Tide customers. Clearly Fred has read…

Why Companies Don’t Need Social-Media Experts

Let’s face it. Social media, like digital marketing initially, has been overhyped. We don’t even need any more “social media” gurus in 2011. We just need executives and marketers who understand the channel well enough to be realistic, patient and smart. We’ve been asking “what?” and “why?” for several years now, and the big questions…

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Can Google Sell Online Video Ads?

There’s been a lively debate recently among online-video enthusiasts about Google/YouTube’s capacity to sell display advertising. Sales people need different skill sets selling paid-search (automated, measurable, bid-based) versus display advertising (which is less measurable and more like selling television or print). To understand the distinction, see Google’s video; this is something we’ve been exploring at…

How to Implement Social Media Despite Agency Limits & Stakeholder Fears

This Content-to-Commerce post revealed some interesting social-media statistics, and prompted me to answer two questions: “Why aren’t digital agencies bringing social-media to clients?” “Why can’t brands seem to overcome their internal inertia?” I have the somewhat rare experience of having seen social media strategy and tactics in various roles: as a marketer (client), client stakeholder…

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Schweet & Sad: Advertising Week’s Battle of the Bands

It’s schweet & sad… You’ve got a week to vote for the best band on Advertising Week’s “Battle of the Bands” (see AdvertisingWeek or visit YouTube “Battle of Ad Bands” channel). The assortment of videos, featuring modern Mad Men (and woman), in the past week have seen about 200-500 views per video. Perhaps mostly from…

SEM Plus Video = Gold in ‘Dem Hills

Pay attention now, online-video and advertising peeps. This lil’ blog post is going to be on the final exam. It might even spawn a trade article and a new business. Search engine marketing (SEM) is big business today, with agencies charging retainers to help websites rank high on search engines (increasing qualified traffic) and help manage paid advertising….