My interest in interactive advertising really only began to take true direction when I was working for eStara.com, the Click to Call people. This is where the concept Call on Cue was born. I think that the evolution of “Call on Cue” is one of the best examples of how innovation has the ability to inspire Creativity. However it is only truly unique because it marries all the important elements of a successful marketing campaign: Creativity, Impact, Efficiency and Total Engagement.

“Innovation Call on Cue, where Click to Call is triggered from within a Flash movie,
Adtech 2008 award winning campaign for Sporting Portugal and General Motors, Prepare your Hair campaign, Summit International Efficiency Award 2007.”

Here’s a Constant Change blogpost that cited a Marketing Sherpa piece on my work:
http://constantchange.typepad.com/constant_change/2006/12/unique_cr…

This is a collection of links to the creative which is public:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/opel/study.html

And this is a post on eStara.com website on my work:
http://website.estara.com/de/aboutus/news/marketingsherpa2.html

And this one about the award winning Sporting Portugal campaign:

I have spent some time researching the attitudes of SME on applying internet in a business growth strategy. SME’s actually do not use much of the Internet for advertising or to establish new distribution channels.

However, SME’s do recognize the importance of the internet in their business strategy to benefit from growth opportunities it presents. In fact SME’s consider the Internet as a vital contributor for business performance but do not apply resources to this area if; from one side, they don’t have or need a growth strategy or from the other, the value of the internet is not vividly apparent to them.

If a SME business owner has a value perception of the internet, adoption of an internet strategy is never far off even though there is no actual planned business growth strategy.

It could be that these firms see outside pressure from competition using the internet, another could be that the company owner just has a very good knowledge of the IT opportunities.

However with most SME who don’t have a planned growth strategy, the value perception of the internet is generally very low, there is usually no internal IT knowledge and perhaps they can’t see any competitive pressure.

If you will allow yourself to take a step back and look at technology adoption rates from the perspective of a SME business owner we may conclude that a change in attitude to business growth is needed and not necessarily a change in the perception of the internet as a business driver.

Show me the money

Why we ask ourselves are advertisers sceptical about online advertising and yet they will place an expensive ad in the paper without giving it a moments thought?

In my view its because the value is not transparent to all of us. I do not question the fact that my ad in the Sunday Times will be viewed by millions of readers. I read the Sunday Times, I can see my ad, my neighbour will too because I know he reads the Times front to back on Sunday afternoon. Somehow advertisers perceive the value of online advertising differently than offline advertising.

Let me be the devil’s advocate a moment by stating:. If you can’t visually illustrate ad performance, don’t bother selling it!

This may sound preposterous to an experienced online marketer. Think of all the wealth of tracking tools, analysis and performance stats I can provide to my advertiser, the possibilities to track ROI have never been finer!

All true, good arguments, but I’ll buy your ad because I know it pays off. You are telling me it will pay off and your statistics tell me this but I still have a problem visualizing the ad you are trying to sell me, I don’t even know these websites you want to place my ad on. On top of that he is thinking your pitch sounds pretty complicated. “I’m sorry we just aren’t quite ready for this right now and besides we don’t really have the budget.”

Turn around Adrank

So if we need to put the money where our mouth is, we should perhaps come up with a significantly simplified way to help advertisers visualize the ROI of online advertising.

What if we illustrate the return of ads by offering advertising conversion scores directly on the ads themselves and outside of any kind of Google AdRank. Current advertisers benefit by knowing if adjusting their creative format, copy or adblock will increase conversions for them but I’ve already made the decision to use Adwords by then. Potential advertisers should also be able to see how online ads generate leads before their very eyes and it makes the whole AdRank system much more transparent at the same time. No need to get out the case studies and analytic demo kit, get out of the hard sell business and back stuck into the relationship business.

I am posting this article back up top for a while as it gives a nice overview of the latest sales projects. As I have just sent out all my Plaxo and Linked In updates I trust someone will take a moment to remind him/herself of who I am before accepting me to connect to them.

These are new TWESTC representations selected by our team for best use of innovation technology targeted and designed for specific service industries.

Publishers : Local Search Pro by Clearsense : SEO Platform for publishers of local online classified advertisers and directory listings

Property Developers : MD Glider. : 3 Dimensional + Google Earth integrated showcase for property development projects

eStara: Call on Cue, Multimedia Integration of the eStara Click Suite Tools.

Online and Interactive Services : 8bahn development - group of Belgian hard coders specializing in ASP, PHP, SQL server technologies for which we provide outsourcing services.

Tourism : MD Glider Tourist : 3 Dimensional integration of Google Earth and Mapping technologies to showcase destinations

We will be pleased to arrange presentations in due course but please feel free to request some introductory documentation or information on the above products and services.

I have worked with many people in advertising of whom I really respect their talent in the production of viral ad concepts. However I have to admit that regarding efficiency this viral ad from US food chain CCarl Jr. . just ticks off all the boxes. First of all they have solved the problem of personalizing the message in Text to Speech efficiently by allowing the sender to choose from a drop down list of possible names for their friends, including aliases such as Casanova or Bunny.

Secondly I am actually immediately rewarded with a discount coupon on chicken wings from Carl Jr. . if my email was successfully to a recipient. Viral’s are great but what is important that at one point the recipient is rewarded with something else than a slap on the back from an advertiser saying ‘thanks chum, you just helped us bang another victim to our mailing list, now just sit back an enjoy the rest of our spam mail!

Here is a solid post by Tomi outlining five unique elements of the mobile medium (Found via All About Mobile Life).

1. The mobile is personal.
2. The mobile is the first always-on mass media.
3. The mobile is the first always-carried mass media.
4. The mobile is the first mass media with a built-in payment mechanism.
5. Mobile uniquely offers the media audience the input tool, at the point of creative impulse.

Mobile is also quoted as being the most misunderstood of all media.

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