Brand Protection in Online World a Major Concern for Enterprises
Diverse reputation protection services are now a reality but corporate mindset is slow to adapt
The web, one of the most powerful tools for both promoting and undermining a company’s valuable corporate assets - brand and reputation, has also changed the entire nature of protecting them. In a new report, ‘Brand protection services’, global advisory and consulting firm Ovum says the task will become even more challenging as Web 2.0 technology spreads. It points out that policy makers have yet to balance the legitimate concerns of organisations with respect for freedom of speech and truthful debate and organisations have to be proactive in protecting their online reputations.
“The fundamental problem is that there is no quality control of content on the Internet.” says Graham Titterington, Principle Analyst and information security specialist at Ovum and author of the report. “The corporate mindset has been slow to adapt to the changing world. New techniques are needed to detect attacks and defend reputation in the online world, even when the remedy requires conventional legal action.”
The Internet is now a major channel for the sale of fake branded goods, which in some cases results in danger to the customer. Copyright and trademark infringement are commonplace. Businesses have suffered real damage as a result of false allegations spread on the Internet. The annual revenue of online counterfeiting fraudsters has been estimated at $110 bn (source MarkMonitor).
Another aspect of online counterfeiting is represented by the misuse of a web domain name. The attacker sets up a website with a similar name to that of a legitimate organisation with the deliberate intention of deceiving visitors. It extends to virtual services offered by fraudsters on the Web purporting to be the legitimate organisation. The issue will become more prominent as the Web becomes more interactive.
A niche group of service providers has grown up to monitor the Internet for these offences and initiate enforcement action both at the ISP level and in the physical world. “For example MarkMonitor is a niche vendor offering services in domain management, online trademark protection, online channel monitoring, and anti-phishing. Larger IT vendors also offer protection services, such as IBM’s COBRA alerting service.”
However, according to Ovum countering bad publicity needs a more subtle approach. Debate has to be matched by a positive involvement in online discussion forums. The wider issues of reputation abuse need to be tackled by a combination of prevention, detection and reaction. The first stage in protection is the registration of trademarks, domain names and intellectual property. Web monitoring can detect early stages in the development of an attack strategy.
More detailed detection requires the co-operation of ISPs in identifying the use of specific IP addresses and their ownership. Reaction includes, forensic analysis, the issuing of legal notices and follow up action, and the closure of web sites and IP addresses that are engaging in illegal activity. /PR
Will Marketers Get Frugal With Google?
It depends on who you ask.
The latest data from comScore showed that clicks on ads placed on Google didn't change much from January 2007 to January 2008. Clicks were actually down 12% from the last three months of 2007.
Clicks on Yahoo! ads also fell 3% from the fourth quarter, but it was Google that got all the unwelcome attention, including a stock price dip to about $450, down from about $740 in November.
What is going on? BusinessWeek quoted UBS as saying in a research note that "unless there's a problem with comScore's data, the most likely scenario is that 'advertisers are simply bidding on and buying fewer keywords.'"
eMarketer senior analyst David Hallerman also said that an economic slowdown would likely mean less online shopping for consumers, and therefore fewer clicks on the ads that direct them to retail sites.
But Mr. Hallerman says that marketers should not overreact to the comScore data. "You typically need multiple data sources to get a clear picture," he said. "Even if the comScore data is perfectly accurate, one month is not enough to view a trend."
Read more - eMarketer
Don't Click This Ad
Some consumers are click farms unto themselves.
Brand marketers measuring their display ad performance might not want to rely very heavily on click-through.
Most display ad clicks come from a very small group of consumers, according to “Natural Born Clickers,” a report by Starcom USA, Tacoda and comScore.
The heavy clickers surveyed represented just 6% of the online population, but made one-half of all display ad clicks.
Heavy clickers' demographics were also very different from those of most Internet users. On average, heavy clickers were 25 to 44 years old, with annual household incomes under $40,000. They were online four times as much as non-clickers, but were not big spenders.
Read more - eMarketer
Mobile Ad Conference Affirms Brands Are Starting To Move
Last week in San Francisco, Informa held their Mobile Advertising and Marketing USA conference. There were speakers from all parts of the mobile advertising value chain as well as from all regions of the world. This post looks at the key discussion topics.
While its impossible to condense 2 full days of presentations and discussion into a brief article, here are some of the key themes raised at the conference.
Brands:
Finally we’re starting to hear from agencies that more brands are moving past the “test and trial” phase, and are viewing mobile as an ongoing part of their media plan. The budgets are often still relatively small, but the budgets are growing and a lot of the brands are placing “repeat orders” without the need for an agency to justify mobile all over again.
“Mobile is not the web, but …”
It has been a common theme that mobile advertising should not be thought of as simply a new form of online advertising. There are different ad formats, different customer patterns, different forms of engagement, etc. However, one speaker pointed out that at a higher level, many of the key successful philosophies from the online world should in fact be brought over to the mobile world, for example:
- Consumers like ads that are Entertaining.
- Ads should bring Value to consumers.
- Re-purposing content from one medium to another doesn’t always work.
- Creative must be “top shelf“, with as high a standard as traditional advertising or online advertising
It seems that the iPhone will in fact exert a strong influence on mobile advertising for a number of reasons. In the 7 months since its introduction:
- the iPhone is inducing consumers to browse the mobile internet. In fact, the more internet pages are browsed using iPhones than all the Windows Mobile phones put together, actually 50% more. Three key reasons for this seem to be (a) the improved user experience, (b) the flat rate data plan sold with every iPhone removes customers’ cost concerns, and (c) the content discovery process is familiar – like the web.
- the iPhone seems to have captured the imagination of agency creatives, and has made many realize that a mobile web experience can be great.
- the iPhone has enabled a new, higher quality level for mobile ads. While opinions were divided as to whether or not it is economically worthwhile to develop an ad version specifically for iPhone users, it was clear that some agencies would do this just to “push the boundaries” and show what is possible. This can only have a positive effect on the growth of mobile advertising.
Search Marketing for Branding
The majority of US consumers visited Web sites for consumer packaged goods products in the three months ending April 2007, and search drove many of the visits, according to comScore's “The Digital Shelf: The Opportunity for Search Marketing in Consumer Packaged Goods,” conducted with the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, Yahoo! and Procter & Gamble.
Nearly 44 million visitors searched for packaged foods in the study period. Baby products attracted 15.7 million searchers, personal care products 9.8 million and household products 1.7 million.
“While search marketing has long been recognized as an effective direct response vehicle, it’s been largely overlooked by CPG companies who focus on brand advertising and promotional efforts to drive in-store purchasing," said Gord Hotchkiss, chairman of SEMPO, in a statement.
Nearly three-quarters of searchers were motivated by product research. More than six in 10 wanted help with their purchase decisions
Nearly one-half of searchers were looking for promotions, and just under three in 10 were specifically looking for a company's site.
Searchers spent about 20% more than non-searchers across the four categories. [eMarketer]
GET Interactive Creates Exciting New Advertising Paradigm
GET Interactive today announced a new process that promises to revolutionize advertising, allowing viewers of music videos, films and other video content to buy and interact with brand and products they see on screen by simply pointing and clicking.
The company’s patent-pending system converts any video content on the Internet, mobile device or IPTV into a shopping or promotional opportunity without disrupting the viewing experience. GET Interactive’s opt-in marketing model arrives at a time when traditional advertising is losing its effectiveness, said Rick Harrison, the company’s founder and chief executive officer.
“GET Interactive re-defines the rules of engagement with the consumer,” Harrison said. “This is an opportunity for the presenter of a brand to drill down and create a relationship with a consumer.”
GET Interactive works with advertisers and content producers to identify products that appear in the video content. Without disrupting their viewing experience, consumers can click the “GET Shop Spot” and browse through still images of the content in a new browser window. Consumers simply point and click on selected items to launch an ad panel with a link to a point of purchase or promotion.
The mobile shopping service will allow consumers to bill purchases directly to their handheld account or download a GPS location-based coupon for the nearest store carrying the desired product.
The GET Interactive system is currently operating on the website of Paramount Pictures’ Freedom Writers, a film starring Academy Award winner Hilary Swank (http://www.freedomwriters.com/). Meanwhile, Overture Pictures will use GET Interactive’s branding platform in the upcoming feature film, Mad Money.
GET Interactive, headquartered in Winston-Salem, N.C. (with offices in Los Angeles and New York), is also in discussions with Interscope, Geffen and A&M Records, which are part of Universal Music Group. Music videos are already widely viewed on mobile phones and other handheld devices.
GET Interactive’s management team has decades of experience in publishing, advertising, technology, entertainment and brand marketing. Harrison started the company in 2005 to answer the growing demand for a new advertising model.
As DVRs reduce the effectiveness of the traditional 30-second advertising spot and Internet video viewing becomes more popular, entertainment companies are looking for new ways to help advertisers reach consumers. Advertisers want to cut through the noise and clutter of the information landscape, while consumers are fed-up with intrusive marketing.
“We believe very strongly that the future of advertising is opt-in,” Harrison said. In GET Interactive's model, consumers retain total control over the advertising they see. “Our basic goal is to make video viewed anywhere shoppable without disrupting the experience,” he said. “We want to be the pathfinder to opt-in marketing around the world.”
GET Interactive is already optimized for Internet and handheld content. As of Aug. 1, it will also be configured for IPTV, Harrison said.
GET Interactive’s opt-in marketing paradigm benefits web publishers and digital service providers by generating additional revenue at little or no cost, Harrison said. Brands benefit because they gain access to motivated shoppers, while consumers now get to decide when or whether they will look at advertising.
“No one loses in this scenario,” Harrison said. “It’s a total media and branding and shopping solution for video content.”
Bigger Sites May Not Be Better for Online Advertisers
Advertising on smaller niche sites could make a big difference.
In the glory days of television, when mass media reigned, media planners could buy time on CBS, NBC and ABC and waltz out for a three-martini lunch. Easy as that.
Times have changed, of course. Today, planning multimedia advertising campaigns is far more complex. But media planners would still prefer to keep things as simple as possible. When it comes to the online portion of their budgets, they buy Google, Yahoo! and a few major vertical-interest sites and, often enough, that is about it.
Merrill Lynch projects that both search and branded advertising will grow online next year, up 27% and 21%, respectively.
But continuing to put the bulk of online ad dollars on large sites could be a mistake. Big, particularly on the Internet, may not be better.
According to new research from Media-Screen, when brand managers and media planners are choosing where to place their ads online, they should not ignore smaller sites with less traffic.
Read more
Why Rebranding Often Fails
by Galen De Young
As competition heats up and sales start to stagnate, companies often seek to breathe new life into the brand through rebranding. In all too many cases, however, those expensive rebranding efforts fail to yield the desired business results.
Here are some of the key reasons rebranding often fails. More than executional mistakes that blunt the effectiveness of rebranding efforts, these are critical errors that almost always lead to failure.
Lack of True Change
Sure, sometimes rebranding is done solely to sharpen the image of a company or brand; after all, periodically things need to be freshened up. However, unless you operate in the world of packaged goods, don't expect great things from launching some new designs and fresh copy.
Rebranding signals change. A new image will cause people to take a fresh look at you—and people's primary motivation in taking a new look is to see what's changed. If you're the same old place dressed up in new wrapping and ribbons, you'll merely confirm the existing position you own in their minds. You'll have wasted a valuable opportunity to change their perceptions.
There are only so many times your prospects are going to reconsider you. Use them wisely.
Making Too Big a Leap
Rebranding should be about truly changing perceptions in the marketplace—changing the position you own in people's minds. That position, however, isn't dictated by you. It's based on what others believe about your company; it's something granted by those in the marketplace.
Read more
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