For a recent experiment, we divided respondents into two groups. To both groups, we showed a trailer for an upcoming movie. One group was given two different descriptions for the trailer (as if there were two different trailers) and asked to chose one or the other. We have found that the presence of this "choice" had a significant effect on recall of key facts from the trailer. We are doing some follow-up work now to clarify a few things, but what we found was pretty interesting.

My colleague Rob St.Louis and I are going to the ARF's Audience Measurement conference in New York in June to present a paper with the results. Come say hi if you are there.  Our thing starts at 1.50pm on Monday June 11 in Majestic on the 6th floor of, I think, Marriott Marquis.

Oh, and we have also just published the results of another study that showed how fiddling with smartphones distracts people from TV and what could be done about it

When people are in front of the TV, they don’t just watch TV.

The pioneering Middletown Media Study conducted in the pre-iPhone and pre-iPad era of 2005 showed that, at the time, 28.5% of 240.9 daily TV viewing minutes were accompanied by exposure to at least one other medium. (Talking on the phone and texting were the most frequent sources of interruption). In addition, about half of all TV minutes were accompanied by non-media life activities, such as caring for others, eating and cleaning.

The competition for TV viewer’s attention has hardly subsided. Since the study, smartphone penetration in the US soared from 3.8% in 2006 to 44% by the end of 2011. Today, for many tablet and smartphone owners (45% and 41%, respectively) using their mobile device while watching TV is a daily activity.

For any advertiser, these numbers lead to a natural question: What happens to my TV ads?

Having failed to locate a ready answer, we decided to find out for ourselves. We partnered with SecondScreen Networks, a company that sells mobile ads synchronized to what’s playing on the TV, to set up an experiment. Our formal objective was to understand the effect of advertising on a secondary screen during concurrent content consumption of television and mobile content.

What we did
To simulate the effect of watching a TV with the mobile phone on, we created a video player that showed two concurrent video streams to a group of 600 online survey respondents divided into three groups.

The stream in the “TV” window consisted of an SNL skit broken up by a sequence of four trailers for upcoming movies, among them a trailer for Friends with Kids. The stream in the “mobile” window showed screenshots from a smartphone every 5- or 10-seconds. Among the screenshots was an ad for Friends and Kids.

We tested three simulated scenarios (see the illustrations at the end of this post): 1) people watching TV without a phone in hand, 2) people watching TV with a phone in hand, and 3) people watching TV with a phone in hand and the phone displays an ad for Friends with Kids at the same time the trailer is on. Each participant was shown a version of the video from one of the three scenarios. We then asked them a series of questions testing what they remembered and how much they liked Friends with Kids.

What we found out
1. Concurrent consumption of mobile and TV content strongly and negatively affected recall and preference rates of TV content. Respondents in the one-screen condition group exhibited on average 17% higher recall and 12% higher preference than the two-screen groups on average.

In other words,  viewers  got distracted when they fiddled with their phones while watching TV; they were less likely to remember or like the TV content than when the TV was the only medium.

2. Displaying a mobile ad for TV content did not lead to a significant increase of recall rates for TV content but it did bring the preference rates back to par with the one-screen condition (it increased preference by 15%).

In other words, when we put an ad on the mobile phone people were looking at, their recall of the TV content was still lower compared to the no-phone-at-all scenario, but their preference rates went back almost all the way up. The “mobile ads” in our experiment helped fight the problem that mobile phones had created in the first place.

If independently confirmed, these findings could mean a couple of things. One is that TV advertisers will be looking for ways to compensate for the drop in TV ad effectiveness caused by TV-mobile multitasking either by dialing up frequency or by putting up two-screen roadblocks with the help of companies such as SecondScreen Networks.

Secondly, ads that invite viewers to engage with a smartphone right away – shazam it! scan this QR code! – might be ruining it for the next ad in the pod. The playing field of a commercial break is already uneven: an emotionally impactful ad will carry viewer’s thought way beyond the allotted 30 seconds. By getting people to fumble with their smartphones, an ad essentially makes viewers tune the TV out for the duration of the exercise.

People who run to the bathroom during the commercial break often can still hear the ad. People who change the channel can at least be counted. Tuning out is the silent killer.

Microsoft unveiled the box art for the upcoming Halo 4 game by emailing Xbox community members one of the 32 pieces of puzzle that when assembled together reveal the image.  The puzzle was cracked in about an hour, probably helped by the fact that the remaining 31 pieces could be seen by changing the last two digits of the image URL before the ".jpg" part, a fact that wasn't lost on the fans:

http://image.engage.xbox.com/lib/feca167070610c7c/m/4/12993-H4_02.jpg 

Google's Screenwise research project announced back in February is designed to collect data on more than just Internet behavior. In addition to custom wireless routers that gather information on participants' browsing and downloading habits, the recently mailed recruiting brochure describes a device "a little bigger than a smartphone" called Screenwise TV Tab. TV Tab "captures audio signals that enables the study to identify which TV programs are being viewed."

The information TV Tab collects includes:

• Identity of person logging into the Screenwise TV Tab
• Timestamps indicating time of log-in and log-out
• Duration of television usage per session
• The total amount of time a television is used in the household

[source: Screenwise Select privacy policy]

I haven't seen the device, but I think it could be based on Android and powered by this TV Tab app developed by Mobile Research Labs.  Android market lists the number of installs for this app at between 10 and 50.




In addition, a different Screenwise app (which looks like a version of Lumi's AnalyzeMe) captures participants' smartphone habits. Among the more interesting things the app collects are:

• Frequency of use of device calendar
• Battery status
• Whether you are using your smartphone inside or outside your home
• How long music is played, and the title and artist for each song
• Timestamp and duration of any video viewed on smartphone
• all URL's and advertisements viewed
• When a Panelist opens or closes an application

[source: Screenwise Select privacy policy]


Google, who is conducting this research together with GfK, is offering a sign-up incentive of $100 with up to an additional $50 for each month the participating household stays in the study.

Some people who were randomly selected to receive a recruiting mailer (accompanied with a crispy two-dollar bill), are concerned it might be a scam, or worse: "The money is real too! A $2 Dollar bill? SO weird man... never heard of anything like this."

Land Rover in the United Arab Emirates printed 5,000 edible copies of a desert survival guide. Twenty-eight pages of potato-based starch paper have a slightly sugary taste from the glycerin-based ink and are bound by a spiral that can be used as skewers. The book comes in  a reflective cover that can be used to send help signals.
-- Y&R Dubai; thank you, Guillaume

Saw this page on AdKeeper, the company that is trying to make online advertising bookmarkable. This could be an interesting way for Pinterest itself to make money: becoming a network for ads that people will want to hold on to. Won't be a huge stretch for them, most of the pins are already very ad like. You will easily find pins for a book, iPhone app, music, movie posters and trailers, and even payday loans.

And I already see people pinning coupons. Here's one from Jiffy Lube someone has pinned after filing out a satisfaction survey.

Rose Castronova was Chief Financial Officer of Hill Holliday’s New York office for most of my 18 years at the agency. And I can say without an nanosecond of hesitation, that she was one of the finest human beings to ever call Hill Holliday home.

After a long illness which she fought courageously, Rose passed away late Friday evening.

I first met Rose when our office was in the “Lipstick Building” at the corner of 53rd and 3rd and we serviced clients like Rolling Rock, Labatt’s, Coopers & Lybrand, Waterford, Minolta, Priceline.com, and Motrin. While her card read “Chief Financial Officer,” Rose was the heart and soul of the office; she was part President, part HR Director, part Staff Psychologist. She was as honest and trustworthy as a colleague can possibly be. Rose understood how our business works, and not just financially. She could instinctively distinguish good creative work from mediocre, she could tell when a client relationship needed nurturing, and she knew who was doing the pick and shovel work and who was coasting. And she never hesitated to speak her mind about anyone or anything. Rose bled Hill Holliday green (to those of you new to the agency, we used to have a lot of green around here), and she was as critical to our success in New York as any other person.

Rose had a wonderful sense of humor, and a thick Queens accent. She communicated in shorthand, with a twinkle in her eyes. She had nicknames for most of the senior team. There was Crazy. And Breezy. And Dr. Doom. If you’re wondering if she had a nickname for you, the answer is “yes.” If you want to know what your nickname was, the answer is “no.” (Since she never told me my nickname, that’s only fair.)

Rose loved Hill Holliday. And the feeling was mutual. But nothing matched the love that Rose had for her family, including her daughter Michele and her beautiful grandchildren Caitlin and Liam. Rose’s funeral is tomorrow, May 1, at 10:45 a.m. at Sacred Heart Church in Wantagh, NY.

Photo: Rose Castronova with Solange Collins

"...when they run to the bathroom" is what I meant to ask.

In case you are wondering, some studies show that people in a coma can hear.

HITE Radio & TV sits at my street corner. The company was established in 1940 – one year after David Sarnoff announced the dawn of television in the U.S. I’m reminded everyday when looking at the logos of TV set manufactures of days passed that a “traditional” medium television is no longer.

While TV has always been, in effect, “social media” it’s an entirely different experience today that it was 73 years ago as television has converged with the web, social media, and mobile – deeply affecting how we not just watch but experience the medium making television a new medium.

Brands looking to better reach their target audience via “television” must approach it as new media – unshackling themselves from decades of planning TV in a similar fashion. A new planning model is needed for modern television. Stacey and I introduced the WATCH model as a first step – available in the bonus chapter of SOCIAL TV.

You can read more about W.A.T.C.H. by downloading Chapter 11 of SOCIAL TV (for free). Enjoy

We’re pretty excited about our new film for Oxfam America. Oxfam wants Congress to stop giving food aid money to special interest groups, and give it to people who need it most. Take a look, share, join the cause.

NBC’s Fashion Star premiered last week to pretty good Nielsen ratings and social ratings which went on to increase for this past Tuesday’s second episode. While from a content perspective, it’s not exactly what I tend to watch on TV, I’m really impressed with the elegance of the program’s architecture and social TV format for three main reasons:

1. Strong social TV footprint: Fashion Star hits on what is becoming a standard footprint for these kinds of shows by integrating the Twitter backchannel into the broadcast programming, making episodes available on demand across multiple platforms, and having a beefy social media presence in Facebook, Twitter, and a partnership with GetGlue.
2. Test & learn attitude: I absolutely love that Fashion Star is experimenting with “emerging” platforms like Pinterest which is an appropriate and, frankly, perfect place to be in both from a target and user-experience perspective.
3. Content as advertising: Most interesting to me is the fact that the show has brilliantly integrated 3 major brands into the content of the show in a way that, in my opinion, sets the bar for sponsorships because it doesn’t feel like a sponsorship – it feels like (because it is) a natural part of the show. Many times brand integrations have an evident and blatant beginning and end – almost like a commercial within the show – but in this case, the brands are editorially woven throughout the show’s content as three retail buyers act, in effect, as the ultimate judges of the designers’ fashions.

Check out the show’s trailer to see how it all comes to life.

Moving beyond a sponsorship:
In our book, Stacey and I challenge advertisers to move beyond traditional sponsorships and, instead, to create experiences with television. Here’s what is awesome about what the buyers from Macy’s, Saks, and H&M are doing on Fashion Star.

• Brand Proof Points: The brands are able to inherently convey their brand proof points without in-your-face advertising — They’re showing, not telling.

• Emotional Investment & Loyalty: Viewers become more invested with how each buyer thinks and makes decisions around fashions for their brand and, in the process, what kinds of styles comprise each of the brands.

• Purchase Intent: Anticipation is created among viewers to get their hands on the fashions and by having them available online immediately following the show and in-stores the next day leverages that instant gratification and purchase intent.

The fact that many of the fashions featured have sold out of their respective stores is one compelling measure of success so far.

If you’re tuning in to the long awaited season 5 premiere of “Mad Men” this Sunday (and who isn’t?), check out the Newsweek / Daily Beast official
“Mad Men Talking Man Men” live chat featuring our own Lance Jensen.

Details here:
What: Mad Men Talking Mad Men Live Chat
Who: Lance Jensen, Lincoln Bjorkman, Tor Myhren, and David Lipman
When: Sunday, March 25th, 9pm ET – 10pm ET (during 1st hour of Mad Men season 5 premiere)
Hosts: Brian Ries and Chelsie Gosk, Newsweek & The Daily Beast
Where: thedailybeast.com
Twitter hashtag: #MadMenChat

Earlier: Pictures from the Edge of the Mad Men Era

‘Audience targeting’ is often used synonymously with ‘data buying’ – selecting a data segment whose audience descriptors meet your targeting qualifiers. But with the vast amount of data available to us, doing audience targeting only through pre-packaged data segments is one-dimensional. It’s a one-size-fits-all approach to something far more complex than that.

Today’s Beacon spotlight is on ChoiceStream ‘CRUNCH’, a company whose audience targeting technology is innovative and multi-dimensional. CRUNCH is a product of ChoiceStream – a company with over ten years’ experience in predicting online consumer behavior. The company’s core business is built on understanding relationships between audiences, context, products. And CRUNCH leverages data, including ChoiceStream’s own unique data set, to inform audience segmentation, ad decisioning, and program optimization.

CRUNCH’s audience discovery capability uses data to custom-assemble your ideal audience in real-time based on your program KPIs. Their pre-defined audience capability allows you to come to the table with the audience parameters you require (e.g., demo) – and then they take steps to validate the data you’re buying, and provide a guarantee for only reaching the audience you specify.

And most recently, we worked with CRUNCH to develop a new audience targeting solution – ‘Active Audience‘ – which focuses on reaching hard-to-qualify online audiences.

We’re look forward to continued partnership and innovation with CRUNCH in the audience targeting space.

One of Hill Holliday’s major areas of interest is the shift towards buying media through technology platforms. In 2011 25% of our digital media investments were handled through our platform media team, and we expect that to rise as more quality inventory becomes available in marketplace environments.

But we’ve been frustrated that the new sophistication in the way that ads are delivered and optimized has been largely driven by media parameters, as opposed to creative parameters. It’s now possible to understand the characteristics of the person receiving an ad with an amazing degree of specificity, and yet the creative execution that is delivered isn’t generally impacted by all of that knowledge.

That’s why we’re so excited to be working with Cognitive Match as part of Project Beacon. While Cognitive Match is by no means the only dynamic creative engine in the marketplace, we love that the company was built ground-up for the age of data-driven, audience buying. Cognitive Match isn’t solving the problem of “red background vs. blue background,” they’re solving the problem of delivering a creative execution that is informed by all of the audience data available to us as well as bringing additional data into the equation for our use.

And, they’re doing it at a fraction of the time for deployment. We can also use them everywhere we run our creative – across all publishers, on mobile devices and tablets – rather than being relegated to one-off efforts on specific publishers.

The Founder of Cognitive Match, Alex Kelleher, previously built a web design agency so understands the challenges of online marketing from the ground up. He’s also passionate about applying ideas from the world of psychology – after all, as he says “what we’re really trying to do is influence what people do next online, so the more we understand them as individuals, the better”.

With Cognitive Match as our partner our goal is to make every piece of creative we present as intelligent as the media decision-making dictated by buying platforms.

When brainstorming new ways to attract an audience online, one idea almost always comes to mind: running a social media contest. Immediately following, come the same questions: What kind of contest will it be? Where will it live? What’s the incentive for the user? How will users participate?

As marketers, we have been trained to think that lowering the barriers of entry will increase participation. Contests should remain simple, requiring only one step or one action by the user for entry … right? Not necessarily. Tumblr and Pinterest are two platforms changing the way we think about social media contests.

Take, for example, the Aldo Rise Tumblr contest. Hoping to connect a highly engaged fashion community within the platform, Aldo decided to reward five lucky winners with a design consultation, a custom Tumblr theme and five reblogs from the brand’s account. In order to participate, users were asked to submit their reasoning why they should be chosen, while also following the brand on Tumblr.

Well performing contests on Pinterest, like Land’s End Pin It to Win It and Something ModCloth, Something You, featured similar formats, requesting users follow both brands, asking users to complete a series of steps and then email their final products to the brand. Each contest required users to create their own boards, with specific details – like including required hashtags or pinning an image from the brand’s original site – to then be considered as a winner of a gift card, judged on creativity, personality and uniqueness.

Land’s End Canvas Pin It to Win It Contest Entry

ModCloth Pinterest Contest Guidelines

What stands out about these contests is the number of required steps that brands are asking of their users. Even more striking? People are taking them. The reason for this success is clear: the user behavior already exists. People are already blogging on Tumblr; they’re already pinning and creating new boards on Pinterest; this isn’t a list of new tasks being asked of them, it’s a project they’re already engaged with – a conversation they already find interesting.

As marketers, we need to redirect our focus. Not on how we’re getting participation, but why. Why would a user be willing to do the things we’re asking of them? So, next time a brainstorm about attracting a new online audience concludes with a social media contest, see if the user behavior you’re looking for already exists. If the answer is yes, you’re already a step closer to a successful campaign.

Today, Facebook provides a mind-blowing array of options in targeting the users – their demographics, interests, affinity, relationship status, real-time actions and behaviors. But despite this unprecedented targeting opportunity that exists nowhere else on- or off-line, marketers continue to voice their unhappiness in measuring ROI on Facebook.  This is where Nanigans comes in.

Nanigans is a 50-person start-up here in Boston. Founded in 2010, it is emerging as a dominant advertising platform on Facebook that allows you go way beyond just clicks. Their software platform – Ad Engine – could significantly reduce your pain in running a successful Facebook advertising program at scale. It helps you optimize your creative through multi-variate testing. It allows you to target based on the array of options that is available on Facebook today. And, it helps you optimize towards whatever is your ultimate goal – whether it’s fan acquisition or app install or ecommerce. Along the way, you get to know the real ROI of your activity, not just click- through rates and cost per clicks.  Nanigans is an official Facebook Ads API partner and we at Hill Holliday are very pleased to have them as one of our Project Beacon Partners.

There’s been a lot of buzz about whether Facebook Commerce (or F-Commerce) has already failed because brands – such as, JC Penney, Gamestop and Gap – recently shut down their Facebook storefronts.

I would argue that the issue isn’t F-Commerce. The problem is the way brands are trying to use it.

Let’s step back for a minute and talk about why people use Facebook to begin with. First and foremost, it’s a place to build relationships, connect with family/friends and stalk old high school flames. When brands got into the mix, they learned that they couldn’t just mimic their marketing efforts on Facebook. Brands gain loyal fans on Facebook through building relationships with their customers and giving them something interesting to engage with, which is now even more important with the release of the new Timeline. Facebook has become a complementary channel through which to dispense marketing messages, not the driving force.

Similarly, F-Commerce shouldn’t be considered the main driver of online shopping. F-Commerce is complementary to E-Commerce.

Brands get E-Commerce. Many have run online shops for years. The problem is that instead of stemming their F-Commerce strategies from existing user behaviors on Facebook, they’re trying to replicate the E-Commerce experience. People Like a brand on Facebook to show their loyalty, and they expect to get something in return for their endorsement. Brands should build their F-Commerce strategies with that behavior in mind.

JC Penney’s old “F-shop” brought a full shopping experience into a Facebook tab.

A great example of a brand doing F-Commerce well is Diane von Furstenberg (or DVF). Each month, she creates a new special offer that’s only available to Facebook fans. These offers range from an exclusively made wrap dress to a Facebook-only discount. Her strategy gets people to Like DVF on Facebook and incents them return to the page because DVF is rewarding people for being a loyal fan of the brand. She’s making fans feel special.

Diane von Furstenberg’s March special offer for Facebook fans

Brands should tailor their F-Commerce to provide exclusive access to products and content. Access could be in the form of an exclusive product offering for Facebook, like DVF, or even an early release to a product line. If you provide something special to your fans, not only will they likely purchase that product, but they’ll also probably share that purchase with their friends.

If we change the way we look at F-Commerce programs – how we create them and measure their success – Facebook shopping will have a real chance to flourish.

I didn’t know much about CampusLIVE when I jumped on board as their point person for Project Beacon.  A little ironic, considering they operated out of the cool basement space in my condo building until the end of last summer when they left for bigger digs.  Shame on me for not stopping by given the cool stuff happening down there.

What started as a series of college-specific portal pages combining academic information, the local food and social scene, and networking tools has evolved into a real content powerhouse, filled with “challenge”-based destinations for students to compete with each other to win recognition and some pretty sweet prizes.

The CampusLIVE crew’s combination of deep knowledge of the often hard-to-reach college demographic, the expertise and resources to create rich, engaging content, and the ability to measure brand engagement within each challenge is a special mix that works.  CampusLIVE partners with brands, many of them major players, to bring challenges to their members.  The challenges range from caption contests to word games to pop culture trivia.  Social sharing is encouraged (and often thoroughly embraced) and some challenges include real-world extensions.  For example, a recent challenge includes NCAA March Madness tickets and a $500.00 Radio Shack gift card as potential prizes.  In addition to the online game, there will be challenges in certain cities where students will be able chase down a ticket guy for the free tickets.

At a time when brands are struggling to generate “engagement” beyond a like, tweet, or fleeting impression, CampusLIVE is building branded experiences that an increasing number of users spend significant time with and share out to their social graph.  ”Procrastination that pays.”

We’re excited to be partnering with them as they continue to expand and evolve.  Here’s a bit more on how it works.

Figuring out how to navigate a city has been a challenge for nearly anyone who has departed suburbia’s haunts. With a smartphone, the old way of navigating cities with maps, printed guides and or totally winging it has become a thing of the past. While there are certainly a slew of ways to navigate cities, one of our favorite ways is with our Project Beacon partner MyCityWay.

Founded by a trio of engineers living in New York City in 2009, MyCityWay has rapidly grown with in-depth city guides for more than 70 cities all over the world. The usual fare like dining, nightlife & coffee are supplemented with what might appeal to tourists vs. locals.

MyCityWay also provides a great platform for location- and intent-based targeted advertising. Whether a consumer is searching for a nearby coffee shop, retail location or specific type of restaurant, brands have the opportunity to present the consumer with relevant messaging tied to a nearby location.

For us at Hill Holliday, one our favorite things about MyCityWay has been their refreshingly candid approach to navigating through a city. As the smartphone has become one of the most important things in our busy lives, we’re excited by the different approaches consumers interact with to find what they need.

As a young kid, I remember my mother regularly clipping coupons from the Sunday papers. She’d organize them by category before storing them neatly in a red tin that was kept near our living room couch. Then, once each week, she’d pack my siblings and I into the car for a grocery shopping trip. The coupons would be matched to items on our shopping list and then transferred to a Ziploc bag before being redeemed at the store. The whole process was quite a bit of work, couponing included.

Some 25 years later, consumers’ desire to save money using coupons has changed little, but the method in which they do so, is vastly different than it once was. Daily deals flood inboxes, instant specials hit iPhones based on location, and users can even have savings pushed to their credit cards, simply by using a hashtag on Twitter.

At the center of this coupon-tech revolution, is our Project Beacon partner Linkable Networks. Formerly known as Clovr Media, the Boston-based Linkable networks team is a smart group, with great technology, taking a big swing at a red-hot space.

The unique ways in which Linkable Networks leverages technology and analytics within this emerging space, creates some amazing opportunities for consumers, financial institutions and advertisers alike. I’m very excited to be their point person within Project Beacon.

Check out their app on Android or iPhone.