While 2007 newspaper advertising revenue dropped 9.4% - the biggest plunge in 50 years (source), internet advertising gained an incredible 26% (source). The total revenue for newspapers still dwarfs internet ($42 billion compared to $21 billion) but with 25% gains year over year, it’s still a matter of time before internet catches up. How did other media types do?

• Cable advertising was up 11% (source)
• Local broadcast TV advertising was down 4.4% (source)
• Radio advertising was down 2% (source)
• Outdoor advertising was up 7% (source)
• Magazine advertising was up 6% (source)

More and more advertisers are migrating to the mediums that can target by niche. This is reflected in the growth of internet, cable, and magazine.

On Friday, I attended a luncheon hosted by the Tampa Bay Chapter of the American Marketing Association held at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center to learn how Disney’s theatrical production, The Lion King is promoted through marketing, advertising, and public relations. Whether or not you enjoy Broadway shows or anything to do with Disney, there is much to be gleaned from the incredibly successful marketing of this production. To date, the show has generated more than $3.2 billion and attracted 30 million theatergoers around the world.

The presentation was delivered by Scott A. Hemerling who currently oversees the marketing, advertising, publicity, and promotions as the National Press Representative for the national tours of Disney’s THE LION KING.  Prior to this, he worked in the same capacity representing the third national touring production of The Phantom of the Opera.

Some of the more interesting aspects of Scott’s presentation detailed their careful selection of those cities in which they perform, and how they tailor the marketing strategy for each location. This can consist of everything from messaging to displays to involvement with the community. For a 2nd-tier city like Tampa, their marketing and advertising budget consists of around 12-15% of gross revenue or roughly $125 - 150,000. Much of this goes to carefully selected ad and banner placements and media buys. Surprisingly, none of this budget goes to online marketing, but that is something Scott admittedly said needs to change.

Where The Lion Kings gets its greatest reach, however, is through the strength of their brand. Media outlets want to be associated with the show regardless of whether they are directly receiving ad revenues. They will hold contests and promotions with ticket giveaways to demonstrate a link with the show and their community. Scott and his team are happy to oblige as long as these partners adhere to their branding standards.

It is such a powerful community event that they would be remiss not to be involved. Aside from the entertainment value, the economic impact of the show generates an additional $3 for every $1 spent. Just think about an entire stage crew living in your town for 2 months, let alone many other ancillary items and expenditures.

On top of the marketing budget for each city, there is also a general budget for the creation of tchotchke items like you see in the picture. Notice, by the way, what seems at first like such a simple logo for such an extravagant production translates so well no matter the medium. You could see the lion on a giant billboard, or the head of a tack.

Right now, The Lion King  is entertaining audiences in two locations.  As soon as the Tampa show comes to an end the crew will be packed up in 24hrs and on to the next location, continuously leapfrogging the other production from one destination to the next. It is an impressive undertaking that requires more than a dull roar to fill seats and perpetuate the show. Aside from an aggressive online strategy, Scott and his team have a great formula, and it was very interesting to learn how they have constructed their marketing strategy.

The annual ADDY Awards ceremony was held this past Friday night, and  a few of us here at Twelve Horses attended. If you remember from last year, there is always a theme. This time it was all about the t-shirt. Just use the “A” in ADDY to come up with a phrase of your liking. Anything goes. Here’s what Twelve Horses rolled with at the event.

All in good fun, and despite our snarky anarchy behavior we managed to walk away with a couple of awards of our own.

We received a gold ADDY for the design of the Monterey County Convention & Visitors Bureau’s website, as well as a silver Addy for an email design done for Incline Creek Estates, which is located on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe in Incline Village. If we ever decide to recreate superman’s castle all in lucite, these will go into the construction.

Thanks to A2N2 for a fun event!

tags: advertising, awards, web design, nevada, lake tahoe

Want to know about one simple SEO strategy that takes less than five minutes to implement and can have a very positive result in regards to rankings in the search engines? If so get ready to change the footer on your website.

The footer on your website usually simply contains a copyright statement and sometimes some other links. Many websites have a two line footer where one line is devoted to links and the other is devoted only to the copyright. Adding a company statement to your footer is an easy way to implement an seo strategy that is simple and doesn’t take a lot of time. Here is an example:

Previous footer: © 2007 Twelve Horses

New SEO Friendly Footer: © Copyright 2007 Twelve Horses - A Web Design, Development & Search Engine Optimization Company in Reno & Utah

It usually works best when you have the text footer [non-link footer] fit on one line. Here are some key points that this new footer accomplishes:

1. This particular website or business is focused on providing web design, web development, seo or search engine optimization, email marketing, and social marketing services. Although that is a very long list sometimes you have to pick and choose what you can fit in a footer. The above example ensures that every single page of the website contains the keyword phrases of ‘web design, development, and search engine optimization’. This will help the search engines recognize that this website is related to those key terms since they appear on every webpage. This strategy not only assists search engines in knowing what services you may provide but also human web visitors. If a website visitor can not figure out what the website is all about they general do one of two actions; either leave or look in the footer for an ‘about us’ link. Having this line of text in the footer ensures that if they do glance at the footer they will be able to know what the website is about without having to click to another page.

2. The above example also contains ‘Reno and Utah‘ in the sentence. Twelve Horses has headquarters in Reno, Nevada with a secondary office in Salt Lake City, Utah. Having these terms in the footer lets the search engines know what geographic area this particular website primarily provides web services to. You may wonder why the footer contains Reno, a city, and Utah, a state. Through some keyword research it was discovered that people in Salt Lake City generally search for ‘utah [keyword]‘ rather than ’salt lake city [keyword]‘, maybe because Salt Lake City is too long or time consuming to type out and Utah only has one major metropolitan area which is the wasatch front. On the other hand Nevada contains several metropolitan areas such as Reno, Las Vegas, etc. which are spread out from each other. From keyword research we discovered people in Nevada are more likely to type in the major metropolitan area they are in compared to just ‘Nevada [keyword]‘. Again, this also provides website visitors information on the geographic area the company is based in by glancing at the footer.

3. This is a very simple and effective SEO strategy that literally should only take 5-10 minutes to implement on your website and will have a profound effective compared to the investment of time that is required.

If you enjoyed this SEO strategy and would like us to post more please post a comment and we will be happy to share our knowledge with you.

This hilarious parody, entitled “The Couple”, pokes fun at the disconnect that currently exists between traditional advertising and today’s consumers.

There is definitely a need for change within the industry as advertisers continue to view their audience as a statistic or dollar opportunity instead of forging meaningful relationships that will benefit all those involved.

“You’re saying you love me but you’re not behaving like you love me. It’s not genuine.”

The world needs more genuine advertising.

Twelve Horses brought home a total of 6 awards in the category of Interactive Media at the annual ADDY Award competition held Friday, March 2nd. The event was held at the Harrah’s Convention Center in downtown Reno.

There was a fun theme, which was come as your favorite Pitchmen, Mascot or Shill. I went as Orville Redenbacher, and found myself quite at home after I ran into the Morton Salt girl.

It was a lot of fun, especially the after party at Sapphire Lounge, and it was especially exciting to watch our creative designers go onstage to accept the awards.

We submitted Nevada and Utah-based client websites that we felt effectively combined rich creative with enhanced functionality necessary for establishing interactive and ongoing dialogues with prospects and customers.

Getting the recognition were the following clients:

Gold ADDY Awards:

Mountain Sports International
Interactive Media: Flash-Based: Business-to-Business
http://www.mtsports.com

Tanamera
Interactive Media: HTML/Other: Business-to-Business
http://www.tanamera.info

Pacific West Companies, Madrone Empire Ranch
Interactive Media: Flash-Based: Consumer
http://madroneempireranch.com

Silver ADDY Awards:

Heavenly Mountain Resort
Interactive Media: HTML/Other: Consumer
http://skiheavenly.com

Heavenly Mountain Resort
Interactive Media: Online Campaign
http://skiheavenly.com

Pacific West Companies, Caviata
Interactive Media: HTML/Other: Consumer
http://www.caviata.com

The award ceremony was hosted by the Advertsing Association of Northern Nevada, which is “a professional organization dedicated to serving as the ultimate resource for education, networking, and recognition within the marketing and advertising industries.” a2n2 is an affiliate of the American Advertising Federation.

The ADDY Awards, conducted by the American Advertising Federation (AAF) are the advertising industry’s largest and most representative competition, recognizing and rewarding creative excellence in the art of advertising.

In each category, a GOLD ADDY® is recognition of the highest level of creative excellence and is judged to be superior to all other entries in the competition. Entries that are also considered outstanding and worthy of recognition receive a SILVER ADDY®.

This video advertisement was created by some of the core developers of Google’s Gmail email program. If they had run this through branding and marketing, I doubt it would have ever seen life on YouTube.com. However, it’s awesome. I have no doubt that those are the actual developers and their script. It’s transparent and honest. Great job!

BTW, isn’t it telling they released it on YouTube and not on Google Videos?

[via AdRants]

Technorati Tags: Gmail, Transparency, Google, Google Video, Branding, YouTube

Ford recently posted the worst quarterly loss in 14 years - $5.8 billion. Ouch! Much of this is attributed to the restructuring of its key North American business, but clearly it is because they are increasingly losing market share. Why?

Ford’s brand has always been aligned with America, history, and the ingenuity of man. Marketers for Ford often use words and images to convey toughness, strength and size. But what about quality?

In my opinion, the perception of quality is what has really hurt Ford. Starting in the 1950s, many people bought Chevrolet trucks because they truly believed they lasted longer than Ford. That perception still exists today, but with much more of the benefit going to Toyota.

Since its inception, Toyota has aligned itself with quality. Many people believe that Toyota invented “lean production,” know they employ Six Sigma in their manufacturing, and practice “kaizan,” which is a standards and efficiency practice that is applied to all aspects of the business.

Whether or not Toyota has just as many recalls as Ford, it doesn’t matter. Customer perception is that Toyota cares about quality. Know one wants a car that they believe is going to break down and cause them difficulties.

Today, the Chicago Tribune ran an article about a new ad that Ford is running featuring a perfectly happy couple on the beach - until the end twist reveals that Mom and Dad are divorced. “Thanks for inviting me this weekend,” he tell his ex-wife and, as the vehicle pulls away, a voice-over intones: “Bold moves: They happen every day.” The strategy of the ad is to generate buzz, which they hope will translate to new car purchases. Note the emphasis on “bold.” Is this what most car buyers want? Is this really what Ford needs to project?

In 2000, Ford implemented Six Sigma into all of their divisions. They have actively worked to improve the quality of their internal systems. But have they marketed this fact? Not that I have seen. Instead, it is always the same stuff - bold, tough, blah.

Why isn’t the marketing department grabbing the wheel and steering the company towards what is really hurting their bottom line?

tags: ford, six sigma, toyota, marketing, quality

Google’s recent purchase of YouTube for $1.65 billion in shares has sparked increased scrutiny over what content is actually being syndicated through this popular video sharing site.

Over this past weekend, Comedy Central, a division of Viacom ordered YouTube to remove any content belonging to them. Thousands of clips from “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report,” and “South Park” were removed and replaced with the message, “This video has been removed due to terms of use violation.”

Each one of these shows enjoyed incredible, viral exposure because of video sharing on YouTube. In fact, Stephen Colbert often made mention of YouTube on his show and joked that he should be on their payroll.

I suspect that Viacom was warned by their attorneys of the possible precedent that could be set by not enforcing their copyright to this content; however, I can’t believe that a more strategic settlement couldn’t be achieved. Comedy Central was benefiting immensely from this exposure.

Personally, I have used YouTube many times as a means of demonstrating the hilarity of John Stewart, or convincing someone they should witness Colbert’s wit. I simply pull up a popular clip and show it to them. I am sure there have been numerous YouTube clips that have been shared and emailed to friends, which have only further increased the exposure of these shows.

Without access to the data, I can only surmise what viewer stats have been since Comedy Central content began appearing on YouTube. If I had to guess, I can only assume that it has increased viewers to the show, not decreased it.

Comedy Central has historically done a pretty good job of creating the sense that they are not your average network channel, but this recent move could impact that image. 

At the very least, Viacom could have worked out an agreement with YouTube where they featured advertisements in conjunction with the existing clips. I am hoping this is simply a legal matter that will be resolved.

I like watching these shows, but my schedule does not always allow time for them. It is nice to know that the especially amusing or poignant clips will be in a place where I can view and share them with friends.

While Comedy Central already shares clips on their site, it is not the same as a user-generated place where visitors can truly get a sense of what resonates with others out there in the online world. I suspect that this is the one major thing that Viacom just doesn’t get.

tags: youtube, viacom, comedy central, the daily show, colbert report

Yesterday morning I attended a Roundtable discussion put on by the Sierra Nevada Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America focused on the relevancy of journalism in today’s public relations market. In fact, our Director of Business Development, Josh Kenzer was one of the speakers.Before arriving to the event I was a little puzzled by the title, “Is Journalism Relevant in Today’s PR Market?,” because I thought, of course it’s relevant. A better title would consist of something like, why is journalism relevant in light of social media, or how has its role changed or been impacted. But the discussion ended up focusing heavily on new channels of distribution, search, blogging, podcasting, and new online social mediums or medias. Of course, I was happy that it did. Social media is having significant effects. If you haven’t seen any recent examples of how it has played a role check out what AOL recently had to deal with, or Dell, or Jupiter Research.Other topics of the discussion included truth, relevancy, media fragmentation, how impossible it is for journalists to report on everything, whether or not a blogger can really be a journalist, and the fact that pr professionals, reporters, and media companies are motivated by money. I certainly believe that both reporters and media outlets have a passion for truth, breaking news, and getting the facts straight, but there is still an undeniable and underlying influence attributed to money. PR professionals get paid to generate exposure just as much as media companies depend on advertisers.That does not change the fact that I am a news junky. I have my RSS feeds setup, receive my email newsletters, read cnn.com, nytimes.com, my local newspaper, turn on the TV at night for more local and national news, PBS, and, you guessed it, the Daily Show. From a local perspective, I am often frustrated when I simply see AP stories regurgitated, or some TV reporter sitting on the side of the road telling me its raining or snowing when I can simply look outside and see that it is. Bring me more in depth reporting about social, economic and environmental subjects. Take those paid reporters and put their energies toward something more meaningful - but to who? Me? Maybe they aren’t so concerned with me. Maybe their target market is the person who wants to see someone in their slicks standing by the side of the road in the rain. Many people are pretty apathetic about what is going on outside of their little sphere. I have friends that are this way.I appreciate the power of social media and self-expression, but I want it to resonate more in main stream media. Traditional media, namely print publications, are struggling to discover new channels of communication. They are looking at email, mobile, rss, blogging, podcasting, myspace, and the like, but I think they are considering it as a way of distributing the same old story; or advertisement. Maybe we as a collective whole can dig a little deeper than that.My biggest takeaway from the Roundtable discussion was the emphasis on truth, transparency, and relationships. Send a press release to a reporter with misinformation, and you can kiss that relationship goodbye. Also, you could wind up getting blasted in the blogosphere or somewhere else, and the negative implications of that could be extremely harmful. As a company, we’ve got to continually get our name out there to generate awareness, but it has to be done with these ethical and sensible principles in mind. Once you’ve got that in place, hit every possible channel you can. Technorati : journalism, public relations, reno public relations, social media