Saturday 30 June 2012


Example 1
Comparative effectiveness of regular advertising activity versus participation in a TAG "Event". Both appeared in the same magazine giving a true like for like.
Reach Toothbrush 3 x 4 full colour page One TAG event
Brand recall
readers 210,000 434,000 readers
Cost per reader recall 6p
Source: Gallup Polls
Example 2,
Reading & Noting
Clairol
Regular Colour Page TAG Page
Reading & Noting 10% 40%
Time Spent under 20 seconds Over 150 seconds
Source: A.G.B.

Payment by results.



TAG invented the solution for truly integrated advertising. Our proprietary TAG dynamically targets individuals with re-personalised marketing messages. TAG enables a personal dialogue with consumers over all media channels: magazines, email, display/web, mobile and more. There is no other company with an ad serving platform that has successfully integrated all of the next-generation marketing concepts employed in TAG. It allows for greater revenues with much lower cost to generate than previously available solutions, creating a new paradigm of efficiency in existing & digital media commerce.

Television will be the first traditional media medium to fall

    
The move away from traditional, or mainstream media is currently accelerating as more and more people switch to the internet for their information and entertainment. Sales of newspapers are declining and television viewers are switching off in record numbers. It's popular in the blogopshere to argue that newspapers will eventually fall, and radio is hardly popular. However, given the current marketplace, television will be the first traditional media medium to completely fail, where as radio has some life left in it yet. Newspapers will survive, but the newspaper of tomorrow will be markedly different.

But Interactive Marketing Communication will still be there, making existing analogue media much more effective and accountable whilst at the same time making Social Media suitable for advertising.

Friday 29 June 2012

Now Here's a True Story you may find interesting...

When we started Interactive Marketing we were introduced to Alvin Toffler who, when hearing of what we were doing simply said "Persevere but remember vested interests will be against you".

Was he ever right!

We were confident that what we were proposing would be more effective and we would be giving clients the very communication programme they needed, that we borrowed three and a half million dollars from venture capitalists.

Our pitch to Clients was beguiling and had never been heard before: "you pay nothing to come into the programme. However, you agree to accept the findings of a stringent purchase study, to be conducted by the independent Market Research Corporation of America.

Based on those findings would you then pay us a fifteen per cent commission on the incremental increases in sales produced."

The Clients fell about laughing, they had never had such an offer from any of their advertising agencies. "Where do we sign?"

We mail delivered nineteen million copies of Shopper’s Voice. Because it was mail delivered we could have Test and Control cells as next door neighbours, thus allowing us to measure changes in behaviour and actual purchase amongst those who had received the program – Test and those who had not – Control.

Obviously Control was exposed to everything else the featured brands were involved in. MRCA are on record as saying, "It was the (then) most precise purchase study ever carried out by us."

To get a perspective, no advertising campaign had ever had such a high degree of accountability put behind it after just one exposure and to this day still hasn’t.

To cut a long story short, when we presented the increase in sales figures to Colgate Palmolive, we said that the results indicated a fee of seven hundred and eighty thousand dollars based upon the agreed MRCA formulae. All Colgate could say to us as they handed us the cheque, "Could we redefine the rules of this game please?"

The figure arrived at was due to the results gained from a double page interactive spread inside our Shopper’s Voice Magazine. But interactive in our terms is where the communication process became two way not based upon any electronic gizmo! The recipients were, for the first time in any advertising context, given the opportunity to be involved with the brands and be part of the communication process.

Colgate had never experienced such a result from all their billions of dollars invested in conventional advertising and they directed us to their advertising agency.

In hindsight, it is amusing to recall the many, many excuses they made not to use us and they stifled the idea. And in those days if the agency said no, very often the client accepted their judgement.

Why did they bring down the portcullis? Well you can draw your own conclusions but in our mind it was a fear that here was an idea better and more cost effective than anything they were capable of doing. It was outside of their control and, God forbid, it would make their contribution ACCOUNTABLE!

Wednesday 27 June 2012

Sergio Zyman, former Chief Marketing Officer...


... the Coca-Cola Company had this to say about "The end of marketing as we know it"

"Simply put, the problem with marketing today is that for the past twenty or thirty years, marketers have become increasingly caught up with the trappings of marketing".

They have been wowed by the glitz, the awards presentations, and the jetting off to do a ‘shoot’ on some tropical isle, and they have forgotten that their job is to sell stuff. As a result they haven’t done a very good job of selling stuff, and they have tried to hide their failure to deliver results in a black box labelled ‘Marketing is Magic.’

"Today, at most companies, marketing is ineffective and therefore considered to be strictly a nonessential activity. Many marketers and their bosses might not admit it, but just look at their actions. Whenever budgets are tight, marketing is one of the first things that gets cut."

Now's the perfect time to make your marketing totally accountable and effective. Contact Paul Ashby paulashby40@yahoo.com and discover the future...now!

Tuesday 26 June 2012

BRANDING IS OBSOLETE!

Congratulations! Your Brand Is About to Become Obsolete

Blockbuster had it all figured out. Kodak was America's favorite company. Tower Records was the place to

be. Cunard was the fastest way to travel. Alas, no more. Each of these companies were blindsided by

innovation. In the blink of an eye, their entire reason for being disappeared into thin air. Every day

companies new and old, small and large, start down the path to obsolescence. Some have no idea that they are in trouble, others are fully aware and are begging for help. It's a challenge that can only be

addressed by changing culture and behavior, and by a mix of traditional and Interactive thinking.

1)Identify the opportunity (brand, consumer, behavior, competition)

2)Convince the right people that they have a problem (get thee to the CEO)

3)Build things for consumers and internal audiences (useful things)

Interactive Communication, properly executed will train people to think differently about how they

approach problems, to look at fixing the big picture instead of tactical problems, and to

see the opportunity in change

Want to discover more? Contact paulashby40@yahoo.com

Friday 22 June 2012

You call this working?



Why Traditional Interruption-Based Advertising Doesn't Work Anymore!

Traditional advertising doesn't work well anymore for a

very simple reason - there's too much of it. There are too many companies

interrupting consumers to try and sell them something. There's so much ad

clutter and noise today that the latest studies show the majority of consumers

ignore companies that bother them with too much advertising. In addition, techonolgy provides

 consumers with every manner of ad blockers, including TiVo, VCRs and DVD recorders, to

cable and satellite TV, to MP3 players and downloadable music, and now satellite

radio. Consumers are paying billions to AVOID ADVERTISING, which is why they

like it even less if you actually manage to break through and interrupt what

they are doing.
But we can change all that and, at the same time, reduce your horribly expensive marketing budget by up to 50%
Contact: paulashby40@yahoo.com

Wednesday 20 June 2012

Why Advertising doesn't work in the Web!


Many Marketing and Advertising people only understand the mass-media business model, exemplified by TV. The problem? The old media perspective is also characteristic of the many so-called New Media analysts who take an unbelievable non-strategic view of the Web and analyze it purely in terms of "eyeballs"!

We can solve ALL your communication problems and, at the same time reduce your highly expensive marketing budget. Contact Paul Ashby @ paulashby40@yahoo.com

Tuesday 19 June 2012

What does Advertising do and how well does it do it?



Aside from comforting purchasers by assuring them that they made the right choice,

aside from comforting CEOs and employees that their work is important, aside from certain

unpredictable, short term increases in consumption, most advertising does not perform as advertised!

Take away the tax deductions that corporations get from advertising, and most expenditures would dry up overnight!

Although elaborate proofs...

Although elaborate proofs of advertising's impotence are available, the

simple fact is that you cannot put a meter on the relationship between increased

advertising and increased sales. If you could, (ad) agencies would charge by how

much they have increased sales, not by how much media space they have

purchased.

Thursday 7 June 2012

SURVEY after SURVEY

The same depressing picture usually emerges:

60% of Marketeers are unable to show any ROI for their current efforts on Social Media.

The myth of Social Media is making all of us look like morons.

Headlines scream about the shift from traditional to Social Media but the data does not support it.

We guarantee that we will provide full accountability plus ROI, for half of what your spending right now!   Contact Paul Ashby at paulashby40@yahoo.com

Wednesday 6 June 2012

The social media debacle...

  Existing loyality to Advertising and Marketing preserves failed organisations and traditions whilst stupidy following it like a shadow.
And boy are we living in stupid times.

Allied to which is the corruption. Now there is no question that our current media, expecially the press, is corrupt, that has been proven time and time again recently.

The corrupt media just love the inefficiency of the current marketing and advertising world, that's why you will never, repeat, never, read an article within the press about the inefficiency of advertising, the lack of accountability and above all else the clutter, why media just love clutter, they make heaps of money on highly ineffecient clutter, so you will not be reading anything against the inefficiency of advertising and marketing in the media, rule number one, don't bite the hand that feeds you!

The prevailing belief in " the market" has just sent us all off a cliff. Advertising people, together with marketing, have a capicity for folly together with a weakness for enfolding myths (Advertising Works|) that shield us from the pain of doubt and uncertainty; and economic theory comes a close second to Marketing and Advertising in the exultant claims it makes for itself.

The belief in the ascendant at the moment is the mystical conviction that "Social Media" and the Internet, left to itself will operate with immaculate precision to maximise human happiness and prosperity. That's the doctrine that has just sent us charging over a cliff into an unpredictable future.

The Facebook debacle, together with General Motors denial as to the effectiveness of Facebook to sell products hopefully will put paid to that little myth.

Because we are flawed and complex creatures all our Marketing and Advertising instutions partake, intrinsically and permanently, of these same flaws.

GENERAL MOTORS PULLS ITS ADVERTISING FROM FACEBOOK!

G.M. determined that its ads on Facebook "had little impact on consumers"!

Meanwhile Forrester research questioned the efficiency of the social network's advertising "One
global consumer goods company told us recently that Facebook was getting worse rather than better at helping marketers succeed"!

We can assure you that we have the ONLY effective, accountable programme either on digital or analogue media....interested? Contact Paul Ashby on paulashby40@yahoo.com