Endeavour Marketing & Media, LLC.

Google BUZZ launched last week and it’s already shaking up the Social Media landscape.  Though Google has been launching a new product seemingly every week (Chrome, Wave, Droid Operating System, etc.) this one comes with more louder Thunder and more Lightning Bolts from atop Mt. Googlempus!

What is it?

If you have a Gmail account and have checked it the past week, you probably know but if not, Google Buzz is a simple tool to post, communicate and share through the Gmail service (which is free like Facebook, Twitter, Friend Feed, etc.).  Think about a cross between the ease of use and ability to follow anyone by Twitter and the deeper sharing and multimedia capabilities of Facebook.

Are People Using This?

Yep.  The first 2 days saw 160,000 Buzz posts PER HOUR and 300,000 Mobile check-ins PER DAY.

Why Would Someone Use This?

The most obvious answer is that it automatically shows up on your Gmail account (no need to sign up for it).  Think about how Internet Explorer became so famous – when you turned on a new computer, there was the IE logo begging you to click it. Also, it’s brutally simple to use. Lastly, it’s within your realm of usage every day, meaning that if you’re a Gmail user, it’s already tied in to other tools you’re using from Google like Calendar, Wave…heck if you have a Droid Phone (runs on a Google Operating System) – it’s there too because when you activate your phone it prompts you to provide your Gmail address or sign up for one!  Buzz is EVERYWHERE if you have a Gmail account.

What about its Mobile “Local” Feature?

This is really the coolest thing about BUZZ!  If you access Buzz through any GPS-enabled phone, it identifies your location and serves up the Buzz from people in a close proximity to you even if you’re following them or not.  You know what restaurant people are eating at around your location, what movie they are seeing, etc. (as long as they are Buzzing from their phone and close enough to you).

Any Stumbling Blocks?

Privacy concerns.  When Buzz first launched it auto-followed people IT thought you should and auto-suggested people to follow based on your Gmail habits.  Google responded FAST and quickly turned the auto-follow to auto-suggest and added a disable Buzz completely feature.  They probably should have taken a look at Facebook’s numerous stumbles in this area.

Will it Threaten the Big 2?

Yes, but not likely to do too much damage because Facebook users and Twitter users are loyal to their products.  It was instantly bigger than Twitter at launch based on number of users thanks to a built in Gmail user base to tap but has not come close to the total number of posts that Twitter has.  Plus Twitter has a great open API ensuring that more applications are in the pipeline at all times.  Buzz also has an open API ensuring innovative apps in the pipeline but with the Droid phone having a built-in  “marketplace” like the iPhone, this creates a potential revenue stream for Buzz because they could possibly charge for Buzz apps.

We’re still playing with Buzz at Endeavour Labs and it’s still early to tell how people are going to adopt it and how competitors will respond but it looks like Google has a bonafide hit on its hands!  We’ll keep you updated on how this thing progresses!

Endeavour Marketing & Media

From Garrick Schmitt for Advertising Age -

The teams playing in this year’s Super Bowl have already been decided, but the Super Bowl shuffle for advertisers began in earnest last month when marketing mainstays like FedEx, General Motors and Pepsi made news by announcing they were opting out of this year’s ad extravaganza.

But for those looking to gauge the health of the ad industry, Super Bowl advertising is a bit of red herring. CBS is charging about $2.5 million for 30 seconds of commercial time — and rightly so. Rarely do you get so many Americans watching one event and actually enjoying the advertising. It’s a tremendous opportunity for most brand marketers and we’d be foolish to look at this year’s Super Bowl as proof of either the rejuvenation of the 30-second spot or the rejection of it.

That doesn’t mean some won’t try. After all, last year Hulu saw a 50% increase in site traffic after running ads during the Super Bowl and Denny’s traffic to its website soared nearly 1,700% as consumers sought information about its free breakfast promotion.

There certainly will be advertising winners (and losers) on Super Bowl Sunday but let’s hope that the Monday morning quarterback chatter doesn’t obscure the larger shift at hand for marketers this year. 2010 will be the year of the “platform” for advertisers. Read Rest of Article

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The latest Facebook breakthrough is coming not from a software developer but from an agency.

Resource Interactive, an Ohio-based digital agency with offices in Columbus and Cincinnati, this month launched “Off the Wall,” a platform that allows consumers to purchase a product directly from a retailer’s wall or their own feed on Facebook without leaving the popular social-networking site.

The product was developed by the agency’s in-house research and development lab, which keeps the company up to speed on new developments in the digital space, while also coming up with prototypes and concepts for a “digital future.”

“We needed a group of people that could take the time and have the focus to look out a little bit ahead,” said Dan Shust, director-emerging media, who heads up the 18-month-old group. “We get caught up in project work occurring right now.”

As marketers look to reign in costs in a tough economy, agencies have felt the squeeze, so ad shops are looking to new revenue streams from product development that have included everything from clothing to widgets to books.

Mr. Shust said he believes product development will become a bigger piece of what the agency does. He said Resource Interactive has determined it made more sense to begin building its own platforms and products that could be used by both clients and others, rather than building customized solutions from the ground up for each client or project.

Opening its products up to non-clients is proving beneficial for the agency, which is adding new clients as a result and has received some interest from international agencies looking to become the exclusive provider of Off the Wall in other countries.

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Endeavour Marketing and Media – A Murfreesboro Advertising Agency

From Kunur Patel for AdAge

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — While coupon mailers clutter the recycling bins of digital-oriented millennials, one startup has revived couponing for the Facebook and Twitter generation.

Chicago-based Groupon has amassed 2 million subscribers to its website, and begun adding big brands such as Zipcar, the NBA and Blockbuster to its regular stable of local businesses. Only one year after launch, it has sold 1 million coupons and received $30 million in second-round financing from Accel Partners. According to a counter on its site, that’s translated to more than $45 million in savings since November 2008.

Groupon e-mails a daily deal per city and consumers opt-in to buy a restaurant gift certificate, a health and beauty service, or entertainment offer at typically 50% off face value — say $30 voucher for $60 dinner or $50 for a spa package. Once the deal has hooked a predetermined number of people, everyone who has opted in then “buys” the deal, and the marketer gets the money minus Groupon’s cut, which is usually 30%-50%, according to Groupon founder Andrew Mason. It only works if the deal attracts critical mass, however — if the offer doesn’t reach its threshold, the deal is canceled and no one pays, not even the provider. (The threshold varies by advertiser; some deals require only 50 people to buy in, others need 500.)

Since launching in Chicago, Groupon has expanded to 28 cities — most recently San Antonio — and has built an audience primarily of affluent 18- to 35-year-olds, 70% of whom are female. Mr. Mason claims Groupon was profitable in June and anticipates $100 million in revenue for 2010, though he did not share projections for this year.

Small businesses use Groupon to attract new customers, drive product trial and cross-sell. For Endeavor Personal Concierge in Chicago, 25% of Groupon users became repeat customers. For MindBody Fitness in Washington, 85% of Groupon users purchased additional services. Other local businesses have reported spikes in website traffic on the day Groupon offers go out.

By using Groupon during the last six months, Zipcar gained about 1,500 new members in seven cities. (By comparison, the car-sharing service reported 325,000 members through September.) “They’re a great local partner in many of our cities,” Stephanie Shore, Zipcar VP-marketing, said via e-mail. “The viral nature of their community plays to our strength as a word-of-mouth brand.”

The buy-in-bulk online concept is not exactly new. Pittsburgh-based OnlineChoice launched a group-buying site in the late 1990s, struggled through the dot-com bust and failed to break through. But social networks such as Facebook and Twitter provide a vehicle for consumer incentive to share deals to make quota, and today’s web climate — not to mention economic climate — is more favorable for group buying.

“I think what’s different today is that the communication mechanisms are so much greater than they were with mobile, Facebook and Twitter,” said Scott Silverman, executive director of Shop.org, the digital division of the National Retail Federation. “You have a population that is comfortable with participating in the internet, not just reading things. It seems like the perfect time for this idea.”

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Endeavour Marketing & Media – A Murfreesboro Advertising Agency

by Garrick Schmitt for AdAge

ust a few short years ago, if you had asked most marketers about the future of mobile, their nirvana most likely would have been a consumer strolling down the aisle of her local grocery store receiving text messages offering 50 cents off a bottle of ketchup or jar of peanut butter.

But not so much today, as industry heavyweights and upstarts like Google, Facebook, Twitter and SimpleGeo are racing to map out a digital, geo-tagged future where our physical and virtual worlds will increasingly collide. Soon a simple coupon delivered via SMS or Bluetooth will seem like an idea from a different era, like Pong or the Hula Hoop.

Everyone, it seems, is looking to take advantage of the demand for location-based services created by GPS-enabled devices, such as Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android 2.0. Even desktop operating systems, such as Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard will soon contain location-awareness features — so too will browsers, as we’ve seen with the latest Firefox releases.

Now come the services. Just this week, Google launched What’s Nearby, a location-based search that’s part of Google Maps on Android and will soon be more widely available. The service allows consumers to simply access a list of the ten closest places of interest near their physical location via their mobiles.

And that’s just to start: Google Latitude allows users to share their locations with friends and view their friends activities on a map; Facebook has rewritten its privacy policy, foreshadowing its entrance into location-based services; and Twitter has rolled out its Geotagging API, which will allow popular Twitter apps like Tweetie and Tweetdeck to display the location from where a tweet was posted.

But geo-location APIs and GPS-enabled mobile devices are just part of the “location equation.” Here’s a look at the most promising geo players who are making location-based marketing a reality for brands today.

FOURSQUARE AND GOWALLA: Foursquare and Gowalla are the two most buzzed-about leaders in location-based services. Both companies provide game-like experiences for their users that allow them to “check-in” at various locales (bars, restaurants, etc.). But it’s Foursquare that has recently made the first play for advertisers. The company recently debuted its Foursquare for Business program, which enables retailers to provide offers to their users and track the success of location-based campaigns. Industry analysts are understandably enthused.

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Endeavour Marketing and Media, A Murfreesboro Advertising Agency

By Dean Donaldson for AdAge

The recent surge of research around creative variables like ad shape, format and video puts online creative into the hot seat, and size, it seems, doesn’t necessarily matter. We’ve been groomed to judge online display ads based on aesthetics alone as opposed to trying to match the physical elements with performance to see patterns. This has shown certain assets can positively impact campaign results, but it often overlooks one critical factor — the online environment.

Historically, we create ads in an assortment of shapes and sizes and stick them everywhere, only to find ourselves surprised when the same creative generates a range of results across many environments. It’s relatively obvious, actually: Surely the impact of a piece of creative that works effectively in one in environment will differ — sometimes radically — when placed in another.

That’s largely due to the consumer experience and level of activity found in each location. It may seem obvious that a portal homepage would differ to a social media site, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. As consumers spend more and more time online, the environment in which they find themselves matters more and more to them — and not matching the right creative against the right environment can be toxic. As they say, looks will only get you so far; for advertising, it’s location, location, location.

Since the first display ad 15 years ago, a variety of environments have become amenable to online advertising. Take the mega sports homepage portal ESPN, or the opening to news sites like New York Times and Forbes where users skim headlines for few seconds before clicking on various links. Then, contrast destination pages found within these homepages, where the user explores athlete stats or reads specific news articles. Although homepages have mass reach, they also have short attention spans compared to destination pages, which are more likely to retain re users for extended periods of time as the absorb information and content.

Next, consider price-comparison pages versus web mail, let alone desktop messenger ads and entertainment content. Each of these online destinations creates different experiences for audiences, and if we seek to drive better results, today’s online creative should be carefully mapped out to fit the area surrounding it.

We’re wasting data from ineffective advertising if we’re not using it to determine how to improve creative concepts against the actual consumer data shown in the various environments. We see the same mistakes repeatedly, such as expecting users to click away when writing emails or hiding enticing content behind static images on fast-paced homepages. Here’s what we know:

For example, homepages typically call for high impact creative that can distract users very quickly before they move-on to another destination. Recent examples include the Chanel No5 ad or Fedex Paper Crumble.

However, destination pages require something more subtle and less intrusive that can be afforded by time, such as the Virgin Bets, often catching people who are rolling through to navigate, provided the pay-off is fun and rewarding like Ikea’s Set the Table.

In web mail, users continually refresh the page while checking emails and habitually return. Here, they’re unlikely to click away, but may be distracted to play with an ad while they chat with others online or prepare to type an email. An ad that rewards data capture like Snickers Mr. T is a great example for a web mail environment.

Also, in communication environments, marketers should use the ability to re-target users and sequence messages, which is much of what contributed to the success of Levi’s Moon bathing campaign. Sharing content with someone that users are chatting with, like in the case of the Universal Pictures’ Bruno ad is a great way of exploiting desktop messenger or facilitating social media.

If reading reviews or looking for information, affording the search within an ad itself drives people closer to the information they’re looking for and can enhance their brand experience as seen in Travelocity.

With budgets under threat, assuming all creative is equal and underestimating the environmental nuances will deliver catastrophic results and could start to destroy the digital atmosphere and threaten agencies just as global warming has melted the ice caps. Credibility comes from environmental awareness and developing a strategy for change. By learning how consumers respond across environments, marketers may consider spending less time looking at format innovation and more time looking at campaigns holistically.

Endeavour Marketing and Media, A Full-Service Murfreesboro, TN Advertising Agency

By Emma Hall for AdAge

LONDON (AdAge.com) — Call it the Subservient Shower Girl.

Burger King U.K. is inviting young men to watch and interact with a bikini-clad girl as she takes her daily shower, in a new “glorious mornings” promotion which urges consumers to “seize the day your way.”

The www.singingintheshower.co.uk website is billed as “the world’s first guilt-free shower-cam,” where visitors can ask a 20-year-old woman to wear a different bikini and sing a different song as she takes her morning shower each day.

Burger King invites customers to “watch the shower babe shake her bits to the hits at 9:30 a.m. every morning.” And it doesn’t end there — you can also win a date with the “sizzling shower babe” by filling out a form saying why you deserve to be chosen.

A Burger King spokesman explained the blatantly male bias of the campaign. He said, “Our research showed that breakfast is a male-centric audience for Burger King; it doesn’t resonate as well with women — we are targeting the people who are buying breakfast.”

The website, which is aimed at men 18 and older (the site is age-restricted), also hosts offers, competitions and viral videos. It will continue throughout the month of December.

Male-targeted ads are also appearing on music-streaming site Spotify, with four different executions timed for broadcast at various times of the day. As well as spoken ads, there will be banners, a scroll bar and album art replacement, all driving traffic to the website.

Sarah Power, marketing director U.K. and Eire for Burger King, said in a statement: “Our shower-cam gives hungry Brits the chance to watch the BK Shower Girl singing in the shower every day to help them work up an appetite for our fantastic new breakfast range.”

Pancentric Digital developed the Singing in the Shower site, and Cow PR devised the campaign.

Read original article in AdAge

Endeavour Marketing and Media, A Murfreesboro Advertising Agency

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — One of the more popular Google searches over Thanksgiving was “Walmart Black Friday store map,” which may go a long way in explaining some of the numbers being reported.

The data coming out today show online retail traffic was either flat or down, depending on the source, while search queries looking for weekend sales skyrocketed. And although web traffic stagnated, consumer spending online rose. Meanwhile, offline data paint a different story. Even as the number of consumers headed to stores jumped from the same period last year — known as Black Friday as retailers look at the start of the holiday sales season to put them in the black — they nonetheless chose to spend less.

The seemingly divergent trends indicate consumers are increasingly using the web as a research tool to help them plan bricks-and-mortar shopping trips and make more thought-out online purchases. Consider the data:

• On Thanksgiving Day, the percentage of U.S. visits to the top 500 retail websites was down 15% compared to Thanksgiving Day 2008, according to Hitwise; on Friday that number dropped 9%. ComScore, meanwhile, reported flat Black Friday web traffic year over year. But the National Retail Federation reported weekend store traffic grew by 13%.
• But Thanksgiving e-commerce sales rose 10% year over year to $313 million, according to ComScore; Black Friday spending totaled $595 million, up 11% over 2008. Meanwhile, the National Retail Federation reported a drop in per-person in-store spending.
• Google searches for retail-related terms were up 49% this Black Friday weekend over the previous year. And searches for “Black Friday” on Thanksgiving and the day after were up 20% over last year; searches for “black Friday sales” on those same days were up 50%.

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Great Article from Valeria Maltoni –

During our conversation at the Inbound Marketing Summit, we talked about writing engaging content for the next web and the socializing of information. One of the slides in my deck visualized the customer contribution part of content, which we said gives you permission to connect. I stack ranked the ideas in order of complexity – with the simplest being a “like” button.

I think many companies are not implementing that on their Web sites because they’re somewhat anxious that nobody will like their pages. So why, oh why, is the site still static and displaying the same stale content? What if you were courageous and led with the information that makes your reader look smart with his peers and then built a path with her and for her to get to the technical stuff? READ REST OF BLOG POST

By Tessa Wegert for ClickZ:

Some might argue that it’s difficult to be creative in developing online ad campaigns when you’re constantly required to deliver the same old message. For grocery chains, that message is typically one of fair prices, selection, and convenience. And yet, the marketers behind these brands are routinely able to produce marketing and advertising initiatives that promote these themes in an innovative way — particularly on the Web.

Consumer exposure to grocery advertising is no longer limited to in-store flyers and newspaper ads. Marketing efforts have been moved online where brand sites have become robust content portals and grocery chains have plenty more to offer than a special on top round. And with good reason; an August study from comScore, Inc. and dunnhumbyUSA — a consulting company specializing in retail sales — found that online advertising is as effective at increasing retail sales and purchase intent as TV. According to the survey, Internet ads raise retail sales of CPG products by 9 percent, compared to an average lift of 8 percent for TV advertising. It’s a worthwhile incentive for grocery chains, with their endless shelves of CPG goods, to invest in an online media strategy.

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