Tag: ipg media lab

Facebook marketing boot camp

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Facebook marketing camp This month the Lab attended a kind of Facebook marketing boot camp, where members of the Facebook team guided us on best practices for integrating Facebook within brand marketing plans. The opportunity is much larger then capturing a portion of the 250 million Facebook users as customers; it’s also a prospect for new ways to be innovative in our marketing.

Most of the conversation of the day centered around two ways you can use Facebook to market your brand: engagement ads and Facebook pages. But the team did talk a bit about what’s new on the popular site. For instance, they are starting to put demographic and geographic targeting into action: Targeting keywords from status updates and users birthdays are new features.

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What makes a great marketer?

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IPG Emerging Media Lab President John RossMy answer to the question of what makes a great marketer is simple: Being a great listener. Yeah, that’s right, listening.

The answer is simple because marketing is simple. If you know what your customers really want and give it to them, magic happens. Easy, right?

Most businesses start off as great listeners. Bernie and Arthur, two leaders I was fortunate to work for when I first joined Home Depot knew how to listen to customers. Their entire business was built around listening. Continue reading “What makes a great marketer?”

Why Apple, AT&T, and consumers are at odds

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Why Apple, AT&T and consumers are at oddsIn tech circles, Apple’s been making some decisions that have concerned many consumers (not to mention Google’s CEO, who resigned from Apple’s board Monday). They have potentially caused serious damage to their relationship with Google, and undermined much of the promise of leading the charge in bringing unparalleled functionality to the mobile phone.

So what happened? The first recent rumblings of discontent came around the time of the 3.0 software launch and the release of the iPhone 3GS. While the iPhone now had sanctioned video capabilities, some of the very neat live broadcasting solutions like Qik or Flixwagon weren’t being allowed into the AppStore, despite already having software functioning flawlessly for months on jailbroken versions of the iPhone.

Then the trouble with Google started. Continue reading “Why Apple, AT&T, and consumers are at odds”

Yet another Silver “man” lining

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Yet another Silver "man" lining (iStock)The departure of Ben Silverman from NBC has stirred up a lot of news chatter that this hammers yet another nail in the coffin of the traditional production company. As co-chair of NBC Universal Entertainment, Silverman was responsible for bringing the same programming flair he originally brought to his company Reveille, with such big hits as The Office and The Biggest Loser, translating many foreign hits into popular US shows. Silverman was also known for exploring new ad models. Now he’s leaving the company to start up a new venture in partnership with Barry Diller’s media and Internet company, IAC.

Anytime you mention “360” these days as a description for a new content model (which has been part of most of the press today), you have to raise an eyebrow and think, oh lordy, Silverman wants to be a cross platform cool kid. As my dear colleague, brand strategy expert Brian Seth Hurst twittered, “repurposed distribution does not a cross media value proposition make.” Continue reading “Yet another Silver “man” lining”

John Ross on why retail needs new tools

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John Ross, President of the IPG Emerging Media Lab John Ross recently joined IPG’s Mediabrands to become President of the Emerging Media Lab. John brings 20 years of retail experience to the job, most recently as VP of Advertising and Marketing for Home Depot. I sat down with him during a recent visit to Los Angeles (John will be managing a trifecta commute between his home base in Atlanta, Mediabrands offices in NY, and the Lab in Los Angeles) to talk about why retail and emerging media are well suited, and what challenges lay ahead for both sectors.

DR: What is the biggest challenge for the retail sector in terms of effectively harnessing the power of emerging media and technology?

JR: [Retail] needs to embrace and employ new tools that allow them to access the dialogue that’s taking place about their business. They need to have new listening tools and these tools need to be snapped into the way they make business decisions. Social media combined with retail has so far been a terrifying combination, it takes courage to really listen and a fear of that that dialogue might get out of control in ways that could be dangerous to your brand. Continue reading “John Ross on why retail needs new tools”

Why Twitter has not jumped the shark

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Has Twitter jumped the shark? (iStock)If I had a nickel for everytime someone asked me What is hot right now? I’d be twittering off my yacht in the Côte d’Azur.

In a recent meeting with some of my fellow digerati we were pitching ideas to get a client excited about  what new’s in the media landscape and all of them declared, Twitter is dead…it’s over. But I think there’s plenty of life left in our friend Twitter.

We are at an interesting crossroads with Twitter, Facebook and a lot of other overly hyped platforms. In many cases, it’s not about the solution itself but about how people are leveraging the data and behavior surrounding that platform and hence, their API’s (application programming interfaces – see my recent article on using APIs for content delivery). Continue reading “Why Twitter has not jumped the shark”

IPG Lab and research firm OTX join forces

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OTX and Lab ink deal Today’s Mediapost article announcing our very exciting relationship with global research firm OTX, caps several months of negotiations.  Aside from the purely financial aspects of the deal, it strengthens and solidifies the Lab’s place, as not just a unique facility to learn about emerging media through our immersion based facilities but now a place to come and study emerging media by way of research.  While the Lab has been championing the virtues of doing research, this relationship adds an exciting layer to our product set and consequently our ability to help provide a comprehensive package for agency/client research needs.

The relationship with OTX actually dates back to last year.  Ongoing conversations brought us tougher to help them on their unique projects for “mobile Jeopardy” and MTV’s – Comedy Central/SpikeTV.

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