eROI Days Email Agency

Well what do you know. We were honored this AM to find that we are one of the email marketing blogs up for the ClickZ awards 2006. Please give us your love with a VOTE. (Not fair that 2 out of the 3 blogs are ours!!)

Finalists were selected from reader nominations for the ClickZ Marketing Excellence Awards 2006 that met eligibility requirements. Voting is open now through the close of business, 5 pm EST, on Wednesday, November 8, 2006. One vote in each subcategory per person (we have our ways of knowing). Winners will be announced on Monday, November 13, 2006.

Please VOTE for Us

OnlineMediaDaily reported on Oct 31 that Media Titan and NBA-player-wannabe Mark Cuban received an email from the Pho List, a media-related exclusive email list. The OnlineMediaDaily article further stipulates that this email (which can’t be substantiated) revealed:

“One reason YouTube’s price tag was so big is that nearly one-third of the $1.65 billion has been set aside to deal with potential legal issues, with the rest being distributed to shareholders, including VC firm Sequoia Capital.

Google realized that $500 hundred million may not be enough (there could be hundreds of thousands of copyright suits here), so they decided to let certain media companies in on the sale. Once major labels got wind, they used the “most favored nation” clause to ensure their piece of the action–about $50 million per major media company from the Google buyout.

Instead of receiving cash, the media companies received an equity position in YouTube, which means they won’t have to pay their artists any royalty fees (most record label contracts call for artists to get 50 percent of license deals). Since it’s an investment, they’re no longer required to share the spoils.

Google basically bought a six-month exclusive on widespread copyright infringement. It figures that deal will ensure that their competitors will slowly fall by the wayside. As a result, expect a legal claim of collusion between Google and big media companies as other video companies begin to spiral downward.”

eROI President Ryan Buchanan writes in iMediaConnection about the Dove campaign:

“Dove no longer sells soap. The company is so much more than a set of commodity products. Dove sells real beauty; natural beauty; non-superficial beauty. The Campaign for Real Beauty website features a one-minute film that shows the transformation of an average-looking woman into a strikingly gorgeous supermodel. Only by seeing this process can we truly comprehend the illusion that the media has portrayed of these fabricated dream girls. The beauty of this site is that it doesn’t end with just awareness of the problem. It launches immediately into an actionable item for eight to 12-year-old girls to sign up for Dove’s real beauty workshops. These workshops teach girls about the importance of identifying beauty within themselves in the pre-teen years before the peer pressure to be like the mythical supermodel drives them to anorexia or bulimia.

This site has generated major buzz for good reason. It is authentic, genuine, and true to the Dove brand. It is an extension of the type of values that Dove has demonstrated for the past several years as one of the first major brands to feature larger women in their ads. It challenges convention and educates. As a viral website, “Campaign for Real Beauty” employs all of the right strategies and tactics. It’s easy to send the website to a friend, it has a compelling call-to-action, and it positions the educational resources on the site as the main focus– a testament to Dove’s humanitarian reasons for creating the campaign. It is clear what is important here, and that isn’t just selling product. It’s helping women and girls redefine beauty to change their life in a positive way.

The website is clearly targeted towards women and girls, but us men and boys are a big part of the equation. As for me, I think my wife is stunningly beautiful whether she is getting out of the tent on an early morning of a camping trip or dressed up in an evening gown for a swanky date. However, I must say that the superficial, heavily-altered, Photoshopped supermodel in the advertisement at the end of the Dove film is straight-up HOT! Men are a simple breed. My question to Dove is, what’s next? How can you break through to men?”

Thanks to my friend Dylan Boyd from eROI, I learned about a new site for all of the funniest, best emails that you get from friends or straight from the source. The site is called FWDitOn.com - check it out. Here is one email that I’m going to post on that site:

“While walking down the street one day a US senator is tragically hit by a
truck and dies. His soul arrives in heaven and is met by St. Peter at the entrance.

“Welcome to heaven,” says St. Peter. “Before you settle in, it seems
there is a problem. We seldom see a high official around these parts, you
see, so we’re not sure what to do with you.”

“No problem, just let me in,” says the man.

“Well, I’d like to, but I have orders from higher up. What we’ll do is
have you spend one day in hell and one in heaven. Then you can choose where
to spend eternity.”

“Really, I’ve made up my mind. I want to be in heaven,” says the senator.

“I’m sorry, but we have our rules.”

(more…)

We’re in the email world and SPAM is part of the discussion of everyday life. However, we never imagined that SPAM would become a popular ENERGY drink. Whoever thought SPAM would give you energy? Apparently, this Dutch company is energized by the success it has had with this drink. It gives a whole new meaning to SPAM which takes on a lemony, urine color and conjures up in my mind the taste of potable meat. Fascinating.

Chuck Porter, Chairman of Crispin, Porter, & Bogusky - arguably the hottest agency in the world right now, spoke at OMMA East today about the success of his agency and the secret of viral marketing.

In his presentation, Porter brought up examples of how the world is moving so fast that a big news story hits for a few hours and then that person / story is forgotten about. This is often true of ”memorable” ad campaigns. The lifespan of great ad campaigns has gotten shorter and shorter with so much noise out there, especially with user-generated content. In fact, one panelist on ”The Creative Panel” pointed out that 90% of big box-office Hollywood films fail, so why expect all TV advertising to succeed? Coming up with and executing upon a big idea is exceedingly difficult and there needs to be a tolerance around how to define success.

The Secret of Viral Marketing

Case Study: Burger King’s Subservient Chicken
www.subservientchicken.com
This site launched 3 years ago and within 12 days, there were 100 million hits to the site and the average amount of time spent on the site per user was 7 minutes. 3 years later, there have been a total of 460 million hits and it completely resonates with the 16-25 year old male demographic who are powereaters at Burger King.

More Chuck Porter advice:

To see the video clips of Chuck Porter’s presentation AND to see his entire presentation via video, go to OMMA’s specific webpage here to check it out>>

Crusty Demon is a advergame site for a new video game. It is a little racy, but spot on for the demographic. Simple and well executed. Keep in mind that advergame sites are used to build the viral spread of the intended KPI (Key Performance Index) that you have established.

The Shins was a site developed by the one and only James Hall from the eROI team. James has personally known the guys in the band for a while and he cooked up a great flash site to showcase the music, videos and quirkiness of the band. Try to find all the hidden easter eggs in the main page of the site.

We Are the Web is a humorous way to share the message about Net Neutrality Laws that are being fought in the high government courts and Senate. The goal is to educate, share and drive you to take action.

Tea Partay was an underground campaign used to promote a beverage company. It was launched without much promotion, but was done so well that many people took it upon themselves to load it up to YouTube and other video sites. If you do your job well, the online community will validate your brand and possibly even do your job for you.

The Viral Chart offers two main services to help advertisers spread and monitor their work, showcasing the most popular viral content on a 7 day and overall basis and tracking for your specific viral media campaign.

The Viral Chart helps advertisers gain insight into trends of viral media work’s implementation using a series of real-time tracking tools.

The Stunners is an off beat video story blog that was used to grow the reach of a large drug company about hair loss. If you have ever met notable baldy Ryan Buchanan you know how serious an issue hair loss can be.

Supporters is a simple site (following the lead of many) that uses consumer generated text to create an experience worthy of passing on to a friend. Just to cheer them up.

Google Image Labeler was a novel idea to use existing search technology and create a game out of it. It is not only a way to challenge people all over the world, but allows Google to leverage users ideas on how to tag an image. Great example of how the community is often more powerful than the technology.

All 2.0 Apps can be found in this aggregator site. It Some of the ideas out there that are launching almost daily might amaze you. The game is constantly evolving.

ClickZ (and every other media company in the world) just reported that:

“Google will acquire YouTube for $1.65 billion, marrying the dominant force in Internet search with the first and most powerful brand in networked Web video sharing, the companies announced. The deal is expected to close in Q4.

The agreement represents a big step into multimedia content and tools for Google. The company has long stated its enthusiasm for video, but has so far struggled to build a large audience around its own platform. With a value pegged at nearly three times the price News Corp. paid for MySpace only 15 months ago, the deal is also testament to the rise of social networking technologies.

“The YouTube team has built an exciting and powerful media platform that complements Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” said Google CEO Eric Schmidt in a statement. “Our companies share similar values; we both always put our users first and are committed to innovating to improve their experience. Together, we are natural partners to offer a compelling media entertainment service to users, content owners and advertisers.”

YouTube CEO Chad Hurley: “By joining forces with Google, we can benefit from its global reach and technology leadership to deliver a more comprehensive entertainment experience for our users and to create new opportunities for our partners. I’m confident that with this partnership we’ll have the flexibility and resources needed to pursue our goal of building the next-generation platform for serving media worldwide.”

YouTube will retain its brand identity and keep its offices in San Bruno, Calif.”

For current and future eROI clients, we have added new tools to assist with database segmentation and to automate the newsletter build via RSS. We have also implemented a new Salesforce integration tool that allows our clients to manage email campaigns from within Salesforce as well as bring campaign data back into leads and contacts.

You may also be interested in our new ecomROI guide (PDF) and eventROI features + benefits guide (PDF) to see how all of our emarketing tools work together as one.

EmailRSS (BETA): Use this tool set up emailROI list campaigns that retrieve your valid RSS feed and create your emails on the fly and at intervals you specify.

See http://tools.eroi.com to login and experience some of the new tools and client only resources.

YouTube graces the cover of Forbes magazine and has a write up in Newsweek. It seems everywhere I turn, I hear about YouTube and MySpace defining the next wave of growth of the Internet. The Online Marketing Media and Advertising show in New York City had 20+ speakers, panelists, and breakout sessions over 2 days that reinforced this message at every opportunity.

Crispin Porter & Bogusky and other ad agencies are creating such compelling ads (e.g. VW ad below) and online experiences (Burger King’s SubservientChicken.com), that loyal fans are uploading it to Web 2.0 superstars like YouTube and creating communities around these advertising concepts on MySpace.

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