Christmas is fast approaching, and with it the rush to get to the shops. But with all the traffic and crowds, you’d be forgiven for staying away and buying your gifts online. Well, this year you can visit some of London’s top retailers from the comfort of home thanks to a new virtual world called NearLondon.

NearLondon offers laser scanned 3D recreations of Oxford St, Regent St and Bond St, with more streets to follow. Many top retailers have signed up to advertise their wares, although they’re currently limited to selling from a shop window. But as NearLondon evolves they’ll be able to house fashion shows, interactive games and virtual concerts in their branded stores.

Does this all sound familiar? Well, NearLondon’s creators have been at pains to point out it isn’t another Second Life, and for good reason too…

Second Life – Not dead, just evolving

It was only two years ago that Second Life was basking in the media spotlight as brands, businesses and even nations rushed to grab their piece of online real estate. In fact, the number of people joining jumped from 450,000 to 4 million in just one year.

But unfortunately Second Life just wasn’t accessible enough for most people, and failed to attract the numbers needed to make it a successful marketing platform. The branded shops and buildings became ghost towns when the crowds failed to materialise and the buzz fizzled out. In many brand managers’ eyes, Second Life is now dead.

However, the site still attracts a million regular users and is now being touted as a platform for online collaboration, virtual meetings and a teaching tool. But it remains to be seen whether Second Life will ever attract the numbers needed to tempt brands back to what was, for many, an expensive experiment.

Will NearLondon be different?

The fact that NearLondon’s creators are already talking about a NearNewYork and NearTokyo shows they’ve got big plans. But will they be able to attract enough shoppers to keep the brands happy?

Criticisms of Second Life have been its awkward controls and the cartoony graphics. In NearLondon, however, you just click around the screen to explore London’s streets which are rendered in detailed 3D graphics similar to the latest video games.

NearLondon is currently on limited release, with software disks to be handed out in London next Monday. Whether it can compete with the buzz and physicality of the real world shopping experience remains to be seen. But it’s certainly another step towards delivering more innovative branded experiences in the digital world.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Advertising agencies are notoriously male dominated, which is a problem when the majority of your customers are female. The fact is that rising female spending power is causing a shift in how products are designed and sold. And it will be those able to deliver marketing that’s appealing to women who’ll prosper. Those who continue to think we only live in a man’s world will fade away.

A few facts:

• 85% of US household purchase decisions are made by women (National Federation of Woman Business Owners)
• Women spend 10% more on the internet than men (Verdict Research)
• 91% of women say ‘advertisers don’t understand us’ (Martha Barletta, in ‘Marketing to Women’)

The web turns female

At ad:tech London, this week, a consultant from trend forecasters The Future Laboratory announced that the web turned female last year, meaning that there are now more female users than men.

So with female spending power, influence on buying decisions and prevalence on the web on the rise, marketers must consider whether their campaigns need to be adjusted.

How can marketing be made more appealing to women?

Does marketing need to be made more feminine?

Well, according to Martha Barletta, in ‘Marketing to Women’:

“Men and women don’t communicate the same way, and they don’t buy for the same reasons…He simply wants the transaction to take place.  She’s interested in creating a relationship.”

Other experts on feminine marketing have suggested that women take longer to reach buying decisions than men. They tend to research more and are less influenced by advertising. This means marketing needs to find subtler approaches.

Word of mouth marketing

When discussing feminine marketing, Tarek Mady (chair of the Marketing Department at the American University in Dubai) said:

“Women are the most powerful brand builders and the most dangerous brand killers due to their tendencies towards information sharing…In Dubai they are six times more likely to use word of mouth than men because by nature, people talk about products they are satisfied with.”

Perhaps the rise of the female shopper means it’s time to focus even more closely on subtle approaches, such as word of mouth and viral campaigns, rather than traditional advertising.

When it comes to feminine marketing the trap is falling into dated stereotypes, delivering marketing that’s patronising and treating all women as a single segment. So creating campaigns that are more appealing to women certainly poses a challenge, but it’s one marketers can’t afford to ignore.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

How can you make money from a user base that hates advertising and doesn’t want to pay for content?

Well, that’s a puzzle all media companies seem to be struggling with at the moment. Whether it’s newspapers, commercial TV or Facebook, no one has yet worked out how to monetise content with advertising people are happy to receive.

But that doesn’t stop them trying…

ITV gets the law changed

Commercial TV has, at least, been thrown a lifeline (albeit a thin one).

Almost exactly a year ago we discussed on the bda blog ITV’s ill fated experiments with ad overlay technology, which could have had viewers spitting out their tea when ghostly slogans started appearing on walls and on people’s foreheads. Thankfully these experiments are unlikely to reach our screens now that product placement on TV has been given a tentative green light.

It’s predicted that product placement could earn UK commercial TV companies £125 million a year. Whilst mere pocket change compared to total TV ad revenue of nearly £3 bn, the decision to allow product placement reflects how advertising has to become more inventive if it’s going to survive in our anti-ads culture.

UK commercial broadcasters will have to tread carefully though. They don’t want to shoehorn too many mentions of Aston Martins and lingering shots of iPhones into the script. Any product placements will need to be done subtly, otherwise viewers will vote with their remotes.

Twitter changes its user agreement

Finding the right balance in how many times you mention brand names is something ITV and Twitter have in common following Twitter’s announcement of changes to its user agreement, which “leave the door open for advertising” to its 45 million users.

Grumbles of discontent at the news are already spreading on blogs, in forums and on Twitter itself. So Twitter, just like ITV, will have to be careful in how it introduces its new advertising model. It will need to find a way of delivering ads people are at least accepting of, in exchange for a service they value.

As with all marketing, the answer lies in delivering advertising in a way that’s useful, relevant and welcomed. But unfortunately this is a puzzle few, if any, have been able to solve.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Facebook continues to be an untapped goldmine struggling to extract cash from its users. People love the service, but aren’t prepared to pay for it.

So advertising remains Facebook’s main source of income. But in its rush to deliver targeted, contextual ads using its members’ data, Facebook needs to be careful it doesn’t upset its users in the process.

And it’s not just its own advertising Facebook needs to be concerned about.

People consider personal data private

It’s no secret that whenever you take part in a quiz or download an app you’re handing over your personal information, and that of your friends, to Facebook’s third party developers.

What they then do with your info is anyone’s guess. But it’s unlikely they create quizzes and apps for your entertainment when there’s money to be made.

In fact, it’s predicted that Facebook’s developer community could soon be earning more than the site itself. It’s estimated this year they could pocket a combined $300-$500 million from sales of virtual goods (e.g. tommy guns in Mafia Wars and poker chips), branded sponsorship and, of course, advertising.

The problem is that some of these developers are misusing people’s personal information. And Facebook needs to step in before the abuse gets out of hand.

Misusing customer data will lose their trust

Facebook is already facing a spate of privacy lawsuits, cases of applications recording people’s login details and a man seeing his wife advertised as a ‘hot single’. And recently a number of applications had to be suspended for flouting Facebook’s user privacy policy.

So Facebook does, indeed, appear to be at a crossroads: it can either start doing more to protect how its members’ data is used or risk losing their trust and loyalty. You only have to look at the demise of Friends Reunited and falling popularity of MySpace to know how quickly fickle online crowds can move onto the next big thing.

Last week, Facebook announced it would be making some changes to give its users more control over their data. In the future, developers will have to specify what information their applications need to use and users will also be able to block applications from scraping their friends’ profiles.

But it will take at least a year before these changes come into effect. So Facebook will be hoping that, in the meantime, there aren’t more cases of people’s private data being misused. Or there might be a rush of its members logging out for good.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Google has been ruffling a few feathers recently after announcing on its Adwords blog that the position your ad appears in the search results doesn’t affect its conversion rate. Its research suggests that whether your ad appears at the top of the page or the bottom the likelihood of people taking action on your website remains the same.

This news has been greeted by a mixture of shrugged shoulders and furrowed brows. Some people wonder why this is even news, whilst others are annoyed at Google’s subtle marketing ploy. Because Google’s research could be interpreted as suggesting the only way to improve your website’s sales is to attract more traffic, which means getting sucked into a bidding war for the top positions.

So is Google correct and the conversion rate remains the same wherever your ad is placed? Or can its position and content be optimised to attract a higher proportion of buyers, rather than browsers?

Who cares about clicks? Send me customers!

Many big companies buy up the top positions for generic terms as part of a branding strategy. They want you to find their website as soon as possible so you can register and bookmark it, even if you’re not yet ready.

This strategy is fine if you’re happy to throw £1000s at Google Adwords everyday. But if you’ve a limited budget, chasing after the top position might not offer you the best return.

Most people initially search the web for information. So if your ad is in top position you’ll attract a lot of browsers at the early info gathering stage.

If your ad appears lower down you’re going to attract fewer clicks. But the clicks you do receive will be from people who’ve scrolled down the page, which suggests they’ve progressed further along the research stage and are closer to buying.

So an ad in 7^th or 8^th position might attract fewer clicks than those at the top. But, potentially, a higher proportion of those clicks will be from people who’ve picked out your ad for a specific reason. So managing your bids to appear further down the page could offer you a better return on your Adwords investment than fighting an expensive war for top position.

To increase your conversion rate it can also help if your ad is targeted at specific prospects, rather than as many people as possible.

How can my Google Ad be better targeted at buyers?

One of the world’s best known copywriters, Bob Bly, recently said that every great ad has four ingredients: urgent, useful, unique and ultra-specific. This is particularly appropriate to creating targeted Google ads.

Instead of focusing on generic keywords, consider how your ad can be made more unique and ultra-specific. If you sell a range of products, how can you create an ad targeted at customers for each one?

For example, if you sell industrial furniture you could create separate ads focused on ‘antistatic workbenches’ and ‘small parts storage cabinets’. You could also include the price to dissuade clicks from those on a limited budget. Your ads might attract fewer clicks. But a higher proportion of those clicks will be from targeted prospects more likely to buy.

The beauty of Adwords is you can split test different keywords and descriptions to discover which offers the best conversion rate for you. Just don’t listen to Google and settle for a 1% conversion rate when higher ones are possible.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

In their 80s heyday TVs ad men ruled the break as their domain, and would marvel audiences with their creative brilliance and 30 second blockbusters. Budgets were generous, and top agency creatives were treated with the reverence of a Hollywood director (which one or two even became).

But times have changed. Now rarely a week passes without whispers of channels merging or collapsing because of the failure of the ad break to keep them alive.

If TV is a sinking ship then advertisers are now abandoning it in droves to chase after the audiences that left long ago.

People now prefer to spend their evenings on the web, where they can control what content they want to receive, which is the barrier every advertiser now faces in remaining relevant in today’s marketing mix.

Giving people what they want

In a recent post, marketing Einstein, Seth Godin commented on the challenges and opportunities advertisers face if they want to be successful online.

Without TV programmes to be paid for or limited slots to fill, the cost of running commercials on the web is low. This means companies who previously didn’t have the budget to compete with the big boys now can. Now anybody with a camera can start their own ad campaign.

Whilst Seth hails this as a great opportunity, it’s going to be difficult to create commercials people will watch when they have the attention spans of goldfish.

As with all modern marketing, the answer lies in being able to offer content people want to consume in exchange for their time.

More than likely, this will come in the form of entertainment, as shown by the popularity of the ‘Will it Blend’ commercials, featuring a sales message amongst the flying debris of iPhones and golf balls.

What about Susan Boyle?

Working out how to make commercials people will watch on the web is the puzzle facing every advertiser. And some are already missing out on millions whilst trying to figure it out.

You’d have thought ITV’s execs would have been rubbing their hands with glee over the Susan Boyle phenomena. But unfortunately they’ve been slow to take advantage of the 100+ million views of her YouTube clip, leaving them penniless.

It’s estimated that a brief ad slot before her clip could have netted £1.5 million revenue for the beleaguered channel.

So, advertisers can learn two things from Susan Boyle:

1. It’s often what the product does that people are interested in, rather than the presentation
2. If they can offer people content they want to consume then they might have a chance of delivering their commercials along with it

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Your advertising has to compete with a lot of noise these days. With so many channels competing for attention, creating advertising that gets you noticed can be tricky. Not only do you need to engage the interest of ad weary consumers. But your ads also need to have the ‘wow’ factor that makes people sit up and think ‘I want one of those’.

Working out how to create ads that jump out and pull people in is a tricky puzzle. This is why so many brands are waving their cheque books at celebrities and signing them up to give their ads the ‘X’ factor.

Why are celebrity endorsements powerful?

Whenever they’re seen in ads, celebrities transfer their positive qualities, such as their reputation, talent and likeability, onto the product. They also act as the brand’s spokesperson, giving it credibility and the thumbs up in the eyes of their hero worshipping public.

Celebrity endorsements can raise awareness, increase a product’s appeal and influence the buying decisions of fans wanting to emulate their favourite stars, which is why so many brands are happy to pay millions for a brief share of a celebrity’s limelight.

However, as with all advertising, celebrity endorsements cannot build a brand on their own. It takes time, patience and delivering a consistent message through every channel to cement the positive thoughts and feelings people associate with your products.

But having a famous face appearing in your ads can give your brand that extra special ingredient that will help it stand out on supermarket shelves.

A few famous celebrity endorsements

Paul Merson – you’d be right to question the suitability of an ex gambling addict, who lost £7 million and went bankrupt, being the public face of a betting shop. However, the ex-Arsenal player is a well known face and is certainly someone Better Bet’s customers can relate to. Nobody can question his authenticity as a gambling man.

Girls Aloud – the band created by TV now make sure they stay on it at as much as possible. Endorsements for Samsung, Coke Zero, Ultimo lingerie and Sunsilk helps them maintain a high profile even when their music videos aren’t being played.

Johnny Rotten – the ex-anarchist and former Sex Pistol has given many the biggest shock of his career by being so successful at selling butter. Whilst an anti-capitalist in his heyday, he’s now being praised for helping to increase Dairy Crest’s business 85% in the last year.

Barack Obama – whilst the popularity of the new President continues to defy his critics and his halo remains intact, Brand Obama is regarded as the World’s #1 brand. With the image of an exceptional negotiator and communicator, his unofficial endorsement of Blackberry is estimated to be worth $30 million in marketing. And the best part is that he hasn’t been paid to do it.

Prunella Scales – the ex-onscreen squeeze of John Cleese is currently rated as the UK’s most successful celebrity endorser. Her series of humorous ads, with Jane Horrocks in tow, marching around Tesco is estimated to have generated sales of £2.2 billion for the supermarket giant.

Tiger Woods – perhaps the best example of a celebrity becoming synonymous with a brand, the successor to Michael Jordan as Nike’s brand spokesman has helped transform a ‘start up’ golf brand into the most popular clothing label on the fairways. With sales of $600 million a year, Nike Golf is also now competing to be the top brand for clubs and golf balls. No wonder Nike named a building after him.

The moment when the ball pauses after this putt at the 2005 Masters is probably worth millions in free advertising alone:

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

In its Madison Avenue strutting heyday, advertising was the only way to sell. Back when people spent their evenings reading newspapers or glued to the TV, brands relied on ads to grow desire and plant jingles in people’s minds.

But unfortunately for the once cocksure ad man, people and times have changed.

The old adage of ‘advertise or die’ is now being replaced by ‘evolve or die’. People are binning newspapers permanently, and fast forwarding or switching off the TV altogether.

The problem with advertising

Advertising’s first aim has always been to grab attention. Then it implants an appealing collection of thoughts and feelings that spring to mind when people are trawling supermarket shelves.

The problem is that consumers have been dazzled with advertising for so long that they’ve started ignoring it. Over time, the unfulfilled dreams promised by ad men have created cynicism, and an attitude has grown towards avoiding ads altogether.

So, brands need to find new platforms for engaging with their ad weary public. For many, this has simply meant diverting their budget online.

But as studies are showing, people are forming buying decisions based on the quality of the content brands provide, and not just on their advertising.

Brand perceptions are being formed online

Last year brands spent nearly £3 billion chasing after the migration of eyeballs onto the internet. But simply raining down ads isn’t an adequate response to the way in which people use the web.

A survey of UK consumers, last year, found that 86% had researched a company online before deciding whether to buy their product. And 22% always conduct an online background check before parting with their cash. Whilst these stats sound promising, less than half (49%) found the information they were looking for.

So, brands should start providing useful content on their website if they want to engage people’s interest and influence their buying decisions. After all, people use the internet to find information, not advertising.

Brand perception is built at every touch point

Advertising can be expensive and makes less of an impact than it once did. There are also now too many other ways in which people can engage with your brand (and they’re looking for a conversation that isn’t one way).

So you need to consider how your business is engaging with customers at every touch point. Whether it’s via magazine ads, direct mail, email or customer service, every engagement influences how people perceive the quality of your products.

And as the survey shows, people are increasingly demanding informative, useful content that answers their questions and assists their buying decisions. Which is why advertising alone, ultimately, is no longer enough to satisfy the needs of today’s cynical, connected consumer.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.