Sooner or later it had to happen... This week YouTube began testing an advertising format that overlays 10 to 15 seconds of video across any video that a viewer selects. YouTube's Flash-based mini commercials appear at the bottom of a video are semi-transparent and clear after the ad has run its course. Clicking on the ad takes the user to a player within the player where they can interact with the advertiser's content. One they click out of the ad, the video picks up where it left off playing.
The format has quite a few advantages for YouTube. Firstly, it is unavoidable - if you want to see the video, then it's going to run. Secondly, it's obviously richer than your average Adwords placement, so it offers a real branding advantage to advertisers. Thirdly it offers a cost effective and measurable new route for advertisers to get their message out to a targeted audience.
As a user of YouTube, I'm not sure whether I'm going to like this level of intrusion, but from the marketeer's point of view, I can't wait to try out the new format to see if it is effective in reaching my target audiences. If YouTube get this right, then they could be setting a course for the future of TV-style advertising. If the targeting's poor, however, there is a risk that they will lose both users and potential advertisers. At the end of the day though, they aren't a charity - their media partnerships, litigation andrunning costs meant that they had to start raising revenue at some stage - this could turn out to be a neat way of addressing that challenge...
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Perfect integrated marketing from Eurocamp. Well, almost...
Yesterday I saw a classic example of integrated marketing that is almost great, but falls down as the customer experience online isn't quite thought through. We received a piece of direct mail from Eurocamp, the travel operator that offers family camping holiday packages in France. It offered us a discount to book our 2008 holiday before the end of the month. This was perfect timing for us, so we visited the Eurocamp website (www.eurocamp.co.uk) to decide which holiday to book. Everything went fine whilst we were choosing our main destination and we were offered a large discount to complete the booking online. But then the problems began.
Travelling down from the North West of England meant that we couldn't complete the journey to our chosen site within a day, so we needed an overnight stop. Relatively straightforward, you would think, as a large percentage of Eurocamp customers would need this option. Unfortunately though, you couldn't book this online. Nor could you book a ferry or Eurostar crossing. You could complete the booking (and an agent would call you back to sort out all of the logistics), but Eurocamp were asking you to take a leap of faith - to book the holiday without knowing the total cost. So we tried to call and complete the booking, but all of the agents were busy so they had to call us back - clearly we weren't the only people struggling with their website!
This got me looking at a few other things around the Eurocamp site. The 3D views of accomodation didn't work on my Mac. They don't seem to do any Adwords, and the site isn't SEO-optimized for anything other than Eurocamp-specific terms - you can't find them on Google by searching for 'French camping holidays', for example. Fine if you know the Eurocamp brand. Not so good if you are researching this kind of holiday for the first time. You also can't comment on past visit to sites either, which I would think would be a great option for regular customers (of which there are many).
This got me thinking:
- How many additional agents do Eurocamp employ to cover enquiries from frustrated website customers?
- How many customers abandon their bookings due to the holes in Eurocamp's CRM process?
- How much new business do they lose through their lack of Search Engine Optimization?
Eurocamp are a great British brand in their sector. With a little more work, they could be a great brand online as well - and probably save themselves a fortune in unnecessary call centre resources...
Travelling down from the North West of England meant that we couldn't complete the journey to our chosen site within a day, so we needed an overnight stop. Relatively straightforward, you would think, as a large percentage of Eurocamp customers would need this option. Unfortunately though, you couldn't book this online. Nor could you book a ferry or Eurostar crossing. You could complete the booking (and an agent would call you back to sort out all of the logistics), but Eurocamp were asking you to take a leap of faith - to book the holiday without knowing the total cost. So we tried to call and complete the booking, but all of the agents were busy so they had to call us back - clearly we weren't the only people struggling with their website!
This got me looking at a few other things around the Eurocamp site. The 3D views of accomodation didn't work on my Mac. They don't seem to do any Adwords, and the site isn't SEO-optimized for anything other than Eurocamp-specific terms - you can't find them on Google by searching for 'French camping holidays', for example. Fine if you know the Eurocamp brand. Not so good if you are researching this kind of holiday for the first time. You also can't comment on past visit to sites either, which I would think would be a great option for regular customers (of which there are many).
This got me thinking:
- How many additional agents do Eurocamp employ to cover enquiries from frustrated website customers?
- How many customers abandon their bookings due to the holes in Eurocamp's CRM process?
- How much new business do they lose through their lack of Search Engine Optimization?
Eurocamp are a great British brand in their sector. With a little more work, they could be a great brand online as well - and probably save themselves a fortune in unnecessary call centre resources...
Friday, August 24, 2007
Second Life. Will the last marketeer turn off the lights, please...?
The last few weeks have seen the worm slowly starting to turn, as far as marketing in Second Life is concerned. Wired carried an article recently talking about an almost spooky atmsphere within many locations in Second Life due to the lack of punters actually using the platform regularly, despite the massive growth in avatars. TechCrunch carried a similar opinion piece. Having been hassled both within my organisation ('but we'll miss the boat') and from various agencies ('but you'll miss the boat') trying to sell me their Second Life island construction skills, I can't say that I'm unhappy about this.
My gut instinct with Second Life was that, despite the hype, it would remain the domain of a relatively niche audience and that many people would register and try it once, only to get fed up that the technology didn't match the hype. By the look of some of the articles I have seen recently, it would seem that increasing numbers of marketeers are beginning to share my point of view. A member of my team recently chatted with a Web 2.0 lead marketeer from a certain FMCG giant at a recent Search Engine conference in California and his view on Second Life (in which his company had invested heavily) were too heavily laden with expletives to post in this blog...
It is easy to get carried away with all of the hype surrounding Web 2.0 and the effect it is having on marketing. It's important that we don't forget that Joe Public is still nowhere near as technologically savvy as those of us that work on and with the web every day. 3D worlds may well become important, but only when they are as easy to use as YouTube. Second Life will remain an opportunity for reaching certain niche audiences. Just don't expert it to sell any additional cans of fizzy drink for you any time soon...
My gut instinct with Second Life was that, despite the hype, it would remain the domain of a relatively niche audience and that many people would register and try it once, only to get fed up that the technology didn't match the hype. By the look of some of the articles I have seen recently, it would seem that increasing numbers of marketeers are beginning to share my point of view. A member of my team recently chatted with a Web 2.0 lead marketeer from a certain FMCG giant at a recent Search Engine conference in California and his view on Second Life (in which his company had invested heavily) were too heavily laden with expletives to post in this blog...
It is easy to get carried away with all of the hype surrounding Web 2.0 and the effect it is having on marketing. It's important that we don't forget that Joe Public is still nowhere near as technologically savvy as those of us that work on and with the web every day. 3D worlds may well become important, but only when they are as easy to use as YouTube. Second Life will remain an opportunity for reaching certain niche audiences. Just don't expert it to sell any additional cans of fizzy drink for you any time soon...
The end of an era as Moonfish closes its doors...
How Do are reporting that Moonfish, the Manchester-based digital marketing agency are closing their doors. Moonfish were one of the pioneers in the Manchester digital marketing agency scene. Despite losing some key staff to Pavilion Communication in recent years, the agency still had an impressive client list, including Cisco, Carphone Warehouse, Swinton Insurance, Thus, English Partnerships and Fujitsu. Just last week they announced they had won the Opal Telecom account (not all that surprising as Opal are part of Carphone Warehouse, but nonetheless, not to be sniffed at).
A statement from Moonfish speaks of differences between key shareholders on the future strategy. The shutdown appears to have come suddenly, however - staff were told to go home and some clients have been looking to other agencies to pick up work that was begun but not yet completed.
A statement from Moonfish speaks of differences between key shareholders on the future strategy. The shutdown appears to have come suddenly, however - staff were told to go home and some clients have been looking to other agencies to pick up work that was begun but not yet completed.
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