Food & Beverage Marketer’s Risks of Interactive Marketing to Kids

Dan Henry, a DigitalDay intern who’s last day is today, put together the following post:

Kids influence more decisions today than ever before. Not only do they buy their own products, but they influence adults and peers to buy as well. According to Berkeley Media Studies Group the reason is technology.

Countless forms of media advertising attract kids to buy and use more products than ever. Kids are marketed through instant messaging, text messaging, video games, and the growing popularity of social networks to buy certain products. However, with these new, young customers growing, in more ways than up, health can take a back seat to instant satisfaction.

How are marketers and consumers responsible and what can they do to fix it? Read Interactive Food & Beverage Marketing: Targeting Children and Youth in the Digital Age to find out about unhealthy marketing to kids and what has already taken place to fix this dilemma.

Blogging about Corporate Blogs

Mark,

First I have to tell you thanks for spear heading the web rework project for TAAN. It certainly needs it and your outline was right on. The next challenge is to get everyone to use it once it’s done. I think it could be a useful new business tool for all of us if we can get prospective client to come to the site and look for areas of expertise. Any way thanks for your great efforts.

Now, the reason for this e-mail. When we meet in Naples this winter, we had a brief discussion on blogs and how everyone could benefit from them, even conservative manufacturing companies. I’d like to put out an e-mail or postcard to our current client highlighting the reasons why, the do’s and don’ts and how they can maximize a blog. Could you give me some incite on this?

Thanks.

John

——–

Hi John,

Blogs have become one of the most effective business communication tools on the Web. By encouraging opinion and interaction, they provide forums for business to create personal presentations to their customers, suppliers and employees – essentially any audience a business has.

A blog can help supplement a business’s often “static” web site with fresh, timely content. Often, this content will contain search-engine-rich keywords and phrases that can positively impact search engine ranking.

A well-written and insightful “corporate” blog can become a respected resource within an industry and enhance a company’s online brand. Corporate Blogging refers to a company producing or supporting a blog that it uses to accomplish business objectives. As with anything, there are certain “best practices” to be followed to help a company maximize its investment.

• Establish a blog editor. A company should have a knowledgeable editor who understands the policies regarding blogging. For instance:
  • Articles should be relevant to the audience and industry
  • Content and tone should be appropriate for the brand
  • Obvious care should be taken not to divulge trade secrets
  • Editing to ensure personal lives do not become public and personal opinions are tempered. Blogging’s strength is in its personal, attributable nature but an editor must guard against opinions that may be construed as too personal or even offensive — even if to just a small segment of a company’s audience.
• Enlist senior management. Senior management should be educated by the corporate communications and legal department about what blogs are and how they might affect business. That way, they can be contributing members of the blog, further improving employee relations. Their support and participation is often what makes a blog more effective.
• Encourage all departments to contribute. Often, employees within different departments of an organization have “expert” perspectives relating to their function within an industry. Encourage contribution from sales, engineering, manufacturing, legal and HR — guiding them to relate their
• Allow readers to comment. Most blogs encourage readers to post comments which helps to build community. Obviously, comments on a corporate blog need to be reviewed and approved before they’re posted.
• Avoid the Marketing Blog. Making your blog into an obvious marketing campaign will quickly diminish its effectiveness and reach. People will quickly see through it. This isn’t to say it can’t discuss a company’s products, news and successes, but it needs to become a broader voice about the company, its industry and issues.
• Keep it fresh. To keep your readers coming back, make your content relevant and timely. Blogs are usually judged by their amount of new content. It’s practically impossible to run out of material. Content can include anything from:
  • product releases
  • job openings and new employees
  • recent company news
  • industry news and resources
  • departmental news and resources
  • thoughts from the CEO.
• Reinforce the company’s brand. Use your blog to reflect your company’s personality: its mission, goals and direction. A blog is just another medium by which you interact with your customers and employees. It’s another part of the brand experience. It should be consistent with the impression the company wants to make.

Hope this helps,

Mark

DD Launches John Carroll University’s Expert Directory

To help local and national media find appropriate subject matter experts at John Carroll University, DigitalDay developed JCU’s Voices & Sources, an online directory of subject experts within JCU.

Powered by DigitalDay’s ContenStream(tm) Content Management System, Voices & Sources 1.0 was designed to allow university professors and administrators to easily create and update their expert profile.

Madison Ave, NYC for the TAAN 2007 Global Meeting

The Transworld Advertising Agency Network’s (TAAN) Global Meeting was held at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City April 27 — 29. The meeting included members from every continent, all agency principals, who gathered to discuss international and local marketing issues ranging from account planning, new business, media law and . . . the Internet.

The History of TAAN, Global Legal Update and Roundtable
After introductions and presentations of agency profiles Gary Lessner, TAAN’s soon-to-retire president, presented a brief history of TAAN, the oldest independent agency network, from its founding in 1936 through the present day and beyond. Additionally he described TAAN members’ extended global reach via our membership in the Network Summit.

The first morning also included a presentation on important international law issues and trends by John Feldman, an attorney with Reed Smith, the founding member of GALA (Global Advertising Lawyers Alliance) and TAAN’s corporate law firm.

The day ended with a lively round table discussion over a range of topics, including:

• The Internet: how are agencies handling client requirements? A separate interactive division? Part of a direct response unit? Alliance with an outside web firm? Etc?
• Account planning, channel planning – what strategic tools are agencies using? Who has on-staff planners?
• New business – what’s your newest, most successful technique for bringing in new accounts?
• Diversification – are agencies opening new divisions to specialize in specific disciplines such as PR, Direct, Web, etc.?
• Are agencies able to get paid for planning, consultation, scope of work documents, etc.?

Throw Away the Time Sheets?
How to charge for and get paid fairly for our services is an issue agencies everywhere share. Ron Barker, president of VeraSage Institute, a California based think-tank for professional service firms, presented Pricing on Purpose – his firm’s goal to eliminate “the archaic practices of billable hours and timesheets, and promote recognition that professionals are knowledge workers, not machines.” Ron discussed the principles of value pricing; why it is superior to cost-based compensation and how it aligns the interests of agency and clients. And how to introduce the concept of value pricing to your clients.

Heads were spinning. He made great sense, but everyone struggled with how we could implement it.

The Attendees
This was my second TAAN meeting, the first being at the Winter ‘07 Meeting in Naples, and I’ve already become to feel comfortable and gain respect for the organization and its members. So, in an effort to give a little credit, seed some great search engine keywords, and document it for posterity, here’s a list of the TAAN 2007 Global Meeting Attendees:

TAAN US Attendees

• Paul Skelton, Travers Collins & Company, Buffalo
• Bob Goranson, Mobium Creative Group, Chicago
• Matt Sonnhalter, Sonnhalter & Associates, Cleveland



• Mark Vitullo, DigitalDay, Akron/Cleveland
• David Maricich, Maricich Advertising + Communications, Irvine, CA
• Mark Gale, Charleston / Orwig, Inc., Hartland Wisconsin
• Rich Wahl, Push, Inc., Orlando
• Jim Flynn, Hult Fritz Matuszak Inc., Peoria, IL



• Bob Neville, Kröme Communications, Pittsburgh



• Rod Miles and Bruce Cappelli, Cappelli Miles [spring], Portland
• Roxanne Joffe and Sam Stern, CAP Creative, Sarasota, FL
• Joe Takach, The Meridian Group, Virginia Beach

TAAN President Gary Lessner, Scotland’s Alan Levy, Julio von Haezevelde from Argentina share a drink at the Saturday evening goodbye dinner

TAAN LATIN AMERICA Attendees

• Julio von Haezevelde, SCA (Soluciones en Comunicacion Argentina), Buenos Aires
• Rodrigo Rodrigues, OpusMultipla Comunicao Integrada, Curitiba, Brazil
• Carlos Lopez, Lab Comunicaciones S.A. de C.V., Mexico City

TAAN EUROPE Attendees

• Nicolas DeWinter, Vandekerckhove & Devos, N.V., Brussels
• Mark Symons, QRBT Ltd., London
• Jarkko Nurmi and Ninna Nurmi, Mainostoimisto Linnunrata Oy, Espoo, Finland
• Kaija Juden and Lena-Kaisa Simola, Tasku Ltd., Helsinki
• Bruno du Teilleul and Donovan Hawker, Mister Joe, Paris
• Claude Muller, COMED, Luxembourg
• Peter Colee and Gregor Lof, X-ingredient, ’s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands
  Scotland
• Alan Levy, The Levy McCallum Advertising Agency, Glasgow
• Nacho Rufin and Eva Garriga, THE PARTNER, Barcelona
• Sean Duffy and John Reisky, The Duffy Agency, Malmo, Sweden

TAAN ASIA / PACIFIC Attendees

• David Weekes, LOUD, North Sydney, Australia
• Bill Ling, CCAA International Ltd., Hong Kong

TAAN MIDDLE EAST Attendees

• Sanjay Deshmukh, The Big Idea, Dubai
• Yakup Barouh, Ilancilik Reklam Ajansi AS, Istanbul

TAAN PRESIDENT

• Gary Lessner, TAAN, Naples, FL

TAAN PRESIDENT-ELECT

• Peter Gerritsen, A-Team, Boston

Sean Duffy of Sweden, Rich Wahl of Orlando, John Reisky also of Sweden and TAAN President Elect Peter Gerritson of Boston

Photos courtesy of Julio van Haezevelde and Rich Wahl. Thanks, Julio and Rich.