Sunday, August 30, 2009

In Recession, Media Bartering Is Back on the Rise


Many Are Turning to Trade to Gain Ad Space -- Flavored Ground Beef, Anyone?

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Got some old airplanes lying around collecting dust? How about some flavored ground beef from a new burger offering that didn't go over well? Don't worry, because there are a few agencies out there that can help you trade your impaired assets for ad space.

The practice of finding a buyer for a marketer's distressed assets and trading them for media credits that are subsequently used to fund media buys is by no means new -- nor is it without stigma. But one feature of recession-era media economics has been that the barter business has gotten bigger.

CLICK HERE for the entire article from AdAge.com

Monday, August 24, 2009

Vancouver Giants TV packages almost SOLD OUT!


VANCOUVER - Joytv 10 is in the final stage of selling the final sponsorships of the Vancouver Giants Promotional package. This is the 5th year that the multi-media promotional program has been running. Sponsorship packages include dominant bridge sign placement in the main concourse of the Pacific Coliseum, TV ads on the Jumbo Screens and internal TV network, ads on JOYTV 10 and a ticket/suite package.

"our clients enjoy the look and feel of a major league sports sponsor at a fraction of the cost" said Mitch Drew, Joytv 10 Account Executive.

For more information contact:

Mitch Drew
Account Executive
Joytv 10
mdrew@s-vox.com
604-575-4115 direct

Friday, August 14, 2009

Mitch Drew’s TOP FIVE reasons you should advertise during tough times.


Why a soft economy is an opportunity to take a few rounds out of your competition and gain market share…for LESS MONEY.

Reason Number One: History shows many advertisers raid their ad budget during tough times.

History has proven that in tough times businesses tend to use their advertising budget as a slush fund. It’s an easy place to get cash that is used to fund everything from Payroll to Rent. The ad budget and the costs surrounding the advertising and marketing efforts are easy targets during tough times. They can be easily raided without any immediate negative effects.

One of America’s great advertising giants David Ogilvy had this to say:

“ I avoid clients for whom advertising is only a marginal factor in their marketing mix. They have an awkward tendency to raid their advertising appropriations whenever they need cash for other purposes”.

If your competition is spending their ad budget on other purposes and NOT on advertising…you have an opportunity to move market share away from them. Let the other guy raid his budget and lose business momentum while you keep a modest yet firm foothold in the mind of the consumer.

Reason Number Two: When demand for advertising products are low…so is the price.

What if you could cut your ad budget by 50% and get the same about of advertising you did spending 100%? What if you could spend $1 and get $1.50 or $2 or even $3 worth of advertising value for the same dollar? During tough times, advertising takes a big hit and with that hit comes new and creative ways to make advertising dollars work harder. Take a look at some of the ways you can purchase advertising and bring in outside media buyers or agents to help you. Make a ‘Wish List’ of some of the TV stations, radio stations, magazines or other ad products that you’ve wanted to buy but couldn’t afford in the past and MAKE THEM AN OFFER. Demand is down…prices are low…you can make a small budget look like a medium budget and a medium budget look HUGE.

Reason Number Three: Your customers are ready to change brands now.

When the consumer is flush, they fly on the airlines they want to fly, stay in the hotels they like to stay, eat in the restaurants and so on. When the consumer is tight for cash they SHOP AROUND. Consumers are willing to say goodbye to the brands they know and love if they are going to get a better price OR better value with another brand. This means that your competitors are vulnerable to you poaching customers from them like never before (they can poach from YOU as well). Advertising your value statement, prices, offers, incentives and other reasons a consumer should switch to (or stay with) your brand is more important NOW as consumers from Detroit to West Palm Beach have been hit and need to find better deals on everything that they consume.

Reason Number Four: Things are going to get better!

We are already seeing signs that things are getting better and the economy is turning around. Most seasoned advertisers know that the discipline of advertising is not about TODAY, it’s about TOMORROW. When this market starts to lift and more advertising starts to fill the minds of consumers, your current advertising will have already made an impression and you will benefit from the investment. Advertise now when ads are cheap and build brand awareness/market share now so that when things start getting better you can stay in a ‘maintenance mode’ of advertising because you will have already gained momentum. Your competition might just wake up late and have to start spending and promoting from scratch in order to compete against you.

Reason Number Five: Advertising works in good times and bad times.

Advertising is one of the oldest forms of communication. It has been used for millions of years as a way to let people know what is available to them, at what price and at what location. It’s a simple and effective way of sending a sales force out into the world to let hundreds, thousands and millions of potential customers know that you are open for business.

Use effectively it is a ‘game changer’. It has the ability to change what we eat and where we eat it. What we drive and where we drive it. Where we go and how we get there. What we do and how we do it. Who we are and why we want to be that person.

Advertising is the foot on the accelerator that drives capitalism and without it, no product would ever move from a shelf.

Mitch Drew


Mitch Drew is the moderator of MITCH-TV. He is a lifetime advertising practitioner who lives in Vancouver, Canada and works in the TV advertising business at Joytv and VisionTV. He can be contacted at mitchdrewmedia@gmail.com

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

TV Show's Not On, but the Site Is Up


NBC's 'ChuckMeOut' Testing Whether Web Presence Can Build Audience in the Off Season
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Is there a viable audience for a TV show even when that show is not on the air? NBC is testing the idea. Even though the start of the third season of "Chuck" is at least several months away, NBC has launched a new online presence for the program, ChuckMeOut.com, that is separate from a more traditional site already found at NBC.com.


CLICK HERE for the entire article at AdAge.com

MZTV Museum of Television


Moses Znaimer re-launches the MZTV Museum of Television

TORONTO - If you are interested in the history of Television, a trip to Toronto will have to include a visit to Moses Znaimer's new MZTV Museum of Television.

CLICK HERE for an online tour

Friday, August 07, 2009

20 companies that are driving innovation and changing the way we use the Internet


The Winners - 2009
1. FreshBooks
www.FreshBooks.com

Online invoicing and time-tracking service

FreshBooks landed in the number two spot last year and now climbs into first place. The company scored with the judges for innovation and use of social media: Trgovac said it continues to “go where its customers are, develop its app and reach out on social media channels.” O’Connor Clarke said, “FreshBooks continues to lead both in the implementation of its system and its approach to support and community participation.” Napier praised the site’s benchmarking facilities: “This includes a quarterly report card which tracks revenue, average invoice size and expenses, and can [compare] that data against other companies in the industry. Companies can also compare number of staff, salary, location and LinkedIn connections or software in use, which can provide valuable feedback and best practices for running a successful company.”

2. Myca Health
www.myca.com

Online communication platform linking patients and doctors

Myca Health is a platform of services, which includes Hello Health, a system that mixes “in-person office visits, text messages, e-mail and video chat.” The mix impressed Geist (“An important entry in an important area”) and O’Connor Clarke (“A superb implementation of an idea whose time has come”). Napier agreed: “The problem Myca is addressing is acute. With doctors and patients increasingly mobile, online and strapped for time, a better process is needed to provide flexible and valuable services to patients, while reducing the burden on health care professionals so they have more time to care for their patients. Myca is well-positioned to do just that. Patients familiar with consumer and corporate social networking sites will feel at home with this solution.”

3. CoveritLive
www.coveritlive.com

Real-time blogging software

“These guys are simply the best at what they do,” O’Connor Clarke said. “The UI is intuitively easy, the feature set is terrific and they’ve done an exceptional job of marketing themselves within both the obvious blogger community and, more importantly, the international mainstream media. CoveritLive is…a national treasure.” Geist said the company “sets the standard for real-time blogging and reporting,” while Trgovac said the company is “still in the early stages of its business model, but they seem to have a realistic picture of their options.”

4. Viigo
www.viigo.com

Smartphone content delivery software (news, weather, flight status, etc.)

This “exciting Canadian startup has a chance to get significant global visibility,” according to Geist. O’Connor Clarke points to the site’s use of RSS, “one of the defining Web 2.0 technologies,” and said it “bridges the gap between the desktop feed reader and the mobile world. Viigo is the most important app on my BlackBerry after e-mail, and with some of the new channels they’re adding, it’s only going to get better.”

5. Radian6
www.radian6.com

Real-time social media monitoring and analysis

Companies need “simple tools to sift through the (social media) clutter and make sense of it all,” according to Shende. And Napier put numbers to that: “Radian6 provides extensive coverage of social media sites, including more than 100 million blogs, tens of thousands of forums, more than 20,000 online mainstream news sources and more than 450 rich media sites (YouTube, Flickr, Google Video), macromedia sites (Twitter.com, friendfeed.com) and LinkedIn Answers.” The company is, according to O’Connor Clarke, “one of the very best solutions currently available for comprehensive online reputation monitoring. They offer a terrific set of tools and keep adding value with new features.” And, Napier added, the future looks bright: “Radian6 is in a favourable position to transition from early adopters in PR and advertising to more mainstream corporate customers.”

6. Filemobile
www.filemobile.com

On-demand social media content management and application development system

Trgovac called this “the company I wish I had founded. White-label social media components that other companies can use: super smart.” O’Connor Clarke called Filemobile a standout player in a crowded market because of its “breadth of solution offering, the flexibility of the UI, the quality of the analytics and the availability of functional APIs.” Napier highlighted brand management: “Filemobile’s solution enables brand management with editing tools to let customers moderate their media services and approve and deny content, so they can protect their brands while simultaneously extending themselves to find and engage customers.”

7. BoardSuite
www.boardsuite.ca

Board-level governance and compliance solution

The judges saw promise in this solution, but also challenges. “It’s a good idea but it does not answer the question of the target demographic’s (generational) reluctance to adopt new technology,” Shende said, with Geist adding, “The company may have identified a solid entry point in Web 2.0, but the challenge will be migrating bigger corporate players. The strongest opportunity is with SMEs with governance issues, but will they (ever) pay?”

Napier, however, said “BoardSuite’s go-to-market strategy sets it apart: the solution is free for SMEs and NFPs, while BoardSuite’s network of partners pay for the solution as a way to improve and streamline their own processes in dealing with these organizations and create an ecosystem of essential services for corporate boards. It’s a win-win situation.” However, she added, “the company has already established partnerships with notable organizations and it will need to continue building upon those partnerships to increase its visibility and reach in the market.”

8. NowPublic
www.nowpublic.com

Crowdsourced/participatory news gathering

A winner last year, “NowPublic continues at the forefront of the reinvention of news media,” according to O’Connor Clarke. “They continue to impress with the rate of their growth, their constant innovation and their overall leadership in defining the future of citizen media.” Napier said the company’s “scan tool, which acts as a filtering system, appears to be positioned to help readers get the information that is most valuable and relevant to them,” but Trgovac, while impressed by the company, is “still not sure how they make money.”

9. Tungle
www.tungle.com

Online scheduling software that works across companies, systems and time zones

It’s safe to say Trgovac is a fan: “I can’t deal with how great this app is. The cross-platform/cross-calendar integration is phenomenal and this solves a very real business problem in the multi-platform reality of business.” This is echoed by Napier: “Tungle has addressed a key pain point: the time-consuming process of coordinating multiple schedules with attendees inside and outside of the office. Tungle’s solution is simple to use and intuitive. The company is in a good position to partner with complementary solutions such as conferencing services, social networks and productivity tools.

Trgovac said her one worry is the business model. O’Connor Clark has an answer to that concern: “I can see this getting picked up by Microsoft or Google sometime in the next 12 months.”

10. HootSuite
www.hootsuite.com

A Twitter toolbox that manages multiple Twitter profiles

“Once again,” O’Connor Clarke said, “Canadian innovation in the social media universe blows my mind. HootSuite is one of those solutions that’s so good you don’t really realize how much you need it until you start using it.” Napier said there are “a number of applications on the market right now designed to improve the Twitter experience, which will create competition for HootSuite, but the company has an intuitive and attractive user interface that makes it easier to manage a Twitter account, and it has identified an approach to monetize Twitter by integrating AdSense.”

Trgovac (“I really adore HootSuite”) is also eyeing the revenue stream: “This is a service I would pay for, and that’s another monetization path for them.”

11. ThoughtFarmer
www.thoughtfarmer.com

Intranet software which incorporates social networking features

A winner last year, ThoughtFarmer “is still great, although they’ve got some tough competition. Still, it has a solid team, smart products and really cool marketing,” according to O’Connor Clarke. Trgovac also sees “lots of competition in the marketplace” but also calls ThoughtFarmer “one of the best social intranet applications I’ve seen, with a great interface and features.”

12. AfterCAD Online
www.aftercadonline.com

Enables viewing and publishing complex data sets over the Web

The judges felt Aftercad offered a good product but it faces stiff competition: “real potential” (Geist); “cool widget, and I can see this possibly getting picked up by Autodesk and rolled into their portfolio, but given that they already have something fairly similar in place I’m not sure how likely that is” (O’Connor Clarke); and “since there are a number of competitors serving the CAD collaboration market with SaaS-based low-priced solutions, emerging companies need to emphasize those aspects of the solution that differentiate it in the market” (Napier).

13. TeamPages
www.teampages.com

Web site creation and management service for amateur sports teams

A solid niche product and “a great tool for quickly and simply creating a space for sports teams; it’s like a community centre 2.0 for the coaches and teams to drop into anytime,” Shende said. Napier added: “TeamPage’s solution has the specific features and functions to optimize team communication. With players and coaches using the site to post pictures, message team members and plan activities, it will be essential that the site continue to provide a high level of security to protect players’ privacy.”

14. The Manufacturing Innovation Network
www.waterloomin.com

An online network built for Waterloo Region manufacturing companies

Geist said the site does a “nice job of mixing Web 2.0 with area economic promotion” and O’Connor Clarke said this is “exactly the kind of thing the read-write Web should be fostering more of. This is a terrific use of Web 2.0 tools.” Napier commented that Igloo, the company behind the site, “boasts experienced technology leaders that it can leverage to grow its visibility both in North America and abroad. Still, there are an increasing number of companies offering corporate social networks in the market that will make it difficult for vendors like Igloo to stand out from the crowd. Igloo’s pricing allows it to differentiate itself as an affordable solution, which will be particularly important.”

15. Well.ca
www.well.ca

An online health, beauty and skin care store

Well.ca generated high marks for its design and functionality, but a lack of extensive Web 2.0 features hurt it a little. O’Connor Clarke is “a fan and follower of Well.ca” but added the site is not really “a 2.0 Web solution. They’re getting there—with the addition of more commenting, rating and community features—but they’re not there yet.” Napier, however, pointed to the company’s “chat application called imWell, which enables customers to ask a live pharmacist questions through the Web site. The smart recommendation engine was designed in-house to recommend products to individual customers based on other items they are viewing or purchasing. The system leverages an interconnected hyper-graph of all its products, learns about them and builds relationships with other products.”

16. Clarity Accounting
www.clarityaccounting.com

Online accounting for small businesses and the self-employed

A solid offering, according to many judges, but not among the most innovative. Geist said Clarity operates in a “crowded space, but it’s good to see a Canadian entrant” and Trgovac said it’s “a little me-too, but the implementation is straightforward and relatively intuitive.”

Napier is looking for future growth: “The company’s agility and responsiveness are strengths: it has a customer request page where customers can make suggestions for future developments, vote on other customer suggestions and see which features Clarity is working on. If the company continues to work on the product features and increases its visibility, it could begin to attract a larger customer following.”

17. Voices.com
www.voices.com

Online voice-over talent agency

Shende categorized Voices.com as “voice agency and casting 2.0. Well executed,” and Trgovac said the site is “a good niche social network.” Overall, though, the judges would like to see more aggressive use of Web 2.0 tools.

18. Taglocity
www.taglocity.com

Enterprise e-mail management and knowledge sharing

By working to manage the flood of e-mail, Taglocity “targets a real problem using innovative solutions,” Geist said. According to Napier, “a solution like Taglocity, that combines both e-mail management with collaboration and knowledge-sharing tools like micro-messaging, enables knowledge workers to capture, organize and share information from within Outlook without having to jump to or learn a different platform or application.” O’Connor Clarke concurred. “Taglocity addresses the problem right inside the knowledge worker’s main desktop environment: Outlook. It requires only small changes to existing behaviour to show immediate productivity benefits. Excellent stuff.”

19. PollStream
www.pollstream.com

Interactive-engagement and community-building solutions

PollStream offers an “interesting niche and solution to collaborative business communications” (Shende) and is a “very solid entry with a clear vision of target market and strategy” (Geist). According to Napier, “one of PollStream’s strengths is the attention it pays to customer project implementations to ensure its solutions deliver ROI in the long run.”

20. Pixton
www.pixton.com

A site where people create, publish, share and remix comics

Geist enjoyed seeing something “new and creative” and Shende said Pixton “outputs creativity, collaboration, crowdsourcing and community all in an innovative new spin on an old, previously non-democratic medium.” The judges hope Pixton can monetize the service. “If the company can continue to attract classrooms willing to try the solution, and highlight the value delivered to entice institutions to pay for the subscription, the company could turn a fun comic-strip tool into something that’s really adding value and providing a revenue stream,” Napier said.

Backbone Magazine
Aug/Sept 2009