Dotcom marketers keep the faith

By DITA DE BONI

Don't cry for dotcom, New Zealand. The truth is, it will not leave you. Despite these hard times, with the share-price plummet, it can deliver - don't keep your distance.

Maybe they are too young to know better, or more probably they are young enough to know better than most, but two visiting internet marketing whizes from San Francisco say both dotcom companies and the internet arm of conventional companies will continue to be where client growth and profit is most prolific.

But a marketing strategy, including above-line advertising to drive people to your site, will still be important, say 23-year-old Christopher George and 26-year-old Julio Cabanillas, interactive media specialists from the global advertising agency Foote Cone Belding (FCB).

The two banditos - as they are affectionately known at the Auckland FCB headquarters - are here to instruct their Kiwi counterparts on the rights and wrongs of internet ad marketing strategies and the correct branding of dotcom companies.

The banditos should know. Sixty per cent of billings issued by the San Francisco office of FCB are to dotcom companies, including Amazon.com.

The office hit hard times two years ago, losing several clients - including Levi's, which it had held for 67 years - but has since reinvented itself with a strong focus on interactive media planning, working into strategies some nifty website executions and interactive banner advertising.

Mr George and Mr Cabanillas are making the rounds of Australasian FCB workshops at a particularly piquant time. With several studies woefully pronouncing the demise of dotcom retailers, the banditos look happy and relaxed - cocky, even.

Mr Cabanillas said: "The recent crash means dotcom companies and their venture capitalists will have to do more homework, that's all. It's no longer good enough to say 'I've got a good idea. I'll become a dot.com and make it.'

"The scepticism about e-stocks is healthy because it has to be done right."

The San Franciscans seem perplexed that New Zealand would still be debating the wisdom of a comprehensive internet strategy - "the internet's not going away" - although they offer some caveats: "It's not just a matter of going online, but doing it intelligently."

Mr George sounds the fundamental warning: "Remember, above all, the experience you want consumers to have online when considering your strategy. What are you trying to communicate? Don't get bogged down in the technology. Remember it's still about brand association."

The two amigos are heavily into "rich media" advertising - audio, video games, e-commerce and other forms of interactivity that enhances the browsing experience as opposed to "static" media placement.

One execution developed for 3Com has targeted IT managers, presenting product information in the form of a game.

FCB claims visitors to the games spend about 13 minutes "playing" - a quest to track down global hackers - while being educated in what the company offers.

"If you can reach the heart and soul of the user, you have a better chance to build a relationship," Mr George says. "These games make the IT manager feel like a hero."

The 3Com e-commerce campaign is available in nine languages and hooks up with a direct marketing strategy incorporating 38 countries. As with many of the strategies developed by FCB, the site is laden with prizes and other incentives.

Another execution the pair have worked on is the Sega Dreamcast video-game launch, where they say the objective was to "wow" the viewer.

The front page of the site features a design which, as it rolls over, becomes bigger and bigger. A suitably exciting soundtrack accompanies the visuals.

The online and off-line campaign for the Dreamcast, strategically launched on 9/9/99, led to the largest sales of a single product in one day in the history of entertainment.

On a smaller scale, but equally effective, has been the listen.com advertising banner, placed on a host of carefully selected music-related sites and search engines.

The banner has a request function where the user can select an artist and be taken directly to that artist's web page and download MP3 audio tracks.

"The fact that you can search within the banner and condition the user to know what you are offering is key. The creative is simple but effective, and conveys exactly what the site is about."

Executions provided by FCB San Francisco can cost anything from $350,000 upwards, and the pair say research shows the sky is the limit for online budgets.

Unlike "off-line" advertising, where performance levels off at a certain level of spending, e-advertising seems to grow exponentially with an increased spend on cover.

Although the internet strategies follow the standard 1:3 ratio of conventional advertising campaigns (roughly three times more should be spent on media placement than production), the cost to clients comes before - and after - the online campaign.

"You have to truly understand your audience and your business. The internet strategies will only be successful in the context of hard objectives," Mr Cabanillas says.

"The real expenditure comes from thoroughly researching your target market, and then the follow-up work to monitor exactly how it's working."

Mr George adds: "Researching where you can place your banner ads, for example, is very important. There may be thousands of obscure websites that come up from search engines but they could be favoured fan sites that are constantly visited by your audience."

The banditos say internet advertising is moving away from the gay/straight, black/white audience identifiers of old towards "psychographic" consumer groups - a more complex consumer profile.

"In placing ads online, we can target video-gamers and disregard how the audience skews (ethnically, sexually etc)."

For examples of what not to do, Senors George and Cabanillas point to Walmart in the US as a site that has not leveraged the unique properties of interactivity.

"What they've done is take the bricks-and-mortar layout - store aisles, for example - and simply put it online," Mr Cabanillas says.

"But the online experience is much more fluid than that, and should provide 'smarter' services like recommendations, discounts and other fun things to enhance the user experience. Not intrusive, just smarter."

In New Zealand, they say a good example of the right approach can be found at www.webmedia.co.nz - a "sticky" site, Mr George says.

"There's lots to do there, and I found myself stuck on the site for a long time. It was fun - very cool."

It certainly helps that the pair are interested in online music and video games themselves. They agree it gives them more empathy with the users - and sometimes "freaks out" the corporate monoliths trying to "get jiggy" with younger target markets.

Emma Blake, media business manager for FCB in Parnell, says the San Francisco visitors have proved very helpful. While the office handles no dot.coms now, it expects the business will pick up in the future.

"What not to do when looking at [online strategies] is not to get too complicated, we've learned," she says.

"As they say, we have to try and not get too creative on systems that are not up to it. The human mind moves faster than the rate of technology."


Related Links


Amazon.com

Listen.com

Webmedia.co.nz