I apologize for the blatant self promotion here. But Spring Creek Group CEO Clay McDaniel was recently profiled in Smart Money Magazine’s Small Business site. I think it’s a nice achievement for our little team of 15 social mediaholics. Here’s the link to the story.
Category: Marketing (Page 13 of 25)
It’s rare that a press release about marketing can leave me without a single thing to add. But, then I find something like this and remember why I read the Drudge Report so often. Since this is a press release from Yahoo, I’m just going to copy and paste the whole thing.
In National Advertising First, Stove Top Stuffing Warms Up Chicago Streets This Winter
Tuesday December 2, 8:07 am ET
Stove Top Campaign Takes the ‘Bah-Humbug’ Out of Holiday Shopping with Heated Bus Shelters and Delicious Stuffing Samples
GLENVIEW, Ill., Dec. 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — In a national advertising first, Stove Top Stuffing is warming up Chicagoans this December by heating 10 bus shelters throughout the Windy City’s high-traffic commuter and shopping areas to help busy consumers keep cozy throughout the hustle and bustle of the holiday season.
The month-long campaign represents the first time that heat has been used in bus shelter advertising, and is part of a larger integrated Stove Top campaign to warm up Chicagoans that also includes print ads in more than 50 bus shelters and street sampling of new Stove Top Quick Cups instant stuffing.
“Stove Top Stuffing is all about warming up families with hot, delicious meals when the temperatures drop, and we wanted a stand-out way to demonstrate this to consumers this holiday season,” said Stove Top Brand Manager Ellen Thompson.
Warm Up Your Senses
Now through the end of the month, Chicago residents can enjoy a break from the cold under one of 10 bus shelter locations throughout Chicago, including:
-- 16 S. Clark Street (Clark Street & Madison Street) -- 197 N. State Street (State Street & Lake Street) -- 300 N. Michigan Avenue (Michigan Avenue & Wacker Place) -- 431 N. Michigan Avenue (Michigan Avenue & Hubbard Street)* -- 757 N. Michigan Avenue (Michigan Avenue & Chicago Street)* -- 538 W. Madison Street (Madison Street & Clinton Street)* -- 1 E. Washington Avenue (Washington Avenue & State Street)* -- 5 N. Michigan Avenue (Michigan Avenue & Madison Street)* -- 221 N. LaSalle Drive (LaSalle Drive & Haddock Place) -- 533 N. Dearborn Street (Dearborn Street & Grand Street) *Stove Top Quick Cups sampling locations
Spreading the Warmth
To give on-the-go Chicagoans a taste of a home-cooked family favorite, Stove Top will hand out samples of its new Quick Cups instant stuffing at select heated bus shelters during the first three weeks of December, including Dec. 4-7, Dec. 12-14 and Dec. 19-21. Whether you’re noshing on holiday leftovers or grabbing a quick lunch at the office, each two-serving Quick Cups provides a warm, flavorful addition to any meal. Just add hot water and heat for up to 60 seconds in the microwave.
To learn more about Stove Top Quick Cups, leftover ideas and quick dinnertime solutions, visithttp://www.stovetop.com.
If you read this blog, you know this space is all for positive thoughts. Warm, happy musings and expressions (well, most of the time.)
So, why would I join a hate group, which is what “I Hate the Oklahoma City Thunder” Facebook Group essentially is. I mean, it’s in the title for crimminy’s sake. I certainly don’t hate all the players on the Thunder. I even like some of them. I have simply chosen to ignore the NBA until the wounds heal.
But, there’s a challenge here. The Facebook group, “1,000,000 Ok City Thunder Fans” has about 1,300 fans. The “I Hate the Oklahoma City Thunder” has about 360. It would be great if more people were in the group that hated the Thunder, not for personal reasons, but for what it represents – a team ripped from a solid fan base.
So join the group. Why not?
Ok, so here’s a little Web site that could probably get addicting if you got good at it and could figure out what it’s most useful for.
Monitter goes out and collects Twitter “tweets” from around the Twitter-sphere and brings them to you. You choose 3 topics that interest you, and Monitter brings you a steady stream of all the tweets in some time period that include those terms. (If you don’t know what Twitter is, please go directly to Wikipedia or Google “Twitter” and read up on it.) You can also target by geographic area, so you only receive tweets from people who live close to you.
What’s the purpose? I have no idea. But it’s free, and you can use it find random information about stuff you may be interested in. And if you figure out a “killer app” for it, let me know.
ClickZ has a report that details President-Elect Obama’s online ad buy. The article has more insights about the $8 million online media plan, but here is a condensed list of who received a little change:
- Google: $3.5 million
- Yahoo: $673,000
- Centro, a local media buying firm for local TV and newspaper site buys: $630,000
- Ad networks: $600,000 (including AOL’s Advertising.com, Collective Media, Undertone Networks, Burst Media, Quigo, DrivePM, Pulse360, Specific Media, and online video networks Broadband Enterprises and Tremor Media)
- Facebook: $467,000 ($370,000 in September)
- Time Warner (most likely CNN.com): $337,000
- Microsoft (MSN Search): $250,000
- Politico: $146,000
- BET.com: $138,000
- The Weather Channel Interactive (geo-targeting): $108,000
- Cox, which offers digital local media: $100,000
- WashingtonPost.com: $100,000.
- Community Connect, publisher of BlackPlanet.com: $61,000
- Microsoft-owned in-game ad network Massive: $44,465
- NBA.com: $21,000 (all in September)
- MySpace: $11,500:
Frequent readers of this column may remember Bonanzle, a fun young company that you should check out if you are selling or buying things this holiday season.
Most small companies believe they need huge expensive PR firms to get on local TV, but this story proves that an entusiastic customer base can bejust as valuable for generating new PR opportunites
Check out this Bonanzle company profile produced by KING 5 this week.
I’ve started reading the Seattle 2.0 blog a little more regularly, especially now that people that I know and am friends with seem to be writing the bylines on a fairly regular basis.
Anyway, I’ve been meaning to add the site to my blogroll for a while. And this article written by the Alliance of Angels’ Rebecca Lovell is a good reason to send people over to check out the site. Let me know if you disagree with any of Rebecca’s points.
Blatant plug here…but in an article written for Mediapost, Spring Creek Group’s Clay McDaniel provides five key questions to ask your agency.
I’m biased since the article came from the Spring Creek Group offices, but it’s worth reading if you are one of the 99% of companies who have tough marketing decisions to make in 2009.
(I’m reposting this from our company blog at www.SpringCreekGroup.com/blog since I was on the road this week and haven’t had time to write as much as I would like.)
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The Spring Creek Group returned today from the Federated Media Conversational Marketing Summit. We’ll try to punch out a few posts commenting on specific news and insights we heard, but the general takeway is that people are desperate for some way to track the success or failure of Social Media campaigns.
So far, the only thing everything can agree upon is that there is no right formula yet. How much is it worth to have someone watch a YouTube Video? Or to create a new one? In fact, the value of User Generated Content seems to be a slippery crocodile for big agencies to grapple with. What is the incentive for Goodby Sliverstein to launch a campaign designed to get 25,000 people to create their own ads? While Agency Creative teams are desperately trying to control the message (and the work), there are tons of people with a camera, a laptop, an idea, and now a giant platform to talk from.
All of this makes the ROI argument more relevant. An agency needs to be able to justify why spending $xx,000 to have their NYU Art School guys build a MySpace page or YouTube video is better than the company giving a couple of film school kids a handycam and a credit card. And since there is no way to value the return yet, it’s hard to quantitatively make any kind of argument.
What does this mean for firms who specialize in Social Media? Well quite simply, it means the industry is growing up. People don’t care about ROI on having a salesperson buy someone coffee. But they care if they are going to send her to New York for 4 day conference. ROI only matters when you identify a place you want to spend a lot of “I” in. When that “I” was a few hours of an intern’s time to build a Facebook page or write a blog post, no one cared. But the fact that ROI is becoming so important indicates Social Media is becoming a real line item on the Marketing Budget, not part of the “Other Channels” bucket. And no matter what, that is good for everyone in the space.
Remember Rick rolling? LOL Cats? Well here’s the next fad. Here are 3 already. Look for 1000 more…Just keep clicking thru…
