Andy Boyer

Category: Marketing

  • Should You Fire Your Marketing Agency

    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.

  • Back from Federated Media Summit

    (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.)

    >>>

    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. 

  • The New Meme in Web Comedy

    Remember Rick rolling? LOL Cats? Well here’s the next fad. Here are 3 already. Look for 1000 more…Just keep clicking thru…

  • But What is his High Score on iPhone Bowling?

    Adotas brings us word that Barack Obama is bringing his presidential campaign to the coolest phone (and presumably most influential trendsetters) on the planet,  releasing an iPhone app that will enable supporters to easily reach out to friends and remind them to vote for their favorite candidate.

    According ot the story, the app,  “Call Friends,” organizes the user’s phonebook by state and gives each contact a status (called or not called).  You can also use the app to find out where he stands on issues – and of course – enables people to donate to the campaign. 

    I will tell you one thing.  I wouldn’t  trust a lot of politicians to run a company’s mail room, but if Obama doesn’t become President, he would certainly be a heck of a CMO.   

  • Kyle Johnson Photography

    I’m going to quickly plug the web site of a colleague of mine, because I like the work he has up there, and also really enjoy how the site is laid out.  If you are looking for a few minute break today, take a wander thorugh the pics at KJ Photos.com.

  • Nintendo Makes Great Use of YouTube Real Estate

    Adding video clips to YouTube is nothing new, and video game companies have been putting demos of their games up there for years. 

    But Nintendo has upped the ante with some real creative work on their channel.  Make sure to watch the whole video, then do some right clicking to see how they did it.

  • 2 Big Numbers, and How They are Related

    $20 Billion.  $16 Billion.  Two relatively large numbers that may be too hard to comprehend.  So here’s a funny comparison. 

    According to Valleywag, the entire newspaper industry is now worth $20 Billion.  I suppose that seems right for a 100-150 year old industry with papers everywhere from New York to Wasilia.

    But that number seems kind of small when you figure that Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s cofounders, are worth nearly $16 billion each according to Forbes.  So 2 men who have made it easier to search for online versions of newspaper articles, could essentially buy the entire industry they are destroying.   Does that mean personal fortunes are a tad over inflated?

  • Josh Howard, Mark Cuban, the National Anthem and a Blog – The Perfect Storm

    I am unashamed to be a huge Mark Cuban fan.  American success story of a guy who hustles, has worked his rear end off, is always searching for the best opportunity for success, and cognisant of when to get out and start something new.  Now he has more money than he can ever spend and gets to run around thumbing his nose at other NBA owners.    (The only unfortunate thing is that you can probably make a case that David Stern’s officials are under orders to make sure he never wins a title.  See: Wade, Dwayne, 2006 NBA Finals).

    Anyway, his blog is always worth reading.  And I was just having a conversation about transparency yesterday which makes this thread on BlogMaverick even more relevant.  The context of my conversation was whether anyone in the U.S. will be able to run for public office in 20 years, if hackers are going to be able to get to emails you sent and received.  

    But here are people who use real email addresses to willingly spew stupidity and hate.  I would love to sit next to one of these guys in the office and get his reaction.  Good for Cuban for publicizing these.  Check out the post.

  • Fun and Easy Social Media Campaign

    Does this make me want to buy a bunk bed? Maybe not. But did it introduce me to a url I had never heard of before? Yes. And am I forwarding said url around to others who might want to buy a bunk bed? Apparently so.

    But check out this fun and easy game from Bunkbeds.net.
    I could survive for 1 minute, 28 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

  • Go Miniman Go

    I bet you didn’t know that the Lego “Mini-man” just had his 30th birthday. Launched August 25, 1978, he’s now been featured in hundreds of Lego products. So how do you announce this across the Social Media spectrum? I think this video does a great job.