Subject: Upfront 2005, New Search Engines--and a New Look

From: Chief Marketer <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 03 May 2005 13:30:01 -0500

May 3, 2005 | A Primedia Property

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Welcome, and Welcome Back
Upfront 2005: A Buyer's Market
Search Marketing: The Five Little Engines That Can
Have Your Say: What Makes a Conference Worth Your While?
The Rules of Text
Industry-Specific Content, You Say?
Reader Engagement Tool Intrigues Advertisers
Getting Noticed in the 900-Channel Universe

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From The Editor

Welcome, and Welcome Back
Those of you who have been reading CHIEF MARKETER since its debut nearly two years ago no doubt notice something different about today's edition. It's not only been redesigned, but it's even undergone a bit of a name change, to CHIEF MARKETER REPORT.

That's because the weekly e-zine is no longer the only component of the CHIEF MARKETER franchise. We have two additional e-mail newsletters--E-ZINE IQ and (imminently) CRM LOOP, both edited by that doyen of marketing trade publishing, Ray Schultz.

And we are proud to present the CHIEF MARKETER Website. On it you'll find a wealth of content on an array of topics that have one unifying feature: They're of critical importance to chief marketers and anyone else who is charged with shepherding, burnishing, and promoting a product, a brand, or a company.

In the weeks ahead we'll be making the Website even more robust, based in part on your feedback. So after you check out the Website, let us know what else you'd like from it.

In the meantime, we'll continue to work hard to live up to our tagline: "Insights. Innovations. Solutions."

Sherry Chiger, editor

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This Week's Stories

Upfront 2005: A Buyer's Market
By Andrew Grossman
If you're trying to buy television airtime in the "upfront" sales market this month, you could be in luck. Media buyers at a New York conference predicted that a weak "scatter" market combined with the uncertain economy and mounting pressure among marketers to move ad dollars online will lead to a weak pricing season for broadcasters.

Not surprisingly given the traditional posturing that surrounds the upfront, the TV executives were a bit more bullish than the ad buyers. Still, no one expects a banner year.

"The dollars are going to be relatively flat; it's pretty much a share game at the moment," said Charlie Rutman, the recently named CEO of Havas's Media Planning Group, who was speaking at MediaLife Publications' Outfront Conference last week.

To read more, visit CHIEF MARKETER.

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Search Marketing: The Five Little Engines That Can
By Brian Quinton
SEARCHLINE
The trend toward vertical search -- narrower than the big one-size-fits-all engines, and (presumably) more targeted -- got a little extra rocket fuel recently with LookSmart's decisions to carve five smaller search sites off of its main search platform.

Three of the five aim their content at students of various ages: Teenja.com for teenagers, GradeWinner.com for preteens, and 24HourScholar.com for college students. Two other new LookSmart search sites hope to appeal to parents: ParentSurf, with a menu of general parenting resources; and GoBelle, directed specifically at active mothers.

At all these sites, visitors have a choice of searching the 1.5 billion documents of the Web that LookSmart's spiders crawl, or searching within the materials on its FindArticles.com property. The aim is to get users of those search engines quickly to a range of information that is relevant to them but not overwhelming, in the way that 15 pages of Google search results might be.

And for advertisers, "we can deliver a highly targeted, highly qualified audience that -- just by virtue of the fact that they're using our site -- is passionate or has a particular need related to the topic," says CEO Dave Hills.

There's another revenue opportunity from these new vertical searches: syndicating search results to content publishers who may want to own their search users. "Most publishers have ceded their search audience to either Google or Yahoo," Hills says. "They take their results and offer their paid search advertising. As a result, they have no relation with the search advertiser, and they don't have good site search or vertical search."

To read more, visit SEARCHLINE.

Have Your Say: What Makes a Conference Worth Your While?
CHIEF MARKETER asked two leading marketing-event producers to tell us how they evaluate their key deliverables--in other words, what makes attending a marketing conference worth the the time and money. We'll publish their answers in an upcoming issue.

But first we want to hear from you. Just click here to take part in our survey. We'll tabulate the responses, show them to the experts we interviewed, and report back with an executive summary.

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Sign Up for the E-Zine IQ enewsletter by Award-winning Editorial Director Ray Schultz of Direct Magazine
E-Zine IQ is a bi-weekly email newsletter about email newsletters with particular focus on corporate communications designed to build customer relationships. It drills down to all aspects of production, from content and getting your newsletters past the spam filter, to the technology you need in house. To subscribe, click here.

The Rules of Text
As a marketing medium, mobile messaging is finally old enough to have a list of dos and don'ts. In its latest Mobile Youth IQ e-newsletter, digital solutions provider North Castle Nextstep and mobile marketing software provider Enpocket offer what they dub "MYIQ Rules for the Mobile Road." Among their words of advice:

* "It's about your customer, not you." In other words, don't send messages telling the recipients what they can do for you--namely, buy your product.

* Tailor the message to the medium. "Think long and hard about what value each particular piece of content has on the mobile phone and in the 'portable' world. If it's better served on the Web, leave it there."

* "Provide instant gratification." Don't tease recipients with a mobile message only to require them to go to the Web or another medium to get their reward.

To read more, visit the CHIEF MARKETER Website.

Industry-Specific Content, You Say?
Surveys have shown that many of you would like to receive industry-specific content. If you're one of the folks interested in receiving targeted industry briefings, let us know which industry you work in by clicking here.

Reader Engagement Tool Intrigues Advertisers
By Andrew Grossman
When "Adweek" used a tool from New York's Monroe Mendelsohn Research (MMR) for helping to measure reader engagement across 211 consumer magazines in its annual March "Hot List" issue, Bob Shullman felt a measure of redemption.

Shullman, MMR senior vice president, began championing his PReSS -- Publication Readership Satisfaction Survey -- tool to intrigued but wary advertisers a year ago. "Clearly it helped," Shullman said last week of the "Adweek" endorsement. "Anytime a metric gets you on the Hot List people want to know what it is about. From that happening, quite a few people called up and said, We'd like to know more about what the survey is."

MMR measures reader engagement by surveying more than 18,000 people on a wide range of metrics, from how they receive the copies of the magazines they read to how often and how much time they spend with them.

"Advertisers want to know what's underneath the audience numbers, what drives people to become readers," Shullman said. "What is it about a product that makes a reader read a magazine or a national newspaper?"

To read more, visit www.ChiefMarketer.com.

Getting Noticed in the 900-Channel Universe
By Christie Schweinsberg
WARD'S AUTO WORLD
Auto makers are among the marketers resorting to nontraditional marketing methods to grab attention and break through the clutter. Product placement, viral marketing, and blogging are part of the menu, along with marketing techniques that defy description, such as braiding a star athlete's hair to match the tread pattern of a new tire.

It's all aimed at getting noticed in a 900-channel TV universe that comes complete with commercial-zapping devices such as TiVo. "We're in a very interesting time" in the brand marketing world, says Simon Williams, president/CEO of brand consultancy firm The Sterling Group. "The days of traditional advertising -- traditional 30-second TV advertising -- [are] dead. If not, [they're] dying."

Says Lincoln Merrihew, managing director-automotive practice, Compete: "If you're a smaller company, and you try to make a splash in the marketplace, and Honda comes in...even if you spend $20 million [on a TV ad campaign], Honda's spending $100 million. It almost doesn't matter how good your ad is, it's just going to be very hard to be heard, because Honda's yelling at a $100 million volume, and you're yelling at a $20 million volume."

So in a battle to climb out of the rut of look-alike ads and win over new customers, most of the world's auto makers are resorting to a long list of new-age marketing techniques, ranging from the familiar to the outrageous. For examples, visit the CHIEF MARKETER Website.

CHIEF MARKETER REPORT is the former weekly CHIEF MARKETER e-newsletter but with a new design, increased circulation of 100,000 marketing professionals, and new quick-read content for today's busy executives who need to "cut through the clutter." CHIEF MARKETER REPORT will deliver the best insights, innovations, and solutions to high-level marketing executives. It will provide thought leadership and explain who's doing what that works. To subscribe click here. To advertise click here.

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