Happy Birthday Online Advertising!

The Banner Campaign that Started a $24 billion Business

Excerpt from an article posted by Frank D'Angelo on 10.26.09 in Advertising Age,

We have come a long way baby.

Oct. 27 marks the 15th anniversary of the advertising industry's first foray into the digital age. Online banner display ads, first appeared in the age of dialup internet access on Hotwired.com. To the many of you reading this who weren't in the business back then, HotWired was the first commercial digital magazine on the web and the offshoot of Wired magazine. 

HotWired was the first online magazine to attract blue chip corporate sponsorships dollars on the web. The site launched shortly before Netscape's browser, and the advent of such other new media such as Pathfinder.com (Time Inc.'s commercial web content offering) and Cnet.com.

Once the media commitment to HotWired was made, we needed to select clients we believed would share our excitement in entering this new space. We went through the client list and quickly reasoned that MCI (telecom), Volvo (automotive) and ClubMed (travel/hospitality) would be as good a core of candidates for this exploration as any. 

Four of our then-clients placed ad banners as part of that first campaign, MCI, Volvo, Club Med and 1-800-Collect. (The other two advertisers were AT&T and Zima.) Keep in mind, this was 1994; the first graphical web browser, Mosaic, was less than a year old (soon to be replaced by Netscape Explorer), and Web access? Purely dial-up, 24.4kps if you were lucky, meaning these ads took a while to load. The online U.S. population? Two million, if that. 

These "original six" were the first brands to take a leap of faith and place advertising in the unchartered "cyberspace" territory. But several didn't know they were taking it until after the fact. Corporate America was still largely unfamiliar with the graphical web, so we didn't even try to sell the concept. We decided to commit agency media and development dollars to place client banner ads on HotWired without clients' prior consent or knowledge. The way he saw it was if they liked it, they would be happy to pay us and if not, that was OK too; but at least the agency would get a running start at exploring this new exciting medium that was on course to change all of our lives.

To read the rest of Frank's article in Advertising age...

Can you explain that for me one more time please?

If there is one lesson I have learned the hard way throughout all of 2009, is that our world and our lives have become increasing more complex and continues to become more and more so with each new day. We are continuously bombarded with new problems, more questions and more choices as we are confronted with new products, services, more ideas and concepts that will confuse the majority of us. All of this adds to the complexity of and compounds what confused us in 2008 and years before that.

I am convinced that the rise of all this complexity is partially a result of us not being able to say no, to always being attracted by the newest of the new, to always being distracted by all of the things society tells us we need to have, but in the end it does not matter. When life gets this crazy, we need a solution to back down from the insanity somehow and reclaim our lives from the turmoil it creates.

All of this complexity is creating new demand for a whole new range of new kinds of services. Individuals and organizations will find business models in helping people deal with the complexity. The biggest opportunity I can see is for people who are really good at explaining - at breaking down of complex subject matter and putting it into terms that the rest of us can understand. There is a huge oppportunity for people and organizations that can take a complex idea, distill it down to its common denominators and re-package it so that a maximum number of people can understand and act on it.

Many of our clients develop and market sophisticated products or technologies, developed by engineers and other geniuses, or sell services that are intangible and are really difficult to explain in everyday terms. Often this results in a disconnect between the customer and the product or the service offering of the organization, even though the product or service might just be the best thing since sliced bread and an excellent match.

At FRANK, we specialize in taking complex problems, ideas and solutions and explain them in clear and concise ways that resonate with your clients. Most of the time, we use words, but we also employ clean, modern and progressive design, Flash animation, custom photography audio and video or a combination of these to help us help you make your message be better understood. We would also like to help you be better at your job.

Contact FRANK today to see how we can help you stand out and be heard above the noise. Heck, we are not shy, there are others who can help you explain yourself in innovative ways too. We don't mind passing these along to you because every client has unique needs and you just might need a unique solution.

Below are some more clever companies and individuals, mostly in the US. Expert explainers who we think will be making a real contribution towards making the world just a little less complicated in the years to come.

Read on...

Social Media meets Miss Teen Canada-World

World class blogger and Social Media Expert, Rob Campbell (SmoJoe) of Lenzr fame prepares Miss Teen Canada-World for the ups and downs of fame in the Social Media space.

One Wednesday Aug 19th 2009, SmoJoe met Siera Bearchell, the 2009 Miss Teen Canada-World winner—Just three days before a flight to Houston. She's off to Texas to compete for the Miss Teen World crown hot on the tail of being crowned Miss Teen Canada-World back in July. The subject of all kinds of media attention ever since, it has become clear that Siera is going to be a very popular beauty queen.

Smojoe has been retained by the team of people behind MTCW to help transfer some of that buzz into the blogosphere. To that end, Rob spent a fun filled afternoon with her earlier this week...

Read on...

Miss Teen Canada-World amasses blog squad

Toronto, May 21, 2009

FRANK just launched a new website for Miss Teen Canada-World and engaged an army of young women to blog about it.

In conjunction with Encourse Communications and DKPR public Relations, FRANK and SmoJoe developed and launched a social media campaign to maximize exposure for the event and its sponsors before a teen queen is crowned on July 25 in Toronto.

Key sponsors include Proctor and Gamble's microsite BeingGirl.ca, which dispenses advice and articles of interest to teens sponsored by fem-hy products Tampax and Always. BeingGirl.ca will also be linked to on the Miss Teen's Facebook page which has about 1,500 followers. Other sponsors include Faze Magazine, Elmer Olsen Model Management Goody and Red Bull, among others.

For more information, check out the

Miss Teen Canada World Wesbsite...

or read the full article here...

Read on...

The first true Internet inauguration

Social networks are deluged as millions around the world take in the ceremony online


by MATT HARTLEY

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

January 21, 2009 at 4:27 AM EST

Just as Mr. Obama's campaign used the Internet in new ways to organize supporters and raise funds, millions of onlookers turned to social networks and other online tools to soak up every last iota of detail of the 44th President's inauguration ceremony yesterday.

When George W. Bush took his second oath of office in 2005, social-networking sites MySpace and Facebook were in their infancy, populated mostly by teenagers and college students. Although some media outlets streamed the proceedings through their websites, the results were unsatisfying and sparse.

The world watched yesterday as the first true Internet inauguration unfolded.

As Mr. Obama began his speech, 12 million people were accessing news content every second, according to Akamai Technologies, a U.S. firm that helps media companies meet visitor demand on their websites.

Akamai noted that worldwide Internet traffic spiked to levels 54 per cent above normal - 60 per cent higher in North America - as the inauguration kicked off.

CNN reported that nearly 14 million people tuned in to the proceedings through its live Web video feed, easily topping its previous record of 5.3 million hits set on election night in November.

Through an integration deal with Facebook, CNN also allowed users to update their status through the news channel's site as they watched events in Washington.

An average of 4,000 users updated their status every minute, with more than 8,500 posting new updates the minute Mr. Obama began his speech. In total, Facebook reported 1.5 million status updates through the CNN portal alone.

Mr. Obama's official Facebook fan page received a deluge of visitors, pushing the number of fans on his profile to more than four million and swelling the comment section to more than half a million posts. His MySpace page now features more than one million "friends."

For more...

Read on...

Here's What Comes next...

Putting the power of mass media back into the hands of the masses...

From the Huffington Post...

12,000 people who participated in Ariana Huffington's "Off TheBus during campaign 08" should be pleased to know that they're finalists for a "Game Changer" award given by the WeMedia Project. Thanks to all the writing, reporting, recording, digging, web searching, e-mailing, news scanning, tape editing, expertise-sharing, columnizing, team playing, and eye-witnessing (that's a partial list...) they did during the project's 16 months of activity, they collectively contributed to the the first open platform election coverage team ever assembled by a major news site.

It sounds obvious, but you couldn't sign up and join the reporting staff in the national section of any major newspaper covering the 2008 election the old way. It's not part of their model to invite the users in. But if you were an interested user of the Huffington Post, you could sign up for OffTheBus. That's what they mean by an "open" platform. You, yes you, could sign up to contribute to a national election coverage team.

The project went live in July 2007 as an experiment designed to cover the amazing presidential election of 2008 - and it succeeded beyond all expectations (thanks in large part to Amanda Michel's ability to steer without controlling OffTheBus's thousands of contributors). In fact, OffTheBus was such a success that HuffPost intends to make the crowd sourcing and distributed journalism methods developed and honed by OTB during the election an integral part of their editorial process -- utilizing them across all of their different sections...

Read on...

Global Recession Looms—Obstacle or Opportunity?

It all depends on how you look at it.

Its in the news, on TV, on the radio, here on the web, you’ve read the papers – From The Globe and Mail to the New York Times or your own local newspapers, everywhere you hear how the world economy is diving, the financial crisis is now full-blown and many companies are cutting back. Scary doom and gloom proposition or an opportunity in the offing?

Is it time to simply cut back and try to weather the storm or is there another way to make the most of it?

In our opinion – opportunity knocks.

Whether you are the Director of Marketing of a large corporation or the proprietor of a small but struggling enterprise, you have got a lot in common these days and a lot at stake during challenging economic times. How are you going to respond to the challenges you will face in days, months or years ahead? Are you just going to sit back and ride it out or are you going to take positive action to move your business forward despite uncertain times?

If you truly are a forward thinking marketer, you might see recession as an opportunity to add market share and strengthen your business while others lie and wait. Your competitors will most often reduce their marketing activities, so proactive companies can view this as the perfect opportunity to ramp up efforts and actually increase market share.

Continual proactive, effective and cost-efficient marketing campaigns during an economic downturn can prove beneficial. In fact, when competitors drop the ball in terms of cutting back on marketing initiatives, companies enabled to reach out to customers and maintain brand awareness and loyalty are also enabled to improve marketplace positioning.

Why is that so?

When your competitors cut back, it will result in an overall decrease in advertising “noise.” That makes your message reaching your customers even louder and clearer, improving the chances that your brand’s message will be heard.

The best way for you to step up to the plate and deliver strong results throughout a recession is to enhance your marketing efforts through online media channels. It is by far your most efficient and effective way to quickly deliver targeted, relevant, revenue-producing communications to your customers. As customer data available to you continues to grow, the opportunities for you to create better insights and improve revenue grow as well.

So when the economy makes it advisable to cut back on pricier traditional advertising and focus more on cost-effective online marketing, it’s important that you are ready to act quickly and decisively. If you want some excellent ideas on how and where to start or help with your online marketing efforts, drop us a line or send us an e-mail.

There are an array of cost effective options at your disposal and we can help you with any or all of them. Be it a new microsite, a re-vamp of your existing site, online advertising (with some killer banner ads strategically located within one or more of the Social Networking circles or specific targeted communities) or some great ideas that harness the power of cheap but highly effective Search Engine Marketing (SEM), or if you are looking to develop a simple but sophisticated e-mail newsletter campaign, we would be only too pleased to be of service.

If you know what you want, give us a call or send us an e-mail.

If some or all of this is all Double Dutch to you, we'll help explain in simple language that makes it easy for you to understand and help you devise a strategy to move forward.

Help is a click away, it all starts here.

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The new culture on the Web is all about consumer creation; it's composed of things like the nearly 30 million blogs out there and the 70 million photos available on Flickr. With a click of the mouse, anyone can be a journalist, a photographer, or a DJ. The audience -- that 1 billion-plus throng linked by the Web--itself is creating a new type of social media. That's leading to the creation of hundreds of promising Next Net businesses like the ones that follow.

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Apple Speaker iPod-Worthy

Apple was late in entering the speaker accessory market for its overwhelmingly dominant digital music player. But after third-party iPod speaker systems started showing up on the shelves of Wal-Mart and Costco and a gazillion online stores, you can just picture Jobs ordering his minions to get into the game.

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The mysterious Origami project is a mystery no longer: It's a paperback-book-size computer that runs Windows XP. Redmond is betting that you on-the-go types will flock to it like bees to honey.

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