Survival Guide

While watching the Superbowl and the Oscars this year (www.mimieo.com), I was interested in noting how many advertisers drove to the web to continue their stories and campaigns. This, to me, seemed to be a big improvement from years past. Yet some advertisers are still not getting it–in fact, some are not even including their web address in the supers or under the tag. So for all the buzz about integration and synergy between offline and online, there are still the misses that occur in this era when most agencies tout 360-degree marketing.

The advertisers who get it (Dove, for example) are doing remarkably well in both awareness and sales. They are becoming the best practices standard in almost every presentation I see of “what to do” between online and offline. And in the Dove case study, one can see where the strategy reached all touchpoints, irregardless of medium, in a seamless approach. Over in the Mastercard world, however, the “Search” campaign has a major disconnect between the tv commercial’s wandering eye and the web experience for the consumer (www.priceless.com/search). Where did the eye go? What do I click on–an envelope? You mean I have to go buy a magazine now? We at bbdigital dissected this experience a bit–was the strategy directed to loyal customers of Mastercard or to new users? Where was the end benefit for Mastercard? All of these questions. If we’re asking them, you can bet that the consumers probably gave up awhile ago.