Original version.
Version accepted by CBS (for the SuperBowl).

Actually, the second tagline is better …
… every once in awhile censorship makes things better, in ADV.

There are a few comments to CTR and delivery rates in e-mail marketing.

Taking into consideration http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007192 and http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=110936, it seems that there’s no actual references in general data. The two researches show a big gap (almost 20%) in the delivery rates, which is not understandable.
One should assume that Epsilon was using brand new mailing lists, while Return Path was using scarcely updated lists. 20% is know as the percentage of addresses that become obsolete with one year time. If that’s not the case, then maybe one of the two research firms needs to change parameters or origins.

There’s one more detail which I always didn’t understand, at least when I was in Europe.
All my mailings had an average of 30% as open rate and a 8/10% as click-through rate. And I couldn’t understand how my results were always above all the general statistics … that’s because I don’t presume I’m such a DM guru.
Now that I’m in the US all my statistics returned normal: independently from the message, its tone or content, my result seems an exact replica of those shown by the two above researches.

My final comment is very simple.
As DM had such an evolution in the US, US customers deal much more critically with incoming messages. Those could be more friendly, even more naïve if compared to the seriousness of European copybodies. But the maturity and the higher experience in dealing with a much more intense amount of targeted communication puts the marketer in a more challenging position towards its public.
On the other hand European people is still “new” to such a communication bombardment: they always complain about the huge inbox but they read and interact more.

At the end one could say: if DM is effective in the US (where response rates are lower), no European marketer should complain if its DM campaign didn’t reach the expected goals.
Moreover, one should come here, and find out how any targeted communication is often a start of a thick conversation (quite impossible elsewhere) and how response times are even more different (being quicker) and meaningful.

Besides the fact that we have to wait some more time before this type of communication will become mass-oriented, there’s no question: we’re progressively becoming the mobile device we carry, which will identify us, will let us pay products and service and will provide us with the majority of all commercial communications.I read “How Twitter Could Make Money” by Joe Marchese and thought he’s telling a normal, obvious, current reaction to proximity advertising.It’s normal, because it’s normal to refuse new things one doesn’t know (I’m speaking in general).It’s obvious, because that’s not the way to proximity communicating (that’s more similar to broadcast at a much more limited level).It’s current, because proximity advertising is still at a test stage and we need to brainstorm on it.But there’s an absolute issue we can not and must not dismiss: “we are our communication device”, every days more and more.And our personal communication device is our cellular phone.And, on and with our cellular phone, “they” are starting to give us applications (activities one can do) and functions (enlargement of its original use).And every time we use our cellular phone “someone” is recording our activity, now for billing porpoises but in the future …And all that information is building up such a precise profile of ourselves that is much more valuable than any highly-profiled DM record.And any advertizer would love getting all that information to target her/his communication to you.But how that impacts proximity advertising and when it will?I’ve been following the mobile market for years and actually working in it since one year and a half and I can say: the technological system was ready at the start of the millennium and we don’t see it operating only because “someone” is still doing enough money with the “old system”. When we changed into GSM, the system started to be able to record any user’s activity. When we adopted the second generation SIM card, we could record on it any information (even the billing information) and the system transformed itself into a “financial” network (that was in May 2000).All those personal information will bust proximity advertising.To make an example, imagine you’re in your car, at noon, packed in the jam, a few cars from the next traffic light (which is currently “red”). There’s a restaurant on the corner, that is promoting its $5 meal to passers-by. The restaurant system searches prospects and creates a connection with your phone. Starting its digital dialog, it discovers:

• in reference to your GPS position, you’ll be in the queue for sufficient time to read an advertising and act consequently;
• in reference on the time of your first call / first access to the phone in the morning, you had your breakfast early and you should be starving;
• in reference to your phone activity, you hadn’t bought anything to eat, so it’s confirmed your starving;
• in reference to your phone agenda, you have time for a quick stop;
• in reference to your buying habits, you should like one of the menus in promotion.

Now, tell me: that’s much better than a sandwich man, isn’t it?

I don’t understand why nobody admits the current ADV crisis is deep as the financial one and that we need to resettle rules and models to return making business instead of thinking how to recover to credit crunch or investments’ fall.The “Wall Street in 2007 = Web Street in 2009?” comment by Steve Baldin touches all the major points: Cheap Money/Cheap Media, Complex, Opaque Financial Instruments/Complex, Opaque Media Buying Processes, Unreliable Rating Agencies/Irreconcilable Web Analytics and Lazy/Ineffective Regulation, with a very effective comparison between the two crisis.But there’s a big difference in the way those are faced: the first is at least managed, the second one no.The only news we get are executives making predictions on when we’ll be out of it, but nobody is trying to find a way to exit it with a new attitude.We’re only waiting for our clients to recover and let us manage their investments again.But, at the end, we’ll provide them with the same service as before, with the same attitude, the same methods, the same bills.As if nothing happened.But why should they pay us such money?The technology gave us more power to invent communication but, at the same time, it gave it to our clients too.The young generation is starting to work on the web with much more attitude than the older professionals, and still they get a lot less money.The computers replaced us for many practical operations and gave us such a control power we cannot still manage.So, why should our clients pay us the same as before?Why cannot we start to think, invent a new business model in ADV and recover from the crisis because we solved it with a new way to make money?This morning a friend of mine wrote a clever note: “young people sleep in the morning, old people think in the morning silence”.We have the experience to sat down one moment, look at the market, look at the scenario and start up the new ADV model for the new society we act in.We must understand that it’s the moment to accept that our target acts in a totally different way than ten years ago and that we have to find out how to communicate to him/her with a revised message on evolved media.But, above all, we must find out the new communication values, which are no more the media. Having found those (which eventually could be our targets too), we’ll be able to bill for them a much more content and confident customer.

I wish to share a thought I had, reading “Portability Is NOT Mobility“.We must think about news consumption from our target people in a very much different way now than a few years ago.Not only we must consider the importance of blogs and Twitter (which are out of our standard media press release delivery), but we have to know that the news are spread in many different ways, on paper, on the web and now on applications.All that means their consumption can be very different from the one we could expect.Moreover the moment when our target is reading our news could be anytime and anywhere, as he can use fixed or mobile devices and there’s no more a traditional time for reading / watching / searching / …If that is somewhat very important for ADV, it could have influences on PR too.

[integral article from MediaPost]Bags of Doritos Late Night are functioning as “tickets” to enable consumers to access and interact with virtual, 3-D performances by the bands blink-182 and Big Boi.Specially marked bags of the brand’s Late Night varieties bear markers that are recognizable by augmented reality technology — technology that enhances video imagery with computer-generated graphics in real-time. The concerts are being billed as the first-ever augmented reality experiences to showcase live-action video within a 3-D, interactive environment.Users log onto Doritoslatenight.com and point the printed marker on the bag at a Web cam to launch virtual performances that seem to “pop directly out of the bag.” In addition, the technology allows users to change the video performances experienced (two songs by blink-182, one song by Big Boi) each time simply by changing the way they hold or move the snack bag.Participants can also enter for a chance to win tickets to a live blink-182 show in the city of their choice this summer. The band’s tour, launching July 24 in Las Vegas, will stop in more than 40 cities.The novel online events — described by the brand as “concerts in the palm of your hand” — are the latest in an ongoing series of innovative efforts focused on involving and giving control to fans of the Doritos brand.The PepsiCo Frito-Lay division brand has been structuring its marketing around those concepts and continuous dialogue with its fans since 2006, when a new Doritos marketing team led by Director of Marketing Rudy Wilson took over.Like the spicier, more “uninhibited” flavors in the new Late Night line, which was launched in April, the augmented reality concerts reflect the reality that young people in particular “have different sides during the day and late at night,” says Wilson. “They may eat different foods. What else do they do late at night? They like to listen to music. And they want to be able to control where and when they listen to the music.”The special-edition snack bags will be available for an unspecified, limited time at retailers nationwide in support of the Late Night launch. Whether more such concerts are developed will depend on what Doritos hears in its dialogue with consumers via social media and other channels, Wilson says.Doritos’ most visible implementation of the “giving fans control” concept to date has been its “Crash the Super Bowl” program, which asks consumers to create its advertising for the big game. Doritos became the first brand to broadcast a consumer-generated ad during 2007’s Super Bowl, and launched careers for the winning video creators in 2008 and 2009. Last year’s commercial topped USA Today’s advertising meter for the event.Other programs have included the launch of Flavor Shots, which allow consumers to control flavor intensity with flavor packets; a promotion enabling fans to design the first consumer-generated Xbox Live Arcade game; another that enables consumers to determine which of two new flavors continued at retail and which was discontinued; and another in which consumers were given the chance to name a new flavor of the chips.