Google to the Rescue?

 Those of us who work with CPG clients spend a lot of time and energy trying to convince our clients to spend more of their budgets in the online space. After all, that’s where their consumers are spending an increasing amount of THEIR time and energy. But our task has not been an easy one. 

Now, however, we have a new ally. I think. Check out this article from Brandweek. It’s about how Google is making a major effort to get CPG companies to spend more of their ad budgets in the online space. It includes an interview with Kevin Kells, Google’s National Industry Director of CPG (I think that’s his title, anyway—it was kind of hard to tell from the article). He says a lot of things that make sense. Things that Attention Shoppers! has been talking about for the last few months. Such as the importance of creating value for consumers—not just talking at them. Or the wisdom in distributing your valuable content around the internet, not just camping it on your product sites. 

But certainly one of the most interesting parts of the article was the description of a study that Google commissioned from Harris Interactive to measure the effectiveness of internet advertising compared to TV spots. The results were very favorable for the online ads.  

This is the kind of data we need to help convince our clients that the internet can increase both awareness and purchase intent. I hope it’s only a first step for Google, and I hope that other major industry players follow suit quickly. It’s obviously in everyone’s (agencies, clients, sites) best interest.

Hairapy is Much Cheaper Than Therapy

In the past few years, I have noticed that Sunsilk shampoo is doing advertising that is TRYING to get me to notice. Which can be a good thing. Or a bad thing (like the print campaign they ran last year that compared problem hair on your head to the hair on, umm.., other parts of your body). But you certainly have to give them credit for embracing online marketing.  I have been waiting for a while for them to finish the Hairapy site. The last few times I visited the guts of the site were under construction.  There was only the homepage with a video featuring a “Hairapist” on the phone consulting a client in dire need of his services.  Now it’s all ready for you. So check it out. It’s well done and a lot of fun, plus a really intelligent way to offer a free sample (make sure you go to the Hairapy Center). But there’s one thing I find a bit strange: unless I’m crazy, the Hairapist who greets you on the home page is different than the Hairapist in the Hairapy Center. Why is this? Did the first actor get a better gig? Did he see the first part of the site up and running and decide it wasn’t a great career move after all? Or did the Sunsilk folks just want it that way? These are the kinds of questions that keep me awake nights.

Want Better TV? You’ve got it.

Very soon, we will all watch TV on the internet (I have two teenage sons, and they virtually never watch TV, yet they watch TV on the internet waaayyy too much). In fact, the internet and TV will be one in the same.

  The folks at Meredith Corporation have figured this out. You don’t know Meredith? Oh, but you do. They are the folks who brought you such fine publications as Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle, and Parents magazines. In other words, these people are a home and family content machine. And they have put that content to good use on a (relatively) new website, BetterTV (which replaces the Better Homes and Gardens site). I predict great things for this property, and since many of the advertisers in the Meredith offline publications come from the CPG world, I expect a bunch of them to head over here pronto. Check it out. You might learn something. For example, tonight I myself learned to make a simple yet elegant centerpiece out of things I would have ordinarily thrown away. 

Down With Campaign Sites, Up With Product Sites

In my last post, I discussed how short-term campaign microsites were rapidly falling out of favor with both CPG clients and agencies. And for good reason. Since most traffic to these sites is driven by online ad campaigns (with an average clickthrough rate hovering stunningly close to zero) it is simply too expensive to drive significant numbers of people to a site where, chances are, they will probably never return.  

However, I do not put product sites in this same category. Far from it. In fact, I believe that most CPG companies are not getting nearly enough benefit out of these sites. The reason? The sites don’t provide enough value to consumers. Simply putting information about your product on the site is not nearly good enough. You need to offer consumers something else. And what might that be? Preferably, something your brand/product can own.  

For example, one of the clients that I work with at Digitas is one of the world’s most popular laundry detergents. They attract hundreds of thousands of visitors to their site every month, by positioning themselves as an expert in stain removal. 

So what can your CPG client or product own? Figure that out, provide information and tools that give value to consumers, and you will have a product site that helps build your brand and increase customer loyalty.

Microsites are so, like, 2005

I read an article in Adweek a couple of weeks ago essentially questioning whether microsites were in the process of dying a quick death. Based on what I am seeing in the marketplace, I don’t think it’s happening yet. In fact, microsites make up a lot of the work that you see highlighted in this blog. Because so many clients and agencies are still creating fantastic—and fantastically expensive—microsites. But based on what my clients are telling me, and what the measurement and analytics folks at Digitas tell me, I believe we will be seeing fewer and fewer microsites. And I think this will happen sooner than later.  

As loyal readers of Attention Shoppers!  know, we have long been an advocate of placing your messages (or, better still, offering something of value for your customers) where consumers are already hanging out, as opposed to trying to come up with something that’s interesting enough to get them to leave what they are doing and go to your website—fabulous though it may be. 

So while there are still a ton of consumer packaged goods marketers trying to drive consumers to microsites through online campaigns (with a clickthrough rate of less than .05%), smart marketers and agencies are doing deals with Facebook, iVillage, Yahoo and AOL. Not to mention tons of other sites where hundreds of thousands, or millions for the big names, of consumers go every month. CPG marketers are either attracting consumers’ attention on these sites with clever banner ads (which do what TV and print ads do from an awareness perspective) or offer much deeper experiences with a content partnership deal with the site or rich media banner. 

Of course, that’s not to say that all websites for CPG companies are a bad idea. Product sites are a must. And some of them are working harder than ever to build brands. But that’s a subject for another night.