Our social media video series (http://www.bobvserp.com/) for a client called RedPrairie features a beautiful and slightly off-balanced research associate named Sally Frockmeister.  She was recently spotted on the new Louie CK show, video clip below.  We think she is simply doing more research on older men to better understand why they make such addle-minded business procurement decisions.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This link will take you to a product/software demo that we built for a client that breaks down a rather sophisticated product into small delicious bites. Product Demo Microsite

And given that the “demo” is one of the key 4 ingredients to marketing success, this tool should be fully explored.

(Yes, that’s me in the demo doing my best imitation of Apple’s “1984″ TV spot.)

Starring in a major Hollywood blockbuster can now be done without first attending rehab. IVI Media is developing a delightful kiosk for the likes of Universal Studios and Disney and more where you and the family can pick a movie, enter the kiosk, perform your roles with passion and exit with a DVD of the movie with YOU in the starring role. Next up: pre-packaged denials and compromising photos on TMZ.

Check out the whole story in this pitch book we just created for them.

“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevancy even less.”
— General Eric Shinseki, 2003

The inexorable change that’s upending marketing is accelerating.  The magazine and newspaper industries were decimated by this force.  I don’t mean the internet tsunami. That’s just the weapon. What’s wielding the weapon is the revolution of consumer choice.

“The digital world has so disrupted the business models of newspapers, radio, television, music and even Hollywood that the yin and yang of mass media and mass marketing are flying apart. We are in the midst of total collapse of the media infrastructure we have taken for granted for 400 years.”
— Bob Garfield, AdAge

The newspapers and magazines were not killed by a byte on their net. They were felled by old fashioned consumer choice.  They bled out because their readers chose a better way to get their news, place their classifieds, and hear about the newest products and services.  Certainly, the old media understands the concept of consumer choice. But they didn’t get just HOW MUCH choice and control the consumer demanded.  And not at the rate of change that it was happening.

I worked at Time Inc and can imagine the end-of-my-career laughter if I looked around the conference room at budget time and suggested, “5 year plan?  How’s this for a 5 year plan: every magazine in this room except People will lose half their rate base and 40% will cease to exist in 5 years.”

The big old media companies couldn’t move far enough.  And they couldn’t move fast enough. Apparently, they were not too big to flail.

According to the AMA, B2C marketers are planning to devote nearly one-fifth of their marketing budgets to social media in the next five years. In addition, growing B2B spending on social media is rising and lines up with the general goals of B2B marketers: customer relationship management and brand-building, which respondents claim will be the highest growth areas in the next year. Social marketing, with its strength in boosting brand engagement and loyalty, is an effective medium for both purposes.

That’s why Darren Ernest (above, right) is the most important man in town. He’s was one of the original SEO guys at a major NYC ad agency (Ogilvy’s neo) and is at the center of today’s biggest SEO and social media campaigns.  And he’s m3digital’s go-to social media guy. Darren is the center attraction at our meetings.  Clients talk about DRTV, print, maybe DM and then with wide-eyed interest turn to Darren and ask, “What’s the latest? Have you figured out how to make social media accountable?” He’s got the Wii controller while we fiddle with the Nintendo joy stick.

As for calculating an ROI on your social spend, the tools and metrics are getting better.  Here’s a good breakdown of the latest ways to measure your investment in social: http://www.socialtimes.com/2010/02/social-media-metrics/

ROI is the word for years to come. And as direct marketers – who have always understood that the consumer calls the shots, that ads that can’t prove their value are failures and that nimble flexibility is the key to profitability – we are thrilled to be square in the middle of this unprecedented change.

Vive la revolution de choix.

Millennium Promise is a global non-profit with a spectacular goal of ending severe poverty by 2015.  There are 80 villages now employing the Millennium Promise model and seeing truly transformational results. The most recent data on Village progress shows dramatic improvements in the basic needs of all MV communities.

We created an interactive website that brings to life the activity and achievements in one particular collection of villages in Uganda.  Take a trip to Ruhiira now to see what’s happening in that part of the world.

www.millenniumpromise.getm3.com

The ‘notch trick’ is a cheap, secret weapon used to lift the response rate of a direct mail pack. We employed the ‘notch’ on a regular basis at Time Inc. The secret to the notch’s power is the same force that’s driving mobile apps profits, texting commerce and is the future of the iPad.

The notch was a small cut-out at the top of the direct mail order card that began the tear-off process.  See above.  It tempted the customer – almost dared them – to tear off the card.  Basically, it started the tear-off for you. It made it easy. In a way, it made the purchase decision for you.

Just like it was easy for people watching the NFL playoff game to text $10 for Haiti earthquake victims ($22MM in a few hours!) Asking them to call and put $10 on their credit card would have cut the response rate by 80% I’m guessing. Notch power is also the secret sauce to mobile apps’ profitability. Download the app, use the free features and, hey, if you want to buy something just one touch and you’ll soon receive a box in the mail. Don’t worry, we’ll hit your credit card.  Easy. Sale.

No doubt the iPad is gearing up with a hip, unique take on the notch. In fact, every form of e-commerce should take the Notch test. Why not start the ordering process for your customer? Make it as easy as possible to order. That means don’t drive traffic to your corporate site and make them look around for the order button. Take them right to a microsite where the ordering process has been halfway begun for them.

Then sit back, count your profits and put another notch in your ROI belt.

We filmed a dozen Duane Reade managers raving about our client’s software solutions.  The software was premiered before 400 Duane Reade managers at the Lowe’s Theatre on 34th Street so we played right along …

Click here to view the embedded video.

For our client RedPrairie, we created an online community focused on food safety.

Visit our new social media site

Many of RedPrairie’s clients are interested and invested in this hot topic. At the center of this Food Safety microsite is a documentary that we wrote, shot and edited about a 4-year-old boy named Jake who got snared in the salmonella/peanut butter outbreak from 2 years ago. It was a big story told through the eyes of a little guy. The ramifications are great for RedPrairie’s clients.

This style of marketing – create a microsite community and fill it with relevant, compelling content – is popular in that it takes the best of social media tactics and blends them with content distribution to engage and, if we’ve done or job, convert visitors to customers.

EPISODE 2

Click here to view the embedded video.

EPISODE 3

Click here to view the embedded video.

Our client offers a transportation solution for supply chain execs.  Big solutions with many bells and whistles and teams of people to integrate it smoothly into a business.  So they wanted a very cool, hip and thin solution that embodies what they offer in an iPhone app.  Now, when you’d like to estimate how much fuel that trip to Florida is going to run you, we have an app for that:  The Fuelculator!

(Caveat: The open secret to eternal, unassailable happiness or, more accurately, ‘joyful stillness’ is to eliminate the false sense of separation. That is not the happiness of which we speak in this article. The happiness referred to herein resides on the phenomenal level and feeds and sates the genetic, conditioned ego. Just so you know. No enlightenment here. Not today. A blog on that TK.)

Consumers pursue happiness with every breath. And don’t listen when they tell you otherwise. Marketers have to be like Ulysses tied to the mast, hearing but resisting, as the Sirens sing their songs of deception. Listening to consumers tell you there are reasons for their behavior other than their own egoic needs is like listening to that Dutch guy say he reacted the way he did to save the plane. He reacted to save the Dutch guy. (Or maybe he was overcome with patri-guilt as it was his boneheaded TSA agents who waved the panty-bomber through.)

With this in mind, determining what makes consumers happy and more prone to buy is quite simple. Just discover what feeds their insatiable and persistent ego. And by ego I don’t mean narcissistic vanity. I mean that force inside that demands you be seen as separate and special and heroic and needed.

Like the big plant in Little Shop of Horrors, the ego is constantly chattering and nagging your brain to be fed.  Even the most enlightened can’t shut it down.  It will be heard.  And what it wants is, at the core, to ensure the survival of the self.

So exactly what will guarantee its survival?  To be more attractive, smarter, stronger, healthier … the usual suspects.  There are dozens of human needs pyramids and tables from which to pull.

But today’s little addition to those ubiquitous lists – something that will definitely feed the happiness of the ego – is a simple thing that is essential in any marketing program that needs to convert a browser into a buyer and to track that exchange (what marketing program doesn’t?) I’m talking about the microsite.

Any DRTV ad, any print ad, any outdoor campaign – basically anything that drives a buyer to a URL to get more info or to order – needs to be supported by a microsite that is designed for instant recognition and instant gratification.

First, instant recognition. The buyer should be met by a microsite that displays the same graphics and copy positioning as the ad that led them there. Sounds obvious but this somehow eludes even the savviest of marketers. This will increase your conversion rate exponentially. I’ve seen the tests. By sending the potential customer to the company’s main website you could be launching them into a sea of conflicting messaging and offers.  And you can’t tell what offline ad got them there in the first place. An inexcusable direct marketing mistake.

Next, instant gratification. Like any 5 year old, the insatiable ego wants what it wants and wants it now.  We have conditioned the consumer to be able to get action and service 24/7. Any backtracking from this expectation will result in lost business. So the design should be such that getting the information they need and taking the next steps are quite apparent to all levels of users.

Clean, simple, instant. That’s not as easy as it sounds.  Going back to the old days of creating insert cards for magazines we saw the design of a card account for huge leaps in response rates. It’s the same with microsites. It takes an experienced creative team to arrange the ones and zeroes in their proper places.  (Um, yeah, we’ve got those people on staff here at m3digital.)

So you see, a perfectly executed microsite is the key to happiness. Tell that to Deepak Chopra.