Last month companies dropped millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads with fingers crossed their creation would be one buzzed about positively on Twitter, Facebook and Monday’s blogger news. The money spent on Super Bowl Sunday, however, is a unique splurge for the industry.

Due to the economy, agencies have been forced to break the traditional models set before them. In the traditional model, companies had large marketing budgets that allowed them to focus on design and cross their fingers for success and alignment with business objectives. This sometimes led to highly creative and winning campaigns, but often resulted in failed campaigns that left companies needing to start from scratch and develop a brand new campaign. This wasn’t a problem then, because marketing and advertising budgets were so large they could support failed campaigns and they had the money to spend on second or even third attempts.

It was inevitable that this frivolous approach to spending would collapse. With the current economic climate and the shift from traditional to new media, this collapse of traditional ways of doing things will continue.

In its place, we have seen a more strategic approach to advertising and marketing that has the potential to generate a much greater impact with audiences. The new face of advertising must lead with a strong business strategy, one that aligns with business objectives, long-term goals and a solid market position. Then, design teams need to execute winning creative content.

As more and more companies choose to move away from traditional media campaigns and cross over into new media campaigns, we will see (and are seeing) a major shift in how advertisers reach audiences, whether it’s through word-of-mouth, Facebook, Twitter or other social networking sites. The future of advertising is here… are you ready?

The FTC’s guidelines have made it increasingly important for companies to be more careful about the bloggers they partner with, check the blogger’s background and insist on disclosure. If a blogger you’re considering partnering with has not thoroughly disclosed relationships in the past, you may need to think twice about partnering with them.

Your organization may also consider utilizing more public relations initiatives that simply present stories you think the blogger will find interesting and relevant in hopes that the blogger will write about them. If bloggers write about your company, product or service without compensation or free products, the post does not require as extensive of a disclosure.

Online conversations are effective at generating word of mouth, so it can only be expected that companies will continue to build blogger relationships. However, your company must be careful to create a culture of compliance and work with bloggers who recognize the need to follow the FTC’s Guides.

First, cases from Kmart and Wal-Mart illustrate how companies and bloggers have chosen to or not to disclose material connections and payments for endorsements in the past.

Kmart generated significant positive word of mouth from its 2008 holiday season blogger campaign. Six bloggers received $500 gift cards to post entries about their experiences at Kmart, positive or negative. Each post was identified as a sponsored post. Each blogger was able to give away an additional gift card to one of their readers. For readers to enter the contest to win a $500 gift card from the bloggers, the reader had to promote the contest and Kmart to their Twitter followers or post a blog comment with the item they wanted most from Kmart. This was done more than 3,000 times on blogs, yielding 600,000 network connections. It was also tweeted more than 3,000 times on Twitter which generated considerable discussion.

In contrast, Wal-Mart created a stir with its sponsorship, through Working Families for Wal-Mart, of a blog where disclosure was not apparent. In 2006, a couple made a cross-country trip across the U.S. in an RV, parking at Wal-Marts for free. The couple started a blog called “Wal-Marting Across America”, which frequently posted stories of Wal-Mart employees they met along the way. All of the featured Wal-Mart employees only had positive things to say about the controversial corporation. Wal-Mart denied hiring the couple, but it turned out that Working Families, which received funding from Wal-Mart, decided to sponsor the couple’s entire trip when it learned about their plan. Working Families paid for the couple’s flight to Las Vegas to pick up the RV, extended the trip’s duration, provided an RV emblazoned with the Working Families logo, paid for the gas, set up the blog and paid the woman to write blog entries. While there is a Working Families banner on the blog, nowhere does it disclose that Wal-Mart sponsored the trip.

The differences in disclosure between these examples (and many others) illustrate why the FTC may have decided to create regulations around endorsements and testimonials.

The Vandiver Group is working with the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) to help the industry understand and apply these new guidelines. Donna Vandiver serves on the Membership Ethics Advisory Panel and you can learn more about the guides at the WOMMA web site.

Check in next week to discuss the impact the regulations may have on your business.

There was a reoccurring topic among presentations and participants this year- measurement. 

Measurement and return on investment is a concern for every business function, and this applies to word-of-mouth and social media communications.  Just as with traditional public relations and marketing, social media ROI does not always have a clear cut definition.  At the 2009 Summit companies and organizations continued to share their best practices for ROI within social media. A few key takeaways:

• A greater level of ROI accountability is being placed on social media programs as budgets are expanding into 2010 and more investment is being made.
• Engagement number (such as page views, number of members, comments) does not equal ROI. ROI is a business result, such as earnings, decreased expenses, etc.
• Social media benefits are often long-term and don’t fit into the short-term measurement lenses of traditional communications.

There is so much information and ideas around measurement and metrics in social media that WOMMA has developed a new guidebook for best practices and lessons.   Go to the WOMMA site to download the guidebook and I’ll continue to share some of my favorite info I discover here on the blog.

The Harvard Business Review has expanded their social media presence from @HarvardBiz to now include @AskHBR, @TheDailyStat and @ManagementTip. Just one glance at the recent tweets by @AskHBR tells you it is a must-add to your list of Twitterpals.

The first post on their page when I logged on read:
Tutorial: What business are you really in? Is your answer the same as your customers’? http://bit.ly/a0R9c Questions?

Following the link, I read through the article and am now thinking about “What business am I really in?” and I want to ask the team I work with what their answers are.

The title of the article is “Marketing Myopia” and seems to be a well-chosen name. The brief presents four myths of marketing positions that, in the writer’s opinion, put a business at risk. The responses are things I believe TVG practices with our client service, yet it requires a deeper look at the “physician-heal-thyself” risk that consulting firms often ignore.

There has been a lot of churn in the economy, the ways clients spend money, the ways clients make decisions and the ways professional service firms in the marketing communications field are positioning themselves. Yet, who is thinking about mar comm from the vantage point of ‘what business are we in?’

If a consulting company turns our teams and our creative talents outward, to serve the marketplace, we achieve success for the short-term. If we focus these teams on looking inward as well, we stand a better chance at long-term strength. We’ve started down a path of rebranding TVG for 2010, and I think I’ll add this question to our next thinking session. So for those of you on my team, be ready to answer: What business are we really in?!

Instead of providing a long synopsis on some of the lessons learned, I wanted to share a few of my favorite tidbits and tweets from presenters and attendees.

I hope these tidbits get your mind going about interactive marketing and social media within your organization. For more of a wrap-up from WOMM-U, visit their conference Web site.

The social media realm has really taken media’s center stage over the last 12 months. With the boom of Twitter and growth of social networks among older demographics, companies everywhere are not only starting to take notice, but they are making room in their budget for social media programs.

What WOMM-U demonstrated was companies are also starting to understand the unique qualities of this medium, especially the need to put some of the control into the consumer’s hands. The common mistakes of controlling the conversation over the past few years seems to be fading and companies are truly embracing the conversations…and it is paying off for their business!

I recently attended the National Association of Government Communicators (NAGC) expo in Orlando. I tried something new at the TVG booth. I pulled out my iPhone and tweeted that I would be giving away a brick of St. Louis-based Bissingers chocolate to the first person who stopped by the TVG booth on the show floor.

Turns out my original tweet went a bit “viral.” Someone I’d never met before, Glenn Batuyong from the Unified Port of San Diego stopped by my booth after seeing my twitter post. He had not been following me, but saw the tweet on the NAGC twitter site, which picked up my post.

Glenn in turn tweeted about winning the chocolate and posted a picture of the chocolate, the flash drive he picked up with TVG information and our crisis communications brochure. You can see the picture at http://twitpic.com/3upu8.

One of Glenn’s followers, the Social Media Guide then retweeted about Glenn’s post. In the span of about three hours, my followers, NAGC followers, Glenn’s followers, the SMG followers, even TVG followers saw my original tweet and Glenn’s tweet. That adds up to nearly two thousand people. Not bad for a few minutes work in between conversations at the booth.

To quote from Glenn’s tweet, “Marketing over Twitter works!” I couldn’t agree more.

Follow Andy on Twitter: @TVGmediaguy

I was a video producer/project manager in a creative subsidiary for the beer company for about twelve years (until 2003). Those were heady times, when market share was rising, new products were being introduced, their international reach was expanding, and the company (with their ad agencies) were producing ad campaigns that became cultural icons (Spuds McKenzie, “Yes I am,” “I love you, man,” Frank and Louie, “Whassup?” and the classic “This Bud’s for You”). And they made the most of their ongoing icons, most notably the Clydesdales.

Working for one of the world’s great marketers let me observe what types of things they did that worked really well, and a few that didn’t (Dewey Stevens, Zeltzer Seltzer, and, in my humble opinion, getting rid of the Cardinals). In a nutshell, here are some of the things I think they did really well that can be generalized for other businesses.

Start with a quality product. They believed in producing a consistent, quality product and I saw the degree to which they were willing to make that commitment. Marketing a really good product is a lot easier than a mediocre or poor one. It’s hard to list competitive advantages if you don’t have any.

Make use of employees as ambassadors. You could probably ask anyone that worked for the company the attributes of Budweiser, and the employee could rattle them off. A-B knew the value of employees as marketers and made good use of that resource. They would give employees new products as part of a monthly beer allotment so that employees could sample them, and pass samples on to friends.

During a time when they were defending Budweiser’s market share, they gave each employee 25 bucks to buy Bud’s for friends, colleagues and perfect strangers. Up the sampling rate and create good will. (People seem to like free beer beyond its actual market value. I don’t know why.)

Played up competitive advantages well. An example: because of their efficient network of distributors and the strategic location of their breweries, they could deliver beer quickly and efficiently. This allowed them to market the freshness of their beer, and thus the Born On date was, um, born. To emphasize this, they created a series of special promotions offering select retailers (and in some cases entire sports stadiums of drinkers) beer packaged within 24 hours.

Aggressively marketed at every level. The brewery of course, was known for their Superbowl ads, flashy sponsorships, even a blimp or two. But they also paid attention to marketing at a grass roots level, and had a number of programs to encourage the driver-salesmen, who were often the main contact between the wholesaler and the retailer, to increase shelf space, show point-of-sale materials, hang neons, get key products on tap, and encourage sampling of new products.

Not every company can be an Anheuser-Busch. But they all can look at the principles that great marketers use, and use those same principles to market products and services more effectively, especially in tough times when marketing budgets become tight.

Smart marketers look to use innovative ways to push their products – social media and word-of-mouth marketing for instance. TVG helps our clients find new and cost-effective ways to build your brand and your reputation.

* I have to say that one of their initial changes, the new AB InBev logo, is a disaster. Neither traditional nor contemporary, it looks to me like it was designed by a second year graphic arts major – no offense meant to second year graphic arts majors. Here are some other local St. Louis opinions about the new logo.