Cream

News

Follow Us

Archive for December, 2009

  • Dec
  • 11

The Re-Launched CNTraveller.com – Review

The recent announced re-design of CNTraveller.com is complete and the site re-launched last week.

The overall site look is understated, with the white and light blue background hues allowing the photography and videos to stand out. Generous leading and font sizes also make for a pleasurable and not ‘over busy’ browsing experience. The CNT team hasn’t forgotten that in travel, pictures do the talking, with large panels used to display attractive hotel and destination photography.

The content of the site is similar to before – destination and activity guides give users tantalising snippets of the contents of the full magazine and there are plenty of references to the ‘offline’ magazine to drive subscriptions.

New interactive features include a blog by CNT’s offline editor, Sarah Miller, and a feed from the magazine’s twitter account. In addition, there’s a readers’ Q&A which, if it takes off, will provide travel companies with an opportunity to promote themselves if they can provide relevant and considered answers to potential travellers’ questions.

The major innnovation is the introduction of a hotel booking engine in association with Travel Intelligence as predicted by Cream in October.  This is heavily promoted throughout the site and it’s clear that the new revenue stream opened up by this feature were an important reason behind the re-launch.

For advertisers, the options are now wider with more ‘aspirational’ ad formats available than on the old site.  Bigger banners have been introduced, as have double MPUs, double Skys and page sponsorship opportunities (the homepage is currently ‘woodpaneled’ by the Canadian Tourism Commission.)

In all, from a design perspective its a huge improvement on the old site, which was looking rather dated, and from an advertiser’s standpoint it now offers a more aspirational environment with formats that better showcase their premium offerings.

The challenge going forward will be for the CNTraveller.com team to up the pace in the creation of high quality, branded and interactive content to keep their visitors coming back for more.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Tumblr
  • email
  • Print

By: Catriona Deery

Posted in Advertising, Online | No Comments »

  • Dec
  • 10

Free, Freemium or Paid For? The Future of Online News.

The latest ABCEs for October have just been released, revealing that the Guardian.co.uk has held on to its no.1 spot for the 2nd straight month with 31.7m unique users in October, with the Mail online remaining in 2nd place with 30.4m users despite the Jan Moir/Stephen Gately controversy.  The Telegraph came in 3rd place with 30m whilst the Times, with 20.87m users, and the Independent, with 9.7m users, lagged well behind  – although both showed rapid month-on-month growth of 13% and 10% respectively.

The survey comes at a time when the whole notion of advertising-funded  ‘free access’ online news models are the subject of intense debate.

Newspapers are suffering under the twin pressures of declining offline circulation and declining ad revenues, both online and offline.  Despite online advertising gaining in popularity amongst advertisers, and the predictions that this trend will continue in 2010, News Corporation have taken the view that growth in revenue from this source is not enough to  justify the continuation of the ‘free access’ model. As such, they’ve announced that the content of times.co.uk will be accessible only to subscribers from the Spring of next year.

Paid for access to content is nothing new – both the FT and WSJ operate such models – but News Corp’s times.co.uk looks like it will be the first online ‘mass’ national newspaper to erect a ‘paywall’ around all its news content.  According to James Harding, the editor, users will have the choice of a subscription or 24 hour access priced at approximately the cover price of the offline version (90p).

This announcement of details of the plans was closely followed by the declaration of a deal between News Corp, Time Inc., Hearst, Conde Nast and Meredith to launch a portal to promote their combined content for ‘paid for’ download to serve the burgeoning market in ereaders and the market soon to be created by the ‘rumoured’ new Apple Tablet.

At the same time, News Corp execs have been mounting a calculated assault on Google, claiming that by indexing their content and making it available to all, Google is threatening to undermine the future of quality journalism.  Google, clearly keen not to be labelled as the bad guy in this debate, announced a pledge to limit users accessing ‘paid for content’ from Google searches to a maximum of 5 articles before the paywall comes down.  They also countered, albeit obliquely, with the announcement of their ‘Living Stories’ project, suggesting perhaps if news providers had given some serious thought as to how to differentiate their content to best exploit the digital medium they might be garnering a larger slice of the online audience than they are.

It will be interesting to see if this bold move by the Times will succeed.  As the latest ABCEs demonstrate, the Times has got the least to lose by such a move, trailing as it does a poor 4th behind the Guardian, the Mail and the Telegraph.

If the subscription revenues are higher than the existing online advertising revenues, it will be deemed to be a commercial success although the Times will inevitably become an increasingly niche publication. The question is  ‘what sort of niche?’ and will that niche still prove attractive to advertisers, as that of the FT undoubtedly is, or will the title disappear from advertisers schedules altogether? Also, what sort of impact will this move have on the newspapers’ offline sales and circulation?

Other newspapers will be watching with interest but as yet there are no signals that they’ll be following the Times’ path.  William Lewis, the Telegraph Group’s new MD of Digital, has hinted that the Telegraph will continue with its ‘freemium’ model, using news as the way to attract a mass audience for their premium games and services such as Fantasy Football.  The Guardian will no doubt see this as an opportunity to grab a larger slice of the online advertising market in the UK as they continue to build the site into an international player to become the bedrock of multinational online campaigns as well as UK ones.

What is certain is that we’ll see more and more online publications assessing their strategies and adopting either subscription or freemium models. The era of access to free news online is not coming to a close, but the era of free universal choice of the source of that news certainly is.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Tumblr
  • email
  • Print

By: Graham Painter

Posted in Advertising, Online | No Comments »

  • Dec
  • 9

Online Advertising – a Smart Move for Luxury Brands?

Online display advertising is on the increase. Figures from Nielsen Online comparing Q2 2009 with Q2 2008 suggest that not only are the number of display ads up, but also the number of advertisers trying out the media for the first time. And figures from the European Interactive Advertising Association suggest this upsurge is due to continue, with 94% of European marketing executives set to increase their spend in 2010 and 1/3 adding mobile advertising to their strategy.

What’s behind this increasing popularity?  Marketers responding to the EIAA study cited the targeting opportunities now available – 4/5 of online publishers now offer some form of targeting according to eConsultancy – and value for money, both the low costs of inventory (driven by an inventory supply surplus vs. demand) and of production.

But I’d also suggest that the rapid development of ad available formats has made the medium more attractive. Where not so long ago the advertiser had the trusty banner, skyscraper and MPU to choose from, now media such as elleuk.com and the Conde Nast sites offer formats as diverse as expandable strips, banners,  double skys and double MPUs, all embedded with rich media.  This allows advertisers, and premium and luxury brand advertisers in particular, to use online as a strong ‘branding’ vehicle, in addition to the more usual expectation of driving traffic to their web sites and generating measurable response, as these new formats showcase the quality of their offering and the craftsmenship that goes into creating it.

And there’s more reason to invest in rich media ads – it increases the effectiveness of the campaign.  A study by Eyeblaster estimated that rich media increases click thru rate by 200% from 0.1% to 0.3%. The most effective form of rich media was video – improving performance over other forms of rich media by 71%.

However, a concern for luxury advertisers is the profile of online ad clickers. ComScore research in the US suggests that not only is a very small percentage of the online population reponsible for the the vast majority of clicks, but also that the ‘clicker’ profile is significantly downmarket of the ideal profile for a luxury brand. This would make sense when one considers the tendency of time-poor affluent consumers to go online with more concrete and rationale objectives, and not be as distracted by, albeit, pleasing frivolities along the way.

However, recent research suggest that the online marketer’s obsession with click-thru-rates with regard to online advertising may be mistaken.  EyeBlasters investigation into something they define as ‘dwell time’ (all interactions with the ad short of a click thru – for example mouse overs, user initiated expansions/videos etc) shows a much different picture, with dwell rates of almost 9% compared to click thru rates of 0.3%.

The case for online advertising becomes even more convincing when recent projects looking at post online advertising exposure behaviour are examined. ComScore found the US users were 65% more likely to visit the advertiser’s site than users who never saw the ads. And a benchmarking study by Nielsen in Australia found that recall amongst consumers was 33% after being exposed to online advertising, with an almost 5% increase in purchase intention.  Further developments in the measurement of the effectiveness of online advertising will continue to make the case clearer and no doubt more compelling.

Online advertising is a logical step for luxury brands wanting to dip their toes in the digital water and less comfortable with the less controllable channels such as social media, as they can select the environment and control the message. However, it also represents an opportunity for brands who have fully developed search and/or social media strategies and are looking for further opportunities to engage with their audience online.

The lessons from these findings are to invest in the quality of the ad content, not to get too obssessed with the click thrus but wait for the business to come in via related channels such as brand searches or store walk-ins.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Tumblr
  • email
  • Print

By: Graham Painter

Posted in Advertising, Online | No Comments »

  • Dec
  • 2

Luxury Fashion Brands Embrace Social Media

The latest round of global catwalk shows has illustrated how fast things are changing in the world of fashion marketing.

At the Dolce & Gabbana show, fashion bloggers  Scott Schuman, Bryan Yambao, Tommy Ton and Garance Doré were seen tapping away at their laptops from seats usually only reserved for the likes of Anna Wintour,  whilst the show was streamed lived on the Dolce & Gabbana website.  With 16m hits in just a few days, D&G’s YouTube channel became the most watched in the world for a 24 hour period.

Louis Vuitton also broadcast a recent catwalk show live, through Facebook from Paris, attracting 50,000 guests from its 750,000 fans on the social media site.  And the celebrity-inspired power of twitter was demonstrated when a Lady Gaga tweet led to so much traffic to the live stream of Alexander McQueen’s show that his site crashed.

Since the shows, we’ve seen the launch of Burberry’s www.artofthetrench.com, a site which combines the appeal and talent of Sartorialist blogger Scott Schuman with the power of social media to deepen relationships with existing customers and forge relationsips with new ones.

And Gucci has launched its latest eyewear range with a viral campaign rather than using traditional media channels.  Its site, www.guccieyeweb.com, lets visitors upload their own photographs and then displays their picture as if were a reflection in the various eyewear styles. Users can share their ‘eyewear reflections’ on facebook, twitter and on the social bookmarking sites.

So should all luxury brands rush headlong into social media? No – as with all marketing, the starting place should be an understanding of your target market, followed by a clear strategy.   For luxury fashion brands, ’mass’ social media is a more obvious move as their lower entry price points makes them accessible to a wider audience.  For brands with a narrower appeal, the strategy might be very different – more personal relationships built via closed or invitation only networks rather than openly accessible ones.

The problem is that many brands aren’t engaging with social media for the wrong reasons – either because they don’t understand how their customers are using it or a fear of losing control of their brands.

Recent research shows that the affluent are just as likely to use social media channels as the mass market, albeit for more rational and less frivolous reasons. And those that comfort themselves with the thought that their older profile of customer has so far shunned social media should understand that the continuing growth of sites such as Facebook is being fuelled by the over 55s.

As for the fear of losing control, conversations have always taken place about luxury brands that were beyond the control of the brand owners. Social media helps to facilitate more of these conversation and spread them faster and wider. But it also makes those conversations more visible and gives the brand a chance to both get involved with and facilitate them – to deepen relationships with existing customers and create relationships with potential new ones.

Social media is just one of the channels available to the marketer and the right social media strategy starts with an understanding of who your customers are and how they’re engaging online. As a starting point, Forrester’s Social Technology Profile Tool should give you some clues. Then start to monitor what’s been said about your brand and where. Once you start to understand where and how your customers are interacting online, you’ve taken the first step to building a considered social networking strategy.

One thing is for certain, with developments such as real-time social search and Google SideWiki on the horizon, luxury brands ignoring social media aren’t going to be able to ignore it for much longer.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Tumblr
  • email
  • Print

By: Catriona Deery

Posted in Online, Social Networking | 1 Comment »