Archive for February 3rd, 2009

“Page by page, line by line” … oh, just kidding.

February 3, 2009

Ken’s Take:

Candidate Obama promised that waste and special interests would be clinically scrubbed from the entire Federal budget. 

So, I wonder:  why didn’t his crack team scrub the pork-laden, non-stimulating $819 BILLION  “stimulus” package? 

Said differently, why should we expect that they’ll do a better job on the full $10 trillion Federal budget ? 

Dire prediction: For the record, if the stimulus package is passed in its current form — or a similar pork-laden variant — the Dow will go to 5,000.

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Excerpted from Boston.com, ” Obama vows line-by-line budget review”, November 25, 2008

President-elect Barack Obama vowed today to get rid of federal programs that no longer make sense and run others in a more frugal way to make Washington work in tough economic times.

Obama said that to make the needed investments to create jobs, “we also have to shed the spending we don’t need.”

“In these challenging times, when we are facing both rising deficits and a sinking economy, budget reform is not an option. It is an imperative,” Obama said.

“We cannot sustain a system that bleeds billions of taxpayer dollars on programs that have outlived their usefulness, or exist solely because of the power of a politicians, lobbyists, or interest groups. We simply cannot afford it. This isn’t about big government or small government. It’s about building a smarter government that focuses on what works. We will go through our federal budget – page by page, line by line – eliminating those programs we don’t need, and insisting that those we do operate in a sensible cost-effective way.”

Full source post:
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/11/obama_vows_line.html 

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Radical idea: thinking before buying … what will be next?

February 3, 2009

Excerpted from WSJ, “New Info Shoppers,” By Mark Penn, January 8, 2009

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With so much attention on psychological marketing these days — finding new ways to tap into people’s heads — perhaps the single most neglected trend out there is the move towards more hard-nosed information-based shopping and purchasing … 

A special kind of consumer has taken a major role in the marketplace — the new info shopper. These people just can’t buy anything unless they first look it up online and get the lowdown … They have become highly suspicious of many TV ads: in a shoppers survey we did, 78% of them said that ads no longer have enough information they need. So many of them search online for virtually everything …

A whopping 92% of respondents said they had more confidence in information they seek out online than anything coming from a salesclerk or other source. They believe the information they find, not in the information that is spoon-fed to them, and the vast number of clicks today prove that they really are devoting time and energy to ferreting out detailed info before they buy.

We have seen many of the big market areas convert to an information-driven model — cars, homes, personal computers and medical care are areas where nearly 4 in 5 shoppers say they gather information on their own from the Web before buying … Now this trend is spreading down the product chain. In our survey, 24% said they are doing online research before buying shampoo …

The point is that advertising isn’t just moving to the Web, it’s got to grapple with an entirely new kind of shopper and way of shopping. Marketers now have to balance traditional media, online media, and content that is generated by experts, bloggers and consumers themselves. An astonishing 70% of Americans now say they consult product reviews or consumer ratings before they make their buying decisions …

New Info Shoppers are bigger than a microtrend. They represent a broad shift in the marketplace brought about by the Internet, higher education, and changing economic times. But the question is when is the marketplace is going to really catch up to them.

Edit by SAC

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Full Article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123144483005365353.html

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Posted in Mktg - Consumer Behavior | Leave a Comment »

Google clicks for General Mills …

February 3, 2009

Excerpted from Brandweek, “General Mills: Google Ads Click for Nature Valley” By Elaine Wong, Dec 18, 2008

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As marketers question the effectiveness of display ads and their ROI value, General Mills is telling a different story. The packaged goods giant revealed the results of a partnership with Google’s Content Network and YouTube, where consumers were exposed to display ads for a Nature Valley contest … The ads resulted in a 525% sales lift and delivered more than 830 million impressions for the Nature Valley brand…

It was the largest in scale for General Mills as far as online efforts go. General Mills didn’t disclose the cost of the effort … I t spent $2.8 million in Internet display advertising during the period when the contest ran…

The company used Google’s ad technology, including display, YouTube in-video, text and search ads, to reach out to consumers. As a result, the brand saw a 1,050% lift in related search behavior and a 1,000 percent increase in Web site visitation among consumers who were exposed to the ads…

“The key takeaway is, when we gave folks who care about Nature Valley an easy and fun way to talk about and share their experiences about the brand, they jumped into it with both feet”…the campaign’s success lies in its ability to tap into “the affinities and passions of consumers,” who, in this case, were avid nature enthusiasts. “Obviously, they didn’t just build a granola bar web site. Instead, they leveraged the passions and interests that most aligned with consumers likely to interact with their brand”…

General Mills said more digital campaigns are in the works following this success…

Edit by SAC

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Full Article: 
http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/news-and-features/digital/e3i213af1e960abb3d865852c02173d4c5e?imw=Y

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Posted in Internet Marketing - eCommerce -, Mktg - Internet | Leave a Comment »