Alison Hamon, VP, Creative Director, Liquid Advertising

Your idea about the perfect working day:
Getting excited about a project. Maybe it’s a new project, maybe it’s the early stages where the most ridiculous ideas come out and are filled with potential. I get the most enjoyment when we can convey some sense of that excitement with a client and share a vision with them.

Your muse best comes when:�
My best ideas come to me in the sort of dream-like states just before going to sleep or after waking up… when you have a real project on your mind, but your brain is partly in a subconscious state. I find that my mind wanders to all sorts of “what ifs.”

What needs to be changed/improved in order to achieve ultimate engagement with users:
An online ad is an opportunity to speak with a user for a fraction of a second. If you can interest a user in that fraction of a second, you may have the opportunity to tell them a little bit more about your product or service. How you use that critical fraction of a second is key. Not all users want to hear your message or are interested in your product. As advertisers, we have a choice: We can present the product in such a manner that the offer is immediately evident, and only those users receptive to the offer will interact. Or we can use any number of visual tricks to get the attention of a wider audience, and hope that some portion of them will have their interest piqued by what follows. Generally in online advertising, the more directly you speak to the user, the more effective the ads. To achieve ultimate engagement one needs to achieve ultimate understanding of the audience — and I think it takes a commitment to ongoing testing to do so.

Favorite Brand Experience:
I’d say I am a bit attached to working with Blizzard on World of Warcraft, perhaps because we’ve been serving WoW ads through Eyeblaster for the last 4 years! Eyeblaster has played a huge role in our ability to track and analyze every click through/view through to conversion. It’s nice to have a solid base of consistency and draw accurate conclusions regarding things that work and those that do not.

Although clients that allow for unbridled flexibility are usually the most exciting for a creative team, it’s also wonderful to work with a client that involves Liquid as a partner in their marketing and sales plans, so that we are judging ourselves by the same objective criteria that the company uses to evaluate their success and not the more ephemeral criteria such as click rates and interaction rates that often are the alpha and omega of agency self-evaluation. Liquid is very lucky to have some very wonderful clients that have made us part of their team in this manner.

The potential impact of the recession on online advertising:
Liquid Advertising is growing and we are poised to have our most successful year ever in 2009. As a whole I think online advertising will fare relatively well during the recession. Obviously there are some areas that are going to be brutal in all media… cars and financial services for example. At Liquid we have seen two smaller clients meet with difficulties in financing their operations, and both drastically reduced their spending. However these losses were more than offset by new business wins and clients who have shifted more of their marketing dollars online. Not all companies falter in a recession. Strong companies will get stronger and gain market share. That is the strategy at Liquid.

People are creatures of habit. The majority of what we do online is hang around our favourite news, entertainment and social networks – and communication is by far the largest part of our daily internet usage. Our comfort sites make up 60% of our usage, and physically ‘browsing’ and exploring the web is actually less than 10% of what we do today; where as communication is over 30%. Just look at the way you spend your day online, even when on the move – and that ever growing inbox! That is why the global certification of Eyeblaster on the new Windows Live Mail system is such an important part of targeted online advertising.

Hotmail has always been one of the dominant players in terms of free email clients for both consumers and business users alike; surprisingly over 30% of business email is transmitted via Hotmail. As an ad-funded email client, it has always been a viable alternative to those not willing to pay for Outlook – the industry leading business email client.

The new Windows Live Mail is a next generation of email client that is actually a replacement for Outlook Express. Microsoft has made it easy to manage multiple mail accounts and so much more; e.g. integration with other Windows Live services, such as Messenger. There is also a desktop version to complement the browser-based version.

So why all the fuss on this change from an online marketing perspective? Penetration of ad-funded communication is naturally a key aspect, but there are other significant reasons that are important considerations for advertisers.

From my own observations of consumer behaviour within email clients, looking at campaign data, it seems fair to deduce that when a person is in that ‘communication mindset’, consumers often want to take a moment’s break from writing mail to ‘play’ whilst they think. Allowing them to explore brands in situation is therefore an important aspect of the type of advertising that works in an email environment, as there is a huge reluctance to “click” here – at least until the user has reached the “sent mail” page. I always advise that you are one third likely to click ads when reading and writing mail compared to when you have sent your mail.

We are also more poised to typing, so data-capture tends to be incredibly effective around email – a great way to add a DR aspect to a campaign that actually carries far more weight for advertisers ROI than a mere click.

And naturally we are chatting with friends and colleagues – so it is a primary position to start your web 2.0 campaign. Instigating consumers to talk about brands, facilitating a ‘tear-and-share’ viral affect via widgets – or real time updates of offers that people can forward-to-a friend; whether theatre show times, to last-minute breaks, to automotive test drives in their vicinity or an offer to taste that new chocolate bar – these are all illustrations of how to work effectively with email clients.

Just be sympathetic to consumers natural reluctance to click and treat any roll-over or expansions with a positive creative reward for consumers, and you are going to find a great way to utilise this environment to your brands’ advantage.

Useful information:

• Out with Outlook Express, In with WLM
• Fingerprint analysis of Email Client Penetration

1.       Deliver content to the viewer through the Ad without them needing to leave the publisher’s site. Publishers are shifting their focus into providing engaging content to keep the viewer on the page for longer rather than generate as many impressions as possible. People are far less likely to click on an ad banner when they are immersed in the content of a site, than when they are merely browsing through a site to pass the time. Therefore the ability rich media provides to interact with the ad without leaving the page is crucial.

2.       Adopt more interactive functionality with video – don’t just run a passive TVC. Online is a sit forward, interactive medium and the best advertising takes advantage of this. Running your TVC is an easy way to get started however by being innovative and interactive, video ads can take advantage of the unique benefits of the online environment, and not simply replicate a passive experience similar to the one audiences have with television.

3.       Don’t trust click-thru as the sole means of justifying campaign success. And even when they do click is that really the consumer or action you’re looking for? Most display ad clicks come from a very small group of consumers, according to “Natural Born Clickers,” a report by Starcom USA, Tacoda and comScore. The heavy clickers surveyed represented just 6% of the online population, but made one-half of all display ad clicks.

4.       So it’s important to find alternative metrics to measure campaign success. For example on a macro level examine brand impact or on a campaign-level the interaction rates generated by the exposures. Historically online creative has been focused on a direct-response pull strategy – trying to drive traffic through to a site. That strategy meant success could only be measured one way: by counting clicks.  But as it turns out, consumers are too savvy and the Web is far too interactive to gauge success solely by clicks.  To do so is to ignore the Web’s true promise of providing true interactivity and complex brand engagement.

5.       Be prepared to justify a campaign with 0% click rate!

Ross McNab | Sales Director APAC

Nick Adams, Business Director, MindShare 

Your idea about the perfect working day: When I’m having fun with colleagues and they are having fun too.  The best ideas come from an environment where people feel free to talk and discuss anything.  You never know when you will be able to get inspiration from an unexpected area of life and transfer it into your work.  Finally, a good day is always rounded off when a plan comes together and results come through which confirm previous insights and strategies.

Your muse best comes when:  I make great connections between things that have been simmering below the surface when I disengage my brain and let things come together without trying to push them too much.  I’m constantly amazed with the thoughts I have in the shower, or when brushing my teeth!  Or, if time is pressing and proposals need to be submitted, it always helps to get away from the working environment with someone who has a complementary skill/mindset, and set aside enough time to work things through properly together. 

What needs to be changed/improved in order to achieve ultimate engagement with users:  Engagement is one thing.  Connection is another.  It’s all very well being engaging with a consumer – but what if this engagement is fleeting or soulless?  The real goal should be to make a connection with that consumer at a motivational level.  Connections are rarely achieved via computer screens alone, so all the best campaigns combine an element of offline, experiential activity, with digital, interactive activity to act as reinforcement.  Content captured in the real world will heighten people’s experience in the digital world, and this is often where the best connections come from.

Favorite Brand Experience:  TescoCompare

The TescoCompare ads may have appeared some time before the current economic downturn, but they were extremely prescient of current consumer sentiment.  Ok, so they don’t have any video and there are no flashing lights, but their effectiveness comes from the simplicity and clarity of their message.  The ad serves initially as a standard 468×60 – thereby providing rapid loading times and universal acceptance by all sites and networks – which is important for online retail campaigns where reach and cost efficiency are essential.  Once the unit has been expanded I love the interactivity of being able to choose which retailer you want to compare Tesco’s prices against.  The ‘swingometer’ is a nice device to give an immediate sense of how many deals are to be had at Tesco, and also delivers this information in a transparent way. 

Much as I like this ad however, there are ways it could be improved.  A dynamic feed could have been used to deliver information on which specific products were cheaper than at the other retailers at that particular moment in time, or even a simple store-locator could have acted as a call to action.