The Old Spice Guy, Isaiah Mustafa

When it comes to raising awareness, Wieden+Kennedy’s Old Spice Guy campaign was an enormous success.

Building on the appealing “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” TV spot featuring Old Spice Guy Isaiah Mustafa, W+K launched a 3-day social media blitz. In response to thousands of questions submitted on Twitter, the W+K team published 183 video responses on YouTube that received almost 40 million views.

But could the campaign have been even better? We think so. Here’s our description of the road that W+K might have taken.

Extend the TV campaign online

In response to data showing that brand and message recall is twice as effective when using both TV and online, W+K allocated 10% of the P&G Old Spice TV budget to online.

The majority of Americans simultaneously watch TV and surf the web. Fifty-four percent of these multi-taskers say the Internet is their primary focus. Heeding these trends, W+K realized that adding an online component would increase the campaign’s reach without increasing its budget.

To implement the online part of the campaign, W+K signed one simple Mixpo contract. The contract included:

• Re-purposing the “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” TV spot to run online as in-banner video ads.
• Managing the media for the online campaign so the video ads would run on premium websites frequented by the target audience – women 25 to 45 years of age. For example, the ads might run on sites like Cafe Mom and the entertainment sections of the local online newspapers and magazines.
• Tracking the performance of the ads and optimizing the ad content and placement in response to performance data.

W+K also saw their online video ad strategy as an important complement to the anticipated social media blitz.

• Nothing beats a YouTube channel for a low-cost, high-impact way to build brand awareness. Whether a viral hit actually increases product sales is another question. With their proven ability to drive purchase intent, online video ads served as the perfect complement to Mustafa’s YouTube video responses.
• W+K was delighted to have a home for the footage they shot but never used in the response videos. They channeled that extra footage into follow-up video ads that ran across the same properties where the original re-purposed TV spot ran.

Build momentum

Because Mixpo video ads are dynamic, W+K easily used its online campaign to stoke enthusiasm for Old Spice Guy and increase overall campaign momentum.

• Auto optimization Mixpo created different versions of the original “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” video ad. Each version had a unique StartFrame, the image viewers see in the Player before the video plays. The StartFrames, of course, featured Old Spice Man in different poses with different props. Mixpo rotated the versions through the same Player. After a specific number of impressions, the low performers automatically stopped running, leaving only the best performer live. W+K was interested to see that the best performers varied by placement domain.
• Fresh content When the social media blitz began, the online video ads easily kept pace. W+K refreshed content and calls to action daily and even hourly without re-trafficking any ad tags.
• Live feeds To integrate video ads into the rapid question-response flow, W+K included a live Twitter feed widget in their video ads. As they viewed the ads, viewers kept up with the latest question submissions.

Increase engagement

Because Mixpo video ads are interactive, W+K was able to maximize its online campaign to drive purchase intent as well as brand favorability. For example, from within its Old Spice video ads, W+K:

• Offered discount coupons Viewers clicked printable coupons available only through the online video ads.
• Offered signed Isaiah Mustafa photos Viewers opened custom lead capture forms to request photos through email while P&G grew its contact lists.
• Included Facebook and Twitter icons Viewers clicked icons to go directly to the Old Spice Facebook and Twitter pages.
• Promoted social media sharing Share links allowed viewers to easily share video ads with their friends and followers.
• Redirected viewers to the Mustafa response videos After the social media blitz began, W+K added redirect actions to the video ads. This gave viewers the option to watch Mustafa’s response videos without ever leaving the original ad. As new responses became available, W+K easily swapped in the new videos without re-trafficking any ad tags.

Ah, what might have been. As our hypothetical scenario shows, dynamic video ad campaigns have the power to extend TV campaigns and complement and augment social media blitzs. Start your own campaign today.

With the latest Mixpo platform feature release, you now have an additional easy and effective way to make Xspots relevant on a viewer-by-viewer basis: the Map Directions overlay action.

In case you’re new to Mixpo, overlays are text, image, video, and widget objects that you place on top of the video content in an Xspot. For example, an auto dealer’s Xspot might include a text overlay that invites viewers to sign up for a test drive. A restaurant Xspot might include an image overlay of its logo.

As the examples imply, you can associate overlays with actions. The auto dealer’s text overlay is associated with a Lead Capture action. Viewers who click the overlay open a customizable form where they fill in their names, email addresses, and more. The restaurant’s logo is associated with a Link action. Viewers who click the logo open the restaurant’s website home page.

To add a Map Directions action to an overlay, you provide a destination address – the address of your dealership, restaurant, retail outlet, event, or other key location. Viewers who click the overlay see a tailor-made Google maps Get Directions page. The page shows viewers how to get from the zip code where they’re sitting to the destination address.

Google maps Get Directions page (click for larger image)

To experience a Map Directions overlay for yourself, play the following Xspot of a recent Mixpo bowling party. Click the Find the Mixpo office overlay that appears a few seconds into the video. (If you can spare a few minutes, take in the rest of the video to enjoy our team at play. While you’re there, explore some of of the other dynamic and interactive features that you can add to your own Xspots.)

Is your business national or regional with franchises or dealerships in a number of cities or zip codes? By adding a geotargeting variable as the destination address, you can automatically show each viewer the closest location.

More Information

New to Mixpo? Explore our website today to learn more about dynamic video advertising.

Mixpo customer? Learn more now about overlay actions and geotargeting by signing in to your account, opening the Client Resources home page, and then searching for “actions” and “geotargeting.”

Why? Brands with a social media presence engage their customers. This engagement brings customers closer to the brands.

Because Xspots are dynamic, they also provide advertisers with opportunities to bring customers closer. Four dynamic features with which you may already be familiar include:

• Auto-optimization React automatically to viewer preferences and get the best performance by optimizing an Xspot while it’s running.
• Message targeting Deliver the right message to the right viewer at the right time using geographical and other targeting methods.
• Rapid response Respond to breaking news or date-specific offers by changing creative on the fly without re-trafficking ad tags.
• Interactivity Increase engagement opportunities with links, forms, coupons, surveys, social media sharing actions, and other interactive features.

Now, advertisers have a new way to build rapport between customers and their brands. Xspots can include dynamic widget overlays that contain built-in animation and intelligence, such as XML, RSS, and other live feeds. As the Xspot plays, the widget continues to update in real time.

The possibilities are virtually limitless.

For example, a political Xspot might include a Twitter widget that streams the candidate’s most recent Tweets as the Xspot plays.

Or, as the following innovative demo Xspot illustrates, a lottery ad might include a widget that updates daily to show winning numbers.

More information

Interested in learning more about what dynamic Xspots can do for your ad campaign? Visit our Industries page now.

Mixpo customer? Learn more today about adding widget overlays to Xspots by signing in to your account, opening the Client Resources home page, and then searching for “widget.”

Mixpo is pleased to join the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) as a general member.

We look forward to participating with other industry leaders on IAB councils, committees, and working groups to make the processes associated with buying, planning, and creating interactive media better and simpler.

These are the questions Harry Gold raises in a recent ClickZ article.

You can have the best media plan in the world, says Gold. The success of your ad, however, rests ultimately on how well the creative answers a couple of key consumer questions:

• How are you going to help me?
• What do you have for me right now?

“Basically,” says Gold, “people are looking for the benefits and offers in your ads.” His advice? “…Make sure you have an arsenal of benefits and offers to test in your campaigns and use this as the basis for your creative testing.”

Great advice, as far as it goes. Unfortunately, for you, the advertiser, it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Does each benefit and offer in the arsenal require its own unique creative? How can you test different versions cost effectively? How can you easily monitor performance and turn it into information you can carry into the design of future ads?

Building on Gold’s advice about testing benefits and offers, here are 3 quick, easy, and concrete steps you can follow to boost the performance of your online video ads.

Step 1. Develop benefit and offer lists

Interactive offers in video ad

Before you run a campaign, take Gold’s advice and do some brainstorming. Develop 2 lists. One list includes what Gold calls “the ways that your product really helps your target audience.” The other includes “offers you can make and fulfill right on the spot.”

For example, an auto dealer might list “zero percent APR financing” as a benefit and “sign up for a test drive” as an offer.

Winnow and sift the lists until you have a manageable collection of the most attractive benefits and offers.

Tip As you brainstorm, don’t let pre-conceived ideas about what’s possible limit the offers you come up with. Online video ads can include printable coupons, surveys, forms, links to more in-depth video content, and much more. In addition, you can target different audiences with benefits and offers that update on-the-fly based on a viewer’s geographic location.

Step 2. Create a unique ad for each compelling benefit-offer combination

On the face of it, this step sounds prohibitively expensive. But if you run your campaign through a dynamic video ad platform, it’s a quick, cost-effective process.

Here’s how it works:

• Upload a 15- or 30-second TV spot to create the master ad. This master forms the basis for each unique version.
• Make copies of the master. Creating copies is as simple as pressing a Copy button.
• Make each version unique by layering interactive benefit and offer overlays on top of the underlying video.

Step 3: Set up ad rotation and auto-optimization

Auto optimize to improve ROI

The only way to really learn which benefits and offers customers respond to is by giving these customers the chance to respond. In a video ad platform that is truly dynamic, you can integrate performance testing into the process of running a campaign.

By rotating different versions of a video ad through the same Player, you discover which version results in the best view rate, clickthrough rate, or percent of video viewed.

After a specified number of impressions, the platform automatically eliminates poor performers and optimizes on the best performing version.

As Gold points out, running ads on the right properties aimed at the right audience gets you only so far. It’s delivering the right benefits and offers that makes the audience respond.

More information

Learn more today about using a dynamic video ad platform to boost your video ad performance.

Mixpo customer discovering auto optimization for the first time? Visit the Client Resources home page now and search for “copy,” “overlays,” and “auto optimize.”

The startup trains its website partners to sell ads, puts them into ad-sales networks with other local sites, and provides them with access to the best tools and technology.

As part of its mission to find “world-class tools that [their] local blog and site partners can use to enhance the revenue potential of their sites,” GrowthSpur today announced its partnership with Mixpo.

“Mixpo easily transforms the power of TV-style advertising into an engaging online experience that is interactive, targeted, and engaging. The result simplifies the process of delivering the right message to the right audience at the right time in a rapid, relevant and engaging way.”

Read more now about the GrowthSpur-Mixpo partnership.

Learn more today about Mixpo’s dynamic advertising solutions for specific industries.

To increase holiday donations, the Salvation Army rotated 3 Xspots and 1 rich media ad without video in the same banner ad space on Comcast Online. While all of the ads helped raise dollars, performance data showed the power of compelling true-story video content. The Xspot engagement rates outperformed the rich media ad rate by 38 to 1.

These success stories show the key role that accurate and detailed performance data plays in online video ad campaigns. Advertisers rely on the data not only to measure the success of completed campaigns but also to optimize campaigns while they’re running and run better campaigns in the future.

Through its Dashboard and Advanced Analytics, the Mixpo platform has always provided a wealth of performance data. Now, a new Reports wizard makes that data easier than ever to access.

Click to see a larger custom reports list

A user-friendly interface guides you through the process of setting up and scheduling fully customizable Xspot and placement reports that you and other recipients receive automatically in email.

For example, you can schedule a weekly report organized by Xspot that includes:

• All of the Xspots in your Group.
• All of the available performance, click, and interaction data.

Or, you can generate a one-time report organized by placement domain that includes:

• Two Xspots in a specific advertiser’s account.
• All of the placement domains where the Xspots are running.
• Only engagement rate, views, view rate, clicks, and click rate data.

Coming soon: The addition of conversion tracking and geotargeting to the Reports wizard.

More information

Read more success stories now.

Mixpo customer? Learn more about the new Reports wizard. Sign into your account today, open the redesigned Client Resources home page, and search for custom reports.

The website Lead411 included Mixpo on its list of Seattle’s hottest companies for 2010.

Lead411 provides information, news, and research about U.S. companies and their executives. Founded in 2001, its goal has been to focus on quality corporate data that is valid and useful.

Learn more today about Mixpo and its dynamic video advertising solutions.

That’s why we redesigned our Xspot Gallery to make it as easy as possible for you to find and demo Xspots in specific categories, with specific features, designed to achieve specific goals.

Auto industry Xspot from Mixpo Gallery

The Gallery isn’t the only thing that’s redesigned. When you’re finished browsing through the examples you find there, take a minute to visit some other pages on our new website.

For example, learn more about Mixpo solutions tailored specifically for politics and sports. Or, get more insight into the technology that powers rapid assembly, trafficking, instant updates, targeted messaging, deep interactivity, and automatic optimization.

These were the major points presented by Political Online Video Advertising panelists Anupam Gupta, Michael Bassik, Michael Beach, Josh Koster, and Alex Skatell at the recent Personal Democracy Forum conference in New York.

Disintegrating barriers

Many political advertisers blame structural barriers for their hesitation to invest in online. They point to:

• A lack of inventory for in-stream video ads.
• The expense and labor involved in creating and/or editing video for online audiences.
• Incentive and pricing structures that favor TV.

These barriers are more perceived than real.

• While in-stream video ad inventory is low, inventory for in-banner video ads is virtually unlimited. By running video ads in standard display ad banners, advertisers have access to millions of online impressions.
• Running in-banner video allows advertisers to target viewers, either by selecting the sites the ads run on or by taking advantage of the geographic and demographic targeting tools available through ad networks.
• Studies increasingly show that online viewers are willing to spend time watching engaging video content. This means that 30-second TV spots can be easily and economically re-purposed for use online.
• TV + online creates a synergy that is more than the sum of the two parts. Yahoo!’s analysis of Nielsen IAG data showed that a 10 percent to 15 percent shift from TV to online increased reach and significantly lowered cost per point (CPP). In addition, the frequency of online ads improved TV brand recall by as much as 50 percent.
  
  

  Source: Nielsen IAG

Online advertising can move poll numbers

A recent study conducted by Russell Research on behalf of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association confirmed that online ads can move numbers. The study measured the ability of an online display and video ad campaign to raise awareness.

Comparisons of baseline polls and post-campaign surveys showed significant increases in awareness (from 42 to 56 percent for some audience segments) as well as strong ad recall.

The time is now

Only 5 months until the 2010 elections. Extend your TV ad campaigns online now.

Learn more about dynamic video advertising for politics.