Play with NZ Herald and Nokia

So this is something new, a little different and a nice little toy to play with. I think it was launched some time last week within the entertainment section of NZH.

Rollover images and they expand with additional information. Visually, I quite like it. It wouldn't work for national, world or business news, but for entertainment it works really well.

Of course, it wasn't until I clicked on one of the stories (yes, one of my favourite topics) that I started to realise that this might not have been an NZH initiative and looks like it has been driven by Nokia.

Lets be fair, the thing that gave it away was the MASSIVE banner at the bottom of the page:

All up, it is an amazingly branded page:

At any rate, I think it is pretty choice and a nice exercise for Nokia no doubt.

What I think I like about it the most, is that hopefully they are using this as an online branding exercise and are not using Cost Per metrics for this campaign.

When you click through to the website you can get product information and check out where to buy, but there isn't an opportunity to purchase online, which in turn means no cost per acquisition.

I'm going to guess that there would have been some significant investment in this so I really like the idea that measurement cannot be drilled down the way so many online campaigns are; instead banking on online giving the same kind of brand exposure that print, television or other 'traditional' mediums can deliver.

Yay Nokia. Yay NZH. Go you guys.

NZHerald Hate

What is up with the NZHerald hate today? Huh?

Coke has decided to un-cork the coke bottle of Summer, and have done so online. Good on them. Nice, easy, broad reach. Makes sense to me.

First thing this morning, Lance Wiggs was on the case and highlighted the homepage takeover on the Herald website. He’s not a fan. That’s fair enough, I can understand. But I’m not sure it can be classified as ‘stupid’. I believe it is what is called being flexible for the clients who enable them to provide a bucket load of news content to us for free.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of the ACTUAL creative, however the nice thing about the creative though, is it gives you the option to go directly to the site. It is quite clear; you don’t have to sit through the ad. More to the point, it is frequency capped, so you only actually have to see it once. That is of course, unless you are trying to make a point and are going through every browser on your computer to play “let’s make a point of this.” Hi... you are HUNTING out this creative now. You are looking for it, it is not targeting you.

The fact that the Herald can serve across browsers should be the point that is being talked about on this one people. Yay. For once I can see what people are talking about on Chrome. This is awesome. I always think that I am potentially missing out on creative executions because I like Chrome, thanks to the Herald, I’m not missing out, which means a great big potential audience across a number of browsers are not missing out. BONUS POINTS!

So what are my main points on this spiel?

• Obviously everyone is using NZHerald. This is great. Go The Herald site. If they weren’t using the Herald we wouldn’t have heard about it being their fault, obviously.
• Good on Herald for supporting more than one browser. Wanna know why you didn’t see the takeover on other sites? Potentially it is because the other sites don’t support browsers other than IE. Guess what, for advertisers, THIS IS A GOOD THING that the Herald does. Not a bad thing.
• It is on the other main sites as well. Hello TV3 and MSN. Look at that, other major publishers who are not willing to turn away advertising dollars.

I regularly bitch about online creative – but it is (more than often) the CREATIVE that I am talking about, not the publisher. Typically if I am talking publisher specific they are having some serious adserving issues or they have taken away formats I like, not because they are willing to keep business ticking over by accepting adspend.

I think people are being just slightly sensitive on this one. You only had to see it once. Get over it.

Love your work NZHerald. Don't stop a-rocking!

Nice work Liquorland!

This is what I LOVE about online advertising. You can react immediately to what is happening in the world.

Yesterday Sydney was covered in a red dust cloud. Check out some pretty amazing pics here courtesy of The Big Picture.

Today, on the Herald homepage Liquorland's advertising is so beautifully relevant/spot on creative/well timed, it's SUPER impressive. (By the way - RIP Sir Howard, totes sad)

Just sublime. And good on NZ Herald too. I wonder what time they got the call yesterday with homepage impression requests. This is going to sound horrible, but no doubt the Sir Howard storyline will boost their impressions significantly today, so I'm sure it won't hurt serving out impressions.

I love good creative (and when I say good, in this case I'm not talking aesthetically, good as in smart).

- Yes yes, advertising alcohol online, I'm still not sure how I feel about this, but the creative, so smart!

Cadbury... continues

I’m going to admit it, I think Cadbury have managed their about face quite well.

There are a lot of things I could comment on here, but if you want to know the down and dirty details about Cadbury taking palm oil back out of their chocolate, I’m sure Stuff, NZ Herald or NBR cover it better than I could as they probably got the press release. If that’s what you’re looking for, follow those links.

What I would like to comment on is their actions on the peripheral of said press release.

Quick background:

• Cadbury takes Palm Oil out of chocolate
• Cadbury get a little slammed by a phenomenal comparison TVC by Whittakers
• Cadbury put a pretty lame PR/Spin full page ad in main mets & Sundays
• Everything goes pretty quiet, but Cadbury is suddenly on special in most supermarkets I walk into.

Throughout all of this I was a little unimpressed that Cadbury were broadcasting their message and not having a conversation with their consumers, or even in the space where their consumers were bitching about them (read: Twitter).

• Then Cadbury release the statement that they are going to remove palm oil from their chocolate

That last one happened yesterday, the 17^th of August.

In their press release (which you can read in full here) they state that they genuinely believed that they were making the right decisions for the right reasons (that part is a little debatable, but we’ll overlook that) and that in response to consumer complaints, they are going back to using cocoa butter.

Consumers spoke, Cadbury listened. How to reconnect with your consumer who is not happy about something you have done? Acknowledge them, listen to what they’re saying and change if possible/its the right thing to do. Then get a LOT of coverage about it. As much as humanly possible preferably.

Someone very smart obviously got in Cadbury’s ear just before the press release went out and taught
them about Twitter. On the 14^th of August @Cadbury_AUNZ sent their first Tweet “Recent changes in the global market have led us to make changes. Learn more at http://www.choclovers.com/”and then, the clever clogs, they set up an automatic search (I’m guessing for the term ‘Cadbury’) and have been responding, where appropriate, to anyone commenting about Cadbury since; to the point that some Twitter-ers were not anticipating responses to their critiques about Cadbury, from Cadbury, commenting that it creeped them out. I say good on them, they jumped on a medium and are using it CORRECTLY from the get go; using the tools that are available to make sure that they can (start to) protect their brand.

Now, I think they should have probably been in this space a little earlier, however I’m not sure what they would have been able to say in response to their critics until they officially decided to take palm oil back out. The point is they’re there now. They’re having the conversation, and they are directing people to somewhere where they can get more information should they want to.

Well done Cadbury, even though it took a little time, I think you did the right thing, and I think you have handled it well. Can’t honestly say that I’m a huge fan of your advertising, but you’re not the ruthless orangutan killers that you were a week ago, so congratulations.

Advertising Alcohol Online

A while ago I wrote a post about the online industry and how they complain about not being taken seriously. Well, this is, in my opinion, another example of why agencies and advertisers shouldn’t take online seriously. Advertising alcohol online.

Just went onto the Herald and was confronted with a nice big rectangle advertising Steinlager’s new brew Edge.

I’m not sure about this at all. Television very strongly regulates alcohol advertising. It can only go to air at certain times of the day, and dependant on ratecard spend on alcohol advertising, ALAC (and please someone correct me on this as this is based on what I think I know about the account) have a deal with the networks which gives them a percentage value of that airtime to counteract the alcohol advertising. There is a balance – alcohol brand and ALAC.

So my concern centres around the fact that not only can this alcohol advertising be seen ALL day on a national site (yes – I acknowledge the fact that it is in the business section and its not like kids visit the business section of the Herald on a daily basis, however the reason that I got to this article was a link on Twitter) but you can take the user brand experience to the next level by clicking on the ad.

The first screen you come up against is an ‘are you 18’ screen, but it’s not difficult to lie on this. What gets me however is the next screen you come to isn’t exactly what was detailed in the ad. The ad says “Find out more” at which point I would have expected to land on the “About Steinlager Edge” as below:

Instead, you land on a competition page (I thought there were rules about giving alcohol away as prizes?):

So we have an ad which is driving the user to slightly misrepresented content and a competition with only an ‘I promise I am over 18’ check box. I wouldn’t say that I am a total stick in the mud, but I do find this worrying. It was way too easy for me to get my hands on alcohol at a very young age, and I didn’t have the access to the Internet that kids to these days. No wonder we are a nation of binge drinkers (don’t get me wrong – totally guilty myself).

So my question is: Is there a similar deal with publishers and ALAC as there is with television?

There just seems to be a serious lack of self-regulation within the online advertising industry. I realize that it is still a young industry, but it would be great if someone would start drawing a line in the sand. I would have thought that this is something that the IAB could have done, but with an impending restructure announced today, and the departure of Grieg as a CEO, I hope that there will be someone/some people to steer the ship in the right direction and really start to take charge of how we can make this industry as great as it could possibly be.

Still hating on Chrome

EYEBLASTER! Why do you hate Chrome?? Why? Why? Why?

So some time ago I wrote a blog asking people not to forget about Chrome users, cos (while I do often bitch about them) I would like to see some of the creative ads that are out there. Really, I would. For instance, today, @craigadolph sent out a tweet: “http://twitpic.com/alwsf - cool telecom ad on nzherald. using non standard ads without being offensive. i like. @ros_ashworth” when I tried to check it out, I could not see it. Instead of this:

I got this:
I totally agree with Craig, that is a really nice wallpaper ad, nothing obstructing my view, NZHerald have done a GREAT job of accommodating the creative. This is the best thing I have seen come out of Telecom in ages - and Eyeblaster has killed it for Chrome users.

For some reason or another eyeblaster does not support Chrome for wallpaper ads. One comment from the last post was that it was ok as Chrome only have 2% penetration. Not sure where this number came from (it was an anonymous comment) however I have access to analytics for a variety of websites (including this blog) and the average percentage of Chrome users across 5 very different sites is 5.8% for the last month.

What I think eyeblaster really need to think about is WHO is using Chrome. Is it ma & pa on the farm in Timaru? Or is it the people who are pretty dedicated to Google, and the internet, and (remember, this is MY OPINION) potentially the early adopters? You know, it was not that long ago that everyone used IE, and look at the use of Firefox these days.

Here’s an idea. Rather than take a leaf out of the telco’s books and constantly play catch up with the rest of the world, why not be proactive? No one like someone who is dancing 1 beat behind the music; Chrome use is growing, dance in time with the music and people will pay you more attention.

Interestingly, 10.1% of visitors to my blog view it through Chrome, well higher than the other sites I have analytics access to. Wonder what that means?

New NZ Herald Homepage

Oh… I like it! It is much cleaner than it was before. I think that the addition of extra visuals on the homepage has seriously broken up the page which was previously too text heavy for my liking.

I was lucky enough to be shown what this was going to look like last week, and when you place the old and new homepages side by side, without a doubt the new one looks much nicer.

I like what they have done with the advertising spaces too. So today Farmers has bought out the homepage with the super rec, and because the super rec is being used, the top banner has been dropped from the homepage. I think this is a really good call on APN’s behalf. If a client is willing to spend the money on a super rec (placement and development of the creative) then give them pride of placement. By dropping the top banner, the entire super rec is above the fold (note: I am viewing this in Chrome). From memory, if a normal rec has been purchased the top banner comes back.

I see (especially news sites) homepages as a portal. People go to check out headlines, and then go to a story they want to read. While I am sure that the ads get clicked on, I think the branding potential is much higher.

Can’t say I’m completely wedded to the font, but that’s something I can overlook.

I like. I wasn’t much of a fan of the old homepage, would visit this one more I feel. I will be interested to see if they roll some of these changes out throughout the rest of the site.

Don't forget us Chrome users!

What a lovely takeover you have done FlyBuys and DFS - All pretty and blue and looking great through Firefox...
Sucks that it completely dies when you look at it in Chrome. Sample of me and visitors to my blog, 10% of my visitors (unique) use Chrome. That's a whole lotta people that are not seeing this advertising as planned - and infact, it ends up looking really bad. That is not a transition on that top banner - that's just what it looks like.

Don't forget us Chrome users - there are more of us than you think.

UPDATED: Ok, so as Anonymous has pointed out: "This is actually an Eyeblaster issue as they do not support Chrome for wallpaper ads. Fortunately Chrome only has 2% penetration in NZ." So what is Eyeblaster up to. Sure, as they point out Chrome only has 2% penetration in NZ - but there was a point when Firefox only had 2% penetration too - gotta move with the times people, 2% penetration since December 08 - that's not bad and sure to grow.

Defacing Websites

Following from the DNS hack of MSN yesterday, which has been fixed thank goodness, my charming ex-flatmate (check him out Josh Waihi) kindly pointed out that its actually easier to deface NZ websites than we seem to be aware of. Back in March I posted a blog about Stuff's new website and their URL's which can be re-seen here and now Josh has brought to my attention a lovely little defacing of NZ Herald:
No one is safe.

My question is who on earth has enough time to do this sort of thing??

What is going on?

This is wrong:
(Focusing on the top banner and showcase advertising)
And it is wrong for 2 reasons.
1. It is horrible creative that tells you NOTHING about the online offering that tvnz.co.nz can now deliver. Why would you buy out the banner and show and not use it more effectively? Run out of creative budget? TVNZ.co have completely re-done their site and made it somewhat more user friendly, but you would never know. Lets at least push the fact that you can live stream the news... or something?
2. What is a news site - the Herald - allowing advertising on their site, pushing to a competitor? It's like back in the day when Sky was allowed to advertise on TVNZ and TV3. Who let that sucker slip though?