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With upward of 400 million unique visitors per month, Twitter has leveled the communications playing field. Any person or entity can use Twitter to build an engaged community and affect change. Twitter users collectively share knowledge and information at the rate of 250 million bursts per day. According to the Pew Research Center, Twitter users are 50% more likely to influence someone’s vote than the general population.

Users can share their thoughts, opinions and ideas with others personally or publicly. There are countless ways to communicate on Twitter. The gravity a single, well-timed tweet has is remarkable.

Mitt Romney sent the following tweet on April 6th:

Praying for a quick recovery for Bella. Ann and I are keeping Rick, Karen and the entire Santorum family in our thoughts.

Upon logging in to their Twitter accounts, Romney’s followers would see the tweet above in their main news feed. With this single tweet, Romney has displayed his empathy toward others to a potential audience of half a million people or more.

Adding a hashtag to a tweet, a word or phrase beginning with a “#” symbol, allows people with similar interests to have an ongoing conversation. Former Senator Fred Thompson often incorporates the hashtag #TCOT in his tweets (Top Conservatives on Twitter). This enables his tweets to reach a wider audience. Messages tagged with #TCOT are immediately visible to people who follow this hashtag, whether they follow his personal account or not.

Biden: President Obama faced tougher decisions than FDR. That’s true. They had fewer golf courses to choose from back then. #TCOT

In addition to reaching his followers and the #TCOT followers, Thompson’s message above was re-tweeted close to 400 times. Re-tweets are paramount for organically widening the audience exposure of a single tweet.

Promoted Tweets

From an advertiser’s perspective, Twitter offers a unique opportunity to reach both influencers and listeners alike. Users can be targeted in numerous ways. Advertisers can target individuals, real time conversations and search queries.

Twitter users are exposed to a countless number of messages. Because of this, it’s not really feasible for an organization to reach their entire follower base every time they tweet a message. When organizations have an important or timely message, promoted tweets are an effective way to reach as many of their followers as possible. Promoted tweets appear in a user’s main news feed along with tweets from other accounts they follow.

A natural benefit of using promoted tweets is that they can be re-tweeted in the same manner as all tweets. Have any of your friends forwarded a banner ad to you via email? I’d guess that rarely if ever happens. On Twitter, re-tweets are part of the vernacular.

Lookalike Targeting

Via lookalike targeting, promoted tweets allow advertisers to reach people who don’t currently follow them. A lookalike audience has similar interests as their followers. Let’s say I am not currently a follower of Romney’s profile. If he were to target his constituency with a promoted tweet, it would be likely that I would see it too, as I follow Senators Scott Brown, John McCain and other GOP interests.

Targeting the Conversation

In the Twitter universe, hashtags are included in 7 out of 10 tweets, driving a high level of engagement. By targeting hashtags with a promoted tweet, advertisers can narrow the focus of their campaign to specific groups of people and topic matter. People who follow a hashtag see promoted tweets in their hashtag post feed. If Mitt Romney wanted to reach “natural” supporters who don’t already follow him, he might want to target GOP leaning hashtags using promoted tweets. For example, #TCOT, #RS(Red State), #GOP or #Obamanomics.

Targeting Search

Twitter search is similar to Google or Yahoo. It’s useful for finding tweets about a subject. Advertisers have the ability to target search queries on Twitter using promoted tweets. Promoted tweets appear at the top of the Twitter search results page similar to a paid search ad on Google or Yahoo.

Expanding the Base

Users of Twitter regularly receive suggestions for profiles they might want to follow. Twitter offers advertisers the ability to quickly expand their follower base via the use of paid suggestion ads. These paid ads appear on the side of the page along with organic suggestions.

Hashtag Promotion

Any user of Twitter has the ability to brand their conversations with hashtags. It can be challenging for hashtags not exposed to a wide audience to gain traction. Twitter advertisers have the ability to quickly create and promote hashtags to millions of people using paid hashtag promotion. Many campaigns use this form of advertising. For example, Politico has promoted the tag, #2012Elections.

For advertisers interested in real time audience reach, consider promoted tweets and hashtag targeting as another tool in your shed.

With a deceptively simple name, digital advertising is both alluring and complex in nature. It involves reaching the target audience while they are engaged with online media. Ideally, this is accomplished by delivering relevant messaging at key points within a target audience’s online activity. Digital advertising has many applications. Some are pretty straight forward, others can get quite complicated. Opportunities to both reach and interact with viewers of online media make this a unique platform.

Here are some of the more common digital ad implementations.

Pre Roll – The natural counterpart to traditional TV ads.“Digital advertising has often been viewed as a competitor to television advertising. However, given the reality of today’s consumers and their cross-platform habits, the two forms should be viewed as complementary rather than competing.” (Nielsen)

Rich Media – Customized ad executions using video assets and interaction with the audience. RM ads can be simple, such as streaming a video through a rectangular banner space. They can also be narrative via the use of motion graphics and interactive experiences.

Display Ads – These ads are often referred to as banners. Banner ads can be static, with a singular message/call to action. Similar to rich media ads, banners can be narrative via the use of motion graphics and interactive experiences.

Search Advertising – The granddaddy of online rapid response advertising. Search advertising allows an advertiser to immediately establish a presence for keyword searches and topic matter viewed daily by their target audience. This is crucial for reaching voters who use Google, Yahoo, Bing and the like to research the issues before voting in an election.

Social Media Ads – Facebook and Twitter have emerged as two of the biggest players in the world of social media. They also currently lead the pack in terms of their capabilities to serve the needs of advertisers. According to Comscore, in October 2011 “Nearly 1 in every 5 minutes spent online was spent on social networking sites.” Notably, “People age 55 and older represented the fastest-growing age segment in global social networking usage.”

If you work in the digital media biz, you’re probably familiar with at least a few of the resources below. Each of these tools offers robust features which are useful to internet marketers, SEO mavens, web publishers, digital media planners, webmasters and bloggers alike. In no particular order…

Quantcast’s measurement service offers publishers the opportunity to gain valuable insights into their user base. By becoming “Quantified”, publishers have the ability to leverage the insights of a powerful data aggregator. This process can provide interesting and valuable metrics about visitors to a publisher’s website. This relationship also allows internet marketers and media planners to view data about websites which they may be considering to include as part of a media plan.

Compete provides an online competitive intelligence service. By combining site, search and referral analytics, Compete helps marketers “outperform the competition and increase online marketing ROI”. Marketers may find useful the ability to research traffic, engagement, and demographic data of their competitors and find out what keywords drive traffic to any website.

Doubleclick Ad Planner is a great tool for digital media planners. It provides a robust interface which allows media planners easily drill down and identify websites which would likely be a good fit for their campaigns. Doubleclick Ad Planner provides insightful demographics and other information about a website’s audience base. If an advertiser uses Doubleclick Ad Exchange or the Google Display Network, a target site list can be easily exported into either interface.

This is a must have for any advertiser who manages multiple Google search and/or display campaigns. It allows digital media coordinators the ability to quickly make bulk changes to ad groups and campaigns offline and then upload. This reduces the tedium of making changes through the browser interface. Advertisers can easily copy or move various ads between ad groups and campaigns.

This is another must-have tool for internet marketers, webmasters and digital advertisers alike. Google’s Analytics provides a robust interface for tracking metrics and assessing campaign goals. Drill down to find the sweet conversion spot for your direct response campaign. Track how visitors find and interact with your content. If you link analytics with adwords, you can track cost per acquisition on a granular level. The charting and graphing capabilities are great as well.

During the ad concept phase, advertisers should take into consideration where their message will run. Regardless of how skillfully the ad has been designed, a target audience’s mindset at the point in time when they actually see the ad will play a large role in its performance. Advertisers should endeavor to connect ad placements, audience and message. Whether the focus of a campaign is direct response or persuasion, advertisers who make this connection have the most optimal chance for a successful digital campaign. Seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it? Creative crafted for a specific target audience group is more impactful and effective at grabbing a user’s attention. The predicament is, due to time constraints or other factors, advertisers often create a one size fits all ad and hope for the best results.

Adam Lisagor, creator of online product videos for web services and tech gadgets, points out mistakes many companies make in online messaging. By underestimating the audience’s intelligence or following a formula toward development of creative, companies often miss the mark when it comes to explaining a product online.

Let’s apply this idea to digital advocacy campaigns. Similar to setting up a search campaign, create multiple ad messages which will resonate with specific, relatively small niche audience groups. Target your audience, broadcasting in high SOV bursts. Measure the results and move forward, refining the campaign based on performance metrics. By uncovering hidden audience gems, you can avoid targeting the lowest hanging fruit and increase conversions.

The banner blindness phenomenon exists in part because advertisers do not seek out the most opportune placements for their ad messaging. Many advocacy campaigns put their entire digital advertising budget in a single basket. For example, going the route of a blind network buy, or using cookie pools in an attempt to refine audience targeting. Can any advertiser really expect that their message will be impactful in this scenario? Broadcasting a one size fits all type of message across a wide audience network prevents the message from truly speaking to the niche groups which the campaign needs to reach. Only after it is too late do some advertisers realize buying a ‘run of network’ is not the answer to a successful digital advocacy campaign.

Niche spaces can provide great opportunities for digital advocacy campaigns. For these opportunities to have the best chance for success, the campaign should strive to align the audience, placement and message. Simply reaching an audience is not enough. You need to really grab their attention by speaking specifically to them.

Search and Display are digital Yin and Yang. These complementary opposites have an important connection within the greater whole of digital advertising. Search is a pull medium. A user searches for specific information about something of interest. When a link from a search results page matches a user’s interest, the user clicks on the link, pulling info through the delivery channel (Search Engine). Search is an excellent medium for direct response efforts. The advertiser anticipates users’ interest in certain keywords and fulfills their expectations by connecting the user to the answer they are searching for. Display is largely used as a push medium. Messaging is pushed to an audience who may not be thinking about or aware of a specific brand. Display is an excellent medium for issue advocacy, persuasion, brand awareness and reach.

Studies have indicated display impacts search by contributing to a lift in searches for brands, products and general terms. Brand awareness via a display campaign can result in visitors being more attracted to a brand’s website, resulting in longer and deeper visits. Tapping into this synergy is a powerful way to create interest and then immediately engage with those who are interested in your brand or message.

Ask us about including a comprehensive search campaign as an ingredient in your media mix.

Guerrilla marketing campaigns make use of creative and interactive ways of communicating with a target audience. The residual effects of these unique campaigns can potentially generate some great results. The company, SIXT, recently undertook a guerilla campaign which demonstrates creative, out of the box thinking. We were not involved with the campaign, but we found it to be an inspiring piece of work.

SIXT, a German car rental agency, came up with a great solution for publishing its rental deals to potential customers. Visitors to über busy Hamburg airport are exposed to ad clutter. There are more ads on the walls, floors and ceilings of this airport than a single person could possibly consume. How could SIXT cut through the clutter and efficiently reach its target audience? Five very strong wireless networks were installed at the SIXT counter at Hamburg airport. Wi Fi networks, can be given unique, custom names — essentially anything the creator would like to use. In this case, each SIXT Wi Fi network was named with catchy ad text. When the wireless networks were activated, potential customers saw the SIXT ad headlines. Anyone connecting to the internet via a Wi Fi hotspot at the airport, using a laptop, iPhone or Blackberry and was exposed to SIXT messaging. If a user clicked on the headline, a SIXT landing page with daily car rental deals appeared. The users of Wi Fi networks at the Hamburg airport were largely the same target audience SIXT was trying to reach, business travelers potentially interested in renting a car from the airport.

SIXT Wi Fi Video on YouTube

Simplicity

Single Minded. Powerful. Less is more. Elegant. Say just enough to get your point across and let the customer make the inferences. One-ness of purpose. One-ness of message. Find the singular purpose or theme.

Faithfulness

Remain true to the brand.

Stopping Power

if the creative doesn’t have stopping power, it may as well have been created in invisible ink.

Craftsmanship

Great ideas need to be well crafted. A big budget is no guarantee that they will. A small budget is no excuse that they won’t.

Partnership

Great advertising is impossible unless you have the confidence and trust of the client. Build good relationships. Find redeeming qualities in your clients. Ask your client to “raise the bar” if they are familiar and comfortable with your work. If you trust each other, they can be a great judge of your work and let you know if it continues to captivate them. Remember “one-ness of spirit,” and trust that you and your client are on the same side of the fence working to achieve the same goals.

This post inspired by Tim Hamill, former creative sage at Bernstein-Rein.

Take a look at some of our recent banner ads:

Brainstorming should be short and furiously paced.

Delegate just one person to take good notes

Number your ideas

6 to 8 people in a brainstorm session is optimal

Laughter translates into high energy creativity

Explore freedom and quantity of ideas

Avoid shooting down an idea from the get go. Build multiple ideas to choose from

Go Nuts. Don’t hold back

Stay focused on what you are trying to achieve. Try not to segue into unrelated topic matter

Jam – Share ideas. Use “big ears” to listen and build off those ideas. “Hitchhike” ideas. In jazz improvisation, being told you have “big ears” is a compliment. It means that you are able to observe the sounds happening around you and compliment them. Take the ball and run with it.

The Pause Phase – This is the incubation phase. Take time to let your subconscious wrap itself around these ideas and work them out.

Embrace phase – Edit down your ideas. Chip away the excess. Bring the idea to life!

Passion – It is a quality of commitment not quality of emotion.

Patience – Be patient with unveiling an idea. Timing is everything.

Persistence – Keep trying to get it done and you will succeed.

This post inspired by Sam Harrison, the King of Brainstorming

Step out of confined spaces. Generate ideas through conversations with your team.

At a recent conference, Brian Collins, former Chief Creative Officer of Ogilvy & Mather, discussed how he transformed his team’s workspace to inspire collaboration.

When Brian first arrived at Ogilvy & Mather, he found his creative team was operating in a closed off, un-inspiring space. With a limited remodeling budget, the only thing he could afford was enough paint to cover the hallway of the creative floor. He painted the walls black, purchased white chalk and simple, metal folding chairs. The result was a creative space that encouraged brainstorming. Team members could sketch their ideas on the hallway walls, encouraging open discussion. The hallway drew the team members out from their offices and into a more open and collaborative environment. The metal chairs discouraged people from sitting. As a result, the team members were more likely to be on their feet, contributing to brainstorming sessions and interacting with each other.

The use of clarity serves well to set brands apart from their competition. Clarity makes brands easier to understand.

For her Master’s Thesis, Deborah Adler, a graduate of the School of Visual Arts in NYC, revamped the familiar prescription medicine canister, creating an improved, and more user friendly version. Aside from child proof caps, the original medicine canister had remained essentially unchanged for half a century. Deborah identified several flaws in the original design. In the hands of a consumer, these flaws could be potentially harmful or even fatal.

Inconsistent labeling – Pharmacies do not use a uniform labeling style. Important dosage information is hard to find.

Branding – The first and largest piece of type on a label is often the drugstore’s logo. Logically, the name of the drug and instructions on how to take it should be given higher visibility.

Curved shape is hard to read – In order to fully understand you prescription, you must turn the bottle back and forth from right to left and back. Not only is this confusing for the average consumer, but imagine how much more confusing it would be if you are in pain or disoriented.

Illegible type – The type on a traditional prescription bottle is also typically hard to read with small fonts and poor color combinations.

Adler’s re-design included:

• Placing the important information at the top instead of the pharmacy logo
• Cleaning up the confusing type for a simpler, more legible typographic system.
• Reshaping and color coding the bottles. In the event that two or more family members are taking medication, this would eliminate confusion about which canister to open.
• Attachment of instructions to the bottle (they usually get thrown away) and inclusion of a thin magnifying lens in case the text was still too hard to read.

A creative director at Target saw Adler’s improved canister design, and quickly acquired the rights to her patent. From this point, the bottle received another makeover. Klaus Rosburg, a Brooklyn-based industrial designer hired by Target, came up with an upside-down version that stands on its cap, so its label can be wrapped around the top of the canister. Every piece of paper in the package adds up to one eight-and-a-half-by-fourteen-inch perforated sheet, which eliminates much of the paper waste.

When the bottle design was finished, it was immediately incorporated into Target’s pharmacies, nationwide. The surgeon general praised the new bottle, noting that aside from child safety caps, Adler’s canister achieved the most significant design improvements for a prescription drug container: The ClearRX Canister