ChasNote

My colleague James Gross, who led the Dell-Graffiti-Contest idea from the FM side, points out on his site:

“the campaign [was] a win for not only Dell, but also the Application Developer, Graffiti. In a time when not a lot of applications are creating compelling campaigns for marketers, instead, many of them are being forced to rely on remnant inventory from ad networks.”

Ad networks are great at 100-percent fill rates with low-CPM, low-value-to-advertisers banners (the two factors are linked quite directly!), but they aren’t well positioned to conceptualize or execute campaigns that add value to a unique conversation. A 34-year-old man with a household income of $95,000 may visit Yahoo Finance to view his stocks, Boing Boing for his fix of quirky digital-cultural happenings, and stay in touch with his college friends by trading sketches using Facebook Graffiti Wall. Advertising works better — both for the advertiser and the recipient — if it understands two things. One, Mr 34-Year-Old is unlikely to be lured away from what he’s doing (click-through rates are considered great if they approach a third of one percent), so you need to bring your brand proposition into those environments. Two, Mr 34-Year-Old is a person, not a demographic; recognize the diverse moods and mindsets he passes through in the course of an hour online (each site he visits provides a guide), and cater your messaging to address that person in the context he’s chosen to join.