Easter Campaigns that Deliver

Every year, when I first hear the clucking of that bunny that brings Cadbury chocolate eggs, I have to smile. Typically, I can restrain myself from racing out to buy a half dozen or so, but I still really like the campaign. As we head into the holiday weekend, I got to thinking: what are the secrets to ads like this that stand the test of time and actually make consumers look forward to seeing them? Our team went through quite a few past and present Easter ads to give you some tips to help you develop strong holiday campaigns for your business.

By the way, beyond candy, the biggest categories of advertisers for Easter are retailers, especially grocery and supermarkets, travel companies, eCommerce sites and movies.

1. Use traditional symbols

Most Easter marketing features pastel colors, dyed eggs, the Easter bunny or, possibly, religious themes. These are all well-recognized symbols of Easter, which give you instant recognition for your promotions. The trick is to pull them off without looking just like everyone else. One way to do this might be to go bright and bold with the eggs or feature your logo in pastels so that your campaigns are distinctly different but equally effective.

For example, you might not think of going to the zoo on during the Easter holiday but Kolner Zoo created a campaign featuring eggs painted with pictures of their unexpected animal contents. It’s eye-catching, clever and attractive.

This imagery in this Pernod Ricard ad is extremely simple but it uses an Easter symbol in red and black rather than pastel.

2. Adapt your characters to embrace themes

On the flip side, you can take the character or mascots you use regularly and have them celebrate the holiday. M&Ms get dressed up in a bunny costume to spread some joy in this ad. The company takes it a step further with a mobile ad campaign that encourages viewers to access recipes that incorporate M&Ms.

3. Tie in unexpected products and services

It’s no surprise that M&M’s jump onto the Easter bandwagon since it is the second most important candy-eating occasion of the year for Americans (we consumed 7 billion pounds of candy in 2011) and M&M-Mars started offering pastel colors in the early 1980s. But you don’t necessarily associate Mercedes-Benz with this holiday. Nevertheless, the company used direct mail to send camouflage-decorated eggs to soldiers who test drove the latest G-Class model, which was very innovative and publicized the good things the auto manufacturer is doing.

4. Find unusual, holiday-related applications for products

Has the local store run out of those kits for dying eggs? No problem. Pick up some Kool-Aid. It never would have occurred to me that you could use the drink mix to color eggs but this is how the company drives up sales at a time of year when the product is not top-of-mind.

5. Be funny

One of the best ways to build positive associations with your brand is to make people laugh. We can all relate to this “chicken” who is exhausted by his work and needs a real holiday.

How about this Schick razor ad that has no copy other than a simple “Happy Easter”? Classic.

6. Talk about renewal

Easter is often considered a celebration of renewal and new beginnings, allowing a wide variety of products and services to develop marketing campaigns when the winter chill is transitioning to summer heat. Using this theme opens up possibilities for a wider variety of advertisers, such as spas, beauty products, diet and fitness categories, home and garden stores and more.

What other advice do you have for marketers looking to connect with consumers and stand out on Easter? How do you feel about the Cadbury bunny and are there any other Easter promotions that have stuck with you?

And just in case you were wondering, I’m in the “ears-first” camp!

Interesting Easter Candy Facts

• Ninety million chocolate Easter bunnies are produced each year. According to 76% of Americans, they should be eaten ears first, but 5% said feet first and 4% said tail first.
• In 1953, it took 27 hours to create a Marshmallow Peep. Today, it takes six minutes. Yellow Peeps are the most popular, followed by pink, lavender, blue and white.
• If all the Easter jellybeans were lined up end-to-end, they would circle the globe nearly three times. For kids aged six to 11, 70% say they prefer to eat jellybeans one at a time, while 23% report eating several at once. Boys were more apt to eat a handful than girls.
• Candy is a relatively recent Easter tradition. Chocolate eggs, the most popular Easter candy, were first made in Europe in the early 1800s.
• Pretzels were originally associated with Easter. The twists of a pretzel were thought to resemble arms crossed in prayer.

Advertising in Fashion

Successful ads for fashion and accessories avoid visual clutter. They convey a strong brand message by using powerful images and minimal but impactful content that work together to grab the attention of the target audience.

Ads targeting women—such as those for garments, accessories or jewelry—tend to feature soft feminine background colors and flowery fonts. On the other hand, ads that are designed for professional men typically have no-nonsense creative with minimal copy and masculine colors that suggest power and control. Another category of fashion ads targets youth. They come in a range of colors with playful fonts and models in action to convey energy.

Here are some designs created by our team that reflect the latest trends in fashion advertising:

The ad here uses a pale background with models showing two different outfits. As the ad targets women, we see flowery fonts. Content is kept to a minimum to let the outfits get most of the attention. The design uses space to create a balance between the two visuals and inspire women to consider the trendy and casual outfits.

The ad here for Paul Puncher makes a statement with a powerful visual. It does not use any words to distract the audience and lets the clothing, the body language of the model and the facial expression do the talking: stylish, high-quality, business attire that makes the buyer look successful.

Selling Marketing Services to Small Businesses

Targeting small business is big business for many industries. That’s because there are 23 million small businesses in the U.S. and they account for 54% of all U.S. sales. Plus, they provide 55% of all jobs and occupy 30-50% of all commercial space, an estimated 20-34 billion square feet (Source: US Small Business Administration).

Small businesses also do a lot of marketing. A survey by Borrell Associates revealed that SMBs have a median spend target of $8,000 per year for marketing, with 34% to be spent on marketing services and 19% to be spent on online/digital. This means there is a target opportunity of $4,240 per SMB per year for marketing services providers.

When asked about the services they would like to buy, small businesses answered: website design and hosting 32%, social networking support 29%, lead generation 20%, email solutions support 18%, graphic design services 18% and video production 11%, among others (Borrell and Associates, 2013).

For newspaper publishers, creating an in-house digital ad agency to serve these local companies is perhaps the most promising new trend in the industry today, according to the Local Media Association (The Local Digital Ad Agency, 12/22/11). Early adopters are having success because they are diversifying their revenue streams and growing the digital side of their businesses.

There are also numerous companies in a range of industries—Deluxe, American Express, Staples and many more—that are trying to build on existing advertising or other offerings to create broader packages of services and leverage their sales teams to reach local small businesses with marketing products and services.

So we decided to build this infographic to give you more detail on small businesses and what you need to know about their marketing in 2013.

As the Local Media Association notes, the revenue potential of providing digital and print marketing to small businesses outweighs some of the other emerging opportunities such as mobile right now. For that reason, the organization recommended every local media company consider the addition of digital agency services.

Now that you’ve seen this infographic, what do you think of the small business opportunity? Are you offering advertising and marketing services to local business? If so, in which categories are you experiencing the most success?

Mobile Marketing Adoption by SMBs

As the world around us goes mobile, businesses face a new challenge of adopting this channel to reach and interact with their target audience. While SMBs have a hard time grasping the hows and whys with their limited means and resources, many believe this could be a blessing in disguise for them.

xAd and Telmetrics recently released a Mobile Path-To-Purchase study, conducted by Nielsen, which explored the growing importance of local mobile search. The study determined the top 3 reasons that consumers have for engaging with local mobile ads:

• Locally relevant: the ad is for a business that is nearby and easy to access
• Local offers coupons/promotions: presented with multiple business options, the ad presents a deal that the consumer can’t get with the others
• Features a known brand: like any type of advertising, consumers are often drawn to businesses they know and trust

According to a report from Borrell Associates, “2013 Local Advertising Outlook: Get Ready for the Rebound,”U.S. local digital advertising will reach $24.5  billion in 2013, to take a 25% share of total local ad budgets.

Of those who have used mobile advertising, a solid 83% said they were at least somewhat likely to use it again in 2013.

Broken out from online spending, 25% of SMBs planned to increase mobile budgets this year.

A continuous wave of new statistics are illustrating that consumers are increasingly turning to their mobile devices for local information. This was also confirmed by Google in one of its announcements that as much as 50 percent of mobile search via its platforms is for local information.

Mobile is where today’s consumers already are, but local businesses are not. So, what do the local businesses need to do to integrate mobile in their marketing communication strategies? I took inputs from my colleague Adam Burnham, vice president of interactive services, to understand the path forward for mobile.

• Which mobile ad features produce the best responses for advertisers today?

Just like most advertising,  clean and simple campaigns with clear calls to action will produce the best results. And mobile allows great levels of targeting to get messages to the right audiences.

• Which mobile marketing tactics have the highest adoption rates among the advertisers?

There are three products within the mobile platform where I see the best tactical adoption and execution. Those are mobile banner display, mobile banner interstitials and mobile sites. All three work well together and complement a diverse media buy.

Marketers have been targeting local buyers for years with publishing news about deals and store openings and expansions in local newspapers. The next step is mobile banner advertising that provides targeted reach and interactive messages tailored to suit individual tastes and preferences. Just make sure to design ads that clearly state the offers, give clear directions for interested buyers and have decent analytics installed to analyze campaign reports to help you get instant feedback and act quickly.

• Which business sectors are using mobile marketing effectively? Which types of businesses can benefit the most from mobile marketing?

This is what is so great with mobile. Many think you need to be in a specific business or serve a certain type of customer for mobile advertising to be effective. The reality is that it will work for pretty much anyone. You should absolutely make sure you have a mobile-optimized site where you are driving traffic through mobile search and mobile display options. The mobile platform is growing faster than anything we’ve seen before, which means more people will access it.

• How does mobile marketing help publishers target the local SMB advertisers?

Local publishers have a leg up just as they do on the web, as they are delivering a content-rich experience for their audiences. People are already visiting their mobile sites to access the content they want, when they want it. That gives them immediate leverage and opportunity to serve the local marketplace through display advertising options. They can then build from there to offer additional mobile products including landing pages, mobile sites and search.

• How can publishers integrate mobile into their multimedia services offering?

Leveraging the mobile platform as part of complete offerings is very necessary. Publishers have to look beyond strictly web-based sales opportunities. And they have to accept that their audiences will be migrating to mobile devices. You can’t fight that. Publishers need to embrace it and build the right offerings to serve the needs of their advertisers. Mobile aligns very well with print, web and social.

Though many studies show people on the go engage with mobile ads and convert into customers at high rates, many local business owners still have skepticism about mobile as the latest “next big thing.” So I tried to understand from our technical expert, Ray Sheerer, about some key tips that SMBs could use before going live with mobile marketing.

•  What should an advertiser keep in mind before starting to use mobile advertising?

Before the mobile campaign begins, geographic location is usually considered the most important piece of targeting criteria for a small- to medium-sized business. Next, the advertiser needs to choose an ad serving platform either through a publisher or on their own. The ad serving platform delivers these mobile ads to mobile websites, microsites and apps that are part of the ad network. The ad networks extend the reach of the mobile ads and allow the SMB to specially geo-target the ad delivery. The advertiser should also request reports that display daily metrics about impressions, clicks and conversion rates. These reports are essential to measure the performance of the mobile advertising.

• Does the call-to-action of a mobile ad need to be different from an online ad?

The call to action of a mobile ad needs to be more clear and concise due to the smaller ad size and reduced space for text and graphics. More important than the mobile ad is the mobile landing page that corresponds with the overall campaign promotion/message. A clear call to action with a click-to-call or a simple lead generation form could highly increase the ad ROI.

Mobile ads can use some innovative ideas to improve engagement. One example is to run click-to-call campaign that initiates the mobile phone’s call function after the user clicks on the banner ad. There is also a click-to-SMS functionality that can be combined with a number of techniques, including the ability to SMS back to the user a mobile web link. These actions reduce the time to reach the seller and share your query. Click-to-download is another mobile-specific choice that is popular for app download campaigns. This call to action takes the user directly to the app store where they can download the advertised app onto their mobile device. Another example of a mobile call to action would be the use of QR codes.

• Which mobile features are being utilized by marketers most effectively today?

SMS opt-in is becoming one of the most effective mobile marketing tools. The messages are delivered to the consumer because they requested them and are typically not viewed as being annoying and unsolicited. QR codes are also being utilized to drive traffic to mobile websites and mobile landing pages. The consumer scans the QR code and is automatically directed to a URL without having to type. The use of call to action buttons for calling, SMS, mapping and emailing is also effective because these are one touch functions to allow the consumer to contact or find the advertiser.

As the main purpose of adopting any technology is to better achieve your organization goals, mobile fulfills those criteria by reaching out to your customers in their comfort zone and initiating interactions that have high chances of resulting into business transactions.

How do you foresee integrating your advertising efforts with mobile technology?

Another Year of St. Patrick’s Day Ads

No, I do not wear green on St. Patrick’s Day, I do not drink green beer and I can’t stand boiled corned beef and cabbage. My mother thinks this is a betrayal of my heritage, but I wear my Irish all year long thanks to my name. And I do notice St. Patrick’s Day advertising, so I wanted to share some examples and tips that may get you in the mood to “go green!”

• Products. When it comes to advertising, it seems like a limited array of products and services tie in with the holiday. Beers and liquors are at the top of the list thanks to Guinness, Bass Ale, Yuengling and Jameson Whiskey. Bars and parties are also big. I thought it was very creative for Taxi Share Chicago to tie in, since they are a solution for all those who indulge too much. And there are a small number of food companies and restaurants that also promote special products,” such as McDonald’s with their shamrock shake.

In this ad for St. Patrick’s Day treats, the cookies and cupcakes blend together with the background in a riot of shamrocks—very festive! By the way, shamrocks have three leaves but clovers can have five to seven leaves (unless you get the odd four-leaf clover). The correct symbol for St. Patrick’s Day is a shamrock because the saint used it to explain the Holy Trinity.

• Colors. We all know that green is the dominant color of the day but it is often complemented by orange. You can see that approach represented in the ad below for a store selling flooring. The orange really makes the categories of products stand out, which is important when there are no product images featured.

In contrast, Guinness invites you to “paint the town black” because of their logo and in honor of the holiday, which they extend to an entire weekend. Great idea because that triples their opportunity to sell beer!

• Images. Again, no surprises here but shamrocks are all over everything that has to do with St. Patrick’s Day. But there are also leprechauns, horse shoes and pots of gold. Since many of the advertisers fall into the party, bar or alcohol categories, we also find quite a few voluptuous red-haired women!

All the standards are included in this ad for Saylor’s Market and the designer even threw in a rainbow for a splash of color that breaks up all the green.

• Fonts. Typefaces are often used to evoke the look and feel of the days of St. Patrick and tend to be Uncial, Insular Script, Carolingian, Blackletter, Gaelic and Celtic fonts. Although these are not necessarily the actual typefaces used during that period of time. You can see samples of these fonts here.

This is an attractive ad from a florist. I wouldn’t have thought about flowers for St. Patrick’s Day but I might order some now that I have seen this. The ad uses a variety of different greens effectively and the font for the headline resembles Blackletter.

• Nostalgia. If you have a story to tell about the history of your company or products, or you just want to make people yearn for simpler/better times, then you play on nostalgia. Jameson’s uses the foundation of its long history in Ireland to poke fun and suggest that the whiskey must be saved at all costs.

In contrast to these rules of thumb, we have this year’s ad for Party City. Now I realize that there aren’t many upbeat dance songs that come to mind when you think of St. Patrick’s Day but it boggles my mind why the company would opt for Mambo #5 for their ad this year. However, by going against the grain, they have gotten quite of bit of attention and it is almost impossible to get the song out of your head.

If you want more traditional design advice for your St. Patrick’s Day marketing campaigns, PrintRunner Blog offers some tips and examples of St. Patrick’s Day ads that you might find helpful.

• Focus on your identity and never lose sight of it. Yuengling identified itself with a city that has a storied history of its own, which allowed the company to maintain its brand.

• Be viral. The more engaging your ads more, especially in the age where social media has become a viable medium to market your business, the more chances people would want to join your festivities. Guinness does a great job with this ad: featuring a sheep dog.
• Acknowledge your history. People seem to put a lot of trust of brands that have stood the test of time.
• Be sensitive with the color scheme of your ad design. Green is the color of choice because of its association with the Irish celebration.
• Keep the design appropriate. Style your ads according to the kind of event you’re holding.
• Tie in with the holiday. Get extra visibility for your existing marketing campaigns by inserting images or linking in upcoming events.

For those of you who didn’t grow up having to eat soda bread when you preferred brownies, here are the top ten facts about St. Patrick.

Have you tied in with the St. Patrick’s Day holiday for your advertising? If so, what has helped you to stand out and what would you suggest for other companies looking to set themselves apart?

Technologies and Trends to Rock the Future of Mobile Marketing

Is your mobile phone becoming your new email inbox? Are the lines between between static e-mails, real-time tweets and instant brand messages going to blur further in future? Kevin McNulty, President and CEO of NetWeave Social Networking says, “There’s no doubt that the proliferation of smartphones and tablets will continue in the future, making the mobile experience more important. For some, their mobile device has largely replaced their laptop or desktop for browsing experiences. If you as a business are not addressing this trend, you risk being left behind completely as web marketing goes mobile.”

How will this impact the retail scene? Deloitte predicts that within three years “mobile influence” will be directly determining 19%, or $689 billion, of U.S. retail sales. So we decided to take a closer look to see which technologies will prove to be game-changers in the near future and how will they impact small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) trying to engage their target customers.

• Location-based mobile advertising (LBA): This integrates with location-based services and the technology pinpoints consumers’ whereabouts to provide location-specific advertisements on their mobile devices. LBA is the most personal and direct marketing channel today that allows marketers to reach a specific target audience by creating campaigns aimed at age, gender, income and lifestyle segments. Celtra’s Q3 2012 Rich Media Monitor Report last December found that, in Q3, the average rich media mobile ad engagement rate was 13.7 percent, nearly a one percent increase over Q2. Location-based features have overtaken branding and presentation with an 18.8 percent engagement rate. Matevz Klanjsek, co-promoter and Chief Product Officer of Celtra said, “Gaming, location-based and social media features in the mobile ads engage consumers in a meaningful way, providing an essential and often missing link between typically overcrowded upper and lower funnels.” Mobile location data reveals the behavioral insights of audiences based on actual consumer activity. As a result, store owners or restaurateurs can find out where users shop and eat by using both real-time and historical data. They can use this information to design and share their promotional offers. Such targeted activity translates into real customer results.
• Near Field Communication: Another trending mobile technology is known as Near Field Communication (NFC) and is a form of contact-less communication between devices like smartphones or tablets, which allows users to wave their smartphones over NFC compatible devices to send information without needing to touch devices together or go through multiple steps setting up connections. Mobile users can use this technology to integrate credit cards, subway tickets and paper coupons all into one device so they can board trains, pay for groceries, redeem coupons or store loyalty points. They can even exchange contact information with the wave of their smartphones. It helps retailers by tying offline shopping with the online experience and drives people who tap on products in their stores to additional collateral on their websites. This increases loyalty and conversion, as faster transaction times mean less waiting in line and happier customers.
• Mobile Visual Search: Mobile phones have evolved into powerful image and video processing devices equipped with high-resolution cameras, color displays and hardware-accelerated graphics.

Marketing to Appeal to Women

March 8^th is International Women’s Day and, every year, thousands of events are held throughout the world to inspire women and celebrate their achievements, ranging from political rallies, business conferences and networking events to craft markets, performances, fashion shows and more.

What is different today than the first year of International Women’s Day in 1909 is that women are earning, spending and influencing at a greater rate than ever before. They account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the U.S. and, over the next decade, will control two thirds of consumer wealth.

Furthermore, women make or influence 85% of all purchasing decisions and purchase more than 50% of traditional male products, including automobiles, home improvement products and consumer electronics. They also have most of the decision-making power when it comes to planning family vacations, according to the 2012 Women, Power & Money Study. But 91% of women say that advertisers don’t understand them.

When it comes to electronics, women accounted for $55 billion of the $96 billion spent, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. Women are involved in 89% of all consumer electronics purchasing decisions. However, only 1% of women surveyed think manufacturers have them in mind when creating products. Is it any wonder when you read about CES booth babes?

“There is a fine line between marketing to women and talking down to women and I don’t think people have found what that is,” says Laura Heller, senior director of the trade publication DSN Retailing Today. A growing number of companies are starting to target their products toward female buyers, or at the very least, promote them in a more gender-neutral fashion. Retailers and manufacturers who get this are seeing impressive results.

It is not about changing the color of products to pink. Rather, it is critical to understand the consumers’ needs and complaints and come up with solutions.

This becomes even more important when you consider that women serve as broadcasters and amplifiers of ideas in the marketplace. Their purchasing decisions and word-of-mouth recommendations have wide-ranging implications for local, regional and national businesses that can’t be ignored. Women tend to share positive recommendations far more than negative ones. More than 33% of women surveyed recommended a product or service in the past six months, compared to 19% who recommended that someone not buy a particular product or service.

Here are three general tips for targeting women from Straight North Internet Marketing:

1. Connect emotionally. One of the most important differences between marketing to men and women is the need for an emotional connection between the brand and the potential customer. One of the most well-known brands that capitalizes on this is Dove. Female consumers who see Dove marketing recognize themselves in the images shared and this is the best way of getting women to connect with your brand.
2. Be useful. Even more than men, women love tips, advice and helpful information. They love to learn, find ways to make things better, more practical or more attractive. The more useful you can be in marketing, the more interest and sales you will eventually secure.
3. Complement, don’t complicate. Women want solutions and to have things straightened out. Products and services that make things easier, smoother and less turbulent are desired. For example, saying “10% off everything” works much better than “10% off in March on Revlon mascaras”.

When it is time to design your marketing materials, consider these attributes:

• Approach. There is no need to create gender-specific communications. You should be appealing to all audiences. Often when companies split their audiences into male and female categories, they end up generalizing and using stereotypes.
• Colors. Women are not little girls so it is a bad idea to go overboard with pink. Along the same lines, skip script fonts, Victorian ornaments, scalloped borders and rounded corners if you want to be taken seriously.
• Copy. You should be concise but persuasive to appeal to women rather than lengthy, dense and flowery. There should be clear calls to action and straightforward guidance, appealing to all users no matter the sex. However, women have been shown to respond to friendly, conversational copy more favorably than men, so ahead and add some personality into the copy.
• Humor. PHD Media interviewed 1,000 people and determined that both men (76%) and women (68%) ranked wit and humor as the number one attribute that makes Super Bowl ads enjoyable (and both sexes ranked cited the same two ads as their favorites!).
• Imagery. Feature women doing something other than the clichés of housework, mothering children or doing yoga. The number two attribute for women after humor is cute animals. At the same time, 69% of women 18-59 and 74% of women 18-34 said they like sexy imagery in ads.
• Subjects. eMarketer notes that Boomers spend more time and money online than any other demographic but these women are completely underrepresented in marketing. Instead of youthful women in their teens and twenties, show more mature women. But be sure you display them as independent versus seeming to rely on husbands (as many are divorced or widowed at this average age of 55). They should also be active because Boomers have reached the age where they have the freedom to start new businesses, go back to school, travel, try new hobbies, etc.

As AdPearance notes in 5 Myths About Designing for Women, ultimately you need create a good user experience for all that includes clear navigation, persuasive headlines, readable copy, strong calls to action and quality imagery before you start thinking about appealing specifically to women.

The best advice to businesses targeting women is to keep your offers clear and your processes honest. Make sure you provide feedback and respond to comments and requests on social media quickly and take criticism.

The 2012 Women, Power & Money Study concludes that “Today’s American woman has changed the game. She calls the shots and makes the decisions. Her leadership is expanding, not diminishing. Any marketer or advertiser who continues to pretend otherwise does so at their own peril.”

And if you want to see what not to do, check out The 9 Worst Ads for Women This Year from The Huffington Post.

What have you tried when targeting female consumers and has it been successful or has it bombed?

Advertising with a Spring Theme

After a long, drab spell of winter, we welcome spring with excitement and a craving for colors. Rainbows overtake shop windows, grocery stores, boutiques and other retail locations. And it is no surprise that the ads for the season are just as vibrant, with a wide variety of advertisers building on the theme.

This ad for spring activities in the town of Scugog includes pictures of people enjoying the outdoors. The bright colors invite readers into the ad. The photos encourage parents to sign up their kids and kids will look forward to all the fun they will have at these parks. Flowers and butterflies are recurring images in ads of the season.

Along with blossoming buds and warmer temperatures, spring is when families can start spending time together outside without their coats, hats and gloves.

Newspapers: the Answer is Not Print or Digital; it’s Integration!

At the third annual Mega-Conference, a collaborative effort between Local Media Association, Inland Press Association and SNPA, it was clear that becoming digital agencies for local advertisers is a priority for newspaper publishers but print is still very important to their business. The print audience is still solid, but it is clear that it will continue to shift with more digital choices. In fact, industry experts believe most publishers will have as much as 50% of their digital content consumed via mobile devices by 2015.

One such expert—Gordon Borrell—expects print ad revenues to stabilize or grow slightly at most papers, a trend he says will continue through 2017. But the results will be uneven, with small and mid-sized papers having the best growth prospects and metros still declining in the range of 4-6%. Digital ad growth for the papers he surveys, which are mostly small and mid-sized, will be 30% in 2013.

In his opinion, newspaper organizations will only succeed to the extent that they target two growing categories of digital advertising: video (growing 30% next year) and targeted display (growing 105%). In contrast, those who stick with run-of-site banners and classified or directory listings might see low single-digit growth next year at best.

Furthermore, Borrell sees digital services like reputation management, search engine optimization, app development and social media management as hot growth areas. His takeaway for small and mid-sized papers is that, if they are selling what the advertisers are buying most, they can expect 15% plus growth and a 15-20% share of digital in their local markets.

A Pew Research Center report covered a survey of 40 newspapers in early 2012 and showed they were losing $7 for every $1 gained in digital revenue. However, there was good news comes from the newspapers looking at new revenue streams:

1. Some are becoming digital service provider where advertisers can come for services like web design or search engine optimization.
2. Others are specializing and localization has become a favorite trend among newspapers that see this as an avenue to offer information only they can provide.
3. Reputation management of local businesses is another offering generating significant interest.

In a recent survey by InfoTrends, marketers confirmed that are planning to shift more dollars away from print and into digital media. In the next two years, print will still make up 30% of marketing spend but it is expected to decline by 6.2%. Online marketing is expected to increase 4.9% and mobile will experience the highest growth, with expenditures increasing by 8.8% (from 10.2 to 12%). Websites, social media and mobile apps are the top digital content to which customers are directed. According to Steve Adoniou, Director of InfoTrends’ Consulting Service, “Print is not disappearing, but its use is declining and its role is changing.”

In “What’s next for print in an increasingly mobile world,” the author notes that return on investment for print is actually increasing for marketers the world over. Marketers have moved away from the broad, general outbound marketing tactics of the past to a more targeted, data-driven and totally integrated approach. As a result, marketers have made print work harder by integrating it with their digital efforts.

This is reinforced by a survey by Oracle, which revealed that 70% of marketers currently use print to direct audiences to digital content. In addition, nearly half of marketers (46%) believe print is “vital” to driving interest in digital mobile content and campaigns. In an age of information overload, print has the power to cut through the clutter, but adding digital and mobile can attract many more eyeballs and offer an altogether more powerful proposition.

In the Newspaper Association of America’s 2011 “How America Shops and Spends” survey, two-thirds (66%) of the total sample of newspaper digital users responded to ads on computer, smartphone or table platforms in the previous 30 days and results are similar across groups, including the desirable younger demographic.

Past 30-Day Response to Newspaper Digital Ads

66%        Net any

56%        Net became aware of product, service, sale, needed item

47%        Net looked for more information by clicks, search, asking others

32%        Net visited store online or in person

30%        Net bought, decided to buy, where to buy

14%        Referred ad to someone else.

Past 30-Day Response to Newspaper Mobile Ads

Smartphone       Tablet

59%                        61%        Net any

46%                        50%        Net became aware of product, service, sale, needed item

40%                        43%        Net looked for more information by clicks, search, asking others

20%                        26%        Net visited store online or in person

27%                        33%        Net bought, decided to buy, where to buy

11%                        17%        Referred ad to someone else

An example of how well the integration of print and digital works is Tourism Australia. The advertiser got four times its investment in media value from a partnership with Fairfax Media on a campaign targeting New Zealand tourists.

Fairfax Media developed a four-phase Amazing Australia campaign, which combined advertising and co-created and user-generated content across multiple platforms: Sunday Star-Times, Stuff.co.nz, Escape, NZ House and Garden NZ Life & Leisure and Cuisine.

Readers were prompted to vote for their favorite travel experience as part of a competition to win their own Amazing Australia outing. Engagement far exceeded the target 20,000 entries and reached a total of more than 76,000 entries.

Research commissioned by Fairfax Media measured and reported on awareness and engagement levels. Each element delivered impressive results on its own but, when respondents were exposed to multiple elements, the effects were magnified. Key messages were more readily absorbed by readers: people who had seen the campaign in print and online agreed that Australia “offers a wide range of diverse experiences for travelers” (up 6.1%) and “has a lot to do for travelers outside the main cities” (up 11.6%) versus those who had not been exposed to the campaign.

For those who bought or read the newspaper, 87% of the target market saw the Amazing Australia booklet; 69% said as a result of reading the booklet, they were more likely to think about traveling outside Australia’s main centers.

Here’s another case study on the successful integration of print and digital in advertising campaigns. In 2012, the Integrated Solutions and National Automotive team at the Toronto Star had the opportunity to partner with Nissan Canada and its agencies (OMD and TBWA) to develop an innovative advertising program.

Common themes were developed for content, consistent technology was used for augmented reality and timing was coordinated across newspapers and out-of-home to achieve maximum impact.

In the Toronto Star, the program included:

• Four-week, pre-launch program with content integration, augmented reality, promotional contest and multi-platform media support (print, online, email, mobile).
• Launch day domination in the Toronto Star.
• First-ever die-cut wrap on all paid copies.
• Domination of all sections on launch day with front-of-section ads and “floating” DPS ad units in all five sections. Ad content was Layar-enabled to give readers the opportunity to interact with the printed page and the brand in a new way.

The result was award-winning. The launch campaign for the 2013 Nissan Altima won Best in Show in Canada’s 2012 Media Innovation Awards this past November. Over eight million readers viewed the campaign in one day, which led to more than 6,500 page views at a 42% click-through rate. Test drives for the Nissan Altima increased by 65% as a result of the interactive

So the ultimate answer to the question is that newspapers should focus on both print and digital to deliver maximum results for advertisers. Print will become an increasingly used, highly-strategic tool for many marketers who can integrate it with digital and mobile channels to bring both tangibility and credibility to their future campaigns.

As a marketer, have you integrated print and digital advertising and, if so, how did this impact your return on investment? If you are a publisher, how do you make it easy for your advertisers to create integrated campaigns across channels?