“Kristen is an amazing leader possessing a modern and progressive view of strategy and planning, has a proven knack for winning over peers, clients and prospects, and knows how to impact the direction of an ambitious agency,” said Mullen President and CEO Joe Grimaldi. “We were looking for a catalyst who, through a special blend of skill and personal qualities, would elevate the performance of our increasingly successful Boston leadership team. There’s no question we will be more successful with her.”

“I’ve been given the rare gift to work for back-to-back companies with integrity, great work and an unwavering belief in collaboration,” said Cavallo. “I’m inspired by Mullen’s forward-thinking approach to creativity, weaving social influence, mobile marketing, PR and performance analytics into their cross-functional team. It’s hard to tell the different disciplines apart. They finish each other’s sentences.”

Cavallo has been SVP, Planning and Development at Martin for the past six years. She first joined the agency as SVP, Group Planning Director in 1998, following a Brand Planning engagement at Arnold. Cavallo has been a strategic leader for numerous major brands, including BMW, Timberland, Volkswagen, Coca-Cola, Kohler, Charles Schwab and Miller Brewing. She won several industry honors for her work on VW, Timberland and Vanilla Coke. In her role as development leader, Cavallo was instrumental in helping Martin become one of the fastest-growing agencies, winning new business from Walmart, Pizza Hut, Expedia, Microsoft, LivingSocial, Mentos, BFGoodrich, Kraft and Johnson & Johnson, among others

1. Segment your data for deeper understanding. Site visitors come from a variety of sources and have different motivations for their visit. Embrace these differences. Take search as an example. How does site success differ by search keyword? What do site paths look like for different groups of keywords? Understanding how segments perform will bring clarity to what is working and what is not. Use this information to adjust bidding strategies, refine keywords and test ad messages.
2. Include the voice of the customer. Clickstream data from tools like Adobe Site Catalyst, Webtrends and Google Analytics do a great job of telling you what happened. They don’t, however, tell you why something happened. Many users achieve what you’d like them to on your site but what about those who don’t? Why weren’t they successful? And what can you do to change this in the future? Understanding the voice of the customer using online survey tools like 4Q, OpinionLab and ForeSee can help you to take action to improve online experiences. This could include adding new content that users desire, enhancing confusing navigation or even finding site bugs that are impacting user success.
3. Set benchmarks and targets. Has a client ever asked you if a report metric is good or bad? Setting benchmarks and targets can help you to provide this context. Past internal performance can be used as well as external competitive/industry data from services like Compete, Hitwise and the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Then, it’s as simple as understanding if performance is above or below the target level. When you’re below target, you’re automatically prompted to take actionable steps like those shown above.

So, take some action with your reports. You can use segmentation, the voice of the customer and benchmarks/targets to bring actionable intelligence and improved marketing performance to your clients. This is a beautiful thing!

What steps have you taken to deliver more actionable information?

You have weathered the economic storm. You were probably caught flat-footed by the recession, but now you sense the light at the end of the tunnel. Business and consumer confidence indices are improving although the US unemployment rate is still high. There is optimism in the air. You have cleared deadwood within your organization.   You have outsourced whatever you can outsource to reduce payroll. Remember that recessions are not unusual – happened over time (1980, 1987, 1991/1992, 2000/2001, 2008/2009) and across geographies (Japan in the ‘90s, East Asia in late ‘90s, Germany/France during mid 90s) – and we can use a few strategies and tactics that worked in the past as our guide.

Treat every dollar as your last

Your marketing and advertising budget probably shrank in the last 18 months. In tandem with your competitors, you migrated dollars to more “measurable” channels and new media – because you were focused on short-term performance.

The last time the CFO asked for ROI for each marketing and advertising tactic, you couldn’t quantify the impact and so the CFO controlled the conversation and the purse. Don’t go back to the CFO for increase in budget now. Instead tell your CEO and CFO what you will deliver by changing your budget or allocating it more optimally across media, geographies, target market segments and marketing tactics.

Hire analytical talent

You probably read the book “Competing on Analytics” and wondered how to bring similar rigor to your organization and decision-making processes in order to maximize marketing ROI. Take this opportunity to upgrade your talent pool while mixing right-brained and left-brained individuals. Let the magic happen.

Optimize your marketing communications

Are you getting what you want from your marketing and advertising services partners? How did your partners guide you through the recession? How are you planning to change the conversation with your prospects and customers? Now is the time to launch an aggressive marketing effort and get to your customers as their wallets thaw. Ensure that your brand stands for the one thing that matters to your target audience.

Don’t forget your employees

Another area where your company probably cut back: reduction in customer service personnel, training, etc. If the service you provide is an integral component of the brand experience, assess the components of the service that are indeed valued by your customers prior to making across the board investment increases.

Don’t let your brand falter

During the first spending reductions you cut back on brand building as your CFO wanted to take cost out of “everything.” Not just advertising, but also customer service, innovation, customer experience and more. You insisted on the value of brand building but couldn’t quantify the value of the brand on long-term performance. Maybe your competitor did not follow your budget cuts and instead maintained or increased spending during the recession. You may have to work smarter and be more surgical.

Take risks

Try to be the first mover in emerging media – mobile, video, social, iPad, and more – if you think that your customers and prospects are hanging out in these venues. Don’t be afraid to try unproven tactics, but adopt a disciplined test & learn approach to know the unknown and manage the risks. If your agency hasn’t proposed treading the untested waters yet, consider firing your agency!

Recession and economic recovery favor the prepared organization. Are you prepared? Now is the time for disciplined, deliberate, and thoughtful actions.

The rankings below were captured during the period of 6:00 – 11:00 PM eastern time on Super Sunday (that was game time). The methodology we used to calculate the rankings is explained on the BrandBowl site. The rankings reflect both volume of chatter and relative sentiment (positive/negative) and are based on nearly 100,000 tweets captured from 66,000 Twitter accounts. We have analytical dashboard data for all the Super Bowl brands if any of you brand managers would like to see?

Here are the final BrandBowl standings 1-42 and above is a Hulu widget if you’d like to view the Super Bowl spots :

1. Doritos
2. Google
3. Focus on the Family
4. Snickers
5. Budweiser
6. Bud Light
7. Hyundai
8. Kia
9. GoDaddy
10. Coca-Cola
11. U.S. Census Bureau
12. E-Trade
13. Dockers
14. Audi
15. Vizio
16. Dodge
17. Dove
18. VW
19. Monster
20. McDonald’s
21. Intel
22. Denny’s
23. Boost
24. CareerBuilder
25. Bridgestone
26. TacoBell
27. TruTV
28. HomeAway
29. EA
30. Walt Disney
31. Dr. Pepper
32. KGB
33. Universal
34. Paramount
35. FloTV
36. Cars.com
37. Motorola
38. Diamond Foods – Pop Secret
39. Honda
40. Teleflora
41. Michelob Ultra
42. Budweiser Select55

Doritos - "Keep your hands off my Mama!"

Doritos, Google and Focus on the Family.

They were the three brands left standing on the podium at the conclusion of BrandBowl2010. Why you ask? Isn’t it obvious, I say? Simplicity. Buzz. And dialogue.

Of course, we all know pulling off effective campaigns is a lot harder than it looks. It’s much easier to be an armchair quarterback, to write blog posts about how successful brands follow simple marketing rules, and then state those rules for all to see.

Boy, this armchair sure is comfy.

1) Production dollars don’t help you stand out at the Super Bowl.

In fact, they might help you blend in.

How do you squeeze your message through the spectacle that is the Super Bowl? How do you break through all of the hype, through the blaring graphics, the laser shows, the celebrities, the boatloads of slickly produced, over-the-top spots?

You chill out.

Google reused their elegant “Parisian Love” spot from their Search Stories campaign. It was nothing more than a simple screencast of an enthralling dialogue-free story. You (yes, you!) can purchase a license for Snapz Pro for $69, get yourself some royalty-free music and in an hour produce something similar yourself. Gene Simmons—and his midget—can eat their hearts out.

2) Pre-game buzz is worth more than any thirty-second spot.

Set against a white seamless backdrop, Focus on the Family had Pam Tebow talk about her difficult pregnancy. Then her son, 2007 Heisman Trophy winning Tim Tebow, tackles her to the ground. Goofy smiles and heart-warming feelings ensue. Not a particularly memorable spot in and of itself.

But Focus on the Family got their $2.6-million-dollar-buy worth before Drew Brees brushed his teeth Sunday morning. According to the BrandBowl, Focus on Family was far and away the most tweeted about brand among Super Bowl advertisers in the days leading up to the big game. That the actual spot turned out to be something of a non-event didn’t matter.

3) Mix the first two rules, add a dash of dialogue with your consumers, and you’ll win the BrandBowl!

Doritos’ “Crash the Super Bowl” campaign continued the brilliant crowdsourcing effort they’ve been running for three years now. It eschews top production values, in favor of building buzz and a community of avid followers in the months (and years, really) leading up to the game. It lets the people take control of the brand. The result is hilarious, simple, stand-out spots that get tweeted about in droves, make Doritos feel like a contemporary brand and makes them winners of the Brand Bowl.

Acknowledgment: this article was written with contributions from Andy Schneider.

BrandBowl2010 Winners

According to the 63,000+ Twitter users whose comments were captured in BrandBowl2010, Doritos was the most effective brand to advertise on the Super Bowl telecast on CBS this year. Budweiser Select55 was the least effective brand.

Mullen, and Radian6, a leader in social media measurement, created BrandBowl2010, a Twitter/Super Bowl experience that combined tweeting, ad reviews and a host of metrics to let viewers generate and view real time ratings of the TV commercials that ran on the big game.

The results were determined from a total of 98,656 Tweets collected at BrandBowl2010. The site provided an overall ranking of the brands advertising on the game based on a composite score that takes into consideration both volume of tweets and sentiment (positive or negative).

TOP SCORERS
When all was said and done, the top three brands were Doritos, Google and Focus on the Family. Doritos won the title by virtue of dominating the sheer volume of tweets. That was enough to keep them ahead of Google, which had a higher percentage of positive tweets.

MOST POPULAR
The most popular brands at the BrandBowl were McDonald’s and Dr. Pepper. Interestingly, neither of these brands had the sheer number of tweets to break into BrandBowl’s top ten—but the tweets about these brands were overwhelmingly positive.

MOST VOLUME
Again, the top three brands were Doritos, Google and Focus on the Family. These brands gapped the rest of the field in terms of volume of tweets, which dropped off sharply after the top three.

Free creative for Budweiser Select55

Mullen is offering Budweiser Select55, the last place finisher in BrandBowl2010, free creative services to make a better Super Bowl commercial next year. Mullen has produced four Super Bowl commercials in the past, including the Monster.com spot When I Grow Up, which many ad critics consider among the best Super Bowl spots of all time.

“Clearly no one wants to come in last place,” said Edward Boches, chief creative officer at Mullen. “So to ease the pain, we’ve made a commitment to recommend, for free, to the losing brand, creative ideas for next year. Perhaps we’ll even crowdsource those ideas, asking the entire social media community to join us in offering up free recommendations.”

The Top Ten Most Effective Brands on BrandBowl2010

1. Doritos
2. Google
3. Focus On Family
4. Snickers:
5. Budweiser
6. Bud Light
7. Hyundai
8. Kia
9. GoDaddy
10. Coca-Cola

The Five Least Effective Brands on BrandBowl2010

1. Budweiser Select55
2. Michelob Ultra
3. Teleflora
4. Honda
5. Diamond Foods’ – Pop Secret

The success of Brandbowl is due not only to all the people at Mullen and Radian6 who built it, but to many people in the social media community who helped promote it: @bbhlabs, @bigspaceship, @rga, @erproulx, @benkunz, @schwartzie14, @stevehall,  @kenwheaton, @lvanderpool and dozens of others.  That alone is a reminder of the worth of having a social network and a community.

Dinesh Gopinath

Mullen announced today that Dinesh Gopinath, Ph.D., has joined the agency as executive vice president, director of strategic analytics. Gopinath, who was selected after a review of 35 candidates, will lead the agency’s analytics practice, which plays a key role in modeling, predicting and optimizing communications strategies across a wide range of client businesses. Gopinath comes to Mullen from ChoiceStream, Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., where he was chief solutions officer and active in using data for precision communications targeting and more personalized forms of communications. He has developed 1-to-1 personalization technology for clients including Zappos, Overstock, Borders, MTV, Yahoo! and AOL.

“In the hiring of Dinesh, we’re looking to further enhance our competitive advantage in gleaning data-driven insight,” said Stephen Hahn-Griffiths, chief strategy officer at Mullen. “Dinesh will provide an added edge to our precision targeting capabilities – in customer relationship management, digital, social media and beyond. He is a strategic and data analytics thought leader.”

“I‘m excited to join Mullen, focusing on the ROI of marketing and advertising while striking the right balance between short-term and long-term client business goals,” said Gopinath. “The timing is perfect,” Gopinath added. “The advertising industry is at a strategic inflection point dealing with the complexities of audience fragmentation, media proliferation, brand multiplicity, emergence of new technologies and the coalescence of advertising, marketing and selling.”

Gopinath had been with ChoiceStream since 2002, and some of his recent work there was in the development of personalized advertising and recommendation technology designed for so-called “advanced-TV” platforms. Previously, he was a principal with Oliver Wyman (formerly Mercer Management Consulting) and was at US West Advanced Technologies (Qwest).

Gopinath has a Ph.D. and an M.S. degree from MIT. His undergraduate studies were at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, India.

Zappos Clients and Mullen Pitch Team at Agency Boston office

It’s true. Mullen won Zappos. We found out late Thursday afternoon and word traveled fast. Adweek and Ad Age were all over it.

Ad Age published a follow-up story on Monday noting that culture was key in this review.

This was a long time coming. Stephen Larkin, our new business guy, has been reaching out to Zappos for over a year. Our PR team had great meetings with Zappos earlier in the year.  Then the ad pitch started in June and became the biggest agency shootout of the year with more than 100 shops bidding, 22 moving to round-two and three going to the finals.

Looks like we won based on best idea, culture (which is huge @ Zappos), partnership and a commitment to analytics and accountability. Alex Leikikh, our new director of account service, and Mark Wenneker, our new executive creative director, led the charge, with help from dozens of agency people who made it happen.

Zappos is a great brand with a ton of momentum and it’s great to be working with them.

It’s a happy day @ Mullen.

But, sometimes campaigns are not focused on direct response, but rather influencing upper-funnel stages such as awareness and consideration.  When this is the case, a best practice is to conduct pre- vs. post-campaign brand survey studies, but we can also utilize an audience engagement construct based on online behaviors that act as proxies for awareness and/ or consideration and be leading indicators of future economic value (leads, transactions).

There are a number of behaviors that can make up an engagement score – rich-media ad interactions (window expansions, video plays, utilizations such as calculators or games), homepage visitation (especially via post-impression response^†), landing page visitation, store/ branch locater activity, consumption of high-value content (reinforcing campaign messages), etc.

However, not all of these behavioral interactions are equally valuable depending upon campaign goals and the interaction’s respective place in the purchase funnel – visiting store locater results pages is an intuitively stronger indicator of purchase intent likelihood than visiting the campaign landing page or even the brand homepage or ad unit interactions.

To account for this differential value of interactions, each behavior can be weighted, respectively, to reflect each one’s relative value (say, on a scale from 0-2, or whatever is appropriate for the specific brand’s business).

Once a methodology is established, the engagement score can be utilized as the basis for gauging campaign responsiveness (via engagement yield = engagement score/ ad impressions) as well as financial efficiency (via cost per engagement = media cost/ engagement score) to guide campaign optimization decisions.

So, the next time, your client has a digital campaign focused on influencing upper-funnel activities, and you don’t have the time, funds, or interest in formally evaluating brand awareness and consideration measures from a brand survey study, consider behavioral engagement as a good, easily available success proxy.

What experiences have you had in using online behavior measures as gauges of success for upper-funnel digital campaigns…? What else would you consider…?

^†Post-impression (PI) response represents the target audience being exposed to online display advertising (OLA), not clicking on the ad (banner), but at a later time visiting the brand’s site and exhibiting the campaign’s goal behaviors (homepage visit, priority content consumption, order submission, etc.). PI response typically accounts for 60-90% of total campaign response.

Social media measurement is quite immature – just as Web analytics was back in the mid-1990s – and it will evolve quickly as marketers trial different approaches and hold enterprise measurement firms accountable in helping make sense of all the activity data generated by social media interactions.

In our experience to-date at Mullen, we’ve discovered social media has its nuances, but overall, at its core, similar principles need to be planned for when embarking on social media measurement. With that, here are Mullen’s 5 steps to social media measurement success:

1. THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS

• Start with a desired consumer behavior/ business goal
• Figure out the appropriate social platforms to get there
• Platforms + goals = measurement opportunities

2. MARK THE TRAIL

• Lay out the potential behavior paths
• Plan a metric for each step
• Incorporate tracking hooks where possible

3. DO THE MATH

• Size the opportunity
• Realistically estimate success
• Calibrate expectations

4. KNOW WHAT YOU WON’T KNOW

• Accept the tracking imprecision of consumer control
• Highlight the risks and measurement holes
• Measure accordingly

5. BUCKLE IN

• Consumer connections are long-term
• Unpredictability will be the rule
• Get 80% right rather than 100% frustrated

That’s our initial perspective. What’s yours…? How have you tackled social media measurement planning? Anything missing…? Any experiences you’re willing to share?