Contact: Igedo Company GmbH & Co. KG Messeplatz D-40474 Düsseldorf T +49.211.43 96 519 F +49.211.43 96 525 info@igedo.com Partner:		Intro Dear Visitors, “Classic advertisers are increasingly looking to the Internet,” that's the result of the German Multimedia Congress 2008 in Berlin. According to Groth, it is now possible to advertise effectively online. Groth’s assessment is backed up by the fact that the Internet is becoming increasingly important for advertisers. In turn, the demands in terms of the quality of online advertising are growing. “The Internet will thoroughly test the creativity of companies which advertise. This is something which is long overdue,” said Jens-Uwe Meyer, the boss of the advertising agency “die Ideeologen”, with delight. Internet advertising now has the chance to prove that there is more to it than just flashing banners and dry, text-based advertisements. Patrick Colister, the Executive CD at Ogilvy in London, is also convinced of the potential which Internet advertising offers: “The Internet will influence the creativity of companies which advertise by providing them with new ways of building up relationships with their customers”. Nevertheless, what distinguishes good online advertising? What options do advertisers have when it comes to communicating their messages digitally and in an innovative manner? What trends can be seen in the area of creative online advertising? Today's newsletter describes the basic conditions within a booming market and looks into what is driving online advertising and challenging people's creativity. We hope that you will enjoy reading it. Your online-marketing-düsseldorf team Problems watching this newsletter? Please click here. The booming online advertising market: The trend towards branding The first online report published by the OVK (the Online Marketer Group within the BVDW) in 2008 clearly shows that the growth in online advertising is continuing and is even surpassing experts’ expectations. In 2007, the German advertising industry invested almost 2.9 billion euros in online advertising. Graphics-based advertising media in particular surpassed all expectations. With a sum of 1.5 billion euros spent, banners and wallpapers etc. still make up the lion's share. The “super banner” remains the most popular form of online advertising. This is followed by the “skyscraper” and “rectangle” formats. The success which video and streaming formats are enjoying at the moment is also quite remarkable. No other format is experiencing such rapid growth. Indeed, the use of such formats more than doubled between the first and second half of 2007. When it comes to the popularity of the various advertising formats, there is currently a clear trend towards large and conspicuous advertising media. Branding too is an increasingly important issue for the customers of online marketers. Advertising formats which allow emotionally appealing campaigns are particularly important. Consequently, it is likely that those forms of advertising which allow the integration of moving images will become the dominant force in online advertising. Ideas which fire the imagination, creative freedom, new formats: What drives online advertising and challenges people’s creativity “The most important ingredients for a good online campaign are a good idea and exciting concepts,” said Margit Berner. In 2008, the Marketing Director of the Hamburg-based online advertising network provider “Advertising.com Deutschland” was a juror for the German Multimedia Award and was therefore able to assess the creative standard of German online advertising from the very front line. In her opinion, a campaign does not necessarily need to be elaborate and expensive in order to be successful. “Even simple ideas can help to ensure that a product stays in people’s minds for longer,” said Berner. One of the most important pre-requisites is creative freedom. Time and time again, numerous award-winning online projects have demonstrated that the greatest creative achievements occur where the client allows the agency to exercise a certain design freedom, where the specifications are not too rigid and where the agency can allow its creativity to flourish. Creative achievement arises from a trusting relationship between the agencies and their clients. Of course, technological developments are driving the web and these forms of advertising. These developments can encourage creativity. They allow greater creative freedom and open up new possibilities for this creativity. In addition to the special forms of advertising offered by marketers, a range of alternative communication strategies allows advertisers ever greater freedom to exploit this creativity and in turn ensures effective and successful advertising on the Internet. A number of new approaches and challenges are summarised below: Content marketing A particular marketing strategy involves people or companies creating new content formats themselves in order to cater for specific needs. The Volkswagen Bank took this route when it was looking to draw attention to the issue of finance and women. Given that there were no appropriate products on offer at the time, an advertising environment in the form of a microsite was created and banners were used on the site for advertising purposes. Engagement marketing It is particularly difficult to draw people's attention to low-involvement products. Engagement marketing can help to overcome these difficulties. This method uses online measures which allow users to interact in brand-related activities. A wide range of different resources such as background information, tips and services or dialogue-based features such as competitions can also help to achieve this objective. Virale marketing Forms of advertising where the users themselves spread the word about a brand are particularly effective in drawing people's attention to that brand. Advertisers in Germany are using in particular viral campaigns and word-of-mouth marketing far more frequently than they did in recent years. The Internet is opening up numerous possibilities for doing this. Videos or games for example can be distributed quickly. However, web logs too are playing an increasingly important role. Graphical search-engine advertising Creative elements can also be used in search-engine marketing. The company Sixt has launched a highly creative SEM campaign with Google Adwords, where the sponsored links for the search query “hire car” are displayed not only with text but with graphics as well. Examples of creative online campaigns: Two selected examples illustrate the way in which the design methods and outlay involved in implementing creative campaigns on the Internet can differ. Case 1: Coke & Faithless: Spectacular product communication with all media facets In order to promote a new bottle known as the “aluminium music bottle”, the Berlin-based multichannel agency “argonauten G2” came up with an elaborate website for Coca Cola. The campaign site is both an interactive art project and a digital promotion at the same time. It centres on the well-known British band Faithless with their song “I won’t stop”. The song is used on the site on an exclusive basis and can be downloaded free of charge from iTunes. The concept is based upon a fairy story which was developed for the new Faithless video by the French artists' group “Paranoid”. Users can interact with the website via all possible interfaces – via the computer keyboard and mouse as well as via a webcam or microphone. Detailed information on the project, in particular desktop backgrounds, is made available in order to guarantee virality. The website also features a video which can be viewed and downloaded and the music itself. http://www.faithless.coca-cola.com/... Case 2: Sixt Ebay Ads: Attracting attention with minimal resources Instead of using classic banners, the creative minds at the agency “Jung von Matt” came up with an unusual strategy for its client Sixt. The idea behind the strategy is to attract people’s attention on the eBay auction platform. Working on behalf of the car-hire company, the agency simply launched a number of auctions with a continuous copy text on eBay. The deadlines for the individual auctions were selected in such a way that the individual advertisements were listed one after another in the correct sequence and the pictures accompanying each advertisement together formed a complete advertising image. The best thing about this advertising campaign is the fact that the only costs incurred were the costs of the vouchers which were to be auctioned. These were offered for a hire car as part of the normal auctions. http://media.adc.de/gewinner/... Examples of international-award-winning online campaigns: Winners of the Microsoft Mouse Awards 2008 for creative online advertising - Virgin Bets: An online clip for betting providers http://www.leanmeanfightingmachine.co.uk/... - Nonstop Fernando: A flight promotion featuring a 14-hour clip http://www.ecreats.com/... - Adidas Impossible Pitch: Interactive user integration http://creative.advertising.msn.com/... Creative online advertising at the online-marketing-düsseldorf Creative online campaigns usually involve the interaction of a range of different companies. Creative agencies come up with the idea and the advertising media. Media agencies are responsible not only for planning and realising the campaign but also for implementing it in a way which appeals to specific target groups. Online marketers then provide the scope and the technology in order to bring the campaigns to the users themselves. Market participants from all of these disciplines are represented at the online-marketing-düsseldorf trade fair. Online advertising and creative brand management will be major issues at the Congress as well. Prof. Dr. Ulrich Lehner, a member of the shareholders’ committee at Henkel KGaA, will deliver his keynote speech entitled “Digital Brand Management”. This will be followed by a panel for brand management with best-practice cases from branded companies. Further questions about online-marketing-düsseldorf? You will also find more information on online-marketing-düsseldorf 2008 on our website at www.online-marketing-duesseldorf.de and on our trade-fair blog "The Main Event" www.theME08.de You can of course also contact us in person: Igedo Company GmbH & Co. KG Nora Wilhelms, Head of Project T +49.(0)211.43 96 519 wilhelms@igedo.com Press Contact: Christoph Salzig pr://ip, Owner T +49.(0)251.49095970 salzig@pr-ip.de Deregister and change format If you no longer want to receive the Newsletter, please click here - if you want to change the format, please click here for mail format HTML and here for mail format plain text.