Serving vs. Stalking

An AdAge article yesterday reported on a recent study of the effectiveness of online advertising. The study examined two online ad tactics - targeted* advertising and obtrusive** advertising - to see their impact on consumers' intent to buy.

The results showed that consumers were 0.9% more likely to buy when they saw a targeted ad rather than a non-targeted one, and that they were 0.5% more likely to buy when they saw an obtrusive ad over a non-obtrusive one. However, when an ad was both targeted and obtrusive, consumers were only 0.3% more likely to buy than if the ad were a typical, non-targeted, non-obtrusive ad.

The study suggested that privacy-concerned consumers may find targeted obtrusive ads to be manipulative.

The bottom line is that marketers exist to serve customers, not the other way around. We aren't serving the customer when we use ads that interrupt what the customer is doing. And we aren't serving customers when we interrupt them with an ad that says, "I know you're looking at Product X right now, so you should stop what you're doing and come look at my Product Y to go with your Product X." Even if these interruptions create more "brand awareness," they don't create the brand awareness we want. If it's not serving customers, it's not worth it.

We serve the customer when we make ourselves available for them to choose when they need our services.

As marketers, our attitude should not be one of pushing ourselves, our products, and our messages onto customers, but one of waiting on customers. "Waiting on" customers the way a server "waits" tables. Or the way a servant used to "wait on" his master. Paying the utmost attention, capable and diligent, doing everything in our power to be available, letting them know that you're there for them, waiting for the slightest request, ready to provide what the customer needs.

Marketers, wait on your customers. Don't interrupt their lives.


*Targeted advertising is that in which the advertised product relates to the content of the site, i.e. an ad for camping gear on a site about outdoor recreation.

**Obtrusive advertising was defined by the study to include pop-ups, pop-unders, ads in an audio or video stream, takeover ads, non-user-initiated audio/video, full page banner ads, interactive ads, floating ads, and interstitials (ads displayed before a page loads).

Crowdsourcing Love and Chocolate

On February 14 of this year, Lacta chocolate discovered that love was in the air. And on the airwaves. And online.


Lacta - a Grecian chocolate company bought by Kraft Foods in the 1980s, and currently the top-selling chocolate brand in Greece - has made good use of interactive marketing in the past few years to promote love (and, by extension, chocolate). Lacta's most recent project climaxed on Valentine's Day 2010 with the premiere of a love story, brought to film by Lacta customers.

Creation of the 27-minute film, entitled "Love in Action," began in October 2009 with a television ad inviting viewers to submit their own real-life love stories on the Love in Action website, www.loveinaction.gr, for the chance to have their story made into a movie. According to an article this week by AdAge.com, the site received 1,307 submitted love stories.

Lacta, their marketing consultants at OgilvyOne Worldwide, and screenwriter George Kapoutzidis picked the winning story from the 1,307 entries.

In November 2009, Lacta issued another tv spot, asking the audience to view actors' screentests for the film (which were posted in full online), and to vote for the cast of the love story. These online audience members also chose the characters' names and clothing for the film.

In early February 2010, Lacta released a short trailer for "the love story we all turned into a movie."

Originally scheduled to release solely online on February 14, the "Love in Action" film also broadcast - at no cost to Lacta - as part of the Valentine's Day programming on Greece's leading tv station, MEGA Channel.

In March 2010, Lacta published a fourth and final tv commercial for the campaign, showing the film's ending and announcing that the film was based on a true love story.

(See the film and the entire campaign process at the Love in Action blog.)

And it seems that interactive romance stories work well for Greece's leading chocolate brand. In the quarter after the Love in Action campaign began, Lacta's sales were up 0.6% while the overall chocolate market was down.

This was not Lacta's first foray into interactive storytelling, either. In 2008, OgilvyOne had helped Lacta to release an online "choose-your-own-ending" love story, entitled "Love at First Site". Visitors made choices to move the story along to a happy (or unhappy) ending. Codes on wrappers of Lacta chocolate bars provided clues as to the right choices to make on the site.

Due to the success of the crowdsourced romance - according to AdAge, "Love in Action" was viewed by 12% of Greek television watchers, and was viewed 150,000 times during its first few weeks online - Lacta plans to create another interactive online love story based on one of the other 1,306 campaign entries.

Love, chocolate, and audience participation. Seems to be a winning combo for Lacta.