The marketing world is gearing up for an Easter bonanza and U.K. retailer Tesco is using Google Street View for a promotion that rewards users for finding virtual Easter eggs. U.K. residents can claim a chocolate bunny via digital coupon for finding three virtual eggs and finders of a golden egg will be eligible to win a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2.

Participants visit the microsite to locate where the eggs are hidden using a smartphone GPS or entering a postal code to begin the search.Continue reading...

Google’s latest project, Art, Copy & Code, is an experiment in creativity and technology to re-imagine advertising with some of "today's most iconic brands and innovative marketers,” such as Volkswagen, Burberry and Adidas.

In addition to well-known brands, the project will also collaborate with filmmakers, creative directors and technologists, leveraging the full range of digital tools from ads and mobile apps to social experiences.Continue reading...

Sir Martin Sorrell, WPP Group CEO, says Twitter is a “PR medium,” not an advertising one (and neither is Facebook). His comments follow Twitter’s launch of its advertising API touted as a booster for marketers to manage campaigns.

"If you look at the Olympics in London, the big winner was Twitter. It wasn’t Facebook. It wasn’t even Google. We did analyses of the Twitter feeds every day, and it’s very, very potent. But—and this is the old fart speaking—I think because it’s limited in terms of number of characters, it reduces communication to superficialities and lacks depth.”

Undaunted, Twitter is forging ahead and fashioning itself as an ad platform. Its API launch partners include Adobe, HootSuite, Salesforce, SHIFT and TBG Digital. Aside from creating a larger revenue base for Twitter, the API could lead to more ads on the site and apps which is worrisome to users.

“Launching an ad based API does not mean we’ve changed our philosophy or that a user will see more ads in their experience,” said April Underwood, product manager, revenue at Twitter.  “From a user standpoint it doesn’t mean we’re becoming more aggressive in terms of ads or altering the user experience at all. This is all about giving marketers more choice as well as a broader set of tools in their arsenal that they can use in how they want to work with us.” Continue reading...

Technology and creativity are fusing to drive a new interdependence between two seemingly diverse business disciplines, the CIO and the CMO.

According to Gartner, by 2017 the head of marketing — not the head of technology — will have greater influence on technology purchases. Gartner predicted earlier this year that chief marketing officers would soon spend more on technology than chief information officers.

Anticipating that shift, IBM has just launched a new set of services targeting CMO’s and CIO’s to augment engagement with increasingly savvy and empowered customers. CMOs can now target customers as individuals instead of clustering them within vague demographic categories — a vital approach, as social media has also made the CMO responsible for building an internal employee culture that represents the company's brand in online interactions.

IBM will rapidly assess a business's current needs against future marketing vision, conduct a gap analysis to evaluate which of the future capabilities are currently supported through existing business architecture and then determine the new processes, technology, data, skills, and governance required for the transformation strategy. IBM will design customized roadmaps for clients built on industry-leading techniques and methodologies developed in worldwide client engagements.Continue reading...

The number of mobile action codes, e.g., QR codes, Microsoft Tags and digital watermarks, rose significantly in the second quarter of 2012 in the top 100 U.S. magazines, according to Nellymoser, a mobile marketing and technology services company that released its latest Mobile Activation Code Study this week.

A total of 2200 codes were printed during the quarter, up from 1365 in the first quarter. This represents 61 percent growth, and is more than double the 1062 codes printed one year earlier in the first quarter 2011.

Four industries: beauty, home, health and automotive, account for 49 percent of all action codes in the most recent quarter. The study included national titles available on newsstands. Better Homes and Gardens, InStyle and Popular Mechanics topped the list with the most action codes per issue.

QR codes and Microsoft Tags continue to dominate the market, but the former has jumped ahead to more than an 80 percent market share, with the latter in second place with a 12 to 17 percent share. Digimarc watermarks, popular with designers for their ability to create custom branded icons, now lead the “other” category, having risen from five codes in all of 2011 to 96 codes in the first half of 2012. Continue reading...

YSL Experience, the web portal for the Yves Saint Laurent family of fragrance and beauty products, is highlighted in a new video (watch below) that was released today by the brand. The website that encourages users to explore, create and share, customizing the website for a "YSL by You" experience and sharing content on Facebook and beyond to bring the brand experience to life.Continue reading...

comScore has been polling major brands such as Best Buy (see above) about their biggest concerns when it comes to digital marketing. Their biggest concern is how to ensure effectiveness: where their ads delivered in-view, to the right target audience, in the right geography, in a brand-safe environment and absent of fraudulent delivery?

It's an issue the research firm addresses in a new white paper, released this week to support its Validated Campaign Essentials offering to validate digital campaign delivery.Continue reading...

If the path Procter & Gamble is pursuing in turning hard toward digital marketing is reminiscent of another recent, major strategic shift for the CPG giant, that's because company executives are deliberately borrowing from that model. More than a decade ago, P&G shook up the corporate world by opening up to outsiders for ideas for innovations in the products and features that make up its brands, in an initiative that came to be called Connect + Develop.

And now P&G is doing something similar for its digital-marketing push. "We want to leverage the knowledge and power of everyone we can" in accelerating investments in digital communications and marketing, Alex Tosolini, P&G's vice president of e-business, told brandchannel. Indeed, if members of the marketing and advertising community have "wonderful ideas" for digital plays, he said, "Please come to us and we'll be open to co-innovating with you."Continue reading...