Cohn & Wolfe to buy majority stake in Six Degrees PR

Mumbai: WPP’s brand communications agency Cohn & Wolfe on Tuesday said it has agreed to buy a majority stake in public relations agency Six Degrees PR and its content and integrated marketing subsidiary Alphabet Consulting. Six Degrees was founded in 2009 and has offices in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. “India is a strategic priority for Cohn & Wolfe, and Six Degrees has the entrepreneurial culture, seasoned talent and drive to succeed that will help us capitalise on the tremendous opportunity for growth here,” Cohn & Wolfe chief executive officer Donna Imperato said in a statement.

“The agency’s presence in Bengaluru... and their work in technology, finance and corporate complements the Cohn & Wolfe India team’s extensive lifestyle and consumer experience,” she said. The media and advertising company said the deal is a part of an aggressive growth plan in the region and builds on Cohn & Wolfe’s Mumbai and Delhi offering and solidifies the agency’s Asia-Pacific presence by growing its footprint in the region to 11 offices.

Cohn & Wolfe, which opened its offices in Delhi and Mumbai in 2012, represents clients across a range of industries, particularly in travel and tourism sectors. “Cohn & Wolfe’s existing business will become part of Cohn & Wolfe Six Degrees,” it added. Six Degrees founders Rishi Seth and Zacharia James will become the group CEOs, leading the Cohn & Wolfe Six Degrees team of 70 professionals across Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru, and will report to Imperato. Six Degrees CEO Karan Punia will become the new CEO of the company and will report to Seth and James.

“Alignment to a global agency with a strong people orientation and methodologies is the next logical step in our journey. We believe Cohn & Wolfe will provide us the required impetus to build on our success, stay relevant to our people’s aspirations and become a global partner to our clients with a full service offering,” James said.

Resource: http://www.livemint.com/Companies/p57AFP5Ns0PfwhKn3gqlpO/Cohn--Wolfe-to-buy-majority-stake-in-Six-Degrees-PR.html

On the Loose: The Social Network

The Essar Group is currently under investigation for allegedly cultivating politicians and bureaucrats to further their interests. According to a story published in The Indian Express on December 2, 2015, a corporate policy presentation made in 2010 was called ‘Navigating the Corridors of Power: To positively

influence the high and mighty’.

The opening remark made by the director of this project was: The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships.

Without getting into the legal, moral or ethical agenda of this particular company’s modus operandi which will no doubt unfold in the coming months, there is an opportunity to be ferreted out of this — to gain an insight on how this city, and big business really works. In an interview some years back, Congressman Jairam Ramesh observed wryly that India is run by 10,000 people, who all know each other well. It’s not news that at every level, contacts count and they always have, everywhere in the world. Top American investment banks have come under scrutiny for hiring the children of Chinese industrialists to gain a footing there. Forty years ago, the iconic mobster book Godfather began with the quote that behind every great fortune there is a crime. In modern day corporate parlance that could roughly translate to, behind every great fortune there is also a formidable team of lobbyists, networkers and PR professionals, quietly connecting the ambitious with the influential — in the hope things might happen. The cringeworthy term ‘high and mighty’ in this context also stresses on the importance of networking, the huge value of building relationships with people who matter. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that — until integrity is forsaken for advancement.

I got my first job in the classic Delhi way, through someone my mother knew. It was a brief, unsuccessful stint in an advertising agency where I realised I was even worse at lying than I am at telling the truth. My colleagues would roll in at 6 pm and work, whatever it is they did, began post dinner. Within two days I knew I wanted out since I was indifferent to jingles and entirely unmoved by ads. Of course, I was there as a favour, certainly not for my brilliance and sure, it’s unfair. But so is the fact that anybody reading this won the birth lottery. The primary predictor of our success isn’t how hard we work but our family’s level of education while we grew up. There’s no point denying privilege exists or that there is a cosy club of business czars, media barons, and public servants that feed off each other.

Nobody really shed a tear when I fled the agency after three excruciating weeks. But I did happen to run into my then boss recently. Time has dulled our mutual contempt and we have stayed in touch. In an ideal world we could all go about our careers in splendid isolation, secure that hard work is all that’s needed for personal growth. That’s simply not true. If only those of us who can tap into school, college and work networks that help in a hundred different meandering ways, could just be aware that we’re not superior just luckier — in the future, it might go some way in ensuring a measure of fairness for those who don’t have them.

Resource: http://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/life-style/on-the-loose-the-social-network/

CAKE by Accelerize Builds Momentum with Global Customer Expansion

Accelerize (OTCQB: ACLZ) (OTCBB: ACLZ) and its digital marketing software division CAKE, today announced significant growth among its international digital marketing customer base, adding more than 60 new clients from the EMEA, APAC and LATAM regions in 2015. CAKE empowers digital marketers from more than 30 countries worldwide with a SaaS-based marketing solution to track and analyze the performance of digital spend. New international CAKE clients include ClickZoot, Digital Performance GmbH, HTTPool, INNO Software, K2 Media, Komli , Little Star Media, LatestFreeStuff, Mobiadz, Pointific, ShopClues, Tapmyads and Wadogo.

CAKE achieved significant global client growth, adding customers from a number of geographies including Australia, Brazil, Germany, Israel, India, Poland, the UK and the US. In 2015, the company experienced a 52% increase over the previous year in the number of clients from EMEA, APAC and LATAM. Overall revenue derived outside of the U.S. grew to 31% in Q3 2015, up from 25% in Q3 2014.

"Our expansion across the globe represents a strong area of future growth for CAKE as companies worldwide shift their advertising dollars to digital media," said Santi Pierini, Chief Operating Officer of Accelerize and President of CAKE. "In this age of digital multi-channel marketing, tracking and attribution have become essential. Advertisers need to understand how each component of a campaign is performing in order to effectively allocate their digital spend. Ongoing investments in our technology, partner network and global operations have enabled CAKE to take meaningful strides with our international presence and customer traction."

According to eMarketer, the digital advertising market is estimated to grow from $138 billion in 2014 to $204 billion by 2018 and a significant part of that growth will come from overseas markets, while total media spend will reach $656 billion. 

About CAKE by Accelerize

CAKE, a division of Accelerize Inc., provides a cloud-based solution to track and analyze the performance of digital marketing return on investment, in real-time. Bringing clarity to multi-channel marketing campaigns, we empower advertisers, agencies, publishers and networks from more than 30 countries worldwide with the insight to make intelligent marketing decisions. CAKE by Accelerize is headquartered in Newport Beach, Calif. with operations in New York City, London and New Delhi. For more information, visit http://www.getCAKE.com.

About Accelerize

Accelerize Inc. (OTCQB: ACLZ) (OTCBB: ACLZ) offers marketing technology solutions that revolutionize the way advertisers leverage their digital advertising data. For more information, visit http://www.accelerize.com.

Use of Forward-looking Statements

This press release may contain forward-looking statements from Accelerize Inc. within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and federal securities laws. For example, when Accelerize describes its global expansion representing an area of future growth, the growth of the digital advertising market, and uses other statements containing the words "believes," "anticipates," "plans," "expects," "will" and similar expressions, Accelerize is using forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on the current expectations of the management of Accelerize only, and are subject to a number of factors and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. The following factors, among others, could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements: changes in technology and market requirements; our technology may not be validated as we progress further; we may be unable to retain or attract key employees whose knowledge is essential to the development of our products and services; unforeseen market and technological difficulties may develop with our products and services; inability to timely develop and introduce new technologies, products and applications; or, loss of market share and pressure on pricing resulting from competition, which could cause the actual results or performance of Accelerize to differ materially from those contemplated in such forward-looking statements. Except as otherwise required by law, Accelerize undertakes no obligation to publicly release any revisions to these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. For a more detailed description of the risk and uncertainties affecting Accelerize, reference is made to Accelerize's reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Resource: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cake-by-accelerize-builds-momentum-with-global-customer-expansion-563358551.html

Youth marketing - ethical issues

Youth marketing is a term used in the marketing and advertising industry to describe activities to communicate with young people, typically in the age range of 13 to 35. Youth marketing includes teen marketing, targeting people aged between 13 to 19, college marketing, targeting college-age consumers, typically aged between 18 to 24, young adult marketing, targeting young professionals, typically aged between 21 and 35. Youth marketing takes place on TV, radio, in print media and in dozens of forms online. Companies often sponsor extreme athletes, musicians, sports teams and entertainment events as a way to insert them into youth culture. Youth market is attractive because of the purchasing power and its members' influence on the spending of family members. In addition, teens and young adults often set trends that are adopted by other demographic groups.
Youth marketing strategies are heavily employed by a wide range of business firms in Bangladesh. Generally companies that sell food, clothing, personal electronics, and entertainment invest heavily in youth marketing programmes. Bangladeshi companies which are in fashion, fast food, perfume, toiletries, entertainment, beverage, beauty products, telecom, cell phone, and tobacco industries have been employing youth marketing programmes for many days.
Youth marketing programmes are increasing the standard of living of the young people. They are becoming aware of various new products which help them to become updated and smarter. Their purchasing of various products accounts for a significant contribution to the economy of the country. Moreover, several social marketing campaigns persuade youths to avoid bad habits and to work for the betterment of society.
However, many youth marketing gimmicks are unacceptable and contribute to a range of youth-oriented problems. Several of these programmes have a materialistic effect on the young people. They are also targeted for some unsafe products like Tobacco through undercover marketing messages (like the hero is smoking in movie scenes). The young models present in these marketing programmes do not represent most of the youths in the country (e.g. young models in the advertisements of telecom companies). Some ads give immoral messages like telling lies, deception, aggressiveness, etc. In addition to that this type of marketing programmes encourage the young generation toward fashions which are truly against the culture of our country.  Languages used in many Ads are combination of Bangla and English (Banglish). Many ads show youths with dresses that are not appropriate in our culture. The advertisements of many multinational companies are telecasted here without any cultural adaptations. The contents and messages of those advertisements are unsuitable for the young generation of our country. The youths watch programmes in foreign channels and the promotional materials in those channels are detrimental to the welfare of the young generation of our country. The health effects of many products (e.g. energy drinks) are questionable where the youths are the main target market.
Despite the fact that many youth marketing programmes have harmful effects on young generation, the young segment of the population is very attractive for the companies. Corporations will continue these youth marketing programmes for their business purposes and this is also essential for the economic well-being of the country. Thus, effective actions are required to regulate youth marketing programmes in the country. Government-affiliated organisations, which are in charge of regulating advertisements, should be more conscious. Bangladesh Broadcasting Authority is responsible for updating advertisement codes and restricting the telecast of advertisements. The authorities should give clear direction for the advertisements which are targeted toward the youth segment of the population. If any corporation publishes ads that are against our culture or values then the authorities should take stern action against that company. Consumer activists groups have to play a crucial role in shaping youth marketing programmes. In developed countries, consumer groups and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) put pressure on government to control controversial youth marketing programmes. For instance, in the year 2011 Philip Morris International ran a global advertisement campaign for their Marlboro brand cigarette targeting young generation in different parts of the world including western countries. Seven Anti-tobacco campaigners including Corporate Accountability International, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Alliance for the Control of Tobacco Use, Tobacco Control Alliance, Framework Convention Alliance, Inter-American Heart Foundation, and Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance in Europe called on Philip Morris International to end the campaign immediately and urged governments to implement tougher anti-tobacco advertising laws. Consumer activist groups (e.g. CAB) and NGOs need to analyse youth marketing programmes regularly and put pressure on the government to restrict such programmes if these have probable negative effect on the young generation. In addition to that ethical topics should be included in the training programmes of workforce who work in the marketing arena.

Resource: http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/

Case Study: How PropertyGuru is making use of data journalism

Like most Internet companies today, PropertyGuru processes terabytes of data daily, as users across Southeast Asia use its variety of platforms to keep themselves up to date on the real estate market.

Data is collected at every point of interaction to deliver help to property seekers in making more confident decisions.

At PropertyGuru, one of the key drivers for both new user acquisition as well as visitor engagement is content marketing, where rich, useful and proprietary content is used to differentiate itself from its competitors, and provide utility to its consumers.

While it may be tempting to be drawn by the promises of Big Data for content marketing, the immediate opportunity is with Small Data, according to PropertyGuru.

The company defined the term “data journalism” to describe its content built around data.

Data journalism “draws on the growing availability of data sets and data analysis tools to uncover and tell stories like the impact of vaccines on infectious diseases, the continuing problem of school segregation, or the differences in working hours across industries, often presenting the results through compelling visualizations or interactive applications,” it noted in its white paper.

Data journalist David McCandless, as part of his work, emphasises that data journalism is bringing together sizeable bodies of disconnected facts and making sense of them through data visualization.

The company prefer ‘journalism,’ rather than ‘storytelling,’ to emphasise the timeliness, relevance and impact of the content to the reader, and place less emphasis on the narrative aspects of the content.

Data journalism, in its usage of the concept, hence, is distinctive from “big data”.

Big data refers to “datasets whose size is beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage and analyze”, often in the vernacular of zetabytes or brontobytes, rather than the commonly used denominations for storage, such as terabytes.

Big data also suggests a high velocity of data capture and / or processing, and involves the combination of unstructured and structured data sets. Big data has also given rise to a new form of technical specialisation, that of the data scientist.

In practice,  large variety of companies process datasets to provide predictive, actionable value for themselves or their clients. American retailer Macy’s, for instance, analyses over 73 million items for sale in the space of an hour to optimise item pricing while Thomson Reuters’ financial analysis tool Eikon uses social media monitoring to track buzz on stock prices and gauge sentiment.

Unfortunately, “big data” has become a marketing buzzword of the worst variety, used to cover such a wide degree of tools and products that it has become difficult to pin down. The term, in and of itself, is valuable.

For instance, at time of writing, Google’s suggested bid for the term “big data” was a pricey SG$15.91 cost-per-click.

The data journalism that PropertyGuru puts into practice however, looks at smaller scale data (or Small Data) to derive insights.

It involves the data that is already at its fingertips which has a tendency to be overlooked when it comes to content marketing purposes: market information, website traffic data, customer information and published, public data. The company then uses these data sources to create content that is engaging, ownable and allows it to build authority with its key audiences.

This is how PropertyGuru leveraged on data journalism, one of its content marketing strategies and an opportunity it believes is being under-utilised by many brands.

Case Study: Real Estate Data Content

PropertyGuru operates in the real estate space. One of the most exciting perspectives anyone in that space can bring, is a data-driven prediction of the prices and volumes in the market.

Some months ago, the company formulated a hypothesis around using its data sources, and market outcomes. It ran an experiment to test the hypothesis, and plotted PropertyGuru enquiry data (as a proxy of market demand), real estate agents listings (as a proxy of housing supply), against state published real estate transaction information.

It found that with a time lag of 3 months, the regression model proved highly significant with an adjusted R2 = 0.72, F(3,20) = 20.72, p < 0.000. In particular, it found two significant predictors of transactions activities – number of enquiries (β = 0.08, p < 0.000) and price (β = -4.82, p <0.001.

Figure 2 below illustrates the best-fit line plot between actual transactions, and the inquiries we received on PropertyGuru’s platforms.

Resource: http://www.marketing-interactive.com

Technology is disrupting the marketer’s world: Anand Kripalu

Amidst a grand gathering to celebrate the finest and trend-setting work in the marketing arena, Indian Marketing Awards 2015 - presented by Hindustan Times and powered by &TV, the keynote address on this year’s theme, ‘Marketology’, was delivered by Anand Kripalu, CEO & MD, United Spirits. Kripalu in his address spoke about how technology has the ability to make or break the fortune of a marketer.

Technology and Marketing

On technology as a force, Kripalu said, “Our recent trip to the Silicon Valley in September was an eye opening experience for us. A few things that struck me included how technology is disrupting the marketer’s world. It is also disrupting the connection between a supplier and the market in a way never seen before. The smartphone is going to be the trigger point of transformation. Mobile phones have become a way in which brands can stay close to their consumers and brands are increasingly turning to technology to foster this relationship.”

He added citing an example from his company, “We have introduced technology which is based on neuro-science and can give you a reliable insight using all those electrodes to know the likes and dislikes of consumers. Technology is playing a vital role in our company in terms of how we understand our consumers.”

Speaking about the greater need for content marketing he added, “Brands have become story tellers today. Content marketing is the kind of advertising people are going to be interested in. The pull factor, the buzz and the two way communication around your brand will ultimately determine how successful brands would be.”

Benefits of Digital Marketing

Explaining the trends in digital ad spends, Kripalu says, “Our return on marketing spend on digital is 2x compared to conventional medium and it comes with the benefit of tracking. In many cases, if your advertisement is played digitally, you pay only if your ad is seen but you cannot do that in conventional models. And you can have laser sharp precision in targeting, which you cannot do using conventional models. There are certain fundamentals about brand marketing that will not change- deeply understand your consumer and evolve your brand, stay one step ahead of the consumer. It’s about how we do it that has changed.”

Resource: http://www.exchange4media.com/

Advertisement, quiz contest held

The social studies department of RBDAV Senior Secondary Public School, Bathinda, organised an inter-house advertisement and quiz competition on its premises today. 

All the participants of five houses enthusiastically participated in the competitions. The students were selected after the preliminary round and prepared accordingly. The students were prepared as per the themes of save girl child, child labour, save electricity etc. Patel house bagged the first position, Tagore second and Gandhi stood third. The teachers had prepared their students very well. A quiz competition was also conducted based on various topics such as deserts, rivers, oceans, peaks of different countries. The teachers had prepared their students well according to the topics. The entire competition took place under the guidance of head of the department Pawan Bhatia. The stage and the questions were prepared and managed by the teachers of the school.  Principal Dr Satwant Kaur Bhullar encouraged and motivated the students and  teachers.

Resource: http://www.tribuneindia.com

We May Be Overestimating the Digital Advertising Opportunity

Mobile is eating television. Americans spend 24% of their time consuming media on mobile devices, according to KPCB analyst Mary Meeker. And while they still spend more time consuming television (37%), those numbers are trending in opposite directions.

The ad spend on mobile, however, has yet to catch up, considering 41% of ad budgets still go toward television, while just 8% goes toward mobile. Meeker believes that the gap between time spent on mobile and its share of ad dollars represents a $25 billion opportunity. But while the biggest growth driver for companies such as Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) may be the shift in ad dollars from television to mobile, it's unlikely that those companies will win ad spending from television at a 1-to-1 ratio with time spent on each platform.

In other words, for each ad dollar shifted from television because people are now consuming media on the Internet, Facebook and Google will only see something like $0.90 of it. The advertiser will retain the other $0.10, or it will be spent elsewhere.

Getting more for less

When an advertiser shifts money from television to digital, a couple of things happen. First, it decreases the total demand for television advertising inventory. That reduces the price per ad on television shows -- a trend we've seen for several quarters now.

Second, that advertiser will look to produce similar results to what it got from TV advertising. It can often do so for less money than it pulled from TV, considering the amount of time spent on digital and mobile continues to rise, increasing ad inventory, and advanced targeting makes digital advertising extremely cost effective, reducing demand for inventory. Consider that a television show could have multiple bidders targeting different audiences. That doesn't happen often on digital.

While businesses want to maximize their ad dollars to produce the most customers, there comes a point where marginal ad dollars spent on digital are no longer worth the money. If a company is already targeting everyone who fits into its target market, expanding targeting wouldn't produce good results. At that point, continuing to shift ad dollars to digital, regardless of how much time is spent on the Internet, is no longer an effective use of ad money.

Considering this dynamic, the amount spent on advertising will decline over time.

But ad spend is still growing

However, that scenario assumes that the number of advertisers remains constant. Of course, we live in a capitalistic society where new businesses and products are being created every day. As a result, the total number of advertisers is growing, offsetting the decrease in ad inventory demand created by the effectiveness of digital advertising.

For an advertising company to succeed, it must attract business to its platform at a rate that offsets the increase in ad inventory from more time spent on its platform.

Facebook has done an excellent job of doing so over the last several years. Facebook now counts 2.5 million businesses as advertisers and has 45 million businesses on its platform. Over the past 18 months, active advertisers have grown 67% compared with user growth of 17%. As a result, average ad prices have increased substantially despite constant improvements to its ad efficacy.

Google, meanwhile, has seen its total users grow and its advertisers remain relatively steady over the past few years. More importantly, it has seen usage increase dramatically because of the rise of mobile devices. As a result of this increased usage, Google has seen its average ad prices decline as inventory outstripped demand. (The effectiveness of mobile ads compared with desktop also played a role.) Offsetting that decline in ad prices has been a huge spike in total ad impressions afforded by the increased usage.

Television, meanwhile, is stuck with a shrinking audience while total potential advertisers remain relatively steady. As a result, ad prices are down and total ad spend is down. Some networks have tried increasing the number of ads they show to offset price declines, but many are backing away from that tactic because of the negative impact it has on viewership.

What should investors make of it?

Television networks are surely in trouble as more people cut the cord. For networks to succeed, they need to innovate by developing new forms of more effective advertising, or figuring out how to insert more advertising into a time slot without negatively affecting viewership. The other option is to improve other forms of monetization.

Meanwhile, Google and Facebook investors expecting digital advertising to eventually monetize their audiences at the same rate as television ought to reassess that assumption. It's unlikely that an hour of browsing Facebook is worth the same as an hour of watching TV because of the cost effectiveness digital advertising offers. Still, the strong growth in time spent on mobile and the Internet in general means that both companies will continue to see strong revenue growth for the foreseeable future. It just won't be in line with the ad revenue contraction from the television industry.

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Adam Levy has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alphabet (A shares), Alphabet (C shares), and Facebook. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Resource: http://www.fool.com