Advertisers hitting the Sweetspot
Sweetspot.ca, a localized Toronto e-mail newsletter and Web site (see MIC, Dec. 2/04) has just expanded into Montreal this month and has plans to invade Vancouver in late May or early June. The publication focuses on shopping finds of interest to upscale urbanites and those who would like to be.
There are now 5,000 subscribers to the e-mail, double the 2,500 it had when MIC interviewed the co. in early December. Visits to the site are holding steady (at 10,000 per week). But ‘that’s considered secondary,’ says founder Joanna Track, an Ogilvy account-side alum. ‘We mainly sell the e-mail. The newsletter’s pass-along factor is up to 25% that Sweetspot can track (those passed along using an embedded forward function), but, says Track: ‘A lot of people just press their [regular] forward button so we can’t track that.’ She says most days they see 10% to 25% pass-along.
Marketers have been hitching their wagons to the star in growing numbers and one must admit the target demo is an advertiser’s dream: primary 25-40, secondary 18-24, with a strong female skew (88%.) Forty per cent claim a $75,000+ income. Track says the newsletter acts as a great filter, with one story a day, on one topic. ‘It’s a very easy read and very digestible,’ she says. ‘Because we keep it short (200 words max,) a person can be in and out and we’re not intrusive.’
Franco site distills home coverage from dailies
Cyberpresse launched a new Web site on Tuesday focusing on everything around the house: dwelling, gardening, renovation and decoration. The site, www.montoit.ca, is in French and derives its content from seven French-language publications, Cyberpresse partners La Presse, Le Soleil, Le Nouvelliste, Le Droit, La Tribune, Le Quotidien/Progrès-Dimanche and La Voix de l’Est.
Montoit.ca is targeting current and potential home and condo owners 25-49. It is expected that the gardening and decoration sections will attract more women while the dwelling and renovation sections will interest more men. Advertising is available on the site. Current participants include Hydro-Québec, CIBC, Bell, Honda and CAA Québec.
Lavalife sponsors text messaging on Speakers Corner
Online meeting service Lavalife has clicked with Citytv’s Speakers Corner, sponsoring the show’s on-screen SMS text messaging component. The program invites viewers with cellphones to send messages during the show, with texts appearing in near real-time. Lavalife’s sponsorship, newly launched on April 9 for four weeks, sees the brand’s call-to-action embedded within a return path message when viewers submit a text during Speakers Corner.
‘It works because most of the messages coming in are about relationships or to send shout-outs to loved ones or people looking for each other. It’s a unique opportunity as they have a mobile product,’ says CHUM’s manager of interactive business development, Richard Kanee. He adds: ‘We have seen response rates on text message offerings as high as 10% and more [when people respond to offers embedded in a return path message.]’ As the current mobile sponsor, Lavalife’s logo appears five times in the flow of messages throughout the program. With up to 200 texts (and growing) received during the half-hour show, CHUM Interactive plans to add more SMS to other programs in the future.
MMA debuts fully integrated marketing ROI service
Wilton, Conn.-based Marketing Management Analytics (MMA) today announced the limited release of Avista by MMA Decision Support Service (Avista DSS). It’s a fully integrated, Web-based system available through an ordinary browser by subscription. It offers real-time analytics, ‘what-if’ planning, optimization, portfolio management and benchmarking capabilities. The system can track and diagnose performance, manage portfolios of brands, capture all marketing history, including performance data, in one location, forecast results, create dashboard views of key performance metrics and create marketing mix models.
The brains behind the system are an integrated database of real-time company and syndicated data, MMA’s proprietary models, and marketing experience based on more than 1,000 studies conducted by MMA on hundreds of brands and businesses in more than 20 countries. MMA is an independent operating unit of Carat.
New avenues developing for cellphone advertising
Design firm Loopmedia and animation producer theskonkworks, both of Toronto, have joined forces to create The Animation Incubator. The joint venture will develop ‘mobisodes,’ animated Web movies and games created for the mobile wireless market, replete with advertising opportunities within the mobile content. Company president and co-founder Sonja Perovic says: ‘We are targeting kids and teens who are really into the new technologies with text messaging.’
The alliance is launching its project at the MIP-TV television market taking place this week in Cannes.
Loopmedia and theskonkworks will offer creative services to companies who want to embed ads. The venture wants to brand series of mobisodes appealing to the demographic that use instant messaging. ‘The goal for campaigns is to find brands that will complement each other for cross promotions. We want to create high quality product – with both companies splitting the cost of advertising, they can get more bang for their buck,’ Perovic explains.
http://www.loopmedia.com
http://www.theskonkworks.com
Voix deal dead
Longueuil, Que.-based Section Rouge Media and Prestige Media have ‘annulled’ the acquisition of the gay and lesbian mag La voix du Village (see MIC March 29/05) by Rouge. In a release, the parties cited ‘an irreconcilable difference’ regarding the pub’s management. There will be no cost to either party due to the annulment.
The free two-year-old magazine has a distribution of 30,000.
ComBase Market Focus: Gander, Nfld.
More than three-quarters of the adults in Gander are community newspaper readers.
* 76% report reading any community newspaper (weekday or weekend) compared to 41% who report reading any daily newspapers (weekday or weekend).
* 38% of adults are exclusive community newspaper readers and only read the community paper, not the daily newspaper.
* Exclusive Gander community newspaper readers tend to be women aged 18 to 24. They are more likely to be married or living with a partner, and homeowners.
When it comes to other media in Gander:
* 28% of adults admit they didn’t listen to any radio yesterday.
* 26% report listening to non-commercial CBC stations.
* 39% of adults report watching less than 9.5 hours of television in the past week, which is less than an hour and a half a day.
Source: ComBase 2003-2004 Study
ComBase, the Community Newspaper Database, is a syndicated consumer-media survey of more than 400 Canadian markets that provides market-by-market information. It is an initiative of the Canadian Community Newspaper Association and its nearly 700 members across the country. For more information, contact Kelly Levson, senior project manager, kellylevson@combase.ca.
History docs examine torture
The History Channel will air the controversial three-part series Torture.The series from Britain’s Channel 4 will broadcast three journalistic documentaries.
Part one, The Guantanamo Guidebook, airing Monday, April 25 at 9 p.m., follows volunteers who submit themselves to the methods of interrogation used at the Americans’ Cuban base camp. Torture: America’s Brutal Prisons, airing Tuesday, April 26 at 9:00 p.m., investigates the prison system in Abu Ghraib, paralleling current situations in the American prison system. Meanwhile, the final instalment, Torture: The Dirty Business will premier Wednesday, April 27 at 9 p.m. Investigative journalist Andrew Gilligan will look into the practice of torture techniques on terrorist suspects.
PMB Factoid
One in four Canadians shop at drug stores 5+ times per month.
Correction
In the April 7 issue of MIC, we stated that Teletoon will partner with Energizer Max Batteries May 8-29 for a two-pronged online trivia challenge – one for younger kids at www.teletoon.com and one for older audiences at www.thedetour.ca. The effort is to promote the release of Star Wars Episode III – Revenge of the Sith and the correct dates are in fact May 2-29.
Yellow Pages, Call Genie offer proximity directory to callers
The Montreal-based Yellow Pages Group is testing Hello Yellow, a free, interactive voice recognition based service. Created in partnership with Calgary-based Call Genie, provider of enhanced voice directory services, the application allows consumers to access information from 527 Yellow Pages categories and 272,000 business listings. All existing Yellow Pages advertisers are included in the database and information is presented in order of proximity to the caller’s location. However, subscribers to the service (rack rate is between $69 to $149/month) have ‘placement priority.’ Promotion for Hello Yellow ramps up this summer with the introduction of coupons and incentive offers, made easy via the self-managed Web site which allows advertisers to change the content of their presented information such as time-sensitive specials. The proof of concept period wraps at the end of 2005, and Call Genie hopes to expand the service to Western Canada, after the June 2005 sale of Advertising Directory Solutions Holdings, publisher of SuperPages, to the Yellow Pages Group.
By dialing 310-YELO (9356) from any phone in Greater Toronto and following the voice prompts of the automated operator, ‘Genie,’ callers name a category of business, then a desired location by providing a landmark, a major intersection or a neighbourhood. Listings, which include all current Yellow Pages advertisers, are retrieved within seconds with phone number, address and connection options. If the call originates from a Bell line – mobile or land – or from any other device that employs LBS (location based services) technology, the operator detects the location of the caller (typical accuracy in urban areas is between 400m to 2500m) and offers location-specific information first.
Ad opps ‘à la carte’ in new CHUM podcasts
Radio station 104.5 CHUM FM in Toronto is launching a daily podcast next month, the first of many such podvertunities unfolding within the CHUM empire. The debut pod property is its popular morning show with Roger, Rick & Marilyn, downloadable in a handy mp3 version weekdays from 5:00 a.m. at www.chumfm.com, beginning May 2. ‘We plan to launch a series of services,’ says CHUM FM program director, Rob Farina, ‘from daily entertainment news, exclusive artist interviews and CD previews [to] new music showcases. One of our main initiatives will be to make available the immense archival material [such as] interviews and performances that span CHUM FM’s 40-year history. From Jimi Hendrix to Elton John to Madonna, for the first time fans can download classic interviews with their favourite artists – unedited and uncensored.’
Says Roma Khanna, VP, CHUM Interactive: ‘The mobile lifestyle and use of digital music players is an exciting new way to consume entertainment.’ Farina adds that podcasting will allow CHUM to ‘extend our reach to listeners at times of the day when they are not near a radio.’ And advertisers are invited along for the ride. Says Marc Charlebois, general sales manager of 1050 CHUM and CHUM FM: ‘This creates an engaging marketing opportunity for our clients. It’s online; it’s offline. We can integrate client content into the podcast. Whereas on the morning show hosts may not expand on ad messages since they have to get right back to the music, in the podcast they can.
Radio up 2.5%, says CRTC study
The CRTC has released a state-of-the-union report on Canadian commercial private radio, with statistics covering 2000-2004.
According to the report, which counts 544 stations, total revenue increased by 2.5% between 2003 and 2004, reaching $1.2 billion. While revenues for English-language and Aboriginal stations grew during the period by 4% and 5.7% respectively, French station revenues dropped by 4.6%.
Not surprisingly there were differences in how AM performed versus FM during the period. For instance, English-language AM held steady with a 0.1% decrease to $259.5 million while FM revenues jumped 5.5% to $738.7 million. Meanwhile, both AM and FM ethnic and Aboriginal radio grew during the period: AM revenues rose by 4.9% to $20.3 million and FM 7.3% to $10.5 million.
On the French-language side, however, it was a different story. While revenues for AM radio declined by 13.2% to $22.6 million, FM revenues also shrank by 3.4%, to $172.5 million.
In 2004, there were 164 English-language AM radio stations and 274 FM stations; 15 French AM and 77 FM stations; and eight ethnic and Aboriginal AM and six FM stations. Twenty-nine new stations started up and 13 AM stations migrated to FM.
