By Sarah Wallace, Centro’s National Manager of Strategic Solutions & Products

Sarah Wallace
Centro’s National Manager of Strategic Solutions & Products

We all know Q4 can be a stressful time for media planners. Centro has developed several customized programs, including plans for Cyber Monday and the Back-to-School season to ease year-end planning.

In addition to our regular plans, we’re now creating customized programs to make it easier to reach niche targets across local markets.   With packages readily available, we hope to make the planning process even easier for advertisers. We can create a variety of customized programs including integrated content, non-standard units, local sponsorships, and programs by vertical, to help develop a unique campaign and plan ahead.

Here are some examples:

1. Cyber Monday, Last Minute Shopping, & Post-Holiday Sales: Why hit the malls with the rest of the country when you can order online from your desk right after Thanksgiving? That’s what more and more consumers are doing, and local websites are jumping in on the action. According to comScore, in 2007, Cyber Monday online sales hit a record of $733 million. Many sites are creating special gift guides to run pre-Cyber Monday to the post-holiday shopping season. These three programs are currently being developed to help reach the consumer at all points during the highest shopping season of the year!
2. Back to School: According to The National Retail Federation, back to school spending topped $18 billion in 2007. Second only to the holiday shopping season, BTS is prime time for retailers.  We’ve targeted the top 10 local markets via Back to School Guides, Homepage, Living and High School sections to help reach audiences in high traffic areas.
3. Stock Ticker:  This package focuses on targeting the active investor. We’ve researched the top 10 markets and found unique opportunities on Homepage and Business sections. Through high-profile logo sponsorships on local site stock tickers, this program can garner over 84 million impressions with just a $2 eCPM.
4. Pit Pass: NASCAR is the #1 spectator sport in the U.S. Now you can follow the NASCAR circuit for the remainder of 2008 and effectively reach NASCAR’s die-hard fans. Pit Pass provides ownership of NASCAR and motorsports content in local markets for the two weeks leading up to the race. 
5. Concierges of Cool:  Having a hard time targeting young, social trendsetters? This program reaches hipsters and party-goers through premium positions in nightlife, event, and entertainment guides.

For other key retail opportunities, holidays, and client-focused periods, let us know how we can help you create and execute custom solutions and provide strategic direction for your campaign.

Interview with Daniela De Simone, Associate Media Director for MindShare Interaction

Question: When do you normally start planning for Q4? When do you actually finalize Q4 planning?
     
Answer: We typically try to start planning in early Q2, but it all depends on the clients and how they release dollars. However, as we all know sometimes planning is last minute.  There are times when Q4 is planned after it begins. Finalized plans for Q4 are usually settled about six weeks before the quarter begins, unless otherwise planned for.

Question: Do you have any last minute planning practices you would like to share?

Answer: When we plan for last minute campaigns it is most helpful for our media partners to really listen to the needs, make suggestions that make sense and will help ensure delivery as well as efficiency. We make sure to stay focused on the target and respond quickly.

Question: Have you had a unique Q4 initiative request that stands out? If so, what was it?

Answer: For this quarter, LG is launching Phase III of their Scarlet series, LG 70. What stood out was their approach to the launch and how they cleverly disguised it as a new TV series.  It was a global initiative that used power of Hollywood to drive the product.

Question: What type of past online executions (creative, targeting, integrated, etc.) have you seen that have been successful during this busy shopping season?

Answer: Email campaigns work well because you can be specific and users feel that one-to-one connection.  I also think solid, clear and simple messaging offers work the best.  You need to make sure users understand what you are advertising and what action they need to take.  The ones I respond to most as a consumer are the ones whose offers are unique; stand out amongst all the rest, and those that appear customized to my personal interests. 

Question: The short deadlines can be stressful times for a team of planners, any remedies to keep them sane?

Interview with Carol Damit, Director of Midwest Marketing Communications for Verizon Wireless

Interview with Carol Damit, Director of Midwest Marketing Communications for Verizon Wireless

Question: Being at Verizon for 19 years, what are your thoughts on the Q4 madness?

Answer: We all need to be focused on the reality of the 4th quarter. In this quarter, everyone is fighting for the consumer’s dollar. For a lot of businesses, 80% of purchasing goes on during this time. There’s a lot of desperation that goes on in Q4 and you really begin to understand your business’ performance at that point. If the business’ marketing efforts and sales are doing well prior to Q4, all they need to do is just round out the year. But at Verizon, we definitely get prepared.

Question: When do you start planning for Q4 online plans? Why then?

Answer: We are constantly planning and making sure our agency is doing the same, staying ahead. We do high level planning at the beginning of the year and then focus on more detailed plans quarter by quarter; planning at the beginning of each quarter for the following. Now is the perfect time to get the plan finalized for Q4.

Question: What advice would you give to other retailers when planning for an effective online campaign in Q4?

Answer: Do your research and understand your audience in advance. Know how you want to target each segment. What’s their shopping and lifestyle behavior? Are they a repeat purchaser or are they a brand new consumer? For example, for our products, we begin a teaser campaign right after Halloween. Our main objective is to drive awareness early with general information about the product and then follow that with more details like price points. If they’re new consumers, having presence online is key. They will look to the Internet to research products, especially today’s younger demographic. Also, the ability to adjust your message to specific regions and/or audiences is important.

Question: Do you have any Q4 Best Practices that you’d like to share?

Answer: Online is important, but what’s more critical is having an integrated campaign. Utilize different mediums and have a consistent message. We’ve had great success in having a cadence strategy.
                    
Question: What type of online execution (creative, targeting, integrated, etc.) have you seen in the past that have been successful during this busy shopping season?

Answer: I really like Miller High Life’s and Pepsi’s online integration strategy. They both promote a sweepstakes in the summer months where consumers are eligible to earn points to shop in their online stores. It works because it gives consumers an incentive to purchase Miller High Life or Pepsi products throughout the year. The online store has some great products consumers could even give as a gift during the holidays. With the economy these days, you’ll definitely see more aggressive promotions.

Question: How do you balance your holiday social schedule with your team?

Answer: I give my team stress balls and we have fun outings to take a break from work.

Question: How do you want to sum up planning for Q4?

Q4 can often be stressful with tight inventory and difficult client requests. Your campaign operations team can lead you through these challenges with a little communication and flexibility. For proven tips on how to deliver a successful campaign, please continue.

Pre-Launch with your Campaign Managers:

Zach Moore
Manager, Campaign Management

• The earlier the better: Your campaign manager works very closely with Centro’s publisher partners on your behalf, ensuring that everything is executed perfectly. The more information your campaign manager knows in advance, the easier it will be to manage your campaign with the site.
  
• Innovative Creative Solutions: If you’re running into any challenges upfront, let your campaign manager know. They’re always happy to help solve problems and can communicate delays to the sites. Adding rich media is always an exciting bonus to your plan, and we’re happy to help execute. To ensure a smooth launch with all the publishers, it’s important to provide your campaign manager with tags for testing and an active test page for preview as early as possible. This allows enough time to trouble-shoot and confirm everything is built to specification so the ads will run as planned.
• Lead Time: What a difference a day makes. For best delivery, it’s always best to deliver your third party tags a full five days before launch and seven days for rich media. This allows us sufficient time to test and implement with publishers on your plan.

Post-Launch with your Campaign Analysts:

Dana Russell
Campaign Analyst

• Success Metrics: How are you measuring success? We want to help you deliver an easy and successful campaign. While your analyst actively monitors pace, they’re also looking at overall performance. By letting us know what you’re looking for from your campaign your analyst can help make decisions that will deliver what you need.
  
• Flexibility: Sites are dynamic, living things. To help you reach your target and create the best campaign, let your analyst know if the client is flexible. Narrow targeting can sometimes lead to under-delivery. Letting us know your client’s objectives in advance can helps us make quick decisions.
• Flighting: How strict are your client’s flights? As demand increases in Q4, finding inventory can be challenging. Let us know in advance if clients can roll impressions from one period to the next – that will help us to ensure full delivery.

By John “Finfinity” Finley

Since April 2006, the Technology team at Centro has been providing our employees with better ways to run the business. When we started at Centro and were first introduced to the media industry, we were surprised by the incredibly inefficient processes used to plan campaigns, buy media across a large spectrum of local sites, manage campaign execution, bill and invoice customers. Agencies, publishers and Centrons were neck-deep in Excel, pushing it to its limits. Everything somehow became an attachment stowed away in someone’s Outlook folder. Yuck.

We knew we could make things better. So we set out and created Transis, Centro’s media management technology. With a team of just four developers in the beginning, we spoke with fellow Centrons and found out how their day-to-day work made each person feel like a robot. We then built software that simplifies and eliminates most of the manual work. We’ve been doing it ever since.

In many ways, our users determine what features and enhancements Transis will have. Centro’s outstanding reputation for “Raving Fan” customer service extends into the software development process, where we do everything it takes to make our customers happy.

To be successful at software development, you must realize that things change. Business requirements change all the time. Heck, even the way in which we change changes. We totally embrace this notion of change. This is why we subscribe to a philosophy known as Agile Software Development.

Being ‘agile’ to us means working with short timeframes that can be easily managed (or scrapped altogether!) It means letting go of bulky product plans that are surely going to be obsolete before they are even finalized and focusing on daily goals where the finish line is in sight. It means intense communication with our customers who happen to be sitting close by, obsessing about quality and usability, and getting new functionalities released every other week.

Keep in mind that we love hearing how people use our tools, and all of the feedback we receive fuels the fires for our next release. So speak up if there is something we can help you with – chances are we can make it happen. It’s easy; just send us an email at tech.ideas@centro.net.

Love,
Centro’s Technology Team

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