Local advertisers speaking at WMS ’09 in Washington, D.C., this morning had plenty to say about how they perceive their choices in advertising, online and off.

Dianne Bonanno, senior manager, marketing communications, The Graduate School, said that her adult education company is doing good business. “In a downturn, people invest in themselves and institutions,” she noted.

Advertising-wise, things are changing quickly, as the company seeks to attract decision makers at companies who pay for their employees’ tuition, as well as open enrollment students who are paying for themselves. “We were a lot in print, but as a national institution, we have moved to a lot of online. We’ve added social media, too. It doesn’t cost hardly anything. There are so many free tools. We are taking full advantage of that.”

Bonanno also noted that social media takes the place of a lot of e-mail and other correspondence, which is too cumbersome to manage. The company also advertises in the Washington metro, news channels, news radio and other broadcast networks. Whenever possible, however, Bonanno said it works to put codes in its advertising to measure it.

Jerome Fowlkes, managing member, Broadlands, LLC, a discount haircut company, said it is spending 10 percent of its gross on advertising, in part via co-op campaigns with other haircut stores. It zeroes in on people looking for a deal or a discount, so direct mail efforts like RedPlum work especially well. Newspapers aren’t in the works, however.

“When a newspaper rep calls me, they don’t understand how I think. Basically, I ran a couple of ads with you, and got no response. Now I have moved on.” Fowlkes has also done some Internet marketing, and has aspirations to do more. “I want a more robust-type Web site to bring people in,” he said.

Valerie Passwaiter, assistant marketing manager for Northwest Federal Credit Union (and wife of BIA sales exec Steve Passwaiter) said her company has “benefited from recession in ways we never could have imagined” because credit unions are perceived as safe places to store money and provide good customer service. Her company has recently boosted its marketing budget by 10 percent to leverage the new interest in credit unions.

Some of the money is being spent on a co-op campaign developed by WRC-TV, which lets the credit union use a template ad that has 10 seconds customized for it at the end. Broadcasters aren’t necessarily going to win a larger share of the ad budget, however, “because they don’t listen. They talk at me.”

Newspapers are guilty of some of that as well, but they at least benefit from being a well-known commodity. “I know what they are, where they serve,” she said.

Some of the broadcast advertising has come with a Web site complement. The Web element is well worth the money, she said. “It has the best tracking mechanism. When we ran a campaign for auto loans on WTOP-FM, the Web site part of it on WTOP.com had clickthroughs from banners on top of the page. That $15,000 campaign ultimately was found to bring in $200,000 in car loans during a two-week period — a major success.

Passwaiter would like to use social media more as well. She has seen the success of Verity Credit Union in Washington state, which is paying young bloggers to comment on the good, bad and the ugly as they like. But company executives don’t see the value of it as a marketing tool. “They see daily visits to the fridge; what their kids are doing,” she said. “It is also tough for us to investigate as a tool, except on employees’ own time, because many office locations have restrictive Web site policies.”

Radio and TV station executives and industry groups are seeking to get chips inserted into mobile handsets to extend the reach of their respective programming. And they may do it with federal help as a public safety issue.

Emmis Communications President and CEO Jeff Smulyan, speaking at WMS ’09 in Washington D.C. said radio chips beat cell towers in cases of emergency communications, and can be put into every mobile phone for 50 cents or less – a message he had just been pushing in a day of lobbying on Capitol Hill. The entire installation would be just $1-2 per phone.

“Cell systems jam,” said Smulyan. “They’re only geared to take calls from 32 percent of the population, or something like that. But in an emergency, that goes up to 90 percent.”

The radio chip would have natural business extensions for the radio industry, in addition to providing emergency communications, added Smulyan. “It would change the perception of the (radio) industry as a dinosaur.” And it would be in the public interest because it would defend radio’s localism. “If you hear a song on the radio (over your phone), you could download it,” he said. “That’s just one application we’re talking about.

Radio over a mobile phone would also be more appealing than streaming over the Internet because “streaming is very expensive. You have to serve the whole world. But with a chip, you would only serve your local marketplace.”

Meanwhile, the TV folks are also itching to get a chipset onto mobile devices. Anne Schelle, Executive Director of The Open Mobile Video Coalition, said that Digital TV viewing is measurable, has unlimited capacity, and costs less than a penny an hour for each viewer. It stands in start contrast to dedicated Mobile video channels, which can only handle 25 streams at a time, and have network costs of $4.00 an hour.

Jerry Fritz Senior Vice President, Allbritton Communications,said broadcasters have the right plan, but the logistics will be a challenge. “You have to have five things go together,” he said. “You have to develop the measurement of mobile use. You have to have the manufacturer install the chip. And the broadcaster has to acquire the bandwidth.”

As more and more digital products and partnerships are introduced, a real debate is emerging whether they can be sold by a traditional media sales type who may be more focused on core product, have limited time to make his or her case (and apparently, a “C student” as well).

WMS ’09 participants in Washington D.C. this week got their fill of the debate. Gordon Borrell of Borrell Associates is clearly of the school that Internet specialists have to be hired. “If you are developing interactive, you can’t do it without sales people,” he says, encouraging the broadcasters in the audience to budget for more feet in the street, even in these tough times. But, he adds, “I have not seen a single case where people are selling two products,” although “a lot of people are trying to do that.”

Kelsey Group CEO Neal Polachek, however, says the issue is really how we define the idea of a “salesperson.” In this day and age, “a salesperson is not just a salesperson; he is a solution solver,” says Polachek.

“He has to go in and figure out the best way to generate (the client’s) objectives. It might be one place on the wheel, or it might be two places. To go in and say: ‘I am going to sell Gross Ratings Points to you,’ or ‘I am going to sell Internet Yellow Pages to you’ is not going to fly.”

Rob Weisbord, director, digital interactive, Sinclair Broadcasting Group, said that much of the issue is simply whether the salesperson has the mental bandwidth to handle multiple products. “There are too many ‘c students,” he says. The current environment requires “A students” because “knowledge is the paradigm,” especially as Sinclair tries to “close the loop” of the array of ad products for three screens: TV, PC and mobile.

“They are 360 degree customer solution sellers,” says Weisbord. Consequently, “the best rep comes from a marketing background. We’re looking for athletes. They’re the most competitive.”

Mediaweek’s Katy Bachman was front and center at this week’s Winning Media Strategies conference in Washington D.C. (thanks for all the questions from the front row Katy).

She wrote yesterday about BIA/Kelsey mobile forecast data and some themes that emerged throughout the show — Many broadcast media companies showed a clear interest in mobile and in the “three screen” strategy. See her writeup here.

Broadband is at the top of the agenda for the Obama administration and the FCC, with digital TV a close number two, according to influential Washington lawyer Dick Wiley, who was speaking at BIA’s Winning Media Strategies.

Broadband is going to be “the big one,” with a special focus on underserved, vulnerable parts of the population, said Wiley, who sites as one of DC’s pre-eminent communications lawyers after serving as FCC Chairman 30 years ago. “Unfortunately, that isn’t clearly defined,” said Wiley, but a lot of money –$7 billion –is being thrown at it. He noted that $2.5 billion is earmarked for The Rural Utility Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with the impact of making this relatively obscure division a major player in communications policy.

The second big issue for the administration is Digital TV, which is finally getting the big switchover from analog signals on June 12 after 22 years of policy development, noted Wiley. Enormous opportunities lie in wait with digital for broadcasters in business, and in regulatory relief. Broadcasters can use digital to extend their core competency in wireless communications and localism, he said. “Here is a area where being a broadcaster is a plus.”

Wiley also said that he didn’t see the Fairness Doctrine coming back, but that there may more restrictions on embedded advertising.

Don’t take The Kelsey Group’s word for the fact that more marketers are switching some of their advertising dollars into the Internet. Here’s what eMarketer wrote a week ago. “In the wake of the global economic downturn, marketers worldwide are shifting more of their budgets into cheaper, more-measurable categories.” The fact that eMarketer actually put those words into an article can only be traced to the fact that it got some hard numbers from the Society of Digital Agencies. It is no surprise that “81 percent of respondents said they plan to invest at least as much in digital marketing in 2009 as in the previous year.”

Happily, eMarketer backs up these figures with another study by Ad Media Partners. The research shows that marketing executives are planning to increase digital spending in social media marketing (77 percent), search marketing (76 percent), mobile marketing (75 percent), behavioral marketing (70 percent), lead generation (63 percent), video advertising (60 percent) and e-mail marketing (58 percent).

EMarketer sums all this up by pointing out that “the combination of accountability, conversion and the infusion of digital media into every facet of life makes the future look bright — for marketers making the move to digital.”

Anyone in the radio or television broadcasting industry who needs to understand how to best take advantage of digital media needs to be at the Winning Media Strategies conference to be held May 20-22 at the Marriott Wardman Park in Washington, D.C. The Kelsey Group and BIA Advisory Services have put together an event that will pay incredible dividends to those broadcasters willing to make the small investment of time and money.

Posted by: Michael Hackmer
Social Media and Online Marketing Manager
BIA Advisory Services
mhackmer@bia.com

In a forecast released today, BIA’s The Kelsey Group (www.kelseygroup.com), a division of BIA Advisory Services, LLC (www.bia.com), predicts U.S. mobile search advertising revenues to grow from $39 million in 2008 to $2.3 billion by 2013.

One of the drivers behind the forecast is the growth of mobile Internet users. BIA’s Kelsey Group anticipates “a tenfold increase in the number of mobile Internet users during the forecast period—from 5.2 million in 2008 to 56.2 million in 2013.”

BIA/Kelsey will present the forecast during “Winning Media Strategies,” its first conference to focus on the new media landscape and the opportunities for traditional media businesses and online companies, May 20-22 in Washington, D.C. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) recently partnered with Winning Media Strategies to demonstrate the importance of mobile and other online methods of distribution to the broadcast industry.

The read BIA’s recent press release on this forecast, please click here.

Welcome to the 2009 Winning Media Strategies blog.

This is the first year of Winning Media Strategies, and we are very excited about building a conference that is entirely focused on enhancing your business and discussing the kinds of progressive “change” we see is necessary for television, radio, cable, and newspaper companies to survive in a rapidly changing media ecosystem.

This blog aims to support the more informal side of networking and education before, during and after the conference. At their core, blogs are all about sharing ideas and engaging people. Over the next few weeks our goal will be to get the conversation rolling with the hope that you and others will chime in. By commenting and contributing, you will help us to craft a more effective and informative conference, and help you and your peers come to grips with the challenges facing the media industry today.

To help get the conversation rolling, we are inviting speakers, analysts and BIA executives to contribute to the blog on subjects that will be covered during Winning Media Strategies. We also have included the BIA Twitter feed on the right side of the blog, so people can follow the quick tweets about WMS and other media-related topics.

We hope that you will follow this space and take time to share your ideas. If you have any questions about the blog, please do not hesitate to send me an email at: mhackmer@bia.com. In the meantime, we appreciate your time and interest in Winning Media Strategies, and hope to see you online and at the conference.