In this interview with President, Chief Strategic Officer and Co-Owner of Otherwise Inc., Lerner discusses her work with Orbitz and reveals some secrets behind its success.
Nancy Lerner has always been particularly interested in how branding and visual design and technology come together. Over the past couple of years, it has made sense for the online dimension to become part of Otherwise Inc., but the company has not thrown everything else away. “We figured that in order to be true to our own motto and our own philosophy we needed to figure out how the online world lived with the offline world,” Lerner says. Otherwise Inc. continues to be what the name implies. The “Other” part has to do with alternate ways of looking at things, which is the visual design component, and the “wise” part of it really has to do with the whole strategic dimension, Lerner says.
Meet Nancy at the iMedia Summit, May 4-7 in Scottsdale, Arizona.
iMedia Connection: What’s one of the most successful “branding” campaigns your company has executed recently, and what made it successful?
Lerner: We had the good fortune to meet up with the folks who were getting ready to launch Orbitz and have been their online agency since February 2001, before they launched the company. We not only do all of their online creative work, but we also drive a major part of their transaction volume everyday through the work that we do. We’ve proven that it is possible to brand online. Through all of the tracking studies that have been done, it has become clear that, through our pop-unders, the brand recognition we have been able to create and sustain has really been remarkable and extremely positive as well.
Orbitz is extremely well known and I would turn to that as being a great example of a successful branding campaign. Actually it’s both a branding and a direct-response campaign as far as we’re concerned. Going back to my personal philosophy and our studio philosophy -- because we understand how brand, technology and design can come together, it has allowed us to create campaigns that are smart, delightful, funny, and quirky, and push the proverbial envelope in terms of rich media. There was an article in Investor’s Business Daily about our use of sound and rich media in our pop-unders. This happens all the time. We look around and say, “Why haven’t other people figured out how important it is, how so many of the bandwidth issues are going away and how rich media is ripe for the picking?” But it’s just not happening. There’s a very low common denominator in online advertising especially when it’s focused around customer acquisition that doesn’t need to be there.
iMedia Connection: What’s one of the most successful “DR” campaigns your company has executed recently?
Lerner: I would put Orbitz right at the top of the list.
iMedia Connection: So it sounds like your company can definitely point to evidence that suggests online advertising and marketing are contributing positively to branding metrics?
Lerner: Yes. I can only refer again back to the Orbitz story where there are regular tracking studies. In the beginning, there was only tracking offline, but now there is tracking online as well. All the tracking indicates strongly, consistently, and month after month that the brand recognition is being driven online and that it’s extremely positive.
iMedia Connection: Are third-party Internet traffic-measuring services useful beyond being something you have to subscribe to to get R/F data?
Lerner: Most definitely. It’s part of trying to constantly understand the landscape and constantly modify the context in which brands and online advertising live.
iMedia Connection: Are most of your clients taking advantage of day-parting or is this perhaps more hype, than hope?
Lerner: Not yet, they’re not. I think it can be an extremely effective targeting tool, but I just haven’t seen a lot of evidence yet.
iMedia Connection: What remains the industry’s biggest stumbling block?
Lerner: I just think there’s still a lot of skepticism on the part of the advertising community – people who were early adopters and didn’t see the kinds of results they thought they should be getting. And there’s a whole tier of very sophisticated offline advertisers who still have not really put more than a toe in the water online, which means that they don’t really believe it can be effective. I don’t think most companies have done a very good job at truly integrating their online and offline initiatives so there’s a tremendous amount of opportunity and refinement and evolution that still can take place. And on the creative side, the proverbial bar has been very low so there’s still a number of pitfalls, hurdles, opportunities. They all speak to a different dimension of things that I still believe can, should and will be done that haven’t all happened yet.
iMedia Connection: What knowledge can you share to bridge the gap on how to better serve marketers’ needs in the online world?
Lerner: A fractured client/advertiser organization where there has never been perhaps more than lip service paid to true integration of the brand is extremely challenging. When you add the online piece into what’s already going on in traditional offline and you’ve got brand-related stuff going on at the same time that you have as customer acquisition… it doesn’t happen all by itself. It requires a corporate culture and a commitment and a mindset.
What gives me goose bumps on a regular basis is when I think about having been involved 20 years ago or more in projects in which Fortune 100 companies were automating for the first time and the kind of technology and integration that was required. Seeing how technology is now being synthesized and integrated not only internally in organizations but also how it is being packaged and pushed out in terms of service and product, [it is evident] the process hasn’t really changed. The technology is different, but you kind of develop a sense of what will happen next because there are certain things that are predictable. That gives clients a sense of ease and comfort.
iMedia Connection: Have any of your clients successfully utilized any emerging technologies, such as IM, wireless, iTV, etc.?
Lerner: No and it’s not that they’ve done it unsuccessfully. They just haven’t done it. I’ve certainly read about campaigns that have been delivered on wireless devices, and they seem to be perfectly appropriate and make good sense. One of the things I’m looking forward to hearing about at the conference is other people who perhaps have used it and are using it because I think it’s really fascinating.