The Media Director & Media Strategist talks about some of the challenges of advertising adult beverages online, and provides advice for marketers.

San Francisco-based Real Branding is a privately held full-service interactive agency that has worked with established brands such as SMIRNOFF ICE™, Del Monte, Northpoint Financial, Rodan and Fields and Corona Extra. As the Media and Strategic Director, Jason Kelley oversees the entire media department, works with clients in developing strategy, negotiates media placements, and outlines successful metrics strategies. Kelley spoke with iMedia Connection recently to give his views on the direction of the interactive marketing industry and suggestions for its improvement.

iMedia Connection: What’s one of the most successful campaigns your company has executed recently, and what made it successful?

Kelley: We’ve run a series of extremely successful SMIRNOFF ICE™ campaigns as part of the brand’s integrated marketing strategy. There have been a number of promotions, most recently the SMIRNOFF ICE ™ Inside Track contest that required customers to come up with clever ways to react to a situation for a chance to win some amazing opportunities. There was some really cutting edge media creative placed on contextually relevant sites to drive traffic to SmirnoffIce.com. Not only was there a high level of participation in the contest, but a lot of people took advantage of viral opportunities to get their friends involved.

iMedia Connection: Can your company point to evidence that suggest online advertising and marketing are contributing positively to branding metrics?

Kelley: Nobody’s going to click on a banner for SMIRNOFF ICE™ or Corona and wait seven days for delivery. Over and over again, with clients from all industries, you see customers entering the site and sticking around for awhile to search for information or interact with features on the site. This is real brand interaction where people are not passively being exposed to the brand, but pro-actively seeking it out to become more familiar on a lot of different levels. For example, after the SMIRNOFF ICE ™ Inside Track promotion went into a quiet period, there was a steady increase in traffic to the site as well as the amount of time people spent on there. People were logging on to interact with some of the branded activities like the music mixer and just have some fun.

iMedia Connection: In this post click-through era, what kinds of new metrics are emerging as the new measurement standards?

Kelley: It’s so dependent on the account. The successful metric for us is not so much the math of traffic but being selective on what traffic is coming to the site and who we’re reaching. A lot of times our clients are age and gender specific, so we have to be smart on were we place our ads. It’s all about the right message for the right audience at the right time in the right context.

iMedia Connection: How does the issue of relationship marketing tie into the future of online marketing?

Kelley: It’s huge. How can you still engage that right audience with the right message? It’s important for us to capture e-mail addresses into a database and market to those people. When they walk through a 7-11 and they see the brand, they’ve already had a conversation with the brand. When they log onto the brand’s Website and leave their contact information, they’ve invited the brand out for a drink. This communication with the brand is important not in terms of reaching new customers, but also in keeping the current customer base alive and active.

iMedia Connection: Have you piloted any early Reach & Frequency planning on behalf of your clients?

Kelley: Not to any real level. We started doing soft studies, but nothing to the point that we can talk at a higher level.

iMedia Connection: Will day-parting become known as one of the Internet’s best practices, or is this perhaps more hype than hope?

Kelley: It’s on a client by client basis. For some clients it is a unique opportunity to target a certain market at a particular time of day. Maybe an adult beverage company might want to target professional people from 4-5? For others, it doesn’t really matter. The key is about making sure you get the right message in front of the right audience.

iMedia Connection: Are your clients increasing their interactive spend over time? What does 2003 look like relative to 2002?

Kelley: They actually are increasing their interactive spending. Let’s just say, we’re excited about it.

iMedia Connection: What remains the industry’s biggest stumbling block?

Kelley: I don’t know if I can identify the biggest, but I can speak for some of our challenges at Real Branding. Marketing adult beverages online is relatively new. We are challenged from our clients to create interesting opportunities that are uniquely own able. Well, when facing FTC/ATF marketing guidelines, “uniqueness” sometimes goes out of the window. For example, if Newcastle Brown Ale was to run a sweepstakes to the Superbowl, we could not count the entrants from California due to the law. In California the value of the grand prize for a sweepstakes sponsored by a beer company is $0.25 and for all other adult beverages is $1.00. Therefore, it is rather difficult to market effectively online to the people living in a state which happens to be one of the most active Internet media consumers. Additionally, viral marketing, relationship marketing strategies and making sure your ads are seen by a 21+ age audience also carry challenges.

iMedia Connection: What knowledge can you share to bridge the gap on how to better serve marketers’ needs in the online world?

Kelley: Well, I’ve personally been in the space since 1994 and Real Branding has been around just as long, so there’s a lot of knowledge there to be shared. Specific solutions are created from specific objectives, and I think that is always the best way to address marketers’ needs online or off.