Mistake 2
Create buzz, but don't let the bee get away.
Many marketers spend a great deal of time talking about the sexier aspects of the advertising and marketing business. Viral campaigns, buzz marketing and "the big idea" are goals that some find more interesting than making money. I love great advertising and great ideas that generate buzz. I also love the fact that great adverting can be shared online with ease. But if you are going to create demand for something through advertising, be sure that you are able to service that demand and capitalize on it at every touchpoint.
A recent Diesel campaign provides an example of demand generated but not answered. The company launched a [warning: adult themed] video that probably made Ron Jeremy look twice. The launch was in support of Diesel's 30th anniversary, and the buzz surrounding this video was tremendous. As you can see, there was a significant spike in the number of queries for "diesel video" on Google.
What if, for example, I had heard about the Diesel video but heard no details about the content? Let's say all I knew was that Diesel had created a must-see online video. I did a search for "diesel video," and the results looked something like this:
The brand itself is not present in the organic listing, so the company obviously did not optimize the video for search. In addition, Diesel is not buying the keyword on Google in order to respond to the demand generated by the video.
Responding to demand generation from outdoor advertising can also be an effective way to generate additional interest around a campaign. For example, let's pretend it is a sunny day in New York City and we -- me and you, yeah you -- just finished Sunday brunch. We see the below outdoor ad, but due to our after-brunch haze, we only take note of the billboard's attributes. We were able to remember the medium (AstroTurf on wall) but forgot the message (tune in for Monday Night Football). I say to you, "Do you remember that green AstroTurf ad we saw? What was it for? Can you do a Google search and let me know? I'm really curious."
It should be pretty easy to find on Google, right? Actually, it was not as easy as you think. But in this case, it was not too hard to find something about the billboard.
The third result on Google links to an article about how people vandalized some of these experimental ads and how the materials were potentially hazardous. This does not necessarily shed a positive light on ESPN. You found what you were looking for on Google, but you also may have found something that ESPN would not want you to find.
In light of the fact that these billboards were experimental, it was very likely that there would be a lot of chatter about them. It would have been prudent for ESPN to harness the buzz through search. ESPN could have created a series of PPC ads targeted to all of the locations where the billboards lived. For a modest budget, ESPN could have successfully captured the demand it generated (and, in this case, detracted consumers from negative press).
Here's a sample ad that ESPN could have used:
