How to Help Jay Leno Win the 10 PM Time Slot

When The Jay Leno Show premiered on September 14th it meant former late night king Jay Leno would be moving to and competing for ratings in the competitive prime-time ratings sweepstakes. To date, reception and viewership has been less than stellar for Leno. Ratings are lower than expected while the show has lost out to re-runs on other networks. This past Monday marked the lowest of lows as only 4.6 million people tuned in.

The Leno show brings us to the question; do Americans simply not want to watch or care about talk show style shows in prime-time? Do we love our dramas and sitcoms that much?

The Jay Leno Show needs to start by engaging with fans and recognizing that it is a much different audience then the late night crowd. To attract viewers, people need to be presented a reason to watch the show over their favorite CBS drama they have been a loyal follower of for years. A few short, un-captivating ads running throughout the evening as people settle in after a long day at the office do not do the trick. The Leno show needs to reach people while they are still in the office, while leveraging the popularity of nightly celebrity guest or musical act to draw their fans to Jay for the night.

Zeta Marketing Solutions to Increase Ratings and Popularity of The Jay Leno Show

• Contests are known to foster engagement; create a contest where Twitter followers can Tweet their best joke or one-liner to @nbcjay
  • A winning joke will be selected by the show’s staff and read by Leno on the next night’s show and will be based on entertainment value and creativity
    • Leno will mention the Twitter user before reading their joke
    • Contestants must be followers of @nbcjay so they can be notified after the previous night’s show that their joke won in the event they did not watch (tweeters who entered jokes will still (hopefully) watch that night’s show to see if their joke was selected)
    • Promote the contest through the many NBC affiliated Twitter handles as well as the NBC Web site to increase the chances the campaign goes viral
  • At the end of each month; the top Twitter use submitted joke will be selected. The Jay Leno Show will fly the lucky winner in for an all expenses paid, overnight stay in the Los Angeles area culminating with passes to a taping of the show
    • The joke of the month will be voted on by Twitter followers and fans of the show, voting will be hosted by the shows official site with video clips available of Jay reading the top 5 jokes of the month as selected by NBC
    • The winners will be acknowledged during the taping of the show and shown on air during the primetime broadcast
• The Jay Leno Show should use email marketing to demographically target people based on the nights guest/ musical act
  • Before the show; NBC should acquire lists based around fans of the celebrity or artist due on the show that night
    • Purchase the list from the celebrities fan site or use a 3rd party with relevant list demographics
    • Send an email the day of the show reminding them that X celebrity will be appearing or performing tonight
    • Make sure to include the celebrity in the subject line to increase interest and optimize open rates
    • Utilize a creative that follows best practices with image to text ratio to aesthetically appeal to the reader while offering the necessary information regarding the show
• Have the creative click through to thejaylenoshow.com home page
  Note: An increase in overall traffic to the Leno home page will generate greater advertising revenue to offset the additional costs of email marketing
• Use a similar concept for targeted banner advertising on Facebook
  • By taking advantage of Facebook’s unique targeting capabilities; NBC can target ads to a selected demographic that might watch a specific night due to the appearance of a favorite celebrity/ artist
  • Example: John Cusack is due to appear on the show Friday, October 30th
    • Target Facebook profiles that list Cusack or some of his popular films (Sixteen Candles, High Fidelity,etc.) in their profile
    • Have a banner ad highlighting Cusack’s upcoming appearance on the show be displayed
• NBC should use SEM to purchase keywords related to guests of the show; especially if that celebrity has been in the news a lot recently and is a high volume search term

Posted in Zeta Buzz | 2 Comments »

How to scare up a traffic boost this Halloween

With Halloween fast approaching this coming Saturday, along with it comes the usual wave of last-minute costumers eager to make a cleaver, funny or scary splash on the 31st. “Halloween” is consistently trending on Twitter, and there is an exponential jump in Halloween-related searches, so now is the time for savvy marketers to pull something out of their bags of tricks.

Zeta Marketing Solutions for the Halloween holiday

• Top seasonal retailers HalloweenMart and Spirit Halloween have a web-based retail environment in dire need of a refresh.
  • HalloweenMart suffers from a bland layout, with no notable call-to-action, compounded with oversized images that further distract from the product listings.
  • Spirit is at the opposite end of the spectrum, having an overwhelming number of category listings, field entries and a harsh color scheme.
    • Create a revamped website based entirely on a dynamic usability study, whilst conforming to their established brand identity and product lines.
    • To drive additional traffic, the retailers should create some branded content for distribution directly to customers
      • Halloween-themed twitter profile templates (downloadable wallpaper, icons, color layout instructions, etc.)
      • A photo-editing suite that “Creeps-out” a portrait you upload, inserting some Halloween-themed images (smoke, bats, pumpkins, etc.) on top of your picture
• While costume retailers seem to be fairly active on twitter (smart move) the other important aspect of Halloween (Candy) has gone unrepresented.
  • Hershey’s, arguably the largest candy brand worldwide, has no active twitter presence. While they do have a corporate profile, there have been no updates at all.
  • Mars also has failed to create a Twitter profile.
    • Both brands should take obvious first steps (Create optimized twitter profiles, update constantly, and link to profile on website homepage, etc.)
    • Tweets should highlight seasonal recipes created solely with their products.
• Costumeideazone.com; the first site that appears in organic search results on Google under “Halloween Costume Ideas” should make better usage of their company Twitter account to build brand awareness and drive traffic to their site.
  • Currently the account has only 13 Tweets and 14 followers
  • To foster fans’ creativity; Costumeideazone.com should host a Twitter based contest where users submit their most unique, original and creative ideas with the winning costume being furnished by costumezone.com or a partner
    • The contest will be cross-promoted on the costumeideazone.com where users can submit their entries and ultimately vote on the winning idea
• Costumeideazone.com should offer weekly newsletters via email marketing throughout the month of October in anticipation of their highest traffic month
  • Capture visitor’s email addresses by partnering with a site that actually sells costumes such as halloweenexpress.com to offer discounts and specials

Posted in Brand Strategy/Creative, Email Marketing, Online Advertising/ePR, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Uncategorized, Zeta Buzz | No Comments »

Companies further more than their own cause during Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Organizations nationwide, both for-profit and non-profit, have taken it upon themselves to infuse Breast Cancer Awareness into their product and service lines. With companies as traditionally feminine as Estée Lauder and traditionally masculine companies like the NFL all showing their support behind the cause, this creates a unique opportunity for active companies to not just gain some good PR, but to turn increased attention into mutually beneficial arrangements with worthy charities.

Zeta Marketing Solution for Breast Cancer Awareness Month

• Companies whose target market is usually male-dominated should utilize this opportunity to target the female audience by developing charitable incentives.
  • Gamestop could donate 10% of all orders $100 or more to the NBCAM.
    • Promote this through their existing social media channels (@gamestopcorp), showing daily examples of what you could get for the required $100
      • ” Band Hero + Guitar Hero 5“
      • “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 1 + 2“

• Online retailers such as Zappos and Amazon should prominently feature breast cancer awareness products (pink colored) on landing pages and prior to checkout.
  • Low-cost items such as ribbons, magnets and stationary should be pushed during checkout, as customers will be more likely to purchase these along with larger orders than by themselves.
  • Offer free shipping on all pink items as further incentive for charitable contributions

• NBACM should develop a series of social media-applicable downloads and skins for promoting the cause.
  • Similar to green overlay developed in support of the recent Iran protest, a series of adaptable pink icons and backgrounds should be distributed so individuals can become actively involved with little cost.

Posted in Online Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized, Zeta Buzz | 1 Comment »

Vitaminwater using social strategy to improve product development

Vitaminwater launched the new “flavor-creator” Facebook application which allows fans to create the company’s newest flavor. The application allows fans to combine popular flavors and even design the bottle for the drink. The winning flavor, as determined by Carrie Underwood and 50 Cent, will net a lucky Vitaminwater fan $5,000.

Zeta Marketing Solution to Cross-Promote the “Flavor-Creator” App

• Vitaminwater should use email marketing to alert consumers who are not current Facebook fans or are not aware of the flavor-creator application and contest.
o Utilize the consumer email database that parent company Coca-Cola possesses to publicize the application and contest via email.
 Deploy a large scale campaign to younger consumers from both the Coca-Cola and Vitaminwater email lists.
• The emails will feature basic details on the contest combined with the flavor-creator avatar linking to the Facebook application.
• The flavor-creator avatar will be above the fold of the email to foster more clicks to the Vitaminwater Facebook page.
o The email will be sent on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday to maximize open rates amongst potential participants.
o Analytics implementation can be leveraged to get granular reporting on the success of these emails.

• Vitaminwater should leverage the popularity of contest judges Carrie Underwood and 50 Cent
o Search engine marketing is a great medium to capture fans of the artists who may not be aware of their involvement with Vitaminwater.
 Purchasing artist-related keywords via Google Ad words (example: “Carrie Underwood”) will help drive traffic and attention to the Vitaminwater Facebook page.
• Keywords “Carrie Underwood” and “50 Cent” accounted for well over one million searches last month on Google alone.
o Vitaminwater should use the popularity of investor/endorser 50 Cent, to cross-promote the application on his Twitter page.
o 50 Cent has over 1.5 million followers. Semi-regular tweets will promote and drum up excitement about the application and contest while providing free marketing for Vitaminwater.
o Produce a mashup utilizing Carrie Underwood and 50 Cent’s most well-known songs as source material, posting it on the Vitaminwater contest page and promoting it through 50 Cent’s twitter page as link bait.

Posted in Technology, Zeta Buzz | No Comments »