Weekly notes 09/04-09/11

Interview with Andy Mitchell
CNN Interactive -- New York
Director of Interactive Marketing
Dept.: Strategic Marketing

Highlights:
Dot-com's marketing department is working constantly on different marketing initiatives. The campaigns are mostly worldwide. Interactive marketing is implemented on several platforms: Online, free video, Pipeline, interactive TV, wireless. These digital properties are also used to promote TV content online -- TV/Web integration.

The selling point is the brand. In the current state of the media, CNN means immediacy, trust, worlwide and around-the-clock news coverage.

RPU (Revenue per User) is an online metric used to showcase revenue for every unique on a monthly basis. While there are no exact numbers available publicly, the RPU reflects the year over the year growth and financial success of the company.

Audience is broad -- 30 million, which is about the half of total online population. It is mixed in gender and is relatively upscale. Very little of behavioral marketing is done, if any. Most efforts are very broad marketing without particular targeting.

Dot-com's marketing is very active in the advertising and marketing industry and is frequently featured in such publications as Advertising Age and Media Week to position itself in front of the advertisers.

CNN's Ad/Marketing Strategy:
In terms of reinforcing and maintaining the value component of its business model, CNN.com operates on two fronts: B2C and B2B. If Business2Consumer part operates primarily on the editorial level, the Business2Business component is strategized and implemented in the Interactive Marketing and Sales departments.

The company employs a multiplatform ad strategy to satisfy the interests of both its advertisers and consumers. As any other media company in the era of the emerging media platforms industry, dot-com is focusing on delivering its value/product via different digital platforms: Internet, video, wireless, podcasting, video on demand, etc.

"Consumers access news everywhere: at home, at work, on the go by using different technology available at that point in time," says Andy Mitchell, Director of Interactive Marketing for CNN.com.

The more there are product distribution platforms, the more there are benefits for advertisers. CNN.com’s marketing strategy offers both end users and advertisers a unique proposition of accessing news on several different platforms, as well as place advertisements on those various platforms.

Ad placements on the site vary from textual ad links to fixed positions as the homepage roadblocks. In the end, the company creates more opportunities for more ad inventory on different distribution channels. The limited premium digital ad inventory gives advertisers access to CNN.com’s very extensive and desirable demographics. The demand for this premium inventory is only increasing year after year.

Success comes from combining various distribution platforms to maximize the reach and consumer exposure to ads, therefore, enhancing ad revenue. The advertising industry probably never had it this good, since multimedia content revolution took place on the Internet, as well as traditional media outlets.

The most successful marketing campaign
"The power of CNN under your command" (http://www.cnn.com/yourcommand/), launched in November 2004, featured a set of funny videos with the starry cast of TV personalities such as Christiane Amanpour, Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, Lou Dobbs, Paula Zahn and Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

The humorous promotional spots were showcased on both TV and the Internet.

This project allowed CNN.com to showcase CNN as a whole and show that they don't take their serious business too seriously. For the online side of the business, it was a good experience to be associated with famous TV personalities, therefore, extending the brand name and its talent components to the digital platform. This project provided an online outlet for TV personalities and created a certain buzz in the industry as a whole.

Struggles with wireless
To many users, the wireless technology is still foreign, which makes it difficult to market CNNtoGo, the company's wireless arm. The new product must be logical and easy for users to understand, otherwise, it will fail. Wireless is still a relatively new notion in the minds of many consumers. The wireless carries promote their product and it helps in the overall education of consumers. CNNtoGo is built to accommodat current technology used by the carriers. People fear things they don't understand.

The eureka moment
It sounds silly, but it just dawned on me that the value component in dot-com's BM is not entirely concentrated in the editorial/consumer part of it -- i.e. the B2C and product offering module. The big part of the value-driving activity is in marketing, advertising, sales, programming, intra- and inter-company relations -- i.e. on the B2B side.