Ready to work together?

Call Lee at 212.253.7500

or email lee@digobrands.com

Tag : media

Rebecca Weiser Recognized as a Rising Star in Financial Marketing!

We’re so proud to announce that Rebecca Weiser, our very own Director of Integrated Media and Analytics, has been named one of Gramercy Institute’s 2017-2018 “20 Rising Stars in Financial Marketing!”

We’ve known Rebecca to be a star since the day she joined DiGo as a Sr. Media Planner back in 2012. In the five years since, she’s proven that time and time again, growing through the ranks of the agency and continuing to be a true agent of the client.

Rebecca has played a vital role in inspiring action and growing the businesses of leading financial brands such as Ally Bank, TradeStation, Online Trading Academy, and Affinity Federal Credit Union through award-winning media strategies. In a constantly evolving media landscape, Rebecca considers all factors that could potentially impact media performance. She approaches each new business problem as an opportunity to provide creative, innovative, and thoughtful solutions. By looking at the story beyond the numbers, she brings unique insights to the table and offers actionabale analysis that has consistently driven growth for our clients.

Her leadership among the team provides clients with the ultimate confidence that their dollars will be spent efficiently and their trust in her has resulted in significant business growth year over year.

Congratulations Rebecca!

The ANA Report: Let’s Proove There’s A Better Way

Many advertising agencies in the US have been taking their clients’ media dollars and distributing them in ways that pad their own profits, rather than doing what’s actually best for the client.

They do so in the form of rebates, mark-ups and pre-arranged agreements, all of which take place behind closed doors, completely unbeknownst to the client.  If clients are aware of it, they are under the assumption that the agencies do this for better negotiating power, or for more efficiencies…but that is rarely the case.

The bottom line is that marketers are losing media efficiency and the ability to improve their own results. They can’t see what their media spend is really buying, therefore they can’t optimize it. A chunk of every dollar they spend is being wasted before they even begin.

Meanwhile, honest agencies are kept out of the running for significant accounts because they don’t hide their sources of profits, therefore they appear more expensive when they are anything but.

This has got to stop, but it won’t until every marketer is educated and committed to transparency.

Our media arm, Proove Accountable Media , was established to combat these dishonest agencies through providing clients with a better option – and to Proove there’s a better way.

Since it was founded, Proove has been directed by Agency Partner Adam Lutz, who, as evident from last year’s Business Insider article here, has become one of the leading pioneers on media transparency and accountability today.

So how is Proove Accountable Media different?

We only buy media that actually runs.

We don’t force our clients to use a prebuilt trade desk or limit them to particular buying technologies and data partners.

We never saddle our clients with pre-arranged investment commitments. Our job is to evaluate every partner, technology and ad buying platform and give the client the most relevant opportunity to fit their needs, not ours.

We don’t markup inventory or create revenue streams that ultimately deplete our clients’ media budgets.

Everything we do, buy, manage and execute is transparent and in our clients’ best interests.

To be an “agency” implies fiduciary responsibility to put the client’s best interest first. It’s why we got into this business in the first place, to help our clients grow and prosper. We over-communicate. We over collaborate. And then we over deliver.

Unlike the rest of the industry, we are a true agent of the client.

Hold everyone of us at DiMassimo Goldstein and Proove accountable for these promises. We already do.

 

SXSW Interactive 2016 Recap

The 30th SXSW has come and gone, and it’s hard to believe how much was packed into such a short period of time! Just in case you couldn’t make it down to Austin for the festival this year – or even if you did, and felt too overwhelmed to really soak it all in – here’s my recap of South By’s highlights:

Branded Activation:

Every year, brands flock to Austin to get in front of the 72,000+ attendees, hoping to become a part of their experiences – especially the ones documented on social media. While there were definitely some interesting “brandtivities” this year, the two that stood out to me the most were:

1) United Airlines: For their first time sponsoring SXSW, the airline set up multiple lounges that brought the actual brand experience to the festival by featuring their comfy first-class seats as lounge chairs / recharging stations. The snacks they gave out early in the morning were the same ones they give on early AM flights, in order to showcase the quality of their in-flight service. Finally, they tapped into the SXSW audience’s natural entrepreneurial and tech spirit by inviting them to help improve the United website and app by taking part in their #IdeasFlyHere sweepstakes

2) Casper: Casper also brought their physical brand experience to life by setting up a “napping pod” – as part of their Nap Tour. They added an additional media touchpoint and extended campaign reach by geo-targeting Facebook ads to people in Austin, encouraging them to stop by their “napmobile.”

DIGO_16_SXSW-BlogPost_750x220_1

Virtual Reality:

This was definitely the must-have accessory for every trade show booth this year. Gillette, Las Vegas Tourism, and Samsung all had virtual reality goggles, helping them showcase their brands. The most interesting use of VR, though, was the premiere of the first-ever Virtual Reality Infographic, as debuted by Nowsourcing.

DIGO_16_SXSW-BlogPost_750x220_2

Notable Startups:

As a Media Director, I’m inherently drawn to ideas that focus on efficiency, creative problem-solving, and leveraging materials that you already have. The startups that impressed me the most were the ones that – rather than reinventing the wheel – utilized resources that were already in existence, and currently being wasted:

4) Roadie: This “on-the-way” delivery Network lets you send shipments with people who are already traveling to a destination, and have room in their car for your package.

5) RoomSplit: This startup is like Airbnb, but for hotel rooms. If, for instance, your SXSW lodging is a really expensive hotel room that has two beds, and you’re only one person, you can find a roommate to split the cost for the duration of your stay.

6) DonateTheBars.com: Whenever you take a vertical-video on your cell phone, the resulting clip inevitably has two black bars on each side. This startup allows users to utilize these black bars in vertically filmed videos by donating them to NGO’s. Watch the video below to learn more.

DIGO_16_SXSW-BlogPost_750x220_3

Inspiring Action:

Lots of brands this year included “inspiration” in their messaging:

7) Pepsi: “Over food and drink, new ideas are born. Join us on the journey. NSPIRE.” – At the Mashable house, Pepsi let people create their own uniquely flavored drinks.

8) Qualcomm: “When will you be inspired by what you can’t see?” – Showcasing an Augmented Reality “Museum of Invisible Things” at theMashable House.

9) Mazda: “Find inspiration at every turn. Driving matters” – At the Mazda Recharging Lounge.

DIGO_16_SXSW-BlogPost_750x220_4

New to SXSW:

This year, SXSW debuted “Featured Speaker Meetups,” allowing eager festival-goers to interact with some of the most notable speakers. I took advantage of this new program and got to spend about an hour speaking in a 1-on-10 group with Kevin Kelly – founding executive director of Wired Magazine – about technology, media, and the future. It was extremely informative, and I will definitely be taking advantage of this opportunity again next year!

Overall, this year’s festival was extremely inspiring, invigorating, exciting, and innovating. Can’t wait for next year – hope to see you there!

-Rebecca Weiser, Media Director

 

What’s Your Measure of Proof?

There was once a man who refused to give up smoking until it was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that smoking caused disease.

He didn’t live long enough to see the proof.

Today, there are direct (digital, mobile, SAAS, subscription, e-commerce, club…) marketers who refuse to improve their marketing success with an insight-driven multi-channel strategy until the perfect attribution model has been developed.

Every day, another one is buried by a marketer with a more reasonable measure of proof.

Is overall marketing efficiency your ultimate measure? Is making one dollar of marketing spend return two or three or four times as many customers your objective?

If so, you are an optimizer.

If you prefer perfectly attributable though small gains in discrete channels, then you’re an incrementalist.

Optimizers eat incrementalists for lunch.

Sometimes, in very big places, incrementalists work in the middle of a pyramid with optimizers at the top. Even so, they can only swim so far up before they hit a ceiling. Too late, they find that the open market is not a very friendly place for an incrementalist.

Why do incrementalists do it to themselves? Is it because they are trading upside for certainty? Is being sure more valuable to them than being successful? Is being right worth more to them than results?

Or did they just swallow a less intelligent idea of what it is a marketer is supposed to do?

Well … enough musing about the incrementalists, much as I would like to convert as many of them as possible to a life of success beyond explanation.

We are for the optimizers.

 

About Proove Accountable Media

Proove(sm) powers brand-driven growth with accountable media planning and buying. Led by digital media pioneer Adam Lutz, who has successfully deployed hundreds of millions of media dollars for top advertisers, we seek tangible business results in everything we recommend. Key performance metrics are focused on engagement of the right audiences in most cost-effective ways. The latest technology and offerings provide our clients the most efficient and strategic media plans and buys. And we are first in line to learn about the latest innovations, technology and data to help drive our clients business, driving the standard of proof into pioneering territory such as social, mobile, owned and earned media.
Learn more about Proove Accountable Media: adam@prooveny.com

Something to Proove: 3 minutes with Adam Lutz, Managing Director, Proove

Q: Let’s start with the name. Proove.
A. Proove is our twist on prove, which is a value we live by. It is a hard word for some people to commit to…I mean it is quite a word to live up to. That’s why I like it. It says everything we are: accountable, actionable and measurable. And we’re willing to prove it, not just say it. We live and die by our performance, and we’re willing to commit, right there in the name — in the very first thing you learn about us — to standing behind our work. And the extra “O”, that’s because it’s not all science. There’s some magic required too. Some art.

Q: Accountable, actionable, measurable. Can you tell me more about how you do that?
A: What got me excited and challenged about Proove is how we can not only provide service but also drive differentiation. Here is an example: our reporting that we deliver to our clients is robust, but we’ve taken it a step further. We look at factors outside of paid media that could potentially impact media performance, which typically leads to unique insights into our clients business. It’s about the story behind the numbers, the real story. We believe in numbers but we want to go beyond the numbers and offer actionable analysis.

Q: The media landscape is changing so fast. There’s the rise of social, the ever-changing world of SEO, new media outlets, shifting demographics, the rise of mobile and other connected devices and on and on. In the face of all this and more, how should a marketing executive view the planning process?
A: The planning process doesn’t change, but the consideration set when evaluating media channels certainly does. A key piece to staying on top of the landscape is to be aligned with the latest technological and targeting advancements that are being introduced. I don’t want to tell a client that he or she should be doing social, SEO, mobile, etc., just based on content — that was what happened 1-2 years ago and agencies are still making these broad recommendations. I want to tell the client that he or she should have media presence across mobile, social, etc., aligned with relevant content & with “X” level of targeting across these tactics. The cutting edge targeting advancements is what is exciting and what to pay attention to. The planning process will stay the same as the landscape evolves, but targeting is what is truly evolving. We develop a matrix of channels, targets and understand how they work together in an integrated fashion. It’s not just the channel that changes but the messaging needs to be aligned both for that channel, for the target and for the way the channel fits into the target’s life.

Q: You spent many years working at some of the world’s biggest agencies. Why did you start Proove with DIGO Brands, a mid-size firm?
A: Large agencies have their own model, which works for certain clients. I am excited about being at a mid-size agency because we are able to respond to our client’s needs with more nimbleness, flexibility and speed. In my first few months here, I’ve witnessed many examples of creative work, problem solving and innovation happen much faster than the large agencies. I’ve seen things that take literally 6 months at a big agency happen here in a matter of a couple of weeks. At a firm of this size, we’re able to bring our best minds to the table and to think proactively about the client’s business, not just their media. It’s a completely different mind-set and level of customer service.

Q: What keeps you up at night?
A: There is a popular advertising phrase that goes: “half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; The trouble is, I don’t know which half”. Proove is about putting that cliche to rest. We are here to eliminate the waste and being able to show the client exactly what happened. We’re not offering guess work. We’re offering to Proove it.

Proove Accountable Media

Proove(sm) powers brand-driven growth with accountable media planning and buying. Led by digital media pioneer Adam Lutz, who has successfully deployed hundreds of millions of media dollars for top advertisers, we seek tangible business results in everything we recommend. Key performance metrics are focused on engagement of the right audiences in most cost-effective ways. The latest technology and offerings provide our clients the most efficient and strategic media plans and buys.And we are first in line to learn about the latest innovations, technology and data to help drive our clients business, driving the standard of proof into pioneering territory such as social, mobile, owned and earned media.