Our final session at the Custom Content Conference is being led by Howard Hunt, VP of New Business for The Hyperfactory, and Susan Kevorkian, Program Director of the Digital Marketplace Group at IDC. They are speaking about what is driving mobile growth and how to effectively harness this technology for brands and products.

The Hyperfactory powers Meredith Corp. – 19.99 percent strategic investment

Howard is showing Hyperfactory’s “Listen to Me” mobile and outdoor campaign for the United Nations in Australia. Profits from 2-minute phone calls generated by messaging went to U.N. charities.

Susan: Tremendous complexity in mobile – many operating systems. Android, Microsoft, BlackBerry, MeeGo, Palm, etc. All are fighting hard to get consumer attention by providing content. Necessity for developers to create content for all of these platforms.

Howard: Challenge is determining which platforms are going to serve your customers best. Google’s Android has about 8 percent of the market now, could be as much as 30 percent and surpassing Apple nowby the end of this year.

Hyperfactory campaign in Hong Kong for Motorola. Saying goodbye to your friends via a giant screen in the departure hall at the Hong Kong airport. Included messages from David Beckham and Chinese soccer star.

Mobile campaign for M&M’s, image of Eminem made from product

Mobile phone and smartphone shipments – 1.1 billion in 2009, up to almost 1.6 billion by 2014 (28.2 percent penetration)

Food Network – Hyperfactory campaign to provide the “glue” between TV show and website

Hyperfactory helped Kraft and Meredith build the iFood Assistant mobile app

Mobile app for HBO series Big Love – 35,000 posts from fans about their personal experiences

Taco Bell game app – put in the amount of money you have, app tells you what items you can buy, GPS map shows you nearest Taco Bell outlet

DHL branded game – 30,000 downloads – build engagement and data acquisition about customers

Nike T-90 soccer shoe poster campaign in Hong Kong, secret mobile codes embedded in posters, on subway trains, at Nike stores, in magazines. Using augmented technology, consumers experienced product in new way. Prizes to teams who successfully activated all of the codes.

Sekai Camera Tech Crunch50, video shows user walking through mall, pop-up screens with info about products in mall stores, shopping information. “Walk down street, point camera toward product and learn everything you want to know about it” to make buying decision.

TED. com video –  device worn around neck, get product information – Amazon ratings and book reviews in bookstore, for example. Reading newspaper, get video about the article you are reading by pointing device. Information about flight off boarding card. TED.com

Mobile advertising key notes – Brands want and need mobile destinations (publishes are the lifeblood)
Spends of $50K-$100K (4 to 6-week campaign)
Network vs premium (CPM $5 vs. $25)
Targeting (demographic vs. handset)
Evolution (location)

Social media and user-generated content have re-emphasized the importance of content authenticity. They also have created more “noise” and distraction on the Internet and in app stores — content providers need to address this information overload

Mobile Internet extends and complements the fixed Internet – offers greater potential to offer valuable/useful content to consumers were theye want it, by leveraging those technologies

Thomas J. Hoehn is Director of Interactive Marketing and Convergence Media for Eastman Kodak.

“The worst thing that somebody can say about Kodak is – Nothing.”

65 percent of Kodak’s business is B2B.

Use social media to help bring Kodak’s stories to customers.

Twitter: 35 million users, 8 percent of U.S. population; another 4% use occasionally. 15.5 million active blogs.

Old vs. New - it was eyeballs and ears, now it’s hearts and minds 

Kodak’s social media strategy: The Kodak Convergence Media Ripcurl. Recognize that people are talking about your brand out there. “The ants have megaphones.” Use the energy of social media to your advantage – don’t fight it. Be Proactive: produce content, photos, tips, events, widgets/apps, contests, interviews. And be Reactive – give people what they want – monitoring, polls, 2-way engagement. Merging all together creates the “ripcurl.”

Kodak Pocket Video Cameras – introduced July 2008 – Zi6, competitor to Flip Mino HD. Kodak found that many users had posted side-by-side reviews of the 2 products, added to Kodak  blogpost.

Kodak used feedback from users to create the next-gen product, Zi8. When introduced, Kodak posted 2 1/2 minute video of product manager, got 11,000  views the first day from fans who had been blogging about product well in advance of introduction.

Consumers had negative reaction to name, so Kodak launched contest to name the next product, including giveaways of camera. Winner gets flown to CES to introduce the camera. Next one called the Play/Sport.

Kodak’s share of voice in posts about digital video cameras has grown from 18 percent to about 50 percent.

Learn more at kodak.com/go/followus

And that’s a wrap for Day One at the Custom Content Conference. Thanks for tuning in, see you again tomorrow.

Sandra Zoratti is VP of Global Solutions Marketing for InfoPrint Solutions Co.

Customers are overwhelmed with content – they are aggressively tuning out messages. 91 percent are opting out of e-mails from companies. 63 percent say they will stop doing business with a brand if they continue to receive irrelevant messages. Consumers are in the driver’s seat in controlling the information that they receive. The challenge is how to keep customers engaged when they are tuning out so much content? The key to engagement is relevant communications.

Customers don’t mind receiving multiple marketing communications messages as long as they are relevant. For marketers, the world must change. 56 percent of marketers perceive themselves as being extremely customer-centric; only 12 percent of customers agree. 80 percent of consumers say they will never go back to a brand after a single negative experience. So the stakes in communicating effectively are high.

Sandra played a video of Liz Miller, VP of Programs  and Operatoins for the CMO Council. “Precision marketing” is opening up a lot of doors for marketers – retention of loyal customers is key. Using data to drive relevant custom content to the right person, at the right time, in the right channel. “Data drives relevance, relevance drives loyalty, and loyalty drives revenue.”  Data is the keystone to custom content.

The average American consumer is registered with 16 loyalty programs and is active in 6.

Precision Marketing in action: Best Western loyalty program – account statement redesigned, promotional rewards added, increases in number of stays, number of nights stayed, revenue generated. Tailoring the content to the audience of high-loyalty customers really paid off returns.

Large hotel chain – went into historial database and pulled inactive accounts. But many of their characteristics matched those of very loyal active accounts, so next mailing went to 18 percent of dormant account and generated $1 million in incremental business.

Graphic Arts Monthly  – print business declining, need to re-engage customers and fortify advertising revenue. Personalized content of front cover (5 choices) depending on interests of subscriber. 43% said personalization of cover content improved their recognition of the Graphic Arts Monthly brand. Results from online survey of 70,000 subscribers.

To learn more, visit profitwithloyalty.com. To connect with Sandra: sandra.zoratti@infoprint.com, twitter.com/sandraz

Alexandre Simon is Senior Director of Digital Business Development for the National Hockey League, is talking about using custom content to turn consumers into fans.

NHL was organization of 30 teams that individually had strength in their local markets but not much scale as a national brand.

Strategy was to turn consumers of the NHL’s product into fans, thereby building scale and revenue. Syndicating custom content is one way for the league to build scale, turning fans into brand evangelists, engaging them wherever they happen to live online.

NHL’s digital assets: game-related content, video and audio features, contests and promotions, real-time editorial, fan media.

Find people where they are and give them a taste of all the digital content that the NHL has to offer.

Previous content strategy was “come to us” – NHL.com waited for fans to discover the site, just a select few. League flipped it around and created a “digital hockey marketplace.” Shifting from a product focus to a consumer focus. Key to syndication model is letting the fans dictate the content strategy rather than letting our content dictate our fan outreach strategy.

Soliciting and observing fan voice on social media networks, message boards, blogs, user feedback forums. Luckily for us, NHL fansare very vocal.

Everyting fans do on every platform is analyzed. NHL assigned programmers to interact with fans between 7 pm and midnight, when traffic is highest – after “normal” office hours.

NHL was first of the four major sports leagues to partner with YouTube. NHL research shows that its fans are the most tech-savvy of the four major sports. 80 percent of the YouTube content about the NHL is generated by fans. Highlights, fights, etc. Branded YouTube NHL channel generates exposure for partners and ad revenue for NHL.

Content syndication through blog networks sucsh as Yardbarker, Bleacher Report and SB Nation. NHL provides video content, shares ad revenue, blogs provide content for nhl.com and individual team websites. Grows “ecosystem” of NHL and builds scale.

Custom content fo advertisers and sponsors – sponsored contests and sweepstakes – Bridgestone NHL Ultimate Leader Sweepstakes, offering trip to 2010 Stanley Cup Finals.

U.S. Army sponsored microsite within nhl.com.

Custom content strategy on social media: direct engagement becomes bigger focus. Content designed to engage fans – polls, contests, games). Engage fans in conversation about league issues – turns fans into brand advocates, passing along NHL messages to their friends on behalf of the league. Fans become advocates.

Fan in Montreal built community of 150,000 with his own NHL Facebook page. Now owned by NHL – hourly posts, video clips, game reports, reactions from fans. NHL offers virtual gifts – fans can send their friends virtual jerseys, penalties, “face wash.”

NHL uses Tweetups to build fan relationships offline – during playoffs last year had 23 events. 150 people showed up to NYC event at NHL store. Fun environment for fans to meet, tweet from event. NHL has Twitter lists for each of its teams – allows league to find out what’s important to fans in each market. Helps tailor local promotional strategies, more effective partnerships with sponsors.

Measuring results of custom content syndication strategy: 300,000 videos seen per day on YouTube, up 300 percent, this season. Does not cannibalize nhl.com, where video views have increased 130 percent year-over-year. NHL’s customer database growing by 25 percent YOY.

Content syndication has to evolve all the time, as new distribution platforms are launched – stay in touch with where fans are consuming content. NHL has just launched iPhone app. NHL can sell different advertising on each new content distribution channel. NHL sales team coordinates with sales team at each new syndication partner.

Next step is to take national strategy and roll it out with individual teams in their local markets to drive ticket sales, sponsorships, advertising.

L.A. Kings hired Kings beat reporter Rich Hammond from local newspaper, who now blogs for the team but still has editorial independence - readers followed him to the team site.

For more about Alex and the NHL’s digital strategy, visit
http://www.pacecommunications.com/blog/post/nhls_alex_simon_reveals_hockey_fans_love_digital_custom_content/
http://www.emarketer.com/blog/index.php/case-study-twitter-promotion-turned-campaign-community-nhl/   And here are links to some of

the NHL digital channels:
http://www.nhl.com/
http://www.youtube.com/nhl
http://bleacherreport.com/nhl
http://www.facebook.com/nhl
http://www.twitter.com/nhl

KLM connects with its customers through a content strategy called iFly, which achieved the highest click-through rate of any of the carrier’s digital campaigns.

Albert is describing how KLM personalizes the content in its custom digital magazine by creating content that is most relevant and of highest interest to its customers — KLM calls this process “Smart Media”, involving concept, planning, and strategy. The magazine is distributed to KLM’s customer database via e-mail.

Each edition of the iFly digital magazine has 16 spreads – 13 edit and 3 advertising.

Content includes articles on KLM travel destinations, culture, adventure, shopping, personal technology, supported with extensive click-throughs to detailed content.

Heineken partnered with KLM with content about a soccer event in Iceland, a key destination for the carrier.

Content program involves extensive marketing partnerships with Samsung Omnia smartphones. Coca-Cola, Audi, Avis, Phillips – all involve extensive feedback from customers. 70 percent of costs are covered by these partnerships.

iFly digital magazine is sent to customers every 6 weeks.

Content is differentiated for frequent flyers.

On average, readers spend about 18 minutes with the magazine. 32% of readers report they have a more positive image of KLM as a result of receiving iFly and prefer this more interactive medium than other print-only KLM magazines and newsletters.

iFly enables KLM to distribute its custom content across three key communications channels — its own media (print and digital), earned media (social media channels) and bought & shared media (national newspapers and magazines).

Via social networks KLM/iFly conducted worldwide Sweepstakes campaign invovling meet-and-greets with Tiesto in New York, Las Vegas, and Rio.

KLM digital magazine is based on an internal content creation platform — everthing is generated in-house. Flash design is handled by an outside partner.

ROI is measured via brand perception and awareness data, time spent with magazine, consultation with KLM’s media agencies, tracking impressions through purchases of tickets.

Research and development for premiere issue took four months.

1.5 million are sent, open rate is 45 percent, 350,000 are considered “active” readers. Most rececipients use their business e-mail addresses, so KLM must track changes.

Thanks for tuning in. Coming up next, we’ll hear from Greg Verdino, Chief Strategist of Powered, Inc.