On Wednesday, May 5th, Stuart Meyler, Principal at Beeby Clark+Meyler, will be speaking at the American Strategic Management Institute’s Performance Marketing Conference in Orlando, FL. His session, entitled "Improve the Customer Experience: Drive Profitability with an Effective Customer-Focused Online Experience" is scheduled to begin at 2:00PM.

Stuart will be discussing how to leverage Web 2.0 to sustain long term business value and customer loyalty, how to align the online customer experience with brand to drive customer growth and business profitability and how to cultivate and drive innovation from customer feedback and insight with online tools.

The Performance Marketing Conference will host business executives from across the country to explore ways to overcome challenges in business performance and discover the latest innovations in performance management, process improvement, customer experience and business intelligence. Led by speakers from the upper echelons of performance-based companies and organizations, The Performance Conference will focus on performance management systems, measures and metrics, employee performance and customer experience. Join best-in-class performance management and business analytics professionals at The Performance Conference 2010 to drive results and improve organizational performance and profitability.

Learn more at: http://www.theperformanceconference.com/index.html

GE has positioned itself at the forefront of technological innovation in its environmentally-sound product development, so it comes as no surprise the firm has embraced online ad innovations too. In its latest effort, the company used live, in-banner video to announce the launch of its health-related initiative. For GE, the live, comments-enabled video ad allowed the firm to reach a large audience in its target markets, while fulfilling its mission to incorporate conversational marketing in its overall strategy.

GE aims to help reduce the cost of healthcare using its technologies and services. Its "Healthymagination" campaign launched last week to get the word out to business executives, investors, and consumers interested in healthcare. The company does, of course, have a vested interest. It offers medical products such as heart disease diagnostic equipment, medical imagery technology, and an electronic medical records system.

To kick-off the campaign, GE CEO Jeff Immelt spoke Thursday in Washington, D.C., and his entire hour-long talk was presented live within expandable display units seen on a variety of business, news, and health destinations.

"Part of our strategy is...taking content and raising it out of branded Web sites into the general media consumption stream," said Michael Clark, principal of digital marketing agency Beeby Clark+Meyler, which handles GE's digital media buying and planning, in addition to some creative work. "Trying to drive the viewer to Web site destinations to view content is a much greater task than asking them to view content at the media level," he said.

Though the video ads, enabled by EyeWonder, were placed on some consumer-aimed health sites such as Yahoo Health and WebMD, the main targets of the campaign are business decision-makers and investors. To reach them, ads ran on sites like CNN Money, BBC, Bloomberg, and Forbes. The campaign also bought placements on BBC, AOL News, US News and World Report, MSNBC, Yahoo News, MSN Money, The Atlantic, Huffington Post, Washington Post, and Weather.com.

"Our media plan was focused on sites where business executives gather," said Clark, noting that all ads were day-parted to run only during business hours.

"What we found is that the initial engagement rate as well as the viewing time of the audience is much greater than other types of ads that we utilize," said Clark. Eight percent of people served the ad initiated the video, he said. The firm also tracked things like viewing length, and is conducting brand impact studies with Insight Express.

In addition to watching the event within the banners, viewers were able to post comments within the ad unit. During Immelt's speech, around 4,000 comments were submitted via the banners, and around 1,200 of those were displayed in the ads during the live event. According to Clark, the comments were filtered to ensure a balanced set of opinions were presented.

Though some video watchers called Immelt's presentation, "cool," "amazing" and a "great idea," many comments centered around the broader healthcare debate, rather than on GE specifically. And, not surprising, there was a variety of negative and cynical comments. "GE Healthcare's products are overpriced and under functional," wrote one viewer. "Do you think a company is still going to give healthcare when they can push people off to inferior Gov care?" asked another.

"All of our clients are continuing to talk about conversational marketing," said Clark. "What was unique here was using the display media space as a conversation platform."

GE was an early adopter of in-banner live video advertising. Last year, the firm used similar EyeWonder units to distribute Immelt's discussion of GE's annual report. The company was also recognized for Web marketing innovation in conjunction with its "Ecomagination" campaign, a similar effort intended to promote its green-friendly products such as desalination technologies and windmills. That campaign centered on short films created for the Web.

EyeWonder says live in-banner video is becoming a hot topic among its advertiser clients, though there aren't any campaigns employing the technology expected in the near future. While Beeby Clark+Meyler also aims to push its clients towards experimenting with such formats, Clark recognizes the challenges of implementing them.

"It's a non-standard execution... It was easier to work with the properties directly," he said, noting the agency purchased ad space directly from the sites. For one thing, publishers worry about having enough bandwidth to enable the ads to download quickly without harming user experience. "There's always a concern whether the unit interferes with the consumer experience on those pages," continued Clark, who said there were alternate creatives in place to accommodate 15 different contingencies. For instance, if the event started late, a message stating that the event would begin momentarily was set to appear. However, according to Clark, everything went off without a hitch.

To promote it, GE ran ads before the live video event, allowing users to submit their e-mail addresses to receive reminders. "We needed to make sure that we were operating within the privacy guidelines of each of the sites," said Clark. Over 1,100 reminders were requested, and according to Clark, those e-mail addresses are no longer being stored since they were collected for that single use.

The campaign is still running, but has since switched ad creative to focus on specific GE healthcare products.

On Saturday July 18th, Stuart Meyler, Principal at Beeby Clark+Meyler, will be speaking at the National Association of Ticket Brokers' World Ticket Conference 2009 at Wynn Las Vegas. His session, entitled "At Your Fingertips: Web 2.0 - Customers Are Just A Mouse Click Away" is scheduled to begin at 9:30am, and is described as follows:

"Do you get a headache when thinking about the thousands of websites, search engine optimization and marketing companies and social networking sites claiming to help better your presence on the web? What works? Too many companies get lost in the sea of choices and do nothing. Learn how to take simple steps to improve your visibility on the web. Hear from Web 2.0 experts and see how companies are finding new customers every day for free!"

World Ticket Conference is the annual trade show sponsored by the National Association of Ticket Brokers (NATB). Ticket brokers from all over the world come together to gain fresh perspective, shop for new products, forge essential contacts and learn how to strengthen their businesses. Vendors providing products and services valuable to the industry also join in the mix.

Tom Beeby, Executive Creative Director at interactive agency Beeby Clark+Meyler, was announced as a new member of the Board of Distinguished Judges & Advisors for the media section of the American Business Awards, and will participate in this year’s final judging.

The American Business Awards are the only national, all-encompassing business awards program in the United States. The media section of the American Business Awards recognizes America’s best advertising campaigns, web sites, videos, live events, annual reports and other media.

Finalists in the 2009 American Business Awards will be determined in preliminary judging to be conducted in April and May, with the final judging to take place May 18 through June 3. The results of the 2009 competition will be announced at an awards dinner in New York on June 22.

On Tuesday, May 12, Tom Beeby will be speaking at the Streaming Media East 2009 Conference at the New York Hilton. His session, entitled "Compelling Video Advertising Campaigns," will begin at 2:45, and is described as follows:

"How can content companies and ad agencies create the most compelling video ads? What is the best way to leverage the brand awareness and interactivity that online video advertising has to offer? This session will focus on the creative side of online video advertising and will teach you some best-practices for creating the right content that's best suited for online viewing. Come see firsthand examples of some of the most creative and successful online video campaigns running today."

It’s sure to be an interesting and informative session. Hope to see you there.

Tom Beeby, Executive Creative Director at interactive agency Beeby Clark+Meyler, was selected to judge The Green Effie Awards. The Green Effie Awards honor eco-marketing efforts that are making a difference.

For the past four years, Beeby has led the creative digital marketing efforts for GE ecomagination through the first-ever video broadcast campaign. The results? The most successful interactive campaign ever by GE. 14% improvement in unaided awareness of GE as an "environmentally conscious" company and 10.5% improvement in ecomagination message association. Additionally, 357% increase in site visits, 137% increase in total page views, 452% increase in total time spent on the site and more than 7 million minutes of user engagement.

Prior to joining Beeby Clark+Meyler, Tom spent 10 years at Modem Media, leaving after 4 years in the top creative spot (SVP, Executive Creative Director) to pursue his dream as an agency principal. Tom’s clients at Modem Media included: Delta Air Lines, Song Airlines, Revlon, Kraft Foods, Sony, Wyeth, Home Depot, AOL, Merrill Lynch, Monster, and the Heineken and Amstel brands. He was directly responsible for the creative product on $50 million billings, annually. Prior to joining Modem Media, Tom was in the creative group of Welles-Rich-Greene in New York.

In addition to increasing bookings both online and offline, Costa and Beeby Clark+Meyler aimed to increase the company’s share of voice in paid search for branded and generic cruise-related queries. Beeby Clark+Meyler devised a strategy rooted in conversion tracking to justify every dollar spent. The web site was set up to generate unique 800 numbers for each search query, which enabled the tracking of offline conversions, making it easy to compare effectiveness on a cost-per-action basis.

The campaign generated a 1,300 percent increase in return on advertising spend based on the data obtained from call tracking and Costa earned a 40 percent share of voice in generic Mediterranean cruise terms on Google, almost twice the coverage of better-financed competitors.

"We are always honored when we receive recognition from our peers for our strategic acumen," said Michael Clark, Beeby Clark+Meyler’s Client Services Chief. "It is incredibly satisfying when this happens for a challenger brand, such as Costa Cruises, who is outspent so significantly in their category."

The OMMA Awards recognize outstanding performance by the brand marketers, agencies and content providers who continue to push the potential of online advertising creative.

Michael is an award-winning Creative Director with innovative brand building experience in all media including emerging technologies, Interactive, branded entertainment, original content, general advertising and direct relationship marketing.

As a Creative Director at atmosphere BBDO, Michael took the online Cingular brand from launch and built it into it’s leadership position, resulting in it re-acquisition by AT&T Wireless. He also re-positioned the online Doritos brand with a yearlong integrated program. This successful program not only built their opt-in database to over 350K teens, it also influenced the brand to abandon their Super Bowl spend and reinvest that budget online – an industry first.

As Creative Director/Partner at international agency JWT, Michael developed the HSBCdirect brand from launch and built it into its current leadership position. Under Michael’s watch, HSBCdirect grew deposits dramatically and hit their initial goal of $1Billion in deposits nine months ahead of target. Michael also launched L.L. Bean online and developed the first branded social network, which would not only pay for itself; it would also produce over $5M in incremental revenue.

Michael’s experience also includes Acura, American Express, AOL, AT&T, ConAgra Foods, De Beers Group, Gateway, GM, Great White Shark Enterprises, Inc., Heineken, Jockey International, Jose Cuervo International, L.L. Bean, Masterfoods USA, NASCAR, Nautica, PepsiCo, T. Rowe Price and U.S. Army.

He has served as a judge for the International Andy Awards, and his work has received critical acclaim by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Adweek and AdAge.

Michael has been a Winner or Finalist at Cannes, The International Andy Awards, The One Show, Ad:Tech, New York Festivals, MacroMedia, Eyeblaster, Media Post and MSN Creativity.

Michael holds a B.A. degree in Advertising from The Pennsylvania State University.

He is married and the proud father of a son.

GE pioneered the use of a new online ad format on March 13, when it used live streaming video within banner ads to deliver a webcast of GE Chairman-CEO Jeff Immelt presenting the company’s annual report.

This was no ordinary investor presentation. It was all done live on the Internet, with the opportunity for shareholders to interact with Immelt via questions submitted online.

GE developed the online campaign with the help of interactive agency Stinson Partners, Irvington, N.Y., using EyeWonder’s LiveWonder streaming video platform.

“We certainly like the live opportunity to talk directly to the public through banner advertising,” said Jen Walsh, digital media director at GE.

GE worked with 10 media properties—including Bloomberg, CNN, CNBC, Forbes, MSN, MSNBC and TheStreet.com—to promote the event before, during and following the webcast.

During the 48 hours prior to the event, GE ran banner ads on these Web sites, inviting users to tune in to the live webcast at the designated time. It also gave them the opportunity to submit questions for Immelt.

On March 13, Immelt made his presentation during a 30-minute live webcast, which was played within banner ads on the partner media sites. He then answered some of the 6,000 questions that had been submitted.

A team of experts at GE answered many of the other questions, which were posted online the following day.

Walsh declined to say how many viewers tuned it, but she said the live webcast surpassed engagement metrics for standard video ads "by a long shot."

"We’ve been trying to do new things online for a while," Walsh said. “Video as an ad format has really been paying off for us in big ways.”

She said GE will consider other opportunities to use the live streaming platform, such as product launches or live events.

"There really must be something worthwhile to broadcast," said Michael Clark, principal at Stinson Partners. "It has to be worthwhile for the client and fit well with what we are trying to do from a communications strategy. We need to ask, can we reach the right target, is this the right message we want to send and is this the right platform?"

Jeffrey R. Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric, is clearly hoping that Marshall McLuhan was right and that the medium is the message.

Over the last few years Mr. Immelt has tried everything — stock buybacks, dividend increases and audio and video messages on the G.E. Web site — to convince investors that the company’s shares are worth buying. But G.E.’s stock is still trading at a multiple below that of the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index.

So Mr. Immelt tried on Thursday to tap the inherent interactivity of the Internet to reach the two million shareholders — about 40 percent of G.E.’s investor base — who are rarely invited to the hundreds of meetings that G.E.’s investor relations department runs each year.

G.E. encouraged shareholders to submit questions through the Internet on Thursday morning. And for a half-hour in the afternoon, Mr. Immelt sat in an NBC studio with Carl Quintanilla, a co-host of the Squawk Box program on CNBC, and Chrystia Freedland, the United States managing editor of The Financial Times, for a Webcast in which he promised to answer those questions. G.E. said it would post answers to many of the others on its Web site on Friday.

Although Mr. Quintanilla said that more than 6,000 questions were received, Mr. Immelt actually fielded only a few of them. Instead, most of the half-hour was spent with the two journalists asking him — and each other — questions, many of which they said were based on Internet submissions.

It gave Mr. Immelt a chance to restate facts he has been stressing for some time — that G.E. has averaged double-digit earnings and revenue growth over the last five years, that its robust overseas sales will more than make up for any slowness because of an economic slowdown in the United States, and that it is in the vanguard of renewable energy and other environmental technologies.

He again tried to squelch a persistent rumor that G.E. planned to sell NBC Universal. And he said that G.E.’s financial services businesses were strong and profitable and that he saw the turmoil in the financial services markets as a chance to buy “inexpensive stuff” to add to G.E.’s financial portfolio.

"We ought to be trading at a premium to the S.& P.," Mr. Immelt said.

Shares of G.E. closed at $34.25 on Friday, up 29 cents.

Immelt takes retail investor questions in webcast

FAIRFIELD, CONN -- In what’s being described as a ‘first of a kind,’ GE chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt hosted a live webcast with retail investors Thursday.

It was a wide-ranging conversation about GE, its 2007 annual report, the market and the 2008 outlook for the company. Investors submitted questions by e-mail ahead of time, but also asked them live during the event. One million people tuned into the broadcast.

The event was planned in conjunction with GE’s distribution of more than 3 million annual reports and proxy statements in preparation for its AGM on April 23.

‘We are really excited about this event and the opportunity to be able to more directly communicate with our ... 5 million shareholders, approximately 40 percent of whom are individual shareholders,' said GE spokesman Russell Wilkerson.

Immelt was joined by Chrystia Freeland, US managing editor of the FT, and Carl Quintanilla, co-anchor of CNBC’s ‘Squawk Box’. They provided 'expert third-party analysis on the markets and GE,' supplementing questions from individual shareowners with their own, said Wilkerson.

The event was simulcast on a number of Internet sites including CNBC, MSNBC, CNN, MSN, AOL, Yahoo!, Bloomberg, Forbes and theStreet.com. There’s no sense yet whether this approach will become standard for GE. ‘We are always looking for new ways to communicate with our investors both institutional and retail,’ Wilkerson said. ‘We love this idea and it really opens up new channels through technology. We’ll see how this event goes, learn from it and continue to use technology to reach investors.’

Retail investors have had other access to Immelt. GE does over 350 investor meetings per year, with many being webcast, Wilkerson said. ‘Jeff meets with investors regularly, including retail investors. One example is our City Swings program, where Jeff travels to cities and meets with individual shareowners and customers.’

The event should help drive investors to use the Internet as a way to receive the annual report. ‘The online version of the report has grown in popularity over the years and we are adding more functionality to it every year, such as downloadable spreadsheets and search capabilities,’ Wilkerson said. ‘Some investors prefer this format, and there are some cost benefits to it.

‘Our webcast is an extension of the online edition. There are still others, however, that prefer to receive an actual book,’ he continued. ‘So, we will continue to work with both formats, but look for ways to identify preferences in advance so we can meet needs and save costs.’

Turn it into a utility.

I was impressed today by a display ad that I came across on Yahoo! News for GE.

Rather than show us a nice pretty image and clever tagline, the ad promotes a live web event with GE's CEO Jeff Immelt. What I liked most about the ad is that when you click on it, it expands to open up a window where you can input your question for Immelt directly from the banner.

The fact that the event is today, makes the ad all the more effective.