It continues to amaze us how, 15 years after the web hit critical mass, online advertising has basically remained unchanged. Outside Google ad words, most of the web continues to suffer from the same banner ad carpet bombing we were subjected to in 2000.

Where’s the innovation? While sites like Facebook hearken the new age of targeted advertising and spend millions of dollars on their serving technologies, I continue to get served Proactive ads featuring Jessica Simpson on my Facebook page. How much technology is required to assess my age? Click through rates have fallen from 0.41% in 2002 to 0.20% in 2007, and the trend continues to decline. Facebook’s CPMs are now averaging an anemic $0.15 and few other Internet sites across the web are doing much better.

When we founded Fuego Nation a year ago, we were hell-bent on shattering the already archaic convention of online advertising modalities and create the next wave of innovation. We started with the requirement to revolutionize online advertising for lifestyle/luxury brands by creating a social context where passionate people could engage with and evangelize their products. It was only after this customized framework was established that we built a product experience to support that vision. Our intent was to provide an experiential approach that improved the user experience for both lifestyle/luxury brands and members alike.

We call our platform for lifestyle branding in social media FuegoFusion. The name comes from our desire to fuse our memberships’ most passionate interests with more experiential approaches to delivering brand engagement that result in powerful affinity and evangelization. Our focus on solving the needs of high-end brands from the outset has resulted in a comprehensive slate of sponsorship services, ranging from multi-tiered, in-product engagement to offline event sponsorships.

FuegoFusion is our implementation of Integrated Experiential Advertising, or IEA. There are two components to every IEA program. The first involves data filtering and targeting, and the second revolves around the engagement experience itself.

Data Filtering

Most Web 2.0 sites begin with amassing content, then figures out ways to make sense of the data, which theoretically enables ad targeting. Fuego Nation, in contrast, filters data at the outset and at every stage of the data lifecycle thereafter. As a result, our process of data filtering is organic and actually requires very little specific ad-filtering technology. A sampling of key filtering components is listed below:

• Data is filtered at the outset, preferably at the brand level. So, for example, Fuego Nation is unique in a social context because it is an exclusive membership club that stands for something very specific – human excellence and endeavor. Guests not attracted to that concept are repelled from the site before they even engage with it – that is strictly by design
• Relevant demographic information is collected at the outset, during the registration process, and its accuracy impacts that user’s ability to experience the product fully
• Users are then filtered by passions which motivate their actions and drive purchasing behavior (in contrast to interests)
• Users rate profile information within the community to further refine the members’ degrees of passion into levels that can be uniquely targeted (e.g. basic, VIP, Elite)

Experiential Advertising

IEA is particularly relevant to lifestyle/luxury branding companies who require tight control over the user experience and brand display. It involves hyper-targeting, but also an experiential, customized component where brands achieve the following benefits:

• The advertising is integrated into the experience itself. In Fuego Nation, users rotate through our passion card carousel (note: passion cards are similar in design to baseball trading cards) and read applicant and member commentary about the activities that inspire members the most. Members are looking at small data sets and photos for each person, and ads are tastefully interspersed throughout the experience and can be almost completely indistinguishable from member cards
• While I might be annoyed by a Proactive ad, few people are annoyed by an ad featuring a beautiful woman clad in Armani – the advertising positively impacts the overall experience and increases engagement with the brand
• We can build layers of engagement into each Flash-based brand trading card so that a user can determine how deeply they want to interact with the brand. Ultimately, they’ll be able to purchase products (Channel sunglasses, for example, directly from the ad window itself)
• Users get Fuego credits for interacting with brand experiences, which further increases their status in the community. In Fuego Nation, members will actually WANT to engage with great brands
• Brands can sponsor VIP users themselves, who will gain additional credits for wearing branded products in their passion card photo (similar to product placement in movies)
• All other brands featured in the product are of a similar quality. So, for example, Mercedes is featured along with Armani, which is featured with the Ritz-Carlton group of hotels – ALL advertising is lifestyle/luxury, so the experience is similar to flipping through a high-end magazine like Vogue, GQ or Vanity Fair
• We only accept advertising sponsors that share our focus on quality, brand experience and prime user demographics. We are exclusive not only about our membership base, but about the brands that we feature and support

The net result of the FuegoFusion experience is that high-end brands can substantiate their offerings in a highly controlled environment supported by brands of similar quality and ilk. This alleviates much of the risk associated with social media sites like MySpace, Digg, Hotmail, etc. Brands can then leverage the stature of users in the community to provide feedback on current and future product offerings, evangelize throughout their own micro networks, and target specific products (Prada vs. Prada Sport for example) to members at various levels (e.g. basic vs. VIP). In essence, FuegoFusion represents a more powerful extension of the way these brands have already achieved success in offline environments.

• Align with luxury brands – design, demos, intent
• Not social network but all web 2.0 – online, off, passion travels well
• Consumer friendly – benefits consumers AND advertisers, enabling real communities and conversations

This entry was posted on Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 8:58 pm and is filed under Business Mechanics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.