CCT+356++Assignment+1

Advertising Campaign Critique
The marketing campaign that I will be critiquing is for Service Ontario promoting the services offered on serviceontario.ca The target audience of the campaign can presumably be characterized as:
 * Target Market **
 * 1) Residents of Ontario.
 * 2) Relatively Web/Tech Savvy.
 * 3) Need to perform certain functions/activities relating to the government of Ontario.

It can be assumed that this ad is intended at reaching a rather web savvy target market since it is unlikely that a pensioner who uses a computer rarely would firstly see the ad, secondly respond to it and thirdly be able to actually use the portal.

Any marketing campaign may only have one or a combination of the following goals: 1. Increase revenue 2. Decrease costs 3. Improve customer satisfaction Service Ontario is focused primarily on the 2) and 3). By building a web portal and transferring some of the functionality of the real world to the web they are greatly eliminating the cost of staff and tangibles such as rent, electricity and other associated resources. They are also improving the ‘customer’ satisfaction of the residents of Ontario; by being able to avoid line-ups and unnecessarily wasting time, users are now able to perform the functions online from their computers. I came across the campaign on two instances, once at Torontosun.com and the other at huffingtonpost.com both on the 8th of February at night.
 * Goals**


 * Instances and comments [torontosun.com]**

As can be seen above, the campaign is portrayed in the form of a banner at the top of the page. The banner is very prominent and positioned in the most expensive real estate on the web site.



Having done a little code inspection, I have come to the conclusion that this ad was placed there automatically, either by adsense or a smaller customized script that embedded the ad into the page depending on the visitor, perhaps even time of day or method of arrival on the site. This means that with this particular instance, there is a good chance that Service Ontario didn’t contact Toronto Sun directly for the banner space, rather they implemented a campaign that placed their ad on many sites/blogs/platforms. Usually, with such arrangements, a cost per click model is implemented.



<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">The second instance of this campaign I witnessed on the home page of the Huffington post; in the same place, exact same banner. The Huffington Post is a slightly more progressive form of ‘news’ and offers more of a bloggers perspective on world events; generally visited by young adults.

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">Unlike with the instance of the campaign seen in the Toronto Sun, the architecture of this ad placement is much simpler with the system just pulling the ad from a local database. This implies that in this instance, it is likely that ServiceOntario advertised directly with the Huffington Post rather than through adsense. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">With similar arrangements, cost per m impressions is usually used which is probably the arrangement between Huffington Post and Service Ontario.

**<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> Effectiveness **
<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">The campaign has been effective in reaching its target audience since I qualify for all three of the criteria established earlier. The technique being used in this campaign is extremely straightforward; create a rather large banner, place it in the most prominent places of web sites with large traffic and increase traffic to your own site. <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">This method does work to some extent but overall I don’t think this campaign is as effective as it could have been for a number of reasons:
 * 1) <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">· The design of the banner: although correct is the intention in being simplistic and clean, it is done rather blandly. The banner did not make me want to click it as a user.
 * 2) <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">· The format. Although the banner is built in Flash, there are no moving elements or animation of any kind which begs the questions; why flash?
 * 3) <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">· Lack of Social Media/Buzz: having gone on to the website, I found it difficult to find a twitter link and having found it realized that this is a brand new initiative for Service Ontario with only 32 tweets.
 * 4) <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">· Out-dated Branding and Web Design. Both the web site and banner reflect a very dated look and feel that does not appeal to me as a user visually.

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;">To summarize, the marketing campaign implemented by Service Ontario has strong and weak points; they are able to reach their consumers, but not converse with them.