First Year Field Test of NeoAdNet1.0 Exceeds Expectations By An Inch.

In terms of learning curve 2008 was a great year for NeoAdvertising making the tricky migration from theory to practice. A migration started in 2007 with the Branswers.com Test Project. Not only were we testing a brand new means of advertising, we were also testing a brand new use of media and a brand new way of engaging with the audience. Add to that a radical way of evaluating ROI and you have a very heavy R&D schedual to uphold.

There were four test beds activated in the 2008 NeoAdNet 1.0 Benchmark Tests

NeoAdNet 1.0.1

• Product: NeoAdvertising
• Media: Industry Forum  AdGabber
• Content: Online Disscussion Topic “The future of advertising is beginning to fade into the past?”
• Test Dates: August 8, 2008 to October 30, 2008
• Test Subject: Use of product serrogates to influence perception

NeoAdNet 1.0.2

• Product: White House OCA Proposal
• Media: Obama TransitionTeam website : change.gov
• Content: Top 20 Ideas from the Public each day posted on
• http://whitehouseofficeofcreativeaffairs.wordpress.com
• Test Dates: Nov. 19, 2008 to to February 20, 2009
• Test Subject: Use of Booster Media to spread message

NeoAdNet 1.0.3

• Product : IAPIA
• Media: Online Blog ThinkHardAmerica
• Content:  White House OCA Ideas and Ideas submitted to
• Mark Cuban Blog with comments from IAPIA staff and others.
• Test Dates:December 20, 2008 to February 20, 2009
• Test Subject:
• Transfer of content and interest site to site.
• Content Interaction Appeal/Format

NeoAdNet 1.0.4

• Product : Coke (Mock Sponsor)
• Media: Adzine  MadisonAveNew.com
• Content:  Latest information on advanced advertising practices
• Test Dates: February 19, 2009 to March 3, 2009
• Test Subjects:
• Content Engagement vs Sponsor Recall
• Navigation: Page to Page vs Site to Site

IAPIA will be publishing the findings of the 2008 NeoAdNet 1.0 Benchmark Tests
during 2009/Q2 along with a comprehensive overview of the recently instituted
2009 NeoAdNet 1.0 Benchmark Test Program. Certainly, we are more than pleased
with the indications of this years research efforts. Branswers raised our expectations
in 2007. These four foundational exercises put solid form to the function. Confidence
is high.

Our Work On The Obama Transition Pays Off.

In the interests of maintaining the spirit of transparency set forth by the Obama/Biden Administration we are providing this account of our recent development activities within the online activities of the Obama/Biden Transition Team and the subsequent Executive Branch Officials.

For more than three months “The Committe” has been deeply emerged in the Obama/ Biden Presidential Campaign.  “The Committee” is our group handle for the 23 volunteers who make up the Political Sphere of Influence Group on the NeoAdvertising Platform development team. They dug through fund-raising junk mail and Facebook group posts to identify the key Transition team appointees under John Podesta. Monitoring chat rooms and political blogs “The Committee” was able to determine the plans for a massive web portal to be launched the day after the Election results were finalized.

We found our way onto the production site and discovered that several forums were planned for public discourse on the Administration’s  massive  portal site to be launched on change.gov. One of the members of  “The Committee” had interviewed an IT manager job candidate who wound up on the transition team. Another person had a sister whose husband was high up in the planning structure. We had our network of moles on the inside, feeding us day-to-day info on site architecture, traffic stats, infrastructure issues and content decisions.

This lead us to the development of an innovative “Trojan Horse” Strategy. IAPIA would propose that the Obama/Biden Administration institute a White House Office of Creative Affairs(OCA). A section of the change.gov site was to be dedicated to Proposals for the Obama/Biden Transition Team. Our OCA Proposal would provide us with the perfect cover to mine the change.gov site for “America’s Ideas. And it would be these cherry-picked ideas from all over the nation–the best of our best–that would make up the content of our prototype front-end to the proposed OCA.

Our concept was simple. America would post it’s ideas for solving the problems expressed in the Obama/Biden Agenda. And members of all the creative communities that serve Corporate America would contribute their genius and their expertise to improve , refine and bring these ideas down the line to fruition. The end product could be adopted by anyone with the capital to make a go of the final business model. As long as the business was located in or employed workers from an area designated as an area for Economic Development by the Obama/Biden Administration.

This allowed the Committee to post a notice as a comment on each selected idea to the author of the idea that their suggestion had been selected by IAPIA to be included as one of the Top 20 Ideas of the Day, to be included in the proposed White House Office of Creative Affairs beta test site. Of course a link to the site was included. The notice was done in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Policies posted by change.gov. We had found a loophole that allowed us to use a NeoAdvertising technique to connect to the change.gov audience for three months. What we learned from members of that audience allowed us to understand that the interest was in the incubation process, not the politics behind it.

From that point we made our proposal to the White House, but our focus shifted back to an open source development platform that would stick with solutions developed to follow the Obama/Biden Administration Agenda guide lines but without the political baggage the direct association with the White House affiliation brings to the party.  Besides, the transition team had adapted key elements of our proposal for their White House Office Of Public Liaison and their Citizen’s Briefing Book. We were not in competition with the incoming administration here…we were and are in support of their agenda. So it made all the sense in the world to “privatize” the IAPIA proposed White House Office of Creative Affairs even as we continued our proposals to White House Staff.

Since we had created a promotional theme for OCA under the banner, “ThinkHardAmerica” we were able to shift our strategy, learning curve and user research into developing ThinkHardAmerica.com The initial 6o day alph phase is currently in progress. We invite you to participate. We will begin NeoAdvertising Sponsorship Trials on March 1, 2009.

IAPIA proposes White House Office of Creative Affairs To Office of the President Elect.

Today, Friday, December 19, 2008 IAPIA sent off our proposal for the White House Office of Creative Affairs (OCA). The establishment of a “Think Tank for America” to aid the Obama-Biden Administration in marshalling the exceptional creative assets of our great nation and the world and direct them against evolving the millions of solutions entailed in each of the agenda items being discussed on change.gov. Begining on Monday, December 22, 2008, IAPIA will begin the next phase of evalauation testing for the operational model of the OCA. Again we will edit and combine America’s Ideas from change.gov with suggestions and input from a wide variety of authorotative sources. You can check out our progress at http://whitehouseofficeofcreativeaffairs.wordpress.com during the coming weeks. The final business model proposals will be available for public review and adaptation at http://ThinkHardAmerica.com on Thursday, January 1, 2009.

A Think Tank For America, Now.

What in the world are we going to do now? Expectations for America to come to its senses and get back on track with the rest of the world, have never been higher. The support for the Obama Administration has never been higher for any incoming administration since Washington’s. The world and the Nation have given him a clean slate.

Now. what is the President-elect intend to do with it? When questioned by Barbra Walters on his selection of ex-Clinton Admin super stars as the agents of “CHANGE”, the President-elect wasted no time clarifying who was there to shake things up. “That would be me.” And who was there to execute to command.

Well Mr. President-elect, we beg to differ. Change has many fathers. And in keeping with your policy of transparancy we believe the world’s thought leaders should be considered as the invaluable intellectual asset they are. They should be tapped for their inspirational contributions to our quest for change.

The White House Office for Creative Affairs is a step in that direction. The demand to contribute to your vision of change is bringing out an entire generation of collaborators, ready, willing and able to make a valuable contribution to the process of government. This is an opportunity to bring new thinking and fresh ideas into an area that is starving for innovative thought and new ways of getting things done.

We at IAPIA have taken up the challenge. There is so much to do and so little time to make a difference.

NeoAdvertising The White House.

On November 19, 2008 our co-founder, Harry Webber announced the launch of a campaign to propose the establishment of a White House Office of Creative Affairs(OCA): A Think Tank for America. NeoAdvertising Practices would be utilized by the OCA to cut the cost of traditional media outreach. To provide a working “Proof of concept” for this proposal a blogsite has been developed to receive the ideas of creative people all over the world. The site can be viewed at http://whitehouseofficeofcreativeaffairs.wordpress.com

We hope that you visit the site and share your ideas for making America better and better. The White House Office of Creative Affairs Project is the beginning of the second stage of the NeoAdvertising. At this point in time there are four broad topics of conversation that will engage most audiences. Politics, Business, Lifestyle and Finance. Having started with the Business component with MadisonAveNew.com as a pilot site, we migrated to our Lifestyle component and Branwers.com as a pilot site. The time was right to begin work on the Political component in concert with the integration of a brand new Presidential level of government.

To get the office going we are looking at branding the office itself. The campaign currently in development is, “A Think Tank for America, Now.” A campaign that allows us to pitch America on the idea of an OCA at the White House level. We will try to do a better job of keeping this site more up to date in the future. Thank you for your patience.

New Daily Progress Blog Initiated.

In the interest of keeping our development process as transparent as possible, we have just initiated a daily blog to function as an ongoing progress report and journal of the efforts put forth to bring NeoAdvertising into fruition. This journal is located at HarryWebberIsReinventingAdvertising.wordpress.com

Hopefully, those who wish to contribute their input and insights into the process of reinventing the advertising business model will find this the perfect venue to give and receive immediate feedback. The HWIRA blog will also function as a bulletin board for the posing of relevant information as to the on-going process of evaluating new developments and technologies that can aid in the evolution of NeoAdNet 1.0.

Welcome To The “Yes We Can” Decade.

History has been made. But is the virus catching? Will the institutions and societies of America heed the call that the winds of change are upon us.? Will the doors that have been closed for so long be blown open by these winds or will the shoulders of resistance to change still bar the way?

I am an African-American working in advertising. I have travelled from aide to Rev. Congressman Adam Clayton Powell as a boy to apprentice to Berry Gordy, Jr. as a teen, to advisor to Gov. Rockefeller, Mayor Lindsay, McGovern for President as a man and been one of the architects of “A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste.”

My career on Madison Avenue has awarded Mike Becker and myself a spot in the Clio Hall of Fame for “I Am Stuck on Band-Aid Brand,” one of the longest running campaigns in history. But it has penalized me for establishing the GAP/American Association of Advertising Agencies Minority Training Program back in early 1970s. You win some. You lose some.

Now I work for large organizations in search of simple solutions to complex value perception issues. Basically, I tell them their advertising sucks. Then I go through the whys and uncover the hows.

Much of my recent work has been with the Institute of Advanced Practices In Advertising (iapia.org). In fact it is the findings generated by that work that now lead me to believe that if one African-American can reinvent politics, another can reinvent advertising.

The quotes from the C levels of every company from Proctor & Gamble to Verizon are all saying the same thing. The business model is broken. When are you people going to fix it?

The practice of NeoAdvertising as it is being defined by IAPIA is not just another “quick-fix”. NeoAdvertising is a complete re-engineering of a business model that has remained the same since the invention of television.

NeoAdvertising is based upon the IAPIA Adaptive Branding Continuum (ABC). Adaptive Branding marketing programs are based upon the continuous change in audience value perceptions, as opposed to static strategy statements currently in use.

My collaborators and I have set a significant objective for ourselves to achieve. Realizing the reinvention of advertising is not unlike realizing the reinvention of Politics. Our belief in the integrity and promise of our work to date is our strongest asset at this point in time. Our confidence has been greatly reinforced by the positive response to our presentations at the highest levels of our industry. Such encouragement has served to double our resolve to reinvent Advertising before 2010.

To reflect that resolve we are focusing our efforts on bringing as many advertising people as possible into our reinvention process. IAPIA is a firm believer in the open source movement and we believe the more new ideas about making advertising new again, the better.

To facilitate that exchange of new ideas and knowledge transfer about the Neo Advertising Network platform, we are reinventing MadisonAveNew.com . Hence the descriptor as the Journal of NeoAdvertising. We hope this slight repositioning will help those interested in the latest developments in the practice of NeoAdvertising to find both new information and foundational background reference.

Our work in the past six months on the alpha phase of Project Branswers (Branswers.com) has generated a tremendous amount of insight into quickly changing audience and content dynamics. Now we are analyzing those findings to set the parameters of the Beta test phase of Branswers.com

From these findings we will begin the development for Alpha.NeoAdNets.com, the web-based pilot version of our reinvention of Advertising software as services (SAS) solution NeoAdNets 1.0. Our target for pilot launch is Jan1, 2010. As the articles listed in the far right column will attest, a lot of work has been done. And there is even more to do to reach our goal. Can we do it? Yes we can.

Obviously, we will live or die based upon the ability of NeoAdvertising to engage an audience that exhibits advanced signs of advertising immunity.

Our findings at IAPIA on audience engagement during primary testing stages of Project Branswers and the subsequent revision of those findings for the development of the NeoAdvertising Network platform are represented the second of a four part series at MadisonAveNew.com .

The NeoAdvertising Network Platform Briefing :

Status of the Achitecture.

The Premise of an RIA Application was recently evaluated by the IAPIA platform group. After further evaluation we found several issues that require further development before our functionality concerns are met. Key among those concerns are complexity and text searchability and global accessibility. Our research efforts continue in the Platform Evaluation Study.

In the Concept Evaluation Study the Branswers.com Alpha Test shows extreme promise
as for using simple html web-based testing platforms for preliminary trend analysis.
The Four Spheres of Influence were tested using sub interest categories for more targeted evaluation. Family Well-Being content topics were strong search pullers and Financial Security was a strong second.

Since initial testing on web-based html has proven satisfactory we will continue into Beta Test with html with the understand we may have to migrate to Php should traffic warrant before closing the Beta Test.

Foresster Research Confirms NeoAdnet Model.

“Should brands develop social media content? And if so, when and for whom? Forrester’s Consumer Technographics® research shows that loyal, socially connected consumers value content created by their favorite brands more than peer-generated content. This startling fact clearly demonstrates that brands with social currency have a unique opportunity to deepen relationships online. Marketing leaders should identify whether their brand has such currency, invest more in building strong connections between customers and the brand, and increase the use of social media in their marketing mix as a way to raise brand relevance, affinity, and loyalty for years to come.” That’s the latest in a study entitled “Brand Matters To Socially Connected Consumers” that confirms that Brand Content Trumps Peers In Influence by Lisa Bradner with Jaap Favier, and Erik Hood. The study is available from Forrester

NeoAdvertising Networks are being developed by IAPIA to provide branded content across a variety of media and collect the feedback and insight that will provide advertisers with an ongoing interactive relationship with their audiences in the following areas:

• Family well-being
• Financial security
• Personal growth
• Fun and escape

NeoAdNet 1.0 is the software application platform that will tie the ad agency, the brand and the audience together to provide a meaningful and engaging growth experience. It is literally the reinvention of advertising to advantage the technologies of our time.

Our Journey Begins.

Most people don’t know me, but millions certainly know my work. “I’m Stuck On Band-Aid Brand,” ” A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste.” “Chow, Chow, Chow,” and the list goes on and on. My work has withstood the test of time and brought me great success.

Four years ago I came to realize that nobody was paying attention to advertising any more. People were becoming advertising immune. The fact is that people were tired of being sold. So I took it upon myself to make advertising worth paying attention to once more.

First, I had to stop thinking of people as customers, or consumers, or users or “the market.” People are just people, with no time to waste on being “sold” on anything. I took the time to discover that people are only an audience for the things that are meaningful to them.

Now if you believe the current state of advertising is just fine, then don’t let me waste any more of your time. Off you go. Have a great life. But if you believe strongly, as I do, that something new is desperately needed, I invite you to read on.

The reason people ignore advertising is because it doesn’t mean anything to them. So I went through the effort to find out what means the most to almost everybody. It took me four years and cost me a bundle.

Now I am ready to find other exceptional advertising minds to create a remarkable new generation of advanced advertising practices from the ground up. These advanced practices will be known as NeoAdvertising (”Neo” means new.) and these four topics will be pillars upon which we will build.

I understand that to change this $800 billion global industry that no longer engages its audience will not be easy. It will take a small army of remarkable people to make it happen. That is why I created the Institute of Advanced Practices In Advertising: to transform this valuable idea into a reality of value.

And that is why I am reaching out to you. If you believe something revolutionary is essential to the evolution of advertising, I have something no one else in advertising can offer you. Something that will not cost you a dime, but if you are ready to change the world, something that will certainly change your life.

I am in search of one thousand remarkable people I believe in enough to entrust with my findings. Where it goes from here is a question I leave up to you. This learning process will take us both a year. At the end of the year you will know what I know about the advanced practices that make up NeoAdvertising.

If you agree to be a part of the work of IAPIA you will be licensed as one of an elite team of practitioners who will have right and the knowledge to pass on what you know during the second year of your practice to no more than ten other novice practitioners whose exceptional insight and human understanding you have come respect and admire in the course of your career. That will be it. We ten thousand members of the IAPIA will have, through our collective creativity and intellect the power to define the next generation in advertising.

Are you ready to become remarkable? Changing the future of advertising will not be an easy task. I have done a lot of the work, but there is a lot more to be done. I hope you will choose to join me. To begin the process of joining IAPIA just click here and our journey will begin.