[Editor's note: This is John Reinan's weekly marketing column for MinnPost. To see the original, go to http://tinyurl.com/6x7p88.]

The dark cloud over the traditional media business looks like a silver lining to Scott Severson.

As old-line media hemorrhage staff and ad revenue, Hopkins-based ARAnet is moving in with free print and Web content that carries client messages wrapped in consumer lifestyle articles.

Severson, ARAnet’s president since 2006, said he’s seeing more opportunities as newspapers and other media organizations cut staff. More than 65 of the nation’s top 100 newspapers, including the Star Tribune, use his company’s ARAcontent articles, he said.

“Newspapers still want to sell [ads in] those sections, but their own content generation is pulling back,” he said. “We generate feature articles that contain high-quality consumer content. They just happen to be underwritten by our clients.”

As an example, Severson cited a recent article that was offered to auto sections. Lexus was the client, “but the article wasn’t about why you should buy a Lexus,” he said. “Instead, the article was about safety systems and mentioned Lexus. The best advertising doesn’t look like advertising.”

Another selling point: ARAcontent articles are free. Clients pay fees starting at $4,500 for creation, tracking and results reporting. Staff writers at ARAnet produce the articles and post them on a proprietary Web site; newspaper editors download the stories of their choice. Other clients include Home Depot, Microsoft, Best Buy and UPS.

Yet the advertising business, like all media, is rapidly moving online, and so ARAnet’s main focus is on its Web offering, Adfusion. The service offers similar consumer lifestyle articles to Web sites such as CNN.com, MSNBC.com and more than 2,500 others. But where the print content is “an awareness vehicle,” in Severson’s words, Adfusion is “a direct-response online sales vehicle.”

Unlike Google ads, which invite readers to click on them — the one-click model — Adfusion uses a two-click system. A reader can click on an Adfusion article on the hosting Web site, such as FoxNews.com, and read it without taking further action. But each article also contains a link to the underwriting client. If the reader clicks on that second link, ARAnet gets paid.

The two-click method weeds out casual browsers, Severson said. Those who read through the content and seek more information are more likely to be motivated buyers. ARAnet gets a minimum of $2 per click with Adfusion, “but we have many clients paying more than that,” Severson said. “We tell clients, if you’re paying 30 cents per click on Google, we’ll meet your conversion metrics even at $2.”

There’s another difference between ARAnet’s online and print content. Where the online articles typically are identified as sponsored content, the print articles merely carry an “ARA” designation, similar to the “AP” identifier that runs with Associated Press articles.

My old colleagues at the Star Tribune will no doubt gnash their teeth at this blurring of the lines between traditional news content and sponsored information. Maybe I would, too, if I still worked as a newspaper reporter. But I don’t, so I won’t. The game is changing, and Severson has successfully planted his flag at the intersection of old media, new media and commerce.

One of Adfusion’s newest clients is Syndero Inc., a direct-response marketer based in San Francisco. Syndero began using Adfusion in April for one product in its Dermitage line of cosmeceuticals. It has since increased its Adfusion buy to five products.

“They’re bringing content that allows the user to read about the product and understand the product, then giving them the option to go further,” said Tim Hamelen, a senior media buyer for Syndero. “It’s an excellent business model for a direct-response marketer.”

Hamelen wouldn’t reveal how many click-throughs Adfusion is generating, but said he’s happy with the number, adding that the sales conversion rate is “excellent — very high. We’ll use them for every new product going forward.”

ARAnet has added 12 new employees this year, bringing total employment to 42, Severson said. The privately held company doesn’t reveal its sales, but Severson said revenue is on track to grow 400 percent between 2006 and the end of 2008 — “and we were already a mature company in 2006.” Adfusion, which became the company’s main focus last year, now provides more than half of ARAnet’s revenue.

“There is no recession in online advertising,” Severson said. “There are big budgets, and people are spending. When all you’re hearing about the economy is doom and gloom, we’re thriving.”

I recently wrote a post about having mixed feelings about the number of faux “people” popping up in the social media space.  However, today I came across an online personality who I thought was pretty cool.  His name is Tommy Silk and he’s at the center of a creative new campaign from Intuit QuickBooks. Tommy is a fictitious music producer and mastermind behind the Jingle Generator. 

Tommy can help you create a personalized jingle for your business.  While the execution on the finished jingle isn’t necessarily that great, it’s still a creative approach to get people to bond with an accounting software company.  Tommy has Facebook, MySpace and Twitter profiles but unlike some other campaigns, it’s pretty evident he’s not real and clearly was created for entertainment purposes.  For more info on the campaign, check out this MediaPost MarketingDaily article.

This way to the anvil drop!

Thursday was a beautiful day for an anvil drop. Our neighbor to the south, Gardner Hardware, started the tradition in 2004, heaving a bright-red anvil from the top  of their store, four floors up, onto an unsuspecting car below.

Thanks to Gopher Towing for providing the target! Enjoy the show.

They start from four stories up.

A colorful crowd was on hand.

My shutter was a little too slow to catch the moment of impact. You can see Taylor reacting to the noise.

Here's the result of the third drop. The red anvil in the hood kind of blends in with the car.

Just another day in the North Loop.

(AP Photo/Ed Ou)

Via HotelChatter.com

As a non-fan of clothed animals, I’d file this photo, and its accompanying Feline Fashion Show, under “creepy.”

However, stepping past the initial reaction - and my slightly paranoid fear of dressed four-legged friends, it’s a clever way to market a traditional hotel with an offbeat mascot - a 13-year-old cat named Matilda, promote a worthy cause (North Shore Animal League) AND sell $20 martinis.

But I can’t help thinking that the photographed feline was hoping for a glamorama outfit that was a wee bit more slimming…

Usually no one.

When six of you show up for the brainstorm in the nicely appointed conference room and the leader is poised to take copius notes with the smelly dry-erase marker at the clean, empty whiteboard, the ideas run dry.

I’ve also found the same to be true if you erase the dry conference room and replace it with smelly bean bags - same scenario, just more snooze inducing.

The fact that these types of brainstorms often end with the fearless leader scheduling another brainstorm is not breaking news, and The New Yorker has a great article explaining why good ideas come to us when they do (The Eureka Hunt by Jonah Lehrer and, unfortunately, only the abstract is available online).

It is a fascinating article that discusses how and why the brain creates those “eureka” moments that pull together seemingly unrelated information to create new ideas and novel connections.

In a world where we sell ideas and not products, understanding the process can be invaluable.  It is something ad agency Modernista seems to have figured out, given the glowing write-up in Monday’s USA Today (agency co-founder Gary Koepke: “This business is no longer about just creating things. It’s about conceptualizing ideas — kind of like a think tank.”)

If your business is selling ideas, how do you make the creation of those ideas systematic and repeatable?  I’m not sure you can without creating the scenario of the conference room whiteboard.  But I do think we can be more efficient, and it begins with understanding how ideas come to you in the first place.

[Editor's note: This is John Reinan's weekly marketing column for MinnPost.com, reprinted with permission. To see the original, go to http://tinyurl.com/5cgaah.]

The new poster boy for green marketing is standing shirtless in sub-zero temperatures, his shaved head painted in team colors as he waves a giant foam finger to the heavens.

Mark Andrew

You can have your earnest ex-hippie with his Prius and his hemp trousers. Mark Andrew is going after Joe Sixpack.

Andrew, a former Hennepin County commissioner and chairman of the Minnesota DFL Party, is betting that sports are the way to deliver a message of environmental sustainability to the masses. His company, GreenMark, is working with pro and college sports teams to develop stadium-based sponsorship opportunities that deliver a green message.

“As iconic structures in urban areas, sports buildings have the opportunity to be screaming billboards for environmental sustainability,” Andrew said. “Sports controls 80 percent of all sponsorship dollars, but the universe has basically been fixed on five categories: pop, beer, cars, banks and electronics.

“We are creating a new category of sports marketing.”

‘I’m an excitement junkie’
Andrew left the public relations firm Tunheim Partners last year to pursue an idea that he’d been kicking around for the better part of a decade. After years in elected office, Andrew said, he missed the excitement of politics and the satisfaction of public service. Sports marketing for a cause fills both those gaps nicely.

“I’m an excitement junkie,” said Andrew from his 12th-floor office in downtown Minneapolis, surrounded by a small army of college interns hopped up on Twizzlers and Jolly Ranchers. “When I left elected politics, I needed something to replace it.”

As he explains it, green marketing in the sports arena is more than just putting up a sign or flashing an ad on the Jumbotron. Andrew is looking for ways to build environmental messages into the sporting experiences that are shared by millions of Americans every year.

It could be something as simple as serving soda in biodegradable cups and finding a use for all those peanut shells. Or it could be more high-concept, such as giving incentives to fans who ride a train or a bus to the game instead of driving.

Some of GreenMark’s ideas may be tested in the new Twins stadium, set to open in 2010.

The Twins are building the stadium with some significant environmental features designed in, said Kevin Smith, the team’s executive director of public affairs. Among them: a system to recycle water for maintaining the field, and a steam line from the neighboring Hennepin Energy Recovery Center to provide power for electric generation.

The team also hopes to secure a coveted LEED designation for the stadium. That stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, the gold standard in green building. It’s a tough standard for an open building to achieve; only one U.S. stadium — Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. — currently holds a LEED certificate.

Thinking big
In addition to the built-in environmental features, Smith said the team plans to aggressively use the stadium as a spur to get Minnesotans to re-examine their views on transportation.

“There are 20,000 parking spaces within five blocks of the stadium, but there’s also a bus terminal,” Smith said. “The light rail will terminate there, the Northstar commuter rail will terminate there. The Cedar Lake bike trail connects to our site. We’re going to be asking people to rethink how they come to the game.”

Andrew is thinking even bigger thoughts for the Twins stadium. He didn’t want to publicly reveal his ideas, because he’s still out pitching them. But he shared a couple of his proposals off the record, and they could be truly dazzling if he can find a corporate sponsor to underwrite them.

At any given time, Andrew said, there are 50 to 60 “sports facilities of scale” worldwide either under construction or on the drawing board. That should provide GreenMark with plenty of opportunities to make its case.

“We are seeking to convert organized sports into an industry segment that is leading the way to educate the public on environmental sustainability,” he said. “We’re very much profit-motivated, but we can do it in a way that provides measurable environmental returns.”

Reality television has made non-celebs “stars” and now social media is paving the way to make fake people my friends.  It has me wondering what’s in store for the future.

I started thinking more about the blurring lines between reality and fiction last month when I came across Parker Whittle - self described as “just a guy with a computer and good intentions.”  Because I’d been referred to Parker’s i’m talkathon blog from a trusted resource, I believed — if only for a brief moment – that Parker was a real person trying to raise money for a good cause. 

It quickly was evident that this was a corporate campaign but I at least thought Parker was a real guy, even if he was blogging on behalf of a company and/or cause (in this case, Microsoft’s i’m Initiative).  Once I got to the disclaimer language at the bottom, which contained phrases such as “If you’re reading this, your BS detector is chirping” and “If we rubbed you the wrong way…so ’sorry, our bad,’” it revealed that Parker didn’t exist in any form. I felt a little duped. Instead of creating a fictitious character, Microsoft should have considered having people apply for the position or perhaps found a real person to serve in the role, especially since it was to promote a communication tool between actual people. 

Since discovering Parker Whittle, I’ve read several stories about other people questioning the validity of some online acquantances. Some social media “personas” are entertaining and obviously aren’t real.  For example, I was intrigued when I read about the Sci-Fi Channel creating a Twitter account for S.A.R.A.H, a character from its prime-time, technology-centric show “Eureka.” And, while some people may question why I’d ever admit it, I’m LinkedIn to Kevin Bacon. (Yes, I know, the likelihood that it’s the Kevin Bacon is slim, yet I thought it was kind of funny).         

As a marketer, I definitely think there’s a place in social media for connecting with brands or personalities, but I’m hoping it won’t get to a point where the majority of profiles carry disclaimer language.

What’s the highest-grossing event in the history of Target Center in Minneapolis?  The T-Wolves/Lakers Western Conference Finals, U2, Prince or Hannah Montana all would be excellent guesses. But I’m hearing all of those high-profile events are expected to be knocked out tomorrow night by the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).

Once viewed as a barbaric activity that took place at dingy old venues like the local armory, mixed martial arts (MMA) is far more regulated than in its early days and has gained serious momentum as a legitimate sport.  If you haven’t noticed, or are simply too squeamish to look, it has become quite popular, particularly with the important 18-49 male demographic.

The Target Center event is sold out locally and will be watched by thousands of fans around the country via pay-per-view at a cost of $45. I’ve been paying attention for a while, but even I’m blown away by the ticket prices – main floor seating is $600 (before Ticketmaster’s “convenience charges”) and most upper level seats are in the $250 range. 

So how did MMA make such a leap? 

Well, MMA bouts are perfect in an age of short attention spans – usually three, five-minute rounds of incredibly fast-paced action instead of 10 or 12 rounds in a boxing match – but the real magic has been solid marketing efforts, a ton of TV exposure and a growing sponsor base.

It’s hard to flip through the channels without seeing MMA on TV and ratings have been strong.  UFC fights on Spike TV are routinely among the most-watched programs on cable and CBS recently began broadcasting events from Elite XC (a rival organization of the UFC) during primetime on Saturday nights.  In addition, you can see fights on Versus, FOX Sports Net and Showtime, among others. 

And, “The Ultimate Fighter” has become a hit reality show – providing big ratings for Spike TV and huge exposure for the UFC as it enters its 8th season of searching for the best unsigned fighters.  Some of the sport’s top stars also have been showing up where you’d least expect them.  For example, Tito Ortiz had a lengthy stint on “The Celebrity Apprentice,” Chuck “The Iceman” Liddell starred in an episode of HBO’s “Entourage” and heavyweight Kimbo Slice became a phenomenon on YouTube before ever turning professional. Highlights of some title fights are even being covered by ESPN’s “SportsCenter.”

As the fan base has grown, the sponsors have become bigger and more sophisticated.  It’s not just blood from some poor fighter’s head wound covering the mat, but logos for brands like Budweiser and Harley-Davidson.  MMA is never going to be a mainstream sport, but if you’re a marketer looking to reach young, blue collar guys, you ought to be paying attention and jump in while it’s still on the rise.

We’re always kicking around ideas, so we couldn’t help but take five minutes to have fun with a little brainstorming.  Thought we’d share a few:

1) Hershey’s Extra Dark “Shot in the Dark Match” – staged with the lights turned out in the arena and the fighters wearing glow-in-the dark gloves, trunks and body paint.

2) Ford Trucks “Built Ford Tough Mobile Matches” – fashion a makeshift cage in the back of a new extended cab pickup truck and create a guerilla marketing spectacle by traveling to high-traffic events with fighters brawling in the back.

3) Bud Light “Tough Guy Tap Out” – A lighthearted event featuring celebrities entering the cage with some of the world’s toughest MMA fighters and money going to charity for every second they last before “tapping out” from a submission hold.  Of course, plenty of free Bud Light would be on tap for spectators.

4) Lids.com “Search For America’s Ugliest Cauliflower Ear” – Cauliflower Ear is a badge of honor for some guys, while others just look at it and cringe.  I say let’s create an online contest judged by MMA fighter James Thompson, the man with the most outrageous ear I’ve ever seen. 

Which idea do you think would create the most buzz?

For years, marketing people have been trying to get a handle on word of mouth: how it starts, how it grows, how to measure it and so on. I know word of mouth has been around since the dark ages, but I honestly never realized what an effect it could have on an individual — until I became a new mom.

In the six weeks since my daughter Saunie was born, I’ve had a million questions, and I know many more lie ahead.  What type of diapers should I get?  What are the remedies for stomach gas?  When is a good time to put them on a schedule?  Is Desitin really better than Butt Paste?  I’ve entered this whole new world and even though I read as much as possible beforehand, I never realized how much I didn’t know. But instead of looking online, I’m turning to my friends with kids, my sister-in-law, my mom and my mother-in-law. To me, their recommendations, advice and knowledge are far more valuable than anything I can find in Parents magazine or BabyCenter.com.

One of my favorite pieces of advice came from my grandmother.  When she spoke to me a week after Saunie was born, she told me to drink a beer to help the breast milk come in.  What??? It seemed like an odd thing to say considering that most new moms stay far away from alcohol. But she had seven kids, so I figured she must know what she’s talking about. That night, I took her advice and had that Corona Light with lime that I’d been craving all summer. I’m not sure that it actually helped produce more milk – but I was much more relaxed when it came to the evening feeding and that made all the difference.  I’ve since passed on that piece of advice to two friends with new babies.

Word of mouth is powerful, especially among women. In fact, many studies show women are likely to trust friends and family as the best source of information when purchasing products.  I know I love that the ladies in my life want to share all their best secrets and recommendations.  It gives me a sense of comfort to know that I’m getting trusted techniques and suggestions vs. reading the latest and greatest “10 best ways to raise your baby.”  I wouldn’t want it any other way.

One of my favorite – yet most frustrating — parts of my job is monitoring, experimenting with and adopting social media tools. I easily could spend four or five hours a day looking over the latest shiny thing, tweeting the day away or perusing my feeds.

On the rare days when I leisurely scroll blog feeds or search conversations, I undoubtedly glean new insight that translates into a better way to communicate online. However, most days, I make a mad dash through the new information that has found its way online, read a few top sites and begin to sort through my accumulated email.

Today I waded through the pile and discovered a new site called SocialMedian.com. Similar to Digg, but with additional customization, SocialMedian allows users to find similar newsmakers and news networks to follow and vote on. 

I’ve signed up, joined a few news networks, and perused a few top stories. Now, I’ll wait.

While this site may be the next Digg, I have no desire to invest in the site until I see a value.  

Per a post a few months ago by Jeremiah Owyang, that would make me a settler. Not a pioneer or a colonist, I’ll try new tools, but wait until I see value before I adopt them.

Where do you fit on the spectrum? Or, where would you fit if time was not an issue?