Excite@Home Launches Peer Campaign

Excite@Home launched a print advertising campaign designed to articulate the company’s online marketing and media services to advertisers, agencies and Web publishers.

The new campaign, “Truths in Web Advertising,” will run in advertising trade publications and business publications from October through December. Spending was not disclosed.

The campaign, created by BigMouth Advertising, seeks “to clarify the complex and often confusing Web advertising marketplace,” and introduce businesses to Excite and @Home and the digital marketing services — rich media, targeting and ad serving — provided by Excite@Home subsidiary, MatchLogic.

“As an advertising agency, this project was of particular importance given the audience of peers that we wished to reach,” said Mark Whitty, partner at BigMouth Advertising.

“BigMouth is known for its honest approach and this fits right in with Excite@Home’s straight-talk approach to the market.”

The campaign is the product of research and evaluation through focus groups and discussions with advertisers, agencies and Web publishers.

The research uncovered two clear trends, Excite@Home said: Web advertising is immensely confusing to the market, and advertisers feel a lot of anxiety about using the Internet as a medium for delivering their messages.

“We learned through our market research that many people are still confused and frustrated by empty promises and people professing to have all the answers,” said Susan Bratton, vice president, market development of Excite@Home.

“So our salespeople have adopted the slogan ‘ruthless honesty’ as the approach to helping our customers. We tell them what the Web can do, what it can’t, what we’re good at and what we’re not as good at. Our goal is to ease businesses into this new medium through education.”

The campaign emphasizes that:

1. “Web advertising isn’t one discipline, it’s about twenty”
2. “Anyone who says they have all the answers is a liar”
3. “Each campaign should provide at least one moment of pure exhilaration”