Archive for the 'Advertising' Category

Blogs have become cultural beacons, sculpting public opinion and the whole of the landscape. I have come to love the blogosphere. What’s not to love? Quick, easy, hilarious rants on current events, news, celebrity, anything and everything. It makes me laugh. It makes us all laugh. I’m a big fan, yet it drives me nuts when people put a greater emphasis on being funny rather than thoughtful. And the funnies are getting all of the credit.

Take Perez Hilton, self proclaimed Queen of all Media: his blog has made him rich and famous. There’s even a TV version of his “work” on VH1. He is a well-regarded, highly-quoted source regularly featured in other media. Why? Because he concocts funny word mashups and indiscriminately draws cocaine debris under the nostrils of celebrities, celebutants and celebutards? I laugh. But is it intelligent or thoughtful?

Not a whiff of either.

His counterparts are no exception. D-Listed, Pink is the New Blog, What Would Tyler Durden Do? –examples of cheap and hysterical hilarity, a lot of vulgarities and bathroom humor about stars and starlets…the writers are very funny, but do they have the chops to become real comedic writers with a day-to-day gig? Most of the humor is easy to come by (raunchy sex jokes that occur to the average 12-year-old boy); these bloggers are brave enough to boldly voice their inner tween. Where the rest of us would blush at the thought of quipping like that with even our closest and dearest, they in fact take the, yep you guessed it, plunger.

The newsiest is The Huffington Post, a digital version of Jon Stewart’s Daily Show. The content is there, the points are on and the contributing writers are some of the biggest uh names in the game (is it bad to shamefully plug myself in my own blog?), but it is not meant to serve as primary news source but more a way to buttress your information on an hourly basis. It says so up there in the fine print.

Wonkette.com, a famous offering about D.C. gossip, honestly describes itself as a, “blend of gossip, satire and things the author makes up.” Similarly, its parent, Gawker, is known for the same in a New York market. The problem is, people look to these sites as honest news sources instead of ha-ha jabs at anything plus everything.

And everyone is guilty these days. We’re all adapting blog speak (see Diablo Cody please) and abbreviated language that was once reserved for quickly jotting down messages via IM has made its way into the daily vernacular.

Remember Cingular’s enormously popular ad? The mom reprimands the daughter for texting too much. The daughter responds in text / IM code. It was only funny because we all got it. OMG people, WTF is going on?

Being tuned in does not make any of us educated while simple-minded and raunchy cynicism doe not make you a comedian and maintaining a blog does not make you a writer… In the end we are reading bloggers.

Oh yeah, and the most important point of today’s rant is this: Abbreviating words doesn’t make you original, just kind of annoying, except when it comes to me, obv. Duh.

Getting consumers to create ads was BIG in 2007, peaking with a slew of such ads shown in the almighty Super Bowl of that year. But, it is still alive and kicking in 2008. In fact one of the Bowl advertisers that ran consumer generated fare last year, Doritos, now has claim to what might be the cheapest ad ever made.

The ad for Doritos in the UK was made for just over $12 by Matt Bowron and John Addis and isn’t half bad.

View it here.

I feel guilty about not blogging for a few weeks - Richard has his mind on other things (his new book, 2011, is on the shelves of bookstores everywhere) and I’ve just been, well, busy, and a little lazy, but mostly busy. I gave a keynote speech at the Retail Advertising & Marketing Association’s annual conference in Sonoma a couple of weeks ago. I was hot! No, really, I was very hot. It was because of the freakishly warm weather with temperatures creeping above 100 degrees. It was a great session though. Lots of very thoughtful and switched-on senior marketers from the retailing industry, struggling from the demands of their jobs in a tough economic environment. We talked through the Punk Marketing Manifesto and everyone there seemed to get it and buy into it. But, what really got them excited were some simple tips I’d put together on the things they could do the very next day that they got back into their offices to raise the bar of their marketing. They’re just simple ideas really, that are the first baby steps on the way to big change. Things they could do under the radar without having to change the whole of their marketing…just yet.
Here they are:

1. DON’T OUTSOURCE ALL OF THE CREATIVITY TO YOUR AGENCIES. IT NEEDS TO BE PART OF EVERY DECISION WE MAKE ON A DAILY BASIS. IT’S NOT TRUE YOU ARE EITHER BORN CREATIVE OR NOT. IT’S LIKE A MUSCLE – THE MORE YOU USE IT, THE STRONGER IT’LL GET, AND BOY IT’LL FEEL GOOD!

2. SIT DOWN WITH A SOME OF YOUR TEAM AND LIST OUT THE CONVENTIONS OF YOUR SECTOR, THEN THINK OF WAYS TO TURN THEM ON THEIR HEADS (NOT YOUR TEAM, THE CONVENTIONS)!

3. GET TOGETHER A SMALL GROUP OF YOUR SMARTEST PEOPLE FROM INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE ORGANIZATION. GO SOMEWHERE FUN, LIKE A BEACH CLUB. ASK THEM TO HELP YOU THINK THROUGH ONE THING YOUR STORES CAN BE THE BEST IN THE CATEGORY AT – MAKE IT VERY SPECIFIC AND ACTIONABLE (NOT BEST AT CUSTOMER SERVICE – IT’S TOO VAGUE!). THE NEXT DAY START PUTTING THAT INTO PLACE. MAYBE IT’S THE BEST WAY OF SAYING GOODBYE TO YOUR GUESTS – A NICE PIECE OF CANDY ETC.

4. PICK ONE STORE AND SET UP A CONTEST THERE FOR 10 OF YOUR STAFF AND OUTSIDE PARTNERS (INCLUDE PEOPLE FROM THAT STORE). MAKE IT LIKE “THE APPRENTICE” – SPLIT THE GROUP INTO TWO TEAMS AND SET THEM A SALES TARGET FOR THE DAY, THE WINNERS TO GET A GREAT DINNER SOMEWHERE. THE NEXT MONTH DO IT IN ANOTHER STORE.

5. PICK ANOTHER STORE AND GET THE STAFF TO DO SOMETHING AMAZING AND WONDERFUL IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. WHEN IT’S DONE REWARD THE STAFF THEN ASK OTHER STORES TO DO THEIR OWN INDIVIDUAL COMMUNITY PROGRAM. DON’T DO ANY PR UNTIL YOU’VE DONE 10 OF THEM.

6. DEFINE YOUR ENEMY – NOT THE OBVIOUS SUCH AS YOUR IMMEDIATE COMPETITOR, BUT AN ATTITUDE. HINT: APPLE’S ENEMY ISN’T REALLY THE PC, IT’S “SAMENESS” OR “DULLNESS.” NOW DRAW UP A BATTLE PLAN TO COMBAT IT.

7. ASK YOURSELF: “AM I A GOOD CLIENT TO MY AGENCY? DO I SET THEM CLEAR GOALS AND GIVE THEM THE FREEDOM TO COME BACK WITH INTERESTING SOLUTIONS?” IF NOT, TALK TO ME ABOUT WAYS TO IMPROVE. IF SO, AND THE WORK YOU’RE SEEING STILL ISN’T GREAT, THEN TALK TO ME ABOUT FINDING A NEW AGENCY.

8. INVEST THEM IN THE BUSINESS. FIRST ASK THE AGENCY TEAM TO EACH WORK IN YOUR STORES FOR ONE WEEK AND COME BACK WITH SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO IMPROVE THE BUSINESS AND SOME CONSUMER INSIGHTS GOT FIRST HAND.

9. GIVE THE AGENCY A SMALL EXPERIMENTAL BUDGET (SAY $50K) TO USE TO COME UP WITH INNOVATIVE MARKETING IDEAS THAT YOU PROMISE NOT TO INTERFERE MUCH WITH. IT’LL MAKE THEM FEEL EXCITED AND MOTIVATED.

10. MAKE YOUR AGENCY PART OF THE WHOLE PROCESS. SET THEM BIGGER PROBLEMS AND THEY’LL COME BACK WITH BIGGER SOLUTIONS.

Here’s the idea. When you go to hulu.com, the website set up by NBC Universal and Newscorp to compete with YouTube, to watch a video clip you can choose what ad you want to watch with it. “You want a sports coupe ad with that clip from the Office, sir? Or perhaps you’re more in the market for a SUV? Let me get that for you straight away.” Hmm.

“It’s choose-your-own-adventure advertising,” enthuses Jean-Paul Colaco, Hulu’s ad guy quoted in today’s Financial Times. Yeah, JP, it’s a veritable adventure. One bad car ad over another, that’s real consumer control. He recognizes that online vid viewers (OVVs) get bugged by having to watch the same old “pre-roll” ad at the for the first 15 seconds of the video and hence the solution - a nod towards relevant content (rather than simply, you must be a young adult if you’re watching this stuff so we’ll plop an ad for a product targetd to you lot before the real entertainment begins).

But it is just a nod. And is a very blunt way of targeting. The viewers won’t, for instance, be able to forgo watching the an ad altogether; they can just choose from a very limited selection which one to play.

If they want to see the damned clip, they have to just grin and bear watching the godawful ad too! Got it?

YouTube’s approach, announced a couple of months ago, is a little different. There will be overlay ads on the bottom quarter of the video screen which viewers can expand to fill the whole screen or, thankfully, block out altogether.

This is better than forcing people to watch the ads, but is still a far from perfect solution; one that uses the medium as the interactive experience it should be. I always loved “Pop-Up Video” on VH1 - you know, the music video show in which trivial facts about the videos popped up as they played - and now dream that online video could do the same thing. For online video the pop-ups wouldn’t come up automatically - as, on a screen that small they would obscure the whole picture and only doesn’t irritate on much repeated content, such as music videos you’ve seen a hundred times before - but would pop up if you, the viewer, decided you wanted to know more: more about the character, the production or maybe even the stuff (aka “the products”) shown. Rolling the mouse over the cool car in the clip could give you a price and some specs, perhaps mention a promotion or invite you to click for a test drive.

Thing is, that technology is available now (see the demos on videoclix.com), it’s just that using it would take too much effort for advertisers to individualize the pop-ups to each different video. They like a one-size-fits all approach, treating the audience as one homogenous demographic, rather than recognizing that in this new Punk world marketers need to customize their messages.

Oh well, I’ll keep dreaming, and probably avoid altogether watching the online videos with pre-roll ads.

TV networks used to carefully build and cultivate shows and they branded the shows as important products; this ensured deep viewer engagement and therefore, ka-$$. We call that long-term viability. But today’s fascination with celebrity reality is a get rich quick pyramid scheme leaving the nets with no shows, no identity, and a hell of a lot of problems. (VH1, we’re talking about you and Flava; listen up).

I was flipping through the cable-waves and couldn’t help but notice a pattern: Dancing With The Stars, Celebrity Fit Club, Celebrity Rehab, Celebrity Apprentice, and I think one on celebrity dieting! Yet the writer’s strike was over! Did the writers stay on vacation?

Out of some weird curiously, I watched the first episode of “Celebrity Rehab” – the term train wreck is a generous review. Seeing Jeff Conaway barely mobile or coherent isn’t entertaining in the least but crept into my soul in a dark way. What happened to privacy for someone’s horrible downfall? To a shred of dignity? Celebrities used to represent some kind of intangible ideal. From Bonaduce to Britney it’s clear that the Hollywood landscape has changed, maybe inalterably.

Flimsy reality TV is in its heyday. Gosh, Hilton’s celeb reality show lasted five seasons! (Gees, yet straight-to-DVD “One Night in Paris” lasted but one horrible night!) And just when we thought it was safe to turn on the tube without her, now we hear she’s coming back with a guest spot on “Earl” and a new show hilariously called “Paris Hilton’s My New BFF”!

Wasn’t realty TV a “Real World” concept born from the desire to watch normal people go through their days with human drama the star? Remember our ole friend Puck! He was never a celebrated guy, didn’t pose for mag covers, but we watched him because he was consistently Puck. And Pedro? He inspired us with his transparency.

So the nets are giving us what we want, yeah. Just look at the ratings over these past years. While the broadcast/cable homes rely on more and more reality, and more and more celebrity crap, viewership for everyone (even Bravo) slides fast into let’s-remake-this-channel territory. They can blame the Internet or games or even, like they did last year, Daylight Savings Time!

But it used to be you watched to “go where everyone knows your name” and where friends were “there for you.” Now we have Hugh Hefner chasing – let’s face it – ho’s. Other than Eliot Spitzer, does anyone REALLY want to know who he’s with when the guy is that gross?

Could be that ratings built on lame reality and tawdry fame isn’t what the public wants and they’re merely watching between laundry runs. Maybe instead of slapping the word celeb on every hair-brained concept, networks should invest in content with a shelf life longer than the latest Us Weekly cover story.

Everything on TV seems to be what works now–this second. Look at Fox. If something doesn’t click with us with super-hype before it airs, it’s history. That is not historically how it’s been with huge hits. So why, then, would it work today?

Building a business with a brand band-aid isn’t a Punk strategy. Being Punk is about listening to your consumer/user/viewer, taking that knowledge to heart so it intelligently works today and keeps people into you tomorrow.

To those short attention span thinkers at E!: maybe Paris doesn’t want us to be our BFF. And you know what? I think the folks at home are happy enough with Miley.