I’ve been to two CMO conferences this month, and here’s what I don’t get: Marketing execs love to stand on stage and talk about innovation and the changing marketing model and the influence of digital media and yada yada yada. Inevitably, however, when it comes time to wow the audience with some multimedia, what do they offer as a shining example of this innovative thinking? A 30-second spot. Oh, sometimes they put a YouTube wrapper around it, but it is what it is - a 30-second spot. Yes, it’s great to pull the heartstrings of conference attendees with an emotional spot on incontinence. But that’s missing the point. If 30-second videos are the primary vehicle that CMOs (or their speechwriters) choose to demonstrate marketing and advertising prowess, well, they may be talking the talk, but they’re not walking the walk. Any capable agency can do good creative; show me something I haven’t seen a thousand times before.
Great article on AdAge (registration might be required, I can never tell what’s behind their annoying subscription firewall) that shoots holes in the tired thinking that marketing on the Internet is all about banner ads. The lemmings couldn’t be more wrong, says author Michael Creamer:
What you’re about to read is not an argument for making over web marketing as a factory for destination websites or for making every brand a content player. … This, however, is a call to give some thought to a question that’s not asked enough about the Internet: Should it even be viewed as an ad medium? After all, in some quarters of the broader marketing world, the habit of looking at advertising as the most important tool in the marketers’ toolbox is undergoing intense interrogation. Consider the growth of the word-of-mouth marketing business, premised on the notion that people not corporations who help other people make consumer decisions. Or look at the growing importance put on public relations and customer-relationship management both in marketing circles and even in the c-suite.
The same conversation should be going on around the Internet. Trends like those listed suggest the possibility of a post-advertising age, a not-too-distant future where consumers will no longer be treated as subjects to be brainwashed with endless repetitions of whatever messaging some focus group liked.
Nice to see someone at an advertising trade pub call out banner ads for what they are: an outdated attempt to replicate the past sins of the print world instead of creating something unique for such a transformational medium.
The much-hyped “Project Apollo” consumer research initiative is dead, MediaPost reports today:
“Despite a promising level of interest, we did not secure sufficient client commitments to make Project Apollo a sustainable venture for our two companies,” Arbitron and Nielsen said in a joint statement. “We are grateful to the companies, consultants and to the marketing and advertising agency executives of the seven Project Apollo Steering Committee members who helped us explore the cutting edge of media and marketing research.”
Conceived in 2004 by Arbitron and VNU (now The Nielsen Company), Apollo was meant to provide marketers with a “single-source” measurement of media and advertising, in order to show better linkage between advertising and consumer purchase behavior. Apollo had a few significant backers, notably Procter & Gamble, but the project seemed doomed from the start, considering its high cost to implement, its reliance on “portable people meter” devices, and its focus on TV, radio, and print media, with little more than lip service paid to online channels. A 2006 pilot encompassing more than 5,000 households and 11,000 people (presumably toting PPMs around their necks) apparently didn’t do enough to convince major advertisers to sign on for a commercial rollout.
As an aside, never has a “forward-looking statements” clause in a press release seemed so prescient:
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The statements regarding Arbitron in this document that are not historical in nature, particularly those that utilize terminology such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “likely,” “expects,” “anticipates,” “estimates,” “believes” or “plans,” or comparable terminology, are forward-looking statements based on current expectations about future events, which we have derived from information currently available to us. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause our results to be materially different from results implied in such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, in no particular order, whether we will be able to:
successfully implement the rollout of our Portable People MeterTM service;
successfully design, recruit, and maintain PPM panels that appropriately balance research quality, panel size and operational cost;
successfully obtain and/or maintain Media Rating Council accreditation for our audience measurement services;
renew contracts with large customers as they expire;
successfully execute our business strategies, including entering into potential acquisition joint-venture, or other material third-party agreements;
effectively manage the impact, if any, of any further ownership shifts in the radio and advertising agency industries;
respond to rapidly changing technological needs of our customer base, including creating new proprietary software systems and new customer products and services that meet these needs in a timely manner;
successfully manage the impact on our business of any economic downturn generally and in the advertising market in particular; and
successfully manage the impact on costs of data collection due to lower respondent cooperation in surveys, privacy concerns, consumer trends, technology changes and/or government regulations.
successfully develop and implement technology solutions to measure multi-media and advertising in an increasingly competitive environment.
Single-source measurement is a critically important, yet critically complex, and therefore an extremely elusive goal of marketers. The millions of dollars wasted on Apollo won’t help the cause.
Still recovering from the shock and awe of Super Bowl XLII. Shock, as in I can’t believe the Patriots lost, and awe, as in the Giants - my boyhood team of choice in the ’70s before I transitioned/bandwagoned to the Pats in the ’80s and ’90s - not just beating New England, but beating them up in the process. I’ve been out of sorts all day, still trying to make sense of it.
So I’m way behind (as usual) on the usual post-Super Bowl blather over the ads that ran during the game. Far better pundits have already weighed in. You have USA Today’s Ad Meter results [puking e-trade baby only ranks 15th - are you kidding me?], and BusinessWeek’s picks and pans (nice graphic treatment with the embedded ads), and the curious critiques of AdAge Ad Critic Bob Garfield (Bridgestone homophobia? screams that frighten children?), and countless other post-mortems that show just how focused we all are on unimportant things.
Spare me the debate over whether these ads actually provide any return on investment. Buzz trackers are off the charts for this event, and the YouTube effect no doubt makes these spots justifiable. The only one I’m truly perplexed by is salesgenie.com - a completely inane three-pack (3 spots!!!) from a dot-com that sells call and mailing lists. Double ick. Adweek provides an important piece of insight on these spots:
Vin Gupta, chairman of Salesgenie … said that, like the previous spot, he conceptualized and wrote copy for the new ads himself.
So there you have it. Gupta claims that last year’s spot sent 25,000 folks scurrying to the website. He doesn’t say if they bought any sales leads once they got there. But why sweat the details? This is the Super Bowl, baby.
As traditional media companies attempt to turn their Web properties into social networking sites, it seems that MySpace is evolving into a media company. The New York Times makes that point in an article explaining how MySpace, though still operating independently under News Corp., is taking on many of the characteristics of traditional media companies as it builds out its own content. The site has “become very mainstream. It’s about consuming content and discovering pop culture,” co-founder Chris DeWolfe told the Times, which goes on to say:
As a result, the MySpace site resembles a portal like Yahoo or AOL as much as a social networking site. Peter F. Chernin, the president and chief operating officer of the News Corporation, called MySpace a “contemporary media platform” and said the site existed to “create content and connect people to one another.”
A quick view of the homepage shows that the portal comparison is correct. New sections devoted to news, politics and celebrities all feature original or licensed content (in addition to the site’s traditional user-generated content, including, for example, links to celebrity MySpace pages). It’s a pretty clear indication of where MySpace is going, since the new content is a way to attract advertisers - the lifeblood of any media company - without soiling the personal profile pages of MySpace’s gazillion members.
I don’t know if the “mediatization” of MySpace spells doom to the purists who just go there to connect with friends. And there are plenty of people pointing to MySpace’s slowing growth as a sign that the site’s appeal has peaked, but if I were AOL, MSN or Yahoo - or any other media company trying to reload to stay competitive - I’d be plenty worried.
Whew! I nestled in for a long winter’s nap and the next thing I know it’s Jan. 2.
Why do some advertisers - particularly sponsors of sporting events - put their TV ads in such heavy rotation? I’m talking about the six-times-per-broadcast spots, the ones from which my kids are now reciting complete lines of dialog. And no, brand owners, that’s not really a good thing. Oversaturation is BAD, even for clever ads. After seeing the same spot a half-dozen times during a single football game, amusement leads to fatigue, followed by annoyance. What started as a positive consumer experience (Hey, funny ad) turns painfully negative (Not this again!).
Here are the worst offenders:
Chevrolet. ”This Is Our Truck - This Is Our Country.” This tired John Mellencamp campaign is our Grand Prize Winner for a jingle that has jumped the shark.
Cialis. An uncomfortable subject made worse by endless overexposure during “family viewing” time. Really now, my 9-year-old son has enough phobias without having to fret about a future of erectile dysfunction. And this from my 16-year-old daughter: “ED is gross.”
Nissan. First with the Rogue, now with the Altima, these ads are creatively cool yet annoying in their omnipresence. Worst sin: They made me sick of The Clash!
AT&T Wireless. The wireless carrier gets some credit for at least offering a series of different spots in its “Seamless World” campaign, which features mash-ups of city names like Philawarepragicago to demonstrate, I dunno, how mobile we are. But the punch lines wear off quickly. And for this they’re anointed Marketer of the Year?
I’m sure there are others, but I’ve purged the evil brands from my consciousness (and use my DVR whenever possible to avoid them). Take that!
If it’s December, that can mean only one thing: an endless stream of Top 10 lists. Some interesting tidbits from Nielsen’s look at what it considers the year’s top media, consumer and advertising trends:
Top TV Program “Buzzed” About Online: My Name Is Earl (No. 10 on the list: Battlestar Gallactica. Battlestar Gallactica???)
Top US Market for Adults Who Have Read/Contributed to a Blog within the Past Month: Austin
Top 3 Consumer Packaged Good Sold in US Retail Stores: Carbonated soft drinks ($17.6 billion), Milk ($12.8 billion), Cigarettes ($7.8 billion)
Top US Advertiser (by US Spending on Traditional Media): Procter & Gamble ($2.6 billion). Question: Why measure just traditional media?
Best presentation I’ve seen on social networking came from Chuck Brymer at the ANA’s annual conference in Phoenix on Friday. Brymer, president and CEO of DDB Worldwide, spoke of online communities as digital swarms, formed through a combination of technological advances and a growing distrust in institutions.
“People used to put a lot of trust in institutions,” he told about 1,200 attendees of the conference, held at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix. “We believed what the government said, what the news media said, and even what advertisers said. It’s not like that today. As a society, we are more cynical and less believing. … We no longer just accept what we’re told by people in high places. Instead, we trust those who are close to us. Those with similar experiences. When you put the expanding digital swarm together with the simultaneous rise in trust in friends and family, you have a very powerful combination.”
This power, he added, “irrevocably changes” the roles of marketers. He compared the herd mentality of traditional marketing and advertising programs – communicating to people who passively sit in front of TVs and radios and read newspapers and magazines – to today’s far more active digital swarms: “The herd is passive. It lacks active intelligence. The swarm on the other hand is about actively sharing intelligence, and that is a huge distinction. While you can lead a herd, you cannot lead a swarm. You cannot issue instructions to a swarm. A swarm is not an audience in the traditional sense and it’s not looking to [marketers] for guidance.”
The implications of peer communication and localized information are significant, Brymer said. “Forget the idea that digital is the new media. The real new media is you and me.” As an example, he referenced Allconsuming.net, a site devoted to people “telling each other about the stuff they’re buying, eating, drinking, watching.”
How can marketers enter the swarm? One word: influence. “While you cannot lead a swarm, you can influence it,” Brymer explained. “Influence is one of the most valuable assets a brand can have in a networked world.” Influence, he said, should be measured in the same way we measure share of voice or share of market. “Brands that have influence command attention.”
In a swarm, he explained, success is determined by whether communities are attracted to your brand or run away from it. “Do people see you as a predator or a peer? If you are a peer, you have credibility and influence. As the word spreads throughout the swarm, people begin to flock to you. You gain greater influence and more people seek you out.”
This requires a level of authenticity that many advertisers may not be accustomed to. “Every touch point, every interaction influences whether your brand is accepted or rejected by the swarm,” Brymer said. “Every day, you are being appraised. The swarm is like a modern day Big Brother – it’s watching you, taking your measure, and evaluating your intentions.”
He suggested three ways marketers can influence the swarm:
Conviction: Brands that are influential, he explained, all start in the same place: with the personal vision and convictions of the marketers behind them. Brands that stand for something – he offered Harley Davidson, Apple and Volkswagen as prime examples – attract followers. “What makes these brands influential is not their size,” he said. “It’s that each believes in something and has built brand communities of influence among its members, who in turn influence others.”
Collaboration: Swarms want a say in how your products and services look, what they do, and what they should do better. Two examples: Lego, which offers downloadable software from its website that lets kids design their own creations>. Another is Philips, which lets consumers track their individual contributions to protecting the environment by switching to energy-saving light bulbs.
Creativity: As you would expect from the head of an ad agency, Brymer touted creativity as “the one element that can influence a swarm more than anything.” Creativity is universal, regardless of the media in which it exists, because it allows marketers to connect with people at an emotional level. “Interesting ideas and provocative thinking influences swarms.” The power of the digital swarm is its ability to pass these ideas on virally. One example: an ad from a Dutch insurance company called Centraal Beheer that has close to 1 million views on YouTube:
Brymer closed with a (slightly paraphrased) quote from former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shineski: “You may not like change, but you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”
Off to Phoenix for the Association of National Advertisers’ annual “Masters of Marketing” conference. Pretty good speaker lineup, including:
Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft
Bob Lachky, EVP & Chief Creative Officer, Anheuser-Busch
Wendy Clark, Senior Vice President of Advertising, AT&T
Roger Adams, Senior Vice President and CMO, Home Depot
Mary Dillon, EVP and Global CMO, McDonald’s
Derek Gordon, VP Marketing, Clorox
Becky Saeger, EVP and CMO, Charles Schwab
Jim Stengel, Global Marketing Officer, Procter & Gamble
Jocelyne Attal, CMO, Avaya
Will be interested in hearing what kind of salvos Ballmer (who is scheduled to ”share his ideas for how marketers can tap into the enormous technological power at their disposal to reinvent their brands and connect with consumers of tomorrow”) launches against Google in the battle for online ad platform supremacy. Also will be sniffing out what seems to be a growing angst/apathy over marketing measurement. I’ll report here on anything that I don’t need to save for MarketingNPV, which is paying my freight.
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