Advertising That Saves Lives

The knee-jerk reaction from many people is that advertising's true "product" is manipulative persuasion that "sells me things I don't need or want or can't really afford." One of my colleagues at USF once made a remark about "how dirty advertising really is." No, I didn't cold cock him, I pretended I didn't hear. But I'll remember it for a long time. The academy does have it's petty side.

This morning's Sunday New York Times features an article, Warning, Habits May Be Good For You by Charles Duhigg. It includes a case study on how marketers study human behavior seeking two linking insights - a product insight to a consumer insight* - in this case, finding "habit" or behavior that would persuade African parents to encourage washing with soap to prevent common, but sometimes deadly, childhood diseases. Proctor & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and Unilever all cooperated in a public-private program that seems to be working in Ghana. Note that the core of the Ghana campaign is based on emotion - disgust - rather than logical appeals.

There's also a nice parallel discussion of the P&G product Febreze and its relaunch in America.

Says anthropologist Dr. Val Curtis, “For a long time, the public health community was distrustful of industry, because many felt these companies were trying to sell products that made people’s lives less healthy, by encouraging them to smoke, or to eat unhealthy foods, or by selling expensive products people didn’t really need. But those tactics also allow us to save lives. If we want to really help the world, we need every tool we can get.”

* Ad researcher Lisa Fortini Campbell calls this link "The Sweet Spot."

Say "paradigm shift" and I'm Out The Door

There're plenty of them: "let's take this topic offline," "at the end of the day..." (the mathematically impossible) "giving 110%" and many, many more.

They're business cliches that make me want to... to... well, they're like "fingernails scraping across a blackboard" and it makes my teeth hurt!

I've resolved to fight them all with one symbolic protest. If I'm in a meeting where the offending words "paradigm shift" are heard, I get up and leave. Seriously. I walk right back in, protest registered.

AdAge's Bill Imada essays the the topic this morning in It's a Chungle Out There.

For further reading, see the inimitable Seth Godin's website for The Encyclopedia of Business Cliches (about 200 examples, yes 200). Scroll down the page and find books on business jargon, including The Dictionary of Corporate Bullshit: An A to Z Lexicon of Empty, Enraging, and Just Plain Stupid Office Talk.

Yikes! A whole category of books on business jargon. Who knew?

You Don't Scare Me, I'm Stickin' With the Union

I'm a proud member - and a signatory to many contracts - of AFTRA and this is the way I voted.

Advertising Agencies "gated communities?"

Background: in the 1990s the advertising agency business woke up and realized that our businesses didn't reflect the America that we called their "target audiences." Truth is, our clients were more diverse than we were.

Starting then, some progress was made, but in a trade as volatile as advertising, focus on social issues get blurry when your eyes are on your profit margin and your career is on the line. Then, in 2006, New York's Commission Human Rights got involved, and that got the industry's attention.

On Monday night, at a meeting in New York, the issue apparently got ugly. Ken Wheaton posted this article on AdAge that begins " The New York City agency world should be ashamed of itself." Tough stuff to read.

Meanwhile, the American Advertising Federation has a program for college seniors called Most Promising Minority Students which is intended to connect talented beginners interested in a career in advertising with AAF member agencies and companies. Several USF grads have been through the program and most are now working in advertising. If you're a USF student, and think you qualify, let's talk!

Hauling TV Coals to Newcastle?

Yesterday I served up a truckload of panic from those clever folks that hope we watch their TV spots.

Well.

This morning it looks like those net folks ought to take a chill pill.

In fact, MediaPost's Media Daily News makes things look all nice and orderly, again. Nielsen's TAMI says that TV is still tops - and getting better!

Personally, when I look at the numbers I think the increase in monthly usage of all three screens reflects the facts that we're staying home more than we were last year and that many of us consume more media in parallel. As I sit here typing this - and tabbing back and forth between today's blog-post, yesterday's and the MediaPost story - the CBS Early Show is on a screen about 10 feet away feeding me the latest on the California wildfires and A-Rod's lovelife.

How would TAMI measure that? And does it really matter?

Meanwhile, TAMI will be used to measure consumption of the Olympics. Should be interesting.

TV looking to Change the Pattern of Your Fridge, Bathroom Visits

It's all about "engaging" you with commercial messages.

“If I could get half those people to turn their heads toward the screen, I’ve significantly increased the value of my client’s commercial,” said Kris Magel, senior vice president and director for national broadcast at Initiative, a media agency owned by the Interpublic Group of Companies.

As a result, you'll be seeing all sorts of stuntifying on both on-air and cable as the 2008-09 TV season begins.

Here're the details.

[Only 20 more days until Mad Men, Season 2 begins on AMC.]

Ads Use Hard Times As Reason-To-Buy

On NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, guest Seth Stevenson - ad critic for online magazine Slate - opined that recent ads are adjusting to consumers moods about the economy.

Audio: 3 minutes, 57 seconds

A Salute to the Declaration of Independence!

One of my favorite movies - and my favorite to watch today - is 1776, closely based on the Broadway musical of the same name. My inner history geek warns you to not take it too seriously as literal history. Hey, it's a musical! But much of the dialogue between John Adams and his wife Abigail are lifted from their letters to each other during the period.

One musical number, Cool, Cool Considerate Men, is a slap at the conservative Southerners who balked at signing, or even debating, the Declaration. When the play was presented at the Nixon White House, legend has it that the President asked writer/composer Sherman Edwards to cut the tune from the show. According to that legend, Edwards Refused.

What seems pretty certain, however, was that when the play became film, then still-President Nixon asked old California friend and movie magnate Jack Warner to delete offending tune. Warner complied.

The film was released without the song and the eventual VHS version was that one.

Years later, when the DVD was compiled, several scenes were reinstated, including CCCM.

I hope that's the version on TV tonight.

It'll be shown on cable channel TCM (commercial-free) at 8pm PDT.

Or rent from Netflix.

Ask A Ninja

One of my favorite websites.

Be warned that the creators of this silliness are media superstars.

Still not convinced?

OK, this should do it!

Production Company Falls on Own Sword, Cannes Officials Relieved

Epoch Films did the noble "right thing" Thursday, when it 'fessed-up to creating a fake spot for JC Penney that seemed to approve of teen sex.

Looks like the cease and desist order may not be in order after all.

The business pecking order works like this:
- a clent hires an ad agency, which it pays to create effective communications, in order to profit in selling its products to consumers,
- an agency has an idea for effective communications, gets client approval, and then hires and pays production company (with the client's money) to bring the idea to life - and hopes that the idea works so that they can continue their profitable relationship with the client,
- the production company completes its assignment and hopes to get another profitable project from the agency.

Yes, the Epoch Films of the advertising world are at the bottom of the food chain and in many ways simple "vendors," though the truth is that a great production company can make a good spot a great one.

In this case, Epoch Films may have taken the fall to protect their relationship with Saatchi & Saatchi. Or they could have taken the fall for S&S for the same reason.

My guess is that the blame is properly placed at Epoch's door. The spot was really well produced but had no real audience beyond Cannes Judges. There was no product consumer targeted - and that's the first thing that an ad agency should be thinking about.

Booty Sweat? B.S. (think about it)

My Dad sold a ginger ale, labeled GoldWater, in 1964 in the candidate's home state of Arizona. Couldn't sell the last pallet-load once Barry lost to LBJ and my family of twelve drank it for months.

I know of one guy who still has a can of Billy Beer, named for Jimmy Carter's bubba brother. But that's only one guy and he's a friend of a friend's friend.

My point might be that the joke was funny once but it was all over once the "anchor truth" departed the scene.

Now a fictitious energy drink called Booty Sweat, lashed to the new Ben Stiller action comedy "Tropic Thunder," is about to become a real product!?

Read the astounding story on AdAge, plus the amazing side story of Oakland-based Brawndo.

As my grandfather used to often say, "What is this country coming to?"

The best of the week...

Here's the best recent work according to AdAge online.

"Charmed" client romance begins finger-pointing stage of relationship

Winning a major award at the Cannes International Advertising Festival is a really big deal and usually the agency team, the production company and the client collectively act the proud parents.

This year a Bronze Lion-winning TV spot for JC Penney, called "Racy" by AdAge, is almost an orphan.

Saatchi & Saatchi says they didn't order it. JC Penney says they didn't approve it. And production house Epoch Films (and even administrators of the festival) ain't sayin' nothin'. Meanwhile the spot, which seems to condone teen sex, got about 16,000 views on YouTube in less than 24 hours.

I suspect the account will be up for review (JCP will be talking to other agencies) within 30 days. A lawsuit against Epoch Films for trademark infringement - and probably including a cease and desist order - should be expected even sooner.

File this one under "Smart People Acting Stupid."

What Should Obama's Media Plan Look Like?

I can't think of a better one than this.

How "True" is Mad Men?

More than a little soapy, the AMC TV series is emerging as America's next guilty pleasure. The series has it all, cigarettes, booze, bigotry and sex - set in the early 60s on Madison Avenue in a fictional ad agency named Sterling Cooper.

Mad Men was the cover story in yesterday's The New York Times Magazine.

It took me some time to catch the fever - I'd seen a couple of episodes and didn't really engage. But I looked at the whole first year via iPod over the winter and now I'm hooked. The series is even literary in a sneaky sort of way - "Don Draper," for example, is the name of a character who is not what he seems, he "dons a drape," figuratively "puts on" a curtain to obscure his identity. Article author, Alex Witchel, notes that Jon Hamm, the actor who portrays Draper, "[acting] assignment as Don is to locate the emotions in a man who spends his life denying them." Or draping them.

I also enjoy the irony that Robert Morse, who was the young lead in the real-time 60s How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying on Broadway, just a few blocks west of Madison Avenue, now plays the aged and eccentric Cooper of Sterling Cooper without really, well, you know. Yeah, I was once an English major.

The NYT piece features a mini debate between two ad giants from the era of Mad Men, George Lois and Jerry Della Femina, about the truth of the series - but no issues are settled.

The great amateur historian George MacDonald Fraser (author of the Flashman series and a screenwriter himself) once wrote a book, The Hollywood History of the World evaluating historic fiction in movies. His standard, "If it makes me feel like I'd just visited that time and place, it's good history." That's why I'll be watching.

Mad Men, Season One can be bought directly from AMC and a slide show of stills from the series are also posted on nytimes.com. DVD is relwased on July 1st. Season Two begins on AMC, Sunday July 27th.

Here are videos and commentary on Mad Men Season One on amc.com

Non-traditional media-man Obama considering network TV: same-old same-old?

Well, his campaign advisers are. Yesterday AdAge reported that his media team "asked NBC Universal about Olympics advertising including $500,000, $2 million and $4 million packages of ads. (NBC presented those along with a $10 million package.) It's not only a sign that the Obama camp has faith it can continue its stellar fundraising achievements but a signal that a widening field of battleground states has the candidate contemplating national broadcast buys. An Olympics buy could also allow Mr. Obama to reach out to a large swath of women."

This morning's New York Times features conflicting opinions of this media strategy from bloggers and Obama partisans Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft and James Joyner* at Outside the Beltway.

Which side of the mass media TV issue do you come down on?

* Does it look to you like Joyner's picture is posed on the very-inside-the-beltway White House grounds?

Big guy doesn't want to blow it

The NBA is a big brand with big problems... can David Stern fix the leak before the ball goes flat?
(AdAge)
Are you a fan? Do you bet on games? Does this change that?

When big guys blow it, they blow it big

Blogger Joseph Jaffe - a rabid advocate for social marketing - tells an AdAge workshop how five companies, apparently through corporate naval-gazing, fumbled big communication opportunities. (AdAge Video)

The man who changed things

Craig Newmark "invented" Craigslist to let his friends know about events in the Bay Area and grew it to be the content juggernaut it is today. But clouds may be gathering on the horizon. Though the power and value of the web enterprise is enormous, Newmark runs it like a Mom & Pop corner store - if you've walked past his modest two story headquarters on 9th Avenue near Judah, you know what I mean. The building looks like it could be the office of a estate agent who became weary of selling houses about seven years ago and can't wait to retire.
Here's an interview with Craig Newmark from today's edition of boston.com (The Boston Globe).
And here's a story from c|net.com and another on auctionbytes.com on the lawsuit mentioned in that article.
Lastly, here's the Craigslist Hits Back story from The Guardian.
David Battles Goliath: Ugly stuff version.

Do Mystery Ads In Ontario Promote Mind-Control Or Education?

This from OMMA Behavioral online. Interesting campaign:
__________________________________________
By Amy Corr , Monday, June 16, 2008

Earlier this year, Ontario residents were puzzled by a series of outdoor ads that appeared to promote a drug that altered the thoughts of teenagers.

"When Amy started thinking for herself, we had to nip it in the bud with Obay," read one ad. "My son had ideas of his own. Obay put a stop to that," read another.

Creative showed a smiling, happy family, and a bottle of Obay pills.

The teaser ads ran for two weeks, causing local bloggers to speculate their origin. Theories ranged from Obay being an actual mind-controlling drug created by a pharmaceutical company to Obay being the handiwork of Scientologists.

The ads originated from an unlikely source, Colleges Ontario, an advocacy group that represents the 24 publicly funded colleges in the province.

According to Malcolm Roberts, principal at Smith Roberts, the creative and media agency behind the campaign, the objective was to change the way parents viewed college.

"Colleges Ontario asked us to help them change the public perception that college is a lesser alternative to university. Many parents are pushing their kids into a university education when, in fact their children would be happier with a college degree in a subject area that actually appealed to them. This campaign was designed to get parents to take notice, and re-think their attitudes toward colleges," said Roberts.

Following the teaser ads was a month-long "revelation" campaign. Original ads were covered by crumpled, yellow pages explaining the rouse.

"Luckily, Obay isn't real. Sure, you want what's best for your kids, but when it comes to post-secondary education, pushing them to do what you want isn't right. Explore all the options at ontariocolleges.ca," reads an ad for the second phase of the campaign.

The campaign delivered 50 million impressions in six weeks and serves as the beginning of a multiyear campaign.

"All 24 colleges have fully supported releasing funds for the next phase of the campaign," said Roberts. "We knew from the outset that this was going to be a long-term strategy, possibly up to five years. You can't change years of ingrained attitudes overnight."

Too bad there isn't a pill for that.

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What do you think? Effective or manipulative?