Media Competition Sometimes Means "Outspend Your Competitor"

The Obama campaign made a commitment two weeks ago to buy $5 Million in TV time on the Olympics broadcasts on NBC.

This just (8:06 am) hit my inbox:

Going for Gold? McCain Makes $6 Million Olympic Buy

Tops Obama Buy by $1 Million

Aug. 5, 2008

WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) -- Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign is buying into NBC Universal's Olympics coverage. The McCain campaign made a last-minute $6 million ad buy, which tops the $5 million Sen. Barack Obama's campaign had previously announced. Read more on this breaking story at http://adage.com/campaigntrail/post?article_id=130119 -- Ira Teinowitz

All Is Not What It Seems

Friday's Today Show featured a discussion of viral videos. You know, those funny little films that we e-mail to each other and which usually end up exposed as fakes on YouTube. Are they ads, or what?

Lydia Loizides checks in on v.v. via MediaPost's TV Board.
Don't miss the video with very glib adman, Donny Deutsch.

What happens when you consume these special-effects-laden little eye snacks which turn out to be empty calories? A funny fart or serious indigestion?

"Mad Men" 2.1 Now Available on Hulu

I was looking for some background noise while I did some work this evening and discovered that Hulu's latest post is Mad Men Season 2, Episode 1.

Yow! Bonus. (as my Art Director/Partner, Charlie Oldham, used to say when good things came unexpectedly his way).

Cruise over to Hulu, and watch again, for the very first time Season 2, Episode 1, For Those Who Think Young, on the the very screen you're squinting at now!

Let me repeat: Yow! Bonus.

Verizon Ad Considered Offensive - Pulled Off Air

A recent trend continues. Small but well-meaning (I hope) groups are insisting marketers pull TV spots off the air because they're deemed offensive.

Here's the latest. First, watch it on YouTube.

Next, read the story on this morning's AdAge online.

1) Did you find the spot amusing/funny/striking/different?

2) Did you find the spot offensive on first viewing?

3) Did you judge the spot offensive after reading PETA's complaint?

Your comment encouraged.

The Romans had a saying, "De gustibus non disputandum est." Pardon the spelling, my Latin is more than a little rusty. "It's better not to dispute in matters of taste."

More tomorrow...

194 Coeds Say Skinny Women Make Them Want To Buy

In a study - that still needs to be followed up - college women "found that despite the negative effect on their body image, women preferred ads showing thin models and said they were more likely to buy products featured in those ads than in ones showing "regular-size models," said Jeremy Kees, a business professor at Villanova."

In this morning's AdAge...

I need some college women to reply here.

Case Study: Power of the Internet

Eleven months ago columnist (and a host of NPR's On The Media) Bob Garfield had a customer service nightmare experience with Comcast (one of the communications "options" hereabouts, too) and in frustration he launched the website and blog comcastmustdie.com.

Here's Garfield, interviewed last December by OTM co-host Brooke Gladstone in which he says he's trying to start an e-surrection. And an e-surrection it became. (It's also interesting to hear a jounalist the target of an interview.)

This morning brother Bob declares victory (damn near) in his AdAge column.

Garfield's blog and website became a downhill snowball of hundreds of people with customer beefs that made Comcast perk up and listen. "We get it," says Comcast corporate spokeswoman Jenni Moyer. "And not only do we get it, we're not just listening. We're also changing the way we do things. And we're moving from being reactive to proactive."

I hope that this will be a Case Study in every media, public relations and communications studies text published in the next 10 years.

TV Watching Time-shifted - No TiVo Necessary

Surprise! Research shows that people watching TV programs online are starting to outnumber people using a Digital Video Recorder (TiVo, etc.).

The story is on this morning's AdAge online.

Note the research methodology used by IMMI described at the end of the article. A cellphone that "tracks individuals' media consumption."

Here's more about that! Including IMMI's report on this study.

Imagine the possible

Proctor & Gamble is breaking new ground with abductive thinking - it's not taught in business schools. Design schools teach it. It' about imagining the possible.
Here's how it works for P&G (in this morning's Business Week).

About 60 Hours* Away - "Mad Men 2"

Whet your whistle on this by San Francisco Chronicle TV critic Tim Goodman.

Take a sip here, too.

*Sunday night, 10 pm/9 central on AMC cable.

To find repeat episode times...

Dark "Iron Man" vs. Darker "Batman:" from a media-delivery p.o.v.

They're both wildly successful, critically as well as financially - The Dark Knight seems to be rolling in about $20 million a day.

The promotion people behind both movies had planned for success and got it in spades. Here Antony Young critiques the strategies behind each campaign in today's AdAge MediaWorks.

Tracking Neurons To See If Ads Work

When I was at the American Advertising Federation annual meeting a couple of weeks ago I was given a demonstration by a Berkeley company called neurofocus of a device that seems to "read" the brainwaves of a subject who is watching ads. A graph told us which parts of the ad were watched with most interest and/or emotional impact.

Today National Public Radio's Morning Edition broadcast a feature story on the device and the people behind it.

Here's their website, too.

At the meeting in Atlanta, I asked the Director of Events and Digital Marketing (according to her card) if I could bring some students on a field trip to see this thing work. She said OK.

Would you like to go?

Entertainment Will Survive

I'm in Las Vegas for an American Advertising Federation Academic Committee meeting and a huge sign in bright lights on The Strip (which with gianormous video screens everywhere is looking like Times Square exiled to the desert) that boldly proclaims Las Vegas, the Entertainment Capital of the World!

But what if you can't - or won't* - go to Las Vegas? Google expects to give us a few laughs courtesy of Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. The Big G's CEO Eric Schmidt spoke on Thursday to the Advertising Age Madison+Vine conference about the comedy clip content deal as well as how to monetize an agreement with Lionsgate Films - which also is, he says, a step to clearing up the web-wide fracas over alleged piracy via Google-owned YouTube.

Lots going on here. Stay tuned to see how it all works out.

Meanwhile, here's an AdAge Three Minute Video of MacFarlane talking about the deal.

* the economy has the Sin City visitor count down, but Vegas won't roll over and play dead. Our Committee was treated to a presentation by Randy Snow, Creative Director at R&R Partners, the ad agency for Las Vegas tourism and creators of the terrific What Happens Here Stays Here campaign. More later.

It's the Way Radio and TV Grew...

A survey indicates that you don't mind a few commercials when you watch TV shows or movies online, as long as the content is free..

You might draw the line, however, at your own hom-made videos being sponsored.

From this morning's AdAge online.

Do you agree?

Mad Men Nominated in 16 Categories!

The Emmy Awards nominations were announced this morning and Mad Men is in the chase.

12 Days to "Mad Men, Season 2"

Yeah, I know I should be all about Budweiser today but, excuse me, media covers this is as if the Belgians had bought the Lincoln Memorial and the Grand Canyon. Steven Colbert opened the Colbert Report last night with a pretty funny bit mourning the loss of that Great American Asset, Anheuser-Busch:

Click the video.

Truth is, Bud isn't a very good beer, but it's a product that's been been gorgeously marketed and advertised year after year (remember the Bud Bowl spots in the Super Bowl? Genius!). Though they never did get Michelob sorted out.

So on to more important issues. The return of Mad Men! For those of you keeping up, Season 2 starts two years after Season 1 ended. If you didn't know that you're seriously lagging behind on your MM FAQs.

Meanwhile here's some news on how the series is being marketed - almost as well as Budweiser has been.

Truth Well Told

... is McCann-Erickson's banner, but this time it's Grey/New York that's got it right.

Bob Garfield,* longtime ad critic for Advertising Age magazine and AdAge.com, usually gets it right, too. Advertising he hates, he hates with wit and passion making his column always fun to read. But unlike so many critics who fawn and preen over things they like, Garfield attacks his likes with wit and passion, as well.

Today he likes Grey's TV spot for Captain Morgan Spiced Rum, and especially likes how the spot tip-toes through the ethical minefield of "drink responsibly" by telling the truth about drinking and responsibility, linking a product insight (some will drink too much) with consumer insight (some will be responsible with panache).

The ad hits The Sweet Spot - see blog post for 7/13/08.

* Garfield is also co-host of National Public Radio's On The Media.

And I had to Google Pecksniffian, too.

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!