MarketingInsideOut.com

The 30-second TV spot isn’t dead.  Neither is radio or print advertising. But according to Outsell Inc., an information industry research firm, the surge of dollars into the online advertising sector continues to grow at a faster pace.

Outsell projects spending on online advertising to surge to 19 percent of advertising spending in 2006. By contrast, spending on print ads will grow an estimated 2 percent and spending on radio and television ads an estimated 2.4 percent.

That projection seems to hold up fairly well when considering that according to an estimate from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) released today, Internet advertising revenues surpassed $3 billion for the second consecutive quarter in Q4 of 2005, a 35 percent increase over the same period in 2004.  

Outsell estimates that the Internet is now used by 80 percent of advertisers, a broader adoption rate than is generally acknowledged, and projected a 90 percent adoption rate by 2008.

Last July only 13% of respondents felt they knew the meaning of the concept podcast, according to the  Pew Internet & American Life study.  A mere 7 months later, eMarketer projects podcasting advertising to reach $80 million this year and $300 million by 2010.

The audiece for podcasts is growing extremely rapidly especially  when you consider it “started” in September of 2004.  And with the audience’s attractive demographics and flexibility of this new “anywhere, anytime” channel — advertiser are hot to take advantage of this medium.  

Advertisers are looking at podcasting as a way to reach consumers that are difficult to reach with traditional media and indeed finding the right podcast can provide a compelling messaging environment for an advertiser’s brand.  And where there’s demand, there will be supply…two new podcasting ad networks — Kiptronic and Podtrac — officially launched in late January.

But advertisers are not the only one looking to jump on the band wagon.  PRWeb, a online release distribution platform, has introduced a press release podcasting service.  

From AdAge today, there’s a good article by Jonah Bloom that’s worth a read.

[Despite an overwhelming mass of evidence that their business models are fatally flawed and their service offerings out of step with many marketers’ demands, the biggest agencies have done remarkably little to substantially reinvent themselves. It doesn’t seem to matter how many of their clients shift projects or even full-scale brand assignments to smaller, nimbler, flatter structured, less-30-second centric agencies, the biggest agencies seem reluctant to really blow up their model.

That’s not to say there have been no moves at all. John Dooner’s McCann Erickson has made smart use of Worldgroup to offer a multidisciplinary approach to marketers’ problems; Andrew Robertson’s BBDO has shown willingness to make personnel changes and is evolving from a 30-second-obsessed agency into a flexible organizer of collaborating Omnicom shops; and Ogilvy has shifted to a single P&L to eliminate financial barriers to collaboration among its disciplinary units.

Layers of bureaucracy
But all the big ad agencies still have layers and layers of bureaucracy, rampant job-title inflation and hundreds of people whose chief role seems to be managing up. Their product has barely changed (you could count the genuinely big ideas from the last 12 months on one hand), and I’ve heard at least three separate first-hand reports of people within those organizations who’ve had good non-TV ideas for a client being told that they’d have to be turned into TV commercials before they could be pitched.

I’ve recently been rereading “Re-imagine!,” management guru Tom Peters’ brilliant look at the new business order, wrought in large part by the Internet and which, he says, requires every modern business to constantly destroy and reinvent itself to survive.

Fear incrementalism
He takes issue with organizations that tweak rather than reinvent: “MIT Media Lab boss Nicholas Negroponte said: ‘Incrementalism is innovation’s worst enemy.’ Sad fact: Big organizations, by their very nature, are addicted to incrementalism ... they seldom make the changes necessary to deal with a discontinuous environment. ... Most big enterprises that survive a challenge from an upstart do so as shadows of their former selves. Still alive. Still big. But no longer the pathfinders.”]

The Hurricanes in 2005 certainly took a massive toll in  many ways. And it certainly wasn’t the best year for insurance companies, but the insurance category was the biggest gainer in the top 15 categories of ad spenders in 2005, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus.  According to Nielsen Monitor-Plus, the category ad spending jumped 31.3 percent, Adweek reports.

Geico increased spending by 51.3 percent to $470.1 million, and Progressive’s spending jumped 45.3 percent to $354 million. Some of the increase in the category has been attributed to online opportunities which have created new opportunities for people to shop for insurance.  A new report reveals that auto insurance quotes submitted to online direct insurers increased by 23% in 2005 compared with the previous year, and actual policy purchases jumped by 29% during the same time.

The insurance category increase significantly outpaced the overall 2005 growth of 7.4 percent in ad spending to $125.5 billion. Ad spending in 2004 rose only 6.3 percent from the previous year, and spending in 2003 rose only 5.1 percent.

You pull into the parking lot of some fancy new restaurant.  You click an icon on your mobile phone and instantly have access to the restaurant’s menu, food and service ratings, photos, rants/raves, web pages and blog entries from others who’ve been there before you.  Maybe there’s even a special offer of some sort from the restaurant. 

To most of us this scenario still feels pretty futuristic — like it might be reality about the same time we all pilot hover crafts.  After all, seems like the majority of us over the age of 25 really just use our mobile phones for mainly…well, making phone calls.

But that instant-access, geographic-specific information, available through our mobiles, may be closer than we think. MVNO companies like Helio (which launches this spring) plan to cater to the spoil me (still living with mom & dad), see me (show offs) and feed me (high income young professional gadget collectors) segments and Helio is already talking about letting users tag their info with geocodes.  Something young user will probably grasp and foster quickly. 

My understanding of geocodes leads me to believe they’re like “tags” on steroids. If you don’t know about “tags” they are simply keywords or category labels that help people sort and organize information — made popular via sites like Flickr.

Once geocoding grabs hold, why couldn’t they link the geocode and all that info right to the phone number?  {Some company is probably already working on it.}  Think about what that could mean. You could be lounging on the couch.  You wouldn’t have to drive anywhere; or use the computer, or for that matter get up off your keister.  And pretty much everyone on the planet can operate a cell phone if all they have to do is punch in a phone number.  Wouldn’t that just be the ultimate in usability? 

It’s pretty clear to me that a phone isn’t just a phone anymore.  And it really hasn’t been for a while for those under 25.  My teenage kids don’t even use the word phone in connection with their cell phone. They call it their “mobile”.  And given the surprise bills I get for overages based on texting volume and surfing minutes, their use of it as a phone represents only a small percentage of their usage. 

On the flip side, my Mom thought her cell phone didn’t work when she first got it because it didn’t have a dial tone. 

Now if someone can figure a way to digitize me and send me through the ether to some warm beach in Fiji…..

Yahoo Search Marketing has informed advertisers that it has altered its trademark policy and will no longer allow competitor bids for keywords containing trademarks, starting March 1, 2006. To this point, as long as your competitive comparison was at least somewhat objective and informative, your ads would be approved. If your competitive comparison had false or misleading information, they would not be approved.  Competitive trademark bidding has been a bit of a gray area, but that’s now changed.

I wasn’t sure I could do the math (too many zeros for my desk calculator so I had to open Excel).  When I read that iTunes had reached the 1 billion mark of songs sold/downloaded, I wondered how long that would be if it were one long playlist.

If the average song is 3 minutes and there are 1,440 minutes in a day, 525,600 minutes in a year, the playlist could play for nearly 6 millennium. Now that’s a lot of music!  And just think about how many songs had to be downloaded every second during the past three years to reach that mark.  That math, I’m not even going to attempt.  

I only have about 3,000 minutes on my iPod and constantly am adding more. So, I’ll be interested to see how quickly they reach the 2 billion mark.  I’d bet a lunch it doesn’t take 3 more years.

T0: Louis Lips, Chief Executive, Faux Pas Corp.
FROM: Hubie Ware, Media Specialist, CYA Advisors Inc.
RE: On The Subject of Off The Record

Thank you for choosing CYA Advisors. We hope the following suggestions are helpful as you prepare for your interview with Jugular Journal.

First, we recommend you abandon your strategy of conducting the entire interview off the record. Not a good idea. It is highly unlikely the program’s producers will agree to this approach, plus it’s never advisable to go off the record with reporters. Consider the case of Kathleen Gingrich, the 68-year-old mother of then House speaker Newt Gingrich. She thought she was off the record back in the mid-‘90s when CBS co-anchor Connie Chung asked her what her son thought of First Lady Hillary Clinton. “Why don’t you just whisper it to me, just between you and me,” Chung cajoled. To which Mrs. Gingrich delivered her now famous sound bite “Bitch” which aired on every national news program in North America and overseas.

Another off the record comment ended the 39-year career Oklahoma University baseball coach last year after TV announcers reported his use of a racial slur while describing one of his star players. No cameras were present and no notes were taken, so the coach figured he was just having a friendly chat with the announcers, but there was nothing friendly about the news account that led to his resignation.

Just remember to narrow your focus, keep your answers positive and concise, and deliver them with passion using analogies and personal experience. And whatever you do, don’t ad lib. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin may have written his political obituary with his recent unscripted comment: “This city will be chocolate at the end of the day.” Unless you want your face ending up on a novelty tee-shirt, stay on message and on the record.

Follow these tips and you should be fine.

• Keep focused on the reporter.
• Don’t be defensive or argue with the reporter.
• Never say “No comment.”
• Restate key messages.
• If you start to make a mistake, stop and start over.
• If you can’t answer the question, say so.
• Answer the question the way you want it answered.

The Marlboro Man now qualifies for membership in the AARP. That’s a shocker. Not that advertising icons ever age. Who would guess that Aunt Jemima and the Michelin Man (aka Bibendum) are both centenarians.. And has the Jolly Green Giant really been watching over his valley since 1928?

You can love ‘em, or you can hate ‘em, but you can’t deny the impact these famous characters have had on generations of consumers, turning unknown brands into household names. Who ever heard of Aflac before the Duck, or Keebler before the Elves? When you hear “They’re Grrrreat!” or “Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz” who comes to mind?

Many icons enjoy rock star status commanding big bucks from collectors. Some have their own Web sites including Mr. Peanut (www.peanutpals.org,), Morris the cat (www.9lives.com/lounge.aspx) and Smokey Bear (www.smokeybear.com). And recently, ground was broken in Kansas City for a new 12,000-square-foot Advertising Icon Museum complete with a Walk of Fame. Look for a 2007 grand opening.

For every superstar, however, there are those icon wannabes who never made it to prime time. Elsie of Borden dairy products fame used to have three sidekicks named Mrs. Blossom, Bessie and Clara who quickly faded into obscurity. Can anyone recall Katy the Kangaroo, Newt the Gnu and Elmo the Elephant who once shared the spotlight with Tony the Tiger?

But the nice thing about advertising icons is even underachievers can succeed. Who else but an icon could build a 45-year career based entirely on receiving the same notice of rejection – “Sorry, Charlie”?

Are you freakin’ kidding me?  How about – Have a happy period. Ever?  I mean come on.  And then at the end of the TV spot the sanitary pad turns into a little lawn chair.  I find it kind of analogous to “What do you say we take this death thing and turn it into a party?”  There are just some things that are sacrosanct.

Now that’s not to say that we can’t be happy when we have our “period”.  But the period is not a happy thing.  It’s not happy when we feel unsanitary and messy – and we do.  It’s not happy when we have to mete out our bathroom trips to ensure that we don’t start to leak – which we all have.  And it, for sure, is not happy when we are experiencing those bone crushing cramps that make us double over and put us into a cold sweat.  Granted, not everyone gets those – but for those of us who do whoever created the “happy” campaign should start to run – now.

Inconveniences aside, it’s also not happy when you’re praying that this time you really will be pregnant – and you get your period.  And rest assured it’s not happy when you are pregnant – and you get your period.  Because sometimes that’s a very bad thing.  I suppose you could say that there’s a moment of happiness during those times when “the condom broke” and you finally get your period.  But I’m pretty sure it’s not the joy of experiencing the actual physical condition that has you doing cartwheels. 

So I have to ask – did these people do any market research?  Did they talk to any consumers?  I’m gonna have to say no.  Because during my lifetime I’ve talked to lot’s of women about their periods – and never have I heard anything remotely like “Have a happy period.”  Not ever!  And it is my educated guess that this campaign is doing more to piss women off than to intrigue them about the merits of the Always product line.  Now it is a form of brand recognition – but from my vantage point the call to action might as well suggest a product boycott.  Is that really helping?   

There are those women who think that the period is a beautiful and natural manifestation of our womanhood.  Well that’s just a load of crap!  Womenhood is beautiful – but the inconveniences are just that.  Do these Always people think that we are so easily lead that if they say a period is happy – we’ll believe it?  Show me some proof!  Yeah, I didn’t think so.

I might even have been guilty of launching into a sexist assumption that the campaign was concepted by a man – but I read it was a woman.  That just floored me.  I want to read that strategy brief!  I’m just shocked that she hasn’t been skewered by the press – who seem to be pussyfooting around this campaign for some reason that’s beyond me.  Because, frankly, I’d volunteer to light the bar-b-que! (Here’s someone else who skewered it…here)

So if we’re going with the assumption that if something is stated in print – it must be so I’d like to offer this thought.  The next time you overindulge on the food and wine “Have a happy bout of diahhrea.  Always.”