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to April
March 31, 2004
Product placement on television programming is being challenged (again) by the FTC and
FCC, and advertisers have responded with a brief of their own. Here’s the article,
from Ad Age (QwikFIND ID: AAP50C):
Advertising
copywriter blog link
I disagree with the “marketer’s rights” argument. And, at the same time, I believe that consumers are smarter and more-discriminating than both the advertisers and the regulators seem to think. I remember when every car on Kojak was a Buick, or at least a GM product, and every car on The Andy Griffith Show and The FBI (“starring Efrem Zimbalist Jr.”) was a Ford product. Even as a little kid, that struck me as fake.
Furthermore, there’s nothing especially “radical” about disclosing sponsorships. The closing credits of those TV shows consistently named companies that provided ongoing production support (“Vehicles provided by Ford Motor Company,” “Suits by Botany 500,” and so on). However, I don’t think that the Ford Mustang that played a significant role in the opening sequence of The Mary Tyler Moore Show was credited, nor the Sunbeam Tiger (or, later, the VW Karmann Ghia) in the opening of Get Smart.
Anyway, if all the products placed in today’s television shows were credited, the closing credits would roll for several minutes, which means even less time for programming. And that makes me wonder: when will the balance between creative content and corporate sponsorship tip past the half-way point? When that happens, will people continue to watch? And, will sharing sponsorship through traditional advertising and product placement continue to make sense?
The future of advertising, at least short-term, goes beyond product placement or media
buying. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: smart advertisers would do
well to transform themselves from content sponsors, to content providers.
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March 30, 2004
Here in California, Arnold Schwarzenegger is our Governor. But, he’s also an
international celebrity and a global brand. That creates issues in advertising because
advertising often reflects popular culture. Here’s the article, from the Los
Angeles Times via Yahoo News:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
First, a spectacularly effective ad doesn’t merely reflect popular
culture, it influences it. Second, and this is the point here, with
Schwarzenegger and many other celebrities, there is a growing gray area in the triangle
between political parody (Constitutionally protected and defensible), commercial spoofing
(no Constitutional protection but often defensible), and trademark violation (illegal and
almost never defensible). Beyond its examination of these issues, I think this article is
worth reading for its examples of specific ads and products that Schwarzenegger’s
legal team has challenged, its sketches of print and television advertising Schwarzenegger
made in Japan, and its brief review of other key celebrity trademark cases.
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March 29, 2004
I’ll start with a side note today, about Intel’s new chip naming strategy, from
the San Francisco Chronicle via my hometown San Diego Union-Tribune:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
Naming a product after its speed or any other metric was always a limited strategy. In the early days of the automobile, for instance, there were lots of cars with model names like “60” or “100,” indicating their claimed top speeds in miles per hour. As the auto industry matured, and as products grew more stable and customers grew more sophisticated, other characteristics rose in importance and were reflected in model names. Intel chips have been name-branded since the first Pentium. What Intel is doing, is series-branding, with an approach almost identical to BMW’s current naming matrix. Nothing new here.
No, the main thing that caught my eye in today’s Union-Tribune, was this
local article about wireless service, and how phone number portability has not produced
the volume of carrier switching anticipated:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
There are three key marketing points here. First, inertia in consumer behavior is hard
to overcome. Second, right before number portability went into effect, all the wireless
carriers advertised and promoted heavily in an massive effort to lock customers into one-
or two-year contracts. That was smart. But the really smart play, was made by Verizon,
which apparently worked its back end to make sure that phone number transfers would go as
smoothly as possible. Verizon gained some 1.5 million customers last quarter, more than
twice the number gained by Cingular and nearly 12 times the number gained by AT&T over
the same period. Perhaps that’s because some of Verizon’s growth came at the
expense of its competitors. And that’s the third and most-important
marketing point: how strong an effect a “non-marketing” business process
can have on sales.
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March 26, 2004
This is a follow-up to my December 9, 2003 entry. A court in Shanghai ordered Lacoste, the
clothing brand, to stop using its crocodile logo in parts of China, and to pay a token one
dollar in damages to Crocodile International, also a clothing brand. Here’s the
story, from the BBC:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
Both Crocodile International and Lacoste claimed first rights to the crocodile trademark in China. The trigger was the extension into China of Lacoste-branded cosmetics. However, the key corporate issue, and it’s one increasingly faced by companies competing in a global economy, is weak branding. Here’s what I said back in December:
While the language of iconography is largely international, it carries with it potentially crippling limitations. After all, how many defensibly unique ways are there to show a specific object, whether it be a crocodile, or an apple, or a wheel, or a smile? That’s why branding goes deeper than mere logo design; it must communicate true, relevant differentiators that are uniquely owned by the brand.
Your brand isn’t a physical mark you slap onto your products; it’s a whole
set of emotional responses that you own. At its core, branding isn’t visual,
it’s visceral.
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March 25, 2004
Yeah, it’s a press release from Microsoft. But, it’s also one of the more
significant studies showing the interconnections between online and offline advertising,
branding, and sales in the packaged goods category. Here’s the release, fresh off the
PR Newswire:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
The traditional marketing mix for packaged goods relied heavily on traditional media
for both trade and consumer branding and promotion. Now, there’s ample evidence (some
might say proof) that online advertising helps drive offline sales. This is something that
companies in other sectors have known all along (many service providers, for instance),
but for it to be validated in a fast-paced, high-turnover arena like consumer packaged
goods is good news, even if somewhat expected. One note about ROI: right now, the cost of
online advertising is relatively low, hence the higher cost-efficiency numbers. As
advertising rates for online media stabilize upwards, look for that advantage to shrink.
Online media will become just another component of the new traditional marketing mix.
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March 24, 2004
Speaking of performance art, here’s a good article about art cars from the Orlando
(FL) Sentinel. It lacks only photographs of the cars to make it great:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
Owning an art car, now that’s individualized branding. Here in Southern
California, there are many of them around, as you’d expect in a region with a strong
car culture. You see them with fair regularity, on the freeways and in parking lots, and
each one draws your attention. Art cars are at once ubiquitous and unique.
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March 23, 2004
Ahh, the pitch. Some agencies turn what ought to be a business presentation into a high
level of performance art. Here’s the article, from the UK-based Media Week:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
Participating in pitch theater is fun for the agency staff, and can help build morale.
And yes, theatrical pitches can work if they’re researched, relevant, and right
on-target, and if the fit feels good between advertiser and ad agency. But then, a
researched, relevant, right on-target pitch with a good client-agency fit will likely be
successful even without the theatrics. Dressing up a presentation with a dog-and-pony show
is usually an inefficient allocation of agency resources. I think the real appeal to these
things, lies in the fact that all advertising people are performance artists. I’ve
said it before: advertising is the ultimate performance art. However, I also think that
the skills that go into creating that art serve the client best when they’re deployed
in the marketplace, not the boardroom.
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March 19, 2004
The marketing mix for a brand may – or may not – include advertising. Witness,
for example, the revival of Pabst Blue Ribbon in the highly competitive beer category,
with no change in the marketing. Here’s the article, from my hometown San Diego (CA) Union-Tribune:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
Market niches grow and market niches shrink, and brands rise and fall with them. It is
no less brilliant to stick with a marketing strategy and rise with a cyclical trend, than
to re-brand or re-position to catch a new trend. It is no more brilliant, either.
Both actions incur costs: the latter in media, creative, and brand equity, and the former
in downcycle market share.
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March 17, 2004
Is the advertising industry heading for another boutique renaissance? This article, from
the Toronto (Canada) Globe and Mail, looks at the increasing number of small,
creative shops landing major advertising accounts:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
Like many things, it’s a cycle. Remember when the list of hot boutique agencies
included names like Borders, Perrin & Norrander, Weiden & Kennedy, Chiat/Day, The
Martin Agency, McKinney, Silver & Rockett, and Fallon McElligott Rice? Then, those
agencies grew, and their ideas became folded into the advertising establishment. And so it
goes. The exciting thing, is this: new hot agencies supplant older hot agencies not
generally because the older shops have lost their creative fires. It’s that the new
shops start new creative fires. And the world of advertising creative opens up a
little wider, and gets a little hotter.
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March 16, 2004
I found this yesterday on the BBC website, but yesterday’s entry ran long so I held
it over for today. It’s about the rise of TV-style advertising on the Internet:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
I’ve been involved in copywriting projects similar to this, using similar
technology. Here’s the rub: the technology must eventually render something
beyond “TV-style” advertising to be viable long-term. The big opportunity lies
in providing valuable, relevant, individually focused content that happens to be supported
by an advertiser which benefits from the click-through. Making the transition from mere
advertiser to content provider is the step most companies don’t take. Ultimately,
that will be to their loss.
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March 15, 2004
In the aftermath of a general election in Spain, here’s an article from the BBC and
something of a follow-up to my Friday (March 12) entry:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
Advertising was effectively nullified as a force in this campaign. It doesn’t matter whether you believe that the unexpected Socialist party victory was the result of a people rising up in righteous anger, or of people panicking into changing their government. What is important here, is that a terrorist group – possibly al-Qaeda – effectively altered the course of a major Western election by using terrorist tactics, a horrible reality for democracy itself.
Okay now, back to my regularly scheduled rants limited to advertising and marketing.
The ability to simultaneously deliver television commercials aimed at separate market
segments is now available in the top ten cable markets. Here’s the article from Ad
Age (QwikFIND ID AAP45P):
Advertising
copywriter blog link
The article says that resistance to customized advertising has come from the creative
quarter. To me, the problem with mass communication, from a creative standpoint, has
always been the mass. The potential for breakthrough communication increases
with demographic focus. The closer you get to one-on-one communication, the more
interesting and innovative and effective your advertising can be. (As an aside, I think
the problem some “creatives” have lies in the fact that they would have to
create ads targeted at real people, and not at ad award judges, but there you go.) The
key, creatively, is to move beyond mere cut-and-paste, retail-oriented customization.
Personally, I think this is exciting stuff.
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March 12, 2004
The U.S. presidential election has already turned nasty on both sides, with the Bush and
Kerry campaigns rolling out negative attack ads on television and in print. In doing so,
they are “fighting for the middle,” but they also risk alienating the American
public. Here’s an analysis, from AFP via Yahoo News:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
Okay, if you think American democracy is going to Hell in a handbasket, open your eyes to what’s going on in the rest of the world. In Russia, the general election will be this Sunday, and Russian Federation president Vladimir Putin faces only token opposition. He also recently replaced his entire cabinet, and one opposition candidate vanished for a month, emerging about a week ago to withdraw from the race with little comment. In Spain yesterday, just three days before a general election, a coordinated series of bomb attacks in Madrid left hundreds of commuters dead, and thousands more injured. The bombings were believed to be politically motivated. In South Korea today, one month before the general election, president Roh Moo-Hyun was impeached, his party broken and locked out of government proceedings. Currently, his supporters and detractors are fighting in the parliament, the press, the courts, and the streets. And, in Iraq, people are struggling to establish a democracy in a nation where the entire social infrastructure is either primitive and spotty, war-torn and damaged, or brand-new and untested.
And, here in America, we have political attack advertising. Well, God Bless
America.
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March 11, 2004
A brief look at brand rationalization, from businesstoday via Zawya.com:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
It’s a good read, although I disagree with some of it. Within a brand portfolio,
the purpose of a marginal brand may be defensive; it may exist to shield a core brand (and
also to serve as early warning about changes in consumer behavior). If you liquidate it,
you eliminate a key component of the overall corporate strategy.
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March 10, 2004
Thanks to fellow copywriter Ken Johnson for this tip, an article in the New York Times
about the rise of gay and lesbian corporate hucksters:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
It seems that gays are the cool-minority-du-jour again (or, put another way, the latest
in a long line of stereotypes exploited to show that an advertiser is edgy and
up-to-date). It’s sort of a relief to me, personally, that the public eye seems to be
off the Young Asian Male Or Female With Cool Glasses. The last time gays and lesbians were
featured in advertising (and other pop culture), was in the 1980s, in similar ways and
with similar self-congratulatory fanfare on the parts of their corporate employers. Does
anyone else remember the Tony Randall sitcom Love, Sidney, in, oh, 1981 or so? It
was the first major-network prime-time tv show centered around a gay character. It lasted
a couple years, right around the time retailer Ikea aired a commercial that showed two men
buying a couch together. So, the 20-year trend cycle still holds, itself an interesting
thing.
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March 9, 2004
This is way cool. It’s a one-volume database of advertisers, advertising agencies,
and media, and it’s totally free. Download a PDF of “FactPack 2004”
courtesy the fine folks at Ad Age:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
Among the data, there were a few surprises. For instance, you might well expect General
Motors to be a top U.S. advertiser through 2003, but would you expect ad spending to the
tune of $10 million per day? I’m more pleased than surprised that the number-one
advertising medium was direct mail, with more than $46 billion spent. And, to those
advertisers who believe that the youth market is where it’s at, a heads-up: the
number-one magazine in the U.S., by circulation, is AARP The Magazine with nearly
twice the readership of second-place Reader’s Digest. Each table, taken by
itself, is mere data-in-a-vacuum; the real value comes from spending time with the booklet
as a whole and spotting clusters and trends.
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March 8, 2004
Happy Monday. I picked up my local paper, and saw this article about the rise of
unscrupulous and unlicensed “health insurance” companies preying on, among
others, freelance writers. Here’s the article, for the third day in a row from my own
San Diego (CA) Union-Tribune:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
I realize that this is less about advertising and more about freelancing. However, I
pay more than $900 a month for health insurance for me and my family (four people total).
I get mailers, spam emails, and junk faxes all the time offering me coverage at
substantially lower “group rates,” all from companies with realistic-sounding
brand names and a plausible third-party connection to my business or industry. I’ve
remained with my two major-name carriers out of no small fear of change, and this article
supports my sticking by my long-established relationships. However, the way things are
going, there’ll soon be one surefire way to judge the authenticity of a health plan:
if it’s affordable, it’s a hoax.
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March 6, 2004
A little bit of weekend catch-up from yesterday, from my own hometown San Diego (CA) Union-Tribune.
This first article discusses a major shift in retail advertising strategy, from print to
broadcast and from traditional retail-oriented ads to brand advertising:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
Probably the best model in retail advertising, is Target’s double-barreled approach. Retail ads in with the Sunday circulars, focusing on products and pricing, sale and promotional items, and attracting store traffic. Image advertising on television, focusing on creating a hip, friendly image and making the store a desirable place to shop. The key here, is double-barreled. You can’t get there by reducing sales-oriented ads and increasing branding-oriented ads, any more than the reverse has (not) worked. It only works when both barrels are firing.
And, as long as I’m here, there’s Martha Stewart, who was found guilty of
insider trading, lying about it, and obstructing a Federal investigation. Here’s the
article, again from my local Union-Tribune:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
The question of what happens to her brand is now in the hands of an entirely
different – and more capricious – jury: the American public.
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March 5, 2004
Does sex sell? Maybe not, especially if it’s commoditized. This article, from The
Age (Australia) looks at risque French retail advertising, and the flaccid sales
results achieved by it:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
Advertising must forge an emotional connection between the seller and the buyer.
Period. And, when sex is used as just another design element, it loses its emotional
power. It becomes just another shock visual. And, rather unshockingly, just another
ineffective ad.
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March 4, 2004
This is something of a follow-up to my February 10 entry about wacky sandwich shop
advertising tactics. This article, from the Mobile Register (AL) looks at
franchisee discontent and confusion over the Quizno’s television commercials:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
The article itself contains a share of the weird, including the franchisee whose day
job is county coroner. And, the advertising is not aimed at the franchisees, so their
confusion over the quirky, youth-oriented commercials is perhaps understandable. Are the
ads brilliant, or a bust? Are they branding, or are they mere buzz? Only the marketplace
knows for sure. The key unanswered question in this retail environment: how are sales
doing?
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March 3, 2004
In its new ad campaign, Molson beer playfully denies that its “Saskatchewan
barley” is an aphrodisiac. Here’s the press release, picked up from Business
Wire:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
I like the concept, even though the whimsical focus on ingredients in beer advertising
is nothing new. Does anyone remember the unseen “Artesians” whose water
“makes it Olympia Beer?” Still, the approach feels fresh because it hasn’t
been used lately.
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March 2, 2004
More about car marketing, in an article from Crain’s Detroit Business (MI)
focusing on the automotive industry’s belated discovery of urban hip-hop:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
These people have missed the point. There’s a huge disparity between the values embodied in hip-hop and the values embodied in some of these brands. Urban hip-hop may be many things, including attention-getting, trendy, and youthful, but it’s also neither sophisticated nor upscale. What may be right for Pontiac may not be right for Cadillac, Mercedes-Benz, or Volvo. And those brands will suffer for the disparity.
In addition, attempting to cobble together a brand with pop culture carries a huge risk: you can’t control the message. From a branding and marketing perspective, that risk may outweigh any short-term reward. “Risk,” by the way, is not the right word, as it implies a measured possibility of a positive outcome. That pop culture will move on is not a probability, it’s an inevitability. Hip-hop is not here to stay; indeed, one might argue the opposite – that its adoption by 50-year-old corporate managers is a sign of its decline.
In the end, the lesson that will be learned – painfully, expensively, repeatedly
– is that there’s a big difference between creating a buzz and creating (or
supporting) a brand.
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March 1, 2004
What does chick-lit and car advertising have in common? Ford. Here’s the article,
from BBC News:
Advertising
copywriter blog link
The Ford Fiesta (that’s the Focus here in the U.S.) will now feature “prominently” in several stories by British romance novelist Carole Matthews, including a novel and short stories for women’s magazines and the Ford website. Both the car and the writing is aimed at 28- to 35-year-old women.
Of course, product placement and literature is hardly new. One of the earlier automotive tie-ins I can think of, is the fictional Hirondel driven by Simon Templar (aka “The Saint”) in the books by Leslie Charteris, although I’m sure there are others. When The Saint was turned into a television series in the 1960s, the Hirondel, being fictional, turned into a white Volvo P1800, which was real and contemporary and to this day makes me want one. Then, a Jaguar XJ-S, a Jensen Interceptor, and, in the movie, a Volvo coupe again in a move that felt forced to me. The more-famous James Bond cars have a certain cachet, carried over from the Aston Martin written into Goldfinger in 1959 by Ian Fleming as a DB Mk III (before that, Bond drove Bentleys) and placed in the movie as the contemporary DB5. Finally, a prosaic example: the 3/4-ton pick-up truck driven across the country by John Steinbeck in Travels With Charley. Although the manufacturer was never identified, there were enough details for a car buff to figure out that it had to be a 1960 GMC. The truck itself was given a name, Rocinante, under which it became practically a third character.
One thing revealed by this recitation, besides my own personal geekness, is that in the
past, character-driven car tie-ins were aimed at men. The Ford deal may be the first
literary connection between cars and women. File that under the category “it’s
about time.”
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Backwards in time to February 2004
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Phone and fax: (619) 465-6100
John Kuraoka, freelance advertising copywriter
6877 Barker Way
San Diego, California
92119-1301