Product placement does not work

The latest 007 movie has over 20 product placements. Apparently, a recent Sylvester Stallone movie had over 100 product placements (more than one a minute). Companies spend a LOT of money (sometimes tens of millions of dollars!) to get their product into a movie. But does it work?

A recent report on AdAge says not only does it not work, it works against the brand. A brain scan of people watching a movie showed that at times, when a product appeared on the screen, it actually gets deleted from the brain.

Hey companies, tell you what, I've got a great service for you: just give one million usd, and I'll promise not to place it in a movie. I now have evidence my campaign will work better than yours!

Giant pinata a bust - big beachball better

Carnival Cruise Lines, which has a very catchy catch-phrase "Fun for all. All for Fun.", tried a new publicity stunt: they built the world's largest (I mean, Guinness Book of Records big) pinata, and filled it with 8000 pounds of candy. They were all set to bust it up with a wrecking ball for the thousands of onlookers, until the police came and halted it. Why? They were concerned how the crowd would react to all that candy. A successful publicity stunt for sure, but what a bummer of an ending!

Not to be totally turned off, they turned their attention to something softer - the world's biggest beach balls. This time, the police not only didn't stop them, rather they pulled out their cell phones and started taking pictures.

Kudos to Carnival Cruise Lines for advertising via fun!

(click to learn more about the advertising event)

Mass microtargeting

One take away from the 2008 US elections - talking to your consumers is powerful. The Recent media introspection confirms over and over that Obama won due to his "nearly flawless" media campaign. It is reported that he has a database of over 3 million voters, with whom he communicates directly, including an SMS or email right before his acceptance speech. Think: whenever he has a question or wants to take a poll or wants to push his opinion on the public - just send an email directly to every supporter. Cheap, fast, effective.

That's power. Power to the people, with the people, and for the President-elect. Read more.

Every name an ad

You've seen it before - people using login names that are actually ads. Names like SEOMaster, TaxPrepGuy, and JavaGuru - pretty easy to tell what they do and what they are trying to sell, and you might click on them just because of their name. It's not a name, it's an ad! Another take on this was the recent net meme to give your profile a middle name 'Hussein' - can you guess who they were voting for?

Recently there was an article in mediabistro about a coffee shop that had had it with freeloading students. Students would just hang out without buying anything, not even glancing at the menu, just to use the free wifi. The answer: change the name of your wifi, frequently, from merely the name of the shop to an ad, such as "OrderAnotherCoffeeAlready" and "HaveYouTriedTheCarrotCake" and even "Mmm,,,YummyMuffinsOnly1,99". As a consumer, I would be amused. I might even be tempted to buy something.

A name is just a name.... unless it's an ad!

More content and more ads

MTV and MySpace have penned a deal to allow copyrighted MTV videos to be posted royalty-free on MySpace. The catch: ads. According to an article in AdAge, The Palo Alto based company Auditude has a way of identifying MTV video material, and simply attaches an ad to it, such as an ad to purchase the DVD of the show being posted. No more lawsuits, even for posting entire episodes.

As long as the ads stay relevant, such as buying a DVD of the show in question, I think this is a great move for the industry. Expect to see this on more and more video sites.

Who needs advertising?

Zappos.com - on online shoe retailer - barely advertises yet has cornered a sizable chunk of their market. How? A blatant, unflinching respect for their customers.

Even more, they respect and value their employees, and in particular their employees' respect for their customers. To quote Creativity-online quoting a Zappos executive:

"We put as much energy in planning and training our employees as other companies do planning their media," says Brian Kalma, director of creative services/brand management. "That allows us to feel more comfortable having every single employee be a direct contact with the customer. Every person is an advertising vehicle; with thousands of phone calls a day, mutiplied by 365, those are a huge amount of touch points with our customers."

A great way to behave towards your employees and customers!

Ads and free speech

Do you believe in ads? Can they fix your faith? Can someone else advertise against your creed? Apparently it's a question.

I'm big on freedom of speech, and just as aware of the needs to curb it. However it's never easy to say who gets a say. The ad world is clearly not immune. Political ads are a frontrunner in line-walking between getting out a message and beating someone up.

Now the anti-religious world wants to advertise. According to Creativity-online there are those who want to post atheist messages on buses. And it's a legal question. Why? In the US, even the money has a faith-ad embedded in it. And what about Christmas? Has an ad right in its name. Should we ban the holiday, or change its name?

I'm not an atheist, but I can't see any reason to ban their ads. Can you?

HP's social marketing

Recently, HP CMO Mike Mendenhall said:

"All public touch points... now impact our brand, its reputation and its revenue. Brands are not defined today by campaigns but by the consumer ecosystems we nurture to support them."

According to AdAge, HP is the world's largest IT marketer, so what he says should carry significant weight.

Advertising as social storytelling

The paradigm of marketing as a "conversation with consumers" is way older than the internet. Many ads are designed to tell a story, however brief. If all goes well for the marketer, people respond favorably to the ad, and they get a chance to make a second or third episode. There is a feedback loop here, but it is slow and indirect, more a peeping-tom or sentiment-surfing than actual dialogue.

With the rise of social media comes an increased ability for marketers to really make advertising into an open-ended ongoing conversation with consumers. For example, as reported on Creativity-online.com:

"A great case in point is the recent EA spot for their Tiger Woods golf game. Someone had uploaded a video of Tiger walking on water inside the game, presenting it as an embarrassing glitch. EA and its agency (Wieden + Kennedy) looked at this video and decided to enter the conversation. They shot a live-action spot of Tiger actually walking on water and stated that it wasn't a glitch in the game, Tiger is just that good. Then they uploaded it as a response to the original video on YouTube. This is the kind of social interaction that earns you tons of respect in the digital world. That the video went viral to the tune of several million views and also made everyone aware there was a new version of EA's Tiger Woods golf game was almost a side effect."

It isn't the conversation that is viral, it is the awareness and sensitivity to consumers that is so infectous. So, how does a marketer make an ad campaign into a conversation campaign? The article on Creativity-online.com goes on to give a number of guidelines:

"1. Look at any marketing effort as the beginning of a conversation.
2. Closely monitor the conversation and be ready to respond to consumers.
3. Provide consumers with tools that help them carry on the conversation for you.
4. Leave room for consumers to interact. Make sure your creative universe is big enough that there are unexplored areas.
5. The conversation is over when the consumers say it is, not when the media plan (or the budget) says it is.
6. Listen and learn from the feedback loop."

I might disagree a bit with the wording in number 5. If you find you have a great story with consumer interest that wanes, why not fire it up again with a new episode? But other than that: spot on!

Bad Ad Contest

Look out Ogilvy!

The New Mexico Media Literacy Project is conducting its annual Bad Ad Contest. The goal of the contest is to heighten awareness and skills of teens in analyzing advertising and advertisers. Contest entries deconstruct an ad, in particular the use of persuasion, subtext and stereotyping, and explaining both what’s wrong with the ad, as well as what could have been done better. See last year’s contest winners.

They are also conducting a parallel Counter Ad Contest. Entries provide commentary by modifying or remaking an ad in a more positive or revealing way. They have some examples, like this one:

I like the emphasis on attention to detail, analysis, and creativity. It's a great way to plant the seeds for better ads and better ad consumers.

Don’t Buy It – Advertising smarts for kids

PBS – Thank you. I have loved your shows since . Now I applaud you for your web site.

The other day I saw my kids playing on the Don’t Buy It subsite of PBSKids.org. Cool stuff. The activities are all about being wise about ads and advertising. Even the banner ads teach about banner ads!

For instance, they give example recipes for food ads, such as the Perfect Burger that includes 100 hamburger buns, 2 cases of lettuce, and superglue, along with pictures of each step.

I also liked the What’s in the shopping bag? activity. There’s a picture of the ad, and you have to figure out what’s really included in the box (hint: no, the Rocket Launcher doesn’t really shoot).

Here’s one more from them:

Can you find the ad in the following picture?

(hint – it cost $40,000,000)

Thumbs up to PBS Kids!

Twitter Ads?

Twitter has a delicious problem on its hand. It needs money, well, at least the investors want money. The problem is that they aren't making any yet. But it's so easy to taste so many ways they could. Their current challenge is to choose one (or so).

What concerns me is the impact their model could have on the consumers. For instance, Jason Calacanis (CEO of Mahalo), posted a few ideas. Two of them, at least, had to do with ads. He opines that people wouldn't mind getting a sponsored tweet every so often. While his final advice to Twitter is spot-on ("An absolute idiot with 10-20M users can make a ton of money. So, get to tens of millions of users and forget about money."), I was left wondering about the "intermittent ad" proposal in general.

Imagine getting a sponsored message every so often in your:

• Your Twitter feed
• Your email
• Your phone calls or answering service
• Your mail

How often (e.g. every 200 messages, once a day, ...) would you be willing to get a sponsored ad if it kept the service free? In what ways would you be willing to get more ads in exchange for free premium services?

VRM - It's about the consumer experience

Recently I learned of Doc Searls' ProjectVRM (note: VRM = "Vendor Relationship Management"), which in effect is a continuation of his Cluetrain Manifesto. While the name VRM starts with the Vendor, I see it more as starting with the consumer. Indeed, as they say on their main page:

In a larger sense, VRM immodestly intends to improve markets and their mechanisms by equipping customers to be independent leaders and not just captive followers in their relationships with vendors and other parties on the supply side of the marketplace. [my emphasis]

In short, they want to empower the consumer, which should power the consumer-vendor relationship, which should make everybody happier. The emphasis on the consumer is evident in their (draft) principles, half of which explicitly emphasize improving the consumer's experience with the vendor. To be fair, the other half emphasize the vendor, and Keith Hopper's post explains why VRM is good for businesses, too, but the main emphasis of the project is around the consumer's experience.

Doc claims that ProjectVRM is just a 'development project'. Well, I for one am eager to see it developed!

Passion by the people of the people for the people

On the same day, I read an article about YouTube's increasing advertising arsenal, and watched Michael Wesch's talk about YouTube to the Library of Congress. What struck me most was the contrast of motivations between the boob-tube and YouTube. TV was made by advertisers to sell products - the program was just filler, and the choice of programs was heavily influenced by the advertisers. In contrast, YouTube programming is made by the people (aka consumer), with absolutely no control in the hands of brands.

Indeed, advertising has come to YouTube, but it is still the passion of the people, about the people, and for the people that really gives YouTube the edge.

Reebok Respects Runners

It's no surprise I think advertisers should respect their ad consumers. Forrester has been saying this for some time, in fact. As they report in "Reebok's 'Run Easy' Creates A Movement, Not A Campaign":

Involve your audience in your media plan. You've heard Forrester talk already about "ceding control of your brand to your customer." This example shows where Reebok actually ceded control of what media and what messages they used to the people who were participating in their movement. Reebok's users created valuable marketing tools like running maps, testimonials, images of them and their friends running easy. And Reebok users determined what media Reebok should use. Reebok bought on and offline properties based on how and where their users RAN, not just how they consumed media.

So empowering your ad consumers makes your ad more powerful. We knew, yes?

Humane marketing

Stumbled onto Joseph Jaffe today, from the Jaffe Juice blog and Crayon. He gives a very nice diatribe against treating customers as anything but human. As he says "Every single customer that reaches out to us deserves a response." Watch it here (9 mins).