Brand Central Station

Okay, so this first statement may make some of you click past this blog entry and vow never to return again …

… I love cats.

It’s not a “sissy” thing, I love cats. My family’s cat, Tommy, is the undisputed best cat in the world. He’s big (14 pounds), fuzzy, yellow and loves pastrami. He’s no Garfield, but he does look an awful lot like that computer-animated cat that lost his head in the unapproved Internet ad produced by the Ford team at O&M (Ogilvy & Mather).

So, while some people applaud the effort as “edgy” creative work or stealthy viral advertising, there are a number of us who are absolutely turned off. “I’ll probably never buy another Ford,” said one (now former) customer who wrote to me in response to a post on this subject to the Experiential Marketing Forum billboard to which I belong.

Ford was noticeably disturbed by it, too. “We find this unauthorized ad totally unacceptable and reprehensible and deplore the fact that it has been unofficially issued,” Ford spokesman Oscar Suris said.

Well, bully for them. There are skeptics among us who think Ford and O&M probably view any kind of buzz about this ad as a positive. You’ll find a great evaluation on the success/failure of various Internet-oriented, viral marketing efforts at the ClickZ News website.

I, on the other hand, am interested in what makes some of us think this ad is a hilarious attempt at pushing the edge of the envelope and others of us (myself included) to be disgusted. What happened to our poor, orange friend is not all that different than the fate of dozens of cartoon cats for decades. It’s a veritable rogue’s gallery: Sylvester, Tom, Snagglepuss (not sure if he was a cat or Paul Lynde in drag, actually) and more recently Scratchy of “Itchy & Scratchy” fame.

I suppose the difference is in the art form used. The more realistic our depiction of those characters, the more realistic the violence perpetrated against them. The Ford cat’s body dropping over to the side sans head and then falling with a thud to the ground is just too realistic – and not funny at all. It’s just flat-out gory. Scratchy getting blown to bits by a hand grenade or Tom getting his tongue yanked out and tied around a trash can or wall stud on a construction site is drop dead silliness.

Are we being alarmist here? I don’t think so, really. The problem underlying violence perpetrated against overly realistic animatrons is the same one we’re trying to deal with when it comes to restricting video game access for our kids. It makes realistic violence an option worth considering, and for those without the presence of mind to think first, the results can be devastating.

Don’t believe me? Just last week a twenty something was arrested for punting a little dog about thirty-five yards through the air and into a traffic-congested street. He and his friends thought it was hilarious. The neighbors didn’t and had his butt busted by the cops.

It can’t come as much of a surprise, though. What do many guys his age (and older) call those little, yippy dogs?

“Kickin’ dogs.” Think about it.

We’re the guys that make the messages intended to influence buying and social behaviors to the advantage of our clients. We’re also the guys who may – intentionally or not – influence the behavior of our audience towards other people, things or issues.

It’s a responsibility we have to deal with whether we want to or not. Let’s treat it with some respect.

Later.

1010 WINS: “Headless Cat” Ad Backfires on Ford

Okay, first let me say that I don’t know the consultants interviewed in this story – but this one from DM News reads just like every other story written about the agency search process for the past year. In short, clients are looking closer at agency costs and profit margins but still want stellar thinking and outstanding service.

Sounds great in theory. But reality is living in an altogether different time zone.

The problem with most client agency relationships is not “honesty” or “integrity” of one party (agencies) when it comes to billing practices. Don’t get me started on how it’s none of a client’s business how much profit an agency makes on a project or their account.

The problem is that most agencies – and, in fact, agency search consultants – are horrible when it comes to setting expectations and clearly defining the value of the service provided by an agency. Clients are left to guess for themselves what can be expected from their agency.

And when they set the “bar” for agencies to clear, they don’t set it too high or too low. In many cases, they can’t remember where they set the damn bar in the first place.

Where agency search consultants can be the most valuable to both parties is in helping to identify the client’s needs and requirements vis a vis service, communications, creativity, strategy, etc. and then finding agencies that can meet or exceed those requirements at as low a price as possible.

But then that’s work. And most agency search consultants either haven’t really been in an agency management position that puts them in direct contact with the realities of project execution so they would know or understand what it takes to get the job done, or they can’t remember what it was like when they were there.

Into this mess walks the only people in the client’s company with any sense of focus or purpose: the bean counters.

What did we all learn in Marketing 101? When all things are equal, the only relevant point of distinction is price.

Right?

Well, procurement departments are doing their job – and the result is a number being done on a number of ad agencies and PR firms that face their ire once they think they’ve won over the marketing folks. It’s classic, passive-aggressive negotiations. But hey, if it works once, companies are encouraged to use it again and again as a negotiating ploy.

Before long we’ll be selling ads by the bucket-load and PR by the pound.

Again, agency search consultants could help put an end to this madness. But it’s unlikely they will because they’re as stupified as the agencies when it comes to explaining the difference between a $500 concept and a $50,000 concept to a purchasing manager. The consultant demurs to the purchasing people – after all, many search consultants make their money by colluding with purchasing to find ways to niggle down agencies by attacking their overhead structure.

What happens next is a classic conundrum where the agency is stretched on revenues and a performance expectation has been set that is either poorly defined or agreed to prior to final compensation negotiations. In many cases, the result is a total collapse of the deal. The “smooth ride” given to the agency without the benefit of any lubricant whatsoever.

You can certainly make the case that agencies have done this to themselves. Lazy business practices, cultures that indulge the conspicuously extravagant and out-and-out cheating have yielded a very low professional opinion of marketing agencies and their management. We all know agency people who lie about what they’ve done for clients, how much they bill, whether their business is up or down.

What’s it all mean? Who knows. My bet is that as an industry, ours is a psychoanalyst’s’ dream. And if that’s the case. I’m going back to bed.

Later.

DMNews.com | News | Article

Let me get this straight … Google is going to offer a free e-mail service with, like, twenty times the online storage space offered by Hotmail and other free services as well as some other, unspecified features? And for that, they want to be able to insert ads they deem “appropriate” for me based on their review of the content of my mail.

People are all in a twist over this because of an “implied” right to privacy in e-mail. Without going into the technological argument as to why this concept is wrong, wrong, wrong – let’s just say that if you’re sending e-mail through a public webmail server and that e-mail bounces around the planet a couple of times before it finds its way to your desktop, you’re a freakin’ idiot if you think anything about that message is private.

You’ll just have to trust me on this. Then again, if you’d trust your most private thoughts to a very public e-mail, why wouldn’t you trust me?

But let’s look at the marketing issues involved here. Privacy groups are up in arms because Google is actually telling us they’ll scan our e-mail to make sure the ad messages we get are more likely to be about things in which we have an interest. I suppose the alternative is what folks like Hotmail and others do which is include ads and hotlinks ad nauseum promoting their own service, discounted diplomas or all other types of advertisers who can barely afford the cost of SPAM.

Look, once you get over this whole “Google will read my mail” thing, what they’ve proposed here is a way to serve relevant ads to customers and that is, in my opinion, a critical next step if online marketing is ever going to reach the next step. Ad content has to be relevant in order for it to matter. And online ad content, by the very nature of the medium itself, has to deal with this challenge in highly quantifiable terms every minute of every day.

But the challenge isn’t stopping at online ads, folks. For those of us in the marketing business, we should be spending extra time trying to discern what the latest Yankalovich study is telling us about how consumers are starting to get fed up with traditional advertising messages. One-way, us-to-you messages are not working like they used to.

The consumer is finding his voice. Don’t be surprised if he tells you to “get lost.”

And for companies to succeed in the world starting today, they have to find a way to listen. If you’re pissed at the Gmail proposal, I think the best you can make the argument that Google is trying to listen to conversations before rudely interrupting. To me, it’s kind of like an online version of the nerdy kid in the room straining to listen to a conversation in order to find out how he can get in on the conversation.

I suppose as long as the kid has something relevant to say when he finally speaks, that’s okay. But that’s not usually the case. They usually come in with a Battlestar Gallactica take or the latest dish on D&D and promptly get deleted from the conversation.

If the nerds at Google don’t know how to listen discretely, interject in a relevant way and keep the conversation going once they’ve butted in, consumers will vote with their feet and leave the party.

It’s a lesson marketers are learning the hard way in every medium. Online, once again, is just a step or two ahead of the rest.

Later.

Will Gmail Read Your Mail?

On demand programming looks like the future of television and long-form, interactive ads look like the future of television advertising. And that’s probably good news for both parties in the marketing transaction.

This article in Television Week caught my eye because it reinforces something I’ve been talking about for the past few years: interactive television (the latest step towards the convergence of television and online) will work because it will finally move television beyond its role as an awareness medium into a more productive role as a discreet customer development medium.

Well, it is “interactive” after all. Duh.

Don’t dismiss this as just the rantings of another techno-geek. I barely qualify in that regard. Instead, consider the impact of the dual convergence of technology and content. What’s really been hanging up the development of truly interactive media have been bandwidth issues and utilization of the technology by people who would actually pay for it.

We all knew bandwidth would just be a matter of time. The pipe is getting larger and will continue to do so. But the utilization issue was the big question.

Thank goodness TiVO was able to hang on for the past four years and remain a constant issue for advertisers and programmers. Without it, no one would start looking for creative solutions to counter the threats posed by the technology (time shifting programming and clicking through commercial breaks).

So what were the creative solutions? Better advertising content designed to take advantage of the technology and engage the viewer rather than count on a passive audience on the other side of the television screen. In the 1950′s people would sit around and watch the box in amazement – broadcast television was a significant technology in itself and a hell of a lot more fun to watch than radio.

By the late 1960′s, television technology was truly available for the masses and the introduction of color helped keep audiences growing and television use become more pervasive. The 1970′s saw the start of programmatic developments (thank you Aaron Spelling and Gary Marshall) and the emergence of cable. But by the end of the 1990′s US audiences had started to erode.

The easy culprit to blame was Al Gore’s brainchild: The Internet. But in reality, the problem was deeper than that. As consumers the American public did not stand still even though television, as a medium, had. TiVO and DVD technology came onto the scene (truly emerged) in the late 1990′s and I think everyone was surprised how quickly the technologies (and what they represented actually meant) were adopted.

Now, at the beginning of this first decade of the 21st century, are we looking at a new boom in television viewing? I don’t think so. Household penetration is as deep as it can get (I think) and there are now social movements afoot to reduce television viewership.

So the emphasis has to be put on the “quality” of the viewing experience – something that hasn’t really been addressed in almost fifty years. We have to see the television experience fundamentally change to a more respectful interaction between viewer and broadcaster. And that’s what this article indicates is finally happening.

Imagine the benefits of marketing only to an audience that is really interested in what you have to say? Early returns from interactive television and on-demand advertising show response rates double that of the best direct mail efforts. Wow.

It won’t be cheap, but it will be effective. And the reduction of wasted effort is good news for society in general (I’m for anything that will reduce clutter and inappropriate messaging to unsuspecting or non-discriminating audiences like children). But more on that later, for now I’ll just say that I’m keeping my eye on these tests and for applications that can relate to smaller advertisers and those companies who operate on Main Street rather than Madison Avenue.

Later.

TelevisionWeek — Advertising News from Television and New Media: “� Copyright 2004 by Crain Communications “

Here’s a piece someone tried to sneak into the media on a Friday evening with the hope that it would elude most news editors over the weekend and become “non-news” by the following Monday. Haha! They weren’t counting on the good old BCS Blog, though, and so now I’m here to expose the story of the century.

Ok, not the century. Or the decade. Or the year.

Not even the story of the day. But it caught my attention and I’ll tell you why. (Of course I will, that’s the purpose of a blog, isn’t it?)

A bunch of real estate investors from New York are working on purchasing the Sears Tower in Chicago from MetLife – a very nice company who currently owns a building with their name on it in the Big Apple. The purchase of the Sears Tower by a bunch of out of towners isn’t news, though. That’s been going on for just over a decade once Sears decided to move out to the suburbs and into an office building without so many flights of stairs.

What is news, however, is that after years of discussion and consideration, the new owners are expected to pursue naming rights as a potential source of revenue to offset the purchase price of the tower, some $840 million. The cost for the naming rights? As much as $10 million a year.

Huh?

Now I’m no real estate mogul (I proved that early on in my career), but it seems to me that these guys are estimating the value of the name on the building to be worth approximately 5% of the value of their purchase. (NOTE: I did some high-level math to figure out approximately what they would pay on a $840 million mortgage over a set period of time, blah, blah, blah – until my eyes glazed over.)

I think you’d have to be dealing with some major self-esteem issues to justify spending ten mil to re-name the Sears Tower after you or your company or your pet poodle or whatever. After all, couldn’t you make a bolder, stronger, more high impact statement about yourself or your brand with $10 million a year some other way?

That got me thinking … are there any brands for whom the purchase of the naming rights to the Sears Tower might make sense? There was only one I could think of …

Viagra.

If you have a suggestion for who should purchase the naming rights to the Sears Tower, let me know. E-mail me at: mbawden@brandcentralstation.com

Later.

Chicagobusiness.com

There’s been a lot of talk recently about magazines violating the “church/state divide” that commonly keeps the editorial department apart from the sales team. But as well researched and written as AdAge’s John Fine’s article is, it’s still missing a major point – one with historical precedent, I might add.

The subject at hand is whether or not magazines should yield some of their editorial independence to advertisers – providing additional promotional support to big spenders by including them in stories, featuring their products in illustrative photographs, etc. This goes beyond mentioning the name of a product used by the subject of a story as part of the narrative – what’s being proposed here is actually making the brand name and product a significant part of the story.

Those in the publishing world who are concerned about this trend keep talking about the “division of church and state” when talking about the two distinct realms of authority in the publishing business. And while I certainly don’t disagree with their concerns (more on that in a moment), I’m somewhat dismayed with their continued use of this somewhat inappropriate analogy.

The historian in me comes out. It was bound to happen, I suppose.

While the separation of church and state and the freedom of the press are both related to the First Amendment, I don’t think it is appropriate for the media to co-opt the former for the latter. The church/state separation is not specified in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. In fact, the concept of a separation between church and state was discussed in some detail in correspondence from Thomas Jefferson during his term as the third President of the United States. The actual wording in the First Amendment says that the government will not abridge a person’s right to worship in a manner of their own choosing.

But let’s give journalists who write on advertising, PR and the media the benefit of the doubt and say they never had to bone up on church/state issues in order to get their J-degrees, shall we. Instead, let’s look at the history of American journalism to understand that what’s being proposed here is actually a concept that is centuries old and has been a problem in this country since the institution of a free press.

In fact, during the time of the founding of our country (around the time of the adoption of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights), it was the practice of the day for politicians to hire journalists to write spurious stories about their opponents. Political “brands” were built on the back of highly inflammatory stories that were highly suspect. The only exception to this practice was George Washington – but more on that some other day (’cause that’s pure history bordering on hero worship and has little to do with marketing).

This practice continued in one form or another through the time of the US Civil War until the early part of the twentieth century. The result was that editorial content was always viewed as leaning one direction or another and people of like political persuasions usually subscribed to the same media. Ironic, isn’t it, that the concept of editorial independence from sales – a concept now given institutional status as a tradition (a la the church/state division) – is really a 20th Century convention that has been around for only the past few generations.

But that’s long enough for everyone in the industry to know it as the only way. And therein lies the rub.

If journalists and publishers want to fight against this trend to blend product placements and editorial, they need to use some appropriate historical allusions rather than a tired church/state cliche that is inappropriate (at best) and inflammatory (at worst). By all means they should look to the history of US media to make their point – don’t get me wrong – they’re just not doing their research.

If I were fighting this fight (and I suspect I will get into it at one point or another), I’d raise issues related to the “value” of editorial independence when it comes to building the brand equities of one magazine or another. Some magazine brands (e.g. Lucky) are catalogs with a magazine cover. Readers know what they’re getting when they pick it up. It’s an infomercial on paper – not my kind of thing, but hey, I don’t watch the QVC Channel either. Other magazine brands (e.g. Time, Newsweek) are news magazines with reputations built on editorial guts and objectivity – albeit with a political bent one direction or another.

I am convinced that consumers resent being manipulated. And for brands built on objectivity (or at least partial objectivity), selling product placements inside a news or feature story is a violation of trust and can’t be seen as anything other than manipulation. It may be short-term money for the media, but it’s a huge risk for the brand. Maybe even terminal.

So what should marketers do to deal with this? I don’t think it’s fair for marketers to demand editorial inclusion in stories as an alternate form of media placements (even if those placements are given away as “added value” for a media buy). Marketers should gain media placements the right way – by making news and being relevant.

It’s called public relations.

Later.

MARKETERS PRESS FOR PRODUCT PLACEMENT IN MAGAZINE TEXT