Brand Central Station

From The Hidden Persuader blog.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Advertising, Print, Art Direction, Graphic Design, Automotive Advertising, Toyota

Colin McKay – a.k.a. the Canuckflack – is at it again with a pithy and relevant post about TiVo’s new ad search capability which is expected to break this Spring.

This is big news, folks. According to news sources, the new feature will allow users:

“…to receive advertisements based on their interests, after creating their user profile on the TiVo set-top box. The technology is aimed at giving advertisers a more targeted and interested pool of potential buyers while attempting to steer users away from skipping all ads that flicker across their television tube.”

This is an interesting turn, especially given the announcement a couple of weeks ago by the major networks concerning the penetration of DVR’s like TiVo and the resulting increase in audience viewership. The ploy from the networks was clearly an attempt to justify higher ratings (Nielson also announced they would start counting TiVo and other recording devices in their ratings numbers) and, subsequently, higher rates.

The major concerns expressed by advertisers and agencies, of course, were questions about the number of DVR users (specifically) who skipped commercial messages entirely or, at the very least, zipped through them in fast forward. Network officials offered a lame excuse about people actually stopping and watching those commercials that interested them – but the answer wasn’t fully accepted.

Now, with this announcement, TiVo’s intentions appear to be clear. TiVo now has a route to circumvent the programmers altogether. By providing this technology to advertisers, TiVo will allow viewers to watch only the content that interests them (television shows, movies, informational videos or advertisements) and will work directly with the marketers to pay for it.

Of course advertisers who are starting to get conditioned to granular metrics via the web are going to love this and push for it in other media channels as well. Why not pay a higher cost per thousand impressions if you know everyone who sees your commercial actually wanted to see it? It’s a beautiful thing.

There’s just one problem.

No one appears to be thinking about how all that entertainment content gets paid for. By cutting out the broadcaster, TiVo may be cutting the throat of the horse it road in on. If ad revenues dry up for broadcasters as DVR penetration increases (and it will increase), there won’t be money to produce or promote new shows and, more importantly, there won’t be money available to broadcast the content for TiVo to edit and re-purpose.

This one will be interesting to watch develop.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Advertising, Television Advertising, Television Programming, TiVo, DVR’s, Media Planning, Nielson Ratings, CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, WB, UPN

It’s been just a few days since we added the Dim Bulb blog to our blogroll and we’ve enjoyed the posts we’ve read so far. But this piece on the plight of airlines today takes a good look at where they’re falling down on their brand promises and asks a vitally important question:

Should airlines even advertise? And if they do, what should they advertise?

Take the argument to the next step … is what advertising the airlines do (some $200+ million a year in image ads alone) actually hurting them by building unrealistic expectations in customers?

Be sure to take the time to read the comments that flow from this post. Whether you have an airline account or not, the thought process alone should give you a reason to sit back and re-evaluate your advertising rationale to make sure you’re really doing the right thing.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Advertising, Brand, Branding, Airlines, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, American Airlines, Northwest Airlines, Delta Airlines, Jet Blue Airlines

The BrandNoise blog pointed us to this story on the CNN web site today. As it turns out, Augusta, Maine is setting the retail trend this holiday season by featuring live models in a downtown lingerie shop.

If my memory serves me correctly, I think this has been done before.

Oh yeah, different product – same tactic.

I guess some retailers will do whatever it takes to make their fourth quarter numbers.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Retail Marketing, Retail Display, Augusta, Lingerie, Holiday Shopping, Window Shopping

In a time where marketing budgets seem to keep getting thinner and thinner, there is positive news – for those companies that provide non-traditional options to clients, that is. Joe Jaffe and the folks at the Church of The Customer blog lay out the evidence to support their claim that “marketing budgets commited to customer evangelism and word-of-mouth efforts are on a big upswing.”

You can read more about it in this post.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Non-Traditional Marketing, Customer Evangelism, Word-Of-Mouth Advertising, Marketing Management, Budgeting, Church of the Customer

Media Orchard blog’s Scott Baradell provides a comprehensive picture on the value of a corporate video. Corporate videos are so often the bane of a copywriter or PR pro’s existence because they typically cost a lot of money to produce, involve a lot of people to complete successfully and, all too often, don’t really do anything to move the business or build the brand.

Ah, vanity, you have so many names.

There are plenty of good reasons to produce a corporate video, though, and Scott’s piece does a nice job of combining key points from a few different authorities into a single, managable article – great stuff for any account manager to know in order to have a worthwhile conversation with a client.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, PR, Public Relations, Sales Collateral, Video, Video Production, Branding, Corporate Communications, Corporate Video, Media Orchard

We all make mistakes, or at least need to offer some qualifications on comments made in earlier blog posts, so let me get a few out of the way. Ironically, these were all brought to my attention in the past 36 hours:

I incorrectly identified Scott Baradell who compiles the Media Orchard blog as “Steve.” My bad. Sorry.

My buddy, Peter Shankman, pointed out that my story on public ridicule as a valid PR tactic involved a PR firm in Birmingham, England – not Birmingham, Alabama as previously stated.

All that carping about Steve Rubel and a few of his “big agency” buddies getting together to try and set the rules for blogging has either paid off big or managed to get me in waaay over my head. I have a password and invitation to the dance now, so I guess it’s time to share my insights with everyone who wants to listen. Actually, it’s an honor and a responsibilty I don’t take lightly. If you have some thoughts you think need to be heard, let me know. In the meantime, check out the progress on this project currently hosted on the New PR Wiki.

And finally, I want to tip my hat to Skip Lineberg, one of the marketing geniuses at Maple Creative (sponsors of the Marketing Genius blog, of course) for doing a little more digging on our national, economic forecasts for the remainder of 2005 and 2006. As background, on the 23rd, I mentioned that there was some economic good news and some economic news that wasn’t so good. The two posts were right next to each other to provide an interesting contrast.

Skip investigated and sent the following reply to me yesterday:

Thanks for your comment on our blog regarding the seeming disparity between the McKinsey survey and the one from Constant Contact. Things do seem puzzling at first. Your question sparked my curiousity, which prompted me to dive deeply into the data.

Here are a few considerations and explanations, which serve to resolve the apparent conflict in the findings:

1- The McKinsey survey is global, while the CC survey is U.S. only. In the McKinsey survey, the U.S. executives were more confident and optimistic than their global peers.

2- The Constant Contact survey is an estimator of the upcoming retail holiday season; it does nothing to measure confidence beyond December 2005 … nothing to look into 2006. Short term sales outlook, versus longer-term confidence measurement.

3- Examining the Constant Contact survey … beyond the first question about the retail holiday sales season, roughly two thirds of the participants expressed concern about the effects of rising energy prices on their business. To me, that does connote a wavering confidence. The majority (55%) also reported “no end of year bonus” this year for employees, which is not a sign of confidence.

4 – And finally — raw, human optimism. It is entirely possible, though illogical, that we think, feel and believe our own company will do well (i.e., succeed) while the rest of the world’s economy is in decline. That’s the determination upon which success in small business is built!

Great stuff, good insights and comments worth re-printing here to share with all of you.

Keep the cards and letters comin’ folks!

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Blogs, Blogging, Much Ado About Marketing, Mike Bawden

All comments (c) 2005, Brand Central Station – all rights reserved. For more information about BCS, please visit our website.

From Frederik Samuel’s Advertising/Design Goodness blog. What a great demonstration for a wide angle lense! Very cool.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Advertising, Magazine Advertising, Creative Direction, Art Direction, Graphic Design, Nikon

Sullivan Higdon & Sink, based in Kansas City, landed in this years Communications Arts Design Annual for their work with Shatto Milk Company. According to our friends at the AdPulp blog, SH&S played off their client’s concern for the environment, interest in nutrition and high quality and created packaging that is not only more environmentally friendly but collectable.

According to AdPulp:

“It’s interesting to note that Shatto can’t currently meet the demand for their product in the K.C. market. Also, customers have started to collect the dairy’s bottles, throwing a bit of a monkeywrech in the “reduce, reuse, recycle” argument, but a good sign, nevertheless.”

Our hats off to SH&S for a job well done!

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Packaging, Milk, Dairy Products, FMCG, Shatto

John Jantsch (who writes the Duct Tape Marketing blog) presents a “little press release trick” in this post on the Duct Tape Marketing site. The idea is really quite simple: send copies of press releases to your clients and prospects.

In fact, John suggests you don’t even have to send them to the media – just make sure something crosses your clients’ and prospects’ desks every three or four weeks and they’ll start to think they’re seeing you in press (more often than you realy are).

I can hear the eyerolls from here. Stop it.

There’s actually something to this. John doesn’t really explain it very well, so let me try:

1) Your customers and prospects are, in fact, a highly targeted public – quite possibly the most highly targeted public you want to reach. Why not contact them directly? Direct mail is, after all, a media channel in itself.

2) News releases, although they don’t look slick and sexy, do warrant the immediate attention of the recipient for at least as long as it takes to read the lead.

3) Overly puffy or sales-oriented leads will turn people off, so even if this release isn’t going to the media, it needs to be written as if it were in order to maintain the sense of credibility.

4) The basic rules of media release distribution still hold true – even if you’re not going to send your releases to the media. Make sure it’s going to the right person inside the enterprise. You know that a release sent to the wrong reporter or editor is likely to get tossed, the same holds true if you send your release to the wrong purchasing agent, supervisor or C-level executive.

5) As great as this idea may seem, it’s imperative you have a follow-up plan in place to leverage the “media exposure” such a direct marketing program creates with your clients and prospects.

Again, another thought-provoking post from John Jantsch.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, PR, Public Relations, Direct Marketing, Sales Strategy, Business Development

It’s just one page long and it was created as part of the Up Your Budget blog promotion on the Budget Rent-A-Car site, but blogger BL Ochman still points to this page as a concise and accurate view of the kind of reference tool needed to familiarize thousands of citizens to the blogosphere.

I suspect BL knows what she’s talking about.

The Budget blog promotion generated thousands of participants every day. In fact, BL has told me that the Up Your Budget Promotion has generated as many as 10,000 unique visitors an hour!

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Public Relations, PR, Blog, Blogging, Up-Your-Budget Promotion, Budget Rent-A-Car, BL Ochman

Peter Shankman, the author of the PR Differently blog provides this brief analysis of this story telling a tale of woe for a small PR firm in Birmingham, England that can’t seem to get paid for its work.

The interesting part to all of this … the firm appears to have resorted to public humiliation (albeit veiled humiliation) as part of its collection tactic. Or is it just frustration and revenge? It’s hard to tell from here.

Then again, how many of us haven’t wanted to take an unruly supplier or client to task in the media.

Seems like more risk that merited by the reward, to me.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Public Relations, PR, Management, Debt Collection, PR Differently