Friday, October 06, 2006

Inviting, not interupting

Nissan’s ad people get it:

“We’re looking at how people consume media, not how we think they should consume media,” said Jan Thompson, vice president for marketing at Nissan North America in Gardena, Calif., part of Nissan Motor of Japan. “We’re inviting them, not interrupting them.” [...]

To be sure, Ms. Thompson said, “there is a trade-off” in concentrating ads in the new media because it can take more time and effort to reach the intended audience and more coordination is required to keep track of all the moving parts in such campaigns.

But “there’s better engagement than you can get with traditional, linear television,” she added, “and we can measure impressions, interaction rates and view-throughs” to determine whether the new media elements are working.

Ford too:

[T]he Ford Motor Company is sponsoring a vlog, or video blog, to be created by Amanda Congdon, formerly of the popular rocketboom.com Web site, as she drives across the country in a hybrid Escape sport utility.

Monday, August 14, 2006

Starwood on Aloft Island

CNet:

Starwood Hotels & Resorts is launching its new Aloft Hotel in the virtual land of Second Life in September, months before the chain of hotels opens in real life. The brick-and-mortar version of the hotel, which caters to active, urban 30- to 50-year-olds, is set to roll out the red carpet sometime in 2008. The folks at Starwood are hoping the hotel attracts a lively bunch of avatars who like to mingle in the lobby and give feedback about the hotel. In this way, Second Life will help guide the earthbound hotel’s operations.

Details here.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

I love the ads on Salon!!!

I’m a big fan of Salon, both for the journalism, which is top notch, AND the business model. Subscribe to Salon for $35 and you get Salon plus print subscription to The Week, The New York Review of Books and Wired. There are ad subsidized and monthly options too.

But I haven’t subscribed. I love the ads. I am the biggest ad-avoider you can imagine, but I actually honestly enjoy and sometmies watch and re-watch Salon ads. The photo is from a Visa ad that struck me today.

Here an article from last year in Wired on Salon’s ad model. Here a podcast with Moira Gunn interviewing Salon Editor-in-Chief Joan Walsh.

Saturday, July 08, 2006

Multiply. Please.

While TiVo-scanning through commercials Doug hit the stop button, backed up, and watched - twice - then exclaimed, ”I love this commercial:”

It’s called “Multiply,” so that should take any guesswork out of what’s going on. Also note the multicolored door panels. Classic. You can also go to VW’s site and "breed" Rabbits in a bizarre middle-school science fair project kind of way.

Doug’s not the only one smitten with the Rabbit ad. BrianofPJ in the Pearl Jam message pit:

woohoo!!!!

when i saw the commercial i was so excited and happy!

maybe because i remember my dad having an old one and that’s the car he tried to teach me to drive a stick with.

think i might look into getting one...for around $14000 i might get two!!!

Photos of the ad shoot are here. They’ve got a microsite to go along with the launch, Gypsy Cab Project, that I don’t find as successful. But then, I’m not the target demographic.

MEMO TO AD INDUSTRY EXECS: Stop complaining that we’re skipping your lousy ads; try attraction not coercion and give us ads we want! Crispin Porter + Bogusky has certainly done that here.

Monday, June 26, 2006

On the ad elephant’s charge

Jeff Jarvis:

I’m seeing a lot of avoidance of the elephant that isn’t quite in the room yet but is banging at the door:

Advertising is the next big industry to suffer huge upheaval thanks to the internet. They may think they’re already there, but they’re not, not by a long shot. In fact, it is the ad industry that is holding up the progress of other industries - newspapers, TV, radio, cable - that are already getting tromped on by that elephant. Advertisers can get away with moving slowly - for now - because they are the ones with the money. Funny how that works. But this won’t last for long, as one client and then one agency discovers that the lazy, traditional, one-stop-shopping of TV upfront and the big-media lunch circuit is inefficient, wasteful, untargeted, irrelevant, and ultimately damned irritating to your customers. READ ON

Friday, June 16, 2006

JWT buys up Huff Post adspace

Great move:

JWT, the oldest advertising agency in the United States, has purchased all the ad space on The Huffington Post home page for one week, starting tomorrow. The Web site will showcase nine of JWT’s best television commercials with links, so that visitors can send the spots via e-mail or instant message.

JWT is hoping that the year-old Huffington Post can deliver that elusive phenomenon: a viral marketing sensation, in which consumers spread marketing messages to each other over the Internet.

The agency also wants to show that it is hip and modern enough to compete in the nontraditional category that has obsessed the advertising industry.

At The Huffington Post, the agency has found an experienced partner in Jonah Peretti, a founding partner of the Web site, who is overseeing the technical aspects of the JWT project.

Mr. Peretti’s name has been tied to viral media since 2001, when he traded e-mail barbs with Nike after the shoemaker refused to let Mr. Peretti order a pair of customized Nike iD sneakers emblazoned with the word “sweatshop.” Much to Nike’s chagrin, the e-mail exchange quickly spread over the Internet, and is considered an early example of how viral media can work.

Now Mr. Peretti and The Huffington Post are hoping to make a handful of previously run commercials from JWT alluring enough that visitors will not only click and watch the spots, but will also e-mail them to others.

Yes, yes, yes! Advertisers must try attraction and abandon coercion! They’ll find that there are ads we want.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Not your father’s razor commercial

A friend sent the link today with the subject line, “Excellent for Father’s Day, I hope you enjoy.” I did. It’s everything good advertising should be.

The NYTimes:

RAZOR’S EDGY—Aimed squarely at the Maxim demographic—that is, guys in their early 20’s who still wear baseball caps to parties—a new video Web spot from Philips Norelco shows just how much further corporate marketers are willing to go online than they are on TV… The spokesman never says a dirty word out loud, but as he describes where the Bodygroom can be used, his voice is bleeped, and images of carrots and peaches appear.

Ian Schafer, president, Deep Focus:

If Tribal DDB’s Norelco Shave Everywhere site wasn’t tremendously “viral,” what a ing letdown it would have been. The product itself seems to be custom-made for legions of -conscious men, while the site reaches out and grabs the of whomever the sheer mention of s elicits a chuckle. I received a link to the site from no fewer than five people within a week of its launch, and I personally know two people that purchased the product as a result. The fact that people know about this product without any (as-of-yet) mainstream advertising is a testament to the campaign-- and the (who knew?) need for a product like this in the marketplace. One of my favorite things about the site is that they could have stopped with a video introduction to the product, but no-- they filled the site with things like music videos, taking the jokes too far (in a good way), creating even more viral potential. Rumor has it, even MTV requested to air the music vid

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Advertisers: try attraction, not coercion!

I don’t get it, what are advertisers thinking? I dabbled in advertising so have some small awareness of the dynamic and how it works. Capturing viewers when they are in ”avoidance mode” is just plain stupid, a waste of time if you ask me.  Annoyed viewers are going to buy your product???

I thought the goal was to attract adherents?

Now the way to do that is to be creative, end clutter, leverage your fan base, and, most significantly, give us the ads we want when we want them.  I have no problem with - in fact, I advocate - making the advertising deal explicit. The problem for the content industry is that we may well find the customer base doesn’t believe the value of that content is quite what the industry believes.

Maybe there should be less of it.

We hear over and over the fallacy that they’re just giving us what we want but it looks to me like we want something different. After all, we’re flocking to YouTube. My well-founded fear is that it is precisely the content companies who are claiming to give us what we want who aim to kill it.

We didn’t ask for hundreds of channels that we don’t watch. We want to watch what we want when we want it and I’m quite confident - as our burgeoning technology-driven entertainment budgets attest - that we are willing to pay for it. The problem is a staid established content industry that wants to (feels entitled to!) make money on what it’s already done rather than coming up with anything genuinely innovative.

Me, I’m looking forward to the first iProgam.

Ted Turner invented cable networks when he put TBS on satellite; HBO invented pay cable when it became the first non-terrestrial broadcast TV network; someone will invent individual series syndication online and become the first non-telecast program. The technology is already in place; my hope is that this time around the content industry won’t kill it first.

Monday, November 28, 2005

Ads I want

Remember fast forward ads? Bad idea. David DeSocio, OMD’s U.S. director of strategic marketing, said he was trying to “involve the consumer even when they are in avoidance mode.”

This idea - ads when I want them - I love:

TiVo Inc. is partnering with several big ad firms to offer its users a system that lets them search for commercials centered around a specific topic. Expected to launch next spring, the feature comes as Madison Avenue is contemplating a number of ways to reach consumers who use technology to avoid traditional advertising.

TiVo is working to develop the product with three media-buying operations—Interpublic Group of Cos.’ Interpublic Media, Omnicom Group Inc.’s OMD [hopefully DeSocio’s “retired"] and Publicis Groupe SA’s Starcom MediaVest Group—along with independent Dallas ad agency Richards Group and Comcast Corp.’s Comcast Spotlight ad-sales division.  [...]

TiVo users will be able to set up a profile of products on their television screens by clicking on categories such as automotive or travel or typing in keywords such as “BMW” or “cruises.” On a regular basis, TiVo will then download relevant commercials to TiVo recorders over the Internet or, for those users who don’t have broadband, send the video via traditional broadcast signals. The commercials will appear on-screen in a folder next to the list of television shows TiVo users record. [...]

TiVo’s pioneering digital video recorder, or DVR, is much beloved by consumers for its ability to easily record and pause live television shows. But it has sent Madison Avenue and broadcasters into a tizzy by allowing viewers to skip traditional commercials.

Recently, TiVo, of Alviso, Calif., has come up with a pitch for advertisers: Use the TiVo DVR itself to send new forms of interactive advertisements. Yet a big question remains: If viewers use DVRs in part to avoid advertising, will they use the devices to watch more of it? With DVR penetration expected to rise and consumers increasingly able to watch TV programs when they choose, this conundrum is one Madison Avenue has been trying to solve.

I have no problem with advertising; I have problems with advertising clutter and ads with no relevance interrupting me when I’m watching a program and so not interested in being interrupted. This addresses every one of those issues.

When I want to buy something, I want to know all about it. Give me an ad with links to more information and I’m there! HECK, I’LL EVEN WATCH SOME BECAUSE THEY’RE SLICK, WELL-PRODUCED FUN.

You’ll recall I like the Salon advertising model. I don’t mind watching an ad to read an article. The ad comes before, so does not interrupt my reading. And allows me to clickthrough for more info. Salon’s ads are honestly the only ads I click on and I have great recall. The last one I watched was for the Chevy HHR, how’s that?

Give me a folder full of ads and when I want to look at them - and, hey, coincidentally when I’m most receptive to their message - I’m there. 

Hat tip Thomas Hawk. Om Malik has more. Also note that this is my first TiVo post to use the real logo, rather than the TiVo Deathwatch logo.