Hee-Haw Marketing

The DVR is Good for TV Advertising (rates)

2009-11-02T19:57:23-07:00

To hear the NY Times tell it, the "DVR, Once TV’s Mortal Foe, Helps Ratings.” Well no shit.

"The reason is not simply that more households own DVRs — 33 percent compared with 28 percent at this point in 2008 — helping some marginal shows become hits. It is also that more people seem content to sit through the commercials than networks once thought."

And they go on to say:

“Against almost every expectation, nearly half of all people watching delayed shows are still slouching on their couches watching messages about movies, cars and beer. According to Nielsen, 46 percent of viewers 18 to 49 years old for all four networks taken together are watching the commercials during playback, up slightly from last year.”

Well now I’ve heard almost everything. Nearly half the audience isn’t fast-forwarding through the commercials, and this is what success looks like.

You might also take a look at the Tivo numbers I posted earlier, too. Good indication that the more people like a show, the more likely they are to record it and watch later. Those also tend to be the shows with highest rates of commercial fast-forwarding.

I guess when you’re looking over at your shoulder at the boys and girls in the newspaper industry, you’ll take anything you can get.

More Stuff from Other Places

2009-11-01T20:34:53-07:00

Ad Avoidance Trivia

Ilya gives a fantastic rundown of the different ways we've tried to avoid ads.

Mobile web may be big. I dunno. Just guessing.

Some nice stats from the Opera browser. Combine that with data usage on the AT&T network. Get ready for some growing pains, peeps.

The New Era of the Network Service

"So-called “network services” like Facebook...and Twitter will soon dominate the web, rather than “information services” like Google and Yahoo."

Sean Parker's Web 2.0 Summit Presentation

The personality paradox

Jonah Lehrer points out the basics of the fundamental attribution error, which I think has lots of interesting insights into how branding works. We don't tend to think of personality traits like aggressive, courageous, generous, whatever - to be an issue of context. But of course, perception and reality don't always match. Also seems to jive with what the economist called the "halo effect," or the assumption that if someone is good at A, she'll also be good at b, c, and d.

Is Mexican Coca-Cola better?

"The company principally imports the Mexican version to appeal to immigrants who grew up with it and draw nostalgia from the packaging they remember. Online you’ll find Mexican Coke cultists offering tips about tracking down grocers who serve a primarily Latino clientele. Surely this is part of the fun — nobody wants to be a snob on behalf of a product that’s easy to obtain."

The History of Hacking meets the History of Social Media

Last but not least...

Bogusky gets out of the Ad Business

"Unless you’ve been living under a copy of Ogilvy on Advertising lately you’ve noticed with a combination of curiosity, and perhaps dread, that every day what we do becomes more like the movie and television business. For some of you the lines may have blurred between what you do and the publishing business. And if you are on the cutting edge you find yourself spending time harnessing games, industrial design, architecture and interactive apps to help build our clients’ businesses.

It’s no coincidence that we find ourselves spending more and more time in these disciplines. These are our sister professions. All of us sharing a common industry. Advertising, movies, music, television, publishing, architecture, industrial design and graphic design."

Wait...they're putting what in the sky?

2009-10-26T22:02:52-06:00

Apparently, given a couple earlier freakouts from random ambient advertising in big cities, we get to see staff emails like these that somewhat expose the absolute ridiculousness of the whole thing.

Subject: Skywriting Alert
This is a special message from the Downtown Emergency Response Team.
The ABC network is utilizing skywriting planes to create large red “V” patterns over major U.S. cities. ABC is organizing the promotional event to publicize a new alien invasion themed television series called “V”. It is reported that “V” patterns will be flown over cities such as New York and L.A. and the skywriting will be done at multiple times per day until the “V” series launches on 11/3/09 @ 8:00 PM. ABC has released a list of cities where the skywriting will take place, however the network has not identified specific locations where the skywriting will occur. October 27 - 12:00 p.m. Dallas, TX

photo via jesape

The Intelligence Class & Word-of-Mouth

2009-10-19T21:13:39-06:00

Another derogatory comment about the size of most social media efforts got me to thinking about the nature of influence. Particularly because for just a few bucks per thousand, I could make a whole lot more people sort of recognize my brand.

***

How do you know a person is intelligent?

Mostly, we equate intelligence in terms not simply of general knowledge so much as knowledge of the right kind of stuff. No to children’s books, but yes to obscure Greek mythology. No to short-hand texting ability, yes to spelling words most people couldn’t use in a sentence.

But I think it’s quite clear that relative to one another, most people aren’t strangely smart or strangely stupid. There are anomalies, but most of what we assume is intelligence is really a symptom of something else, maybe a natural desire to accumulate knowledge, or access to good schools, challenging parents, luck, whatever. So our version of intelligence has more to do with access to information than IQ scores.

And it’s these “intelligent” people who use that perception of smarts and access to gain influence. The more intelligence perceived, the more influence gained and the more access given. It’s the echo chamber of smarts that happens as we ask ourselves questions like...

What do we consider smart? (Reciting Shakespeare, yes, fixing carburetor, no) Do other people we define as smart consider this person smart? (smarts in TX just don’t equal smarts in NY) Does this person do things we think smart people would do? (reading the Economist, yes, collecting comic books, not so much) And finally, do these people have access to things we don’t? (whether that’s people or information)

And based on stuff like this, one person can have considerably more influence than that of another person.

And so it is with word of mouth, online or otherwise. What is important is not only reaching the same number of people as we can much more easily with reach media. More often than not, it just won’t happen. But what we can do is supply those people with the access, the information, and the kind of smarts that would make our constituents influential with the audiences that matter to us. And by doings these things, we can create or enhance an echo chamber of influence for ourselves, too.

Point being – a carburetor-fixing, comic book-collecting mechanic from Texas might not be able to sway a local election, but can become quite influential with access to the higher-ups at Marvel and a limited edition issue of Dark Avengers given the right audience.

And if anyone tells you that’s bullshit and your 10,000 earned don’t hold up to their 100,000 paid, just tell them they’re stupid. There’s an echo chamber for that, too.

Life Lessons of an Ad Man

2009-10-15T20:12:28-06:00

Brilliant TED talk from Rory Sutherland, one that may make ad men walk a little taller after watching.

From the TED Blog,

"He's here to speak about value, about value that you can't always see. In the world if advertising, Sutherland explains, they realize that many problems in life can be changed by tinkering with perception rather than reality. For example, when given the problem of making a train ride more pleasant, engineers come up with a solution to make it shorter, one that costs millions. He says, take not even half that budget and hire supermodels to walk the cars with Chateau Petrus. People will ask that you make the journey longer."

Only problem is that I'm not real sure he's really talking about advertising at all, but more so experiences that change perceptions. The train metaphor is great, but it discounts what the vast majority of real-life ad agencies would see as step 2, which would most often be a splashy ad buy touting how great it is to ride without traffic or how much work you could accomplish without worrying about the driving bit.

Either way, there aren't many left that can still capture the romanticism of the advertising world quite like that, and I'd hardly call Rory your run of the mill advertiser, so maybe I should just shut up and applaud.

photo via James "Busdriver" Scott