Which entities would have a really tough time attracting positive attention right now? AIG, yes. GM, no question. Bernie Madoff, no doubt.
Added to the list are two little words that have to got to shake any agency to its core: Mexican tourism.
Yes vacationers, remember Mexico? That was the place to which thousands of you were headed before the swine flu outbreak… and the resulting fears have weighed heavily on Mexico’s economy.
The United Nations World Tourism Organization says the country boasts one of the largest tourism businesses in the world, welcoming more than 20 million tourists a year. It’s the only country in Latin America on the list of top 25 most popular vacation destinations, and tourism is the third largest contributor to the economy. 70% of all visitors come from the United States.
But that was before the cooties came.
President Calderon plans to spend $92 million on new advertising and promotion to bring tourists back. With t-shirts boasting “I went to Mexico and all I got was the swine flu” in circulation, he understandably feels he’s got to do something.
There’s no real point to this post. I think I just wanted to express a certain kinship and sympathy for a brand that feels it must include a medical update, the phrase “keep the people safe” and a quote from the dean of the Harvard School of Public Health in its new television ad.
Oh, well now I’m definitely in the mood for a Cancun vacation! Que es muy terrible.
I have no idea if they’ll sell even one tampon, but P&G’s Tampax is the stealth sponsor of a series of viral videos that tell the story of a 16-year-old boy who wakes up with - uh - “girl parts.” And at least from an art point of view… they’re good. Click HERE if you do not see the ad below.
Leo Burnett created the campaign at Zack16.com. Its big link to the brand thus far is when our hero, Zack, gets his first period in French class and sneaks into the girl’s bathroom looking for a Tampax vending machine.
P&G calls it “a learning lab out on the net” that’s “not very heavily branded at all.” Hmm. And so far the videos aren’t a huge hit, with about 10,000 views in the past week on YouTube and elsewhere.
I really wanted to dislike this campaign and - if I were a P&G stockholder - I probably would. I also wonder if the best way to pitch tampons to young women is with stories about young men baking brownies, but what do I know? I hope it sells something.
In the meantime, I’m enjoying the work of a good copywriter and have started following Zack on Twitter at @ZackJohnson16. He appears to be trying to figure out how to manage menstruating while at soccer camp.
Note: the “hovers like a UFO” comment is from the Day 3 video. Really - these are pretty humorous.
In January 2009, I started a new feature called “Tone Deaf Ad of the Week.” Since every financial services firm out there felt like it should advertise but had little to no idea what to say, there was a vast selection.
The first ad I picked on came from Bessemer Trust boasting the enormous headline, “We invest our money right alongside yours...” First off, my portfolio is in the tank and you’ve kicked off an ad talking about yourself. More importantly, hadn’t the gruesome Fall/Winter of 2008 proven that idiots and jerks may in fact invest their own money unwisely and take themselves down right along with you? Next!
Next came yesterday, in fact, with a new full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal. The headline? “Right now, you have two choices, sink or swim.” Why yes, it’s about me, the investor, thank you. And the text, while too long, is more thoughtful - more mindful of what’s occurred in the last several months. The company still insists on that “we invest our money right alongside yours” thing but the ad is a solid player.
So hats off to Bessemer for having the most improved, formerly tone dead ad of the week. Keep it up!
Each year, the Financial Communications Society (FCS) recognizes firms in various categories for excellence in financial services advertising, collateral and (now) digital. You can read the press release announcing this year’s winners HERE.
There are two reasons I wanted to write a quick post on this event:
(1) FCS named two of my faves as Best In Show. The first is American Express, which was named Best In Show - Corporate Image advertising for its Martin Scorcese-Tina Fey “Timeshare” (my label) ad. The post I wrote about this ad is HERE. The second is E*Trade which was selected Best In Show - Consumer Retail for its “Baby” campaign - and you know how much I love this campaign. I first wrote after its premiere at the 2008 SuperBowl, then again this past January when the second round of ads came out (”I wanna punch the economy in the face“). And E*Trade has kept it rolling with two more greats, Singing Baby and Golf.
(2) It’s a walk down memory lane. 2009 is the 15th year FCS has given its Portfolio Awards. 1995 was the very first year - and my team won an award for our ChaseDirect launch campaign. ChaseDirect was the U.S.’ first national direct bank (even before Bank One’s Wingspan, which many remember), and we won that night. It was a business that we all felt passionately about and my team from Chase and Wells Rich Greene were there to celebrate.
Monday May 18th 2009, 7:53 pm
Filed under: Twitter
I just feel like I need to mark the occasion: I got my 500th follower on Twitter today!
That means that 500 people have elected to see everything I tweet on their home page, ever day. Day after day. All the time. Who are these people??
Actually I know who they are, and anyone can see for him/herself at www.twitter.com/stephfierman. It’s an eclectic group of digital, business, marketing, PR, advertising, social media, non-profit and strategy folks… and I thank every one.
And I’m learning more and more about how Twitter works every day, too. If you want someone to follow you, for example, start retweeting their tweets until they notice. They’ll check you out, decide they’re interested in what you have to say and voilà! your favorite ad agency or magazine decides to follow you.
I’ve mentioned him before, but Kent Huffman is doing an incredible job on Twitter, transforming simple but great ideas into an ever-widening community that’s good for him and everyone else. He started with the most popular CMOs on Twitter and has now created a list of the top marketing authors. He gives a shout-out to everyone on these lists, they pick up followers, positive karma comes back to Kent and on it goes. Brilliant.
There are also new automatic tools that are supposed to help you with Twitter arriving every day. Some are helpful, some are not. One that I tested this weekend puts supposedly like-minding people onto your “Followers” list automatically. One of these new follower’s business pages involved the words “live s*x” - I kid you not - so there’s spam and garbage on Twitter just like everywhere else on the Web. But TweetDeck, Seesmic and Tweetie for Mac and iPhone all have fans.
So thank you, Carol Phillips, for being my 500th follower. Carol is a professor at Notre Dame and an expert on millenials marketing. The chance of me “meeting” Carol and hearing her ideas (because now I’m following her) without Twitter? Quite close to zero. So that’s pretty great.
I may get in trouble for this opinion, but… so be it.
This week’s AdAge features an editorial, “InBev abusing agencies with its payment terms,” written by the president of an advertising agency in the Midwest.
InBev is the Belgian company that bought Anheuser-Busch. The brewer is notoriously cheap and frowns on pricey marketing and advertising, both of which had been a highly visible of A-B’s strategy for decades.
The editorial points to numerous cost reductions and policy changes that InBev seems to have implemented after the purchase. The author mentions a couple internal corporate changes, such as the replacement of offices with bullpens and the elimination of first-class travel and baseball tickets. There’s a snarky retort after each mention including, “So what?” and “Hey, times are tough.” So much for this agency executive’s public expression of empathy for (or any effort to protect the privacy of) InBev/A-B employees.
He’s far clearer in his disdain for the company’s treatment of external partners.
“The company has gone one step too far” by announcing that it would now take up to 120 days to pay its bills - a “horrible precedent.” After InBev’s CEO says (in an unrelated WSJ interview) that he’s going to run the company on a tight leash, our author quips “… that’s true of any company, but we all still need to pay our bills.” Oh, snap! He grinds on, quoting a Morningstar analyst as describing the InBev team as “ruthless” “machete-wielding investment bankers.”
Finally, the writer crows that the Belgian government may soon examine the new policy to determine whether it is an abuse of power.* I suppose he throws this in to point out that others (a whole government!) see what he sees.
And here’s where I may get in trouble.
I’ve been an executive for 20 years. I value and am grateful for my relationships with the agencies that have made me look good and helped grow my brands. There are many in the agency business whom I consider friends. But there are some fundamental, DNA-level business principles and tenets that are not negotiable. Discretion is on the top of the list.
If the Belgian government instructs InBev to reverse the policy, great. If I worked at InBev and one of my agencies was hurt by this new policy, I would take up its cause with my superiors and encourage the agency to privately protest and/or resign.
And if that agency went to the press to air private and confidential matters such as billing and payment policies, I’d dismiss them on the spot.
This is such an unholy, obnoxious breach I wouldn’t think twice. An agency executive who takes a business matter to the media cannot be trusted with a private conversation, negotiation or anything else. You do this and you’re done. At least in my backyard.
What purpose did this agency president believe his editorial would serve? Is he an InBev agency or did he simply decide to speak out on behalf of his trade? ‘Doesn’t really matter. Could anyone believe, particularly in this economy, that he could or should pressure a global company by throwing a temper tantrum in public?
I’m tempted to tell him, “Hey, times are tough” (where have we heard that before?), but the policy may in fact be unreasonable. It would be unjust for a small agency to suffer or even go out of business because InBev wants to make money on the float. Not my point; I plead no contest. But an agency leader who takes private business and/or contractual matters out into the public forum should perhaps consider a different line of work because - in the increasingly fragile, trust-based business of advertising - I wouldn’t trust this guy to pull out my chair at dinner.
* Update: the Belgian government has dropped its probe, determining that InBev’s new payment policy does not violate any antitrust regulations.
So yes, this is another post about Twitter. What can I say? It’s the fastest growing, probably weirdest social media phenom thus far, and I’ve been sucked in.
One of today’s interesting tweety tidbits is a quite lengthy email that Rupert Murdoch - sorry, I meant the Deputy Managing Editor at The Wall Street Journal - recently sent to employees outlining “do’s” and “don’ts” for employees on Twitter or otherwise engaged on the “social Web.”
It’s sort of a doozy.
Don’t ”friend” confidential sources, don’t criticize colleagues, and my favorite (verbatim): “Don’t engage in any impolite dialogue with those who may challenge your work — no matter how rude or provocative they may seem.”
Employees may cite (but not push) their own reporting and - well, that seems to be pretty much all they can do. And even that rule, as you can see, comes with a murky qualification.
Some of the restrictions make perfect sense, such as not detailing how an article was edited. Others are ripe for wrongful discharge lawsuits, such as the “don’t” that says you mustn’t recruit family or friends to promote your work.
In most instances, this particular restriction would be nearly impossible to dissect and prove. If I retweet comments from a former colleague who then talks up my work, did I solicit that positive feedback? And, I’m sorry: if my mom claims that I’m just the cleverest person ever ever ever, there’s nothing I can do about it.
So I was thinking that the whole thing seemed very 1984… until I spotted a blog post detailing real tweets that some knuckleheads have posted on Twitter. A sample (with all grammar errors intact):
- “I just got to work (Oracle) and I am doing as little as possible”
- “Huh, with my boss on twitter, maaaybe I should take down that sexy picture of her… but her reaction will be priceless!”
- “hate my job!! i want to tell my bosses how dumb they are and how meaningless this job is, then quit, and be happy!”
- “Workin… This job sucks worse then [sic] the economy!”
The title of this blog post? “TwitterFired: The Top Ten Tweets to Get You Fired.”
Huh. Maybe The Wall Street Journal Twitter police knows what it’s doing.
Kent Huffman, Chief Marketing Officer at BearCom Wireless, a published author and all around smart, nice guy is doing something so smart on Twitter.
He’s publishing and frequently updating a list of the “top” CMOs on Twitter– those with the largest number of followers. So what does this mean?
– It makes Kent a leader in the marketing community on Twitter. It makes his “personal brand” stand out in a positive way among friends and colleagues with shared interests.
– It’s likely that many on the list will retweet the post but, just as importantly, they’ll send it to others outside of Twitter (Hey Mom, look at this list I’m on!). This exposes Kent and his work to an ever-widening, friendly crowd on the Web.
– It connects everyone on the list to one another.
– It gives Kent fresh content to create meaningful tweets over time. Not always easy.
– It drives traffic to not only Kent’s Twitter page, but also his own website, which is where he posts the list.
– Each time he posts an update, everyone on the list has their names, their brands and their Twitter addresses repeated, thus making it likely that they’ll get even more followers, and giving the search engines yet another page to crawl for their name.
– And of course, each new update can potentially bring changes to the list, thus given a new CMO a fresh spotlight and creating renewed interest as everyone checks the list anew.
Kent leveraged his profession – which any of us could have done but didn’t – into its own mini-phenomenon that spreads learning and excitement across the Web, simply by calling attention to a community in which he’s already a member. It’s a marvelous example of social media marketing at its best.
I’m proud to be on Kent’s list (#30 with a bullet!). For those of you on Twitter, take a quick look at the list: you may want to follow someone who is the CMO of a brand you care about. At #1 is Best Buy ’s Barry Judge (with more than 6,800 followers!) and it goes from there.
Man, it’s a tough time to be a media company. What with News Corp.’s operating income dropping 47% (99% in the newspaper business and 97% in the TV division) and both Arianna Huffington and Jeff Bewkes declaring the death of big media, what’s a media mogul - or budding mogul - to do?
One obvious answer IMHO should be an enhanced, more enlightened focus on women, because their behavior is changing and not enough advertisers and media companies appear to be keeping pace. 36% of women claim to be reading fewer magazines and 39% are spending less time reading newspapers. These are consumers - moms, in particular - who control 85% of all household spending and are worth more than $2 trillion in US spend each year. That’s “trillion” with a “t.”
A lot of these women say they’re migrating online. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is women age 40-50 in the home; moms aged 25-35 with at least one child are heavy online shoppers (see chart); and twitter moms showed Motrin who’s boss in November 2008. “Power moms” are also increasingly focused on video, and even upload their own on a variety of topics at sites like NewBaby.com.
SFMOGD came across two ads this week that are real… which just seems sort of impossible!
Ad #1 was brought to our attention by our friend, Jonathan Gilbert, and has some disturbing things to say about the condition of German underwear. Here is a billboard currently posted in Berlin’s shopping district:
That would be Chancellor Angela Merkel on the left posing in front of various undressed members of the German government, with her ”weapons of mass destruction” in full view. The ad is part of an underwear company’s national ad campaign. Modeled after the country’s successful ads promoting ”cash-for-clunkers” exchanges, the ad’s copy offers Germans who trade in their old underpants a €5 credit toward a new pair with the slogan ”The country needs new undies.” No mention of whether the old panties need to be (*gag*) washed before you trade them in.
Ad #2 appears to be a real television commercial for a North Carolina furniture store that takes race relations very seriously. Based on the company’s perfectly normal description of the ad on YouTube, the weird humor and full-on racial context appears to have been lost on The Red House. Luckily, it’s not lost on us:
Wednesday April 29th 2009, 6:36 pm
Filed under: Internet, blogs
There have been a number of lawsuits in the last 24 months or so that basically seek to determine the responsibility an online delivery mechanism has for the content it carries.
There’s the fashion model, Liskula Cohen, who sued Google for a number of personal remarks that a blogger wrote using Blogger - a Google property.
Or one of my personal favorites, AuditAdmit.com, which raced to wipe its system of the IP addresses after comments about Yale law school students (females) became so vicious that the victims sued. They got somewhere, but mostly because the two owners of the site cracked under pressure.
Note to Ms. Cohen: Google isn’t likely to crack under pressure.
The latest, of course, is the call for Craigslist.org to eliminate its “erotic services” section, following the murder of a woman who went to a hotel and meet a man she first encountered on the site. And now there appears to be attempted copycat crimes, as well. And it’s pile-on time now, too: people who try to sell stuff on the site and subsequently are assaulted by would-be buyers they met on the site, etc.
It’s all pretty awful. The question is: who’s responsible and - once we determine responsibility - does it matter? Do the attorneys general urging Craigslist to remove the section really care about the legal backing they have for asking the site to cut the section? I’d say no.
It’s challenging for me to fault Craigslist for individuals knowingly and legally advertising their services and then coming to some harm in the fulfillment of those services (the illegal ads gotta go). Craigslist is the Internet version of all the personals and “massage” advertising that’s run at the back of local newspapers and magazines for decades.
I’m processing this, but my first conclusion is that there is no reason that Craigslist couldn’t start a ratings system much like Amazon’s - so you know something about the “seller” and the “buyer” - and also make it very clear that IP addresses are kept and will be turned over to authorities if any illegal activities result. There’s clear precedent for the former, and the latter… Craigslist would merely be enforcing its existing TOU (Item 6). This is “bare minimum” stuff.
This isn’t over, as it’s no different that the contentious debates over free speech that take place in the “real world” today. Do I believe in the First Amendment? Absolutely. Would I want to be Google or Craigslist when the mother of a dead girl goes on national television claiming that (perfectly legal) content on my site killed her child? Absolutely not.
There have been several articles recently pointing to the rise in both offline and online coupon use. While consumers 65+ are more likely to use newspaper coupons and younger individuals prefer online coupons, there’s no real news here given that these stats will change over time as newspapers become less available and older consumers become more and more comfortable on the Web.
In the meantime, don’t leave home - or buy online - without it!
I’ve become accustomed to checking online for coupons and promotion codes prior to making either a store or Web purchase. There is an art to this and, once you get the hang of it, you’ll become savvier about what sites are likely to bear fruit and which will not.
There are four general categories of sites I’d recommend you consider:
1. Aggregators - these are sites whose sole purpose in life is to offer coupons and “promo codes” from many retailers, typically across multiple industries. Some examples would include:
4. Forums - some activities tend to make people want to vent (like having to take your shoes off at the airport…), and folks on these sites love to let others in on a deal:
If you’re set on a particular brand, it only takes a second to check out that company’s own site, too. KFC, for example, has a pre-set button on its home page pointing visitors to printable coupons. I’m actually surprised that more brands don’t take advantage of this simple way to build a solid customer database. If a consumer is a fan, he will part with valuable demo and psychographic information in exchange for a steady stream of deals delivered by email.
And as a final tip: consider opening a brand new email account exclusively for your interactions with coupon and promotional sites. You’ll be able to see all your coupon- and deal-related email in one place without clogging your own email inbox.
So start looking for coupons online and, pretty soon, you too will understand the nirvana of “stackable codes…”
Whether you are job-hunting or not… this is absolutely must-see TV. I was tempted to show you just one of the videos here, but decided it would break up the flow.
My favorite is #13 - watch her hand. What’s yours?
Poor Dominos.
In a nutshell, two employees posted a “prank” video on YouTube that shows them at work spitting and sneezing on food, putting cheese up their noses and then onto pizzas, passing gas on meat then - ouhhhh - putting said meat on the food…
As the beauty says to the gross Ben Stiller character when he asks her out (in that great philosophical movie, Dodgeball),I think I threw up in my mouth. Just a little.
I coach corporate clients on how to manage their reputations and build brands online. I show companies how to proactively create meaningful online interactions with prospects and customers. I use case studies to demonstrate the usefulness of one social community vs. another. I present lessons that apply to all businesses, and some that are industry-specific. And I do train companies how to assess and react to negative content on the Web. Be proactive and, when you must, here’s how to react to problematic online content.
And then there are things that you just can’t plan for. We’ve seen vanity urls (walocaust.com, ihatestarbucks.com) and online stunts created by disgruntled employees and angry investors. We’ve seen rats scurrying along the floor inside a fast food restaurant. These kinds of events are now so frequent that they can and should be part of a company’s online crisis strategy. [NOTE: You have one of those, right?]
But two employees, with no ax to grind, demonstrating phenomenally bad judgment? All a company can do in advance is reinforce its own employee policies with respect to unacceptable behavior and… make sure the Internet is covered. I’m sure that disparaging the company to this extreme is already grounds for dismissal, and these two MENSA members have been fired. And arrested and charged with a felony.
Unfortunately, Dominos is taking a real hit. But the company has come out swinging online - play fire with fire - and I give them enormous credit for that. Take a look at Dominos’ own YouTube response (click HERE if you do not see the video below):
If I were advising the company, I’d suggest a 5-point action plan over the next 90 days. What they’ll actually do? We’ll have to wait and see.
In the meantime, if you order a pizza and think you see boogers… I’M KIDDING!
Here’s a quick post about an article about Disney in the The New York Times today.
The piece is all about a Disney researcher considered to be “the kid whisperer.” Her job is to help the company understand the needs, wants and desires of boys age 6 to 14, and then use this information to drive incremental revenue. While 40% of the audience for Disney Channel is male, for example, girls continue to drive an outsized percentage of (merchandise) sales.
The article follows Kelly Peña as she walks through boys’ homes, unearthing insights such as - while a 12 year old is trying to be tough and mature - he still as stuffed animals on his bed.
While in-home anthropological research is becoming de rigueur in consumer packaged goods, it’s a pretty big deal in the entertainment space, where executives or creatives often believe they “know the target” and pursue a product development process not necessarily informed by real people and their real behavior.
This is a huge simplification, but there is a fundamental difference in both B2B and B2C companies alike that build something new by starting with their customer target’s belief systems and behavior vs. those who start with the best product development process. I was trained in customer segmentation - start with the consumer (or business target) - and build “to suit” - but not everyone is.
If pursued with rigor, I think this type of development work could be extremely helpful to the process of creating new entertainment vehicles and entertainment-inspired merchandise.
There’s a new proposal from ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) that could enable a virtual endless number of domain-name suffixes to be created over and above the already-familiar 18 including .org, .edu, .net and .com.
The idea is to enable businesses and others to create suffixes that are specific to their business or purpose, as opposed to the current generic “top-level” endings. “Whatever is open to the imagination can be applied for,” says Paul Levins,” ICANN’s vice president of corporate affairs. So if the Museum of Modern Art wanted to attract visitors to its permanent collection, it could conceivably create a URL ending in “.art.”
Most experts agree that there are numerous issues with this new proposal. The first and possibly most obvious one is… who’s going to keep track? Could Mars use “.candy” while Hershey uses “.chocolate” and “kisses” and JellyBelly uses, well, “.jellybelly?” The answer seems to be yes, and the possibility of chaos for marketers and consumers is obvious.
Secondly, this proposal opens the door for scammers and squatters to purchase a brand’s name and simply invent multiple URLs to go with it. This would not only mislead Web surfers, but could cause brand names to fall into the hands of those who wish to exploit them and possibly get money from the owner. If your pet peeve is labor relations at Wal-Mart, you could purchase WalMart.unfair, Walmart.worksucks, WalMart.unions, WalMart.sickout. There are no guidelines, at least not yet.
Third, who can own what? Are all words in the common domain and therefore available for purchase? The International Olympics Committee has already threatened to sue ICANN if the organization permits the purchase of the IOC’s trademarked and protected words. And the Flemish government doesn’t seem happy, either.
2008 saw a record number of cybersquatting complaints from trademark holders as it is.
Fourth, what are the intricacies of the process? Do I have to prove anything to purchase any URL I wish, how long can I keep it and must I meet some performance level to maintain ownership? What happens if there are two potential buyers for a TLD - will there be a bidding war?
Finally, ICANN proposes to charge an application fee is $185,000 plus an annual “continuance” fee of $25,000. As the seller of services, what assurances of value and security will ICANN provide? Is ICANN responsible for the protection of children who may wander onto a porn site at SpongeBob.fun? The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse estimates that it could cost big marketers up to $1.5 billion just to defend existing turf: what do these companies get in exchange for the millions of dollars they would suddenly have to pay to protect something that suddenly needs protecting?
ICANN is going to have to put some fencing up around proper names, brands, and protected words, but that won’t help the vast confusion that could result. I suspect that larger commercial brands will settle into some industry-wide structures that try to minimize the information overload. Because if you think spam is bad now…
I am hyper-sensitive to market research that is somehow flawed, or lopsided, or misrepresents the group being tested. I’ve written a few posts on this very topic - here’s one on galvanic skin response, and measuring brand affiliation and a relatively new post on how Fuqua and the AMA mixed and matched some concepts on a questionnaire that IMHO compromised (some unknown percentage of the) results.
I’m into (a) crafting effective research vehicles and (b) making sure I’m talking to the people I think I’m talking to.
So I found an article in The Wall Street Journal today very interesting. In an online poll, Cosmogirl.com and the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unwanted Pregnancy recently found that 1 in 5 teenagers have shared nude or nearly-nude photos of themselves on cell phones or the Web. The article’s author, Carl Blalik, points out how this statistic has taken on a life of its own in the media. 20% of our teenagers are engaging in this dangerous behavior!! GAH!
The problem is… probably not. Long story short, the research firm the two entities hired surveyed teens and young adults who had previously signed up to take online polls and surveys. To many, this means that the survey polled individuals already predisposed to being on the Web a lot and engaging in technology-oriented activities. Then there are questions about who even in that group responded: the environments in which those surveyed could be dramatically different, for example (an 18 year old living at home may be different from one at college who might be different from one who is working full-time). The research company did not normalize for the multiple factors that could affect the integrity of the research… with the biggie being that it’s highly unlikely that responses from a random sample of all teens in the given age ranges were captured.
Fascinating!
No one tried to hijack the research, no one had ill intent - there are no bad guys here - but this kind of thing happens. And if the flaw isn’t caught, results fly into the universe and end up on the news every night.
Here’s a real-time, personal example. Yesterday, I received an email from a company I don’t know anything about called Advertiser Perceptions (and a reminder email today). The email asked me to click on a link to take a “Media Influencer” survey for which I would receive an honorarium of $20. I do take online surveys here and there, and $20 bucks is OK, so I started the survey. And it went on FOR-EV-ER. That’s when I noticed that the cheery email copy said that the survey wouldn’t take more than 30 minutes. 30 minutes?? A half hour for $20 so a bunch of advertisers could figure out what to sell me? No chance, no how, not going to happen.
So what kind of segmentation did Advertiser Perceptions do before they sent these emails? Are they offering the same honorarium to an ad manager fresh out of college and a marketer with 20 years of experience? I’d assume yes, and therein lies the garbage-in-garbage-out problem of the day. If Advertiser Perceptions does not adjust for this bias, they’ll end up with a non-random sample of people who have the time and inclination to sit at their desks for 1/2 hour and take some third-party survey for $20.*
I can’t tell you exactly what that sample will look like, but I can guarantee it ain’t random or representative of the entire prospect list.
And there you have it. Caveat Emptor. Ask questions. Does something “sound right” to you? Because maybe it is… and maybe it’s not.
I just want to say how relieved I am to discover that I am NOT the only one who is totally digging the song in State Farm’s TV commercials.
I’m serious: I’ve been pondering a blog post about this for awhile, but assumed that I was just an ad nerd, grooving to some random tune in a car insurance ad. That State Farm had come up with this insurance jingle… and you would mock me.
I really should have more confidence in myself. Not only is it not a jingle… it’s a remake of the The Sound of Musicsong, “Sixteen Going On Seventeen,” by Modern Music. And it’s all over the web, like HERE and HERE and HERE.
Perhaps the strangest cover of a song ever - but brilliant just the same (and not a Von Trapp in sight).
While restaurant chains suffer, and the industry predicts a “purge,” one restaurant has decided to let its customers take more of a direct role in its future.
Sghetti’s Italian Bistro, a local restaurant in Pennsylvania, has established a “pay what you think it’s worth” policy. The menu no longer shows specific prices, opting instead for a suggested price range by category: appetizers $3-$9, pasta $6-$12 and so on. The offer is good for parties of 8 or less at dinner only, beginning at 4pm.
“[The recession] is sad, for senior citizens and young families,” says the spot’s owner, Eugene Razzano. “…we can do something to empower people.” Razzano recognizes that some diners won’t be fair, but believes that the press coverage and increased traffic - particularly return traffic - will make this a successful proposition overall.
I think this is brilliant. Razzano has been very clear that he is assessing the program on a week-to-week basis. High-margin beverages are not included, and parties are asked to tip the wait staff, as usual. He’s getting full-blown word of mouth, while still protecting himself on the downside.
Part of the commentary on this blog lately has seen me preaching restraint to businesses advertising at such a sensitive time. If you’re going to put a message out there, be 100% certain that it connects to how people are feeling and what they are experiencing. Even if a negative reaction happens “outside your target audience,” it can have an outsized ability to impact business over the mid- to short-term. My opinion is that companies including Pepsi and Hawker have taken risks with their brand images by promoting messages that are out of tune with the public zietgeist.
In December, Domino’s created an online-only promotion offering a free pizza to site visitors using the promo code ”bailout.” The promotion never got final approval internally… but someone didn’t tell the pizza retailer’s online tech team.
A clever consumer living in a suburb of Cincinnati somehow caught on to the live promo code last week and before you can see “meat lovers special,” Domino’s had given away 11,000 free pizzas. In less than 24 hours.
The news spread quickly, fueled in part by online moms at sites like www.CincyMomsLikeMe.com. If you’re curious about the power of online moms and aren’t familiar with the Motrin Moms event last November, I really would suggest you check it out. Do not screw with these ladies!
Things became even more complicated by the fact that Domino’s retail stores are franchised. A man who owns 14 locations in the Cincy area thinks he gave away somewhere between 600 and 700 pizzas. Corporate has promised to reimburse all franchisees. Maybe the stores will even see an upside: the event got hundreds of people to try the new ordering engine at Dominos.com (which is pretty good, by the way).
Depending on how you look at things, Dominos is either lucky or unlucky the promotion wasn’t discovered two days later - on April Fool’s Day…
In the meantime, I’m enjoying the work of a good copywriter and have started following Zack on Twitter at 
Secondly, this proposal opens the door for scammers and squatters to purchase a brand’s name and simply invent multiple URLs to go with it. This would not only mislead Web surfers, but could cause brand names to fall into the hands of those who wish to exploit them and possibly get money from the owner. If your pet peeve is labor relations at Wal-Mart, you could purchase WalMart.unfair, Walmart.worksucks, WalMart.unions, WalMart.sickout. There are no guidelines, at least not yet.
