Ms. Adverthinker

As reported in BusinessWeek, social network users are spending less time on sites like MySpace and Facebook in an effort to avoid advertising.  “The average amount of time each user spends on social networking sites has fallen by 14% over the last four months, according to market researcher ComScore.  MySpace, the largest social network, has slipped from a peak of 72 million users in October to 68.9 million in December, ComScore says.  The total number of people on such sites is still increasing at an 11.5% rate, but that’s down sharply from past growth rates.”

“MySpace and Facebook recognize the issue but say increased targeting and other innovations will spur users to pay more attention.”

We will see what happens, but maybe online games are the new social networking sites when it comes to hot places to advertise.

More on the influence and importance of design: this week the NY Times had an article contrasting and comparing the websites of Obama and Clinton as if one were a Mac and one a PC.  This further illustrates the point made earlier this week in the comparison of font use by the different presidential candidates–never underestimate the power of good design.  According to the NY Times article:

“The differences between hillaryclinton.com and barackobama.com can be summed up this way: Barack Obama is a Mac, and Hillary Clinton is a PC.

That is, Mr. Obama’s site is more harmonious, with plenty of white space and a soft blue palette. Its task bar is reminiscent of the one used at Apple’s iTunes site. It signals in myriad ways that it was designed with a younger, more tech-savvy audience in mind — using branding techniques similar to the ones that have made the iPod so popular.”

“In contrast to barackobama.com, Mrs. Clinton’s site uses a more traditional color scheme of dark blue, has sharper lines dividing content and employs cookie-cutter icons next to its buttons for volunteering, and the like.”

The article does question, however, if this “being a Mac” is good politics:

“While Apple’s ad campaign maligns the PC by using an annoying man in a plain suit as its personification, it is not clear that aligning with the trendy Mac aesthetic is good politics. The iPod may be a dominant music player, but the Mac is still a niche computer. PC, no doubt, would win the Electoral College by historic proportions (with Mac perhaps carrying Vermont).”

Coming off the Super Bowl surge of popularity for advertising (when commercials get higher audience than the game thanks to DVR devices), a NY Times had an article today noting the importance of the web for additional viewing of popular commercials. In fact, marketers should be thinking about ways to post all spots on the Internet on various sites:

“The ‘torture test’ for brands beyond their Super Bowl ads is how to make it easy for consumers to find the ads and engage with them, whether you put them on Web sites, on YouTube or make them easy to search for on Google,” said Pete Blackshaw, executive vice president at the Nielsen Online Strategic Services division of the Nielsen Company.

With broadcast production costs rising and media placement costs continuing to rise, it just makes sense to take the spots that have been produced for the paid media placement and use them in free media outlets that consumers actually seek out. As an advertising agency and strategic partner to our clients, we should be recommending that all produced spots are placed on the web.

I have an interest in law, especially when it applies to advertising. When I saw this WSJ Law Blog entry about Abercrombie & Fitch’s revealing ads being removed in Virginia, I was intrigued:

“On Saturday, police in Virginia carted away two promotional photographs from the A&F store in Virginia Beach’s Lynnhaven Mall (the picture above wasn’t one of them). Under a local ordinance making it a crime to display ‘obscene materials in a business that is open to juveniles,’ the store’s manager, who police say had failed to heed warnings to remove the photographs, was issued a citation. If convicted, the manager reportedly faces a fine of up to $2,000 and as much as a year in jail.”

Turns out however, “the Virginia Beach deputy city attorney said Monday afternoon that police will seek to drop the charges against A&F…According to the story, city officials said thought it would be difficult to meet certain standards of the obscenity law.”

How much publicity did A&F receive for this waste of police time and effort? Probably enough to make the risk of removal worth it.

Who knew there was such a thing as a “specialty in semiotic analysis of package design for consumer-product companies?”  According to an article in this past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine,  there is just such a thing and what it means is that the specialist “applies the close-reading analytical skills you might associate with deconstructing a novel or a work of art to the breaking down of logos and packaging to their ‘constituent parts’ and ‘indexical signs.’”  For the article, he broke down the Tide logo in ways I would have never imagined:

“…the original Tide package…communicated ‘cyclone in a box,’ he says.  ‘There’s this great dynamic tension there.  The word “Tide” is bursting out of the circle, and the circle is standing out of the box.  It’s almost a baroque composition; it’s like what Steven Spielberg would do if he were designing a brand.’  The idea was that Tide is a ‘force of nature–it’s a phase shift’…’some sophisticated color research’–involving a psychologist who specialized in such things–went into selecting a bright scheme that would suggest ’sufficient power,’ tempered with the ‘likable’ blue that had a more ’sensitive’ connotation.”

This article is a great reminder that good design takes a lot of research, hard work and talent to produce.  Never underestimate the subliminal power of logos and design.  For a  timely example as we approach Super Tuesday, check out this article in the Boston Globe that breaks down the font use and logo design of each of the major candidates.  Here is a sample:

Clinton

“The Hillary type palette is far from fresh and colorful; it is begging for legitimacy instead of demanding respect. It projects recycled establishment. The type has a tired feeling, as if the ink has been soaking into the page too long. The Hillary logo has the look of an ’80s newspaper layout or an investment company. The tall lower-case reminds me of someone with their pants pulled up too high. I wonder about the significance of the three stars and three stripes. A third term?”

Obama

“Obama’s type is contemporary, fresh, very polished and professional. The serifs are sharp and pointed; clean pen strokes evoke a well-pressed Armani suit. The ever-present rising sun logo has the feeling of a hot new Internet company. His sans serifs conjure up the clean look of Nike or Sony. This typography is young and cool. Clearly not the old standards of years past.”

McCain

“McCain uses type that is a perfect compromise between a sans and a serif, what type geeks call a “flared sans.” Not quite sans and not quite serif, sort of in between, moderate, not too far in either direction. The strokes have contrast between the thick and thin, creating the feeling that the ends are going to have cute little serifs, but they just flare out a little, not forming actual serifs but wanting to. The military star centered and shadowed is a not-so-subtle touch. And McCain just says “President,” as if to say he’s already been elected. Everything about this logo says you can buy a car from this man. From the perfectly centered star to the perfectly spaced type, the entire design looks like a high-end real estate company. McCain has done something no other candidate has done, he uses all blue, no red - not even a dash. If we were to predict the results based on typography and design, we would pick McCain and Obama.”

This is from an article in Advertising Age:

“Research from internet ad network Mindset Media confirms the ad’s personification of Mac users as superior and self-satisfied.  Its recent Mac user ‘mind-set profile’–a psychographic ranking system that scores respondents on 20 different elements of personality–found them to be more assured of their superiority, less modest and more open of the general population.”

“Far fewer cohesive personality traits emerged among PC owners, likely because of the breadth of PC ownership.  Given that 95% or so of all computer users own a PC, those users essentially are the general population.  The one area where PC users did stand out as statistically different was in creativity–low creativity, that is.  Mindset Media found they tend to be realists who are emotionally steady and work well with what they’re given.”

This makes total sense.  I don’t think research really had to be conducted to learn these things, but it is interesting that now there are statistics to confirm it.

I am trying really hard to like the show Mad Men.  Everyone else does, so I should too, right?  I hate it.  I appreciate the research that has gone into recreating that era.  I appreciate the history of specific advertising campaigns told through the stories in the show.  I appreciate the style and costumes.  But, working in advertising makes me feel dirty after watching that show.  I have no appreciation for the business after watching arrogant men push each other around and demean women each week.  While that may have been the culture during that period in history, I worry that it will give modern-day viewers the wrong impression of our business today.

The theory behind the popular book Microtrends is being challenged. The book’s theory is that demographic segments as small as 1% of the population can “tip an election” or “spark a movement.” The problems, according to a Brandweek article, include:

• The results are only as good as the data: many samples are not large or representative enough to accurately reflect the population, subjects self-report behavior and tend to lie (or to say it more kindly, report their aspirational behavior rather than actual behavior).
• A psychographic splinter group that has one defining trait in common may have just that–one thing in common and nothing else.
• Within each niche, each person has multiple selves. For example: “Let’s say the research identifies a segment of ‘Thrillseekers,’ and contrasts that against groups who prefer more safety. Who’s to say that the person who jumps out of a plane for kicks will exhibit this same commando attitude toward the prospect of risky sexual behavior?”
• Marketers can become so obsessed with quirks and fads that they fail to consider their underlying drivers–which are often clues to broader cultural trends far more valuable to the marketer in the long run.

How are these problems overcome?  Think of microtargeting as an “inaugural research step toward a broader targeting strategy–one still aimed, but not exclusionary.”  Brands that have done a good job with this approach:

• Vans–viewed as cool shoes for everybody that work especially well for skateboarders.  Vans sold the skater “lifestyle.”
• Apple–manages to be both inclusive and exclusive.  In iPhone spots the viewer never sees a discernible age, race or gender.  “Even the dancing silhouettes in ads for iPods instill a sense of relatability that fully rendered models arguably wouldn’t.”

Conclusion: make sure your brand is speaking to the relevant audience, but don’t ignore or exclude everyone else.

Reported in Brandweek:

What should a company do when negative news is being reported about the company? “One school of thought is that maintaining or increasing advertising during such a time will drown out the bad news. The alternative–pulling advertising–seems pretty risky. Nevertheless, a new study that ran in December’s Journal of Advertising Research suggests that’s exactly what you should do while the bad news runs its course…It found that advertising has an amplifying effect: When the news is good, advertising helps. When it’s bad, advertising makes things worse.”

You betcha. At least according the Ad Age. Here are the stats on the ElfYourself viral campaign by OfficeMax:

• 26.4 million people, nearly 1 in 10 Americans visited the site.
• 2,614 years–if you were to add up all the time people spent on the site this year.
• 123 million elves created this year; compared to 11 million last year.
• 508%–the site’s market share growth over the course of November/December.
• 16%–the site’s active reach in December (i.e., how many of the 165 million active internet users that month made a visit).

The question is, did this fun campaign help the OfficeMax brand? The answer is, yes:

• Of the 20 most common search terms in the four weeks of December, six of them included the words “Office Max,” indicating that brand awareness had carried through.

According to Bob Thacker, senior VP-marketing and advertising at OfficeMax: “We were looking to build the brand, warm up our image. We weren’t looking for sales. We are third-place players in our industry, so we are trying to differentiate ourselves through humor and humanization.”

What can other brands learn from this? Provided by Ad Age, here are some viral marketing tips:

• Make it Personal.
• Don’t Discount Older Audiences. (40% of all visitors to ElfYourself were 55 or older.)
• Offer Fun.

“MySpace…is posting all of the commercials broadcast during the game on a special section of the social-networking site at no extra charge to those advertisers.  Google’s YouTube, Time Warner’s AOL and Yahoo are doing the same for their commercial polls.  Hosting these sites build viewer traffic, which then allows them to sell more paid advertising.” — The Wall Street Journal

Reported in BusinessWeek:

“There’s big money at stake if the Feb. 24 awards ceremony gets scotched.

• $4 million worth of post-Oscar parties.
• $5.5 million in media coverage.
• $26.5 million in limos, security, personnel, and gifts for the nominees.
• $51 million for the main broadcast in the Kodak Theater, along with side events.
• $54 million in spending on radio, TV, print, and outdoor campaigns by studios competing for awards.
• $100 million in publicity generated for companies who clothe and bejewel the stars.

We have all read Malcom Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and latched on to the idea of spreading trends by reaching key influencers and leveraging their word-of-mouth to propel the brand we are marketing. We love this idea: spend the precious few marketing dollars that we have targeting only those people who will help us maximize those dollars by spreading the word of our products’ greatness for us. Now, according to an article in this month’s Fast Company, a network-theory scientist–Duncan Watts–is debunking the idea of influencers as a key marketing tool:

“Watts believes…a trend’s success depends not on the person who starts it, but on how susceptible the society is overall to the trend–not how persuasive the early adopter is, but whether everyone else is easily persuaded.”

While this may be true, even Watts’ own research proves the effectiveness of influencers and word-of-mouth, evident by his experiment using new, unknown music. He recruited two groups of people for his study: one group ranked the music based on their own likes without knowledge of what other people thought, while another group–subdivided into eight “social groups”–ranked the music in an environment where they were able to see what others thought about that music. “In the merit group, the songs were ranked mostly equitably, with a small handful of songs drifting slightly lower or higher in popularity. But in the social worlds, as participants reacted to one another’s opinions, huge waves took shape. A small, elite bunch of songs became enormously popular, rising above the pack, while another cluster fell into relative obscurity.” However, “in each of the eight social worlds, the top songs–and the bottom ones–were completely different.” Watts’ analysis of these results: “Word of mouth and social contagion made big hits bigger. But they also made success more unpredictable.”

Inability to predict and see regularity in what was going to be popular in each of the groups does not debunk the role influencers play in starting trend; it actually proves their importance and influence. Each group was influenced by the influencers.

While Watts’ computer generated models of social behavior are impressive, they certainly aren’t convincing when not tied back to real world examples . The Tipping Point is so convincing because the theory can be tied back to actual social and cultural events.

Using the Internet as a tool, more and more consumers are engaging in culture consumption, broadening their knowledge horizons and then using that experience and knowledge to contribute their own creative expressions and deposit those right back into our culture for further consumer consumption. According to a recent article in Ad Age:

“For years, marketers viewed the cultural consumer as an elite market segment, estimated to represent 2% of the overall population. As we witness a maturing knowledge economy, it’s become evident that we must enlarge our view of who’s consuming cultural experiences and how often. To benefit from the coming era, smart CMOs need to see that American consumers aspire to be viewed as thinking, expressive human beings…Consider these facts:

• The typical adult attends an average of 1.9 cultural events per month.
• 68% of the American public is interested in independent films.
• Gen Y-ers (those ages 18 to 29) attend an average of 2.3 cultural events per month.
• More Americans visit museums, historical sites, zoos and aquariums than attend all professional sports events combined, including auto racing.
• In 2006, 65% of households ranked “avid book reading” as their No. 1 at home leisure activity, according to the Standard Rate and Data Service.”

(Then again, according to a recent article in The New Yorker titled The Twilight of Books, you might not believe consumers are more culturally inclined and reading literature “…if you consulted the Census Bureau and the National Endowment for the Arts, who, since 1982, have asked thousands of Americans questions about reading that are not only detailed but consistent. The results, first reported by the N.E.A. in 2004, are dispiriting. In 1982, 56.9 per cent of Americans had read a work of creative literature in the previous twelve months. The proportion fell to fifty-four per cent in 1992, and to 46.7 per cent in 2002. Last month, the N.E.A. released a follow-up report, To Read or Not to Read, which showed correlations between the decline of reading and social phenomena as diverse as income disparity, exercise, and voting. In his introduction, the N.E.A. chairman, Dana Gioia, wrote, ‘Poor reading skills correlate heavily with lack of employment, lower wages, and fewer opportunities for advancement.’”)

If your target is an avid Internet user, they are more likely than not consuming cultural experiences frequently. And, as that Ad Age article notes, “Knowledge is power. Ideas are the killer app. Learning is the new status skill. This is an enlightened age, and culture consumers revere brands that teach them new things without pontificating.” What can brands do to feed that consumer hunger for cultural and knowledge?

Consumer Influence in Potential Buyers’ Purchase Decisions: What Does This Mean for Marketers?

A study sited in MediaPost’s Media magazine noted that “75% of shoppers say it is extremely or very important to read customer reviews before making a purchase. And they prefer peer reviews over expert reviews by a 6-to-1 margin.”

I always read consumer reviews of products when the site I am purchasing from provides the reviews next to the product I am considering. And, these reviews almost always help me decide one way or another. Zappos.com is great about providing this kind of feedback, and it is so helpful to have people tell you about the fit, size, color, etc. when you are buying online—where things don’t always show up the size or color you envisioned them, or you can’t be there to try it on. I love iTunes for this reason too—many times I have been influenced to try new music because others who bought something I liked have also purchased xx.

When I buy products online that do not provide these consumer reviews, I typically don’t actively seek out other consumer reviews. And, I am almost always disappointed with my purchase because something wasn’t as I thought it would be. You would think I would have learned my lesson by now: consumer reviews are helpful.

So, if consumers themselves are selling our clients’ products/services for us, then what are advertisers responsible for in the purchase cycle? If the product is good enough, it will sell itself, right? Maybe, but not always. Admittedly, our tactics must shift a bit, but how do consumers find out about products and services? Advertising. How do think about those products and services, and come understand the brand? Advertising.

What changes need occur in our marketing efforts? According to one of my favorite blogs, Influx Insights:
“If we shift over from the media to the marketing world, it appears that most marketing departments aren’t yet designed and organized to manage and cope with Marketing 2.0 [the Marketing 2.0 trend suggests a new open environment of participation between brands and their customers], most are still working and structured for a 1.0 world.

“The Marketing Department is going to need to change radically, but there are some questions.

“How do they make the transition?

“When does the “tipping point” occur?

“Marketing departments need fundamentally new skill sets, new positions/job titles and they are also going to need some smart technology to assist them.

“Given how little bandwidth most departments have these days, it’s safe to assume that there are quite a few brands out there who risk damaging their reputations because they simply aren’t structured to cope with the new era of conversation and participation.”

Clearly, advertising/marketing and public communications must work hand-in-hand in this new Marketing 2.0 era to craft our messages and inform consumers about our clients’ products and services, and then correct any misperceptions. And, we must learn from and leverage the consumer feedback and influence that is out there to constantly improve our communications tactics, and if necessary, make recommendations for improving the products/services we are selling. We should feel lucky that consumers are that interested and we should listen and learn from what they have to say. Let’s get out there and listen to them. In fact, let’s invite them to tell us what they think.