Ms. Adverthinker

“They shop for casual clothing more than ever before, tend to buy many of the household grocery items and gladly will pick up at least shower gel and cologne grooming products for themselves.” — reported in Ad Age.  Some interesting facts:

• 62% purchase clothes only to replace those that have worn out.  Only 17% follow fashion trends in style, colors or brands.
• 65% do at least half the household food shopping. (My guess is that they are purchasing from a list created by a female in their lives!)
• 64% think shower gel is an acceptable grooming product, but other than that the majority did not recognize grooming products as having formulations especially for them.

Reported in Ad Age.

“Text Analytics–a general term for the mining and interpretation of written words–has been used for more than two decades, most notably by the defense industry as far back as the Cold War to read into the word choices and text of, say, a speech written by Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev.” — according to a recent article in Ad Age.

The article goes on to say that marketers are increasingly using text analytics to mine information from customer service surveys, e-mails, online forums, and blogs.  “…while the blogosphere and social networks have so far not proved great advertising media, text analytics offers the potential to make them stronger marketing vehicles.”

Dove used the tool to not only understand reactions to their campaign, but to gain an understanding of what motivates people, which issues are most important to women in their target group, and how to create better products and messaging for them.  All by using text analytics from content on its own message boards.

What a fantastic way to leverage social media tools with a quantitative analysis!

Check out the hilarious article in The New Yorker this week about technology and the absurdity of it.  I think my favorite part was the first paragraph:

“Shortly before Valentine’s Day, a study was released claiming that forty-seven per cent of men in Britain would give up sex in return for a big-screen plasma television…As with all matters relating to technology, numbers are key: precisely how long were those men prepared to go without sex?  And how large a screen?  (Answers: six months; fifty inches.)”

Other highlights:

“When teen-age girls window-shop these days, they don’t linger longingly outside show boutiques or record stores.  They cluster, sighing, noses pressed against the glass, in front of cell-phone stores.  But few of these devices will ever be used for talking.  The real purpose of a phone, as everyone knows, is texting.  Only techno-tards make actual phone calls…”

“Congratulations.  You, but especially I, now require the kindness of an eight-year-old…to turn on the television, let alone the living-room lights.  This may be the first generation of children who are better qualified to survive in the world than their parents, especially if survival depends on maneuvering loyal droids to fire ranged weapons using a nunchuck.”

Great read.  Enjoy.

The CEO of Ask.com announced a shift in the search engine’s strategy yesterday, as reported in the WSJ. He now wants to “focus Ask on its core audience, predominantly women who use the site to ask questions about topics like entertainment and health. To do that, he says, the company will launch new products and enhance its technology through efforts like pulling in more community-generated answers.”

“The new strategy…is a retreat from efforts by former Ask management to broaden the search engine’s audience beyond middle-American, predominantly female consumers, who have long made up its core, to more technologically sophisticated audiences. Just last summer Ask had begun offering search results that combine text, video, maps and other results on one screen.”

The search engine also plans to “refocus the company’s products and marketing on the area where Ask believes it is strongest — searches framed as questions, as opposed to single words or phrases.”

This shift makes so much sense. Rather than competing in an already saturated search market where Google is king, Ask is smart to focus on a niche audience with whom they have already had success. And, by focusing on a niche audience, the search results will be so much more relevant for those users. I love this idea.

Product sampling has always been used by consumer-product companies on the premise: “try it, you’ll like it.”  But for sampling to work, you have to have a product for them to sample.  HBO has a product and in the past has offered limited-time-only access to its subscription channel in an effort to get people to sign up.  With technology now allowing online viewing of video for the masses, HBO is taking an interesting new approach to sampling: putting episodes of one its new series online for free.

“While the show has enjoyed wide critical acclaim, some viewers have checked out. The first week of episodes drew 316,000 viewers, on average, and the numbers have declined steadily, to an average of 196,000 in week four.

“Now the pay cable channel is doing something it normally does not do: give away some of the episodes. The first three weeks of “In Treatment” are available free on HBO.com, and the first four episodes are also on YouTube [see episode one here].

“HBO says the free episodes are part of a sampling strategy for the series that is unconnected to the ratings.”

This is a great idea for getting viewers hooked and wanting more.

The talk in business these days is all about how to involve the consumer–the end user–in the brand. Through brand interactions, comes loyalty. Bonus for businesses: consumers want that involvement too. They want to contribute to product creation, give their opinions on product reviews, throw out advertising ideas. All of this is an effort to be heard. Consumers are desperate to find outlets where they can feel individual and important. And brands are giving them an outlet to do this (good thing, since consumers would do it anyway).
The convergence of these two desires results in blogs, product reviews, and consumer contribution to content. The epitome of consumer contribution to content is the amazing Wikipedia. The NY Review of Books has a great piece summing up the success and addictive qualities of Wikipedia when contributing content for the world to read:

“More people use Wikipedia than Amazon or eBay—in fact it’s up there in the top-ten Alexa rankings with those moneyed funhouses MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube. Why? Because it has 2.2 million articles, and because it’s very often the first hit in a Google search, and because it just feels good to find something there—even, or especially, when the article you find is maybe a little clumsily written. Any inelegance, or typo, or relic of vandalism reminds you that this gigantic encyclopedia isn’t a commercial product. There are no banners for E*Trade or Classmates.com, no side sprinklings of AdSense.”

“It worked and grew because it tapped into the heretofore unmarshaled energies of the uncredentialed. The thesis procrastinators, the history buffs, the passionate fans of the alternate universes of Garth Nix, Robotech, Half-Life, P.G. Wodehouse, Battlestar Galactica, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charles Dickens, or Ultraman—all those people who hoped that their years of collecting comics or reading novels or staring at TV screens hadn’t been a waste of time—would pour the fruits of their brains into Wikipedia, because Wikipedia added up to something. This wasn’t like writing reviews on Amazon, where you were just one of a million people urging a tiny opinion and a Listmania list onto the world—this was an effort to build something that made sense apart from one’s own opinion, something that helped the whole human cause roll forward.”

And on the thrills of the edit:

“I clicked the ‘edit this page’ tab, and immediately had an odd, almost lightheaded feeling, as if I had passed through the looking glass and was being allowed to fiddle with some huge engine or delicate piece of biomedical equipment. It seemed much too easy to do damage; you ask, Why don’t the words resist me more? Soon, though, you get used to it. You recall the central Wikipedian directive: ‘Be Bold.’ You start to like life on the inside.”

Providing consumers an outlet to interact with a brand and be heard can give a brand that addictive quality needed to bring consumers back again and again.

Others might view Wikipedia differently, and not quite so democratic, as noted on Slate.com:

“While Wikipedia does show the creative potential of online communities, it’s a mistake to assume the site owes its success to the wisdom of the online crowd.

“Social-media sites like Wikipedia and Digg are celebrated as shining examples of Web democracy, places built by millions of Web users who all act as writers, editors, and voters. In reality, a small number of people are running the show. According to researchers in Palo Alto, 1percent of Wikipedia users are responsible for about half of the site’s edits. The site also deploys bots—supervised by a special caste of devoted users—that help standardize format, prevent vandalism, and root out folks who flood the site with obscenities. This is not the wisdom of the crowd. This is the wisdom of the chaperones.”

Over the holiday shopping season, Wal-Mart launched a new blog, CheckOutBlog.com.  This blog is a new and interesting approach for Wal-Mart.  The NY Times reported on this new blog over the weekend:

“Known for its strict, by-the-books culture — accepting a cup of coffee from a supplier can be a firing offense — Wal-Mart is now encouraging its merchants to speak frankly, even critically, about the products the chain carries.

“This unusual new Web site, which was quietly created during the holiday shopping season, has become a forum for unvarnished rants about gadgets, raves about new video games and advice on selecting environmentally sustainable food.

“…Wal-Mart’s site…turns the traditional model on its head. Instead of relying on polished high-level executives, it is written by little-known buyers, largely without editing.

“The result is an intensely personal window into the lives, preferences and quirks of the powerful tastemakers at Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, who have spent years shielded from public view.”

I wonder if won’t still be met with some skepticism just because it is hosted by “Wal-Mart.”  It is a very interesting approach, and if nothing else, shows some progressiveness for the brand that is right in line with positioning it has taken on sustainability. If they keep this up, they just might gradually change perceptions of Wal-Mart — a task that at once seemed impossible, but could now be a plausible outcome.

I love research: usually there is a nugget of information that is revealed and gives us an “a-ha” moment.  But I also love research because it always confirms things we instinctively know, but provides the data to support those instincts.  That is what an article in today’s WSJ does for me.  The article is all about recall of commercials watched through fast forward on a DVR.  Some key findings reported that the most successful ads:

• Concentrated the action and the brand’s logo in the middle of the screen.
• Didn’t rely on multiple scene changes, audio or text to tell the story.
• Often used familiar characters.
• Were more likely to have been seen once before live.

Duh.  But the implications are interesting:

• Advertisers may want to unveil new campaigns during live events like sports games and then re-run spots during programs likely to be recorded.
• Advertisers may want to test multiple edits of a spot to see how it performs when it is fast forwarded.

As declared by Fast Company:

1. Google
2. Apple
3. Facebook
4. GE
5. Ideo
6. Nike
7. Nokia
8. Alibaba
9. Amazon
10. Nintendo
11. Procter & Gamble
12. News Copr.
13. Affymetrix
14. Disney
15. Samsung
16. Method
17. Target
18. HP
19. Tesco
20. Ausra
21. Timberland
22. IBM
23. Arup
24. Anomaly (an ad agency, oops, branding/innovation/design/VC firm)
25. Autodesk
26. Herman Miller
27. RealNetworks
28. Boeing
29. LG Electronics
30. Omniture
31. iRobot
32. Wal-Mart
33. Live Nation
34. Intel
35. Burton
36. Whole Foods
37. Cisco Systems
38. Corning
39. Toyota
40. Real D
41. Microsoft
42. Payless
43. AirAsia
44. Current TV
45. Sun Microsystems
46. BMW
47. Tata Group
48. AKQA
49. Prosper
50. Baidu

“No matter which services you choose, the most important point is simply to use video.  Too many companies don’t have clips showing their products, their philosophies, or simple news announcements by their CEOs.  Business is a conversation, and video is increasingly how that conversation takes place.” — summary of an article in this month’s Fast Company that talks all about the various ways video can be used by businesses.

More confirmation that the marketing efforts for the Dark Knight will continue as planned, reported in BrandWeek:

“Promotional partners are standing by their programs and reportedly won’t need to scrap any related marketing materials.  The reason: they did not focus on the ghoulish Joker character, instead preferring to center their campaigns on the hero, Batman.

“That’s been the norm for brand/movie tie-ins for years, with corporate partners choosing not to align too closely with the bad guys.”

A new survey shows in-person events can boost purchase intent as high as 52%, according to a recent article in BrandWeek. If consumers attend brand-sponsored events–such as sports championships, walkathons and theme parks–purchase intent translated directly into sales about 50% of the time. And, sports-related events have the greatest impact.

“The special value of events, sponsorships and trade shows has to be considered, ” said Raymond Pettit, co-author and svp at MarketShare Partners in Los Angeles. “There are many connection points you can build at an event whether it is emotional, aspirational or awareness building–it goes beyond just counting audience attention.”

I wonder, though, about people that attend these events, wouldn’t they be more likely to buy the product anyway? Just the fact that they are attending the event shows a pre-disposition to like the brand.

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.

How addictive is gaming? “Total time spent gaming online hit 11.4 billion minutes in December, up 27% over the previous year…Only e-mail and shopping keep people online longer nowadays.”  So, naturally, media companies and advertisers are looking for ways to leverage the popularity of online games.  BusinessWeek reports that MTV has been taking advantage of this growing trend and now “is pushing hard into online games in pursuit of their rich advertising potential and can’t have failed to notice that traffic growth is slowing at social networks.”

MTV has been signing up advertisers for its games, and one of the more recent additions: Staples.  Staples “recently sponsored a game on ShockWave.com, an MTVN site that attacks millions of women users.  The game features the Easy Button from its TV spots that, when pressed, magically makes chores disappear.  Women visitors were asked to submit photos showing why they needed an Easy Button.  They voted on the top five–including a messy garage–and the winning photos were converted into digital jigsaw puzzle, which happen to be a favorite among women gamers.”

I am continually surprised at the number of female gamers, but everywhere I turn lately I am reading about the popularity of gaming and the how women love gaming too.  See my previous entry on how women spend their time online.

But, I digress.  The point is, online gaming boom is showing no signs of slowing and advertising within games is the new product placement.  In fact, advertisers are expected to spend $2 billion on online games in 2012, four times 2007’s total.