Ms. Adverthinker

My friend over at Monkey Bulb found this spot and I love it so much, I am posting it here too.

Check out a cool experiment by blogger Noah Brier: Brand Tags.  This experiment proves that consumers control brands - brands are what consumers say.  On this site you can tag brands yourself, or you can see what others are saying about brands.  Very cool and fun.  Enjoy.

Google has been ranked the most reputable company in the country - a list it wasn’t on at all four years ago. See the entire article at AdAge. Google doesn’t spend any money to advertise its brand or services. According to Robert Fronk, senior VP-senior consultant, reputation strategy, at Harris Interactive:

“The positive perception of how you treat your employees, your corporate-social-responsibility efforts, and your products and services and the amount of media that can generate probably trumps any ad spend they would ever want to make.”

However, HP, a company that has recently re-invigorated its advertising to lean more to the hip and cool:

“…made not only the biggest jump from 2006 to 2007 — 21 spots, from No. 38 to No. 17 — but also the biggest jump in the history of the study.”

Coincidence?

I don’t watch the Discovery Channel, but I am inspired to after watching this spot. Genius and beautiful. Enjoy.

Video continues to be a growing method for consumer consumption of information and entertainment.  According to an article in BusinessWeek this week:

“The average American (age 12 and up) with Internet access spends more than 6 hours a day watching videos, shows, news, and sports - or playing games - on screens of one sort or another…Solutions Research Group…predicts a rise to 8 hours a day in 2013.”

“…on average TV accounts for 4 of the current 6 viewing hours.  The other 2 hours involve the Web, DVDs, gaming consoles, and mobile devices.  (The ratio is roughly reversed for the 12-to-24-year-old set.)  By 2013, the group forecasts, Americans will spend an average three hours daily viewing or playing with PCs and mobile devices.”

I love this.

This is too funny–and true–not to share given our current obsession with social networking sites. From Current TV. Enjoy.

Slate has an interesting article summing up how we read online.

At the first of May, Levi’s released the first of 10 viral videos to kick off its global brand campaign for its 501 jeans. Two videos have been released so far, and they have been so popular that Levi’s is looking to integrate the viral campaign into the larger brand campaign. It is about time that online started influencing offline media. Check out the videos here:

Jumpin’ In

“Hollywood Jungle”

Focus groups feel so old-school.  Marketers have been doing them forever and the methodology really hasn’t changed all that much since that “Mad Men” era.   With the crazy amounts of consumer-generated media available to marketers, it is odd that we would even bother convene focus groups to tell us what consumers think about the brands we represent: people are telling us–and the world–without our asking.  It seems that some companies are latching on to this new media better than others and using blog communities to gather relevant insights.  As reported in AdWeek:

“Now firms with expertise ranging from research and word of mouth to digital media are setting up closed communities for clients to tap into the nuances, the spontaneity and the language of consumers engaging in a leisurely change, a different dynamic to one where they sit face-to-face in a focus group for a prescribed period of time.  Some of the initiatives focus on a specific topic for a couple of weeks; others create a longer, ongoing conversation.

“‘…when you are a running a qualitative blog: You have people for 10 to 15 days, which is a huge  amount of time for them to think about their answers and to challenge your own questions, which makes a big difference in results.  What people say when they talk together is more interesting than what they say when they talk to us.  What they say peer to peer is more sincere and sometimes very intimate.”

Women are social and love to share information.  They are the gatekeepers for almost all purchase decisions for their families and they advise their friends on their purchase decisions.  So it makes sense that women would be attracted to blog-writing as a way to spread “word-of-mouth” experiences and information.  According to a recent article in AdAge:

“…more than one-third (35%) of all women in the U.S. aged 18 to 75 participate in the blogosphere at least once a week. And that number increases if less-frequent visits are factored in. Of those women who are online any amount of time, 53% read blogs, 37% post comments to blogs and 28% write or update blogs, according to the study.”

Why do they blog?

“For fun (65%)

To express themselves (60%)

To connect with others (40%)

As a personal diary (34%)

To give advice or educate (26%)”

Why do they read blogs?

“For fun (46%)

To get information (41%)

To stay up to date on family and friends (36%)

To stay up to date on specific topics (34%)

To connect with others (28%)

Entertainment (26%)”

Everything is going digital.  As people get more accustomed to using websites to find the information they seek, they are becoming more particular about how they find that information.  Reported by BBC News:

“The annual report into web habits by usability guru Jakob Nielsen shows people are becoming much less patient when they go online.  Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave.  Most ignore efforts to make them linger and are suspicious of promotions designed to hold their attention.”

And:

“There has also been a big change in the way that people get to the places where they can complete pressing tasks, he said.

In 2004, about 40% of people visited a homepage and then drilled down to where they wanted to go and 60% use a deep link that took them directly to a page or destination inside a site. In 2008, said Dr Nielsen, only 25% of people travel via a homepage. The rest search and get straight there.

‘Basically search engines rule the web,’ he said.”

Google, always on the cutting edge of innovation, demonstrated its Android mobile phone OS this week. This looks like it could be major competition for the iPhone. Very cool stuff. The phone’s built-in compass allows users to pan around an image by physically moving themselves. Check out some of the coverage and videos:

Keynote and Sneak Peak Images

Hand-held Videos

Most moviegoers agree that the best movie-watching experience is on a big screen, but more and more movies are available online for viewing on our much smaller computer screens. Netflix is quickly becoming a leader in this service by offering the ability to stream movies to a Windows PC as part of consumers’ subscriptions. And, now they are offering a device that sends those movies–streaming–to your big screen TVs: the Roku Netflix Player. For our “I want instant gratification” society, this is a great service, but the quality is reportedly still not great:

According to an article in BusinessWeek–”The Roku is a small box that superficially resembles products such as Apple TV or Vudu. But while the setup is similar, the operation is completely different. Other services download the content to a hard drive for playback; Netflix is pure streaming. The quality is not as good as Apple TV or Vudu, but it’s about equal to standard-definition digital TV. Making it work smoothly requires an Internet connection that consistently delivers at least 2 megabits per second.”

The services out there for movies on-demand at home are getting better and less expensive, but you still can’t beat the experience of watching a movie on a big screen. And free is best of all. If you live in Little Rock, be sure to check out Movies in the Park this summer. Free outdoor movies–shown on the big screen–every Wednesday night for eight weeks starting June 4th with E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial. Bring friends along with the beverages and snacks of your choice and hang out under the stars for an evening. It is a fantastic movie experience.

Here is the Movies in the Park schedule for the summer:

June 04, 2008 E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial

June 11, 2008 Rocky

June 18, 2008 Happy Feet

June 25, 2008 Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

July 02, 2008 Notting Hill

July 09, 2008 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

July 16, 2008 Casino Royale

July 23, 2008 The Wizard of Oz

How do we combat that pesky DVR fast-forward button that zips our consumers right through our commercials?  Product placement in the show!  But is it too much?  According to an article in BusinessWeek:

“…American Idol has become as much a marketing showcase as musical slugfest.  Contestants cavort in rock videos to pitch Fords, troop off to Apple to record iTunes tracks, and answer questions brought to you by AT&T.”

“Three years ago, Idol scaled back its sponsors from five to three to limit ad clutter.  But this year it added Apple, figuring it fit the show’s demographic. Meanwhile, advertisers like Ford Motor, which on May 14 unveiled a sportier Focus in a weekly 45-second rock video, became omnipresent.  It’s a lot of plugs to get through.  Idol showed 4,151 product placements in its first 38 episodes this year according to Nielsen Media Research.  That’s up just 4% from ‘07, but the time on screen jumped nearly 19%, to a total of 545 minutes.”

The result?  An aging audience for American Idol.  Those skeptical youngsters are tuning out the product plugs and moms are tuning in instead: the median age of Idol viewers is now 43.