Advertising

Posted by Carroll Trosclair

NBC Universal will try to get $3 million for most 30-second television commercials during the 2009 Super Bowl, but advertisers may have reason to resist the hefty increase. The 2009 game is scheduled in Tampa February 1.

The Wall Street Journal reported in May 2008 that NBC will use $3 million as "the starting point for negotiations" with advertisers, 10% higher than any previous starting point. According to the Journal, prices for the spots traditionally increase about 5% per year.

The Fox network charged $2.7 million for most 30-second spots during the 2008 Super Bowl. Since the exciting New York Giants-New England Patriots game drew a record 97.4 million viewers the cost per viewer was about 2.7 cents. At $3 million per spot, the cost would be about 3.1 cents per viewer for the same size audience.

NBC is using the 2008 record audience as a selling point for the 2009 commercials, but advertisers aren’t guaranteed those numbers next year. The Giants-Patriot battle featured two of professional football’s most popular teams from two of the largest television markets in the nation, top ranked New York and the seventh-ranked Boston/Manchester area.

The odds of those same two teams making it back to the Super Bowl are extremely small. The only repeat match in Super Bowl history was the 1994 game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Buffalo Bills. They met in Pasadena in 1993 and again in Atlanta in 1994.

About half of the National Football League teams are located in television markets ranked 15th to 70th.

The Journal reported that major Super Bowl advertisers like Anheuser-Busch lock in lower rates by signing contracts for multiple spots over several years.

References: Matthew Futterman and Suzanne Vranica, Wall Street Journal, May 6, 2008; Downtown Magazine.com

Posted by Carroll Trosclair

There’s something ironic about business publications losing business. You’d think that with all the information and wisdom they disseminate, they’d retain enough to protect themselves from major slumps in advertising revenue. However, according to the 2008 first quarter reports from Magazine Publishers of America, the magazine industry association:

Business Week suffered a 19.4 percent decline in ad pages, dropping from nearly 533 pages in the first quarter of 2007 to 429.5 pages in the first three months of 2008. That represented a drop in revenue from $63.8 million to $53.9 million.

Forbes ad pages dropped 13.2 percent, from 581.8 pages to 504.8 pages. Revenue dropped from $66.6 million to $61 million.

Fortune Small Business ad pages declined 18.6 percent, from 92.1 to 75 pages. Its revenue fell from $9.9 million to $8.4 million.

Fortune Magazine did better than its small business brother, losing only 1 percent of its 433 ad pages and actually increasing its revenue from $49,2 million to about $50 milllion.

But some of the smaller business publications fared badly:

Smart Money lost 21.4 percent of its pages and 17.7 percent of its revenue.

Kiplinger’s Personal Finance’s ad pages declined 20 percent and its revenue fell from $10.3 million to $8.5 million, down 17.2 percent.

What’s the old proverb? "Physician, heal thyself."

But Magazine Publishers of America said American consumer and business magazines collectively experienced a 6.4 percent decline in ad pages and a 1.2 percent decline in revenue during the first quarter of 2008.

Posted by Carroll Trosclair

With interest in consumer loyalty reward programs growing rapidly, Chockstone Inc. has introduced technology to administer the programs through regular credit and debit cards, allowing consumers to get rid of all those cards devoted exclusively to individual companies. The new service is called "SingleSwipe."

Some merchants fear the loss of their name on the loyalty cards will diminish their branding efforts. However, others think that loss will be more than offset by the increased convenience and savings of the new system.

Chockstone is a Portland, Oregon firm specializing in loyalty marketing and technology. It says SingleSwipe will track customer "preferences and purchase history and immediately provide savings and promotional offers that are most relevant to each individual customer."

Chockstone CEO Jeff Lipp added that the system will accelerate the payment process and eliminate "the hassle factor for consumer participation in a rewards program." It will also decrease the overall cost of administering such programs, he said.

The company said SingleSwipe can be used with either VISA, MasterCard, Discover or American Express credit cards.

It will require cardholders to register their credit or debit cards and use those cards for "both payment and loyalty transactions," a requirement that might raise consumer concerns about privacy and the protection of their credit card information.

To head off those concerns Chockstone said that it "maintains and processes all data throughout its network and platform in compliance with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) regulations."



Chockstone said in April 2008 that "more than 46,000 merchant locations" use its services to conduct their loyalty programs. Those locations include Subway, Tully’s Coffee and Plaid Pantry.

Posted by Carroll Trosclair

The drastic decline in American newspaper advertising was highlighted in April 2008 when the New York Times Company reported a first quarter net loss of $335,000, brought on mainly by a 10.6 percent decline in advertising revenue.

The loss surprised analysts, but the company stock dropped only eight cents, to $19.42, the day the losses were announced.

In reporting its 2008 first quarter results, the company noted that even a 16 percent increase in its Internet advertising could not offset the decline in print advertising.

The company owns the New York Times, the nation’s most prestigious newspaper, the Boston Globe, the International Herald Tribune and 16 smaller papers.

Investors Calling for Company to Sell Smaller Papers

According to both the Times and Reuters reports, some investors have been calling for the company to sell smaller papers and to focus more on Internet properties.

The Newspaper Association of America announced earlier in the year that newspaper advertising revenue dropped nearly eight percent in 2007. That was the second biggest drop in more than 50 years.

In his New York Times story on the loss, Richard Perez-Pena called the company’s 10.6 percent loss in ad revenue "the sharpest drop in memory." He attributed it to both the nation’s economic downturn "and the continuing long-term shift of readers and advertisers to the Internet."

• National Newspaper Advertising
• 2007 American Ad Spending

Posted by Carroll Trosclair

Outdoor ad companies are making it possible to advertise almost anywhere. In addition to traditional billboards, they offer mobile billboards, wallscapes, vehicle wrappings and advertising on scaffolding, pedicabs, rickshaws, scooters, cabs, segways and bikes.

Montage, a New York-based company, also has a patent pending on huge illuminated floating billboards for your favorite beach, swimming or boating area. These boards are 24 feet long and 14 feet high and have backlighted illumination.

The company website says the floaters are a "real attention grabber" and "look great at night from a far distance." Montage has a nationwide permit from the U.S. Coast Guard for the floating billboards. The permit gives it "24-hour access to areas such as the Hudson River around Manhattan Island, coastal beaches, the Chicago River or any other waterfront location."

Montage has offices across the United States, as well as in Canada, Europe and China.

Mobile Billboard Advertising

Posted by Carroll Trosclair

Social media sites with names like Facebook and My Space are called advertising’s latest miracle messengers. They are different, we’re told, from all the rest, as all the rest once were.

The excitment over these sites confirm that advertising is perhaps the most flexible business on the planet, which is one reason it is so much fun and attracts so many crazies. We have glided easily from one major medium to another, from newspapers and magazines to radio, billboards, kiosks, direct mail, television, email, websites, DVRs and racing cars, not necessarily in that order. We embraced them as quickly as we learned how to write, record and put pictures on them.

Social media is different, we’re told, because it will interact with us and turn customers into passionate missionaries for our products and services, right there on our computer screens. We hope it does.

Loyal customers worked for mom-and-pop operations even without the Internet, but that was when customers had names instead of numbers. Some customers still spread the word for their favorite motorcycles, cars and ball teams.

But can social media find many enough missionaries who will sing the praises of business-gobbling retailers loud enough to drown out the critics who don’t like their labor, neighborhood, environmental and small business practices?

Utility, insurance, oil and financial giants will have to search hard for customers who love them enough to lobby their neighbors on the finer qualities of multi-millionaire CEOs who walk away with additional millions while customers struggle with rising prices.

Lots of luck. Meantime, we’ll still see companies thanking themselves profusely in TV commercials, proving that at least their ad agencies love them.

Posted by Carroll Trosclair

The growing number of corporate-sponsored "house parties" are in step with both the "experiential marketing" movement and the "authentic marketing" strategy recommended by James Gilmore and Joseph Pine II. In their book "Authenticity" the business consultants tell companies to quit using ads to "talk" about their products and to "start creating places—permanent or temporary, physical or virtual—where people can experience" the products. (See Authentic Marketing Strategy.)

Both the experiential and authentic strategies encourage companies to diversify their branding and advertising budgets to include innovative public relations functions and special events such as the nationwide home gatherings staged by the firm House Party.

House Party stages nationwide home events in which companies can interact with consumers, introduce products and monitor the reactions in a party atmosphere. As many as 1,000 "parties" are conducted simultaneously, sometimes in connection with a television show.

The company has staged parties for such diverse clients as Campbell Soup, Hershey, Kraft, Time Warner and Ford. NBC Universal used parties to promote several television shows.

Ford contracted for 1,000 parties, hosted by Ford customers, to counteract negative perceptions of its vehicles. House Party recruited hosts through its website and received more than 4,000 applications.

Kitty Kolding, House Party’s chief executive, said "we find people who have strong brand affiliations and give them reasons to do something they do anyway, speak positively about the brand."

Hosts are not paid but are given gift packs. They serve as "evangelists" for the product or company.

People attending the parties are encouraged to discuss the products and, in Ford’s case, were given opportunities to see and/or drive Ford vehicles. They watched a Ford-sponsored TV show.

House Party says its clients pay $100,000 to $250,000 for the parties.

Posted by Carroll Trosclair

Attorney advertising ranks with political advertising as one of America’s most sensitive and controversial marketing tools. They share many characteristics and are tough to produce well.

First, both the political and attorney ads are usually "I" ads, meaning they promote one person. They don’t have to be that way, but for many reasons most of them are, making them difficult to produce without sounding self-centered, vain and boastful.

Attorney Ads Are Controversial by Nature

Second, they are by nature controversial. Both the politician and the lawyer are usually against someone or some group. The politician is trying to defeat an opponent. The lawyer is usually trying to beat the district attorney’s office, an insurance company, some other big business or a government agency.

Both political and attorney ads are often attack ads, which voters say they dislike, but which consultants say are necessary and effective.

Lawyers Often Tackle Popular Causes

They are often taking on issues that are unpopular with a large part of the viewing or listening audience. The politician may be tackling a popular incumbent or political party or may be challenging a popular policy. The lawyer may be offering to represent criminals, attacking well-respected companies or soliciting clients for a class action suit.

When you wave all these red flags in front of trial lawyers, corporate attorneys, government agencies, bar associations, judges, consumers and marketing consultants you’re likely to generate a lot of debate, and that’s what we see in Attorney Advertising Rules.

Posted by Carroll Trosclair

QuadrantOne, the ad sales network started in February by four of the nation’s largest media companies, received a tremendous boost in March when it was joined by the 26 newspaper publishers in The Newspaper Consortium. The move allows quadrantOne to offer nearly double the number of websites on which it can sell ads.

The Newspaper Consortium said it would immediately make 138 of its 425 newspaper websites available to quadrantOne and will add more later. That immediately brings quadrantOne’s total newspaper sites to about 250.

The Consortium was formed last year by A. H. Belo Corp., E. W. Scripps Co., Media General Inc., Cox.Com and McClatchy Co. to partner with Yahoo.com in the sale of advertising. It has also shared search content and recruiting with Yahoo.

For more about quadrantOne, see QuadrantOne Beckons Big Ad Buyers

Posted by Carroll Trosclair

American listeners and viewers will be bombarded with political commercials in the months leading to the November 4 Presidential and Congressional elections.

Politicians and their supporters will spend millions of dollars producing ads to boast about themselves, stretch the truth, twist the truth and attack each other. Some will make us laugh and say "Yeah, go get’em." Many will anger us. Most of them will just bore us.

On November 5, we’ll find that nearly half of them were a waste of millions of dollars because their candidates will have lost.

But, Americans will tell themselves the commercials are just the price of democracy. All that baloney, all those spots, all that muckraking, all that wasted money and all that annoyance is the price of separating real leaders from losers. It’s the democratic process at work.

In Britain, they see it just the opposite way. Because of broadcasting’s impact, they view political commercials as potentially dangerous and they worry that the guys with the most money can create an uneven playing field. So they don’t allow any political ads on radio or television. They just allot each party a certain amout of time to state their cases. The ban on commercials is considered essential to preserving the democratic process.

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Ban on Political Commercials