Here in the States, the news today in AdWeek that Toys R Us has dumped IPG's Hill, Holiday, Connors, Cosmopulos after just one year, is further proof of the insanity taking place in the ad agency biz.
Just one year ago a review was organized by search consult, Select Resources International in Santa Monica, Calif. The finalists for the $85 million account were Hill, Holliday, Omnicom Group's DDB in Chicago and independent The Richards Group in Dallas. The agency of record, WPP's Young & Rubicam in New York, got smart and decided not to defend the business.
So, what does this tell us... Firstly, after spending dumpster loads of money to win the account, it ups and leaves before they've recovered the costs of the pitch. The other two finalists were out of pocket from day one. Secondly, the agency search consultant, pockets a hefty fee for matching the client with an agency they dump after just one year. Doesn't inspire much confidence in their expertise. But, I'm sure they'll be doing it again for clients who employ Marketing people who are too dumb to make their own decisions.
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I have to confess an ulterior motive with this post... Because I used to work on the Dell account for many years at both Chiat Day and later at GMO, I was intrigued today to read that Dell says its profit and sales grew in its fiscal first quarter, beating Wall Street's expectations in a sign the computer maker's turnaround efforts may be starting to pay off.
For the three months ended May 2, Dell says it earned $784 million, or 38 cents per share, up 4 percent from $756 million, or 34 cents per share, in the same period a year earlier. Dell says its revenue jumped 9 percent to $16.08 billion from $14.72 billion. Michael Dell is one very smart guy, and now that he's back at the helm, the results seem to be paying off.
Analysts, on average, had expected a profit of 34 cents per share on sales of $15.68 billion, according to a poll by Thomson Financial. The company says strong growth of commercial and consumer products and services and lower costs as a percentage of sales helped drive results. My only worry is that once the "Poisoned Dwarf's" new agency is responsible for driving sales, they may start going in the opposite direction! defies
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Couple of interesting comments on my last post about mobile advertising, which I thought merited a reply... So, here are my thoughts in answer to both Michael Byrne and Mel Carson...
Mel... I am ready to be convinced regarding the merits of mobile advertising. But as I said in the post, I lived through the bloodbath of the dot com implosion when people were spending obscene amounts of cash to build audiences before they had even worked out how to make money from that audience. The key question is... How many of those 500% more searches on the iPhone actually translated into sales? Yes, your company, Microsoft, is all over the potential of mobile... As you should be.
However, knowing that you are an incredibly smart and market driven company, I'm sure you're not putting all your eggs in that basket. As Michael would put it... Have you opened up a virtual store on Second Life yet? I sincerely hope not. Good comments though. That's what I think is the single most important benefit of blogging, the feedback. Which is why, on my US blog, AdScam, I am having a running battle with MediaBistro's ad blog... AgencySpy, which makes it almost impossible to make comments to posts. Keep commenting, I'll keep posting.
Cheers/George
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I'll admit that sometimes, I am a cranky old sod, particularly when it comes to people who never stop going on about a lot of the "New Media" out there. Don't get me wrong, I am on board with about 75% of it, even though most of the over-hyped social networking stuff will never make money, in spite of the dipshit investors pouring millions into it. Reminds me of the dot com boom, lots of people got severely burned... But hey you never know... The next one might be the big one... Right?
But, the one I really don't get is mobile advertising. Yeah, I know Juniper Research in the UK just released a report claiming that mobile advertising will be worth nearly $8 billion in less than five years, with delivery channels including idle-screen, mobile TV campaigns, display advertising and SMS. Which means if you want to watch Star Wars on a book-match sized screen for several hour (unless your battery runs out before Luke does for Jaaba) you will also have to put up with a couple of hours of advertising.
It just seems to me there are much better channels already out there for advertisers to spend their money on. And don't even get me started on SMS - text ads.
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For all the loonies out there who can't wait to blow loads of cash on the latest iToy... It's official... Well, almost. The Jesus phone... The 3g version of Apple's iPhone will be announced on June 9th. Well, that's what gadget blog Gizmodo, says. According to "someone very, very close to the 3G iPhone launch." Which could be God Job's pool cleaner or dog walker. Who the hell knows.
It doesn't seem more than three weeks ago since Citi analysts Richard Gardner and Yeechang Lee, made the same prediction three weeks ago. And, when you consider June 9 is freak out time for all the Apple crazies when God Jobs does the keynote at the Apple worldwide developers conference, it all starts to make sense, right?
All I can suggest until that momentous date is that Apple Loonies should stay home, watch all their Star Wars DVD's, and take lots of cold showers whenever they start to lose control of their faculties.
Over here, from some strange reason, everyone seems to think the sun shines out of CP+B's arse. So I was amused to read an article in current issue of FastCompany about Crispin Porter + Bogusky. It starts out by describing Alex Bogusky, who appears on the cover, as Jesus.
It then goes on to describe the knicker wetting expectations of the crowd at the Denver Ad Club as they waited for him to put in an appearance after opening the latest CP+B office in nearby Boulder. An office that was created primarily to handle the newly won Nike account. Unfortunately, just before the June issue of the magazine was published... Nike abruptly fired CPB, after one year of handling the account and the production of one TV spot that was widely seen as a disaster.
What's even funnier is Bogusky's comment that the agency is doing really, really well. This after the disastrous work for not just Nike, but also Hagar, Miller, Redenbacher and others over the last year or so. But then, I guess it all depends on what your definition of "really, really" is!
Exactly like the music and publishing biz, the network TV people here in America don't seem to get it... The news today is that, ABC announced its first significant revision to its Web TV plans since 2006. In an effort to distribute programs across the Web, they will start letting Web users embed clips of its shows on blogs and other sites. ABC.com also will make it easier for users to find specific portions of TV shows, and will roll out a new video player that lets users expand the video to the full screen.
For ABC, the upgrade makes sense. If TV networks don't make it easy for users to embed content, other companies will. Some already have. RedLasso -- now under attack by the networks -- has a large following of blogger's who use its service to embed TV clips in their sites. CBS, Fox and NBC have recently sent them a cease and desist letter, ordering it to stop enabling syndication of network shows.
RedLasso CEO Ken Hayward, meanwhile, argued that the company is helping traditional TV networks. "RedLasso believes we are providing a valuable service to the content producers and the blogger's," Damn right. Make it easy for people to use your stuff. If it's good, it will drive people to the network. If it sucks, you're screwed!
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So, the big on-line news over here in the States today is that Microsoft has bitten the bullet with its new strategy for beating Google, which is basically all about paying for results.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates announced the company's "Live Search Cashback" service this morning at an annual conference for online advertisers at MS headquarters. The service rewards people who use Microsoft's Live search engine to purchase products online with a cash refund. "We want to earn your loyalty and reward it with cash-back savings for your everyday online shopping," MS said in a statement posted on its Web site.
The new initiative comes as Microsoft is busting its chops to finalize a search advertising deal with Yahoo that Microsoft hopes will provide it with the audience it needs to compete with Google. Hmmm, long way to go there Bill.
To get the rebates, you have to register for a free account with Microsoft. Once your total cash-back rebate amount equals $5, this huge amount of money can be deposited in a bank account or a PayPal account or sent by check. Just don't go mad with that $5!!!
Picked up an Interesting piece in The Guardian the other day talking about the well known story of Steve Jobs visiting PARC (Xerox's research center in Palo Alto) and being blown over by his first look at a GUI. So much so, that he immediately got his engineers working on its development, first with the Lisa... Remember that? Then in the Mac.
As the article points out, he missed the significance of other PARC riches, including Ethernet, OOP, scaleable type, laser printing etc, etc. Nearly all of which were brought to life by PARC engineers after they had left and started their own companies.
Funny thing is though... PARC is still there and still being funded to the tune of many millions a year by Xerox. And they've been doing it for thirty years. Unlike many other companies that merely pay lip service to research. Wonder how much Apple spends in comparison to Xerox?
Over here in the States, you have to laugh at all the recent hoopla surrounding the launch of Starbuck's new logo... which in actuality, isn't all that new. The logo -- which offers a more revealing look at the coffee chain's mermaid symbol and goes with brown instead of green as its color -- is getting mixed reviews from marketing and public relations experts.
It features a semi-bare-breasted mermaid with her tail fin split in half. Ooooah, naughty. The previous green logo showed less of the mermaid. A Christian group in San Diego called "The Resistance" is offended by the new logo and wants consumers to boycott or complain to the Seattle-based coffee chain. (So, what else is new?)
Some PR experts are taking the new logo a little less seriously. "Seattle is known for people who like the peace pipe and this looks like the work of someone smoking some while watching 'A Fish Called Wanda' in the Pink Taco Restaurant," said Jason Rose, president of Rose & Allyn Public Relations. Yeah... I can see that, through a cloud of smoke.
As just about everyone reading this (Yes, all three of you) must work in the ad biz, and have had just about 80% of their work never see the light of day, I was encouraged to read that new theories suggest black holes are not a one-way street. Anything that falls into them may eventually come out the other side.
So, that campaign I did for Maxwell House coffee, the one the client rejected all those years ago, may, one day, actually run? Apparently the findings lend support to quantum gravity, but fly in the face of Einsteinian relativity. They also support Stephen Hawking's reluctant admission that information couldn't be destroyed by black holes.
Penn State researcher Ahbay Ashtekar says, "Once we realize that the notion of space-time as a continuum is only an approximation of reality, it becomes clear that singularities are merely artifacts of our insistence that space-time should be described as a continuum." Wow... I couldn't have put it better myself!
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Further proof that you can still make a shitload of money from a very simple idea, with the news today that Online address book Plaxo has been bought for an undisclosed amount by Comcast. Plaxo has certainly been around the block. It was co-founded by Sean Parker, (I claim no relationship to the former Napster pin-up.) The site reported 15M users October 2006. The original Plaxo idea was pretty good. providing automatic updating of contact information. Users and their contacts store their information on Plaxo's servers. When this information is edited by the user, the changes appear in the address books of all those who listed the account changer in their own Plaxo books.
Last year, saw the launch of Plaxo Pulse. This enables sharing of content from multiple sources across blogs, social networks, rating services, etc. Users can share and view the content according to categories such as friends, family or business network. Apparently, Comcast has paid an undisclosed amount for Plaxo, which has its aggressive partnership policy to thank. So far, Plaxo has partnered with Google's OpenSocial, AOL and last year Comcast. All of these deals created familiarity which eventually led to a buyer. Wonder how much they paid?
As an entire chapter in my next book is devoted to drug and health care advertising, I was interested to read that finally something might be done about the insidious prescription drug product placement that goes on in many American TV shows. Think Sopranos/Prozac or Desperate Housewives/Viagra for just a couple of examples.
A recent article in the medical press notes that the number of casual references to name-brand pharmaceuticals is higher than ever before. Medical shows in particular lend themselves to this form of non-advertising, and they are among the most popular prime-time programs. Shows like "House," "Scrubs," and "Grey's Anatomy" routinely feature sexy doctors and nurses dropping references to brand-name drugs.
Studies reveal that the authority granted to these characters leaves viewers less likely to notice or question their implied endorsements of the products. So, by their implied authority, a TV doctor recommending Vicodin is not as obnoxious as the same actor appearing in a commercial stressing that you can't be socially acceptable without the latest under-arm deodorant.
Loyal, arse kissing, Jobs drooling, Apple Freaks will no doubt be wetting their knickers at the news that the "Uber-Company" has just launched an online ad similar to its "Silhouettes" TV spot which launched here in the US just two weeks ago. As usual, the infantile sound track will promote the "Steve Jobs Benevolent & Retirement Fund," iPod and iTunes products.
In fact, it's pretty much the same old, same old ad, 'cos it uses the identical song as the TV spot, simply cutting and pasting different bits. "Gamma," running on AOL Music, Spinner.com, Artist Direct, Fuse TV, Mp3.com's search results, Papermag and Pastemagazine.com, is just as pseudo-psychedelic as "Silhouettes," except it's online and therefore lacks the impact of the big screen.
If you must, you can Watch the ad here. The usual surfer dudes at TBWA in gnarly Venice Beach created the campaign and handled the media buy. And yeah, I know it's better than 90% of the crap out there, but it's getting a bit expected now!
I did a piece for BrandRepublic the other week about conferences in general, and "Under The Influence in particular. Gordon thinks it would be a good idea if I posted, for all the numbnuts out there that missed the original piece. So here it is...
Over the years I’ve spoken at a great many advertising and marketing conferences, both in the US and the UK. The vast majority of them, particularly here in the US are boiler plate. Invariably, the attendees are expected to cough up a ton of money to listen to a bunch of MBA “suits” going through Power Point fueled presentations that usually do little more than extol the unparalleled virtues of whatever company or service the presenter is currently shilling for.
Only last week, the AAAA (America’s equivalent of the IPA) held their “Leadership Conference” at the Ritz Carlton, Laguna Niguel, California, which just happens to be one of the most expensive hotels in the world. However, in the interests of the “new realities” of the ad biz, they dispensed with the customary golf and tennis tournaments and got straight down to business with the same regurgitated chat about the challenges of the Internet age, and how they should all shape up and get up to speed with social networking, Web 2.0, guerilla, viral, and watching Star Wars on the two inch screen of your mobile phone. Even Chiat’s legendary Lee Clow, sporting his new title of Global Director of Media Arts waxed eloquent about the possibilities of what you can do on the Internet in terms of advertising and storytelling, before proceeding to show a bunch of Chiat’s 30 second TV spots for Apple. The whole thing sounds to me like one big yawn. But, if you are into conferences, have the fortitude, and your company is dumb enough to pay your expenses, you could easily spend every day of the rest of your life listening to that kind of crap at an ad/marketing conference of your choice somewhere on the face of the globe.
Which is why I was so pleased to be lucky enough, just a couple of weeks ago, to be in London speaking at Iris’s “Under the Influence” conference in the Borough Market area of the new and uber-trendy East End. And no, I hasten to add, for those who know me; it wasn’t the fact that it was held in five pubs and included enough food and booze to choke a donkey that got me all excited, it was because it had a ton of original and highly interesting and relevant content. OK, the food and booze was a definite plus, but everyone I spoke to (and there were close to a thousand people attending the event) thoroughly enjoyed it and was adamant they would be back next year. Oh, and did I mention that the whole thing, including the highly lubricated party in the evening, was free?
That’s right, no co-sponsors, no one handing out pens or beer mats with media company logos on them, no wankers sat at booths trying to interest you in signing up for a free demo of their new Web 2.0 “ChatBook.” The one they guarantee will be the beginning of the end for Facebook. Instead, the conference simply had lots of helpful people from Iris running a remarkably smooth event. Which when you consider the whole event took place in a series of packed to the rafters’ boozers, and that by about 3.00 PM, everyone was on their tenth pint, is a rather splendid achievement.
As for the content, not only was the quality of speakers extremely high… Yes, he said modestly, it did happen to include me and BrandWeek’s very own Philip Smith… It was the diversity of the people presenting and their radically different areas of expertise that made it particularly valuable. Many conferences claim to be about the future of the industry with an emphasis on so-called “New Media.” Yet the majority of the presentations are made either by representatives of old media desperately trying to reinvent themselves, or management zombies from the BDA’s – Big Dumb Agencies, fresh from their latest buying spree of digital, viral, guerilla, or whatever companies, which they then proceed to suck the marrow out of their young bones, before tossing the calcified remains on the bone pile of their previous purchases. In the big bad world of BDA’s, nothing changes. But, if you take the speakers at “Under the Influence” as a guide to the future, there may just be a glimmer of hope. From Andrew Baron, founder of the wonderful “Rocketboom,” to Matt Smith from “The Viral Factory,” to Shaun McIlrath responsible for a ton of great work before joining “Iris.” These are just a small sample of the many great speakers who were present on the day; I believe you’ll be able to see all the presentations at the “Under the Influence” site shortly. Which I guarantee will be well worth the trip.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the whole affair was that of all the people I spoke to over the course of many hours and many, many pints, not one of them was from a Big Dumb Agency. All were from the new disciplines, start ups, small shops and most encouraging of all; there was a healthy sprinkling of students. But perhaps that may have had something to do with the fact that the conference was free and in the evening you could drink ‘till you fell over, and it wouldn’t cost you a penny.
Now, that’s what I call a conference.
George Parker
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