If you ever wondered why so many young Americans are spotty, overweight, and just generally a pain in the butt... Listen up... We are to blame. And no, I'm not talking about us as parents (well, maybe to a certain extent) I'm talking about the "Us" in the ad biz. Did you know that here in the US, food companies spent $1.6 billion to market products to children and teens in 2006. Of which $870 million was targeted to children under 12, and about $1 billion was aimed at teens, according to a report released yesterday by the Federal Trade Commission.
Here's the best bit... The food advertisers' favorite medium was TV, where, it would seem that few of the primetime shows met the food advertisers' criteria for targeting to children. (And, this is really funny... Coca-Cola has decided it should only think of itself as "advertising to children" when over 50 percent of a show's audience is under 12.)
In response, the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, a coalition of 14 food companies — including Coca-Cola and Kellogg — promised they would either stop targeting children in advertising, or promote only "better-for-you products." Meaning products they claim are invested with some kind of nutritional value.
Just as companies were permitted to define what "advertising to children" meant, each was permitted to define for itself what "better-for-you" represented.
Nonetheless, the pledge seemed to appease the FTC. Director Lydia Parnes of the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection concluded that joining the coalition would serve as "a useful first step" for other food marketers.
Oh, please give me a break... Isn't this the old "Putting the fox in charge of the henhouse routine?"
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Just to prove that weird things happen when clients decide "Social Networking" is the next big thing they should jump into.. McDonald’s “Big Mac Chant Off,” went looking for the best performance of its “Two all-beef patties” jingle, they soon found a winner. But one of the runners-up is grabbing the headlines... Why? 'Cos he held up a McDonald’s back in 1994!
Launched on June 16 to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Big Mac, the contest asked users to perform their own version of the famous Big Mac ingredient list and to post the results to a contest page on MySpace, the 1,000 entries were winnowed down to 5 finalists, one of which was Tamien Bain and his hip hop-flavored entry. Bain, revealed that he served 12 years in prison for holding up a Miami-area McDonald’s restaurant at gunpoint on Memorial Day 1994. Bain was 14 at the time of the crime, but was charged as an adult! He served his full term.
Kent Voetberg, marketing director for McDonald’s Corp., says that Bain’s “interesting” background never posed any problem regarding his contest eligibility.
You can always rely on the US to deliver the bizarre! Remember Eddie Davidson, the guy who was known as the "Spam King?" Davidson, aided by several subcontractors, sent hundreds of thousands of unsolicited e-mail messages to potential purchasers of worthless stocks throughout the United States and the world touting the so-called excellent investment opportunities the stock offered.
Well, according to a story in the Denver Post, Davidson, 35, was found dead in the driveway of a home near Bennett, Colorado, an apparent gunshot suicide victim. In a Toyota Sequoia located in the driveway, authorities found the bodies of Davison's wife and baby, also gunshot victims. Davidson had escaped from a minimum security prison on July 20. He was just two months into a 21-month federal sentence.
The Rocky Mountain News reported that Davidson forced his wife to help him escape from the minimum security facility. What is weird, is not just the awfulness of killing his wife and kid, but he wasn't doing "hard-time" and the sentence was so light, he probably would have been out in a year. Still, he got to act out his second amendment rights by carrying a gun. God bless America!
Even though I've been living in the US, off and on, for well over thirty years, people here still ask me... And most of them, I've known and worked with over the many, many years I've been in this totally screwed up business... Just where the Hell I live now... And, the answer is, Boise, Idaho. To which I usually get the reply... F*u*c*k!... Boise, Idaho! What the hell are you doing living in the Mid-West? Further proof that most people here (unfortunately, I think the same applies in the UK) don't know their own bloody country, let alone Outer Mongolia. Anyway, to set all you wankers out there straight, Kiplinger magazine just voted Boise one of the ten best places to live in the US. And if you don't agree, come on over for a visit and a barbeque, but be warned... We're really big on 2nd amendment gun rights here. So, you'd better be "packin' heat!"
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According to a mid-July memo AOL is doing a bunch of housekeeping that will see a number of services shot behind the woodshed -- among them media-sharing site Bluestring, Xdrive online storage, the AOL Pictures photo-sharing site, and MyMobile. In the memo to employees, EVP Kevin Conroy said, "There was a time at AOL when the strengths of our aggregate portfolio of products more than compensated for the weakness of an under-performing product. The realities of the industry and market shifts in online advertising no longer make that possible. Simply put, every product makes a direct impact on our bottom line."
The belt-tightening drive is also hitting some of AOL's blogging properties, and some authors who are paid by the post were asked to put their efforts on hold until the end of the month. All of this may just be part of AOL's usual periodic pruning, but it's getting more attention because the Yahoo-Microsoft soap opera showed that AOL is in play, and for sale. The question is whether there are any interested buyers
The usual big names are being batted about -- Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, IAC/InterActiveCorp, or maybe a media outfit like the New York Times Co. or News Corp. -- but in most of cases, it's easier to list the cons than the pros. Like other property owners these days, Time Warner may find itself stymied by a lousy market.
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Even though Apple has a well deserved reputation for "cool" and great looking products, if somewhat "pricey," they are certainly keeping up their reputation for bad customer service. David Pogue, in today's New York Times, Circuits section, has a well written piece about how two full weeks after the launch of "MobileMe" (which costs $100 a year) Apple still hasn't sorted out multiple complaints from the thousands of Apple Freaks who've signed up for the service and are having horrendous problems with their email.
But, as David puts it... "The real problem is how Apple is responding. For a company that's so brilliant at marketing, it seems to have absolutely no clue about crisis management." All users get as a response to complaints is the standard... "We understand this is a serious issue and apologize for this service interruption. We are working hard to restore your service."
Nothing new there... Remember the iPod battery replacement fiasco of a couple of years ago?
It was announced today that Google is taking the wraps off an Internet encyclopedia designed to give people a chance to show off - and profit from - their expertise on any topic. The service, dubbed "knol" in reference to a unit of knowledge, (pardon!) had been limited to an invitation-only audience of contributors and readers for the past seven months.
Now anyone with a Google login will be able to submit an article and, if they choose, have ads displayed through Google's marketing system. The contributing author and Google will share any revenue generated from the ads, which are supposed to be related to the topic covered in the knol.
Obviously, we can expect that the advertising option will encourage people to write more entries about commercial subjects than the more academic topics covered in traditional encyclopedias.
In other words, it will probably have lots of articles about used cars and washing machines!
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There's an interesting piece in The New York Times about how Amazon has begun a limited testing of its new Video on Demand service, which will replace its Unbox store. The big difference between the two is that the new service will stream movies through your browser rather than requiring you to download them and use Amazon's video player.
Users will also retain access to movies and shows they're previously purchased. The service is not expected to be particularly profitable; Amazon is most likely looking to the future. Which when you consider they didn't make a profit for the first ten years they were in business is proof that Jeff Bezos looks at business quite differently than most of Corporate America's senior management, who only seem to plan from quarter to quarter.
There's an interesting article in Salon about Barack Obama's marketing machine. With over 5 million people on Obama's e-mail list this is just the start of what political strategists say is one of the most sophisticated voter databases ever built.
Using a combination of the information that supporters are volunteering, data the campaign is digging up on its own and powerful market research tools first developed for corporations, Obama's staff has combined new online organizing with old-school methods of voter outreach to assemble a central database for hitting people with messages tailored as closely as possible to what they're likely to want to hear. It's an ambitious melding of corporate marketing and grassroots organizing that the Obama campaign sees as a key to winning this fall.
It's particularly funny when you consider how so called "Marketing Guru" Mark Penn really screwed up Hillary's campaign efforts. And this is the guy who heads up one of the world's largest PR outfits. But unlike most ad agencies, Burston Marsteller (Penn is the CEO) didn't work on spec, and Hillary still owes him several million. There's a lesson there, somewhere. Not that anyone ever takes notice!
Over here in the US, when you continue to read about the seemingly never-ending saga of the Yahoo-Microsoft takeover, buyout, collapse... You have to think about that scene in the movie "Lost in America," where, after his wife has lost their six-figure nest egg in a Las Vegas casino, the Albert Brooks' character tries to convince the management of the casino what a public relations coup it would be if the casino could just give them their money back.
Unfortunately, it didn't work for him; and it certainly won't work for Yahoo. No matter how much better it looks now than it did a few weeks ago, that rejected $33-a-share offer for the whole shebang just ain't coming back. According to the pundits, "The current Microsoft/Icahn proposal would require the immediate replacement of the existing Board and the removal of the top management team at Yahoo." Well... Yeah!!!
Over here in the US, I'm writing this on Sunday night. In about ten hours, the New York Stock Exchange will open. I expect it to be a bloodbath. Not just because the economy has been going down the tubes for months, but because I think we have just tipped over the edge of the precipice. not just with the news today that the government will bail out both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac... They had little choice on that... But with the much more ominous news that they have said that banks and brokerage houses are now on their own.
This sums it up... "The credit crisis has entered into a new phase -- the government has one bailout left in them, and this is it," said Jeffrey Gundlach, chief investment officer of TCW Group in Los Angeles." And, as we all know, as the economy goes, so goes the ad biz. It's going to be a really tough couple of years... If not more.
Not just over here in the US, but over there in the UK!
Here in the US, all the Apple freaks are out today, standing in line to be the first on the block with the new GodPhone 3G. At one Japanese store, hundreds of people were waiting in line to buy the phone yesterday. One California-based Mac repair company sent a worker to New Zealand to pick up and disassemble one of the first iPhones as soon as it went on sale. The company's Web site, Ifixit.com, was sluggish yesterday as techies around the world logged on to gawk at the first public images of the new gadget's microchips.
In America, people were auctioning off places in line at Washington Apple stores. The new iPhones cost $200 and $300, that doesn't include the cost of a place in line for those not willing to spend the night standing outside an Apple store.
The going rate for a space ranged between $50 and $100 on Craigslist yesterday. A typical offer: "I will have the rest of the family stay in line so i will have FOUR (4) extra spots so you don't have to camp out. you give me $75 cash and you will have a spot in line." No doubt, the guy had plenty of takers. Further proof that Apple freaks, really are freaks.
I was interested, and more than a little mystified to read that more than a ten years after it crashed and burned in a huge pile of flaming debt, WiReD - the magazine aimed at pseudo-tech-geek-wannabe's - is returning to the UK. Publisher Conde Nast, which acquired WiReD after the first UK version blew up, says it will launch next year and has hired editor, David Rowan. He's fully buzzword compliant, as his old column which highlighted trends and "The Next Big Thing" showed.
Cynics might wonder if the skeptical British market will again reject this brave venture in favor of more "Lad Mags" featuring cars and lots of T&A. As was the case with American Football, will a garish DayGlo publication that's full of utopian drooling about technology, bogo-economics, and junk science work with the British public? All I can say is it stopped working for me years ago, when they started filling it with really bad ads for trucks, Hummers, booze and all kinds of other crap. Maybe they should go the T&A route!
Even though loyal readers of MadScam, may groan, 'cos I've been on, and on about this about this before... But, what the hell... I'll do it again.
Isn't it about time someone created a TV spot that essentially owned up to the fact that bringing a man's fantasy to life, by promoting the aphrodisiac qualities of whatever you splash all over your genitalia... Not to mention your stinking armpits... May not necessarily be the ultra testosterone message from "Axe" (Yeah, it's called something else with a really suckorific name over there, which I think is Lynx... But, it's just as fucked up) in its "shower tool," a really bad TV spot with a rough and smooth side, featuring a man who's brought through a "Guywash." During which, the smooth side gives him a soft scrub and a blow dry, while the rough side aggressively softens his rough patches.
The spot ends with the man emerging clean and refreshed from the shower. See the ad here, created by BBH, London. All I can say is... Bloody pathetic!!! Oh... Not to mention, it really fucking sucks... Yeah, I know, I'll be fucking edited out! As will be the fucking!!!
Here in the US, all the big three auto companies announced disastrous figure for their last quarters sales. No surprise really when you consider Americans are realizing that driving Hummers when gas is four dollars a gallon - And soon to be five - doesn't make a lot of sense.
As usual, Detroit got the message too late and it will take them years to make a really competitive small car. Too bad they didn't spend some time in Holland and see what people drive when gas is ten dollars a gallon.
Even more ominously for the economic outlook, Starbucks announced today that it was closing 600 stores and laying off 12,000 workers. First to go are the gas guzzlers, then the frappacino's. Next thing you know, Bush will stop telling us that the US economy is fundamentally sound!
George Parker
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