Posted by truecreek on October 18, 2010 under More Dam News, Opinions. Everyone has them. | 
Now, I’m no fan of the Jackass series of TV and films, but you just cannot argue the fact that they can get the eyeballs. And 3-D had to help.
Jackass 3-D grossed a whopping $50 million in its debut weekend, setting several records and setting punditry tongues wagging in the process. First of all, the film bested the $48.1 million opening weekend for Scary Movie 3 in 2003, taking the October opening weekend record. Second of all, the opening figure is far and away the best opening weekend for any kind of non-fiction/documentary film in history. If you count this series as a documentary franchise (which I do), then the third entry is now the fifth-highest grossing documentary in history in just three days. It stands behind Jackass: The Movie ($64 million), Jackass Number Two ($72 million), March of the Penguins ($77 million), and Fahrenheit 9/11 ($119 million).
While the franchise has mediocre legs (part one had a 2.9x weekend-to-total multiplier in 2002 and part two had a 2.4x multiplier in 2006), thus making $100 million+ not quite a sure thing yet, there is little doubt that the film will end its domestic run as the second-highest grossing documentary/non-fiction film of all time. Still, 3-D films seem to have better legs than average (witness the useless My Soul to Take dropping just 53% in weekend two, as well as the inexplicably strong holds of Legends of the Guardians, now at $46 million), partially because they keep the bigger auditoriums for longer periods of time. If it can manage a mere 2.4x multiplier, it will in fact surpass the Michael Moore anti-Bush epic.
More here.
Posted by truecreek on under More Dam News, Opinions. Everyone has them. |
Personally, I’m not a fan of Southwest. Just not my cup of tea. But obviously, they have done a wonderful job of positioning themselves as the champion for the little guy/gal. The bag cops campaign was a good one, hitting the major airlines hard with a message that highlighted their collective greed in such a humorous manner. But for a lot of people, this is no laughing matter. Fees are killin’ them.
From AP:
Southwest Airlines is giving its “bag cops” a break.
Southwest has been running a heavy dose of TV commercials boasting that unlike most other airlines it lets passengers check two bags for free.
But the airline said Friday it will launch a new TV commercial designed to boost sales on its website. The ad, featuring singing and dancing employees in Chicago, is important to Southwest because its flights don’t appear on online booking websites such as Orbitz and Travelocity.
Also, Southwest is seeking actors for commercials that will target airlines that charge customers up to $150 to change their itinerary. Southwest doesn’t charge a fee for changing flights on a ticket.
Southwest spokesman Brad Hawkins said the airline hasn’t decided when or how widely the new campaign will run.
Brett Snyder, who blogs about airlines as The Cranky Flier, said the change-fees ads will probably be less effective than Southwest’s long-running “bags fly free” campaign. He said travelers know that they will get charged for checking a bag on other airlines, but they don’t know if they’ll ever need to change their itinerary.
Posted by truecreek on under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
My father, Joseph E. Young Sr., died last month after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. He had just turned 81.
To say we had a wonderful relationship is really an understatement. He was a great man, hard-working, loyal and dedicated. I learned so much from him. I will sorely miss our time together but know that some day, I will once again sit with him under a tree on beautiful summer day.
As you would expect, his death took my eye off the ball for a while. For some strange reason, I just didn’t see the need to post or update. I remember reading Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ “On Death and Dying” back in high school. If true, the five stages seemed to all happen at once. Part of me understood the situation and the rest of me didn’t.
Yes, you do feel numb.
What I didn’t expect was the impact small memories would have. Every day you see or hear something that stokes the fire within. Just writing this post and looking at this picture reminds me so much of the fun we used to have together.
But for me to get back in the swing of things, it’s vitally important that I get back to doing what I enjoy most and that’s working hard in the ad business. It’s time to scour the Internet for interesting articles, compelling research and great creative work.
So if it’s OK with you, here we go.
Posted by truecreek on July 14, 2010 under More Dam News, Opinions. Everyone has them. |
Yesterday, a federal appeals court decided that the policy of fining broadcasters for ‘indecent language and the like’ was unconstitutionally vague. The policy caused a huge issue for broadcasters because they had no way of knowing what would pass muster with the FCC, and what wouldn’t.
I have to agree with the court entirely. Here’s copy from the actual decision by the UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT. Simple and too the point.
We now hold that the FCC’s policy violates the First Amendment because it is unconstitutionally vague, creating a chilling effect that goes far beyond the fleeting expletives at issue here. Thus, we grant the petition for review and vacate the FCC’s order and the indecency policy underlying it.
Posted by truecreek on June 24, 2010 under More Dam News, Opinions. Everyone has them., Research |
Some fodder for those who are looking to justify moving dollars over to social marketing. A very interesting set of statistics, without a doubt. At the very least, every company should realize that social media can really support and communicate your message when you are in crisis mode. Just make sure you get your facts straight first.
By Michele Gershberg
Brands that use microblogging sites like Twitter to provide real-time responses to the public are winning a higher degree of trust from consumers, according to a study by a leading public relations firm.
Some 75 percent of people surveyed said they view companies that microblog — sending short, frequent messages on sites like Twitter or status updates on social networks like Facebook — as more deserving of their trust than those that do not, according to a survey by Fleishman-Hillard, conducted with market research firm Harris Interactive.
The second annual Digital Influence Index study, released at the Reuters Consumer and Retail Summit in New York, researches the extent to which the Internet affects consumer behavior.
The findings on Twitter are particularly notable in a year where many leading corporations found themselves in crisis mode, from BP’s role in the Gulf oil disaster to recalls from Toyota Motor Corp and Johnson & Johnson and a viral campaign against new diapers from Procter & Gamble on Facebook.
“What really matters here I think is that the rules of crisis engagement that we’ve known for years and years still apply, but they still apply in a much more accelerated way,” Dave Senay, Chief Executive of Fleishman-Hillard, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
Part of the lesson is “not to overreact, but also to react with factual information, and don’t get beyond what you know,” Senay said. “And do so not in a 24-hour news cycle, but in minute-to-minute monitoring.
Companies also need to be well set up in the digital world well before any potential problem arises, building a relationship with their customers so that trust can help them manage a crisis, said Brian McRoberts, senior vice president of digital research at Fleishman-Hillard.
More about Consumers Say: “In Tweets We Trust.” here.
Posted by truecreek on June 22, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them., Research |
There is so much research on this topic already and more seems to come out every day. There needs to be a greater focus on advertising to combat this horrible trend. It will have to be powerful stuff, like Marsteller’s “Crying Indian” that featured Native American actor, Iron Eyes Cody. It was one of the most successful campaigns of its kind, with some suggesting it reduced litter by almost 90% in 300 communities.
Now that’s how you do it.
By Mary Madden and Lee Rainie.
Adults are just as likely as teens to have texted while driving and are substantially more likely to have talked on the phone while driving.
In addition, 49% of adults say they have been passengers in a car when the driver was sending or reading text messages on their cell phone. Overall, 44% of adults say they have been passengers of drivers who used the cell phone in a way that put themselves or others in danger.
Beyond driving, some cell-toting pedestrians get so distracted while talking or texting that they have physically bumped into another person or an object.
These are some of the key findings from a new survey by The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project:
- Nearly half (47%) of all texting adults say they have sent or read a text message while driving.
- Looking at the general population, this means that 27% of all American adults say they have sent or read text messages while driving. That compares with 26% of all American teens ages 16-17 who reported texting at the wheel in 2009.
- Three in four (75%) cell-owning adults say they have talked on a cell phone while driving. Half (52%) of cell-owning teens ages 16-17 reported talking on a cell phone while driving in the 2009 survey.
- Beyond driving, one in six (17%) cell-owning adults say they have physically bumped into another person or an object because they were distracted by talking or texting on their phone. That amounts to 14% of all American adults who have been so engrossed in talking, texting or otherwise using their cell phones that they bumped into something or someone.
More about Adults Text While Driving Too here.
Posted by truecreek on May 20, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
By Joseph Young
They have been all over television over the past few years. You’ve seen them before. The beautifully art directed HD spots from BP. All those bright green and yellows flying around to that perfect music. It’s easy to find outstanding animated spots in just a few minutes on the web. And from what I have heard within the business, there were some spots produced recently that were in the $3 million per range. All of that backed up by a substantial national media buy.
All concepted and produced with one thought in mind: to position BP as a friendly, “we’re here with you” company that is working hard to make the world a much better place.
What a crock.
How long do you think it will be before the millions of dollars spent by BP to position themselves as the savior of our collective energy future just melts away?
When a brand screws us all like this, they become lepers. We cringe at the very thought of doing business with them. We now look at their brand as a ‘taker’, not a ‘giver.’ And in the case of BP, I suspect you will see a growing disdain for the company as the days wear on.
So I wonder when the first round of new TV spots will start up? It must suck for the agency that is responsible for producing what comes next from the company. If it were my shop, I would really have to do some soul searching before anyone spent another minute behind the lens on behalf of BP.
Posted by truecreek on May 4, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
Summer is almost upon us, a time when the cinema industry generates over 40% of their total annual box office revenue. It’s a time when people go out to the movies in droves, choosing to watch the hot new movies of the summer rather than stay on the couch and sit through another season of reruns on television. According to Nielsen, the shift is dramatic, with a 13% tick up for cinema in share during the summer months.
Last year, the industry experienced a record-breaking summer, with huge hits like Transformers, The Hangover, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and many others. Coming up this summer there will be another 13 blockbusters and remakes scheduled for release on the big screen.
Here’s just a few of the flicks you can expect to see this summer at a theater near you:
Iron Man 2
Shrek Forever After 3D
Sex and the City 2
Marmaduke
Toy Story 3D
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
For most consumer marketers, cinema is the place to be this summer. And throughout the year, cinema advertising is a fantastic complement to any broadcast TV schedule. So if you are in the theater, consider yourself a smart marketer. If you’re not, give True Creek a call and let’s fix that.
Posted by truecreek on April 26, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
We recently commissioned several of our very talented writers to concept some headlines for a organization that has dedicated itself to combating distracted driving. Here are just a few. If you have a favorite, please comment and let us know.
Posted by truecreek on April 14, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them., Research |
By Erik Sass
A new report from the Cinema Advertising Council and NewMediaMetrics details consumers’ emotional attachment to different media, as well as brands appearing in various media contexts. The findings suggest that cinema advertising can compete effectively with television for video advertising dollars.
Movies fared better than most other media in terms of emotional attachment, reflecting their immersive quality, and the fact that consumers will pay a fair amount for such an experience. CAC found that 44.5% of consumers that buy health and beauty products reported emotional attachment to movies, versus 29.6% for magazines, 21.2% for radio and 20.6% for magazines. Similarly, 43.9% of survey respondents who buy consumer packaged-goods and foods said they were emotionally attached to movies, compared to 28.9% for TV, 20.5% for magazines and 19.2% for magazines.
The data, summarized in CAC and NewMediaMetrics’ “360 Cross Platform Study,” were gathered in a survey of more than 3,000 people ages 13-54, categorized by the type of products they consume. It asked them to rate emotional attachment to media and brands in media on an 11-point scale, with 9-10 considered “emotionally attached.” The survey compared consumer ratings for TV, magazines, newspapers, Internet, cinema and a variety of other out-of-home channels.
Across all consumer categories, the overall attachment rating of 41.5% for movies ranked ahead of televised sports and major entertainment events, such as the Super Bowl (39.7%), Summer Olympics (26.3%), World Series (22.8%) and Oscars (16.1%).
Last year, the CAC released a study from Integrated Media Measurement showing that cinema advertising plus TV more than doubled consumer conversion rates when compared with TV alone.
The digital out-of-home industry in general has been working to bolster its measurement capabilities with new, more precise metrics in the hope of winning spending usually allocated to cable and broadcast.
Posted by truecreek on April 8, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
So, if these stats are correct, one could assume that as much as 17% of the population that has not adopted broadband would do so if they understood the nuts and bolts of how it works?
By Susannah Fox
A new report released today by John B. Horrigan, formerly of Pew Internet and now at the Federal Communications Commission, finds that 78% of adults in the U.S. are Internet users and 65% of adults have home broadband access.
Adults who do not have broadband at home fall into four categories:
Digitally Distant: 10% of the general population. Median age is 63. Half say that the Internet is not relevant to their lives or they lack the digital literacy to adopt broadband.
Digital Hopefuls: 8% of the general population. Low-income, heavily Hispanic and African American. Likely to say they want to go online, but lack the resources.
Digitally Uncomfortable: 7% of the general population. Likely to own a computer, but lack skills and interest in taking advantage of all the Internet has to offer.
Near Converts: 10% of the general population. Median age is 45. Cost is the biggest barrier to having broadband at home.
Posted by truecreek on March 26, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
My wife and I are getting ready for our annual celebration of the finer things in life, Loveapalooza. As part of the decorating committee of two, I was charged with arranging for the flowers.
Several weeks ago we received a gorgeous bouquet as a gift from our parents. The flowers were from ProFlowers.com. So I went to their site and found a perfect deal: two for one on roses. Buy a dozen, get a dozen. Now that’s the ticket. So the order was in.
When the flowers arrived two days later, I quickly looked at the roses and determined it was only a dozen, not two. So, being the ever vigilant consumer that I am, the call went out. Immediately, the ProFlowers customer service rep jumped all into my perceived floral quagmire and took control. Two dozen fresh roses were headed out the door to me for overnight delivery. With the most heart felt of apologies. And thank you so much for being a ProFlowers customer.
A minute or so later, a very professional HTML email hits my box repeating the apology and giving me the tracking number of my complimentary order of two dozen red roses. Now that is the way you handle it.
Unfortunately, it was a call I should never have made. Later that evening, my wife discovered that there actually were two dozen roses in the package, they were just stacked in a way that only showed the tops of a dozen or so. Everything was there and they looked absolutely beautiful.
Ugh.
So this morning, I sucked it up and sent an email to customer service. Yes, I blew it and you actually did send the correct amount of flowers. And please don’t hurt Gabriella, the woman who packaged the gorgeous roses. And the email was off.
Five minutes later their reply. You’re very welcome!
I suspect the flowers will arrive shortly and will be just amazing. Plus, there will be another note inside with some sort of coupon for a future purchase. Trust me, that is one coupon that will never be used.
But I can tell you that ProFlowers has a customer for life.
Posted by truecreek on March 12, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
Tongue-in-cheek, but valuable none the less.
By Steve Cuno
We rarely hear about the fourth law of thermodynamics. In brief, it states that whenever a server says, “Careful, this plate is extremely hot,” an invisible force compels the customer to touch the plate. The compulsion grows as the cube of the number of decibels with which the server pronounces the word extremely.
It seems that, given a choice between heeding a voice of experience and sabotaging ourselves, many people do not just opt for, but positively execute, a mad dash for the latter. This can be as true of marketers as it is of other human-like creatures. So, for those who prefer wasting time and money, I offer the following personally witnessed, surefire shortcuts to screwing up your marketing. (I should add that narrowing it down to 12 wasn’t easy.)
Sabotage Tip 1: Don’t set firm objectives. You’re much safer stating that your goal is to “get your name out there” or to advertise because the competition does. That way, even if sales tank, you can sit back and say, “I did my job.”
Sabotage Tip 2: Put the goal where the ball lands. With a little practice, anyone can learn to retrofit objectives to results. Soon after a VP of marketing proudly showed me a new sales video, it became apparent that the video appealed to employees, but offended customers. No problem. The VP promptly claimed that the video was never intended for sales, but for training. George Orwell would have been proud.
Sabotage Tip 3: Write and design for internal approval. Authorize as many people as possible to revise or, better yet, outright veto creative work. This will ensure that creative people avoid trying to connect with the market. Instead, they will focus on creating what is sure to fly internally.
Sabotage Tip 4: It’s all about what YOU want. A major coffeehouse chain lost customers for years by refusing to fill the demand for lattes made with nonfat milk. Why did they resist? Because the CEO liked coffee the way it was made in Italy, and Italian baristas don’t use nonfat milk. Darned customers. What makes them think they should have a say in what they want in their coffee?
Sabotage Tip 5: Misuse research. Herd a bunch of people into a focus group and ask them to evaluate your campaign. Treat their comments, especially the ones you like, as if they’re statistically valid. You can also phone 5,000 people and ask them what they do, don’t, would and wouldn’t buy, and why. Assume they know.
Sabotage Tip 6: Don’t listen to your salespeople. The only thing that salespeople do is interact face-to-face, every day, with real customers who use your products. What would they know about marketing?
Sabotage Tip 7: If it’s wild and creative, go with it. If you have a killer concept that’s destined to take top honors at the next awards show, it would be a sin not to back it with your budget. Who cares whether it’s effective? It deserves to be shared!
Sabotage Tip 8: Avoid valid evidence. Proper testing and analysis let you reliably predict a direct mail strategy’s outcome before risking big bucks. But if nature had intended for us to conduct valid, predictive tests, we wouldn’t have hips to shoot from. Showing the concept to coworkers, friends, family and people in a mall, though not predictive, is faster and easier. And, only in the short run, cheaper.
Sabotage Tip 9: Don’t trust your agency. Your agency may have experts on staff, but you can still hobble them by overruling their expertise with your intuition. You can also focus on minutiae. For instance, make the art director change a border on that mail piece from black to dark blue.
Sabotage Tip 10: Trust your agency. Not trusting experts is self-sabotage, but so is trusting non-experts. Many agencies, figuring they can affix stamps as well as anyone, list “direct response marketing” as a core capability. If you are firmly committed to failure, this is no time for due diligence. Just hand them the checkbook.
Sabotage Tip 11: Mistake a slogan for a brand. Imagine a person who is fast losing friends. This person might do well to take an honest look, figure out what alienates people and make changes. But substance is such a bother. Surely this person could more easily regain friends by learning to say something like, “Hi, I’m Alex—where coolness is Number One.”
Sabotage Tip 12: Disdain proven techniques. For nearly two centuries, direct response marketers have amassed information on what works in the marketplace. Moreover, experience shows that what worked yesterday works today. But learning all that stuff is tedious, and using it might hamper your creativity. Mustn’t let that happen.
There are many ways to sabotage marketing, but this should give you a good start. If you fail to implement these recommendations, don’t come whining to me if your marketing succeeds.
Posted by truecreek on March 2, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them., Research |
From Nielsen.
In a demographic view of social networking activity on mobile devices, women were found do use their phones to “tweet” and “friend” 10% more than men. And while social networking is commonly thought of as something for “the kids,” the 35-54 age group had more active mobile social networkers than any other group.
Posted by truecreek on January 29, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
My clients know this very well by now. I love cinema advertising and think it is a great place for them to advertise. There are over 125 new movies scheduled for release between now and the end of 2010. Movies from directors like Martin Scorsese, Tim Burton, Oliver Stone, Jon Favreau, Ridley Scott, M. Night Shyamalan, Tony Scott, The Coen brothers and you guessed it: Sly Stallone.
Then, you have Marmaduke. Releases 6/4, starring Jeremy Piven, Ron Perlman and Amanda Seyfried.
Posted by truecreek on January 26, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them., Research |
Very interesting research from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. It’s a hot topic of discussion here at True Creek, for sure. The premise was also the theme for a recent episode of ‘Modern Family’ on ABC.
By Margaret Shapiro
We’ve heard about the gender divide in knowledge and use of technology. It seems the gap may start with the simplest of technologies — cellphones — and at a fairly young age — middle school.
For a study published in December in the journal New Media and Society, University of Alabama at Birmingham sociologist Shelia Cotten asked nearly 1,000 middle school students to rate the different ways they used their cellphones.
The results showed boys much more than girls used their phones to play games, share photos and videos, listen to music and send e-mails. Girls tended to use their phones primarily for talking and or text messaging.
To the researchers’ surprise, the boys used the phones for talking and texting just as much as the girls — in other words, they didn’t use the “complicated features” instead of socializing, but in addition to it. “We would’ve expected that girls would use cellphones for talking and texting because females are socialized to communicate more with others than males,” said Cotten in an online video presentation of her research, “but there were no differences.”
“By these study results, we aren’t saying that parents should buy phones with fewer features for girls,” she said. “But it does point out how much more needs to be done to teach girls” about technology. “Females traditionally have perceived themselves as less skilled in terms of technology, especially with regard to computers.”
Cotten said that 60 to 70 percent of middle school kids report owning a cellphone.
More about Boys vs. Girls on Cellphones here.
Posted by truecreek on January 25, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
By Olga Kharif
Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) — Clear Channel Communications Inc., the largest U.S. radio broadcaster, said it may be interested in signing shock jock Howard Stern, whose five-year contract at Sirius XM Radio Inc. expires at the end of 2010.
The company’s interest hinges on whether Stern would be willing to work “within the limitations” of free over-the-air radio, said John Hogan, chief executive officer of the radio division of San Antonio-based Clear Channel.
“We clearly have both the willingness and the financial wherewithal to consider high-profile talent,” Hogan said in an e-mailed statement. “We would be the most logical company for him to optimize his exposure and financial return.”
Sirius XM, which averted bankruptcy last year after John Malone’s Liberty Media Corp. bought a 40 percent stake in exchange for $530 million in loans, may not be able to afford to renew the radio talk-show host’s existing contract, worth $500 million, said Tuna Amobi, an analyst at Standard & Poor’s.
Hogan’s remarks represent one of the first public expressions of interest after Stern, 56, said on air yesterday that he’s fielding calls from companies that want to hire him.
“Even if (a new contract) were half of what it was before, it would still be a major financial burden for Sirius,” Amobi said. “It’s a totally different game.”
Posted by truecreek on January 22, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
Great article by Henry Blodget.
A few years ago, when Google announced its decision to agree to censor its China site, it was savaged for selling out.
The company had violated its own “don’t be evil” motto, critics yelled, and it was tacitly supporting the Chinese government’s outrageous censorship policy.
The critics were wrong.
Google made the right decision to build a business in China a few years ago. And it’s making the right decision now, by threatening to pull out of the country if China doesn’t relax its censorship demands.
Google’s decision to make a big public threat now, when it controls 15% to 20% of China’s search market and is known to most Chinese internet users, will put far more pressure on the Chinese government to relax its policies than a boycott of the country five years ago would have.
Google matters in China now. The announcement that Google was threatening to pull out spawned public support for the company in China. It got Secretary of State Hillary Clinton into the act. It forced the Chinese government to respond with a statement. It has grabbed the attention of investors, as well as the hundreds of other companies that do business in China and are forced to play by Chinese rules. It will focus more public attention on the reality of China’s censorship policies than any boycott ever could have.
In short, by playing ball with China until it had some real leverage, Google has a much better chance of actually forcing the government to change.
More about Google Has Played the China Situation Brilliantly here.
Posted by truecreek on January 20, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
By Darren Rovell
Every time a company buys naming rights to a stadium, their executives get challenged. Is this really a good deal? Why does it seem like companies who have put their name on stadiums face greater economic trouble than those who pass on the idea?
I think the latter might be more perception than reality –- that the percentage of companies that sign naming rights deals and then file for bankruptcy are somehow much greater than those that don’t sign deals and don’t file for bankruptcy.
Answering whether naming rights deals are good deals depend on two things: price and activation.
In order to sell these rights, teams show companies what the “impression value” of the stadium is. That is, how many times will the company’s name be mentioned in the media.
The numbers being shown to these companies — ranging from millions of impressions to hundreds of millions of impressions a year –- are real. But there’s a big difference between having a 30-second ad and having your company’s name mentioned 30 times. I’m just throwing it out there, but I think that tens of thousands of impressions can equal what one 30-second ad can do as far as driving business to a company.
We just had on Wes Thompson, CEO of Sun Life Financial, whose company reportedly paid an average of $4 million over five years to put its name on the stadium where the Miami Dolphins play.
Because this is the seventh name change the stadium has had, the impression value has already been severely compromised. Simply put, fewer people are willing to call it by its official name because they’ve been put through the ringer. So Sun Life’s first job is to find out exactly how much it has been devalued — even with the Pro Bowl and the Super Bowl coming up.
But the next job is to convince fans why they should have their insurance through Sun Life. That is the essential leap that makes naming rights worth it or not.
Thompson mentioned that this was an opportunity to increase brand awareness and that the stadium was a great destination, but Thompson didn’t mention exactly what Sun Life was going to do with the rights.
Perhaps Thompson needs some time, but that’s not a great start. Because it’s an insurance product, it requires more of an effort than say a beer brand like Land Shark, which previously had the name to the stadium.
Is Sun Life going to offer some sort of deal where the longer you had Dolphins season tickets, the lower they are willing to go on your insurance as compared to the product offered by their competition?
We know Sun Life employees will be in their luxury box entertaining corporations, but how many Sun Life employees will be walking throughout the stadium talking to fans?
Perhaps I didn’t pry enough on specifics, but I’m skeptical of what Sun Life is going to do because I’ve found that most naming rights deals are ego buys with very little activation. Most naming rights deals aren’t worth it because the company itself doesn’t make it worth it.
Because of this deal, I now know the name Sun Life Financial. That’s the first step. Getting me to actually put my money with the product or service the company offers is the second step. And, at least for me, it’s a step that not a single company that has ever landed naming rights has ever accomplished.
Posted by truecreek on January 11, 2010 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
By Sarah McBride.
Last year was the first since 2002 that U.S. consumers spent more money buying movie tickets than buying movies to watch at home, underscoring the changing economics of Hollywood.
According to new data from Adams Media Research, Americans spent $9.87 billion at the box office in 2009, 10% more than in 2008, according to a report Adams plans to release Tuesday. At the same time, sales in the U.S. of feature films on DVD, long a cornerstone of movie studios’ business models, plunged 13% to $8.73 billion, including Blu-ray high-definition discs. (Other companies that track box-office receipts include Canada in their North American figures, adding about 7% to the total and pushing the year’s gross above $10 billion.)
The figures indicate that studios will likely have to continue looking for ways to survive in a marketplace where they can’t count on hefty home-entertainment revenue to offset giant production costs. Those costs often more than eat up the studios’ half of the box-office receipts, which are split with theaters.
The ongoing decline in home-entertainment revenue has already fundamentally altered the way studios do business, forcing them to place big financial bets on hoped-for mass-market blockbusters at the expense of features that cost less to make but that also have smaller earnings potential.
Hit titles such as “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince” and “Up” were among those that lured large numbers of Americans to the cinema last year.
“Consumers are still in love with movies,” said Tom Adams, president of Adams Media. “In this environment, however, they’re seeking the biggest bang for their bucks.”
For studios, which count on income from home entertainment to underwrite growing production costs, the trend represents a giant headache. In the early 2000s, studios began counting on the cash bonanza generated by consumers’ building up libraries of DVDs. Now, they will have to alter budgets to reflect the shrinking DVD income stream.
More about how Cinema Surpassed DVD Sales in 2009 here.
Posted by truecreek on October 28, 2009 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
By Joseph Young
Well, we’ve crossed the threshold. In my travels today, I had the chance to stop off at the local Wegman’s to take advantage of their snappy food bar. Lunchtime can be pretty busy in that place and today was no exception.
What was interesting was seeing what I will call “The New Sweatpants Society.”
Men and women, meeting, then having lunch with their significant others at the grocery store. That is no big deal.
What was interesting was that in almost every case, one of them was dressed in business attire. The other, in sweats.
It was striking.
Couples all over the place, dressed entirely differently. Someone obviously didn’t get the memo.
So, do you think it’s a statement of the times? The extremely casual nature of their dress could mean that one of the two is working from a home office, works in a very casual environment or perhaps they have a day off. But this is Tuesday, yes?
Unfortunately, I suspect it’s something a little more sinister. One of them is out of a job.
On the bright side, I’m sure most of these couples are relishing the chance to break some lunchtime bread together.
But on the other, perhaps it’s a sad commentary on the current employment situation in our country.
I plan on checking in again in a month or so to see if the things have changed any. Let’s all hope I see a few more shirts and ties!
Posted by truecreek on September 25, 2009 under Opinions. Everyone has them., Research |
In a follow up to one of my earlier posts, research conducted by Hart Research Associates for Citi has shown that consumers in the U.S. have made what they are calling “permanent spending and savings changes” as a result of the current recession.
According to a tidbit in today’s edition of the USA Today, 63% percent of the people contacted by Hart stated emphatically that the way they handle their personal finances has been changed forever and only 29% plan on going back to the old way of doing things.
If this research proves out to be prophetic, and I believe it will, all marketers will have to hope they can get a piece of what will be a much smaller pie.
http://truecreek.com/2009/07/29/what-will-this-recession-teach-us/
Posted by truecreek on September 8, 2009 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
For years now, I have recommended to my clients that they invest in sports packages tied to their regional teams.
For example, if you have a medium-sized business in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida and the like and you have not considered running thirty second television with some SEC package available at your local station, you might be missing a great opportunity. Of course, it’s not perfect for every business, but it will work well for many businesses.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that the demos for football are all male. Just not true. You will reach a very large and diverse audience with your buy.
Don’t worry that the season has started. The stations will prorate any type of package and there are still a bunch of them out there. Stations are hungry.
Take advantage of some pricing weakness and negotiate a great deal for yourself. Or call us and we’ll help you put it together for you.
Posted by truecreek on September 1, 2009 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
By Joseph Young
So are you a Marvel, or a Disney? The more and more I think about it, I’m a Marvel guy. Just can’t get enough of Iron Man. My wife Lin, is a Disney, without a doubt.
The acquisition of Marvel Entertainment by The Walt Disney Company was announced yesterday to great fanfare. It was just all over the map. You have to congratulate the PR folks. The whole introduction was very well done.
To think: the amount of collective creative talent that will be put in place upon the completion of this deal will be just incredible.
But is the deal weak? From today’s news, consider this:
- Sony Corp.’s Columbia Pictures is developing the next three “Spider-Man” sequels, starting with “Spider-Man 4″ set for a May 2011 release.
- News Corp.’s 20th Century Fox has the long-term movie rights to the “X-Men,” “Fantastic Four,” “Silver Surfer” and “Daredevil” franchises.
- Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures has a five-picture distribution deal for Marvel-made movies, the first of which will be “Iron Man 2,” set for release next May. Paramount said it expects to continue working with Marvel and Disney.
Add to that, Sony and News Corp maintain their rights in perpetuity unless they fail to make more movies.
If these terms are true, that’s a BIG ouch to me. This can’t all be about merchandising, theme park rides and retail store locations, can it?
UPDATE: It looks like the comment above just might be true. According to BusinessWeek, Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger has stated that the deal is all about Marvel’s 5,000 plus characters, combined with Disney’s success with consumer products, theme parks and rights and license fees. The movies are going to have to wait.
Posted by truecreek on August 28, 2009 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
Great article from Milan Martin. He speaks of the truth. If cultures don’t mesh well, it’s going to be a challenging creative business relationship. Been there and done that.
By Milan Martin
For the past several months, we’ve been in the throes of a pitch. A big pitch. We really wanted to work with this client, so we threw ourselves into it. Multiple creative teams across several offices, customer focus groups, brand videos — the whole nine yards.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned about pitching over the years it’s that you absolutely have to show your true colors. With this pitch, we went to great lengths to give these prospective clients a taste of what life would really be like for them if they chose us.
When they visited our agency, did we take them to Chez Francois for lunch? No. We had Shake Shack brought in. Double cheeseburgers, black-and-white shakes and fries. On paper plates. Because that’s us. We’re burger-eating, jeans-wearing, show-you-an-idea-even-if-it’s-not-completely-baked-yet kind of people. And that doesn’t work for everyone.
Misrepresenting your agency culture or your personality in a pitch would be like convincing a beautiful girl to marry you based on your common love for Michael Bolton. You may have won her hand, but you’ve got a lifetime of Michael Bolton ahead of you. And if you weren’t a Michael Bolton fan to begin with, the thrill of “victory” will soon fade with each rendition of “When a Man Loves a Woman.”
On the same token, we asked as much from them. How do you see agencies in the context of your marketing organization? What would your current agency say about you? Talk to us about how you like to work. SHOW us a day in the life!
So throughout the pitch process, we made several visits to this prospect’s corporate headquarters. It was a nice building in a corporate park in suburban New Jersey. At first glance, nothing out of the ordinary. But each time we drove into the parking lot we noticed something strange: large groups of people in business suits walking in gang-style through the parking lot, some engaged in gregarious conversation with each other, some more stoically focused on some unknown mission.
We never really said anything to each other about it, but each of us, we later found out, was trying to imagine where these people were walking to. To us city folk, we can’t imagine not having at least two Starbucks within a half-block walk, so maybe these poor suburbanites were walking to the closest Starbucks, three miles down the road. Or were they on a “Blues Brothers”-style mission from God?
The big pitch day came and went. Two questions rested heavy on our minds. Did we do everything we could to win? And where the hell were all those people in the parking lot going?
Well, we won the business, and in our first, much more casual, immersion meeting with these great, shiny, new clients, they opened the floor to us for questions. At this point, one of our account guys raised his hand with a furrowed brow. “Here we go,” I’m anticipating, “a smart question, maybe about the detail behind their segmentation or their CRM program.”
“So, uh, yeah. Where are all the people in the parking lot walking to?”
Keep in mind, the contract’s not even signed at this point, so for a brief moment in time I was a little worried our first question of this newly christened relationship wasn’t more … strategic.
“Where do you think they’re going?” the head client responded with a grin.
(“Don’t say mission from God. … Don’t say mission from God.”)
After a minute or two of us awkwardly trying to guess, they finally revealed that it was simply a part of their corporate culture. They drive to and from work, have desk jobs and work long hours — this just gets their heart rates up for a few minutes a day.
Logical enough.
As luck would have it, just then our new clients realized that this was their team’s scheduled “walk” time. “You want to see our culture, do you?” the head client offered. So off we went. Walking. Around the parking lot. In 91-degree heat.
And you know what? It was an amazing way to get to know each other, cut through the formality established by the oak in the conference room and have a “date” out of school. One last chance — for both parties — to “speak now or forever hold their peace” (or at least for the length of the contact).
Fortunately, we don’t mind getting a little sweaty. But if we were the type of people that were worried about staining our Louis Vuitton shirts or scuffing our Prada shoes (we’re more Gap kind of people), we wouldn’t exactly fit within their culture.
They invited us into their culture. And we fit into theirs the way they fit into ours (they’re big fans of Shake Shack).
Since then, each time we’ve visited, there’s been time allotted on the agenda for a “walk around the parking lot.”
And so far, it’s a very happy client-agency relationship.
Now, you’ll no doubt ask: “If you had won the business and in that pre-contract meeting found out that you had nothing in common and didn’t really like each other, would your agency have walked away from the deal?”
Maybe, maybe not. I guess it would depend on the severity of the culture riff. But what I will say is that if you’re looking to establish deep, long-standing relationships with your clients, sharing your culture, honestly and openly, in the courting process is critical.
Otherwise, you may be in for a whole lot of Michael Bolton. And nobody wants that.
