Posted by truecreek on November 5, 2009 under More Dam News, Research | 
By John Horrigan.
Some 69% of online Americans use webmail services, store data online, or use software programs such as word processing applications whose functionality is located on the web. Online users who take advantage of cloud applications say they like the convenience of having access to data and applications from any Web-connected device.
However, their message to providers of such services is: Let’s keep the data between us.
Download the report here.
Posted by truecreek on November 4, 2009 under More Dam News, Research |
Broadcast radio still has reach. Now, that’s great to hear.
By Katy Bachman.
Contrary to popular belief, consumers are not trading broadcast radio for new media. Far from it. Of all audio segments, broadcast radio reaches more than 77 percent of users daily compared to 11.6 percent for MP3 players and iPods.
In total, more than 90 percent of adults were exposed to some form of audio media.
The findings, published Tuesday (Nov. 3) are based on a Nielsen analysis of data from the Council for Research Excellence Video Consumer Mapping Study. The $3.5 million landmark study conducted in 2008 used direct real-time observation methods to record the media behavior of participants in five major markets. Earlier this year, the CRE released results for video media.
Portable audio has its highest daily reach among the 18-34 demographic, but it takes up only 7.5 percent of all daily audio usage, compared to more than a 47 percent share for broadcast audio. In fact, broadcast radio has the highest daily reach among 18-34 year olds at 82.2 percent, compared to 81.6 percent for the 35-54 demo and 71.9 percent for 55 and older.
“There is a much more complex picture going on with audio than we ever really imagined,” said Dr. Michael Link, chief methodologist for Nielsen (parent company of Mediaweek). “What this report shows is that 18-34s aren’t abandoning radio. Rather, they’re adding new audio technologies in addition to broadcast radio consumption.”
Broadcast radio was also widely used among users of other forms of audio media. More than 81 percent of those who used portable audio devices, also listened to broadcast radio.
The medium also stacked up well against other media in terms of average hourly reach. Live TV reached the most people, followed by radio, the Web/Internet and newspapers and magazines.
Posted by truecreek on under More Dam News |
By Robert Seidman
Yankees/Phillies Game 4 Up +45 in Rating & +47% in Audience with the Fall Classic Overall Rating Up +42% & +45% in Audience.
Game 4 of the 2009 World Series soared to a 13.5/22 average household rating/share with an average audience of 22.8 million viewers last night on FOX according to fast national ratings issued by Nielsen Media Research. Game 4 is the highest-rated and most-watched World Series game since Game 4 of the 2004 Series (18.2/28, 28.8 million) when the Red Sox snapped their 86-year championship drought.
It’s also the most-watched, non-decisive Game 4 in eight years, dating back to the 2001 Series (23.7 million., Diamondbacks-Yankees) and the highest-rated non-decisive Game 4 in six years (13.6/23, Yankees-Marlins-12-inning game). Compared to last year’s World Series, Game 4 of Yankees-Phillies is up +45% in rating and +47% in audience compared to Game 4 of Rays-Phillies (9.3/15, 15.5 million), and ranks as the highest-rated and most-watched prime-time show of the Monday-Sunday broadcast week (10/26-11/1).
Game 4 and its pregame program (10.7/17) combined with an NFL overrun and THE OT (fast nationals for both will be released later today) to make last night FOX’s most-watched night since the AMERICAN IDOL finale in May.
PHILADELPHIA topped all markets for Game 4 with a 42.0/58, +8% over its Game 4 rating a year ago (39.0/54). NEW YORK fired a 31.2/45, a Series-high and a better rating than any of the six games of the Yankees last World Series appearance in 2003.
2009 WORLD SERIES TO DATE
This year’s World Series has been a dominant force in prime time. The first four games of the 2009 Fall Classic have averaged an 11.5/19, 19.1 million viewers and a 6.1 among A18-49. The Series is up +42% in household rating and +45% in audience over last year (8.1/14, 13.2 million) and is the highest-rated, most watched World Series since 2004. If we compare the first four games of the World Series to top-rated season-to-date prime-time shows, the World Series would rank No. 2 in households, and No. 4 among Adults 18-49.
Post-season baseball has powered FOX to its best fourth quarter performance in history. Season-to-date, FOX is averaging a 3.7/10 in prime time among Adults 18-49 (preliminary pending final NFL numbers), +16% better than second-place CBS (3.2/9), FOX’s biggest season-to-date lead ever in fourth quarter and the biggest for any network in six years. The week of October 26th, which included four World Series games, averaged a 4.9/13 among Adults 18-49, an +81% win over second-place ABC (2.7/7) and the highest-rated fourth quarter week on any network in five years, dating back to the week of the 2004 World Series on FOX.
Posted by truecreek on November 3, 2009 under More Dam News |
By Cat Moriarty
Sure, your brand message is consistent across all channels. But you haven’t truly integrated your marketing efforts unless you’re putting those channels to work together.
Mixing media — especially print and digital — is not only a smart idea, but with a little creativity, it can be a highly profitable one.
If your company depends on offline purchases, for example, improve direct mail conversions by e-mailing your audience before a drop, like True North did during a campaign for a New York–based credit union. The print-digital combination quickly produced 5,543 new members — 122 percent above expectations.
And with personalized URLs (PURLs), you can use direct mail to help drive online purchases, too. It’s what office machinery and consumer electronics company Ricoh did (with some pretty impressive results) when promoting its new high-end production print equipment
Retailer W.L. Gore had similar success when it included PURLs in its “Take Me to Everest” campaign. Not only did PURLs strengthen the company’s direct mail–Web connection, they also helped build brand awareness and generate shoe sales during the coveted holiday season.
And as this holiday shopping season soon gets under way, don’t underestimate the power direct catalogs — and their hybrid cousins (magalogs and catazines) — can have over online sales. With so much online competition, sending catalogs and other direct pieces is helping brands like mark and Zappos.com motivate customers to visit their sites more often, stay longer and get to know them better.
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 October 26, 2009 under The Work |
Couple of nice pages and a spread from some recent work Chris produced for an agency in Tampa, FL.
Posted by truecreek on October 14, 2009 under The Work |
Some new work for Comcast. Full pager for Encore Atlanta and the Fox Theater.
Posted by truecreek on under More Dam News, Research |
By eMarketer.
College students are the most connected demographic group in the US. They own multiple electronic devices and are a prime audience for online video.
eMarketer estimates 18.2 million college students, 95.7% of the total, will go online at least once a month in 2009. As Internet usage becomes ubiquitous, the percentage of students online is growing more slowly, rising to an estimated 96.8% in 2013.
“Not only is Internet access widely prevalent, but so is technology ownership in general,” said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, “College Students: Connecting with the Connected Crowd.” “Since students own multiple devices, they want to use those devices to interact with friends and information in multiple ways. They care less about what method they use for their interactions and more about how easy and seamless those interactions are.”
Students are heavy consumers of online video—but also regular TV. They use social networking Websites to stay in touch with their friends—but rely on text messaging as well. And smartphones, which are becoming more and more common on campus, give students the ability to do many activities without touching a computer at all.
Despite the fears of some industry-watchers, college students are not abandoning social networks now that the sites have caught on among their elders.
“So far, that is not happening,” said Ms. Williamson. “In fact, the opposite is true. Students are more likely than ever to use social network sites.”
EDUCAUSE, which has tracked social network usage on campus for the past several years, found that the percentage of students visiting sites such as Facebook or MySpace on a daily basis has more than doubled in the past three years, from 32.9% in 2006 to 66.2% in 2009.
“But other indicators bear watching,” cautions Ms. Williamson. “One is how often students visit social networks and how much time they spend there.”
Still, in May 2009 Youth Trends found that Facebook was the No. 3 source among college students for learning about new products and services, after word-of-mouth and television commercials. Social networks remain a viable venue for marketing to the college crowd.
Posted by truecreek on October 7, 2009 under More Dam News |
Continuing the discussion about the change in consumer spending behavior….from today’s Washington Post.
By Nancy Trejos
The recession has cooled the American ardor for living on credit. After years of saying “Charge it,” consumers are more often paying with their debit cards instead.
Worry about jobs, fear of fluctuating interest rates on credit cards and wariness about spending too much are contributing to the change.
“People are managing their money in a different way,” said David Robertson, publisher of the Nilson Report, which tracks the credit card industry. “You clearly have a situation where those people who have jobs are exhibiting recession anxiety and they are making more debit transactions.”
Nine months ago, Alyson Chadwick, a public relations representative for a nonprofit organization on Capitol Hill, got a debit card with a MasterCard logo so she could use it anywhere for purchases. Carrying cash was unsafe, she thought, and a debit card would help her manage her spending better.
“I use my credit cards hardly at all,” she said. “I don’t even carry them with me.”
Trish Preston, head of U.S. debit for MasterCard, said the changing fortunes of debit and credit tell the story of how the recession has transformed consumer spending.
“Think about what’s happening in the economy,” she said. “Appliances, furniture, jewelry: Those are very sensitive to the economy, and those have generally been credit spending categories.”
Debit cards, meanwhile, tend to be used for routine necessities such as groceries and gasoline. “Those kinds of expenditures are happening,” she said.
The Federal Reserve said that revolving credit, primarily credit cards, dropped by $6.1 billion in July, or 8.1 percent on an annualized basis. Debit card usage, meanwhile, had been steadily growing over the years but has surged in this recession.
Credit cards draw on money borrowed at often high interest rates; debit cards withdraw money from the cardholder’s bank account.
Visa announced this spring that spending on Visa debit cards in the United States surpassed credit for the first time in the company’s history. In 2008, debit payment volume was $206 billion, compared with credit volume of $203 billion. MasterCard reported that for the first six months of this year, the volume of purchases on its debit cards increased 4.1 percent, to $160 billion, in the United States. Spending on credit and charge cards sank 14.8 percent, to $233 billion.
“Consumers are rational thinking individuals, and they’re going to shift their behavior in a way that fits with their current economic situation,” said Scott Strumello, an associate with the Auriemma Consulting Group, a Long Island-based payment card advisory firm. “They’re thinking more seriously about it, and many may decide, ‘I’m going to use debit where I can and reserve credit for larger purchases.’ ”
For three decades, credit cards, which emerged about 50 years ago but were not in widespread use until the 1970s, have reigned as the preferred mode of payment, mostly on big purchases, for baby boomers and their children. Before that, people used cash, bank loans or the installment plan.
Baby boomers typically charged responsibly. Their children, who grew up in the mostly prosperous 1980s and 1990s, became dependent on cards from an early age, partly because card issuers marketed heavily on college campuses. Unlike their parents, they tended to see credit cards as long-term loans. And they charged too much.
“An awful lot of kids grew up in a very big house and they grew up with pretty much everything they wanted, and then they became adults and their parents, rightly or wrongly, probably wrongly, conditioned them to a set of conditions they cannot afford,” said Lewis Mandell, professor of finance and business economics at the University of Washington and a senior fellow at the Aspen Institute.
Industry executives said much of the debit card growth is fueled by a growing disdain for carrying cash and writing checks. But they also acknowledged that credit cards have fallen out of favor with consumers who want to save more and limit their discretionary spending. In July, the personal savings rate reached 4.2 percent, up from about 1 percent of after-tax income early last year, according to government data.
“The real question is: Is consumer behavior permanent?” Strumello said. “And that’s something where the jury is still out. Consumers have made moves in other downturns.”
Mandell said the next generation might reject credit after seeing their parents struggle with money. “I think the next generation may be self-correcting depending on the duration and magnitude of the downturn,” he said.
There is some indication that the shift to debit is partly a visceral reaction to credit card industry practices in the past few months. Since a law was passed in May that will limit the industry’s ability to raise rates and fees, many issuers have cut credit lines and increased rates, forcing borrowers to look for other modes of payment.
Posted by truecreek on September 27, 2009 under The Work |
Strong piece of design from Kyle, a member of The Creekbed.
Posted by truecreek on September 24, 2009 under More Dam News |
Combine the brand strength of UPS with their trusted driver network and you just might have the best way to date to deliver your message to a promising audience.
By Stuart Elliott
Since 1907, United Parcel Service has been delivering packages ordered by consumers. Next week, the company plans to deliver packages they have not ordered, in a test of an effort to expand into direct marketing.
Beginning on Monday, U.P.S. will experiment in five major markets with a service it calls Direct to Door, giving advertisers and retailers a chance to provide offers and product samples to U.P.S. customers. The marketing materials will come inside small boxes labeled Direct to Door Paks, and will be delivered to customers along with merchandise they actually ordered.
The test, to run through Oct. 2, is intended to gauge whether there is interest in having U.P.S. serve as an alternative to marketing mail delivered by the United States Postal Service or by companies like Valpak.
If Direct to Door goes forward, the added revenue could help United Parcel offset declines in demand for its mainstay package delivery service since the recession started.
In July, U.P.S. reported its sixth consecutive quarter of lower package volume in this country. The decline in the second quarter was 4.6 percent compared with the period a year earlier, which Bloomberg News described as the worst result since United Parcel went public in 1999.
“I wouldn’t say it was developed as a result of the economy,” said Lisa Lynn, marketing director for new-product research and development at United Parcel in Atlanta.
Rather, she said, it stems from “some opportunity we saw at the heart of what we do every day working off our delivery network.”
The test is also meant to see if U.P.S. customers welcome unsolicited packages or dismiss them as some new type of junk mail.
One effect of the economy is that “people are very receptive to offers right now,” Ms. Lynn said.
An experiment in figuring out how to better aim traditional, tangible marketing materials at consumers may seem quaint when so much of the buzz along Madison Avenue is about aiming virtual pitches at them online.
But direct marketing remains a lucrative business. According to the Direct Marketing Association, it accounted for $176.9 billion in ad spending last year in the United States — 52.1 percent of the total, by the association’s tally.
“We did some focus-group research and it really indicated that people were receptive to receiving offers from U.P.S.,” Ms. Lynn said. “What we heard was, ‘If U.P.S. brings it to me, it’s not junk.’ ”
Still, the company is taking several steps to try to ensure that a Direct to Door Pak is received more like a gift than another application for another credit card.
For one thing, the offers inside each box are intended to be special rather than “mass offers distributed through other channels,” Ms. Lynn said.
For another, no Direct to Door Paks will be delivered unaccompanied by packages ordered by that household, she said.
And the boxes will not bear the addresses of the recipients, Ms. Lynn said. Rather, they will carry phrases like this one: “Inside are premium offers from some of America’s best-known brands.” They will also include a photograph of the familiar brown United Parcel truck next to the words “Delivered to you by U.P.S.”
About a dozen companies — advertisers and retailers that use United Parcel to deliver orders to customers — are taking part in the test, Ms. Lynn said. They include the Finish Line; Men’s Wearhouse; Sephora; two Williams-Sonoma home furnishings brands, Pottery Barn and West Elm; and Zappos.com, the online retailer of shoes and housewares recently acquired by Amazon.
“It’s an interesting way to reach out to our customers and partner with one of our closest business partners,” said Aaron Magness, director for business development and brand marketing at Zappos.com in Henderson, Nev.
“We are an online retailer,” he added, “but we want to maintain a high-touch relationship with customers, constantly trying to find different ways to interact with them in whatever means they’re comfortable with.”
Mr. Magness said he liked the idea that the boxes would not arrive “out of nowhere, from random people knocking on your door.”
The offer to be made by Zappos.com during the test will invite recipients to “become a member of our V.I.P. program,” he added, entitling them to “free next-business-day shipping on every order.”
United Parcel plans to deliver about 250,000 Direct to Door Paks in about 150 ZIP codes in Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Miami, Phoenix and Washington.
Those chosen to participate in the test are “high-opportunity consumers,” Ms. Lynn said, meaning that they often order merchandise delivered by United Parcel Service.
“Our drivers have relationships with these people because they deliver to them frequently,” she added. “There’s a lot of trust in the driver and the brand.”
Mr. Magness also cited the trust factor as a reason Zappos.com was interested in the test.
Ms. Lynn described the customers to receive Direct to Door Paks as ages 35 to 54 in households of two persons or larger and living in single-family, owner-occupied homes.
As for what the service will cost marketers, “I can’t go into specific pricing,” Ms. Lynn said, “but the pricing model is similar to other media.”
The goal is for the cost to reach each 1,000 consumers — a common media measurement known as cpm — to be “comparable or less than an equivalent piece of direct mail,” she added.
Posted by truecreek on September 23, 2009 under More Dam News |
By Mark Walsh
As expected, Yahoo Tuesday formally unveiled its new global brand campaign centered on the theme of catering to all aspects of consumers’ online lives and carrying the tag line “It’s You.”
The ambitious marketing effort, announced at IAB Mixx Conference and Expo and aimed at breathing new life into the Web portal’s image, will launch in the U.S. on Sept. 28 and in the U.K. and India on Oct. 5 before rolling out to other countries in 2010 including Brazil, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, and Taiwan.
“We want to celebrate the (Yahoo) brand once again in the marketplace,” Elisa Steele, Yahoo’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer, told a packed room at the IAB conference in introducing the company’s new ad campaign tabbed at more than $100 million and expected to run through next year.
Posted by truecreek on September 10, 2009 under More Dam News |
A smart idea by P&G.
By Laurie Burkitt
Justin Breton, a 21-year-old senior public relations major at Boston University, spends a lot of time talking about PUR, a water filtration system from Procter & Gamble.
Breton is among 100 college “ambassadors” P&G is paying to pitch the company’s brands–namely, PUR, TAG deodorant and Herbal Essences hair products–at 50 colleges and universities year-round. Through a program P&G calls ReadyU, these students create their own marketing plans for promoting the company’s products to fraternities, sports teams, and extra-curricular groups.
P&G pays the students to work 15 hours a week, meaning some kids can earn up to $2,500 a semester. (P&G will pay around $500,000 to kids before graduation next spring.) To make sure students are putting in their time on behalf of one or two brands they are assigned, P&G and RepNation, a unit of marketing outfit Mr. Youth, organize daily conference calls and require ambassadors–65% are women–to file reports every two weeks that include 25 pictures of their academic advertising attempts.
The ReadyU program is part of P&G’s move to dabble in new types of marketing, including online retailing and sports sponsorships. Now, at universities, it’s letting go of its tight grip on brand messaging and allowing students to craft pitches.
Mohammad I Sheikh, a senior studying advertising at the University of Texas at Austin, another PUR pitchman, says he spends up to 15 hours a week teaming with active campus groups that care about boosting water quality in developing countries. They plan to attend international student fairs and events near dorms, Sheikh says. Emily Kieczykowski, a junior majoring in business at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., says she passes out coupon books while walking from class to class. When football season is in full swing, Breton says he’s considering plugging TAG deodorant by holding a body odor contest to find the stinkiest college athletes.
“This was a big risk to put the branding power in someone else’s hands,” says P&G spokesman Glenn Williams, “but we know it’ll be successful.” While the Cincinnati company relinquishes some marketing control to students, it still requires them to execute corporate ideas. On freshmen move-in day, each of the schools’ ambassadors was asked to organize groups of movers to help hoist futons and boxes into rooms and pass out samples of PUR. Over Labor Day weekend, P&G required students to arrange free bus trips to Target, where students could buy P&G products with coupons they had been given.
P&G tested the program last year at three universities–University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Tennessee at Knoxville and the University of Texas at Austin–and decided to expand based on increased regional sales results, on which the company declined to disclose, and the creativity of the students. One Tide ambassador, for instance, held a campus mud battle and offered to wash dirty clothes (with Tide, of course) to anyone who participated.
To talk up PUR to BU students, Breton is organizing free concerts featuring popular campus musicians who will drink PUR-filtered water on stage and have samples on the sidelines for the audience. He works with one other ambassador on campus and meets with her a few days a week to hash out marketing ideas that they pitch daily to RepNation.
Still, pitching filtered water can be challenging, confides Breton. “It makes me wish I had gotten Tide as my brand,” he says.
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 under More Dam News |
By Sharon Jayson
College students say social networking makes them more narcissistic, a national survey reports today — and they also believe their generation is the most narcissistic of all.
That’s what a majority of 1,068 college students said when asked about narcissism in a poll on social networking sites in June by Ypulse.
More than half (57%) said their peers used social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter for self-promotion, narcissism and attention-seeking. And 92% said they used MySpace or Facebook regularly. Two-thirds said their generation was more self-promoting, narcissistic, overconfident and attention-seeking than others.
The survey was done with Jean Twenge, associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University and co-author of The Narcissism Epidemic.
Other researchers, however, say self-promotion doesn’t have to be a negative.
“We all kind of put on our best face when presenting ourselves in social situations, online or offline,” says Nicole Ellison, an assistant professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing who studies social networking. “When good things happen to me, I put that on Facebook, and when bad things happen, I also put it on Facebook. It’s a structure to receive emotional support.”
Houston Dougharty, vice president for student affairs at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, says today’s students are altruistic and care about helping others, which doesn’t say “narcissism” to him.
“I think there’s a negative connotation to narcissism that I would not want to promote as a description of this generation.” Social networking is “a celebration of individuality and sort of promotion of one’s own personality,” he says.
But Twenge says her research suggests growing narcissism in Generation Y, based on 40 questions used for decades. Scoring 21 or more indicates more narcissistic traits, she says. In the 1980s, one of seven scored in that range; now it’s one in four. “We see this change over time in narcissistic traits, but I was very interested to hear whether young people saw that in their generation,” she says.
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.
Posted by truecreek on August 17, 2009 under More Dam News |
Nice concept. Excellent execution.
Posted by truecreek on August 13, 2009 under More Dam News |
By Stacy L. Wood and C. Page Moreau
New high tech products are a way of life for today’s consumers, but many innovative new products face a special hurdle to marketplace success: their complexity makes them difficult for consumers to learn how to use. While consumers may desire the functionality of a particular new product feature—say, the ability to hot-sync one’s mobile phone’s calendar feature to a desk-top computer’s calendar program—learning how to use such a feature may take some learning effort. How do consumers react to the learning curve? The answer often is, “not well.” Consider your own experience with complex products such as computers, software, mobile phones, mp3 players, TiVo, etc.
Likely, our own experience mirrors what has been shown through marketplace research—consumers’ expectations of usage difficulty have caused a significant number to delay purchases, while actual usage difficulty has caused many to return purchased products.
This research investigates the consumer’s new product learning process. What we find is that learning has an influential emotional component. Specifically, learning to use a new product can evoke an emotional response, (independent of the emotions produced by the attributes or benefits of the product itself), and that learning-based emotional response can influence product evaluations over time.
We used two empirical studies to demonstrate this consumer-centric process of innovation. The first study was a laboratory study examining participants’ reactions as they learn how to use an innovative new PDA.
The second was a longitudinal quasi-experiment examining participants’ reactions to a new web-based course management interface throughout the course of a semester. While the frustrations of wrestling with a new product’s instruction manual are familiar, three surprising findings emerge from these studies.
First, positive or negative emotions that arise from the learning process are not related to the products’ benefits (or lack thereof) but are independent assessments of the process of learning. In other words, difficulty in learning to use a product can create negative emotion even if the product is good (i.e., has strong net benefits). For example, a consumer may find a new product feature is both desirable and works well, but still have a difficult time learning how to use that feature. While the product features themselves might generate positive emotions if they are good, the learning process creates distinct emotions that are independent of the more traditional “consumption emotions.”
Second, although these “learning” emotions are process-oriented, they still have a significant and stable influence on product evaluations. In this way, we evaluate a product more positively when it offers a smooth learning process, independent of our assessment of the product’s net benefits. While it may not seem rational (since the pain of learning is only experienced initially and the product’s use may far outlast this initial learning period), these learning emotions can impact more stable overall evaluations of the product. Perhaps, as consumers, we blame a product when it has made us feel stupid and reward a product when it has made us feel smart.
Third, the emotion experienced by the consumer during this learning process is driven primarily by the consumer’s expectations for learning and early use. Thus, a consumer may experience the same challenging learning experience as positive if she anticipated difficulties prior to use or as negative if she did not. This last finding suggests that consumers’ emotional experiences can be influenced by both managers, via the early formation of expectations, and by the consumer’s own product-related expertise. Consumers with expertise in the product category will be differently impacted than novice consumers.
Marketers or salespeople may be tempted to make unreasonable claims about how easy a new product is to use as such claims are likely to increase a consumer’s likelihood of trial. But this research shows that setting unreasonable expectations for ease of use can cause a backlash of negative learning emotions that will impact the consumer’s evaluation of the new product.
Marketers must take care to encourage trial while setting fair expectations. How might this be done? Best Buy’s new Geek Squad program may be one humorous way to remind consumers that it sometimes takes a “special kind of person” (i.e., a nerdy technophile) to set up complex consumer electronics. The mere presence of the Geek Squad offer may serve to set consumers’ expectations so that, if they set up the product on their own, they are happy, but they are neither surprised nor upset if they find that they need to call in the experts.
Given the growing problem of innovation discontinuance (i.e., when consumers reject a new product after purchase or trial), understanding how marketing communications (e.g., product demonstrations, advertising, programs) and consumers’ own expertise interact to influence expectations is important. Especially for quickly evolving electronic and high tech products, product returns are costly both in terms of retail logistics (e.g., lost sales, restocking costs, repackaging and selling used products) and lost opportunities.
If a consumer has successfully made it through the early steps of the innovation adoption process—awareness, evaluation, and purchase—and then rejects the innovation post-trial, he or she may be unlikely to consider other alternative choices or related innovations in the future or, even worse, may be a source of negative word-of-mouth.
Posted by truecreek on August 4, 2009 under More Dam News |
From Popsop.com
Miller Russia has announced the winners of contest called “Create Your Future”. The aim was to choose the best design from 500 submitted works which will be printed on the new collectible cans series this year. From 30 short-listed works just 3 were chosen by online voting.
The authors of the best projects will get $5000, $3000 and $1000 accordingly.
Unfortunately, the design that took the most number of votes is too similar to the first collectible Miller can, that’s why the jury will choose a new design concept from the 30 final designs. And author of that design will also get a cash prize $5000.
Posted by truecreek on under More Dam News |
We’ve posted about this before, but this strong article by Anne Mai Bertelsen really drives home the the point that it is short-sighted to shift too much of your ad budget to the web if you are looking to reach baby boomers. They just have not adopted these mediums as quickly as younger audiences have.
By Anne Mai Bertelsen.
Earlier this year, Forrester Research released its five year advertising forecast which found that marketers were shifting substantial advertising dollars out of traditional media and into interactive channels such as mobile marketing, display ads, search, social media and email.
Yet, marketers who rely too heavily on interactive channels, at the expense of traditional channels, risk losing out on the lucrative Boomer segment that are avid multi-media consumers. In fact, unlike other age groups, Boomers consume a daily, balanced diet of media from multiple traditional and interactive sources with traditional media — television, radio, and newspapers — providing their daily “squares.”
While the media has been focused on reporting the demise of traditional media, Boomers have largely been ignoring their prognosticators and continue to use these mediums as their “go to” sources for entertainment, news and exposure to brands.
Consider these statistics:
Television
* Boomers spend, on average, 9.5 hours a day on “screen” time activities — e.g., television, computer, mobile phones, video games — with the largest percentage of time spent on television.
* 77% of Boomer’s daily viewing occurs between 7:30 pm and 11 pm, when they are most likely to watch The Discovery Channel, A&E, the Food Network, ESPN and Fox News.
Radio
* 76% listen to the radio — more than any other demographic — with half listening during morning drive-time and their programming preferences vary from oldies to country to talk shows.
Print
* Time spent on print (e.g., newspapers, magazines, books) is highest among Boomers, with younger Boomers (45-54) spending on average 30 minutes a day and older Boomers (55-65) spending up to 100 minutes a day.
* In addition to national papers, 57% read their local daily newspaper regularly and 68% read their weekly community paper.
These traditional sources provide the foundation of Boomers’ awareness and knowledge of brands. They augment their daily traditional media consumption with time online, spending on average two hours a day.
But unlike other age groups, Boomers — who according to The Pew Internet and American Life Project now account for 35% of all Americans online — use the Internet much more heavily to research and purchase products and connect with friends and family than their younger peers. Typically, traditional advertising triggered their online search.
And, Boomers are researching products and services online because their brand loyalty is up for grabs; they are not brand loyal. Refuting a popular marketing truism that older consumers become more brand loyal, a 2008 AARP/Focalyst study found that 61% of Boomers felt “it didn’t pay to be brand loyal.”
A more recent Nielsen analysis of brand spending corroborated that finding: in March 2009, Nielsen reported that only a fifth of Boomers were more brand loyal than their younger cohorts.
As those who target Boomers well know, this segment offers an incredibly wealthy opportunity for marketers:
* 78 million+ members
* Estimated $10 trillion in discretionary assets – transferred to them by their dying parents and grandparents
* $2.3 trillion annual average spend on consumer goods and services
But, only if marketers shift some of their advertising dollars back to traditional media, creating an integrated media plan, to engage Boomers.
Posted by truecreek on July 30, 2009 under More Dam News |
Cash for Clunkers racks up 22,782 trade-ins and $95.9 million so far
by Chris Shunk on Jul 30th 2009 at 4:29PM
When the government’s Cash for Clunkers program returned 4,026 orders on its first full day of availability, some were surprised by the speed with which the sales booster took off. After only five days, the program seems to have picked up steam rather than lost it: 22,782 trade-ins have funneled through dealer lots in the 3-4 days since Monday when the program began. So far, dealers have requested $95.9 million in reimbursement money from the government, or about 10% of the funds that were supposed to keep the program running into November. The cars.gov website currently shows $75 million left for CAT3 trucks and $779 million out of $1 billion for everything else.
So far, the average rebate value is reportedly $4,209, which means most customers are eligible for the $4,500 voucher that requires a new vehicle purchase with a 10+ mpg improvement verses the model being traded in. Tuesday was the busiest day so far, with $51 million worth of reimbursements filed by dealers, and there were $27 million filed on Wednesday.
The National Automotive Dealers Association says the program will likely run out of money well before the November deadline. If C4C continues at its current pace, the program could end as early as September. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Association, some 23,000 dealers have submitted registrations and 19,328 have been approved.
Posted by truecreek on July 29, 2009 under More Dam News |
You just have to love Scandinavian design.
From Popsop:
Heineken company an the Dutch design studio Tjep have opened in the centre of Amsterdam the first branded Heineken store.
It is divided into 4 sections: the fashion store with the branded designer clothes, state-of-the-art beer shop with a “Fridge” exposition, small recording studio for young talanted musicians, and a travel section where Heineken fans can give the tickets for branded sponsored events.
The general idea of the interior design is to express coolness and freshness which light Heineken beer brings to drinkers.
Posted by truecreek on under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
The Great Depression, by far the biggest economic downturn of the 21st century, taught an entire generation of Americans a horrible, yet valuable lesson. After Black Tuesday, when the stock market totally collapsed, life for many of these people would never be the same.
Jobs were gone overnight. Banks failed. Entire industries were devastated. Commodity prices plunged, taking with them so many family farms. Tent cities sprung up all around our nation. Life had never been harder.
As a nation, the shock to our collective system was so severe that our grandfathers and grandmothers became cynics. No one trusted the banking system. People started hoarding cash, hiding it anywhere they could. We became a nation of savers, simply because we didn’t want to expose our families to a repeat of the disaster.
And they never forgot.
The same shift in our financial psychology is happening again. After seeing their collective portfolios dive 40 to 50%, people are now on the sidelines, watching the market, willing to accept next to nothing in return simply because they are afraid to lose even more.
Savings rates have increased by ten fold, according to some statistics. Six fold at the very least. Consumer’s behavior has changed and in my opinion, for good.
My clients are seeing this firsthand. We are too. Financial conservation is back in vogue. The average homeowner is doing everything they can to clean up their household balance sheets. This popular frugality has permeated virtually all segments of our population, from the poor to the very wealthy.
And we are learning a lesson we will never forget. Just like they did back in the 1930s.
For those who think that we will bounce right back to the ways we did things before this hard recession started, think again. We are witnessing a sea change in the way the consumer deals with the economic realities at hand.
I find it very hard to believe that those lessons will be quickly forgotten.
Posted by truecreek on July 21, 2009 under Opinions. Everyone has them. |
As advertisers, we are all aware that it is becoming increasingly difficult to cut through the clutter of the multitude of messages we are receiving daily from those companies that want to share their wares with us.
So many in fact that it has become extremely difficult for an advertiser’s message to stand out from the pack. Add in the prospect of the increasing use of DVR’s and other time shifting technologies and you have a real advertising challenge on your hands.
There is however, one advertising tactic that is gaining greater acceptance. That tactic is cinema advertising.
In “The Arbitron Cinema Advertising Study”, the evidence is very clear: consumers are showing increasing acceptance of movie theater advertising. Younger viewers and those who frequent movies now see the on-screen commercials “as part of the entertainment experience.”
What a wonderful treat. We finally have “a willing and attentive audience.”
According to the study, more than 45% of the respondents had gone to the movies at least once, with 60% of those watching the commercials prior to the start of the movie. It was also determined that the perception of the method of advertising is positive, with over 63% stating that they “did not mind the advertisements they put on before the movie begins” with the younger audience being even more receptive.
So, give cinema advertising a try. Better yet, just give us a call and we’ll get things moving.
