Bringing the Brand Heat: Branding as the Butt of a Joke

The long running competition for your entertainment/telephone/internet/TV dollar has seen some serious twists and turns. Cable companies promise phone service, phone companies promise television, Internet companies tell you to pull the plug on both...and everyone wants to tell you what you already know: that you have a choice.

Direct TV and Dish Network, the satellite contingent, have a long history of using their ads to create fun friction in the competitive space. Some of the ads are entertaining (louder ads anyone?). Some obtuse. (See here for ad gallery). But one caught my attention during March Madness for the way it used  'brand' as the butt of the joke...while serving up useful and usable benefits as differentiators.

[You'll want to ignore the lame image manipulation at the end as they are not part of the original spot and we're added by someone claiming to find subliminal messaging in the spot]

In the Direct TV spot, a fictional cable company executive team at Cable HQ reviews the functional benefits of Direct TVs web-accessible DVR service (aka...I can set my DVR from anywhere, at anytime). It's about a Functional Feature + Benefit. The cable company's response to competitive differentation is to...conjure the forces of 'brand heat'.

The team, including CEO Character Ed Begley Jr.,  congratulates each other on the brilliance of the idea: which is invoked using the noun 'youth' and the latinized ending '-ize' to create a brand response promising to "youthenize America'.

So What?

It's entertaining (though your mileage may vary)....and it points out something obvious if not always apparent: if the basic offering isn't differentiating, then the functional benefits (i.e., usability) can be. In this socially networked world, customer-centered service innovation can become the PR...and the advertising.

The Deutsch/LA agency (the latest agency to dish the dirt in these campaigns) has done a nice job of making brand heat the butt of the joke in this ad, proving that irony can, in fact, be pretty ironic sometimes.  Of course, Direct TV's 30-second skip forward feature is also pretty ironic...given the investment they've made in producing their TV advertising with big name stars.

That an ad agency and their client would use useful and usable service innovation as competitive differentiation against the vague concept of 'brand heat'..in a TV spot...is certainly funny...in a gallows humor sort of way?

In Advertising We Trust

[Today's post is from Claudia Zellman, Account Supervisor at R+K]

So I set my TiVo to record TNT’s new drama Trust Me many months ago in anticipation of a series centering on two best friends working as creative partners at a top-ranked Chicago ad agency.  I mean, hello? Advertising, Chicago, it sounds like programming tailor made for me.  I pictured The Office but about the ad biz instead of the paper industry.  Perfect! Then by the time the show finally started, I had forgotten all about it. I didn’t hear any chatter around the office, no big hype or ratings that I saw. 

Last week, I got a call from my father-in-law who had started watching it asking me how “real” or how “funny” I thought it was. Turns out the first two episodes had already been collecting dust on my DVR so I finally sat down to watch and see if I was missing anything. 

So, what can I tell you? Is it true to life? Entertaining? So far, I would say yes. It’s definitely filled with clichés – the writers know what they are talking about having worked in the industry for 20 years at well known agencies like J. Walter Thompson and Leo Burnett. I was extremely impressed that they went through all the trouble of creating a website for their “fake agency” – complete with client extranet!! Very realistic (here).  

I imagine that the success of AMC's Mad Men could have had something to do with the premise of the new show. Who knew advertising would be so relatable and interesting to the masses? Or are we just talking to ourselves? Well, that’s where the jury is still out for me. Mad Men is this retro, glamorous, un-politically correct drama with well written plots and smart scripts that is more about the era than about an accurate depiction of advertising. The humor in Trust Me is certainly a refreshing departure from the soap opera drama in Mad Men but I wonder if people outside of the industry will relate too. 

My focus group of one, my husband, thinks yes (but he doesn’t count because he already has kind of an insider perspective from my raves and rants about my job!). The tidbits from real life, like the unveiling of the Effen campaign and mentions of well known brands like Dove and Potbelly’s is rewarding somehow and may just be enough for people to get hooked. 

I personally don’t know if I can unwind from the work day watching another show about work! Even if it made me chuckle, it also made my stomach turn when things weren’t going well for the Agency. So jury is still out for me, I really wanted to like it but think it got off to a slow start. 

Now let the virtual office cooler talk begin…..what do you think???…….  

The selfish gene: self-reference in the AdAge

Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, published a book in 1976 called The Selfish Gene. In an oversimplification of his point of view, the idea is that genes are a means unto themselves (rather than being merely players in supporting the evolution of the organism that employs them).

Sometimes, according to Dawkins, genes even act in ways that benefit themselves at the expense of the organism (think genetically induced diseases for instance).

What does this have to do with marketing? Or advertising? Or the interwebs?

Traditional advertising is a selfish approach to marketing. It not that it presumes to know what others want or need...that's not selfish, it's arrogant. It's that traditional approaches to advertising interrupt and demand that attention be rendered unto it.

Once upon a time when time seemed less scarce, when mass media was the only option, and before media consumers were themselves media producers, selfish advertising worked. It worked for it's own interests.

The environment has changed. Customers and prospects are all selfish, sometimes in a very public way. I'm not talking about people being uncaring or without charity. Quite the contrary. I'm talking about the selfishness of individual choices and self expression in the marketplace.

Consumers (not a term, I trust, most of us would choose to define our interests) have always been selfish...it's just that in the always-on, democratized media environment today, selfish advertising doesn't stand a chance against the infinite choices in self interest a person now has.

When an environment changes, organisms must adapt to survive. The same holds true for marketers. They must be cognizant that selfish prospects want to decide what's good for themselves. A marketer who takes an unselfish approach to engaging self-interested prospects might just find a way to survive...and thrive.

Cars, banks and ad performance: The Sporting News

The Hollywood Reporter (no, I don't usually visit, but this is research!) has an article about a report on ad spending among financial services firms: down 10% this year through 3 quarters.

Of course that's overall. Ad spending by formerly fat cats like Bank of America (the #3 financial services ad spender), is down 30% this year...shareholders can only wish the stock price was doing as well (BAC down 70%).  Financial Services firms and the other major beleaguered industry, Automakers, represent two of the big three TV advertiser categories (consumer goods being number 3). 

Automakers have reduced TV spending in 12 consecutive quarters. Even supposing they successfully lobby for taxpayer money, it's hard to imagine those funds will be put to use paying advertising bills.   

So what?

Financial services and Autos represent the two biggest spenders in televised sports (10% of all sports advertising according to Steve Lanzano of ad group MPG North America). Should spending on sports wane, then inventory becomes available. And with any commodity whose supply exceeds demand, prices will drop (see here for a take on ad deflation).

It may be that sports sponsorships and advertising will become affordable for second tier advertisers...now defined as those who have cash. 

It might also be that those with now-scarce cash for advertising demand something more for their money than their name on a 'sponsored by' screen: namely, they may demand performance. 

A recession in ad spending may move all industries once and for all toward performance based models of advertising...the kind direct response marketers have lived with for years.  

How many Buicks did GM sell because of Tiger Wood's celebrity? How many leads did the stunning ad during the Master's generate? In the future, one might expect that question to be answered by a marketing executive in front of his shareholders, in front of the campaign...not by a CEO in front of Congress after the money is gone. 

It would be only sporting:  advertisers pay not just to have their ads show up, but like the athletes they are underwriting, for actually performing. That's a game that's not limited to professional sports.

Stupid networks: Delivering the goods

As with most aspects of the future, someone somewhere probably thought about it long before it became obvious to the rest of us. Take the network.

Way back in 1997, a network engineer for AT+T (the prior version, before it disappeared and then was reincarnated by SBC) named David Isenberg wrote a paper called "Rise of the Stupid Network". You can view it online here.

The premise of the paper was to challenge the status quo thinking of the telecoms...no mean feat for someone employed by a company that had created one of the world's most powerful telecom companies based on certain assumptions about their value proposition.

Isenberg identified these assumptions that in turn held the companies hostage to thinking differently about their role in a changing world. These assumptions included:

1. expensive, scarce infrastructure can be shared to offer premium priced services,
2. that talk - the human voice - generates most of the traffic,
3. that circuit-switched calls are the "communications technologies" that matter, and
4. that the telephone company is in control of its network.

Of course, history is showing that Isenberg had it right. Cheap infrastructure, data in all its forms (including voice), Packet switched + IP-based technologies...and most importantly control of the network...all undercut the old telecom value proposition.

Now take Isenberg's view and apply it to any network...television, radio, online advertising.

The parallells are readily observable: if intelligent devices are located at the end of the network (computer screens for watching TV programs; gaming; and connecting the weekend call to your mom) then the network's sole value is to carry content.

And if your sole job is to carry content, then you want all the content the people connected to your network can get. If you create content, you want it to be available on any network you can get it on that will support your goals...want to talk to your sister through a mobile device or your computer? Which network is deisgned to support your needs.

Want to watch reruns of The Office while your in the office? Which network supports your device?

In the ever emerging future of the stupid network, walled gardens and network content exclusives will certainly exist. But the transition will make those practices harder to support financially. The flexibility demanded at the ends of the network will exceed the capacity of any one network to meet the diverse needs of users by doing anything but delivering the data.

For broadcasters, certain realtime events like sports or news might capture large audiences. Ultimately, though, the traditional networks will have to make a decision between being a provider of conduit or content. One or the other is where the smart money will be.

Trying to be everything to everyone is a recipe for extinction.

Just teasing: Bill + Jerry as warmup acts

Like warming up the crowd before the headliner takes the stage, Microsoft says today that the first two ads in its $300 million campaign were just...um, warm ups. As previously posted here and here, we--like many--weren't sure if it was slow-reveal brilliance or a quick spew of head scratching incompetence.

Either way, the idea promoted by Microsoft's Brand Manager that the new campaign illustrates a strong desire among Microsoft managers to...“have a conversation about the real PC.” is kind of laughable in the context of a talk-at-me advert.

Several professional opinions are offered at the NYtimes and AP (not that getting paid makes an opinion any more right)

Paying Sienfeld $10 mil for two spots sure seems like an expensive way to do a warm up act for the soon to bne aired 'real' spots. Then again, with the way the Federal Reserve, er, I mean Microsoft is printing money, a $300 million ad campaign may not be that big of a deal.

See the new Pride ad here:

It kind of makes those Apple ads seem not so funny anymore. 

Whose foolin' whom? DVRs, product placement, and the death of intrusion

Yes, everyone with a DVR or TiVo it seems skips the ads. Advertisers and the networks that sell to them have been concerned for several years about the unfortunate habit viewers have of only wanting to see what matters to them...and ads, apparently, aren't it.

Alas, one approach has been to stick the product in viewers faces where they can't skip it...in the show! Noone will notice, er, I mean noone will be able to skip it there. And think of the added credibility of the brand when someone as awesome as Michael, um, I mean Steve Carrell uses our product in the context of the The Office! Or one of the true arbiters of American Idolatry sips a Coke after another rousing amateur is made into a star we all surely love. 

Product placement isn't new. But like Fed Bailouts, 3rd string quaterbacks, or hair of the dog,   they may very well represent desperate measures for desperate times. They are an attempt to support intrusion as a viable model for selling ads. As people skip the ads, avertisers rightly question whether they should pay for impressions that do not exist.

Product placement today suffers some of the same challenges to measurement as the traditional interruptive model of the 30-second spot or commerical pod. In the case of product placement,though, the additional challenge is in not seeming so obvious that it seems unnatural--and yet to seem natural requires that the product get pushed to the background.  In any case, just like the unfounded fears of subliminal advertising and the Hidden Persuaders in the 1950s, trying to be too sneaky about product placement gets legislators and other consipracy theorists up in arms...as in the FCC's latest effort looking into product placement. 

At least when radio broadcaster and master hawker Paul Harvey stated... 

"I am fiercely loyal to those willing to put their money where my mouth is."  

...you knew exactly what he was doing because he was telling you. 

Neilsen reports the number of product placement events by braodcast and cable in the charts below. Now you know.

(Click to enlarge)