Advertising Smackdown - Oscars vs. Super Bowl... Part I

While last night's Oscars provided few surprises in terms of the statues awarded - Kings Speech, yadda, yadda, yadda...  it did provide an interesting look into advertising strategy, as it is sometimes referred to as the "Super Bowl for women."

There is a whole lot of icky feeling and stereotyping in such a label - but I'll deal with that another time.  I'll also want to take a look at some of the advertisers who may have ran ads during both events, to illustrate different strategies for different audiences, etc...  Here, I wanted to take a quick look at the ad rates and the audiences to see which advertisers scored more bang for their buck.

The stats are plain - the Super Bowl outpaced the Oscars in both audience and ad rates:

Of course, the two are correlated (typically) - higher audiences yield higher ad rates.  It makes sense.

The Super Bowl may be more expensive in terms of price tag, but was it as efficient at delivering the audience?  Was it a good deal?

For this we have to calculate something [like] a CPM - the Cost Per Thousand of traditional print media quantification.  It's not a perfect match when shifting to Television, but it does give us some idea of how efficient the Super Bowl and/or the Oscars were at delivering audiences.

CPM is calculating by dividing the Ad Cost by the Audience and multiplying that by 1,000.  It tells us, literally, the cost to reach 1,000 people.

[Avert your eyes if math scares you]

Oscars - $1.7million Ad Cost/37.6 Million Viewers X 1,000 =  $45.21
Super Bowl - $3 million Ad Cost/111 Million Viewers X 1,000 = $27.27

So, the Super Bowl wins in efficiency too...  I, of course, am overlooking a BIG POINT here that might change the results.  What is it??

J.C. Penney Looks to Red Carpet to Rebrand... Again.

So it looks like J.C. Penney is hitting the red carpet again this year, with another "rebranding" strategy.  While last year's carpet was abuzz with Penney's new campaign focused on the "fashionable side" of JCP, this year's campaign is more subdued, simply unveiling a new logo...

[cue, screeching halt...]

Yes, another major brand is skating out onto the thin ice of logo regeneration.  The Gap's new logo (Left):

lasted barely a day, before consumer outcry via social media



led the company to revert back to the OLD logo (Right panel, above).  Gap joined the list of other brands - like Starbucks, and Comedy Central - that launched new logos to mixed reviews.

So, I was a bit surprised when I caught my first glimpse of Penney's new art (Right Panel):


Wait.  Did Penney's steal a page out of Gap's playbook?  Is it just me, or does the second "visual" look a lot like the Gap logo so hated by Gap customers?  Apparently our good friends on the internet make it easy to create your own "Gap" logo, and it kind of looks like Penney's took them up on this offer.

I'm not sure whether this "rebrand" will cause as much of a commotion as the Gap fiasco, which may be a good thing.  However, I am not sure this change is substantial enough to cause the splash that Penney's is looking for.   Apparently, the company is looking for is new "lowercaps" logo (that's right, the key difference here, if you didn't catch it, is that the new logo on the right (above) has dropped the JCP for jcp).  Earth shattering.

What really gets my goat is that brands continue to think that they can address and appeal to real shifts in consumer behavior within younger generations via surface aesthetics such as this.  Sure, Millenials are part of the "text generation" that eschew capitalization, but if brands think that they can woo them simply by "talking the talk" - all I can do is SMH.

brandDR shows her age... by blogging...

Today's New York Times essentially put the last nail in the coffin of my youth by declaring:

While the younger generation is losing interest in blogging, people approaching middle age and older are sticking with it. 

Great.  What better time to launch a blog than when they become irrelevant to a key demographic that will be driving marketing into the future.

But wait...  While the younger crowd may be turning away from blogging - moving towards more "social" media like Facebook and Twitter - it doesn't mean blogs are dead in the water.  Instead, it means that bloggers need to embrace these media as vehicles to drive traffic to their blogs.

Twitter allows us to reach broad audiences with short bursts of information.  Perfect for blasting out announcements of new blog posts.  Use of #hashtags to link to broader conversations can help spread the word outside our immediate network.

It's pretty easy to download the Twitter app for your Facebook account, so that your Tweets also post to your wall.  This is good news, since research shows that Facebook is more successful at generating clicks through bit.ly links.  This has been my experience.  Check out the stats for good old brandDR:

Pretty much all my hits come from Facebook.  With one click I can publish a new post to brandDR the blog, tweet it through @brandDR on Twitter, and have that tweet post to my DrKristin Comeforo Facebook page.  

I think that blogs are still relevant, especially if you link your blog through a variety of social media channels.  But still, a blog is only as good as your audience judges it to be.  Here are some tips I try to keep in mind to keep people reading:

1.  Have a voice - and speak from it.  People read blogs for a perspective, not just for facts.

2.  Be relevant.  Focus on topics that are important to you (the blogger) and your audience (hopefully you know who they are - if not, you should find out!).

3.  Keep it short.  No one wants to read a long post.  Videos and images are good ways to convey ideas without forcing a lot of reading (maybe this will bring back the younger generation of blog readers??).

4.  And when all else fails, when you are the Professor, you can always assign your blog as course reading. That will insure some sort of audience.

What do you think?  Any advice - especially from you in the "younger generation" in terms of what makes a good blog?  Any thoughts on the "death" of blogging?  Am I really that old, or is the Times' off target with its' predictions?

"Save the Money" turns into "Save Face" for Groupon

The Superbowl is quickly turning in a Superbawl for virgin big game advertiser, Groupon.  Sure the game was weeks ago but the fallout for poorly planned messaging is still raining hard on the brand.

Almost immediately after the [most offensive] ad ran, social media recoiled in horror and raised its voice of criticism.  Perhaps the best example

was retweeted by over 100 other Twitter users.

I hope you can envision the ad - call it back into your memory - because you won't see it anywhere, anymore.  Just to show the power of the Twitterverse and social media in general - this is what I found when I tried to view the Tibetan ad (the most offensive of the Superbowl spots) on YouTube:

The brandDR declares this a flat-line strategy.  Staying relevant in terms of current events that are important to key customers is important and laudable, but the execution is DOA.  "Dark" humor in ads may be an effective strategy, but not when dealing with a pressing social issue that has life or death implications on a group of people.

Pulling the "Twitterverse" Into Orbit

It seems silly to mention how social media tools and usage of them, have exploded over the last few years, and how that explosion has impacted brands or really anyone with an idea they want to communicate.

While individuals have less at risk in engaging in social media by trial and error, brands can really crash and burn when they don't know what they are doing.

I don't need to remind you of the Kenneth Cole tweet that made light of the turmoil in Egypt in the early days of their revolution.

 Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo -KC less than a minute ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®

We're all familiar with what big brands do via social media, mostly because of their high profile mistakes like KC's - but what about smaller brands?

In a recent infographic produced by Postling, Facebook and Twitter led the way in terms of most used social media tools for smaller businesses, with 78% using Twitter and 75% using Facebook.

While Twitter generated slightly more "engagement" than Facebook (gauged via the number of comments to content), Facebook was far more successful in driving traffic to company related sites.

So the reasons for [smaller] businesses to engage via social media are clear - how the heck should they use them?

In his book Engage! author Brian Solis gives the example of "all natural, good for you pizza joint" @NakedPizza.  Today, the brand has 10,655 followers, but even over a year ago was able to declare Twitter a success.  According to Solis:

On April 23, 2009, the company reported that Twitter accounted for 15 percent of total sales that day. (Engage! p. 316)

Solis later teamed up with @Jess3 to sketch a map of the "Twitterverse."  That is, to chart peripheral sites that have popped up to help small businesses, big brands, and individuals alike, enhance their Twitterxperience.

Check out their 2011 Twitterverse Console below.  The idea is that it can help you figure out what sites are best for your business.  It's in CLICKABLE format here.

Marc Jacobs Sends Facebookers "Best Valentine, Ever!!"

Tonight, fashion designer Marc Jacobs sent Facebook fans a sweet Valentine by streaming his Marc Jacobs Collection FW2011 runway show live via a Facebook App.

"Fans" were able to post comments on the show, in real time, that would appear on the MJ Live page as a live feed and also post to the users' wall.

Despite early technical "SNAFU's" that inspired several "wtf?" and "no music" comments, Fans seemed to revel in their ability to see, and comment on, MJ's fall line.

According to the App page, there were 493 "monthly users," and the page garnered 390 "likes" at press time here.  In terms of the overall FB Nation - seems like a drop in the bucket, but we still have to give props to Marc Jacobs for being the FIRST to stream in 9:16 portrait view, making the content viewable across web, smartphone, and iPad platforms.

All in all, it seemed like MJ figured out a way to make Facebook more like Twitter - by creating a conversation that transcended individual users' friends networks, and setting Facebookers free from the confines of the status update.    The App page linked people who would have never been linked before and brought a unique set of voices to the table.

These voices rose around topics like hats worn by the models (general consensus - they were "weird"), the overwhelming presence of polka dots as a pattern, and at times gushing, almost fawning over the boots and the precision with which Jacobs executed the pencil skirt.

I wonder what kinds of take aways Marc Jacobs Intl will have from this experiment.  What a great way to hear the consumer voice and to source for feedback.  I'm also curious about the analytics that will emerge, in terms of how many people viewed the stream, across which platform, and how many commented on, or otherwise engaged the material.

If you missed the show tonight, no worries - there is another one tomorrow (Tuesday, February 15th, 3:45PM) on the Web/Smartphone and Facebook.

Black Hats are the New Style at J.C. Penney

Just about a year ago, J.C. Penney - your "go to" retailer for tube socks and long underwear - hit the red carpet hard at the Academy Awards.  They weren't outfitting celebs in killer gowns and tuxes, but instead running six :30 second commercials highlighting Penney’s new focus on Fashion. 

New look.  New day.  Who knew?  Apparently, everyone who Googled anything related to fashion (and more) during the 2010 holiday shopping season.

Using what Google refers to as “black hat” tactics, J.C. Penney (or an agency on its payroll) was able to cook the books of search results – insuring that J.C. Penney was number 1 on lists for a variety of searches ranging from “skinny jeans” to “tablecloths.”

The top spot is, of course, the most coveted real estate in Googleville, with about 35% of searchers clicking into the first record, which is just about equivalent to the numbers clicking into the second, third AND fourth records COMBINED.  Despite J.C. Penney's attempt to downplay, this has big implications on the bottom line.  

So how’d they do it?  What was the “black hat” tactic anyway? 

One aspect of the algorithm Google uses to rank results considers the number of sites that link to your webpage.  The idea is that sites will want to link to the “best” content to keep consumers happy, so the more sites that link to your site, the better.  It shows that your site is considered “the best” in terms of delivering some sort of informational or consumer satisfaction.

Seems plausible, but, the temptation for collusion – the quid pro quo of “I’ll link to you, if you link to me” – is great, as is the temptation to generate dummy sites for the sole purpose to post links and manipulate search results.  And that is exactly the black hat J.C. Penney donned.

In its investigation, the NY Times found that:

Some of the 2,015 pages [with J.C. Penney links] are on sites related, at least nominally, to clothing. But most are not. The phrase “black dresses” and a Penney link were tacked to the bottom of a site called nuclear.engineeringaddict.com. “Evening dresses” appeared on a site called casino-focus.com. “Cocktail dresses” showed up on bulgariapropertyportal.com. ”Casual dresses” was on a site called elistofbanks.com. “Semi-formal dresses” was pasted, rather incongruously, on usclettermen.org.

For a retailer that has struggled to get back in style J.C. Penney not only finds itself painfully out of style, but also left out of Google search results, as the giant is notorious for punishing brands that cross it.

After Google “corrected” for the black hat tactics, J.C. Penney has slipped from the top spot to 60 or 70 in the ranks on many of the searches investigated by the Times.

Questions remain, in terms of brand equity and, perhaps, “information equity.”  How will consumers feel about J.C. Penney for engaging in these tactics? How will consumers feel about the results the next time they Google search?

Another Dropped Ball in Terms of LGBT Marketing

Stock photo sites, enema marketers, and even Bollywood have recognized the power of the “Pink Dollar” – the upwards of $800 billion that gay and lesbian (plus bisexual, and transgender) consumers bring to the market.

So, I am wondering what's up with Sealy Mattress?  

This stellar Superbowl ad delivers on multiculturalism; and their tagline – “Whatever you do in bed, we support it” – is both provocative and relevant in terms of the key benefit its mattresses deliver.

But, by choosing not to include a same-sex couple in its ad, Sealy not only undermines its tagline (perhaps warranting a disclaimer – "as long as you do it with a partner of the opposite gender") but also misses out on a prime opportunity to woo LGBT consumers, who have been found to be exceedingly loyal to brands to openly advertise to them.

There is, after all, a whole lot of truth behind the "Subaru driving lesbian" stereotype.

Among all the dropped balls both on the field and during the commercial breaks - this seems to me the one that hurts the most, in terms of opportunity lost for ROI.