ANA Marketing Maestros

Your Tweets Have a New Home...Welcome to The Library of Congress

By Cara Brooke Schultz

Did you think the tweet you wrote publicly pronouncing your love for a new product would stay in “twitterspace” forever? The idea that tweets would slowly dissolve into Internet space is no longer! Twitter and the Library of Congress announced that every public tweet posted since the birth of Twitter in 2006 will be digitally archived.

According to the Library of Congress’ Web site, “The Twitter digital archive has extraordinary potential for research into our contemporary way of life. This information provides detailed evidence about how technology based social networks form and evolve over time. The collection also documents a remarkable range of social trends,” said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington.

 

Only public tweets will be archived, and even Google is getting in on the action. Google is planning on creating an interactive archive. People can search tweets at any point in time and ‘replay’ what people were tweeting about at that very moment! Think historical moments like Barack Obama’s inauguration or the devastating earthquake in Haiti.

Would you use the Twitter archive? If so, what chatter would you like to look-up?

 

From Thanksgiving Turkey to Springtime Favorite

By Duke Fanelli

I maybe a bit late to the party, but I was thinking about Tiger Woods and the hype surrounding his decision to play at the Masters Tournament. I have to admit, for all intents and purpose he played masterly…yeah some bad shots and he was highly critical of his own play, but he finished Sunday tied for fourth (-11 under par). Not bad after being out of commission for more than five months, dealing with personal and family issues.

Most striking throughout the four-day Tigerfest, was the media and gallery’s acceptance of Tiger. If you had spent the past five months living in a cave, you’d never have known how nasty things got. The #1 player in the world was back and he and his fans were basking in the glow. (Not to take anything away from Phil Mickelson’s win, which was spectacular, well deserved and a milestone in his career.) The Sports, marketing and armchair pundits, who earlier this year wanted to see Tiger’s head impaled on a fairway wood, were nowhere to be seen. Except for an errant Tiger-detractor, who paid to have a small plane fly over Augusta National—with a not so obvious reference to Tiger’s apology speech—the crowd loved watching his come back.

So where does this all leave us? American’s have notoriously short memories when it comes to celebrity misdeeds and we are certainly as forgiving when it comes to the idiotic behavior of our star athletes. So the question is: will Tiger get some of his old endorsements back? I’m guessing the answer is no. But a more intriguing question may be are new endorsements right around the corner? And, who is first in line?  Anyone want to weigh in with a guess?

By the way, Tiger’s comeback at the Masters gave ESPN the highest U.S. audience ever for a golf event on cable TV, as nearly 5 million people tuned in to watch Thursday’s first round. As the millions viewing the Master’s can attest, Tiger’s back, his fan base is strong and shooting 11 under par last week, is a clear indication that he is capable (which some doubted) of topping the list of golf’s superstars for some time to come. Is this a Rod Tidwell and Jerry McGuire moment?

Excuse Me Ma’am, It’s $65 Extra For Oxygen….

By Cara Brooke Schultz

Recently two airlines have been in the hot seat with passengers—Spirit Airlines and Ryanair—for charging what most people deem ridiculous extra fees. Spirit Airlines announced on Tuesday that it will now be charging customers for carry-on baggage. According to a CNN.com article, “The charge for carry-on bags varies from $30 to $45 depending on whether passengers are members of Spirit’s ultra-low fare club and whether they ‘pre-reserve’ their carry-on bag in advance.” Airline officials hope this will spiral into a bring less; pay less policy. They also said, “it will improve inflight safety and efficiency by speeding up the boarding and deplaning process.”

The question is: will other airlines start charging for carry-on bags? Which in all likelihood could be the case—Spirit Airlines originally started charging customers for checked bags, and other airlines followed soon thereafter.

Ryanair, based in Dublin, Ireland is thinking about enacting a fee for the use of the bathroom on flights shorter than one hour. The fee would be minimal, one Euro—about $1.33. They said the idea stemmed from trying to encourage people to use restrooms in airport terminals before boarding. Another part of the plan, suggested eliminating one of the bathrooms to free up space for extra seats.

Personally I rather just spend more money on my ticket, rather than pay all of these extra fees for checked and carry-on baggage. How do you feel about all of the additional fees?

I also find myself wondering how other modes of transportation are faring with the airlines tacking on so many additional fees—is the rail system benefiting from this?

 

Marketing for Cooking-Toys Might Need a Few New Ingredients

By Cara Brooke Schultz

Advertisers in the toy industry should pay attention to a new demographic: male ages 2-11. Yes you read that correctly, 2-11.

According to a recent Adweek article, data over a five-month period ending in February showed significant numbers for the Food Network, “The overall male audience for Throwdown with Bobby Flay is 36 percent, but jumps to 47 percent in the 2-11 age bracket; overall male audience for Iron Chef America, also 36 percent, jumps to 45 percent in the 2-11 bracket. And on TLC, the audience for Cake Boss, 30 percent male overall, jumps to 36 percent among those boys.”

It seems as if this large audience is going unnoticed—or maybe not? After taking a quick look through a few Web sites, I noticed more cooking-toys being manufactured in primary colors rather than in pastel pink and lavender. Another subtle difference, boys were being integrated into the advertisements alongside girls for the toy packaging. The Adweek article, “Half Baked” explained, “Today, male celebrity chefs are driving the current food craze and more boys than ever are watching those shows.” 

 

Although most of the toys are still advertised for young girls, keep an eye on how advertisers might soon be changing their ingredients for this stale recipe. 

 

New Plans for Local Ratings Unfair to Advertisers

By Bill Duggan

Nielsen, last week, formally announced its plans to eliminate the reporting of live-only local TV ratings to advertisers and its local station clients. Now, advertisers and local stations will only have overnight access to data for three different data streams: live program plus same day time-shifting of programming, live plus three day time-shifting, and live plus seven day time-shifting. Going forward, live-only data will only be available in custom reports, on a delayed basis.

Advertisers and agencies are disappointed. Nielsen has made it clear since this issue arose in 2009 that it could make three data streams available. Advertisers and agencies have been consistently adamant regarding the need for the live-only stream and have been willing to concede to the local stations the choice for the other two streams.  But now all available streams for local TV ratings will be “plus” and therefore include time-shifting.

On the national level, the evolution from program ratings to average commercial ratings has been a positive step and C3 takes into consideration three day time-shifting. But it is important to point out that on the local level program ratings continue to be used. Therefore, all the “plus” streams do not take into consideration commercial skipping in DVR playback. As a result, local commercial viewing would clearly be overstated—some agencies estimate that this change will result in an instant 7 percent viewership boost to local TV stations. Overstated rating could then lead to overstated ad rates.

 

This situation is unfair and unfortunate. Again, there are three local ratings streams available. One of those streams should be live-only as the majority of agencies and advertisers have consistently told Nielsen as well as the local stations. Remember, it’s those advertising dollars that ultimately fund the local stations and well as Nielsen’s ratings services. Why has the opinion of advertisers and agencies been disregarded?

Battles on the TV Screen

By Cara Brooke Schultz

Companies battling it out on the small screen is not new. In fact, Burger King had a slew of commercials in the 1980s taking jabs at McDonald’s.

And who can forget Pepsi’s commercials arguing how it tastes better than Coca-Cola.

Recently you’ve probably watched the public scuffle between AT&T and Verizon Wireless. If not, here are two commercials for your viewing enjoyment: 

With all of these public feuds taking place throughout advertising history, how does it affect you as a consumer? I personally rather hear why the company is better for me as a consumer; I could do without these public punches thrown at each other over the television screen. What do you think—do these commercials waiver your thoughts when making a purchase?  

Census Time!

By Bill Duggan

I mailed back my Census form today.  When the results are fully tallied, it will be exciting and enlightening to see how the demographic profile of the country has changed. Our population has likely reached a tipping point. In 2010, births to Hispanic, Black, and Asian women are projected to account for 50 percent of all births in the nation and that percentage will continue to increase going forward. The Census Bureau estimates that minorities will constitute a majority of the nation’s overall population in about three decades and a majority of Americans under age 18 in only one decade. The implications to marketers are now clearer than ever before—multicultural markets are no longer niche or “add on” segments. Rather, ethnic is the new mainstream and marketing as well as work-force diversity must reflect that.

 

Smart companies such as McDonald’s, General Mills, Coca-Cola, and State Farm are taking note and “leading with ethnic insights” (a line used by the CMO of McDonald’s at a recent ANA conference). It’s hard to believe that there are still companies either ignoring multicultural audiences or targeting these groups with only token spending. Just look at the numbers!  The Hispanic population is projected to grow 20 percent between 2000 and 2020 while the non-Hispanic population will grow just 12 percent. And the median age of Hispanics is almost ten years younger than the non-Hispanic population.  Plus, household sizes are much bigger—Hispanic households have 5+ people versus only 12 percent for non-Hispanics. 

The new Census info should be a game changer. Marketers are encouraged to be prepared rather than surprised by taking a hard look at the demographic data and projections available now. 

Is Facebook Making You Frown? Social Media Marketing Is a Ton of Work!

By Cara Brooke Schultz

Social media burst onto the scene, but like any new medium, it has brought with it a slew of questions. Marketers are asking, “How do I deal with…

• Privacy issues in social networking?”
• Data safety—visitors can get hit by identify theft and frauds?”
• Negative or undesirable posts?” 

At last week’s Advertising Law & Public Policy Conference presented by Microsoft several of the speakers weighed in with their opinions. During the presentation by Douglas J. Wood, senior partner, Reed Smith LLP; Christopher Sloan, assistant vice president and senior corporate counsel, Liberty Mutual Group; Divya Narendra, chief executive officer and co-founder, Sumzero.com we learned that in order for a company to actively participate in social media the company must enable conversations, monitor conversations, influence conversations, react to conversations, and monetize conversations—which translates into saying, “no you cannot just set up a Facebook fan page and walk away.” 

Seems like a lot of work huh? Well it is, and it doesn’t just stop there—with your new social media sites your company needs to adopt a social media policy for internal and external communications. A key point to keep in mind as you dive into social media, “don’t ban what you can’t stop.” Social media is not ending anytime soon, in fact recent statistics state the sites are still growing at a rapid rate, “Two yeas ago, 20 percent of survey respondents were using social networks and social media, now that figure is 66 percent,” (Research Report: Harnessing the Power of Never Media Platforms for More Effective Marketing, 2nd Edition. ANA 2009). 

For more information about the conference, visit our Web site. 

Socially Responsible Companies Can Make a Difference

By Susan Burke

According to a March 17, 2010, New York Times article, The Body Shop, a pioneer in corporate social responsibility, has taken up a new cause—sex trafficking. Over 1.2 million children become victims of the global sex trade each year and human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world. 

The goals of the campaign, which utilizes online, in-store, social media, sponsored screenings of the documentary “Playground: The Child Sex Trade in America,” and out-of-home, are to raise awareness about the issue, collect funds to help the victims of this crime, and encourage legislative action in this area.

 

On their website, The Body Shop, which is part of L’Oreal, encourages consumers to take the following actions to help fight sex trafficking:

1. Tell friends and family about the campaign.

2. Buy The Body Shop’s Soft Hands Kind Heart Hand Cream, or make a donation to ECPAT.

3. Report a suspected incidence of child trafficking by writing to [email protected]

4. Learn more about the issue by reading a full report on Global Child Trafficking for sexual purposes. or the summary report.

5. Learn more about The Body’s Shop’s Progress Cards which have been developed to support future phases of this campaign.

So far, $1.5 million has been raised to support this cause by consumers of The Body Shop in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. For more information on how your brand can become more socially responsible, visit www.ana.net/mic. 

And The Winner Is....Social Media!

By Cara Brooke Schultz

Who will be watching the Oscars on Sunday night? Okay…you can put your hand down now, and continue reading.

I’ll be watching the Oscars for two main reasons:

1. To see what all the actresses will be wearing—so I can then pour over the images on the Internet Monday morning and discuss the magnificent fashion hits as well as the misfortunate tragedies. 
2. To find out what movie will win best picture, which actor will win best actor, and which actress will win best actress.

So technically you could consider that four reasons, but for the purpose of this Blog post we’ll continue to count that as two. After the Oscars, when I discuss the fashion statements with my friends, am I going to be calling them to chat? No way! Who has time for that?! 
 
Instead, I’ll be online via Blogs, Web sites, forums, and of course social media—and advertisers are very much aware of this. For example, a USA Today, article talked about how several Oscar advertisers are making a push in their social media efforts this year, “’It's no longer smart just to buy on the Academy Awards,’ says consultant Charlene Li. ‘You have to tie into social media so that people talk about you.”’

According to the article, we can expect to see a social media push from the following companies: J.C. Penney, Samsung, Hyundai, and Cottonelle, just to name a few. If you plan on watching the Oscars, where will your water-cooler conversations be taking place?