Saturday, February 28, 2009
A Critical Analysis of “What is Branding and how does it apply to Brands.”
A Critical Analysis of “What is Branding and how does it apply to Brands.”
By: Daryl J. Orris, Ph.D.
Brand leaders’ position, are threatened during economic downturns because of consumers trading down.
Excerpt from the American Advertising Academy, December 2008 Newsletter:
“Today Branding is More Critical than Ever”
“People today can touch it, feel it, sense it, hear it and live it. It’s theirs as long as you continue to support them with the promise that the brand provides. One wrong attempt to mislead, lie, or over-promise will lose thousands of loyal consumers in the blink of an eye. A loyal customer’s ability to share their unhappiness can be accomplished in just a few minutes. And this is as true for B2B as it is for B2C. That’s the beauty of our new marketing paradigm. Everything has become retail. Marketers can gain data and insight from consumers in real time. The question is: are agencies providing this window into their consumer engagement?”
CRM is: Customer Relationship Management. Here the above author has confused CRM with Branding. The author has misperceived every aspect of Branding with CRM. The author’s start point is in error, and as such, everything he has to offer becomes misinformation and ineffectual. What follows is a point-by-point critique of these Branding misperceptions and the correct view of Branding, be it Business to Business or Business to Consumer:
“People today can touch it, feel it, sense it, hear it and live it. It’s theirs as long as you continue to support them with the promise that the brand provides. One wrong attempt to mislead, lie, or over-promise will lose thousands of loyal consumers in the blink of an eye. A loyal customer’s ability to share their unhappiness can be accomplished in just a few minutes.”
Branding today is as critical as it has always been and this statement is obvious in its nature, but loses touch with what Branding is. It addresses Brand Promise. The brand promise is really ‘what the brand’s promotional efforts are saying to the consumer,’ as adjusted by CRM, and, along with the brand’s category positioning, as communicated to the consumer – where and how the brand is positioned within its category. A Brand is no more, and no less, than what the Consumer says it is. Obviously, CRM assists the Marketer, Advertiser, and Advertising Agency, by giving them information on how the brand is perceived by the consumer. With this information CRM assists in that by now adjusting the Brand within the category, to build Brand Preference; to defend the brand from category competitors, and to develop or maintain brand position within the category and to retain loyal consumers. With this information Brand Preference can be achieved.
Brands that have become household word, a part of the American Lexicon, are dynamic, not static. Brands are continually evolving, as are the consumer’s perceptions of brands. And it is the function of the Marketer and the Agency to keep the Brand viable to the consumer, be it wholesale buyer or consumer. A Brand is nothing more than what the consumer or customer says it is. Meaning, Brands need to be continually tended to and modified to maintain its perceived (or preferred brand position) brand position and make or keep the brand relevant to the target consumer. Misrepresenting the brand is a prescription for disaster, and saying that: “consumers can be lost in the blink of an eye,” is an obvious statement. And it calls out the need for CRM and the understanding that all brands are dynamic. Knowing how the consumers perceives the brand at all times is important for all Marketers. But what is important is that a brand can be affected by consumer perception driven by promotion. Meaning, marketers and advertising agencies can alter and influence consumer perception. Advertising Agencies are more than relevant in the 21st century, but in reality, a requirement for brand promotion.
Today’s challenge (early 2009) is fending off category competitors from eroding the Brand’s value in the consumer’s mind. Most established brands have several category threats: traditional brand category competition, private label, and discount brands. When consumers begin to make value associations that involves making the most of their limited resources, perceived or real, there is a natural tendency for consumers to trade down: either to discount brands, or to private and generic brands, or to brands on deal. Brand leaders position is threatened during economic downturns. Consumers simply trade down if they cannot find the brand’s value or inherent personal commitment to the brand, and supreme, ownership of the brand – as if a lifestyle statement, like Nike and other supreme brands.
So the challenge for Marketers is to keep brand loyal consumers from trading down.
Here is where the differentiation between CRM and Branding come into play. CRM tells the Marketer how the brand is perceived by the consumer, then with the help of Advertising Agencies strategies they can be developed to compete in the category to maintain position, or to strategically adjust brand perception within the category to move up using methods and techniques to promote value and to convince consumers that the value proposition and inherent benefits and features of the brand makes this brand the best value within the category. This is promotion.
“That’s the beauty of our new marketing paradigm. Everything has become retail.” This is either the dumbest statement ever conceived or the smartest. B2B and B2C are separate and distinct separations. The author in this case, I hope, is referring to the branding distinction. Meaning that: wholesale buyers are consumers too. ‘That they have their customers in mind, and when they buy.’ The Marketing Paradigm referred to is one of all media, traditional and New Media.” Everything has become retail, in that everything is merchandised and then purchased. That is the smartest. The stupidest, the author is clueless as to what ‘paradigm’ means or represents. Media is of course, not static; it is as it has always been, dynamic. Therefore, media is ever changing and today’s media is in a period of transition. As it was always was media is dynamic in nature and ever changing. But promotion is not. Promotion is the art of manipulating media for brand promotion. Brand promotion is static, not dynamic. Brand promotion is to simply maintain or to elevate the brand within its category. Dullards continue to ascribe new meaning to the static. But the simple reality is that brand promotion remains ‘a struggle between brands within their respective categories.’ Call it what you might, it is none-the-less, A COMPETITIVE BATTEL WITHIN THE CATEGORY BETWEEN LIKE BRANDS.
I am amused by the stupidity thereafter. Like the premise for this discussion: “The question is: are agencies providing this window into their consumer engagement?” Advertising Agency’s function is to differentiate and promote the brand. “Differentiate is hallmark in the reality of ‘Promotion.’ It is the agency’s responsibility to differentiate the brand and then to promote. It is that simple. All else is window-dressing or stupidity as was the basis for this discussion.
Finally, “The question is: are agencies providing this window into their consumer engagement?” Needs to be addressed.
If an Advertising Agency is not privy to the Marketers CRM, then the answer to this question is a decided no. All Marketers see Customer Relation Management as in integral part of their marketing mission. Marketers must share CRM and marketing data with their agencies. Not just current CRM/category data, but also historic information as well. It amazes many advertising agencies how their clients are fearful of releases historic marketing data to its agencies.
With strategic marketing data, and historic CRM and category data, the Advertising Agency can effectively develop a strategic creative strategy to either maintain or increase category position. Back to our question: “The question is: are agencies providing this window into their consumer engagement?” If the Marketer is sharing brand and market information with the advertising agency the answer is yes. If the advertising agency is perceived as an outsider it cannot possibly develop a strategic creative initiative to maintain or increase category position.
A good example of this is this author’s experience in advancing a brand during an economic downturn. The author’s experience in the Frozen Vegetable Category with his agency representing Green Giant as it’s agency of record during the recession of the eighties. Green Giant was a category follower behind Birdseye until Viking Creative Concepts, Inc. developed a strategic strategy to overtake Birdseye by touting Green Giants features and benefits over the category leader Birdseye.
A strategic campaign was developed to tout Green Giant’s consumer advantages over Birdseye. Green Giant had developed over time a line of gourmet vegetables developed for their outstanding taste profiles over all category contenders. Much of the strategic differences went beyond Birdseye original advantage that was ‘Flash Freezing.’ But over time, equipment manufactures took the advantage away from Birdseye and made the technology available to all category participants. Green Giant’s advantages were twofold: Gourmet Vegetables, developed in Green Giant’s test fields and the ability to pick vegetables at “The Peak of Perfection.” ‘The Peak of Perfection’ was in fact the ability of determining a field’s optimum harvesting. Coupled with that was ‘Flash Freezing’ meaning that: “Green Giant Vegetables are picked at the peak of perfection and then Flash-Frozen to retain all of the vegetable’s nutritional benefits especially when compared to fresh picked. Fresh picked lose nutrients form the time of picking, transportation, to market display, to preparation and consumption. Frozen vegetables retain these lost nutrients compared to fresh.
Above that, Green Giant was: Quality (gourmet quality hybrid vegetables), Consistency (always perfection, ready when you are), Convenience (frozen vegetables are ready when you are) stored in the freezer, Green Giant vegetables keep their nutritional value and freshness especially when compared to fresh, that must be used immediately after purchase to retain their flavor characteristics.
So, within the category of vegetables, Green Giant Frozen Vegetables were superior to other category contenders because of the gourmet varieties it alone had developed, then because the vegetables were picked at “The Peak of Perfection” where taste and nutritional value were at their highest. These benefits were used to develop ”The Giant Difference,” – is: quality, or, convenience, or value. This strategic difference moved Green Giant, number two, over the then category leader Birdseye. During Viking Creative Concepts, Inc. representation of Green Giant it maintain it’s number one selling vegetable in the world category position. When Viking resigned the account, due to a conflict of interest between Viking’s owner, Daryl Orris, and The Pillsbury Company’s Haagen Dazs Brand. Orris had invented Liquor Ice Cream, which was thought to be a conflict between Blend’s ‘Original Liquor Ice Cream,” and Haagen Daz ice cream, as both were in the Superpremium ice cream category. Even though, Blend’s® was determined by AFT (now TTB) and FDA to have lost its ice cream identity because while frozen solid and 80% superpremium ice cream, its 20% distilled spirits flavoring system renders the end-product intoxicating, and therefore it was classified as “Distilled Spirits.”
When Viking stopped its representation of Green Giant, it lost 33 percent of its sales in year one, and 17 percent loss compounded in year two. The result was that the then owner, Grand Metropolitan, sold off Green Giant’s seed lots and research fields in Le Sueur, Minnesota, and all of the plants. The brand promise was lost.
Green Giant vegetables, owned by General Mills, are now co-packed by JR Simplot, and have none of the advantages it once had, that had made the brand the world’s number one vegetables.
So to our original branding question: “The question is: are agencies providing this window into their consumer engagement?” Brands must be transparent to consumers, but they must also be transparent between the Marketer and the Advertising Agency. The agency needs to know strategic information to develop its strategic creative plan for the brand.
Branding is what the consumer says it is, but it is the Marketers responsibility to determine strategic differences, that they share with the Advertising Agency to develop a Strategic Creative Strategy to develop the ‘brand promise’ and to develop the category strategy to find its strategic place within the category. Not all brands need to be number one. Being number two or three with reduced marketing costs can be more profitable than being number one. And if the category cannot distinguish between brands, price will always win out. It is up to Marketers to be able to distinguish their brand within the category.
But the upshot of this article was to establish “Consumer Value Perceptions” so that consumers will pass on price and instead choose ‘brand value.’ Brand Value is when the product or service can supplant price. In the case of Green Giant as illustrated, it once had superior features and benefits over other category contenders to catapulted it to the number one category position. Many times, in weak categories, where features and benefits are not distinguishable, price alone wins out. The brand promise coupled with the value-proposition, wins consumer franchises and a distinct category position – be it value, price, or quality. Value, is a not clearly understood concept and worth research. Because value, transcends price. For example, a high quality knife lasts longer than cheaper competitors and therefore transcends price. Finding the value proposition for a brand is intrinsic to success. As is having all of the strategic information of the brand, shared with the Marketer. Only when a Marketer and an Advertising Agency share all strategic information, can a “Brand’ strategically win within its category.
Posted by Daryl Orris at 12:45 PM
Saturday, February 28, 2009
A Critical Analysis of “What is Branding and how does it apply to Brands.”
A Critical Analysis of “What is Branding and how does it apply to Brands.”
By: Daryl J. Orris, Ph.D.
Brand leaders’ position, are threatened during economic downturns because of consumers trading down.
Excerpt from the American Advertising Academy, December 2008 Newsletter:
“Today Branding is More Critical than Ever”
“People today can touch it, feel it, sense it, hear it and live it. It’s theirs as long as you continue to support them with the promise that the brand provides. One wrong attempt to mislead, lie, or over-promise will lose thousands of loyal consumers in the blink of an eye. A loyal customer’s ability to share their unhappiness can be accomplished in just a few minutes. And this is as true for B2B as it is for B2C. That’s the beauty of our new marketing paradigm. Everything has become retail. Marketers can gain data and insight from consumers in real time. The question is: are agencies providing this window into their consumer engagement?”
CRM is: Customer Relationship Management. Here the above author has confused CRM with Branding. The author has misperceived every aspect of Branding with CRM. The author’s start point is in error, and as such, everything he has to offer becomes misinformation and ineffectual. What follows is a point-by-point critique of these Branding misperceptions and the correct view of Branding, be it Business to Business or Business to Consumer:
“People today can touch it, feel it, sense it, hear it and live it. It’s theirs as long as you continue to support them with the promise that the brand provides. One wrong attempt to mislead, lie, or over-promise will lose thousands of loyal consumers in the blink of an eye. A loyal customer’s ability to share their unhappiness can be accomplished in just a few minutes.”
Branding today is as critical as it has always been and this statement is obvious in its nature, but loses touch with what Branding is. It addresses Brand Promise. The brand promise is really ‘what the brand’s promotional efforts are saying to the consumer,’ as adjusted by CRM, and, along with the brand’s category positioning, as communicated to the consumer – where and how the brand is positioned within its category. A Brand is no more, and no less, than what the Consumer says it is. Obviously, CRM assists the Marketer, Advertiser, and Advertising Agency, by giving them information on how the brand is perceived by the consumer. With this information CRM assists in that by now adjusting the Brand within the category, to build Brand Preference; to defend the brand from category competitors, and to develop or maintain brand position within the category and to retain loyal consumers. With this information Brand Preference can be achieved.
Brands that have become household word, a part of the American Lexicon, are dynamic, not static. Brands are continually evolving, as are the consumer’s perceptions of brands. And it is the function of the Marketer and the Agency to keep the Brand viable to the consumer, be it wholesale buyer or consumer. A Brand is nothing more than what the consumer or customer says it is. Meaning, Brands need to be continually tended to and modified to maintain its perceived (or preferred brand position) brand position and make or keep the brand relevant to the target consumer. Misrepresenting the brand is a prescription for disaster, and saying that: “consumers can be lost in the blink of an eye,” is an obvious statement. And it calls out the need for CRM and the understanding that all brands are dynamic. Knowing how the consumers perceives the brand at all times is important for all Marketers. But what is important is that a brand can be affected by consumer perception driven by promotion. Meaning, marketers and advertising agencies can alter and influence consumer perception. Advertising Agencies are more than relevant in the 21st century, but in reality, a requirement for brand promotion.
Today’s challenge (early 2009) is fending off category competitors from eroding the Brand’s value in the consumer’s mind. Most established brands have several category threats: traditional brand category competition, private label, and discount brands. When consumers begin to make value associations that involves making the most of their limited resources, perceived or real, there is a natural tendency for consumers to trade down: either to discount brands, or to private and generic brands, or to brands on deal. Brand leaders position is threatened during economic downturns. Consumers simply trade down if they cannot find the brand’s value or inherent personal commitment to the brand, and supreme, ownership of the brand – as if a lifestyle statement, like Nike and other supreme brands.
So the challenge for Marketers is to keep brand loyal consumers from trading down.
Here is where the differentiation between CRM and Branding come into play. CRM tells the Marketer how the brand is perceived by the consumer, then with the help of Advertising Agencies strategies they can be developed to compete in the category to maintain position, or to strategically adjust brand perception within the category to move up using methods and techniques to promote value and to convince consumers that the value proposition and inherent benefits and features of the brand makes this brand the best value within the category. This is promotion.
“That’s the beauty of our new marketing paradigm. Everything has become retail.” This is either the dumbest statement ever conceived or the smartest. B2B and B2C are separate and distinct separations. The author in this case, I hope, is referring to the branding distinction. Meaning that: wholesale buyers are consumers too. ‘That they have their customers in mind, and when they buy.’ The Marketing Paradigm referred to is one of all media, traditional and New Media.” Everything has become retail, in that everything is merchandised and then purchased. That is the smartest. The stupidest, the author is clueless as to what ‘paradigm’ means or represents. Media is of course, not static; it is as it has always been, dynamic. Therefore, media is ever changing and today’s media is in a period of transition. As it was always was media is dynamic in nature and ever changing. But promotion is not. Promotion is the art of manipulating media for brand promotion. Brand promotion is static, not dynamic. Brand promotion is to simply maintain or to elevate the brand within its category. Dullards continue to ascribe new meaning to the static. But the simple reality is that brand promotion remains ‘a struggle between brands within their respective categories.’ Call it what you might, it is none-the-less, A COMPETITIVE BATTEL WITHIN THE CATEGORY BETWEEN LIKE BRANDS.
I am amused by the stupidity thereafter. Like the premise for this discussion: “The question is: are agencies providing this window into their consumer engagement?” Advertising Agency’s function is to differentiate and promote the brand. “Differentiate is hallmark in the reality of ‘Promotion.’ It is the agency’s responsibility to differentiate the brand and then to promote. It is that simple. All else is window-dressing or stupidity as was the basis for this discussion.
Finally, “The question is: are agencies providing this window into their consumer engagement?” Needs to be addressed.
If an Advertising Agency is not privy to the Marketers CRM, then the answer to this question is a decided no. All Marketers see Customer Relation Management as in integral part of their marketing mission. Marketers must share CRM and marketing data with their agencies. Not just current CRM/category data, but also historic information as well. It amazes many advertising agencies how their clients are fearful of releases historic marketing data to its agencies.
With strategic marketing data, and historic CRM and category data, the Advertising Agency can effectively develop a strategic creative strategy to either maintain or increase category position. Back to our question: “The question is: are agencies providing this window into their consumer engagement?” If the Marketer is sharing brand and market information with the advertising agency the answer is yes. If the advertising agency is perceived as an outsider it cannot possibly develop a strategic creative initiative to maintain or increase category position.
A good example of this is this author’s experience in advancing a brand during an economic downturn. The author’s experience in the Frozen Vegetable Category with his agency representing Green Giant as it’s agency of record during the recession of the eighties. Green Giant was a category follower behind Birdseye until Viking Creative Concepts, Inc. developed a strategic strategy to overtake Birdseye by touting Green Giants features and benefits over the category leader Birdseye.
A strategic campaign was developed to tout Green Giant’s consumer advantages over Birdseye. Green Giant had developed over time a line of gourmet vegetables developed for their outstanding taste profiles over all category contenders. Much of the strategic differences went beyond Birdseye original advantage that was ‘Flash Freezing.’ But over time, equipment manufactures took the advantage away from Birdseye and made the technology available to all category participants. Green Giant’s advantages were twofold: Gourmet Vegetables, developed in Green Giant’s test fields and the ability to pick vegetables at “The Peak of Perfection.” ‘The Peak of Perfection’ was in fact the ability of determining a field’s optimum harvesting. Coupled with that was ‘Flash Freezing’ meaning that: “Green Giant Vegetables are picked at the peak of perfection and then Flash-Frozen to retain all of the vegetable’s nutritional benefits especially when compared to fresh picked. Fresh picked lose nutrients form the time of picking, transportation, to market display, to preparation and consumption. Frozen vegetables retain these lost nutrients compared to fresh.
Above that, Green Giant was: Quality (gourmet quality hybrid vegetables), Consistency (always perfection, ready when you are), Convenience (frozen vegetables are ready when you are) stored in the freezer, Green Giant vegetables keep their nutritional value and freshness especially when compared to fresh, that must be used immediately after purchase to retain their flavor characteristics.
So, within the category of vegetables, Green Giant Frozen Vegetables were superior to other category contenders because of the gourmet varieties it alone had developed, then because the vegetables were picked at “The Peak of Perfection” where taste and nutritional value were at their highest. These benefits were used to develop ”The Giant Difference,” – is: quality, or, convenience, or value. This strategic difference moved Green Giant, number two, over the then category leader Birdseye. During Viking Creative Concepts, Inc. representation of Green Giant it maintain it’s number one selling vegetable in the world category position. When Viking resigned the account, due to a conflict of interest between Viking’s owner, Daryl Orris, and The Pillsbury Company’s Haagen Dazs Brand. Orris had invented Liquor Ice Cream, which was thought to be a conflict between Blend’s ‘Original Liquor Ice Cream,” and Haagen Daz ice cream, as both were in the Superpremium ice cream category. Even though, Blend’s® was determined by AFT (now TTB) and FDA to have lost its ice cream identity because while frozen solid and 80% superpremium ice cream, its 20% distilled spirits flavoring system renders the end-product intoxicating, and therefore it was classified as “Distilled Spirits.”
When Viking stopped its representation of Green Giant, it lost 33 percent of its sales in year one, and 17 percent loss compounded in year two. The result was that the then owner, Grand Metropolitan, sold off Green Giant’s seed lots and research fields in Le Sueur, Minnesota, and all of the plants. The brand promise was lost.
Green Giant vegetables, owned by General Mills, are now co-packed by JR Simplot, and have none of the advantages it once had, that had made the brand the world’s number one vegetables.
So to our original branding question: “The question is: are agencies providing this window into their consumer engagement?” Brands must be transparent to consumers, but they must also be transparent between the Marketer and the Advertising Agency. The agency needs to know strategic information to develop its strategic creative plan for the brand.
Branding is what the consumer says it is, but it is the Marketers responsibility to determine strategic differences, that they share with the Advertising Agency to develop a Strategic Creative Strategy to develop the ‘brand promise’ and to develop the category strategy to find its strategic place within the category. Not all brands need to be number one. Being number two or three with reduced marketing costs can be more profitable than being number one. And if the category cannot distinguish between brands, price will always win out. It is up to Marketers to be able to distinguish their brand within the category.
But the upshot of this article was to establish “Consumer Value Perceptions” so that consumers will pass on price and instead choose ‘brand value.’ Brand Value is when the product or service can supplant price. In the case of Green Giant as illustrated, it once had superior features and benefits over other category contenders to catapulted it to the number one category position. Many times, in weak categories, where features and benefits are not distinguishable, price alone wins out. The brand promise coupled with the value-proposition, wins consumer franchises and a distinct category position – be it value, price, or quality. Value, is a not clearly understood concept and worth research. Because value, transcends price. For example, a high quality knife lasts longer than cheaper competitors and therefore transcends price. Finding the value proposition for a brand is intrinsic to success. As is having all of the strategic information of the brand, shared with the Marketer. Only when a Marketer and an Advertising Agency share all strategic information, can a “Brand’ strategically win within its category.
By: Daryl J. Orris, Ph.D.
Brand leaders’ position, are threatened during economic downturns because of consumers trading down.
Excerpt from the American Advertising Academy, December 2008 Newsletter:
“Today Branding is More Critical than Ever”
“People today can touch it, feel it, sense it, hear it and live it. It’s theirs as long as you continue to support them with the promise that the brand provides. One wrong attempt to mislead, lie, or over-promise will lose thousands of loyal consumers in the blink of an eye. A loyal customer’s ability to share their unhappiness can be accomplished in just a few minutes. And this is as true for B2B as it is for B2C. That’s the beauty of our new marketing paradigm. Everything has become retail. Marketers can gain data and insight from consumers in real time. The question is: are agencies providing this window into their consumer engagement?”
CRM is: Customer Relationship Management. Here the above author has confused CRM with Branding. The author has misperceived every aspect of Branding with CRM. The author’s start point is in error, and as such, everything he has to offer becomes misinformation and ineffectual. What follows is a point-by-point critique of these Branding misperceptions and the correct view of Branding, be it Business to Business or Business to Consumer:
“People today can touch it, feel it, sense it, hear it and live it. It’s theirs as long as you continue to support them with the promise that the brand provides. One wrong attempt to mislead, lie, or over-promise will lose thousands of loyal consumers in the blink of an eye. A loyal customer’s ability to share their unhappiness can be accomplished in just a few minutes.”
Branding today is as critical as it has always been and this statement is obvious in its nature, but loses touch with what Branding is. It addresses Brand Promise. The brand promise is really ‘what the brand’s promotional efforts are saying to the consumer,’ as adjusted by CRM, and, along with the brand’s category positioning, as communicated to the consumer – where and how the brand is positioned within its category. A Brand is no more, and no less, than what the Consumer says it is. Obviously, CRM assists the Marketer, Advertiser, and Advertising Agency, by giving them information on how the brand is perceived by the consumer. With this information CRM assists in that by now adjusting the Brand within the category, to build Brand Preference; to defend the brand from category competitors, and to develop or maintain brand position within the category and to retain loyal consumers. With this information Brand Preference can be achieved.
Brands that have become household word, a part of the American Lexicon, are dynamic, not static. Brands are continually evolving, as are the consumer’s perceptions of brands. And it is the function of the Marketer and the Agency to keep the Brand viable to the consumer, be it wholesale buyer or consumer. A Brand is nothing more than what the consumer or customer says it is. Meaning, Brands need to be continually tended to and modified to maintain its perceived (or preferred brand position) brand position and make or keep the brand relevant to the target consumer. Misrepresenting the brand is a prescription for disaster, and saying that: “consumers can be lost in the blink of an eye,” is an obvious statement. And it calls out the need for CRM and the understanding that all brands are dynamic. Knowing how the consumers perceives the brand at all times is important for all Marketers. But what is important is that a brand can be affected by consumer perception driven by promotion. Meaning, marketers and advertising agencies can alter and influence consumer perception. Advertising Agencies are more than relevant in the 21st century, but in reality, a requirement for brand promotion.
Today’s challenge (early 2009) is fending off category competitors from eroding the Brand’s value in the consumer’s mind. Most established brands have several category threats: traditional brand category competition, private label, and discount brands. When consumers begin to make value associations that involves making the most of their limited resources, perceived or real, there is a natural tendency for consumers to trade down: either to discount brands, or to private and generic brands, or to brands on deal. Brand leaders position is threatened during economic downturns. Consumers simply trade down if they cannot find the brand’s value or inherent personal commitment to the brand, and supreme, ownership of the brand – as if a lifestyle statement, like Nike and other supreme brands.
So the challenge for Marketers is to keep brand loyal consumers from trading down.
Here is where the differentiation between CRM and Branding come into play. CRM tells the Marketer how the brand is perceived by the consumer, then with the help of Advertising Agencies strategies they can be developed to compete in the category to maintain position, or to strategically adjust brand perception within the category to move up using methods and techniques to promote value and to convince consumers that the value proposition and inherent benefits and features of the brand makes this brand the best value within the category. This is promotion.
“That’s the beauty of our new marketing paradigm. Everything has become retail.” This is either the dumbest statement ever conceived or the smartest. B2B and B2C are separate and distinct separations. The author in this case, I hope, is referring to the branding distinction. Meaning that: wholesale buyers are consumers too. ‘That they have their customers in mind, and when they buy.’ The Marketing Paradigm referred to is one of all media, traditional and New Media.” Everything has become retail, in that everything is merchandised and then purchased. That is the smartest. The stupidest, the author is clueless as to what ‘paradigm’ means or represents. Media is of course, not static; it is as it has always been, dynamic. Therefore, media is ever changing and today’s media is in a period of transition. As it was always was media is dynamic in nature and ever changing. But promotion is not. Promotion is the art of manipulating media for brand promotion. Brand promotion is static, not dynamic. Brand promotion is to simply maintain or to elevate the brand within its category. Dullards continue to ascribe new meaning to the static. But the simple reality is that brand promotion remains ‘a struggle between brands within their respective categories.’ Call it what you might, it is none-the-less, A COMPETITIVE BATTEL WITHIN THE CATEGORY BETWEEN LIKE BRANDS.
I am amused by the stupidity thereafter. Like the premise for this discussion: “The question is: are agencies providing this window into their consumer engagement?” Advertising Agency’s function is to differentiate and promote the brand. “Differentiate is hallmark in the reality of ‘Promotion.’ It is the agency’s responsibility to differentiate the brand and then to promote. It is that simple. All else is window-dressing or stupidity as was the basis for this discussion.
Finally, “The question is: are agencies providing this window into their consumer engagement?” Needs to be addressed.
If an Advertising Agency is not privy to the Marketers CRM, then the answer to this question is a decided no. All Marketers see Customer Relation Management as in integral part of their marketing mission. Marketers must share CRM and marketing data with their agencies. Not just current CRM/category data, but also historic information as well. It amazes many advertising agencies how their clients are fearful of releases historic marketing data to its agencies.
With strategic marketing data, and historic CRM and category data, the Advertising Agency can effectively develop a strategic creative strategy to either maintain or increase category position. Back to our question: “The question is: are agencies providing this window into their consumer engagement?” If the Marketer is sharing brand and market information with the advertising agency the answer is yes. If the advertising agency is perceived as an outsider it cannot possibly develop a strategic creative initiative to maintain or increase category position.
A good example of this is this author’s experience in advancing a brand during an economic downturn. The author’s experience in the Frozen Vegetable Category with his agency representing Green Giant as it’s agency of record during the recession of the eighties. Green Giant was a category follower behind Birdseye until Viking Creative Concepts, Inc. developed a strategic strategy to overtake Birdseye by touting Green Giants features and benefits over the category leader Birdseye.
A strategic campaign was developed to tout Green Giant’s consumer advantages over Birdseye. Green Giant had developed over time a line of gourmet vegetables developed for their outstanding taste profiles over all category contenders. Much of the strategic differences went beyond Birdseye original advantage that was ‘Flash Freezing.’ But over time, equipment manufactures took the advantage away from Birdseye and made the technology available to all category participants. Green Giant’s advantages were twofold: Gourmet Vegetables, developed in Green Giant’s test fields and the ability to pick vegetables at “The Peak of Perfection.” ‘The Peak of Perfection’ was in fact the ability of determining a field’s optimum harvesting. Coupled with that was ‘Flash Freezing’ meaning that: “Green Giant Vegetables are picked at the peak of perfection and then Flash-Frozen to retain all of the vegetable’s nutritional benefits especially when compared to fresh picked. Fresh picked lose nutrients form the time of picking, transportation, to market display, to preparation and consumption. Frozen vegetables retain these lost nutrients compared to fresh.
Above that, Green Giant was: Quality (gourmet quality hybrid vegetables), Consistency (always perfection, ready when you are), Convenience (frozen vegetables are ready when you are) stored in the freezer, Green Giant vegetables keep their nutritional value and freshness especially when compared to fresh, that must be used immediately after purchase to retain their flavor characteristics.
So, within the category of vegetables, Green Giant Frozen Vegetables were superior to other category contenders because of the gourmet varieties it alone had developed, then because the vegetables were picked at “The Peak of Perfection” where taste and nutritional value were at their highest. These benefits were used to develop ”The Giant Difference,” – is: quality, or, convenience, or value. This strategic difference moved Green Giant, number two, over the then category leader Birdseye. During Viking Creative Concepts, Inc. representation of Green Giant it maintain it’s number one selling vegetable in the world category position. When Viking resigned the account, due to a conflict of interest between Viking’s owner, Daryl Orris, and The Pillsbury Company’s Haagen Dazs Brand. Orris had invented Liquor Ice Cream, which was thought to be a conflict between Blend’s ‘Original Liquor Ice Cream,” and Haagen Daz ice cream, as both were in the Superpremium ice cream category. Even though, Blend’s® was determined by AFT (now TTB) and FDA to have lost its ice cream identity because while frozen solid and 80% superpremium ice cream, its 20% distilled spirits flavoring system renders the end-product intoxicating, and therefore it was classified as “Distilled Spirits.”
When Viking stopped its representation of Green Giant, it lost 33 percent of its sales in year one, and 17 percent loss compounded in year two. The result was that the then owner, Grand Metropolitan, sold off Green Giant’s seed lots and research fields in Le Sueur, Minnesota, and all of the plants. The brand promise was lost.
Green Giant vegetables, owned by General Mills, are now co-packed by JR Simplot, and have none of the advantages it once had, that had made the brand the world’s number one vegetables.
So to our original branding question: “The question is: are agencies providing this window into their consumer engagement?” Brands must be transparent to consumers, but they must also be transparent between the Marketer and the Advertising Agency. The agency needs to know strategic information to develop its strategic creative plan for the brand.
Branding is what the consumer says it is, but it is the Marketers responsibility to determine strategic differences, that they share with the Advertising Agency to develop a Strategic Creative Strategy to develop the ‘brand promise’ and to develop the category strategy to find its strategic place within the category. Not all brands need to be number one. Being number two or three with reduced marketing costs can be more profitable than being number one. And if the category cannot distinguish between brands, price will always win out. It is up to Marketers to be able to distinguish their brand within the category.
But the upshot of this article was to establish “Consumer Value Perceptions” so that consumers will pass on price and instead choose ‘brand value.’ Brand Value is when the product or service can supplant price. In the case of Green Giant as illustrated, it once had superior features and benefits over other category contenders to catapulted it to the number one category position. Many times, in weak categories, where features and benefits are not distinguishable, price alone wins out. The brand promise coupled with the value-proposition, wins consumer franchises and a distinct category position – be it value, price, or quality. Value, is a not clearly understood concept and worth research. Because value, transcends price. For example, a high quality knife lasts longer than cheaper competitors and therefore transcends price. Finding the value proposition for a brand is intrinsic to success. As is having all of the strategic information of the brand, shared with the Marketer. Only when a Marketer and an Advertising Agency share all strategic information, can a “Brand’ strategically win within its category.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Recent AdAge Comments
How Too Much Doom and Gloom Dampens Consumer Spending
Lesson From Germany: Firms Are Slashing Budgets -- and That's Not Good
Posted by Gunnar Brune on 02.24.09 @ 06:50 PM
Two months into 2009 we're learning the first things about marketing strategies this year. And while there might be one global reason for a crisis it becomes more and more obvious that what's going on differs a lot from country to country, market to market. In Germany the first statistics on consumer and marketing behavior have been published. What is most striking is that current marketing thinking is not driven by consumer behavior but rather by internal company factors -- and marketers might be unwillingly firing up consumer crisis behavior!
First off, it's clear that the German consumer is still in buying mood. GfK, one of Germany's best-established research companies, just released data for the first weeks of 2009. Guess what? Consumption went up by 2.2%! How is that possible? It is because prices -- especially for energy -- went down. The German consumer hasn't had so much buying power with his income in some time. Opening rounds of layoffs might have happened, but they have not had an overall impact yet. Furthermore, the growing distrust in the financial sector has made the savings level decline -- even against the growing fear for income and job losses in the near future.
This is quite a clear strategic situation: People still have money, buying power and little tendency to save. You would think that marketers would try to make the most of it as long as the German economy has not yet been hit by the possibly growing number of insolvent companies and layoffs.
It's worth noting that the German situation is not typical for Europe. Germans tend to rent flats rather than buy them and are therefore not as hard hit by the housing crisis as people in the U.K. and Spain, who often own flats and have to serve mortgages.
Yet despite this, advertising spend already going is in "tactical" crisis mode. This is a strange example of anticyclical spending: Consumers' moods goes up and advertising spendings go down by 1.6% in January, according to Horizont/Nielsen Media Research. Cinema spending go down by 55% in January, print magazine spend goes down by 11.9% and TV spend goes down by 4.7%.
But there is also a contrary trend. Outdoor spending goes up by 37.9%, newspaper spending increases by 6.4% and radio spending goes up by 5.5%.
Also, it turns out that discounters are investing while brands are being cautious. The discount trade companies reinforce their investments; the food discounters raise their budgets: Penny plus 19.6%, Lidl plus 42.8% and Aldi (mother company of Trader Joe's in the USA) plus 9.4%. Procter & Gamble, on the other hand, reduces spendings (as measured by Nielsen in Germany) by 14.6%.
In sum this means that while consumers still spend, marketing has already anticipated a crisis and unwillingly seems to drive consumers into crisis mode.
Strangely enough the big companies have the strongest urge to reduce marketing investments. In a survey by Handelsblatt, the German business newspaper, it turned out that the bigger the company, the more marketing cuts are planned for 2009. Are the market leaders the ones who let go first?
There is another proof, also from the Handelsblatt study, that some marketing strategies are more driven by internal thought than consumer insight. Big companies in Germany mention the crisis three times more often in their communications than small companies do. Does consumer insight relate to company size? It never has and now is no different. There should be a strong indication that mentioning the crisis is relevant to the consumer. Do not confuse consumer insight with maketers' worries.
2009 will be a very challenging year, whatever happens. But what marketing does should relate to consumer insight and relevance. And at least today there is a great gap. This is a clear chance for every brand that does it right and makes a difference.
Response:
Gunnar knows the culprit, but is unable to do more than cry out - the fear is fear itself. With most markets dominated by consumer spending, fear mongering among companies that are holding back and becoming conservative, only serve to scare off consumer spending. In the great depression, things were really bad, affecting every market.
Hearing all of the car market woes, and needing new wheels, I went off to see what deals were out there. All I saw were inflated car prices with artificial discounts. After visiting several dealers I decided to look in the car ads - it is consumers who are discounting used cars - why? Probably to reduce payments and or debt. The dealers are hoarding their precise cars, hoping for spring demand as usual. It is private party owners who are discounting. Scared consumers.
Usually when these sorts of market changes occur, economists call it a "Market Adjustment" which is an apt description of what is happening now. Inflated prices are coming down, as consumer markets adjust to consumer fear. When the Price is Right, they'll buy. But like me, they are expecting deep discounts, not business as usual.
Peter Arnell Explains Failed Tropicana Package Design
3 Minute Ad Age: Feb. 26, 2009
Produced by Hoag Levins __Published: February 26, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Pepsico's Tropicana brand is junking the new orange juice package design it only just launched weeks ago. The beverage marketer is switching back to its old design whose centerpiece is an orange skewered by a drinking straw. In this video recorded at a press conference five weeks ago, Arnell Group CEO Peter Arnell vigorously defends his agency's carton design that has now been withdrawn from the market.
Response:
Listening to Arnell defend his new design was priceless. I had an Art Director who became the Director of Package Design at General Mills. I heard him speak about Package Design once and it sounded familiar to Arnell’s schlock speak. The straw in the orange was branding – referring to fresh-squeezed taste. Losing the orange, meant losing the “impulse” as Tropicana quickly found out with an immediate sales and volume hit. Nowhere in the article was that fact. It would have taken a multi-million dollar campaign to promote the new look. While most of Arnell’s work is admirable, this was not
Lesson From Germany: Firms Are Slashing Budgets -- and That's Not Good
Posted by Gunnar Brune on 02.24.09 @ 06:50 PM
Two months into 2009 we're learning the first things about marketing strategies this year. And while there might be one global reason for a crisis it becomes more and more obvious that what's going on differs a lot from country to country, market to market. In Germany the first statistics on consumer and marketing behavior have been published. What is most striking is that current marketing thinking is not driven by consumer behavior but rather by internal company factors -- and marketers might be unwillingly firing up consumer crisis behavior!
First off, it's clear that the German consumer is still in buying mood. GfK, one of Germany's best-established research companies, just released data for the first weeks of 2009. Guess what? Consumption went up by 2.2%! How is that possible? It is because prices -- especially for energy -- went down. The German consumer hasn't had so much buying power with his income in some time. Opening rounds of layoffs might have happened, but they have not had an overall impact yet. Furthermore, the growing distrust in the financial sector has made the savings level decline -- even against the growing fear for income and job losses in the near future.
This is quite a clear strategic situation: People still have money, buying power and little tendency to save. You would think that marketers would try to make the most of it as long as the German economy has not yet been hit by the possibly growing number of insolvent companies and layoffs.
It's worth noting that the German situation is not typical for Europe. Germans tend to rent flats rather than buy them and are therefore not as hard hit by the housing crisis as people in the U.K. and Spain, who often own flats and have to serve mortgages.
Yet despite this, advertising spend already going is in "tactical" crisis mode. This is a strange example of anticyclical spending: Consumers' moods goes up and advertising spendings go down by 1.6% in January, according to Horizont/Nielsen Media Research. Cinema spending go down by 55% in January, print magazine spend goes down by 11.9% and TV spend goes down by 4.7%.
But there is also a contrary trend. Outdoor spending goes up by 37.9%, newspaper spending increases by 6.4% and radio spending goes up by 5.5%.
Also, it turns out that discounters are investing while brands are being cautious. The discount trade companies reinforce their investments; the food discounters raise their budgets: Penny plus 19.6%, Lidl plus 42.8% and Aldi (mother company of Trader Joe's in the USA) plus 9.4%. Procter & Gamble, on the other hand, reduces spendings (as measured by Nielsen in Germany) by 14.6%.
In sum this means that while consumers still spend, marketing has already anticipated a crisis and unwillingly seems to drive consumers into crisis mode.
Strangely enough the big companies have the strongest urge to reduce marketing investments. In a survey by Handelsblatt, the German business newspaper, it turned out that the bigger the company, the more marketing cuts are planned for 2009. Are the market leaders the ones who let go first?
There is another proof, also from the Handelsblatt study, that some marketing strategies are more driven by internal thought than consumer insight. Big companies in Germany mention the crisis three times more often in their communications than small companies do. Does consumer insight relate to company size? It never has and now is no different. There should be a strong indication that mentioning the crisis is relevant to the consumer. Do not confuse consumer insight with maketers' worries.
2009 will be a very challenging year, whatever happens. But what marketing does should relate to consumer insight and relevance. And at least today there is a great gap. This is a clear chance for every brand that does it right and makes a difference.
Response:
Gunnar knows the culprit, but is unable to do more than cry out - the fear is fear itself. With most markets dominated by consumer spending, fear mongering among companies that are holding back and becoming conservative, only serve to scare off consumer spending. In the great depression, things were really bad, affecting every market.
Hearing all of the car market woes, and needing new wheels, I went off to see what deals were out there. All I saw were inflated car prices with artificial discounts. After visiting several dealers I decided to look in the car ads - it is consumers who are discounting used cars - why? Probably to reduce payments and or debt. The dealers are hoarding their precise cars, hoping for spring demand as usual. It is private party owners who are discounting. Scared consumers.
Usually when these sorts of market changes occur, economists call it a "Market Adjustment" which is an apt description of what is happening now. Inflated prices are coming down, as consumer markets adjust to consumer fear. When the Price is Right, they'll buy. But like me, they are expecting deep discounts, not business as usual.
Peter Arnell Explains Failed Tropicana Package Design
3 Minute Ad Age: Feb. 26, 2009
Produced by Hoag Levins __Published: February 26, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Pepsico's Tropicana brand is junking the new orange juice package design it only just launched weeks ago. The beverage marketer is switching back to its old design whose centerpiece is an orange skewered by a drinking straw. In this video recorded at a press conference five weeks ago, Arnell Group CEO Peter Arnell vigorously defends his agency's carton design that has now been withdrawn from the market.
Response:
Listening to Arnell defend his new design was priceless. I had an Art Director who became the Director of Package Design at General Mills. I heard him speak about Package Design once and it sounded familiar to Arnell’s schlock speak. The straw in the orange was branding – referring to fresh-squeezed taste. Losing the orange, meant losing the “impulse” as Tropicana quickly found out with an immediate sales and volume hit. Nowhere in the article was that fact. It would have taken a multi-million dollar campaign to promote the new look. While most of Arnell’s work is admirable, this was not
Monday, February 23, 2009
Is Print Dead?
Recently on Charlie Rose and then in AdAge an ongoing discussion about Print and how New Media, specifically the Internet has been affecting it.
Excerpts from the AdAge Article:
Print is Dead
Nope, this is about newspapers, and to some extent magazines, having their once-enviable franchises disintermediated by the web. Every publication now must compete with every other around the globe, many of which are willing to offer their content for free. They also face competition from thousands of aggregators, who take journalists' content, monetize it for their own profit, and, in many cases, give little or nothing back to its originators.
Unsurprisingly, those who come from print-media backgrounds, such as former Time Inc. editor Walter Isaacson (who made his case for micropayments in one of the smallest issues of Time in recent memory), fall heavily into the former group. Then there are those who've had a bad experience trying to charge for content, such as Slate co-founder Michael Kinsley, and those who make a living from the web, who believe it is lunacy.
Law of nature_"Consumers won't pay; it's just that simple," said MSNBC.com President Charlie Tillinghast. "They'll read amateur blogs and everything else first before they pay for general news and information. Those are the physics of our business."
Easy for Mr. Tillinghast to say: MSNBC was built from the ground up on the free model, augmenting licensed content from the AP, Reuters and NBC News with content produced by a small newsroom supported by online revenue.
High demand -The pro-pay advocates argue that demand for news has never been higher. Indeed, traffic to newspaper websites was up 12% in 2008. MSNBC had 45 million unique visitors in January, probably the largest audience for any single news outlet ever.
But certain news categories, such as sports, business, national and international news, have been commoditized, and differences in quality haven't been enough to get people to choose to pay over free alternatives. "If we were to charge for our content, someone would be out there with the same content -- not as good or as deep but a percentage of our quality -- and would offer it for free, and we would lose overall reach," said Forbes.com CEO Jim Spanfeller.
Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson said the problem is that while Google is great at getting people to content, it does nothing to distinguish quality. "And if you are going to get people to pay for content, you have to encourage them to make qualitative decisions about that content," he said on PBS's "Charlie Rose."
In the past two weeks, plenty of industrywide solutions have been proposed, including a tax on the $30 a month most internet service providers charge for web access, similar to the TV taxes in the U.K. that support the BBC. Editor & Publisher columnist Steve Outing endorsed a start-up, Kachingle, that would allow people to pay a monthly fee to access participating websites.
Collective schemes have been mulled since at least 1995, when nine newspaper chains, including Knight Ridder, Gannett, Hearst and the New York Times, launched New Century Network to compete with Microsoft.
Smaller businesses_But assuming that the horse is out of the barn and publishers must convert to an online world supported by ads, is it possible? Online publishers say yes, and while it won't be dollars for pennies, as NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker is famous for saying, it will be dollars for nickels and dimes. The businesses are simply going to have to get a whole lot smaller.
In addition to the generally crummy economy, the display-ad model that funds newspapers online is broken, which is reflected in their slowing growth rates. That's partly because the bottom fell out of midmarket banners, the ads that fall between low-end direct-response ads and high-end branded advertising and account for half of revenue at some publishers.
Mr. Tillinghast laid that partly at the feet of publishers themselves and trade associations such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which pushed for standardized ad formats that commodified banners and created even more competition in the form of ad networks.
IAB President Randall Rothenberg took issue with that assessment. "Standards allowed the market to scale, and grew it from nothing to $20 billion market in about a decade," he said. "If you were to remove standards from interactive advertising, the marketplace would collapse overnight."
Ironically, just as they're pushing down ad rates, networks have become critical to newspapers' ability to compete with Yahoo and Google locally and move their own unsold inventory. Yahoo even operates an ad network for papers called Apt to allow them to increase their local scale.
In addition to the generally crummy economy, the display-ad model that funds newspapers online is broken, which is reflected in their slowing growth rates. That's partly because the bottom fell out of midmarket banners, the ads that fall between low-end direct-response ads and high-end branded advertising and account for half of revenue at some publishers.
Mr. Tillinghast laid that partly at the feet of publishers themselves and trade associations such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which pushed for standardized ad formats that commodified banners and created even more competition in the form of ad networks.
IAB President Randall Rothenberg took issue with that assessment. "Standards allowed the market to scale, and grew it from nothing to $20 billion market in about a decade," he said. "If you were to remove standards from interactive advertising, the marketplace would collapse overnight."
Ironically, just as they're pushing down ad rates, networks have become critical to newspapers' ability to compete with Yahoo and Google locally and move their own unsold inventory. Yahoo even operates an ad network for papers called Apt to allow them to increase their local scale."
The most interesting part of the debate is that while many believe Print is Dead, many believe Print is alive and well, it is the owners of the Print brands that are not. That they are buried with debt, and that print is doing fine.
Whatever the case, the suggestion that Print is Dead is hurting it. And it serves as another excuse for Marketers and Advertisers to pulls back from expending dollars on any media product.
Print is not Dead as the people are saying, but it is in a transition period to be sure. What is overlooked in the debate is "Content." It is content that drives people to websites and also purchase a newspaper or magazine. President Obama's election and the headlines that followed provided an increase in all Print Media, people wanting it for commemorating history. It seems if the content is meaningful to the individual they'll shell out to acquire it. But why isn't that true of the Internet.
The Internet will be all about content in time, but again, directories or ads will be required to get readers. what amazes me is how many Websites don't have video augmenting the site - especially the big packaged goods manufacturers. For whatever reason, they stick with a traditional print and picture format instead of bringing action video to their sites.
Soon time will change that too. Astute Marketers and Advertisers know that all Media is in a transition period adjusting to New Media, especially the Internet. How it is leveraged to promote brands will determine its value to marketers and advertisers.
Print is in a transition period, the outcome is not yet clear. But one thing is certain, it is not business as usual when so many choices are out there. This is probably the best time for experimentation for Marketers to determine impact upon their brands and creating their own metrics exclusive of the noise everyone else is making.
Excerpts from the AdAge Article:
Print is Dead
Nope, this is about newspapers, and to some extent magazines, having their once-enviable franchises disintermediated by the web. Every publication now must compete with every other around the globe, many of which are willing to offer their content for free. They also face competition from thousands of aggregators, who take journalists' content, monetize it for their own profit, and, in many cases, give little or nothing back to its originators.
Unsurprisingly, those who come from print-media backgrounds, such as former Time Inc. editor Walter Isaacson (who made his case for micropayments in one of the smallest issues of Time in recent memory), fall heavily into the former group. Then there are those who've had a bad experience trying to charge for content, such as Slate co-founder Michael Kinsley, and those who make a living from the web, who believe it is lunacy.
Law of nature_"Consumers won't pay; it's just that simple," said MSNBC.com President Charlie Tillinghast. "They'll read amateur blogs and everything else first before they pay for general news and information. Those are the physics of our business."
Easy for Mr. Tillinghast to say: MSNBC was built from the ground up on the free model, augmenting licensed content from the AP, Reuters and NBC News with content produced by a small newsroom supported by online revenue.
High demand -The pro-pay advocates argue that demand for news has never been higher. Indeed, traffic to newspaper websites was up 12% in 2008. MSNBC had 45 million unique visitors in January, probably the largest audience for any single news outlet ever.
But certain news categories, such as sports, business, national and international news, have been commoditized, and differences in quality haven't been enough to get people to choose to pay over free alternatives. "If we were to charge for our content, someone would be out there with the same content -- not as good or as deep but a percentage of our quality -- and would offer it for free, and we would lose overall reach," said Forbes.com CEO Jim Spanfeller.
Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson said the problem is that while Google is great at getting people to content, it does nothing to distinguish quality. "And if you are going to get people to pay for content, you have to encourage them to make qualitative decisions about that content," he said on PBS's "Charlie Rose."
In the past two weeks, plenty of industrywide solutions have been proposed, including a tax on the $30 a month most internet service providers charge for web access, similar to the TV taxes in the U.K. that support the BBC. Editor & Publisher columnist Steve Outing endorsed a start-up, Kachingle, that would allow people to pay a monthly fee to access participating websites.
Collective schemes have been mulled since at least 1995, when nine newspaper chains, including Knight Ridder, Gannett, Hearst and the New York Times, launched New Century Network to compete with Microsoft.
Smaller businesses_But assuming that the horse is out of the barn and publishers must convert to an online world supported by ads, is it possible? Online publishers say yes, and while it won't be dollars for pennies, as NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker is famous for saying, it will be dollars for nickels and dimes. The businesses are simply going to have to get a whole lot smaller.
In addition to the generally crummy economy, the display-ad model that funds newspapers online is broken, which is reflected in their slowing growth rates. That's partly because the bottom fell out of midmarket banners, the ads that fall between low-end direct-response ads and high-end branded advertising and account for half of revenue at some publishers.
Mr. Tillinghast laid that partly at the feet of publishers themselves and trade associations such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which pushed for standardized ad formats that commodified banners and created even more competition in the form of ad networks.
IAB President Randall Rothenberg took issue with that assessment. "Standards allowed the market to scale, and grew it from nothing to $20 billion market in about a decade," he said. "If you were to remove standards from interactive advertising, the marketplace would collapse overnight."
Ironically, just as they're pushing down ad rates, networks have become critical to newspapers' ability to compete with Yahoo and Google locally and move their own unsold inventory. Yahoo even operates an ad network for papers called Apt to allow them to increase their local scale.
In addition to the generally crummy economy, the display-ad model that funds newspapers online is broken, which is reflected in their slowing growth rates. That's partly because the bottom fell out of midmarket banners, the ads that fall between low-end direct-response ads and high-end branded advertising and account for half of revenue at some publishers.
Mr. Tillinghast laid that partly at the feet of publishers themselves and trade associations such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which pushed for standardized ad formats that commodified banners and created even more competition in the form of ad networks.
IAB President Randall Rothenberg took issue with that assessment. "Standards allowed the market to scale, and grew it from nothing to $20 billion market in about a decade," he said. "If you were to remove standards from interactive advertising, the marketplace would collapse overnight."
Ironically, just as they're pushing down ad rates, networks have become critical to newspapers' ability to compete with Yahoo and Google locally and move their own unsold inventory. Yahoo even operates an ad network for papers called Apt to allow them to increase their local scale."
The most interesting part of the debate is that while many believe Print is Dead, many believe Print is alive and well, it is the owners of the Print brands that are not. That they are buried with debt, and that print is doing fine.
Whatever the case, the suggestion that Print is Dead is hurting it. And it serves as another excuse for Marketers and Advertisers to pulls back from expending dollars on any media product.
Print is not Dead as the people are saying, but it is in a transition period to be sure. What is overlooked in the debate is "Content." It is content that drives people to websites and also purchase a newspaper or magazine. President Obama's election and the headlines that followed provided an increase in all Print Media, people wanting it for commemorating history. It seems if the content is meaningful to the individual they'll shell out to acquire it. But why isn't that true of the Internet.
The Internet will be all about content in time, but again, directories or ads will be required to get readers. what amazes me is how many Websites don't have video augmenting the site - especially the big packaged goods manufacturers. For whatever reason, they stick with a traditional print and picture format instead of bringing action video to their sites.
Soon time will change that too. Astute Marketers and Advertisers know that all Media is in a transition period adjusting to New Media, especially the Internet. How it is leveraged to promote brands will determine its value to marketers and advertisers.
Print is in a transition period, the outcome is not yet clear. But one thing is certain, it is not business as usual when so many choices are out there. This is probably the best time for experimentation for Marketers to determine impact upon their brands and creating their own metrics exclusive of the noise everyone else is making.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Men becoming Women
Dismissed, Denigrated and Demonized: 'The Decline of Men'
Author Guy Garcia Worries About a World of Man Boys and Self-Absorbed Sissies
Posted by Robert Rosenthal on 02.12.09 @ 12:41 PM
Just as modern mothers may be saving us from the bank-born recession, I wondered about the state of men in these calamitous days. To better understand why down is the new up, Ad Age spoke with Guy Garcia, author of "The Decline of Men: How the American Male Is Tuning Out, Giving Up and Flipping Off His Future."
Ad Age: The title is alarming, Guy. Are American men really that much of a mess?
Garcia: You should be alarmed. The story of the decline of men starts before conception. Did you know all human beings start life in the womb as a female? It's only when the Y chromosome triggers the production of testosterone that some of us turn into what we recognize as males. With the number of genes in the Y chromosome dropping and testosterone levels down 17% over the past 20 years, some say men as a "species" are facing extinction. I'm personally hoping that won't happen.
Ad Age: Me too. Extinction is so ... final. What do we know for sure?
Garcia: We do know that men are losing traction in high schools. The same is true in colleges, where 59% of all students are female. Harvard professors tell me male students have lost their drive and ambition, women tell me they can't find a guy who's not a dummy, slacker, cheater or loser. Men of every stripe and part of the country are telling me they feel confused, besieged and worried that they have lost their place in society, that they have lost their bearings as men. They sense the male gender is adrift and increasingly dismissed, denigrated and demonized -- by the media, by women, even by other men. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Ad Age: Well that's a real kick in the Titanic. Sure, women have deservedly made their mark and increased their sphere of influence. But "just the tip of the iceberg"? Really? How much worse could it get for us dumb/slacking/cheating/confused losers?
Garcia: Let's start with the says-it-all title of Maureen Dowd's post-feminist creed, "Are Men Necessary?" The answer, of course, is yes, we are. The reason is that in this great unraveling of gender roles and male identity, one of the casualties has been the nuclear family. Last year, for the first time ever, single people outnumbered married people. More than ever boys are growing up in single-parent homes without fathers who can guide them into adulthood. And we've known for a long time that boys who grow up without strong male role models are more likely to drop out of school, make less money, be more likely to use drugs or get in trouble with the law and, ultimately, end up divorced themselves. It's a downward spiral.
Ad Age: So we're paying a real price for being jerks these past few hundred years?
Garcia: I explain to women that they have a stake in this, too, because the next generation of men is at risk -- these are their sons, daughters' boyfriends, future sons-in-law. So women have a vested interest in what happens next. Also, as bigger consumers of media and most consumer products, women are increasingly setting the social agenda.
Ad Age: It's remarkable that the disaster course you describe hasn't been more widely reported until now. Congratulations on that, and thanks, I think. But what are we guys supposed to do? You've delegated much of the repair work to women; they seem to be more competent than we. But isn't it up to us guys to reverse the vicious cycle?
Garcia: The first step is to begin the conversation. One thing we know is that men do not feel the media is speaking to them. Men all across the country have told me that they are tired of seeing guys in advertising portrayed as preening metrosexuals, cavemen or clueless slackers -- sometimes all at the same time! Parents of both sexes are worried about the message that their young boys and girls are getting about men, about their dads.
Ad Age: So, it's the media's fault again?
Garcia: It goes way beyond that. The industries projected to grow in the next few decades are mostly in the service sector, where communication, collaboration and multitasking rule. At the same time many of the industries that favor the physical and mental attributes of males are shrinking or disappearing. Women in their 20s in the 10 largest U.S. cities already out-earn men of the same age. The trend is pretty clear.
Ad Age: You talk about the "message" that the media portrays, but let's be honest: Men have brought this on themselves. Whether you look at our politicians (Bill Clinton, Governor Spitzer, Senator Toilet Stall), sports heroes (Clemens, O.J., Isaiah) or CEOs (Kenneth Lay, Dennis Kozlowski, Conrad Black), you witness men behaving badly at the highest level. At the other end of the spectrum, guys seem to be feminized, flimsy and fatuous. What do you make of that?
Garcia: Your examples are all symptoms of male decline. Men have been conditioned to be selfish, greedy and aggressive. Infidelity and perfidy are manifestations of insecurity. Society has taught men that it is manly to be competitive, to make as much money as possible, to win at any cost. I would add the war in Iraq and the implosion of Wall Street to the list of troubles that have been brought about by the old-fashioned, swaggering macho approach to politics, economics and life in general. Yet in spite of this -- or partly as a result of it -- other guys have simply given up. They sense that they've lost the high ground (and the future) to women, and they aren't even trying anymore. They've opted out to become jackasses, stoners and slackers. Responsibility is shirked, and adolescence is extended indefinitely.
Ad Age: So men are trapped in their own macho stereotypes, turning into man-boys and self-absorbed sissies?
Garcia: It's very hard to change, not to mention that guys don't like to talk about their problems. Denial, I have been told, is a river in Egypt. But it also is a way to pretend everything is fine in spite of the facts. Still, when the pain factor gets high enough we actually are capable of adjusting our assumptions and behaviors. The first step is admitting that there's an issue that need to be addressed.
Ad Age: Speaking of addresses, isn't Barack Obama a new kind of man?
Garcia: Does his tendency toward negotiation over aggression, communication over silence and compassion over ruthless ambition point the way to a more humane and sustainable form of masculinity? So far, the answer is yes. Most Americans, male and female, have accepted him as the new model for the world's most powerful man -- and, by implication, all men. That is a big change, and a reason for hope.
Ad Age: Outside of the White House, what "new kind of man" might we see emerge?
Garcia: The new kind of man will take many shapes and forms. That's what's new about him. We know that the old, rigid definitions of manliness are outdated and dysfunctional. Men can no longer hammer women -- or the world, or each other -- into submission without ramifications. That game is over. It's time for us to resurrect the masculine virtues that are much older than modern society: compassion, generosity, loyalty, modesty, humility, farsightedness, curiosity and patience.
Ad Age: What are those?
Garcia: That's the point. These words barely appear in our vocabulary anymore. There's one more: courage, as in the courage to change; the courage to be different and not apologize for it; the courage to care about a stranger or cause that does not directly benefit you. And don't forget the courage to frankly admit and talk about the decline of men.
Ad Age: So the audacity of men is not hopeless?
Garcia: In his inaugural address, President Obama spoke about a "sapping of confidence across our land" and the need to regain the can-do spirit of Americans as "the risk takers, the doers, the makers of things." These are things that guys are best at; it's why they matter and are necessary. Our country will lead the world again, but it won't happen if the male half of the population forgets what always has made them -- and America -- great.
Ad Age: Point taken. What about the marketing implications? Aside from an increase in the sales of video games and pornography, what should marketers know about guys and how to reach them?
Garcia: We know that men, as a group at least, are not reading. Women read twice as many books as guys, and non-pornographic magazines that cater to men are struggling. So what, besides sex, gets our attention? The messages that seem to resonate with men fall into two general categories: escape and reassurance. As men lose economic and social traction they look for ways to relax and forget -- games, sports, physical activities of every kind, travel. Male-targeted reality shows such as "Ice Road Truckers" and "The Deadliest Catch" tap masculine nostalgia for a time when physical brawn and bravery -- not PowerPoint and spreadsheets -- defined manly work.
Marginalized by society and maligned by the media, men are yearning for anything that tells them, or shows them, that they still matter. Meanwhile, a multibillion-dollar industry sells goods by reassuring males that they are virile and powerful and up to speed with the latest gear. Deep down inside, every guy knows he's Ironman, even if he's actually an ironing man. Stay-at-home dads are fully aware that their tricked-out Bugaboo baby strollers have fat tires and awesome tech specs. And it's no surprise that James Dyson's space-age DCO7 vacuum cleaner, with its guy-friendly promise to "never lose suction," has become a worldwide best-seller.
Ad Age: Well, of course. Who among us isn't totally turned on by the prospect of a perfectly groomed rug?
Garcia: As long as we don't sweep our troubles under it.
Ad Age: Speaking of which, I do the cooking in my family. Does that make me a girly man?
Garcia: Au contraire: Cooking, which combines chemistry with creative self-expression, has been reclaimed by modern men who recognize the primordial power of preparing a gourmet meal.
Ad Age: You're preaching to the pulpit, bro! Except for that gourmet part.
Garcia: Just as women once used food to get to a man's heart, men have learned that whipping up a delicious meal is a mutually satisfying way to get something else. Grown guys may no longer have a suped-up Mustang in the driveway, but in the kitchen, they can still get under the hood.
Ad Age: I'm hearing "Little Red Corvette."
Garcia: Zero to 60 in three courses.
Ad Age: Any more news on the fragile male psyche?
Garcia: Early findings from the OTX Modern Male study show that younger men are more likely than older men to be accepting of women as their equals or even their superiors. But those same men are also less optimistic about their future than women their age. This breakdown of confidence has produced a schism in the male psyche, and that insecurity turns up in different men in different ways. Some men retreat, submit or become "feminized," while other guys retrench, bulk up and swagger. The fact that both of these male archetypes exist in every guy is the key to understanding who men are and what they want.
Ad Age: What do we want?
Garcia: Men do not want to be separate from women; they never have and they never will. What men want is a social role, sense of place and duty that differentiates them from women. There's an unspoken assumption that just because women want to do things that only men used to do, that men should want to do things that only women used to do. This is a source of great disappointment for women and great angst for men. As women become more educated and independent, straight men have started using their own physical attractiveness as a way to compensate and even out the power balance. The assumption that men who groom and preen are secretly gay could not be more untrue. Guys are shaving and wearing tight jeans to get the attention of the opposite sex, just like women used to do, and for exactly the same reasons. But to openly admit this, of course, would be unmanly.
~ ~ ~
Robert Rosenthal, the SHORT ORDER DAD™, is an international marketing professional, frequent TV and radio host, writer, classically trained cook, and father. He is a partner in the pre-eminent firms of BrightLine iTV and Walton-Isaacson, as well as the big cheese of Rosenthal Heavy Industries, a creative digital-video production company.
Guy Garcia is the CEO of Mentametrix, a research and marketing consultancy based in New York City, and is author of several books, including "The New Mainstream: How the Multicultural Consumer Is Transforming American Business."
1 Comment
The coffee now being smelled is so old a shovel can stand up in it.
The problem with the game that's now over is being that it's all been
a game in the first place.
My only hope is a phoenix to arise from the ash it's caused.
Joanne Jubert
Little Silver, NJ – Joanne Jubert | Little Silver, NJ
Due to previous commentary -- and after multiple warnings -- you have been banned from commenting on this site.
Nonsense. All of it. Guy Garcia is the spokesperson for men? Men have been herded, cajoled, and convinced that they have some sort of responsibility to women over and above the obvious sperm donor status as many women see them. Fine. From early education where all teachers are women, to mother dominated households, how is that any man would want to do anything but escape from female dominance?
Alex Baldwin should be our spokesman, not Garcia. Baldwin is a good demonstration of what happens to us with the assistance of women - where we end of like him, ridiculed and become Homer Simpson image of the modern male. The Simpson's is the true model of American men - both Homer and Bart are dominated by the female characters.
It is all pretend, like Garcia's book. We real males do what we damn well please. The rest, a ruse, that we show females so that they leave us alone.
Author Guy Garcia Worries About a World of Man Boys and Self-Absorbed Sissies
Posted by Robert Rosenthal on 02.12.09 @ 12:41 PM
Just as modern mothers may be saving us from the bank-born recession, I wondered about the state of men in these calamitous days. To better understand why down is the new up, Ad Age spoke with Guy Garcia, author of "The Decline of Men: How the American Male Is Tuning Out, Giving Up and Flipping Off His Future."
Ad Age: The title is alarming, Guy. Are American men really that much of a mess?
Garcia: You should be alarmed. The story of the decline of men starts before conception. Did you know all human beings start life in the womb as a female? It's only when the Y chromosome triggers the production of testosterone that some of us turn into what we recognize as males. With the number of genes in the Y chromosome dropping and testosterone levels down 17% over the past 20 years, some say men as a "species" are facing extinction. I'm personally hoping that won't happen.
Ad Age: Me too. Extinction is so ... final. What do we know for sure?
Garcia: We do know that men are losing traction in high schools. The same is true in colleges, where 59% of all students are female. Harvard professors tell me male students have lost their drive and ambition, women tell me they can't find a guy who's not a dummy, slacker, cheater or loser. Men of every stripe and part of the country are telling me they feel confused, besieged and worried that they have lost their place in society, that they have lost their bearings as men. They sense the male gender is adrift and increasingly dismissed, denigrated and demonized -- by the media, by women, even by other men. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Ad Age: Well that's a real kick in the Titanic. Sure, women have deservedly made their mark and increased their sphere of influence. But "just the tip of the iceberg"? Really? How much worse could it get for us dumb/slacking/cheating/confused losers?
Garcia: Let's start with the says-it-all title of Maureen Dowd's post-feminist creed, "Are Men Necessary?" The answer, of course, is yes, we are. The reason is that in this great unraveling of gender roles and male identity, one of the casualties has been the nuclear family. Last year, for the first time ever, single people outnumbered married people. More than ever boys are growing up in single-parent homes without fathers who can guide them into adulthood. And we've known for a long time that boys who grow up without strong male role models are more likely to drop out of school, make less money, be more likely to use drugs or get in trouble with the law and, ultimately, end up divorced themselves. It's a downward spiral.
Ad Age: So we're paying a real price for being jerks these past few hundred years?
Garcia: I explain to women that they have a stake in this, too, because the next generation of men is at risk -- these are their sons, daughters' boyfriends, future sons-in-law. So women have a vested interest in what happens next. Also, as bigger consumers of media and most consumer products, women are increasingly setting the social agenda.
Ad Age: It's remarkable that the disaster course you describe hasn't been more widely reported until now. Congratulations on that, and thanks, I think. But what are we guys supposed to do? You've delegated much of the repair work to women; they seem to be more competent than we. But isn't it up to us guys to reverse the vicious cycle?
Garcia: The first step is to begin the conversation. One thing we know is that men do not feel the media is speaking to them. Men all across the country have told me that they are tired of seeing guys in advertising portrayed as preening metrosexuals, cavemen or clueless slackers -- sometimes all at the same time! Parents of both sexes are worried about the message that their young boys and girls are getting about men, about their dads.
Ad Age: So, it's the media's fault again?
Garcia: It goes way beyond that. The industries projected to grow in the next few decades are mostly in the service sector, where communication, collaboration and multitasking rule. At the same time many of the industries that favor the physical and mental attributes of males are shrinking or disappearing. Women in their 20s in the 10 largest U.S. cities already out-earn men of the same age. The trend is pretty clear.
Ad Age: You talk about the "message" that the media portrays, but let's be honest: Men have brought this on themselves. Whether you look at our politicians (Bill Clinton, Governor Spitzer, Senator Toilet Stall), sports heroes (Clemens, O.J., Isaiah) or CEOs (Kenneth Lay, Dennis Kozlowski, Conrad Black), you witness men behaving badly at the highest level. At the other end of the spectrum, guys seem to be feminized, flimsy and fatuous. What do you make of that?
Garcia: Your examples are all symptoms of male decline. Men have been conditioned to be selfish, greedy and aggressive. Infidelity and perfidy are manifestations of insecurity. Society has taught men that it is manly to be competitive, to make as much money as possible, to win at any cost. I would add the war in Iraq and the implosion of Wall Street to the list of troubles that have been brought about by the old-fashioned, swaggering macho approach to politics, economics and life in general. Yet in spite of this -- or partly as a result of it -- other guys have simply given up. They sense that they've lost the high ground (and the future) to women, and they aren't even trying anymore. They've opted out to become jackasses, stoners and slackers. Responsibility is shirked, and adolescence is extended indefinitely.
Ad Age: So men are trapped in their own macho stereotypes, turning into man-boys and self-absorbed sissies?
Garcia: It's very hard to change, not to mention that guys don't like to talk about their problems. Denial, I have been told, is a river in Egypt. But it also is a way to pretend everything is fine in spite of the facts. Still, when the pain factor gets high enough we actually are capable of adjusting our assumptions and behaviors. The first step is admitting that there's an issue that need to be addressed.
Ad Age: Speaking of addresses, isn't Barack Obama a new kind of man?
Garcia: Does his tendency toward negotiation over aggression, communication over silence and compassion over ruthless ambition point the way to a more humane and sustainable form of masculinity? So far, the answer is yes. Most Americans, male and female, have accepted him as the new model for the world's most powerful man -- and, by implication, all men. That is a big change, and a reason for hope.
Ad Age: Outside of the White House, what "new kind of man" might we see emerge?
Garcia: The new kind of man will take many shapes and forms. That's what's new about him. We know that the old, rigid definitions of manliness are outdated and dysfunctional. Men can no longer hammer women -- or the world, or each other -- into submission without ramifications. That game is over. It's time for us to resurrect the masculine virtues that are much older than modern society: compassion, generosity, loyalty, modesty, humility, farsightedness, curiosity and patience.
Ad Age: What are those?
Garcia: That's the point. These words barely appear in our vocabulary anymore. There's one more: courage, as in the courage to change; the courage to be different and not apologize for it; the courage to care about a stranger or cause that does not directly benefit you. And don't forget the courage to frankly admit and talk about the decline of men.
Ad Age: So the audacity of men is not hopeless?
Garcia: In his inaugural address, President Obama spoke about a "sapping of confidence across our land" and the need to regain the can-do spirit of Americans as "the risk takers, the doers, the makers of things." These are things that guys are best at; it's why they matter and are necessary. Our country will lead the world again, but it won't happen if the male half of the population forgets what always has made them -- and America -- great.
Ad Age: Point taken. What about the marketing implications? Aside from an increase in the sales of video games and pornography, what should marketers know about guys and how to reach them?
Garcia: We know that men, as a group at least, are not reading. Women read twice as many books as guys, and non-pornographic magazines that cater to men are struggling. So what, besides sex, gets our attention? The messages that seem to resonate with men fall into two general categories: escape and reassurance. As men lose economic and social traction they look for ways to relax and forget -- games, sports, physical activities of every kind, travel. Male-targeted reality shows such as "Ice Road Truckers" and "The Deadliest Catch" tap masculine nostalgia for a time when physical brawn and bravery -- not PowerPoint and spreadsheets -- defined manly work.
Marginalized by society and maligned by the media, men are yearning for anything that tells them, or shows them, that they still matter. Meanwhile, a multibillion-dollar industry sells goods by reassuring males that they are virile and powerful and up to speed with the latest gear. Deep down inside, every guy knows he's Ironman, even if he's actually an ironing man. Stay-at-home dads are fully aware that their tricked-out Bugaboo baby strollers have fat tires and awesome tech specs. And it's no surprise that James Dyson's space-age DCO7 vacuum cleaner, with its guy-friendly promise to "never lose suction," has become a worldwide best-seller.
Ad Age: Well, of course. Who among us isn't totally turned on by the prospect of a perfectly groomed rug?
Garcia: As long as we don't sweep our troubles under it.
Ad Age: Speaking of which, I do the cooking in my family. Does that make me a girly man?
Garcia: Au contraire: Cooking, which combines chemistry with creative self-expression, has been reclaimed by modern men who recognize the primordial power of preparing a gourmet meal.
Ad Age: You're preaching to the pulpit, bro! Except for that gourmet part.
Garcia: Just as women once used food to get to a man's heart, men have learned that whipping up a delicious meal is a mutually satisfying way to get something else. Grown guys may no longer have a suped-up Mustang in the driveway, but in the kitchen, they can still get under the hood.
Ad Age: I'm hearing "Little Red Corvette."
Garcia: Zero to 60 in three courses.
Ad Age: Any more news on the fragile male psyche?
Garcia: Early findings from the OTX Modern Male study show that younger men are more likely than older men to be accepting of women as their equals or even their superiors. But those same men are also less optimistic about their future than women their age. This breakdown of confidence has produced a schism in the male psyche, and that insecurity turns up in different men in different ways. Some men retreat, submit or become "feminized," while other guys retrench, bulk up and swagger. The fact that both of these male archetypes exist in every guy is the key to understanding who men are and what they want.
Ad Age: What do we want?
Garcia: Men do not want to be separate from women; they never have and they never will. What men want is a social role, sense of place and duty that differentiates them from women. There's an unspoken assumption that just because women want to do things that only men used to do, that men should want to do things that only women used to do. This is a source of great disappointment for women and great angst for men. As women become more educated and independent, straight men have started using their own physical attractiveness as a way to compensate and even out the power balance. The assumption that men who groom and preen are secretly gay could not be more untrue. Guys are shaving and wearing tight jeans to get the attention of the opposite sex, just like women used to do, and for exactly the same reasons. But to openly admit this, of course, would be unmanly.
~ ~ ~
Robert Rosenthal, the SHORT ORDER DAD™, is an international marketing professional, frequent TV and radio host, writer, classically trained cook, and father. He is a partner in the pre-eminent firms of BrightLine iTV and Walton-Isaacson, as well as the big cheese of Rosenthal Heavy Industries, a creative digital-video production company.
Guy Garcia is the CEO of Mentametrix, a research and marketing consultancy based in New York City, and is author of several books, including "The New Mainstream: How the Multicultural Consumer Is Transforming American Business."
1 Comment
The coffee now being smelled is so old a shovel can stand up in it.
The problem with the game that's now over is being that it's all been
a game in the first place.
My only hope is a phoenix to arise from the ash it's caused.
Joanne Jubert
Little Silver, NJ – Joanne Jubert | Little Silver, NJ
Due to previous commentary -- and after multiple warnings -- you have been banned from commenting on this site.
Nonsense. All of it. Guy Garcia is the spokesperson for men? Men have been herded, cajoled, and convinced that they have some sort of responsibility to women over and above the obvious sperm donor status as many women see them. Fine. From early education where all teachers are women, to mother dominated households, how is that any man would want to do anything but escape from female dominance?
Alex Baldwin should be our spokesman, not Garcia. Baldwin is a good demonstration of what happens to us with the assistance of women - where we end of like him, ridiculed and become Homer Simpson image of the modern male. The Simpson's is the true model of American men - both Homer and Bart are dominated by the female characters.
It is all pretend, like Garcia's book. We real males do what we damn well please. The rest, a ruse, that we show females so that they leave us alone.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
The article
Eye, Doesn't Let It Go
Central Message Is Simple, yet Ad Keeps Your Attention
Posted by Bob Garfield on 02.16.09
You represent a client. There's a lot of money on the line. And prestige. And personal pride. Not to mention the agency trophy case. And your book. All of that has a way of focusing your thinking.
Whether your brand is a disposable diaper or a fabric softener or a state lottery or a savory food, you are going to lovingly (or at least obsessively) sweat over every detail of copy, layout, production, whatever. Whatever brand X is, you're going to have it on the brain. And so is the boss and the boss' boss and the suits and the CMO.
And then the ad shows up somewhere in the real world, at which point the lavishing of attention comes to an abrupt halt. You may as well have stapled your senior thesis into People or Men's Health. Sorry, nobody cares.
Oh, sure, people will see it, but they're most likely to pass right by. It may register; it probably won't. No matter what medium you are working in, as far as the audience is concerned, your craftsmanship amounts to just so much spam.
That's why conventional wisdom dictates that you try to achieve instantaneous clarity of message. You only have the audience for a second; make it count. That's also why there is no print anymore -- just magazine-size outdoor. Simple image, simple headline, simple idea. Boom. Or, at least, boom.
There is, of course, a second option: to forsake that tiny bit of communications combustion and go for the big score, to craft an ad so intriguing, so involving, so ambiguous that you dare readers or passersby to stop flat-footed and try to take it completely in. About 20 years ago, Benson & Hedges and the late, lamented Wells, Rich, Greene did just that in a campaign of print ads depicting scenes of confounding significance. Something was happening among those characters, and it looked vaguely untoward, but just exactly how was impossible to say. This tactic pretty much defines Diesel ads as far back as we can remember.
And then there is the rare miracle: an ad that scans in an instant, delivering the message to all but the most militantly indifferent, but then keeps you looking because there appears to be more going on. It's a Kinder Egg, candy on the outside with a prize in the middle. It's the Zapruder film, after the president is shot. It's a swimsuit model conversant about Pushkin.
And it's a poster, from Y&R, Chicago, for MGD 64.
The central joke is simple. Sixteen alcoholic drinks are seen in four rows of four. But 15 of them -- from pomegranate martinis to lager to white wine -- are seen as glasses only fractionally filled. Not nearly empty, but Photoshopped to have jigsaw-shaped holes where the fluid should be. The only full container is a bottle of MGD.
The headline: "The 64 Calorie Collection."
Yes, if you're watching your calories, you can have a whole MGD 64 or a fragment of a martini. Got it.
But wait. There's more. We have no earthly idea whether this was intentional, but the weirdly fragmented images of the 15 other drinks look something like letters of the alphabet. Look, there's an L, there's a J... is that an F? So to see this poster is to stand there trying to figure out what the other message is. L-Y-E-... wait, I-Y-F.... um...
After a while, it becomes obvious that, no, there is no code, no secret message, no sneaky dis of lard-assed pomegranate-martini drinkers. But the time invested in deciphering the undecipherable does spell one thing. For Sonya Grewal and Todd Taber, the creative team who did the aforementioned sweating, it spells success.
Note: Comments submitted to Ad Age blogs are posted automatically and will include the name and location with which you registered. Ad Age reserves the right to delete comments that are insulting or personal in nature. Comments may be used in the print edition at editorial discretion. Comments are restricted to 500 words or less
Dear Bob,
Poor package and brand registration. A clever little headline such as:
so next time?
Or,
'so you'll have a ... '
Could have induced thought to reinforce the brand. From the tone of your article you were looking for something too.
And you solved the puzzle of it is what it is. Or something along that line. I like it visually too, it belongs in the MOMA collection. But as an advertisement, it needs more brand, and less cute.
For example, somehow the entire campaign escaped me until you alerted me to Miller 64. Worth a try for sure. This is why I always encourage clients to use IMC - because on the publicity side you can clean up. Many times a senior marketer or CEO complimented us not on the campaign but on the trade talk we developed using PR - publicity methods, such as this.
So you are right, it is a winner. But it could have been so much more. Perhaps it is the first installment, like "G," was.
Central Message Is Simple, yet Ad Keeps Your Attention
Posted by Bob Garfield on 02.16.09
You represent a client. There's a lot of money on the line. And prestige. And personal pride. Not to mention the agency trophy case. And your book. All of that has a way of focusing your thinking.
Whether your brand is a disposable diaper or a fabric softener or a state lottery or a savory food, you are going to lovingly (or at least obsessively) sweat over every detail of copy, layout, production, whatever. Whatever brand X is, you're going to have it on the brain. And so is the boss and the boss' boss and the suits and the CMO.
And then the ad shows up somewhere in the real world, at which point the lavishing of attention comes to an abrupt halt. You may as well have stapled your senior thesis into People or Men's Health. Sorry, nobody cares.
Oh, sure, people will see it, but they're most likely to pass right by. It may register; it probably won't. No matter what medium you are working in, as far as the audience is concerned, your craftsmanship amounts to just so much spam.
That's why conventional wisdom dictates that you try to achieve instantaneous clarity of message. You only have the audience for a second; make it count. That's also why there is no print anymore -- just magazine-size outdoor. Simple image, simple headline, simple idea. Boom. Or, at least, boom.
There is, of course, a second option: to forsake that tiny bit of communications combustion and go for the big score, to craft an ad so intriguing, so involving, so ambiguous that you dare readers or passersby to stop flat-footed and try to take it completely in. About 20 years ago, Benson & Hedges and the late, lamented Wells, Rich, Greene did just that in a campaign of print ads depicting scenes of confounding significance. Something was happening among those characters, and it looked vaguely untoward, but just exactly how was impossible to say. This tactic pretty much defines Diesel ads as far back as we can remember.
And then there is the rare miracle: an ad that scans in an instant, delivering the message to all but the most militantly indifferent, but then keeps you looking because there appears to be more going on. It's a Kinder Egg, candy on the outside with a prize in the middle. It's the Zapruder film, after the president is shot. It's a swimsuit model conversant about Pushkin.
And it's a poster, from Y&R, Chicago, for MGD 64.
The central joke is simple. Sixteen alcoholic drinks are seen in four rows of four. But 15 of them -- from pomegranate martinis to lager to white wine -- are seen as glasses only fractionally filled. Not nearly empty, but Photoshopped to have jigsaw-shaped holes where the fluid should be. The only full container is a bottle of MGD.
The headline: "The 64 Calorie Collection."
Yes, if you're watching your calories, you can have a whole MGD 64 or a fragment of a martini. Got it.
But wait. There's more. We have no earthly idea whether this was intentional, but the weirdly fragmented images of the 15 other drinks look something like letters of the alphabet. Look, there's an L, there's a J... is that an F? So to see this poster is to stand there trying to figure out what the other message is. L-Y-E-... wait, I-Y-F.... um...
After a while, it becomes obvious that, no, there is no code, no secret message, no sneaky dis of lard-assed pomegranate-martini drinkers. But the time invested in deciphering the undecipherable does spell one thing. For Sonya Grewal and Todd Taber, the creative team who did the aforementioned sweating, it spells success.
Note: Comments submitted to Ad Age blogs are posted automatically and will include the name and location with which you registered. Ad Age reserves the right to delete comments that are insulting or personal in nature. Comments may be used in the print edition at editorial discretion. Comments are restricted to 500 words or less
Dear Bob,
Poor package and brand registration. A clever little headline such as:
so next time?
Or,
'so you'll have a ... '
Could have induced thought to reinforce the brand. From the tone of your article you were looking for something too.
And you solved the puzzle of it is what it is. Or something along that line. I like it visually too, it belongs in the MOMA collection. But as an advertisement, it needs more brand, and less cute.
For example, somehow the entire campaign escaped me until you alerted me to Miller 64. Worth a try for sure. This is why I always encourage clients to use IMC - because on the publicity side you can clean up. Many times a senior marketer or CEO complimented us not on the campaign but on the trade talk we developed using PR - publicity methods, such as this.
So you are right, it is a winner. But it could have been so much more. Perhaps it is the first installment, like "G," was.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
President Obama's New War.
Another woe, but this time the woe is on all of us.
The idea that we are going to withdraw American Solders from Iraq only to park them in Afghanistan and in Pakistan is more that I can understand. Out of the frying pan and then fall into an abyss?
I know Obama said it makes no sense to him how the we can spend billions on an unpopular war on peoples who hate us. Especially when our country and people are hurting.
So now we spend money on other Muslims who hate us in Afghanistan and Pakistan? The Military Industrial Complex must have him by the neck - somehow. The recent BBC-ABC pole in Afghanistan is proof enough they want us out. So who are the Insurgents? They are religious fighters who have come to drive the infidels out of Afghanistan. American's and its allies are the Infidels - get it?
This is just like Beau Geste film of 1939 and the French Foreign Legion, more Infidels to fight.
I'd like to know why it is an imperative of this nation to systematically kill Muslims? Lets just use Homeland Security to spot oddballs and attack terrorism the cheap way, instead of the Billion a day way. We have those tiny drone aircraft - let them scout the borders and nail whomever shows one hair on his or her a**. Boom! Drugs smuggling, Boom!
It doesn't take the most sophisticated Army in the world to destroy two camels and a donkey. If they ever amassed, then an even bigger BOOM!
I thought Obama said things are going to change in Washington DC - how, by spending more on war? It's time to stand back and let Iraq have its theocracy to match that of Israel. A Democratic Theocracy joke. And what do we do, keep talking about an imaginary two-state solution in a Theocracy? Weird stuff. And here I thought Obama was different.
He sure fooled me.
Advertising Age Banned Bad Boy
Woe is me, Daryl Orris. Banned from commenting on AdvertisingAge.com - on any blog or story - forever silenced. Imagine, contributing Free Content to a Commercial Website: AdAge.com, and then be banned from making any further comments. I am penuriously contrite, but I remain outspoken.
Why was I banned? Because I was a critic and upset a favored few. Or at least my criticism of the posts made by a pool of supposed experts exasperated them. SAD, apt acronym for Small Agency Diary, and it is perhaps the greatest aggriever, for me anyway on that website. Big Tent can get strange too at times. I couldn't always buy in to some of the most outrageous nonsense I have ever read concerning Advertising. Thus prompting my comments. But generally I tried to be helpful by dispelling ignorance, and outright error.
Misleading people as to what Advertising does through SAD makes no sense to me. And then to have critical comments or statements that are indirectly advocated and endorsed by Advertising Age is absolute nonsense - but far worse, eliminate critics. Silencing critics works in China, but here? The truth will find its way out.
I have owned two Advertising Agencies: AdWorks, in San Francisco and Viking Creative Concepts, Inc. in Minneapolis. I subscribed to AdAge for over a decade. The ability to interact through the comments and blogs sections appealed to me. I hate AdWeek because they have on several occasions panned my work. The Critiques so off the mark, I just stopped reading the rag. There I go again, being critical.
So with AdAge I commented, using my many years of Marketing Communications experience with a broad range of service and product marketers and marketing: as an Advertising Agency, an Advertiser, and as a Professor of Public Relations and Advertising.
So this is a new start. With everyone in several different blogs insisting I start a blog, well, here we are. Go ahead, this is an uncensored blog.
Having had a wide range of experiences, have no problem discussing just about any facet of Communication, and enjoy a wide variety of opinions. Hearing them helps one learn, and or firm up one's own resolve that they have found the right path.
I thought to begin with, posting Banned AdAge blogs written by me, which were first edited, and then eliminated altogether would be a fun way to start here.
I am open to ideas from anywhere and anyone.
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