Several airlines have announced that they will soon begin offering in-flight web access, according to the New York Times (and Adotas).  JetBlue looks like they’ll start by offering email and instant messaging.  More airlines will follow, including Virgin, American and Alaskan.

The fact that its taken this long for us to have internet access while flying is absurd, so I’m not exactly jumping for joy at this news.  The airlines seem to be stuck about 10 - 15 years behind the rest of the world.  We can put a man on the moon but I can’t listen to my iPod on take off.  You’ve got to be kidding me with that.  A few other things I’d like the airlines to work on while they try to give me email in-flight:

* How about letting me recline my chair to what almost would constitute as a normal posture while we take off and land?  Instead I have to actually lean forward until we’re in the air.  Makes sense.

* When I walk up and try to buy a ticket for a flight that leaves in 2 hours, do you really have to charge me 8 times the original price?  Do people really pay that?  Isn’t it better to fill the seat or are you hoping that 1 out of 7 people take that deal?  (This has only happened to me at a time when they lost my original booking…customer service isn’t exactly a high priority at some of these airlines).
* How about having more than 12 pillows and blankets on board?  Oh, and don’t give me those unsealed nasty blankets, that’s disgusting.  Sealed only please.

* And everyone has made fun of the peanut bags but seriously, the last time I flew I counted eight and a half peanuts in the bag.  At least the stewardess gave me two bags.  17 peanuts really hit the spot.

Ok, so I’ve been traveling a lot and just waiting for a reason to rail on the airlines.  Luckily this amazing news about in-flight web access gave me the opening.  I’ll enjoy that for the 18 minutes that they actually let me use my laptop in the air.

Look, I’m as big a fan of the head fake shimmy to scallywag, foot shuffle back to head fake shimmy as the next guy, and love ironic jewelry that says something even more ironically specific when the jewelry is eaten, but I will not be upgrading to Direct TV’s HD offering - thank you very much, Beyonce.

In one of the most preposterous TV commercials of all time (I originally thought it was a parody of some kind), our luminary is starring in a music video that is going swimmingly, just beautifully, until she’s reminded that she’s actually hawking Direct TV, and desperately needs to upgrade me to a $29.99 HD package. But she doesn’t stop the video part, just injects the commercial part, or is it the other way around. I’m so confused.

But, then the mouthful of her gold “upgrade” medallion cleared it all up for me. However, the thing is, I’d much rather have the “upgrade” necklace than the Direct TV upgrade.  All I can find, though, is a necklace with Beyonce herself on it, not the actual “Upgrade” necklace that would match my “With a 2-yr service agreement” bracelet, and “After mail-in rebate” anklet.

All kidding aside, this piece of advertising, and the hideously frequent volume of its showing, is really why the average consumer gets turned off by our trade, and why smart strategy is increasingly moving toward actual and resonant consumer insights driving brand gains. What could possibly be the core insight here? That Beyonce is an expert on High Definition television? Or that she really believes that $29.99 is the optimum price point for 75 of the hottest HD channels…

No, what we have here is the classic “music to sell stuff to” theorem, wherein a marketing exec, typically on the client side (but not always), heard the song or saw Beyonce’s video, and said, “You know, it has the word ‘upgrade’ in it, and people know who Beyonce is, and we can cover the cost of her talent fee by simply cutting up the music video with some VO about the offer…, as long as we run 1,200 GRPs a week during the holidays, man this stuff is going to sell itself”.

So in honor of one of the most ungainly, clumsy and annoying commercials ever to air under the “music to sell stuff to” theory, what other gems have gone untapped? Please submit your idea for a song that ‘totally’ needs to be paired with a product; example:

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profits …

I read yesterday’s MediaPost article about Facebook and MySpace’s new ad platforms. A couple of advocacy groups (Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups) protested these marketing plans to the FTC yesterday. These groups are actually quite large and influential; the U.S. PIRG has a number of interests, including the environment, transportation and health care, in addition to media and internet reform.

So, for those of you who haven’t heard about Facebook’s new ad plaform, it’s really simple - advertisers will be able to deliver their marketing messages to users based on their activity, and the information that they share with friends.

And, a Business Week article on this topic said “Under the new system, marketers also will be able to create brand pages where users can view related media, review products or services, add items they like to their personal pages, and become friends, or “fans,” of the brand—and even make purchases.” Of course, these activities would show up in the users regular feeds to their friends - which many feel violates privacy.

I think the real controversy in this case is how much personal information marketers are given. The Business Week article suggests that the most vulnerable group are those young members who might not realize how much personal information they’re sharing, or where it will end up.

Personally, I’m torn. At first I thought ”I’ve already learned to cope with the ads in Gmail”, which use my personal conversations to fuel ad selections. How different is this? I suppose I also think that if I use this product for free, I shouldn’t mind being advertised to (as with Gmail). Futhermore, if I’m going to be advertised to, at least this new ad platform has the potential to make those ads relevant to my interests.

To gain some perspective, I asked Dan Dooley what he thought. His impression (in part) was that Facebook might have been wise to put more controls around the free distribution of user behaviors for the profit of advertisers.  I do get what he’s saying. With no restraints it’s easy to see how, for example, men who meet certain criteria could start seeing Viagra ads in their ad feeds, even though they never suggested an interest.

I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts on this.

I often site other blogs in my posts but never have I really just copied someone else’s post.  But one of my new favorite blogs (thanks to Tomer for showing it to me), Social Media Today, had a recent post that beat me to the punch on pointing out what has to be the best Fake Steve Jobs quote ever.  Thanks SMT:

“And I’m getting involved too with weekly code reviews. Not that I can read code, because I can’t. But I know how code should look on a screen. Which frankly I think is way more important.”

Just when I was about to go after Steve Ballmer for his inability to say anything intelligent about the web, Marc Andreessen beats me to it. I’ve mentioned Marc’s blog as one of my favorites a while back, and he very succinctly nails why Microsoft continues to lack an understanding of the importance (and staying power) of social networking. And for a while there I thought Microsoft might be trying when the reports were coming out that they are interested in buying 10% of Facebook, but then Steve says something like this to the UK Times Online:

“I think these things [social networks] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people.”

He also compares Facebook to Geocities saying that it had “most of what Facebook has.” No, it didn’t. But we don’t have time to get into that. Suffice it to say, I’m guessing Steve’s not getting many Facebook friend requests as he clearly doesn’t really understand what the site even does.

But back to the point. I could try to make fun of Ballmer but as I said, Marc did a much better job in this blog post, which you now see below. Enjoy

Ballmer subsequently added:

“I think these things [talking motion pictures] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people.”

“I think these things [televisions] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people.”

“I think these things [rock and roll music] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people.”

“I think these things [hip hop music] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people.”

“I think these things [fast food restaurants] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people.”

“I think these things [bikinis] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people.”

“I think these things [cars] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people.”

“I think these things [typewriters] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people.”

“I think these things [digital music players] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people.”

“I think these things [mobile phones] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people.”

“I think these things [video games] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people.”

“I think these things [search engines] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people.”

“I think this thing [the web] is going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people.”

And then finally, “I think these things [personal computers] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people.”

This really annoys me (that sound you hear is me stretching to get on my high horse) - here is a picture of the US Soccer team’s away jersey from just a few years ago: 

Here is the away jersey the women are now sporting in the current world cup:

Notice anything peculiar?

Reminds me of an informal survey someone I know either took or told me about wherein an email went out asking, male and female alike, given a choice between two potential people to date, and both are equal in all ways - attractiveness, intellect, sense of humor, interests, income, articulation… loves puppies, remembers birthdays, can cook, never dated Lindsey Lohan or Brody Jenner, etc. – but the main difference is that one would call themselves patriotic, and the other would not. Resoundingly, by a wide and long margin, the un-patriotic person was preferable.

I don’t know why, as I would not label myself patriotic or unpatriotic, rather “adequately patriotic”, but maybe my reaction to the above (or that it elicited a reaction at all), sways me in one direction or the other.

The net here (requisite marketing spin): consumers typically associate your brand or product with the colors you’ve invested time and energy to make them build an association with. No need to over think.

Maybe the uniform “deciders” didn’t want possible negative global reaction to US Foreign policy to affect the good and talented women in the tournament.

However, replacing it with a color (GOLD!) that possibly represents the most negative world perception about our domestic policy (namely, that they think we are all rich and lazy) is just maybe short sighted.

We might as well play in Cowboy hats.

The actual cowboy kind, not the Bon Jovi kind.

I’m currently in the process of watching The Sopranos from beginning to end. We don’t have HBO so I missed out on what I now know is a great show. I’m just starting season 4 and there are some classic quotes I’ve heard so far. Although from a quote perspective I have to say it’s no “Fletch” (”it’s all ball bearings these days”, “I’ll have a Bloody Mary and a steak sandwich and… a steak sandwich”, and “The lob is a very important part of the game”, to name a few).

But there was something that Silvio said in the last episode that I watched that got me thinking about the interactive industry. In the scene, Tony is laying into his captains about their inability to produce revenue during the current recession. He then asks Silvio to “break it down for ‘em”. It goes like this:

Anthony ‘Tony’ Soprano Sr.: Sil, break it down for ‘em. What two business have traditionally been recession-proof since time immemorial?

Silvio Dante: Certain aspects of show business… and our ‘ting.

Classic, right? And it got me thinking. There’s a lot of talk right now about a perceived bubble that we’re in and that at any moment things might start to crumble as they did in the early 2000’s. And that might be true. But I’m starting to think that online marketing might become recession-proof. Or at least that it should be.

As we know, online marketing is still only around 6 - 8% of typical Fortune 1000 advertising budgets (at least that’s the latest figures I’ve heard). Online marketing also easily outproduces traditional advertising in terms of ROI. “Reach” is still something that online can’t compete with against traditional advertising (long live the 30 second spot), but from a pure measure-ability standpoint, nothing beats interactive.

I’d argue that if/when the bubble might burst, advertisers should increase the percentage of their budget that is attributed to online marketing. The ability to say we spent $X and received $Y in return becomes even more valuable when budgets are tight. Maybe then we’ll start seeing some of the TV advertising getting whacked.

I was reading the AdFreak blog (which always tickles me) and saw a post about a fun little quiz created by MindFloss. 

Certainly nobody reading this blog is unfamiliar with the many, many, many pharmaceutical commercials and their drugs many, many, many “possible” side effects.

Well … MindFloss wants to see how well you paid attention. Take the Quiz.

Two things are currently fascinating me this media summer: Rupert’s single handed attempt to dismantle the US economy and business reporting universe buy purchasing WSJ, and the run to the White House.

On the first front, does anyone really think that even if our most highly respected paper (sorry, NYTs) does take a drastically Murdochian editorial tone and demeanor - and save for probable under reporting on China’s political enterprises (since he wants to expand his empire there), there’s no telling it will – are we really going to lose the only responsible organ for transparent reporting on capital markets? Well, the capital markets tell us…

No.

Someone enterprising and resourceful is going to fill the gaps that Murdoch will supposedly create, and if no one does, something will. A digital community, an artful blogger, an amalgam of the two. Ten years ago yes, there would be have been real concern about a reportage vacuum in the financial verts. Today? Whatever. The WSJ is in this mess because of strong competitive pressure , not a market still reliant on a single source for its financial coverage.

It’s likely Michael Bloomberg, even if he doesn’t run for the presidency, will save the day none the less.

Which brings me to my second curiosity and question: who do the presidential candidates turn to for their advertising, and how are they selected?

Is it a comment on the state of the ad community or the acumen of the office seekers that the biggest brand builders in the world - BBDO, DDB, Satchi, W+K (you know, for Nader), et al. – aren’t selected or even pitching the business for the highest office, i.e. the biggest brand, in the world.

I can’t imagine that telling a voting public how you’re decision making, baby kissing, pork loading, veto drafting, estate dinner attending skills differ from your opponents is much different from explaining how your paper towel’s spill picker-uppering is better than someone else’s. We put as much emotion and energy into selecting both.

These tiny Washington consultant groups (headed by ex-politocos like Bob Schrum, not ex-admen) are winning business that should be going to the masters of marginal narratives and integrated thinkocracy. Hillary is buds with GSD&Ms chief, but are they actually running her ad campaign?

Who’s doing the media placements, and what’s the gross up? This stuff fascinates me. Maybe the big agency holding cos don’t want the business, with all of the baggage it comes with (let alone the red face test you’d have to pass as a self respecting Creative Director building ads for a conservative).
If you know anything about this strange world I’d love to hear from you.

So I was in the middle of finishing this post when I got an email on the same topic from my good friend and childhood idol, Joe Koufman. So now I have to give him credit for the idea - great. Oh, and if you don’t know Joe, he works at a great Atlanta technology company, KnowledgeStorm, and is apparently a huge hippie based on this photo I found of him and his lovely wife. Peace, man.

Back to the point…according to a study by Rainmaker Consulting there is a pretty big gap between what agencies think a client wants (when choosing which agency they want to work with), and what clients actually want. The biggest differences? Size and location. Apparently clients don’t care too much about those two things, and I’m betting in the interactive world they care about them even less.

The ranking of things that are important to clients when selecting an agency came out looking like this:

1. Quality customer insights
2. Chemistry
3. Creative work
4. Service level / response to needs ongoing
5. Cost control
6. Innovative / strategic thinking
7. Case for ROI
8. Client list
9. Strict adherence to brief
10. Seniority of account team
11. Location
12. Size

We shouldn’t be surprised, but all those agencies that lead with their clients, size and experience better rethink their pitches. Wait, what am I saying? You guys should keep pitching that way and maybe just flip this list upside down and start from there. What do clients know anyway about what they want, right?

In all seriousness, do you really want a client that is focused on the size of your firm and impressiveness of your client roster? Surely the client that is focused on things like your ideas and the chemistry they have with you are going to be better long-term partners for the agency.

So my question is, does this list surprise any of you?