So the Geico Cavemen commercials really are being spun into a TV show? A similar thought came to me when I heard that ABC had green-lighted a one-episode pilot as when I was walking through the mall this past weekend and saw an otherwise good looking man dressed in tattered camouflage shorts, a polo shirt and bright blue sneakers …. “Who told him that was ok?”

Seriously. Who asked us, the America public, if this was ok? What team decided they should take these underdeveloped characters and turn them into their own television sitcom/comedy-drama? Are we really this starved for entertainment? I’d LOVE to have been sitting in the room as the idea was pitched “you know those Geico cavemen ….. that would be a great TV show. Think of the marketing! It would be really popular with the 18-25 segment!” Geico said they were “excited to have an opportunity to do brand extension.” Note: Geico IS getting royalties for use of the characters (ca-ching). However, they did spent $403 million on ad time and space in ‘05 (source: TNS Media Intelligence) which is believed to have gone up 20% in ‘06. Maybe they just want some of their money back?

IMO, characters from commercials should stay in commercials. Dunkin’ Donuts “time to make the donuts” guy didn’t get a spin off, Aunt Jemima didn’t, and neither did the Taco Bell dog or Tony the Tiger. These are corporate mascots not TV show personalities. THAT above anything else is why it won’t work. I don’t want to see Tony the Tiger battle his anger issues, get caught in a love triangle or be stuck in awkward social situations. Sure… brands would love their commercial’s mascots to be spun into a TV show! “Free” branding! But, this one might just bite them in the bottom. This will really not be funny. And I begin to wonder how this might potentially hurt them. Will they appear greedy? If the show flops, will its negative press be tied to the Geico brand? Is any press really good press?

Hey big brands…. you want some killer marketing? Try a viral marketing program a la Diesel.

A recent editorial in iMedia blasts “big brands” that are in an interactive fog in favor of big agencies – whose sole function, apparently, is to connect consumer to brands and not to develop content in support of connection (or to build trust, equity, differentiation, etc).

The pundit’s lead example of how big brands are in a fog is none other than P&G – specifically the CPG marketer’s current call to the industry to stop trying to impede the conversation about product and brand experience outside of controlled environments (telling and selling), to more “open, generous, and experiential” engagements that are more intra-consumer. Obviously, the most envied and successful brand marketers on the globe just doesn’t get it because they “have a million dollar contract, and a $100 game (?)”, and they are still focusing on TV and Sampling.

What the author misses - and ultimately shows his tin ear for – are two points: first, oftentimes leaders of large businesses use the trade podium to speak to their own lieutenants. P&G’s Lafley and Stengle are as much speaking to the AAAAs as they are to PG’s own internal legacy and formula driven brand marketers. Secondarily, the marketers themselves admit they are in the infancy of learning, and are calling on their own directors, and other industry leaders to challenge agencies partners to not only think, but also invest in the longer term, focus on observed instead of declared consumer metrics, and more.

The writer then contends that the secret to marketer’s ineptness is their desire to be in the content game.  I’d love to be on fly on the wall when P&G’s Lafley and Stengle sit down with the board and present their plan to move from detergents and diapers to taking on Disney in the animation game. Good times.

Only once they become content businesses, it seems, can big brands take full advantage of digital technologies employed by the likes of www.endless.com. (Forget the fact that had the author ever been exposed to advanced distribution technologies employed by manufacturers and marketers like P&G, or their customers, like Wal-Mart, he would know they already have the means for more advanced marketing practices, just not the internal collaboration).

All in all, a very confusing position to take from someone who has won an Eddie, or is it an Ozzie, and is currently a publications editor – but I wonder how much of the position is backed by experience as a big brand manager, or a big agency strategist. Or how much is self preservation from all those big companies who want to be contentencia (look out 1to 1 Media, here comes Johnson & Johnson).  P&G is right - agency or marketer: it’s not about engagement, it’s about trust.

The past few months, both the trade pubs and blogerati have been ripe over the issue of free, or spec, creative during the agency review process. Agencies, and the AAAAs, are squawking about clients who ask for creative during the review, but don’t pay, or pay little, stipend. Well, I’ve been on both sides, and can tell you the chirping needs to end.

Over the past 10 months I’ve been an integral client side decision maker in two large, multi disciplined, consultant driven service pitches (and over a dozen more on both sides prior), and can say without blushing that what the agency may be giving up in creative or “idea-izational” services, they completely win back for not having to effectively practice what they preach and invest in their own brands.

The fact that many large scale pitches require consultants and a stage heavy orientation process - often involving speculative creative - is more than partly the fault of agencies themselves, large and small, doing such a poor job of, well, BRANDING and marketing their brand’s unique differentiators and “reasons to believe.” Marketers wouldn’t need spec heavy presentations if the agencies did a better job at what they will tell the client their brands will eventually need – brand-focused, media-agnostic, integrated interpretation and conversation with the potential consumer.

Question: of the top 10 global agencies, can you rattle off what their particular brand represents?  As a client, when was the last time a potential partner marketed to you as a potential consumer (prior to an RFP)? I think we here at Spun do a better job than most at pivoting our brand around our key offering: user experience and behavioral understanding. But we can also get better.

The common response is that the work an agency does for its clients speaks for its brand and product offering. My response to that argument: then show the failures as well as the successes, the coal with the diamonds, and try not to be so self consumed to assume that your clients themselves don’t power the best of your work (you’ll say this in public, but rarely in private).

Until agencies do a better job of building and positioning their brands, Spec creative is the cost and capital for not having a deep marketing department of your own. Your thoughts are welcome (but I’m not paying a dime).

We at Spunlogic are deeply saddened by the events that unfolded at Virginia Tech on Monday. Now, days later, we have all had time to reflect on the events that shook our nation, and how new media has changed the landscape of tragedy.

Minutes after the mass murder, my coworkers and I were alerted to the breaking news. One coworker was sent an alert on his PDA, while it was sent to another coworker via RSS. I came across the story after opening a new browser to find the headline on my Yahoo! homepage. As each piece of information was released, we verbally shared the updates along with our distress. Despite the horrific details, we were comforted by the information – with each update, we were less in the dark.

Later in the day, Amy, a fellow Project Manager, received a call of relief from a friend in a student exchange program at Virginia Tech. He was going down his cell phone’s address book letting friends and family know he was not hurt. Amy was surprised to find out that her friend, Martin, had actually been outside the classroom building when the SWAT team arrived. Originally thinking he was witnessing some type of drill, Martin caught the following 15 minutes on film from an adjacent building. His call to Amy was short, but she soon got the full story when he wrote a blog post about his experience. Martin’s video and story would later become international news, even being broadcasted on CNN.

News spread quickly as a result of new and interactive media. Television networks and newspapers scurried to use search engine marketing to secure Google, Yahoo!, and MSN keywords related to the killings. Meanwhile, students and their loved ones traded phone calls, text messages, instant messages, emails, and social networking posts. An “I’m ok at VT” group was established on the social networking site Facebook to allow students to communicate their safety to friends. In turn, the site quickly became a bulletin board for students to find out the whereabouts of their friends. Social networking sites soon became the source for breaking, but unsubstantiated, stories, as well as a resource for reporters looking for details on the victims.

As in most cases, when things are done faster, they typically lose quality. As reported by InfoWorld, bloggers wrote of the presumed identity of the killer, linking to the Facebook profile of a Virginia Tech student who was pictured with an extensive gun collection. Many claimed the student even posted a blog implying he was the shooter. The rumors were, for the most part, silenced when the student made a post claiming he couldn’t be the shooter, as the real shooter committed suicide.  On Wednesday the world became intimately acquainted with the actual killer, Cho Seung-Hui, as NBC News aired video and pictures that Cho mailed to their studios.

Misinformation is not the only negative impact new media will play in this and future adversities. The amount of detailed information (and users’ exposure to it) may prove to be a dangerous byproduct of the times. On Wednesday’s edition of Anderson Cooper 360, Anderson interviewed former FBI profiler, Gregg McCrary, who warned of the potential for copy cats due to the extensive coverage of the tragedy.  McCrary explained that “[his] concern is by repeatedly playing these videos and showing these photos over and over again, we’re energizing some other killer out there, somebody who is on the edge, who is on the verge, and sees this as a way to go. Just as [the Virginia Tech killer] identified with the Columbine shooters, somebody’s going to identify with this guy. [McCrary believes] the responsible thing to do is to back off on showing these videos and these pictures. [The news] can certainly report the story and that needs to be done, but [McCrary believes] the danger here is that we’re energizing some other killer and that we may have some other events that follow in the wake of this.”

Our inquisitive and impatient nature has led to the success of social networking, instant messaging, and other Web 2.0 staples; but what are the costs? Will the camera phone recordings, streaming video diaries, victims’ blogs, etc. help the nation heal, fuel copycats, desensitize America’s youth, or all of the above? In the future, perhaps we will use interactive media, such as SMS, to alert those in danger faster.

For years, America has been at the mercy of media gatekeepers, newspaper editors and television producers, but in the user-generated world, it is our responsibility to self-edit. I am the first person to claim my right to any information available to me, but I also feel I am mature enough to make wise decisions about the content I consume. Nevertheless, in the world where anyone can become an internet celebrity, I can’t help but be concerned that the Virginia Tech killer has laid a path for others seeking his twisted yet endless fame. In the end, I do not bless nor condemn the role new media has played in this horrific event; I only question if the world can change as fast as new media.

I have come across two great examples recently where doing good is good business. I sense this is more than just a coincidence and is really a trend that should be monitored if not co-opted by other firms. The two things I came across are uniquely well conceived online marketing plans/ideas. So before I riff on the broader implications of the do-good trend let’s take a look at each example.

The first is from Microsoft and launched last month. It’s a new marketing plan involving their Live Messenger product. You may recall it by its previous name MSN Messenger. It is a popular and mature product that is free to use and ad supported. Many of you might not have noticed the rotating banner ads at the bottom of Live Messenger, they are easy to miss, but between pay per placement and pay per click they generate a modest profit. In a brilliant marketing move Microsoft has put a spin on the term “IM” and has created the “I’M Making a Difference” campaign. The essence of the campaign is that by choosing from one of the several worthy charities such as the Boys and Girls Club, Multiple Sclerosis Society, Sierra Club, etc and inserting a corresponding symbol at the end of your display name, Microsoft creates an ad revenue share with that charity.

So at no cost to you some of the revenue Microsoft receives for showing the ads that you are ignoring is sent to the charity you have chosen. An “i’m” symbol shows up at the end of your display name that shows that you are participating in the program. It is a brilliantly simple and well executed idea and should serve to increase users brand affinity for Live Messenger, which is a perfect complement to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates’s epic charitable efforts. The halo effect for the advertisers should not be ignored, perhaps leading down the road to higher placement fees which leads to more net dollars for everyone involved. An excellent, and rare, example of making something you are already doing help others. I encourage others who use Live Messenger (over 250 million have a version of it installed) to give it a try.

I came across the other “do good” idea a few weeks ago. The company is Green Dimes, and it has been up and running for the past six months. The company has built an internet based business model around junk mail. No, not the Viagra ads you receive in Outlook, but the junk mail you receive in your mailbox at home. They state that each year the equivalent of 100 million trees are used to create the junk mail we come home to every day and promptly throw in the trash. They act as a well connected intermediary to several “Do Not Mail” lists and let you customize which junk mail you actually want to receive. In a nice marketing twist they plant a number of trees on your behalf. Even their 1 year plan plants 12 trees. They keep a running tracker on their home page of how many trees they have saved/planted and how many pounds of junk mail they have stopped from being delivered. It’s a well conceived business that is venture backed and, to use the classic marketing phrase, “makes a great gift”. Several catalog dependent companies such as Mrs. Fields cookies have noticed a growing number of opt out requests coming from Green Dimes asking for recipients to be taken off of the company’s bulk mailing list. A note to catalog marketers to think about perhaps integrating their email and snail mail preference centers into one area.

So, do two examples of businesses doing good business by doing good make a trend? Actually, there are many more examples, some of which you may know of and I have yet to come across. So, please comment away on this post if you know more good examples.

The broader trend I see is that, increasingly, customers want to see, or will want to see, everyday companies doing their part to be good citizens. Particularly for the younger generation of consumers, this may become a requirement to prove your brand’s credibility. Old line businesses such as with British Petroleum’s “Beyond Petroleum” campaign and Charlotte-based NUCOR Steel’s “It’s our nature” website stories have been well done. However, those two firms have much to prove as far as whether their intentions lead to credible actions. So keep an eye out on your competitors, they may be more green or charitable than you. Whether they are or not, it may well be time for you to take the initiative to position your brand as a leader in this area. And you might enjoy the monetary benefits while you help everyone else enjoy the more tangible benefits of your efforts.

Have you heard the buzz stirring over the past year or so about Google looking to provide TV spot placement? Well, Google has selected partners Echostar and Astound Cable for a trial that will allow Google to provide an ad-sales system for national television commercials, with inventory running on 120-plus cable TV networks.

By using an auction-based system, Google has been able to create some nice efficiencies. Pricing is on a CPM basis and advertisers only pay for actual impressions delivered.

And the usability (at least in writing) seems crazy-easy – and cool. Users will be able to log into their Adwords account and then access their TV spot account. From there they can select where their ads are running based on the 120 available channels. Advertisers can target by demographic, daypart and channel. And, if you’re completely stumped on where to place your ads, Google even has a “recommendation engine” that will provide you a suggested plan based on your target audience.

Of course … this wouldn’t be a Google technology if there wasn’t some killer statistics. The system will provide real-time commercial ratings for Google spots. According to Google’s release, users will be able to report aggregate statistics on how many times an ad was viewed – and EVEN if it was watched through the end!

Now THIS is how technology can meet traditional marketing to create some really powerful data. This means no more guesswork for marketers. Using Google’s TV spots, marketers will able to evaluate the effectiveness of their campaigns and make changes that will create an immediate impact on their ROI.

Just had to share this. We’ve all had dollar bills before that had writing on them, usually someone’s phone number or something. I had a dollar yesterday that had an ad on it pointing me to the website where I can track where my dollar has traveled lately. The site is called WheresGeorge.com. It worked on me, though I’m wondering exactly how legal this is.

And because you’re dying to know, according to the site my dollar has traveled 204 miles in 251 days with an average of .81 miles per day, starting in Turtletown, TN. I was bummed out to find that the site doesn’t allow your dollar to rank its speed vs. other dollars. Or maybe I’m just looking for some new kind of competition since my NCAA pool is already lost after day 1.

I stumbled across a post on Fast Company’s blog about Calvin Klein’s new fragrance. Written by an authentic GenY-er, the post makes an excellent point about how tragically wrong the branding of this fragrance went. The article that got him on his hysterical Gen Y rant appeared in the New York Times Thursday Styles.

Before I launch into my own hysterical marketing rant ….. I can appreciate CK’s desperation to create a new “hit” fragrance. I mean, CK One (THE fragrance in my youth), which pulled 90 million yearly in its prime is now collecting only a third of that. They need a new hit fragrance.

The article talks about the grass-roots market research the company did; eventually leading to the trademark of (brace yourself) “TECHNOSEXUAL” to describe its target audience of “casual hookup” text messengers. Ouch. Maybe they didn’t do their homework. This same word has in the past been used to describe people who are “attracted” to machinery. (Yikes!) In the end, this intensive research yielded “in2U” … a play on GenY’s abbreviated text communication.

What is painfully obvious is how incredibly out of touch CK was when they began this initiative. Honestly … in2U? Yes, technology has advanced quickly. Yes, GenY uses text and instant messages and social media more than any generation before them. And, yes all marketers will have to respond to this shift. But, I don’t think it means patronizing their lifestyle with SILLY advertising.

Yes Silly. The article says: “A typical line from the press materials for CK in2u goes like this: ‘She likes how he blogs, her texts turn him on. It’s intense. For right now.’” Bleeeeh.

Off my rant, I have to give CK some positive marks for recognizing they need to address this audience with relevant branding. But ask any GenY-er and they’ll tell you they want nothing more than to get away from blatant advertising, let alone be the obnoxious target of it. They like to feel like they’ve uncovered their own brands and then spread it around with their peeps. Get it? Think Scion. Talk about underground marketing with a HUGE GenY following.

BUT. You never know …. I have not heard their online strategy. If they are able to effectively (quietly) infiltrate social media, they just might create a following. Because one thing is true in technology, and certainly with GenY, it’s always changing. CK might just be able to crack this egg if they can put themselves in the right places, even if the messaging is “wrong.”

The advertising and marketing industry is always trying to find the easy way out. When things shift, when consumers find ways around our efforts to reach them, we tend to freak out and think of ways we can supervent their efforts.  Not going to pay attention to our banner ads?  We’ll create an ad that covers the whole screen so you have to see it.  Not reading our magazine ads?  We’ll make ads that look like the real articles in that magazine so for just a second you start reading our ad.  Not listening to our radio ads?  We’ll just sponsor every single thing that a station does so you can’t avoid us.  Yeah, great ideas right.

My new favorite is the fear that agencies are stricken with now that the DVR is continuing to gain momentum.  What in the world will we do if people skip our commercials?  We can put products in shows so people see them.  We can put clever codes in commercials so people use their DVRs to see them.   I’m embarrassed to say that I fell into the same trap when I recently posted a blog suggesting that we create commercials so that when someone does fast forward through them you can see a message in the screen.  I still think that’s an interesting idea but its missing the point.

The answer seems so obvious to me now.  JUST MAKE BETTER ADVERTISEMENTS!  When did we lose sight of the fact that the reason consumers are skipping our advertisements is that they stink?  Someone said recently in an article I read that Americans just don’t like commercials anymore. Oh really?  What about the commercials during the Super Bowl?  We’ve all heard people say that their favorite part of the Super Bowl is the commercials.  Google has a whole section devoted to Super Bowl commericals on their video site (btw, when are they going to marry this with YouTube?).  What about the show that comes out at the end of every year that is the “Best Commercials of the Year”? When we see a good commercial we generally tell people about it.  Mentioned to anyone the VW crash commercials?  Oh yeah, that one has been seen by 111,000 people on YouTube already.  It’s not that we don’t like commercials, its that we don’t like BAD commercials.

Case in point.  Banner ads are seeing a resurgence currently due to their ability to have video and truly interactive content.  This makes the banners better and (GASP) people now respond to them.

So I say bring on the DVR, the banner ad blockers, the satellite radios.  Force us as marketers to do a better job rather than trying to trick consumers into seeing our advertisements.  Maybe then they’ll listen to what we’re saying instead of inventing new ways to avoid us.

Just as everyone went from black and white TV to color, from VCRs to DVD players, and from Melrose Place to Desperate Housewives; everyone will move to using DVRs eventually. And the people that make the commercials, well they’re trying to figure out if they’ll still have jobs when the shift happens. They’re currently trying to figure it out, but so far, the efforts aren’t working too well. A while back Sprite put out a commercial that required viewers to pause at a specific time to view a code and then go online and enter that code into their website. Interesting and definitely different, but were many people really doing that?

This past Thursday night NBC tried some new things and then basically announced their plan to embrace product integration. First, they ran an actual advertisement for a commercial. Toward the end of My Name is Earl, right before a commercial break, an announcement came on that said, “Stay tuned for more My Name is Earl, and check out who Ellen is working with now”. Then the first commercial was an American Express spot with Ellen working with a bunch of animals (part of the “My Life, My Card” campaign). Then, during The Office, Kevin expresses his love for using the great shredder he has, shows how it can even shred a CD and then, what do you know, a commercial during the next break is for Target’s new shredder. And then later in the show, when asked where he got the great shredder, he proudly says, “Target”. Also during The Office, Michael Scott defends the restaurant Hooters and says to the camera that there are over 400 locations nationwide. Nice spin to poke fun at product placement while actually doing it.

Studio 60 and 30 Rock essentially based their entire shows on product integration in the past week.

So yeah, these are some interesting ways to go. But where is the creative thinking, the real innovative ideas? Pausing commercials to get a code is certainly different, but with the problem being that people want to skip commercials altogether, do we really think that getting them to spend even more time with them by pausing them is a good way to go? And product integration is a tough line to walk with the risk of lowering the content quality being so great. So why not come up with ideas that take advantage of the change? How about having commercials that, when viewed in fast forward mode, you see a message or code? So the only way you can see it is if you fast forward? The advertiser that recommends that people fast forward their commercial – now that would be doing something different.