I’ve always had a bit of a sore spot for the Anti-Smoking campaigns. Don’t get me wrong, smoking among kids IS a problem: at least 4.5 million U.S. adolescents are estimated to be cigarette smokers and nearly 6,000 children under 18 years of age start smoking every day (American Lung Association, 2003).

My contention is this: I don’t believe anti-smoking ads are effective.

Let me back up a little bit … as a part of the Master Settlement Agreement with “big tobacco“, millions upon millions of dollar$ were given to states to create anti-smoking campaigns. However, according to a recent study conducted by the University of Georgia, the ads “do very little to dissuade middle school students from smoking—in fact, they increase the likelihood of teens picking up the habit.” The idea simple: teens don’t want to be talked down to, and as a result won’t respond to these ads. The study’s lead author suggests what I’ve always suspected, that the ads “inadvertently encourage rebellion.”

This leads me to the real purpose of my post … a recent campaign produced for another organization (that doesn’t work off the $$ of Big Tobacco), The National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign’s “Above the Influence” campaign. Above the Influence is a result of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, and is aimed at youth aged 9-18, especially the vulnerable middle-school adolescents.

The specific campaign I have isolated for this post is called STONERS IN THE MIST. And it’s cool. Stoners will love to play with this site. No, really. They will. Maybe even some young person who has only toyed with the idea of using marijuana will finally be swayed by this cool site. The site is led by Dr. Bernard H. Buck, a white-bearded explorer, complete with funny accent and safari suit. The entire interface is neat… there’s tons of funny video clips that “explore” the life of a stoner and a map users can click to see even more about the social life, health and fitness, and activities of a stoner.

I’m so confused. What’s the point of these anti-drug campaigns? Is it to create fun, flashy websites for kids to play with, or, are we trying to convince them they don’t need drugs?

I guess, who am I to judge? Perhaps the greatest challenge in advertising is to develop an effective anti-drug ad.

For almost every native New Yorker who was around when 9/11 occurred (and the aftermath) there is an unspoken bond of anguish and immense sorrow that never seems to diminish somehow as the years pass.

I’m one of those native New Yorkers. Every year I find myself tearing up when the TV specials come on and have the change the channel. I still can’t find the courage to see any of the films that have come out since because I don’t think I can sit and watch it happen all over again. The one thought that I keep coming back to is – there are thousands of people that I will never meet, never smile at and never get to know now, gone in the blink of an eye.

This year, I ran across an article about a Second Life event that commemorates that fateful day and was curious enough to overcome my aversions (at least for a little while) and check it out. According to the article, the sim opened at the time when the first plane struck. I logged in and teleported.

Names of those lost from each of the buildings and planes, as well as the service men and women who lost their lives, are etched on a wall, which is surrounded by water on three sides. Pictures of those lost (at least I’m hoping that’s what it is) are collaged and displayed in a separate area.

No buildings are shown, which I think makes it even more significant. People came in and out; some returning for a second or third visit. Flowers, signs of ‘We will not forget’ and more are scattered around the base. No one talked very much. And periodically, a soft rain would fall.

It was beautiful in the ways that only Second Life can be.

Remembering 9/11, we will never forget.

Since the beginning of the month, I’ve been reading up entranced by the bitter fight between NBC and iTunes, which had been well covered by Phill Ryu. This is an interesting case where someone at NBC sadly thought that this was a good idea but have clearly miscalculated.

Basics of What Happened

This case can be summed in 5 basic steps:

1. NBC’s sells shows on Apple’s iTunes Store at $1.99 per episode; contract comes up for renewal
2. NBC tries to re-negotiate with Apple asking $4.99 per episode; Apple refuses to budge on price
3. Negotiation goes public; NBC hoped “the people” would side with them, forcing Apple to concede
4. Negotiations goes nowhere; NBC switches to Amazon’s Unbox service for Tivo
5. Wheels fall off the bus!

So who’s the Biggest Loser?

I think that NBC will lose because:

Reason #1: People will buy the DVD

NBC is operating under the assumption that people are willing to pay $5 per episode. Considering that a typical television season has 21 - 23 episodes (according to Ryan Tuttle, who is an avid TV watcher), I’m calculating that viewers of shows like 30 Rock, which had 21 episodes, will shell out almost $105 based on the new price:

21 episodes/season * $4.99 per episode = $104.79

That’s a fair sum, considering that you can buy the 30 Rock Season 1 DVD for less than $50. If viewers paid $1.99 per episode, they would be shell out a more reasonable $41.79:

21 episodes/season * $1.99 per episode = $41.79

Reason #2: People will steal download shared episodes for free

In comparison to movie downloads, shared TV episodes are more popular. It seems that while only a small fraction of shared files, or torrents, are TV series, 50% of all download activity is focused on grabbing these shared files. And at $4.99 an episode, downloading these for free would be a steal.

Reason #3: iTunes is FREE while Tivo’s are not!

You can download iTunes for FREE but the barrier to entry for Amazon Unbox Service is a Tivo box. While there are potentially 1.5 million broadband-ready TiVo boxes that can take advantage of this service, it seems that Amazon is tight lipped about how many subscribers are currently purchasing movies through this service. Even if you estimate that 2% of subscribers, that’s only 30,000 potential customers, which will fetch about $150k per episode which seems a bit on the lighter side.

Reason #4: People will opt for cable/satellite TV

Many of the folks that I’ve known who buy episodes do not have cable. They buy episodes from iTunes because it is more cost effective. If you assume that a viewer watches three TV shows and there are 4 episodes a month (one per week), a typical viewer would pay much less than a regular cable bill:

3 shows * 4 episodes * $1.99 per episode = $23.88 per month

When you compare that to a normal cable/satellite bill (approximately $30 to $60 per month), viewers can save a ton of dough. But when you price an episode at $4.99, a viewer will now pay $59.88 per month and at that cost viewers will likely opt in to cable TV.

Reason #5: People will Tivo the episode

One of the reasons that people have Tivo’s is that they can digitally record shows. The benefit of having the Unbox service is that you can access movies, and that is worthwhile if you are a bare-bones cable subscriber. A typical Tivo subscriber would “Season Pass” the show and enjoy the show at their leisure.

Final Marketing Pressure

To makes matters worse, Apple is considering a more aggressive marketing strategy for the TV episodes, with rumors swirling of a price cut to $0.99 per episode. When you consider that NBC had a 30% market share of downloads on iTunes, I see NBC really taking it on the chin.

Oh well, hope that you don’t own any GE stock shares (GE is the parent company of NBC).

Has SEM arrived? Well, search engine marketing, absolutely.

What I’m referring to here is what Accenture - in the elegant codex of consultant speak - is calling Social Ecosystem Marketing. Basically, applying Gladwellian effect principals to advocates and peer groups, and amplifying your message to the most active and influential segment authorities. A blend of eCRM and oCRM (organic).

While I enthusiastically agree with moving from a mass, single segment approach to marketing in advocacy layers, especially for consumer package and household technology goods, what concerned me was a recent article in Adweek attempting – poorly – to demonstrate the power of this methodology (oh, and the impressively convoluted designation: Social Ecosystem Marketing – these people slay me).

The article cites a program Sprint and Unilever coauthored to target moms and, seemingly, their extended network of peers. Users were asked to log in and write shorts scripts about their days, with the crowd pleasing-est to be recorded by a cast that includes Leah Remini.

However, the piece cites as success 3,000 entries and 50,000 votes. So this is what constitutes the validation of Social Ecosystem Marketing? The story goes on to report that the program, “by definition” hit extroverted mothers who would invariably talk about Suave (the brand in play) to their girlfriends. But, in no way does the piece dig deeper into how the marketers know that the participants were extroverts, or if they extended the message at all to their net promoter sphere. Less an ecosystem, more like a bowl full of guppies.

Hilariously, the article goes on to tout the program as a way to gather consumer insights and ethnographic data through what users submitted. A new research paradigm: from declared behavior, to observed behavior, to self selected fictional  manners. Excellent.

Finally, about the name (if it sounds sorta like social science, it must be social science - but let’s play along): Two things an ecosystem relies on for sustainability are biodiversity – the more diverse a population, the more the system can absorb negative or high impact events; and stochastic phenomenon (basically, chance happenings). We hope that our marketing efforts don’t rely on chance, and marketing to Moms more likely means you’re hitting a far less diverse pocket of population than more (have you ever been to the local Outback Steaks during margarita night?).

Maybe I’m nitpicking. But if I think about the cost of just hiring Leah Remini for this program, forgetting everything else, don’t you think it would have been more cost effective to send 1 bottle of Suave to 5,000 local PTA presidents along with a packet of coupons for peer distribution?

Sampling…great. What’s elegant about that?

Can you develop Frito-Lay’s brand and produce their “Mockumentory” ad campaign? Of course you can! With the power of social-media and a bold “hot dog” flavor, you can not only do these things, you also have the chance to be one of the lucky winners to have a year’s supply of Doritos . . .

So why my sarcasm? Other than the fact that social media is by far the tastiest spice currently being traded in the marketing world, I believe that social should be social. Can you still taste that “social” football-flavor left over from the Doritos’ SuperBowl campaign? Do you think that engagement with your community/customers betters your brand online?

The one great thing that Frito-Lay has done is understanding that the online channel is a viable one, and that consumers have no problem going from offline to online. Now let’s see if they will really ever get social.

Check out the Dorito’s X-13D Website.

During a recent emerging media roundtable we held, one of our key clients raised the point that, as marketers generally, but digital marketers specifically, if we simply eliminate the 50-100 stupidest and simplest to resolve mistakes, we would be 1000% times more successful. It’s knowing what those mistakes are that is the rube.
During dinner, we also talked about what conferences are the best and most informative. Two seemingly unrelated topics, right?

I recently read an interesting book called The Black Swan, which may help to explain part of this blindness phenomenon. Basically the title refers to the first time Australians, who had only ever seen white swans, saw their first black one. The author tries to explain why (really how) this discovery was so surprising, and extends his hypothesis to everything from economic models to consumer’s ability to be persuaded by advertising.

Human’s have an innate need to create order from random occurrences, and our ability to build patterns (and the assumption that those patterns will go on, ad infinitum) lets us believe that we can see what’s coming. However, this is a dangerous belief, and one that distracts us from the highly unlikely and causes us to overvalue the impact of the improbable but spend on skills sets that hone the comfortably regular.

When I think about YouTube, I think about a black swan – it’s a swan we’ve certainly seen before (TV, Video, and even user-generated content: America’s Funniest Home Video, anyone) - but I think we are completely over-reaching in what we believe to be its impact on our daily lives, if our daily lives consist of anything more than simply being entertained. It’s a black swan because we assign to it an extraordinary amount of benefit and wonder, now, but we also assume it will eventually impact our lives proportionally to anything else that’s remotely similar. 

Who knows, but it’s this random occurrence, much more luck than skill, that brought us YouTube and MySpace, and trying to guess what the next killer app is going to be - but based on conventions we already know - won’t actually deliver us that thing any time sooner.  And it certainly doesn’t mean the next big thing will impact our lives as much as we will initially assume it will, or that it will live up to the unrealistically strong hold it will have on our imagination. What we do know, is the mathematical notion of ergodicity – that over time, we really can’t predict what something will become at all.

So, getting back to the question at the round table – how do we identify and eliminate the stupidest mistakes we make. Although the author doesn’t explicitly advize this for this reason, I’m reinterpreting:  attend conferences and forums that have NOTHING to do with your field, that no one else is attending.  Visit the Agricultural Equipment Technology Conference. Check out to Robocup 2007. Any one up for North America’s No.1 event for 3PL executives & 3PL users?

I really believe that you will get more from hearing about the logistics world’s latest black swan than you will reading another story about how YouTube will elect the next president, or how mobile marketing is where the action is. You will see patterns that can be applied to your assumptions as a marketer, as well as note the subtle connections improbable events or products have with each other.

We’re sometimes blind (and stupid) because we chalk up every major event to a pattern. Sometimes it’s actually just dumb luck. But either way, you’re more likely to get lucky and find inspiration in an environment you’re unfamiliar with as you are competing with 2,000 other eMarketing wonks at iMedia talking about the same things. Over and over, and over.

In advertising, as well as in User Experience, there’s a concept of memorability. In the case of advertising, it’s more about whether the viewer remembers your brand (as opposed to UE where’s it’s whether they remember how to use or do something). Back in the day, one of the most successful campaigns was for Charmin. You remember Mr. Whipple? He was the grocer who chastised patrons with “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin!” How about the old lady at Wendy’s asking “Where’s the Beef?” More recently, there has been “HEAD ON. Apply directly to the forehead. HEAD ON.” All annoying, yet effective, no?

Well, there seems to be a new trend – ‘Brand cheerleading’ and psychological trickery. Interestingly enough, the campaigns in question are both for meat. The first campaign is for Hillshire Farms – a very effective one since I remembered immediately what the brand was. One ad in this campaign shows a woman at her desk preparing a salad with meat on it. Her coworkers come out of nowhere – one chanting “go meat, meat – go meat, meat” while another chimes in with a cheer “That salad rocks, the best….” And another continues with “that’s crazy girl, I swear, there is so much STUFF in THERE”. Silly, yet cheerful. We all know why cheerleading exists whether we’re used to seeing applied to lunch meat or not. At the end of the commercial the whole office gang (sitting together) cheers “cuz you hungry. you hungry. you’re mama say you hungry! — you say Hillshire, I say Farm. Hillshire. Farm. (pause) GO MEAT!” WHOO HOO – I’m going out and getting me a salad (with meat on it)!

The second product is also a lunch meat product. This time, Oscar Meyer is pitching their Deli-Creation lunches with the same type of commercial - though with more of a psychological twist. Two guys driving the wiener-mobile show up in an office cube-farm with sandwiches and a microwave/backpack (complete with extension cord to the wiener-mobile). The catchy tune (Muzak version of what sounds like ‘we’re having a heat wave’) prompts the lunch-bringers to march while nodding their heads up and down to the beat. The office workers start nodding… I start nodding.  “Yes,”  I say to myself while nodding.  “Oscar Meyer microwavable sandwiches are good.”   In an apparent stroke of good timing, I had just come across an article on how shaking your head up and down while performing a task can increase your conviction that your opinion about that task is correct. SO, if you’re inclined to eat a nice, hot, turkey and cheese sandwich made by Oscar Meyer, your conviction that Oscar Meyer lunch meat is good might be increased. Of course, the study is about YOU nodding your head - not the guys on the commercial - but I dare you to watch it and NOT have the urge to do so.

So now you get the ‘Go Meat’ portion of this post… why the “thank you?” This is another part of an ad I saw that sticks with me and definitely works as far as brand recognition goes. Driving to work one day I saw a billboard for The Closer with Kyra Sedwick. It had a picture of her, the words “The Closer, New Season, TNT, Monday June 18, 9p/8c, THANK YOU.” Thank you? Hmmmm - I don’t get it. Polite, yes… Are they thanking me for reading their ad?? Ok. You’re welcome? Actually, it turns out that the main character (the Closer) says this throughout the show - it’s her ‘tag line’. Of course, I didn’t know this (nor did several people I asked). So if TNT is trying to talk to their current audience, fine. They’ll understand. However, for those of us who are Closer-clueless, this ad is annoying. It IS memorable - but not in a good way. Therefore, I’m not watching the show.

I think I’ll have myself a sandwich instead. GO MEAT! Thank you.

In a revolutionary and completely novel spin to the current TV measurement wars, MTV Networks is telling the marketing world that they are in fact a system of important audience collectives and won’t be treated like the other traditional measured media - like the rest of those old-fogey-grey-beard nets.

As part of this fascinating approach, MTV is advising the ad world that just as “regular” television is being pushed toward a more responsive and responsible measurement platform (looking at commercial pods instead of total program viewership, and eventually actual spot position audience), the MTV Net’s audience is too busy and non-linear in their attention focus to watch commercials. But, what a great looking audience it is!

Basically, MTV is telling media buyers that they should pay up because of who watches the Network’s shows, not for the idiots that bother to watch the commercials that support those shows. You know, like, how pedestrian is that?

The reason the Network that basically invented premium cost per demo and that began the stratification and delineation of audience power Qs wants us to judge them differently?

 “When the American Association of Advertising Agencies first looked at commercial ratings in 2005, MTV lost more than 20% of its 18- to 34-year-old prime-time viewers during breaks. Over the course of a day, VH1 lost 14% of its 18- to 49-year-old viewers during breaks”.

Thank God at least the 14 year-olds are sticking around to see the latest prepaid wares from Amp’d mobile.

But to turn this back into a constructive position, and one that would actually help consumers and networks alike, MTV is asking for an engagement measurement – which not only makes sense given their content, but would also elevate the general state of TV advertising overall (imagine if networks could punish marketers and agencies for ads that cause program attrition: “Ok, Skittles, even thought the Clio folks loved the weirdo-long-beard-guy, 12% of our audience didn’t and they changed the channel. You owe us $286/CPM on that loss). I want my MTV indeed.

MTV (the channel, not the Network) was once a giant at inventing new programming genres that could attract and keep finicky teens and YAs: , Remote control, Yo! MTV Raps, Liquid Television Real World, Newlyweds, The Osbournes, Jackass…  Now, let’s see if they can temporarily redirect the focus of even finickier media buyers and their clients. I want my MTV indeed.

Video, in the end, may just kill the video star.

So in January I wrote a blog entitled The E-Race to the Whitehouse. In that blog I outlined the interactive marketing tactics that Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain were using at the on-start of their campaigns. Since then, I’ve received 50+ emails, all personally addressed to me, from the Senators, their friends, their family, and their staff. I’ve also seen webcasts, blogs, and accounts on Flickr, Facebook, and MySpace. But, what caused me to write this update 4 months later? This:

In this YouTube video, Senator Clinton talks about a recent campaign where she requested that users help pick her campaign song. The unique thing about this new video is that it’s funny! After watching it, I thought, “Wow, maybe social networking really can both help a candidate’s (or company’s) image AND help them reach a younger audience!”

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.