One of the most unbearable moments of truth in business comes when standing in front of a copy machine assuming, while acknowledging the hopelessness of that assumption, the machine will dutifully perform its job. In this commercial, when presented with the dreadful "paper jam" indicator, a woman reacts in the usual fashion by taking her anger out on the machine. But, as we find out, it's not always the copy machines fault and this copy machine wants her to know that.
- Ypulse points to the launch of the new American Legacy Foundation "Seek Truth" smoking prevention campaign which shows teens holding placards placards asking questions outside an undisclosed tobacco company headquarters in New York City.
- Ty Montague has resigned as co-creative director of Wieden + Kennedy here, and sources said he is heading to WPP Group's J. Walter Thompson in the top creative job.
- Digitas is the new direct marketing agency of record for General Motors Corp.'s Saab. Digitas has handled interactive efforts since 1999 and will take on the direct portion following Brann Baltimore which resigned the account after its becoming part of Euro RSCG 4D.
Bob Bly, who's been a copywriter forever, doesn't like weblogs.
Expressing that opinion would be welcomed if Bly had a proper understanding of the platform. After reading his article about the topic on DMNews, it is clear he has no idea what he is talking about.
Bly writes, "The first is that most blogs I encounter are rambling, streams-of-consciousness musings about a topic of interest to the author, largely bereft of the practical, pithy tips that e-zines, Web sites and white papers offer." Apparently, Bly has only reader the Xangas and LiveJournals of teenage girls. There are many fine, business focused weblogs with valuable and intelligent content for business professionals published today. For a taste, visit Rick Bruner' s Business Blog Consulting which is a compendium of business weblogs.
Bly then writes, "The second problem involves distribution. With an e-zine, once the reader subscribes, he gets it delivered to him electronically every week or month or however often you send it. But with a blog, the reader has to go out and proactively look for it. And since your contributions to your blog may be irregular and unscheduled, he has no way of knowing when something new of interest has been added." Mr. Bly has obviously never heard of RSS or newsreaders which deliver the content of a weblog, post by post, to a person's desktop in real time without all the baggage in most HTML e-zines. Not to mention the need to sift through spam just to get to the email. By the way, didn't the term "e-zine" go out with the 90's? Bly digs himself in even deeper, "And thatÂ’s another of my complaints with blogs in particular and the Web in general: the ease with which people can post and disseminate content. "The best thing about the Web is that anyone can publish on it; the worst thing about the Web is that anyone can publish on it," a computer magazine columnist once observed." Mr. Bly one of the most powerful things the weblog publishing platform does is enable many voices to be heard. It's called Citizen's Media. Why should voice a opinion be limited in any way? We can certainly understand why that might threaten your multi-million dollar annual fees earned by writing all those overpriced newsletters for major corporations.
Further illustrating his misunderstanding, Bly writes, "Blogs are, by virtue of being a form of online diary, like diaries: rambling, incoherent and more suited for private thoughts than public consumption. If you have something of value to share, many better formats exist for doing it online than by blogging, including white papers, e-zines and Web sites." Blogs are only rambling incoherent diaries if they are written that way. The weblog publishing platform does not perpetuate a particular writing style. It just makes it easier to publish thought - good or bad. And white papers? Who reads those anymore? All you get out of white papers is high level marketing blather and who needs that? Oh wait, you do Bob. Writing them pays your salary.
UPDATE: Business Blog Consulting's Rick Bruner makes the case for weblog's contribution to ROI.
Rather than suing the band for co-opting its name, the U.S. Postal Service has entered a marketing agreement with Postal Service, the band. "We could've abandoned the name," the band's record label Sub Pop Owner Jonathon Poneman said, "but it would've been a significant setback. Name recognition is very important to us. While they've certainly settled on a popular name, one wonders what sort of hostage situation they've found themselves in. The band will play an exclusive concert for senior Postal Service execs and the band's music may end up in USPS ad campaigns.
Hummer hosted a branded concert with the Black Eyed Peas in Anaheim, CA for 1,500 Hummer owners to promote its new, smaller H3 which sat on the stage as the band performed. The concert was held one day prior to the official unveiling of the vehicle at the California International Auto Show. Following the concert, a three minute video was shown and then placed on Hummer .com.
Over the next four days, the video had 20,000 views, the heaviest traffic the site has ever seen.
If that brand onslaught wasn't enough for concert-goers, XM Satellite Radio was there pimping its relationship with GM along with Cigar Aficionado which held a cigar tasting event. While brands have had a presence at concerts for a long time, full on brand sponsorships are relatively new. Following the traditional model of offering "content" for free, the growth of concertisements will depend heavily of musical artists's comfort with "selling out."
In an effort to "hip up" the brand, Mercury has launched Meet The Lucky Ones, an online soap opera-like webisode. It's a story written and produced in the style of a quirky independent film about the comic misadventures of a slightly dysfunctional family. The story unfolds over a five-week period and is told through an interlocking combination of Internet-delivered short films, coupled with interactive elements that reveal significantly more details about the characters and the plot than you get from the films themselves.
The film shorts depict a droll and bland existence filled with odd twists worthy of an episode of Six Feet Under.
Mercury's agency, Wunderman Detroit enlisted entertainment industry professionals to create the piece. Creator Kirt Gunn brought together a team of top talent, including: Director, Derek Cianfrance - 2003 Sundance Film Festival Award Winner for Best Cinematography, Quattro Noza; Executive Producers Jon Kamen and Greg Schultz of @radical media - Producer of the 2004 Academy Award Winner for Best Documentary Feature, Fog of War and of Fade to Black; Writer, Ed Herbstman - Da Ali G Show, Creative Consultants, Mother New York, and Musical Composer, Stephin Merritt - The Magnetic Fields.
While it doesn't quite come off as an indie film so far, it does introduce radical (as ad campaigns go) topics such as murder and death at the same time tying it to a chance to win a new car. Quirky indeed.
GM has launched a weblog to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the smallblock engine. The first entry was October 21 and discusses how the Chevrolet Corvette became a sports car once it had the GM smallblock V-8 was put under the hood.
Another couple posts review smallbock milestones over the last 50 years. Chevrolet Chief Engineer Ed Cole is highlighted as the man behind the creation of the engine. With proper syndication feeds, GM hopes, perhaps, to at least gather the following of some gearheads interested in this sort of thing. The blog sits on the domain gmblogs.com indicating other blogs may follow but currently, the page only sports a GM Blogs logo. A call to Hass MS&L, a GM public relations agency and the whois registrant of the site confirms the site is a GM initiative but referred calls to GM's corporate communications.
We await callbacks.
There are innumerable, un-branded car enthusiast sites available and time will tell whether branded sites such as this GM blog will see adoption. While the site is clearly GM produced, it would behoove GM to state clearly on the weblog GM is firmly behind it so as to ward off skeptics. If GM does, in fact, have plans to launch more weblogs, the medium could gain more mainstream corporate awarness and be embraced by many more companies likely sitting on the sidelines pondering the viability of the medium.
As we all participate in the newspaper death watch, consumer are oblivious to our prognostications and still consider newspapers to be the most credible medium for news. In a recent InsightExpress study, Newspapers and local TV news ranked above other media as most credible.
Among ABC, CBS and NBC, ratings for women 18-49 are down cumulatively 13 percent. For women 18-34, ratings are down even further at 16 percent. The drop offs are coming mainly from daytime soaps. Perhaps women have finally realized that their own lives are, in fact, more exciting than watching the same person have sex with 12 different people over the span of 30 years. John Consoli's got all the details over at MediaWeek.
Calling the Q4 scatter broadcast market a "leaky faucet," Carat USA Director of National Broadcast Andy Donchin says business is coming in "but it isn't flowing." MediaWeek's Megan Larson posits the uncertainty surrounding the election and the price of oil as possible causes for the low demand as well as the late start of some Q4 programs.
Broadcast networks are doing business at or slightly above upfront prices; cable is a bit lower; movie studio money continues to flow.
And, eyeballs continue to shift unexpectedly.
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