Lynette Web points us to a study that finds most teens are in a social network (duh) but also finds that the prevalence of social networks may devalue longtime humiliating (or triumphant) traditions like reunions for those way past teenhood.
"For instance, we recently talked about having our five-year class reunion, and I found that most of the people I asked said they really had no reason to get together in five years because they used sites like MySpace and Facebook to stay in touch with anyone they really wanted to keep up with, anyway," says Sam Ford of Convergence Culture.
That's disappointing. What have we been working so hard for if in the next five years we can't show our former nemeses how awesome we still look, then act really sweet and invite them (and their six screaming babies) to sit next to us? We have officially lost our will to go on. MySpace, you destroy everything you touch.
- Cynopsis Reports, "CBS Sports had a super night Sunday with Super Bowl XLI averaging a fast national household rating/share of 42.6/64 from 627p-1004p. The 9-930p time period earned the highest rating/share of 45.0/65. Super Bowl XLI was the second most-watched Super Bowl ever, averaging 93.15 million viewers. Sunday's NFL championship telecast also ranks third overall as the most watched program in television history after the series finale of M*A*S*H and Super Bowl 30."
- MediaPost reports, "A total of 58% of Super Bowl advertisers, some of whom paid as much as $2.6 million for a 30-second spot, also purchased pay-per-click search ads on their brand names--up from 42% last year, according to Reprise."
- Adland has the story on a Swedish teaser poster campaign that was hijacked by a porn company who took all the glory for it leaving the originator of the advertising, SJ Train, up the creek.
Consumer-generated "marketing campaigns" are hot this Super Bowl season, an indication of either curiosity, desperation or laziness which may contribute in part to big brands' decisions to shy away from this year's pigskin adfest.
Lending legitimacy to this lame attempt at representing their companies, Compete compiled some data on which consumer-gens are faring best and worst this close to the cut.
more »
- Former Gawker Founding Editor Elizabeth Spiers, now founder of Dead Horse Media plans to launch several new blogs. One will cover organic living.
- Online ad spending is predicted to increase 18 percent in 2007 while media spend in other media decline.
- If you want the background behind those 20 websites Toy, New York created for OfficeMax, here's the video that recaps the project.
- Apparently, consumers aren't the only ones having trouble understanding a brand's positioning. In a recent Louws Management Corporation study, it was found just 1/4 could clearly articulate their company's brand positioning. Oops.
- Incumbent Riney is out of the Sprint Nextel pitch. Goodby, O&M and Y&R remain.
- Boobs and bikinis are now hawking coffee at coffee shops.
- P&G and Unilever has decided to sit out this year's Super Bowl advertising extravaganza and will, instead, allocate dollars to other efforts they feel will provide a better ROI.
- Rather than believing its new operating system is good enough to seel itself, Microsoft is serving up a $500 million worldwide waterfall of advertising.
- A "viral" print ad? Yawn. Snooze. Huh? WTF?
- George is right. The five finalists in the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl are quite good. Our money is one Duct Tape of Mouse Trap.
- George also thinks he has the perfect replacement for the Maytag Man. He thinks it's Elmo Blatch (real name: Bill Bolanfder), the guy who killed the Tim Robbin's character's wife.
more »
A survey of 2,500 men and women ages 18 to 59 was conducted by New York-based Brand Keys and found - through some sort of proprietary prediction model - Budweiser, Footlocker, Frito-Lay, Pepsi and Coke will benefit most from the money they spend during this year's Super Bowl. This is the third year the organization has conducted the study which you can download here (Word Doc).
Is it just us or are people idiots when it comes to navigating to popular websites? A recent Hitwise study featured on eMarketer found MySpace to be the top search term for 2006. Also on the list are ebay, Yahoo and Mapquest. Are we the only ones that realize all you have to do is add a .com to these popular names rather than search for them? Hmm. I suppose somewhere in the world, there are still people who haven't heard of the Internet either. Oh well. At least Hitwise is making some money with this nonsense.
Even if he can't sell CD's, Kevin Federline proves he can generate buzz by sole merit of his complete lameness. And it's nice when you can get attention by being yourself.
Nielsen BuzzMetrics reports that the latest ad deal for the Speared ex-beau accounts for a whopping 26% of all Super Bowl ad-related blog conversations between January 14 and January 21. The figures cap at 49% on January 17. Compare those beans with the '06 figures.
"Sometimes the counter-intuitive or 'campy' choice of spokesperson yields the highest pre-game buzz dividend," Nielsen CMO Pete Blackshaw explains. "Nationwide saw a similar lift last year with the use of retro-star MC Hammer, and this helped them take a higher share of mindshare leading to the game."
Congrats to K-Fed. Guess there really is a calling for everybody.
It shocked us a little that for 2006 somebody will actually get credit for doing more than being you or spending money. But instead of dicking around like its counterparts, AdWeek stays on track by asking vital questions like, "What's more important, growth or creativity?" which they say contained the big answer for which agencies deserve the gold stars for blood, sweat and tears.
And that's why they've awarded Global Agency of the Year to TBWA, which orchestrated the oft-spoofed but beloved Mac v. PC campaign.
AdWeek also gave Goodby, Silverstein & Partners the coveted US Agency of the Year Award for their "Got Milk?" campaign, featuring an odd alien twist and even some scandal in '05.
Hats off to Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, to TBWA and to AdWeek. They deserve an award for not shirking the responsibility of doling out much-earned credit in favour of that consumer-as-marketer hype. But we can't just blame Ad Age and Time for slacking when lately even major brands prefer to beg for ads instead of creating something themselves.
But hey, it's a fine line between generating legit consumer interactivity and generating yourself out of a job, yeah?
- Cynopsis reports, "The retransmission rights payments disagreement between MediaCom Communications and Sinclair Broadcast Group came to a head late Friday and into Saturday with MediaCom being forced to drop 22 Sinclair stations from its cable system in 12 states as of 12:01a January 6."
- Time Magazine is getting into the blog game with a site makeover, a news aggregator and topical blogs.
- Ecommerce hit the 4100 billion mark in 2006 and continues to charge ahead.
- Brands should know by now an angry mob of bloggers is something to steer clear of lest you want amplified what you intended to be hushed.
- Time says you are the Person of the year. Advertising Age says the consumer is the Agency of the Year. Jonah Bloom explains they really didn't copy Time.
- The free 411 services are catching on with advertisers. Aegon Insurance and Absolut are the latest brands to become advertisers on 1-800-FREE411.
- Heavy.com has closed on a second round of financing, $20 million from Polaris Venture Partners. The financing will be used to expand the network internationally.
|
