Tag Archives: advertising

Poll: 2 in 5 Americans read paper daily

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One of the findings of an Adweek Media/Harris Poll taken in December 2009. Only 43% of US adults say they read a daily newspaper – either online or in print – almost every day, while 72% read one at least once a week and 81% read one at least once a month. The study found that one in ten adults say they never read a daily newspaper.

“Daily newspaper readership skews heavily toward the older age groups. Almost two-thirds of those ages 55+ (64%) say they still read a daily newspaper almost every day. Younger Americans read newspapers less often. Just more than two in five of those ages 45-54 (44%) read a paper almost every day as do 36% of those ages 35-44. However, less than one-fourth of those ages 18-34 (23%) say they read a newspaper almost every day and 17% in this age group say they never read a daily newspaper.

Though many newspapers are exploring the possibility of charging a monthly fee to read a daily newspaper’s content online, the poll results suggest this tactic is unlikely to work. Three-fourths of online adults (77%) say they would not be willing to pay anything to read a newspaper’s content online. Among the minority willing to pay, one in five online adults (19%) would only pay between $1 and $10 a month for this online content and only 5% would pay more than $10 a month.

The average monthly amount consumers are prepared to pay ranges from $3 in the US and Australia to $7 in Italy.

I want to be depressed by these findings but must confess that I do not read a hold-it-in-your-hands newspaper and I’ve never been better informed. I spend the first two hours of every days gobbling up news from dozens of sources. And much (most?) of the real news comes from newspapers that are bleeding red ink.

What will I be reading if/when those traditional sources are no long? I have no idea.

Is this the future of advertising?

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First, I am assuming this was a paid commercial. And I’m assuming Domino’s Pizza paid a premium. The ultimate “live read.” As I watched, I realized I was paying very close attention, trying to figure out what I was seeing.

Whose idea was this? The show’s writers? You damn well better have good writers if you’re going to try this. Was it Domino’s idea? Their ad agency?

My next thought was, this is a one trick pony. You can’t do this every night. Or even every week. But then it hit me, you wouldn’t need to. This segment had 100% of my attention. I clearly got the message that Domino’s Pizza was trying to make their product a lot better. I don’t need to see some mindless 30 second spot over and over.

This… whatever it is… didn’t insult my intelligence. It played to it in a tongue-in-cheek manner ideally suited to those who watch The Colbert Report. I have no trouble imagining an advertiser paying big bucks for this.

Mel Karmazin interview: “Fucking with the magic”

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Mel Karmazin is the CEO of Sirius Satellite Radio. Before that he was head of CBS Radio. For most of his career he has been known as a “Wall Street darling” for his ability to drive up the price of his various companies’ stock. Don Imus frequently referred to him as the Zen Master. Let’s just say he knows a lot about radio and advertising. I was struck by his description of advertising and frank assessment that Google was “fucking with the magic.”

“I loved the model that I had then. At that point I had… I was the CEO of  CBS and I had a model where you buy a commercial… if you’re an advertiser you buy a commercial in the Super Bowl and, at that time, you paid two-and-a-half million dollars for a spot and had no idea if it worked. I mean, you had no idea if it sold product… did any good… I loved that model! That was a great model! And why …if I can get away with that model… if I’m in the business where I can sell advertising that way, why wouldn’t I want to do it?

No return on investment. And you know how everybody looks for return on investment? We had a a business model that didn’t worry about return on investment and then here comes Google. They screwed it up. They went to all these advertisers and said, we’ll let you know exactly what it is.”

Oooh. Reminds me of the old saw, “I know that only half of my advertising works, I just don’t know which half.” The full interview is worth a watch and confirmed my feeling that a real sea change (in advertising) is taking place.

Monsanto Twitter silence on AP story

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I just spotted (in Google Reader) an Associated Press story about Monsanto with the headline: Monsanto seed business role revealed. Here’s the first graph:

ST. LOUIS — Confidential contracts detailing Monsanto Co.’s business practices reveal how the world’s biggest seed developer is squeezing competitors, controlling smaller seed companies and protecting its dominance over the multibillion-dollar market for genetically altered crops, an Associated Press investigation has found.

I was curious what the twitterverse was saying about the story and found an endless stream of links and comments. No surprise there.

I’ve been following one of Monsanto’s Twitter feeds (@monsantoco) for a while and dropped into see how they were responding to the story and the Twitter buzz.

monsanto-twitter

Nothing since Friday morning at 9:10. Hard to draw any conclusions without know more but with almost 3,000 followers, why wouldn’t you use Twitter to “engage in the conversation.” If not now, when? If not Twitter, how? If you’re going to use social media to tell your story, you gotta be there if/when the story gets unpleasant or be conspicuous by your absence.

Depending on the serious of the AP investigation, there are probably lots of emails and phone calls and maybe even a few meetings, to decide if/how/where to respond to the story.

If anyone on Learfield’s senior management team are reading this, take a few minutes at your next meeting to talk about how you would respond to a big, negative story about our company.  I really think we could engage quickly without making our lawyers all jittery and nauseous.

Disclosure: Monsanto is an advertiser on at least one of the radio networks owned by the company I work for.

UPDATE: Monsanto did get a response up last night. And linked to it from Twitter. Probably hard for a company that large to move any faster.

Newspaper ads: Bought or sold?

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I don’t think I’ve ever met a newspaper advertising salesperson. Given that (until recently?) newspapers are jammed with ads, doesn’t that seem odd? During my Radio Years, I wrote countless commericals and it was common to start from an ad torn from the local newspaper.

My sense back then was that businesses “bought” newspaper ads rather than having to be “sold.” A grocery store HAD to have the weekly specials in the local paper.

I suspect far more time an effort went into the layout of the ad than the selling.

If we have any current or former newspaper sales people reading this, leave us a comment. I’d love to know more about the sales process and how it has changed or is changing.

Why they’ve started putting soap in boxes

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I’ve recently noticed most popular brands of bar soap are sold in boxes, instead of just the paper wrapper. You don’t have to be a genius to figure this out. It makes it a little less obvious –in the store– to see that they’re giving you less soap for the same prices.

soap

The bar on the top is Dial (4.0 oz). The bar on the bottom is Ivory (4.5 oz). It appears to my untrained eye that they’ve shaved more than half an ounce but Ivory is probably less dense (it floats!).

One of the marketing shills would undoubtedly try to convince me the big dip and rounded corners make it easier to hold some horse shit.

It is my sincere hope –long shot, I know–  than in a couple of months I can search Dial Soap and find this post on the first page of Google results.

Obits on TV

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We’ve been fiddling around with the Internet for about 15 years and tried lots of different ideas. Streaming audio of debate from the state legislature; oral arguments from the state supreme court; online database of accident reports format he state highway patrol; and –as the say– the list goes on. One idea could never get off the ground was Obits Online. This was back in the late ’90’s as I recall.

Funeral homes would log in to our online database and post funeral announcements. The public could search by name, date, city, etc etc. We pitched the funeral home associations in Missouri and Iowa (maybe some other states, I don’t recall).

The idea never got off the ground because most funeral homes were still trying to figure out their fax machines and were convinced the people in their communities were not using computers and were unlikely to do so any time soon.

I bring up this stillborn digital baby after spotting this story (AdAge.com) about a TV station in Michigan that’s running on-air and online obituary ads after three of the region’s four daily newspapers reduced publication to three days a week.

obt-screenshot“For $100, the station will run the deceased’s name and photo on-air and publish a full-length obituary on ObitMichigan.com. Full-screen graphics listing names of people who have passed away are broadcast during the local station’s morning and noon shows Monday through Friday, as well as on weekend morning shows. Viewers are pushed to the website for more information about the deceased as well as funeral-services information.

The station’s owner, Meredith Corp., expects to roll the concept out to its other stations and says it is also in licensing discussions with other station groups.

At $100 an obituary, it’s not clear that WNEM or Meredith has really tapped a massive vein of cash. Revenue from obituaries “is a teeny subset” of overall newspaper-classified revenue, said Mort Goldstrom, VP-advertising at the Newspaper Association of America. Fees charged by papers can range from as high as $1,000 for a major metro to a few hundred dollars for a midmarket paper. And many small community and weekly newspapers still run obituaries for free.

WNEM started running obituaries in August at no charge, to get people familiar with the service and to work out any software bugs. Since launching as a paid service in early September, executives said, the station has over 700 obituaries in its system.

The new obituaries are also prompting a change in the way people go about their daily routine, he said. “The biggest issue that we have is the elderly people that don’t have the ability to pay for internet access or don’t have a computer. Now they see it flash on TV and those that don’t have a computer can call the funeral home and ask for information,” Mr. Luczak said.”

Having the TV station to promote and leverage the idea is an important component. I hope they make some money and provide a useful service.

“Mass Roots Marketing”

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Interesting post at AdAge.com on hyperlocal media and how one big media company –in this case NBC– is attempting to play “at the intersection of advertising, marketing and programming, potentially creating new kinds of content in the burgeoning local arena.”

“We’ll explore what the best solutions are to connect across all platforms. Maybe it’s finding a great blogger who lives in that community who becomes an on-air personality. It’s creating things for people to feel more connected to their community.”

“Local media is going to be the intersection of utility and entertainment and everyday life. As things are globalizing, local becomes even more vital. You have the same brands, the same food, etc., wherever you go now. Local is what makes things different; it gets to what people love about their neighborhood, why they decided to live there.”

“You start with an event or something that happens in a small community in one locale and you’re looking at it to amplify out from that. NBC Local is well-placed to help big marketers to put those new kinds of programs in place. You’ll still have people buying local 30-second spots, but more and more also putting together programs that make an impact on a very local level and have that radiate out in significant ways.”

Uh, isn’t this what local broadcasters and newspapers are doing? Or should be doing? Or used to do? Are the Big Guys planning on doing “local” better than local media?

Stay tuned.