Tag Archives: advertising

Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful

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While flipping through the latest edition (were there previous editions?) of Jefferson City Magazine, I came across this ad for KRCG TV. Actually, it’s only half of the ad. I think the facing page had some news guys or something. But Marketing Consultant Kristi Gratz was clearly out front.

marketing-consultant

I don’t know Ms. Gratz but assume she is a very good Marketing Consultant or she would no be so featured. But this ad does not conjure up reams of ratings data and CPM charts. Frankly, Ms. Gratz looks hot. I don’t think that was her –or KCRG’s– intent, it’s just the filthy old horn dog in me.

And if you imagined Jefferson City as some midwestern hayseed haven, take gander at the cover of Jefferson City Magazine. It would seem you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a babe or a hunk (and the occasional horn dog).

This cover has given me a great idea. Coffee Zone: The Ones To Watch. I don’t have time to lay it out tonight, but watch this space or YanisCoffeeZone.com later this week.

If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to call KCRG regarding some spots promoting smays.com.

“Oh, hello. May I speak with Ms. Gratz, please? Yes, I need some marketing.”

No more creating mass through scarcity

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So you’ve got a TV station or radio station or newspaper with all this good “content.” The cost of producing it is already sunk so you put it on your website and sell some banner ads. Ch-ching. But it just isn’t working for a lot of “legacy media” and Terry Heaton explains why:

“The assumptions of any content play are that its value is so great that expensive, adjacent advertising will support it and that the mass attractive to advertisers can be created through scarcity. Neither of these assumptions is viable online, and the real problem is that both must be present for significant revenue to be realized.”

So what do we do?

“We should nurture our legacy products as best we can, but we simply must separate our ability to make money from our dependence on the content we create. The key to that is in defining, understanding and developing the Local Web.”

I added the bold in hopes that would help me understand what he’s saying. I think he’s referring to the content we are already creating. We have a story in the paper, we put it on the web. We have a good radio morning show, we stream it. And so on.

We can’t just “re-purpose” our existing content and expect to attract an audience that will be attractive to an advertiser. I think he’s right.

Listenomics and why things are different this time

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I remember reading Bob Garfield’s The Chaos Scenario as an article in Advertising Age but I’m not sure I listened to the interview Mark Ramsey (Hear 2.0) posted to his website back in March. More on that in a moment. I don’t think the book is out yet but here’s a blurb from the web page:

“What happens when the old world order collapses and the Brave New World is unprepared to replace it…as an ad medium, as a news source, as a political soapbox, as a channel for new episodes of “Lost?” That is The Chaos Scenario.

In this fascinating, terrifying, instructive and often wildly entertaining book, Garfield is not content to chronicle the ruinous disintegration of traditional media and marketing. No, having established the problem, he travels to five continents for solutions.

What he discovers is the answer for all institutions who wish to survive – and thrive – in a digitally connected, Post-Media Age. He calls this the art and science of Listenomics.”

Mr. Garfield is Advertising Age editor-at-large and co-host of NPR’s On the Media. Looking forward to the book. If you spot it before I do, let me know.

Local newspaper subscription drive

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I almost didn’t post this because I don’t want to read anything into the photo. But this young man is soliciting subscribers to the local newspaper. This might be part of an on-going effort. I don’t know and was uncomfortable asking the young man. He did say he had picked up “a few new ones.”

The signs offer a $10 Hy-vee gift card with every new subscription. Or you can just try the paper for free for three weeks.

This reminds me a story old radio “time salesmen” used to tell. They’d give a car dealer a little break on their ad buys if the dealer would tune all the radios on the lot to their station. Sweet!

If I had been given this assignment, I like to think I would have dressed in my best Mickey Rooney outfit, grabbed a HUGE stack of papers, and started shouting (as loudly as store management would allow)… EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT IN THE NEWS TRIBUNE! EXTRA! EXTRA!

When they came over (okay, IF they came over) I’d make my pitch.

PS for the paper webmaster: Dude. This is THE slowest loading page I’ve come across in a while. GOT to get that fixed.

Google lets me target ads at myself. No more old people ads?

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“Not only will Google now target ads at you based on your interest, but it will also let you target yourself. Anyone can go to Google’s Ad Preferences Manager and see exactly how Google is categorizing their interests. Now, here’s the really smart part: Google lets you add or remove any interest. In effect, it is inviting you to declare what kind of ads you want to see. You can also opt out of the program completely.”– TechCrunch

It took me less than 3 minutes to update my interests for Google. And I’m sure I’ll go back from time to time to tweak them.

 

Are radio commercials spam?

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A little preface here: Most of the food I ever put in my mouth was paid for –directly or indirectly– by radio commercials. My father was a radio guy and for many years I wrote and produced radio “spots.” Lots and lots of them. Some were good, some were just the right length, if you know what I mean.

So when Seth Godin –one of the keynote speakers at the recent Country Radio Seminar in Nashville– refers to radio commercials as “spam,” it’s a problem for me. I’m a regular reader of Mr. Godin’s blog and have purchased and read a number of his books. I think he understands marketing in the 21st century as well as anyone.

So what’s spam and what’s not?

When you get your hands on my email address and send me an unsolicited email trying to sell me something (or get me to give you money, or visit your porn site, etc) …without my permission, we call that spam. You invaded my inbox without my permission.

When I turn on my local radio station, I know there will be commercials. They pay for the music/news/weather programs for which I tuned in. I’m giving tacit permission for the the station to try to sell me something on behalf of their advertisers. Value for value. That doesn’t sound like spam to me.

And if every commercial I heard was talking about something I cared about, something of interest… I’d probably pay more attention and the commercials would be worth more to the advertiser.

This is how cable TV programs work. If I’m watching HGTV (House & Garden), there’s a pretty good chance the commercials will at least marginally relevant.

I’m sure a lot of radios stations attempt to do this when and where they can. But it’s tough. They’re trying to reach the largest audience they can and will sell a spot to damn near anyone (preachers and politicians pay in advance).

Given the choice, most of us will choose NOT to listen to a poorly produced or irrelevant message. Commercial or otherwise.

So are are radio spots spam or not?

Only the listener can answer that. And he or she does, every time they punch the button to another station. And keeps punching it until they find a song or talk show they like (at least more than the commercial). Or pull out the iPod.

Online advertising

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“The Tribune Company owns businesses (which) make money by placing ads in between (broadcast) or alongside (print) scarce content. That model, I’m afraid, is dying for two reasons. One, content isn’t scarce anymore. Two, advertisers have other, cheaper ways of reaching the people formerly known as the audience. I’m not sure there’s any form of government help that can protect traditional media from that.”

— Terry Heaton on Tribune bankruptcy

“This change has been more like seeing oncoming glaciers ten miles off, and then deciding not to move.”

— Clay Shirky