[The Product Is You is an occasional Murketing series collecting advertising that is aimed at advertisers: Magazines or television networks packaging up their consumers — that is, you, the potential ad target — in ways designed to attract advertisers. Previous installments here.]
This somewhat recent summation by Seventeen Magazine of who its readers are, and why advertisers want to reach them, is a model of the form. The first page panders to the marketing-world viewpoint that today’s teens are incredibly difficult to understand, practically another life form, and whatever “your idea of teens” is, it’s wrong. Then page two brushes aside the entire notion that teens are scary aliens — or at least the teens who read Seventeen aren’t. In fact, they are consumption machines. They have money to burn, and you need to get your brand in their face right away. By advertising in Seventeen, of course.
After the jump, a second ad from the same campaign further reassures potential advertisers that not only is the Seventeen reader jarringly shopping-mad, but so are her friends — and she works hard to make sure they follow her example. Read more
[The Product Is You is an occasional Murketing series collecting advertising that is aimed at advertisers: Magazines or television networks packaging up their consumers — that is, you, the potential ad target — in ways designed to attract advertisers. Previous installments here.]
Here is a Channel 1 ad, promising those who would advertise on the in-school television network that doing so will “connect teens to your brand.” What sort of teens does Channel 1 have to offer? Apparently the sort of teen who is concerned about such issues as high gas prices. But the key is why is concerned: “I have to spend my money on gas and not other things I’d like to buy.” He is tuned in to the big issues of the day — because he recognizes that they might have an effect on his personal consumption habits. Perfect.
The Consumed column earlier this year about the Geico cavemen mentioned the massive amounts of money that the insurance company spends on advertising. Is it worth it?
An item in Ad Age the other day says yes. Since 2004, Geico has increased its ad spending by 75%, to more than half a billion dollars a year. Citing a study by JD Power, Ad Age says Geico’s market share has grown, it tops rivals in acquiring new customers, and awareness of the brand has risen — “91% of shoppers today say they have seen or heard at least one Geico message in the last 12 months.”
That’s really an amazing figure. I didn’t know it was possible to expose 91% of Americans to anything anymore.
What this really means to other advertisers is hard to say. It does suggest that advertising can still work, etc., but creative aside, that spending level is pretty dizzying.
Posted Under:
Advertising,
Update
This post was written by Rob Walker on July 25, 2007
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Exciting news! The global warming crisis will soon be solved. Why? Because Current TV is having a consumer-generated ad contest, that’s why. “The way nations and societies make up their minds in the modern age has much more to do with mass advertising than many of us purists would like, but that’s the reality,” Al Gore informs the New York Times. “Since we face a true planetary emergency, we have to give the planet a P.R. agent.”
Your brow is furrowed because all this talk of “mass advertising” and PR agencies sounds kind of old-think, am I right? Well, unfurrow now. Current TV will tapping the creativity of the masses, who will be incentivized to submit their home-made 15, 30, or 60-second TV spots by the possibility of winning a brand new car! The winner will be announced in November, and after that the awesome power of advertising will kick in, hip us all to the problem of this global warming thing — which, really, has hardly gotten any attention — which I can only assume will be promptly solved.
The Times story includes a quote from Butler, Shine honcho Greg Stern. (NYT doesn’t mention it, but that agency was a user-generated-content pioneer, with its Converse Gallery campaign.) “The idea of turning to consumers to spread the word is very smart,” Stern says. “It might even preclude the need for an ad agency.”
He sounds kind of relieved.
Posted Under:
Advertising,
America
This post was written by Rob Walker on July 13, 2007
Comments Off on Consumer-generated ads to the rescue
[The Product Is You is an occasional Murketing series collecting advertising that is aimed at advertisers: Magazines or television networks packaging up their consumers — that is, you, the potential ad target — in ways designed to attract advertisers. Previous installments here.]
In recognition of the recent reports that Jane Magazine is shutting down, two examples of how the publication characterized its readers to potential advertisers.
[The Product Is You is an occasional Murketing series collecting advertising that is aimed at advertisers: Magazines or television networks packaging up their consumers — that is, you, the potential ad target — in ways designed to attract advertisers. Previous installments here.]
This is from a couple of years ago, but I’ve hung onto it because it’s one of my favorite examples of the transaction being proposed: Hey advertiser, we would like to sell you this guy.
When I read this story the other day, I of course thought it was nuts:
Judging from the biological reactions, test subjects were just as engaged while watching fast-forwarded advertisements as they were while viewing opening scenes from the NBC show “Heroes” at regular speed.
In other words, those ads you blast past with a DVR fast forward button are as “engaging” as the ones you used to sit through. The source of this research is NBC, which wants to convince advertisers that the money they pay for commercial time isn’t being thrown away just because a certain percentage of the audience fast-forwards past the spots.
Absurd, right? Just more desperation from networks trying to salvage their business model. And that may be the case.
On the other hand, while a fast-forwarded ad may not be as engaging as an actual, watched ad, that doesn’t necessarily mean it has no effect at all.
One of the big mistakes that people often make about advertising is that it works (or fails to work) in purely rational or linear ways. That is: Consumer sees ad; consumer is persuaded; consumer goes to store and buys product. Of course, that almost never happens. The brain is a complicated thing, and as you probably know, a great deal of the work it does takes place at a non-conscious level. One famous book on this general subject is Timothy D. Wilson’s Strangers To Ourselves, which was a major (cited) influence on the best-seller Blink. It’s not a book about advertising by any means, but I belatedly remembered and looked up one passage that’s relevant here.
Basically Wilson makes the point that regular advertising often works the way that people believe subliminal advertising (naked figures in ice cubes in a liquor ad or whatever) works: By communicating with the non-conscious part of the mind.
People fear subliminal advertisements (which have no effect) more than everyday advertising (which often has powerful effects) because they worry that they will be influenced without knowing it. But ironically, everyday advertisements are more likely to influence us without our fully recognizing that we are being influenced. It is not as if we go to the drugstore and think, “Should I buy the house brand or Advil? Well, if Advil is good enough for Nolan Ryan, it’s good enough for me…” Instead, we might find a name brand more comforting or familiar and not realize why we feel that way. So we shell out the extra cash for something that is no different from the house brand…
A failure to recognize the power of advertising makes us more susceptible to it … because we are likely to lower our guard while watching commercials or fail to avoid them altogether. …
He adds that he and a colleague in one study (which I haven’t read) used the term “mental contamination” to describe the process, “because our minds can unknowingly become ‘polluted’ with information we would rather not have influence us.”
The upshot is that while maybe you’re not engaging with that Taco Bell ad the same you would if you were sitting there hanging on every word. But a) how often do you hang on every word of an ad even real time, and b) even at super-fast speeds, you may still processing the fact it’s a Taco Bell ad. Does that mean you’ll march like a robot to Taco Bell afterwards? Of course not. But maybe Taco-Bellness has taken up one or two more bits of your nonconscious mind just the same, and maybe that will make a difference later without you ever consciously thinking about it. (And maybe the more certain you are that you’re ad-proof, the more likely it is to occur.)
A little esoteric-sounding, perhaps. But the point is that it is possible that a bit of “mental contamination” is getting through after all. And if it is, then maybe advertisers do owe networks something for such scenarios — because delivering such “pollution” is the name of the game.
[The Product Is You is an occasional Murketing series looking at advertising that is aimed at advertisers: Magazines or television networks packaging up their consumers — that is, you, the potential ad target — in ways designed to attract advertisers. Previous installment here.]
I watch Bravo. “Top Chef,” “Project Runway,” sometimes that Kathy Griffin thing, maybe other stuff too. So it’s only fair that the second installment of The Product Is You should take a look at the sequel to the previously mentioned Bravo ad. This one offers up a deconstruction of the typical Bravo-watching man. In other words: This time the product is me.
Like his mate, Bravo Guy greets the world with a blank and empty gaze, toting fresh purchases, his credit cards visibly at the ready for more shopping.
Some details:
A “rock t-shirt” that he “bought online, but he still digs the band.” In other words: He’s a poseur with a Peter Pan complex. (And who apparently doesn’t even have it in him to wear his “rock t-shirt” unless it’s covered up by a borderline-generic button-down.)
The “latest cell phone,” crammed with individuality-boosting ringtones and wallpapers, plus a Bluetooth earpiece that is “part design statement.”
Credit cards “most recently used at the mall for lunch and shopping.” Ah, lunch at the mall. It’s the perfect setting for a Bluetooth design statement. Stop by Hot Topic for some new T’s when you finish those waffle fries, rocker.
A linen blazer: “Learned to ‘make it work’ by watching Project Runway.” Translation: Takes orders from the little flickering images of good-looking people on his TV set. That’s why you’ll love him most of all, advertisers. Get to this bundle of insecurities before his next self-medicating shopping trip. He’s waiting for your help ….
Bottom line: Now you know what I’m really like.
What’s your take on this person? Credit cards burst from her pockets. She carries two bags full of stuff, and uses two gizmos at once. Her smile is unconvincing, her gaze glassy and unfocused. She looks dazed, rather zombie-ish. Who is she?
If you’re fan of Bravo, she is you. Or at least, she is the representation of you that Bravo uses to round up advertising.
I will explain what I mean by that in this first installment of yet another new Murketing feature, an occasional series called “The Product Is You.”
Trade journals for the advertising and marketing business are themselves full of ads. Of course the ads there are different from the ones you see in regular magazines, because these are not aimed at consumers. They are aimed at advertisers.
That is to say: Networks and magazines and other entities whose business model depends on advertising take out ads in the ad trades, to attract advertisers. Got it? So what they tout in these ads-to-attract-advertising, is their audience.
What they are packaging and selling is, in other words, you, the consumer of media, potential target of advertising. If a media entity attracts consumers that advertisers want to address, then it can sell more advertising time, or space.
This Bravo ad, which took up two full pages of an advertising trade, is an example of a particular style of audience-packaging that I’ve always found fascinating. It’s an example that I think is worth lingering over for a moment.
Bravo’s pitch is that its viewers are “affluencers.” These desirable creatures are “now available” to advertisers who buy time on Bravo. As you can see, these sample affluencers are depicted here in fully packaged form. They are right there, sealed up, ready to be bought, and sold to. Read more
The Geico cavemen sitcom has been picked up by ABC, and will air Tuesday nights at 8 Eastern. So reports the NYT:
The half-hour series will have a different cast from the seven commercials that have appeared since the campaign was introduced in 2004…. But the premise of the sitcom is the same as the campaign: The cavemen, living in contemporary America, seek to counter what they perceive to be prejudice against them….
ABC hopes that the popularity of the caveman campaign will translate into ratings, [some network guy] said, as part of the network’s plans to reinvigorate the lackluster sitcom genre by “taking real chances” with premises and plot lines. ..
ABC and Geico “may collaborate on some form of integration,” [the guy] said, referring to interweaving references to Geico into story lines.
Search that articles the “previous coverage” links in vain for a reference to this Consumed on the subject.
Also: AdRants has posted that the early word on the sitcom is not good.
Finally: Here is a clip and some hype from ABC’s site.
Got 20 minutes to kill? Sure you do.
Check out this 1970s Navy recruiting film, narrated by Lou Rawls, and with a superdope sound track by “Port Authority, the US Navy’s Soul Band.”
Rawls, in his astonishingly authoritative voice, explains how when you sign up, you canlearn electronics, “like these brothers.” You’ll “get threaded out” with a Navy uniform. You’ll learn to swim — “swim man, dig?” And you’ll also experience this epiphany: “When you’re hungry enough, common weeds taste like soul food.”
Getting “threaded out” is a piece of slang that really, really needs to make a comeback.
More seriously, the film is a pretty fascinating document. I became aware of it after hearing an NPR piece the other day about the near-collapse of black enlistment in the armed forces; African-American sentiment has been strongly anti-the-Iraq-war from the start, and apparently black enlistment has fallen fifty percent since it started.
It’s interesting, with this old recruiting film, to sort of listen between the lines, and decide for yourself just how openly it is saying: Look, this is a racist and sexist society, but as an African-American, woman, or both, you’ll have a much better chance of rising on your merits than you will in civilian life.
Or, as Rawlsy soulfully puts it: “The new Navy is together, all together.”
New developments regarding the predicted (by others, not by me) age of a world “devoid of brand advertising as we know it:”
TV “ad clutter” was “relatively flat” in 2006, according to one recent study, with broadcast and cable channels “running an average 15 minutes of nonprogram time per hour in prime time.”
This is seen as somewhat good news: At least clutter isn’t growing at the same pace of recent years.
On the other hand, Red Herring says:
Beware YouTube watchers, ads are coming?as soon as this summer.
The video-sharing site that was acquired by Google in November is experimenting with the precise length, form, and placement of those ads, and will begin rolling them out this summer, Suzie Reider, head of advertising for YouTube, [said recently]
“We’re looking at executions like a very quick little intro preceding a video, then the video, then a commercial execution on the backside of the content,” Ms. Reider said.
The idea is to generate long-promised revenues that Google can share with the more than 1,000 “premium” content creators whose video material is available on YouTube, Ms. Reider said.
In Consumed: The Geico Cavemen: What an ad campaign spawning potential sitcom characters really reveals.
The recent news that ABC was willing to entertain the possibility of a sitcom starring the Geico cavemen seemed a sort of watershed. Here were characters dreamed up as part of an advertising campaign, potentially crossing over into a venerable form of mainstream, pop-culture entertainment. While that sounds momentous, it misses a larger point. As characters in a successful advertising campaign, the cavemen are already part of mainstream pop culture. More so, in fact, than the characters in most current sitcoms….
Read the rest of the column by way of this New York Times Magazine link, which will probably expire in a week, or this Boston Globe link.
[April 20 Update] Some blog references/reactions to the column: Scott Goodson/StrawberryFrog; Jason Oke/Leo Burnett Toronto; Disney corporate blog; PSFK.
The problem: With utility rates rising sharply in the Ukraine, many people there have simply stopped paying their utility bills.
Solution: An ad campaign. With attitude.
How much attitude? Well, the main figure used in the billboards and television ads was Joseph Stalin, “a man whom many Ukrainians blame for killing one-third of the country’s population during the famine in the 1930s,” the Associated Press notes.
In the television ad, Stalin is shown in grainy black-and-white footage being applauded by hundreds of party members as a dubbed-over voice says: “Those who don’t pay for their heat should be punished!”
Okay, okay. That’s actually too much attitude. The campaign has been called off.
Posted Under:
Advertising
This post was written by Rob Walker on March 27, 2007
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Our heroes over at Stay Free declare the Prank of the Month:
A guy in Switzerland, pretending to be a representative from Gucci, called up a weekly paper and reserved a two-page spread. He then sent in a fake ad of himself naked from the waist up, flanked by a bottle of Gucci fragrance. When the bill went to Gucci as he requested, hilarity ensued.
Posted Under:
Advertising
This post was written by Rob Walker on March 23, 2007
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