Under Armour Wants to Dress Athletic Young Women

With brawny athletes wearing its sleek, sweat-absorbing apparel in hard-charging situations, the sportswear maker Under Armour became the brand of choice for young men in their teens and 20s. Now the company is aiming to win over a new audience — active young women. “Women’s apparel some day will be larger than our men’s apparel business, which is our goal,” predicted Kevin A. Plank, a former college football player who founded Under Armour 14 years ago. The Baltimore company’s new television and digital campaign for women from ages 13 to 24 features several athletes, the most famous being Lindsey Vonn, the Olympic-winning Alpine skier, undertaking rigorous, even grueling, workouts — strained muscles, sweat and all.

Retargeting Ads Follow Surfers to Other Sites

The shoes that Julie Matlin recently saw on Zappos.com were kind of cute, or so she thought. But Ms. Matlin wasn’t ready to buy and left the site. Then the shoes started to follow her everywhere she went online. An ad for those very shoes showed up on the blog TechCrunch. It popped up again on several other blogs and on Twitpic. It was as if Zappos had unleashed a persistent salesman who wouldn’t take no for an answer. “For days or weeks, every site I went to seemed to be showing me ads for those shoes,” said Ms. Matlin, a mother of two from Montreal. “It is a pretty clever marketing tool. But it’s a little creepy, especially if you don’t know what’s going on.”

Traditional Advertising: Why Companies Need It

Back when the first towns were so small that every resident and half the itinerant traders passing through were on a first-name basis, advertising a professional service meant little more than walking into the village pub and introducing yourself to the innkeeper. Chances are, you would have gotten to the next stage--in part because you were the only lawyer, accountant or land surveyor in town. These days few potential buyers will even take a meeting unless you've found a way to tell them who you are before you walk in the door. Which means something has to open that door for you. Then and only then can your professionalism, empathy, experience and ability to demonstrate a clear value proposition come into play. That's why I'm a big believer in advertising.

Google Sees Facebook Threat in String of Deals

Google products are efficient, slick and -- as the coders say -- elegant. They get you from point A to point B fast. Really fast. But are they fun? That's the question for the search engine as it struggles to gain a foothold in the fast-growing and here-to-stay social web. That web isn't marked by speed and elegance but rather by pit stops and side roads that allow people to pull over, meet new or old friends, play a game and buy souvenirs. In short, have fun.

3 Things You Don't Know About Old Spice's Success

Hello marketers. Look at your marketing. Now at this Old Spice campaign. Now back at your marketing. Now back again. Sadly, your marketing isn't the Old Spice campaign. And guess what? Even if we want to switch to the Old Spice campaign strategy, few of us will ever have the resources for that kind of effort.

Suiting Up in Jerseys Suitable for Women

Ladies, if you have ever wanted to wear strappy stilettos with your favorite football jersey, you are in luck. This fall, the National Football League will begin an advertising campaign encouraging you to do just that. The campaign, called “N.F.L. Women’s Apparel, Fit For You,” takes an approach to marketing clothing that is meant to be both fashionable and sporty. And while jerseys and T-shirts for women have been available on Web sites like nflshop.com and in catalogs, this is the first time the league has dedicated a campaign to apparel for women.

Google Gmail Adds Skype-Like Call Features; Will Ad-Supported Calls Follow?

Google will add the ability to make telephone calls to any phone in the U.S. or Canada from its popular Gmail application by integrating Google Voice and video chat. The feature will roll out to U.S. Gmail users in the next few days. Although Google has offered chat and the ability to make calls to other Gmail subscribers signed into the email service, making a call with the new platform requires users to download Google's voice and video plug-in, click "Call Phone" in the Chat tab of Gmail, and dial the number on keyboard that appears onscreen. The company's microphone and camera provide the required equipment. The platform likely integrates Gizmo5, which Google acquired last year.

Why Isn't Back-to-School a Subscription?

The annual back-to-school shopping season is nearly over, and this year we've witnessed major retailers throw at it bundles, up-sells, bulk discounts, co-branded promotions, free shipping, buzz agents and every other conceivable sales trick. And yet it's hard not to think that they've completely missed the boat. Their marketing presumes that they've never before met their customers, and as if this year is the first time their target audiences have gone shopping for school stuff.

Nissan to Move Beyond Price-Driven Advertising

Nissan's new marketing boss, Jon Brancheau, has only been in his job for three months, but he has been a car marketer for a lifetime. He grew up around the business, his father having worked at General Motors in a Cadillac assembly plant during the 1950s and 1960s. Mr. Brancheau followed in his father's footsteps for a time, leading marketing for Saab and later running GM's international media operations, before jumping over to Nissan Motor America in 2008 to oversee global marketing for Nissan's Infiniti division. Two years later -- after the abrupt departure of his predecessor, Joel Ewanick -- he was made VP-marketing for Nissan.

Facebook, Apple's 'Walled Gardens' Make Analytics That Much Harder for Brands

Tracking the effectiveness of advertising on the web was hard enough. Tracking it in the era of "walled gardens" could become that much tougher. The rapid shift of web audiences and marketer attention toward closely controlled properties such as Facebook or Apple's iAd platform is presenting a growing challenge for web analytics. Nearly a quarter of online time at the PC is now spent with social media, the lion's share of that on Facebook, according to Nielsen Co.

UBS on The F1 Starting Grid

UBS is moving into Formula One as a global partner, giving the Swiss bank a platform to underpin its rebranding and advertising campaign. The partnership, which begins at next month’s Singapore Grand Prix, also gives momentum to F1’s global partner programme, an area that private equity group CVC felt was under-exploited when it took on the commercial rights in 2005.

Creatives, Know When to Ask for Help

I have a theory about why some "traditional" agencies aren't evolving as quickly, or effectively, as they need to: because their creative directors aren't admitting that they're stupid. Now, hang on a minute. Before you take a four-iron to my knee caps, let me explain what I mean. In my pre-creative-director career as a copywriter (you know, back when ads were written in Triceratops blood on cave walls) I never had to worry about writing for a small thing we now call the internet. Back then, an "integrated campaign" meant it had TV, print and radio. The definition of "interactive" was doing a print ad that required someone to turn the page. My colleagues and I never had to think of any solution beyond it.

Groupon Launches National Deal With Gap, Selling 10 Groupons A Second

What a difference a deal makes. This morning, Groupon launched its first nationwide deal, $25 off a $50 purchase at Gap. The promotion, which was available in every city, briefly crashed Groupon’s servers as deal-happy consumers clicked on the 50% discount and pinged their friends. Despite the technical difficulties, according to Groupon‘s CEO Andrew Mason, as of 11AM PST (the e-mail blast went out at roughly 6AM in each time zone) Groupon has sold 200,000 Groupons and is currently selling roughly 10 per second. Ten sales per second is an unusually high volume, Mason says, “several multiples above the average.”

Facebook Launches ‘Check-In’ Service to Connect People in Real Space

Facebook announced a new Places product Wednesday evening that will let users check-in from a mobile device, see who is around them, let friends or the public know where they are, and find interesting, new places. The announcement extends, yet again, the reach of the immensely popular social network, in hopes that the new service will convince its 500 million users to feed more information as they move around in the physical world.

Making Its Own Dating Game, Axe Lines Up Concerts

With the possible exception of zookeepers trying to breed pandas in captivity, surely no one mentions “mating” more than marketers at Axe, the men’s grooming brand whose racy advertisements promise young men that women will find them irresistible if they use their products. “Axe is all about being a guy’s wingman and helping him as he navigates the mating game,” said Mike Dwyer, a marketing director at Unilever. Now, to promote a new fragrance, Axe Music, which will be available in a body spray, shower gel and shampoo, the brand is staging four mystery concerts in major cities, with the artists and sites announced only shortly beforehand.

The Best-Ever Social Media Campaigns

Procter & Gamble's Old Spice was just another guy brand with an entertaining spokesman in its TV commercials until the brand's agency, Wieden + Kennedy, put Isaiah Mustafa on the Web recently and invited fans to use Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets to pose questions that he quickly answered. The questions poured in--even celebrities asked a few--and Mustafa responded in more than 180 Web videos shot quickly over a few days. The real-time effort was the first of its kind, but it won't be the last. Marketers are eager to find clever new ways to engage consumers online with branded content and interactive advertising that is good enough to make people want to share it with their network of friends.

Apple iAd Partners Say They're Happy With Early Results

Apple's iAd mobile advertising platform is getting favorable reviews from the companies whose advertisements were the first to run on the new system, including Dove soap-maker Unilever and Nissan. App makers like Dictionary.com and CBS Mobile have said iAd is allowing them to charge more for ad space in their applications. Though neither Apple nor the advertisers would share revenue or traffic numbers, they noted that their pilot iAds tended to pull in users and keep them interested for significantly longer than other kinds of digital ads.

Evolving Advertising To Become The ‘Object Idea’

If an ad is to work – make people talk about it, love it and want to take a stake in sharing it – it must become a social object. Many a viral campaign acts as a social object because it becomes part of the cultural conversation – people talk about it, and ultimately act as the medium for the message. But for an ad to take on meaning for the consumers that it speaks to – and to get them to take action as a result of it – it must be driven by a purpose-idea. A purpose idea is the emotional, intrinsic reason that will motivate an individual to want to buy the product – and the reasons why the product was created to begin with. A sense of safety and security from purchasing a certain brand of car, a boost in self-confidence from wearing a sexy heel (and the looks it may generate), or a sense that whole grain will nourish you and contribute to a healthier, lighter and longer life.

A Better Creative Brief For The Post Digital Age

A recent post by Gareth Kay (of Goodby’s Brand Strategy discipline) turned our attention to a presentation he made at Boulder Digital Works on crafting a creative brief for the post-digital age. Kay begins by taking a (somehow comical) look at creative brief templates of yore (1992), which mostly all addressed a very common set of elements: a problem to be solved by advertising, consumers to ‘target’, a message to tell them, reasons to believe, and tone of voice. Needless to say that there is a continually expanding set of technology devices and platforms – and respective user interfaces – available in our current culture: from mobile to social media, to desktop and mobile video and others. Their impact includes facilitating a more participatory culture, making us more social, contributing to a more fragmented media landscape and leaving us ‘always on’ and conscious/communicative of our location; these factors need to be considered within an informed creative brief.

Being 'On-Emotion' Leads To Success

Recent breakthroughs in neuroscience confirm what we marketers know in our guts, but sometimes forget in the day-to-day rush of preparing the next ad campaign launch. Namely, everybody feels (emotions) before they think (rational decision), and without generating the appropriate emotional response, no ad campaign can succeed.

GM’s Big Idea

GM plans to make a big splash on next year's Super Bowl, which I find surprising and disappointing. It's a surprise because it's such a dumb idea. Ads on the Super Bowl are a rarefied group intended to one-up one another with creative and/or sleaze (or both). It's a big viewership event, for sure, but brands have to pay big time for the privilege of exposure while dumbing down the marketing content so there's any hope of breaking through the clutter. Super Bowl ads are reviewed and remembered as advertising, not meaningful communication. GM use to waste money on it back when it used to waste money on everything. It was a dumb idea then, and it's still a dumb idea now...for any brand.

Where Have I Seen That Face Before?

I think that's the same model in commercials for Cialis (left) and Plavix (right). Aside from the obvious hilarity of promoting a drug that causes hearts to palpitate and then one that calms them, I think she illustrates some of what's wrong with advertising. We know the spots aren’t real, of course. When the model and her model husband discover the urge to procreate while painting the walls in their model living room, the set morphs into an outdoor setting so they can instead sit down and lecture us about our, er, heads exploding and other risks from taking Cialis. The Plavix spot has the model getting chased by a hospital gurney, and then she happily fills out paperwork. The ads are clearly fantasies. Can make-believe messengers deliver real truths?

Boy, Could the Former Editor of Maxim Ever Tell You Some Stories

For this latest edition of Dumenco's Media People -- an ongoing series of conversations with media grandees -- I interviewed longtime print guy Keith Blanchard, most famous for being one of the founding editors, and then editor in chief, of the U.S. edition of Maxim. Blanchard was hired by puckish publishing legend Felix Dennis, whose original Maxim in the U.K. had already rocked the glossy world by popularizing the cheeky "lad mag" sensibility. Today Blanchard is North American executive creative director at Story Worldwide. I spoke to him about leaving a career in edit for life on the agency side. The interview took place at Story headquarters in Midtown Manhattan and was continued over lunch and supplemented by e-mail. What follows is a condensed version of a much longer conversation.

Making News Sites Stickier With Apps That Summon the Web

Websites from Fox Sports, the New York Daily News, the San Antonio Express-News, the Houston Chronicle, the San Francisco Chronicle and others are trying a new system to fight, or rather accommodate, web surfers' fleeting attention spans. The sites are using a platform from Brand Affinity Technologies called NetBat, which overlays editorial photos of celebrities and athletes with apps that summon content from Twitter, Google, YouTube and other parts of the web without making users leave the site. Many sites have already incorporated modules that bring up tweets about the subject at hand, but this platform seems to offer more options at once.

Mad Man

On June 30, Alex Bogusky went for a bike ride in the hills outside Boulder, Colo., then made his way downtown to the century-old house-cum-studio he had renovated and dubbed FearLess Cottage. Once inside, he called Miles Nadal, his boss in Toronto, and resigned. Bogusky was 46. Adweek had named him creative director of the decade, and the agency he helped build, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, was bringing in more than a billion dollars in billings. He had a dream title of his own making, chief creative insurgent, and a salary close to $2 million. Bogusky's conversation with Nadal, the owner of CP+B's parent company, MDC Partners, was followed by an e-mail. Bogusky hoped Nadal saw him "as a friend who wants to try something new." He signed it, "Love, Alex." Then Bogusky and his wife, Ana, spent much of the afternoon sitting on their porch contemplating what he had just done.

More Fake ‘Mad Men’; More Real Ads

The fact that Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, the new agency on “Mad Men,” has landed the Pond’s cold cream account is not the only ad news to come out of “Mad Men” this week. AMC, the cable channel that presents the series about the ad industry — and America — in the 1960s has made a deal with a giant marketer, Unilever, for a season-long sponsorship agreement. The agreement, for undisclosed terms, is centered on six commercials being created in the “Mad Men” vein for six Unilever products. Brands like BMW, Canada Dry and Clorox have previously tailored commercials for the show, but this is believed to be the first deal to involve multiple products from the same marketer.

Buick Regal Naming and Branding Turns to Social Media to Attract Younger Buyers

I am watching the reinvigoration of the Buick Regal name with some interest. This is a brand name that is being essentially relaunched to reach a younger demographic, with a heavy focus on the 35-40 age group, moving away from the traditional Buick target market, usually double that age bracket. There are two ads: Autobahn and Discover Beauty that essentially position the car as an American BMW, since much is being made of the car's German engineering.

In Advertising? Your Job Description's Changed

Do you work in a job that involves writing creative, managing clients, media planning and buying, or trafficking ads? Well, take a minute from your busy day to digest this news: Your job description's changed.

Microsoft Quashed Effort to Boost Online Privacy

In early 2008, Microsoft Corp.'s product planners for the Internet Explorer 8.0 browser intended to give users a simple, effective way to avoid being tracked online. They wanted to design the software to automatically thwart common tracking tools, unless a user deliberately switched to settings affording less privacy. That triggered heated debate inside Microsoft.

Corona Light Sets Sights on a Younger Party Crowd

Corona Light is carving out its own image with the “It Only Gets Better” campaign at a time when consumers are buying less beer. For two decades, Americans drank beer regardless of how the economy fared. That included a lot of light beer. Then the economy fell into recession, and all beer sales slipped for the first time in nearly two decades.

Saab Woos Its Formerly Loyal Customers

Now that Saab is Swedish again -- or at least Scandinavian, having been wrested from General Motors by Danish company Spyker earlier this year -- the automaker is hoping to bring back consumers who have departed over the years.

An Insurgent Campaign for a Shaving Gel

In a video on the Web site for Edge shave gel, EdgeShaveZone.com, the comedian John Caparulo explains what irritates him about pickup basketball games. The video, and about six others that will be added episodically through September, is featured on what the brand is calling the Edge Anti-Irritation Zone, an online campaign that makes light of everyday irritations to highlight how the product helps prevent shaving irritation.

Corporations Need a Reason for Being

In Adweek July 18th- Warren Berger wrote an interesting piece about the potential mid-life crisis of the ad biz. "There are lots of tough questions companies must confront in dealing with a consumer who's more engaged, more informed and more concerned with social issues than ever before. Among those questions: What does the company stand for? What does it believe? How does it make its products and treat its employees? Is it being straight with us in its ads? All of these points are part of the larger conversation people are now having about brands." This isn't a crisis inflicting advertising, it comes from somewhere, it's a corporate identity crisis- could corporations have lost track of their reason for being? You sell stuff, we know that, but it's not enough. What's your reason for being? What do you want to do when you get to work in the morning? Does you brand have a cause?

Interruption vs. Engagement, Revised

Last week in Advertising Age, I tried to argue that we marketers should reevaluate our approaches to "interruption" and "engagement" marketing, as I think we're using both terms incorrectly. Budgets are getting shifted away from the short commercials of traditional media into longer social experiences of new media, like Old Spice's recent campaign, as if the latter's entertainment can replace the former's historic utility. Dozens of smart folks chimed in with ideas that either improved on what I'd tried to say, or added thoughts that had never occurred to me. I want to thank all of them...except for the numbnut who declared that "advertising is lies, all lies" and called us "paid prevaricators." I have no idea what he was doing slumming with us in one of the Inferno's outer rings, as he clearly belongs further in. I'd like to riff on what I found to be the most consistent and insightful commentary.

Tallying Up Viewers

Some of the nation's biggest media companies and advertisers, seeking to develop new ways of measuring audiences, could make Apple Inc.'s iPhone the vehicle for a study of how Americans consume media on a range of devices—from TV sets to mobile phones to computers. The study would be one of the first major initiatives of the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement, a high-profile collaboration between the media and ad industries begun last summer with much fanfare.

Tweeters Star In Wheat Thins TV Ads

Kraft Foods/Nabisco Wheat Thins will take social media marketing integration to a new level this week, when it debuts the first of at least two 30-second national TV commercials featuring consumers who have tweeted positively about the brand.

Food Companies Pitch Healthy Offerings, Opinions

Everyone knows they should eat fruits and vegetables. Few people hear it from fast-food companies and snack purveyors. That is changing as companies that make foods rich in fat and salt aggressively market healthier options.

G4 Channel to Become 4G in a Week of Sprint Promotion

NEXT week the cable channel G4 will morph into 4G. In a letter-swapping promotion for Sprint Nextel’s next-generation wireless Internet service, the name of the channel will change for seven days, affecting all its logos and shows. The campaign begins Monday. “We think it has some unique abilities to break through the clutter in the marketplace and help Sprint promote its service,” Neal Tiles, the president of G4, said in a telephone interview. He added, “How often do you get to change the name of the network for an extended period of time?” No, nothing is sacred now, not even a television channel’s name.

ABI: No Mobile Plan? It's Time To Get One

Marketers, listen up: if you don't have a mobile marketing plan, it's time to get one. According to ABI Research, consumers are ready and willing to receive marketing messages through their mobile devices. Thanks to the proliferation of smartphones and the more affordable data plans, more people than ever are available through mobile marketing messages.

Why Interruption Stills Trumps Engagement

I know we're not supposed to say it out loud, but a lot of CMOs and agency types think that advertising is going the way of the dinosaur, the Model T and conversation without emoticons. Consumers want to engage with content instead of get interrupted by ads, or so the logic goes, so we celebrate social campaigns like the recent one from Old Spice, and find favor only for commercials that are entertaining. Making a sales pitch just isn't credible anymore. Now that we're well into the social-media revolution, I think it's time to revisit the three assumptions on which this argument is based.

Social Media Draws a Crowd

As more and more advertising dollars flow into social media, some Madison Avenue firms are seeking to grab a piece of the action. But it will be a tough fight as the space is overrun with companies seeking to own the segment, from start-ups to public-relations firms. Universal McCann, the media-buying firm owned by Interpublic Group of Cos., is bolstering its social-media offering by launching a practice this week called Rally. The division will help marketers develop campaigns, track online chatter about their brands and measure how those campaigns perform. Headed by Heidi Browning, a former MySpace executive, Rally will house several new social-media hires.

Pepsi Fires a Salvo to Restart the Cola Wars

Pepsi is engaging in a bit of war re-enactment, remaking a well-known comparative commercial, but with a twist, replacing Coke and Pepsi with the sugarless versions Coke Zero and Pepsi Max. The new spot, by the TBWA/Chiat/Day division of TBWA Worldwide and directed again by Mr. Pytka, uses the same setup, except this time the drivers drink Coke Zero and Pepsi Max, and the song is “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” by War.

Ford Speaks: How to Sell Cars and Influence People

Scott Monty is the global digital communications chief for the Ford Motor Company, and full disclosure, a force to be reckoned with in The Influence Project. He currently ranks at number 43. He likes to say that Ford subscribes to a combination Woody Allen/Yogi Berra theory for social media where 90% may be just showing up, but what's critical is what you do when you get there. Monty talked to Fast Company about Ford's strategy for combining online and traditional advertising, breaking out of comfort cliques to expand a customer base, and the trials and opportunities presented by living in a 140 character society.

Excitement Or Peacefulness?

I don't have to tell you about the incredible marketing opportunity that is the 45-65 consumer in America today. You know those numbers inside and out. And therein lies the problem. Yes, the numbers are great. In fact, the numbers are amazing and incredible and stupendous and shocking and undeniable. So what.

Audi Focuses On Making Premium Leap

Audi has spent several years building brand awareness and consideration in the U.S. market. Now the company, which saw sales increase 28% in June, is hoping to join the ranks of bona fide luxury brands. The company has focused much of its marketing muscle on vehicles like the A4, but the next phase will be a raft of premium vehicles positioned against vehicles like Mercedes-Benz S-Class and BMW 7-Series, says Loren Angelo, Audi's U.S. brand marketing manager.

How Starbucks Dominates Facebook

Starbucks is the first consumer brand to reach 10 million Facebook fans, a.k.a. user "likes." Taking the lead from Coca-Cola over a year ago, Starbucks has attracted 2.3 million fans just in July so far…and the month is only half-over. Starbucks is now in the rarified company of Lady Gaga. In light of its recent privacy flap, Facebook is treading carefully when it comes to brands' presence on the site, including releasing a new video (above) to address users concerned about advertising on their pages. As for how Starbucks shot to 10 million?

Why Google Me

The world may not need another social network. But Google does. Google needs a place where people can easily congregate and communicate. A place that's as easy to understand and use as Google.com. A place that people "like." Why?

Twitter Sees Sizable Ad Business

Twitter is ready to declare success in its initial revenue-building efforts, and casts an even wider net by launching limited-time deals feed @earlybird, which provides time-sensitive offers from advertisers. Disney has signed up for the first offer: a two-for-one ticket promotion for The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which debuts in the U.S. today. The tweet takes users to a Fandango page to purchase the tickets with a discount code.

Is Love Enough?

ESPN is launching today a new branding ad campaign intended "to demonstrate our love of sports," according to one of its execs quoted in The New York Times. I'm just not so sure that love of sports is a Big Idea worthy of an ad campaign. First, isn't it like McDonald’s declaring "we love hamburgers," or Geiko saying the same about insurance? ESPN had better love sports, and I can't imagine the connection is a secret.

How LeBron's Entourage Got His 'Decision' on ESPN

By now you've heard the offense against basketball star LeBron James' one-hour TV special to announce his team choice -- that it was narcissistic, sullied his brand and blurred the journalistic line for ESPN. But what you haven't heard is the defense of the man who helped put the show together: uber-agent Ari Emanuel, who says "The Decision" forwarded the paradigm for advertiser-funded programming.

Scary Good

Allstate Insurance is running a campaign in which the threats of trees falling on cars, teens nicking car bumpers, and pets trashing upholstery are portrayed by a character named "Mayhem." I think it's scary good advertising. The actor, Dean Winters, is wonderfully smarmy. He was hilariously memorable as Tina Fey's self-adoring idiot ex-boyfriend on "30 Rock," and in these spots he cheerfully promises mayhem on dark roads and in crowded parking lots. He's perfect because he's sinister in the same way that stripes threaten to clash with plaid. I get the point but I'm not scared. Which is why the critics' complaints that the spots resort to fear mongering are plain wrong. Mayhem's mischief is an expression of reality; fate (or chance) is capricious, and that's why there's such a thing as insurance in the first place. So these ads manage to tell the truth, which is 1) an immense accomplishment for the category, and 2) directionally illustrative of what other advertisers should do.

Old Spice "Man": Short-Term Laughs, Long-Term Pain?

These ads have been huge viral hits. Old Spice will certainly move a little more product and a short-term boost in sales is certainly nothing to be ashamed of. However, in the long term, is Isaiah Mustafa, the ad's star whos exposure has landed him a production deal with NBC, the only real beneficiary? Maybe worse yet, is Old Spice, by laughing at itself, hurting its brand? Is Old Spice making the age-old advertising mistake of confusing making consumers laugh at your brand with engaging consumers with your brand?

Coalition Debuts Campaign To Stop Comcast-NBCU Deal

A group of 21 businesses and public interest organizations has formed The Coalition for Competition in Media to oppose Comcast's bid to acquire 51 percent of NBC Universal. On its Web site, competitioninmedia.org, the group claims that Comcast's controlling stake in NBCU would give it "unprecedented power nationally and in local cable markets around the country." Some of the members of the new coalition include: Bloomberg, National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, Free Press, Writers Guild of America and Media Access Project.

The Eternal Truths Behind The Best New Branding Commercials

The top advertising spots--actually the best whole branding campaigns--have always begun with a flash of brilliant insight about a category and its primary audience, something meaningful that no one noticed before. Call it an observation of the obvious, a point of view that captures a profound and different truth about a product that no one else has seen.

How Social Media Has Radically Altered Advertising

Social Media started out as a bit of a novelty — a playground for the “geekerati.” But it has taken hold as a game changing force that will reshape advertising at its very core. It’s time to move past debates about traditional media co-existing with social media. Madison Avenue should see social media as a wonderful, if not disruptive, gift. It should run hard to catch up with the consumer, let go of legacy business models and build something better.

Facebook Touts Selling Power of Friendship

Facebook Inc. is trying to rev up its advertising business with a little help from your friends. The social-networking site is aggressively pitching to big advertisers like Ford Motor Co. and PepsiCo Inc. the latest in a series of ad formats that tell users which of their Facebook friends have expressed interest in the brand or product featured in the ad. The so-called social-context ads, which Facebook started rolling out over a year ago, are based on data it collects on the likes and friends of its users.

Chipotle Ad Campaign Gets Meta

In the second meta fast food campaign to launch this week, Chipotle Mexican Grill is running ads explaining why it isn’t running the usual fast food ads.

Is Your Advertising Writing Checks Your Company Can't Cash?

When I started out in advertising almost 20 years ago, the firm I worked at had a simple mantra. Promise a lot. Deliver more. And we did. It was our "ad" you might say and the founder of the firm believed that every day we had to live up to that ad. If we didn't, then over time we'd fail and eventually that failure would cause us to lose many a client. I've never forgotten that lesson but alas I'm reminded every day that companies around our fine country have.

Agile Advertising and the Four Feedback Loops

Burt’s presentation at Cannes elaborated on their experiences working with some of the world’s top agencies to change how they make and measure large scale, digital advertising – and how drastic improvements in ad effectiveness can be achieved using existing, proven technologies.

Levi's Goes Forth, and Beyond

Levi's annual Fourth of July campaign, Go Forth, this year focused on the theme of work and on the residents of the recession-battered community of Braddock, PA. Check out its latest campaign above and after the jump, including a spot for Levi's Workshops, inviting the public to "roll up your sleeves, get your hands dirty, and get down to work" at workshops located across the U.S.

Google's Display Advertising Plans Include Gmail, YouTube

For a company that has made a big business of indexing third-party websites, a substantial part of Google's display success hinges on its ability to milk YouTube and its other owned and operated properties such as Gmail and Google Finance.

Comedy (Not on Spill) in Ads for Florida

During Dan Aho’s vacation to the Florida Gulf Coast, he slurped seawater, spirited off shells from an old lady and destroyed a sand castle in progress, often snug in the most horrifying of tourist tog — the dreaded red Speedo. He would seem to be giving visitors to the Sunshine State a bad name, except that his goal is actually to bring more of them here. He is the star, after all, of the most ambitious and humorous effort yet to keep Florida’s tourism empire alive despite the oil spill in the northern Gulf of Mexico.

Marc Pritchard at Cannes: 'We're Sharing What's Behind the Brand

Digital is fast becoming so pervasive for marketers that it may soon lose its meaning as a separate media designation, according to Procter & Gamble Co. Global Brand-Building Officer Marc Pritchard. It's one of the many ways the company is changing through a brand-building organization he brought together last year that encompasses all areas of marketing communications.

Armstrong Is Magnet for Ads in Big Race

Lance Armstrong kicks off the Tour de France this Saturday and advertisers are rushing to join him for the grueling 21-stage cycling race that starts in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and ends in Paris on July 25. Anheuser-Busch InBev NV, Nissan Motor Co., RadioShack Corp. and General Motors Co. have all signed up to pitch their wares for the annual bike race, drawn by the cycling superstar, a rebounding economy and a generally affluent audience. Their enthusiasm may be short-lived. Like golf, cycling relies heavily on the popularity of a compelling athlete to drive ratings and consumer appeal; Mr. Armstrong said that Tuesday this would be his final appearance in the three-week competition.

Why Microsoft Killed Kin After Just Six Weeks

In what may be one of the fastest launch-to-failure paths ever taken by a major marketer, Microsoft's Kin, the company's first phone product, is being discontinued just six weeks after its May 13 launch. As first reported by Gizmodo, the phone's marketing and product development teams are being shifted to work on the launch of the Windows Phone 7.

MTV, Warner Music Group Join Forces In Video

MTV will soon start to sell ads for music videos owned by Warner Music Group, the companies announced on Wednesday. MTV will have exclusive rights to Warner Music's video ad inventory, Warner said in a statement. The move comes less than a year since Warner signed a similar agreement with Outrigger Media. Rumors began circulating last week that Warner Music was shopping for a new means to sell ads. A music industry source said that Warner Music had spoken to music video portal Vevo about the possibility of that service selling Warner's ads.

Wash Away Bad Hair Days

Believing better data leads to happier shoppers, Procter & Gamble Co. recently mobilized its market researchers to scientifically define those infinitely varied unhappy days when a woman's hair has gone rogue. They are the dreaded bad hair days, and P&G has put them at the center of a massive research and advertising effort aimed at winning back women to Pantene shampoos and conditioners. At stake are millions of dollars in sales lost during the recession, when consumers cut back discretionary spending and economized on things like hair products.

Alex Bogusky: The First Cannes Lion For Not Advertising At All

We love awards in advertising and awards motivate agency behavior and recommendations. Perhaps it is time for Cannes to have a new award. An award for the most accurate, careful and ethical use of advertising. Not PSA’s, but an award for consumer brands that have decided to take into consideration all the potential effects of their marketing and have built a plan that carefully avoids abusing the power of advertising. This would need to be the pinnacle of achievement. So what is nicer than titanium? Unobtainium? Kryptonite? Crystal? I sort of like that. Crystal clear. No blemishes. And here is what I’d like to see entered next year.

Bounty Now Promises A Competent Clean

A year after changing campaigns for Bounty paper towels, Procter & Gamble is refocusing the brand’s advertising again. Bounty had for decades been called “the quicker picker upper” or, in a more recent variant, “the quilted quicker picker upper.” In February 2009, Procter switched approaches, introducing a theme, “Bring it,” to reflect that absorbency — picking up spills as soon as they happen — was perhaps no longer the be-all and end-all it once may have been.

A-Game: Brands That Get It Right

When it comes to mobile, the ad industry has seemed stuck in its own version of Waiting for Godot. Each year for the past decade, the industry has hyped mobile’s great potential, only to face myriad technical and business obstacles. Now, thanks to advancements by Apple and innovations by Google, mobile has arrived as a truly effective platform for brands.

The Ad Cannes Job

An annual orgasm of self-love -- remember, the awards aren't voted by clients or consumers -- suggests to me that the advertising industry is still unable to talk to itself about what's happening. Creative ain't what it used to be. Actually, it never was. For the entirety of human history, advertising was a vehicle to get people to buy things. Creativity was important as long as it was applied to this goal; even corporate ads from the late 1800s had a direct link to a sales strategy.

Coca-Cola Hopes to Score With World Cup Campaign

The giveaways are part of Coke's biggest marketing campaign, with World Cup-themed events and advertising spanning 160 countries. The beverage giant won't disclose its World Cup spending, but IEG LLC, a Chicago company that tracks and analyzes corporate sponsorships, estimates the company has poured as much as $600 million into the World Cup. That figure includes $124 million for sponsorship rights and as much as $475 million spent on marketing globally.

Volkswagen Nabs Cannes Cyber Lion

Volkwagen's "Fun Theory" campaign won the Cannes Lion for best online advertising campaign of the year. The groundbreaking viral campaign, created by DDB, took home the Cyber Grand Prix at the 57th International Cannes Lions Advertising Festival for its concept (making things fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better), execution (including viral stunts such as the piano staircase, above, which has generated more than 12 million views on YouTube) and results, with sales of Volkswagen's eco-cars up year over year.

A Look at Who's Getting What on Apple's IAds

The first of Apple's iAds are expected to start popping up on iPhones later this week, but don't expect all the marketers that have committed to the platform to be there. A check-in with declared iAd advertisers found that many are still in the early stages of flushing out concepts and creative. Some are weeks -- perhaps months -- away from having an iAd in the system. What are the i-advertisers up to? Here's a look at some of those willing to share.

Mountain Dew Lets Fans Plan Tour, Events

Typically, a brand event is at least months in the planning -- or if not, likely requires hyper mode by the agencies handling it. But while seat-of-the-pants activation may be inadvisable for most events, a 30-day, 69-city "grassroots" promotion tour that was part of Mountain Dew's year-long "DEWmocracy 2" campaign may point to an alternative worth considering.

The Onion's Best Friend Is an Ogre

The movie, which has since gone on to do big business, has spawned tie-ins with companies ranging from Hewlett-Packard Co. to Bank of America. But none is as bold as the one advanced by the Vidalia Onion Committee, an association that represents 100 growers of the Vidalia, a trademarked sweet onion that is unique to southeastern Georgia.

Coke Sees ‘Phenomenal’ Result From Twitter Ads

Coca-Cola saw “phenomenal” results from its first experiment with paid advertising on Twitter, the drinks company’s digital marketing chief told the Financial Times. The US soft drinks company is only the second brand to sponsor a “trending topic”, using Twitter’s “promoted tweets” to tap into online discussion about the World Cup this week.

Darryl Willis, Reluctant Star of BP's Latest Commercials, Talks to Ad Age

You've seen him in those commercials for BP. An unassuming man wearing an orange polo and wire-frame glasses approaches the camera as he walks along a generic dock and says, "I'm Darryl Willis. I oversee BP's claims process on the Gulf Coast. BP has got to make things right, and that's why we're here." Mr. Willis has been setting up and overseeing BP's claims offices in the affected Gulf Coast states -- a juxtaposition that some commentors on black-focused blogs said has undertones of racial perfidy. Nonetheless, Mr. Willis, a married father of two children, has become the most visible face of BP. Ad Age spoke to Mr. Willis via phone as he was en route from Florida to New Orleans.

Kickin' The Balls: How Adidas Is Fighting To Win The World Cup Battle Of The Brands

From now through July 11, the world will be engulfed by the sports spectacle of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The full tournament lasts a month and begins with 32 nations. But as Molly Maixner, brand marketing manager for Adidas soccer, explains, planning for and maintaining a presence at the World Cup is a 24/7/365 challenge with high stakes not only for players and coaches but also for marketers that have paid significant dollars to become official global FIFA partners.

Shell Oil Breaks Industry Silence With Aggressive Ad Campaign

As BP repeatedly botches its communications efforts around the environmental disaster that is the worst oil spill in U.S. history, nearly every other oil company has gone silent save one: Shell Oil. Shell seems to be going after a space once owned by BP by presenting itself as something more than an oil company -- beyond petroleum, if you will. An aggressive new ad campaign, which includes print, TV, online, outdoor executions and two websites, energygalaxy.com and shell.us/letsgo, kicked off May 28. The effort touts the dawn of a future that will be powered by new and multiple energy sources and cleaner fossil fuels that Shell is "unlocking." It also expresses the notion the world will soon be on the road to sustainable mobility and that Shell is "ready to help tackle the challenges of the new energy future." The London office of WPP's JWT assisted Shell on the effort.

Watch Out: Apple May Aim To Reshape Online Advertising

Apple, without a doubt, is creating a massive sea change in how we interact with digital content. Note that I didn't say "the Web." This is because the millions of iPad and iPhone users spend more time within Apple's walled garden of apps rather than in a browser. However, there's a potential dark side to the millions of Apple devices being sold and it should give every marketer pause.

Levi’s Features a Town Trying to Recover

A campaign for a clothing brand is rolling up its sleeves, figuratively and literally, as the ads are set in an actual distressed town and the advertiser donates money to help revitalization efforts there. The campaign is for the flagship Levi’s brand sold by Levi Strauss & Company, and it is the start of the second year of an initiative that carries the theme “Go forth.”

Imperfection Is A Good Thing

The Authenticity Trend has been fully infiltrated into mainstream culture for years. We see its implications from politics to household products. Consumers are attracted to "the real." This is evident in the rise of farmers markets and the dislike of preservatives like parabens, for example. As if through a prism, when the recession hit, the Authenticity Trend evolved to that of "Imperfection." We still want "the real" but, now, we don't believe the hype. We sense when something is fishy and want to see behind the curtain. Think of those great Ally Bank ads with the pony. If nothing else, we learned from the recession that there is no such thing as "perfect."

Facebook Targets New Territories

Facebook is looking east for its next phase of expansion, as it prepares to take on entrenched competition in China, Russia and Japan and become the first social network company to connect 1bn people. Mark Zuckerberg, founder and chief executive of the world’s largest social network, said that after relying largely on organic growth to reach almost 500m members, Facebook would soon begin to make its first strategic local moves.

Apple to Brands: C'mon Get Appy

Apple promotes developers behind apps for Disney, Pandora, games and other content on its just-released iPhone iOS 4 and still-hot iPad (3 million sold in 80 days) devices. With Conde Nast today announcing that its shuttered Gourmet magazine is being revived as a digital-only brand, Gourmet Live, optimized for the iPad, will other old-school media brands skip the Web to head straight to the iPad?

Lights Out for Light Cigarettes

With the focus squarely on Big Oil, specifically BP, it's easy to forget about Big Tobacco. But June 22 is historic, because today, the U.S. tobacco industry is required to stop selling and marketing "light," "low-tar," and "mild" cigarettes, in compliance with the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009. Research shows "light" cigarettes are no less deadly than regular cigarettes. While "light" and similarly branded cigarettes are no longer allowed in the U.S., leave it to Big Tobacco to find a way around the law — they're simply rebranding their products.

Brand.net Raises $14 Million For Online Ad Futures Market

The era of eight-figure funding deals for ad networks isn't over -- at least not yet. Brand.net, a San Mateo, Calif., network found by former Yahoo execs, just closed a $14 million funding round led by Focus Ventures. The ad-network space is saturated and the competition for ad dollars and margins is cutthroat. But while most networks are chasing the latest hot sector -- real-time buying and selling of audience and ad impressions -- Brand.net has taken a page from the TV market and created a futures market for online display and video.

Cute, Cuddly and Commercial

Aleksandr is one of the more prominent examples of the trend for animated characters or puppets to act as brand ambassadors. US consumers have long been charmed by the frogs that feature in Budweiser’s advertising or the cockney gecko that stars in Geico’s campaigns. Meanwhile, Domo, the saw-toothed mascot for Japanese broadcaster NHK, has gone on to appear in video games and comics, and spread virally online. But the proliferation and popularity of these creations and the merchandising they have spawned raises questions for both brand owners and advertising agencies hoping to capitalise on the value of the intellectual property.

How Hanes & Dyson Are Winning By Naming The Problems They Solve

Getability is simply how easy an idea is for someone to immediately understand without a whole lot of explanation needed. When your marketing has getability, it means that it is simple, clear and memorable. This matters for good reason. Marketing that is complex or confusing rarely works. To help their getability, two brands in particular are using a technique that may be worth considering when promoting your product or service ... they are giving an ownable name to the problem they solve. The recent marketing from Dyson around their new Air Multiplier fan is one great example.

Nike’s Massive Social Ad In Johannesburg

Nike’s Write The Future campaign is taking an innovative approach by merging social media and World Cup activities to forge a truly interactive experience. Fans can submit a 57-character inspirational message through Facebook, Twitter, Mxitt (a South African social network), and QQ (a Chinese social network) and choose an accompanying picture of their favorite soccer player to have it headlined on the Life Center, one of Johannesburg’s largest skyscrapers.

Adidas Says World Cup Already A Winner

While there is still plenty of football left to play, it looks like the FIFA World Cup games are already making marketing dreams come true: Adidas -- one of the major sponsors of the FIFA World Cup games -- says it has already set a new sales record, selling double the number of jerseys compared to the 2006 games.

Report: BP’s Brand Value Plunges By Nearly $1 Billion

There’s no doubt that BP’s brand value has been affected by the explosion of its Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico in April. And as the damaged rig has been dumping thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf each day and causing massive environmental casualties, BP has been on a social media and advertising campaign to repair some of the damage.

Cannes Advertising Festival Seminar: Social Media As An Instrument Of Change

For those at the seminar who want further information, or for those who couldn’t make it, here are a synopsis, a list of key points and links to the case studies that I mentioned in my seminar at Cannes today.

Soccer-Related Spots Score With Consumers

World Cup goals may be few and far between, but soccer-themed TV ads are helping marketers including Sony Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. and Coca-Cola Co. rack up points with consumers. "Overall, the TV ads that were created specifically for the World Cup broadcast are performing as well as—or, in some case, better than—many of the Super Bowl commercials,'' says Peter Daboll, chief executive of Ace Metrix, a Los Angeles research firm that measures ad performance in the U.S. That's a high bar since the Super Bowl is widely considered the championship of American TV advertising.

Why Twitter's New Ads are Ingenious

Twitter this week began testing a new type of advertising: "Promoted Trends." Under the new system, brands can pay to appear below the "Trending Topics," the most talked-about terms on Twitter at any given moment. The idea is, in a word, ingenious -- the perfect way to generate revenue from the popular social network without infuriating users.

Study: Consumers Creeped Out by Some Big, Targeted Ads

Ads targeted at a particular context -- car ads on automotive sites, for example -- are a staple of online advertising. It's presumed that the more closely an ad matches a person's interest, the more likely that person is to to click and buy. And it couldn't hurt if the ad is big. But a recent academic study indicates that may not always be the case.

Google Gives Developers Click-to-Call Ad Option

The Google vs. Apple battle for mobile dominance is being waged on many fronts, with each providing ways for developers to monetize their applications. Now, Google is adding a new option for developers: click-to-call ads that appear within apps running on smartphones. Google said the placements would run on both Android-powered handsets and iPhones -- if Apple doesn't block them, as it recently hinted in a terms-of-services change. Google and Apple are vying for the attention of developers by offering not only platforms for reaching large numbers of mobile phone users, but also options for making money -- including through advertising.

How Much Is a Facebook Fan Really Worth?

Of course it's in Facebook's best interest to show that people who are fans spend more money. Without that, why would companies buy ads on Facebook? I just think we should think about why people become fans of a brand on Facebook. They already have an interest and desire to be more involved in the brand. They may be looking for deals or looking to contact other people who are interested in the brand. But they're already a fan. I wonder if anyone is asking what they spent on the brand before they became a fan on Facebook. That would at least give some indication as to whether or not Facebook is influencing purchasing or simply the by-product of people who are already fans.

Marketing Innovation to Drive Extra Use From Bacardi

Saw a great example of marketing innovation at the airport last week. It was a promotion stand for Bacardi pushing a pouch of mix for making Bacardi Mojitos.

Microsoft Lets Users Tout Office '10 Suite

To inform consumers about the new product launch, Microsoft and agency JWT have created a series of Web videos showing actual Beta testers telling how the new Office 2010 helps them with home, school and small-business tasks. The videos talk about how these users want to "Make it great" (the theme of the campaign).

Kraft Bull's-Eye Brand Makes TV Comeback

Kraft Foods' Bull’s-Eye brand has returned to television, after nearly two decades. A 15-second spot, dubbed “Statue,” was originally scheduled to break on the brand's Website, but Kraft took out a last-minute TV ad during Game 6 of the NBA Finals. The ad shows a cinematic reel-like clip of statue portraits. Meanwhile, a voiceover says: “Bold versus sweet. Let’s see. They build statues of bold men. They don’t build statues of sweet men. Well, they do. But they’re call figurines,” as a figurine of a small boy flashes on the screen.

Showing TV, and Commercials, on the Shelves and in the Aisles

For many marketers, advertising in stores is an increasingly important way to influence shoppers at the so-called moment of truth, as they finally make up their minds about which brands of soup, soap or cereal to buy — or not buy. Now, a company is hoping to bring commercials to the retail point of purchase on screens that will be attached to shelves and above aisles.

Florida Sells Its Seashore (Oil? What Oil?)

Florida has begun a national advertising campaign to protect its fun-in-the-sun image from the sludge and stink of the oil spill — spending almost as much in June (about $9.5 million) as the state usually spends in a year. State officials describe it as a necessity: tourism is Florida’s largest industry, employing one million people and bringing in $60 billion a year. The goal, they say, is to show off what the state still has to offer.

IPad's Early Adopters Are Gazing At The Ads -- For Now

It's early days for advertising on Apple's iPad, but advertisers running campaigns on the device over the last four weeks say people are watching -- and a lot more than your typical rich-media web ad. Much of that can probably be explained by the fact that the iPad's early adopters find just about everything on the device -- including the ads -- a curiosity. The question is whether those rates will stay high once the novelty of the device wears off.

Can Infiniti Become A Tier I Luxury Brand?

Infiniti from the very beginning has had a difficult time establishing a brand identity and finding a way to execute it in communications. Introduced in 1989, Infiniti was Nissan's response to the introductions of the other Japanese luxury marques; Acura and Lexus. The original Q45 was a sporty performance alternative to the Lexus. Unfortunately, the brand got off to a rough start when it introduced the car and brand with the infamous "rocks and trees" campaign created by its agency Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos.

Dwindling Brand Creativity Narrows Cannes Film Predictions

How many favorite spots can you name from the past year? Exactly. Brand creativity has felt a bit like a zero sum game lately. As marketers and agencies have devoted more creative energy to digital and digitally spirited work, the creativity pool focused on commercials has seemed commensurately drained.

Denny’s Takes Super Bowl Time-Out

The biggest recent highlight for the Denny’s restaurant brand was its 2010 Super Bowl campaign marking the return of its free Grand Slam breakfast on your birthday promotion. It was also, as it turns out, the last hurrah for Denny's CEO Nelson Marchioli.

P&G Goes on Offensive for Pampers

Procter & Gamble Co. is ramping up promotions for its redesigned Pampers, sales of which are holding steady despite a debate over whether the diapers might give some babies bad rashes. Over the past week, P&G has increased its spending on Internet advertising and is issuing more coupons for its new Pampers with Dry Max diapers.

Advertising Spending Will Grow, Report Says, But Not Until 2011

Advertising spending in the United States will not begin to grow again until next year, according to an annual forecast from PricewaterhouseCoopers. The 11th annual entertainment and media outlook report, to be released on Tuesday morning, predicts that ad spending will fall 0.5 percent this year compared with last year.

Dodge Salutes Team USA At World Cup

Dodge's new commercial today touts the 2010 Dodge Challenger in a 60-second spot created in honor of the World Cup match between USA and England tomorrow — a fact it played up in its teaser for the ad, after the jump. The v/o: "Here's a couple of things America got right: Cars ... and freedom." Too patriotic for the brand, but par for the course at the World Cup? Tell us what you think, or flag a World Cup brand campaign that caught your eye with a comment below.

Marketing Venture From Bateman and Arnett Takes Off With Orbit

The comedians Will Arnett and Jason Bateman are introducing their first videos created in concert with brands, five months after announcing DumbDumb, something they call a “sponsor-driven advertising and production company.” What is that, exactly? It is a company, backed by IAC, controlled by Barry Diller, that is creating Web videos on behalf of paid sponsors, the first one being Orbit gum.

Is It Time To Remove Advertising From The Web?

When I was in Shanghai a few of weeks ago, I was invited to sit with some of Asia’s top bloggers to listen to an interactive marketing agency explaining their social media marketing strategy. There was much talk about creating conversations through blogger outreach and, I guess, the idea was to be transparent about what they did and how they acted with new media publishers.

Marketers Face Zooming Costs as ESPN Launches 3-D Channel

Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN network has convinced three major advertisers to produce expensive 3-D commercials for its new sports channel debuting Friday with the 2010 World Cup broadcast. It is the first major test of marketers' appetite for 3-D pitches. Procter & Gamble Co., Sony Corp. and Disney's Pixar will all experiment with spots on the new 3-D sports channel. ESPN has previously aired several 3-D telecasts, including the Masters Tournament.

An Advertising Reformation?

I may be looking too hard for hopeful signs but I think we may be at the threshold of a reformation in advertising, which will mean larger changes in the communications world overall. Here are two of them and why I think they’re important (and somewhat related).

Mercedes-Benz Plans New Ad Push

Daimler AG's core Mercedes-Benz division is launching a global marketing campaign Friday, including a new advertising slogan—"The best or nothing"—and a redesigned version of its three-pointed star brand symbol. "Our claim has to reflect that we want to be the best in all disciplines," Mercedes-Benz sales chief Joachim Schmidt told reporters on Tuesday, referring to the brand's new advertising slogan.

Chrysler Ads Aim To Rebuild Image

After hunkering down for months, Chrysler Group LLC is preparing a sustained marketing push to energize dealers and reconnect with American consumers following its reorganization a year ago. Later this month, the auto maker will kick off a national advertising campaign to promote its redesigned Jeep Grand Cherokee, which is just now arriving in showrooms. It's the first all-new vehicle since the company'sbankruptcy filing, and Chrysler is counting on it to make a big splash and help rebuild its image.

Apple's iPhone 4: CEO Steve Jobs Shows Next-Generation Device

Apple CEO Steve Jobs' unveiling Monday of the next-generation iPhone — it's thinner, has a higher-resolution display and comes with video chat — may have lacked a single "Wow!" moment. But coupled with the launch of a new operating system and mobile advertising service, the message to competitors was unambiguous: Catch us if you can.

Retargeting Dramatically Improves Conversion

The term retargeting has been around marketing for some time as a reference to the practice of coming at customers and prospect from new angles. The Internet version of retargeting takes a slightly more modern approach. Retargeting on the Internet is the practice of delivering customized ad content based on the sites a person visits. This form of site based behavioral retargeting is gaining in popularity with small businesses.

BP Rolling Out New Ads Aimed at Repairing Image

Undeterred by criticism of a new TV commercial featuring its leader, BP PLC is pressing ahead with a major ad campaign—in an effort to rescue its badly damaged image—as torrents of oil continue to spew into the Gulf of Mexico. "We are preparing a series of ads to air over the next days and weeks," said Andrew Gowers, a spokesman for the British oil company. President Barack Obama blasted the company on Friday for reportedly spending $50 million on television advertising as the company scrambles to fix its leaking well.

Haunted By Dancing Khakis

Gap Inc. is searching for "a creative partner for our holiday 2010 campaign," according to Advertising Age. In the spirit of helping the brand’s managers with their decision, I hereby offer up some straight and very dim suggestions.

High-Fructose Corn Syrup Offers Bittersweet Lesson

High-fructose corn syrup is getting a bad name. Hunt's ketchup is the latest product to replace corn syrup with old-fashioned sugar. Gatorade, Wheat Thins, Ocean Spray cranberry juice and all the baked goods at Starbucks are now made with regular sugar. In New York State, a bill to ban the sale of food containing high-fructose corn syrup was introduced this year. One analyst estimates that U.S sales of high-fructose corn syrup were down 9% in 2009 compared with 2007. A further fall is expected this year. This decline has taken place in spite of a two-year $30 million "Sweet Surprise" advertising campaign sponsored by the Corn Refiners Association. The campaign highlights what the association says are vague and unsubstantiated opinions.

Toyota Plots Brand Rehab

After turning in the worst performance in May sales among major automakers in the U.S. market, Toyota is launching a new marketing campaign (and charm offensive, led by Toyota president Akio Toyoda) to try to get American consumers thinking once again about what once made the Toyota brand so great. Two years ago it was the world's best-selling automaker. Yesterday, Toyota reported that its U.S. sales in May improved by only 7%, while its competitors reported double-digit increases over their dismal May 2009 results. Toyota execs had plenty of excuses – including the fact that they had a tough comparison with last year’s sales while domestic automakers were at their nadir a year ago. It's also hurting from consumers' fatigue with its massive program of zero-percent-interest loan incentives introduced earlier this year. But it’s clear that many potential car buyers remain leery of Toyota’s products and promises in the wake of the company’s massive safety recalls early this year. Naturally, Toyota wants to shift the conversation to more positive messaging.

BP Goes on the Offensive

BP's new commercial featuring CEO Tony Hayward hit YouTube and US TV yesterday. The damage control isn't just aimed at BP's brand, but the "gaffe-prone" Hayward and images such as AP's latest. After addressing BP on CNN last night, a "furious" President Obama is heading to the disaster site again today. And crowdsourcing solutions to the spill is officially a cottage industry.

Sprint Boasts 'First' 4G Phone

Sprint today unveiled an ad campaign for the HTC EVO, a mobile phone that uses 4G high-speed wireless technology. The effort kicks off with an ad dubbed "Firsts," which makes the claim that Sprint is the first national cellular carrier to offer a 4G phone. In 30- and 60-second TV spots, a voiceover takes viewers through a timeline of "firsts," like the first train, the first airplane, and the first space shuttle, among other inventions. The technologies advance until the HTC EVO is revealed. The voiceover concludes: "First isn't later, it's now. What will you do first with EVO, the first 4G phone?" Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, handles.

Gee, Gee, Gee, Gee, Sprint Celebrates Its Next Innovation

Advertising for the Sprint brand, part of Sprint Nextel, has been featuring its next-generation 4G wireless network for a while now as Sprint rolls out the service in partnership with its Clearwire affiliate. The 4G network operates faster than the current 3G network. On Wednesday night, Sprint will begin to pull out as many stops as it can to give 4G a big splash as it brings out a cellphone from HTC, known as the Evo, that Sprint calls “the first 4G phone.”

Men's Wearhouse Ads Take New Approach

For many men, spending a day shopping is akin to having one's gums scraped. But The Men's Wearhouse wants to demonstrate the understanding it has for its target with a new campaign asserting the store is "A place where men belong."

McDonald's First Gay Ad: Meh to Wha?!

McDonald's France is targeting gay customers with a new TV commercial that's already burning up the Web and social networks. Responses range from kudos (for recognizing its gay customers) and snarkasm (gee, thanks for serving gay people!) to yawns (not one of their better ads, creatively) and ire (for portraying a closeted teen. Don't ask, don't eat?) Take a look and tell us what you think.

Political Ads Are Tough Sell For Image-Conscious Corporations

After a landmark Supreme Court ruling this year freed executives to spend unlimited corporate cash on campaigns, some predicted that businesses would flood television airwaves with pro-industry political ads -- but that just hasn't happened yet. Image-sensitive corporations are still trying to make sure that, if they jump into 2010 politicking, they do so as anonymously as possible, according to Republican political operatives and trade group leaders.

Americans Downing Less Beer, Sparking Brawl Among Brewers

Crack open a beer this summer. Please. The $100 billion U.S. brewing industry is staggering into its crucial selling season from its weakest position in years. Sales for 11 of the biggest brands fell in the four weeks ended May 16, according to SymphonyIRI, and only four of the top 30 -- Keystone Light, Modelo Especial, Yuengling and Pabst Blue Ribbon -- posted gains. Meanwhile, despite massive measured-media support, category titans Bud Light, Coors Light and Miller Lite all declined.

Accenture Ditch Their Distinctiveness

I was stopped in my tracks this morning when I read the paper and saw this truly awful ad from Accenture. Dear oh dear. Not that "elephants can dance too" metaphor, or surf as it is in this case. So deja vu. So crap. Really. It made me think what a mess Accenture's communication is in since it knee-jerked into firing Tiger Woods, who it has used since 2003.

Bring on Digital: Why I No Longer Consider Myself a Traditionalist

Ah, digital. By now, we've supposedly all embraced it -- that vast frontier of untapped potential to interact in new, ever-more creative ways with the consumerscape. And yet, as I walked up to the entrance to my first Interactive One Show, I couldn't help viewing my agency-paid ticket as much of an obligation as I viewed the digital medium itself.

Best-Ever Advertising Taglines

Frances Gerety, a copywriter for the now-defunct agency, coined "A Diamond is Forever" in 1948 for Johannesburg, South Africa, diamond company DeBeers. That memorable tagline and 24 others were among the best-ever advertising taglines as rated by a group of 10 CMOs and advertising experts.

Consumers Get a Chance to Go Commercial

CheapTickets, part of Orbitz Worldwide, is announcing on Tuesday morning a user-generated content contest, asking consumers to create a 30-second commercial that shows “just how good it feels to save” by using cheaptickets.com. The judges on the panel will include the executives at CheapTickets who oversee advertising and Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Why Nike's 'Write the Future' Is Rewriting the Past

Everyone is talking about the new Nike World Cup spot, and with good reason: It's a beautifully told story that transcends media formats to deliver a truly emotional and inspirational experience. In 30 seconds, it appears that Nike finally cracked the code by combining compelling narrative with the power of digital distribution. And, Wieden & Kennedy showed us what it means for a brand to truly participate in culture. Or, did it? Is this really still a way to build a strong digital brand?

Prudential Seeks Brand Campaign

Prudential Financial has confirmed that it is seeking an umbrella campaign for its master brand in a creative search that's just getting started. The work up for grabs constitutes a new project-based assignment, a client representative said. Sources expect the corporate image campaign to be backed by about $50 million in major media spending. Prudential Financial offers life insurance, mutual funds, annuities and investment services, including retirement planning. The division and this particular assignment are separate from Prudential's real estate business.

P&G Relaunches Pantene

Procter & Gamble's Pantene is making a comeback with a new campaign from Grey that suggests consumers "Put it to the test." The beauty brand, which now offers products customized by hair type, named the winner of its first "Reality Hair Star Contest" with a live TV ad broadcast Tuesday on NBC's season finale of The Biggest Loser: Couples.

Freer Ad Spending Buoys TV's Upfront

The upfront market, the annual mating dance in which ad buyers and major broadcast networks haggle over ad time for the new TV season, is heating up, and could be sold out in a matter of weeks, ad buyers and marketers say. It's a major reversal from last year when talks dragged on through much of the summer in a harsh economic climate.

The Ad That Went Bad

If you're a regular dim bulber, you know that I love to riff on what's happening to brands, marketing, media consumption and the greater Known Universe. I had the honor of keynoting the Worldwide Partners' annual meeting in Miami earlier this week and for that occasion I wanted to explore a new way of looking at things...so I wrote a poem, which follows. My apologies to Dr. Seuss and anybody who gets headaches from bad rhythm or rhyme.

Kraft Gives Mayo Brand a 'Bold' Makeover

Kraft is looking to spice up the lunchtime sandwich with a new celebrity-backed campaign for its line of flavored mayonnaises. The effort for the Sandwich Shop brand, which kicked off with a 60-second spot during last night's American Idol finale, stars HGTV Design Star judges Candice Olson, Genevieve Gorder and Vern Yip. TV spots, dubbed Tastemakers,” are set up in a makeover reality show format.

Kraft Hopes to Encourage Adults to Revert to a Childhood Favorite

Kraft Foods wants grown-ups to get the blues in the night, and in the afternoon and at snack time, too. The “blues” in this instance are the familiar blue boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Dinner, a product that Kraft has long sold to adults as a meal to make for children. In a new campaign — the first work on the brand from a new creative agency — Kraft tells adults that its macaroni and cheese has, to quote ads for Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, the taste adults have grown to love.

'Telling' Her Doesn't Cut It Anymore; Let Her Sample Your Product

No matter how you try to spin it, the marketing industry recognizes that traditional advertising has lost much of its effect on mothers. And, as a marketing professional myself, I don't like the way that sounds. But who can blame moms? They've seen a lot of misleading and manipulative messaging, they've been mistreated by salespeople and they've learned that it's just safer not to believe.

American Airlines Thanks Troops, Vets, Families

American Airlines will debut two TV spots over the Memorial Day weekend that pay tribute to military service members, veterans and their families. Created by Dallas-based TM Advertising, American's advertising agency of record, the new 30-second commercials were filmed on location at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, one of Dallas-based American's hubs. "Thank You" tells the story of a traveling solider who begins his journey with American Airlines.

Both Style and Substance in Diaper Advertising

Diaper ads typically are earnest, fawning over babies and remaining steadfastly euphemistic about function, typically pouring blue liquid into diapers to demonstrate absorbency. But a couple of years ago Huggies shifted directions with another JWT spot: a father slips into a bedroom during a party to change the diaper of his baby boy, who, lying on the bed and smiling, suddenly produces a geyserlike stream that splatters the ceiling. “We’re moving away from the saccharine and getting into a little more reality and humor,” said Richie Glickman, a JWT creative director who worked on that spot and the latest one. While it is, in the most literal sense, potty humor, Mr. Glickman said such ads resonated with parents at a deeper level.

How Can Brands Best Get In Front Of Digital Audiences?

We’re still here at the first TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York. Up on stage right now is an interesting group of people discussing how brands can best engage with digital audiences in this day and age. This is an overview of what Judy Hu, Global Executive Director of Advertising & Branding at GE, Brian Pokorny (CEO of dailybooth), Christopher ‘moot’ Poole of 4chan fame and Andrey Ternovskiy, who started Chatroulette, had to say about that.

NBA Roll Out Finals Mashups

As the NBA conference finals wind down and the 2010 championship finals take shape, the league has rolled out the last piece of its "Amazing Is..." postseason campaign which was pulled together with the help of DJ Steve Porter and the NBA's ad agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. As in previous spots, Porter took audio clips from star players at key moments in NBA history and created mashups under different themes for different stages of the playoffs -- “Belief” for the first round, “Unity” for the conference semifinals, “the Journey” for the conference finals, and “the Dream” for the finals.

Twitter Bans Sponsored Tweets, Saves Itself

Twitter has banned third party ad networks like Ad.ly, Sponsored Tweets and MyLikes. Like the multilevel marketer who used the pretence of friendship as a recruiting tool, these ad services are all about monetizing personal relationships. Each third party ad network offers a different spin on the same basic business model: you sign up as a sponsored tweeter, and based on the number of people who follow you, you are assigned a price for referring to various advertisers in your tweets. You select from a list of advertisers, and then tweet a link to that advertiser's product, either using your own text or a message that is provided by the advertiser. Your followers click the link, and you get paid.

Dr Pepper Execs Explain Restage

Expect to see a lot more of Dr Pepper, Snapple, 7Up and Sunkist on television this year. Parent company Dr Pepper Snapple Group plans to increase ad spending behind these—and several other—brands by $25 million in the second quarter. The soft drink company is also introducing new products, like a new line of Snapple teas created by The Celebrity Apprentice finalists Bret Michaels and Holly Robinson Peete (unveiled today). Svp of marketing Andrew Springate and evp Jim Trebilcock (pictured far left) said the reality show tie-in was part of a yearlong restage—a term they used to describe new packaging and drink formulation. In an interview with Brandweek, Springate and Trebilcock discussed the new products inspired by The Celebrity Apprentice and other changes the brand is making to stand out in a crowded category.

Kraft Charts New Course For Its Chips Ahoy! Brand

Chips Ahoy!, Kraft’s top-selling chocolate chip brand, is giving its eight-year-old “Cookie Guys” campaign the heave-ho to make way for a new effort built around “joy.” The campaign, which coincides with new products and packaging, centers on the moments of exultation moms and children alike derive from eating the cookie. A spot launching this week, for instance, shows kids moving and grooving each time someone opens a package of Chips Ahoy! The spot is set to the tune of the 1979 R&B hit “Bustin’ Loose,” by Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers. Tagline: “There’s a lotta joy in Chips Ahoy!

Marketing To Hearts And Minds: Balance Brand And Retail

Media and production budgets continue to shrink while expectation of results does not. We are challenged daily to figure out how to make more happen with less, and this is never truer than when trying to determine how to both brand and sell our clients' product. Gone are the days where most advertisers can afford both the big, broad anthemic brand campaign as well as the more "hard sell," retail version. We've morphed into a space where ads are expected to both brand and sell, but cracking the code on how to accomplish both effectively has proven challenging for many.

Twitter Cuts The Cord On Third-Party Ad Networks

Third-party ad networks have been officially banned from Twitter, according to a post on the Twitter blog on Monday from Chief Operating Officer Dick Costolo. It's a move that could drive some of the advertising start-ups that have built around Twitter out of business. "We will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API," the post read, explaining that the exception will be Twitter's own "promoted tweets" program that it announced earlier this year.

Unconscious Branding: Who Needs Facts?

Few doubt that branding messages can be powerful, but new research shows that even when consumers don’t recall the specific message, their preferences can be shaped to the point where they reject new information that conflicts with their stored brand association. Melanie Dempsey (Ryerson University) and Andrew A. Mitchell (University of Toronto) set out to test the power of branding messages by conditioning consumers to like or dislike fictitious brand names. They exposed consumers to hundreds of images which included 20 pairing a fictitious brand with positive words or images. 20 other images paired another brand with negative sentiments. At the end of the process, the subjects were unable to recall which brands had been associated with positive or negative messages, but DID express a preference for the positively-matched brand. The researchers called this an, ‘I like it, but I don’t know why’ effect.

Google TV: What Does It Mean for Advertisers?

Google opened up an entirely new store of inventory for advertisers today with Google TV, an interactive platform that collapses the wall between TV and internet in the living room. The service, created with hardware partners Sony, Logitech and Intel, will launch this fall on TVs, set-top boxes and Blu-ray players.

Samsung Courts Consumers, Marketers

The South Korean company's plans may include pushing interactive advertisements from other companies through Samsung's phones and flat-screen TVs. Ads will likely be built into Samsung's new application store that, similar to Apple's for its iPhone, lets consumers stream content from the Internet to--in Samsung's case--a Web-connected television. Millions of Samsung's ipTV owners now have access to 30 ad-free applications, such as movie-streaming programs Netflix and Blockbuster. By year-end they will be able to tap into more than 100 of them. Then marketers may start doing it, too, piping their own messages into the apps.

Facebook, MySpace Confront Privacy Loophole

Facebook, MySpace and several other social-networking sites have been sending data to advertising companies that could be used to find consumers' names and other personal details, despite promises they don't share such information without consent. The practice, which most of the companies defended, sends user names or ID numbers tied to personal profiles being viewed when users click on ads. After questions were raised by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook and MySpace moved to make changes. By Thursday morning Facebook had rewritten some of the offending computer code

Joel Ewanick's First Order of Business at GM: Chevy

Less than a week after stepping into his role as top marketer at General Motors, Joel Ewanick is striking fear along GM's entire ad agency roster by prepping his first big change: shifting creative duties on the $600 million Chevrolet account to Omnicom Group's Goodby, Silverstein & Partners only weeks after it was consolidated at Publicis Groupe's Publicis.

Kodak Turns Over a New Leaf

Picture this… Kodak is going sustainable. A new logo will now be attached to packaging, marketing and advertising materials to signify environmental products unique to the brand. The logo, featuring a green and yellow leaf, supports its new tagline of “Kodak Cares.” Further proof of the company's commitment to an environmental corporate conscience is Kodak's new sustainability focus, leveraging a growing movement of consumers willing to pay for and support environmentally friendly companies and products.

Reality Becoming More Augmented Daily

One of the projections many folks had for this year was the growth of mobile applications that could use browsers, cameras, GPS and compass built into the current generation of phones to layer data on the view from a phone’s camera. The so-called augmented reality this produces is something that is amazing to witness and will become standard fare soon.

The Local Advertising War Will Be a Clash of the Internet Titans

When Google upgraded their Local Business Center to Google Places, it launched the opening salvo in what we expect to be a long war for local advertising dollars. With local advertising revenues expected to reach $144.9 billion in 2014 according to BIA/Kelsey — and more and more dollars are shifting away from traditional media toward digital media buys — the new war for local ad spend will be a battle between the Internet (Internet) titans and social networks. Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Foursquare, Yelp and even Apple are all attempting to carve out their own niche offering for local advertising dollars. Who will succeed remains to be seen, but this is a fight you won’t want to miss.

Traditional Ads Yield Social Traction

That social media is a powerful tool for raising awareness is not new news. But its increasing power is leading some advertisers to reconsider how they plan and measure traditional ad campaigns as they increasingly look to so-called earned media impressions as being as important as primary paid media. The promise of what some are calling "free media" is that it's more credible than paid placements, particularly when it comes from consumers speaking to other consumers.

Sprint Hopes ‘Cents’ Adds Up To Dollars

As much as Madison Avenue looks back to the 1970s and 1980s when trying to evoke nostalgic feelings in consumers, there are still nothing like the trappings of the 1960s to seek to make those emotional connections. That is evident again in a campaign scheduled to get under way on Monday from a new brand under the Sprint Nextel banner, Common Cents.

Football Already Winning Upfront Deals, Networks Say

Advertisers are already focusing on buying time in football broadcasts, according to networks, even before the networks have put much of their prime-time lineups on the grid for consideration. Executives at two different broadcast networks said Monday that they had already seen interest from marketers in purchasing ad time in football.

Branding South Africa: May The Best Team Win

With less than a month to go to the kick-off of the 2010 FIFA World Cup games, entries for a new marketing campaign contest for South Africa are pouring in. The Get Wildly Creative About South Africa online ad contest, organized by South Africa Airways, South Africa Tourism and the CMO Council, has attracted more than 400 entries from around the world so far, says Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council, and it expects to receive more in the next week; more than 10,000 aspiring ad professionals have already viewed the briefs and entry procedures.

Matrix: How Facebook’s ‘Community Pages’ and Privacy Changes Impact Brands

This is one of those important posts to forward to your marketing team, agency partners, and to Facebook themselves. While there’s been plenty of coverage about user privacy concerns, attention on Facebook’s changes on brands hasn’t been adequately covered, this analysis is intended to unravel what’s at stake –and what brands should do. I’ve spoken to a handful of brands and their representatives to learn what’s eating at them.

World Cup Kicks Off Marketing Games on Epic Scale

Global marketers such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Nike are describing the 2010 FIFA World Cup as a larger event than even the 2008 Beijing Olympics. That scale -- combined with the intensity of interest in the sport, the national pride of fans and the fact that it's the first major global sporting event ever held on the African continent -- figures to sell a lot of sneakers and soft drinks.

Bleep or No Bleep, Bolder Words Blow In

How much more frank is the language used in everyday advertising getting? Look, or listen, no further than a print, online and radio campaign for that most prosaic of products, Frank’s RedHot sauce. The theme of the campaign is “I put that ——— on everything.” In print and online ads, the missing word is covered with a splat that makes it look as if a censor spilled some sauce on the page. In the radio commercials, a loud bleeping sound is heard over the word.

Domino's Illustrates Power Of 'Rational' Appeals

Domino's Pizza's recent sales surge is one compelling reminder of the power of a clear benefit appeal and intelligent execution, as opposed to advertising that entertains but falls short on results, in the opinion of at least one marketing consultant.

Bing Marketing Moves From Search Overload To 'Los Links'

It is often said about the internet that you cannot advertise your way to market share. At least that's what former Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone will tell you. Priceline.com and Hulu, of course, have other ideas. So what of Microsoft's $100 million campaign for Bing? Its query share hit 11.8% in April, according to ComScore, up from 8.4% since Microsoft's search service was re-launched 10 months ago. "Bing continues to impress with continued market share gains," Citibank analyst Mark Mahaney said in a research note.

Chrysler Prepping New TV Campaign to Help Brand Image

Chrysler is prepping the launch of a corporate branding TV campaign it hopes will help repair its image in the minds of consumers -- and it's hired a new agency, Interpublic Group of Cos.' Gotham, for the project.

Facebook Makes Gains in Web Ads

Facebook Inc. is catching up to rivals Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in selling display ads. In the first quarter, Facebook pulled ahead of Yahoo for the first time and delivered more banner ads to its U.S. users than any other Web publisher, according to market-research firm comScore Inc.

“Daddy, What’s a Brand?” and 9 More Awkward Questions for Uncertain Times

Chiquita, Victoria's Secret, The GOP, Amnesty International. They all use marketing and invite trust in a distinct belief system. They're all, to one degree or another, brands. For a brand, nirvana is when your good name is so widely endorsed that it enters the language. "Pass the Kleenex." "Google it." But that's the top of a long and slippery slope--look at Toyota and Tiger Woods. A healthy brand drives up your stock, and vice versa. These are the things we thought we knew. It's 2010--are they still true?

Twitter to Launch Twitter Business Center

We have confirmed with Twitter that beta testing of its new business features, dubbed the “Twitter Business Center,” has begun. According to the company, “only a handful of accounts have these features presently,” but it will expand on a gradual business to more accounts. One of the biggest additions: the ability for businesses to accept Twittter direct messages, even from people they don’t follow.

JetBlue Asks Its Fliers to Keep Spreading the Word

Now another airline, JetBlue, is introducing a marketing initiative that seeks to convince consumers how much better traveling on JetBlue can be. The campaign is scheduled to begin on Monday as a video-rich online effort — JetBlue is calling it a digital brand experience — whose Web address is meant to say it all: experience.jetblue.com. (It will also be reachable by visiting the JetBlue Web site, jetblue.com, and clicking on “experience.”) The initiative, by a digital agency in New York named Firstborn, is an example of what is known as experiential marketing, which aims to bring brands to life in tangible ways that eschew traditional advertising tactics like television commercials.

Marketing and Communications Should Go Together

Should marketing be in the driver's seat at the risk of alienating corporate communicators? Or, should corporate communicators take the lead only to risk a potential disconnection with the sales and marketing force? Personally I see these as false choices. They generate a lot of heated debate in their respective industries, but not much light. I think the better approach is to ask how these functions can best work together to add the most cumulative value to the company overall.

FCC Web Rules Create Pushback

The head of the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday outlined a proposal for regulating the Internet that he described as a "third way," or middle ground between "heavy-handed" regulation and a do-nothing approach that could hurt competition and leave consumers unprotected.

McDonald's to Use Facebook's Upcoming Location Feature

Facebook is preparing to launch location-based status updates for its users. But the social network is also planning to offer it to marketers, including McDonald's. As early as this month, the social-networking site will give users the ability to post their location within a status update. McDonald's, through digital agency Tribal DDB, Chicago, is building an app with Facebook would allow users to check in at one of its restaurants and have a featured product appear in the post, such as an Angus Quarter Pounder, say executives close to the deal.

TV Networks See a Seller’s Market, Unlike Last Year

A year ago, as television executives prepared for the 2009-10 season, they suffered double-digit percentage losses in advertising revenue because the economy weakened demand among marketers for commercial time. Now, as those executives get ready for the 2010-11 season, they are optimistic for a rebound in revenue, and higher rates, because demand has improved in recent months.

NBC: Back To Basics

NBC is returning to a more traditional outreach to woo agencies and advertisers for the 2010-11 season. Hoping to get out of fourth place in primetime viewership, NBC and its NBC Universal family of cable networks is going "back to basics" in its outreach to brand marketers this year, says NBCU president of ad sales Mike Pilot. "For us, it’s a requirement, our big issue in the marketplace is getting NBC primetime back to health,” Pilot tells the New York Times.

Windmills in a Hurricane

Goldman Sachs may have broken the law making gazillions betting its products would crap out, the entire country of Greece is probably going out of business, and financial services brands are telling individual investors that they deserve better from their brokers. Duh. It seems like absolutely reasonable messaging until you get into the details:

Yahoo’s New Ad Disses Google, Glorifies The Web Portal of Old

Yahoo launched a new $85 million ad campaign, aiming to promote Yahoo as the single destination for all your online needs. Their slogan: “Your favorite stuff all in one place. Make Yahoo your home page.” Their first target: Google.

A Bank’s Ads, Dressed Up in Historical Garb

The History Channel is producing 12 two-minute videos for Bank of America, each beginning in the same era as the episode, then jumping to a current example of the bank’s civic-mindedness. Representatives of the bank and the cable network do not describe the videos as commercials, preferring the terms “mini-documentaries” or “interstitial content.”

Effort To Integrate Madison Avenue Turns to Super Sunday

A long-running attempt to bring more racial diversity to the advertising industry is shining a spotlight on the biggest day of the year for advertising — Super Bowl Sunday — in an effort to bring its arguments to life. The Madison Avenue Project, as the diversity initiative is called, held a news conference on Wednesday morning to release the results of a study of the commercials that ran during Super Bowl XLIV on Feb. 7. According to the study, of the 52 spots during the game that were produced by major advertising agencies, the lead creative director in every instance was white.

Make Your Product Work for Your Brand

Digital technologies have fundamentally changed the way consumers interact with each other and, by the way, with brands. The role of engaging brand stories has not gone away. However, to truly establish loyalty and advocacy -- the holy grail of marketing in the digital age -- our marketing and brand strategies need to go beyond telling great stories. We have to make marketing focus on how products or services are actually used, not on how we hope they are used. We have to make them more useful by wrapping them in applications that increase their usefulness to the consumer.

Consumer Groups Say Proposed Privacy Bill is Flawed

Consumer groups have been fighting what they see as the prevalence of online tracking, where online advertising is selected for a certain user — perhaps because he once visited a company’s home page, perhaps because he showed an interest in automobiles or baby products, or perhaps because he is a middle-aged man. As opposition has intensified, companies like Google and Yahoo have adjusted their own privacy policies in response to consumer concern. Industry groups, while arguing that free Internet content depends on this type of sophisticated advertising, have issued their own self-regulatory principles.

Starbucks Whips Up Frappuccino Campaign

Starbucks today (Tuesday) kicked off a new campaign for its Frappuccino brand, touting “however-you-want-it” blended iced drinks. Dubbed "Express Your Love!," the campaign comes as Starbucks tries to grow sales of its priciest drinks, such as the Frappuccino. (The coffee chain recently announced Frappuccino-inspired products, including ice creams and the Vanilla Frappuccino Light drink.)

Apple Draws Scrutiny From Regulators

U.S. antitrust enforcers are taking a keen interest in recent changes that Apple Inc. made to its licensing agreement with iPhone application developers and are likely to open a preliminary investigation into whether the company's actions stifle competition in mobile devices, according to people familiar with the situation. The Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department, which are jointly tasked with enforcing federal antitrust laws, are holding discussions over which agency would hold the inquiry, these people said. Apple, the FTC and Justice Department all declined to comment.

Trying to Move Up From a Fast-Talking, Buy-Now Approach

Guthy-Renker is testing a campaign for Proactiv, its popular line of acne products, that is far more like a campaign for a mainstream brand. It’s in sharp contrast to its roots in fast-talking, hard-selling direct-response television like the Guthy-Renker spots for Malibu Pilates or “The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts” DVDs. “This is scary territory for direct-response marketers,” said Greg Renker, co-chairman of Guthy-Renker in Santa Monica, Calif.

Palm Ads Improve Just In Time For Sale To HP

Just as the future of both Modernista! and Palm seemed in doubt, a strange thing happened: They started putting out some pretty good ads together. Palm had reportedly been shopping around for a new agency after the disappointing launch of the Pre smartphone when suddenly it was announced this week that Hewlett-Packard was buying Palm for a cool $1.2 billion in cash. In the midst of this chaos, a few new spots for the Palm webOS have quietly rolled out. They follow the "Don't miss a thing" theme that launched last month, and unlike the Pre ads, they won't be criticized for not highlighting features or the interface. Check out one of the new spots below and two more after the jump.

Apple to Charge a Premium to Put Ads in Mobile Apps

Setting a high bar for its debut in the advertising business, Apple Inc. aims to charge close to $1 million for ads on its mobile devices this year and perhaps even more to be among the first, ad executives say. Apple is hitting the road to showcase its new mobile-device advertising capability, dubbed iAd, and has indicated it could charge as much as $10 million to be part of a handful of marketers at the launch, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Say Hello to Mass Media 2.0?

Reckitt Benckiser ("RB") made ad trade headlines last week when it announced a record-setting $40 million web video buy for 2010. What shocked everyone wasn't the dollar amount but rather that the company pretty much doesn't care where the ads run. "This kind of strategy echoes planning/buying 101 back in 1970," said a comment on the news article in Advertising Age, "It's a senseless approach that abandons all facets of leveraging for optimization and efficiency." Spoken like a true technonut, I say. At risk of overly analyzing the move I wonder if it heralds a realistic approach to web advertising. Say hello to mass media 2.0?

The Future of Stealth Marketing?

Saw The Joneses over the weekend. This movie has kicked up a bunch of articles about stealth marketing and who's using it. As their tagline says, They're not just living the American dream, they're selling it. Now, this isn't really a new approach, brands have been using stealth marketing for quite sometime. BzzAgent created some controversy when it first started a few years back because their agents were not disclosing the fact that they were promoting a product.

In a World of Ads, Teaching the Young How to Read Them

A federal agency is undertaking an effort to school youngsters in the ways of Madison Avenue. The initiative seeks to educate children in grades four through six — tweens, in the parlance of marketing — about how advertising works so they can make better, more informed choices when they shop or when they ask parents to shop on their behalf.

Too Many Shops, Not Enough Business

In college, my economics professor used to say that the difference between too much supply and not enough is one unit. Such is the tenuous nature of economic equilibrium. But when it comes to the advertising industry, the basics of supply and demand seem to be permanently suspended. The bottom line? There are far too many agencies chasing too few dollars.

McDonald's Dillon Splits Up Advertising to Make Shops Say 'I'm Lovin' It'

What's it take to get cut-throat agency competitors to play nice? A $2 billion global budget doesn't hurt. It's at least one reason McDonald's can get its agencies to collaborate on strategy and major messaging before releasing them to develop their own spins. But McDonald's doesn't pit them against each other in winner-take-all shoot-outs; rather, it asks clients for their best work and often goes with multiple agencies contributing to the campaign, as it did with the recent "I'm Lovin' It" update. The company sees that collaboration as crucial to its advertising success.

Sony Taps Stars to Make its Products Shine

This laser focus on a small basket of specific products is a new marketing strategy for Sony, which pulled in $24 billion in third-quarter revenue (ending Dec. 31, 2009), up 4% from 2008. For the past few years, the company spent its nearly $5 billion on global advertising budget on a huge number of its products--from laptops to DVD players. Niche is the new tactic. By honing in on its most promising devices and celebs, Sony is aiming to fend off competitors that dominate the consumer electronics space.

A Milestone for Internet Ad Revenue

For the first time, marketers spent more in 2009 on Internet advertising than in magazines, according to a report from ZenithOptimedia, which said online ad spending would rapidly close ground on newspapers. Despite a record-setting $6.3 billion fourth quarter, online advertising revenue declined 3.4 percent for the year from 2008, the first year-over-year falloff since 2002. The loss in ad spending across all media was an even steeper 12.3 percent for the year and 2 percent for the fourth quarter.

Upfront Market Looks Primed for an Upswing

A year after the major television networks slashed advertising rates amid a dismal economy, advertisers are poised to boost spending on commercials for the coming TV season. Last-minute ads are fetching much bigger premiums than they were a year ago. Both buyers and sellers of commercial time say the yearly "upfront" market for commercials could see higher prices per viewer, and greater overall spending.

Gatorade, Before and After

PepsiCo Inc. is launching a new ad campaign during Friday night's NBA playoffs meant to boost its struggling Gatorade business by getting athletes to gulp its iconic sports drink before, during, and after the game. The campaign, promoting the Purchase, N.Y., food and beverage giant's new lineup of "G Series" drinks for athletes, aims to demonstrate that Gatorade isn't just a sports drink that replaces nutrients sweated out during the game, but a system with three steps: a carbohydrate-loaded "Prime" concentrated liquid before play; the traditional "Perform" sports drink during; and a light, protein-rich "Recover" drink after.

McDonald's Unveils 'I'm Lovin' It' 2.0

After more than a year of consumer research and agency brainstorming, McDonald's global chief marketing officer unveiled an updated take on its iconic, 7-year-old "I'm Lovin' It" campaign today before an audience of 15,000 franchisees, marketers and suppliers.

P&G's Decision to Spend $100 Million on Oprah Bigger Than It Seems

On the face of it, $100 million is nothing to Procter & Gamble. The consumer-products giant spent $2.7 billion last year on traditional media and web-based banner ads, according to Kantar Media. So why should anyone care if Oprah Winfrey's fledgling cable network got a taste of a couple of Tide, Crest and Pampers-created pennies?

Milking Emotions: Media Lovers May Like Ads, Too

At a time when marketing executives are under pressure to measure the performance of and prove the effectiveness of their ads, Starcom USA, a media buying and planning company, says understanding emotional motivations for media choices may help consumer product companies deliver ads that motivate readers to consider their products.

Facebook Wants to Know More Than Just Who Your Friends Are

Facebook Inc. announced an ambitious plan to get its tentacles further out into the Internet by better linking people, places and things, as it looks to turn a massive audience into a pool of well-understood consumers.

iPad Poised to Revolutionize Retail Industry

In the first weeks of the iPad launch, retailers have been largely left out of the conversation. But industry executives believe the device could have a major impact on everything from retailers' catalogs to e-commerce to enhancing the in-store experience. So far, few retailers have embraced the new Apple device even though many already have iPhone apps. Gap, Gilt.com and eBay are among the retail brands that have created iPad applications, while Puma is expected to add iPads to its stores late this year.

At 40, Earth Day Is Now Big Business

So strong was the antibusiness sentiment for the first Earth Day in 1970 that organizers took no money from corporations and held teach-ins “to challenge corporate and government leaders.” Forty years later, the day has turned into a premier marketing platform for selling a variety of goods and services, like office products, Greek yogurt and eco-dentistry.

C'mon, Get Happy: Advertisers Want Consumers To Lighten Up

New ad campaigns suggest marketers are eager to shake off the gloom of tough economic times--and they hope consumers will do the same. While some economists aren't sure the tough times are history, advertisers don't seem to care. Companies are rolling out carefree ads that use humor, colorful images and upbeat language to get consumers to lighten up--and open up their wallets.

Word of Mouth Has Greater Impact Than Ads

Marketing campaigns that encourage considerable word of mouth among consumers have a greater impact on sales than more traditional forms of advertising, according to McKinsey. The consultancy argued that word of mouth is the "primary factor" behind between 20% and 50% of purchases, with a particular relevance in relation to expensive products and first-time acquisitions. It added that an advertising "overload", growing mistrust of marketing and the social media-driven shift in control away from companies and towards consumers have all encouraged this trend.

Study: Marketers Shifting Online Budgets To Content Sites, Away From Networks

With their ability to cheaply reach eyeballs, online ad networks have commanded more money and attention from marketers in the past few years, thus edging out content sites in the conversation for ad dollars. A recent study, however, claims content is back. A survey of agencies and marketers revealed that 52% of them plan to spend more on content sites this year, whereas only 35% said they were likely to increase budgets for ad networks. As examples of content destinations, the study cited ESPN and WebMD.

Earth Day Turns 40

Is it possible it’s been four decades since the notion of green marketing first dawned in America? Indeed it is, and Thursday marks the 40th birthday of Earth Day. The now iconic Keep America Beautiful "Crying Indian" ad (which you can watch after the jump) debuted in 1971 with a close-up on a single tear traversing the cheek of Iron Eyes Cody. It was the first environmental commercial. Marketers have been on the green bandwagon ever since, but has it really made a difference? Ad Age recently took a comprehensive look at the noise, the facts, and the scorecard.

Nielsen: Facebook's Ads Work Pretty Well

It pays to have fans on Facebook if you want your ads to work there too, according to the first public study to come out of the collaboration of Nielsen Co. and Facebook. The study of more than 800,000 Facebook users and ads from 14 brands in a variety of categories shows a marked increase in ad recall, awareness and purchase intent when home-page ads on the social network mention friends of users who've become fans of the brand in the ad.

Social Media Ads Beat TV

Last week, neuromarketing firm Neurofocus released summary results of a study that compared the performance of the same ad when run on television and on two Internet websites, Facebook and a website controlled by the advertiser. The commercial tested was “Trip For Life,” part of VISA’s multimedia campaign built around the 2010 Winter Olympics.

CNN Marries Content and Commercials to Retain Viewers

TV viewers by now are accustomed to seeing product placement in their favorite shows. But how will they react upon seeing "program placement" in their commercials?

New Razors Place Focus on Comfort, Not Blade Count

Schick is introducing a new razor, the Hydro, however, and this time it is not raising the blade ante. The new razor is available in both five- and three-blade versions, and advertising focuses less on blades than how a moisturizing gadget reduces irritation.

Schwinn Pops Kickstand On $5 Million Campaign

Once upon a time, Schwinn pretty much owned the American bicycle market and, with models like Varsity, Continental, and of course, the Paramount, defined American-made bicycling dominance. But that was back when a carbon frame was something you made with a pencil, and brands like Trek, Specialized, Cannondale and Giant had not climbed onto retail bike racks.

Twitter Loses Its Scrappy Start-Up Status

Twitter’s first developer conference, held this week in San Francisco, served as a coming-out party for the four-year-old service. Twitter the start-up is becoming Twitter the big company, with more polish, controversy, competition and revenue.

Brands Try 'Snappable' Magazine Ads

Magazines have tried to bring their pages to life with “snappable” icons that serve up ad offers or extra editorial content to mobile users, but reader response is often low. Entertainment Weekly is hoping to do better with its upcoming summer movie preview issue, though. The April 23 issue will let readers view the trailers of 20 films by snapping or scanning a 2-D Microsoft bar code with a smartphone. They’ll then be directed to YouTube, where the trailers reside. Five advertisers, including HBO, Absolut and Honda, are running snappable ads in the issue.

A Beer Marketer Is Painting the Town, Literally

One of the hottest trends in marketing is for brands to commission the creation of content — sometimes chock full of product placement, sometimes low-key in trying to peddle their wares. One of the softer-selling projects of late is to be introduced on Thursday night by Stella Artois beer. It is a documentary film, 12 minutes long, about the increasingly scarce art of wall painting, by which billboards are painted directly onto building walls.

Google’s Profit and Revenue Rise, but Analysts Wanted More

Google may be fighting a multifront war against Apple, Microsoft, federal antitrust regulators and the government of China, but its online advertising business continues to hum along nicely. The company topped published forecasts on Thursday, reporting that its net income in the first quarter jumped more than 37 percent from the recession-mired quarter a year ago. Sales grew 23 percent from the period a year earlier. But the stock was down nearly 5 percent in after-hours trading because the results were lower than the “whisper number” of analysts, the unpublished estimate that some analysts give clients. Google shares closed at $595.30 in regular trading before the earnings release.

Marketers Watch as Friends Interact Online

Birds of a feather flock together. Or, in the Internet age, a customer's friend is a potential customer. Embracing those truisms, some big marketers, including Sprint and eBay, are turning to small start-ups to help them tap social-networking data to find would-be clients among the friends and acquaintances of existing customers, to the dismay of some privacy advocates.

Twitter Brand Raises Questions

Twitter. The privately held company received a new round of investment last fall, believed to be $100m, which values the business at a whopping $1bn (£624m). That makes Twitter roughly as valuable as WH Smith - which provides an excellent point of comparison. WH Smith has done well this year. Its annual revenues are likely to be about £1.3bn, and most analysts are expecting those revenues to result in pre-tax profits of about £80m. Over at Twitter, for all its glorious PR and amazing technological impact, there is nothing. Not a cent. Because Twitter does not charge for its service.

What AT&T Could Learn From McDonald’s

I usually try to keep my critiques to categories I’ve worked in, primarily because I think it’s irresponsible for me to comment on what works and what doesn’t when I have little basis for my assessment other than being a consumer. So I initially demurred when some folks have asked for my POV on AT&T’s new campaign, Rethink Possible. But then I started wondering whether my expertise in other categories might actually shed some light on the issue — that’s when I realized that there are some instructive parallels between AT&T and fast food chains. And while AT&T has adopted some of what drives fast feeders’ success, there are a couple of important lessons it might want to learn.

‘Crocs’ and ‘Style’ in the Same Breath

“First and foremost, what we want to do is establish Crocs as a brand and not that one shoe,” said Ken Chaplin, vice president for marketing at Crocs, referring to the original model. With newer loafer styles and flats, the company hopes to gain more of a year-round presence. “Spring, summer — we own that,” Mr. Chaplin said. “But we also have great shoes for back to school, fall and winter. There’s a lot of opportunity to expand wearing occasions and the seasons we play in.”

Advertising Is Invisible

Kapitaal is a short animated film by a Dutch design studio, Studio Smack. The video tries to convey the huge amount of visual information surrounding us, which renders branding and advertising simply ineffective as we have become immune to it. The video, which received several awards, has everything in black except content hoping to demand attention, which is in white.

Tweets at 35,000 Feet: How Virgin America Uses Promoted Tweets

Promoted Tweets are now live. Yet most of us are still generally curious about how this will work in the wild. What does this mean for partner advertisers? Are our search results and Twitter streams going to be spammed with advertisements now? Will Twitter ever be the same? Of course, the answers to those questions depend entirely on the individual advertiser. The only real way to understand what Promoted Tweets means in the grand scheme of things is to talk directly to the advertisers executing Twitter’s vision. Virgin America’s Vice President of Marketing, Porter Gale, was more than happy to answer our questions and provide insight into the company’s strategy around Promoted Tweets.

There Is Nothing Easy About Advertising

Slowly but surely things are getting better, and I have decided that it is time to get back to investing in the future rather than just trying to survive. Advertising is one expense that is really an investment. Like all investments, advertising can produce results that range from great to disastrous. It requires understanding who your best prospects are, how to reach them, and what the message should be. Because most small-business owners are busy, if not overwhelmed, it can be tempting to let advertising salespeople drive the process. That can be a mistake. You don’t want to choose your advertising based on which salesperson happens to call on you.

Google's New Advertising Machine: the Bid Simulator

Call him Google's brain. Officially, Hal Varian is the search titan's chief economist, but he is perhaps more accurately its high priest of big-think innovation. Academics, entrepreneurs, Googlers and the like have pored over Mr. Varian's numerous articles espousing the company's ambitions, from digitizing libraries to the nuances of copyright. Mr. Varian, who will discuss the online future of information and data as a speaker at Ad Age's Digital Conference today, recently wrote about the value of auction pricing and audience measurement, but don't let these seemingly simple topics fool you. He sees them as an obvious outgrowth of a larger idea: computer mediation.

Twitter Wants Ad Money

Twitter’s advertising model is no longer under wraps. The social-networking site’s ad plan, Promoted Tweets, launches today and will work a lot like Google’s AdWords. When users search Twitter for keywords and what people are talking about, Twitter will run ads that marketers have bought to run against the search. The San Francisco company also plans to display promoted posts in streams of relevant user posts

Walmart Gets the Word Out on 'Straight Talk' Phone Service

The world's biggest retailer wants to make sure consumers know it's staking a claim in the wireless war -- and it plans to tell them this week with a national ad campaign touting Walmart's Straight Talk service as a real money-saver. In a pair of ads by Interpublic Group of Cos.' Martin Agency, the retailer claims that if cellphone users switch to Straight Talk -- the wireless brand that retails exclusively at Walmart stores -- it "can add up to over $850 in saving a year."

Old Ads That Won’t Die Or Fade Away

Madison Avenue is coming up with a digital variation on an Irving Berlin standard: The campaign has ended, but the advertising lingers on. Thanks to Internet staples like YouTube, Facebook and the special Web sites known as microsites, consumers can still see ads after the completion of the campaigns of which they were part — not unlike satellites that remain in space, visible to the eye, long after they have stopped being tracked.

Twitter Unveils Plans to Draw Money From Ads

Twitter will unveil on Tuesday a much-anticipated plan for making money from advertising, finally answering the question of how the company expects to turn its exponential growth into revenue. The advertising program, which Twitter calls Promoted Tweets, will show up when Twitter users search for keywords that the advertisers have bought to link to their ads. Later, Twitter plans to show promoted posts in the stream of Twitter posts, based on how relevant they might be to a particular user.

Consumer-Goods Makers Pour Out Ads

As wary Americans start to crack open their wallets, household-goods makers like Procter & Gamble Co., Colgate-Palmolive Co., Kimberly-Clark Corp. and Clorox Co. are cranking up their advertising, hoping to coax consumers farther out of their shells. Amid signs of an improving economy, recent survey data show consumers are more willing to splurge by eating out or buying new shoes, but the same doesn't necessarily hold for everyday household goods.

AT&T 'Rethink' Signals Detente in Attack-Ad Battle With Verizon

It looks as if a truce has been called in the wireless wars. After months of putting much of its $1.87 billion media budget behind ads featuring Luke Wilson to beat back Verizon Wireless, AT&T is taking the high road with a new campaign themed "Rethink Possible." And after funding its "There's a map for that" ads that tear down AT&T's coverage with a big chunk of its $2.16 billion media budget, Verizon is expected to also relinquish its weapon.

The iPad Sells Itself; Most Brands Don't

I read an article in The New York Times about a contest being hosted by OgilvyOne to find the "best salesperson in the world." However, it's not a Rolls-Royce contestants must convince consumers to buy, but an ordinary red brick. News of this contest hit the business pages and blogs just as reports about Apple's ( AAPL - news - people ) latest innovation, the iPad, hit the front pages and every other media channel. As a branding veteran, I couldn't help but note how these individual stories characterized the two fundamentally different starting points for achieving the same ultimate marketing objective: Make the sale. Let me explain.

Agencies and Developers Welcome Apple’s iAd

Advertising agencies and software developers on Friday welcomed Apple’s new iAd network as a potential breakthrough that could give an important boost to the small but fast-growing mobile advertising market. However, they also warned that making ads for iAd would be expensive and it was likely to take some time for Apple to demonstrate it could build a big enough market to make it worthwhile.

Magazine Advertising Pages Declined 9.4% in Quarter

The ad-page retreat isn’t over yet. Magazine ad pages fell 9.4 percent in the first quarter of this year from the first quarter of 2009, to about 34,800 pages, the Publishers Information Bureau reported Thursday. The decline was in contrast to the upbeat assessments by many publishers about ad spending returning in the first quarter.

Apple Edges Into Selling of App Ads

Apple, the maker of popular gadgets, is getting into the business of selling advertising, ratcheting up its rivalry with Google. On Thursday the company gave a preview of a new version of the basic software for its mobile devices, including the iPhone. The software has a built-in advertising system, meant to be used by the developers who have created the more than 185,000 applications in Apple’s App Store.

AT&T Rethinks its Position

It was such a long time ago when AT&T ditched its original Saul Bass logo that the discussion about it happened not on Brand New, but on Speak Up. In 2005. One year before the launch of Brand New and, also of importance, nearly two years before the iPhone launch. All this to say: Has it really been that long? But also: Didn’t this happen, like, yesterday? Either way, a lot has changed for AT&T, having risen as the heaven where the iPhone lives to also being the hell where the iPhone dies in the clogged lines of its 3G network with all of its hope placed in the hands of Luke Wilson. No more. Yesterday, AT&T launched a new brand campaign that introduces the theme of “Rethink Possible” and tries to do what few other companies — like Nike, Target and Apple — can, drop the name from the logo.

What Should EA Now Do About Tiger Woods?

Now imagine what you're thinking if you work at EA Sports. Do you look at this Nike ad and feel gratitude that another brand is attempting to confront the bad stuff so that it (and you) can sell some new stuff? You've already declared that you'll be supporting the wayward (off the tee) golfer. You've already launched PGA Golf Tour 11. And you've made a lot of money out of your association with him over the years.

The Most Corporate Band

On its path from rootsy L.A. hip-hop troupe to pop juggernaut, the Black Eyed Peas have been escorted by a parade of corporate backers. From Coors to Levi's, Honda to Apple, Verizon to Pepsi, brands have padded the group's video budgets, underwritten its tours and billboarded band members in prominent places. When Apple was preparing the 2003 launch of the iTunes store, The Peas' "Hey Mama" became the first song associated with the iconic campaign's dancing silhouettes, a point of pride for will.i.am, the band's frontman.

Tiger's New Nike Commercial Could Prove Too Much, Too Soon

Today is Tiger Woods’ big day. At 1:42 p.m., he is scheduled to tee off at The Master’s in Augusta, Ga., marking his first foray into competitive golf after his disastrous personal slide of the last few months. And it may be just in the nick of time that Woods is returning to what he really does best, because his attempts at restoring his tarnished personal brand are going south in a hurry. Woods had seemed to be following to some positive effect the script laid out by his handlers for his personal-rehabilitation campaign leading up to this week’s Masters. With sober interviews and engaged answers to dozens of personal questions at a press conference on Monday, Tiger seemed poised for a well-orchestrated and deliberate comeback.

After Bruising Ad Battle, AT&T Looks to Rebrand as Lifestyle Company

AT&T is undertaking an ambitious rebranding effort under the banner "Rethink Possible" that includes a redesign that updates its trademark logo. The new theme attempts to position AT&T as a lifestyle company and elevate it from the recent ad sniping with rival Verizon. "Rethink Possible" will inform all advertising from the country's fourth-largest spender going forward.

Keystone Light Smoothes Out Its Message

Watch out, Sam Adams. Take a back seat, Most Interesting Man in the World. There's a new beer mascot in town: Keith Stone. MillerCoors brand Keystone Light is introducing a new spokescharacter, Keith Stone, in a national advertising campaign targeting young males. The character, a Jack Black-esque hero, is meant to embody the brand's "Always Smooth" positioning.

As Tiger Woods Returns to Golf, Nike, Others Embrace Their Links

Tiger Woods and the voice of his late father star in a new commercial from Nike Inc., one of several new advertising pushes that suggest the golfer may be on his way to repairing his shattered image with corporate America. Nike aired Wednesday a black-and-white TV spot with Mr. Woods looking into the camera. In the background, the voice of his father, Earl Woods, seems to be talking to his son about the importance of taking responsibility for his actions.

National Car Rental Seeks To Elevate Brand

National Car Rental has launched a new ad campaign with the twofold goal of attracting new business travelers and educating stakeholders about its improving reputation. The effort highlights company differentiators that are attracting and retaining a loyal base of business travel customers, such as customer satisfaction and loyalty program benefits through its Emerald Club loyalty program. St. Louis-based National Car Rental is a subsidiary of Enterprise Holdings (which also owns Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Alamo).

How Toyota Helped Digg Itself Out of Trouble

In late January, Toyota watched the hundreds of stories about its recall situation flow through Digg and saw the passionate comments and conversations triggered by those stories. Toyota was already an advertiser on the user-voted news aggregator, but execs at the company concluded that ads weren’t going to be enough. In a fast-changing crisis, the carmaker needed a PR platform where it could listen and interact with consumers.

Facebook is Evil

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a fan of Google. This isn’t a post to describe my personal affection for a corporate entity, but it is an attempt to describe one element that I find particularly appealing. Don’t Be Evil. This phrase is Google’s infamous, informal corporate motto. I love it. Not only does it help reinforce my romantic, naive teenage dreams that I could become the next Richard Branson or Bill Gates just by doing good in the world, but it also helps prove that in the new business world, evil is bad for business.

IAB: Internet Ad Revenues Reach Record Quarterly High

This from the IAB's annual revenue report. I'm a board member of the IAB, FWIW. From the release: Though U.S. Internet advertising revenues, at $22.7 billion for the year, showed a 3.4% decline from 2008, there are signs of an emergent recovery in the industry. The fourth quarter of 2009 hit a record quarterly high of $6.3 billion, a 2.6% increase year-over-year and a 14% increase over the third quarter of 2009.

Global Ad-Spending Expectations Improve Again

ZenithOptimedia has upgraded its global ad-spending forecast again, now predicting 2.2% growth in 2010, up from the 0.9% increase it had projected four months ago, which was itself a slightly more optimistic projection than the 0.5% gain anticipated before that. "Confidence in the global economic recovery, while tentative, continues to grow, and this improvement has been apparent in ad markets across the world," ZenithOptimedia said in a report Wednesday morning. "Ad expenditure is accelerating in bullish developing markets, while in the developing world the downturn is coming to an end more quickly than expected."

What Your TV Is Telling You to Do

NBC Universal planted these eco-friendly elements into scripted television shows to influence viewers and help sell ads. The tactic—General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal calls it "behavior placement"—is designed to sway viewers to adopt actions they see modeled in their favorite shows. And it helps sell ads to marketers who want to associate their brands with a feel-good, socially aware show.

Ideas About Black, Urban Gen Y Need Update

At last week's marketing series, "The New Black. The New Urban," which took place at media mogul Damon Dash's DD172 center, the message was, indeed, that marketers can't make it by faking it or by relying on outdated notions about what African-American -- and more broadly, urban Millennials -- see when they look in the mirror.

Yelp Tweaks Its System For Transparency--And Lawsuit-Dodging

Yelp has found a work-around for those wicked extortion rumors (and that pesky lawsuit). In a blog post with the no-nonsense headline "We're Increasing Transparency and Eliminating 'Favorite Review'," Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman explains its plans. The "transparency" part is met by allowing users to see reviews that would otherwise have been obscured by the review filtering system. Whereas the Favorite Review part sees this entire segment of the advertising package deleted from Yelp.

For Weight Watchers, Jennifer Hudson Wins a Losing Battle

The previous campaign for Weight Watchers featured a furry critter that tempted dieters with high-calorie foods. Now, the company has decided to get real: its new campaign will star the actress and singer Jennifer Hudson, who will talk about what she has experienced in her quest to lose weight.

Pushing Infographics Too Far? The Ford Fusion Competition

The concept of visualization as a medium is great, but how far can information graphics be pushed until it falls off the cliff? The Fusion 41 Competition [fusion41.com] is a recent example of the world of advertising focusing on the visual attraction of data visualization. The competition "amassed a wealth of raw data generated from all of the teams and activities", which were then "brought to life" in poster-size infographics.

MLB Comes Out Swinging With Financial Advertisers

Despite a laggard economy and tepid ratings for the sport in 2009, advertisers are returning to Major League Baseball telecasts for the coming season, which begins this week, and baseball’s TV rights holders are close to selling out commercial time on their first few months of games, both at the national and local levels. Buoyed by a doubling in automotive ad dollars and a 75 percent hike in financial advertising compared to this time last season for its Saturday afternoon games and two prime-time contests, Fox is virtually sold out for April and May. Turner has taken in 15 percent to 20 percent more ad dollars than it did last year for its Sunday afternoon MLB games.

Google, Facebook Preparing For Flood Of Political Ad Cash

Just in time for this year’s mid-term Congressional elections in November the US Supreme Court opened the financial floodgates by overturning campaign finance rules that prevented corporations from spending at will to oppose or support political candidates. Two of the biggest likely beneficiaries of these new more liberal (not in the political sense) spending rules will undoubtedly be Google and Facebook, although they stood to benefit regardless as more and more political ad dollars flow into search and online display.

Vitaminwater Tries Winking

The new ad campaign for Coca-Cola's Vitaminwater hints at a use for enhanced waters and sports drinks that is part of conventional wisdom among many college students and young professionals: hangover relief. The ads debuted during the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament, and are part of Coke's effort to revitalize the brand, which it bought for $4.1 billion in 2007. After a decade of fast growth, Vitaminwater's sales volume slipped 22% last year, according to Beverage Digest, as price-conscious consumers traded down to tap water and, in some cases, sodas.

You've Got To Be Kidding

The markets tumbled, retirement savings dissolved, and home values evaporated as every principle and presumption about individual investing was called at least into question, and more likely to account. Now financial services firm Vanguard is promoting the answer: stop investing, and start Vanguarding. It bought a four-page magazine spread to reveal this crucially useful insight (I saw mine in the latest issue of The New Yorker), and the story unfolds as follows

Facebook: Next-Generation Niche Search Engine?

With so many companies launching Facebook fan pages, initiating paid search ad campaigns and developing ecommerce strategies on the site, it's easy to see how Facebook's social network could become the next-generation niche search engine for products and services. Recent data and technology trends point to the possibility of this cultural shift. For starters, Facebook gained the most growth in search queries, rising 10% to 436 million searches from January to February, according to comScore.

Sam Adams Wants to Show You Just How Small It Really Is

Samuel Adams Boston Lager marketer Boston Beer Co. is pushing an unusual selling point in new ads: Its own insignificance. In a spot titled "Growing Up Small" from the brewery's longtime agency, Octopus, it sets out to dispel the notion that it accounts for a significant portion of U.S. beer sales, asking drinkers in a series of documentary-style interviews how big they think Sam Adams' share is. Twenty-five percent, guesses one. Huge, says another. At that point, the brand's actual market share flashes across the screen: 0.9%.

Successes (and Some Growing Pains) at Hulu

Hulu, the popular and free online video hub, has some things to celebrate as it heads into its third year. The site, a venture of NBC Universal, the News Corporation and the Walt Disney Company, has been profitable for two quarters, Jason Kilar, Hulu’s chief executive, said in an interview on Monday. Hulu has successfully brought online TV into the mainstream. And now it appears set to move beyond standard computer screens with an application for Apple’s iPad, four people briefed on its plans said. But there are signs of dissatisfaction in Hulu’s house.

Marketers in Warm-Up for World Cup

Although March Madness still has a weekend to go, advertisers are already gearing up for June and July Jubilation. The 2010 World Cup, to be held in South Africa from June 11 to July 11, has attracted a lengthy list of blue-chip sponsors seeking to capitalize on the global passion for soccer — or, as they say outside the United States, football. Marketers are starting to disclose details of their ads or, in some instances, introducing elements of their soccer-centric campaigns.

Provoking Google And Yahoo

Tim Cadogan, chief executive officer of Pasadena open-source ad server OpenX, is aiming to shake up the advertising war between Google and Yahoo by taking the fight off their turf. Cadogan is teaming up with Orange-France Telecom ( FTE - news - people ) Group to create a new OpenX-powered advertising exchange to serve all of Europe. The ad exchange, rolling out this summer, will be similar to Wall Street's electronic trading system. Marketers will have the power to bid on ad space available through Orange, a telecommunications company that doubles as an advertising network, and reach Orange's 340 million monthly unique users in 32 European countries.

Food Brands’ Ads Remind Us Why The American Diet Is So Poor

In the middle of a 2 hour TV special where chef Jamie Oliver tried to convince children, their parents and their teachers to stop eating processed food and eat simpler, fresher and better, the makers of Ragu reminded us in the ad breaks why the American diet has got so poor.

Hulu's a Towering Success -- Just Not Financially

Hulu is everyone's favorite provider of TV on the web, but it's facing an ideological battle over its future. On one side are its network backers, which would like Hulu to become a paid service. On the other is the advertising community, which would like to keep Hulu free as a test-bed for new targeted-ad formats that can't be skipped. It's an important issue, because any debate about Hulu is a debate about the future of purely ad-supported TV, which is increasingly becoming an endangered species.

Reputations at Stake, Companies Try to Alter Word of Mouth Online

It didn't take long for Julie Liu -- late 20s, smartphone-addicted, constant Googler -- to get hooked on the online review site Yelp. Where to eat Friday night? Read some reviews by random anonymous diners. Oh, that looks good. Book a table online, show up, eat. But after Liu and her sister opened Scion restaurant in Dupont Circle, they saw Yelp from a different angle. Liu said Yelp's salespeople phoned repeatedly, telling her that if she advertised on the site, negative reviews would move lower on Scion's page and positive reviews would move up.

In a Test of Sales Savvy, Selling a Red Brick on YouTube

An agency whose founder went door to door to sell stoves before he got into advertising — and was so good at it that the company asked him to write a manual for the other salesmen — is creating a contest that celebrates selling. OgilvyOne Worldwide, part of the Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide division of WPP, is tipping its hat to David Ogilvy by sponsoring the contest, which is to begin this week. The contest will search for what is being immodestly described as “the world’s greatest salesperson.”

State Farm Sounding Like Its Rivals to Stay on Top of Them

Geico outguns it by more than double when it comes to auto insurance ad spending. Progressive outspends it by nearly 40%. And Allstate matches its outlays on auto-insurance ads. Yet State Farm -- the country's leading auto insurer -- gained market share last year despite raising its rates and dwelling as a distant third in ad spending in the category. When rival Allstate raised rates, its policy sales declined, but after State Farm did the same, its share actually advanced due to a small increase (less than 1%) in policies sold during a down market.

Rupert’s Pathetic Pay Wall

Rupert Murdoch has declared surrender. The future defeated him. By building his paywall around Times Newspapers, he has said that he has no new ideas to build advertising. He has no new ideas to build deeper and more valuable relationships with readers and will send them away if they do not pay. Even he has no new ideas to find the efficiencies the internet can bring in content creation, marketing, and delivery. Instead, Murdoch will milk his cash cow a pound at a time, leaving his children with a dry, dead beast, the remains of his once proud if not great newspaper empire. I used to work for Murdoch at his American magazine TV Guide. I respected his balls. It is a pity to see them gone.

For Troubled Heineken, Why Image and Status is Not Enough

From the moment it was the first premium beer imported into the U.S. after Prohibition up until the middle of the last decade, Heineken lager was a fast-growing brand fueled by its social cache. But that seems like a long time ago now.

Brands Who Became Agencies: Decon Creative Group

With so many advertising agencies out to prove their thinking can work outside the protective environs of their ivory tower, we’ve seen an influx of brands hit the market that are not only the brainchild of agencies, but funded in part or whole by them as well. The case studies are well documented, and some of the people behind this movement even took part in our last PSFK Conference New York in 2009. This phenomenon got me thinking about the inverse scenario. What about brands that start services agencies? I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some such agencies and have always found their perspective to be grounded in, well, reality. While their counterparts seem to be starting brands to justify their existence, it seems like most agencies that are born out of brands come into existence either because of the need for a creative outlet or a happy diversification accident through some sort of organic impetus, whether it be a request from a “client” or simply a need for new revenue streams.

California’s Dairy Industry Takes Old Question to New Extreme

For years, the question “Got milk?” was actually asking consumers “Got enough milk?” — reminding them to drink milk by comically exaggerating the perils of running out. Now the “Got milk?” campaign is taking the opposite tack, by comically exaggerating the perils of never running out. The twist on the campaign, which began appearing this week, is from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco, the Omnicom Group agency that created “Got milk?” in 1993 for the California Milk Processor Board. The slogan is familiar beyond that state because it is licensed by the California milk board for nationwide milk campaigns that feature people sporting milk mustaches and are sponsored by national milk processors and dairy farmers.

With a Little Star Power, Top Brass Ask for Ideas

Executives at Allstate, known, after their famous slogan, as “the ‘good hands’ people,” are looking for a few good advertising ideas — and are making that clear in attention-getting fashion. Three top managers of the Allstate Corporation came to New York from the company’s Northbrook, Ill., headquarters to make a presentation to senior sales executives from dozens of major media companies. They were joined by a surprise guest: Dennis Haysbert, the actor and Allstate spokesman. The message, delivered by the Allstate leaders on Wednesday under the title “The New State of Allstate,” was this: Help us advertise more effectively by developing, for all types of media, better ways to tell consumers that Allstate sells protection, not just insurance.

Behavioral Ads Offer A Windfall For Marketers, Publishers

Behavioral targeting may keep advertisers front-and-center with their target audiences. It may also keep some publishers in business. The practice, which involves tracking consumers' Web surfing and shopping habits so marketers can deliver ads to audiences who are most interested in them, is paying off for the companies that are dabbling in this space, according to a survey the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI).

Not Being Evil Has To Be More Than A Marketing Slogan.

It’s a lot harder to actually be good than it is to simply say you are good. Like others, I am becoming increasingly skeptical of the original Don’t Be Evil company (the one Cutts works for, in fact). Their hypocrisy on China is stunning. It’s hard to argue with the evidence Danny Sullivan laid out. Whether Google is doing business with the Chinese government in 2006 or pulling out of the market in 2010 they make the same argument that good v. evil dictates their actions.

Wall Street Journal Aims to Win Over The New York Times’s Local Audience

Maybe newspapers really are dying, as some media analysts have been predicting for decades, but apparently that does not apply to newspaper wars. A doozy is shaping up at the moment between The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

Keds Campaign Claims a First, Then Revises

When marketing retro sneakers, marketers face a challenge: how do you sell them to consumers too young to be nostalgic for bygone eras? Keds, a 94-year-old brand owned by Collective Brands, thinks it has the answer with a new slogan, “the original sneaker,” and a Web site that had its debut on March 9. Created by the Night Agency, a digital marketing firm in Manhattan, TheOriginalSneaker.com features an opening page laid out like a monthly calendar that changes daily and features tidbits about the brand and cultural highlights from the last nine decades.

Our Biggest Brands Can No Longer Be Managed By Nerds

There's something desperately wrong with consumer brand marketing. We all know it. The brand-building talent and expertise that created the CPG manufacturer are gone. Marketers with the ability to identify an unmet consumer need, develop a product to meet it, create a brand, and then lead it to market dominance are missing. Product managers with a fear of ambiguity have replaced the creative, forward-thinking brand builders. Our biggest consumer brands are now managed by nerds.

New FDA Rules Tighten Tobacco Advertising And Sales To Youth

New rules that take effect on June 22 severely restrict the way that tobacco companies can advertise and sell cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products, especially to children and teenagers. Lyndsey Layton reports that the rules are the result of the broad new powers Congress granted to the Food and Drug Administration last year to regulate the ingredients in tobacco products and the way they are distributed, sold and marketed.

Old and New Media Coexisting Nicely, Thank You

It was not that long ago when Madison Avenue believed that Web video — also known as webisodes, online video and Web series — would replace television, or at least put a big dent into the ability of TV to reach consumers. Now, however, as more marketers turn to Web video, many are increasingly doing so along with — rather than in place of — television.

How I Ran an Ad on Fox News

Slate ad critic Seth Stevenson tries out a Google service that allows you to run your own commercial on national TV for as little as $100.

Sony's PlayStation Move Ad Snarks on Microsoft's Project Natal, Ignores Nintendo Wii

All three current-gen videogame console makers have staked their futures on motion sensing. Nintendo famously did it first with the Wii, a ballsy, forward-looking move that many believed would lead to the downfall of the venerable company--but instead it won them this generation, racking up incredible sales and proving the naysayers totally and embarrassingly wrong.

Why So Few TV Ads Are Viral Hits

The Holy Grail for many marketers is having their big-budget TV spot become a viral hit online, providing millions of dollars worth of free exposure from consumer pass-along. The bad news is the chance of this happening is pretty slim, and even if it does, there's a good chance the spot won't do much to persuade viewers.

The Funny Side of What Can Go Wrong at the Big Meeting

With the country in a grim mood about corporate America, Hyatt is adding some humor to its marketing in an effort to get companies to hold meetings again. In a series of Web videos from the comedy site Funny or Die that begin running Thursday, Hyatt will emphasize what can go wrong when people choose the wrong hotel or meeting planner. (Hint: watch out for rogue mimes.)

NBC, Dr Pepper Manage to Blur Commerce, Content Even More

The day when commercials are indistinguishable from the programs they support finally arrived -- just before 10 p.m. Eastern last Thursday night. That's when an ad for Dr Pepper ran after NBC's insider-y sitcom "30 Rock," making use of recurring character Dr. Spaceman, played by comic Chris Parnell. In the spot, which was paired with a more-traditional TV commercial for the soda, Mr. Parnell's fictional medical practitioner decried boredom and told viewers how drinking Dr Pepper could banish it. A few moments later, viewers saw the credits roll for "30 Rock." Staffers from "30 Rock" were not involved in the creation of the commercial, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Despite Digital Crackdown, Companies Still See Fast Growth In China

Google's likely shutdown of its Chinese-language Google.cn search engine, the main portion of its China operation, isn't good news for marketers and their ad agencies -- but it hasn't fazed them about business opportunities for multinational companies in the mainland, either. "Google came into this country with their eyes wide open and knowing censorship would happen," said Shanghai-based Arto Hampartsoumian, CEO, China at Bartle Bogle Hegarty.

Facebook More Popular Than Google? Let the Ad Wars Begin

According to the latest Hitwise analysis, Google's lost its crown as the most-visited Web site in the U.S. last week. The new king of web site traffic is, of course, Facebook. In the future, technohistorians may marvel at this event. During the Winter holidays there were a few momentary spikes in traffic which placed Facebook on the top, but if you check out the graph of the long term trend shown above, you can see Facebook's meteoric rise is now on target to meet or beat Google. And if that curve continues on its trajectory, which it may well do for a while (its market share is 185% up over the same week in 2009, for example,) Facebook will become number one by a huge margin, versus the tiddly little 0.04% separation it currently has above Google's 7.03% share of average weekly market share.

Rebelling Against the Commonly Evasive Feminine Care Ad

Ads for menstrual products remain conspicuously euphemistic, typically featuring women practicing yoga in white spandex, riding white horses along the beach, or airborne in cheerleader outfits. “Fem-care advertising is so sterilized and so removed from what a period is,” said Elissa Stein, co-author (with Susan Kim) of the book “Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation.” “You never see a bathroom, you never see a woman using a product. They never show someone having cramps or her face breaking out or tearful — it’s always happy, playful, sporty women.”

Employee Benefits

In the battle to win over consumers during difficult economic times, marketers are sending their employees to the front lines. The trend seems to be accelerating. Last week, Zappos introduced a new pitch with puppets fronting actual recordings of employee customer service calls. Last month, Lowe’s launched a campaign with store associates advising cash-strapped DIY consumers. Those campaigns come after several others celebrating the rank and file. Over the past year or so, Southwest Airlines, Ford, Domino’s, Bank of America, General Electric, Exxon Mobile and Verizon have featured staffers or actors playing them.

Facebook’s Ad Platform: The Mainstreamification Of Online Advertising?

A recent post by Jan Chipcase got us thinking about the implications of Facebook’s ad platform on the future of online advertising. Jan makes a strong point that making the creation of a targeted digital ad accessible to a mass audience will ultimately make advertising more simple and effective by educating a large audience on how targeting, measurement and costing of an online ad works. The increased transparency of the process exposes the value models of advertisers and media platforms to an audience that may have previously only been on the receiving end of advertising. Given its increasingly vast penetration, Facebook is arguably one of the best media platforms to mainstream online advertising.

Exploring Ways to Build a Better Consumer Profile

Digital-marketing companies are rapidly moving to blend information about consumers' Web-surfing behavior with reams of other personal data available offline, seeking to make it easier for online advertisers to reach their target audiences. Advertisers say the push could enhance their ability to target ads at specific types of consumers, but it is drawing scrutiny from Congress, federal regulators and privacy watchdogs, who are already concerned about the use of Web-surfing data.

Amway Looks To Boost Image, Attract Distributors

Amway, the privately owned global direct sales company, known for its network of salespeople who sell vitamins, beauty products and other household staples door-to-door, is launching an estimated $25 million ad campaign that pitches its "positivity." Two 30-second TV commercials, created by Omnicom Group unit Element 79, portray Amway as a benevolent company that creates jobs for those in need, makes eco-friendly and good-for-you products and improves communities. "We help people build better lives, build their own businesses, and together, build better communities," a voiceover says in one spot that breaks Monday.

NBC Breaks Beyond TV to Reach New Viewers

What do a can of Coke and a package of Pampers have in common with an episode of "Heroes" or "30 Rock"? More than you might think. All are products that need to be marketed and sold. Indeed, the people who produce, package and promote TV programming have a tougher job, in some respects, than others -- their product airs only at a certain time or for a specified duration. So they have to amass as large a viewing population as possible, or miss out on a great chance to have people sample their wares.

The Verb Treatment for an Investment House

Computer users searching online for information say they are “Googling.” Commercials running in states like Michigan and Ohio suggest that shoppers go “Krogering.” But what will investors make of a campaign that proposes they start “Vanguarding”? The campaign, scheduled to begin this week, turns the Vanguard brand name into a verb, the better to help potential customers remember the company’s mutual funds and other investment products.

Diesel Launches Social Media Campaign

In addition to creating a digital extension to Diesel's national "Be Stupid" campaign, which broke earlier this year, the AOR will be responsible for a number of social media aspects for Diesel, including a mix of blogger relations. Iced Media will monitor Diesel's social media programs daily using IcedMetrix, a proprietary measurement tool that enables clients to track social media referred sales.

H-P to Brandish Its Technology Credentials

In need of an image makeover after an aggressive acquisition spree, Hewlett-Packard is launching its first corporate advertising campaign in more than five years. The company, which consumers know primarily for its printers, says it is seeking to recast itself as a broader technology concern with a campaign featuring, among others, rapper Dr. Dre and stand-up comedian Rhys Darby, star of the HBO series "Flight of the Conchords." A person familiar with the matter estimated that the eight-week campaign will cost $40 million.

Zappos Breaks New Campaign

Zappos has launched a new campaign centered around the notion of “delivering happiness”, a value that the company strives for by delivering customer service worthy of a “wow”, its No. 1 core value. Zappos uses the spots to celebrate their customer service reps – known internally as their customer loyalty team, and emphasizes the notion that they are a brand “powered by service” and “happy to help. 24/7.” The first spot in the campaign features Zappos puppets portraying a customer and a customer service rep helping her with her question – based on an actual Zappos customer call.

E-tailers Seek Revenue Boost From Ads That May Even Tout Rivals

Don't be surprised if the next time you're shopping on Target.com, Walmart.com or any other major retailer, you see ads -- sometimes for competing stores. Consumers have gotten used to seeing sponsored links across the web, with just about every major publisher from The New York Times to Food Network serving them up. Google is the largest seller of text ads through its AdSense program (that also includes display ads), which collectively generated $5.2 billion in revenue for publishers in 2009.

For Marketers, a Different Set of Oscar Winners

It is rare to see an actress on the Oscar red carpet wearing her gown from the previous year. Why, then, were there so many retreads among the commercials that appeared on Sunday during the ABC coverage of the 82nd annual Academy Awards? The reruns were an aberration given that for many years the Oscars broadcast had been a showcase for new commercials, much like the Super Bowl.

Google Tests TV Search Service

Google Inc. is testing a new television-programming search service with Dish Network Corp., according to people familiar with the matter, the latest development in a fast-moving race to combine Internet content with conventional TV. The service, which runs on TV set-top boxes containing Google software, allows users to find shows on the satellite-TV service as well as video from Web sites like Google's YouTube, according to these people. It also lets users to personalize a lineup of shows, these people said.

The Rise Of Transactional Advertising

The marriage of brand advertising and free content is facing peremptory annulment. There is no shortage of punditry around “the death of the media company” and whether it is a just dessert or a societal travesty. But that’s looking at it from the media company and consumer viewpoint – what do advertisers think about all of this? Where is online advertising headed and what does that mean for free content?

American Express to Cardholders: Take Charge; Make a Difference.

American Express is using the celebrity-studded Academy Awards TV event on ABC to give one of its new programs a star turn: the company is promoting its cards by urging consumers to "take charge of making a difference." At American Express, card "membership" was long touted for its privileges. Now it comes with responsibilities too.

Diet Coke Eyes 'Next Gen' Consumers

Diet Coke will make an appearance at this year's Oscars. A new 60-second spot for the soft-drink brand will debut during the awards ceremony on Sunday, March 7. The spot is part of an ongoing campaign called “Stay Extraordinary," and "celebrates the achievements of the next generation of Diet Coke drinkers," per the brand, which is owned by The Coca-Cola Co., Atlanta. It will initially air during the Academy Awards, and two additional 30-second spots will be introduced next week during American Idol.

In Recognition of Good Taste

"Good taste" is rarely used to describe great advertising, but Domino's is going to town with it. It just announced that it has doubled its quarterly profits after telling its customers that it had fixed the taste of its pizzas. It didn't "improve" things or follow any other standard operating procedures of the marketing world; in fact, it violated some of the basic tenets of advertising, such as telling the truth. Critics lumped it into the category of "mea culpa ads" (such as the billboards London's Evening Standard newspaper ran last year apologizing for the crappy quality of its content). Domino's went one better, though, by running documentary-style spots of consumers likening the crust to "cardboard" and topping to "ketchup." It was called extreme and even bizarre. Comedian Steve Colbert got in on the commentary.

Ads Posted on Facebook Strike Some as Off-Key

Facebook, the world’s biggest social network, is selling more ad spots to big companies like Wal-Mart Stores, Procter & Gamble and PepsiCo. But the site’s pages are also home to countless ads from smaller companies that can be funny, weird or just plain creepy — those suggesting you are, say, eligible to get a free iPad because you are exactly 26 years old, or entreaties to see what your offspring would look like if you had a child with a celebrity.

Sienna Minivan Hits Market at Worst Possible Time for Toyota

Toyota executives are trying to stop the brand bleeding as they deal with safety recalls and attempt to jump-start sales with a new incentive program and a fresh TV-advertising campaign aimed at shoring up consumers’ overall confidence in the company. But at the same time, Toyota also has been launching an important new product, a completely made-over, 2011 version of the Sienna minivan. The long-derided minivan segment has been showing some signs of life lately, and Toyota still sees it as an important category for the long term, as its Generation X customers move through parenthood.

Can Toyota’s New Ads, Incentive Program Offset Recall Damage?

Toyota is employing a marketing campaign to mitigate the horrific damage it has sustained over the past several weeks – including an estimated 18,000 “lost” sales in February, billions of dollars in repair costs, and an untold deterioration of its once-sterling reputation. Even as Toyota executives testified on Capitol Hill this week, the brand was unveiling a whole new approach in its TV advertising and launching the company’s most ambitious incentive program ever. “We’re back in the sales business,” Bob Carter, general manager of the Toyota division of Toyota Motor Sales USA, declared to reporters on a conference call yesterday.

Unilever: Brands Must Move Past TV Spots

Unilever's creative agencies need to "move past their reliance on the 30-second spot" and focus more on social media efforts to keep up with modern consumers. So said Unilever's vp, personal care Kathy O'Brien today at the American Association of Advertising Agencies' Transformation Conference in San Francisco. "The world has moved on. I think consumers have moved on, and we need to get past [TV spots] to figure out what the next way of talking to consumers" will be, said O'Brien. "I also put the onus on us. We rely heavily on it as well as a company. We've done it well for so long [that] we assume it's at the core of everything we do and it doesn't always need to be."

Yahoo! Pitches Scale To Advertisers. To Consumers, It's Personal

Yahoo!, which will celebrate its 15th year in business on Tuesday, is pitching the "science, art and scale" of its enterprise to advertisers. Carol Bartz, company CEO, is working with marketers, including Wal-Mart and TurboTax, to develop advertising and content tailored to specific audiences they want to reach. "We need ads to engage an audience because we want that audience to stick around," Bartz on Monday told a group of advertising and media executives assembled for an American Association of Advertising Agencies (aka the 4A's) conference in San Francisco.

Madness: Infiniti Partners With NCAA Basketball

Infiniti is expanding its marketing relationship with men's college basketball by becoming "Official Corporate Partner" of the 2010 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship and CBS Sports." The automaker says that as part of the program, it will create custom features to air during CBS sports broadcasts. The content wraps Infiniti branding around narratives about college basketball and coaching. The new agreement comes after Infiniti's recent multi-level sponsorships with ESPN, the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC), the SEC (Southeastern Conference) and the Big Ten Conference. The company used that program, which it said was the largest to date, to support its Infiniti G sedan and coupe.

Lowe’s Knows Customer Value

Lowe’s launched its spring campaign today, March 2nd, and its focus is on customer service. The brand wants to help its employees (a.k.a. associates) offer better expertise and service to shoppers, while also helping them keep within their budgets. Not a bad idea in these economic times. Associates will get equal time in the new commercials alongside actors portraying customers. Their advice and recommendations are geared towards supporting a growing trend of DIY home projects. “Everything we do in the campaign is grounded in service and value, because that’s where the consumer lives right now,” according to Lowe’s SVP, Marketing and Advertising, Tom Lamb.

Medals for Ads During NBC’s Winter Olympics Coverage

The seemingly continuous commercials during the coverage of the Winter Games on the networks of NBC Universal gave a new meaning to the term “snow job.” It was as if every spot showed snow, or ice, or both, in which skiers, skaters and snowboarders cavorted. That made it difficult for ad-weary, ad-bleary viewers to distinguish the commercials from the actual coverage of the Vancouver Olympics. Perhaps that was the sponsors’ fiendish intent: to perpetrate the ultimate blurring of the line between advertising and content.

Magazines Team Up to Tout 'Power of Print'

Magazine executives spent much of last year telling anyone who would listen that they were taking their brands digital. Their message this year: Print rules. Five leading magazine publishers have pitched in on a multimillion-dollar ad campaign touting the "power of print." They say nearly 1,400 pages of the ads will be sprinkled through magazines including People, Vogue and Ladies' Home Journal this year.

Lowe’s Puts Its Focus on Knowing the Customer’s Wants

The bar in “Cheers” was supposedly where everybody knew your name. A leading home-improvement retailer plans to present itself as the place where everybody knows which type of washer you need, which type of insect is infesting your garden or which shade of purple a teenage girl can paint her room without driving her mother crazy.

Google, Microsoft Spar on Antitrust

Seeking $335,000 in unpaid advertising bills, Google Inc. filed suit against a small Internet site in Ohio in October. The complaint was so routine it was just two sentences long. Google never expected the response it got. Last month, the small Internet site countered with a 24-page antitrust lawsuit against Google, accusing the search-engine giant of a litany of monopolistic abuses.

Dairy Industry Backs First Lady's 'Let's Move' Effort

The dairy industry interrupts its regularly scheduled "milk moustache" campaign to bring you an ad in support of First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move!" program to combat childhood obesity. "We share the concern that childhood obesity is a problem in the U.S., and the world," Julia Kadison, vice president of marketing for the Milk Processors Education Program (Milk PEP), tells Marketing Daily. "We want to emphasize milk as part of the solution."

Can Geek Culture Exist Without Brands?

Geek culture is strongly linked these days to brands, commercialism and cash. Apple, Wizards of the Coast, Star Wars, LEGO, Marvel, Pixar (and the list goes on) are all brands that link very strongly with any geek’s sense of belonging and meaning. They also, consequently, get a lot of our hard-earned cash. We live in a highly commercialized world, and money helps make it go ’round. But, how much does geek culture need brands and how much do the brands need us geeks? What is the relationship like and are we being charged excessively for our passionate fandom and connection to brands like LEGO and Apple? How do we define our geekiness without these brands? And, how do we foster our children without overemphasizing the importance of having the new release LEGO or movie-associated merchandise.

Google Hits Back Over Algorithm Dispute

Google on Thursday mounted a renewed defence of the way it ranks search results, as fresh questions emerged about its practice of sometimes manually intervening to override its automated ranking system. The company has been forced onto the defensive by the disclosure earlier this week of a preliminary anti-trust review from the European Commission. Brussels is looking into complaints from three companies that Google’s search rankings and its related advertising system treat some competitors unfairly.

That Triple Salchow Was Great. Now for More Ads.

Since the Vancouver Winter Games began on Feb. 12, the networks of NBC Universal have presented hundreds of hours of coverage — and thousands of commercials. Here is a look at some of the highlights, sidelights and lowlights of the spots so far.

Turning Pride into Advertising

What if you could get your customers to advertise for you? I'm not talking about just word-of-mouth. I'm talking about turning them into full-fledged outdoor boards.

BMW Marketing VP Discusses 'Joy' Strategy

BMW has just launched what the Woodcliff Lake, N.J.-based company says is its biggest brand campaign to date, and maybe the first that puts as much focus on the drivers and their pleasure in driving as the cars themselves. It's part of a big-media strategy the company is doing to raise its profile worldwide with a more emotional, optimistic voice. Jack Pitney, VP of marketing for BMW, takes Marketing Daily for a drive.

Athletes Walk The Line Between Effective And Overexposed

In the week after he led the New Orleans Saints to victory in, and was named MVP of, Super Bowl XLIV, quarterback Drew Brees was guest of honor in a parade at Disney World; appeared in marketing for Unilever's Dove Men+Care, was part of Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" childhood obesity PSA campaign; made guest appearances on "Good Morning America," "Early Show," "Late Night with David Letterman," "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" and "Oprah"; and was back in New Orleans as a King of the Krewe at Mardi Gras. ESPN also dusted off its "This is SportsCenter" spot showing Brees driving a Mardi Gras float that gets jammed in the parking lot gates. Chris Stuart of Encore Sports & Entertainment, which handles marketing for Brees, called the demand "tremendous."

How One Ad Agency Boosted Productivity After Cutting Costs

Close your eyes and listen to the fight. One side says we have to change the way we do things now and the other warns grimly that if we do, the end result will be the Dark Ages. This isn't Washington, D.C., but the Madison Avenue echo chamber, with corporate America pushing for cost consciousness and efficiency from its ad agencies and those agencies railing against companies' bean counters being sicced on them. With each soul-crushing Ad Age item about the rising influence of procurement departments, creatives' agita rises.

Take a Step Closer for an Invitation to Shop

Like many retailers, the North Face has been having trouble luring shoppers into its stores. The company, which sells outdoor apparel and gear, is about to try a new tactic: sending people text messages as soon as they get near a store. Advertisers have long been intrigued by the promise of cellphones, because they live in people’s pockets and send signals about shoppers’ locations. The dream has been to send people ads tailored to their location, like a coupon for a cappuccino when passing a coffee shop.

The Art of Package Design

Working at method has taught me that package design is the single most important part of your marketing plan. Founder Eric Ryan likes to say that he views cutting steel as a marketing expense. Once a consumer told me that he buys method because the package design makes him want to lick the bottles. Remarkable design, whether in the store or in the consumer’s hand, makes every other aspect of marketing possible. Zero advertising on a remarkable product trumps heavy advertising on a mediocre product.

Visa Connects with Olympics Congratulations

Taking a page from its 2008 playbook, Visa is updating its "Go World" campaign with ready-made pieces to congratulate the company's sponsored athletes when they win a medal. "We know through research that the way consumers connect to the games is through the athletes and their stories," Jennifer Bazante, head of global brand marketing for Visa, tells Marketing Daily. "It helps extend the window of the breakthrough moment for the athlete."

A Campaign to Leaven the Mood

Almost 75 years ago, the fashion editor Diana Vreeland began captivating, puzzling and amusing a Depression-weary nation with a column in Harper’s Bazaar magazine called “Why Don’t You ... ” She offered suggestions that were breezy — “Why don’t you tie black tulle bows on your wrists?” — or profligate — “Why don’t you turn your old ermine coat into a bathrobe?” Now, during times deemed almost as hard as those, Saks Fifth Avenue is introducing a campaign inspired by Ms. Vreeland’s maxims, although more grounded in the practical. The campaign, which carries the theme “Think about ... ,” includes print and online advertisements, catalogs, signs in stores, e-mail marketing, events, direct mail and social media like Facebook.

Coca-Cola Gets Hands-on With Its Own Digital Billboards

The world's largest beverage company has added another feather to its cap: media owner. Late last year, Coca-Cola started rolling out its Digital Network, a group of 29 electronic billboards in 20 markets that the company owns and operates. The company leases the space from outdoor advertising companies such as Clear Channel Outdoor and Boardworks, but it acquires and owns the 14 feet by 48 feet LED screens.

Doritos, Your Ad Sucks Compared to this One

You've probably seen the Doritos Super Bowl commercial that scored highest among viewers. What does this Doritos ad do? Now imagine you're a writer, and you get this assignment: write a memorable safety belt ad. You've seen them. They're usually violent, ugly spots about how you'll end up terribly mangled if you don't wear a safety belt. What do you do? Do you work on outdoing other writers in the twisted metal department?

Chevy Focuses On Family And Friends In New Ads

GM's Chevy brand is sporting a very different look in ads that just launched during the Winter Olympics: Vignettes featuring families and friends in Chevy cars. The latest television commercials for Chevy's Equinox, Malibu, and Traverse models drop spokesperson Howie Long in favor of "very human, intimate, family moments – those that often happen in the enclosed environment of the family car – to capture the spirit of Chevy," says Bob Moore, chief creative officer of the agency that created the ads. The previous tagline, "The American revolution," is also gone.

Digital Branded Content Syndication

Think of someone you know who is graduating from high school in 2010. Maybe it’s your younger cousin, or a niece or nephew. Perhaps it’s your son or daughter. Or perhaps it’s some young folks in your town you may know. Take a minute to think about someone you have watched grow up for the past 15 or so years. Furthermore, let’s acknowledge that your young high school graduate represents, quite literally, the “18” in the coveted “18-35 demographic” that many marketers are constantly trying to reach. Now think about the fact that the high school graduating “Class of 2010” was born around the time that Netscape Navigator arrived—the time when the Web was born.

New B2B Product Introductions: Prioritize Your Online Tactics

Here is something that product managers and strategic marketers know first-hand: new product introductions and market roll-outs often carry large, and daunting, expectations. A poorly-executed product intro can cost jobs, upward professional mobility, and even millions of dollars and damage to an entire product family’s brand image in the market

Kraft: Cadbury-Merger Savings to Support Marketing

Kraft Foods expects to realize annual pre-tax cost savings of at least $675 million by the end of 2012, some of which will be used to further increase advertising and consumer spending as a percentage of revenue, chairman/CEO Irene Rosenfeld reported during the company's Q4/year-end fiscal 2009 earnings call on Tuesday. The global food giant increased advertising and consumer spending to 7.2% of net revenues in 2009, versus 6.7% in 2008, she pointed out. The increased advertising support for key brands, including the Philadelphia Cream Cheese "Spread a Little Love" and Miracle Whip "We Will Not Tone It Down" television campaigns, have been "extremely well received" and effective at building the brands' franchises, Rosenfeld said.

Let's Take On The Ads That Fuel Such Waste, Debt And Misery

Imagine a young Karl Marx alive today: a radical-minded, straggle-bearded intellectual who wanted to make the world a better, more just place. He blogs, presumably. He's among the millions fed up with the party knockabout. What might Karl seize on as the great issue in economics and politics? I'm beginning to think it might be advertising.

Real Leaders Don't Do Focus Groups

Apple is famous for not engaging in the focus-grouping that defines most business product and marketing strategy. Which is partly why Apples products and advertising are so insanely great. They have the courage of their own convictions, instead of the opinions of everyone else's whims. On the subject, Steve Jobs loves to quote Henry Ford who once said that if he had asked people what they wanted they would have said "a faster horse."

Teaching Pet-Friendly Homes New Cleaning Tricks

IN “Dog Whisperer” with Cesar Millan, now in its sixth season on the National Geographic Channel, several episodes have featured vacuum cleaners that send dogs into a barking frenzy. With tactics like placing their food bowls next to vacuums that are not in use, Mr. Millan helped reverse the behavior. Now Swiffer, the 11-year-old Procter & Gamble brand, is hiring Mr. Millan to help with a different sort of behavior modification: getting consumers to forgo traditional floor cleaning devices and buy Swiffer products.

P&G Aims For The Gold

Procter & Gamble, the consumer goods company behind products such as Tide and Pampers, hopes the Olympics will help it score with penny-pinching shoppers. The Cincinnati company rolled out a $10-million ad campaign Monday, integrating corporate and brand messaging, to win over consumers watching the 2010 Winter Games. The goal? To convince shoppers to buy its premium products. TV and Web ads, themed "Thanks, Mom," announce P&G's efforts to subsidize travel costs for every mother of a Team USA athlete.

Audi Launches Winter Olympic Ads

After throwing a Hail Mary in the Super Bowl, Audi is going for the two points, with a pair of spots to air during the Winter Olympics' Friday evening opening ceremonies. The new ads, via AOR Venables Bell & Partners, are directly competitive with Lexus, BMW and Mercedes-Benz vehicles.

BMW Touts 'Joy,' Value in New Ads

With Americans tightening their belts, BMW AG is parking "the ultimate driving machine" in the garage, at least for a while. The auto maker for years has promoted the power and performance of its cars using that slogan, one of the longest-running and most well-known in the auto industry. But now the company is switching gears. On Friday, it was launching an advertising campaign that focuses on the joy the company says comes from owning its vehicles and suggests BMWs are safe for mothers and children. One print ad uses the tagline "Joy is Maternal"—a departure from past promotions that touted horsepower, handling and acceleration.

A Look Back at 10 Ideas That Changed the Marketing World

Looking back at some of the greatest innovations in marketing and advertising over the past 100 years, the creative brilliance of these ideas is obvious. Yet the stories behind these examples involve bold thinking, the passion to champion new ideas and a high dose of risk. Our industry's visionaries often countered research results, drove themselves beyond the great idea and defied bosses and boards to push through their plans. Let these stories inspire today's marketers, who have so many new tools at their disposal, to set aside conventional thinking and become the marketing innovators of the next 100 years.

For G.E., a Human Face on Its Role in Health Care

General Electric, for one, still believes in advertising. As the Olympics begin, the company is introducing its biggest campaign ever aimed at consumers. Called Healthymagination, it publicizes G.E.’s role in the world of doctors and hospitals. In the United States alone, G.E. expects to spend more than $80 million this year on the campaign. Its role in health care is technical: G.E. makes and sells medical devices, like machines that measure bone density and perform M.R.I. scans. But the advertising focuses on the personal.

Don't Like Product Placement? Here's Why It's Your Fault

The Association of National Advertisers' annual TV & Everything Video Forum is supposed to be a place where marketers gather to figure out where the business of TV advertising is going. That quest has yet to be completed. But this year, advertisers had no trouble showing us where TV has already gone. Speaker after speaker lined up example after example of shockingly intrusive pacts that placed -- nay, shoved -- commercial messages deep into programming.

P&G Olympics Push Pays Homage to Moms

Procter & Gamble is feeling generous at this year's Olympic Winter Games. The packaged goods maker is sending Team USA's mothers to Vancouver to watch their children compete, as part of a program called "Thanks, Mom." The program, announced today (Thursday), will defray the cost of travel and accommodations, allowing moms to support the athletes in person during the Games. P&G is also running a campaign, which celebrates the special people in the lives of Team USA's members. (Since forming an alliance with the U.S. Olympic Committee last summer, the company has tapped several Team USA athletes to star in its Olympics-focused marketing. Among the athletes are snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis, speed skater Apolo Ohno, and skier Lindsey Vonn.)

Sprite Launches First Integrated Global Campaign

Coca-Cola is accelerating its push to make Sprite the soda of choice among the younger crowd both here and abroad, with the brand's first integrated global campaign. The campaign -- dubbed "The Spark" in reference to the brand's 2009-updated logo -- features hip-hop musician Drake and includes multiple TV spots, online music remixing and movie-creation tools, mobile, outdoor and print elements.

How e.l.f. Became a Social Media Giant

Few brands have had as singular a focus on social media as e.l.f., a cosmetics line that does zero in the way of traditional advertising yet has strong working relationships with about 500 bloggers. As the CMO for e.l.f. (the acronym stands for Eyes Lips Face), Ted Rubin is known for his active use of Twitter (where he has 20,000 followers) and his responsiveness. Rubin, a former protege of Seth Godin, says he responds to every tweet he gets. The social media outreach, along with distribution at Target, a recession-friendly price of $1 per item and a positive review in O: The Oprah Magazine two years ago have helped e.l.f. build a strong brand on the cheap. Brandweek spoke with Rubin about his thoughts on traditional advertising, social media and why larger brands like Coca-Cola can benefit from e.l.f'.'s strategy.

Campaigns Big Enough to Open With Olympics

Super Bowl XLIV on Sunday was part of the frenetic stretch, which continues this weekend with the Winter Games and other sports programming, like the National Basketball Association All-Star Game and the Daytona 500. The TV marketing blitz, which began with the coverage of the Golden Globe Awards on Jan. 17, is to run through the Academy Awards on March 7 and conclude with the finale of the National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament on April 5. All those events have something in common other than high prices for commercial time: They are all broadcast live, part of a trend known as big-event television, which prizes programs that can attract large, involved audiences at a time when consumers have generally been atomized into tiny niche markets.

Beyond The Super Bowl

As the post-Super Bowl analysis turned this week from which team won the big game to which brands won big, we were once again reminded of the Super Bowl's role as the year's single most important advertising. While the commercials have understandably been the focus of conversation over the past several days, the Super Bowl also offers online marketers some important lessons that help illustrate the changing media dynamics taking place.

Dove Super Bowl Spot Scores Initial Points With Men

When Unilever first announced it was launching its new Dove Men + Care line with a commercial during Super Bowl XLIV, industry watchers questioned whether making a costly, 30-second ad buy was the right strategy. It seems the move has paid off for Dove, at least, according to initial ad buzz results. Prior to CBS’ broadcast of the Super Bowl, three of the most popular terms associated with Dove were “soap,” “beauty” and “deodorant.” But in the 24 hours following the game, the Dove spot, via Ogilvy & Mather, started generating terms like “Super Bowl,” “ad” and “men," per Zeta Interactive, a New York City-based digital and interactive marketing agency.

Who Says the Future Needs an Advertising Agency?

Advertising agency of the future sounds a bit like horse drawn carriage of the future. I’m not saying for certain that there won’t be agencies in the future, only that the future doesn’t necessarily need agencies. Just like the future doesn’t need printed news but it needs journalism; the future needs commercial communications, but who creates them, the agency or the brand or someone else, is unwritten. And though the future of the agency is unwritten, I have real doubts that agencies will survive or should survive.

Super Bowl: A Missed Opportunity For Pepsi

PepsiCo ditched the Super Bowl this year to make a major social media play. Instead of spending money for ad time on the Super Bowl, it's relying primarily on digital initiatives to spread the word about its Internet-based Refresh Project contest and charity campaign. The cause-marketing effort is a good one. Word is spreading through traditional media, online networks, social media and celebrity chatter. But I believe Pepsi made a big mistake in giving up its long-held Super Bowl ad real estate. A more integrated media approach--one that included the Super Bowl--would be a savvy play for Pepsi. And such integration is something top marketing executives need to keep in mind in their rush to embrace digital initiatives.

Why Advertising Needs Behavioural Economics

Julian Barnes observed that "when you buy a newspaper in America, you watch your country disappear". If you work in advertising or marketing, you can pull off a similar trick: just buy a copy of the Financial Times or The Economist and "watch your discipline disappear". Anyone exposed to current business publications would be forced to conclude that the best means of creating business value and growth lies in mergers, balance-sheet manipulation, takeovers, outsourcing, off-shoring, downsizing, tax-avoidance, restructuring, leverage ... Anything, in other words, that does not involve the tedious business of finding out what people might want and then providing it profitably over time within a relationship of deepening trust.

Do-It-Yourself Super Ads

Be afraid, Madison Avenue. Be very afraid. That seems to be the message in the aftermath of the crowded, frenetic advertising bowl that took place inside Super Bowl XLIV on Sunday. Among those commercials consistently deemed most effective, memorable and talked-about, many were created or suggested by consumers — or produced internally by the sponsors — rather than the work of agency professionals.

Microsoft Seals Ad Deal With Interpublic

Microsoft is getting cozier with Madison Avenue. The software company is partnering with advertising holding company Interpublic Group in a deal that will make Microsoft the go-to ad technology provider for the U.S. offices of ad giant's agencies, including McCann-Erickson, Deutsch, Hill Holliday and The Martin Agency. Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash., slashed its undisclosed rates, so that its ad server Atlas will become the default technology to deliver ads and analyze their performance.

One Word: Networks

Read Bud Caddell's latest addition to The Library of Agency-of-the-Future-Prognostications: Who says the future needs an advertising agency? Between the post and the 50-some comments it's one of the most clear, comprehensive, and thoughtful summations of the industry's evolution that I've come across. After I read it, one word was echoing in my brain: Networks. The difference between what everyone has been doing, and what everyone needs to do is networks. We no longer create messages and experiences for groups of individuals; rather we create integrated experiences across all media environments that are specifically designed to serve and empower networks of connected people.

Manthems, Delusions, and Other Super Gaffes

If you’ve been in the business long enough, you come to understand there are some basic rules to follow when running an ad on the Super Bowl. Humor works best. Use animals or big-breasted women – or both. Wow people with extraordinary settings and production values. Many of the advertisers on last night’s big game followed the Super Bowl advertising playbook to a tee. And, yet, they violated some fundamental rules of advertising in general.

Brand Messaging: Visual Over Verbal

Johnny Mercer, in my opinion, was the best lyricist of the 20th century, but I'm sure those words on a piece of paper, even repeated millions of times, would not have made "Moon River" famous. It was the music that made the words "Moon River" famous. Advertising needs visuals in the same way that lyrics need music, if you want to drive your words into the minds of your prospects. Without a visual hammer, an advertising campaign is almost certain to fail.

Denny's, Doritos, Snickers Score Big in Ad Bowl

Panicky poultry, a battered Betty White and a series of violent ads for Doritos provided plenty of laughs during Sunday night's Super Bowl, even with the weak economy prompting several heavy-hitting advertisers to sit out the Big Game.

In Super Bowl Commercials, the Nostalgia Bowl

As dangerous as it may be to generalize, it is probably safe to say that few folks think of Marcel Proust as they watch the Super Bowl. But for the advertising bowl that took place inside Super Bowl XLIV on Sunday, it was one long remembrance of things past — with candy bars, mobile phones and beer bottles standing in for madeleines. Nostalgia is a critical component of the pitches from sponsors on Super Bowl Sunday. After all, the best way to appeal to a mass audience of 100 million or so Americans is usually to fill spots with paeans to the past along with catchy music, stars, special effects, talking babies and endearing animals.

Attention Big Brands, We Had a Blast on Twitter Last Nite, but Where Were You?

If you were on Twitter last night during the Super Bowl, you probably had a blast with the rest of us participating in all the chatter around the game, and the commercials. Many of us were using the #brandbowl hashtag to critique the ads in real-time, in fact I was seeing 100 new tweets coming in every couple of minutes. For reference, that's about FOUR times the volume of a busy #blogchat.

The Top None

I'd planned in all sincerity to write an essay about the three Super Bowl commercials that I thought wouldn't get the recognition in most "top ten" lists, but that I believed might actually do something business-wise down the road. I meant it. I wanted to be positive... ...but I just can't. I can't think of one spot that is going to matter after today's Monday morning ad quarterbacking is done.

Behind Kraft's Marketing Makeover: From New Ad Agencies to New Attitude

Quick: Name one highly creative advertiser. Bet your first choice wasn't Kraft. The company that brought the world "My bologna has a first name" and "We helped!" for Shake and Bake is unlikely to ever go down in the ad annals next to Nike or Apple. But North America's largest food company -- about to become even larger with the addition of Cadbury -- is making strides toward updating the look and tone of its advertising while keeping it as accessible as possible for consumers.

Marketers Say TV Spending Will Drop. Nets Stay Bullish. Let the Deals Begin

Even as major marketers once again threaten to pull back on TV spending -- a new survey indicates they will allocate only 41% of their budgets to the medium this year -- the TV networks are gearing up for an "upfront" ad-sales market they expect will be more robust than in the recent past. In a new Forrester and Association of National Advertisers survey of 104 U.S. advertisers that collectively spend almost $14 billion in measured media, more than half of them -- 62% -- said that TV advertising is less effective than it used to be.

Super Bowl 2010: Live-Blogging the Ads and the Music

Super Bowl 2010 is more than a football game–it’s a face-off between companies striving to have the most-talked about commercials. And the super spectacle will also be rocked by music from the Who, Carrie Underwood and Queen Latifah. Speakeasy will be live-blogging the cultural and commercial aspects of the Super Bowl. Feel free to give your take on the ads and the music in the comments section. You can check out the action on the field here.

NewBizNews: What Ad Sales People Hear

Recently, at CUNY, we held a roundtable for ad sales people from hyperlocal blogs to big newspapers to hear what they are hearing from local merchants. We’re wrapping up our research for the New Business Models for News Project — indeed, it was Alberto Ibargüen, head of the Knight Foundation that funded this work, who said he really wanted to hear sales people’s perspective — and beginning research for Carnegie-funded work on new ad models, products, service, and sales methods, working with The New York Times on The Local.

How Toyota Can Flip The Funnel

It's tough going these days if you work for Toyota or any of its partners. It's tougher being a customer especially with the doubt surrounding loose floor mats and sticking accelerator pads and safety concerns in general. And then there's the perceived broken trust and the lost credibility associated with a brand that seemingly reigned supreme in terms of relationship, bond and loyalty.

Google To Super Bowl Marketers: Give Us Your Ads--and Your Ad Dollars

Charging into the Super Bowl for the first time, Kia Motors is discovering that buying a 30-second ad during the game, which will air on CBS this Sunday, is opening a few doors, namely a deeper relationship with a very big company: Google. Google is working closely with Kia and nearly all Super Bowl XLIV's 40 Super Bowl advertisers, offering them exposure far beyond the TV. The marketers that are paying up to $2.8 million for each 30-second spot can upload the ads on Google's Super Bowl Ad Blitz page, as they have in the past. But this year Google has added even more features including social media buttons that will make it easy for viewers to pass them along or "tweet" them on Twitter.

How the Nexus One Was Created

Google has launched a series of videos on its official Nexus One YouTube channel, documenting various details on how one of the world’s best Android phones was created.

Super Bowl XLIV Ad Quiz: 30 Brands. 30 One-Second Ads. How Many Can You Spot?

Seventy-five thousand fans will jam into the Sun Life Stadium on Sunday to watch the New Orleans Saints and Indianapolis Colts compete for the Super Bowl ring. If you can't afford the obscene ticket price, you can join the other hundred million who will be in their living room or man cave glued to an HDTV with guacamole, chips and six pack in hand, cheering on their favorite... commercials.

Will Pepsi Win The Super Bowl?

Just days before the Super Bowl, when media outlets are abuzz about all the commercials consumers can expect to see in the big game, the folks of Gastonia, N.C., a small town 25 miles west of Charlotte, are opening their newspapers to find an article about one company that will be sitting on the sidelines this year: Pepsi.

Element of Choice Draws In Online Viewers

Aiming to wrest more advertising revenue from online video, several companies, led by ad giant Publicis Groupe and including Microsoft, Yahoo, CBS and Hulu, have spent the past year testing online-ad formats to figure out what consumers want. It turns out they want choice. Tests found that "ad selector," a format that lets online-video watchers pick one of three companies' ads to watch, outscored other ad formats, including the much-maligned "pre-roll" ads that consumers are often required to see before viewing online video clips.

Radio Poised For First Quarterly Rebound In Three Years

It's been three years since radio advertising last posted quarterly revenue growth, back in the first quarter of 2007 -- three years that most recently saw Citadel Broadcasting, owner and operator of 224 stations, file for bankruptcy protection in December and long-struggling Air America shut down entirely in January. It's hard not to dread the full-year figures for 2009, due out from the Radio Advertising Bureau later this month, after the third quarter alone delivered a 21% plunge.

Budweiser Urges Fans to Vote for Super Bowl Ad Via Facebook

This Super Bowl, it truly does seem that the name of the game when it comes to advertising is social media. For example, Budweiser recently launched a campaign on Facebook asking fans to choose which commercial will air during the big game. According to AdAge, Budweiser is this year’s biggest advertiser — privy to five minutes of air time. The beer company launched its social media campaign on Friday, and already thousands of people are taking part. The idea, essentially, is to infiltrate every level of Facebook (Facebook). First, you might see the targeted ad for the campaign in your newsstream (see the photo above). If you are so inclined to vote, you must first become a fan of the beer:

A Clean Break With Staid Detergent Ads

One of the biggest — and dullest — categories in consumer marketing is showing signs of life. The category is laundry detergents, prosaic products whose advertising budgets have financed decades of soap operas and women’s magazines, not to mention enough coupon inserts to fill a googol of Sunday newspapers. (Yes, before there was “Google” there was “googol.”) The detergent business is emblematic of what is known as a low-interest category, a marketing term that means most consumers would rather watch paint dry than a commercial for such everyday products.

Hey, Go Daddy: Your Strategy Is Showing

Another Super Bowl, another press release from GoDaddy.com about how its "controversial" and "racy" commercial failed to make the grade among network censors. This year, the press release came more than a full week before the game, with the exhortation that: "We really thought we'd make it this time."

Super Bowl Shuffle: Why Marketers Will Shift to 'Platforms'

There certainly will be advertising winners (and losers) on Super Bowl Sunday but let's hope that the Monday morning quarterback chatter doesn't obscure the larger shift at hand for marketers this year. 2010 will be the year of the "platform" for advertisers. Unlike a website, banner, Facebook application or 30-second spot, a platform is an always-on digital environment that allows brands to run specific or multiple programs. The goal is to meaningfully engage consumers on multiple levels.

An Advocacy Ad Stirs a National Debate

For 43 years, Super Bowl viewers have watched all kinds of commercials from companies that are famous (Coca-Cola) or otherwise (Cash4Gold.com), peddling everything from automobiles to Xerox copiers. But never has there been a Super Bowl spot that took sides on a contentious social issue — until now. CBS, which will broadcast Super Bowl XLIV on Sunday, has sold 30 seconds of commercial time in the game to Focus on the Family, an evangelical organization known for conservative views on subjects like abortion and gay marriage. The commercial is to feature Tim Tebow, the college football star, and his mother, Pam, discussing their anti-abortion positions.

Middle-Aged Super Bowl Showing Its Paunch

Who would have thought we'd ever miss the days of the Budweiser talking frogs? The main advertising buzz around this year's Super Bowl has been CBS' inability to sell discounted time and the controversial advertisers who are taking advantage of the cheap rates. In the good old days of, say, five years ago, the Super Bowl meant three things to its 90 million viewers: football, partying and ads. At 44, the Game is beginning to show its middle-age paunch, with the media focusing on its problems, not its successes. Sounds more AARP than MTV!

Investors to Get a Reading on Ad Revenue

Media companies have predicted a bounce back in their advertising revenue. Now, investors say, they have to come through for shares to resume their run. The economic downturn led companies to slash advertising on TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. In recent months, slower declines in ad spending fueled stock prices for U.S. media companies, including the Big Five conglomerates. Investors will get a good read this week on advertising activity. News Corp., owner of The Wall Street Journal, is expected on Tuesday afternoon to post fiscal second-quarter earnings of 20 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters, higher than the 12 cents a share from a year earlier. Before Wednesday's opening bell, Time Warner is expected to pull in fourth-quarter profit of 51 cents a share, up from 23 cents a share. The rest of the Big Five—Walt Disney, Viacom and CBS—will report earnings later this month.

Super Bowl Ad Time Is Sold Out, CBS Says

Ad time for the Super Bowl is sold out, according to the top ad-sales executive at CBS, the network broadcasting the contest this year on Feb. 7. "We're pacing ahead in terms of timing," said Jo Ann Ross, president-network sales, CBS Television Network. The last time CBS broadcast the event, in 2007, sell-out didn't happen until just days before kickoff, Ms. Ross said. CBS has sold the typical amount of ad inventory, she added -- "more than 60 and less than 70" 30-second spots.

Gannett Reverses Loss, Reports Smaller Ad Drop

Gannett Co., the largest U.S. newspaper publisher, said Monday it turned a profit in the fourth quarter, helped by a drop in one-time costs and a smaller decline in ad sales. The earnings report showed Gannett has been able to slash expenses enough to stay profitable despite steady revenue declines. Other big publishers, such as Miami Herald owner McClatchy Co., have followed a similar course in trimming staff and consolidating printing and delivery operations.

Pepsi Push Harnesses Facebook Potential

For the first time in 23 years, there will not be an advertisement for Pepsi during Super Bowl next weekend. Instead, PepsiCo, the soft drinks maker, which in previous years has wowed audiences with dazzling spots featuring Cindy Crawford and Britney Spears, is going online. With a $20m digital campaign that features its own website and a heavy presence on Facebook, PepsiCo is betting that a more interactive approach will resonate with consumers in the always-on age of social networking sites. "We're living in a new age with consumers," says Ralph Santana, vice-president of marketing for PepsiCo North America. "They are looking for more of a two-way dialogue, story-telling and word of mouth. Mediums like the digital space are much more conducive towards that."

Pepsi Invites the Public to Do Good

Decades ago, consumers were invited to “be sociable, have a Pepsi.” Now the brand wants to invite consumers to help Pepsi support social causes — and will use social media like Facebook and Twitter to help spread a message. Pepsi-Cola is formally introducing on Monday an ambitious campaign named the Pepsi Refresh Project, aimed at doing well by doing good. The brand is dedicating at least $20 million through the end of the year for donations to local organizations and causes proposed by the public in realms like health, arts and culture, the environment and education.

McDonald's Bets LeBron James Won't Be a Tiger

The multiyear partnership deal McDonald's signed last week with basketball star LeBron James is an early sign that the Tiger Woods debacle hasn't put marketers off celebrity endorsements altogether. But it does indicate that the landscape is subtly changing. McDonald's said Thursday that its new relationship with Mr. James will kick off with his appearance in a Super Bowl XLIV pregame commercial. The ad is a remake of "The Showdown," an iconic 1993 Super Bowl spot in which National Basketball Association legends Larry Bird and Michael Jordan sought to outdo each other with seemingly impossible shots to win a Big Mac.

5 Lessons Learned From The Front Line

There is no doubt that 2009 was a fierce battleground for online marketers to reach the hearts and minds of Generation Y. Between the economic downturn, the proliferation of new media and blogs and the explosive growth of social networking sites, advertisers were challenged like never before to reach millennials and do it with the tightest marketing budgets seen in years. Many marketers, such as Vitaminwater, launched great campaigns and won, while others barely made it off the battlefield.

NBC Expands Research into Massive Olympics Audience

NBC Universal likely won't turn a profit off its broadcast of the Winter Olympics this year, but it hopes the research it performs on the event's massive audience might generate additional ad revenue in the days and months after the last gold-medal hockey skate has left the ice. The media giant, in the midst of parent General Electric's transfer of majority ownership to Comcast Corp., intends to ratchet up its examination of Olympics viewers' media-consumption habits, building off a big test it performed during the 2008 Summer Olympics broadcast from Beijing.

Coke Unveils Integrated Super Bowl Platform

Coca-Cola is giving its Facebook fans an advance look at its twin Super Bowl commercials, and also using the social media platform to put its "Open Happiness" theme into action by enabling users to trigger charitable donations and pass "virtual gifts" on to friends. Starting now, each virtual Coca-Cola gift and commercial sneak-peek triggers a $1 donation by Coca-Cola to Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Gift recipients receive a special Coke bottle image that is displayed on their Facebook page and newsfeed to feed the viral gift-giving dynamic.

Using Humor in a Campaign Supporting Disabled People

A national effort to encourage businesses to employ workers with disabilities is not your father’s hire the handicapped campaign. One difference is that the new ads are paid rather than pro bono, with an estimated budget of $4 million for the first two quarters of 2010. The ads will appear on television, in print, online and outdoors; there is also a sponsorship deal with NPR. The ads are being financed largely by agencies in 30 states that provide employment services as well as health and human services to their citizens who are disabled. The agencies have set a goal of raising $10 million for the campaign’s budget for the full year.

Volvo Launches Ads For 'Open-Minded' Folks

Volvo, a car brand that Ford will spin off to Chinese automaker Geely next year, is launching an ad campaign for its C70 and C30 cars. The effort, via Boston-based Arnold Worldwide, posits the cars as vehicles for open-minded folks who don't mind switching partners now and then. Media for the campaign was by Euro RSCG 4D for online advertising and MPG/Media Contacts for media planning and buying. The first ad launched in January, and the second will hit the waves in February on cable and in cinema. National print support for the C30 will begin appearing in April publications. The ads, under Volvo's new brand campaign -- "There's more to life than a Volvo. That's why you drive one" -- posits Volvo as a vehicle for those who live a rich, varied life.

Coke Ties Facebook Charity Promotion to Super Bowl Ads

Pepsi is putting its Super Bowl ad dollars to work by helping communities and bypassing TV spots in the game. Coca-Cola is doing the same -- but using its Super Bowl advertising as a hook. During a press event at the Dunlevy Milbank Boys & Girls Club in Harlem, Coca-Cola detailed plans to donate up to $500,000 to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, with half of the money raised through a Facebook program linked to the Super Bowl.

Verizon and its Atomic Bomb

We have seen several epic marketing wars: The Cola War of Coke vs. Pepsi, The Beer War of Budweiser vs. Miller, The Mouthwash War of Listerine vs. Scope and The Battery War of Duracell vs. Energizer. But they all fail in comparison to the money and firepower currently being expended in the Cellphone War between AT&T and arch-rival Verizon Wireless. Last year AT&T and Verizon Wireless spent a combined $4 billion in advertising to blast consumers with 615,000 television commercials. Yet, despite the incredible sums spent and the enormous volume flooding the airways, most consumers are still confused.

Will You Be My Frugal Valentine?

Madison Avenue is going high and low for Valentine’s Day, as in low prices and high technology. Valentine’s Day is always among the most commercialized holidays on the marketing calendar, offering retailers and advertisers a chance to extract money from those consumers who have managed to refill bank accounts after depleting them for Christmas shopping. The National Retail Federation estimates that Americans spent $14.7 billion last year on Valentine’s Day purchases.

Hey Stupid! Diesel Thinks You're Awesome

With every new day, the phrase "I'm just not the target demographic" seems to be more relevant for me. Earlier this week I saw a couple of striking posters that caught my eye. They were bold, typographic and used hot colors. That was the good part. Then I read the message: SMART LISTENS TO THE HEAD. STUPID LISTENS TO THE HEART. BE STUPID. This is a new ad campaign from Diesel fashions. Their pitch is that smart is cold, intellectual, and cautious, and has only one good idea. Stupid is exciting, hot, emotional full of possibility, and has "balls." The logic seemed pretty weak.

Will Tim Tebow's Pro-Life Bowl Ad Kill His Potential as an Endorser?

University of Florida star and National Football League hopeful Tim Tebow might have just thrown a penalty flag on his own future marketing ability by appearing in an anti-abortion ad scheduled to air during the Super Bowl, say sports-marketing experts. In an era when most athletes rarely, if ever, delve into politics or social causes, Mr. Tebow will be appearing in a 30-second spot for the Colorado-based conservative Christian group Focus on the Family. The ad is expected to be pro-life themed, and is slated to air during CBS's Feb. 7 broadcast of Super Bowl XLIV from Miami.

Bud Light Goes for Gags at Big Game

Anheuser-Busch InBev NV will shelve its Bud Light "Drinkability" slogan during the Super Bowl in a bid to resuscitate the beer's sales with funnier commercials. It's even considering benching its famous Clydesdale horses during the game. Anheuser, the world's largest brewer by revenue, has bought five minutes of commercial time during the Feb. 7 football spectacular. It is expected to air several Bud Light ads with a newly created tagline, "Here we go." The line is meant to show that Bud Light is a "catalyst for a good time," says Keith Levy, Anheuser-Busch's vice president for marketing.

Merrill Lynch Launches $20 Million Effort

Bank of America Merrill Lynch is launching a $20 million marketing campaign focusing on retirement planning. Themed "help2retire______" (read "help2retire blank"), the campaign encourages individuals to "fill in the blank" by identifying aspects of their working and financial lives that they want to put an end to and to focus on what matters most when planning for and during their retirement years.

What’s the Meaning of Your Message?

Why do most marketing messages fail to engage potential customers? Why are most internal corporate communications viewed as a bunch of baloney? Why do we distrust big media, big business, and most politicians (big or small)? It's simple, really. Have you heard the expression, "The meaning of the message is the response it elicits?" It suggests that when you communicate a message -- whether you do so face-to-face, over the telephone, on the Internet, over the airwaves, or in writing -- the message means what the receiver of the message thinks it means. And increasingly, what most messages mean to us is apparent.

The Power Of Nostalgia In Advertising

As we age our nostalgic yearnings grow, making us more receptive to advertisers and marketers use of what researchers call "a longing for positive memories from the past." In addition to time's arrow, this desire for nostalgia is further intensified by society's present circumstance of receding predictability and opportunity. While science is still struggling to unravel the neuro-dynamics of nostalgia, studies have identified some nostalgic cues that can be exploited and how images and sounds from the past can create favorable attitudes about products.

Hopefuls Gird for Gridiron

Buying Super Bowl ads has helped catapult companies like online brokerage E*Trade Financial, Internet job board Monster.com and video site Hulu into the public eye. That's why several little-known advertisers—including mobile pay-TV firm Flo TV, information provider KGB and vacation rental service HomeAway.com—are forking over millions of dollars to appear on this year's Big Game broadcast.

Miller High Life Goes Long(er), Bowl Spot Toasts Small Biz

Miller High Life won't be doing another one-second commercial for this year's Super Bowl. Instead, the brand will buy a 30-second spot -- but position it as being "given" to small businesses as a platform for them to tell their stories. Last year, the brand used pre-game teaser commercials starring its popular "deliveryman" (actor Windell Middlebrooks) to spread the word that it would be forgoing a standard-length commercial because spending $3 million was too much. (Due to the economy, 30-second rates are down to between $2.5 million and $2.8 million this year, according to TNS Media Intelligence.)

Intel Makes Super Bowl Comeback

After more than a decade, Intel returns to the Super Bowl this year to kick off a campaign for its 2010 Intel Core Processor, billed as its biggest product launch in five years. "A lot has changed in the past 13 years [since Intel's first Super Bowl campaign]. People are using computers in completely new and different ways," said Heather Dixon, Intel consumer marketing manager. "It's not just surfing the internet anymore; the No. 1 and No. 2 reasons now are social networking and videos."

Rivalries as Keen as on the Field

There is nothing like the big matchups at the Super Bowl as powerhouse players go head to head. For Madison Avenue, those fascinating face-offs have nothing to do with football; they pit marketers against one another in competitive categories like automobiles, credit cards, fast food and online services.

Dockers 'Men Without Pants' March to Super Bowl

Dockers will advertise during the Super Bowl for the first time since 2002. On Feb. 7, the apparel brand is breaking a new TV spot, which uses Shazam mobile technology to allow consumer interaction. The new 30-second ad, dubbed "Men Without Pants," is part of Dockers' ongoing "Wear the Pants" campaign, which launched in December. It will run during CBS's telecast of Super Bowl XLIV, and appropriately, will address men on the subject of modern masculinity. (The ad shows childish men marching and singing: "I Wear No Pants." The men are interrupted with a message: "Calling all men, it’s time to wear the pants.”)

Campaigns Walk the Invisible Tightrope

Every January, Madison Avenue gets into the betterment business, unleashing a flood of advertising that seeks to take advantage of the impulses among consumers at the start of a new year to improve themselves. Scores of millions of dollars are spent on campaigns for weight-loss plans, diet pills, low-calorie foods, gyms and fitness centers, smoking-cessation drugs and exercise equipment. Almost always, the pitches are upbeat and positive, seeking to instill feelings of empowerment and encouragement in those who want to effect change in their behavior and appearance.

Ad Results, Understanding Clients Called Key To Ad Sales

Some advice for media companies trying to sell ads: Promising your senior staff's full attention might not charm potential advertisers as much as you think. Ad results, understanding a marketer's business, aggressive deals on price and customer service are the real top priorities, according to a new Advertiser Perceptions survey of more than 1,500 digital, TV and print media decision-makers at both clients and agencies. Each of those four criteria were rated "very important" by at least 75% of respondents.

Audi Aims For A Super Bowl Touchdown

Audi hopes luxury car buyers will tune in to Super Bowl XLIV. The $2.8 million price tag for a 30-second commercial is high, but the ability to reach 95 million people in one day is important to Audi. It's a shot at distinguishing the company from big competitors, at a time when car marketers--particularly the luxury players--are reeling. Audi's U.S sales slid 5.7% to 82,716 cars sold in 2009, compared to the year before, according to Autodata.

Foreign Auto Makers Suit Up for Super Bowl

Foreign car makers are marketing their vehicles more aggressively in the U.S., and are making the Super Bowl a high-profile part of their strategies for wresting market share from American rivals. On Feb. 7, tens of millions of football fans will see about a half-dozen auto commercials from at least four overseas manufacturers flicker across their TV screens during the big game. Last year, three auto makers, advertised on the Super Bowl broadcast.

NBC Haunted by Its Knockout Bid for the Games

The Winter Olympics start in 23 days, and NBC expects to lose $200 million on them. But it didn’t have to be that way — even with an economy that has shredded NBC’s advertising assumptions. In June 2003, executives from NBC, ESPN and Fox gathered at the International Olympic Committee’s headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, to bid for the television rights to the 2010 Winter Games, which had not yet been awarded to Vancouver, and the 2012 Summer Games, which would be given to London.

'Tweet Me' Joins 'Love You' On Sweethearts Candy

The familiar candy hearts from Necco that have been a Valentine's Day tradition since the Civil War will carry a new endearment this year: "Tweet Me." The move accelerates recent commercial tie-ins for the 145-year-old Sweetheart brand, Bruce Horovitz writes, while it's a freebie public relations coup for Twitter.

If Google Goes, So Do Many Digital Marketing Opportunities in China

Normally China's internet censorship is a topic of hot interest for the Human Rights crowd at the State Department, but the fate of Google.cn in China should be watched closely by marketers, too. If the search site does disappear from the mainland, more is at stake than just paid search opportunities. Google is a key player in drawing advertisers to online media. The web -- and particularly the growing number of social networks -- have found the U.S. company to be a key catalyst for online marketing efforts.

Why Case Studies Fail You With Customers

Marketers use the term case study for a more in depth or descriptive narrative of a customer engagement, from the problem the company helped solve, to the solution used to solve it, including glowing quotes from a happy customer. So why do case studies fail you with customers? The short answer is that those were instances of success for others, and you cannot replicate exactly the same conditions that brought them there. In other words, you fail to see what was behind the implementation. Copying or relying heavily on something happened elsewhere in a different context is a waste of your time.

NBC’s Slide to Troubled Nightly Punch Line

At its height, NBC was the very model of what a television network should be. With iconic programming, enviable ratings and spectacular business success, the peacock network delivered plenty of laughs along the way with “The Cosby Show,” “Seinfeld” and “Friends.” Nobody is laughing anymore. Today the network is in shambles, brought down not just by the challenges facing broadcast television — fragmenting audiences, an advertising downturn — but also by a series of executive missteps that have made its prime-time lineup a perennial loser and, most recently, turned its late night programming schedule into a media circus that threatens the lucrative “Tonight Show” franchise.

Concern About Prices May Delay Bidding for Olympics

After years of bidding up fees for the rights to televise sports, U.S. media companies are putting on the brakes. Richard Carrion, a member of the International Olympic Committee's executive board, said the organization is seriously considering delaying until next year the bidding for the U.S. media rights for the 2014 and 2016 Olympics because of the ongoing struggles of broadcasters hurt by a rocky advertising market.

Oscar Mayer Counts on the Joy, Not the Jingles

Oscar Meyer, which has two of the most famous advertising jingles, is pushing them to the side as it introduces its biggest campaign to date. After more than 125 years in existence, the brand is spending more than $50 million on its first campaign to extend across all of its meaty products: bacon, hot dogs, premade sandwiches, bologna and sliced packaged meats. The brand wanted to emphasize its name beyond just a few well-known products, said Sean Marks, director for marketing at Oscar Mayer, a division of Kraft Foods.

After Ditching Tiger, Accenture Tries New Game

On Dec. 13, Accenture decided to end its six-year sponsorship of Tiger Woods. The next day, Roxanne Taylor, the global consulting firm's chief marketing officer, presented the concept for a new ad campaign to Chief Executive Bill Green. Amid salacious headlines about the golf superstar's alleged extramarital affairs, the new campaign, based on an idea Accenture's ad agency already had on hand, was put on a fast track. It would replace images of Mr. Woods with a lineup of animals pictured in ways designed to jibe with Accenture's longstanding slogan: "High Performance. Delivered."

McDonald’s Serves Up Competitive Branding At 2010 Winter Olympics

The 2010 Winter Olympics offers world-class athletes an intense and competitive environment to showcase their talents. Yet no other participant is preparing more intensely for the games than McDonald’s. That’s right, McDonald’s. The fast food juggernaut has devised a marketing strategy that is as specific and yet as varied as the many competitions being offered at the games next February. McDonald’s is embracing the Winter Olympics in every aspect, and will fill everywhere from host city Vancouver to social networking phenomenon Twitter with its messaging.

Online/Offline Integration: 5 Tips For Strengthening Your Brand Experience

With another holiday season behind us, retailers are busy crunching sales data to measure success and year over year revenue. However, this is also a good time to assess your company’s brand experience. And if yours needs improvement, integrating offline and online marketing can help.

Marketers Need To Better Understand Creativity

It can be said that creative advertising is like brain surgery. When advertising is artfully done it cures people of the status quo by activating neural circuitry. To be creative artfully requires a dynamic mix of imagination and understanding of how the world might work. This is not a matter of being correct, but rather a matter of making the audience wonder, provoking a self-referring reverie that elicits an expanded idea of ones-self and how the world works. As a result, we see anew.

Questionable Spin: Marketers Push The Envelope In Tough Times

Tough economic times are prompting mainstream marketers to try some audacious stunts to generate awareness and sales. Just last week New York outerwear company Weatherproof Garment Company posted an attention-getting billboard in Times Square. In the ad President Obama is pictured in China, where he is wearing a jacket apparently made by the company. Trouble is, Obama isn't a company spokesman. The White House called the garment company and asked it to remove the billboard, which the company's director of public relations, Allen Cohen, says it will do, with reluctance.

Online Buddy Comedy by Jason Bateman, Will Arnett Could Make You URL

Jason Bateman and Will Arnett are selling out-- if you can call it that anymore. The duo just announced a partnership with Ben Silverman to form a digital production company to produce shorts and commercials. Their label, ironically called DumbDumb, looks doubly smart. They plan to take their quirky eye for chuckles and leverage it to make both traditional commercial spots "low-fi, lo-tech way" online shorts for companies. And their first distributor will be Yahoo.

Location-Based Apps Hold Promise For Big Marketers

By now many marketers have probably played around Foursquare or Gowalla or know someone who has. For the uninitiated, these are location-based mobile applications that allow people to "check in" from stadiums, bars and bookstores and compete for "mayorship," collect badges and share tips. They are practical, addicting and lots of fun. Users of these services number in the hundreds of thousands today. That's small by national advertiser standards, but it's significant for many local advertisers, which are offering discounts to frequent visitors and offers to people who are physically nearby. This is a trend in local marketing worth noting because it promises to give national advertisers the opportunity to conjure up or attach to an emotion among smaller niche groups.

KFC Pays Indiana Cities For 'Fiery' Ad Space

Fast-food chain KFC is giving Indianapolis and another Indiana city $7,500 so it can emblazon founder Colonel Sanders' face on their hydrants and fire extinguishers to promote new "fiery" chicken wings. Experts say to expect more ads like this, on public property from sewer grates to the local landfill, as companies look to cut through the clutter of traditional advertising. Cash-strapped governments have long sold space on mass transit, benches, trash cans and other public property to help stretch budgets.

ING Direct Ad Takes Advantage Of Americans' Amnesia About The Stock Market

'Owners' tempts the young and inexperienced to 'get your share,' and implies that investing can be an expression of one's cultural politics. A tough, tasty steak of a book, Justin Fox's "The Myth of the Rational Market" arrived last fall just in time to explain how and why the smartest economists and best-managed institutions on Wall Street nearly detonated a bomb in the world's underpants.

Apple's News Strategy: Steal Google And CES Thunder

Apple just announced that its App Store has blown past three billion app downloads, which is impressive. But the timing is curious, as are the swirling rumors about the upcoming Apple Tablet. Is Apple trying to out-PR CES and Google?

Is Pepsi's Pass on Super Bowl an Offensive or Defensive Move?

The bound stacks of marketing and advertising magazines are filled with mentions of zig and zag. The marketer should zig when everyone else is zagging. Zig and zag, not coincidentally, are often put to the task of pulling the cart of increased ad spending. As in: Company X, instead of retreating during a recession, zigged when everyone else zagged, and spent more money on marketing. Full disclosure: I'm a student in that particular school of thought myself. But what happens to a marketer that zags when everyone else is zigging? We'll find out this year as PepsiCo, one of the annual big spenders in the Super Bowl, yanks all advertising for its beverage brands from the game.

Audi CMO: What U.S. Automakers Are Doing Wrong

German luxury brand Audi is a refreshing change from what most of the news in the auto business has been about lately. The Volkswagen subsidiary has pumped up its U.S. advertising budget by 20%, increased its market share and been surprisingly successful in marketing "clean diesel" models against competitors' hybrids. In this eight-minute video, Audi America CMO Scott Keogh recaps the company's strategies at the same time he wags his finger at what he portrays as the hopelessly bland marketing of U.S. domestic automakers.

Dr Pepper Buys Its First Super Bowl Spot

In an effort to drum up more interest in its recently launched Dr Pepper Cherry, Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc. has bought advertising time during Super Bowl XLIV. The purchase marks the first time in the company's 125-year history that Dr Pepper will advertise during the National Football League championship, which will be broadcast by CBS Corp. on Feb 7.

When I Knew Advertising Had Completely Changed

During the year-and-a-half I spent researching and writing Adland, I was often asked, usually by people who knew me in my past life, "What are you doing here? Didn't you write a novel? Didn't you gleefully leave this world behind?" The simple answer was that I was writing another book. Not another novel but, ironically, a book about the past, present and future of the world I had supposedly, gleefully, left behind. Many who worked with me found this curious and funny, and not just because of the irony, but because really, who the hell am I to write a book about advertising?

Cheap Beer If You Check-In… Or Just Tweet.

One of the most compelling aspects of the location-based service Foursquare is that they are increasingly enticing users to check-in to venues by partnering up to offer special deals to those who do. A person who checks-in at a coffee shop and shows the barista, may get a free coffee, for example. It’s a win-win for both the service and the venue because it gets people using the app more and gets people visiting the venue more. But what if users and venues go around Foursquare and start using Twitter for that?

In Allowing Ad Blockers, a Test for Google

In a manifesto-like e-mail message sent last month to all Google employees, Jonathan Rosenberg, a senior vice president for product management, told them to commit to greater transparency and open industry standards. Rather than hoard knowledge to exploit it, he wrote in “The Meaning of Open,” share it and watch Google and the entire Internet prosper. With the Chrome browser, however, Google’s inclusive principles are being put to the test: a new version of the browser allows, one might even say encourages, users to stop Google ads from appearing. How Google got to such a position speaks to the inherent dynamism (or is that chaos?) of business on the Internet.

Ad Influx Brightens Hopes For Newspapers, Magazines

A year-end flurry of ad spending helped moderate steep declines at some newspapers and magazines, and has fueled an uptick at others, raising hopes for a recovery in 2010. Still, following a brutal 2009, when scores of publications closed or made drastic cutbacks, publishers remain wary of declaring an ad rebound as marketers selectively reopen their wallets. Publishing executives attribute the recent influx of ad money in part to marketers hurrying to spend the remainder of their annual ad budgets after doling out those funds sparingly earlier in the year amid fears of an economic collapse.

Gmail Points to Possibilities of the Coming Data Decade

If you threw me on a desert island (one with internet connectivity) and said that I could use only one website, it would be Gmail. For the last five years Gmail has become the most indispensable tool in my communications and productivity system. I've even found a full-fledged Twitter client, Twitgether, that integrates into Gmail. My use of Gmail is unorthodox in that I also use it as a massive database -- a backup brain. For years now I have been e-mailing myself articles that I think I might need later. Along the way, Gmail gives me a preview of what the algorithmic, personalized future of advertising and media will undoubtedly resemble.

Melanie Wells On Marketing And Advertising

Marketers will try to convince consumers that behavioral targeting doesn't violate their privacy. Companies have collected online data about consumers and their Web habits for several years. This information helps them figure out which consumers will be most receptive to ads for their products. 2010 will be the year when the marketers, media companies and consumer watchdogs find out if consumers believe--and if they care--that behavioral targeting violates their privacy.

Geico Poses 'Rhetorical Questions'

Geico today broke a new campaign dubbed "Rhetorical Questions," which is the latest of at least four other concurrent campaigns for the auto insurance provider. The new effort, via The Martin Agency, spotlights the savings car owners get when they switch to Geico insurance. The four spots, however, don't feature any of the company's mascots like the Gecko, the Cavemen, or Kash. Instead, Geico tapped actor Mike McGlone (from The Brothers McMullen) to play a reporter who asks rhetorical questions, such as: "Does Elmer Fudd have trouble with the letter R?" and "Did The Waltons take way too long to say goodnight?"

Google Executive Eyes Advert Revolution

When asked what his title as president of Google’s sales operations and business development means, Nikesh Arora answers: “I’m basically responsible for the business side.” At Google – whose engineers can sometimes be accused of being on missions unconnected with the bottom line – this means working out the future of advertising in the digital economy Google helped create.

Fewer Actors, Other Trends You'll See in 2010

The economy may continue its gradual recovery next year, but advertising is expected to show the influence of the recession through 2010. Don't expect a letup in the rough-and-tumble sales pitches that hit the airwaves, Web and magazines this year, as advertisers like Campbell Soup and Verizon Wireless, owned by Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group, took direct aim at their competitors. Advertising executives expect such barbed comparison ads to continue. Other companies, meanwhile, will be showing their softer sides. In the bleak aftermath of the recession, many marketers think consumers will respond to brands they perceive as giving back to the community.

Chief Reputation Officer: Whose Job Is It, Anyway?

In the 20th century, PR and marketing were separate but unequal career paths, and CMO was the highest-ranking and most-respected title to which one in those jobs could aspire. The standard career paths in these areas were relatively linear: As a lead communicator, you went to j-school, did a turn in journalism or an agency and then apprenticed under a "gray hair" boss until he retired. This is compared with the typical path of a chief marketing officer, who got his or her M.B.A. in marketing, hired agencies that made him or her look good, learned how to manage big budgets and award-winning creative and then got in the running for the corner office. Today that is changing because of the increasing importance of reputation management.

Brands Continue to Keep It 'Real,' but for How Long?

There's still nothing like the real thing. Or so say food marketers looking to stand out in the mass-produced herd. What really is "real" could eventually be for the government to determine. In the meantime, real people drink Caribou, real dogs eat Alpo, real sandwiches have Hellmann's and Canada Dry ginger ale is made with real ginger. Don't bother taking notes, because Wendy's says "You know when it's real" anyway. Advertised "real" foods, products, services and even experiences aren't new, but they're on the rise.

Babies and Tigers: Best and Worst Ads of 2009

Madison Avenue gave a nod to grim economic realities in this year's crop of ads, but also pitched plenty of escapist fare—both inspired and goofy. The industry was struggling through one of the worst business climates it has seen in decades. Global ad spending plummeted 10%, according to ZenithOptimedia, a media-buying company owned by Publicis Groupe. Cash-strapped advertisers cut the fees they pay their advertising firms, and tens of thousands of ad jobs were lost. Some of the country's largest firms, such as WPP's JWT, were forced to close once-thriving outposts in markets such as Chicago. Well-known agencies such as Cliff Freeman & Partners ("Where's the Beef?") were forced to close shop completely. From reviews of major campaigns and interviews with advertising executives, here are our choices for some of the best and worst marketing maneuvers of 2009.

Domestos Take the Fight to the Own Label Bullies

Hot on the tails of the recent post on Heinz's "It has to be Heinz" campaign comes another example of a big brand taking the fight to the own label bully boys. This one is from Domestos, the bleach for cleaning your toilet. Surely this is a "commodity category" where brands have no role to play, and own label will take over? Well, Domestos don't agree. They have done a great job over decades to consistently communicate their power in the fight against germs with the endline "Kills 99.9% of all known germs. Dead". Their latest ad uses the idea "Cheap bleach is finished".

American Apparel Grabs YouTube's Long Tail

One of YouTube's greatest challenges with advertisers has been the notion that it's a repository for clips of dogs riding skateboards. But one marketer, at least, sees this as a plus. American Apparel has been targeting ads to over 100 videos of pets, including a clip of a skateboarding canine, to promote its line of dog clothing. The Los Angeles-based brand chose the videos based on suggestions from employees. "It would be hard to do an advertisement on the back page of LA Weekly or a fashion magazine for the dog T-shirt," noted Ryan Holiday, a Web marketing executive at American Apparel.

Spendthrift to Penny Pincher: A Vision of the New Consumer

The economy appears to have begun recovering after the worst recession in half a century. But businesses ranging from shoemakers to financial services to luxury hotels don't expect American consumers to return to their spendthrift ways anytime soon. They see consumers emerging from the punishing downturn with a new mind-set: careful, practical, more socially conscious and embarrassed by flashy shows of wealth. Much as the 1930s shaped the spending habits of an entire generation, many companies now anticipate a shift in consumer behavior that persists even after jobs and growth get back closer to normal.

Magazines Get Ready for Tablets

Magazine publishers are taking a mulligan. After letting the Internet slip away from them and watching electronic readers like the Kindle from Amazon develop without their input, publishers are trying again with Apple iPhones and, especially, tablet computers. Although publishers have not exactly been on the cutting edge of technology, two magazines — Esquire and GQ — have developed iPhone versions, while Wired and Sports Illustrated have made mockups of tablet versions of their print editions, months before any such tablets come to market. Publishers are using the opportunity to fix their business model, too.

Google Bets On Display Ads In 2010

Online display advertising, viewed as inefficient and time-consuming for many marketers, has been a tough sell in recent years. Google aims to change that. In 2010, Google expects the "if you build it, they will come" model to pay off. The company rolled out a new version of its DoubleClick ad exchange in September to open display ad buying to more marketers. "Make it as easy as possible for people to buy display ads, and the pie will grow," says Neal Mohan, vice president of product management at Google in Mountain View, Calif.

Retailer Asks Holiday Shoppers To Take A Hike

Among the seasonal songs that radio stations play before Christmas is the 1949 pop hit “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” A retailer is introducing commercials that reminds shoppers just how cold, wet and uncomfortable it can get outside -- and just how enjoyable that can turn out to be. The commercials are the first that the retailer, REI, has ever run on television. They are part of a holiday campaign that also includes radio commercials; print and online ads; direct marketing; e-mail messages; signs in stores; presences on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube; search-engine marketing; and ads on the REI Web site.

Seismic Shift In Targeted Ads, Media

At November's "Media & Money" conference, I presented on "The Seismic Shift in Targeted Advertising & Media." For all of its negative press and terrible operating results, the airline industry has produced a brilliant success that has the potential to turn the advertising and media business upside down: yield management.

H&R Block Drops 'People' In Attempt to 'Get It Right'

H&R Block, which seems to update its tagline and ad approach as often as the IRS tweaks its tax codes, is back with a new campaign themed “Get it right.” The campaign, which broke this month, is a manifestation of major changes at the company of late.

Do These Vuitton Ads Stretch Too Far?

Bling is out, enduring quality is in. That’s the message this holiday season from makers of luxury goods, who are betting that even in a shaky economy, shoppers will still pay serious money for fine craftsmanship. Instead of sexy models flaunting handbags and lots of skin, Louis Vuitton’s current ad campaign features Vermeer-inspired images of demure young women hand-finishing purses and wallets at a workshop table. One ad is entitled “The Young Woman and the Tiny Folds,” another “The Seamstress With Linen Thread and Beeswax. There’s just one tiny detail missing. Hardly any Vuitton bags or wallets are handmade.

AOL’s Ho-Hum Debut

AOL began its life anew as independent company on Thursday, when Time Warner completed the spin-off of the Internet company nearly a decade after it merged with it in one of the most disastrous combinations in corporate history. Investors and the media seemed to greet the event with little more than a collective “ho-hum.” Tim Armstrong, who became chief executive of AOL in March, rang the opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange. He then headed for a press conference, as AOL’s shares dipped around 2.5 percent in morning trading.

Uptick In Global Ad Spending Is Forecast For 2010

It was not exactly a rousing chorus of “Happy Days Are Here Again,” but the predictions for next year by three forecasters of advertising spending had Madison Avenue smiling, however faintly, on Tuesday. The predictions all called for an increase in worldwide ad spending in 2010 compared with 2009, which by most measures will end up as the worst year in decades. Still, there were caveats, among them an expectation for a less robust recovery in the United States than in other markets and continued weakness in demand for ads in print media like magazines and newspapers.

How The Droid Took Root All Over the Web

So is the Droid the iPhone killer? So far, no, but it's off to a very respectable launch thanks to some smart seeding by Verizon. Analysts estimate Verizon sold between 100,000 and 200,000 Droids in its opening weekend; the wireless carrier should sell a total of 765,000 Droids by year-end, according to Avian Securities' forecast. At this pace, Droid, which was released in early November, would slightly trail the performance of the first Blackberry Storm, which sold a million units by the end of January after going on sale just before Thanksgiving last year.

Forecasters Predict Ad Stabilization in 2010

The global advertising market will start to stabilize next year, following double-digits declines in 2009, but more-established markets such as the U.S. won't gain steam for some time, according to some of Madison Avenue's most closely watched forecasts. Fallout from the global financial crisis will linger in the U.S. ad market in 2010, the forecasts say. Interpublic Group media agency Magna predicts that U.S. ad revenues—the revenue reaped by media companies in selling ad space and time—will grow just 0.2% to $162.7 billion and reach low-single-digit growth rates by 2012. Publicis Groupe's Zenith Optimedia, which tracks ad spending instead, projects that it will shrink 2.6% to $144 billion in the U.S next year.

Nicorette Puffs $15 Million Into Ad Blitz

Drug maker GlaxoSmithKline wants people to know that it "sucks" to quit smoking, but there's a way to make it "suck less." The maker of Nicorette, an over-the-counter nicotine-infused gum that helps some cigarette smokers wean themselves off nicotine, is launching a $15 million campaign that will break on prime-time TV networks ABC, CBS ( CBS - news - people ) and NBC this Monday. The ad blitz, created by Omnicom ad agency TBWAChiatDay, will feature four 30-second spots with the tagline, "Quitting sucks. Nicorette Makes It Suck Less," that will air until April. Print ads that look like an open letter to cigarette lovers (saying, "Dear Smokers, 2010 is going to suck") will run in magazines such as ESPN, Time and People. The company will spend $15 million between now and the middle of 2010, then another $15 million in the second half of the year.

As Part Of Comcast Deal, GE Promises To Keep Advertising

Now that Comcast and NBC Universal have agreed to merge, what happens to all the ad revenue NBC properties get from their No. 1 advertiser, General Electric? Turns out, part of the deal includes a guarantee that GE will continue to advertise on NBC properties. As part of the purchase agreement, GE is contractually obligated to continue to spend "no less than $59 million of gross advertising" with the merged Comcast-NBCU each year, for a five-year period starting the year after the deal closes. And it must purchase an additional $50 million in connection with the 2012 Olympic Games.

A Big Name In Tech Tries A Common Touch

As the company that makes the plumbing of the Internet, Cisco Systems rakes in the cash, but it is hardly a top technology brand among consumers, in the way of Apple or Microsoft. While it specializes in corporate equipment, Cisco does, in fact, sell some consumer gear. The problem is that Cisco’s efforts to hawk such products have been lackluster. (Ever heard of Cisco’s home stereos? Exactly.)

Using 'Fuzzy Analytics' To Accurately Measure TV Ad Performance

To many, tracking the success of TV ads is like admiring a Monet -- it's a beautiful picture when taken as a whole, but not meant to convey detail. When it comes to measurement, most TV advertisers know audience reach, some demographics and probably some level of top-line results. Admittedly, it doesn't match the depth and granularity of data we can get for online campaigns, where we know who's responding to our ads, what they're doing on our websites, how much time they spend there and whether or not they complete a purchase.

AT&T Joins NYC & Company

Telecom giant AT&T has partnered with NYC & Company, the official tourism and marketing organization for the city of New York, on a two-year advertising agreement. The deal provides AT&T with various platforms to promote itself and its Yellowpages.com and YPmobile brands to the market, while sponsoring some of NYC & Company's latest efforts to tout the city's attractions.

For Most, Marketing Budgets Flat This Holiday

Even though retailers are hoping for much stronger sales than last year, they're not spending more on marketing to get them. BDO Seidman's poll of retailing CMOs reports that 55% say this year's holiday advertising budget is flat this year. In last year's survey, only 43% said so. Only 19% have upped the ad ante, leaving 26% who have cut spending. But the results may be a little misleading, Catherine Fox-Simpson, a partner in the firm's retail and consumer product practice, tells Marketing Daily. "Ad pricing is down significantly this year," she says. "Ad space costs a lot less now than it did a few years ago, so retailers can get a lot more bang for their buck. Even if advertising budgets are flat, there could be significantly more advertising now than in years past simply by virtue of pricing being down."

The Year's Best Marketing

Great branding and marketing happened all the time in 2009, only it often occurred in some less noticed and most unlikely places. In fact, I'm not sure we possess the right criteria or language to agree on what "great" even means. So many things have changed − from our channels to our expectations − that much of what was celebrated in the media (and promptly resold to other clients) just left me flat. I had this sneaking suspicion that we were missing something all year long.

Twitter Ads Are Evil: Here’s Why

Advertisers are frustrated. You’re all having direct conversations with friends on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and the rest while totally bypassing the mass mediums they understand. Rather than consuming content all day on TV, in newspapers and on the radio, you’re engaging, one-to-one, with individuals you trust. They can’t get in the middle of that. They hate it. So it’s perhaps predictable that we’re experiencing the rise of in-stream Twitter advertising.

Is Marketing a Strategic Resource or a Procured Commodity?

When Sir Martin Sorrell, Executive Chairman of the WPP Group and for two decades arguably the most powerful individual in advertising, appeared on The Charlie Rose Show last May, the conversation was more remarkable for what he didn’t say than for what he did say.

Cheap and Cheerful for the Holidays

With only a month left before Christmas, it seems clear that consumers, worried about the economy and unemployment, will need considerable incentives — in the form of big sales and deals — to buy anything. As a result, campaigns are celebrating price cuts, discounts and bargains in a manner that the British call “cheap and cheerful.” It is a far cry from the holidays of not so long ago, when commercials suggested giving luxury cars as gifts by topping them with red bows — and never mentioned the sticker shock.

Google Adds TiVo Data

Google has signed a license agreement with DVR company TiVo that enables the Internet search provider to integrate TiVo set-top box viewing data into its measurement of audiences for inventory sold through the Google TV Ads platform. The deal adds approximately 1.6 million subscribers to the universe of set-top boxes that Google TV Ads has to draw on to analyze the second-by-second TV viewing behavior of audiences. Google also has a deal with Dish Network and access to more than 13 million set-top boxes via the satellite carrier.

Stores Line Up Early For Black Friday Throw-Down

While retailers have been tempting holiday shoppers all month with pre-Black Friday deals, the fiercest of the price-cut showdowns begins this Friday at 5 a.m. Wal-Mart Stores, Best Buy, Target, JCPenney and Kohl's are already blaring their best prices online, offering lots of cross-channel options that make it easier for shoppers to choose store, web, or both. (JC Penney, which has vowed this will be its biggest Black Friday sale ever, is even pushing the insomniac envelope, opening stores at 4 a.m.)

Neither Red State Nor Blue State, But Toy State

Billy Joel sings about “a New York state of mind.” Can a campaign centered on a brand character named Ripp help put children -- and the parents who shop for them -- in a Toy State state of mind? Toy State is the name of a Chinese company, based in Hong Kong, that markets motorized playthings, primarily to boys ages 4 to 7, under brand names like Road Rippers and Caterpillar. The toys are sold by retailers that include Kmart, Target, Toys “R” Us and Target.

We Have Seen The Future, And It Is Old

Have you seen the advertising campaign for Dos Equis beer featuring "The Most Interesting Man in the World?" Each commercial depicts exploits from the "interesting man's" past, or he offers insight on a particular topic. For example, on the topic of "Life" he says, "It is never too early to start beefing up your obituary." What we find especially interesting is that the unnamed character is an older man. In fact, he is played by a long-time character actor named Jonathan Goldsmith.

Verizon, AT&T Feud Is Good For Business

The ongoing dispute between Verizon Wireless and AT&T over advertised coverage area -- coupled with a new phone for Verizon-- looks to be a buzz benefit for both companies. According to YouGovPolimetrix's BrandIndex, which takes the measure of positive vs. negative talk about a certain brand, buzz for both companies has increased in the two weeks between Nov. 2 and Nov. 19. At the beginning of the period, AT&T's buzz was at about 7.7, while Verizon's was around 21.3. By the end of the time period, AT&T's had risen to 14, while Verizon's had risen to 32.3.

Oodles Love Google, But Wouldn't Exactly Call It 'Fun'

Drum roll, please. Search engine Google topped Forrester Research's survey of consumers' favorite online brands, though respondents ranked the company low on qualities like "trustworthy," "relevant" and "fun." Forty-four percent of consumers rate Google as their favorite online brand in 2009, compared with 36% in 2007. The search engine dominates in wealthy homes. Fifty-five percent of those bringing home more than $100,000 annually rank Google No. 1. It appears relevance is still a weakness for search engines. None ranked above 35% in this category. In fact, only 25% of Google fans rate the engine as relevant. That's a category where Yahoo and Microsoft inch ahead at 33% and 30%, respectively. Meanwhile, only 35% of Google fans view the brand as trustworthy and reliable, while only 6% of YouTube fans say that company had the same attribute.

Apple Envy

'Tis the season to diss Apple in some very creative and entertaining ways. I'm just not sure whether it's a sign of strategic marketing insight, or fishbowl-like confusion of message over meaning. First came Microsoft's "I'm a PC" campaigns, with its snippets of slice-of-life everypeople declaring their stereotypical lifestyles, and then shoppers explaining how they'd first looked at an Apple but then chose a PC because it was a better value. I'm all for comparison ads but the nonsense of contrasting PC-ness with Apple-ness is kind of silly.

Sony Retunes $5bn Ad Budget

Sony is looking to concentrate its nearly $5bn annual advertising firepower on a smaller number of products to “reinvent its marketing”, senior executives at the company said. The company fears it is being outgunned by competitors that spend heavily to promote specific products or categories, such as Apple with the iPod or iPhone, Samsung in televisions, or Canon in digital cameras. As a result, Sony believes, even when its device is superior it might not sell as well.

Wag The Dog

Savvy sports sponsorship buyers already know that in most circumstances sponsorship performs best when evaluated over the long-term and when it features "ownership" of a distinctive piece of the action. For instance, having an in-game feature is more effective, dollar for dollar, than being in the middle of the :30 spot parade. Add to this a relatively new strategy: Adding foreign language rights to a general sponsorship. If the sponsorship being considered is official status with one of the stick and ball sports, let's say MLB, it would be smart to enlarge that sponsorship domain to include Latino, Asian or even all foreign language rights.

Consumers Use Cellphones In Interesting Ways

Mobile advertising seemed like the next big thing just about 10 years ago. Now it has arrived. With widespread adoption of advertising-friendly smart phones, such as the iPhone, Blackberry and the new Droid, marketers are finally ready to divvy out their budgets to mobile. This year, mobile ad spending is expected to hit $416 million, up 30% over last year. By 2013, marketers will spend around $1.6 million, according to research firm eMarketer. How marketers should pitch their wares may be determined by consumer behavior. So what are people doing on their cellphones?

Godiva Rides in a New Direction

At a time when many consumers are drinking tap water rather than bottled water, shopping at Wal-Mart rather than department stores and eating in rather than dining out, a high-end chocolatier is making over its marketing to better fit in with the new mood. The Godiva brand of chocolate is introducing a campaign that carries the theme “the golden moment.” The campaign, with a budget estimated at $3.5 million to $4 million, is the first work for Godiva from its new agency, Lipman in New York. The campaign, composed of print and out-of-home advertising, does not seek to reposition Godiva as an alternative to Hershey or other mass-market candy brands. Nor does it suggest, as so many ads for upscale products do these days, that Godiva is a good value. Rather, the campaign seeks to explain why Godiva is still worth buying during tough times, using an emotional appeal to make the case that a brief respite to indulge oneself — “the golden moment,” as it were — is as desirable now as it was when the Dow was at 14,000.

Welch's Heads to the Vineyards

Welch's is gearing up to promote its grapes and the vineyards they come from. Today (Wednesday), it launches its "Real. Grape. Goodness" campaign across television and digital, and will be rolling out print ads beginning in December. The effort will focus on the natural qualities of Welch's 100% Grape Juice and the farmers who grow the grapes. Food Network star Alton Brown continues in his role as brand spokesperson.

The Digital Economy's Coming Subprime Crisis (And What You Can Learn From It)

Are crises predictable? That's what most economists are thinking about these days. The great Hyman Minsky spent a lifetime building a model of macroeconomic crisis, striving to do exactly that. I spent an afternoon building, presented for you here, a tiny model of microeconomic crises: how industries crash and collapse. Our subject? Why media just might be the new Wall Street.

Flip's Quest in First Major Ad Push: Become a Lifestyle Brand

Flip, the Cisco-owned maker of pocket-sized camcorders, wants to go mass, and it's hoping its first, multimillion-dollar ad campaign, launched today, will establish it as a lifestyle brand. For a company that has previously eschewed big media buys in favor of grassroots marketing, it's a new strategy. But there's a lot at stake for the player that invented the sub-category of dummy-proof, affordable camcorders priced around or below the $200 range. For starters, it needs to quickly capitalize on the market's growth before it tapers off, thanks in part to competition from video-camera-enabled smartphones.

A Brand Favored by Muscle Men Wants to Appeal to More Women

SALES of vitamins and minerals are projected to grow more than 6 percent this year — to $11.2 billion, from $10.6 billion in 2008 — according to Mintel, a market research firm, and that bump may come not in spite of the economic downturn, but because of it. “Economy-conscious consumers concerned with avoiding illness, and thus avoiding sick days, turn to supplements to maintain good health,” Mintel wrote in a recent report. “People tend to take better care of themselves when there are tough economic conditions,” said Joe Fortunato, chief executive of GNC, the vitamin and supplement retailer. A healthy diet, exercise and supplements “are a way to reduce health care costs down the road,” Mr. Fortunato said.

HTC Gets You

Ever since Yahoo introduced its "It's y!ou" campaign last September, it seems like we've been getting "you-ed" up the wazoo in advertising. Granted, technology is having a customizable moment and the use of the y-word reflects this. But there's more than one layer of irony in multiple advertisers attempting to target millions of people with messages about their individuality.

A Magazine Promises Ads Will Register

The Week magazine is making a new guarantee to advertisers: that its readers will remember an ad in its pages more than ads in most competitive magazines. “We were trying to think, what’s the most accountable thing you could do?” said Steven Kotok, president of The Week. “This is a way they can say when they buy The Week, they know it’s money well spent, because we’re guaranteeing it will be among the most effective ads they purchase,” Mr. Kotok said.

Amid Transition, Rivals are Descending on Apple

Apple, once untouchable in terms of marketing, has gotten a little roughed up lately. For much of the decade, Apple got away with bashing longtime adversary Microsoft without repercussions. Apple also dominated the MP3 player category without a serious rival. But now, as Microsoft has reinvigorated its marketing and it navigates into the phone handset category, suddenly everyone is bashing Apple.

After a Brutal Year, Marketers Regroup to Share War Stories and Ideas

A year ago, 1,200 executives in marketing, advertising and the media attended an annual conference that by coincidence took place a month after the financial crisis began. Together, they stared into the abyss, wondering what conditions would be when — or if — they met again. The sky has not fallen, at least so far, and most of those executives are now gathering for the 2009 conference. Many of them are saying, “What a difference a year makes.” Others, however, are wondering, “What difference does a year make?”

Crowdsourcing a Discussion on Crowdsourcing: Agency Nil, Anomaly and Victors & Spoils

If it seems like you’ve been hearing a lot about crowdsourcing lately, it’s because you have. Crowdsourcing is one of those buzz words, like synergy or viral that people are throwing around now to cover just about anything. According to Wikipedia, the term was coined in a June 2006 Wired magazine article by Jeff Howe. My first experience with the concept came when I participated in The Beast, the Alternate Reality Game tied to the Steven Spielberg movie, A.I., back in 2001. As a member of the 6,000+ strong Cloudmakers group, I joined fans from across the world to solve puzzles and interact within this fantastic fictional world. We worked together to create a ‘collective detective’ that competed against the puzzle makers, not against each other, and it was brilliant. And now crowdsourcing is very much in vogue.

Kayak.com's First National Ads Aim To 'Flip' On Awareness

The Kayak.com travel search engine is hoping to "flip" from a well-kept secret among frequent travelers to a tool used by mainstream travelers every day. After discovering earlier this year that 68% of consumers who use online travel sites had never heard of Kayak, the company decided to focus on marketing. This week, Kayak is launching its first national advertising campaign on TV, online and outdoors, created by its new agency of record, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco. The creative features the tagline: "Search one and done," a device that resembles the traditional destination/time flip display boards once found in train stations and airports around the world, and a new logo based on this "flippy" device.

Hal Varian: The Google Ad Economy

Google's Android software will soon be powering Motorola phones, but for the 11-year-old Internet giant, advertising is still king. Google beat analysts' estimates last quarter, thanks to brisk advertising sales. In October the company announced that its third-quarter revenue increased 7% from the same period last year, to $5.94 billion. Net income rose 27% to $1.64 billion. Google accounts for roughly a third of all online ad spending in the U.S.

National Newspapers' New Focus: Local Markets

National news outlets' battle to provide local news and win local advertisers is suddenly heating up fast. The Wall Street Journal's new weekly San Francisco Bay Area edition will appear for the first time tomorrow, confronting a similar Fridays-and-Sundays push from The New York Times that began there on Oct. 16. The Journal is simultaneously planning to hire new reporters for metro coverage of the New York area, according to insiders who confirmed a New York Times report breaking that news yesterday. And The Times plans to introduce a Chicago edition in the next few weeks, fed by a deal with the new Chicago News Cooperative.

For a Men's Body Lotion, a Rugged Messenger

In the new campaign — a collaboration between ESPN and the New York office of Bartle Bogle Hagarty — and a new Web site, StrongerSkin.com, Vaseline, a Unilever brand, explores new territory for men’s grooming. While new categories like men’s body spray, shower gel and facial scrubs have surged in the last decade, major brands like Axe, Old Spice and Gillette have not introduced below-the-neck moisturizers.

Diageo's Walsh Sees 'Slow' Recovery as U.S., Europe Trail Asia

Diageo Plc Chief Executive Officer Paul Walsh said the world’s largest liquor maker will see a “long and slow” recovery from recession in its biggest markets, and plans to compensate by expanding in emerging economies. The U.S. and Europe will take more time than Asia to rebound, Walsh, 54, said in an interview at Diageo’s London offices. Countries such as Mexico and Brazil have been “almost business as usual” through the slowdown, the CEO said, adding that China has seen a “sharp, V-shaped recovery” as a result of the country’s $586 billion stimulus package.

NAD: The Plug Stops Here

Welcome to a day in the life of the National Advertising Division, an arm of the national Council of Better Business Bureaus that, outside of advertising's legal circles, is pretty much unknown to the public. But since 1971 the NAD, an adjudicative body made up of fewer than 10 attorneys, has had one of the most powerful and influential jobs in the marketing universe: It gets to tell brands what they can and cannot say in their advertising.

Don't Fall Into The ROI Trap

Nobody's arguing that SEM (both in its paid and organic subspecialties) can deliver ROI. But viewing ROI as a primary and exclusive goal for your organization's search campaigns is dangerously myopic. Here's why:

How Will "Augmented Reality" Affect Your Business?

My colleague Anand and I think that augmented reality is going to be a big deal for businesses. What is it? It is the idea that locations, devices, even the human body will be "augmented" by linking and overlaying additional information on top of "regular" reality. Anand and I think augmented reality will change at least the following five things:

What TV Shows Are Really Selling

After a U.S. senator was shot on Fox's drama "24" this year, another character blurted out the make and model of the assassin's submachine gun. The German brand had been prominent in so many episodes of "24" that gun-enthusiast bloggers, among others, speculated whether the company was paying to advertise on the show.

Esquire's Six-Figure Augmented Reality Issue Turns Old Media New, Kind Of

If you can't have a magazine e-reader that mimics print, you might as well have a print edition that mimics digital. Or tries to, anyhow. This seems to be the driving notion behind the December issue of Esquire, in which about half a dozen pages are enhanced with augmented reality features; hold them up to a Webcam, and the images on the screen come to life. Hold the cover up to a Webcam, and cover subject Robert Downey Jr. steps off the page in 3-D, offering a primer on Esquire's augmented reality issue while the cover copy flies off the cover behind him. Tilt the magazine and the on-screen animation moves in sync. The effect is triggered by a box, displayed prominently (and a bit jarringly) between Downey's legs on the cover that allows the computer to interact and communicate with the printed page. The effect, needless to say, is pretty cool if not a bit over-the-top.

The World’s First Crowdsourced Ad Agency

Victors & Spoils launched today, touting itself as the “world’s first creative (ad) agency built on crowdsourcing principles.” The agency’s crowdsourced approach stems from identifying the need for companies, brands and agencies to be radically transparent, to address the consumer’s demand to be more involved and from a growing cost consciousness regarding clients’ budgets. Recognizing that the crowdsourcing paradigm can feel a bit unruly for most clients, Victors & Spoils will face the daunting challenge of identifying an array of possible crowdsourced solutions and keeping them on-strategy for their clients.

Walt Whitman and the Levi's Ad

Wieden + Kennedy uses the words of Walt Whitman in their current work for Levi's (the "America" and "Pioneer" spots in the "Go Forth" campaign). They actually use Whitman's voice as well, recovering it from wax cylinders from the 1880s. At first, it feels presumptuous. Whitman is perhaps the American poet. He helped grasp what America was and fashion the ideas that made it something we could think. It is not too much to say he helped found America. To see his language and voice leveraged for commercial purposes, is at first a little breathtaking.

Many Big Marketers Go on the Hunt for New Agencies

A long list of major marketers, including General Motors, Yum Brands and Emirates Airlines, are on the prowl for new advertising firms, a signal that the ad recession may be easing but not necessarily a herald of better days for Madison Avenue. During the economic downturn, many companies held off on searching for new ad partners. Reviews to select a new ad agency can be disruptive—and expensive. The process can run a marketer $50,000 to $100,000 for a domestic review and several hundred thousand dollars for a global one involving many regions, industry executives say. But the hunt appears to be on again. "Clearly we are seeing the beginnings of an ad recovery. The volume of ad reviews is way up," says Russell Wohlwerth, principal of Ark Advisors, a consulting firm that matches ad firms with marketers.

Twitter's Business Model: Brilliant or Non-Existent?

It has become a popular game, even among investors who should know better, to dismiss Twitter based on lack of a business model. But there is a difference between not generating income and lack of a business model. I believe that, in just a few short months, Twitter will show the world that not only do they have a business model, but that theirs is the most sophisticated around. As the founders have admitted, they did not necessarily plan out their success. But the result of their outside funding and considerable valuation is that they have been free to watch and learn what might be possible. Most publishers talk about the two common monetization streams — advertising and subscribers — as though there are no other options. As many have seen over the last year, dependence upon advertising is a slippery slope in a downturn.

Online Rally May Sidestep Newspapers

It was a good day for newspaper Web sites when Mercedes-Benz USA introduced its updated E-Class cars this summer. Mercedes bought out the ad space on the home pages of The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and had those sites create special 3-D ads for them, at an estimated cost of $100,000 a site. The days after were not as good. While Mercedes was happy with the newspaper sites’ performance, it shifted money to cheaper, more tightly aimed ads bought through networks, which bundle ad space from many Web sites.

Ads Aren't Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality, or "AR," is one of the ideas buzzing around the advertising world these days. The premise is that consumers don't want to look at static ads any longer, so there are various ways to augment them with technology that makes them move, speak, or appear in 3-D. Unlike passive advertising, AR embeds interactivity that lets people engage with marketing content. Cool. Only that's not AR. It's just a fancy name for creating ads for the sake of creating ads. The industry would do well to avoid pursuing the sham.

New Verizon Ads Take Direct Aim at IPhone, but What Are They Selling?

Whatever rumors were brewing a few months ago that Apple would break its exclusivity with AT&T and take its iPhone to other carriers, it's a good bet they can be put to bed for now. Less than two weeks after Verizon Wireless aired a TV commercial that takes aim at AT&T's network service, it's now going straight for the iPhone. The teaser campaign, which plugs the new Android device and debuted Saturday night during the playoff game between the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Angels, is, however, causing some head-scratching.

Social Media's Clumsy Ad Model Needs New Moves

Social media advertising has stumbled in its current form, and needs new choreography. That’s the blunt message that media consultancy Media Link has for MySpace. Media Link has been advising MySpace since August, following a major executive shakeup at the troubled News Corp. unit. That message might as well be aimed at the entire social media landscape, which generates a disproportionate amount of ad impressions but commands such low prices that some in the industry even speculate it could hinder an expected online advertising recovery.

Adult Toilet Training, From Madison Ave.

With the prevalence these days of commercials for erectile dysfunction drugs and risqué network programming, however, tissue brands also are growing more frank. In a 2008 Cottonelle spot by JWT, New York, actors sat on scorching car hoods or fell on their posteriors while rollerblading, and a voiceover intoned, “The world is a tough place on bottoms.” The campaign introduced a slogan still used today: “Be kind to your behind.” Now a new JWT campaign for Cottonelle, a Kimberly-Clark brand, makes an even more direct appeal. A commercial shows the brand’s puppy mascot scampering through a health spa, as the voiceover recommends that “the gentle care you give to your face, hands and legs, also goes to your tush.”

Gap Revitalizes Brand To Regain Market Share

Gap hasn't had an easy time of it, and not just because of last month's death of Don Fisher, who founded the store in 1969. The clothing retailer, which owns Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy, has suffered through years of declining sales and several executive changes. Only Old Navy, Gap's value-priced brand, has seen a sales increase this year.

CalorieCount.com Targets Media Buyers

Food database and weight management site CalorieCount.com is looking to attract a new crop of advertisers with a campaign touting its “Strength in Numbers.” The effort, which began this week, is the first major ad campaign for the New York Times-owned brand. CalorieCount.com was founded by two aerospace engineers in 2003. About.com, which is a division of the New York Times, purchased it in 2006.

Pulling Off The Optimal Platform Job

Another week, another blog post on the subject of “why creative advertising folk need to embrace ‘technologists and their geeky ways’” once again ignites vigorous debate. The post in question is by Joe Mele, VP Client Partner at Razorfish, and received a great many comments and a huge number of re-tweets of the @BBHLabs‘ tweet that contained a link to it. The citizens of Twitter seem to react with a combination of self-loathing and schadenfreudian glee to the disruption that social technologies are wreaking on advertising. It’s a little bit dull and frankly misses the point – and it wasn’t quite (I don’t think) what Joe was saying. Of course, how advertising responds to the digital challenge is a roasting hot topic.

The New Low-Hanging Fruit

In this continuing economic roller coaster, marketers have become more open to different ways to optimize their end-to-end marketing funnel. Increasingly, they're turning their attention site-side, where any improvements in conversion rates can lift the ROI of every marketing channel and infuse new efficiencies into the marketing mix as a whole. This shift in focus marks a milestone for e-businesses, who have had processes in place to optimize acquisition ad channels for years. Most likely due to the money regularly being spent on media, optimizing search marketing campaigns, display ads and other efforts have long been top of mind for marketers looking to get more done with fewer resources.

We're Spending More Time with Social Media: Advertisers Follow

The attention dashboard is rapidly emerging as the online hub for sharing and discovering information, connecting us to people, content, and events in real-time. According to research, we’re already spending more time in social networks than we are in email. New studies are only fortifying these findings, documenting an increase time spent specifically in Social Media and blogs. In fact, the Nielsen Company reports reports that time spent on social networks and blogs accounted for 17 percent of total time spent on the Internet in August 2009. Most notably, but not surprising, however, is that this discovery represents nearly triple the percentage of time spent using Social Media just one year ago.

MySpace Tries to Recover Its Cool

A new executive team at MySpace is trying to reignite the brand by focusing on areas like music, videos and games as users abandon the social-networking site for cooler destinations. MySpace, which is holding a conference this week for its global ad-sales staff, needs to lure visitors back and kick-start advertising revenue, ad executives say. Research firm eMarketer estimates U.S. ad spending on the site will be $495 million this year, down 15% from $585 million in 2008. The basic challenge is similar to the one facing big Internet companies, such as Time Warner's AOL and Yahoo, that are under pressure to reinvent themselves for fickle audiences.

Digg’s Vote-for-Ads Experiment Is Raising Revenue

When the social news site Digg introduced sponsored links into its main news flow this summer, the company knew it was taking a gamble. Would the notoriously rambunctious community revolt or boycott the site for cluttering up its news feed with advertisements? “The response has been overwhelmingly positive,” said Mike Maser, chief strategy officer, during a recent visit to The New York Times. The experimental advertising platform, which began a measured introduction at Digg.com in August, incorporates the same social voting principles as the news site, allowing users to vote for the ads they like and against the ones they don’t.

Are You Lovin' it?

Have you heard? McDonald's is looking for a new slogan to refresh its present one. According to Adweek, McDonald's has tasked three global roster shops to come up with the next expression of "I'm lovin' it," sources said. The drill began a few months ago and is ongoing, with the shops -- identified by sources as Omnicom Group units DDB and TBWA and Publicis Groupe's Leo Burnett -- conducting market research and developing pitch ideas, sources said Presentations are slated for late October.

Olympic Challenge: Engaging Youths

To help address all that before the 2010 Olympics, the committee has been sponsoring a global campaign carrying the theme “The Best of Us.” The campaign, by Cole & Weber United in Seattle, part of the United unit of WPP, enters a second phase on Wednesday with the introduction of what the committee is calling The Best of Us Challenge. Young people ages 12 to 19 will be invited to create video clips in an effort known as consumer-generated or user-generated content. The clips are to show them responding to challenges from athletes like the beach volleyball player Natalie Cook, the pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva, the snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis, the gymnast Shawn Johnson, the tennis player Rafael Nadal, the swimmer Michael Phelps and the skier Lindsey Vonn.

Truth in Advertising, Offline or Online

With so many advertising dollars flowing onto blogs, Facebook and Twitter, it is not surprising that the Federal Trade Commission, which is charged with protecting consumers from sneaky advertising, has turned its eye on this new medium. Spending on consumer-generated and social-networking sites reached $1.01 billion in 2008, up 25 percent from 2007, according to PQ Media, a research firm. It is expected to grow about 20 percent this year. Much of this advertising is clearly labeled. But a lot of it is paid advertising masquerading as bona fide endorsements by celebrities, well-known bloggers and even ordinary people — honest comment, free from pecuniary considerations.

In New Campaigns, Spots Take On a Rosier Hue

The American economy is back — or so some of the country’s biggest advertisers are saying in new campaigns. It may be a sign that the recession is ending, or it may be a sign that consumers are sick of hearing about it. While economists and investors study housing starts and gross domestic product predictions to measure economic vibrancy, General Electric, Bank of America and other companies are using commercials to proclaim that America’s future is bright. And that may be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Future Of Internet Advertising

There is a big shift underway in Internet advertising. How consumers interact with Web ads, how marketers buy them, and how the success of these ads is measured is about to change. Matt D'Ercole, an executive creative director at Digitas New York, a unit of Publicis, tells us what he sees in store for the future of online advertising.

7Up Ups Ad Budget

7Up is feeling bubbly about its prospects. This week the original lemon-lime soft drink is launching its first new ad push in more than three years. A pomegranate line extension is on deck for later this year, and a package facelift is in store for 2010. TV ads breaking this week featuring Every body Loves Raymond star Brad Garrett emphasize that 7Up is “Ridiculously bubbly.” The theme behind the new campaign is that a sip of soda can make the biggest grumps happy-go-lucky.

Cheezburger Network CEO: I Can Has Media Empire?

"No, it's not a typo," deadpans Ben Huh, the 31-year-old CEO of the Cheezburger Network. He's referring, of course, to his company's title--and its flagship Web site, I Can Has Cheezburger, which earns 8.5 million page views a day by posting cat photos with ludicrous captions, like "Rehab Kitteh...Has Relapse." Unlike bigger user-generated content hubs, such as Facebook and YouTube, Huh's brainchild has been profitable since day one. It helped, he says, that during the company's late 2007 launch, "it was just me sitting on my couch at home, so it didn't require much cash." But this year, the Cheezburger Network (officially titled "Pet Holdings, Inc.") will generate more than seven figures from advertising, licensing fees, and merchandise sales.

Plug? Ad? Opinion? Life?

Ok, so I just said something nice about Best Buy and something critical about its competitor. Look on my disclosures page and you’ll see that I had a business relationship with Best Buy. A few weeks ago, because of my book, they paid for me to come speak to various groups over two days (which I quite enjoyed and which taught me a lot about retail, which I’ve been contemplating and want to write about). So is what I just said about Best Buy an ad? An endorsement? A testimonial? Or just a story and my opinion?

The Long, Viral Lives of Cadbury, T-Mobile and Microsoft

If the ad campaigns on this week's viral video chart look familiar, they should: They've all been here before. In fact, many of them have been on the chart for a long time. The longest-running campaign, Cadbury's "Eyebrow Dance," is celebrating its 26th week on the chart and the second-longest, T-Mobile "Dance" is marking its 25th week. Microsoft's "Project Natal," meanwhile, is on for its 18th week in a row. Evian's "Rollerbabies" is on for the 13th straight week. Only three videos are new enough to be celebrating their second week in a row: Microsoft's Windows "Launch Party" video, Trend Micro's "Fearless Web" spot and MoveOn.org's "Protect Insurance Agencies" campaign. As you can imagine, it's quite a feat to add enough growth week after week to continue to maintain a presence.

CBS Inches Closer to Selling Out Super Bowl XLIV

CBS is close to selling out approximately 80% of its ad inventory for Super Bowl XLIV, according to a person familiar with the situation, a sign that the sports-advertising marketplace may be recovering more quickly than other TV venues. CBS is still hesitant to force a price point into its discussions but has sought between $2.5 million and $3 million for a 30-second spot in the game, according to this person. As usual, the price hinges on the position of the ad within the telecast as well as whether advertisers want to get more involved with the event by buying up pre-game time or other CBS sports inventory. CBS is expected to broadcast the game from Miami on Feb. 7, 2010.

Nothing To Say

Bank of America/Merrill Lynch took out a double-page spread in the Wall Street Journal last week to deliver what it must have felt was a very important message to its current and would-be customers. 
Nothing. The spread was mostly black ink. A conductor's hands appear in the lower-right corner, a header reads "Expertise and resources, seamlessly orchestrated," and two lines of mouseprint explain that "understanding the score" is important to providing lots of financial services. And we wonder why: - Nobody trusts financial firms anymore, and - Newspaper ads are a dying breed

More Ads for Basic Brands as Shoppers Spend Less

Readers of this week’s People magazine could be excused for believing they were leafing through a Look magazine from 1959. Of the 44 full-page ads in the issue, half are for brands like Campbell’s, Jell-O, Kraft cheese, Lipton tea and Post cereal. Familiar packaged foods that were once dismissed as dowdy or out of date are regaining their puissance as Americans spend less and eat at home more. While marketers in fields like automobiles, financial services and luxury goods are slashing ad budgets — among them, Chrysler and Citi — advertising is being maintained, and in some cases increased, for prosaic mealtime products like Heinz ketchup (up 967.1 percent in the first half of this year, according to TNS Media Intelligence), Hellmann’s mayonnaise (up 165.6 percent) and Jif peanut butter (up 39.8 percent).

Branding Content

As advertisers reconsider the value of traditional television commercials and product placement, many aim to weave their brands into entertainment in new, enduring ways. Jon Kamen is the chairman and CEO of @radical.media, a company that produces television programs, films and commercials. Kamen chose five examples of companies that have effectively integrated entertainment into their brands.

Google Decides to Find Its Creative Side

Google Inc., a champion of the belief that advertising should be less about art and more about science, is embracing its inner creative side. As it searches for new growth, the company in recent months has focused more on creating custom ad campaigns spanning multiple Google services for big spenders including Hewlett-Packard Co. and Ford Motor Co. Since the summer, Google has helped J.C. Penney Co. and PepsiCo Inc.'s Quaker Oats unit launch ad campaigns on YouTube and on some of the hundreds of thousands of sites across which Google sells display ads, along with search ads.

Condé Nast to Close Gourmet, Cookie and Modern Bride

Condé Nast plans to announce this morning that it will close Gourmet magazine, a magazine of almost biblical status in the food world; it has been published since December 1940. The magazine has sustained a severe decline in ad pages, but the cut still comes as a shock. There was speculation that Condé Nast would close one of its food titles — Gourmet or Bon Appétit — but most bets were on the latter. Gourmet has a richer history than Bon Appétit, and its editor, Ruth Reichl, is powerful in the food world.

A Year After Implosion, Merrill's Bull Is Back

A year after the brand played a major role in a meltdown that prompted a federal bailout and a worldwide economic downturn, Merrill Lynch and its bull are back, with a $20 million campaign offering consumers “help.” Bank of America, Merrill Lynch’s new owner, is launching the campaign, themed “help2,” to reintroduce its newly acquired Merrill Lynch Wealth Management group. The latter is BofA’s brokerage and wealth management division, which it purchased as part of its rescue of Merrill Lynch last September. Print,TV and online ads feature the classic Merrill bull—a mascot that was first introduced in 1974. The target: affluent Americans. Research, however, showed that their goals differed depending on age, which is why the campaign addresses different notions of help, said Claire Huang, head of marketing for BofA’s global wealth management, global banking and global markets units.

GM Not Practicing What It Preached for Advertising

General Motors Corp. said it wasn't going to do corporate ads -- and then it put Chairman Ed Whitacre in its multiple-model "May the Best Car Win" campaign. The automaker also said it was going to create distinctive advertising for its four remaining vehicle brands, Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC -- but tell that to subscribers of Newsweek and BusinessWeek.

Chubb Turns to Humor to Make Its Pitch

In a current print advertisement for the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, a woman stands in a verdant field, a picnic basket at her side, and shakes open a red sheet to spread on the grass. What she does not see in the background is an agitated bull galloping toward her. “Who insures you doesn’t matter,” reads the copy. “Until it does.” The theme carries through in a series of print ads — by the Levinson Tractenberg Group (formally the Levinson Group) of New York — where other moments of quietude are about to go awry. In one, a man fishes in a canoe on a river, unaware that he has drifted perilously close to a waterfall; in another, a golfer lines up a putt, oblivious to the enormous alligator behind him. For Chubb, which aims at the affluent, this is the first time it has loosened its bow tie and taken a humorous approach.

Samsung Steps Up the Action With Eli Manning

Samsung’s latest commercial makes viewers feel that the New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning might just land in their laps. Then he throws the football and it spirals across the screen, through the playing field and several TV screens and past cheering fans on their sofas. That is all intended to bring the intensity and passion of the game to viewers and sell Samsung LED televisions. The company, which is in its fifth season in a partnership with the National Football League, has overhauled its “That’s How I See It” campaign to include action sequences and bold graphics.

Two-Thirds of Americans Object to Online Tracking

About two-thirds of Americans object to online tracking by advertisers — and that number rises once they learn the different ways marketers are following their online movements, according to a new survey from professors at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkeley. The professors say they believe the study, scheduled for release on Wednesday, is the first independent, nationally representative telephone survey on behavioral advertising. The topic may be technical, but it has become a hot political issue.

Marketers Fight the D.C. Squeeze

Did you ever think the next sale of Trojans or e.p.t. would help fund President Obama's healthcare reforms? While Congress has backed off on taxing such products after pressure from Republicans and a flurry of behind-the-scenes industry lobbying, it still has marketers fully in its sights. The sparring over taxation and advertising regulations has only just begun. So far, marketers appear to be faring well in what American Advertising Federation's evp of government affairs Clark Rector described "as busy a time as I can recall in quite a few years." Given the activist bent of the Obama administration and the Democratically controlled Congress, he added, "the thinking is that the business community is under fire and marketing tends to be the most visible face of that."

'Awkward' Niche Site Tries to Cash In

Back in May, Mike Bender and Doug Chernack, a pair of screenwriters in Los Angeles, got together for lunch. Bender told his friend about a trip back home where he noticed a particularly embarrassing old family photo on his dad's desk. "I've got plenty of those in my house," Chernack remembers responding. And so the idea for Awkward Family Photos was born with the mission of "spreading the awkwardness" by collecting those snapshots that make us wince.

Does IBM Have Elves? Do Ads Bleed Meaning? (Muddles In The Ad Biz Model)

I was watching Stephanopoulos yesterday morning and I saw this IBM ad. And I thought, "hey, I've seen that guy somewhere before." And sure enough, he's in a Castrol Motor Oil ad. I think it's the same guy, right down to the wrinkles in his forehead. Does this matter? Maybe what happens in an ad for Castrol Oil stays in an ad for Castrol Oil. Or do actors have "transmedia" properties? Do they carry anything with them between ads? Here's what the "meaning transfer" theory says.

Viva Takes on Eating Utensils

Viva, attempting to counter sales erosion from private label, is positioning its paper towels as a companion to food, not just a mechanism to clean up after it. Central to the effort is a deal with Food Network celebrity cook Sunny Anderson that includes 30-second interstitials showing her using the paper towels as a way to enhance the experience of utensil-free eating. Those segments show Anderson, star of Food Network’s Cooking for Real series, preparing her tomato and mozzarella bruschetta by using a Viva towel to squeeze moisture from basil leaves. In another segment, she suggests using coasters made from Viva towels to jazz up red pepper salami bites.

Can Twitter Rake in the Ads to Justify $1 Billion Valuation?

The question about Twitter used to be, "Is it a business?" Now, the question becomes "How big can it be?" And the answer is: It better be big. CEO Evan Williams confirmed last week that the microblogging service had finalized its new funding, reported to be $100 million, giving Twitter -- which now has no monetization program in place -- a whopping $1 billion valuation. Prior investors Spark Capital, Benchmark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners doubled down, and late-stage investors T. Rowe Price and Insight Venture Partners joined up. With the funding, Silicon Valley and the venture community are once again setting their sites on the marketing budgets of American business to support another free "cloud" web service, in this case 140-word bursts of text. Indeed, they're counting on the exponential growth of advertising revenue in a flat market for a company that -- while certainly useful to marketers -- has yet to earn its first dollar.

Social Networking Use Triples from Only a Year Ago

Obsessed with Facebook? You're not alone. The hours you spend logging on to update your status, post photos, and make comments on friends' walls is not simply a "phase" you're going through which will end sometime soon. It's a ongoing trend affecting everyone these days and it has serious implications for the online advertising industry. According to new figures from Nielsen, the amount of time spent surfing social networking and blogging sites had tripled since last year, suggesting "a wholesale change in the way the Internet is used," says Jon Gibs, VP of media and agency insights at the company's online division.

AOL, Yahoo Face Off to Impress Madison Avenue

The rivalry between AOL and Yahoo is on prominent display this week, as the two struggling Internet companies compete for advertising dollars on Madison Avenue. They are pouring on the glitz as they vie for the attention of thousands of ad-industry professionals at the Advertising Week conference in New York. Marketers typically don't negotiate specific deals to buy ad space or time during the annual event. But media companies use it to tout themselves to the many ad agencies and advertisers in attendance, including Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Verizon Communications, Bank of America and MasterCard Worldwide. The aim is to establish relationships and secure business down the road.

'Adland' Searches For Meaning On Madison Ave.

Former adman James Othmer spent two decades working in the ad industry as it was in the throes of a dramatic transformation. As more consumers zap commercials on DVRs and read magazines and newspapers online, Othmer has concluded that the Madison Avenue industry as he knew it is dying.

The Platform vs. The Eyeballs

This might be the most subtle yet important shift that marketers face as they deal with the reality of new media. Marketers aren't renters, now they own.

GM Flaunts Fuel Efficiency in New Terrain TV Campaign

You can buy a crossover SUV, or you can buy a Mini Cooper -- they have the same fuel-efficiency mileage. That's the message General Motors Co. is sending in a TV campaign for the 2010 GMC Terrain that's part of the automaker's "May the Best Car Win" push. The four-cylinder model, which has a direct-injected Ecotec engine and six-speed automatic transmission, is EPA-rated at a segment-leading 32 miles to the gallon on the highway.

Even More On: Everything I Need to Know About Marketing I Learned From Google

In my last two columns, I've offered the following 15 marketing lessons learned from Google and examples of folks applying them. More than just tidbits to maximize SEM programs, these are principles that can be applied to all facets of marketing. Of course, the irony in all this is that Google is a company that's proudly spent very little on advertising. Accordingly, perhaps the most important lesson of them all is that marketing is so much more than just advertising. Today, I'll close this series with five more lessons learned from Google about marketing.

What If They Like Big Brother?

Google announced late last week that it will offer an exchange to help brands place online display ads. Earlier this month, it was revealed that Congressman Rick Boucher is drafting legislation to require businesses to disclose to consumers the information they capture about their Internet behavior, and allow them to control its uses. The two news items are related, whether they're ever covered in the same story or post.

How Much Are You Worth to Facebook?

Some of the most iconic companies of our time -- Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter -- attracted millions of users practically overnight, by unleashing what's known as a "viral-expansion loop." In plain English, they grew because each new user led to more users. The trick is that each of these businesses created something people really want and then made it easy for customers to happily spread their products for them to friends, family, and colleagues.

Facebook Sets Deal to Provide Ad Data to Nielsen

Facebook Inc. plans to announce a deal with online measurement company Nielsen Co., in a step to address advertisers' frustration with measuring how ads perform on the social network. Under the partnership, Facebook will begin polling its users about some of the display ads it runs on its site, such as a banner promoting a movie release. Facebook will provide that data, including responses from those who didn't see an ad, to Nielsen, which will package it for advertisers, say the companies. Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg is planning to introduce the product, called Nielsen Brand Lift, in a keynote address at an advertising conference Tuesday and to pitch it to marketers this week in New York.

Pepsi Program Targets African-American Moms

Pepsi is targeting a somewhat overlooked demographic—African-American moms—with a digital community where such consumers will be asked to share personal and inspirational thoughts. The effort, promoted across various media with the tagline “We inspire,” will serve as the cornerstone of Pepsi’s African-American marketing outreach for 2010. Pepsi is aiming to build buzz for Pepsiweinspire.com via Facebook and print ads, in Essence and Black Enterprise, featuring actress Taraji P. Henson reflecting on the love she has for her mother.

Gill Linton: Does the Fashion Industry Know What a Brand Strategy Is?

Now that fall fashion marketing is here and the industry is working on what’s next, what should fashion brands do differently to make up for a terrible fiscal 2009? Everyone’s a brand strategist these days, including people in the fashion industry whose core business is to produce fashion shows, generate publicity and create ad campaigns. In which case you’d expect fashion brands to be more distinct from each other, wouldn’t you? Considering fashion is all about change, the fashion-marketing model is really old fashioned. It took a recession for people to accept that the selling cycle doesn’t work, and although advertising isn’t as effective as it used to be, brands still invest heavily in formulaic print ads, along with the same old sponsorships, trunk shows, pop-up shops, collaborations and now blogs, videos and social networking.

Inside the 'Inside Intel' Campaign

"Intel Inside" was the first, and arguably the best, "ingredient" branding to come out of Madison Avenue. And thanks to that campaign everyone knows that Intel chips are inside computers. But the success of that ad push, which made its debut in 1991, created an image of Intel as a staid chipmaker.

Will Facebook kill Google?

Will social networking giant Facebook kill search giant Google by sucking up advertising dollars? In the short term, the answer is clearly no. Longer term, that answer is very unclear. I chatted with nearly two dozen people who are buying ads on Facebook. Many of them are also purchasing ads on Google and other online venues. The overwhelming sentiment? Facebook ads are actually more effective and do a better job of getting them in front of their target audiences.

Burger King's School Of Endorsements

In a recent ad that Burger King just started running, NASCAR champion Tony Stewart teaches a course to other celebrities about only endorsing brands and products they actually believe in. The ad features Eric Estrada selling his own line of Estrada sunglasses, and an overly botoxed Carrot Top (the comedian) selling his own Carrot Crusher juicing machine (both of which have mock websites selling the fictional products - nice touch by Burger King). Clearly, neither of them understand Tony's point of only endorsing brands you really believe in.

Toyota Sets a Big Sales Drive

Toyota Motor Corp. is preparing a $1 billion marketing blitz to juice U.S. sales in the fourth quarter and plans to expand its line of gas-electric hybrid models under the Prius name, people briefed on the plans said. The strategy, aimed at revitalizing its key North American operations, was laid out by Toyota President Akio Toyoda and his top U.S. lieutenants at a meeting in Las Vegas with the company's U.S. dealers. The world's largest auto maker needs to turn around its North American business after acknowledging it expects to report a loss in its current fiscal year, which would be its second annual deficit in a row. Toyota executives vowed to go "pedal to the metal" in the fourth quarter, using financial strength to drive sales as the U.S. economy appears to be recovering, these people said.

Public Actions; Private Realities

The financial markets' collapse and a growing distrust of global leaders both public and private has increased the importance of thinking strategically about communications and its impact on reputation. Government officials, political candidates and all those operating in the public realm are increasingly asking how they can measure with greater certainty the dynamics that drive their communications performance. With upcoming battles in the US on climate change, healthcare, Supreme Court confirmations, financial reform and a new Middle East peace initiative, among others, there is ample opportunity to evaluate communicators’ ability to drive public opinion. The corporate sector has been measuring the impact of communications and reputation for some time, using the results of these analyses to determine how their allocation of resources and themes affect financial outcomes such as stock price, P/E ration, revenues and profits. The earliest iteration of measurement centered on clip counts and evaluations—the most basic tenets of media relations—but has since evolved to include more robust scientific metrics. This is spurred by the diminishing effectiveness of traditional advertising. One recent survey revealed that only 13% of respondents believe advertising claims.

Pizza Hut vs. Domino's: Who Delivered the Best Media Strategy?

The start of the football season kicks off the most important sales period in the pizza-delivery game. A rivalry to match a Cowboys-Redskins playoff would have to be the head-to-head shootout between pizza franchises Pizza Hut and Domino's. In media terms, there's a high level of blocking and tackling, and strategy that is played out in their advertising programs. Pizza Hut leads the $29 billion category with some 18% of pizza sales, and Domino's takes about 10% of the market. Frozen-pizza sales have jumped, as have private label with consumers trading down. As an act of defiance to the recession, both marketers have held and even increased their advertising media budgets in 2009.

Conspicuous (Downscale) Consumption: Pabst Sees 25% Sales Growth

Pabst Blue Ribbon is a recession juggernaut, but not just because it's cheap. Sales of PBR are up an astounding 25% this year, according to Information Resources Inc. And while cheaper beers -- a group within which PBR has long been something of a mascot -- are outperforming their more expensive peers as consumers look for low-cost options these days, there's clearly more than pricing at work here.

Start-Up Tries to Revive Online Group Buying

When most people think about buying in bulk, they think about buying 50 rolls of toilet paper, a case of air freshener or 40 boxes of cereal at Costco or BJ’s Wholesale Club. But what about four hours of services from a personal assistant or four salsa dance classes? Groupon, a start-up based in Chicago, that offers daily deals in which people can score reduced prices and discounts on acupuncture, meals, opera tickets, Segway tours, even teeth cleanings — as long as enough people to participate.

Buick Adopts New Advertising Tag Line

Buick will launch a new advertising tag line Monday: “The new class of world class.” Bob Lutz, General Motor Co.’s vice chairman for marketing, revealed the new line to Automotive News at a media event here today. The tag line will be used in new advertising for the Buick LaCrosse sedan.

Brands Buy Media To Save Consumers From Advertising

Dropping a total of $2.2 million dollars, South Korea’s Hyundai Card has bought out all media space in the newly opened subway station just outside their building. Next, they put up ads that are largely blank and state, “The world is flooded with too many ads, for a short while we want to leave it empty for you.” White space is an old trick for making an ad stand out, offering a stark contrast with the surrounding cluttered environment. The decision to paradoxically save consumers from advertising with an ad campaign is not necessarily new either, we’ve reported on anti-branding efforts by the likes of Starbucks and clothing brand Freshjive.

Timberland Answers Call of the Wild

Outdoor footwear and apparel company Timberland has launched a multifaceted campaign that includes a TV ad by London shop Leagas Delaney that casts a trail runner as "bait" for wolves, a wild boar and a hungry bear. Along with the pulse-pounding, cinematic spot, the effort from the client also features iPhone and Blackberry applications and games; interactive billboards; Hulu videos; sidewalk graffiti; customizable Pandora radio stations; and a Harvard Square subway station takeover in Cambridge, Mass., not far from the client's Stratham, N.H., headquarters.

Google Releases News-Reading Service

Google, long seen as an enemy by many in the news industry, is making a bold attempt to be seen as a friend with a new service it hopes will make it easier for readers to read newspaper and magazine articles. On Monday, the company introduced an experimental news hub called Fast Flip that allows users to view news articles from dozens of major publishers and flip through them as quickly as they would the pages of a magazine. Google will place ads around the news articles and share resulting revenue with publishers. Fast Flip, which is based on Google News, tries to address what Google considers a major problem with news sites: they often are slow to load, and so they turn off many readers. Google, the leader in Web search services and advertising, argues that if reading news online was closer to the experience of scanning through physical newspapers or magazines, people would read more.

Microsoft Goes After Search Market With Pictures

Are pictures really worth a thousand words? Microsoft hopes so. Today, the Seattle-based software behemoth took the stage at TechCrunch50 to unveil visual search, the newest feature for its new search-engine, Bing. Bing's visual search displays search results by pictures, rather than text, which comes in pretty handy for certain types of searches. Say you're searching for a pink handbag to buy: Click the handbags category, filter by color, and see loads of images to choose from.

Yahoo! Seeks To Boost Image And Awareness

Yahoo! is searching for a better image. Eager to remind Internet users and marketers that Yahoo! is a powerhouse brand, the company next week plans to kick off a marketing blitz that is likely to include TV, online and print ads. It will discuss the campaign next Tuesday during Advertising Week in New York City. Yahoo! aims to remind marketers that, while it's not the No. 1 populated site, it still grabs 578 million unique visitors per month. The goal: to gain a bigger share of the estimated $21 billion that will be spent this year on display ads.

Ad Shift Throws Blogs a Business Lifeline

The dream of quitting the day job and making a living from blog revenue has proved to be far-fetched for most bloggers. But a few entrepreneurs, like the Sugars, have found success in blog networks. Such networks put blogs on various topics under some form of central control, like a digital-era Condé Nast. Though they do not command nearly the same ad rates that glossy magazines do, they are attracting ad dollars while magazines are losing them.

Is Honesty One of HSBC's Big Brand Values?

These U.K. HSBC spots from JWT London that focus on "integrity" and "responsibility" are gorgeously filmed, but they're so achingly ironic and hypocritical, they make my head spin. Yes, HSBC has refused government bailout money, but the firm is now cutting 6,100 employees, yet still managed to find $1.67 billion to bid on ING's private banking business. Meanwhile, the bank holds forth on the topic of social justice in ads that show a paparazzo and fisherman who "do the right thing." It must be comforting for the C-suite suits to see their gold-tinted vision of reality reflected back at them during commercial breaks. Would they spike the photo of the year or toss back the first big catch in weeks, if it meant losing a ton of money? Of course not. Would you? Integrity and responsibility begin with honesty, something these ads sorely lack.

Twitter Expands Rules to Allow Ads

Twitter, the fast-growing microblogging site now seeking ways to make money, expanded its terms for users on Thursday to allow advertisers to reach the Internet site's more than 45 million monthly visitors. Twitter, the two-year-old venture capital-backed company that lets people send an unlimited number of 140-character messages, is just now beginning to ramp up efforts to monetize, or gain revenue from, its popular site. On Thursday, it revised its "terms of service" to specify that it may run ads.

How Brand Advertising Is Moving Online

Federated Media Publishing is rolling out Ad Stamp, a new option for marketers that combines two of the industry's largest ad units with a companion banner piping and social media content. The FM network now offers a large "pushdown" ad -- rolled out recently by members of the Online Publishers Association -- at the top of Web pages that expands to 970-by-418 pixels before collapsing to 970-by-60. On the right side of pages, FM will place a 300-by-600 "tower." FM, which runs campaigns on top blogs like Boing Boing, has added a social touch to the package with a 300-by-250 pixel "conversationalist" placement at the bottom of pages to pull in brand-related feeds that can include blog posts, Tweets and options for friending the advertised products and services on Facebook or following them on Twitter.

Jameson Adds Some Blarney to the Facts

Another liquor brand is arriving on television, bearing barrels filled with Irish whiskey — and Irish blarney. Jameson, sold by Pernod Ricard, will join a lengthening list of distilled spirits to use television as an advertising medium in the United States. Since 1996, when networks and stations began changing decades-old policies against accepting liquor commercials, big brands like Bacardi, Jack Daniel’s and Smirnoff have added video to their marketing tactics along with ads in print, online, outdoors and in stores. Now, smaller brands like Jameson are going on TV, too. One reason is that more television outlets have started to take liquor spots, among them local stations owned by CBS and NBC.

Sorry, Bob, Adworld's Not Dying. 2 Stars.

Well, as you always kind of suspected, Bob Garfield hates advertising. He even thinks it will die, at least in its mass-appeal form. And big deal, he'd say. People hated that crap anyway. What he doesn't exactly explain is: What are all those big advertisers going to do with all that money instead? Nor does he think there's much chance of you blindsided, slack-jawed advertising people evolving into something that could help answer that question.

Butterfinger Hopes Funny Again Means Money

There is an expression among performers: “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.” The idea behind it is that making people laugh can be, well, no laughing matter. What is true in show business is true in marketing, as many brands that have centered their campaigns on humor have learned. For instance, Bud Light beer has been struggling in its most recent commercials to strike the right balance between amusing consumers and getting them to pay attention to the sales pitch. As product attributes were played up and laughs were played down, Bud Light began to lose ground to rival brews. That led executives at Anheuser-Busch InBev to promise a mid-course correction that will tilt back in favor of fun. Similarly, the Butterfinger brand of candy bars, sold by the confections and snacks division of Nestlé USA, has gone back to comedic advertising after several years.

Digital: Integration Now, Integration Forever

When the executives at Razorfish, an ad agency "born digital," peer into their crystal balls, they see thing like universal screens, ubiquitous devices and consumer e-dentities becoming realities within the next five years. For media and advertising, old business is crumbling under the weight of digital interactivity going mainstream. Advertisers and content providers will no longer rigidly push out what they are selling, but instead, co-xist with consumers on an open, integrated digital plane of video, text, images, audio and commerce. When genuine interactivity abounds, prime-time television and the 30-second spot will be history. And that could be sooner than we think, according to the Razorfish brain trust. New approaches to social networks and social graphs, content and e-commerce, are among the change agents already at work, says David Friedman, president, Americas, Razorfish.

Adding a Masculine Edge to Body Wash

The humble bar of soap has been under attack in recent years, as liquid soaps and hand sanitizers like Purell grow more popular. Women have been more apt to snub it, with 29 percent reporting that they never buy bar soap, compared with 24 percent of men, according to a 2008 study by Mintel, a market research firm. But men increasingly are being wooed from bar soap, too. Among the newest offerings is Nivea for Men Active 3, which is being advertised in a print campaign — by Draft FCB, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies — in magazines like GQ, Esquire and Men’s Health. Like some other brands, it can be used as both a shampoo and body wash, but also functions as a shave gel for both above and below the neck.

Stop Being an Agency and Start Being an Agent of Change

Ten years ago the chairman of MIT's Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte, commented that any company that describes itself as an "agency" is doomed. He's right. Agencies -- as middlemen between media owners and brand owners -- are today merely commoditized suppliers and not the creative business partners our predecessors once were. Agencies, simply, are not as important as we used to be.

Tap Into the 'Power of Pull' to Get Your Brand Out There

For more than 100 years, marketing has largely operated as a push paradigm. We create messages and funnel them through the media to reach stakeholders. Push remains viable. However, with time on social-networking sites and search engines rising, we need new ways to engage and reach people multiple times across different sources. That, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer, is when consumers will trust what we have to say. That's what the "power of pull" is all about.

A Lot of Branding but Not Much Understanding

In the barrage of back-to-school ads, get ready to see a lot for the University of Phoenix. The school heaps more than $100 million a year into measured media alone and is a highly efficient marketing machine that spends more each year than Cheerios or Tide. In a field where most old-line universities spend a few million a year at best, the University of Phoenix is an anomaly for its approach to both education and marketing. It's the country's largest private university, with more than 400,000 students and 230 campus and learning-center locations. Its parent, Apollo Group, posted more than $3.1 billion in revenue during fiscal 2008 (Phoenix represents about 95% of Apollo's net revenue).

Learning From Craigslist: Who Are Mass Media's True Customers?

The cover story of the most recent issue of Wired addresses how Craigslist rose to dominate classified listings, in spite of (or perhaps because of) how little it has changed, and the quirkiness of the business. The real customer experience lesson though, can be found in a follow-on blog post written by the story's author, Gary Wolf. In it, he muses, "Why, given the site's notorious shortcomings, has nobody ever succeeded in taking business away from it?" He writes about how many local newspapers have tried to embrace local listings, such as the Bakersfield Californian. When you look at their apartment-for-rent page, you immediately see the problem — the classified listings are sandwiched between giant banner ads and overwhelming navigation options. And this speaks to the fundamental issue facing the mass media today — it doesn't know who its customer is.

Mobile e-Commerce is Struggling

There's no question that mobile web use is on the rise. Recent reports tell us that cellular networks worldwide are seeing major increases in growth. In fact, there are even concerns that the current infrastructure won't be able to keep up with the new demands. According to one research firm, 3G traffic in developed markets will increase by 20% by the end of 2014 but some operators will face HSPA capacity shortfalls as soon as mid-2010, if not earlier. Forrester Research also recently predicted that more than a third of Europeans will be accessing the mobile internet by 2014. With these levels of growth, we're also seeing related mobile services getting a boost. App stores, both phone-based and carrier-based, are popping up left and right, mobile video usage is booming, and mobile ad markets are seeing dramatic growth, too. However, there's one area that hasn't yet benefitted from the mobile revolution: mobile e-commerce.

Why Kraft Is 'Pheeling' Good About Cream Cheese

Kraft Foods is introducing a new campaign behind its Philadelphia cream cheese, playing up the emotional connections consumers feel with the brand. New ads show the various uses for cream cheese, and use the word "pheeling" (a combination of “Philly” and “feeling”) to describe a happy state of mind. One spot, breaking next Monday, reinforces this theme by showing a boy spreading cream cheese on a bagel for his mother, a husband and wife indulging in an evening snack of strawberries and cream cheese, and a girl helping her grandmother prepare dessert for the family. In each instance, the people smile and laugh together because of moments created by Philadelphia cream cheese.

Magazines Now Create and Customize Ads

Magazine publishers once ran ads. Then, they created ads for their advertisers. Now, they are making different custom ads to run in each of their publications, and sometimes even allowing the advertisers to use the ads elsewhere. “It’s a lot of work,” said Jeff Hamill, senior vice president of Hearst Magazines. But with advertising pages down 28 percent in the first half of this year versus the period last year, according to Publishers Information Bureau, publishers are happy to do it.

Social Media Is Infrastructure: PR, Marketing, Ads Safe

Practically the only thing guaranteed that social media will kill is your free time. Maybe it will kill your real-world social life too, but that's only if you choose to have an intimate relationship with your computer, at the pure neglect of the world outdoors. While it's popular and tempting to say that social media is poised to eliminate core business elements, such as marketing, public relations, or advertising, the truth is that the latest Web tools are simply infrastructure, to be used well. More traditional departments in business, and the third party vendors who provide their services, will need to adapt to a changing world, but they aren't going anywhere.

Privacy Groups Urge Curbs on Online Targeting

A coalition of privacy groups wants Congress to force online marketing companies to get amnesia about what citizens do online, unless they get permission to remember. At issue is the online ad industry’s increasing infatuation with behavioral ad targeting — which involves tracking a user to divine what her interests are in order to show ads targeted to those interests. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all have such technology, as does Facebook and dozens of ad networks you have never heard of.

American Express To Card Holders: 'Spend Responsibly'

American Express is rolling out a major new campaign for its charge card that urges consumers to take responsibility for their spending. The tagline: "Don't Take Changes. Take Charge." The ad campaign broke Tuesday with full-page print ads in major newspapers. It is the first for its basic charge card since 2002. The print ads, part of a campaign that will include TV commercials and radio promotions, features a wallet with a sad face, until you turn the ad upside down. "Why welcome risk into your life?" asks one print ad. "The Charge Card can make a big difference," the ad says.

The Outlook Is Murky for Media Advertising

Matthieu Coppet has a word of hope for the world’s beleaguered media companies, reeling from the deepest advertising slump in memory. All signs point to a relatively robust recovery in ad spending, beginning next year, Mr. Coppet, an analyst at UBS, said in a recent report. His enthusiasm is far from universal. Gerhard Zeiler, chief executive of the RTL Group, the biggest commercial television broadcaster in Europe, reflects another view in the industry: the good times will not return anytime soon.

A New Mindset is Needed

A new mindset is needed. There’s been a great deal of discussion of late both here and in other forums about the blurring lines between advertising and editorial and the implications for both relationship building and sales. As a measurement geek (or queen, which ever you prefer) my response is generally – who cares what you call it, focus on the results. Is what you're doing selling stuff, saving money, or making you more efficient? Great, do more of it, and less of the stuff that isn’t generating revenue.

Why Social Media Won’t Save Madison Avenue!

Just last week, holding company WPP announced a decline in profits of forty seven percent and indicated there would be more massive layoffs to come. Much is being made of how, in spite of the decline in most ad budgets, the increasing use of the Internet, and particularly social media, will save the ad industries bacon. Sorry guys, it ain’t going to happen. Simply because it will be impossible for online advertising and social media to deliver everything that is expected of it. The stark reality is that advertising on the Internet is not going to grow; it’s actually going to decrease. This is what happened during the dot com explosion ten years ago; this is what’s going to happen this time around (with perhaps the single exception of Google).

Ads That Invite Drinkers to Jump for ‘Joie’

A campaign for a popular liqueur is playing up its French roots and the quintessentially French feeling of joie de vivre in an effort aimed at perking up sales. The campaign, getting under way next week, will invite drinkers to live “La vie Grand Marnier,” as in the brand of Cognac and orange liqueur sold by the Marnier-Lapostolle Group of France. Needless to say, the Grand Marnier vie, er, life is about fun and frolic, with a cup-runneth-over spirit embodied by an abundance of the liqueur splashing out of the confines of its glasses.

How Special K Became a Social Media Star

Marketers across all industries are buzzing about social media these days, but no one has really figured it out, said Jose-Alberto Duenas, Kellogg’s marketing vp of ready-to-eat cereals in the U.S. Though digital and social media may soon overtake the 30-second spot as the most popular form of advertising, brands still have a lot of experimenting and learning to do in this space. That’s what Kellogg is doing with social media campaigns on its Special K, Pop-Tarts and Frosted Mini-Wheats brands. It’s also teamed up with Ashton Kutcher’s Katalyst Media and Feeding America to raise up to $1 million for hunger relief. Efforts like the latter program have attracted 210,000-plus in Facebook fans.

Out Of The Box

In 2008, the only advertisement any marketer could talk about was Cadbury's drumming gorilla. The advert was made for television but was also viewed millions of times on YouTube. Agencies were delirious at the crossover success to the video sharing site. Here, finally, was proof that traditional agencies could conquer the web with old-school marketing skills. Gorilla scooped the grand prix in film at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. By June this year, Cannes was a very different festival. For a start, the Croisette - normally packed with partying ad men - was deserted as agencies stayed away to nurse their shrinking budgets. But in any event, rather than television adverts winning awards for online work as Gorilla had, it was the online campaigns that impressed the judges across every category.

Hey, PC, Who Taught You to Fight Back?

FOR years, Microsoft was the stodgy market leader. It sold 90 percent of the world’s operating system software, and generally left the advertising to Dell, H.P. and other hardware makers who licensed Windows. The only time Microsoft hawked its most recognizable brand on television was when the latest version of the software hit the shelves. Then the company flooded the airwaves with commercials full of loud music and swirling imagery saying that the new version of Windows is out — and that it’s awesome! Apple is the classic smaller insurgent. Its share for desktops and laptops in the United States is just over 8 percent. Every time Apple grabs another point of market share from Microsoft’s partners, its stock price climbs. And one way that Apple has tried to gain share is by running clever ads that ridicule everything Microsoft stands for.

Act Now, and We'll Double Your Market Share!

The phrase "As seen on TV" might bring to mind Snuggie, ShamWow and PedEgg but probably not a venerable American brand that invites you to share the most important moments of your life. Yet for Kodak, direct-response TV has become an effective and preferred way to reach consumers in the year and a half that the company has used it.

Sony Out to Create New Ad Icon With Latest PS3 Spots

Is Kevin Butler the new Mac guy? Actually, Jerry Lambert, the actor who plays Kevin Butler in Sony PlayStation 3 ads breaking this weekend, smacks more of John Hodgman's frumpy PC character than Justin Long's Mac daddy. With bland, cubicled offices as his backdrop, Mr. Lambert, garbed in a Dunder Mifflin-ready shirt and tie, walks and wisecracks as he answers questions one-on-one with fictitious consumers. The new ads from agency Deutsch, Los Angeles, are designed to elicit the same serial attraction that makes consumers anticipate fresh Mac vs. PC ads.

A Few Good Things to Come Out of the Recession

I'm sure I'm not the first one to tell you: We're in a recession. The doom has advertisers hanging signs along the lines of "Will Work For Food" on their agency walls, and marketers continue to face facts and figures like these, from Forrester's 2009 Global CMO Recession Survey: 71% of marketing budgets have been reduced this year, and more than half reported reductions greater than 20%. Now here comes the curveball: I think this might be the best thing that has happened to our industry in decades.

Bud Drinkers, Not Agency, Will Be Behind the Next Chinese New Year Campaign

Anheuser-Busch InBev is the latest marketer in China to invite consumers to create an ad campaign, but the brewer has one rule: The commercial must feature ants. The U.S. beer giant is partnering with Tudou.com, a Chinese video-sharing site like YouTube, in a contest that lets consumers pitch ideas for a Bud TV spot that will run during the Chinese New Year in February 2010.

HP and Amazon Tap Into Crowdsourcing for Ads

HP and Amazon's latest ad campaigns may use crowdsourcing to generate advertisements, but the concept is far from new. Dorito's "Crash the Super Bowl" contest, launched in 2006, has been one of the more successful campaigns of this type.

Using Milk-Carton Ads to Build Strong Brands

Hoping to reach children at school and shoppers at the store, a growing number of national brands are turning to an old medium: milk cartons. The ads on the smallest cartons, the half-pints that are distributed through school lunch programs, are aimed at children. Larger containers, like gallon jugs, are intended to reach the adults who do the shopping for their households — the people who decide whether to pick up a box of brownie mix or try a new cereal.

Unilever Goes Crowdsourcing to Spice Up Peperami's TV Ads

Unilever is offering $10,000 in a competition to find ideas for its next TV campaign for snack food brand Peperami, using its quirky Animal character, as it decides to drop its ad agency of 16 years and turn to crowdsourcing for creative ideas. The company, which has worked with Lowe on the Peperami brand since 1993, is looking for ideas from people that are a cut above the user-generated content level competitions run by Pringles and Doritos last year.

The Craigslist Credo: Bad Advice for Newspapers

Here is a question I took away from my reporting on craigslist: Why, given the site’s notorious shortcomings, has nobody ever succeeded in taking business away from it? Many people seem to believe that craigslist is hard to beat because they have a “first mover advantage.” Once a sufficient number of people put ads on craigslist, there is no need for users to go anywhere else.

The Recession Impression

On Monday, Sept. 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers imploded, the world tilted and all the Fiji Artesian water came tumbling off the table, crashing along with the stock market. Suddenly the conspicuous consumer became the conspicuous coupon clipper. Bad if you own a Hummer dealership. Good if you own a real value proposition.

Scrapping Privacy To Save News

Eduardo Hauser, a former media executive, sat in his Hollywood, Fla., office last year, trying to figure out what was wrong with DailyMe, the news aggregation service he launched in 2005. The business relied on Internet readers to tell DailyMe what kinds of articles they liked reading, and based on the answers DailyMe served up related articles for them to read and relevant ads to accompany them. The problem? Most readers were too lazy. To ramp up business, Hauser, the CEO and former founder of AOL Latin America, has created a behavioral tracking software he hopes will not only change the face of his company, but also news outlets across the country.

YouTube to Capitalize When Viral Lightning Strikes

YouTube is looking to turn those bolts-from-the-blue viral videos from cash drain into advertising gold. The video-sharing site, under pressure from parent Google to start turning a profit, today began placing ads on the kind of one-off viral hits -- mostly uploaded by the amateurs that made the site famous -- that, until now, haven't had advertising.

No, What Does Your Brand Do?

The marketing media was buzzing last week with news that CBS will promote its fall program lineup via a teeny-weeny video player inserted in an issue of Entertainment Weekly magazine. I know the ad industry is in dire need of some good news, but doesn't anybody else think this is utterly stupid?

Why Entertainment Weekly's Video Ad Misses the Point

Fun, but futile. That's my response to the news this week that technology heretofore seen only in Harry Potter films will soon grace a mainstream magazine's pages. Some copies of Entertainment Weekly's September issue will contain a video page advertising CBS's fall programming and PepsiMax, using a pliant and super-thin LCD screen powered by battery.

Can Yahoo Make E-Mail Pay Off?

Yahoo! may have thrown in the towel on the business of searching for information online. But the company is doubling down on a technology where it already has the lead over search king Google: in free e-mail service offered over the Web.

Online Video's Where It's At

These days most companies have no choice but to cut their marketing budgets. And that's a good thing. You read that right -- it's a good thing. The reason it's a good thing is that most marketing bucks are spent on depreciating messaging. Either the medium is failing to deliver the numbers it used to or the creative is ignored by the target audience. Think about it. Most marketing teams are investing in a product that has gone down in value for the past 30 years, that product being network television.

Monocle: A Magazine, an Attitude

Many publishers will refer to advertisers as business partners. Tyler Brûlé, the founder of Wallpaper magazine and editor in chief of Monocle, calls them “patrons of Monocle’s approach.” And he means it, too. In the United States, magazines abide by the rules of the American Society of Magazine Editors, which call for clear bright lines between advertising and editorial. But for Monocle, a globe-trotting magazine for what Mr. Brûlé calls the “Lufthansa audience,” the only bright line is the one separating lively from dull.

Tokyo Café Targets Trend Makers

At first glance, the Lcafe appears no different than any of the dozens of cozy cafés in Tokyo's Shibuya district, where trend-conscious young people flock to sip coffee and nibble on cakes and sandwiches. But look closely at the froth of the cappuccino or a coaster resting beneath a drink or the artwork hanging on the wall and it reveals the café's side business: pitching new products to affluent and influential young Japanese women.

Can Microsoft's Bing, or Anyone, Seriously Challenge Google?

Every year, the market-research firm Millward Brown conducts a survey to determine the economic worth of the world's brands — in other words, to put a dollar value on the many corporate logos that dominate our lives. Lately the firm's results have been stuck on repeat: Google has claimed the top spot for the past three years. The most recent report values Google's brand — those six happy letters that herald so many of our jaunts down the Web's rabbit hole — at more than $100 billion. What's astonishing about this stat is how effortlessly Google seems to have earned the public's affection. Other companies — Microsoft, Coke, IBM, McDonald's — spend enormous sums to stay in the consciousness. Google, which makes most of its money from ads, rarely advertises itself. Telling the world how well it does what it does just isn't Google's way.

Do Consumers Care About Web Privacy?

Freaking out about the easier opt-outs proposed by some online-privacy advocates? Maybe you don't have so much to worry about. In June, Fetchback, an advertising network that specializes in ad "retargeting," added a link within its ad units that, when clicked, took consumers to a page that explained who the advertiser was and how the ad got there and gave contact info for Fetchback, as well as a way to opt out of future targeting.

A Terrifying TV Commercial

A Swedish cosmetics commercial has moved almost 110,000 people to join an "I'm scared of it" group on Facebook, and prompted lots of debate on news sites, like this one. Is this an advertising success?

Brands Flock to Niche Video Networks

Erik Beck, a 27-year-old Californian, has some 3 million fans who tune in monthly to his Web-based show, IndyMogul. The special effects video guide teaches aspiring film makers how to create car crash scenes without actually destroying their vehicles. The longtime amateur video maker has become the go-to guy for the 18- to 34 year-old crowd and, more recently, the marketers trying to woo them.

You Had Me At 100

Chevy worked overtime to produce a lot of buzz for the estimated 230 miles/gallon for its Volt EREV, and I'm not sure anybody cared. It wasn't as auspicious coming out party for the "new" GM. It's too bad, because the Volt EREV (for Extended-Range Electric Vehicle) deserves the attention...and GM should get the credit.

The Massive Attention Surplus

There was an attention drought for the longest time. Marketers paid a fortune for TV ads (and in fact, network ads sold out months in advance) because it was so difficult to find enough attention. Ads worked, so the more ads you bought, the more money you made, thus marketers took all they could get. This attention shortage drove our economy. The internet has done something wacky to this situation.

Web Sites Debate Best Values for Advertising Dollars

For a time, Internet advertising was a rising tide lifting all boats. But as ad spending ebbs, there are more arguments about where on the Web advertising is the most fruitful. The fight over shrinking Internet ad dollars pits online publishers that offer premium content against major Web portals such as AOL, MSN and Yahoo. Portals and publishers, meanwhile, also have to compete with the ad brokers that sell often cut-rate leftover ad space on Web pages with less visibility.

Why Large Online Ad Formats Aren't Industry's Silver Bullet

Larger ad formats might be in vogue right now, but when it comes to online display advertising, bigger is not always better. Ad effectiveness depends less on size than it does on shape and placement, according to Dynamic Logic.

Key to Marketing in Complex Times: Simplicity

In an era when marketing strategies seem more complicated than ever before, author Jonathan Cahill is selling simplicity. And he backs it up with 115 case studies. Prior to opening his own London firm, Spring Marketing Innovation and Research, Cahill spent 30 years as an ad man with major agencies in the UK and Italy. His recently published book is entitled "Igniting the Brand: Strategies That Have Shot Brands to Success." And one of his conclusions is that marketers and their agencies are trying so hard to devise strategies that they often look right past simple truths.

YouTube Pumps More Ads Into Lineup

Google Inc., which has struggled for nearly three years to turn YouTube into an advertising platform, is aggressively pushing new ad formats and ramping up deals with media companies for the online video site.

The Birth of ‘Just Do It’ and Other Magic Words

To the list of great copy writers in advertising, add an unlikely name: Gary Gilmore. Mr. Gilmore, the notorious spree-killer, uttered the words “Let’s do it” just before a firing squad executed him in Utah in 1977. Years later, the phrase became the inspiration for Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign.

Time Inc.'s Motor City Makeover

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing thinks he has a jump-shot for his troubled city: He is in talks with Time Inc. executives to work together on a year-long flood of stories about the re-invention of Detroit, says an ad industry insider. Edward Cardenas, a spokesman for Bing, won't reveal details but confirmed the discussions. "We have to explore the best ways of telling our story."

Hardee's, Carl's Hope to Steer Angus Eaters

The burger wars are heating up, with the Hardee's and Carl's Jr. chains taking aim at McDonald's Corp. with a taste challenge and an attack on Big Mac. In September, Hardee's and Carl's Jr. restaurants will offer mail-in refunds to customers who claim to like a McDonald's Angus burger better than a Carl's Jr. Six Dollar Angus Burger (which actually costs $3.99) or a $3.49 Hardee's Angus Thickburger.

Why Your Agency Should Embrace Connection Planning

Ask around and you'll find that most marketers believe there is something fundamentally wrong with their media and advertising today. They will complain they are not getting truly media-neutral solutions that are grounded in consumer insights and are ownable by their brands.

MSNBC.com: EveryBlock.com Won't Replace Local News

Among the conundrums left by the newspaper die-off: What is the new model for local news and information, once the sole province of community newspapers? MSNBC.com snapped up one of the more promising efforts, EveryBlock.com. The startup, founded by programmer and journalist Adrian Holovaty, was funded by the Knight Foundation's "news challenge" program, an annual contest for innovations in local news.

Google Adds Forecast Insight to Insights for Search

Last year, Google updated Google Trends and launched Google Insights for Search, allowing advertisers and marketers to track search behavior based on frequency of searches, time frame, or geographic location. Now Google is throwing the element of predictability into the mix. Looking at a particular trend's historical search popularity, Google forecasts the trend's future performance.

Study: Online Advertising Drives 9% Sales Gain For CPG Brands

A new study indicates that online advertising boosts retail sales of consumer packaged goods brands by 9% on average -- comparable with the lift from TV ad campaigns. The findings come from comScore and marketing consultancy dunnhumbyUSA based on research involving online campaigns run over three months for a variety unnamed CPG brands.

Sony Relies on Humor to Counter a Grim Mood

Ah, the great comedy teams of history: Laurel and Hardy ... Burns and Allen ... Abbott and Costello ... Manning and Timberlake. Manning and Timberlake? As in the football star Peyton Manning and the singer Justin Timberlake? Yes, according to a humorous campaign for electronics products sold by Sony.

Financial Times Feels Vindicated by Web Strategy

Two years ago, when other media executives were convinced that the only way to succeed on the Web was to give away their content, “we were regarded as slightly freakish,” says John Ridding, chief executive of The Financial Times. The FT, which had charged readers for access to its Web site since 2002, stuck with that strategy, merely tweaking its system to try to draw in more readers. Now, with advertising showing few signs of rebounding from a deep slump and other publishers moving to imitate FT.com by erecting so-called pay walls, Mr. Ridding feels vindicated.

Why Do U.K. Videos Always Seem to Go Viral?

For more than five months, a minute-long clip featuring a pair of children gyrating their eyebrows to the old-school hip-hop hit "Don't Stop the Rock" has been one of the most popular videos around, racking up millions of views around the internet. Made by Fallon, London, for Cadbury, "Eyebrow Dance" is one of several odd, soft-selling commercial creations from this side of the Atlantic Ocean now dominating Advertising Age's Viral Video Chart. Its wild popularity, along with that of T-Mobile's "Dance," Evian's "Rollerbabies" and Samsung's LED Sheep, begs the question: What makes U.K. ads so infectious?

AOL Blossoms as Print Retreats

The office at Ninth Street and Broadway in Manhattan in the former Wanamaker’s department store has all of the trademarks of a well-financed digital start-up. Young people eat pizza and chat about applications while others are jammed into conference rooms discussing search optimization. The only oddity in the futuristic tableau comes when you step off the elevator to see three large letters: A O L.

Mad Men's Secret Product Placements

Fans of the AMC's Mad Men know that the show, about fictional 1960s advertising agency Sterling Cooper, names other real-life agencies and brands to achieve some verisimilitude. What they may not know is that some of those are actual product placements.

Despite Sales Success, Campbell Puts an End to Soup Wars

Campbell Soup Co. is dropping its hotly contested comparative ad campaign against arch-rival Progresso -- even though the ads worked really well. When the marketer launched its initial push for Select Harvest soup, it began with a taste-test ad in which a blindfolded woman tastes Campbell's brand and names farm-fresh ingredients, then names chemicals after tasting Progresso.

Marketing's Drift Away from Media

This is going to be a column that focuses on a terrible, tooth-hurting phrase, for which I apologize in advance. But there's no way around it. The phrase is "below the line," as it applies to marketing. It refers, generally, to all forms of marketing that do not involve advertising in specific media. "Below the line" is not Web advertising. It is things such as in-store events, guerrilla stunts that drum up media coverage, and company-built Web sites. A pop-up—a temporary store—showcasing a newish product in a heavily trafficked area? A (very au courant) below-the-line move.

CMOs Optimistic, But Still Tight-Fisted

CMOs are feeling better about the economy, but they're not about to spend more on traditional advertising. Such marketers expect an increase in customer activity over the next year, and to shift more dollars toward Internet marketing, per a study released this week by Duke University's Fuqua School of Business in conjunction with the American Marketing Association. Don't expect a surge in offline ad revenue to follow suit—such adverting is expected to fall 8 percent.

The Waning Days of 'Mere' Music Licensing

From the early strains of "Revolution" by Nike, marketing has increasingly co-opted the soundtracks of popular culture to create emotional resonance. And, boy, has the dance between marketers and music changed. No longer are brands and agencies willing to "crutch-up" their advertising with simply a popular song. In fact, the practice of slapping a song in at the last minute is moving into the Ice Age. What continues to thaw and thrive is the shared-values model, that fertile area where what the brands want us to experience and what the bands want us to experience is the same place.

Web Sites Debate Best Values for Advertising Dollars

For a time, Internet advertising was a rising tide lifting all boats. But as ad spending ebbs, there are more arguments about where on the Web advertising is the most fruitful. The fight over shrinking Internet ad dollars pits online publishers that offer premium content against major Web portals such as AOL, MSN and Yahoo. Portals and publishers, meanwhile, also have to compete with the ad brokers that sell often cut-rate leftover ad space on Web pages with less visibility.

Covering Many Bases for a Brand of Blue Jeans

The British say “Mind the gap,” but in this country it has been a while since shoppers minded what Gap was selling. The Gap division of Gap Inc. was struggling even before the recession, which has persuaded consumers to cut back significantly on clothing purchases.

P&G’s Ending Billable Hours Forces Grey to Show Chip Ads Work

For Grey Global Group Inc., its contract to create TV, print and Internet advertisements for Procter & Gamble Co.’s Pringles isn’t just about selling potato chips. It’s about the end of billable hours. Instead of being paid for hours clocked devising promotions for rice potato chips or crispy cracker sticks, Grey earns an undisclosed fee upfront and add-on payments for sales and market share gains. P&G moved brands accounting for 40 percent of sales to the new payment system July 1 and aims to expand that.

The Content Crisis

The signs are everywhere. The New York Times is close to bankruptcy. Magazines are dying in droves. The music industry is trying anything to make a buck. The TV networks are wondering if they can keep selling increasingly expensive space in return for an increasingly smaller audience that time-shifts its way out of having to watch the ads. Meanwhile, business plans that held the words "advertising funded" are being rewritten, while multitudes of newspapers and content sites are closing down because of lack of income.

BMW Pumps Diesel

For many Americans who came of age in the ‘70s, diesel is a dirty word. BMW, however, is looking to change consumers' perceptions by prepping a new campaign designed to sell drivers on a cleaner-burning, eco-friendly fuel that doesn’t get in the way of performance. As part of its “EfficientDynamics” initiative, the automaker this month will launch a multi-platform effort promoting the 335d sedan and X5 xDrive35d crossover.

Is Television Over?

If you love to hate ads, you might enjoy two new books that train their sights on modern marketing. The first makes the case that advertising as we know it is about to be obliterated. The second suggests that we should all dance a gleeful polka on its grave.

Notice Those Ads on Blogs? Regulators Do, Too

Bloggers, be warned. Advertisers, you too. Two of the National Advertising Review Council’s investigative units plan to announce Tuesday their first decisions involving blogs. Their recommendations call for clear disclosure when a company is sponsoring a site or paying for product reviews.

Why Now Is Not the Time to Cut Costs

The deep recession and financial meltdown we are experiencing have put consumer-goods marketers into an enterprise-threatening economic environment. How long it will last, of course, is anyone's guess. As we well know, a market for a product must meet three conditions before consumer spending occurs. First, there must be a need or want in the consumer's mind. Marketers are trained to stimulate existing wants and create new ones.

Wall Street in 2007 = Web Street in 2009?

The online ad industry has been on a fairly stable course for at least seven years now. The last major disruption this industry suffered dated from the Great Dotcom Meltdown of 2001-02, when the entire economy collapsed. Since that time, things have largely been on the upswing, and it's remarkable to me that search spending -- the healthiest component of online -- has held together, even in the midst of a deep recession whose likes we have not seen since the 1930s.

Before You Base Your Business Plan on Paid Content, Read This

For a moment last week, it seemed like paid content was really on the march. Rupert Murdoch announced his intention to charge for every News Corp. news site. DirecTV, the second-largest pay-TV provider, was found in talks to launch a web-video service -- for its paying subscribers. And a comprehensive new forecast reported that consumers were spending less time with media that's heavily subsidized by advertising -- and more with media they pay for.

PR and Advertising are at a Crossroads

Advertising and public relations stand at a crossroads -- at once battered by recession-driven corporate downsizing and confronted with a bevy of new and often untested online platforms. Amid the uncertainty, firms have battled back with disparate strategies: eschewing general advertising to reach smaller target audiences; rushing to integrate the once separate fiefdoms of PR and advertising; and seeking to capitalize on the disintegration of multinational firms by buying up local branch offices.

There’s an App for That. But a Revenue Stream?

Media brands are jumping onto the iPhone. USA Today? There’s an app for that. “The Rachel Maddow Show”? “Entertainment Tonight”? Public radio? Yes, yes and yes, there are apps for those. Now, if only there were an app that showed media companies how to make money on the iPhone.

In a 'Content Snacking' Age, Will Ads Still Be Welcome?

Media consumption is changing. You don't need me to tell you that. But you may be unaware just how much it's shifting as we embrace "the stream." What's the stream? It's a way of consuming content as a continuous feed of brief bits, singles, 10-minute videos, tweets and status updates. It reflects the societal shift from analog to digital. And it's a natural fit for the web, where attention spans are minuscule.

Facebook Joins Forces with Advertisers

More than 80 per cent of the largest US advertisers are using Facebook to promote themselves, suggesting that corporate America has embraced the social networking site as a mainstream promotional platform. This marks a striking shift. Companies were initially hesitant to advertise on social networks because users appeared resistant to advertising and there were fears that corporate logos might appear alongside offensive content.

How Powerade Defeated Gatorade in Court

Yesterday's verdict in favor of Coca-Cola's Powerade had a lot to do with endurance -- Gatorade Endurance, court documents revealed. On April 13, Gatorade's parent company, the PepsiCo-owned Stokley Van Camp, filed suit against Coca-Cola's Powerade ION4 product. It alleged false advertising, trademark dilution as well as other claims.

Building an Army of Hyper-Local, Mobile-Connected Advocates

No, this isn't "the year for location" in mobile. That phrase has become industry cliche by now. But it's hard to ignore the hype that one location-based service called Foursquare is getting in some circles -- and no advertiser should. The NYC-based startup has built a sticky platform, an avid fan base and, quite possibly, the next-generation platform for proximity marketing.

Father of Flash Mobs on the Future of Viral

As the provocateur behind the Great Flash Mob Craze of 2003, Bill Wasik knows first-hand how quickly stories (trivial or otherwise) can flare up in the wired world, get fanned by the media, and then quickly fizzle. Making way, of course, for another ephemeral story that seems urgent at the time.

Best Buy's Augmented-Reality Ad Dazzles, but Does It Work?

Best Buy got props on Sunday when its weekly supplement came equipped with a 3-D notebook computer -- that is, if you had a webcam and held the circular up to it, you'd see a 3-D image of a Toshiba laptop, thanks to the technology known as augmented reality.

Web Ads Get More Intrusive

The Web has long relegated advertising to the sidelines as part of a do-not-interrupt mandate that separated cyberspace venues from traditional media. That's slowly changing.

Measuring the Results of an Ad, Right Down to the City Block

The people who buy media have found their jobs more complicated lately, what with all the new ways of measuring response — how many people clicked, clipped a coupon or made a purchase after seeing an ad.

Mass Media Crisis Is Marketers' Crisis, Too

By undermining the financial viability of traditional media, marketers are jeopardizing the only viable means currently available for reaching mass audiences. That's the core premise of "The CMO's Dilemma: Can You Reach the Masses Without Mass Media?," a new white paper co-authored by John Rose and Neal Zuckerman of The Boston Consulting Group. Rose and Zuckerman argue that it's critical that marketers, agencies and media companies start addressing the issues surrounding this dilemma together.

Advertising's Revenge of The Nerds

After years of calling the shots, the traditional Mad Men of advertising -- the creative types who cooked up memorable sell-lines like "the ultimate driving machine" -- are increasingly sharing the spotlight with, you guessed it, the nerds. Or as Jon Bond, a co-founder of Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners, which has done work for Target and Panasonic, says, "If we were in India, it would be as if the untouchables had suddenly become the ruling class." What has allowed the lowly quants to sit at the same table as the advertising Brahmin is a new way of thinking about the creation of desire.

Ad-supported Content, Out: Paid Content, In?

According to a new survey published by private equity company Veronis Suhler Stevenson, consumers are getting wise to advertising and are choosing to avoid it. In 2008, for the first time, people used more paid content than ad-supported stuff.

Going Google: A New Contender in the Microsoft vs. Apple Advertising Battle

Boston, San Francisco, New York, and Chicago will be getting a month-long billboard ad campaign starting for this week, with one simple message: If you want to escape Microsoft's expensive grip, switch to Google.

Integrated Media Strategies Are Necessary

Earlier this year, Forrester Research released its five year advertising forecast which found that marketers were shifting substantial advertising dollars out of traditional media and into interactive channels such as mobile marketing, display ads, search, social media and email. Yet, marketers who rely too heavily on interactive channels, at the expense of traditional channels, risk losing out on the lucrative Boomer segment that are avid multi-media consumers.

Creepy? Annoying? Or Creepy and Annoying?

Gary Koepke, co-founder and executive creative director at Modernista, loves that you're creeped out by his ads for Sprint's Palm Pre. In the past few weeks, the Boston-based ad shop's TV spots have been unsettling potential consumers. The campaign features actress Tamara Hope speaking directly to the camera in near-robotic tones and sharing strange observations about traffic lights, jugglers and reincarnation.

Is Persistence the Key to Web Branding?

The Web has a problem: It's largely ad supported, but the rapid-fire way people churn through page views by the dozens makes it less than ideal for brand advertisers. Yes, the move to make the Web safe for marketers is progressing on many fronts. There's the development of new, larger ad units by major publishers and an increased focus on creativity within the industry, not to mention there's an increasing number of people consuming online video. But because brands, above all else, need face time to make their case to consumers, more must be done to get ads in front of users.

Now on YouTube, Local News

With its ability to collect articles and sell advertisements against them, Google has already become a huge force in the news business — and the scourge of many newspapers. Now its subsidiary YouTube wants to do the same thing to local television. YouTube, which already boasts of being “the biggest news platform in the world,” has created a News Near You feature that senses a user’s location and serves up a list of relevant videos. In time, it could essentially engineer a local newscast on the fly. It is already distributing hometown video from dozens of sources, and it wants to add thousands more.

The Latest Branding Opp? The Profile Picture

Twitter may be free of advertising, but that hasn't stopped brands from trying to get in front of users glued to the fast-growing service. They've made their presence felt in subtler ways, such as holding quizzes and donating to charities in the hopes visitors will tweet about a brand. One of the more recent efforts involves brands looking for a persistent presence in the Twitter stream through users' profile pictures.

The Monetization of Mimi: Mariah CD to Have Ads

As music sales continue to drop like they’re not so hot throughout the industry, Island Def Jam Music Group is jamming on a new business model: integrating brands into artists’ CD booklets. The first deal, created for the Mariah Carey release Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel on Sept. 15, is a 34-page co-production with Elle magazine that includes lifestyle ads from Elizabeth Arden, Angel Champagne, Carmen Steffens, Le Métier de Beauté and the Bahamas Board of Tourism. Providing the experiment goes well, the label is eyeing bigger brand deals for booklets of CDs by Rihanna, Bon Jovi, Kanye West and other artists.

Why Now?

A number of dim bulbers emailed me this week to complain that it was dumb for spokesceleb Mike Rowe to add the phrase "why not?" to the end of Ford's tagline "why Ford, why now" in a new TV commercial. I actually don't like the "why now" part.

P&G Tries Augmented Reality

Procter & Gamble is testing the waters for “augmented reality,” a form of digital technology that's driving a new campaign for Always Infinity. The packaged goods giant hopes to give consumers ways to interact with its ads like never before.

Ads Follow Web Users, and Get Much More Personal

For all the concern and uproar over online privacy, marketers and data companies have always known much more about consumers’ offline lives, like income, credit score, home ownership, even what car they drive and whether they have a hunting license. Recently, some of these companies have started connecting this mountain of information to consumers’ browsers.

Reason vs. Emotion in Branding

On Monday, Roger Dooley posted a short piece on his Neuromarketing blog titled, "Emotional Ads Work Best." Citing an analysis of data regarding successful ad campaigns referenced in the book Brand Immortality by Pringle and Field, Dooley states the following: "Campaigns with purely emotional content performed about twice as well (31% vs. 16%) with only rational content, and those that were purely emotional did a little better (31% vs 26%) those that mixed emotional and rational content."

Can Microsoft and Yahoo Co-Create New Businesses?

Microsoft and Google's increasingly captivating competitive dance took another turn on July 29 with the announcement of a search partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo. The deal could create a viable competitor to Google--or even more enticingly build very different kinds of growth businesses.

Yahoo, Microsoft Deal Gives Bing a Google-Rivaling Turbo Boost

After years of foreplay, Microsoft and Yahoo have made it official: They're cozying up in bed together. The major beneficiary will be Bing--it'll usurp Yahoo search, boosting its Google rivalry power.

How Verizon, Campbell Soup, Scotts Find Value on Air

Radio companies, like all media companies, are under more pressure than ever to prove their medium's value to marketers. But when three brands opened up their strategies to radio executives at the Advertising Research Foundation's Audio Council in New York, the industry got an insightful look as to what else marketers are looking for from radio.

Why Is Six Flags Targeting Kids with a Creepy Old Guy?

This could be a make-or-break summer for Six Flags. And in the current economic environment, families will likely sacrifice thrill-ride screams for savings. So why, in the face of such serious challenges, would Six Flags respond by rolling out an ad campaign featuring a widely mocked character that the company's own chairman once said is "misguided" and "weakens the brand"?

An Environmental Group’s Campaign of Wry Lies Against Bottled Water

Can an ad campaign turn bottled water into the new tobacco? Taking a cue from antitobacco campaigns, Tappening, a group opposed to bottled water on environmental grounds, has introduced a campaign called “Lying in Advertising,” that positions bottled water companies as spreading corporate untruths.

Big Spenders Get the Most Buzz

Spend and you will get buzz. That seems to be one takeaway from YouGov's BrandIndex, which compiled daily feedback from thousands of consumers for the first half of the year in order to find out which brands consumers are buzzing about and which brands they're not.

GM's Appointment of Lutz Shows No Respect for Marketing

General Motors' new advertising and marketing czar is Bob Lutz, who until April of this year headed global product development. According to CEO Fritz Henderson: "Bob's responsibilities beyond creative design will include brands, marketing, advertising and communications." (I can visualize Bob at his first meeting with one of GM's agencies: "I'm not a marketing expert, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.")

Marketers Revisit Instant-Messenger Ads

Universal Pictures spent some $35 million promoting Bruno a summer movie with Sacha Baron Cohen about a homosexual fashion reporter. There were the typical TV and radio ads, says Doug Neil, Universal Pictures' senior vice president of digital marketing, but the plugs that built a viral hum and motivated moviegoers were video display ads embedded in instant messages.

GM Shops Sweat as Lutz Sunbathes in Caribbean

GM's new marketing top gun, Bob Lutz, met with the automaker's brand teams on July 14, spent 10 to 20 minutes critiquing the work for each brand and, in the words of someone in the know, "crapped all over the advertising." Then he jetted off to the Caribbean island of Montserrat on holiday, leaving some scared individuals in his wake.

Watching You Watching Ads

A technician in a black lab coat gazed at the short, middle-aged man seated inside the Walt Disney Company’s secretive new research facility here last week, his face shrouded with eye-tracking goggles. Read ESPN.com on that BlackBerry, she told him soothingly, like a nurse about to draw blood. “And have fun,” she added, leaving the room. In reality, the man’s appetite for sports news was not of interest. (The site was a fake version anyway.) Rather, the technician and her fellow researchers were eager to know how the man responded to ads of varying size. How small could the banners become and still draw his attention?

Is Augmented Reality the Next Big Thing?

Until recently, augmented reality existed mainly in movies like The Minority Report and computer science labs at universities, where technologists grappled with comically clunky headgear. Now, however, several new Web and mobile applications are changing minds and helping to bring AR into the mainstream.

Marketing Takes a Beating in Beltway

As if the recession pummeling the industry wasn't enough, the business is starting to feel besieged by the Beltway. There are efforts to strip the $4.7 billion direct-to-consumer-drug category of its tax deductibility; congressional concern over consumer tracking on the internet, endangering the $23.4 billion online-ad market; Food and Drug Administration scrutiny of such household names as Cheerios and Tylenol; proposed guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission seeking disclosure for paid blog posts, even tweets; and, of course, the federal government's strong hand in setting -- and sitting on -- ad budgets at Chrysler and General Motors. With a new Congress and an administration seeking funding for health care and other programs, marketing has become an unpopular and easy target ripe for regulation and shakedown to fund the federal piggy bank.

Advertisers Need to Make Some Noise

Sound in advertising is hot once again. Take the recent VW television commercial making light of a hybrid car's sound or General Motors admitting that the Volt has "the feel of a sports car" but its sound needs to be refined. Or Starbucks' approach to reinvigorating its brand by rejuvenating the coffee experience so that customers can hear the "whir of the grinders."

For Those Who Want Their Cereal Extra Manly

Wheaties, invented accidentally when a health clinician in Minneapolis who was simmering bran gruel for intestinally distressed patients spilled it onto a hot stove and it dried into flakes, was introduced by the Washburn Crosby Company (now General Mills) in 1924. The brand adopted the “Breakfast of Champions” slogan in 1933, and in 1934 the Wheaties box featured its first athlete, Lou Gehrig. It is a formula — slogan, athletes (from Bruce Jenner to Mary Lou Retton to Tiger Woods), block letters on orange box — that has kept Wheaties in the game for more than eight decades. But that formula does not seem to be winning new fans.

Has Jamba Juice's Controversial Ad Just Pureed Its Billion-Dollar Dreams?

When James White, the still new CEO of Jamba Juice, stopped by our offices a few weeks ago, we'll admit we were excited. Who hasn't been occasionally seduced by the charms of its Pomegranate Pick-Me-Up (Jamba's signature blend of strawberries, blueberries, pomegranate juice, and raspberry sorbet)? White came by to explain to Fast Company his strategy to turn Jamba Juice into the next billion-dollar brand and potential Starbucks slayer. Given the whirl of controversy online about Jamba's new ad campaign being a ripoff of the work of cult cartoonist David Rees' Get Your War On series, White appears to have forgotten the first rule of holes: When you're in one, stop digging.

Advertising And Modern Minstrelsy: What’s Funny About Race Roleplaying?

Last week we came across this music video/ advertisement for Taco Bell (created by DraftFCB), a riff on Diddy’s 1990s anthem, "It’s All About the Benjamins." The commercial, entitled “It’s All About the Roosevelts,” seems to have drawn inspiration from the popular "Lazy Sunday” skit featured on SNL four years ago, a self-parodizing rap video about the banal lives of Chris Parnell and Adam Samberg. SNL’s characters rap self-seriously (but in actuality, self-deprecatingly) about the boring details of their daily lives, from visiting cupcake bakeries to finding directions on the Internet. The comedic effect is a result of a combined dissonance; it’s not funny because it’s white people rapping, it’s funny because it’s dorky white people rapping about their very un-thug lives.

Your New Sweet Spot: The 50-Plus Consumer

Today's advertising agencies are filled with young, talented people whose job is to create messages for a world of consumers who look, act and feel just like they do. In advertising parlance, reaching the 18-to-34-year-old demographic is called targeting the "sweet spot." Ninety percent of today's marketing dollars are spent trying to reach this group. Marketers lust after them, and media companies do everything in their power to lure them to their Web sites, magazines, TV shows and radio stations.

Advertising Will Change Forever

Here's one of the things we do at Forrester Research: we interview as many marketers as we can about their plans, identify trends and project future likely conditions, and then we put together some numbers to make a projection. If you've ever seen a Forrester projection, it comes from a process like this.

Amazon Charts Course Toward E-Book Advertising

Books are among the last bastions of ad-free content. But they won't be so forever if Amazon has its way. The online retail giant has been nurturing a growing e-reader market with its Kindle device; analysts estimate more than a million have been sold since its 2007 debut. And the idea of serving ads in e-books has been a subject of chatter for a while. But Amazon appears to have taken the next concrete step in that direction. Recent reports indicate the online retail giant has filed patent applications to stuff digital books with contextual advertising.

Madison Avenue Will Be Watching FedEx’s Web Videos

FedEx has been something of an advertising bellwether. So when the company announced that after 18 years it would forgo advertising during the last Super Bowl, because it could not justify the expense during the downturn, the news resonated. The company is certain to be watched closely Monday, then, as it unveils its first Web-video advertising campaign, five three-minute films that feature the actor Fred Willard.

Nike Stages a Takeover of Fuel TV for 6.0 Line

To promote its 6.0 line of action-sports gear this month, Nike is establishing a major promotional beachhead on Fuel TV, the News Corp.-owned cable outlet geared towards skaters, surfers and bikers. The deal allows the sportswear company to dominate the network for a set period of time.

Should YouTube Charge a Fee to Upload Video?

Gene Munster, the analyst with Piper Jaffray, put a report out Thursday looking at the finances of YouTube, and he makes a suggestion that I haven’t seen before: Google should charge a “nominal fee” to people to upload videos to YouTube if the video isn’t appropriate for advertising.

Dos Equis' 'Most Interesting Man' Is an Even Greater Beer Salesman

"He lives vicariously through himself." "The police often question him just because they find him interesting." And he can drive an expensive imported beer brand to double-digit sales gains during a recession that's forced many of its competitors into steep declines.

Cellphones: The New Billboards

Ad-weary Internet users may have trained their eyes to ignore banner ads, but on an otherwise uncluttered mobile phone screen the ads are harder to ignore. That's the thinking behind SAP's new mobile marketing campaign, which it launched in mid-June along with related online and print ads.

Commercials On The Go

Michael Jackson's memorial service drew a surprising number of eyes to TV sets July 7. Even more surprising was the number of people who watched the farewell on their phones--nearly 1 million.

Tracking Makes Life Easier for Consumers

It would be like having the same conversation -- over and over and over again. That's how one digital ad executive describes a world where no one is allowed to collect information online, a scenario the industry is hurriedly -- and worriedly -- trying to keep from happening.

Game Advertising Goes Mainstream

Games have long been fertile marketing ground for movie studios, soda companies and fast feeders -- youth-targeted brands counting on a cache of cool. So what are Alka-Seltzer and Knorr doing in the space?

Auto News: Lutz Promises Drastic Changes in GM Marketing

General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz says one of the first things he plans to do as the new head of marketing is make "drastic" changes in the "tone and content" of all of GM's advertising, according to Automotive News.

Facebook Lures Advertisers at MySpace's Expense

Facebook has won over millions of users from social networking pioneer MySpace. It's becoming more alluring to advertisers, too. Even as overall U.S. advertising spending on social networks declines this year, ad sales are on the rise at Facebook, and the company is gaining a larger slice of the pie at the expense of News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace, according to a new report from marketing researcher eMarketer.

Turning Your Audience Into Marketers

At last month's Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, Hiroki Ono of Japan walked away a winner. But he didn't take home a Grand Prix or Golden Lion. Ono, a 23-year-old aspiring filmmaker, placed first for "Feel the Globe."

The Seven Myths Of Mobile Advertising

With a clearer distinction between what's realistic today and what's been mystified by industry hype, brands, agencies and publishers alike can start leveraging the mobile medium now as an easy-to-use, creative, targeted, and measurable new revenue opportunity.

Print Media is Dying. Online Revenues are Tiny. What if the Ads are to Blame?

By now, we're all familiar with the gruesome predicament of print media: Print readership is falling, and ad revenues are disappearing as a result. The Web hasn't been any kind of savior, for a simple reason: No matter how good your newspaper or magazine's site is, advertisers still don't pay as much to reach a Web reader as they will for a print reader, to the tune of about ten cents on the dollar. No wonder print publications have been so scared to migrate their businesses online--it's like asking them to move into a shiny new house that happens to be on pile of toxic waste.

Google's AdSense for iPhone Trips up Advertisers

In the two weeks since Google announced it would open up AdSense for mobile, serving up text and display ads inside apps, there are signs the online-ad giant -- and marketers -- are still figuring out how to create good experiences for mobile users.

Everywhere You Go, a Duane Reade Ad

Macy's, F. A. O. Schwarz and Saks Fifth Avenue are not the only retail landmarks of New York City: there is also the Duane Reade drugstore chain. With 253 stores in and around New York, Duane Reade is a near-ubiquitous presence in the city, as its former slogan, “Everywhere you go, Duane Reade,” put it.

The Decline of Traditional Advertising and the Rise of Social Media

Forrester Research released its five year forecast that estimates interactive marketing spending from 2009 – 2014. Forrester predicts that interactive marketing in the US will near $55 billion and represent 21% of all marketing spend by 2014 and will include search marketing, display advertising, email marketing, social media, and mobile marketing. More significantly however, overall advertising in traditional media will continue to decline in favor of less expensive, more effective interactive tools and services.

J. C. Penney Plays Up Its Manhattan Opening

J. C. Penney, a retailer with middle-American roots, intends to make a grand entrance with its first store in Manhattan, a place at the heart of retailing.

Advertising Could Do With More of Bernbach's Genius

"Nobody's Perfect" is the title of Doris Willens' new book on Bill Bernbach and the golden age of advertising. And just to make sure you get the point of the title, the book explores every imperfection she could find in the career of perhaps the most famous person in the history of advertising.

P&G Rethinks Production Houses

Creative agencies generally have free rein and a wide field to choose from when hiring production companies. But in the current era of compulsive cost control, this is changing. One large global marketer is rewriting the rules for the hiring of production houses with an eye towards exerting more control and reducing costs, with another said by sources to be making a similar move.

Lights, Camera, Action for Concession Coupons

Film producers spend millions every year to draw audiences to their movies. Now, advertisers are beginning to benefit from that, using not only movie screens for their commercials, but the lobbies of cinemas as well.

The Internet Makes Work for Idle Hands

The radical decentralization of the means of cultural production and distribution it has brought about, that I mentioned in the slidecast in my last post, "Social Begins At Home," has changed the very nature of the audience--of what an audience is.

Wagnerian? Vaudevillian? No, Hardwarian.

Marketers have always been fond of coining words, the better to stand out amid the cacophony and clutter. There are myriad made-up names for products, like Kodak, Xerox and Q-Tip, not to mention advertising slogans proclaiming that Cocoa Krispies cereal is “cocolossal,” Mr. Salty pretzels are “crisplier” and 7Up is the “uncola.”

Amazon Applying for In-Book Advertisement Patent for Kindle

Before everyone gets in a huff, let’s consider Amazon’s intentions with these patent applications. Surely they would never allow advertisements to be placed in books which you have purchased legitimately at full price, so let’s put that out of our heads. But what if you could take a few bucks off the cover price at the cost of a few contextual ads relating (if possible) to the book’s content?

Why the Court's Decision on Virtual DVRs Matters to Marketers

The U.S. Supreme Court decided on Monday to let stand a ruling that Cablevision can go forward with its virtual DVR product. Let me explain what this is and what it means for marketers.

Pro Bono Spots Soak Up More Commercial Time

For almost 65 years, Smokey Bear has been reminding Americans, “Only you can prevent forest fires” (and, more recently, wildfires). As the economy faltered, it turned out, Smokey was sharing screen time — and exposure in other media — with pro bono advertising intended to prevent home foreclosures, encourage financial literacy and keep students from dropping out of high school.

Advertising: The Price of 'Free' Media

The march of technology has disrupted the implicit contract that has driven the media business for a hundred years or more: Publishers/programmers provide quality content; advertisers help subsidize the content and, in return, get to show commercial messages to audiences; and consumers enjoy the content and accept the ads that subsidize all or some of the cost.

In A Rude World, Can Marketing Ever Be Polite?

By now, we've all read enough stories about ill-mannered co-workers who text during meetings, nasty bosses who idolize Simon Cowell ("I'm just being honest with you!") and subordinates who snipe like characters from "The Office" or "Scrubs."

Beam Marketing Chief on Making His Brands Heard

When Rory Finlay took over as senior VP-chief marketing officer of Beam Global Spirits & Wine in early 2007, he faced a daunting challenge. Beam, the world's No. 4 spirits player, boasted iconic brands such as Jim Beam, Sauza, Maker's Mark and Canadian Club, but it lacked the budget to go ad-for-ad with its much larger competitors Diageo, Pernod Ricard and Bacardi.

Foes No More, Ad Agencies Unite With Internet Firms

Advertising agencies and Internet companies once viewed each other as foes, but are now coming together to harness the potential for online advertising. Like many other segments, online ad spending has slowed from its previous breakneck pace during the deep recession, forcing companies to devise new ways to chase fewer dollars.

Levi’s Courts the Young With a Hopeful Call

Generation Y. Generation O (for Obama). Millennials. Echo boomers. Call them what you will, the tens of millions of Americans in their teens and 20s compose a market as hard for advertisers to figure out as it is alluring and lucrative.

Mamas, Don't Let Your Ads Grow Up To Be Camels

Remember the old joke about the camel? That it's a horse built by a committee? Many of the ads targeting mature consumers these days appear to be built by committee. Chock full of pictures. Lots of messages all at once. You could consider them visual camels.

Selling Junkless Junk Food to the Masses

Someone once described the concept of trying to have it both ways as like brushing your teeth while eating a candy bar. Substitute “snack chip” for the treat in that sentence and you’ve a good idea of the strategy behind a campaign for a new entry into a growing category that could be called junkless junk food.

What the Michael Jackson Sales Surge is About

Sometimes people ask me why, say, McDonald’s or Coca-Cola or Nike bother to advertise at all. We’ve all heard of them, right? We’ve all decided whether or not we like them. So why waste the money? Here is my answer: Because the simple-sounding issue of salience is very important. And as backup I offer the abrupt return to popularity of Michael Jackson’s music.

Digital TV: Where Are All Those Eyeballs?

For years local broadcast stations looked forward to digital TV as a potential business panacea. The technology would allow them to create so-called subchannels alongside their existing ones that would beam niche programming—from local weather to high school football games—over the air to viewers' sets, theoretically attracting more advertising and helping the local guys compete with cable.

How Get-Rich-Quick Ads Steal Google's Brand Equity

In a world of double-digit unemployment and old-line industries in mid-collapse, here's a sales pitch tailor-made for the times: "Get Paid by Google."

The Online Ad That Knows Where Your Friends Shop

If a marketer asked people to hand over a list of all their friends so it could show them ads, few would comply. On social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, though, friendships are obvious, and advertisers are beginning to examine those connections.

Google Finds Way Into Mobile Apps

As mobile users increasingly flock to the fancy applications on their smartphones -- and potentially spend less time on the mobile web, where Google has staked its lead -- the search giant had to find a way into those apps. So it is using its contextual ad program to serve up text and display ads inside mobile applications.

‘Simpsons’ Draws Higher Rates on Web as Ads Target Loyal Fans

Television programs such as “The Simpsons” and “CSI” are for the first time commanding higher advertising rates at Web sites including Hulu.com and TV.com than on prime-time TV.

How to Kick Off an Innovation Project

To build consumer loyalty, Office Max launched a study of what women look for when they buy office supplies

Ads That Break the Mold and Grab Attention

Everybody seems to hate advertising, in part because it seems inescapable. Television screens are cluttered with commercials. Web sites are obscured by pop-up and rollover ads. Streets, sidewalks, and vehicles are plastered with so many signs and digital screens that many people are calling them graffiti. Yes, print media are becoming ad-free zones, but no other space seems off limits, from airport jet ways to elevators to clothing.

Web Privacy Efforts Targeted

The threat of new regulations involving Internet privacy is prompting Web advertisers to give consumers more control over how their private information is collected and used online. In coming weeks, a group of advertising, media and Internet trade groups plan to announce new guidelines for Web sites that they say could better protect consumers' privacy online. Among the measures is an icon that would appear either on Web pages or ads alerting consumers if their activity is being tracked. Clicking the icon would reveal information on the activities that a site collects about visitors, along with a list of companies that use this data, said an official at an ad trade group.

Automakers Create On-The-Go Ads

Dying to hear how the stereo system of an Infiniti convertible sounds? Check your mobile phone. The automaker has a mobile music application that runs on Facebook and plays melodies on mobile phones while users ogle pictures of the new G37 convertible. The Tokyo-based auto company is also buying text ads on mobile news feeds and embedded spots for mobile video.

Case Study: How Search Ads Helped Pier 1 Stay Afloat

The marketing team at Pier 1 Imports chose a challenging time to launch a new campaign. Bank of America had just gobbled up Merrill Lynch, several of the nation’s largest investment firms had buckled down and were receiving TARP money, and in the midst of it all, panic-stricken consumers just weren’t buying.

Online Ad Lessons Learned: Creativity and Content Matter

At this point, I don't need to lament anymore the ailments of the print-newspaper industry. It's a well-chronicled and covered story.

Brand Awareness Was Only Half the Battle for Aflac

Any CMO who invites L.A.-based rap group Majesty into an insurance company for a performance is clearly trying to shake things up. Indeed, Jeff Charney has made it his mission to infuse new life to a still-misunderstood brand. Mr. Charney, 50, is senior VP-chief marketing officer for Aflac U.S., one of the largest sellers of supplemental insurance which is largely known for its spokesfowl, the Aflac duck.

In Defense of Experimental Advertising

How is it that in spite of the incredible scientific and technological boom since John Wanamaker's time -- penicillin, DNA, space flight, supercomputers, the internet -- his puzzlement as to which half of money spent on advertising is wasted remains as relevant today as it was nearly a century ago?

Data as the Ad

Apple's "Wall of Applications" developed for its recent developer conference did more to demonstrate the breadth and scale of its applications than any single static ad ever could. It's a great example of the power of data as a compelling form of communication. In Apple's case, it's all about the scale of the information to signify the size of the ecosystem.

Buyers Suggest MySpace Revamps

For one of the Web’s biggest sites, there’s a lot that needs fixing over at MySpace. Buyers and analysts have varying ideas on just what News Corp. should do with its ailing social net, ranging from the philosophical (decide who you are) to the logistical (cut down the clutter). But no one doubts that change is needed, and is coming soon.

Bank of America Resurrects Home-Mortgage Advertising

Don't look now, but home-mortgage ads are back. At least they are for Bank of America, whose latest TV spot shows vignettes of families perusing a single sheet of paper. The ad, for the newly renamed Bank of America Home Loans division, is focused on a one-page summary of a home loan's agreement terms. The new work, under the theme "Clarity Commitment," is part of an overall rebranding campaign around the jettisoned Countrywide brand name (Bank of America acquired the beleaguered mortgage company last year). But the effort also pushes past the "Starting now, Bank of America has a new address" introduction and doubles as a home-loan ad.

How To Fix A Broken Advertising Industry

Here's an irrefutable fact: Marketing and advertising agency models are completely broken. With the rise of the Internet and the evolution of new-media offerings--from mobile to social media to word of mouth--client needs have changed. Yet the models of most agencies, built on the traditional foundations of TV, print and radio, have not.

Why 'Going Galt' Isn't the Solution for Newspapers

The Newport Daily News in Rhode Island has a new digital strategy: close its free, ad-supported site and sell an electronic edition that costs more than twice as much as getting the print paper in your driveway. It's a bold move that just might work. So why isn't every newspaper so brave? What if every newspaper gated off everything tomorrow? What if newspapers embraced the idea of "going Galt"?

Does the CEO Make an Ad More Credible?

Good news, relatively speaking, for CEOs who'd like to get their faces on TV: In polling conducted among LinkedIn members for AdweekMedia, relatively few respondents said seeing the CEO in a company's advertising makes the message less credible -- though well under half said it makes the ad more credible.

Remote Control Marketing: Don't Interrupt; Interact

The conventional 30-second television commercial hasn't changed in over 50 years. The time has come. Technology allows us to consume information, news, entertainment and more not only with a mouse click, but with the remote control.

GEICO Shifts Ad Focus From Savings To Service

There's neither a talking gecko or cavemen to be found in a new campaign from auto insurance company GEICO. The effort also offers a different message. Instead of focusing on savings, the new campaign touts GEICO service. And instead of reptiles, it has talking trees, car bumpers and other inanimate objects to elaborate the message that the company has a 97% positive satisfaction rating among customers.

Time to Close the Gap Between PR and Advertising

Integration among industries is nothing new. Throughout time, industries with similar formats, products or product-delivery systems have grown by bringing their offerings together. For instance, once-separate grocery stores and pharmacies are now commonly housed together in one supermarket, and corner drugstores are selling a wider selection of convenient grocery items. The local cable company has evolved into an internet service provider that can also hook you up with a phone package, and the phone company is offering internet and TV services, too. More recently, Facebook has incorporated Twitter-like status updates into its news feed.

One Medium PR People Should Buy: Search

A key distinction between PR and advertising has always been that public relations is earned media rather than paid. But now, just as search engines have revolutionized the way consumers access information, search marketing is evolving public relations.

Mercedes Campaign Focuses on Image, Not Recession

Car companies like Hyundai and Ford have been showing solidarity with consumers recently, running ads promising that the companies will help them should they lose their jobs. Mercedes-Benz USA is trying a different way to get customers to buy cars as it introduces its updated E-Class Series.

Facebook: Our Targeted Ads Aren't Creepy

Facebook's targeted advertising program is "materially different from behavioral targeting as it is usually discussed," Chris Kelly, the social network's chief privacy officer, said in remarks prepared for a Thursday morning hearing before two House subcommittees.

MyPlan For MySpace

MySpace has fired 30% of its workforce, or about 400 people, just as parent company News Corp. scrapped a $350 million plan to consolidate it in a new office with the other components of Fox Interactive Media. Most of the business coverage sites blame falling advertising sales and traffic gains by Facebook. As you may know, News Corp. is busy implementing a strategic overhaul to combat these two issues, having recruited a new CEO for all its digital operations from AOL (an expert in falling ad sales), and one for MySpace from Facebook (adept at prompting visits that make it no money).

Charles Schwab Launches 'Aggressive' Creative

Normally, Charles Schwab would be taking a hiatus from advertising during the summer months, but the current economic climate and a recent uptick in business have prompted a new flight of executions.

Why Advertising Isn't That Important to YouTube

Google would like YouTube to become profitable -- a tough task when it's providing free bandwidth and video storage for much of the world's videos, most of which have limited interest to advertisers. But providing all that bandwidth isn't as expensive and YouTube is far closer to break-even than previously thought, according to IT outsourcing firm RampRate.

Is Hunch The IPhone Of Search?

As much as I like Bing and think that it has effectively closed the gap with Google from a user experience perspective, it's going to require drastic measures to catch Google's market share and revenue. That said, as Microsoft has often stated, we're still in the early innings of the search game and Bing may just be the rally-inducing hit Microsoft needs. But we're still only talking about the search game here. As Gord said, "The iPhone isn't a mobile phone, it's a mobile Web and computing device. The phone is secondary." Bing is still a search engine -- actually, more of a search portal. What search needs is an iPhone. What search needs is a decision engine. Not a search engine with a tagline that says decision engine, but a true decision engine.

Kickin’ Down Madison Ave., Feelin’ Groovy

The moon may not be in the seventh house. And only an astrologer knows for sure if Jupiter has aligned with Mars. But it seems like the dawning of the age of Aquarius on Madison Avenue, as images and sounds from the 1960s become increasingly popular in advertising.

Seven Predictions About the Future of Advertising

Let’s start with what we know about media habits, structural changes in advertising practices, and advertising effectiveness.

Why Interactive Advertising Needs a Creative Revolution

One of the most persistent questions about advertising is: How does it work? Almost 20 years ago, John Philip Jones suggested it depended on which side of the pond one was on. His paper "Advertising: Strong Force or Weak Force? Two Views an Ocean Apart" described the typical American view that advertising was "expected to work by conversion: by addressing apathetic prospects and persuading them with powerful arguments." In contrast, "weak force" described the European view: Advertising was a "nudge," acting as a reminder, reinforcing existing brand perceptions and defending the status quo.

New Balance Plays Patriotism Card in New Marketing Push

The "Made in America" claim is one that's traditionally attracted little interest from American consumers accustomed to purchasing items produced in distant lands. But with unemployment on the rise and the bankruptcy of manufacturing icons General Motors and Chrysler, New Balance is banking on a shift in consumer awareness of and preference for American-made goods.

Why So Many Media Companies Stumble Globally

There are plenty of global conglomerates in industries from finance to pharmaceuticals to, of course, advertising. But running a global news business requires a tricky combination of international brand appeal, regional relevance and subject expertise that both travels and translates.

Ad Agency Finds 2-For-1 Deal In Downturn

The lack of income isn't the only hard thing about being unemployed: There's also isolation and a loss of purpose. Ariel Horn, who runs The Horn Corp., a Manhattan ad agency, has found both a way to help the numerous unemployed ad workers in New York, and a new business model.

Fast Feeder Stays Relevant By Providing Comfort, Value

Mary Dillon, CMO of McDonald's, one of the few companies to thrive during the recession, talks marketing in a downturn, advertising to kids, and niche promotions within the context of one global message. While the chain continues to boost digital as a percentage of spend, she's also focusing on "old media," like outdoor.

Nearly 3,000 Ford Dealers to Break Sunday Newspaper Ad Blitz

In a move that will put a smile on the faces of local newspaper publisher, at least for a day, nearly 3,000 of the roughly 3,700 U.S. Ford, Lincoln and Mercury dealers will run mostly full-page ads in local newspapers this Sunday. Unlike traditional ads from individual retailers that push sales, the executions are more corporate in tone. Ford Motor Co. and JWT's Retail First arm, Dearborn, Mich., created eight different templates for the "advertorials" for the dealers to customize with their own local ad agencies, said Kim Cape, retail marketing manager at the automaker.

Amazon Readies Return to TV

Amazon is readying a return to TV advertising after it stopped running commercials in 2002. The Internet retail giant isn't ready to hire an agency yet. Instead, it has kicked off a user-generated commercial contest to find submissions that tell its story. Amazon plans to work with winners to craft their entries into TV spots.

How GM Stifled 'Passion and Creativity' in Its Marketing Ranks

The former VP-marketing and advertising at General Motors Corp. believes its culture is "so bureaucratic it stifles all passion and creativity" with bloated processes, woeful inefficiencies and an approach to its agencies that is threatening rather than productive. So says Mike Jackson, who left GM two years ago after seven years, pulling no punches in a recent guest column in Automotive News entitled "GM Must Overhaul Marketing."

AOL Buys Two Companies Specializing in Local Online Media

Time Warner Inc.'s AOL unit has acquired local online media companies Patch Media Corp. and Going Inc. as part of a broader strategy to build the company's position in the relatively fast-growing local online advertising market. The acquisitions come as Time Warner moves to split off AOL into an independent company and AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong, who joined the company in April, is working on putting together a new structure and strategy, in which local content is one major push.

All That Advertising Brings Buzz for Coffee Marketers

The coffee wars generated a flurry of advertising in May. McDonald's launched its first McCafe blitz, Dunkin' Donuts made its first concerted doughnut push in more than a decade and Starbucks began its first pure branding campaign. While it's too soon to say what the impact on sales has been, all three marketers saw a major uptick in buzz, as measured by Brand Index.

The Infomercial Comes to Life in India's Remotest Villages

Advertisers in India can't rely on TV, radio or even newspapers to reach the country's 700 million rural consumers. So they use Sandeep Sharma. On dirt roads across the subcontinent, the former wedding singer cracks jokes, gives demonstrations and stages game shows to spread global consumerism, one village at a time.

Campaign Against Rival Could Haunt FedEx

The word bailout has gone from descriptive to derogatory. In a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign introduced Tuesday, FedEx objected to legislation that would make it easier to unionize the company by accusing its rival, United Parcel Service, of taking a government bailout.

Free… It’s Still the Most Powerful Word in the English Language!

There’s been a hell of a lot of chat recently about exactly how you can make money through social media. So far, the only ones cashing in have been the founding principals when they sell off a fraction of their site to a traditional media company, which immediately gives them an insane valuation in the billions. Right now the situation smacks of the late nineties, dot com “Field of dreams” model. The one that said if you build it they will come, then we’ll start making dumpster loads of money by selling lots and lots of really shitty and intrusive advertising on the site. It didn’t work ten years ago and billions of dollars worth of VC money went down the rancid tubes of hundreds of short lived Silicon Valley start-ups.

Nescafe Launches Assault on Starbucks' Instant Java

Nescafe has found something new to roast: Starbucks. The premium-java chain is launching a nationwide offensive into the instant-coffee market this fall, and Nestle is quick to point out the considerable price difference between it and Nescafe.

Google: We're Actually Really Small

Three times in the last month, government agencies have targeted Google for antitrust reviews. An outstanding private lawsuit alleges that Google tried to kill a business-to-business search engine with predatory pricing. And during the waning months of the Bush administration, soon-to-be Obama antitrust chief Christine Varney declared that Google "has acquired a monopoly in Internet online advertising." Last month she asserted that the Bush administration had been too lax in combating monopolistic behavior and that the Obama Justice Department would no longer "stand on the sidelines." This should explain why Dana Wagner, a former Department of Justice antitrust lawyer hired by Google just last year, is rapidly becoming one of the company's public faces.

P&G' Multi-brand Makeover Ad 'Quadruples Purchase Intent'

P&G are launching an innovative new approach to TV advertising this June. The ‘Max Factor MakeoverBreak’ will three 90 second advertisements shown over consecutive commercial breaks, which see a consumer made over by experts using a range of P&G Beauty & Grooming products. Throughout the series of adverts, experts share tipsfrom how to select the right hair colour to applying moisturiser properly.

Where to Find the Marketer Opportunities in the New iPhone

Apple executives didn't throw any curve balls at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference today in San Francisco. But the iterative changes hidden within a new, faster iPhone -- and the previously announced software upgrade -- could change not just consumer but also advertiser behavior. Here's a run-down of what's new and what it means to marketers.

In Ads, Banks Try the Warm, Cozy Approach

There is Ally Bank: “A better kind of bank.” And A.I.U.: “A unique franchise.” And — really — Redneck Bank: “Where bankin’s funner!” All are new names and new slogans for old companies with big worries and, in some cases, even bigger image problems.

The Platform Is The Problem

A pair of mobile studies in the last week offer a sobering contrast to the hoopla surrounding the launch of the Palm Pre Saturday and the upgraded iPhone today. Based on a survey of brands and agencies, the Mobile Marketing Association estimated mobile will garner less than 2% of total marketing dollars this year.

Thinking Beyond the Online Banner

Considering the magazine-heavy resume of The Daily Beast founder Tina Brown, it stands to reason the Web publisher would take her cues from that world. But rather than adopt the banner, the most magazine-like Internet ad format, the IAC-owned Daily Beast has sworn off "traditional" Web ads in favor of custom executions.

Sound: Differentiating Brand Builder

Some time ago, I was flicking through a copy of ‘People’ magazine, when I beheld something on its pages that caused me to just about fall off my chair. An ad promoting a TV series about Elvis, which was to run on CBS, was the source of my surprise. “The King is Hear…”, proclaimed, typographically, what turned out to be the first part of this innovative notice. On turning to the next page of the magazine, sure enough, I did hear the King. Elvis was singing from the pages and a voiceover was promoting the series. If you managed to see this copy of the magazine, I’m quite sure you’d have found the advertisement as unforgettable as I did.

Why Walmart Is Getting Serious About Marketing

It's marketing's time at Walmart. It's easy to become complacent when you are a $401 billion company whose shareholder meeting gets teen idol Miley Cyrus out of bed before 8 a.m. to perform for more than 15,000 employees as a warm-up act for American Idol Kris Allen. But Walmart executives know that if the recession abates, they will face a challenge holding onto shoppers who've been introduced, or reintroduced, to the retailer as they've traded down to save money.

Something New Gains With Something Borrowed

As companies give mobile-phone advertising a try, many are starting to focus on the search ads that have worked so well on personal computers.

Pay-What-You-Want Ad Agency

If magazines, restaurants and hotels can turn to pay-as-you-want pricing schemes to help them survive the recession, why not an ad agency? Sure enough, Agency Nil offers a variety of freelance branding, media and advertising services without any set price, leaving it instead up to clients to decide how much to pay.

Can Advertising Change Consumer Behavior?

That's THE question to ask: Will our advertising effect consumer actions, and not simply awareness, perceptions and attitudes? But, there's a follow on question to ask: Once advertising has moved someone to experience our brand, will said experience cause them to change their habits? To become a "customer?"

Searching for Bing? It’ll Be Baked Into TV and Online Fare

In seeking to make the new search engine Bing as much a part of the popular culture as “bada bing,” Bing Crosby or Stanley Bing, Microsoft is buying prominent placement for bing.com inside television shows and the online video hub Hulu.

Corona Extra Revives Ads from the '90s

How many brands can revive a TV commercial that last aired nearly two decades ago--and not in a nostalgic or camp way? Not many.

Digg Plans Social Ads

Social news site Digg is rolling out its first major ad product, borrowing a page from Facebook by designing units that mimic the site experience itself.

How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live

The one thing you can say for certain about Twitter is that it makes a terrible first impression. You hear about this new service that lets you send 140-character updates to your "followers," and you think, Why does the world need this, exactly? It's not as if we were all sitting around four years ago scratching our heads and saying, "If only there were a technology that would allow me to send a message to my 50 friends, alerting them in real time about my choice of breakfast cereal."

Al Gore Wants to Save Advertising, Too

According to former Vice President Al Gore, the importance of sustainability doesn't just apply to the environment. It also is key to the future of advertising. "It really comes out of the environment, but in my opinion the key theme of this century really is sustainability," Gore said. "This theme of environmental sustainability has become a part of our culture, it's a part of our discourse, and I'm very optimistic that it will soon be a part of our policy."

Stop Selling Scarcity

You have to love - or at least pay attention to - Digg’s new advertising system enabling users to vote on ads: The more that users digg an ad, the less the advertiser pays. That’s a reversal of advertising but it’s the way advertising probably needs to go: The better your relationship (which springs from a better product and service), the more your customers will market it for you, the less you’ll have to pay to market it. That is the ideal. Advertising is failure.

The 5 Worst (and Best) Ad Songs of All Time

The right song can help a product shine -- but the wrong one can hit an off note. Billboard consulted with a six-person panel of experts in advertising and branding to determine our list of the best five songs in commercials -- and five that made viewers reach for their remotes.

Southwest Campaign: 'Grab Your Bag. It's On'

Southwest Airlines has launched a new ad campaign encouraging customers to travel despite the current economic recession.

Unilever’s Attitude Towards Mothers & Daughters Compared And Contrasted

On one hand Unilever see mothers as mentors of their daughters - as we see here in this snap from a Dove soap website. On the other hand Unilever see mothers as sexual collaborators with their daughters and their boyfriends - as we see here in this ad from the guys at Axe.

Trying to Pitch Products to the Savers

The biggest challenge confronting marketers is how to deal with the Meineke mind-set consumers have adopted as a result of the recession.

Name That Tune

You know you're old when songs you listened to when you were a kid are being used to brand old fogey cars. It's common for musicians of all ages to sell their music to advertisers. Beck and the Who have done it, as have Feist and the Rolling Stones. It's not just a crass sellout anymore, but rather crass marketing strategy: ads get heard more often than songs on radio stations, so getting into a commercial is just one of a menu of options that include inclusion in the soundtrack of a movie, or appearing in a teen drama on TV.

Target Offers Taste of DailyCandy

Target has its bull's-eye on a new venture: online media. On Tuesday, the retailer plans to formally announce a partnership with DailyCandy.com, the email newsletter and Web site owned by cable operator Comcast that covers fashion and culture for a mostly female audience.

The Ad Campaign for a ‘New’ G.M.

Can General Motors make up for decades of mistakes and misfires in a minute? That is the ambitious goal of a 60-second commercial to begin running on television on Wednesday. The spot is already available on a Web site (gmreinvention.com) and on YouTube.

Put Ad on Web. Count Clicks. Revise.

On a recent Thursday, Darren Herman, the president of Varick Media Management, was sequestered in his SoHo office. He wasn’t scrutinizing a television ad or images from a photo shoot. He was combing through graphs and Excel spreadsheets. From the “Mad Men” era until now, advertising has been about a catchy tagline, an arresting image, the Big Idea. But Mr. Herman and his competitors are bringing some Wall Street-like analysis to Madison Avenue, exploiting the huge amounts of data produced by the Internet to adjust strategy almost instantly.

Carl's Jr. Makes New Kind of Network Buy

Justine Ezarik might not be a household name, but the 25-year-old has a cable TV-size audience. The only difference: Ezarik's audience is on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

Advertising as Failure

At Burda’s DLD conference in Munich, talking with the Nokia Ideas Project, I first happened on the notion of advertising as failure. That is, the ideal relationship a company should have with its customer is that it produces a great product the customer loves and talks about and thus sells; there is no need for advertising there. It’s only in the case of failing at that idea that one needs to advertise.

Marketers Fear Frugality May Just Be Here to Stay

Mary Pryor was doing pretty well until January, when she got laid off from her web-project-management job at cable channel Fuse. Now she's replenishing her wardrobe at clothing swaps, eating on $25 a week, living without cable TV and doing her laundry in the bathtub. "My gym membership is gone," she said, "so I'm running around outside and doing jumping jacks in my living room."

Future of Advertising? Print, TV, Online Ads

A research project commissioned late last year with dire-sounding rhetoric about a crisis in advertising has produced decidedly calming conclusions. Among them: Threats posed by DVRs and clutter to TV ads are overblown; print and online advertising are effective; and word-of-mouth about brands is largely driven by paid media ads.

Amazon's Jeff Bezos on Kindle, Advertising and Being Green

An environmental theme ran through Amazon.com Inc.'s annual shareholders meeting on Thursday – though it wasn't intentional, according to the CEO.

Are You Building Concepts or Conversations?

When I first got into the ad biz and during my college studies the big thing that was repeatedly hammered into my young, impressionable mind was the need for every ad and ad campaign to have a "concept." A concept was that big idea, that creative aha that would simultaneously capture the consumer's attention and drive home a key benefit of the brand being advertised. And in the world of interruption based marketing, that makes sense. And to a lesser degree, today, it still does. But here is the rub. Here is the big thing that I think many of my fellow advertising folk haven't quite figured out. In the world of social media and web based marketing, you don't need a concept. Why? Because social and by and large digital isn't an interruption based communication platform. It's invitation based.

Dr. Dre Raps for Dr Pepper

It may just be a few seconds of music, but Dr. Dre fans will remember the new Dr Pepper ad as the spot where they heard the first officially released beats from the much-delayed "Detox."

Campaigns Address Today’s Anxieties by Looking Back

Advertising almost always wants to be upbeat, the better to jolly consumers into, well, consuming. So it is startling to see a spate of campaigns invoking some of the most downbeat times America has ever endured: the desperate decade that began when the stock market crashed in 1929 and continued through the Great Depression.

How Facebook Will Upend Advertising

With social networks like Facebook transforming the way companies communicate with consumers, it's time for the ad industry to get its head out of the sand.

The Vice and the Virtue of Marketing

As publications continue to struggle or fold because of dwindling advertising revenues, one is thriving by selling not just ad space, but entire marketing campaigns.

Why Wont Traditional Media Outlets Innovate?

By now, it's no longer news--in fact it's cliché to say it's cliché--that the old ways of doing business in traditional media no longer apply. It's accepted as fact that media companies that resist change are doomed to fail and that legacy models have been overturned by digital technology. Except here's the thing: Having realized the digital pennies they're pulling in won't replace the analog dollars they're losing, traditional media companies are clinging ever more desperately to what they know.

Don’t Dial ‘M’ for Murder, Type ‘A’ for Altruistic

Most appeals to donate blood treat the subject as if it was a matter of life and death -- and, often, to be sure, it is. But a new campaign is taking a different tack, on the theory that a light-hearted approach may attract more donors.

China's 'Ugly Betty' Is One Long Product Placement

As it goes into its third season as a smash TV hit across the mainland, the Chinese version of "Ugly Betty" is also pioneering new levels of product-placement clutter. The show is set in an advertising agency rather than a fashion magazine, which enables the program to focus on all manner of products and their attributes. Mateo Eaton, who heads the branded-content division of Mindshare North Asia, acknowledged that the dense placements are a bit over the top, but advertisers -- and the TV producers they're paying -- aren't complaining at all.

Secret of Googlenomics: Data-Fueled Recipe Brews Profitability

In the midst of financial apocalypse, the gadflies and gurus of the global marketplace are gathered at the San Francisco Hilton for the annual meeting of the American Economics Association. The mood is similar to a seismologist convention in the wake of the Big One. Yet surprisingly, one of the most popular sessions has nothing to do with toxic assets, derivatives, or unemployment curves.

Why We Will Remember Tide Thursday

Analyst conferences are rarely exciting, but when P&G Chairman-CEO A.G. Lafley appears at one next week, some believe the near-term future of package-goods marketing -- and the long-term future of Procter & Gamble -- may hang in the balance. Some are even billing the appearance as "Tide Thursday," a reference to "Marlboro Friday" in 1993, when Philip Morris, battered by value-brand incursions on its Marlboro brand, cut prices 20% and stepped up consumer marketing in a move that was ultimately copied by many in the consumer-goods industry, reshaping the way many marketers approached pricing and advertising.

Real Time: The Web's New Prime Time

The Internet was always fast. Google made a point during its rise to prominence to detail -- to the millisecond -- just how quickly it delivered a search result. And, as we all know, the Web has gotten even faster.

The Gloves Are Off: More Marketers Opt for Attack Ads

It's going to be a cruel summer in advertising. Attack ads have been on the rise for the past year, but comparisons are getting sharper, responses are growing testier, and an increasing number of ad battles are ending up in court. Just don't expect a letup, because they're also working.

Microsoft Aims Big Guns at Google, Asks Consumers to Rethink Search

Microsoft has used attack ads to go after Apple, and now it has Google in its sights.

It’s The Economy Stupid! (Or Why We Need a Brand Hug)

If there has ever been a time for brands to stop selling product and start acting like a company, it’s now. This is the time to prove to one’s loyalists – the family of customers, vendors and stakeholders - that brands feel their pain. A ‘grown up’ brand needs to sympathize and recognize that it understands people aren’t living their lives in a ‘business as usual’ mode. These times are business most unusual. It’s time for brands to remind their fan base that everyone is in this together. Brands need to be leaders with a voice that inspires.

Learning, and Profiting, from Online Friendships

Companies are working fast to figure out how to make money from the wealth of data they're beginning to have about our online friendships.

A Tale Of Two Houses

I have a difference of opinion with Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore. Actually, it's not so much a difference as a question of context. He believes there's room for more visual branding on the search results page. I believe this is a potentially dangerous area that has to be handled very carefully on the part of the engines.

Paid Search Has To Work Harder Now

Noah Brier points us, via John Batelle, to a post by Gian Fulconi from ComScore which takes note of the fact that paid search traffic is witnessing a decrease of late. Fulconi says that though search queries are up 68% over the last couple of years, the growth rate of the number of paid clicks is at just 18%.

TV Advertisers Are Offered Closer Ties With Content

In another sign of how hard television executives are working to attract advertising in tough times, two cable channels plan to significantly expand an initiative that pairs commercials with relevant scenes in the shows they interrupt.

Dial Fights Recession by Stepping Up Spending

Dial CEO Brad Casper has picked a funny time to go on a spending spree: the deepest recession in a half century. For the first time since he became CEO of the notoriously thrifty unit of Germany's Henkel four years ago, all five of Dial's largest brands will simultaneously have substantial consumer marketing campaigns this year -- including TV, print and digital -- led by Energy BBDO, Chicago.

Corporate Campaigns Hint at Brand-Advertising Revival

If you page through The Wall Street Journal or New York Times, you might discover a few surprises. FedEx, General Electric and IBM have recently launched corporate branding campaigns, and tech power SAP made a splash just last week with a global push from Ogilvy themed "Time for a clear new world."

Advertising is Dead. Long Live Advertising.

There’s been lots of talk about the “death of advertising” and the increasing ineffectiveness of the media. There’s a tremendously well-researched, insightful and informative Bob Garfield post in Ad Age, with lots and lots of numbers supporting his version of “Apocalypse Now” for the ad industry. There’s no doubt that there’s agency layoffs, and client cutbacks and fear and uncertainty. So who am I to be the bearer of even an ounce of good news for the ad industry?

Touting Good Works, Marketers Make Stars Of Those They Help

Many marketers are talking up their good deeds and social responsibility projects in advertising. Some now think the way to stand out in the clutter of look-at-me, do-gooder messaging is by featuring some of the people they say they are helping through social programs or business practices. If consumers like these projects, maybe they'll feel better about the brand.

Angry Ads Seek to Channel Consumer Outrage

The mad men of Madison Avenue are really mad these days, creating a spate of angry advertising campaigns that seek to channel the outrage, frustration and fear felt by consumers hit hard by what some are calling the Great Recession.

Comcast Unleashes 'Shack 'n Stein'

Comcast has launched an effort to draw subscribers with the promise that the cable provider offers a mix of quality and value. A centerpiece of the TV campaign is a commercial starring the incongruous duo of basketball star Shaquille O'Neal and economist/actor Ben Stein.

Art In a Time of Advertising

Nothing in America is so brilliant a symbol of the nation’s wealth as New York’s Times Square, that dazzling ad-scape, where each sunset gives way to a neon-and-tungsten gloaming that lasts until dawn. But a recession could dim the lights. Nowadays, more and more billboards are going blank, and the Wall Street Journal has reported a drop in shares of outdoor advertisers. Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, a big billboard company, announced a 25% decrease in revenues during the first quarter of the year. Advertisers are now looking to more creative, less costly ways to reach the public.

Companies Quickly Call Foul When They Feel Wronged in Ads

Marketers are increasingly defending their brands by filing complaints or going to court against rivals in these tough economic times. Complaints to the ad industry's self-regulatory agency are on the upswing this year as marketers show less tolerance for direct or implied jabs by rivals in advertising — and rivals are more tempted to take such jabs.

Chrome Wasn't Built in a Day

Last fall, Google released a new Web browser called Chrome that is speedy, elegant, and reliable. Just ask the 1.42 percent of people who use it.

The Art of Culture Jamming at the Anti Advertising Salon

Last Thursday we attended the Anti-Advertising Salon at MEET hosted by Marc and Sara Schiller of the Wooster Collective. The evening served as a thought provoking expose on “billboard liberations” and the motivations of their creators. The discussion featured Jordan Seiler of the Public Ad Campaign, who most recently orchestrated the NY Street Advertising Takeover; and Steve Lambert of the Anti-Advertising Agency, which is perhaps best known it’s collaboration with eyebeam (Firefox plugin Add-Art) and the Graffiti Research Lab “GRL” (an ad-jamming campaign entitled Light Criticism).

IPhone Gets Bigger as Ad Medium

Madison Avenue is plowing more resources into a new marketing medium: Apple Inc.'s iPhone. In the past several months, companies such as Burger King Holdings Inc., Zippo Manufacturing Co. and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. have experimented with promotional software applications that can be downloaded onto the iPhone, or they have created ads that are placed within other popular applications for the device.

Hybrids Battle for Green

With sales of hybrid vehicles sinking, a green-advertising battle is erupting between Toyota Motor's new Prius and Honda Motor's new Insight. Beginning today, Toyota, the world's largest auto maker, is rolling out a major U.S. ad push for its 2010 Prius, the third generation of the world's top-selling hybrid vehicle. The car hits dealerships in the coming weeks.

Goodbye, Destination Web, Hello, Online Enlightenment

For the past 15 years, marketers have lived like kings online. We built ornate palaces in homage to ourselves in the form of websites and microsites. Each acts as a destination that embodies our meticulous choice of aesthetics, content and activities. We still put a lot of time, effort and money into erecting these palaces, much as Louis XIV did in planning Versailles. And, for the most part, we have been rewarded handsomely for our efforts. For years consumers flocked to our sites, reveled in all we had to say, played with our toys and sometimes were motivated enough as a result to buy our stuff. That's what life was like in the good old days. But now we're in the age of online enlightenment.

Grilled Chicken a Kentucky Fried Fiasco

KFC's grilled-chicken launch was to be the biggest in the chain's history. Now it might also go down as a marketing case study in what not to do. The story starts with a marketer testing the elasticity of its brand. After all, we all know what the 'F' stands for in KFC, so suddenly insisting the consumer associate the fast feeder with grilled chicken, rather than the Colonel's fried version, was always going to be a stretch.

Going Out of Business: The End Of Search Marketing

A guy walks into a search pitch meeting and says, "Thank you for inviting me here today. But I'm not in -- and you don't want someone in -- the search marketing space to be your search vendor." Now the punchline to that could have been the guy ends up on a barstool in about 15 minutes because he was thrown out on his ear. But it wasn't. In fact, the reality was a two-hour discussion about the change that is taking place which has its roots in search, but transcends our business entirely.

Last.fm Launches Visual Radio to Entertain Listeners, Woo Advertiser

Last.fm, the social music site acquired by CBS two years ago, unveiled a major redesign to its interactive radio service on Wednesday in an attempt to keep users where its advertisers can reach them.

Is Advertising to Blame For The Current Recession?

According to a new study from Harris Interactive, 66% of consumers believe advertising agencies bear at least some responsibility for the recession because they “caused people to buy things they couldn’t afford.” Segue to AAAA's chieftain, Nancy Hill, who had this to say in our AAAA's leadership conference address in response to the above findings: "Now imagine that: Advertising agencies causing the crippling of the economy because we stimulate consumer desire and consumer demand. Who says advertising doesn't work?"

Real Trumps Trite

Advertising has long been criticized for making hollow unbelievable and overblown promises that aren't grounded and simply pandering to people's emotions. The public has gotten sick of this stuff, which presents a problem for clients and their agencies who want to say something big. I think T-Mobile in the UK has gotten it right.

Boing Boing Sells Out?

With the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") pondering adapting its archaic advertising regulations to cover blogs, I chanced upon some blatant commercial content posing as a blog post on one my favorite sites, Boing Boing.

TiVo Promotes Ads It Hopes You’ll Talk to, Not Zap

The company that attacked television advertising is trying to resuscitate it. TiVo, which allows viewers to digitally record programs and fast-forward through ads, is trying to sell ad spaces on its screens. It is in a footrace with other companies, including Cablevision, Cox Communications and DirecTV, to offer interactive alternatives to the zapped-through television spots. The ads are called interactive because they ask the viewer to do something — enter in a new channel number, press a button on the remote — to get more information.

New KFC ads give us a lot to unthink about

KFC wants its customers to be stoopid. Thick as bricks. The dimmer the better. Of course, that's not really the message of Draftfcb's "Unthink" campaign for the fast feeder, but it might as well be.

Dove Breaks For Real-Life 'Gossip Girls'

In the latest example of a network looking to build viewer retention during breaks, the CW is launching Dove-sponsored vignettes during "Gossip Girl." The 90-second pieces hope to offer somewhat real-life versions of the series.

LensCrafters Infuses Brand With Some Heart and Soul

Cutwater's first work for LensCrafters attempts to put heart and soul into the brand with a new campaign that promises, "Love what you see. See what you love."

Ad Agencies at Fault for Economic Crisis, Finds Poll

When it comes to assigning blame for the current economic crisis, two-thirds of Americans are pointing the finger at ad agencies and more than half are singling out the media.

‘Stimulus’ Works Its Way to Madison Avenue

Genius, Thomas Edison said long ago, is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. Now, the geniuses on Madison Avenue are recalculating the formula to add a lot of stimulation. As marketers remake campaigns to address the recession, advertising copywriters are liberally peppering prose with financial words and phrases, particularly “stimulus” and “stimulus package.”

Does Content Matter?

Remember back in the Paleolithic era of the Internet, when people said things like "paradigm shift" and "information superhighway"? Back about that same time, it was the informed wisdom that "content is king."

The Rise And Fall And The Coming Transformation Of Madison Avenue

Madison Avenue has come a long way. Since the emergence of modern advertising in the 1920s, defined by the shift from text-based to visual advertising and the use of psychologically sophisticated messages, ads began to resonate powerfully with consumers. Madison Avenue represented the new and the modern (until the emergence of social networks and media), and ads helped consumers figure out what they needed to live a certain lifestyle. Consumers were eager to embrace the cultural authority of Madison Avenue. But by the late 1950s, they were feeling differently.

Truth Rules

If I believed everything I saw in ads, I'd believe that oil companies are dedicated to protecting the environment, tobacco companies want to help me quit smoking and the Sham Wow is the second coming of sliced bread. Yeah, right. The whole "say-whatever-they-want-to-hear-and-we'll-sell-'em" mentality that still rules some corners of the marketing and ad industries just doesn't play anymore. Consumers are smart. They know when you're gaming them, when you're using a snake oil ploy just to make a sale. And, guess what, they're not buying it.

The Slow Erosion of Google Search

I remember it very clearly. Four of us were getting together for breakfast last year at SXSW. We were waiting for a cab, and we started sharing our Twitter stories. Each of us had one…We had used Twitter in ways that it was never imagined to be used, getting real value from it. It was at that point that I started to think about Twitter as something other than a fun little SMS tool. I also started to wonder if Twitter might be the game-changer that finally put some heat on Google…the favorite conjecture of recent times is “Who is the next Google killer?”.

Microsoft's Talk Vs. Microsoft's Walk

Not so many columns ago, I urged Microsoft to do something amazing in search. Last week, they did. But it wasn't in a good way. I was on the road last week, and I saw three different things land in my inbox about Microsoft and its search efforts. With each email, my frustration mounted. Finally, Friday as I was sitting in Seattle airport, I couldn't contain myself anymore. I sent an email to the most senior person I knew at Microsoft Search. The gist of the email was "don't do it," Yesterday, I got an email back thanking me for my "honest" feedback. Yet somehow, I don't think it will make a difference.

True/Slant Tests Another Model Of Web Journalism

This week, a new Web news site is entering the fray, with a novel approach to journalistic entrepreneurship, new forms of advertising, and an effort to blend journalism and social networking. The site, called True/Slant, at trueslant.com, is opening its doors via an odd preliminary status it calls an "open alpha." This means it's rough around the edges, and not yet taking in revenue, but hopes to attract enough participation to hone its design and operation.

Benefits Vs. Price: Advertising Strategy In A Recession

In an economic downturn of such weight and impact as this, now being referred to as the "Great Recession" due to our love for branding our own historical periods, how does a mass-market consumer brand react to ensure success? I've been paying close attention to various answers to this question over the last few months, and I've learned there are two distinct camps of response. They are diametrically opposed in process and structure, but each can be successful in its own right.

Magazines Blur Line Between Ad and Article

If the separation between magazines’ editorial and advertising sides was once a gulf, it is now diminished to the size of a sidewalk crack. Recent issues of Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, Time, People, ESPN the Magazine, Scholastic Parent & Child and other magazines have woven in advertisers in new ways, some going as far as putting ads on their covers.

'Pitchmen' Celebrates Advertising As Entertainment

The reality show focuses on Billy Mays, the most successful direct-response salesman in TV history. 'I cut through the noise, through the clutter,' he says. 'People want to hear the pitch.'

Warm and Fuzzy Makes a Comeback

If music hath charm to soothe the savage breast, what can calm worried consumers during an economic crisis? Madison Avenue believes one answer is nostalgia. As the recession continues taking its toll, marketers are trying to tap into fond memories to help sell what few products shoppers are still buying. The time-machine tactics are primarily evoking four decades — the 1950s through the 1980s.

Search Has Won The Advertising Culture War

For the past five years, "we" in search have been fighting "them" at the ad agencies for that slowly shifting piece of the overall marketing pie. In large part, we've been talking past each other the same way that jocks and geeks do in high school. As long as the jocks continued to win the affections of the pretty girl with the big marketing budget, the geeks were marginalized, making them an angry, depressed bunch. Well, you know what? Times have changed, and we've won.

How Google is Changing Advertising Agencies

In just a little over 10 years, Google has built a business that is impossible not to admire. In fact, its success begs the question -- what would Google do (WWGD)? Media pundit and thinker Jeff Jarvis tackles this question head on with a new book by the same title. In "What Would Google Do?," Jarvis breaks down Google's practices into 12 distinct rules and then applies them to aging industries like media and advertising.

A Strategic Path To The Digital Customer

A new executive brief by IBM Global Business Services, based on an in-depth study by the Institute's research team, reports that to compete in the new era of advertising will require a fundamental change in media and entertainment companies' capabilities. The study findings show that four trends are raising the bar for consumer-centric marketing: consumer adoption of new distribution formats, a shift in advertiser spending, the digital migration of platforms and the emergence of new capabilities due to game-changing moves by both new entrants and existing players.

What's The Point Of Search Marketing?

I give you the very reason search marketing is the most powerful platform of them all -- the point (aka intent) of the consumer using the channel is perfectly aligned with that of advertisers and the rest of the marketing ecosystem looking to exploit, er, leverage the channel.

Esquire's Latest Cover Stunt: A Mix-and-Match Flip Book

First Esquire's October issue came with a battery-powered cover that blinked and flashed. Then the February issue had a flap on the cover with an ad inside. Now the May issue of Esquire, on sale April 10, is coming perforated to split into a flip book that will let readers play mix and match with the facial features of President Barack Obama, George Clooney and Justin Timberlake.

Google Aims to Connect Ads for TV, YouTube

Google Inc. is developing technology to connect its TV-ad brokering business to YouTube and eventually video on other Web sites, as it struggles to lure bigger advertisers to both services.

Twitter Gets a Conference

File this under “You Knew It Was Coming.” Web entrepreneur and Voice of the Net event organizer Jeff Pulver announced early this week he is organizing a conference around the hottest name in digital media, Twitter. The “140 Characters Conference” is far from a short message, spanning two days (June 16-17) at New World Stages in New York. Pulver says the focus will be on the effects of Twitter on media, advertising and celebrity.

Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet

The Internet shatters all forms of advertising. “The problem is not the medium, the problem is the message, and the fact that it is not trusted, not wanted, and not needed.”

Brands Team Up for User-Generated-Ad Contest

The nation's top marketers are known for a lot of things, but here are two things they're not known for: turning over their brands willingly to the YouTube hoi polloi and, well, doing anything together.

An Icon That Says They’re Watching You

I have an open question for the people who complain about the potential of advertising networks to track your behavior on the Internet: What is a better way?

Another Reason to be Skeptical of "Analysts"

I agree about one thing - building ad platforms like Tweetsense will be difficult. But nothing valuable is ever easy. Adwords was not easy. Overture was not easy. What Facebook is building is not easy. And TweetSense won't be easy.

Belief-Driven Behavior