31. March 2008 by bryan.lonn.

Recently, at a television financial board meeting the issue of politics and ad spending was brought up.  The worry for the Republicans is having enough money to battle the big Democrats.  Democrats are spending roughly $50 million a month to build their names, while McCain is spending a minimal $10 million a month.  This may effect his campaign and give-up the chance for another Republican in the White House.

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29. March 2008 by bryan.lonn.

During the Super Bowl this year, Audi decided to introduce it’s car in a commercial inspired by Godfather.  The commercial starts with an elder slowly awakening to an Audi bumper and the screams start shrieking to the full Audi outside.  The commercial was targeted to Generation X mainly because other generations may not be familiar with the joke behind it.  Plus Gen X makes a majority of the sales for Audi.  The commercial was deemed a success yesterday because foot traffic in stores increased by 20%, the website was viewed by 500 times more consumers and the ad was featured on over 600 different media mediums (Ex. The Today Show).  But was it really succesfull?  We still don’t know if Audi has sold more cars?  And what makes maters worse is that most markets researched didn’t even understand the humor behind the commercial, does nobody know Godfather anymore?  Will have to wait and see if this gem of an ad really did that well.

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14. March 2008 by bryan.lonn.

Today at the McGraw-Hill media summit, Howell Raines former New York Times executive director, said, “Newspapers are fading away faster than we thought.”  Since classified dollars have been going from Newspaper to Internet by an alarming rate, everyone should pull their stocks in the Newspaper medium.  Uh-oh!

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13. March 2008 by bryan.lonn.

A record 5.4 billion dollars will be spent this year on political advertising. Eighty-five to 95% of this budget will be used in television and direct mail. Results are showing more swing voters are effected by traditional means over non-traditional. Only 1% of this budget will be used digitally. Since digital advertising is cheaper than the alternative it’s no surprise it is lower. But after seeing the success of viral marketing for the Obama camp you would think more politicians would gravitate to non-traditional advertising as the big new medium. My thinking is within the next ten years we will see more dollars going towards digital tactics.

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12. March 2008 by bryan.lonn.

AAAA - known as American Association of Advertising Agencies seems to be falling a little behind.  The company has been a great asset to Advertisers in the past for having creative, new and up-to-date Advertising related help.  Recently, at the AAAA conference though things had changed.

American Association of Advertising Agencies seems to be falling behind and is now pushing for Digital content.  Have we not been a digital content world for the last seven years?  AAAA finally jumping onto non-traditional advertising may be too late since AdAge and other publications have advanced forward.  Since the company is running by a more conservative and older-inclined base this makes AAAA a tough sell for new agencies. Could AAAA be pushed out of the picture?

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11. March 2008 by bryan.lonn.

A pretty fun post from engadget.com, Ryan Block…

Finally, HD DVD users now have the empirical evidence they’ve been looking for to prove that the universe really is conspiring against them. We figured we’d make ourselves useful over here and give you a list of things you can do with your poor, obsolete HD DVD player — starting with taking it out to dinner, excusing yourself to the bathroom before the check comes… then getting the hell out of there.

Gimmes

• eBay
• Doorstop
• Entertainment center cup-holder
• Destroy it. Office Space style.

Oh, the humanity

1. Mail it to the office of Howard Stringer in protest of Blu-ray’s victory.
2. Plug it into your clothes dryer’s 240-volt outlet. Woops, honey! My bad, guess we have to buy a Blu-ray player now.
3. Finally, replace your Betamax player.
4. Buy the Blu-ray player of your choice, put it in the box, attempt to return it as “defective.”
5. Channel it through Whoopi Goldberg and make some pottery with it.
6. Put a Blu-ray disc in the tray and then call up Toshiba when it doesn’t work. Repeatedly.
7. Put it in a time capsule, just to confuse future generations.
8. Buy a few dozen of ‘em and build a little hut for your Blu-ray player.
9. Lock it alone in a room with a few lethal weapons… let it die honorably.
10. Use it to upscale DVDs, which is all you ever used it for anyways.

Of course, feel free to leave your own suggestions in comments.

Tags: format war, FormatWar, hd dvd, HdDvd, toshiba

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7. March 2008 by bryan.lonn.

If I told you that monthly over 67.5 million unique visitors go to YouTube and all U.S. Magazines in that medium receive the same, 67.5 million unique visitors as well, would that impress you or sicken you? Most Advertisers are disgusted and leaving magazines as a medium in droves. Which is why many publications are teaming with advertisers to create better pieces to receive better advertising dollars. Could magazines be headed to where television was a few decades ago? Many analysts say that having advertisers play a vital role in the publications creation could build revenue. My thoughts, go with it. This medium is going no where and fast and needs a whole new reconstruction in order to survive. Could we be seeing more web publications too? My guess is yes.

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3. March 2008 by bryan.lonn.

This last year and this year haven’t looked great for network television.  Viewership keeps falling and the medium as a whole is starting to shrink to other mediums (Ex: Internet and Cable).  Recently, large companies like Unilever and Kimberly-Clark have started cutting back television ads in wake of a dying medium.   Kimberly-Clark (Large paper manufacturer) cut network television ad spending from 60% to 40%.  Unilever has cut commercial spending for most brands from 130 spots in 2005 to 30 spots in 2008.  Non-Traditional advertising for Kimberly-Clark went from 10% of the budget in 2004 to 34% in 2008.  It looks like researchers are going to have to figure out how to go beyond the 30-second spot in order to gain momentum again for the network television medium.

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1. March 2008 by bryan.lonn.

Ever since the economy crunch spending seems to be a little bit more tighter. Consumers are starting to head towards more private label products and saving money rather than spending. Which is why the new Fortifido product will be a destined to fail. Only a few customers will care about vitamin water for their dogs. As a society we’re just barely able to care for our own families, why would a consumer spend more trying to slightly improve the health of their long lost friend? This product can only be successful in two locations: Hollywood and Peta members. Finally, why is the dog water in the same bottle as human water? Didn’t someone in product design think maybe a recyclable bowl might be a little easier on those dog? For a luxury item it just doesn’t stand the test of time.

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13. February 2008 by bryan.lonn.

It’s no surprise that Yahoo didn’t sell to Microsoft. The only benefit would have been to the board that was given the 44 billion dollars. As we all know in the search community that Google is the tyrant and everyone else falls way below. Putting MSN and Yahoo together would take years to integrate because their both on different systems. This would give Google more time to dominate and probably ruin both Microsoft and Yahoo in the process. Remember Time Warner joining AOL in the past? Sounded good at the time and the stockholders loved it until it just didn’t work and everything fell apart. Same situation but with different companies. If Microsoft wants to face Google they need to start thinking more on the freeware department and repositioning their company.

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