Archive for the 'Corporate Marketing 101' Category
Sunday, October 9th, 2011
Modern Day Pavlovs
Remember our old friend Michael Schudson, who, when not calling C. Wright Mills’ magnum opus a “cliché” and lecturing journalists against adopting an “anti-commercial bias,” argues that advertising doesn’t work? One wonders if Schudson read the informative story on the elaborate production of restaurant TV ads in yesterday’s New York Times, in which producers say, “What we’re trying to do is be the modern-day Pavlovs and ring your bell with these images.”
The piece conveys more powerful evidence that advertising does indeed work. If it didn’t, why would restaurant chains fund such intricate and expensive endeavors? Schudson would have you think they are fools wasting investors’ money to justify their own jobs. If you think corporate overseers would tolerate that for a second, I’ve got a deal on a bridge for you.
The truth?
Any restaurant chain that forswears TV ads is in serious trouble.
“If you come off television, when your sales dip, it takes a long time to get them back to where they were before stopped advertising,” says Michael Branigan, vice president for marketing at Sizzler. “There are a ton of studies that show this. You lose brain share of your customers, and it is expensive to get revenues up again. If I stopped advertising, Sizzler’s revenue would be down, minimally, 10 to 15 percent for the year.”
Wednesday, September 21st, 2011
A Thaw for Greenwashing!
Hurray! Capitalists are finding that the Great Recession is good for greenwashing. Per Advertising Age:
People care less about the environment or green marketing claims than they did a few years ago, yet they’re also less likely to doubt marketers’ green claims or motives, according to the new Green Gauge Report from GfK.
The 2011 version of the study, based on surveys of more than 2,000 respondents between June 9 and July 5, found only 33% said the environment is “very serious and should be a priority for everyone” this year, down from 39% last year and 46% in 2007. At the same time, 41% of people agreed with the statement “first comes economic security, then we can worry about environmental problems,” up 13 points from 2007, according to GfK.
Despite people being less responsive to environmental ad claims, they seem to believe them more often. The Green Gauge report found 39% of people say business claims about the environment aren’t accurate, substantially lower than the 48% who believed that three years ago. And 37% of respondents this year said business and industry are fulfilling their responsibility to the environment, up 8 points from 2007.
This, of course, is music to the corporate ear:
“There’s a thawing in attitudes toward greenwashing,” said [study author Timothy Kenyon]. “There’s also a realization from consumers, given the economy, that [companies] can only do so much.”
And there’s even more excellent news:
People also increasingly get their environmental information from marketers, Mr. Kenyon said.
Things to notice here include the explicit discussion of the landscape for greenwashing. That’s powerful evidence that, behind closed doors and despite public denials, greenwashing is indeed the ultimate, intentionally planned aim of corporate “green” marketing efforts.
Also, don’t let the obscurity of the name “GfK” fool you. This is the biggest of big-time work:
You can rest assured the “consumer package goods” giants are lapping up this exciting research.
Thursday, September 8th, 2011
The (Further) Demise of Content
Leslie Savan, TCT‘s favorite advertising critic, once wrote that, if you want to understand advertisements, one of the major principles to bear in mind is “follow the flattery.” Ego strokes are often used to build brand affection and loyalty.
Of course, as we TCTers know, marketing is a core part of the overall corporate capitalist order, and, as such, faces constant pressure to refine and extend itself.
Hence, is it any surprise that the premium on flattery is devouring more and more of the “content” (aka programming, aka “shows”) in commercial media? Content, after all, is merely secondary advertising, something that exists to attract eyeballs and eardrums to advertising/marketing (aka unintentional shopping).
Exhibit A: The new television program “Up All Night,” the plot of which is: two new, first-time parents attempt to care for their baby, with supposedly inherently hilarious results. Is it funny, or just an attempt at flattery? Judge for yourself:
Exhibit B: The new motion picture, “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” the plot of which is: a woman holds down an upper class “job,” while also trying to be a wife and mother. This one is also a load of undisguised, straight-up button-pushing. It is, in Tasha Robinson‘s apt phrase, lifestyle porn:
Such is American culture these (late) days. Hilarious, isn’t it?
Meanwhile, for those of you wondering how Hollywood movies serve as marketing vehicles, two words: product placement. “I Don’t Know How She Does It” features not one, but two Product Placement Coordinators (look under “Other Crew”). During its filming, one product placement expert described it thus:
Sarah Jessica Parker leaves her character of bad girl from New York upper class to become a London City broker. In this case she is even a mother and has to conciliate these two roles. The comedy is based on the best-seller by Allison Pearson, who will be out in February with her second novel “I think I love you”….The shootings will begin in London in January. A product placement fit for high fashion Companies, accessories, and baby products. A rare occasion for products for kids; the premises fo this movie seems to be in fact really good.
Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011
Yet Another Type
Meet Noah Brier, who broods in the the photo at left.
Brier writes of his time at NYU’s Gallatin School, where he loved the freedom to explore “city planning, eventually moving to education, cultural studies and landing on a fascination with media” and to work with hip professors.
Where did it all lead Mr. Brier? You guessed it: To starting a marketing consultancy specializing in coaching corporations on perfecting the art and science of commodity fetishism. Brier waxes passionate in Advertising Age:
Many…brands belong to the biggest companies in the world, and they are proven money-making machines. They manage global distribution networks and put products in millions of stores worldwide. What to post on Facebook hardly seems like one of the more difficult business decision they’ll face today. Yet, it turns out to be exactly that.
Brier’s advice?
Teach your brand to speak….[Corporate planners] have to…have to think of their channels [means of reaching their targets with "marketing stimuli"] less as CRM and more as owned media. In a nutshell, they need to [have their brands] act less like brands and more like people.
Percolate [Brier's new consultancy] helps brands identify and create content at scale. In a digital world, we believe brands can be signals. Pointing consumers to valuable information that is not necessarily about the brand directly, but speaks to the brand promise and consumer mindset.
Lovely, humane stuff, isn’t it? Thank you, Gallatin School!
BTW, Brier’s favorite part about his hero, Marshall McLuhan?
What struck me most about the stories of McLuhan was a point about his ability to keep morals out of his conversations about media.
The amorality is the message…
Friday, July 22nd, 2011
Another Sociopathic Hipster
Our parade of pony-tailed social engineers continues today with the illustrious Jeff Goodby, whose agency just released this brazenly sexist and pseudo-scientific [and now withdrawn!] ad campaign for the California Milk Processor Board.
The ads are clearly targeted at men, whom they flatter by endorsing both the idea that stale pieces of misogyny are somehow wildly funny and the counterfactual suggestion that men themselves are going around being minutely careful about how they treat women.
Here’s how Goodby gets his laughs, meanwhile:
The idea, says Jeff Goodby, who shares the title of co-chairman at Goodby, Silverstein with Rich Silverstein, is to “enlist the spouse or significant other” of women to encourage them to drink milk.
“We did it in the past, but the women just didn’t drink enough milk,” he says, laughing. “If they’d only drink enough, we wouldn’t come back.” [NYT, 07/11/2011]
Haw, haw, haw! Isn’t recycling sexism to force-feed cow milk to an overweight population on behalf of factory farming, rBGH-injecting profiteers just a hoot?
And if you believe there really is any such thing with these people as “drink enough milk” or “we wouldn’t come back,” well, I can also get you a really excellent deal on the Brooklyn Bridge…
Wednesday, July 20th, 2011
Skateboarding for the Overclass
To continue this week’s theme of pondering the high quotient of deluded posers in the marketing trade, meet Adam Roe, whose Lunchbox “shopper marketing” agency just got bought by the venerable social engineering conglomerate JWT.
Like our friend, the grimacing but allegedly always laughing Bob Knorpp, Mr. Roe presents himself as ultra-hip and creative and just about as funny as the day is long.
Meanwhile, here is Mr. Roe’s client list.
And here is Roe’s soulful explanation of the meaning of his latest sellout:
We are now all closely measured by sales, which makes the role of shopper solutions ever more critical, yet the sale starts long before the customer ever gets to the shelf and often long before it gets to us. By joining forces, JWT and Lunchbox offer brands, retailers and shoppers an unstoppable solution from start to finish. [Source: Advertising Age]
Yes, this is all about simultaneously serving the needs of both “brands” and shoppers. Sure. Never mind that Roe refers to the latter as “it” in this very statement, as he also undoubtedly does when practicing his craft.
