Top Five Ad Industry Pet Peeves
Top Five Ad Industry Pet Peeves
AdAge
Pet peeves. Precisely defined as a "particular and often continual annoyance." Or to put a finer, more ad-game-specific point on it: things that won't make you change careers per se, but will definitely make you think long and hard about banging your head against the wall.
In virtually any business, pet peeves are natural. And when you amplify that with an industry where science meets art—where risk and reward tango on an increasingly tenuous dance floor—it's not surprising that annoyances can abound.
So with all of the dynamics at play between agencies and clients, it would be far too easy to point the finger just at clients. To be fair, every peeve on my list has been proverbially petted both within agencies and between agencies and clients. In short: There is plenty of blame to go around.
Literally and figuratively, Breitling is a brand with time on its side. Not only has the renowned maker of chronometers been in business since 1884, the demand for the Swiss firm’s timepieces is such that (so the story goes, anyway) only about 150,000 watches a year leave its Grenchen workbenches. When you’ve made chronographs for the RAF, sent watches into space on the wrists of astronauts, and have a following that includes Roger Moore, Harrison Ford, and Sir Richard Branson, you don’t face much in the way of an image problem. Adweek dropped in at the company’s new digs this past week to talk to Prissert about his brand, its marketing, and the future of Breitling on his watch.
In fact, things have actually been moving rather quickly for this privately held company. Earlier this year Breitling opened its first boutique on a choice corner in Midtown Manhattan, an ambitious move that’s now one of the many responsibilities of its new president. After 20 years without a change of U.S. leadership, Breitling recently pinned the wings on 40-something Frenchman Thierry Prissert, whose arrival clearly signals the brand’s desire to explore different altitudes. Prissert doesn’t come from the watch world. His last gig was running Vilebrequin, the Saint-Tropez stitcher of $250 swim trunks.
Coke Extends BET Partnership Into the Store
MediaPost / Marketing Daily News
Coca-Cola's ongoing partnership with Black Entertainment Television (BET) speaks to the brand's emphasis on engaging and growing its share among African-American teens. Of course, Coke is far from alone in making this demographic a priority target audience, for a number of reasons. African-American teens not only spend $96 more per month than the average teen, but exert far-reaching influence on mainstream cultural trends, points out Seth Freeman, senior brand manager, sparkling beverages, African-American marketing for Coca-Cola North America. Further, the Coca-Cola Company estimates that roughly 86% of its growth going forward will come from Hispanics, African-Americans and Asian Americans, he says.
BET—and its "106 & Park" program, in particular (which has been the #1-rated music variety show for 13 consecutive quarters)—have been "pillars" in Coke's outreach to African-American teens for several years now, confirms Freeman.
What Your Social-Media Team Should Learn From Direct-Response Folks
AdAge
Media buying in its simplest form has always been about balancing targeting with scale. You find a specific audience that you want to influence and then you buy enough media to put your message in front of as many people as you can afford to reach. Trouble is, even though it works, it's not always the best approach. This is where the direct response folks have a lot to teach those of us working in the social spaces.
Back in the 1990s I worked with Ward Thomas, who is now director of analytics at Euro RSCG Discovery. Even back then, Ward had built proprietary models that could accurately predict the highest propensity for purchase within a given audience. These models didn't only increase overall response by making sure the right audience was selected for a marketing program, they also reduced the total marketing spend as a whole by eliminating many of the folks who were less likely to respond. So for less money spent, a client could achieve higher response and better conversion.
How Food Marketers Are Responding to Government Pressure on Kids’ Ads
AdAge
Now the real food fight begins.
Amid pressure from the government, some of the nation's biggest food and drink marketers said today they will tighten guidelines on what can be advertised to children. For the first time ever, the Better Business Bureau's Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative said it would enforce the same nutritional standards for all 17 of its voluntary members, rather than letting companies pick and choose their own rules. And the standards will be tightened as of December 2013 to the point where one in three products now advertised to kids would be off the air, unless recipes are reformulated with less sodium, saturated fat and sugar.
The new rules—which cover marketers such as McDonald's and Kraft Foods—are partly meant to thwart a stronger proposal by the Obama administration that advertisers say would pretty much shut down kid-oriented ads for most foods.
But here's the rub: Both the government's proposal and the industry's effort are voluntary. So are marketers and bureaucrats simply shadow boxing, or will someone actually land a punch?
Ford Launches Major Racing Program. NASCAR? Not.
Media Post / Marketing Daily News
Racing is a big deal at Ford, especially when it comes to reaching Millennials who really could not care less about more traditional four-wheel speed feasts like NASCAR and drag racing. So the company's new mega-deal with the X-Games franchise is all about new racing forms made popular in Asia and Europe and finding a growing audience of social media-savvy twenty-somethings.
Ford's group VP of global sales and marketing Jim Farley, speaking at a press conference on Thursday, said there is no one way to reach Millennials—referencing Toyota's Scion division, where he used to work. "I've been doing what I've been doing for more than two decades. Millennials are the heart and soul of the business and there are some other companies who have formed total brands to attract them," he said. "That was a rewarding discovery for me as a leader—that marketing tactics and product strategy can be totally different."
Farley said the key vehicle in the automaker's efforts to reach the next generation is the Fiesta compact. "It has really been a groundbreaker for us. It may be the most affordable Ford in the U.S., but it's also the most important Ford."
Companies continue online tracking despite company privacy policies: study
Direct Marketing News
Six online advertising industry firms continued to use active tracking cookies despite promising in their privacy policies to stop tracking consumers after they opted out of targeted ads, according to a study from Stanford University Security Laboratory.
The companies “promise to stop tracking after opting out, but nonetheless leave tracking cookies in place,” according to the study from the security lab, which is part of Stanford's computer science department. The researchers found that the tracking cookies used by 24/7 Real Media, AudienceScience, Netmining, Undertone, Vibrant Media and Wall Street on Demand actively update after a consumer opted out.
The researchers examined 64 members of the Network Advertising Initiative's self-regulatory program over the past week, said Mayer. The group separately tested whether the companies' tracking cookies remained active after a consumer chose to not be served targeted ads via the NAI's opt-out program and after a consumer enabled a browser's Do Not Track mechanism, which requests that a company not track a device's online behavior. Thirty-three of the 64 NAI members continued to track consumers who opted out of receiving ads targeted to their online behavior, according to the study.