Happy Holidays

The Ad Contrarian is on vacation till January 3rd. Happy Holidays

Top 10 New Year's Resolutions

My New Year's resolutions for 2008:1. I will vote for the first presidential candidate who can complete a sentence without mentioning god.2. I will strike dead anyone in my employ using any of the following words: engagement, branding, aspirational, counterintuitive, webinar, or quirky.3. I will stop sending those pictures to Katie Couric.4. I will buy a new Samsung TV because it is the official

Three Worst Christmas Songs

TAC is supposed to be on vacation but can't stop having tiresome opinions. Listening to the radio this week lead me to this list:The Three Worst Christmas Songs Ever1. Holly, Jolly Christmas -- Far and away the worst. A very annoying song sung by Burl Ives, a very annoying person.2. O Holy Night -- I've heard this song a thousand times and still can't figure out the melody.3. The Little Drummer

Guest Blog: The Disconnect

The following post was written by guest blogger John JossThe disconnect between advertising claims and service to customers can cause deep dissatisfaction that may take immense effort to reverse, if indeed it is ever reversible. I refer in this guest blog specifically to a company that has been using the 'snide ridicule' approach to advertising in which is denigrates competition and claims

It's Still Simplicity, Stupid

Have you tried to set the alarm clock in a hotel room lately? Have you tried to read a cell phone operating manual? Have you attempted to use the GPS navigation system on a rental car? Well, the same exasperating complexity that has infecting technology is creeping into marketing.More than ever, the key to advertising success is a simple message.Marketers have way too many messages and way too

Brand Tinkering

As we mentioned in a recent post, tinkering with the brand is way more fun than solving real business problems.Solving problems requires unpleasantness. Floors have to be swept and walls have to be painted. People have to be fired. Systems have to be changed. Products have to be redesigned.Brand tinkering, on the other hand, is generally quite agreeable. All it requires is money and a bunch of

Internet Chaos

Here's why your viral campaign went nowhere; why your video on YouTube is getting way fewer hits than you expected; and why your blog was a bust.The internet is chaotic. Success is random and unpredictable. Most success is the result of one person's good, odd idea and is very hard to duplicate or recreate. Creative strategy is less important than execution on the web.You can make a hit record by

Web Films vs Bagels

I had a chance to stay at a Ritz-Carlton last week. The convergence of two recent posts -- Ritz Bits and The "Brand Problem" Problem -- came together in a perfect storm.I stayed for 2 nights and had no turn-down service either night. I had horrible French toast for breakfast, made with stale bread. I sent it back and asked for a bagel. I got a stale one.Meanwhile, Ritz is spending lots of time

The "Brand Problem" Problem

There was a time in America when every problem was a "communications" problem.If you couldn't get along with your husband, you weren't communicating. If your kid was incorrigible, you probably weren't on the same wavelength. If your boss didn't like you, you just didn't communicate well with him. There were no problems of substance, just problems of communication.Well, the truth is, sometimes

Guest Blogger: TAC Needs A Better System

The following guest post comes from John Joss, a regular commenter here at TACHaving seen, read and enjoyed the earlier TAC book, I willingly signed up to receive the new, expanded and improved edition. Imagine my disappointment, then, when after three attempts to execute the 'order' I found that there was no apparent, obvious way to send it.This failure to devise a complete system that works end

Now With 20% More Cranky Opinions

The new edition of The Ad Contrarian book is being printed and will be available shortly.The difference between the blog and the book is that in the book we don't just whine about everything, we also give you ideas about how to make your advertising more effective. Also, the book burns easier.And, it makes a great Christmas gift for people you don't really like.Best of all, it's free. Just click

The Ignoramus Superhighway

For those silly enough to believe in the "The Information Age" and "The Information Superhighway" here are Yahoo's Top Ten search subjects of 2007: 1. Britney Spears2. WWE3. Paris Hilton4. Naruto5. Beyonce6. Lindsay Lohan7. RuneScape8. Fantasy Football9. Fergie10. Jessica AlbaIt's encouraging to see Americans getting so much useful information about so many important subjects on the

Ritz Bits

People over 50 control 77% of the financial assets of this country and are the target for 10% of all advertising. The prejudice against older customers is so strong and so pervasive that even smart companies can't see beyond it (see Aiming Low.)A few years ago, Saks Fifth Avenue decided their customers were too old. They embarked on a plan to attract younger, hipper customers. After two

In-Your-Face Book, II

According to The New York Times, Facebook is changing its "Beacon" marketing scheme after 50,000 people signed a petition protesting it.As we reported earlier in "In-Your-Face Book", Facebook was playing with fire by paying only perfunctory attention to privacy sensitivities.While consumers still don't fully understand internet privacy issues, TAC predicts that web-based marketing schemes --

Unreasonable People

One of the things web providers are going to have to get used to is the irrationality of everyday people.This can be seen in the reaction of webbies to the fuss over Facebook's "Beacon" program (see In-Your-Face Book). They point out that people put their most intimate details on their Facebook page and then get all stirred up when Facebook publicizes what they've been buying. Isn't this complete

Readers Ignore Banners

TAC has been saying for some time that banner ads are a very weak form of advertising -- far weaker than most traditional advertising.If you're a typical web user, you've probably been exposed to dozens of banner ads today. Can you remember noticing even one? We all trained ourselves years ago to ignore banner ads on websites.There are statistics that show that click through rates on banners are

In-Your-Face Book

In its attempt to monetize its cultural success, Facebook is looking for trouble.As we predicted in The Ribbon, consumers are getting increasingly suspicious of social networks prying into and publicizing their private activities. Consumers still don't understand how pervasive this is, but as they get a whiff of it, they aren't liking it.Last week the Associated Press reported that users of

Cookie Monstrosity

One thing you can say about the internet with absolute certainty -- there has never been another invention that has spawned more bad ideas.The latest comes from Pepperidge Farm. From some retro universe they have launched a campaign called "Connecting Through Cookies" (I kid you not.) The centerpiece is a website called The Art of the Cookie. You see, this website is going to be a social network

What A Concept!

The International Herald Tribune reports that Publicis is prepared to launch a brilliant new idea.It's a fully-integrated agency with, like, the creative and media in one "agency-like entity." Holy cow, what'll they think of next!Now, am I wrong or isn't this way ad agencies were configured for about a thousand years before the global bozos got their sweaty hands all over us?For about a decade or

More Marketing Morons

According to Ad Age, Pontiac is shifting its advertising efforts toward media that appeal to younger audiences such as video game tie-ins, Web ads and spots on sports channels and late-night shows.The logic of this is perfectly idiotic and, as such, perfectly in line with the brainless reflexes of so many marketers. (See Aiming Low) A few facts:1. The average Pontiac buyer is over 50.2. Baby

Not Dead Yet

From the usually sensible Bob Garfield speculating in Advertising Age, March 26, 2007, about the future of advertising: “It's a world ... in which ad agencies are marginalized ... in which marketing -- and even branding -- are conducted without much reliance on the 30-second spot ... Because nobody is much interested in seeing them, and because soon they will be largely unnecessary.” Yeah,

Excuses, Excuses

TAC apologizes to my loyal readers (both of you) for missing a couple of days. Been traveling and doing real work. I'll be back tomorrow.SUBSCRIBE TO THE AD CONTRARIAN

Marketing Gurus Finally Getting It

I read something in Seth Godin's blog today that made me think some marketing gurus are finally starting to get it. The post is called "What Brand Is Your Mattress? "Seth says, "They (some marketers) believe that the brand can build the product. That's backwards." Which is what we've been screaming about for years.Remember The Ad Contrarian mantra: We don't get them to try our product by

Dirty Rotten Liars

A while ago we posted something called "Research or Baloney".The subject was the unreliability of online research. Since then, the ARF (Advertising Research Foundation) has called for a study of online research.One of the points we made was that online samples are terribly unreliable because you can never know who is responding. If a sample is unreliable, the results are worthless.Now Business

Status Anxiety

I gave a luncheon talk yesterday. It was to a hundred or so ad execs. Some from agencies, some from media.They were lovely people who seemed in large part to agree with what I had to say. This is deeply troubling.I think I may be losing my status as a contrarian.SUBSCRIBE TO THE AD CONTRARIAN

The Rolling Wave

Over the next few weeks I'm going to be writing about a phenomenon which we (my colleagues and I) have dubbed "The Rolling Wave."This wave is a hugely important and influential group of people who are breaking the traditional adoption pattern of new products and new technologies. They are looking beyond product benefits and brand personalities and are making buying decisions -- both consciously

Read A Book

People sometimes ask me what my favorite books about advertising are. Here you go:1. e by Matthew BeaumontA truly hilarious novel about a London ad agency in the throes of a big new business pitch. The gag is, it's written in the form of company emails. I know it sounds tedious but, trust me, it's terrific.2. Then We Came To The End by Joshua FerrisA very funny, and mildly frightening, novel

Ads or Content?

In a headlong rush to get ahead of the digital curve, some once-upon-a-time excellent ad agencies are turning out some pretty awful advertising.These agencies have decided they are no longer in the ad business. They're in the "content" business -- whatever the hell that means. Apparently they have stopped hiring advertising creatives and have instead been hiring "content providers." And you

Halloween

I hate Halloween.It's Christmas for the maladjusted.I'm taking the day off.SUBSCRIBE TO THE AD CONTRARIAN

The Ribbon, cont.

As a follow-up to last week's "The Ribbon", you might want to have a look at this and this from Ad Age.

The Yellow and Brown Process

Prospective clients want to believe that there is a method to the madness.More and more, success in winning new clients is not about the effectiveness of the advertising you create, but about how clever you are at articulating a convincing process behind your creative endeavors.Well, there are processes for doing just about everything an agency does. But when it comes to creating ideas, sorry,

Nobody Knows Anything

In Hollywood they have a saying: "Nobody knows anything." This explains how huge-budget, big-star, focus-group-approved movies manage to bomb on a regular basis.It is not dissimilar in advertising. Most of consumer behavior is perfectly obvious -- people like things that look nicer, taste better, work more dependably and cost less (see Salesmen & Sociologists.) But then there’s the mysterious

Stay Foolish

"Don’t let the noise of other people’s opinions drown out your own inner voice... Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”- Steve JobsSUBSCRIBE TO THE AD CONTRARIAN

The Ribbon

One of the things that worries me about the internet is the naive and foolish belief that it has, and will continue to have, a substantially empowering effect on the individual.Web advocates speak eloquently about how the advent of the internet has allowed individuals to influence communities, organizations, and enterprises in completely unique and original ways. While there is some truth to

Marketing Tips for Geniuses

DOTAC (Daughter of the Ad Contrarian) is in full college application mode, which means we've been traveling around looking at colleges. We've met some genius-type people on our visits but have witnessed some woefully inadequate marketing practices. If you're a college or university marketing or admissions officer, here are some tips:1. A visiting high school senior bases about 99% of his/her

Baloney Sandwich

I came across two marketing stories today that made me want to scream. Or even worse, update my blog.First from the Boston Globe. A story about how net research can explain everything in the universe."You can use online data to predict what consumers are doing across every facet of their lives," said Stephen DiMarco, chief marketing officer of Compete Inc., a Boston firm that tracks Web traffic.

And Speaking of Churchill

Yesterday we posted a quote from Winston Churchill. Apropos Sir Winston, guest blogger Simon Billing contributes this piece on the silliness of focus groups.May 28, 1940The Rt. Hon. W.S. ChurchillThe House of CommonsLondon W1Sir,Please find below the results of our focus groups on the speech you intend to make before Parliament next week. Please note that this research is qualitative in nature

Reality Check

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."--Winston ChurchillSUBSCRIBE TO THE AD CONTRARIAN

Marketing To Yourself

One of the great joys of being in the advertising and marketing business is the power to market to yourself.So if you're young and work for an NBA team, you blast the hip-hop music in the arena even though the average season ticket holder is an over-50, fat-ass white guy.And if you work on a car account, you write a spot your friends will think is cool, even though no one under 25 can afford a

TAC Predicts

Casey Stengel once said, "I never make predictions, particularly about the future." The Ad Contrarian does not have the wisdom to follow Casey's sage advice. TAC predicts:Within the next year there will be a very disturbing report/investigation/article on the influence of internet pornography on the sexual behavior of young people.This report will create headlines, a furor, lots of posturing

Start Your Own

I was talking to a young lady the other day. She went to a great college, studied advertising, and now has a job in an agency. She expected the ad business to be full of oddballs, eccentrics, and iconoclasts -- like in the movies.Instead, she said, everybody repeats the same 10 cliches, drops the same 3 agency names, and talks about the same ads.One of the problems is that it's getting harder to

Big, Dumb, Global Bozos

Every now and then some big, global agency comes sniffing around trying to buy us. Usually it’s because their agency in SF is a disaster, or they want to get their hands on one of our accounts.Recently it was driven home to me why we’ve never taken any of these guys seriously. The ceo of a very large agency came around. He’s sitting in our conference room. He leans across the conference table.

Big News from Brandweek

Stop the presses! Here's some huge news. Consumers favor brands that offer them good quality at a low price! Oh my god!"The 26,000 men and women polled... showed a strong inclination to brands that either saved them money or were perceived as having good value" is how Brandweek reported it.A company called Brand Keys did the survey. Apparently, they had to poll 26,000 people to figure this out.

Stick a Knife in My Head

We’ve been ranting for quite some time about how advertisers are missing a huge opportunity by always targeting young people.In short, people over 50 have 77% of the money and are the target for about 10% of all advertising (see "Aiming Low.") According to The New York Times it looks like some companies are starting to wake upHowever, with their typical heavy hand, most marketers will blow their

Absence of Choice

A recent post by Seth Godin in Seth's Blog called "Choice" had this to say: 'If I had to pick one word to describe what's new, what's different and what's important about now vs. then, it would be "choice."'As usual, TAC disagrees. What's new and different is absence of choice."Then" there was a mens' store, a pharmacy, a grocery, a shoe store, a fruit stand, a pizza joint, a coffee shop and a

Dull Men in Grey Suits

A piece called "Why Have Admen Lost Their Mojo?" in The New York Observer asks where have all the visionaries and scoundrels gone?The writer has a lot to say, but most of it is off target. The reason there are so few big personalities left in advertising is that advertising has been homogenized into submission by consolidation, globalization and corporatization.The ad business used to be an

Worst Idea of the Week. Any Week

CBS is planning a "reality" show in which the contestants compete to write the best ad jingle. This is not a joke. It's called Jingles. Apparently no one has told the programmers at CBS that nobody has used a jingle in advertising in about 20 years. They really ought to watch their network sometime.SUBSCRIBE TO THE AD CONTRARIAN

Overstimulated by the NBA

The new NBA season is soon to begin, so you can expect me to become even crankier. I used to love the NBA. Now, every time I go to a game I swear I'll never go back. Until the next game.The constant marketing drives me crazy. There is not a minute during the game when someone isn't trying to sell me something. And when they're not selling something the idiotic promotions and incessant music and

New Species of Human

According to most new age marketing gurus, there is apparently a whole new species of human being. This species has some interesting traits:1. Other than the internet, they don’t trust media.2. They are immune to marketing.3. They dislike advertising.4. They want a “conversation” with brands. This, of course, is a lot of nonsense. But it’s remarkable how widespread these beliefs are becoming in

Pudding Heads

DOTAC (Daughter of The Ad Contrarian) sent TAC this link. Apparently some geniuses called Pudding Media are going to provide you with free VOIP phone service if you will let them listen in on your calls and send you ads that relate to your conversation.Of course, this will not intrude on your privacy. "Mr. Maislos (chief executive) said that Pudding Media had considered the privacy question

Good At Counting

In the world of advertising, research is no different from creative work -- some of it is excellent and powerful, and some of it is worthless and dangerous.My experience has been that market researchers are good at counting, and very little else. So if you want to know "how many", you can hire a research firm and be pretty confident you'll get an accurate result. But if you want to know, "why"

Quantum Advertising

Quantum theory makes scientists crazy. It's the only area of science in which the idea of cause and effect (or, as they like to say, "deterministic causality") has to be suspended. One of the consequences of quantum theory is that in certain cases things just pop into and out of existence. In fact, there are physicists who believe our whole universe is a quantum event -- it just appeared out of

Terrestrial Locomotor Performance

What happened to the simple declarative sentence? Why can't people talk straight? Do they think they sound smarter by talking in dense, incomprehensible jargon?Not long ago I wrote "Everything You Need To Know About Branding On One Little Page." In doing so I came upon a book called Kellogg on Branding: The Marketing Faculty of the Kellogg School of Business. In an excerpt from the book, I found

The Backlash Will Come

It's not going to take advertisers long to figure out that on-line display advertising has been a failure as an interactive medium (see Two In A Thousand.) It can't sustain its growth for long with a response rate under 2 in a thousand unless it's willing to take big cuts in cpm.Right now, we're still in the frenzy part of the adoption cycle in which every marketer thinks she has to be doing

Favorite Ad Of The Week

Check out the description for this used golf club on eBay. SUBSCRIBE TO THE AD CONTRARIAN

Jersey Old Men

TAC has written previously about the remarkably under-utilized potential for marketing to people over 50 (see Aiming Low)It was reinforced recently when I went to see Jersey Boys, a stunningly mediocre exercise in pop nostalgia (full disclosure: I almost always hate Broadway musicals.)The writing was exactly what I expected -- that cloying high school sensibility that so often infuses Broadway

Account Planners Gone Wild

The same day I posted "Smelly Volvo Families" an article appeared in Ad Age about the new Volvo campaign.The article was about how Volvo's agency developed the idea for its new campaign. Apparently, the agency interviewed valet car parkers to find out what Volvo owners are like. I swear this is not a joke. Valet car parkers.I wonder what planning genius came up with this idea.They enjoyed many

How To Get Bad Advertising

Over the past few years, some large advertisers have decided that the best way to get good ads is to have a roster of agencies and make them compete for assignments. Now smaller advertisers are starting to do this.It's a perfectly brilliant way to get lousy advertising, but a lovely way for narcissistic marketing executives to get agencies to kiss their asses.Anyone who's spent 15 minutes in an

Smelly Volvo Families

I was at the movies last Saturday night and saw a remarkably ill-conceived theatrical spot for Volvo. It was a faux James Bond thing with yachts and helicopters and jet planes and very expensive looking people doing idiotic superhero things. The gag, you see, was that it was a couple trying to get somewhere for their anniversary. It ended with some inanity about life being better together. A

Two In A Thousand

In "Legends of Interactivity, Part 2" we saw that the click through rate on a typical banner ad is under 2 in a thousand.The question is, why is the level of interactivity so alarmingly low on display ads?We understand why response rates are low in traditional direct response media -- you have to cut out a coupon or tear out a card; fill in your name and address; take it to a mailbox, etc. It's

The Ad Contrarian Mantra

Just about everything you read on The Ad Contrarian blog derives from one unifying principle:We don’t get customers to try our product by convincing them to love our brand, we get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product.This seemingly innocuous sentence represents a radically different perspective from how most companies and most ad agencies practice advertising and marketing

Legends of Interactivity, Part 2

I really pissed off some net heads a few weeks ago with The Legend of Interactivity. As a matter of fact, they were so pissed off they actually interacted.It’s amazing how vehemently zealots react when their beliefs are challenged. The major objection to "The Legend of Interactivity" was that I based my observation that interactivity on the web has been grossly exaggerated on one data point --

Sky Not Falling, Update

In 2003, Forrester Research (see Nailed) estimated that DVR's would be in about 26% of homes by now.In fact, Nielsen reported earlier this year that DVR's were in 17% of homes. About 1/3 fewer than Forrester had predicted.Always remember that without change nobody needs research. Consequently, it is baked into the DNA of research companies to emphasize (and, unfortunately, sometimes exaggerate)

The Long Tail and The Fat Head

There is an interesting marketing hypothesis called The Long Tail. The Long Tail states that companies with low costs of inventory and distribution (like web powerhouses Amazon and Netflix) can derive substantial income, even a majority of income, by selling unpopular items to tiny market segments. There seems to be significant data to back up this idea.As usual, a whole lot of marketing people

Report From the Real World

A few brave souls volunteered to drop out of pop culture for two weeks (see Media Droputs) and tell us how it feels. Here are two reports after the first week:From "Dotcalm"I have realized this is not easy to do! I'm used to either waking up to Whoopi or NPR - so there's news in my face one way or the other - so set it to buzz...Then, my e-mail login page has "Bad News" and "Celebrity Idiots of

Help wanted

I need your help:1. Does anyone have an ounce of data that indicates that campaigns created with the benefit of account planning are any more successful than those done without it?2. Now that the “upfront” is concluded for 2008 and the tv networks increased their take by almost 5%, where are all the geniuses who were predicting its demise a few months ago?3. Can anyone remember an ad they saw on

How to Watch TV Commercials

Now that fall is approaching, the new tv season is almost upon us. There used to be just one new tv season every year. But now there’s a new season every, well, season.We can all get more out of the commercials we’ll be seeing if we know a little more about advertising. The first thing you need to know is that there are basically two types of tv commercials: those with talking animals and those

Today's News Tomorrow

Reports from media drop-outs tomorrow. Apparently, they've become so mellow they've stopped consulting their calendars. But don't worry, TAC is on their ass.SUBSCRIBE TO THE AD CONTRARIAN

Brand Babble

I read an article by the creative director of a large international ad agency. He said his advertising is not intended to sell products. The objective is to "build brands".There was something alarming about this statement, but I had heard it expressed so many times before that I'd begun to take it for granted that I was crazy and everybody else was right.A few days later, however, a thought

Salesmen & Sociologists

Has anyone else noticed that the increase in client dissatisfaction with advertising has coincided almost perfectly with the ascendancy of account planning? Maybe it’s just a coincidence. But, then again, how can it be that we have added the science and knowledge of these consumer insight experts into our repertoire and yet -- according to our clients -- our efforts are less effective than ever?I

Research or Baloney?

For a brief period I was a science teacher. I didn’t actually have a license to teach science but because of a teacher shortage you could say I was drafted.My three years in the classroom taught me a lot about science and the scientific method. Most of all, it gave me a healthy respect for the difference between a fact and an opinion.Scientists are constantly struggling to establish factual

Emotional attachments

One of the most wasteful uses of advertising dollars is to try to create emotional attachments to your brand. First of all, most ads that try to use emotion are transparently pandering, usually generic, and rarely hit the mark.Second, contrary to all the bull you hear, most consumers have little or no emotional attachment to most of the brands they use (see "Salesmen & Sociologists.") When they

The Entertainment Age

Several years ago, observers more optimistic than TAC hailed the ascendancy of the internet as the dawn of “The Information Age”. It’s a lovely idea. Unfortunately it’s a fantasy.The internet certainly has wonderful applications for people interested in gathering information. And there are a lot of people who use the internet in that way. But, by far, the internet is quickly evolving into an

Business Week Needs Our Help

Business Week is having a hard time figuring out the TiVo data we've been talking about all week (see Which Ads Don't Get Skipped). Apparently, they need to subscribe to The Ad Contrarian blog (see Myths Exploding, Mysteries Unraveling.)SUBSCRIBE TO THE AD CONTRARIAN

The Legend of Interactivity

Someday I'm going to write an advertising book called "Legends and Rituals". It will be about how advertising and marketing people are blind to the evidence of their own eyes but keep saying and doing the same fictitious things over and over.One chapter will be about interactivity. Pick up any article, book or blog about marketing and you'll read that there's a new species of human being

Blind to the facts

Advertising and marketing people want to believe that everyone is young, urban, and hip -- just like them. That's why so much advertising is misguided and irrelevant to the people who actually buy things.The idea that every product must be marketed to a young audience is so baked into the DNA of the marketing community that they can't see beyond this counterproductive, crippling prejudice. Two

Myths Exploding, Mysteries Unraveling

For the first time ever, the advertising industry is getting data about things that up until now were the province of speculation and ideology.We’re starting to get a glimpse of how consumers actually behave when confronted with advertising. Not how they say they behave; not how we think they behave; not how they behave under controlled conditions, but what they actually do at home in front of

The Sky Is Not Falling

The popular press and the ad trades would have you believe that tv viewing is in steep decline, and that this steep decline is exacerbated by heavy DVR usage (TiVo, etc.) disrupting the traditional effectiveness of tv advertising.The facts tell a different story.If you read Nailed you saw how TAC used Nielsen data from November, 2006 to report that about 1.6% of total tv commercials are skipped

Media Dropouts

Three brave souls have volunteered for Dr.A's Get-Happy Diet. They are Dotcalm, The Professor, and Uncle Susie.They'll be dropping out of pop culture for two weeks and reporting to us on how it's affecting them. The hypothesis is that they'll be less stressed and less anxious. We'll see.SUBSCRIBE TO THE AD CONTRARIAN

Dr. A's Get-Happy Diet

Last week, Dr. Adcontrarian explained (uh...declared, proclaimed, popped-off?) about how unprotected media exposure makes us unfortunate ad people unhappy.Today I unveil Dr. A's Get-Happy Diet. The good part is, you can eat all you want. The bad part is, you're going to drop out of pop culture for a few weeks. It will not only make you happier, it will make you realize how addicted you are to

How to Be Happy in Advertising

Dr. Adcontrarian is on duty today to help you be a happier ad person. Please have a seat.It's not easy being happy in advertising. It's a frustrating business. Modern life is filled with many horrors -- war, husbands, pizza with chicken on it. And we ad people are closely aligned with something uniquely anxiety-producing -- pop culture.Advertising used to be about discovering what consumers

Quickies, III

* Not sure it's the worst commercial of all time, but it's pretty damn close. Doc Pomus must be spinning. How come the Black guy is the only one who looks embarrassed? Your comments, please.* Nonetheless, TAC is not “media neutral”. TAC believes the :30 second spot is still the most powerful marketing tool ever invented. Yeah, I know. I don’t get it.* Please someone tell me one internet ad you

Amazing data from TiVo, II

Earlier this week, I presented data collected from TiVo (see Amazing Data from TiVo) that showed that the least-skipped commercials in June, as in previous months, were all either retail or direct response commercials. This will be shocking to almost everyone on Madison Avenue and not surprising at all to a small group of us who practice Performance Based Advertising (PBA). One of the three

Amazing data from TiVo

If TiVo is teaching us nothing else, it's teaching us that all the noise agencies make about "rewarding" viewers is just the same old baloney. Agencies secretly would rather be in the entertainment business (hey, so would I) and they are always looking for a reason to re-define advertising as entertainment, thus the talk about "rewarding" viewers. Data from TiVo-ers, however, is telling quite a

Bullsh*t

It is probably not a coincidence that the loss of confidence in advertising is concurrent with another trend in the advertising business – the unprecedented concentration of the ad industry into the hands of a few lawyers and accountants. A couple of decades ago Y&R had the largest share of the ad market in the US at a little over 1%. Today four global holding companies control about 75% of U.S

Quickies, II

- Hypocrite Hall of Fame: Brad Haley, exec. VP-marketing of CKE Restaurants in Ad Age, “Too often today ads appear that seem to have been developed almost exclusively with the goal of ‘breaking through the clutter’ ...viewers of attention-getting ideas with weak ’selling ideas’ are often left with a soulless thrill and no corresponding development of the brand-consumer relationship.” This from

Indirect Marketing

Some things can only be achieved indirectly.You can’t be happy by trying to be happy. If you want to be happy you have to go fishing, or eat a pizza, or clean out your closet.And when someone tells me she's "working" on her marriage, I’m pretty certain that within a few weeks her house will be crawling with attorneys and real estate agents. You want to have a good marriage? Stop trying so hard.

Barry Bonds

Before Barry Bonds ties Hank Aaron this week, he has a chance to redeem himself and his legacy in the eyes of baseball fans. When he hits his 755th home run, he should issue the following statement:"Today I had the great privilege of tying the most famous record in sports. Having done so, I am announcing my immediate retirement.While it would be a great honor to hold the all-time home run record

Quickies

- The consumer is becoming more resistant to marketing, right? Tell that to Apple and Toyota. Here’s what the consumer is becoming more resistant to: generic, undifferentiated products supported by smug, benefit-free advertising. - If I have to read one more quote from one more brain-dead agency boob with the word “engagement” in it, someone’s going to die. The engagement crowd is trying to

Precision Guessing

A close friend of mine is a psychiatrist and former medical director of a large behavioral health organization.In our frequent conversations about psychiatry and the human condition, he often makes the point that human behavior is often unfathomable.It occurred to me recently that his years at Harvard and Johns Hopkins may have been wasted. If he wanted a profound understanding of human behavior

Nailed

It has become an article of faith in the advertising and marketing world that traditional mass-market advertising is on the way out.From the New York Times, December 28, 2004:Jim Nail, principal analyst at Forrester Research, said, “You’re seeing the end of the era of mass marketing.”Well, it’s a few years later, and it seems to me I saw some Bud spots on the Super Bowl. Also, I seem to recall

Aiming Low

Of all the dumb things that advertisers do, one of the dumbest is aiming their message too young.

There seems to be an irresistible need for marketers to target young people despite monumental evidence that older people have far more money, are far easier to reach and all-in-all make better customers.

Of course, there are some products that rely on the youth market for their survival. But for

Puzzles & Mysteries

An article by Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, in The New Yorker leads me to believe that advertising people can learn something from spies. Not about stealing other peoples’ ideas, but about solving business problems.Gladwell tells us about a national security expert, Gregory Treverton who distinguished between two kinds of problems: puzzles and mysteries. His distinctions have

Wait A Minute

Former Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen once said, “The three most important words in the English language are ‘wait a minute.’ ”Advertising and marketing people would be wise to take heed. There is no doubt that we are in a period of great change in the advertising world. What’s not so certain is how it’s changing or where it’s going. There’s a lot of hand-wringing and bloviating but not

The End of the World

I have good news. We haven’t all died from bird flu. Or from SARS. Or from ebola virus. Oh, and we survived Y2K pretty much intact. And if you can’t sleep nights worrying about global warming, here are a few quotes that might help: In “The Cooling World," April 28, 1975 Newsweek informed us that meteorologists "are almost unanimous" that “catastrophic famines might result from…global cooling” On

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