Jaffe Juice

Cannes Creativity Evolve?

It already has.

Last year, the overall number of entries at Cannes were up 18%, however the total film entries (read: TV) were down 2%.

This year, overall entries are up another 12.5%, with Cyber entries up 32% and film down 2.7%

Any questions?

This break up brought to you by...

Dear John,

Sorry to have to do this via voice mail, but I'm leaving you for another woman. And no, you can't watch.

But don't feel bad, 'cos this call is being sponsored by Zoloft.

Your soon to be ex-wife....

PS Virgin Mobile USA is introducing an ad supported cellphone service, aimed at predominently younger consumers. And get this:

...can get up to 75 minutes of free calls per month if they spend an equal amount of time looking at ads and replying to these ads via text messages.

Good luck with that one, Richie Rich.

Guy Goma gets his 15 minutes of fame (give the man a job!)

Poor Guy Goma. He goes to the BBC for a data support cleanser job interview and the next thing he knows, he's live on the air as an expert weighing in on a recent verdict on the Apple v Apple court case.

Gotta love MSM, especially the fact that a perfect stranger is almost able to answer the superficial questions with a degree of credibility.

Here's the interview:

...the only remaining question is whether he got the job (either the one he was applying for, or the producer who goofed)

If you're not busy growing, you're busy dying

A new ANA/Booz Allen study reveals the following:

Marketing organizations that take advanced roles in their companies and lead such non-traditional activities as innovation and strategy contribute to superior corporate performance. The study found that marketing organizations can be classified into six basic categories - but only one category correlates with better performance: "Growth Champions." Marketing departments in this category are 20% more likely to exhibit superior revenue growth and profitability than those in the other five categories. However, only 9% of marketers fell under the Growth Champion category.

What's wrong with Marketing?

First of all, why is innovation and strategy classified as non-traditional?

Secondly, follow the logic...if marketing departments that fall into the "Growth Champion" category are 20% more likely to exhibit superior revenue growth and profitability, why the hell do only 9% of marketers fall into this category?

For your information, here is the breakdown:

• Growth Champions (9%): The Influentials...
• Marketing Masters (38%): Bubbling under...close second; arguably less accountable?
• Senior Counselors (17%): Academics/Good at talking and coming up with charts
• Best Practices Advisors (9%): Me-toos/sheep
• Brand Builders (12%): The Ad Guys/Love going to the Super Bowl
• Service Providers (15%): Lackeys.

  So I applied a tad of Jaffe Juice irreverence, but there are some common threads or trends. One continuum is ideation to execution; another is innovation; a third is the coverage - and influence - throughout the organization (the opposite of a silo approach); a final one is the ability to try out new approaches (versus status quo/best practices)

Guess what? Online is a traditional medium

The Internet is not a baby anymore. The Web is not a child anymore. Online is in fact a teenager and if it commits a crime, it can go to juve detention...or worse still, tried as an adult.

Enough with the metaphors.

Tac Anderson had a bit of a rant on this week's episode of Across the Sound (ATS #34) and he was venting (big time) on the lack of support/committment/follow-through regarding new marketing (and specifically social media)

Segue to the newly released Forrester report, which basically revealed that interactive marketers have been and are reluctant to shift dollars away from traditional online channels like e-mail or search to some of the new opportunities such as gaming, mobile or blogs.

Just 13% reported using blogs or social networks in marketing, and 49% said they had no plans to do so in the next year.

So it would seem that the creme de la creme of interactive marketers are acting rather "traditional" in terms of defending their own status quo

How ironic and how utterly not surprising.

ATS #34 - The New Marketing Podcast

This week's episode of Across the Sound - the New Marketing Podcast is a solo edition, with a bunch of surprises and audio mash-ups, jingles and vignettes.

Full show notes below for Episode 34:

EGC = Expert Generated Content

AdPulp draws a clear distinction between CGC (Consumer Generated Content) and Expert Generated Content i.e. content created by people who know what the hell they're doing.

The example given is the recent Firefox effort, in which roughly 1% of the users submitted entries and the two winning submissions were created by an aspiring director and art and design junior.

AdPulp asks whether co-creation is in fact co-promotion. Point taken, although in the consumer's eyes, it's all the same, isn't it?

The AdRant Rant about Ads (and the Agencies who make them)

Steve Hall is mad as hell, and he's not going to take it anymore. Actually, Todd Copelvitz is mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore.

Take what? The posturing, postulating, procrastinating and procreating about the demise of the 30-second spot and the importance of things like addressable advertising and relevance.

Todd says that's there's only talk and not much walk, and puts it down to good old fashioned laziness.

His call to arms is to write a book about it (kidding) and...

,,,those of us who are willing to rethink how the pieces work owe it to ourselves to answer the call. Remake the face of the agencies you're at, if you can. If not, step out and start your own. Seize the moment. I'm more than willing to help.

Anyone interested? Seriously, anyone?

On one hand, one could argue that that's exactly what is happening with respect to the mushrooming of creative, strategic, media and marketing "boutiques" - including, but certainly not limited to - the likes of Strawberry Frog, Naked, Anomaly and Denuo.

On the other hand, Todd doesn't seem convinced that it's enough. He doesn't appear to be as focused on the "cause" (people not doing anything about it), as the "effect" (kicking the lethargic agencies' collective asses)

Take that!

The Keys to Podcast Advertising

Gregory Galant, CEO of RadioTail (I'm beta testing their ripple product for my podcast) wrote this article on successful podcast advertising.

His 5 succinct tips are as follows:

1. Keep your message brief. Word
2. Vary your creative. Earthlink?
3. Don't underestimate your audience. Halleluyah
4. Place your ads interstitially (don't use pre- or post-roll) How about Point-roll?
5. Don't imitate broadcast radio. W-NNNNNN-BC

Here's a brief and very meaty excerpt:

Ads placed before a podcast make it difficult for potential listeners to sample and get excited about the podcast. Many podcast producers reject them for that reason. It's even bad for the advertiser because that's when podcast listeners are most likely to fast-forward-- when they have their hands on the control just after they've selected a podcast.

Good stuff!

Phineas Gunning-Fog

Media Orchard calculated the readibility of various blogs, thanks to the Gunning-Fog test, which is an objective test of readibility, as opposed to a subjective assessment of content.

The Gunning-Fog test is a rough measure of how many years of schooling it would take someone to understand the content ... It's all based on the number of words per sentence, number of syllables per word and the percentage of words with three or more syllables, among other things.

Here are your benchmarks of comparison:

Fog Index	Resources
6	TV guides, The Bible, Mark Twain, Comic Books
8	Reader's Digest
8 - 10	Most popular novels
10	Time, Newsweek
11	Wall Street Journal
14	The Times, The Guardian
15 - 20	Academic papers
Over 20	Only government sites can get away with this, because you can't ignore them.
Over 30	The government is covering something up

Here are a few blog results courtesy of Media Orchard and also the results for Jaffe Juice: