Jaffe Juice

If the fast forward button is your worst enemy...

...then the pause button is your best friend (one of my better lines)

The trades and papers are all in a tizzy about TiVo's announcement to introduce "extended advertiser information", allow "consumers to contact advertisers" or to allow "instant response to ads."

jaffe is amused for a few reasons:

1) TiVo's been offering this for ages already - in their homepage long-form ads/content as well as overlays in select 30-second ads

2) This concept is all over my book. In the chapter on on-demand consumption, I talking about "commercials frozen in time" where consumers will be able to enter "new worlds" i.e. go deeper into commercials of interest without missing a second of regular programming.

3) Is this nothing but an extremely elementary demonstration of "interactive" i.e. go to the Web and check out any form of online advertising?

If anything, I'm surprised by how basic the offering is...click to get more information or one-click (sorry, Amazon) to get a brochure or free sample...how very Wink of you.

Make no mistake, it is the future of television advertising and will inject new life into the mothball-smelling 30-second spot. It's new marketing 101 my friends: give the consumers who give a damn about you/your product or brand/your message the means to do something about that need. It's a clear sign that the 30-second spot is morphing into its new role: a foot in the door; a conversation starter.

What you crave

Don't judge me based on the fact I started watching Harold & Kumar go to White Castle, but I just had to marvel at how such a sumpremely branded ad could have been created like in this movie.

Most of all, it's honest...White Castle is what you crave (when you're as high as a kite and have the munchies)

Anyone know to what degree this was paid for? Or in fact (like Castaway), did they just barter the deal with hundreds of thousands of square gifts from heaven?

Forget permission, the next ad model will be enforced/mandatory viewing

You got to hand it to the Japanese...they're one step ahead of us all. Rather than face up to the realities that consumers are weaning themselves off irrelevant advertising and turning to DVR's like TiVo for respite....rather than figure out the solution, doesn't it just make sense to focus on the problem instead? After all, if those ungrateful sods of consumers don't get it...we'll make 'em get it. Consumers, you can run, but you can't hide! (insert evil laugh here)

Segue to the final act of desperation, courtesy of PVRWire that Japanese broadcasters are throwing their toys that skipping ads is a violation of copyright law. HUH? Come on guys, this big brother mentality is both juvenile and short-sighted. Instead of bullying your consumers and trying in vain to preserve an old-world order, why not just rededicate yourselves to creativity, better targeting, contextual relevance and the creation of branded experiences (not necessarily in that order)

Sidenote: Another sign that Life after the 30-second spot is very much a global challenge and imperative.

Chuck and the Crispin Factory

On Thursday night, about 150 Minneapolis advertising folk gathered at Le Meridien (cool hotel) for the second leg of round 2 of the Battle for the HeArt. Headliner was none other than Chairman of CP+B, Chuck Porter (some say he put the Porter in Crispin, Porter + Bogusky)

First of all, I want to send a big shout out to my Twin Cities brothers and sisters. It was great to meet you all.

Here are some highlights from Chuck’s speech. In a nutshell, Chuck’s message was that creativity is creativity – no matter which form or definition you might choose to describe, outline or define it.

Another DVR Silver Bullet for the Toothless 30-second Werewolf

Not sure why Lifetime would want to produce research which adds fuels to the raging debate about the future of the 30-second spot, but I thank them nonetheless.

As reported by MediaWeek, it is women (and therefore not men) who are in the “driver’s seat” when it comes to DVR use.

To quote their Senior VP of Research, Tim Brooks, the results are “dramatic and counterintuitive” and some highlights include:

·         48% of married women say the decision to purchase a DVR was their own

·         55% of the wives claim superior knowledge of the DVR’s features, compared to their hubbies

·         Here’s the big one: 99% of women say they use their DVRs to zap through commercial spots (jaffe note: find me the 1% and let me sponsor their frontal lobotomy)

·         Here are some 90-degree stats for your:

o       98% said they would recommend DVR to a friend

o       94% said the service was “worth the cost.”

Citizen Marketing – jaffe style

I’m sick and tired of threatening dumbass companies with action…I’m going to start taking some.

Today’s specially selected will include Northwest Airlines and indirectly, Delta. They are being fairly or unfairly singled out – not because of what they did, but because of what they didn’t do. You can decide whether my rant is justified or not; whether these two companies are innocent, scapegoats, guilty by association, or just ‘orrible.

CBS = Common Broadband Sense

(insert 50% sarcastic, 50% genuine clap here) So CBS announced that they're going to be launching a 24 hour broadband news channel online....bypassing cable (so no CBS News - fair and balanced) and rather catering to the exploding shift from nightly news on the network's terms to always-on on-demand consumption.

Maybe it's due to the fact that network news is in the TOILET (ya think?)...but smartly (here's the credit part) they're leveraging the reality that their brand means something (even in a post Rather Reality) to consumers.

Personally, I'm glad they've showed up to play and in so doing, will stop being bitch slapped by the CAB (Cable) and quite frankly the Web. This is one of those times where if can't beat 'em, join 'em....

Now here are the cautions/concerns:

1) Will they just dump/transplant their content online with a similar advertising proposition i.e. same shit, different (time of) day...or will the evolve the offering...say to incorporate search

2) Will they put dedicated and specialized resources on this or just overwork their terrestrial folk who may not "get it"

3) Will their tree falling make a sound? Meaning will anyone care and/or show up? CBS and their network brothers and sisters are way behind the major online portals in terms of recurring and substantial traffic (gulp, reach) Put different, will they invest substantially in migrating/growing/attracting the kind of traffic they need (beyond the pathetic, "I'm going to mention the website address at the end of my broadcast only because they forced me to" attempts by current newsreaders?

Either way....it's a smart move, albeit an inevitable one.

Citizen marketing is great...unless all companies suck

I've been following Jeff Jarvis' "Dell Hell" on his influential blog, BuzzMachine and this morning picked up Jennifer Rice's lament with Comcast via @d:tech as reported in MediaPost.

To call Jarvis' comprehensive account of his hell with Dell scathing, would be to call the Unibomber misunderstood. It was worse. The amount of negative PR generated continued to snowball and the hundreds of like-minded consumer comments served as a proxy of what is unquestionably many thousands more of disgruntled and underserved customers.

The harder Jarvis pushed, the more Dell resisted until eventually Jarvis e-mailed Dell's CMO and Chief "Ethics" Officer.

The other day I blogged how hard it is to get hold of a human at Amazon, and it appears that all of the successes of the post dot-com boom are all in the same leaking boat - eBay, Amazon, Dell etc etc etc - why the hell are thier customer service arms virtually non-existent? That's rhetorical. It's the money, stupid. It's the money

Flea-twood Mac (geddit?)

Far be it for me to not jump on the bandwagon which seems to be spreading through the Web like a bad case of fleas on a mutt.

Here are my observations of this very humorous CGC creation:

1) It was created by a bloke by the name of Scott Kelby, who - according to his very humble website - is editor in chief of photoshop user magazine. Bottom line is that this is a pretty damn good way to generate some business through dramatic increased traffic to one's website, no?

2) It was posted on nytimes.com and seemingly was ONLY available on NYTimes. What an interesting turn of events to see something this viral being distributed through a MSM outlet like this. [insert your own thoughts here] I did manage to find a Quicktime version of it (linkable via the graphic)

ROy-Vey!

Every now and then, a ROI study comes out to completely underscore the fact that marketers really don’t have a clue which half or three-quarters of their budgets are being absolutely flushed down the toilet.

As reported in the new MediaBuyerPlanner, a new study by the ANA, Forrester and MMA revealed:

·         

60% of marketers believe measuring ROI is important, but only 20% feel they do it well.

·         

73% of 135 senior-level marketers surveyed, lack confidence in their ability to understand the sales impact of a marketing campaign

Personally, I would find out exactly who the other 40% of respondents - who didn’t feel that measuring ROI was important – are, and make sure they were instantly fired or thrown in jail.

• A 2004 study by the ROI Council concluded that ROI analysis prompted nearly half of advertisers and agencies to alter their 2005 media buying plans.

Scarier still is the fact that despite the inept and unconfident points of view demonstrated by the marketing decision makers in this study towards ROI, they’re still making mission critical decisions based on this limited, incomplete and flawed information.

Hey, I got an idea. Let’s hold the Internet to a ridiculously high, siloed and unrealistic standard, while we continue to plough money into old marketing based on nothing more than faded fumes of the past, a longing to return to the good old days of 3 networks, and of course a guarantee that we’ll be wined, dined and 69’ed and taken to Cannes, the SuperBowl and other Boondoglish excursions.

We should all be ashamed of ourselves. Grrrr.