REICH COMMUNICATIONS

Creativity in a Bubble

 

A couple of recent missteps by advertisers and their agencies reminds me of how too many ad concepts are created in a bubble.

We all saw the upset that a recent Pepsi ad created when many people thought it trivialized the Black Lives Matter movement and what it represents.

This week McDonald’s faced a twitter-storm over a new ad that’s been running in the U.K.  The ad, critics say, exploits childhood bereavement for a deceased father.  McDonald’s agreed to pull the spot after a huge outcry in England, all of it negative for McDonald’s.  Thanks to social media, the news spread far beyond the U.K., hurting the McDonald's brand.

Another ad, for Nationwide, caused a stir after it aired on the 2015 Super Bowl.  The insurance company had to defensively explain its intentions as social media chatter turned overwhelmingly negative.  Both the Nationwide and McDonald’s ads had a common theme that went awry -- deceased family members.

Why does this continue to happen?

I think it’s because of how ad concepts come to be and how they are presented to clients.  The creative process is, sometimes, hatched and incubated in a bubble. 

Many years ago when I had just started my own PR business, I had an ad agency client.  It was a well-known and well-regarded shop, known for its creative flair.  The agency was invited to present to a potential new client – a copier company.  PR was part of the RFP, so I was asked to participate in the pitch.  The PR component was fairly straightforward – product PR and case histories.

I sat in on the agency’s internal sessions as they were developing strategy and creative for the pitch.  They had just hired a supposed hot shot as EVP and Creative Director and this was the first pitch where he was leading the charge.

The internal meeting where the new CD presented the proposed creative was a big dog & pony show, but honestly, I was not impressed.  In fact, I thought the whole creative concept was wrong and maybe even a bit offensive.

When the CD finished, there was silence in the room.  Finally, someone broke the silence to say he thought it was very creative.  Once the ice was broken, everyone else was effusive about what a groundbreaking and creative idea it was.  I was a bit intimidated and feeling out of my element, so I kept my mouth shut.  I was happy just to be part of the pitch.  But I had my doubts.  Creative, maybe.  But good for selling copiers, or that particular brand of copiers?  I wasn’t convinced.

I remember the day we went up to Connecticut to present to the client.  The agency president introduced the new EVP/CD, reeling off his accomplishments and all the creative awards he had won.  The new guy talked a little about strategy, and then introduced me for the “mundane” PR stuff, sating he wanted to save the best for last.  I briefly presented the PR component, and the client-to-be said it all made sense and they liked it.

And then, the drama having been built up and the “routine” PR stuff out of the way, came the ad creative presentation.   As they were presenting, it just wasn’t making a lot of sense to me.  But these ad hotshots know what they’re doing, I thought to myself, struggling to get myself to nod and smile as the creatives presented.

They finished and then the client’s marketing director got up.  He said, the PR stuff made a lot of sense, but what the hell were we thinking when we came up with the creative?  He blasted the agency guys and all but threw us out.  As I was leaving, he pulled me aside and said he liked my stuff, but he wanted to hire only one team for advertising and PR, so I was out of the running because I was with that agency.

Twenty-something years later, I now have enough confidence to speak up honestly if I were to find myself in a situation like I was back in the internal creative session.  But back then, I figured all these ad guys at a hot agency must know what’s right. 

Now I know that there’s so much sucking up and fear of being the lone man out on the limb.  It’s part of being in a bubble, where people are afraid to speak up.  It’s like that in too many agencies, just as it’s in many corporate board rooms and now, it seems, even in the White House.

The bubble mentality is what probably got these ad agencies, and their clients McDonald’s, Nationwide and Pepsi into hot water.  Hopefully, they’ll learn from this… but probably not.

What We Do: The Christopher Awards

 

For nearly 20 years we’ve promoted the annual Christopher Awards, a program that recognizes the creators of outstanding and inspiring work in TV, film and books.

This year the writers, producers, authors and illustrators of 21 books for adults and children, along with TV programs and feature films were honored at the 68^th annual Christopher Awards presentation in Manhattan.

It’s always an inspiring event, even though there’s little glitz and glamour often associated with awards programs.  It's not The Oscars.  Instead, this classy but low-key event congratulates and thanks the people who in the past year have done work in the media that shows that every individual can make the world a better place.

Among this year’s winners are the creators of the NBC hit series “This Is Us,” a wonderful program that looks at family dynamics and love over two generations.  The Christopher Award, however, isn’t based on the show’s popularity or tremendous ratings.  The award is for the ongoing look at good family values at work.

Among the winners in the film category is “Hidden Figures,” which tells the little-known story of a group of black women who handled mathematical wizardry for NASA in the 1960s, even as they faced demeaning racial prejudice in the workplace.  These women were called “computers” because that’s the work they did, plotting trajectories and dynamics for space shots before electronic computers were in use.  Their work was crucial in helping America’s space program get off the ground – literally.

What I find interesting among the award winners every year are the books for children.  Some of these books tell simple yet important stories, often with spectacular illustrations.  This year’s Christopher Award-winners in that category include “Ida Always,” which tells the true story of two polar bears in the Central Park Zoo and what happens after one of them dies.  Joan Bauer’s book “Soar” tells of a 12-year-old who loves baseball but can’t play because of a heart condition.  The beautifully illustrated “What Do You Do With a Problem” helps kids of kindergarten age understand that everyone faces problems, but there are usually ways to deal with them.

It’s not always easy to generate media interest in these awards, because they usually don’t involve big celebrities. (We have had celebs over the years, like James Earl Jones, Mister Rogers and the Sesame Street characters.)  But we get exposure for many of the book authors in their hometown media.  We get features about some of our winners and the work they do on wire services and newspaper syndicates.  We get coverage in the trade media and in the religious press.  And sometimes we get a TV interview, when a producer recognizes the human interest value of an award-winner’s work.

It’s a challenge, but it’s one we’re up to and one we enjoy tackling.

What's in a Name?

 

 

The name Michael has fallen from the top spot as the most popular name for American boys for the first time in 43 years. 

The Social Security Administration’s annual list, based on new names registered for Social Security numbers, showed only 14,000 Michaels named last year, the lowest for that name since 1940 and putting it number 8 on the list of most popular names.

Noah ranked number one last year.

Emma was the top name for girls last year.

When we named our kids, back in 1975 and 1981, the names we picked were, coincidentally, the most popular names at the time.  In 1981 Michael was still enjoying its run at the top of the list, and in 1975 Jennifer was #1.  It’s now #273.  Both our kids told us when they were in school that they wished we hadn’t picked the most popular names for them, since they were always one of three or four Jennifers and Michaels in their classes.

I remember as a kid not seeing many other Davids, although my name did hit the top of the list back in 1960.  That was the first and only year it was the top boy’s name.

Here are the full top 10 lists…

For boys, in order from 1 to 10:   Noah, Liam, William, Mason, James, Benjamin, Jacob, Michael, Elijah and Ethan.

For girls:  Emma, Olivia, Ava, Sophia, Isabella, Mia, Charlotte, Abigail, Emily and Harper.

It's interesting that despite how much these two names were in the news, neither Hillary nor Donald showed much of a change in popularity.  The name Donald dropped 40 spots last year, to #488.  The name Hillary has never been on the top 1,000 names.

"Failing" Media Booming

 

The "failing" New York Times is doing well, despite pronouncements to the contrary by the White House.  It seems that being in the cross hairs of the president is giving The Times and other "fake" news outlets a real boost.

The Times is seeing a real surge in digital readers, as well as in print.  The paper reports it now has 2.2 million digital readers, dwarfing the print circulation.  And what's even better news is that many are paid online subscribers.   

The paper is seeing digital revenues from online subscriptions and digital advertising getting to the point of offsetting the ongoing loss of print ad pages.  It’s a trend that’s been happening for the past few years, accelerated over the past several months by the outrageous political situation we’ve been enduring.

Digital subscriptions rose by 418% over the past six years, to $233 million, while print subscription revenues dropped by 2% to $648 million. 

Other "fake" news outlets are also enjoying a boom.  CNN and MSNBC are enjoying record numbers of viewers, as people are looking to get reliable coverage and analysis of the craziness in D.C.

And independent non-profit investigative news organizations like Pro Publica are seeing many new readers and a solid increase in donations from a public hungry for honest investigative reporting.

For major media, it seems that being called “the enemy of the people” by POTUS may actually be a good thing.

Vinyl

Saturday marked the 10th anniversary of Record Store Day.

If you're a boomer or Gen Xer, you'll know what a record is. 

Records were the source of music for most of us, beyond the radio. They were packaged in cardboard albums with great photos and illustrations, and liner notes with info on the songs and the musicians.  Some of those albums have themselves become collectors' items, worth far more than the original $5.99 to $15.99 cost of albums back in the day.

Tape cassettes and then CDs seemed to spell the end of music on vinyl records.  Record stores that used to be filled with row after row of vinyl record albums began to replace vinyls with CDs, relegating record albums to small areas that carried only the top sellers.  That meant if you were looking for jazz, classical or anything beyond the Top 40 hits, you were probably out of luck.

And then came downloading and streaming, and record stores themselves began to disappear.

Through all the changes, however, there's always been small group of music lovers who clung to vinyl. They preferred the fuller sound that vinyl provided, as opposed to the crisp yet somewhat clipped digital sound of CDs.  Some alternative and punk bands put their recordings out on vinyl, perhaps as a way to thumb their noses at the music establishment. 

And then along came the millennials, always looking for something new but, in doing so, often "discovering" for themselves the things of their elders.  And that included music and the format for listening to it.  Vinyl record stores began cropping up in neighborhoods populated by the young generation.

Vinyl records last year hit a 25-year high mark, with more than 13 million units sold -- a 53% jump from sales of 2015.  It was the first year that vinyl record sales outpaced digital downloads, in terms of dollars spent.  And industry experts project vinyl sales to hit 40 million units this year, worth $1 billion.

Even as vinyl sales have been growing for the past ten years, it's still a drop in the bucket from the heyday when, in 1981, a billion vinyl albums were sold with dollar volume exceeding $5 billion.

Today vinyl represents about 6% of the $15 billion recorded music market.

Record Store Day celebrates and promotes the vinyl music format, just as it celebrates record stores themselves. Several hundred record stores have opened throughout the U.S. in the past five years, proving that vinyl is not dead.

For musicians, fans and retailers, that's music to the ears.

 

 

 

This "two-fer" is a bad deal

 

Two-for-one is usually a good deal, but not when it comes to government regulations designed to keep us safe.

I understand the desire to make the federal government smaller.  But when it comes to laws and regulations that help keep us safe, whether on the road, in the air, or with the things we eat and drink, two-for-one is not at all a good thing.

David Friedman, former acting director of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) explains in human terms how the new administration's executive order that stipulates that for every new regulation put in place by government agencies at least two must be repealed, is a very bad and dangerous idea.

Here's what Friedman wrote on the blog of the Union of Concerned Scientists.  It's not political -- it's about keeping us safe.

....

Imagine you are in the market for a new car. You are excited to buy one with a new technology that will warn you of an imminent crash so you have enough time to hit the brakes to save your son’s or daughter’s life and your own. The car salesman tells you he’s got just the car for you, and it comes with his new two-for-one deal. To get that one new feature, you have to give up two others, brakes and seat belts.

You’d never take that deal, but it is exactly the kind of situation the President has created for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and every other agency responsible for protecting American’s health and safety.

This “two-for-one” executive order, signed January 30th, 2017, requires every agency to get rid of at least two regulations for every new one they seek to put in place to help make American’s lives better off. Making matters worse, the health, safety, and other regulations that must be eliminated must at least offset the industry investment required to meet the new regulation–regardless of the benefits of the new or older regulations!

So, take my not-so-hypothetical example above. When I was NHTSA’s Acting Administrator, we put out an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking that would require new cars to come equipped with radios that would allow them to “talk” to one another, sharing basic safety information that would allow a car car to warn the driver of another equipped vehicle on a collision course. This vehicle to vehicle, V2V, communication system is estimated to prevent 425,000–524,500 crashes per year when fully implemented. Saving lives and avoiding injuries would deliver savings of $53 to $71 billion, dwarfing the investments automakers would have to make to equip vehicles with the new technology, therefore delivering positive net benefits within 3-5 years.

But under the “two-for-one” executive order, those benefits just don’t matter, the lives saved and injuries avoided just don’t matter. Instead, other regulations, like those requiring seat belts and brakes, would need to be repealed to offset the investment costs… again, ignoring the lives lost and harmed along the way. And if those two don’t cut the costs to industry enough, even more would need to be eliminated, putting even more lives at risk.

When you consider that in 2015 alone, 35,092 people lost their lives and 2.44 million people were injured in traffic crashes in the United States, it is clear that the “two-for-one” executive order is a very bad deal for our nation.

Making matters worse, this same raw deal applies to fuel economy standards that NHTSA is set to finalize for 2022-2025 to help nearly double fuel economy compared to where we were at the beginning of the decade. So, will NHTSA have to repeal safety standards to make more room to cut the high cost of our oil use? I expect they would never make that trade. I expect it would be the same for the Department of Energy (DOE), where I had the opportunity to help establish efficiency standards for household and commercial appliances. I don’t think the DOE would repeal appliance efficiency standards that are estimated to save consumers more than $2 trillion by 2030 if they had to both offset the industry investment costs of new ones and ignore the benefits of them all.

The “two-for-one” executive order is good for only one thing: grinding to a halt federal efforts to save lives, protect our health, and help us spend less money fueling our cars and heating and cooling our homes.

 

Zissen Pesach

 

(A sweet Passover)

 

Advertisers speak with their feet

 

The flap over the revelation that FOX paid out some $13 million to hush several women who threatened lawsuits against FOX star Bill O’Reilly has moved advertisers on the show to take action.

At last count, some 50 advertisers have pulled their spots from “The O’Reilly Factor,” FOX’s top-rated show. That hurts O’Reilly, but not necessarily FOX. Many simply moved their ad schedules onto other FOX shows.

It does show, however, that social issues and public outrage on those issues do matter to many marketers. Whatever their feelings might be on issues, they don’t want to risk alienating customers and potential customers by having their ads run in a risky environment.

It’s the same thinking that has prompted many advertisers to pull ads from controversial and hate-mongering sites like Breitbart. In the case of the O’Reilly ads, MediaPost reports that many of the brands that pulled their spots have seen substantial increases in digital engagement, being cited in tweets and other social media shares and comments. Most were reported as neutral, about one-third to nearly half as positive, and a tiny portion—1 percent – as negative toward the advertiser.

The big question: Has the move resulted in any added business for the advertisers? It is probably too early to know that, but it looks like the move to pull ads will not hurt the marketers.

It’s interesting to note that, even as there is so much public outrage toward O’Reilly over this, our president stands by him in tweets and public comments. Perhaps based on comments we’ve all seen him make and allegations we’ve heard, he doesn’t see such sexual harassment as a bad thing. The predator-in-chief sets a wonderful example.

Differentiating "Real" from "Fake"

 

The phrase of the year for 2016 - 2017 will have to be "Fake News."

Millions of Americans were bamboozled by fake news involving the presidential candidates during the election, much of it, we are now learning, coming from a meddlesome Russia, with others coming from hacking entrepreneurs in eastern Europe looking to cash in on clickbait headlines and phony stories.

Some fake news came from talk radio and cable channels.  And some came from party operatives and PACs on both sides.

Some of the fake information was easy to discern as false.  But much has been presented in fairly convincing ways that have fooled many of us. 

Another part of the problem comes from sensational or erroneous headlines.  We are bombarded constantly with information from every angle -- in legitimate media and now also on social media, often forwarded or shared by people we know, even if only online.  With so much coming at us, it's easy to just glance at a headline or maybe the first line of a story and then stop. 

But the impression may be made.  And therein lies the problem.  How do we tell the difference between what's real and what's not?

I have my own ways of truing to tell the difference.  I trust legitimate media.  Even with those media that I trust, I check to see if it's hard news or opinion.  I'm cautious about what I believe when it's been shared.  Articles can be altered or totally made up when shared online.  If I see something that looks like it's from a PAC-funded source -- you get to recognize them after a while -- I usually just ignore it altogether.  That goes for things from Democratic-slanted sites as well... and I'm a Democrat.  I want information that's truthful, not simply slanted the way I might think.

I'm pleased to see a major project that's being launched to increase trust in real journalism and help educate people to understand how to recognize real and fake news.  It's called the News Integrity Initiative, administered by the CUNY (City University of New York) Graduate School of Journalism. 

Thanks to the support of some major businesses and non-partisan organizations like Facebook, AppNexus, Mozilla, the Ford Foundation, the Craig Newmark (Craigslist) Philanthropic Fund and others, the News Integrity Initiative will open its doors with $14 million working capital, to start the process of educating people about what real journalism is and how it works to strive for the unbiased truth.  

I'm sure we'll be hearing more about it.  I am so glad to see something like this now.  It is needed so much.

 

 

Just in... 4/6/17  Check this out.  The founder of eBay is giving $100 million for investigative journalism and to help fight fake news.   From Adweek, read it here. 

Automakers Show Sense of Humor

 

The big business of marketing cars is usually serious stuff -- putting emphasis on things like speed, sleek beauty, freedom of movement and, over the past few years, safety and technology.

Here are two examples of car companies using a sense of humor, appropriate for April Fools Day, as they introduce two "new" technology features. 

Honda borrows from the social media phenomenon of emoji with its new emoji car horn.  Here's a link to the ad.

And Lexus introduces its Lane Valet feature, which I'm sure many of us wish was a real option.  The press release they put out summarizes it.  The fictitious press release says: “This advanced system will improve traffic flow by assisting the movement of slower moving vehicles from the left lane into the more appropriate right lane, which, in turn, helps make the highway safe and more enjoyable for all parties. Utilizing unprecedented radar and lane monitoring technology, in conjunction with 802.11p V2V wireless data protocol, this new semi-autonomous system will help Lexus drivers to communicate temporarily with the slower vehicle and do the driver the courtesy of safely moving their vehicle for them.” 

Here's their ad for Lane Valet.

Now if only they'd come out with cars that run on batteries and drive themselves.  Oh, wait...