my 2 cents

New Happy Meal character making McDonald's customers unhappy

 

Here's a good example of the error in thinking that because something works well in one country that it can be successful in another culture.

McDonald's now has a PR problem on its hands, after introducing its newest mascot "Happy," which, according to the company's news release, is "a new animated Happy Meal character that brings fun and excitement to kids’ meals while also serving as an ambassador for balanced and wholesome eating."

The problem is more attention is being paid to the public's negative response to the character than to the company's "balanced and wholesome" Happy Meals.

Despite the character's success in Europe, people here are making an uproar via social media, which is spilling over to mainstream media and becoming an even bigger story.  Some parents are complaining online that the Happy character is too scary, with its open mouth lined by big teeth.

I don't know about that, but I do feel sorry for the poor McDonald's workers who will have to wear one of those costumes outside the store, especially as the summer heat begins.

 

Are we smart with our smartphones?

 

Fifty-six percent of us now have smartphones. That number keeps growing every year.

MediaLife recently reported on a survey taken earlier this year on how we use our smartphones.  The study looked at how much time we spend doing various tasks on our phones.                                               Photo: New York Times

On average, we spend 2 hours and 42 minutes using our smartphones every day.  That number seems to have plateaued, rising by only four minutes after much bigger gains over the previous five years.  

The biggest percentage of time on smartphones is used on Facebook -- 17 percent.  All other social media sites, combined, account for 9.5 percent of smartphone time. 

YouTube takes up 4 percent, and Twitter is at 1.5 percent.

Gaming takes up 32 percent, via downloaded games and apps. 

The study didn't measure how much time we spend emailing, texting, taking pictures and videos on our phones.  Oh, and also, making and taking calls on the phone.

 

 

 

Smart marketing: Follow your target

 

Until yesterday, I don't think I had heard about an online series called "Between Two Ferns," hosted by comic actor Zach Galifianakis, possibly best-known for his role in the sophomoric "The Hangover."

But I'm not part of the demographic target that the White House is trying to reach with messages about the Affordable Healthcare Act.  The success of the President's initiative depends partly on younger people -- Millennials -- signing on so their premiums can help offset benefits that will be paid out largely to the older demos like me and my peers.

So I'd say it was a smart move to have President Obama go on the edgy comic talk show and submit to the intentionally rude and bizarre questioning by Galifianakis, whose questions included "How does it feel to be the last black President of the U.S.?" 

The interview was so strange and far from the norm for the President that it got tons of views, largely by the younger people that the White House has been trying to reach -- people who are probably not watching the shows where the President would normally appear, like the Sunday morning news shows.  Far beyond the program's normal viewership of perhaps hundreds of thousands, viral pickup of the interview has taken the total audience well above seven million so far, and there's sure to be lots more as the story gets out via both mainstream media and social media.

This is a good example of an important marketing tactic -- go where your target audience is.  A story in The New York Times calls this "the latest public relations gamble that Mr. Obama and his aides have taken in their pursuit of new ways to deliver their message to the connected-but-distracted generation." 

And it looks like it's paying off, with some 20,000 visits to the Obamacare website within just a few hours after the interview first went up.  Smart.

They just don't learn. Another Kimmel prank fools many TV newspeople

 

Jimmy Kimmel did it again.  Looks like many people on news desks at local TV stations and some networks just don't verify stuff when it's on the web.

Kimmel phonied up footage of a wolf supposedly stalking the dorms where the Olympics athletes are housed, and he got U.S. Olympic team member Kate Hansen to post it on her YouTube feed.

Take a look at all these newscasters around the country who talked about it, thinking it was the real thing.  It's a funny clip, but it points again to a serious problem with the authenticity of things we see online. 

 

  

 

Is Facebook passe among younger users?

So where else are young people going online?  And who are they talking to?

 

If you believe media reports, Facebook has gone out of favor with the younger demos, ages 14 - 34.

But a recent survey, reported this week by Adweek, shows that 66 percent of people ages 14 - 34 are frequent users of FB.  What's changing is that they're increasingly using other platforms as well -- mainly YouTube.

Another study, meanwhile, shows that nearly two-thirds of young people have joined at least one social network by the time they're 10 years old.  The survey, by the London School of Economics, found that 28 percent of British kids ages 9 and 10 already have a personal profile on a social network -- mostly Facebook.  That number has more than doubled over the past year and a half.

The U.S. has restrictions on how marketers interact online with kids under 13 -- basically, they can't.  And although many parents restrict (or try) what their kids can do online, the growing access to mobile devices makes parental control ever more challenging.  Once a kid has a social network profile, he or she becomes a target for sometimes questionable people -- scammers or, worse yet, pedophiles.

There's a TV station in New York that for years has been asking this question at the start of the 10 p.m. newscast -- "It's 10 p.m.  Do you know where your children are?"

The challenge these days is more like, "It's any time during the day.  Do you know what your children are doing online and who they're talking to?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Super Bowl: It's About the Ads

 

The big pre-Super Bowl story this year was about the weather in New York -- would the first outdoor Bowl played in a northern climate be played in single-digit temps or be snowed out?  But New York delivered good football weather yesterday, and the previous few days were also a hit for the hundreds of thousands who flooded Times Square and Broadway for the NFL marketing extravaganza "Super Bowl Boulevard." 

The ads did make news, but this year in a slightly different way.  One predictable story angle was the ever-increasing cost -- as much as $4 million for a 30-second spot. 

But the other angle, as Stuart Elliott pointed out in a New York Times video report, is that many of the Super Bowl ads got huge viewership even before the opening kickoff yesterday at Met Life Stadium.  Thanks to the combination of advance publicity in traditional media and added chatter on social media, some of the ads got millions of views days before the big game.  And, those views probably weren't interrupted by the distractions of bathroom breaks and reaching for the chips and wings.

As Stuart says in the video clip, people who've seen the ads beforehand talked about "that Cadillac ad" rather than saying "a car ad."  Releasing the ads in advance and putting them up on social media added visibility and brand awareness... a win-win.

 

B to B marketers feeling their oats again

 

It looks like business-to-business marketers are feeling optimistic these days.  Forrester Research, as reported in Advertising Age, says B to B marketing budgets are expected to rise by 6 percent this year.

B to B marketing budgets had fallen considerably in 2009 and 2010, in the wake of the recession.  But they came back up a bit over the past two years, although they're still a lot below pre-recession marketing spending levels.

On average, B to B marketers will allocate 4 percent of revenues to marketing, which is up from a low of 2.5 percent in 2012, but that's still quite a bit less the 5 - 10 percent of revenues that was spent on marketing pre-recession.

Trade shows will remain the biggest single line item in the typical B to B marketing budget, accounting for nearly 20 percent of the total marketing spend.  Thirty percent of those surveyed by Forrester plan to decrease trade show spending this year, while 21 percent will increase it.

Social media will be an increasing factor in B to B marketing, experts are saying, but it still remains a fraction of what consumer marketers will try in the social media arena. 

LinkedIn seems to be the preferred social media platform for B to B, even as some experts are predicting MySpace will make a comeback.  That might be true for companies in the music and entertainment arenas, but I don't see it happening for most B to B marketers.  MySpace hasn't been on most people's radar for a few years.

Whichever marketing tools are utilized -- advertising, trade shows, PR, social media -- the pressure is on, obviously, to get more for less.  Budgets may be growing a bit, but they're still tight.

 

Young people, media and stereotypes

 

The younger generations are constantly online, socializing mainly via social media, as they share every little details of their lives with friends and strangers online.  And they don't read magazines and rarely watch TV.  That's what we boomers and Gen Xers tend to think, if you put any faith in the stereotypes we constantly see when we think of Millennials (Generation Y) and the younger Generation Z.

(An aside here:  This is the first I've seen of Gen Z, which is used to categorize the teen children of the Generation Xers, who are themselves the kids of the boomers.  Got that?  And I wonder, what will the next group be called after Gen Z?  Do we start back at the beginning with Gen A?)

But back to those stereotypes...

Two separate studies, reported in MediaLife and Media Daily News this week, show those stereotypes may not be so accurate after all. 

More than half of Millennials say they prefer to socialize offline, and 63 percent say they communicate face to face more than they do online.  They're active on Facebook, but teens are not as interested.  It's something teens have grown up with, so there's no "wow" factor for them, and it becomes even less cool as they see their parents and grandparents on FB.

Teens seem to be a bit more careful about posting personal information online, with just under half saying they share nothing or close to nothing personal online.  They're also realizing how long personal information can stay online, and the get the importance of maintaining privacy.  Looks like they've learned from the older generations' mistakes online.   

Teens (Gen Z) are online a lot, up 37 percent last spring as compared to a year earlier.  Online time for other groups, including Gen X, remained fairly steady.  The study says much of the increase has come from the growth of tablets and smartphones, whose prices have been coming down and thus more accessible to younger people.  Teen ownership of smartphones, for example, grew last year from 35 percent up to 55 percent.

The study had another finding that belies stereotypes.  The younger generations, especially teens, like magazines.  More than two-thirds of teens say they prefer printed magazines over digital e-zines.  That's encouraging news for publishers.

One would think traditional TV is dying, if we believe all the articles we see.  But more than half of the young people surveyed say they prefer watching TV or video on a traditional TV set, rather than on a laptop or the so-called second screens of mobile devices.

So much for stereotypes.

 

 

 

 

Who should "own" Social Media?

 

Here's something to add to the continuing discussion regarding where responsibility for social media should lie in the corporate organization chart.  It's been an ongoing battle between marketing, PR and advertising, with some adding customer relations into the mix.

A survey by The Creative Group, reported in MediaPost a few days ago, adds some fuel to the fire.  The survey of marketing and ad executives shows that 39 percent of them feel social media outreach belongs under the purview of the communications/PR department.  Thirty-five percent say it should reside in the marketing dept., and 15 percent feel it should be assigned to the customer relations dept.  Five percent felt it should be a direct responsibility of the CEO.

MediaPost writer Erik Sass adds his own opinion that social media should be the responsibility of all the departments mentioned above.

In theory, he's right.  But in real-world practice, one person or one department needs to have day-to-day responsibility for the organization's social media outreach and dialogue.

My vote is for the PR department. 

The PR discipline is supposed to be sensitive to the impact and tone of communications.  The PR person or PR department is supposed to be most adept at putting ideas into words that explain, motivate or convince an intended audience.  If that audience happens to be reached via social media, the tool that is utilized is still words, or in some cases words and pictures or video.  But it's all based on the written word, which is what we in Public Relations are supposed to best at.

The PR person can't -- and shouldn't -- work in a vacuum, though.  That's where all the other departments come in.  Guidelines should be established based on input from the marketing and advertising folks, the customer service people, the lawyers (ugh) and possibly even the CEO as well.  But implementation and day-to-day dialogue via social media should be under the guidance of the PR people.

There should be protocols established so predetermined actions can be taken if a problem or firestorm erupts online, as we've seen happen.  That's when it might be necessary to have group decisions made regarding content and wording. 

But everyday communications via social media should be, in my opinion, handled and overseen by the PR people.  They're the ones who should be most adept at a company's communications with the world beyond the boardroom.

 

 

Where we use our smartphones ... Not only in the car

 

One of the areas of specialization in my Public Relations practice is traffic safety.  I've been working in this segment of PR for more than 20 years, since I organized and publicized the first World Traffic Safety Symposium for the New York Auto Show.

The Auto Show work led to a contract for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and then the National Road Safety Foundation, a non-profit that produces safe driving educational programs and distributes them free to schools, police and individuals.  I've also done work for companies that market traffic safety-related products including one I recently started with -- a just-launched cellphone app called LifeSaver that prevents the user from texting and driving.

I know how big and important an issue texting and distraction is.  It's up there as one of the top causes of traffic crashes... just behind impairment. 

A recent Forrester Research study shows that 68 percent of us access the internet from our cars.  Hopefully, not all are driving when they do that, but it's easy to see what a big danger cellphones have become for those of us on the road.

The survey also shows that 64 percent go online via mobile devices in our living rooms; 63 percent in restaurants; 61 percent in the bedroom; 51 percent in the kitchen; 50 percent in the bathroom; 45 percent on public transit.

The restaurant figure shows how addicted we've become to being connected.  We've all been in restaurants where you'll see a group of people at a table -- all looking down at their phones instead of engaging in conversation with their tablemates.  As for the bathroom statistic -- well, I guess going online is yet another way to be productive in the bathroom.  Talk about multi-tasking!

George Simpson, who writes for Media Daily News, has a good column on the subject.  It'll give you a chuckle as you scratch your head and wonder... "What are we becoming?"  Or as Simpson headlines his column:  "Sure signs that society is starting to crumble."