REICH COMMUNICATIONS

Trick or Treat

 

Americans will spend $9 billion on Halloween this year, says the National Retail Federation.

The group’s annual Halloween spending survey found 70 percent of us will celebrate, whether partying, attending parades or hayrides, trick-or-treating or just staying be at home handing out candies and goodies to goblins who come to the front door.

For kids, the favorite costumes will again be princesses for girls and super-heroes for boys.  Adults who dress up will favor witches, vampires, zombies and, of course, sexy nurses.  Even pets get in the act, with bumble bees, hot dogs and pumpkins expected to be the most popular doggie outfits.

The average store-bought costume runs about $45, the National Retail Federation says.

When I was a trick-or-treater, back in medievel times, most kids made their costumes -- usually helped by their moms.  I remember going as a ghost (in an old bed sheet), a hobo (in dirty tattered clothes and smudged makeup on my face), a witch (with a mop head for hair and a homemade cone hat).  The only store-bought item might have been a mask.

 

                                                             My grandpup Martin in costume

One year I went as a robot.  I had rescued a big cardboard carton, maybe from a refrigerator, and Mom  helped me cut out holes for my arms and head.  Dials and gauges were made from tin foil and my face was covered with silver-colored makeup.  It was pretty impressive.

But as I tried to get through the front door, I got stuck.  Although we had been able to squeeze the carton through when it was empty, once I was in it with my arms sticking out, it was too wide. 

It definitely hampered my candy collecting, but it was a Halloween I still remember.

It should be interesting to see how many, if any, homemade costumes I see in my doorway tonight.

 

A cautionary note: NHTSA says kids are twice as likely to get hit by a car on Halloween, so drive carefully and stay alert.

 

 

Shorter is Better - For TV Ads

Shorter TV ads get more viewer attention than longer ones.  That's what research recently reported by Television News Daily says.

Ten-second ads get about ten percent more attention than 30-second spots, and 20 percent more than 60-second ads.

This doesn't seem like earth-shaking news.  To me, it sort of stands to reason.  A shorter ad is less of an intrusion. 

The challenge, though, for a shorter ad is you have less time to draw and hold the viewer's attention, and less time to get across a convincing marketing message.  Shorter ads might be used in combination with the more traditional 30s or 60s, which have the time to get across the marketing pitch, while the short 10-second spots can serve to keep the brand name out there and possibly remind viewers of the longer ads that have the full marketing info.

We've been seeing short ads -- some even less than 10 seconds -- on the internet for years as pre-roll for online content.  But for those online ads to be seen, marketers need to hook the viewer in the first few seconds so he or she will want to keep watching, rather than click on "Skip Ad."  That's where real creativity comes in... or not.

 

Ads We Like and Those We Hate

 

My wife is participating in a focus group and as a prep question she was asked to list some ads she likes and some she doesn't like. 

We talked about it and we both agreed we love the "Dog Tested" campaign Subaru is running, showing dogs in various situations.  I could watch those ads over and over and, in fact, I've stopped the fast-forward on our DVR so I could watch one of those ads for perhaps the 20th time.

The other question was: what ads do we hate?

Two insurance ads topped out list.  Aflac, for the annoying Aflac duck.  At least they don't use Gilbert Gotfried's grating voice any more, but the voice is still annoying. 

The other ads are the seemingly non-stop pitches from Geico.  Some are funny the first time and maybe even the second time.  But Geico, which is by far TV's biggest advertiser, has them running all the time and everywhere, it seems.  So we hate them because of overexposure.

Now to the key question... Would I buy a Subaru because of the ads, and would I not buy coverage from Geico or Aflac for the same reason?  Hard to say, since many other factors would be in play.  For a car, it would be things like price range, style and comfort, reputation.  For insurance, it would be price and reputation -- reputation not based on the ads but on word-of-mouth regarding how they respond when you have a claim.  But, all other things being equal, I would avoid a company whose ads I hate.  I've done it before with banks.

 

 

 

A major source of info for consumers - PR

 

Articles, features and reviews in the media, including in social media, are a major factor in consumers' purchase decisions.  And much of it results from public relations initiatives – good old publicity.

A new study by Audience Audit, reported in Adweek, says news articles, many generated through PR, are considered by 22 percent of people as a source of information about products. 

The most common source of information comes from online searches, at 66 percent. The second-leading source of information, at 62 percent, is paid advertising -- 37 percent from ads in traditionally media and 25 percent from ads online.

Word of mouth from friends (real ones, not online friends) is the third biggest source of information, at 45 percent.  Word of mouth from family members accounts for 46 percent, and the most common source of information comes from online searches, at 66 percent.

The second-leading source of information, at 62 percent, is paid advertising -- 37 percent from ads in traditionally media and 25 percent from ads online.

Ads, of course, can be costly, especially in print and on TV, while public relations is a relative bargain.  It should usually be a part of a company's marketing mix.

Swoosh

Most brands work hard to avoid controversy, which means they often come off as plain vanilla -- staying quietly in a safe space.

Nike, though, has plunged right into a red-hot polarizing issue, and I think they'll come out ahead long-term.

 

The iconic footwear/athleticwear company, which had maintained its endorsement relationship with controversial football star/pariah Colin Kaepernick, has gone a big step further -- featuring the embattled player in its new ad campaign that celebrates 30 years of the "Just Do It" ad slogan.  The new ad with a close-up of Kaepernick, has the headline "Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything."

The tweeter-in-chief could not, of course, sit quietly on the sidelines for this, and his divisive comments have brought even more attention to the new campaign.  Ad experts estimate Nike has so far received $43 million worth of publicity -- nearly half of it positive, about 20 percent neutral and a quarter negative. 

Among the brand's key demographic -- 18 to 34-year olds -- 56 percent felt on-field protests like what Kaepernick was fired for are appropriate.

Not surprisingly, social media is ablaze with calls to boycott Nike products.  But many online and in surveys are praising the company and say they will buy more Nike products to support its bravery and its standing on principles they agree with.

In the face of the presidential bluster on Twitter, the NFL issued a statement in support of Nike and Kaepernick.  "The NFL believes in dialogue, understanding and unity.  We embrace the role and responsibility of everyone involved with this game to promote meaningful, positive change in our communities.  The social justice issues that Colin and other professional athletes have raised deserve our attention and action," the statement said.

Calling attention to the troubling and complex issue of alleged police brutality, especially in minority communities, is a good thing.  It is not an act of disrespect to our flag, our national anthem or our military, as some would have us think as a way to confuse the issue. It is simply a quiet and peaceful way to call attention to a real issue that we as a society need to deal with.

 

 

 

Brick & Mortar

 

 

It’s hardly news that the retail business has been struggling, as online shopping has become more convenient and more commonplace. 

Some retail segments have been devastated by online retailing.  When was the last time you booked airline tickets or a hotel stay at a storefront travel agency?   

Other segments have tried to stay in the game by lowering prices, chopping margins down to the bone.  But that doesn't work out well, as online competitors can also drop prices without having to carry the costly overhead of workers and rent.

So some brick & mortar retailers are trying things that only brick & mortar stores can do… special events that involve shoppers hands-on.   Even though grocery retailers haven’t suffered the onslaught of online, with 90 percent of women saying they still prefer to buy groceries in a store, food stores bring customers in with lots of in-store activities like food and beverage tastings and cooking and other product demos.

Eighty-seven percent of shoppers surveyed by PopSugar, as reported in ADWEEK, want food samplings at their grocery stores, and 59 percent say they’ll go to a store for a cooking class.

Book retailers (those few that remain in business) also do lots of in-store events – author readings and book signings, cooking demos and experts talking about a variety of subjects covered in books that are for sale right there on the shelves.

Some retail sectors are losing the battle, though, as 63 percent of women say they now buy fashion and accessories online and 54 percent prefer to shop online for beauty and cosmetics products.   Even the consumer electronics and tech sectors are not immune, with 59 percent of women saying they now buy those products online.  Ironically, they often go to the brick & mortar stores to see what’s available and get info from the salespeople before they go home and place an order online for a better price and/or free delivery right to their doorstep.

It’s a real battle, but many brick & mortar retailers can shift it in their favor by offering outstanding customer service, a liberal returns policy and lots of interesting and relevant in-store events.  Those things cost money, but I think smart retailers will see it as a smart investment to bring people into the stores and build customer engagement and loyalty.

Internships - Working for Pay or for Free?

 

Several years ago I wrote a post here advocating pay for interns.  I mentioned how when I used interns, I always paid them, at the very least to cover their lunch and transportation.  I remember it caused a falling-out with a colleague in the office who had two interns who wrote and edited for her beauty blog, for which she got paid by advertisers while the interns, who worked there full-time, got nothing except some free product samples.

At the time, many PR agencies, including large ones, used unpaid interns.

That always bothered me.  Supposedly, an internship is a chance to learn about a business and gain hands-on experience. But from what I saw, many interns learned little more than how to stuff envelopes or do mundane filing and word-processing.  They got little, if any, real instruction about strategy of PR work or how to improve their writing skills.

When I had interns, I took the time to discuss a project, put it into a broader context and explained the hows and whys of what PR people do.  When I gave them back edited news releases, I sat with them and explained why I had made the edits.

I'm happy to see that the free internships are a bit less common these days.  A story in today's Wall Street Journal says that 43 percent of internships are unpaid, down from more than 50 percent five years ago. 

The story gives examples of young people who turned down unpaid internships and, weeks or months later found internships for which they were paid.  It tells how one New York consultancy began paying interns after schools stopped sending candidates for unpaid positions.

It's only fair, I feel.  Even though interns are hopefully learning and gaining valuable workplace experience, they are doing work for which the employer is being paid.  Some of that income should go to the people doing the work.  It gives greater value to what they're doing as they learn.

 

What We Do: Teen Traffic Safety

 

For The National Road Safety Foundation, a non-profit group that promotes safe driving behavior with free programs on distracted and impaired driving, drowsy driving and more, we develop programs and partnerships with other organizations that help spread the word about safe driving.

Last week we were in New Orleans, representing the Foundation at the PTA National Leadership Conference.  We created a partnership with the New York State PTA last year for a statewide program on pedestrian safety for grade school kids, and now we're talking with some other state PTA leaders to bring the program into more states.

And that's just a small part of what we do with The National Road Safety Foundation.  More is in the latest NRSF newsletter "Road Buzz."  You can read it here.

Upfront Week

 

It’s probably TV’s biggest week, and it’s not even on the air.

Upfront Week, happening now here in New York, brings execs from ad agencies, media buying firms and advertisers together to hear from the networks (over-the-air and cable) about their planned fall schedules and their new and returning shows.  The Upfront presentations are giant dog & pony shows in high-profile spots like Radio City, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, and the nets trot out their stars, putting their late-night hosts Jimmy Kimmel, Steven Colbert and Jimmy Fallon to work as emcees.

There’s big money at stake – upwards of $16 billion in advance commitments by advertisers to buy time in the nets’ primetime schedules next season.  Advertisers scramble over each other to buy positions in what they are betting will be the big hits next fall.   They’re afraid if they wait, they could get locked out of a hit show, or if they can buy spots in the fall, the prices will be quite a bit higher.  That’s been the traditional thinking that’s enabled the networks to keep raising prices for ad time, even as their audience continues to shrink.

Years ago when the late media buying guru Gene Dewitt was a client, I’d line up interviews for him with ad biz reporters at The N.Y. Times, USA Today, The L.A. Times, CNN and the ad trades, where he’d make his prognostications on which new shows would be hits and which would fail.  He also would decry the whole upfront process, claiming it pits advertisers against each other in a feeding frenzy that really only serves the networks -- pushing their ad prices higher.  For years, Gene used to predict the end of the upfront marketplace, encouraging advertisers to forego the hyped feeding frenzy and push back, demanding better programming, more audience data and an orderly structure for pricing and buying ad time.

And here we are, a dozen or more years later as the Upfront is again underway.

Stories in The Times (New York and Los Angeles) are reporting that this year’s Upfront could see only a small increase in sales – maybe 3% -- or even a decline of 2 or 3%.   

There are a number of factors converging to bring a change, not only in Upfront spending, but in ad spending on TV overall throughout the year.  One analyst quoted in the L.A. Times says it will go down by 2% this year.

What’s happening?

*  TV viewership is down.  Except for major sports and news events, TV doesn’t draw in the huge number of viewers that it used to.  The nation no longer tunes in, almost as a whole, to see Ed Sullivan on a Sunday night.  Primetime viewership over the past three years is down from 10% (FOX) to as much as 24% (ABC.)  Only NBC has seen an increase of 7%, thanks only to a bump last year fueled by its mega-hit “This is Us.”

*  We can watch what we want when we want.  And we can go to so many more places for news – 24/7 and even reflecting our own political biases, if we choose.  The amount of programming is mind-boggling.  Where we used to have perhaps 100 choices of scripted programs between the 3 or 4 major networks, we can now choose from more than 600 scripted programs on the networks, on cable and now on streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon, ready to play whenever we choose.

*  Add to the networks’ woes the fact that coveted younger viewers (the 18-49 demo) are watching less and less of anything on regular TV.  Many don’t even own a TV or they are not hooked to an antenna or cable.  They stream bits and pieces on their laptops, tables or phones... or their unconnected big-screen TVs.

So as the TV audience disappears and fragments, the networks hope to raise their ad prices yet again.  This year, the average $134,000 cost for 30 seconds on primetime was 6% higher than it was the previous season.  Even if it does go up again for next season, how many more years will advertisers keep paying higher prices for fewer eyeballs?

It’s not totally bleak for the networks.  The shows they produce bring in money for them when they are shown on other platforms.  And some shows that eventually go into syndication can be a golden goose for the producing network and/or the producing studio, often owned by the network or the network’s parent company.

And meanwhile, we’re in the midst of another Upfront Week.  With lavish over-the-top presentations and parties, it’s good for New York’s economy, if nothing else.

Using PR to Extend the Reach of Ads

 

It costs a lot to advertise.  Thirty seconds on a hit network show can be upwards of $100,000.  A spot on the Academy Awards broadcast is going for more than $2.5 million.  Spots on the Super Bowl cost upwards of $5 million.

And remember, those numbers are just for one spot -- 30 seconds that interrupt a program, when many viewers run to the kitchen or the bathroom.  And a key element of advertising is frequency -- ads have to be seen many times in order to have a real impact.

So some advertisers use PR -- publicity -- to extend the reach of their ads at relatively little cost.  Think of the super bowl of advertising venues -- the Super Bowl.  Many advertisers use PR to hype their ads before the big game, pushing for stories in the media and getting them seen and talked about via social media. 

Advertisers sometimes do something intentionally controversial in hopes of getting a bigger bang thanks to PR.  We saw an example just last week, in some outdoor ads in Boulder, Colorado for a local chain of sushi restaurants called Hapa Sushi.  According to ADWEEK, the chain ran a series of ads on kiosks and bus shelters downtown that used tweets by the president, unedited.  One ad shows a presidential tweet threatening the head of North Korea, followed by the words "Eat well before it all ends."  Another used a tweet that reads "The global warming we should be worried about is the global arming caused by NUCLEAR WEAPONS in the hands of crazy leaders!" 

Some Boulder officials missed the humor and asked the advertiser to edit the ads. Instead, the sushi chain agreed to take the ads down after only a few days.  But they garnered attention in the local newspaper, the Boulder Camera, local TV and other media around the state. 

Minimal ad expense -- bigger bang through publicity.

Years ago, one of my clients -- an ad agency -- was planning to run a huge billboard ad in the Times Square area, directly opposite a church.  The ad, for a maker of high-end toilets, showed people from behind standing at toilets, with their butts fully or partially exposed.

After the church voiced a complaint to the billboard company, the story got out to the media.  It ended up running in newspapers and on TV in New York and nationwide, with most of the stories showing the proposed ad, along with the name of the advertiser. 

A few weeks later, after the news died down, my client admitted that they had never actually planned to run the ad.  They had tipped off some folks at the church, which prompted the complaint to the billboard company.  And they gave the story to a friend in the media.  Once one outlet wrote about it, it exploded everywhere else.  

Afterwards, they asked me to do an ad equivalency evaluation for them, and the "free" exposure ,they got was worth several million of dollars.   And they never paid a dime for an actual ad, other than the very minor expense of having a mock ad created.

Clever?  Devious?  You decide.  It worked.  It caused some laughs, and no one got hurt.