It was a long year. We have recession that is flirting with Depression. The near collapse of the U.S. auto industry. The election of Barack Obama, the first African-American President of the United States; a man whose middle name is Hussein. Amazing.
Advertising is in a full-body battle with the digital-video-recorder and the consumer’s ability to skip over any and every TV ad.
Considering all the TV, outdoor, Internet and cellphone ads, the social networking and video ads, it is hard to choose one single piece of marketing communications that is the best; that transcends everything else in the marketplace for getting a message across.
But, in my opinion, there was one such effort.
This Will I. Am and Friends video, “Yes We Can," was self-directed by the music artist, not coordinated by or ordered up by the Obama campaign.
The reasons it is my “Best Message Creation of 2008,”:
1. Born from the enthusiasm for Obama by a talented artist, it captures enthusiasm in a rare way.
2. It is technically brilliant. The overlay of people speaking inside Obama’s own words was done flawlessly.
3. The use of celebrity is not beside the point. The passion for Obama, the product or brand in this case, is infectious not contrived.
4. Message delivered: Obama is cool because he inspires. He doesn’t inspire because he is cool.
5. It goes to show you that an ad done as well as this can hold eyeballs for almost five minutes.
Fox News racked up its seventh straight year as the most-watched cable news channel, delivering an average prime-time viewership of 2.1 million, 40% more than 2007, according to data released Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research. CNN placed second with 1.3 million, up 69%, while MNSBC drew 920,000, a boost of 82%.
CNN logged the best year in its 28-year history in viewership and adults 25-54, as did HLN, the onetime Headline News. MSNBC gained momentum and had its best year ever.
Cable took the largest share of the news-viewing pie that it has ever gotten. Fox News and CNN continually broke records, with CNN garnering 13.3 million viewers for Election Night, up 109% compared with 2004.
Nielsen said that 2008 was Fox News' highest-rated year in total day and primetime. It averaged two million viewers in primetime, compared with 1.3 million for CNN and 918,000 for MSNBC. It was a record year in viewership for "The O'Reilly Factor" (the top-rated show in cable news) as well as for "Hannity & Colmes" and "On the Record With Greta van Susteren." It also was the highest ratings year on record for "Fox & Friends," which handily beat the competition, and "Special Report With Brit Hume."
MSNBC was the year's fastest-growing cable network; it beat CNN in places in the demo and got close in households. Two hours in primetime -- 8 p.m.'s "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" and the newcomer, 9 p.m.'s "The Rachel Maddow Show" -- have improved the network's position against CNN for second place in primetime. "Maddow" is beating "Larry King Live" in the demo since its September 8 debut.
As I followed a link for a story about how diet soda can make people gain weight, I was somewhat surprised to find an ad featuring Oprah Winfrey's somewhat slenderized face hawking an Acai berry diet, I thought...huh?
The exact wording on the ad is "Oprah's Acai Berry diet."
As we head into the New Year season of incessant diet ads, is it not time to ask of Oprah is remotely credible for touting weight loss?
Didn't I just hear or read about how Oprah had gained a bunch of weight? I don't pay much attention to Ms. Winfrey, but I do remember something about this.
Sure enough, a story from People Magazine a few weeks back reported this: "Having packed 40 pounds onto her former 160-pound self, Oprah Winfrey is declaring, "I'm mad at myself" because she's "fallen off the wagon." As the media mogul, 54, writes in the January issue of her O magazine hitting newsstands Tuesday (and provided in advance to the Associated Press by Winfrey's Harpo Productions): "I'm embarrassed … I can't believe that after all these years, all the things I know how to do, I'm still talking about my weight. I look at my thinner self and think, 'How did I let this happen again?"
As I can attest from a life of gaining and losing weight, people do go up and down the diet ladder. And Oprah is surely one of them. And while her experience is typical of women, and many men, why should anyone listen to her at this point endorse a particular diet? I am missing the aspirational aspect of following an Oprah diet suggestion that inevitably leads to yo-yo dieting.
I can recall that back in the 1980s Oprah's first endorsement of a diet was Optifast. She lost something like 60 or 70 pounds. She was more gaunt than svelte. Her endorsement, though, created a two-year explosion of business around Optifast that extended to products like Medifast and a host of other liquid protein powder diets that are utterly unsustainable. Sometime after that, when Oprah had gained back the weight, she spoke very little, as I recall, about the failure of the diet. And I believe she said something about not endorsing diet regimens in future.
We all know Ms. Winfrey has a legion of people around her to keep her away from the sweets. She has schedulers, trainers, cooks, etc. But all of that apparently is not enough to manage her weight very effectively.
So, I ask again...why is she lending her image and name to a diet anything? If I was promoting a diet regimen, I might be glad to score an appearance on her show. But I'd be thinking maybe the time has passed for wanting her to actually fasten her face and endorsement to the product or system.
Every year, somebody sends me some fruit and candy from Harry & David or some such mail-order operation. Let me tell the world...NOBODY WANTS THIS!
These boxes and baskets of fruit is the same stuff you can get at Kroger, only marked up 1000% with shipping added on.
My brother John advised me the other day that his gift to his siblings was a donation to the North Carolina food banks, which are sorely depleted from the Recession and foreclosure problem. Bravo! I said. At least it wasn't the George Costanza "Human Fund."
This ad from Leo Burnett is a pro-bono effort for the Greater Chicago Food Depository. I like it. The only odd thing is the shot of the female model, which makes her look oddly origamy-like---and how about those "man hands"?
Public relations done well is as much a key ingredient to marketing and brand management as advertising. And often, it is a greater, more important ingredient than the ad plan. At least it should be. But it often isn’t seen that way by people I will call “the honchos.”
Today, The Bush White House floated the idea of an “orderly bankruptcy” for General Motors and Chrysler. The “B” word. Yikes. The concept is a little fuzzy. But most experts think it would involve GM and Chrysler actually going to Bankruptcy Court to file Chapter 11, with the government providing either the Debtor In Possession (DIP)financing for the companies, or guarantees on the money after Treasury Secretary Paulsen twists the arms of some banks who have gotten upwards of a trillion dollars from Treasury and the Federal Reserve to loan the companies $15 billion-plus.
The automakers have been wanting to avoid actual bankruptcy for fear that customers will bolt when given the choice between a bankrupt brand or one that isn’t bankrupt. There are a few surveys out that seem to indicate that consumers wouldn’t bolt, especially if the Feds stood behind the companies.
A survey by CNW Marketing Research, for example, found that 48% of would-be buyers would consider models made by a bankrupt carmaker. Another survey by Merrill Lunch & Co. found 90% of the 500 respondents would consider a bankrupt company's cars on their list if the company was "backed by U.S. government funding."
Frankly, I think this kind of research is useless. But let's take the CNW survey. Fifty-two percent of respondents said they would not consider buying a vehicle from a bankrupt car company. Today, the potential universe is 100%, and the Big Three have about 45% of the market. I don't want to see how low their market share drops within year-one if the universe of buyers is cut in half. The drop in revenue would be too fast and drastic.
I don’t trust surveys of people when the question is seeking to get the consumer to say what they will, would or might do when its time to buy something and sign up for a four or five year loan.
I’d rather go by my instinct, which is that all but die-hard Big Three supporters will go to Ford (if it stays clear of Chap. 11) or the imports.
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News, opinions, inflammatory meanderings and occasional ravings about the world of advertising, marketing and media. By Marketing Editor Burt Helm and Senior Correspondent David Kiley.
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