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Champions League Match vs Classical Concert (Real Madrid, AC Milan)
Proof that fun marketing is still possible…
[Quote:]
On the night of the October 21st the Real Madrid played Champions League match against AC Milan.
Heineken convinced several university professors, girlfriends, and several bosses to convince their students, boyfriends and employees to go to a concert on that night. All of them couldn’t say no and had to go to the classical concert.
But…
Cardinal Condoms
[Quote:]
Cardinal Condoms prepares legal action against the Catholic Church.
We find the innumerous scandals in which the church is involved damages to the brand name Cardinal.
The number of accusations against the Church made by adults everywhere in the world of sexual abuse in their childhood grows every day. Even worse was a huge scandal in Holland because of the refusal of the church to pay economic damages to one of the victims. The Church wanted the liability insurance to pay.
Recently a Catholic Church in Holland refused hosts to homosexual believers going to communion. Around the same time Angelo Balducci, a ‘Gentleman of His Holiness’, who serves as a ceremonial usher in the papal house, was caught enlisting Thomas Ehiem, a Vatican Choir member, to be the middle man in his male prostitute meet-and-greets. At least one time the men met in the Vatican.
We are a premium brand with an excellent reputation. But the negative publicity around the criminal behavior of the Church is causing damage to our brand. We have contacted a specialized law firm.
Of course this is just a way to get some free advertising, but I can’t help but laugh!
Instant Ads Set the Pace on the Web
[Quote:]
Advertisers have been able to direct online messages based on demographics, income and even location, but one element has been largely missing until recently: immediacy. Advertisers booked slots in advance, and could not make on-the-fly decisions about what ads to show based on what people were doing on the Web.
Now, companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft let advertisers buy ads in the milliseconds between the time someone enters a site’s Web address and the moment the page appears. The technology, called real-time bidding, allows advertisers to examine site visitors one by one and bid to serve them ads almost instantly.
For example, say a man just searched for golf clubs on eBay (which has been testing a system from a company called AppNexus for more than a year). EBay can essentially follow that person’s activities in real time, deciding when and where to show him near-personalized ads for golf clubs throughout the Web.
Advertisers can go ahead and buy anything they want in the milliseconds between me entering an address and the page appearing. As long as the actual appearance of the page is under my control (and on my computer it will be), Adblock will have the last word.
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Don’t Blame Your Community: Ad Blocking Is Not Killing Any Sites
[Quote:]
Back in December of last year, we signed an experimental ad deal to run a series of ads on the site, where a single advertiser would effectively have all the ads for a 24-hour period. As a part of that, there would be an ad at the top that temporarily “pushed down” the content for a few seconds, before pulling back up. Nothing was covered. Nothing prevented readers from getting the content. And the “pushdown” ad only showed once per visitor and never again. We went back and forth about it, but decided it was worth an experiment — especially since no content was blocked or covered. I won’t name the advertiser who was in the first test… but many of you did notice, and did not like it. We got a lot of complaints. So we killed the additional tests. I won’t lie: these deals were for quite a bit of money — a very large premium on the amount of money we typically make from advertising. But when we saw how annoyed our users were, we realized immediately what a bad idea this was and told the others who were scheduled to run similar campaigns, “sorry.” We gave up a lot of money to do so, but what it came down to in our mind was that it wasn’t worth it.
And when I say “wasn’t worth it,” I don’t mean just to us or our community — but to the advertiser. Most of the anger we saw over the original ad campaign wasn’t directed at us — it was directed at the company doing the advertising. So we told a bunch of companies willing to pay us a lot of money not that we didn’t want their money — but that they didn’t want to buy that kind of advertising, because it would only damage their own brands.
[..]
Along those lines, if you are running a media site, if you’re having trouble making money, it’s your fault. Don’t blame your readers. Don’t blame your community by telling them they’re “devastating” a site by blocking ads or failing to pay for a paywall. As the producers of that site, it’s your responsibility to do things to get that site paid for. If you don’t like what we’re doing on Techdirt, go ahead and block our ads. Sure, just like Ars, many of our ads are paid for based on impressions and we may make less money from those ads, but that’s our problem and the problem of advertisers who aren’t willing to do more unique, creative and compelling projects that benefit the community rather than annoy it. We want the advertisers, sponsors and partners we work with to get the best results possible in a way that everyone wins. And that’s not by forcing people who don’t want to see their ads to see them, or by pissing off our readers by blocking them if they use ad blocking. It’s by taking on the responsibility ourselves to put together compelling programs that make everything more valuable for all participants.
Magazine marketers give up on marketing magazines
[Quote:]
I fly a lot less than I used to (and I never flew that often), so I was surprised when I received this piece of mail that seemed to be about frequent flyer miles expiring. It was either open the junk mail or keep cleaning the kitchen, so clearly I had to open the junk mail right away. I was surprised to learn that the direct mail had hardly anything to do with frequent flyer miles; it was a solicitation to restart my subscription to FORTUNE.
This is how bad it’s gotten for at least one prominent print publication: It has to masquerade as something other than what it is to entice customers to open an envelope.
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Ars Technica
Ars Technica recently changed their site in a small way – if you were using ad-blockers, the content would be hidden for you until you disabled ad blocking for the site.
My first reaction was “fine, you can do that, it’s your right. As a result, I won’t read your content, and I’ll no longer link to your content either. If you think keeping me away is worth keeping away everybody I usually tell about the things I see, that’s your choice to make”.
The next day, an update to the AdBlock subscriptions disabled the blocking, which meant the overall effect was just another futile step in the war between advertisers and adblockers, and not really worth talking about.
But I’ve been thinking about what Ars is saying here. A summary:
[Quote:]
There is an oft-stated misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won’t hurt a site financially. This is wrong. Most sites, at least sites the size of ours, are paid on a per view basis.
[..]
Let me stop and clarify quickly that I am not saying that we are on the verge of vanishing from the Internet. But we, like many, many sites are greatly affected by ad blocking, and it is a very worrisome trend.
Let me paraphrase, and I’m sure some of you will disagree with what I’m doing here, feel free to use the comment box.
What they say is: “It’s really not right for you ad-blocking folks to deprive us of income we could otherwise make selling your page views to advertisers. We know you won’t buy the advertised products but, just between you and us, we can get away with selling the advertisers false hope because they can’t tell beforehand which page views definitely won’t pan out”.
Now let me ask you the obvious follow-up question: if Ars is this eager to lie to their advertisers about their public, just to make sure their income is a bit higher than it would be if they didn’t lie, what makes you think they won’t be just as eager to lie to you, the reader?
I always thought the content on Ars was high quality, well done work. Now, I’m not so sure any more.
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Eyes turn to “value for money” London 2012
Here’s why I didn’t talk about Vancouver much, and why I won’t talk about London either.
[Quote:]
Moves to safeguard company trademarks and stamp out ambush marketing, to preserve the monopoly of official advertisers and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) logo, are raising concerns among civil liberty groups.
Police will have powers to enter private homes and seize posters, and will be able to stop people carrying non-sponsor items to sporting events.
[Quote:]
I can already see how the London Olympics will go. Tickets will be available only to pre-selected goodthinkful rightpersons, and in order to enter the Olympic zone, you’ll be subjected to the same kind of probulation you undergo when you fly from Abu Dhabi to Washington DC with brown skin.
Once in the venue, you’ll only be allowed to look at authorized looking-at-zones, and any deviation from your vision permit will be immediate grounds for correctional therapy with the friendly constable. Excessively loud cheering, or cheering which is not quite loud enough will also be discouraged, and failure to cheer at the correct volume will incur a fixed penalty notice, which shall be issued at the discretion of your friendly constable.
Discussing the games in any fashion other than exhilaration and excitement at the wondrous event unfolding in this, your very own nation, will result in a special bonus fixed penalty, and shall cause future employers to be aware of your protected free speech disagreeability.
[..]
The olympics are in london. The olympics have always been in london.
[..]
They are a fine innovation of Airstrip One, and have been happening in London every year since they began. Taking three random datapoints from the last century and a bit, say, 1908, 1948, and 2012, we can see clearly that the Olympics have always been in London. Some Eastasians may propone the preposterous view that they have occurred elsewhere, yet without doubt these nefarious attempt at propaganda have only misled the most gullible, lowest echelons of our great society.
Google knows…
… that marketing folks are not the smartest cookies in the jar when it comes to graphs and statistics, so they tune their displays to make it look attractive to pay 400% for a 15% increase:
Inschrijving bel-me-niet-register heeft gevolgen
[Quote:]
Wie denkt, na zich te hebben opgegeven bij het ‘bel-me-niet’-register, dat hij niet meer wordt lastiggevallen, komt van een koude kermis thuis. Dat schrijft het AD.
Het is volgens de krant gebleken dat verkopers aan de deur de lijst met adresgegevens van het register gebruiken.
Translation: the Dutch do-not-call register is being used by door-to-door salesmen to compile lists of places to visit.
I gave up my land line a long time ago, because sales calls were about 75% of my call volume, so I never had a need to register, but these bloodsuckers don’t seem to learn.
shakedown!
(you also wouldn’t believe how many advertising networks have contacted me asking me if I want to “monetize” my apps…)
BT blamed for Davina McCall spamcalls
[Quote:]
The Reg was contacted by an angry reader who found a message from Davina McCall on his 1571 voicemail telling him about BT’s sponsorship of the Sport Relief charity. He was annoyed because his number has been registered with the no-pester register the Telephone Preference Service since February 2007, which should ensure he doesn’t get unsolicited sales or marketing calls.
You might think the issue here is whether or not a charity call is really a sales call, but in fact it’s even murkier than that.
When the reader complained to BT he was told that the message did not qualify as a call because the messages were sent straight to subscribers’ mail boxes; since no actual two-way phone call was made, the communication is not covered by TPS rules.
BT said: “As part of this year’s Sport Relief campaign BT is sponsoring the BT Sport Relief Million Pound Bike Ride. To raise money BT is operating Chat for Change Day on Friday 26th February where 1p will be donated to Sport Relief for every call made on a BT landline.
Perhaps the letter of the rules allow this, but the spirit definately doesn’t. It’s a clear message BT is sending its clients: BT doesn’t give a flying fuck about your wishes.
It’s the same with political parties over here in NL. There’s a local election coming up, and three local political parties have already made it impossible for me to ever vote for them – I have a very standard sticker on my mailbox stating I don’t want any non-addressed mail, but these political idiots think their message is more important than my wishes and crammed their party political program down my mailbox. If they’re going to ignore me on such a minor issue, odds are that they’re going to ignore me on pretty much everything else as well. So fuck them, I won’t vote for them.
Good News!
[Quote:]
[A]dvertising will in the future world become gradually more and more intelligent in tone. It will seek to influence demand by argument instead of clamour, a tendency already more apparent every year. Cheap attention-calling tricks and clap-trap will be wholly replaced, as they are already being greatly replaced, by serious exposition; and advertisements, instead of being mere repetitions of stale catch-words, will be made interesting and informative, so that they will be welcomed instead of being shunned; and it will be just as suicidal for a manufacturer to publish silly or fallacious claims to notoriety as for a shopkeeper of the present day to seek custom by telling lies to his customers.
– T. Baron Russell, A Hundred Years Hence, 1906
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Aspartame has been renamed and is now being marketed as a natural sweetener
[Quote:]
In response to growing awareness about the dangers of artificial sweeteners, what does the manufacturer of one of the world’s most notable artificial sweeteners do? Why, rename it and begin marketing it as natural, of course. This is precisely the strategy of Ajinomoto, maker of aspartame, which hopes to pull the wool over the eyes of the public with its rebranded version of aspartame, called “AminoSweet”.
Michael Pollan on Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual
Ad placement
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Comcast Rebrands Itself as Xfinity. Seriously? That’s… That’s All You Got?
[Quote:]
So, Comcast has some public image issues. And what do you do when you want to fix the perception but not the underlying problems? Change your name! Change it to the worst, pseudo-pornographic, retro-futuristic garbage marketing dollars can buy.
Do you get it, people? It’s infinity, which is awesome, and X, which is dangerous. It’s, like, dangerously awesome.
The overhaul will apply to Comcast’s technology platform and products, which means all you malcontent Comcast cable, internet, and phone customers will soon be malcontent Xfinity cable, internet, and phone customers. They’ll start rolling out the rebranding next week in about a dozen markets, with the rest of the country getting the Xfinity treatment later this month.
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Driven to Distraction – Despite Risks, Carmakers Integrate the Web With the Dash
[Quote:]
To the dismay of safety advocates already worried about driver distraction, automakers and high-tech companies have found a new place to put sophisticated Internet-connected computers: the front seat.
Technology giants like Intel and Google are turning their attention from the desktop to the dashboard, hoping to bring the power of the PC to the car. They see vast opportunity for profit in working with automakers to create the next generation of irresistible devices.
Although the article carefully avoids mentioning this, it’s of course all about getting eyeballs in front of advertising – how else would Google expect to make money from this?
Don’t watch the road, watch this advertisement instead!
So, if you’re in marketing, kill yourself before you kill us!
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Superphone!
Look the Nexus is a great phone, and a very good competitor in the smartphone market, but for the life of me I cannot fathom why the press so easily laps up the new categorization attempt by Google to call it a “superphone”… and joyoftech agrees:
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This Is Your Country on Drugs
[Quote:]
I went to a conference where the title of one talk that jumped out at me was “Creating a Disease.” A drug company executive got up on stage with a PowerPoint presentation and explained how his company had created a disease—overactive bladder. The company owned a pill for incontinence, but the market for incontinence is very low because mostly elderly people suffer from it, and doctors try to manage this in a non-pharmaceutical way. Even though this drug works on your bladder, it is very hard on your brain. It can cause severe memory problems. But the company wanted to expand the market so it created this disease called “overactive bladder” or “OAB,” which it defined as needing to go to the bathroom more than nine times a day. And now you see ads for this drug, Detrol, for overactive bladders. It became a blockbuster.
Why is the mainstream media not digging into the AT&T story?
[Quote:]
Even now, with the blogs all over the story, and Michael Wolff griping, and with AT&T admitting that its coverage in New York and San Francisco isn’t up to par — even now, with all this going on, no one in the mainstream media will hold AT&T’s feet to the fire.
Know why? Katie points me to this article. The big T was the second-biggest ad spender last year, just slightly behind Verizon. For the first nine months of this year they’ve dropped a bit but they’re still the fourth-biggest advertiser.
But wait a minute, you say. Would TV networks and leading newspapers really look the other way on a big story just because they feared losing advertising revenue? Would AT&T really use its advertising budget as a weapon to shape the way it gets covered? Surely that kind of thing doesn’t happen.
Yeah. Surely not. Must be something else. All that breaking news about the underpants bomber or something.
Verizon snuffs Google for Microsoft search
[Quote:]
Verizon has unilaterally updated user Storm 2 BlackBerries and other smartphones so that their browser search boxes can only be used with Microsoft Bing.
The move is part of the five-year search and advertising deal Verizon signed with Microsoft in January for a rumored $500m.
Verizon pushed the search change over its network two days ago, the company has confirmed with The Reg. “We’re a proud supporter of Microsoft’s Bing search engine,” a company spokesman tells us. “On a couple of select smartphones (Storm 2 the most prominent), we’ve changed the [Verizon Wireless]-supplied web menu to make Bing the default search engine.”
Previously, the search box – baked into the top of Verizon’s browser, above the url address bar – could be set to search Google, Wikipedia, and other sites.
Naturally, such sites can still be queried via the browser proper. But countless users are up-in-arms over the switch. A discussion thread dedicated to the change at CrackBerry, a popular BlackBerry user site, is now 36 pages long.
I can’t imagine who at Microsoft and Verison thought this would be a good idea… $500 million for undying animosity and ridicule…
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Facebook faces criticism on privacy change
[Quote:]
Digital rights groups and bloggers have heaped criticism on Facebook’s changed privacy policy.
Critics said the changes were unwelcome and “nudged” people towards sharing updates with the wider web and made them findable via search engines.
The changes were introduced on 9 December via a pop-up that asked users to update privacy settings.
Facebook said the changes help members manage updates they wanted to share, not trick them into revealing too much.
“Facebook is nudging the settings toward the ‘disclose everything’ position,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the US Electronic Privacy Information Center (Epic). “That’s not fair from the privacy perspective.”
[..]
Jason Kincaid, writing on the Tech Crunch news blog, said some of the changes were made to make Facebook more palatable to search sites such as Bing and Google.
Let me translate “more palatable to search sites” for you: Facebook can sell more advertising space. They don’t give a shit if your thirteen year old niece is stalked as long as they can get the ad-click-through…
“God Bless Tiger Woods”
[Quote:]
The words of Yahoo! chief executive, Carol Bartz.
She comments further, “This week we got a huge uplift: Front Page, News, Sports, Gossip. He just filtered through the whole place. It is better than Michael Jackson dying; it is kind of hard to put an ad next to a funeral.”
So basically his two favourite things in the world are people dying and divorce. Nice guy.
The most powerful nation on Earth, populated by the, seemingly, most simple-minded people on Earth, and this gal is one of the (many) people you can blame.
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AT&T moves closer to usage-based fees for data
[Quote:]
AT&T is moving even closer to charging special usage fees to heavy data users, including those with iPhones and other smartphones.
Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, today came the closest he has so far in warning about some kind of use-based pricing. He spoke to attendees at a UBS conference in New York.
“The first thing we need to do is educate customers about what represents a megabyte of data and…we’re improving systems to give them real-time information about their data usage,” he said. “Longer term, there’s got to be some sort of pricing scheme that addresses the [heavy] users.”
Translation: stop using the phone the way we advertised it to you!
and talking about advertising, is AT&T planning to allow iPhone users to block advertisers in the apps they’re using? No? Gee, what a surprise. I guess it’s really time for Apple to end the exclusive deal
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Color of the Year for 2010: Turquoise
[Quote:]
Pantone LLC, an X-Rite company (NASDAQ: XRIT), and the global authority on color and provider of professional color standards for the design industries, today announced PANTONE® 15-5519 Turquoise, an inviting, luminous hue, as the color of the year for 2010. Combining the serene qualities of blue and the invigorating aspects of green, Turquoise evokes thoughts of soothing, tropical waters and a languorous, effective escape from the everyday troubles of the world, while at the same time restoring our sense of wellbeing.
“In many cultures, Turquoise occupies a very special position in the world of color,” explains Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute®. “It is believed to be a protective talisman, a color of deep compassion and healing, and a color of faith and truth, inspired by water and sky. Through years of color word-association studies, we also find that Turquoise represents an escape to many – taking them to a tropical paradise that is pleasant and inviting, even if only a fantasy.”
I too, enjoy a refreshing drink of Pepsi Turquoise.
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Things I learned from iPhone and Droid ads
[Quote:]
What I learned by watching Droid ads:
# It is fast and it despises aesthetics.
# It is for men—wave surfer athletes and pro boxers first, workers operating heavy machinery second.
# It is packaged inside missiles launched by stealth jets.
# It is a robot and should mostly be handled by other robots.
# Should you actually hold this phone in your hand, you gain superpowers.
Nokia shuts up Regent Street shop
[Quote:]
Nokia is to shut the doors on its high-tech store in London’s Regent Street after failing to tempt consumers out of the bustling Apple store across the road with interactive translucent walls and a glitzy lounge area.
[..]
Ben Wood, an analyst with CCS Insight, said: “There was no question that the store was trying to replicate what Apple had done and build up the brand rather than shift devices. The question in why that strategy has worked for one company and not for the other.”
Probably an analyst with a marketing background, as he seems to be unaware that the actual product matters, and he’s only talking about “building up brands”.
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Cartoon
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At The Dallas News, a New “Bold Strategy”: Section Editors Reporting to Sales Managers
[Quote:]
mong.jpg
Bob Mong
After the jump, you will find a memo Dallas Morning News editor Bob Mong and senior vice president of sales Cyndy Carr sent to everyone at A.H. Belo Corp. Wednesday afternoon outlining what they call a “business/news integration.” Which means? As of yesterday, some section editors at all of the company’s papers, including The News, will now report directly to Carr’s team of sales managers, now referred to as general managers. In short, those who sell ads for A.H. Belo’s products will now dictate content within A.H. Belo’s products, which is a radical departure from the way newspapers have been run since, oh, forever.Those sections mentioned in the memo include sports, entertainment, real estate, automotive and travel, among others.The memo doesn’t mention Business or Metro by name, but there are references to “health/education” and “retail/finance”; these are not defined in the missive. Says the memo, Carr’s sales force will “be working closely with news leadership in product and content development.” Executive sports editor Bob Yates and Lifestyles deputy managing editor Lisa Kresl are quoted in the memo enthusiastically signing off on the unconventional marriage; says Kresl, “I’m excited about the idea of working with a business partner on an arts and entertainment segment.”
President Obama, who it’s said enjoys the refreshing taste of Coola Cola on occasion, further said that…”
A Brief History of Black Friday
[Quote:]
If you ask most people why the day after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday, they’ll explain that the name stems from retailers using the day’s huge receipts as their opportunity to “get in the black” and become profitable for the year. The first recorded uses of the term “Black Friday” are a bit less rosy, though.
According to researchers, the name “Black Friday” dates back to Philadelphia in the mid-1960s. The Friday in question is nestled snugly between Thanksgiving and the traditional Army-Navy football game that’s played in Philadelphia on the following Saturday, so the City of Brotherly Love was always bustling with activity on that day. All of the people were great for retailers, but they were a huge pain for police officers, cab drivers, and anyone who had to negotiate the city’s streets. They started referring to the annual day of commercial bedlam as “Black Friday” to reflect how irritating it was.
So where did the whole “get in the black” story originate?
Apparently storeowners didn’t love having their biggest shopping day saddled with such a negative moniker, so in the early 1980s someone began floating the accounting angle to put a more positive spin on the big day.
In other words: marketing propaganda.
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I really like beer.
I prefer Guinness myself.
I’m italian, but I’ve never heard this story (I see it was published mainly on pay TV and in the worst news outlet, as Studio Aperto, one I carefully avoid).
I’d have been very disappointed if I was involved in the prank: I don’t care about Milan, but I like classical music.