WPP Names CEO for Dell Shop May 20, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentFormer Digitas President Torrence Boone Will Head New Global Agency LINK
Published: May 19, 2008
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — After months of speculation, WPP said today it has named Torrence Boone, former president of Digitas, Boston, CEO of the global agency it is building from the ground up to service its first client, Dell.
“The opportunity to play a leadership role in the creation of a new agency, built to spec, with an ambition to redefine the client-agency relationship, comes along perhaps once in a lifetime,” Mr. Boone said in a statement. “I’m thoroughly excited about Project Da Vinci’s prospects and look forward to working with an exceptionally talented team to tackle the marketing challenges of Dell and other clients in today’s dramatically changed media, marketing and customer landscape.”
Mr. Boone, 38, who declined to grant an interview today, comes to the start-up venture after several years at Digitas, which he joined in 2001. He previously served as VP-general manager at interactive shop Avenue A. Earlier, Mr. Boone, who holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, was a senior manager at Bain & Co., where he focused on the health-care/pharmaceuticals and consumer-products areas.
He will officially take the reigns in early June, will be based in the agency’s New York headquarters and will report directly to WPP Group Chief Executive Martin Sorrell.
‘A new kind of marketing organization’
“The goal from the start was to design and build a new kind of marketing organization that not only provides unique solutions for Dell, but meets other clients’ marketing needs and does so using developments in technology to guide and measure its marketing decisions,” Mr. Sorrell said in a statement. “Torrence is ideally suited to this critically important leadership role. His deep experience across multiple marketing disciplines and his reputation as a developer of innovative marketing programs make him uniquely qualified to lead Project Da Vinci as we focus on reinventing the approach for integrated marketing services. We believe that Project Da Vinci will provide a template for other clients with similar desires.”
Mr. Boone’s appointment is long-awaited; it has been nearly five months since WPP was handed Dell’s three-year, $4.5 billion marketing contract, with the understanding that the holding company would build it a custom-made global agency network.
In his new role, Mr. Boone will be responsible for an agency with hubs in four U.S. cities, as well as London, Beijing, Singapore and Sao Paolo, and a staff of 1,000 or more staff globally. He will also have the help of a leadership team assembled ahead of his arrival. It includes Valerie Hausladen, managing director, Austin office; Kelly McGinnis, chief corporate communications officer; Matt Rayner, chief media officer; Jack Reynolds, chief talent officer; John Roulston-Bates, chief technology officer; Joe Scangamor, chief operating officer and chief financial officer; Ken Segall, chief creative officer; Stephen Sonnenfeld, president, consumer-solutions group; and Jeffrey Wilks, president, business-solutions group.
With a CEO in place, Da Vinci will focus on, among other things, establishing a new name and identity, which it expects to introduce soon.
Ogilvy, Dove Miss Chance to Turn Bad Press Into 'Debate' May 15, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentIf They Wanted to Be Word-of-Mouth Marketers They Should Have Been Listening
Published: May 12, 2008
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The latest Dove controversy epitomizes the ad industry’s struggle to reinvent itself as a participant in an ongoing conversation rather than an old guy with a megaphone barking orders to people who no longer follow them.
Ogilvy’s work for Unilever’s Dove brand has been a poster child for this conversion. Here was a campaign that used traditional one-way stuff such as TV spots, banners, billboards and magazine ads but did it in a way that encouraged and facilitated debate everywhere from Oprah’s studio to the smallest blog. Further, it embraced and employed consumers’ parodies or reinterpretations of the ads and, in doing so, seemed to achieve the zenith of marketing: accepting that what the consumer thinks and says about your brand is more important than what you say and think about your brand.
Personally, I thought the campaign’s entire premise disingenuous. Here was a company that for years told women what they ought to look like suddenly telling them it was OK not to look like that after all. But any place where I said that, I became another part of the marketing effort, likely sparking other people to come to Dove’s defense by pointing out that I should be applauding their efforts, not dredging up past missteps.
So last week, when it was revealed in a New Yorker magazine profile of an airbrush artist, Pascal Dangin, that he retouched some of the Dove ads, you might think Unilever and Ogilvy would spot an opportunity for another conversation.
Here was Dove’s statement as I imagined it: “We’re sure our consumers are smart enough to know that photos that are going to be blown up to the size of a billboard may have to be retouched. For the sake of the women themselves, there are certain things — a pimple, a stray hair — that might be airbrushed. The idea here was to use models of various shapes and ages, not to unduly expose them. We think we’ve made a point. But, we’ve also tried to raise women’s awareness of the issue of retouching and ask whether, when taken to extremes, it can create an unrealistic notion of beauty. If this New Yorker piece reopens the debate, that’s a happy coincidence for us, and something we definitely want to hear consumers’ views on it.”
There was no such statement. Instead, three days after The New Yorker came out and 24 hours after being contacted by BusinessWeek and Ad Age, what comments had been offered by the brand’s representatives were still distinctly defensive, either focusing on the fact that not all the pics were retouched or noting that Ogilvy didn’t know about the retouching.
Dove’s reaction was simply too slow for today’s digital world. For brands to work as word-of-mouth marketers, they have to be listening at all times, even when the chatter seems to have died down. The reaction also smacked of a brand, or at least an agency, still wanting to control the message rather than genuinely welcoming a fresh twist in the debate.
As Jack Neff’s story “For Unilever, P&G, No Good Deed Is Going Unpunished” in last week’s Ad Age illustrated, taking a position on social issues is essential today and yet a recipe for getting criticized. But the key for two-way marketers is going to be to welcome the cut and thrust of debate, whatever it might bring.
I haven’t heard of a smarter way of doing that than P&G’s recent decision to let consumers make the decisions on two media controversies: the company’s support for TV shows that contained perceived profanity and shows displaying gay kissing. Perhaps that’s what Unilever should’ve done in this case too — put it to a vote: Do you want your billboards complete with every last pubic hair or do you agree that there’s such a thing as too real?
Dove's 'Real Beauty' Pics Could Be Big Phonies May 8, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentPhoto Retoucher Says He Improved Images in Controversial Campaign
Published: May 07, 2008
BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) — Dove’s “real beauties” may not be so real after all, at least by the account of a renowned airbrush artist.
In a May 12 profile in The New Yorker posted online, Pascal Dangin of New York’s Box Studios is quoted as saying he extensively retouched photos used in the Campaign for Real Beauty, which, if true, could seriously undermine an effort that already has subjected Unilever to considerable consumer and activist backlash in recent months.
Models ‘a challenge’
“I mentioned the Dove ad campaign that proudly featured lumpier-than-usual ‘real women’ in their undergarments,” wrote Lauren Collins in the New Yorker article. “It turned out that it was a Dangin job. ‘Do you know how much retouching was on that?’ he asked. ‘But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone’s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.’”
A spokeswoman for Unilever didn’t immediately return calls and e-mail for comment. An attempt to reach Mr. Dangin was unsuccessful at press time. But a spokeswoman for the campaign’s creator, Ogilvy & Mather, cast doubt on the account of the celebrity fashion photo retoucher, though she said the agency is still attempting to collect details of his work, if any, on the ads.
“We are unsure right now what he did,” the Ogilvy spokeswoman said. “He works with Annie Leibovitz, the photographer. And we don’t have any record of him actually working on any of the Dove campaign.
“There was no retouching of the women,” she said. “If there was a hair that was up in the air, that might have been the kind of retouching that was done. But until I know what he actually worked on, I can’t comment on it.”
Leibovitz appears unscathed
While Mr. Dangin long has been known to work with Ms. Leibovitz, she wasn’t the photographer on the earlier ads in the campaign that appear to have been referenced in the New Yorker profile.
Ms. Leibovitz was the photographer in a December 2005 shoot that ultimately became the basis for the Dove Pro-Age version of the campaign that broke in early 2007. That effort featured women in their 50s and 60s nude, not in their underwear.
If true, the news could be devastating to the nearly 4-year-old Dove campaign. The most famous execution to date — and one that won both a Cyber and Film Grand Prix for Unilever at the International Advertising Festival last year — has been the “Evolution” viral video, which shows an attractive but rumpled woman transformed through a variety of makeup, styling and retouching tricks into a billboard bombshell. The kicker: “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.”
The viral has been viewed more than 15 million times online and seen by more than 300 million people globally in various channels of distribution, including news coverage, by the estimation of Ogilvy Chairman-CEO Shelly Lazarus.
Last year’s follow-up to “Evolution,” “Onslaught,” took a harsher tone in criticizing the impact that distorted images in beauty advertising have in encouraging such problems as eating disorders.
Axe to grind
That in turn led to charges of hypocrisy from the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, because Unilever’s Axe extensively uses buxom, attractive models in sexually suggestive ads.
A parody of the video, “Onslaught[er],” also became fodder for the environmental activist group Greenpeace to wage a successful effort in recent weeks to get Unilever to back a moratorium on clearing of Indonesian rain forests to grow palm oil. The group claimed Unilever, a major buyer of Indonesian palm oil, has been killing orangutans through its purchasing practices.
The Pro-Age effort in particular also provoked controversy, and Dove’s sales growth appeared to slow, then stall last year during the Campaign For Real Beauty’s third year, according to Information Resources Inc. data
New Balance Consolidates With PHD for Global Account April 21, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentMedia Shop’s New York Office to Handle Planing and Buying
Published: April 10, 2008
NEW YORK (Adage.com) — Omnicom media agency PHD has grabbed its first global account since appointing a new worldwide CEO this October. Footwear marketer New Balance has consolidated its global media operations with the agency after making PHD its North American media agency in October. … FULL ARTICLE
Media Agencies Try to Navigate Choppy Waters( Advertising Age) April 21, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentAt Venice Festival, Shops Ponder Their Place in Increasingly Digital World, Original Article HERE
Published: April 21, 2008
VENICE, Italy (AdAge.com) — If you went to the Venice Festival of Media this year, you couldn’t help but think about profit margins. Not the slim ones of media agencies, but the presumably fat margins of the water taxis that are the fastest and most expensive way to zip around the collection of islands that make up to this old city . Even a short trip, say 15 or 20 minutes, could run
as much as 100 euros — or about $160 — all for the privilege of a pitched, bouncy, herky-jerky ride that on a bleary morning might conjure stern memories of the previous night’s bellinis. Propping up the taxi companies, which are the only option for harried visitors, is a basic economic principle: a scarcity of ways to get the job done.
No such luck for today’s media agencies.
A predominant theme running through the presentations and panel discussions was that in today’s advertising marketplace, there is no end to the competition for two roles the media agency is vying for: the seat at the right hand of the marketing team, directing its advertising spending, and the role of content czar (or “content jockeys,” as Universal McCann CEO Nick Brien put it), managing the endless geyser of content big brands let loose today. The scrum includes parties as diverse as production houses cranking out branded content; consumers who have involved themselves in the branding process; and, of course, the ad agencies off of which media shops were spun — perhaps mistakenly — more than a decade ago.
Lingering insecurity
That question of whether the two agencies should be reunited, or rebundled, long a soapbox issue for creatives, got little truck with a crowd clearly reveling in its independence. But that doesn’t mean the media agencies have worked out the inferiority complex that so often drives them to navel gazing at these events. One of the audience-poll questions asked whether media agencies are set up to become strategic leaders for brands — a tee-up, you’d think, given the audience. Yet the crowd was divided just about evenly among the three possible answers: yes, no and not yet.
You could argue that a third wasn’t a bad vote of confidence given that most of their agencies weren’t even around 15 years ago. But somehow it’s hard to escape the feeling that if you have to ask whether you’re in power, then you’re probably not.
That’s where the Venice Festival of Media comes in. Now in its second year, the conference is meant to be the media-buyer and -planner community’s version of Cannes, with the crumbling beauty of the palazzo-lined canals standing in for the crumbling beauty of La Croisette. The Venice event has a long way to go to match the liver-besieging week of the Cannes awards for decadence, scale or centrality in the industry. But it already rivals it for logistical nightmares. The 850 attendees — twice last year’s turnout — were spread out among hotels on different land masses, putting large amounts of power in the hands of those sunburned water-taxi drivers and giving reason for griping. Venice very quickly emerges as a curious choice of venue for anyone working on anything resembling a schedule.
Nevertheless, most polled said they’d come back next year, even if they coupled their logistical complaints with a few quips about the dullness of much of the content. It’s their event and, in a short time, a sense of ownership has developed, a cheering development for master of ceremonies Charlie Crowe, chief executive of festival owner and organizer C-Squared. In just a year’s time, the buoyant, pocket-squared Mr. Crowe capitalized on the inaugural buzz and made the festival something approaching a must-attend, if more for the networking than the panels.
Talking to themselves
A clear challenge for the third installment will be to improve the content. Too much of this year’s festival was dominated by stale discussions of media planning, hackneyed calls for more digital competence, and meditations on branded content that anyone who’s picked up a trade magazine would know inside and out. The big names were there onstage — Jack Klues, a thundering Alexander Schmidt-Vogel — but they weren’t challenged enough. Hot-button issues such as the rebates agencies receive in many parts of the world were given too-short shrift in light of how important they are to local buyers and sellers. And, typical of an ad conference, there was too much of the industry talking to itself.
The high point contentwise was most certainly a series of panels of media-agency CEOs. One British attendee describe the two-hour session as “a bit knockabout” on the way out, as good a descriptor as any, even if there weren’t any major disputes. The panels offered a rare chance to see the people who control a massive chunk of the world’s media spending on one stage, and it was a clear framing of the challenges facing media shops by the people who run them.
A major continuing challenge is the deep involvement of procurement executives in marketing processes putting downward pressure on the profitability of agencies of all kinds. For all the talk about strategic value and making investments in technology, said MindShare CEO Dominic Proctor, “five minutes later we’re in a haggling match over whether it’s a 1% or 2% [fee] on a service. That’s a habit we have to break.”
With that, Mr. Proctor hit on one of most difficult contradictions facing agencies. Just about everyone agrees the media world is increasingly confusing and requires smart strategists to navigate it. We also know that brands have never been so important to the C-suite. Yet the threat of agency commoditization looms as large as ever. While procurement is often the whipping boy in these situations, one agency CEO argued that corporate bean counters — or, for that matter, clients and media sellers — can’t be blamed if media agencies don’t continue their ascent.
“More than any other time in the last 20 years, our destiny is in our hands,” said Steve King, worldwide CEO of ZenithOptimedia.
The Future of Media Agencies April 3, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentThe Future of Media Agencies
Shops Want to Prove Communications Planning Is Vital to Marketers in an Increasingly Digital World
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Published: April 02, 2007
Fourteen months ago, Naked Communications, the communications-planning agency that helped upend the advertising business in the U.K., opened in New York City after years of threatening an invasion. The news, heralded on the cover of this magazine, triggered some anxiety among Naked’s soon-to-be competitors: How will Naked play with creative and media agencies? Is there demand for the kinds of ideas Naked develops?
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| Photo Illustration: Marc Simon |
| A recent survey by the American Advertising Federation’s Center for Media Research found that about three-quarters of the marketers it questioned said that as much as 20% of budgets are reserved for experimentation. |
More info: |
Most important, the launch of a shop whose programs often delineate the limits of mass marketing, leading marketers down new paths that have little to do with TV advertising, broached a much larger question: Is the U.S. — a market full of conservative advertisers moving only grudgingly into a post-interruption era ushered in by the digital age — ready for communications planning, a way of thinking that’s flourished in other markets, especially European ones, but that’s been slow to take root here?
The hustle by just about every media agency to embrace the discipline was one of the biggest trends in the agency world over the past year, as the major players reacted to rapid shifts in the ways consumers interact with media.
New outlets, new headaches
The explosion of YouTube and all manner of consumer-generated and -distributed content made the internet a platform for brand storytelling. Finally, there was a place other than TV for advertisers to tell their stories, a reality that’s made figuring out a communications strategy that actually reaches the right consumers all the more daunting.
Enter communications planning. Or connections planning. Or engagement planning. Or channel planning.
Whatever you call it, it’s become clear that the future of media agencies will be determined by how well they can guide marketers through an ever-complicated media world. Responding to that environment represents a huge shift for agencies that have been experts in buying time on TV or space in newspapers but, with a few exceptions, don’t have nearly as much experience in giving strategic, consumer-centric counsel.
“Media agencies have been built to give great media recommendations,” says Antony Young, president-CEO of the U.S. division of Optimedia, a part of the Publicis Groupe. “They’re very good at responding to briefs and delivering audiences. The big shift we need to undergo is move from being media-facing to consumer-facing” and start with studying how a consumer interacts with and uses media.
Positioned around planning
Mr. Young, who moved from London to New York last summer, is charged with carving out a place for Optimedia in the U.S. market. He took one look at what clients wanted and decided to stake his agency’s new positioning on planning. Other agencies are going a similar route. Universal McCann, the Interpublic Group of Cos. agency that’s struggled for years with client losses, named Wayne Fletcher, an anthropologist by training, to lead the agency’s communications-planning offering on a worldwide basis from its London office. His boss, CEO Nick Brien, has said the development of that offering is a priority that’s second only to embracing the media world’s switch to digital.
All these companies owe some debt to trailblazers Naked and other boutique-planning offerings but also to giants such as Publicis’ Starcom MediaVest Group and Aegis Group’s Carat, whose work for marketers such as Procter & Gamble Co. has led them into customer-facing areas such as design and retail strategy.
Lisa Donohue, exec VP-managing director at MediaVest, says just about all marketers these days are in search of media-neutral solutions. The challenge for some is to break down internal silos so communications planners have the requisite information to create strategies that reach beyond media and into in-store settings and packaging and even product design.
Some of this thinking has had dramatic effects on advertising institutions propped up by traditional ways of thinking. Both P&G and rival Unilever took a pass on advertising in the Super Bowl this year and Unilever’s Dove brand didn’t spend any money on media for its “Evolution” video, which was distributed on YouTube and watched by millions.
“We are seeing clients shift dollars from TV into other channels,” says Peter Mears, head of knowledge at PHD, an Omnicom Group-owned unit that serves companies such as Discovery Networks, Chrysler Group and Safeway. “This is not a deliberate goal, but if you’re following consumers, that’s where you’ll end up.”
New era of experimentation
It’s also likely that the ad business has only seen the beginning of the kind of experimentation that will fiddle significantly with how major marketing budgets are spent. A recent survey by the American Advertising Federation’s Center for Media Research found that about three-quarters of the marketers it questioned said that as much as 20% of budgets are reserved for experimentation. Nearly 80% of respondents said they’re open to new ways of using traditional media.
All of that will drive the growth of communications planning and with it the fortune of agencies, both media and creative, that do it well.
Fallon Worldwide, one of the early U.S. players in the practice, recently recommitted to it by bringing back John King, who as a young media planner at the Publicis-owned agency helped develop a media-agnostic way of thinking the agency called connections planning. For instance, when Mr. King and Fallon helped launch Ted, United Airlines’ low-cost carrier, the agency steered the marketing approach into one that leaned heavily on guerrilla marketing and PR to drum up excitement for the brand. After more than a year away from the agency, he returned in mid-February as director-connection planning.
“Eight years ago, this was a luxury,” he said. “There was a lot of chatter about it, but it felt a little ahead of its time. Now you’ve got multifaceted audiences with split attention spans who are multitasking; you’ve got influentials who are opting out of media altogether; and you’ve got consumers involved in the creative p
rocess.”
A good time to be Naked
It’s exactly those conditions that have set the scene for Naked, the agency says, and, after its first year, it’s easy to believe them. M.T. Carney, one of the founding partners of Naked’s U.S. operation, says the company has tripled its revenue expectations for its first year here, picking up projects from major marketers Coca-Cola Co., Johnson & Johnson and Nokia. With 26 staffers, the agency has twice what it expected to have and is expanding onto a second floor in the New York loft building that houses its office. Soon, it will open a Los Angeles office that will explore the overlapping worlds of marketing and entertainment.
Ms. Carney isn’t particularly worried about bigger players trying to get into the game whose rules Naked helped write. Those agencies, she says, are too tied to the ad model to offer objective advice on how budgets should be spent.
“Clients know the model is broken, and they can’t keep going back to the same agencies who are using the same tools,” she says. “It’s like how Einstein defined madness, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
Saatchi President to Start Indie Shop March 21, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentSaatchi President to Start Indie Shop
David Murphy Leaves Los Angeles to Open Agency With Former Fallon Creatives
Published: March 20, 2007
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — David Murphy, president of Saatchi & Saatchi, Los Angeles, is leaving the company to start an independent shop with former Fallon, Minneapolis, creatives Stuart D’Rozario and Bob Barrie. The Minneapolis-based agency is called Barrie D’Rozario Murphy.
Mr. D’Rozario will hold the titles of co-president and executive creative director. Mr. Murphy will share the co-president title and serve as executive director-brand innovation. Mr. Barrie will be executive creative director-visual branding. The idea is to create an agency small enough and connected enough to create individualized teams for each client.
Mr. Murphy said the trio will be “keeping the model very nimble and [will] bring people from all different talents and industries onboard as we need them. The idea that an agency can solve every challenge within its four walls and only within its four walls needs to be rethought.”
Focus on talent
In their first few months together, the partners will be lining up clients, but the real focus will be on talent. “We’re still defining what kind of agency we want to be,” Mr. D’Rozario said. “We have a clear idea of it, but now we have to focus on building it, defining it and getting together the right kind of people to fill out the team.”
Mr. Murphy joined Toyota agency Saatchi, Los Angeles, in 2005, and his departure is effective March 30. His responsibilities will be absorbed by the agency’s leadership team, headed by Kurt Ritter, CEO of the Los Angeles office.
Mr. Barrie left Fallon last November after 23 years with the agency, where he worked with clients such as Time magazine, United Airlines, Porsche and Jim Beam. Mr. D’Rozario had been with Fallon only four years when he left in November with Mr. Barrie to start their own company, but his 20 years in the industry have paired him with clients such as the airline Ted, Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, Volkswagen and Credit Suisse.
Huge media shift for J&J March 19, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentJ&J Jolts ‘Old’ Media With $250 Million Ad Spend Shift
As Rivals Talk, Giant Puts Money Where Its Mouth Is — Digital Formats
Published: March 18, 2007
BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) — Staid Johnson & Johnson is proving to be marketing’s Elvis Presley: While rivals talk up nontraditional marketing without
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Quietly and broadly, Johnson & Johnson is shifting larger parts of its marketing budget from traditional media to digital media. For the second year in a row, it has announced that it will sit out the TV upfront. | ALSO: Comment on this article in the ‘Your Opinion’ box below. |
Related Item: P&G New-Age Marketing Gurus Ride Traditional Ad Model |
changing measured-media spending habits much, J&J’s adopting the King’s refrain: “A little less conversation, a little more action.”
Measured media
The consumer-products giant’s measured-media spending plunged more than $250 million in the U.S. last year to $1 billion, as measured by TNS Media Intelligence. That 22% reduction (not counting Pfizer brands acquired at year end) is remarkably close to the 20% of its marketing budget that experts had said J&J was looking to shift to nontraditional media last year.
A first glance at the figures indicates that cuts in direct-to-consumer advertising for J&J’s prescription-drug and medical-device brands account for essentially all of the spending reduction. But a closer examination of the numbers also reveals that the New Jersey marketer has shifted quickly from its once-slavish reliance on traditional media, particularly TV. That’s particularly surprising given J&J’s reputation as a heavily decentralized organization.
Move into unmeasured media
Overall, J&J reported global ad spending fell around 10% to $1.9 billion last year, even as sales rose 6% to $53.2 billion. But J&J’s measured-media spending in the U.S. fell more than twice that fast, suggesting a big chunk of its marketing budget went to unmeasured media, such as search and other direct marketing, rather than away.
Moreover, the company’s move to sit out last year’s upfront — and its intent to do so again this year — gives it more flexibility to shift around marketing funds given it isn’t locked into expensive TV commitments.
J&J declined to comment on changes in its media spending for competitive reasons, a spokesman said. In contrast to rival Procter & Gamble Co., whose executives have talked at length about nontraditional marketing though the company’s measured-spending habits haven’t changed much, J&J has taken the Elvis tack.
Innovation fund
J&J has shifted some marketing funds using a tactic once employed by P&G and Unilever — a corporate tax on its businesses and brands to fund a centrally controlled innovation fund that brands can tap by using nontraditional media, said Rex Briggs, CEO of the consulting firm Marketing Evolution and co-author of the book “What Sticks,” who has been an adviser to J&J.
“Johnson & Johnson has been one of the phenomenal companies at marketing R&D, and getting people to try new things, and go beyond the comfort zone of 30-second TV spots,” Mr. Briggs said. “And that is translating into [budget] shifts. To me, it seems like a model for best practice.”
The spending shifts in J&J’s prescription-drug business aren’t likely all about new media. Seven of J&J’s prescription-drug and medical-device brands combined to slash media outlays by $274 million last year, accounting for virtually all the decline in J&J’s measured spending. But many of the media cuts came on such brands as diabetes monitor OneTouch and anemia drug Procrit, whose users are easier to target online and through other direct approaches.
E-mail programs
J&J drug brands increased their direct-mail and e-mail programs 31% last year, totaling 64, according to John Cummings & Partners/DBMscan, a database-marketing-tracking firm, though that was slower than the 77% increase in such initiatives the firm detected among direct-to-consumer drug marketers overall.
J&J’s march away from traditional media also shows up in such brands as Neutrogena, Aveeno and the Johnson & Johnson baby and corporate brand, all of which cut measured-media spending last year despite growing sales, even as some brands, such as fast-growing sexual-health brand K-Y, hiked spending.
J&J also last year launched or boosted support behind specialty websites on such topics as arthritis, cancer, attention deficit disorder, pain and psychiatry last year. Its online spending rose 31% to $32.1 million, according to TNS, though that doesn’t capture the heavy search advertising that normally drives most traffic to such sites.
Feature film
For Remicade, a pricey Rx drug used to treat Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis, J&J is using online marketing and public relations to drive people to local showings this month of “Innerstate,” a feature film it produced about sufferers of the diseases who talk about being helped by drugs, though Remicade is never named.
J&J also is getting more use out of BabyCenter.com, a consumer website J&J fished out of the eToys bankruptcy in 2001. The site now reaches 500,000 to 700,000 people daily, based on Alexa.com data, well ahead of any single website operated by its package-goods rivals.
“Up until a few years ago, BabyCenter was really a stepchild of J&J,” said Mr. Briggs. “People at BabyCenter had an easier time talking to people outside the company than inside. I think [J&J] really turned a corner the past couple of years, seeing the value of having a community dimension to brands.
CareerBuilder in Review After Messy Split With C-K March 9, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentCareerBuilder in Review After Messy Split With C-K
Bowl-Poll Fallout Caused Agency to Quit; Four Shops Vie for $60M Account
Published: March 08, 2007
CHICAGO (AdAge.com) — Fresh off its contentious breakup with longtime agency Cramer-Krasselt, CareerBuilder has opened its search for a new shop to handle its $60 million creative advertising account.
Said to be pitching the Chicago-based job website are the hometown offices of Publicis Groupe’s Leo Burnett, Interpublic Group of Cos.’ DraftFCB and Omnicom Group’s DDB, along with Boston’s Arnold, part of Havas. Spokespeople for the first three declined to comment; Arnold could not be reached at press time.
The timetable for a decision was unclear.
Bowl ads didn’t measure up
The account is up for grabs because of the No. 1 recruitment site’s messy breakup with C-K. The agency said CareerBuilder put the account up for review after its Super Bowl ads failed to crack the top 10 in USA Today’s Ad Meter poll. C-K immediately quit because, as agency CEO Peter Krivkovich put it, “There are a few times in your life when you have to tell someone to f— off and mean it.”
In the marketer’s first comment since the breakup, a CareerBuilder spokeswoman disputed Mr. Krivkovich’s account, saying, in a statement: “The decision to do an agency review this year was not based upon the USA Today poll or any single factor. While this year’s campaign is good, it did not carry the same breakthrough impact as previous years. … We are looking for a creative partner who can rise to the challenge of consistently delivering stunning creative work from a grounded, insightful strategy.”
The statement went on to say, “CareerBuilder.com appreciates the work that Cramer-Krasselt has done for our organization over the last five years. We hoped that C-K would participate in the review process and are sorry they chose not to participate. We wish them the best of luck in the future.”
DDB an Ad Meter vet
If winning the Ad Meter — which measures whether 238 people in two states liked the ads, and not the ads’ effectiveness — is still a priority for CareerBuilder, then DDB, Chicago, would have to be viewed as the favorite to win the business because it’s the agency of record for mega-brewer Anheuser-Busch. A-B has won the contest for nine straight years, thanks in part to a market-testing process that mirrors the Ad Meter process.
Both DDB and DraftFCB have relationships with Tribune Co., which, along with fellow publishers Gannett Co. and McClatchy Co., owns CareerBuilder. DDB is the agency of record for the Chicago Tribune, having beaten out Burnett in the final round of the review for the business. DraftFCB works with Tribune’s Los Angeles Times.
Consumers Are Questioning Yahoo Answers' Ads March 9, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentConsumers Are Questioning Yahoo Answers’ Ads
Marketers Should Try Frank Talk With Consumers Than Push a Product
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Published: March 05, 2007
Yahoo, perhaps more than any other major portal, has done a phenomenal job of barreling headfirst into the Web 2.0 world. In addition to acquiring the “twin towers of tagging,” Flickr and del.icio.us, it has launched the wildly successful Yahoo Answers Q-and-A site.
So far, Yahoo has been cautious in its attempts to introduce marketers into these popular communities. Flickr has dabbled in a co-branded site with Nikon, and del.icio.us remains completely devoid of advertising. However, in the past few weeks, Yahoo has quietly rolled out a program to help advertisers participate on Yahoo Answers.
The effort, called Sponsored Questions, spotlights advertisers and their questions. New Line Cinema is one of the first advertisers onboard. It is using the site to market the new Jim Carrey film, “23.” (Yahoo clearly labels advertiser questions as paid placements and is guiding marketers on how best to engage users.)
Initial results have been mixed. The community responded positively to the announcement, understanding Yahoo’s need to monetize the site. However, once advertisers landed on Planet Yahoo, the response was lackluster.
New Line’s first question to the community was, “Why does the recurrence of numbers (e.g., 23) and symbols suggest a hidden deeper meaning?” The question generated 807 responses. Some of the responses with the highest user ratings were quite negative. For example, the user sqshyblujello wrote: “Dude. Will you stop annoying us with all this 23 crap?”
Yahoo is in a delicate position. It’s under pressure to monetize its various investments in consumer-generated media. At the same time, it risks alienating the very community that has made these sites so successful in the first place. The key for both Yahoo and its advertisers is to empower users to help achieve them their own goals.
Both Yahoo and its sponsors need to wake up and start using the site not as a place to market products and services but as a way to tap into the wisdom of crowds. In other words, start asking frank questions that help solve real problems rather than creating new ones. Otherwise, the presence of sponsors will generate more questions than answers.
~ ~ ~ Steve Rubel is a marketing strategist and blogger. He is senior VP in Edelman’s Me2Revolution practice.
