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Ogilvy, Dove Miss Chance to Turn Bad Press Into 'Debate' May 15, 2008

If They Wanted to Be Word-of-Mouth Marketers They Should Have Been Listening

By Jonah Bloom

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?

Wave of Widgets Spreads on the Web April 10, 2007

Wave of Widgets Spreads on the Web

Entrepreneurs Experiment With Ways to Profit From Web Site, Desktop Gizmos

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 9, 2007; Page D01

The standard Internet advertisement is so familiar that most people tune it out: a billboard stripped across the top of a Web site, waiting for consumers to surf by and maybe click on it.

Now a young generation of online-ad creators are pushing a newer idea: putting a brand on a mini-site so fun or useful — a video game or a spruced-up calculator or a live sports update — that people download it, paste it on their personal blogs or social networking sites, use it again and again and share it with friends.

It’s called a widget, an old word for a 21st-century product. And it’s what they make at an expanding roster of companies that locally includes Freewebs of Silver Spring and Clearspring Technologies of Arlington — start-ups founded in the past two years.

“Advertisers are no longer wanting people to click on a link to buy something,” said Haroon Mokhtarzada, Freewebs’ 27-year-old founder and chief executive. “Now they’re wanting people to engage in a neat product while they build brand equity.”

Though widget technology is too new to be turning a profit, some high-profile investors apparently see the potential. Last month, Clearspring pulled in funding from AOL icons Ted Leonsis, Steve Case and Miles Gilburne along with Bethesda-based Novak Biddle Venture Partners, bringing the company’s total financing to $7.5 million. Mark Jung of Fox Interactive Media, which owns a dozen Internet properties including MySpace.com, became chairman of the board. And in one of last year’s largest local venture-capital deals, Freewebs got $11 million from Novak Biddle Venture Partners and Core Capital Partners.

“The new role of companies is not to produce content and spoon-feed it to users,” said Hooman Radfar, 25, the founder of Clearspring. “Their new role is to create tools people want and push them out so people can use them however they choose.”

On the screen, most widgets resemble a tiny window on the user’s desktop or Web page, similar to picture-in-picture television sets. What they do, and how they promote their clients, varies.

Purina has created a tiny box that alerts pet owners about good dog-walking weather. Last month, Hewlett-Packard offered a downloadable March Madness scoreboard that continuously pulled down college basketball tournament results. Twentieth Century Fox is promoting “Live Free or Die Hard” with an iTunes player that also blurts out quotes from the movie.

Such promotions offer advertisers a couple of distinct advantages: Once dragged onto personal Web pages, widgets tend to live on longer than traditional ads — not necessarily because users care about the brand, but because they like the interactive feature they downloaded it for. And friends who see the widget on someone else’s blog or MySpace profile are a self-selecting group of consumers. Much of Clearspring’s business is tracking the widgets as they spread across the Internet — providing its clients with information about a potential customer base.

At Freewebs, the original business was helping people build their own Web sites. But the founders soon realized they could leverage their 18 million visitors as a launching pad to spread widgets. Now Freewebs has pumped out a Reebok widget that lets you design your own sneaker and a zombie-killing video game to promote the movie “Ghost Rider.”

“This is more about consumption rather than just about publishing on a Web page,” said Jonathan Strauss, Yahoo’s product manager for widgets. “Advertisers see this as a unique opportunity to have a persistent presence on valuable real estate.”

Yahoo first invested in widgets in 2003 when it worked with the photo-sharing site Flickr to create personalized slide shows that remain on users’ desktops or Web sites. In 2005, Yahoo bought Pixoria, a start-up that created the widget maker Konfabulator. Now Yahoo has more than 4,300 widgets in its gallery, including one from Target that counts down the days until Christmas and others that show live webcam views of Hong Kong traffic, Australian beaches and New York City’s Greenwich Village.

Meanwhile, a slew of other widget companies have cropped up, though not everybody uses that word. Blog publisher TypePad now offers “blidgets”; home-page creator PageFlakes lets people incorporate “snippets” into their personalized pages; Netvibes, Snipperoo and YourMinis host widget galleries.

Apple and Microsoft have desktop tools in the form of constantly updating stock tickers, news feeds and airline schedules. Google says its fastest-growing products are “gadgets” for its personalized start pages, or Web sites that allow users to customize the displayed information.

Some of the most popular widgets on the Web are made by amateur developers or have user-generated content — YouTube video screens on Web pages, for example, or Backwards Bush, whose widget counts down the days, hours, minutes and seconds left in the current presidency

Chris Seline, founder of District-based Searchles, a social bookmarking site that organizes links, videos and articles for its users, is creating widgets that let people access certain online content without having to visit the actual Web site that provides it. By offering convenience, he said, he keeps his company’s name on people’s screens.

“It’s contagious,” he said. Widgets “are the glue between people and the content they want.”

There are problems, though. Snazzy interactive widgets can guzzle computer resources, which will slow down page loads. Some skeptics say Web sites could become so cluttered with widgets that they cease to be effective.

Advertisers are leery of paying top dollar for widgets because their influence on consumers is unknown. And the longer a popular widget lives online, the less incentive there is for an advertiser to pay for a new one.

“Brands need to be where their consumers are,” said Eric Weaver, a Seattle branding consultant with the firm Sound Principles. But he said that not all marketers will buy into the widget idea. “It’s just one more way to have your brand out there, but it’s not going to convert anyone. If I have a pizza-related widget on my desktop, am I going to want to buy everything from Papa John’s? Probably not.”

To introduce more advertisers to the idea, Freewebs throws a free widget into every online campaign it designs, so clients can “test the waters,” said Christian Cunningham, the company’s vice president of advertising.

A snag in the business model is that no one has quite figured out how to make much money off widgets. Cunningham said he expects a pricing strategy will emerge within the next year as advertisers become more comfortable with the idea.

“The economy is still being shaped,” said Clearspring’s Radfar. As in any other online venture, “we have to get volume first, then we’ll figure out how to make money.”

The companies may also have to clarify what qualifies as a widget before Internet traffic analyzers, such as Nielsen NetRatings and ComScore, monitor their penetration into online communities. Media companies, online retailers and big advertisers often use such measure
ments to target their audiences. Widget pioneers, however, say the new mode of advertising will make counting page views and unique visitors obsolete, since widgets connect users to content without opening additional browser windows.

Gregory Dale, chief technology officer at ComScore, said the firm is not yet tracking widgets, “but once anything gets critical mass, it will be measured.”

In the meantime, these widgets — or gizmos, snippets, doodads or gadgets — are not replacing the traditional Web sites of the companies promoting them, said Maurice Boissiere, vice president of client services for Clearspring.

“The point is to see that there’s value in the widget itself,” he said. “It’s the new cash register.”

Chris Sawin of Batanga sent this follow up March 15, 2007

Chris Sawin of Batanga.com sends this follow up data supporting the previous article speaking about the power of Hispanic Marketing the file can be downloaded as a PDF by clicking here

But in synopsis gave us this data

Now 44.8 million strong, Hispanics/Latinos are a fast-growing, diverse population in the United States. With growth surging nearly 58% from 1990 to 2000—more than four times the growth rate of the U.S. population—and approximately 23% from 2000 to 2006, Hispanics/Latinos comprised 14.7% of the total population in 2006.

More significantly, the community is expected to keep growing at a strong and steady clip— by 2010, it is estimated that there will be 50 million Hispanics/Latinos or 16% of the total U.S. population. By 2050, 28% of the entire U.S. population is projected to be Hispanic/Latino (estimated to be 122 million).

From 2000 to 2006, the purchasing power of Hispanics/Latinos climbed more than 63% to $798 billion. By 2011, it will top $1.2 trillion, according to the University of Georgia’s Selig Center for Economic Growth. The estimated 8.7% compound annual growth from 2000 to 2007 is 80% greater than that of the rest of the U.S. population.

The three largest Hispanic/Latino nationalities represented in the United States are from Mexico, Puerto Rico and Cuba. Mexicans represent nearly 67% of the entire Hispanic/Latino population. However, all of these segments charted double-digit growth surges from 1990 to 2006. Some specific examples to note include:

• The Mexican population segment has grown the most since 1990, steadily increasing at an overall rate above or near 50%

• Though increasing only 19% from 1990 to 2000, Cuban Hispanics/Latinos showed the second highest percent of growth of the groups overall between 2000 to 2006, increasing 37%

• “Other Hispanics” increased 82.7% overall from 1990 to 2006, but experienced a -7% decrease from 2000 to 2006. This category is extremely diverse, comprised of 19 countries, which may account for its growth volatility over the years

U.S. Hispanics by Country of Origin

Country 1990 2000 1990-2000 2006 2000-2006

(millions) (millions) Percent Growth (millions) Percent Growth

Mexico 13.5 20.6 53% 30.0 45%

Teens (12- to 19-year-olds), in general, are sought after as the ultimate consumers and creators of trends. The Hispanic teen segment may be one of the most important markets for future-oriented marketers to understand, according to Cheskin Research. Cheskin Research reported that:

Hispanic teens “provide rich insights into larger issues affecting the future of the American consumer identity. . . . And with a current spending power of $20 billion and a projected growth rate six times higher than the rest of the teen market, Hispanic teens are a force in and of themselves.”

The Hispanic/Latino teen influence is evident in virtually every product category, from food to personal care to fashion. In response, a broad range of companies are playing to Hispanics/ Latinos’ preferences and purchasing power. For example, Neutrogena and Aveeno Active Naturals, owned by Johnson & Johnson, now offer a scrub, a peel, a night treatment, an eye cream and moisturizer to attract Hispanic consumers looking for skin care products tailored to their needs. Hostess brand launched Las Delicias de Hostess in 2005, a line of 10 new snack cake products catering to the Hispanic/Latino consumer, appearing in San Diego, Dallas and Phoenix. The new line of snacks features “pastelitos” or cakes flavored with pineapple, strawberry or chocolate; “panque” or mini-pound cakes, with strawberry and pineapple fillings; cupcakes with pineapple or “dulce de leche” fillings, and “concha,” a chewy yeast roll with sugar topping.

The Hispanic/Latino culture pulses with music that is routinely at the top of the mainstream charts and Hispanic/Latino styles permeate American culture. In fact, marketers predict that Hispanic/Latino-influenced fashion will soon generate at least half the sales of the urban market (African-American, Hispanic/Latino and/or Asian-American). The Hispanic/Latino focus on image is also core to this group’s heavy consumption of beauty products.

• In 2020, the Hispanic/Latino teen market will balloon 62% larger than today—growing six times faster than the rest of the teen market.

• In 2006, Hispanic/Latino teens constituted 20% (an estimated 6.3 million) of the U.S. teen population.

• In 2006, Hispanics/Latinos under the age of 20 accounted for more than 38% of the total Hispanic population in the United States.

• The average percentage of the Hispanic teen population in the top 10 Hispanic/Latino markets is 43.1%.

• Eighty percent of the teen population in Los Angeles is Hispanic/Latino. According to 2006 estimates released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2004, Hispanics/ Latinos spent more per household on the following categories than non-Hispanic/Latino consumers: groceries, phone services, major appliances, vehicles, children’s clothing, and footwear. In addition:

• Hispanics/Latinos are 14% more likely to plan to purchase a new car in the next two years than the general population

• The average Hispanic/Latino family spends 46% more on weekly groceries than the general market

• While total telecom spending is expected to rise 5.2% between 2006 and 2011, telecom spending by Hispanics/Latinos is set to jump more than 7%

The Hispanic/Latino market has already influenced many facets of American culture overall—and its impact is projected to increase, given the market’s estimated growth. As a result, advertisers and marketer
s will likely continue to recognize study and communicate with the Hispanic/Latino population in order to be effective.

The Hispanic/Latino Market Profile offers advertisers and marketers an overview of key facets of the Hispanic/Latino market, providing insights on how to evolve marketing efforts to reach this group successfully.

Decision on BBC web ads delayed until this spring February 23, 2007

Decision on BBC web ads delayed until this spring
The debate over whether Britain’s BBC should run advertising on its international web site looks set to run until at least spring. The controversial proposal, which would mean that BBC.com could raise money by running ads to be seen by the site’s international visitors, has been winding its way through the approval process for sometime now and yesterday a decision was delayed until later this year. The idea is to raise money for the international expansion of the BBC’s web operations through advertising revenue. Those accessing the web site from Britain wouldn’t see the ads, but overseas users, of which there are many, would. The plan is now being considered by the BBC Trust, which will make the final decision as to whether the plan can go ahead. When the Trust met yesterday, it said that it wasn’t satisfied that it had all the information necessary to make a decision and asked BBC managers for details on how the ad revenue would be reinvested. Members of the Trust have also asked for more analysis on whether all fair trading issues have been addressed. Other big news organizations in Britain have been protesting the move, fearing the effect it would have on the commercial market if the BBC is allowed into online advertising. In a statement the Trust said that it hoped to reach a final decision on the issue later this spring.

Yahoo Rich Media Snafu Appears Limited To PointRoll February 21, 2007

TRUSTe Gives Nod To WhenU, Snubs Zango February 16, 2007

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