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What’s this, Grandpa? It’s a CD player.
0April 29, 2006 by Colin
Cake’s Short Skirt, Long Jacket. An eclectic little song that made it big in 2001, to be quickly dismissed by the cognoscenti who once thought it was cool and underappreciated.
Today, we can mock the video for its basic premise: asking regular joes on the street to pass judgement on the song – after listening to it on a portable CD player. A portable CD player? Who under the age of 35 even uses one of those?
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CSR: pity those poor multinationals
0April 29, 2006 by Colin
“French fries and sneakers: pure evil” – that’s the title of Steve Maich’s column in the latest issue of Macleans. In his analysis, the corporate social responsibility efforts of the world’s biggest consumer brands contrast with their continuing poor showings in pubic CSR polling: Nike, Coca-Cola and BP all suffer at the hands of activist groups, and are affected by the public’s myopia for much more harmful activities by less profiled corporations.
After all, it’s hard to get your community group riled up about picketing a two story building in a corporate business park.
” … What started as a well-meaning movement, aimed at getting business to promote the greater good, has morphed into an industry unto itself: it’s the discontent industry, and it’s driven by image consultants and professional lobbyists, none of whom can present a coherent vision of what it means to be ethical. Instead, the public is fed a constant diet of anti-corporate polemics like The Corporation, No Logo and Super Size Me, all painting business as a hostile force, warping society into a bleak dystopia driven by endless greed.
… The result is a world in which arms manufacturers do brisk business with regressive dictators while tech companies eagerly assist autocrats in squelching democratic rights, and yet an entire generation of supposedly intelligent people seriously believe the world’s most unethical corporation sells hamburgers.”
Technorati: CSR corporate social responsibility
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McDonald’s is generating buzz with the lizaydies, old-school style
0April 28, 2006 by Colin
It seems that McDonald’s is deploying a three prong approach to growing its share of the fast food consumer market among women: healthy menu choices; more focused messaging; and creating fashion and celebrity-driven buzz about the brand’s traditional character icons.
Global Chief Marketing Officer Mary Dillon is making some organizational changes, as well as refocusing the multinational’s marketing efforts towards specific demographic groups.
“… In addition to evolving the chain’s “I’m Lovin’ It” advertising platform to emphasize the “it” over the “I,” Ms. Dillon plans to evolve McDonald’s women’s marketing to more strongly appeal to them as mothers. …” (AdAge)
Pricing, salads and happy meal toys seem to be attracting this group, but McDonald’s is also working the celebrity cachet/retro style angle as well, designing faux classique tshirts for sale at select upscale boutiques.
” … To design the campaign, McDonald’s hired DIC Entertainment Corp., an entertainment-licensing company that has been successful at reviving nostalgia brands such as Strawberry Shortcake. The two chose vintage T-shirts, currently a hot fashion item, as their first licensed product. The shirts, which retail for about $55, include the chain’s old ad characters, such as Mayor McCheese and Grimace, and ad slogans, such as “You Deserve a Break Today.”
To get the word out to the cool crowd, McDonald’s set up a big display in February at Lisa Kline, a trendy Los Angeles boutique. The company also sold the shirts at Intuition, another well-known L.A. store. The two stores are known for their celebrity clientele.” (WSJ/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Now, how could this guerilla marketing go wrong? Someone wearing a “Big Mac Attack” shirt shows up on SmokingGun after being arrested for assault? The “Grimace” tshirt shows up in a made-for-DVD movie produced and shot in the San Fernando Valley?
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PR strategies threaten freedom of the press in Quebec: survey
1April 27, 2006 by Colin
A number of journalists in Quebec, according to an “unscientific” survey (quite honest of them to admit that), feel that the communication strategies deployed by private and public sector organizations threaten the freedom of the press in the province.
“…Un sondage maison de la Fédération professionnelles des journalistes du Québec auprès de 224 journalistes indique que 42% des répondants estiment que les stratégies de communication des organismes privés et publics constituent la principale menace la liberté de presse au Québec.” (FPJQ news release)
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My Bare Lady: definitely not a Victorian story of redemption
0April 27, 2006 by Colin
Now in production, and scheduled for the Fox Reality channel in the fall, the final confluence of reality entertainment: reality television and porn.
” … My Bare Lady, which begins shooting in June, will follow the four female porn stars as they study at a London drama school and aim to land a role in a West End theatre production. (Guardian, reg. req.)
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The New York Times lives on greenies and other corrective measures
0April 27, 2006 by Colin
Regret the Error may take the New York Times to task for its corrections, but internally the paper depends upon greenies. So says Jonathan Landman, the deputy managing editor for digital journalism at the Times:
” … Greenies? They are daily critiques of the newspaper, prepared by editors with contributions from staffers and circulated throughout the newsroom. The odd name comes from the habit of Allan M. Siegal, the assistant managing editor for standards who has been preparing critiques of this kind for decades, of using a green marking pen.) (Ask the Editors, NY Times)”
Landman doesn’t think, however, that readers should be given a public forum to highlight these errors.
” … We do, of course, publish corrections and editors notes to correct the public record. But it seems to me that fingering individuals in public for writing less-than-ideal headlines or overusing buzzwords or splitting infinitives would do much more harm than good, making people fearful and overcautious rather than diligent and responsive.”
One blogger seems to have noticed – quite a while ago – that the Times corrects these minor grammatical errors even after they’ve gone online and have been pumped out through the RSS feed. If you have an eye for detail, you can spot the greenies and then track their deletion through your feed reader.
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What’s your Spam IQ?
2April 27, 2006 by Colin
Are you a spam victim in waiting? An unsuspecting doofus only one click away from opening your PIII 900 Wintel to a keylogger designed by some 16 year-old in Belarus? Take the Spam IQ test, designed by Industry Canada’s Office of Consumer Affairs.
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Car dealer advertising sure to draw negative associations
0April 27, 2006 by Colin
A car dealer in Prince George, British Columbia has managed to alienate a portion of his community – and customer base – by placing a poorly considered ad encouraging locals receiving government compensation cheques for past abuse to spend their money on his lot.
The car dealer is located in a community near an aboriginal residential school run in the past by the Roman Catholic Church. For a hundred years or more, members of Canada’s first nations were sent to live at these schools in an attempt to assimilate them.
“”You have a whole lot of individuals who went to residential school who were sexually and physically abused and working through settlements with the government and the churches, only to find out there’s some used car salesman at the end looking for your money,” [Grand Chief Ed] John told CBC News.
The dealer apologized in a subsequent edition of the paper:
“”Action Motors would like to apologize for our ad that ran Friday, April 21, in the Stuart Nechako Advertiser. We did not mean to offend anyone with this ad. We appreciate your support over the years and look forward to serving you in the future.” (National Post, behind firewall)
Or, to paraphrase: “Sorry about that. Still, whaddya think of that 94 Taurus?”
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Leasing a sheep for advertising – file that under markets for everything
0April 24, 2006 by Colin
The latest buzz accelerator is sheep. To be specific, sheep decorated with advertising for a Dutch hotel company. The gimmick has drawn the ire of an asthetically-minded local mayor, who has threatened fines if the sheep are not removed in short notice. The result? 60 hits on Google news and counting.
“…Hotels.nl Chief Executive Miechel Nagel said the company would respond by increasing the number of sheep it uses in Skarsterlan to 60 and changing the statement on their blankets to ”Thank You, Mr. Mayor.”
”Now it’s a freedom of speech issue,” said Nagel. He added the local economy also was getting a boost as farmers were being paid 15 euros to 20 euros ($18-$25) per sheep per month to wear the advertisements.
”Their value as lamb-kebabs is around 60 euros ($75),” Nagel said.” (AP/NYT)
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Improving direct-to-consumer advertising – and slagging the Nasonex Bee
0April 23, 2006 by Colin
Oh, to have the measurement and evaluation money available to drug companies. Medical Marketing and Media has taken a look at The Science of DTC (pdf), discussing the growth in pre- testing of direct-to-consumer advertising, as well as efforts to improve the clarity of the many DTC formats.
In part, it’s a reaction to the scandal surrounding the side effects ofVioxxl and the resulting attention levelled at DTC advertising by the FDA.
“We’re trying to cut to the issues at hand in DTC advertising,” says [Merck consumer marketing manger Ed] Slaughter. “Every time an FDA official gets up and speaks at a conference, they say, ‘If anybody has any data on this, we’d love to see it.’ This is an attempt to move the ball forward and answer that in a scientific, data-driven way.”
MM&M calls upon industry insiders and critics to comment on past and current DTC practices, placing special emphasis on particular initiatives to improve consumer understanding of pharma advertising. Initiatives like Pfizer’s Principles for Clear Health Communication (pdf)
… Even the highest-functioning readers are hard-pressed to slog through the dense, highly technical text in a typical brief summary. To improve readability, Pfizer adopted its Principles, mandating that communications
should explain a drug’s purpose and limit content to avoid clutter; involve the reader; make text easier to read through use of active words, conversational style, chunking and road signs; make the look of the content more inviting through use of white space, good contrast and elimination of ghosting and other competing visuals; and
select realistic visuals that motivate patients to take action. The company’s new consumer-friendly risk information format for print ads, wherein easy-to-read chunks of information are presented in bulletpoint-happy bubbles, was one result of those principles. (MM&M)Funny how the editors of MM&M couldn’t follow the same advice in constructing that last paragraph …
Some academics have critiqued the presentation and positioning of risk information in DTC advertising, claiming it understates risk – likely to the benefit fo a sales pitch.
“… Drug makers often use flashy, sparkling graphics to distract viewers and divide their attention when risk information is presented during an advertisement, [Duke University professor of psychology Ruth] Day said. “Risk information is there,” she said. “It’s physically present, but functionally absent.”
For instance, she explained, Schering-Plough uses a “charming” cartoon bee character in its commercials for its allergy product Nasonex.
But, Day exclaimed, “Watch his wings.”
She demonstrated for regulators a simulation of how the bee‘s wings move quickly during the commercial’s presentation of risk information. But, Day noted, when the narrator talks about the drug’s benefits, the “wings are not moving. In fact, he doesn’t have any wings at all.”
A plotting of wing flaps per second during the presentation of benefits and risks found “clearly more [flaps] during the side effects,” she declared.
Day’s research found that risk information is placed in less favorable locations in drug advertisements than is benefit information. (ASHP News Release)
Pharma Marketing Blog offered an alternate evaluation of Day’s presentation before the FDA.
Some more details on the creators of the Nasonex Bee (BBDO and Neal Adams here and here)
Technorati: DTC pharma PR measurement
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Information design and onboard navigation
0April 22, 2006 by Colin
You come to a fork in the road. You don’t know which way to follow. Which resource appeals the most: your car’s onboard navigational computer, with its limited portrait of the neighbourhood; your AAA TripTik; or your fearless certainty that “left is right”?
Each choice reflects your relative appetite for information, your interest in your immediate or distant surroundings. Do you only need intersection by intersection directions to the hockey arena, or are you more interested in visiting every sports facility in town?
If you’re fond of electronic maps – Google, MapQuest, Yahoo or onboard – you’re likely relying on information from two companies: NavTeq or Tele Atlas. The New Yorker explains how NavTeq updates its information, then mosies on down a garden path to discuss the development of previous generations of traveller’s guides and maps.
“A map is a piece of art. It is also a form of language—a rendering of information. A good map can occupy the eye and the mind longer than almost any other single page of data, including Scripture, poetry, sheet music, and baseball box scores. A map contains multitudes.” (New Yorker)
But your little 4 by 4 inch screen can’t show you all that information.
Also in the New Yorker: The Lonely Planet Guide to My Apartment:
LOCAL CUSTOMS
The population of My Apartment has a daily ritual of bitching, which occurs at the end of the workday and prior to ordering in food. Usually, meals are taken during reruns of “Stargate Atlantis.” Don’t be put off by impulsive sobbing or unprovoked rages. These traits have been passed down through generations and are part of the colorful heritage of My Apartment’s people. The annual Birthday Meltdown (see “Festivals”) is a tour de force of recrimination and self-loathing, highlighted by fanciful stilt-walkers and dancers wearing hand-sewn headdresses.
Technorati: maps wayfinding Lonely Planet
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YouTube, Rump Shaker and CPG Ads
0April 21, 2006 by Colin
Is YouTube a long term business, or is it simply a intermediate step as we wait for high capacity pipe to connect us all up at blazing speeds? Once that pipe is in, we can just flip 30meg files to one another without the hassle of uploading to a central site. YouTube is really more of a storage facility than an easily searched database, and the tagging system is completely random. As for business models, where is their reliable and sustainable source of revenue?
That’s CNet’s question today: “YouTube: too rough for advertisers?” How do you attract the deep pocketed CPG advertisers who covet your 18-34 demographic viewers? And how do you reassure those advertisers that horrible juxtapositions of content and paid advertising won’t take place:
“Most of the sites prohibit pornography or anything that violates the law. Yet, one video featured on eBaum’s World Thursday showed a multi-car crash on an icy road. As cars continue to slide into each other, up comes a banner ad for Bridgestone tires.
[eBaum's World director of advertising Karl] Heberger acknowledges that sometimes the video doesn’t quite fit the advertiser’s message or image. “The problem is advertisers want it both ways,” [Heberger said. “They want to be in front of that 18 to 34, but they don’t want to be associated with much of what that demographic finds entertaining.” (CNET)
Technorati: YouTube CPG advertising
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Media measurement takes a step forward in Canada
2April 21, 2006 by Colin
After several years hard work, the Measurement Committee of the Canadian Public Relations Society has launched a new media measurement tool to support the measurement and evaluation efforts of PR practitioners in Canada.
“The MRP™ (Media Relations Rating Points) system provides communications and marketing professionals with an easy-to-use tool that measures the effectiveness of any public relations campaign. The 10-point rating system can be used for any type of media coverage (i.e. print, TV, radio, online). The MRP system can also be used to measure crisis communications and unplanned media attention after the fact.
The primary objective of the MRP system is to create a standardized reporting mechanism that can be widely accepted and utilized with ease to measure coverage results. This system can be easily customized by Company or by project. MRPs provide clear metrics to evaluate media coverage, track total impressions and cost per contact.” (Media Relations Rating Points User Guide)
Tested, in some form, by organizations like the Bank of Montreal, Second Cup, Kellogg Canada and others, it has been endorsed by the CPRS and IABC, and is supported by a subscription databank established and maintained by News Canada.
Key in this initiative is its breadth: with such a wide-ranging and well-tested mechanism, an opportunity now exists to implement a common measurement standard that will help corporate shops and agencies alike to effectively measure, and compare, performance.
Technorati: MRP measurement media monitoring
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Haikus in honour of Scott McLellan
0April 19, 2006 by Colin
The White House press secretary has resigned, and the folks over at Democratic Underground have penned some very-not-so-flattering farewells … haiku style!
In the interests of fairness, let me point you to a previous post on the difficulties of acting as a government spokesperson.
Your fat flabby ass / disappearing through a door / don’t let it, hit you (link)
Miss Helen Thomas / outlasted the little shit / there is some justice (link)
Delighted you’re gone / Your lies no longer pollute / The peace of my home (link)
Lying’s not easy / Propaganda takes its toll / My soul has been lost
I do need a break / Spend more time with family / Who will lie for Bush? (link)
The BEST, in my opinion:
That’s an ongoing / investigation that I / will not comment on (link)
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Eric Schmidt, another media training victim
0April 18, 2006 by Colin
We often send executives to media training because they appear uncomfortable in public settings. Which is exactly how Eric Schmidt, the current Chair and CEO of Google, ended up standing in front of a blue retractable curtain, practicing his employee question and answer sessions. It looks like it dates from about 1988.
True to form, it looks like his agency gave camera duties to the most inexperienced person in the room. The proof is in the fidgeting with the camera and playing with the video settings DURING recording.
Dammit. Does that man not love emphatic hand gestures? (Google Video)
Canuckflack
… Colin McKay has some thoughts about design, data, management, government and oddities … written in Canada!
Tumblr Goodness
Blood Stains from the slaine Monks of Lindisfarne in the Viking attack of 793AD. Folios 191v and 192r of the Lindisfarne Gospels - written and illuminated by the Anglo-Saxon Bishop Eadfrith in 698AD.
Liber generationis Jesu Christi
“Lo, it is nearly 350 years that we and our fathers have inhabited this most lovely land, and never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race, nor was it thought that such an inroad from the sea could be made. Behold, the church of St. Cuthbert spattered with the blood of the priests of God, despoiled of all its ornaments; a place more venerable than all in Britain is given as a prey to pagan peoples.”
Alcuin, Letter to Ethelred, King of Northumbria
Images: British Library
I had a Brooks Brothers 15 1/2 - 35 shirt and we used its front pocket to determine when the Pilot design was “pocket sized” - Joel Jewitt, discussing the invention of the Palm Pilot
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130408043926-7298-early-employees-joel-jewitt-palm
Before I discovered the Internet
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