Archive for the ‘Marketing stuff’ Category
After a 17 month hiatus AMC’s ‘Mad Men’ returns this Sunday in its regular 10PM slot. AMC has also created another new show which debuts with a ‘sneak preview’ April 8th at 11PM (right after ‘Mad Men’) called ‘The Pitch’ – Stuart Elliot of the New York Times covered this in his excellent column on Monday – http://nyti.ms/GHuVXI.
The premise is that a number of real-life advertising agencies compete to win the business of clients such as Subway, Waste Management, and Frangelico to name a few. Apparently the successful highlighting of brands on shows such as ‘Undercover Boss’ has emboldened brands to continue offering themselves up for deeper dives into their collective corporate cultures.
Fifteen agencies agreed to appear – all of them are small or midsize independent shops. The larger agencies have all declined as well as a number of notable smaller ones. Were our agency given the opportunity to participate I’d quickly decline as well. If I were a betting man I suspect fictional Don Draper of Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Pryce would also decline. In fact I recall a terrific scene from season 3 where Don and Conrad Hilton have a meeting where Mr. Hilton asks Don for advertising advice.
I’m Donald Draper.”
{Reminds him they met}
“We have, haven’t we?”
“We had a drink, of course.”
“I can’t believe you’re Conrad Hilton.”
“Don.”
“I’m fine.”
“I really should have known that.”
“Well, they don’t do that for everyone.”
“How did you find me?”
“Well, here I am. What can I do for you?”
{Mr. Hilton asks Don for advice on advertising}
“I think you wouldn’t be in the Presidential suite right now if you worked for free.”
“Connie, this is my profession, what do you want me to do?”
I can understand the attraction of having your agency get exposure as well as an opportunity to show off the kind of thinking that goes on every day at marketing and advertising agencies. However, it is a very slippery slope to offer high level strategic thinking and marketing concepts for free in the hope that your agency will stand out and then be hired. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? Clients really get a big benefit in shows like ‘The Pitch’ in getting free consulting that they may or not choose to avail themselves of, and there’s not much protection for a version of that idea being employed by the client with no restitution to the agency that came up with the idea.
This has been going on in the advertising industry for years and it’s not likely to stop or even slow down.
I’m not mad about the idea at all. Would your agency choose to participate or pass?
In the highly competitive hotel industry, creating revenue from sources other than the actual room charge itself is critical. Hotel food and drinks are priced substantially higher than what would be considered ‘normal’ retail prices. And anyone that has stayed in a hotel recently knows that movies are priced at exorbitant prices. This is keeping in mind that you are only watching the movie once and not buying it. For me, the selection of movies advertised by the ‘in-room entertainment channel’ is not as extensive or chock full of great ‘new’ movies as they would like to have you believe.
I don’t know at what price movie studio and distributors sell movies to hotel chains but my intuition tells me it ends up being less than $2 per movie against the total price the guest pays per movie. For the hotel chains the more popular movies will supplement the cost of the less popular movies. The hotel guest gets a per movie price of $13.99 (that seems to be most common to me), or in the case of the hotel I stayed at over the weekend – $15.99. I daresay the profit margins are impressive either way.
With internet television rising distribution, I wondered if it’s just a matter of time before Netflix and/or Amazon.com make arrangements with hotel chains to deliver movies off of your own account into your hotel room. The technology and ability to manage have been available to do that for quite some time.
It’s obvious that one big obstacle (maybe THE big obstacle) to having hotels agree to this is that the hotels and movie distributors would sacrifice a too-big profit opportunity.
As far as I am concerned fleecing customers just because you can when there are limited other options is a lousy business model. Of course guests can bring in their own movies and watch them on their tablets, but hotels do not go out of their way to allow you to connect your tablet to the television for obvious reasons.
So I ask, where’s that bold hotel chain that wants to get out in front and offer in-room movies for $5 per movie? Do you think that could impact a hotel chain’s amount of new customers, or increase customer loyalty either initially or eventually?
The New York Lottery began in 1967 and according to Wikipedia its first slogan was “Your Chance of a Lifetime to Help Education”. It has generated over $34 billion in aid to education revenue. It continues to have the highest sales in the United States of any state lottery.
For those of us that live in the greater metropolitan New York City area the New York Lottery has been running television and radio spots for as long as the lottery itself (over 40 years). The announcer on air has seemingly been there for at least half that time. I wondered who the actor was and decided to try to find out. I was unsuccessful at first and that’s probably the way the New York Lottery wants it to be. Finally I was able to find out his name – Ralph Buckley. The man who may have the best job ever.
A 2007 New York Lottery television spot featuring Don Lafontaine and Ed McMahon (both of whom have passed on) notes their names but includes no information about the name of the New York Lottery Announcer the aforementioned Mr. Buckley.
I cannot recall ever seeing Mr. Buckley do any other role. I’ve never seen him interviewed (couldn’t you see him on Letterman or Leno?) and know absolutely nothing about him. I assume he is very well off (think residuals!) and after all these years I could recognize his voice in seconds whether it is on television or radio.
The job does not appear to be all that difficult and apparently the job security is very good. Sadly I was never aware of the audition for that job when it took place all those years ago. Too bad.
Did you know what his name was?
Have you ever gone to the Target.com website? I had a couple of Target gift cards from the holidays and there’s no Target store all that close to where I live. So I finally decided to try to use the gift cards online. I had money to burn and could not find anything to spend it on. Maybe that’s the point people have told me. It’s as if Target wants you to go into the store, and by having a less than great user experience to buy something on its website you will be forced to go into the store.
As I’ve noted in prior posts, like many men in know, I am not much of a shopper and am more of a buyer. I go into a store to buy what I need and get out. I act the same way online.
Target is a good operation. The occasions that I’ve been in their store have been positive experiences.
That’s in stark contrast to what I found online. The online selection was skimpy at best and the few things that might have been worth considering were out of stock. I was looking for slippers for instance – the selection was awful. I looked for clothing and again was disappointed. I had heard about Jason Wu as a featured designer for Target. On the Target website every Jason Wu item was out of stock. After about 15 minutes of futile searching I finally gave up.
Let’s assume that I am not the target Target.com shopper (sorry I just had to). So maybe I am being overly critical of their online platform but somehow I don’t really believe that. Could their business model really be to have people not want to shop online at all and compel them to go into the store?
Unredeemed gift cards are a big profit center for big box retailers as more than 30% of gift cards go unredeemed. The more I think about it the more I have to admit that the lousy website experience provided by Target (and probably other big box retailers) is completely intentional.
Have you had similar experiences with Target.com or other big box retailers? Did it frustrate you like it did me?
Back in 2000 the movie ‘Paying it Forward’ starring Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, and Haley Joel Osment explored the idea of doing something for someone else just to ‘pay it forward’ as opposed to being paid back for a good deed. I stumbled upon the movie over the weekend and found myself compelled to watch again having really not seen it since 2000.
I’ve also seen a number of television spots from Liberty Mutual Insurance from a 2011 campaign they call ‘Doing the right thing’. Here is one of the spots –
http://bit.ly/evcXoB
. I love the music associated with the spots as well as the feeling generated from the good deeds and actions depicted in the one minute spot. There’s also a 30 second spot along the same lines but different music
http://bit.ly/hR9eUU
.
Last week I had my own experience of someone doing the wrong thing, and others doing a good thing. I returned from New York late in the evening and it was raining and I noticed a plastic bag on my windshield. Inside the plastic bag was a note that said “A Subaru Forrester, I think New Jersey Plates ****** could have possibly been Connecticut plates, hit your car in parking lot’. Multiple witnesses. And three people signed their name and gave their telephone numbers.
I stood there in the light rain for a moment trying to process what had happened. It was dark and I did not immediately notice where my car had been damaged. Finally I saw that the front bumper had been scratched but the damage appeared to rather minor. Still, from the initial outrage of how could someone hit my car and just drive away, my thoughts turned to how amazing it was that three total strangers would stick their necks out, take the time to write a note (not everyone has a pen and paper handy) and find a plastic bag in which to put the note so that it would be legible.
I contacted the people that wrote the note and thanked them for their considerate acts. I also contacted the local police department to report the incident but as yet have not heard back from anyone as I left a voice mail since it was hardly an emergency.
So I start my week with the positive notion of keeping in mind what it feels like to be the person who was treated right, instead of the person that was wronged. I hope and will look for an opportunity this week to pay it forward myself. And it should be that way every day, every week.
It’s worth it don’t you think?