[ Summer Time and the Livin' is TV ]
Does anyone remember playing flashlight tag? Maybe this was just a game that we played during the summer in Westgate Hills. If you know the premise, forgive me. It’s pretty simple. You just play tag with a flashlight. Instead of the person who is “it” having to “tag” others so they’re “it,” in this version, you use a flashlight to make the tag. As I recall, there was an element of hide-and-go-seek, too. But this game only works at night. There’d be no point, otherwise.
As a kid who really liked watching a good deal of TV, playing flashlight tag up and down Wendover Drive was never a problem. After all, summer time was when networks ran re-runs. Maybe we were treated to the occasional “special” like “Battle of the Network Stars.” Who could forget Bruce Jenner vs. Love Boat’s Lauren Tewes in a sack race?
Anyway, life’s certainly changed. Never mind the fact that we probably don’t want our kids running around at night. Never mind that kids today are completely booked with scheduled activities, sports, camps, summer enrichment, etc. The fact is that there is a lot of great TV on in the summer!
For kids, there’s a never ending stream of summer hits. Take Disney’s High School Musical, High School Musical 2 and Camp Rock. But networks and producers haven’t forgotten mom and dad. There are some really, really great programs premiering (or returning) in the summer.
Cable paved the way. For instance, Mad Men, last year’s huge hit for AMC, will be back. But the traditional networks are in on the action. In simpler times, summer hiatus months allowed networks to produce new episodes or develop new programs. But today, producers and networks are busy 12-months a year producing programming. Presumably the demand is there.
Take a look at a brief list of new programs that are premiering or returning this summer: Hopkins and the Mole on ABC; So You Think You Can Dance and Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader on FOX29, Nashville(Star) and Last Comic Standing on NBC, Swingtown and Million Dollar Password on CBS.
Original entertainment programming isn’t the only “new” content this summer. NBC will be broadcasting the Olympics in August. While the primary season for the election is finally over, people are still intensely interested in the two candidates so news programming is enjoying the benefit.
This snapshot is just that…Cable networks are chock-full of new and original programs, summer shows like Mad Men, etc. TV viewership typically drops in summer months. However, the fact is that people are spending more time with the TV than ever before. People demand content all year long and content providers are meeting that demand. Advertisers need to understand that while HUT’s and PUT’s do decline in the summer, the availability of new content on TV will attract viewers, even during the summer. This could feature nicely in a well developed media buying strategy and negotiations process.
Google “advertising in a recession.” You’ll get over 3 million results!
Quickly scan the list. Not surprisingly, most of the search results are from ad agencies or businesses that make money from advertising. However, there are a number of articles from publications like Business Week and the Harvard Business School that make the same point.
How does the old expression go: “When times are good you should advertise. When times are bad, you must advertise!
I don’t intend to write a self-serving article aimed at clients and colleagues using research to press for continued (even increased) budgets. Rather, I wanted to provide a very broad overview of some research that’s out there. And, I’m including a bibliography of sorts in case you want to read more details on the topic. At the very least, this stuff should give pause when considering ad spending during a recession.
Quick Findings
- Cereal giants Post and Kellogg’s had neck-and-neck market share prior to the Great Depression. Post cut its ad budget and Kellogg’s did not. Today, Kellogg’s enjoys a bigger share of the market share.
- Ford cut ad spending during the Great Depression. They had been the number one automotive manufacturer in the country. Chevy continued to advertise through the Depression and continues to outsell Ford today.
- Businesses that aggressively advertised during the last recession (just 25% of all businesses) increased their market share 2 ½ times the average for businesses in the post-recessionary period.
- Research noted that businesses that increased ad spending during a recession saw a 1.5 point increase in market share. Whereas 80% of businesses that increased ad spending during expansion periods saw no increase in market share.
Tactics
For many businesses, the question isn’t about cutting, but about making advertising dollars work harder in periods of slow economic growth. Here are some tips and tactics to consider.
- Focus on loyal customers. Develop and promote loyalty rewards programs.
- Negotiate better media buys. The media markets are just as susceptible to recessions…even more so! So, take advantage of the situation.
- Buy smarter and more efficient campaigns. Use :15s on TV. They are very efficient, almost as impacting and will build frequency. Build campaigns with strong cross-over elements.
- Be efficient with your creative. Realize that ads have a longer shelf life with the consumer than advertisers (or agencies) assume.
- Don’t go dark. You’ll cede share to your competitors who stay in-market. As the research proves, it will be very difficult to ever get back the share you’ll lose.
Don’t get me wrong, in tough times, it’s relatively easy to cut ad budgets. This doesn’t require layoffs and it’s easy to rationalize. Advertisers convince themselves that “there’s no market out there” so there’s “no sense in advertising.” That thinking is problematic at best. People still “need” things and consumers still “want” things. In a recession consumers make more discerning choices. This necessarily means that advertising has to work harder. Finally, the recession will end. Advertisers reap disproportionate benefits when advertising through a recession. Those that do not advertise through a recession, never get back to their pre-recession position.
Check out some of the articles and online sources I’ve found around this topic.
- Five Tips for Marketing in a Recession.
- Does it Pay to Market in a Recession.
- Recession Proof Marketing.
- How to Market in a Recession.
- Independent Report Shows the Value of Marketing in a Recession.
The Media Audit just released its latest survey on time spent using different media. TV is still number one, but internet increases have been dramatic. The Media Audit (June, 2008) reports that web usage is up 62% year-over-year. “US adults now spend an average of 3 hours and seventeen minutes per day online.” TV viewing remains high at three hours and forty-two minutes. It was noted that “14.2% of US adults visit a radio website in a typical 30-day period, many of whom are likely streaming radio content.” (Media Audit, June 2008)
Check out the chart below.
Recently, Google unveiled its new tool called Google AdPlanner that is aimed at advertising agencies with focus on online media planning and research. Google released this free, web-based tool for beta testing on Wednesday June 25. Articles in many digital media have approved of Google’s move and expressed great excitement. But, is the tool actually that good or groundbreaking? There are quite a few software options that can handle planning of online media. So, what’s all the buzz about?
First of all, let’s talk about what AdPlanner actually is and what it does. Google added the AdPlanner tool to their expanding free service options that include Google Analytics, Google Trend for Website and few other applications. AdPlanner is a web-based software that lets users to first research websites that are of interest to the target audience and then create a media plan using the selected sites.
The research part of the tool allows users to narrow the search based on four demographic criteria – gender, age, education and household income. Behavioral qualifier can also be added to refine the search results, however, only in type of a website address. The tool also provides information about unique visitors and page views as well as information about the inclusion of a site in Google content network and the available ad formats. Sounds interesting? Maybe, but this kind of segmentation is fairly archaic and provides only very broad results. In order to further narrow the results, behavioral criteria can be added to the search. However, even generic websites like Ford.com or Suzuki.com returned no results.
The media plan portion basically adds up the information about visitors and page views to provide a quick snapshot of what the media planner would/could include in a buy. Unfortunately, even this portion of the tool doesn’t offer contact information to the selected websites or basic rates.
Reporters and analysts expressed high hopes for the tool due to Google’s ability to collect data from the search habits of its users and apply it to the research part of AdPlanner, therefore, providing a great value to media planners and their clients. However, the tool, even though still in beta testing, lacks deeper geographic targeting capabilities (other than by country), narrower behavioral targeting (other than website address) and more functionality on the media planning side that media planners are familiar with from the offline world like CPM, Reach and Frequency, etc.
AdPlanner does sound like a neat idea, but there is still a lot of work Google’s programmers have to do in order to make it a valuable tool. What’s more, the tool has been on the market for only a couple of weeks, and it has managed to raise some eyebrows in terms of privacy and access to confidential information that would be available through the web-based software. So, the online media planners have to either stick with information provided by Nielsen Net Ratings and ComScore when putting together an online media plan; or wait until Google AdPlanner goes out of Beta testing.
[ Digital Publishing and Advertising Conference ]
On June 25th, 2008 digital publishers and advertisers came together for the Digital Publishing and Advertising Conference in New York to discuss the ever-changing market and technology. Gillespie Group's Holly Rafferty and Alena Minarovicova were present to document the new wave of developments in this ever growing media field. Over the course of a day, a plethora of topics such as the state of the economy, social media, media usage patterns and integration were all touched upon.
Over the past ten years, digital technology has grown by leaps and bounds and advertisers and publishers are trying to keep up. It seems as though once the advertising industry gets a grasp on the latest technology, that technology is passé and consumers have moved onto the next big thing. Right now, the buzz word for most brands is social, as in social media. Social media takes many forms such as message boards, podcasts and wikis. Social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and LinkdIn are growing in popularity and usage. Wait, that was so last month, now we have Twitter, the mini-blogging site where little tidbits of information are shared with your select group of friends/family/outsiders you invite into your life—or the latest versions Plurk or Spoink. The popularity of sites such as these are a testament to the changing attitudes toward communication and sharing thoughts with the world.
Just in case people haven’t spent enough time connecting to each other on the internet through their computers, they are connecting on the move through their phones. Mobile advertising is the next big thing in advertising. July 11th marks the arrival date of the Apple iPhone 3G. While for some people, it’s just another phone, to those at DPAC, it’s the next wave into technology becoming mainstream, mainly due to its price that is now comparable to any other smart phone on the market. What’s more, Apple’s iPhone is easy to use, it’s slick and fashionable, user friendly and functional. If text messaging was the beginning of mobile advertising – be prepared for a revolution. iPhone’s capabilities and functions along with various applications open a wide array of possibilities to marketers for advertising formats and delivery options.
While there are millions of potential consumers using social networking sites and mobile phone owners, the question is how the advertisers reach them in such an anti-commercial setting. The key is communication—not talking AT your consumer rather, talking WITH your consumer. The keynote speaker Marta Martinez said it best when she noted “companies need to become valuable participants in consumer conversations. Companies need to listen to their consumers and put out messages that are relevant and that the consumers want to hear/see and be part of.” They need to integrate their messages into applications that can micro-target a variety of users.
