Archive for the ‘Advertising’ Category

3D’s Exciting, but Let’s Keep the Basics in Mind
Thursday, June 10th, 2010 by Edgar Villalpando – SVP Marketing

World Cup Soccer

As far as I can tell, everybody short of Pele will be watching the World Cup soccer matches in 3D. The only reason Pele won’t be putting on the silly glasses is because I expect he’ll be on hand for a lot of the matches.

If you haven’t heard, ESPN, with the love and support of wireline and satellite service providers from Philadelphia to Los Angeles and all points in between is broadcasting what is essentially the bragging rights to being the best ball kickers in the world in three dimensional glory. The event’s so exciting that Proctor & Gamble, Sony and Pixar will all experiment with 3D commercials.

Just as an aside here, I can understand and even anticipate a little bit a 3D ad from Pixar or Sony, but what’s P&G got to hawk that demands the expense of 3D equipment? Ivory Soap floating in an imaginary bathtub in your living room? Head and Shoulders cleaning up your dandruff as you wait for the soccer to resume?

I can’t see it—but then again most people can’t see it without an upgraded television, an upgraded service connection and a pair of silly glasses. And that’s the point. Most people can’t see it. My hope is that the industry, which tends to get carried away at times, doesn’t get too euphoric about the prospects of 3D TV. Yeah, it’s a neat concept; yeah, I’d love to see some balls get headed so close I can almost touch them; and yeah, the thought that this is only the start of a sports phenomenon fills me with anticipatory joy.

It also fills me with what psychiatrists describe as anticipatory anxiety because I’m afraid that looking forward to the next best thing we’ll somehow miss the best thing that’s in front of us right now: interactivity. You don’t need goofy glasses or a special TV to interact with sports programming. You just need a service provider with the wherewithal and desire to serve it up to you. Companies like ActiveVideo (there’s the commercial, you knew it was coming) will do the rest by retrieving content from the cloud and showering it down, on demand, to the consumers who want the latest statistics to go along with the game action.

It’s easy. It’s available now and, to steal a soccer phrase, it’s a GOOOOOAAAAAAAALL!!!!! for cable operators who put it in place.

World Cup soccer, I guess, is as good a place as any to start with 3D sports—allegedly there was some golf tournament this April that was in 3D, but, being a golf tournament, no one was interested enough to don the funny glasses to see the funny dressed duffers.

But I digress. Sports in 3D is great; it’s the future and it’s going to be a lot of fun—someday. Until that day, until everyone can watch different TVs with the same glasses, or no glasses, and until the price of televisions comes down to where the public will willingly switch out perfectly good and already-costly HD sets with newer costly 3D sets, sports in 3D will be a curiosity.

Sports with an interactive flair, on the other hand, is available today and to satiate a whole lot more subscribers than any 3D soccer match.

Google: If Anyone Can Pull off a New TV Model, They Can
Thursday, May 27th, 2010 by Edgar Villalpando – SVP Marketing

GoogleTV

At first glance, this whole idea of Google TV seems like a ho-hum, here comes somebody else to try to make waves in the cable industry. Stand there in line behind Microsoft and TiVo and Apple and all the others who have come before you with limited or no success.

Sure, the surface concept seems shallow and devoid of content and distribution. Sure, the idea of showing today’s Web content on the Internet has been tried before and the audience has never been there. And sure, there is already a moneymaking machine in charge of television, from the broadcasters to the cable channels to the pay TV channels and it’s tough for anybody to throw a stick into the spokes of that well-oiled organization. And sure, it’s a solution that requires yet another box when content can instead be streamed directly from the cloud.

Beneath the surface, though, are a few lingering thoughts: This is Google, this is the age of partnerships, and the very mention of Google TV seems to have been enough to wake Apple TV from its slumber. So maybe there’s something there after all.

Content? Yeah what’s out there now is weak but when you have a pipe the size of Google’s and a potential audience used to tapping the search engine for anything from a word definition to a map to a satellite picture, content providers won’t be aloof. In fact, it seems pretty apparent that content shouldn’t be a problem for Google just as it’s not a problem for satellite and telco providers. Cable channels may come from and go to cable, but their main allegiance is to the almighty dollar and if Google can find a way to monetize its service, there will be multiple dollars to salute.

The likelihood is that Google, with an open platform and an army of eager apps developers will be able to come up with some sort of monetization formula that will draw the likes of broadcasters, cable channels and even existing online content providers like Hulu into the Google TV fold. So figure content is not a problem.

Distribution might be a bigger hurdle. Google has struck a deal with Best Buy so in the worst of circumstances it could have a Google-equipped set-top box or some other device for sale at your local big box store. It’s got a partnership with Sony so it could be included in a variety of Sony televisions. But to really get out there, Google needs to cut a deal with a cable or satellite box maker—Motorola, Cisco and quite possibly Pace—and they have to have the blessing of the service provider to incorporate Google. At that point, perhaps, it becomes Google TV channel, one multifaceted point where Google presents its apps and content and presence amid all the other cable selections. It’s not necessarily what the big boys in the Silicon Valley want, but it would be a workable idea in a cable/satellite dominated space.

Google TV surely looks like another ho-hum play in the video entertainment space until you take that second glance. At that point it looks like either a threat or a new avenue for cable. My guess is it will be a new avenue in an increasingly interactive cable space.

Behavioral Ad Alerts? Seems Like Just Another Gadget
Thursday, February 25th, 2010 by Edgar Villalpando – SVP Marketing

Bobblehead

Whenever I have doubts about the ingenuity of mankind, I rummage around the house for the latest edition of the Brookstone catalogue. There, under one roof, I can find gadgets—each one “better” than the next—that can solve all of my problems. Even the ones I didn’t know I had.

Trouble pulling into the garage? There’s a gadget for perfect parking. Lose your car keys too often? Press a button and Brookstone will help you find them. Can’t stand the beeping made by the gadget on page 36? They’ve probably got headphones on page 38 that will mask the noise. It’s like an app store for, well…stuff!

I was reminded of this recently when I saw some news about how a group of U.S. trade bodies has developed a graphic for the Web that indicates behavioral targeting has taken place via the use of cookies to track Web users from site to site. The purpose of the icon is to assure the Web browser that the advertiser is a good guy who’s sticking to a set of industry-set regulatory rules.

Excuse me if I’m over thinking this, but it seems to me the creators of this concept—a group of leading advertising and marketing trade organizations—are addressing the symptom, rather than the problem. Just as the buyers of Brookstone products could practice parking skills or could put the car keys back in the right spot every time, there are ways to deal with privacy issues that don’t involve adding a meaningless icon to the clutter already on the screen.

Ask anybody who browses the Web and looks at advertising if they know the advertisers are gathering information on them and their eyes will no doubt narrow, their lips will compress and they’ll say, “Yeah. It’s a fact of life.” Those who developed the idea for the icon, however, said people actually are “rarely aware” they are being tracked, whatever that means, and 84 percent of them object to the activity. I believe half of that.

Generally, people understand that advertisers wouldn’t put information out there if they didn’t figure there was some way to make a buck off of it. If that includes tracking you, so be it. On the plus side, maybe that information will be used to give you a good deal on the camera of your dreams or a great holiday break. On the negative side it could be used to pitch a set of Ginsu knives. Or an Edgar bobble-head doll just for reading this blog.

But rather than simply alerting us to the prying eyes peeking over our shoulders, wouldn’t it be better for these agencies to hold the advertising and direct marketing communities to a higher standard? Wouldn’t it benefit everyone if those organizations would use their clout to ensure that users could feel that their privacy is being protected?

It seems to me that people can live with sharing their behavior with brand marketers, when they regard those brands as friends. So instead of giving us the illusion of safety—like taking off our shoes at airport security—by putting icons on the screen, I would suggest that the industry work vigorously to make sure that its own house is in order.

By the way, I think there’s a Brookstone gadget for that.

Why Should the Players Have All the Fun?
Thursday, February 4th, 2010 by Edgar Villalpando – SVP Marketing

Super Bowl Commercial

There’s plenty of blame to throw around for why the modern Super Bowl is what it is: an overhyped orgy of athletics and advertising that starts too late, lasts too long and sometimes even provides a rollicking good evening of entertainment.

Blame Bart Starr, if you must, or Joe Namath. Better yet, blame Mike Ditka, Buddy Ryan and those 1985 Bears who humiliated the New England Patriots in a game so boring that even Boston fans stopped crying in their Sam Adams and just conceded their team just wasn’t good enough.

They’re all responsible in a way for teasing us with the idea that what’s billed as the biggest football spectacle of the year might actually be as good as Joe Namath predicted and others have shown over the years or — as the Bears and Starr’s Green Bay Packers showed — the game can be so dull that billions of viewers are more interested in watching the slew of advertisements that pay for the bloated spectacle.

It’s been said too many times that the ads are the best part of the Super Bowl. Advertisers themselves have fed that myth by holding their best stuff for the big game.

Interactivity kicks that part of the game up another level by making the ads something that can hold attention even beyond the 30 or 60 second slots into which they’ve been placed.

The most obvious spot for interactivity is via a storyline that continues beyond the ad’s allotted time. Imagine those Budweiser Clydesdales kicking a field goal — it’s been done, I know — and using the interactivity button to learn whether it’s good or bad. Chances are you won’t miss anything of the game and if you’re really into seeing every nanosecond of every play, you can use your manual dexterity to push both the interactive and pause buttons.

For those who don’t like distractions, there are interactive platforms that can provide you with the best of both worlds: the millisecond-by-millisecond grind of the on-field thrills and the opportunity to learn — or maybe even vote on — whether the field goal was good. Talk about multi-tasking. What more could you ask for? Drama on both ends of the scale.

Interactivity can even take the drama off the field and put it right in your living room in the midst of your Super Bowl party. There might be multiple views of the field; there might be multiple interactive possibilities to explore; but there is only one remote. In a crowd of Super Bowl partiers, with beverages flowing more freely than the New Orleans offense, imagine the impact of being the only person in control. You’ll either be more popular than Peyton Manning or more harried than Drew Brees — or, depending on your fan preferences, the reverse.

Imagine this situation. The Bud Clydes line up for the winning field goal against the washed up Coors Light coaches. The snap is good; the ball is sailing towards an end zone projected on an Apple iPad. The Sony cameras are clicking, the Panasonic videocams are rolling, fingers are poised over BlackBerries to tweet the results, and the program returns to the game. As the owner of the remote you control the party’s destiny. You determine whether you click to the interactive site for the field goal or return in time to see Manning change the play at the line.

What do you do?

And if that’s not more exciting than either the game or the ads that support the game then my name isn’t Archie Manning. Oh, wait a minute, my name isn’t Archie Manning. Nevermind.

Sometimes the Ads are Better than the Shows
Thursday, January 21st, 2010 by Edgar Villalpando – SVP Marketing

Boost Mobile Pig

Commercials are like blogs; the more controversial or funny or outrageous, the more attention they get. If you don’t like a blog, you can skip forward to something else. If you don’t like bland advertising, well…that’s why they created “fast forward.”

I’m not anti-advertising. There are certain ads that just make me stop, look and listen and move my finger off the FF. While I’ll gladly fast forward through laundry detergent ads or shots of cars with bows on their roofs or male enhancement pitches (although I can see why some guys might pause at that point), when the Boost Mobile pigs show up (click here for video), I’ll stop and have a laugh. Those pigs remind me of trade shows.

I don’t fast forward through clever ads but for every ham eating pig there’s a dog of an ad that doesn’t deserve 30 seconds of attention and only gets watched because the viewer can’t fast forward, doesn’t need to use the bathroom or already has a beer. It’s not my fault that some advertisers lack imagination and a decent ad agency, nor is it my concern that the broadcasters running these dogs might not get the attention—or revenues–they want. Suck it up, guys! Life’s tough, “Mad Men” is fiction and the ‘60s were never as much fun as old timers remember. It’s 2010 and attention spans are shorter than mini skirts.

All that said, I concede there’s a problem with the way broadcast media works. For better or worse, it’s ad supported. If people duck the ads and advertisers know they’re doing it there’s no money to pay for good content. And in media, that’s more disturbing than pigs eating bacon.

That’s why some Australian news grabbed my eyeballs. Those down-under folks are always on top of things. Australian commercial TV stations will be equipping set-top boxes that run Freeview with MHEG 5 (that’s short for the cleverly named Multimedia and Hypermedia Information Coding Experts Group, not the equally cleverly named MPEG or Moving Pictures Experts Group).

MHEG is an interactive middleware that powers Freeview, which, ironically is a digital TV service owned by the major TV stations in Australia. It’s ironic because these same broadcasters are using MHEG to plop static advertising into Freeview programming while promoting the service as “the easiest way to enjoy digital TV for free. There are up to 50 digital TV channels, no subscription, no contract, no fuss.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t being forced to watch an ad against your will something of a fuss creator? The Aussies waltz around this dilemma by arguing that MHEG won’t restrict viewing, it will enhance it with “high definition graphics and interactive channels.”

If they say so. Personally, though, I think interactivity — with or without advertising support — is better as a free will option delivered as part of a programming package and, in the best of all worlds, targeted to the viewer’s interests, not as a way to stifle my desire to fast forward those Geico cavemen. Make an ad worthwhile, and I’m in hog heaven; force me to watch a boring ad and you chance losing me as a viewer altogether.

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