Those new Apple ads mining the Walt Mossberg connection

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

An Apple campaign pitting Macs against PCs is a lot like the Mac itself, stylish and simple. It’s a good example of how to be convincing without ad copy butting into the story. Two people in front of a camera exchanging barbs in a way typical Mac and PC people would.

In the ad, ‘Network,’ there’s great body language, a lot of unpolished, but authentic ‘waitwaitwaitwaits’ and ‘aaaahs.’ The one on ‘Restarting’ has both of them in conversation, but Mr. PC’s speech freezes mid-sentence, and he has to restart. Much to the amusement of our Mac fella who wanders off camera to get help for his friend, from IT. 

The only polished ‘copy’ comes out in the Wall Street Journal ad –and that when Mr. PC reads off Mossberg’s column. Walt Mossberg, in case you aren’t into his technology column, is someone who’s opinion makes or breaks a product. No surprise then that this campaign is also running on the front page of the Wall Street Journal’s online edition.

There are 6 versions. You can see them all here.

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Could this be advertising?

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I had a conversation with a someone today about the different ways marketers will have to rethink advertising, since the old ways don’t seem to fit –when it comes to online content– on devices that are smaller than PCs and TV screens.

Then I came across Amazon’s Fishbowl, something I had commented on last year. It’s intriguing that Amazon is doing this, but then again, every marketer that does not experiment with new formats around their content, will be left in the dust. Fishbowl features interviews; there is one patently branded piece that looked like a great marriage between three essential parts of the Amazon service: the author, the customer and the delivery method. In this case it was a UPS ‘spot’ that did not look like a commercial at all, even with the big brown truck in the background.

Essentially it is a way for Amazon to spring a surprise on a customer who has ordered Mitch Albom’s book "The five people you meet in heaven." Albom personally delivers the box, getting an opportunity to plug the theme of the book about how we never know how much we could impact the world when we connect with someone. The only thing I didn’t like about it was the title: UPS Special Delivery. The idea was strong enough to not need such heavy handed branding. And it does not need to be watched on a TV screen either.

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Hoi Polloi is 2 years, 1 month, 2 days old

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It’s over two years since I began this blog. That was pre-tsunami. What a lot –the BK subservient chicken ad, mobile phones, a papal election, flat-world theory, word-of-mouth marketing, iTunes — has transpired since then.

I want to thank those who rallied around when I briefly converted this blog into a tsunami relief site (now at waveofhope.us) which was able to help one devastated family, and an orphanage start anew. Also to those contributors, editors, and all those whom I’ve interviewed for articles, using this blog as a starting point, bigtime thanks.

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Interesting media quotes

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“PCs have become the emotional hard drive of our global audience"
MTVN president and chief operating officer Michael Wolf

"Advertisers will be able to buy 15-second video commercials that can’t be skipped. Shows will also have heavy product-placement opportunities."
Wall Street Journal article on CBS launching Innertube, for TV on the web

"New-world editorial, please shake hands with old-world media economics 101."
George Simpson, ‘How the real world works," an article on why pulling ads when content is tasteless, fraudulent or politically incorrect, doesn’t amount to censoring free speech. In Online Media Daily

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Agencies are rebooting. Madison + Broadband romance grows

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

The Madison and Vine excitement has wound down a bit, making room for the Madison Ave and Broadband relationship. I know, broadband is not an ‘address’ but it is something that makes marketing, advertising and end-users’ atwitter with huge expectations. It’s impossible to think of broadband without the on-demand phenomenon. And it’s impossible to mention on-demand without bringing in RSS.

RSS advertising is expected to grow by 129% by 2010 (Mediapost’s report on PQ Media study.) Interest in rich media is on the rise (again) with steady broadband penetration. Denmark, South Korea, and even Iceland have higher penetration than the US, though, reports cNet.

Television has begun moving into broadband country. Consider these:
CBS launched Innertube it’s broadband channel.
ABC has a Video-on-demand section, and is also has broadband plans to work with affiliates
NBC had formed a national broadband company (NBBC) with its affiliates.

No wonder agencies are changing –fast. I wrote about this in Create Magazine’s summer issue that’s just-out.

Broadband is one of those forces that bring about this change, and agencies learn to draw on its values. As outgoing AAAA chairman, Ron Berger stated at the end of his speech, "I think our industry would be better if agencies were as comfortable with change as we like to tell clients they should be."

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Quotes of the week:

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"(Customers) expect it all to be included because to them data is the main event and voice is just another thing they do with their phone"  Helio CEO, Sky Dayton, in a Reuter’s story

"The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed."  Author William Gibson

"if you hold a political stunt news conference at a gas station and then depart in an alternative fuel automobile, you should drive further than one block."
Mike Swenson, on House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who drove away in a Hydrogen fuel vehicle from a news conference at a gas station, but then got into an SUV.

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Was Exxon Mobil’s Rex Tillerson misquoted in headline?

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No wonder people find it tricky to be interviewed by the media. Exxon Mobil CEO is quoted on CNN.com as saying "Use less of our stuff" which is a headline summary of the quotes in the piece.

But does the following: "We just have to ask people to make sure they are using energy wisely" and "Be efficient with it, don’t waste it." mean use less of our stuff? In fact using the product ‘wisely’ and efficiently, has a different meaning from what the headline implied. If the head of Toyota Prius made a statement about "using our technology wisely," would a headline on a story about hybrids be phrased ‘Use more of our stuff?’ 

Headlines are dangerous, especially in a world where information gets indexed, is retrievable, and lives virtually forever on search engines. There’s a headline about Steve Jobs telling a hacker to shut up, that goes back to a story from 1981, but lives on thanks to Digg, which provides the link.

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Selfcast and the YouTube: Waiting for the ‘relevance engine’

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Now that YouTube has it’s British counterpart, Selfcast TV, there’s going to be a rash of consumer generated content. Selfcast is the creation of Blinkx.com, a one-time desk-top search engine that has now morphed many times over into a video search engine called BlinkxTV.

When I interviewed Blinkx CEO Suranga Chandratillake a few months back, he convinced me that the ‘engine’ was only as good as the content it delivered. The ability for consumers to link to anything, and find relevant content especially TV content was where all search should be headed, he said. The ‘video search engine’ model may not be the only answer, but for now, it seems like it’s making ‘appointment TV’ obsolete. The next step for a video engine is to make demographic targeting precise, so that advertiser and end-user benefit. BlinkxPico, as it is now called, has 1 million hours ofsearchable video, audio and TV, but that doesn’t help a time-strapped end user. People need to find things easily. Sure, we like to say ‘content is king’ but it’s good to remind oursleves that relevance, not the quantity of content, is the crown jewel.

Example: On BlinkxTV, type in ”Commander in chief" and the ABC series starring Geena Davis shows up 8th on the list. Use the same search terms in Google, and it is right at the top. But there is rich/mixed selection on Blinkx –a podcast with a film director comparing the ABC series to West Wing, and even a BBC TV story on the targeting of the Sri Lankan army commander by a suicide bomber last week. It’s a lot of clutter. I’m still waiting for the "I’m feeling lucky" button of smart selection.

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Yahoo Go: are search engines becoming ad engines?

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The buzz about Yahoo launching Yahoo Go may seem like a surprise, but that’s only because people got used to putting Google and Yahoo into a bucket marked ‘Search,’ as if it were separate from the bucket marked ‘broadcast’ in which ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox were kept.

The ‘leaping content’ theory forces us to empty the buckets into one big tank out of which content, whether it is video or audio, can feed the faucets of our multi-media devices. This is where the phone jack, the cable, and a broadband connection meet. Not to mention the DVR. At least some TV networks have begun to understand that. NBC’s Jeff Zuker, hastily getting out of his bucket, has said so much addressing the need for the linear to have its non-linear counterpart. Disney, too will start the trial run of its downloadable and streaming content. Apparently with interactive ad content.

To get back to the search engine bucket that no longer exists, they (the Yahoos and Googles of this world) are certainly moving into the mobile phone territory, and seem to be laying the groundwork for those in the leaky ‘broadcast’ bucket to move in. Which tells you something about who’s going to be in charge of advertising. Ready for a new bucket called ‘ad engines?’

I listened to a panel discussion last year where someone from Google spoke of always making sure their business model satisfied ‘the trinity of advertiser, publisher and end-user.’ Sounds like what ad agencies should have been doing all along.

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