To my handful of readers: Rumours of my death have been exaggerated. Not quite as much as those of Gordon Lightfoot, but nonetheless. While there have been a lot of things happening in the world recently, there’s been little time for me to comment on them. I’ll attempt to remedy that in the future.

This article caught my eye today: Online Advertising Revenues Climb Out Of The Trough, Boosted By Search, Display, And Video

I found it interesting because I work in an industry closely tied to online advertising. But how close? Without going too far into the details, my employer is in the Digital Signage space. Thus every piece of media we produce either links to, or connects with advertising in some way shape or form. But is it online? What does that even mean anymore?

In my previous post, I suggested we do away with the term “Digital” as its meaning has become too convoluted and disconnected from reality to have any… well… meaning. I propose the same with “Online.” On the surface, it seems like a term with a fairly clean and simple meaning; you’re either online, or offline. Or are you?

Smartphones, wifi, GPS, Satellite Radio, RFID, Web-enabled TV, …Web-enabled FRIDGES. All of these have rendered the idea of being “offline” almost meaningless. If you lose your network connection to your desk/laptops, its entirely possible that you have a completely separate connection available on your mobile devices. Even newspapers are becoming ever more available on eReaders and mobiles.

As far as advertising goes, what this means is that the distinction between “online” and “offline” also needs to change. “Offline” advertising then, is essentially anything on paper or slapped up on a wall. Everything else… EVERYTHING is online. So what this makes me think, is that if “online” ad revenue is starting to “climb out of a trough” (especially during the current climate), what on Earth is happening to ad dollars from other “traditional” or “offline” forms of media? Further, now that you can have circuitry embedded in the surface layer of a contact lens, how long will it be before display advertising can be targetted to specific eyeballs?

Why would you even bother with paper or brick-and-mortar advertising at that point?

Here are some quick points to ponder that have me wondering about… well, just about everything.

1) According to Nielsen, The Weather Network was the 4th most accessed site (in Canada) on mobile phones in Q1/2009. They beat out Yahoo Mail, Gmail, iTunes, Google Maps, MSN Games, and YouTube. Windows LiveMail, Google Search and Facebook took the top 3 spots.

Think about this. 674,000 people were in a position where they needed to access information that is questionably accurate at the best of times. Further, it’s winter in Canada (Q1 2009). You do not need a network of trained meteorologists to tell you that it’s going to be COLD.

2) I’ve decided to use the Twitter account that I had abandoned 3 seconds after signing up for it upon its birth, to actually, genuinely see what the fuss is all about. I don’t know if I plan on updating it. I want to see if I can establish a really ecclectic list of people to follow for starters. My first reaction? Following Brent Spiner is equal parts amazing, creepy, and disturbingly addictive. I’d definitely suggest checking out his feed.

“ALARM! ALARM! Someone has breached the security system! “Ernst, Ernst, to me! (learned that from Picard) STAT! (learned that from ER)”

3) The same could be said about any specialized industry, but I’ve always found the task of describing what I do to be a difficult task, especially when the person asking isn’t in the industry (specifically if said person is older and happens to be in my family). I usually start off explaining a particular project, stepping back to mention that it’s in the Digital Marketing space, stepping back once more to mention that it’s just marketing with a particular technology spin to it, and finally I resort to grunting “I do computers.” This is usually met with a lightbulb reaction and a remark similar to “Ah yes. My friend/your cousin Jane is a programmer too!” It’s usually at that point that my soul dies a little and I start fantasizing about violently dramatic ways to escape the conversation and/or the room.

…is that (unfortunately) they don’t resonate with the majority of the North American audience.

Now, a few points I need to clarify here:

1) I’m in North America.
2) I’m not calling the general public a bunch of morons. … …
3) I’m not under the impression that this is a ‘new’ idea.

I’ve been going through the archives at http://www.ibelieveinadv.com/ and I just started to notice that whenever I’d smile and nod, savouring that “a-ha” moment that really good ads are known for inducing, it would be due to one of the non-North American teams at BBDO, Publicis, Oglivy etc etc etc… Seldom were those moments the result of an ad that was grown and cultivated here on this side of the pond.

This post however, is not about the differences between the North American market and… pretty much the rest of the world. I just wanted to make a few observations about ads that make me wonder about them for a little while after I’ve seen them, and the effect that has on the brand the ad is trying to represent. It tends to be the rule rather than the exception, that advertisers want their customers to “get it” immediately after they consume one of their ads. Sometimes, that actually works:

There’s an instant connection/spark/kick to the groin upon delivering their message. However if this fails, well then you can always resort to plan B; play the ad 10-15 times an hour, plaster it within view of any moving organism with a pair of eyes and shove it in every paper publication available on the news stand in order to beat your message over the heads of the public.

Or… you can do something like this (click the image to go directly to the IBIA site):

Now I’m completely open to the fact that I may just be obtuse and I didn’t “get it” instantly. But those of you that (like me) looked at it for a bit and went “…what?” will know what I mean. The internal monologue in my head switched on, and I started to wonder about what exactly was going on here.

There’s a shirt, a tie… a rather extreme closeup of said things. Hmm… It’s for Clearasil. They’re an acne cream. There’s not much of the guys face in the ad. “Say hello to the mirror…” What does that mean? … That guy’s collar’s kinda weird. You’d think he would ha-…

Now here’s an ad that just got me to stare at it for about the same length of time as an average television spot, and all it had in it was a picture of a shirt and a tie (and some stubbly dude). Is this going to have the same effect on me as an ad that repeats… *ahem* ad nauseum (sorry), or one that appeals to my sense of kitsch like a cute ol’ grandma wondering about the location of misplaced beef? Perhaps, perhaps not. I suppose the real question is, what kind of brainpower does one need to apply towards perceiving an ad (active or passive) before that ad becomes ‘effective’? Further, if both types of perception result in increased sales, does it really matter?

As usual, leaving you with more questions than answers,… cheers.

They have the ability to lie dormant for years, re-activated for any one of a thousand strange reasons. Maybe you’re at a party and someone whistles 3 or four notes that force you to stop and try and remember their origin for days. Or perhaps you’ve heard someone utter a cryptic pop-culture phrases like “Where’s the Beef?” or “Mikey Likes It!”. Whatever the reason, there’s a good chance that if you grew up in front of the boob tube, part of your subconscious is now permanently etched with countless slogans and catchphrases used to market just about everything, from Ketchup to Cars.

Think you’re different? Think your psyche’s been cleansed for the better? …

(I’m sure just those 3 videos, or any of the ones linked above, will no doubt cause a 3 hour YouTube session. You can thank me later.)

This was just a fun little post. There’s no deep analysis here. No probing question for you all to chew on. Except for maybe one. Despite their overall quality, what makes these old ads so … “appealing” 10, 20, or 30 years down the road? What is it about nostalgia that makes us praise and treasure something that was seemingly worthless and annoying (regardless of how catchy it was) when it was created?. Further, which ones are destined to become the next batch of guilty pleasures that will make future generations question their own sanity?

A friend of mine recently sent across a link to an ad for the new Pomegranate Phone.

Now, you could be a party pooper and fire the appropriate term into Google, rendering the need to read the rest of this post null and void. But for the remaining 1 or 2 readers, play along if you will.

The Pomegranate Phone

I’ll keep this post relatively short, because there’s a fair amount of buzz out there about this particular ad. The usual camps have precipitated out, and the debate will rage on for a few days or so whether or not the ad accomplished its goal. I took the time to explore the ad, never having heard of the phone in the first place, and I think if you go into it with that mindset, you’ll be all the more entertained.

I’ll post again shortly with some followup once the buzz has died down.

I had mentioned in my previous post that I’ve been a bit of a PC hobbyist since the late 90′s. Building my own machines, pulling my hair out when I invariably messed something up and had to start all over again. I’ve been clearing out piles of old PC magazines, including a rather bulky collection of Maximum PC which dates back to 1999. So of course nostalgia kicks in and I start flipping through some of the older issues, and I started to realize something. The actual specifications of PC components have become less and less prominent in just about all forms of marketing material.

There was a time when PCs were marketed and sold literally by the numbers. CPU manufacturers incorporated the processor speed right into the product names themselves. But a glance at an ad from Best Buy or Dell will reveal just how much this has changed. Processor speeds and cache sizes have been replaced with more “comfortable” features and benefits (space-saving, optimized, easy upgrades) and technology “microbrands” like Crossfire, Corei7, and BluRay.

The reason for this isn’t all that mysterious, and I think it represents a definite response to consumer feedback to the industry. The average consumer doesn’t really care what’s under the hood. Well let me rephrase that. Customers don’t care about the low-level details, as long as it performs for them as expected. As a PC manufacturer, this is a bit of an issue because you can’t continue to “wow” consumers with incremental increases in gigahertz or Terabytes anymore. So instead, you go back to basics. Focus on maintaining connection between the brand, and the consumer. The markets will sort themselves out in terms of who buys what. Hobbyists can still get ample information on component specs from any number of online sources, and when you look at it, they were never the primary audience for the major retailers anyways. What really matters is whether or not you (as a company) can recognize the difference between a message that says “We have a PC for you” and “We have YOUR PC”. Hobbyists are more likely to respond to the former. The rest of the world responds to the latter.

This is definitely the direction that the PC market has been heading in for a couple years now. The Mac camp of course has been doing this even before the infamous Mac vs PC campaign. Well, there was this guy too, but… that particular campaign didn’t last too long.

The same kind of shift has been going on in other areas of personal technology too. Consumer level camera ads speak more about ease of use than megapixels. Instead of listing off all of the bells and whistles, mobile phones are all about service plans and the different ways that you can connect with people once you get the device in your hands. Of course, improvements in technology will continue to make there way into successive versions of products, but it will be interesting to see if there will be another shift in the way that those products are marketed to us.

A very familiar face has been in the news recently, though I’d be willing to bet few people actually know his name. In fact, I’d bet that even after mentioning Vince Schlomi, most people would still be at a loss to figure out exactly where he was from. That is, until you see a picture of him.

Vince Shlomi. aka: The ShamWow Guy

Vince Shlomi, aka: The ShamWow Guy was arrested recently and is alleged to have assaulted a prostitute. You can read all about the sordid details here: at the Smoking Gun website. As this made the rounds on the internet, it got me thinking about infomercials themselves. You wouldn’t have much trouble getting consensus over the fact that the vast majority of them are absolute train-wrecks. Formulaic, half-baked scenarios encrusted with bad acting, with a nice thick syrupy coating of dubious promises and happy days ahead.

And this is also probably why they work. Little known, but omnipresent companies like Thane Direct and Interwood Direct Marketing are the companies responsible for the vast majority of infomercials that flood the airwaves when any sane individual should just be drifting off to sleep. They’re also responsible for raking in a LOT of money (it’s hard to track down actual numbers for these giants, but it doesn’t take an accountant to take a guess at profits for either behemoth.)

I guess the question is, why is it that we give infomercials so much leeway for being so utterly horrible? Why do we glue our eyes to the screen to watch these pitchmen try to sell us miracles of modern technology that amount to no more than your average chamois, blender, or reasonably sharp knife? There’s got to be a reason why we expect a different calibre of advertisement from a car company or a even a shampoo manufacturer, than we do from Vince or his colleagues.

HI! I'M BILLY MAYS!

I actually don’t think we have to look very far to find a workable theory. The problem is that it suggests a schizoid break between the way we’d like to perceive ourselves, and the way that we actually behave. It’s something that marketers have known for years.

We all want to be sold to.

But, we also hate salesmen, no? The very mention of the term instantly triggers visions of a fedora topped gentleman in a bad suit knocking on your door, trying to sell you a vacuum in the middle of Vietnam (true story, a friend of mine actually does this for a living). But at the same time, perhaps there’s some sliver of psychological need hidden in Maslow’s pyramid that we haven’t yet discovered. You know, if you uhm… subscribe to that particular theory anyways. There’s got to be a reason why someone with a particular cadence in their voice and a flair for the dramatic can capture your attention and dazzle you as they make a waffle in 15 seconds. Maybe it’s the sense of a challenge. We’re all reasonably intelligent individuals. “Alright sure, if you think you can woo me with some fancy talk and an hassle-free payment plan, then be my guest.” Or, perhaps the same part of the brain that’s responsible for the food dehydrator you have hidden away in the back of your cupboard with your sense of shame and defeat, is also the one that feeds your pleasure center. Your guilty pleasure center that is.

Looks a little ... underwhelming when you get it home, doesn't it?

Whatever the reason might be, the future seems bleak for those of us convinced that humanity has, or ever will evolve beyond the need for some degree of state-fair pageantry in advertising. It seems there will always be a provider for that coveted 3am – 5am time slot, now home to Mr. T, Jack Lalaine, and … that girl that was Chrissy’s cousin on Three’s Company.is