Citi's new ads featuring that quirky duo may have moved to a No. 1 slot for memorability in a recent survey, but that won't save them from being shelved after just two months. The "Very, very, very rewarding" campaign included seven TV commercials and multiple print treatments featuring two oddball characters named Roman and Victor. It kicked off in late October, and was originally scheduled to run through March. But a Citigroup spokesperson yesterday said that once the current flight of ads ends next week, they will be discontinued. Beginning in the new year, Citi will instead run ads now being planned to promote its ThankYou Rewards Network, according to Citigroup spokesperson Mark Rodgers. The network enables Citi customers to accumulate points for a variety of different types of banking transactions, not just credit card use. The current ads carry only a logo for the rewards program, while the primary message is that the Citi PremierPass credit card is easy to use--and points accumulate quickly, and are easily redeemed for "the everyday things you buy." Some TV viewers in particular found the ads, directed by Jared Hess ("Napolean Dynamite," "Noche Libre") annoying. Whether viewers were annoyed or otherwise engaged, however, the spots were proving to be memorable. In the most recent survey of "memorability" by IAG Research, Citi's "rewarding" ads hit the top spot for the month of November, according to the Top 10 Most-Recalled New TV Spots, as reported by Ad Age. (Other advertisers to make the list included EA Games, Dell, Victoria's Secret and Capital One.) For all of their memorability, however, the Citi ads did not register as "most liked" on a similar list measuring viewer recall of new ads for the period from Nov. 6 to Dec. 3. Fallon, the Publicis-owned agency in Minneapolis that has served as Citi's agency of record since 2000, referred questions to the client, noting that it was in the midst of planning the rewards program for the first quarter. Fallon shares media planning and buying duties with WPP's Mediaedge:cia.
Ethnic foods trended up over the last year, with Asian and Hispanic frozen entrees enjoying the highest growth, according to AC Nielsen. Recent research data reveal that in the year ending Nov. 4, total retail sales of Asian foods (excluding Wal-Mart) rose by 4.5 percent to $1.1 billion, while sales of Mexican foods continued a four-year rise to reach $3.2 billion--up 3.5 percent from a year earlier. Harry Balzer, vice president of NPD, cites the tortilla as an example of why this is so. About 42 percent of U.S. households have tortillas in their refrigerator, he says--yet only 14 percent of households are Hispanic. "It's another kind of bread [to non-Hispanics]. [Americans] love to try new things." Indeed, AC Nielsen says tortillas remain the most popular product. Sales rose four straight years, and culminated in a 4.3 percent climb to $1 billion in the 2006 period. Mexican salsas and sauces ran a close second at $945 million--up 2.8 percent from last year. The largest contributor to Asian sales continues to be one-food frozen entrees, which edged down by 1.6 percent to $379 million in the latest 52 weeks, said the market researcher. Further, says AC Nielsen, the two-food frozen entrée segment in the Asian category has doubled in size since 2002--up 21 percent to almost $88 million last year alone. In the Mexican category, the same segment was up 36 percent, to $30 million over the earlier year. According to AC Nielsen, Asian and Hispanic populations are the fastest-growing U.S. ethnic groups and constitute the biggest drivers of ethnic food retail sales. U.S. Census Bureau data reveals that there are currently 14 million Asians and 41.3 million Hispanics living in the U.S. Asians are forecast to account for 8 percent and Hispanics 24 percent of the nation's 394 million population by 2050. Still, says NPD's Balzer, all ethnic foods have to move beyond the base population group to have a significant impact as a mass-market product. "The question is," he says. "Does it penetrate the base group?"
The North American International Auto Show in Detroit tends--like its host city--to be more meat and potatoes than nouvelle cuisine. In January, automakers will serve up new versions of their production vehicles, and concepts tend to focus less on flights of fancy than on the direction designs are actually going to take. While last month's show in L.A. seemed to be as much about alternate drive train technologies as about sheet metal, Detroit will focus again on traditional vehicles, as gasoline prices have dropped by about $1 over the last few months. Fuel efficiency will certainly remain a key message, but expect a little less hand-wringing about petroleum-based fuel as automakers pull the wraps off new cars and trucks. Of more than 45 introductions show managers expect next month, there will be many crossovers, with several automakers entering the fray in market segments in which they hadn't fielded car-based SUVs before. None of which means the companies don't use the show for design experiments: the Kia Kue is a design concept for a coupe that indicates the design direction the company will go in. Honda will unveil an Accord coupe concept serving the same purpose, and Nissan will reveal what it is calling an advanced design study called the Nissan Bevel. Chinese automaker Changfeng Group Co. will also show four vehicles under the Liebao (cheetah) brand at the show, although the company said it won't start selling in the U.S. until later in the decade. Chrysler Group, among other things, will show a new car, the Nassau, a four-door passenger luxury coupe; new Dodge vehicles about which the company is saying little, and the Jeep Trailhawk, which is based on the Wrangler. Cadillac will show the first redesign of its top-selling CTS, the new version of which is scheduled to go on sale in late summer. Among the show's "at long last" reveals, Toyota's Lexus brand will finally unveil a performance sub-brand "F"--specifically an F-series version of the IS sedan, bowing late in the year as a 2008 model--meant to compete with Mercedes' AMG and BMW's M cars. Porsche has announced the next-generation Cayenne. BMW's Mini brand will unveil its first major revamp since Mini's launch when it pulls the wraps off the 2007 Mini Cooper and Cooper S, which will go on sale next year. Among more plebeian brands, GM's Saturn division has said it will begin selling a new car, Astra--based on an Opel car of the same name, and meant to replace the poorly selling Ion compact car. The vehicle, intended to lure import buyers to Saturn, reflects a collaboration between the two GM divisions, of which the Sky roadster is also a product. However, GM won't show the Astra until the Chicago auto show the following month. Astra, a 2008 model car, will become the latest in a raft of new Saturn vehicles, after the Sky roadster, Aura sedan, Outlook and Vue SUVs. It's all part of a product salvo the company says gives Saturn a lineup of vehicles that have been on the market for only 20 months. Hyundai, which plans to move upmarket, will show a mid-sized crossover, the Veracruz--the ninth vehicle to join Hyundai's 2007 model year lineup. The company says the new crossover will be bigger than Honda's Pilot, with third-row seats. Mitsubishi, which has been struggling for three years, plans to show off three new vehicles, including a new Lancer compact car. If Ford is notably missing from this discussion, it is because the company last year decided to alter a long-standing strategy of offering pre-show news of vehicle reveals. To build anticipation, Ford now keeps pretty mum about its plans for the show.
Supplementary insurance company Aflac, known for its memorable quacking duck, is training its sights on the growing Hispanic market. Columbus, Ohio-based Aflac, the world's largest seller of supplemental insurance, gets 70% of its revenues from Japan, and has been looking for a way to increase its U.S.-derived revenues. The buying power of the Hispanic population is forecast to grow from $735.6 billion to $1.08 trillion in 2010. Financial services is a category where Hispanic spending typically increases as the family's disposable income rises. Aflac's first step was to launch aflacenespanol.com, a Spanish-language version of the company's Web site. While it has not specifically developed any products for the Hispanic market, the company's "bottom-up" culture--in which its sales agents suggest product ideas to management--means the 65,000-strong domestic sales force can get to know the Hispanic demographic and brainstorm solutions specific to it. From the "top-down," the company is taking a civic-minded approach to developing a relationship with the Hispanic community. Aflac forged an alliance with the Latino Coalition to create the Aflac Civic Awards, which this week honored Hispanic small business leaders.
Weeks after some of Madison Avenue's leading forecasters released revised--and generally moderate--outlooks for U.S. and worldwide ad spending for the year ahead, new research reveals that advertisers and agency media executives are generally upbeat on their spending plans for most of the major media over the next six months. The findings, which come from the just-completed fall wave of Advertiser Perceptions' survey of 2,400 media decision-makers, reveal growing confidence on their spending plans for all media--with the exception of radio and local newspapers. Perhaps most interesting of all, a slightly higher percentage of the ad executives plan to increase their budgets for TV than for online media. That last point is consistent with estimates being released by the major ad forecasters, which indicate that despite the high rate of double-digit growth coming from online media, TV continues to be the biggest single contributor of the growth in overall advertising spending. TV, for example, is projected to contribute 46% of the overall increase in North American ad spending and 50% of worldwide ad spending next year, according to the latest edition of "This Year, Next Year: Worldwide Media and Marketing Forecasts," released Wednesday by WPP's GroupM unit. The Internet, will be the second-biggest factor, contributing 41% of the North American ad expansion, and 28% of the global ad expansion in 2007. Outdoor will actually be the third-biggest contributor (7%). One factor fueling television's growth in the U.S. marketplace is the rapid expansion of Spanish-language television, which is actually growing faster than online display advertising in the market. In addition, the U.S. TV marketplace continues to expand via growth in new and emerging outlets, as well as new brands using the medium. However, GroupM predicted: "It is just a matter of time before internet regains its position" as the dominant contributor to the U.S. advertising expansion. Another factor slowing the Internet's contribution, according to some observers such as TNS Media Intelligence's Steven Fredericks, is that online advertising costs are generally more efficient than the old media they are substituting in advertising budgets--meaning that advertisers don't need to spend as much as they had been before to generate the same kind of results. Whatever the precise factors influencing ad spending sentiment, the pattern is clear according to the Advertiser Perceptions study. Nearly a third (31%) plan to boost their TV ad spending over the next six months, versus only 29% who plan to increase it for online media, and 25% for print media.