Anheuser-Busch's big ad buy during this year's Super Bowl was emblematic of a lot more than its need for reach during the game. According to Tony Ponturo, A-B's VP/global media and sports marketing, the company based the buy on extending into non-traditional media, and integration on the broadcast set and on the field. Speaking at the Association of National Advertisers' Everything TV & Video Forum on Thursday, Ponturo said it is no longer enough to buy ad space during broadcasts of big events and live pro and college sports, pillars of A-B's ad strategy. He said the ad buy must be integrated with the Web and within the game itself. "Everything we do today is about how to extend our traditional media buys with new technology." he said, noting that the company garnered an additional 32 million views of its Super Bowl ads online the week after the game. Ponturo said the Web provides a destination for more irreverent creative. One of the company's Super Bowl ads starred Will Ferrell improvising as Jackie Moon from the movie "Semi Pro." A-B shot much more improvisational--and risqué--versions for the Web. "The incentive to do the traditional Super Bowl spot was the 20 million views we got on the Internet," he said. "Two years ago, those ads wouldn't have had a home. Now, all of us use video in a much different way: You go on a shoot and do a spot for traditional media and then one for the Internet side." Ponturo said that in the '80s and '90s, A-B was concerned solely with reach; "we were hunters." He added that while 90% of A-B's media plan is still focused on traditional media, "we think the most important thing is how to evolve to the digital online space with traditional media. It's going to be how do we do sponsorship deals, how do we talk to owners of Web assets and integrate the old (media) with the new." Per Ponturo, A-B has shifted its dollars--incrementally--to the Web and also from the four networks to cable entertainment buys. "Ten years ago, 81% of our buy was against broadcasters," he said. Now, the mix is around 70% network, with over 30% on cable. Still, live sports is over 70% of what A-B does in media strategy. "We like it because it's live; we like it because it's TiVo-proof; there's a lot of promotional connection, an emotional connection and product placement--through stadium signage, for instance," he said. He added that big-event buys give an advertiser the "look of the leader" and mass reach frequently with double-digit ratings. Besides the Super Bowl, A-B has media buys and integration with the Final Four, the World Series and the forthcoming Olympics. "In this day and age, if we get 17 days of 14-15 share, those are big consistent numbers," he said.
Attempting to stop consumers from defecting to rival carriers, Sprint Nextel on Thursday introduced an unlimited voice and data services plan for $99.99 per month after reporting a fourth-quarter loss, ending Dec. 31, of $29.5 billion, or $10.36 per share. The company wrote down most of the remaining value of its Nextel Communications purchase in 2005, and stated it would stop paying dividends for the foreseeable future. Dubbed Simply Everything, the plan gives subscribers voice, data, text, e-mail, Web-surfing, Sprint TV, Sprint Music, GPS Navigation, Direct Connect and Group Connect for one monthly price. During a call with analysts, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse forecast the third-largest U.S. carrier would lose 1.2 million annual-contract subscribers in the first quarter of this year and more in the second. During the reported quarter, revenue fell about 6%, to $9.8 billion, compared with the year earlier. About 108,000 subscribers took their business elsewhere, but an increase in its Boost prepaid and wholesale channels brand partially offset a loss of 683,000 subscribers paying monthly bills. Print ads and in-store promotional displays that focus on marketing the Simply Everything plan begin to roll out Friday, along with the service, according to Emmy Anderson, Sprint spokesperson. "We're marketing the new service through our existing ad campaign plans, so we don't spend additional funds," she says. Sprint previously committed spending $200 million on advertising to market Nextel Direct Connect. The new Simply Everything Plan includes unlimited Direct Connect, so the carrier will tap into existing plans to promote the Simply Everything Plan at the same time. Sprint has recently stepped up its focus on marketing and advertising messages on unique services. The carrier has been paying more attention to sending compelling messages, switching last April to Goodby Silverstein & Partners as AOR. "When we brought on Goodby Silverstein & Partners, they began to feature bright giant swirls that create a more noticeable visual to catch your attention," Anderson says. "They carried the message across everything we do at Sprint." The new pricing plan is available to existing and new customers on both Sprint's CDMA network and Nextel iDEN. Subscribers don't need to renew or extend their contracts. There's also a $5-per-month discount for families subscribing to high-end plans. Rival carriers AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile also offer unlimited service plans for one monthly price. Recently, Verizon was the first to announce a $99.99 unlimited voice plan--followed by AT&T, and then T-Mobile, which offered the most comprehensive plan for text, voice and picture messaging until now.
Boston-based insurance company Liberty Mutual is doubling marketing spend this year to back a raft of Web-based films that carry its "do the right thing" theme to a Web movie effort, The Responsibility Project, at responsibilityproject.com. The project involves films about people faced with ethical choices. The company has also launched a new raft of TV ads that evolve the responsibility theme it launched in 2006. Hill Holliday, Boston handles. Speaking at Thursday's Association of National Advertisers' conference in New York, Stephen Sullivan, SVP/communications for Liberty Mutual Group and chairman of ANA's Board of Directors, said that programs like The Responsibility Project reflect the maturity of the Web. "As online platforms mature and as peoples' media behavior begins to be established, innovative ideas like Responsibility Project may not need network TV unless it can prove value or delivers an audience and works with advertisers," he says. The new campaign comprises a number of ads, each of which is a vignette following one person doing the right thing. That's a departure from earlier ads, which have had a "pay it forward" aesthetic, with different people acting altruistically in chain-reaction fashion. Sullivan said the ads will also live online. "We made a major financial commitment to produce 20 original films this year that will be put on our Web site and will be published in a way that will be very easy to share. People will click and drag and put them in e-mails," he says. He added that the company is not a big player in the segment in terms of media spend, but the company will double media spend this year. "The insurance category is the most competitive ad category and has grown by double digits," he says. "Our competitors have raised the bar and so have we. But, while we have doubled overall spend, we have also doubled online spend." Sullivan pointed out that the company's target--buyers of car and homeowner's insurance--gives Liberty Mutual a narrow aim. "We want to address large numbers of people and establish an emotional connection with them, but we don't have a huge disparity in demographics." The company is continuing its activity on PBS this year with sponsorship of "The American Experience," "Antique Road Show," and a new program called "From the Top," about kids who are classical musicians. "The PBS audience is a good one for us," he says. Sullivan describes today's media landscape as a three-dimensional mosaic. "It used to be you would do your media plan with three broad paintbrushes [covering the three major networks at the time]. "Today, you have all these little pieces of ceramic and glass that have to be evaluated and put together in a picture that is very unlike the broad brush we used 20 yeas ago. PBS, for example, is one of the pieces."
It's no secret that Victoria's Secret is struggling. The division of Limited Brands, like so many other retailers, has been wrestling with declining foot traffic at malls, and an economy that isn't exactly sending women screaming for new dainties. This week, it announced that same-store sales in the fourth quarter fell an extremely unflattering 8%. But for once, a retailer isn't blaming all its problems on high gas prices and a scary economy: During a conference call with investors, CEO Sharen Turney conceded that the brand has strayed too far from its roots, getting too young and too sexy, with a product assortment that just isn't tempting shoppers the way it used to. "We will return to our heritage, increasing the level of sophistication in our product offerings," she says. "We'll reinvent sleepwear, and return the brand to the ultra-feminine, and meet her needs and expectations." Part of the problem has been VS' success with younger buyers, particularly in its Pink brand. "Pink did well, and then all the brands got younger," she says. Today, Turney says, Victoria's Secret is focusing on an aspirational buyer who is 26--a far cry from the target Pink buyer, a girl so young the retailer uses stuffed animals in its promotions. Bra launches--like the new higher-end BioFit Bra, available in stores next week--"will be fewer but more powerful," she says, and stores will emphasize a "good, better, best" pricing strategy, with stronger options in each category. Limited Brands has other issues, too. Same-store sales dropped 8% at its Bath & Body Works division, which it says resulted from too long a period of holiday promotion, lack of new and appealing products and gift selections that left shoppers cold. For the quarter, Limited Brands says sales fell to $3.28 billion, from $4.02 billion in the same period last year, with an overall decline in comparable-store sales of 8%. And for the year, sales slipped to $10.13 billion, from $10.67 billion in the prior year, with a decline in comparable stores sales of 2%. While it says it is making changes to improve results, Limited Brands also says things may get worse before they get better: While it first predicted February sales would fall in the mid- to high single-digits, it now says they are more likely to come in the "negative low double-digit range."
Business-to-business marketers have long debated whether B-to-B events sponsorships and other event marketing are effective only for boosting sales in the short term--or also have longer-term, brand-building value. Results of a new Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) study, conducted in partnership with Gallup & Robinson and Exhibit Surveys, claim to have put this question to rest. And the answer is ... Yes, B-to-B events have significant brand-building power. In addition, according to the researchers: "Contrary to the traditional advertising model, B-to-B event and sponsorship marketing is driven concurrently by thinking and emotion, sustained by reason and quality of experience at the event, and closed by action (intent or purchase). The unique value of event marketing is its ability to foster positive attitudes via a focused combination of marketing, relationship building, and event experience." Specifically, the study set out to determine "how and in what ways the bond between the customer and B-to-B event marketing is incremental and unique to other marketing activities." About 2,000 pre- and post-event interviews were conducted across four diverse B-to-B events, with both attendees and non-attendees in the events' target universes. This was followed up by a sales conversion study with those who had indicated purchase intent. In addition to purchase intent and "emotional connection" indicators, study participants were queried on imagery and "likelihood to recommend" indicators. ARF had conducted a previous, similar study in the business-to-consumer events sector. Highlights of the B-to-B study results:
Is it possible that corporations and their brands can learn something useful from the seemingly clueless 20-something celebrities like Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, Lindsay Lohan and Amy Winehouse? If you doubt the effectiveness of their branding strategies, ask yourself how these young women can continually embarrass themselves, endanger the work product that made them famous, flirt with disaster, hospitalization and even death, and yet still manage to make the front page of glossy magazines and be hired as brand ambassadors-not to mention pull down millions in private equity to start up their own product lines? These disaster-prone celebrities translate the simple act of buying coffee, pushing a baby carriage or shopping for sweatpants into a sought-after, hyper-analyzed and Web-immortalized media moment. What innate branding secrets do these seemingly clueless celebrities posses? Most importantly, what lessons can we adopt in our quest to elevate the cultural currency of our own brands? Here are eight key lessons: 1. Hire a great stylist. A great stylist elevated Lindsay Lohan from Disney Teen Queen to favorite of Karl Lagerfeld, and Nicole Ritchie from "stripper casual" to red-carpet tastemaker. Regrettably, Britney hasn't mastered this lesson yet. And consumer brands with great stylists are winning more market share. Heineken Premium Light, which looks as chic and stylish as a cocktail, became the beer of last summer as soon as it launched. This "diva in a bottle" used a sexy, minimalist approach and found its way into the hottest, A-level social establishments. And, despite its engineering and service problems, Apple's iPhone proved that design always triumphs over function. 2. As much as we like a good train wreck, consumers love a great comeback. Our young celebrities know that the only narrative sure to generate more publicity than bottoming out in rehab, an unwanted pregnancy or jail time is a personal turnaround. Martha Stewart has reaped hundreds of millions of dollars thanks to the publicity, and sympathy, her jail stint for tax evasion generated. Nintendo was considered down and out by the hard-core gaming audience after the ascent of Sony PlayStation, but Nintendo reinvented itself-and the gaming category as a whole-with the Wii. Al Gore is another great example. His Q score bottomed out after his election defeat, but thanks to his shape-shifting embrace of environmentalism, he is more popular, hip and influential than at any time in his career. His branding went from stiff Washington wonk to MySpace-friendly eco-dude. 3. Expand your talent profile-be a double/triple threat. Today's celebs are not content to flaunt their talents in just one discipline. Every B-level actor is also a director, producer, online entrepreneur or owner of a clothing or fragrance line. Today's brands are following suit. Game consoles like Xbox are no longer satisfied to be single-use devices and now play movies and provide a gateway to the digital home. Mobile phones are multimedia platforms and PC rivals. Beverages are energy drinks. Books are being outfitted with CDs and DVDs and web portals. 4. Drastically downsize. One strategy that never fails to draw an outside share of attention is to dramatically downsize, with celebs ideally dropping below 100 pounds and inviting the inevitable gossip about eating disorders. The Olsen Twins went from being sitcom has-beens and straight-to-video actresses to Page Six "It Girls" with the increasing momentum of every pound lost. This can work for brands, too. The iPod Nano, the Blackberry Pearl, the Mini-Cooper, digital cameras-smaller means smarter, hotter and buzzier. 5. Get caught with another sexy brand. If one sexy celebrity is good, two is better. It worked brilliantly for Brangelina and Bennifer, even if neither partnership lasted. As for brands, when Nike teamed up with Apple to form Nike +, it nabbed a Grand Prix at Cannes. And many retailers and fashion brands are discovering the power of two. Whether it's Kohl's teaming up with Vera Wang or Stella McCartney and Adidas, brand marriages are hot. 6. Adopt a cause. Paul Newman transformed the celebrity-as-change-agent concept in 1982, setting the gold standard for celeb philanthropy and social change. Now, just about every celebrity, even those prone to appearing in sex tapes, is fighting to save the environment, feed and clothe refugees, or rescue Third World children. Of course, individual brands, as well as their corporate parents, are also trying to reap the benefit of enlightened citizenship by joining (RED). Some corporations are using eco-initiatives to re-brand themselves, like BP. Ironically, because everyone in the world is going green, it's even harder to stand out amid all the foliage. 7. Develop an icon rather than a tag line. We're moving into a post-literate world. The hottest celebs are one-note caricatures who need no explanation-Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton are sex bombs, Amy Winehouse is a crazy beehive, Britney is bottomless. Advertising is becoming increasingly iconographic. The hippest brands have unmistakable visual IDs-the one-bite Apple logo, the Target bull's-eye, the Nike swoosh. But mature brands can transform themselves into leading players by finding an icon or symbol that illuminates their brand personalities, like Geico and the gekko, or Staples and the Easy Button. These symbols translate across all media platforms. 8. Parody means popularity. In defiance of the old cliché about all publicity being good publicity, brands are terrified and paranoid about negative PR. But the more Paris and Britney are ridiculed and photographed in flagrante delicto, the more successful and desirable they become. Most major brands know they've become household words when they see their TV commercials parodied on "Saturday Night Live" and YouTube. Comedians like Jay Leno have had a field day writing jokes that end with the familiar punch-line, "Got Milk?" The fact that its two-word tag line is part of the cultural vernacular shows how far even a mundane commodity like milk can go as a brand. In a real-time, 24/7, blogger-driven universe, celebrities and brands are learning that the conversation with consumers never stops. And, if there is a period of quiet, then it's time to push the panic button. Lori Senecal is general manager of McCann Erickson, New York. You can reach her at lori.senecal@mccann.com.