New insights drawn from a unique and well-regarded study of consumer media behavior may have uncovered some important clues for cracking Madison Avenue's so-called "media engagement" code, an industry-wide effort to understand how consumers are involved with and influenced by media. The initial findings suggest print media such as magazines and newspapers are far more engaging than electronic media like TV, radio and the Internet, but they also garner far smaller shares of the time consumers spend with media. That paradox suggests that print media may be inherently more valuable for advertisers than more pervasive electronic media, which the study implies are treated like "background" media. But the findings, which academic researchers at Ball State University gleaned from their so-called Middletown Media Studies, stop short of answering Madison Avenue's most important question: how do consumers engage with advertising content within these media? "The intent of this paper is to see what we have in the Middletown Media Studies that can inform the current discussion about engagement," said Mike Bloxham, director of testing and assessment for BSU's Center For Media Design. Because the Middletown studies directly observe how consumers use media, they are considered a powerful tool for understanding actual behavior that cannot be measured via the kind of survey research typically used by advertisers and agencies to evaluate media. By taking key components of that data, including the amount of time consumers spend with media, but especially the percentage of time they use each medium either exclusively, or as their primary media option, the university's professors have come up with a rudimentary measure of engagement. "It's quite interesting when you put the media alongside each other and look at which medium [plays] the greatest percentage of time in people's lives as the primary source, or one that is not being shared with others," explained Bloxham, adding, "That arguably could be one metric that is more or less a measure of engagement. But of course, you have to overlay that with total time spent with the medium." Using these methods, TV, radio and the Internet clearly dominate total usage. TV dominates in the home, radio in the car, and the Internet at work. No surprises there. But when the researchers looked at which medium has the greatest share of primary usage, print media excels. Using this measure, magazines ranked first, serving as the exclusive or primary medium 85 percent of the time they are used by consumers. TV and radio ranked second and third, dominating 76 percent and 75 percent of the time they are used by consumers, while newspapers ranked nearly as high, dominating 71 percent of the time they are used by consumers. The Internet dominates during only 48 percent of the time it is used. Print media also dominated in another important area of engagement study: the time people spend with other important life activities, such as eating. Not surprisingly, the results were embraced by the print industry, especially the magazine industry, which has been conducting a similar series of studies designed to demonstrate to Madison Avenue that while magazines garner a small percentage of the time consumers spend with media, publications represent much more involving time among those media, and that has a greater value to advertisers seeking to engage consumers. "What this study does, very well, is demonstrate that engagement is not a simple topic. There are multiple dimensions that need to be understood," said Ellen Oppenheim, CMO of the Magazine Publishers of America. She acknowledged that the study stops short of actually analyzing the impact on advertising in each of the media. "The level of involvement in reading requires people to be more focused on print and makes it harder to multitask. From what we've seen, the advertising involvement may have many factors," Oppenheim added. She said the MPA is preparing another in its series of accountability and engagement brochures she hopes will demonstrate that conclusion even further. The BSU white paper, "Engaging the Ad-Supported Media," can be read in its entirety on the Web.
There's a sneaking suspicion that GoDaddy.com is eager to have its Super Bowl spot repeatedly rejected by ABC as a publicity stunt--as long as a version gets cleared in time to air in the game. After all, a whiff of advertising censorship usually generates a flood of interest. GoDaddy has happily fanned the flames through a blog and frequent media appearances by its president, Bob Parsons, chronicling the provocative spot's approval process. Parsons, however, denies that the exposure his Phoenix-area company has received for 13 rejections is intentional. "I'm not that smart," the flamboyant and friendly executive demurs. "I have been telling it like it is. Have there been PR benefits? Yes. Have there been benefits beyond what we expected? Yes. I'm just this little fat guy out here in Scottsdale who wants a Super Bowl ad." Parsons and GoDaddy may have unwittingly benefited from the media's interest in Super Bowl advertising, but other advertisers are more deliberate, devising elaborate PR campaigns to generate coverage and extend the value of the costly ad spots. Weapons in the battle include viral photos on the Internet, podcasts, "making-of" videos, ads about the ads, strategic leaks about the creative and press releases in print, audio and especially VNRs, or video news releases, which are a video form of PR that is beginning to compete more directly with conventional TV advertising. To be sure, PR is a massive industry. No greater evidence is needed than Warren Buffett's recent purchase of Business Wire, one of the major online distributors of company and brand press releases. PR has become even more crucial now with traditional advertising under pressure due to reasons ranging from increased clutter to skipping devices to the heightened importance people place on word-of-mouth. "These commercials are a huge investment," said Brent Bamberger, vice president of marketing at Bacon's Multivision, which monitors coverage of Super Bowl ads. "They're like movie premieres, and they need to be hyped before the game." To pump the box office, Burger King has unleashed photos on the Internet underbelly of model Brooke Burke canoodling with "the King." Toyota is set to podcast its ad and distribute audio news releases in both English and Spanish. Emerald Nuts is running newspaper ads to advertise its ad. Nationwide Insurance has disclosed that its spot will feature male model Fabio, but is keeping the lid on other info--for now--to heighten interest. Cadillac has a video news release in circulation, hoping that local news stations will air the piece about its ad as "news." And Anheuser-Busch is joining other advertisers in releasing a "behind-the-scenes" video of its five minutes of Super Bowl commercials, and making a top executive available for interviews by the dozen. "We want to maximize the 60 seconds," said Adrienne Hayes, a Burger King spokesperson. "We want to turn it into 60 minutes by building anticipation among consumers and whetting their appetite." So far, BK is on track. An analysis by Multivision shows BK leading the pack with a 33 percent share of voice of all broadcast media coverage on Super Bowl ads (network, cable, and in the top-50 markets). CareerBuilder.com--back in the game with an ad featuring monkeys that make an office environment miserable--is second with 17 percent, followed by GoDaddy at 15 percent, Toyota with 12 percent, Emerald Nuts at 11 percent, and Nationwide with 9 percent. Overall, Multivision says coverage about Super Bowl spots has increased nearly 10-fold since just 2002. Super Bowl advertisers can be loosely grouped into three categories, the first two of which do extensive pre-game PR. There's the "old reliables" such as Anheuser-Busch and Pepsi, which are in the game every year, and are eager for their brand to be associated with the prestige of the Super Bowl. There's the "look at me underdogs" such as GoDaddy and Emerald, which scrape together enough dough to run a spot and are eager for everyone to know about it. Then there's the "shock and awe" cluster that do no pre-game publicity, hoping that surprise will gain them attention when the ad comes out of nowhere in the game. With the deluge of pre-game hoopla, some advertisers such as Burger King and Toyota said they considered the contrarian shock value route, but opted against it. Both said they had a compelling story that news outlets would cover--and their ads were complex, so they wanted viewers to ponder them beforehand. Burger King is returning to the Super Bowl for the first time in 11 years, and has developed a lavish 60-second spot to resemble the old grand MGM musicals. Toyota has the first bilingual Super Bowl ad ever; the spot promotes the new Camry Hybrid by linking two languages with two kinds of power--gas and electricity. "We had a lot of discussion about it," said Toyota spokesperson Nancy Hubbell. "But our ad is unique in that it has a bilingual component. We're making the connection between English and Spanish, and gas and electricity, and we wanted people to think about it before and then reinforce it." Nationwide Insurance is sort of straddling the fence between PR blitz and stealth bombing. The company wanted to publicize the fact that it was in the game, but keep the details quiet. Then, USA Today called, and Nationwide decided to drum up interest by leaking that Fabio would star in the spot. The company won't release any other details, although that may change as the game draws closer. "The decision was to play up the surprise factor," said Nationwide spokesperson Mike Switzer. "We believe we're going to catch a lot of people off guard." Burger King is not avoiding stealth marketing entirely. Besides doing media outreach and a "behind-the-scenes" video about the spot's creation, the company has quietly seeded the Internet with paparazzi-style photos of Brooke Burke cuddling with "the King." The two are frolicking on the beach, snuggling at an NBA game, and holding hands while riding horses. Burke is in the Super Bowl spot, and the company was hoping the snapshots would create a little "water cooler talk." So far, it's worked with Internet blogs and chat rooms buzzing about Burke's new beau and celebrity magazines picking up the photo. "Online is where 20-somethings and younger people are getting their information," said Mary Durkin, vice president of marketing at Delahaye, a media analysis firm. "You're reaching a demo that's not reached through conventional means of PR or advertising." Celebrity magazines such as In Style, of course, have a different standard for coverage than other news outlets. Hoping to slide coverage of its Super Bowl ad into newscasts across the country, Cadillac distributed a video news release in which a "reporter" delivers a story, ironically, about the value of news coverage of a spot. Footage rolls, and a Cadillac executive says: "We've purchased the Super Bowl commercial slot for several years and we've found albeit expensive, it's worth every penny...the coverage that we get to help us launch our new products is absolutely spectacular." Emerald Nuts is hoping to tap into the coverage barrage with a PR effort it hopes will get consumers and retailers excited about its brand. Being linked with the Anheuser-Busch-es and Pepsis is a way for Emerald to raise its profile among the Krogers and Wal-Marts. But the company isn't assuming people will catch its spot--especially since it's in the fourth quarter, when viewers might desert a blowout in droves. Emerald is urging viewers to look for the spot in ads in The New York Times and USA Today running for the 10 days leading up to the game. Ads about ads piqued the media's interest. "You have ads talking about watching the ads and reporters talking about ads talking about watching the ads," mused Multivision's Bamberger, the analyst. Unlike the late-game Emerald ad, Anheuser-Busch runs little risk that any viewers will miss its ads. The company has five minutes of ads throughout the game and the pole position: the game's first spot when interest peaks. Still, A-B is making clips from its spots available to the news media--although trying to keep the punch lines under wraps--and, for the first time, releasing a "behind-the-scenes" video of the production process for the 10 spots. Plus, marketing executive Marlene Coulis is making the rounds, doing dozens of interviews. While Ambassador Coulis is on tour plugging A-B's ads, it's back to the storyboard for GoDaddy. The paradox is that GoDaddy has now generated so much interest in its spot that if ABC ultimately declines to air it, the company could inundate the Web with it and reach more than the 90 million people who will watch the game. Company chief Parsons says that might work this year, but in the end GoDaddy would "lose credibility" as the feisty fighter for free speech. Last year, GoDaddy cleared network standards and practices barriers, only to have its Super Bowl plans thwarted when Fox decided mid-game not to air its ad a second time. The result was a public relations godsend. GoDaddy became a cause célèbre as the media played the spot over and over, and viewers couldn't get enough. "We were struck by lightning," Parsons said. "That was never our intention." Plenty of marketers, however, have made that their goal this year. And the missions are well underway.
What goes into a new network name? Apparently, five days of work. That's all the time Lou Goldstein and Bob Bibb, co-president of marketing for the WB, had to come up with The CW. "We came in very late in the process," said Goldstein. In an effort to keep the whole deal secret, Goldstein and Bibb hired an outside marketing firm to come up with the name for the marriage of the WB and UPN networks to begin airing this fall. Admittedly, they would have liked more time--and more options. "There were other names we liked as well, but they were already taken, or for other reasons we couldn't [use them]," said Goldstein. Both Goldstein and Bibb will be kept on for the new network, but it is still undetermined whether the WB marketing group would be left intact. Speculation has been mounting over whether the CW name would be changed, given the speed of the deal. The CW was seen as just a placeholder until some extensive research and marketing work could be done--as with most network launches. As to the question of whether the name might change later, "as of now, the answer is 'no,'" said Goldstein. He added that they might tinker with the look of the logo and perhaps eliminate 'the' from The CW. The CW does have a working blue-and-white logo that was sent out on the day the announcement was made. Discussions started in December--with only a handful of senior CBS and Warner Bros. executives with knowledge of the project. This left Goldstein and Bibb with much less time than they had in creating the WB. "For The WB, we took six months to develop the brand and three months to find the name," said Goldstein. Many marketing executives have taken a stab at the new name--saying that 'The CW' isn't as descriptive as many new cable network names such as Spike, Oxygen, and Logo. "I would argue that they made their work a lot harder," said Hayes Roth, vp of worldwide marketing and new business for WPP Group branding agency Landor Associates. "It's an opportunity missed. Why would you go with an acronym [like other broadcast networks]? Why not set yourself apart?" Regarding the CW name, Mary Durkin, a vice president at media analysis firm Delahaye, asked: "The Country and Western Network? "People will have their opinions," said Goldstein. "What we look like now will not be what we are in six months. It will be totally different." Marketing executives admit that branding names for companies are tricky situations--and that what first appears problematic can actually be an opportunity. "It's not impossible," said Roth. "It's an empty glass. 'The CW' has no meaning. Now they need to fill it up." Many marketing executives have also touted this refrain: People watch TV shows, not networks. "When it comes to general entertainment channels, the name is less important than 'I know my favorite show is on that channel,'" said Larry Gerbrandt, senior vice president and senior corporate analyst at Nielsen Analytics. Stations are now concerned about what to do with their branded station IDs such as 'WB 11' or 'UPN 5.' "The branding aspect at stations will get worked out over time," said Gary Weitman, a spokesperson at Tribune Broadcasting, which owns WPIX and 16 CW affiliates that were announced as the original affiliates of the network. The new network and its re-branding will have reverberations at Nielsen Media Research, which needs to read diary entries accurately--otherwise, Nielsen could miss valuable new CW viewers. For example, the traditional "WB 11" entry would likely be recorded as "CW 11"--and that could lead to confusion. "Anytime something like this happens, we think about how it affects how we measure and report the data," said Laura James, a Nielsen Media Research spokeswoman. Nielsen has "a three-way check in the diary [system]. We ask [viewers] to fill in the channel, the call letters, and the program name," said James. "If it said, 'WB 11,' we would know it's Channel 11."
Big media buying agency Carat is throwing its considerable TV advertising clout behind Nielsen's so-called "live" ratings, calling on the major TV networks to hold off on plans to incorporate new Nielsen data measuring the playback of programs on digital video recorders for the balance of the 2006-07 TV season. Beyond that, the agency says "further discussions" are required before it would feel comfortable incorporating DVR ratings into its 2006-07 ad deals with the networks. The disclosure, which comes in the form of a new position paper released late Thursday by Shari Anne Brill, vice president-director of programming at Carat USA, follows similar statements by big ad agencies including Interpublic behemoth Magna Global USA and WPP's Mediaedge:cia, that "live" ratings should remain the currency of network TV ad deals at least until the new DVR data can be better understood. The major broadcast networks, have maintained that DVR playback data boosts the ratings for the most popular TV shows, and should be factored into ad deals and audience guarantees. Recently, Fox signaled something of a shift in its hard line stance, acknowledging so-called "live plus same day" of DVR playback as the industry's standard, vs. the more encompassing "live plus seven days" of DVR playback. The cable industry has taken a wait-and-see position until the dust settles and DVR data patterns become more stable, but many believe the 2006-07 upfront buying season will become a much more stratified market with deals being based on a variety of combinations of those data streams depending on the needs of clients and their willing to take risks on the timing of their commercial exposure. "Carat believes the best solution is for the industry to stick with live ratings through the balance of the 2005-06 broadcast season and have further discussion regarding 2006-07," wrote Brill, adding, "This will allow a more definitive look at how DVR playback activity impacts program ratings."
If American brands are to succeed in penetrating and competing in China's booming market, they need to form partnerships with local media consultants or foreign media consultancies with a significant local presence, according to Richard Wageman, one of ten foreign lawyers at Lehman, Lee & Xu, a Chinese law firm based in Beijing. Of course, there's no lack of incentive; speaking during the final presentation of the Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) two-day symposium on advertising law and business affairs, Wageman touted the numbers of media devices already in circulation. "There are already 300 million cell phones in China, and I would guess perhaps half a billion television sets, which are quite cheap." Wageman also gave a list of impressive figures for the ad industry itself: "The advertising business generated about $30 billion in revenue last year; it employs about 910,000 people--and there are literally tens of thousands of ad agencies, though some of them are obviously quite small." China, once a closed society, has indeed become ad-friendly. But there are still hurdles for foreign brands, and media planners in particular. For one thing, Wageman warned, the Chinese legal system is still opaque, although it is improving: "Courts are very regionalized, and they will protect local interests. There is a lack of transparency in the court system, although they're making real efforts to upgrade it." Pointing to the example of intellectual property (IP) law, he noted that "they're setting up a separate court to deal with it." The Chinese government is particularly concerned with protecting its IP rights in relation to the brands, logos, and products associated with the 2008 Olympics. "We always thought the IP system would improve as the Chinese felt their own IP rights were being threatened, and that's proven to be the case," Wageman confirmed. "On IP disputes, about 85 percent of them were Chinese, and 15 percent were foreign." Meanwhile, consumer research--and laws governing personal privacy--are still in their infancy, though growing rapidly: "They only just now developed a credit-reporting system that banks can access. So while [research] is very limited, the field is really wide open. They've brought some new laws out governing access to personal data, but again, they're quite limited in scope." As transparency improves, Wageman said he expects the foreign and domestic Chinese media planning industry to boom in the next few years: "I think there's going to be a huge increase. There are already a number of consulting companies that are foreign-dominated or totally foreign-controlled dealing with advertising and media strategy." These firms are invaluable for outside brands trying to get in: "They'll do market research, vet the ads, tell you if they think it offends any cultural or legal provision." These services can also provide some of the benefits of guanxi, or connections, to foreign brands: "Influence is still important... and it tends to be regional. So when you're dealing with an advertising campaign in the Shanghai area, which has 40 million people at minimum, you'll go to a consulting company that's been there a while, and it will have people that are in tune with the state-owned television stations and print media companies." In fact, Wageman pointed to one example where local savvy enabled a clothing brand to run a controversial campaign featuring a scantily clad model that might otherwise have been nixed: "If the government had focused on it, it probably wouldn't have been allowed, but they got away with it because of local influence." Asked what differences media planners can expect in the Chinese market, Wageman recalled the proliferation of outdoor advertising in particular: "You can just bombard people, because you can put ads on public facilities, which is certainly not like here in the U.S. So you'll see ads on light poles--just covering them--and the next 400 telephone poles or light poles will all be plastered. And billboards are endemic, on top of literally every building. It's part of the charm of Asia, I suppose."
Merrill Lynch downgraded its recommendation to Wall Street investors on Reader's Digest Thursday from "buy" to "neutral," based on lowered expectations of free cash flow. "Although the expansion of RD into new countries and businesses is tracking above plan, the performance of Consumer Business Services segment was weaker than anticipated," the report noted. "Since free cash flow is the main appeal of RD's story near term, we think its share performance could be capped by the likely reduced expectations for free cash flow, while investors take a wait-and-see approach to RD's long-term growth initiatives." Merrill Lynch also noted that Reader's Digest's earnings per share had dropped as a result of a $188 million charge the company took to write down the value of its Books Are Fun (BAF) unit and said: "We think the turnaround of BAF is also going to take time, especially because of the seasonality of the business." The downgrade occurs as Reader's Digest implements an expansion plan, including a new consumer title featuring Food Newtork lifetyle diva Rachael Ray.