Toshiba International Corp., a Houston-based unit that is part of Japan’s global electronics giant, has awarded ad shop Shelton Group the marketing services account for its U.S. LED lighting products division. The agency-of-record assignment is a new one for the client. Its LED lighting products operation, which was launched less than two years ago in the U.S., did not have an incumbent. According to Kantar Media, the division spent nearly $10 million on ads in 2011. That’s expected to increase as the division grows. The selection was made without a formal review. The scope of work includes leading overall strategic branding efforts for the division, creative advertising, media planning and buying; PR, online marketing, package design, trade shows and retail promotions. Toshiba chose Shelton Group because of the agency’s focus on marketing green products to mainstream consumers. “Shelton is the ideal partner for us because they understand how to effectively position products with sustainable attributes to the mainstream market,” said Peter DallePezze, vice president, product and marketing for Toshiba. Globally, Toshiba is one of the largest LED lamp manufacturers and it is expected to be a strong competitor in the U.S. as it expands its marketing effort here. Suzanne Shelton, CEO of the Shelton Group, stated that the agency was excited to be "crafting an approach that will change consumer behavior in the lighting category and drive sales for Toshiba.” Shelton Group, based in Knoxville, TN, is a specialist in marketing sustainable products and services to the mass market. Clients include Georgia-Pacific, First Energy and Lowe’s.
For the second time since its launch in 2007, NBCUniversal’s “Green is Universal” has landed a major consumer sponsor to support its environmentally conscious activities. Procter & Gamble’s ongoing “Future Friendly” eco-effort will partner with NBC’s “Green is Universal” eco-initiative. The marketing effort starts March 19 and runs through “Earth Week” –- April 15 through 22. It will also promote P&G products, including washing detergent Tide Coldwater, dishwasher machine soap Cascade, and shampoo-product Pantene. The campaign will run across the NBC TV Network, Bravo, The Weather Channel, iVillage, NBC.com, DailyCandy, and Bravotv.com. Much of the focus will be on three PSA-style TV vignettes featuring NBC talent. One P&G spot features NBC syndicated magazine show “Access Hollywood”’s host Billy Bush and his daughter, who described what she’d do with the savings of 2,000 gallons of water a year -- all from shutting off the faucet while brushing her teeth. The spot ends with a tag for P&G’s “Future Friendly” joined with another tag to buy Cascade at Target stories. A “Green Is Universal” title slate follows this. Another spot talks about how there are savings to be made with washing in cold water, which uses less electricity. This features Stephanie Abrams of The Weather Channel. The third spot focuses recycling plastics, which links up with P&G’s shampoo brand Pantene. NBC’s “Green Is Universal” campaign started up in 2007. Subaru of America had a sponsorship with “Green Is Universal” in 2008 centering around three 40-second vignettes.
The spread of mobile technology has been a boon for news consumption, bolstering the appeal of traditional news brands and even expanding long-form journalism. More than a quarter of Americans (27%) get news on mobile devices, increasing overall news consumption, according to a new report by Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The research firm’s annual State of the News Media study found social media has grown quickly in the last year as well, but still plays a limited role in how people get news. Regardless of platform, the report concluded that technology providers -- rather than publishers -- are collecting the lion’s share of ad revenue from the digital news boom. “In sum, the news industry is not much closer to a new revenue model than a year earlier and has lost more ground to rivals in the technology industry,” the report stated. The majority of Americans now get news through at least one digital, Web-based device, mainly a desktop or laptop computer. But the number who get news through multiple devices is growing, with nearly a quarter (23%) of adults doing so on at least two devices. Nearly a third (31%) of smartphone owners also own a tablet, and 13% have a computer, smartphone and tablet. On smartphones and tablets, users are more likely to go straight to a news site or app, rather than relying on search. That works to the advantage of established news sources with familiar brands. Based on data from mobile analytics firm Localytics, the Pew study also found people tend to spend more time with news on mobile devices than on PCs. They go to news sites more often, spend more time at a sitting and read more articles per session. Rather than cannibalizing usage, comScore research indicates that mobile devices increased traffic on major newspaper sites by an average of 9% last year. Social media has generated as much -- if not more -- buzz than mobile gadgets in recent years, but hasn’t been as big an influence on news consumption, according to the Pew report. Less than 10% of the digital news audience follow news recommended on Facebook and Twitter “very often,” it found. That compares to 36% who get news directly from a site or app, 32% via search, and 29% from news aggregators like Topix or Flipboard. Still, social media is playing a growing role in news distribution. Based on an analysis of Hitwise data, Pew found 9% of traffic to news sites comes from Facebook, Twitter and other social sites -- up by more than half since 2009. Facebook users follow links from friends and family, while Twitter users follow a range of news sources. The growth that news publishers have enjoyed through mobile and social channels, however, hasn’t been matched by business gains. Technology intermediaries are capturing even more of the digital revenue pie. The Pew study cited an eMarketer finding that five technology companies last year generated 68% of all digital ad revenue. And roughly one of every five display ad dollars is expected to go to Facebook by 2015. For traditional newspapers, the problem of monetizing growing online audiences is especially acute. Last year, they lost about $10 in print ad revenue for every $1 gained online. That’s worse than in 2010, when print losses to digital gains had a $7 to $1 ratio. Up to 100 newspapers in the coming months are expected to join the 150 dailies that already have some kind of digital subscription model. Despite a handful of exceptions, such as The Financial Times and The Boston Globe, the study faults legacy news providers for failing to adopt new approaches to boost revenue. As an example, it points to the lack of targeted or “smart” advertising in digital media to generate higher ad sales. A separate Pew report released last week found that two-thirds of Internet users are uneasy with targeted advertising and search engines tracking their behavior. That reflects the tensions traditional news outlets face as they seek to grow revenue, while maintaining trust with their users.
In the social media age, where word of a company can spread instantaneously over the Internet, many firms have reevaluated their PR efforts. A New York research firm has completed a study that concludes that a public company’s reputation can account for a huge portion of its stock value. In the case of firms in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, reputation currently accounts for an average of 31% of share price. The firm, Echo Research, a unit of the UK’s Ebiquity, devised a formula that uses regression analysis to calculate the impact of numerous factors, including media exposure, financial analysis, intangibles, such as the general thoughts and feelings about a company throughout its industry, and corporate reputation measured by innovation and social responsibility. According to the study, reputation accounted for more than half of the share prices of the top ten reputation leaders in 2011. Apple and Google were tied for the top spot last year in terms of the contribution that their reputations made to their share prices: 58% in both cases. Four other firms were right behind, including Exxon, McDonald’s, Walt Disney and IBM, all with a 57% contribution. Rounding out the top 10 were Nike (56%) and United Technologies, Procter & Gamble and Chevron, all with a 55% reputation contribution to the price of their shares. At the other end of the spectrum, Echo calculated that Supervalu Inc.’s reputation was a 38% drag on the price of its shares. Sears Holdings, Office Depot, Coca-Cola Enterprises and Sprint Nextel Corp. also had reputation issues that cost them share value instead of adding to it. “The bottom line is that corporate reputations are now underpinning investor confidence in companies’ ability to deliver the economic returns expected,” said Dan Soulas, managing director, Echo Research USA. The financial crisis contributed significantly to the decline of corporate reputations generally, said Soulas. On the flip side, a rise in the value of corporate reputation over the last four years has “laid the foundations for the share price recovery that we see today,” Soulas said. The Echo analysis shows that in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 market collapse, the average contribution of reputation to company value in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell by 3 percentage points to 13%. Since then, it has grown steadily to the average 31% it represents today. “What chief executives really want to know,” Soulas said, “is how corporate reputation can grow shareholder value.” The study concludes that a 5% improvement in the strength of corporate reputation of an S&P 500 company will deliver an increase in market capitalization of close to 3%.
Urban broadcaster Radio One had “an awful fourth quarter,” according to CEO and president Alfred Liggins III, who confessed that the company’s poor performance was “shocking.” Total revenues dropped 9.4%, due to losses across all Radio One’s major markets, partly because of the absence of political advertising, format changes and the loss of several big national accounts. When political ads are excluded, core radio revenues were still down 4.2%. Radio One also recorded a non-cash impairment charge (against goodwill and other intangible assets) of $22.3 million; this resulted in a net operating loss of approximately $9 million. Liggins said the company has been moving away from urban formats in some markets because they were not delivering the same audience formats under measurement by Arbitron’s portable people meter. Thus, a formerly urban format station in Houston has been reinvented as an all-news station, with similar changes in the works in other markets. The radio business in general had a mediocre 2011. According to the Radio Advertising Bureau, total radio ad revenues decreased 2% in the fourth quarter of 2011 to $4.5 billion. For the full year, total ad revenues increased 1% to $17.4 billion. The company has better news to report from its cable TV division, TV One, which targets urban audiences and saw revenues grow 8.7% in the fourth quarter of 2011. Liggins said he expects TV One’s base earnings to increase to $40 million in 2012, significantly boosting the company’s bottom line.
With CBS in NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament mode -- airing the first big night of the event on Thursday -- some networks expected the worst. But it turned out better than expected. Fox's "American Idol" got to a Nielsen preliminary 4.5 rating/14 share. A repeat of "Touch" at 9 p.m. gave the show a still-healthy 2.2/6. Without CBS' "Big Bang Theory," both ABC and NBC looked to improve around this time. But ABC's season premiere of "Missing" at 8 p.m. could only manage a 2.0 rating/6 share -- a tenth of a rating point lower than "Charlie's Angels" opened up in the fall with a 2.1 rating. Perhaps the lack of a comedy with "Bang" allowed NBC some cheer. The return of "Community" earned a Nielsen preliminary 2.2 rating/5 share among key 18-49 viewers, way up over its current 1.6 rating season average. NBC's "30 Rock" had its best results since November -- a 2.0/6, up 33% over its season average. NBC's 10 p.m. new midseason drama "Awake" kept the same numbers as a week ago during its premiere, with a 1.6/4. Later on in the night, ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" at 9 p.m. earned a 3.0/8, down a bit from a week ago. "Private Practice" pulled in a 2.2/6, up from its previous performance. CW says its still-shining drama "The Vampire Diaries" slightly improved in the key demographics it sells to advertisers: adults 18-34 and women 18-34. It was up 8% in adults 18-34 to a 1.4/5 and improved 6% to a decent 1.9/6 among women 18-34.
Is there a top ad executive with a more diverse portfolio than Mary Jeanne (MJ) Cavanagh? She heads sales at the Gospel Music Channel (GMC) and last year took over much of the national business at the Sportsman Channel, dedicated to hunting, shooting and fishing. While the Sportsman doesn’t exactly lend itself to package deals, she feels she now has a critical lure to reel in a slew of new advertisers at Sportsman. The network becomes Nielsen-rated March 26. “Advertisers want to be able to show they’re reaching X, Y and Z,” she said. “They’re held accountable by their clients.” The Sportsman Channel -– part of InterMedia Partners along with GMC -- has distribution in over 30 million homes, a benchmark many networks use in order to sell with Nielsen numbers. Cavanagh says the measuring stick at the highly targeted network won’t necessarily be the size of the ratings because the content lends itself to the engaged viewer. Still, she’s hoping to peel dollars away from the Outdoor Channel, which pulled in about $37 million in ad revenue in 2011 (about the same as 2010), and perhaps appeal to advertisers on the History Channel searching for men 25 to 54. So-called endemic advertisers, for products such as outboard motors or ATVs, are less concerned about ratings, but national brands count on them before revving up spending. Sportsman Channel signed Ram trucks pre-Nielsen and it has sponsored a Friday programming block. Since many outdoorsmen travel frequently, the hotel category is one Cavanagh would particularly like to crack. She says, however, there may also be a perception on Madison Avenue about outdoorsmen that differs from Sportsman headquarters in New Berlin, Wisc. “The thing we have to show is hunters and fishermen are regular guys,” she said. “They’re not just guys who live in the middle of America and wear overalls." One example is Justin Jackette, an account executive at Sportsman under Cavanagh. He wears pinstriped suits when not wearing gear that will help when tracking deer and bears. Cavanagh doesn’t hunt, but once caught a small shark and reeled it in solo. Sportsman has been receiving Nielsen data internally for about a year and is satisfied enough with the results to bring them to market. Programming includes cooking show "Dead Meat" and the adventure travel-oriented "I Wish You Were Here."
ESPN’s Hispanic-targeted network and leading Spanish-language newspaper publisher impreMedia have signed a deal involving content sharing and cross-promotional initiatives. ESPN Deportes will offer clips from “Juego Cruzado,” which is based on ESPN’s “Around the Horn,” and feeds of live soccer to impreMedia.com, a hub for papers such as Los Angeles’ La Opinión and New York’s El Diario La Prensa. The content will also be available on other impreMedia online offerings, while the ESPN network will offer a weekend sports preview show on Fridays. ImpreMedia content will be available on many ESPN Deportes shows, while its journalists will appear on “NacionESPN” and videos on the ESPN Deporters site. On the business side, the network and publisher will co-produce promotions spread across all of their combined multimedia properties. The deal comes as Univision is set to launch a Spanish-language cable sports network and Telemundo under Comcast is showing signs of moving deeper into sports programming. Earlier this month, U.S. Hispanic Media, a subsidiary of an Argentine entity, took over impreMedia, which says it reaches a quarter of all U.S. Hispanics.
2012 promises to be the most tumultuous year ever in TV media buying as digital video gives advertisers more choices and TV networks more competition. More than 40% of the total advertising expenditures in the United States are focused on traditional television. Can the TV industry delay the full impact of digital video? It’s time for marketers to break free of the peculiar and self-defeating rules of TV advertising and make smart investments into digital video ad formats on a genre-by-genre basis. A framework for understanding absurdity Joseph Heller was a young writer from USC who was trained in advertising and possessed a strong grasp of the absurd, sometimes contradictory, societal rules. In many ways, his landmark novel "Catch-22" characterizes the dilemma for traditional marketing executive attempting to succeed in the modern TV industry. "Catch-22" made popular the phrase that refers to a situation in which contradictory constraints force you to choose from no-win scenarios. The novel is about a fictional Air Force squadron fighting Mussolini off the coast of Italy in World War II. The main characters are young pilots named Yossarian and Orr who are entangled in absurd Air Force regulations as shown in this passage: "There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy, and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions… " Yossarian eventually discerns that "Catch-22" does not actually exist, but because the military claims it does, and the world believes it does, the result is complete adherence to the rule. The absence of proof of the rule’s existence actually causes its own enforcement. Modern television -- the ultimate Catch-22 You can find the sequel to "Catch-22" in the world of modern television. The rule of TV advertising says that you must use television to maximize reach, frequency, recall and impact. If you break this rule, you are insane. But if you are sane, you spend your advertising dollars in a way that maximizes the return on investment. Doing so would mean shifting the vast majority of your advertising dollars to measurable video display media, which means you’ve broken the rule of TV, which means you are insane. In order to grow profits, TV executives must convince brands to pay for advertising ahead of a TV show’s actual airing, while guaranteeing stars enormous paydays ahead of ad revenue. The only way brands can justify paying ahead of time is to believe rule. As if to take their cue from"Catch-22 ," the brands obey the rule, and the absence of statistical evidence provides for its own enforcement. That cycle of absurdity is being broken. It only feels like TV is holding its ground against YouTube and Hulu because digital video is taking audience share away from TV gradually, one genre at a time -- instead of a sweeping change that is easier to notice. Statistics tell us digital is stealing audiences from television. I’ve ranked the principal TV genres from top to bottom, with No. 1 on the list being the most immediately affected by digital video and No. 7 the least: 1. News 2. Comedy 3. Sci-Fi/Fantasy 4. Lifestyle/Talk 5. Drama 6. Reality 7. Sports Now let’s take a look at why I’ve ranked them this way. NEWS -- The revolution will not be televised News will be the first category to see the vast majority of its traditional advertising dollars move to digital news outlets in the short term. Fox News Channel and CNN remain strong with Americans over 50 and the advertisers that chase them. But these older viewers will not be replaced by the generations immediately younger. Younger viewers won’t abandon the news because they never watched it in the first place. They watch clips from The Daily Show or theonion.com. Or, they simply got a constant flow of text messages or blog postings. Take a look at the sample of average viewership during the lucrative morning show timeslots between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. January numbers for morning news shows, a cash cow for television: Those are tiny numbers relative to viewership on the Web. YouTube eclipses all the major networks combined during the coveted 7:00 a.m.-10:00 a.m. dayparts, and I estimate that 50 million of the 4 billion YouTube views per day (about 10%) happen in the morning slots of all times zones in the United States. At the height of the Arab Spring, YouTube hit 135 million unique viewers per month, and at its current growth rate, YouTube may reach 500 million monthly unique viewers, or a Super Bowl audience each week, by the end of 2012. Comedy – The really funny stuff will be online Comedy used to be a gold mine for the networks and syndicators. Inexpensive to produce and universally appealing, comedy shows attracted droves of advertisers that paid premium prices. But then production costs got out of hand with the historic contract extension of "Friends" paying $22 million per cast member in 2002, only to be topped by Charlie Sheen’s deal for $1.2 million per episode for 24 episodes of "Two and a Half Men." All of this was ad supported with little or no ability to connect media expenditures directly to revenues. High production costs have become disconnected from ad revenue, and that’s unsustainable. The industry has been acting on instinct, placing bets on expensive talent and selling advertisers on emotion, before it is clear a statistically measurable large audience will be watching. Led by YouTube, digital video is going to reorder the economic model, connecting ad revenue directly to performance. Comedy shows may one day be produced one show at a time with production costs paid directly as a percentage of the media spend. Talent would no longer be guaranteed a big payday, but the overall payout could be much larger if they agreed to take a percentage of total ad buying. With its relatively low production requirements, the comedy genre will translate easily to the Web. “Lazy Sunday,” JibJab, “Fred” and now “Annoying Orange” spawned millions of comedy producers who now deal only in digital formats. A digital version of Lorne Michaels is inevitable, and we will soon see a sustainable multi-year comedy franchise on the Web. Soon, advertising revenue for TV sitcom will be surpassed by video display advertising revenue for comedy on Hulu, YouTube, et al. Sci-Fi/Fantasy – It takes a little imagination With the cancellation of "V" on ABC and "The Event" on NBC, it’s increasingly clear that TV will struggle to create another "Star Trek" or "The X-Files." The sci-fi genre just feels right in the motion picture format, and advertisers might do better to buy audiences for MMOG (multiplayer online games), blogs and social hames to get their messages across to sci-fi/fantasy fans. However, syndication-heavy channels like NBC’s SyFy will do well in the short-term because serial science fiction hits make good reruns. Lifestyle/Talk – Keep talking The legends are leaving: first, Larry King and then, Oprah. Who knows how long Ellen will stay interested, and now anyone can clearly become a very important, bold-faced name without appearing on "Charlie Rose." The genre had a good run, but the format needs updating. Still, it will take quite longer for the majority of ad dollars to shift to digital. Brands still love women in the 34-50 age range, and women still love talk TV. Advice is popular on the traditional Web, but nothing beats the guilty pleasure of talk television. Drama – No plot twists here This genre will likely endure in traditional TV. The TV format really lends itself to episodic, serial storytelling. When people say “that’s really great TV,” they usually mean drama or dramedy. Talented TV creatives who usually distribute through HBO, Showtime and other pay-per-month formats will likely be the first to migrate to digital. (YouTube, are you listening? Call Bruno Heller.) Dramas with long story arcs like "Rome" and "Damages" could do well in digital video because the ad products don’t hold the content hostage. Reality – Just like IRL I grew up in this genre, leading some of the first product-placement media buys in the space with "Survivor Season 1." It will be some time before high-quality reality programming comes to the Web. Reality television is actually more sophisticated than it might appear. A lot of work goes into cast selection, plot development, and positioning with advertisers. Mark Burnett and his "Survivor" brand have appealed to advertisers because he has a rare talent: He knows how to tell a compelling story with regular people placed in irregular circumstances. The reality genre will continue as a powerhouse in television media. Advertisers want compelling, loosely scripted real life (and outright personal tragedy like "Jon & Kate Plus 8") to keep consumers fixated. Sports – What’s the score? Advertisers will continue to crave sports programming in the television media. Sports and awards shows will continue to provide advertisers with one of the few vehicles for getting get large populations to watch the same entertainment program at the same time. In a new media landscape characterized by fragmented audiences, that’s important. After all, the most Super Bowl XLVI had an audience of 112 million people. Rights management is the other major reason why sports entertainment will be the last pillar to fall to digital media. Digital video media will take time to appreciate and learn the complexities of rights, especially in the major sports. Not only the teams and the leagues, but also governments, are major stakeholders in the status quo. Summary Back to "Catch-22." Advertising executives can avoid the this scenario by thinking of their video-based advertising on a genre level, as shown in the previous examples. Doing so enables them to articulate to their bosses that they are shifting money from, let’s say, CBS to CBS Digital in a structured way that anticipates audience migration and reduces wasted ad impressions.