Veteran senior adman Stephen Gatfield has resigned as co-chairman of Naked Communications, the New York-based communications planning agency that he joined a little more than a year ago. Gatfield also resigned his post an executive director of Enero Group (formerly Photon Group), the parent company of Naked. Before joining Naked, Gatfield had been a consultant after serving in several corporate roles at the Interpublic Group as well as a stint as CEO at IPG’s Lowe Worldwide. Earlier, Gatfield was chief operating officer at Publicis Groupe’s Leo Burnett Worldwide. There was no explanation provided for Gatfield’s departure by either Naked or Enero, a media and marketing services holding company that is based in Australia. When Gatfield was named an executive director of the parent company earlier this year, company chairman John Porter stated: “Steve brings to the Board a very useful set of skills for the next phase of Photon’s evolution. He has an international perspective, global marketing services experience, and a strong insight into emerging media technologies and content.” Upon his departure however, the company issued a terse statement simply stating that Gatfield was leaving. A company rep did not immediately respond to a query seeking details. It was not clear whether Gatfield would be replaced at Naked. Gatfield’s resignation comes six months after the departure of Paul Woolmington, one of the three founders of Naked’s New York office, which was formed in 2006. It also has offices in Minneapolis and London as well as branches in about a dozen other countries with a total staff count of more than 200. With Woolmington’s departure, only one of three founders of the New York office remains -- Neal Davies. A third partner, MT Carney, left for a Disney marketing post in 2010.
Harris Corp. has partnered with Geo-Broadcast Solutions to introduce a new broadcast radio product that can target audiences more precisely, down to the neighborhood level. The “ZoneCasting” technology allows radio advertisers to deliver ad messages to many specific, defined zones across a single broadcast market, offering an extra level of geographic precision that could help attract more local businesses to radio. ZoneCasting, created by GBS and supplied exclusively by Harris, will undergo its first commercial test this fall at WRMF-FM, serving Miami-Ft. Lauderdale and southeast Florida. The system relies on a network of low-power FM transmitters and simulcasting technology to deliver varying content to hyper-local target areas in a synchronized fashion. Harris and GBS say ZoneCasting’s precision will help radio compete with digital media, by offering improved targeting while also increasing affordability for smaller businesses. Richard Redmond, vice president of product management and strategy, transmission systems for Harris Broadcast Communications, stated: “This is not about investing in a new studio or transmitter with the hopes it will improve ratings or revenue. This is about helping broadcasters become more competitive against a fractured marketplace.” Radio advertising could use a shot in the arm. Total radio advertising revenues increased a modest 1% in the first half of 2012, to a total $7.89 billion, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau. This is due, in large part, to slow growth in spot, long the mainstay of radio advertising, which was flat in the first half of the year. Anything that spurs local advertiser interest in radio would help raise spot revenues.
Havas Sports & Entertainment (HSE Group), the brand engagement operation of Havas, has opened an office in Moscow in preparation for key upcoming sports events in Russia, the agency confirmed Monday. The shop said its Moscow office would focus on providing clients with services including sponsorship consulting, branded content, social media, PR, experiential and research. Both the 2014 Winter Olympics and the 2018 FIFA World Cup Soccer Tournament will be hosted by Russian cities. The Winter Games will be played in and around Sochi. A number of cities will host the World Cup competition, with final selections set for later this year. HSE said it was pulling core members of its Russian team from sibling agencies MPG and Arena Magic Box, which have been operating in the region for some time, servicing clients such as LVMH, Heineken and Reckitt Benckiser. Sibling creative agency Euro RSCG also has offices in the region. The new office is being run by Maria Gavrilova, who has been named managing director of Havas Sports & Entertainment Russia. Earlier she was head of special projects, Havas Media. HSE worked with 10 Olympic sponsors during the recent London Summer Olympics, as well with a number of past FIFA sponsors, stated Lucien Boyer, president and global CEO of HSE. The shop has a track record, he said, of advising “clients looking to connect with consumers around these big events.”
While all those new media measures and metrics are needed in a new digital media world, gross ratings points -- GRPs -- will be around for a while."Although deeper digital data sets can allow marketers to plan and buy smarter TV campaigns, the sheer scale of TV advertising spend and its ingrained processes and systems give GRPs the leverage they need to remain the core currency for TV and online video," says a report written by Michael Glantz by Forrester Research.This is not to say that new marketing and media executives will not be looking for new metrics. Also of special importance is how to mix in new metrics and measures. "Skill at weaving together meaningful data sets to see the big TV picture will separate the leaders from the laggards," says the study.Forrester says GRPs no longer provide complete coverage for marketers because they only measure age and gender in a world of digital detail, are a backward-looking metric, and face digital video platforms that can already target audiences beyond the basic.Right now the key word is "scale" -- something traditional TV has in droves -- which works in GRP's favor. Audiences still watch TV in near-record numbers, the report says, and TV attracts the lion’s share of most marketing budgets. Forrester's estimates are that TV advertising revenues were 76.6 billion in 2011, with digital video ad sales at $2.1 billion. Traditional TV will continue to rise -- to $82.6 million in 2012 and then $88.6 billion in 2013. Digital video advertising revenue will climb to $2.9 billion by the end of this year and then reach $3.9 million by the end of 2013.Consumers are watching video in new ways, with multitasking the norm -- and that will further push the new metrics.Glantz says 74% of U.S. consumers report that they multitask -- up from 58% in 2011 -- with social adding new layers of engagement. One key factor is that fractionalization of media creates a strong need for cross-media platform metrics.
Although NBC still scored big on Sunday thanks to NFL football, the race for Sunday got closer when looking at preliminary results.NBC registered a Nielsen preliminary 6.5 rating/17 share among 18-49 viewers -- down over 20% from the 7.8/21 for the opening week of TV's top-rated series, "Sunday Night Football."CBS was able to gain some -- just about a full rating point -- a result of its own NFL football coverage in the late afternoon which boosted its early evening shows, especially "60 Minutes," which climbed to a 3.2/9 from a 2.1/5, and "Big Brother" which scored a 2.3/6 -- up from a 2.1/5. This was the first Sunday of CBS's half-hour shifting of its prime-time schedule -- all to avoid the confusion over start times due to NFL afternoon programming overruns. Even then, the NFL football extended prime-time coverage, which scored a 6.3/19 and ran from 7 p.m. to 7:37 p.m. Overall it posted a 2.5/7 for the night versus 1.5/4 the week before. Fox also had a bit of NFL programming overrun in the early evening, but that didn't give much lift to its prime-time programming efforts for the night versus the NFL early-evening programming coverage of a week ago -- just getting to a 2.0/5, down from a 4.1/11 the week before. After NFL programming. Fox ran reruns of its animated comedy shows.Both Univision and ABC landed about the same levels as last Sunday -- Univision at a 1.0/3 versus a 1.1/3. ABC came in with identical 0.7/2 numbers for a full night of reruns.
To promote its educational technology products, computer giant Dell this summer ran a first-of-its kind campaign for the company that ran across Web-connected TVs, the desktop Web and mobile devices. The aim was to track individual consumers across the three platforms to correlate the impact of one channel with the other two. “This type of campaign allowed us, for the first time, to have an integrated, cross-channel dialogue with our target demographic across their multiple connected devices, further reinforcing our educational technology messaging,” said Mary Ellen Dugan, Dell’s executive director of global brand and advertising. Working with Dell on the effort were WPP mobile agency Joule, GroupM’s MediaCom and cross-platform ad technology specialist Tapad. The company delivered 15- and 30-second Dell spots to some six million connected TVs. Joule CEO Michael Collins said the mobile ads, linking to rich media sites, ran on a defined list of sites and apps. “However, within that site/app list, we targeted consumers who had already seen the connected TV ad and those who had not, so we were able to see the difference in performance between these two groups,” he said. The ability to reach the same users across multiple devices helped Dell to approach the campaign in terms of audience rather than specific channels, he noted. After the campaign ran for a month from mid-July to mid-August, Joule and MediaCom found a 68% lift in the time viewers spent on Dell’s mobile site compared to viewers who only saw the ads on a single device. “Our research shows that consumers who see ads on more than one device are far more inclined to take action,” said Tapad CEO Are Traasdahl. The company says its tracking technology doesn’t use personally identifiable information (PII) and that it provides clear and persistent opt-out notification to consumers. According to a recent study by YuMe and research firm Frank N. Magid Associates, 30% of all Internet homes have connected TVs, and users of those sets are generally receptive to advertising. Almost 90% said they noticed ads on the platform, with 60% noticing pre-rolls. People were also more willing to watch ads in exchange for getting free content than paying a fee. Without connected TVs, Collins said it wouldn’t have been possible to link a specific TV and smartphone to the same person in the Dell campaign. “This cross-channel engagement is the beginning of a big shift in how brands will communicate with their consumers,” he said.