Craft beer brewer Breckenridge Brewery of Colorado is extending its low-budget “Truth in Beervertising” TV campaign with two new spots parodying big-brand beer advertising. One of the new 30-second spots, dubbed “The Least Interesting Man in the World,” shows Breckenridge’s head brewer, Bob Harrington, standing motionless and staring with a blank expression as he watches bottle after bottle of the brand’s 471 IPA being capped by a brewery machine. Harrington’s only line: “I like to drink beer. And when I do, I prefer good beer.” A voiceover concludes the spot with “Never stay thirsty, my friends.” In the second spot, Harrington is shown, back to the camera, watching waves roll onto a sunny, pristine beach. As the view pans out, it becomes clear that he’s actually watching a large-screen TV while enjoying a Breckenridge Agave Wheat, whereupon he promptly flips to a football game. This spot has no lines for the brewer/actor, and no voiceover; instead, it ends with a screen message: “Find Your Couch.” If the spots happen to remind viewers of highly visible, high-budget campaigns from Dos Equis and Corona -- well, Breckenridge has no comment on that score. What Breckenridge Director of Marketing Todd M. Thibault will say, however, is that the campaign’s point isn’t about attempting to position the brand’s beers against any specific brand or brands, but instead to humorously convey the message that producing good beer is Breckenridge’s sole focus. “Many beer campaigns always seem to be talking about something else, like their cans’ new technology, or how you should drink their beer when you choose to drink beer,” says Thibault. “We talk about how we always drink beer, and how we like good beer.” The campaign -– including the new spots and the 2011 TV spots -- is from Breckenridge’s agency, Denver-based Cultivator Advertising & Design. Last year’s spots parodied big-brands’ focus on technological innovations, like chill indicators on cans. Those four 15-second ads were produced for $10,000. (Cultivator’s cost efficiencies for the brand include employing the production facilities at Fox 31 Colorado news -- as with last year’s ads, the new spots are being aired on that channel during sports events and Sunday prime time.) This year, the two longer spots were produced on the same budget. The brand now has distribution in more than 30 states, but focuses its limited traditional marketing in its largest market -- Colorado -- relying on viral sharing of its spots to prompt beer lovers around the country to seek out its distinctive beers and ales. In addition to being posted on Breckenridge’s own site (and promoted on its Facebook and Twitter accounts), last year’s spots were picked up by beer bloggers and critics –- a dynamic that the brewery hopes to replicate with the new ads.
Average monthly retransmission fees that TV stations get from cable, satellite, and telco video services continue to climb. Now the average monthly fee is about 33 cents per subscriber per month, as of the third quarter of 2011 -- up 27% over the same period in 2010 and 47% over the same period in 2009, per SNL Kagan, which surveyed 16 TV station group owners. Univision Communications ranked first at 61 cents, and Sinclair Broadcast Group was second at 49 cents. Next came Newport Television and Lin TV, ranked third at 48 cents each. CBS Corp. ranked fourth, with retrans fees of approximately 45 cents. SNL Kagan says CBS pulled in a collective $52.3 million in retrans revenue in the third quarter. CBS Corp. projects that it will pull in about $250 million in retrans revenue in 2012. Previously, SNL Kagan had noted that monthly subscriber fees that go to cable networks can range from 14 cents per customer for channels such as the Food Network to as much as $4 per subscriber for cable sports networks such as ESPN. Looking ahead, SNL Kagan says average retrans fees will remain on an upward trend, giving the leverage of valuable programming to owned-and-operated stations.
Digital viewing of traditional TV shows is rising. Video plays on tablets, mobile devices and connected TVs nearly doubled in the fourth quarter pf 2011 over the third quarter. At the same time, video plays on Google TV grew 91% in fourth-quarter 2011 over previous periods, per Ooyala, a digital video technology and analytics company. All this is good news for new video and TV-related businesses. New tablet users continue to eat into the share of those with desktop and laptop computers when it comes to video consumption -- with 45% more likely to complete at least 75% of videos played. Both iPhone and Android grew rapidly quarter-over-quarter in terms of videos played and hours watched. iPhone grew share by 156%; Android devices, up 61%. Bigger screens still mean more time for video to be watched. Ooyala says videos longer than 10 minutes account for more than half the hours watched on connected TV and game console devices. "The dramatically increased engagement with IP-delivered video creates opportunities on a massive scale for publishers and brand marketers,” stated Bismarck Lepe, co-founder and president of products for Ooyala.
Against some tougher 2010 comparisons, CBS Corp. achieved slightly better revenue and advertising results for its businesses in 2011. For the fourth quarter of 2011, CBS' total advertising revenue -- network, cable, radio and outdoor -- grew 5% to $2.6 billion. For the year as a whole, CBS inched up 2% in total advertising revenue to $9.2 billion. Advertising revenues for its entertainment divisions -- CBS Televison Network, its syndication and interactive businesses -- were essentially flat in the fourth quarter of 2011 versus the same period in 2010. Looking at overall entertainment revenue for the CBS Televison Network, its studios, distribution, CBS Films and its interactive business, the company had a 1% gain to $7.5 billion for the year despite big returns from advertising revenues in the 2010 for the Super Bowl and higher advertising revenues from the NCAA College Basketball Tournament. In 2011, a new agreement had CBS sharing the college tournament games with TNT. For the fourth quarter, entertainment revenue dropped 1% to $2.0 billion, mostly due to unfavorable comparisons to the fourth quarter of 2010, when CBS recorded the second-cycle syndication sales of "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. CBS says revenue growth for the year was driven by new licensing programming agreements for digital streaming, growth in underlying advertising revenues for the CBS Television Network and higher retrans revenues CBS' local broadcasting -- TV and radio stations -- were subject to lower political advertising revenues. It witnessed a 12% drop in revenue overall to $721 million in the fourth quarter. CBS TV stations declined 18% in revenue; CBS radio revenues decreased 5%. All local broadcast CBS stations were hurt as a result of lost revenues from missing early-season games due to the NBC lockout. Both TV and radio, however, saw gains in automotive advertising For its cable networks -- CBS Sports Network, Showtime Network, and the Smithsonian Networks -- revenues for the fourth quarter of 2011 improved 7% to $395 million from $368 million. Much of this came from rate increases and growth in subscriptions. Outdoor revenues for the fourth quarter of 2011 increased 1% to $514 million, with publishing revenues also slipping 1% to $229 million in the period. Overall, CBS's net earnings gained 31% to $370 million for the quarter, and almost double for the year, $1.3 billion versus $724 million. Revenues for the quarter inched up to $3.9 billion from $3.8 billion. Revenue for 2011 rose to $14.2 billion from $14.1 billion.
When it comes to watching entertainment programming, it turns out size doesn’t matter as much as people previously thought (or hoped). According to a new study conducted by Chadwick Martin Bailey (CMB), consumers are using their tablets and smartphones to stream video programming at an increasing rate, and they’re doing it in their homes, where televisions are available. According to the survey of nearly 1,500 consumers, 58% of people who viewed programming on a tablet did so in their homes -- and of these, 63% did so even though the program they were watching was available on their televisions. “The big media companies have been comforted in this notion that the biggest available screen is always going to win in any situation,” Peter Fondulas, founder of Fondulas Strategic Research, which worked on the project with CMB, tells Marketing Daily. “That may have been true a while ago, but people have become more open to devices and may even prefer [smaller screens] in some situations.” The survey found significant members of all demographics have watched video programming through a device other than their televisions. While 74% of consumers ages 16-29 had watched programming online, 39% of consumers 50-75 had also watched a television program or movie online. And their preferred method of watching such programming is either through a network Web site (27%) or Netflix (24%). Only 12% of consumers said they watched through their TV provider’s Web portal (such as Comcast’s Xfinity.com). Such findings could have serious repercussions as the cable and satellite industries work to continue their business models in the new era of Internet-connected television. According to the study, 43% of consumers said they’re likely to cut back on cable spending in the next year. However, the companies’ greatest fear (consumers cutting the cord entirely and opting for an Internet-only model) is less likely. Only 3% said they’d cut their cable entirely. More likely, consumers will be looking to “shave” services, such as cutting premium and non-premium channels, removing HD boxes and cutting down the number of boxes in their houses. “The people that we see shaving their pay TV service are in essence creating their own a la carte plan,” Jon Giegengack, a director at CMB, tells Marketing Daily. “My own hunch is that pay TV will have to switch to a model more like that. as there’s more attrition.” With the inevitability that more people will look to the Internet to watch television and movie programming (particularly with more Internet-connected televisions in the home), the opportunity is wide open for a company to come in with a different model that appeals to consumers’ individual tastes, Giegengack says. “One of the barriers we found [to cord shaving] was the ambiguity of what the options are and the services [consumers] have,” he says. “There’s this increasing group of people who are on deck and know that there are better of options available, but haven’t yet cut the service.” The company that does succeed will likely have to be strong on the three fronts that consumers said were important to them: streamable content (as opposed to owned content), a wide variety of programming available and, most of all, ease of use. “Lots of companies are working hard at this, and it’s only a matter of time before someone does,” Fondulas says.
Another key night of the NBC watch continues apace. Putting a lot of marketing muscle around its Monday night, the second regular airing of NBC's "The Voice" -- a two-hour episode -- grabbed a still-powerful 5.9 rating/15 share among 18-49 viewers -- down 12% from a week ago, which had a 6.7 rating, on the Monday after the Super Bowl. Perhaps a little more worrisome is "Smash," which dipped almost 30%. Still, it scored a 2.8/7, winning an increasingly difficult 10 p.m. time period against CBS' "Hawaii Five-0"(2.6/7) and ABC's "Castle" (2.0/5). The news is good for NBC overall. It won another Monday night, topping perennial Monday night champ, CBS -- with a 4.9/12 average for the Peacock Network and a 3.3/8 for the Tiffany Network. Perhaps the better news for NBC was that two hours of "The Voice" (and "Smash") put the kibosh on all CBS shows, which hit season lows: "How I Met Your Mother" (3.4/10); "2 Broke Girls" (3.7/10); "Two and a Half Men" (3.8/9); "Mike & Molly" (3.3/8); and "Hawaii Five-0" (2.6/7). Other contenders for the night were ABC (2.3/6), Fox (2.1/5), Univision (1.4/4), and the CW (0.6/1). Two hours' worth of ABC's "The Bachelor" dropped a bit from the week before, to a 2.5/5. Fox's "House" saw a season-low 2.4/6; and "Alcatraz" went south as well, to a 1.9/4. The CW's "Gossip Girl" hit a series-low 0.5/1 among 18-49 viewers, with 1.2 million overall viewers. "Hart Of Dixie" landed with a 0.6/1 -- the same as a week ago, with 1.6 million viewers.
A new report suggests that TV watching via broadband is on the rise, while devices facilitating over-the-top viewing are gaining more traction. Parks Associates found that 31% of homes with broadband regularly watch TV online. Meanwhile, nearly 13% of U.S. broadband homes have a device facilitating OTT, viewing such an Apple TV or Roku box. The research firm said holiday-season sales were robust, and it predicts 14 million units will be sold this year. Parks Associates reported during the 2011 holiday period that 4% of households bought "one of these inexpensive, single-function devices" that enable OTT consumption from "Internet-based services, such as Amazon Prime Instant Video and Netflix." And it's not just younger viewers who may engage in cord-cutting. Kurt Scherf, a vice president at Parks, stated: "Nearly 20% of these holiday-season buyers are over 45 years of age, so these devices have achieved relatively broad appeal among multiple consumer segments." He added: "While this trend does not yet frequently equate to canceling pay-TV services, it can mean shaving some premium channels for a set of households." That would be good news for Netflix, where CEO Reed Hastings recently suggested the company's biggest competitor is HBO. Netflix recently launched its first original series, "Lilyhammer," which it has begun advertising with the creative featuring star Stevie Van Zandt. As Parks makes its forecast of about 14 million OTT units to be sold this year, it said Apple reported 2.8 million Apple TV units were sold in a fiscal 2011 period, with an additional 1.4 million in the holiday quarter, while Roku sold 1.5 million units in 2011.
For an increasing number of consumers, watching television has gone from a passive activity to a truly social one. Armed with any mobile device, they are able to rate, comment and participate in select TV programming and chat about their favorite shows via social channels -- all in real time. Advertisers have taken notice -- and are becoming involved in the conversation. Media economist Jack Myers predicts that, between 2012 and 2020, social TV will generate an aggregate $30 billion in spending by marketers. Tom Cunniff, vice president and director of interactive communications at Combe Inc., believes social TV gives brands the opportunity to better connect with consumers in a more engaging, emotional way. He recently experienced the integration of TV and social himself — and shared his thoughts on social TV. What do you think is fueling the growth of social TV? First of all, marketers realize that TV is not going away and will probably still be the dominant form of media for some time to come. Secondly, I think there’s a problem with most digital media, which is that it’s inherently anti-scale. We keep trying to shrink and shrink audiences down as small as we can with the illusion of finding the one person who’s going to buy today. So I think smart marketers look at social TV as a chance to have an integrated solution — something that has the mass reach of television and the intimacy of social. Why should advertisers even care about social TV? We have to care about what consumers care about. Consumers like to watch TV, be entertained by it, and they like to talk about what they just saw. TV has always been a social activity. Go back to the 1950s, when TV was introduced. Families sat around the TV and talked about what they were watching, usually during the commercials. This isn’t new behavior. This isn’t technology leading something and enabling it. This is what consumers already do. As an example, when the Giants and 49ers were playing for the NFC Championship, I spent the entire fourth quarter talking about it on Twitter with all my friends. It made the game much more exciting. Are more shows are being created to take advantage of social media? Not yet. We see some tacking on of Twitter hashtags and “like us on Facebook” messages. Hollywood has to do some thinking about how to integrate social. It’s really what we talked about interactive TV becoming. What is a great example of a successful social integration with TV? My favorite example is Heineken Star Player, developed by an agency called AKQA. It’s an app that lets you interact in real time with a UEFA Champion’s League game. Whether you’re watching the game on TV, on your mobile device, or on your laptop, you predict what’s going to happen next. So if there’s a corner throw, will it lead to a score? A foul? You predict what’s going to happen. This goes back to basic human behavior: Nobody is more of a sports expert than a man with a beer in his hand watching television. So this app just harnesses that. The agency has done a good job of game-ifying the app. You earn points, bragging rights and can be in your own league with friends. You can play against the world. I don’t know what the business results have been, but I would say if I was CMO of Heineken, I’d be really excited about the app because it just feels so natural. If I can get a guy to have a Heineken in one hand and his mobile device in the other hand watching TV, that’s awesome. How can data be used to make better programming decisions? We should be looking for signs of vitality in shows that haven’t yet caught fire. As an example, Seinfeld didn’t hit the Nielsen top 30 until its fourth season, but it had consumer buzz. But today, in this sort of hair-trigger environment, you’d just kill that show -- you’d kill it instantly because it wasn’t performing well. So I hope that more people say, “You know what, this show hasn’t caught fire yet, but there’s lots of buzz on Twitter, on Facebook, and everywhere else. We should give it some time.” What I worry about is that we’ll end up drawing the wrong conclusions from the right data. We’ll say, “there seems to be a lot more buzz when the character wears a hat.” And so now, suddenly, we’ll have everybody on How I Met Your Mother wearing a hat because that’s what the data tells us. Data is fairly neutral. We can be smart about it, or we can be dumb about it. I’m praying for smart but worried about dumb. Is the recent resurgence of Betty White’s career a great example of the public being rewarded for their social support? A great example. We have to give credit to the Snickers campaign, which got that public support going. Again, that points back to the power of television. A problem in business is that we have people who grew up in the TV world and people who grew up in the digital world, and there’s some disdain for the other side. I feel lucky because I spent about half my career in traditional media and half in digital, and for the past 10 years I have crossed both. Both sides have strengths. If you want to create mass awareness of Betty White and bring her back, there’s nothing like TV. If you want to start a word-of-mouth campaign, there’s nothing like social for activation. Betty White is actually a great example of traditional and digital media working together. That’s the kind of thing that we should be looking at and taking advantage of. We should resist the urge to reinvent the wheel. There’s fundamental human behavior involved here, and it’s working really well without our interference. We should just figure out where we fit naturally. Bill Duggan is group executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers.
For those that watched the Grammys (hereafter known as the Adelies) on Sunday night, it’s likely you saw one of the most remarkable and striking pieces of work to have graced our screens in a long time.No, I’m talking about the apparently wonderful performances by Adele or Jennifer Hudson. I’m talking about an ad. To be precise, the ad for Chipotle Mexican Grill.Now as those that know me are aware, I seldom talk about ads in such terms. In fact, I might not actually use the word “ad” to describe this piece of communication. It is so much more than that, being part of an ongoing ethical foundation that the company has built and committed itself to.And I should make clear at this point that on Sunday night, I wasn’t watching TV at all. I became aware of the Chipotle video because David Berkowitz of 360i posted a link on Facebook -- and it popped up in my news feed while I was writing an unrelated piece.If you haven’t seen the ad yet, I highly recommend you take the time to do so. It excels on a number of levels. The Creative -- from the haunting rendition of Coldplay’s “Back to the Start” to the character and quality of the animation, it is the kind of work that takes endless ingenuity and real craft to pull off. And that’s after you’ve got the thing that all good ads need: a great idea. Media Placement -- with a soundtrack like that where else would you want to debut the ad? Plus, the younger-skewing audience may be more likely to respond to the message. The Message -- Chipotle has long since positioned itself as the fast-food place with a difference. None of the conventional aspects of the fast-food experience seen as negatives in many people’s eyes are here. The company sources its beef from cattle that have never been treated with antibiotics or hormones. The cattle providing the milk (and cheese) for the chain have only eaten food devoid of animal matter. It supports a number of sustainable agriculture initiatives and recently sponsored TEDx Manhattan -- Changing The Way We Eat conference. Bottom line is that Chipotle walks the talk we heard in the ad. Social Media Integration --Frankly David Berkowitz is among those better positioned to comment on this than I, but the fact I discovered the ad in my Facebook news feed and then linked through to the full video on the Chipotle web site says something. I’ve subsequently watched the fascinating “making of” video. All in all, out of pure interest driven by the creative and the message I spent about 20 minutes or so interacting with content core to the brands values that night.Frankly, Chipotle’s marketing is the stuff of case studies. What really made this piece of work so powerful was not only the points above, but the fact that Chipotle has aligned itself with a particular position that impacts its business, society and how we live. Not everyone will agree with them, but by taking a position and living up to it, the brand comes to stand for something more meaningful than anything based solely on price, quality or trying to be all things to all people. This is a real brand personality brought to life.
Program packages costing consumers around $10 per month have been attracting TV business entrepreneurs. For example, Netflix basic streaming and Hulu Plus both cost $7.99 a month, and a number of local digital TV packages have been priced around $10. The trouble is that not everyone wants to pay the same freight to the program owners. Aereo, a New York City service backed by Barry Diller, is a new $12 alternative TV package looking to test the waters. This one -- in part -- tries to go where the likes of FilmOn and ivi TV went before: retransmitting over-the-air broadcast signals digitally to consumers. History may not be on Aereo's side. FilmOn and ivi TV couldn't make the case that they had the right to re-air broadcast signals without some sort of payment to stations. The two companies argued that they were essentially cable operators. Aereo tries a different angle, saying that consumers have the right to receive broadcast stations signals over the air by an "antenna." But Aero's consumers use an antenna that's essentially stored at one Brooklyn location -- and then digitally transferred to devices like iPads and iPhones, as well as to regular TVs. So what's the $12 fee for? "Technological services." Ah. No doubt, broadcasters will make the case that any new TV/video retailer -- or middleman -- is looking to make a buck off their programming wares. That's because, without Aereo, consumers could still get those stations' signals for free. The real issue is the driving force behind these new wave of low-cost TV/video services. I'm guessing that consumers - - even those not necessarily from financially depressed homes -- may not want put all their eggs into one entertainment basket. With so many options available to receive TV shows and movies, some consumers may want to add and subtract services -- especially if they only cost $10 or so a month. This can be far cheaper than $100 to $125 a month bills from regular cable operators, satellite distributors, or teleco packagers. Why not combine Netflix, Hulu Plus, and one of your local cable operator's low-cost packages that provide some bare-bones cable networks? That's still a cheaper overall deal. Smaller, simpler services might for the foreseeable future be the key to satisfying viewers’ video/TV/movie entertainment needs.
Don’t just know your audience. Know where they’re watching your videos and your video ads. Because video viewing habits — from completion rate to engagement — vary widely depending on the device in front of a consumer’s eyes when an ad appears. That’s the conclusion of online video technology provider Ooyala’s latest quarterly report, released today, that analyzes video ad viewing habits across connected TVs, computers, tablets and mobile phones. Specifically, Ooyala found that viewers are more than twice as likely to complete a video when watching on a tablet or connected TV compared to a desktop. The completion rates for connected TV ads makes sense intuitively — connected TVs are lean-back devices and viewers are less inclined to skip an ad or switch to another site, app or show. Similarly, iPads and tablets offer fewer distractions so viewers may opt to watch ads more. “Engagement is strongly influenced by the type of device used to watch a video,” said Bismarck Lepe, Co-Founder and President of Products at Ooyala. “Our data shows that videos over 10 minutes in length have 45% higher engagement on tablets than either desktops or mobile devices.” Viewers on connected TVs and gaming consoles are most likely to watch a video all the way through — at a rate of 47%, with tablet owners completing videos 38% of the time. Mobile viewers had the lowest completion rates. Even with the range of completion rates, viewership across non-desktops skyrocketed, suggesting consumers are indeed watching videos across many devices. The share of non-desktop views more than doubled in the fourth quarter. So what lessons can media planners and buyers learn from these findings? As video ad viewing and buying becomes more multi-platform, marketers need to evaluate each medium on its own merits, look closely at the specific results of each campaign on each platform, and determine then where it’s best to spend their money. Because the data is available to show where ads are working and where they aren’t working. The Ooyala research comes from a cross section of Ooyala’s more than 100 million unique viewers watching Ooyala-powered videos across various sites.
When your network needs more viewers, why not go directly to the ratings source and ask viewers in Nielsen TV panels to give you a boost? That’s what Oprah Winfrey apparently did in tweeting for her still struggling OWN cable network. One major problem: Such activity is strictly prohibited by Nielsen. Winfrey quickly apologized for the mishap. “Every 1 who can please turn to OWN especially if u have a Neilsen box,” Ms. Winfrey tweeted after 9 p.m. on Sunday, just as a new episode of her interview show “Oprah’s Next Chapter” began. Similar Nielsen snafus have happened on and off for years. Last November, on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” the host started an “Occupy Nielsen” effort, asking people to turn on their TV sets when the show was airing. “You don’t even have to watch the show, you just have to put it on,” he said. Winfrey will get a minor slap on the wrist – an asterisk from Nielsen attached to the time of the incident. Fallon’s punishment was more severe – Nielsen deleted the ratings of the show for that night. All this explains to many what Nielsen still means -- seemingly for the foreseeable future -- to TV and advertising executives. It is the “currency” for ratings that are attached to the hip of all TV advertising revenue. Rentrak and other competitors would like the play in the big time -- and finally break Nielsen's virtual domination of the business. Many want a “new currency” for the TV advertising business. We are not sure of the resulting policies regarding manipulation of viewers in those samples. Given the bigger tweeting world, you wonder why more stuff of this kind doesn’t happen – especially with local TV outlets. In the past, programs and networks have mistakenly advertised or marketed to Nielsen sample homes and received similar punishment. Sometimes those Nielsen viewers make it easy for stations and networks. Years ago a TV consultant said one Nielsen home in the New York area was having trouble with its Nielsen box. But rather than calling Nielsen to fix the problem, the household called the New York TV station for which he was consulting. Talk about letting a cat into a hen house. The consultant said the station did the right thing – but there was temptation. Kind of like what Fallon had wanted to do: “Yeah. We wanted to tell them, ‘Okay. No problem. Just leave your TV set on to this specific channel for around a month, night and day, and we’ll get back to you.'” That would have given someone some extra currency for sure.
Kate Upton, the cover model for 2012's Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, is also the star of new TV spots for Carl's Jr. and Hardee's. The ads, to promote a new Southwest Patty Melt, won't begin airing until late this month. But the CKE Restaurants chains -- famous for somewhat risque spots featuring the latest stars/supermodels to draw the attention of its "young, hungry guy" target audience -- are clearly hoping to ride the wave of publicity from the SI issue, on newsstands today (Feb. 14). The restaurants today released sneak-preview video clips of interviews with Upton and footage from the commercials' shoot. The ads are from the 72andSunny agency. -- Karlene Lukovitz