If Le Mans race car drivers blocked your car to prevent you from driving after a night out on the town, odds are you’d listen up. That’s the premise of a new 30-second TV spot featuring three Extreme Speed Motorsports drivers and two Ferraris sponsored by Tequila Patron. The ad, produced in conjunction with Extreme Speed Motorsports and created/directed by Radical Media's Jeff Zwart, will be aired during the American Le Mans Series, for which Tequila Patron is the presenting sponsor. Its first airing will be during the Long Beach Grand Prix broadcast on April 14. The ad shows ESM driver/owner Scott Sharp and Tequila Patron president/CEO (and race-car driver) Ed Brown driving Ferrari Italia 458s, zipping up to stop a couple from driving after a celebration in a nightclub. (Teammate Guy Cosmo can be spotted in a cameo role as the nightclub's doorman.) The concept aims to (literally) drive home the message of drinking Tequila Patron, and all alcohol, responsibly by leveraging the "cool factor" of the Ferrari race cars, notes Patron Spirits International CMO Matt Carroll.
More than half of marketers who responded to a survey on the impact of attribution said understanding the path to conversion allows them to more accurately disburse budgets. Many, however, still don't understand how the process should work. Marketers have been working to understand how a variety of channels influence sales. In time, the promise of attribution will integrate offline activities, too, but for now this study -- "Marketing Attribution, Valuing the Customer Journey," released Tuesday from Google Analytics and Econsultancy -- looks to optimizing budgets and campaigns for more traditional models and stages. For those who do understand the process, 52% of client-side marketers report that attribution has led to an increase in spending on some digital channels, and 72% of marketers say that attribution leads to better return on investments. Once a linear path, the road to conversion becomes complicated as mobile, social, search, television, radio, billboards, automatic identification technologies and other channels join the process. Not understating attribution remains the biggest challenge in adopting the practice, according to Bill Kee, product manager at Google. Understanding how channels influence sales through attribution also means a cultural shift at most organizations. Marketers that still rely on the last-click attribution model continue to put most of the company's marketing budgets in channels closest to conversions, such as purchases. Some 51% of survey respondents named the lack of priority in marketing as the No. 1 barrier to attribution, followed by being unsure how to choose the appropriate model and a need to better understand the potential advantages tied for No. 2 at 42%. Other barriers include a lack of data or access to data to inform the process, 41%; new staff and resources, 37%; lack of budget, 33%; lack of management buy-in, 32%; and attribution technology not yet mature enough, 27%.
Social media activity for TV shows is primarily used by viewers to keep preferred shows strong. According to a new study from TVGuide.com, 76% of people say the primary reason for their social media activity is to "keep my favorites on the air." This data is up from a 66% level in 2011. TVGuide.com conducted the study in partnership with Social TV Summit. Almost all of those who make comments on social media platforms -- 95% -- post their remarks after watching a show. This is way up from the 70% level a year ago. TVGuide.com now says 40% make comments during a show and 53% before a show. Big events pull in more social media interactivity. Before the Super Bowl, 62% of viewers intended to voice their opinion. Almost all of those -- 58% -- actually did. For entertainment awards shows, the social media activity-versus-intent was greater: 57% of those intended to comment on the Grammys and Oscars and 80% actually did. When it comes to using social media, more are interested in what other people are saying, versus saying something themselves. Thirty-three percent report "they wanted to say something about the event," while 69% "wanted to see what others were saying." Social activity for this survey included posts, status updates, check-ins and comments on social networks, fansites, official network sites, and entertainment sites and apps, such as TVGuide.com.
ACTV8.me, which powers second-screen interactivity synced with TV content, will launch apps linked with Fox shows such as “New Girl.” Fox has also taken an undisclosed stake in the company. ACTV8.me also has an undetermined relationship with a Mark Burnett production entity and has been running an app linked with NBC show “The Celebrity Apprentice.” The free Fox apps, which allow viewers to chat and answer trivia questions in real-time as a show airs, can be used on iPhones. In coming weeks, it will be usable on iPads and Android devices. ACTV8.me CEO Brian Shuster stated that the focus was to nurture new, compelling interactive and social features "that enhance the overall television entertainment experience and ultimately grow audience viewership." ACTV8.me is one of several entities, including Nielsen, trying to provide networks with systems allowing viewers to watch a show and interact with additional content (and other viewers) live on a second device. Networks can build engagement, as well as derive some ad revenue. An app for TBS’s “Conan” is sponsored by AT&T. “The Celebrity Apprentice” app offers contests, including one to win a Buick Verano. Buick is one of the advertisers that ACTV8.me said would sponsor its platform for the show this season. Others include Crystal Light and Walgreens. CEO Shuster added that there was an “overall goal of gamifying the second-screen experience."
This summer’s Olympic games won’t be the first Olympics to boast thousands of hours of broadband video; but it will likely be the first to deliver the events across so many platforms, from the TV to the desktop to the tablet to the smartphone. That’s because video viewing on mobile devices has skyrocketed in the last year. The games then will be an interesting proving ground for digital video technology. To get it right, NBC is going to need to manage a lot of moving parts, from video files to live programming to ads that belong on different devices for the 3,000 hours of live online video coverage it’s planning. The media company said this week that it’s paired up with online video technology firm FreeWheel to manage and serve up the ads on NBC.com, NBCSports.com and other properties. What’s particularly interesting about this deal is it’s the latest one that promises to deliver online video ads in a form that closely mirrors TV, and underscores that media properties increasingly need to make online video feel like TV. Companies like Tremor Video are selling on GRPs, Nielsen is aiming to standardize ratings for TV and online in one cross-platform ratings system, and ad loads have doubled in online video over the last year. Freewheel has said that in 2011, the number of online video ads in programs longer than 20 minutes jumped from three to seven. The new NBC-FreeWheel deal both follows this trend and builds on it, because the ads that run in Olympic programming will be served up in commercials breaks that look like ad breaks on TV. Advertisers online can opt for the first spot in a commercial pod, or the last, or adjacency to a certain athlete or event. Those factors can all be managed live and in real-time, along with display rights windows, inventory booking conflicts and any ad unit constraints, FreeWheel said. Plus, ads will be tailored for each platform via digital ad insertion, with perhaps shorter, call-to-action spots for mobile phones and more TV-esque ones for PC viewing. “An advertiser like BMW will be able to have different ads running at the same time targeting someone watching on a smartphone, a tablet, and a PC,” FreeWheel said. FreeWheel works with a number of TV network clients, such as ESPN, A&E, and CBS and Turner, for which it just handled March Madness. NBC is making a big play in digital ads from the Olympics to its role in the upcoming Digitas NewFronts later this month. Already, the network has sold more than $50 million in digital ad buys for the summer Olympics.
Keith Olbermann is gone again. But where has his brand gone? Nine months into his Current TV thing, the controversial news anchor has been fired for… well, the usual reasons. He previously lasted some seven years at MSNBC. What does this say about the Olbermann brand now? Perhaps something different than you think. Controversy has been an integral part of his brand -- even back to his ESPN days, and CNN before that. Let's face it. If Olbermann didn't get into trouble, we'd suspect something. That's part of what you get for $50 million over five years -- the supposed price tag of his contract that Current executives say he violated. This week another TV brand, Katie Couric, is appearing on ABC's "Good Morning America." No violation here for most -- unless you have been sleeping in a cave for six years or in a domicile where no cable operator has laid fiber yet. Then you might be confused; Couric no longer works for NBC's "Today" show. Of course, TV marketers sometimes look for confusion as a way to get viewer sampling. Nothing wrong with that. Still, "Today" show producers didn’t take this lying down: They scheduled the controversial, and sometimes polarizing, Sarah Palin as a special guest host for the same week. Former "Today" anchor Meredith Vieira was also a special guest host. Glenn Beck’s brand, formerly with Fox News, also seems to have found a home – a smaller one, with some 300,000 monthly paying fans on his website. Interestingly, that is around the same number of viewers Olbermann brought in for his short Current TV stay -- and also around the same number of Olbermann’s Twitter followers. Could a niche Internet TV effort be in his cards too? Perhaps that smaller niche could come on a pay TV network. Olbermann had been talking with Showtime. Like Bill Maher on HBO, Olbermann would have -- in theory -- more freedom to do his own thing and the added bonus of swearing if needed. Any TV news brand needs to find its right dimensions. Still, personal entertainment "brands" can be fleeting; network brands have a much longer life. Oprah Winfrey is now associated with the struggling cable network bearing her name, Oprah Winfrey Network: OWN. Nothing is smooth in the land of TV brand names.
To paraphrase Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, and/or fat suits so grotesque that their characters turn into the Macy’s-Parade-balloon version of themselves. That’s certainly true for Betty, the former Mrs. Draper, who was never a great mind, to be sure, but managed always to hold on to her huge beauty and Grace Kelly-like style. And since John Hamm (who plays her ex, Don Draper) directed this episode, I’d say that while they are divorced in their fictional roles, there’s also perhaps some previously undiagnosed tension in their offscreen relationship, as well? Talk about pounding on her character! Really, I know “Mad Men” is full of surprises, but who could have predicted that within eight months, Betty the perfect Breck girl (she of the cigarette diet during her character’s third pregnancy) would turn into a physical mixture of Happy Rockefeller and Rosemary Clooney? There weren’t enough Bugles manufactured worldwide to fuel that kind of weight gain. (Come to think of it, Grace Kelly put on some poundage by the end of her life, too. But she was at least 20 years older than Betty by then.) Of course, the actress January Jones was pregnant in real life (and this episode had to be filmed before the opener to give Hamm time to prepare.) But all that porking up reminded me of the grotesque fat suit that Weiner gave the now-lithe Peggy when she was pregnant and didn’t know it. Everyone in the office made fun of her, and at the time it seemed to be a suit of armor to repel sexual advances. It’s all deeply disturbing and queasy-making. What I object to in “Tea Leaves” was the uneasy mixture of contempt for fat and the blameless diagnosis of cancer. But in that new funereal home of theirs, the Grande Betty seems to get a reprieve from death. “It’s benign,” she says, as she looks up from the phone at Henry, her loyal second husband. But her seeming numbness at the news soon turns to frustration as she complains about her fatness. Henry shouts “I don’t see it!” If there was a theme in this episode, that’s it: more important than the ability to read the tea leaves is the ability to see what is right in front of you. Or as Cecilia (the creepy turbaned faux-gypsy tea leaf reader who approached Betty in the restaurant) put it, it's having "the gift of sight." Other themes: death (literally or figuratively, and Henry does mention being Scrooge looking at his tombstone) and being replaced. Feeling pushed-out and publicly humiliated by Pete after the Mohawk plane unveiling, Roger gets blinded by rage, and says, “When is everything gonna get back to normal?” The answer, obviously, is never; the new normal is always a tad trickier than you think, especially with the radical changes to come during 1966 and onward. On the “everybody’s replaceable” theme, the brazen Michael Ginsberg, whom Peggy interviews for a copywriter job, has lots up his sleeve (in addition to his resume.) Her current art partner, Stan tells her as much; to him it’s clear as day that the new man will be Peggy’s boss, pronto, just as Joan predicted that Megan would be made a copywriter and Faye said Don would be married within a year. Peggy, however, is a believer in challenges. In the end, however, Peggy's Pollyanna-ishness didn't matter, because Roger went ahead and told the Mohawk client about Michael before she even had a chance to hire him. Roger says he needed to "smooth the way for the Jew." But he needn’t have bothered. "Turns out everybody's got one now,” the ever-old-school Roger says to Peggy. “Tell you the truth, it makes the agency more modern, between that and it's-always-darkest-before-the-Dawn over there.” (Don’s new African-American secretary was hired only as response to a competitive screw-up, not “on purpose,” as Roger says.) I couldn’t stand Ginsberg, who seemed as stereotypical a Jew as Pauly Walnuts is an Italian. In his manic energy, and grating accent, he reminded me of the insult comedian Jimmy Barrett. Even though they’re not related, the new kid lists the poet Allen Ginsberg on his resume. I got the idea that for the writers, just bringing in the ghost of Alan Ginsberg suggests darkly prophetic rants (after “Howl,”his second most famous poem is called “Kaddish” a Jewish death prayer) and easy connections to the emerging downtown hipster zeitgeist. The poet Ginsberg favored thrift store clothing (albeit not as glaringly mismatched as Michael’s clownish madras jacket and paisley tie.) He also lived on the Lower East Side in a “cold-water flat” similar to the railroad apartment they show the new copywriter going home to. (Fun fact: Allen Ginsberg coined the phrase “flower power.) By the late 1960s, the Lower East Side was attracting artists, poets, musicians and broke druggies. The elderly Jews’ kids had for the most part moved on to either large project buildings or to Brooklyn and Queens; the richer ones went to Long Island. In his craven and manipulative interview with Peggy, SCSP’s new copywriter told many whoppers about his background (like Don?) The biggest lie was that he had no family. “Nobody in the world cares I got the job but you," he tells her. Still, I wasn’t prepared for the Dad straight out of “The Jazz Singer” (“I hef no son!”) Michael’s grandparents would have been the ones with the accent; or another explanation would be that the father was a Holocaust survivor. In that case, he would most likely live in Washington Heights or on the Upper West Side, not in the kind of Lower East Side apartment with the tub in the kitchen depicted here. (Weiner grew up in California, the son of a neurologist. But still, the show is so well researched and detail-perfect that it makes me think something strange is going on here, especially since the guy talks about buying prostitutes one minute and solemnly prays over the kid the next. ) Also strange was the father’s outfit, right out of a play about social justice in the 1930s, and the fact that he towered over the son. (Height differences usually went the other way in that generation.) For now, I’m going with the “Do not judge, let ye be judged,” line. But while I’m judging, when are the agency partners going to fire that ineffectual and rude Bozo, Harry Crane? Really, how many screw-ups will it take? (And would a woman in his position who flaked out that many times be allowed to stay on to her job? That’s not even a question: remember that Joan was great at the job, heads and shoulders above Harry, but wasn’t allowed to keep it.) In the meantime, he's great for comic relief. Though the backstage scene at the Rolling Stones concert seemed fake, the story that Harry signed the wrong group was hilarious, as was the scene in the car with Harry scarfing down 20 White Castle burgers. (Although his hostility toward his wife and marriage is not fun to listen to.) Did Don’s foray there prove that he’s tuning more into his almost-teenaged daughter, Sally, and is worried for her? Sadly, (but right in character for a narcissist) when Betty had to think about the future with cancer, she didn’t worry about what would happen to her children. Rather, she was worried about no one hearing a good word about her. I did like the moment between her and Don, when he reassured her, calling her his old pet names, Bets and Bertie. Don made a joke in the last episode about the Francises’ new Addams Family-style house. But inside, it really looks like a mortuary. Also, could they have made a bigger contrast between Don’s light, bright, happening new apartment and this old, formal, dark place? Some things come up again and again: the writers’ fixation with chairs, for example. A few seasons back Betty was angry at Don’s unwillingness to fix a broken chair in the dining room in time for her party. This time, she dreams about the scene of the family without her, and Sally turns her mother’s chair over and places it on the table. (In his little black suit, Bobby looked like Eddie Munster, but I’m mixing ‘60s TV monster comedy shows metaphors.) There’ve been a lot of references to Betty’s eating disorder as well. (Although the term didn’t exist then.) A few seasons back, when grandpa Gene was still alive, Sally told him that her mom would not allow ice cream before dinner. Gene tells her, "She's afraid you're going to be fat like she was... Her mother used to take her to town and then make her walk home. I put a stop to that." So the idea that Betty offers Sally ice cream before dinner was breakthrough -- is Betty getting warmer and less rigid? But there seems to be no joy in the offer for Sally. She leaves at least half and stiffly asks her mother if she can go watch TV. (In the old days, her mother used to order her to do that.) Betty eats both her and Sally’s parfaits. That’s why I’m thinking that Betty actually lied about the diagnosis. Because her life is a mess, and, reading the tea leaves -- or just seeing the truth -- at this point is just too hard.