• by John Gaffney , December 4, 2002

Tribal DDB Was So Ahead Of It’s Time: Heard a lot of talk about “tribal marketing” at this week’s ARF-fest in NYC. It sounds very cool in theory. Find a large interest group and then find ways to advertise to them. So if you need to advertise mesquite wood chips, make sure you buy a lot of outdoor billboards on the way to The Burning Man festival. More seriously, tribal marketing has worked well for some media properties. Cigar Aficionado magazine is much more than a high-end psychographic play. It was and is a publication that talked the language of the cigar tribe. It helped to create and maintain a cigar culture. It did this so well, that non-cigar advertisers (like every high-end auto manufacturers) bought tab-sized pages, despite a comparably low circ and high CPM. I would also argue that Premiere thought they could do the same things with movie buffs. Too bad movie buffs have been fed a low-cal diet of rehashes and sequels over the past decade, with some notable exceptions. Tribal marketing is something for the toolkit, especially if your client needs a tribe. But tribes are small units for the most part. Something tells me the next few years are going to demand a more aggressive, mass market approach as well.

Disney Doldrums: “Harry Potter Under Water “ better known as “Treasure Planet” has a better shot of hitting box office gold than I do at beating Annika Sorenstam at golf. Disney revised its Q4 numbers yesterday because of that. I mention this because I still see making movies as the company’s strong suit, and if it falls apart, the ABC network will suffer because of it.

Parting Shot I like Real Networks new strategy of giving free samples of its player over a two-day period. It’s a strategy needed for this time in the internet lifecycle: risky, bold and a huge potential upside.