• by September 26, 2003

Have A Coke And A Smile, Or A Beer And A Diaper. Contextual media planning may be the future of the business, but it is not without its pitfalls. That's what a panel of experts concluded this week during a MediaPost Forecast 2004 panel session about contextual marketing. Panel moderator Marston Allen offered one such scenario. Allen who is senior VP-director of communications architecture at Universal McCann shared the unintended consequences when the agency acted on research showing that workers might want a little caffeine "buzz" near the end of their workday. Armed with those consumer insights, UM scheduled a series of Diet Coke ads to run online around 4 p.m. and the strategy struck a nerve, just not the right one. "We got flamed. We got so many complaints: 'You have absolutely no right, no permission to talk to me in that way at that time,'" recalled Allen. But when asked if the strategy drove Diet Coke sales, Allen said, "Yes it did, so the client was quite pleased, thank you." In another example that "tickled" panelist Len Ellis of direct marketing giant Wunderman, the DR pro said he was shocked when rifling through supermarket scanner data that showed a high correlation between Pampers sales after 8:00 and beer sales. Then it hit on him, "Mom sends dad out after 8:00 to buy Pampers and while he's there he buys beer." Returning to the subject of Coke and context, Allen an audience member from a yellow pages firm, asked why big branded products like Coca-Cola don't advertise in directories, in relevant places like under pizzeria headings. "I don't know too many people who way, 'I really want a Coke, let me look up in the yellow pages where to find one," quipped DoubleClick's Doug Knopper. "Let your fingers do the walking can make you thirsty," countered UM's Allen. But perhaps the most outrageous contextual link of the day was suggested by Clear Channel's Lori Wellinghoff, who recommended a co-branding alliance between some radio properties and a major consumer brand: "What if every KISS FM partnered with Chapstick?" she suggested.

After sitting through Wednesday's sessions of MediaPost's Forecast 2004 conference, the Riff just can't get the idea of contextual planning out of our heads. So we were especially attuned when the deft lifestyle marketers at Home & Garden Television unveiled findings of a new lifestyle trends study that - not surprisingly - highlights the context of certain advertising opportunities on HGTV. This particular study focuses on how the changing of a season impacts household activities in a way that is especially relevant for new HGTV series "Mission: Organization." It seems that along with the changing color of leaves (in the Northeast, anyway) and other signs of autumn, household activities accelerate and become more focused on organizational issues. In a counterbalance to spring cleaning, nearly two- thirds (63%) of respondents to the ICR survey said they have an increased desire to "add structure and organization to their daily household activities." "Maybe it's a reflection of the American culture and our upbringing. Whether you are still in school, have kids in school, or are beyond all that, you still get in the 'back-to-school' mode when Fall hits, and that requires added organization," postulates Gail O'Neill, host of the new HGTV series. "As a child, we all loved getting those notebooks with all their special pockets and sections that ensured that everything would be in its place, and we're still that way as adults." To aid in that mission, O'Neill offers some valuable tips, including picking one room at a time ("That way you won't feel so overwhelmed."), do it with a friend or companion, create bins, boxes or other mechanisms for sorting and storing items, label everything and, perhaps most importantly, ask yourself the litmus test question: "Do I need it?" If not, she advises, "Get rid of it." Good advice, but we'd like to see O'Neill devote a segment for editors on how to organize press releases about new TV shows.

Dog Days Continue At Martha Stewart Omnimedia. Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia is continuing its push to de-emphasize the Martha Stewart name in its media properties. This week, it premiered "Petkeeping with Marc Morrone, a new "FCC-friendly" weekly program featuring the pet care expert. It's not that Omnimedia doesn't fully support its Martha Stewart Living TV series, it's just that the firm might want to hedge its bets given the legal troubles surrounding founding namesake-in-chief Martha Stewart. Depending on the outcome of her criminal charges, we could very well see the company de- emphasize Ms. Stewart's name even more dramatically, shortening its corporate moniker to simply Omnimedia.