• by John Gaffney , July 10, 2002

Now Stepping Up To The Dartboard:Yeah, let me have a shot at the forecast bullseye. All due respect to McCann Universal VP Bob Coen’s call of a 2.1 percent increase in overall ad spending, but I would like to introduce some wild cards. First, I think advertising has taken on many powerful new forms that are hard to measure. This should lead the ad business to re-examine how it tallies total ad spend. Xbox has based its summer’s budget on sponsorships. Do sponsorships count in an ad spend forecast? They should. Long-distance services have shifted a lot of marketing dollars toward cross-promotional deals in which dollars traded are low, but results are high. Should those deals count as advertising? I say to the extent that actual money changes hands, yes. Pepsi will spend a fair amount of money this year on street teams and other buzz marketing tactics. That should count, too. Having said that, I think packaged goods companies will end this year up more than 5%. But overall, when the dust clears on 2003, it will be a down year by about 3%. Here’s why: telecom, airlines, financial services and the tech sector still have some cutbacks coming and those cutbacks will hit whatever ad dollars are left. I also think that the only forecast that matters is the one you have for this week.

Ogilvy Goes To Washington: I have no idea how Ogilvy managed to recapture the Partnership for a Drug Free America one year after it settled an overbilling charge. But I do know that they need to do a better job in creating and placing the ads for this account/cause if they expect to have any impact. I hope Ogilvy at least gets some people involved that work on the front lines with kids and drugs. They will tell you that “Just Say No” and other anti-messages don’t work.

More Movie Trash Talk: While researching the marketing efforts behind summer blockbusters recently, I did run across one very important print ad. The MIB II ad in Sunday’s New York Times ran across a half-page spread, with an extra two vertical columns added to the left hand side. I have never seen that execution before, but much credit to whoever designed and placed it.