• by May 31, 2005

WAS THAT A FREUDIAN SLIP, OR WAS IT SIMPLY THE NETWORKS GETTING THE SLIP? - We have a wise friend who also happens to be an expert about the national TV advertising marketplace and after years of studying - and participating in - the vagaries, idiosyncrasies and seemingly illogical nature of the network upfront advertising marketplace, has come up with the only logical conclusion for the way media buyers typically behave when the networks' push comes to shove: they become irrational. Why else, he asks, would they allow the sellers of a commodity set the timing, the pace and perhaps most importantly, the price of what they are about to buy?

As it turns out, it's not just his theory, but also the informed professional opinion of somebody who ought to know: a psychologist. Stymied by the seemingly irrational nature of the upfront, this friend of ours hired a behavioral psychologist a few years back to "analyze the market." In other words, he put the upfront on the couch. What the shrink concluded was that some of the nonsensical upfront market behavior had more to do with Freud than incestuous buyer/seller fraud. It had more in common with the principles of Jung than the obsessive pursuit of demos that are young. The main motivations behind upfront market behavior, as it turns out, are more about emotions like fear, than they are about rational thoughts like intrinsic advertising value.

Don't get us wrong, we're not saying network buyers are wackadoo, but at least one shrink thinks their market behavior occasionally is certifiable. And if you believe the old adage that "no buyer ever lost his or her job for paying too much, but plenty have been fired for missing the market," it's easy to understand the psychological motivations driving the upfront. And it's not just media buyers that are prone to such neuroses. Clients are too. So, apparently, is the trade press. The reality is everyone involved is afraid of missing the market, and that anxiety creates the kind of hair-triggers that:

* Get media buyers to jump at the first sign of action.
* Get clients to approve budget increases that weren't apart of their going-in strategies.
* Get reporters to go with speculative market-moving stories before the market has actually moved.

In the end, they're all proven right, of course, because the self-fulfilling nature of these actions forces the inevitable and the market actually begins to move - more often than not, in the direction the networks spooked it into.

Okay, so that's a vast oversimplification of the upfront marketplace. We know there are other factors involved, like genuine principles of supply and demand, and the fact that it's become virtually impossible for most big ad agencies to handle the kind of year-round TV buying for their clients that the upfront mitigates. But we also know that fear is a powerful motivation for getting people to do something they might not otherwise do.

At last, we understand the real reason why the upfront won't ever go away: People are too afraid of missing it.

BETTER HOMES -- Is it possible the creative team at the Sullivan Group had some inside knowledge about Meredith Corp.'s negotiations with Gruner + Jahr, which lead to the acquisition of the German publisher's U.S. magazines? Or is it just a coincidence that the headlines of ads in the new trade campaign the agency recently broke for Meredith seem to allude to some kind of a merger? You be the judge.

Here are some of the heads:

* Second Home
* New Roommate
* New Office
* Family Bonding
* Last Resort
* Surprise Party

Of course, as Sullivan's campaign states, each of those copylines was "inspired" by an article published in one of Meredith's existing magazines, but we do know some magazines that must be throwing some surprise parties to bond with a new family after learning of new roommates in a new office at a second home. Let's face it, after G+J's corporate management over the past year or so, it may be been their last resort.

Someone who evidently may not have had any inside knowledge about the pending deal was Carolyn Bekkedahl, who signed on a week prior to the announcement as executive vice president-group publisher of G+J's magazines.