ABC tells you where to advertise: ABC

Lotsa coverage of the upfronts this week. (Its plural when you're talking about the presentations, I guess, and singular when you're talking about the whole marketplace.) At any rate, ABC is trying to bring truer accountability to advertising, launching an Advertising Value Index. According to this Mediaweek story, it works like this: advertiser gives list of marketing objectives to ABC. ABC spits out data where the advertiser should advertise. Where they get the data for this, I've no idea. And guess what? It turns out, according to ABC sales president Mike Shaw, "ABC over-indexes all television in nearly every case, often by a wide margin. ABC delivers the most valuable audience in television." Help! I'm falling off my chair!

eMarketer cuts its social net forecast

Not many headlines have caught my eye so far this morning, but this one did: "eMarketer Trims Social Network Ad Forecast." The report, by senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson, says that social network advertising should only grow by 55 percent this year, down from an earlier estimate of 70 percent. That shouldn't have anyone crying in their virtual beer, but lest you think the problem is the economy, think again. The report cites the difficulties that marketers have in implementing and tracking social media campaigns. In the limited world view from my home office, I think this is a stumbling block that is going to take at least a few years to get over.

Apropos of nothing: Sue Simmons and the F-Bomb

I guess I'll file this under reasons to love Twitter, to give it some loose connection to whatever it is I do on Adverganza. So, last night, I'm watching the local NBC4 News when long-time 11 p.m. anchor Sue Simmons launches into an apology for "a word some people find offensive" that she uttered earlier in the evening during a promo for the news when she thought she wasn't on-air. I scrambled to YouTube to try to discover what the naughy word was. Alas, nobody had posted the video yet. But on TwitterScan—which lets you search tweets—I was rewarded. Simmons had said, "What the fuck are you doing?" probably to some poor, off-camera flunkie. Now, you can see the dropping of the F-bomb, and her apology above. Let's just say that her delivery of that offensive word isn't exactly sotto voce. UPDATE: You've probably discovered by now that this clip is no longer available. Bummer.

JC Penney reflects on Mother's Day

Just noticed this Mother's Day spot from JC Penney, which is a lovely take on mothers, daughters and the passage of time. It'll never be as good as last year's Christmas spot—which I'm bringing up here again because you must go see that commercial if you never have. I don't care that it's May 13th! Assume this is Saatchi again. Great stuff.

Halo 3 campaign has halo effect on Gatorade

First, view this Gatorade spot from the "League of Clutch" campaign, featuring the Celtics' Kevin Garnett. I think it was created by Element 79. Then, ask yourself if this commercial was heavily influenced by the "Halo 3" campaign from McCann WorldGroup and T.A.G. that just won Best of Show at The One Show. Just sayin'.

OMD silently pursues Cannes Media Lion

Can't get the audio to play on the video above, but what the hell, since it appears to be an OMD submission for a Cannes Media Lion, worth putting up anyway. Involves "Project Runway" and Hershey's and making a product relevant for today's "hip consumers." Why hasn't the word "hip" been banned by now? The shop also posted this Cannes submission for a campaign it did for Absolut. It, too, doesn't seem to have workable audio.

Adverganza's Monday morning picks, 05.12.08

A little late with the Monday morning picks. Had to get an early-morning assignment in. OK, I'm still scanning the headlines so you don't have to:

From Advertising Age:

—Magazine leads with Dove retouching story. Still think it's much ado about nothing, but what do I know? I'm a blogger.
—Fun! Look at how much holding company CEOs make. The winner is Omnicom's John Wren, who made more than $10 million last year.
—The dicey job of marketing the new Batman movie after Heath Ledger's death.
—Amid the doom and gloom, advertisers focus on a new product: hope.
—More thumbs down on the upfront. Here's a chart predicting how the broadcast nets will do.
—Is sampling the new media buy?
—More on the executive shuffle at Aegis.
—Bob Garfield took a happy pill and gave 3.5 stars to this Nike apparel ad from 72andsunny and directed by Guy Ritchie.
—Video interview with Lee Jeans CMO Liz Cahill on how the company has dipped its toes into social media.

From Adweek (a lot of good stuff in this issue):

—Cool story by Mark Dolliver about how consumers might not reward companies for their green efforts.
—Branded entertainment around social responsibility is the next big thing.
—Hunter College not happy about Coach-sponsored college course.
—Another cool story, this one from Brian Morrissey, on brands that build themselves entirely through communities. Accompanying video interview with Rob Kalin of Etsy.
—Moms skip commercials on DVRs. Didn't finish the story, but here's why we skip: we're too damn busy.
—Mark Wnek does a direct upload of his brain in this great, rambling post about the 4As conference.
—Barbara Lippert isn't feeling that warm and cuddly about Carmichael Lynch's first Subaru effort, which focuses on love. Wish they'd link to the spot so we could all watch it.
—Tony Granger! Unleashed!

From Brandweek:

—Consumer electronics ask you to recycle your old consumer electronics. Hope this circle is virtuous.
—Shocker! Social networkers don't like untargeted ads.
—Smaller candy makers not dancing in the aisles over the Wrigley/Mars merger.
—Casual dining out, buying frozen dinners in.
—Q&A with David Churbuck, vp/global Web marketing, Lenovo. Best quote: "'There is nothing to do in Second Life except, pardon my bluntness, try to get laid.'"
—Why do I find this story about "A-list" business execs being receptive to advertising funny? Doesn't it make them also sound gullible?

From Mediapost:

—Coke starts its Olympic push. You can get a fridge pack in Ethiopian, Thai and Mandarin. Collect 'em all!
—Some "Sex and the City" Mercedes ad. Sounds cheesy.
—Hey everybody! Free iced coffee at Dunkin' Donuts on Thursday!
—Forgot to mention that Facebook is now offering data portability too.
—Saturday is Pangea Day. Sorry, can't make it. I've got a kid's baseball game to go to that day.
—The Media Ratings Council withholds accreditation of C3.
—NBC Universal says it will make money on Internet!

From Mediaweek (a new member of the Monday morning picks club!):

—Cablevision buys Newsday. Who the hell knows why.
—Manhattan Media buys 02138—the magazine silly, not the zip code.
—The U.S. Open will be cablecast where it belongs.
—This week's Programming Insider.
—Video of Alan Frutkin on the upfront.

From The New York Post:

—Cable wants to eat the broadcast networks' lunch.
—Who was supposed to be at the Time 100 party. And I don't mean any of us.
—Dissident Yahoo shareholder has only 96 shares but knows how to rile things up.

From The New York Times:

—Norman Pearlstine joins Bloomberg as chief content officer.
—If you know what primetime is, let us know.
—Duh. Playboy faces competition from the Internets.
—Advertisers like a (TV) year with 52 weeks in it.

From The Wall Street Journal:

—More downbeat predictions about the upfront. Free.
—CW sells a block of primetime. Free.
—"Speed Racer" business kinda slow. Subscription required.
—Cool Buzzwatch post about the "When Obama wins" phenomenon, as in "“When Obama wins…SkyNet will be destroyed at last.” Free.

Phew! That's it for today. Have a good one.

AT&T Mother's Day ad in bloom

Brentter has posted this AT&T commercial, which takes a different approach than the usual beat-people-over-the-head-with-your-latest-cell-phone-deal. Take a look. Somehow I'm seeing a connection between this ad and Haagen-Dazs' missing bees.

I'm so all over data portability

Sometimes you just luck into being right. That's what happened to me anyway, in declaring data portability across social nets somewhat inevitable in my Social Media Insider column on Wednesday. On Thursday, MySpace announced an opt-in program in which its members can share their profiles across Yahoo, Photobucket, Twitter and eBay. Truthfully, I don't spend much time thinking about such things, but when I think of all of the social networks I've been asked to join since I started doing the column, the craziness of it all bashed me over the head--and from a sheer time-saving vantage point, if my social nets are taking up too much of my time with profile updating than I'm less likely to spend quality time with them.

Is this the year the upfront goes down?

I don't cover the network upfront quite as maniacally as some people, but seems it's been a few years since it actually went down. Now Merrill Lynch's Jessica Reif Cohen is saying that her best case scenario is a two percent decline, and her worst-case a drastic 14 percent. Reif Cohen, of course, cites the economy, but also the writers' strike and ratings declines—which have never stopped the upfront from being up in the past. I know there are still a lot of media buyers out there hung up on guaranteeing advertisers a certain number of gross ratings points, but at some point, it's got to be de-emphasized.

Dove's retouched, fat-bottomed girls

So retoucher quoted in The New Yorker says that those real women in the Dove ads were retouched. I guess I'm lukewarm on how big this controversy is, although others are getting all hot and bothered about it. It's not like he turned them from size 12 into size 0, but go at it anyway, if you want. UPDATE: So now everyone involved, except the women themselves, has issued a statement denying any substantive retouching. Turns out Annie Liebovitz shot the thing. Anyway, retoucher Pascal Dangin, says: "The recent article published by The New Yorker incorrectly implies that I retouched the images in connection with the [2005] Dove 'real women' ad. I only worked on the [2007 Dove Pro-Age] campaign taken by Annie Leibovitz and was directed only to remove dust and do color correction—both the integrity of the photographs and the women's natural beauty were maintained." OK. Time to move on.

Who knew DIY social networks were so hot?

I guess you never know what's going to grab people's attention. Wrote my Social Media Insider column today on the trend toward creating niche social networks, and quite a discussion has arisen from it. If you want to join in, click here.

Sayonara SuperSpy

Was going to title this post "Sayonara AgencySpy" but that would imply that AgencySpy, the blog is folding, when it's just that the main spy, SuperSpy, is getting out of the blogging business. Says she got promoted and can't spend the time anymore. Trust me, though, she won't be able to entirely stay away. Happened to Copyranter. Happened to me when I left AdFreak. This blogging thing is a little like crack. (Not that I would actually know.) Story was first broken by my partner-in-crime George Parker at Adscam yesterday. Guess he wasn't supposed to do that.

Interesting investor chases after SpotRunner

Don't find it the least bit surprising that SpotRunner just closed another huge round of financing--$51 million to be exact. If you're not aware--and you should be!--the company's focus is an automated system for creating and buying ads that is targeted at this point mainly to small companies, like the local florist. What does surprise though, is one of the new backers, Groupe Arnault/LVMH, the luxury goods conglomerate. According to Nick Grouf, company founder and former PeoplePC founder, the funding from LVMH reflects its desire to have better targeted, focused advertising.

Coke Zero ad features speaking with tongues

Found the Coke Zero spot above on YouTube in Chinese, Spanish and Italian--it stars an eyeball and two tongues fighting over whether the tongues just drank Coke Zero. Talking tongues isn't quite as disgusting as that Monster ad where the heart plops onto the assistant's keyboard, but I find them a little yucky. You can see an English version of the commercial here. And apparently, there's a sequel.

You, too, can be a new media douchebag

Going for some low-hanging fruit this morning since got a lot to do. Heard about this video from a tweet by AdFreak's David Griner. It's about how to become a new media douchebag. Ever since I started this Social Media Insider gig, have started to wonder if I'm becoming one. Via The Presurfer.

Nerve's 50 greatest commercial parodies

Can't resist linking to Nerve's "50 Greatest Commercial Parodies of All Time." Of course, most are from Saturday Night Live, with the No. 1 and 2 spots dating from 1976 and 1977. Nerve's pick for the best was Dan Ackroyd for the Bass-o-matic, above. It would've been fun if they threw in a few user-created parodies, but that's just a quibble.

Didn't run for president; does buy search

Kinda strange that I came across a search ad for mikebloomberg.com in my Gmail yesterday morning, though the ad doesn't appear to run when you do a straight Google search. What, exactly, is the point? He's not running for president, nor is he running for re-election. Anyway, the site's not bad if you're obsessed with Mike.

Old Spice ad just smells funny

Damn. So look forward to Old Spice ads, but this one misses the mark, even though it uses the song "I'm Hotblooded" as the campy classic it is.

'Mediaweek' quietly launches its new site

My former colleagues at Mediaweek have taken a different approach than Adweek to promoting the launch of their new site, by almost not promoting it. It launched yesterday and, from an interface perspective, it looks much like the Adweek.com site, which, you may recall, I do like better than its predecessor. The video above explains the goals of the site, and is unapologetic about the advantages of being owned by Nielsen in a data-driven business. While some people feel uncomfortable about that connection, I'm not among them, as long as Mediaweek doesn't suck up when it reports on its parent company. I don't think it does. Get over it people--the data-sharing is what's called synergy.