The 30 Second Spot

Well, over the Thanksgiving Holiday its a great time to take a moment out of the grind and relax and read. I just finished a book that I found very interesting Madison & Vine, the convergence of the entertainment industry and the advertising industry. The book talks about the "New Consumer". The New Consumer is a topic I focus on considerably. The new consumer is anti-marketing, an active participant in massive consumption of media, and wants their entertainment, advertising, media, music, and information on their time, when they want it.

The book Madison & Vine, really focuses on the old world view of advertising 30 second spots. The glamour of producing television that millions of people, might pay attention to or use that time to check the sports scores while their significant other is watching Desperate Housewives or the Bachelor. The books focus is on the fact that the 30 second spot is "dead". Well its really not dead, it just needs to evolve, sort of. . .

Its not the 30 second spot that needs to evolve, its the idea of communicating a brand message to an audience. Back to the new consumer, we know that they are voracious consumers of media, they are engaged on multiple platforms, and are never full attentive to one single medium. So how does a 30 second spot communicate to them? And how does it communicate to them when they hit the fast forward on their TiVo?

What we need to think about is who our audience is. David Ogilvy said "The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife. " And as true as that is about what you say to the consumer, it is just as true with how you say it. And you know and I know that your wife doesn't just watch TV. She talks on her cell phone, text messages, IMs, emails, works, browses the web, reads magazines and newspapers, plays video games, shops, goes to the gym, runs a large corporation, runs your family, so why only talk to her in a 30 second commercial? Not to mention the fact with all of those different vehicles fighting for her time, you don't think she is going to fast forward through those thirty second spots?

Videos Game as an Advertising Medium

So last week I spoke at the American Marketing Association on a panel about video gaming. The panel also included members of other agencies, a client, and a gaming developer. The panel proved to be very interesting, but I think the biggest challenge is how are we as marketers going to work with the game developers/studios to develop the right metrics which will allow us, and our clients, to understand the medium and compare it to other media vehicles. I mean let's be honest, we need to quanitify the medium, apply the same business criteria to it as we do to any other media.

There is one small stipulation, we can track time spent, usage, brand awareness, preference, recall, unaided recall, etc. But the question becomes what is the "variable" that we can use to account for the experiential level of participation? If you can drive the new Aston Martin, how much more likely are you going to be to purchase it versus seeing someone else drive it?

Halloween in NYC

So last night I went to check out the infamous Halloween Parade at in the West Village, basically a couple blocks from where I lived. Needless to say I don't think I need to attend another one of those events ever again. It was incredibly overcrowded, too many drunk, AGRESSIVE people, which resulted in fights between guys who could have easily rolled out of deep Compton and men wearing nothing except for a couple chains and a loin cloth. None the less it was one of those experiences that I can comfortably check off my list in things to do. On another note don't ever drive down there or park your car around the parade, there must have been 20 people sitting/standing on top of other people's cars to get a better view. . .

Something one of the people I was with said to me which makes you think. . . So you have a couple in their early fifties (obviously not someone like my parents, I hope) that is all dressed up and ready to go for halloween. . . The question is what is the psychological analysis of what they are wearing, why they are wearing it and is it the only time that they threw on the Cowgirl/Sheep outfit?

Video Game Zombies

When I was around 9 years old, I am using that as an estimate since I don't really remember how old I really was. There was a clip on some parody show called "Video Game Zombies." VGZ scared the shit out of me. It was about these were kids who spent all of their time in the arcade playing games. Their eyes were hollowed out, they had no emotions, all they wanted was quarters to play video games, and they would hunt down people for their quarters. This terrified me, and for a long time I was afraid of becoming a video game zombie, since at the time and well basically ever since I have had a bit of an obsession with video games. Anyway, my dad used to tease me and tell me that if I kept playing those games I might end up a Video Game Zombie.

At the time he had no idea that it would become a $10.6 billion dollar industry. Tomorrow when he buys EA stock, he will pray for a video game zombie epidemic. I guess it was pretty smart of him to give me my first computer in the early 1970s, and all of the video game titles.