Insights
Smaller. Faster. Mo-better.
Advertising Age - GM Moves $225 Million Cadillac Account to Modernista
The day of the Mega-Agency for Mega-Accounts may be nearly over. Car accounts, once only could go to the largest network agencies, with their large overhead, and even larger expense accounts.
Cadillac left Leo Burnett for upstart Modernista who has handled the Hummer account since it’s launch. Similar to the Crispin Porter + Bogusky win of VW, the move followed a move of the marketing chief from one brand to the other.
Unlike VW, Cadillac has a brand that has credible product- but is still not connecting with all its target markets with the right voice. The Burnett produced fashion show spot for the new Escalade that aired in the SuperBowl was blamed for the switch- but, once again- car clients are looking for excitement about their brand- generated by advertising, as opposed to being generated by the merits of the vehicle.
Toyota sells a ton of vehicles in this country- with the most unremarkable advertising- but a high quality, high value, reliable product.
We believe that there are more cost effective ways to market motor vehicles- including a total rebuilding of the dealer networks. Look to what Harley Davidson, Apple and Nike have done with their brand experience retail destinations for a look at what the future of automotive retailing should look like.
It’s not the agency that’s the problem in most cases- it’s the manufacturers who still haven’t let go of their old ways of doing business. The questions is can small ad agencies keep the creative energy and freshness once they land one of these monster accounts- and come under the watchful eye of the old school masters in a new school world?
It will be interesting to see what Modernista does with Cadillac- and if they will be able to hold on to Hummer too.
What do you think?
Nielsen ratings for commercials?
Nielsen to Offer Commercial Ratings
Yep, you read it right, Nielsen, the people who deliver the ratings for TV shows now are now going to offer ratings on commercials. This is so the networks can say- “sorry, we delivered an audience- they just thought your commercial sucked.”
Which brings me back to the monster sitting in the room- who is rating the audience? While Nielsen offers all kinds of demographic info- it’s still broad swipe data- which is so passe.
All these attempts to improvise a way to avoid the inevitable- a unique data set about each viewer- with all the likes and dislikes - and preferences- that allows advertisers to absolutely nail down who is seeing what ad- and when- and then getting feedback- think Amazon.com with it’s suggestions, it’s reviews - all on steroids- but not quite as bad as the ACLU pizza scenario. You would actually receive credit for viewing and interacting with commercials in the form of discounts on the programming you wish to watch.
The real future of TV advertising is more like a website- and as the two merge, you will be hard pressed to tell the difference. Commercials will have stats packages much like websites- telling marketers exactly what they need to know about the buyer- so they can either continue marketing to them, change their message, or abandon all hope.
And Nielsen, should abandon all hope of this service offering meaningful data.
The Next Wave’s Blogosopher seminar in the news
The Blogospher seminar was profiled today in the Dayton Daily News. The seminar teaches businesses how to use blog software (or content management system software) to manage content on their site and optimize it for search. One of the reasons this site has seen it’s average monthly unique visitor-ship rise over 800% is the use of WordPress to manage this part of the site.
It’s also been the reason many people searching for other ad agencies in the Dayton, Cincinnati or Columbus areas end up here.
Content direct- the wave of the future.
It’s coming- and if you are a middleman in the content delivery system, watch out. To define middlemen: record labels, movie studios, television networks (cable, broadcast, pay-per-view)- the people who come between the content producers - and their audience. The only people who will still be able to profit from this are the quality aggregator distributors like the Apple iTunes store, Amazon and probably Google (who may or may not - own the online world in the near distant future).
Read the link above- to find out how an unknown, small time singer, gave a concert to 70,000 people from her basement. Even if this was a set-up by a label, there are enough nerdy music geeks out there that can figure out how to do this on their own.
Sandi Thom now has a number one UK single- just recently the hip-hop band Gnarls Brakley have a UK number 1 hit purely from downloads.
Music is driven by word-of-mouth and the preferences of the “early adopters/ innovators”- more so than other product or service categories. If you are trying to build a brand quickly- using good webstrategy can get you to the top quicker than conventional media. If you don’t believe it, go ask Sandi Thom.