TRACTA :: 4eyes

Once again the news is full of the death of print and the future is digital.

One of the most consistent magazine performers in the US is about to reduce its base advertising rates by 42%.  Playboy magazine will reduce full page rates from $2.6million to a paltry $1.5million on the back of an 18% drop in circulation over the past three years.

Meanwhile in the US, newspaper circulations continue to decline while visits to newspaper websites continue to grow.

Showing that some media properties still appeal to advertisers, Visa has just signed up to sponsor the Olympics through to 2020 – that’s FIVE Olympic Games.  That’s confidence!

If you spend a bit of time online, like I do, you’ll be surprised what will turn up.  It made mainstream news as it was a “world first”, but it all happened online when U2 live streamed a recent concert over YouTube.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had a nice comeback to an assemblyman who heckled him, including a “hidden message” within his official letter to veto a proposed bill (or something like that!).

And this one … I just don’t know what to say about it!

BEST (AND WORST) ADS I’VE FOUND THIS WEEK

Telecom’s “This little light of mine” – the neat website that goes with the ad.  I want to hate it, but I quite like it!

Fast & Furious – print ad for Sky On Demand (ran in Skywatch)

Bill English promotes TVNZ7.  Or is it the other way around???  (Labour isn’t happy!)

That’s it from me!

First things first, folks… what with Jeremy Wells’ new programme on TV and the “Bird of the Year” competition on National Radio, NZ birds are so hot right now.  And this one is definitely hot – from the BBC’s “Last Chance to See” documentary series.  I laughed!!!

The format of these Four Eyes posts is starting to look somewhat familiar.  A number of these stories seem to replicate or continue with themes visited previously…

For example, WiFi on commercial flights?  Google has teamed up with Virgin America to offer free WiFi on their services.  How cool are Google Doodles?  Google launched an NZ-wide competition for schoolkids to create a Google Doodle that will be used on the site.

But seriously folks, there are some interesting developments happening in the world of advertising media.  The biggest news is that in the UK, online advertising spend looks to have overtaken TV spend for the first time.  In New Zealand, online adspend is predicted to overtake radio and possibly magazines this year, making it our third most popular medium after newspapers and TV.

Another big story is that Microsoft has done deals with both Facebook and Twitter that will see the social media sites’ users’ status updates and posts included in Microsoft Bing search results.  Whether this means that your status update about the rip in your tights will become public fodder is unclear.  And if you’re searching for “McDonalds” do you want to see all the tweets saying “Just had McDonalds for lunch”?  One thing is certain – Microsoft has finally beaten Google to something!

and now…

MY COOL ADS OF THE WEEK

Auckland billboard for Yellow, displaying tweets in real-time

BNZ’s innovative display ad that took over YahooXtra’s news page

L&P’s Tourism Paeroa campaign running across multiple media

KFC in Dutchland take a novel, cross-media approach to fast food marketing

Fail!  Toyota’s “scare a friend” campaign backfires, agency gets sued!

Enjoy the sun this long weekend – I will be!

I must have had a good Friday last week!  So good it’s already Monday and I’m still typing this post!

Today I’m going to ask you to cast your mind back to previous posts, as we feature a few continuing stooooriiieeeeesss…

Remember the outpouring of outrage when Kraft announced the name of their new spread (iSnack 2.0)?  They now have a new name chosen by the public – Vegemite Cheesybite.  Stars out of ten for originality??

And remember how I was hyping the wider reach of radio brands to their loyal audiences?  The Edge radio station are at the forefront of this development, giving their young and tech-savvy audience multiple access points to the brand.  They have just launched their own iPhone app, allowing users to listen live through WiFi or 3G.

Speaking of WiFi and connectivity – you may have seen ads for TVNZ’s iPhone app, giving access to news, weather and TV schedules and allows video viewing through WiFi.  It’s the most popular iPhone app in NZ!  What is this WiFi and where do you get it?  How about on your next flight with United Airlines?!  They promise it won’t interfere with flight communications or navigation!

On a completely different tangent, recent figures show US magazine advertising is in freefall – down 26% for Q3 2009 compared to the same period in 2008.  Meanwhile, Australian TV networks are reporting an increase in spend for the month of November compared with last year.  NZ’s media spend seems to be continuing to track down year on year across all media, except online (Q2 online spend in NZ was up 5.5% from 2008).  Looking forward to the market reigniting in 2010!

As usual I’ve included some interesting campaigns to make you smile… or at least mutter to yourself.  Stephen King is launching a new book soon, but if you’ve got the time you can search the web for clues to put the story together, line by line.  That story, and this one about Telecom’s new logo that isn’t, are on www.techday.co.nz – a new site by Action Media that brings together content from all of their tech titles (Netguide, The Channel, MacGuide, IT Brief and Telecommunications Review).  Read more about Telecom’s new logo here and here).

Finally, this ad has recently been doing the rounds and is touted as The Best Story Ever.  I like!

Catch you next week!  And someone please tell me why men want Snow Caves?!?!

This week Four Eyes presents the usual wrap up of advertising and online news from around the traps, along with my favourite ad of the week (if not the year!).

It’s still all about Twitter!  Somewhat unsurprisingly, a recent study has found that Twitter is used more often on mobile devices than any other social network.  Given that when Twitter launched a big part of its appeal was its mobility, it’s really a no brainer!  It is also becoming increasingly evident that Twitter is giving fans of TV programmes, movies, music, etc a means to share their passion.  Perhaps a new measurement of engagement with TV programmes could be the amount of Twitter traffic, as shown in this article about Tweets following Hey Hey Its Saturday.  And this article says how negative Twitter comments substantially affected Bruno’s ticket sales.  The democratisation of marketing is upon us.  Advertising won’t make a difference if people don’t like the product!  Don’t try to go behind the backs of your customers (as Nestle have learned) but if people are saying good things about you – promote that!  NZ Tourism should be using these comments to market to Australians…

Cool ads.  Google consistently raises the bar with their logo (or Google Doodles) that change out to represent special days.  The one on the left was for the anniversary of the invention of the barcode.  If you scan it, it actually reads “Google”.  Clever eh?

In other entertaining and innovative ad campaigns, Coke Zero has launched a technologically innovative programme to “find your double” through Facebook, Orcon internet has a multimedia campaign offering the chance to help Iggy Pop record a single and TSB used a prime ad space to respond to Westpac’s issues with the IRD.

But my favourite ad of the week, month and maybe the year is an anti-ad for Kettle Chips from Australia.

Finally, whoever can tell me why so many men are searching for “snow caves” on TradeMe will win a chocolate fish!

Enjoy your weekend!

The other day my good wife and I were listening to the radio when one of the announcers made a horribly objectionable and sexist joke.  It roused our emotions so much we both felt the need to text the station to make our feelings known (she was disgusted, I congratulated the announcer).

To our surprise we both received replies to our text messages, directly from the announcers themselves.  This, to me, showed the increasing 2-way communication happening in media, and especially in radio.

Every radio station in the country now has a website, most livestream so users can listen online, several have “exclusive” content on their sites, including video (radio, with pictures?) and nearly all have fan networks/club registrations with exclusive offers.

All this means that radio stations now have an even closer link to their audiences than they ever have before.  The radio brand can follow its listeners, and can interact with them in so many more ways than simply broadcasting to them.

Advertisers can capitalise on this ever-stronger relationship by associating their brand or product with the station’s brand.  Sponsorships and promotions on radio allow brand attitude to develop into brand behaviour that listeners actively participate in and become deeply involved in.

It’s all a matter of finding the right station to fit your target audience, but with the range of stations in New Zealand all targeting different audience niches, you can be sure there will be a station that fits your brand!

The Radio Bureau (whose job it is to promote radio advertising in NZ) have a useful page that outlines the advantages of using radio for promotions, as well as showcasing some campaigns that have done just that to great effect.  See it here.

Catch you next week!

Welcome back to what I hope will be more regular contributions to Four Eyes.  That’s Iain’s Interesting Internet Information.  Hope it’s interesting for you!

Online stats – advertising and social media

Latest research from UK – online adspend more than TV @ 23.5% of total ad spend!!

Twitter tweets are 40% pointless babble (no surprise), 37% conversational and about 9% useful (according to US research)

Facebook NZ traffic and stats.  Did you know Facebook gets more NZ traffic than TradeMe?  Or that you can target advertising by gender, age, location, interests, relationship status, what they’re fans of… and more?!?

New Sites and Stuff

YahooXtra to launch new online shopping portal, incorporated into its site.  Partnering with Hubsta, can they do better than Telecom’s Ferret?

Described as “NZ’s first internet TV network”, Zild.co.nz features 7 local and 14 international TV channels available streaming and on demand

Did you know that NZ On Air is also making its catalogue available online?  At NZOnScreen.co.nz, the most popular request is “A Haunting We Will Go” from 1980

This is cool:  Coca Cola’s new vending machines that can dispense up to 100 different drink flavours.  And they’re doing cool things with it, like telling people through their mobile phones where the nearest one is.

This (free) startup website aggregates comments and activity about a brand, making everything about it really really “Public”.

Fails

Heard about the new Vegemite, iSnack 2.0?  They ran a competition and picked this name, and the initial reaction was not good (to say the least).  This article reviews all of the negative comment happening.

Well, that made Vegemite take notice (or was it a stunt all along?!?).  Another competition, for a new new name, to launch soon!

And here’s another example of misuse of Facebook.  Have you ever had to tell someone “You’re NOT my mother”?

Have a lovely weekend everyone!