Digital media have transformed advertising and spawned what seems to be zillions of stand-alone agencies specializing in digital, social, and similar forms of marketing. But according to a May 22 MediaPost report, their days may be numbered.

In a March and April Mediaschool Group survey of 2,000 marketing students across Europe, fully 80 percent predicted that these specialized silos will disappear within ten years.

If true, this may a good thing.

As digital media grew, they grew in complexity; and few, if any, practitioners of advertising had sufficient mastery of all the rapidly evolving technical ins and outs.

So enter an army of technical, coding and other specialists who had little to no mastery of advertising and marketing.

Button-pushers run rampant

While their work produced some great successes, such as Ford’s Explorer Facebook campaign that saw a 104 percent increase in shopping activity, it’s also produced a huge number of blunders whose consequences were anything from laughable to tasteless to downright creepy.

Like the digital marketing specialists who sent out e-mail blasts during Hurricane Sandy inviting recipients to “storm” client Jonathan Adler’s site for free shipping with the code word Sandy.

Or Kenneth Cole’s digital specialists who, paying more attention to trends than common sense, tweeted during the height of the Egyptian riots, “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is available online.”

Or O2, the UK’s largest mobile phone service, leaking customers’ phone numbers to every website they visited.

Voices of sanity

But now there are signs that digital disciplines and marketing disciplines are, at last, starting to work together.

This year’s Super Bowl blackout was a case in point. Then, creatives who knew something about advertising created tasteful, interesting and, above all, marketing-related messages that digital experts put up right away and in the right places.

Tide, for example, tweeted, “We can’t get your blackout, but we can get your stain out.” This message worked perfectly with their commercial about a Joe Montana-shaped stain that aired later on.

Volkswagen’s tweet was fully consistent with its “happy Jamaicans” television campaign: “”Lost power during the Big Game…Don’t worry, #GetHappy:voa.us/VDSvjj”

Over on Facebook, Mayhem – Allstate’s living, walking, breathing jinx – posted, “I meant to turn off the scoreboard. Sorry, everybody. Wrong switch.” This reinforced the brand message and got over 39,000 likes.

And Oreo’s tweet and graphic reassured consumers, “Power out? No problem. pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC YOU CAN STILL DUNK IN THE DARK” This was retweeted over 10,000 times within the following hour.

Some things don’t change

The marketing students surveyed also overwhelmingly agreed with some longstanding advertising truisms.

Nearly 70 percent believe that television will still be a relevant advertising medium ten years from now.

And a similar number, unwittingly repeating a core tenet of the 1960s Creative Revolution, said that in ten years, the role of advertising would be more to “entertain” than to “sell.”

So after a long and sometimes tumultuous courtship, it looks like digital expertise and marketing expertise are now engaged and on the verge of a happy marriage, with both disciplines living together happily ever after.

“The next generation of marketing leaders clearly has a strong point of view on the future they will shape and create,” said Anne Pflimlin, director of the Mediaschool Group. “It’s clear to them that the questions of silos and channels don’t exist.”

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According to a May 22 Advertising Age report, about 30 percent of desktop ads and an even higher percentage of mobile ads are a total waste of money.

That has nothing whatever to do with the quality, effectiveness or targeting of the ads themselves, digital analytics firm ComScore found recently.

Nor is it part of the usual rant about how clicks, likes and other forms of buzz don’t equal sales.

It’s because that proportion of the advertising is simply unviewable.

New medium, old problem

The problem of wasted media dollars goes back at least as far as the beginning of another newfangled technology – commercial broadcasting.

By their very nature, radio and television reach audiences that advertisers really don’t want to pay for.

Part of this is geographic, because by definition broadcasting covers a – wait for it – broad area. So if you’re a restaurant owner trying to drum up local lunch business in downtown Richmond, radio, for example, will help – but at the cost of buying useless (to you) listeners all the way from Charlottesville to Norfolk.

Before cable, it was even worse for television advertisers in multistate metro areas. A southern Maryland or northern Virginia advertiser couldn’t run broadcast television without buying the whole Washington, DC, metro. Same for Fairfield County, CT, and Bergen County, NJ, advertisers vis-avis metropolitan New York.

There was also demographic waste, because broadcasting reached a broad spectrum of consumers, many of whom were not qualified prospects for any given brand.

And there was waste resulting from the audience not paying attention, talking during commercial breaks or taking trips to the refrigerator of bathroom.

A different kind of waste

But in all those situations, at least the ads were there to be ignored or mistargeted.

Here, it’s a case of advertisers not reaching consumers they do want to pay for.

Ironically, in an advertising medium whose raison d’etre is its ability to target consumers geographically, demographically, psychographically and behaviorally, there’s a totally different problem: Owing to different technologies, notes Ad Age, “advertisers have been wasting money on mobile in a literal sense because a significant portion of the ads they’re paying for never properly display on devices. ”

From the earliest days of broadcasting, which admittedly involves less complex technology than computers, there were uniform technical standards. But it was only this year that the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Mobile Marketing Association jointly released standards for mobile advertising.

So far, only one mobile advertising network – Apple’s iAd – is the only platform to be accredited by the Media Ratings Council as meeting those standards.

And they had to jump through all sorts of hoops to do it. As part of “an in-depth audit,” iAd

demonstrated accurate reporting of impressions, taps, tap-through-rate, visits, views, views-per-visit, average time spent, conversions, unique devices and unique device visits. Apple said its mobile ad network is more streamlined than others and that it only charges for ads that fully render on users’ screens.

Oh, and they had to pay “more than $100,000″ for the privilege. (Of course, the first added advertiser they get at their $100,000-a-year minumum will cover that expense.)

Google’s DoubleClick and server startup Medialets are two of a handful of networks following iAd’s example, while others, including network Millennial Media and server MoPub are weighing whether it’s worth the cost and bother.

A question of measurement

It’s the interactive technology that creates discrepancies between what mobile advertisers pay for and what they actually get.

With radio or television, once a commercial airs, it shows up on receivers, whether consumers want it or not. But with mobile advertising,

Serving a mobile ad involves a publisher sending an ad request to its ad server, that ad server sending a request to a third-party ad server, the third-party ad server making a request for creative and the creative server delivering the ad unit to the device. (If this sounds complicated, it is.) Couple all that with mobile-connectivity issues, and it’s easy to understand why a mobile ad might not render.

Still, publishers typically get paid regardless of whether the ad ever appears because ad servers usually use ‘server-side counting,’ meaning it’s counted as soon as an ad impression is requested.

Under the new MRC standards, mobile networks and serviers must use “client-side counting,” i.e., counting or charging for an impression only when the ad actually shows up on someone’s mobile device.

Grumbling in the ranks

But not everyone in the industry is thrilled with that approach. Millennial gives advertisers a choice of server-side or client-side counting. (No mention of whether there’s a premium for the latter.)

MoPub says it doesn’t work with publishers whose discrepancy rate – i.e., the difference between the number of impressions an advertiser pays for and the number that actually display on mobile devices – is less than 5 percent.

Which may be an elusive goal.

The Weather Co., which ComScore ranked fourteenth in unique mobile visitors in March, says it dropped its discrepancy rate from 20 percent to under 10 percent by switching to DoubleClick for Publishers Premium (there’s that extra-cost word again) last fall. Meanwhile, they’re offering advertisers more inventory than paid for, to compensate for all the times those ads never show up anywhere.

But while foregoing standardization, Weather Co. says they support it. “There’s no agreement how to measure it,” their VP-digital monetization told Ad Age, “and that’s just not fair to anybody.”

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Style Weekly readers evidently believe our ads are true, because they’ve voted Bikram Hot Yoga Richmond’s best yoga studio. Again.

Congratulations, for the second year running, to owner Garland Hume and her whole staff.

GM CEO Dan Akerson thinks there’s one problem with his company’s cars: They don’t make enough money from their owners. So his company’s hard at work to remedy that– by turning them into smartphones on wheels, complete with streaming video and paid advertising, by the 2015 model year, according to a May 9 MediaPost Marketing Daily report (link not available).

Chump change

The car maker already takes in about $1.5 billion a year from its OnStar safety and security system, but to Akerson that’s chump change. “We have never been properly compensated,” he complained, so GM will be changing OnStar to “make some real money.” While he wouldn’t say just what those changes might be, he did say, “We do want to change this from a safety and security business to one that is much more feature-rich.”

But OnStar won’t be the only thing changing.

By mid-2014, Reuters reports, GM “will start selling internet-capable vehicles that GM says allow passengers in the backseat to watch streaming video,” complete with streaming commercials.  By 2015, most Chevrolets, Buicks, GMCs and Cadillacs will also have “4G LTE mobile broadband.”

‘Brought to you by Allstate’

“For example,” Akerson enthused, “what happens if when the logo shows up on your screen, it says ‘brought to you by Allstate’? How many times is that going to pop? And how much can you get from Allstate?”

Whatever they get from Allstate (and other advertisers), they also plan to get $20 from each car buyer who signs up for this internet service.

Akerson thinks this will provide a lucrative advertising medium to a captive audience that spends an average of four hours a week driving to and from work. But his scheme has some disconnects as reported.

One is that while this new automotive advertising medium serves the back seat (for obvious safety reasons), people who drive to work do so from the front seat. And despite pressures to carpool to save energy and decrease congestion, most drivers don’t have backseat passengers. So who’s going to see the ads – and pay an extra $20 for the dubious privilege of having them where they can’t see them??

Another is that “GM risks alienating customers with ads in the car. But those concerns may be outweighed by the convenience of the new service, which will include access to real-time navigation and traffic information.”

Driving while distracted

So if you’re driving to work, in the front seat, you’re going to get your real-time traffic information from the back seat?

Or will your 4G LTE mobile broadband be up front with you, where its distracting screen can pose the kind of safety hazard that’s caused more than 36 states to pass distracted driving laws of one sort or another?

Ten states, plus Puerto Rico, Guam, and the US Virgin Islands, already outlaw handheld cell phones while driving; 39 states ban text messaging (both sending and receiving) while driving. Many states’ police reports even list electronic equipment distraction a category of car crash causes.

As Akerson said, “”We do want to change this from a safety and security business.”

Potential advertiser Allstate may not be thrilled with the extra damages they might have to pay out because the advertising medium that carries their in-car video commercials causes accidents. But then again, GM may make more money selling replacement cars.

It looks as if the visions of dollar signs dancing in his head may have distracted Akerson from seeing some realities out on the road – particularly during commuter drive time.

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Little more than half a year after Hurricane Sandy, New York is undergoing a storm of criticism over a business development advertising campaign that’s long on cost and short on reality, The American Interest blog reported May 5.

The cost

The Cuomo administration set aside about $140 million to fund the campaign. The governor’s office, according to the New York Times, claims that “the scale of the campaign is similar to that in other states.”

But other states whose tax, labor and regulatory policies have caused them to hemorrhage businesses are applying less costly tourniquets. “Connecticut is spending $27 million promoting its state, Michigan $25 million…California spent $50 million on a campaign to promote its state,” state operations manager Howard Glaser told the Times. All three  are less than $140 million. Combined.

The source

What’s prompted even more criticism than the cost is the source of all that money, namely, “ostensibly independent” state agencies that have functions other than paying for advertising.

A state official said the early stages of the ad campaign were partly financed by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, which runs programs intended to reduce energy consumption and improve the environment, and the Dormitory Authority of New York, which supports universities and nonprofit institutions.

Last December, the Cuomo administration added another $50 million. The money came from the State Power Authority, which was created to generate and provide cheap electricity to lower bills for residents and business.

Last month, the state expanded the “Open for Business” campaign, using $40 million from the federal aid package intended to help New Yorkers recover from Hurricane Sandy, records show.

“These authorities should be lowering electric rates, building dormitories and otherwise doing what they were created to do, rather than being raided” to pay for the commercials and air time, former Westchester County state assemblyman Richard Brodsky (a Democrat, incidentally), told the Times.

The media buy

Half of the air time is being placed outside New York State, which raises the question of why half the air time designed to attract out-of-state businesses is running inside New York. Is there really that much business just across the state line in New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Vermont and Ontario up for grabs?

Critics also question the heavy network buys on CNN, CNBC and NBC. Geographically, a spot buy could bring heavier media weight to bear at lower cost in selected target markets. Demographically and behaviorally, there may be better media for reaching business decision-makers than across-the-board CNN.

The slogan

BBDO, the advertising agency for this campaign, has a history of creating strong and original advertising concepts. “Open for Business” isn’t one of them.

Wisconsin’s used it, to less than statewide acclaim.

So did West Virginia, until 2007, when it was withdrawn by popular demand.

The Message

The latest commercial (It’s not up on YouTube yet, so you’ll have to scroll down at the link to see it.), supposedly designed to attract small businesses, describes New York as a place “where small business is big business” and notes that it’s where “over 50,000 businesses were launched last year alone.”

This is true in a way, but a very strange way.

One of their examples, Steinway & Sons pianos, spent $875,000 for what was “the world’s largest solar-powered rooftop air-conditioning and dehumidification system” in 2009. That’s more than some genuinely small business make in years. Moreover, Steinway’s been in New York since 1853, which 159 years before “last year alone.”

Another example, Perry’s Ice Cream, does business in nine states, which is pretty big business for a small business.

Harvey Cohen, the political consultant who helped the present Governor Cuomo’s father win the governorship, and who’s now with the state government’s Empire State Development Corporation, says the campaign’s supposed to correct business relocation consultants’ “misconceptions.” True perceptions would be more like it.

“Yes they knew high taxes, yes they knew regulations, yes they knew right to work,” he said. So what, exactly, did they get wrong? Oh, “they certainly don’t know the new attitude brought in by the new administration,” as if attitude were all it took to change a real, objective situation.

To most other people, the campaign’s an expensive exercise in wishful thinking.

On NY1 television, Cuomo’s predecessor and fellow Democrat Eliot Spitzer said, “They’ve spent who knows how much money on TV ads that are fluff and a waste of taxpayer money.”

As far as Andrew Rudnick, CEO of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership trade group is concerned, that’s a gross understatement. “New York’s business climate still isn’t competitive enough, in any objective sense of the word, for an ad to overcome,” he said in an interview. “I don’t think it’ll make a measurable amount of difference.”

Maybe Governor Cuomo and Mr. Cohen can take some solace from what Doyle Dane Bernbach founder Bill Bernbach told the Wall Street Journal in a 1965 interview. “Great advertising can make a bad product fail faster,” he said. “It gets more people to know it’s bad.”

No way is overtaxed, overregulated, closed-shop New York State a good product for small business relocation. But between the unoriginal campaign line and the overused testimonial technique (particularly for this category), no way is New York State in danger of running great advertising.

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Advertising Age reported on Bud Light’s summer marketing plans May 1, and they’re straight out of the 13-year-old Saturday Night Live “More Cowbell” sketch.

You remember – the one where Christopher Walken, playing a music producer, keeps telling a band to add more and more cowbell until the take is totally ruined.

Doubling down on music

Having put “major resources” behind a Labor Day weekend music festival in Philadelphia last year, parent company A-B InBev

is rolling out a program called “Bud Light Music First” that will culminate Aug[ust] 1 with one concert in all 50 states.

The event, called “50/50/1,” will be staged everywhere from Anchorage, Alaska[,] to Albuquerque, N.M.[,] and feature acts including Kendrick Lamar, Sublime with Rome, Alex Clare and the Flaming Lips. Bud Light will promote the event on MySpace, which will host a hub for the program in which fans can get concert updates, listen to featured artists and download a special app that can be used to win prizes, including concert tickets.

They’re also bringing back Justin Timberlake as “music curator” front man for  pseudo-craft beer Bud Light Platinum’s advertising campaign.

Misery loves company?

Even the fact that Bud Light’s partnering with MySpace is deja vu all over again.

You remember MySpace, don’t you?

That’s the social network that people used to go to until Facebook came along.

“This is not the first time that A[-]B InBev has partnered with MySpace, which is attempting a comeback after being overtaken by Facebook years ago,” Ad Age notes. “The site served as a digital partner for the ‘Bud Light Hotel’ music event in New orleans during the Super Bowl.”

Good money after bad?

Bud Light VP Rob McCarthy claims that music is a “unique platform” that “brings people together, yet everyone interacts with it on a personal level.”

Maybe.

But based on results to date, they don’t interact on a personal level by buying Bud Light.

For the first three quarters of 2012, Budweiser sales were down 6 percent – 7 percent for the third quarter alone. January through March of this year saw Bud sales down only 4.1 percent. And for the four weeks ending April 13, Bud Light sales were down another 6 percent.

Bud Light Platinum’s introduction at February’s Grammy Awards telecast with a 60-second commercial (that did more to sell Justin Timberlake’s new CD than the beer) produced an encouraging blip.

But as of April 13, Platinum’s sales were down a whopping 36 percent.

Clearly, something’s not working here. But unfortunately, it’s the something that Bud Light’s doubling down on.

The First Law of Holes

British politician Dennis Healey enunciated what came to be known as the First Law of Holes:

If you’re in a hole, stop digging.

That’s excellent advice if you don’t want to end up burying yourself (or your brand).

Albert Einstein put it a slightly different way when he defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

These are clear, simple, intuitive principles, and you don’t have to be an Einstein to grasp them – unless you happen to work for Bud Light, that is.

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When Young & Rubicam CEO David Sable announced his advertising agency’s win of the J C Penney business on April 25, he said, “I and the whole team look forward to helping JC Penney as they write a great new chapter.” May 1, a new television commercial showed consumers the first page.

The spot will run for less than a week on broadcast channels, Facebook and YouTube, then slip away to possibly well deserved oblivion in time for a Mother’s Day promotion.

It takes the form of a plea and an apology to customers that ousted CEO Ron Johnson’s “fair and square pricing” marketing strategy alienated in droves, costing the retailer a 25 percent drop in sales and a $985 million loss in just one year.

Creative and production work began several months ago, while Penney was still sharpening up the axe for Johnson, according to a May 1 Bloomberg News report.

It uses footage from Penney’s previous “Yours Truly” campaign that debuted during the Oscars broadcast, over which a female voice says

It’s no secret, recently JC Penny changed. Some changes you liked and some you didn’t, but what matters from mistakes is what we learn. We learned a very simple thing, to listen to you. To hear what you need, to make your life more beautiful. Come back to JCPenney, we heard you. Now, we’d love to see you.

“We want to give customers our assurance that what they loved about JCPenney’s trusted brands, great style and affordable prices will be inherent to every shopping experience,” a spokeswoman said.

Since the retailer was bleeding (though not yet hemorrhaging) money before Johnson’s disastrous 17-month makeover, there may not have been that much love. And, based on online comments, there’s a lot of residual hate.

Quite an earful

“While this ad is certainly a bold move that will get talked about,” writes Will Burns at Forbes.com, “it does nothing to change my mind about the brand or the experience or anything else. It only says, in effect, ‘We were not listening to you before. Now we are.’ Okay, great.”

And in listening, Penney’s getting quite an earful.

As of the morning of May 1, when Burns checked out Penney’s Facebook page, he found “over 3,000 comments…Some positive comments, but most seemed negative and angry.”

A look at the May 2 comments to the Ad Age report confirms this:

• “I think they need to look at a more bargain pricing to get me to come back. Right now at Sears or Kohl[']s I can get better volume and quality for my limited spending dollars…You need to also offer discounts and promotions at a good price like before…I felt you had become to [sic] high priced. So let’s see what you can do to win us back. “
• “They missed the boat – what’s their promise? They need to re-establish the basics of the brand. What can customers expect from now on that will keep them coming back?”
• “…The ad apologizes for trying to change…why? [C]lothes weren’t exactly flying off the shelves at the old Penn[e]y’s.”
• “…Just make your changes and tell the customers about the new POSITIVE initiatives. Consumer’s [sic] today have the attention span of a gnat. The past is the past. Move on.”
• “This ad is full of the empty promises and disappointment of returning to the store.”
• “Very poor humanization of the brand. It is very hard to turn a brand around without innovation. This has none of that.”

“If the strategy was to pop the build-up of angst and anger amongst its core customers,” Burns writes, “it appears from the Facebook page to be doing so.” Fine. But popping a blister isn’t quite the same as healing the second-degree burn that caused it.

“An apology can help a brand recover from a setback,” says Northwestern University marketing professor Tim Calkins, but “[t]he key is you then have to follow it to live up to the apology.”  According to some marketing critics, however, Penney’s following up in a way that may be asking for trouble.

Marking up to mark down

“[A]t first glance,” Time.com reports, “it appears as if the sales are back in a big way. A recent JC Penney brochure lists dozens and dozens of items on sale for Mother’s Day, and an online-only coupon (promo code: DEAL4ME) offered shoppers 15 percent off on purchases of $100 or less, and 20 percent off orders over $100 made by May 2.”

But appearances – particularly first appearances – can be deceiving. As early as Johnson’s last months as CEO, Penney began marking up “everyday” prices in order to mark them down. Believe it or not, there may be a certain logic to this.

Johnson’s pricing system failed to resonate with customers precisely because stores removed the cue that helps shoppers make what they think are logical, value-driven purchasing decisions. ‘By not showing marked-down prices, Penney’s removed an element that helps shoppers feel rational,’ [a Science News] post noted. ‘Seeing that marked-down price next to a higher original price provides an important yardstick for gauging whether we should buy something.’

(In other words, a $14 shirt is a piece of sleazy junk made in a third-world sweatshop, while a shirt with a $50 price tag marked down to $14 is a quality shirt at a steal. Go figure.)

According to dealnews.com, the retailer’s new pricing policy may be giving consumers plenty to feel rational about, since they’re marking up prices by as much as 67 percent.

Prices for standard store lines, they report, have been hiked by 20 percent – just enough to cancel out the store’s 20 percent discount coupons. Purchasers of other items, though, may not be that lucky. A side table, for example, “that retailed for $150 [in late April], available at $135 after a coupon…today carries a hefty $245 price tag – a 63 percent increase in seven days.” Another furniture item – a stool – now sells for 67 percent more than its early April price.

“[K]eep your credit card in your wallet,” writer Louis Ramirez advises,

until these products go on sale. If you’re looking for a special collaboration line, wait until the price is marked 50 percent to 60 percent off so you aren’t paying more than you would have before the strategy change. For cheaper everyday items, never make a purchase without at least finding a coupon that will knock at least 20 percent off.

No third chances

JC Penney better hope that its new pricing policy won’t be as serious a blunder as its 17-month-old one.

“By running this kind of ad,” Burns notes, “JC Penney has all but admitted that it has one chance to get it right. They have drawn a line in the sand and admitted past failure in a public and dramatic way. The ad will disarm some and buy the retailer time to actually get it right. And they better this time because JCP will not be able to play this card, as bold as it is, again.”

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In the wake of Hyundai pulling and abjectly apologizing for a UK commercial that upset a London copywriter whose father committed suicide, three more brands have had to follow suit, Advertising Age reported May 2.

Ra-a-a-a-cist!

One of these was the last of a three-spot campaign for Mountain Dew, the first two having apparently escaped offending anyone’s tender sensitivities.

When an organization calling itself the Black World Coalition denounced it as “arguably the most racist commercial in history,” parent company Pepsico cancelled the entire campaign – which is slightly ironic when one considers that rapper Tyler, the Creator, who, well, created it is himself black.

In the first commercial of the series, Felicia the Goat (whose voice Tyler based on his mother’s) beats up a (white) waitress for serving Mountain Dew. Why, nobody knows. In the second spot, the goat escapes and is pulled over for DewUI (Get it?). In the third, “most racist commercial in history,” the battered waitress is asked to pick out her assailant from a lineup comprising  the goat and five black men.

And that’s where the “racism” comes in. “Of course, in the world of Mountain Dew, every single suspect is black,” the Black World Coalition complains. But this neglects the fact that in order for a lineup to work, all the subjects (who can sometimes include police officers) need to look and dress alike in order to avoid bias; so if one person in the lineup is black, the others have to be, too. Tyler could have easily cast a lineup of white thugs, but then someone might have whined about the spot having a lily-white cast.

In addition to what’s becoming the standard apology, Mountain Dew has used Hyundai’s “copyright infringement” dodge to pull the whole campaign from YouTube. But, unlike Hyundai, they don’t have the excuse that this was some kind of guerilla commercial.

According to Business Insider, they knew what they were approving.

Tyler, The Creator described when his manager Christian Clancy first told him that Mountain Dew thought he was creative and wanted to work with him.

I’m gonna tell them some stupid idea I come up with five minutes before the meeting and they’re gonna think it’s f***in’ retarded, and I didn’t get my hopes up,” Tyler said.  ”And then I took a meeting with them and it was like, ok, uh, they were actually cool and young, a little older than me, and they were like, ‘Tell us your commercial idea.’”

So Tyler described the [campaign] as the following: “Alright [sic], it’s a f***ing goat, right? It’s a goat and he’s gonna drink the f***ing Mountain Dew, and he’s gonna yell at the lady, and the cops are going to pull him over, and then he’s going to be in jail and then he gonna [sic] do PCP.”

Positive he was going to get turned down, Tyler noted his shock when the Mountain Dew team ate the concept up.

“I’m so used to people saying, ‘That’s f***ing retarded,['] and I’m looking at Clancy like, ‘Yo are they serious’ and they actually liked it.”

More ra-a-a-a-cism!

Meanwhile, Chevrolet apologized for and remixed a commercial showing how its Trax SUV is a “reborn” version of a Roaring Twenties model after receiving what’s been variously described as “a complaint” and “some negative feedback regarding the lyrics in the commercial’s soundtrack,” according to GM Canada spokeswoman Faye Roberts. The South China Post later called the spot “racist” and “offensive” in a headline and subhead.

The “offensive”soundtrack in question is an existing piece of music by Austrian performer Parov Stelar. Well, not whole 60-second track, but just six seconds, or 10 percent, of it, with lyrics that include “In the land of Fu Manchu” and “where all the girls sing ‘ching, ching, chop-suey.’”

Funny thing is, the spot ran on television only in Canada and on Chevrolet websites in Europe, neither of which is anywhere near China. But with its North American and European sales continuing to tank four years after its government takeover, Chevrolet division is seeking to Find New Roads by increasing sales in the People’s Republic of China. To that end, they’re sinking $11 billion into building new plants and hiring new (Chinese) workers there, in the hope of selling 5 million vehicles by 2016. Your tax dollars at work.

That corporate strategy probably explains why GM spokeswoman Ryndee Carney was quick to state, “Our intent was not to offend anyone and we’re deeply sorry if anyone was offended” – also why the company was quick to remix the spot to remove the offending lyrics and pull even the inoffensively remixed commercial from its European websites.

(As a side note, what folks regard as ethnic slurs today were fairly common in the 1920s’ music scene. In one recording of music from the Cotton Club from that era, an emcee introduces Duke Ellington as “the king of jungle music.” And the original lyrics of Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It” start with “Chinks do it. Japs do it. Upper Lapland little Lapps do it. Let’s do it. Let’s fall in love.” Of course, being authentic isn’t the same as being unbigoted, much less politically correct.)

Misogyny!

In India, Ford and its advertising agency, JWT, disavowed and apologized for a poster campaign that critics outside India, who saw them on the Ads of the World website, labeled as “sexually offensive.”

The posters feature illustrations of three attractive women bound and gagged in a Ford Figo’s luggage compartment, presumably to demonstrate its roominess.

“The ads were not approved by Ford,” Ad Age reported.

Such ads, created without client approval, are often called “fake ads” or “scam ads” and are made by creatives seeking attention and looking for ways to bolster their portfolios. But the practice can spell bad news for both clients and agencies and the timing couldn’t be worse for these ads to emerge out of the Indian market.

The controversial posters were uploaded for public view at a time when India is in crisis over sexual assaults on women. ..

One of the ads depicted reality TV star Paris Hilton with what appears to be Kim Kardashian and her two sisters tied up in the trunk of her car. The tagline: “Leave your worries behind with Figo’s extra large boot.”

But by a strange turn of events, the agency, not the individual creative people, had entered them in Goafest, India’s equivalent of the Clios or the One Show. Even stranger, the entry was accompanied by a letter of approval from the client, as required by the competition’s rules to prove the entry’s authenticity.

Strangest of all is why, if the poster was really a guerilla effort that had nothing to do with either JWT or Ford, they fired both managing partner and chief creative officer Bobby Pawar and VP/senior creative director Vijay Simha directly because of it.

Be careful out there

General Motors says it’s now “reviewing our approval processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Maybe the clueless people who approved Tyler’s “stupid idea” for Mountain Dew should consider doing likewise.

Given today’s digital technology, anyone with a computer and the knowledge to use it can create a commercial for your brand. Many copywriters and art directors do, to build their portfolios, to win awards, or to just have fun. While your brand or your agency can’t control everyone, you can at least check your own company’s award entries before filing them, to keep anything scandalous from getting wide exposure.

Best of all, you can try to come up with great ideas that don’t depend on ethnicity or sexuality. The industry has a rich history of them, you know. It may mean more work. But it’s better than the alternatives of turning out inoffensively bland vanilla mush or making yourself a target of some sorehead with a chip on his or her shoulder and computer access.

Make your advertising more effective. Visit www.BrightOrangeAdv.com

A “brutal” April was the cruelest month for the beer industry, Advertising Age reported April 30, and that’s coming off an almost as bad first quarter.

The biggest loser

“It’s brutal out there for everyone,” Beer Business Daily told subscribers April 30. But for some brands – Budweiser, to be specific – it’s more brutal than for others.

January through March saw MillerCoors brands down 3.3 percent, Heineken USA sales “down by low-single digits” and Budweiser off 4.1 percent, according to Beer Marketer’s Insights.

For the four weeks through April 13, according to Nielsen numbers, Coors Light sales declined 1.8 percent, Miller Lite 8.8 percent, Bud Light 6 percent and Budweiser 7.7 percent.

Highly advertised, higher-alcohol, pseudo-craft line extension Budweiser Platinum’s sales fell by 36 percent (no, a decimal point isn’t missing) during the same four-week period.

Down so long it looks like up to me

Of course, losing sales and market share isn’t exactly new to Budweiser.

Their 2013 losses are fully consistent with their 2012 sales performance – down 6 percent for the first three quarters of the year, down 7 percent the third quarter alone. In 2011, Budweiser celebrated one of their best years in a quarter-century, with sales down only 4.4 percent. And as Budweiser’s home-town paper, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, noted a little over a year ago

Sales have been slumping for 25 years straight. At the peak of its popularity, in 1988, more than one in every four beers sold in this country bore the iconic red-and-white label. Last year, it was one in 12. For the first time ever, it’s being outsold by Coors Light.

Now, Budweiser is confronting the problem head-on.

With excuses.

And with an advertising strategy that would feel right at home on your grandfather’s small-screen, black-and-white television set.

Excuses, excuses

In an April 30 earnings call, parent company A-B InBev’s CEO Carlos Brito came up with a raft of excuses to explain away his flagship brands’ continuing decline. Notably, target audience Millennial males’ perception of Budweiser and Bud Light as watered-down, mass-produced, old man’s swill wasn’t one of them.

Instead, the culprits were 20-degree-below-normal temperatures across the nation (a result of global warming, no doubt). And higher payroll taxes, which took effect in January (but not the year before). And delayed tax refunds. And higher gasoline prices (which have actually been dropping since a late February peak, according to the AAA). And…well, you get the picture.

2013 technology, 1953 message

While not acknowledging its target audience’s perception of its product, Budweiser is rolling out a new television campaign to combat it – by using the latest 2013 technology to push a 60-year-old advertising strategy and message.

Throughout the 1950s (and ’60s and most of the ’70s), beer advertising either made sweeping, unsubstantiated claims of perfection or talked at length about the quality of their ingredients – malt, barley, water, and hops (which most people thought was how a kangaroo got from place to place).

The campaign lines reflected it.

Schlitz was “The beer that made Milwaukee famous.” Miller was “The Champagne of Bottled Beers.” Rheingold was “The Dry Beer,” Bud “The King of Bottled Beers.” And a beer called Hamm’s advertised itself as coming “From the Land of Sky Blue Water.”

Probably the only brand that got beyond the feature-and-process stage was Schaefer, which sold itself to heavy users as “The one beer to have when you’re having more than one.”

It was only in the late 1970s that beer advertising graduated to attributes and benefits – most notably with the Miller Time campaign that positioned the beer as a reward for a hard day’s blue-collar work, by Budweiser’s counter to it – “For all you do, this Bud’s for you.” – and Miller Lite’s category-creating “Tastes great, less filling. All you ever wanted in a beer…and less” that made lower-alcohol beer respectable.

The new commercials are an extension of last year’s Track Your Bud campaign, which, Ad Age writes, “gives drinkers more information on how their individual beer was made” by “link[ing] each beer to its origins, including ingredients, by using the ‘born on date’ on the bottle or can.” The new commercials convey this six-decade-old message with plenty of ingredient closeups throughout.

Using 2013 technology – smartphone apps – Bud buyers can scan the date on the can and get the 1953 message. Or the ingredients half of it.

The other half of the sixty-year-old strategy was claims of perfection. This time around, instead of just making the claim, the Budweiser spots offer backup – from those exemplars of disinterested objectivity, the A-B InBev employees who oversee the brewing of Budweiser themselves.

In one commercial, Pete Kraemer, A-B InBev’s head brewmaster says on camera, “I have dedicated my life to making sure that beer will be perfect.” In the other, Newark, NJ,  brewmaster David Taylor says, “We work hard every day to make your Budweiser the perfect Budweiser.” Case closed; that settles that.

So let’s recap.

Budweiser’s introduced higher-alcohol beers like Platinum and tried to pass them off as craft beers, and that’s not working.

They’ve tried the borrowed interest of celebrities and music events to recapture the 20something male audience, and that’s not working.

And now they’re trying to bring back the good times of the 1950s with a message straight out of that decade.

They certainly seem to be on a roll here.

Make your advertising more effective. Visit www.BrightOrangeAdv.com

Between eight and twelve million businesses are invisible to prospective customers, according to an Interactive Advertising Bureau white paper released April 29 – and it’s largely because of their own inaction.

Lost in cyberspace

Of an estimated 16 to 20 million businesses, the white paper reports, only two to three million have marketers actively managing their online listings. And according to 2011 Google statistics, some 8 million businesses hadn’t claimed their listings at all. Too many of those are small and home-based businesses.

This is a huge lost opportunity, because unless they’re in brick-and-mortar locations that are traffic magnets, unlisted businesses might as well not be in business.

Consumers search for businesses based on what they’re looking to buy, and they overwhelmingly do it with online searches – either one of many online directories like YP, Yelp, Manta and local and vertical specific directories; or search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing; or social network media like Facebook, Google+ or Linkedin; or mobile apps.

About 40 percent of consumers go online for local searches each day, 67 percent at least three or four times a week.

It’s easy to get yourself found

The good news is that all it takes to remedy this situation is an hour or so of free labor.

In order to list your business on online directories, you need to know what they are, so Google “online directories.” Or, for links to 50 of them, go here.

Then, create word processing files that contain your business name, your contact information, a description of what you do, your logo and/or a photo of your storefront, and so on.

As you go from directory to directory, you can copy and paste in the relevant information in the right places.

If your walk-in address is different from your official address, make sure to lead with it. If you don’t have a walk-in address, at least specify your service area.

Make sure to highlight the principal ways that customers can contact you. If you work by phone, then it’s your phone number; if by e-commerce, your website URL.

If you have product photos, post them. If you have one or more videos, post it (or them). If you have a menu, post it. If you’re offering a price-off deal, post the coupon. If you have good testimonials, post those, too. If you do business in several listed categories, then find all the relevant categories and repeat the process before moving on to the next directory.

Doing this will make your business visible in more ways than you’d expect. Each online listing creates an incoming link from a trusted source to your website – and that, in turn, improves your search ranking.

Getting your business listed online sounds like more work than it really is. You can get a good selection of listings in an hour or two at most. And it’s a more more productive use of time than sitting around wondering why the phone doesn’t ring.

Make your advertising more effective. Visit www.BrightOrangeAdv.com