There are two aspects to this:

• The use of superlatives is becoming (more of) a turn-off in concept statements and advertising.  I am seeing this more with younger participants, but I hear it from time-to-time from the “older” folks as well.   “Best” or “better than” is not the tone they want to hear; using or including the “best of something” (e.g., best quality ingredients) – if the key benefits support the claim – is more acceptable.
• Greater value is being placed on the parts (individual) vs. the whole.  I haven’t heard in quite some time someone say “that’s a great CD.”  They like a particular song.  They download it, put it on their iPod or other device, and customize their listening experience.  That focus on being able to customize experiences is helping to drive how they react to new products and ideas.

For example, I can’t image Pepsi coming out with an ad campaign today saying “The Choice of a New Generation.”  This new generation would blog about the ridiculousness of that claim – “you’re telling us what’s our choice?!”

If this is all sounding very left-brained and logical, that’s not my intent.  I’ve often said that unless there’s a connection between a consumer and a brand, a sale will never take place.  That connection can be emotional and/or rational, but it needs to happen.

And yet, my sense is that there this is an evolution to individuality that’s becoming more pronounced.  Companies need to become increasingly more sensitive when choosing how to position themselves and their products.  Until this morning, the best case example I could give was the “I’m a Mac” campaign from Apple.  As you know, they put it out there – I’m a PC vs. I’m a Mac.  In effect, they’re asking, “which one are you like?”

But just today, I saw a headline of “Design-your-own skincare, including ingredients and concentrations” (via Springwise).  Of course, I had to go visit this site.  Turns out that you can custom blend your own cosmetics from natural ingredients. From the www.mycodage.com/an website:

Convinced that every skin is unique and deserves special treatment, in 2006 Amandine and Julien, with the help of many experts, developed a technology that allows you to customize your product to suit the specific needs of each skin.  Codage was born.  100% made in France, CODAGE today delivers worldwide – from its French laboratories directly to you.

A bit stilted in the French to English translation, but how much more personal can you get than that??

As always, I’m interested in your thoughts!

Some in the ad community are happy with this trend as it allows them only to pay for those ads viewed.  (That assumes consumers are watching and aren’t in the middle of multi-tasking when the ad is running – but that’s always been an issue.)

In the online world, pay-per-click has been around since the mid-1990s.  The fact that this could be done for video and have appeal shouldn’t be a surprise.

With YouTube in particular, advertisers have been creating and posting special videos for quite some time, hoping a message goes viral.  So this isn’t a passive ad placement channel to begin with.

However, I’m not sure how YouTube’s new system would translate to less video-intensive sites.  Maybe the “choose one of three ads” approach, an option we’re seeing on several other sites, will become the better ad model for those outlets.  It requires some captive attention and, by picking, consumers might be more likely to view the ad in this setting vs. the way video ads are run today.

Your thoughts?

Don’t get me wrong.  Good advertising I really like.  But so much of it is bad – or stupid.  The DVR lets me watch commercial-free if I want to.

Among DVR owners in Nielsen markets (37%), Nielsen recently reported that 40-50% of commercials are watched during playback, up from earlier estimates of 30-40%.  (Source:  MediaDailyNews, 8/5/10)

I’m not sure what to believe about this:  Commercial viewership up among DVR owners?  Really?  Or did Nielsen change how they’re measuring things? One hypothesis I had was that more recent DVR adopters could be less sophisticated/less comfortable using the fast forward/jump feature on their remote controls.  But Nielsen says that DVR playback is happening more among younger and higher-income viewers, so I can’t imagine my hypothesis is true.

While DVR viewership isn’t universal, these “facts” got me asking a few questions:

• Who’s not watching ads – consistently?  Do they have any identifiable characteristics that we can plan around?
• What are the best, most effective ways to reach these ad-skippers in other media and/or via other ways on TV (e.g., product placement, sponsorships, etc.)?
• What defines “stopping power” in a TV ad today, and how is it measured, particularly among DVR viewers?   I would think that the first and last ads in a pod would have the highest viewership, yet is this reflected in the numbers agencies are getting to calculate impressions?  Related to this, for researchers/account planners, is there a method out there for testing ads in a program-embedded clutter and letting people skip as they would at home, to get at stopping power and ad effectiveness?  Plus, can ads be tested at fast-forward speed to assess their stopping power?
• What impact is all this having on brand awareness or brand image?  Have any tracking studies been done among ad-skippers vs. those who fast-forward through ads vs. ad-watchers to see what impact ad viewing behavior has on these critical brand measures?

As I write these questions from my logical left brain, I have to remind myself that how we take in information isn’t very well understood.  I might not “know” the latest musical phenom, but I always seem to have heard the tune before I learn the artist’s name or see their face – and this is without kids at home.  What goes on around us seems to sink in and have an impact.

I don’t know the answers to the questions above, and maybe I’ll dig around to learn a bit more.  Yet it’s clear that whether TV ads are skipped or seen, consumers continue to form impressions of brands.  And since no matter how hard we try, not everything that impacts them will be known or measurable, I feel more strongly than ever that having consistent brand values which shine in all we do – and being present where our target lives – is the best foundation for the relationships we want to have with them.

We have monthly phone plans, unlimited data plans, and pre-paid phones, but what about a service that says if you agree to view two ads a day on your mobile, you’ll get X off your monthly carrier changes, and five ads a day you’ll get Y off your charges?  Or extra minutes?  Or free text credits?

Certainly, marketers love the platform because people are literally attached to their phones at the hip.  And, if like TV programming viewed on the Web, a person couldn’t get their messages unless they saw the 10-15-second ad first, theoretically, they would be more attentive to the ad.  At least this form of mobile advertising is more opt-in than any other.  The consumer makes an agreement with their cell phone provider and by extension the ad network:  I’ll agree to watch you ads if you lower my bill.

Are we so entrenched in the cable TV model that we’re not thinking outside the box?  I think there could be an opportunity here.  What do you think?

A couple of key points from “Are Family-Friendly Shows a Better Environment for Ads?” (Ad Age 11/4/09):

“Running an ad in a show that matches its tone and provides appropriate context can boost ad effectiveness by an average of more than 30%.”

“The collective ad-spending might of the Alliance for Family Entertainment is enough to raise the eyebrows of any media outlet.  Should [this] research help guide marketers’ spending decisions, then certainly, TV networks and other media might take notice.”

I am not in media research.  But I spent more than 10 years working in ad agencies.  What surprises me is that this is “new news” or that media outlets would be just waking up to these facts.

In part, my job as an account planner was to work closely with the media planner – and there were times when the two of us sat with the buyer to refine a buy.  We were always looking for great synergy between our ad spends and the people we were trying to reach.  From the sound of it, this collaborative approach may be on the verge of a resurgence.

A cautionary note for Marketing ROI and Math Marketing advocates: All TRPs are not the same.  Those that enhance loyalty or positive brand associations – things hard to calculate – count for more than just immediate sales returns.