Category: Advertising

National Public Radio Wants You to Buy Radio Advertising

I’m not familiar with Warren Berger.

But if “All Things Considered” wants to run an interview with a guy who recommends buying radio commercials, I’m gonna post it.

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New Era Makes a Marketing Challenge Go Away… Almost

The Sunday New York Times has a look at American Idol contestant Adam Lambert. Lambert is…

1. Widely rumored to be gay, and

2. Widely considered a favorite to win the competition

Homosexuality has always had a significant place in the arts, but because the vast majority of the marketplace is straight, those in charge of marketing gay artists have often tried to hide those artists’ sexual identity. The article, while focusing on the “is he or isn’t he” speculation, also shows how far we’ve come from the days when

…studios forced Rock Hudson into bogus relationships with women and obliged gay actors “to lie from morning to night.”

In 1959 Liberace, the camp artifact best known, as one critic wrote, “for beating Romantic music to death on a piano decorated with a candelabra,” sued an English newspaper for libel for implying in print that he was gay… When asked on the witness stand whether he was homosexual, Liberace emphatically told a judge: “No, sir! I am against the practice because it offends convention and it offends society.” He won the suit and damages and then, much later, was named in a $113 million palimony suit by his partner Scott Thorson.

It’s worth noting the Boston Red Sox did not field a black player until that same year: 1959. Fifty years later, race doesn’t even register when the Most Valuable Player results are announced — but we still haven’t seen a gay Major League Baseball player come out during his playing career.

A previous American Idol runner-up,  Clay Aiken,  came out publicly — several years after his turn on the show was over. A half century after Liberace’s lawsuit, Adam Lambert can compete effectively in the most mainstream music competition imaginable, and allow the media to speculate as much as it wishes.

But he won’t quite let himself take the final step. The choice may be his, or his handlers’, or the show’s.

We’ll know that sexuality has ceased to be viewed as a marketing problem when a contestant comes out before the  votes are cast — and the New York Times doesn’t care.

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Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.

Ford Hands Over the Keys to Fiesta Marketing

When I started working for the New York Mets in 1986, there was a nice clean line between the fans and the game:

1. The players played the game

2. The fans watched.

There were exceptions — I remember a particularly violent Upper-Deck encounter between a group of intoxicated corrections officers and everyone around them — but in general, the customers were expected to buy their tickets, watch, and go home.

By the mid-90’s, things had begun to change. Fans were demanding more opportunities to interact with the team, and we had responded with baby steps such as letting them run the bases after some games. Our VP of Operations, who had worked for the team since 1962, was not happy about it.

“All of a sudden, the fans think they’re part of the show,” he said. “They’re not the show. Why can’t they just watch and enjoy it?”

I was reminded of this, and how it has played out in marketing since then, when I read this article about Ford’s new campaign to market the Fiesta:

The company has picked 100 young, Web-savvy drivers to get behind the wheel of its new Ford Fiesta subcompact for six months and post their impressions on sites such as YouTube, Flickr and Twitter.

The marketing campaign starts later this month, almost a year before U.S. consumers will be able to buy the Fiesta. Since the Fiesta name has been absent from the U.S. market for years and Ford hasn’t been in the subcompact market for a long time, the company has to find a way of turning heads away from top-selling small cars like Toyota Motor Corp.’s Yaris and Honda Motor Co.’s Fit.

The most interesting part of this to me is that Ford has accepted, and perhaps embraced, the fact that although they’re paying for the whole thing,

[Ford] will have no control over the online material posted by the 100 participants. That means some could be bluntly critical of the car and Ford won’t be able to stop it.

The marketing world has changed from the days when it was the advertiser’s job to broadcast the commercial, and the consumer’s job to watch it. Like it or not, your customers are now part of the show.

Ford deserves congratulations for recognizing this — here’s hoping the Fiesta is good enough to justify their faith.

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Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.

Hot Promotion Idea for Media Salespeople

The next time some ad agency demands “added value” and won’t give you any direction as to what they want,  give ’em this.

I found it on Tara Bloom’s “Ditch the Dusty Widget” blog, and it’s perfect for Mother’s Day.

You can thank me later.

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Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.

Green Is the New Clutter

My colleague Jennifer Schurter has an interesting post on “greenwashing” — the practice of making dubious environmental claims in a marketing campaign.

I found it especially timely, having recently encountered:

1. Three different dry cleaners claiming to be “environmentally friendly”.  One has made that claim for years; the other two recently added signage to that effect.

2. A Portland pest-control company advertising its “concern for the environment” — an interesting position to stake out when its primary business is to kill living things.

3. A Portland radio station (not one of mine) honoring  Comcast Cable as part of its “Green Team”. Apparently this is because if you stay home and watch movies on demand, you’re not driving to the theater or rental store.

4. Thursday’s Wall Street Journal article on the difficulty of verifying environmental claims.

All of these claims may very well have some truth to them — although the cable one made me hoot in my hybrid.  And the reason for the approach is that environmental impact and energy use are definitely on consumers’ minds.

But the proliferation of “green” messaging will ultimately cause consumers to tune much of it out.

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Click here to learn the shocking truth about Phil Bernstein

Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising and Marketing Blog.

Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call Phil Bernstein at 503-323-6553.