Tori and Lyle and Thelonious. Click click.

Starting Tuesday, Starbucks will allow coffee drinkers in 600 U.S. cafes to download the song "Now Playing" with a click on their Apple iPhone. Will this change the world? Will marketers now embrace "impulse media," and every company soon target cell phone and MP3 users with one-click impulse offers? Will U.S. tax forms next year have only one box at irs.gov, click here, to pay what you truly deserve?

Dunno. Don't talk to us. It's a new week and we're too busy downloading iTunes drinking lattes.

BTW, this proves Apple's use of flexible software in the iPhone is really a new platform for marketing. The first iPhone software update went out last week. Suddenly, you have a new way to buy (be sold) songs at point-of-sale retail. Wonder what marketing gifts/gimmicks lie in store for iPhone users in next round of software upgrades?

Disney says no to advertisers, yes to future profit

Parents watching the latest rerun of High School Musical on the Disney Channel might be surprised to note, they won't see any commercials during the breaks -- at least not for cereal, toys, or college savings funds. Disney is the rare cable network not to take paid advertisements, and instead runs promos for its own programming to feed itself.

This is revolutionary, given the stakes. Television and cable are filled with the implicit bargain of viewers getting something for almost free -- in Disney's case, the cable subscription really costs about 80 cents per month -- in exchange for watching ads for products they may or may not want. By passing up this advertising market, Disney shows big restraint. Its audience is huge. The Jan. 20, 2006 premiere of High School Musical drew a 5.7 household rating and was viewed by 7.73 million people. Average daily ratings hover around 3MM viewers. Consider that the Cartoon Network took in $398 million last year in ad revenue, and TNT $1.05 billion, and you gotta admire Walt.

Instead, Disney pushes its own programs, DVDs, and merchandising tie-ins -- and then uses the stay-tuned platform to launch its future revenue streams via stars such as Zac Efron, Vanessa Anne Hudgens, Miley Cyrus, and whoever else will become the next Britney Spears. High School Musicals 1 & 2 are today promoted in 34 nations (Poland, China and India), and all these young Zacs drive the cross-sales, music, concerts and movies for the Disney of tomorrow.

It's a brilliant case study of Disney giving up the short-term view of today's ad dollars to build a marketing funnel for the next 10 years of pop profit. Advertisers may want in -- and occasionally a Kellogg's or Yoplait sneaks aboard as a Disney Channel sponsor. But for the rest of us, Disney is keeping the kids all for themselves.

Are your marketers and sales guys fighting like this?

Admit the problem. Your sales and marketing teams are not in synch.

Marketing directors rarely think about the sales force. They aren't mentioned in the top 150 marketing blogs. Your marketing chief rarely discusses strategy with the sales czar. Your web gurus don't think about sales. Your media plan doesn't list them as a line item. Heck, we googled "marketing strategy + sales" just to check, and the only thing that popped up was bud.tv.

Reason? Marketers and sales often compete internally in organizations. At their worst, marketers can think sales is just brute force, and sales can think marketers have their pointy heads in the clouds. Sometimes organizations create opposing incentives -- sales reps may get a commission if they close a deal or sign a customer, but leads coming from marketing go to an inside sales phone bank, cutting the field sales team out. Sales thinks marketing is overhead. Marketing wonders in its heart why sales is needed.

Too bad, because it all needs to work together. This is particularly true in internet marketing, where lead generation culminates with a prospect filling out a form online ... and if no one follows up quickly, that consumer lead will die. If your web team never talks with the sales force, you have a problem.

Here's a handy checklist to see if you have a sales vs. marketing smackdown:

1. Money fights. Does your organization create opposing incentives, where sales is not rewarded for marketing activity?
2. Org imbalance. If prospect leads are handled by different organizations (field, inside sales, customer service), do the teams talk with and train each other?
3. Delayed response. If a prospect comes in any "door" -- internet, phone, print, retail -- and wants to sign up/buy immediately, can each part of your organization sell them quickly?
4. Hole in the flowchart. Review your marketing plan ... does it indicate clearly how advertising media, direct marketing and field sales activity are synchronized each month of the year?
5. Broken budget process. Think about your planning cycle. Do sales and marketing directors collaborate in planning how your budget will be invested? Or do they each have a separate budget, and create siloed plans that are not in synch?
6. Measurement madness. Ah, this, the biggest sin, may reside with the top exec, if he or she is measuring each part of marketing and sales as silos. We've had clients wonder why print results are down, while internet results are through the roof. Direct mail can be slipping, but field sales is getting more leads. Do you really know how all the metrics fit together?

Marketers must remember that prospects hear your message as a series of integrated communications, and their response may shift from channel to channel. If you don't measure how each channel affects the others, you'll be giving praise and casting blame unfairly -- and the sales vs. marketing imbalance may spin further out of control.

There is no easy fix. We suggest in your next annual budget cycle, just put the sales and marketing chiefs in a room, and tell them to build one plan. Watch the spears fly.

Wayback inside your competitor's web strategy

Want to see where competitors are heading in their internet strategy? Easy. Visit the Wayback Machine, an online archive of 85 billion web pages that will show you actual old web sites from any company or organization, any time they were updated, going back to 1996. You simply type in the name of the web site you want to research -- such as www.mycompetitor.com -- and a series of links will show up for the home page at old dates, exactly like it used to look at that point in time. Web designers have used this for years. Business strategists might take a scan to see how competitors have been progressing -- No more sign up? Content now free? More video? New social networks? Products in a new area? -- and then predict their trend line forward.

Also fun to see really bad examples of Web 1.0.

Web 3.0: The difference between viewers and hunters

Wenda Harris Millard, media czar at Martha Stewart, makes a brilliant comment about messing up earlier this year when she relaunched www.marthastewart.com. Back in May 2007, the "new" site looked like this:


What's in the middle? Only 12 links taking you to content (you know, the stuff people search for). The site was designed for "viewers," Millard says, not "users," so focused solely on clean, simple, open design. Big mistake -- viewers, and web traffic, turned off. So Millard relaunched the site again later in the year, this time with many, many more links to content in the bottom two-thirds, like this:

Now the midfield has 57 clickable topics, grouped under what's new, dinners, videos, holiday ideas, all-time favorites, poll, and classic recipes. The small links within the groupings have no-brainer titles such as "chocolate," "Christmas," and "good things for decorating." You want chocolate? Click on chocolate.

The point? Web users are foraging. They are not viewers. They are hunters. They aren't looking at your web site as a framed piece of art. They don't care if your Web 2.0 design has rounded curves and elegant white space. They want to find what to click, and then click it fast. Seth Godin talks a lot about the difference between push and pull. Great design can push. Great usability lets users pull. The editors at Martha must have screamed about the simple idiocy of labeling the chocolate section just "chocolate." But online, that works.

Now, we aren't designers, and we respect the brilliance of subtlety, balance, contrast, and tension in grabbing attention. But as media planners, we note that consumers are in different modes when they use different media. Make sure your communication format fits the need -- and if the user is hunting for something you offer, give them several very clear targets.

This month at Mediassociates

People sometimes ask, what do media planners do? We cut through the forest of advertising, build paths, and find customers. This month, we ran forecasts, drew charts and made thousands of calls to media outlets to plan ad campaigns for retail, food, software, health, education, credit unions, home utilities, even pet accessories. We researched the latest trends in radio, outdoor, Google, Facebook, print, newsprint, GRPs, Portable People Meters, and child marketing. We launched a marketing blog that got noticed in the U.K., Canada, and Australia.

We spoke with a young woman in California wanting to know which college courses to take, and whether she should get into advertising.

We said yes.

We love this business of making advertising work. Just ask Rocky, the newest addition to our team. He's shown here reading PRWeek, where a public service campaign we helped design made Page 1.

Rocky's a pit bull. Helps sometimes in negotiations.

Radio ratings tank, so Arbitron spins the truth

Arbitron insults your intelligence with a new spin campaign about GRPs. It's pure baloney. Marketers and media planners should cry foul.

A new electronic measurement system for radio ratings has exposed the fact that GRPs aren't what we thought they were -- real ratings are actually off 30% or more in the first two markets, Philly and Houston, where the Portable People Meter was used. This PPM device replaces diaries to monitor how people really listen to radio, and it found people skip around the dial a lot more than previously thought -- in general, hurting ratings of any single station. The PPM system goes to NYC next, and by end of '08 will be in the top 10 U.S. markets.

This means your radio buys have been weaker than you thought. Marketers who thought they were buying 100 GRPs were really only getting 70 GRPs for their money. If they want to get to 100 gross rating points, they'll now need to spend more. Arbitron is trying to mask the bad news with full-page ads in MediaWeek telling buyers that the new GRPs are more powerful. In actuality, 30% of the old GRPs have vaporized.

There is some good news as radio ratings tank -- the more accurate data will allow media buyers to build more sophisticated plans, buying deeper into lower-ranked stations to get exactly the reach and frequency clients want. With a real read on the audience, we can now place ads more likely to hit the real listening target, which in turn should boost responses and customer action.

But come on, Arbitron. Launching a PR campaign saying 70 PPM GRPs is the new 100 is a bit silly. Here's what we suggest. Send us a check for $100,000. We'll put it in a bank for you. And we'll call you tomorrow saying, whoops, you only have $70,000 in your account. But don't worry -- 70 is the new 100.

(For a detailed look at how far 100 GRPs have fallen in radio, here's a table showing TRP details for Philly. If you thought you had 100 TRPs for teens A12-17 Mon-Fri 3P-7P, you really only had 54.)

Finally, a map of ALL internet marketing

SEOBook offers a mindmap of every possible thing to think about in your internet marketing plan: research, web design, blogs, monetization, SEM, SEO, competition ... with links to specialist web sites that show you how to do each component. Nuff said.

When oil giants turn on a dime

It's been seven years since BP launched a $200 million rebranding campaign with Ogilvy to turn the world's 3rd largest oil concern into "Beyond Petroleum," an eco-friendy, consumer-listening, solar-powered investor that is much more than an oil company. As you'd expect, such claims from an oil behemoth -- founded in 1998 by the merger of British Petroleum and Amoco -- were met with some derision at first. But BP took a green-and-gold sun as its logo, quickly won PRWeek's "campaign of the year," and now -- seven years later -- the campaign is still going strong.

We think it's brilliant. Here's why.

1. BP's media plan and creative are unwavering. Over 86 months, we've seen the same logo, the same brand position, the same yellow highlighted text, the same targeting of higher income consumers (think "investors") in magazines such as The Atlantic. BP is consistent. It tells the world it is more than oil; it is the friendly environment + future energy. Think about the frequency of impressions. After seven years, you can't help but begin to believe some of it.

2. BP's advertising covers every angle. Gas stations in the U.S. were modernized with the green and gold. The very gasoline itself was rebranded, with the middle-grade gas now called "Silver" at BP stations. From the road, the point of sale is inviting, challenging Mobil's convenience stores-Speedpass-and-clean-bathrooms for busy travelers.

3. It's ballsy. Come on. Changing the very name from British Petroleum -- which sounds aspirational to the U.S. consumers who admire the uppercrust UK -- to Beyond Petroleum. Doing so left its core product, oil, behind. Imagine selling that idea to YOUR board.

4. This is so looooong term. The world of oil energy is changing. Heating oil manufacturers in the U.S. are just beginning to toy with 5% grades of bio-diesel, and here in 2001 we have the third-biggest oil conglomerate walking away from its core to focus on solar power and clean energy. Now in 2007, with Al Gore in the news, investors looking toward the Northwest Passage, and Russia planting a flag on the seabed of the North Pole to stake a claim on ocean rights when the ice up there is gone, BP got a jump on the others by recognizing the long-term trend in the market. We need more energy, and we're looking ahead. And now, we Americans can still feel good about oil.

BP, BP. How could you be so smart?

The social network of children says 'Peace Out'

There is a theory that the reason boys and girls have different strengths in academics -- boys score higher on math and spatial relations, girls score higher on verbal memory and object location recall -- has nothing to do with sex or gender. It has to do with puberty.

Studies have shown that math aptitude tends to rise for both sexes every year until a boy or girl hits adolescence. Something about the flood of hormones changes gears in the brain, and once sex attributes appear in the body, the mental development for math and geometry seems to slow down.

OK. Now think back to 7th grade. Girls hit puberty several years before boys on average. Which means that boys have a few precious years to continue to advance in math, while girls' minds change to more adult matters. Remember? The boys who hit puberty first banded together on the football team, while late bloomers huddled in the chess club. The girls who hit adolescence first joined sports teams too and were more socially outgoing, while late bloomers wrote in journals.

We find this concept interesting, because it points to a deep shift that divides children from men and women. It's not about sexism -- it's about hormonal timing. And if hormones split our reasoning, then there are two main social cultures in the world -- adults vs. children. Children, if you will, are their own society with mores and slang and values, and when children grow up, they leave that continent behind.

This unique social culture of children also gets passed down from generation to generation. The famous poem "Ring Around The Rosy" has its roots in the Great Plague of London in 1665, where children in streets saw rosy red rings on the skin (ring around the rosy), sweet herbs stuffed in pockets to heal (pockets full of posies), and cremation of dead bodies (ashes, ashes, we all fall down). Children have passed that rhyme to their friends, onward, for more than 400 years.

All of this explains why one of our sons looked at us in church, slammed his fist on his chest, waved two fingers and said "peace out." We haven't said peace out since the 1960s, but on some level, in the sub-youth culture, the cool phrase continues to be shared below the adolescent radar. We've heard silly old jokes from 7 year olds that we haven't heard since we, too, were age 7. It's interesting to think that viral or word of mouth marketing isn't just about the network, but about the years in which the network passes through the generations.

Unfortunately, as today's youth get more of their mindset from media -- television, internet, radio, and text messaging -- the historical culture of children may be eroding. Kids only have so much room in their heads. If our adult influence pushes them to buy more video games and spend less time chanting outside, the thread of history may be broken. Children will become little adults, chasing the same iPods that we want, too, and no one will recall the good old bubonic plague.

Hope it doesn't hurt the math scores.

Adwidth to connect big brands with small talent

Adwidth wants big, big advertisers to tap creative genius from small guys working in their garages. The idea is Adwidth will match marketers with "user generated content" from aspiring video-makers. The young talents will compete by producing TV spots, and the social network will vote on content until the best rises to the top. If it works, your big brand could get a cool TV ad cheap, such as the famous Doritos spot above.

Advertisers could save millions. Unknown video savants could get discovered. Or, we could end up with bad 30-second doses of reality TV.

Watching me watching you

The fun part about using a media planning blog to communicate with clients, ad agencies and marketers is the data we can collect. For example, the map above shows the location of computers who have visited THIS web site in the past two weeks since launch. Not bad, considering we're reaching business leaders and our ad budget for this side project is exactly $0.

We've had 258 visits, an average reader stay for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, and we're proud to say the fourth-most-trafficked city is London ... perhaps because we've written two articles about The Economist and one was, ahem, rather negative.

Digging deeper, we see we've had three visits from "The Economist" computer network, er, at 1.67 pages per viewer.

Dear London lawyers: We're sorry.

Put yourself in a higher bracket

OK, next big meeting, after work, in the restaurant with the important client/boss/vendor you're trying to impress, casually let one of these receipts fall on the table. It's fake, and it will show that you are loaded to the gills.

Call it word of mouth marketing.

We'd show you the web site that prints these, but hey ... is this legal?

Answer one question to solve advertising math

We're constantly amazed by the number of marketers who get hung up on media math. Of course, it's complicated, with every media channel talking about different metrics -- Gross Rating Points (% reach x frequency), CPM (cost per mil, or thousand impressions), DEC, and those lovely new web figures, cost per click, conversion rates, etc. Here's a little secret: media channels use different metrics because they like to use the ones that make their channel look better than the other options.

So: How about cost per acquisition? It's simple. How much are you willing to spend to bring in one incremental customer?

You should be able to answer this, and then pass it to your ad agency or media planners, and hold them accountable. If one customer generates $1,000 in revenue and $300 in profit in the first year, you may be willing to spend, say, $400 to bring in a new customer (since more profit will flow in future years, and you need to replenish your base). That's your target cost per acquisition.

So, you have $400 in funds to bring in a customer.

If half goes to sales, then you have $200 to spend on marketing for each new customer.

And if only 1 in 4 customers is sold, you have $50 to spend for each lead (or inquiry).

$50. That's it. All of your media needs to drive a phone call or web lead form for $50 per inquiry. How's your direct mail doing? If it costs 50 cents per piece, you'll need a 1% response rate to get to a $50 call. How's newsprint? If one ad costs $5,000, you need 100 calls from a single ad to get to a $50 call.

Now, you have a single, common benchmark for every aspect of the media. Those old GRPs and CPMs are fine for planning. But if you really want to measure performance, you need to track action, not impressions. Everything else is just Monopoly money.

You're way, way off. Except for the wrinkle cream.

Three weeks ago we searched online for nursing care options for an aging parent. Now, every time we hit Slate.com we get served text ads like these -- for Viagra, arthritis, retirement homes and joint creams. This is called ad retargeting, when advertisers chase you around the web after you (apparently) identify yourself as a prospect interested in their service.

Dudes! We're still relatively young and use words like "dudes". Haven't these online ad networks ever heard of customer modality?

Now on the web: God 2.0

ComScore reports that faith-based video site GodTube launched Aug. 8 and in three short weeks racked up 1.7 million unique visitors, making it the fastest-growing web site in the U.S. Makes sense. Gallup polls in 2005 found that 70.6% of Americans believe in hell, 80.5% believe in angels, and 82.2% believe there is a heaven. (Interesting that we believe more, when we like what might happen if we believe...)

A glance at GodTube shows the passion people bring to sharing their religious views. Skateboarders give testimony; actor Stephen Baldwin speaks out. Some say they're proud to be Christian and believe in modern science, while others offer a $250,000 prize for "anybody with any evidence of evolution." The site -- which now only takes limited advertising from like-minded organizations -- is a case study in the complexity of American Christianity.

Marketers could use the site for free focus groups, to explore which religious debates rise to the top in the video rankings (although some posters try to game the system, as on YouTube, by adding hot tags like "Egypt, Alien, UFO" that apparently resonate with young Christian viewers!). Marketers might also pause and consider the extent of religion in the heartland -- there are thousands of similar religious sites on Jewish and Muslim topics -- and temper their worldly creative a notch if the media plan dips toward a spiritual audience. After all, someone out there is listening.

What if Google became evil?

Yes, Microsoft may have used PR to strike fear into business reporters' hearts about Google, but no one describes that fear better than Cory Doctorow. The editor at popular Boing Boing has written a short story describing a future where Google knows too much -- and where a Big Brother government uses Google to monitor citizens a little too closely.

The interrogator in the secondary screening room was an older man, so skinny he looked like he'd been carved out of wood. His questions went a lot deeper than shrooms.

"Tell me about your hobbies. Are you into model rocketry?"

"What?"

"Model rocketry."

"No," Greg said, "No, I'm not." He sensed where this was going.

The man made a note, did some clicking. "You see, I ask because I see a heavy spike in ads for rocketry supplies showing up alongside your search results and Google mail."

Greg felt a spasm in his guts. "You're looking at my searches and e-mail?" He hadn't touched a keyboard in a month, but he knew what he put into that search bar was likely more revealing than what he told his shrink.

Google, founded by two cherubic kids whose motto is "don't be evil," faces scrutiny as it finalizes a bid to acquire the banner ad giant DoubleClick. Google collects reams of information about users to offer personalized ads, and if its advertising network grows, it will know more and more about your email messaging, web browsing, shopping habits, videos, online social profiles, and your network of friends and colleagues -- more than might be healthy, critics say.

Doctorow notes his story "Scroogled" is not a slam, just a scenario. He says:

I think most of the things that Google does are good. I think one of the most heartbreaking things that any of us can live through is for an institution that we love to change in a way that makes us hate it. So it seemed to me that this would be a great opportunity to write something of dramatic note, something that would work as a story.

We love Google because its network provides value, and that comes from the ocean of linked information and users within it -- right, Metcalfe? Consumers find anything in 0.0003 seconds only because of Google's vast knowledge. But as the internet morphs offline and becomes part of everything -- first your cell phone, then your wallet, your car keys, light bulbs and your dog's collar -- and as Google continues to index that knowledge, the world wonders if there are brakes on this train. Is one knowledge, under Google, too much?

Amazon unties MP3 strings

Amazon finally joins the band with its new online music store. 2 million songs, all DRM-free, meaning users are no longer handcuffed and can share the songs from computer to computer. Prices for most are 89 cents, slightly cheaper than Apple's iTunes.

Interesting that Amazon focuses on openness to try to break into the market: The songs can be played and passed between PCs, CDs, Macs, iPods, Zunes, Zens, iPhones, RAZRs, and BlackBerrys.

Rock on.

Nielsen reports stormy weather for newsprint

Nielsen reported U.S. ad spending for the first six months of 07, and local newsprint took another hit -- down -8.0% year over year. Internet ad spending was up 23.2% by comparison. Glossy mags and outdoor had modest gains.

What gives? Analyst John Dvorak writes local newspapers have asked for this punch because they are lazy. The typical small daily has original news on pages 1 and 3, and then pads the rest with AP wire reports.

Years ago, this lazy model worked. The wire services used to provide local papers with a wide range of stories that local editors could use to enliven their news mix. Over time, many newspaper owners saw the savings they could realize from loading up on wire stories while minimizing their original editorial content.

Once the Internet arrived, this model was dead, as the Net revealed that many newspapers weren't actually contributing anything new or unique. The fact that people all over the country subscribe to the New York Times, rather than to a local paper, says it all.

Our bet is the big dailies and the tiny community weeklies will survive. It's the mid-sized newspapers in the middle that have the most at risk. Advertisers who use measurement to track responses from daily newsprint ads don't need to see the circ numbers (or "readership" claims) to make the call -- if costs per inquiry continue to climb, they will put their funds into other, more economical media.

Learn from Fake Steve, and get gritty

Any man who calls Bill Gates Beastmaster and Apple fans iTards is a gutsy satirist, so it's small wonder Daniel Lyons has been praised for his Fake Steve Jobs blog. We're addicted.

Now that Lyons/Fake Steve is outed, he/they have published a book, and we ponder -- why is this man so addictive? The blog is nasty and funny, yes, but it also contains real news about Apple and some inside scoops about how the recent refund was generated, what's coming down the pipe, how shakers like Vivendi, Richard Branson, IBM, and Northwest Airlines are influencing technology markets, and what dark histories lurk in corner offices. As in:

Remember when Microsoft was fun? This (video) was shot in 1986, just 18 months before Ballmer sold his soul to the devil. Check out the price on the software. Back when they had to compete, they actually kept prices down.

Perhaps in this world of ever-fragmenting media, a little grit and edge are needed to break through. If you aren't offended by the F-bomb, get the book.

Commercials as content

Firebrand launches on Oct. 22, trying to make commercials as cool as MTV was back in the day by offering "commercial jockeys" playing the hippest ads after 11 p.m. on ION. Pop culture fans will also find Firebrand at its web site, or with downloads from iTunes.

The economics are also cool. Firebrand targets Gen Y-ers/Millennials who account for $200 billion in consumer spending each year, and about 40% of online purchases. This audience is spending less time with mass media, so Firebrand will reach them via late-night cable and internet and mobile and, they hope, twentysomethings passing the cool commercials on to all of their friends. The launch plan includes outreach to influential bloggers, who are now either writing up the business model or praising the press junket.

It's a new point of entry for making your message go viral. Question is -- is your ad cool enough?

Although designers should be very afraid

OK, so maybe Google is scary -- at least, if you are a designer of newsprint ads. Google has launched an ad creation tool that does just that. Any bloke can now create a professional-looking newspaper ad in seconds, with a few clicks. No software required. No bills from creatives.

Do you get brilliant creative? No. Do you get smart thinking on where to put your ads, in which publications, to reach the right audience at the lowest cost for the best response rates? No. But man, it's easy.

The Hidden Persuaders 2.0

So BusinessWeek and The Economist write exactly the same cover headline a few months apart slamming Google for privacy concerns. Seems Google may have too much data on YOU.

Coincidence?

We find it intriguing that WSJ now reports Microsoft is using surreptitious PR to undercut Google's proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of online ad giant DoubleClick. Apparently Microsoft used PR giant Burson-Marsteller to send emails to business writers in the U.S. and Europe asking them to focus on the privacy risks of Google's expanding online ad models. We don't know if BusinessWeek or The Economist got the pitch, but both ran the headline "Who's Afraid of Google?". Both articles raised the ghostly spectre of Google abusing YOUR personal data, and painted Google as an emerging dark monopoly of online advertising.

Sounds very similar to WSJ's investigation of Microsoft's PR:

In recent months, public-relations firm Burson-Marsteller pitched media outlets and Internet companies on what it said were the dangers of the deal, which would bolster Google's already strong presence in online advertising. In the written pitches reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Burson cites the deal as part of a larger discussion of "fair and free competition" in Internet-search and privacy rights of consumers...

Adrian Webb, head of corporate communications at (U.K.) Esure, said he was miffed when he received the email since he sensed a Google competitor was behind the pitch. 'Burson-Marsteller acts for Microsoft -- this has not been stated anywhere,' in the email, Mr. Webb said.

Well, if true, bully for Microsoft. All is fair in love and war. Exactly 50 years ago Vance Packard first wrote about the psychology of getting people to want what they don't want in his landmark book The Hidden Persuaders. With bloggers now picking up the Google risk story, it's nice to see the hidden persuaders of PR are still in business.

Lessons in guerilla marketing from Iran

We watched Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with fascination yesterday, not for his comments on nukes or the holocaust, but because he kicked off a firestorm of positive PR for Columbia University. School chief Lee Bollinger, initially slammed by protesters for inviting the Iranian president, began the debate with a 10-minute attack on Ahmadinejad's views. In the U.S., Columbia U. came out shining.

All of which reminds us of guerilla marketing. When we present alternative marketing concepts to clients, the options typically fit on a flowchart and are evaluated by CPM, or cost per (mil) thousand impressions. Compared to radio, cable or print costs, the cost to make impressions with events, street teams, video people, outdoor projection ads, etc. seems astronomical. Hmm, the client says. That looks too silly, and way too expensive.

When evaluating alternative marketing, consider that it's not just the impressions, but the word of mouth and viral shakeout that follow the event that counts. At the Iranian president's speech yesterday, there were just a few hundred seats in the auditorium, but more than one thousand chanted and waved signs outside. The buzz ran on the news nets and the scene was carried in papers internationally. Everyone in the world with a Western inclination heard Columbia University held its own, with a little flair. Run the event against the number of seats in the house, and the CPM looks high. Consider the PR amplification, and it sure looks different.

You can't buy that kind of buzz. Or can you?

My cell phone can now wash clothes

Talk about integrated design. We own a Samsung cell phone (third in cool, after iPhone, then Razr), and when our washing maching busted this summer with a cascading leak, we went to Lowes to see -- guess what -- a Samsung washing machine. Same color, same style, as the cell phone in our pocket.

Didn't buy it. Sweetie had Consumer Reports in her pocket and the thing was one half-circle too short. But the temptation was real. "Hey, it's red!" Interesting take in how integrated communications can build on each prior impression to drive up the transaction utility of a purchase impulse. As in, "Hey, it's red!"

Closing the sale, the Apple way

Sick of computer viruses, we bought an iMac this weekend. Forget design. Apple gets customer service right.

Creative savant Darryl Ohrt noted this back in the iPhone craze, and yesterday we saw it for ourselves. Two guys in black T-shirts helped us, explained everything, and swiped our credit card on a hand-held wireless thingy in the middle of the store aisle -- no waiting in line needed. Receipt was emailed home for convenience, and a second copy printed out and stapled to a form for a printer rebate. Took all of 4 minutes.

Both guys were named Mike, and one guy, obviously in training, paused to say, "you know, this is a great company to work for." We believe him.

Reminds us that no matter how effective your ad media plan, to close the sale, streamlining the response process and pumping up employees is key. Apple gets it. Apple rocks.

Print is dead. Long live print.

Business 2.0 is leaving us for good. We're sorry. We were unfaithful. We googled other news online, hung out in blogs, spent Saturday nights at Facebook. Somehow you found out, and now you're gone.

The whole print-is-dying thing is real, but only in some quarters, we think.

The best way to predict print demise is to ask media planners to pull a Mediamark Research (MRI) run on target readers' "consumption preferences" of media. Every year MRI interviews 26,000 U.S. consumers in their homes to get detailed predictions on how they use 6,000 product categories, including web sites and glossy mags. If a magazine's base under-indexes on print and over-indexes on web, you may be in trouble. Business travelers, for example, "over-index" heavily on web usage and are only moderate users of magazines -- so glossies with web subject matter targeting business folk should see circs fall as their readers continue to migrate to the web.

If the magazine scores very high in media consumption among the target demo, it should have legs. Young mothers check the web only once a day, and are heavy consumers of magazines ... so In Touch should be here for a while.

In lieu of flowers, please send subscription donations to Fast Company.

Yoda and Anakin and Obi Wan, oh my

George Lucas says he's filming another 100 episodes of the Star Wars saga for television, a new twist on "Clone Wars" to air fall 2008. Somewhere on HBO or another prime network, perhaps. Alas, our 1977 crush on Princess Leia is fading fast. Anyone thinking media is not over-fragmenting ... please pass the Excedrin.

But wait. Stop thinking like a Year 2007 marketer. Sure, no one could stomach 100 new feature-length films with lightsabers, but in the new world of iDevices and YouTube, consumers with short attention spans may want to download 100 snippets of space. Serialized content could be king. Soon CGI may get so good you can pick your own ending, or better yet, insert your avatar and finally get that date with Leia.

It all makes sense. The Force, it seems, will ALWAYS be with you.

Now, this $5 coupon is what we call good design

As media planners we've seen a lot of subtle ads that simply don't pull. Now, we love designers. We don't do creative. Good creative can shake the universe to the core. However ... we think designers sometimes fall into the trap of subtlety -- subtle design because designers tend to be intelligent, and smart people really, really like nuance.

Trouble is, consumers are barraged with thousands of images and sounds other than your own. Subtlety may not work.

To solve this puzzle, we offer this simple test. Print out the image above. Blow it up. And put your next ad smack in the middle of this, instead of the pretty black frames agencies typically use.

Will your ad still pull?

OMG G2G CODE 9

There is a whole youth subculture out there with its own language, values, and secret codes. On this Saturday night we had a knock on our door, the entire neighborhood demo of <13 was out front, wanting to know if our kids could play Manhunt. We said yes, and flash, our boys were gone. Hope it's not a hunt for a real criminal.

Noslang.com offers a little translation tool to figure out what kids are saying these days, but at a deeper level, we ponder why an entire demo has games and dynamics that adults aren't tuned in to. For us it all started with those Yugioh card battles at age 4 -- Yugioh has since conquered children in 42 nations -- and now is moving to flashlights in the dark. Soon our boys may be texting ohmygodgottogoparentsarewatching in code on cell phones while asking for car keys.

At least we know someone who can teach us the skateboard.

Ad retargeting chases your tire-kickers

Business 2.0 offers this nice graphic explanation of how ad retargeting works online. We love Business 2.0.

This approach on the web is similar to chasing "unsold leads" in the real world. When consumers hit your web site, but don't buy, you serve them ads in the future on other sites trying to bring them back. Fetchback and several online ad networks can do this. Wish my Golden Retriever could, too.

Big pharma lessons in the media mix

The recent tussle over an FDA bill which could have restricted some direct-to-consumer advertising from pharmaceutical companies has a lesson, buried within, for local hospitals or health awareness campaigns. WSJ reports that of $5.3 billion in pharma ads in 2006, 55% was spent on TV, 36% on magazine, 4% on newspaper, and only 2% on radio and outdoor.

We find this interesting because regional hospitals often spend heavily on TV during branding campaigns, and then go deep