That's right. We need CPM bad.

A crash course in media planning -- you know, the sophisticated, intelligent side of advertising. Much love to the designers at Plaid.

In case of crash, make coquettish eye contact

Speaking of communication design, Delta's flirty new in-flight safety video follows the psychological rules of human attraction. You see, people the world over use certain expressions to arouse desire. Women smile, lift their eyebrows, and gaze directly at you, and then look down and away to hint at shyness. (See woman in seat at video second :32. Really, we don't make this up.) Men take a different approach; to signal strength, they lean back in their chairs and stick their chests out, like the captain here at the Delta helm. In fact, chest puffery is found across nature -- snakes, frogs and toads also inflate their bodies to demand attention.

(See: Your boss.)

Which brings us back to how good creative captures attention, say, among passengers stressed out that their plane may come to a sudden stop against a mountain. Delta's little vignette grabs consumers with basic cues -- full lips, flirtatious hand waves, and lots of eye contact. We'll remember that as we hug a seat cushion to our chest and jump out the exit.

Why media planners are (not) better than creatives

We get phone calls occasionally from students who want to know the difference between creative agencies and media planners. We explain that for advertising to work, you need both (a) strong communication design and (b) a detailed plan on where to put the message. After all, you're not buying advertising; you're really buying a customer. If you don't have a media plan on how, where and when to reach the customer, it all won't work.

Ah, but then we admit -- creative is just as important. The best designers we know think of communication in algebraic terms, even if they claim to be bad at math. Consider the creative below for Westport Country Playhouse, a regional theater in New England, focused clearly on a new demographic target: women in their 30s and 40s who make decisions about dragging their husbands out to the theater (where the men may discover a really good time).


This creative shop, Plaid, focused a simple print campaign on a keen logical flow: most theater ads talk about products (the play); so to reach a new audience, let's talk about the experience (the date). The result breaks through, and ties offline media into a sexy interactive campaign.

We recently met with another agency, O'Halloran, who focuses on Yellow Pages strategy. (Yellow Pages, for the uninitiated, is an extraordinarily complex beast, and careful planning can free up hundreds of thousands of dollars in ad placement.) They noted a research study that showed people are influenced to respond to a print ad based on information, ad size, graphic design, and color. Subtle changes in copy alone can affect 79% of the people who see the ad.

The point is good design really has no incremental cost. You need to pay for creative anyway; but the selection of a shop that can move people to emotional response with a logical response pathway, or simply mail in a horrible layout, can make all the difference.

A timely proposal: Let's move to 48-hour days

So after a day that felt like 48 hours filled with alarm kids bus commute coffee email calls proposal deep think blogging office jokes client service more traffic school concert bed story and finally a glass of wine with some nice cheese that smelt like old socks, it occurs to us: What America needs is a move to 48-hour days.

The idea of a 48-hour shift is so blindingly obvious we're surprised no one has thought of it before. First, don't tell us it's silly; Americans already do a spring-and-fall shift clocks an hour ahead-or-back thing vaguely related to dust bowl farming, and none of us remembers why. And second, some of us already do long days. They're called medical interns, and they stay up for 48 hours or more a pop usually right before they circumcise your young child, and since physicians are close to God, who wouldn't want to emulate them?

The real power of the 48-hour day lies in the benefits. Just think of the possibilities. You could work like a madman, two 10-hour shifts, with time left over for a long lunch, recess and a siesta. Commuter traffic would be cut in half as we all schlep to the office for longer days less frequently, reducing your gas bill, saving the planet, and easing pressure on all those bridges built in the 1950s that are about ready to collapse. Family values would return as parents reunite with children, spending 10 or so hours a day reading books and playing soccer, and divorce rates would fall as spouses learn to flirt with each other again. IQs would rise as we all snuck in an hour to read Shakespeare.

Ah, but the best part is what happens if we keep 365 of the new, longer days in each year. Your age is cut in half, because suddenly it takes two of the old years just to reach one. Are you now 40? Welcome to age 20 again! Sure, no one will reach age 65 to retire, but that saves the U.S. government from the looming social security crisis, and your 401k isn't doing so hot, anyway. And as we are all forced to drink more coffee in the 48-hour days, Starbucks will return to growth mode, impulse purchases will skyrocket, and the U.S. economy will be pulled out of the looming recession.

Think of the joy. Christmas and summer vacation will come twice a year. You can finally sleep in and still have hours to work overtime and restart the exercise program.

It's time, America. Let's get on with 48 hours, stop moving the clocks around each spring and just recognize we need broader windows to cram in everything that we need. And as we begin to find enough hours in the day for longer dinners and walks in nature, those silly French will finally envy us.

Old Spice wins the viral vote

Lest you think we're totally down on this viral thing, we do love media buys for video that can reach the online masses. Watch this clip and try not to be impressed with the Old Spice integration. Target demo: Young hipsters, gadgetiers, men 18-34, or anyone in Florida.

Tx Andy.

Google slippage, or how to predict a decline

So analysts bashed Google stock today after seeing that pay-per-click ad revenue is slipping. We've noted that Google Trends shows global searches for common phrases are sliding as well, with demand down about 50% in the past four years. Seems Google is also playing with its formulas to wring more money out of click budgets -- a potential sign of desperation. Google may be in decline.

Which brings up a point: Why can't anyone see changes like this coming? Take any infatuation -- AOL, Google, MySpace, Facebook, widgets, real estate, the 17th century tulip craze -- and people jump in as if the ride will last forever. But the reality is almost everything in life follows a bell curve path toward the future. By the time you hear something is hot, chances are that same something is about to peak.

Look at your own life. If you work in marketing but aren't CMO or agency president yet, you're probably in your 30s or 40s, have rising income, good job prospects ... but chances are, eventually your earnings power and title and circle of colleagues will peak, and then diminish.

In marketing, clients and agencies are always hungry for an edge, so they tend to disregard the future downward slope and leap into every bubble. We recently had the opportunity to talk with BusinessWeek.com about widgets, and the reporter mentioned that everyone who produces these things proclaims them to be the future of marketing. Uh-huh.

Don't get depressed. Just, when planning your future, remember that what goes up must come down.

Brilliant VC idea of the week: TweeVee

Darryl Ohrt at Plaid has a killer concept for a new broadcast medium: TweeVee. Imagine a television broadcast where you can also see a stream of comments running across the bottom of the video, posted by your circle of friends or professional colleagues.

This is no small idea -- it actually recognizes how consumers are now using media. ESPN has reported that sports fans watch television while simultaneously using cell phones to pull other scores or text results to friends. A few days ago a brilliant friend of ours spent an evening posting hilarious Twitter comments about the Obama-Clinton debate. Why not pull this multiple media use into one simple screen?

Send VC funding inquiries to Mr. Ohrt here.

How Malcolm Gladwell conceived 'Blink'

Author Malcolm Gladwell has a wonderful piece about how he conceived the idea for his book on rapid cognition -- the ability of people to make snap judgments, sometimes right, often wrong.

Believe it or not, it's because I decided, a few years ago, to grow my hair long. If you look at the author photo on my last book, "The Tipping Point," you'll see that it used to be cut very short and conservatively. But, on a whim, I let it grow wild, as it had been when I was teenager. Immediately, in very small but significant ways, my life changed. I started getting speeding tickets all the time--and I had never gotten any before. I started getting pulled out of airport security lines for special attention. And one day, while walking along 14th Street in downtown Manhattan, a police van pulled up on the sidewalk, and three officers jumped out. They were looking, it turned out, for a rapist, and the rapist, they said, looked a lot like me. They pulled out the sketch and the description. I looked at it, and pointed out to them as nicely as I could that in fact the rapist looked nothing at all like me. He was much taller, and much heavier, and about fifteen years younger (and, I added, in a largely futile attempt at humor, not nearly as good-looking.) All we had in common was a large head of curly hair. After twenty minutes or so, the officers finally agreed with me, and let me go. On a scale of things, I realize this was a trivial misunderstanding. African-Americans in the United State suffer indignities far worse than this all the time. But what struck me was how even more subtle and absurd the stereotyping was in my case: this wasn't about something really obvious like skin color, or age, or height, or weight. It was just about hair.

Loyalty's allure, or why you always park in the same spot

Look, we shouldn't be seduced by brands, because after all we work in advertising and understand that brands are just designer coloring put on commodity products. But last night we were checking out reviews of digital cameras ... and realized we were drawn to the Samsung, which looked a bit like the Samsung Blackjack smart phone on our desk, which had a similar red hue as the Samsung washing machine in our laundry room ...

And we realized. Branding by Samsung got us.

How does this happen? Psychologists suggest there are three aspects of loyalty: affective (emotional attachment), continuance (the perceived cost of switching), and normative (the feeling of obligation). Marketing gurus such as Don Peppers explain there is a hierarchy of loyalty drivers: quality, then loyalty purchasing (the points you earn on your credit card), and ultimately personalization (which competitors find difficult to match). Marriage is the ultimate bond of loyalty, where psychological emotion (love) and sheer marketing convenience (she knows how you like coffee) make staying the rational choice.

But we think there is something more basic in loyal consumption, the same impulse that makes schoolkids take the same seat in class each day, or drives you to select the same parking spot. Humans are comfortable in ritual. In the transaction utility of a purchase (the juice you get by making a selection), picking something new yet familiar is reassuring. Apple is the brand that combines this best -- you love the new iGadget, but you're comforted by the past performance. Probably our ancestors who found safe shelter, such as a cave without snakes, and stayed loyal to it survived ... while the brand promiscuous got eaten by a bear.

We can't explain why our new phone matches the washing machine. Imagine that Samsung planning meeting -- "Team, we'll make washers that people buy every 11 years look just like our hot cell phones!" But dammit. With no emotional attachment, no switching costs, no obligation, no marriage vows, no points program ... somehow brand loyalty just felt right.

Google results falling fast. Here's why.

Google isn't exactly bragging about it, but results from Google PPC campaigns are down across the board. Here's what you need to know before kicking your internet marketing manager, and how to fix the problem.

1. First, the downward trend is real. Go to Google Trends, type in a keyword phrase, and Google will serve up a graph showing worldwide search volume. Search use at Google is down about 50% in the past four years for a range of topics including "advertising agency," "heating oil," "furniture," "music lessons," "office supplies" and "new car dealer." It's hard to get a real look inside Google's black box, but play around with the Trends findings and you'll see slippage in most categories.

This look at search trends for "office supplies" proves the point. If anything is constant in business, it's that we all need paper clips and paper. When global search volume is down 50% for the bedrock of business ... something is going on.


2. To make fewer searches worse, more competitors have jumped aboard to chase the reduced number of searchers. The glory days of being first out of the gate with a PPC campaign on Adwords are over. As competitors bid on your category, placement on the page remains difficult. A few industry bargains remain, including healthcare, where most hospital administrators have not yet discovered they can capture patients online in search engine marketing. (See: Pew.)

3. The likely scapegoats are new social media such as Facebook ... but they are not to blame. A new report by Pew notes that social media has been around for as long as the internet (starting back with Usenet and electronic bulletin boards). Pew researched email use and found it has been almost constant from 2000 to 2007 (about 55% of internet users type email on any given day), showing consumers haven't really migrated more to interacting with each other.

4. The real answer: Consumers are more savvy. Today about 68% of online shoppers now search at least four online resources before making a purchase decision -- and all that clicking around drives up PPC costs. Mediapost reports that users are also gravitating toward reviews written by other consumers, not company paid ads, which helps explain the decline in Google search volumes.

It's simple, really. More competition + smarter shoppers + consumers gaining control over product information = tougher PPC results. The only solution is to build more sophisticated PPC campaigns with bid management software and to extend your brand online with other entry points, such as microsites, blogs, and video. Search still works. But like everything else in advertising, now it's going to take hard planning to make it work right.

Pirating iTunes with a DoubleTwist

If information wants to be free, you might call social networks such as Facebook the Freedom Trail. Today Wired reports a new Facebook widget app by DoubleTwist, called Twist Me, allows Facebook users to strip digital rights management from iTunes downloads and to pass music or video seamlessly to each other. Now, any formerly protected song from Apple can be flipped into an MP3 and flashed around the internet.

The point isn't the cool software -- there are scores of programs that skirt digital chains, and we're sure soon lawyers will be calling DoubleTwist -- but the ready adoption by the under 35 crowd who see nothing unethical about sharing stuff they did not pay for. For every lock put upon music or video, they find another key. In a way, it is hypocritical for marketers to complain about the wildfire of network sharing, since we embrace it with our attempts to post viral content. (Don't steal music. But please, forward our Audi ad on YouTube...)

The big question is how any content creator will make money in the "free" future. One path is the old NPR/new Radiohead model, where you give your goods away for free first and then ask for donations. Or, there is the tried-and-true advertiser "implicit bargain," in which consumers receive content for free in exchange for giving implicit permission to be interrupted by a word from the sponsor. (See: TV.) Or, there is the multichannel strategy, such as giving away recordings but making money from live performances.

The coolest outcome would be if content creators won more profit in the new freedom networks. Sure, old intermediaries like giant record companies are going to get squeezed. Their profits will fall, and big box retailers such as Wal-Mart, fresh from their victories over small record stores, may soon have to sell socks and not DVDs in their aisles. But new creative voices will find barriers to entry low, market penetration simple, and product distribution as easy as a Facebook app. Information may be free, but quality is still something people will want to pay for. Fire up the keyboard, kids; no one is stopping you now.

(Wired how-to here. If you really care, don't miss David Pogue's wonderful column on the generational divide in copyright morality.)

The Yes We Can pop quiz!

OK, Hillary may sound like Obama, and Obama may have lifted lines from others, but we think people are overreacting to this plagiarism thing. After all, George W. Bush ran the slogan Yes, America Can! back in 2004. The problem with populist communication is it leads to copywriting porridge -- words that are warm, sticky, and blandly homogeneous. Sooner or later, you can only spell oatmeal so many ways.

For proof, try matching the slogan with the talking head. These are real campaign lines from U.S. presidential candidates dating back to 1848. Then wait for the words to reappear magically on CNN sometime next week.

SLOGAN
(a) Real plans for real people
(b) Putting people first
(c) America needs a change
(d) A leader, for a change
(e) Peace and prosperity
(f) For the future
(g) Are you better off
(h) For president of the people
(i) Patriotism, protection, and prosperity
(j) Prosperity and progress
(k) The stakes are too high

TALKING HEAD
(a) George W. Bush
(b) Bill Clinton
(c) Walter Mondale
(d) Jimmy Carter
(e) Dwight Eisenhower
(f) Richard Nixon
(g) Ronald Reagan
(h) Zachary Taylor
(i) William McKinley
(j) Al Gore
(k) Lyndon B. Johnson

ANSWERS
˙snoıʌqo ooʇ ʇsnɾ sɐʍ ǝuo ʇɐɥʇ ʇnq 'ooʇ 'sʇnuɐǝd uo ǝʇonb ǝɔıu ɐ pɐɥ ɹǝʇɹɐɔ ʎɯɯıɾ ˙ɔʇǝ 'q = q 'ɐ = ɐ ǝɹɐ ǝʌoqɐ ǝɥʇ ɟo llɐ oʇ sɹǝʍsuɐ ǝɥʇ

New York Times welcomes you -- to meet some crappy sponsors

Silly New York Times. We signed up at its web site again recently, after a mild internet browser mishap wiped out our cookies and we forgot a few passwords. NYT asks new readers to punch in some useful data, such as your job title and household income, before giving free access to its reports. So, as we entered the hallowed walls of all the news that's fit to print, we were greeted with ... a butt-ugly AOL-circa 1997 Special Offers for You! page inviting us to get medical hair restoration, no-cost diabetic supplies, and a cheap vacation in Branson, Missouri.

What is NYT smoking? Imagine if your business sold intelligence as a product, and an affluent, educated, 40something new customer walked in your front door. Would your first greeting to the new customer be, hey, see you're in the demo for thinning hair, how about some potion to cover up that bald spot!

This smells like business silos, folks. The same idiocy that gets American Express to insert ads for cheap steak knives in its bills to affluent business customers (some doofus at the AmEx billing center figures she can make a few bucks for her org unit) encourages some ad guy to sell crap on the NYT welcome page. No one is thinking about the overall customer experience, or the incredible harm to the overall brand when a crass touchpoint leaves a bad taste in the customer's mouth. Some sub-silo at nytimes.com is making money, and no one is looking at the big picture.

The sad thing is this first touchpoint is a wonderful opportunity to pull the new reader in. Explain some cool NYT features. Offer a simple dial that allows the reader to customize the news home page. Provide a free trial offer for a home print subscription. Mention the latest NYT awards, or introduce the hippest NYT bloggers. So many ways to engage and start building loyalty ... without a Disney vacation planning DVD.

Our free offer to NYT: Find that welcome-page marketing manager and fire him.

Amigos de Obama

The most telling signal of U.S. presidential outcomes is not what candidates are saying, but how supporters are reacting. Hillary delivered a strong speech to Hispanics three blocks from the Mexican border yesterday. But does she inspire support like this?

Here's a good test for your own marketing plan. If the above spot seems foreign, it may be time to recognize different cultures require vastly different communications. Find inspiration at Adweek's Marketing y Medios.

With GrandCentral, Google pushes past PPC

Last summer Google acquired GrandCentral, a sweet little service that simplifies your phone life. The idea of GrandCentral is you get one phone number -- for life -- and push all the other phone numbers through it. If someone is close to you, you program GrandCentral to ring all your phones when she calls -- office, home, cell, gym. If you know someone more annoying, you can limit which phones ring when she calls. Say, sending your Aunt Millie just to the home voicemail.

This week, Google pushed GC a bit further with a click-to-call button. With one blue icon (above) on your web site, Google will connect a web site visitor to you instantly (your phone and their phone will ring at the same time). This is enticing to any marketer who has run an Adwords campaign, because the problem with getting people to a web site is how to truly connect to them. Even if a web visitor to your canned prunes site fills out a lead form, you still have to call them back -- and because people are busy, call-back contact rates usually hover around 60%.

Google is starting the GrandCentral web feature with bloggers, who can post the button for free. The service is in beta for other web sites (but then, everything at Google is still in beta).

The big story is watching Google move past PPC text ads to telephony and rich media campaigns. There is an enormous universe of businesses out there who have web sites but don't "get" PPC campaigns (Huh? People use Google? But we have a web site!). Grand Central gives Google another point of entry to this audience, who surely will be interested in spending ad dollars on Google once they see it make the phone ring. Phone integration also positions Google to be a top player in mobile advertising (where smaller screen sizes make traditional PPC ad inventory tight).

Whoops, gotta run. Our web browser is ringing.

Hey, that's you, on Obama's eyebrow!

Whatever your position, give Obama credit for inspiring the first true interactive brand of U.S. politics. He has the cleanest Google PPC campaign, his messiah vocals roused the viral Yes We Can video, and now that video has morphed into a web site by Syrup that allows you to upload your personal photo or video into a data visualization of Yes We Can. The end result is funky, low-res, and a metaphor for modern politics. Thousands of little voices trying to be heard, and perhaps not making sense.

Marketers will ponder for years how a little song created by several artists in 1 day morphed into 30 million views in one week.

tx Agency Tart for the find.

Of melted chocolate and misplaced context

Recently we've been thinking the real problem with personalization is the failure of marketers to recognize customer modality. Netflix can use collaborative filtering to predict our film interests, DoubleClick can track clickstreams to serve up tailored ads, but often the result is off target. People have different modes, which is why today we don't want puppy PPC ads on our news pages, even though we were scouting for dog supplies last night.

Bill Green inspires us to think there's a second huge obstacle to making personalization work -- environmental context. For example, consider chocolate. If chocolate were ad creative, it would win national awards. Great design, huge benefits, nice offer, compelling call to action. This afternoon, after a long day-off nap, we were getting ready for a jog and saw some Dove chocolate by the window. Yum. One piece ... totally melted in the sunlight, gooey, disgusting. Usually the crisp chalky chunk is a wonder on the tongue, but a little misplaced warmth ruined the whole snack.

Maybe this is also the trouble with advertising -- you can control the message and perhaps reach the right target perhaps in the right mode, but if the surrounding context is off, everything else will fail. Marketers often disregard how news stories or competitor moves or weather or other factors influence response.

Airline advertisers get context. They actually have agreements with newspapers that if there is a major plane crash in the news, all airline ads get pulled the next day. Editors in newspapers usually follow the church vs. state wall and don't have any influence over advertising ... but if they see an AP report that a passenger jet goes down, they run back to the advertising department to quickly pull any airline print ads. The people who fly people get that the context of bad news would spoil their responses and even sully their brands. One extreme example, but something other marketers need to consider.

Next time your results are off, critique the creative and the media placement. Evaluate sales processes. Then, also consider the context. What tidal waves in the market may have pulled your results off course? What can you do to prevent that tomorrow?

The trouble with ad networks

Don't miss Bill Green's series on contextual madness. The hot trend in online advertising is putting display ads across vast networks of web sites, targeting users based on their clickstream. Unfortunately, this means your beautiful ad may appear on a site -- or next to content -- that isn't quite in sync with your brand. Or in sync, depending on your politics.

It's not just Google. It's a complex mousetrap.

Mario Sgambelluri throws cold water on the whole Google-has-the-best-results thing by pointing out the way most people measure internet campaigns disregards everything we know about marketing.

The logic trap marketers fall into is thinking the last ad people saw triggered the response. So if a text ad on Google creates a click at 25 cents, that's good, right? Sgambelluri points out that people take actions based on a culmination of impressions. The concept of integrated marketing has been around for decades, yet we seem to forget this when evaluating online ad components. A Google ad helps close the deal, but prior impressions in offline and online media helped get consumers to the point of decision.

This is important, because as marketers allocate funding in online campaigns they must consider the upstream online communications -- banner ads, blogs, social media, videos, microsites -- that lead consumers to the search engine trigger point. Atlas Institute source presentation here.

A bad news day for radio

Just in from IWM: Forrester says digital music sales will rise 23% annually for the next five years. Social nets like MySpace and Facebook are expected to become digital music stores. MySpace is talking to record labels about a new free download service that would work only while you're at a computer. Vivendi takes it a step further with the new Zaoza service, pushing tunes to mobile phones for $4.40 per month and, in a cool twist, allowing users to share music with up to five friends. Zaoza will launch in Europe first, then the U.S., and work on all mobile handsets except Apple iPhones.

Zaoza means "word of mouth" or "buzz" in Chinese ... something missing in news about radio.

Heavy Rain: An uncanny step toward AI

Nice piece in Salon on the surreal quest for the perfect game face. Way back in 1906, German psychologist Ernst Jentsch noticed that slight gaps in realism freak people out, which he termed the Uncanny Effect. This is why old cartoons with Snow White seem fine, but when we watch The Polar Express, the almost-but-not-there animation of Tom Hanks looks disturbing. The closer imitation gets to reality, the scarier it seems.

That's why the little wax dolls in old ladies' houses look creeeeepy, folks.

CGI filmmakers and video game designers are rushing to get human faces just so. Now French game studio Quantic Dream has refocused game realism away from swaying palm trees and racing cars to the expressions of people. The image above is a recruiting video for Quantic, trying to lure fresh designers to crack the code on humanity. Quantic will soon release a new game for PlayStation 3 called Heavy Rain, which will include swarms of people wiggling eyebrows like the lass above. The eyes are important because they are the perceived window to the soul, and a key problem with past demos was the eyes looked dead, like this.

If Quantic succeeds it will be a breathtaking move ... because once computers can simulate human expression, filling in the AI content will be just behind.

ESPN's new idea: Web simplicity

Pity the people who run ESPN.com. They've created one of the most popular web sites in the world, getting traffic from 1.36% of all internet users, and must serve up content on far-ranging sports and Russian tennis players daily. This is why the main ESPN site has evolved into a bit of a monster, with 197 links in its nav bars and drop-down menus before you reach the content.

(We really counted.)

So what a breath of fresh air to see the new ESPNthemag.com site. It's structured like a blog, with a vertical string of stories and rich media that tell users where to go first. The fresh microsite was designed by Sarkissian Mason in about six months, building upon the 10-year anniversary of the print ESPN The Magazine -- meant to attract workers taking lunchtime breaks to quickly surf sports news.

Note. To. Design. Team. Minimize the burden of choice.

One million hacks later, iPhone wants to be free

BusinessWeek reports that nearly 1 million iPhones, 25% of all sold, have never signed on to authorized cell networks. From Brazil to Nigeria to Russia to China, consumers are flocking to the device in an enormous gray market.

While this is bad news for Apple partners AT&T, Orange, O2, and Deutsche Telekom, who may lose hundreds in monthly fees per unlocked phone, all may be good for Apple. Sure, Apple loses partnership fees every time someone fails to register a phone through a licensed cell carrier -- but most of the gray-market countries are far afield, and these additional sales help spread the Apple brand. Analysts suggest the phones are spreading either from leaks near Chinese factories, or simply from consumers who max out their purchase limits (5 from Apple stores and 3 from resellers).

The big story is the sheer demand, and the efficiency by which an entire market has evolved to break the rules and sell tons of Apple product. If market momentum builds in the unlocked direction, Apple may have to abort carrier handcuffs and start selling an open-access phone.

Elave's full frontal path to viral marketing

So the silly Brits at Elave have launched a risqué online video that has, um, full frontal nudity. (Be careful. We warned you.) Elave is a real company, selling ointments to help people with eczema and dermatitis, yet went out on a limb with a spot showing actors who look like medical professionals ... who just happen to work in a really, really warm lab. What up?

Despite the hoopla, advertisers simply can't control viral marketing -- it's very hard to get an idea to spread through the public -- but there are two basic approaches. Malcolm Gladwell focuses on the channel; the hyperconnected people who make ideas spread. Seth Godin focuses on the idea itself; how content must be made so catchy that it turns from a "sneeze" into an "ideavirus," scaling like the flu everywhere.

The Elave spot is an attempt to create just such an ideavirus. This little snippet of flesh (OK, a lot of flesh) would never pass S&P at major cable networks, but that's the point. Traditional TV is irrelevant, the Elave spot was launched online and it is so crazily different it surely will get passed around.

We see three dangers with this type of aggressive attempt. (1) You may generate attention but not get response, especially if the attention is just young men looking at models. (2) Shock will fade. Eventually, this type of thing will no longer startle. (See: HBO ratings.)

And (3), beware the adverse impact. A large portion of potential customers, say women in their 30s and 40s, may not want to be exposed to this. Perhaps, eventually, online video ads will have to work the old-fashioned way -- by offering something meaningful that people want to buy.

Marketing lag, or why it's now safe to buy a Ford

Buddy of ours is shopping for a pickup. First words out of our mouth were: Buy a Toyota. Cause we all know American cars are crap. Like those Ford Explorers that tend to roll over and almost killed two friends of ours in a snow storm or those 7.5 million GM A-Cars that had gas tanks placed dangerously between the rear axle and back bumper perhaps to save costs, ready to rupture if the bumper got tapped ...

But wait. We're wrong! Consumer Reports has just announced Ford SUVs are climbing up the charts in quality, and now greatly outpace those fancy European models. All that bad press Ford and other U.S. automakers got years ago is still stuck in our minds ... but CR has recommended not one but six Ford models (Edge, Expedition, Explorer, Explorer Sport Trac, F-150, and Taurus X). Egad!

This is the problem with marketing. CMOs and marketing managers tend to change companies every two years, and when they come in fresh, they immediately launch NEW! IMPROVED! marketing messages trying to establish a name for themselves. But consumers remember. Ford, for one, faces an uphill battle in convincing anyone it can match Toyota in quality -- yet Consumer Reports notes that several Ford models are now better than the giant Toyota Tundra 4WD V8.

You can't change history, but if you work in marketing or advertising, you have to recognize it. While operations works on tomorrow's quality control, here are a few things to address in your messaging to consumers today:

- What marcom went out in the past 10 years?
- What PR -- good or horrible -- did your company create in the same period?
- How will prospective customers remember those marketing messages and PR debacles?
- Is your current brand message building upon that history realistically?
- Are you gradually migrating your customer base to a new awareness?
- Or, are you making promises that are wildly out of sync with where you've been?

Just a thought. P.S. Be sure to buckle up.

(Note to lawyers: See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, the debate that Ford may have inflated tire pressures unsafely low to mask high center of gravity here, and the infamous 1973 Edward Ivey "value analysis" memo for GM here.)

Catwoman's lacy night out for media buyers

The Catwoman who made Batman toasty back in the 1960s, actress Julie Newmar, is now taking out huge ads in Adweek and Mediaweek asking marketers to consider her for employment as a corporate spokesperson. She's wearing almost nothing. At age 74.

This goes beyond sex in advertising to brilliant ROI. The ad cost a bit, sure, but if Ms. Newmar gets hired for a cool mil, it works. The media placement is reaching the critical few (advertising agency decision makers) most likely to pitch Newmar to a client. The creative is over the top, which is the point, certain to get noticed. The copy is clever but direct; "spokesperson" is mentioned twice at the top. And the boomer demo of people in their 70s never looked so good. Um. Look, we hate to linger over this stuff, but someone has to do it...

Adweek's duh! moment

Adweek has relaunched with a cleaner print layout and a rather pretty web site missing one piece of functionality: You. Go to adweek.com and there's no way for you to comment on articles.

This is a big Duh! moment, because Adweek is under serious threat from online blogs and communities that are wild parties of marketing discourse. Advertising professionals are swarming around sites such as Adrants, IWM, and AdGabber to find and share industry news. And the vital piece of social media is rapid, off-the-cuff, look-aren't-we-intelligent response.

Comments engage. They build buzz. They forge networks. They connect individuals to a community. Almost every one of the top 150 marketing blogs lets you, small reader, post a comment at the end of a thought leader's missive from the mountaintop. Heck, even The New York Times is starting to let readers post comments after thought pieces.

But at Adweek.com, no can do. Not for lead stories. Not for columnists. We loved Mark Wnek's brilliant piece on bad writing and so wanted to chime in (and see what others thought, too). Uh-uh. You can join a community, but only if you carefully click through the right path and spend 5 minutes filling out a lengthy data application. We did, but haven't clicked back.

Come on, Adweek. It's. Called. Social. Media.

Irwin Gotlieb teaches TV to change its spots

So this one guy, Irwin Gotlieb, CEO of media-buying giant GroupM, directs 16% of all the world's $364 billion in global advertising. When this guy has an idea, you better listen.

Now Gotlieb is pushing a simple but far-reaching concept -- what if you could serve different ads to different TV viewers, at the same time on the same channel? This already happens on the web, where behavioral targeted ad networks track your clickstream and then fill a web page with an ad tailored just to you.

Last year Gotlieb led investment in Invidi Technologies, a startup that can customize TV spots. If you've got three TVs in your home, the teen gets one message, Mom gets a different one, and Dad gets a third, Gotlieb says. Microsoft filed a similar patent application recently, which would dig through data from a consumer's offline behavior (credit card transactions, travel location, content viewed in various media) to then serve up personalized ads the next time you touch any Microsoft content network.

The future of advertising is coming, and it's watching you closely. (Good Fortune profile on Gotlieb here.)

Beautiful Audi. Strings attached.

I Believe tells us this Audi A4 spot was conceived by DDB, Barcelona, Spain, and filmed with no computer-generated imagery. Instead, a team of real puppeteers and magicians choreographed a beauteous creation under guidance of clown-priest-juggler Philip Noble. All we can say is ... boss, it's time you sprung for a company car.

The boinking sound you hear is a mallet

OK, three posts on sex in advertising in one day. Enough. But we must leave you with Andy's bit on vintage album covers. Apparently the target demo for music in the 1950s was M35-54 who stashed naughty records in the attic next to Playboy.