Yahoo and Intel make TV a little less like fire

We've often wondered at the failure of smart tech designers like Apple or Samsung to create a successful convergence device. One theory is people don't want a single interactive gizmo. Humans have three zones of communications: a passive zone in which you view things, like TV or live theater, from a distance; an interactive zone about 2 feet from other people or your laptop screen; and a personal zone 6 inches from your mobile. This could be psychologically based, tied to your cave ancestors listening to stories by campfires vs. whispering intimately to their lovers.

Thus we have big TVs and small cell phones, and no single device does everything.

Steve Rubel notes that convergence may come after all, with Intel and Yahoo creating a Widget Channel that will embed computer-style interactivity onto the big screen. It would be an advertisers' bonanza to have customers be able to click into the commercials for more information, or even purchases.

We'll see if people used to watching fire from a distance now want to play with it.

Deconstructing the asterisk*

*Angela Natividad praises J&J and TBWA/Chiat/Day/NY for this campaign encouraging young athletes to stay away from steroids. At first, we thought this was creepy -- a bit of a slam on the poor kids who struggle with acne. And then we realized this is brilliant. The only way to get the message out is to have the target pay attention, and acne or skin blemishes are such a pain for teens that they'd probably tune in to this spot to see the outcome.

Marrying an ugly habit with physical ugliness is a risk, but we won't forget it.

Why Wrangler, we can barely see you

We're torn over whether this works. Sure, Wrangler's new TV spots, pointed out by our friend Kelpenhagen, are damned unusual. Could get noticed. Can see the couple on the couch now: "Look, honey, before you change the channel at the break, let's pause and try to figure out what the hell that spot is about. A new alien flick?"

Subtleness is often loved by talented creative types, who dig nuance because it signals intelligence, sets them apart from loud car salesmen, and often wins awards. Subtleness is also defined as the state of being so delicate that you are difficult to understand.

TiVo pushes YouTube; advertisers tremble

TV advertisers, worried that audiences are avoiding them by skipping ads or moving online, may now have a heart attack. TiVo has announced it will begin streaming YouTube videos to its settop digital video recorders, giving consumers a new way to be entertained without watching ads.

About 1 in 4 U.S. homes now have TiVo-type devices that allow them to record shows and fast-forward through commercials. YouTube attracts 68 million viewers a month, who in May watched 3.8 billion videos. You do the math.

Photo: Esther G.

Cable's Project Canoe could tip ad spending over

Cable systems Brighthouse, Cablevision, Charter, Comcast, Cox and Time Warner have been in talks for more than a year to launch a unified ad targeting system. "Project Canoe" would use details on viewer demos to customize ads; if you have a pet, you'd see dog food commercials; if your neighbors have girls, they would be served ads for Barbie Dolls while watching exactly the same channel.

But this week, as the first details emerged, one interesting point came up: If advertisers can improve targeting, might that lead them to reduce their overall media spend?

Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch noted in March that the effort is a ploy by cable companies to (a) combat Google TV, which offers detailed viewer profiling and targeting, and (b) to boost their share of the overall TV ad pie from $5 billion to $15 billion a year. (Most of the $70 billion spent on television ads in the U.S. goes to local spots.) But it could backfire. Once marketers realize which half of their TV advertising has been wasted, they may not want to spend that half at all.

In France vs. Romania, Toyota says small is cool

With the price of diesel now over $10 a gallon in Europe, advertisers there are pushing harder that small is the new cool. This spot focuses more on the personality of the driver than the Toyota, reframing the sex appeal of cars from sheet metal to soccer.

Nice. Expect to see a lot of this in the U.S. soon.

Tiji explains where balloons go

Stunning animation by Pierrette Diaz, Mathieu Elkaim and Yoann Lemoine of DDB, Paris, France. Maybe American could try something like this to offload the heat on its $15 baggage fees.

The strange success of Carlton Draught

Sometimes creative works well by being indirect. We're not sure why this off-topic ~2006 spot for Carlton Draught grabs attention while the Coldwell Banker spot in our prior post falls flat. Perhaps discordance in communication has to include humor to make an imprint; an image of throngs battling violently over beer strikes the funny bone while paintings of old men staring just seem boring. Perhaps beer advertising is so predictable that an unusual take wakes up the viewer.

Or perhaps Carlton nailed the demo target.

Back in 2001, Carlton Draught had only 3% of the Australian beer market. Last month it announced share was closing on 8%; Carlton attributes the growth to refocusing from blue-collar workers to a hipper, younger, larger demographic. Reading that approach into this creative, you can see the burly men and the operatic music work for both groups. Going far afield is a risk, but the Carlton spot nailed it.

Tale of two realty ads

Sometimes, creative works best when it is direct. You be the judge.

Dear Pontiac: What a spec ad is ...

... is not for the squeamish. Spec ads are not real ads, but things you create to try to show what you could do if someone hired you. Check out this brilliant, disturbing spec ad for Pontiac that probably will never see the light of TV, but, damn, if it did, no one would ever forget it.

Wouldn't it be great if automotive ads showed something other than cars zipping down Route 1 south of San Francisco?

(Tx to AdGabber. And if you're looking for a job in advertising, read about spec ads here.)

davidandgoliath's merry Kia Maniac

Yeah, yeah, it's a gimmick, but Kia gets a holiday cheer for one of the funniest EOY car-sales promotions ever. Anything beats shouting announcers or that silly Lexus with a bow on top.

Credit davidandgoliath agency.

truTV shoots at the heart of branding

When Al Ries and Jack Trout started talking about positioning in Advertising Age back in 1972, the concept of little ladders in our heads for brands was wildly new. Then came the Coke vs. Pepsi cola wars, Wendy's vs. McDonald's "Where's the Beef?" and Avis vs. Hertz "We try harder." Marketers embraced the idea that your message -- about your brand -- needs to fit in position next to your competitors.

Now, the next brilliant move in branding comes from Steve Koonin at Court TV. Koonin joined Turner in 2000 and quickly juiced audiences by rebranding TNT as drama and TBS as funny. Fast Company reports prime-time ratings at the networks are up 14% and 7% respectively.

The message here: Focus your brand on one thing.

Fast says Koonin plans to do this next with Court TV. Seems courtroom television had a few problems: first, it sounds like lawyers, ugh, and second, viewers like different things. Research showed some women viewers enjoyed the mystery solving while young men liked the gritty truth voyeurism.

Koonin decided to chase the young men -- a sweet advertising target -- and so is rebranding Court TV as truTV. Ginormous name change. Strong focus. The moniker moves a bit outside the courtroom to embrace shows such as Forensic Files, the true-life stuff.

The second message here: Branding takes guts. With truTV, Koonin is conceivably walking away from half his audience -- the women who focused on the court mystery side. He is changing the name radically, removing "court" which could confuse people. By narrowing his brand, he is grabbing a stronger position -- but leaving many things behind.

We're not sure how audiences will react, but we know one thing: Now we understand what truTV stands for, and we're going to check it out.

TV Guide turns on new video search site

The little TV Guide booklet by the grocery checkout has grown up, gotten bigger, and now launched an online video search service to challenge Google, YouTube and Netflix. Seems TV Guide realizes there is a problem in the search market: more people than ever before are watching video via cable, DVDs, TiVo, mail envelopes, iTunes, YouTube, and whatever else crams inside your web browsers -- but it's dang hard to search for professional video content.

You got the flat-panel. Now, how easy is it to really "pull" good video to it instantly?

Ain't easy. A search at Google for "CSI" turns up the official site, ads, video review pages, and real government agencies. Not a lot of watchable video. Allen Weiner over at Gartner notes there is a huge disconnect between video search and viewing habits. Pew says 76% of viewers A18-29 watch video online. YouTube gives us 1:57 clips of Jim Carrey looking like Caruso. So where is CSI?

TV Guide's Online Video Guide will push viewers first to free content of the actual shows, and then to professional episodes you may need to pay for and amateur videos popular enough to make the grade. This should accelerate the growth of tvguide.com, which had 4.9 million visitors in August vs. only 3.2 million subscribers to the print form. In a competitive twist, the online guide allows you to specify whether you only want free content -- setting TV Guide apart from those dastardly iTunes and Amazon Unbox, which make you pay.

Now, if someone would just build a simple remote control to run all this.

TV viewers, put down that laundry and focus

Here's an intriguing tidbit from our friends at Mediamark Research: TV advertising isn't just about ratings. It's about how focused your audience is when they see your ad.

Consider the handy chart above, which shows the % of Americans "consuming" each media channel by daypart (click here to enlarge the MRI report from June 07). Take a gander at TV, there in the top left. About twice as many people watch TV after work as in the morning. So far, no brainer. That's why we have ratings, and why prime-time spots cost more. Some advertisers avoid prime time due to the perceived added cost.

But now consider how FOCUSED your audience is when they watch. In the 5-9 a.m. daypart, only 31.4% of viewers say they are "very focused" on the TV. From 5 p.m. to midnight, 37% of viewers were "very focused."

Hmm. Let's do the math. [(37% - 31.4%) / 31.4%] = oh, you get it, about an 18% increase in attentiveness for consumers in the evening vs. morning. That means if your TV spot airs around dinnertime, viewers are 18% more likely to actually see, and remember, your message. All GRPs and impressions held equal, it appears catching consumers when they're relaxing after work is a better bet. Heck, who wouldn't want an 18% lift in results?

Now, if this seems shaky ground, let's look deeper at the "multitasking" column. (You know -- like when you read a blog eating a breakfast sandwich and checking voicemail.) Of morning viewers, about two-thirds were multi-tasking while the TV was on in the background. By evening, the number of viewers doing something else had fallen to one-half.

Ahhh. The light appears. Mornings: busy. Evenings: less busy. Seems like common sense, but few media planners consider this when they're juggling GRPs. In your next advertising plan, sure, weigh media efficiency and eCPM. And then consider the daypart, and ask the question -- at 8 a.m. or 8 p.m., will my audience really, truly be paying attention?

This just in: TVs are history

Since the average U.S. household watches eight or more hours of television a day, it's unbelievable to think that soon it will all be gone. At least if your TV has rabbit ears.

At midnight on Feb. 17, 2009, U.S broadcasters will stop sending analog signals to those old-fashioned sets, and the entire nation will go digital. Trouble is, most Americans don't seem to realize that airwaves will go silent -- and 70 million U.S. TV sets still rely on old-fashioned antennas to get a signal. The change comes as a result of legislation passed in 1996 allowing broadcasters to use the airwaves for newfangled digital signals. Some fear the elderly or non-English-speaking viewers, last to hear of the switch, will get left in the dark.

The horror. What will happen to the ad industry if 50 or 60 million homes lose TV signals in one night? Will citizens rebel? Civil war? No worries. Cable marketing execs say the last bill consumers stop paying when times get tough is usually the cable TV bill -- because we're all addicted. The lines may be long at Costco on Feb. 18, but by the next day, we'll all be back with flat panels -- ready to work our eight-hour shift.

MySpace TV goes pro

Marketers keep trying to create new portals, which in 1998 were "sticky sites" and now, game over, are social networks. This week AOL's Bluestring follows Yahoo!'s new Mash. Bluestring collects photos and stuff. Mash lets you edit profiles of other people. Wow! Even hipsters at Brandflakesforbreakfast have had enough.

As new portals shake out, marketers might pay attention to the content formats most likely to go viral on the existing networks (though we'd avoid "Leave Britney Alone" for brand implications). Check out MySpace TV's new "quarterlife", a professional TV series produced at $500,000 per pop. The series, on Nov. 11, will use comments from viewers to change story lines, even future actors. Dunno if the 36 episodes will go nova among MySpace's 110 million users, but advertisers should audition.

Slip sliding away -- in a hot Audi

Audi fans, follow this bouncing ball. Magna Global releases a study showing TV commercial ratings are dropping off a cliff in homes with DVRs. It gets bad. Real bad. Apparently commercial ratings are 39 percent lower than program ratings in houses with those black boxes that record and play back TV. And when only playback periods are measured, commercial ratings fall to 64 percent lower.

This means (a) people are skipping TV commercials, (b) advertisers need HeadOn! topical headache medicine, and (c) Audi is fighting back! Audi released two kindacool commercials that are sped up, with the idea you have to slow them down with your DVR remote to fully enjoy them.

And then the story gets strange. Perhaps worried most consumers can barely find the remote, Audi released the clip above on YouTube to explain how to slow down commercials with your DVR remote.

OK, we know 1 in 5 homes has a DVR and this commercial-skipping thing is going to get worse. But sending your customers to the web to YouTube to find your instruction video to get instructions to record your commercial on a DVR and then use the remote at a later date to stop, rewind, and slow down the commercial is giving me a headache. Methinks an ad agency somewhere thinks too much. HeadOn! HeadOn!

A product launch we hate to love

HeadOn is still giving us a headache with their on-your-face ad campaign for a topical headache treatment that looks a bit like a glue stick. Seth Stevenson noted a year ago that the thing looks like a viral prank -- 10 or 15 seconds of TV spot with the product name repeated over and over again. A year later, it's still running on cable. Egad.

Yet there is something there. Apparently HeadOn used focus-group tests for numerous formats and found that maximizing repetition blew away any other ad approach in, yes, getting the message to stick. HeadOn has updated the spots with a chorus line of voices in the background, sort of like the reverb echo in my head. Short spots, cheap cable buys, and a staccato pulse have made HeadOn break through. Talk about reaching for frequency.

It's Friday. Pass me the glue stick.