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Media Multitasking (II)

More data to support the fact that people's media-consumption is becoming more and more splintered. Television ad premiums will certainly continue to be challenged if the audience's attention is that diverted, further justifying advertiser's intent to move ad dollars from television to other media outlets.

More on Web-based Video Advertising

As a follow-up to this post, here's a good article on where the industry sees this going.

Perception Analyzer® Question Naming

questnomEditPerception Analyzer requires that all questions in a project questionnaire have unique names. If you don’t specify a name when a question is created in PAEdit, the editor will create one automatically, beginning with the name QUEST and using QUEST1 next, then QUEST2, etc. The automatic question naming can be used to create a consistent naming scheme when creating modules of questions to evaluate multiple products or concepts.

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Moms Online

Another Ad:Tech session partial transcript by Heath at FC Now - this one about how moms use the Internet as told by Joanne Erickson, research director for Disney Online.

Key stats:

"According to Nielsen, there are 31 million moms online. They're 38, tend to be married, are very smart -- college educated -- and are working moms. Moms forever have been key decision makers. What's interesting is how that translates to the Internet."

"Nine out of 10 new Internet moms agree that the Internet helps them simplify their lives. 68% visited sites for food and cooking. 61% visited sites for news information. And 56% visited sites for parenting and children's education information. I'm online researching schools and interviewing teachers."

Sounds Like a Stretch

In this post we referenced how, partially due to the proliferation of DVRs (digital video recorders), more advertisers are moving parts of their advertising dollars to media outlets other than television. Today, Lost Remote links to an article about a study that suggests 96% of DVR viewers stick through commercial breaks as opposed to the 49% of non-DVR viewers (claiming the other 51% of non-DVR viewers flip around to other channels during commercial breaks). The caveat in the article that, in my opinion, makes the statistic worthless is, "96 percent of those viewers actually watch TV commercials when they become DVR subscribers, albeit in fast-forward mode."

I have a DVR (TiVo) and fast forward through commercials at the fastest fast forward speed and I can tell you that I have absolutely no idea what any of those ads are. Even though the article claims that, "most fast-fowarders "notice" TV commercials either "always" (15 percent) or "sometimes" (52 percent) while zipping through the spots," I'd say "notice" is a pretty weak term and not one on which advertisers are going to want to spend millions of dollars.

Mickey D's & DVDs

Interesting test by McDonald's to offer rentals of the top 30 DVDs (accounting for ~80% of DVD rentals) from kiosks at restaurant locations. The rental fee is $1 per day and the real beauty (in my opinion) is that a DVD may be returned to any location, not strictly the one from where the it was rented. It will be interesting to watch this unfold and see what consumers think.

Thanks to Peter Davidson for the original post.

Advertising - What's To Come?

Heath over at FC Now offers a partial transcript of a panel discussion from Ad:Tech discussing the future of advertising and the issues facing television, print and online venues. Panel members were:

John Battelle, visiting professor at UC-Berkeley
Michael Tchong, founder of Trendscape
Lenny Baker, CFA for Saloman Smith Barney/Citigroup
Martin Niesenholtz, CEO for New York Times Digital

Auto-streaming of online ads

So, I'm reading an article about how online advertising hit a Q1 record in 2004 at $2.3B, which lead me to another article about how Yahoo! feels that its "long, slow effort to educate major advertisers about Internet advertising and to get them to change their spending habits [from television and newspaper to online]" is starting to pay off. Interestingly, what struck me more than the content of the second article was the auto-streaming FedEx ad playing in my browser amidst the article - the same ad I've been seeing on TV for weeks (they have other static ads for other companies in rotation, so to see the one I'm referencing you may have to refresh your browser a few times, at least until the ad stops running altogether). I must admit, like many of us, I am pretty numb to online advertising, but this really got my attention - so much so, I'm writing about it here.

So, it's an article about getting old-school television advertisers to go online and they are simultaneously streaming a television ad to me through my browser (not as part of the article, mind you, but as a separate ad on the site). Coincidence? Who knows. Effective? Well, if the point is to get your attention, then yeah.

Has anyone seen others like this and do you have an opinion as to their effectiveness?

SkyHigh Marketing

Jennifer over at What's Your Brand Mantra shares a very funny email she received from SkyHigh Airlines, the parody airline created by Alaska Airlines. It's interesting to read about this today because just last night, my wife and I (both in marketing) were going nuts over the absolutely horrible ads on TV. Then, the SkyHigh Airlines commercial came on (if anyone knows of a link to these, please let me know) and it was like a breath of fresh air. Funny, well scripted, well acted and to the point. Actually, our only criticism was that the tone of the ad better fit with the brand image of Southwest Airlines (witty, fun-loving, goofy, etc.) and I wondered what airline focus group respondents would have said the ad was for if asked before showing them the Alaska Airlines tag at the end.

Also, the SkyHigh Airlines web site is one of the most elaborate marketing efforts I've seen. It has a functional online reservation system that returns adburde results and a suggestion form that randomly changes your complaints into happy-grams. Between online, email, TV and radio, this a campaign that's well-rounded, on message and receiving the almighty buzz that we are all after. Here's the email clipped from What's Your Brand Mantra:

From The Desk Of Howard Barium Chairman and CEO, SkyHigh Airlines May 1, 2004

Hello valued passenger or creditor!

I come to you with great news: SkyHigh is doing something!

Like many of you, I was surprised by recent reports of the alarming disparity in SkyHigh airlines seat pricing, one seat sometimes costing a thousand dollars more than the seat next to it.

Once I recovered from a wave of profit-induced dizziness, I was shocked. I immediately pledged to look into it after my golf game.

What I found was a computer system so slow and antiquated I had to give up on even getting my e-mail. I worked on it for hours until a clever young man pointed out I was typing things into the office microwave.

After that was cleared up, I realized that our fares are not random enough. Our consumers are in real danger of getting the same fare!

It was clear. SkyHigh needed to develop a proprietary random fare generator. One that is beyond reproach for randomness and corrupting human bias. One that gives us the ability to look consumers in the eye and say, “We have no idea how this happened.”

The solution? Trent, the pricing chicken.

Unlike Alaska Airlines and their Common Sense Fare initiative, Trent has very little initiative and does it pretty much for the feed. And common sense? Ever try talking to a chicken? On the other hand, I bet no one at Alaska can work a 10-key with their face.

While we are on the subject, Alaska is flaunting simplicity? Have you looked under the hood of your car, lately? Complexity is the future. It’s sad really. It’s like the confused Neanderthal throwing rocks at the moon to make the sun come back. Poor things. I wish them best of luck.

No, you don’t have to thank us. Our fares are random because random is only fair.

See this wonder of white meat we call Trent at www.skyhighlines.com.

Okay.

Good stuff.

Howard


Shake It Up

I like the notions behind the so-called credo of Kevin Roberts (CEO Worldwide, Saatchi & Saatchi) from a recent Tom Peters presentation.

1. Ready. Fire! Aim.
2. If it ain't broke...Break it!
3. Hire crazies.
4. Ask dumb questions.
5. Pursue failure.
6. Lead, follow...or get out of the way!
7. Spread confusion.
8. Ditch your office.
9. Read odd stuff.
10. Avoid moderation!

The common theme seems to be to shake things up. Resist the status quo and open your mind to what's possible, not just what's easy or in front of you. Not for everyone I suppose, but I like it.

For further insight into Kevin Robert's philosophies, I also found interesting these 40 thoughts.

Rubik's Robot

This has absolutely nothing to do with market research, but someone invented a LEGO® robot that solves the Rubik's Cube®. Why? I suppose because they could, and sometimes that's a good enough reason (but not all the time). I, myself, have only solved it once and that was years ago when I had a lot more time and A LOT more patience. One nice thing about robots is that they are not burdened by the lack of such things. If I had more time and patience, I'd think of other nice things about robots.

Editing Perception Analyzer® Data in Excel

Sometimes it is necessary and convenient to edit raw Perception Analyzer data in a text editor or Excel. This may be done to add data for questions that were not asked during a dial session or to edit existing dial data. The new or edited data may then be reimported into PA for viewing.

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