Monthly Archives: January 2011

Advertising Holding Company Futures?

By
Steve Poppe
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ITT announced yesterday that it will split into three companies.  Sara Lee is considering splitting into two companies. And as you know, I believe Google will split into 3 companies in the next 5 years.  All this makes me wonder what’s in store for the big public ad agency holding companies?  What will IPG, WPP, Omnicom and Publicis look like in a decade or two?

The drivers of divestiture are usually varied margin and profitability spans.  In the case of ITT, the military business is not as profitable as the water pump business.  In agency holding companies, I wonder if there are discreet businesses with differing margins? 

Our business has changed much in the past 5 years thanks to the computer and digital marketing.  Analysis and reports, once the provenance of humans are now much more automated.  Translating the big selling idea across platform was always the heavy lifting, but today many media forms are converging. Content is still where the money and margin is in marketing.

If I were a betting person, I’d suggest a bifurcation of creative and analytics. Move the analytics companies nearer the energy plants so the computer farms are cheaper and run the creative companies in urban centers closer to all the stimuli. Patsy Cline? Fast forward. Peace!

Sugar and Salt. America is finally well cared for.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Thank God Tostitos is Reuniting America.  Someone has to. Now, if they could only take on gun control.  Reunite America is the silliest, most well-intentioned, advertising idea I’ve heard in a long time.  I thought tossing or snapping Tostitos around the room and off the wall was silly, but this takes the tortilla.  And to read about the campaign (Goodby, you should be ashamed of yourself) in Stuart Elliott’s ad column today, it seems as if this is not so much a brand idea as it is a media strategy.  To wit (as reported in the New York Times):  

The goal of the campaign is to establish Tostitos as a brand that “brings
 people together through the power of technology” said Justin Lambeth,
vice president for marketing at Frit-Lay in Plano, TX. 

Is the technology the onion dip bowl?

Beside myself am I. My fingers have seized up with the thought of this campaign – well-meaning though it may be.  Tostitos is owned by the Frito-Lay unit of Pepsi, a company busy refreshing America.  So, at least we are in good marketing hands fellow countrymen.  Sugar water and salts snack….taking care of the motherland. Peace!

Newsweek-Daily Beast or Ballast?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Does anyone see a problem here?  Como se dice “weekly daily?” 

Okay, the venerable Newsweek is done, stick a fork in it.  The Beast is, well, a beast. Albeit not the HuffPost.  So why not bypass all the peaceful coexistence, “let’s learn from one another” BS, merge the two properties, call it the News Beast and get started.   A new publisher, Ray Chelstowski, was announced yesterday who will sit atop both vehicles, but I’m feeling more organizational mission than editorial mission.  The reason Newsweek is in the straights it is, is because of stasis.  Well, let’s go for goodness sake.  Seconds are ticking. 

News isn’t a weekly thing anymore or a daily thing for that matter.  It’s a minute thing.  What a beast does is eat ravenously.  Every minute.  It’s hungry.  It’s a beast, not a ballast. Let’s go Mr. Diller, Mr Harman, Ms. Brown. Peace!

The Coens (Brand of Brothers.)

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I saw True Grit last night and it moved me.  In a telephone interview with a NYT reporter one of the Coen Brothers (Which is the pretty one? Family joke.) said he didn’t know why the movie had “connected so strongly” with its audience. It’s grossing like a dookie, by the way. The film may be the Coen’s first with a PG-13 rating. 

 The same don’t know why response is mine when someone asks me why I like the Coen Brothers. It’s hard to articulate.  My pat answer is have you seen “No Country For Old Men”?   That’s one way to sum it up.  After reading the Cormac McCarthy book and loving it, I saw the movie and loved more. And you know that doesn’t happen often. It is just hard to put their craft into words.  Is it pacing?  Dialogue? Art direction, camera work, sound, casting, acting? All that.

Is it realness? Truncated fanfare? Their work has a story; sometimes a beginning middle and end – but not always and it’s not always fulfilling…it’s just raw, thoughtful life.

I first ran into the Coen buzz machine for the first time at the Park City Film Festival (now Sundance) with their launch film Blood Simple.  They became the darlings – and it was a good place to break out.  The dudes are complicated and not for everyone.   But when we look back on film making 200 years out the Coen Brothers brand will, perhaps, be the only one remembered from this era.  Errah Errah.  Peace.

Opening the Mobile OS.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

The pace of technological innovation has slowed of late.  Goldman Sachs is getting tricky and slick trying to find ways to sell Facebook stock. Businesses are spending IT dough and manhours investigating the cloud. Coders are buildng games to cash in some chips and because they are bored.  Groupon is a technology extension of social networking and promotion, a lovely breakthrough, but an extension none the less.  Facebook and Twitter are lazy teenagers now (in internet years) so the question is “From where will the new innovation come?” 

What’s the biggest need we mobile citizens collectively have today?  An open and interoperable language for mobile phones.  Interoperability is simultaneously the boon and bane of commerce.  Today the mobile operating systems of Apple, Google, Nokia, Microsoft and Research in Motion don’t play well together. Different apps for different haps.  It’s a big stick in the mud.

Some smart coder is going to jump on this and create an  open mobile OS or an elegant translator (site) so there can be mobile  harmony.  It may come out of the open source community or it may come from a company who wants to be a good global citizen.  Mobile computing is far too exciting to leave dysfunctional.  Keep an eye out. Alcatel-Lucent, MIT kids, China, MSFT…you listening ????  Peace from Babylon.

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