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Better Man

By
Steve Poppe
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Eddie Vedder sang “Better Man” last night at Madison Square Garden and it was extraordinary. Though there are lots of songs written by PJ that incite sing along, Eddie seemed to want to sing this one by himself. He stopped the song after a few bars and was motioning to the crowd to let him do it.
 
Sorry. As soon as he started up again, the 19,000 really started singing. My friend turned to me and asked “Why do they do that?” My response: “It’s not his song.”  Were Eddie more sensitive and a prima donna, he may have taken offense. He didn’t.  He knows Better Man is no longer his song. It’s our song. And that is the highest compliment fans can pay an artist. He was euphoric from that moment on.
 

A killer app for radio.

By
Steve Poppe
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I’ve always been a big radio fan. Too much so, perhaps. I’ve argued with a TV exec buddy of mine that radio will make a comeback in terms of dramatic programming — think TV drama for radio. Okay, I’m still waiting on that one but it’s early in the 21st century. 
 
PSFK today posted a neat story regarding radio that solves community
 
If you have ever listened to public radio in small town or resort town, you’ll know how this type of radio works. And why it works. It is local people talking local stuff. From lost and found, to ride boards, weather, events – it’s a wonderful snapshop of what’s what.  Local radio is where the community rises to the top. Throw in a little music and retail advertising and an outsider can really get the flavor of what makes the community tick. Big city radio has a hard time with this. I think we may have found a killer app for radio.
 
PS. Going to see Pearl Jam tonight. On the floor in the Garden.

 

Miller Lite is toast.

By
Steve Poppe
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MillerCoors, the soon-to-be combined brewer that will compete with Anheuser Busch for share of the domestic beer market, has some hard marketing decisions ahead with Miller Lite. A friend of mine who brews beer at home once told me Miller Genuine Draft is the best tasting pasteurized beer on the market. He told me this while we had some grain a toastin’ on the stove. I believed him. Sometimes, where you hear something is more important than what you hear.  Taste is not an underrated quality in beer and especially so when it comes to light beer.
 
Here’s my advice regarding Miller Lite, the beer that broke open the light category with its “Tastes Great. Less Filling.” campaign. Taste is the key strategic point and Y&R Chicago pounded it a couple of years ago with “I can’t taste my beer.” If MillerCoors and current agency BBH can create advertising that “proves” the taste, they will win.  Don’t do a taste tests, just find what in the brewing process creates the taste better and make that the idea. 

How about something like “it’s the toast.”

 

The future of pockets.

By
Steve Poppe
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0
Want to know my favorite invention over the last few years? The iPod? No. Blackberry? Nope. Flip video? Nah-uh.  It’s the Smart Key System for my Prius.  It never has to come out of my pocket.  The wireless reader in the car knows when I’m nearby and unlocks the door and lets me push the start button without inserting the key.  I’m so used to it, in fact, that when I use the other family car I often sit for a beat before I realize the need to go old school.
 
So what’s the future? Soon all cars will be keyless and these keys, now the size of a small box of matches, will be reduced to coin size. And what will happen as we need to carry less keys and money and other things that go jingle in our pants pockets?  Pants designs will change. Instead of 4 pockets, we’ll probably have one. And that one will be for our iPhones. Were I Tommy Hilfiger, I’d put that pocket right in back…in the middle.
                                                                                                                     

I’m really stupid.

By
Steve Poppe
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All along I’ve been thinking that the gia-normous profits the oil companies are making have been the result of corporate avarice, and that ExxonMobil and the like are making billions at the hands of poor schlubs like me who are spending at the pump liked never before.
 
I was so wrong.
 
Exxon/Mobil isn’t the enemy, it’s saving the planet. At least so says their new ad campaign. While waiting on line at the local falafel store a TV commercial on cable news told me so — as did a series of expensive spread ads in the New York Times. The new campaign has a lovely little blue graphic depicting some sort of blue liquid chemical construct, reminding me that ExxonMobil is big into R&D. And the ads educate me that ExxonMobil has people working really hard to solve next generation energy problems. Real people — I’ve read their names and titles. Lastly, ExxonMobil has developed a new exciting separator film for lithium ion batteries “to be” used in hybrid cars. (Did you know hybrid cars lower emissions?)
 
I’m so glad ExxonMobil is spending $50-100 million on advertising to educate me as to what a helpful company they are. Without that I might have thought them in it for the money. I’m so stupid.
 

Total Buying Power

By
Steve Poppe
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Here’s an online media metric for those of you tracking social networking and social media.  Total buying power.  It’s a single, simple, comparative number.  LinkedIn’s average user age is 41 years old with an average household income of $109,000. Its 23 million registered users in May generated 7.7 million monthly visits to the site.  When I multiplied visits by income it made my calculator quake. (It was close to a trillion.)  When I multiplied registered users by the income, the calculator spit the battery. 

In May, MySpace had 60M visitors and Facebook 26M, but how much money do college and high school kids make each year.  Granted Facebook’s average age is getting older, but the income levels really aren’t there yet.  Between the higher income target and the smart marketing strategy, you can see why LinkedIn is the only one of the three turning a profit. 

So, media types, what do you think about this metric?  Is Total Buying Power (TBP) a discussion starter?

Spreadsheet and sickle

By
Steve Poppe
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The McClatchy Company today reported it is letting go around 1,400 of its newspaper employees. This, after having let go 2,000 others over the last 18 months.  Samuel  Zell has his spreadsheet and sickle out at the Tribune Company and who knows what will becomes of Newsday as the Dolans take control.  Is there less news to be reported?  Is there less advertising to pay the bills?  Or is it the Internet?


It’s a perfect storm of all three, actually. There is not less news, but more.  Technology has enabled few things in the world to go unnoticed.  Add to that the millions of bloggers reporting and analyzing news and events and the choices become even greater.  Bloggers are competing with favorite newspaper columnists for Share of Day (SOD.)  That’s the impact of the Internet.  And in this recession-like clime, ad pages are harder to come by.

Newspapers will always be around. The delivery medium will change, but the news will be there.  As for reporters, there are good and bad and regardless of where they publish, smart media properties will hire the good to attract readers.  With the right packaging and the right mix of advertising, the strong will reemerge and all will be fine.

The greening of social networks.

By
Steve Poppe
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(Not that kind of greening.)

MySpace is acknowledging its soft ad revenue by redesigning its home page to be less cluttered and more advertiser-friendly.  It is also updating its nav bar in the hopes of making MySpace a little more adult friendly (my theory.)  You see, one of the reasons News Corp’s social networking darling isn’t bringing in the ad revenue it had hoped is the demographics are too young. Think of it like TV advertising on Saturday morning. 
 
Facebook, though its user base is older, also isn’t making big ad revenue because they, too, are not hitting the ideal user base demo.  Let’s face it, this demographic group barely see ads online. Zude, which we like to refer to as a “social computing platform that provides users an unprecedented level of freedom and design customization” (mouthful, I know,) is an online property designed to make it easier for users of all technical abilities to build and manger web content. And that includes not just the young, but all consumers. As those who are in the high-spend demographic enter the social computing age, thanks to more usable online properties, advertisers will start to spend more money to reach them.    
 
Advertisers will pay for consumers who will pay. It’s a fact.
 

Whass the idea?

By
Steve Poppe
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There’s a saying I once put into a new business Powerpoint deck that actually sounded like a saying: “Campaigns come and go, but a powerful branding idea is indelible.”  To me this touches upon the problem with Anheuser Busch’s advertising over the last 15 years — no powerful branding idea.  The Wall Street Journal today (6/13/08) reminds us of some so-called great Bud and Bud Light ad campaigns: Clydedales, Louie the Lizard, Spuds MacKenzie, “whassup,” Bud Bowl, Cedric the Entertainer and, more recently, “dude.”  Beyond the creative hook, can anyone tell me what the branding idea is in these campaigns?  I sure can’t.  Therefore, the idea is the creative not the product, and that’s always a bad idea.


No wonder InBev – the company attempting a hostile takeover of AB — feels there is fat to be cut away from Anheuser Busch.  They are right.  Whoever owns the company should cut the Super Bowl budget in half and spend the $13 million saved on some special beechwood aging gizmo that proves superior taste claim.  It will give all the dogs and horses and geckos something substantive to talk about. 

 

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