Carroll Trosclair's Blog
Posted by Carroll Trosclair
A South Korean advertiser is testing the power of blank space in its ads, a novel idea that’s bound to be frowned upon by writers and ad designers.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Hyundai Card and Hyundai Capital, a financial firm associated with the Hyundai Motor company, has paid $2.2 million for all the ad space in three subway stations and four trains on a new subway line. It is leaving most of the ad spaces blank, except for a small logo. The only message is carried in the corner of huge white panels at the entrance to the stations. It says: "The world is flooded with too many ads. For a short while, we want to leave it empty for you."
The company has tied up the ad space for three years, but has not decided yet how long it will use blank ads. It reportedly is considering using the space to display art in the future.
The idea is not likely to catch fire in North America, but it might encourage a little more simplicity in some of those billboards where the old seven-word rule has been forgotten.
Posted by Carroll Trosclair
- Jack Avrett (1929–1997)
- Charlotte Beers
- Chuck Fruit (1946–2008)
- Clarence Holte (1912–1993)
- Don Logan
- William "Bill" Sharp
- Bob Wright.
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Posted by Carroll Trosclair
Football games were once events that you attended to see football and perhaps a marching band. No more. The NFL, with the help of advertisers, has turned its games into multi-ring circuses, without the elephants. They’re all about high decibels, video, smoke and fan showoffs.
Fans are treated to:
- Rap singing which they couldn’t understand if they tried
- A continuing stream of local commercial announcements
- On-field awards for teachers and other honorary folks
- A few memorable and even more forgottable singings of the National Anthem
- Announcers screaming into microphones to introduce players
Then there’s the inevitable halftime contest in which a sponsor's customer can embarrass himself trying to catch a football shot from a gun at 30, 50 and 70-yards.
That may be followed by a football passing contest. Two unknown guys see who can hit a target the most in a few seconds.
Occasionally, NFL teams spring for a real musical halftime show, but they’re more likely to invite kid teams to entertain fans by scrimmaging a few minutes.
Fans are also encouraged to entertain themselves by painting their bodies, dressing wierdly, smooching, shaking their booties or flexing muscles for the big video screens. Some "official team" advertiser is usually willing to provide a prize.
Even the cheerleaders are sponsored, but there’s not enough room on their costumes to display the names.
Maybe the caliber of the entertainment is purposely limited so that it does not halt the rush to the hot dog, beer, soft drink, popcorn, peanut, pizza and nacho stands. At $7 a beer, there's big money to be made there.
Television viewers are spared some of the stadium antics, in payment for being bombarded with network commercials and the "put some points on the board" commentaries by teams of has-been players and coaches.
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Posted by Carroll Trosclair
We need to get away from the subject of advertising occasionally to maintain a fresh perspective on that business and see its end result at work. Excuse enough? Cruising through Connecticut is a good way to refresh the mind these days.
For starters, Connecticut is a beatiful state, which you realize soon as you enter the Merritt Parkway from New York and then flow right into the Wilbur Cross Parkway, both part of Connecticut Route 15.. The parkways take you most of the way to Hartford, where the new Connecticut Science Center was opened in June 2009 amid much promotion.
Our visit there inspired the article New Connecticut Center Proves Science Can Be Fun. Lots of kids having plenty of fun and hopefully learning a lot about geology, astronomy, the environment, etc. Great place to take the kids, or grandkids.
We didn't get to take a balloon ride, but the directory of balloon operators in the Connecticut Vacation Guide was impressive and descriptive enough to remind us of a similar ride over the Temecula, California wine country. The Connecticut hills, valleys and fall foliage provide spectacular views for the balloon riders. See Connecticut Hot Air Ballooning.
The Connecticut wine industry is relatively young. However, 19 of its wineries have put together a wine trail that offers not only the usual tastings and seminars, but also many other activities to make the winery-hopping an enjoyable experience. See Connecticut Wine Trail Features 29 Wineries. The wine trail brochure. directory and map is an effective advertising tool, but we're supposed to be forgetting advertising for a while.
Posted by Carroll Trosclair
United States agencies won about 23 percent of the Grand Prix and Gold Lion awards at the 2009 Cannes Advertising Festival. However, they fared surprisingly poor in Film categories designed for television commercials, winning only one of those eleven awards.
That one Gold was won by the JWT (J. Walter Thompson) agency in New York for a pair of controversial spots made for MTV. The two commercials ridiculed senior citizens in an effort to get young people to vote in the 2008 Federal election.
One spot shows an elderly couple having trouble understanding airport security officials. The other portrays an elderly man unable to find the right button to answer his phone. Both spots end with text saying "Old people outvote young people 2 to 1. Choose or Lose."
Ridiculing Old Age
Ridiculing old people, and hinting that most of them have dementia, does not make either commercial the finest 30 seconds in the American political process. The spots would probably have been shamed off the air as racism or sexism if they had portrayed other segments of the population in that manner. Where is AARP when we need it?
The awarding of a Gold Lion to the commercials does not speak very highly of the Cannes judging criteria.
"Incredibly Crass"
Neither does an Internet video produced by The Viral Factory in London for Diesel Product Service, a British clothing firm. Even the agency said, in submitting the entry, that the video was "incredibly crass" and we might ad "tasteless." But then it boasted that the video had "achieved over 14 million views" on the Internet.
Cannes cheapens its many great Lion winners by putting the MTV and Diesel Product entries in the same Gold room with them and by encouraging similar submissions in the future.
Posted by Carroll Trosclair
American advertising lost its third media icon within two weeks when Karl Malden died July 1, 2009. Like Ed McMahon and Billy Mays, who died in late June, Malden was recognized for the television commercials he starred in for decades.
For 21 years Malden promoted American Express Travelers Cheques, closing a long series of commercials with the line "Don’t leave home without them." The commercials often depicted a person or couple losing cash on a vacation or business trip, then using their American Express Travelers Cheques to resume their trip.
Malden was chosen for the American Express role for his "everyman" resemblance that most people could relate to and because he had distinguished himself as Lieutenant Mike Stone, a tough cop in the popular 1972-77 show The Streets of San Francisco.
The "don’t leave home without them" series of commercials was proposed by David Ogilvy, the legendary head of the Ogilvy & Mather advertising agency.
Before becoming the public face of American Express Travelers Cheques, Malden won recogition as an actor on both Broadway and in Hollywood, winning awards in shows such as "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "On theWaterfront."
But many people remembered him primarily for his role in the American Express commercials. In 1989 he told the Chicago Tribune: "After 50 years of doing all those other things in the business, wherever I go, the one thing people will say to me is, ‘Don’t leave home without it.’ What am I going to say? It’s kind of frustrating in a way, but at the same time, American Express has been very good to me, and it’s given me independence."
The day that he died American Express issued a statement saying Malden "was always the leading man to his fans at American Express, and we are grateful for our long association with one of the giants of the entertainment world."
"Don’t leave home without it" is now a generic line used to promote dozens of products and services.
Sources:
"Oscar-winning actor Karl Malden dies," by Jim Cheng, USA TODAY, 7-1-09
Posted by Carroll Trosclair
We completed an article a couple of days ago saying that despite the rapid growth of new digital ad tools, traditional media will survive for years at least as niche advertising channels.
Part of the reason television, newspapers, magazines and radio will survive, experts tell us, is because consumers are comfortable with them. Millions of people would still prefer to read a publication, watch television or listen to radio than cruise the Internet for their news or entertainment, especially their entertainment.
Television’s numbers are declining, but reports say it is still the leader of the very fragmented media world that advertisers have before them.
Today, we’re told that’s partly because advertisers, like consumers, are also comfortable with television.
David Carr of the New York Times attributes that bit of insight to Brad Adgate, director of research at Horizon Media. Adgate was commenting on the networks’ continued ability to get good prices for their upfront time sales despite the Internet competition, the poor economy, etc.
"Part of what you are seeing is a comfort relationship," Adgate said. "There is a relationship with buyers that has developed over decades and there remains an attitude that if it isn’t broken completely, why fix it?"
That jells with what Mitch Berman, CEO of Zillion TV, told blogger and author Sramana Mitra. The crucial media battle, he said, is "still TV versus PC," but he added that "the TV screen is the screen of choice," not only for consumers and content providers, but also for advertisers
For more on the subject, see The Dominant Ad Media of the Future and "Niche Advertising in Traditional Media."
Posted by Carroll Trosclair
Steffan Postaer, author of "The Happy Souls Industry" and a judge at the Dubai Lynx advertising awards show, brought up the unhappy issue of scam ads just as the 2009 contest season got underway across the globe. Although most of the world probably doesn’t know what they are, Postaer refers to the "scam" or "ghost"ads as a "universal problem" in the ad contest world. Other blogs imply the same.
For the innocent among us, "scam" ads are advertising contest entries that have never really been ads. They have not been published or run on any station. They were created not for a paying client, but by an agency or individual hoping to grab fame and fortune by winning an award. They were created solely for a contest.
"With young creatives dying to become famous, the matter never ends," Postaer wrote in his "Gods of Advertising" blog from the Dubai Lynx contest.
"We are likely seeing a few scams in the Dubai Lynx," he wrote. That would be understandable because the Lynx judging is relatively new, Dubai is a relatively young ad center and "young creatives" might think it is fertile ground for sneaking in a contest-only ad.
So, what's the big deal? Great copy is great copy and beautiful graphics can be beautiful art whether they've been produced for a client or a contest. The big deal is that Lynx, Clio, the Addys and similar contests are ad competitions, not art or prose contests. Ads are tools for selling something and they must satisfy the client that they can sell whatever he wants sold. That's why the client should be the first judge of any ad.
Postaer said the Dubai people were "methodical in handling this universal problem and do a marvelous job maintaining the show’s integrity."
Posted by Carroll Trosclair
You can’t be more civilly opinionated about "Mad Men" and "Trust Me" than the guy who wrote: "For the love of all humanity, please stop writing shows about advertising." We don’t think he likes either show. And he’s not alone.
Another reader responding to "TNT's Trust Me Advertising Show" said "it really is hard to like a coke-addled bi-polar Creative Director who still thinks it's 1978 and styles his hair accordingly." Sorry, Tom Cavanagh, he doesn’t like you, or at least your role.
Still another reader (without any justification we assume they are all men) doesn’t think we would like much about the ad business itself. "The truth," he writes, "is that the dysfunction and dishonesty that are part and parcel of working in advertising would make stomach-turning viewing. So would the commonplace contempt hipsters, aka younger creatives, have for consumers."
Our first correspondent likes "Mad Men" better than "Trust Me." That's "only because it's based in the 60's and that's what all of us in the business want to think is was like and nobody around to tell us differently."
Well, there are a few of us still around, but some of us toiled in the hinterlands and the Gotham Giants usually insisted we knew nothing about real advertising. Maybe, maybe thankfully, they were right.
Anyway, Correspondent No. 1 had this advice for the "Trust Me" producers: "If you want to do it, get some real life ad people in there and leave the Hollywood bozos to continue messing up law firms and doctor's offices."
To be fair, some people like "Trust Me," but we’re not sure how many are in the ad business.
Posted by Carroll Trosclair
The Rose Bowl and Macy’s parades thrive on sponsorships and advertising, but New Orleans carnival krewes still say "don’t advertise on my parade."
Actually, the city government long ago turned the krewes’ old tradition against ads into a legal ban against advertising in carnival parades. The krewes, or carnival clubs, are non-profit organizations that pride themselves on conducting what they call "the greatest free show on earth."
They finance the parades, including floats, costumes and millions of dollars worth of souvenir throws with membership dues, assessments and fund raisers. Though the costs of individual parades can run into hundreds of thousands, and in some cases millions of dollars, the 27 New Orleans parades accept no advertising.
It is simply a tradition that goes back to the 19th Century and is guarded carefully to avoid the commercialization of carnival. The ban even applies to the millions of souvenirs that the krewes throw to the crowds. The city parades stand out as a commercial-free island in an ocean of advertising.
The anti-commercial tradition is not as strong in the suburbs. Outside the city, the krewes and their parades are younger. Some struggle harder to make ends meet.
The advertising issue is a recurring one in the city and the suburbs, especially in troubled economic times. Three of the 55 parades scheduled in the Greater New Orleans area for 2009 were cancelled.
Some promoters visualize bigger, more expensive floats financed by advertising. But the city and its krewes have maintained the ad ban at least through the 2009 carnival season.
The 2009-10 economy could provide another severe test of the tradition.
Reference: "Mardi Gras Guide," 33rd Annual Edition 2009, Copyright Arthur Hardy Enterprises Inc.
Posted by Carroll Trosclair
Don’t believe anyone who tells you that websites have killed the retail catalog business. Our family still receives dozens per year, most of which we’ve never requested and few of which we ever get to read.
Hammacher Schlemmer of New York City claims to be "America’s longest running catalog" and it is the champion at least in our household. In 2008, we received 13 of them, all in full color and ranging in size from 72 to 96 pages.
The front cover of each says: "Offering the Best, the Only and the Unexpected for 160 years." Inside the "Holiday Preview" issue, we’re told that "five generations of customers have frequented our landmark store or browsed our catalog."
Began in The Bowery in 1848
The company began in 1848 with a store in the Bowery of New York City.
"From the days of velvet-lined hardware display cases and doormen donned in tailcoats, to our current white glove delivery service on select purchases, we at Hammacher Schlemmer strive for customer service second to none," it adds.
Each catalog contains pictures and detailed descriptions of unique items, muost of which you probably would not find in either Walmart or Macy’s. Samples:
Sample Items
A 3-wheeled cooler that can carry 24 beverage cans and eight pounds of ice while being ridden at 14 miles per hour on a 500-watt electric motor.
A fiberglass rocket ride, complete with rocket sound effects, like you used to find in front of supermarkets in the 1960s.
A walking stick that converts into a four and a half inch telescope, "allowing you to quickly discern the details of your environment."
You’ll find those and about 300 other gizmos and unique items in most issues, each with pictures, prices, shipping weight and descriptions that read better than a lot of magazines do.
The company says it hopes to keep it up for another 160 years. We hope they do.
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Posted by Carroll Trosclair
Agencies for Burger King, Stove Top and other companies demonstrated in 2008 just how far the industry will go to be different.
Crispin Porter & Bogusky of Miami sent an expensive production crew 20,000 miles to rural areas of the world for Burger King’s "Whopper Virgin" ads. According to The Telegraph of London, the crew used "13 planes, two dog sleds and one helicopter" to find unbiased "whopper virgins" in Greenland, Thailand and Romania. They even brought their own hamburger cooking equipment. We may never know how much they spent just producing the commercials and accompanying documentary. See "Whopper Virgins."
Heated roofs were installed in 10 downtown bus shelters to help illustrate the warm feeling that Kraft’s Stove Top stuffing can give you.
Microsoft reportedly spent millions to get Jerry Seinfeld to co-star in a series of commercials with Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Imagine what those two would cost on the open talent market.
Victoria's Secret
Victoria’s Secret went beyond a few 30-second commercials. It produced a 43 minute televised style show to illustrate how little clothing it could show on million dollar models.
Coca Cola’s 2008 Super Bowl commercial illustrated how much more freedom that agencies now have in producing commercials. The telelvision spot featured three huge balloons breaking away from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and chasing an equally-large balloon Coke in the skies above Manhattan. The commercial probably would have been impossible, or at least tremendously expensive, to produce without computer graphics, which have opened a whole new world of possibilities for advertisers.