Another Bloody Blog Post...

Just a couple of quick things today. So I have been drinking this water for the past few months and I think it’s pretty cool. I like the look of the Another Bloody Water bottle, the anti-marketing feel of the name and copy, and I must admit, I think the shape and color of the bottle and text to be pretty stylish.

Apparently, three guys started the company: one a local food distributor, a graphic designer and an ad guy.

Companies need to tread a fine line when they are going down the “anti-marketing” marketing approach. It can quite easily come off as tricky and un-authentic by a cynical audience. But in this case I think they have walked that fine line quite well and tapped into something I think a lot of us have probably thought about before - IT'S JUST BLOODY WATER!

Makes me think about what else we could apply this slogan to. Another Bloody Energy Drink. Another Bloody boutique Beer. Another Bloody Social Networking Site. Another Bloody Reality TV Show....

Who likes Riddles and Paradox's? A couple of my favorites are:

• What starts with "e" ends with "e" and contains only one letter? An envelope.
• Why is it called the 100-year war when it lasted for 116 years?

My friend Ed sent me this little paradox yesterday: according to a study from McKinsey & Co, regarding the effectiveness of TV advertising, by 2010 they predict:

• A 23 percent decline in ads viewed due to switching off.
• Nine percent loss of attention to ads due to increased multitasking.
• A 37 percent decrease in message impact due to saturation

And the real kicker: real ad spending on prime-time broadcast TV has increased over last decade by about 40 percent even as viewers have dropped almost 50 percent.

A free case of Bloody Water for anyone who can explain that one to me!

Fragmentation and Advertising Value

So I listened to the Cameron Reilly interview with Geoffrey Bowll, Managing Director of Melbourne based ad agency Starship today. Excellent interview! Two intelligent guys, not afraid to call a spade a shovel. Definitely give it a listen. And thanks to Jake to bringing it to our attention :)
One thing Geoffrey Bowll was talking about in the podcast was, with the decline in TV audiences and increasing media and audience fragmentation, how this could be used by advertisers and marketers to their advantage.

Consider a simple (crude example). Suppose a clothing manufacturer has two choices to advertise their products; TV ads and Podcast sponsorship.

TV ads: cost of ad airtime = $20,000 for 1,000,000 views or eyeballs.
So, disregarding notions of brand awareness and loyalty etc, for this ad to just break-even (at an industry standard 10% EBIT return on Sales) it would require $200,000 worth of sales. If we assumed each purchase for a person was approx. $50, that would be 4000 customers, from that one ad, that would need to be compelled to purchase the product to achieve an acceptable ROI on the advertising expense.
To break-even:
TV ad rate of return per set of eyeballs is $0.2 (each person who sees the ad needs to spend approx 20 cents on your product to break-even)
TV ad conversion rate needs to be 0.4%, which is the percent of people who saw the ad that need to buy the product to break-even, (given an average purchase price of $50 per person).

Podcast sponsorship: Now let’s consider the alternative. Suppose there was a podcast dedicated to fashion. This podcast has a modest audience of about 30,000 listeners. Rremember people who are listening to a fashion dedicated podcast are most likely fashion enthusiast, industry people and early adopters - a marketer’s wetdream.
Ok, so the audience is small but the cost of the sponsorship will be small also. Let’s say the cost of sponsorship is $1000 per podcast episode (this is an upper range estimate - the rate for most popular podcast is $25 per thousand listeners / downloader’s).
To break-even the podcast ad would need to generate $10,000 worth of sales. This gives us the following to break-even figures:
Podcast ad rate of return per set of eyeballs is $0.33
Podcast ad conversion rate needs to be 0.67%

If you are aiming to get 4 people out of every 1000 people who see your TV ad to purchase your product (with the likely TV audience a scattered demographic), getting 7 out of every 1000 people who hear you podcast ad, with an audience that you know is interested in a similar topic, likes to support the "free podcast” they are receiving and are generally early adopters, seems like a walk in the park.

My advice to anyone considering moving from traditional media advertising to new alternatives: Give it a try on a small scale. Build in tools and applications that enable you to track results. The small cost of new media makes it a small risk in which you can easily track the results.

And for those that think fragmentation and the shift from traditional media is not happening, check this article on Afterworld. Afterworld is the first television series to be made available on mobile phones and the web simultaneously, created by three-time Emmy-nominated producer Stan Rogow.

Has Diggnation uncovered the secret to successful IPTV advertising?

For anyone who has ever watched Diggnation (the IPTV show comprising of Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht sitting on a couch staring at their laptops talking about the most popular stories on Digg in the past week) there is no doubt that had they pitched this to a network executive they would have been shown the door in the first 5 minutes. But each week 250 thousand people download the show and for the advertising pioneers who have loaded up the wagons and taken their ad spend over to Digg land, they are getting far more than they bargained for.

Diggnation offer their sponsors an advertising system that would send shivers down the spine of most media buyers. The ads all appear in one block at the end of the show, presented by the hosts themselves in a loosely scripted manner with no guarantee that the brand message will be concisely articulated and they employ no flashy CGI or smooth as silk voice overs. So what's the advantage for companies like to GoDaddy advertise with them? Unlike traditional commercials people actually watch them! Not only do viewers stick around to watch the 2 hosts bumble though their sponsorship announcements (which are usually just as entertaining as the rest of the show) their is also a feeling of obligation from the viewer to support the company that supports the show. Digg watchers are no doubt aware of how difficult it is for net cast shows like this get sponsorship and the more Rose and Albrecht position themselves as "the little guys" of broadcast television the more their viewers feel like helping them out in any way they can. If this means checking out the sponsors website or mentioning their name here and there then so be it. After all "any friend of Diggnation is a friend of mine".

So is it worth it for the advertisers? definitely. They may be tapping into a smaller audience than a 30second ad spot during prime time, but they can be sure that the viewers will watch the ad, pay attention to the offering and given the opportunity support the company that's supporting the show they love.

How is TV and web advertising like Friday work drinks?

If my ad goes out to a prime time audience of 2million people then obviously this is more valuable than a web marketing campain that nets 100,000 hits right? I am going to use an analogy to answer this question so bare with me if I digress a little.

Lets say your meeting a few people for Friday after work drinks, most of the group you know but there are a couple of new people there, friends of your friends. Its busy at the local watering hole but you make an effort to take notice when your being introduced to the new people in the group. You take note of the persons name, what they look like, how they are connected to the people you know. Whilst this is taking place, there are about 100 people in the background that you don't know talking to one another, you glance around the room every so often, you hear snippets of conversations but by and large your more focused on the conversation at hand.

Now imagine that you are asked to take a survey about your evening, focusing on what you have seen an heard that night. Can you recognise the face of every person in the room? Do you recall the subject of the conversations that were going on around you?

I wont question the fact that your ad was played to 2million people, but the question is how many of them were paying attention? How many of them hit the mute button? How many got up to make a cup of tea? How many turned away to have a conversation with their partner? TV advertising is a lot like the crowd at the bar, they're there, you can hear them, you can see them but more often than not, your not paying attention to them.

On the other hand, the web marketing campaign is a lot like the new people you meet. You take the time to remember their name, you focus on them, listen to them, find out a little about them. Someone who takes even the shortest amount of time to go to your website has obviously made an effort to find out more about you.

The result is that at the end of the day your much better off with 1 person that takes the time to get to know your company than a million people who don't remember you.