Get a Cane for Commercials

A recent e-Marketer daily article talked about TV as "old media" and mentioned the decreasing influence it has in sales and the slowly decreasing amount of money being spent on television commercials as a result.

As a DVR queen, I agree. I love my DVR and rarely watch live TV--and its attendant commercials--anymore.

I do watch a couple of shows that I think are taking this "old media" in a great new direction. The first is the Sci-Fi Channel's series, "Eureka." I've adored this series for a while and was upset when they were in danger of going off the air before the writer's strike. When it came back (yea!) I immediately saw how they did it.

New sponsor. In this case, Degree deodorant. Degree sponsored a large part of the show and got prime commercial slots in exchange as well as custom commercials that only aired on Sci-Fi featuring sets and cast-members from the show. Airing these commercials during the show's time slot also meant that DVR Queens like me would stop fast-forwarding when we saw familiar faces & sets, and, since these commercials always immediately pre-saged the return to the show, I rarely bothered to fast forward through them. Brilliant!

The other series doing it right is "Fringe". I love the eerie splash screen that tells me ~exactly~ how long the commercial break will be. Only 60 seconds? Might as well let it run and grab a soda (meaning I see some of the commercial and hear all of it--things which would not have happened it I'd fast-forwarded it). I'm also pretty sure that Fringe sells smaller commercial blocks. They still pack in plenty of commericals, up to 5 during a 90-second break, but they waste less time on them. I like that. :-)

TV is not a dead media yet, but marketers need to learn to stop treating TV viewers like a captive audience--thanks to TiVo and the like they aren't. Make us WANT to watch your commericals :-)

Seeking out... New markets?

Apparently the world is not enough for Doritos.

In June 2008, Frito Lay, the parent company of Doritos, is sponsoring the first ever interstellar advertisement.

Once you stop laughing (or maybe that was just me), you can check out the full article at Science Daily.

The star system they are aiming for is about 42 light years away and scientists theorize that some of its planets may support life forms similar to those on Earth. At 84 years round-trip, not including time to pack and plan, it seems a rather long ROI for Frito Lay.

Tree Killers!

That, in a nutshell, is what most Americans think of direct mailers. An interesting, if slightly out of date, article at e-Marketer gives the details.

Apparently junk mail, the actual physical kind, only accounts for about 2% of municipal waste. The average person asked credited it as being 1/3 to 1/2! That's a big difference.

Compare that to spam, which most people just blow off as a nuisance--Spam accounts for 98% of all email sent!

It's also a perception to keep in mind if you are considering a direct mail campaign. Most of the people surveyed did say they would think better of a company that sent their DM piece on recycled paper

Ah, Editors!

I have to admit, I live for stories like this one from the Entrepreneur.com blog.

Nothing says, "yes, editors really do have a purpose in life," like a little commercial embarrassment for the people who didn't use one. Localization is also a GOOD thing :-)

Just in case you want to cut to the good parts, here are the sites the Entrepreneur blog links to. Be warned, they are a bit irreverent and the ad content (not the articles, just the ads) may or may not get you in trouble at work.

The top 10 unintentionally worst company URLs

Top 13 Worst Slogan Translations Ever

Homework

I forgot how much *work* homework and classes can be.

I'm taking an SEO and website marketing class (technically two classes they require you to take concurrently) to learn a little bit more about the non-content aspects of SEO for my site. I'm hoping to learn a little more about design/marketing, too, since while I love the site Kimmer did for me, it's starting to feel like time to change things up. Plus I do all my own updates and the tables are driving me NUTS!

This is work. Seriously, like WORK. Since it's all about learning to market myself, this qualifies as marketing time, right?

Shameless Self Promotion

Ah, my first blog. I am actually a little ashamed to say I am not an avid blog fan. The only ones I've ever read were linked to from someone's email or website. I've never sought them out. I don't have any bookmarked to see what new wit, wisdom, or gobbledygook some stranger is pounding out on the keyboard that day. In short, WTH do I have my own.

Truthfully? I *don't* know. I just don't. I just joined a new (to me) writing group, MomWriters (www.momwriters.com) and a number of the messages from other members included blog links this weekend. I was intrigued. I followed the link. I read their blogs...

In a way, blogging is a bit weird to me. So many of them are essentially personal journals published on the internet. How brave is that? I'd be terribly afraid I'd rant on about a neighbor driving me nuts, the 'evil' kid who teased my daughter at school, the moron teaching my new writing class, whatever, and a few days later the person in question would come up to me with a printout of my blog and want to know WTH my problem is. Trust me, with my luck & karma, this is EXACTLY how it would go.

So, I'm planning this blog to be a bit more professional, a bit of blatant self-promotion. I have recently hung out my shingle as a freelance business writer and virtual assistant. If you want to know what a VA is, check out www.ivaa.org; they have a great definition that I don't want to re-type. Obviously, if you write, people want to know what you've written. Well, now I can add blogging to my currently painfully thin list of credits and move on, and send them somewhere to get an idea of my style. Maybe. Still not sure I want to actually tell anyone I'm doing this!

That ought to be enough to get me started. Since this is only semi-professional, I can now admit I'm going to post this and go indulge in another guilty online pleasure, a rousing hour or so of 'City of Heroes'.

G'Night World - Wish me Luck (or at least a minimum of typos)
Dy