12 May 2010

Consumers Hesitant To Embrace E-Reader Advertising

The CMO Council’s new study:

CONSUMERS HESITANT TO EMBRACE E-READER ADVERTISING; OPT FOR TANGIBLE, BUT TARGETED, EXPERIENCES IN MAGAZINES
image Consumers are holding on to their magazines, not ready to join the e-reader revolution, but are open to change in the form of more relevant and targeted, personalized advertising engagements …

“Consumers view magazines as part of an overall experience, likely rooted in leisure and relaxation. The advertising within print publications is viewed as part of that experience, similar to the commercials during the Super Bowl. What is telling is that regardless of channel, consumers are demanding a more personalized engagement, not necessarily a more digital one when it comes to their leisure time publications.”

image As usual, it all sounds very familiar.  NostraChuckus had something to say about this subject years ago:

Positioning Magazines for Baby Boomers (April, 2007)
There are active and passive parts of our day. Without getting into too much psychobabble, as you get older the passive side needs more nourishment. It’s not really passive. It’s focused absorption. At some point you have to climb out of your frenetic digital nest and concentrate on one thing. It might be reading a book, watching a TV show or movie, listening to music, looking out the window.

Or immersing yourself in a magazine.

This isn’t ‘down time’ (that would be sleeping), but nourishing your psyche by absorbing and not actively being involved in what you’re doing.

image Magazines do not compete with the various offerings slithering and exploding in a digital nest … It’s like a pleasant dinner, a walk, a good movie, a good book – to be singularly appreciated.

… For a big part of their day Baby Boomers are happy to fly far from all the chaos and into another nest – one that is warm and nourishing. That’s where they will find, among other delectable items, your magazine.

And the smaller these doodads get, the less visceral impact they will have:

Foretellings
image The visual power of the web will fade as more people use handheld devices.  Goodbye, fancy-schmancy web sites. People will get bored sifting through it all when they can find what they need with their smartphones …

That silly retronym “traditional advertising” will remain the premiere force for introducing people to a product or service, along with sustaining its shelf life. Television, print, radio, and billboard ads will continue to have the visceral power they’ve always had – if only for their sheer size, simplicity, and cutting-edge audio/visual qualities.  Advertising on smartphones will be considered an annoyance, invasive, and rather dinky – while marketing (coupons on steroids, and more) will flourish and dominate.

More:

image In a Fast World, There is Still Room for Slow and Steady
… Most members of the Baby Boom and Silent Generation would agree that a fast-paced world does not mean everything in it has to be at the speed of a texting pre-teen.

10 May 2010

HR/Brain Roll

I’m on a Human Resources/Brain roll. My last post:

Memo to H.R: Older Brains = Smarter Brains

image The first roll was in 2003, before blogs were known as blogs.  You’ll have to take a wild ride on The WayBack Machine to find it:

Advertising to Baby Boomers: Back into the Fold (June 26, 2003)
image Truth is, you can analyze marketing fodder all day and night, read countless books about marketing to Baby Boomers, attend advertising and marketing conventions around the world, and soak up everything all the experts have to say. Much of what is out there is valuable and useful, some practically required reading, others instructive and illuminating. But if you plan on implementing a creative strategy, and turn it over to a different generation of advertising professionals—you'll forfeit the natural sensibilities required to generate vital campaigns.

Since then, a book – and scores of posts.  A handful:

Hire Baby Boomer Creatives
NostraChuckus predicts the future. Again.

The Trouble with HR
image It makes all the sense in the world for ad makers (both clients and agencies) to be well-stocked with people who understand consumers, whether young people who fathom the mysteries of cyberspace, a good mixture of people who reflect the ethnic and cultural diversity of our country, and, yes, even older people who understand the vitality and buying power of the great gorge of baby boomers overtaking our land. – Rance Crain

Older Employees' Better Coping Skills Mean Better Engagement

image Thanks to Kim Walker of Silver Group Asia, we now know that Singapore is a leader in the HR revolution:

Singapore Promotes The Benefits Of Older Workers
image Singapore's Ministry of Manpower has launched a multimedia campaign created by Dentsu to promote the employment of older workers. Through the campaign, MOM aims to highlight the importance and benefits of employing older workers to CEOs, HR Directors, HR Managers and Line Managers.

Do we have anything like this produced by the U.S. Department of Labor?  Or any other government entity? I haven’t seen any.  We’re too busy pushing Social Security – which is well and good and appreciated.  But perhaps we should also do a bit of vigorous, high-profile advertising that would benefit and expand the economy:

07 May 2010

Memo to H.R: Older Brains = Smarter Brains

I can’t seem to get away from this book:

The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain
For advertisers, everything she says is important.  Ms. Strauch talks about “creating a disorienting dilemma” and “shaking up the cognitive egg” to get our attention – not something usually done when advertising to Baby Boomers. Most ads pander and lull us to sleep.

image Carla Fried of CBS Moneywatch profiled the book:

Memo to H.R:
Older Brains
= Smarter Brains

image A new book makes the case that our brains can age as well as a vintage French burgundy; many of our most important cognitive functions actually improve with age … as Strauch’s book makes clear … older workers can provide valuable brain power to an organization.

I said pretty much the same thing a few days before, commenting on a New York Times interview with Barbara Strauch:

image

My book also surprised me after I read it:

The Trouble with HR
image While writing the first edition of my book way back in 2004, I ripped through it without much of a third eye – meaning, I knew what it was about but I had no idea what it was going to end up being.  When I received copies from my publisher, cracked open one, and finished it, I had a minor epiphany.  “This is really a book about HR.”  Kind of a shock, since I certainly didn’t plan it as such.  I’m one of those creative types, not a Human Resources person.

I wonder if Ms. Strauch had some of those same thoughts about her book.

I'll leave you with a quote from Rosser Reeves:

Old Masters and Young Geniuses
"No, I don't think a 68-year-old copywriter can write with the kids. That he's as creative. That he's as fresh. But he may be a better surgeon. His ad may not be quite as fresh and glowing as the Madison Ave. fraternity would like to see it be, and yet he might write an ad that will produce five times the sales. And that's the name of the game, isn't it?"

06 May 2010

The Year Of The Baby Boomer Brain

Have I blogged that already?  Sometimes I get distracted, forgetful.

Ahhh. I guess I did:

image2010: The Year of The Baby Boomer Brain
Researchers have confirmed what many mature people already know – intelligence actually gets sharper with age.

And there’s that book. I finally read it. I think:

The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain
image For many years, scientists thought that the human brain simply decayed over time and its dying cells led to memory slips, fuzzy logic, negative thinking, and even depression. But new research from neuroscien­tists and psychologists suggests that, in fact, the brain reorganizes, improves in important functions, and even helps us adopt a more optimistic outlook in middle age.

Now we have even more research about older brains … although something tells me I’ve seen it all before – but I can’t remember …

Sometimes Older Really Is Wiser
By PAULA SPAN
image “Our study is one of the first to show that some cognitive processes seem to improve in old age.”

Have I blogged that already?  I don’t remember.  Sometimes I get distracted, forgetful.

01 May 2010

Foretellings

NostraChuckus, that uncannily somewhat accurate prognosticator who mostly deals with predicting common sense, is at it again:

Social Media/Word-of-mouth advertising/marketing on the web has been a washout:

The Failure of Web Advertising
image While the web itself has been a massive success (influencing virtually every aspect of our lives) advertising on the web is mostly a bad joke.

Fifteen years into its mainstream life, television had created scores of powerful consumer-facing brands.

The only truly powerful brands I can think of that web advertising has created are native web brands like Google, Yahoo, Amazon and Facebook. It's as if the only brands television was good at creating were CBS, NBC and ABC.

I’ve talked about this for years:

The Latest WOM On WOMM

5 Reasons Why 90% Of Social Media Efforts Fail

Is roiling ether the best place for advertising?

Snake Oil In Cyberspace
Perhaps … it is simply a case of older users being a bit more savvy about marketing ploys, social networking, and the intermixing of the two.

While Dick Stroud might not agree with everything I’ve said so far (or what I’m about to say), he did get me thinking …

Why are marketers so conservative
image To me it is as obvious as the nose on your face that smartphones will dominate the mobile market … It is an absolute no brainer. This applies to the older and younger market and all groups in between.

image Smartphones could end up dominating more than that. With the exception of the workplace, smartphones (along with iPads and Kindles or something like them) might just make desktops and laptops and the web as we know it obsolete.  If ‘being connected’ mostly means communicating with friends, doing simple search, reading the news - then all that’s really needed is a smartphone. 

And the more people use smartphones, the less they’ll tolerate silly graphical doodads mucking up their small  screens. (I’m not including digital games– that’s another industry.)

Steve Jobs already knows this:

Thoughts On Flash
image Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it.

My advertising/marketing predictions and not-technical-because-I’m-not-a-tech-guy recommendations:

  1. The visual power of the web will fade as more people use handheld devices.  Goodbye, fancy-schmancy web sites. People will get bored sifting through it all when they can find what they need with their smartphones.

  2. image How this will play out, I don’t know – but the ‘web’ needs to be rethought.  Accessing a page on a desktop or laptop is not the same as accessing it on a smartphone.  There will have to be two separate ‘webs’ for large screens, small screens. People will get very tired very fast clumsily negotiating bulky pages on handheld devices. Usability cannot be ignored.  Laptops and Desktops will only be utilized for deep research or visual treats. 

  3. That silly retronym “traditional advertising” will remain the premiere force for introducing people to a product or service, along with sustaining its shelf life. Television, print, radio, and billboard ads will continue to have the visceral power they’ve always had – if only for their sheer size, simplicity, and cutting-edge audio/visual qualities.  Advertising on smartphones will be considered an annoyance, invasive, and rather dinky – while marketing/search (coupons on steroids, and more) will flourish and dominate.