New form of in-game advertising

When I was watching the 2013 Slaughter of disliked rival Oklahoma Cotton Bowl, I saw a type of ad layout I had never seen before.

I hope this is an anomaly and not a trend.  Other wise, American sporting events will not be the same.

Sau Paulo says no thanks to billboards

In 2006, the mayor of São Paulo mayor banned the use of outdoor advertising, including billboards and transit. Initially, the business community was alarmed, and worried that there would be millions in lost revenue and tens of thousands of lost jobs. But a 2011 study showed that 70 percent of the city’s residents find the ban to be beneficial. The ban…

Via Populous

More pictures on tirafoto's flickr.

Digital Agencies.

Interesting benchmark on how we're doing on digital. These agencies I love, but we need to get on the boat and remember we are in the business of speaking in behalf of our brands no matter what the media is. The message and the experience tied to consumer-product relevance.

Which makes me think. Souldn't our first brand be our own agencies?

Thoughts?

News Roundup

Thanks to Naveed's Weekly Digest for all the links below.

• Tan Le demonstrates a headset that reads its user's brainwaves.


• Hello HTML5. Goodbye Flash.


• Some ground breaking news about the new health care reform bill: Children strongly oppose one aspect of it.


• Naveed gave a presentation about the effectiveness of the Old Spice campaign to a packed house.


• There are three types of happiness. Which one are you?

The future of coworking is here

Conjuncted is a coworking concept that recently launched in Austin where freelancers or others can pay a small fee to share a professional work environment with others. The following is from one of the founders and Texas Creative alumni Cesar.

Coworking is quickly gaining popularity in our backyard. Just this Sunday, Conjunctured was featured with our friends at LaunchPad Coworking and Caroline Collective (Houston) on the front page of the Statesman's Life & Arts section. Our pal Omar did a great job capturing the developments with the story, video and pictures—view the extensive coverage here:


Since July 1, we've had time to repair the A/C (whoo Texas!), stock the place with snacks and drinks and get some superfast wi-fi installed. We even acquired a few temporary pieces of furniture (folding/rolly chairs, plastic tables) so we could fire up our laptops. Check conjunctured.com/rates for a list of current features and amenities and a wish list we need help with. Our goal is to furnish this place well-enough by the end of the month then throw a shindig to celebrate, which you're totally invited to—more details as they develop.

We're working with a local interior designer, Adrienne Breaux, to help sketch out a dream plan for the interior that will encourage work + play + community. Moving forward, we don't expect to have this plan fulfilled right off the bat, but we're fine with that. Just as several of you helped us lease the space by paying months in advance (you are rock stars!), we're bootstrapping this all the way.

When the plan is complete, it will serve as our vision—something to work towards. In the moment, however, let's get coworking in the space, and in Austin, ASAP! The free coffee's a-flowin' and we're paying rent regardless of ugly paint or a lack of furniture. :) Come see the space—help us imagine the layout, share your thoughts. Or, if you're like us and excited about the opening of Austin's first coworking space, come work with the five paying coworkers who are willing to work on the temporary furniture we've got!


As always, thanks SO much for helping us bring Conjunctured Coworking to Austin.


Lots of love,
Cesar, David, Dusty + John
Conjunctured


PS: As always, we're looking for desk or conference room sponsors (we want to keep costs as low as possible for everyone) and new great people like you to be a part of the community. Contact us if you have questions/leads!

21st century story telling

Basically, advertising is story telling. And story telling is about communication. Both are about communicating to people a certain plot line, memory, or message. The internet and new technologies have allowed people to communicate even more effectively and interactively. More often than not, it has enhanced the conveyed message. In the case of Local Projects, it has also fostered community.

Below are some examples.


A very inspirational digital storytelling company called Local Projects. From Dwell.







An interactive twise on the traditional (especially in the Southern US) story telling quilt. Via Its Nice That.

Church Marketing Sucks

For those of us who work in the branding/marketing communications department of churches, there's a site called Church Marketing Sucks. I think it's intriguing how more and more churches are hiring business people and applying marketing communication principles to spreading the Gospel of Christ. I first read about how many non-profits fail because they don't even have basic business operating fundamentals in The Cathedral Within by Bill Shore. If you go to Volunteer Match, a lot of the help wanted listings are for marketing help. As more and more churches are growing, I hear of more and more churches hiring art directors, creative directors, marketing directors, and account executives from the for-profit world.

Model Citizen or Model Consumer?

Model Citizen or Model Consumer?

by Dean Terry, Art & Technology professor at The University of Texas at Dallas

editor's note:
In somewhat related news, Dean Terry has produced a film about isolation and lack of community in contemporary suburbia entitled Subdivided. Read press coverage here and here. Thanks to Jenny for the link to this article.


Originally Published in the Dallas Morning News

It comes as no surprise that Americans are under severe stress due to crushing debt levels and a savings rate that is basically zero. It’s not surprising because we are encouraged to over-consume by nearly every facet of culture and media. Worse, we have internalized consumerism to the point where it has become our value system.

As media critic Mark Crispin Miller told me recently, we have been reduced to being “receivers of messages that constantly tell us that the only thing that matters in life is to go shopping and then stay home with your stuff.” Which is, as he says, “profoundly anti-democratic.”

We have replaced the model of “citizen” with the model of “consumer.” The citizen model encouraged group involvement, debate, and community. The consumer model encourages immediate gratification and personal indulgence. It replaces the real empowerment of civic engagement with a fantasy of empowerment enabled through consumer products.

And not only has the role of consumer become our primary function in society, it has, in large respects, become our religion.

The new Ikea is like the big blue consumer cathedral of Frisco, dominating the landscape like the pyramids (except much uglier). And the hype surrounding its opening is like any new blip on the shopping landscape: its novelty arouses us for a short while, but then we’re on the hunt again for the next promise of material salvation.

And if consumerism is our new religion, one aspect is conspicuously absent: the ethical one. We shop without considering the larger ramifications of our purchases. How and where was this product made? Who and what am I supporting by paying for this thing? How are the workers treated? (The difference between Wal-Mart and Costco, for example). We are encouraged to isolate the buying experience into how it will make us feel in the moment and to ignore the larger effects. These days the effects reach all around the world.

And as Americans we like to think we have a system and ideas worthy of exporting to the world. If the American Dream has degenerated in to a consumer dystopia, we might want to do some rethinking. Here in the wealthiest county in Texas we serve as a kind of model. It is an unsustainable ideal. Our hyper consumptive, supersized lifestyle is a disastrous example for the rest of the world. Especially in booming places like China, where if everyone drove the aptly named Suburban and bought oversized houses the environment would literally collapse.

Some say “personal responsibility” is the answer. True enough when it’s a fair fight, but it’s not. As individuals we are grossly outmatched by enormous propaganda campaigns, market studies, Ivy League psychologists, and “perception managers” who do just that – manage our perceptions of everything. Sadly, they also manage the perceptions we have of ourselves.

This is especially offensive when it comes to our children. The marketing most of us were subjected to growing up seems quaint compared to the industry that is aggressively targeting the youth of today.

Our kids are being trained to be good consumers, which is certainly not the same thing as being a good person, or a good American. Girls get shopping mall games and boys get mini-Hummers, the very symbol of excessive, wasteful consumption.

And everything is branded. Few well-designed toys exist that are not cross-selling something else: sugary snacks, sugary pop idols, animated characters.

Walking through a mega toy store you get the sense that life is nothing but a series of acquisitions. That basically childhood is a matter of working your way through the different departments, front to back. Then you get to head to the big box stores and the SUV lot. Then you get a starter castle. Your identity is defined by what you have, even if it’s the same thing everyone else has.

If consumerism has replaced citizenship, then the more stuff you have the higher your status. And as long as status is equated with stuff our personal, financial, and civic lives will continue to deteriorate. It’s good for the marketers, but it’s bad for democracy.

The American philosopher William James said that worship of success was our national disease. The problem is, in order to cure the disease, we have to admit that we are afflicted in the first place.

Ads infect PDFs

The virus that is advertising has made its way into the PDF, Adobe's popular file type. Yahoo! reached an agreement with Adobe that will allow the search monster to place dynamic advertising into the sides of PDF files. It's unclear if the ads will be incorporated into Adobe Reader or the ads themselves. The BBC article makes it seem like the ads will be accessbile from any PDF reader. So, say goodbye to the integrity of the PDF, since the whole point of a PDF is to allow the designer to have total control over the content of the document.

UT does Chipotle

If God wanted a burrito, he'd go to Chipotle.

Well, at least, that's sort of what an ad two students from UT's Portfolio III class think.

Chipotle is holding it's second "30 Seconds of Fame" competition where universities from around the country are asked to submit a 30 second TV commercial promoting the Chipotle brand. The contest boasts a $30,000 grand prize for the winning team. $15,000 goes to the winning team, with the remaining $15,000 going to their university.

Zach Vernon and Suzy Elizondo, as well as Josh Horn and Andrew Goldthwait accepted the challenge and came up with some good work.

Team Stop! Animation (Zach and Suzy) were fortunate enough to make it into the 12 finalists chosen by Chipotle.

It is now up to the web-surfers and procrastinators of America to cast their votes for the best commercial of the 12 by going to youtube and watching their favorite ad (and possibly giving it a good rating and maybe adding it to their favorites...).

In order to support the UT - Austin team, follow the link accompanying this post (click the title of the post) to view their commercial, aptly titled, "Natural Selection."

I'm sure Team Stop! Animation would really appreciate it. I'm quite certain they would, actually.

Hook'em.

-Zach Vernon

Not enough talented advertising graduates

Thanks to DRoth for the heads up about this article. Scroll down for the article or click on the post title.

I'd like to comment on two of his points.

1. The shortage of talent has also driven up salaries to record levels.

The average starting salary for advertising graduates is around $30,000. Although the source is only one school's Career Office, I know that estimate is accurate based on my conversations with people around the country.

$30,000 is not a record level salary. I have a friend who works at an interactive SEO agency and her starting salary is around that range too so I'm not sure if he's referring to traditional or interactive agencies.

2. The problem begins in the universities.

Geoffrey Roche, a very successful ECD in Canada had this to say about the way the advertising industry treats its jr. level employees.

"The greatest paradox in our industry and the most cruel joke in the biz. Kids save their money, their parents mortgage their homes, they take out student loans, attend prestigious design schools for 4 years, finally get their degree and what do we tell them? “You need experience for this entry-level job that pays a little more than a waiter earns!”

Deb Morrison, the renown former Chairperson of the Texas Creative Program had this to say about teaching new media and the convergence of industry and academia.

DWen: Do you think portfolio programs should take into account the current and future trends of interactive and viral advertising when teaching jr. creatives? What about direct mail and direct marketing?

Wow. The convergence + the immense growth of so many creative content opportunities tells us that 1 -- careers can shake and rattle in so many ways and 2 -- advertising curriculum has to keep up. That's not easy. But we should be ready to bring smart and engaged people in, to flexibly reform classes, and to help guide trends, not just react to them. Academe should be a partner with industry, not simply ask for money and support.

I just wrote a column on this for Talent Zoo...you'll see it next week or the next, I believe.

_____________________________________

Art & Commerce: The Education Gap
July 23, 2007
By Bob Greenberg

NEW YORK Without a doubt, cultivating new talent is the most pressing issue facing our industry. As we all know, we cannot move ahead without new talent and right now, there is a dearth of it-particularly in new media disciplines like interactive.

The problem begins in the universities. We are all struggling to attract the best and brightest to our industry. There was a time when advertising was considered a sexy, desirable profession. In the 1970s and 1980s, top graduates from the best colleges and universities pursued careers in advertising, fueling the industry and creating a body of work that built brands and changed the world. In the mass-media era, the lure of advertising was strong: Agencies were a great place to make one's mark in terms of both money and cultural influence.

The invention of the Web, which ushered in the era of consumer control, changed all that. As consumers gain control of the marketing landscape, advertising has lost its luster-ironic considering there has never been a better time to join the industry. As those who attended Cannes last month can attest, the diversity of work today is breathtaking. We saw campaigns that range from Dove "Evolution" to Tate Tracks to Burger King Games to Nike+. The days when award-show winners were synonymous with television spots and print ads are over. We've come such a long way that there is now recognition for everyone in advertising.

The shortage of talent has also driven up salaries to record levels. It's as if we are living inside another dotcom-style bubble-minus the flocks of people migrating to our industry as they did back then. Without the inflated stock prices of those days, I can't see us going back to recruiting parties, stock options and signing bonuses.

To change perceptions, we must begin inside the university programs from which agencies draw their talent. Whereas Goldman Sachs and McKinsey need target only one kind of student—graduates of the nation's top MBA programs—the advertising industry must draw from sources as diverse as business schools, design schools, and specialized programs like VCU Adcenter and Miami Ad School.

Digital agencies also need to target students in computer science programs as well as programs like MIT's Media Lab and New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP).

As agencies and clients, we need to take a proactive role inside all these programs if we're going to capture the hearts and minds of the next generation.

I serve on the boards of four universities: VCU Adcenter, NYU's Tisch School of the Arts (which houses ITP), Parsons School of Design and, most recently, the Berlin School of Creative Leadership. My involvement with these schools has been rewarding personally and professionally. From VCU, we recruit some of our hottest young account planners. NYU's ITP program is the source of dozens of our top interaction designers. Our visual design department is loaded with Parsons grads. And I'm counting on the Berlin School to feed us top creative talent in the future.

By providing us with first-rate recruits, these schools are helping my agency.

Coming full circle, my participation is helping them shape their curriculum to fit the needs of agencies in our new marketing era. The kinds of professionals needed today have changed dramatically in the past 10 years, but in many cases colleges and universities haven't entirely caught up with the new reality. Just as agencies and clients have too many people working in the old marketing model, colleges have professors who use outdated methods to train the next generation of ad-industry pros. Take copywriting, for example. Whereas copywriters in the past focused on the narrative arts associated with television and print, the next generation of copywriters needs to tackle a more diverse mix of assignments, from response-generating copy in banner ads to viral videos, Web sites and mobile campaigns. In this one area alone, there aren't enough professors with diverse backgrounds, and the problem is replicated across disciplines like planning, design, data intelligence, media and all the departments that make up the modern agency.

As much as these schools need members to serve on their boards, they also need money to help attract faculty and students, and to upgrade their curricula to serve the needs of today's agencies and clients. That's why it is so important that the industry contribute its share, as IPG recently did with a gift of $1 million to the VCU Adcenter. Putting money where my mouth is, R/GA has donated pro bono services to schools including NYU, Rhode Island School of Design and Parsons (and VCU, which is in development as I write this) to help them develop world-class Web sites—one of the most important pieces in the recruiting puzzle.

Like schools, various industry associations play a critical role in ensuring that there is a new generation of advertising talent. All agencies and clients should support the Advertising Educational Foundation and, in particular, its online curriculum project, an excellent source of content for professors and students wanting to learn about our industry.

We should all get involved in the education scene, as a matter of both self-preservation and self-satisfaction. I can't think of a better way to give and receive at the same time.

Bob Greenberg is CEO of R/GA in New York and a regular 'Adweek' columnist.

ads from Turkey

Someone from an international agency sent me work to post! They must think that highly of this mere blog...

I received these print work and interactive work from Clara from DDB Istanbul. Their interactive work (kindly hosted by James at Adverlicio) really grabs your attention.







On a side note, after work today I went to a UT advertising, mostly Texas Media graduates, alumni and professor happy hour at Ozona Grill and I met a lot of great people who work at Dieste Harmel & Partners, Tribal DDB Dallas, Is7, true.com, Sabre Travel Network and many others. I was one of the younger people there and I caught up with Prof. Dobias and Gene Kincaid too. Based on my many conversations, it seems like interactive really is the future.

Nike and Don Imus

I'm a subscriber to Nike newsletters and I received this email just now. What an interesting, efficient, and cost-effective(free) way for Nike to take on the issue. Why spend $400,000+ making, producing, and placing a TV spot when you can send out a simple email?

Click to enlarge.

Pitches: No Longer a Death Sentence for Incumbents?

It used to be that a new client CMO = death sentence for incumbent agencies. Yet in the past couple months, we’ve witnessed several examples of incumbent shops beating the odds and retaining the account. MediaCom recently pitched against several other media shops and emerged the victor for Staples, even adding the UK and Canada to its existing domestic duties. Philips Electronics is re-awarding Carat London with its global media duties and Revlon has come running back to Carat after briefly handing over the reins to Initiative. To top it off, Initiative has also retained and added duties to their Big Lots account, after a review which included several other shops.

Notice that all of these incumbents are media shops. Perhaps it has to do with accountability: media shops are particularly good at pulling out the numbers and wooing clients with results and figures, while creatives…. Well, here’s a pretty storyboard we made??

Regardless of the cause, this could be a sign that incumbents may actually have a fighting chance in the crazy world of pitches.

SueTube

Everyone knows that Google--owner of, um, the Internet--recently purchased YouTube for like a hundred bajillion dollars (or $1.65 billion, whatever). Back then, it seemed like a pretty awesome business move (all those impressions!!!!), but the conglorporation might be kicking itself after Viacom--owner of, um, television?--announced it is suing Google for $1b over copyright infringement.

Marc "Smarty Pants" Cuban, the self-proclaimed Blog Maverick, whatever that means, and founder of broadcast.com said this was gonna happen: "Google will get sued by thousands of rights holders." And boy, was he right! Viacom alleges that about 160,000 unauthorized clips are floating around on YouTube and have been viewed more than 1.5 billion times, so lawyers are pretty happy.

But why didn't Viacom sue YouTube a long time ago? Well, if you possessed the mental capacity of Marc Cuban, which you don't, then you would've figured out long ago that lawyers were stealthily waiting around for Google to buy out YouTube so they could jump into their infinitely deep pockets and swim in sweet delicious money.

And Google's response? They're claiming innocence, meaning they're stalling while they scrape up enough money to buy Viacom, which they could probably find under the cushions of the couches in Google's break room. I heard there are million-dollar bills under there.

But in the end, guess who benefits? You! NewsCorp & NBC have teamed up for a more proactive response--to develop an online video portal, chock full of content like House, Heroes and 24, plus hit movies... allegedly. I'll believe it when I see it. But if it really happens, it might be the beginning of the end of TV as we know it. Just kidding. And what does Marc Cuban have to say about all this? "It's a great idea." Thanks, Marc.

e-Books or real books?

On the Locus magazine site, Cory Doctorow wrote a really interesting article about e-books vs. novels and new media vs. traditional media. I think it brings up some very good points. My personal opinion is that nothing can take away the tactile feel of flipping through a newspaper, a magazine, or a book.

Animator vs. Animation Part II

This was created by 17-year old Alan Becker of Ohio. Also, at some Flash conference blog I recently saw (The name escapes me at the moment), there were some pictures of a 14-year old boy flash extraordinaire as a guest speaker. This shows that technology isn't just for grown-ups.

They were wrong about TiVo

February 16, 2007
Viewers Fast-Forwarding Past Ads? Not Always
By LOUISE STORY

People with digital video recorders like TiVo never watch commercials, right?

Add that to the list of urban — and suburban — myths.

It turns out that a lot of people with digital video recorders are not fast-forwarding and time-shifting as much as advertisers feared. According to new data released yesterday by the Nielsen Company, people who own digital video recorders, or DVRs, still watch, on average, two-thirds of the ads.

One big reason is that many people with DVRs still tune in to watch about half of their shows at the scheduled start time, meaning they must sit through commercials.

And even when people watch recorded shows later, many are not fast-forwarding through the ads. On average, Nielsen found, DVR owners watch 40 percent of commercials that they could skip over — perhaps because they like ads, don’t mind them or simply can’t be bothered.

“People are actually playing back more of the commercials than we thought,” said Steve Sternberg, executive vice president and director of audience analysis at Magna Global Media Research, an ad-buying agency. “People are buying DVRs not because they want to time-shift all of their viewing and skip all commercials, but because they want to time-shift some of their viewing.”

While the new data may well be fodder for cocktail party chatter, it also has major financial implications. Largely because many advertisers thought that people with DVRs were not watching their ads, they have not been paying for time-shifted viewing on DVRs. Now the networks could use the new information to try to charge more. And advertisers may begin pressing networks to rethink commercial breaks — maybe making them shorter.

People who have DVRs often insist that they never watch commercials, as if skipping commercials is a badge of honor. And while it is true that some DVR owners probably watch no commercials, others never touch the fast-forward button. Most people are probably in the middle of those two extremes.

“That’s part of the reward of taping: being able to zip through the advertisements,” said Marjorie Elson, a 62-year-old psychologist in Maryland. “But sometimes I do watch them — only if they capture me.”

TiVo has found that its customers view the last commercial in a break the most, followed by the first commercial. (Viewers sometimes do not start fast-forwarding right away, and they often stop a bit early so they do not miss the next part of the show.) Commercials in the middle fare the worst, said Todd Juenger, vice president and general manager for audience research and measurement at TiVo, which serves 4.5 million of the roughly 15 million DVR viewers.

Nielsen announced the data as part of its preparations to release commercial viewing numbers for every TV program, starting in May. Nielsen, which collects data every few seconds through its set-top boxes, added DVR households to its sample in the last year; its commercial ratings data reflects the total time viewers spend watching ads, including viewing of partial ads, rather than whether ads are watched from start to finish. Advertisers spent upward of $70 billion last year for their TV spots — more than in any other type of media.

“The cable operators that have the subscribers, the programmers who have the content and the marketers have to get ahead of this,” said Curt Hecht, chief digital officer at GM Planworks, the part of the Starcom MediaVest Group that manages General Motors’ ad buying. “They need to figure out how advertising can remain sustainable and effective in the new landscape.”

Advertising and television executives have not yet figured out which DVR owners are more likely to be commercial skippers, though Nielsen has found that younger people generally skip more commercials and time-shift more of their viewing than older people.

Nielsen has also found that commercials are more often watched during playback if the viewer is looking at the show the same day it ran. Commercial viewing drops significantly over time after the original showing. If advertisers start paying for DVR viewing, one question is whether they will pay just when viewers play back shows within a few hours.

Without DVRs, people can, of course, change the channel, leave the room or not pay attention during commercial breaks, but those activities seem to have only a minor effect on ratings during commercials — only 5 percent, according to Nielsen data.

“DVRs are really the big X factor going forward,” said Brad Adgate, senior vice president for research at Horizon Media, an ad-buying agency. “People’s DVR behavior is going to drive the marketplace.”

DVRs, which were introduced in 1999, are becoming more popular every year, and the cable operators are increasingly offering the feature in new set-top box packages. Analysts say DVRs are now in 12 to 20 percent of households. DVR owners tend to be wealthier and more educated than the average TV owner. DVR owners tend to have more children, and some own more than one DVR.

DVR owners account for about 6 percent of all TV viewing, but that figure is likely to grow, said Tracey Scheppach, vice president and video innovations director at Starcom USA. “Four of five people use the word ‘love’ when they describe this product, and when you have a product that powerful, it is going to become mainstream,” Ms. Scheppach said.

Starcom USA signed on last month to become TiVo’s first customer for a new monthly rating service in which TiVo will sell viewership numbers for commercials and programs seen by its customers. Companies like Nissan have already bought TiVo data to analyze how often their commercials are fast-forwarded. TiVo has long been tracking what its viewers watch, down to the second. But it is just now beginning to develop demographic data, using a panel of customers.

In some households, children are exposed to TV only through DVRs. Patricia Bowen, 35, a commercial property manager in San Antonio, said she liked being able to control what her children watched by programming acceptable shows on the DVR. She said her family liked to stop fast-forwarding during commercials to watch Apple and Geico ads.

“My son doesn’t understand why other people cannot pause their TV when they need to go to the bathroom,” she said.

Advertisers are well aware that coming generations may be DVR users. Visa decided to use brighter colors in its recent “Life Takes Visa” commercials in an effort to get fast-forwarders to stop and watch for a moment, said Susanne Lyons, chief marketing officer for Visa.

“We’re trying to make a bigger-than-live color statement so when you’re flipping through quickly, the color jumps out,” Ms. Lyons said.

But Visa also decided not to advertise on TV at all in its new campaign for Visa Signature, a card for affluent consumers, in part because DVRs tend to be in wealthier households, Ms. Lyons said.

Emma Staples, a 29-year-old sales manager in Knoxville, Tenn., says she fast-forwards the commercials at a slower speed than her husband in case she wants to stop and watch one.

“I like to see what is going on in commercials,” Ms. Staples said. “Sometimes I’ll stop if it’s a preview for a movie I might want to see.”

Advertisers generally do not get to purchase particular positions in commercial breaks, even though it has long been known that the first and last position are best for brand recall. Now, networks may have to consider what happens to advertisers that follow a boring ad.

“If you have a horrible ad in the first position and it just basically drives people away, whose fault is that?” said Alan Wurtzel, president for research at NBC Universal.

Network executives said they had talked to a number of advertisers developing commercials that remain visible even during fast-forwarding. TV networks are testing to see how often DVR users remember ads even when they fast-forward through.

The cable operators are also experimenting with ads shown through video-on-demand and promotions for ads that run along the bottom of screens during TV viewing. Advertisers like Burger King and General Motors have purchased a new offering from TiVo that asks people at the end of shows if they would like to see a commercial.

Network executives said that commercial skipping has been overblown.

“When you talk to an advertiser it is like ‘Oh god, I’ve got to go on to the Internet because on television these people are fast-forwarding through the commercials,’ ” said David Poltrack, the chief research officer for the CBS Corporation.

Mr. Poltrack also said that the networks had always focused primarily on attracting the most viewers to their programs. As DVRs become more popular, he said, networks will be forced to find ways to keep more people watching commercials.

Katherine Bryant, 29, owns three DVRs — two in her home in Charleston, S.C., and one in her Oklahoma City apartment. Ms. Bryant, a dentist, said she watched more TV shows than she used to because she no longer had to sit through all the ads.

“Once you have one,” she said, “you can never, ever go back.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Make a Dorito's Super Bowl commercial

Goodby, Silverstein & Partners launched a contest a while back, along with Yahoo!, where everyday people could submit their commercial for a Dorito's super bowl commercial. I didn't really think much of it because I assumed, wrongly, that a lot of the videos would be "youtube-esque" (i.e. someone just gets out their cell phone to record their dog doing a normal task like eating and uploads that).

Well, I just saw the five finalists for the contest. And I am amazed by the quality. They are really cool although some of them were made by people who work for commercial production studios. If you read the finalist's bios, a lot of them just used their home computers and some software to edit the spots; the gap between amateur and professional is rapidly closing.

Another neat thing about it is that people vote on the commercials. What if agencies actually did this with their work? I know there's pre-testing and screening of commercials but that's usually in a formal, structured setting. Are there any agencies that have websites where regular, everyday people can comment on their work?

My personal favorite is Mouse Trap. What's yours?

The Hispanic market is growing but did you expect this?

The Hispanic demographic is growing by leaps and bounds and is no longer going to be a minority population (according to the US Census and Time if I recall correctly). Several Hispanic marcom (marketing communication) agencies, such as Dieste Harmel, LatinWorks and La Comunidad, are helping to lead this new "Hispanic consumer wave." But I never expected something like this to happen. Monica also previously talked about this next big thing in marketing.

edited: Original post said that Hispanic population growth is going to exceed Caucasian population in the next five-ten years. Refer to comments below although anonymous didn't provide a URL. I am flattered that someone would take the time to verify my post though.

Dallas-based food chain to accept Mexican pesos
10:11 AM CST on Saturday, January 6, 2007

By KAREN ROBINSON-JACOBS / The Dallas Morning News
Starting Monday, patrons of the Dallas-based Pizza Patrón chain, which caters heavily to Latinos, will be able to purchase American pizzas with Mexican pesos. Restaurant experts and economists said they knew of no other food chain with locations so far from the Mexican border offering such a service. "We're trying to reach out to our core customer," Antonio Swad, president of Pizza Patrón Inc., said Friday. "We know they come back [from Mexico] and have pesos left over. We want to be a convenient place for them to spend their pesos." While U.S. restaurant chains have stepped up their marketing to Latino consumers and incorporated Latin flavors in the menu, it's unusual to see that outreach extend to the cash register.

"I think it's a very interesting idea," said Ron Paul, president of Technomic Inc., a Chicago-based restaurant market research firm. "They are catering to that audience." But Mr. Paul said he did not see other chains rushing to emulate the program, in part because of bookkeeping headaches...