In case you missed this memo while watching CNN bash President Trump in every story or opting for Fox News’ overt love for the President in every story, let me remind you that SPORTS MATTER.

They mater because they generate revenue.
They generate jobs.
They generate passion.

Now with the return of the National Football League, National Basketball Association, National Hockey League, and Major League Baseball—all at once it seems—sports will generate billions in advertising revenue. This is exactly what the country needs. And right now.

At the four-month mark where every major professional sports league went on hiatus due to COVID-19, the return of live sports is just what we all need. Live sports signals an important return to normal for the country and spark a television advertising sales marketplace that was left in a disparate place. During the last full season, each sport played, the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL produced nearly $7 billion in ad revenue for networks across the United States. That’s not to mention the billions produced overseas and the remaining parts of North America.

Don’t think that sports matter? Here is exactly how much national ad revenue the big four sports leagues added to the networks’ gross sales during their last full seasons (*according to Kantar Media):

• NFL—Regular Season: $3.3 billion, Playoffs: $1.3 billion
• NBA—Regular Season: $528.2 million, Playoffs: $877.5 million
• MLB—Regular Season: $144.7 million, Playoffs: $338.5 million
• NHL—Regular Season: $35.9 million, Playoffs: $102.2 million

Seth Winter, EVP of sports sales for Fox Sports says that “the reopening of live sports is “a very symbolic and real indicator of the move forward to whatever the TV ad industry’s new normal will be post-pandemic.”

Jo Ann Ross, president and chief advertising revenue officer, ViacomCBS domestic advertising sales says that, “There is a thirst and a hunger for live sports.”

All you have to do is look at the few live sports that aired recently to demonstrate how thirsty advertisers and audiences are for any sort of live sports:

• UFC 251—1.3 million people purchased the event on pay-per-view That’s among the highest in the sport’s history. UFC has generated this many buys only four times previously with the the most recent coming in 2018, when Khabib Nurmagomedov defeated Conor McGregor at UFC 229. That event generated a record 2.4 million buys.
• The Match: Champions for Charity golf tournament, which aired on May 24 and featured Tiger Woods and Peyton Manning vs. Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady drew 5.8 million viewers across TNT, TBS, truTV and HLN. WarnerMedia reported that this telecast was the most-watched golf match in cable TV history. The WarnerMedia’s ad sales team sold every spot a month in advance with the expectation of this type of outcome. 
• When NASCAR races resumed on Fox one May 17th, over six million viewers made it the most-watched NASCAR Cup race on any network (outside of the Daytona 500) in 2018.

All of this comes of devastating news that U.S. advertising revenue plummeted 31% in May due to only those few events take place due to the pandemic. What makes this worse is that the Standard Media Index reports that majority of major ad categories reduced their media spends drastically—by 10%-20% or more. Only pharmaceutical manufacturers spent more in May than they did in the same 2019 period.

Two media companies saw ad revenues deteriorate as a direct result of the absence of NBA games when the playoffs take place in May, broadcast by Walt Disney’s ABC and ESPN and WarnerMedia’s TNT. WarnerMedia saw ad revenue decline by 45.5%, while Disney saw it tumble by 39.6% for the month of May.

First up is MLB on July 25th followed by the NHL on August 1st. I can wait to see what advertisers have in store for us…

Michael Jordan: The gold standard of sports advertising.

The post Sports Are Back to Save the Ad World appeared first on Media Guy Struggles.

I’m just like the rest of you, hunkered down watching Anderson Cooper talk to 22-year-old Harvard researchers predicting a two-year nightmare of mask wearing and hearing reports from Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti tell us that the Hollywood Bowl is closed this year and we won’t have sports until 2021. No exactly what I was looking for in 2020, that’s for sure.

A 1910 advertisement from Ma Bell.

A few weeks ago, spending was up up up in the media world with all of us Ad Men scrambling to understand the effectiveness analytics and reach our target audiences with bull’s-eye precision. Brands like Miller were still touting good times centered around cold brews, KFC pushing “finger lickin’ good” chicken like a drug dealers marching sentry in Baltimore, and the Charmin Bears were touting the brands delivered the cleanest bums.

These days when you turn on the TV—and for many of us the TV is on nearly 24 hours a day—all you see are COVID-19 tribute commercials. This represents quite a pivot in our socially distant coronavirus live where ad agencies and their clients are facing an unparalleled level of ambiguity. The Interactive Advertising Bureau reports that 70+ per cent of brands, media planners, and media buyers believe that the coronavirus will have a larger advertising influence than the 2008 financial crisis. Although you probably feel different watching television, but overall expenditures on traditional media (Radio/TV) is down almost 40% from what and digital advertising was down a third from what agencies had expected to spend at the start of the buying year.

But the folks at Nielsen have some data that supports our general feelings. Their data shows that when people are forced to stay inside (weather, illness, etc.), they watch around 60% more content than they usually do. And, the major brands took note, replacing their ad campaigns that were in rotation and replacing them with relevant coronavirus-centered content. Citibank is celebrating our heroes, Uber is thanking us for not using their service, Papa John’s is touting contactless pizzas, while Captain Obvious from Hotels.com reminds us of the obvious: Just stay home.

Currently, like all film production, commercial shooting has been locked down during the pandemic. Even so, brands haven’t stopped re-purposing content or using new footage provided from their staff’s family or shooting single camera B-roll to re-imagine their messaging and stay in front of millions in this ever growing television audiences and everyone scrolling through digital platforms nearly every waking moment of every waking day. Brands, even those not considered essential or shuttered, are finding ways to enter the COVID-19 conversation with their spending power.

A March 2020 survey by GlobalWebIndex asked internet users in 13 markets whether brands should continue advertising as normal. Nearly four in 10 US respondents ages 16 to 64 agreed, and a similar share (35%) were neutral, compared with 28% who disagreed. (The global results were on par with those in the US, at 37%, 36% and 27%, respectively.)

So until we are freed up a little bit or things re-open or another controversy arises, get ready for a steady stream of alarming medical news, wearing masks to the grocery stores, and commercial gems like these…

Apple

Citibank

Dunkin’ Donuts

Fitbit

Walmart

Go Daddy

Amazon

The post The COVID-19 Commercial Pivot appeared first on Media Guy Struggles.

I came into the advertising business in 1974 at the age of six. I was the manager in a department of one for my dad’s side home business preparing and disseminating press releases via the United States Postal Service. I prepared envelopes sticking the 1″ x 2-5/8″ white labels perfectly straight on number ten sized letters, collating the news releases, stapling and folding them, then stuffing the envelopes, licking them closed and then affixing postage stamps squarely in the upper right corner. I did this after school in our Inglewood apartment that could have served as the setting for the Sidney Deane family in White Men Can’t Jump without the need to change a single prop. My payment for this OSHA-violating work? Tickets to a Los Angeles Kings or Lakers game that wasn’t sold out. Pretty good payday until you consider that day got those tickets for free from his wife who worked in the ticketing department of the Fabulous Forum. He always told be that this work would be the backbone of breaking into the advertising business. I can’t say he was wrong.

These days, advertising and public relations is a difficult business to break into, especially if you are not connected. I worked for my dad in my early years and my dad continued his penchant for loaning out my talents for little remuneration to me. In 1989, I was farmed out to a largish New York City agency to work their accounts from the inside. I was a gun for hire. I made around $400 a week before taxes. I’m sure dad’s agency made ten times that for my work. It doesn’t matter now because a learned a lot and that time was the backbone of my career.

I learned about two important things at the New York agency: How to maneuver around office politics and why Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree” is the key the being a better boss. This was the early nineties and yes, the New York agencies still had an enough misogyny, alcohol, racism, and debauchery to make any modern PC’er run for the hills. It was a lot to handle if you played those reindeer games. Most everyone dabbled in the big four but no one talked about it. Luckily, I was young and not a boss or my path surely would have spiraled much faster than it did.

My boss in New York was a typical advertising lifer. Handsome and gruff with a gift for the gab, he took long lunches with junior graphics designers in short skirts and still drank multiple cocktails during the day. He liked me because I did his dirty work and covered for him effectively when the big bosses came calling. HE taught me how to soft shoe through a crisis and that losing your temper would only make things work. He also handed me a copy of “The Giving Tree” a day after I told his biggest client he was negotiating a better media rate behind closed doors instead of the truth that he was at The Plaza with the flavor of the week from the 32nd floor. He told me to memorize the words, pictures, and pages of the small, leaf-green tome.

There are many interpretations of this masterpiece with the most obvious being the wonderful lesson of generosity it literally illustrates. It’s an Aesop’s fable about life and life lessons, specifically what it means to be flawed and mortal, and wise and  enlightened. He taught me that you will always have a hard working, loyal if you embraced the key teaching lessons from the book. Talent wouldn’t always win the day—and most importantly, keep you employed without a good staff that had your back. Here’s a few of those vital teachings…

Stop Keeping Score—Most of us have been pre-occupied with fairness, equality and justice—at home I am the self-proclaimed Commission of Fairness. It’s a specialty of mine. I learned that from “The Giving Tree” because it teaches us not to tally up things up things all of the time. The tree gives in the truest form of altruism. She gives and gives and gives without ever expecting anything in return. She never asks for credit or reminds the boy of her countless sacrifices.

Know the Magic Words—The one thing the Boy in “The Giving Tree” never stops to do is say “please” or “thank you.” It seems not knowing common courtesy may have been the reasons he never could find contentment. Barney the Dinosaur always said to use please and thank you. The Tree should have told the Boy that as well. Good manners are the root (pun intended) of a happy life and productive teamwork. Do you know the magic words? Excellent. Use them every day… (Please?)

You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide—Life is difficult and complex. So is looking in the mirror and facing your terrors and misgivings and maddest dreams. However, if you ever find yourself so troubled with your dilemmas that you are keen—at a timeworn, shaky age—to go meandering out to sea in a makeshift canoe, it’s time to capitulate. The penultimate request from the Boy is for the Tree’s entire trunk. It always smacked me as the bluest and the saddest moment of the book, and Silverstein illustrated the bleakness so well. The lesson here is a fine one: don’t fight the waves of life in a dying vessel. Let them crash over you before you obliterate what you hold special. Remember: giving in isn’t giving up. Remember the great words of John Maynard Keynes, “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”

A Picture’s Worth A Thousand Words—Silverstein has a unique method of drawing that flawlessly captures the human spirit in all its weakness and allure and immorality and eccentricity. “The Giving Tree” radiates a inimitable brand of straightforwardness. Every line is fraught with emotion, whether it’s the innocence of an untied shoelace or the speechless vacancy of the Boy’s wrinkled face as he ages, or the influential image of a infinitesimal broken man sitting on a severed tree stump, his illustrations speak loud. Louder than words. This book was one of the key lesson teachers that show me how to do presentations. My presentations are simple, yet complex through the use of imagery. It has won me awards and gotten millions of dollars of concepts greenlit over my career.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want—Mick Jagger famously sung, “You can’t always get what you want… But if you try sometime, you’ll find, you get what you need…” The grass is always greener on the other side. Don’t go chasing waterfalls. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. An orchard sounds more significant than a single tree. And, after all, who wouldn’t want to actually be king instead of just pretending to be one? Unfortunately, the Boy learns this truth the hard way. After constantly asking for too many of his wants, all that’s left is too little of what he needs. Seriously, people. Know a good thing when you have it. Perfection is reserved for something celestial. Strive for greatness, but sometimes very good, is , well, great.

The post The Biz: Want to be a Good Boss? Read this…. appeared first on Media Guy Struggles.

Photo: Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images

Okay, so where am I?

Let’s just say that The Comeback Chiefs just scored three touchdowns in the final few minutes in Miami to earn their first Super Bowl win in 50 years. That ought to narrow it all down.

On Sunday, huge brands like Tide and Pepsi once again spent millions of dollars from their advertising budgets. As a matter of fact, advertising for the game sold out before the end of November at a price tag of $5.6 million for a 30-second commercial. The demand for Super Bowl ad was so strong this year that Fox added two-and-a-half minutes of commercial time to the telecast. And, if you have the cash, why not advertising in the biggest television event of the year? Look at these numbers:

The figure point to a 5.5% increase over the 2019 game, in spite of a 5% audience decline for last year’s It’s important to note that live sports have held their own against the rising tide of video streaming that has divide viewers’ collective attention away from traditional satellite and cable television. The result is the National Football League’s enduring strength against other programming. Simply stated, it is more valuable than ever to advertisers.

To note, the $5.6 million cost for a 30-second spot to a colossal leap over the cost for the same amount of time for the the big game in 1967. In 1967, ads for the first-ever Super Bowl cost anywhere from $37,500  to $42,500, while 1995 marked the first year that the average cost crossed into the millions, when 30-second ads sold for $1.15 million.

So who scored and who fumbled this year?

WINNERS

Google
“Loretta”

If you didn’t cry or pretend you weren’t you might not actually be human.

Hyundai
“Smaht Pahk”

Making fun of Boston and New York accepts has become part of the of the lexicon pop culture. Boston natives John Krasinski, Chris Evans, and Rachel Dratch drive it home.

Dashlane
“Password Paradise”

Death on the River Styx is the perfect apt metaphor for those regular occurrences when you need to gain access to your online accounts. Shoot it just happened to me trying to get into my American Airlines frequent flyer portal…and the exact same questions were asked in the exact same order. Goodness gracious, on relatability scale, they were spot on (and quite humorous about it all too.)

Amazon
“What Did We Do Before Alexa?”

When Ellen DeGeneres asks Portia de Rossi “What did we do before Alexa?” I was a little dubious. But once the newsy makes his fake news joke, they had me.

Jeep 
“Groundhog Day”

An ode to the classic with a fresh spin…plus a superb ending.

LOSERS

Audi
“Audi Presents: Let It Go”

The Frozen ear worm “Let It Go” anthem doesn’t fit the message quite as well as Audi imagines it does. What a waste of Maisie Williams and 5.6 million dollars. Next time call the Media Guy, Audi. I can save you eight to ten million in production, royalty charges, and actor’s fees.

Avocados from Mexico 
“The Avocados from Mexico Shopping Network”

Pool floats? Baby carriers? Luggage? All of these things can be purchased on the Avocados From Mexico Shopping Network? Do we even care where our avocados come from as long as they aren’t $3.99 each? This one was a loser from the moment it was greenlit from the storyboards.

Tide
“Laundry Later”

Charlie Day is the freakout actor of his generation. Tide dropped at least $22 million on their four spots. I like the concepts, but it wasn’t particularly Clio Award worthy.

Proctor & Gamble
“When We Come Together”

No shortage of star power here. After the clever spilled chili open, it was literally a mess to watch.

The post The Best and the Worst of the Super Bowl LIV Commercials appeared first on Media Guy Struggles.

Last week marked the another death from one of my childhood legends, Rocky Johnson. He was one of the first black wrestling champions (in fact, the first tag team champion) and brought class to sport that is seldom know for that characteristic.

RIP Rocky Johnson.

Saturday mornings were never the same without you.

His death reminded me of the ridicule I received at school and in my neighborhood towards my affection of professional wrestling. “Fake!” the haters would bellow at me, very much like the wrestler would in their interstitial interviews between matches. “You’re wasting your time watching that stuff. Read some Shakespeare”, my English teachers would lecture. Other would caution, “You’ll never get a date if girls find out you watch that junk.”

Little did they know that this was all part of my master plan of life education that taught valuable strategies about advertising much in the same way the book “The 48 Laws of Power” teaches you how to navigate the politics of work. Even at 12 years old, I theorized that you could learn a great deal from professional wrestling. I always believed that using the principles of being a great wrestling draw could make you successful in your career. Little did I know how perfectly these principles would apply to advertising. What are these principles you ask? Here they are—learn them, embrace them, love them:

• Wrestling is outrageous and entertaining. Advertising needs be, too.
• Great production values will only get you so far.
• Be the black hat.
• Be a jobber occasionally.
• Find your reality.

Have you ever really watched wrestling and tossed away all the testosterone oozing from every inch of the telecast? They are a lesson on how to suck viewers in and hold them breathless, an hour at a time. They are the sports version of soap operas, inching along the storylines and filling up arenas and pay-per-view purchases.

Well, BROTHER (!), if you haven’t watched a professional wrestling telecast, you’re not prepping for your big moment in the advertising world. Imagine a comic book mixed with Roman gladiators, with incredibly gifted, larger-than-life athletes who have the gift of gab, saying whatever they want (as long as it follows the script) and make grand entrances to their offices.

So where’s the advertising sagacity in all of this? Let’s go back to the six principles…

Wrestling is outrageous and entertaining. Advertising needs be, too.

The action is real, but the outcome is fake. Deal with it. When you go to ballet, you go for the story and the athleticism displayed on stage. In short, you are there for the content. Professional wrestling is built the content. The personalities. The performance. It suspends our skepticism. It allows us to escape and appreciate the outlandish showmanship.

Advertising, like wrestling, one part inauthentic, two parts showmanship, three parts branding, and two parts concept and follow-through. We defend the work and that’s why clients trust us with their brand. The creative is the showmanship that grabs attention and makes consumers respond to the campaign. If you’re in the industry you need to embrace that we need to be the best part of our clients’ day. Emancipate your creative and have some fun with it all. Do your research, down some coffee, and then get a little funky. I can’t underscore enough to have a little bit of fun. Your craft and your finished product will be better for it.

Great production values will only get you so far.

Always Be Closing.

In wrestling, the performers are either pushing for the big match via their interviews or looking for a three count in the ring. In advertising you have to have a similar mentality. Get those approvals. Close new business. Don’t let roadblocks get in the way of performance. Years ago, I wrote a column about closing and some of the keys to closing. Read it. Embrace the key points.

Be the Black Hat.

The black hats are the bad guys who use everything at their disposal to achieve their goals. They steal. They lie. They cheat. Honestly,  the black hats are the guys they get the boos, but also the coolest cats in the room. The bend the rules and puff their chests out while doing it. You would do well to recommend that your brands channel their black hats. Get upset. Raise a ruckus. If you tell the truth, will it hurt? Hell yes it will. That’s good. The truth will set you free. The best creative involves that legendary work tension that leaves everything on edge. Stir it up and you’ll see how everyone melts into place. (Just don’t be unethical. That will get you fired.)

Take the Loss.

There’s a certain thing that happens in wrestling—being a jobber. When you do a job, it means you take the L. You job out. Sometimes you have to be the punching bag and take the heat. It’s part and parcel to being in the industry. You can’t go undefeated. I have a thing called the quarterly battle system where I only go to the mats on one project per quarter. Other than that, nothing is that important. Remember, if you lose splendidly, you look good even in defeat. All of us that have been in the industry for longer than a cup of coffee take the L. Do it, occasionally.

Find Your Sweet Spot.

The post What I Learned from Professional Wrestling appeared first on Media Guy Struggles.

I just got back from a whirlwind tour of Finland (Kemi, Lapland, Helsinki) and Russia (Saint Petersburg, Moscow) and it’s time to get caught up. As you can see from the graphic, the call for ANDY Awards entries has been announced. As you know I am an award junkie so I am moving to get my entires into place to win this elusive award. I am sure there are plenty of you who have no idea what this award is, so here’s there elevator speech, “for 55 years the International ANDY awards have been known as the most sought-after awards for creative excellence in advertising.” Heady stuff for sure and prestigious in my industry. I want one and my three previous attempts have bore no fruit. I’m taking it seriously because the single entry cost is $1,500!

The quest for an ANDY made me assess my work against some of my contemporaries from the past year. You know what I found? I found a whole lot of campaigns that should have never been greenlit. They missed their mark or worse. You know I don’t have a Hall of Shame because I’m negative. I do it because the worse the ad, the greater the inspiration to be better; to do better. Also, some of the advertising SVPs need to call the Media Guy before they spend millions on a media buy to showcase bad work This is one of my independent new business pushes. I don’t charge a lot for a two-day consultation and the return on investment for the companies that do call is immense.

In 2016, I introduced my “You Should Have Called the Media Guy” columns where I implore tone-deaf ad men and women who don’t bother to focus group their advertising and I censure then why a call to me, the Media Guy, can save them some serious advertising budgets in bad publicity if they had only let me review their work first. The columns have proved to be reader favorites (you can catch up on past columns here):

Burger King
The American Red Cross
Pepsi
Kellogg’s
Anaheim Ducks
T-Mobile, Dove, and McDonald’s
Class of 2018 Media Guy Hall of Shame Inductees
The Best and the Worst of the Super Bowl LIII Commercials

I am sure you sit at home and wonder openly and loudly how ads such as these could ever wind up on television or in your online feeds. Some are so poorly thought out you have to say “how did this load of poop make it past their high-paid creatives. So despite my offer for inexpensive, yet sage consulting, there were companies and ad department that decided, “hey we got this!” and didn’t call the Media Guy. The ran with their great ideas and I’m here today to bash them a little bit by inducting them into my Media Guy Hall of Shame.

Before I do though, I want to run my annual PSA for those fools making ten times more than me in their lofty corner glass offices:

“Hello Chief Marketing Officers: you can’t see the forest among the trees. Call me. A small consulting check made out to me could save embarrassment and, also, potentially, your jobs. Swallow your pride and just do it!”

5. Peloton’s “The Gift That Gives Back”

Peloton decided to shame a thin woman’s journey to get, well, more thin and the world laughed at them. Others wagged their finger at them, especially the husband who obviously was a real winner as he made his wife check in daily with selfies and what not. In short, the campaign follows her through a yearlong selfie expedition as her dictatorish partner passive aggressively suggested that she needed more exercise.

4. Kia’s ‘The Niro Electrified Family”

Kia started off with a smart actor placement on the form of Robert DeNrio in this heavy power of puns spot aimed at promoting its electric e-Niro range. I’m sure that concept sounded good in the pitch session but the end product ended up like the agency chose to wing it without a script after into securing an Oscar winner. Sigh.

3. Snapchat’s “Would You Rather”

You have to be kidding me that this would happen in the current #MeToo climate. In 2009, Chris Brown decided to use Rihanna as a punching bag on the way to the Grammys. SnapChat decided they should make light of domestic abuse it, asking users to reveal whether they’d prefer to slap Rihanna or punch Chris Brown. Snapchat responded saying the ad was the product of a third-party oversight intended to promote the company’s latest game, “Would You Rather.” I mean, really? No wonder SnapChat has fallen off the Earth.

2. Miele’s “International Women’s Day”

How do you celebrate modern women on International Women’s Day? By reinforcing the 1950s housewife stereotype. The appliances manufacturer probably thought it was cute to share an image of four white women excited over a washer and dryer, but completely missed the mark. Miele deleted the Facebook post a few hours later. Seriously Miele, you shouldn’t rely on old-fashioned stereotypes for your marketing. Know your target audience. Understand what drives them and use this information to inform your social media for business campaigns. It’s basic Marketing 101. One call to me and I would have told you that instead of you showing around the creative department and being pandered with a bunch of “great job”, “looks incredible”, and “you killed this!” comments I am sure you heard prior to giving the thumbs up to roll this out.

1. Oreo’s “First Christmas”

So it’s Christmas Eve and even though every kid’s parents leave milk and cookies by the fireplace, Santa is a glutton and needs more. [You know, I covered mean Santa before. He’s not so easy to work for…] At this point, he pulls over to a gas station and sends his first-day-on-the-job elf intern inside for some Oreos. (Yeah, yeah, bad day to start, but go with it, will ya?) Newbie elf grabs a Big Gulp of orange soda and several packages of Oreos (it’s clear he has no idea what glutton Santa is all about). Thankfully, dude at the cash wrap knows the deal and turns on the elf to his milk vault behind the counter which gains him a golden ticket to the Infamous Santa Xmas Rager. Cute idea, no? Exactly, NO! This entire spot smells of creepiness. Dimly lit with newbie elf is wearing way too much makeup. The guy behind the counter with the milk stash twists off the top of the Oreo and demonstrates the proper method to lick off the creme. Good gawd, too much information! All we need is the FBI to show up on December 26th in the epilogue to figure out what became of newbie elf who disappeared for an Oreo pit stop.

The post Class of 2019 Media Guy Hall of Shame Inductees appeared first on Media Guy Struggles.

Most people think the music in your local coffee shop or corner retain chain is just elevator music or something off of an easy listening station that’s people piped in. After my New York ad agency days, I went to work for my father (another set of long stories for another day), and then I went to work for the largest swimming pool supplies retailer in the world.

“Swimming pool supplies?!” you say…

“Small potatoes!” you exclaim…

Nothing could be further from the truth.

When I was there, the world’s largest swimming pool supplies retailer had 430 brick and mortar stores in 115 retail markets across the United States. We were huge. These were the days before the Internet dominated your shopping experience. My first few years there we didn’t even have a web presence. No one even knew what a web presence was.

[Cue your old guy jokes here if you like, but nothing could be further from the truth here too. Evolve or die. I have evolved and continue to thrive. Yet, I digress…]

My boss at the world’s largest swimming pool supplies retailer was my cutthroat mentor. He was an old school Chicago mad man. The kind the mafia would ask and then double check if it was alright to run their reindeer games on his turf. He used to smoke a pipe and mashed the burning tobacco down with his thumb for a tighter smoke. He handled Montgomery Ward in its heyday when it was the greatest American retailer (of all goods) with $1.2 billion in sales (that’s $10.5 billion in today’s money). he knew retail they way Michael Jordan knew basketball. No one roadblocked him. No one was smarter. No one could ever be louder with purpose than him. He was the virtuoso of the marketing campaign. He taught me when to get upset and when to take the high road. Every move he made had a purpose whether he was playing the short game, the long game, or simply manipulating the whole system so his campaigns would have the maximum impact. The best part was he was totally ethical and always made sure I was as well.

After he promoted me and moved me from a floating desk in the middle of the insane data entry to my very own office that was more like a cave than a madison avenue corner suite with a view of the park I was used to just a few years earlier he gave me my first real assignment: Curating In-Store Music for the entire lot of outlets.

Believe or not his was no easy project. Thoughtfully crafted music strategies have the power to significantly impact our relationship to brands and deliver on business goals. In this case I was talking about a nearly a billion dollars in business and that’s a lot of pressure.

The first thing I discovered is just because customers aren’t paying attention to music, that doesn’t mean that retailers don’t take advantage of the subtleties of musical choices as a tactic to make customers spend more. I looked into other businesses to see what work.

North, Hargreaves and McKendrick found that themed music influenced wine purchases. In one study, researchers played tunes that would be typically regarded as either French or German on alternate days around the shelves of products in a wine shop. They found that on days when French-style music was played, shoppers would be more likely to purchase French wine from the shop. Similarly, customers could be coerced into purchasing more German wine by playing German music. Disconcertingly, when shoppers were asked about their experiences in the wine shop, they said that they were unaware of the music and the effect that it was having on their purchases.

Shopping to the Beat: Track Tempo

The mood and atmosphere of a shop that music contributes to are essential in influencing customers. Specifically, it is the pace, or tempo, of ambient music that can have the most significant effect on shoppers.

In an experiment conducted in a U.S. supermarket, Milliman played various pieces of background music with varying tempos each day – some fast, others slow. Meanwhile, he tracked the speed of customers as they shopped, and recorded the supermarket’s total daily profits. Milliman found that when fast-paced music was played, shoppers walked more quickly through the shop. This gave them less time to make impulsive purchases and to absorb the range of items for sale on the shelves. Conversely, slow-tempo music had the opposite effect – it slowed customers down as they shopped and people purchased more during their visit.

As a result, significantly higher daily profits were earned by the supermarket simply by playing slower background music in the shop.

Chart Toppers vs. Unknown Tracks

Shopping habits, including the shops that we choose to visit over others, depend on our past experiences in a store. Unpleasant experiences, such as overcrowded aisles, can deter people from returning to a shop. Therefore, you might assume that a shop playing a person’s favorite music would make them feel at home and at ease throughout their experience.

Yalch and Spangenberg looked at the effect of playing well-known music compared to music which customers would likely not be familiar with in a shop. In the study, shoppers were given either a fixed length of time to shop or a less restrictive time allocation. As they shopped, either obscure or easily recognized tracks were played as background music.

The effect of familiarity with the background music on shoppers’ behavior was surprising. Of the participants given no time limit, those who heard recognizable tracks spent nearly 8% less time shopping, whilst people who heard unfamiliar music perceived time to pass quicker.

Researchers explain this by the level of arousal which familiar music generates: when paying more attention to the music, time may have seemed to pass slower, leading to the customers hurrying their shop.

Bach vs. Bieber: How classical music makes you spend more

The type of ambient music being played in a store, regardless of whether or not customers recognize the tracks, can also influence consumers’ behavior. Take classical music, for instance. The genre of classical music, with its enduring, rarely intrusive, instrumentals, is often associated with sophistication and ideas of luxury, more so than a regular chart hit by a pop artist. But can a shop manager make his or her customers feel more affluent and willing to spend more simply by playing classical music?

Areni and Kim set out to find out whether classical music could make people spend more money in a wine shop. They played either classical music or top-40 chart music in the shop on different days of the experiment. On the days when classical tunes were played as background music around the shelves of wine, customers would spend more in the shop, purchasing more expensive types of wine than when they heard chart music being played. These findings suggest that an atmosphere of wealth whilst shopping can lead you to increase your spending in line with this manipulated shopping environment.

Classical music may affect the choices wine shop customers make, but it is rarely heard in supermarkets and other popular shopping destinations. What effect do other genres of music have on customers?

Jacob et al found that romantic music influenced floristry customers and further investigated the impact of different musical genres on customers in a study of florist shop visitors. They monitored customers’ purchasing decisions when either no music, pop tracks or romantic music were played in the background of the florist. The researchers found that romantic music had the greatest effect in persuading customers to spend more on the florist’s offerings.

However, it’s important to understand that different track selections played as ambient music can affect each person differently. A track will affect somebody to different degrees if it is a particular track that they love, compared to one that they loathe – you might rush your shopping to avoid the latter!

Apart from our individual reactions, which are based on each person’s tastes and past experiences, different attitudes to music in shops have been found across various population demographics. For example, Kellaris and Rice  women react to more to quieter music than men do.

Combining Music

The research we have looked at has had implications for shop managers worldwide. Analysts of consumer behavior now take into account music and a plethora of factors when creating and improving customers’ experience in their stores.

But we know that ambient music is not the only influence on our shopping patterns: product variety, quality and pricing all affect the choices that we make. However, the effect of the shopping experience is significant, and it has been suggested that music has more of an influence on customers when other factors are taken into account.

One study, looked at a multitude of situations in a mock-up shop, including one situation in which Christmas music was played, another where a Christmas scent permeated the air, and another where the music and scent were combined. Researchers found that the scent alone had a negative effect on shoppers’ behavior. However, when the scent was combined with seasonal music to match, a coherent, fuller experience was created, and as a result, they had an opposite, more positive effect on shoppers.

These results show how music can reinforce a message and emphasize the influence of the entire, holistic shopping experience on customer behavior.

Music and sound are at the forefront of the conversation around experience more than ever before. At its best, the right music and sound will foster brand connection and loyalty not only for customers but for employees as well.

People have been making music almost as long as they’ve been making sounds. From lullabies to war chants, music has always served a purpose in the human experience. As civilization has grown, the use of music in our lives has changed, but its influence on our brains has not.

With all of that in mind, you might wonder: why do some stores play bad music? Often, it boils down to store owners misunderstanding the psychology behind the music in their establishments. Retailers with a sound knowledge of how in-store music influences shopper’s attitudes can harness its powerful effects on the human mind. In my case, I curated a brilliant selection of summer songs ranging from The Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, the Lovin’ Spoonful, Elton John, and some others.

Sales went up 9% in the first six months after installation so that was all the validation I needed.

The Ad Biz Past Columns:
The Biz: Advertising Agency Origins, Part 2
The Ad Biz: Office Stabbings and Media Guy Origins

The post The Biz: Curating In-Store Music appeared first on Media Guy Struggles.

Okay, so where am I?

I’m at a local eatery working, of course, on finding the next big idea. The last few years have been fruitful on my pursuit of these grand plans for advertising and marketing grandeur. It never stops. But the quest for being great should never stop. Employers and businesses want that. They demand it actually and I am one to oblige them at every time.

My work should be a performance of sorts; at least in the advertising world. My ego tells me that I’m on the payroll is because the people paying my bills want to see me perform for the same reason you went to see Baryshnikov dance, Christian Bale act or the sun set over the white sands of Hawaii. It’s art in the form of advertising. It’s not work, it’s a recital. I can’t be just an ad man. I must be a virtuoso. Itzhak Perlman with a violin. Michelangeli at the piano. Gretzky with the puck.

I don’t play the ad game where everyone else does. I play it behind the scenes. I don’t bluster in meetings trying to charm people to go forward with my ideas. I work in the sanctity of my office, or offsite, sifting through muse and the magic of data. I come in for a landing every now and then, usually with a creative brief fresh from the design team. Sometimes I get the feeling my colleagues don’t know where I have gone until I plop the brief down in an email and shout “right over here.”

Yet I digress…

So why am I not in the office collaborating all “think tank-like” in a brainstorming session, you ask? Eating alone has become a crucial aspect of modern living. The commuter, the businessperson, the student—everyone is doing it these days and according to the Great Britain’s Wellbeing Index nearly a third of adults in major metropolitan cities are eating alone “most or all of the time.” I remember in high school doing things solo was a red flag that you were an irreversible loner, or worse, a Unibomber type. Things are different now, as we’ve become less embarrassed about solo dining habits. Bookings websites report that reservations for one have soared, home delivery of meals is a cottage industry, while communal and cafeteria tables are increasingly popular in restaurants everywhere.

Unaccompanied dietary habits are steering us into unexplored terrain. Group dining has long been a universal human ceremony. Not only is it sensible (more hands make lighter work) but meals have, customarily been used to meet our essential need to connect with others. The multi-generational family meals that were often lore of television ads are going the way of dial-up modems. Take a look at Peggy’s pitch about “connecting” for their advertising pitch.

The concept of communal dining existed from the 1960s until present day, but despite the fact that the default number that cookbook recipes serve is still four or six, changes are afoot. Most of us are time-poor and overworked (at
least in our own mind). Eating alone, at least for me, has turned into a
brilliant space to image campaigns. As I wrote earlier in the year, (and
not just Taco Bell) best Big Ideas can be found in the smooth future heartburn of a Taco Bell quesadilla with fire sauce food. 

–>

The trend for eating alone has contributed to the popularity of hummus and guacamole dips for less polished lone cooks who aren’t seasoned enough to whip up 15-minute meals out of those new bestsellers or get expensive Postmates or DoorDash. The boom in dips can be ascribed to people eating on their own because they are so simple to consume if you’re concurrently in a hurry and eating alone. It’s a combination of getting into a habit of thinking it’s not worth cooking for yourself mixed with comfort.

The splendor of independent dining is that you are free to savor your guilty pleasure without judgment from others. Mealtimes now are an ideal way to have quality time to yourself. It becomes a blurred border between work and pleasure and that makes work seem less like, “work.”

Another thing that may entice you to dine alone is your waistline. Eating with other actually makes you eat more and the bigger your group, the more you eat. Take a  dinner for two—you’ll eat approximately one-third more than you would alone. A party of four? Plan to increase your consumption as much as 75%, because that’s what happens on average.

Trust me and the forty plus pounds I’ve left behind this year while eating alone. Try it and you make just discover the Big Ideas you’ve left on the communal dining table.

The post Eating Alone Can Be Your Virtuoso Moment appeared first on Media Guy Struggles.

In the last installment of The Biz, I recalled origin stories about my life in the New York ad agency world, including Schelp-Rock, copywriters, and would-be vampires. In the continuing saga of agency life, here’s an ode to a shirt ad that inspires even today…

*Read the copy below…

Back at the agency I was buddies with one of the creative directors. Martha was in her forties and I was in my twenties. She was tough as nails, but also had a glow of a beauty pageant queen. She hated her name because it wasn’t glamourous and some would brand her as “old” before even speaking with her. I could see her cut down a vendor at the knees and then strut down the hallway like she was working the catwalk. She was amazing when it was the 11th Hour and a campaign was due. Together, we never missed a deadline. She gave all of the credit to her Creative Director Kit that sat on her rickety bookshelf that sat opposite her drafting desk.

What was in that Creative Director Kit, you ask?

The kit was a curated collection of childhood memories: bobbleheads, vintage cameras, Charlie Brown lunch boxes, industry awards, Star Wars action figures, a View-Master in its original packaging, and Pez dispensers. While other non-creative departments often gossiped about how the kit was an overreach, i.e., a middle finger to the non-creatives, inside the department, we used it as the springboard to the Mendoza Line of the minimums of greatness.

Over the years, I’ve noticed that the greatest advertising creatives I worked with give their Creative Director Kits deep thoughts and carefully ensure that additions and subtractions to these shelves aren’t taken for granted. While their desks are disorderly messes, their muse art grease the wheels of capitalism and advertising art. I chronicled my kit a while ago here.

In Martha’s case, on the right partly hidden by her three Clio Awards and wilted bamboo leaves were a few classic print ads—some hers and some clipped from the pages of Life Magazine or Sports Illustrated. One ad that always caught my eye was powerful image of a man with an eye patch that rested upon five chunky paragraphs of copy: “The man in the Hathaway shirt.”

This legendary ad, conceived by David Ogilvy in 1951, is arguably one of the most inspiring pieces of advertising copy ever conceived and the pre-curser to non-sequitur campaigns such as Dos Equis “The Most Interesting Man in the World” and all of the Geico mascot ads. On eBay, there are dozens of framed reprints for auction with sales reported as “brisk.” The origins of the ad are a lesson in serendipity mixed with thinking outside of the box.

The man behind the Hathaway Shirt: Ellerton Jette

Ogilvy was on the way to his Hathaway shirt photo shoot when he stopped at a Manhattan drugstore and was struck by the jar of 50-cent black eyepatches. He bought a few and became a trailblazer for a brand new style of rogue advertising. Ogilvy was under a tight $30,000 national advertising budget set forth by Maine-based CF Hathaway, a new client who had never advertised before. He knew something out of the ordinary was called for but never expected that the eye patch would become part of advertising lore. He suggested to his photographer, “Just shoot a couple of these to humor me. Then, I’ll go away and you can do the serious job.”

The eye patch became the talking point, the buzz of the fashion industry. Without it, the Hathaway campaign was simply another shirt ad with a fit, well-dressed man in an upscale tailor shop. With the eye patch, the ads had a hidden story that made the reader wonder what really happened to this man. Where was he? What did he get into? It appealed to both women and men. The perfect ad.

The first media placement was in the New Yorker, clocking in at over 10 per cent of the total ad budget ($3,176, or the equivalent of $31,288 today). The impact was immediate. Seven days later, every Hathaway shirt in the city was sold out just seven days after the ad appeared.

“The man in the Hathaway shirt” is a master course in copywriting. It’s an ad for a short but created a myth and a legend in one fell swoop without ever deviating that the shirt is the primary reason that three thousand dollars was being dropped on a single magazine ad that reached approximately 350,000 people in 1951. Even more startling is that this 247-word advertising manuscript is almost impossible to put down. Try finding an ad now this long in our short-attention-span world. Even today, the copy flows like a novel would, conjuring instant pictures of the finest that a shirt company could offer:

The man in the Hathaway shirt

At long last American men are begging to realize that it is ridiculous to buy good suits and then spoil the whole effect by wearing a cheap, mass-produces shirt. Hence the growing popularity of Hathaway shirts, which are in a class by themselves.

Hathaway shirts wear infinitely longer — a matter of years. They make you look younger and more distinguished, because of the subtle way Hathaway cut collars. The whole shirt is tailored more generously and therefore more comfortable. The tails are longer, and stay in your trousers. The buttons are made of mother of pearl. Even the stitching has an ante-bellum elegance about it.

Above all, Hathaway make their shirts of very remarkable fabrics, collected from the four corners of the earth—Viyella and Aertex from England, woolen taffeta from Scotland, Sea Island cotton from the West Indies, hand-woven madras from India, broadcloth from Manchester, linen batiste from Paris, hand-blocked silks from England, exclusive cottons from the best weavers in America. You will get a great deal of quiet satisfaction out of wearing shirts which are in such impeccable taste.

Hathaway shirts are made by a smaller company of dedicated craftsmen in the little town of Waterville, Maine. They have been at it, man and boy, for one hundred fifteen years.At better stores everywhere, or write C. F. Hathaway, Waterville, Maine, for the name of your nearest store. In New York, telephone MU 9-4157. Prices from $5.50 to $25.00.

Ogilvy on the campaign: “For some reason I’ve never known, it made Hathaway instantly famous. Perhaps, more to the point, it made me instantly famous.” It also made the eye patch famous.

The patch started popping up in other company’s ads featuring eye patches on cows, babies, and dogs. Ellerton Jette, Hathaway’s president, was laughing all the way to the bank having being the genius of deferral, allowing Ogilvy to dream up a campaign unencumbered, promising never to change a word of his copy or fire the agency.

Over the years, I’ve convinced colleagues to take a deeper dive in the Creative Director Kit found in every creative’s office because ads like Hathaway truly puts things in perspective. As the old golf saying goes, you “drive for show and putt for dough. And while it is true that the big drive off the tee brings the oooooooooooo’s and aaaaahhhhhh’s, the short game is the hard work just like the Big Idea is the hard work and when you land it, it makes you indispensable.

So yes, “The man in the Hathaway shirt” sets a very high creative bar. If you find the ad sitting in the in a creative director’s office, rest assured this is someone who aspires to greatness. Someone who realizes their duty is much more than their desk or their paycheck. Someone like Martha. A nod to the diligence and creative energy of yesteryear.

–>

The post The Biz: Art Director Kits and The Man in the Hathaway Shirt appeared first on Media Guy Struggles.

In the seventies, the normal fare on my eight channels was reruns (it wasn’t called syndication yet)—Bewitched, I Love Lucy, The Original Mickey Mouse Club, I Dream of Jeannie, The Brady Bunch—and it got to the point where I knew the dialog from every show cold. But I didn’t watch to see what a moron Darrin Stephens or Major Nelson were or witness Lucille Ball’s physical comedy. I watched for the commercials.

I jumped at every opportunity to see more commercials, study the messaging, learn more about the lighting and camera angles. Little did anyone know that the television was more than a mindless brain drain, but rather a series of seminars I built for myself in that empty apartment that would be the backbone of my future career.

My self-educated study of advertising was better than anything I learned at UCLA or any subsequent continuing education classes I still take. When we would visit my uncle, who was in the ad game, I would smuggle extra copies of Advertising Age and (later) Adweek from his office so I could learn even more about the business and the creative process, always looking to get to the next level. I distinctively remember being captivated by Madge, the Palmolive manicurist, who had a gift of the gab and forced her clients to soak their hands in dishwashing liquid while doing their nails.

That advertising was effective and I begged my mom and dad in separate households to buy Palmolive instead of the other Brand X. I had to negotiate for it, even committing to do the dishes at age seven. Did them I did and yes my hands remained soft and I never had “dishpan hands.” And then, the commercial that stopped me in my tracks, aired one fateful afternoon.

It was a seminal moment for me. Maybe it was the perfect script or perhaps it was the freckle-faced kid with the same name as me. But whatever it was, I remember exact the time I watching this new spot in an awe-inspired trance in that Inglewood apartment. As an only child, I was captivated by the camaraderie at the breakfast table. As a kid of divorced parents, I was amazed there was time for breakfast debates, or that there was even a breakfast. I loved the announcer’s manipulative script and authoritative tone directing parents to manipulate their households that something good for you was actually delicious. I must have watched that commercial 20-30 times that weekend, taking in the nuances of the edit, studying every aspect of it including writing down every word in my black notebook with fresh college-rule paper.

Seeing this spot opened my eyes to the fact that you have to find that amazing idea and drive it with a powerful narrative for anything to truly become special. From a production perspective, I appreciated the meticulously detailed cut and as an ardent viewer, I was convinced that this was one seamless take that built all the way through the debate, the first taste of cereal and climaxing with the “He likes it! Hey Mikey!” What kept me coming back for more was that the momentum didn’t ease with the kids. The announcer played us all like puppets with his crafty delivery that drove you to the final framed shot of the cereal box. Brilliance in thirty seconds.

On Monday, I went to school and everyone ruined it. It seems my entire class had seen this commercial and convinced themselves I was the real Mikey. “He likes it! Hey Mikey!” echoed the hallways for a solid month. It was not was I was looking for in life at that time. I never did try Life Cereal but it was that experience that convinced me that it was me who had to craft the commercials. From the writing of the spot to the actual directing of them. It was a must and so I official began my journey.

As I aged and the innocence of the spot gave way to sexier ways to incite a surge of adrenaline that I could encapsulate into my own work became my calling card. Each spot I contrive takes a boutique agency approach working closely with clients to ensure I’m not just checking boxes and running through the motions, but crafting something that will catch the attention of today’s constantly changing audiences. Here’s the latest series of “Long Man” commercials produced for Sakeru Gummys in Japan…

Who knew that all of this could grow from cereal and dishwashing soap commercials?

The post The Inspiration of Mikey appeared first on Media Guy Struggles.