Ad-mageddon

(this post was inspired by my dream journal: seventiestelevision.blogspot.com)

Mervyn's going-out-of-business sales advertisement campaign is a celebration in devastation.

Using a post-apocalyptic 'motif' to drive victims of the fallout towards their 'shelters' Mervyn's stores have installed afflicted neigborhoods surrounding stores with destroyed buidings, debris, flaming wreckage, and even actors hired to fill the roles of dead and dying victims.

When potential customers walk or drive past these 'fallout' survivors, the actors are armed with flyers and discount coupons redeemable at the stores.

Separation of Church and Video Games

Sony's "Little Big Planet" video game, originally set for release in North America on October 27, has been recalled due to the inclusion of two passages from the Quran.

This kind of video game blunder first drew the public eye in Rockstar's "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" with the 'hot coffee' minigame scandal.

Sony responds:
"During the review process prior to the release of Little Big Planet, it has been brought to our attention that one of the background music tracks licensed from a record label for use in the game contains two expressions that can be found in the Quran. We have taken immediate action to rectify this and we sincerely apologise for any offence that this may have caused.

We'll confirm the new launch date shortly."

At Electronic Arts, we are always looking out for this kind of mistake, and even were at fault when a version of an episode of the South Park cartoon was found on the Playstation version of our "Tiger Woods 99 PGA Tour" golf game.

Even recently, while working on the Wii title, "Boom Blox", we refered to one of the items in our game as the 'Super Ball' and fortunately avoided copyright infringement with the Wham-O company by wisely changing the name to 'Bouncy Ball'.

Fun is a serious business.

I love real-time approval ratings!

During the 2008 presidential debates, CNN displayed real-time approval ratings from undecided Ohio voters at the bottom of the screen. The graph clearly showed the way that the voters were connecting to the responses from both presidential candidates McCain and Obama and the difference in responses between men and women.

It was obvious to me that in the second half of the debate when the responses turned to education that Obama captured both demographics when he stressed parental involvement in their children's education.

There's already a video of this segment on YouTube. Obama's comments on the topic of the world's highest per-capita national education spending combined with American children's amazingly low test scores in math and sciences begin around 5 minutes and build to a crescendo near the 7 minute mark where the graph shows 100% approval ratings from both men and women. The 3rd Presidential Debate - Part 8:

"...but there's one last ingredient that I just want to mention and that's parents. We can't do it just in the schools. Parents are going to have to show more responsibility, they've got to turn off the TV set, put away the video games and finally start instilling that thirst for knowledge that our students need."

(I can forgive his disparaging comment about video games in the context of more responsible parenting)

I want to put this idea out there for FREE to any company that wants the benefit of real-time approval data from viewers: coordinate a system similar to this real-time approval rating that uses the cable box remote as the input device, REWARD the active participant for every minute (a small fraction of one cent that would amount to a few dollars over a month of TV watching) that they respond to programming and advertisements.

The benefit to advertisers could be as readily apparent as the real-time approval ratings seen during tonight's debate! Companies and networks could see the data that corresponds to their product ads and shows.

Banner Blindness

In researching my new glasses product and information on eye-tracking, I came across some information regarding banner advertising with regards to eye-tracking.

This picture comes from a banner blindness article on Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox website. It displays a 'heat map' of a user's eye fixations while browsing for internet information; the redder colors show the areas with the highest fixation rates and the green boxes identified the advertisements placed on the web page (after the heatmaps had been generated).

What is interesting to note is that none of the boxed ads received any fixations at all.
The Persuaders video we saw in class said that one of the goals of advertisements is to "cut through the clutter". It seems that Internet surfers have become immune - 'blind' - to anything that resembles a banner or an ad on a webpage.

How will online advertisements evolve to cut through the clutter?

Bootleg Pokemon

My family took a trip to China a few years ago for my wife's import business. The kids and I spent time walking the shops and markets of Beijing and we saw many knock-off and pirate copies of Pokemon games.

Just a few of the unofficial, pirated, fake, and knock-off Pokemon game versions were:

EmeRald Version
Fire Red - Germany Language

Naranja Version

Perla Version

Frigo Returns

Chaos Black

Quartz

My son drooled over all of the 'new' Pokemon games and babbled wide-eyed wondering how much they cost. I asked to play one of the games priced at 40RMB (about $5USD) and the clerk pulled a bare Game Boy Advance cartridge out of an empty box. The game started just like any other Pokemon game, but the starter Pokemon were new strange-looking and amateurish - obviously not Nintendo approved. I researched online after we returned home about the video game market in China. Just about every piece of game software has been pirated, copied, or knocked off.

I asked the clerk about the preponderance of copied games (most were in bare-bones plastic sleeves) after seeing two Playstation2 games I had worked on, The Godfather and MTX Mototrax. He responded by stating that the copies were roughly ONE-TENTH the price of a new game and most times just as good. We even saw a very official-looking box set that claimed to contain 2000 Game Boy Advance games on a DVD for a few hundred RMB (around $50 USD)

To penetrate the Chinese video game market, developers need to think of new delivery systems where piracy can be circumvented or eliminated. Subscription-based 'MMORPGs' (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) charge players a monthly fee to access their computer servers that store their gaming information. However, this new type of gaming has spawned a new breed of exploiters where sweatshops full of PCs and workers 'farm' gold in online games and sell the virtual money for real-world cash. The workers themselves earn less than $1 per hour: Wage Slaves at 1UP.com

Unlike the Pokemon tagline, where software bootleggers are concerned, there's really no way to "catch 'em all"

Cereal and Pizza for breakfast!

My family has taken a liking to Kashi Autumn Wheat Cereal lately; all three school-age kids and I are eating it for breakfast and we have two more boxes in reserve.

The traditional morning banter is supplemented by the equally traditional reading from the cereal box. Not the ingredients or even the story of Autumn Wheat sparked our interest, but the advertisement for PIZZA on the back of the box!

There are three different varieties: Roasted Vegetable, Tomato Garlic Cheese, and Mushroom Trio & Spinach.

The advertisement threw me at first, but then I realized the genius behind it: rather than stuff the back of the box with more useless information and pictures of the product you're already eating, why not sell something for lunch or dinner (or breakfast the following morning!)

Unfortunately for Kashi, we enjoy making our own pizzas (chicken fajita with soy cheese!) but I'm certain that the back-of-the-box pizza campaign has a positive impact on the company's products.

Lil Wayne - Transcending Bling Bling

Last night in class, Mr. Kambara shared this paperback and the MTV Instructoart animation that accompanies it: The Life & Death of Bling Bling

The animation and paperback chronicle the lifespan of the phrase, "Bling Bling", defined on Wikipedia.org as "...a slang term in hip hop culture referring to flashy or elaborate jewelry and ornamented accessories that are carried, worn, or installed, such as cell phones or tooth caps."

As we discussed the life cycle of fads and trends, I could hear the chorus of the rap song of the same name. "Bling Bling" Released in 1999 by B.G., it was Lil Wayne who rapped the chorus:

"Bling bling
Everytime I come around yo city
Bling bling
Pinky ring worth about fifty
Bling bling
Everytime I buy a new ride
Bling bling
Lorenzos on Yokahama tires"

What made me think back to the chorus of this song and the fact that Lil Wayne was featured on the track was the fact that he is currently all over the FM hip hop radio stations - Power106 and Latino 96.3 - with 2 songs in the top 10 on both stations, I've been hearing his material for many recent weeks.

I find it fascinating that even though "Bling Bling" may be dead, the song and the message remain the same, repackaged, remixed, and remastered through the 'flava of the month' vocoder and that Lil Wayne has come out seemingly on top with 12 nominations from BET's Hip Hop Awards show that airs on October 23.

Good luck, Weezy. I'll be happier when sagging pants dies.

Sign up for Google AdSense!

Since this Blog is about Principles of Marketing, I thought I should look into Google's free AdSense product:

"Google AdSense matches ads to your site's content, and you earn money whenever your visitors click on them." The setup was easy enough and linked into the same account that I set up my Blogger account with. I slightly modified my Layout so that the ads wouldn't get chopped off. The AdSense adverts are automatically generated from keywords contained in your website. Presumably since I don't have a lot of content on my Blog, AdSense has a difficult time choosing appropriate ads to display. Last I checked, there were a number of links to Marketing sites, Blog sites, and a video link to 1-800-Dentist. I did, however, get a match to Pepperidge Farms. In another Blog that I'm working on, Seventies Television, I take fragments from my dreams and weave them into 70's TV shows, along with some kind of product or company like Ford, Home Depot, or Pringles potato chips. So far, AdSense hasn't hit on any of the products I placed, instead opting for Lasik, DirecTV, and the ION channel. So I haven't yet figured out this AdSense program - I'll look into the AdSense for Search next, which integrates a custom tailored search engine into your website - but it's FREE and the biggest AdSense earners like Digg.com, ShoeMoney.com, and FreeWebLayouts.net earn hundreds of thousands of dollars per MONTH using the service!

Pepperidge Farm Milano Cookies

This was the product Micah grabbed out of the backpack. Here's the copy from the bag:

"Deep rich chocolate, exquisite cookies. Ahh, yes. The Milano cookie. You've chosen a classic. Simple. Elegant. The perfect balance of two exquisite cookies embracing a layer of luxuriously rich, dark chocolate. A true masterpiece. There's a whole world of Pepperidge Farm cookie temptations out there - reward all your senses. The Art of the Cookie: Begin with a baker's soul. Seek the finest ingredients. Explore nature's infinite variety of flavors and textures - sweet, crunchy, rich - oh, and chocolate. Entertain inspirations. Embrace decadent cravings. Reward yourself. Open. Taste. Delight. Baked with no artificial flavors or preservatives (just one more reason why they're so good). Product of USA."

Every word and phrase (with the exception of the last sentence) is filled with inflated hyperbole, and dripping with decadence, so much so that it was impossible for any of us three Mooks to read through it with a straight face.

Bloviated drivel aside, I carefully examined the packaging and arrived at two comments on seemingly oxymoronic design decisions and one suggestion:

1. When Micah pulled the cookies out of the backpack, the shape and color of the package looked like a bag of Goldfish crackers. These snack crackers are also made by Pepperidge Farms but I believe cater to a younger demographic more concerned with shoveling handfuls of salty snacks than daintily tasting fine cultured European baked goods. Change the bag and solve the confusion.

2. The Pepperidge Farms logo clashes with the elevated nature of the rest of the package from the words to the font. Dress up the logo for the classy Milano cookie bag.

3. I suggested that changing the inside foil color from silver to gold might make the product seem more expensive, but Brandon's challenge was that the highly reflective quality of the silver foil heightens the visual appeal of the cookies when the consumer looks into the bag: "Hey look! You got a bunch more cookies in there!"

Marketing of Primal Rage

In 1994 I worked on the Arcade Game Primal Rage for Time Warner Interactive and was busily working on the sequel while the sales and marketing department were conducting their campaign.

On the development side, we were responsible for the creation of the game, and worked with the marketing department through beta testing of arcade locations where the game would earn sometimes $1000 over a week one quarter at a time (although some games were priced at $0.75 per play) Using these earning numbers over several weeks from a handful of different locations - large arcades, minigolf centers, bowling alleys, even convenience stores - the sales and marketing departments would sell to arcade machine distributors, who then would lease the machines to arcade locations.

The sad truth is that there is really no room for second place when it comes to arcade machines; why buy a #1 earner and a #2 earner when you could simply buy two #1 earners? The competition for quarters was fierce and that determined the success or failure of all arcade game sales.

As far as Primal Rage was concerned, we had several weeks' worth of #1 earnings data from many different locations. This resulted in several thousand units sold for the arcade game and a healthy success for Time Warner Interactive.

The fascinating aspect of the marketing of Primal Rage was the campaign behind the consumer versions of the game. Less than a year after the release of the arcade game, there were ELEVEN different consumer versions either available or in production. I have a marketing brochure that lists all SKU's and shows a timeline of 'Marketing/Promotional Support' that spans the months of July through December.

The 'Support' as listed comes in such forms as: Nationwide TV and Print Advertising, Electronic Gaming Monthly Nationwide Mall Tour, In-Store Merchandising, Public Relations, Major Market Radio Advertising, In-Pack Promotion, Sega Channel Promotion, Online/Internet Activities, Polybagged Demo Disks, National Six Flags Videogame Tournament, and a Consumer Strategy Guide, all of which have different life spans.

Coordinating all of these dates and promotions nationwide would be too much for one person, and I'm not sure how many people the Marketing team had. I also have no idea what the size of the budget for this project was, but I can imagine that could have been in the millions of dollars.

What is equally fascinating to me was the coordination of merchandising of the brand into toys and apparel. I still own 6 out of the 7 original Playmates 6" action figures of the characters in the game, as well as some compact collapsible playsets, arcade and consumer strategy guides, some large 12" action figures, and the Primal Rage slide projector! The work that went into negotiating these merchandising deals must have been exciting and fun to be a part of!