Fabulous - and very on-the-nose - post about DaimlerChrysler's slippery slide into brand oblivion.

For the first time that I've noticed it anyway, I've had a video ad for Dove show up on my blog today. Depending on where you are, you may or may not see it (it's showing up in that AdSense box below the mesh ad, over in the C column on the right). Fascinating to see the growth of Google's move into display and video ads really start to ramp. A taste of things to come, I'd say.

(posted by blackberry)

Well, not really, but my Wife and I did spend last week recording our radio listening habits for the latest round of Toronto BBM (Bureau of Broadcast Measurement) ratings. You know, those things that the stations use to figure out who's listening, and advertisers use to figure what stations to buy to reach what audience. We hadn't done it before, and given I have an, um, more-than-passing interest in media and advertising, we figured what-the-heck.

While filling out a little booklet was fine and dandy, what was most interesting to me in the process was realizing how little radio I listen to anymore. It was really surprising. Not that I am not listening to anything, but that it's not radio. For instance, we went away as a family so the music was kid's tunes on the iPod. Then, it was me in the car, listening to CDs, music and podcasts. On the subway? All iPod, all-the-time. Home? Same. Kid's music and iPod tunes and podcasts.

I also found it interesting that the BBM people don't seem to be interested in knowing that I am listening to my iPod, or CDs for that matter - although, you'd think that they'd want to know what is happening around substitution. Oh, wait, right, they *don't* want to know.

Tags: BBM, tags, radio, ratings

My friend Mark has a post up riffing on the whole "we don't need your bloody marketing" thing that web 2.0 types tend to wax poetic on. And the post sorta makes me want to scream and shove sharp objects in my eyes.

Why? Because Marketing is, and near as I can tell always has been, the basis upon which virtually any good business has been built, and it misses the point completely. For the record, a-gain: Promotion is only a part of Marketing. An important part to be sure, but jeez louise people, it ain't the whole thing.

When I read things out there in the big world like "to be successful you have to have a product that meets a need, regardless of the marketing" or "the marketing was good, but they didn't get the distribution they needed" or "they had great marketing, but it was too expensive" it drives me batty. Marketing is all of those things. Anybody who thinks that somehow you can create something and then foist it on an unsuspecting public with enough ads and it will work must have a penchant for making their lives a living hell.

Marketing is, at its' core, recognizing a problem and then doing everything to profitably solve it. The best businesses stay completely focused on solving that problem in a way that resonates with their market. So for you webby startups out there, that's the thing to remember. It's not whether or not you can avoid spending money on advertising, it's how well you are making your customers' lives better.

Fact is, if you are doing real Marketing well, everything will be easier.

Tags: marketing

Jeff has a tremendous post here. Long, but worth it.

Lines up with my view of the world, big time - as anyone who has been listening to me for the past, oh, two years, and has been playing any sort of follow-the-money already knows.

For the past 50 or more years, advertising has been based on one basic concept: yelling at people via the television, works. You could get enough of them in one place, nice and passive, and if you delivered the right message enough times you could create awareness. From that (and I simplify) awareness led to trial, trial led to preference, preference led to loyalty. At the heart of this process were the assumptions that (a) you could get enough people in one place to allow for scale and (b) the message was for the marketer to control.

Fast forward to 2006, and that past starts to feel like a trip to Never-never Land. Companies are spending 50% or more of their ad dollars on things like paid search, the money that's left is being cast across extremely fragmented markets, PVRs and Tivo are at long last making commercial-skipping "Me TV" a reality in a way that VCRs never really did.

Clearly, for marketers with a job to do and agencies and networks who would like to keep their jobs, this is a challenge of the first order. So what is the answer?

As we sit here today, I don't think anybody knows. People talk about micro-tactics and multiple small efforts, but how does that work when you need to reach tens-of-millions of people? This is not clear. You hear about "conversations" being important, but how do you control your message in that environment? Feels to me that you just don't. And on top of that, you have an agency and broadcast community that seems to want to wish these changes away and keep doing what they have always done. I've seen *that* movie: travel industry in around 1998, anyone?

At mesh we are tackling these topics with some of the smartest people in the field, and today Mathew, Rob, Mark are joining the discussion, too. I have a bit of a different take on the mesh blog, and Mike has a good post about how we are putting these principles to work promoting the conference.

If you care about this topic, you can't afford not to be at mesh. Register today.

Tags: marketing, media, mesh06tags, web2.0

I spent the afternoon with a few hundred other Canadian digi-types at the first-ever  Sympatico-msn Digital Ad Summit. First off, props to those mesh-sponsoring msn kids for pulling off a very strong event (nice work, Patrick - and thanks for the invite) and for attracting a very tech-savvy crowd. As a co-founder of mesh, and other big events in past lives, I have a deep appreciation of the, um, challenges of event production and this one came off very well.

Also kudos for presenting a very strong line-up, though I must say that Bob Garfield was a disappointment. I was actually really looking forward to hearing the whole Chaos Theory he espouses (and I subscribe to) regarding the implications of the turmoil in mass media, broadcasting and advertising. Unfortunately, he likely should have been stopped at the border. His talk, while rich in good stuff, was overshadowed by a condescending tone, out-of-touch Canada vs. US quips and punch lines which fell tortilla-flat. He seemed tremendously out of touch with the fact that his audience were among the most tech with-it folks in Canada. As opposed to those in, oh I don't know, North Korea, who might have been more likely to marvel at his digi-smart pronouncements. Shame.

That said, Steve Rubel kicked it (he's back in 2 weeks at mesh) as did Jeff Cole (whom my wife and I will have the pleasure of dining with tomorrow night. Oh boy, talking 'net future with the man presiding over all that data, while enjoying a nice bottle of Rioja? I'm like a kid with candy :-)). The gentleman from France who discussed mobile and media was fascinating, and while they are clearly miles ahead over there, I still can't get past thinking that we are at least three years away from it really taking off here.

Mark was there with me and shares his thoughts on Cole's talk. In all,  it was a great and thought-provoking event.

Tags: msn, sympatico, steverubel, jeffcole, bobgarfield, mesh06tags

I've thought a lot about Google taking a serious run at the Travel category over the past few years. Mostly because that's part of what I was paid to do, and also because it makes a lot of sense. So I was interested to see Mathew Ingram's piece in today's Globe and Mail (which seems to have spun out of this blog posting) where he talks at length about the prospect. For the most part, I think he got it right.

For one thing, Google certainly has designs on being a portal, if their recent moves with Finance and Real Estate are any indication. Beyond that, their competitors are already there in Travel, sorta, with Yahoo!FareChase leading the way and msn Travel (in typical Microsoft fashion) representing a half-step towards a fully integrated travel "thing". As well, there is a lot of money at play, both from an ad and a distribution cost perspective, and they have reason to want to maximize it. Finally, if they have been nervous about upsetting the ad-revenue apple cart in the travel category (huge numbers) that nervousness has likely been reduced by things like IAC's purchase of Ask.com. IAC maintains a controlling interest in Expedia, and with this purchase is both a big customer of, and a direct competitor to, Google.

However, I think that there is a big difference between Google ramping up their travel "experience" and them actually fully taking on the OTAs. In terms of them having some multi-site search experience and sending traffic from that to an OTA or a supplier (airline, hotel etc.). that seems like a pretty obvious thing. Suppliers would love it, and the competitive gauntlet has already been thrown down.

But actually selling travel? Yikes. Why would they? Call centres, rules and regs, etc. etc. Easier to just further solidify their role as gate-keeper, and take advantage of the lack of loyalty and brand meaning that these guys have to crank out the ad money.

Also, worth noting that most of this applies less here in Canada. For a bunch of reasons, the OTA and Supplier landscape is different and it is less likely that the existing dominant players here (Expedia.ca, AirCanada.com and WestJet.com) would suffer or benefit much from such a move by Google. Why? Well, the competition is lighter here, they often have exclusive inventory, offer pricing of global inventory in Canadian dollars, work better and have brand meaning that brings a lot of business direct.

Technorati tags: google, yahoo, travel, expedia, travelocity, orbitz, aircanada, westjet

I just wrote the following over on the mesh blog. I sort of liked it, so I thought I'd add it here, too:

Lots of talk today about whether money can be made from blogging, with the WSJ publishing a story on it (just the type of story to get the often-inward-looking blogosphere fired into a navel gazing frenzy. But I digress :-)).

I guess it sort of depends on who and how you ask, right? I mean, if you were to ask many of the folks coming to speak at mesh, who happen to blog, whether "blogging makes money" many of them would likely say "Not directly, but indirectly? You better believe it."

I mean, think of the untold millions spent on traditional advertising and PR to create just the type of profile and voice that some people have built for themselves and their businesses via blogging and social media. How can you tally the value of creating your own soapbox? In traditional media, I guess overall marketing efficiency metrics are viewed as the most important gauge of the effectveness of spend, but can one really say, categorically, that traditional PR "makes money"? It's tough. But when put in that context? Wow, blogging "makes money" in spades.

Does it do so directly? Not often. Just like only PR practicitioners, by a tight definition, are the only ones who directly "make money" from PR. But indirectly? Bloggers, their organizations and PR firms Clients, without question.

That's the way to look at it, I think.

Dave Winer comments here, mesh speaker Paul Kedrosky here, and mesh speaker Scott Karp here. Mark thinks aloud here, Mathew has some great points here.

Certainly food for discussion in the marketing and PR streams at mesh.

Technorati tags: blogging, wsj, web2.0, mesh06links

This is something I want to get into more deeply, but for now Steve Rubel has a great wrap-up on a session he attended this morning with a bunch of US broadcasting, advertising and marketing execs. The gist? In the US, some of the biggest TV execs still can't wrap their heads around the idea of micro-markets - not really, anyway - and some big marketers are getting ready to take a leap.

All by way of putting the challenge that all these media changes are creating for those who need to deliver a message and those who, historically, have been paid to do that in quantity into yet more perspective.

Hopefully this is something we will dive into more deeply when Steve joins me on-stage 1:1 at mesh on May 15th and 16th in Toronto.

Technorati tags: marketing, media, web2.0