Tag Archives: advertising

MacBook product placement in top TV shows

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Ichattv_2In the season premier of The Office, Pam heads off to art school with what appears to be a new MacBook. Back in Scranton, Jim has a MacBook Pro so the two love birds can chat. Of course, Michael has to get in on the fun (“Put me down, Michael. Take me back to Jim.”)

Pretty good product placement. But no better than what we saw in the season premier of HBO’s Entourage (I would have sworn I posted on this but can’t find it), when Johnny Drama carried on an LA/Paris relationship via his MacBook Pro.

I’m sure PC users assume this is just Hollywood horse shit but it really is that easy to video chat on the Mac.

We’re not talking about a bottle of Budweiser on the kitchen table. In both instances, the Mac’s were written prominently into the story line. Would love to know how much Apple paid for these two placements? [via Cult of Mac]

Not that there’s anything wrong Vista

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KingmacI think Jerry Seinfeld is damned funny. And smart. He’s probably a good choice for Microsoft’s $300 million ad campaign ("Windows, Not Walls") for Vista. Jerry is reportedly getting $10 million for the gig. If they let him write the ads, they might pull it off. I don’t have to use Vista (Praise be to Allah!) but I don’t hear good things about it.

I bring this up because I just checked out the latest series of Get A Mac ads. Throne, Off the Air and Pizza Box. Snap!

Here’s something I’ve wondered… you’ve got Mac fan boys like me posting their love for all things Apple. Are there bloggers out there singing the praises of Vista? Drop a link in the comments.

Ad budgets to be reduced

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Adv4food

“It’s going to be a bumpy six months for advertising, according to results from a new survey of advertisers released Thursday (Aug. 21) by the Association of National Advertisers.

More than half of the 100 advertisers (53 percent) surveyed expect their ad budgets to be reduced in the next six months because of the tough economic climate.” — MEDIAWEEK

Google CEO Eric Schmidt

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Last week Google CEO Eric Schmidt was interviewed by CNBC’s Jim Cramer (Mad Money). Terry Heaton provides an insightful summary of special interest to local media companies:

“He said the company gives up billions in revenue by keeping ads off the home page. Why? Because it would upset users. “We prioritize the end user over the advertiser,” he told Cramer. This simple statement — if truly adopted by media companies — would revolutionize all of online media. We’d have a race to see who could better serve the wants and needs of the people formerly known as the audience, and that would be a refreshing change from words like capture, drive, and my favorite, monetize.

Google doesn’t provide any guidance whatsoever to stock analysts, and Schmidt’s answer, again, is profoundly simple when he says it would “get in the way” of running the business, adding, “If we started giving quarterly guidance, all of a sudden the whole company would start focusing on the quarter rather than trying to change the world.”

On the company’s heretofore unsuccessful attempts to make money from YouTube, Schmidt said it didn’t matter, at least not right now. He said they make plenty of money already, because YouTube places users in the stream of Google’s other businesses, and that cannot be overlooked. “I’d be worried if people weren’t using to YouTube,” he told Cramer. “Since it’s an enormous success globally, we know we will eventually benefit from it.”

What are people saying about your product?

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ImagesThe folks Kraft Foods wanted to know what people thought of Vegemite (something they put on toast in Australia). So they hired IBM who has a little program called CoBRA (Corporate and Brand Reputation Analysis) to listen to on-line consumer conversations in blogs, boards and news feeds.

CoBRA scanned 1.5 billion posts in 38 different languages, and came up with 479,206 mentions of Vegemite. Outranking other giants like Coca Cola, Nike, Toyota, Sony and Starbucks when it came to people searching and commenting on their favourite product online.

There’s more on the story here. I only mention this because all those big brands mentioned above spend a butt-load of money marketing and advertising. I’m guessing Kraft doesn’t do so much for Vegemite.

This means something but I’m not sure what.

What is it with the Apple logo on TV?

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"Sex and the City’s" Miranda, Cynthia Nixon, sat down with Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday night to promote her blockbuster chick flick. Jimmy brought out his laptop partway through the interview for an online multiple choice quiz, which decides which of the four main SATC characters the taker is most like."

I started noticing this after I turned in to a Mac fanboy. What’s the big deal about masking the Apple logo? I guess they’d mask any recognizable brand logo. The difference is how distinctive the MacBook is. But maybe that’s true only of Mac fans. To everyone else, it’s just a laptop.

So here’s today’s assignment: Name another product that is equally recognizable (without seeing the brand logo). Begin.

Minority Report Billboards

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“Billboards are, for the most part, still a relic of old-world media, and the best guesses about viewership numbers come from foot traffic counts or highway reports, neither of which guarantees that the people passing by were really looking at the billboard, or that they were the ones sought out.

Now, some entrepreneurs have introduced technology to solve that problem. They are equipping billboards with tiny cameras that gather details about passers-by — their gender, approximate age and how long they looked at the billboard. These details are transmitted to a central database.

Behind the technology are small start-ups that say they are not storing actual images of the passers-by, so privacy should not be a concern. The cameras, they say, use software to determine that a person is standing in front of a billboard, then analyze facial features (like cheekbone height and the distance between the nose and the chin) to judge the person’s gender and age. So far the companies are not using race as a parameter, but they say that they can and will soon.

The goal, these companies say, is to tailor a digital display to the person standing in front of it — to show one advertisement to a middle-aged white woman, for example, and a different one to a teenage Asian boy.” [New York Times]

The results business

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Mark Ramsey points to a survey of marketing professionals that shows growing pressure on accountability:

“86% of marketers say pressure has increased on them to account for results; no one said that the pressure has decreased. Moreover, 68% of organizations are measuring the quantifiable contribution of marketing to the bottom line.

Message to radio: You’re no longer in the advertising business. You’re in the results business.
So which are you selling, advertising or results?”

I feel like I should have something to say about this… but I don’t know what it would be.