PR 101

Numerous research studies have found most people just don’t believe television advertising. The average viewer is most likely to make a run for the restroom than sit and watch the latest Madison Avenue effort. Still, that hasn’t stopped agencies and their clients from spending millions to create more and more commercials.

I have to admit, some are clever. But, that doesn’t mean I ever would buy a product based on what some actor tells me. And as for car dealerships – why I would buy anything from someone who shouts at me? TV advertising just doesn’t work anymore. It doesn’t matter that people are watching a lot more television than ever.

According to an August article published by MarketingVox.com: “by 2010, traditional TV advertising will be one-third as effective as it was in 1990, according to a study from McKinsey & Co.

“That forecast assumes a 15 percent decrease in buying power driven by CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) rate increases; a 23 percent decline in ads viewed due to switching off; a nine percent loss of attention to ads due to increased multitasking; and a 37 percent decrease in message impact due to saturation, AdAge reports (via MediaBuyerPlanner). According to McKinsey, real ad spending on prime-time broadcast TV has increased over last decade by about 40 percent even as viewers have dropped almost 50 percent.”

I often give my new clients a little quiz: I ask them what is their favorite TV commercial. About half cannot name one. Of the remainder, about half of them cannot remember what company or what product was being pushed. Of that final 25 percent, most of them say they like the commercial, but wouldn’t buy the product.

Those commercials are a nice try on an advertisers part, but in real life, nice tries get you nothing.

Which brings me to my point

It doesn’t bother me that advertisers are wasting their money. It’s their business and their money.

What really bothers me is when a company shows the same ad over and over and over again. I cannot speak for all markets – just Milwaukee. And Milwaukee is often used as a test market, so maybe we get more commercials than the average metro area.

I will give an example. The Olive Garden is running a campaign positioning itself as a mid-range restaurant. If you haven’t seen it, the commercials feature various groups of people meeting at an Olive Garden to share good food and companionship. So far, so good.

However for some reason, the campaign has devolved into the same commercial over and over again. It features a mom and dad visiting their daughter at college. When I first saw it, I thought it was pretty good. It had a key element that made it realistic – it showed the parents taking their daughter – and her friends – out for a meal.  Speaking as the parent of two now college graduates, I think we fed half of Miami University of Ohio and Purdue University.

However, by the 20^th time I watched the family talk about eating pasta at Olive Garden, I was screaming at the television. Other companies have done the same thing – I love Southwest Airlines, but I was going to throw something at the television if I heard the phrase: “it’s on” one more time.

What I want to do to my television after one too many commercials.

I once read a study that after six or seven screenings, people start to resent television ads. After 20 or so showings, the reaction to the overplay can actually make people not buy a product.

You know, it’s nice when someone else makes the case for social media, even if they don’t mean to.

As said I Monday, I will not be publishing next week. The next blog will run Jan. 4^th. Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year to all.

This is the headline from the Dec. 11, 2009 crainsnewyork.com online business magazine: “367 magazines shuttered in 2009.”

The article goes on to report that: “As bad as the news is, the pace of decline appears to have slowed. In 2008, a total of 526 U.S. magazines ceased publication. In 2007, there were 573 that shut down.

The number of titles that folded may actually be higher, said Trish Hagood, president of Oxbridge Communications, parent company of MediaFinder, which describes itself as the largest online database of U.S. and Canadian publications. She explains that it will take until well into the new year to do a final tabulation.”

A knowledge gap is being created

I decided to write this blog because of last week’s announcement that two venerable magazines were shutting down: Editor & Publisher and Kirkus Reviews are being shuttered.

I know neither of these of magazines would be the kind likely to be sold at the grocery store checkout (except maybe for grocery stores in Cambridge, Mass, the lower East Side of New York and Berkley, Calif.). But, they served important purposes in their niches.

The century-old Editor & Publisher covered the newspaper industry. When I started as a reporter in 1975, it was a must read. If you wanted to know what going on in the business, you read E & P. I got my first two reporting jobs from classified ads in the magazine. It was a magazine in which readers’ actually read the ads first, especially the classified job listings.

Kirkus Reviews published over 5,000 book reviews annually. It was an important outlet, especially for new authors. It was often the first public exposure a first novel received. Kirkus was an important resource for bookstore buyers. They would often choose a novel to offer to their customers based on something they read in the magazine.

Personal note: As one who is writing a novel, and hoping to get it published, I mourn the loss of Kirkus. I also mourn the loss of E & P. It was an important press watchdog.

The closing of those two, and other magazines, is creating a knowledge gap.

Magazines used to occupy a unique place in news and information publishing. Newspapers were looked to as a daily source of information. That role has largely been taken over by Web-based news sources, including Twitter. Magazines were the source of the longer, more in-depth pieces. Magazines had the space and time to really tackle a subject. But, they were more immediate than a book.

With the death of so many magazines, a valuable source of explanation and analysis is going away. Oddly, to me at least, many newspapers are trying to turn themselves into daily magazines. They write long investigative stories that often run for several pages. That’s not why people read newspapers. They want to know what’s going on in the neighborhood. People don’t have time to ready long stories in the morning – when newspapers are delivered.

There is a solution

Yeah, you guessed it – I think magazines should be moving on line completely. I know Editor & Publisher has been on-line since the ‘90s. Kirkus is also online.  However, I don’t think either did a very good job of bringing readers to their websites. Like a lot of other publications, I think they saw the websites as an auxiliary to their print editions. It should have been the other way around.

There is precedent for this – the move of soap operas from radio to television in the early 1950s.

A little history first. In 1946, there were approximately 10,000 television sets in the United States, according to questia.com. By 1950, there were 3 million and by 1953, half of all households in the United States had a television. Kind of sounds like the growth of social media, doesn’t it?

Proctor & Gamble started soap operas on radio during the Depression. It was a marketing decision to sell more laundry soap and other products. When television began to dominate, P & G moved the soaps to television. After all, you go where the customers are – which is a rule of social media by the way.

So, why can’t magazines do the same thing? The web is becoming the dominant media – so why not move to the customers are? More and more people are doing their reading online. I still get Sports Illustrated’s print edition, but I also read it online every day. SI and other publications can do more on the web – post videos, run a lot more pictures, link to other relevant sites and be a lot more immediate in their analysis.

I think that move would save a lot of magazines. In cost alone, it would be a good move. No longer would a publisher have to factor the cost of production and printing.

Seems logical to me. Any thoughts anyone?

Note: I will not be posting on either next Monday or Wednesday. It is a holiday week and I am taking some time off. The next blog will run Jan. 4, 2010.

Welcome to the second part of Public Relations 101. This Wednesday blog is where I will be giving you my opinion on various marketing communications efforts.

I see my Monday blog as a kind of primer on marketing, public relations and social media. There is some opinion in it, but basically, I hope you are reading to learn what I know. I appreciate that hundreds of people who read and comment on it.

I greatly enjoy writing it. I will keep at it. But, because I try to keep the lessons to around 1,000 words – long for a blog I am told – I don’t have the space to review marketing campaigns. So, this blog has been born. I don’t have a title for it, so suggestions are welcome. I do expect to start some debates; in fact I want to start some. It is how we all learn. I do not have all the answers. I don’t even know all the questions.

I hope you all read this one as much as you read my Monday offering. So, let me get to it.

I am very active in social media. As I am sure you have noticed, I blog. I also tweet, spend time on Facebook and am approaching 5,000 contacts on LinkedIn. While I have only posted one video on YouTube, I watch it a lot.

I also am active on Plaxo, dabble on FriendFeed, use Digg and read Mashable. I am willing to bet I use social media a lot more than most. When you throw in my age – I am 55 – I am definitely ahead of any curve you can name.

Yet, lately, some parts of social media have started to frost me.

First, somebody has to destroy the keyboards of a lot of social media developers

Why you ask, a look of bewilderment on your face. You just told us that you are an active user of social media. What’s the problem?

This is how I feel when I get yet another site invitation.

I will tell you. There are too damned many sites coming out there are trying to imitate LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. Everyday I get invited to join some new site that says it will make my life easier. I think sometimes that the late pitchman Billy Mays’ last act was to  create all of these sites. The copy that comes with these sites is eerily close to how Mays used to sell products.

Look I am a huge believer in social media. I firmly believe it is replacing conventional advertising, marketing and public relations. Everyone should be using the Big Four plus one – LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogs. Okay, I agree Digg, Mashable and Technorati are also important. A case can be made for Friendfeed and a few others. If I lived in Brazil or the Middle East, I would use Orkut.

But, geez, every time I one of my email accounts, there are half a dozen invitations for sites I never heard of. We don’t need all them. I know the shakeout is coming, but fast enough for me.

Second, I am really tired of all these social media “experts” who claim they can make me a million dollars in the time it takes to trim my nails

To all of you who send these schemes to make millions on the Internet – GO AWAY! You may not know you’re lying, but I do. As the cliché says: “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

If you use the term guru when you send me an email, I going to hunt you down and slap you silly. Guru is a religious title akin to Father, Rabbi or Imam. Here are the first two definitions of Guru: (n) guru – a Hindu or Buddhist religious leader and spiritual teacher; Guru: each of the first ten leaders of the Sikh religion.

So, why not call yourself the Marketing Pope or something and be done with it.

Plus, I want to know what qualifies somebody as a social media expert? I belong to the Public Relations Society of America – the public relations industry group. The PRSA bestows a designation called APR or Accreditation in Public Relations. An APR is earned an by taking both written and oral examinations. The standards are rigid.

As far as I know, there is no social media industry wide group that bestows such a designation. I know there are individual training companies that give out accreditations. But, as I said, there is no agreed upon industry wide designation.

So, to me the only thing that works in proving you are an expert is if you have actually run effective social media campaigns. So, if you haven’t, stay away from me.

Until Monday, later all.