PR 101

I work from a home office.

That’s good because it cuts way down on costs, my commute takes about 30 seconds, and I don’t have to share the bathroom with anyone other than my smarter half. It’s bad because there are way too many distractions in my house.

One of those is the television. I am a news junkie, so I flip on the television on during the day to see what’s happening in the world. I haven’t been a working reporter for almost a decade, but I am still hooked on current events.

So the other day I turn on the tube only to see a commercial for denture adhesive. Three women of a certain age were singing about the joys of this adhesive to the tune of the Everly Brothers “Bye Bye Love.”

My first thought was WTF?!?! I am sure Phil and Don Everly were not thinking about loose teeth when they were recorded the song in 1957.  (I was three-years-old when the song came out. My late older brother was big fan of the duo, so I heard it a lot.)

“Bye Bye Love” was one of those bouncy little pop ballads that were so prevalent in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. Hearing that song made me realize that the industry I am in is co-opting my formative years. I don’t like it.

For those of you who are not Baby Boomers, I realize we get pretty boring rhapsodizing about how great things were 40-years-ago. But, we had to listen to my parents stories about their generation. Now it’s your turn to listen to us.

You have to remember how controversial rock was in the ‘50s and ‘60s. When Elvis appeared for the first time on Ed Sullivan, they only showed him from the waist up. It was thought way too scandalous to show his gyrations. Seems a little tame now when you think about Madonna kissing Brittany Spears or Adam Lambert going all bi-sexual on national television. That’s one of the things we love about it. It was considered untouchable by anybody but us damned hippie kids.

Abbie Hoffman - the man who predicted our music would be co-opted.

I don’t think Steppenwolf would have been allowed to play “Magic Carpet Ride” on broadcast television forty years ago. After all, whether it is actually true or not, we always assumed the song was about getting high. People sang about such things in the ‘60s.

So, I Google the song and discover Wendy’s used a version of it in a commercial. Well, I suppose that marriage of music and marketing kind of works. You know, munchies ….

In fact, that Google search turned up three pages on About.com of popular songs used in commercials. What used to be the anthems of rebellion are now background music for selling hamburgers and cars.

Excuse me, but I have to say it: Bummer Dude!

Well, the late Abbie Hoffman did predict this was going to happen – I think in his opus “Steal This Book.” (Which I did, but then someone stole from me. It’s what Hoffman wanted to happen, but I digress.) The point he made was that eventually society co-opts everything. Oh, well, that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Although I have yet to hear any commercial using the lyrics from John Lennon’s song New York City:

Standing on the corner

Just me and Yoko Ono

We was waiting for Jerry to land

Up come a man with a guitar in his hand

Singing, “Have a marijuana if you can”

His name was David Peel

And we found that he was real

He sang, “The Pope smokes dope every day”

Up come a policeman shoved us up the street

Singing, “Power to the people today!”

So, maybe there are some corners that are still untouchable.

There has been a lot of debate in the blogosphere lately about whether television is still a viable place for companies to hawk their wares. Those who argue old school marketing methods aren’t going anywhere for a long time say television is still a great place to set up a booth. Those who have imbibed the social media wine argue just the opposite – that television is as much a dinosaur as print.

Well, I think that for a time, both sides are right. However, if the sun isn’t yet setting on television for marketing, it is late afternoon. Why you ask?

A lot of eyes still watch the television screen

Well, let’s consider the latest report from Nielsen. In comparing American television viewership, the research service found that overall television viewership had risen by 1.9 percent to 153:27 hours a month in the first quarter of 2009. That’s an average of just over five hours a day.

(Editor’s note: Who has five hours a day to watch television? That’s 35 hours a week. Assume people work about 45 hours a week, spend another 10 hours commuting, and sleep 56 hours a week, that leaves 22 hours a week, or three hours a day, to get everything else done. No wonder most Americans look so bleary-eyed.)

According to Nielsen, approximately 284 million Americans watched television in the first quarter of last year. That number increased by 1.2 percent over the same period in 2008. For analysis purposes, that number was flat.

Still, that means approximately 80 percent of the American population was watching television. If I were marketing something, I think I would consider using television as part of the campaign – depending on the age of the consumer I wanted to reach.

TiVo and DVRs are changing the game

The Nielsen report found something else that is very interesting – approximately 79 million Americans watched “time-shifted” television. In other words, they recorded a show to watch later. They spent about eight hours a month doing that – a 37 percent increase over the first quarter of 2008.

Nielsen also found that “online video grew 13 percent in Q1 2009, driven by both strong brand marketing and large media events including the Presidential inauguration, the Super Bowl and March Madness. With broadband levels increasing in the U.S., online video audiences will continue to grow as consumers begin to upgrade their PCs to support increased video consumption. Mobile video viewing (on smart phones) has grown a significant 52 percent from the previous year, up to 13.4 million Americans. Much of this growth continues to come from increased mobile content and the rise of the mobile web as a viewing option.”

The researchers found that 131.1 million Americans watched video on the Internet in the first quarter of 2009 – a 13 percent increase over the same period as 2008.

What do time shifting, watching video online and on smart phones have in common – little or no advertising. Anyone who owns a DVR knows that it is programmed to skip by commercials. Most DVRs record the last five seconds of commercial to ensure none of the program is missed. That’s why marketers in Europe are developing five-second ads. They hope they can at least make an impression on a viewer.

I think we are about to see a massive change in the way people wath videos.

I think what we are seeing is a shift away from traditional television watching. As I said, the sun hasn’t set yet on traditional television. But it’s late afternoon for the 70-year-old medium.

The report notes that the age group that spends the most time watching time-shifted television are the 24- to 35-year-olds. They spent just over 12 hours a month watching something they had recorded. What marketers should really notice is that 12- to 17-year-olds spend the most time watching video on their phones – 6.5 hours a month. This is a group everybody wants to reach. The theory is that they haven’t yet formed any brand loyalty.

So, what I take from this is that the younger you are, the less likely you are to be wedded to traditional television. Oh, you still watch it, but you are gradually integrating newer technologies into your viewing universe.

Incidentally, while I don’t have any data to back this up, I think the same thing is happening in the rest of the world. In fact, since on-line video watching demands broadband hookups, I have a feeling the rest of the world is further along than the United States. Broadband in most of the world is much faster that in the U.S.

I think the snowball has started to roll downhill. The avalanche hasn’t gotten serious yet, but it is at the point where it cannot be stopped. Marketers and their clients had better start looking for alternatives.