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    Total Buying Power

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    Here’s an online media metric for those of you tracking social networking and social media.  Total buying power.  It’s a single, simple, comparative number.  LinkedIn’s average user age is 41 years old with an average household income of $109,000. Its 23 million registered users in May generated 7.7 million monthly visits to the site.  When I multiplied visits by income it made my calculator quake. (It was close to a trillion.)  When I multiplied registered users by the income, the calculator spit the battery. 

    In May, MySpace had 60M visitors and Facebook 26M, but how much money do college and high school kids make each year.  Granted Facebook’s average age is getting older, but the income levels really aren’t there yet.  Between the higher income target and the smart marketing strategy, you can see why LinkedIn is the only one of the three turning a profit. 

    So, media types, what do you think about this metric?  Is Total Buying Power (TBP) a discussion starter?

    Spreadsheet and sickle

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    The McClatchy Company today reported it is letting go around 1,400 of its newspaper employees. This, after having let go 2,000 others over the last 18 months.  Samuel  Zell has his spreadsheet and sickle out at the Tribune Company and who knows what will becomes of Newsday as the Dolans take control.  Is there less news to be reported?  Is there less advertising to pay the bills?  Or is it the Internet?


    It’s a perfect storm of all three, actually. There is not less news, but more.  Technology has enabled few things in the world to go unnoticed.  Add to that the millions of bloggers reporting and analyzing news and events and the choices become even greater.  Bloggers are competing with favorite newspaper columnists for Share of Day (SOD.)  That’s the impact of the Internet.  And in this recession-like clime, ad pages are harder to come by.

    Newspapers will always be around. The delivery medium will change, but the news will be there.  As for reporters, there are good and bad and regardless of where they publish, smart media properties will hire the good to attract readers.  With the right packaging and the right mix of advertising, the strong will reemerge and all will be fine.

    The greening of social networks.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    (Not that kind of greening.)

    MySpace is acknowledging its soft ad revenue by redesigning its home page to be less cluttered and more advertiser-friendly.  It is also updating its nav bar in the hopes of making MySpace a little more adult friendly (my theory.)  You see, one of the reasons News Corp’s social networking darling isn’t bringing in the ad revenue it had hoped is the demographics are too young. Think of it like TV advertising on Saturday morning. 
     
    Facebook, though its user base is older, also isn’t making big ad revenue because they, too, are not hitting the ideal user base demo.  Let’s face it, this demographic group barely see ads online. Zude, which we like to refer to as a “social computing platform that provides users an unprecedented level of freedom and design customization” (mouthful, I know,) is an online property designed to make it easier for users of all technical abilities to build and manger web content. And that includes not just the young, but all consumers. As those who are in the high-spend demographic enter the social computing age, thanks to more usable online properties, advertisers will start to spend more money to reach them.    
     
    Advertisers will pay for consumers who will pay. It’s a fact.
     

    Whass the idea?

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

    There’s a saying I once put into a new business Powerpoint deck that actually sounded like a saying: “Campaigns come and go, but a powerful branding idea is indelible.”  To me this touches upon the problem with Anheuser Busch’s advertising over the last 15 years — no powerful branding idea.  The Wall Street Journal today (6/13/08) reminds us of some so-called great Bud and Bud Light ad campaigns: Clydedales, Louie the Lizard, Spuds MacKenzie, “whassup,” Bud Bowl, Cedric the Entertainer and, more recently, “dude.”  Beyond the creative hook, can anyone tell me what the branding idea is in these campaigns?  I sure can’t.  Therefore, the idea is the creative not the product, and that’s always a bad idea.


    No wonder InBev – the company attempting a hostile takeover of AB — feels there is fat to be cut away from Anheuser Busch.  They are right.  Whoever owns the company should cut the Super Bowl budget in half and spend the $13 million saved on some special beechwood aging gizmo that proves superior taste claim.  It will give all the dogs and horses and geckos something substantive to talk about. 

     

    Bud suffers from a geezer mentality.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

     

    I grew up on Budweiser beer. Clean, crisp beer. Clydesdales. American colors. No after-taste. Man, it was a great beer on a hot day. Still is.
     
    Today, Budweiser and the Anheuser Busch Company are being pursued by InBev, a Belgium company, and number 3 brewer worldwide.   It didn’t have to come to this.  Over the last 15 years Anheuser Busch took its eye off the ball.
     
    The latest generation of Buschs let the master brand Budweiser diminish in importance, while building up Bud Lite.  The assumption was the old boys would keep drinking Bud and live forever, so they focused their resources on Bud Light but got in a slug fest with Coors Light. Budweiser sales waned. Moreover, they never understood how to create a brand extension in the craft category. And every year AB spent millions and millions in Super Bowl commercials and thought they were innovating, reading all their great advertising press.  Finally realizing their folly, AB attempted to get younger with Bud.TV, but it was too late and way out of touch. Geezer mentality.
     
    If they can bring this thing back, and I dearly hope they do, AB really needs to understand the next generation beer consumer. It’s a BIG market they don’t want to cede to InBev.
     
     
     

    Smart. And not so.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

     

     
    I’m planning a personal boycott against products with the word Smart in the name. No Smart Car for me. No Smart Phone. No Smart Food (butter? popcorn?) No, no and no. And even though the new Hewlett-Parkard touch screen computer seems pretty cool, it’s part of my boycott. 
     
    Naming is not an easy business. There are two ways to go: descriptive and non. When introducing a category-breaker product, I tend to recommend the descriptive approach — words and word assemblages that explain function. If the descriptive approach implies benefits, that’s cool, but for this approach I tend to stay away from benefit. 
     
    Today HP introduced the HP TouchSmart IQ500PC, an overgrown iPhone-like desktop computer that lets users stroke and palpate the screen for navigation. But couldn’t they have been equally creative with the name?  I can live with the “Touch” part, but “Smart?”  It’s just lazy. And to add a model number that begins with IQ?
     
    Invent? I don’t think so.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

    McDonald’s Lost Opportunity. On a sesame seed bun.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

     

     
     
    If you are a student of marketing, fast food is a very exciting category.  It responds immediately to advertising.  Burger King is on its way back for the zillionth time and it looks as Crispin Porter Bogusky’s work is finally paying off.  Never a big fan of all the “king” advertising, I do appreciate how he is weaved into the core (youth) customer message of “eat big , eat tasty.”
     
    On a roll since “I’m loving’ it” and especially so since the launch of salads, McDonald’s is currently pursing a pretty smart beverage strategy and has a winner on its hands with the new Southern Style Chicken sandwich. Maybe the new chicken sandwich will help win back some share lost to Burger King. And you can tell Mickey Dees is feeling a little Whopper pain because they’re launching a new promo for the Big Mac. But here’s the rub: to get younger customers interested in this dated sandwich, McDonald’s is hosting a consumer generated contest. Dohhhh!
     
    According to an Ad Age interview: “Customers will be able to go online, create or mix their own version of the two all-beef patties jingle through MySpace,”  the best of which will be aired on TV. For those who don’t know the old Big Mac jingle it went something like this: Two all beef-patties, cheese, onions, pickles, lettuce, special sauce on a sesame seed bun. (Does it get any “funner” than that?)
     
    This is an example of a marketing meeting gone wrong where the alpha fe/male says, “We need a promo, let’s do something with consumer generated content.” and the rest of the room does the account executive nod.
     
    They’ll get lots of entries, I know. They’ll sell some incremental Big Macs, I know. And it may be worth a quarter’s worth of improved sales, but it’s still a lazy tactic for a fast food juggernaut.
     
     

    Props to Rupert.

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

     

      

    Okay, okay I think I’m becoming a Rupert Murdoch fan. I wouldn’t want him as my CEO in a new internet start-up, but I like how he is going about learning what’s next. I’ve dinged him for what he’s doing to the Wall Street Journal, but must give him credit for putting money into a lot of different new media properties in an effort to learn. It is the wild west don’t forget.
     
    Mr. Murdoch has shown some restraint when it comes to DRM (digital rights management) and he believes in the newspaper business, so long as the writing is great and germane. His take on MySpace vs. Facebook is also interesting. He feels MySpace is for those who want to express themselves and Facebook is a utility. Nice boil down. It also makes me feel good about our online property, Zude, which is poised to be the best of all individual expression platforms. After shelter, sustenance and procreation, personal expression is the most important human need. The online world is a  brand new canvas for personal expression and Mr. Murdoch sees that. 

    50-50 edit to ads is crazy

    By
    Steve Poppe
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    0

     

    In an effort to bail his sinking ship, Samuel Zell, new owner of the Tribune Company, has decided that all Tribune Company newspapers must aim for a 50-50 split between editorial and advertising (notwithstanding classifieds and supplements.) Are you kiddng me? 
     
    A real estate guy, Mr. Zell may understand this loose analogy: It’s like dictating that all buildings rented must be 50% business and 50% residential.  It’s crazy and arbitrary. His decision is not based on newspaper reality, it’s based on money. 
     
    Mr. Zell’s idea will kill his papers. (I hope Charles and Jim Dolan aren’t listening.)
     
    Two points for Mr. Zell: This decision is being made during an economic down turn while ad revenue is eroding; so he will erode editorial strength as a tactic not a strategy. Secondly, as the economy softens, people are going to read more newspapers. Newspapers are one of the world’s most amazing values. As people conserve, they become more thoughtful and analytical. Reading a newspaper from cover to cover is an inexpensive way to get smarter, kill a couple of hours, and not spend money.  My head hurts.
     
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