The Super Bowl is our Super Bowl.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

As we jet (oops Dr. Freud) closer to the Super Bowl, I realize what an exciting time it is to be in  advertising.  The Super Bowl is our Fashion Week.  It’s when agency people get to lay some wood.  The best commercials of the year are put on display, much the way at Fashion Week the best designs are showcased.     

I wrote a brief once for an online music property in which I stated “an artist is never more in touch with his/her art than when looking into the eyes of the audience.”  Well, that’s sort of what we do in the ad business during the Super Bowl, we display our work and sit with people we care about, watching their reactions. The ad meters and USA Today polls are nice, but real time reactions from those around the chips and dip is most important.  Real consumers.  Our friends.  Our family.  And if you tell people it’s your spot it is cheating.

Granted, the best spots don’t always sell the most, just as the best fashion designs don’t…but the Super Bowl allows agencies and the builders of ads to represent (and learn a wee bit about their craft from the people).  Good times. Peace!

Pepsi ReFunk

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Okay I could be tripping and correct me if I ‘m wrong, but wasn’t the Pepsi Refresh Project going to be funded by taking money normally put into Super Bowl ads and reallocated to well-meaning projects around the world.  You know – “Come on world, tell us how you want us to spend our money and we’ll refresh the planet!!!”

I’m all for doing good, or as I wrote in a strategy for Bailey’s Café in Bed-Stuy “doing good’s work”, but the whole Pepsi Refresh thing seems a little off.  Like a big advertising application in search of a product.  Anyway, I read today that Pepsi has a number of spots on the Super Bowl.  And the two most recent posts on the Pepsi Refresh Facebook page are from 17 hours ago and Tuesday.   

I “like” Pepsi’s refresh advertising, its intent and its lovely imagery, I’m just not so sure I want to vote for Pepis with my mouth.  (Drink it, that is.) Isn’t that the point?  And please, don’t tell me the category is mature and everyone knows what Pepsi is  – a similarly expressed sentiment, from earlier this week in a Tostitos article. 

Refresh should be moved to the corporate side of the business – kept alive and funded – but let’s refresh the strategy and move some cases. (The Coke people probably don’t agree.) Peace.

Advertising Holding Company Futures?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

ITT announced yesterday that it will split into three companies.  Sara Lee is considering splitting into two companies. And as you know, I believe Google will split into 3 companies in the next 5 years.  All this makes me wonder what’s in store for the big public ad agency holding companies?  What will IPG, WPP, Omnicom and Publicis look like in a decade or two?

The drivers of divestiture are usually varied margin and profitability spans.  In the case of ITT, the military business is not as profitable as the water pump business.  In agency holding companies, I wonder if there are discreet businesses with differing margins? 

Our business has changed much in the past 5 years thanks to the computer and digital marketing.  Analysis and reports, once the provenance of humans are now much more automated.  Translating the big selling idea across platform was always the heavy lifting, but today many media forms are converging. Content is still where the money and margin is in marketing.

If I were a betting person, I’d suggest a bifurcation of creative and analytics. Move the analytics companies nearer the energy plants so the computer farms are cheaper and run the creative companies in urban centers closer to all the stimuli. Patsy Cline? Fast forward. Peace!

Sugar and Salt. America is finally well cared for.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Thank God Tostitos is Reuniting America.  Someone has to. Now, if they could only take on gun control.  Reunite America is the silliest, most well-intentioned, advertising idea I’ve heard in a long time.  I thought tossing or snapping Tostitos around the room and off the wall was silly, but this takes the tortilla.  And to read about the campaign (Goodby, you should be ashamed of yourself) in Stuart Elliott’s ad column today, it seems as if this is not so much a brand idea as it is a media strategy.  To wit (as reported in the New York Times):  

The goal of the campaign is to establish Tostitos as a brand that “brings
 people together through the power of technology” said Justin Lambeth,
vice president for marketing at Frit-Lay in Plano, TX. 

Is the technology the onion dip bowl?

Beside myself am I. My fingers have seized up with the thought of this campaign – well-meaning though it may be.  Tostitos is owned by the Frito-Lay unit of Pepsi, a company busy refreshing America.  So, at least we are in good marketing hands fellow countrymen.  Sugar water and salts snack….taking care of the motherland. Peace!

Newsweek-Daily Beast or Ballast?

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Does anyone see a problem here?  Como se dice “weekly daily?” 

Okay, the venerable Newsweek is done, stick a fork in it.  The Beast is, well, a beast. Albeit not the HuffPost.  So why not bypass all the peaceful coexistence, “let’s learn from one another” BS, merge the two properties, call it the News Beast and get started.   A new publisher, Ray Chelstowski, was announced yesterday who will sit atop both vehicles, but I’m feeling more organizational mission than editorial mission.  The reason Newsweek is in the straights it is, is because of stasis.  Well, let’s go for goodness sake.  Seconds are ticking. 

News isn’t a weekly thing anymore or a daily thing for that matter.  It’s a minute thing.  What a beast does is eat ravenously.  Every minute.  It’s hungry.  It’s a beast, not a ballast. Let’s go Mr. Diller, Mr Harman, Ms. Brown. Peace!

The Coens (Brand of Brothers.)

By
Steve Poppe
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0

I saw True Grit last night and it moved me.  In a telephone interview with a NYT reporter one of the Coen Brothers (Which is the pretty one? Family joke.) said he didn’t know why the movie had “connected so strongly” with its audience. It’s grossing like a dookie, by the way. The film may be the Coen’s first with a PG-13 rating. 

 The same don’t know why response is mine when someone asks me why I like the Coen Brothers. It’s hard to articulate.  My pat answer is have you seen “No Country For Old Men”?   That’s one way to sum it up.  After reading the Cormac McCarthy book and loving it, I saw the movie and loved more. And you know that doesn’t happen often. It is just hard to put their craft into words.  Is it pacing?  Dialogue? Art direction, camera work, sound, casting, acting? All that.

Is it realness? Truncated fanfare? Their work has a story; sometimes a beginning middle and end – but not always and it’s not always fulfilling…it’s just raw, thoughtful life.

I first ran into the Coen buzz machine for the first time at the Park City Film Festival (now Sundance) with their launch film Blood Simple.  They became the darlings – and it was a good place to break out.  The dudes are complicated and not for everyone.   But when we look back on film making 200 years out the Coen Brothers brand will, perhaps, be the only one remembered from this era.  Errah Errah.  Peace.

Opening the Mobile OS.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

The pace of technological innovation has slowed of late.  Goldman Sachs is getting tricky and slick trying to find ways to sell Facebook stock. Businesses are spending IT dough and manhours investigating the cloud. Coders are buildng games to cash in some chips and because they are bored.  Groupon is a technology extension of social networking and promotion, a lovely breakthrough, but an extension none the less.  Facebook and Twitter are lazy teenagers now (in internet years) so the question is “From where will the new innovation come?” 

What’s the biggest need we mobile citizens collectively have today?  An open and interoperable language for mobile phones.  Interoperability is simultaneously the boon and bane of commerce.  Today the mobile operating systems of Apple, Google, Nokia, Microsoft and Research in Motion don’t play well together. Different apps for different haps.  It’s a big stick in the mud.

Some smart coder is going to jump on this and create an  open mobile OS or an elegant translator (site) so there can be mobile  harmony.  It may come out of the open source community or it may come from a company who wants to be a good global citizen.  Mobile computing is far too exciting to leave dysfunctional.  Keep an eye out. Alcatel-Lucent, MIT kids, China, MSFT…you listening ????  Peace from Babylon.

Partly Cloudy

By
Steve Poppe
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0

So I go to Best Buy yesterday and purchase a new PC.  Toshiba Satellite, a suped -up version of its predecessor. It has an Intel i3 processor which should hold me for a while.  Hopelessly (as my carpenter used to say.)  As exciting as it is having upgraded to Windows 7 and Office 2010 Pro, there are still quite a few things to worry about.  How do I export then import my contacts from old Outlook to new (big problem, as the translator won’t work), how do I move my bookmarks over (.pst file or something), how do I get my old software over (McAfee anti-virus, Snag-It, etc.), and then learn a new keyboard and where the delete key is, etc?   Oy.

But here’s where the cloud comes in. Once we put all out shtuff in the cloud, these laptop, PC and Mac change-overs should be quite seamless.  I haven’t even thought about getting my iTunes over – but the cloud will presumably back all that up and allow the devices to quickly cut-over.  That’s going to be cool for half-wayers like me.  I know technology but I’m a guy and don’t read directions.  Not innately techy, I have to work at it.  The wifus does all the tech heavy-lifting. If we need to escalate we call the boy.  Off at school, twenty something tech friend gets the call at $20 an hour.

I’m pumped to learn Microsoft OneNote and to have up-to-date versions of PPT, Word and Outlook.  I’m not pumped to relearn everything…but soon the cloud will help. The cloud will facilitate ease-of-use and access to the latest and greatest service tweaks. Usability will be a byproduct of the cloud and though it may cost a shekel or two, I can’t wait. Peace cloud.

Spidey Gonna Fly.

By
Steve Poppe
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0

Spiderman is a play running on Broadway created by Julie Taymor (a Lion King contributor), Bono and the Edge of U2.  It has been in the press lately for many things negative.  Though it hasn’t officially opened, it’s been playing to packed houses and making some money.  There is a lot of flying on wires above the stage and, no doubt, some good music written by Bono – but so far negs outweigh the positives thanks to a number of broken bones, concussions and a report today that the leading bug lady has decided to quit.  It may all sound like bad news…but it’s certainly news.  And Spidey is in the papers daily. 

The advance reviews haven’t been great, but it’s a unique play and one that kids will love.  With a great song or three, this baby should take off.  And with a little danger, a la the flying scenes, a constant promise, the rows and seats should be filled for months if not years.

Bono, Taymor, Broadway, danger, big music – these are things that make for successful entertainment.  Sight unseen, I’m thinking big win.  Peace!

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