Advertising Age Archives

Why I Will Cancel Advertising Age

08/31/2015 By Jayme Soulati

No offense Rance Crain. In my book anything the Crains do is golden, coming from a Chicago girl (no I’m not native, but my child IS, so there). I will cancel after subscribing for many years as a loyal customer of the print edition.

I was around when B2B was its own magazine and then it merged inside its sister publication, Ad Age, and then it disappeared completely.
I was around when there was at least a smattering of public relations news somewhere in the publication, and then there was none.
I’ve been around since the campaigns like ‘how many licks does it take to reach the center of a Tootsie Roll pop’ were the norm and there was more dispersed coverage of all campaigns than just those that cater to the big advertising guns.

Alas, we ‘fair to middlin’ (what my grampa used to say)’ marketers no longer compute. We don’t have the advertising dollars to play in the same sandbox as the big guns, and the reporting shows.

[Read more…]

Full-Service Marketing Is Extinct Like A Dinosaur

07/27/2015 By Jayme Soulati

Used to be, back in the day, that everyone offered full-service marketing. , and so do you. Anyone hailing from the agency world knows that it’s full service or no service. Whether or not we had the competency to say we offered full-service marketing, we went and got it to compete for the coveted client retainer.

Nothing much has changed since then; except, well, technology. Technology has fully disrupted the marketing blend, or rather it has ‘interrupted’ it as per the op-ed in by Ken Wheaton on July 13, 2015.

Regardless of how you view technology and whether it has your daily grind, one thing is clear. The chaotic complexity is here to stay, and it has made full-service marketing extinct, like a dinosaur. [Read more…]

How Twitter IPO Changes Its Focus

11/18/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Few people understand what happens when a company goes public. We watched how Facebook maneuvered an ever increasingly heated spotlight, and now Twitter is undergoing the same.

In this piece Nov. 11, 2013 in Advertising Age, “Twitter’s task: Getting new users to understand it,” it seems the biggest issue Twitter has with new users is its complexity.

To follow this line of thinking, go back to the very first tweet you posted. Perhaps you need to go back to the very first time you logged in and saw a blank screen with some stranger popping up to say hi. Were you as nervous as I and almost backed out?

There are still people who don’t engage on Twitter because they believe the common misnomer that it’s a bunch of people talking about what they eat and where they go to the movies. We in the know, know better, right?

Because Twitter is now publicly traded (NYSE: TWTR) with a valuation of more than $20 billion and a 73 percent “stock pop” (says Ad Age) on day one of trading, it has to think differently about how to behave:

Attract more of the masses (a major hurdle)
Onboarding new users and making them feel comfy out of the gate
Reduce consumer churn – the rate that new users drop off in a short period of time
Increase advertising dollars for marketers who want proof the users are there to click through and make a buy

Take a look at Twitter’s number of users in the U.S., says Advertising Age:

Q1 2013 – 48 million monthly active users

Q2 2013 – 49 million monthly active users

Q3 2013 – 53 million monthly active users

Facebook has three times the scale. At the end of Q2 2013, it boasted 179 million monthly active users

It’s like comparing apples to oranges, however, because look at the skill and understanding a Twitter peep has to communicate. When you read tweets from accounts trying to sell, they’re awkward. Engagement and relationship building are the keys to earning followers; Facebook is about existing relationships among friends you already know. Not so Twitter.

It’s because of Twitter that I have a new network of true and real friends I’ve met IRL, spoken with on the phone, engaged with on Skype, and hired into my business. Not so Facebook.

There are so many ways Twitter can be used to enhance knowledge of the world.

When there is a natural disaster like the ones in New Orleans, Haiti, the Philippines, New Zealand, and elsewhere, Twitter comes alive with tweets around the world providing updates about the crises and how peeps can help. Not so Facebook.

The hashtag is finally coming into its own as a way to follow conversations; its now in use by Facebook AND Google+. We owe that to Twitter as the first channel to adopt hashtags; I think I first began hashtagging #RockHot in August 2010, and all the threads of tweets featuring that phrase I created are documented. Pretty cool.

I digress…

What I’m hoping doesn’t happen with Twitter as it has with Facebook is the social channel’s intense need to put advertisers first and revenue above service. We who have been around since the early days know quite well the quirky and secretive nature of Twitter with a tribe mentality.

It’s too bad Twitter will change itself to appeal to the masses who don’t and won’t get it (although I’ve heard from a lot of moms that the kids are hitting Twitter in droves and foregoing Facebook). Groups of young boys (about freshmen age in high school) are forming Twitter accounts and buying followers to gain immediate traction.

Perhaps Twitter needs to look within among users who already prefer the channel over the others instead of trying at this late juncture to appeal to those who won’t get it to also thus appeal to marketers sinking advertising dollars into the channel.

Time will tell…

New Gender Marketing With Oakley And Ruffles

07/08/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Advertising Age hasn’t inspired too much blog fodder of late; perhaps it’s due to its new ugly format and thin reporting. It was too serendipitous, though, that in the June 3, 2013 issue two stories about gender marketing with men and Ruffles and women and Oakley appeared pages apart.

Which got me thinking (always dangerous).

Why do brands continue to have gender marketing challenges in this day and age? You know, the era of women’s equality, stay-at-home dads, paternity time, and breaking the glass ceiling, etc.?

Oakley Trying To Sun Glass Women

The sub-head of the story really surmises the irony of this brand’s challenges, “At the $1 billion (yes, billion) apparel and eye glass company, the women’s business accounts for just 10% of sales, making it the biggest opportunity.” (Read that again without gasping, really?)

Apparently, the brand has attempted to sell to women but has obviously failed. No women were managing teams; they were in product development roles instead. Pink became the predominant color of choice for the women’s line because male leadership thought every woman identified with that. Few women were positioned in leadership ranks and testosterone prevailed in the male-dominated company.

Same-sex companies targeting same-sex customers does not beget inter-gender marketing success; I guess Oakley found that out.

Hmm, I wonder if Proctor and Gamble has noticed a trend for Daddy Mamas and is redoing diaper branding to make the box more manly?

Ruffles Women And The Bro Code

Ruffles, the potato chip with ridges, has always been a family brand – moms buy and the family eats. Getting too family for its britches, brand marketers sent a team of women into bars to immerse in the male snack-food psyche and crack the bro code. Men, who are too close to men, couldn’t master such research due to the introspectiveness of that analysis (or some such).

For three years (wow), the women infiltrated the snack-food brotherhood and learned a lot that resulted in these adjustments to the lowly potato chip with ridges:

Men shop for junk food on impulse; 25% of chips are purchased in smaller sizes.
The brand began to target millennial men.
Packaging was redone with inspiration fueled strictly with testosterone.
A spokesman the likes of Ron Burgundy meshed with Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood (how the heck are they millennial inspiration?) was created, named Ruff McThickridge.
The Ultimate Ruffle was born with thicker, manly ridges along with Ruffles Max to go alongside the beer (not so heavy).
Flavors were beefier and included beer-battered onion rings.

What’s so astonishing is the longevity of both these brands. Oakley is 38-years-old and Ruffles has to be older than that. How is it that this kind of eye-opening gender marketing research is happening now?

So glad it is, as I pity the poor man who can’t have a potato chip because the packaging is too girly. As for my sunglasses? I think I’ll settle for my Prada. Goodness knows those Oakley wraparounds would totally interfere with my curls.

Social Media Presents 50 Shades of Wiser

01/22/2013 By Jayme Soulati

Happy Thanksgiving! 65 w dandelions growing! WTH? via soulati

Social media has not only leveled the playing field for small businesses, it’s enabled professionals of all ages to compete.

If you’re not learning, you’re dead.

The opportunity social media presents for learning is so vast that anyone, regardless of age, who has gumption, passion, and energy can compete with youngsters in a highly successful way. More and more, avatars with gray hair are populating Twitter. I’m making an assumption they are aging gracefully and wiser as a result of social media.

Someone on a Google+ Community posted a suggestion that we should petition Advertising Age for a Top 50 Over 50 instead of the customary Top 40 Under 40 feature. (I concur.)

What prompted this whole post is a short email from a woman I never met or spoke with. She mentioned she was 50+ and was feeling the light dimming on her career path because she was a former print graphics artist. She had little enthusiasm for PowerPoint graphics nor did she know where the road ahead would lead.

…which got me really thinking, and that’s always dangerous.

Mastering what social marketing presents for anyone in the at-large field of marketing communications would take a lifetime and then some. So, instead of saying you’re all washed up at 50, why not re-invent and re-invigorate and get excited about the learnings available for the plucking?

How I’m Reinventing

I’ve just signed on with Hubspot. Don’t you say a word, internet marketers and digital marketers and SEO folks; I’ve heard enough about your negatives about their poor technology. (I concur, and it’s terribly out of my control.)

I plunked down the money because I know myself. I know that I need to go large to ensure I do what’s required — the lessons, landing pages, website tweaks, buttons, and etc. to make the leads pour in and put my website to work.

It’s called inbound marketing or digital marketing, and it’s an area I’m investing in. Everyone who’s been a loyal member of this community knows I’ve written willy-nilly for three years on this blog. I’ve not needed to care about analytics and blogging ROI. Life has changed, and that’s prompted engagement in a whole different way.

I’m jazzed, nervous, worried, and 100 percent vested in making this thing go and grow. I’m greeting a side of marketing I’ve been circumnavigating.

With each accomplishment, I feel bolstered with energy and excitement about what the future may bring. When I get my first genuine lead in my dashboard I’ll rejoice; when I get my first slice of new revenue, I’ll celebrate and know I’ve made the right choice.

When you hit 50 as a professional, your career is not over; in fact, it’s just beginning. How many companies would relish hiring a mature practitioner at the leading edge of social marketing to guide them strategically?

Fighting Cherry Pits

With that said any of you who thinks life is a bowl full of cherry pits right now (no matter how old you are):

1. You have to find the strength from within and want it.

2. Set your goals and aim high.

3. Take little steps and do it right; earn confidence.

4. Consider obstacles a challenge; find a solution around them.

5. Align with a solid, excellent core team of IT folks.

6. Grow your business by investing when that decision is right for you; you’ll know.

7. Rejoice in each accomplishment, but do celebrate.

If you have any tips you can add about how you feel about getting wiser each year, let me know…this is a topic we may be revisiting soon!

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Oakley Trying To Sun Glass Women

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