Archive for July 9th, 2007

The man who scored a huge publicity coup by giving away cars on “Oprah” and who moved 1,000 cars in 41 minutes after an appearance on “The Apprentice” is leaving General Motors for one of the hottest brands around: Harley-Davidson. He’ll be the venerable motorcycle brand’s first chief marketing officer. Marc-Hans Richer, who at 40 is one of the better-known figures in auto marketing today, made his mark in new media and branded entertainment, particularly in the last five years, as advertising director of Pontiac and as marketing director of the brand since April 2004.

Under his guidance, Pontiac pulled off the watershed media stunt of giving away 276 of its G6 model to the entire audience of Ms. Winfrey’s season opener in September 2004. In addition to launching the sexy Solstice with a branded integration during NBC’s “The Apprentice” in spring 2005 that saw consumers clamor to get the first ones off the assembly line, he also helped revive Pontiac by tying with ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and concerts in Times Square.

One of first on Second Life
Mr. Richer, one of Ad Age’s annual Marketing 50 in 2004, keynoted at Advertising Age’s Madison & Vine conference this year and appeared on the cover of Ad Age’s Point taking a blowtorch to a pamphlet on traditional marketing. As evidence of this, he introduced Pontiac’s G5 coupe — completely online. He was, moreover, one of the first marketers to discover what’s now become a standard web-marketing tool: Second Life.

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Advertisers looking for more bang for their buck can take heart that efficacy of television spends in India ranks among the top three across all Asian markets, trailing only behind Taiwan and Malaysia. For every $1,000 spent in India on national television, an advertiser delivers a purchasing power parity of 6.82%, against 9.54% in Taiwan and 6.82% in Malaysia. And for every $1,000 spent, a marketer can get over two million prime-time TV viewers in India.Further, Internet penetration may well be the lowest in India, but spends on the Net in India are set to explode at a scorching 60% growth — the maximum across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.

These are highlights of a first-of-its-kind survey done by GroupM-owned MindShare, the country’s largest media buying agency. The survey, which compares media costs across 12 Asian markets, reveals that total media investment across the Asia-Pacific will reach $99 billion in 2007, growing at 8% against a worldwide average of 5%. In fact, overall media growth across Asia has been consistent for the past five years — ranging from 7% to 9%. Read the rest of this entry »

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