Archive for March, 2009

The Blob can’t just count on his thick hide to save him from Wolverine’s razor-sharp claws. He needs liquid fortification … from a giant Slurpee? It’s a winking bit of product placement that fans will see in the upcoming summer tentpole X-Men Origins: Wolverine, with the villain chugging the popular 7-Eleven drink during a key scene. (He gets his blubbery butt kicked anyway). 

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NEW YORK Those hoping for a turnaround in the U.S. ad economy next year could be sorely disappointed, according to a new forecast from WPP’s GroupM. What’s worse, the new research predicts that outlays in 2010 will decline even more than they will this year.

The new study revises downward spending predictions the holding company made in December 2008. GroupM said it now expects U.S. spending this year to fall by 4.3 percent in 2009 to approximately $155 billion (versus the 3 percent drop predicted in December) and tumble another 6.8 percent to about $144.5 billion next year.

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The DVD release of “Marley & Me” has seen some pretty aggressive TV marketing for the movie about “the world’s worst dog.” I don’t know that it’ll move sales of the DVD, but who doesn’t like seeing cute yellow labs frolicking about and destroying (someone else’s) property? (Hell, even Cottonelle toilet paper knows the branding power of a yellow lab.) I’ll also be curious to see if there are any attempts at returning the DVD once families who haven’t read the book or seen the movie previously settle down in front of what’s pitched as a family comedy and discover that a) the ratio of people to puppies is entirely too people-heavy and b) SPOILER ALERT: Marley dies in a wrenching scene that combines all the tear power of “Old Yeller” and “The Yearling” with the child-traumatizing potential of the opening scenes of “Bambi.

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LOS ANGELES (AdAge.com) — It was the best of times; it was the wurst of times.

With Americans expected to scale back on the amount steak they’ll throw on the grill this summer, Johnsonville Sausage Co. has hired the Santa Monica, Calif.-based branded-entertainment production company Matrixx Pictures to ensure consumers add its bratwurst and Italian sausages to their grilling rotation.

Van Vandegrift, the executive producer at Matrixx — and who also produced last year’s A&E reality TV series “Gene Simmons: Family Jewels” — said that in coming weeks Matrixx will launch an online social network featuring user-generated videos of “grilling enthusiasts who are reaching out to other people” who may not yet share a brio for broiling brats.

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NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Old media railed for years that content was king, only to have its online-video traffic numbers usurped by lip-synching college kids and dramatic prairie dogs. Simply put, the traditional networks, with all their desirable, high-quality video programming, hadn’t figured out how to turn into bona fide online juggernauts — until Hulu.

The joint venture from News Corp. and NBC Universal allows users to access episodes of programs ranging from “Friday Night Lights” to “Bewitched” to “In Living Color.” Between April 2008 and February 2009, Hulu has gone from not being ranked in terms of video streams by ComScore VideoMetrix or Nielsen VideoCensus to holding the No. 4 and No. 2 spots, respectively.

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NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Reckitt-Benckiser will cap off its fifth straight year of organic sales growth with a new recession-approved media strategy: moving TV dollars to online video.

The company plans to shift an estimated $20 million in TV ad dollars to the web for more than 15 of its brands, including Lysol, Air Wick, Mucinex, Finish and Clearasil. The strategic shift is significant for the company, which has traditionally spent upward of 90% of its $475 million measured-media budget on TV, and less than $1 million in measured spending on the web in 2008, according to TNS Media Intelligence. Even though its 2008 internet advertising through the first half was already double its full-year internet spending in 2007, it was still only 1% of media spending.

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Research is useless. Some of it, anyway — if it does not reflect real behavior rather than theoretical models. Panelists at The Advertising Research Foundation’s 55th anniversary conference in New York agree on this view. The theme for the discussion, “Can Research Catch the Customer,” was that current research methods are built largely on a faulty understanding of human psychology.

Nathan Berg, associate professor of economics at the University of Texas, said current market research frequently assumes an impossible degree of analysis by consumers. In addition, people who know less frequently make a better-informed choice. “There is a faulty idea that more information is better. Most people don’t consider all options. In fact, being smart means making fast decisions before you consider everything.”

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The campaigns just keep coming as QSR’s duke it out for share of consumers shifting from costlier dining venues to fast food options.The latest, from Quiznos and Popeyes Louisiana Chicken, feature a talking oven and a fictional down-home chef, respectively.

The Quiznos campaign, the first since the brand ran into implementation troubles with its 12 million sub give away, uses humor to introduce a new line of $4 Toasty Torpedo sandwiches.

The baguette-inspired sandwiches, which come on ciabatta bread, represent another extension of the lower prices program begun in January, says Quiznos CMO Jessica Steinfort.

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NeXplore plans to unveil today a search advertising platform that enables marketers to create and manage paid search ad campaigns through images, text and video. NeXplore Ads 2.0 also lets brands interact in real time with potential or existing customers by linking to the ads via video chat, call scheduling, email and instant messaging.The fledgling search engine launched in January 2008 will go head-to-head with rival Yahoo, which revealed in February that it had been quietly testing the sponsored search tool Rich Ads In Search with national brand advertisers Pedigree and Pepsi. The brands noted seeing click-through rates increase by as much as 25%.

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In an effort to offset depressed CPM rates with more impressive ad units, online media company Giant Realm today is slated to roll out its biggest Flash video overlay ever. “This is partly a reaction to ever-decreasing CPMs,” said James Green, CEO of Giant Realm. “We were looking to do something that (advertisers) were willing to pay for.”

Targeting men ages 18-34, the New York-based entertainment portal/ad network was founded by the William Morris Agency in mid-2007, and has since grown to encompass dozens of sites geared toward video games, sci-fi and independent movies and music.

Measuring 938 x 518, Giant Realm’s new custom-designed placement consumes a users’ entire screen during the time it takes for a video player to load.

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