Hot Topics, Cool Media: At Digital Hollywood

October 19, 2010

Digital Hollywood, considered the premier entertainment and technology conference in the U.S., is blowing media minds this week in Santa Monica. PCA’s The Hot Sheet attended several hot panels, including one discussing “Advertising Accountability.” Speakers representing today’s biggest electronic advertising platforms – online banner ads, social media, “linear TV” (including cable and satellite), radio (and digital radio), online games – pondered the business conundrum: How does one best measure digital media advertising? Among the insights and questions:

• Social media offers the cheapest advertising, but is the toughest to quantify. Its bloggers and commenters are highly influential in their “pull” to consumers. Social media is also the most “disruptive” to other media because it is least susceptible to control.
• Behavioral targeting media – banner ads that zero-in on people’s online activity – can generate a consumer backlash. For example, someone searching for cancer cures online may not want to be served ads that remind them of their cancer.
• There is value in “social currency.” What customers are saying about a product or service online, even if negative, holds potential power. Therefore, boost your customer-service and integrate it into Facebook and Twitter.
• What is worth more: a blog post or a banner ad? Consistent metrics remain elusive.
• There is no substitute for good “creative.” Compelling advertising is good in any medium. But agencies will always feel the tension between research, account and creative departments.
• The digital divide: Most ad dollars still go to traditional, “linear” media. But a tipping point is coming, when younger, more tech-friendly demographics will dominate audiences. When that happens digital spending will zoom up.

Speakers included William A. Lederer, Kantar Video; Eric Forst, Visible Technologies; Mark Yesayian, MEC Interaction; Charlie Rahilly, Clear Channel Radio; Craig Mcdonald, Covario; Scott Ferris, Microsoft Advertising; Kenneth Papagan, Rentrak Corporation; Patrick Hayes, GSMG Global.

Gap Falls Into Logo Trap

October 12, 2010

Whether it was genuine backtracking or an elaborate P.R. ruse, we may never know. But Gap has quickly junked its new logo after what it calls an “outpouring of comments from customers and the online community in support of the iconic blue box logo.” Cliff Kuang at Fast Company design blog has tracked the logo flap from the start. (Fast Company also brought attention to Tropicana’s bad orange juice carton design, which The Hot Sheet noted at the time.) He says, “You gotta wonder: Are rebrandings — whether bold and visionary or downright terrible — impossible in the age of Twitter and Facebook? Will companies know when an outcry isn’t pointing to a terrible design, but rather just people refusing to embrace change?” But you also gotta wonder whether some of the outrage came from designers sore about how Gap commissioned the new logo. The company used the reviled “crowd-sourcing” method, in which designs are solicited at large… for free. No member of the design community – hurting for work like everyone else these days – would appreciate a logo created that way. Such practices drive down artists’ fees even further, especially when pursued by major corporations.