Consumer Reports Bashes Gift Cards

Consumer Reports, the original keep-'em-honest consumer advocate and the forerunner of today's review sites, ran this full-page ad in today's New York Times. An unusual move for them-- they rarely advertise-- but the $8 billion fact they put out in this ad is certainly interesting enough to spark a lot of conversations about the value of gift cards and the number that go unused.

I know it did at the Toad household, where I'm estimating we've got a few hundred dollars of unused cards sitting in a desk drawer somewhere.

Curious to see if this sparks a backlash of any sort, or even just a lot of conversation on marketing/consumer sites. And if CR picks up any new subscriptions because of it.

And Yet Another Proof Point For The Real Digital Revolution

Today's Adweek has a fascinating story called "Shoppers Want More Customer Reviews" that offers statistical evidence for something I've been noting anecdotally.

What's particularly interesting is that the reviews in question are for things like toys and smaller consumer goods items-- not just the high ticket items (cars, electronics) that gave consumer reviews their initial boosts.

Consumers will go into the store, select a few items they are interested in, and then turn to review sites for their final decision. This means that advertising can do nothing more than get the product into the consideration set (possibly-- we have no idea how much influence the in-store experience and packaging have vis-a-vis advertising). And that's very important because it completely changes the nature of advertising from a purchase-oriented communication to a consideration-set oriented communication.

And places the onus back on the manufacturer to make a product that people actually want to buy. Which is one of the key components of The Real Digital Revolution

Here's a relevant snippet for those disinclined to follow the link:

In other survey findings, many people said they shop seamlessly back and forth between physical stores and Web sites, and they do not examine customer reviews until midway through the shopping process. Most of the respondents said they start their shopping process at retail stores and then seek out online reviews as they near their final choices, looking at the reviews of only a handful of possible purchases. Specifically, 81 percent use customer reviews to decide between two or three products or to confirm that their final selection is the right one and only 40 percent actually start the shopping process using reviews, according to the study.

Busted

Today's Ad Age informs us that:

Consumers aren't buying Wal-Mart's new "Save Money. Live Better" ad campaign, according to a survey to be released today by Wal-Mart Watch, which found that only 4% of people believe that Wal-Mart saves the average family $2,500 annually.

Not a real surprise and I suspect the number is artificially low, given the source. But still, even if in reality five times as many people believe the claim, that's still 80% who aren't buying it.

Add to that the fact that I suspect Ad Age isn't going to be the only publication that picks up on a juicy tidbit like that (4%!!!) along with the tortured mathematical formula for getting there, and you have a great example of The Real Digital Revolution in action once again.

Lasting Effects of the Great Freelance Boom

Back in the late 1990s, hiring freelancers, which had previously been something big agencies did as a last resort, became far more commonplace, and, as the Dot Com Boom overtook us, it became more or less de rigeur.

For a vast majority of my friends, it was a goldmine. It seemed like anyone with a halfway decent book who’d done a stint at a good agency could more or less double their salary by going the freelance route. Heck, I know I did. We could make up numbers and still find people to pay us a big fat day rate. Double dipping was not uncommon, especially in the throes of dot com madness when agencies needed all the bodies they could muster.

And while the party came to a crashing end on September 11, 2001, the aftereffects are still being felt throughout the industry.

You see it in who holds creative director positions at big agencies. With one or two exceptions where turnover has been high (JWT comes to mind) big agencies are led by people who’ve spent a goodly part of their career at that agency. Which is not to say that they’re a bunch of hacks— but the fact remains that the people who were winning awards and setting the ad world on fire 10 years ago are now the ones whose names come up when I go looking for freelancers. And I can’t help but wonder what today’s big and mid-sized agency scene would be like if most of these guys had stayed and were actually running groups or running shops rather than bouncing around helping to lay out print campaigns or landing pages for last minute pitches.

And despite dropping day rates and a rapidly contracting pool of agencies to work for, the freelance road is still the career path of choice for many of the top talents in our business. They’ve realized how easy it is to work for themselves, to feed off the big agency trough without ever having to be a part of it. Or having to go out and actually start their own agency.

Not that I blame them. Except for a certain lack of control over your schedule and uncertainty over the next paycheck, freelancing is a pretty sweet gig. You don’t deal with politics or personalities or long term issues. You just go in and make ads. Your goal is to make the CD who hired you happy and to make sure everyone at the agency knows he’s happy so they’ll keep you around or bring you back soon. Period. End of story.

It’s not a bad life, but it’s not one that leads the industry to a better place. Imagine if the top players in the NBA were free agents who moved around a few times every season. Mostly to fill in for injured players or to shore up the team for an important series.

But that’s exactly the position our industry often finds itself in. It’s demoralizing to the people on staff, to have these highly paid superstars jump in and show them how it’s done, all while collecting nice sized day rates. And yet agencies aren’t reaching out to the freelance talent pool either, and trying to figure out ways to bring them on board. Now it may just be that they don’t want to: someone who’s been a freelancing for 10 years may not have the mindset necessary to succeed at a big agency. And then of course there's the salary requirements: agencies can rarely match what a hard-working freelancer brings in per annum.

So then the question that remains is how do we save the next generation from falling into the freelance trap? Should we save them? And if so how?

Curious to see if anyone has a theory. And if my UK and other international readers have seen a similar trend in their markets.

Defeating The Armies of "No"

My post on Defeating the Armies of "No" -- all those people outside the marketing department who have the power to maim, kill or destroy an ad campaign-- is the featured post on Marketing Prof's Daily Fix today. Check it out.

Geico Does It Again

This is from the same series as the Flintstones commercial. Featuring a Cabbage Patch Kid, it makes me laugh every time I see it. (Which, if you watch Nets games on YES, is pretty often.)

Facebook and the Case of the Unnatural Degree of Intimacy.

While Facebook’s stock continues to soar, I thought I’d share this (likely familiar) story of Facebook’s major problem: creating an unnatural and artificial degree of social intimacy between two people who barely know each other.

So there’s an art director I work with who asked to “friend” me on Facebook. Now I keep an account under my real name mostly for research purposes: I joined up with a friend of mine about six months ago and the only people I’ve added are those who have found me-- about three dozen altogether.

Now this art director seems like a nice enough guy, his office is not far from mine and I say hello to him in the hallway. But honestly, friends, all I know about him is his name and the state he hails from (long, not-very-interesting story). I don’t know what accounts he works on, who his friends are, where he’s worked previously: none of that.

But now, due to Facebook, which he is quite active about updating regularly, I know all sorts of things about him. That he has a new girlfriend (thus ending one mystery), where they’ve gone on their dates. What her pet name for him is. What movies he and I both like. What books we’ve both read. Which “Friends” character he is most like. His zombies and werewolves have attacked me, and he’s written somewhat amusing messages on my “FunWall.”

All fine and good, except he’s not some long-lost college roommate. He’s some guy I work with and when I see him in person, it’s extremely awkward because I now know all these somewhat intimate details about him and yet we’ve barely exchanged more than “hello.”

I mean what am I supposed to do – go up to him and say “Hey relative stranger. I saw on Facebook that you went to Lars And The Real Girl the other night. Since I also know that you and I appear to have similar taste in movies, did you like it? And what about this new girlfriend of yours—she sure looks hot in her profile pics—did she like it too? Oh, and how was her trip to Michigan to see her sister? Sounds like you really missed her.”

Creepy, right? But thanks to Facebook I can know all sorts of bizarre details about people I barely know in real life.

And that's the problem. Why would I want to put any of my business contacts on a site like that? And don't tell me that all they have to do is give you a mechanism to sort your friends into levels of intimacy. Because the second you label someone who thinks he's your good buddy a "business contact" you've got a world of hurt feelings to attend to.

Solve that, social networking site builders, and then maybe you can get a money-making model in place. But until then, you're not providing me with a whole lot of value.

Odd Sponsorship

So the Continental Airlines Arena is the New Jersey Meadowlands, home of the New Jersey Nets is now known as the Izod Center.

And I'm trying to figure out who decided that a brand that aspires to exclusivity and class (especially vis a vis its archrival Polo) should put its name on a basketball arena. In a swamp. In New Jersey.

Unless of course Izod is putting its logo on the Nets uniforms or something.

Which would definitely be even more puzzling