I’ll say one thing: if legislation regarding advertising alcohol brands on outdoor mediums stays put, it will be an admittance by the industry to the ineffective nature of the medium.

Why? I made a short 2-point list.

It boils down to one thing: the Department of Transport must decide whether outdoor advertising is effective. If it is, it will be banned. If it’s not, it will stay…
1. Media owners and advertisers are desperate – admitting that outdoor advertising doesn’t work.

All of the sudden, advertisers are saying that there is no proof that billboard ads aid in building brands or even selling products – let alone contribute to abuse – this to protect their case. To me there is a fundamental problem with this statement. The efficacy of outdoor advertising is in essence what an advertiser pays for when they slap their logo and product on a piece of steel standing outside. Am I the only one seeing the irony in this ridiculous stance? Why on earth is the emphasis of the argument then being placed on how there is no proof that it works, implying that it’s a redundant medium?

“The literature demonstrates no cause or link between alcohol beverage advertisements and particular drinking patterns resulting in problems,” was the ARA’s conclusion in a February interview with The Star, and seems to be the stand that related advertisers and media owners took, as stressed in the Sunday Times on 28 June.

2. Playing the ‘economy card’ is a surefire sign that an argument has no legs to stand on… especially when a marketing budget will only be shifted from one medium to the other and not fully removed from the advertising industry altogether.

“Pulling millions of rands from outdoor advertising will hurt the advertising industry, and in effect, the economy,” the general statement from those affected rings*. I believe that line must be rephrased to “pulling millions from outdoor advertising will hurt media owners who actually own billboards and other outdoor outlets, while lining the pockets of other more effective, measurable mediums”. In most cases, liquor brands are assigned a set marketing budget. With the removal of outdoor from the equation bespoke budget will logically be assigned to an alternative medium. The people who will suffer are those relying on revenue from outdoor advertising, not the advertising industry.

To me this looks like a “if we can get COSATU all over this, we won’t have to worry” tactic, which is a very desperate attempt to derail possible legislation. The budget is there. It’s going to be used for advertising and marketing. It will filter into the economy. Are we living in a country where we force companies to use self-proclaimed redundant media for the sake of ailing businesses? Or do we evolve from this situation, stimulating job creation in another sector of the industry?

Publicis has jumped on the bandwagon, launching changetheconversation.co.za, an over-dramatised micro site that lets you choose between disagreeing with the proposed legislation, or agreeing with the legislation because “I don’t need a job”. Very, very dramatic.

I work in advertising. I obviously don’t support any notion that might influence the advertising in a bad way. I do however feel that when you are trying to argue for something, you cannot change the rules halfway through by sinking the ship that brought in the money in the first place. Saying outdoor advertising is ineffective is a stupid thing to do, especially when you’re trying to sustain its future relationship with the alcohol industry.

I know, I am sounding very idealistic – it’s just that I get extremely irritated when I hear child-like reasoning and contradictions that support an obviously lost cause. The bottom line is that the Department of Transport will essentially decide how effective outdoor advertising is.

*As an aside, I have to mention that I forgot the Sunday Times at home, as I’m writing this from my desk at the office. All quotes are taken from my semi-photographic memory.

I know… very manly of me. But I’ve been fascinated with The Sims ever since the game was conceptualised and discussed on the pages of some 90s computer magazine. And this time they’ve taken it a step further by introducing advertising into the actual game play, which is fed to the game via an internet connection. According to an old article by AdAge, in-game advertising will take the form of billboards and posters, as well as the possibility of outdoor executions.

I can already see the hundreds and thousands of people complaining about this notion: “no more advertising in The Sims 3!” And who can blame anyone for feeling like that? When you play a game, the last thing you’d want to see is an advert for Bio Slim or some arbitrary product that has absolutely no relation to you. Also, aren’t we exposed to ads enough already?

Initially, I was excited to hear about the fact that in-game advertising will be emphasized, especially when considering the possibilities. Personally, I feel that unless a so-called in-game billboard or poster runs in conjunction with say a product launch where Sims can actually try out the product, wear it, etc., those billboards and posters will have the same effect (or should that be ineffect?) as a banner ad on Facebook. Yes thousands will see it, but most will have no relation to it whatsoever and in the end it impacts negatively on the Sims 3 game.

Product-orientated brands such as clothing and other usable items can definitely add value to a player’s experience of the game, but I think it would be important for Maxis or EA (or whoever is running in-game advertising) to approve advertisers at their discretion; not just chase the possibility of an additional revenue stream. I saw that the Toyota Prius is on promotion at the Sims 3 Exchange, and you can download it and make sure that the rest of your neighbourhood stays green.

Of course, whenever advertising is introduced on a website, social network or in a game especially, it constitutes co-branding at a certain level. As a player, being able to get your hands on the latest iPod touch would be awesome, but conversely if you only have the option of getting in touch with a JNC SSFT-4200BK , my personal view is that it would reflect negatively on The Sims brand. This, however, could just be because I’m in marketing and tend to overanalyse things…

It’s not the first time advertising has been used in the Sims. H&M previously introduced an expansion pack that included all the latest fashions from the department store, and an Ikea expansion help Sims players out with some nice furnishings for their simulated homes.

I’ll post updates as they come a long, after I finished constructing a nice log cabin for Venter van Staden.

A video interview with the NY Times R&D Group posted by Nieman Journalism Lab had a look at all the different platforms that NYT uses and aims to use in the not-too-distant future to reach their reader base (watch the video here).

From Kindle2 to touch-screen desktop computers, the list is endless and emphasises the uncharted waters in which media finds itself at the moment.

I wonder, though, how long this ‘difficult situation’ will last and how long it will be before a proper monetisation system is figured out on which both publisher and consumer can agree. Even just the fact that NYT is willing to extend its reach to all these different platforms show that power has shifted from media to technology; it’s no longer media that decides which tech innovations will make it but rather the other way around.

Think about the example of how the pornographic industry decided the fate between both VHS and beta, and HDDVD and BluRay. The Kindle2 has started to take off, with even Oprah flipping through the electronic page(s) of her own.

If I had to start my own business from scratch right now, I’d be on the phone to China sourcing cheap production, rather than posting free journo job apps on twitter.

A while ago I posted a video that I felt was sure to go viral… in a South African sense of the word that is. Well I’ve gone and tracked it and the results are in.
The video was of Nhlanhla Nene (view it here), Chairperson of the Finance Portfolio Committee, who had the unfortunate experience of a chair giving way under him on live television.

The video was available on YouTube the next morning and had reached over 40,000 views in the first 48 hours – a strong amount compared to the total of 106,000 views four months later.

Taking into consideration SA’s lack of access to broadband internet and even less knowledge of even video sharing heavyweights like YouTube, it was going to be interesting to see the internet viewing habits of South Africans.

To sufficiently track growth, I used 3 criteria: views, comments and ratings. To me, the rate of growth on a day-to-day basis was the most important part and I would love to compare it to growth rates of views, comments and ratings from countries where access to broadband internet is more prevalent to see the difference but for now I’ll just make some broad assumptions in that regard.

First the total amount of views in 10 days…

…compared to total growth in views over the same period.

Then total ratings…

…versus total growth in ratings.

Finally, total comments…

…against total growth in comments.

On the totals, you can see activity starting to even out, but when comparing it to the growth curve you can clearly see a massive spike followed by a huge drop. The total activity could not even be sustained for one whole day. Although I don’t have a case study to compare it with right now, I would assume that internationally it would have the same type of curve but on a grander scale and for a longer time period.

My conclusions? Firstly, it takes far less activity for a video to be deemed ‘viral’ within a South African context. And because of this, I don’t believe that it is financially viable for South African brands to ‘invest’ a lot of money in viral videos. Yet.

Yes, do something effective on a shoestring budget to support a bigger campaign, but don’t invest 100k in an online viral campaign making use of YouTube, Zoopy and MyVideo. Yes, you’ll be able to track ROI but you will be horribly disappointed in the findings.

There are many more interesting conclusions when comparing the growth rate of the different criteria at the same spaces in time, but I’ll leave that to you before this post balloons even more out of control…

Enter word-of-mouth agencies. These companies base their business models on selling WOM to clients as part of their traditional mix, billing it as “the most effective means of advertising”.  The dictionary on my dashboard defines advertising as “drawing attention or describing a service or product in a public medium in order to promote sales or attendance”. By definition, word-of-mouth is not advertising and the moment a client pays for guaranteed word-of-mouth, it’s not word-of-mouth anymore. Why?

When I think of word-of-mouth, I think of my mom telling me that Skip works better than OMO or the restaurant on the corner sells a killer steak. So what WOM agencies do is build a network of people who are supposedly influential in their respective social settings and pay them to go out and create a buzz in a client’s relevant target market. These guys will 9 times out of 10 be students looking for extra dosh.

So all of the sudden, my mom starts telling me about how smooth the David Beckham razor is…

Mom: Hey you.
Me: Hey.
Mom: You know that fluff on your face you’ve been dying to get rid of?
Me: Um, what fluff?
Mom: Exactly. (Looking down at paper) What razor do you currently use?
Me: Mom, you’re being weird.
Mom: That’s why you have a rash as well.
Me: Weird and rude…

Effective… The people on their list then get feedback from you on what you think of the product etc. The result is a very hard sell, backed up with a bit of “in-depth” research.

Word-of-mouth is something that can be stimulated, not forced. And once you put your brand in the sphere of getting people talking about you, you have absolutely no control over which direction the talks are going to go. Rather than sending out under-cover sales people punting your brand to their social circle, create something that stirs the public in a way you’d like them to.

WOM is something that might be used as an objective but not as a means to an end within the marketing mix – if it is, then it’s not word-of-mouth.

PS.: Anyone who talks about WOM as “something very new” is obviously not spreading facts. Obviously word-of-mouth was the very first means of promoting something. All the other mediums came afterwards… And don’t you think it’s funny how I just told you that WOM isn’t a promotional tool and here I am saying that it was the very first means of promoting something? Now there’s a catch 22.

Exciting things are happening in the world of electronic gaming, especially when looking at it from an advertising point of view.
First off, the days of the acne-ridden teen video gamer are over. A recent study showed that the average age of video gamers has increased, almost as if it aged with the original gamers. In the 80s it was considered absurd to have a family, career and still get home at night to battle it out in Balloon Fight. Today the crop of all gamers is between 26 and 42 years old.

Secondly, families are starting to see video gaming as fun, quality family time. In the UK, consultancy Deloitte found that a quarter of all households own a Nintendo Wii and almost another quarter (24%) intended to purchase one within the next year. Games such as Monopoly, recently brought to consoles by Electronic Arts, Buzz, Wii Sports and Guitar Hero all shifted video gaming from its era of 1 player Super Mario to full-on living room arcade.

Thirdly, with so many new gamers it becomes inevitable that advertising will start creeping in – and it already has. AdAge recently ran an article on how companies and brands will be involved with Sims 3, Maxis’ third installment of the highly successful life simulation game. Utilising permanent internet access brands will be able to buy advertising a la Google Adwords which will be displayed within the game.

The future of gaming is definitely bright. South African music and movie retailer Musica recently stated in the Sunday Times newspaper that they will start focusing more on gaming as the way forward. They reported a decline in sales in both CD and DVD categories, while game and console sales were on the increase.

But thanks to Contagion Media in the UK, agencies are now able to buy pre-designed games from them to use in campaigns. What makes it really worthwhile is that they can upload artwork and manage analytics. It’s almost like a stock image site, but with games.

I have recently managed a project where we created a flash game for a competition. 216 hours and a tired but happy client later we had the game done and dusted. It’s a serious amount of effort and even more money to run the risk of not being successful.

No details as to how much it’s going to cost yet…

There’s a huge above the line marketing campaign behind something like this; television ads, radio commercials, print, and even social media tools such as Facebook has been utilised get citizens away from the television and flex that democratic muscle.

According to www.southafrica.info, “20-million voter registration forms, 300 000 street pole posters, 44 000 stationary packs and 40 000 banners” was also used to get a response from SA citizens.

The response to this campaign, combined with the need of each South African to be involved in democratic society, went like this:

• Total turnout of 3.6m people
• 1.6m new registrations (these are the ones that really count, since they are new and will almost definitely vote in the election)
• 77.9% of new registrants are from youths, with 105 893 between 16 and 17 years, 342 639 between 18 and 19, and 835 447 between 20 and 29 years of age
• The website got a total of 53914 enquiries

I’ve stumbled upon an amazing stats website, where I got some interesting stats on elections in general.

South Africa’s voting population, compared to other countries:

Statistic on SA elections

The elections take place in 2009, after which we’ll be able to see how many people voted. Registrations have already been dubbed as the best turnout since 2000, so it might be interesting since there has been a counter trend when comparing population growth with voter growth, the latter of which has been experiencing negative growth.

MTV Networks has purchased the rest of software company Social Project it does not own with plans to integrate more deeply social network features such as sharing of videos among its global network of websites and, within two to three years, the television.

The MTVmusic.com site is no new idea. Most probably inspired by Hulu.com, a video viewing site and joint venture by Fox and NBC showing prime television shows for free by being ad-supported, it is definitely proof of a trend that’s fast picking up speed.

In the last 3 years or so, MTV has been experiencing a slump in viewers and it seems only obvious that they’ll be embracing a very progressive strategy with the eye on long-term sustainability.

Personally, I can’t wait for it to roll out.

To segway from the previous post on the future of television in America, a recent article in the Financial Mail caught my curious attention.

The article is centered on Goal Technology Solutions, an Internet/telephone services provider moving into on-demand television. Recently a so-called “TV race” started in South Africa, where the market was opened up to many new entrants to provide entertainment variety with the eye on the 2010 world cup soccer.

GTS plans on installing set-top boxes in 8000 homes by January 2009, supplying them with on-demand video from big guns such as Warner Bros and NBC. It has an advantage by making use of broadband instead of broadcasting, effectively freeing them from licensing with the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA).

They’ve currently got 1000 customers, meaning in the next 3 months they want to push those figures up with what would usually be considered unrealistic growth. Initially I really got excited about what they have in store for SA TV, but after reading the Advertising Age article Tom Rogers actually said that video on demand “is not the solution, because at best it accounts for 3% of viewing in households”, that ship kind of sank.

Believe me I’m all for tech developments, especially if it increases competition in a specific market and the consumer scores out of the deal. I checked out their website and it really looks like a solid company – and they’ve got some great deals on ADSL. I’m just not sure if on-demand TV would take off in SA, especially if it’s been so poorly received in the states… but who am I to predict the future of a new advancement in technology?