CharlieMoger.com

Marketing and advertising advice for owner-operated businesses

Fakin’ it ain’t makin’ it anymore

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Cheat, cheat, never beat. Didn’t we all learn that lesson long ago? Apparently, it’s a lesson lost on a CBS news producer who got caught with fingers in the creative cookie jar and paid with their job.

Katie Couric’s Notebook is a regular feature on the CBS Evening News where the anchor comments on a topic of her choice. Her recent commentary on the growing obsolescence of libraries, it turns out, wasn’t just bad journalism–it was plagiarism. Theft. Worst of it, it wasn’t even Katie’s dirty work

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Location. Location. Location.

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That old real estate maxim applies to the location of your ads within a cluster of ads, or pods.

For years media buyers have maintained the first position in a commercial pod is best. Now, Magna Global proves it: the first minute in a broadcast commercial network television commercial pod is  about 3 percent higher rated than the overall pod, and for cable, it was 6 percent higher.

This research break out from Nielsen’s numbers gives new importance of auditing media invoices. It’s not just the program, nor the block, but your place in the block.

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Age compression

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[Originally published 15 April 2007]

 

That’s not how it was when I was a kid…

The first time those words slip out of your mouth, you realize time has slipped you into your parents’ shoes. Time compression is not a phenomenon reserved for grown-ups. “The emotional and psychological distance between childhood and the teen years is far shorter than ever,” reports USA TODAY.

To establish relationship, you first have to attract. To attract you have to speak a common language. Today, kids are speaking a language of age compression, or as the story calls it, “KGOY–Kids Getting Older Younger.”

You can scream and stamp your foot at the injustice of kids denied the innocence of the growing years, or just realize this is how this age group is experiencing it. Once you make that leap, you will have slipped into their shoes; your first step in attraction marketing.

100,000,000 and counting

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We should all have this kind of success. Apple sold it’s 100-millionth iPod. How many did they sell because of discount sales? Did detailed ads explaining the many features and functions put them over the top?

Five-and-a-half years of iPodding demonstrates the effectiveness of attraction marketing. Teathered in our ears, iPods deliver choice in our hands; extreme intimate connection–personalized.

Choice is proof you’ve become transparent to consumers;  turning over the reins of control. It’s actually more a case of admitting control has been taken. iPods don’t come pre-loaded. They’re individual expressions of their owner. (The only condition is digital rights management (DRM), a condition imposed by the music industry likely to pass into history soon.)

iPods are all about salience: choice of song without obligation to an album, choice of genres, sequence, etc. They’re examples to all of us what’s possible by truly understanding customer desire and helping satisfy it. Do that and they’ll say thank you 100-million times.

 

[Originally published 10 April 2007]

 

 

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