advertising

Most Important Brands for Women: Marketing Works!

by Kathryn Ciano on October 25, 2010

in Economy, Odds & Ends

Today NBC Universal releases the results of their survey tallying the most important brands for women. Wal-Mart, Target, and eBay are women’s favorite brands:

September results for its new monthly brand index rates — in order, after Wal-Mart, Target, and eBay — Verizon, Ford, Coca-Cola, iPhone, AT&T, Honda, Pepsi, iPod, Amazon, Toyota, Sears, Similac, Bank of America, Microsoft, Netflix, Tylenol, McDonald’s, Sprint, Kohl’s, Chevrolet, Samsung, and Comcast.

Perhaps more interesting than which brands women prefer is the advertising methods that best capture women’s attention. Evidently whatever brands satisfy women’s default preferences in the summertime, television reruns doldrums fall to the wayside as soon as prime time reminds us what we really prefer:

Getting a big push from the start of the broadcast TV season, a number of brands showed lift. Dr. Pepper, was one of the biggest gainers moving up, gaining 19 places to 64th-best brand for women from 83. The soft drink had a high-profile mention on Fox’s “Glee,” for example. Sears, a major sponsor CBS’ “Survivor: Nicaragua,” gained 5 spots from 19 to 14. Netflix, with a big overall NBC Universal online video sponsorship, gained 2 spots from 20 to 18.

We’re all just keeping up with the Joneses, yo. Says NBCU Women & Lifestyle Entertainment Networks strategic research insights vice president Tony Cardinale: “Social media campaigns continue to spark a lot of dialogue and move the needle, and television remains a powerful influence. We saw multiple cases where strategic TV exposures corresponded with more brand activity.”

Good for Ford, Verizon, Coca Cola, et al. for boosting sales via product placement rather than tax-funded bailouts!

CSR and Oil Companies: The Truth Dawns?

by Iain Murray on August 4, 2010 · 1 comment

in Culture, Economy, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Natural Resources

The environmental left is in some disarray following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  After all, BP had trumpeted for years the idea that it was ‘Beyond Petroleum.’  Shell and ChevronTexaco had mounted similar campaigns.  All had collected numerous awards for their commitment to sustainability and other objectives of the green lobby.  Yet here was BP responsible for worst environmental disaster many people had seen.  The hand-wringing is palpable among the Corporate Social Responsibility mavens.  Here’s the conclusion of one group, EthicalCorp:

Many in the CSR community have discussed the disaster in the context of the oil industry at large. BP, they reason, was certainly ahead of its competitors in discussing the responsibility of an energy company to address climate change and invest in alternative energy.

But it’s critical to remember that being “best in class” when your industry’s core products and services are fundamentally unsustainable, is a total misnomer. There is no such thing as an ‘eco-friendly’ oil company.

The remedy, it seems, is ideological purity:

Let’s start with the term ‘CSR’ itself. Like ‘sustainability’, it’s clearly lost a lot of its meaning and needs to be rethought—and possibly thrown out altogether. Continuing to frame corporate efforts on sustainable development as ‘CSR’ also keeps those efforts in the CSR department, instead of driving their integration into core business operations.

But what about ethical rankings and indices? If they actually worked well, they could have a significant impact on investment decisions. As Innovest concluded in its 2000 oil industry risk report—which ranked BP #2 out of the 13 oil companies on the S&P 500 for its “superior environmental management program”—investors could use the ranking as “a valuable indicator of future performance in the oil industry based on environmental criteria.”

Firstly, no oil company should be found on any of these ethical, CSR or sustainability-related lists.

And it shouldn’t require the biggest ecological disaster in American history, for example, to displace BP from the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.

Secondly, ranking and index criteria need to be made more visible and more robust. Yes, most tell us they are based on publicly available data. But most of them also rely on sourcing that data from corporate commitments—what companies say they are doing or plan to do.

Some are even based solely on information found in the CSR reports of those companies. All rankings and indices need to be driven by externally verified data from a solid variety of sources.

And what about marketing? The high-profile communications campaigns from the energy industry need to be automatically subject to greater scrutiny, and more robust regulation.

Shell’s new CSR campaign, “Let’s Go”, bears an uncanny resemblance to “Beyond Petroleum”, focusing on broad claims such as “Shell is helping to deliver cleaner-burning natural gas to more countries than any other energy company.”

The viewer of these ads is given no context for the claim—what other energy sources natural gas burns cleaner than, for example, or how delivering the gas to “more countries” is a relevant metric for sustainability leadership. This is unacceptable.

It seems that companies’ green marketing materials will no longer be enough for the CSR industry.  They will require much more to deliver their seal of approval – so much, it appears – that energy companies will no longer be able to achieve them without completely divesting themselves of their most profitable activities.

As it happens, the oil companies realized this a few years ago.  Tom Bower’s book Oil reveals how BP, Shell and others quietly shelved their environmentally-focused campaigns after the release of An Inconvenient Truth.  as bower characterizes the thoughts of Shell’s Chief Executive, Jeroen van der Veer, “Posturing for publicity purposes was harmless, but relying on the profitability of renewables was foolish.”

It’s taken several years for the CSR types to notice.  If they are now openly hostile to energy companies, then ‘posturing for publicity purposes’ is really no longer an option.  The cry of “hypocrite” is a powerful one.

So what is left?  We at CEI have been arguing for years that corporations need to do what they did en masse in the 1930s, the last time corporations came under as heavy attack as they are now, and legitimize their activities.  They need to point out the good that they are doing, how oil creates opportunities and wealth we would not have without it, for instance.  Apologetic advertising or pretending to be something they are not needs to be a thing of the past.

Truth in advertising, indeed.

Some U.K. government ads on global warming too scary

by Fran Smith on March 18, 2010 · 1 comment

in Environment, Global Warming, Nanny State, Sanctimony

“Is global warming the new apocalypse?” asks The Times of London in an article focusing on children’s fears about global warming in the context of a scare-mongering U.K. government advertising  campaign to promote climate-change awareness.

Recently the Advertising Standards Authority ruled that some of the campaign’s print ads using nursery rhymes overstated the risks of global warming and were to be banned. But it passed on a TV ad that got almost 1000 complaints that it was too scary.

Check out an earlier CEI post on global warming alarmists’ exploitation of children. Look again at CEI’s response to an earlier apocalyptic video shown at the COP15 Copenhagen meeting on climate change.

Regulation of the Day 108: Murals in Front of Houses

by Ryan Young on February 3, 2010

in Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Regulation, Regulation of the Day

A Los Angeles couple recently paid an artist to paint a mural on the wall in front of their house. As you can see from the picture, it is filled with cute, cuddly forest creatures.

Now the city is threatening the couple with half a year in jail and $1,000 in fines for violating outdoor advertising regulations.

It is worth noting that the mural is clearly not an advertisement. Tacky, maybe. But definitely not an advertisement.

John Stossel has more.

Regulation of the Day 87: The Volume of TV Commercials

by Ryan Young on December 18, 2009 · 1 comment

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Regulation, Regulation of the Day, Tech & Telecom

The House passed the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act on Wednesday. If it becomes law, the FCC would control the volume level of television commercials. Some of them are noticeably louder than regular programming. This is, to put it tactfully, irritating.

Rep. Rick Boucher told the Associated Press that “It’s an annoying experience, and something really should be done about it.”

He was talking about the commercials, though his remarks better fit the regulations he voted for.

Still, he’s right that something needs to be done. Loud commercials are a nuisance. They are also avoidable. For example, I avoid them by watching as little television as possible. Maybe read a book or spend time with loved ones instead. There are other ways, too. Here are a few:

-Use the mute button on your remote.

-If you have DVR and you’re watching a show you recorded, you can fast forward through the commercials.

-Change the channel.

-Let broadcasters know how you feel. Tell them not to run loud commercials. You can contact ABC here; CBS here; Fox here; and NBC here. They’d rather you watch their channel than not, after all. And the best way to prevent a viewer exodus is not alienating them.

Besides, they’d probably rather hear from you than the FCC.

(Hat tip to Fred Smith)

FTC Sets its Sights on Bloggers

by Elizabeth Jacobson on October 19, 2009

in Features, Tech & Telecom, Zeitgeist

The blogosphere has been up in arms over the last two weeks, ever since the Federal Trade Commission issued an update to its “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” In the past, these guidelines have determined the kinds of research claims companies or celebrity endorsers can make about products in advertising. With the recent update, though, the FTC has chosen to extend its reach onto the Internet, applying its regulations to blogs, Facebook pages, even Twitter feeds. L. Gordon Crovitz explains in the WSJ:

The guidelines require people to disclose online if they have what the FTC vaguely defines as “material connections” with the sellers of a product or service. This could include getting free samples on which they base comments or reviews. Bloggerl objected to the double standard that exempts traditional media from the rules – many newspapers, magazines and broadcasters accept free books and other products for their reviewers.

The FTC’s aim is to go after advertisers, but its vague definitions don’t offer much clarity. Further complicating the issue is the FTC’s intention to handle violations on a selective, case-by-case basis. Laws ought to be clear and enforcable, not ambiguous and imposed at the whim of some unelected government regulator. Either all bloggers who break the rules are criminals, or none of them are.

Netizens should recognize how unnecessary these regulations are. Bloggers who care about their reputations already practice honesty and transparency. Bloggers who don’t disclose their commercial ties risk alienating their readers and losing traffic. This relationship between content creators and users is what makes social media self-regulating. Citizens don’t need the government to clean up the Internet’s garbage.

Truth-In-Labeling? Call the Federal Advertising Bureau

by Elizabeth Jacobson on September 25, 2009

in Tech & Telecom

This week, the New America Foundation called for government-mandated “Truth-in-Labeling” from the nation’s broadband service providers. They’ve even created a mock-up of what they think such a disclosure form should look like. In addition to fees, service limits, and contract terms, NAF would like the disclosures to include information such as minimum reliability, maximum latency, and a service guarantee.

While it’s true that the actual speed a user experiences is often a fraction of the advertised speed, this isn’t secret knowledge. Internet companies oversubscribe their networks – that is, they put more people on one connection than what the router could handle at one time. Because, on average, not all customers will be requesting downloads from the network at the same time, ISPs are able to maximize efficiency and minimize the cost to consumers this way. When this pricing/advertising scheme became standard practice, the most common services were web browsing and email, two activities that do not rely on constant data downloading. Today we live in the era of online video games, streamable video, and internet telephony. However, most ISP’s already provide dedicated video and voice services (i.e. cable TV and phone). Online gamers are among the most technoligically-savvy consumers; presumably, they know what grade of internet access will suit their needs. While most consumers don’t know the exact data rate that they’re getting, they do know that 50 Mbits/second is faster and costs more than 2 Mbits/second, which is faster and generally more expensive than 784 Kbits/second. For less knowledgeable  users, “Broadband” is fast internet. Above a certain limit, it’s becomes difficult for humans to perceive the difference between “fast” and “faster.”

NAF’s demands for the disclosure of certain technical aspects are also unnecessary. Minimum reliability is problematic because some broadband technologies are less reliable than others. For example, satellite internet connections are known to be affected by interference from weather and other unpredictable environmental conditions. Maximum latency can be affected by many different factors, enough that giving a “maximum” amount of time (even if it only occurs 1% of the time) could force companies to cast their own service not in a “realistic” light, but in a poor light. A service guarantee would mean that an ISP would refund customers for any amount of time that their connection is disrupted. In my personal experience, home broadband connections aren’t usually out for more than a few hours. A three-hour outage on a $49.99/month internet service would equal roughly a $0.21 refund per consumer.

The folks at NAF may mean well, but you know what they say about good intentions. Government micromanagement of ISPs’ advertising practices is another small step in the erosion of the real free nature of the ‘net.

More on the Microhoo Deal

by Richard Morrison on July 30, 2009

in Regulation, Tech & Telecom

The long-awaited collaboration of Microsoft and Yahoo on search has the tech business community abuzz. CEI analysts Wayne Crews and Ryan Young made their original statements here. Media outlets immediately took note, as seen in this Investor’s Business Daily story (posted, fitting enough, at Yahoo Finance) from yesterday:

Ryan Young, a fellow of regulatory studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, says the deal should be approved.

“It will make Google stay on its toes,” he said. “Bing and Yahoo should improve from the proposed partnership. This is how a competitive, contestable market works.”

We also got some love from Erika Morphy at E-commerce Times in her story today:

The Obama Administration is taking a harder line on antitrust issues than in the past, which could prove to be a wild card, noted Ryan Radia, information policy analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, although he’s also convinced that the deal will go through.

“Antitrust administrators are looking to make headlines now,” Radia told the E-Commerce Times, pointing to investigations he dubbed “dubious,” such as the probe into the Google book deal or the inquiry into Silicon Valley employment practices.

“The latest line of attack is that lack of regulation and enforcement is behind the recession,” he said.

[...]

Microsoft has been battling EU antitrust charges for years, CEI’s Radia noted, with the most recent involving accusations that it violated EU antitrust law by bundling Internet Explorer with its Windows operating system.

“It is going to be more of a problem over there than with U.S. regulatory authorities,” he predicted.

National Journal’s Tech Daily Dose also noted our advice to regulators to keep their snouts out of the deal:

“Our subcommittee is concerned about competition issues in these markets because of the potentially far-reaching consequences for consumers and advertisers, and our concern about dampening the innovation we have come to expect from a competitive high-tech industry,” [Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Herb] Kohl said in a statement. Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee ranking member Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said he did not see “any immediate yellow flags” from an antitrust front. Competitive Enterprise Institute argued regulators “can best serve consumer interests by leaving well enough alone.”

Who knows where we’ll pop up next!

FTC to Monitor Blogs for Undisclosed Compensation

by Elizabeth Jacobson on June 22, 2009 · 2 comments

in Regulation, Tech & Telecom

So much for the idyllic “free information” model of the internet. The Federal Trade Commission is drafting new rules that would extend its authority to encompass bloggers who promote products in exchange for compensation or giveaways. The FTC’s new oversight could be quite extensive, even covering the common marketing practice of affiliate links, as the Associated Press reports:

New guidelines, expected to be approved late this summer with possible modifications, would clarify that the agency can go after bloggers — as well as the companies that compensate them — for any false claims or failure to disclose conflicts of interest. It would be the first time the FTC tries to patrol systematically what bloggers say and do online. The common practice of posting a graphical ad or a link to an online retailer — and getting commissions for any sales from it — would be enough to trigger oversight.

While professional journalists in print or broadcast media are held to strict standards (they usually can’t receive gifts or payments), Internet bloggers need not subscribe to any common code of ethics. However, government oversight in the blogosphere seems a bit drastic and unnecessary. It’s one thing for the FTC to enforce guidelines on electronic advertising conducted by tax-exempt organizations, corporations, or bloggers officially affiliated with them. But applying these rules to independent, small-time consumer product reviewers and noncommercial bloggers who use AdSense oversteps any reasonable exercise of regulatory power in the name of “consumer advocacy.” The FTC even wants to extend its reach to Twitter and other social media services. Perhaps Twitter will have to increase its 140-character limit if users who tweet about a product will be required to include a “#CompensatedReviewFTCCompliant” hashtag.

These new regulations – specifically, the threat of an FTC investigation – could have serious consequences for the availability of information on the Internet. When the FCC regulated political content on broadcast radio in the 20th century, the result was a “chilling effect” on political speech. Broadcasters stopped providing potentially controversial content for fear of an FCC investigation. Unsurprisingly, our government has not learned its lesson. The AP continues:

Between ads on her five blogs and payments from advertisers who want her to review products, Rebecca Empey makes as much as $800 a month, paying the grocery bill for a family of six. She also has received a bird feeder, toys, books and other free goods. Now the 41-year-old mother of four in New Hartford, N.Y., worries that even a casual mention of an all-natural cold remedy she bought herself would trigger an FTC probe.

Last, there’s the obvious problem of manpower. The feds couldn’t possibly believe that they have sufficient resources to monitor the entire blogosphere, could they? Add to that the Twitter timeline and all those public MySpace pages, and you’re looking at a pretty long list. Let’s not forget the millions of Internet message boards - surely those would be included, too. Who’s going to regulate those blogs not based in the U.S.? Cnet’s Caroline McCarthy sums it up best:

…does the FTC realize just how many small-time bloggers are out there? Championing business ethics is a worthy goal, but, um, good luck getting much done when there are hundreds of thousands of blogs out there and new ones popping up more or less daily. Ever heard of the expression “herding cats?”

Consider this more evidence that government attempts to enforce any kind of content regulation over the Internet are almost always short-sighted, heavy-handed, and usually lack any technological understanding. Certainly, bloggers ought disclose compensation arrangements, gifts, and conflicts of interest, and most reputable bloggers already do, but do we really need the FTC to keep its eye on every amateur blogger with a coupon? While it may be desirable for the FTC to promote competition and fair business standards in some contexts, going after blogs is another example of the government injecting itself where it’s neither needed nor welcome.

More Behavorial Advertising Adventures

by Nick Brown on February 24, 2009 · 1 comment

in Regulation, Tech & Telecom

Back in January I wrote about several advertising industry trade associations coming together to impose self-regulation in an attempt to deter federal regulation of behavioral advertising under the Obama administration. I pointed out that the Federal Trade Commission had advised the advertising industry back in December 2007 that it were pushing the envelope on what the FTC considered to be reasonable behavioral advertising. It seems as though the industry may have viewed this as an idle threat under the Bush administration, but got wind that the new administration would be looking at the issue with renewed vigor.

Last week, the FTC released its Staff Report on the issue entitled FTC STAFF REPORT: Self-Regulatory Principles For Online Behavorial Advertising.  The report succinctly defines the issues at hand and examines the stakes of all sides.  Importantly, the FTC has refined its Principles for Behavioral Advertising self-regulation within the document.

These Principles, a summary of the issues and concerns surrounding behavioral advertising, are divided up into four key points:

1) Transparency and Consumer Control

2) Reasonable Security, and Limited Data Retention, for Consumer Data

3) Affirmative Express Consent for Material Changes to Existing Privacy Promises

4) Affirmative Express Consent to (or Prohibition Against) Using Sensitive Data for Behavioral Advertising

In other words, these are the concerns that need to be addressed in self-regulation.  The FTC concludes its report by saying that the Commission staff will monitor efforts of the industry to self-regulate over the next year keeping an open dialogue with all parties involved.

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