If you feel you’re being overwhelmed by information overload in the digital realm, you have lots of company.
A survey conducted last month of ~200 adults who are online “content consumers” found that the largest proportion reports being online essentially their entire waking day. The survey, conducted by content publishing platform company Magnify, was made up of executives, professionals, entrepreneurs and technologists.
It’s a small survey sample to be sure … but who could really argue with the results it uncovered? When asked to what degree they were connected to the Internet, here’s how these respondents answered:
From the moment I wake up until the moment I go to bed: ~50%
Most of the workday: ~28%
9 am to 9 p.m.: ~17%
But here’s the even bigger kicker: A large majority of the respondents reported that the quantity of information being received today had grown by 50% or more compared to last year:
Information flow has doubled or more since last year: ~26%
… Has increased by ~75%: ~10%
… Has increased by ~50%: ~28%
… Has increased by ~20%: ~25%
… Has stayed essentially the same: ~11%
How are people dealing with processing the additional information? See how many of these “coping mechanisms” reflect your own actions or behaviors:
Reading/responding to e-mail on evenings and weekends: ~77%
Never turning off the mobile phone: ~57%
Unable to answer all e-mails: ~47%
Missing important news: ~41%
Ignoring family and friends: ~40%
Answering e-mails even while with children: ~35%
Checking e-mails in the middle of the night: ~33%
The question is: Have we finally reached a critical-mass state where the law of diminishing returns kicks in?
Well, we might have thought that one year ago … before the latest torrential increase in volume happened!
Who controls consumer household spending? Women ... men ... or both?Among the “everyone knows” factoids in marketing, it’s accepted pretty much without question that women are the purchasing decision-makers in households far more than men. Whether it’s decisions on consumer spending or healthcare services … women are much more likely to be making those decisions compared to men.
And the figure commonly cited? Women are responsible for ~80% of the decisions. But how accurate is this … or is it time to reconsider this notion?
A survey conducted last year of ~4,000 Americans age 16 and older by The Futures Company, a London-based marketing consulting firm, found that ~37% of women claimed they have primary responsibility for shopping decisions in their household, while ~85% claimed they have primary or shared responsibility.
And the figures for the male respondents in this survey? Substantially the same, it turns out: 31% claimed they have primary shopping responsibility and 84% claimed that the responsibility is shared.
Emily Parenti, marketing director at Futures, concluded that the survey results “tell a different story” than the common perception of how much women control the purse-strings in households.
Indeed, the Futures survey is one of the first ones that actually goes so far as to quantify the issue. Ira Mayer, president of EPM Communications which publishes the newsletter Marketing to Women, has attempted to find the origin of the accepted 80% figure – but has come up empty.
“There is never any sourcing of the number,” Mayer says. And yet, “it’s become accepted folklore.”
When challenged to cite corroboration, students of marketing point to the book Marketing to Women, published in 2002 by Marti Barletta, wherein the claim is made that women “handle 80% to 90% of spending and purchasing for the household.”
And yet … Barletta has never been able to cite the source for this claim, either. Instead, she considers it “one of those rules-of-thumb numbers that everyone in the industry uses.”
Perhaps marketers need to take a look at this rule-of-thumb again. Because in addition to the Futures survey, a 2008 online research survey conducted by Boston Consulting Group asked women and men to estimate what percentage of household spending they influence or control.
True to form, the average answer given by women in the BCG survey was 73%. But the average answer given by men was 61%.
So in essence, both genders are claiming responsibility for a controlling or influence more than 50% of the spending in their household.
This points to a difference in perspective that likely won’t be going away anytime soon. Indeed, Marti Barletta still claims to be “pretty comfortable” with the 80% figure for female control over household spending. “Even being conservative, I wouldn’t go below 75%,” she asserts.
Whatever the correct figure actually is, one thing we can be certain of is that the notion of women having overwhelming control of household spending is off-base. And so, consumer product manufacturers would be wise to recalibrate their thinking as they engage in their product development and marketing activities and programs.
Adding a lot of class to the neighborhood: Adzookie puts the "outré" in outdoor advertising.There’s an interesting story that’s been swirling around the past few days about out-of-home advertising. Evidently, mobile ad network firm Adzookie is on the prowl for using someone’s house as an advertising placard.
As in “the entire house.” Or nearly all of it; Adzookie plans to place its logo, marketing messages and social media icons along with highly visible hues on every inch of surface save the rooftop, windows and awnings.
And what’s in it for the homeowner? Adzookie is claiming it will pay the mortgage on each house it selects for the honors.
Already, well over 1,000 applications from property owners have been received. The vast majority involve houses, but there are also restaurants, other businesses, and even a house of worship that have been submitted. You can click over to Adzookie’s Facebook page to view many of the pictures and pitches received.
How will Adzookie make its decision? Key, of course, will be traffic density; homes in sleepy sub-divisions or cul-de-sacs won’t have much of a chance. Then there’s also the issue of restrictive homeowner associations or the howls of protestation over “eye pollution” from nearby neighbors. That’ll knock quite a few more out of contention.
But here’s another tidbit that may turn out to be a deal-breaker for most of the remaining applications: CNNMoney magazine is reporting that Adzookie’s budget for the entire program is only ~$100,000 … and that includes the cost of painting the home(s) in question.
Even in this depressed real estate market, there aren’t too many houses that have a mortgage that low – unless you’re talking about a home in the City of Detroit, perhaps.
This capricious initiative proves yet again that in today’s world of advertising and promotion, pretty much anything goes. And if the idea is quirky enough, it’ll generate publicity in and of itself – thereby helping to bring about the desired awareness and interest even before the first slaps of the paintbrush ever hit the house.
That the venerable Philadelphia Orchestra, 111 years old and one of the best-known, best-loved ensembles in the classical music field, should be facing bankruptcy proceedings comes as a surprise to most people. This orchestra, with its stellar roster of past music directors including Eugene Ormandy, Ricardo Muti, and Leopold Stokowski of Disney’s Fantasia fame, would seem to be nearly immune to financial stresses.
But the fallout from the economic recession has affected private and public funding alike, with corporate donors snapping their wallets shut … and many well-heeled retirees and other donors looking at their financial and real estate portfolios and feeling much poorer.
In the new economic reality, the prognosis for the Philadelphia Orchestra and other professional classical music ensembles is grim unless severe cuts are made to operating expenses. But those steps can also be risky. Just a week before the Philadelphia announcement, the Detroit Symphony, another well-established body whose list of past music directors including Antal Dorati, Paul Paray and Neeme Järvi is almost as impressive as Philadelphia’s, nearly went under after proposing more than a 15% reduction in player salaries, plus other concessions.
Rather than agree to their base pay dropping from ~$104,000 to ~$88,000, the musicians went on strike in the Fall of 2010. It was only when the board of the DSO was ready to pull the plug on the orchestra’s existence that the players agreed to come back to work.
On Saturday, April 9, the DSO performed for the first time in over five months, and the musicians are now committed to completing the current orchestral season. After nearly two years of wrangling, it’s the best outcome anyone could have hoped for.
Looking out across the country, it’s difficult to find much good news in the orchestral field; the Honolulu Symphony was recently liquidated and the Louisville Orchestra has also filed for bankruptcy.
But one bright spot is in Buffalo, where the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, under the inspired 11-year leadership of music director JoAnn Falletta and a pragmatic, forward-looking Board led by Cindy Abbott Letro, is weathering the economic stresses with better success. Another venerable orchestral institution, the BPO is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, and its roster of past music directories includes such luminaries as William Steinberg, Michael Tilson Thomas and the composer-conductor Lukas Foss.
Considering that the Buffalo urban community is much smaller than many other metropolitan markets like Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco that support professional symphony orchestras, what the BPO has been able to accomplish is nothing short of amazing.
In 2008, the BPO concluded a capital campaign that added more than $32 million to the orchestra’s endowment, and posted a balanced budget in the 2009-10 season. In 2010, it went on tour for the first time in ~20 years. The BPO’s symphony programs are some of the most interesting and inventive being performed by any orchestra in America (I know: I’ve attended several of them). And the orchestra is continuing to release new CDs of fascinating orchestral repertoire on Naxos, the world’s largest classical music label.
Key to the BPO’s success goes beyond public monies, or support from foundations plus a few wealthy individuals. It’s about creating a strong link between the orchestra and the wider community – something easy to talk about, but challenging to accomplish without building strong chemistry and a sense of shared destiny. And in that regard, the attitude, approachability and personality of the music director cannot be overstated.
Richard Morrison, esteemed music critic of The Times of London, writes in the pages of BBC Music Magazine of “the existential crisis that could soon devour orchestras across the world with exemplary management, hard-working musicians, high standards and realistic attitudes.” He can “easily envisage a future in which dozens of ailing cities across Europe and America lose their orchestras forever.”
Not that Morrison is happy about his prognosis: “Some might argue that, in this age of universally-available Internet concerts, the physical presence of an orchestra in any particular region no longer matters. I can’t agree. It would be a tragedy if the opportunity to hear live classical concerts was bestowed only on people living in the wealthiest cities,” he opines.
If the example set by the Buffalo Philharmonic is one that could be replicated in other urban areas, Morrison’s grim prediction could turn out to be wrong. Let’s hope so.
Until now, Google has been the biggest target of blame … but now we’re seeing Facebook in the thick of it also.
It’s only been in the past year that Facebook has made a real run for the money when it comes to paid search advertising. There are some very positive aspects to Facebook’s advertising program, which can target where ads are served based on behavioral and psychographic factors from the Facebook profiles of members and their friend networks. This is something Google has had a difficult time emulating. (Not that they haven’t been trying … which is what the new Google +1 beta offering is all about.)
But now, Facebook is the target of a lawsuit from a number of advertisers who contend that there are major discrepancies between Facebook’s click volume and the companies’ own analytics programs which suggest that the purported clickthrough activity is significantly inflated.
As an example of one company that is a party to the lawsuit, sports fan site RootZoo alleges that on a single day in June 2010, its software programs reported ~300 clicks generated by Facebook … but Facebook charged RootZoo for ~800 clicks instead.
While contesting the allegations vigorously, Facebook’s attorneys have also argued against the company having to disclose the source code or other details of how it calculates clickthrough activity, citing fears that the proprietary information could be leaked to outside parties (competitors) as well.
But that argument fell on deaf ears this past week. Instead, Facebook has been ordered by the U.S. District Court in San Jose, CA to disclose a wide range of data, including its source code for systems to identify and filter out invalid clicks.
In making this decision, Magistrate Judge Howard Lloyd stated, “The source code in this case implemented Facebook’s desired filtering, and whether that filtering [has] lived up to Facebook’s claims and contractual obligations is the issue here.”
This ruling appears to call into question the sweeping terms and conditions that Facebook advertisers are required to sign before beginning a media program. The relevant language states: “I understand that third parties may generate impressions, clicks or other actions affecting the cost of the advertising for fraudulent or improper purposes, and I accept the risk of any such impressions, clicks or other actions.”
[This isn’t the only incidence of Facebook’s broad and restrictive stipulations; another particularly obnoxious one deals with “ownership” of content posted on Facebook pages – basically, the content creator gives up all rights of control — even if the content came to Facebook through a third-party source.]
But in this particular case, evidently the terms and conditions language isn’t sweeping enough, as Judge Lloyd ruled that the plaintiffs can sue on the basis of “invalid” clicks, if not “fraudulent” ones.
Touché! Score one for the judges against the lawyers!
Of course, it’s way too soon to know how this particular case is going to play out – or whether it’ll even get to court. It’s far more likely that Facebook will settle with the plaintiffs so as not to have to disclose its source code and other “trade secrets” — the very things that cause so many marketers to see paid search advertising as a gigantic black hole of mystery that is rigged against the advertisers no matter what.
But one thing is easy to predict: This won’t be the last time the issue of pay-per-click advertising is brought before the courts. Whether the target is Facebook, Google or Bing, these skirmishes are bound to be part of the business landscape for months and years to come.
An uptick in print magazine advertising -- however modest -- appears to be occurring.Could it be that print magazines are finally on the positive side of the “U” in their recovery? The most recent stats on print advertising activities suggest that this may be so – if only slightly.
In statistics released this past week by Publishers Information Bureau, this data aggregator found that across all of the magazines tracked by the bureau, print advertising rose ~2.5% during the first quarter of 2011 compared to the same period last year. While not large, it is a gain, which is better news than most publications have had in quite a while.
PIB charted advertising growth in seven of the twelve advertiser categories it tracks, with the following segments showing increases year-over-year:
Apparel and accessories
Automotive
Cosmetics and toiletries
Drugs and remedies
Financial, insurance and real estate
Media and advertising
Technology
As for the other categories, advertising was roughly even in women’s fashion and beauty magazines, while advertising categories that continued to decline were retail, food, home furnishings, and travel.
More specifically, how did some of America’s largest and most famous magazine brands fare? The answer is: “It depends.”
BusinessWeek: +49%
Elle: +15%
Vogue: +11%
Glamour: +6%
The Economist: +4%
The New Yorker: +4%
Time: +3%
There are explanations behind the outliers’ advertising performance. BusinessWeek has undergone an extensive redesign since its purchase by Bloomberg, and major resources have been poured into the publication to raise its profile and editorial muscle.
At the other end of the scale, Newsweek has struggled in the wake of its purchase by nonagenarian Sidney Harman, the retired chairman of Harman International Industries (Harman/Kardon) and husband of Jane Harman, executive director of Wilson International Center for Scholars and an ex-congressperson from California. Bringing Tina Brown onboard as “celebrity editor” at Newsweek hasn’t paid big dividends yet – at least in terms of advertisers returning to the magazine.
Does the uptick in advertising mean that print magazines are out of the woods yet? Hardly. Let’s not forget that the improved advertising figures are coming off of 2010’s low base levels that are nothing short of ugly. Print advertising is slowly emerging from the worst business environment faced by magazines since the Great Depression, after all.
I blogged recently about the financial travails of Blockbuster and its pending sale … indeed, whether the brand would survive or be liquidated instead.
It was a true battle between old and new forces … with Dish Network seeing Blockbuster as a conduit for augmenting its suite of services, and Monarch looking only to liquidate Blockbuster’s substantial real estate holdings while shuttering the enterprise for good.
When the dust finally settled, Dish Network was the victor, agreeing to pay ~$228 million in cash at closing, which is expected to occur within the next few months. In total, the deal came in at ~$320 million, which tracks with the current value of Blockbuster’s assets.
What in tarnation is Dish Network thinking of doing with Blockbuster? It turns out that the company is hoping to use at least some of Blockbuster’s ~1,700 store outlets to facilitate cross-marketing of its satellite programming and related video services.
The industry is already abuzz with what this really means. Is the Blockbuster acquisition by Dish Network a master-stroke … or a big blunder?
Dish Network looks like it will attempt to keep Blockbuster afloat by having it provide free or discounted rentals as a value-add to Dish’s pay TV subscribers. But industry watchers are also looking at potential online opportunities which could turn out to be more lucrative, since Blockbuster holds streaming rights to various video titles that Dish can use to expand its existing streaming offerings. It could also roll Blockbuster licenses into a Dish-branded online video-on-demand service offering.
In a likely related move, Dish Network has also acquired the assets of financially troubled satellite operator DBSD North America. That purchase provided access to a broadband spectrum that Dish can now use to roll out wireless networks for voice or data communications. This way, it wouldn’t need to rely on the broadband networks of other Internet service providers to stream the content to its satellite TV customers.
But with the pace of change and the fickleness of customers, any effort to bring synergy to these new acquisitions must happen very quickly. Dish Network doesn’t have the luxury of time to make things work; it’s got to happen in weeks and months rather than years.
So the coming months will be interesting in seeing how the Dish/Blockbuster union pans out. One thing is certain: Blockbuster won’t end up looking anything like it does today. But on the bright side, the brand won’t be thrown into the dustbin of corporate history – at least not yet.
And that probably surprises more than a few industry observers – the ones who have been loudly predicting the death of this iconic brand for months or years now.
One of the great benefits of the “online everything” world in which we now live is the ability to evaluate nearly anything about marketing not with hunches or speculation, but with hard data.
A perennial question is what time of day is best to deploy marketing e-mails to customers and prospects. The higher the propensity to open and read these messages, you’re closer to the goal of converting eyeballs to clickthroughs … and to sales.
ReachMail, a Chicago-based e-mail service provider, recently studied a large sampling (~650,000) of the millions of consumer and business marketing e-mail messages it sends out for clients daily in order to determine open rate differences based on the time of day. It normalized the data to account for different time zones.
Weekdays: Peak e-mail open rates are between ~11:30 am and ~2:00 pm.
Weekends: E-mail open rates begin trending upward at ~11:30 am, but don’t peak until ~4:00 pm.
John Murphy, ReachMail’s president, had this to say about people’s weekday e-mail open rate behaviors: “You would think it would spike in the morning, but they’re looking at work e-mails in the morning. Once they’ve cleared out their inbox, they’re looking at marketing e-mails in the afternoon.”
ReachMail’s conclusion: It’s best to deploy weekday e-mails between 10:00 am and Noon. For weekend e-mails, deploy them between Noon and 3:00 pm.
And this additional tidbit also: Don’t assume e-mails sent during the week will perform better than those deployed over the weekend. “People’s engagement rates are up there on the weekend,” Murphy maintains. “It’s our habit of checking e-mail all the time.”
I’ve blogged before about evolving consumer attitudes on “green” products, and the telltale signs that “green fatigue” may be setting in with at least some people.
And now we have survey results that lend additional support to this observation. Harris Interactive conducted an online survey of ~2,350 U.S. adults in November, 2010 – one which is done annually by the polling firm. A comparison between the 2010 and 2009 survey results suggests that fewer Americans are engaging in various green behaviors in their daily lives.
While the year-on-year differences may be slight, the overall trend in participation is down. To illustrate, here are the comparative percentages of respondents who report that they “always” or “often” engage in certain “green” activities:
Turning off lights when leaving a room: 81% (versus 83% in 2009)
Making an effort to use less water: 57% (vs. 60%)
Purchasing locally grown produce: 33% (vs. 39%)
Purchasing locally manufactured products: 23% (vs. 26%)
Are there any areas where the trend is up rather than down? Actually, no. But Harris did find one area of stability: The same percentage of respondents in both years reported “always” or “often” engaging in recycling activities (68%).
What about other environmental activities? Again, the trend lines aren’t going in green’s favor:
Purchased energy-efficient appliances (e.g., Energy Star): 30% (versus 36% in 2009)
Donated or recycled electronic devices or parts: 32% (vs. 41%)
Switched from bottled water to filtered tap water: 23% (vs. 29%)
Purchased a more fuel-efficient car or hybrid vehicle: 8% (vs. 13%)
In fact, only one of the nearly 20 activities that were surveyed by Harris showed a positive “green” trend for 2010 versus the year prior — and that was switching to paperless statements for personal financial accounts.
Big whoop.
In trying to understand what is causing the change in behavior, it’s too simplistic to cite the economic recession. After all, 2010 was a less challenging year on that front compared to 2009, when the economy was really in the dumper.
For clues, we might turn to several other consumer research studies. The 2010 Green Gauge® Study conducted by GfK Roper gives us some possible reasons. That study concluded that there’s a sense of “green fatigue” among U.S. consumers. Clear majorities believe that green products are “too expensive” … while one–third of the people surveyed believe that green products “don’t work as well” as the alternatives.
But a more startling statistic from the GfK Roper study is that nearly 40% of the people surveyed feel that “green products aren’t really better for the environment.”
That shows a pretty skeptical public! And what about the issue of truth in advertising? The newest Green Gap Trend Tracker survey from Cone, just released this month, found that well over half of the ~1,035 adults surveyed do not trust the “green” claims made by products and brands.
Interestingly, even with so much of the consumer participation trending down rather than up, these surveys also found that more people today actually consider themselves to be environmentalists or green/environmentally aware.
So, consumers see themselves as green-friendly … but it’s all in how someone defines the term. As it turns out, it’s a murky definition that has people all over the map when it comes to the actual behavior.
Christina Applegate takes motherhood … to celebrity status.
Zsa Zsa Gabor is a fabulous celebrity … and a panel of experts has been commissioned to find out why.
His very existence … makes Prince William a celebrity.
Because the public goes so (Lady) gaga over celebrities, celebs have been used to hawk products and services for decades. Often, they can add pizzazz to what is otherwise a pretty routine advertising campaign. But how effective are the added glitz and glamour in ringing up additional sales?
I’ve long suspected that the value of celebrity endorsements might be over-hyped. Now we have some quantifiable proof. Ace Metrix, a California-based ad measurement firm, evaluated ~2,600 television ads shown during 2010. The company tested 263 unique national ads featuring celebrity endorsements, spanning 16 industries and 110 separate brands. All ads were tested within 48 hours of breaking nationally in order to capture immediate rather than “cultivated” ad effectiveness.
The celebrity ads were then evaluated against a control group of non-celeb ads in order to determine their comparative effectiveness in generating ad “lift” (better performance).
What the Ad Metrix analysis found was that only ~12% of the ads using celebrities showed more than 10% lift over average advertising norms in their respective industries. Even more startling, ~20% of the celebrity ads yielded 10% or worse (net negative) performance over the average advertising norms.
Here are some of the celebrities who had a “net negative” effect on their clients’ TV advertising effectiveness during 2010 – worst listed first:
Tiger Woods (Nike) – I guess this hardly comes as a surprise!
Lance Armstrong (Radio Shack)
Kenny Mayne (Gillette)
Dale Earnhardt, Jr.(Nationwide Auto Insurance)
Donald Trump (Macy’s)
Which celebrities managed to generate better-than-average scores? Queen of the heap is Oprah Winfrey for her 2010 spots for Liberty Mutual and Progressive Insurance. Ed Burns (iShares) and Carl Weathers (Bud Light) took the other top honors in positive lift.
Peter Daboll, head of Ace Metrix, had this to say about the findings: “This research proves unequivocally that, contrary to popular belief, the investment in a celebrity in TV advertising is rarely worthwhile. It is the advertising message that creates the connection to the viewer in areas such as relevance, information and attention, and this remains the most important driver of ad effectiveness.”
Interestingly, Oprah’s ads weren’t pitching products per se, but rather addressing current issue topics – in this case, warning against texting while driving. So one way to get through to the consumer via a celebrity is if the content is informational rather than a sales pitch.
But if the goal of the advertising is product sales, chances are the more the celebrity is truly “connected” to an advertiser’s product or service, the more successful he or she will be in engaging the target audience beyond simply the “curiosity factor.”
If you feel you’re being overwhelmed by information overload in the digital realm, you have lots of company.
Nones Notes 
