|
Number
38: February 4, 2004
If you think your friends and colleagues would enjoy this newsletter
feel free to forward it to them. If someone
sent this to you,
today. Outlook 2003 and AOL 9 users, please add us to your trusted or buddy lists, so you won't miss an issue.
This week in Katydid:
Experiencing
Buyer's Remorse
I'm feeling a little foolish. I think I might have made a big mistake. I
had $4.6 million dollars burning a hole in my pocket, and I was looking
around for a good buy when, in the store window, I saw 60 seconds and I
knew I just had to have them. But come Monday I sure wanted to return
them. Unfortunately, to paraphrase Stephen
Hawking, there's a universal no-return policy on time.
In Sunday's broadcast of Super
Bowl XXXVIII (it's 38, but don't all those letters look impressive?)
there were only 30 minutes available and 30 advertisers took the bait. I
hope you saw my ad. I'd hate to think you might have missed it while
restocking your snack bowl or attending to other needs.
It's clear that we got a little bit more for our money than the
actual time purchased. This is a coming-out party for campaigns. Before
the start of the game, most advertisements have been previewed.
Afterwards, the media provides additional free exposure by producing
news about the commercials.
Of course, not everyone can be the prettiest girl at the ball. Some
of us have to resort to other wiles to garner the attention we crave.
Just in case my ad doesn't make the archive
of this year's commercials, I'll recap. It was quite humorous. I had
my Katydid logo turned into a colorful animated character. (I had long
conversations with Pixar about whether Magicicada septendecim
really should have such long eyelashes, but they're the experts.) The
plot revolved around how KTD Communications helps companies crawl out of
their start-up (larval stage) image, shed their old brand messaging, and
finally take flight.
My ad was also controversial. You may have already heard the
hullabaloo surrounding the realistic depiction of molting. Hey, it's all
part of nature… the circle of life… whatever, it looked hot. People
will talk. (There's even a site dedicated to Super Bowl
commentary.)
I also came under fire for the crude humor. Apparently, some people
are sensitive. It was a word used commonly in polite conversation – some
people thought I meant another sense of the word. That's debatable I
suppose, but those people aren't in my target audience.
I wonder if any of the other companies who purchased time on Sunday
similarly regretted their decisions. Despite the high cost of attending
the party, one doesn't want to be the only one not attending. It feels a
bit like being in the group of schoolgirls standing at the edge of the
dance floor waving our hands screaming, "Dance with me!" It's
a little desperate and undignified.
Then again, there's something about being conspicuously absent from
the party. The main goal is to get people talking about you. If only
there were a way to get as many people as possible to expect to see you,
and then not show
up. I wish I'd thought of that before. Maybe it's not
too late to stop payment.
Top »
Who's
Really Overexposed?
When one has a petulant child who's acting up, a wise parent tries
not to give them undue attention. The best approach is to take a
matter-of-fact tone while correcting the misbehavior. If only our media
were wise enough not to take the bait. Goodness, knows I'm not.
I'm now part of the third wave of controversy. There's the event, the
discussion of the event, and then the discussion of the discussion – the
meta-controversy. In our media-saturated culture, very few people are
ever aware of the event, but we all have an opinion on the controversy.
It's safe to say the NFL Championship held on Sunday, its attendant
hype (and meta-hype), the launch of new advertising campaigns, and even
the result of the game were all upstaged by one-tenth of a second at the
end of the half-time 'show.'
Setting aside, for the moment, the moral finger wagging (it was an
interesting conversation I got to have with my 10-year, old daughter), I
wonder if the event would have been less controversial if some in the
media had just ignored it or downplayed it.
As one would expect, pictures of the event were the most searched
item on the Internet, Monday. But CNN and FOX News both ran the story
all morning long (saved for the end of the hour). Each of the national
networks lavished the story with attention during their evening news
broadcasts with numerous 'teasers' throughout the broadcast.
CBS
News, the one network one would expect to show a little
embarrassment, ran a sequence of teasers that progressively showed more
of the event – literally a striptease, first a long shot of the pair
dancing, then to a medium shot, then at last, a close shot of the flash
itself in a blast of pixilated splendor.
The genius (if I can use that term) of this stunt in front of 140
million viewers was that nearly every report also mentioned that one of
the performers has a new album coming out. For the next few days, we'll
have updates (always with pictures in case we forget). We'll discuss the
motivations of the performers, who knew what and when. I daresay before
long, we'll have someone recreate the costume and demonstrate the
wardrobe malfunction.
All this is free advertising, but there is a cost. This is the mass
media version of spam. It's easy to create, it spreads quickly, and it's
indiscriminate. The outraged viewers are not the target of the message;
they are the message. The message of the stunt is, "Our
performances outrage your parents."
Spreading outrage in the mass media only spreads the message. If the
news organizations wanted to prevent escalation, they would have offered
a measured response that humorously mocked the prank as immature and
ineffective. However, what would they use to keep us glued to our TVs
until the end of the hour?
Top »
Thanks for Reading
This e-mail newsletter spreads mainly by word of
mouth. Please send it on to your colleagues. Also, you can
read other back issues.
If you have suggestions of web sites to review, writing that buzzes,
or a new way of looking at things, let me know. Send your suggestions to
.
If you received this newsletter from a friend, please
today. Our subscriber lists are confidential; we never sell or rent our
lists to third parties. If you want to
from this newsletter,
please let us know.
Kind regards,
Kevin Troy Darling
Top »
|
