The Internet Is NOT the Hottest Media Channel Today

Ad Age ran an article today that surprised me. Even though the interactive channel is growing at a very healthy 15% clip, that growth is being outpaced by a medium that may surprise you as well: shopper marketing, which is growing at a rate of 21% per year. 

In case you are not exactly sure what shopper marketing is, you’re not alone. In fact, even the people who DO shopper marketing don’t agree on exactly what it is. The definition, according to the report, is: “All marketing stimuli designed to engage the shopper, build brand equity and lead him/her to make a purchase while he/she is in ’shopper mode.’” 

All this is more bad news for traditional media (TV, Radio, Print) which is growing at about 2%. And news, one must believe, will get a lot worse for them before it gets better—if indeed it ever does.

FOOD FIGHT!!

How do you get kids (and fast-food munching adults) interested in good, nutritious food? Easy, let them toss it at the lunch lady. That’s the premise behind this very cool site, Good Food Fight, brought to you by the fine people at Eat Better America (and guess who the fine people behind Eat Better America might be? General Mills! But you have to dig deep to find that out.) 

The site is a great mix of video, interactivity and Flash. And the splats that the food creates are surprisingly realistic. I did quite well against the Lunch Lady, but got destroyed by the hot dog vendor.  Give it a try. Just five minutes provide the minimum daily requirement of stupid fun, with trace elements of information and inspiration. 

Thanks to Ben Jones for pointing this out to me.

A Robot Menage a Trois, Brought to You by Norelco

Not long ago, I wrote about the latest viral video from Smirnoff. It was for their new Green Tea product, and was very, very similar to the wildly successful original Tea Partay video. I don’t know the results produced by the second video, but I am pretty sure that Green Tea Partay was not nearly as successful as the original. 

Another extremely successful viral campaign from last year was the shaveeverywhere.com effort from Philips/Norelco. But unlike the Smirnoff effort, the latest work from the folks at Philips, Robot Skin, has NOTHING to do with the huge hit they had with shaveeverywhere. Perhaps it is because the new work was done by the London office of Tribal DDB, not the American one.

Lost in translation, in my opinion, is the singularity and freshness of the last year’s opus. The shocking simplicity of a guy describing the advantages of shaving his privates was priceless.  

The first-person perspective of a futuristic detective story in “Robot Skin” doesn’t feel so fresh. Still, there are nice production values here–a manga-style animation with decent writing and a nice soundtrack. But the product is so lost in the experience, that I am pretty sure most folks won’t walk away with much of an understanding about what the new razor actually does. In any case here is what another blogger had to say about the work. I agree with much of what they wrote.

 Oh, and if you are looking for the robot Menage a trois, go right to episode three.

When It Comes to Online Spending, Adweek Agrees With Attention Shoppers!

 You may recall that some time ago I wrote about why, in spite of overwhelming evidence that they should be spending more of their marketing dollars online, most clients are not using the online space they way the could and should. The post was entitled “Are You Getting the Dough You Deserve?” 

The next day I wrote about why I thought that clients were not giving those of us who toil in the online space the dough we deserve, and what we might do about it. This post was called “A Good Place to Start.” (scroll down to the July 17th entry).

A few days ago, Adweek published an article with a similar theme. Much of the piece had to do with a study, “How Companies are Marketing Online”, done by some smart people at McKinsey & Co. Adweek and McKinsey agreed with Attention Shoppers! about one of the major reasons companies aren’t spending more in the digital space: a lack of metrics to measure the impact of online advertising. 

However, the folks at McKinsey uncovered a reason that we hadn’t thought of: 41% of those questioned said they aren’t doing more online because they don’t have the in-house expertise to do so! And 18% said their agencies don’t have the necessary digital expertise! 

At some point, I would assume that CEOs of companies large and small are going to demand that their CMOs find people (and agencies) with the necessary digital expertise. I have a feeling that time is going to come very soon.

This Will Sell A Ton of Hair Gel

Check out this spiffy new site promoting the Redken Urban Experiment line of hair care products. Sadly, it has been many years since I have been a target for this type of stuff. But if I still had my flowing blond locks, I would be gooping them up with this Redken product, just because I like the site so much. Here’s what one blogger had to say about it. 

The music, photography, typography and user interface all work together to create an effortlessly hip experience. But there’s a lot more to discover here, including a very watchable series of webisodes featuring a couple of New Yorkers who travel across the country in search of, well, I’m not quite sure WHAT they are in search of, but it’s fun to watch. 

Plus, there’s the opportunity to play a virtual version of that old favorite, ”spin the bottle”. Sadly, it has been many years since I’ve been the target for that type of stuff as well.

What if McDonald’s and Baskin-Robbins Got Married?

If one day Mr. MacDonald and Miss Baskin Robbins were wed, the chubby offspring of their union would undoubtedly be Dairy Queen. If you have never experienced the culinary delights of the Dairy Queen, then I feel bad for you. In one tiny building you can have your fill of burgers, fries, and all the milk—not cream—based dairy treats you could ever want.  

When I was growing up in Winthrop, Minnesota (population 1,286), we did not have a McDonald’s or a Baskin Robbins in our fair town. But we did have a Diary Queen (at the yearly Sibley County Fair, we also elected a Pork Queen, but that is a story for another day). And our Dairy Queen was the site of many first dates, break-ups,  friendships, and overall general happiness.  

The new website for Dairy Queen captures much of that happiness. The marketing people at Dairy Queen have created a world of DQ-liciousness  filled with food and fun. 

A couple of quibbles, however: using video online can be very effective, but not when your video host says exactly the same thing every time you load the home page. That is not a good user experience, and says that you only expect consumers to visit one time. If you’re springing for a video shoot, do a bunch of different takes so the host can react to previous behavior and then spend the extra time to program a more interesting consumer experience. 

Also, I enjoyed seeing the menu and the nice food photography, but the descriptions were so generic and bland. That was a missed opportunity to bring more of the distinctive brand voice and personality to the food.  

All that said, this site made me long for the lazy days of August so many years ago  when it was just me, my best girl and a Peanut Buster Parfait.

Be Careful What You Shave With—You Could Get a Baby Butt-Kicking

You all remember that whacky story about Oedipus and his slightly dysfunctional family, right? No? It goes something like this: Boy loves girl (who happens to be his mother), boy kills father, boy marries mother. The End.  

Well, leave it to those psychologically complex folks from France (at JWT) to update the Oedipian tale, add a ninja baby and use it to sell razors!  

In all honesty, maybe this work isn’t REALLY based on Oedipus (I may have just wanted to use my World Lit. 101 class knowledge for once), but the campaign does feature a baby who wants to beat his dad to a pulp. Why? Because cher papa has started to use a Wilkinson razor that makes his skin feel as soft as a baby’s bum. So Mom now showers more of her attention on Dad than the kid. And that makes the kid fighting mad.

Take a look at the intro video, explore the site, then, if you are so inclined, download the elaborately produced game and get it on.  

Wilkinson is clearly going after the younger crowd here, but I’m not convinced large numbers of them will download a game that, however well-done it is, does not come close to competing with the console and online games they play every day. That said, the site and animation are really fun, and they certainly communicate the client’s message in a clever, memorable way.

Special merci to Mike Davis from Digitas for sending this my way.

He Who Has The Most Friends Wins

In a popularity contest with millions of friends (and hundreds of millions of dollars) at stake, Facebook appears to be getting the best of last year’s it site, MySpace.  We at Attention Shoppers! have pointed out a number of times that Facebook is the hot destination du jour for the cool kids (and adults who want to be like the cool kids), and now the folks at AdweekMedia have made it official. They have just named Facebook the hottest digital property of the year.  

Of course, that doesn’t mean that MySpace is now hanging out with the nerds—it landed in the runner-up spot. YouTube rounded out the top three. The article makes for interesting reading, as we strive to get better at meeting our consumers where they spend most of their time, and provide them with marketing that is valuable to them.

On an unrelated topic, I hope by now you have all noticed the nice new picture that graces the Attention Shoppers! home page. I shot it myself at the local Stop and Shop, as I was shopping for many delightful CPG products.

A Cause in Every Spoonful

As often as possible, I try to check in on the major sites that our targets tend to frequent. Tonight, I am playing the airport waiting game, my flight delayed once again in a major city in Ohio. So I visited Glam (now claiming to be number one with women—19 million visitors a month, as opposed to iVillage’s 17 mil) and noticed this major charity play from Yoplait.

Increasingly, companies have been spending serious marketing dollars in the cause-related area. It will be interesting to see what happens to those dollars when companies can see, thanks to the internet, exactly how much activity those dollars are actually generating. Do you think spending will go up or down?

You, Too, Could Be a Guinness World Record Holder!

If you’re like me, you have often thumbed through the Guinness Book of World Records wistfully thinking, “I could be in this book if I put my mind to it.” The problem is, growing the world’s longest finger nails, or amassing the world’s biggest ball of string, or running the world’s fastest 100 meters take so much, well, effort. However, today is your lucky day as I am going to tell you how you can break into the Guinness Book of World Records with little to no effort at all. 

All you have to do is go to this site, where the fine folks from Crest and Oral-B in the Arabian Peninsula (yes, this is the first time Attention Shoppers! is visiting this part of the world) are trying to break the world record for the largest number of smiles (photos of smiles, actually) ever collected. And you can get in on the action simply by uploading your smiling photo. That said, since the current world record is 33, 670 smiles, I cannot guarantee that each and every one of your names will make the book.  

There is also a nice charity component to the promotion. Right now the number of smiles collected stands at a mere 773, so there is a long road ahead. I would suggest that making people register before uploading is a barrier, but perhaps the fussy folks at Guinness require it.

Here is some more info about the promotion. Special thanks to Armin Molovi, who works in marketing at Digitas, for sending this my way.