commbasics

  To sum up our series today on the death of journalism as we know it, there is less and less independent analysis from the free press due to budgetary constraints.  Consumers are relying more and more on online content, especially video , to make their decisions but they still want objective content.  Businesses that understand this are turning to ethical journalism and sponsoring it directly to establish themselves as trusted sources of content.  The tech world is taking baby steps in this direction.  Xilinx and Altera hired former print journalists to manage in-house publications sent to current customers.  Cadence Design took a step further hired a journalist to manage blog content specifically to promote the companies products and services, but the efforts focus only on current customers. Larger companies, like Pepsi , offer a section of the website devoted only to pop culture, not products.  Digikey , in contrast, offers industry news...

Bob Hoffman, the Ad Contrarian who 10 days ago posted on Pepsi's massive social media failure, and I have had a very civil exchange on the issue and have discovered we pretty much agree on everything: Pepsi, social media, advertising, brain-dead marketing, etc.  He posted again today on 4 Questions for the Digerterati , that make a lot of good points, although I still say that the claims of "digital advertising and social media" are completely valid IF YOU DO IT RIGHT. The benefits of digital advertising are debatable.  A few months ago there was a lot of noise about how Facebook was driving more eyeballs to business websites than Google, but a few weeks ago, the drive through to revenue from Facebook advertising was pitiful calling into question the benefits of Facebook advertising.  That, however, supports one of my key contentions about advertising in the 21st century: Advertising doesn't convince someone to buy something as much as it reinforces t...

Last week a blog post popped up last week on the Ad Contrarian  about the "massive failure" of the Pepsi "Refresh" campaign.  The author, Bob Hoffman of the redoubtable Hoffman/Lewis add agency, was claiming this proved that social media didn't  work. Let's not point out that the advertising effort Pepsi was putting out before they tried social media wasn't helping them gain market share, which is the reason they went to a social media effort.  Because that would just prove that advertising doesn't work, using Bob's logic. Instead, let's take a page out of Bob's own book. Bob says:  1. Advertising is most productive when it is focused on changing behavior, not attitudes. 2. Advertising messages should be created for, and directed at, the heavy-using, high- yield customers in your category. 3. We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand; we get them to love our brand by convincing ...