BUT ... Advertising IS Brain Surgery

Maybe in years past advertising wasn’t brain surgery, fact is, today it is. You need to break through Media ADHD and get into someone's brain.

Are your customers "fans" ? Do they interact with your advertising (widgets), laugh and enjoy your creative (radio, you tube, Pandora) get turned on by seeing new fashions and styles that are relevant to them like club wear on hump days, (online behaviorally targeted and day parted rich media).

Is it that "ADVERTISING DOESN'T WORK"? or that THE ADVERTISING STRATEGIES, CREATIVE AND BUYING DON'T WORK?

We think Advertising is Brain Surgery, in a world without many Brain Surgeons.

Is your Media plan strategic? Your creative relevant? Are you capitalizing on media the way consumers are interacting with it, or just there just because it's there? Something we hear all of the time, "We tried ....(fill in the blank) it didn't work"

Macys needs to become more relevant with Females and the many Marketing Generations down to the iGeneration; The solution? Dump more money into newspaper ads? run the same horrible 60 second radio and :30 TV commercial promoting the 257th One Day Sale of the year on the 258th day of the year?

What if? Macys developed a widget, “The Shoe Diva”? You interacted and could be a 6, 5,4, 3 or 2 inch heel? Are you a a Croc or Birkenstock? Are you a cage-dancer or an urban warrior? What if online there was a series of behaviorally targeted and dayparted virtual fashion shows based on different user groups with rich media online with links to see if your size was in a store near you?

Maybe Advertising is Brain Surgery in a world without Surgeons?

The DEATH of the DEMO

It’s time to put the concept of using Broad Demographics as an upstream strategic tool into the history books. If you don’t, everything downstream is flawed

· Are you looking for strategies and concepts that enable you to be relevant with a consumer who increasingly doesn’t use e-mail as it’s too SLOW, rather prefers text and IM? (and OMG

u r rite she does it in “shorthand”)

Demographics should be DEAD, and Specific User targeting ALIVE. Why? Broad demographics date back to the 1950’s and as such do not reflect media consumption, engagement or simultaneous media usage of specific individuals today.

They do not hold up in an environment that the average consumer is using 10 forms of media a day has a 15 second attention span and that’s IF your message can grab them in the first 4 seconds.

Why are they still a core to existing media plans and strategies? THE INSIDER TRUTH”? they make buying, analyzing and comparing price efficiencies on linear media buys easy. They do not help you build effective strategic advertising plans and in fact, might accomplish the opposite today.

Another truth, agencies aren’t structured to deliver strategic segmented user strategies built on a specific consumer users media consumption. It’s too expensive, time consuming and back end intensive. Case in point, I have personally witnessed the SR Planning teams representing two of the largest US advertisers at a Major ad agency literally roll their eyes at the concept of identifying segmented users and creating media plans, strategies and creative that are relevant to them.

Why consider change?

Advertising is about being relevant and quickly “on-point” with a consumer so they’ll give you another 15 seconds. As an example: think about the Media Consumption behavior of the three female targets that are in the popular 25-54 Demographic.

· A working Mom with an 8 and 10 year old children

· A single clubber female

· A stay at home Mom with a 4 year old child

Oh by the way, all three are 33 years old. Each with entirely different media consumption behavior. Since we are “targeting” a 25-54 year old female, we need to add a 27, 40 and 50 year old female to the mix, then throw in different geographies. Using the media consumption of radio for the three individuals.

· The working Mom? drive time is the worst time to engage her as she is not listening and on the phone during commute times, she streams a “stress relieving station” at work, spends several hours Saturday and Sunday listening to terrestrial radio.

· The single female?, her radio prime time is after 8pm primarily in the car to a

and from, eating out, bars, shopping and clubs.

· The stay at Home Mom? she doesn’t control her radio listening Morning and Afternoon drive, her kids do.

Since the 25-54 Demographic spans 3 decades let’s be more strategic with a demographic “target” spanning only 16 years with the much more targeted 18-34 Female Demographic.

o 18 year old is a high School SR

o 33 year old is a working Mom with 2 kids, one is 4 the other 8.
She’s the 18 year olds Math teacher.

Using Demographics for your online buys? Online site demographics are not as important as the content being consumed. The site demographic may be women 25-54 but based on the selected streams, you could be targeting a gay male with a birth control message.