Introducing Generation Jones

Kidnapped, Hijacked or Rescued? Generation Jones Seeks to define those born between 1954 and 1964.

I was commuting to Manhattan on Monday and listening to WCBS talk/news radio when I got the news. Apparently, according to marketing consultant Jonathan Pontell who was being interviewed, the large group of people born between 1954 and 1964 are not, as previously cast Baby Boomers but are an entirely different species known as ( a term he coined) "Jonesers". This is a huge group of people. It is nearly a quarter (53 million) of all adults. This is a group that is too young to truly have embraced he idealism of the 60's and we are the ones who watched our older brothers and sisters sell out to Yuppism during the 80's. Jones has written a book called Generation Jones: Between the Baby Boomers and Generation X.

But before I go on describing why Mr. Pontell might be on to something in further segmenting Boomers, I'd like to explore my feelings. It was not difficult for me to embrace being Black and African-American instead of Negro. I was only ten or eleven years old when I stopped being a Negro and I hadn't really embraced the term or let it define me. But Baby Boomer is different. It seemed to fit separating my ideas from those of my parents and generations before. It had a lot of optimism and swagger. "Jonesers" sound like followers. Pontell describes us as "yearning" and yes also as "jonesing" that is longing and craving. I do see some of that in my peers but I don't like it and I certainly don't want to be defined by it. Pontell goes on to say that Jonesers are busy, practical and media-savvy. He explains that our "hunger" is an active hunger. We are open to switching brands and channels and we have a built in detector that protects us from being manipulated.

As a marketer, I believe the jury is still out on whether there are difference that are significant enough in the younger Boomers to completely separate them from Baby Boomers. But I like the fact that Pontell believes that our best days are ahead of us. "Generation Jones has not yet spoken," he says, "but it's clearing its throat."

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Super Bowl Ad Spending Tops $230 Million

Was Super Bowl Ad Spending An Economic Indicator?

The Super Bowl was more intense than usual. And not just for the hard fought close game or the nail-biting ending watching as New England quarterback Brady heaved a Hail Mary pass into the end zone. It was the first time I tried watching the game and engaging in social media at the same time. I tweeted throughout, visited cokepolarbear.com to watch the bears watch the game and even dropped in on Facebook to see what my friends and family were doing. The online chatter was mostly about the advertising. Perceived winners and losers. The majority of people in my social network found an ad or two to love, but the overall sentiment was that advertisers may have been trying to hard and that many of the spots missed the mark. I watched the ads carefully and generally agree but my takeaway is broader than that. Advertisers spent an estimated $230 million for the airtime alone.Many advertisers that would not have touched a $1 million dollar spot a few years ago were literally rolling around in $3 million dollar spots. Hyundai purchased five, General Motors, on welfare a couple of years ago had five spots in the big game as well. In fact, about 30% of the spots shown during the game were for automobile manufacturers. They didn't just show up. They showed up with celebrities, stunts, animals and intricate social media tie-ins. While the economy might not be back, big business seems to be spending again. Let's hope that hiring isn't far behind.

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Car Manufacturers Dominate Super Bowl Advertising

From my ABC News Column

Valuable Share At Stake.

One of the most reliable trends indicating the economy is improving is the growth of car sales. Last year, car sales increased by more than 10%, the best showing for the industry since 2008. American auto makers did well in 2011 as Japanese car makers Toyota and Honda struggled through a major earthquake and a tsunami that crippled manufacturing, hurt inventory and parts availability and left the door open for a resurgence from U.S. automakers. 2012 is setting itself up as a very important year for automakers. Did American car makers do well just because Japanese car makers encountered obstacles beyond their control? Will foreign automakers come back with a vengeance and push U.S. automakers back into the hole they’ve slowly been climbing out of since the U.S. Government had to come to their aid with the bailout of 2008? These questions have put the car industry on the center stage this year. From an advertising perspective, there is no bigger stage than the Super Bowl and automobile manufacturers have purchased almost a third of the spots to be run during the game. In addition, they’ve pulled out the stops on engagement as well developing apps and social media strategies to get consumers to watch the game while interacting with brand using their smartphones, tablets and laptops. Lexus will be advertising during the Super Bowl broadcast for the first time. Volkswagen is using dogs as a variation of its popular Star Wars ad of last year. Hyundai also has decided to go with an animal, in this case a cheetah, in one of three spots it will be running on the big game telecast. Acura has gone deep into its pockets signing celebrities Jerry Seinfied and Jay Leno, Kia is one of two advertisers (the other is Teleflora) using supermodel Adriana Lima. Honda has tapped Matthew Broderick in a bit of Boomer nostalgia reprising his role as Ferris Bueller while Chevy, in arguably the most exhilarating Super Bowl spot makes the car the hero by taking it skydiving and bungee Jumping. Chevy’s other Super Bowl commercial is the only crowdsourced spot for auto-makers. The spot called Happy Grad was the winner of a competition that received 400 scripts and 198 films. The winner Zach Borst received $25,000 for his efforts. In all, 12 auto brands have purchased space on the Super Bowl. So, nearly $100 Million dollars will be spent, not including production or activation to social media and PR by auto makers vying for buyers. Last year, Volkswagen’s take off on Star Wars was the hands-down winner based on recall and likeability. My vote this year goes to the Chevy Sonic because it best captures the attitude of the car buying audience it is targeting in a memorable way.
This year’s crop of Super Bowl car ads have something for everyone as car makers make an appeal for buyers. It’s good to see the auto industry regain some of its swagger. Let’s hope they are still swaggering when the first quarter sales results come in.

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Sex and The Super Bowl

From my ABC News Column

Super Bowl's Sexy Ads: Will They Work?

Allow me to set the stage. Picture the Roman Coliseum in Ancient Rome where as many as 50,000 spectators would gather to see gladiator fights, prisoners battle with lions and wild animal hunts. Now think bigger and gaudier. This Sunday at Super Bowl XLVI, 68,000 will gather at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis and over 100 Million will watch on TV and the internet. Most will be eating and drinking to excess and the sole focus will be entertainment. The game will be intense. Two teams vying for a large paycheck and the most important distinction of their lives: that of “champions”. They will have been worked into a frenzy by coaches and teammates assuring them that this chance may never come again so they should leave everything on the field. Once on the field they will hit each other with the force of a car crash, over and over again. Every move they make will be scrutinized and important moments that happen on the field and the sidelines will be replayed over and over again. Periodically, throughout the game necessary breaks will be taken so the players can rest and the networks can earn money by showing advertisements for 30 and 60 second time slots they have sold for as much as $4 Million dollars a slot. The purchasers of those time slots will have those scant seconds to make a positive connection with an audience that is half in the tank and available to be entertained but not overtly sold to. This is the story of why advertisers try to use sex to sell in their Super Bowl Ads.
According to the creator of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, we are obsessed with sex. It constantly occupies our minds both consciously and unconsciously. According to a study conducted by the Journal of Sex Research, men had sex thoughts an average of 19 times a day. Sex is the most searched term on the internet. It is therefore, not surprising that, in an effort to cut through the clutter advertisers use sex. So this year, both Kia and Teleflora have engaged Adriana Lima, best known as a Victoria’s Secret Angel. GoDaddy, the perennial pimp of Super Bowl commercials has hired Danica Patrick, Jillian Michaels and the Pussycat Dolls and H&M strangely is going with David Beckham. From what I’ve seen, the spots do a pretty fair job at titillation considering that on network TV you really can’t show anything or do anything. From an eye-candy perspective, the stars are, for the most part (I ain’t rating Beckham) attractive. But do the ads work? Advertising Professor Jef. I. Richards is credited with having said: “Sex sells. But only if you’re selling sex”. GoDaddy might argue that they successfully used sex in their 2005 Super Bowl ad to create name recognition. So, why, 7 years later are they still using it? It could be that they believe it works. They started advertising as a small company with about a 16% share of the market and now boast a better than 50% share of the market and over a billion in sales. It has been viewed as polarizing but then again, no one sees you purchase a web domain from GoDaddy so there is no pressure not to be viewed as sexist. And finally, they are one of the few big advertisers in their category. I bet you can’t name any other of the top five web-hosting providers. The other advertisers don’t have sex as their primary marketing strategy. They have pulled it out for the Super Bowl as a special tact for this occasion. If you take a look at the top 15 Super Bowl commercials of all time you’ll find that sex only finds the list twice: Joe Namath and Farah Fawcett for Noxzema and Cindy Crawford for Pepsi. The Xerox Monk, Mean Joe Greene for Coke, Apple’s breakthrough 1984 ad, Michael Jordan and Larry Byrd playing one-on-one for McDonalds, The Budweiser Frogs, Monster.com’s cinematic “When I grow Up”, E*TRADE’s Monkeys, EDS’s Cat Herders, Linebacker Terry Tate for Reebok, Budweiser’s Clydesdales, Brad Pitt for Heineken and Betty White for Snickers all won with humor and star power. And each (with varying degrees of success) manages to connect the activity on the screen to a product attribute.
I suspect that like in years past this year’s attempts to use sex will be middle-of-the road efforts that might catch your eye but fail to connect with audience at the deeper level needed to initiate a sell or spur consumer brand interest. The strategic problem that is almost impossible to overcome when using this tactic is that connecting a brand benefit to sex is a long shot unless like the professor says that’s what you’re selling.

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Super Bowl Advertisers Heavy Up on the Social Media

Marketers plan to tee up consumers with spots, then hit them with social media engagement.

I was at a panel discussion a couple of years ago with David Plouffe, campaign manager for President Obama’s 2008 campaign. David said one of the revelations they had during the campaign was that if it wasn’t on video, it didn’t happen. In a similar vein, social media works best when, well, when there is something to be social about and very few things are as social as sports. In fact, 4 of the top ten most tweeted moments have been sports moments and every one of those four beat tweets of Osama Bin Laden’s death and all but one beat the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami. It should come as no surprise then that the Super Bowl represents for advertisers, not just millions of eyeballs watching the broadcast but also millions of fingers simultaneously sharing their thoughts on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. As Social Media matures, advertisers are become savvier in their ability to use it as part of the overall media mix. This year, the Super Bowl gives us a good look at current practices using a combination of traditional and digital media. During this year’s Super Bowl, advertisers will be anticipating that viewers will access the internet while watching the game.
The Super Bowl routinely draws more than 100 million viewers and is the biggest single event stage for advertisers. All seventy spots sold this year going for as much as $4 million for a single commercial. According to the Coca Cola marketing team, at least 60% of Super Bowl viewers are expected to have another screen—smartphone, tablet or laptop—nearby. So naturally, Coke will be planning to engage viewers online. Coke’s TV spots will be directing viewers to CokePolarBear.com, where a couple of the Coke Polar Bears will be watching the Super Bowl each rooting for a different team. Reportedly they will be cheering enthusiastically and also watching the commercials. Should be fun when a Pepsi ad comes on! Visitors to the site will also be able to ask the bears questions. Finally, after the game, visitors will be able to send friends coupons for coke either celebratory or conciliatory depending on your team preference.
GM’s Chevrolet is also motoring grill first into the fray with the Chevy Game Time app. Using the headline: “Don’t Just Watch, Play Along With the Super Bowl” the free app download will allow users to interact socially with trivia questions and polls during the game along with the chance to win 1 of 20 cars and thousands of other prizes being given away. Users can also share the content with people in their social network. In a clever twist, if you registered before January 27th, you were given a unique license plate number. See that plate number on a car in the spot and that means you’ve won it.
Most, if not all of the 35 or so advertisers in this year’s Super Bowl will be trying to send viewers to websites to further engage them. They will be competing with Super Bowl advertisers, advertisers who will be trying to grab viewers from the many who will be online and pretty much everybody else. The power of social media is that it puts the power into the hands of whoever can wrest attention. The Super Bowl itself, for the first time, is setting up a Super Bowl Command Center. A team of social media strategists and technical experts will situate themselves in a 2,800 square foot facility and monitor the conversation on Facebook and Twitter and other social media platforms to interact with the expected 150,000 people who will be in Indianapolis for the game. They will help them find parking, perform other helpful tasks and be on hand in the case of an emergency. As of this writing there are more than 21,000 people already following the command center on Twitter.
It has become clear that the internet can be a very useful marketing tool for advertisers. The trick is to find the right level of engagement for the brand. Consumers, who utilize the second screen generally, are enjoying discussing the event with their chosen network of family, friends and associates and eavesdropping on what others are saying including the rich and famous. The brand that tries to get to intrusive or familiar runs the risk of actually alienating the consumer or worse angering a consumer who can then aim his weapon—his influence—at the brand. In this day and age an influential consumer with an axe to grind can do some damage. I hope that with all of the online excitement, we don’t miss the game!

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