Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

During the Great Depression, the majority of Americans were forced to tighten their belts to a degree hard to imagine today. With millions of people deeply worried about getting “three hots and a cot,” survival was in – and luxuries were out.

Yet millions of Americans somehow found a way to scrape up the then-princely sum of 28 cents for one luxury nearly everyone refused to give up: a movie ticket. The hard-pressed, hardscrabble times created an unquenchable thirst for spectacular fantasies of high society and easy living that few people would ever experience. No matter how threadbare your existence, for about a quarter you could spend hours basking in the suave, debonair world of Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn. Marketers latched onto this trend, and found ways to reach consumers’ wallets even in the toughest times.

For example, with the help of product placement, cigarette consumption per capita shot up two and a half times between 1930 and 1940. Many reports stated that tobacco manufacturing was one of the most stable industries during the Depression.

Fast-forward to 2008 and a financial collapse so deep and vast that comparisons to the Depression are inevitable. Plunging stock prices and rising tides of pink slips certainly provide plenty of bad news from which Americans might want to escape. Wallets are shut tight to frivolous items, and consumers begin to ignore shiny ads and marketing tactics. But marketers still need to reach their customers. Brand loyalty is challenged more than ever and consumers still want to be engaged and interact with everyone and everything around them. This time around though, movies have serious competition when in comes to helping consumers escape the daily doom and gloom. You can bet where there’s escapism there’ll be magic for advertisers.

Video games just may be the bright spot advertisers need. Like Depression-era movies, they transport people worlds away from real problems. You may briefly forget about your finances while fending off hordes of evil undead threatening to eat your brain. Sweating the future seems unnecessary if you can escape for a few hours as a heavy metal axman rocking a packed arena.

Product placement worked in movies (reports show a 59% retention rate), but when Mario and Luigi jump Pizza Hut pizzas for points will consumers open their wallets? If the product’s audience is the highly sought after 18-34 male then advertisers are practically giddy with possibilities. This enthusiasm for creating new dynamic advertisements has prompted growth for the in-game advertising industry.  According video game network leader Massive Incorporated, ad revenue will grow from $56 million in 2005 to as much as $1.8 billion in 2010. No doubt this deal will become sweeter as advertisers continue allowing game designers to push experimentation with more innovative game-play. This promising new cost offset also helps increase profits for publishers by an extra 20% per game.

These are odd economic times but I think marketers are taking the right steps for future progress. The gaming industry is going to deliver us all a sweet escape from our humdrum lives. That’s inevitable, just as movies have done in the past. This recession is just a bonus level for the gaming industry.

A new entertainment blockbuster was released everywhere on April 29th.   The media was all over its release with stories, reviews, and commentary.  Fans lined up in droves the day before to be the first to experience it.  After the first day, the blockbuster had raked in hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.  

What caused all this stir?  Was this the new Indiana Jones movie?  Or maybe the latest Rolling Stones tour?  No, the blockbuster in question was Rockstar Games latest release, Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA).  That's right - a video game.  Welcome to the 21st century, where movies, television shows, and concert tours compete with console-based video games.  Games give an added dimension in that they incorporate these other forms of entertainment and then give the user the ability to control them.  Witness the popular Guitar Hero video game which is like rock concert except you are the one playing.  Or GTA itself, which is highly cinematic in its lighting and camera angles so it feels like you are moving around inside a movie.  

While the target demographics may be narrow for such titles as GTA, the profit margins are anything but.  The game sold 3.6 million copies on its first day which translated into $310 million in sales.  By the end of the first week 6 million units had sold for a total of $500 million in sales.  The movie release of "Iron Man" that very same weekend generated a mere $104 million at the box office.  GTA's numbers smash the income garnered from most Hollywood films during their entire theatrical release.

GTA reportedly cost about $100 million to produce.  Compare this to Spiderman III ($258 million) and even Titanic ($200 million in 1997 dollars), and the video game is starting to look like a bargain that generates huge profit margins.   With this kind of consumer anticipation, media fenzy, and return on investment, video games have come of age.  No longer are they the second cousin or a nickel and dime industry.  Monetarily, video games have arrived and will be a permanent part of the entertainment landscape for decades to come.

So you want to position your product as “fun.” Join the club. There are a million brands and products out there boasting their ability to deliver fun: high-tech gadgets, sports cars, a pair of fuzzy bunny slippers. How do you differentiate your “fun” product from all the rest? You could launch a full-blown attack against its “serious fun-ness.”

This may seem counterintuitive. Why would you want to raise opposition to your brand? Because consumers respond well to companies who don’t take themselves too seriously — especially when juxtaposed against an individual or organization that takes itself über-seriously. The key to successfully pulling off this type of advertising is creating the quintessential killjoy.  

Welcome to www.nolaf.org. NOLAF (National Organization for Legislation Against Fun) is a fictional, yet somewhat frighteningly believable grassroots group founded to stamp out all things fun. Their public enemy #1? Tostitos chips and dip. This McCarthyesque group of characters are bound and determined to crush the crispy brand to bits, eradicating it and its enjoyable effects.  Besides the brilliant casting, flawless execution, high quality production, attention to detail and dry, witty humor, the concept behind this site is pure gold. If you don’t eat Tostitos chips and dip, you are practically in league with NOLAF. Or at least you’re one of their mindless guinea pigs (dressed like the 1970s Olympic track team but not nearly in as good of shape).

The beauty of this site is the barely visible Tostitos brand. They aren’t using the site to sell the brand; it was created for the sheer pleasure of the visitor. I clicked on everything because I couldn’t get enough of the head honcho (love child of Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute) and his geezer sidekick.

By creating an anti-fun group that despises their brand and giving their target a chance to get in on the joke, Tostitos proves that it is a very “fun” chip.

The Writers Guild of America strike is just about two months old. Negotiations have collapsed. And it’s not looking like they will resume anytime soon.

Such a strike has negatively affected all day parts of the television schedule – dramas, sitcoms, and late-night talk shows. New shows can’t be written if their writers are on strike. Letterman has been in reruns for weeks. When this season’s episodes of Grey’s Anatomy and Ugly Betty written prior to the strike dry up, what will the networks run in their place? What will viewers choose to watch, if anything?

The networks have a couple of non-union alternatives for producing new programming, and one of them could create new openings for our clients to tell their stories. The networks can lean on their news producing staffs to ramp up production of primetime news magazines. It’s also cheaper for the networks to produce programs like Primetime, 20/20, Dateline and 48 Hours than the expensive, start-studded dramas and comedies ABC’s Nightline, a program that has suffered in the ratings since Ted Koppel’s departure two years ago, could also fair better during the picketing, especially if Jay Leno can’t book guests.

Sidebar - Late night talk shows are going to look a little different this week when their hosts return with new shows. CBS’s David Letterman and Craig Ferguson will be going on the air with writers and WGA-approved programs.  That means that Letterman and Ferguson won’t have any problems promoting weeks of star-studded shows. Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Kimmel, on the other hand, might have more trouble. They will go on the air this month without writing staffs, relying on bookings to attract viewers rather than catchy monologues and jokes. Most A-list Hollywood stars, however, aren’t willing to cross the picket line.

It’s up to the ever-stressed news magazines to pick up the slack that won’t be filled with expensive entertainment and reality shows – another cheap, non-union option. News magazines can shrink and grow on a dime. Freelance producers will be hired to fill multi-night schedules the regular staff can’t manage without more warm bodies. Good news for freelancers as well as media relations professionals looking for national pitching opportunities. Programs like Dateline, on hiatus for months, and Primetime, removed from the fall season schedule, are going to need stories to tell as execs bring them back with high expectations. Producers and bookers will be scouring the Web for local news, blogs and other sites that provide the fodder for their 12-15 minute pieces. The doors may be open a little wider for our clients now that there will be more pressure on these shows to deliver more stories.

So, who’s calling Barbara?