Advertising Industry

A recent Absolut Vodka ad, inspired by a pre-Mexican War map of North America — showing Mexico stretching from Louisiana to the Columbia River — caused a furor last week.

Quick recap of the drama: TeranTBWA creates an ad for Absolut to run in the Mexican market, showing a radically new map of North America, with Mexico occupying pretty much everything between California and Louisiana. Ad blogger Laura Martinez, visiting family in Mexico, tears the Absolut ad out and posts it on her blog on March 31st. The Los Angeles Times picks up the story and runs with it, and soon the ad wafts over to the political blogs. Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin dubs it “the reconquista ad.” A formal boycot is called for on all Absolut products by an anti-illegal immigration PAC, and Absolut is deluged with letters such as this, which is not the engagement advertisers for a brand-reliant product like vodka like to see:

Absolut -

I run a bar in Pt. Richmond, California — where the Kaiser Liberty Ships were built during WWII. After seeing your ad Campaign where you show a western map of the United States in which California is part of Mexico again, I’ve decided to do the following…

1) Never carry Absolut. Ever.
2) Lower the price of Ketel One vodka to $2 a shot indefinitely to build loyalty.
3) Print a copy of your ad and put it above the Ketel One drink special.
4) Tell all my friends and family what Absolut thinks of the United States of America and our right to enforce border laws.

I am on the front line of illegal immigration and its effects. Where are you? Oh yes, Sweden.
Good riddance.

The real mistake, though, isn’t with TerranTBWA, which had the misfortune to see a funny and effective local-market ad find international eyes, but with Absolut. Through its half-hearted apologies and citing concerns of cultural relativism Absolut inflamed the story instead of quashing it. The company attempted to explain the ad in context, posting a statement by its Corporate Communications VP to their blog on Friday:

This particular ad, which ran in Mexico, was based upon historical perspectives and was created with a Mexican sensibility. In no way was this meant to offend or disparage, nor does it advocate an altering of borders, nor does it lend support to any anti-American sentiment, nor does it reflect immigration issues.

All of which is true, but Absolut, in relaying the apology, forgot who the target market for the apology was: the angry bar owner in Pt. Richmond. The ideal response would have been a quick and abject apology, and announcing they are immediately looking for a new agency to take over their Mexican advertising. After readers posted over 3,000 (!) comments to the original statement, Absolut followed this up with a blog post titled “We apologize,” trying again:

To ensure that we avoid future similar mistakes, we are adjusting our internal advertising approval process for ads that are developed in local markets.

This is a genuine and sincere apology.

When you have to declare that your apology is genuine and sincere, things have gone off the tracks.

The latest issue of ChangeThis, the online journal that “The No Asshole Rule” author Bob Sutton says looks “more interesting than the typical Harvard Business Review,” trains its wide lens on the subject of viral marketing, with a piece by David Meerman Scott.

“The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How Word-of-Mouse Spreads Your Ideas for Free” starts off with a case study of Universal Orlando Resort’s influencer marketing campaign for its new park, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.The very reason that made the campaign right for a viral approach made that same approach necessary. “If we hadn’t gone to fans first, there could have been a backlash,” said Cindy Gordon, Universal Orlando’s vice president of new media and marketing partnerships.

These elements proved crucial to the success:

• Passionate fan base.
• Existing online communities that could spread the message.
• Online communities made it relatively easy to find seven key influencers.
• Insider edge lent the campaign credibility and a cool factor. The midnight webcast that launched the product was shot live from the set of Dumbledore’s office.

The Internet Advertising Bureau UK released a report this week, done in concert with PricewaterhouseCoopers, showing that online advertising in the U.K., and particularly search advertising, will quickly surpass print advertising. In addition, the report says that online ad buys will beat TV ad buys by 2009.

Sure, there are a few caveats: the UK media market is different from its counterparts around the world; PWC and the Internet Advertising Bureau clearly are dogs in this fight; and past performance is no indicator of future results, yadda-yadda. Never mind. The fact is, it’s time to take SEM out of the advertising ghetto and into the mainstream. (While you’re at it you might want to get your SEM troll out of his or her cave and into a proper office.)

Need to get up to speed on Internet marketing, SEM, search engine optimization (SEO), word of mouth marketing (WoMM) and the rest of those irritating but essential acronyms? You might want to add these events to your spring calendar:

• What You Didn’t Know To Ask About SEARCH. – The Direct Marketing Association’s primer, May 14, New York City.
• Search Marketing Expo – Danny Sullivan’s groundbreaking confab, April 10 & 11, Sydney, Australia
• SEM/SEO Training – A Search Engine Strategies (SES) event for beginners, May 6, Denver, Colorado

Other SEM resources:

• Search Engine Roundtable – One of the largest SEM communities
• SEOMoz Blog – SEO guru Rand Fishkin’s independent blog on internet marketing
• Yahoo Search Marketing Blog – Yahoo’s SEM blog
• Inside Adwords – Google’s SEM blog

On the same day that AdAge ran a skeptical piece “Can Nielsen Still Reign Supreme?,” Nielsen Co. announced plans to acquire a fast-rising rival company in IAG Research, to the tune of $255 million.

The move gives Nielsen a critical new metric to offer to clients — one that measures not just how many people are watching a given ad, but what they actually think of it. IAG Research uses surveys from 200,000 regular participants that offer clients information on which ads and shows viewers are actively engaging with, positively or negatively. Nielsen was no doubt worried by the trend of top advertisers demanding that IAG be included on ad buys. From Ad Age:

In 2006, NBC signed a deal with Toyota that required the network to use data from IAG Research to demonstrate its viewers paid attention and could recall particular details about a TV show.

Nielsen can use the additional credibility in its ratings company, still stinging from revelations that they may have overstated the audience for some major and minor cable channels (including E! Entertainment and Oxygen) by 20 percent. The company has been on a bit of an acquisition binge as of late, as noted by Agency Spy:

Although Nielsen is looking pretty nimble these days (the company has snapped up Telephia, Audience Analytics and BuzzMetrics, too) they can’t buy the whole lot of ‘em including Rentrak, TNS and the pugilistic Group M’s Irwin Gottlieb and his mafia.

At the International Advertising Association’s World Congress, Dentsu CEO Tateo Mataki urged ad firms to seek out news ways of earning revenue, including investing in their own clients.

The business model in which the agency’s sole function is to create advertising and buy media is no longer viable… We need a new model. We need to develop relationships where both parties share risks and rewards equally. Rather than just accepting assignments, we must be proactive. To manage change, we must take risks.

Mataki, giving this strategy the unwieldy portmanteau “Dentrepreneurship,” offered up Dentsu’s recent campaign for noodle cups, which featured anime and manga characters that Dentsu spun off into their own line of comics and cartoons. Which is reminiscent, of course, London-based ad firm Mother’s recent foray into comics with their sci-fi book “Four Feet From a Rat.” The difference here is that Denstu did almost $3 billion in revenue in 2006, while Mother, while certainly generating lots of heat, is hardly in the same realm.

I talked with the chief innovation officer over at Method, Chris Tacy, about the move for firms to start taking client equity over cash. Method itself has arranged several partnerships, though he declined to state with who. Tacy pointed out this arrangement is new only in the advertising world. Law firms and product design firms have done it for years, particularly in start-up rich Silicon Valley

Upstart ad firm Anomaly generated a ton of press last year when the upstart agency created a deal with Virgin America’s fledgling airline venture, with Anomaly taking a cut of Virgin’s sales. The plan seemed to run aground, though, when Anomaly and Virgin America announced they’d be parting ways at the end of last year.

Investing in a client does make a lot of sense for both the firm and the client, binding the two together in way that ensures both parties are acting in good faith. The problem is that investing can also mean waiting years for a return on the investment, a tough pill to swallow in a short-term industry. But if Dentsu is making a move towards this model, others are more likely to follow.

While most giant ad agencies have been slow to make the jump into digital media and consumer tracking techniques, BBDO continues to lead by example. Last week, BtoB Marketing announced its Top Agency awards, and BBDO New York took top honors in the Large Agency category. That’s hardly a surprise: Since chairman and chief creative officer David Lubars began rebuilding the agency in 2006, loads of major clients have come back to the storied firm’s doorstep — GE, Hertz, Chrysler, Sony, Target, among others. And big jumps in revenue and billings have come with them.

Once known mainly for blockbuster commercials from television’s golden age, BBDO in recent years has done a 180 under Lubars, embracing everything from guerrilla marketing to webisodes. Now the agency deserves additional kudos for exploring “areas such as behavioral planning and engagement mapping, [and] hiring new directors and staff for these areas,” according to BtoB.

Engagement mapping is a fairly new tracking technique that takes into account various touch points along a given path to a conversion when attributing that conversion. Previously, only the last click counted when attributing a conversion. With engagement mapping, multiple clicks — and it some cases offline actions — can be taken into account. The company is so smitten with the technique that in January it added industry vet Elyse Hoelzer as its director of engagement mapping.