The US Ski and Snowboarding Teams will be featured in OOH ads in ski resorts as reported in MediaBuyerPlanner.com on February 11.  The advertising program is run through Brand Connections’ Active Outdoor Winter network of “10,000 digital and static ad spaces, in lift lines and lodge lobbies across the country.”  

A similar article appeared yesterday (2/28/08) in sportsonesource.com.  I really like sportsonesource (you can see their link in my left column).  But, what bothers me is the way sportsonesource uses, or accidentally mis-uses, information in their article. 

First the headline, “US Ski and Snowboard Teams with NY Branding Firm” is not really correct.  Brand Connections’ home page states, “Brand Connections is a leading provider of integrated media and marketing services,” not Branding (notice the initial cap).  Some might say it’s semantics but “branding” is not “advertising” and when you are in that business it’s especially annoying.   Here’s an explaination / exploration on that…

The piece also states that Brand Connections, “claims to reach 50 million consumers during the winter.”  Actually, that’s not what it says on the company website — “Our network of 50 million lets you touch 9 our of 10 active skiing and snowboarding consumers.”

If you think about it, there are about 281 million people in the US – it isn’t possible that 20% of the US pop is an active skier/snowboarder.  According to the Snowsports Industries Association snow sports fact sheet the combined number of skiers/snowboarders is 11.6 million – that number is made up of participants 7 years old or more who participated more than two times in 2006 and comes from the National Sporting Goods Association. 

So, the “50 million consumers” is more likely 50 million impressions.  More importantly, the media reaches the right consumer.  Brand Connections states that they reach “9 out of 10 active skiing and snowboarding consumers.”

I’m sure the writer of the sportsonesource article was truly and honestly doing their best on the piece.  But niggling, inaccuracies like the ones noted above accidentally marginalize branding, advertising, marketing, public relations, etc. and the professionals who sweat, bleed and cry working on this stuff every day.

<< rant over >>   

A radio DJ just made a joke about the cloud of satellite debris from the Navy’s recent rocket shot into space…. The cloud of debris will pass over the NYC area tomorrow night just before midnight.  “Whoa, watch out!” was the joke.

It ain’t funny though - according to the March/Apri issue of Science Illustrated.   When Sputnik was blasted into space (1957 – just over 50 years ago) “the space surrounding Earth was essentially, empy and pristine.”

Now, after over “4,500 launches, 3,100 satellites are still orbiting Earth, but only about 40% of them are still in operation.”   “We are aware of 11,875 pieces of space junk more than 4 inces across, hundreds of thousands of pieces between half an inch and 4 inches across and millions of even smaller fragments.” 

These little, human made gems, travel through space ”at speeds of upwards of 14,400 miles per hour (anything that dosen’t move fast enough plummets through Earth’s atmosphere.).”

So then, from outer space our “Blue Marble” (510,072,000 km² wide) looks like Pig Pen from the Charlie Brown comics… 

Or, we’ve all seen them somewhere, ”that” house that has junk all over the yard.  A mess of a place.  Some of the trash blows into the street or the neighbors yard or surrounding woods.  The crap just creeps out across the borders making the whole area look bad, not to mention the eco-impacts.  Don’t the people who live there see it?  Don’t they care about the people around them?  The other living creatures? 

From space, that’s our Earth.  Space trash.  Nice.  Makes you proud to be a human being… Nice legacy for our kids… 

I was lucky enough to spend the evening on Valentines Day at the Belasco Theatre in NYC.  Watching, and at times participating in, a new musical (on Broadway at least) titled Passing Strange written and narrated by Stew (band The Negro Problem). 

First, a caveat. With minimal theatre in my background and my Literature major years past me, I am in no way a critic.  Honestly, I can’t even write all that is contained in this work.  But to give some perspective, you need to understand how I value a musical, play, novel or any other piece of art - It makes me think.  It makes me feel.  It makes me go back over it in my mind days later.  It makes me talk about it with others.  It connects me to things I wasn’t connected to and reconnects me to things I’ve lost or fogotten.  It helps me to understand and define myself to myself as well as to others.  It helps me understand others.  Passing Strange does all of this….

Passing Strange follows a young mans journey from to adulthood – it is a timeless story of defining, re-defining, questioning and accepting self.  Think movies like Rebel w/o a Cause or Reckless (search for it here).  It more deeply explores the enduring questions who am I? where do I fit in? how did I get here? (yes, that’s a Talking Heads reference – this one gets even deeper) from many perspectives including but not limited to the position of son, friend, lover, African American, “religious” person, parent, artist…. 

Judging by the audience – about twenty to seventy years old, male & female, all races - and their response, it seemed they all “got it” meaning that they had experienced a similar evolution or some portion thereof in their lives.   From a business POV, it would seem to me, that means this musical could be a commercial success and that would be good – these people deserve it.

The acting was excellent in this quick moving musical.  Actors needed to rapidly transform into a number of roles and change moods and personas quickly in a piece that at times resembled snapshots of moments in the main characters (simply called Youth in the Playbill) life.  Years of life experience could be (and was) summed up in a mere thirty seconds on stage.  A bare minimum of props were used and were used very effectively.  Sitting in folding chairs the actors - along with the narrator and musicians – had you sitting alongside them in VW beetle on a hill overlooking Los Angeles.  You could actually smell it… 

Each scene was effectively created (almost entirely) by the lighting – especially the light wall on the back of the stage – small changes to the locations of the band and characters, the voice of the narrator and the music.  Along with serious issues of love, death, race and rebellion came pokes at avant garde film, theatre, LA, Amserdam, Berlin, religion, haughtiness, performance art and musical jokes.  The music itself was mostly hard rocking yet poingnent touching on jazz, blues, punk, gospel and call & response as the main character traveled through life and experienced these genres and related life styles. 

This was A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in musical form.  The artist, Youth, rebelled against conformity, “the man,” organized religion, God, parental love, family and friends in an effort to define himself.  He traveled the world as if a new geographical location would resolve the emotional and psychological wandering.  He explored mind altering drugs and nearly has a religious experience in an effort to find his solid ground.  While none of this was his final solution, it was part of the journey, a journey well told, well written, well acted, well played and well worth seeing.  

 Passing Strange opens the end of February.  Go see it….

Someone who should know – an ad agency guy with two decades of experience – asked me recently, “What is Web 2.0? Is it software?” The other day a MarketingVOX enewsletter reminded me of the conversation with an article titled “Web 2.0 Experience on 93% of Marketers To Do List for 2008.” 

The piece said, ”New features likely to undergo the greatest growth (i.e., the biggest jump from current use to planned implementation) are mobile commerce (m-commerce), URL/widget sharing, and personalized messaging, the survey found.”  It included a list of all the various internet initiatives on tap for 2008 and, while no one marketer was doing everything (nor should they), the combinations of the various projects added up to the ”93% of marketers” number.

I wondered if some of the people implementing these things didn’t even know that their plans were considered Web 2.0 initiatives….like my agency friend - if he ponders adding widgets, comments or blogs for his clients - wouldn’t realize.  So, pretending I was “that guy”, I typed “What is Web 2.0” into Google….

So how is it that a person well versed in marketing dosen’t know what Web 2.0 is?  Is it ignorance?  Is it that Web 2.0 as a term is such a buzz word that it’s loosing its meaning?  Or that Web 2.0 as a term is so broad that it dosen’t work anymore?  Is it that some folks are so focused on the “deliverables” (blog, widget, m-commerce) that they don’t think of the platform as a whole or pause to consider the strategy and logic behind implementation?

Received a package from my mom’s husband the other day.  Two sweet winter hats from his recent Utah skiing trip to Alta for me and my boy.  He knows we’re fellow snow lovers.

Same day – same mail we received TransWorld Snowboarding March 08 issue.  In the Launch letter from the Editor in Chief Kurt Hoy titled “The Mountains are Free” I learned that Alta dosen’t allow snowboarding!!

I didn’t realize there was anyplace left that didn’t allow snowboarding!  When I was a youngster starting riding nobody allowed snowboarding.  But, NOW!?!  In the year 2008!?!  I guess dinosaurs do exist.

Hoy’s article makes a great point.  Atla is on US Forest Service property.  You know, US Gov’t property our tax dollars support.  He suggests writing to the Forest Service.  Good idea. 

A quick check on the Alta website lists Clif Bar as a friend of Alta.  You could also send them a note – they’re cool folks (and probably don’t even realize their faux pas).  You may even want to try to talk some sense into (annoy) Alta with a quick email or phone call.

Also suggested, is poaching the runs from Snowbird.  A look-see on the Alta site regarding shared Alta/Snowbird ticket says both resorts “continue to maintain seperate ownership and operation preserving the unique skiing experience and resort atmosphere each offers.” 

Hmm, no mention of single planks on the Alta site…. seems like they are deliberatly NOT writing NO SNOWBOARDS.  Type “snowboard” into the Alta.com search box and you get 1 result.  They are simply avoiding it altogether…

Seems they don’t need or want snowboarders money but we are all fellow snow lovers.  Encourage your skier friends NOT to go there and NOT to buy their hats, etc. — even if they’re your mom’s new husband. 

AdRants pointed to an Oakley goggle ad yesterday which featured pro snowboarder Shaun White at his ”summer job” spraying disinfectant on bowling shoes at the alley (there were actually two TV ads featuring White and other pro riders Danny Kass and Gretchen Bleiler).  The ads were shown during the Winter XGames a week ago.

Here’s the White and Bleiler ad…

Funny thing is, White is also a pro skater and spends his summer season skating (and winning).  An interview with White (also shown during the XGames a week ago) discussed his transfer from winter to summer season and included comments on that from Jake Burton and Tony Hawk.  So, for Shaun there is no “off season.” 

Here’s the White and Kass (formerly of NJ – yeah bro! – and kingpin of Grenade makers of sweeet goodies) “nice goggles” ad…

In a quote attributed to John Wanamaker, it used to be that 50% of the advertising budget was wasted but no one was sure which 50% was the waste.  That was coined in the late 1800’s.  Well, it seems now – like taxes, gasoline prices and Super Tuesday rhetoric – that number too has inflated…

And this is embarassing…. 3,000 marketers were surveyed by The Fournaise Marketing Group.  They said, “that 65% of their marketing spend had no discernible effect on consumers in 2007. “ 

And it gets worse….  “The report suggests the main cause of the waste can be largely attributed to lack of measurement. Of the 55% of marketers who track their spending, 80% do so manually, spending hours gathering and analyzing data.”

The report was cited by the World Advertising Research Center and appeared in eMarketer.com.  Makes me proud to be in marketing (not).

In a piece on The Information Society for the Information Age, author Tim Armstrong says that Wanamaker’s “sentiment will finally be obsolete in a digital media world where return on investment (ROI) is transparent and advertising is a profit center that’s ‘always on.’ …. Today’s marketing industry spends $250 billion a year.  How much will it spend once advertisers are sure that neither half is wasted, that they can do twice as much marketing that’s twice as effective?”  

If the 65% is a true number and simple measurement is all that’s causing that huge waste seems like a great opportunity for marketers, maybe even a competitive advantage with little to no investment needed.

In a post titled Mom, Stop Lookin Over My Shoulder I commented on a survey noting that teens are “more likely to cover their online tracks” (like, duh).  Media Life had an article touching on the same topic sparked by January 22 program  “Growing Up Online” on PBS Frontline.   The article says, “As “Frontline” explains, parents often have no idea what their kids are up to online…”  This is news?

Some one, somewhere, working for Continental airlines (or one of its competitors) should/will know of this based on this post…

Flying into the 2nd busiest Caribbean airport, I was listening to Foo Fighters, Clash and Matchbox 20 CDs – in full – on a sweet seat back system.  Other options were movies and such.  On the way home listened to “Continental Radio” repeated over and over.

 Obviously, consumer/traveler control was much better than repetition – so that’s my “vote” if that was a marketing test!  I haven’t listened to “London Calling” in years and certainly never while flying over the crystal blue waters of Maho….