Turner Lets Marketers Buy Shows Rather Than Networks

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Time Warner is trying to extract some testosterone from its general-entertainment cable networks in an effort to please advertisers who say they are increasingly interested in swinging for powerful niches, not broader masses.

Under the new plan marketers could purchase time during specific pieces of programming that skew toward men, such as 'Family Guy' on TBS.

At the entertainment conglomerate's Turner cable networks -- TBS, TNT, TruTV and Cartoon Network and Adult Swim -- executives are set this week to start touting a new plan allowing marketers to purchase ad time on a group of programs that pull a strong male audience. Turner will offer advertisers packages that allow them to go after men between the ages of 18 and 34 as well as those between the ages of 18 and 49.

The idea is to let marketers purchase time during specific pieces of programming that skew toward men, such as "The Office" on TBS; "Family Guy" on TBS and Adult Swim; "Operation REPO" and "NFL 360" on TruTV; and selected movies on both TBS and TNT, such as "American Gangster." TNT's NBA games can fit into the deals. CNN can also be woven into the mix if an advertiser wishes.

Includes digital properties
Turner's digital properties can be included, and the media outlet will also work with individual marketers to produce "microseries" and other pieces of advertiser-sponsored content that can travel across the various cable and web properties to help marketers make more of an impression. Turner has enlisted writer/producers Marc Abrams and Michael Benson, who have worked on HBO's "Entourage" and Fox's "The Bernie Mac Show" to help with the effort.

Turner's offer goes against the grain of how TV is traditionally sold. With exceptions, TV networks have predominantly offered advertising in broader fashion. For TV outlets, what show an ad accompanied was less important than ensuring that commercials filled the entire schedule. But marketers are demanding ways to go after specific slices of audience, often hoping to reach a smaller group defined by gender, income level or even interest in a particular product segment.

"The marketplace has changed," said David Levy, president-sales, distribution and sports for Turner Broadcasting System. Rather than just selling across a particular network, aggregation of "quality programming is acceptable," he said. "It's being used on the digital side. I don't think it's being used on the TV side too much."

Turner's effort "sounds like a change that is in response to what they have been hearing from their advertisers," said Mary Price, principal-brand media at Richards Group, an independent Dallas agency. "Everyone wants to buy a psychographic, a life stage. When they can offer me solutions that are really down on a more niche level, that becomes even more enticing."

From TV to DVR to DVD
The idea also gains more traction in a media landscape that has more TV viewers focused more on specific programs than the venue in which they are watched. An intense fan of Fox's "24," for example, could watch the show on Fox at a certain day or time, of course, but also might watch the show days later with a digital video recorder, or simply watch it on a computer screen or sample old episodes on DVD. Gaining methods to track the consumers as he or she follows a favorite piece of content becomes more important.

Turner's Mr. Levy notes that marketers who purchase online ads often work to aggregate specific types of consumers across a group of websites, and Turner's idea might help do the same on a different screen. "You take that premise of digital aggregation of demographics and we're applying it to our television business," he said.

Of course, Turner's male maneuver comes during one of the most difficult TV marketplaces in recent memory. Against a backdrop of economic uncertainty, advertisers are holding on to their money very tightly. Answering demands that countermand the traditional way of selling commercials could lend the media company a point of differentiation, particularly as the upfront market, when networks sell the majority of their ad inventory for the coming TV season, moves fitfully.

Six Rules for Brand Revitalization

McDonald's Did It, and You Can Too

by Larry Light
Published: June 29, 2009

Larry Light

Brands do not die natural deaths. However, brands can be murdered through mismanagement. Some brands are beyond hope -- but others can be revitalized.

Of course, it's not easy. But it is well worth the effort. We at Arcature developed the following principles and practices over the years while working with a variety of clients in a variety of businesses. They're also practices we applied during my tenure as global CMO of McDonald's from 2002 to 2005.

For a brand to be successfully revitalized, everyone needs to be on the same page. Then they must follow the six rules of brand revitalization listed here. This "Plan to Win," as we call it, is built around the eight P's: purpose, promise, people, product, place, price, promotion and performance.

Rule 1: Refocus the organization
Refocusing the organization begins with redefining the brand and business purpose and goals. The brand purpose should be aspirational. At McDonald's, where I held the post of global CMO, we defined the long-term ambition "to be our customer's favorite place and way to eat and drink." For the first three years, the primary focus was on becoming the "favorite place and way to eat." As Jim Cantalupo, McDonald's CEO, liked to say, we would "be bigger by being better." How would we accomplish that?

Rule 2: Restore brand relevance
The brand promise is an articulation of the relevant and differentiating experience that the brand will deliver to every customer, every time. Brand revitalization means defining where you want the brand to be and then deciding how to get there.

Over the years, the essence of the McDonald's brand was the perception that it was an affordable, convenient brand for families with kids. There were those who said that equity could not and should not be changed. But McDonald's set out to change people's perceptions and go from appealing to the child in your heart to appealing to those with a young-adult spirit at heart.

Rule 3: Reinvent the brand experience
To revitalize a brand, we need to bring the redefined brand promise to life. This is what the five action P's are all about. The five action P's are people, product, place, price and promotion.

People come first. Building employee commitment to the new direction, employee confidence, and organizational and employee capabilities are critical factors that influence future success.

And it's imperative to inspire those in the organization to believe that the new brand future will happen and that they can help. At McDonald's a new on-boarding communication was created called "Learnin' it. Livin' it. Lovin' it."

Product is the next P. Products and services are the tangible evidence of the truth of the promise. When we redefine the promise, product and service renovation and innovation are imperative.

A disciplined approach to brand extension can revitalize and strengthen a brand. McDonald's extended its product range to include products such as salads, yogurt parfaits and coffee. The Crest revitalizations included extensions beyond cavity prevention to include tartar control, whitening, breath freshening, dental floss, mouthwash, tooth whiteners and toothbrushes.

The place is the face of the brand. Whether a store, a website, a retail display, a kiosk or wherever the "place" may be, the experience must be consistent with the intended brand direction. For example, McDonald's embarked on a very ambitious retail reimaging program. It also updated the brand website.

Price comes next. The launch of the McDonald's Dollar Menu created an everyday-low-price list of items and enabled the brand to significantly reduce marketing emphasis on on-and-off discounting. Overemphasis on deals and discounts builds deal loyalty rather real loyalty.

Promotion comes next. In September 2003, a new global campaign was launched in 119 countries. The common signature theme was "I'm lovin' it," supported by a distinctive set of five musical notes. The character of the communications was designed to reflect the new young-adult spirit of the brand. The following year, McDonald's adopted its first global packaging approach. It's the longest-running theme in the history of the brand.

Whether advertising, special events, public relations, online, cause marketing, sponsorships, Olympics, World Cup or other forms of communication, the goal was to be consistent with the new McDonald's brand promise. Disconnected, monthly promotional messages and tactics destroy brands.

Rule 4: Reinforce a results culture
Measuring and managing performance is the eighth P. The McDonald's Plan to Win included three-year, measurable milestones.

Creating a results culture means it is important to produce the right results the right way. A balanced brand-business scorecard should include measurable elements such as brand familiarity, brand reputation, employee pride, customer-perceived value, brand loyalty, sales, share and profit.

Rule 5: Rebuild brand trust
In this skeptical, demanding, uncertain world, trust is a must. As part of revitalizing a brand, rebuilding trust is critical. Investment in rebuilding trust is an important, challenging marketing imperative. There is demand for more openness, more social responsibility and more integrity. Over the years McDonald's invested in building trust -- Ronald McDonald House, environmental responsibility, commitment to employee diversity, local community activities. As the concern with healthful living has grown, so has McDonald's commitment to providing appropriate choices -- for example, salads, apple slices, yogurt parfait, water, juices and milk.

Rule 6: Realize global alignment
The power of alignment is awesome. During brand revitalization, we often talk about the need to get everyone on the same page. But we rarely, if ever, define the page we want everyone to be on. That's the purpose of the one-page Plan to Win, the one-page document that summarizes the eight P's and the desired outcomes.

Brand revitalization needs the courage and perspective of strong leaders. Jim Cantalupo was a decisive, committed leader providing clear direction and priorities. Charlie Bell, chief operating officer, was not only a great communicator, his positive attitude was infectious. They were the leaders who led the creation and launch of the far-reaching McDonald's Plan to Win. The vision and positive momentum initiated by Cantalupo and Bell continues to produce results even in a difficult economic environment.

What's happening

So,

I realize it's been sometime since the last post so I should give some feedback as to where I have been.

After winning the Baiada center Incubator / Business Plan Competition at Drexel University the team went down to Rice University to present Stabiliz Orthopaedics' new products to 450 investors and professionals.

The response was very good.

On the home front, the Belarusian programmers have been finishing artistsforartists.com and the new site should be up in the next few weeks with users having the ability to genearte and follow their own transactions.

The developers looked to be on target with their timeline.

Everything looks to be moving in the right direction.

The 'YouTube Is Doomed' Guy Has More to Say

Fliqz CEO Benjamin Wayne on Google's 'Folly' and How Marketers Need to Think About Video From an ROI Perspective

by Simon Dumenco
Published: June 15, 2009

I started up a conversation with Benjamin Wayne, the CEO of Fliqz -- a white-label video-streaming-solutions provider based in Emeryville, Calif., that counts Major League Baseball, VH1 and WebMD among its major clients -- after I quoted his rather provocative views in my column. In a post titled "YouTube Is Doomed" at Silicon Alley Insider, a division of Business Insider (a site that has a content-sharing agreement with AdAge.com), Wayne wrote that "Google's massive video folly is on life support, and the prognosis is grave."

Benjamin Wayne

He was reacting to a recent report by Credit Suisse that suggested that YouTube was on track to take in $240 million in ad revenue in 2009, against operating costs of $711 million, for a net shortfall of just over $470 million. Since many observers think of Google, even in this recession, as having more money than God, the numbers didn't really sink in until Wayne -- an online-video guy who actually understands the P&L implications -- weighed in. "Believers," he wrote, "would have us think that Google will sustain YouTube, indefinitely if necessary. Proponents of online advertising argue that increased understanding of the medium will lead to more advertising dollars at better CPMs, lifting all boats in a sea of monetization." Wayne offered a contrary take: "YouTube is soaring towards the future like a pigeon towards a plate-glass window."

YouTube's nearly half-billion-dollar loss would come, he added, "after more than a year of feverish experimentation in various forms of advertising, cross-product embedding, licensing and partnership deals. YouTube is adamant that ultimately they'll find an advertising solution that will enable the ungainly behemoth to reach profitability. Looking at the math, it doesn't seem likely."

For this latest installment of Dumenco's Media People -- a continuing series of conversations with media grandees -- Wayne and I had virtual coffee via Skype video.

Simon Dumenco: Did you hear from anybody in the Google camp in response to "YouTube Is Doomed"?

Benjamin Wayne: We didn't hear from anyone directly, although we got a sudden burst of traffic from the Google folks on the Fliqz website. [laughter]

Dumenco: I found it amazing that a lot of other observers initially just brushed off the thought of a half-billion-dollar loss, as if Google could just cheerfully absorb it.

Wayne: Consumers are basically unwilling to believe that anything bad could ever happen to YouTube because they've become emotionally attached to a product that they believe should continue to exist and that Google should continue to subsidize. But from a balance-sheet perspective, it's just very hard to make the numbers work over time. And when you look at the impact in terms of the overall market capitalization of Google, it's pretty significant. And so in a recessionary environment, when the cost of capital is so high, you have to wonder how long a company like Google can sustain that.

I think that the real problem is that YouTube is taking all the stuff that's good that they can monetize, and they've already monetized that stuff. If you look at the way in which content is growing on YouTube, the user-generated novelty content and the copyright-infringement stuff is growing much faster than the content they can monetize. So whereas, with most businesses you'd say, well, over time it gets better, I think YouTube has a business where over time it continues to get worse, because the proportion of content you can't monetize continues to outstrip the portion of content that you can.

Dumenco: What about Hulu in this mix? They made the very strategic decision to keep out the non-monetizable riff-raff and make these extensive strategic partners with A-list content creators. And now they have even Disney onboard.

Wayne: I love Hulu, but problem with Hulu is it's kind of a non-repeatable phenomenon in the sense that they took content where the cost of producing the content and building the brand and attracting the audience had already been absorbed in the TV world, and they took that content that already had this rabidly loyal brand audience, put it online and monetized the fact that they didn't have to absorb any of the cost of building the brand or building the audience. Whether or not you can do that when you have to absorb all those initial production, distribution and marketing costs -- I'm not sure the value equation still works. They're monetizing the Long Tail effectively because they've already monetized it first on TV, then through DVD and cable, and now they're monetizing it again online, so it's all found money from their perspective.

Dumenco: Let's talk about place-shifting a bit. How much monetization upside is there, really, in the growth of the segment of people who are willing to regularly consume news and entertainment content on their cellphones?

Wayne: We can't make video monetization work on the web -- it's very hard through advertising, anyway -- and so it's very hard to believe they're gonna shift it to mobile and make it pay for itself there, which means that people have to pay for subscriptions, which is a hugely unproven market still today.

Dumenco: Do you have a client you think is deploying video in a way that's really strategically interesting?

Wayne: Yeah, I'll give you a couple different examples. We have three broad categories of the way people use video. One is people who have online communities of some form and they're using video as a tool to drive more page views, because they have a media-monetization model where, even though they can't monetize the video itself, they're monetizing the sponsorships and the banner ads and the other things on the page. We have people like Military.com, who have a video section called Shock and Awe. And in the two years that we've worked with them, they've grown their consumer base in terms of views by over eight times, which represents over 100 million new page views for them.

Another example is VisitMaine.com. They realized that in the recessionary economy, more people are taking trips with cars than planes, so they put video front and center in the site to drive people into planning a virtual vacation through the VisitMaine.com website. And they're seeing a four to five times uptick in terms of the number of people who are planning Maine vacations as a result of interacting with their video content.

I think what marketers need to avoid is what I could call video for the sake of video, which is why most people did it in the first place. They need to think that, as marketers, our goal is to find an audience and attract them to our site. And we can do that through search-engine submission of video, which is 53 times more likely to get you a first-page Google result than a text page will, or through viral distribution. We see people getting as much as 40% of their video viewership though videos that are being virally distributed and ending up in places like Facebook pages and private websites and blogs -- places that marketers could never get access to before. And then we're seeing real-estate sites like Re/Max that, when they list rental properties and they put up a video listing, they're getting conversions that are four times higher than when it's just images and text alone.

So there are ways that I think video can really drive a business. But you really have to start at the ROI and then work backward, as opposed to saying, "We just spent a lot of money on a video solution, now what the hell do we do with it?"

Dumenco: Back up to the video search-result differential -- that 53 times figure you cited. Explain why it's that dramatic.

Wayne: There are two factors. The first is that the amount of video content that exists in the world is much, much smaller than the number of web pages. So, from a sifting perspective, Google now shows blended search results, where they'll show video search results along with regular search results, so video has a better chance of showing up, relatively speaking. The second is: Google's search spiders can't read Flash tags, so the only way video shows up in Google search results is if the site submits it to Google. But not that many sites are submitting their video content in the first place, so if you do that, you're much more likely to end up at the top of the pile than you are with traditional SEO techniques.

Dumenco: I presume Fliqz helps to automate that process.

Wayne: Absolutely.

Dumenco: How much do you worry about video standards and video-marketing standards -- pre-roll vs. overlays and all that?

Wayne: There's a big push right now to establish standards, and that's not fundamentally the problem in the market. That's kind of everyone saying, "We're all drowning from an industry perspective, and if we all agree that the life boats should be the same size, that will solve the problem for us." What we really need to do is figure out how do we make video easier for marketers to use; give them the right rules of engagement to make it successful; and focus on how do they integrate it in their overall approach to the market so that it really drives core business. We need to focus less on the technology and more on what the technology is good for.

Dumenco: I'm going to ask point-blank anyway: What's your preference? Are you a pre-roll guy? An overlay guy?

Wayne: "None of them works" is the short answer. [laughter] Look at it this way: Say your site is doing 10 million streams a month -- that's massive content delivery. Now, let's assume that you can put a video ad on 50% of that, so you're down to 5 million streams a month that you can actually monetize. And let's assume that you can get a $5 CPM. It works out that that's $25,000 in ad revenue, so at the end of the day it just doesn't matter. There's not enough there that it matters whether or not you have pre-roll or overlay or whatever, because you won't get enough aggregate views so that the math works. So people hate pre-roll, but if you've got really high-value content you can do it, and it is effective. Overlay, people love because they think it's a good user experience, but it fundamentally just doesn't work, and the reason is: If you're watching, say, "Seinfeld," and a Head & Shoulders ad pops up at the bottom, the chances that you're gonna interrupt Seinfeld to go away to a website to look at a consumer product is zero. So it's a good user experience except that it's completely ineffective.

Dumenco: It's too good for the user. You're depressing me here, Benjamin. OK, where's the light at the end of the tunnel? Is it a question of people being cautious about their P&L and their ROI and then just hoping that the market continues to explode and then there's critical mass where you can, instead of the $25,000, maybe next year you're making $75,000 and then maybe it's a quarter million dollars three years from now? Is it a waiting game?

Wayne: Well, to a certain extent yes, but I'd put it a different way, which is: Video is massively expensive, which is why everyone hoped that advertising would be the great white hope that it would solve all problems from a video-cost perspective. But fundamentally it's not different than using e-mail or using photos or any other form of media or marketing that you'd use on a site. So you have to think about it within the same rules. For the consumer sites, proprietary content is the only stuff you're gonna be able to monetize. If you don't have proprietary content, you're not making money off that unless you can drive some other marketing goal. If you're a business and you're using video, you got to think of it like every other form of media. It's not an end in and of itself from a monetization perspective, but it's a very effective tool for driving the same types of goals you would with other media.