Boost Your PR by Doing Something, Not Just Saying Something
Written by Webmaster
Thursday, 04 September 2008
"...Creating effective advertising is extremely difficult in today's overcommunicated society. It's not just the volume of advertising ($285 billion this year), but the inherent lack of credibility in the message. Nobody is going to believe that Chevrolet is "America's best truck" just because General Motors says so...". Remember when a political party used to hold a convention to select its candidates for national office? Of course you don't. Today, the candidates are already selected long before the convention starts. Then what is the function of a national convention?
Everyone seems to be down YouTube's throat for not pulling its weight at Google. The television networks earn a pitiful 1% online of what they rake in from their broadcast outlets with the same videos. And the "me too" video sites are venture-capital money machines of the burning kind. Online video now boasts a bigger audience than cable television, but its $1 billion in ad dollars is a fraction of the $70 billion in broadcast wealth many assumed would be redistributed. When will online video be the behemoth business everyone always crows about? Maybe when we quit treating its biggest strength as a weakness.
Top 10 tips to maximise the efficiency of marketing spend in a downturn
Written by Webmaster
Saturday, 30 August 2008
Marketing budgets - often among the early casualties of a recession - are declining faster than at any time since 11 September 2001, according to the IPA's most recent Bellwether Report. Yet, as Hugh Davidson, author of Offensive Marketing, points out: 'Studies show that brands that maintain or increase marketing spend in a recession tend to do better than their rivals in the long run.' He cites Reckitt Benckiser's results as an example. Due to strong NPD and heavy marketing support, the company's sales rose 20% between 30 March and 30 June. However, to escape hatchet-wielding finance directors, marketers must
German research firm GfK today dropped its bid to acquire Taylor Nelson Sofres, paving the way for WPP Group to acquire the London-based market research giant. That brings WPP one step closer to overtaking Omnicom Group for bragging rights as the biggest marketing holding company in the world -- but that doesn't mean TNS is going to make it easy for WPP CEO Martin Sorrell to reach that milestone. TNS said it still wants nothing to do with WPP's $2.2 billion takeover bid filed earlier this month. And the London Times website reported that TNS' largest shareholder, Cedar Rock Capital, rejected WPP's offer.
"...Creating effective advertising is extremely difficult in today's overcommunicated society. It's not just the volume of advertising ($285 billion this year), but the inherent lack of credibility in the message. Nobody is going to believe that Chevrolet is "America's best truck" just because General Motors says so...". Remember when a political party used to hold a convention to select its candidates for national office? Of course you don't. Today, the candidates are already selected long before the convention starts. Then what is the function of a national convention? 
Everyone seems to be down YouTube's throat for not pulling its weight at Google. The television networks earn a pitiful 1% online of what they rake in from their broadcast outlets with the same videos. And the "me too" video sites are venture-capital money machines of the burning kind. Online video now boasts a bigger audience than cable television, but its $1 billion in ad dollars is a fraction of the $70 billion in broadcast wealth many assumed would be redistributed. When will online video be the behemoth business everyone always crows about? Maybe when we quit treating its biggest strength as a weakness. 
Marketing budgets - often among the early casualties of a recession - are declining faster than at any time since 11 September 2001, according to the IPA's most recent Bellwether Report. Yet, as Hugh Davidson, author of Offensive Marketing, points out: 'Studies show that brands that maintain or increase marketing spend in a recession tend to do better than their rivals in the long run.' He cites Reckitt Benckiser's results as an example. Due to strong NPD and heavy marketing support, the company's sales rose 20% between 30 March and 30 June. However, to escape hatchet-wielding finance directors, marketers must 
German research firm GfK today dropped its bid to acquire Taylor Nelson Sofres, paving the way for WPP Group to acquire the London-based market research giant. That brings WPP one step closer to overtaking Omnicom Group for bragging rights as the biggest marketing holding company in the world -- but that doesn't mean TNS is going to make it easy for WPP CEO Martin Sorrell to reach that milestone. TNS said it still wants nothing to do with WPP's $2.2 billion takeover bid filed earlier this month. And the London Times website reported that TNS' largest shareholder, Cedar Rock Capital, rejected WPP's offer. 
