ChasNote

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I don’t know anything about I Love Local Commericals — a low-budget commercial production outfit? I also don’t know anything about Cullman Liquidation, including whether or not they’re a real company. But if they’re real and I was on the market for a used mobile home, this commercial makes me think they’d be fun to work with.

I’m with Ian Schafer on this one:

“It’s one thing to call out your competition if they are another chain. It’s another to insult small businesses. My advice? Next time, stop trying to make a ‘viral’ with the goal of getting views, and instead, focus on creating content that actually builds your brand — or at least makes it look good.”

Yikes, that’s an ugly trough representing 2009 US ad spending by the top 100 spenders.

Two-thousand eight was no walk in the park — down 2.7% for the year, and down 3.8% if you just count measured media like TV and print advertising — but even in last year’s tough climate 50 of the top 100 brands increased their media spends. Some of the strongest brands, in fact, increased investment to gain share against competitors seeking to conserve cash. As every business person knows (but few have the stomach to actually do it), aggressive market leaders tend to become bigger leaders during bleak economic times.

“Among the big gainers was Walmart Stores, which boosted estimated total U.S. ad spending 15.9% to $1.66 billion. The giant discount retailer turned recession into opportunity; measured media spending on its flagship Walmart chain soared 66.4%, making Walmart the nation’s fifth-most-advertised brand.” Night Skies ipod The Great Escape psp

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ZenithOptimedia forecasts an 8.7% decline in overall US media spending in 2009. Wow. Count on a banner year for dominant players beating up on the industry wimps!

Times are less bad for digital. Back in April eMarketer lowered its estimate for 2009 online ad spending Alien Abduction film Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian movies

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More at Ad Age.

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“The News Corp. network will also run pieces of content during ad breaks crafted by the producers of the shows running on air at the time, part of another move to keep audiences rooted to the screen during commercial interruptions.”

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Not a bad idea — it brings the advertiser closer to what viewers came to watch, the programming content. But it still suggests that the commercial content isn’t good enough or relevant enough to hold viewers on its own. At some point, the brands need to do a better job making great content themselves.

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“It is getting so bad for local television stations that some are turning to newspapers for help…. The news for stations has been grim lately: without election advertisements to defray the losses in automotive ads, a cross section of station owners reported 20 percent to 30 percent quarterly drops in revenue last week, suggesting that the local TV business is almost as weak as its print counterpart.”

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With viewership numbers down (3 million viewers, or 7% of the audience, went elsewhere in Q4 08); advertising rates falling (the average prime time spot was down 15% in Q4), production costs rising ($3 million per hour of network drama) and the re-run market shrinking as cable networks do more original programming on their own, it’s dire days for the big four broadcast TV networks.

All In The Family, #1 in 1978-79, reached 30.5% of TV households; Desparate Housewives, #1 in 2007-08, reached only 10.9%.

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on Sunday’s big spenders who forgot to invest the pocket change on related paid search.

“What do ‘Shankapotamus,’ ‘PepSuber,’ ‘drinkability,’ and ‘LMAO’ have in common? Two things, actually. First, they’re all words that advertisers spent $100,000 per second to build buzz around during the Super Bowl, and secondly, they were all available as search terms on Google the morning after the advertising aired.”

Oh my. I know this is mean of mean to say, but I hope at least 4 people lost their jobs today.

From Ad Age

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“Research firm eMarketer has some sobering news Jacknife release for the TV networks: You’re not booking $70 billion in ad revenue in 2009. Try about $66.9 billion, or about 4.2% less than the $69.8 billion of advertising sold on network and cable TV in the U.S. in 2008.”

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This isn’t terribly surprising, given the state of the economy. What will be more interesting to watch is what happens after the economy emerges from the recession. Will the old media-buying habits pick up where they left off, and those dollars will flow back to TV, bigger than before? Or did we just witness the high-water mark for TV ad spending?

Unless this YouTube clip has been doctored, commercials for Kraft’s Nabisco Premium Plus crackers ran in the final episode of Battlestar Galactica, an episode in which one of characters commits suicide with a pistol to her head. (Skip the below clip if you want to avoid a gory scene.) In the Nabisco ads which immediately follow that image, Nabisco crackers thrown into soup bowls create fountains of splattering tomato soup, choreographed to a song whose lyrics are “I just want to celebrate another day of living.”

It just goes to show, those awkward adjacencies don’t just happen on the web!

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