After the break: the 'wild west' quest to bring the consumers to the advertising
Companies are moving closer to the entertainment industry as they try to promote their products to jaded customers. There are as many hits as misses and the business model is poorly understood, writes
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He disappeared from public view more than a year and a half ago. But today, few people matter more in the advertising world than a coffee-swilling young American named Beta-7.
Beta-7 materialised on his own internet site during the summer of 2003 to tell the world that his life had been ruined. In more than 100 web postings running to tens of thousands of words, he said he had been hired to test Sega's new ESPN NFL Football video game and had experienced violent seizures as a result. Beta-7 called for action against the game maker and then fell silent leaving behind his website,
www.beta-7.com. It was hard to ignore but it was all a hoax. Beta-7 was Jim Gunshanan, an actor, who played the character on the internet, even improvising dialogue in online chat rooms. Wieden & Kennedy, the US advertising agency known for its work with Nike, conceived the campaign to create confusion, starting a cat and mouse game with its target audience of video gamers.
“The idea for the campaign was to create an experience for gamers that would cause them to debate its accuracy,” says Ty Montague, a former Wieden executive who helped develop the Beta-7 character. “We never said it was true or not true.”
Madison Avenue liked what it saw. Wieden won a slew of industry honours last year for the effort and Mr Montague became a hot property. He is now chief creative officer of WPP's JWT unit in New York, making him a key member of the management team charged with remaking one of the world's largest and best-known advertising agencies. Indeed, a 10-minute faux documentary depicting the Beta-7 campaign capped the festivities this year when J Walter Thompson gathered its UK employees at London's Royal Court Theatre to celebrate the agency's rebirth as JWT.
For anyone in the audience, the implication of the video was clear. The best advertising should no longer feel like advertising. It should be a form of entertainment or even a part of everyday life. The Beta-7 campaign an exercise in what the 1960s avant-garde might have called “guerrilla theatre” pointed the way forward.
“Selling things in a bold-faced, loud way is pretty much exhausted,” says Craig Davis, who was named JWT's worldwide creative director earlier this year. “I don't think we have ever been closer to the entertainment business.”
There is a growing fear that conventional advertising is losing its punch. For decades, the best way to send marketing messages to consumers was during the commercial breaks of television programmes. But as a cultural institution, the commercial break is breaking down.
Technological advances are giving consumers a greater ability to avoid television commercials and the results are not pretty for advertisers. The biggest problem is the spread of digital video recorders, or DVRs, which enable viewers to fast-forward past television commercials. Aegis of the UK, the world's leading independent advertising buyer, estimates that global advertisers will wind up wasting $35bn a year by 2010 if current patterns in DVR usage persist.
For now, television is still gaining share in the global advertising market as print publications continue to lose business. But no one in the advertising world denies that clients are nervous.
“The fear is that television is not working as well as in the past,” says Maurice Levy, chairman and chief executive of Publicis, the French marketing services group. “The reality is that television is working very well. They are all thinking about the future and obviously we have to offer solutions.”
Marketers are responding in a variety of ways. Some are shifting money into discounts and trade promotions or investing in better customer service. More are making greater use of new advertising media, such as the internet or mobile telephones and other wireless communications devices. Old forms of advertising such as outdoor posters and store displays are gaining a new appeal because consumers cannot use the new technologies to avoid them.
However, in the realm of advertising content, an industry consensus is forming. The conventional wisdom holds that the era of “interruption marketing” will give way to that of “permission marketing” advertising that will be sought out by consumers, rather than just tolerated.
The implications are dramatic: advertising content will no longer be able simply to exist in parallel with entertainment content in the break, in other words. Advertising will have to move toward the front and centre of the culture to gain the attention of consumers. As Dawn Coulter, an international planning director at McCann-Erickson, puts it: “Brands should pervade culture in a good way, not a bad way.”
The most tangible evidence of this shift to what could be called “infiltration marketing” is the growth of product placements in films and television. PQ Media, a market research firm, estimates that the value of product placement deals in the US grew from $174m in 1974 to $3.5bn last year. By 2009, that figure could reach nearly $7bn, PQ Media says.
However, Madison Avenue's push into entertainment has been marked by a greater sophistication than having James Bond drive BMWs or making sure the American Idol cast drinks Coke. Many advertising executives doubt that product placement is particularly effective and they are increasingly looking to play a direct role in the creation of entertainment content.
“If you have an hour of television, we used to concentrate on the 15 minutes of commercials,” says Robin Kent, who until earlier this year served as chairman and chief executive of Universal McCann, a media-buying arm of Interpublic of the US.
“What we are now doing is trying to see how we can infiltrate that other 45 minutes and get some message in front of the consumer that will resonate, and I'm not talking just about product placements.”
The current term for this approach is branded entertainment and its techniques tend to be subtle. For example, Spring London, a unit of the Leo Burnett advertising agency, developed a UK television show for Heinz called Dinner Doctors that offered cooking advice for busy mothers but never mentioned the food maker's name. Under UK law, product placement of that kind would have been illegal.
Instead, Heinz made itself known through the sponsor credits at the start and end of the programme and by using product labelling that mentioned Dinner Doctors. Its broader intent was to forge a closer connection with mothers without hitting them over the head with a tin of baked beans.
“Branded entertainment is often confused with programme sponsorship and product placement but it is moving beyond that,” says Chris Harrison, managing director of Spring. “Branded entertainment is about advertisers inspiring, creating, funding or promoting their own programme content.”
Marketers are also trying to reach consumers directly by using their internet sites as an advertising medium. The Fallon agency recruited well-known directors such as Guy Ritchie to make internet films for BMW's web site. Ogilvy & Mather enlisted Jerry Seinfeld, the US comedian, to star in “webisodes” for American Express.
ome companies are even putting public spaces to new uses. Birra Peroni, the Italian brewer, rented a store on London's exclusive Sloane Street for a month and reserved the interior for a bottle of its beer sitting on a pedestal. The store was transformed into a three-dimensional advertisement designed to give the beer a sense of high style.
“We were positioning ourselves as an Italian fashion design,” says Will Harris, chief executive of The Bank, the UK advertising agency that came up with the idea for the Italian beer boutique. “It was sandwiched between Armani and Versace.”
Andrew Robertson, chief executive of BBDO Worldwide, says that, as more advertising content is delivered via mobile phones and other wireless communications devices, it will become possible to charge people for advertising. He admits this sounds improbable but notes that people buy T-shirts promoting everything from rock bands to sports equipment.
“It may be that the message is the medium,” he says. “It activates the connection. The beauty of these (wireless) devices is that if you have a message that's compelling enough, you can activate this connection anywhere, anytime.”
To people who worry about corporate power, there is a nightmarish quality to this spread of advertising beyond the confines of the commercial break.
“As we see the decline of the 30- second commercial, the main effect is ad creep the spread of advertising into every nook and cranny of our lives and culture,” says Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert, an anti-commercialism group he founded with Ralph Nader, the consumer activist. “This has a predictable result: people don't like it.”
Advertising agency executives are conscious of the dangers. Under the old regime, advertising often offended people. But the rules of the game were understood. Advertising had a place during the break. But now, marketing messages are shifting from their traditional niche in regulated media such as television to less well-policed places, ranging from the internet to the spots above the urinals in men's toilets.
“I think it's the wild, wild west again,” says Pat Fallon, chairman of the Fallon advertising agency. “The difference between a big idea and a big mistake is pretty fine.”
The Beta-7 campaign underscores just how daring advertisers are getting. The Beta-7 site combines graphic descriptions of violence and injury with healthy doses of obscenity and plays it all for laughs like the Book of Job as seen through the eyes of a skateboarder. At one point, Beta-7 confesses that he has had “a weird day, and not in a good way. Seriously freaky X-Files type weird”. He also maintains a humorous commentary on his need for coffee. “Decided tonight that maybe I've been having too much caffeine,” he writes. “So I'm going to limit myself to one latte in the morning and one Coke with lunch.”
But what is most remarkable about the Beta-7 campaign is its blurring of fact and fiction. In the “FAQ” section of the site, Beta-7 writes: “I don't work for Sega, or anyone for that matter . . . This is not a marketing campaign, it is a campaign to make a deceitful and dangerous corporation be held accountable for it's actions. I'm sure Sega would like you to believe it's a marketing campaign or a hoax, because then they will not have to take responsibility for what they have done.”
Nor was that the limit of the cheekiness. At one point, Beta-7 mailed copies of the video game to 10 members of his audience to see if it would make them violent. All 10 recipients subsequently received letters ostensibly from the company but actually drafted by Wieden's attorneys telling them that they should return the games, Wieden says.
All 10 complied, Mr Montague says. “They're good kids.”
Mr Montague says the campaign worked because its target audience of video-game enthusiasts was hip enough to get the jokes but playful enough to keep on reading what Beta-7 wrote.
“They knew at some level that we were pulling their legs and they were enjoying it,” Mr Montague says.
But other advertising executives wonder whether all members of the public will be able to make such distinctions. David Lubars, who became chairman and chief creative officer of BBDO North America after working on the BMW films at Fallon, says that, in general, advertising content will only work as entertainment if people know it is advertising.
“The backlash will come, and deservedly so, if the thing isn't honest and doesn't admit what it is,” says Mr Lubars. “You can't fake the intrusion. Admit the intrusion.”
In the meantime, there is no way of knowing whether there are other Beta-7s in our midst, perhaps less scrupulous versions, making their advertising pitches without identifying themselves as advertisers.
As Beta-7 might have put it, the advertising game is getting seriously weird. Whether that will be weird in a good way remains an open question.
广告业的“新边疆”（上）
逾一年半以前，他从公众视线中消失，但在如今广告界，很少有人的重要性能与他相比。他叫Beta-7，是个牛饮咖啡的美国年轻人。
Beta-7于2003年夏天在他自己的网站上现身，告诉世人说他的生活被毁了。在发了100多个网络帖子，用了数万字，称自己受雇测试世嘉(Sega)的新款ESPN NFL足球视频游戏，结果发了好几次惊厥症。Beta-7呼吁采取行动对抗游戏生产商，随后销声匿迹，只留下他的网站
www.beta-7.com.此事很难让人视而不见，但它是个骗局。Beta-7其实是演员吉姆?贡斯哈南(Jim Gunshanan)，他在网上扮演这一角色，甚至还在网上聊天室即兴与他人对话。以与耐克(Nike)合作闻名的美国广告公司韦登迪公司（Wieden Kennedy）策划了这一广告以制造混乱，与其视频游戏目标受众之间开始了一场猫捉老鼠的游戏。
“这一宣传活动的设想是为游戏玩家创造一种体验，促使他们探讨游戏的准确性，”韦登迪公司前高管蒂?蒙塔古(Ty Montague)说。他帮助开发了Beta-7这个人物。“我们从来没有说过Beta-7是否实有其人。”
没有广告味的广告
广告商云集的麦迪逊大道（Madison Avenue）对Beta-7创意的结果很满意。韦登迪公司去年因此举赢得了一连串行业奖项，蒙塔古先生也成了抢手人物。他目前在纽约，任WPP集团麾下智威汤逊公司（JWT）的首席创意官，成为公司管理团队的关键成员，负责改造这家全球最大、最著名广告商之一的公司。智威汤逊雇员今年在伦敦皇家剧院聚会，庆祝该广告公司以“JWT”的名字再生，聚会上一部描绘Beta-7广告宣传的10分钟仿纪录片使庆祝活动达到高潮。
对在场的任何人来说，这个视频的涵义都很清楚。最优秀的广告应该让人看了不觉得是广告。它应该成为一种娱乐形式，甚至是日常生活的一部分。Beta-7广告宣传是一次演练，上世纪60年代的先锋派或许会称之为“游击戏剧”，它指明了广告发展的方向。
“厚着脸皮、大声吆喝的方式基本上已经走到头了，”克雷格?戴维斯(Craig Davis)说。戴维斯今年早些时候受命出任智威汤逊公司的全球创意总监。“我认为，我们从来没有像现在这么接近娱乐业。”
走向式微的传统广告
业界越来越担心，传统广告的效果正在衰退。几十年来，向消费者传递营销信息的最佳途径是在电视节目中的插播广告。但作为一个文化风俗，插播广告日渐式微。
随着技术的进步，消费者越来越有能力避开电视广告，其结果对广告客户来说很不妙。最大的问题是数码视频录像机(DVR)的普及，有了这种录像机，观众就可以按快进键，跳过电视广告。全球领先的独立广告买家、英国的Aegis公司估计，如果目前数码视频录像机使用的模式持续下去，到2010为止，全球广告客户每年会浪费350亿美元。
眼下，电视在全球广告市场上的份额仍在增加，而纸质媒体仍在丢生意。但广告界没有人否认，客户们都紧张不安。
“人们担心，现在电视不像过去那么管用了。”法国市场营销服务集团阳狮公司(Publicis)董事长兼首席执行官莫里斯?利维(Maurice Levy)表示。“实际上，现在电视非常管用。他们都在思考将来，我们显然必须提供一些解决方案。”
转向渗透的广告新思维
商家的的回应方式多种多样。有人将资金从广告转向折扣和促销手段，或投资改善客户服务。更多人正进一步应用新的广告媒体，如互联网、移动电话和其它无线通讯设备。户外海报和商店陈列等旧的广告形式具有了新的吸引力，因为消费者不能使用新技术来避开这类形式的广告。
然而，在广告内容领域，广告界正形成一个业内共识。人们继续坚持这样的传统认识：“干扰式营销”时代将让位于“许可式营销”时代，即由消费者挑选广告，而不是容忍广告。
这些变化的意义非同一般：换句话说，广告将不再以中间插播的方式，让其内容与娱乐内容并存。广告必须走向文化的前沿和中心，以赢得消费者的注意。正如麦肯世界集团(McCann-Erickson)的一位国际策划主管道恩?科尔特(Dawn Coulter)所说：“品牌应以一种好的而不是坏的方式渗透在文化中。”
这种营销可称之为“渗透营销”，而向这种营销方式转变的最切实证据是，电影和电视中“产品植入式广告”(product placement)在增加。市场研究公司PQ媒体公司（PQ Media）估计，1974年，美国植入式广告业务的价值为1740万美元，到去年已增至35亿美元。PQ媒体公司表示，到2009年，该数字可能达到近70亿美元。
