5 Blogs Before Lunch

We've moved to THE FIVE--at the intersection of creativity and commerce

5 Blogs Before Lunch is now THE FIVE. All of your favorite wit wisdom has shifted location. Please move here in an orderly fashion.

Starbucks is selling more beer, wine and savory snacks as they expand their afternoon menu.

Starbucks wants people come back for more, and more--all throughout the day. Over the last couple of years, they've been market testing an afternoon menu of alcohol (beer and wine) and savory snacks.

"As our customers transition from work to home, many are looking for a warm and inviting place to unwind and connect with the people they care about," Clarice Turner, Starbucks' senior vice president of U.S. operations, said in a news release.

Way back in July 2009, we posted a report that Starbucks was about to beging testing a new retail concept in Seattle that included the sale of alcohol on premise. The chain then started selling late afternoon savory snacks and alcohol at one shop in Seattle in October 2010. Now, five stores in the Seattle area and one in Portland, Oregon offer the extended menu.

Now comes word that they are expanding the concept, and will begin selling beer and wine in a small number of Starbucks in Southern California and Atlanta. Starbucks is also planning to add savory snacks, cheese plates and hot flatbreads to menus in four to six outlets in each market to see if they might entice people to start a different sort of habit--the Starbucks happy hour. We call it "Bucks-thirty."

Source: Los Angeles Times

Macy's goes on the attack, suing Martha Stewart for its J.C. Penney deal

A month ago we posted the news that Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia had inked a deal to sell housewares at J.C. Penney. It sounded like a great deal for Penney's and MSLO, but it seems to have made Macy's feel like a jilted bride.

And there is nothing like a mega conclomerate's scorn.

Macy's is now suing MSLO in New York State Supreme Court claiming the deal with J.C. Penney violates the terms of an exclusive deal to sell MSLO products at its stores.

The J.C. Penney deal involves opening store-in-store Martha Stewart shops inside most of its stores beginning next year. MSLO products at Macy's are scattered througout their Home departments, and are a valuable draw for the retailer.

Let the mud-slinging begin.

Source: USA Today

Saab owners stay true to their loyal friend until its last breath

For decades, Saab owners have dealt with endless electrical problems, hose leaks and other mechanical defects that were just part of the Saab experience. Still, through all of the mechanical troubles Saab owners suffered through, they have always been some of the most loyal fanatically loyal fans.

Even now, with Saab in bankruptcy after being tossed to the curb by General Motors, and effectively no longer in operation, Saab enthusiasts are gathering this weekend across this counrty and around the world in rallies, caravans and other meet-ups designed to show their affection for the Swedish brand.

They're holding out hope--hanging on by the thinnest of threads, that all is not lost and that a white knight might come in and save Saab at the last minute.

The chances of that are slim, however.

From Brandchannel, here is a quote from former Saab CEO Victor Muller:

"Although I am not anymore Saab’s CEO — you all know that we did not manage to keep the company alive, unfortunately — I would like to thank all of you personally. Without people like you, Saab would have no reason for existence. Without people like you, we would have never bought Saab back in 2010. At that time there were convoys all over the world. Today and yesterday, some 110 events in 42 countries were organised. Which car brand would ever be able to touch that? That is something unique.

Saab is everything but over. I do not want to create any expectations based on nothing. There are some very interested parties who would like to take over Saab as a going concern. They do not want to buy some parts of Saab, but the whole enterprise. This is very encouraging. I cannot predict whether this will succeed. This is something I cannot exert an influence on. I am just helping — to the best of my abilities — the administrators make a deal."For adventurous shoppers seeking deep discounts, Saab dealers still have about 2,200 cars in their inventories that are still for sale.

Source: WSJ.com and Brandchannel

As baby boomers become seniors, they get their own television network--RLTV (Redefine Life TV)

As the number of baby boomers who offically become  "seniors" grows exponentially over the next years, we will see more and more companies targeting this still highly active group.

They are currently the fastest-growing and wealthiest segment of the population, and were least hurt by the recession. According to data from the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey, adults over the age of 50 spent $2.7 trillion on consumer goods in 2010. Everyone from pharmecetucal companies to insurance carriers to retirement communities see the opportunity with the senior class.

Television is also a high-value area for the post 18-49 set. So it is no surprise that a cable network has arisen to provide programming for the AARP crowd. Let's face it--older folks have a lot of disposible income, and spend a lot of time watching television.

RLTV is a cable channel specifically targeting seniors, and has hired talent with whom this audience can relate. Seventy-seven year old Sam Donaldson and Florence Henderson will each have their own shows, as well youngsters like Joan Lunden, 61, and Deborah Norville, 53.  

Programming such as "Making Medicare Work for You," will find a place on RLTV, as well as reality shows like "Another Chance for Romance" and "Sunset Daze," which the Los Angeles Times calls a "Jersey Shore" for adventurous senior citizens in Surprise, Arizona. Another reality show "Family Pickle" takes a look inside New York City’s world renowned Carnegie Deli, home to "the wildest cast of characters you’ll ever meet."

"Advertisers are waking up to the fact that the 50-plus population is an audience they have to pay attention to," said Kevin Donnellan, an executive vice president with the AARP, and a producer of two magazine shows for RLTV. "We're no longer living in that era where people are thinking about their father's Oldsmobile."

RLTV was launched in 2006 and was originally called Retirement Living TV (the founder made his money building retirement communities) but recently changed to Redefine Life--a broader message to match this broad audience group.

RLTV does not boast of its distribution deals as of yet, but as cable distributors and other media outlets realize the extreme value of the senior community and its impact as part of the viewer demographic, they're bound to pick up speed.

1-800-GET-THIN Lap-band ads getting congressional scrutiny for "aggressive marketing"

The controversy around a surgically implanted device to help people lose weight has been festering in the Los Angeles area for months. Opponents of the "Lap-Band" a ring that is surgically implanted around the stomach to discourage overeating have questioned the effectiveness and safety of the device, as well as its marketing claims.

The 1-800-GET-THIN weight-loss surgery billboard campaign is ubiquitous along Southern California freeways--in a town known for its obsession with physical appearance. Local opponents have questioned the "aggressive marketing" of the device through the freeway billboards, radio, television, direct mail and the Internet. Two former employees have accused 1-800-GET-THIN and its affiliated surgery centers of operating in unsanitary conditions, improperly billing insurers and putting an emphasis on profits over patient safety.

And now, the opposition is getting a national sponsors in  U.S. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) and two other House members who are calling for congressional hearings to examine whether the sponsors of the ad campaign, their affiliated clinics and the device's manufacturer are improperly promoting a potentially dangerous surgery. Waxman wants Congress to subpoena documents from 1-800-GET-THIN and Lap-Band manufacturer Allergan Inc.

"We believe the Committee should hold hearings to examine whether FDA device regulation has been ineffective in protecting the public from dangerous medical devices like the Lap-Band,"  said Waxman and Reps. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) and John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) in letter.

The Los Angeles Times reports that five patients have died in Southern California since 2009 after Lap-Band surgeries at clinics affiliated with 1-800-GET-THIN, according to lawsuits, autopsy reports and other public records.

For its part, the Food and Drug Administration has sent warning letters to 1-800-GET-THIN and some of its affiliated surgery centers, saying that its advertisements were misleading because they did not adequately disclose dangers of the surgery. The company has agreed to change the ads to address the FDA's concerns.

"The fundamental mission of the FDA is to ensure the safety and effectiveness of medical devices," Congressman Waxman is quoted as saying. "That is why it's critical that we understand how unsafe devices get on the market and how to protect patients from these risks."

L.L. Bean kicks off its Centennial with a Giant Mobile Maine Hunting Boot--the Bootmobile

To mark the company's centennial, L.L. Bean has driving a giant hunting boot across the country.

Well, not a real hunting boot exactly, it is a truck designed to look like the brand's iconic hunting boot. You know, like the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile looks like a wiener.

L.L. Bean commissioned the Bootmobile, a 20-foot-long, 13-foot-high vehicle that is scheduled to travel throughout the country during the company's 100th year.

Wired magazine reports from Manhattan that "the Bootmobile appears to be cobbled together from a diesel Ford F-250 pickup. (It’s an automatic, so no heel-and-toe downshifts.) In true Yankee fashion, it’s wearing all-terrain tires, sports a Maine license plate and is missing a hubcap." In fact, the Bootmobile was built to scale by Echo Artz, a specialty fabrication shop in Kissimmee, Florida--a far cry from Bean headquarters in Freeport, Maine.

L.L. Bean founder Leon Leonwood Bean began the company in a single room selling the Maine Hunting Shoe, with a rubber sole and shell stitched to a leather upper. The Maine Hunting Shoe has become emblematic of the brand.

Additional sources: The New York Times

Mark Cuban partners up with Ryan Seacrest, AEG and Creative Artists Agency to reimagine HDNet into AXS TV

If Oprah can have her own television network, so can Ryan Seacrest.

He, along with events promoter AEG and talent agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA) are partnering with billionaire Mark Cuban to essentially take over his existing network HDNet. The new network will be called AXS TV (pronounced "access") and will be a pop culture and music cable channel that is expected to debut in June.

Reports are that the network's programming will rely heavily on live lifestyle and live entertainment content from the music assets of AEG, and the "A-list connections and production capabilities of Seacrest." Cuban will still lead the venture.

The Hollywood Reporter suggests that the venture is “virtually” a 50-50 partnership between Cuban and the new partners.
 
Seacrest, CAA and AEG have been pitching the network concept for some time. At one point there were reports that the group was in talks to take over VH1 Soul, a little-watched spinoff of MTV Networks' VH1 channel.

HDNet has been around for about a decade, and is currently in a reported 25-35 million homes, through distribution deals with DirecTV, Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Charter and Dish. Those numbers are still small, with the big cable networks in 100 million+ homes.

Seacrest’s shingle, Ryan Seacrest Productions (which produces the ubiquitous Khardasian franchise among other projects), will have a production commitment with the new venture. Ryan Seacrest Media, a holding company separate from RSP, is the investor in AXS.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter last spring, Seacrest insisted whatever deal he and his partners at CAA and AEG struck, it “will not be the Ryan Seacrest channel … it will not be branded with my name or my face. My role would be to hope to provide content for them, but primarily it would be an ownership role.”

Source: AXS.tv press announcement

Neuromarketing: brain food for creativity

Neurmarketing research is becoming a more active experiment with many advertisers from Google to Frito Lay. By studying consumers' sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective responses to advertising or product stimuli, marketers can learn why consumers make the decisions they do, and what part of the brain is telling them to do it, then adjust marketing and advertising accordingly.

And now, the Advertising Research Foundation has conducted a study of neuromarketing effectiveness, analyzing the latest methods being used to evaluate advertising and products to determine the effectiveness, drawbacks, and promise of various analytic methods.

The study was sponsored by eight major marketers: American Express, Campbell Soup Company, Clorox, Colgate-Palmolive, General Motors, The Hershey Company, MillerCoors, and JP MorganChase; and four major TV networks: ESPN, Viacom Media Networks, NBCUniversal, and Turner. The project was also supported by Dentsu, Publicis Groupe, A&E, and Warner Bros.

The study is the first major review of neuroscience methods that apply to media and advertising response. The New York-based ARF brought together eight neuromarketing research companies from across the globe to have their methods reviewed and analyzed by an academic review panel with expertise in methods evaluated in the study, namely: facial coding, biometrics, electroencephalography (EEG), steadystate topography (SST), facial electromyography (fEMG), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

The academic reviewers concluded that neuromarketing research has the potential to provide important new insights for the evaluation of commercials and other visual stimuli, but also that there remains a need for continued validation efforts to strengthen this field. Nevertheless, the ARF strongly maintains that, while researchers should not abandon traditional measures, they should likewise not simply defer learning about and trying neuromarketing approaches until all the academic validation questions are answered. The potential contribution of these approaches to the creation of great advertising is simply too compelling.

Above all, advertisers should not be reluctant to use neuromarketing methods qualitatively, especially early in the creative process, to identify opportunities and pitfalls in storylines, messaging, and key branding moments. Additionally, the ARF provided its viewpoint on which types of approaches are best suited to the most common research objectives and questions that advertisers have.

The findings from this work are summarized in the ARF’s newly released white paper, Uncovering Emotion: Using Neuromarketing to Increase Ad Effectiveness.

Campaign Friday: Volkswagen is going to the Bark Side with Star Wars themed Super Bowl campaign

During last year’s Super Bowl, Volkswagen scored a huge hit with an ad starring a young boy dressed as Vader trying to employ the mythical powers of The Force around his house. This year, the Star Wars theme returns, and Volkswagen's advertising spend is being maximized with a social media component.

For this year they've created a customizable iconic crawl invite to "invite your friends to your Big Game party," and a canine chorus teaser ad that barks the Imperial March. Keep an eye out for the 2012 Game Day commercial—it is bound to be epic.

President Obama is creating a Socialpaloza event around the State of the Union

This Tuesday night, the President of the United States will deliver his State of the Union address to Congress, and the nation.

Traditionalists might watch the address on broadcast television, and listen to network talking heads analyze every word.

Or, fans of digital and social interaction might chose to watch it online at the White House website where there will be an "enhanced version" of the speech featuring details and graphs. Immediately after the speech, the White House will live-stream a panel discussion featuring senior administration officials and a live audience taking questions from Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

President Obama is clearly our most social media savvy President ever, as he effectively demonstrated during his 2008 election campaign. He's broadly used www.whitehouse.gov, Twitter and Facebook during his first term, and now it appears he is gearing up for the 2012 election using even more social tools.

Following the State of the Union, the White House will engage in a week-long Twitter marathon involving Administration officials taking questions in a day-long, question-and-answer session, followed by a series of community-focused discussions with policy advisers and experts, with specific conversations on LGBT issues, the Latino community, veterans and seniors, among others. The week will end with Twitter Q&A's will be directed toward specific policy issues including health, education and jobs. People who want to participate can ask questions on Twitter with the hashtag #WHChat, and administration officials will respond in real-time. There is also rumor of a "special online event with the president" to be announced soon.

Source: Huffington Post

Selling Ad Choices: An advertising campaign designed to educated consumers on behavior advertising.

"Behavioral Advertising" is the term used by advertisers for when they track audience behavior and serve relevant advertising to an online consumer.

Advertisers love it.

Many consumers are scared of it.

When a consumer visits a web site, the pages they visit, the amount of time they view each page, the links they click on, and all sorts of other behavior is collected, creating a profile that links to that visitor's web browser. As a result, site publishers can use this data to create defined audience segments based upon visitors that have similar profiles. When visitors return to a specific site or a network of sites using the same web browser, those profiles can be used to allow advertisers to position their online ads in front of those visitors who exhibit a greater level of interest and intent for the products and services being offered. On the theory that properly targeted ads will fetch more consumer interest, the publisher can charge a premium for these ads over random advertising or ads based on the context of a site.

In other words, behavioral marketing is the reason you see ads for the sites you have recently visited, with advertisers hoping to lure you back. An advertiser's goal is to increase relevancy based on the collected data and foster a better conversion rate.

Advertisers love the ability to target consumers. But many consumers feel such tracking is an invasion of privacy, with few consumers knowing they can opt out of such programs.

So, The Digital Advertising Alliance, the ad industry's self-regulatory program for online behaviorally targeted advertising, recently launched an advertising campaign with the goal of helping consumers understand the benefits of targeted ads.

The 'Your AdChoices' campaign builds upon the DAA's two-and-a-half year effort to develop and implement cross-industry best practices and effective solutions for the collection and use of data through its Advertising Option Icon.
"With widespread industry adoption of the DAA's Self-Regulatory Principles, the DAA remains committed to informing consumers about interest-based advertising, online data collection and use, and the simple way they can exercise control over their web viewing data," said Peter Kosmala, managing director, Digital Advertising Alliance. "This highly creative public education campaign is an important step in that ongoing process."

While the ads don't explicitly tell consumers they have the ability to opt out of behavioral targeting, they feature the Ad Choices icon that the DAA has created for advertisers to embed in their ads. Clicking on the Ad Choices icon allows a web user to opt-out of behavioral targeting.

Advertising, in order to educate consumers about advertising--hum.

Source: Advertising Age

Shatner, The Priceline Negotiator, meets his demise--advertising style.

For the last 14 years, William Shatner has overacted as the "Priceline Negotiator" in the advertising for the discount travel site.

His character has become a cultural icon and helped elevate recognition of the brand as a discount-price bidding system for hotel bookings.

But now, Priceline wants to focus on a broader strategy beyond negotiated bidding, and that means Shatner's character must go. The brand needs to find a way to shift focus from what it has deeply impeded in consumer's minds, and give people a different reason to care about it.

The first step to brand rejuvenation? The Priceline Negotiator must meet a fiery death--advertising style.

Shatner’s final ads for the company will see him attempt to save vacationers as a bus comes dangerously close to falling from a bridge. Before the end, Shatner continues to attempt to advise customers on how to get reduced prices. “Save yourself –some money,” Shatner says before he meets his apparent end on the bus. The ad is in-character for both The Negotiator, and for Shatner's own acting style known for his over-the-top delivery. The octogenarian (he turned 80 last March) perfected overacting throughout his lengthy career--from his character as Captain Kirk on Star Trek to his portrayal of T.J. Hooker and Denny Crane on Boston Legal. Yep, he knows how to milk a line and steal even the most mundane scene.

But it is just that ability to draw attention to himself that has nesessitated the transformation of Priceline's "The Negotiator" to become yesterday's newspaper as it shifts from a name-your-price model to a fixed-price approach.

Yep, Shatner's Negotiator was just too good at representing the old approach.

“The challenge is harder to get people’s attention than it used to be. … So we decided to do something really over the top to get the message across,” Priceline CEO Christoper Soder told the AP.

All parties have left a Shatner return a viable possibility--perhaps in the same way Jack, the Jack in the Box clown, returned after his own fiery explosion in 1980.

Ah, the magic of Hollywood.

Newsweek is returning to its 1960s design for 'Mad Men' issue

When I was in the advertising world, the concept of the separation of "church and state"--editorial and advertising, was a firm line never to be crossed. But, over the years, and especially with the advent of the Internet, that line has gotten thinner and thinner, and is crossed more and more often.

An example is the announcement that Tina Brown's Newsweek is planning an issue that revives the magazine's design elements of the 1960s, including the ads to mark the March return of the AMC cable TV series "Mad Men."

I'm a big fan of Tina Brown--ever since her days at Vanity Fair, and I wish her the best of luck at reviving Newsweek from the thin shell of a brand that it has become. So, in a way I support the alliance between broadcast advertisers and editorial magazine. And, I suppose times have changed, and consumers are smart enough to view promotion though one lens, and editorial through another.

Newsweek will ask legacy advertisers to revive their ads from the era, and newer brands will be encouraged to produce ads as they might have looked then. "It's analogous to when the NFL has a game and the teams wear their vintage uniforms," said Newsweek Daily Beast President Rob Gregory.

Brown has said she thought of the idea while talking with Matthew Weiner, creator and executive producer of "Mad Men," about ways to treat its season-five premiere on March 25, nearly a year and a half after season four concluded.

"Newsweek was very much on the cultural forefront at the time of the show," Brown said. "It covered the events that are so much of the background for the show's drama -- the burgeoning civil rights movement, the women's rights movement, the Vietnam War. That was Newsweek's cutting-edge beat and its flourishing journalistic subject. So it seemed like a wonderful marriage in a sense to take that and apply it to the magazine, to make the magazine an homage to the period."

The "Mad Men" will include a cover story on the series and a feature on the role of advertising in U.S. culture.

Source: Advertising Age

Is Grandma a Binge Drinker?

"I either don't drink at all, or I drink too much."

It is a classic quote from a confirmed binge drinker--one whose primary intention is to become intoxicated by heavy consumption of alcohol over a short period of time. According to the CDC, more than 38 million Americans binge drink around eight drinks in a sitting, four times per month. But, most people who binge drink are not alcohol dependent or alcoholics.

Binge drinking is usually associated with teens and college-aged kids, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ("CDC") just released a study revealing that adults over 65 years old binge drink more frequently than any other age group.

More young adults, ages 18 to 34 participate in binge drinking than any other age group, but it is the over-65 crowd that binge-drinks most frequently: an average of five to six times each month. The study describes binge drinking as four or more drinks for a woman and five or more drinks for a man.

Binge drinking has also been found among the baby boomers. A study published in "The American Journal of Psychiatry" in 2009 uncovered binge drinking in 22 percent of men and 9 percent of women who were 50 - 64 years old.

"Binge drinking by adults has a huge public health impact, and influences the drinking behavior of underage youth by the example it sets," said Pamela S. Hyde, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administrator, in a statement. "We need to reduce binge drinking by adults to prevent the immediate and long–term effects it has on the health of adults and youth."

According to the CDC, this behavior greatly increases the chances of getting hurt or hurting others due to car crashes, violence, and suicide. Drinking too much, including binge drinking, causes 80,000 deaths in the US each year and, in 2006 cost the economy $223.5 billion. Binge drinking is a problem in all states, even in states with fewer binge drinkers, because they are binging more often and in larger amounts.

So, the next time you see grandma with a beer bong, ask her if she knows what she's doing.

McDonald's and HarperCollins partner to bundle reading books inside Happy Meals

In the U.S., childhood obesity opponents have been pressuring McDonald's to deliver healthier Happy Meals to kids by trying to ban toys inside unhealthy meals.

In the U.K. childhood literacy advocates are manipulating McDonald’s in a different way, by partnering with them to hand out around nine million popular children’s books with its Happy Meals for a month. It is part of a new partnership with publishing house HarperCollins aimed at getting books into the hands of families and to support parents in reading with their children.

From now until early February, McDonald’s will offer its Happy Meals customers copies of the much-loved Mudpuddle Farm series of books by Michael Morpurgo, former children’s laureate and War Horse author.

The announcement follows research released by the National Literacy Trust in December which revealed that almost four million children in Britain – one in three – do not own a book.

Jonathan Douglas, Director of The National Literacy Trust, commented: “Our recent research showed that one in three children in this country don’t own a book, which is extremely concerning as there is a clear link between book ownership and children's future success in life.  We are very supportive of McDonald’s decision to give families access to popular books, as its size and scale will be a huge leap towards encouraging more families to read together.”

Families will be able to take home copies of favourite titles including ‘Mossop’s Last Chance’ and ‘Martians at Mudpuddle Farm’.  Each book comes with a finger puppet to help parents bring the stories to life for their children, and to encourage children of all reading abilities to use their imagination and create their own tales.

Hey HarperCollins, how about rolling out a similar campaign in the U.S.?

Source: National Literacy Trust