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Advertising Week New York City | September 20 to 24 |
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Advertising Week In New York City was held September 20 to 24, 2004 in Manhattan, and was the largest gathering the Advertising Industry ever. Organized by The American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA), the event comprehensively covered each advertising media segment of this 250 billion dollar global business, featuring trade shows, panels and presentations for industry insiders and the general public. |
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Advertising Week showcased nearly 200 events for the industry, and a few show-stopping public events. One of the highlights for the public was watching live advertising icons, in the form of costume characters, parading down the center of Time Square to their creator’s offices on Madison Avenue. |
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In another event, for ten minutes Time Square’s electronic signage showcased many well-known images of advertising icons. Even non-attendees participated as Yahoo.com users voted for America’s Top 5 Favorite Advertising Icons and Slogans. The winners are: |
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America’s Favorite Icons:
America’s Favorite Slogans:
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A nostalgic trip down memory lane was the exhibit at the Museum of Television and Radio, organized by The Leo Burnett Agency’s Archive Department, which presented an overview of the agency’s vision and work over the years. The exhibit displayed the company’s icons, and featured live costumed |
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characters including Tony the Tiger, Ronald McDonald and The Maytag Man. The most touching event for this writer was viewing the McDonald’s advertising over the past 30 years. For those to young to recall, Leo Burnett hired Norman Rockwell to design the artwork for the Kellogg’s Corn Flakes box. My father worked with Mr. Burnett many years ago and remembers that there was always a large bin of apples in the reception area of his office. When, 40 years later, I visited their Starcom IP office in Chicago, there was brilliant bin of bright red apples. I did enjoy an apple but did not then realize it was an old tradition. The Publicis Groupe, which purchased the agency in 2002, really got a slice of all our American childhood memories, not to mention the apples for the pie.
With all of the best of the best being presented during Advertising Week, the underlying theme of this industry was apparent: creating mind share, changing minds and steering the masses to the beat of the corporate drum. The ultimate goal is to sell product, create the perception of need, convince society to prepare for war or peace, and select the flavor of the moment. While one can embellish and expound on these who, what or whys, I will focus on the one key element that fuels the whole locomotive – The Money and the race to get it.
Each industry segment participating in Advertising Week took this opportunity very seriously. The leadership and its caucuses were out in full force to promote their industry segments and advance their causes, taking market share much as an Army Infantry advances its ground. Radio Advertising, Interactive and Online Advertisers, Point-of-Purchase Advertising, Television, Cable Television Advertising, Newspapers, Magazine Publishers, Outdoor and the rest were going all out to impress media spenders and gain recognition with the advertisers.
One thing this writer has witnessed is that there is a leader in the collective minds of all other media segments. Each one is striving to get a bigger piece of the Broadcast Media Advertising Budget pie. Last year Broadcast Media decreased in revenue while all other media segments advanced.
Other media is winning over broadcast television, and there are major changes coming because of new technology that puts more selective choices in viewers hands. With the introduction of DVRs like TiVo, consumers can now choose the show they want and watch it any time, skipping over the commercials. Television is losing part of its audience to The Internet as people spend more time surfing the Web. This means companies need to look at new ways to reach their target market. The question is, will new media be as efficient as old media, and will advertisers be able to afford the cost of getting their message to the consumer.
I paid closest attention to a few key events that looked at the convergence of all mediums: Interactive Advertising World – by The Interactive Advertising Bureau; MediaPost and Media Magazine’s Forecast 2005; the Point of Purchase Advertising International (POPAI) OMA Global awards luncheon; and the 2004 AAAA Creative Conference. (Unfortunately I missed the Advertising Research Foundations’ Cross Media Show Down.)
Interactive Advertising World – by MediaPost and The Interactive Advertising Bureau, kicked off Advertising Week with a full two-day schedule of Key Notes from Jack Trout and Andrew Nibley, panels, workshops and trade show. The panels featured industry elites with demonstrations of interactive creative and all the demographic data that backed up their campaigns. One interesting aspect of watching these panels was gaining a true perspective of the duplicity of the online marketplace, demonstrating the media valuations lines drawn between differences of Brand Building Clients and Direct Response Clients, and the idiocies of a young 9 billion dollar advertising medium seeking its waterline. There was one panel in which Sarah Fay, President of Carat Interactive, presented a world-class online campaign that was created for Adidas and showed all of the interactive and brand building capabilities that the web can offer. On the other hand, Jens Thraenhart, Director of Internet Strategy of Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, explained that he will only pay for online advertising on a per booking revenue share model.
Media Magazine’s Forecast 2005 presented an impressive cross media overview of all major media outlets and was led brilliantly by MediaPost Editor-In-Chief Joe Mandese. Joe posed the key question to the panels: how can we fix this industry and change along with consumers’ new ability to be proactive and selective in viewing commercials, and the fact that this new ability to choose is eroding the advertisers’ ability to get a message to the audience. What is apparent from these panels is that there is uncertainty in the marketplace and each industry segment has a path to grow their own revenue, while taking it away from national and spot television advertising. Media Magazine promises to present the research and findings from Forecast 2005 in their November 2004 issue.
The Media Buzz is “Accountability.” All competing mediums are working overtime pushing their Media Doctors and specialists to come up with new ways to track media results. They need a tangible method to substantiate and prove the value of their media.
One of the most impressive success stories I found during Advertising Week were the strides made in establishing In Store Advertising or the Point Of Purchase Display media segments as a measured media. During the POPAI OMA awards luncheon, research was presented in tracking media, consumer reach and cost to impression accountability that can track lift in sales. They made a compelling presentation on how they will be tracking guaranteed ad impressions, or in POPAI words “track and measure placement of marketing-at-retail advertisements,” with the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). RFID allows for real-time monitoring of uptime and the location of display in store, and web based exception alerts notify the advertiser of problems quickly so a timely correction can be made. How does this work? RFID is technology that uses radio waves to automatically identify people or objects with a microchip. The chip transmits the identification information to computers that can make use of the data.
The industry segment with the best ROI and ability to track sales results will be the winner of the advertising budgets. One prediction I can make for this industry is that time tells all, and I sincerely hope that the cream will rise to the top.
The creators of this event intended it to be a celebration of creativity and the extraordinary contributions advertising has made to popular culture, as well as a forum for industry decision-makers and media trade associations to conduct events. I can say it worked and look forward to next year’s event. I do believe that as a result of Advertising Week the industry will benefit as a whole.
- By
Ken Margolis |
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