SOON ON HULU: AD THAT LETS YOU ORDER PIZZA

Original Story: Money.CNN.com

Just when you thought it couldn't get any easier to order pizza ...

Later this year, the streaming video service Hulu will serve up a Pizza Hut advertisement that allows viewers to order a pizza right within the ad.

The feature combines Pizza Hut's online ordering system with Hulu's interactive advertising system. It's the kind of thing that could become more common as companies take advantage of emerging interactive ad capabilities.

Mike Hopkins, the chief executive of Hulu, promoted the Pizza Hut ad campaign at Hulu's annual presentation for advertisers in New York on Wednesday. He called the ad an "in-stream purchase unit" and said other advertisers could use it to initiate product sales in the future.

Hopkins also promoted the fact that whatever TV show a viewer is watching will resume right after the order -- in this case, for a 3-Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizza or a comparable delicacy -- is placed. Pizza Hut is owned by Yum! (YUM, Fortune 500) Brands.

Hulu, which is owned by the parent companies of ABC, Fox and NBC, includes ads on both its free and paid streaming services. This differentiates it from the ad-free services of two rivals: Netflix (NFLX) and Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) Prime.

Hopkins also promoted other ad innovations, including 360-degree ads for mobile devices. He showed an example for a car company that let a user look up, down and around from the drivers' seat of a car, taking advantage of the accelerometers inside some smart phones.

 Hulu's free service is currently only available on desktop computers, while its subscriber service, Hulu Plus, works on phones, tablets and other devices. But Hulu said it would enable part of its free service on phones this summer.

Hopkins also confirmed what has been widely reported for months: Hulu is in what he called "active discussions" with cable and satellite distributors to "integrate Hulu Plus into their set-top-boxes."

Netflix is also in talks with distributors about making its streaming service available through set-top-boxes, and announced several deals with small distributors last week. To top of page

GM Drops Super Bowl Ads Too

Story first appeared in USA Today.

First General Motors said this week it won't buy ads on Facebook, the big dog of new media, and today GM says it won't buy ads in the upcoming Super Bowl, the tentpole event in old media.

The reasoning was the same: Not worth the money.

GM states that they understand the reach the Super Bowl provides, but with the significant increase in price, they simply can't justify the expense.

CBS is asking for $3.8 million per 30-second ad slot in the Super Bowl, up from NBC's $3.5 million for the last game, according to The  Wall Street Journal.

GM aired Chevy ads and a Cadillac ad in six ad slots in the game this year, plus ads in the pregame show, including ads for Chevy's Sonic and Silverado pickup and Cadillac's new ATS sedan. It also aired the winner of Chevy's Route 66 make-an-ad contest.

An analyst states that it feels premature for GM to make such a big decision regarding Super Bowl, especially since GM will be launching a new line of full-size pickup trucks and full-size SUVs around Super Bowl time. The Super Bowl audience is ideal for those vehicles, and the timing is right.

And results on a car-shopping site showed some bang for the Super Bowl ad bucks this year. In the week after this year's Super Bowl, consideration on Edmunds.com for the Sonic climbed 107%, the third largest shift among vehicles advertised during the big game, behind the Lexus GS350 and the Kia Optima.

Chrysler has advertised in the Super Bowl for the last three years and in the past two used it for big-budget, spots featuring rapper Eminem and actor Clint Eastwood.

The "Imported from Detroit" commercial in 2011 with Eminem is credited with helping to change the image of the Auburn Hills, Mich., automaker. The company's commercial in this year's Super Bowl with Clint Eastwood, while politically controversial, also drew attention to the company's progress.

Ford has not advertised in the last couple of Super Bowls, but has bought time in the pregame show. Ford, however, has aggressively shifted its focus to social media.

GM said earlier this week it stop using paid ads on Facebook, but would continue a major presence with its free pages on the social-network site. Along with its other recent high-profile decision to cut paid advertising on Facebook, GM's new global ad agency Commonwealth is sending the message that there is a new advertising sheriff in town.

Some might even read into this move as a way for GM to cut more costs, boost its share price and make it appealing for the U.S. government to sell its stake in the automaker to allow it to shed its 'Government Motors' moniker".

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Multiple Media To Carry Census Message

USA Today

First, they'll tell you the Census is coming. Then, they'll tell you why filling out and mailing back the forms is a good thing. Finally, if you've ignored the first two, they'll tell you to open your door to Census workers.

Today, the Census Bureau unveils a $133 million national advertising campaign that will debut at 9:15 p.m. ET Sunday during the Golden Globe Awards on NBC.

The money is part of $340 million the government is spending to promote the Census this year, including more than $70 million for ads targeting Hispanic, black, Asian and other ethnic markets.

The campaign chiefly targets the 84% of the U.S. population that consumes English-language media, but ads on billboards, radio and TV and in magazines and newspapers will circulate in 27 other languages.

The first of five TV ads directed by actor/writer Christopher Guest (This is Spinal Tap,Best in Show) showcases Guest's signature style — using dry wit to showcase life's absurdities.

In the first ad airing Sunday, a film director played by Ed Begley Jr. announces with dramatic flourish his latest ambitious project: Creating a portrait of "every man, woman and child in this beautiful country of ours." The ad ends with two people whispering: "Isn't that what the Census is doing?"

The campaign will feature different themes, says Jeff Tarakajian, executive vice president at Draftfcb, the lead ad agency, which is working with subcontractors who specialize in specific ethnic groups.

One theme is "10 questions, 10 minutes" to highlight the ease of filling out the form.

Another ad will have a crowd cheering as someone walks to a mailbox to send in the form.

This spring, when Census workers start knocking on doors of people who did not respond to the mailing, ads will show doors opening on to schools, hospitals and other institutions that get funding based on Census counts.

The Census is used to allocate $435 billion a year in federal money to states and communities. The number of seats each state gets in the House of Representatives is adjusted every 10 years based on the Census, which is used to redraw political districts.

The campaign's goal is to get people to promptly fill out and return their Census forms. Every time the mail-back response rises 1 percentage point, the Census Bureau says, it saves $85 million because it doesn't have to follow up.

Despite the most ambitious outreach in Census history — including websites, blogs and social media such as Facebook and Twitter— several groups worry that not enough is being done to target traditionally hard-to-count groups.

"This kind of project is not the sale of soap or deodorant or fried chicken or hamburger," says Marc Morial, head of the National Urban League and chairman of the Census Advisory Committee. "It's civic engagement."

Retailers Ramp Up Holiday Advertising

Wall Street Journal

Wal-Mart ramped up its holiday push with its "Christmas Wish" 

commercial, above, during the World Series.

Consumers will face an onslaught of elves and jolly snowmen in the coming weeks, as companies such as Target, Wal-Mart StoresKmart and Gap boost their holiday advertising spending beyond last year's levels.

Kmart began its holiday ad blitz 30 to 40 days in advance of when it started in 2008 and says it has increased what it will spend this holiday season, aiming to sway shoppers with the slogan "There's Smart and There's Kmart Smart."

"We are cautiously optimistic," says Mark Snyder, Kmart's chief marketing officer. "Last year the recession hit [the shopper] right between the eyes and she found herself scrambling. This is the year she said, 'I will do things differently,' so she is looking for deals early."

For the first two weeks of October, retailers reached 35% more viewers—their "ad weight" in industry parlance—on national cable and network television than they did in the same period a year ago, according to TNS Media Intelligence, an ad-tracking service owned by WPP.

"We are seeing increases across a large number of retail advertisers," says Jon Swallen, senior vice president of research at TNS. "Clearly they are trying to jump-start" their sales efforts.

Kmart, Wal-Mart and J.C. Penney have more their doubled their ad weight during the first two weeks of October from a year earlier, TNS says, while Home Depot and Lowe's are each up by almost 50%. J.C. Penney, Lowe's and Home Depot declined to comment on their ad spending.

Gap, which operates Old Navy and Banana Republic in addition to its namesake stores, says it will increase its marketing spending by $25 million in the third quarter and by $45 million in the fourth quarter. The namesake Gap brand is also returning to TV commercials, which it hadn't bought for two years.

The increased ad spending by retailers is a reversal. Even before last fall's economic turmoil struck, retailers had been cutting ad budgets. U.S. ad expenditures by retailers fell about 6% in 2008 to $17.2 billion, according to TNS.

But retailers are grabbing for slices of a pie that has shrunk. Holiday-season consumer spending this year is forecast to remain flat, according to both consulting firm Deloitte and research firm Retail Forward, although it's an improvement over the sales plunge in 2008. Deloitte expects holiday sales this year of $810 billion. In 2008, the research company says sales fell 2.4%, the first time sales have fallen since 1967.

Target declined to be specific about its spending plans. It said there is always a seasonal peak in its advertising and marketing during the holidays but that this year it will "exaggerate that trend."

Wal-Mart Stores, one of the few retailers that continued to increase marketing during the downturn, is also spending "significantly" more this holiday on advertising, according to a person familiar with the matter. Wal-Mart declined to comment.

The world's largest retailer by revenue put its holiday push into full gear during last week's broadcast of the World Series by airing a spot called "Christmas Wish." The commercial, crafted by Interpublic Group's Martin agency, featured U.S. servicemen in the desert, stunned as it begins to snow. The scene switches to a little boy visiting a department store Santa to ask him for a present for his dad.

Even companies that are keeping ad spending flat with last year say the consumer will see an uptick in ads nonetheless, because prices for ad time and space across all media have fallen significantly this year, giving them more bang for the buck. Wal-Mart has previously said that it has been benefiting from media price deflation.

Best Buy's chief marketing officer, Barry Judge, says, "there are many low-cost advertising alternatives." Best Buy, whose ads begin Dec. 12, will use its blue-shirted store employees as Christmas carolers in TV ads. featuring such items as electronic chess games. But the electronics retailer's "Twelpforce"—a Twitter-based tech-support service—will also make use of 'tweets" and Facebook for marketing.

While each company will have a different marketing approach, they all have one thing in common: touting value. Consumers have gotten used to the deep discounts stores resorted to during the recession.

"Frugal is the new cool," says Bob Thacker, the senior vice president for advertising and marketing at OfficeMax. "Consumers may see as many Ebenezer Scrooges in ads this year as they see Santa Clauses."

OfficeMax's holiday push begins Tuesday with a plug for "Dazzling Deals" and includes the company's popular holiday gimmick "Elf Yourself," an online stunt that allows consumers to turn themselves or someone else into an animated elf that can then be sent to friends.

Sears is hawking "More Value, More Christmas" in its ads. One commercial, which begins airing this week, features Santa and his reindeer shopping in Sears and using the Sears Research Center to find the best prices on big-screen TVs.

Pushing value is "critical" this year, says Don Hamblen, Sears's chief marketing officer. "Consumers are doing their homework, now more than ever."

Launching Products Without Television?!?
Story from Business Week

For decades it has been axiomatic that companies with new products to unleash on the unsuspecting masses would turn to a tried-and-true medium with enormous reach: TV. Some of the modern era's most iconic products—Winston filter-tip cigarettes, the Ford F-Series pickup, the iPod—achieved liftoff on the tube.

Yet when Procter & Gamble introduced the Oral-B Pulsonic toothbrush last fall, it did so with nary a TV commercial. Now, having made a success of that launch, P&G is doing the same with a loofah-like Old Spice body scrubber and the latest iteration of its Febreze air fresheners. P&G has company. Unilever, Kimberly-Clark, and Microsoft all have recently launched products—or intend to do so in the coming months—without TV.

Of course, TV remains the No. 1 advertising medium in the U.S. and most everywhere else, dwarfing the Web by a factor of 41/2 to 1. But at a time of frugality, many companies are looking for a cheaper alternative. Yes, brands can reach customers easily because TV audiences are so large, but they have to pay for viewers they don't want as well. That's fine for an established product with mass appeal. But for new products or niche brands, it's harder to justify to the bean counters.

So while most companies continue to rely on TV to pitch their biggest brands, they're identifying products that can fly without commercials, chiefly those aimed at the young and Web-savvy. Such people still watch plenty of TV, but they also spend hours on blogs and video sites—where ad rates are far cheaper. And increasingly they research their purchases online.

Last year Microsoft used a TV campaign to advertise Zune Pass, its online music service. As it relaunches the service with an aggressively priced subscription plan, Microsoft is again using 30-second spots, but it's putting them online only. Buying ads on many smaller sites, says Zune global marketing manager Chris Stephenson, allows him to be more precise. He says the campaign, which launched on May 11, is reaching just as many of the young, techie males he's courting as the TV ads did last year—and for half the price. "When you're buying American Idol, or even just MTV, you're buying an enormous amount of wastage," he says.

REACHING "MILLENNIAL MOMS"

When Kimberly-Clark launched its Huggies Pure & Natural line of diapers in April, it aimed to reach "millennial moms," who would be more environmentally conscious. Instead of television, it advertised on mom blogs, where many young mothers research pregnancy, and paired the campaign with ads in prenatal magazines. The company made sure to use an old-fashioned marketing ploy, though, giving bloggers and blog readers free samples of the diapers, the biggest expenditure in the campaign.

Without trusty 30-second TV spots, brands must come up with creative ways to reach customers. To generate buzz for its slim Oral-B Pulsonic toothbrush, aimed at fashion-conscious consumers willing to pay $70 for a toothbrush, P&G sponsored a promotion during New York's Fashion Week last fall. There, at an event called Style 360, it designed a model bathroom where Michael Moloney, the interior designer on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, showed off the brush. The company also worked it into a fashion show featuring pajamas and loungewear (models sashayed down the catwalk, brush in hand). The gimmick paid off, generating press on fashion and style blogs—and in mainstream newspapers. Pulsonic sales exceeded expectations, says P&G.

Ads to Go Leaner, Meaner in '09

As posted by: Wall Street Journal

With U.S. ad spending expected to fall 6.2% to $161.8 billion this year, marketers and ad firms will be forced to do more with less, say advertising gurus.

With U.S. ad spending expected to fall 6.2% this year, more brands are taking aim at their competitors, like Domino's with their new oven-baked sandwiches versus Subway. Courtesy of Domino's.

Evidence that marketers wanted ads to work harder began appearing last year as the economy slipped. Brands such as Microsoft, Burger King, Campbell Soup and Dunkin' Donuts took direct aim at their competitors, a marketing technique deployed more frequently in a downturn. Domino's Pizza is starting 2009 with an aggressive campaign for its Oven Baked Sandwiches that touts results from a taste test claiming consumers prefer its sandwiches to Subway's hoagies.

"Ads have to get combative in bad times," says Nick Brien, chief executive of Interpublic Group's Mediabrands. "It's a dog fight, and it's about getting leaner and meaner."

Industry experts also predict 2009 ad pitches will be less lavish and glamorous. Auto makers' ads will be less prevalent. "Goodbye, A-List spokespeople with unspeakable price tags. Hello, Z-List," says Mark Wnek, chief creative officer of Interpublic's Lowe New York.

Madison Avenue executives say they will deploy a host of other strategies, workarounds and outright gimmicks, from shorter TV commercials to billboards that can see who's looking at them. Here are what ad executives say you will see this year:
Short and Sweet

TV ads will emphasize how a purchase will cost you less, and the message will be communicated in less time. Instead of the usual 30-second spots that consumers are used to seeing, expect advertisers to cut back to 15 and even 10 seconds to save money on their ad buys.

—Tim Spengler, president of Initiative, an Interpublic media-buying firm

Less Glitz

Pricey, glitzy ad production will be rare -- no problem for the YouTube generation that hasn't been impressed by gorgeous camera work. Hello to video, studio backgrounds and direct-response TV, ads that promote 1-800 numbers.

—Mr. Wnek

Ads That Watch You

Face-reading technology is upon us. The ability to recognize whether a person looking at a digital sign is male, female, young, old and their ethnicity is here. It will enhance and better align creative to reach its target, thus enabling advertisers to communicate and connect to their consumer.

—Jack Sullivan, director of out-of-home advertising at Publicis Groupe's Starcom

Ads People...Like

People will, amazingly, see more and more advertising they actually like and seek out. It will mean immersive, long-form Internet experiences like Frito-Lay's hotel626.com or Burger King's whoppervirgins.com because, more and more, TV commercials are simply too easy to avoid (and all too deserving of such treatment).

—Jeff Goodby, co-chairman of Omnicom Group's Goodby, Silverstein & Partners

Ivy League Approval

With their endowment funds shrinking and a sudden need for additional revenue streams, look for hallowed institutions of higher learning to endorse consumer brands next year. Well-respected universities in the U.S. would lend credibility to brands in need like financial institutions and automobile manufacturers.

—Mr. Spengler

Online Tracking

Innovations in location-based services and mobile-phone applications will give consumers more services than Google Maps. People will use Starbucks finders on their cellphones, be able to find friends nearby on Loopt.com, or even search for the nearest toilet at MizPee.com. Local advertisers, such as the neighborhood pizza place, will launch online ad campaigns in 2009 because they can reach customers who are nearby with online ads.

—Tom Bedecarre, chief executive officer of AKQA

Video Explosion

Video will increasingly show up on anything that doesn't move and even some things that do, on cellphones, buses, elevators, fast-food restaurants, billboards and, of course, the Internet. All will be jam-packed with more brands.

—Mr. Spengler

Smart Ads

Out-of-home ads will increasingly be linked to use of cellphones and other Web-enabled mobile gadgets. People's growing ability to gather and store information while out and about is critical and necessary for their purchase decisions, and ads will increasingly cater to new information-gathering behaviors. Expect smart signs that will be able to read your grocery-store loyalty cards to offer better sales deals. Also expect digital signs within retail stores that know your wardrobe (because you will let them know that) and will be able to offer up clothing that will match and complement your existing wardrobe.

—Mr. Sullivan

No Banner Year

Banner ads will be the new junk mail. More and more, reputable companies won't be buying up the space around the Web sites you visit. Clicking these ads will become less and less legitimate as brands will endeavor to do things that add more value to you in the social-media and customer-service space.

—Colleen DeCourcy, chief digital officer at Omnicom's TBWA

Seeing Red

If you were paying attention to the Christmas lights this year, you know red will be the next big color in advertising, taking the throne from orange.

—Mr. Goodby