I recently heard a statistic that 76 percent of consumers don’t trust advertising. Ouch, that’s gotta hurt. This means that your industry’s credibility is only slightly more viable than Hillary’s sinking odds at snagging the Democratic nomination.

Just when you think the direct response industry, or the advertising industry at large, have finally gained some street cred, we get sacked with more FTC complaints against Kevin Trudeau or revelations that Lipitor ads featuring Dr. Robert Jarvik are misleading.

There’s a reason why “Saturday Night Live” has consistently come up with relevant material to ridicule the ad industry…we practically spoon-feed it to them.

All jokes aside, enough is enough! Join ERA and Electronic Retailer at our upcoming events, where you have the power to learn about and change the course of your industry.

April 30, NYC – ERA Legal Series: Practical Knowledge for the New Technology Landscape

The seminar will shed light on the most recent FTC developments and offer practical insights and in-depth legal solutions in the area of emerging technologies, notably behavioral advertising.

April 31, NYC – Electronic Retailer LiveEdit Lab

Discover the fate of paid programming at our Executive Media Summit, followed by a day of relevant sessions geared to keep your business ahead of the game and afloat in times of economic uncertainty.

May 20, Washington, D.C. – ERA Government Affairs Fly-In

Finally, if you truly want to be involved and have your voice heard on behalf of the industry, join with your colleagues as we teach you the legislative issues facing your business. You’ll then be paired into groups with a seasoned lobbyist to meet with your elected representatives in Congress on Capitol Hill to voice your concerns.

It’s your industry; perhaps it’s time to take some ownership.

Pat Cauley, eMedia Editor, Electronic Retailer Magazine

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That is to say, after a 50 plus-year reign of supremacy, has broadcast media begun to slide down a slippery slope to be consigned to history with the telegraph and Morse code? More and more evidence seems to be mounting that broadcast is facing troubled times. First, the market was segmented when cable came of age. The “Big three” were suddenly faced with actual competition and they lost significant numbers of eyeballs. This didn’t do a lot for programming initially, the song “500 Channels and Nothing on” sort of summed up the early cable landscape (with the possible exception of MTV, in the early days). But eventually, the industry found its footing and went the way of the magazine industry with channels dedicated to niche markets—think the History Channel for old men, the Food Network for people who like to eat, the Travel Channel for people who want to see the world without leaving their house, and Animal Planet for people who can sit through six hours of Ron Reagan commentating the riveting action of a dog show.

And while radio has always been a bit of a wild-west environment, the world reacted to the homogenization of content with satellite radio and our friends (soon to be friend) XM and Sirius (maybe Xirius, quick run out and register that URL). Once again we have channels that are designed to appeal to a much narrower demographic based on the inescapable logic that there may not be enough of an audience to make a radio station devoted entirely to the delta blues genre in any one metropolitan area, but if you take all of the people from all of the metropolitan areas in the country and add in the smattering of people in between those places, suddenly you have a potential audience that rivals the legions of Britney Spears fans that used to exist. And Clear Channel had to go running to a judge to make sure its leveraged buyout isn’t plagued by nit picky questions from a lot of bean counting bankers.

So, we see the broadcast universe moving to a model of medium-casting, with content appealing on different channels to smaller groups of people. But where do we go from here? (more…)

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It was the summer of 2003. I had just finished my first year of college down South, returned home to Pittsburgh and landed an internship in the Steelers’ marketing department. Walking into Heinz Field’s corporate offices was like something out of a movie for someone who was born and raised in ‘Steelers Country.’

I remember like it was yesterday sitting down in the boardroom as a manager sat across the long, brown, intimidating table ready to grill me. Forget a suit, I was dressed in old Catholic school gear I had dug out of my closet and forcefully asked my mother to dry clean! That table was all that stood between us. I was expecting the usual litany of dress code rules, vacation allowances, etc., when he caught me off guard and said, “What does marketing mean to you?” It would be two more years before I would even take my first marketing class, and so a stab in the dark was all I had going for me. Throughout the next four months, I learned an insurmountable amount of information about promoting the Steelers brand to better the community and serve the fans.

These early lessons have carried over into my current career, as I watch many of our members and readers engage consumers—rather than fans—to buy and interact with their companies. Fortune recently released a list of the top 20 most admired companies:

1) Apple, 2) Berkshire Hathaway, 3) General Electric, 4) Google, 5) Toyota Motor, 6) Starbucks, 7) FedEx, 8 ) Proctor & Gamble, 9) Johnson & Johnson, 10) Goldman Sachs Group, 11) Target, 12) Southwest Airlines, 13) American Express, 14) BMW tied with Costco Wholesale, 16) Microsoft, 17) United Parcel Service, 18) Cisco Systems, 19) 3M and 20) Nordstrom

These companies obviously all benefit from extraordinary marketing and/or advertising departments. For me, good marketing means taking creative risks. Taking the big chances is sometimes worth it, but sometimes it doesn’t pan out quite as you’d like. Take Cartoon Network’s gaffe last year, for example, when large, electronic light boards featuring characters from its popular “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” giving the middle finger led to bomb scares and the closing of multiple bridges in Boston. How is one supposed to know when a marketing gimmick or promotion has gone too far? How should CEOs react when marketing departments propose such big ideas?

Enjoy the following hilarious clip from CollegeHumor.com that pokes fun at the Cartoon Network scenario.

What does marketing mean to you?

Pat Cauley, eMedia Editor, Electronic Retailer Magazine

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ERA’s eRetailer Summit is off to a great start. We’ve already exceeded last year’s total registrations before the tradeshow floor even opened! Whenever I attend conferences, I always seem to find myself drawn to the education sessions, rather than the tradeshow floor. My instincts proved correct today when I learned more about blogs within an hour than I had learned in the past three months. I’ll begin implementing what I’ve learned moving forward. I hope you check back often as our blog continues to grow and expand in quality and quantity.

Earlier today, I also had the pleasure of eating lunch while listening to a keynote presentation from YouTube’s Brian Cusack. Among many interesting statistics, he addressed the rapidly shifting media consumption habits. It turns out people are spending as much time engaging with online content and videos now as they do watching TV. Don’t believe it? If you’re reading this blog post, you’re part of that statistic.

Since you’re clearly not watching your TV right now, enjoy the following video I came across while checking my email today. It’s definitely not something I want to think about when I board that plane on Wednesday!

How do you think marketers and advertisers will adapt if these viewing habits continue?

Pat Cauley, eMedia editor, Electronic Retailer Magazine

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I was having lunch the other day with ERSP Program Analyst Bob Hilleman and our former ERSP colleague Tessa Barrera. Soon, the conversation turned to the subject of traditional television and print advertising and how these promotional vehicles (though still packing a powerful punch) will soon be considered the advertising models of the past. We discussed how new outlets such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Second Life and Twitter have arisen as new outlets for marketers to explore. Yes, marketers are realizing that as technology advances so must marketing, and these examples are just the tip of the iceberg. However, perhaps looking at why traditional marketing campaigns succeeded can help guide the jump into exploring the new media.

Think back to the advertising campaigns that you remember: M&M’s “Melts in your mouth, not in your hands”; Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef?” and Campbell Soup’s “Mmm…Mmm good.” All catchy taglines tied to successful advertising campaigns that appeal to the consumer’s feelings of trust, quality and security. By building a recognizable brand, the advertising worked to reinforce and create the connection with the consumers by appealing to their emotional sense of quality, fairness and connection. What makes a successful brand and a successful advertisement is that emotional connection. Consumers have to invest themselves into the subject, the character or the product.

More and more, new technology is on the rise. YouTube or Vimeo features short, digestible clips. Twitter issues one-sentence updates. Tumblr is built for short and quick blogging. The focus is on content, quick, constantly updating, but never in-depth. This speed, this bite-size focus is being heralded as the wave of the future, but it doesn’t allow for the building of a brand. It’s focused on tiny bits of information ready now, not to be stored away but to create a temporary quick fix for a need of information. It’s exciting, it’s constantly moving, it’s cutting edge. Yet, it is also, as of now, fairly impersonal. Consumers are there for the speed of changing content, not for the emotional ties to others. Tubmlr is attempting to incorporate those two aspects—building on the social connections of a Facebook, but still on the speed of a Twitter. Yet still, even with the social networking tie-in, the speed of the information has not yet been harnessed to achieve emotional connections. (more…)

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Since its founding 21 years ago, Hawthorne Direct has never been afraid to take chances. The company launched a new website—The Hawthorne Videoactive Report—just a little over a year ago that features a brief daily newscast about interactive, video-based advertising.

I caught up with Scot Wilcox, the Report’s writer and editor, to chat about the site—and its relationship to the parent company. Hawthorne has produced about 220 reports to date, and Wilcox thinks that the project is hitting its stride. “The Videoactive Report is pretty multi-faceted,” he says. “It’s a way to share good information, to test new ideas and to ensure that we stay atop the hot trends. That’s not to say that our agency will offer every single tactic we talk about, but you certainly can’t innovate from an information vacuum.”

The project is the brainchild of DRTV pioneer Tim Hawthorne, a founding member of what is now ERA. According to Wilcox, the Report reflects Hawthorne’s creative and community values: “Tim has been out there networking and sharing his ideas for years. The blogosphere is a particularly efficient medium to continue that process. Plus, we’re doing it in video, the most engaging format there is.”

Although the site includes advertising news, Wilcox explains that “the HVR,” as he calls it, is more of a trends and analysis site. “Don’t forget that we’re first and foremost an advertising agency, not the Associated Press,” he says. “We really don’t worry who’s first with a story. What we care about is how these events impact the agencies doing the work.”

Perhaps the site’s most interesting feature is that Hawthorne Direct views it as a hybrid of sorts: part working content site, part test lab. For the daily videocast, the agency has tested different formats, emphases, production software, studio arrangements and distribution options. The website also provides the agency a vehicle to test layout, optimization, ad creative, media buying and social networking. Wilcox says that from the agency’s perspective, The Videoactive Report will always be something of a work in progress, but viewers should still enjoy it as a time-saver. Deputizing someone else to scour hundreds of resources for the critical content should always be appealing.

Pat Cauley, eMedia editor, Electronic Retailer Magazine

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Earlier today while “Facebooking,” I saw that my friend Savannah had posted a YouTube video on my friend Emily’s wall. The video was a teaser/preview for an upcoming string of new episodes for MTV’s widely popular “The Hills.” Although the show is completely ridiculous, it is a mindless, guilty pleasure nonetheless. I quickly copied the link and placed it into e-mail to shoot out to a few friends, jokingly telling them to mark their calendars for March 24th when the show returns. Although I’m slightly embarrassed, executives at MTV should be thrilled that this viral transgression of its content happened. Moreover, it was my friend’s response to my e-mail that I found most interesting.

“Sorry bro, I can’t tube at work,” Boris said. It was at that moment that I realized ERA’s keynote speaker at the upcoming eRetailer Summit in Miami on Monday had truly made the map. Like its parent Google before it, YouTube has become an action verb! Join me in Miami on Monday to hear YouTube’s Brian Cusack discuss the promises and challenges of video in advertising.

Click on the video if you’d like a peak at the senseless L.A. drama.

Hopefully, I’ll see you in Miami where we can discuss issues that actually matter, involving not only your bottom line, but also your company’s future.

Pat Cauley, eMedia editor, Electronic Retailer Magazine

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Amnesty International “Protect the Human” project has gone to some interesting lengths to promote its cause for human rights. It’s even employed shock tactics to drive traffic to its website. However, one of its recent campaigns pokes fun at the DRTV industry.

As an industry that’s had its battles with credibility, many direct response marketers try hard every day to improve our collective image. This is one of the main reasons ERA (formally NIMA) was founded in the first place!

Does this sort of joke offend you? Or, are you flattered that an international cause would use a faux live shopping segment to promote its agenda?

Pat Cauley, eMedia editor, Electronic Retailer Magazine

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