New billboards track people’s movements

Posted on May 16, 2016 by Bob Rehak

Michael Balsamo of the Associated Press reported on May 1, 2016, that New York Senator Charles Schumer is calling for a federal investigation into an outdoor advertising company’s latest effort to target billboard ads to specific consumers. Schumer called the Clear Channel Outdoor Americas billboards “spying billboards,” a claim denied by Clear Channel.

Clear Channel, which operates more than 675,000 billboards throughout the world, argues that “spying” is inaccurate. The company insists it only uses anonymous data collected by other companies that certify they are following consumer protection standards. Further, Clear Channel claims it aggregates the data to protect confidentiality.

In a video on its website, Clear Channel says it “measures consumers’ real-world travel patterns and behaviors as they move through their day, analyzing data on direction of travel, billboard viewability, and visits to specific destinations.”

Clear Channel then maps that data against Clear Channel’s displays, allowing advertisers to buy ads in places that “reach specific behavioral audience segments,” says the company.

Clear Channel calls this program RADAR.

Senator Schumer says an investigation is necessary because “most people don’t realize their location data is being mined, even if they agreed to it at some point by accepting the terms of service of an app that later sells their location information.”

My Take

Advertisers have always tried to target consumers as tightly as possible to maximize the efficiency of their ad budgets. Nothing new there!

But it’s not immediately clear how the content of billboards changes based on the group of people meandering through a place like Times Square at any given moment. Nor is it immediately clear how the data is aggregated and how large the aggregations are. Finally, it is not clear whether the company has the ability to dis-aggregate data to track specific individuals. For instance, could the data be used to track the movement of someone through a city? And, in less scrupulous hands, could the technology be used to harvest highly personal information from my phone, such as account numbers, health data, etc.

I personally don’t want a billboard company tracking all of my movements. While I DON”T mind seeing relevant information on billboards, I DO worry about the erosion of personal privacy.

The Importance of Properly Assessing Risk in the Purchase Decision Cycle when Developing and Placing Advertising

Posted on August 8, 2013 by Bob Rehak

The rise and fall of mediums affect the ways people assess risk when purchasing products and services.

I have long believed that the worst advertising any company can have is unhappy customers. It’s very important that companies get their products and services into the hands of people who will have a good experience with them. That requires understanding the types of risk that potential customers face.

Four Types of Risk

People always judge products and services, in part, by the amount of risk that the purchase involves. Risk falls into four categories:

Price risk = “Will this ruin me financially if the product/service doesn’t work?”
Performance risk = “Will this product/service do what I need it to do?”
Social risk = “What will other people think of me because of this decision?”
Self-image risk = “What will I think of myself because of this decision?”

Every purchase decision has a distinctive risk profile. The nature of this profile affects the form, content and placement of communication. The higher the risk, the more important things like trust, credibility, reassurance, warranties, recommendations, reputation, past experience, and relationships become.

Large industrial or business-to-business purchases, such as a new plant or production line, have huge price and performance risks. Therefore, committees often make decisions. Because of this, social and self-image risks escalate as well. Bad recommendations can ruin careers.

Consumer automobile purchases also rank high on each type of risk.

The choice of a medical provider and hospital for coronary artery bypass surgery can have extremely high price and performance risk, but social and self-image risk may be negligible.

A person’s choice of clothes may have high social and self-image risk, but little price or performance risk.

Impulse purchases, such as candy or ice cream, have very little risk of any type. This is why people buy them almost without thinking.

Meeting Customer Expectations

When developing content for an advertisement, copywriters and art directors must properly address the type(s) of risk that the reader will most likely feel. Failure to properly articulate the degrees and types of risk that the reader is feeling will result in objections that torpedo the sale. Worse, it could result in unhappy customers that kill the brand.

Risk assessment affects message placement as well as creative development. Certain mediums are better vehicles for addressing certain types of risks. For instance, addressing performance risk may be easier in television than print because video lends itself to product demonstrations. Likewise, addressing social risk may be easier on the Internet than other mediums because of social networks.

The feedback that the Internet gives companies helps them design products that better meet the needs of users. It also helps them better understand customers and match products with market segments based on risk profiles.

Risk of Not Considering Risk

For advertisers, the risk of not considering risk in message creation and placement is irrelevance, lost sales, and brand vitality.

Viral Communications and the Internet

Posted on July 19, 2013 by Bob Rehak

So, we’ve all heard about viral communications … as with those videos that someone posts on YouTube. Someone sees it, tells their friends, who tell THEIR friends, who tell THEIR friends and so on. It’s kind of like in the days before the Internet when “rumors would spread like wildfire.”

Robert Rehak’s Own Mini-Viral Communication Experience

Two days ago, a lady named Joanne Asala in Chicago who edits CompassRose.org said that she had come across some photographs that I had posted on BobRehak.com. I took them in Chicago’s Uptown Neighborhood back in the mid-1970s and the focus of her blog is the history of that neighborhood.

She asked permission to post two of the photos and refer people to my site to see the rest. I agreed. She posted them late Wednesday night. When I woke up on Thursday morning, traffic on BobRehak.com had spiked. My photo site had received 800 visits by 4 am. Within 24 hours, that number had swelled to more than 8000 and the trend has continued today – with each visitor viewing an average of 13 photos.

The point of talking about this mini-viral episode is not to brag, but to point out how valuable a single link can be. Ms. Asala’s post led to several others on Facebook and as news of my “historical time capsule” (as she called it) spread throughout Chicago, my site received thousands of new visitors and tens of thousands of page views.

Ground Zero for Poverty

At one time, in the 1920s, Uptown had been a summer resort and playground for Chicago’s rich and famous. By the 1970s, the neighborhood had spiraled downward. It was ground zero for poverty. Today, it seems Uptown is lurching toward gentrification again. The photos provide an interesting historical contrast.

Many of the visitors emailed me to say how the portfolio brought back memories of growing up in the area. Some felt misty-eyed. Others wanted to purchase prints. Others wanted to know whether I had pictures of their friends in my archives. Still others emailed me about the locations in the photos and told me what they looked like today. (I now live in Houston, not Chicago.)

Positive Side Effects of Viral Communication

Thanks to Ms. Asala, I was able to meet and network with many people online that I never would have been able to meet in real life. Often I talk about the side effects of communication technology on this blog. This is one side effect that was very positive.

From a marketers point of view, viral communications can be a dream – or nightmare – come true. Which it is depends on the content of the communication being spread. Several weeks ago, I wrote a post about viral communications “gone bad.” It was a review of Steven Wyer’s compelling book about Internet defamation and invasion of privacy. His book is called Violated Online. Happily, this experience was all positive.

Lessons learned

I took three things away from this experience:

Viral communications can improve site traffic exponentially. From an average of 100 visitors a day, traffic on BobRehak.com jumped to 10,000 in a little more than 24 hours. That’s a 100x increase from just one initial link!
Quality content is what keeps viral communication going. Without friends telling their friends, referrals die out.
Perhaps marketers should spend more time improving the quality of their communication and less time carpet bombing the public with insipid ads and commercials that people ignore.

Advocacy Advertising and Political Debate

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Bob Rehak

Let’s talk about advocacy advertising today. You’ve all seen television commercials attempting to swing public opinion. They’re designed to sway Congressional votes on important issues, such as gun control, abortion, trade, energy, health care and more.

Both sides of important issues employ research in these epic struggles. Typically, researchers read a series of one-sentence “sales” propositions to respondents. Respondents rate each proposition on a scale. Researchers then rank the propositions based on their average ratings.

For those producing and targeting commercials, these rankings reveal which arguments work best among groups people are for issues, against them or undecided. So far, so good. When we get to the next step in the process, however, a dark consequence of advocacy advertising begins to emerge.

Solving Health Care Reform in 65 Words?

The average 30-second television commercial contains just 65 words. That’s about four to six sentences depending on their length. Now you understand why so much effort was thrown into research designed to identify compelling sound bites.

Addressing Multidimensional Issues with Single-Minded Discussions

The medium of television advertising forces multidimensional issues into single-minded “discussions.” Each side hurls its sound bites at each other without ever truly addressing each others’ arguments. It feels like the movie Groundhog Day in which Bill Murray replays the same bad dreams over and over again in an endless series of looping nightmares. The usual results:

Political stalemate
Perpetual disagreement

Frustrating Progress

Most advocacy advertising lowers the level of public debate to that of two shrill cockatoos parroting the same soundbites at each other, over and over. We rarely seem to get past the opening volley in the debate.

Progress is the casualty. Frustration is the winner.

Interactive Media Creating a “Pull” Economy

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Bob Rehak

Compared to printed media, online publications offer several powerful draws.

Lower costs of publication
Lower cost of consumption
Interactivity
Choice/variety (an infinite number of channels)

These appeals are causing a far-reaching shift from a “push” to a “pull” information economy. The decline in ad revenues for printed newspapers and magazines is a barometer of this change. People report spending less time with traditional mass media while spending more on interactive media which enables them to find exactly what they want, not only in terms of information, but also in terms of products and services.

People can now find what they want
instead of what someone else wants them to want

As a consequence everything we consume is increasingly customized. A shift to computer-aided manufacturing is creating the ability to mass-customize goods and services. The technology of manufacturing and the technology of communication are converging in a way that allows manufacturers with unique capabilities and consumers with unique desires to find and collaborate with each other.

Push vs. Pull in the Marketplace:
The Changing Balance of Power

As a result, we’re seeing a steady shift in information/goods/services being pulled through the economy by consumers rather than pushed by publishers and manufacturers.

The “push economy” characterized by mass production in the last century anticipated consumer demand. The “pull economy” reacts to it. Small niches of consumers once dismissed by sellers are a growing market force.

You can see this trend in everything from micro-breweries to built-to-order cars and computers, personal publishing, user configurable software, customized clothing and more.

You can hear this trend in everyday language – “me” is replacing “we.” Intellectual freedom is replacing group-think. People still want to identify with groups; they just don’t want to lose their individuality in the process. Interactivity empowers them. It’s no longer about being part of the machine. It’s about controlling the machine.

Anticipating Demand vs. Collaborating with Customers

Marketing today is still about creating products and services that fit into people lives. The shift is from anticipation to collaboration. Instead of trying to guess what the largest number of people want, marketers need to be agile enough to collaborate with customers to create what each wants on demand.

Digital Media and Purchase Decision-Making

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Bob Rehak

So I got into a debate last month with a friend who runs a very successful Internet marketing company. The subject was purchase decision models.

I argued that before people purchase a brand, they must prefer it. And before they prefer it, they must consider it. And before they consider it, they must be aware of it. The entire process is like a leaky funnel. At each step, a certain number of people fall away.

My friend argued that the only things that mattered in his world were finding the right key words, optimizing web content for search engines, obtaining the top spot on page one of search results, and funneling leads to people who could close the sale. Who was right? We both were.

Awareness

There’s no argument that being the first brand people see when they begin to shop is a huge advantage. (It’s called awareness.) Being first in a Google search is like being at eye level on an end-aisle display in a grocery store, or placing your ad on the inside front cover of a magazine. You virtually guarantee people will see you. But that’s no guarantee people will buy you. You have only gained awareness.

Consideration

In most product categories, people consider three to five choices. They compare prices. They assess performance, risk, value, convenience, and many other factors. Finding the right key words for SEO is very similar to finding the right words to put on a package or in a headline. In all cases, you highlight the benefits most important to a specific target audience. The objective is to get on the prospect’s shopping list – to make them consider you. But success at this stage still doesn’t guarantee a sale. Every organization has competition. You still have to become the preferred alternative.

Preference

Becoming the preferred brand among those considered requires the customer to see your brand as the best fit with his or her needs. When prospects use search engines, they are essentially defining their needs. For instance, they may be looking for a “safe compact car under $20,000.” Search engines help sort options the same way that shoe leather and shopping trips do. “Optimizing” the pitch for a specific audience is always necessary to become the preferred choice. Before search engines, the words we used for optimizing were “market segmentation” and “targeting.”

Purchase

What it takes to win a sale varies by industry. In many, it is crucial to funnel leads to sales people. In others…not so much. Regardless, making the sale is always the final objective in the process and the amount of sales will vary relative to success of efforts earlier in the process.

Purchase Decision Process

In retrospect, I think my friend and I were arguing over semantics. I was talking about a general process. He was talking about how a specific tool worked within the context of that process.

The Internet is somewhat different from mass media in that it can simultaneously be a channel for communication, sales and distribution. Regardless, the steps that consumers or businesses go through in deciding which brand to purchase remain basically the same.

The question is not “Is awareness necessary?” The question is “How will we build awareness?” Any business leader who thinks awareness is not necessary in the Internet Age is limiting his/her potential.

The question is not “Can we skip the consideration and preference phases and send prospects straight to sales people or an order button?” If people want to consider several brands, they will. It’s important for companies to provide enough information to enable prospects to evaluate the alternatives.

Even though the technologies of selling change constantly, buyers never do.

Digital media primarily affect the efficiency with which marketers can reach people, present information and take orders.

Erosion of Trust in Information Fosters Polarization in Politics

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Bob Rehak

A familiar thread running through many of these posts is trust. A good friend who is a very successful businessman once told me that “If you don’t have trust, you don’t have a business.” I have come to believe that saying with all my heart and soul. I think every copywriter, reporter and CEO should have it tattooed on his or her navel.

Trust is the currency of communication.

When we don’t trust the information someone is sending us, we don’t trust him, her or them. This merely seeks to divide us. We may win elections or business deals with bad information, but we lose something larger – the relationships upon which long-term success is built.

Recent surveys indicate that the credibility of advertising and media (Pew, Gallup, Neiesen, Lab42 studies) is severely eroding. Both have fallen to about 25 percent. Said another way, three in four people automatically discount what they read, see or hear through the media, whether it’s programming, news, or advertising. By the way, that also is roughly the same percentage of people who falsify information on social media profiles.

How can we restore trust?

A good place to start is over in that far corner of the ring called truth and fairness. If you don’t believe “truth” is obtainable because it is too subjective, then let’s strive for fairness and balance.

I asked several friends, “what would you do to restore trust in the sources of information?” Here are some of the suggestions:

Stop exaggerating to make your point. Yes, exaggeration sometimes gets attention. But it undermines acceptance.
Acknowledge limitations of your information or knowledge.
Be honest, open and fair. Don’t try to twist the facts to make a point. Selective regurgitation is not the way to get the gist of something right.
Don’t withhold information that materially changes the meaning of something.
Support your case with specifics. But don’t misrepresent their meaning to suit your ends. We’ve all seen too many election ads that take quotes out of context to twist the true meaning of what someone said. We’ve all seen too many people waving documents that purport to prove something is true when it is false.
Cite original sources. Do your research. Don’t repeat rumors. And don’t just trust what a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend said. By the time something is filtered through a newspaper reporter who is quoted in a blog which is reposted in a tweet and then distributed in an email rant, the original meaning may have been lost. I had a conversation with my barber before the last election in which he claimed “Obama is a known communist.” Hmmmm. I thought he was a Democrat. So I asked the barber what made him think that. “Somebody wrote a book about it. Everyone knows it.” “What’s the name of the book?” “I can’t remember.” “Well, can you tell me one thing he’s done that is communistic?” No response.
Make it clear what is fact and what is your opinion of the facts.
Acknowledge different sides of an argument and hold all sides to the same standard of truthfulness. Try to illuminate, not obfuscate. Nothing is more frustrating than when someone doesn’t acknowledge your point of view, but keeps spouting sound bites to make his or her point of view. This does nothing to advance the discussion, but leads to isolationism and gridlock.
Don’t repeat falsehoods, even in jest. A surprising number of people get their news these days from “comedy news shows” that blur the distinction between fact and fantasy.
Be suspicious of ad hominem attacks and avoid generalizations. Treat the other side with respect.

Counterfeiting the Currency of Communication

The partisan pursuit of self-interest often gets in the way of these principles. Unfortunately, when people cross these ethical lines, they undermine the trust that binds people together. People begin to trust only those that share their world view. Compromise is victimized. Politics become polarized. Winning arguments by counterfeiting the currency of communication is a prescription for disaster. The government won’t let people counterfeit its currency. Why do so many human beings willingly counterfeit their own?

Impact of TV Commercials on Preschooler Food Preferences

Posted on February 9, 2013 by Bob Rehak

The Journal of the American Dietetic Association published a study from the Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention in January 2001 titled: The 30-second effect: an experiment revealing the impact of television commercials on food preferences of preschoolers.

DL Borzekowski and TN Robinson, the study’s authors, sought to determine whether televised food commercials influence preschool children’s food preferences.

Study Design

They divided 46 2- to 6-year-old preschool children into two groups. One saw a videotape of a popular cartoon with a commercial embedded in it. The control group saw the cartoon, but without the commercial. The children, from a Head Start program in northern California, were then asked to identify their preferences from pairs of similar products, one of which had been advertised in the embedded commercials.

Findings and Implications

They found that children exposed to commercials were significantly more likely to choose the advertised items than children who were not. They concluded that even brief exposures to televised food commercials can influence food preferences within this age group.

Further, the authors advised adults to limit preschooler’s exposure to television advertisements. They also raised a public policy issue – given the epidemic of childhood obesity – about advertising to young children.

My Take

From personal experience, both as a parent and advertising-industry professional, I believe that this age group lacks the cognitive capabilities to differentiate commercials from programming. Thus, they are exceptionally vulnerable at a time when they are forming preferences and habits that could influence the trajectory of their lives.

Hit the pause button for a moment of ethical reflection.

Kids like “fun.” (Don’t we all?) Advertisers know this and so they pack commercials targeted at kids with flashy animation, bright colors, happy music and fantasy characters. These are the tools of the trade. Advertising targeted at adults uses the same tools for the same reasons.

If the products and services being advertised are not harmful, I believe that there is nothing inherently wrong with this. We should also remember that television is a competitive marketplace of ideas. Nothing prevents anyone from using the same tools to encourage consumption of healthy foods like Popeye cartoons once did.

Late in life, I gained a significant amount of weight from eating too much unhealthy food. After nutritional counseling, I began eating virtually nothing but lean meats, vegetables and fruits. I lost eighty pounds, nine inches from my waistline, and feel infinitely better now.

However, a curious thing happened in the process. Much of the food advertising I see on TV now repulses me. What used to make me drool – gooey cheese in pizza commercials, for instance – now makes my stomach turn back-flips. Seriously, it’s such an unpleasant feeling that I must look away from the TV. Someone needs to research this phenomenon to see if a heart healthy diet is the best defense against the seductive pull of advertising for less healthy foods – among children and adults. There could be something happening on a cellular level here. When I was fat and tried to diet, the first two weeks were always the hardest. Every time I saw one of those gooey pizza commercials, it triggered cravings. Now, the opposite happens.

Anncr VO: “And now we return to our regularly scheduled programming.”

How a Mouse Click Can Affect Future Employability

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Bob Rehak

My parents drummed into me the importance of “Buyer beware.” Today’s parents need to teach kids a variation on that phrase, “Browser beware.”

One of my younger employees once told me that he preferred digital media to mass media such as television because he didn’t have to suffer through commercials not targeted to him. However, the technology used to target digital ads can harm people who may not be aware of what’s going on (and he certainly didn’t fall into that group).

In 2011, The Journal of the American Association of Pediatrics published a study called Clinical Report—The Impact of Social Media on Children, Adolescents, and Families. The report by Gwenn Schurgin O’Keeffe, Kathleen Clarke-Pearson and the Council on Communications and Media cataloged both the negative and positive influences that social media can have. The report makes a powerful case for media literacy education.

The authors define social media as any Web site that allows social interaction
These include social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter; gaming sites and virtual worlds such as Second Life; video sites such as YouTube; and blogs.

The authors point out that many social sites gather information on the person using a site and use that information to give advertisers the ability to target “behavioral” ads directly to an individual’s profile. They also discuss how this information can come back to haunt kids later in life:

“When Internet users visit various Web sites, they can leave behind evidence of which sites they have visited. This collective, ongoing record of one’s Web activity is called the “digital footprint.” One of the biggest threats to young people on social media sites is to their digital footprint and future reputations. Preadolescents and adolescents who lack an awareness of privacy issues often post inappropriate messages, pictures, and videos without understanding that “what goes online stays online.” As a result, future jobs and college acceptance may be put into jeopardy by inexperienced and rash clicks of the mouse.”

Browser beware!

Effects of Electronic Media on Children Ages Zero to Six

Posted on January 30, 2013 by Bob Rehak

The Effects of Electronic Media on Children Ages Zero to Six is a comprehensive survey of research stretching back 50 years. It was prepared for the Kaiser Family Foundation by the Center on Media and Child Health, Children’s Hospital Boston in 2005. It explores the history of research about the effects of electronic media on children while their minds are still developing and when they are most vulnerable, i.e., before they fully develop critical thinking skills and become conscious of how media can affect them.

Even the youngest children in the United States use a wide variety of screen media. As the Kaiser Family Foundation notes in its introduction to the study, “Some children’s organizations have expressed concerns about the impact of media on young children; others have touted the educational benefits of certain media products. This issue brief provides a comprehensive overview of the major research that has been conducted over the decades on various aspects of young children’s media use, and also highlights the issues that have not been researched to date.”

Topics examined include:

Health
Aggression
Violence
Pro-social media
School Achievement
Attention and Comprehension
Fear Reactions to Frightening Content
Parental Intervention
Learning
Reality
The Family Environment
Response to Advertising
Computer Use

In regard to advertising, research has shown that children in this age group are unable to understand its persuasive intent. This raises questions about unfair manipulation that could affect a child’s later growth and trajectory in life. For instance, among the studies cited, research showed that:

• The likelihood of obesity among low-income
multi-ethnic preschoolers (aged one to five
years) increased for each hour per day of TV or
video viewed. Children who had TV sets in their
bedrooms (40% of their sample) watched more TV
and were more likely to be obese (Dennison, Erb &
Jenkins, 2002).
• Children (average age of four years) preferred
specific foods advertised on video more than
children who had not seen the foods advertised on
video (Borzekowski & Robinson, 2001).
• Body fat and body mass index increased most
between the ages of four and 11 among children
who watched the most TV (Proctor, Moore, Gao,
Cupples, Bradlee, et al, 2003).

This survey of research concludes with a call for more research in specific areas. One of those is “media interventions.”

“In order to mediate the effects of media on young children, interventions such as media literacy programs and parental education curricula should be designed and evaluated. There have been almost no media literacy programs designed for zero- to six-year-olds. The United States is far behind other countries in this regard; Australia
and the Netherlands begin teaching media literacy in
preschool and continue it through higher education.
Research in older children indicates that media literacy
may be the most effective intervention with which to
counter negative media effects. Media influences on young children are not only strong and pervasive, but also potentially controllable – especially in the early years when parents determine the majority of their children’s media exposure.”

My next post will deal with media literacy programs which these researchers say may be the most effective form of intervention.

Media Impacts

Unintended Consequences

Category Archives: Advertising