05/09

Day Parting.  One of the interesting developments as the Web matures is day parting.  This is segmenting a day by the nature of the traffic to a web site and selling that segment to advertisers or featuring material appealing to that segment.  It is the same as Prime Time on TV and slotting programs by whether they pull 18-39 year olds or an older demographic. 

Day Parting assumes two things.  1.  Web traffic is large and continuous enough  that it can be segmented.  2.  Distinct human behavior using the Web can be leveraged for the benefit of visitors and advertisers. 

One research study from Minnesota Opinion Research Inc. (MORI) showed consumers look for news in the morning, entertainment in the early evening and shopping at night.  Accordingly, some news sites modify content to match this trend. 

In Belgium some online advertising is split into five time slots:

1.  Breakfast from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. in which beauty, hygiene, transportation and work products and services are featured.

2.  Lunch from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in which there is personal communication, food and information (entertainment).

3.  Afternoon from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. in which the same products as lunch are offered. (Hmmmm).

4.  Dinner from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. in which food, entertainment, sports, hygiene, health, free time and culture products get preference.

5.  Late night until morning when there are entertainment and pleasure-oriented products.

This seems too precise to me, but Belgians must know something I don't. 

Why should PR practitioners care about day-parting?  Because it means stories pitched to Web news venues should be day-parted as well.  There are morning ideas and evening ideas, and they are not the same.  For those still wondering if they should be pitching web editors, know that web editors want ideas.  They ask for them because like anyone else in the information business, they live and die by content.

We didn't use to pay attention to online, but now, we approach some web sites regularly.   They have reach that other media don't have.  I suppose we should be asking how to frame ideas based on time-of-day preferences. 
 

05/08

In political campaigns, money is mother's milk.  It makes no difference that senators, activists and major newspapers inveigh against millions spent to elect candidates to office.  Candidates hunger for money. 

So, it was no surprise the Washington Post reported that the Democratic Party has already found a way around the new McCain-Feingold campaign law, which regulates how candidates can solicit money.   See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22631-2003May6.html. 

It is also no surprise that a presidential candidate, Senator John Edwards, a trial lawyer,  has campaign documents that show a suspicious pattern of donations from low-level employees of law firms -- employees who don't have the money to give and yet, have given $2,000 each.

Public information campaigns are not sufficient to stop the scramble for funds among politicians who want to get elected.  Public relations has no effect, even if PR whips up indignation over money-grubbing, (which it did.)

The money issue has been at the heart of political campaigns since the founding of the country.  The rich are different than you and I.  They can write big checks and gain hearings with politicians we will never get.  It has always been this way and always will be.   There was never a time, to my knowledge, when campaigns were clean and without chicanery.  Well, maybe the first election of George Washington to office, but certainly not the second election.  Abraham Lincoln's nomination in Chicago was notable because delegates were treated to an open bar and were drunk by time it came to vote.

Politics are messy.  PR practitioners who work in political campaigning have the instincts of killers -- anything to bring down the other candidate and get their own elected.  It's a blood sport.  But, it takes money to play the game, and money is at the heart of legal challenges to the McCain-Feingold law as well as end-runs being put into place as I write. 

Wouldn't it be better to recognize the situation for what it is, and go back to the future?  It seems to me the only rule should be for fast reporting of campaign contributions with no limits on amounts contributed.  Public revelation of who is funding a candidate's campaign can do more to regulate campaigns than laws. 

05/07

Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, had gotten great publicity for the service, including a cover story in Fortune magazine, but there was more to success than that.  Jobs realized price points make a difference in the music business.  Almost anyone can afford a 99-cent song from the service.  It hearkens to days when music companies sold 45 RPM vinyl records with the large hole in the center because they were affordable for high school students. 

Song-swapping and CD ripping should have made it clear to music producers that there is a strong interest in individual tunes more than albums, but music companies and artists weren't listening closely.  It was more profitable to make someone pay $16 for a CD, even if he or she wanted only one song on it.  Jobs is taking the industry back to the future with 200,000 individual songs available and more being added regularly.   This episode points to a truth the music industry should have understood but apparently didn't.  If you give customers what they want, they'll buy it and will be tempted less to rip you off, which is what peer-to-peer song swapping does.   That, of course, is marketing 101.

It is hard to believe an entire industry can so lose its way that it takes an outsider to give it directions.  But this isn't the first or last time that has happened.  Other industries are similarly lost and looking for a way out -- think of airlines.  They are so trapped in conceptions of what the business should be that they cannot look closely at what customers want and provide it in a new way.

As PR practitioners, we are often called upon to defend the status quo.  We're not marketers, and we don't have access to reams of marketing data, so we assume those above us know more than we do.  Unfortunately, they don't -- not always anyway.   We should always ask questions about businesses we represent and never back away from hard facts.  Sometimes, the truth in them is what a CEO needs to see.

 

05/06

If what I read yesterday is true, we may have a premier example of stupidity occurring in the U.K.  There, apparently, the Cadbury chocolate company offered to redeem candy wrappers for sports equipment to help schools out.  This is not a new idea for a promotion.  In the U.S., Campbell Soup labels have been collected for decades. 

So what happened?  The British press laid into Cadbury chocolate company for promoting obesity in children.  Yes, you read that right.  It's not as if U.K. children don't eat chocolate.  They do.  But to reward them for eating chocolate, that's a no-no. 

The modern political correctness is as unpleasant and annoying as anything willed to us by our forefathers.  I see it in far too many situations from how we dress, how we talk, how we eat, how we describe people and how we use pronouns.  It's dumb but no one seems brave enough to stand against it.  Perfectly good deeds and words are no longer acceptable because someone has ruled them so. 

You would think Americans would be fed up by this and ignore the censure of self-appointed interest groups.  In fact, that has happened in a few areas.  For a few years, no one would wear furs in public.  Today, women ignore protests and stay warm.  "Take your daughters to work day" has migrated to "Take your sons and daughters to work day," and few are doing it anyway.   Ever try to keep an eye on your child while you are working?  One hint:  They rarely sit quietly at a desk and play with crayons.  I've just learned that I am not supposed to eat farm-raised salmon but, I am ignoring that order -- as are most consumers, as far as I can tell

There will be a backlash against present societal taboos in due course, and new ones will take over that will be just as annoying.  They are not all bad.  It was long past time to wean society from smoking, for example.  But nags who pursue us day-in and day-out are like evil nannies.  We can do without them -- and we should.

 

05/05

Over the weekend, I shook off winter indolence and started long-delayed yard work.  Ten hours later, I discovered I have back and other assorted aching body parts.  But the useful part of doing Spring cleaning was that it reminded me how hard lawn care is for those who do it full-time.  I watch professionals mowing and cleaning yards up and down my street, and they are driven to finish one house and move to the next.  My guess is they finish five or six properties on a Saturday alone and none are small.  After this weekend, I know I wouldn't last a day with the pros.  I'd be dragging after the first hour or two and sitting in the truck after that.

Lawn and yard care is not a complicated a task, but it still requires know-how and muscle.  We tend to forget that every job in society has skill and labor attached to it, and it is easy to overlook contributions of so-called  "little people."  But, as unions pointed out in 1930s protest songs, the wheels of an economy won't turn without "little  people" who know how to build the wheels and set them spinning.  That is why CEO compensation has sparked so much anger.  The ratio used to be 40 to 1 from top the bottom but is closer to 400 to 1 now.  There is a legitimate question whether CEOs are actually worth that when the real work is done largely at the bottom of the hierarchy.

It is dangerous for PR practitioners to be divorce themselves from the lowest-level work, especially in businesses, such as retail, where customer relationships depend on clerks earning about minimum wage.   These are the people who make business go, and they get off nightly with aching feet and backs while we take "spinning" classes to avoid desk-belly.  Never forget that.