Friday, March 29, 2024

Goodies to Go ™
November 6, 2000– Newsletter #105

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Goodies to Go ™

November 6, 2000–Newsletter #105

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Please visit http://www.htmlgoodies.com

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Greetings, Weekend Silicon Warriors,


Did you hear…


The music site Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI)
announced the results of its $10,000 hacker invitational.
SDMI says that hackers went two for five, successfully
attacking two of the five elements that the organization
requested hackers attack. Of course, the results are in
dispute (as many results seem to be lately). Researchers at
Rice and Princeton University claim they penetrated four of
the five targets. Either way, SDMI may be claiming victory on
the surface, but this must have scared the living heck out of
them.


Feliz Navidad! A virus dressed up like a cyber-Christmas card
is making the rounds. If you get an e-mail with the attachment
Navidad.exe, don’t open it. In fact, I think it’s about time
to simply not open any attachments. I don’t even open
attachments from people I know. The secretary of our department
where I work was hit with a virus last week that she swears
came from a friend. It’s just too scary these days.


Want to get scanned? C’mon! It’ll be fun! Image Twin Inc., out
of North Carolina, has created a system that will bathe your
body in white light for 12 seconds, making a perfect
“sculpture” of your person. You could then buy clothes online
that would definitely fit, because the computer would use the
body scan (rather than your own decision to attempt to fit
into a 36 in. waist when you’ve been a 40 in since you turned
35). The company hopes to set up fifty of these scanning kiosks
in malls around the country by the end of 2001.


Now onto today’s topic…


Well, the slew of articles pushing e-commerce for the holidays
have begun. My latest issue of Yahoo! Internet Life has a big feature
comparing online stores. And the online news sites are running
the obligatory “why-online-shopping-is-safe” stories.


I’m going to take a different bent.


This semester, I’m holding a class on commercial copywriting.
I’m teaching students how to write commercials. Two days ago,
I gave them their final commercial assignment of the semester.
I make a point of getting the last assignment in early so
there’s a week of downtime before the final.


The assignment was to write a television commercial for the
site MySimon. The commercial would run during prime time, and
would be used to get people to come to MySimon to do their
online shopping this year.


On the surface, it would seem a fairly easy commercial to write.
Come to MySimon, search for the best price, and when you find it,
buy it. We’ll ship it right to your door.


Easy, right?


Well…maybe. There’s an age-old question in the world of
advertising: Can one medium sell itself successfully on
another? We all know that newspaper advertising can aid sales
at a clothing store, or that TV advertising helps sell
hamburgers at Burger King. That makes fairly good sense.
However, can a radio station really increase its listenership
by advertising on TV? Can a TV station up its viewership by
advertising in the newspaper? Can a newspaper increase its
readership by advertising on radio?


Finally, and this is the big question: Can an Internet site
attract new users by advertising on television?


Before you answer with a resounding “Yes,” let’s look at some
facts.


The last Super Bowl gathered 130 million people in front of
their TV sets, and numerous dot-coms blew the bank account with
television ads. Many ran with little or no success. Sorry to
say, the ads were often so good they ran into a bad case of
commercialitis.


“Commercialitis” is a nasty problem in the ad world whereby a
commercial is so entertaining that people remember the
commercial but not the product, or even if they remember the
product, they don’t buy it. According the Entertainment Weekly,
one of the best cases of commercialitis was the famous Wendy’s
“Where’s the Beef” campaign. The whole world was quoting Clara
Peller, but no one went out to buy more hamburgers.


The dot-com commercials were very popular, but very few showed
any marked increase in users after the game.


Here’s a for-instance. We all remember that fantastic sock
puppet dog from…uhhh…ummmm…that online store…oh yeah!
Pets.com.


In case you didn’t know, Pets.com closed its doors effective
November 9, 2000.


The only real standout from the Super Bowl ads was the
Monster.com “When I Grow Up” ad where that one kid delivers
the line, “When I grow up, I want to be forced into early
retirement.”


I have read the reason that commercial stood out and actually
had some success in getting people to the site, was that it
wasn’t a one-time deal; it continued to run well after the
Super Bowl. A company named Angeltips.com, a site dedicated
to connecting investors with entrepreneurs, made the decision
to drop their advertising during the last Super Bowl and go
with a longer run of commercials over the beginning of 2000.
They believed that the one-time shot wasn’t enough.


A short search of the Web can turn up a slew of articles that
discuss why many dot-coms are staying away from TV and are
putting their money into more and more banner ads. The reason?
In studies, more people can recall a specific banner ad than
can recall a specific television ad.


OK, people can recall it. Do they act on it?


After I went on and on, as professors often do, regarding
these issues, one student mentioned that I was forgetting
one of the basic concerns of buying advertising space: the
target audience.


Did the people watching the commercials during the Super
Bowl really want what was being sold? Maybe Monster.com
just hit a large pool of people who were ready to look for
another job, and Wendy’s didn’t hit enough hungry people.


Setting aside the fact that one of advertising’s goals is
to help to create a target audience, OK, let’s run with
that.


This year, almost 80% of those who use the Web will make a
purchase online. The majority of those buying online, 60%,
will be men. Most will be either middle class or upper-middle
class. If projections are correct, people will spend almost
four times as much money this year as they did last year
online. The big sellers will be books, software, and music,
in that order.


It looks to me like the audience is primed and ready to
enter that credit card number.


With all that in mind, I ask my original question: Can a
Web site substantially increase its user traffic through
television advertising? eBay and Amazon.com are ready to go
with huge ad campaigns. Will it help?


It is my opinion it’ll help only with brand loyalty and
brand-name recall. When I’m watching TV, I’m not surfing.
Most people will not get up from their chair, turn off the
TV, and go to the Web just because they saw a commercial
for a site.


If a Web site purchases television ads this year, I believe
the best they can expect is to reinforce their brand in the
minds of those who already shop online. Maybe they’ll get a
few extra people showing up, but I don’t think they’ll get
many. Those who were already considering coming to the site
will probably be more likely to come if they see a lot of
advertising for it.


Is that enough? Is it worth the money? It may be. Keeping
your site in front of potential Web shoppers is important
for brand retention. When’s the last time you saw a
commercial for toothpaste, got up, went out, and bought
toothpaste? In fact, when’s the last time you saw a
commercial and immediately acted upon it? It’s
probably happened, but not too often. What advertisers want
is to set their product firmly in your mind so that when
the time comes for you to buy toothpaste, you will remember
their product.


The big e-commerce sites will advertise because they can,
and they will succeed because they are keeping their name
in front of the target audience that will use the Web this
holiday season.


Will it bring in brand new people? Maybe, but a very small
percentage. That’s my guess.


Don’t tell my class, OK?


That’s that. . Happ-E Holidays.


Joe Burns, Ph.D.


And remember: Was Santa always dressed in red and white?
Nope. Do you know who put him in those colors? Coke. The
Santa we all think of these days was an advertising piece
for a soft drink that wanted to get their brand colors out
there in a subliminal way.


Ho. Ho. Ho.

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