Check out this humorous and interesting talk about perceived value and its growing importance in the future.

Trends

Wired Mag editor Chris Anderson was at the Mixx Conference during Advertising Week where encouraged publishers to embrace the freemium model (and buy his book on the topic).

Advertising Age has a 3 minute video summary of his talk.

Trends

The Wall Street Journal’s new mobile app pricing plan asks users to pay a hefty $2 per week fee for the privilege of reading the “paper” on their iPhone or Blackberry. Subscribers to either the online or print editions of the paper pay $1 per week and subscribers to both get the app for free.

Conventional wisdom, if there can be said to be any, in the still-new mobile news market is that you slash your readership by a factor of 10 or more when you charge for mobile content. There are simply too many free options and readers are accustomed to getting their news online for free.

It seems that Murdoch’s goal with this strategy is not to make money from the app but create added value for subscribing to the print and online editions. It’s an interesting approach and consistent with his assertion that news has a real, and very high value.

Trends

MDC Partners, the same holding company that owns Crispin Porter & Bogusky, has invested in social media agency Attention. On the company’s blog, founder Curtis Hougland said they chose to partner with MDC over other potential investors because the company “gets it.”

As vague and cliche as that sounds, there’s some truth in the statement. In Hougland’s words,

“we are at an inflection point in social media, the shift from early adopter to early majority, a horizontal skill set requiring more and more vertical market expertise”

True that, Curt. More and more entrepreneurs will be starting these types companies and investors will be hungry to snap them up. It won’t be that long until kids who grew up with social media their entire lives are helming social media marketing agencies.

Industry News, Trends

Jim Spanfeller, the outgoing CEO of Forbes.com, has written a treatise against the current state of online advertising pricing. His central claim is that remnant advertising doesn’t really exist and online media buyers have pulled one over on publishers.

He compares the online media business to the airline industry:

“The fact that we’re relying on methods developed by an industry that has to date not made any money in the aggregate is scary to say the least.”

It’s a thought provoking read and definitely worth your time.

Read the article

Trends

Over the past few weeks an image has been showing up in all corners of the internet supposedly demonstrating that soda-champ Coca Cola has kept remarkably consistent in its branding over the years while the challenger, Pepsi, has flailed about trying to stay current, retooling their logo any time the design winds change.

The image creates a dramatic effect and its interesting that non-marketing geeks would find it interesting enough to pass it around the way they have. That doesn’t mean it’s accurate however. In fact, the only way to make the story interesting enough was to completely fabricate it. The always on-the-mark site Brand New has a revised version of the graphic along with a comprehensive history lesson on the Coke logo. Both the original graphic and the Brand New graphic are reproduced below.

Trends

Hilarious advertising bingo card from Zach Golden

Trends account-speak, ad, adexec, advertising, bingo, madmen

YouGov, the UK-based international internet research firm, recently published their BrandIndex report which polls thousands of consumers to find out which brands are hot and which are not. Unsurprisingly, advertisers that spend loads of money, especially if they are spending on innovative advertising, captured the largest portion consumers attention in the first half of this year.

Microsoft, Best Buy and KFC have been able to create brand buzz in spite of the critiques levied by scores of industry people. Ford emerged a real winner in the report, generating buzz by denying government bailout money while competitive brands, GM and Chrysler, who took the money suffered.

Industry News, Trends

Subway has put Phelps in new TV advertising created MMB Boston, Ad Age reports.

The sandwich chain had pulled the world’s fastest swimmer from their unfortunately titled FreshBuzz website following the publication of a photo of Phelps take a bong toke. In the camera-phone age fans should probably expect this trend to continue especially amongst younger stars.

Industry News, Trends michael phelps, phelps, subway

I really wish the people satirized on this site weren’t on my radar. But! They are and that makes me happy socialmediadouchebag.net exists, spot on guys!

Trends