Christmas in October? If you haven’t yet thought about how you’re going to market your business during the holiday season, now’s the time to let us put an advertising package together for you.

Here are just a few ideas.

•Cox Media airs 25 days of Christmas starting on December 1 on ABC Family and you can advertise throughout the entire market (locally or nationally) or even in small market zones if you want to target a small area near your place of business. On November 24 you can advertise on Thanksgiving Live on the Food Network. TNT will air Christmas in Washington and TBS will air A Christmas Story. HGTV will give one lucky person an HGTV Urban Oasis Giveaway and will air behind the scenes coverage. MTV will have Club NYE 2014. If you’re targeting men, there are the bowl games like last year’s BCS Championship on ESPN that achieved a 17.47 household rating. These are just a few examples of holiday programming.
•Usually one or two radio stations in a given market area will turn to 100% holiday music. KOIT-FM in San Francisco has done this in the past. Your business can be a part of that music environment.
•Put together special holiday gift packages of your product and then promote them via email blasts, online, on blogs, on your website and more.
•Be a sponsor and or have a booth space at the La Mesa Christmas in the Village event or other holiday event that makes sense for your product or service.
•Have your own holiday event, or partner with a media source to work with an event they’re already producing. Magazines are good at this.

The bottom line is that now is the time to increase your sales for the year when people are more apt to make purchasing decisions. Popcorn Press & Media can help you make smart decisions that target your chosen audience. You could probably do this yourself, but what I’ve found is when I am given the chance to monitor what client’s are doing on their own, we can usually save money and time that can be used elsewhere.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

A recent Warc.com news article stated that marketers need a “content mindset”.  The basis of the article stated that marketers need to start thinking more like journalists and consider more about content compared to traditional strategies.
The article quoted Steve Rubel, chief content officer at PR Firm Edelman, “Most marketers wrap content inside a marketing message.  Good journalists do the opposite.  We need to think like them, with the reader’s needs ahead of our own creative process.”

Media Audit Report Shows that consumer’s spend 13% of their daily media exposure on email.
The Media Audit found that “13% of a consumer’s typical day exposed to media is spent reading and writing emails.”  The study found that the average time spent reading and writing emails is an hour and 27 minutes per day, which comprises 13.2% of the total daily media exposure.  The time spent on emails ranks highest among the 35 to 44 age group, followed by the 25 to 34 years old, then the 18 to 24 year old group.

It’s no surprise these days that newspapers have been one of the heaviest hit by consumers’ usage of online content to get their news updates.  Subscriptions to newspapers are down nationwide and significant media budgets allocated to newspaper ads in the past have moved to other mediums. So what is the Union Tribune doing to recapture this loss?  Well, a few years ago the paper conducted a major overhaul of the layout of the newspaper with mixed reviews.  It also changed its name to UT San Diego.  One of my former gripes with the paper was that they weren’t willing to negotiate with media buyers even as readers were dropping like proverbial flies.  It appears the downturn has forced them into, finally, getting on board with new media in a way readers and advertisers can respond to.

I recently met with my sales rep for the UT to get updates on their new offerings.

Now, they still have traditional newspaper ads and email lists and they’ve come out with a couple of new magazines, Healthy Living Magazine and Coastal Living Magazine.  That’s not what I’m excited about though.  What I’m excited about is their new UT-TV that airs on Cox Cable channel 114 and AT&T U-Verse channel 17 (and soon to add Time Warner Cable).  The shows also stream live 24/7 on utsandiego.com.

The UT Live streaming demographic is primarily 52 year old adults who are college graduates, are married and own a home and make an annual income of $102,000 a year.  Television ratings are yet to be reported. One of the benefits of advertising on their stations is that if you’re an advertiser that doesn’t have an ad produced, they’ll make an ad for you at no extra charge depending on the number of ads you’re ordering. This will help smaller advertisers get onto television in an affordable way.Their shows are Front Page with Scott & Amber from 6 to 10 a.m. featuring local and national news and entertainment, Wonderland with Noah Tafolla from 10-11 a.m. 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. and 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. covering the history, places and people of San Diego Neighborhoods, The Roger Hedgecock Show from 11 a.m. to Noon and 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., The Sports Page with Acee and Annie from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., Night & Day with Chris Cantore and Michelle Guerin from 2 to 3 p.m., 7 to 8 p.m. and 11p.m. to 12 a.m., Prime Time with Taylor Baldwin from 3 to 6 p.m. covering breaking news stories, and a few other shows on the weekend.

With all the talk about the recent Superbowl ads and what was effective or not, my pick was not a standard :30 or :60 TV ad at all but a Nike Product placement shot of a pair of Nike cleats that literally had me thinking I needed to buy a new pair of Nike shoes until I realized I was being marketed to.  I really, really do need a new pair of sneakers though.

Anyway, I shouted out at the Superbowl party I was at, “nice product placement ” when I realized the marketing brilliance.  I did some research online to confirm my suspicions.  According to brandchannel.com’s January 41, 2013 post about sports brands, The Super Bowl was the end of the first season for a deal between Nike and the NFL.  The famous cleats were Alpha Pro cleat and Vapor Fly glove.  Players also wore Nike apparel but I think the cleats were the star of the show.

So, what other brands have done a good job at product placement?

According to a December 11, 2012, theweek.com article, here is a summery of the ten most famous product placements.

1.  Junior Mints, Seinfeld

Other candy companies were asked for permission to place their product but declined because they didn’t want their product falling into an open chest cavity of a patient.  No money exchanged hands they just gave Seinfeld permission.

2.  Reese’s Pieces, E.T.

Hershey spent $1 million promoting E.T. for the rights to use E.T. in their ads.  They saw a 65% jump in profits only two weeks after the movie premiere.

3.  Ray-Ban, Risky Business

When Tom Cruise sported a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses in Risky Business the brand’s annual sales were only about 18,000.  After the movie, sales grew to 360,000.  Just six years after that, Ray-Ban had sold more than four million pairs of Wayfarers.  Although the sunglasses were sported on Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Bruce Willis in Moonlighting to name a few other placements, it wasn’t until Ray-Ban inked a deal with a product placement company for $50,000 a year that they started seeing results.

4.  Fed-Ex, Cast Away

Fed-Ex didn’t pay to be a part of the movie even though they were all over it.  At first they were reluctant to allow their image and brand to be used.  I bet they’re glad they said yes.

5.  Reebok, Jerry Maguire

This is a story of where product placement went bad.  Reebok paid 1.5 million in merchandise and ads to be a part of the movie.  During the entire movie the brand got disparaged. They were supposed to run a scene at the end to make up for the bashing. Unfortunately, the scene got cut, the movie got slapped with a lawsuit and an out-of-court settlement was reached for an unnamed amount.

6.  White Castle, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle

White Castle didn’t pay a dime to be a part of the movie but they did agree to promote it through collectible cups, radio ads and signage.

7.  Staples, The Office

Staples is The Office’s crew at Dunder-Mifflin’s biggest competitor.  They have a product placement deal with the show.

8.  BMW Z3, GoldenEye

In 1995, James Bond drove a BMW Z3 Roadster in the movie GoldenEye.  The cost, $3 million, but the brand made $240 million in advance sales alone.

9.  Slinky, Etch-A-Sketch, Mr. Potato Head, Toy Story

When Toy Story came out in 1995, the above referenced toys weren’t doing very well but after the movie came out and the products were featured the brand’s sales soared. Etch-A-Sketch saw a 4500 percent increase, Slinky’s received 20,000 orders even though they had stopped production, and Mr. Potato Head’s sales boosted 800 percent.

10.  Nuprin, Doritos, Pepsi, Pizza Hut, Reebok, Wayne’s World

Wayne’s World came out in 1992 and made a parody of product placement but showed all the brands mentioned above in a segment about not bowing down to sponsors.  Effective?  Yes.

What were your business successes or failures this past year?  It’s a great time to re-evaluate what’s working in your business and what’s not working. If you haven’t thought about your advertising for the new year, now’s the time to get that in order as we head into what looks like a more promising year.  Hiring is up and there’s talk that the real estate and home furnishings sectors should gain some ground this year.

What’s trending in Adland?  I thought you’d never ask.

•National ad packages in CBS’s Superbowl XLVII New Orleans are going for $3.7 to $3.8 million and there’s just a handful of packages left, or at least that’s what they’re reporting.  Of course, you can always buy spot market ads like in San Diego for less.  Some of the national advertisers on board are Anheuser-Busch, Audi of America, Cars.com, and Godaddy to name a few.

•Retail Christmas sales have been revised to a 4.5% increase, according to an article in AAF’s Smartbrief January 4, 2013 email.  It is conjectured that the boost in sales was due to deep discounting.

•In the same AAF Smartbrief email, it was reported that the FTC has cleared the way for Google to self promote in adwords campaigns but they must make their campaigns easier to transfer to rival sites.

•According to Warc News, big firms are downbeat about the outlook for European investments.

•With so much focus on digital advertising you’d think that advertisers would be allocating most of their media dollars to digital, however, according to an article in Ad Age’s digital, “How the Real-Time Ad Market Grows from $2 Billion to $9 Billion”, just 10% of most budgets are allocated to digital.  That means the remaining goes to traditional advertising.  The article mentions how that category could grow if more companies took advantage of the new opportunities to order programmatic online ads.  Publishers supply ads to companies with audience, budget and desired outcomes supplying higher quality content and demographics.

SAN DIEGO December 4, 2012 — Popcorn Press & Media has been selected for the 2012 San Diego Award in the Advertising category by the San Diego Award Program.

Each year, the San Diego Award Program identifies companies that we believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and our community. These exceptional companies help make the San Diego area a great place to live, work and play.

Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each category. The 2012 San Diego Award Program focuses on quality, not quantity. Winners are determined based on the information gathered both internally by the San Diego Award Program and data provided by third parties.

About San Diego Award Program

The San Diego Award Program is an annual awards program honoring the achievements and accomplishments of local businesses throughout the San Diego area. Recognition is given to those companies that have shown the ability to use their best practices and implemented programs to generate competitive advantages and long-term value.

The San Diego Award Program was established to recognize the best of local businesses in our community. Our organization works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, professional associations and other business advertising and marketing groups. Our mission is to recognize the small business community’s contributions to the U.S. economy.

The Media Audit Report came out with a survey that revealed beer consumption is making a slow comeback from its peak in 2008.  The report surveyed 80 U.S. cities and found that 5.9% of the respondents consumed beer frequently.  The Audit defines frequent beer consumption as consuming beer on six or more occasions in the past two weeks.

According to the survey, there has been a 5.4% increase in the percent of women who frequently consume beer. Although they still make up just 19.6% of frequent beer drinkers, the number did rise from 18.6% in 2008.  Note, this category may be a niche that can be filled by beer companies who want to take advantage of the increase.  The study showed two mediums that would most likely expose women to beer ads:  Radio and Television.  The survey showed, 23.3% of females who frequently consume beer are heavy radio listeners who spend three or more hours a day listening compared to 18.3% of the general population.  They are also 22% more likely to be heavy TV viewers. They spend five or more hours per day watching TV and represent 26.1% of heavy TV viewers.

Finally, the report found the top frequent female beer drinking populations were in Greensboro, North Carolina (7.2%), Akron, Ohio (5.9%), Boise, Idaho (4.7%), Allentown-Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (4.6%) and Eugene, Oregon (4.3%).

Popcorn Press & Media can create effective, targeted ad placements in radio and television for your beer product. Contact Janene at [email protected].

The Media Audit came out with a report regarding Digital Consumers and their characteristics regarding mobile usage.

They reported that there are five characteristics of this group.

1.  Young and Affluent-40% of US consumers have mobile internet but the number is larger with the young who represent 78% of mobile usage.  This group is between the ages of 18 and 34, and have a household income of $100,000 or more.  A little more than half have no children living at home indicating they may have more disposable income.

2. Upscale-In the same vein, this group is more likely to pay for higher priced items. They are 60% more likely than the rest of the population to earn more than $150,000 in household income.  Also, one in ten plan on purchasing an automobile that costs more than $30,000 in the next 12 months.

3.  Influential-Mobile users are usually influential with others and they engage in social media. They can potentially reach others who are opinion leaders and possibly influence them to try different products or services.  Compared to others, this group is more likely to have a college degree, have influence in business banking decisions and are sought out for financial advice from others. They are also more likely to be Facebook and Twitter users.

4.  Highly Mobile-This group moves around so they may be more elusive and harder to reach than through traditional marketing channels.  Mobile users are generally more likely to be heavy domestic air travelers, and frequent foreign air travelers. They also tend to spend more time driving around in metropolitan areas.

5.  Deal Conscious-Although this group is upscale and affluent, a lot of them shop at discount stores like Walmart and Target, and more than half use coupons. They are also more likely to use “deal-of-the-day” sites like Groupon.

Mobile advertising options are available. A lot of cable systems in the area of your target audience offer packages.  Ask me how can you start a mobile marketing plan in your target area.  [email protected]