Now this post just to further irk Sir Warren, was
written at the time of the Super Bowl. In principle
these thoughts deal with what happens when a lot
of new companies try to establish their brand
identities all at once.
To PNL's credit, GZ has been very selective about where
he places adds and to what shows he attends since he
realizes there is no point in advertising to people
and companies that aren't part of your target market.
======================================================
Super Bowl Advertising, 2 dots vs 17 coms
Friday, January 28, 2000 7:59 PM ET
According to what I just heard on the news, 17 "dot.coms" are advertising during the
Super Bowl this year. Last year only two advertised.
One- ourbeginning.com- advertising this year had annual revenues of only $1 mil, and
was spending $2.2 mil on their 30 second spot. All the dot.com competing for time
slots have pushed the slot price up to an all time high.
The CEo of this company that only has received 10,000 hits said that this was what
they needed to do to direct traffic to their web site. Let me repeat, direct traffic to their
website. The CEO said his company could easily handle ten times the traffic.
Now all these dot.coms saw what with Monster.com's (450% increase in traffic) last
year, and think the same thing will happen to them. Namely "brand" name recognition
from being placed in front of the eyes of 125 mil viewers watching the Bowl game,
who- in theory- will remember the site name and go to their web sites.
Only rub is that Monster was one of two new brand names. Other brands advertised
were primarily household names like Fed-x, Pepsi, et cetera. Monster's was only one
creative ad to remember. Now instead of two, there are 17 !!.
Two hours after the game, I wager people will only be able to recall two or three, and
those will probably be the ones that they've already heard of because so many are
vying for your attention.
A comparison would be remembering what programs were on the televison on a
specific night when there were three stations as opposed to having cable with 30
stations instead.
More competition for your attention means less attention.
Each and every one of these dot.com thinks that there ad will be clever enough to rise
above the visual orgy. Unfortunately for many this year, it won't
I heard a survey mentioned on the news or NPR during Christmas time, and that report
said that only 15% of these new dot.com ads made any impression during the holiday
season. The ads people seemed to remember when asked to recall were primarily just
those of Amazon, and per Amazon's lay-offs today- you see what good Amazon's ads
did for them.
Probably next year there will be fewer dot.coms running
these ads to these expensive slots after their ads fail to direct the anticipated traffic to
their respective sites. |
