Hasta La Creative!

This is the hype machine and the the hype machine is deafening.

Chugga, Chugga, Chugga the hype machine goes. That’s the sound of spinning yarns into memes and trends. Social media is the new this. Content is the new that. And so on.

Which is why I find this cold glass of water (or is it sand in the gear box?) from serial entrepreneur Kaila Colbin refreshing.

In the provocatively titled “Can We Please Stop Hyping Social As The Marketing Messiah?” Nathan Safran replaces assumptions with data. During the 2012 holiday season, for example, 34% of retail website visits came from search. 40% were direct. 2% — yes, a mere two percent — were from social.

Another study Safran cites has 15% of respondents always or often turning to social for shopping or product research, while 97% say they always or often turn to search. Search is obviously not the only possible marketing channel out there, but at least if your dogma is that “search is best,” you’ve got some stats supporting you.

I’m not a search marketer. And this post isn’t about search, it’s about our ability to reason and read between the lines. For instance, digital spending reports continue to baffle me. Up and up the spending goes; yet, so-called display ads are the worst of the worst ROI generators.

Can we trust our most trusted media sources today? Hell, can we trust our own media literacy?

Companies are about to spend $17 billion dollars on display ads this year, but only one tenth of one percent of the people who see these display ads will notice, or act. The information fails to justify. Either companies are throwing money down the hype-made drain for no good reason, or display ads work much better than reported.

The post Protect Yourself from Industry Hype – Search Is What People Use When They Intend To Buy appeared first on AdPulp.

Here is an ad for Harvard University, not that Harvard needs ads.

One reason, among many, that Harvard does not needs ads is numbers. The institution has all the numbers on its side. For example, The Atlantic looked at data that shows that 3,000 graduates of Harvard University are worth more than $30 million, and that most of them earned rather than inherited their money.

It’s a stat that sticks out — 3,000 graduates of Harvard University are worth more than $30 million. It’s also proof of how things work in the real world. People who are connected to wealth and privilege have a huge head start on the rest of the field, and frontrunners like to keep their seemingly insurmountable leads.

Is it all that different in advertising, or any other field of endeavor? By doing great work and winning grocery baskets full of awards every year, an agency is able to recruit better talent which propels it forward and ensures its elite status.

Speaking of elite status, the following video has been reappearing in my Facebook feed over the weekend:

The facts of income inequality in America are hard to stomach — 80% of Americans own just seven percent of the nation’s wealth, while the top 20% holds the remainder. The rich, do in fact, get richer.

Which has what to do with our roles as media and/or marketing professionals? We help the rich get richer, mostly for pennies on the dollar. But we also have the opportunity to do more than create wealth for our clients, we can create meaning for their customers. As consultants to big business, we are positioned to help steer not just communications but operations. Some may bristle at this kind of reach, but its not overstepping, it’s looking out for everyone’s best interets.

Another key takeaway for marketers is the fact that eight in ten Americans are far from financially well off. The struggle to earn has to be factored when asking our fellow Americans to buy a car, a new computer, or a bottle of vodka. And when we recognize the struggle for what it is, we know that things like planned obsolescence are morally wrong, and therefore unjustifiable.

The post Wealth Accumulates In Pockets appeared first on AdPulp.

According to BusinessWeek, the type of purchases one makes with a credit card can determine one’s credit score.

The FTC suit against Atlanta-based CompuCredit for allegedly “deceptive” marketing practices offers a rare look inside the opaque business of credit scoring. It reveals a mechanism that consumer advocates and politicians have long suspected exists—one in which purchasing behavior, not just payment history, matters.

The allegations, in part, focus on CompuCredit’s Aspire Visa, a subprime credit card for risky borrowers. The FTC claims that CompuCredit didn’t properly disclose that it monitored spending and cut credit lines if consumers used their cards at certain places. Among them: tire and retreading shops, massage parlors, bars, billiard halls, and marriage counseling offices. “The company touted that cardholders could use their credit cards anywhere,” says J. Reilly Dolan, assistant director for financial practices at the FTC. “What they didn’t say was that you could be punished for specific kinds of purchases.”

Earlier this week Kraft – which makes its namesake cheese singles, Philadelphia cream cheese and Oscar Mayer meats – posted a 13% drop in first- quarter net income amid surging costs for dairy, wheat and other commodities.

According to Dow Jones, food manufacturers like Kraft Foods are blaming ethanol producers for cost increases.

Kraft’s Chief Executive Irene Rosenfeld has been in Washington in recent weeks to talk to key decision makers on the diversion of corn for biofuels. “This was a policy that was well intentioned but has had some unintended consequences that have exacerbated commodity increases in certain parts of the world causing people to go hungry,” she said.

People are going hungry? Or companies aren’t making their numbers and “people” aren’t getting their bonuses? Either way, it’s bad news.

Well run oil, financial services, technology, retail, health care, communications and consumer packaged goods companies are making money.

Here’s Fortune’s list of most profitable companies:

• Exxon/Mobil
• GE
• Chevron
• J.P. Morgan Chase
• Bank of America
• Microsoft
• Berkshire Hathaway
• Wal-Mart
• AT&T
• ConocoPhillips
• Goldman Sachs
• Johnson & Johnson
• IBM
• Procter & Gamble
• Altria Group
• Pfizer
• Wells Fargo
• Cisco Sytems
• Hewlett-Packard
• Intel

If you work on any of these businesses (or another just like them), I hope you too are making a profit.

Gas prices are out of hand and there’s no ceiling in sight. We’ll be looking at $4.00/gallon and up before GWB and his oil men buddies depart Washington next January.

The Washington Post has more…

“On April Fool’s Day, the biggest joke of all is being played on American families by Big Oil,” said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., as his committee began hearing from the oil company executives.

“These companies are defending billions of federal subsidies … while reaping over a hundred billion dollars in profits in just the last year alone,” complained Markey, chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

Regulation? Taxes? NO WAY!

“Our earnings, though high in absolute terms, need to be viewed in the context of the scale and cyclical, long-term nature of our industry as well as the huge investment requirements,” said J.S. Simon, Exxon Mobil’s senior vice president. Last year the oil and gas industry earned 8.3 cents per dollar of sales, only a little higher than the Dow Jones Industrial Average for major industries, he argued in prepared testimony.

Microhoo!

According to Market Watch, Microsoft Corp. offered to buy search-engine operator Yahoo Inc. for $31 a share, or $44.6 billion, in an effort to better compete with online-advertising juggernaut Google Inc.

Microsoft executives acknowledged that Google is the 800-pound gorilla of the search market and said a partnership with Yahoo would create a stronger rival.

“We’re very, very confident that this is the right path for Microsoft and Yahoo,” Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said in a conference call Friday morning.

In an appeal to Yahoo employees, who are nervous about pending layoffs, Microsoft said it would offer significant retention packages to Yahoo engineers, key leaders and employees across all disciplines.

The dark clouds of recession are upon us. People want answers to their quesions. “What’s the Fed going to do about this? Can I sell my house in this market? Will my business fail?”

Business too seeks answers. The Wall Street Journal looks closely at the key retail sector after weak holiday spending.

Chains are slamming the brakes on store openings, cutting back on inventory and girding for leaner times as consumer spending chills. The speed with which sales slowed during the holidays caught even cautious retailers off-guard, prompting a flurry of profit warnings.

And while data on December consumer spending won’t be released until the end of the month, plummeting sales suggest consumers are snapping shut their pocketbooks.

“Financial stress from high energy costs, the fallout from the housing slump and sluggish employment and income growth” will weigh on shoppers, projects Rosalind Wells, chief economist of the National Retail Federation.

So, it’s gloom and doom for the average American shopper and those companies who serve this vast market. A fact which makes this New York Times “Sunday Styles” piece on conspicuous consumption all the more far out.

EXHIBITION and theater are far more important at Harry Cipriani than the taste of the food. Diners go to see who’s there. And they go to prove they can afford to be there. As Frank Bruni wrote in The Times in November, in a review that gave the restaurant a rating of poor, “prices are the point of Harry Cipriani, which exists to affirm its patrons’ ability to throw away money.”