Marty’s Marketing Minutia

The bow-tie brand has come undone.

It looks like Campbell Ewald, Ceco, if you prefer, may have lost the advertising revolution.

For almost a century Campbell-Ewald Company (Ceco) has been the custodian of the Chevrolet brand, the creation and production of all its advertising and the spending of billions of dollars in various media.

For much of this time the Chevy-Ceco partnership set the gold standard in an agency/client business relationship. And there has been some extraordinary advertising along the way.

But the past several years have not been the best for the Chevy brand and its advertising agency.

Recent work, including the most recent and insipid “American Revolution” ad campaign was not revolutionary, but ordinary and tepid, at its best. But in all fairness Ceco had little or nothing to work with.  The cars were not revolutionary, but ordinary and tepid at their best.

Tit for tat. Good cars + good client + good agency = good work.  Zero for 3 does not work.

So when the news hit the media fan Thursday that most of the Chevy account was under review, it was not unexpected. It was surprising that it took so long for the blame to go from Gallows Motors group-think-mentality to the agency.

It was obvious the newest knee-jerk reaction advertising as in “do something, anything fast” advertising featuring Howie whatshisname pitching the newest line of blather in poor comparisons ads was not going to work. If that’s smart, aggressive advertising, it’s difficult to imagine what dumb advertising is or will be?

Word has it the Ceco will retain the retail, product, catalog and website business, which is the equivalent of advertising grunt work. Is 25% of an account worth it? All Chevy brand advertising is up for grabs and possible glory. Ad Age reported Campbell-Ewald will remain the agency of record, but Goofy Motors will “start hearing pitches for select Chevrolet assignments.”

So the once natty bow-tie brand has come untied, my question is can it ever be re-tied?  Time will tell.

Ford Commercial from Argentina

Al Gore, global warming, and other dire predictions of ecological doom and disaster notwithstanding, what if the earth stopped revolving? How would that affect you? This terrible hypothetical was faced by Ford and JWT Argentina in this unique commercial

Click Here for more.

Who was whom last month in social media? And who cares?

If the words Facebook, My Space, Twitter, Tagged and Flckr are not in your marketing lexicon and daily vocabulary some people, especially oh-too-hip media mavens, will consider you a Luddite in the social networking sense.

Loosely defined social networking lets people interact with each other without a personal commitment. Certainly there are proponents for this new-odd-medium, but to many it appears to be a gigantic waste of a person’s time.

It’s a digital phenomenal phenomenon.

According to ClickZ , a source of news and advice for the digital marketer, Facebook now accounts for almost 60 percent of U.S. traffic to social networking sites, having increased its share of audience by 194 percent in September 2009 compared with September 2008.

The once dominant MySpace slumped to just 30 percent of overall visits, less than half of the 67 percent share it enjoyed in 2008.

Twittering appears to be more smoke than substance. The tweeter/Twitter’s meteoric growth increased by a whopping 1170 percent year-on-year, but it still accounts for just 1.8 percent of social networking traffic.

Tagged — whatever that is – received the third-largest amount of visits during September 2009, with around 2 percent, and myYearbook rounded out the top five with around 1 percent.

Time Spent or Time Wasted?

That has to be a contradiction in terminology. Experian-Hitwise, which provided the data, found that users continue to spend more time on MySpace than they do Facebook, despite MySpace’s traffic loss. Users spent an average of 26 minutes versus 23 minutes a month, respectively.

In the 2009 to 2008 comparison MySpace saw a 12 percent fall in the average amount of time spent on its site, compared with Facebook which has experienced 23 percent growth in that period.

The average time spent per user on the Twitter site has also dropped dramatically, falling 56 percent from over 36 minutes in 2008, to just 16 minutes in September 2009. Again, this drop could be attributed to the migration of use from the Twitter site itself to third-party applications which are used by many of the network’s most active users.

Making sense of this information can contribute to mental fatigue.

Can you tell a good car story?

CVMedia (www.cymedia.net) a Michigan company is looking for non-actor-candidates to appear in 30-second commercials to tell an interesting and positive Detroit car company story.  The casting news email stated, “Successful candidates must have a rich family “history” of working for and/or driving Detroit’s “Big Three” cars; Ford, Chrysler and/or GM. Stories must be Michigan-based, compelling and most importantly, positive and heartfelt.”

“To be considered, interested candidates must submit an email to mike@cvmedia.net that includes their name, phone number and story (keeping your response to less than 500 words) by no later than Sunday October 25th. If you have photos that reinforce your story, feel free to submit them along with your response.”

“Finalists will be called by our production team on Monday, October 26th between noon and 1:00 pm. Initial phone interviews will last approximately 5-10 minutes. If you are not available at that time to be interviewed over the phone, please indicate this in your response as an alternative time later that evening may be chosen by our production team. “

“If chosen, you will be invited to come in for a face-to-face interview at our client’s office in Farmington Hills. Those chosen to appear in these locally aired TV commercials will be paid a fee to be determined by our client.”