Farewell Ernie Harwell

Posted by Andy Boyer in Media May 5, 2010

I was going to put some notes together on the passing of Detroit Tigers Broadcasting legend Ernie Harwell. However, before I had a chance, the North Sound division of AndyBoyer.com but together this list which I’ll forward here:

Was born two years before the radio was invented.
Was a bat boy for the Atlanta Crackers (really) at age five. He never had to buy a ticket for a baseball game since then.
Broadcast games for the Atlanta Crackers but was traded to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1948 for catcher Cliff Dapper becasue Branch Rickey liked Ernie and Brooklyn needed a third guy to substitute for Red Barber who was sick with an ulcer.
Broadcasters were fired often because as the teams’ radio sponsors — mainly beer companies like Strohs, Gunther, Goebel — won contracts, the new sponsor often thought the broadcaster identified too much with the old sponsor.
Vin Scully replaced Ernie Harwell for the Dodgers
In Harwell’s first broadcast for the Tigers in 1960, there was not room for him or his color guy in the Cleveland press box so they had to do the broadcast from a table set up in the upper deck. It was 35 degrees and windy. The 15 inning game lasted almost five hours.
Rick Rizzs did the unthinkable by spending a year as Ernie’s “replacement” in 1992. Bo Schembechler made this decision and resigned a year later. Ernie was broadcasting for Detroit again in 1993.
In 2002 the Cleveland Indians named their visiting radio booth for Harwell
When he retired, he had twice outdone Cal Ripken’s consecutive games streak. He missed two games in his career. One for his brother’s funeral and the other for his Hall of Fame induction.
It’s Harwell’s call of the 1963 World Series you hear in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”
He and his wife Lulu were married for 68 years

Photo borrowed from http://rodgerdodgerowl.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/ernie-harwell/

The Question No One is Asking About the iPad

Posted by Andy Boyer in Big Businesses, Media, Technology April 6, 2010

I’m not writing a review of the iPad. Since I’m not a tech blogger, I’ll leave that to JetCityDigital, Mashable, Jeff Jarvis, and AllThingsD. (And yes, I did put Ron Schott in the same sentence as Walt Mossberg, so remember this post in 10 years people.)

I don’t want to debate if the iPad is a laptop killer, or simply the media companies’ attempt to put us all back in a walled garden. I have a much simpler question.

In every publication I read, articles focus on 10% unemployment, a looming deficit, and the fact that we’re all doomed. So why on earth do we need a laptop that’s not a laptop, or a phone that’s too big to be a phone, or a $500 way to read magazines that still cost $5 per issue to download? The iPad seems like something we should have gotten in 1998, when we all used $100 bills as post-it notes. But in a recession? Who needs to drop that kind of coin on a device that serves a secondary function for all the functions we already have solutions for?

I got the iPod. I got the iPhone. I get Android. I get the iPad in Tokyo or Shanghai. I may even get the iPad in the U.S. in 2 years, or if the content was all free. But I have to admit, I’m not sure how far “shiny” and “new” takes you in 2010 middle America… I’m looking forward to being wrong on this…

Craig Ferguson Unplugged

Posted by Andy Boyer in Media February 24, 2010

What does this have to do with social media? Craig Ferguson, host of the Late Late Show on CBS, has a real conversation with his audience in TV land, without the hyped up studio audience in the way. Interesting 4:00 of TV

New Ad Report – TV $ Down, Social Media $ Up

Posted by Andy Boyer in Advertising, Big Businesses, Marketing, Media, Social Media February 9, 2010

You always have to take these kind of reports with a grain of salt, but Mediapost reports on a new Forrester Research/Association of National Advertisers survey, based on responses from 104 U.S. advertisers in 21 industries, including Cisco Systems, GlaxoSmithKline, ING, Kraft, Marriott, State Farm and Clorox. All told, they represent nearly $14 billion in media budgets.

Here are some highlights from the report, which kind of illustrates how many irrational people there are making marketing decisions:

TV marketers plan to spend 41% of their media budgets on television in 2010 — the same level as a year ago. (However, this is down from the 58% level of two years ago.)
BUT…62% percent of companies say TV ads have become less effective in the past two years due to increased advertising clutter.

So, even though 62% of the marketers admit TV ads are less effective than before, they are going to spend the same amount as last year. Read: “Buying TV is easy, and I like hanging out with ad agency folks on sound stages.”

More insight:

Virtually all advertisers believe the TV industry needs new audience metrics beyond reach and frequency; 82% of respondents would be interested in ratings for individual commercials.
BUT…While 78% are interested in targeting consumers more precisely, only 59% would be willing to pay a premium for it.

So, advertisers admit the TV spot is hard to measure. But no one wants to give up any of their media buy to improve targeting capabilities. Read: “Buying TV is easy, and I can blame the product guys if the ads aren’t working.”

80% of advertisers say future branded entertainment deals will grow. And in 2010, 38% say they will spend more on branded entertainment as an alternative to the 30-second commercial.
19% say the 30-second spot will be dead in 10 years, down from 28% a year ago.

So, advertisers want to move away from 30 second spots and into branded entertainment. But these same people think the 30 second spot will live forever.

Now the good stuff:

Social media, Web advertising and search are stealing budgets from TV and other media. Of those surveyed, 77% said they would be moving TV dollars to social media this year; 73% plan to shift money to online advertising, and 59% will be spending more on search-engine marketing and 46% on e-mail marketing. Other non-TV traditional media doesn’t seem to be part of this trend. Only 15% said they plan to increase spending in traditional media such as radio, outdoor, magazines or newspapers.

Advertisers want targeting (online advertising, email and SEM). They want stronger engagement (Social). And they don’t see much future potential in radio, outdoor, etc… The question is, do they expect lower CPM’s in these channels in comparison to TV? If they want to shift budgets to mediums where they can get a direct measurement of success, why don’t they want to force TV to do a better job of measuring?

There’s an obvious part of this survey that is missing, which illustrates how there’s still a knowledge chasm. No one asked how many of these companies are going to integrate their social and online campaigns with a TV buy. It’s obvious TV is still needed – at least for the largest 104 advertisers – to drive awareness and brand. But it’s not an either/or. These guys have the chance to use the 30 second spot to drive branded entertainment deals online, and capitalize on an engaged social audience. For me, how these 104 companies are going to integrate those campaigns is the really interesting question.

A Few Notes About the Tiger Woods Debacle

Posted by Andy Boyer in Big Businesses, Marketing, Media, Sports December 11, 2009

Yes, I’ve succumbed to the Tiger Woods scandal. I think there are a few items of this story that make it different than the ordinary tabloid affair.

1) The effect this will have on golf: Golfers didn’t become multi-millionaires for consistently finishing 13th until Tiger got to town. A huge percentage of golf fans are simply Tiger fans. Phil vs Tiger is completely different than Phil vs “That other guy.” Sponsors were paying big money for Tiger, which meant TV networks could charge more money to Golf advertisers, which more money was going into the Prize Pool of each tournament. Companies are already having to trim marketing costs. This is a great excuse for companies to pull money out of Golf. If you were the 45th ranked player in the world, you may have found this funny when the story broke, but your check for finishing 13th just got smaller.

2) Why the Tabloid Web sites are crushing the Sports sites: I can’t think of a better example of the power of search driving news consumption. For the reasons listed in Section 1, the sports sites like ESPN.com have been loathe to dig too deeply into the story. There’s a lot of hand waving and things like, “Yeah, Tiger’s in some controversy over there, but let us tell you all about the upcoming Alabama vs Texas game.” ESPN needs this to go away, so they can get back to the business of reporting on Golf and Tiger’s domination in the sport. To the sports sites, Tiger taking time out of competing in Golf is comparable to the New York Yankees deciding to sit out one season. Or having the the entire rosters of both 2009 NBA All-Star teams take a year off to travel the globe. But, ESPN’s decision to pretend it’s not a “big deal” is not fooling anyone. People are just going to their favorite search engine, typing in “Tiger Woods,” and getting the juicy stories from other sources, like TMZ. It’s another example of why in the news aggregation business, we really need to ensure all web sites get a level playing field to broadcast across. You can’t trust news sources if they are in the pockets of the people paying the bills.

3) Seeing the Inside Mechanics of Tiger’s Spin Machine: I don’t know about you, but I’ve been shocked at what seems to be near PR incompetence from Team Tiger. Now, it’s possible that his transgressions are so monumental that cutting them down to 2 porn stars, a pseudo-madame, a reality show wanna-be and a few other random floozies, is actually a big win because they’ve managed to keep the other 90 quiet. If that’s the case, then all of Team Tiger should be ashamed for not reigning him in earlier. It’s also possible that their whole strategy of keeping him away from cameras for the last 10 years was specifically designed because they knew he’s been an eventual PR nightmare ready to explode. But it does seem like all of the companies with money invested in Tiger should have been able to assemble a PR “Dream Team” to handle this better.

4) The Unfortunate Duck and Cover Strategy: With some regard to number 3 above, I think it’s incredibly sad that Team Tiger’s best exit plan is to throw Elin under the bus. According to some web sites, there’s a claim that Elin is demanding, “Your family or your golf.” This would be a convenient excuse for Tiger to disappear to Dubai for 12 months and avoid having to discuss this issue with anyone. The public perception would be that he “loves his family so much,” that he’s giving up golf to make it right by them. The reality would be that the wife would be placed in the position of “Bad Guy” to anyone who watches golf. Plus, sponsors, other golfers, advertisers and golf fans would all be cheated by having a year without the best player in the world. The great thing about team sports, is that no matter what mess you find yourself in, you have an obligation to the rest of your team. Alex Rodriguez couldn’t take a year off. He had to go out every day and get heckled by fans, because he was ONE of 25 New York Yankees. Kobe Bryant was ONE of 12 LA Lakers. Those guys had to stick their pride in their back pockets and still compete against the best athletes in the world. It would be sad if Tiger used the excuse of “My wife doesn’t want me to play” as a way to duck the criticism he deserves.

Those are the thoughts of the top of my head.

Girls in Lingerie = Education?

Posted by Andy Boyer in Marketing, Media August 2, 2009

Ok, this is whay I deserve for watching Fox Soccer Channel on a Saturday evening.

Channel 401 is awesome if you want to see some of the most random commercials from companies who can’t afford stations that receive am actual rating point. But this one takes the cake.

Imagine a young 19 year old girl standing in her lingerie. Starting with some line like, “Guys, don;t you wish you were out of your pajamas right now?” And then she goes on to tell us how important it is to get an education, and since watching soccer on a Saturday night obviously makes us uneducated, we should get an online degree.

You might think they’d spend the 60 seconds talking about a brand we could Google or Bing (heretofore to be simply called “Bingle”) later. But instead they have bought a bunch of urls to test their ad effectiveness, and thus drive the unique url the whole time. So they own http://10connect.com, http://20connect.com, http://30connect.com etc all the way up to 100. (Trust me if you don’t believe me.)

Anyway, I’d love to understand more about this campaign. Do lingerie-clad teenagers really drive signups for online education? Weird.

I Need a Place to get News

Posted by Andy Boyer in Media, Seattle July 6, 2009

Ok, I’m throwing my hands up in the air. We have all these sources for “News” but it feels like everyone is just writing Op-Ed pieces. Is there anyplace where real journalists report real stories, by researching real facts and attaching them to real analysis, all in a single place?

What sent me over the edge, was a snarky blurb on a local Seattle technology pub, which backhandedly complimented Microsoft for “finally” getting a corporate twitter account. If would have been a perfect opporunity for any of the following stories:

How a Fortune 100 decides to build a Twitter Account.
An analysis of Microsoft’s individual business units run their Twitter accounts, and the similarieties and differences between them.
Comparison between other other Fortune 500 companies’ use of Twitter.
A conversation with the major marketing and advertising agencies about how Twitter is affecting brands.
An interview with Starbucks and Alaska Airlines Social Media and or Marketing?PR folks.
How companies are profiting from their twitter campaigns.

Instead, we got a few lines about how Microsoft PR is late to the Twitter game, with absolutely no rationale or arguments about why a corporate Twitter account has to be well thought out, or even a list of the potential risks.

Now, I understand stories like the ones I hoped for require research and interviews that go deeper than gettign an email shot to you, and it’s hard to write them while at the bar watching a sporting event. But where are the journalists who would write stories like this?

So my question: Where are you guys actually getting real news these days? What journalism sources are stimulating your brain more than a John Grisham novel?

The Official End of Time Magazine Being a Credible Source of Information

Posted by Andy Boyer in Media April 28, 2009

It really doesn’t get much worse than this. You know you’ve been hacked, you publicly admit the data is fantastically absurd, and yet you go forward anyway and announce an award.

Time Magazine’s list of Top 100 influential people was released, and TechCrunch brings to everyone’s attention that the list is an absolute farce.

Says Techcrunch:

The hackers of 4Chan have succeeded in completely gaming Time Magazine’s online poll for its Time 100 list of the most influential people on the planet. At the top of the list is Christopher Poole, aka Moot, the founder of the 4Chan online forum, whose members used some coding to get his name to the top of the list. Not only did they help moot win the poll, but they also arranged the next 20 names to spell out “Marblecake, also the game.” Marblecake is a lewd sexual reference, but is also supposedly the name of the chat room where one of 4Chan’s online collective actions, Project Chanology, originated.

So, if a magazine knows it is publishing something inherently inaccurate, and everyone else knows it’s inaccurate, how do you trust anything else it writes?

What Does Oprah on Twitter Mean for Social Media

Posted by Andy Boyer in Big Businesses, Marketing, Media, Social Media April 18, 2009

So this is a time sensitive topic, and I’m already a day late, so this quick stream of consciousness will probably not be very well thought out and hence cause people to vehemently comment about how wrong I am. Oh well.

So Oprah has joined the Twittierverse with the appropriately chosen moniker @oprah. She was basically dragged kicking and screaming into it by Ashton Kutcher on his race with CNN to One Million followers. (BTW, different topic, but you will never hear me say anything negative about Ashton Kutcher. He is very high on my list of business minded entertainers that I hope to meet someday, not for the star power or Hollywood “glow,” but for the business and marketing insights I could learn.)

Now the social media world has fallen into a few camps on this.

– Predictably, there is the camp who feels like their baby is being exploited now that Oprah has gotten involved. These are the same type of people who listened to Pearl Jam at a dive bar in downtown Seattle in 1990 and then got mad when they showed up on David Letterman and sold out Madison Square Garden.

– There’s a camp who thinks Oprah is late to Social Media, and shouldn’t be given any credit at all.

– There’s a group of people who have never heard of Twitter who are about to sign up for accounts just so they can follow Oprah.

– And finally, there’s a bunch of people in mainstream media who are going to be calling the “Social Media Expert” in their city to do a 90 second interview on this “blossoming company called Twitter.”

So here’s my synthesis:

Oprah never has and never will need Social Media. She has the most popular syndicated television program in the history of mankind. Combine all the impressions from the top 100 “social media superstars,” and I bet that number doesn’t even sniff the kind of eyeballs Oprah generates in TV and print. And let’s not even begin to joke about revenue. Take Harpo’s annual revenue in one hand. Start counting up all the revenue generated by Social Media Superstars in the other. And let me know when you get to an even balance.

I work in Social Media, so this may seem like blasphemy, but honestly, Social Media is what you do when you can”t get on Oprah. If I build the world’s first economical and reliable jet pack, and post videos on YouTube of me flying back and forth to work all day, guys like Michael Arrington and Guy Kawaskai are going to cover it. But if I get on Oprah, or even 60 Minutes, I better have an army of telephone operators ready to take orders. It’s a subtle but distinct difference.

Said more succinctly, Social Media is what we do to get NOTICED by Oprah’s producers. It’s not what Oprah needs to do to get noticed by us.

That being said, Oprah, as a teacher and educator, please use proper capitalization on your Twitter page. There’s no reason to join the Twitterverse and then show 50 million kids that the only reason to ever use the “Shift” key on their laptop is to create a smiley face.

So Oprah, welcome to our world here in Social Media-ville. This is what has been created by all of us with lots to say, but nowhere to previously say it. So come hang out for a while, and then remember us fondly when you are in front of your camera, in your studio, talking to 200 million people.

Andy Boyer

Personal Thoughts on Marketing, Sports and Tech

Category Archives: Media