John Tantillo's Winner and Loser of The Week: MTV and The Super Bowl
Winner:
I want to start by saying that from all that I hear, MTV’s new series Skins sounds like another deplorable step down for our culture and yet another blow against civility.
That said, MTV is simply doing what MTV does best—and its viewers want their MTV.
From the beginning, it was obvious that Skins, a dramatized take on teenage life that has been accused of possibly violating child pornography laws, was a show that would offend, alienate adults and make MTV look like a renegade.
That might be death for other networks but what is MTV but a network that built its reputation on offending, alienating adults and looking like a renegade?
Its Target Market, the same demographic depicted in the show, expect this behavior—in fact, to the extent that MTV doesn’t offend and look like a renegade, its brand loses credibility in its audience’s eyes. Think Elvis Presley shaking his hips a little too much on The Ed Sullivan Show. Think The Doors going even farther just a decade later.
MTV will lose sponsors you say? Of course they will (Subway and Schick just dropped out). But assuming this is contained and doesn’t lead to wholesale legal action and other problems, MTV will find other sponsors more in line with the Target Market for this show—and don’t be surprised to see the old sponsors come trotting back if the show succeeds and the outrage dies down.
Again, from what I’ve heard, this show might indeed be a sad testament to how low we have sunk as a society, but in strict brand terms, MTV has done exactly what it needed to do.
You simply don’t get a reputation for going too far unless, occasionally, you go too far. The same rules that apply to an NBC just don’t apply to an MTV.
There’s another element at work here as well: adpublitizing. Or shall we say, showpublitizing or networkpublitzing (now that’s a mouthful). Today, in a fractured media landscape, one way to supplement advertising dollars and gain product/service visibility is by creating a controversy that the media will cover. Usually, this controversy surrounds an advertisement that gets pulled by jittery networks.
But in this case, MTV has used a show with many objectionable qualities to get an ongoing cycle of press at the series launch of the kind that promoters can usually only dream. In the process, it has cemented its brand image with their audience. This is basically a repeat of what it did and still do with Jersey Shore where both onscreen and offscreen scandals generate ongoing attention.
Folks, let the adult world (justifiably) lament this next chapter in the history of our teens, but no one can expect MTV to behave any differently.
Fact is, if history is any guide, today’s scandalous series is tomorrow’s “groundbreaking,” “risk-taking” television. Remember Smothers Brothers?
Loser:
Folks, here we go again and this year I want to get in there a little early:
Super Bowl advertising is a waste of money!
Last week, Anheuser-Busch decided to preview its Super Bowl ads (FedEx has already decided to continue their absence from the big event). Both these facts are evidence that companies are finally beginning to understand that Super Bowl advertising is a monumental waste of money.
Super Bowl ad buys make little sense from a practical advertising point of view because they violate the” law of frequency.” Countless studies have shown that for advertising to work it must be seen by a viewer at least five times with the optimal frequency being ten. The Super Bowl’s prohibitive advertising spot costs make this frequency unlikely.
Why do otherwise savvy marketers, who for the other 364 days of the year believe in the “law of frequency,” suddenly abandon it? There are numerous reasons: the glamour factor, the celebrity factor, the showcasing of the “creatives” at advertising agencies and the hope that a company might just hit some kind of elusive jackpot. But the jackpot never happens.
Moreover, the hope of many advertisers to create a memorable or witty spot that gets replayed in perpetuity on the Internet and thus earns back the huge Super Bowl advertising expense is misguided. Check out the YouTube viewer numbers for some of the most famous and beloved ads and you will see that they are anemic seldom exceeding one million views over four years. Super Bowl ads with an interactive component and contests can offer limited help.
The main hope for Super Bowl advertisers is the concept of adpublitizing. As I discussed with MTV, adpublitizing is the creation of an advertisement for the specific purpose of creating controversy or buzz—both of which will ensure greater viewer frequency by the use of free media publicity (e.g., talk shows covering the controversy and inevitably naming the company and the product).
Fact is, a company’s best bet is to make an ad controversial in a way that doesn’t hurt the company image but causes the ad to be banned. Then the law of frequency kicks in on the publicity side and the Internet re-airing side. But this is an incredibly risky strategy that can easily see a company overshooting the mark and ending up on the wrong side of publicity.
What about Anheuser-Busch’s decision to preview its ads before the game? I believe that the beer company is probably using an approach that intends to increase frequency by way of adpublitizing. But the company is also showing that Super Bowl advertising isn’t really about the advertising, in Anheuser-Busch’s case it might very well be about throwing a kind of appreciation “party” for its distributors who, after all, are the folks that close the sales week after week by getting the product to the shelves.
Overall, a Super Bowl ad buy is simply a waste of money. Thus, it is no mistake that companies like FedEx and General Motors have begun to actively find much more cost-effective alternatives to the big game.
TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY:
Let's salute Jack LaLanne who died this past week! To learn a lot more about brand consistency read The New York Times obituary here.
Editor's Note: Read the next edition of Marketing News Exclusives, Marketing News' e-newsletter, for more about Skins. You can access the article here beginning Feb. 3, and subscribe here to get issues in your inbox.
John Tantillo is an AMA member and president of the Marketing Department of America, a New York-based marketing firm.
http://blog.marketingdoctor.tv/
The opinions expressed in this post are the views of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the American Marketing Association.
