Known for being fearlessly risqué, American Apparel has yet again used shock tactics to its advantage. Its latest effort: using nudity to sell clothes. The company has rolled out a banner ad that displays a topless model – boobs, nipples and a tantalizing unzipping of her top.
Of course, American Apparel has attracted attention for some time now, with its open embrace of sex as an integral part of its brand image. "Yes there's shock value to these ads – that's what our advertising strategy is about," explains Ryan Holiday who does online strategy for American Apparel. "We photograph models in a way that's honest – we aren't so constrained by the rules."
The nude ads are currently displayed on only two blogs- Debauchette and Reverse Cowgirl – both of which deal with sex and neither of which have had any advertising on them before. Holiday explains that the company chose the blogs because employees are personal fans of them and because they don't enforce the same restrictions that mainstream publications do. Recently, American Apparel had to switch out an underwear ad on design blog, The Sartorialist, because the site's users complained. The company is also talking to other publishers who might be amenable to running the ads.
The attention the new campaign is attracting online is exactly what American Apparel wants. The brand has worked hard at creating an image for itself that is "soaked in youth and sex". Provocative advertising is their artillery. Their site even has a special section labeled "provocative ads."
"These ads were Dov's idea – it's something he's been wanting to do for a long time," says Holiday. Dov = Dov Charney, the company's controversial founder and CEO, who is known for conducting meetings in his underwear, and even in the nude, and was recently sued for sexual harassment (creating a "hostile" work environment) earlier this month. He was also accused of keeping nude pictures of female employees on his computer, something Holiday was quick to point out was for business reasons -- the employee also happened to be a model for American Apparel.
"I mean you could say its an inopportune time," says Holiday when asked whether rolling out the nude ads at a time when Charney is being sued for nudity in the workplace amongst other things is really the best move. "When you see the way the lawsuit is represented in mainstream media like the Wall Street Journal, they seem not to get what American Apparel is all about. But if you look at the response to the ad from young people there are no negative responses – they're a different generation. You could say there's sort of disconnect between how mainstream media reports on American Apparel and how younger people perceive what the company is doing," he adds.
Is American Apparel worried about a backlash against the new ads? "No because we're very open about sexuality," says Holiday.
What happened to the American Apparel that was about sustainability? Why all the raciness? "Whatever the polls might say -- ethical consumers were a niche. (Charney) wasn't going to sell as many T-shirts as he wanted by targeting a niche; he wanted a generation," writes Rob Walker in the June issue of Fast Company magazine. Charney's way of widening this demographic – sex and youth or making "sexy T-shirts for young people."
But do ads featuring topless ads run the risk of alienating part of American Apparel's user base and narrowing the brand's appeal? Holiday is of the opinion that it won't, because the company is targeting a niche. "These two blogs talk about sex and people who work in the sex industry. The ads let us reach out to an interesting audience, one that is normally ignored."
So American Apparel wants to go mainstream but it's advertising for a niche audience? "We're mainstream in the sense that Obama is mainstream -- we are connecting lots of small groups together into a big audience. We also advertise very heavily on sites like MySpace and Facebook. We did a big campaign on the Sartorial," says Holiday.
The company's ad strategy is about tailoring different advertisements for different demographics. For Reverse Cowgirl and Debauchette, the company actually had a photographer and a model read the content and then design the ads for those blogs in particular. The ad on Debauchette for instance is more provocative than the one on Reverse Cowgirl, reflecting the content of the different sites.
But is there a disconnect between the product itself and the advertising? Much of American Apparel's clothing is basic and simple, with not a hint of suggestiveness. By comparison, their ads are provocative, controversial and steaming hot. When I asked Holiday about this, he explained: "The company's clothes may not be particularly suggestive, but there's no reason why normal can't be sexy. That girl is unbelievably sexy in the ad- she's doing that with vintage clothing. We don't airbrush and we use normal models."
So what comes after the boob and the nipple? Stay tuned. I'm sure Charney won't disappoint.
A causal relationship between fast food ads on TV and obesity rates in children has been established. This according to a study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which revealed that a fast food TV ban for children's programming would reduce obesity rates by 14-18%, with effects being more pronounced for males and younger children.
According to Adage, the National Bureau of Economic Research has described the study as "the largest of its kind to directly tie childhood obesity to fast-food advertising on American television."
"Hopefully, this line of research can lead to a serious discussion about the type of policies that can curb America's obesity epidemic," stated Shin-Yi Chou, one of the study's authors.
The big question of course is whether government intervention should go quite so far as to ban fast food advertising for children's programs, or whether the onus should be on parents. The BBC ran a poll on the issue in 2004 – while the conversation was sharply divided, the majority seemed to think parents, and not advertising, are to blame. Here's a snapshot from the poll of how parents see the issue:
"Anyone who blames TV for their children's' dietary related health problems is just looking for an excuse to shift responsibility away from themselves for their failure to exercise parental control. All the government reviews of advertising in the world won't fix that." Mark, USA
"Personally I think those who want adverts banned are the ones whose children pester them into submission. Banning these adverts would make their lives 'easier' - no pestering children to contend with. Parents appear to be getting lazier and as a consequence their children grow up spoilt and rude. Parents need to wise up and realise that they have to the power to say no and to turn the television off. " Kerry, Ulverston, Cumbria, UK
"What a load of rubbish. Kids get fat (or do we have to say 'obese' now?) because they eat what their parents buy and feed them on. When are parents going to start taking responsibility for their own children's health?" Dave, Doncaster, UK
On the flip side however, exist parents who support the idea:
"The more television our children watch, the more they are bombarded with advertising directed at senseless consumerist behaviour. These days, it seems that our economy is based on an insatiable appetite for personal luxuries. Where else would children learn this culture besides television?" Joey Di Venosa, Montreal, Canada "All non-parental types say they will not let their children watch TV when they have them. Have children and then stay home and care for them 24/7. You'll change your mind about TV. Trust me." Kathy, USA
"Why should there be any advertising during children's programming? They shouldn't be viewed as a lucrative consumer market because it is only 'pest power' that turns the advertising into sales. Admittedly parents should be tougher with their kids and teach them that they can't have everything they want, but some parents don't have the strength to do that and they shouldn't be held to ransom by the advertisers." Steve, Reading, England
Earlier this month, McDonald's rolled out its famous quarter pounder in Japan – but to regular passersby, there was no apparent connection between the smell of burgers and the world's largest fast food chain.
Two of the chain's stores in Tokyo have been remodeled to temporarily strip away any branding – no golden arches, no signature clown, and not even the fast food giant's name. Instead, the décor is minimalist in a way that's in line with Japanese culture. The only two colors to be seen are red and black: sleek black seating, a red and black façade, and a menu that's all in red and black. The temporary stores serve just two burgers - the Quarter Pounder with cheese and the Double Quarter Pounder with cheese - both also packaged in red and black.
McDonald's aim: to offer consumers a blind taste test. "We want consumers to discover great taste and not care about who produced it. Those who think of McDonald's as fast food can just focus on taste and find a premium burger, without prejudice or preconception," said a spokesperson to Creativity Magazine.
What are Digg's policies about offensive comments?
All users have to sign Digg's Terms of Service, which prohibit spam, defamatory comments and hate speech. Users are permanently banned for hate speech. We banned between 20 to 30 users who commented on Fast Company's article. Sometimes if it's a grey area, they try to influence a person's behavior rather than banning them. The problem is that people can easily set up alternate accounts.
Digg is a massive site. How are offensive comments found and policed?
Digg has over 30 million users every month. It gets about 16,000 submissions on any given day, and about 32,000 comments. We have a skeleton team of folks, one to two people on the site answering emails, deleting spam, that sort of stuff. We basically rely on the wisdom of the crowds. People can dig up and down comments. People can report others - internally we call it the jerk report.
What happens when your community is largely skewed towards a particular demographic? Does the wisdom of the crowds still hold?
The crowd based community management is always imperfect. We've tried to give the community as many tools to do this. Digg does skew younger, it does skew male, it does skew early adopter. But it's tough to characterize Digg as a monolithic community - there are pockets that are sexist racist, homophobic - certainly. There are trolls and people might see over indexing of these folks. But equally there's the other side of the coin.
Digg has seen a broadening of its demographic since its inception. The site has also experienced an expansion of interest into the arenas of politics, business and the environment. Digg represents the growth of the internet -- different thoughts and ideas. There are different micro-communities following different information. We've seen that there's serious stuff and funny stuff. The comments around different issues represent what these issues are about.
Are sexist comments defined as hate speech?
They are evaluated on a case by case basis. Sexism in general is a cultural grey area. We have to ask ourselves -- is this using the First Amendment right to be offensive yet not crossing the line to become true bannable offense.
Kevin Rose says that he wants the site to be a useful source of information. Is there a discrepancy between the culture of the site as it exists, and what the staff and Digg want it to be?
There are micro ecosystems of snarky behavior on Digg. But nobody in the Digg office would be like yeah that's awesome. I don't think I'd describe the culture of Digg as sexist. But there's the whole question of troll management -- how do you manage this as you grow? There are pockets of groups that behave really badly and the anonymity of internet creates an acrimonious culture. The question is what is our philosophy of community management? Are we hands on or hands off? The front page of Digg represents what people want to vote up - how much personality should we impose?
Does Digg plan to expand its community moderation team?
We're always looking into new tools to help community policing team -- like automating components of it. You need to both the human and the automated elements.
What are the site's plans for the near future?
We want to create more experiences outside the homepage that makes the site more relevant to particular people- so it's not just a one size fits all homepage of 35 million users but is based on what information you're digging.
Fast Company's Women in Web 2.0 article caused a minor uproar in the Digg community when I called out several commenters who posted comments that I, and many of the women I interviewed for the piece, found overtly sexist and/or offensive. As the conversation – if you can call it that – spiraled, a couple of prominent themes emerged amongst the community's accusations.
The first: Writing an article highlighting the accomplishment of women in web 2.0 is inherently sexist, and hence any sexist comments in response are justified.
Women have far less power than men in almost every aspect of society, and especially in Silicon Valley. Highlighting the accomplishments of those few who have broken through is instructive and, for many of us, inspiring. Obama is celebrated as being the country's first black president, Eileen Collins is recognized as the first woman to command the Space Shuttle. Calling any of this sexist or racist is grasping at straws.
The second major sentiment: "Welcome to Digg. I suggest you relax and don't take the comments so seriously."
Here’s the thought behind this one: Apparently calling people out on Digg for making sexist comments is naïve and uninformed. “Fast Company put up photographs of these women – what else did you expect?”
Talking down to people is part of Digg's "culture"—or at least it is for a subset of the community who make "jokes" at the expense of those they don’t know, who twist references to pop culture to distort reputations, who basically bend over backwards to run other people into the ground. It's okay to be offensive, these folks say, because it's on Digg. Yeah, right. Kevin Rose and his team apparently don’t think so. They banned 20-30 users for hate speech made in response to Fast Company’s article.
"If you're offended, you don't get the joke. The people spouting these racist, sexist comments (most of them) do NOT believe them."
Would anyone get away with calling Oprah Winfrey, Obama or Michael Jordan the N-word in real-life? Even if they claim they're just doing it to be "funny" but don't actually believe it? Nope. Why? Because it's offensive to all African-Americans.
Sexism isn’t always attacked with the same gravity as racism. That’s because so many men don’t think it’s an issue that deserves their attention. They’re wrong. Such behavior that goes unchecked--or worse still, is condoned--leads to a pattern that reinforces negative stereotypes.
The true Digg community includes lots of people who participate to learn what others online are up to. It's an influential community and an important navigation tool. It has 35 million users a month. Using a site like that to call women names and treat them like sex objects compounds is just compounding a much larger problem—and the repercussions won’t end on one site.
There was a time when it was deemed okay that women didn't have the right to vote. It was okay that they weren't allowed to be doctors or lawyers or politicians. It was okay that they couldn't drive. It was okay that they didn’t go to school. While lots has changed, there's much that hasn't. An equitable balance is never going to be struck so long as the online community, men and women alike, continues to turn a blind eye to the “humor” and slurs that users on some message boards sling about -- under the shield of anonymity of course.
For an interview with Digg's Marketing Director, Beth Murphy, about the site's culture, policies and plans for the future click here.
It's been one week since the country elected its first black president. All eyes are on America. Words like hope, change and forward thinking are being bandied about like never before. The US is a developed country right? Obama in office is proof of just how developed right? America can once again settle comfortably back into its undisputed position as world leader yes? After all, the nation sets an example for the rest of the world, particularly countries in which equal rights are not yet affirmed. Right?
Wrong. Racism may be off the map for now, but the US, just like everywhere else in the world has a long way to go. For one thing, the country is still rife with sexism.
I come from a developing country and have grown up watching women unquestioningly take a back seat to men. For years I've heard stories of women being beaten by their husbands, female fetuses being aborted or worse yet female babies being killed, widows being forced to burn themselves on the funeral pyres of their dead husbands, acid being thrown at women by rejected suitors, exorbitant dowry demands compelling young girls' families to sell everything but the clothes on their backs. Coming from a big city, I've never encountered any of this myself, but knowing that I lived in a country in which thousands of others did was sobering.
Then I came here. I went to school at the nation's oldest women's college, Mount Holyoke. I saw a breed of woman I had never seen before -- tough, intelligent, determined and passionate. And as I looked at this country through the eyes of an immigrant, I saw a world of possibility that defied barriers of age, race, caste and especially sex that I had grown up hearing about. Sexism, it seemed, had faded into a very distant shadow from the past. But college ended, I moved on, and I eventually meandered into the untrammeled world that is the Web. The walls came down, the masks came on and the politically correct BS I had so willingly bought into dissipated into thin air.
Yesterday, an article I wrote on the most influential women in web 2.0 went up on FastCompany.com. The comments it elicited on Digg were unprecedented. (Update: Digg's founder Kevin Rose emailed me after I posted this blog to say that his team is in the process of deleting any comments on this article that violate the site's terms of use. So the comments I highlighted may not all still appear.) A few applauded the list, a few critiqued it and offered others they thought should have been featured, but the overwhelming majority went like this:
seantubridy Do her... Wouldn't do her... Wouldn't do her... Do her... Do her... Wouldn't do her... Wouldn't do her... Ugh, who hasn't done her? Wouldn't do her... Do her... Argghh!
Humdain "Do her, do her, Oh who hasn't done her, do her, lose the pigtails and we'll talk"
What is it about the online space that brings out not only the best, but the absolute worst in people? Where are all these people in real life? Do they just never leave their holes, I mean homes? Or are they people I run into all the time -- at work, on the subway, at a bar downtown or at Starbucks?
The first thought that comes to mind whenever I run into ugliness like this is the New Yorker cartoon: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." The comfortable anonymity offered by the Web allows people, in this case men, to say whatever it is they actually think deep down. And their feelings are incontrovertibly sexist. These are the same people we all run into in real life. But in the offline world, like the Ku Klux Klan when their masks are put away, it's hard to tell who's who. Men offline would never dare claim ownership to the ludicrous statements they so freely spout on the Web.
Where do these feelings stem from? Is it bitterness, callousness, loneliness, boredom, resentment or a genuine belief that women are inadequate? Digg is an Internet forum so perhaps this isn't all that serious. But then again, it's THE Internet forum and it's a fairly good indication of what people are thinking.
Admittedly, the list FastCompany.com came up with is not perfect. The word "influential" like other adjectives is subjective. We anticipated disagreement and disgruntlement. We expected some names to be disputed, and others to be offered up. Sheryl Sandberg, Charlene Li, Susan Mernit, Tara Hunt, Angie Chang, Jane Hu, Mary Hodder, Anastasia Goodstein and Allyson Kapin are just some of the names we considered for the list and eventually rejected -- not because they aren't important or influential, but because they didn't fit the very specific criteria we had decided upon for the purposes of this list.
To clarify, as the introduction to the piece clearly states, "our list wasn't chosen by star power, nor by career altitude." Rather, we judged each candidate on a single criterion: has she definitively changed the way we interact online? Some of these women gave us new tools to speak to one another. Others put those tools in more people’s hands. Still others are thought leaders, attempting to simplify and enhance how we interact online. We offered you these names knowing our list would spark debate.
When I initially decided to look into doing a piece on women in the world of Web 2.0, I talked to several people in my quest for an angle. One recurring theme that emerged was how hard it is for women to make it in Web 2.0.
"It's a heck of an interesting proposition to raise money from angel investors. You have to bring a guy with you whether it's a 16 yr old you saw on the street or your grandfather. It's sad but true," said Dina Kaplan of blip.tv when I asked her about how women were progressing in her field.
"There are definitely some women who have emerged like Gina Bianchini from Ning. But the blogosphere is where you hear so much about web 2.0 and it is very male dominated. There's still a lot of sexism there. There are perceptions and stereotypes and roles we play into. I'm thinking about Sarah Lacey being targeted at South by Southwest and Cathy Sierra being targeted for no other reason that I can think of except her gender. They attacked her and bullied her. I don't know why it's so hard for women to gain visibility in this space," said Anastasia Goodstein who writes YPulse, a blog about youth marketing to teens and tweens.
"There are so many women pioneers in this field, but the press doesn't cover them. Tech reporters at the New York Times and the Washington Post tend to cover the same handful of men they view as pioneers instead of looking outside the box," said Allyson Kapin, the founder and organizer of Women Who Tech.
"In Silicon Valley, everything is fluid and temporary. There are no employers or employees as such. With no tradition here, we're losing the opportunity to develop a better social structure. People make ridiculous remarks to women and there's no oversight. Silicon Valley is all about getting eyeballs and numbers for your product, money. That structure is never going to support good behavior between those who are the defaults (the white males) and everyone else. It's an environment that's very supportive when it comes to developing new technologies but is otherwise not supportive of anyone but the default. Silicon Valley has always been full of very brash, young experimental crazy thinking people. The role for young men to be mentored by older men who when they go too far just doesn't exist," said Mary Hodder, founder of video site Dabble.
She went on to talk about the difficulty of securing VC funding as a woman: "I think it's fair to say that one of the reasons I had such a hard time getting funding was because I didn't have a business partner. There's no sole woman out there getting funding. Even BlogHer consists of multiple women… It's really difficult for a woman to get funding -- unless you're willing to take your shirt off on TechCrunch. I just don't think we should have to do that."
I listened to it all, and then made a decision. This article would focus on the things that have been achieved, rather than the challenges that still exist. Because the world can say what they will, women are doing some amazing work on the Web, and they're doing this despite a wide variety of difficulties -- raising funds, being hired and promoted, gaining technical experience, and being taken seriously -- that men just do not have to grapple with. They deserve to be acknowledged for their work, and for their courage.
Whether you're looking for career advice, want the low-down on what's going on in the tech world, or just need some help boosting your leadership skills, Fast Company's expert bloggers have something for you. Here's a snapshot of what they're saying:
Playing Checkers: What the Meltdown Means For Store Brands, Tim Manners It’s no secret that the substandard “private labels” of yesterday are today often just as good or better than the national brands they copy. The recession is a killer incentive program for shoppers to give these store brands a try. Once they do, will they ever return to the national brands? One can’t help but wonder whether we might someday look back on the economic meltdown of 2008 as the moment when retailers finally sealed the deal with shoppers for their brand loyalties. Read more. #2 Economic Survival Tip: Learn New Best Practices, Dan Adams Have you ever joined a new company and found that your old company was doing some things much better than your new employer? And vice versa? Many companies improve areas of weakness when employees behave as honeybees, cross-pollinating practices from one firm or industry to another. But this is a slow process and you don’t have the time to wait when a downturn is upon you. You need to find and drive these best practices into your business quickly. Read more.
Innovative Designer Thinks Outside of the Box, Lewis Perkins Since my last post, I am still thinking a lot about the importance of HOW we design products and develop materials that have a life above and beyond its first. Many expound the virtues of the closed loop design (also known as a cradle to cradle concept), but often the most affordable and sustainable use for a product is in a second life that does not mirror the first. Read more. Leadership: So What? Kate Sweetman “Let me briefly introduce myself, and then, more importantly, outline the basics of the leadership conversation that I hope to foster… Here’s a very general outline of the topics this blog will explore. Not in this order necessarily, and always in the context of the pressing issues of today: recession, innovation, globalization, diversity, uncertainty. It is the framework of the Leadership Code – the five essential domains of all effective leaders no matter what their context or circumstance.” Read more. Off With their Heads! On to Results, Cy Wakeman “In these challenging times, many leaders are seeking to reduce expenses through the reduction of head count. While it is important to ensure that the resources of the organization are being tightly managed, the organization’s talent still needs to be led. Reality-Based™ Leaders lead first and manage second. Here’s how…” Read more.
Email Discussion is the New Customer Newsletter, Valeria Maltoni "You may think that email is not such a big deal, after all it’s been around for a long time now. Think again. Email can be a 2.0 tactic when its connective power is harnessed for the benefit of the community it serves - instead of being a one-way, push technique to sell more. Here are three ways in which email used this way is direct, relevant, and memorable…" Read more.
Whether you're looking for career advice, want the low-down on what's going on in the tech world, or just need some help boosting your leadership skills, Fast Company's expert bloggers have something for you. Here's a snapshot of what they're saying:
The Power of Meaning-Full Engagement -- Dr. Alex Pattakos "We are, by nature, creatures of habit. Searching for a life that is both predictable and within our 'comfort zone,' we rely on routine and, for the most part, learned thinking patterns. In effect, we are prone to create pathways in our minds in much the same way that a path is beaten through a grass field from repeated use. And because these patterns are automatic, we may come to believe that these habitual ways of thinking and behaving are “beyond our control.” In other words, life, it seems, just happens to us. As a consequence, we lock ourselves inside our own mental prisons and hold ourselves 'Prisoners of Our Thoughts.' This, in turn, limits our true potential, including our potential to innovate--in our personal life and in our work life." Read more.
Obama's Victory: The Torch has Been Passed and The Responsibility is Now Shared – Mark Goulston "We need change, but even more importantly, we need to change… We have to go from being “ready for change” to being “ready to change.” Most people are ready for change if it is done for them; few are ready to change if it means hard work, focus, discipline, accountability and taking responsibility for their actions." Read more.
Travel in the Credit Crunch -- Robert Buckman "It's no surprise that Americans are traveling less during the credit crunch era. What started out as a tough year for air travel has become a very difficult one, with operating costs still high, and capacity reductions tied to those high costs… The technology that airlines really want and need is that which allows them to most effectively manage their operations, including enabling more passengers to manage their own air travel." Read more.
Obama's Use of Social Media: Less Than Adequate? – Brian Reich "I was a little disappointed that the Obama campaign didn't do more with its big database, its command of social media and new technologies, and its giant war-chest to dig deeper into serious issues and give voters - struggling to find some little bit of serious discussion amid all the mud-slinging - the real facts they needed to make a choice in this election. They basically ran a substance-light, play-it-safe, don't-make-any-mistakes kind of campaign. Too bad, because the Obama campaign had the potential to achieve so much more." Read more.
Feeling the Pain, Understanding the Solution -- Julie Auslander "We've become too busy to talk to our neighbor. We've become seduced by the virtual experience. As we've become disconnected from our friends and family, we've lost access to what people actually need. Yet business is all about understanding more than just what people need: business is about understanding people's pain — and then providing a solution to that pain. How can you understand that pain at the most basic level unless you talk to people?" Read more.
The election of the US's first African American president yesterday sent waves across the nation -- and the entire world. Amongst the deluge of media coverage over the last 24 hours, Fast Company's multifacted community of expert bloggers logged on to share their thoughts on the election. Here's a snapshot of what they're thinking:
Shel Leanne - The Communicative Power of Barack Obama: How He Became President-Elect
"What enabled Senator Barack Obama to tear down traditional barriers of race and ethnicity, to become such a historic figure? There were two key factors. His outstanding communication abilities, which enabled him to garner support from one of the most diverse coalitions in American history; and his excellent ability to launch and lead a formidable organization—he exhibited leadership and managerial skills of the highest order." Read more.
Kate Sweeman – Excellent Leadership is Innovation - Just Ask Obama
"In decoding Obama, I find that, while he is young and not entirely proven, he has the makings of one of the few fully complete leaders I have encountered in almost 20 years of studying and helping to develop leaders around the world. He embodies and exhibits all five of the leadership domains that research tells us are essential to world-class leadership no matter what the context." Read more.
Lynette Chiang -- Barack Obama and the Power of Positive Discrimination
"We certainly hope (Obama) will do something for the economy, but being black, showing the world that the mindset of America has shifted in this symbolic way – is enough to set the ball rolling. And we just needed to get that ball rolling. You'd think it got rolling with all these fictitious movies showing Morgan Freeman type actors in the role of President, Overlord, King Cop etc. It always seemed like politically correct fantasizing until now. I say, Barack being black is enough for me." Read more.
Lindsey Pollak -- Gen Y and the Presidential Election
"If you weren't aware of them yet, you couldn't miss them on Election Day. Barack Obama’s victory is the biggest and most inspiring example yet of the growing influence of Generation Y (born approx. 1980–2000) in the U.S. and the world." Read more.
Robert Atkinson -- The First Digital President?
"Senator Obama has promised an ambitious digital government and society plan, including promising to create a Chief Technology Officer, to use the Internet to create more open government, to spur broadband deployment and adoption, and to advance health IT, among others. But the real question is whether the Obama administration will use IT to accomplish a few narrow (albeit important) goals, such as using IT to bring a bit more accountability to government, or whether he and his administration will look to IT as key to solving a host of pressing public policy problems that the nation will face." Read more.
Today at Adtech’s roundtable on the state of the industry, Tina Sharkey, Chairman and Global President of BabyCenter; Rob Norman, CEO of Group M Interaction; David Morris, Chief Client Officer of CBS Interactive; and Rob Master, North American Media Director of Unilever all spoke. The discussion was moderated by Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of IAB.
Major issues: What lessons for the media industry are being learned from this election?
Rob Norman -- “From a media mix model point of view, this is a fascinating time. There are three things you have to keep eye on: geography -- where they are and how to find them, technology, and the value of integrity. My sense is that Obama has fused geography, tech and integrity with great effect.”
David Morris: Morris emphasizes that the value of the web is being able to interact directly with an audience: “One thing I’ve learned – not everything in your campaign goes well. If things go wrong, you have to go to the Web and deal with it- candidates went to web discussed what problem was and corrected it. Brands can learn from that.”
Tina Sharkey -- She acknowledged both candidates, but particularly Obama, as having done a fantastic job in the digital media space. “If you look at candidates as marketers and media planners, they’ve done a phenomenal job at activating conversation and joining conversation.”
Market spending for interactive media is unfair given the percentage of time consumers spend using interactive media. Do you see that balance redressing itself over the next year?
Rob Master: “Unilever feels very confident about the numbers in the digital space. But if consumers decide they want to get off the net and watch more TV, we’ll follow them. If the digital space continues to expand, our investment will too.”
Rob Norman: “I think the fair share issue is phony because we have to distinguish between what is legitimately media time and what is time people spend doing other activities.” Much of the time people spend on line, they are not receptive to advertising. “I suspect the share is far fairer than people would have you believe.”
People like to consume short form media online. How do you see this consumption pattern affecting marketing?
Tina Sharkey: BabyCenter’s email and newsletter consumption is increasing. “Because of the barrage of things out there we are breaking through into a diff channel. Marketers are coming to us for a mix of things – targeting is getting much more specific, and the mix of that is getting much bigger than it has ever been in past”.
We’ve already got signals that, regardless of who the new administration is, there will be a more pro regulatory environment in Washington related to business. How should the advertising industry be thinking?
David Morris: We have to be smart as an industry – if we are upfront to our consumers and explain clearly and concisely how we are collecting information and what we do with it, that’s okay. The concern is targeting people under the age of 13, health, financial status -- sensitive areas. We need to self regulate – it’s important that we don’t cross consumer trust.” He emphasized that the range of choice and content available is a “great service” paid for by advertising. “If we are regulated… we will not be able to provide this. We need to self regulate but also explain to Washington that we are providing a service.”
Rob Norman: The high minded answer is that “regulation needs to identify the harm against which its regulating before it regulates. My sense is that industry has pretty good track record against keeping ppl away from harm.” The practical approach is that it’s easy to ask the question: do you think its good idea for advertisers to track your behavior and send you messages based on this. The answer, says Norman, is obviously no. “All people in the value chain are not perfectly aligned in this area. There are dubious motivations by some of parties involved.”
Does a message on a branded site hold more value on less branded sites?
Rob Master: In this day and age, on a scale perspective, having a strong relationship with the publisher is critical. To that point, context -- where that message is delivered -- is important.
David Morris: Every site says they have premium content. You need to define premium content. We have premium inventory and less premium inventory. It is up to us to monetize as much inventory as possible. Just like today when you’re managing a financial portfolio and need a diverse mix to have money safe, the same way large publishers need different investments depending on where the market is.”
