Category: media
Why Microsoft’s Bing Ads Suck
An ad for Microsoft’s Bing search engine came on TV last night. The message, obviously, is that Bing is better than Google: That’s a cute commercial, but it will never allow Microsoft to topple Google’s search dominance. Neither will the “Bing It On” challenge commercials that demonstrate Bing’s supposed superiority. Compare Bing’s factual analysis of which search engine is better with this: Google’s commercial tugs at your heart strings. Forget about searching for Chinese delivery places or a good deal on hardwood floor installation; Google is there with you while you live your life and save your treasured memories. It’s an effective emotional appeal, which keeps Google’s TV presence more appealing than Microsoft’s. Microsoft got this back in 1995, when they used the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up” to roll out the then-new Windows 95 and its Start Button. Commercials of the time were low on the facts of the new operating system but heavy on the new frontiers offered by the new generation of computers.
Going multi-screen: #Facebook #adds #hastags
Facebook now allows users to include clickable hashtags in their posts. The decision seems Twitter-inspired, right?
Sort of, but not completely. Though they are using the tags made popular by Twitter, Facebook’s new feature has just as much to do with an old media dinosaur - namely, live television:
During primetime television alone, there are between 88 and 100 million Americans engaged on Facebook – roughly a Super Bowl-sized audience every single night. The recent “Red Wedding” episode of Game of Thrones, received over 1.5 million mentions on Facebook, representing a significant portion of the 5.2 million people who watched the show. And this year’s Oscars buzz reached an all-time high on Facebook with over 66.5 million interactions, including likes, comments, and posts.
Speaking of the Big Game, recall that Super Bowl Sunday was a big night for Twitter this year - half of the commercials mentioned Twitter in one way or another. Watch almost any live programming and you’ll catch hashtags superimposed on the screen almost as ubiquitously as the logo of the channel you’re watching. All this takes advantage of multi-screen media consumption - the fact that audiences usually mess around on their phones and tablets while zoning out in front of the warming glow of TV.
And if you’re a show, product, or even a politician in a debate you want to own both of those screens. Facebook wants to be a gateway to the buzz – and the sweet, sweet marketing dollars that follow it.
Eric Snowden: Today’s hero. Tomorrow’s villain?
People are passing the hat online to reward Eric Snowden for revealing the NSA’s data collection schemes. Michael Moore and Glenn Beck both called him a hero, and if those two were both on the Titanic they probably wouldn’t agree to jump into a lifeboat. He talks about transparency, and he sure seems noble and well-spoken. The story, which is still unfolding, reads like it was lifted from a movie script: Snowden gave up an apparently fulfilling life, an affluent lifestyle, and a lucrative career to reveal government overreach.
Before booking Eric Snowden Day and throwing a parade, though, it’s worth waiting to see what else is out there about him, or at least what he says next. When a story seems to come straight out of Hollywood, sometimes it proves too good to be true.
Online video more effective, say online video makers
This story is making the rounds: ad executives are pimping online video as more effective than TV advertising.
Anecdotally, there are many reasons that theorem makes sense. With DVR culture firmly entrenched, TV commercials have become almost universally fast-forward-throughable with the exception of news, and sports, and Wheel of Fortune. Online video viewership is skyrocketing.
On the other hand, there are reasons why an ad executive would want to trend more toward online video ads. Online videos have a higher likelihood of going viral and creating positive buzz so that the ad execs can use empty phrases like “go viral” and “create buzz.” Viewership is easily measured, giving agencies something to report to the client. And if they flop no one notices. A bad Superbowl commercial gets a hundred million hands hitting a hundred million foreheads, but a bad online video can drift to oblivion (unless it’s REALLY bad).
It also sounds really good to say that online video is the wave of the future. There’s nothing to back up whether online video advertising actually drives sales more or less; but an agency exec who suggests skepticism will sound like a dinosaur.
This isn’t to say online video isn’t a great medium for message delivery. I think it’s probably the best, and that’s my opinion. This study asks marketing executives, and it was done by an outfit called EMarketer.com. It’s not exactly unbiased.
Unnecessary Language Criticism
Check out this sentence from Politico’s story on Virginia dealing with gay stuff:
In the 2013 off-year elections, a state that once leaned solidly to the center-right has become the newest focal point in the national debate over same-sex relationships.
When people talk about needing more writing education in our schools, this is why. Somehow, a national publication let this sentence go through.
If a state “leans” one way or another, by definition it is not “solid.” Further, a state cannot “lean” to the center, making the phrase “center-right” incorrect. Leaning implies a direction, being solid implies a lack of mobility.
The reporter should have written something like this: Virginia was solidly conservative, but is now a swing state that leans Republican.
(The premise of the article is pretty flimsy, too, but it’s a slow news day so they get some slack for that.)
A Great Week for Team Obama?
Megan McArdle might be onto something:
In finance, there’s an art known as “Big Bath Accounting” which is used to manage earnings expectations. Here’s how it works: if you know you’re going to have a bad quarter, you look around for anything else that might go wrong in the future, and you decide to “recognize” that bad news now. Inventory looking a little stale? Write it down, man! Customers getting a little slow to pay? Now would be a good time to write off their accounts as bad debt… The theory is that there is only so much bad news people can take in all at once, so you might as well cram all the bad stuff into one action-packed earnings call.
This is a couple days old, but the more you think about it – and the more news cycles turn since ScandalFest 2013 dropped – the more sense it makes that having all this hit at once is a good thing for the White House.
None of the controversies has been what any serious commentator would call impeachable, but each serves to damage credibility. Imagine if they were spaced out a little more. If the IRS scandal broke after two weeks of talking about the Benghazi hearings, and was subsequently followed by the AP/DOJ dust-up breaking a week or two after that, it would be far worse for all the President’s men. Each scandal would be discussed in its own spotlight for a little while, but the timing would still maintain that “Groundhog Day” feeling.
In order for the current blitzkrieg to be as damaging, new information will have to come out fairly regularly over the course of several months. That’s a lot of new stuff that would have to break, like the President said, there may not be that much “there” there. Meanwhile, a public with a short attention span and a media looking for fresh news will find new stuff to talk about. Democrats who are looking for fundraising and grassroots support in the mid-term elections will be slow to criticize the President.
On top of that, scandal discussion sucks up a lot of oxygen that could be used on other issues. Higher taxes are shrinking paychecks, and Obamacare is making American health care more expensive and complex. The policy environment is ripe for Republican criticism, but the line that connects a big government that taxes too much and overreaches on programs with a big government that swipes reporters’ phone records and harasses its opponents is not starkly obvious to casual observers. And there’s always the chance for a Republican politician trying to overplay his or her party’s hand.
The last couple of weeks may have been tough to get through. There’s still plenty of time for the scandals to fade into the background and there will be opportunities for the President to go back on offense. If all this bad news was going to hit anyway, having it hit at once was the best possible outcome for the White House.
Sometimes a crummy week makes for a better year.
Scandals! The Bad News Power Rankings
Jay Carney faced the press today, and… Yikes! That was rough!
On some level, you have to respect Carney. He could have woken up, faxed in a resignation Pat Riley style, rented an office near Farragut Square and started counting money. Instead, he chose to answer questions in the face of Scandalpalooza. And even if he had a rough day, none of the scandals are impeachable.
They are damaging, though. In fact, the last week and a half has heaped layer after layer of bad news on the White House doorstep. The mid-term elections are now 18 months away, and the window for putting up any meaningful legislative wins is maybe 10-12 months. President will have a tougher time advancing his agenda while responding to all the bad news. Ranked below are the President’s top speed bumps (that we know about so far today), with 1 being the most disruptive to the President’s agenda and 5 the least:
- DOJ vs. AP - People appreciate unfairness, so the IRS scandal will have legs. But no reporter will have any trouble understanding the First Amendment threats posed by the Justice Department skimming reporters’ phone records.
- IRS vs. Tea Party Groups – Political players wielding government power against their enemies is easy to understand, and makes for a simple story to write.
- Benghazi – Really, what’s the worst part? The administration’s keystone response to the embassy attack? The lies about what caused the attack? The fact that it looks like the President and his underlings were less than forthcoming due to the impending election? This is pretty complex – for scandals looking to catch on, complex is bad.
- Gosnell - During the election cycle, progressive groups tried (largely successfully) to reframe the abortion debate by talking about narrow hypotheticals. From the White House’s perspective, the silver lining of the week’s tri-scandals is that it takes mainstream attention away from the Gosnell verdict. It will help motivate pro-life advocates, but its broader messaging implications will be muted.
- Obamacare - Small business owners are already feeling the pinch. Kathleen Sebelius has been doing her “Secretary BoJangles” routine trying to fund advertising and encourage signups (like it’s some kind of high school club).
(If I missed anything, or if you disagree, leave a comment or yell at me on Twitter.)
Obama’s Commencement Speech Revisited
Last Sunday, President Obama addressed Ohio State’s Class of 2013 thusly:
Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.
Cool speech, wasn’t it? Here’s a quick rundown of some of the big headlines over the last week:
- The Administration messed up in Benghazi – and ABC news showed they directly lied to the American people about the root cause of the attack.
- The IRS specifically and deliberately targeted the President’s political foes during the 2012 election cycle.
- The Obama Justice Department snagged phone records – both professional and personal – for AP reporters. They didn’t say why.
Benghazi and Cultural Stickyness
Today the Washington Post pointed out analytics that showed interest in the Benghazi hearings was largely older, whiter men. That may have a bit to do with the demographics of people working inside the Beltway who would be most likely to tune in, but it won’t be the final determination of whether this scandal has legs.
One of the reasons Watergate remains so ubiquitous in American political is that its unique moniker has kept it alive. When political scandals erupt, the suffix “-gate” is immediately added. No one references the Teapot Dome scandal that way.
Linguistically, the Benghazi scandal has that potential. Too many lavish, taxpayer-financed vacations for the President? Travelghazi. Donors receiving special access to the President in exchange for campaign cash? Sounds like a “Donorghazi” program. And you can throw in Cubaghazi for that one couple that raised a bunch of money for the President and then magically got to go to a country that normal schlubs aren’t allowed to go to.)
It won’t be testimony in a stuffy hearing room that gives the administration’s misdirection gravity beyond the halls of Congress.
A Matter of Trust
The catchy headline is that more people trust a guy who talked to an empty chair than the President of the United States, but that’s the Reader’s Digest account of the Reader’s Digest poll on the celebrities we trust the most.
Consider the top five: Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, and Maya Angelou. This poll is probably fun to report on, but did the respondents really give it that much thought?
If Hanks knocks on your door at 11:00 p.m. dressed in drag and imploring you to help him move Peter Scoleri’s lifeless corpse, that trust would likely wear off pretty quick.
Calling these people trustworthy is a version of the word association game. It’s a knee-jerk reaction, and not necessarily rational. It’s fleeting, but it helps contextualize what we read or ear about them – even the bad stuff – so long as we are distant from it.
On the other hand, 45% seems low for a sitting President, and it seems like a number that could get beaten down – maybe with a steady drumbeat of stories about Benghazi. Not a deluge of Republican arm-waving and histrionics, but a steady drip of stories about inconsistencies in testimony or incompetencies in strategy will keep the idea alive that the President is not 100% forthcoming. The reverberations could extend into his legislative agenda and clip his wings as he tries to foist Speaker Pelosi back onto the country.
Benghazi probably won’t drive him from office, but as long as the story has legs it will whittle away the President’s shrinking cache of trust.
