Radar Waves

How much did they pay to license that song?

Bad news for all those big brand marketers who have spent millions to secure the rights to add major label music to their TV ad campaigns, in the hopes of riding those sonic coattails.

I just taught the first installment of my USC Annenberg course, "Music as Communication," for the fall semester. One of the ways in which I introduced the course's themes to the students was playing songs for them and asking them to name the product the song advertised on TV. In a class of about 25 college students pre-selected to have an interest in music and communication, here were the results:

• Chemical Brothers - Galvanize (Budweiser): ZERO brand recognition
• Spoon - I Turn My Camera On (Jaguar): ZERO brand recognition
• Kelly Clarkson - Go (Ford): about 1/3 of students in the class

Sheesh. Even I know what the Chemical Brothers song advertises, and I don't even watch TV. In part, these results show the waning influence of television programming and advertising in the media consumption (and production) habits of today's youth. But maybe it also shows that young people's relationship to music is becoming more fluid, complex, and self-determined; the kids know the songs and the brands, they just don't identify the one with the other. Or maybe the commercials just sucked.

Strangest of all -- I played the new R&B hit "Me & U" by Cassie, released about two weeks ago, as part of a different section of the class on genre and race/gender/SES interpellation. Even though the song has yet to be used on television in conjunction with any commercial products (other than Cassie herself), several students in the class immediately identified Cassie's audience as Volkswagon Jetta-driving females.

So in other words, this song which hasn't been used in a TV commercial yet was more successful at evoking a specific make and model than songs which have appeared in car commercials in recent months.

Go figure. VW's agency should definitely get on the stick with this one.

Finally, America Becomes Decent

The House passed a bill yesterday that increases the fines for "indecency" on television and radio stations about tenfold, to $325,000 per violation, with a cap of $3 million per show. Holy shit, that's a serious amount of money! The Senate has already passed its version of the bill, and Bush has sworn to sign it (not that he ever vetoes anything, anyway).

Seriously, this is bad news for a number of reasons:

1. It won't make Americans better people. The notion that Janet Jackson's breast is a threat to the fabric of our society is beyond laughable in a country that refuses to abide by either the Geneva Conventions or the Kyoto Treaty.
   
2. It will only hasten consumer abandonment of mainstream media. Censorship = boring. As long as the Web, cable television and other media channels remain relatively uncensored, the decline of traditional broadcast channels will accelerate.
   
3. It will undermine broadcast industry economics and product quality. The dual threat of advertiser defection to other distribution channels and government fines will provide a powerful disincentive for broadcasters to create innovative programming, thus sealing their eventual obsolescence.
   
4. It forces consumers into paid channels. TV and radio are the last tattered legacy of America's once-proud emphasis on public resources and public discourse. The airwaves do, theoretically, belong to all of us. But if consumers are forced to pay a tax (in the form of cable or ISP fees) for access to uncensored information, these concepts will be rendered functionally irrelevant.
   
5. Infrastructure doesn't even matter anymore. What's the difference between broadcast, cable and internet, anyway? Not the infrastructure, which has converged significantly, and will continue to do so. Absent this distinction, the delta in regulation between channels seems to have little justification. This is scary, because the gap may be getting narrow enough for censorship to jump the fence -- to cable, internet, and maybe even mediated interpersonal communication (e.g. email, IM, phone).

I can only hope that America will come to its senses before we're living under information lockdown, to a degree that would make even Joe McCarthy shudder.

The saddest thing is that the House passed the bill 379-35. We're ashamed to say our own congressman, the usually sensible Adam Schiff, was among the signers. Here's a list of the brave souls who didn't capitulate (33 Dems, 1 Repub, 1 Indy):

Abercrombie
Baird
Becerra
Berkley
Berman
Blumenauer
Clay
Conyers
Delahunt
Frank (MA)
Grijalva
Harman
Hinchey
Honda
Kucinich
Lee
Lofgren, Zoe
McDermott
Nadler
Olver
Paul
Payne
Sabo
Sánchez, Linda T.
Sanders
Schakowsky
Scott (VA)
Serrano
Sherman
Stark
Wasserman Schultz
Waters
Watson
Watt
Waxman

Modding a "dog whistle" for teens

We love MIT's advertising lab blog, because its unearths all that is wacky, wonderful and weird in the world of marketing and media. they also tend to find an advertising angle for new technology, even when there isn't one readily apparent.

so this one was a leap for them, but of interest to us, since it involves modding a technology used to control and manipulate teens behavior (essentially a "dog whistle" only teens can hear, used to keep them from loitering outside of stores) and co-opted it for their own use. Since most people under 20 can't hear the tone, a few tech-savvy and resourceful teenagers recorded the sound and have been virally spreading it amongst teens as a ringtone. Since ringtones must be turned off while at school, these allow students to hear their phones ringing - right in front of their unsuspecting teachers.

talk about turning the tables on technology. love it.

Monday media: free IPTV, the adventures of Orkut in Brazil, and Google's ostensible metamorphosis into Big Brother

Busy day -- Marissa and I are both in the middle of a bunch of consulting projects. But there are a couple news blips worth pointing out:

1)    ABC announces it's gonna make some of its most popular shows (e.g. Lost Housewives, Desperado in Chief) available for free viewing on the Web. It's an ad-supported model -- the shows will be broadcast-only, embedded in a proprietary viewer and punctuated by interstitial video ads (let's just call them commercials, shall we?) by advertisers including AT&T, Ford and P&G. Inevitable hacks aside, the streams can't be downloaded, so it won't bite too hard into the small but hype-heavy iTunes TV download market. I'm all for it -- Disney owns much of the content as well as distribution, so there aren't a lot of palms to grease or hurdles to jump (local broadcasters are going to be pretty pissed, though -- but that's a much bigger story). It gives them an opportunity to do a little revenue-bearing market research, and to develop alternative marketing models for the TiVo age. Thumbs up.

2)    The NY Times discovers Orkut, alive and kicking in Brazil. While they do play up the kiddie porn angle, they fail to mention the venue's apparent popularity among drug dealers. So many threats to our security, so little time. Of course, it's a truism that as soon as the NYT discovers something, it's by definition on the way out (even my own NYT article about Smalls jazz bar in NY foreshadowed its imminent demise).

3)    Big concerns among net libertarians that the Google/Earthlink WiFi plan in San Francisco doesn't sufficiently address privacy concerns. This concern is somewhat legit -- according to someone we know on the inside, the G/E plan was the least privacy-friendly of any that the city reviewed. On the other hand, I just don't get it -- everyone in the universe is now toting around a mobile phone, taking and sending pics, downloading ringtones, texting and being texted. How does adding a mobile laptop to the mix really expose us to further scrutiny by either commercial or governmental forces? We're already about as transparent as possible. Truth be told, I'd rather have Google mining my GeoWeb metadata than SprintPCSNextel -- at least they know what to do with it, for crying out loud.

Why is Alberto smiling?

Boy, does Alberto Gonzales look happy to announce this bust-up of a global kiddie-porn ring. Maybe he's just proud of a job well done, and of deservedly putting these pervs in stir.

But maybe -- just maybe -- he's happy because the news comes JUST EXACTLY AT THE VERY MOMENT that U.S. District Judge James Ware is deciding whether and to what degree Google will have to fork over its proprietary record of the terms people have typed into the search engine. Coincidentally enough, Google was subpoenaed by the DOJ to support the Net censorship and erstwhile anti-porn law COPA (Child Online Protection Act, 1998) against an ongoing suit by the ACLU.

Of course, it's all the Internet's fault. I mean, no pedophiles ever used telephones, automobiles, credit cards, airplanes, libraries, houses, sidewalks, hotels or pens and paper to commit their nefarious deeds. Because if they did, the U.S. government would have to start writing laws to curb people's freedoms in those venues as well. Oh, wait a second...

Gee, sexual deviance makes such a convenient excuse for governmental invasion of privacy and the diminution of civil liberties. I wonder where that path leads us. Anyone got a history book handy?

Poocharellis for the Dogs

My life is currently consumed by the wonderful, wacky world of "branded entertainment" as aram and I prepare for a presentation at OMMA later this month. branded entertainment is the glamorous euphemism for product integration, itself a term that implies sponsorship on crack. this is not your parent's Texaco Star Theater. this is the new world order where brands usurps content, often clumsily. The latest example is P&G's Poocharelli's sitcom on Nick at Nite and Ford's foray into filmmaking and the festival circuit.

I'm working on an article to accompany our presentation for mediapost so I dont want to rant too much here - and I'm also pretty torn. With so many of these campaigns, the devil is in the details. so many are so obvious, so clumsy, so poorly executed. And while many ad agencies excel at telling a compelling, visually arresting story in 30 seconds, it remains to be seen if these guys can also create 90 min stories. I almost pity the poor agency and network execs. They've been soiling their underwear about tivo, ad skipping and massive audience defection to video games and online entertainment since Jamie Kellner's ludicrous proclamation that skipping TV ads is stealing. (arrest that woman! she went to the bathroom while M. Night was hawking AMEX!) so its natural that branded entertainment starts to look more and more attractive as a feasable economic model.

but...as I said, the devil is in the details. it seems there's a spectrum at work here - ranging from prop placement (where no money changes hands, common in europe where the line between commerce and content is more strongly delineated) to product placement to product integration. and along that spectrum there is some contextual, smart integration (e.g. Banana Republic in Project Runway) and some truly clumsy executions (almost anything on Survivor).

That raises a few questions: Is there a qualitative and quantitative difference between reality TV and scripted entertainment and how they handle branded entertainment? What is the financial flow? Who makes what? (The creative guilds are especially interested in that one). What is the responsibility of marketers and programmers to the public? How sophisticated is the viewing public? What is the backlash (if any)? and don't even get me started on the issue of children's programming and product placement. While its banned from programming explicitly targeted towards children, kids are watching many of the prime time programs rife with this stuff. I asked a 10 year old I know, a religious American Idol watcher, if she could name the brands in  the show. Sure, she said. She easily rattled off: Coca-Cola, Ford, Cingular. These are all issues that will be worked out over the next few years - in the meantime, we'll try to address a few of them as we get closer to the conference.

Aram discusses kids music on ABC World News Tonight

I'll be on ABC's World News Tonight this Friday (3/17) Monday 3/27, discussing the sudden explosion of the kids music market. I won't scoop the mouse house entirely, but here's my quick take on why this market is changing and growing:

Demand-side: Gen-X'ers are becoming parents, and their musical tastes are important, because they make the purchasing decisions. Factor in a post-9/11 baby boomlet, and the growing desire for "family-friendly" fare that always accompanies a wave of new media technologies.

Supply-side: Low, low, low marketing and promotional costs (plus, no need to hire the Neptunes to produce). Also, little risk that the pre-12 group or the 35+ group will file share in significant numbers.

Structural: A shift in music sales away from record stores and toward family-oriented general merchandisers, long tail-driven niche market growth, emergence of new music biz models like Razor & Tie, which relies heavily on direct response TV ads and other methods the majors won't touch.

We'll see whether any of that makes it into the story. Plus, bonus B-roll footage of me and my son playing music together and flipping through a CD holder.

UPDATE: The piece appears to be airing tonight (3/27)