November 6, 2006

Message From Michael                    
                                                                 

• SWEEPS AND ELECTIONS


• CUT THE CORD


• IS IT LIVE OR IS IT?


• NIELSEN’S ANSWER TO R2/D2


• ON THE WINGS OF A SNOW WHITE DOVE


• DATES WORTH NOTING


• COCKTAIL CHATTER

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• SWEEPS AND ELECTIONS:  You can’t start off a weekly newsletter like this without mentioning those two words.  A point about sweeps:  It may seem basic, but people seem to ‘forget’ that a sweeps week runs Thursday to Wednesday.  Just because of habituated thinking, we tend to think in Monday to Friday terms.  So, like it or not, you’re still in week one.  Also, after numerous diary visits to Nielsen HQ, it’s clear to me that diary keepers are more careful to fill out their diaries on Thursday’s (understandable, because it is the first day and they’re still enthusiastic), and Monday (maybe because of feeling guilty for not doing so well Saturday and Sunday, which are the lowest days, or maybe because it is the start of the work week).  A point about elections:  the Pew Internet and the American Life Project reports that more Americans are going online for political information, and the politicians are taking heed.  A third of the political consultants surveyed by the E-Voter Institute say they will spend at least a fifth of their campaign budget online in the next election and that figure will rise in succeeding years.


• CUT THE CORD:  More and more U.S. households are doing just that, dropping their landlines and going completely wireless.  Digital research firm Telephia surveyed the top 20 markets and found that roughly one in ten households have gone wireless only.  Based on my math, the total households number 39.3 Million.  Of those, 3.8 Million were wireless only.  The city with the highest wireless use was Detroit with 19%.  The city with the lowest wireless only use was San Francisco with 5.5%.  Even though Telephia officials say income, ethnic mix and average age affect wireless use, obviously topology does as well when a high tech city like San Fran is so low.  Number one market New York had a ‘wireless substitution rate’ of 6.5% while number two market Los Angeles was 9.8%.  Other high adopter cities were Minneapolis (15.2%), Tampa (15.1%) and Atlanta (14.3%).  On the other end were Baltimore (5.8%), St. Louis (7.2%) and Cleveland (7.3%).On a semi-related note, Google has announced the creation of a new application that will allow mobile users to quickly retrieve e-mail on their cells.  YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley says he hopes to have a YouTube application for use on mobile devices within the next year.  And Cingular has unveiled plans to let consumers buy music tracks for phones.


• IS IT LIVE OR IS IT:  A DVR or VOD.  Increasingly it’s one of the two, according to consumer research firm Leichtman Research Group.  Although the firm says the overall impact of Digital Video Recorders and Video On Demand remains small, it has doubled in the past year, from 2% of all TV viewing in the U.S. to 4% of all TV viewing in the U.S.  The report says 60% of all digital cable subscribers have used VOD, which is more than double the figure of 25% two years ago.  And 12% of all households in the U.S. now have a DVR, which is four times the figure of 3% two years ago.  Again, even though the services represent a very small proportion of all TV viewing in the U.S., Leichtman projects that by 2010, more than 50 Million households will have DVR’s and some 42 million will have access to VOD from their cable provider.On a related note, Nielsen has announced that it is yet again delaying the introduction of its commercial minute ratings data.  It seems that Nielsen can’t decide if the ratings should only be for live viewing, or live viewing and one day of DVR playback, or live viewing and seven days of DVR playback.


• NIELSEN’S ANSWER TO R2/D2:  It’s A2/M2, which is a cutesy representation of its Anytime Anywhere Media Measurement initiative.  In the latest announcement, Nielsen Media Research and NetRatings are joining forces to create a “TV/Internet Fusion database.”   The two are combining Nielsen’s national people meter sample of 30,000 TV viewers with NetRatings netview sample of 29,000 panelists.  They are installing software meters on the laptops and personal computers of people with People Meters.


• ON THE WINGS OF A SNOW WHITE DOVE:  Proctor and Gamble sends its semi-pure, semi-sweet message.  Subsidiary DOVE has scored a huge hit with its viral ad titled Evolution.  It is 75-seconds long and shows, in rapid cut succession, how an ‘ordinary’ woman is transformed into a stunning billboard beauty.  It ends with the message, “no wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.”  And then the zinger when it talks about “real beauty” and “self esteem.”  The ad, which we talked about in a previous MfM, has taken on a life of its own with 1.7 Million downloads, and the true test – increased sales.  It is a stunning example of a viral ad hitting a nerve and hitting a homerun at the same time.  Candidly, its potential impact is so huge, maybe this piece should have been the lead to today’s MfM.  You can see the ad for yourself by searching YouTube with the words Dove and Evolution.On a very much related note, the Billion-dollar advertising Behemoth, P&G, attributes its growth in sales to product innovation (of course they’re going to say that) and marketing innovation, such as the Dove spot.  CEO A.G. Lafley says their corporate marketing improvements are having a direct impact on the bottom line, using “marketing ROI and media-mix modeling.”  In a quote from MediaPost, Lafley says the company is shifting dollars from “communication plans” that aren’t working hard to plans that are working harder.  Translation, they’re moving money from television to the Internet and direct marketing.  


• DATES WORTH NOTING:  Mark November 14TH on your calendar.  That’s the day Dan Rather will launch his new career with “Dan Rather Reports” on Mark Cuban’s HDNet.  Also, mark the next day, November 15th , on your calendar.  That’s the day Al-Jazeera will launch its English language version.  Both will be difficult to get.  Al-Jazeera because it has not been able to find a carrier in the U.S., so it will be Internet based; Dan Rather because HDNet has similar distribution issues, although you can locate it through its Internet site, hd.net.


• NOTES WORTH NOTING:  I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I didn’t have a catchy headline.  In any case, Univision’s New York Station, WVTX, scored a milestone of sorts by coming in second in the key age groups with its 6pm newscast, just behind WABC but ahead of the other three English-language newscasts.


• QUOTE OF THE WEEK:  As I’ve noted before, I don’t like the generic quotes that are supposed to inspire and motivate, but occasionally I think there are quotes that are worth reporting in MfM, such as this one from an interview by NPR’s MediaShift with ABC investigative reporter Brian Ross:  “If there ever was a time where TV people didn’t have to write, just had to know what good pictures were or how to get to a fire – that doesn’t work for us anymore. Everyone has to be able to sit down and write a story in an understandable, logical way.  If the convergence occurs, the employment skills will be different. They’ll have to be Net-savvy, and they’ll have to write. I’m always surprised by the number of people in TV news who can’t write well.”




• COCKTAIL CHATTER:  More than two-thirds (67%) of Americans consider the U.S. to be a Christian nation, according to a survey by the Pew Research Group.  That’s down from last year but up from the 60% of a decade ago.  The hot, must-have toy for this Christmas is T.M.X. which stands for Tickle Me Elmo, Extreme version.  So extreme is the interest that some retailers say the T.M.X. alone is rejuvenating Christmas toy sales.  Marketers say part of the reason for the popularity is the technique of marketing it with mystery.  November is National Novel Writing Month in which you have 30 days starting November 1st and ending November 30th to write a 50,000 word novel.  Interested?  Visit the website NaNoWriMo.org.  Google officials are trying to stop people from using the world “google” as a verb… sort of.  According to a posting on the official Google blog, “You can only "Google" on the Google search engine. If you absolutely must use one of our competitors, please feel free to "search" on Yahoo or any other search engine.”


• EDITORS EVERYWHERE:  Not surprisingly, MfM readers are very observant.  “Thank you” – if that’s the right word – to the numerous people who pointed out the typo in last week’s report.  The line from Cocktail Chatter was supposed to be “candy and GUM ranked third in food sales, NOT candy and GUN.  So, shoot me.


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