Think Multicultural

Those of you who follow the Hispanic advertising trades have probably already read about Zubi Advertising’s $80 million multi-platform, multi-client media buy on Univision.com.

I think this is a fantastic example of what a lot of forward-thinking professionals in Hispanic advertising have been pushing for many years - truly integrated marketing programs to reach the Hispanic consumer. For too many years, and at too many agencies, Hispanic media strategies have been staid and flat - 360 advertising all too often has meant doing a TV buy coupled with radio and maybe some out-of-home.

Kudos to Zubi and their media team for developing an integrated media buy (albeit only one network/publisher) that includes both traditional (TV, radio) and new media such as online and mobile. I imagine the cost savings they are generating for their clients (such as Ford and American Airlines) will be significant. Hopefully they will continue to pursue additional integrated buys across other media properties.

These types of deals show that the future of Hispanic advertising is bright for agencies and clients willing to push the envelope and the accepted best practices. I hope everyone is taking notes.

The bad news is that P&G is cutting their overall ad budget. The worse news for TV people is that most of that cut is coming out of TV.

On the plus side, they’re moving their ad spending “aggressively” to online media.

What’s the difference techie people and ad people? Attitude.

This article in Adweek describes how online video watched on computers is going to save the video ad space from DVR ad skipping on TV.

Seriously?

For half a century or more, TV has been the ultimate one-way medium, in which the programmer controlled not only the message, but the delivery time and channel. This one-way conversation was interrupted by DVR, which is simply a computer that is attached to a TV, giving the viewer the ability to control at least the delivery time and making the channel irrelevant.

On the other hand, computers have put power in the hands of the masses. From Napster to YouTube to MySpace to Facebook to RSS readers, computers have enabled people to control their content. Computers and the web are all about giving people the power to control their media and the conversation.

The idea that moving video onto computers will enable advertisers to prevent commercial skipping is ludicrous. Five days after the iPhone was released someone had unlocked it so that it worked on networks other than AT&T. Although the record labels were able to take down Napster, music and movies are still free on sites like Kazaa, Limewire, and the various BitTorrent-style sites.

Advertisers are not going to win a war against techies and consumers to force them to consume media when/how the advertiser wants. The future for advertisers is not using technology to force-feed commercials consumers. The future for advertisers is in being smart and clever and relevant – reaching consumers in non-obtrusive yet effective ways that aren’t so in-your-face that some 15 year old geek is going to destroy your technology and business model between WoW sessions.