ABOVE: This morning, the New York Times devoted an entire page to a news article suggesting the possibility of Estee Lauder’s influence on editorial decisions at Harper’s Bazaar Magazine. The news article was preceded by Estee Lauder interstitial “pre-roll” advertising and two Estee Lauder ads appear adjacent to the article.

Today the New York Times Style section includes an article (sheepish clarification: it showed up on my RSS feed of “magazine-related” news) that, in a tone of righteous indignation, reported that Harper’s Bazzar was devoting 40 pages of an issue to glamorous fashion photos modeled by four super-models/actresses who regularly appear in and on the cover of the magazine. Except this time, they will be identified as the “stars” of a new fragrance from Estee Lauder instead of, say, the stars of a re-make of Charlie’s Angels.

In the San Francisco Chronicle today, a story appears about the possibility of the FCC tightening the “product placement” rules related to, say, a Coca-cola cup appearing on the table in front of the judges of American Idol.*

As I’ve written before — many, many time — I’m a advocate for transparency in the relationships marketers have with media. I think marketers and media companies should disclose the relationships they have with one another and let the audience decide what is, and is not, ethical. Indeed, I think they should be proud of the relationships.

That said, I must ask: Among the readers of Harper’s Bazaar, are there any who really care where the ads stop and the edit begins? Have you flipped through the September issue of any of fashion magazine? I think most readers would be shocked to learn there is anything in them other than advertising. More than any genre of magazines, fashion magazine advertising is the reason they are purchased.

As for reality programs like American Idol, is the “franchise” of American Idol not a product, itself? Do viewers care that watching the whole show is like watching a commercial for the brand American Idol and all of the performers appearing are also brands?:

When Ryan Seacrest tells viewers they should go download recordings of the evening’s performances on iTunes, are viewers really duped into thinking that was an editorial decision on the part of Ryan rather than a business relationship between the Fox Network and Apple? Do viewers think the Ford music video advertisement is something the contestants do to relax during the week? Do viewers think Coca-Cola is what’s in that cup in front of Paula Abdul?

Are readers and viewers that stupid?

Okay, some are. So perhaps they need some type of explanation or disclaimer below that NYTimes.com advertisement for the product being written about in article next to it. Perhaps they need a big box that includes a warning that, “this article about Estee Lauder’s Senuous is sponsored by Estee Lauder’s Senuous.”

Bottomline: When you attempt to apply the same journalistic and ethical guidelines to entertainment (i.e., fashion magazines and “commercially-sponsored” network reality shows) that you do to news journalism (general or business), you start heading down a slippery slope to school marm silliness that soon makes serious ethical issues seem trite.

*I wrote about American Idol’s creative product placement practices earlier this year.

Four years ago, an article in the Wall Street Journal suggested Internet advertising would match magazine advertising by 2007 and blow past it in 2008. What happened?

The very short version: During 2007, almost $60 billion was spent on advertising that appeared in print while $11.31 billion was spent on advertising that appeared on the Internet.

The very long version: I don’t expect any readers of this weblog to remember a four-year-old rant I wrote (and here) about a Wall Street Journal article appearing in July, 2004. Screen grabbed on the left, the WSJ story carried the headline “Online Ad Dollars Set to Match, Then Go Ahead of Magazines (sub. required).” The article was based on a Jupiter Research report predicting that in 2007, Internet advertising spending would grow to $13.8 billion which, claimed the Wall Street Journal, “would match magazine advertising.”

My rant, which later became an article appearing in Folio: Magazine, was directed more at the Wall Street Journal reporter’s mis-interpretation of the research than it was at the Jupiter Research report. Their prediction was not really a comparison of Internet advertising to magazine advertising, merely their estimate of online advertising spending through 2007 and beyond. It was the Journal reporter who decided to mashup a comparison of future Internet advertising (based on Jupiter’s numbers) and its magazine number estimate.

However — and this was a major focus of my rant — the reporter (and Jupiter) failed to recognize that the Internet advertising prediction included all online advertising while the magazine advertising prediction excluded all business-to-business magazine advertising.

In my response to the article, I suggested that a better prediction of 2007 magazine ad spending would be the 2004 estimate by Veronis Suhler that $28.3 billion would be spent on magazine advertising (consumer and B-to-B) in 2007.

Fast-forward four years. Today, Advertising Age issued a report that included the actual ad spending (split by media) in 2007. As you can see in the Advertising Age pie chart below, $11.31 billion was spent on Internet advertising and $30.33 billion was spent on magazine advertising. Throw in the $28.22 billion spent on newspaper advertising and there was nearly $60 billion spent on print advertising last year.

Let’s break this down a bit. Let’s look at a comparison of the 2004 predictions vs. actual performance from Jupiter Research and Veronis Suhler regarding Internet and magazine advertising. As you can see on my comparison below, Jupiter over-shot their Internet advertising prediction while Veronis-Suhler undershot their magazine advertising prediction.

(Granted, Jupiter Research’s prediction during the most recent four-year span was dramatically better than their 1999-2003 prediction. In 1999, they predicted that online advertising in 2003 would total $11.5 billion compared to the $6.6 billion it actually hit.)

What does this mean? First, it means, (to quote a wonderful headline I saw this morning) “90% of all statistics can be made to say anything 50% of the time.” No doubt, the statistics in today’s report can be spun any way you want. I’ve spun them one way. Most bloggers would spin them in a way that suggests they are another nail in the coffin of the print medium. Frankly, the way headlines and intro paragraphs will be written can make most any statistics imply whatever you want — at least 50% of the time.

As for me, personally: I love Internet advertising. Without a doubt, it’s growing faster than any other form of advertising and I, personally, am benefiting from that. In 15 years, it has grown from zero to $11.3 billion, an amazing feat. However, my complaint is with the misuse of numbers by reporters and tech-oriented analysts — and, to be honest, just about everybody I know — to support a narrative that can be summed up in three words: Print is dead. As much as I love the Internet and all things digital, that narrative is probably not going to be true in the lifetime of anyone making that prediction.

Today’s narrative — as it was back in 2004 and 1999 and 1954 when TV was going to kill print and radio and movies — is that the Internet is going to bury all other forms of media one day. Today’s narrative is that Internet advertising is growing at a far larger percentage (which even a middle-schooler should understand is easier to do when you have a lower base on which to grow). Today’s narrative is that newspapers are going to be dead in, what, a year of so? Certainly, they won’t last for an entire decade, goes the narrative. According to Steve Ballmer, “…there will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form.” (He later said he could be off on the number of years, claiming, “…If it’s 14 or if it’s 8, it’s immaterial to my fundamental point . . . “

Of course, he also said the iPhone would flop.

Personally, I am doubtful about the longterm viability of the kind of print product the national chains of newspapers produce. Outside the sports section, I find little of value or interest to me in my hometown daily churned out by one of those national chains. And as I’ve said many times on this blog, I think many business-to-business print publications that focus merely on the transactions of their industries will be replaced by online properties that can provide a better, more timely flow of such information.

So, yes, I do think print will constrict while the Internet grows — over time. But die? Not likely.

Friday Afternoon Pondering: Minonline.com is the source of the chart above that ranks the top performing publications (as measured by the number of pages of advertising) during the past quarter in the business-to-business vertical of marketing. Minonline.com distributed a link to the chart as a teaser for its subscription-based service in which on Monday, I presume, the chart will be interpreted. At the link above, it merely states: “Crain’s Advertising Age shows its strength as the #1 publication on top of the advertising pages list for the 1st quarter. A less likely occupant is ST Media Group’s Signs of the Times with a first-quarter 2008, year-on-year 10% increase in ad pages and a nearly 40% increase for March 2008.”

Note: This is not the Signs of the Times magazine referred to, rather this publication about the sign industry is.

I’m not sure I trust the B2B media pundits to interpret this chart, however. I think it is a job for the guys at the Freakonomics Blog. How can advertising for advertising be so dramatically up in a quarter when advertising is supposed to be down — especially advertising in, of all media,B2B print publications.

I can guess the theories: (A) Media companies are advertising aggressively because they have so much unsold inventory, (B) media companies are launching new properties and thus are buying more ads to promote them, (C) media companies are aggressively pushing the message that advertising in a recession is the mark of a savvy marketer, (D) none of the above, (E) all of the above.

I’m guessing (doing anything else would require actual research and thought on my part) D & E are both correct answers. But again, I think it will take a skeptical economist to figure this out, not some analyst focusing on a narrow band of data related to the number of advertising pages sold.

I know, I know. It seems like all I ever do is hang out on the Internet.

But there’s this guilty pleasure I’ll now admit. I’m hooked on American Idol. Last night, David Cook won this year’s competition. He’s the first winner who I think may go on to be a hugely successful recording artist who I may actually enjoy listening to later. While others have certainly gone on to big success, I’m not really a fan of their music. For example, Carrie Underwood is nice looking and a megastar, but I’m not really into that commercial Nashville sound, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, since I know some people are going through AI withdrawal this morning, I thought I’d say goodbye to this season with a confessional list of six reasons why I like watching American Idol:

1. It’s perfect content for watching with a DVR like TiVo: I can honestly say, I’ve never watched an episode of American Idol “real-time” (while it is being broadcast). Even last night, my wife and I didn’t start watching the season finals until it had been on over an hour. I probably only watch about 20 minutes per hour of American Idol. I don’t like the host, the judges, most contestants or almost any of the features. I love being my own editor of the show. If you can figure out how to program your DVR remote to jump-ahead 30 seconds, you can watch the only segments I think have  any value: (a) the ‘up-close-and-personal back-story features about the contestants; (b) the performances of the really talented ones. The Fast-Forward control is the key to watching American Idol.

2. The show displays how advertisers must react to DVRs/TiVo: It is with amazement that I have discovered that while I Fast-Forward through a lot of the content of the program, I find myself stopping and reviewing some of the commercials and “sponsored” content. I’ll admit, some of this may come from my professional curiosity of what is taking place. Over the years, the show has gone from rudimentary “product placement” marketing (Coca-Cola cups on the judges table) to sophisticated and non-offensive “branded content” marketing that shows what “post-advertising” can be. Apple has become a major sponsor this year and, as typical, has displayed how “content” can be the most effective form of marketing. I may do a separate post on everything Apple has done this season, but, let’s just say: what Apple did this season on American Idol is the most brilliant display ever of network TV marketing. I doubt more than 1% of viewers recognized the array of brand-marketing, product marketing and (and this is the amazing part) direct marketing they were being bombarded with throughout each program. While Ford and Coca-Cola used the program effectively, Apple used it masterfully and in a way that proves once more their understanding of media is on a higher plane than we mere mortals.

3. The program has universal (omni-demographic) appeal: Over the years, I’ve discovered my love of NFL football means I have a topic I can strike up a conversation with people everywhere I travel in the U.S. Unlike politics or religion, a conversation about the hometown team is typically a “safe” place to start a conversation. American Idol is the same deal, except better. If you watch American Idol, you can have a bubble-gum conversation with waiters and waitresses, flight attendants, teenagers, retired couples from Florida. “What’s the deal with that Justin dude?” is good for a five minute conversation in a Southwest Airline boarding line.

4. I love story-driven competition: Next year, even if you think it would be the last sports thing you’d ever be interested in, watch the coverage of the Ironman Triathalon — the one in Hawaii. Typically, it’s a 90 minute documentary shown weeks after the event. It is mesmerizing because they focus on the stories of just a few of the participants who represent the different reasons why someone would get involved in such a sport. If American Idol was just a talent competition, I would have tuned out after a week or so — I don’t watch any other such program. However, the producers of the show find contestants who are both talented and have something about themselves that is compelling. Indeed, it can be argued that the final decision of this year’s winner came down to whose story the viewers preferred, as both of the contestants were very talented singers.

5. It makes me appreciate how very unique star-quality talent is: Living in Nashville and going to places like the Blue Bird has enabled me to be blown away by extremely talented people who will never be stars. Watching American Idol over a few months will amaze you when someone you think can’t lose ends up breaking under the pressure — or blossoming. It’s fascinating to watch who gets better and who peaks at the right time. Carrie Underwood went from being okay into super stardom during her year. I think David Cook did the same this year. Others prove that many people have a lot of talent and have worked hard and have not given up on their dream and have been lucky — but still don’t connect with the only folks who matter: the people.

6. It’s user-created content: Think about that one long and hard. While the program is perhaps one of the most over-produced and packaged programs in history, at its essence is this: People who aren’t stars and are on no-body’s A-List get a shot at getting to perform in front of a bigger audience. In the end, millions of people get to decide if they have what it takes to make it to the big-leagues, fame and fortune. There are lots of analogies there for what is taking place across all forms of media.

Chris Anderson’s post on LongTail.com contains an observation that is so obvious, it is missed by many self-appointed experts. (Okay, I’ll admit I live in that glass house.):

“Not only do small (Long Tail) publishers montetize their content at 3-5 times the rate of the larger publishers in PubMatic’s survey, but they’re improving in the current environment while the big publisher decline.

This is a fact of life in business-to-business-media, where the business model has long been focused on “free” distribution of content to decision-makers in specialized fields. The “cost per thousand” (CPM) model of advertising sales does not exist as a metric in this long-tail of the media world. Of course, if an advertiser selling a $100,000 piece of equipment can reach 90% of the decision makers in a market of 5,000 specifying engineers, then, hell-yeah, the publisher of that content should be able to monetize it at hundreds of times the rate of, say, a newsweekly.

The lesson here: Online, if you want to monetize content, the number of eyeballs seeing your content is less important than who those eyeballs belong to. And the more helpful that content is in assisting real people make important and valuable decisions, the more “monetizable” it will be.

My friend Steve Rubel does some “back of the envelop math” that he believes suggests $1 billion of Internet advertising is wasted.

His post reminded me of some universal advertising truths — and a century-old quote that addresses the dilemma. I wrote the following as a comment on Steve’s post, but thought I’d also mirror it here:

All advertising uses metrics that don’t account for the people who may not flip to the exact page in a publication, or may not be looking at a billboard while driving down the highway or who use commercial time to get up and go to the restroom.

This trainwreck in the making was noted 100 years ago by John Wanamaker, the turn-of-the-century New York department store entrepreneur, who is credited with the famous advertising line: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

Pay per click is an attempt to overcome the “wasted” impressions dilemma, as are TV infomercials that share revenue with broadcasters or direct-marketing ads in publications that do the same type of revenue share.

However, if “branding” is your goal with advertising, “placing” the ad anywhere is not what ensures success. “Impressions” are not results, they are mere audit metrics. Increased revenues (or votes or other actions) are the only metrics that matter in the end.

Great advertising generates reactions and results.

The advertising that does not do that is wasted — and that’s a lot more than 50% of what is produced and placed.

Over on the Custom Media Craft blog on Hammock.com, I just posted some highlights from the annual survey conducted by the Custom Publishing Council called “Characteristics Study: A Look at the Volume and Type of Custom Publications in America”. (Note: Hammock Inc. was one of the founding members of the Custom Publishing Council). According to the survey, in 2007 a record number of marketers used custom media to promote their products and brands. Personally, I believe the numbers are still conservative as there are lots of online “content marketing” activities taking place that fall through the cracks of this research. For instance, most of the digital startups that have content creation for marketers (i.e., video distributed online) as part of their business model should probably be covered in this research — but aren’t.

One thing this survey underscores is a statistic that doesn’t click with many of my friends in the magazine and media industry who think of the magazine format as being, exclusively, a business model (i.e., consumer of B2B magazines). The magazine format is not just a business-model, it supports and serves other business models. I typically use university alumni or association magazines as examples here, but think of all the institutions and, now, companies, who use magazines and other media they create as platforms for fostering long term relationships with their constituencies (customers, alumni, members, supporters, etc.). While there are probably (and I’m guessing here) less than 20,000 magazines that have advertising and circulation-revenue as the focus of their business models, this survey indicates there are 143,173 magazines in America. Even if my number is low and their’s is high, the truth of magazine publishing is this: Most magazines in America “support” a business model — they aren’t a business model.

This is an important fact to consider when thinking about the “business model” of another media: blogging. Today — and forevermore — there will be only a small fraction of blogs that are, themselves, a business. The vast majority — as in 99% or more — of business-related blogs will support a business model (or a cause or institution or campaign), not be a business model.

Another thing: I confess: As much as I enjoy publishing — indeed everything about — magazines, I’m also very-much a new-media guy. I believe content-marketing, custom media, social media, conversational media — whatever you want to call it — should be front and center in any company or institution’s marketing effort (our company works with clients in doing just that). I see no “competition” or “conflict” or “irony” in me advocating new media while still championing the magazine format as the most compelling engagement media available.

At Hammock.com, view statistics and highlights from the Custom Publications in America survey.

In January, I wrote about the format-busting Apple ad that was running on the front of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal websites. A week later, I pointed out how the ad format compromised the visual effect of editorial following a breaking news story. While I’m a fan of the creative execution of the Apple ad (but still not a fan of its mean-spiritedness and, frankly, don’t believe the veracity of the core message), I pointed out that what was taking place would never be allowed by business magazines or in the print New York Times or Wall Street Journal.

Today, NYTimes.com is running another execution of the ad, however, the ad is not appearing on WSJ.com. Perhaps after the close of market today, the WSJ.com will run it? I’ll watch.

(via: Patrick Ruffini’s Flickr photo stream.)

Interesting article in the NY Times today about scionspeak.com, a new marketing effort by Toyota. It also provides the current state of a non-blogosphere “trend story” about where social media marketing is today. From that vantage point it’s a good story for tech bloggers and social media marketing types to gauge how those from the real world perceive what it means to be a trendy social media marketer:

1. Being a trendy social media marketer means you’re not considering setting up a “Facebook for [Your Brand or Product Category Here].” You know that your customers don’t “belong” to you, even if they are “members.” (Unless, of course, you’re Nike or Apple.)

2. Trendy social media marketers are supporting current customers, not “future” ones.

3. Trendy social media marketers work for clients whose products have tiny market shares and whose customers like being “misunderstood,” “quirky,” “hip” or “superior.”

4. Trendy social media marketers work for clients who have customers who use the word “freaking” as an adjective.

5. Trendy social media marketers recognize that mainstream reporters love Flash websites.

Quotes from the article:

“The Scion Speak campaign is aimed not at future Scion owners but at current ones. StrawberryFrog says that it wants “to reduce Scion’s investment on conquering new customers and increasing the passion for the brand among its core fan base…At least some Scion owners who have created their own coats of arms seem pleased with the results. A Scion driver, writing online as Monsterslovecandy, created a design that included a harlequin pattern, crossed wrenches and a phoenix, and wrote on a fan Web site, “I think it came out freaking sweet.”

There are many insightful points in Matt Creamer’s essay in Advertising Age, “Think Different: Maybe the Web’s Not a Place to Stick Your Ads. As the title suggests, he uses Apple as an example of a company that, relative to its overall advertising spending, devotes only a small fraction of its marketing budget to “advertising” online. (As I’ve pointed out, when they do advertise online, they do it well.) Notes, Creamer, Apple doesn’t suffer from a lack of exposure online, however. Indeed, in many cases, the sites on which it would advertise have far less traffic than Apple web properties attract.

The article can be summed up with this quote from Jakob Nielsen: “”The basic point about the web is that it is not an advertising medium. The web is not a selling medium; it is a buying medium. It is user-controlled, so the user controls, the user experiences.” (Presumably, Matt’s essay is focused on non-search advertising as that is online advertising that is controlled by users.)

Quote:

This…is a call to give some thought to a question that’s not asked enough about the Internet: Should it even be viewed as an ad medium? After all, in some quarters of the broader marketing world, the habit of looking at advertising as the most important tool in the marketers’ toolbox is undergoing intense interrogation. Consider the growth of the word-of-mouth marketing business, premised on the notion that people not corporations who help other people make consumer decisions. Or look at the growing importance put on public relations and customer-relationship management both in marketing circles and even in the c-suite. The same conversation should be going on around the Internet. Trends like those listed suggest the possibility of a post-advertising age, a not-too-distant future where consumers will no longer be treated as subjects to be brainwashed with endless repetitions of whatever messaging some focus group liked. That world isn’t about hidden persuasion, but about transparency and dialogue and at its center is that supreme force of consumer empowerment, the Internet.

That I liked Matt’s essay should come as no surprise: It echoes what The Cluetrain Manifesto clearly articulated and foresaw nearly ten years ago. Maybe after another decade or so of hearing this repeated, the men and women who are responsible for marketing (and advertising) budgets will finally figure out that what the web enables is more powerful than advertising. Indeed, it will likely prove to be the most powerful marketing platform ever conceived — as long as you realize that it’s not a place to merely stick advertising. It’s a buying medium, not a selling medium.

Frank Baker, media educator, has posted a “media literacy lesson plan” for teachers informing them How to Use Super Bowl Ads In The Classroom. Apparently this lesson plan is designed to help improve the “media literacy” of children so they’ll understand better how media works to influence them into making decisions like purchasing stuff they don’t really need. While I agree that such literacy is important (my children will tell you that when they were pre-schoolers, I would often ask them after watching or hearing an ad, “What were they trying to sell us?”), I’m amused (alarmed?) that Mr. Baker does not see the irony of this plan if its goal is to encourage students to be less influenced by the media.

Here’s the lesson plan:

Here are some questions you might have your students ponder before the game:

1. What do you know about the Super Bowl game? Where did you learn it?
2. Why does the game get tremendous media attention every year?
3. What makes advertisers want to put their ads on this once-a-year sporting event?
4. Why do the ads cost over $2.5 million for just one 30 second ad?
5. Who decides what order the ads air during the game?
6. How do advertisers create buzz about their ads, even before the game is broadcast?
7. Create a chart listing the known advertisers and their parent companies.
8. How many ads are for: alcohol? Why is this so?
9. Which ad(s) are you looking forward to viewing and why?
10. How do advertisers make money from their Super Bowl spots?
11. Might you find ads inside the stadium? If so, where? Be on the lookout for not-so-obvious ads during the broadcast. (Students might want to create a list)

Here are some questions to consider after the game:

1. What ad(s) did you find most entertaining, and why? (students should be specific and give details here)
2. What ad(s) did you find the most dull, and why?
3. Which ad(s) did you think were most effective, and why?
4. Which ad(s) were you most willing to share (email) with a friend?
5. Which ad(s) featured well-known personalities? Why?
6. Which “techniques of persuasion” were used in each ad? (teachers might want to print out a list and have students match the ads with those on the list)
7. Calculate the total cost to the TV network if each ad costs an estimated $2.7 million.
8. How do Super Bowl advertisers get mileage for their message after the game is over?
9. How many ads did you spot inside the stadium?

I’ve developed some follow-up lesson-plan questions of my own:

Here are some questions to consider about this Super Bowl lesson plan:

1. How many hours before, during and after the game did this lesson plan assign students to spend watching and discussing Super Bowl ads?
2. What does it communicate to students that two days of classroom time should be devoted to discussing beer ads appearing on a football game.
3. How many minutes of beer ads were the students assigned to watch and discuss by this lesson plan?
4. Discuss why and how lesson plans like these — even clever and creative ones — frighten parents and other citizens who are concerned with the state of the nation’s educational system.
5. Create a chart listing any possible connection there might be between this lesson plan and something beneficial to a student (other than reinforcing how important drinking Budweiser must be to the nation’s economy because they can afford more and funnier ads than anyone).
6. Calculate the total cost to the nation’s economy of wasting valuable classroom time on lessons plans like this.

This “told-you-so” post by Michael Arrington regarding advertising on Robert Scoble’s blog is so inside ball I hesitate to comment, however when did such hesitation stop me before, so, here’s my observation: A long time ago, Scobleizer.com didn’t carry advertising, but it has always been advertising. It was advertising (marketing?) to create and build Brand Robert. Robert wasn’t trying to monetize his blog, he was trying to monetize Brand Robert. That strategy worked so that Brand Robert and all its brand extensions have been acquired (or perhaps more correctly described, aqhired) by a media company that has an advertising business model. In other words, Brand Robert’s new stewards will now be monetizing Brand Robert and its brand extensions using a media company business model.

For the record, my blog still doesn’t “carry” advertising — it is advertising.

Also, for the record: I love advertising and am involved in numerous media programs, projects and properties that have an advertising business model.

It’s true, I’m not a fan of the term “content marketing” and would never apply that term to the work I do. That said, I really like some people who are evangelizing the use of the term “content marketing” who have honored this blog with a high ranking on a new list of bloggers who write about what they believe the term describes (more on that in a minute).

So since I’m an accidental (but appreciative) “content marketing” blogger, I’d like to use this new authority to explain fully why I don’t like or use the term “content marketing” except when a potential client is using it to describe something they’d like to hire my firm to do. (The same is true for “Web 2.0″ or any other term I may accidentally be associated with.)

See, I have a problem with the word content when used to describe what I create. I believe using the word “content” voluntarily to describe what I do insults the talent, skill, creativity and craft that goes into the media my colleagues and I create and manage in collaboration with our clients. I believe the term “content marketing” makes it sound like I’m marketing a service to shovel out some commodity created primarily to fill up space or time. Creating “content” is not what we do. Helping tell brand stories. Adding value to products. Encouraging loyalty or involvement. Educating. Activating. Those are the things the talented individuals at our company do with and for the talented individuals who are our clients. “Generating content” is absolutely the least valuable of all the services we provide. And I say that knowing the “content” we create is consistently judged to be among the best “content” created by people at companies like ours.

Longtime readers of this blog know my go-to muse on the topic of the term “content” is the philosopher Doc Searls who summarizes everything I believe when he says (and I’m leaving it precisely in his vernacular), “Stop calling everything ‘content.’ It’s a bullshit word that the dot-commers started using back in the ’90s as a wrapper for everything that could be digitized and put online. It’s handy, but it masks and insults the true nature of writing, journalism, photography, and the rest of what we still, blessedly (if adjectivally) call ‘editorial.’ Your job is journalism, not container cargo.”

End of rant.

I need to be very clear: I have nothing personal against my friends and industry colleagues who want to use the term “content marketing” to describe a business category. I don’t use the term — but I’m not leading any faction that’s “anti-” anything. I’m for whatever anyone can do to let marketers know there are companies out there who can help them create and manage media used in building brands and creating communities. And I’m honored that my weblog is ranked #13 on the new Junta 42 Top Content Marketing Blogs. And I’m (big surprise here) enough of a self-promoter to encourage people to go there and “vote” (hitch) this blog up the list. And I’m also enough of a search-engine geek to know that if the marketplace wants to call the business I’m in “content marketing,” then I’m not going to try to hide from the term when potential clients are searching for it. So, “content marketing” searchers, head right over to Hammock.com if you’re looking for a company that can help you solve any editorial or graphic design or video or online content marketing needs you may have. Anything not involving container cargo ship content, in other words.

Oh, and another thing: if you haven’t fallen asleep yet, you must actually be interested in “content marketing” (or custom media, customer media, custom publishing, customer media, conversational media, conversation marketing, etc.) so let me also point you to a new weblog on Hammock.com called Custom Media Craft. It’s tightly focused on the “crafts” used in our development and management of brand story telling. Oh, wait. Another term for another post.

Technorati Tags: cluetrain, custommedia, custompublishing, doc searls, hammockinc

Last week, I wrote that while I believed it was brilliant, the animated Apple advertisement that appeared on the front page of NYTimes.com and, especially, the Wall Street Journal website, may have crossed some as-yet-determined line of what is okay — or not okay — with online advertising on news-media websites. In that post, I wrote: “The ad’s headline is in a little ruled box, but it’s in a font that is extremely similar to the actual headlines on the page…it’s obvious to you and me and probably 99% of the WSJ.com and NYTimes.com readers that this is an ad, but if this had appeared in a magazine, well, let’s just say it would have at least needed some clarification or a major ASME bruhaha would be taking place today.” Later, David Kaplan of PaidContent.org noted that the folks at NYTimes.com had decided to limit the giant ads to “once a month.”

I thought by displaying the current news-screaming front page of WSJ.com with last week’s “ad giant” front page may demonstrate why it’s a challenge to experiment with editorial real-estate and conventions that you have trained readers to believe are reserved for only the most major news story. In this case, I think the experiment — despite its brilliance as advertising — needs some re-thinking.

I think the Mac ad running on the front of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times (and perhaps others) websites today is the most brilliant online advertising I’ve ever seen. (I also think it’s mean-spirited and insincere, as well, which I mention below — but that’s not the focus of this post.) Hands down, it beats any interstitial ad I’ve ever seen — primarily because I’ve always clicked on the “skip this ad” whenever I’ve seen one. It also beats any “rich media” play-with-a-pencil ad. It beat ads that fly-over editorial content. It beats anything that blocks editorial content. It beats any YouTube “user-generated” ad for that matter. It’s incredible. Most incredible, however, is that it is running on the front page of the Wall Street Journal & New York Times websites.

Apple has a long history of redefining what an ad can be. And by ad, I’m talking about the good-old-fashioned paid media kind of advertising where an ad-buyer purchases space or time to run (or insert) some “creative” that is created by some people called “creatives.” I’m not talking about new notions of marketing that focus on creating products that people talk about and calling that “the thing formerly known as advertising” (although I’m a big believer in that, also). In this case I’m talking about the thing formerly known as advertising that is still advertising.

Ask most people what the greatest ad of all time is and they’ll tell you, the Superbowl ad called “1984” that introduced the Mac. But hey, let’s don’t ask “most people,” let’s just google the phrase greatest ad of all time and see what happens.

While Apple and others have created and run “rich media” non-traditional size online ads before — even on the WSJ.com and NYTimes.com websites, I believe the one appearing today on WSJ.com is breaking new ground, 1984 style. Here are a few reasons why:

1. It’s incredible that it’s running on the front of WSJ.com with nothing that labels it as an ad. The ad’s headline is in a little ruled box, but it’s in a font that is extremely similar to the actual headlines on the page. And while the same ad is running on the front of the New York Times website, the ad actually has a “Wall Street Journal” attribution on the headline (it’s covered up in the scan above, however). Of course, it’s obvious to you and me and probably 99% of the WSJ.com and NYTimes.com readers that this is an ad, but if this had appeared in a magazine, well, let’s just say it would have at least needed some clarification or a major ASME bruhaha would be taking place today.

2. This ad proves that the web is not just about “search” advertising: This is brilliant brand-marketing creative. Some of the most effective ever. It’s pretty brilliant product advertising, as well. The fact that I think the campaign is mean-spirited and not accurate is beside the point. It’s so good that it became a part of pop culture — and very few ads do so anymore. (While it’s another point, the TV versions of these ads are perhaps the only advertising that my DVR at home is used for “ad-rewatching” rather than ad-skipping.)

3. This ad demonstrates that brilliant advertisers can actually understand the whole cross-platform, synergistic, multi-media advertising idea that’s been the holy grail of media companies for the past decade: Perhaps it’s because their products jam the halls of every magazine publisher in America, but Apple has never stopped advertising in magazines. It’s hard to pick up a consumer magazine without an iPod or iPhone ad in it. When it comes to TV advertising, Apple is ubiquitous these days. With the co-op dollars they’re getting from AT&T, they’re carpet-bombing NFL football with iPhone ads. This “I’m a Mac” campaign is hard to miss, as well. Except for Nike, I can’t think of an advertiser who has used outdoor or transit advertising more effectively than Apple. And online, they are now setting the mark. Most importantly, each execution reinforces the other.

4. It’s not just about great products: As much as I love Apple products, they are flawed. Leopard is flawed. I know that for a fact. I have 25 Macs I’d like to upgrade to Leopard, but can’t because of some glitches it has with some software that is critical to our business. Yet there is a notion that Apple spends money creating great products so, therefore, it does not depend on advertising as much as companies that don’t create great products. The fact is, they create great products that are designed beautifully, have better-than-competitor usability and support the launch and marketing of those products with brilliant advertising — the kind that gets people to stop in their tracks and write posts like this.