vivid shining brands

According to the Economist today: According to data from Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS), a private-equity firm, spending on public relations in America grew by more than 4% in 2008 and nearly 3% in 2009 to $3.7 billion. That is remarkable when compared with other forms of marketing. Spending on advertising contracted by nearly 3% in 2008 and by 8% in the past year. PR’s position looks even rosier when word-of-mouth marketing, which includes services that PR firms often manage, such as outreach to bloggers, is included. Spending on such things increased by more than 10% in 2009. One global PR group, IPREX, of which our friends at FinemanPR are a member, saw a 14% increase in revenue. PR tends to do well in recessions because it requires less capital outlay than big media campaigns, but its hit-or-miss nature is less effective than any well-executed brand ad campaign. If the story doesn't get picked up, nobody sees it. Plus, they don't usually let you put your logo or a ...

Now that the tinsel and mistletoe dust have settled, let's take stock of the near future for retail advertising. According to Calculated Risk , December retail sales were down .3% from November on a seasonally adjusted basis, but up 5.4% YoY from December 2008. This graph shows retail sales since 1992. This is monthly retail sales, seasonally adjusted (total and ex-gasoline). Click here for larger chart. Retail appears to have bottomed, and should begin a long, slow climb back to better times, although given anemic consumer confidence, that climb could be slower and more arduous than anyone would like, and this includes the retail segment of the advertising industry, whose fortunes have been tracking the industry it serves. A report in Bloomberg News  notes that: Americans also bought more consumer goods, computers and telecommunications equipment from overseas, signaling a revival in overall demand and business investment. But most analysts say that demand is we...

Reporting in the NY Times today , Miguel Helft captures the frank admission of Andy Rubin, whose title, paradoxically, is VP Engineering: “There is an opportunity to make some margin on the unit sales, but that’s not the objective here,” Andy Rubin, a vice president of engineering in charge of the Android technology, said during a press conference at Google’s headquarters here. “Our primary business is advertising.” [emphasis added] Interesting, I think, that the core notion of needing a big agency to handle your advertising continues to erode with advances in technology. The advantage is heading toward the smaller, more nimble agencies with great outside technological and graphic design resources that they can tap, but need not own. Overhead disappears. The focus shifts to creative strategy and administration. Clients certainly benefit, but it is admittedly a bewildering time to run an agency, with everything in the game changing seemingly at once.