“The View From the Phlipside” is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY, Monday through Friday around 7:30 AM. The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program. Mostly because the host may suddenly add or subtract words at a moment’s notice. WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed. You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com. Copyright 2013-18 by Jay Phillippi. All Rights Reserved. You like what you see and hear? Drop me a line and we can talk.
Programs from the week of January 6, 2019
This Week’s Podcast
My name is Jay Phillippi and I’ve spent my life in and around the media. TV, radio, the movies and more. I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View from the Phlipside.
Super Bowl Ads!
It’s that time of year! With the Super Bowl just a month away, it’s time for me to focus on the stuff that will bring the real interest to our unofficial national holiday. The TV commercials! Curiously, over the last couple years the relationship between the interest of the game and the advertising has swung for me. The games have become more interesting while the spots have let me down. We’ll see if we can swing everything back into its proper place. Besides, neither the Bills nor my beloved Steelers are in the playoffs, so why should I get excited about playoff football?
First of all, let’s get down to that most American of all concerns. Money. How much will this year’s spots cost? The price hasn’t changed much since last year. A 30-second spot will set you back right around $5 million. Last year you could a bit of a deal on the ads if you bundled it with spots during the Winter Olympics. No such deals are available in 2019.
Let’s start off with the veterans, the car commercials. Hyundai, Kia, Toyota and Mercedes-Benz have all inked deals. Since the game will take place at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, that last name is unsurprising. Audi will be back, while several other big names, including any of the General Motors marques, Fiat/Chrysler, BMW and Honda, are still keeping mum on their plans.
Budweiser has grabbed an exclusive slot for alcohol ads during the games. So it will be all Clydesdales and, sadly, yet another “Dilly Dilly”. That ad was a surprise hit the first time. Count on seeing lots of ads from the alcohol giant. They have four minutes of advertising in their playbooks.
Luke Wilson will being the face of a toothpaste ad this year. Colgate has drafted him to be rep their flagship brand. It’s their first appearance in three years.
M&Ms will be back. Rumors say they have a “big announcement” that will be included in the spot. Meanwhile, Pringles will do more flavor stacking in their spot. I could make a cheap joke here about Millennials and avocado toast but I’ll pass and just say that Avocados From Mexico will be back for the fifth straight year. Turbo-Tax and WeatherTech will be back as well.
What interests me is that I don’t hear any rumblings about any special ads, the ones that turn everything upside down. That may be a good thing since many of them bomb. And who knows? Maybe toothpaste will turn out to be really funny.
The Ratings
For years, ratings in the media were pretty straightforward. During my radio career I didn’t have to worry about ratings given my market size. But the name of the game in that industry was Arbitron. Meanwhile, on the television side the name was much better known. Nielsen. Nielsen ratings. Nielsen families. That one company has dominated the television ratings market basically forever. It’s an era that might be coming to an end.
There are two things at play here. The ratings company’s relation with a major broadcast network, and the changing face of the media world.
The agreement between Nielsen and CBS ended on December 31. That contract was estimated to be worth $100 million each year. The two companies have not, as of the moment I write this, come to an agreement on the cost of the next contract. CBS, like many folks in the media world, are concerned that the current method of estimating viewers isn’t accurate. Those numbers are how a media outlet of any kind establishes its value to advertisers. Nielsen has been the industry standard. A standard without a real second option. The problem for Nielsen is if they lack one of the biggest players’ numbers, the value of the ratings decreases. It’s no longer one stop shopping. On the other hand, how can CBS sell to advertisers without those numbers? The ratings giant has made clear to its clients that they are NOT permitted to share information. With anyone. Again, there is no other standard that will work. Like the government shutdown, both sides can rant and rave, but in the end, they have no choice but compromise.
What about that second issue? There are serious questions about how you include traditional TV viewing, satellite/cable channels, streaming viewers and all the other options available to the audience into a single set of numbers. There isn’t a process that offers a number that the media accepts yet. There are traditional ratings systems, and there are digital ratings systems. There is no “one ring to rule them all”. Nielsen would love to continue being the go to company for that kind of information. But they have competition. From the digital side is a company called Comscore. Comscore is an American media analytics and measurement company that has had some teething pains since its founding 20 years ago. As recently as two years ago, they faced being delisted on the NASDAQ stock exchange. Today they are in a race with Nielsen to find that new standard for the media.
It’s not the sexiest media news of the new year, but in some ways it may be the most important.
Fictional Influence
One of the things that my parents drilled into my head as a kid was to think for myself. I haven’t always been perfect in practice, but the idea sits locked into the foundation of my worldview. How many times did you hear some variation of “If so and so jumped off a bridge, would you?”
The reality is that our culture has always encouraged us to let other people do our thinking for us. Celebrity endorsements are the most obvious examples of that. We are supposed to think “Well if famous-movie-star likes it then it must be good/cool/sexy”. It’s an idea that has been around for a long time.
And in the age of social media, it has a new name. “Influencer”. Social media is the perfect environment for influencer marketing. Because it’s all about social interaction and relationship.. The stronger the relationship the more powerful the impact can be on buying decisions.
Which makes a new trend in influencer marketing more disturbing to me than ever. I am no doubt late to this party because my social media sphere is still fairly small, but I only came across the name of L’il Miquela late last year. With a million and a half Instagram followers, L’il Miquela hit the news last spring when a rival hacked her account and demanded that she tell the truth.
That truth being that she isn’t a real person.
L’il Miquela is a CGI personality, a digital avatar, created as an art project in 2016. Since then the character has developed a devoted following, released several singles, and made a contributing editor to the website Dazed Beauty. Oh and has also become the face of high end fashion brands like Prada. All while claiming to be a sentient robot.
A quick moment on that last claim, if someone has actually broken the barrier on true, sentient robots and their best idea on how to use the technology was to make them a fashion influencer, they should be exiled to a desert island for the rest of their life.
Meanwhile, back to the question of a CGI influencer. If it’s a dumb idea to let movie stars influence your thinking, where does that leave the idea of being influenced by a person who isn’t a person? An avatar designed for one thing and one thing alone, separating your from your money. It’s a scam pretending to be a relationship. Fictional influencer is not a term that I find any need of.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
Copyright Jay Phillippi, 2018
Theme music for “The View From the Phlipside” and “TVFTP – Podcast” is “Hustle”
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
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