I place BrandIndex's casual dining value research with Reuters' ShopTalk blog

Best deals for restaurant meals

When it comes to getting the most bang for a buck at sit-down restaurants, Olive Garden, Cracker Barrel, Golden Corral, Applebee’s and Chili’s get top marks, according to 5,000 diners recently polled online by BrandIndex.

Brands with the worst perceived value were Ground Round, Benihana, Bahama Breeze, Landry’s Seafood House and Hooter’s.

Sit-down restaurants have been discounting heavily as consumers cook more meals at home and “trade down” to lower-priced fast-food chains to save money amid a long recession that has sent U.S. unemployment to a 26-year high.

BrandIndex is owned by market research company YouGov.

Here is the full list of results:

(A score can range from 100 to -100 and is compiled by subtracting negative feedback from positive. A zero score means equal positive and negative feedback.)

CASUAL DINING — VALUE SCORES (July 10, 2009)

Oliver Garden: 56.80
Cracker Barrel: 55.61
Golden Corral: 54.85
Applebee’s: 47.24
Chili’s: 46.14
Famous Dave’s: 44.28
TGI Friday’s: 41.43
Red Robin: 41.28
Ruby Tuesday: 40.70
Hometown Buffet: 34.64
Fuddrucker’s: 32.31
Macaroni Grill: 30.58
Pei Wei Asian Dinner: 29.40
Carrabba’s: 26.24
California Pizza Kitchen: 24.70
Buffalo Wild Wings: 22.50
Sizzler: 22.27
Luby’s: 18.25
Red Lobster: 17.68
On The Border: 16.42
Houlihan’s: 3.62
Ground Round: 0.00
Benihana: -7.66
Bahama Breeze: -11.63
Landry’s Seafood House: -12.26
Hooter’s: -41.98

I position BrandIndex's Tylenol research in Brandweek

Researcher: Consumers Turn on Tylenol

The Food and Drug Administration's position on acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, is giving parent company Johnson & Johnson a branding headache, according to researcher YouGov.

The firm, whose BrandIndex polls 5,000 U.S. adults daily on brand perception, found Tylenol's negative buzz grew in a very short amount of time.

On June 25, the brand's buzz score - which is rated on a scale of 100 to -100 and calculated by subtracting negative feedback from positive - was 38.9.

On July 9, that score was 18, an "incredibly sharp drop in a very short time," per a YouGov rep.

The FDA announced its ruling on July 3. The agency reasoned that acetaminophen could cause liver damage and recommends maximum doses of Tylenol be reduced. Extra Strength Tylenol, which has a higher amount of acetaminophen than the regular kind, could become prescription-only.

Tylenol, which famously countered a pr debacle in 1982 when an unknown criminal laced Extra Strength Tylenol with cyanide, killing seven people, quickly addressed the FDA's ruling with full-page newspaper ads calling Tylenol "the safest brand of pain reliever you can choose," and stressing that the onus is on the individual consumer to take the proper dose.

Book quadrantONE CEO Andy Ellenthal as a panelist at the OMMA AdNets Conference

Truce: Can’t Premium Publishers and Ad Networks Just Get Along?

After all of the rhetoric about ad networks depressing CPMs and undercutting publishers’ brand equity, even branded media continue to rely on ad networks. The nets provide a persistent revenue stream and a source for achieving added reach. How is the relationship between networks and publishers evolving? Are some networks modifying their models to appeal to publishers’ needs to maintain CPMs and brand equity? Are the newest optimizations tools performing as advertised for publishers or are they just another under-utilized tech toy? And have the nets and publishers found ways of resolving the sales channel conflicts that some say undermine a brand’s premium value?

My op-ed about Twitter appears in Mediapost

The Twitter Revolution For Business May Not Be Televised by Drew Kerr




When I attended Internet Week's Social Media Camp, marketing pro Chris Heuer presented a slide in the initial Social Media 101 session that read: "Spin doesn't work. People smell BS a mile away."

Ironic, I'd say.

Tell me if this doesn't remind you of late-90's nuttiness: social media gurus conducting Twitter seminars for anxiously paying attendees and clients... people are signing book deals based on tweet compilations. Just last week, Twitter is on the cover of Time magazine ("Twitter and the change it brings"). One Social Media Camp seminar was about "the science of retweeting." Ashton Kutcher battled it out with CNN for the most followers. Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jason Calacanis offered $250,000 to Twitter to become a "suggested user" because he equated it with another "Super Bowl."

Now with investor community whispers of Twitter becoming an e-commerce tool, it's time to wonder if it can really walk the walk.

The anecdotal and empirical evidence about Twitter's shortcomings is snowballing as fast as the microblogging site's growth is slowing. The media hype turning point may be upon us.

I'm not talking about abject failure -- Twitter has proven to be a financial boon for Dell Computer, apparently helping to generate more than $3 million in sales since 2007 from its @DellOutlet account. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is milking his Twitter account for everything it's worth to show how cool both he and his company are, selling shoes over the Internet. For breaking news and massive outspoken protests (such as the recent #cnnfail Twitter trend) and customer service outreach (notably with JetBlue), the service has absolute merit. I follow certain journalists to get a sense of what they are writing about and what's on their minds.

But Twitter is turning out to be like a huge party that everybody RSVP'd for and very few people showed up. You know that feeling you may have had in the back of your mind wondering how interesting it would really be to let everybody know about what you were doing every hour? You may have been right -- it's not interesting at all.

To me, it started with the ingenious New York Times article at the end of May that revealed most celebrity Twitter feeds were concocted by ghostwriters. Suddenly, Twitter had a little hollow ring to it, that it was a bit of a smoke and mirrors act. And if Hollywood couldn't bother Twittering, then what about other CEOs and well-known names?

Then came the one-two punch this spring: Nielsen Online issued a report that "more than 60% of U.S. Twitter users fail to return the following month," followed by last week's Hubspot reseaerch that showed that more than half of Twitter's 4.5 million registered users have never posted a tweet. This is going to be a business?

I've heard all kinds of stories of mega-celebrities with tons of followers putting links in their Twitter feed, only to see the click-through traffic produce very disappointing numbers.

Recently, digital traffic measurement firm Compete said monthly unique visitors grew only 1.47% in May.

When the cold light of day arrives, and Twitter's ROI is scrutinized by corporate America, marketers, PR firms, Hollywood, and everybody else who drank the Kool Aid, it may turn out that Twitter is only effective with a certain niche of early adapters, or highly mobile and connected individuals.

Twitter may be more comparable to the specialized smaller audience of Wired magazine versus the colossal mass outreach of Good Housekeeping.

Spin? Oh, yes, it does work.

My blog post about Michael Jackson's former publicist picked up by NY Times' Media Decoder

Amidst Fond Remembrance, Flack Attacks

By David Carr

A lot of tender pixels got spilled yesterday over the death of Michael Jackson, but Drew Kerr, a New York public relations executive, noticed that there was a clank amidst all the encomiums.

One person that didn’t hold back their axe to grind was Jackson’s former publicist, Michael Levine, who worked with the singer when he was accused of molestation in 1993. Instead of doing the classy thing and taking the high road, he belly-flopped right into the mud.

According to the Associated Press, Levine said: “I must confess I am not surprised by today’s tragic news. Michael has been on an impossibly difficult and often self-destructive journey for years. His talent was unquestionable but so too was his discomfort with the norms of the world. A human simply cannot withstand this level of prolonged stress.”

Mr. Kerr, whose been around the PR game for a while suggested that the social convention of not speaking ill of the dead applies double when he or she happens to be a former client.

Wow. Couldn’t the guy just stick with nice things to say about his former client instead of playing backstabbing armchair shrink?

If you’re a client of Michael Levine, don’t get on his wrong side if you part ways. Guys like this give public relations a bad name, even after you’ve passed on.

Reveal BrandIndex's data about Bing vs. Google recognition in Brandweek and Silicon Alley Insider

Microsoft's Bing is Clicking

Bing, Microsoft's latest search engine, is starting to click with consumers, according to YouGov's BrandIndex.

The index, which is based on 5,000 daily interviews over the Web, shows 25 percent of all U.S. adults 18 and over have heard something about Bing over the last two weeks. For Google, the figure is 52.5 percent.

Microsoft broke ads for Bing in late May. The campaign, via JWT, New York, has been estimated to be in the $80 million to $100 million range.

The media blitz seems to be raising awareness, if nothing else. According to BrandIndex, only 7.9 percent of consumers had heard of Bing on June 8.

YouGov's data comes after comScore showed Bing had achieved 15.5 percent penetration among Web surfers for the period of June 2-6. Google's share gene rally hovers around 60 percent, per comScore.

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The Masses Are Learning What "Bing" Is (MSFT, GOOG)

The Masses Are Learning What "Bing" Is (MSFT, GOOG)What's an $80 million ad campaign get you these days? For Microsoft (MSFT), advertising its re-branded search engine Bing, about three times better brand recognition in just three weeks.

As of Monday, 25% of US adults over 18 have heard of Bing, according to the YouGov BrandIndex. That's up from 7.9% on June 8. During the same three weeks, Google's (GOOG) brand recognition hovered between 52.5% and 57.4%.

YouGov comes up with their number after interviewing 5,000 people each weekday. The margin of error is about 2%.

Here's the chart:

Acted as spokesperson for BrandIndex's GM research in The Wall Street Journal

GM Will Hold Ad Budget Steady

Plan Calls for Spending of Up to $50 Million a Month While in Chapter 11

[EXCERPT]
As General Motors prepares to drive out of bankruptcy court, Madison Avenue is breathing easier.

Late last week, the fallen auto maker said it will maintain an ad budget between $40 million and $50 million a month while in bankruptcy proceedings -- much less than in years past, but about the same as in the months leading up to its June 1 bankruptcy filing.

Advertising and marketing firms, which are facing an abysmal ad market, had been anxious about how much GM would spend to peddle its products as it struggled through bankruptcy. It isn't clear when GM will emerge from Chapter 11 protection, though some GM executives and advisers expect it could be a matter of weeks, say people familiar with the matter....

BrandIndex, a firm that tracks consumer's perceptions of more than 1,100 brands, says it has seen a "modest jump" in positive buzz for GM. "The campaign has been far more convincing to women then men" and it is also generating a slightly more positive response with 18- to 34-year-olds than the 35 to 49 crowd, says Drew Kerr, a spokesman for BrandIndex, which is owned by YouGov.

I launch INVIDI's pact with DIRECTV in The Wall Street Journal, Mediaweek, Multichannel News, Mediapost and B&C

DirecTV Will Offer Targeted Ads in 2011

DirecTV Group Inc. is preparing a new service that allows advertisers to reach viewers based on their locations, a significant change for the satellite-television business.

Satellite companies have so far been constrained in their ability to target specific regions -- DirecTV, for example, has mainly east and west broadcast streams.

DirecTV will use software from startup Invidi Technologies to deliver the targeted ads, beginning in 2011. The software can home in on the geographic region of viewers by picking up information from set-top boxes, said Michael Kubin, executive vice president of Invidi Technologies.

"We know exactly where a viewer is located, and to advertisers who want to avoid waste, that makes all the difference," Mr. Kubin said.

The new service will allow DirecTV, which has 18 million subscribers, "to compete for a large slice of the TV budget, which is local advertising," said Tracey Scheppach, senior vice president and video-innovations director at Publicis Groupe's Starcom Worldwide.

Advertisers have been clamoring for more precision and rival cable operators have ramped up their own local ad offerings. At the same time, lawmakers are growing increasingly concerned about the privacy implications of ad-targeting technologies. On Thursday, Congress plans to hold a joint subcommittee hearing on privacy and digital advertising. "DirecTV stands ready to work with Congress on addressing any privacy concerns they may have with respect to consumers," a DirecTV spokesman said.

DirecTV is entering local advertising as the segment reels from the recession. Local U.S. ad spending will fall to $94.4 billion in 2009 from $111.2 billion in 2008, according to forecasts from research firm eMarketer.

Still, as growth at DirecTV and its major cable rivals slows, the operators are becoming more aggressive in searching for new revenue streams, said Thomas Eagan, an analyst at Collins Stewart.

The country's largest cable operators have identified targeted-TV advertising, including by geography, as a major future engine of growth.

Canoe Ventures LLC, a joint venture between Com cast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc., Cox Communications, Cablevision Systems Corp. and Brighthouse Communications, plans to launch a service that allows advertisers to select geographies.


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DirecTV Sets Stage For Local, Targeted Ads

Satellite Service Inks Deal With Invidi For Set-Top Ad-Insertion Technology

DirecTV has signed a deal to use ad-insertion technology from Invidi Technologies that will let the satellite TV operator for the first time deliver different local ad spots to individual subscriber households.

Currently, DirecTV is working to integrate the Invidi software with its digital video recorder receivers and is aiming to launch the local ad capability in January 2011, said Bob Riordan, DirecTV senior vice president of national advertising and sales.

"It's a tremendous engineering challenge and we have every confidence that this will happen. But there's no short solution to this," he said. "You can't be half-pregnant with this technology."

Dish Network announced a similar agreement with Invidi last fall. The two satellite companies together represent some 31 million set-top boxes, according to Invidi executive vice president Michael Kubin. "We hope there will be a standard everybody works off of, which will make it easier for one advertiser to work across all distributors," he said.

Invidi also has been working in an addressable-ad trial with Comcast, in the MSO's Baltimore market. "Our technology is intended to be platform-agnostic," Kubin said. "We've been speaking with everyone -- satellite, telcos and cable MSOs -- since the beginning."

Today DirecTV can only sell advertising across its national footprint. Using Invidi's technology, the satellite company would be able to s erve individual TV commercials dynamically by region, ZIP code, designated market area (DMA) - or even by subdivision, neighborhood, political district, street or individual household.

"At this point we're a national advertising play," Riordan said. "This lets us for the first time deliver a local advertising solution."

The various TV spots, sold in the local inventory available to DirecTV, will be delivered via satellite to subscribers' DVRs. The Invidi software then determines based on various factors which ad to serve in a given time slot.

Riordan said that by the time DirecTV launches local advertising, more than half of the operator's subscribers will have DVRs in their home, representing somewhere around 20 million boxes.

As for privacy concerns, DirecTV is "highly sensitive to the privacy of our subscribers," Riordan said, noting that targeted ads would be delivered based on anonymized data. "This is a noninvasive platform," he said.

DirecTV plans to overlay geographic information from subscriber se t-top boxes with "reputable" third-party demographic data, according to Riordan, to allow marketers to target ads to specific demographic profiles. "It will take such waste out of advertising," he said. "I'll be getting a Ford commercial, but a household with a 21-year-old may be getting a Jetta commercial."

Initially, the satellite TV operator expects to offer 25% or less of its available i nventory for local, targeted ads, Riordan said. Other details of the business model are "also under discussion," he said, such as whether different advertisers would be able to buy the same avail in different markets.

Invidi, founded in 2000, has received funding from ad agency GroupM, which is a subsidiary of WPP, as well as Motorola, Menlo Ventures, InterWest Partners and EnerTech Capital.

"Individual household advertising solutions have for decades been the holy grail of marketers and media professionals," GroupM CEO Irwin Gotlieb said in a state ment. "We hope this is an early step in the establishment of a common ecosystem f or the television industry's delivery of advanced advertising products."

On the cable front, Canoe Ventures - a consortium of the U.S.'s six biggest MSOs - is working toward delivering Community Addressable Messaging, a service that initially would allow advertisers to show a different version of an ad to viewers in high-income areas. Rainbow Media's AMC is currently testing that service with Canoe.

Separately, Cablevision Systems this summer is expanding its addressable-advertising capabilities to deliver TV spots based on an individual subscriber's demographic data to some 500,000 households across the New York metro area, using technology from Visible World.

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DirecTV to Serve Up Targeted Ads

In a deal that will allow DirecTV to serve up local advertising, the satellite TV operator announced Wednesday that it will begin deploying software developed by the GroupM-backed Invidi Technologies Corp.

The agreement follows a similar arrangement that was hashed out between the addressable-advertising software company and DirecTV rival DISH Network. That deal was announced in November 2008.

Once the Invidi software goes online––DirecTV will upload the program to its subscribers’ digital set-top boxes––the operator will be able to insert local advertising, allowing marketers to target a sedimentary band of targets, ranging from DMA to zip-plus-four to individual households.

Under the new targeting system, DirecTV will push local ads in advance of their airdates, where they will be stored at the premises level (i.e., in the set-top box). From there, th e Invidi software will cue up the spots from the set-top hard drive. In other words, rather than viewing a scheduled national s pot in the two-minute local window, DirecTV subs will see relevant ads targeted specifically to certain consumer behaviors/demographic contours, depending on what that particular advertiser is looking to achieve with its campaign.

DirecTV will begin serving up the Invidi software to “friendlies” in early 2010, with an eye toward full deployment to its 18.1 million subscribers by 2011. “It won’t be a matter of just flipping a switch, but once they start lighting the boxes up, the progression will be rapid,” said Michael Kubin, executive vp, Invidi.

In the early stages of the service, DirecTV will offer a quarter of its available inventory for targeted ads. Schedules and deliveries will be verified by Invidi’s ADN (ad delivery notification) software.

“Advertisers hate waste, and what we offer marks a significant change in the ability to get the right spots in front of the right people,” Kubin said. “Our spot optimization allows advertisers to carve up the audience into segments, so they can hit different demos in the same break. A targeted audience is exponentially more valuable than the sort of deliveries you can achieve with a shotgun approach.”

Founded in 2000, Invidi is backed by a number of investors, including GroupM, Motorola and Menlo Ventures.

“Individual household advertising solutions have for decades been the holy grail of marketers and media professionals,” said GroupM global CEO Irwin Gotlieb. “We hope this is an early step in the establishment of a common ecosystem for the television industry’s delivery of advanced advertising products.”

The deal comes as the cable industry readies its own advanced-advertising cooperative, Canoe Ventures. While AMC kicks the tires on Canoe, parent company––and Canoe investor––Cablevision is expanding its own targeting capabilities this summer. After an 18-month trial reaching 100,000 subscriber households, Cablevision is opening the aperture, prepping a targeted-ad push that will include 500,000 households across the New York metro area.

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DirecTV Taps Invidi For Local Ads

Will push localized ads to DVR storage

Satellite operator DirecTV has signed a deal with addressable advertising firm Invidi Technologies to supply it with software that will allow it to deliver local advertising by playing pre-recorded ads off subscribers’ digital video recorder (DVR) set-tops.

Invidi is the first technology supplier that DirecTV has formally announced for the local advertising initiative, which won’t launch until January 2011. Geographically-targeted ads would be “pushed” in advance to be stored on subscribers’ set-tops, and the Invidi software would cue up the localized ads to be played off the hard drive in place of a national spot.

“It is an extensive undertaking, and we’re in the very early stages,” says Bob Riordan, SVP of advertising sales for DirecTV.

Invidi, whose investors include advertising firm Group M and Motorola, struck a similar deal with Dish Network back in November for its Advatar software. Interactive TV firm NDS, which supplies conditional-access and guide technology to DirecTV, has also proposed using DVR storage to deliver targeted advertising. And in 2007, News Corp. applied for a U.S. patent for a process by which an MPEG-2 compressed program would be broken up into a series of segmented files that separates program content from commercials and promos. Fresh commercials could then be delivered to the DVR on a “push” basis, through either broadcast or broadband delivery, and new software would be smart enough to record them and then “splice” them into the program when a viewe r watches a time-shifted show.

DirecTV has begun offering some local avails on regional sports networks, in partnership with cable entities NCC and Comcast Spotlight, but that is through traditional linear satellite feeds. The new system, which could eventually also use broadband connections to deliver local advertising, would be a major improvement that could be available across DirecTV’s broader base of channels.

“It gives us the ability to get into the local marketplace,” says Riordan. “We’ve been a national platform, and we’ve done very well, but that’s kind of restricted our growth somewhat. Now we can get out in the marketplace at a local level.”

Invidi, which was founded in 2000, has working deployments of addressable advertising with multichannel operators today, says EVP Michael Kubin, but it hasn’t been able to disclose who they are.

When it was pointed out that NDS also has such a targeted-ad system, and that News Corp. has also applied for a U.S. patent relating to delivering targeted ads from a DVR, Kubin agreed that intellectual property was a big issue. But he says Invidi is only using technology it d eveloped, and hasn’t licensed any outside [IP]. He says he is also sure that Dish and DirecTV have done their homework on the patent front.

“There’s a broad portfolio of IP that covers this, and the reason these deployments take so long is everyone is really careful to make sure the IP is in place,” he says.

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DirecTV Delivers Addressable Ads

Satellite television distributor DirecTV Group has struck a deal with Invidi Technologies to deliver addressable advertising starting in 2011.

DirecTV has been selling national advertising for some time. The company says this is an effort that initially will sell advertising locally.

Like many addressable advertising providers, Invidi looks to store advertising that is appropriate to specific households or geographic locations on TV viewers' set-top boxes, then send out those commercial messages when needed.

Invidi struck a similar deal with Dish Network back in November. Invidi investors include media agency Group M and electronics manufacturer Motorola.

Many addressable initiatives are under way -- including one that Invidi has been testing with Comcast's Baltimore cable system.

One big effort that is beyond the testing phase is with Cablevision Systems and addressable advertising technology company Visible World, which has Group M's parent company, WPP Group, as an investor. After a year of testing, the system is now deployed in some half-million Cablevision households. The target is to be in 1 million homes by the end of the year.

Overall, Cablevision has some 2.8 million digital TV subscribers that it intends to connect with addressable ad technology. Tara Walpert Levy, president of Visible World, says a number of advertisers have bought in so far, including entertainment and consumer electronics marketers.

I arrange for BrandIndex to own the "Coffee Wars" for both Ad Age and Brandweek

All That Advertising Brings Buzz for Coffee Marketers

BrandIndex: Consumers Saying More Positive Things About Starbucks, McDonald's, Dunkin'

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) -- The coffee wars generated a flurry of advertising in May. McDonald's launched its first McCafe blitz, Dunkin' Donuts made its first concerted doughnut push in more than a decade and Starbucks began its first pure branding campaign. While it's too soon to say what the impact on sales has been, all three marketers saw a major uptick in buzz, as measured by BrandIndex.

BrandIndex, which tracks more than 1,000 brands by conducting 2,000 daily interviews from a panel of 200,000 consumers, monitors key brand attributes, including buzz, value perception, quality ratings and customer satisfaction to compile its index (which has a range of -100 to 100).

Dunkin' began May with a 24, peaked at 33 mid-month and settled at about 32 this week. McDonald's started with a 15, peaked around 24 and had dropped off to 16 by June 9. Starbucks' campaign, which has been confined to newspapers and select outdoor markets in its initial phases, has been more cyclical. The company began May with a score of 1, shot up to 11 within a week and plummeted again. In the past week, the chain's buzz has shot up to double digits again.

Those numbers may seem low, but ratings vary dramatically by category. Within the fast-food sector, a good buzz rating is considered to be anything above 10. Ratings closer to zero mean consumers have heard an even number of positive and negative things about a brand.

"Over the last few weeks, Starbucks has generated buzz through a variety of channels, including our national 'Coffee value and values' campaign hitting its stride, beginning our sponsorship with 'Morning Joe' on MSNBC and being named No. 1 best coffee by the Zagat survey," Starbucks' senior VP-marketing, Terry Davenport, said in a statement. He added that the retailer's online activity, including using Facebook and Twitter to tout its efforts, has also built excitement among baristas in its stores.

Dunkin' did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

McDonald's spokeswoman Danya Proud said the burger chain has been "extremely pleased" with the results of its coffee push. In particular, she said, the chain's "McCafé Your Day" online competition with Visa has gotten more than 10,000 entries. That response rate makes it "by far the most successful online sweepstakes in the company's history," Ms. Proud said.

Starbucks tries 'a different tack'
But all three companies got a pretty strong jump in buzz, said Ted Marzilli, global managing director at BrandIndex. Starbucks' jump, he said, had the "highest magnitude," especially because it was coming from about zero. He said Starbucks should be heartened that it not only made a splash when its competitors were outspending it but got a second spike in interest as McDonald's and Dunkin' were leveling off.

"They're probably going to be outgunned by McDonald's and Dunkin'," he said, noting that those brands spend more on advertising. "Starbucks is trying a different tack in

last couple of months, getting people to think about bigger concepts. How expensive is a $3 latte when you think about other things like providing health care, working with farmers in areas where coffee is imported? That slightly different tack seems to be making a mark."

Mr. Marzilli said an increase in buzz can trigger shifts in other metrics, but not always. And as it stands, Starbucks is still struggling with its "value" perception, or whether consumers view the brand as giving them the most bang for their bucks. The chain has been hovering around -26, with a small spike last week that seems to have already corrected. McDonald's is just behind Dunkin' in value perception, around 25 to Dunkin's 26.

But when consumers want to treat themselves, all these numbers may

go out the window. According to BrandIndex, 43% of adults asked where they were most likely to purchase a "premium coffee drink" said Starbucks, 15% picked McDonald's, 11% sided with Dunkin' and 31% had no preference.

Starbucks Brews a Fresh Pot of Publicity

June 10, 2009

-By Elaine Wong

Faced with consumers cutting back on purchases and stiff competition from McDonald’s McCafe, Starbucks today (Wednesday) launched an ad campaign touting its newly earned accolade in Zagat’s 2009 Fast Food survey: “No. 1 Best Coffee.”

Zagat released the results of its 2009 Fast Food Survey on Monday. Starbucks won for best coffee in the “fast food” segment. The campaign, via BBDO, New York, to promote the win breaks in major newspapers including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. In less than 48 hours, Starbucks said it has been able to “pull the lever” on several marketing components­from newspaper ads to digital, paid search and social median an effort to generate buzz for the brand.

The goal was to implement a marketing campaign that would effectively link both offline and online components, including paid search, digital ads and e-mail mailings to registered Starbucks cardholders. Starbucks also bought “smart-targeted placements” on web sites like Yelp.com, where users share ratings on categories including shopping, dining and arts and entertainment.

The social media component involves Starbucks reaching out to its Twitter community of 200,000 members, as well as Facebook, where the brand has 1.8 million fans, and MyStarbucksIdeas.com (a community of 180,000 registered members).

Starbucks could use the publicity. Data from YouGov’s BrandIndex­ which tracks consumer perception of more than 1,100 brands on a daily basis ­showed that Starbucks lags behind Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s in terms of perceived value. Though the gap narrowed toward the end of May, McDonald’s ongoing push for the McCafe has widened the distance between the two brands, BrandIndex found.

The new effort tries to change brand perception by linking customer appreciation with the quality of Starbucks coffee. “Zagat says we’re the country’s #1 best coffee. Actually you said it, but Zagat repeated it (which is nice),” the ads state.

Chris Bruzzo, Starbucks’ vp of brand, online and content, said the campaign reflects the chain's agility. “It’s actually a pretty well-oiled machine here, because we have great, ongoing conversations with our consumers,” he said. “That’s a daily conversation that’s going on and it makes us really nimble, flexible and enables us to do great things very quickly.”

The campaign will continue into July, and in September, Starbucks will also incorporate in-store signage, Bruzzo said.

The move follows Starbuck’s recent streak of aggressive media promotions. Close to Election Day, it ran a spot, also via BBDO, New York, which posed a series of questions, such as: “What if we all cared enough to vote? Not just 54% of us, but 100% of us.” More recently, it’s began a push for its Via line of instant coffee and last week, Starbucks scored a sponsorship deal with MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

All the buzz could be helping the chain already. Among adults ages 18 and over, Starbucks' buzz score jumped from -2.2 on June 1 to 27.2 yesterday (Tuesday). Dunkin' Donuts ended the day with 24.5 and McDonald's was at 15.6.

I break quadrantONE's pact with Politico in Mediapost, Mediaweek/Adweek and PaidContent.org

Politico Joins Quadrant One

QuadrantOne -- the online ad sales network launched last year by Gannett Co., Hearst Corp., The New York Times Co., and Tribune Co. -- has added Politico as its first national affiliate.

QuadrantOne is owned by its four founding companies, but has actively sought affiliate partners to create a larger pool of online ad inventory for national advertisers.

QuadrantOne reaches well over 20 major markets and over a dozen smaller ones, with a network of newspaper and broadcast sites.

Politico.com is expected to add 6.3 million unique monthly visitors to quadrantONE's existing base of some 47 million.

"Politico augments our story to marketers, showing that we do have a legitimate national offering," said QuadrantOne CEO Andy Ellenthal. "And, on their own, it might not necessarily be in Politico's wheelhouse to get more consumer focused advertisers that we work with."

To simplify the buying process for large brand advertisers, QuadrantOne recently created a centralized pool of standardized ad units from newspapers nationwide, which can then be sold off in blocks.

QuadrantOne recently reached a similar partnership with The Associated Press. Ellenthal predicted the company will announce two or three more such deals before the end of the year.

The partnership comes amid solid growth in usership of online news resources. According to Nielsen Online, in January the number of monthly unique visitors to newspaper Web sites increased 7.9 million to 74.8 million, a jump of 11.9% over the same month in 2008.

Per the same measurements, 44% of all Web users visited newspaper Web sites in January, an increase of 7.3% over January 2008. The number of page views generated increased 15.4% to 3.7 billion.

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quadrantONE Strikes Affiliate Pact with Politico

quadrantONE, the fledgling online-advertising-focused joint venture between Hearst Corporation, The New York Times Company, Gannett Co. Inc., and the Tribune Co., has signed on Politico as its latest affiliate partner.

Going forward, the year-old company will begin packaging Politico.com’s six million-plus unique users with its 340 or so local news sites to national advertisers, selling display and video ads on the site. With the addition of Politico’s audience, quadrantONE’s network now reaches 45 million unique monthly users in total, according to CEO Andy Ellenthal—more than double the reach of a year ago when the company first entered the market.

quadrantONE was originally founded in February of last year as a means to create clout for local newspaper and information sites that typically don’t have the resources or relationships to target national ad dollars.

The concept was to package premium ad placements for national brands across multiple sites at once, rather than selling remnant ad inventory as many networks do. “The reason why we exist is to create efficiency in reaching out to national advertisers,” said Ellenthal. “Buyers don’t want to deal with hundreds of sites, and most local sites don’t have the scales or resources to target them.”

According to Ellenthal, for Politico—which also manages its own ad network—the affiliation with quadrantONE is aimed at helping the site expand beyond its core political-junkie-targeting ad base. “Politico has strength in certain categories like advocacy groups, which we don’t touch,” he said. “This is about bring advertisers that might not have considered Politico on its own. Like national autos for example. We’re already there. For these consumer advertisers that like news, Politico now becomes a natural fit.”

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Interview: Andy Ellenthal, CEO Of quadrantONE, On The Alliance’s Move Beyond Newspapers

The national online ad sales alliance quadrantONE, long an ad network for newspapers, is slowly branching out. Recently, it signed up D.C.-focused news site Politico as its latest member. The deal just covers not just the Politico site itself, but its entire 60-member ad network, which includes The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Denver Post, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer as well as Reuters. While Politico technically operates a small newspaper—it’s free with a circ of about 25,000 in the Capitol Hill area and comes out three days a week when Congress is in session—the addition of the site to its client roster is seen as a way of quadrantONE broadening its reach beyond traditional dailies.

I talked with Andy Ellenthal, the former DoubleClick exec who became quadrantONE’s CEO nearly a year ago, about the move beyond newspaper websites, why some people still confuse quadrantONE with the Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) Newspaper Consortium, and how the latter half of this year is looking for the ad-sales alliance. The Q&A begins after the jump

paidContent: Yahoo’s alliance is more about driving a two-way flow of local and national online content and ad sales. quadrantONE has always tried to position itself as strictly national in terms of ad sales. Does the introduction of Politico and its newspaper sites heighten or soften that position?

Ellenthal: The reason we exist is to pull the content together in a way that’s appealing for national advertisers. We’re competing on the national level against Yahoo News and CNN. That’s where Politico adds an extra layer of content and greater attractiveness for users and national advertisers. We do kind of get bucketed into this local ad sales playing field—and we will do spot buys if an insurance company, for example, wants the 25 top markets. But we want to be competitive across the entire national platform. Everything else is extra.

PC: The company opened its doors in February 2008 and you came on in July. Even though you don’t have much to compare it to, how have been affected by the pullback in ad spending?

AE: If I had a five-year track record, things might look differently. The reality is, we’ve had this platform turned on for a year and our salesforce has been around in a full capacity only since Q3. So every month is actually an improvement. Even the auto advertisers, which includes General Motors and Ford, continue to be one of our largest categories, along with retail, travel, insurance and casual dining. Packaged goods in an area that we expect to grow, despite the lingering recession. We want to be in a position where we have a good blend of advertisers and where we’re not overly dependent on one or even a small handful of categories.

In August and September, financial services was looking like that was going to be a particularly important area for us. But with the collapse of the financial markets last year, that quickly turned south. If we had been betting solely on that, that could have been a problem. But we never went that route. Still, we do want to be ready for when the financial sector comes back.

PC: The companies that helped create quadrantONE—Tribune Company, Gannett (NYSE: GCI), Hearst Newspapers and NYTCo (NYSE: NYT)— have spent the past year making deep spending cuts. Have the challenges affecting those companies begun to impact quadrantONE?

AE: I can’t talk about the company’s financials, but being small—we employ fewer than 30 staffers—certainly helps. As far as our backers are concerned, right now, it’s about demonstrating traction in the marketplace and bringing new advertisers to our affiliates. We are self-sufficient in so many ways and we’re not dependent on someone else’s services to operate our business. That said, we have no plans to hire additional staff until at least 2010. We had been doing a fair bit of hiring up to this point. But it’s not just the economy; I never liked to hire after June anyway. It’s hard to take in employees as you get into Q3 and Q4, as things get busier and it’s harder to make sure people get absorbed into the company in the best way. And we’re pretty set right now as it is.