Tuesday, October 08, 2013

USAT | Watch the new series of "TV" commercials

USA Today published three new "television" commercials yesterday on its YouTube page. (I use those quotation marks because I'm not exactly sure what you call video commercials when they appear on multiple platforms.) So far, each one has been watched fewer than 400 times.

Have these commercials started appearing anywhere else? Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot.com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the green rail, upper right.

17 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's similar to the media "up-front" they did. There is no reason for Gannett to have this type of stuff going on. They are not a broadcast player and they continue to spend so much money. And the sales group keep losing all their sales people. So sad..

    ReplyDelete
  3. "So far, each one has been watched fewer than 400 times."

    Which is 398 more times than most Gannett videos have been viewed. That's progress.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I hadn't seen Susan in awhile. I'm a big fan, sincerely. But I can't help but notice from this commercial that maybe she's has some surgery? Could she be under pressure to deliver looks that match her talents? Just askin'.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yes, be glad Michael Wolff isn't writing about you -- cause he exaggerates, lies and generally gets it wrong (look it up).

    ReplyDelete
  6. "Get the facts not the fiction." How many thousands and thousands of dollars did CMO Sandy Micek pay for yet another silly USA Today slogan?

    ReplyDelete
  7. This advertising campaign comes at the hands from the Fi Agency in Stockholm at work again for USAT. Guess no U.S.A. agency is good enough for our CMO. As Fi reports: "In September 2012, Fi unveiled one of the company's most significant client milestones with the launch of USA Today's redesigned website. The work was a year-long collaboration with Gannett and has received positive acclaim with critics describing it as "impressive" and "unprecedented. Industry press like .net Magazine and Web Designer Magazine covered the work for USA Today as use case studies."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. WRONG AGAIN. Design Mob did this work: http://thedesignmob.com/work/projects/usatoday-ads

      Delete
    2. It was a trivial effort to check out both your claims and realize that you're both way off base.

      Delete
    3. geeeeezus how much money was spent with all these agencies? probably much more than what was saved by giving our old co-workers the boot.

      Delete
  8. I thought BB Banikarim already knew what our readers wanted. Guess she needed a helping hand afterall:
    DC online suggestion box adds USA Today as a client
    Betterific, the digital suggestion box that gives users a place to sound off on everything from fast food to mobile phones and beyond, recently partnered with USA Today to bring crowdsourced suggestions for improvement to the attention of the news media's marketing team. USA Today joins several other national organizations that have partnered with Betterific to learn more about what consumers want from their products.


    "USA Today is a giant publication," says Micha Weinblatt, co-founder of Betterific. "They are very forward thinking."


    Weinblatt says that Betterific is now looking beyond querying users on its own site for the companies it partners with. "We're getting traction on licensing our technology to brands—Fortune 500 companies—to use internally in a closed environment," Weinblatt explains. "It's an exciting opportunity for us."

    ReplyDelete
  9. They're a little cringe-y, no? But a good example of how Usat is trying to amplify their 'pronounced voices'. I imagine Brennan and Page swallowed hard to do their bits; it's a little silly. At least Wolff didn't need to spend more than 2 seconds on his part. Probably the only people that found them as amusing as intended are BBB and crew; I found them to be beneath them really. That's how Brennan bullyingly shows up two knuckleheads? Page's big insight in politics is the party line talking point? Wolff scares people - really?
    You'll never see them on TV - Gannett rarely - rarely will spend that money again. But the You Tube destination looked good. There's something BBB did okay.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wolff to America: We're no longer The Nation's Nicepaper.

      Delete
  10. Dont hang this crap on Sandy Micek. Clearly the ineffective work of Maryam Banikarim. What next? A naked man hiding behind his usat when locked out of his hotel room?

    ReplyDelete
  11. Oh, you bet you can hang it on Sandy. She and BBB are BFFs all the way. Remember, BBB hired her. They think alike, but you're right, BBB clearly wears the pants. Bottomline is that they are all responsible for screwing up the USA TODAY brand.

    The commercial with the naked man hiding behind the usat newspaper when he was locked out of his room was actually pretty funny. The problem with that campaign was that the cheap crystal palace spreadsheeters wouldn't allocate the right amount of money to support a serious ad campaign. So, no one saw the commercial. It ran here and there on some cable news outlets for a few weeks and that was it. There were three or 4 others created at that time.

    Gannett's never been serious about marketing and promotion and they've never had the vision, intelligence, or judgment to create an effective and sustained approach to branding - not only USA TODAY, but Gannett and all of the local newspaper and television products. And, sadly, they still don't.

    What they hired in BBB and Sandy and others are cheap imitations of ad agency account managers posing as wanna-be-marketing professionals who really have no clue. All were out of a job and just happened to be at the right place at the right time when Gannett was turning over it's sr management and looking outside the company to bring new people in - that's it. Gannett was desperate, they were desperate and now you're sitting in the muck of the results of desperate people.

    Gannett's continued decline will not be an accident. This is all self-inflicted. It should not come as a surprise that readership is not growing, web/mobile traffic is not growing, circulation is not growing, and revenues are not growing (unless it's an election or Olympics year)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Best and most truthful post of the week!

      Delete
    2. Memo to the USAT Marketing Team:
      BASEBALL has the steroids issue....NOT HOCKEY. And you made Susan Page look foolish, sad to say. And Wolff...well who the hell cares. He doesn't even work here.

      Delete

Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.