Rise or fall in the fall

As summer ends, big marketers typically have spent down their budgets until 2024 starts, but their plans for 2024 are in place now. The big TV networks and streamers say they’ve wrapped up their “upfront sell in” to advertisers. Traditional TV viewership is down to 50%; cable is down 25%. The Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA strikes mean no new content production for ye olde Fall Lineup! The ad-laden streaming networks will have programmed ads in all the right content depending on your viewing habits and their powers of demographic suggestion. They know your habits, just like credit card marketers know your purchases.

Streaming series can be great TV, but does this mean postponing viewing the new “Yellowstone” in October? Thanks to the strikes, starting to map out Monday through Thursday and maybe Friday TV evenings is a chore. Which series? When? Binge? Or watch an episode once a week? Sports TV solves Saturday and Sunday, and maybe Monday and Thursday until the end of the NFL regular season. Will the new Bud Light commercials are as humorous as the old “fratty” ones that dominated football viewing?

This new streaming schedule is a diaspora without “must-see TV.” It will create some interesting ad targeting, much like digital radio. Uber-frequency is likely, meaning you see the ad so many times, you will tune it out. However, the Instagram comedic influencers I follow during the same evenings I”™m watching the tube are much more engagingly viewed than 90% of the commercials that target me.

My influencers comprise fellow hobbyists, comics and Italian foodies, the latter always finding the best pizza/pasta “sangweeches” in the Boroughs and New Jersey. Westchester and Fairfield get short shrift – just one guy in Yonkers, so there”™s an opportunity for a talent to emerge.

Try the Instagram Reels habit. You may get hooked, but the content can be very enjoyable, anticipated and welcomed. TikTok influencers target viewers based on product interests. Does your product or service have an angle that could be memorialized via a series of fun or uplifting posts? It”™s TikTok and Instagram filling a vacuum of non-sports advertising. Let”™s face it; LinkedIn is so much “same old same old.”

Our new cousin of Instagram, Threads, is failing to suit the early adopters. Twitter now goes by “X,” but do we “X” people when we respond vs. “tweet?” Did Musk think of “X”™s” and “O”™s” like Valentines get signed? How does ad sales superstar Linda Yaccarino who Musk brought to his $44 billion acquisition get “X” bought? X is an enigma in terms of its future. Recently, Musk has been clearly pivoting away from X”™s nebulous future to the first profitable quarter for SpaceX, Tesla discounts and Tesla”™s new pickup truck future that will be as popular as Dylan Mulvaney, the hired influencer who destroyed Bud Light. Pickups are the most profitable vehicles manufactured. Have you seen the Tesla truck? It”™s akin to the DeLorean in “Back to The Future.” Musk says it”™s only coming in stainless steel, but it”™s also bulletproof! Musk must be having X problems; his media machine cranking up Tesla and SpaceX focus. Mark Zuckerberg, a martial arts expert, is insisting on a cage match with Musk. No lie. Threads is weak, X is weak, so these megalomaniacs are trading insults on social media and spin this suggested cage fight. This clearly gets through to shareholders, though.

Who are your shareholders? Senior management, staff, customers, potential customers, targets at large, community stakeholders you need to partner with — all these folk need to be thumbs up. Those potential customers and targets at-large are who you need to uplift for revenue goals, all the while impressing everybody else in the mix. The community piece can be a tough trade area to develop. Historically, it means charitable giving. Currently, it can mean a partnership borne of co-marketing by sponsoring a non-profit”™s event. Sponsors, should never be sheepish and push for all the “value added” they can get.

Right now, it”™s fall trade show prep season. Recognize trade shows are circuses and few trade show spends yield the activation of new customers as intended. Why? Unless you have specific meetings with prospects pre-scheduled before the show, trade shows are expensive and truly difficult to master. The bigger multinational exhibitors spend inexorably huge sums to shock and awe. But fear not; just think in terms of the tag team of Reach and Frequency. The slim jim brochure — useless unless messaging impact yields unaided recall of your brand. Brochure grabbers do not build business. The big “ah hah” is will your name AND your unique selling proposition (USP) be recalled at all by 20,000 attendees? How will they get into your booth and its story? That”™s reach. Any way of having your message benefit from frequency? Videos on big LED walls can have audio, but the din of the crowd and the migraines the booth staff will have after the fourth playback of the soundtrack rule that out. Can your team figure out a silent movie type video that everyone will want to see, and see it in your booth, and tell people about it?

Well, that”™s the ad game. And – whether you”™re  Musk, Trump, Anheuser-Busch, a cool and clever Instagram influencer, or a Westchester and Fairfield business that really wants the buzz – the circus barker is you, and think about whose eyes and ears you need to ring in. Hint: harnessing creativity and serving up impact, in the hands of pros, who must get on the scoreboard or get fired, really can make the difference. Ask to see their reels. You”™ll know if they have the chops based on past clientele and assignments.