Archive for January, 2012

RIM’s Twitter Campaign Goes Horribly Wrong #BeBold

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/rims-twitter-campaign-goes-horribly-wrong-bebold-2012-1


RIM’s latest marketing campaign is based around a squad of cartoon characters called the Bold Team, accompanied by the #BeBold hashtag on Twitter. It wasn’t a good idea.

Why? Because the campaign is blowing up in RIM’s face. Spectacularly.

The vague hashtag, plus the cheesiness of the cartoon characters, prompted the masses to hijack #BeBold. So now, just one week after McDonald’s reminded marketers everywhere how NOT to do a Twitter campaign, RIM makes the same mistake. It’s getting ripped on by its own hashtag (via Gizmodo).

Take a look at what people are tweeting. It entirely consists of folks railing on either the cartoon, or the company as a whole:

rim twitter bebold

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Doctor

The government is having a hard time conducting a full review of physicians who have opted out of medicare, according to a memo released last week by the Department of Health and Human Services. 

The evaluation sought to answer what type of physicians opted out, whether the number of physicians opting out increased or decreased over time, and why the physicians chose to opt out. 

According to deputy inspector general Stuart Wright, the evaluation was not completed because Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Medicare Administrative Contractors (MACs) and legacy carriers do not maintain sufficient data. 

While CMS provided the Office of Inspector General (OIG) with 7,900 providers ranging from 1998 to March 2011, only one out of 10 MACs and one of six legacy carriers provided OIG with all data elements required by CMS. Consequently, the OIG claimed it could not sample opted out physicians and interview them. 

The memo implied that the number of physicians opting out will increase in the future, considering “the potential for legislated decreases in Medicare reimbursement for physician services. ” It briefly references a 2011 August report published by the Texas Medical Association, which reported that 50 percent of Texas physicians are considering dropping out of Medicare program altogether. 

This trend is nothing new. TMA has released another report in March 2011 that showed that 34 percent of Texas doctors are not accepting new Medicare patients or have limited the number of doctors. Similarly, a report by AARP released in February 2010 surveyed 413 Idaho physicians and found that 17 percent have completely closed their practices to new Medicare patients.

The Physicians’ Foundation has published numerous reports on the topic. A 2008 survey reported that 12 percent of physicians have closed their practices to Medicare patients and the 2010 survey reported that 52.2 percent of physicians said that health reform would cause them to “close or significantly restrict their practices to Medicare patients.”

Now See: Why doctors are loosing money >

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baby-ICU-hospital-medical-debt

The Super Bowl is really important to Americans.

The year’s most highly-anticipated sporting event is so important, in fact, that 15 percent of adults would miss the birth of their own child to attend a Super Bowl game featuring their favorite NFL team, according to a recent survey by CouponCabin.com (via The Week).

Apparently funerals and weddings also become back-burner commitments when Super Bowl Sunday rolls around: Nineteen percent of participants said they would miss the funeral of a loved one to watch their team play and 20 percent said they would miss the wedding of a close family member. 

Don’t Miss: The Best Quartbacks To Never Win A Super Bowl >

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Ever have the joy of describing the winning touchdown of the big game to that one friend who missed out on the broadcast? According to the NFL, such descriptions are a violation of copyright. Listen closely right before the commercials and you will find yourself being told that not only are unauthorized reproductions a no-no, but so are “…descriptions and accounts of the game.” What?? Apparently talking about something is akin to stealing it in the eyes of some broadcasters. Fortunately, according to the folks at publicdomainsherpa.com, media owners exaggerate copyright claims all the time, and alas, “facts aren’t copyrightable.” The gods of common sense prevail.

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Monday, January 30th, 2012 Uncategorized No Comments

P&G To Lay Off 1,600 After Discovering It’s Free To Advertise On Facebook (PG)

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/pg-ceo-to-lay-off-1600-after-discovering-its-free-to-advertise-on-facebook-and-google-2012-1


old spice

Reality appears to have finally arrived at Procter & Gamble, the world’s largest marketer, whose $10 billion annual ad budget has hurt the company’s margins.

P&G said it would lay off 1,600 staffers, including marketers, as part of a cost-cutting exercise. More interestingly, CEO Robert McDonald finally seems to have woken up to the fact that he cannot keep increasing P&G’s ad budget forever, regardless of what happens to its sales.

He told Wall Street analysts that he would have to “moderate” his ad budget because Facebook and Google can be “more efficient” than the traditional media that usually eats the lion’s share of P&G’s ad budget.

This is coming from the man who increased P&G’s adspend by a staggering 24 percent over the two years through October 2011, even though sales rose only 6 percent in the same period.

Note that P&G’s revenues were up 4 percent to $22 billion in the quarter but the company’s costs for sales, general and administrative work were flat.

P&G’s staggering ad budget has become a bit of an issue among analysts. On the call, McDonald and his crew were asked about ad costs three different times! . McDonald eventually said:

As we’ve said historically, the 9% to 11% range [for advertising as a percentage of sales] has been what we have spent. Actually, I believe that over time, we will see the increase in the cost of advertising moderate. There are just so many different media available today and we’re quickly moving more and more of our businesses into digital. And in that space, there are lots of different avenues available.

In the digital space, with things like Facebook and Google and others, we find that the return on investment of the advertising, when properly designed, when the big idea is there, can be much more efficient. One example is our Old Spice campaign, where we had 1.8 billion free impressions and there are many other examples I can cite from all over the world. So while there may be pressure on advertising, particularly in the United States, for example, during the year of a presidential election, there are mitigating factors like the plethora of media available.

P&G’s Old Spice campaign is a textbook example of what the entire company should be doing. The problem is that the entire company isn’t doing it. Check out Mr. Clean’s Twitter stream, for instance. Oh, right—he doesn’t have one.

McDonald’s recent discovery that digital media is free comes after the long-delayed launch of Tide Pods, now scheduled for a month from now but with only a limited supply. It was originally planned for July 2011. The ad budget for that campaign is estimated at $150 million and will come from agency Saatchi & Saatchi.

The problem is that while P&G has struggled to get a single U.S. pod out the factory door, several of its competitors have already launched competing laundry pod products.

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