Analysis: A marketing job for Superman

LOS ANGELES, April 14 (UPI) -- A new online ad campaign for American Express featuring a short film co-starring Jerry Seinfeld and Superman calls attention to the challenges that marketers face in a media environment that is not just changing, but changing at a constantly accelerating rate.

As the TV networks prepare for their annual "upfronts" -- the dog-and-pony show in which they unveil to advertisers their fall prime-time schedules and lock in as much ad revenue as possible for the coming season -- marketers are taking their customary hard look at the economics of network TV advertising. Such spending decisions are affected more and more each year by continued audience fragmentation as the number of entertainment choices continues to proliferate.

During the 2003-04 season, experts were confounded by Nielsen ratings reports indicating that large numbers of viewers from key demographic segments seemed to be abandoning network TV. The growing market penetration of personal video recording devices such as TiVo and Replay TV contributes to the difficulty advertisers are experiencing in reaching the super-sized audiences TV used to deliver routinely.

At a recent Advertising Age-sponsored conference in Beverly Hills, Calif., the head of marketing for American Express, John Hayes, suggested that the appropriate response to the new circumstances requires advertisers to experiment and take risks. In a keynote speech, Hayes said his company had reduced the TV-advertising component of its marketing budget from 80 percent in 1994 to 35 percent today.

The Seinfeld-Superman campaign that American Express recently rolled out shows Seinfeld and his pal, the Man of Steel, kicking around the city one afternoon when a thug steals Seinfeld's new DVD player. To make a short story even shorter, it is not Superman who saves the day, but Seinfeld -- with the help of his trusty American Express card.

The film -- directed by Oscar-winner Barry Levinson -- is available online, and the company clearly expects that people who view it will find it amusing enough to share with others. The approach is designed to "cut through the clutter" of images and information that confront media consumers virtually every moment of their waking lives.

Richard Quigley, senior vice president for global advertising, sponsorship and brand management at American Express, told United Press International the company has decided to move away from buying sponsorship of content in favor of producing its own content. The idea is to reach consumers in ways that conventional TV advertising cannot.

"Instead of just sitting in front of the television, they might be on the computer with broadband," said Quigley. "They might be with the Xbox, they might be listening to MP3s."

Quigley said he doesn't want to be completely reliant on conventional programming that may or may not deliver its target audience. As an example of creating its own entertainment-marketing opportunity, the company sponsored four concerts at the House of Blues in Hollywood in the week leading up to the Grammy Awards in February.

The Seinfeld-Superman campaign is an example of "viral marketing," an approach described in the book "Not on My Watch: Hollywood vs. the Future," by Peter Dekom and Peter Sealey. Dekom is a veteran Hollywood attorney who has negotiated deals for some of the entertainment industry's leading players. Sealey is an adjunct professor of marketing at the University of California-Berkeley and a former head of marketing for Columbia Pictures and Coca-Cola.

Dekom told UPI viral marketing offers advertisers substantial economic benefits over traditional TV spending.

"It's cheap because, bottom line, your consumers decide if it's hip and cool," he said. "If it's hip and it's cool, it gets read and looked at."

In a promotional video issued by American Express, Seinfeld sounded curious to see whether that will work for the Superman film.

"I know people are going to like it," he said. "I'm just wondering to see if the computer thing works -- that people are looking for this kind of entertainment in the computer. I think they are. I think the ground has already kind of been broken for this."

Quigley said the results are already in, with research indicating that the short film is connecting with PC users.

"Just everything we've seen so far has been terrific," he said. "There's a variety of metrics that we're tracking on this. Virtually all of the numbers have exceeded our expectations."

Still, marketers know that TV still delivers the largest audiences, and Quigley said his company continues to use the medium as part of its overall strategy.

"We still continue to believe that TV plays a critical role in the communication mix," he said. "The presence we're going to have is going to need to change."

Trial and error is not a particularly new feature of marketing, but it seems to have achieved a comparatively new place of importance as old business models fall into obsolescence at an increasingly rapid rate.

"At least among those who are aware of what's going on with trends of consumer behavior, there's a good deal of uncertainty out there," said Quigley, "which is why there's such a premium in our view on testing and experiment."

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