diet Coke: It's possible that a major brand has nowhere to go, but down.

David Kiley

So, Coca-Cola has moved diet Coke to another agency in the hopes of reviving the flagging fortunes of diet Coke. Wieden & Kennedy is taking over for Draft/FCB. Why? Because Bor the first nine months of 2006, the brand's volume in grocery, drug chains, convenience and gas, and mass merchants excluding Wal-Mart fell 3%, according to Beverage Digest, despite ana increase in ad spending.

Here is a possibility to conside: That no amount of advertising creativity is going to reverse that trend, and that perhaps Coke should just manage diet Coke downward to maximize profit on a dwindling base of customers.

Cola drinkers have long been in decline. And we know why. Vitamin water, teas, fruity teas, Red Bull...the list goes on. People don't pass on diet Coke because Vitamin water, teas, fruity teas and Red Bull have a cooler image. They drink them because the taste or kick is more to their liking. For older boomers who grew up in diet Coke...we drink less and less cola, even diet cola, all the time.

I worked for the diet Coke agency a decade ago that came up with a decent enough tagline..."This is Refreshment." The tag was nothing, but it provided a new platform for a different kind of advertising that replaced "Just for the taste of it." The ads packed a lot of buzz---especially a memorable ad featuring a construction worker (named Lucky Vanous) taking off is shirt in front of a group of ogling secretaries. Another ad was set to music from The Band, and featured a woman in a dusty town obviously liberating herself from a no-good cowboy boyfriend. It was all pretty engaging stuff...telling little stories to associate with the brand. The public and media were really talking about it.

The idea in the campaign was people were choosing refreshment in different ways, but that diet Coke was part of the refreshment they were seeking, no matter whate else they were doing. The ads, especially the "Lucky ad," got a huge amount of bounce and buzz in the general media. But then Coke marketing czar Sergio Zyman up-ended the strategy after six months and reverted back to "Just for the taste..."

diet Coke has been declining ever since...in the U.S. anyway. Changing a campaign after six months was madness. Part of the reason these brands never get good traction again, I believe, is that churning sales and and marketing people at the clients don't believe in consistency any more. They are like ADD ferrets (to use a phrase from GM exec Paul Ballew) on crack. If you can't make up your mind about what this brand is supposed to be and stand for in the marktplace, how can consumers be expected to figure it out.

Some brands just hit a natural peak, and its downhill from there because tastes change. Coke can lard up diet Coke with flavors of lime, coffee, lemon or cherry if they like...but it's still a diet cola...and I just dont think diet colas are ever going to be on a growth curve again. If you are going to dispute that theory, then at least have the good sense to choose a brand platform and stick to it for more than a few quarters, and manage the brand as best you can for profitable decline.

Until Coke admits that and starts managing the brand profitably for what is probably diet Coke's inevitable continued decline from its previous peak, though, they'll just keep churning ad campaigns and agencies with little payoff. I suppose changing agencies again, though, gives the newest team installed to figure out the diet Coke problem some months of political cover until they are re-assigned to another brand or country. Then another crew will come in and repeat the process again. What business school teaches this anyway?

Draft "On Top" Ad Stirs Controversy. But I Like It

David Kiley

There is a hulabaloo about an ad that Draft/FCB created to salute award winners at the 2006 Cannes International Ad Festival.
Adweek's Adfreak bolg and The Chicago Tribune have weighed in on how seemingly tacky it is. The grand prizes at the award show are called "Lions" for those who do not know.

This from the Trib: "The ad with the lions copulating, posted last week on a blog called Adfreak.com (an offshoot of trade publication Adweek) beneath the headline "Draft FCB, always with the classiest ads," immediately stirred up a stinging barrage of criticism from a growing list of mostly anonymous observers who submitted postings.

One comment derided Draft FCB for being staffed by "rejects from other places." Another described the people responsible for the trade ad as "hacks" and "whores" who wound up working for Draft and Foote Cone & Belding because "neither agency puts a premium on creativity." Yet another post at the site claims the ad was the handiwork of none other than Jonathan Harries, Draft FCB global chief creative officer."

Ouch. And Draft/FCB is issuing apologies for it. The thing is...I actually like this ad. Go figure.

Kramer's Tirade, Part II

Burt Helm

When we last reported on this, AOL had replaced the pre-roll ad that ran ahead of a very profane, racially charged video with one for a Hershey's candy bar. The first ad, for childrens' movie Flushed Away, was an "inappropriate pairing," AOL said, and such snafus were "extremely rare." When asked if AOL thought the Hershey's ad was an appropriate pairing, a spokesperson replied, "Advertisers are aware that they are advertising on TMZ.com. Obviously that choice is up to the advertiser."

Really? Cause people from Hershey's just called. They aren't pleased.

Here's a statement from the spokesperson: "The Hershey Company was not aware of the placement of this ad. We in no way condone the content of the video. We immediately requested the removal of our ad, and the ad was taken off the site, once we became aware of the situation."

AOL has now stopped running any ads next to the Kramer vid. Here's the moral: if ads can run next to a video like this on a top-tier site like AOL without advertisers' knowledge, we've got a long way to go before we start making good money on messier sites. It's going to take awhile for advertisers to get comfortable with YouTube.

O'Reilly's War on Christmas: Truth Takes a Holiday Again

David Kiley

I'm sorry. I can't help it. But Bill O'Reilly's argument that there is a war on Christmas is so inspid and vacant of facts and truth that I can't help myself. I have to comment here and probably a few more times before the New Year.

I channel surfed onto his rant last night after he was off for a week. He started right in on the Christmas war, and a case the Supreme Court may hear (God help us! They don't have better cases?) about a school in New York City that is barring the display of the nativity scene. What struck me about O'Reilly's nonsensical rant (I may write a book) was his insistence that the Federal government recognizes the Birth of Jesus as a holiday.

You have to be paying attention to recognize the distortion here that is so great, some could classify it as a lie. The exact wording of the Federal law follows.

"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the following days, to wit: The first day of January, commonly called New Year's day, the fourth day of July, the twenty-fifth day of December, commonly called Christmas day, and any day appointed or recommended by the President of the United States as a day of public fast or thanksgiving, shall be holidays within the District of Columbia, and shall, for all purposes of presenting for payment or acceptance of the maturity and protest, and giving notice of the dishonor of bills of exchange, bank checks and promissory notes or other negotiable or commercial paper, be treated and considered as is the first day of the week, commonly called Sunday, and all notes, drafts, checks, or other commercial or negotiable paper falling due or maturing on either of said holidays shall be deemed as having matured on the day previous."

It's not exactly an endorsement of the Baby Jesus. It was, and is, a recognition by the government that the vast majority of citizens, including Federal employees, celebrate, commemorate and otherwise mark December 25. Some go to church. Many do not. But everybody who follows the traditiona wants the day off. The Federal holiday was not so much a recognition of the Birth of Jesus, but a recognition that a whole lot of people want, expect and should have the day off.

This imaginary war on Christmas of O'Reilly's is a great business model. {We wondered when you were getitng to the business part]. He invents a cause celebre, invents the arguments for and against it, decides whom he will debate on it with him controlling the microphone....and all while he has a new book out that--you guessed it--advances the war on Christmas discussion. It's a brilliant business model for selling books and making lots of money. But it reminds me of the story of the fireman so desperate to appear the hero that he sets his own fires so he can be the first one on the rescue scene.

I have recently read O'Reilly's "Culture Wars." Every page and every word. A review if forthcoming. It takes a long time to write when there is a gross distortion of facts on nearly every page.

Branson, Bond, and the anatomy of a product placement

Burt Helm

Last weekend I caught the new James Bond movie, Casino Royale. The flick packs more than its fair share of product placements, of course. But look closely, and you'll also see a person placement. In the background of the Miami airport scene, there's Virgin Chairman Sir Richard Branson getting the wand in the security line (and a few seconds later it cuts to a shot of a Virgin jet landing, natch).

I made a call over to Virgin to ask about it. They put me on with Virgin Atlantic Communications Director Paul Charles, who set up the deal. According to Charles, producer Barbara Broccoli gave him a call last May. A deal with British Airways had stalled, and she needed a plane in Prague for the airport scene (yep, Prague stands in for Miami) in 10 days. Virgin didn't need to pay for the placement directly -- just schlep the jet and crew over for three days of filming (and throw in some marketing dollars. Virgin's doing promotional tie-ins for Casino Royale too). The producers offered to stick Branson and his son in the film for fun as thanks, according to Charles. All-told, Charles pegged the cost somewhere in the "hundreds of thousands of pounds" range.

I actually thought the flamboyant entrepreneur was a much more effective placement for Virgin anyway. Branson's on for only a few seconds and you barely catch him, so it kind of startles you when you see it. And I'm much more likely to talk that up with friends than I would some plane flyover.

Racist Tirade, brought to you by "Flushed Away"

Burt Helm

Ahem, adjacency problem? Like everyone else I clicked in to watch Seinfeld’s Michael Richards rant on TMZ.com. Anybody else raise an eyebrow when you clicked to watch the video, and it ran a pre-roll ad for the children’s animated movie “Flushed Away”?

Did AOL give Dreamworks a heads up that their ad would be immediately followed by a stream of profanity and repeated use of the “n-word?” When you watch it, it practically looks like a sponsorship.

UPDATE: Just got back comment from AOL about this. They sent a statement via a spokesperson, attributing it to Kathy Kayse, AOL's Executive Vice President Sales & Partnership Alliances:

"Traditionally, AOL offers advertising solutions which could include video pre-roll before a specific programming feature on AOL. On occasion, additional ad spots become available, in which case our technology repurposes ads to expose them to additional viewers. In the case of "Flushed Away," when we realized that our system pushed the "Flushed Away" pre-roll ad in front of a controversial TMZ.com story, we immediately pulled it. An inappropriate pairing such as this is extremely rare and we are very mindful of our advertisers' needs."

It's true that the Flushed Away ads are gone. The site now runs a pre-roll advertisement ahead of Kramer's slur-filled rant for a Hershey's candy bar.* So that's an appropriate "pairing"?

*When asked about that, an AOL spokesperson said "Advertisers are aware that they are advertising on TMZ.com. Obviously that choice is up to the advertiser."

Does L'Affair de OJ Hurt or Feed Judith Regan's Image

David Kiley

So, Rupert Murdoch issued an executive order. Kill OJ. The head cheese at News Corp. decided he'd had enough. Fox affiliates were refusing to run the Fox produced documentary on O.J. Simpson tied into HarperCollins' publishing of the notoriously titled O.J. Simpson memoir "If I did It" about how he might have gone about killing his wife and friend/flunky Ron Goldman. Might have? Ha! Fox's Bill O'Reilly was excoriating his own employer almost nightly over the affair. Night-time Fox nutball, judge, jury and executioner Sean Hannity was criticizing as well.,

So Murdoch pulled the book from Fox owned HarperCollins and the show from Fox Network. And, so it seems, he pulled the rug out from under ReganBooks chief Judith Regan who is at the center of the multi-million OJ deal.

By the way, if OJ's contract looks anything like the publishing contracts I have signed, he gets to keep his money.

But the question is...is this a humiliation for Regan? I'd say so. For some time, Regan has been a combination of Paris Hilton (famous for being well-known), Zelig (popping up in the strangest of episodes, such as the derailment of Bernard Kerick's nomination for Homeland Security chief when it became known that Kerrick had employed an illegal immigrant as a nanny, that Regan and Kerrick were shacked up in a city-owned apartment near Ground Zero provided to Kerick as NYC police chief)and part Tina Brown (she must have at least some editing skills, but its over-estimated because of her celebrity).

There have been awful lot of books printed. It's inconceivable that some won't get out. It will be a huge undergound seller. The documentary, featuring Regan interviewing Simpson, has also been cut. That will get out too in some form. Youtube.com? The Fox owned Myspace.com?

The question is who, besides Simpson, will profit from the distribution of this crud when it leaks out into the free mediascape?

Regan has been taken to the woodshed, first in the public square and then by Murdoch. She claims that she went after this project out of some mission derived from alledly being battered in her own past (her past and reputation leave some doubting the truth of her story). It would be nice to think that she might have to repay some of the money she gave to Simpson. But I doubt that. It would be nice to think that she would pays some kind of price for a really awful exercise of judgement. But I doubt it. The book and documentary won't officially be aired or sold. But it will get out. And it maye be more of a sensation than if it had rolled out the conventional way.

Is Regan crazy? Crazy like a Fox.

Who'll Jump For a Golden Gate Sponsorship

David Kiley

I hate to sound crass. But as I read in Adage.com, the directors of the Golden Gate Bridge are looking for corporate sponsors to close its $87 million deficit, I can only imagine the meetings at the ad agencies about that one.

Sure the Bridge is an amazing national landmark. But it's also, according to a new documentary out, the site of one suicide attempt/contemplation per day. Two dozen people tragically went all the way last year. Dozens more were talked out of it. Others, I guess, look like they are going to, as they were caught on film, and decided against it on their own. Officials say they aren't talking about naming rights for the Bridge (The Golden Nugget Gate Bridge?)But they are looking for sponsors.

A life insurance company? Prozac? I can say that because I was once treated with an anti-depressant (uh oh...guess I can't run for public office now). I take the subject very seriously. But I can't help thinking what the potential sponsor will say when, two dozen or so times a year, the news story about their sponsored property is the lead in a suicide story. It will be like that every year. It is the most jumped off bridge in the world by many estimates.

No Need to Brag, Maxell

Burt Helm

In this week’s issue I wrote a small item about Hip-Hop artists appropriating and remixing famous brands and advertisements in fashion and music videos. I mentioned the music video director Erik White, who has made recasting well-known brands a device in two of his latest projects. His Diddy video "Tell Me", which riffs on the old Maxell ads, came out today.

Most companies weren’t too excited about having Hip-Hop mess with their brands. General Mills threatened to take legal action against the designer of the above shirt (they had some sort of problem with the depiction of the Doughboy in front of a pile of cocaine, cash, and a blunt).

Maxell, on the other hand, is so psyched about the video that they issued a press release today. Though I agree with Maxell’s attitude – a riff on your brand in pop culture is almost always a good thing – nothing screams "zero authenticity" like a corporate press release. It smacks of a paid placement, even if there isn't one.

And we saw how people react to product placements and press releases just a couple of weeks ago.

Click below for the full release.

Continue reading "No Need to Brag, Maxell"

Walmart's Roehm Up To Her Old Publicity Marketing Ways

David Kiley

First, I saw Walmart's advertising honcho Julie Roehm on The O'Reilly Factor vamping for Bill O'Reilly about how Walmart was going to be proudly marketing Christmas trees and Christmas merchandise and not Holiday trees and such. Bill was shooting back love glances from his Irish baby blues, as he notched a victory on his belt in his invented war against the invented foe of "secular progressives." You may remember that O'Reilly concocted this imaginary war last year as he went on the warpath against retailers who chose to sell "holiday" merchandise instead of "Christmas" stuff.

Then, this morning, a press release from Walmart about how a staffer of John Edwards, the former Senator and Presidential hopeful, inquired to a Walmart about getting a Sony Playstation on the same day that Edwards was having a media event in which he talked about how bad Walmart is to its workers. The facts of that incident is that a young staffer was acting on his own in the hopes of securing a Playstation either for himself or one of the Edwards children. I don't know about you readers, but I have had interns and staffers who did dumb things on their own without thinking in the hopes of scoring some points with the boss.

I could be wrong, but it looks like Ms. Roehm is using her well-known imagination for attention grabbing marketing at her new gig. You may recall Ms. Roehm's past endeavors at Chrysler---sponsoring the Super Bowl Lingerie Bowl, a Chrysler ad in which a Mom left-handedly tells her adolescent daughter that her little brother was conceived in the car, and an ad that implied spouse swapping between neighbors.

The punch at Edwards and cave-in to O'Reilly might imply Walmart is flexing its well-known conservative leanings. But let's not forget that Walmart, on Roehm's watch, also hired an agency to market to gays and transgender consumers. That little move has had this blog swamped with as many comments as we have gotten over the AFA's boycott of Ford over its support of gay media.

Ms. Roehm does know how to get her brands noticed.

Smith Barney's To-Do List: Learn grammar, class

Burt Helm

I picked up my Wall Street Journal this morning to find Citgroup unit Smith Barney’s new brand campaign emblazoned on the plastic. To the marketers' credit, the advertisement caught my attention, and the slogan left a lasting impression. Too bad my impression was this: Wow, Smith Barney is boneheaded.

“I am Working Wealth” amazes with its efficiency. It starts things off with a tasteless play on the phrase “the working poor” (Remember the working poor? They’re the millions of Americans who work full time jobs but can’t keep their families above the poverty line). Then it packs in incorrect grammar and a clumsy double-entendre (If a money manager told you he looked forward to “working” your wealth, would you write the check?). And we haven’t even gotten to the body copy on the other side of the bag:

WORKING WEALTH. EARN YOUR FIRST DOLLAR BY YOUR LABORS. Get up early, work late. Get up the next day and do it again. Keep doing it, even after the dollars start adding up. SMILE AT CHALLENGES. CURSE AT IDLENESS. Be true to your dream. Don’t stop until you achieve it. Then dream another dream. And work to achieve that. PASS ON YOUR VALUES. NOT JUST YOUR ASSETS. Give your family a better life. And the world a better life, too. Leave no statues. Leave signs of significance. Working wealth wears no uniform and meets in no club. But you know who you are. We at Smith Barney would like to say one thing to you. WELCOME. (capitalization Smith Barney’s)

I won’t accuse the company of cooking up these idle platitudes -- aristocrats have used such stuff to validate their wealth since the dawn of Western civilization (see line 332). Pompous job applicants still employ them regularly. But if we’re deciding to make our brand message fundamentally classist, Smith Barney, might we do it with decent or even smart writing (what's a 'sign of significance'??)? It’s one thing for a financial services firm to come off as pompous, or even as pompous and stupid. It’s another to cram all that into a slogan and advertise it every day.

Buick's Woods Youtube Video Shows Lack of Imagination About New Medium

David Kiley

Buick put a grainy short video up on www.Youtube.com that appeared to be shot by a bystander at a commercial shoot. Buick outed itself and said that, in fact, GM and its agency, McCann-Erickson, had shot it and put it up on the site.

I could tell. It was pretty pointless. About 30 seconds of very hard-to-hear chatter, Tiger (kneeslap) having his lines being stepped on by a passing plane, and a few partial views of the Enclave crossover SUV. Yawn. Zzzzzzzzzzz. Still, the Detroit News and a few blogs picked it up. I, in fact, went to see it after reading about on www.autoblog.com.

Youtube is a fascinating medium. The nice thing about it is that it is so easily searchable. It doesnt matter that there is a lot of flotsam up there. There is a lot of flotsam on the Net too. I don't see most of it, though, because when I go to google search, I'm looking for something specific. But this Buick video is definitely flotsam.

Okay...time for ideas. 1. Shoot a one minute video, at least, of Tiger actually saying or doing something amusing. 2. Show him doing or saying something amusing with the car so you can show off some of the selling points. 3. Put up a video of one of Tiger's golf-course sessions in which he cracks jokes and shows off his antics with a golf club and ball in front of an audience. 4. Give Tiger a Treo at a tournament during practice days and see what he comes up with. 5. Have Tiger throw a hissy fit with a waiter about his Spring water not being cold enough or someone not bringing him the right golfball. And that's what I thought of just while I'm sitting here in two minutes.

Youtube is the new Google for searching video on a subject. If I'm going to go to the trouble, make it worth my time. Without the constraints and sensors of the networks, I expect videos on Youtube about the brands I am interested in to be compelling and engaging. How can you take the top athlete in the world and put me to sleep for thirty seconds???????? Jeesh.

The YouTube Election Ratifies Google’s Investment

David Kiley

As I was watching Election returns last night, I was struck by NBC’s Tim Russert’s comment that this may be the first election that turned on YouTube.com
It caught my attention. What Russert was specifically referring to was the abundance of film clips of Montana’s U.S. Senator Conrad Burns (pictured above)on www.Youtube.com, which seem to have helped bring the entrenched Republican down (the vote tally is subject to possible recount).

I looked up the clips. Oh my! I wasn’t very familiar with Burns, though I knew his reputation as a gruff, old-school Republican prone to saying anything he wanted because he had little worry of ever being dislodged from his seat. The clips vary from anti-Burns ads spotlighting his criticism of out-of-state firefighters who came to Montana to help battle forest fires to a video of him at a picnic talking to his handyman on a cellphone--a little fellow from Guatamala named Hugo, according to Burns, and without a green card. Uh Oh. In another video clip, Burns joked about the fact that Hugo had no green card.

As I searched on Burns, I also came up with clips of Hillary Clinton put up by an outfit called “Bigotwatch.” It had a clip of Senator Clinton telling a really bad joke during a speech about someone named Ghandi---who----yuck yuck yuck----runs a gas station in St. Louis.

YouTube is turning into one of the most potent public squares in the culture and political wars since Rush Limbaugh first went on the radio. In fact, where did I see webcam video of Rush disgustingly doing his own parody of Michael J. Fox in a Parkinson's Disease fit of involutary bodily movement? Youtube.com

There's more. Morning radio/TV personality Don Imus has been excoriating Congressman Joe Barton from Texas for holding up a piece of legislation that would advance research into autism and provide some help to parents of autistic children. One of the most damning things Imus showed on his morning show was video footage of a parent trying to see Barton at his Texas office. He was turned away by a paranoid group of office staff, who called 911 to come and get the parent even though he was the picture of calm and politeness. Where did Imus get the video to show? YooooooouuuuuuuTuuuuuube.com

Memo to those seeking office: From now on, don’t be stupid. Or at least, be less stupid about what you say. No longer can the Conrad Burnses of the world think that they can give a talk at a church picnic back at home without it being available for thousands and potentially millions to see on www.youtube.com. Think of that the next time your buddy asks you give a toast at his bachelor party.

It’s in this context that I think that Google’s purchase of www.Youtube.com was a crafty and brilliant acquisition despite some cat-calls from the cheap seats that they paid too much, $1.65 billion, for a firm with no model for making a profit.

One thing I know is that streaming video is more entertaining and engaging as an ad medium than web text or banner ads. When we want to know something about a subject these days, from Conrad Burns to the new Ford Fusion to Marvin Windows, what do we do? We Google it. Same goes with video now. Whether I want to take in engaging video information or entertainment about Senator Burns, Sen. Clinton, Marvin windows or the Ford F Series pickup, increasingly I will, and I’m not alone, will go to the default branded source of streaming video content--www.Youtube.com--to see what I can see. Evene better, news organizations are crediting Youtube all over the place, and helping to drive traffic.

I hardly know an ad agency these days that hasn’t told me it uploaded its more interesting ads, or “director’s cuts" of certain ads we see on TV, up to Youtube.com. Google, of course, saw this. And already, I sense that Youtube is becoming a verb, just like Google.

I may be proved wrong, but I also have a sense that while www.myspace.com displaced www.friendster.com as the go-to social networking website, and there are rumblings that myspace.com could go the way of Friendster, Youtube.com will remain the leading portal for online streaming video. Caveat: This is based purely on instinct and my nose.

As we head into a wide open, free-for-all, gloves-off presidential election in 2008, with the campaign season starting up by this coming summer, Youtube will be an enormous factor. Those of us who go searching on, say, “Bill Richardson” or “Hillary Clinton” or “Mitt Romney” to see what we can see about these potential candidates, we will, in the Democratic tradition of Google search, find a stack of ads, film clips and parodies of these people. Separating the real from the fake and the ad from the lampoon will be increasingly difficult for the consumer viewer. And you know what---that will be part of the fun. Let the games begin.

Kellogg Testing The Brand Barriers for Special K

David Kiley

Kellogg has enjoyed nice success expanding the Special K brand. Among other things, its become almost a default product to buy for baby boomers when they get a bad cholesterol report from the doctor.

But as the food company readies a rollout of breakfast bars (good idea), and protein water (call the brand police), I think Kellogg will run up against what every ambitious consumer marketer eventually faces: a case of brand extension greed.

I've seen this movie before. Starbuck's Jo magazine and CD burning stations, the $90,000 Volkswagen Phaeton, Everlast cologne, Coke Blak, Dell consumer electronics.

I can't know that Special K water will flop. I haven't even seen the advertising yet. And there have been some brand extensions, whose failure I would have bet the mortgage would fail, that have succeeded. Did anyone predict the success of Dannon bottled water?

But there is a mystique around vitamin and fortified water. And the big red Special K logo doesn't quite cut it in my boomer circles. Now, if Kellogg undercuts the price of the hipper more happenin brands and products in this segment, they might just get somewhere. I can only imagine the mark-up on "vitamin" or "protein" water.

Good luck Kellogg's. I think you'll need it.

Argument Over Commercial Ratings May Be Missing the Point

David Kiley

Nielsen, TV broadcasters, cable networks and advertisers continue to haggle over a system they all can agree on to measure the audiences of TV commercials in the age of digital-video-recorders and time-shifted TV watching.

The main issue and bone of contention is how to account for and value viewers who watch a program and its commercials several days after the program has aired live. Huh? That's what your worried about?

How about whether the ad was watched at all. I admit this is anecdotal, but as I now watch about 75% of the TV programming in my life on a time-shifted basis, I find that I watch the ads only in fast-forward mode. The question advertisers will have to answer with TV stations and Nielsen is: How much does this viewing count? How much is it worth?

Can my use of a DVR be so unique? My favorite viewing has become the Sunday football game. I subscribe to DirecTV and bought the NFL package so I can watch the NY Giants now that I live in Michigan. I tape the game, which usually last 3.5 hours, and play it back on my own time. This usually takes one hour. The time shifting and shortening is invaluable. No huddles. No ads. No half-time. No waiting for a coach's challenge to a ref's call. Watching the game this way allows me to spend Sunday afternoons with my family, and eat my football cake too.

I admit that while I am fwding through the ads, half-time, etc., I am taking in something of the brand messages and promotions for the network's programming. But I'm hard pressed to say what its worth. A day later, having watched the ads without sound and at stepped up speeds, the only one I recall is an ad hawking a promotion for consumers to submit their own Super Bowl ad concept. Isn't that ironic?

If I chose to watch an ad in a program I recorded three or four days after I recorded it at normal play-speed, it wouldn't be worth less than it would had I watched it live...unless the ad was for a one-day sale the next day...it would be a miracle that I watched it at all. Maybe Nielsen, the Nets and advertisers should pay more attention to that.