Is TV advertising obsolete?

TECHNOLOGY - In 2005 Sony Canada decided to drop all of its TV ads in an effort to focus on internet marketing.

Even yesterday, with massive advertising campaigns centred around the World Cup final game between Spain and the Netherlands (Spain won 1-0) it becomes questionable whether any of that advertising money will encourage people to buy their product over someone elses.

And whats bizarre is that approx. half of the advertising we see on television now promotes not so much the product or service, but the WEBSITE belonging to that product or service.

And then there's just ads where the product has very little or nothing to do with the ad itself, beyond being a part of the celebration. Like the Coca-Cola ad below:



Does it encourage you to go buy Coca-Cola? Not really. Barely even trying to. Its more about product placement.

Adidas (which at least makes sporting equipment) meanwhile was promoting a computer game on Facebook (branded with their product logo of course). Their hope was to get people hooked on the Facebook game and then try to cash that into more people buying Adidas products.

Television advertising is increasingly becoming hit-and-miss. You can spend millions on an advertising campaign, but there's guarantee whatsoever that companies will recoup those losses. (Of course we're also talking about corporations with such huge profits and likewise large advertising budgets that they don't seem to care any more.)

The problem however is that the advertising landscape is changing. Internet advertising is (with rare exceptions) cheaper, more effective and more likely to result in people actually buying your product.

But the internet isn't the only adverising zone that is growing... specifically the internet on your SmartPhone is becoming a viable option for advertisers. Right now 25% of Canadians have SmartPhones and that number is expected to rise dramatically in the next 2-3 years, eventually all cellphones in Canada will be SmartPhones with the internet at your finger tips.

And then there's SEO (Search Engine Optimization) which is quickly becoming the most effective way to advertise and get customers, especially for small businesses because it places them on an even footing with corporations (which are more likely to waste their money and just write it off as a failed attempt).

Lets take a different sporting event as an example... The Tour de France. When you watch this you are far more likely to see cycling gear and bicycles being advertised... and the yet the sponsors still vary between Radio Shack (which is known as Circuit City in Canada because they went bankrupt and were sold), Quick Step, htc Columbia, Shimano, Cervelo, Vittel, Garmin-Transitions Optical, Skoda, Lampre-Farnese and others...

Seriously, if there's space left on their cycling jersey (including their butt or legs) they will sell it to a sponsor.

As the internet continues to grow more dominant eventually TV will dwindle and non-traditional advertising will replace it. In the coming years television bandwidth will be auctioned off to create more space for cellphones, and television via transmitters won't even exist anymore. Everything will be satellite, cable or internet.

If you're in the TV advertisement business your days are numbered and your competition is increasingly fierce.

Chatr, new discount wireless aims to stifle competitors

TECHNOLOGY - Rogers Communications has launched a new discount wireless service called Chatr, offering unlimited calling and texting overseas for flat-fee plans ranging from $15 to $65 (almost identical to Mobilicity plans).

Rival Mobilicity is accusing Rogers of being a “$20-billion bully” aiming to destroy the competition and create a virtual monopoly. CEO John Bitove says his company is pursuing legal action under the Competition Act if Rogers launches Chatr.

“You look at the markets they’re targeting, they’re our markets. You look at the plans they’re offering to the consumer, they’re basically ripping off the plans that we’ve put in place,” says Bitove, noting that Rogers could have made discount plans years ago but only changed now when Mobilicity entered the market. “What they’re basically being is a $20-billion bully to try and destroy the competition as quickly as they can.”

If Chatr goes forward it will be in addition to Rogers Wireless and Fido, all of which are owned by Rogers Communications Inc. The new Chatr service won't even be profitable for Rogers and will have to be subsidized in an effort to kill the competition.

If Rogers goes forward with this plan it will be a clear violation of the “abuse of dominant position” section of the Competition Act which makes it illegal to use "fighting brands introduced selectively on a temporary basis to discipline or eliminate a competitor.”

Once Mobilicity is driven out of the market, Rogers will cease advertising Chatr and eventually drop the brand due to it unprofitability.

This is not the first time companies have introduced discount wireless brands... Telus has Kodoo and Bell Mobility has Solo, but they were launched years ago and were attempts to gain market share and not the result of new competition.

Start up companies Public Mobile, Wind and Mobilicity are threats to Rogers' majority of the market share. There's also Quebecor's Videotron and another discount wireless coming out in the coming year from Shaw Communications.

And last but not least, Google is hoping to release a SmartPhone carrier service sometime in the next 2 years... which could spell trouble for Rogers' stranglehold on the Canadian market.

It would make much more sense if Rogers simply offered more discount offers to existing customers so they can retain them. And boosting their customer service would be nice too. Rogers has a bad reputation for its computer-voice operators, long wait times, shoddy customer service, billing errors and huge phone bills when customers go roaming.

If they spent more time trying to make their customers happy and less time being pricks to both customers and the competition they wouldn't need to worry about the competition because customers value good service.

Give customers a break and treat them with respect and they're more likely to stick around.

Canadian economy booming, but danger on the horizon

CANADA - Economic figures in Canada continued to boom in June, creating 93,200 jobs with the largest gains in self-employment (25,600). This brought the unemployment rate in Canada down to 7.9%.

Most of the job gains were in Ontario and Quebec. The biggest increase was the service sector which added 103,400, but the manufacturing sector cut 10,200 jobs during June. The overall job gains was way more than the expected 18,000.

These new jobs were split pretty evenly between full time and part time, 48,900 and 44,200 respectively.

Combined with previous job gains since the start of 2010 Canada has now recovered 95% of all the jobs that were lost during the American Recession.

But Canada is still not out of danger's way. Economists are now warning the real estate market in major Canadian cities is about to burst their bubbles. Toronto home sales in June are down 23%, the second month of decreases. Meanwhile according to real estate economists Toronto homes are overpriced by approx. 30 to 50% and this bubble is expected to burst sometime in 2010 or early 2011.

When that happens it will hurt the construction industry and there will be a ripple effect hurting other sectors, including manufacturing and the banking/mortgage industry.

Canada's big banks never received a bailout during the 2007-2009 American Recession (which itself was caused by a collapsing real estate market). The same thing is expected to happen here in Canada, but sometime in the next 6 to 9 months. When it happens many mortgage deals will fall through, the banks will be stuck with properties that are worth 30 to 50% less than the amount that was paid for them and this in turn will effect the equities and deriviatives market on the Toronto Stock Exchange. When that happens we may yet see a bank bailout in Canada.

Meanwhile the Bank of Canada is thinking of raising interest rates in late July, which if they do will hurt home prices by making it more difficult to get a good mortgage rate and will have a downward effect on the already faltering real estate industry.

If and when the real estate bubble bursts in Canadian cities it will mean a stock market crash, many lost jobs and a deep Canadian recession that will make our woes during the American recession look minor in comparison.

See Also:
The Toronto Real Estate Market

AIDS vaccine close to being completed

HEALTH - A vaccine for HIV/AIDS could be available by 2014 or 2015 thanks to scientists who have found two powerful human antibodies which can stop the spread of HIV.

The two antobodies, VRC01 and VRC02 are believed to be effective against 90% of HIV mutations. Finding more antibodies and sealing the gap (making it 100% effective) is the next step in creating a vaccine. Once that is done its just a matter of determining the best method to distribute it to the population.

But... if there was an AIDS vaccine available in Canada, would you want to take it?

If you were living in southern parts of Africa where AIDS is rampant, I think it would be a guarantee you'd want to take it.

But if you live in part of the world where AIDS is not so common some people would be more tempted to pass on it and continue practicing "safe sex", because AIDS is not the only sexually transmitted disease out there. The argument therefore is that AIDS in such regions can still be combated using the traditional methods of condoms and being very careful who you have sex with.

A mandatory government immunization program just seems risky... because the worry then is that people might start spreading other STDs by accident, or causing a spike in pregnancies and abortions.

The two VRC antibodies were discovered in the bloood of an HIV-infected person who was immune to the virus. A tiny minority of lucky people who have HIV never develop AIDS and its from these people that we may be able to find a vaccine and maybe even a cure for AIDS.

Even if a third or fourth VRC antibody isn't found to close the gap to a full 100% effectiveness against all different HIV mutations, its still a huge jump forward for treatment and prevention of HIV.

Scientists are very optimistic a full vaccine is less than 10 years away.

Approx. 65,000 Canadians were infected with HIV in 2008, a 14 per cent increase from 2005. In 2008 there was 2 million AIDS-related deaths globally, according to the World Health Organization. Southern Africa is the hardest hit where some countries have HIV prevalency rates of approx. 40%.

See Also:
How America Aids and Abets AIDS/HIV Worldwide
Sex Rights in Africa
Africa's Best Hope: Anti-Retrovials