SeanReadsTheNews

AP: Commercials Shrink to Match Attention Spans

Emily Fredrix, advertising reporter for The Associated Press has a great story today on the growing popularity of 15-second TV commercials, providing a detailed breakdown of the latest creative and financial trends in advertising.

TV commercials are shrinking along with attention spans and advertising budgets. The 15-second ad is increasingly common, gradually supplanting the 30-second spot just as it knocked off the full-minute pitch decades ago.

The number of 15-second television commercials has jumped more than 70 percent in five years to nearly 5.5 million last year, according to Nielsen. They made up 34 percent of all national ads on the air last year, up from 29 percent in 2005.

She has numerous case studies in the article of famous and not-so-famous campaigns as well as a diverse and thoughtful spread of expert sources from business and academia.

The article defies excerpting because the case studies weave together to make broader points, so I recommend you read the whole thing.

CNNMoney: Use Apps To Track Kids on Halloween

Since I blogged a great Wall Street Journal opinion article on the economic opportunism that underpins Halloween paranoia, I am obligated today to note that CNNMoney falls into that trap big time today with an article by Jennie Bragg on iPhone apps you can use to follow your kids on Halloween.

Halloween is supposed to be fun, but it is also the one night every year that many parents allow their kids to wander the streets of town alone for an entire evening.

Instead of being a nervous nelly at home or the one parent tagging along with the kids while they trick or treat, check out some of the new technology that will allow you to track your children's whereabouts.

This is the worst kind of cheesy, opportunistic, a-factual PR stunt outreach and it galls me that it worked.  Linking overhyped risks with overhyped Apple technology to produce a value-free advertisement for a private company.  Great work there CNNMoney.

 

BW on the Economics of Pot Farming

Sheelah Kolhatker of BusinessWeek contributes a long story on the economics of growing marijuana in Humbolt, County, Calif., a haven for quasi-illegal cannibas cultivation that is threatened by the potential passage of Proposition 19.

Humboldt County could also lose the geographical advantage of its remoteness, which makes it ideal for producing an illegal product, as production moves closer to where most of the customers are, in Los Angeles and San Francisco. With taxation and regulation happening at a county or city level, there could also be a race to whichever area has the friendliest rules.

The article details how this remote valley is supported by the outsized profits from marijuana due to its limited legality - the boom was ushered in by a medical marijuana provision that can make smoking legal for causes as minor as a stiff neck.

The article provides an interesting look at how taxation and regulation distort market economics as well as the social conventions necessary to operate the corners of the law.

 

CNNMoney: Microsoft is a Dying Consumer Brand

David Goldman of CNNMoney.com calls out the many ways Microsoft is becoming irrelevant in a cutting-but-tough-to-dispute article.

 Consumers have turned their backs on Microsoft. A company that once symbolized the future is now living in the past.

Microsoft has been late to the game in crucial modern technologies likemobile, search, media, gaming and tablets. It has even fallen behind inWeb browsing, a market it once ruled with an iron fist.

Of course, when Microsoft is on the ropes, that's usually when it comes up with something - but those days may be past.  In any case, technology PR pros can save this article as an object lesson of what happens when you take your market and your customers for granted.

One of my former bosses used to say "Bill Gates is the devil," at some point during any time she was preparing a PowerPoint presentation - it's finally catching up with them.

Portfolio on Managing Airline Ticket Prices

Joe Brancatelli, the business travel writer for Portfolio.com, writes today on how to navigate buying business air tickets in the coming year - one in which the airlines will have regained substantial amounts of pricing power as the recession eases. It's part of a three-part series (hotels are next week all you travel PR people...).

The piece is full of nuggets of wisdom, one of which I so seldom follow I'm calling it out.

The widespread availability of online pricing tools has convinced many business travelers that they can go it alone. Nothing could be further from the truth. The more complicated your travel, the more you need a good travel agent. The less time you want to spend tethered to your computer looking to book, the more you need a good travel agent. 

Joe does a really good job at this stuff, he's worth reading even if Portfolio has dropped off your "must-read" list since it stopped being part of Conde Nast.

WSJ: Halloween "Stranger Dangers" Are Fictional

I'm breaking another rule today highlighting an opinion article that isn't about business journalism - but I do feel strongly about parents turning Halloween lame with paranoia, and that's what former New York Daily News columnist Lenore Skenazy writes about on the page today.

Halloween taught marketers that parents are willing to be warned about anything, no matter how preposterous, and then they're willing to be sold whatever solutions the market can come up with. Face paint so no mask will obscure a child's vision. Purell, so no child touches a germ. And the biggest boondoggle of all: an adult-supervised party, so no child encounters anything exciting, er, "dangerous."

Think of how Halloween used to be the one day of the year when gaggles of kids took to the streets by themselves—at night even. Big fun! Low cost! But once the party moved inside, to keep kids safe from the nonexistent poisoners, in came all the nonsense. The battery-operated caskets. The hired witch. The Costco veggie trays and plastic everything else. Halloween went from hobo holiday to $6 billion extravaganza.

I realize I probably wouldn't be able to resist this emotional blackmail if I actually had children - there does seem to be a parent socialization process that operates by generation.  Somehow, even knowledge that there is NO RISK to trick or treating, and application of wisdom from parents and grandparents, is no use against it.  All parents conform once they have kids.

And while I'm on the topic, if you can afford a house, you can afford decent Halloween candy.  While my neighbors seem to be driving candy companies to employ nanotechnology to devise ever smaller pieces to hand out - come on.  Are you really going to go broke giving out $75 worth of full-size candy bars vs. $15 of the small ones?  Isn't it worth it once a year to spend a little extra and not be seen as a cheapskate?

 

NYT's Sorkin Tries to Define Insider Trading

Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times today devotes his column to insider trading, finding a story where the traders are sympathetic rail yard workers who bet a hunch their company was about to be sold and made $1 million.  Rather than buying info. for a hedge fund with a briefcase full of bearer bonds, these guys were just observant.  It's enough to call the whole concept into question.

So, given the ever expanding definition of insider trading, what exactly does inside information mean? It may come as a surprise to know that there is no actual language that defines the term in the legal books. The S.E.C. relies on Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, purposely vague provisions that make the purchase or sale of any security through “manipulative and deceptive devices” illegal. It is also a crime to engage “in any act, practice, or course of business which operates or would operate as a fraud or deceit upon any person.”

If all of this sounds confusing, that’s because it is. And that’s why some argue that the S.E.C. should draw some bright lines around what insider trading is — and what it is not. In an age when information zips across the planet and sophisticated investors piece it all together, the public and investors deserve clear rules. A safe maxim might be: “If you have to ask if it’s right or wrong, it’s probably wrong.”

What is insider trading is a Halley's Comet story but unlike Galleon, this case is novel and puzzling how it worked out.  Kudos to Sorkin for giving the case top tier attention.

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BW on the Market for Chinese Tilapia

I'm intrigued by Bruce Einhorn's BusinessWeek story devoting six pages to tilapia farming in China.  Being married to an Asian, I've been eating the stuff for years but apparently it's a growing trend that is changing the way we obtain seafood.

As overfishing threatens the world's wild fisheries, aquaculture advocates say fish farms will play a far greater role in feeding people around the world. "We are no more going to get our seafood from the wild than we get our beef, nuts, fruit from the wild," predicts Kevin Fitzsimmons, a professor at the University of Arizona and former president of the World Aquaculture Society. He is also on the board of HQ Sustainable Maritime Industries (HQS), an NYSE Amex-listed company that sells Chinese-raised tilapia. "It's all going to be farm-raised," he says. And there's no fish better suited to this new world than tilapia, says Fitzsimmons. It's a fast-growing species with mild-tasting flesh that producers can easily adapt to all kinds of uses. "Tilapia," says Fitzsimmons, "is going to be basically where chicken is with poultry."

The full piece is a fascinating look at how shifting diets can change commerce, culture and science in far-off lands.  

WSJ on Abandoned Lots and Ruined Crops in Florida

Adam Cancryn of The Wall Street Journal offers a C1 feature on a surprising piece of real estate collapse fall-out, a plant-killing virus getting loose from abandoned developments that is devastating Florida agriculture.

As if the real-estate bust hadn't wreaked enough havoc on Florida, farmers say abandoned lots left behind by would-be developers have become a breeding ground for a plague that is killing thousands of the state's orange trees.

A type of tiny lice known as the Asian citrus psyllid has made its home in the orchards, spreading a disease known as citrus greening, or yellow dragon disease, which causes trees to produce shriveled, bitter oranges before killing them. Since being spotted in 2005, the disease has spread to all parts of the state. And with no known cure, citrus greening is threatening to cripple a $9 billion-a-year industry that supplies 90% of U.S. orange juice.

Before anyone points to this as an example of the downside of development and an excuse for more government regulation, however, note a paragraph from later in the story that suggests that differing tax treatments led to so many of those abandoned lots being citrus farm-certified in the first place.

Keeping the land also gives many absent owners the advantage of generous tax breaks intended for farmers. Land labeled for citrus use is assessed at about $2,200 an acre, compared with up to $20,000 or $30,000 an acre without that classification, said Marsha Faux, Polk County's property appraiser.

This is a surprising, informative article with real investment impact.  It's a great Wall Street Journal story.

BusinessWeek / Fortune on the Mortgage Mess

It was a big day for big articles on the foreclosure mess, with three major stories in BusinessWeek (2) and Fortune (1) all blog-worthy.

First, Peter Coy, Paul M. Barrett and Chad Terhune triple team the big story in BusinessWeek, contributing a seven-page mega-deconstruction.

They open by neatly encapsulating what's at stake.

Wall Street's unspoken strategy has been to kick mortgage losses down the road until an economic recovery reinflates the housing market. The faulty-foreclosure crisis has forced the issue back into the present tense, triggering a fight over who will bear the brunt of those losses. 

This is another one of those stories that won't provide much new if you've been reading every story on the issue but give you a one-stop shop if you haven't.

After that, BusinessWeek columnist Chris Farrell issues a moving plea to end the moral hazard/bailout mentality before it's too late, echoing my long-time observation that we can't solve a burst housing bubble by re-inflating it.

The Obama Administration hasn't done much to address the latest developments in the housing market. Bravo. A hands-off approach is appropriate even though odds are many financial institutions will pay a steep price for the credit spree that ended disastrously with the credit crunch three years ago. Congress is hardly willing to contemplate another bailout. Foreclosure law is primarily a state issue. The courts are the proper venue for sorting out the fight between big investors and mortgage-backed securities packagers.

But the Administration should go farther. Seize the opportunity to tell bank managements bluntly that even in a worst-case scenario, "You're on your own. Oh, and by the way, we won't make management, shareholder, or creditors whole if you get into trouble."

We can only hope.  And they'll end up there soon enough if anyone listens to Allan Sloan of Fortune Magazine, who also contributed an opinion article today, subtly titled, "Want To Get Away With Murder?Become a Bank."

You miss a payment on your credit card or send it in a few days late, you get whacked. Forget to make a loan payment, your credit rating gets vaporized. But if a bank doesn't do its job properly -- for example, if you can't get a knowledgeable and competent human on the phone to deal with a loan modification or a paperwork screwup because the bank is holding down back-office costs to save money -- it ends up being your problem, not the bank's.

Yeah, it's pretty obvious, but eloquently put and part of an overall persuasively savage column. Too many people say "too big to fail" means banks can get away with this stuff over and over again - it's good to see respected columnists like Farrell and Sloan saying "enough."