How Advertainment is Changing
The World
by Tom Dyson
September 1, 2006
A cruise ship drifts by on the horizon... you think you hear the sound of its horn, carried to your ears on a warm sea breeze.
Then the camera pans out.
Now you realize a pair of sunbathers are making this sound. They are sitting in beach chairs, simulating the ship's horn by blowing on the rims of their Corona beer bottles. A bucket of Coronas rests in the white sand beside them.
Have you see this commercial before? It's been on the air for twelve years. Today I heard a speech by this commercial's creator. His name is Jim Courtright and he's made some of the most successful television and magazine commercials of the last twenty years.
Now Jim says his industry - the advertising industry - is changing direction and early investors in this trend stand to cash in. Before I can show you the future, I need to explain the past. Here's an overview of traditional media and marketing:
Media are the means of communication, such as radio and television, newspapers, and magazines, which reach or influence people widely. Media deliver information in the form of data, text, pictures, sounds, documents and videos. You know this information as news, weather, entertainment, email, sports and so on.
In the past, it cost colossal amounts of money to deliver this information to you. Imagine a newspaper. You buy it for fifty cents. Yet it cost millions to produce. You have to hire dozens of writers. You need graphic designers to put it together. You need million-dollar printing presses to crank out the day's edition. Then you need a huge distribution network to bring the newspaper to newsstands all over the nation.
Your cable television may cost a couple of bucks a day. But imagine the cost to the medium provider. To give you hundreds of channels, with quality programming twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, these guys send satellites into space!
The point is, the assembly and distribution of content via traditional media is very, very expensive.
There's only one way to make most mass media work: marketing.
Advertising subsidizes the medium so you get your information at a low cost. That's why we sit through annoying adverts that interrupt our favorite television shows and thumb through pages and pages of junk in our magazines.
This relationship worked fine for decades and everyone was happy. Then about ten years ago, a dark, handsome stranger jumped into bed...
The Internet is the new medium. The Internet assembles and distributes content, just like traditional media. But unlike other media, it can handle all the content types, including video, text, data, pictures - and it's far cheaper.
There's nothing new here. Everyone knows this. It was the basis of the technology boom. But here's what people haven't figured out yet, and the reason for our investment opportunity:
Jim Courtright is pioneering a new form of advertising that only works over the Internet. This advertising is far more effective than the traditional advertising methods we're all used to. Jim calls this innovation "advertainment."
Traditional advertising uses distraction to sell products. Advertainment sells and entertains at the same time. Jim showed us several examples of his advertainments. His ideas are brilliant. They will revolutionize the relationship between marketing and media and bring even more wealth to the people who provide your Internet connection.
Take a traditional Macy's advertisement. They pay a supermodel to wear a dress. Then they pay a magazine to publish the picture. That's all they get. An advertainment - on the other hand - would have the supermodel parading the dress across the bottom of your screen. Click to change its color. Click again and she'll dance. With another click you can see matching accessories. Click again to buy it.
Recently, Macy's pulled $350 million out of their budget for print advertisement.
Which media do you think marketers prefer? If you're convinced, like I am, then take Jim's stock advice on this: sell the stock of traditional media and buy Internet delivery. Sell Viacom and buy Comcast.
Good investing,
Tom
P.S. Check out Jim's work at bigthinkingbythehour.com.
