Letters

Don't be too impressed with Jaffe's viral Nike ad I read Joseph Jaffe's opinions about viral marketing, his spec Nike ad and his lament that it's not Wieden/Kennedy/Jaffe yet ["How I Just Did It," A&C, May 9]. Excuse me, but the idea for Mr. Jaffe's DIY Nike ad would never have entered his head had Wieden + Kennedy not come up with "Just do it" and the branding that followed in the years leading up to his not-worthy-of-patting-himself-on-the-back spot. His viral marketing is, in my opinion, less effective than me wearing a Nike T-shirt on my run through the park. The hits he's getting are from Internet-savvy geeks and ad people viewing it for context reasons alone. A few pages before this article is a piece about electronic billboards (what took so long?), which is much more interesting and potentially industry changing than Jaffe's Internet games. Joe KazmierskiCreative directorMake Love Not AdvertisingPhiladelphiaWe should take the blame on compensation While I did not attend the recent 4A's management conference in Bermuda, I did read in the press [Adweek, May 9] that the issue of compensation, and the notion that it should be tied to the quality of the advertising, was discussed. In fact, Andy Berlin was quoted as saying that "bad advertising and good advertising are compensated exactly the same way." If anyone is to blame for our industry's unfair compensation agreements, we have only to point the finger at ourselves. Whenever we fall back on our "muscle memory" and think of ourselves solely as purveyors of advertisements, we are painting ourselves as vendors and will be treated as such. Over the past year, I have not met one client who's talked singularly about "advertising." Instead, they've expressed their need for "communications programs" that best leverage their dollars overall. If this is what clients are telling us, then we should surely listen. Agencies today must create ideas for clients that can be executed across a full spectrum of media to resonate and reinforce the "brand promise" at every touch point. And generating ideas to accomplish this should really be the basis for agency compensation.Carl Anderson President and CEO DoremusNew YorkBusiness of barter in the media world might not be that rosy Judging by Steve McClellan's story [April 4], there seems to be no downside to barter—it's just a great way to save money on media buys. Based on my experience with barter as an ad-agency go-between for clients, as a competitor in the media buying business and as a one-time employee at a barter company, he left out a couple of items. 1. Barter is not a simple I-give-you-this-you-give-me-that exchange. It is a complex and confusing practice and can be fraught with convolutions, problems and greed that can leave an uninitiated client victimized—and worse, he won't even know it. 2. Barter is not a media strategy. It is an accounting procedure. It allows a manufacturer's CFO to record as a profitable sale unwanted product sitting in a warehouse. Instead of dumping it on a reseller at 15 or 20 cents on the dollar, a return that probably does not cover the cost of the goods, the CFO records an accounting transaction that reflects a "sale" at wholesale value to a barter company, and he looks like a hero. But in lieu of hard cash, the company gets a confusing and illusionary item known as "trade credits." 3. Barter is basically a last resort, just short of throwing the unwanted product in the ocean. Thus, the standard M.O. for most barter companies is to first approach a manufacturer's financial person, not the company's marketing director or the ad agency's media director. In the process of selling a company on using barter, marketing and media are a secondary and potentially disruptive impediment. Barter companies want to talk to the money guy, who may have no idea about the possibly negative impact barter can have on his company's marketing or media efforts. 4. Barter agreements are rarely on a one-to-one dollar basis. Yes, Ace Hardware received $3 million in "trade credits." But Ace probably had to marry these credits with cash to redeem them. How much cash? It is contingent on the media placed. Curiously, the barter company sets the cash/trade ratios. (This is somewhat akin to playing poker with all your cards showing. The house always wins.) A typical ratio is 80 percent cash and 20 percent trade credits. 5. "Placing the buy in accordance with the plan designed ... by the agency." That statement is subject to serious interpretation. It depends. I worked with a baby-food client that had an agreement with a well-known barter company. The media plan, designed to reach women 18-34 with infants, called for daytime network TV soap operas, Lifetime and USA cable networks and Parents magazine. At the 11th hour, the barter company told us they couldn't secure units in soap operas but could replace them with game shows (which skew to women 50+); they couldn't get Lifetime and USA but could get CNN and CNBC (which skew to men 35+); and they couldn't get Parents but could get Parenting at the same rate. The barter company agreed to implement the plan as written, then found the desired components were "sold out" or "not available in their inventory." For the uninitiated, what transpired was classic bait-and-switch. 6. Think of barter companies as commodities brokers. They buy low and sell high. They take positions in large blocks of airline tickets, hotel rooms, car rentals or media time or space at 25 cents on the dollar. They make their profit by selling these commodities to their clients at a rate that's lower than the market price but significantly higher than what they paid. They took the risk, they reap the reward. So they'll sell a :30 unit on a second-tier cable TV network valued at $10,000 for $7,500 and make a handsome profit. Keep in mind that they only make this profit when they sell the item. Consequently, they are going to push the media time or space they've got in their inventory. Which means they can't be media neutral. 7. What's fascinating to see is that the same big agency senior media executives who once fiercely disparaged barter as a dreadful thing are now in a hurry to set up barter operations. Hypocrisy? Nah. It just reflects today's main, driving concerns of ad-agency holding companies: profits, stockholder equity, profits, stock price and profits. The barter company brethren will say I've cited old, outdated examples, that I'm unfairly painting the barter industry with a huge paintbrush. But my recollections are as recent as last year, and I really hate painting. As my grandmother from Cork used to say, a leopard doesn't change its spots. John G. MaherSvp, director of planningU.S. International MediaLos AngelesSend letters to Tim Nudd at tnudd@adweek.com.

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