When I was in the 5th grade, our teacher, Mrs. Christian, had every student know and recite the capital of all 48 states in the United States. (Yes, 48. Alaska and Hawaii were not admitted as states until 1959, after my 5th grade challenge).

It was here I learned how to spell Mississippi and that Baton Rouge, not New Orleans, was the capital of Louisiana.

Today, a fifth grader has it much easier, they simply have to know the 17 kinds of gender identity.

According to a psychologist and sex expert, they are:

AFAB (Assigned Female at birth).
AMAB (Assigned Male at birth).
Cisgender
Transgender
Cishet
Non-binary
Intersex
Genderqueer
Gender-fluid
Gender Non-conforming
Gender-Expansive
Agender
Gendervoid
Bigender
Omnigender
Pangender
Two-Spirit

(If you want the definition of these terms, they are here:
https://www.womenshealthmag.com/relationships/a36395721/gender-identity-list/)

Some things have changed. Not the least of which is education.

Transportation has changed: Electric vehicle sales will increase 25% this year.

Investing has changed. Cryptocurrency is an entirely new investment category today. The word new to the lexicon.

Speaking of cryptos, Banking is changing as 86% of the central banks on the planet (including the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank) are in the process of testing (and in a few cases now) implementing digital currencies into bank accounts (They are called CBCDs – central bank digital currencies). Cash will be gone. Central Banks and governments will be in full control of the zeros and ones in your bank account.

Government has changed. It used to be that politicians – left or right – were patriots, committed to the country’s security. But in the last Congress, California Congressman Eric Swalwall was sleeping with a Chinese spy named Fang Fang. Despite being aware of Swalwall’s sexual proclivities, Dame Pelosi appointed him to the …wait for it… the House Intelligence Committee.

Congressman Eric Swalwell and Christine Fang AKA Fang Fang.

Shopping has also changed a good deal due to the so-called pandemic.

Online shopping, up 31% during the pandemic, has continued to soar. Online sales were $3.3 trillion in 2019 and expanded to $4.9 trillion through 2021 and are expected to reach $7 trillion by 2025.

So, if you sell your product online you are on the right track – boost your SEO and maybe test some pay per click. If not, get there.

And customer’s buying interests have changed as well. There is currently a strong new interest in eating out. If you own a restaurant, promote to your customers.

“People are spending more on experiences and less on material things. And more on their health versus things that were very popular pre-pandemic, such as clothing and other fashion items. With the closure of spas and salons, purchases of self-care items have also been on the rise, giving some beauty retailers a much-needed sales boost.”

…

“The pandemic has definitely changed consumers behaviors, priorities, and purchasing habits, which directly lead to changes in the business world. And we can expect many of these changes to be permanent.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jiawertz/2021/01/31/changes-in-consumer-behavior-brought-on-by-the-pandemic/?sh=6f8a7585559e

Have the interests of your customers changed? Even a little?

When was the last time you surveyed your customers and got their opinions on what you sell? Or your prospects? Get their hot buttons, get any changes in their attitudes, likes, dislikes about what it is you sell.

Start the new year with a survey of your clients or prospects or both and boom your sales in 2023 and beyond.

Send me an email or give me a call using the contact information below. The economical pricing may surprise you.

Very Best,

Bruce

Courtesy of cottonbro – Pixels

It was a little while ago that a friend, trying to give an example of how difficult it would be to survey very niche audiences, challenged our ability to survey left-handed golfers in Houston.

He was trying to be funny but was surprised when I told him that we could survey that public today – no problem. Technology has dramatically expanded the ability to survey niche publics in both the U.S. and in various parts of the world.

Truth be told, I could’ve reached and surveyed those left-handed golfers in Houston in “the old days” but it would have taken much more time and been more expensive than it is today.

Most of our clients are based in the U.S. and we can execute surveys for respondents in a city, a region, or the entire country. Having been in the market research business for over a quarter of a century, I can’t think of an industry for which we haven’t conducted surveys.

I’m sure there are some, but I can’t think of any. We have conducted surveys for everything from corporate giants to mom and pops getting critical information that helps drive sales – technology, healthcare, nutrition, real estate, the environment, religion, education, politics, and on it goes.

In recent years, we have conducted surveys around the world: Germany, Mexico, Australia (both sides of the continent – Sydney and Perth), Canada, Russia and have access to conduct surveys in most countries on the planet. Translations are often involved but that, too, is handled smoothly these days.

Though Russians might be reticent to voice certain opinions during these times, Ukrainians would likely welcome the opportunity. We can survey both publics today, but I am going focus on Ukraine and conduct surveys of Ukrainians over the next few days.

If you have questions you would like to ask Ukrainian citizens, send them to me. I can’t promise I will include them as I already have a rough survey constructed, but I will welcome your response and may use your question.

I intend to release the results to key government personnel, the media, through my financial newsletter – StrategicFinancialIntelligence.com – and to those of you in my general database.

Best,

Bruce

President & CEO

On Target Research

www.ontargetresearch.com

Bruce@brucewiseman.net

1-818-397-1401

I didn’t have a dog in the fight this year. But when one is born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area, opposition to the Rams, Dodgers, and the Lakers is part of one’s DNA.

Still I couldn’t help but admire the Rams defensive line that sacked Joe Burrow, the Bengals quarterback, again, again and again. Bottom line, I have to wait until next year for the 9ers.

The game aside, the commercials this year generated eye-watering amounts of money to NBC and star power that only Hollywood could deliver to the major marketing event on the planet.

Revenue for commercials for this year’s Super Bowl was about $600 million. Serious coin for a single program. But the commercials don’t just cost the airtime ($6.5 million for 30 seconds, $13 million for 60 seconds). The talent is pricey, and this year more than any other, the commercials featured high profile celebrities flogging everything from beer and potato chips to mortgage lending, electric vehicles and 5G phone service.

Everyone from Arnold and Salma Hayek promoting the new BMW EV to Ana Kendrick selling mortgages, Seth Rogan and Paul Rudd doing their potato chip thing and Scarlett Johansen and her husband demonstrating Amazon’s Alexa, to name a few.

The Rams’ team members each got $101,000 in bonus money for winning the Super Bowl, but the movie stars score much more dinero for appearing in their commercial work. So, besides the cost of the airtime ($6.5 > $13 million), celebrities typically pick up anywhere from $500,000 to $2,000,000 for promoting everything from sea shells to the metaverse to the Hard Rock cafe. Some are paid more.

For example, here are some past pay checks – Super Bowl commercial stars and the amounts they were paid, leaked from various sources: Kate Upton was paid $1 million for her appearance in a milk bath for the Game of War video game, Arnold was paid $3 million for a Bud Light Super Bowl commercial in 2014 and Brad Pitt picked up $4 million back in 2005 for a Heineken commercial.

Celebrities attract eyeballs…and get paid for it. (This year’s viewership clocked in at 101.1 million.)

https://www.thelist.com/437370/heres-how-much-celebs-get-paid-for-super-bowl-commercials/

So, with airtime, cost of talent, production costs and the director’s fees, figure $10 to $20 million depending on the length of the spot. Yet it is stunning to me that corporate marketing directors or CEOs approve these multi-million dollar budgets when the commercials position their products with harm, damage or loss in an apparent effort to be funny, not to sell.

This is a a disease, probably borne out of some Harvard MBA class that has metastasized to ad agencies and corporate marketing departments that humor sells and that humor is generated by some kind of negative, damaging or disparaging occurrence.

AMAZON

Scarlett Johansson and her husband, comic Colin Jost, “stared” in a commercial for Amazon’s Alexa, which is kind of a video butler. Now I am a Scarlett Johansson fan (who isn’t) and she and her husband go through various scenes where in there is the implied possibility that Alexa can read minds. It’s kind of silly but OK, then at the end, Alexa announces to dining table full of guests that Colin left the oysters in his car for five hours at which point everybody at the table chokes and  barfs out their oysters onto their plate.

See the last scene for yourself – everyone  is regurgitating oysters at the end of the commercial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0UEAr8I9G8

Really? Is this supposed to be funny? Do you think you are going to sell more Alexas cutting a commercial the last scene of which positions the product with a table full of friends regurgitating oysters?

PEPSI

There’s a Pepsi commercial staring Payton and Eli Manning the great NFL quarterback brothers, both now retired. They are about to watch the Super Bowl, they toss jabs back and forth as Eli drinks Pepsi and Payton munches on Lays potato chips. Then, famed NFL running back Jerome Bettis storms into the house in an effort to get them on a bus to the game. Payton says no so Bettis ties a tow line from bus to the house, drives off and rips the living room out of the house.

Huh?

There’s more but please tell me why you couldn’t produce a Super Bowl commercial staring Eli and Payton Manning promoting Pepsi  without destroying their house?

What’s the message? Drink Pepsi, get your living room demolished?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2C6ZJEb0kg

There are others.

The Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd commercial promoting Lays potato chips ends with Seth marrying a ghoul that looks like she has been dug up from the grave. You know, something out of the walking dead.

The commercial ends with the picture of this ghastly looking female. Just the positioning that would prompt you to run to the store and grab a bag of Lays potato chips.

Not.

Every Super Bowl 56 commercial, ranked

And the Hellmann’s mayonnaise commercial is 60 seconds of people being slammed to the floor, the last of which is Kim Kardashian’s new squeeze, Pete Davidson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_1Ordi5GjY

Like I said, it’s a disease. But, thankfully, they are not all produced this way. With a Dolly Parton introduction Miley Cyrus belts out a ballad promoting T-Mobile’s 5G network. Miley displays some really impressive vocal chops. The lyrics are weird but the girl can sing. And the maps that compare T Mobile coverage to Verizon’s  are very convincing.

https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/dolly-parton-miley-cyrus-super-bowl-commercial-t-mobile-1235180320/

If I were in the market for a new pickup, the commercial for the new Chevy Silverado EV pickup would get me to the dealer for a test drive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bZYqFsU72Y

But the commercial that really scored, that got the public to REACH, was that of Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S.

The super clever commercial was 60 seconds of a QR code floating across the screen. That’s it. No audio, no “hot button” text, just the floating QR code.

The result? 20 million people copied the QR code, and went to the Coinbase site. The volume was so intense, it temporarily crashed their server. Coinbase has yet to reveal how many of those 20 Million visitors signed up for a new account.

That is what is what you call marketing success – a commercial that gets a response, a huge response, a huge reach.

So, how did they know? How did they know what to offer that would get a response?

They survey.

That’s right, Coinbase surveys both their existing customers and their prospects to find out what they need and want or consider valuable.

https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/other-topics/other/coinbase-user-research

You think Amazon conducted surveys that suggested they position their brand with people getting sick at dinner, or that Hellmanns’ research revealed that seeing people get knocked to the ground would motivate more mayonnaise sales?

Surveys let you know what is in the mind of your publics (both existing customers and prospects). They open the door to more leads, more sales and more income.

How do I know?

We have been conducting surveys and increasing sales and income for clients for more than 25 years

Bruce,

I want to thank you and your team for the amazing survey On Target performed for Energy Professionals. 

We have been using your survey results for our website, all of our marketing materials, our training for our sales reps and for the foundation of all our company communications.  One of the results we have achieved using this information was our highest ever sales last month.

Your services are very valuable, and we will be back for more surveys.

Sincerely yours,

Jim

Jim Mathers

CEO/President

Energy Professionals, LLC.

If you want to increase your sales and income, give me a call or shot me an email.

Best,

Bruce

Bruce Wiseman

President & CEO

On Target Research

www.ontargetresearch.com

Bruce@brucewiseman.net

1-818-397-1401

y

I have consoled myself with the fact that the 49ers won, if not the Super Bowl, the NFC championship in Garoppolo’s first full season and he’ll be back.

And I have given Patrick Mahomes his due. The kid is 24 and will be a force in the NFL for some time. Hell, he may be the ghost of the great Otto Graham ([Graham]”He is the greatest winner among quarterbacks ever, and that cannot be disputed: seven championships in 10 professional seasons—and he lost in the championship game the other three years.” — Peter King)

Next year Mahomes will be back but so will Jimmy G and Tom Brady appeared in a super bowl commercial confirming that he’ll be back. It will be an exciting season.

But the real show Sunday afternoon was not the Niners or the Chiefs, but some 81 commercials @ $5.6 million per 30 seconds on top of lush production budgets.

I rather hate to be this carping commercial critic, but let’s face it folks, the vast majority of these commercials would only play well in Mrs. Johnson’s first grade class.

They are created by agencies who have clients with seriously deep pockets and no use (or a complete disregard) of surveys or an understanding of the emotional tone of their audience.

I’m not going to review all of the footage that was passed off for commercials on the Super Bowl. It would take much too much time and I would be drained of any sense of positive communication.

But I will touch on two: what I considered the best, and the worst.

Let me start with the worst, first. In doing so, I admit to not having seen every comm single commercial, but I saw a lot. And this one…is representative of many.

A television commercial, or any ad really, should motivate you to want the product or service. That’s what it is supposed to do. Whether $5.6 million or a few hundred dollars the should motivate want.

In this commercial, they are advertising candy.

You should want some. You should drool.

This commercial starts with people talking about some problems in life: Texting too much, spam, government surveillance…and then it switches to footage of lots of people walking down hills into a valley.

There’s a huge hole in the floor of the valley. The people surround the hole and are singing.

A helicopter appears above the crowd and the hole with a huge Snickers bar dangling from a cable. The Snickers bar is dropped into the hole.

The point of the commercial is that there is a lot wrong with the world, the solution to which may be dropping a Snickers Bar in the hole.

To top it off, a couple decides to take a selfie at the edge of the hole. They step out of the crowd, back up closer to the edge of the hole to take the picture, but get too and close fall backwards into the hole.

The commercial closes with Luiz Guzman (you know the short Puerto Rican, character actor) stepping in front of the camera and saying, “The Snicker’s Hole. It’s working.”

Huh?

Give it a watch. What do you think?

So Snickers gets my vote for the worst commercial of the Super Bowl and the biggest waste of money.

The better question is which was the best commercial.

In the one that I thought was the best – and best here is defined as the most persuasive because I personally oppose the product that was being sold, they have scripted a masterpiece.

The commercial was by Verizon for 5G.

You’ve probably heard of 5G to a greater or lesser degree. This is the new wireless protocol that will be carrying your phone traffic (and that of other devices). 5G traffic is much faster than the current 4G that we all use now. There is a huge push by the telecommunications companies to get 5G deployed due to its increased speed, which is going to allow the digital communication to reach many more devices than the exiting protocol.

How much faster?

I’ve read articles that say three times faster and articles that say hundred times faster. I don’t know where it will land, but clearly it’s going to be much faster.

However, many are many opposed to 5G and the telecom industry’s push to deploy it. Over 200 cities in the United States alone have expressed opposition to 5G.

Their opposition stems from the fact that with 5G comes a dramatic increase in electromagnetic energy. This kind of energy is terribly bad for the body. There are a number of studies that show this to be the case but the studies have been brushed off by the FCC that seems to be in an incestuous relationship with the telecom industry on 5G

The problem is that while the 5G communication band is a much higher frequency, it doesn’t travel as far as previous phone signals. It shoots in shorter bursts which means there has to be many more phone towers to relay the increased number of signals from the phones.

With more phones and more signals comes more electromagnetic energy which is tied to a number of chronic diseases not the least of which is cancer.

So there is growing opposition to 5G as people become more and more aware of the hazards the electromagnetic radiation.

Verizon is very clever with the creation of this commercial. They are clearly aware that there is great opposition to 5G. So are government entities that have, we repeat, dismissed the studies that show the tie the connection between 5G and health hazards.

Verizon produced a commercial, which you can watch at the link below here which cleverly pushes a great deal of power and heartfelt good wishes to the firemen, nurses, doctors and other first responders that will get to use 5G.

They make the point that 5G is not what’s important; what’s most important is the dedication, care, and compassion these people have for their fellow man. They and their actions are what is important (which is entirely true) and their dedication and efforts are simply backed up by 5G. The commercial validates these people and only incidentally mentions that it is 5G that enables them to do their jobs.

Check it out.

In the end of the commercial is really more PR that marketing,

I picked this as the best commercial because of all the commercials I watched, this was the most persuasive communication that I saw. It changed my mind. It changed mine from complete opposition to 5G to having a problem, to thinking, there ought to be a way to retain the technology without the damage to human bodies.

I would still oppose its deployment, but would also look for a solution.

Meanwhile, it is abundantly clear to me that Verizon had done their homework before producing this commercial – they had clearly done in-depth market research and fully understood the public’s opposition to the product and produced a commercial that changed minds. And it did so without ever mentioning the enemy line.

Give it a watch let me know what you think.

And if you need to have market research or surveys done for a PR campaign, give us a call. When you know what is in the mind of your prospect, selling ideas is easy to do.

“We took bids on this project, and none of your competitors offered such a short turnaround…. At the same time, your cost was lower than all the competitive bids, again permitting us to move quickly and get more for our budget for this project than we would have afforded from anyone else.” KO Vice President

Best,

Bruce
ontargetresearch.com
818-397-1401