Our Time. Our Money.

Starbucks surprised Wall Street recently with better than expected quarterly earnings. One of the primary reasons for the uplifting results? The halo effect Starbucks received from the massive ad assault for McDonald’s McCafe brand.

McDonald’s advertising spend increased Starbucks’ sales. OK. A quote from Starbuck’s CEO Howard Schultz, found in this article in AdAge, follows at the end of this post.

This has to be another example of the inefficiency in the current value exchange in the advertising economy. Despite McDonald’s spending $100 million to buy your and my time and attention, we started going to Starbucks more often. We went to McDonald’s for coffee too, so the ads worked, but couldn’t it be better? Couldn’t McDonald’s get more value out of their ads while reduce the value the ads create for their huge competitor?

The ad sales reps at USA Today, NBC, Facebook, et al…the people who got paid a good amount of money for selling $100 million worth of our time and attention to McDonald’s…do you think they remember the ads are from Mickey D’s? Or do they go home to their spouse and say, “I landed some coffee advertiser today…forget their name”.

If the money flowed directly to consumers, maybe we would remember, and be more loyal to, who delivered the message. And the money.

Oh…and Mr. Schultz’ quote on the subject:

“As you know, extraordinary advertising dollars have been spent by fast-food companies trying to attract coffee consumers during this quarter,” Mr. Schultz said. “Many commentators and industry watchers have been concerned that this marketing spend would have a negative adverse impact on Starbucks.” But on the contrary, he said, the “various marketing campaigns,” including Starbucks’ own first branding campaign, have “created unprecedented awareness for the coffee category overall and has actually had a positive result on Starbucks’ business.”

Those who have been checking the blog, looking for an update….my apologies. I have been putting all my energy this summer into getting the project off the ground that will tackle the very problem I discuss here. I’m getting very close to announcing my plans and my approach that will give each of us a “seat at the table” and a slice of the ad revenue marketers spend reaching us every day.

But these are challenging economic times, and I’m trying to launch this plan without raising any money. So it’s taking a little longer, with a few extra speed bumps along the way. Disappointing, sure, but when you are trying to shatter a status quo, and do it in a non-traditional way, sometimes surprises pop up and that’s where I am. It’s an exciting challenge to do something differently….it requires thick skin and patience and I’m trying my best to develop both.

I am as certain as ever that consumers can and will be properly compensated for the critical job we play sharing our time and attention with marketers. It’s just taking a few months longer to get this off the ground than I had hoped. But it will make it all the sweeter once I’m up and running.

I hope you’ll stay tuned. There WILL be news soon. In the meantime, I will update this blog as often as I am able to.

There’s not a lot of post activity on this blog yet (an understatement) so I was happy to read a new comment in this thread. Especially a comment from an intrigued reader.

I followed Clint’s link to his blog, Why We Worry and read his interesting perspective and solid contrarianism! In particular, Clint blogged about the predicted collapse of the Internet advertising economy by Wharton Professor Eric Clemons that I recently blogged about. Of course I posted a few comments on his as well

If you like reading my blog, you’ll likely like this one too…questions the status quo on a range of topics.