Hello from Vancouver

Here are views from my hotel room in the Hyatt downtown

I'm so happy to be here. Not only is SPR my favorite academic conference, but it is also a place to see former students and friends. In fact, last night at 1am local time, I was checking into the hotel. I was the ONLY person in the lobby aside from employees. But, then when I turned around and headed for the elevator, there was IU-Telecomm. PhD Mija Shin (although she did not look as blurry as she did in this picture)! She had just arrived, having driven from relatively nearby Washington State University in Pullman.

It was great to see her. I only wish that it hadn't been 4am to my body's clock. Otherwise I would have taken time to catch up with her.

Getting Ready for SPR

Sorry to be so quiet again.
I've been busy preparing for a visit to Vancouver, BC.

It's time for my favorite academic conference--Society of Psychophysiological Research.

I'm involved in 4 poster presentations.
Plus, because Vancouver is so close to my home state of Washington, my dad and stepmom are actually going to come up and visit me!

Pretty fun time. Only downside is being away from family for so long...luckily I'll be back in time for Halloween!

Deathwatch

Here's a website that might interest some...
A chance for you to benefit from the misfortunes of some poor Prime-Time TV producers:

Bravo Network used to have a wonderful series on called Brilliant But Cancelled.

Guess what, it got cancelled....

But, it moved to the online world and now has a contest going on where you can win a video ipod if you correctly guess which of the new network TV series get cancelled.

Never being one with my hand on the pulse of what's happening in Hollywood, I just went with the odds-on favorite.

Click here for Brilliant but Cancelled's Deathwatch.

And, thanks to a student from my T344 class for bringing this to my attention.

Julia Fox's 15 minutes expands

Julia Fox continues to get fantastic coverage on her content analysis comparing The Daily Show with network broadcast news. Thanks to one of her co-authors Volkan Sahin for these frame grabs from Julia's coverage last night on MSNBC's Scarborough Country.




Picture 2

Julia Fox finds 'The Daily Show' Just Like Network News--Only Funnier

Congratulations to my colleague Julia Fox who recently had a piece accepted for publication in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media entitled "No Joke: A Comparison of Substance in The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Broadcast Network Television Coverage of the 2004 Presidential Election Campaign."

This study, a content analysis of nightlynewscasts from randomly selected days in July, August, and September of 2004--along with episodes of the comedy show "The Daily Show" and found that the comedy central show--hosted by John Stewart--was just as substanitive on the issues!

I'll let Julie discuss more of the details of the study...you can email her.

But, you may have trouble getting a response quickly...as the press has been innundating her with requests for about a week now.

Check out what a quick scan of the search terms "Julia Fox and The Daily Show" resulted on blogs alone:

Truthdig

TMZ.com

TV Squad

Poynter Online

Pensito Review

1010 WINS (CBS radio O&O in New York City)

Congrats, Julia!

Just another sign that great work is being done at IU Dept. of Telecommunications.

Bad Timing--Part 2

A little more than a year ago, in the very recent days following Hurricant Katrina, I posted a blog discussing the terrible timing of a New Orleans-based rice company's advertising promotion.

Well, this is more an example of bad editing than bad timing, I suppose, but consider the unwanted publicity (not to mention brand image) that a British supermarket chain got by paying $$ for this ad printed in The Independentnewspaper right opposite a story of the Amish shooting tragedy in this county.

This story comes from the blogger FishNChimps by way of Adrants.

opinion fatigue--response rates lower than 10%!!

Recently, the Potter household has been inundated with phone calls from opinion pollsters. Okay, innundated is not accurate...we may have had three in the past week. But, I know with election season just around the corner the matter will only get worse. Usually I am sympathetic to the plight of the telephone researcher...after all, research is my business and I recognize that survey research can tell us quite a bit about opinions & attitudes. Plus, when it comes to marketing research, I believe that at the heart of it all is a desire to make products/services that more closely match the needs and wants of consumers. So, I cooperate and answer their questions.

But...when the calls keep coming, I stop being all that sympathetic.

Apparently, I'm not alone, according to a group of top ad executives who got together to discuss what they called 'opinion fatigue', according to an online article by Advertising Age.


Apparently, people's lack of willingness to participate in surveys is resulting in response rates (i.e., the percentage of people who DO take part) to drop below 10% in many cases! And, oftentimes those people are 'professional respondents' who have a make a hobby (career?) out of searching for incentive prizes/payments to participate in opinion research.

With that being the case, makes you wonder the validity of the opinions marketers (and politicians?) are making their decisions on. As one consultant said in the AA article, "We're perpetuating a fraud."

Oh, and to see what IU Ph.D. Sam Bradley (now on the advertising faculty at Texas Tech) has to say about the Ad Age article, check out his blog.

http://adage.com/article?article_id=112237

RAEL finds Radio Ads Make a Personal Connection

I'm hoping that I can be better at making posts...as my last one mentioned, I am up to my eyeballs with fun/interesting/time-consuming stuff to do. But, I know how disappointed I am when the blogs I like to peak in on regularly don't have new updates...so, I'll try harder.

Let's start the week with a summary of a recent Radio Advertising Effectiveness Lab study summarized by Radio and Records here.

This study showed that radio listeners feel that radio listeners develop an emotional connection with the ads that stations play...more of an emotional connection than with Internet advertising. This is not a surprising finding, of course, due to the greater level of cognitive effort required to process audio ads than visual ads. Listening is something that we must "do" to a much greater extent than looking.

The trouble becomes how a radio producer can get a listener's attention to the radio message in the first place...when the radio is playing in the background while the listener is driving or making dinner, or working ore whatever....

My own work suggests that the use of structural features such as changing speakers, sound effects, music, production effects, can be used to "force" listeners to pay attention for a brief (like for only a couple of seconds)...after that, it is the content which must drive the day. An interesting finding from the RAEL study is that a feeling of LOCALISM can add to the emotional connection. What's happening in your community? Is it the stuff that everyone is talking about? Then your commercials should be, too.