Is Facebook Advertising a Fraud?

A few weeks ago, Facebook launched its Initial Public Offering (IPO). Since then the stock has tanked from $38 a share to a perch in the high $20’s, which is a significant financial haircut for those who paid the IPO price.

Complicating things, General Motors announced the day before the IPO that it was discontinuing its $10 million commitment to Facebook advertising on the grounds that it was not working for them. Some people seem to be linking the poor early performance of Facebook shares with its viability as an advertising medium. I canvassed a number of people at conventional and digital agencies across the country and came up with some interesting findings.

First, the General Motors (GM) issue. Almost immediately after GM’s announcement of their Facebook pullback, the cable business channels had some serious digital players on talking about the decision. They generally said that perhaps the reason things failed for GM was that they were not using Facebook properly. A few of my panel members echoed that sentiment as well and then a Ford spokesman made the rounds saying that Facebook was working just splendidly for them.

I have no way of knowing if GM did not execute properly. A lot of the hoopla may be just because the investment bankers set the IPO price too high. Additionally, problems in Europe, particularly Greece and Spain, plus a miserable jobs report in the U.S. on June 1st have roiled markets and hit the majority of stocks negatively.

When you talk to young people and I speak with hundreds, they almost all use Facebook. It is perfect social medium for them. Many tell me that if a friend mentions a film that they like on their Facebook page, they are far more disposed to go to it. Young professionals in the bigger cities say it helps them screen restaurants and bars. “If a friend says that a particular place is a great spot for brunch, you can bet that I will check it out”, a young New Yorker writes. This is the most powerful form of advertising, word of mouth, and it is free!

Here are some composite comments from a wide variety of people regarding paid Facebook advertising.

“We like to put a promotional app (i.e., sweepstakes, etc.) on a brand Facebook page and use Facebook ads to draw participation and hike “likes.”  What is a like?  Simply put, it is an option on the Facebook web site that allows you to provide feedback on stories that appear in a friend’s or company’s news feed. You can be positive without adding any additional commentary. A lively debate is going on in media circles about how to evaluate the value of “likes”, but clearly a high number is beneficial.

Another media  director says that smaller clients can get the word out about promotions very cost effectively and with some pinpoint targeting in terms of demographics, geographic region, interests and sometimes even if they use a competitive brand.

Several people mentioned that a company Facebook page is a great way to build a database and metrics such as cost per visitor and cost per name acquired can be calculated when they give out coupons or special promotions on the company page.

An unusually thoughtful observer who entered the digital game quite early relative to most of us, wrote that Google Display Network (GDN) outperforms Facebook on all metrics and reaches far more people than Facebook. At the same time, he stresses that you can get more frequency with Facebook as users spend more time with it than Google (it seems that we can never escape Reach & Frequency!).

He goes on to say that “unlike GDN, Facebook does not offer mobile advertising, retargeting, contextual targeting or advertising on partner sites”.  He also stressed that Facebook mobile ads cannot be far away. Most of feel that most likely it will be mobile advertising that will be a key linchpin in global advertising going forward

More than one commented to the effect that Facebook needs to figure out how to get their advertising growth to keep pace with the increase in their user base.

So, is Facebook advertising a rip-off? It would appear not. Just make sure that you are in experienced hands that have the analytic caution to use it wisely and evaluate results objectively. And, remember,  more competition is coming over the next few years from companies that probably do not exist now.

Warren Buffett, the greatest investor of the 20th century, has often said that over time a stock’s price will reflect a company’s performance and prospects. But sometimes, it can take years to get there. Facebook is run by smart people who are likely working furiously on improvements to their advertising business model. Forget about the day-to-day fluctuations in the share price and focus on what they can do for you and your clients.

Finally, keep in mind that we are still trying to determine how different media types work together after one hundred years of trying. Isolating Facebook’s effectiveness is difficult and it should never be bought in a vacuum. An old friend who has reinvented himself as a digital media director puts it beautifully: “No one that we do it for uses Facebook exclusively. It is always a component of a broader mix of digital options.”

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you can reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com

The Rich and The Stinking Rich

A few weeks ago, I had an amusing conversation with someone. She stated that I was rich and I laughed out loud.  Coincidentally, I ran across Timothy Noah’s new book, THE GREAT DIVERGENCE (Bloomsbury Press, 2012) the next day.  Noah is known in liberal circles as writing the “TRB” column in THE NEW REPUBLIC. I expected a left wing rant but instead was pleased to read a measured presentation of the facts of income inequality in this country.

For many years, I have told people in lecture halls and client presentations that Gallup has found that 88-90% of us consider ourselves to be middle class. Most of us accept the premise that if we think that we are middle class, then we are. As marketers, this is a very bad idea as we then inject ourselves into some everyman scenario where we believe that if we like a product, then the general public will as well.

To his credit, Mr. Noah does not buy in to the fuzzy everyman thinking. If  you are earning $109,000 a year, you are in the top 10% in 2012 so you are not middle class demographically no matter how average you feel. Noah breaks up the affluent into five general and amusing categories:

1) Sort of Rich—This is income between $109k and $153k which puts one in the bottom half of  the top 10%.
2) Basically Rich—This is people making between $153k and $368K with $368k being the bottom threshold for the top 1%.
3) Undeniably Rich—those making between $368k and $1.7 million ($1.7 million is the bottom of the top 0.1 percent).
4) Really Rich—this group does well. Annual income is between $1.7 million and $9.1 million ($9.1 mm is the bottom threshold for the top 0.01 percent)
5) Stinking Rich—this is the rarified air of the top 0.01 percent , which consists of $9.1 million or more in annual income. Many are ballplayers, entertainers, or financiers.

A lot of people would take issue with these demarcations. If you have a child at an elite college or two in prep school, you do not feel Sort of Rich or Basically Rich. You may even have a balance on your Visa card. Also, to me, wealth has always been a net worth statistic. Some people are rich but have surprisingly low incomes as their wealth is tied up in real estate, art, or low dividend stocks.

The book goes on to talk about a very discernible pattern in the U.S. today and much of the developed world as well. People on the top are gaining pretty consistently while those in the middle are struggling to keep pace.

Noah’s long term worry is that if this trend of income divergence continues it could undermine our democracy. So far, things have been calm with few examples of civil unrest or even anger among the lower 90% of U.S. citizens. To me, the reason for much of this is that America remains an aspirational society. We may not be in the top 1% or even 10%, but we still dream of getting there.  If things get worse over the next few years, I agree with Noah that a backlash could occur.

The author does offer a few solutions or suggestions. Education is failing in the US and has not kept up with technological demands. Right now, news sources say that we are 25th in global math proficiency, which is a real embarrassment. Our immigration policy is warped as it keeps out doctors, scientists and engineers that we badly need but lets in millions of unskilled workers.

So far, so good! To me, he goes off the reservation when he employs a “soak the rich” approach to raising revenue. Now, let me be clear. I think it is ridiculous that Mitt Romney and Warren Buffett pay a tax rate far lower than I do. Over a certain income threshold, say $1.5 million, a minimum tax of say 25% seems equitable to me.

Noah goes much further. He suggests a 70% tax on portions of the Really Rich and all of the Stinking Rich as he defined them.  According to IRS estimates only about 8,400 households make over $10 million per year. So putting a truly confiscatory tax on them will not raise all that much money when we have a deficit of $1.3 trillion this year. All this approach would do is encourage the wealthy to structure their assets in a way to defer income or limit tax liability. A few might even leave the country.

THE GREAT DIVERGENCE lays out the facts beautifully. It is an easy read and his style is breezy and he even makes demographics fun. As marketers, we need to understand the affluent as the divergence in income shows no signs of slowing down.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com

Urbanization, Globalization, and Media

I have a rather stunning statistic for you. Each and every day around 180,000 people leave the rural countryside across the world and move to a city. Demographers are not exactly sure but sometime in the 2007-2008 window, a majority of the world’s people lived in town and cities for the first time in measured history.  In my lifetime, cities have absorbed close to 70% of global population growth.

Along with our old favorite demographics, plus the increasingly significant globalization, urbanization is the last support in the three-legged stool of megatrends that are remaking the world in the 21st century.

Even a casual look at the data is absolutely mind-boggling. Ghaziabad, India is adding 250,000 new residents each year on its current base of 4.6 million. Have you ever heard of Ghaziabad? While we are playing trivial pursuit, are you familiar with Beihai, China? I have been following its fortunes for several years. It is growing by 10-11% per year. In only seven years, it will double its current census count of 1.3 million making it the fastest growing metropolis in the world. While China and India or Chindia, as some have dubbed it, get all the publicity, don’t forget that across Asia millions in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam stream into their cities as well each year.

All of this action fuels economic growth but one problem stands in its way. That problem is an inadequate infrastructure. As young people across the globe flock to the cities for more opportunity, the strain on natural resources and urban area infrastructure in enormous.  By the middle of this century, there will be an additional 2.8 billion people living in cities.

The problems are huge. But, the opportunities are profound. People who produce steel, cement, copper and oil will have cities lined up to buy their products. The greatest problem may be supplying clean water to these new urbanites. China has a fifth of the world’s population yet only 7% of the world’s freshwater supply. Some engineering firms are going to have to provide some massive desalination plan or other sleight of hand to get them through the next few decades.

With this massive shift from rice paddy to world-class city, the world of media will be affected profoundly as well. Some friends have written to me to say that newspapers in the big Asian and South American cities are set for a spike as new citizens who devour them on mass transit to and from work. To me, that is legacy thinking that is not likely going forward.

Over the last 60 years, a young person starting out in a big city outside of North America would often take this route in media usage: Buy a radio, then get a phone, buy a TV, and then (over the last 10 years), purchase a laptop.

Today, all that has changed. Someone coming from a rural area to Manila might get a cheap radio, but few buy a laptop, a landline phone or cell phone and they delay a TV purchase. What they get as soon as they can is a Smartphone. This allows them to call anyone, get the music they want, have Internet access, and choose from a nice compliment of video options.  Once they upgrade to a decent apartment, maybe cable or satellite TV is added to the mix.

The key takeaway to me is that these new urbanites have skipped a few steps compared to my generation or likely yours. They grew up with very little media in primitive conditions in remote rural areas. For many a Smartphone is their first passport in to the media world of today. While not affluent yet, they are buying personal care products and discretionary purchases like McDonald’s, cigarettes, and Coca-Cola that they never did in their home villages. This is why all players in the new media world have to find out a way to properly monetize mobile. The potential is huge as some 400,000 +new Smartphones are sold globally DAILY.

Localization of online advertising has to explode given the current globalization scenario. Right now, some 20% of the world’s GDP comes from the top 10 metropolitan areas. With the population shifts that we have talked about, imagine how much will come from cities that we currently have never heard of in 20 years. The U.N. says that 80% of the world’s urban population will be in the developing world by 2032.

A shift in economic growth and power is well underway. Accompanying it will be a seismic shift in media usage habits. Get ready, my young friends.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com

Surely, TV is ruined?

In 1776, Adam Smith published his magnificent economic treatise A WEALTH OF NATIONS. It was a defining moment for classical economics and the free market.  A few years later, one of his past students, Sir John Sinclair, reported to Dr. Smith about the success of the colonists in the American Revolution. “Surely”, he wrote, “if we are on at this rate, the nation must be ruined.” Smith answered the letter as follows: “Be assured, my young friend, that there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.”  His meaning was that despite political bungling it takes a lot to bring a nation down.

I think that the same thing can be said about the TV medium. About a dozen years ago, I spoke at a conference and talked about how TiVo was going to change things in TV in a big way. No one was upset as penetration was in the low single digits at that time. I remember saying that DVR’s (Time Shifting Devices such as TiVo) would lead to greater commercial avoidance and that when DVR penetration hit 40%, TV would cease to be the powerful advertising medium that it had been for 50 years.  Even the TV folks in the audience applauded so I repeated my fearless forecast at events over the next few years and never received any push back.

Well. As we write DVR penetration is at 41% of US TV households according to Nielsen and other forecasters claim that it is in the 43-44% range.  And commercial avoidance is rampant. Study after study continues to find that not only are viewers skipping many commercials on playback but also people are multi-tasking so much with laptops and Smartphones that many TV commercials are being missed. And, any honest agency person who really analyzes clients sales will tell you that it takes more rating points, sometimes far more, than it did several years ago to move the sales needle.

Yet, this week, the network upfront market is about to explode in New York as each of the major players gives its new season presentations. While few are expecting the 12% uptick in sales that the networks had last year over the previous year, most reliable sources are betting on a high single digit year over year increase which is very good given a domestic economy with only 2% GDP growth and worries about European banks and that continent’s fragile economy (the upfront marketplace is where major network advertisers place approximately 85-92% of commercial dollars. It happens in a two-week cavalry charge in late spring each year. Old network hands say that they sell for two weeks a year and move inventory around the rest of the time. Inventory not sold in the upfront is sold in the scatter market at higher prices than the upfront and a small allocation goes to opportunistic or last minute buys at often very favorable rates).

While all this is going on, Dish Network is introducing Auto Hop, a service that will allow subscribers to automatically skip commercials on many if not most primetime programs.  Not a death blow, for sure, but it is clearly another way that network TV commercials lose some more of their effectiveness.

So, what is going on? To me, it remains the same as it has been for the past several years. Increasingly, major advertisers are using more social media and experimenting with mobile. But, national network TV is their security blanket. Package goods have crossed the Rubicon and now spend more on promotion that conventional advertising. In many categories, however, network TV and increasingly national cable TV remain the backbone of their media efforts.  And, the networks have done a great job of mining new categories for TV spending.

If you had asked most media analysts five years ago how long the network upfront could last, many would have said 3-5 years. Now, it looks as if it could be 5-7 more years regardless of the extent of commercial avoidance.

Measurement metrics for all new media are improving and some very rapidly. That has to raise the confidence level of marketers over the next few years in reallocating their media dollars.

So, is TV ruined as the dominant advertising medium? Long term, as commercial avoidance grows, it has to be but to paraphrase the great Adam Smith, “there is a lot of ruin in the TV medium”. Stay tuned, my friends. I will.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com

Mobile Media Set For Takeoff

This past week Apple reported a remarkable earnings story that had the whole financial world buzzing. For the 1st quarter, 2012, they had earnings of $11.6 billion vs. $6.0 billion for the same quarter a year ago. Most analysts had projected earnings to be in the $10 billion range.  In the quarter they sold 4 million macs, and 11.8 million Tablets. Currently, they are selling 400,000 I phones a day across the world. In China, sales have quintupled in the last year.

Analysts are falling all over themselves to talk about the $100 billion cash stash that Apple has. With that they could swallow the entire upcoming IPO (Initial Public Offering) from Facebook or buy all of McDonald’s. It is staggering when you consider it. Will Apple be the first company to have a capitalization of a trillion dollars?

I consider all of the stock market buzz to be mostly noise.  This Apple news signals to me a significant breakthrough in the media world. This year, mobile media is now 5% of online billing and about 1% of the total domestic advertising handle. But, look closely, my friends. Big players are starting to pile in. With Smartphones and Tablets exploding the big guys now see scalable platforms in mobile via display, search, video and in-app. Mobile spending should be up 50% this year.

The future looks bright beyond belief. I have seen several projections but International Data Corporation’s appears to be the most widely quoted with tablet shipments projected to be up over 50% this year to over 100 million and top 195 million units in 2016. Smartphones are set to reach 660 million units this year and an amazing 1.1 billion by the end of 2015. How is that possible? There are 7 billion people on earth so 15% will get a Smartphone in 2015? Actually, it is within reach as many who have a Smartphone get a new model every two years and couple that with organic category growth and a billion plus units three and a half years from now is definitely within reach. (By the way, what is a Smartphone? There is no formal definition but I use the one from PC Magazine that describes it as “a cellular phone with built in applications and internet access)

Can anything stop this growth?  Well, remember Research in Motion and the Blackberry? Now, they are fighting for survival. Or the problems Motorola had when they dominated flip-phones but did move fast enough to web-enabled handsets. The issue is that the players may be different 5 years from now but people want the world in the palm of their hands. Mobile media will capitalize on that desire.

As has been true of every emerging medium, there will be hiccups as you experiment with its possibilities. Don’t let the little bumps in the road deter you—the potential is tremendous and you do not wish to be left behind.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com

Commercial Avoidance Revisited and The Invisible Gorilla

In January 2009, when I was beginning this blog, an early post was entitled “The Elephant In All Our Offices.” The basic premise was that commercial avoidance was growing steadily and we all had to face up to it.

When I wrote that post DVR (time shifting devices) penetration was at about 28% of US TV households. Recently, Nielsen projected that DVR penetration is now at 41% and other sources peg it at 43-44% of the total household frame.

So, it would seem to be a good time to update the concept of commercial avoidance. A lot has happened in 39 months.

The big issue is the explosive growth of other video options. Netflix and Hulu have both grown nicely and You Tube usage is up as well.  You can visit sites of ESPN, CNBC, CNN and dozens of other channels and see streaming video of much of their programming with minimal commercial interruption.  Every hour that you spend with them means less exposure to traditional advertising messages. And, with DVR penetration up 46-50% in the last three years, it is clear that people are seeing fewer and fewer commercials.

A new study from Boston College has a few people rattled but not many wish to discuss it. In brief, they state that the majority of viewers are multi-tasking when they watch TV. They toggle back and forth between the TV and another device or two but are not really giving either undivided attention.  This is particularly true of young adults. So, they may be sending a text message, watching video on their I-phone or surfing the web during a two minute commercial break. They are underexposed to the advertising often as much as those who are zipping through the commercials in a recorded program.

As I have done for years, I continue to monitor the effectiveness of media weights. There appears to be a direct correlation between DVR penetration and TV advertising effectiveness. Seven years ago, with a tried and true promotion, 1100 rating points in a specific daypart configuration would be sure to move the sales needle for a specific product.  Now, that same promotion might need 1450 points to generate the same sales spike. Some people dismiss these findings by saying that the economy is still weak so people are not buying. That could be part of the reason but a big culprit has to be that many people are simply not seeing the message as in the past. People have been channel hopping for over 50 years since the remote came in to vogue. Now, it is rampant across most age groups. If you go to Hulu.com you see a lighter commercial load. If you go to Netflix, you can view commercial free.

And, what of top rated shows in the current environment?  Take a leading show such as ABC’s Modern Family. Besides being a Nielsen leader almost every week a new episode airs, it is also a leader in programs that are taped and viewed later. If you want to be in that program in either network or spot TV, the premium on a cost per rating point basis can be very large compared to other primetime fare. But, if 12-16% of the viewing is done days later, how many of people playing it back are seeing your spot? Is the premium still worth it? When I bring this up, people shrug or get silent. Some programs have to be getting somewhat overpriced in this scenario.

The whole issue of commercial avoidance strikes me as not getting nearly enough attention these days. A few panel members were candid with me. Some anonymous comments were: “I am two years from retirement. Why should I bring this up with my clients? It is a lose-lose for all of us. Where would I put the money? We can’t shift much more to social media now.  I still can’t prove that it works well. TV is a security blanket for many of our clients. Off the record, I think that you are correct about the gravity of this issue, but I am not going to stir the pot.”

Another said, “We are very busy and understaffed right now. I am not about to address your theoretical issue with my management or clients.”

I understand but I do not think that the issue is theoretical. Rather it is a cancer that is growing each day.

Why are people not facing up to commercial avoidance? There are many reasons but I believe one of the biggest is that my panel member is right when she says that people are busy. When people are busy they focus and focus hard on the issue that is directly in front of them. If you do that, you sometimes miss some big things.

A few years ago, Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons published a book called THE INVISIBLE GORILLA. It is a fascinating look about how intense focusing can make people blind to the obvious. They actually made a brief film that made the point brilliantly. The movie short had two teams passing basketballs back and forth. One team had white shirts on while the other wore black. Viewers were asked to count the number of passes by the white shirted players but to ignore the black. Doing the task was completely absorbing. After a few minutes, a lady wearing a gorilla suit appeared, crossed the basketball court, beat her chest like a good gorilla, and then exited.  Thousand of people have seen the video but usually more than half do not notice the “gorilla”. The task of counting the passes and ignoring the black shirted players absorbs all of the attention and blinds them to the intrusive stimulus. The Nobel Prize winning Behavioral Economist Daniel Kahneman writes that the gorilla study illustrates that “we can be blind to the obvious and we are also blind to our blindness”.

The gorilla study to me is a very nice analogy for what is happening with commercial avoidance. The gorilla is crossing your screen daily and getting bigger and staying longer. But, media and marketing professionals are often so intent on the task in front of them that they are simply not seeing it. And, some, as Kahneman puts it, are actually “blind to our blindness.”

Television’s effectiveness as an advertising medium will not die overnight. But it is losing ground each month and too many are not preparing for the future by hedging their bets and testing alternatives. The gorilla is now 800 pounds. In three more years, he well may be a 1200-pound specimen. Regardless of how busy you are—admit to the problem and start looking at new platforms NOW.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com

The Real American Consumer

A little over 20 years ago I was called in to a meeting. Agency staffers were reviewing work for an upcoming new business presentation. I was asked my opinion and said, “Two of the executions seem way too upscale for the target demographic.” The writer, took offense, and asked me to define the target. Briefly, I outlined what market and media research indicated. “Some 70% of the people who would buy this product live in households making less than $50,000 per year”. The young writer laughed in my face and said, “no one could live on that.” Trying to maintain my composure I responded that most people do. He dragged me in to see his boss who told me that something was wrong with my figures. I responded that they were not my figures and ticked off top line income estimates from the U.S. Census, Department of Labor, Merrill Lynch, Mediamark Research, Inc. and Simmons. The upscale executions were kept in the presentation and we did not get the business. I talked briefly at the pitch but my income data were not part of the slide show.

After this event, I turned my annoyance into action. I put together a presentation that I dubbed “The Real American Consumer” that tried to impress upon clients and prospects that everyone in the U.S (and now the world) does not live as all of us do. I update it every year and it holds up well.

The presentation is built on the premise that people who work in marketing, advertising, broadcasting, cable, and publishing tend to lead comfortable lives. As we get older, unless we have very bad habits or get married and divorced too often, we tend to become affluent and, a few, wealthy. Yet, as we grow in wealth, we get more detached from the people who have bought our products and gave us our pleasant lifestyles.

Each year, the Gallup organization does a survey of American opinion. And, the results almost always indicate that some 89% of Americans view themselves as middle class. That is fine but for a marketer it can be a deadly assumption. If senior executives see themselves as “everyman”, then some bad decisions are often made. Once a client rejected a creative campaign because he said that his golf buddies at the club did not like the storyboards that he presented. Another client, a fast food maven worth millions with many stores owned outright, told me that my media buy was no good because he was “not seeing the commercials.” I told him that was good as he was not the target. His response was that he was just a regular guy and he should see his spots. He did admit that sales were up nicely but felt something was wrong.

Well. The moral here is not to lose contact with your target audience and respect them as well. According to the latest government data, the median household income in the US is $51,914. Remember what a median is? Statistically, it is the 50th percentile so approximately half of America earns below that benchmark and the other half above it.

Here are some other quick facts that show how far you may be from the average American:

22% of Americans have a passport. Well, then 78% do not. I bet virtually all of you and your friends have a valid passport.

30% of Americans have no credit card

18% are completely unbanked

17% are functionally illiterate

8% live in mobile homes. In some counties, the figure is 26%

3% use a library each year even though the library has free books and movies

20% at the bottom have an effective net worth of zero. The next 20% are worth about $15,000


Can you, as a marketer, relate to all this? If you want to be effective as a marketer, you do not have to live as your customers do, but you need to know a lot about them.

Sam Walton was the most successful retailer of the 20th century. Shortly before his death and suffering from bone cancer, Mr. Sam, as he liked to be called by associates, would still fly in for every new Wal-Mart store opening. When he met with the manager just prior to the ribbon cutting, it was not uncommon for him to observe that he had visited the grocery store down the street and that Wal-Mart was charging 2 cents more for a half gallon of milk. The smile would disappear as he told the manager to get the price below the competition. Walton, by then a billionaire, was said to live on $200 a day, wear clothes sold at Wal-Mart and spent his free time tooling around Bentonville, Arkansas in an aging pickup truck. How much of that is truth or folklore is irrelevant. What he did do was constantly talk to and LISTEN to his customers. He may have been the wealthiest man on earth for a few months in the late 1980’s but he never forgot who put him there.


Several years ago, my CEO told all of us to visit one of our client’s retail locations every couple of weeks at a minimum. Few did it but I was a good soldier and always complied. Once, I entered the fast food restaurant on a Sunday, bought a cup of coffee, and sat in the back of the dining area and watched and listened. I was reading a copy of the New York Times Book Review but kept the cover page concealed. At one point, I saw a lady arrive with three children. As they were eating she raised her voice to one of the children and said, “Finish your sandwich. If you don’t, next month we are going to McDonald’s.” What a wake-up call that was for me. This was a special and expensive treat in her eyes. The next day I told a few colleagues about it. Most got the point, one’s eyes filled up, but one young fellow said, “Who cares about those people.”

Tonight when many of you open a nice bottle of cabernet or pour yourself a single malt scotch, remember who is giving you that pleasant lifestyle. They buy fast food, beer, Coke and Pepsi, cigarettes, pickup trucks, soap, razor blades, and Kraft macaroni and cheese while you grill the swordfish. Don’t lose touch with the Real American Consumer. They deserve your respect and understanding.

If you would like to contact Don Cole directly, you may reach him at doncolemedia@gmail.com