ColemanMedia Report

Junior Media Planner Eddie Cinch received a Holiday Card on the morning of December 17th that contained an unsolicited media proposal stuffed inside the American Stationary Season’s Greetings card, according to sources at the Los Angeles office of Leo Burnett.  The card, sent by Lee Gafferty of Knowshame Media, contained a 17-page printed presentation and  a prepared Insertion Order, along with a note from Gafferty suggesting that a “Happy and Prosperous New Year is only a signature away.”  ”You’ve got to be f-ing kidding me,” said Cinch.  ”I’ve maybe talked to this guy once on the phone, so you can imagine that I was surprised to receive a rather thick envelope from him.  I thought ‘oh, how nice of him to send me a Starbucks card,’ but no, it’s nothing but a shameless ploy to get on a media plan that’s already finalized.  These people never cease to amaze.”  According to Cinch, Gafferty followed up three times to make sure Cinch received the card.

A complaint lodged by Western Regional VP of Sales Vince Chillini Monday afternoon accused junior media planner Judy Wittenmeier of comparing “apples to oranges” when justifying her selection of rival behavioral ad network SpyBot over CookieCutter Networks, according witnesses at the scene.  ”You can’t possibly make a comparison between SpyBot and CookieCutter,” Chillini said in an email to Wittenmeier.  ”CookieCutter uses a proprietary formula of complex algorithms and automatic back-end optimization that’s so advanced, I don’t even know how it works.  And as far as I can tell, neither does our ad operations team.  But it’s clearly outlined on slide 26 of my PowerPoint, so it has to be true.”  Wittenmeier wasn’t available for comment, but a planner on Wittenmeier’s team, who asked to remain anonymous said, “He can’t be serious, right?”

After recording a record 622 million sales calls and emails to ad agencies and marketing departments in the first 12 days of the month, the Internet Advertising Bureau officially declared October National Ad Sales Month.   The industry organization, which monitors online marketing and sales activity, awarded the label to October due to a 4,727% increase in sales calls and emails from the prior month.  ”The numbers are out of this world,” said Jerry Van Winklesmith, a researcher with the IAB.  ”A property crime is committed approximately every 3 seconds in the United States.  In those 3 seconds, ad agencies across the country were hit with 722.3 sales calls and emails asking about Q4 plans.  So, like we always do in this industry, we put a positive spin on a ridiculous situation, slap a label on it, and send two weeks worth of emails around that theme.”  The IAB plans to celebrate the occasion by hosting a two-day conference on how to manage sales calls.

Night Custodian Lauro Castaneda of the Richards Group scheduled a meeting Tuesday afternoon with ExactoClick Director of Southwest Sales Thomas Knowschaim after Knowschaim’s repeated attempts to meet with Richards Group media team members failed to bear fruit.  According to witnesses at the scene, Knowschaim admits that Castaneda isn’t the ideal audience for his pitch, but insists that he just needs to “get in front of someone, anyone at the agency.”  ”Look,” Knowschaim said, “all I need is 20 minutes of your time, and you’ll be so blown away at how perfect my proposal is for your client that you’ll want to sign right then and there.”  Castaneda, who has limited media buying experience, reportedly took the meeting as a courtesy.  ”I really don’t know what he’s talking about,” said Castaneda.  ”But he promised to bring in cupcakes, and I usually get kind of hungry in the afternoon, so I figure it’s a win-win.”

Director of Southwest Sales Simon Nash knows that senior media planner Dara Schlesinger is on vacation, but wants to check in to see if there is anything that he might be able to provide for her in the mean time, according to three voice messages left in Schlesinger’s voice mail inbox late last week.  According to the messages, Nash already spoke with the receptionist, and knows that Schlesinger will be out until next week, but thought he would check in just in case, and apologizes for “adding to your backlog.”  Schlesinger, who returned to the office Monday morning to over 1,300 emails and 26 voice messages, found three voice messages and 16 emails from Nash sent during her two-week vacation.  ”This is getting ridiculous,” said Schlesinger.  ”If he knew I was on vacation until the 28th, what made him think that leaving a second or third message would do anything other than annoy the hell out of me?”

Director of Sales Chase Lively read an article about the launch of junior media planner Julia Postlethwaite’s latest online campaign early Tuesday, and is certain that his ad network, AdNauseum, can provide Postlethwaite’s client with millions of “highly-targeted, highly engaged eyeballs” that will “definitely help her campaign beat its KPI’s.”  According to witnesses at the scene, Lively became the 25th sales representative to contact Postlethwaite since the article broke, at least 14 days into a 21-day campaign.  ”Why do people feel compelled to contact me about a campaign that already launched?” said an exasperated Postlethwaite. “I mean, the campaign launched two weeks ago.  What makes them think there’s still an opportunity!?”  Lively reportedly added that he would be happy send a proposal for any “incremental dollars” and would “prove to [Postlethwaite] just how effective his network is” if she could “just find some testing budget or cancel one of your current placements.”

The Center for the Misrepresentation and Distortion of Statistics reported today that the one millionth web site or online publisher claiming to be “Number 1″ for some specific audience or media segment launched in the Los Angeles suburb of Whittier to great fanfare early Monday.  According to the CMDS, Ridiculclick.com is already marketing itself as “the Number 1 site claiming to be Number 1,” despite existing in a live environment for less than 72 hours.  ”The claim seems kind of ridiculous to me,” said CMDS President Ronald P. Calliguia.  ”But since they have a sales PowerPoint claiming it, the CMDS has no choice but to blindly ratify their claim.”  The owners of SocialEZE.com, a site claiming to be the “#1 post-tweet mid-roll video distribution platform that integrates across all social networks” missed the one millionth “Number 1″ site status by approximately 17 seconds.  SocialEZE.com’s claims are still being investigated by the CMDS.

The Center for Disease Control reported late Tuesday that the number of cases of ad rep overdose has skyrocketed this month, putting health and government officials on high alert and preparing for a potential pandemic in the online advertising industry.  According to the CDC, emergency room visits for media planners shot up 225% over July and 719% over August 2008.  ”This is an alarming trend nationwide,” said LA-USC County Hospital spokesperson Hal Hogenwinkle.  ”But locally it’s reached epidemic status.  We’ve seen media planners and buyers being admitted who have been exposed to nearly fatal levels of sales calls and emails.  Many of them can barely speak, save to scream ‘for the love of God, make it stop!’”  Officials with the CDC could not confirm the cause for the epidemic, but pointed to a 600,000% increase in sales calls and emails over the last three weeks as the probable culprit.

According to several witnesses at the scene, western regional sales director Derek Noklass began a media capabilities PowerPoint presentation during the DrinkLA Summer Mixer event Wednesday evening, shortly after purchasing a round of drinks for three members of the Hyundai marketing team.  The 52-slide presentation was reportedly given standing up, after handing two vodka sodas and one Amstel Light to the three members of the team at approximately 8:30 p.m., nearly two hours into the industry networking event.  ”We were like, what the hell is he doing?” said Jill Blakesly, a media buyer on the Hyundai team.  ”He asks us if we want refills on our drinks, and we’re like ‘sure, why not?’  Then he comes back 5 minutes later with drinks and a laptop, and starts going to town on his retargeting capabilities.  I mean, really?  It would have almost been less inappropriate to accidentally touch my boob or something.  Almost.”

Director of West Coast Sales Joey O’Brien left the 56th follow-up to his introductory email Tuesday morning to the voice mail inbox of Senior Media Planner Chet Petersen, according to sources at the San Francisco office of Publicease North America.  According to Petersen, the follow-up calls and emails began approximately 37 seconds after Petersen sent a cursory e-mail response thanking O’Brien for his interest in his clients’ media strategies, and have continued at a rate of approximately 3 per hour since then.  “This is ridiculous, man,” said Petersen.  ”I answered his email as a courtesy, now I can’t get rid of the guy.  I mean he started out by asking if I had time to meet tomorrow, and now he’s accusing me of doing a disservice to my clients by ignoring him.  Relax, man, I’ll get back to you as soon as I deal with the 600 other sales reps that called me yesterday.”