In the battle over your good health, New York City has already decided you're a loser. You need to be saved from yourself. You aren't smart enough to — or willing to — listen to common-sense things like statistics. But maybe if shown some amputated limbs, a few cups of lard and shocking physical deformities, you'll take a moment to think about what you're doing to your body!

Yeah.

Scare campaigns have long been the choice of municipal mothering, but do they actually do anything? I was six years old when I first saw the famous “this is your brain on drugs” metaphoric fried-egg PSA, the skillet that spawned a thousand other PSA-based attacks in the War on Drugs.

We won that one … right?

The Bloomberg administration is currently defending a new line of health-related scare ads, which feature obese people (one missing a leg) and highlight the fact that portion sizes have increased. Stop cleaning your plates, people!

It seems scare campaigns are all the rage these days, especially here in the Big Apple (where no one, apparently, eats apples). The city got some flack for ads that launched last year featuring folks who had lost limbs, digits or the ability to speak from smoking, and this summer faced similar controversy for a campaign — called “Pouring on the Pounds” — which focused on the deadly effects of sugar and featured delightful lard-based imagery.

But what's the point of causing a fuss when there's no value to the shock value? Many have suggested that these ads don't bring results, and I wholeheartedly agree. People aren't quitting smoking en masse; the McDonald's on Sixth Avenue still does a brisk lunchtime business, as I can attest when I pass it each day; and drugs still seem to be pretty popular in general.

One would think that if years of negative PSAs haven't cured us of our ills, the government's strategy would change, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Attempts to frighten us through the years include the “Faces of Meth” campaign and the more recent Montana Meth effort. Both are genuinely shocking, and yet methamphetamine abuse is somehow still a major national problem. A campaign that my colleague Allison Schiff wrote about, which compared co-sleeping with an infant to putting a baby to bed with a butcher knife, was utterly ridiculous. Then there was that recent anti-obesity campaign featuring depressed fat children, which I deemed effective in a recent blog in the sense that the controversy surrounding it earned the campaign some buzz. But will it eliminate childhood obesity? Probably not. On the other side of the weight issue is this campaign against anorexia. The most compelling thing about this particular scare ad is that the model actually ended up dying from the disease, but again, there are young women intentionally starving themselves at this very moment regardless.

I guess we're hopeless. We're too fat and we're too skinny, we eat too much, what we eat is bad for us, we ingest poisons, we like cheese.

I couldn't believe it when I heard about the billboards in Albany showing “your abs on cheese” and “your thighs on cheese.” Trust me, you'll be prying gruyere from my fat-fingered, cold, dead hands. Seriously, though, if we declare a war against cheese, I'm moving to France.   

I won't lie to you and say that I'm not desensitized to graphic imagery. I'm a journalist, and we're a decidedly morbid and shady bunch. I was actually smoking a cigarette earlier this week and a lung cancer PSA came on the TV. Did I put out my cigarette, toss the pack and start a new smoke-free life? No. I've also seen all the “Truth” ads. But I'm not alone — when putting graphic ads on cigarette packs was being debated last November, I went around and talked to some smokers, who overwhelmingly agreed that they would continue buying their cancer sticks, even if packaged in photos of diseased lungs and rotting teeth. They were more concerned about another price increase.

Aside from the cigarettes, I tend to take pretty decent care of myself. I go to the gym, get plenty of fresh air, have hobbies, try to keep my stress levels manageable, eat a fairly balanced diet and forgo both sugary sodas and fried food (for the most part). But it wasn't the PSAs that gave me these habits — I'm pretty sure it's a combination of my upbringing, common sense and my own personal desire to be attractive and live past 40. 

Though I believe them to be ineffective, I don't mind the ads. Keep ‘em coming. I'm curious to see other depictions of the dangers of modern life. Just please tell Sarah MacLachlan to stop with the animal cruelty ads. I'll quit smoking if she'll just stop singing with sad-faced puppies. Deal?

Personally, the first thing I do when I get into a New York City yellow cab is turn off or press the mute button on that “smart” advertising that automatically pops up on the little interactive touch screen facing the back seat. If I wanted to be blitzed by Al Roker clips I would … wait, who wants that?

In any case, Glamour magazine is rolling out a test scenario in the lead-up to Fashion Week, offering fares the chance to buy beauty products from the backseat, according to The Wall Street Journal. Once they download the necessary app, they'll be able to casually wave their smart devices in front of the screen to make luxury purchases to be delivered to a physical address later.

The five-day experiment will start this Friday. Fifty cabs will be outfitted with the technology and deployed around the Meatpacking District and Lincoln Center. Willing participants who are lucky enough to hail one of the specially kitted-out cabs will ride for free.

Depending on how into shopping you are, I guess you could call it a true joy ride.

The Journal said that the Glamour people are trying to recreate the virtual stores Tesco created in the Seoul subway system, where South Koreans (they, unlike NYC, have underground WiFi) could shop for groceries with their smartphones by scanning QR codes.

I know being able to shop on-the-go is just a logical step when it comes to mobile technology and any brand that doesn't take advantage of that will probably end up behind-the-times (etcetera, etcetera), but there's very little about the experience of being in a taxi cab that is conducive, at least in my mind, to shopping. You're bumping along at high-speed (until you stop short at a red light), you might be late and if you're like me you're keeping your eye on the meter to make sure you have enough on you to cover the ride.

Maybe it might make sense for longer taxi rides, like to the airport, for example — but mostly I feel like it's just another assault on my attention. Does there always have to be a screen in my eye-line that's selling me something?

Side point: I can't even imagine how annoying it must be for the cabbies themselves, having to listen to the same content pumped out over and over again just behind them. Kind of like when my poor college roommate Suzie worked part-time in a Hallmark at the Natick Mall in Massachusetts during the winter holiday season and the store management played Clay Aiken's Christmas album on a loop. She almost lost her mind.

Luckily for the drivers of the new 18,000 livery cabs proposed to hit NYC's taxi fleet, The New York Times reported they will have the choice to opt-in or out of including those little glowing screens in their hacks.

Digital agencies are coming along fairly well when it comes to mobile marketing strategy and execution — so says Melissa Parrish, senior analyst at Forrester Research and author of a recent report independently ranking the nine U.S. digital agencies “that matter most and how they stack up.”

Parrish said there are two main takeaways from the report: One, that all of the agencies surveyed appear to understand the need for integration — “mobile marketing should not exist in a silo,” she said — and two, that there is little differentiation between the agencies when it comes to mobile marketing, an indication that the channel is clearly growing in importance.

And agencies say they're going to put their money where their collective mouths are. In response to mobile growth, Parrish found that almost half of the interactive marketers featured in the survey are planning to increase their mobile marketing budgets.

But are they really ready? Parrish told me she thinks the agencies surveyed are, for the most part, prepared to deliver on the mobile imperative, though some are still in the experimentation phase.

“What I found really interesting is that while 50% of marketers said they plan to increase their budgets, the vast majority were starting with budgets that were under half a million dollars, which isn't very much when you realize we're talking about huge enterprises and marketers who have millions to spend,” she said.

The nine digital agencies featured in the Wave have already moved beyond the experimentation and are “ready to put real investment against mobile,” said Parrish, who noted that this is one of the reasons these agencies ended up making the final cut. Also important to Parrish, and what made the leaders, well, the leaders, is whether the agencies had clear visions for their future with mobile and whether they could prove that their claims about what they could deliver to clients matched up with reality.

So, how did the agencies rank?

Leaders

• SapientNitro received the highest client scores across all criteria and maintains a “clear and forward-looking vision for mobile.”
• AKQA's innovative strategies make it a good choice for progressive brands, but it could do more to prove its chops for the less adventurous set.
• Ogilvy has a solid vision for the future of mobile, though Parrish found it would also benefit by paying greater attention to “more immediate needs” related to execution technology and methodology.
• Though clients love TribalDDB's proprietary backend technology and its ability to integrate mobile with other strategies, there's room for improvement when it comes to post-launch optimization.
• Razorfish has sound strategic development skills and solid execution. What's it missing? Value. Clients would prefer more competitive pricing for its services.

Strong performers

• iCrossing's solid strategic methodology is there in spades, but some clients feel it's a little too rigid. The agency needs to be a bit more flexible so as to adapt to the needs of specific clients.
• While VML has a “pragmatic get-it-done attitude” and works well with other agencies, it doesn't challenge its clients to be innovative.
• Though Rosetta scores high for incorporating audience insights into mobile strategy, clients would prefer more competitive pricing and teams with more mobile experience.
• In June 2011, four WWP agencies merged to form Possible Worldwide. While the newly combined group has satisfactory offerings in the way of strategy and execution, they're less mature than the other agencies in the Wave.

Though these interactive agencies have got it down (mostly), Parrish advised agencies and marketers alike, whether they were featured in the Wave or not, to remember that mobile marketing is not exclusively about the “new, new new or the flashy, flashy, flashy.”

“Mobile is still in such an emerging stage,” Parrish said. “So mastering the fundamentals is just as important.”

The International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF), a child labor watchdog organization, will launch an attack ad against Hersehy's on the Jumbotron outside of Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis during the Super Bowl, the company said in a Jan. 31 statement. The ad will appear alongside ads by McDonalds and AllState and will reach more than 250,000 people, according to the ILRF.

The ILRF claims Hershey's does not “take responsibility for its cocoa supply chain and improve conditions for workers,” according to the statement. The ILRF also makes the argument that Hershey's forces more than 200,000 children to harvest cocoa beans each year.

“Unlike some of its competitors, Hershey has made no movement to allow a third-party to investigate the exploitation of children by its cocoa suppliers. Additionally, Hershey's refuses to provide information about how the small amount of money it has invested in West Africa has actually reduced forced, trafficked, and child labor among its cocoa suppliers,” the statement said.

Hershey's, which did not respond to requests for comment, announced plans on Jan. 30 to reinforce cocoa sustainability efforts by accelerating farmer and family development in West Africa, as well as an initiative that enables a third-party to monitor and audit practices on farms supplying certified beans to Hershey, including instances of unsafe or illegal child labor.

Because Hershey's hasn't returned requests for comment, it's difficult to fully indict them for something that is happening on the other side of the world. But previous allegations from other organizations paint a pretty awful picture of what's happening with Hersey's labor practices.

{UPDATE]: Jeff Beckman, director of corporate communications at The Hershey Corp., sent me an email claiming ILRF has released a statement saying it would not run the ad. I have yet to confirm Beckman's claim.

[UPDATE]: In response to Hershey's Jan. 30 announcement, The ILRF has agreed not to run the ad. 

Facebook is preparing to file papers for an initial public offering (IPO), The Wall Street Journal reported on Jan. 28. The outlet reported that “people familiar with the matter,” say the IPO could come as soon as Jan. 31 and that Facebook is close to picking Morgan Stanley to lead the deal. Facebook declined to provide comment to Direct Marketing News when asked if the report was accurate. No confirmed reports have surfaced elsewhere.

Facebook's silence on the matter has led to much juicy speculation.

Bloomberg Businessweek has “two people” on the record saying Facebook's valuation is between $75-$100 billion.

Forbes says the valuation is overblown and that the IPO will be irrelevant because it won't unleash corporate capital spending or boost the overall venture financing market.

CNBC financial analyst Jim Cramer says a $70 billion valuation is a good deal for investors but “if it's priced at $110 billion, however, he doesn't think it will make that much money,” according to a CNBC post on Cramer's assessment.

Even Rupert Murdoch threw a jab at the valuation, tweeting, “Facebook [is] a brilliant achievement, but $75-100bn? Would make Apple look really cheap.”

Regardless of the ultimate financial outcome of the IPO, any additional capital should mean major opportunities for marketers, as Facebook would certainly invest heavily in driving additional advertising and advertising services revenue wherever possible.

Stay tuned to Direct Marketing News for additional coverage of the IPO as more information surfaces.

Hillside, N.J.'s Route 22 Toyota might not have Procter & Gamble's marketing budget, but surely whatever they can afford to spend deserves better than this. In an email sent to a Direct Marketing News staffer on Jan. 20, Route 22 Toyota urges fans to come into the shop wearing their favorite team's colors in order to save on service packages.

Seems harmless enough; however, the dealership fails to capitalize on a HUGE opportunity to motivate anxious Giants fans (whose favorite team was two days away from qualifying for a Super Bowl berth), as well as dejected Jets and Eagles fans (two groups whose favorite team failed to make the playoffs despite lofty expectations).

 

The email never references the three local teams, it calls the Super Bowl the “Big Game” and the AFC and NFC champions the “American and National” champions.

“Whether your favorite team is on the roster or not, we're rewarding everyone that wears their team colors,” the email says, misusing the term “roster” in a way only someone who knows nothing about sports ever could.

Look, I realize not everyone likes sports and that some of my objections to this email might seem overly picky. But here are three important questions that need to be asked:

1) Everyone understands the significance of the Super Bowl. It's watched by 1 billion people worldwide every year. Why not call it what it is instead of using vague terminology like, “Big Game?” Are football terms copyrighted? Or is this a case of ignorance or someone cutting corners?

2) Why would you not specifically leverage the emotional attachment New York, New Jersey and Philly fans have for their football teams? You know who is most likely to come into your store. The email is targeted to a certain region. Get fans' attention by actually calling out their teams' names.

3) If you're not going to do either of the things I mentioned above, then why use football to motivate your customers at all? Why not just promote your specials and use the price points to drive traffic to your dealership and website?

This is a major missed opportunity here.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that everything should be gender neutral (for example, I think gender neutral childrearing is a little extreme), but there's something a little off-putting about ��Lego Friends,” Lego's new line of girly toys — and it's not because I'm opposed to gender-specific marketing.

Understanding why men and women generally maintain different buying behaviors would be like discovering the answer to the age-old chicken/egg question. Do people act their gender because they're treated a certain way or because that's what they are intrinsically?

For that, there's no black and white answer, but when it comes to marketing, gender-specific targeting is understandable. Marketers are looking to move product or build awareness around a brand and they're only going to reach out, with their limited funds and time, to the people most likely to buy or care about what they're doing. Marketers need to get their messages into the right hands.

So, boys get G.I. Joe dolls (sorry, action figures) and girls get My Little Ponies. I, for one, owned this purple, red-haired My Little Pony when I was growing up, a gift from my grandfather. The popcorn on its hindquarters was scratch n' sniff. Yum.

But then there are the Lego Friends. I don't like them. They're really skinny. And they're all wearing different color variations on the same pastel tank top, one emblazoned with butterflies, another with hearts.

What gets my hackles up is not that Lego decided to design products that would appeal to girls; it's their marketing department's conception of what appeals to girls: beauty shops, fashion and cupcakes.

Often, we don't even realize we're being targeted, but that's because the targeting is working. It makes sense to us why we're being targeted. And sometimes the targeting makes us uncomfortable, like when Lego feels the need to create something like Emma's Splash Pool.

Don't forget to check out our special February targeting issue, live on our site on Feb. 1.

The embattled U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is continuing its struggle to stay in the black, but the five-month moratorium on facilities closures may end more than a month before the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) releases an advisory opinion on its streamlining plans, said USPS spokeswoman Sue Brennan.  

The USPS filed a formal request this week with the PRC asking it to expedite its approval of plans to reduce the number of postal facilities by more than half and revise mail delivery service standards. The request is in response to the PRC's announcement that it will need until at least July 10 to release its opinion, Brennan said. Some lawmakers — including Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a cosponsor of one of several postal reform bills on the table — have been vocal on the issue, saying that the Postal Service, without intervention, is likely to go belly-up by that time.

The USPS requested in its filing a decision by mid-April.

However, PRC chairman Ruth Goldway said the commission's decision to wait until July to issue an opinion is purely proper due process. She said the Administrative Procedures Act “requires certain levels of notice and time for review of testimony and the opportunity to cross-examine witnesses,” as well as the opportunity for each camp to offer rebuttals to testimony.

“It's a long process,” she said. “I myself pushed our staff very hard to find a way in which we could move this process forward quickly, and the staff presented to us what they thought was the minimum time necessary and fair, and that's what we issued. The USPS in the pre-hearing conference did not raise this April date. We're trying to do the best we can.”

Goldway explained that the USPS provided 13 witnesses with written testimony on the issue, and there are a host of other participants in the debate — among them various postal unions, the Greeting Cards Association and the Major Mailers Association. She said these participants must all legally be given the opportunity to read the testimonies, determine who to cross-examine, submit their own witnesses for examination by the Postal Service, and have the chance to offer rebuttals.

“The USPS, if [it] wants, can not rebut … and it would take a month out of the process,” Goldway said, adding that the issues facing the post office are of such complexity that a thorough review is necessary. “This is an important issue and we have to listen to all interested parties,” she said.  

Brennan said she doesn't know what will happen if the PRC fails to issue an advisory opinion by the end of the moratorium, but said the USPS is proceeding with every cost-saving aspect it's permitted to without waiting for the PRC or the moratorium to end. The moratorium only prevents physical closures of facilities.

“We're doing all the feasibility studies; we're reviewing everything,” she said. “There may be some uncertainty with the time frame, but we are moving forward.”

The five-month moratorium, announced in December, was intended to allow lawmakers time to find solutions to the problems plaguing the Postal Service and enact them through legislation. While several reform bills exist, none have made it through either house of Congress. However, that may soon change, as the House returned to work Jan. 17 and the Senate goes back to work on Monday.

Many possibilities have been bandied about in terms of revenue-raising, including authorizing the USPS to sell non-postal products as a way to raise additional revenue; revising a 30-year-old mandate that requires six-day delivery; and reevaluating another longstanding mandate that requires the USPS to prefund 75 years' worth of retiree benefits.

The USPS' inspector general has said that the organization has overpaid its civil service pension requirements by about $75 billion since 1972.

The USPS also pays about $115 million every other week to the Office of Personnel Management to fund the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS). Goldway said $7 billion has been overpaid into the FERS fund to date. “There is legislation that would give them that $7 billion back, some of which it could use for operating [costs] and retiree benefits,” she said.

“Those are the big accounting issues, and the federal government and Congress can take action on that one way or another,” she said. “We're going to do what we think is fair and responsible within the requirements of the law.”

I recently took a trip to my local bookstore and left outrageously offended.

I've become more and more accustomed to shopping online; whether it's because I've grown lethargic or because I attend school in the barren farmlands of Rhode Island, I don't know. Had I known I would encounter the experience I'm about to describe, I would have continued my e-commerce shopping under the covers with a chocolate bar and a credit card. Here's what happened when I did venture out for a in-store shopping adventure.

I went to a different store than I'm familiar with for a monthly browse and, as any self-proclaimed music geek would, I ventured towards the magazine section on the hunt for the latest music industry news before I left.

I spent 20 minutes searching for the music magazines. I was in a state of confusion as I circled around the shelves again and again. I checked entertainment, current events; heck, I even checked the tabloid section. But never, never, did it cross my mind to check the so-called “men's interest” shelf. But sure enough, as I walked past, I happened to notice a little guitar sticking out by one of the scantily clad models on the magazine beside it.

If I had a “most offended moments in life” list, which I don't, this would be right up there with my great aunt pinching my cheek and telling me I should lay off the turkey or I'll start to look like one. How dare they assume that only men are interested in music? It was while my inner outrage boiled, however, that I got to thinking: Is this bookstore really that sexist or are marketers actually aiming to appeal to men with these magazines?

None of the magazines in this section were using particularly flashy colors or phrases that typical women's interest magazines include, but to assume that marketers gear magazines without bright colors towards men alone is sexism that should not be overlooked. 

While it's true that certain magazines aim to please men and conversely women, it doesn't seem entirely fair that such a broad topic enjoyed by both sexes should be blatantly placed in one sex's category because that implies women are interested in fashion and beauty alone. I might as well grab my pink lipstick and cook dinner while I'm at it. At the time, I concluded that this particular case was the fault of a worker in the store.

However, there have been other similar occurrences that piqued my suspicion further as I investigated.

The “Cami Secret” clip-on camisole, coined “Boob Apron” by an online parody, brings up doubts in my mind about the intentions of the marketers. The women in the infomercial declare their exasperation with men who stare at their chests and seems to insinuate that all men are pigs who can't take their eyes off women's chests. While this could be a major issue in some cases, many people were outraged by the idea that all men behave in this manor.

In other cases, an unsettling number of commercials display, instead of a set of parents, mothers alone with their children. Why should women represent stay-at-home parents instead of men? The old standard is hardly as prevalent as it was fifty years ago.  Recently, more and more men have taken on the role of “stay-at-home-dad” and these commercials can be offensive to both fathers who stay with their children and mothers who work.

Both examples show a transparently sexist approach to connecting with their viewers.  Do our magazines do the same? Hard to say.

What I do know? Make a "general interest” shelf.  Problem solved.

Until yesterday, there may have been some folks out there who thought SOPA and PIPA would make cute puppy names, as my colleague Allison Schiff suggested. It wasn't until major websites like Craigslist, Reddit, Wired, WordPress and Wikipedia staged a daylong blackout — along with approximately a gazillion smaller sites — that Web users of every age and stripe were forced into an understanding of what the Stop Online Privacy Act and its Senate counterpart, the Protect Intellectual Property Act, could mean to the open sharing of knowledge on the Internet.

The puppies are really wolves in disguise.

By the way, I just linked to an image that is undoubtedly copyrighted material, so if the legislation were law, this would be the end for Direct Marketing News' website — without a speck of legal due process.

As far as protests go, yesterday's was effective. Of the 40 original sponsors of the Senate's PIPA, six have defected and another 12, while still supporting the intent of the bill to enhance the protection of intellectual property, are working to rejigger the legislation to make it less Orwellian (I hope).

House members have also been backtracking on SOPA. Yesterday, SOPA cosponsors Reps. Tim Holden (D-Pa.), Lee Terry (R-Neb.) and Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.) withdrew their support.

The issue websites, protesters and, now, your average Internet-addicted Joe have with the two bills is not that they necessarily want carte blanche to pirate movies and music — although file-sharing websites could be concerned about that aspect — but that the broad wording of the legislation would allow the government to shut down, without notice, any website hosting any copyrighted content whatsoever.

This would have the effect of placing upon the Internet a gag order. Under PIPA/SOPA, the fact that I'm about to link to something from file-sharing torrent site The Pirate Bay could result in Direct Marketing News' entire website being taken down for a second time today. Interestingly, The Pirate Bay claims to be not scared of these bills at all.

Anyone who attempted a Google search yesterday saw its logo masked by a black bar, which when clicked, linked to a petition page and a charming infographic. Google said 4.5 million people took the time to sign the petition.

The looming specter of SOPA and PIPA didn't just prompt website blackouts. Massive traffic to the websites of congressional reps overloaded and shut some down completely. The popular website Mashable didn't go dark, but replaced its regular content with 100% SOPA coverage. Actual physical protests occurred in major cities, including New York and San Francisco.

More than 2.4 million tweets on Jan. 18 were about the bills. Teachers and students alike seriously freaked out or alluded to pending meltdowns on Twitter, where it became uncomfortably obvious that neither teachers nor students are learning from books anymore. Many of these tweeters were also completely clueless about what was happening, some actually tweeting “RIP Wikipedia,” which makes me wonder: Is our children learning? 

Hopefully now they get it.  

(Side note: Since when did user-edited Wikipedia become acceptable as a vetted source for lesson plans and term paper research? Didn't everyone see the Colbert Report episode when Steven Colbert urged his fans to go online, find Wikipedia articles about elephants and edit them to include the completely untrue statement that their population had tripled in the last six months? Roughly 20 articles were vandalized, and Wikipedia blocked Colbert from being able to edit Wiki pages. But I can log on right now, go to George Washington's Wiki page, as Colbert also did that night, and edit it to say that he never owned slaves. This would be bad news for someone's George Washington term paper.)

(I also just linked to copyrighted material — a television episode — so this would be the third time I'd have gotten Direct Marketing News' website killed under the legislation.)

But whether a reliable source or not, the beauty of the Internet is the free and open sharing of information. Everyone knows that you can't trust everything you read on the Internet, but without such an open forum, the truth would have a harder time revealing itself. It's a cliché for a reason that the cream rises to the top.

The problem is that while effective, yesterday's protest didn't kill the legislation. Many people may misguidedly think SOPA and PIPA are dead in the water now. Not the case. While the Web's Jan. 18 protests and blackouts shined a bright light on the danger the bills pose to free speech and liberty, this is not yesterday's news. Internet restriction is still on the table. Lawmakers are simply redrafting the legislation, which may or may not contain language that would turn America's Internet into a replica of China's. One thing, though, is for sure: The conversation needs to continue, unabridged and unabated.