Gorilla Marketing

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@launchgum GASP! Was that you who fed the mandril blue gum? Is that what you call gorilla marketing? www.twitpic.com/10cy0
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Voting Question: Is Viacom being fair demanding 22% to 36% rate increase on it's 19 channels to Time Warner cable customers?
These 19 Viacom channels include MTV, Comedy Central, Spike TV, TV Land, and VH1. Even though ratings for these have fallen, Viacom wants a big 22% to 36% increase in the rate they get from Time Warner Cable and their subscribers, reasoning that customers spend 1/5th of their time watching Viacom channels, but Viacom's rates comprise less than 1/5th of subscribers' total cable bill. In other words, Viacom is claiming to have been undervalued so long, that the time is now to adjust their price up to where it should have been all along. This increase is THREE TIMES what Viacom previously agreed to in the rate contract they signed with Time Warner. So Viacom wants to break their contract to hold Time Warner ransom for more money, and is threatening to make all those 19 channels go dark tonight at 12:01 a.m. Jan 1, 2009, if Time Warner doesn't relent to the big increase. Does this sound really fair to you? Viacom has been known to be very aggressive negotiators and has pulled dramatic stunts like this in the past. I know this as an industry insider and corporate lender to numerous media companies. Viacom's negotiations with the big corporate banks were different than those with cable operators, but it was clear, they felt they were the 800 pound gorilla in the market and could command from vendors and others, whatever they wanted. It was their whole strategy for acquiring channels, consolidating market share, and increasing their negotiating power. There is nothing illegal with this as long as there is not TOO much industry consolidation such that it could be considered anti-competitive or nearing an oligopoly (anti-trust lawsuits would follow). Actually, I suspect one may be brewing from this latest standoff. I'm also a Time Warner subscriber and while I don't want these channels to go away, I also don't like being held ransom when Viacom wants to break it's contract and play power politics to squeeze us for more money. If they felt they were so undervalued back when they signed the original rate deal, why didn't they speak up then? A deal's a deal! It's not cable subscriber's fault that Viacom's ratings and ad revenues have dropped or that they were not as rate aggressive as they could have been when they negotiated their original deal with Time Warner. This feels much like the "Bailout Deal" for Wall Street where average taxpayers are being tapped to pay for the bad judgement of big financial companies. When is this madness and irresponsibility on the part of not-so-bright senior management going to stop? Do you support the position here of Viacom for 22% to 36% rate increases above the contracted rate increase? Or do you support Time Warner trying to hold the line for subscribers and who is the second largest cable operator in the U.S.? read more...

Resolved Question: There is no money...right?
Anyone else think these 'bailouts' have one glaring problem? The US government is pledging to bailout this company and that company and people talk about it as if it can be done. Very strange. Here is my understanding. The US, and the global market for that matter, discovered that there was simply too much debt in the market place so the solution was to inject more money into the system. The problem is that no one seems to be asking where this money comes from. The US government gets its money from only 3 places, taxes, bonds or it simply prints it. So this bailout money has to come from one of those places because as we all know it would be crazy to borrow more money to get yourself out of debt...right? So the government will tax us to pay for the bailout or people will buy bonds to pay for the bailout. Taxes are not bottomless and as the economy shrinks that means there will be less and less money for taxes and it becomes and ever shrinking pool to draw from. Bonds are simply a method of the government acquiring debt in order to gain some cash for a short term use. The problem is it is still debt and as the US debt mounts US bonds seem less and less appealing in a world economy. So that leaves us with one alternative...print money. That will signal the end. The more money we print the more its value drops. There is no money. We are $10 trillion in debt, we are broke. The economy IS going to contract whether we like it or not. The people that have spent their entire lives dealing with the economy have to know this. So why do we keep hearing about bailouts? Doesn't it scare anyone that the 800 pound gorilla in the room is being ignored? read more...

Products and services have to find customers in a fiercely competitive market. Large corporations have large advertising budgets and big marketing teams but small businesses may only have a small budget and they have to be a bit more imaginative. It's not just a matter of cost however, but of results and the recent trend for gorilla marketing is proving successful in many cases.

Conventional TV campaigns, billboards and press advertisements are all expensive and the public is used to them and may have become desensitized to them. Niche marketing or aiming at a target audience is the modern way of doing things, aided by technology. The younger generation is particularly receptive to different sorts of promotions. Gorilla marketing, sometimes referred to as buzz marketing or stealth marketing, has also been taken up by bigger organizations.

This sort of method puts an emphasis on building a relationship that feels personal to the customer. Some tactics are inexpensive or free and a lot of companies have come to value word of mouth recommendations. The Internet plays a big part in this and potential consumers of a product may not even realize that they have been targeted in this way. Chat rooms, blog pages, messages and chain email are all portals for promotion. Sending text messages to cell phones is another method. The act of sending personal messages to a bluetooth has been dubbed "bluejacking."

Communication has always been the tool of publicity departments and it is easier than ever for people to share information, opinions and ideas. With the Internet, it is literally a global market. Gorilla marketing takes note of the fact that families have fragmented as far as their leisure time is concerned. Instead of gathering round the TV together, families are apt to be doing their own thing in different parts of the house. Mom may be watching her soap in the living room, Dad is listening to his baseball game on the radio in his den and their teenage kids are social networking in their bedrooms.

There are other ways besides high tech solutions to get the message across. Urban dwellers are familiar with sticker campaigns. They pop up everywhere and sometimes in unexpected places. They may be in subway stations, telephone booths or stuck in the cab of a truck. Advertisements are printed on receipts or on the reverse of bus tickets. The art of gorilla marketing is making use of the everyday things that we all take for granted. A slogan on a T-shirt is often a walking advertisement.