Ad Infinitum

Via eMarketer:

According to the new "Alternative Advertising & Marketing Outlook 2006" report from PQ Media, US spending on alternative media strategies was up 16.4% in the first half of 2006 to reach an estimated $53.37 billion.

Furthermore, PQ Media estimates that spending on alternative media will accelerate in the second half of 2006, as segments like branded entertainment marketing and entertainment advertising generate higher growth. In fact, the firm estimates that overall alternative media spending will grow by 18.5% to $115.77 billion for full-year 2006.

The double-digit growth in 2006 follows a strong 2005, when total alternative media spending rose 18.8% to $97.66 billion.

Clicking through the link provides a thick broth of numbers, a veritable chowder of data.

When we think about media spending--and even alternative media spending--we need to remember that we are really only talking about Earth-based marketing. Extending outside the solar system, we find a much wider variety of marketing and advertising strategies. For example, a little birdie told me that there is a race of aliens living on a planet in the constellation of Pisces whose strongest marketing growth is to be found in advertising on the walls of the stomach. There is a compelling reason for this, of course, since the primary medium of communication for these aliens has been the X-ray. Since their planet rotates at 3/4 the speed of light, life is very tense, so the native inhabitants have evolved a means of communication using perforations of the stomach lining to spell out a kind of Morse code (though far more nuanced). (It is also a fact that market research questionnaires inevitably find that "being flung into the inky blackness of infinite space" is a top challenge among businesses on this planet.)

This is a vast improvement over what little birdies usually tell me, which is "Hand over the worms or I'll peck out your eyes."

Advertising inside the body may seem unusual to you, but there have been experiments with similar approaches here on Earth. Back in the 1980s, there was an ad agency (whose name I cannot recall) who experimented with advertising on the bodies of live salmon. This is not as abribrary as it may seem, as their primary target markets were grizzly bears and Ian Anderson. Alas, the culture changed, Ian Anderson got out of the salmon farming business, and the bears were convinced by PETA to eat vegetables. Then another group convinced the bears to eat fruits rather than vegetables, until finally the bears went on a hunger strike, more out of confusion than anything, and then had a large meeting where they decided that the best idea yet was to simply eat humans and solve several problems simultaneously. But I digress...

The idea of salmon-based advertising was ahead of its time. It has come to my attention that the next big movement in marketing will be to market to wildlife. It is no surprise to anyone that humans are becoming more and more resistant to advertising messages, so agencies have decided to go in search of greener pastures, so to speak, and have begun developing ad campaigns targeted at animals. TV ads have for years been targeted to household pets (you didn't think those things were meant to appeal to thinking humans, did you?) so going after wild animals is really only the next logical step. The strategy--inspired by the original salmon-based advertising idea--is to target ads at particular species by advertising on the bodies of those animals' primary prey. Herbivores present some interesting, but not entirely insoluble, problems. As for those species that eat insects, large-format equipment manufacturers will soon see the next big market to be micro-format printing.

It's easy to see the flaw in the plan, which is the (so far) lack of consumer spending by wild animals. But have no fear. I received an e-mail recently from a mountain lion I know in Southern California. (We met one evening several years ago when I went into the Santa Monica Mountains dressed as an Impala; I've found that rather than buy a car, it's far more cost effective to simply dress up as one. It takes longer to get up to highway speed, but the gas savings are substantial.) Anyway, this mountain lion told me that he had recently received a credit card offer. Now that the credit card companies have themselves started targeting other species, we're off to the races.

Which just goes to show you that we have yet to plumb the depths of alternative advertising.