January 31, 2012 # 8:50 am # Industry News, Specials # No Comment

I’ve always said that companies are hiring way too many people to manage online advertising and that frankly, that media buyer are just lazy and many are a complete waste of money. Agreeing with me, the CEO of Procter & Gamble, the mega-brand company that owns, among other thigns, Old Sice, has decided to lay off 1,600 people in their marketing department. The reason? That they are a complete waste of money since much of their Facebook success has been based on free advertising.

 In the digital space, with things like Facebook and Google and others, we find that the return on investment of the advertising, when properly designed, when the big idea is there, can be much more efficient. One example is our Old Spice campaign, where we had 1.8 billion free impressions and there are many other examples I can cite from all over the world. So while there may be pressure on advertising, particularly in the United States, for example, during the year of a presidential election, there are mitigating factors like the plethora of media available.

This is extremely interesting, because it basically points out that, unlike what Facebook would like you to think, that you don’t have to spend a single dollar on Facebook advertising to have a very successful Facebook campaign.  Much about online advertising is becoming less and less about how much you spend, but how creative you can be in spreading the message. This is something that any performance marketer knows, especially those who depend completely on organic traffic.

Of course, Facebook would rather you not know this. In light of their complete hatred of the performance marketing industry, and how they are even trying to prove that “likes” can be sued under CAN-SPAM, we have to wonder how they will feel about this news.

Still that being said, despite the free advertising, Old Spice can’t get away from the general opinion that it makes you smell like Old Men’s Feet.

  Sugar rushes and caffeine highs followed by a depressing energy crash are what happens to your body if you drink a soda right now, but plenty of Blisstree readers actually seem to be okay with that. Some of you think it’s alarmist to compare a caffeine and sugar rush to doing drugs, and some just don’t really care about the slump they’ll find themselves in after drinking 39 grams of sugar, but what makes us really worried about a soda-slurping habit is what happens over the long term.

Here’s a quick snapshot of you, in a few years, after drinking soda on a regular basis:

You’ll Be Fatter: According to research in the Nurse’s Health Study, which monitored the health of 90,000 women for eight years, drinking a single soda every day of the week added 10 pounds over a four-year period.

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You’ll Probably Have Diabetes: In the Nurses’ Health Study, women who said they drank one or more servings a day of a sugar-sweetened soft drink or fruit punch were twice as likely to have developed type 2 diabetes during the study than those who rarely consumed these beverages.

You’re Much More Likely to Develop Heart Disease: According to a study published in 2007 in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association, subjects who drank a soda every day over a four-year period had a 25% chance of developing high blood sugar levels and a 32% greater chance of developing lower “good” cholesterol levels. The Nurses’ Health Study found that women who drank more than two sugary beverages per day had a 40% higher risk of heart attacks or death from heart disease than women who rarely drank sugary beverages.

You’re Probably Also Less Healthy In Other Ways: Several studies, including the 2007 study published in Circulation, suggest that diet sodas have some of the same effects on health as regular sodas, despite having none or very little of the sugar. Why? Drinking soda is typically part of an overall lifestyle that’s not very healthy: We know you don’t like us to compare drinking caffeine and sugar to substance abuse, but when it comes to your lifestyle, some think that soda is just like a gateway drug.