‘Dot-Coms’ Go Retro Offline to Get More Online
In Manhattan, you can’t walk down the street without seeing a “dot-com” ad on the side of a building or a bus. In San Francisco, radio stations play one dot-com jingle after another. And televised football games now have more ads for Internet sites than for beer.
Dot-coms, or commercial Internet sites--many of which had no advertising budget at all last year--are spending millions of dollars this year on radio, television and outdoor ads as they attempt to break through the jumble of 10 million competitors.
Some of the big players, such as AltaVista and CNet, will spend more than $100 million over the next year to promote their names and new services.
Afraid that they can’t muster enough “eyeballs” through online ads to reach the immensely fragmented audience of the Internet, the new online players have turned to old offline mass marketing--namely, television, radio, print and outdoor sources from billboards to buses.
They all have the same goal: to sell you everything from toys and sporting goods to information and communication services--and ultimately turn what has been a mostly money-draining business into a profitable one. But first, they have to get you to their Web sites.
“It’s been said that people shop in an online world but live in an offline world,” said Jay Mininger, director of marketing for DSports.com. “We need to reach people where they live.”
“It’s a race to establish a brand identity,” said Kevin Flynn, a partner at the Martino Flynn advertising agency in Rochester, N.Y. “It’s a little like the wild, wild West, because there’s a big gold rush and not everybody will survive. The winners will be those who really break through the clutter.”
DSports.com is the online version of Dick’s Sporting Goods, a 50-year-old chain of 82 stores that is trying to take its business online. The online version will spend $15 million--30 times what it spent in the first six months of the year--for a national ad campaign in the last three months of 1999.
Martino Flynn created what it calls “cool, edgy” television ads for DSports.com that feature basketball players who suddenly break into a wordless “Girl From Ipanema,” singing “dee . . . dee dee, dee dee . . . dee dee dee.” All just to get you to remember the “D” in DSports.
The name game is so vital that many of the ads run by Internet companies never tell you what they do or what they sell. The point is to pique your curiosity so you’ll take a look at them.
Outpost.com is 5 years old. That’s centuries in online time. For six weeks leading up to the holidays, the online retailer of computers and accessories will spend $4 million to $5 million.
Its television ads last year featured a distinguished gentleman sitting in a library chair telling viewers that in order to get their attention, he’d shoot gerbils out of cannons. The ad got the Outpost name across, but nothing else.
“TV gets your name and image out there, but it’s wildly expensive and inefficient,” said Bob Bowman, Outpost.com’s chief executive. “Our hits increased by 25%, but the question is, do they buy and do they come back?”
This year, Outpost.com will remind viewers of the gerbils but will talk about what the site is and why it’s different from other online computer retailers. And it is also using online ads to target the specific audiences it wants.
One result of the online advertising frenzy is an increase in ad rates. Rates are up, according to advertising buyers, by 15% to 30%, depending on the market.
