Topics for 9/12/2010 Show

Here are the proposed topics for this week's episode of The BeanCast, and as usual we'd love to hear your thoughts and questions.

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This week's panel will be Brian Morrissey (Adweek), Rob Schwartz (TBWA\Chiat\Day), Brent Terrazas (Brentter Media) and John J. Wall (Marketing Over Coffee).

TOPICS

Google Instant's Effect On Search: In the single biggest move since paid search ads, Google unveiled Google Instant. This real-time results system literally evolves a search result as you type. The stated reason for this is to save the user time and get them to their search results quicker. But John, is this really about users or is this purely about revenue? Don't quicker results loads means more ads served? Will this increase the ability of marketers to capture attention as a search is being formed? What kind of strategies do you see SEO experts using to take advantage of this? Could marketers effectively lead consumers to change a search query in progress just by optimizing for this new system? What about the revenue question -- Google denies this is purely revenue based, but you type in single letters and big brands show up, right? Could this potentially drive up the cost of keywords as these keywords are hit more often, making them more desirable? Will it deliver more or less effective impression?

How Ad Revenue Sharing Is Saving Piracy: A few years ago the standard response to pirated material on YouTube was a takedown notice. But now with contextual ads and revenue sharing plans, suddenly content producers are willing to turn a blind eye to copyright infringement in exchange for a piece of ad revenue. Brian, how are these models changing the viability of YouTube as a profit center for Google? Is this a lucrative revenue stream for content producers? How is this affecting the ecosystem as a whole -- does the presence of copyrighted material inspire more ads and the resulting ad revenue encourage more copyrighted material? Is such an adhoc system of slapping ads on content as users post it the future or doomed to eventually collapse? How would you contrast this to the more defined systems like Hulu -- is one more cost effective than the other?

Should Slogans Be Short Or Long?: Al Ries had an interesting examination of Slogans over on AdAge.com this week. His premise was essentially that shorter is not better when it comes to slogans. And going by his examples, it pains me to say that the man clearly has a point. When you look at "When it absolutely, positively has to be there over night," the current FedEx slogan of "We understand," falls flat. So Rob, the drive in agency creative departments for some time has been to get to the shorter, sharper taglines -- are we doing ourselves and clients a disservice by taking this tact? What drives the need for the shorter tagline? Is a shorter message really more memorable than a well-crafted, longer slogan? He obviously admits that some short slogans still work -- what makes the difference for these lines?

Brands Turn To Direct Agencies For Social?: This next story kind of blows my mind. In a survey conducted by PRWeek of in-house brand marketers, 21% said they would first turn to their direct marketing shop to handle Social Media, while Advertising, Digital and PR shops ranked at 20%, 17% and 16% respectively. Brent, assuming these numbers are believable, why is direct ranking so high here -- I thought PR had this one in the bag? Is it possible that the PR-driven, relational focus of social media management is experiencing a type of backlash? Are these numbers a reflection of a perceived need to make the medium work harder for ROI?

Pepsi Refresh Becomes Global Strategy: And with no prior planning, I just happened to have the Chief Creative Officer at TBWA\Chiat\Day on the show when Pepsi Refresh blossoms into a global strategy. First of all, congratulations, Rob. But let me ask what it is about the program that has made it so successful? What challenges do you expect taking this global?