I don’t watch too much TV.  Throughout my life, I’ve really only consistently watched three shows – Mash, Cheers, and Seinfeld.  Pretty sad.  Since Seinfeld went off the air in ‘98, I haven’t regularly “tuned in” to anything except baseball.  Advertisers haven’t been able to easily reach me on television, but I have begun watching one show pretty regularly – The Colbert Report.  All politics aside, I just love his dry sense of humor and witticisms.

So, if you want to advertise to me on TV, you have only one choice: Comedy Central at 10:30 MST.  I prefer to see advertising for fly fishing gear, or any other outdoor gear for that matter – more realistically, I’d probably respond to some travel-related stuff or maybe a cheaper way to buy Gillette Fusion razor blades, but I am yet to see any of it on Comedy Central.  That’s probably because the typical advertiser on Comedy Central is trying to reach the younger male 18-34 demographic, which is one of the more coveted demos – and of course, one of the most expensive to reach.

Reading a recent Forbes.com post really opened my eyes to the shifting demographics of late night/news television.  According to Forbes, the number of viewers between 18 and 34 watching Colbert and Stewart dropped 15% and 14%, respectively over the last year.  This would be considered relatively bad news for the television network (Viacom owns Comedy Central) – but it’s important data for advertisers.

Colbert is categorized into the “late night talk show” category.  Based on the Forbes article, here are the average ages for male viewers between May 2008 and May 2009:

• The Colbert Report 38.3 (up five years)
• The Daily Show (Jon Stewart) 41.4 (up five years)
• The Late Show (Letterman)  54
• Tonight Show (Leno – before O’Brien) 55

The takeaway for advertisers: if you are trying to reach a slightly older male demo, you may want to consider these cable shows.  They may give you a fresh place to run your ads.  But, be careful, the younger audience may still be “priced in” to the rates – so just make sure you’re getting a good deal for your ad dollars.  Over time, keep your eyes on the ratings data as I would expect Comedy Central tries to skew back toward a younger demo to be more consistent with its overall programming.

It was a great day in Boise – high 70’s, sunny, not a cloud in the sky.  The magnificent weather made it very easy to lose sight of why we had the day off in the first place.

But, as the day winds down, I’m finding time on this Memorial Day to reflect on the many friends and family members who have served overseas this year and in years past – most of whom returned safely, some of whom unfortunately were not so lucky.

One of those service members who did return safely this year is our very own Dave Arnett.  I just wanted to take a moment to write about Dave, and let him know we all appreciate the sacrifice he made for his country.  Dave, a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy Reserves, was unexpectedly called to active duty early in 2008, and before spring was upon us in Boise, he was on the ground in Afghanistan.  He was thrust into a role typically reserved for an Army officer – talk about ambiguity and unfamiliarity – and did a stellar job leading actions with a multi-national, joint-service unit.  He returned to Boise right before the holidays, to a celebratory reception at the Boise airport held by family, friends, and many of us Balihoo’ers.

We also appreciate the sacrifice Dave’s family made – he left very unexpectedly with very short notice, and his wife and kids certainly missed him.

Dave serves as a role model for all of us – he’s incredibly smart and competent, adds a lot of fun and spirit to the office, and has an indomitable, selfless “can-do” attitude.  He’s passionate about a lot of things, but when it comes down to it, he is most passionate about his family and doing a great job no matter what the challenge – he certainly proved this in Afghanistan and proves it every day at Balihoo.

Dave, we’re glad to have you on our side – both for Balihoo and for our country!

A while ago I blogged about advertising in Yankee Stadium (see here).   I didn’t talk about demographics, but I did talk about the mechanics of doing it.  Well, watching a baseball game tonight made me want to blog about the importance of choosing the right media for your demographic and also made me think back to a lesson I learned a long time ago in advertising - don’t let ego, your own personal interests, or emotion dictate where you advertise; selecting media should be a scientific process.

The reason I thought this is I was watching a baseball game and noticed that a well-known home flooring company was prominently advertising throughout the game - both in the stadium and on commercials.  This was a big-market team’s broadcast (not the Yankees, but a reviled rival), which means this advertiser was spending big-market dollars for the ad space.

It’s a well-known and well-documented fact that women make the large majority of home furnishing decisions.  Smart home furnishing stores cater their ads to women because it’s been proven that whether single or married, spanning a wide range of ages and other demographics, it’s women, not men, who make the home purchasing decision.

The advertiser, in this case, shall remain nameless, but at Balihoo some of our clients are flooring and home furnishing stores - these include Carpet One and Flooring America, and both of these companies wisely build their creative and select media vehicles with the woman home purchaser in mind.  Thus, you’d never see them advertising during a baseball game.  Why?  Because baseball audiences are skewed as high as 70% men viewers.  I did some very quick analysis of Nielsen data and looking across the 2008 season, saw that baseball game audiences average roughly 33% women in the broad 25-49 yr old demographic (i.e. home flooring purchasers).

This flooring chain has to know this, yet it is advertising in a relatively expensive venue with a majority male audience.  A bad double whammy!  Why in the world would a flooring chain focus its ad dollars in a baseball stadium?  I’ll hazard some guesses - the male-dominated marketing department likes baseball?  The CEO is a baseball fan (probably of this team)?  They have just done it that way for years and *think* it works?

The lesson to businesses of all sizes is to focus your ad dollars where your target audience is most concentrated.  Don’t let personal interests get in the way of good advertising decisions.  There is so much data and information available today that your media decisions should be data-driven.  Doing anything else is simply wasting ad dollars on viewers who don’t matter to you.

Holy crap!  When I picked up my Saturday Edition of the Wall Street Journal this weekend something just didn’t feel right.  So, I squeezed it – kinda’ like a pack of Charmin - and shook it – kinda’ like a wrapped Christmas present - and to my surprise noticed a scintilla of red peeking out of the top right corner of the paper.  What was this?  I have been reading the Journal since I was a kid - not because I was an aspiring businessman, per se, but my father was a union newspaperman and every weekday morning he’d bring home all the New York area union-affiliated newspapers and I would wake up in all my glory to read them: The New York Times, The Daily News, The Wall St Journal, The Star ledger (NJ), even The Racing Form, which made me know way too much about handicapping as a little kid.  I’ve continued to read the Journal consistently for years, so the small difference in the paper’s pliability was readily apparent to me, and I can verifiably say this is the first time I saw a foreign document hidden inside the bounds of The Journal.

What was hiding inside was an FSI, otherwise known as “Free Standing Insert”, which we laymen call a circular.  You probably know them well because they appear in just about every Sunday paper and over the years have become more commonplace in daily papers and via the mail.  This particular FSI was a colorful, four-pager for Regus office centers.

Despite my shock at seeing the FSI in the Journal, I think it could signal some changes that are occurring in the newspaper marketplace.  I have no “inside” knowledge of this, so just taking some guesses, but if there was a purposeful decision by the Journal to open up to FSI advertising, I think that’s a good sign for newspapers in general.  This prompted a bunch of questions in my mind.  We all hear how bad newspapers have been doing, so has the WSJ changed or expanded its advertising model?  Are advertisers driving this change because FSI’s are more effective than standard run-of-press (ROP) ads within the paper, and thus will advertisers have more options/flexibility with FSI’s?  If newspapers offer more flexibility and capabilities for FSI advertisers, could they help boost their revenue?

I’m particularly interested in these questions because FSI’s are a component of our business at Balihoo.  Through our local marketing solution, we offer users the ability to customize and place an advertisement in every medium. FSI is a big part of this, especially since so many of our users utilize FSI as part of an integrated campaign.  Essentially, they customize their ad (oftentimes in many places on the sheet(s)), then with the click of a button the FSI is sent to a best-in-class printer, drop-shipped to the paper of their choosing, and run in the paper at the right time to coincide with their campaign.  I often hear “FSI is more effective than ROP,” so again, I’m wondering if advertisers essentially drove the WSJ to open up this form of advertising within their hallowed paper.

What does this all mean to advertisers? Maybe it’s a leading indicator that newspaper advertising will evolve - we at Balihoo certainly believe FSI advertising works today and should be a part of an integrated campaign for many of our customers.   But we firmly believe newspapers need to do more to help their advertisers.  Offering more comprehensive “solutions” to advertisers around FSI could be one path.

FSI’s already offer many benefits over ROP advertising: users can vary messaging in FSI’s to test different offers, more easily geo-target their ads, and given the size the advertiser can ensure their identity isn’t lost in a small news ad while having more “room to play” with things like multiple coupon offers and such.  But to do some of these things requires quite a bit of leg work on the advertisers’ behalf and newspapers could essentially change their model to help alleviate some of this legwork.

Some ideas I have on how newspapers could improve their offering: first, they can make geo-targeting and testing easier and seamless for the advertiser by offering more consultation to their advertisers and partnering with FSI printers to offer turnkey packages.  Second, they could open up more of their research to their advertisers – again, this could come from a consultant at the newspaper who works closely with the advertisers to ensure they are reaching their audience in the most effective way.  Finally, they could do more to help their customers advertise in an integrated fashion by offering “packages” that combine FSI and other complementary media so they all revolve around the same campaign theme – for example, text ads and direct mail that speak to the same offer as the FSI.

If newspapers are going to “save themselves” they need to be truly solutions oriented.  Just my thoughts!

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that mobile advertising is growing, but far off last year’s predicted pace.  Spending on mobile advertising is expected to be about $200 Million this year, far off the expected $1 Billion, but still up significantly from $120 Million in 2008.

Like several other media we’ve mentioned in past blogs, the cost of mobile advertising is down with the economy.  Think about it - some of these mobile advertisers are hurting ($200 Million doesn’t allow too many companies to stay in business, many of whom expected huge growth this year).  The situation warrants you to think, “How can I use mobile advertising to my advantage?”

First off, there are many different ways to advertising via mobile - these include text ads, either via standard SMS or via bluetooth, display (banner) ads, mobile gaming, or video - for more info see this wikipedia post.  There are a lot of ways you could deploy mobile advertising, but we at Balihoo are strong advocates of a “test and control” approach to advertising, especially in newer media, and we think a great way to try mobile is through a limited test. So, here is ONE approach you as a local store owner could use:

Mobile is best for a younger demographic (18-25 or maybe up to 35) - using it for older demographics could work, but may not be worth the risk.  Additionally, mobile is better for driving demand than it is for branding, so think about “testing” a demand generation campaign toward a younger audience, perhaps versus another medium that has worked for you in the past, like direct mail or pay-per-click.  Allocate the same budget to both mediums and use consistent messaging or offers (e.g. same coupon amount) to ensure you don’t unduly influence the test.  Launch your campaign during the same timeframes, again, to limit external influences on your test.

The hardest part will be determining how much to spend - you need to make sure you spend enough to ensure the sample size is large enough to yield believable results.  This can be tricky - there are sample size calculators (http://www.raosoft.com/samplesize.html) but if this is confusing, I’d strongly recommend you hire an ad agency.  The final step will be measuring the result - a good approach would using a coupon, which will allow you to monitor the lead source whether you have a good point-of-sale system (to capture the coupon) or not.

One of the cool things about mobile advertising is many companies now offer the ability to “geo-target” - that is, send a text message when a mobile user is within a certain locale.  For example, one time I was visiting San Francisco (I live in Idaho) and got a text message with a coupon for a certain coffee shop in San fran.  I thought it was pretty cool and proceeding to buy my coffee there!  If you are a location-oriented business (like one that depends on foot traffic in a city or mall), this might be a good approach for you.

OK, so you want to do it, but are asking, “How do I buy mobile advertising?”  There are several ways.  You can buy direct from a cell phone carrier (Verizon, Sprint, etc), through a mobile ad network, or through an ad or media agency.  Each has its advantages and disadvantages - going direct could give you more control and visibility, but likely provide less reach and could be costlier, going through an ad network could be cheaper and give you greater reach, but will provide less control over who sees your ads, while using an agency could also be more expensive, but should come with lots of advice and experience.  Remember, just because the latter two are more expensive per message, doesn’t mean they won’t be more effective, which could result in better return on your investment.

Another way we’ve bought mobile is actually through other media owners – for example, some radio stations have lists of listeners who have opted-in to receive text ads – this could be a great way to reach a very targeted demographic who will be responsive to mobile ads.  It may take a little more legwork to find such lists, but the results could be well worth the effort.

Using a “test and control” approach is a great way to get started in any new medium - it limits your risk in trying new things for your business.  Think of the money as a “tuition” - an investment in learning and hopefully improving relative to your competition.

For the 10th year in a row, Boise was ranked in the top ten of Forbes’ Best Places for Business and Careers (see list here).  We at Balihoo are indeed proud to be a part of the business community that has garnered such consecutively high rankings since 2000.

I wanted to provide some quick commentary on why Boise gets such consistently high rankings (see blog about other lists on which Boise is ranked).  As a Boise transplant - I chose to move here with my family from the NYC area after working for a startup back there – I believe I can still speak with some level of impartiality.

One reason for the ranking is no doubt Boise’s awesome balance of business vibrancy with outdoor recreation, as well as a decent amount of art and culture for a city our size.  People who move to Boise do so for the work_AND_life opportunity, not just the work.  It’s amazing to meet so many Boise transplants – or even people who grew up here, went to work in a big city, then came back – who say the same thing: they essentially just dropped everything to move here, either because they wanted to raise their family in a great place, or they were single/without kids and loved the outdoors and recreation.

Our office is a perfect testament to these two profiles.  We are a venture-backed startup, with the same underlying spirit and intensity as our startup brethren on the east and west coasts, but our people made the explicit choice to move for work AND life. We are a diverse office, but we are like-minded in that we’re either creative or technology people (or both) who want to work in a great company surrounded by smart, driven people.  No doubt, we still have to work hard to compete with all those companies just focusing on the “work” part of things, and of course it’s a challenge, but we manage to make it happen.

To personalize our company a bit, I pulled together some quick stats:

• About 35% of our employees moved to Boise from the Northwest - mainly Seattle and Portland.  They wanted to live in a place similar recreation and quality of life without the rain and traffic (Boise has 215 sunny days a year compared to Seattle’s 165)
• We have a decent contingent of “back east” people - about 15% of us are startup-minded people from the other side of the Mississippi who wanted a big change from the east coast grind
• We have a handful of international folks who now call Boise home
• And finally, we have people who’ve lived in California, Arizona, Alaska, Colorado, and Utah who came here for all the aforementioned reasons

A lot gets published about Boise, but here is “my” list of the top ten “little” reasons to live here:

1.  You can ride you bike to work from just about anywhere you live in the valley (on my ride I see wild quail every day and sometimes deer, otter, or eagles - pretty cool to see in a capital city)

2.  Traffic is almost non-existent – coming from NYC, I love to hear people talk about “the traffic” – that means they had to wait at a stop light or two on their way to work

3.  Parking is $1.50/hour in downtown garages (last I checked, NYC was around $28)

4.  There is a ski mountain 16 miles from downtown – still holding a base of 60” as we approach April

5.  I can fish 200 yards from the office in a clean river that holds naturally reproducing brown and rainbow trout

6.  The zoo is awesome for kids – it’s no San Diego zoo, for sure, but there is an awesome diversity of species and exhibits at a very reasonable cost

7.  I’m not sure exactly why, but our Thai food rocks – there are a lot of really good Thai restaurants all over the town

8.  There are 6 parks for my kids (with great swing sets and climbing structure) within a two-mile radius of my home, where I can feel safe letting my kids play.

9.  You can get really cheap flights to any city in the west, and our airport is incredibly convenient – so when you have a yen for “big city” things, you can be in SF, Seattle, LA, Vegas, Phoenix, Portland, or San Diego in 1-2 hours.

10.  Despite our “potato state” reputation, there are no potato farms to be seen in Boise – most of those are way out in Eastern Idaho, 5-6 hours away

Why stop at ten…perhaps my favorite thing about Boise is there is hardly ever a line at the DMV. Other places I’ve lived entailed a multi-day wait to renew a driver’s license.

“How’s that impartial?  There’s gotta be something wrong with Boise!,” you say?  I really have had only two complaints since I’ve lived here – we need some good Italian food, and you can’t get to the east coast on a direct flight.  But, I’m very willing to live with those two drawbacks in favor all the positives.

That is hands-down the most common question we’re asked at Balihoo.  Quite frankly, there is no medium that has stood out in the past since so many factors affect the answer: from the product or service you are advertising, to the goals of your campaign, to the demographic you are trying to reach, to the varying price of the medium you are considering.  Instead of answering with one medium, we typically advocate our clients run integrated campaigns (see Katie’s blog post) that mix complementary mediums and give the advertiser the opportunity to gain from cross-medium synergies.

That said, we find ourselves recommending TV advertising more frequently than we have in the past relative to other mediums.  Why?  There are four main reasons.

• Prices have dropped significantly over the past six months-or-so due to the combination of the poor economy and drop-off in advertising after the presidential campaign.

• TV allows different geographic coverage options – Cable allows more precise geographic targeting while Network TV allows for larger area coverage at potentially attractive prices.

• The combination of TV and Internet search advertising is a strong one – think about it…many people today go to their computers to get more information right after they see an ad, or even better, people are surfing the web while watching TV; so a well-coordinated TV and Internet search campaign can produce wondrous results.

• TV can be a great medium for reaching a targeted demographic, which has been especially true in cable TV given the number of stations catering to specific audiences.  For example, if your target is women 35-55yrs-old who are homeowners, cable stations like HGTV and Food Network will undoubtedly reach your audience with very little “waste” (i.e. very economically) and they should probably be part of your advertising mix.  Network TV can provide similar targeting capabilities, but might not be as straightforward and require a little more expertise to plan effectively.

Our market-based experience is validated by a recent report published in AdAge titled, “Guess Which Medium Is as Effective as Ever?: TV”.  The article states that despite many “experts” predicting TV effectiveness would decline due to forces like TiVo and the Internet, it has actually increased in effectiveness based on studies conducted since the early 1990’s.

The report does list some caveats, the main one being “creative matters”.  Oftentimes the roadblock to affordable TV advertising is the production cost of a high-quality spot.  So many local cable spots are of poor quality, as I’m sure you’ve noticed in your local market, and actually do more harm than good to the advertiser over time.  Fortunately, for most of the franchise-based clients with whom we work, professional, customizable TV spots are provided by the franchisor, making TV advertising highly affordable, especially relative to any local competition that would have to spend thousands of dollars producing an ad.

The drawback for many people in utilizing TV is the complexity of placing an ad – you need to consider things like reach, frequency, ratings points, etc…  Even if you think you’re doing it right, if you aren’t doing the math and properly applying these measurements, you could very easily be “taken for a ride”.  Please heed my advice and have a media professional help you – any media buying fees will be nominal relative to the possible cost of inexperience.

The net here is that if you’re new to TV advertising or haven’t used it in awhile, I’d recommend investigating how you can add it into your integrated media mix.  Or, if you’re already using TV but haven’t “re-priced” your buys, now is the time to take another look at what you’re paying for your schedule and renegotiate.  If you make sure you have high-quality creative and rely on professional media planning, TV can deliver significant ROI for your marketing dollar.

Last week I was graciously invited, along with several other Boise-based business leaders, to present a “messy business problem” to an MBA class at Boise State University.  (Note: Boise State isn’t just great at football – the school has a well-respected MBA program of which we are proud to be a part.)  The deal was we present a big, messy problem and in return the MBA students would work on solutions and present them to us next month.

While I expected to find a wide array of unrelated, business-specific problems from these business leaders, I was surprised to find that there were two common, reoccurring themes.  First, they wanted to know how to solve the pervasive problem of email overload in their business.  Second, they were looking for creative ways to continually promote work-life balance in the face of this harsh economy that demands they do more with less.

At first I was a bit surprised email overload could be a “biggest, messiest” problem for a business from a CEO’s or company president’s perspective, but when I stepped back and thought how much time everyone in my company spends on email, it’s not too hard to quantify the problem and see the magnitude is quite large.  What I think: email has actually gotten worse over the past few years due to the myriad inbound mediums of subscriptions, blogs, twitters, and newsletters on top of an already high load of email from colleagues and clients on a minute-by-minute basis.  I really feel like I need to read the subscriptions and such to keep up with my industry and profession, but have little time to do so.  There are obviously tools and techniques to help alleviate some of this pain – at Balihoo we heavily rely upon instant messenger, use a wiki for process management, communicate through this blog, and have an open seating arrangement promotes more communication and less email.  There are also tools – like Google reader  - to help remove some of the subscription-based emails – one of our venture investors wrote a good article about this last week (see it here), so I won’t rehash it here.  I certainly don’t have all the answers, but do think we need to continually address it as a business ourselves, so I’m really looking forward to the students’ ideas.

The second problem was especially interesting to me as COO of Balihoo since my main job is productivity and operation of the company - balancing work-life in the face of an economy that demands businesses operate leaner than ever.  As a manager, this is a tough issue – of course you want everyone to pursue all the things outside the office that make them happy, but the counter is as business leaders it’s our primary responsibility to our stakeholders to ensure the company performs well in the face of perhaps the worst economy in generations.  The reality is we need everyone to work harder today; if everyone doesn’t pull hard together during these times, any company – not just Balihoo – puts its jobs and overall viability in jeopardy.  This fact puts businesses like Balihoo, who espouse work-life passion, in a bit of a vicious paradox: doing “fun” things, inside or outside the office, often just cuts into the time we have to work on business deliverables, but we still do them anyway as we believe it’s the right thing to do in principle and pays long term dividends in terms of team building, company esprit, and morale.

The thing I love most about Balihoo is I am surrounded by great people at Balihoo who I think understand this – if not they wouldn’t be working so hard to build the world’s best marketing solution for franchises.   I guess deep inside I fundamentally believe we will all be rewarded for today’s work down the road (maybe I’m more of a believer of Karma than I thought) and in a shorter term sense, get rewarded by keeping our jobs in a very tough economic climate.  Nonetheless, I can’t wait to get some good ideas from the students next month and I’ll certainly blog about their ideas once I get them.

The public has been heard – corporate executives who jet around in private aircraft, particularly those who lead dismally performing companies, will not be tolerated.  In today’s Wall Street Journal, Cessna Aircraft Co. ran a bold ad intended to counter this negative stigma.

I’m a big fan of bold advertising - especially in down markets where boldness is required in all facets of business management.  But some may argue this one might be a little over the top due to the economy and public perception.

The ad urges corporate CEOs to be bold and resolute instead of timid and cow-towing to public perception with the message: keep your corporate jets, or at least ensure you are considering all the positive reasons for corporate aircraft before just cutting due to image.

Some excerpts from the WSJ:

• “Pity the poor executive who blinks, and gets rid of the company jet.”… “One thing is certain: true visionaries will continue to fly.”
• “Timidity didn’t get you this far. Why put it in your business plan now?” Instead of retreating, the company argues, companies should adjust and make sure they are flying the right type of aircraft.

Cessna, who has made the news recently with big layoffs and poor performance itself, is obviously taking a big risk with the ad, especially considering it committed more than half its ad budget to the campaign.  Public perception toward corporate greed and excess has probably never been more disapproving.  There was a censorious outcry from both politicians and the public over the “Big 3” auto CEOs’ use of private jets last fall, as well as toward the big banks’ use of corporate jets to visit Washington this week.

As far as public opinion goes, the ad probably won’t win a lot of fans.  But the real question is: will the ad win over the minds of executive decision makers who are considering their corporate travel options, either now or in the near future.  If nothing else, Cessna is taking its own counsel to heart and being as bold as it suggests CEOs should be.

You vote - good ad or bad?

It’s a long-held fact that the majority of grocery shopping is driven by impulse purchases.  Right?  It may not be.  A recent study published on Knowledge@Wharton counters this (see the study here).

The study states that impulse purchases make up only about 20% of total purchases, as opposed to previously held belief that they made up closer to 60-70% of total purchases.  While this study was done in Europe and limited to grocery, the authors state the findings can be extended to the US, and I believe the findings can also be applied to many segments of retail and offer some great insights for retailers and product manufacturers alike.

One of the main findings is impulse purchasing may be more driven by nature than nurture.  That is, in the past, marketers mainly drove unplanned purchases through in-store advertising (i.e. “nurture”).  However, the study posits that consumers’ impulse purchasing is also driven by their demographics (i.e. nature).  This doesn’t mean in-store promotion is not important by any means, but it does mean retail marketers should explore and balance between two different approaches to drive impulse purchases: marketing to the “right” consumers who are more likely to make impulse purchases in the first place, versus crafting an in-store environment that is most conducive to driving purchases.  The two strategies, of course, can go hand-in-hand, and this thinking should drive retailers to balance in-store versus out-of-store marketing budgets to match their chosen strategy.

This article is especially interesting to me (and Balihoo) because our Marketer Edition offers the ability to launch and manage campaigns in all advertising mediums, as well as in-store advertising such as POP and in-store signage.  As a software plus service provider, our advertising specialists talk with our many retail users every day about balancing their bugdets with in-store advertising versus more traditional, out-of-store advertising via TV, radio, online and print.  I thought this article would provide some good insight to managing this ongoing balancing act.