The Lost Boys

For broadcast television, Coke was it. The 50-year partnership of fizzy sugar water and network TV yielded some memorable moments, from the groovy "Things Go Better with Coke" spots of the '60s to the carefree "Can't Beat the Feeling" campaign of the '80s. But in recent years, the 19th-century elixir hit a rough patch in its relationship with TV. Since the big broadcast networks no longer deliver the mass audience the company needs, Coca-Cola cut its network ad spending last year by 10 percent. "Where are we going?" Coke's then-president, Steven Heyer, asked rhetorically at an Advertising Age conference in 2003. "Away from broadcast TV as the anchor medium." Acknowledging that many in the ad industry are afraid to follow, he added bluntly, "Fear will subside, or the fearful will lose their jobs. And if a new model isn't developed, the old one will simply collapse."

Heyer's speech was bold stuff when he made it, but lately this kind of television-bashing has become a staple of industry confabs. "There must be - and is - life beyond the 30-second TV spot," Procter & Gamble's global marketing officer declared last winter. "Used to be, TV was the answer," proclaimed the president of GM North America. "The only problem is that it stopped working sometime around 1987." The broadcast networks have been losing audience share for years, thanks to the remote control, TiVo, and all the new channels on cable and satellite. But when Nielsen Media Research announced last fall that young males - the hardest-to-reach and most intensely targeted subset of humans in North America - were watching 12 percent less prime-time network TV than the year before, Madison Avenue went on orange alert. True, the falloff was only 26 minutes a week - but in the ad business, a few lost minutes can add up to major trauma.

Read the article: www.wired.com