Review: Burger King's Whopper Scent

During my first semester teaching at Ohio State, I shared with my students an Advertising Age story about Burger King's franchisees near riot over "the King."

The Oct. 25, 2005, story ran under the headline, "Franchisees turn on Crispin's King."

The problem is that BK is the No. 2 burger chain in the country, distantly trailing No. 1 McDonald's and barely leading No. 3. Wendy's.

Burger King goes well with their target market: young males. And although the King played well with that audience, he was not bringing in new customers.

Burger King is "highly effective with a very narrow target so the strategy is working, but is it the right strategy?" said one fast-food industry executive. "From a traffic perspective ... the answer is no. They're selling higher-priced products to fewer people, and that's where McDonald's understands that it's a volume-driven business."

This tension continued for more than two months:

Until now, the two sides would clash, but generally come to some form of compromise. But franchisees have recently balked at corporate plans with increasing frequency, with some criticizing the fast-feeder's focus on young males at the expense of women and families, a strategy forged in conjunction with its agency, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, Miami. (Advertising Age, January 9, 2006, Peace breaks out: BK quells franchisee feud; Franchisee board renews relations after fights over chain's marketing tack).

Somehow these King ads managed to persist and even elicit imitations:

We can only imagine what the Burger King suits -- to say nothing of the entire creative department at BK's ad agency of record, Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Miami -- must be thinking every time they see one of a new collection of McDonald's spots featuring various kids and a plastic statue of the iconic Ronald McDonald seated on a bench. (Chicago Sun-Times, March 1, 2006, McDonald's serves BK leftovers)

Now more than three years later, the King persists. Clearly Burger King has access to proprietary data that I do not share. However, almost universally my discussions confirm the original franchisee concern: the ads play well to the target market are irritate almost everyone else.

Let's put it this way, since that original ad appeared, I have not once heard my wife suggest going to Burger King for a salad.

Fast forward to this week, and I see a Tweet by a former Tech Student @humbearto that read:

Hilarious: www.firemeetsdesire.com Click for the king. Oh Burger King, when will you stop outdoing yourself? 8:41 AM Dec 16th from web.

As you can see in the screen shot above, Burger King has launched a new King-based Web site for the Whopper-scented fragrance, Flame. Perhaps the weirdest part is that they actually made the fragrance, and you can order it from the Web site.

The visual humor comes from the idea that either the King or the scent would be sexy.

This online marketing effort will surely drive traffic to the Web site and young males to the stores. But they were going anyway. In order to succeed, you have to be able to expand beyond the base.

I liken this to John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate. Of course she played well with the base. They loved her. But were they going to vote for Obama? Of course not.

And although there is something to be said for energizing the base, I don't see the King brining in new customers.

CNN's Anderson Cooper even called the spray, "news of the weird."

Newspapers RIP; Detroit Raises White Flag

I started my career as a newspaper reporter for the Las Cruces Sun-News. Before that I interned for The Modesto Bee, and I was the editor-in-chief of New Mexico State's student newspaper, the Round Up for two years.

The Round Up is/was/will forever be the best job that I ever had.

When I left NMSU with diploma-in-hand in 1997, I was as "print" as you could be. Man, did I love newspapering.

Read about how cult members become completely devoted to their cause, and that is how I felt about the institution of the daily newspaper.

It was my calling.

Veteran newsman Mack Lundstrom only intensified that love during my Dow Jones Newspaper Fund internship boot camp at San José State that summer. If you ever wanted to love a newspaper, just spend a few hours talking to Mack. He's still my hero.

Many fluke events led me away from the daily newspaper, but I have missed it nearly every day. And it has been especially sad to watch the industry die as the business model implodes.

But I have to admit that I wasn't ready for what I saw today on Twitter, posted by @MarketingProfs:

Detroit newspapers quit print home delivery: http://tinyurl.com/5k4vxj

What? How is that even possible? What? OK, maybe in 2018, but 2008? Twenty-bleeping-oh-eight?

It read like a headline from the Onion. But it was painful nonfiction.

According to the Wall Street Journal story:

The Free Press and the News would be the first dailies in a major metropolitan market to curtail home delivery and drastically scale back their print editions. Other newspapers are contemplating similar moves in response to the erosion of advertising and the rising costs of printing and delivery. In October the Christian Science Monitor said it will stop printing a daily newspaper in April and move instead to an online version with a weekly print product.

Insane. Just insane.

I get it -- and I'm even part of the problem with this blog, my Facebook and Twitter pages (follow me on Twitter). And I subscribe to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal only on Sundays. But I just cannot explain the gravitas with which this hits me.

Being in my mid-30's makes me feel antiquated and irrelevant, but this makes me feel as if I have one foot in the grave.

No home delivery -- even on most days -- is a white flag of irreversible consequence.

Internet, I love you. But you took just 14 years to deliver a coup de grâce to my first love. And for that I can never forgive you.

Say it ain't so.

5 Questions: Author, Educator Bob Schaller

Today marks the beginning of a new weekly feature for Communication, Cognition, and Arbitrary Thoughts. I've decided the Weblog needs an infusion of new energy. So each week, I'm going to post a "5 Questions" feature with someone interesting.

I got the inspiration from Bob Schaller, who writes a number of "20 questions" features. Since Bob writes much faster than me, I decided to stick to 5. I also found it appropriate for him to be the first featured individual.

Bob Schaller is an accomplished author, educator, and journalist. He has published more than 35 books, including a recent biography on Olympic swimming sensation Michael Phelps titled, Michael Phelps: The Untold Story of a Champion (available at Amazon.com, $6.29). He is a staff writer for SwimNetwork.com. Currently a doctoral student in mass communications at Texas Tech, Schaller has worked at newspapers in Nebraska, Colorado and California. He also writes for Splash Magazine, published by USA Swimming.

1) What’s the most important characteristic for a writer?

Schaller: To respond to criticism well, to apply it, and always get better. The best experiences I have had always involve editors who take me out to the proverbial woodshed. My talent is marginal, but my work ethic is exceptional. I like that feedback because it makes me better. Also, write across different genres, not just one or two. If you want to make a living at it, that's essential, and it's also a great way to get better. There's a narrative arc even to explicating a technical writing project like explaining a digital camera. Though that's different from a biography, it involves a lot of the same critical-thinking and writing skills. Passion is awesome, and people should have that in whatever they do. But a lot of people who love to write simply aren't that good at it. It's tough, because writing is so personal -- we can all do it at the basic level. But to do it professionally is a whole new skill set. Hey, I can hit a running 12-footer, maybe even more often than Kobe, but the Lakers haven't called. Still.

2) You’ve taught print journalism and are writing a text on online communication. What must journalism students know today that wasn’t taught 10 years ago?

Schaller: There has been a move away from teaching -- in my brief experience -- storytelling skills. The new media present new challenges, and they require different skill sets to tell a story well across media. There are some basic components to journalism and storytelling that ring true across media -- get it right, be clear and concise, etc. -- but doing it on video, print, or audio are different skill sets. It'd be hard to be good in all three, but it shouldn't come at the expense of developing and honing one's skills. Being a jack of all trades and master of none means a small market, or limited opportunities. Or at least get good at one before moving onto the others. I like the idea of the multi-media journalist, but a lot more thought, planning and better learning outcomes are going to have to be developed before the new media journalist is part of the working world -- and curriculum. A big part of that is a lot of the good folks in academia left the "real world" before the Internet. It'd be hard for anyone to teach something they never experienced. The real-time news cycle is a foreign term to those who left the field before they had the pressure of which story to post, or hold, and when to update a Web site, how the news cycle changes fact checking and editing. Knowing how to use the bells and whistles on this new engine is awesome, but not if you are spinning your wheels. Everyone can produce media -- that's awesome -- but not everyone wants to read or hear what EVERYONE else to say. That was the big myth with the citizen journalist, that anyone would care about what others have to say. All the "interactivity" is nasty comments appended at the end of story and below YouTube videos. People want to express themselves -- cool -- but a rant or vulgar diatribe is not a form of journalism whatsoever. Now, if they have rhetoric skills, it's a different conversation -- speaking of which, those should be taught, too.

3) What do you wish that more freelance writers knew?

Schaller: That you are a contractor as much as a writer. You'd better market yourself if you are going to put food on the table. You can't believe in writer's block and be a real writer. Sometimes the words find you, but sometimes you have to find them -- I have repeated that several times teaching, because it's a craft. Someone goes out in the real world and Joe's PR Firm needs a release written by 5 p.m., and you say, "I can't do it, writer's block." Goodbye. Next.

Being a freelance writer is a great life, a life of dreams. But your name is your brand, so you'd better attach it to projects you are committed to do, and do well. Also, there's this myth about freelancing that you have no boss. Anyone who signs a paycheck to you is your boss, and if you make them mad once, you run the risk of never writing for that Web site or magazine again -- worse, it might extend to ALL the editors in that person's network, because we all know that word travels fast in these times. Also, don't ever miss a deadline. I try to "comically" beat deadlines -- to get the assignment done well and turned in as quickly as possible, so fast that the editor laughs because she or he "can't believe how fast'' I turned it in. Because when they need something under the gun in the future, they will remember you for that. And usually, with we-need-this-fast assignments, the pay is correspondingly higher because of the urgency.

4) You have amazing networking skills. What is the biggest mistake that recent graduates make in networking?

Schaller: Thinking people owe them something. I tried to help someone here, and they were so mad they didn't have an answer that week, that person stopped talking to me even when we passed in the hall. Think I will help that person again? Not likely. Also, remember that everything you do is an opportunity to network. Even if you are working for a poverty-level wage at a nonprofit (which is awesome, that's just not me), you are going to deal with big companies. Make connections, send a thank you -- send a resume and work sample. No is going to move you up unless you move yourself up. A lot of people love filling out applications online, and that's cool if it is asked for, but that's just getting you in line -- I want my students and friends at the front of the line so they get a shot, and what happens from there is up to them. Another important thing is that people think the opportunities are endless. They are, but if you get an interview, don't give it anything other than your best. You have a million arrows in your sheaf, but you only get one shot at most targets. Miss once, and that often is it. Also, don't ever react to a perceived (or even real) disrespect if there's a networking opportunity. Sometimes, people don't mean what they say, or they are having a bad day and take it out on you -- they'll remember the person who took the high road for all the right reasons, and you might get a job, and an apology, down the road. If you react, you just got to feel good for a second, and doors have closed. I'd rather chug a gallon of pride than throw away a five-figure freelance gig over ego.

5) If someone were to write a biography on Bob Schaller, what should the title be?

Schaller: Dumb luck uncovered: How do these things happen?

Thanks, Bob!

Need to Win Lottery So I Can Design Cool Stuff

I could have thought of this.

I should have thought of this.

With a little bit of help, I could have coded this.

I feel as if I missed out.

http://www.wefeelfine.org/

Brands, Clutter, Web 2.0, & Ambient Awareness

There are some people in the world that I want to know what they're doing.

Not BFFs or anything like that. Just interesting people. So we're friends on Facebook, or I follow them on Twitter.

Since I'm a mass communications prof, I like to keep up with opinion leaders in the new technology field.

Today, one of the almost complete strangers that I follow on Twitter posted (or Tweeted, but I hate that word) this: "Tackling Social Media Strategy :: how do you use social media to create ambient awareness with journalists, publications & influentials?"

And I thought, "ambient awareness"? I was pretty sure I could figure it out, but I direct messaged her to see just what she meant, and she was nice enough to write back.

She pointed me to this awesome story by the New York Times.

Apparently those people about whom I want to know a little bit are those about for whom I have "ambient awareness." OK.

But does that translate to a company?

I talk a lot about Lovemarks (official site), so I know that we care a lot about the perceived personalities of brands. But do we really care about the companies?

I love Tide. But I don't much care what's going on at Tide right now. This may be different for a service company -- especially a Web 2.0 service company, such as Google or Digg. However, that's a pretty narrow sector of the economy to devise a marketing strategy for.

So if you were to reach out to me through the social networks, dear Web, would I care, or would it be yet evermore clutter in the advertising landscape?

So, do you care what's going on with the companies you love? Comment here!

Probably, only Tim will comment. But he has good things to say. So read his hopefully inevitable comment and leave a comment yourself.

Stop Reading This and Pick Up a Book

What short attention span?

Read here.

Interesting Political Campaign

Check out this page by Sean Tevis, who is running for state representative in my native state of Kansas.

It's an interesting campaign.

Toys from Google Labs: Finding Sets

I stumbled across a toy under development at Google, Google Sets. If I am reading things correctly, this particular tool must not be under very active development because I believe its inception date was 2002.

At any rate, the basic idea of the tool is to enter up to five search terms, and the algorithm will attempt to make either a Small Set (15 items or fewer) or a Large Set from those items.

For example, if you enter titles of reality television shows, it returns more reality shows.

However, it appears to be a bit useful for stalking.

I entered my name and the names of two former colleagues, "samuel bradley", "yongkuk chung", and "mija shin". If you do that and click Large Set, you get a pretty nice list of my former colleagues in the Institute for Communications Research at Indiana University.

Cool ... and spooky.

Perish the Published: Making Texts Affordable

From the New York Times:

EDITORIAL
That Book Costs How Much?
Published: April 25, 2008
Colleges and universities will need to embrace new methods of textbook development and distribution if they want to rein in runaway costs.

My Life's All a Twitter

The devil made me do it, really.

I have added another social networking site to my life.

The devil, by the way, is named Tim Laubacher.

I called him out in a blog post yesterday for not using Facebook or MySpace.

His retort suggested that he was, indeed, using Twitter, which appears to be a stripped-down social networking site that has only status updates.

In my never-ending quest to learn more about "new" media, I signed up for Twitter. You can now follow me there if you are deathly bored and care what I am up to.

You can also follow me via Twitter on the little box in my sidebar (likely down and to the right).

I'm still not sure how this helps my life, but it has caused me to learn how to update my Facebook status using SMS text messages, so that is a bonus.

Great Guinness Campaign: New Holiday

I love this promotion.

Check out Guinness's online integrated promotion to make St. Patrick's a holiday. And sign the petition while you're there.

Advertising: The Future, Now, and Past

Our National Board of Directors was in town this week. In my opinion, this is a great week at Tech, as we have mass communications industry leaders from across the nation travel to Lubbock.

I believe that the experience is very beneficial, as we get a chance to merge ideas about education and industry.

And as was the case last year, a lot of the talk was about change. And there is a lot of change. We spent a lot of time talking about "new media."

On Thursday night, Linda Sease, Scripps' director of marketing/newspapers, gave an address on RedBlueAmerica.com, a new online venture.

The next morning, Clear Channel Television's Bill Moll gave an address on the future of television.

Both talks were informative, and both heavily relied on new technologies.

All of which led me to ask -- God forbid -- was Marshall McLuhan right? Is the medium the message?

And I still think the answer is a resounding "no." It's still the message.

I'm still trying to finish David Ogilvy's Confessions of an Advertising Man. Four decades after is was written, it is still uncannily accurate.

The world is changing quickly. The media world is changing even more quickly. People don't change so quickly.

Good advertising might be a banner ad rather than a 30-second spot -- it really is no longer a 60-second spot. But people are still people. Are connecting with them means understanding them.

Good strategy is good strategy. Young would-be advertisers are still better advised to read Ogilvy than Wired Magazine.

The medium is still the medium. You need to understand it. But it does not drive the day. The consumer drives the day. If you don't understand the medium, you're a fool. Don't try to put 30 words on a billboard. They won't be read, and you'll cause accidents. That's just common sense. But if you throw bad strategy up on the same billboard, you've made an even worse mistake.

You might muddy your brand's image and undo other on-strategy work.

It's absurdly simple, really. You have to understand your customer and your medium. Somehow in this rush to adapt, it seems that the medium is getting top billing. And I suggest that is ill-advised.

BBC Illustrates Mortgage Mess

Although this is already a bit dated, I encourage you to take a look at the BBC's graphic depiction of the problem with sub-prime mortgages.

Separate from the issue is the fact that I think this is an excellent example of new Web-based journalism. The BBC is using the medium to its advantage with visual examples over gray blankets of text.

Some of the graphics are even interactive.

Thanks, Wes.

Would Aristotle Have Had a Blog?

I'm just saying, that's all.

First, are there any great thinkers any more? Are there any great ideas left?

Second, if there are any great thinkers around, do they spend time on new pursuits, such as Weblogs?

If he were alive today, would Aristotle have had a blog?

This is a small part of my current curiosity on gate-keeping, which will be the subject of a forthcoming blog post.

Advertisers Target, Close Grip on YOU

I suppose that we have two choices, really.

At one extreme, we can move to Tibet or Montana. We can buy a manual typewriter and begin our lives off the grid.

Or we can succumb to the grid. If you think about it long enough, you'll realize that the grid is not all that different than the Matrix.

If you're reading this, you're on the grid. And if you're on the grid, someone is tracking your movements. They know where you are, where you've been, and where you are likely to go.

When I teach about database marketing in the principles of advertising class, students often are amazed at how much information the grid knows about them. The grid is getting more clever, too.

In an Associated Press story this morning on CNN.com titled "Ad targeting improves as Web sites track consumer habits," I have learned some new tricks of the grid.

If I use a commercial search engine to look for a restaurant, then it is most likely that I live close to that restaurant. As I search for several businesses in the same vicinity, then it becomes pretty easy to figure out about where I live. Then all of a sudden, the ads in my Web browser start to target to me.

Your opinions about this can range from "clever marketing" to "totalitarian Amerika takeover." The truth, as usual, is likely somewhere in between.

Next year, I intend to travel to Canada. So I might start searching things about Canadian cities. Based upon that, the search engines can learn that I live in Texas and want to travel to Canada. Now I start seeing ads for plane fares between Texas and Canada. Cool or chilling?

Allow me to digress for a moment.

My wife and I quasi-recently saw the movie Wild Hogs (which we loved, by the way -- see a review here). Now, I am not a motorcycle person. But I was curious about a few things after seeing the movie, so I did some Googling.

For the next two weeks, one of the technology-related Web sites that I visit had nothing but Harley-Davidson banner ads. I found that really curious. Coincidental? Perhaps.

And here's the biggest problem. Right now, I am writing to you on Blogger, which is owned by Google. So right there in the upper right corner of the screen is my e-mail address. Google need not guess who I am based upon restaurant searches (had to look up the address of Schlotsky's on Friday) because it knows exactly who I am.

So just a minute ago, I had to look up the Web address for Harley-Davidson to include the link. I opened up a new browser window and punched in "www.google.com". What do you think was in the upper right corner of the Google screen? My e-mail address!

I used to wonder why Google allowed me to blog for free. No longer.

Allow me to digress once again.

For the past few weeks, I have been thinking that I should eventually return to the Apple Macintosh platform. I cannot tell you exactly why I have been thinking that, but I have. There are lots of reasons, of course. There are also lots of reasons to stay PC -- how I love thee, MATLAB. But I have had this growing feeling that eventually I will switch back.

Returning to the CNN.com story that started this all, the advertisements on my CNN.com page are all about Macintosh's new OS X Leopard software.

Coincidence? Probably. But I'll never know. And I'll wonder.

But is it bad?

I am pretty agnostic about this. As I said, I am interested in the Mac these days. So if I have to suffer through an advertisement, it might as well be for something relevant to me. That seems good, I think.

There also seems to be some safety in numbers. Sure, the database marketing companies know a lot about me. Sure, my TiVo sells me out every night while I am sleeping. But seriously, there are 300,000,000 of us. Who really cares what I -- as me -- am doing?

And mostly I am pretty comfortable with this. But I did see Amerika in 1987, so it does freak me out just a little bit. Because if someone did want to know, they probably could.

There's a lot of wiretapping and such going around these days. Our distance from the former East German Secret Police seems only a difference in degree rather than a distance in kind. Having the records, after all, is a necessary first step in misusing them.

If you'll excuse me now, I need to go search for a cabin in Montana ... just not online.

Student Times, They Are 'a Changin'

Internet Killed the Papyrus Star

The Buggles will pardon my reference to their 1981 music video, "Video Killed the Radio Star," which was the first video to air on MTV.

Above is a picture of my kid circa December 2003. She was in kindergarten. We thought it was great that she liked the computer, so I set up my old laptop for her, and she played with it until she killed it.

Fast-forward 4 years later, and I am in one room on this computer. She is in another room on another computer. She has been there since she woke up. And if we do not kick her off, she will be there until she goes to bed.

This is a problem.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Perhaps it started with Dr. Rob Potter's blog post about wasting time online. Perhaps it started with my own self-realization that I sink way too much time into this box.

My parents did a great job preparing me for the information society. I had an IBM PC Jr. at a very young age. Some day I'll hunt down a photograph of my old computer.

At any rate, my little PC Jr. prepared me for this world. It certainly prepared me for Annie Lang's lab at Indiana. Navigating DOS? No problem. I'd been doing it since I was 10.

I used to program in Basic. In the house in which I grew up, there was a large party room on the third floor, and there was a full kitchen / bar. For some reason I was fascinated with playing bar. But I didn't have any drinks to mix. So I wrote a program in Basic that tuned my PC into a cash register. You could order drinks, and it would figure out the total. I loved it.

I also love cash registers, but that's a story for another day.

At any rate, I could use the computer to do stuff. And along the way, I probably learned something about logic and all of that. But what I could not do was waste endless hours on the thing reading about the Alabama-LSU football game in both the Tuscaloosa paper and the Baton Rouge paper, as I did this morning.

When I started college in 1991, the Internet was still not ready for prime time. So I did my homework on the computer. I wrote papers on the computer. But that was about it. No matter how much time it took, the computer was not some magnet that seemed to be sucking my life away.

We fooled around with Compuserve in 1993 and 1994, but not much was going on there. It was not until I arrived as editor of New Mexico State's student newspaper in May 1995 that I had my first high-speed access. And by that time, there were enough Web sites to make it worth my while.

Still, even by then, it did not consume me. There was too much work to do. Homework. My column. Everything.

Somewhere along the way, that changed. The Internet became an addiction. And I don't throw that word around lightly. Much to the (perhaps) joy of Texas Tech doctoral student Wendy Maxian, who is interested in these things, I get the DTs when I am away from the Internet.

Seriously. If freaks me out. This summer, we were staying with my wife's family, and it was not really easy for me to get on the Internet. I felt horrible. I might as well have been sleeping in some gutter covered in newspaper wishing I had $5 and a glass pipe.

The same thing happened two weeks ago during our reunion at NMSU. I'm a college football junkie, and I hated being away from the scores. I was having the time of my life, but I kept wondering about the Tennessee/Alabama score. And the Indiana score. And the K-State score.

This morning, I woke up two hours ago. I emptied the dishwasher. And then I poured a cup of coffee -- and other than 5 minutes to eat a bowl of Cracklin' Oat Bran -- here I've been for two hours.

I toured the country of college football. It was fun to read about Nebraska's free fall in the Lincoln newspaper. Then I checked my regular litany of blogs. Then I checked some other sites. Then I read Advertising Age's small agency blog.

Which led me to Bart Cleveland's post titled, "Memory Almost Full ... of Junk."

I think you can see where this is going.

"But checking out your fantasy football site when you should be looking for inspiration to write an ad for a woman's perfume is self-delusion. How in the world can anyone pay attention to the task at hand if they are compelled to check their email, I.M. and favorite sites every few minutes? My kids say they can do it, but then when I see their report cards, they tell a different story. Old or young, we cannot be distracted and do another task well," Cleveland wrote.

He's right. Dr. Potter was right. The tool has become the master for too many of us.

Science fiction writers love to hatch plots about how computers take over the world. While we're busy dismissing this as foolish since we don't see any lasers flying, perhaps the computers already have won.

E-mail: Not Entirely Unlike Heroin

I love e-mail. I loved e-mail when e-mail wasn't cool.

I remember sitting in our house in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 1993 with a Compuserve account and no one to e-mail. There were weird things called Jughead and Archie. I was confused and mad. It was like having a car and no roads.

Today there is no such problem. Scads of messages clog my inbox every day, and luckily for today at least, the vast majority of those do not involve male enhancement. I cleaned my inbox yesterday, so I am down to 813 messages.

So I check my e-mail approximately 8,321 times a day. Which I -- of course -- know is insane.

When I go out-of-town, I feel like some sort of drying out smack addict when I cannot check e-mail. Which is, of course, also insane.

Thanks to colleague Dr. Rob Potter, the audio professor, for posting a great audio podcast on this very topic. Well written and eerily close to home.

Time to check my e-mail.

Going Technorati

Technorati Profile

Same Technology that Offers Me A&M Gear?

From the New York Times.

Members of the booming social network Web sites treat their individual profile pages as a creative canvas for personal expression.

The social networking companies see those pages as a lush target for advertisers — if only they could customize the ads. Although Internet companies have talked about specifically aiming their ads since the inception of the Web, so far advertising on social networks has been characterized by mass-marketed pitches for mortgages and online dating sites.