Notes From the Underground

Guerrillas Put ROI Against the Wall

2004-06-22T08:57:00.000-07:00

All guerrilla marketers are familiar with the following scenario. After receiving an RFP, the creative department has crunched out a fabulous campaign that's not only guaranteed to generate buzz but is also well under budget. Everyone involved in the campaign is totally stoked to hit the streets, and the brand managers around the table during the pitch are nodding their heads in enthusiastic accord. The meeting ends with handshakes and backslaps.

Then something weird happens. A week later, the client calls back in deep consternation; the higher-ups are putting the kibosh on the guerrilla campaign. The money is going to a more "proven" marketing discipline. The bosses are worried about ROI, and guerrilla campaigns are just too damn hard to measure.

The issue of ROI for guerrilla marketing forays is quite timely and has received ample attention in Strategy a few issues back. How do you measure guerrilla marketing success and failures? What are some common standards that can be used to measure guerrilla marketing, and when are those standards going to be developed? Will guerrilla measurement really hinge on just how many consumers received a coupon, visited a site or remembered a street stunt?

Man, I hope not. In fact, I propose that the term ROI is outright jettisoned when talking about guerrilla marketing campaigns, because the rise of guerrilla marketing makes present ROI measurement obsolete. That's right. Obsolete. Guerrillas must base their measurement on a new term for a new way to market: ROE - the Return on Experience.

Let's first look at two cornerstones of present ROI measurement - the number of impressions and the derived sales from those impressions - and how guerrilla marketing is poised to spin these metrics into a whole new way of doing business.

In the Internet heyday, success was measured in how many "impressions" a site or banner ad received. This type of tally wasn't invented by online operators; they were merely copying the calculating norms of mass media - how many eyeballs saw a magazine ad or a TV commercial. Success in these realms is measured by excess. The more eyeballs, the better. Period.

The rise of guerrilla marketing is the beginning of the end for mass marketing as we know it today. Guerrilla marketers hone their strategies and tactics for an experience between a brand and a consumer, not merely an impression. This is a revolutionary change in marketing.

An impression for a guerrilla marketer can mean only one thing: a personal interaction with the consumer and brand to create a memorable and relevant experience that is nothing less than impressive. Watching television - and the ads - is a passive experience. But guerrilla marketing makes a connection with the consumer that hasn't been achievable with traditional marketing. It's not about reach, it's about depth.

Now let's say that sales metrics are the common denominator of ROI measurement - the "lowest-hanging fruit on the ROI tree," as Stephen Woods, former president of Pierce Promotion, called it in a recent issue of Promo Magazine. Then the real challenge for ROI measurement lies in the higher branches, where measuring such things as purchase intent, brand loyalty, personal values, conversion rates and other unpredictable consumer behaviors are harder to come by. The health and vitality of these higher branches are the crucial metrics for ROE measurement.

Guerrilla marketers are the vanguard of a whole new way of doing business, what Harvard University economists Joseph Pine and James Gilmore call the Experience Economy.

They posit that "the next competitive battleground lies in staging experiences. An experience is not an amorphous construct; it is as real an offering as any service, product or commodity. In today's service economy, many companies simply wrap experiences around their traditional offerings to sell them better. To realize the full benefit of staging experiences, however, businesses must deliberately design engaging experiences that command a fee.

This transition from selling services to selling experiences will be no easier for established companies to undertake and weather than the last great economic shift from the industrial to the service economy."

ROE is long-term measurement. It is a continuum of consumer experiences, interactions and reactions that, if put in mathematical equations and permutations, would closely resemble those of chaos theory. But they shouldn't. ROE isn't wholly a statistics game, although quantifiable information should coexist with qualified insights.

ROE measurement is closer to anthropology, even history, than mathematics. Knowing that 100,000 coupons were distributed and 50,000 boxes were sold the week a guerrilla campaign was deployed is necessary. Charting and strategizing the future sale of millions of boxes resulting from the guerrilla campaign in the next week and in the next decade is crucial.

The purest guerrilla campaigns often originate in the nexus of the psychographic they are trying to reach and are sparked organically from within the core to reach the core. Guerrilla marketers know the ROE on a particular target psychographic because they constantly keep in touch with it, gauge it, learn from it and fully immerse themselves in it.

Measuring ROI is too clinical - you just have to think of those one-way mirrors in focus groups sessions to quickly conjure up images of lab rat experiments. Measuring ROE should be organic, a process that comes from within. Every guerrilla program must deliver brand messaging outward, and at the same time, take in and absorb consumer insights and demands in an informal manner with reporting standards that move away from ROI metrics and into ROE territory. Every campaign should result in better understanding of the consumer beyond the original scope of the program. This goal should be inherent in every plan of attack. It's part of ROE.

If guerrilla marketing is the early manifestation of the Experience Economy and the power of experiential marketing, then the methods of measuring ROE should be experiential as well. Informal exit surveys, residual measurements, long-term tracking, Internet querying and one-on-one interviews are the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

The question isn't whether the Experience Economy is going to occur, but rather when it's going to happen. Marketers need to make the transition a smooth one. The first step is to forget the transactional metrics of ROI and focus on the equity-building ideas of ROE. Now if only the bosses could wrap their heads around the concept, and step confidently into a brave new experiential world.

Please post any and all comments here. Thank you.

Seed, Then Sample

2004-05-05T09:56:00.000-07:00

Sampling is increasingly being integrated into the overall marketing mix for almost every consumer product launch. Getting the goods out on the street is a vital component to brand awareness pushes, product launches and trial. Targeted, focused and ROI-driven sampling campaigns are increasingly preferred over mass blow-outs.

Experiential sampling is the buzzword these days, a concept that emphasizes a consumer's value-added experience to drive trial and sales. It's hard to find sampling campaigns that rely on simply handing out product on the street corner. Sampling has become much more sophisticated than that.

For instance, a Dasani campaign for Coca-Cola gave consumers massages with their sample-size bottle of water. A Unilever campaign in the U.S. affixed three million samples of its new antibacterial wipes on popcorn bags at movie theatre concession stands. My firm conducted an in-mall sampling campaign for Rimmel London cosmetics by offering teenage girls and their mothers an on-site make-over, while a branded über-cool environment let their friends hang out and listen to a live DJ.

Experiential sampling introduces and keeps a brand or product on the consumer's radar screen. And in the youth market's cluttered brand landscape, a unique experience translates into a powerful purchasing incentive. Teens and young adults love freebies and tactical sampling is a highly effective way to reach them.

As youth marketers, we've found that when a sampling campaign is supported by a trend seeding campaign, response and pick-up rates jump to exciting levels. The notion and methodology of guerrilla "buzz" marketing has certainly been getting ample attention as more and more marketers see the value of a targeted word-of-mouth viral program.

Seeding (i.e. feeding the product to) trend-setting youth - the so-called mavens and connectors of their generation - is a powerful tool when creating buzz. The inherent youthful mistrust of all things marketing is effectively eroded when a hip peer has been seen using or talking about a particular product. Since sampling programs are increasingly market-specific, it's quite convenient to seed one market at a time, then sample with an experiential campaign people would not easily pass up nor forget.

Trend seeding relies on influencers who are obsessed with being ahead of the curve when it comes to new products and trends. Identifying and recruiting these influencers is the most arduous task. Trend seeders don't want to be an instrument of marketing; they want to be appreciated and made important by their VIP access to new products and brands.

Once on-board, these trend seeders naturally and enthusiastically take over spreading word-of-mouth. Hollywood studios, record labels, liquor companies and even automotive giants consistently use trend seeding to drive interest and buzz.

Mass market campaigns are costly and prone to be lost in the media shuffle, but trend seeding can sometimes have much more impact on results. One only has to read Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference to realize the potential of riding the trend wave. The potential of tipping a product into mass-appeal hysteria is nowhere greater than with the youth market, and a sampling campaign can only feed the fire once word starts getting around.

A trend-seeding campaign can also fuel your creative fire. Since youth sampling is heavily dependent on the experience, feedback from trend seeders can greatly improve your experiential sampling campaign. Do not, however, use trend seeders as a focus group. That's not their purpose and their trend-setting egos will be badly bruised if they feel they are not the VIPs you purport them to be.

The danger with buzz marketing is its own popularity and the glut of undercover messaging that comes out of it.

Buzz or viral marketing is paradoxical in nature: the more marketers use it, the less effective it is. Yet a sample of a product or brand enjoying viral buzz legitimizes that word-of-mouth with actual product on the street. Sampling takes buzz to the next level, since getting and trying the product is a cool thing to do, while buzz assures marketers that the kids won't ignore the sampling experience.

Welcome to the Sub-Viral World

2004-05-05T09:54:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, sneaker maker Puma got a huge boost in buzz.

Hipsters, fashionistas and Internet junkies set the message boards ablaze and servers humming by distributing and downloading the greatest print ad Puma had ever conceived.

The purveyors of über-cool eagerly began to pump up Puma's street-cred by referencing the image as a groundbreaking and brilliant leap in display ad creative. It was provocative, daring, unambiguously sexual - even dirty. Certainly dirty.

Without inadvertently floating into the pornographic, I'll try to explain the ad obliquely: a woman in Puma sneakers is, um, servicing a guy in Puma sneakers. The picture is cut off at the woman's shoulders, for a smattering of ambiguity. Oh yeah, there's a Puma bag in there somewhere, corner logo placement and an unmentionable coup de grace too, but I won't go into it.

Soon after the release, Internet chatter on blogs (personal Internet logs) and word-of-mouth buzz in most urban circles of pop culture dilettantism were awash in Puma pandemonium.

Because the ad pushed the boundaries of mainstream thinking and broke social taboos - certainly exhibiting an ethos that is warmly embraced by the youth-dominated counter-culture and underground scenes - it was an instant success. Not surprisingly, the "alternative" crowd already marched in Puma sneakers. The resonance (and relevance) of the image - actually two separate images in exactly the same pose - was obvious.

But there was a problem: Puma never commissioned the ad. In fact, as soon as buzz reached critical mass, they declared the ads a fake and blitzed out cease-and-desist orders to various bloggers and sites, dangling legal action above anyone posting the "defamatory image."

The corporate's heavy-handed tactics started another round of blog buzz just as quickly as the ads themselves. This time, however, the buzz was less than favourable.

But what if you subscribe to the notion that even bad press is good press? Many cyber-pundits like gawker.com, memefirst.com and ad-rag.com began to insinuate that Puma had sneaked in a buzz marketing double-dip through a remarkable online viral strategy: surreptitiously releasing the ad itself, then vehemently denying it had done so.

(Puma's counsel said in a statement: "Please be advised that such offensive image was created without our knowledge or consent.")

Welcome to the wacky world of "sub-viral marketing."

Sub-viral marketing hinges on subversive parody of well-known brands that is distributed as either picture or video e-mail - usually with a "fwd:" tag in your Inbox - and is based on the theory that satirizing a brand effectively triggers its mnemonic recognition in the consumer's subconscious.

Sub-viral content has to look amateurish, feel subversive, usually display risqué content and be totally deniable as corporate intrusion. Since sub-viral marketing won't really work if the companies fess up to releasing the parodies, the best sub-viral campaigns are indistinguishable from genuinely amateur Internet parodies.

According to London's Guardian newspaper, sub-viral marketing is the latest trend increasingly being employed by brand behemoths such as Budweiser, Levi's and MasterCard.

I should admit that 20% of my daily e-mail output involves forwarding off Internet detritus to peers across the world. Of course, I need to first filter out all the mundane, moronic and puerile gaga that inexorably finds its way into the Inbox - about 99.99% of all bit packets coursing through the pipelines.

But a good and engaging fwd: will get my attention, and subsequently the attention of my peers, perhaps enough so to spark a potential tipping point.

Sub-viral marketing hopes to capitalize on that creative spark, and whereas a buzz-worthy amateur parody comes across once in a blue moon, a brand parody developed in top creative shops around the world has immediate impact in cyberspace.

And therein lies the temptation for major mass marketers to embrace self-mocking machinations.

Since the Puma photo hit the scene, dozens of Internet brand parodies have been put under the microscope by cyber-pundits.

There's the Nokia short video that shows a ceiling fan flinging a cat across the room.

There's a Levi's spoof called "Rub Yourself" which reveals an onanistic teenager doing exactly what the title purports.

There's the infamous MasterCard "Priceless" parody about a drunken teen couple and the guy's less-than-successful attempts for a happy ending on the girl's front porch.

And who can forget Budweiser's "Wassup" parodies that inundated Western society's Outlook a few years ago?

These are now suspected of being prototypical sub-viral campaigns that tipped over into mass phenomena, with wide debate as to whether the clips are amateur subversive genius or ad agency brilliance.

Ultimately the debate is inconsequential because it's ephemeral, as most things on the Internet are. But from a marketer's perspective, lessons learned from sub-viral marketing are not inconsequential in the least.

As a report by New York-based marketing and branding firm Harvest Communications attests, "whether they are negative or positive, brand parodies offer companies invaluable consumer insight that is not forced out of a focus group, but homegrown and authentic. They offer us clues about what resonates with customers, what concerns them and [are] possible early indicators of public opinion."

Certainly Puma got a sneak-peek into the headspace of their target customers. For two weeks after the images were posted, thousands of message board posts relayed the rants, raves and opinions of the so-called mavens, connectors and influencers of pop culture.

But Puma got a headache from the entire episode as well: only a few days ago, the same pundits that squawked about Puma's brilliant strategy began to readily admit that the ads are indeed fake!

Guerrillas vs. Terrorists

2004-05-05T09:53:00.000-07:00

Guerrilla marketing methodology is nascent and therefore exciting. It's exportable to myriad sectors of the economy, and has the dynamism to breathe a little revolutionary spirit into an award-obsessed marketing industry. And when applied to the demographic that I mostly serve and market to - that ever-elusive 18-to-24 slice of the pie - guerrilla marketing campaigns elicit astounding resonance and relevancy.
The press is increasingly giving coverage to guerrilla campaigns conducted by both large multinationals and nimble boutique concerns.

Most recently, marketing watchdogs and the press had a field day with two street campaigns that were described as the latest hit-and-run street tactics of cutting-edge guerrilla marketers.

The first front-pager to make it above the fold in The Seattle Times, and to almost instantaneously get picked up by the AP, was a local campaign for Pizza Schmizza.

Get this: the pizza pusher paid homeless people in Seattle to hold up signs that read: "Pizza Schmizza paid me to hold this sign instead of asking for money." The AP quoted "advertising industry watchers" pronouncing the campaign as a "first of its kind," and citing the perennial mantra of "ad clutter" to explain the imperative need for alternative marketing channels.

To that effect, Pizza Schmizza has also handed out fake parking tickets with pizza coupons on them, and has blitzed neighbourhoods with election placards reading "Elect Schmizza for Dinner."

And then there's www.GoldenPalace.com. The online gambling house slathered its URL on a porn star and paid her to streak topless at the U.S. Open. "Guerrilla tactics" were in the press as sports hacks repeatedly wrote of tourney winner Jim Furyk's surprise at landing in the lascivious embrace of mammary marketing. Earlier this year, another branded streaker emblazoned with the casino's online co-ordinates bared his charms at the French Open and at the UEFA Cup soccer final in Spain.

Certainly, GoldenPalace.com knows its market - wealthy, fun-loving and high-living males. The multi-continent streaker attack indeed resulted in millions of visits to the site, and certainly established the casino as the progenitor of body billboards. And Pizza Schmizza got a sizable boost, I imagine, in publicity and awareness. The owner was actually quoted in The Seattle Times spinning the campaign as an altruistic endeavour and not a pure marketing ploy.

But neither of these campaigns is guerrilla marketing. To be sure, guerrilla marketing takes audacity to an art-form. Guerrilla methodologies are predicated on alertness, mobility and attack. But equally paramount to any successful guerrilla foray, whether in battle or marketing, is the absolute co-operation of the people and a perfect knowledge of the target market. Pizza Schmizza and GoldenPalace.com didn't show the world a guerrilla movement. Rather, they assaulted and shocked an already marketing-savvy (and weary) consumer with a terrorist blitz of senseless marketing.

Terrorist marketing seeks airtime. It is parasitic and base. It is indiscriminate, impersonal and ineffective. If there's a lack of audacity to terrorism, there's usually plenty of shock value.

Terrorist campaigns calcify the consumer into mistrust and provoke a negative reaction against creative marketing. Even handing out Pepsi cans on the corner can become a perilous mission.

Because a basic premise of a guerrilla movement rests with the support of the people, guerrilla marketing should be deployed when giving value to the consumer, and presenting a memorable experience. It's the only way that a guerrilla campaign will really work. It's not enough to surprise or to rile the consumer. There's more to it than that.

Guerrilla marketing methods use high-impact, dynamic and unconventional face-to-face interactions at times and places where the target market is most receptive to learning about and experiencing a brand. The creative strategy and selected targets will surely depend on product, messaging, desired effect and consumer psychographics - but the aesthetic to the campaigns must never reach lowest-common-denominator tactics.

Guerrilla marketing is inexorably infiltrating into the general marketing mix to break through the white noise. Terrorist marketing, however, just makes noise, and should be relegated as another reckless contribution to the panoply of mixed messages that are directed at a flabbergasted consumer.

Profit in Pennies: Marketing to the Poor

2004-05-05T09:50:00.000-07:00

If we were to take a relativist global outlook, the marketing that we do essentially revolves around selling products and services in a hemispheric marketplace where it's fairly easy to motivate the typical consumer.

There is more than enough wealth to go around for thousands of brands to get snatched up by an enthusiastic consumer who has the deepest pockets in the world. We got it good here.

But what about the majority of the world, which is comprised of much poorer nations?

Marketing in the Third World is a tough job. But marketers there are coming up with unique, innovative and outright exemplary marketing strategies.

Why should I care about non-competing firms pursuing a consumer that can't afford my clients' products anyway? Because there is a large stratum of consumers in North America that is so resistant to mainstream brands and is so stingy toward major purchases that marketing to it may mean looking for examples from the Third World .

A growing number of consumers who don't (or can't) eagerly translate traditional marketing into purchases - for instance, a percentage of students and the low-income youth underground who are frequently un(der)employed and media-cynical - are many times more affluent than the average Nigerian or Chilean, but their lagging propensity to purchase imposes a need for some creative marketing.

In Brazil , buying a vehicle is extremely price-prohibitive. In response, Brazilians have come to rely on pooling money with other buyers to form a consórcio. A number of buyers pool small payments and at the end of each month a lucky winner is chosen by lottery to use the car for the month. If enough people chip in, two cars may be distributed, one by chance and the other going to the person who contributed the most that month.

What a great idea for a North American automaker when marketing to the student consumer (or first-time buyer). A car for this psychographic is a refuge from parents and pressure; it's new-found mobility and freedom, as well as the prime catalyst for entering consumer society and growing up.

But purchase, insurance and maintenance of a car are also huge financial strains. As bundled services and payment options have become a commodity among car suppliers, a fearless marketer can take these operations to the next level with a consórcio-type model, and the first to respond to them will be the youth demographic - because it's new, simple, peer-based and because it makes sense.

Major appliance companies in Mexico offer credit based on home or vehicle titles, not banking records or credit ratings. Cell phones in Latin America are stripped of all non-essential gadgetry to allow the handsets to retail at $25, and mobile customers pay only when they make a call instead of being charged for both receiving and dialing a number, which is standard billing in the U.S.

These types of purchasing incentives are almost ideal for a young consumer who has no financial or credit history but a title to a second-hand car, and for the mobile and connected young adult market that wants to eschew costly cell charges and fixed lines, not to mention their parents who are confounded by their monthly statements.

A mainstay in practically all Third World habitats is the street vendor, hawking individually packaged products: cigarettes, candy, toothpaste, lottery tickets, batteries, etc. Consequently, the Mexican producer of Mentos candies introduced packaging for 11 pieces instead of the 14 sold in the U.S., and display boxes that feature 12 boxes instead of 24, to sell more effectively to both peso-strapped consumers and wholesalers who sell predominantly to small street vendors and newspaper kiosks. In India, the world's largest market for shampoo, the leaders of the sector all sell single-usage sachets for a few rupees.

The smaller-is-better mentality is easily transmutable to youth and young adults who are constantly bumming smokes off of each other, not wanting to dish out on a whole pack, or their single-usage needs for No-Doz, aspirins, batteries or cleaning products. This already exists in thousands of bar bathrooms: Where else can you buy a single pack of French ticklers, cologne, feminine products and just one mint or antacid?

I recently returned from a trip to Argentina and Uruguay, where economic depression has led many of these unfortunate street beggars to master juggling in order to differentiate themselves and basically market themselves for a successful transaction in a sea of competition. How different this approach is to the typical North American panhandler, whose modus operandi is an outstretched hand and a look of shock when the hand-outs don't come.

I hope not to make an asinine comparison, but this difference can be analogous to marketing practices here and there, to the rich and to the poor. The poor there work harder, and so do the marketers trying to reach them.

The same applies to youth here in North America, many of whom are increasingly becoming brand atheists and purchase resisters. Every day it gets harder and harder to successfully influence them, while new and differentiating ideas and executions from marketers are slow in coming.

Interestingly, the exception to my beggar analogy comes from our squeegee kids and street buskers, who actually work for their pennies. Youth marketers should do the same.

Zines: Astoundingly Untapped

2004-04-14T09:51:00.000-07:00

Heritage Minister Sheila Copps' announcement of cuts to the Canadian Magazine Fund (CMF) and the Publications Assistance Program (PAP) has produced a chorus of condemnation from practically all sectors of the Canadian magazine industry.

Under the new funding structure, huge Canadian titles like Maclean's, Canadian Business and Chatelaine will lose hundreds of thousands of dollars of annual funding from the three-year-old CMF. By April 2005, the CMF will dwindle to $16 million, while the PAP will be set at $45.4 million, representing a roughly 30% decrease in funding from 1999 levels when the program was initiated.

The cuts hit the moneyed magazines the hardest, which display the logos of Rogers, Transcontinental or Quebecor on their mastheads. These three top publishers combined raked in more than $25 million from the CMF and PAP this year.

However, a reallocation of funds will open up more than $4 million ear-marked for small community newspapers, ethnic, Aboriginal and minority-language publications. Furthermore, the CMF will increase funding for arts, cultural and literary magazines which will receive access to up to $1 million in editorial and content support. This is good news for a sector of Canadian publishing that had absolutely no coverage from the press during this subsidy imbroglio, nor any respect from fat-cat publishers and mainstream marketers alike - namely, the thriving, idiosyncratic and perennially overlooked world of zines.

Yes, zines. Surely, you must all know what a zine is! (Insert a mischievous wink-wink here.) One of the most interesting cultural phenomena in the past 20 years has been the proliferation of zines, of which the most modern incarnation started with the punk rock and DIY movements in the late '70s.

But the precedents to zines are both numerous and individually ground-breaking. From American Revolutionary broadsides (Ben Franklin self-published) to science-fiction and horror fanzines of the '50s that launched the genres into the mainstream, to Beat poetry chapbooks that shook up the stodgy establishment, the ethos of zine publishing sustains the oft-misused term of alternative culture and cannot be underestimated in its social impact. Soviet-era Samizdat - underground distribution of self-published, handwritten or mimeographed "subversive literature" - was unequivocally a prime catalyst to the demise of a ruthless totalitarian regime.

Today's zines can be superficially described as self-published periodicals that are characteristically marked by small press runs, irreverent slants, highly specialized content angles, non-existence of any operating profits and a rabidly devoted fan base - even if that base will never exceed 100 readers. But if an individual zine may be lacking in readership, the zine universe more than makes up in volume and variety.

Since there are an estimated 10,000 zines in the North American marketplace, this form of publishing can no longer be relegated as a strictly underground product, but must be accepted and appropriated as a significant yet undervalued disseminator of content, and a bridge between marketers and trend-setting youth.

The dominant drivers for the zine revolution are the kids, plain and simple. All youth trends originate from the underground, either organically or propelled along by savvy marketers and content pushers.

The latest punk-infused wave of zine culture is tailored to the individualistic, anti-commodity and community-focused worldview of engaged and influential kids and young adults - the mavens of their generation - who spark the buzz that's almost inevitably assimilated by the mainstream media. Where do you think Rolling Stone finds its "new bands to watch," or trend watchers get their "hot next year" cues?

However, because of the antithetical nature of zines toward the commercial establishment, and the wide variety of sub-cultures and special interests that this world represents, zine publishing is still an astoundingly untapped marketing medium.

So why don't zines get any respect from marketers? In large part, it's because most zines are crappy and unapologetically obscure. Furthermore, a majority have circulations that are beyond laughable. Do advertisers want to hitch their wagon behind a zine that covers illicit horticulture, published and distributed in Medicine Hat, with a monthly print run of 300 copies? Probably not, but insightful and forward-thinking marketers might.

And that type of zine is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. A handful of publications are breaking out of the marginalized zine zone and establishing themselves as something more than just a zine, retaining their alternative skew but soliciting more and more mainstream advertising money. I call these publications "mega-zines" - not a zine and not a mainstream magazine either.

For these "mega-zines," the not-for-profit ethos is simply dismissed as naïve and weak-willed. They place emphasis on quality content over personal musings, slick design over DIY avant-gardism, circulation growth over prideful obscurity, ad revenue over "keeping it real."

Mega-zines like Vancouver's Concrete Powder (board culture), Toronto's Butter (urban fashion) or Pound (hip hop) and Montreal's Motel (alternative rock and culture) are breaking out of the pack, chasing the success of now NYC-based Vice, which grew from a Montreal zine into a mainstream magazine, a clothing line, a record label and a film production company. Because of their enviable combination of specialization and street-level credibility, these pubs are ideal communicators for niche marketing and a source of invaluable youth market insight.

These mega-zines are easing the often confrontational relationship between zine culture and mainstream communication media, and should be nurtured by marketers and advertisers to continue to do so. It's not solely up to the government to help the small publishers, although its quiet nod to mega-zines will certainly contribute to their growth.

The large publishers will do just fine, probably countering their lack of federal funding with increased ad rates, making alternative publishing channels that much more palatable to the mainstream.