THINK!: The three best economic indicators in the world to tell you when to buy shares in which companies

Monday 20 October 2008

The three best economic indicators in the world to tell you when to buy shares in which companies

My stock picking technique works on a number of variables but my personal favourites are:

a) talking with Black Cabs drives in London - if business is slowing for them time to run;

b) quarterly reports of temporary/interim employment agencies - cut backs show up in real time earnings and reveal more, I believe, than advertising spending and earlier;

c) corporate advertising buys: if a big global company buys a big global campaign buy their stock - they've got money to burn and they know something we don't (The inverse also holds true e.g when did you last see an exspensive brand campaign from the IHT?) That doesn't mean hold their stock, just that there is in MHO a direct correlation between big investor relations/corporate brand campaigns and short-term stock market moves (6-12 months). Someday an economist will do a study on this and I will be proved wrong/right.

However, a big buy in a monthly in a market that is moving faster than magazine delivery trucks does not count. HSBC - big exposure to Asia, big exposure to Asian financial crisis to come/come harder. That said, this campaign began in September...On the edge.

The more dynamic point here is that a) someone thinks print is still a good idea and b) entire print issue/internet inventory for one day or more buys and full page only ads in newspapers might be a model for the future.

October 20, 2008
HSBC Sponsors Entire Issue of New York Magazine
By DOUGLAS QUENQUA
There is more than one way to look at HSBC Bank’s decision to buy 24 ad pages in this week’s New York magazine, making it the largest single-issue advertiser in the magazine’s history.
Given the recent turmoil in the banking industry, one could see it as a case of bad timing. Is the American public really in the mood for an aggressive marketing pitch from a bank right now?
Or one could consider it kismet: Now more than ever, Americans need to be reassured of their financial security and the stability of their financial institutions. The ads in New York center on the idea that people see things differently depending on their position in life, and that HSBC understands that, making it well-suited to work with all kinds of people in all kinds of financial situations.
Not surprisingly HSBC, the largest European bank with operations in 83 countries around the world, is taking the second view. The bank says its domination of the Oct. 27 issue of New York, which has been in the works for several months, delivers the right message at the right time.
“Now more than ever before people are reappraising not just how they manage their money, but what’s important to them,” Tracy Britton, head of marketing for HSBC Bank, North America, said. “This campaign is very timely and appropriate.”
HSBC’s New York presence, which includes every full-page ad in the magazine before the listings section as well as the back cover, extends online as well. The bank will be the sole advertiser on NYMag.com on Monday and Tuesday of this week, with a “significant share of voice” after that. HSBC is also sending e-mail messages to subscribers inviting them to enter a contest to help write the copy for a later ad.
Buying most or all of the ads in a magazine — or on a Web site or TV show — has become a popular tactic in recent years as marketers try to stand out in an increasingly cluttered field. Target bought all the ads in an issue of The New Yorker in 2005, and this year ABC bought all the ads in a single issue of TV Guide.
The single- or dominating-sponsor approach is attractive to publishers at a time when magazine ad sales are falling. Consumer magazine ad pages fell 12.9 percent in the third quarter of this year, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. New York magazine’s ad pages fell 1.7 percent from 2007 to 2008.
Neither HSBC nor New York, which is published by New York Media Holdings, would discuss the cost of the ad package, but according to New York’s rate card, a single full-page ad costs about $64,000, and the back cover is about $81,000, which places the value of HSBC’s buy at about $1.6 million. However, publishers typically give considerable discounts for bulk buying.
The New York ad buy is one part of a global campaign from HSBC that began in September called “Different Values.” The effort is centered on print ads that show a single picture of an everyday object repeated three times, each with a single word offering an interpretation of the image. For example, a picture of a baby is shown with the words “love,” “legacy” and “expense.”
Such ads are running in Vanity Fair, The Week, GQ, Harper’s and others. Of the 15 such ads in this week’s New York 10 were created specifically for the issue.
The campaign also includes a television ad, created as a 90-second spot but shown in 60- and 30-second versions as well, that tells the story of a woman who is arrested in a protest of a logging operation, but is revealed to be romantically involved with a lumberjack. A voiceover says, “We recognize how people value things differently. So what we learn from one customer helps us better serve another.”
The ads were created by HSBC’s agency, JWT of New York and London. JWT is part of the WPP Group.
Although HSBC has largely been absent from the headlines surrounding the banking industry’s troubles, it is facing challenges of its own. It reported a 29 percent decline in profit for the first six months of 2008, and its stock price has fallen about 30 percent in the last year to about $70 a share.
This leads to a third possible interpretation of the New York ad buy: a show of strength.
“HSBC is choosing to make a strong statement when there’s a lot of turmoil” among its competitors, Ellen Oppenheim, chief marketing officer for the Magazine Publishers of America, said.