Coke joins J&J in passing on the TV network upfront sale

According to Ad Age, Coca Cola has joined Johnson & Johnson and also will not buy upfront TV ad time, although it will be sending executives to the upfront presentations. The networks have to be worried about this trend; after all, Coke bought more than $190 million in TV ad time last year.

So where is all that money going? Well, truth be told, what's most likely is that advertisers are just holding the money back, intending to buy specific show and commercial spots a la carte later in the year when they know more about their needs and how the fall lineups stack up. But the article cites another trend at J&J that we have also seen in our marketing research:

According to people who have spoken with J&J executives, the company plans to shift more of its marketing spending to nontraditional media -- 20% or more of the budget, according to one of the executives.

With Johnson & Johnson spending more than $1.3 billion on advertising last year, that could mean $260 million moving into non-traditional marketing -- and you can bet a large chunk of that will come out of the TV advertising budgets.

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