Johnson & Johnson is quietly shifting larger parts of its marketing budget from traditional to digital media. And for the second year in a row, it has announced that it will sit out the TV upfront, according to Ad Age.
J&J's measured-media spending plunged $250 million, or 22 percent, in the U.S. last year, to $1 billion - pretty much in line with a forecast that the consumer-products giant would move 20 percent of its marketing budget into unmeasured media, such as search and other direct marketing.
J&J is also putting some money to a centrally controlled innovation fund that its brands can tap by using nontraditional media.
Other digital moves include a 31 percent increase in direct-mail and email programs, and an online marketing and PR effort to promote "Innerstate," a feature film it produced about disease sufferers who use a pricey drug called Remicade, though in the film the drug is never named.
J&J is also getting more use out of BabyCenter.com, a consumer website that it fished out of bankruptcy in 2001 that now reaches 500,000-700,000 people daily, according to Alexa.com data, well ahead of any single website operated by package-goods rivals.