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J&J, Skipping Upfront Again, Shifts More Budget to Digital

Johnson & Johnson will once again sit out the television upfront marketplace, and in the meantime is quietly shifting larger parts of its marketing budget from traditional to digital media.

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, according to Ad Age (via MarketingVox).

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. That puts it well ahead of any single website operated by package-goods rivals.