Tag: Advertising

Reading Around on June 2nd

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Some additional reading June 2nd from 10:55 to 18:58:

  • Craigslist’s Forced Censorship of Erotic Ads Saves Journalism Industry | Threat Level | Wired.com – Craigslist’s new policy barring the publication of erotic ads has not only saved lives and stopped prostitution, it’s also saving the dying newspaper industry.

    After the site announced last month under pressure that it would no longer publish erotic ads, sales of erotic ads in local alternative weekly newspapers have soared, according to the Washington City Paper.

  • Good Luck With That – “There are commercial websites, not even bloggers, necessarily,” Bridis added, “that take some of our best AP stories, and rewrite them with a word or two here, and say ‘the Associated Press has reported, the AP said, the AP said.’ That’s not fair. We pay our reporters. We set up the bureaus that are very expensive to run, and, you know, if they want to report what the AP is reporting they either need to buy the service or they need to staff their own bureaus.”

    Bridis did acknowledge the importance of fair use. “Because we do it too, necessarily,” the AP news editor conceded. “If the New York Times has a story, we may take an element of it and attribute it to the Times and build a story around it.”

  • Marilyn Monroe – MARILYN: Never-Published Photos – LIFE – August 1950: A 24-year-old Marilyn, wearing a simple button-down shirt monogrammed with her initials, leans against a tree in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park for LIFE photographer Ed Clark. The negatives for these photos were recently discovered during our ongoing effort to digitize LIFE’s immense and storied photo archive, including outtakes and entire shoots that never saw the light of day. Click through to see more stunning shots of Marilyn, plus the reason why they may never have been published…

Reading Around on May 7th through May 8th

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A few interesting links collected May 7th through May 8th:

  • Barack Hussein Obama’s un-American mustard choice – The latest blogospheric brouhaha? When President Obama ordered a burger earlier this week, he asked for it without ketchup — and with Grey Poupon. No, seriously. Not that this should be surprising by now, but even Sean Hannity has picked up on the story and broadcast it to millions of Fox News viewers. Naturally, in response, various liberal outlets are responding with equal fervor.…Why, then, am I writing about this? Well, because it gives me an excuse to link to a really fascinating article Malcolm Gladwell wrote for the New Yorker a few years back about the science of taste — why people like certain kinds of things like ketchup, spaghetti sauce, soda and mustard. Turns out that those store brand colas really aren’t very well-made, that Heinz really might be the platonic ideal of ketchup and that almost everyone prefers Grey Poupon to patriotic and manly (but lousy) American mustard. From the piece:

  • The Seattle Traveler » Waterfront Fun at Seattle Maritime Festival – Seattle puts its maritime prowess on display this weekend with the annual Seattle Maritime Festival.

    Saturday’s Family Fun Day is always a big treat, and the highlight is the Tugboat Races. These are the largest Tugboat Races in the World = with over 40 boats expected to participate.
    Photo credit: swanksalot @flickr

  • Lawmaker Defends Imprisoning Hostile Bloggers | Threat Level – “Rep. Linda Sanchez responded Wednesday to Threat Level’s tirade against her proposed legislation outlawing hostile electronic speech. Her answer: “Congress has no interest in censoring.”Sanchez, with the introduction of the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act, clearly has a great interest in censoring.”

Cat Fight Emerson vs Bud

Seth Anderson0 comment

St. Louis cat-fight!

Taj Mahal

Emerson, one of St. Louis’ largest companies, is apparently steamed at what it thinks is rough treatment at the hands of Anheuser-Busch. The Ferguson-based manufacturer of cooling equipment, network power products, appliances and tools plans to boycott Anheuser-Busch products to protest stingier payment policies and what it claims are Anheuser-Busch’s cutbacks in funding for local non-profits.

In an internal memo obtained by Lager Heads, Emerson sounded off:

“With the InBev acquisition of Anheuser-Busch we have seen negative things happening in the St. Louis community and in regard to Emerson doing business with InBev. InBev payment terms with Emerson have now been stipulated as 120 days – take it or leave it!”

Before being taken over by InBev, A-B typically settled its accounts in 30 days. Emerson, an Anheuser-Busch supplier, is evidently mad at the change. It’s not alone, but this is the most interesting response – by far- to Anheuser-Busch’s new way of dealing with suppliers.

[Click to continue reading Emerson to boycott Anheuser-Busch | Lager Heads | STLtoday]

DDB Chicago has both petulant companies as clients, as Jeremy Mullman reports:

DDB, Chicago, finds itself in exactly that awkward position today following a report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Emerson, an engineering conglomerate, has instructed its divisions to boycott Anheuser-Busch products in response to A-B’s new insistence on making vendors — including Emerson — wait 120 days for payments. Emerson also included among its reasons what it described as A-B’s cutbacks in funding to local nonprofits, including the United Way and the Girl Scouts.

The orders were contained in an internal memo obtained by the newspaper. “With the InBev acquisition of Anheuser-Busch, we have seen negative things happening in the St. Louis community and in regard to Emerson doing business with InBev,” the memo reads. “Effective immediately, we will not use Anheuser-Busch InBev products at the Emerson World Headquarters complex, Winfield Conference Center, on Emerson planes, or in Emerson suites at Busch Stadium (Cardinals), Scottrade Center (St. Louis Blues & concerts), and Edward Jones Dome (Rams).

“We want all divisions to comply and not purchase or stock any Anheuser-Busch InBev products. We suggest you use Coors, Miller, Modelo or Heineken products.”

[Click to continue reading Coors Light at Busch Stadium? – Adages – Advertising Age]

I’d be annoyed too if all invoices were paid after 120 days – that really would mess up our cash-flow. A few years ago we did a large marketing program with a major financial corporation, and because they paid their invoices within 60 days, we had to take out a bridge loan with a local bank just so we could stay afloat. Turned out ok, but money was more liquid a few years ago. Four months is a long time to hold someone’s money before paying it.

News America Purchases Floorgraphics

Seth Anderson4 Comments

Whoa, that’s one way to settle a lawsuit that is going poorly…

Hanging Out on the Bean

News America Marketing, a unit of the News Corporation that produces coupon inserts and sells advertising in supermarkets, settled a lawsuit this week with a competitor that had accused it of anticompetitive behavior and corporate spying.

On Wednesday, News America bought the company, Floorgraphics, outright for an undisclosed sum.

The lawsuit was settled after witnesses began testifying in the trial in federal court in New Jersey. The original lawsuit was filed in 2004.

In a brief statement, a spokeswoman for News America confirmed the acquisition, saying, “We’re pleased to be expanding our network of stores to better serve our customers and we’re very excited to incorporate the quality network so ably developed by Floorgraphics.”

[From News Corp. Unit Settles Suit With a Rival, Then Buys It – NYTimes.com]

Surprising development, actually. Rupert Murdoch must have made FGI an offer they couldn’t refuse.

[more details at Jim Edwards blog: bnet]

News Corp Trial

swanksalot1 Comment

We wrote about this case a while ago, and it seems to be getting juicy. [Source documents available here]

Tall statue aka Our Onion-headed Overlords

At issue is whether News America has lied, cheated and stolen to maintain its market share. FGI claims News America “engaged in illegal computer espionage by breaking into FGI’s password-protected computer system and obtaining propietary FGI information.” News America denies the allegations.

The saga began when, according to FGI’s complaint, News America made FGI an offer it couldn’t refuse:

At a meeting in July 1999, News’ Chief Executive Officer told FGI that News was interested in buying FGI, but if FGI refused to sell and chose instead to compete with News for in-store programs other than floor advertising — such as instant coupon machines, shelf ads, take ones or shopping cart placards — News would destroy FGI.

FGI chose to compete — and News America allegedly made good on its promise to kill FGI. The complaint:

“…on at least eleven separate occasions between October 2003 and January 2004, News intentionally, knowingly and without authorization breached FGI’s secure computer system and repeatedly accessed, viewed, took and obtained FGI’s most sensitive and private information concerning its past and upcoming advertising and marketing programs.”

FGI discovered this when one of its clients asked FGI how News America knew about a program that the client was only running with FGI. News America had blown its cover by asking the client why the program wasn’t also running with News America.

A breach of FGI’s computer system was later traced to “an IP address registered at the time to News,” the complaint states.

Following the computer break-in, FGI lost contracts from Safeway, Winn-Dixie, Piggly Wiggly and Basha’s.

[Click to read more Trial: Did News America Marketing Group Break Into Floorgraphics’ Computers? | BNET Advertising Blog | BNET]

Usually these sorts of business litigations are dryasdust, however, News Corp. isn’t most companies.

Snuggie Train

Seth Anderson1 Comment

We were laughing about Snuggies ’round these parts recently. Looks so much like a Jim Jones kind of garment, just missing the cup of Flavor-Aid or a pair of Heaven’s Gate Nikes.1

The Snuggie blanket launched nationally on direct-response TV in October, just as the economy was slowing to a crawl, so the timing seemingly couldn’t have been worse. However, it turns out the timing couldn’t have been better.

The quirky little blanket with sleeves has become the raiment of the zeitgeist, with more than 4 million units sold in just over three months and more than 200 parody videos on YouTube.

…

[Scott Boilen, president of Allstar Marketing Group, Hawthorne, N.Y] said he’s heard reports of customers swamping stockers and grabbing all the Snuggies before they even reach the shelves at Bed, Bath & Beyond or Walgreens, the first two retailers to carry the blankets.

The timing worked well on many fronts for Snuggie. With conventional advertisers pulling back, remnant time for direct-response ads has swelled. And because apparel and other consumer-product sales are down, plenty of idle Chinese factories are eager for business.

Ads tout the Snuggie as a way to cut heating bills and let folks curl up on the sofa with their hands free. With a growing number of consumers hunkering down and looking to save money, two Snuggies and two book lights for $19.95 is starting to look like a pretty good deal.

And something about the Snuggie just matches the spirit of the times. “It’s a tremendous value in today’s tough economic times,” Mr. Boilen said. “In this type of economy, people are looking for a value, and this is certainly a value at the price point. … People are staying home more, and it makes them feel good.”

[From Humble Snuggie: Marketing’s New Red-Hot Seller – Advertising Age – News]

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4OxmXpKCcI

Is your life shrouded in a cold blue haze? Do arrows with $ symbols appear when you try to raise the thermostat? Is your blanket slightly too small? If so please join us, the Cult of Snuggie. There will be punch and pie.

Footnotes:
  1. no, it wasn’t Kool-Aid, stop saying it was [↩]

Mrs O Has No Regrets

Seth Anderson0 comment

Interesting write-up of the Mrs. O blog

Michelle Obama-at Blackbird

ON the blog Mrs. O, fans of Michelle Obama’s style can view photos of the outfit she wore on a recent date with the president-elect and find out where to buy the same purple designer coat.

The advertising agency behind the blog, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, does not work for Mrs. Obama or for the fashion designers the site features. In fact, mrs-o.org is not for a client at all. It is an entirely new business created by the Zag division of Bartle Bogle, which the agency started to invent new brands.

Mrs. O and Zag are part of a business model transformation in the advertising industry. Agencies are parlaying their expertise in marketing the brands of other companies into creating and marketing their own.

…

Zag got into the fashion blogging business in September, after Mary Tomer, a 27-year-old account planner at Bartle Bogle in New York, hatched the idea for the blog. She noticed Mrs. Obama’s style during the Democratic convention, yet could not find information on what she wore.

She decided to create a Web site, which she described as “a central resource for tracking her style and providing as much designer information and commentary as possible.”

Instead of writing the blog in her spare time after work, like most bloggers with day jobs, she approached her employers to see if they would bankroll her new hobby. They readily agreed.

“Mary was very sure about what she wanted, and when you read about the best brands, they are unrelenting,” Mr. Jenkins said. “That’s what I preached to my clients for the last 10 years, and now we have the chance to do that ourselves.”[Click to read more Advertising – Ad Agencies Create and Market Their Own Brands – NYTimes.com]

and this is how my photo ended up there:

Ms. Tomer and the site’s other writers find pictures of Mrs. Obama in newspapers or on the photo Web site Flickr and get permission from the photographers to post the photos free. They research her outfits by calling designers, searching on sites like Style.com and, when stumped, turning to the blog’s readers.

At first, Bartle Bogle thought of the site as an experiment in new media. Quickly, though, “there was a realization that there was a bigger idea here that was a very viable business opportunity,” Ms. Tomer said.

Ms. Tomer was very polite, professional, and of course I was pleased to be affiliated, even tangentially, with her website. I hope she’s able to parlay Mrs. O into a great success, for at least eight years…

Newspapers of the future

Seth Anderson0 comment

Unfortunately, my local paper has taken a decided downturn, close to becoming just a advertising circular, with a few stories thrown in here and there. Newspapers should have more reporters, not less, staff cutbacks is not the solution to restoring newspaper profitability.

As Felix Salmon says when you pay for the physical newspaper you’re not paying for the news, you’re paying for the paper. A newspaper is a big physical object. Creating it and distributing it on a daily basis is a hugely expensive undertaking. And subscriptions to newspapers are cheap — the amount of money being charged for home delivery of The New York Times or any other major paper only does a tiny amount to defray the costs of producing and delivering the object.

The problem newspapers are having with online isn’t that the readers won’t pay, it’s that the advertisers won’t pay. The reduced costs per reader make up for the reduced revenue involved in giving the product away, but a physical newspaper generates far more in terms of ad revenue per reader than does a newspaper website. Probably once physical newspapers all disappear, ad rates for news websites will go up somewhat merely because ad buyers won’t have as many options. But I think it’s plausible that even when everything shakes out online advertising revenue still won’t support the volume of staff that print advertising revenue once did.

[From Matthew Yglesias » News Without the Paper ]

No Social Networking for Big Pharma

swanksalot0 comment

No social networking for Big Pharma, probably because they are worried that people might realize that the latest and greatest new pharmaceutical has some nasty side effects, or worse, is just ineffective.

Although a majority of marketers have embraced online social media and user-generated content efforts, one industry is conspicuously not taking advantage of the gold rush: pharmaceuticals.

Drug brand Web sites almost never carry the features that marketers usually are desperate to give their customers: bulletin boards, chat rooms, blogs and Web-page hosting.

The reason: Marketers fear that user-generated content will include complaints about injuries caused by their drugs’ side effects. The law requires these “adverse events” to be reported to the FDA. The FDA’s adverse-event databases are regularly combed by lawyers looking for potential class-action suits

[From Why Pharma Fears Social Networking]

and this just boggles the mind:

On the other side are brand managers, whose every published word must survive a thicket of in-house lawyers, some of whom aren’t Internet savvy.

Dori Stowe, chief digital strategist at Grey Healthcare Group, New York, recalls speaking with a pharma company’s legal team about a campaign, “and somebody raised their hand and asked, ‘What’s Google?

Anecdotal, sure, but how McCain-esque to you have to be to have avoided learning the name of Google? I’ve been using Google as my web search tool since 1998, so that’s ten years, plus Google is a hugely successful publicly traded company.

YouTube Pulls Obama Spot

swanksalot0 comment

Now I’m really curious to see the ad, I wonder if it is available.

Google-owned YouTube has pulled a Barack Obama ad from its site at the insistence of NBC, which charged that the spot infringed on its copyrighted content and that it did not give Obama’s campaign permission to use the material.

The ad, titled “Bad News,” is designed to get out the vote by appealing to voters and potential voters who do not want John McCain to win the election. At one point, NBC’s Tom Brokaw and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann are shown — with Olbermann announcing that McCain has “won.”

NBC has demanded that Obama stop using the clip altogether. But his campaign balked and instead attached a disclaimer to it that said, “NBC and MSNBC did not cooperate in the making of this video.”

[From YouTube Pulls Obama Spot]

I checked YouTube, and found the ad, removed, with this disclaimer: This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by NBC

If I find a copy, I’ll post it. Must have really irked NBC to be hoisted with their own petard.

McCain is computer illiterate

Seth Anderson0 comment

The ad is actually pretty funny, and McCain did admit he is a relic from a prior age.

“Today is the first day of the rest of the campaign,” Obama campaign manager David Plouffe says in a campaign strategy memo. “We will respond with speed and ferocity to John McCain’s attacks and we will take the fight to him, but we will do it on the big issues that matter to the American people.”

The newest ad showcasing their hard line includes unflattering footage of McCain at a hearing in the early ’80s, wearing giant glasses and an out-of-style suit, interspersed with shots of a disco ball, a clunky phone, an outdated computer and a Rubik’s Cube.

“1982, John McCain goes to Washington,” an announcer says over chirpy elevator music. “Things have changed in the last 26 years, but McCain hasn’t.

“He admits he still doesn’t know how to use a computer, can’t send an e-mail, still doesn’t understand the economy, and favors two hundred billion in new tax cuts for corporations, but almost nothing for the middle class,” it says. It shows video of McCain getting out of a golf cart with former President George H.W. Bush and closes with a photo of him standing with the current President Bush at the White House. “After one president who was out of touch, we just can’t afford more of the same.”

[From The Associated Press: Obama mocks McCain as computer illiterate]

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ2I0t_Twk0

Privacy and IE 8

Seth Anderson0 comment

Unfortunately, much of the internet, especially the ‘free‘ internet1 relies upon cookies, and upon tracking users and click streams. That said, IE 8 and its touted much-improved privacy controls will most likely benefit everyone. Not to mention that Firefox (via the Adblock plugin) and other browsers already have these privacy options, and have had them for years.

Microsoft’s newest browser is still only in beta, but it already has the advertising world in a tizzy. Its “InPrivate” set of features on Internet Explorer 8 out this week has publishers, marketers and industry advocates worried that it could block their ability to distribute, track and even monetize what the Interactive Advertising Bureau values as a $21.2 billion-plus internet-ad industry.

[From Latest Microsoft Browser Fuels Fear – Advertising Age – News]

Computer Consultants

IE’s default settings have InPrivate Blocking turned off, but some advertisers are already worried:

For instance, the InPrivate Browsing feature — already slang-termed “porn mode” — only allows a user to hide single browsing session activities from “over the shoulder” viewers such as family members. It does not block ads from being served to the user or from advertisers counting views or clicks.

It works, and got its nickname, by letting users surf porn sites (or any other content, for that matter) without caching any content such as a list of URLs visited, cookies or other data. That could mean no cookies on your computer — as well as no cookies for future use by marketers or publishers, although only during selected InPrivate sessions.

However, it is the InPrivate Blocking feature that seems potentially more worrisome for advertisers. InPrivate Blocking acts to inform users about sites that consistently track and collect browsing histories. In fact, when a user opts into an InPrivate session, it will automatically block third-party content if it detects that the third party has “seen” the user more than 10 times. So, for instance, if the third party is advertising.com and it is serving ads across 10 sites a user has visited during an InPrivate session, it will begin to block advertising.com tracking codes and possibly content on the 11th website.

Mike Zaneis asks:

“With IE’s market share, will so many people activate that so that it could affect the revenue side of the industry?” he asked. “Any content from anywhere that appears as third parties, whether advertising or stock tickers or news feeds, all appear as third parties, and in theory their content could be blocked.

“And if you’re blocking all third parties, you’re also going to block all analytic companies,” he said. “You’d be blocking the companies that do the auditing of ad delivery.” He’s particularly concerned about the potential disruption to the entire accounting system of internet advertising.

[Microsoft Internet Explorer general manager Dean] Hachamovitch concedes that IE 8 has no way of knowing if the content is an ad, a stock tracker or a newspaper column. It can only tell if it is third-party content. So that does mean that any content, say, ads, analytics and more, can be blocked.

Will the great internet gold-rush come to an end? Will DoubleClick have to change their policies? Stay tuned…

Footnotes:
  1. for instance, how many of you really click on the ads at this site? Not many, I presume, though Google still keeps track of you, and of our site’s content to theoretically serve targeted advertising [↩]

John McCain Running on Empty

Seth Anderson1 Comment


“Running on Empty” (Jackson Browne)

Continuing on a theme, yet another musician is pissed off at the John McCain campaign for appropriating a song without permission. You’d think such copyright stalwarts would have learned to ask first. Silly kids, laws are for Republicans to break.

Jackson Browne sued Sen. John McCain on Thursday for unauthorized use of one of his songs in a television commercial.

Browne, one of rock music’s most famous activists for liberal causes, is “incensed” that the presumptive Republican nominee for president has been using Browne’s signature 1977 song “Running on Empty,” said Lawrence Y. Iser, the singer-songwriter’s attorney.

Browne filed a copy- right infringement lawsuit against McCain and the Republican National Committee in U.S. District Court in L.A., seeking damages and a permanent injunction prohibiting the use of the forlorn arena anthem or any other Browne composition.

…

Browne’s attorney said that he is “informed and believes” that McCain approved the ad.

[From Jackson Browne sues Sen. John McCain for unauthorized use of ‘Running on Empty’ — chicagotribune.com]

Luckily, I was able to write this entire post without using a pun based on Jackson Browne’s song, Lawyers in Love.

Insomniac Voters Unite!

Seth Anderson0 comment

When I’m up in the wee hours1, I tend not to watch television, but that’s just me.

Lonely Zenith

The Obama campaign is the first to use a long-form infomercial during the 2008 presidential campaign. If you hadn’t noticed, that may have been because the nearly 30-minute program aired at 1:30 a.m. Sunday on ION Television.

“This was one more effective way for us to communicate with folks who may not normally see other communications we have with voters who are paying closer attention to the race.,” the campaign said in a statement.

The mostly biographical 28-minute, 30-second program included scenes of the Illinois senator’s keynote speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention as well as scenes from other campaign appearances along with background about Mr. Obama and frequent call-in numbers.

…

“It is a first. I guess they are going after the insomniac vote,” said Evan Tracey, chief operating officer of TNS Media Intelligence’s Campaign Media Analysis Group. He said the unusual airing time in fact appears to allow the campaign to test the effectiveness of the infomercial format without spending much.

[From Chicago Business News, Analysis & Articles | Obama courts insomniac vote | Crain’s ]

Political advertising seeks viewership, and especially viewership that isn’t competed over by political rivals.

Footnotes:
  1. which unfortunately happens more than it should [↩]