CHECK MATE: News of IBM's Big Blue triumph over human chess master Gary Kasparov beat all other marketing events in terms of media attention during the one-month period leading up to this edition of SPINdex. With 53 print and electronic news stories referencing Deep Blue's publicity and marketing impact on IBM, and 13 minutes of national TV time, the matchup scored a SPINdex of 553.
Bolstered by an extraordinary number of tie-ins, marketing for "The Lost World" attracted 48 stories in the SPINdex sample, including 5 minutes of network news time and 30,887 words of print copy. The Federal Trade Commission's "unfair advertising" charge against R.J. Reynolds' Joe Camel earned a score of 410.
Coming in fourth was the unveiling of the Big 4 TV networks' new fall prime-time schedules, with a score of 398. News surrounding President Clinton's attack on "heroin chic" images in ads ranked fifth with a score of 286.
Mr. Mandese is a senior VP of Myers Reports. Mr. Weiner is VP of Medialink Research.
