September 02, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Much like a software company, The New York Times is courting outside developers to design their own applications for its content. Quietly launched a year ago, the program has resulted in the creation of eleven web feeds from which developers can access and manipulate streams of Times' articles, best seller lists, movie reviews and other materials. Appearing at the recent Creativity and Technology conference, Times programmer Derek Gottfrid provided an update on the web and mobile phone apps built so far by outsiders.
August 31, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Many marketers are struggling with the new world of Twitter and social media but few face the dilemma of pharmaceutical giants such as Pfizer. Twitter-using consumers are highly interested in their drug products, but their marketing communications are rigidly constrained by federal regulations. While Pfizer has just launched a Twitter site, the company is not exactly sure what it's allowed to say on it.
August 27, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- As it expanded in China, a country whose consumers were not used to carbonated sugar-water drinks, Coca-Cola heavily pushed its Minute Maid orange juice brand. And five years later, it's selling more than a billion bottles a year and sales continue to increase by double digits despite the recession. Meanwhile, the brand's latest user-generated digital campaign has received more than a quarter million video and photo submissions in the first few weeks after it launched. Ad Age's Normandy Madden interviews Andres Kiger, Coke's senior director of marketing in China.
August 26, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- When European adman and author Jonathan Cahill was researching his new book, "Igniting the Brand," he sifted through 27 years of Advertising Effectiveness Award files. Studying the most successful campaigns from the U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S., he was searching for patterns of what worked. But the only pattern that really stood out was the inherent unpredictability of advertising strategies themselves. His findings make him more wary of the industry's growing excitement about the new "science" of ad planning made possible by digital data.
August 24, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In a move that seems to symbolically close a big loop of media convergence, CBS and Pepsi will run a video ad in the September print edition of Entertainment Weekly. See portions of the actual video and hear Ad Age media reporter Nat Ives and TV editor Brian Steinberg ponder the implications of what it all means.
August 20, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In an era when marketing strategies seem more complicated than ever, author Jonathan Cahill is selling simplicity. And he backs it up with 115 case studies. Prior to opening his own London firm, Spring Marketing Innovation and Research, Mr. Cahill spent 30 years as an ad man with major agencies in the U.K. and Italy. One of his conclusions in his recently published book, "Igniting the Brand: Strategies That Have Shot Brands to Success," is that marketers and their agencies are trying so hard to devise strategies that they often look right past simple truths.
August 18, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Despite their large numbers and executive positions throughout other parts of the business, females still lag behind in ad agency creative departments. Why? That was a hot issue for the 24 women honored at this year's Advertising Age Women to Watch luncheon. The most memorable answer was given by Tiffany Kosel, who is a creative director and VP at Crispin Porter & Bogusky.
August 13, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Skeptics who are still not sure about the real potential for building large-scale mobile phone audiences for content and ads would do well to take a look at People.com. The mobile channel of that Time Inc. magazine site is now logging 18 million mobile page views a month. And that horde of on-the-go readers and viewers seeking celebrity news via their mobile phones is just the beginning, says Fran Hauser, president of the digital side of Time Inc.'s Style and Entertainment Group.
August 11, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The "Big Idea" has long been the traditional core of ad campaign's organization but does it really work that well in the new age of social marketing? That was the issue raised at the recent 4A's strategic planning session by Mark Earls. The author and marketing guru discussed new insights about the behavior of human communities and warned marketers and their agencies not to assume that a single creative concept will work effectively across a wildly diverse and unpredictably fluid social environment.
August 03, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In 2008, as gasoline prices topped $4, sales of 75-miles-per-gallon Vespa scooters spiked to record levels. But in the first two quarters of this year, sales have dropped just as dramatically for the Piaggio subsidiary. But Vespa marketing campaigns continue at full throttle. Last week, the parking lot of Central Park's Tavern on The Green was turned into a maze of test-riding tracks for members of the media. And Piaggio Americas' CEO predicted that U.S. consumers would become serious scooter users over the next five years.
July 31, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In our continuing look at how agencies are creating their social-media capabilities and services, we talk with MediaCom North America CEO Doug Checkeris. Some agencies, like Edelman, have hired in-house social media teams. Others, like BBDO, are using young mentors to teach all their executives how to Facebook, blog, Twitter and otherwise function and think like authentic social-media players. But MediaCom is taking a different route.
July 29, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Despite the various problems that are inhibiting its growth, mobile advertising is experiencing increasing amounts of success. One of the latest examples of how cellphones can be effectively integrated into a major marketing campaign is that of Kmart's new Protege line of low-cost basketball shoes. At the recent Interactive Advertising Bureau conference, Mobext Mobile Marketing managing director Phuc Truong explained the campaign's strategy and tactics.
July 27, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Fed up with bad press and wary of the Federal Trade Commission's intentions, a new organization of mommy bloggers is on the offensive. Their new initiative offers something like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for mommy bloggers who operate with journalist-like standards. During the first 24 hours after the web campaign was launched, more than 200 bloggers had signed on. One of those behind the effort is blogger Liz Gumbinner, who previously worked for 14 years as a creative director at the David & Goliath and Deutsch ad agencies.
July 23, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The cost of getting an individual user to respond to a recent mobile-ad campaign ranged from 67 cents to $85, according to Michael Collins, CEO of mobile-marketing agency Joule. Speaking at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's Mobile conference, he cited the wild cost variations as an example of the complexity and inconsistency that continue to hobble to growth of the mobile-ad industry.
July 20, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- BlogHer, the online female community that logs 15 million unique visitors a month, holds its fifth-annual convention in Chicago this week. And one of the things attendees will be buzzing about in the corridors is the growing debate over blogola. In a pre-conference interview, BlogHer co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Elisa Camahort Page said a blogger's mere disclosure that she is accepting money, freebies or perks to include product mentions in a post is not enough to solve the problem.
July 16, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The digital chaos that has upended the music marketing business appears to be creating dramatic new opportunities for music publishers. In the past, those companies have been tightly focused on owning and licensing song rights, while record companies have controlled the recording and product distribution business. But no more. Los Angeles-based Bug Music, which owns more than 250,000 songs, spent the last three years reorganizing itself as recording studio and music marketer competing directly against those record companies.
July 14, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In its launch of the summer's annual Restaurant Week, NYC & Company, the marketing arm of New York, has given a special nod to both social networking and the recession. Twitter users, for the first time, were able to get first dibs on information about which restaurants would be included in the program that offers lunches and dinners at luxe eateries for near-diner prices. Meanwhile, the program was expanded to make the "week" 20 days long to amplify its impact on recession-hammered restaurateurs.
July 10, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Advertisers have largely abandoned the sponsorship of objective journalism, and the country's most powerful newsrooms are increasingly unable to fund the basic gathering and reporting of real, original news. That bleak picture was the subject of a Gotham Media seminar earlier this week. The former president of CBS News, president of the Newspaper National Network and CEO of Air America Media explored what the panel characterized as the mainstream media business' biggest content crisis.
July 07, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In an effort to improve the public's perceptions of its products, the plastics industry will launch a $10 million social-media blitz aimed at millennials. Created by the Apco Worldwide agency for SPI, the industry trade group, the four-year effort is designed to spark viral conversations among millennials about the many benefits of plastic. This interview with SPI President-CEO William Carteaux took place at last week's NPE2009 conference in Chicago.
June 30, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Along with all the other ways it's wounded marketers, the global recession is greatly exacerbating the problem of counterfeit products. Citing data from its latest study of the issue, the CMO Council warns that global rings of brand pirates have moved far beyond luxury goods into even the most mundane sort of branded items. Council VP-Operations Liz Miller estimates that U.S. marketers are losing from 5% to 8% of their profits to brand fakers.
