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.
June 26, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Things have never been smooth between TiVo and advertising agencies since that company rose to fame by popularizing ad-zapping DVRs. But now TiVo has changed into a home-entertainment utility with video content from more than a hundred sources and an ad-sales department. But, as VP for Ad Sales and Content Services Tara Maitra explained at the recent Advertising 2.0 conference, the company still gets no respect in ad agency land.
June 24, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- What's the future for media agencies in a 2.0 world where marketers communicate directly with their consumers? That was one of the issues Tim Hanlon addressed at the recent Advertising 2.0 conference. He's managing director of VivaKi, the year-old Publicis entity that's an investment arm and think tank for new digital-marketing strategies. It's re-envisioning what a media agency is.
June 22, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- For the last 53 years, Advertising Age has tracked the spending and calculated the rankings of the nation's 100 largest advertisers. Over the years, that annual Ad Age DataCenter report has become a much-anticipated barometer of the overall health of the ad industry itself. In this video interview, Ad Age's director of data analytics, Brad Johnson, interprets the key points and implications of this year's findings.
June 19, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- How about a contest to determine the country's fastest SMS texters? That 2007 idea for a small-scale PR gimmick has spawned what has become a major branded-entertainment property for LG Electronics. The modest effort three years ago drew in several hundred mobile phone thumb athletes. This year's program, co-promoted with MTV, the Mets and Citi Field, attracted 250,000 entrants. The finals were filmed as a TV show earlier this week in New York with the winner -- a 15-year-old from Iowa -- taking home $50,000.
June 17, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- As he prepared for his trip to serve as president of the film and press juries at Cannes, David Lubars critiqued Bob Garfield's harsh critique of the annual event. The chairman and chief creative officer of BBDO said he was puzzled by the constant attacks on the awards shows that highlight the industry's best work and most accomplished creatives. But he also said the overall quality of this year's advertising creative declined as recession-wracked marketers reined in their budgets and vision.
June 15, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Bloomberg's digital future will heavily involve distribution of original video news content to mobile-phone users around the world, according to Andrew Lack. The former president of NBC News was named CEO of Bloomberg's new Multimedia Group eight months ago. And ever since, industry watchers have been speculating on Bloomberg's digital expansion strategy. At last week's Advertising 2.0 event, Mr. Lack detailed some of his visions.
June 11, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb sparked a recent controversy with his remarks about Michael Vick. But he didn't call a press conference or tap a friendly editor to do it. Instead, he directly made news with his blog on Yardbarker.com. It was the latest example of how the Yardbarker ad network and celebrity-athlete blogging hub is becoming a growing presence in the world of sports media.
June 09, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- New York times Op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof has become an unlikely evangelist for digital games as a new form of journalism. He's so taken with the idea that he's developing an online game to go with his new book due out in the fall. Authored with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, it's a serious work about the oppression of third-world women. In this keynote address at the recent Games for Change Festival in Manhattan, Kristof explained how an MTV game had opened his eyes to the true power of that online messaging format as a reporting tool.
June 02, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Coors Light has enjoyed 14 consecutive quarters of sales growth but back in 2003 that brand was tanking. What turned it around so dramatically? On the surface it appeared to be a simple new marketing strategy focused on the refreshing nature of cold beer. But what really drove the success was a disciplined approach to the management of creative ideas and insights inside the company.
May 29, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- A new CMO Council study reports that digital attacks are the greatest threat facing marketers today but that many still aren't doing enough about it. It says phishing attacks against financial services marketers increased by 51% alone in the last half of 2008. The Council also argues that granting legal departments exclusive jurisdiction over the problem is not an effective solution.
May 27, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- As it goes into its third season as a smash TV hit across the mainland, the Chinese version of "Ugly Betty" is also pioneering new levels of product-placement clutter. The show is set in an advertising agency rather than a fashion magazine, which enables the program to focus on all manner of products and their attributes. Mateo Eaton, who heads the branded-content division of Mindshare North Asia, acknowledged that the dense placements are a bit over the top, but advertisers -- and the TV producers they're paying -- aren't complaining at all.
May 25, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- It's one thing to debate the potential power of social-media marketing to influence product sales but quite another to watch a social-media project actually create a popular new product. In his keynote address at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's Social Media Conference last week, Forrester Research's Josh Bernoff explained how Del Monte Foods did that very thing in just six weeks.
May 21, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Josh Bernoff is vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research and co-author of the book "Groundswell." Keynoting the Interactive Advertising Bureau's Social Media Conference this week, he discussed how major marketers such as Procter & Gamble are using social media in increasingly potent ways. With the social-community effort detailed in this video, P&G significantly increased sales of its feminine-care products.
May 19, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Even the big-time marketers that actually understand Twitter remain wary of its raw and freewheeling nature. But imagine if they had a system that could automatically find, aggregate and display as a stand-alone feature only positive Twitter chatter about their brand. What if they could even filter out profanity and mentions of competitors? That's what the recently launched Tinker.com aims to do. Glam Media's Joe Lagani explained it at the ANA's Brand Innovation Conference last week.
May 18, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- With all the fuss about carbs and obesity in recent years, Dunkin' Donuts has been downplaying its namesake product. But no more. As the economy collapsed into chaos last year, the restaurant chain discovered that previously carb-conscious consumers were drifting back to donuts as comfort food. Since then, Dunkin Donuts has launched aggressive new campaigns targeting that fried-dough-craving demographic. And its latest -- and largest -- online donut promotion has been a wild success.
