New management at a client usually means changes in marketing tactics or switching agencies.

But in the case of Six Flags, the changes will be more drastic. The new management team includes Daniel Snyder, who made his fortune in junk ma--I mean direct mail. He's now the owner of The Washington Redskins, where he once charged admission for fans to see the team practice in training camp.

Ad Age has more:

Mr. Snyder further argues in filings that Six Flags’ advertising and marketing had no clear message; targets only one of two key demographics; is expensive and lacks co-branded marketing. He also said the company has too few strategic concession relationships, and those are with tired and dated brands not recognized by children.

Mr. Snyder wants to target mothers and young children as well as teens; use more targeted, direct marketing and sell category-excusive rights to food items with name-brand food marketers. He also proposes renaming rides and attractions with paid sponsorships and to charge fees for exclusive “official sponsorships” with “more modern” brands like action sports, movie celebrities and musicians.

Six Flags' current agency is Doner, but you can bet that won't last. I pity the poor agency who has to go meet with Snyder and present a marketing plan. They'll definitely have to kiss his ring--of course, that wouldn't be a Super Bowl ring.

Lewis Lazare: There's been an amicable divorce at Ebel Signorelli Welke/Chicago. The three partners who formed the agency in 2002 have split up. Bob Ebel has left the advertising business altogether to become president of Elmhurst-based MyLife Home Health Services, an organization providing in-home health care to the elderly.

Creative leader Bob Welke also has left ESW to become CEO of Blue Horse/Milwaukee, an ad agency that had until recently been owned by ESW. But ESW has sold Blue Horse to Welke and the 30-person agency's executive committee. Welke has relocated to Milwaukee.

Jim Signorelli now is chairman and CEO of ESW in Chicago, where he intends to focus on building the shop into an agency specializing in "transaction-driven marketing." The agency's current client roster includes KFC, Taco Bell, PLS Financial Services and its newest account, Oberweis Ice Cream and Dairy stores. "We have a great deal of expertise getting people in stores," Signorelli said. "We are all about ROI and cost per leads, while Blue Horse has more of a brand orientation."

With Welke's move to Milwaukee, Signorelli is bringing on board Phillip Lanier as ESW/Chicago's new chief creative officer. Lanier started his career at Chiat-Day in Los Angeles, and later met up with Signorelli when they both oversaw the Arby's account at W.B. Doner.

Blue Horse dates back to the mid-1960s. Its flagship client is American Family Insurance. The agency also does public relations work for Wal-Mart and U.S. Cellular and work for several B-to-B accounts. Blue Horse has about $30 million in billings, but Welke hopes to begin to add new business.

USA Today: Millions of anglers, hunters and target shooters are shelling out billions of dollars on gear, from $300 fly-fishing rods to $10,000 shotguns. Outdoor retailers such as Cabela's are expanding nationwide, opening superstores that attract legions of shoppers and tourists. Outdoor trade shows are drawing more exhibitors each year.

Many of the enthusiasts are baby boomers in their peak earning years — and their kids are joining them, according to industry groups and marketing reports.

"People are spending more on outdoor sports than they ever have," said Michael Callahan, senior vice president at Cabela's, the No. 1 U.S. hunting-and-fishing retailer.

From 2003 to 2004, sales of hunting and shooting products surged 8% to $2.9 billion, while fishing gear sales rose 2% to $2 billion, reports the National Sporting Goods Association trade group. Anglers and hunters spend tens of billions of dollars more on lodging, travel and other costs, according to industry groups and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Cabela's, Bass Pro Shops, Gander Mountain and other retailers are huge attractions.

Some of the "destination" megastores boast forest and waterfall displays, gun and archery ranges, museumlike dioramas of wildlife and huge aquariums. At the Silverton Casino Hotel Lodgein Las Vegas, tourists flock to a Bass Pro Shops Outdoor Worldstore that resembles a frontier hunting lodge from the 1800s.

Customers drive hundreds of miles to shop at Cabela's 13 vast stores. Picture a Home Depot and Disneyland for hunters and anglers, where they can buy canoes and kayaks; antique rifles for $250,000; women's swimwear; and kids' snow parkas. There's even a $43,000 log cabin that outdoorsmen can assemble themselves.

Eight more Cabela's stores are in the works.

Here's an amusing article out of today's Cleveland Plain Dealer, entitled "Confessions of a Nielsen Family," in which columnist John Horton recounts his family's week of watching TV and writing down what they watched.

Seven days of chronicling viewing habits taught me this: The remote control is a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands, and we have 10 of them between me; my wife, Debbie; my daughter, Lindsay, 7; and my sons, Brian, who's almost 5, and Jack, 1.

Where it went wrong, I can't say. When our house first received the diary, I thought about clicking on some high-quality, educational programming just to encourage the networks to air more of it. Maybe linger a few hours on the History Channel, or get lost on Animal Planet.

I seem to recall my family was asked to do this 20 years ago. But with billions of ad dollars at stake, and with advertisers questioning the efficacy of network and cable TV, is this still the primary way they measure the TV audience? Can't they get any more precise info without asking busy, random families to write stuff down?

Washington Post: "My Consult" is a Web-based second opinion service offered by e-Cleveland Clinic, the facility's Internet service. Patients who have received a diagnosis of any of more than 600 life-threatening or life-altering conditions can request an electronic consultation with a Cleveland Clinic doctor. For $565, a physician provides a written second opinion and a treatment recommendation -- all within five to seven working days of receiving a completed request.

"We've been working on this program now for about three years," said C. Martin Harris, executive director of e-Cleveland Clinic. "It really came from the fact that as an organization we have been focused on providing high-quality patient care."

"As we thought about that from a patient's perspective, it became clear to us that we had to think beyond the four walls of our institution and start thinking about delivering services to where patients spend the majority of their time."

A Web-based second opinion allows patients to consult with medical experts regardless of where they are located. This service could be particularly helpful for people living in rural areas or overseas, and it also could benefit patients with complex medical conditions.

Forbes: The Shanghai No 2 Intermediate People's Court yesterday ordered two Chinese companies to pay more than 300,000 yuan in compensation to Hennessy Cognac for infringing the French company's trademark, the China Daily reported.

Zhuhai Xiangmutong Trading Co and Xiamen Golden Huanya Food Co, a bottling company, have been ordered to pay compensation, cease infringing the Hennessy trademark immediately and publish an apology in a local newspaper, Xinmin Evening News, the paper said.

The court heard that the two companies had been bottling and marketing a drink claiming to be a French cognac under the trademark Hanlissy.

The court found that the names Hanlissy and Hennessy are similar in appearance and pronunciation and this may confuse consumers.

According to Adweek and his own press releases, Ernie Mosteller, an author and creative director who founded production houses in New York and Florida, has launched an advertising agency in Galveston, Texas, called Tangelo Ideas. The agency identity was inspired by Mosteller's youth spent on a citrus farm in Florida.

Author of a book on advertising entitled Use a Stick (available for free download), Mosteller worked as a creative director at Filmworks in Miami and later at Image Point.

“Formulaic thinking doesn’t move business anymore,” says Mosteller. “And formulaic structure leads to formulaic ideas.”

Asked why the Houston/Galveston base, Mosteller is matter-of-fact: “I like the island culture in Galveston. And Houston, the fourth largest city in the country, represents huge creative potential. Traditionally, the top creative agencies in Texas have been located in Dallas and Austin. But that’s about to change.

Ad Age: Lowe Worldwide founder Frank Lowe emerged from retirement today with the surprise announcement that he is setting up a new advertising agency with Paul Weinberger, who resigned as chairman of Lowe London. Mr. Weinberger is expected to take with him Lowe London’s biggest account, the $75 million Tesco supermarket business he has overseen for years.

The unexpected move from the eccentric Mr. Lowe, who is 65, comes three months after the expiration of a non-compete agreement with Lowe parent Interpublic Group of Cos. that prevented him from taking Lowe staff or clients for two years after his retirement at the end of 2003.

"If Keith Richards can still play rock and roll then Frank might be able to do the same," said an Interpublic executive.

He started his own London agency, Lowe Howard-Spink, in 1981, and built Lowe into an international network, renamed Lowe & Partners in 1990. Interpublic, already a minority shareholder, bought the remaining 64.6% in 1990.

ShoreBank Pacific, a Washington State chartered, FDIC insured bank, is the first commercial bank in the United States with a commitment to environmentally sustainable community development. We believe that long-term community prosperity goes hand-in-hand with a healthy environment.

Through our lending programs, we support individual and community efforts to bring together conservation and economic development. With each loan, we provide information on conservation improvements that can increase the value of the borrower's business.

ShoreBank Pacific helps borrowers:

Use energy efficiently;
Reduce waste and pollution;
Conserve natural resources; and
Plan for the long term.

[via Iconoculture]

Wired: The spyware wars are over - and spyware has won.

Back in 2002, Gator was one of the most reviled companies on the Net. Maker of a free app called eWallet, the firm was under fire for distributing what critics called spyware, code that covertly monitors a user's Web-surfing habits and uploads the data to a remote server. People who downloaded Gator eWallet soon found their screens inundated with pop-up ads ostensibly of interest to them because of Web sites they had visited. Removing eWallet didn't stop the torrent of pop-ups.

In a June 2002 legal brief filed with the lawsuit, attorneys for The Washington Post referred to Gator as a "parasite." ZDNet called it a "scourge."

Today Gator, now called Claria, is a rising star. The lawsuits have been settled - with negligible impact on the company's business - and Claria serves ads for names like JPMorgan Chase, Sony, and Yahoo! The Wall Street Journal praises the company for "making strides in revamping itself."

Apart from plush new offices at the northern edge of Silicon Valley, it's remarkable how little the latter-day Claria differs from the old Gator. It's true that the company has toned down its most aggressive tactics. Journalists, watchdogs, and regulators seem mollified. For the most part, though, the company is in the same business as before, courting the same customers and selling a product that does the same thing in the same ways.

CEO Scott VanDeVelde doesn't deny this. "I don't feel like there's a need to wipe the slate clean," he says. "Our technologies are dead center of where the market is going."

Sky Showbiz: Actress Selma Blair has landed an endorsement deal with Chanel.

According to Glamour, she will be the new face of Chanel Vision, promoting the high couture giant's range of stunning specs.

She's been snapped in many a glam Chanel frock, both new and vintage. Last year she chose Chanel for her wedding dress when she married Ahmet Zappa - son of the late and legendary Frank.

Chanel's Karl Lagerfeld took the snaps for the new spec ads.

Selma said: "I have a lovely relationship with Karl... It's different to be shot by him. I'm so comfortable in front of him.

"Sometimes when I work with other photographers, they say, 'Give me more Selma, more, more.'

"But they don't really know who I am. With Karl, he's capturing something that's more - my personal flaws, the way I am as a girl, not a model."

According to Ad Age, Comcast Corp. President CEO Brian L. Roberts’ total compensation for 2004 was $33.5 million, making him the highest paid media executive in the magazine's survey.

Roberts and his rival James O. Robbins, president-CEO of Cox Communications, who was paid $29.4 million, beat out such well-known luminaries as Sumner Redstone, chairman-CEO of Viacom, ($28.3 million) and Rupert Murdoch, the chairman-CEO of News Corp. ($23.6 million). Walt Disney Co. President-CEO Robert Iger made $11.9 million. Mel Karmazin, with his move to Sirius Satellite Radio, was paid $14.3 million in 2004.

Out of the publicly traded magazine companies, the highest paid executive by far was Harold McGraw III, chairman-CEO of McGraw-Hill, with $16.7 million. Meredith Corp. Chairman-CEO William Kerr took home $4.41 million, while newcomer Susan Lyne, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia president-CEO, made $4.29 million.

E.W. Scripps President-CEO Kenneth Lowe earned $6.23 million to top the newspaper pile; Gannett Co.’s former President-CEO Douglas H. McCorkindale made $5.84 million; and Lee Enterprises Chairman-President Mary Junck was compensated with $5.24 million. Tribune Co.’s former Chairman-CEO Dennis J. FitzSimons took home $4.72 million. All of those smaller players beat out New York Times Co. former President-CEO Russell T. Lewis’ $2.35 million, and Dow Jones & Co. Chairman-CEO Peter Kann’s $2.9 million.

Spike Jones at Brains On Fire points to this twisted identity story from Fort Collins, CO.

The owners of the Drunken Monkey are considering changing the controversial name of their bar - and they want the community to help.

The Old Town bar, 151 S. College Ave., is named for a Kung Fu movie and decorated like a beach cabana - complete with an outdoor deck, swings hanging from the ceiling and a tree house.

The idea for the contest came from Carey Hewitt, owner of The Cupboard in Old Town, who has objected to the Drunken Monkey's name since it opened in early October.

Hewitt, who has owned The Cupboard for 33 years, also led the opposition against the Purple Martini, a Denver-based bar that leased a space and wanted to open in Old Town. A liquor license for the bar was denied last week after two days of public testimony.

Since it opened a couple of months ago, its name has created a storm of controversy among Old Town business owners and residents who say they’re embarrassed to take visitors through downtown.

Chip Steiner, executive director of the Downtown Development Authority, thinks changing the bar’s name is a terrific idea. He thinks the Drunken Monkey is a degrading name that does nothing to help the downtown area.

“It’s very damaging to the downtown image and its reputation,” Steiner said. “It’s just a bad, bad name.”

The writer must make the product itself interesting. Otherwise, a great part of his ingenuity and inventiveness will be used in devising tricks which lower the efficiency of advertising, rather than raising it. -Rosser Reeves

Babej has been reading Rosser Reeves' classic, Reality In Advertising. From the quote above, it does not sound dated. Evidently, the business was filled with artistes then, like it is now. Hence, the need for a man like Reeves, who could reign the monkeys in.

In other news, Hadji Williams, author of Knock The Hustle tells us his book is selling well. And that he's getting hate-mail of the “you’ll never work in this town again” variety, sent by trifling corporate ad industry types.

I wondered when a brand would utilize Flickr in an ad/pr campaign. We now have an answer, and the answer is Visa.

Julia Mancuso, a Visa blogger

Journey to Torino is a blog written by six Olympic athletes and one moderator/host. The blog also features a podcast and a Flickr link from the sidebar.

Cammi Granato, an ice hockey player for Team USA says:

My first experience on the ice was on the studio rink when my mom enrolled me in figure skating lessons. I was dressed in a tutu and had pom-poms attached to my white skates. Little did my mom know I was more interested in the action on the rink beside it. During the lesson, mom would finally realize I wasn’t on the ice with the other figure skaters – instead, she’d find me in the other rink with my nose pressed up against the glass watching hockey. “I want to play hockey mommy."

So, she's not Frank Deford. It's still a great move by Visa to go to market with a real blog written by real people. JTT also offers comments and trackbacks, another nod to the audience and sign that the Visa team behind this project really gets it.

[via Micropersuasion]

Reuters: Google Inc.'s search for revenue beyond its wildly popular pay-per-click advertising system has everyone from publishers to phone companies unnerved by the seemingly endless scope of the Web leader's ambitions.

Nowhere is this more closely felt than Madison Avenue, where the advertising industry sees Google encroaching on turf ad agencies and media buyers have considered their own for much of the past century.

Seeking to diversify its revenue base, Google has begun offering advertisers a set of free marketing analysis tools to help customers boost how much they spend on text ads carried by Google.com or affiliated sites. It is selling ads in print publications and expected to move into branded, graphical ads.

These moves, which some see as competing with systems offered by independent companies and ad agencies themselves, has provoked grumbling among many in the advertising industry.

"From a consumer perspective, Google is all good," Merrill Lynch analyst Lauren Rich Fine said in a recent note to clients. "However, Google is starting to attract negative publicity (tied to) its foray into other mediums."

His argument that Google's encroachment into other businesses, including the large advertising agencies, drove Google shares down 4.7 percent last Monday, its biggest percentage loss in a year.

The stock has since recovered most of its losses, closing at $417.70 on Friday.

According to this story in the Washington Post, BellSouth was none too pleased with the city's idea to offer free Wi-Fi throughout the city.

Hours after New Orleans officials announced Tuesday that they would deploy a city-owned, wireless Internet network in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, regional phone giant BellSouth Corp. withdrew an offer to donate one of its damaged buildings that would have housed new police headquarters, city officials said yesterday.

City officials said BellSouth was upset about the plan to bring high-speed Internet access for free to homes and businesses to help stimulate resettlement and relocation to the devastated city. Around the country, large telephone companies have aggressively lobbied against localities launching their own Internet networks, arguing that they amount to taxpayer-funded competition. Some states have laws prohibiting them.

Greg Meffert, the city's chief technology officer and a deputy mayor, said he is saddened that BellSouth finds the city's network so objectionable.

"It's a once-in-a-century opportunity to truly show the entire world what can be, instead of just what is, and help write future history in the process," Meffert said. "It's a damn shame they don't see that."

I think it'll be very enlightening to watch New Orleans' attempts to rebuild itself after Hurricane Katrina. Companies and their brands have the opportunity to do lots of good and make a lot of money, too. Or they can look like shameless profiteers.

Don't get the headline reference? Click here.

Newsweek: In "First Descent," a new snowboarding documentary that opens in limited release this week, mountains are everywhere. You'll have to look a little harder to spot the Mountain Dew.

But not too hard. Mountain Dew, after all, didn't just pay to have the soft drink in the movie. It financed the entire project, which follows five snowboarding icons. (A rep won't comment on the budget.) Experts call it "branded entertainment." How better to control screen time for a product?

But John Galloway, VP of sports and media for Pepsi-Cola, says that less is more in this film. Pepsi-Cola, which owns Mountain Dew, wants to build buzz by association. "Our goal is for this to be the seminal movie of snowboarding—we didn't want to go overboard with the product,'' he says. Product shots are subtle—a snowboarder's helmet, for example, shows the logo.

Still, media experts aren't so keen on the idea of a company's bankrolling a documentary, with say over the final cut. "It's like going back to the 17th century, where you had to please the patron," says Mary-Lou Galician, head of media analysis at Arizona State University.

Watch the trailer on Apple.com.

Associated Press: A coalition of American churches joined farmworker advocates Thursday to urge McDonald's Corp. to pay more for its tomatoes to help boost the wages of tomato pickers.

The National Council of Churches request comes after the Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers announced their campaign last month to pressure the fast-food giant to pay more for the fruit.

"Every so often there comes a moment that holds out the promise of making the world a significantly better place, if only we take action. Today the McDonald's corporation is presented with one of those moments," Council General Secretary, the Rev. Robert Edgar, said in a statement.

A call requesting comment from McDonald's was not returned Thursday.

Florida pickers harvest about 90 percent of the nation's domestic winter tomato supply.

The council, which represents about 35 Christian denominations, supported the Coalition of Immokalee Worker's four-year boycott to pressure Yum! Brands, the parent company of Taco Bell, to pay more for its tomatoes.

Louisville, Kentucky-based Yum! agreed in March to raise its price, an increase that was to be directly passed on to farmworkers.

NYT: Ai Miyazato, known as Ai-chan earned her 2006 L.P.G.A. Tour card with a record 12-stroke victory over Libby Smith and Lee Ann Walker Cooper at the L.P.G.A.'s Qualifying School at the Legends Course in Daytona Beach, Florida.

The L.P.G.A., enjoying an influx of young talent with global appeal, can now look at Miyazato as another potential star and as a future rival for Annika Sorenstam, Paula Creamer, Michelle Wie and Pressel.

Miyazato is already a legend in Japan. She has several endorsements there, including one with Japan Airlines, and is a mainstay on television commercials.

"Ai-chan was already famous when she was a junior," said Sonoko Funakoshi, a freelance golf journalist who works in the United States and covered Miyazato's victory Sunday.

"Since Ai-chan, women's golf in Japan is expanding and expanding. It's bigger than men's golf."

On NPR last week, Jeff Jarvis was asked whether, like radio and TV before us, the internet and blogs are naturally forming into networks.

He said, “The internet kills networks.”

Jarvis is the director of the new media program the City University of New York’s new Graduate School of Journalism. Professors like to make sweeping pronouncements. Big whoop.

But Jason Calacanis begs to differ. For him--the co-king of blog networks--this latest Jarvisism is a big deal.

I'm so tired of Jeff Jarvis claiming to be a huge expert on blogging. What has Jeff done to become such a huge expert on bloggging? Sure, he runs a decent personal blog, and has done so for a long time? However, Jeff is tapped as this expert on the business of blogging and he's never made any money from blogging (except maybe what About.com paid him).

Why a guy who just cashed a $25 to $35 million dollar check from AOL, is worked up about Jarvis, it is hard to say. Is the proof not in the pudding?

On Friday, W+K London rolled out a new 120-second spot for Honda.

Directed by Stink’s Ivan Zacharias, the spot follows a Honda test-driver (who lip-syncs the song “The Impossible Dream” by Andy Morris) as he gets on a Honda Monkey bike that morphs into other Honda vehicles, including the 1965 Formula 1 Grand Prix-winning car, the new BAR F1 automobile, and a powerboat.

As the spot wraps and the song ends, Garrison Keillor says in a voiceover, “I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

[via Adfreak]

Bruce Nussbaum: Michael Bierut of Pentagram fame has cut through the blather to raise a really fascinating--and funny-- issue in Corporate America. Everyone loves design but no one wants to call it design. Top CEOs and managers want to call design something else--innovation. Innovation, that they are comfortable with. Design, well, its a little too wild and crazy for them. So they call it innovation.

I've been seeing this phenomenon for some time now--ever since design took off as a strategy and way of thinking inside big corporations. The same managers who are perfectly comfortable talking about "vision," whatever that is, don't like to talk about "design." Innovation, however, connotes measurement, control and has a kind of engineering tonality to it. So "innovation" is accepted.

As for me, I think that if managers are uncomfortable with the term design, they should call it a "banana." Bananas are beautiful, functional, organic, unique, measureable, portable, pleasurable and provide a delightful, emotional experience to consumers. Bananas embody what CEOs and managers are struggling to achieve in using design to create new products and services.

Yes, it took the legendary designer Michael Bierut to make me have this epiphany. Banana. Wow.

[via Incite By Design]

As protestors get creative with their continued attacks on Wal-Mart, it pays to look back in American history at protest campaigns with like-minded goals. Ben Price of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), has written eloquently on the anti-chain store campaigns of the 1920s and 1930s.

With Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward corporations trying to squeeze local merchants with their mail-order version of retailing, community reaction was visceral. People organized boycotts and catalogue burnings. Their outhouses were stocked with a new brand of illustrated toilet paper. The stigma of buying through the catalogues was so great that the Sears Roebuck Corporation promised its customers that all transactions would remain confidential and products would be shipped in unmarked packaging. The inside cover of the Sears Roebuck sales catalogue told buyers "As some of our customers, especially townspeople and business houses, request us to ship our goods in plain packages or boxes, leaving off our name and address, so that no one will know what they have bought or where the goods come from, we have decided to make every transaction strictly confidential."

When chain store corporations came to town with their absentee ownership, money vacuums, uniformly inferior products, and low wages, democracy activists pressured newspapers not to sell advertising space to them. Community based merchant associations tried to force chains to sign minimum "fair-trade" price contracts and pressure manufacturers not to sell directly to the chains. Chain store opponents petitioned state legislators to use tax laws to block the chain stores, and to impose levies high enough to put them out of business. Like the people they represented, many state lawmakers joined the chain store opposition, believing it was their obligation to reflect majority will to govern over the institutions of commerce in their communities.

Independent radio stations and newspapers treated communities to diatribes against the chains, warning that they threatened to destroy a cornerstone of American democracy, the independent businessperson. William K. Henderson used his radio program, based in Shreveport, Louisiana, to lambaste the chains. He told his listeners:

"We have attempted to bring to light the ruinous and devastating effect of sending the profits of business out of our local communities to a common center, Wall Street. We have appealed to the fathers and mothers—who entertain the fond hope of their children becoming prosperous business leaders—to awaken to a realization of the dangers of the chain stores’ closing this door of opportunity. We have insisted that the payment of starvation wages such as the chain-store system fosters, must be eradicated. We have importuned those who labor to join in striking down the chain system in every form and character."

Ad Age has an article pondering the future of the company.

“These are the death throes,” said Alex Tamayo, VP at Media Contacts, the interactive buying unit of Havas’ MPG. He noted that while TiVo has put a brand name on time-shifting, it’s struggling to gain subscribers and is being outpaced by cable operators who are aggressively rolling out their own DVRs.

In fact, TiVo’s new developments came the same week that the 8-year-old company reported, as part of its third-quarter results, that it had added during the period 55,000 net new stand-alone subscriptions -- subscriptions independent of an agreement with a multichannel video provider such as DirecTV. The total was substantially lower than the 103,000 new subscriptions in the year-ago quarter.

TiVo’s also still reeling from a blow earlier this year when DirecTV began marketing its own branded interactive DVR, leaving the future of DirecTV’s relationship with TiVo unclear.

Excuse me. I have to go xerox something on a Ricoh copier.

Rangelife points to this story from Focus on the Family (a misnomer if there ever was one):

Focus on the Family has fired its banker; Wells Fargo because the bank is among the largest corporate contributors to homosexual causes.

In 2003 alone, Wells Fargo gave $2.1 million to more than 95 non-profit agencies serving the homosexual community. That brings their total giving since the 1980’s to more than $14 million.

Focus on the Family is sympathetic to the homosexual community but opposes the radical agenda by activists. The ministry will be switching all its banking to First National Bank Omaha, described as a family-friendly institution. Wells Fargo declined to comment.

Wells Fargo has won several awards for recognizing the GLBT community including scoring a perfect 100 on the Human Rights Campaign’s “Equality Index.”

IFOCE: Japan's Takeru Kobayashi consumed 67 Krystal hamburgers in eight minutes to win the 2005 Krystal Square Off World Hamburger Eating Championship in Chattanooga, TN.

To the amazement of the more than 2,000 fans gathered in Chattanooga for the event, San Jose's Joey Chestnut was in front of Kobayashi for the bulk of the contest. At one point Chestnut led by as many as 6 Krystals but finished 5 behind Kobayashi, losing ground in the final seconds of the Square Off.

This year's square off offered a whopping $22,500 purse. Kobayashi took home the top prize of $10,000 cash, the Krystal World Champion's Belt, the champion's crystal trophy and the title of Krystal Square Off World Hamburger-Eating Champion.

For American eating fans, however, the story was 21-year old Joey Chestnut. He is the first eater to ever lead Kobayashi through a contest and to be well within range to beat him.

[via A Hamburger Today]

The spot opens at the counter of a pizza place. Behind the counter is a middle-aged worker. The customer, a bald midget, stands in front of the counter, ready to order. He is in a hurry.

CUSTOMER: "Quick! What makes Pizza Pan pizza so unique?"

WORKER: (He spends 20 seconds going on about fresh dough, fresh ingredients, fast delivery, etc.) "Did ya get all that?"

CUSTOMER: (Holding a cell phone) "Oh, I'm sorry. I was on the phone."
(He is then hit in the face with a cream pie.)

So memorable, and so bad. Such is the nature of local advertising. Does it have a future in our fragmented media world? It's the focus of my new column on Talent Zoo.

Lewis Lazare: "Peace" is the central message in two new public service spots being released this month from Romani Bros./Chicago for Rotary International. The campaign tagline, as it was in an earlier campaign spotlighting Rotary's efforts to eradicate polio, is "Humanity in Motion."

The more arresting of the two new commercials is "Symbols," a well-edited montage of unusual peace symbol imagery. A second spot called "Peace" features people from all over the world simply mouthing the word "peace" in their native tongues. Toward the end of the commercial, a voiceover announcer notes Rotary provides scholarships to students interested in promoting world peace.

Though the "Peace" spot looks as if it was shot in many different locales, Romani partner Bernie Pitzel said most of it was filmed within a two-block area in downtown Los Angeles. Ah, the magic of modern film making.

Rotary is a worldwide organization of business and professional leaders that provides humanitarian service, encourages high ethical standards in all vocations, and helps build goodwill and peace in the world. Approximately 1.2 million Rotarians belong to more than 31,000 Rotary clubs located in 167 countries.

After considering this New York Times report on Google's corporate culture, it certainly makes me wonder why we settle for so much less in the ad biz.

Google, like I.B.M., says that it is forging a corporate culture in which success depends on performance.

But while I.B.M. is an old company that has revamped the social contract with its workers, Google is writing a new one from scratch.

Some of Google's benefit and compensation practices resemble I.B.M.'s. The retirement plan is a tax-deferred 401(k) program with employee savings matched by company contributions, as it is for new employees at I.B.M. starting this year. Annual bonuses at Google range up to 25 or 30 percent, as they do at I.B.M.

Yet Google portrays itself as a special place, starting with its company motto, "Don't Be Evil." And its programs and perks for employees are unusual, even by the often-generous standards of young Silicon Valley companies in good times.

Meals of all kinds, painstakingly prepared by company chefs, are free at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., a modern corporate campus known as the Googleplex. Other amenities there include children's day care, doctors, dry cleaning, laundry, a gym, and basketball and volleyball courts. Maternity or paternity leave is 12 weeks at 75 percent of full pay. There is also up to $500 available for takeout meals for the entire family after a newborn arrives, courtesy of Google. Shuttle buses (with wireless Internet access for working while commuting) ferry employees to the Googleplex from throughout the Bay area.

And the big perk: the company's engineers are given 20 percent of their time to pursue their own ideas instead of company assignments.

Show me an art director or copywriter who has ever been rewarded with a 30% bonus. Please. I want to hear about it.

I have a saying I'm particularly fond of. "If you're thinking it, someone else is doing it."

Over the past few years, my mom and I have discussed a business idea that seems like it may have legs. An evening gown rental business, where we make haute couture affordable for the night.

Today, I discovered a firm that's already doing it, albeit for hand bags.

Direct marketer, From Bags To Riches, will lend you the bag of your dreams for one month, then you can return it for another equally dreamy one. And so on.

Hollywood.com: Academy award-winning actress Kim Basinger has been enlisted by Italian fashion designer Muiccia Prada to model her new spring/summer Mui Mui collection.

Basinger, 51, who was a successful model before turning to acting, is the latest middle-aged female star to be chosen by highly acclaimed fashion houses, including Madonna, 47, and Demi Moore, 42, who both starred in recent Versace campaigns.

Muccia chose Basinger for the intellectual sensuality she has, which is quite unique.

Adweek on Yahoo! News: The rebirth of online advertising and its growing respectability as a creative medium is attracting more traditional creative talent to interactive agencies. But many Web-shop executives are skeptical about how well creatives steeped in traditional advertising can adjust to the interactive medium.

"What's happened in the last year is the Web's gone from being a curiosity to being mainstream media," said Chris Wall, co-chief creative officer at WPP Group's Ogilvy & Mather in New York. "The investment will get bigger, and the production values will go up."

Still, interactive is an inherently more complex medium, said Bob Greenberg, CEO of Interpublic Group's R/GA. While the agency has hired traditional-agency creatives, Greenberg said he doubts that most with long careers in TV or print can thrive in a medium that values inbound messaging as much as outbound. "Generally speaking, I would not be looking for creative people from [traditional] agencies because I think their background is too limited," he said.

Other interactive executives echo Greenberg, cautioning that while interactive needs storytellers, it also has a steep learning curve. "You need to know the medium in order to communicate through the medium," said Lars Bastholm, ecd at independent AKQA. "Many really don't."

Greenberg predicts the emerging digital media world will force traditional creatives to learn the language of the Web. "They're going to have to do it," he said. "They just don't know it yet."

[via Not Billable]

Seth Godin would like to see ad execs empowered by clients to actually move the needle, as opposed to the typical dancing around it, most of us do now.

What a shame that some of the smartest people in our field aren't allowed (by their clients and by their industry's structure) to get behind the scenes and change the product, the strategy and the approach instead of just annoying more people with ever louder junk.

Of course, I agree with Seth. But I find his notion hopelessly romantic. In a world where MBA-toting clients clearly know best when it comes to art direction and copy (skills not taught in B-school, strangely enough), just getting an idea that has not been ruined by committee sold in and produced, is about as much as any of us can hope for.

Ad Age reports on Tyson Foods' new "Giving Thanks" booklet, which features all sorts of faith-based ways to say Grace.

“People are not just buying our products, they’re buying us and they’re spending more and more time looking on the Internet and elsewhere to find out, ‘what does this company stand for,’ “ said Bob Corscadden, Tyson’s Chief Marketing Officer. Consumers researching Tyson are likely to find on the Net a chronicle of Tyson’s long history of accusations of labor violations and illegal political gifts. So a little religion couldn’t hurt.

Tyson has been developing the Giving Thanks at Mealtime booklets (roughly 25,000 have been sent out since the program’s kickoff in late August) for the past two years, taking its time with consumer research and working with Mr. Miller and others to determine that prayer books would indeed please rather than put off would-be purchasers. Although it has looked to tie to some faith-based organizations, “teaming with any one religious group could alienate other groups. It’s a sticky wicket,” Mr. Corscadden said.

You can download it directly here.

NYT: Nielsen Media Research is rolling out an ambitious, expensive effort to provide data to help measure the effectiveness of outdoor advertising.

The data is collected by an Npod, a device resembling a cellphone, weighs 1.4 ounces and is equipped with a global positioning system. The Nielsen Outdoor unit of Nielsen Media Research had 850 consumers in the Chicago area carry one for nine days during the summer of 2004, tracking their movements past outdoor signs.

The participants' travels - on foot, in cars and on trains - were plotted on maps showing the locations of outdoor signs, thus indicating who passed by certain billboards, posters on bus shelters and other signs. The device tracks exposure to the outdoor ads but could not determine if a person actually looked at or read them.

The multimillion-dollar effort by Nielsen Media Research is indicative of a trend that is remaking the advertising industry as marketers demand better methods to determine the effectiveness of their advertising. The goal is to finally provide a reply to the old complaint, attributed variously to the merchant John Wanamaker and the soap magnate Lord Leverhulme: "Half my advertising spending is wasted. I just don't know which half."

Advertisers spend an estimated $5.5 billion a year on outdoor advertising in the United States, according to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, a trade group. And through the first nine months of the year, the association reported yesterday, ad revenue rose 7.9 percent from the period a year ago, more than had been predicted.