Ad Age, hoping for a New York Post-worthy story, but not getting it, addresses the sexual predator factor on MySpace again.
How many advertisers backed out of MySpace last week after it revealed it had deleted the profiles of 29,000 known sex offenders -- more than four times the number originally suspected -- from its site?
Not a single one.
Julie Henderson, senior VP-corporate communications at MySpace parent Fox Interactive Media, said a few concerned marketers called when the news came out but were placated when told MySpace had deleted those 29,000 profiles.
Ms. Henderson also pointed out that 29,000 out of 180 million registered users is one-thousandth of a percent. Of course, this number doesn't account for offenders savvy enough to register under a pseudonym.
Don't Ask A VC For Something Your Credit Card Can Provide
Guy Kawaskai is not the VC you want to ask for a million bucks to build your Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site...not when he built one for $12,107.09.
Spike Jones at Greenville, SC identity firm Brains of Fire has some choice words helpful criticism for GMC, in relation to the automaker's new website Let's Talk Trucks, an obvious nod to social media.
After rightly identifying the consumer testimonals as ads, Jones then hops aboard the Cluetrain:
The funny thing is, “Let’s Talk” is big and bold on every page. But this isn’t a conversation, it’s GMC talking and you listening. There’s no conversation. No give and take. No banter. And no place at all for GMC owners to connect with one another.
Seems to me that it’s all hat and no cattle. Nice try, boys.
Rafat Ali at paidContent is reporting that Treehugger has been bought by a larger media company for $15 million.
The new site will become part of Discovery’s PlanetGreen network, which includes the eco-lifestyle TV network launching next year. Last year, Discovery-owned Animal Planet bought two online pet sites: Petfinder.com and PetsIncredible.
Treehugger, based in Brooklyn, NY, was formed in 2004, and offers a mix of text and video news, blogs and advice. The deal also include's Treehugger's user-generated site, Hugg.com. The company says it has about 1.4 million unique monthly visitors.
To summarize, a three year-old media brand (in a popular niche), built with simple tools and a savvy staff can make serious money in verry little time.
Mr. Lovemarks is going to show Fallon some love. Yes, Fallon, the creative rock of Minneapolis.
According to The Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.), by giving Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, the additional responsibility of Fallon, Publicis hopes the Minneapolis shop can grow faster after several lackluster years.
Fallon has been stung by executive departures and a slew of account losses, including the exit of BMW, United Airlines and the bulk of the agency's Citibank business. In 2005, it closed its New York office. In the U.S., Fallon's creative department has been in flux since 2004, when David Lubars, the shop's former president and executive creative director of Fallon North America, defected to Omnicom Group's BBDO.
"We want Fallon to get back on top of the Crispins and the Wiedens," Mr. Roberts said.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Walt Disney Co. is buying the Club Penguin virtual community in a $350-million deal that could eventually be worth as much as $700 million.
Launched in October 2005, Club Penguin has more than 700,000 paid subscribers and 12 million registered users, most of them in the United States and Canada. Visitors can adopt, name, feed and clothe virtual penguins, and they can chat and play games with other users.
Behance looks at the reinvention of fashion eyewear line, Oliver Goldsmith, by Claire Goldsmith.
Here's one of the things she says, that I particularly like:
"One good piece of wisdom was 'while your competitors are copying you they will never be able to get ahead of you.' I liked that, as creators are always worrying about their designs being copied."
Note, there was an Irish writer by the name Oliver Goldsmith in the 18th century. I doubt many people had sunglasses back then.
I think a good deal about about the differences between journalism and advertising, and how in many cases the differences are fading away in this new age of content-driven media. Then along comes a story that reminds me just how large a gulph still exists between the two professions.
According to The New York Times, Editor of The Oakland Post, Chauncey Bailey, was shot multiple times at short range yesterday morning while walking in an open-air parking lot just three blocks from the Alameda County Courthouse and several city buildings.
Roland Holmgren, a spokesman for the Oakland Police Department, said they were looking into the possibility that the killing was related to Mr. Bailey’s work as a journalist, though no suspects have been named.
[UPDATE] Devaughndre Broussard, a 19-year-old handyman at a Black Muslim-owned bakery in Oakland confessed to the murder. The bakery, the police say, was the headquarters of a criminal gang that was involved in kidnapping, torture and three killings.
Officer Roland Holmgren, a police spokesman, said Mr. Broussard “referred to himself as a ‘soldier’ ” for the bakery’s leadership. “We don’t believe he acted alone,” Mr. Holmgren said. More charges are forthcoming in this case.
Selling It Over There So We Don't Have To Sell It Over Here
Seems that American brands have also invaded Iraq. From USA Today:
Many Iraqis are developing a taste for American-brand products, which were banned under Saddam Hussein and are becoming increasingly popular.
Rice, salt and canned goods are among the most popular American products at the Al-Ameer market, owner Mohammad Abbas said. "American items have a great reputation and quality," he said. "And people want them in our markets because they get bored of Syrian, Jordanian and Iranian items."
A couple neighborhoods away at the upscale Honey Market, shelves are stocked with Duracell batteries, Dove soap, Kellogg's Froot Loops cereal, and Kent and Marlboro cigarettes.
Gatorade is particularly popular when temperatures break 120 degrees in the summer, store manager Faris al-Jabir said, though American goods account for only 2% of sales.
Hmmm...we're having trouble selling them democracy, so maybe we can at least sell them some cigarettes. Maybe that's what freedom really is these days.
Sports Is An Entertainment Product That Content Helps Sell
Entertainment brands are on the forefront of seeing themselves as creators of content. For marketing pros in this sector, it's native territory. Mike Stevens, chief marketing officer for the New York Giants, is such a creature.
According to Ad Age, the New York Giants and Fox Television's two New York stations are forming a new content and distribution partnership.
The deal calls for the Giants' new entertainment division to air programs and news segments exclusively on Fox-owned stations, which already carry the rights to most of the team's regular season games.
The programming, created by the Giants, will be diverse, including the expected range of pre- and post-game shows, but also entertainment- and lifestyle-oriented fare to appeal to a demographic wider than its normal sports base.
Stevens said that because the team already controls its radio production and sales, the close partnership with Fox's stations makes it one of the most streamlined ad buys in all of sports.
"We want to almost be viewed as an agency," said Mr. Stevens.
The Airwaves Will Be Free Again...This Message Brought to You By the Good People at Google
The Washington Post took a look at this Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.) piece on Google's move into cellular communications and decided to write its own article on the development.
Google has developed a prototype cell phone that could reach markets within a year, and plans to offer consumers free subscriptions by bundling advertisements with its search engine, e-mail and Web browser software applications.
The move would echo another recent product launched by a phone industry outsider, Apple Inc.'s iPhone. But Google's product would draw its revenue from a sharply different source, relying on commercial advertising dollars instead of the sticker price of at least $499 for an iPhone and $60 per month for the AT&T service plan.
The Post story goes on to speculate that this new gPhone is for people who can't afford a cell phone. I'm not so sure. It costs a lot of money to lug around a device that works so-so half the time. Make it free and that changes the game, not just the score.
The New York Times shares this "Ridiculously Thick Yogurt" ad from Fage, a Greek food company with U.S. distribution.
After coming up with the idea to mix Fage's affordable luxury with the kind of non-affordable luxuries the word "luxury" was invented for, Fage's ad agency, Ogilvy New York, approached both Honora and Tourneau directly and worked with their in-house marketing departments on media placement and concept development.
Ralph Orssini, the president of Honora, acknowledged some initial concern about dunking his fine jewelry in yogurt for an ad. “At first I had to really be explained what the concept was,” he said, adding that he soon realized that the creative campaign could speak to a younger generation.
He also said that he saw similarities between the products: Honora pearls have the highest nacre content of pearls on the market, Mr. Orssini said, “so in essence, we sell ridiculously thick cultured pearls, and they sell ridiculously thick cultured yogurt.”
Fage has cultivated a devoted following in urban markets, where Total yogurt is sold in high-end grocery stores like Whole Foods, Wild Oats and Trader Joe’s.
According to CNN, citizens in Collinsville, IL have partnered with the H.J. Heinz Co. to fill an 8-foot-tall, 4-foot-wide plastic pouch with 1,500 pounds of the condiment for a school fundraiser.
"That's a lot of ketchup," said Tracey Parsons, a Heinz spokeswoman.
The company donated 4,000 glass bottles of the condiment for people to buy for $1 and pour into the packet. Proceeds will go to the Collinsville Christian Academy, which was damaged by a fire this week.
The feat is being submitted to Guinness World Records.
The High Cost of Pulling Riches from Silicon Valley Salt Mines
I didn't even need to open to the Business section of today's Sunday Times to find a disgusting article about wealth, status and the American dream. For today, the article is conveniently splashed across the front page.
Hal Steger, the gentle creature depicted above, is a marketing executive worth $3.5 million. The $1.3 million house he and his wife own on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean is paid off. Yet each day Mr. Steger continues to toil in what a colleague calls “the Silicon Valley salt mines,” working as a marketing executive for a technology start-up company, still striving for his big strike. Most mornings, he can be found at his desk by 7. He typically works 12 hours a day and logs an extra 10 hours over the weekend.
“I know people looking in from the outside will ask why someone like me keeps working so hard,” Mr. Steger says. “But a few million doesn’t go as far as it used to."
For several more examples of this mindset read the entire article. Then remind yourself to never, ever move to Silicon Valley.
Heron Preston is a Junior Strategist at Naked Communications in NYC. He's also a man with a video cam and a YouTube page full of bare insights.
Preston offers video interviews with Piers Fawkes of PSFK, Daniel Cherry of Wieden/NYC and Harry Bernstein of Berlin Cameron United, to name a few. Please watch them all. Having just done so, I'm struck by how exposed Preston's subjects are. It's as if these are scripted vignettes by a protégé of Christopher Guest, not biographical sketches. Perhaps, they are. Stranger things have happened on the internets.
The organization ordains 10,000 people a month, twice as many as in 2000, according to Andre Hensley, the church’s president. Eighty percent join the fold solely to perform weddings, he said.
According to the report, four states with tight asses, fail to recognize marriages that were performed by mail order ministers. The states are CT, TN, AL and VA.
Even if you live in a state that does recognize such unions, the Gray Lady won't.
The New York Times has a policy of publishing articles only about weddings in which it can confirm that the officiant is legally empowered to perform the ceremony.
Another interesting fact from the article: 39 states, including Connecticut, do not recognize common-law marriage.
[ABOUT THE ARCANE HEADLINE] Jason Strider is a character in a novel who marries his friends from Cornell thanks to the power vested in him by the world wide web.
The New York Times is reporting on adveritsing's Brave New World--a place where French holding company, Publicis, intends to play a major role.
Their goal is to transform advertising from mass messages and 30-second commercials that people chat about around the water cooler into personalized messages for each potential customer.
In the United States, some companies are already running about 4,000 versions of an ad for a single brand, whereas 10 years ago they might have run three to five versions. The number of iterations will grow as technology improves.
David W. Kenny, the chairman and chief executive of Digitas, indicates greater production capacity is needed to fulfill this demand. Publicis executives see sources of low-cost labor from a Digitas subsidiary called Prodigious, a digital production unit that works with all agencies in the Publicis Groupe, as central to their plan. Prodigious already uses workers in Costa Rica and Ukraine to produce copious footage for companies like G.M.
Mark Beeching, executive vice president and worldwide chief creative officer of Digitas says, “The more you can standardize and automate in terms of making different versions, hallelujah. That money should be spent creating more content.”
Fallon is under new leadership, but that doesn't mean famously combative, Pat Fallon, has to like it.
"This is certainly not how I would script it," 62-year-old Mr. Fallon said.
Referring to his agency's new boss, Fallon said, "Kevin has 'Lovemarked' his way into clients. We've been saying that we'd rather outsmart the competition than outspend them for 26 years, but we've never taken the time and energy to promote it the way Kevin has. He's turned it into a new-business machine, and you have to tip your hat to that."
Begrudging respect aside, Chuck Porter of Crispin Porter & Bogusky, a lifelong friend of Mr. Fallon, said, "I don't care what the organizational chart says, Pat doesn't report to anyone."
USA Today is running a brief, but interesting piece on a move that lends Publix a special PR glow.
Seven popular antibiotics will be available free from Publix supermarkets for people with prescriptions, even if they have a health insurance provider that would pay for them.
Fourteen-day supplies of the seven drugs, among the most commonly prescribed, will be available at all 684 of the chain's pharmacies in five states. Publix said it is not limiting the number of prescriptions that customers may fill for free.
The prescription antibiotics available under the program include amoxicillin, cephalexin, penicillin VK and erythromycin.
"With health care and prescription costs on the rise, our free prescription drug program will reinforce our commitment to the total health and wellness of our customers and their families," said Publix spokesman Dwaine Stevens.
Publix has stores in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee.
Mark Pincus Is In Oil Stocks and Other Bits of Video Wisdom
Serial entrepreneur, Mark Pincus--with Harvard MBA in hand--started Freeloader, Support.com and then Tribe.net.
Speaking to Howard Lindzon of Wallstrip about a future where there will only be two types of media, measured and non-measured, Pincus said, "Measured media, which is anything on the internet, measured media will just fundementally sell for a premium to non-measured."
Josh Rubin's Cool Hunting found something cool (surprise, surprise) from an ad agency based in Amsterdam (more surprises!).
It appears that Kessels Kramer has a content division called Kessels Kramer Publishing. Their lastest offering is a book called one hundred things to do. One of their suggestions is to knit garments from plastic bags (see photo).
Kessels Kramer Publishing sees each new book as a surprise (surprise!) or new incarnation that always challenges and questions the reader as well as the publisher.
Being a copywriter, albeit a strategically-aware one, I'm a bit of a fish out of water here at the 4A's Account Planning Conference. So I won't analyze everything I've heard today, but I do have a few random observations I'd like to make:
If there's one theme I heard constantly today, it's that our industry, the media, and our world is in a permanent state of change now. Get used to it.
Apple and Starbucks are worshipped here. I've heard at least 3 separate presentations in which they've both been used as examples of great focused brands. Virgin and Target are highly thought of as well. I don't disagree, but is there just a little bit of preaching to the choir here? I mean, I'm in a roomful of Starbucks-drinking Mac users, for the most part. If this were a convention of insurance sales reps, Apple would be a non-entity for most of them.
Al Gore and "An Inconvenient Truth" have been referenced a few times as well as an example of passionate, world-changing ideas. No mention of our current president and his single-minded messianic desire to remake the Middle East.
Gareth Kay of Modernista! and Mark Lewis of DDB San Francisco gave a great presentation of the "Seven Deadly Sins," i.e., myths and misconceptions agencies and marketers have. But at one point, Gareth referenced Twitter and asked how many people in the room use it. Out of a room of 200 or so, maybe 3 or 4 raised their hands. No deep analysis of that, I just thought it was noteworthy.
According to Associated Press, a loosely formed coalition of left-leaning bloggers are trying to band together to form a labor union they hope will help them receive health insurance, conduct collective bargaining or even set professional standards.
While bloggers work to organize their own labor movement, their growing numbers are already being courted by some unions.
"Bloggers are on our radar screen right now for approaching and recruiting into the union," said Gerry Colby, president of the National Writers Union, a local of the United Auto Workers. "We're trying to develop strategies to reach bloggers and encourage them to join."
Sitting at a panel titled "A Union for Bloggers: It's Time to Organize" at this week's YearlyKos Convention for bloggers in Chicago, Kirsten Burgard said she'd welcome a chance to join a unionized blogging community.
"I sure would like to have that union bug on my Web site," said Burgard, a blogger who uses the moniker Bendy Girl.
Sensational Headline Tops Yet Another Facebook Story (YAFS)
BusinessWeek had the effrontery to run yet another Facebook story (YAFS) with the sorry headline, "Fogeys Flock to Facebook." I may be over 40, but damn, I am in no way prepared to handle the unbearable weight of that description.
So screw BusinessWeek. I could point out, as the article does, how Facebook signs up 150,000 new users a day or how the 35-and-up crowd now accounts for more than 41% of all Facebook visitors, but instead I'll turn to a more telling comment on the story made by DavidMullings, a 26-year-old entrepreneur.
I run my own company and use LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace - but each of them serve a slightly different purpose. If I had to choose one though, it would be Facebook. Where else can I have Guy Kawasaki, author of "The Art of the Start" as a friend and actually get a reply from him? So far Facebook has succeeded for me where LinkedIn has failed - connecting me with VCs and Angel Investors. On top of that, Facebook has allowed me to connect with interesting individuals from all over the World because of the groups - especially the Web 2.0 group. All these sites are tools and how you use a tool is less important than what the tool can do in the first place. LinkedIn is limited for what I want to do. Within 1 week of joining Facebook, I secured an invitation to Boston College to present at their Entrepreneurship Club in September - top that LinkedIn or MySpace.
Content Just Wants To Be Free (Even When It Belongs to The Gray Lady)
According to The New York Post, New York Times executives - including publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. - made the decision to end the paper's subscription-only TimesSelect service.
While other online publications were abandoning subscriptions, the Times took the opposite approach in 2005 and began charging for access to well-known writers, including Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich and Thomas L. Friedman.
The decision, which also walled off access to archives and other content, was controversial almost from the start, with some of the paper's own columnists complaining that it limited their Web readership.
The number of Web-only subscribers who pay $7.95 a month or $49.95 a year fell to just over 221,000 in June, down from more than 224,000 in April.
Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 weighs in on the development:
The new economics of media make charging for content nearly impossible because there is always someone else producing similar content for free — even if the free content isn’t “as good as” the paid content by some meaningful metric, it doesn’t matter because there’s so much content of at least proximate quality that the paid content provider has virtually no pricing power. As smart, talented, and insightful as the New York Times columnists behind the paid wall are, the are too many other smart, talented, insightful commentators publishing their thoughts on the web for free.
Analysts and ad execs say established Internet sites - namely, the big portals and large content providers - are starting to feel the pinch after years of charging top dollar for space on their sites.
The pricing pressure is apparent in AOL's most recent results, in which ad growth slowed to 16 percent from nearly 40 percent over the past few quarters.
Online ad growth at the Washington Post fell to 11 percent in the second quarter, compared with 36 percent a year earlier.
"People are still buying display ads, but they are buying them elsewhere and for less than if they bought them from AOL or Yahoo!," said Jupiter Research analyst David Card.
This shift is benefiting newcomers - such as social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube - at the expense of more established rivals that were once considered "must buys."
As for AdPulp, you might say we're wishing upon a star for those much ballyhooed windfalls from that longtail thing.
The American Society for Magazine Editors is whacked.
According to Folio, the trade association is bent out of shape because XXL editor-in-chief Elliott Wilson appears in a Roccawear ad on his magazine's back cover.
“No person on an editorial staff should ever be involved in producing or participating in advertising,” says ASME executive director Marlene Kahan. “[The XXL ad] appears to be a violation of ASME guidelines.”
The ad in question is one in Rocawear’s new multimedia ad campaign called “I Will Not Lose”, which was inspired by company co-founder and CEO, Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter. It features recording artists like Ciara and Three 6 Mafia, as well as individuals who have overcome adversity in their lives.
Planners Planning To Use Blogs To Plan Their Plans
Today at the Account Planning Conference, Aki Spicer from the Fallon Planning Blog and Ed Cotton from Butler Shine & Stern's Influx Insights led an interesting discussion entitled "Blogging the Agency," encouraging Account Planners to start blogs, use the blogosphere to find unique voices and encourage clients to take advantage of blogs and social networks.
But the most interesting thing I thought was meshly.com, a site developed by Fallon to track trends in the blogosphere and connect people. It's a Twitter-meets-Digg type of method of posting your favorite links and articles via IM. So beyond just scouring the web for insights, Fallon is actually developing its own web tools to measure trends.
In true Account Planner fashion, Ed and Aki sent out questionnaires to the planning community to get their opinion on blogs in preparation for the discussion. I think they sent it out to hundreds of people. They got 38 responses, so maybe there's not a mass trend towards account planners using blogs. And they did reveal that legendary planner Jon Steel hates blogs.
UPDATE (8/8) - The entire presentation is now available at the Fallon Planning Blog .
More Random Notes From The Account Planning Conference
There are only two types of Account Planners in America: Forty-something Brits and Twenty-something Americans. That's it. I'm not sure if that bodes well for the future of Account Planning, because those British accents can really give any presentation an aura of legitimacy.
This whole conference is awash in...greenwashing. From carbon-neutral ad agency networks and Gore worshipping to a presentation by the Method company of cleaning products (which was founded by an ex-agency account planner), you'd think the entire world has the environment top of mind and is actively seeking something to do about it. Of course, here at the Account Planning conference, brands are the answer to the earth's fragile state. I hope they're recycling the thousands of bottled water containers people are using around here.
Prior to a session featuring Kevin Wall, the coordinator of Live Earth, there were two things placed on every seat: A sheet describing "Tips on how to lead a more carbon neutral lifestyle," and a brochure, enclosed in a clear plastic sleeve, from a company promoting "freehand advertising," a media vehicle in which "our agents distribute free packets of paper to students campus-wide with your ad at the top of every page." I simply can't get my mind around that paradox.
Google is a sponsor here, and has about 13 people attending the conference. Same for Yahoo. No one from Crispin is on the attendee list, and I think there's only one or two Goodby people here. That says quite a bit about the shift taking place in the ad industry.
I think it's a rule here that if you give a speech or lead a session, you need to do a PowerPoint presentation interspersed with videos plucked from YouTube. And don't forget a clever commercial or two to prove the point. Although I have to say, the presentations here need a little better art direction. Believe me, advertising people aren't immune to making bad PowerPoints.
There was an odd presentation by Greg MacGillivray, who's made a number of IMAX films. While he was talking about his Everest film, my agency planner turned to me and asked, "What's the relevance of this?" I didn't know. Sure enough, 10 minutes later, MacGillivray's presentation morphed into a sales pitch for corporate sponsorship of IMAX films. So if your brand could benefit from sponsoring an IMAX film, well, you should get in on it.
We've heard a number of good case studies as part of the Jay Chiat Planning Awards, but special congrats to Cramer-Krasselt, which is in the running for the Planning Grand Prix for its Rozerem work featuring Abe Lincoln and the Beaver:
It's one of the more intriguing case studies that's been presented here, tapping into the emotional power (and random nature) of dreams to connect with consumers. No matter what you think of pharmaceutical advertising in general, I definitely appreciate the approach they took to injecting new thinking into selling something as dull as sleep aids.
By the way, San Diego is frickin' gorgeous. And did you know it has a Little Italy neighborhood? It's sweet.
