Amsale Aberra, a 52-year-old couture wedding gown designer -- and a native of Ethiopia -- is the new spokesperson for the MKX, Lincoln's first entry in the compact crossover wagon market. According to The Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.), Ms. Aberra's New York-based wedding- and evening-dress house, claims annual sales of about $30 million. The Amsale label is in the same league as Vera Wang, another high-end …
Pytka To Direct Consumer Generated Spot
According to Ad Age, Joe Pytka--the most famous commerical director on earth--will deign to direct a spot conceived by a consumer of NFL football. Gino Bona of Portsmouth, N.H., is the winner of the NFL's promotion that gave fans the opportunity to determine one of the league's 30-second spots that will run next month in Super Bowl XLI. Mr. Bona, who works as a sales director at the Garrand & Co. marketing firm in …
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Iowa Journalists Delve Into Marketing Services Business
The Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.) looks at one prominent media company's scramble to become a player in marketing services. Meredith Corp., whose magazine titles include Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle and Ladies' Home Journal, is spending an undisclosed sum to acquire Los Angeles-based digital-ad agency Genex and Arlington, Va., word-of-mouth-marketing firm New Media Strategies. The acquisitions …
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P&G Asks Women What They Want
Today, P&G launched Capessa.yahoo.com, an online community for women. This is P&G's first stab at consumer-generated content in the digital space. Here's what they're saying, as quoted in Businessweek: "This is not about selling products. It's about better understanding of consumers and learning about their needs and habits," said P&G spokeswoman Robyn Schroeder. "The more we learn about these consumers, the more it …
Class In Pocket
Engadget is all over the MacWorld story of the day/year--the June 2007 release of Apple's new iPhone. As expected, it's a beautifully designed device. It features a 3.5-inch screen, and the highest resolution screen Apple has ever shipped, 160ppi. Other features include a built in 2 megapixel camera, speaker, mic input, and an iPod connector. It works with any IMAP or POP3 email service. iPhone's mobile browser runs …
The $10,000,000 Dollar Widget
David Utter, a staff writer for Web Pro News, looks at another Web 2.0 acquisition by Yahoo. Bix. Flickr. Delicious. Upcoming.org. Webjay. Konfabulator. Jumpcut. SearchFox. They all have something in common with MyBlogLog: a big check from Yahoo in exchange for the companies. MyBlogLog is a social network that lives on blogs, mostly. Many sites, like Scott Karp's Publishing 2.0, display a MyBlogLog widget that shows …
Realtors Ask Americans To Buy Real Estate
Market Watch reports on a professional association's attempt to use millions of dollars in advertising expenditures to overcome prevailing economic trends. The National Association of Realtors is launching a $40 million advertising campaign to encourage Americans to buy houses amid the ongoing housing slump. The Realtors' campaign includes $26 million in television advertising, about double what the group spent in …
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Counting Gators Before They Hatch
News Net 5 in Cleveland, Ohio reports on one retailer's desire to capitalize on an Ohio State victory (that did not happen) in last night's championship game. Macy's made a losing bet on the Buckeyes and now has T-shirts that stores can't sell, proclaiming Ohio State college football's national champions. Three of the department stores in Columbus had the merchandise ready to go in case the Buckeyes won Monday's …
Gatorade Is For Winners
With all the brands desperate today to unleash a viral video on the Internets, I think it might be instructive to look at a brand that's been viral offline for decades. No ad agency had anything to do with the creation or perpetuation of the Gatorade dunk. Maybe this should be the definition of what viral is? Something can only be viral if uninstigated consumers create meaning around the brand. Everything else is …
A New Spoke On The Marketing Services Wheel
The Wall Street Journal is running a piece on BrightLine, a 15-person Manhattan firm that takes ideas for traditional ads and figures out how those concepts can function in venues such as video on demand and digital video recorders. Tweaking traditional ad ideas for on-demand services is a niche specialty, falling somewhere between traditional media planning and marketing services -- but one that is increasingly in …
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