Phil Rosenthal, creator and executive producer of Everybody Loves Raymond testified before Congress on behalf of the Writers’ Guild and Screen Actors Guild. He denounced product integration and did so quite elegantly (even though this issue is primarily a battle for compensation, and not about big bad brands forcing themselves on entertainment elites). [via New TeeVee] …
Brands Are Made of Ideas. Tires Are Made of Rubber.
L.A. Times has a story about a multinational brand caught in the middle of a larger story about crime, nature, globalization, history, imperialism and poverty. The setting is Liberia, the African nation emerging from 14 years of civil war. The brand is Japanese-owned Bridgestone. Bridgestone is in Liberia for its natural resources. Rubber is Liberia's biggest export and Bridgestone's Firestone plantation, which is …
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Cable Imitates Interweb. Hopes Ad Dollars Will Follow.
According to The Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.), the ability to direct ads to viewers' specific interests which is driving the growth of Internet advertising, could also fuel the new ad opportunities on cable platforms. Cable operators, through which a majority of Americans watch TV, are developing a new generation of marketing platform, including video-on-demand and interactive ads that marry traditional TV …
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JPG Magazine Dirt
Derek Powazek, the founder of JPG Magazine and long time member of the technorati has been forced out by his business partners. Believing as he does in radical transparency, he chose to detail some of the sordid details on his blog. Unfortunately, issue 10 will be the last one that Heather and I will have a hand in. We are no longer working for JPG Magazine or 8020 Publishing. Why? The reasons are complicated, and …
Is Video The Net’s Best Offering?
MySpace is fast becoming VideoSpace. According to The Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.), The News Corp-owned site seeks to "aggressively expand its video offerings and grow from its social-networking roots into a popular culture and lifestyle portal." The content will cover music, celebrities, action sports and other topics that MySpace executives say its community is already talking about. This round of deals is …
Slick Slides
Ogilvy's Rohit Bhargava received an honorable mention in Slide Share's World's Best Presentation Contest for his blogging types treatise. Why one might need to know this type of arcane material is beside the point. I'm looking at the design of the presentation, and it is elegant for Power Point. …
McDonald’s Burger King
"We train more people than the U.S. Army." -Karen King, McDonald's USA's East division president According to Ad Age, Karen King joined McDonald's 30 years ago in Lawrenceville, Ga. Today she manages some 5,000 restaurants, comprising 36% or $10 billion of revenue for the domestic system. Today she's also the star of a new ad campaign that seeks to rid the world of the very concept of "McJobs." "If you have the …
The Irritainment King of Sacramento
irritainment (eer.uh.TAYN.munt) n. Entertainment and media spectacles that are both annoying and compulsively watchable. CNET News.com says Casey Serrin is "on his way to becoming the most hated blogger on the Internet." Serrin, 24, is a "would-be real estate mogul" from Sacramento, CA. He bought eight houses in eight months in four states with no money down looking to fix 'n flip. He became over-leveraged and lost …
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