Packaged goods advertising needs a kick in the pants. No one's going to argue otherwise. However, I'm not sure what Unilever and WPP's Mindshare Entertainment have wrought with this painfully derivative spot for Dove? According to Ad Age, this Mad Men mirror for Dove is just the beginning. Unilever is planning to work six of its iconic brands--Dove, Breyers, Hellman's, Klondike, Suave and Vaseline--into this newly …
Digital Publishers Don’t Have Old Media’s Margins, But The Best Operators Are Making It Work
Daniel Lyons of Newsweek wrote an interesting piece about the business side of Huffington Post, a new media company with $30 million in revenue. HuffPo has a big audience--24.3 million unique visitors last month, nearly as many as The New York Times--but like most Web sites, it can't monetize it very well. Right now, HuffPo generates just over $1 per reader per year. That's nothing compared with the mainstream-media …
American Family Is Pioneering Trackable Advertainment, Proving That It Helps Sell insurance
American Family Insurance has no gecko, but they the company's marketing pros do have a clue. According to Ad Age, the brand's content play, "In Gayle We Trust," is now entering its second season with an even stronger focus on targeting and tracking new customers. American Family is also bring gaming to the forefront with a new social-simulation game, "I-Am-Fam," from game developer WildTangent. "I-Am-Fam," a new …
Sounds Good, But What’s On Their Heads And Feet?
"All Summer" is a new branded music video from Converse via Anomaly, New York. The song was produced by Rostam of Vampire Weekend and also features Kid Cudi and Best Coast. …
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Branson’s Daughter, Holly, To Run Digital Magazine Business
Ad Age reports that Virgin is planning to extend its brand into consumer magazines with the launch of a new title, Maverick, which will be available exclusively as an app for the iPad, iPhone and eventually, Android. If the venture is successful, Virgin hopes to establish itself as a leader in digital magazines. As I say here any chance I get, brands are in the media business today. Clearly, some, more so than …
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Have Web Show Will Travel
Hollywood producer and award winning casting director, Lauren Lloyd, wants to get her some of this Webvertainment thing that everyone's so hopped up on. So she created BigTV, which airs shows like "The Unemployment Chronicles." "We're about ultra-passionate people, who want to host their own shows," says Lloyd. BigTV is presently looking for hosts with "compelling perspectives" and the ability to share their POV in …
Digital Disruption: How’s It Going For You?
"The ad business is going through a change not seen in three decades." - Judy Shapiro Judy Shapiro is a veteran marketing exec and Chief Brand Strategist at CloudLinux, a Linux-based OS for technology service providers. In her latest piece for Ad Age, she argues that we're moving from a one:many web to a many:many web and that a lot of media companies are quietly being crushed by the changes underway. ...utterly …
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The More You Feed People Paid Media, The More Prepared They’ll Be To Pay
Barry Diller is chairman and chief executive officer of IAC/InterActiveCorp. …
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