John Malone, chairman of Liberty Media Corp.--which owns cable channels, satellite-television operator DirecTV and baseball's Atlanta Braves--sat down with Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal recently to discuss some pressing topics in the communications industry. Here's a slice of their discussion: MR. MOSSBERG:Tell me why nobody offers me, through a traditional cable or satellite service, a real Internet-type …
Sapient Forms In-House Broadcast Production Group
Content is on the rise in marcom circles. Just yesterday, I wrote, "I believe content is attractive to customers and prospects precisely because it's not a commercial" in response to Lux Shampoo's long-form ad. But that's not an opinion I share with Sapient Entertainment's new Director of Entertainment and Executive Producer, Jim Houck. Houck doesn't want anything to do with branded content. He wants to …
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Beauty Doesn’t Come In A Bottle
With Lux Shampoo, Unilever is striving to make beauty available to all women. To achieve their mission, the global packaged goods concern is turning to the star power of Catherine Zeta-Jones in a Hollywood-like production. According to Brand Republic, the short, "Alchemist," was created by JWT from an original screenplay by Jeffrey Caine, who also wrote the screenplay for James Bond film "GoldenEye" and thriller …
Narcissus Would Have Drowned In His Profile
Author and New York Times Magazine columnist, Rob Walker, is having a reaction to the glut of self-promotion unleashed daily in the social space. After reading this piece in Fortune where the writer says, "I have literally been Facebooking and Twittering (some say frittering) all my content away!" Walker offers this meditation on the state of things: Hmmm. The thing that stopped me here was the phrase "my …
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News You Can Use
I like to hear what Nick Denton of Gawker Media has to say. The guy pulls no punches, and he often delivers the exact insight into digital publishing that I'm looking for. Let's examine one of the nuggets he just shared with Michael Learmonth of Ad Age: When Gawker started, there was a surfeit of information and not nearly enough context -- so we provided that, in the form of links and occasionally snarky commentary. …
How Do You “Wire” A Paper Product? (More Thoughts About Content Packaging And Pricing)
Stephanie Clifford of The New York Times takes a careful look at Wired, the magazine's present difficulties and its enigmatic leader, Chris "Long Tail" Anderson. In 2006, Mr. Anderson published "The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More," arguing that the Internet allows for the sale of an array of niche products rather than relying on blockbusters. In "Free: The Future of a Radical Price," …
Let’s Watch, Shall We?
The New York Times' Bits blog points to Nizmlab, Chunnel.tv and Video Antville as sterling examples of curated content. What's interesting to note for our purposes here is how many commercials are being archived and presented to a global audience made up of people willing to spend their free time watching commercials. What other testament do we need that people like commercials when they're funny or in some way well …
Smart Bankers Invest In The Future Vitality of the Amazon
Native Green Project, presented by Bradesco Bank in Brazil, claims to be "the first native-generated content project, produced specially for the web." The images native residents from the Amazon captured are now compiled in 10 episodes that are approximately 4 minutes long. They can be seen exclusively on the Web at www.nativegreenproject.com. The project also has a Facebook page, because what campaign would be …
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