New Cadillac Ad: Lust For . . . What Was That, Again?
It's been noticed elsewhere, but it bears repeating:
Those of you who caught this Cadillac commercial on the Oscars may have missed some key lyrical subtleties on its soundtrack, which comes courtesy of the Pogues' "Sunnyside Of The Street":
So I saw that train
And I got on it
With a heart full of hate
And a lust for vomit
Now I'm walking on
On the sunny side of the street
If I was wearing a hat, I'd be tipping it.
As I said here once before, well, at least it's not like any ad agency ever took a song Iggy Pop wrote about heroin and used to to sell Royal Caribbean Cruises.
(Except, of course, one did.)
I am picturing a meeting in which a Cadillac exec is getting hung up on the lyrics, and some agency guy saying "don't worry, the singer has hardly any [warning: disgusting image] teeth. No one can understand him."
06:03 PM | Advertising: Egregious, Advertising: Good | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
February 26, 2007Lehman on New York Times Co.: Stock Gains Driven By Protestors, Short Sales
Lehman Brothers analyst Craig Huber just came out with a report suggesting that the New York Times' decent stock performance thus far this year comes in part from a rise in shorted shares--and investors who want to own stock in time to register protest votes at the company's upcoming annual meeting.
Or, as he puts it (emphasis added, and sorry for the ugly formatting--text conversion isn't always pretty):
Since late January (1/26/07), New York Times stock has increased 13.7% to $26.03 (vs. the S&P 500 up 2.0% for the same period).
We believe this move was unwarranted and was due primarily to the following issues: First, there was renewed speculation that the
company may change the dual class share structure due to pressure from large shareholders making the company a potential takeover
candidate which we think is unlikely to happen ("New York Times Shares Rise Nearly 7 Percent", Reuters, February 7, 2007). Also, there was speculation that investor Warren Buffett had invested in New York Times which we think is unlikely (â??New York Times Rises on Talk Buffett Is Buying Stockâ??, Bloomberg, February, 7, 2007). Lastly, the companyâ??s record date of February 23rd, which is when an investor
must own the stock in order to be able to vote at the annual meeting on April 24, 2007, put upward pressure on the stock, we believe.
We believe the February 23rd record date put additional upward pressure on the stock price by creating a short squeeze over the
past two weeks. The "record date" is the date investors must own the stock to be able to vote at the companyâ??s annual meeting. We
believe this caused a short squeeze as brokers who lent out shares to be sold short had to recall the shares for the owners of the stock who wanted to be holders of record of New York Times shares on February 23rd and therefore eligible to vote at the April 24th annual meeting.
We believe the items up for vote this year are no different than in prior years; Class A shareholders have very limited items they can
vote on (auditors, stock compensation plans, acquisitions involving NYT stock, and the like); however, they do vote on 4 of 13 directors
every year. The other 9 directors are voted on by the Class B shareholders (which the Sulzbergers and insiders own) at the same annual meeting.
The large short interest of New York Times stock likely increased the magnitude of this short squeeze. The number of New York Times shares that were short in January went up 10% vs. December and now makes up 15% of the float and represents 13.5 days of volume traded.
We do think some investors want to log in a â??protest voteâ?? by withholding votes for the four directors the Class A shareholders
vote on. This would be similar to what happened a year ago which did not change anything. At the 2006 annual meeting, 36.0 million Class A votes on average were withheld for the four directors elected by the Class A shareholders vs. an average of just 1.3 million votes withheld for these directors in 2005. We do not think these â??protest votesâ??, however, put any significant pressure on the board or Sulzberger family to get rid of the two classes of stock which we believe is the goal of certain large shareholders (â??Morgan Stanley Arm Again Criticizes Timesâ??, Wall Street Journal, January 23, 2007). It is very unlikely in our opinion that the Sulzbergers are going to get rid of the two classes of stock. The two class voting structure has served the Sulzbergers very well since the company went public in 1969 and is quite common in the media industry.
06:16 PM | New York Times | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Oscar-Winner William Monahan's (Poorly Documented) Past Life
Long before he published a novel and waaay before he won an Adapted Screenplay Oscar for The Departed, William Monahan was an excellent and scabrous writer for the weekly New York Press.
In particular, I recall one piece about heroin he wrote in 1996 that was sort-of OK until you got well into it, at which point he began talking about an afternoon a week or so previous that heâ??d spent under its influence. And at which point it got much more vivid and affecting. (It clearly touched a nerve in NY Press readers, who wrote letters to the paper that got far beyond the standard cant articles about heroin usually provoke.)
I've spent the last hour trolling the New York Press Web site, Google, and online databases for any sign of said piece and am coming up with absolutely no trace of it whatsoever--save for a column in Newsday from summer '96 that referenced it. (And which was written by, um, Jon Fine.)
Anyway, Monahan's piece was great, as was most of his stuff he wrote for the Press back then. It's a minor drag that it all seems pretty much lost now, but things have turned out pretty well for him. Congrats, William.
05:33 PM | Oscars, William Monahan | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
February 22, 2007Fox News Channel's 1/2 Hour News Hour In Strong Debut
Mickey Kaus links to TVNewser pointing out that the Fox News Channelâ??s brutally-reviewed news parody The ½ Hour News Hour ended up drawing a rather impressive audienceâ??around 1.5 millionâ??which, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, means its audience is only slightly smaller than Jon Stewartâ??s The Daily Show and already ahead of The Colbert Report.
07:13 PM | Fox News Channel | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
February 15, 2007Gone Fishing
Currently taking a break in a land far from home, without steady internet access. I'll be back in New York and back on the blog Wednesday, February. 21.
09:53 AM | | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
February 08, 2007Super Bowl Ads Notch Boffo Nielsens
I kind of hate to put myself in the position of defending something as quaint as the 30-second TV ad, but when data comes over the transom showing just how many people saw this yearâ??s Super Bowl ads, well, it gets you to thinkinâ??.
Says Nielsen in a detailed press release (forgive me, I canâ??t find it online):
The average commercial aired during Super Bowl XLI received a national television rating among persons older than age two of 32.1 and was viewed by 92.8 million people, according to The Nielsen Company, which today issued a summary of Super Bowl-related advertising measurement results from its media tracking businesses.
I would like to point out that any TV producer would gladly amputate a limb to get these ratings for their actual shows.
Other data:
The big winner: HPâ??s motorcyling ad, which was seen by 99.5 million people.
Tied for number #1 in most-played back: The consumer-generated Doritosâ?? ad, specifically the one set at a cash register. Which pokes another hole in the arguyments about â??professionalâ?? versus â??amateurâ?? content. (I do not like this argument. My next column touches on it in a broader look atâ??bad term alertâ??user-generated ads; will link to it when it goes up online.)
Getting Nielsen data on which ads get watched is going to make things very interesting.
As for me: I watched the Super Bowl. I also went through the commercials again via DVR. And, I gotta tell you, I donâ??t even remember seeing the HP ad. Not at all.
04:44 PM | Super Bowl Ads | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)
Rupert Murdoch: Neither Shy Not Retiring
I suppose it's a sign of severe geekhood if you walk away from a lengthy interview with Rupert Murdoch thinking about how funny he is. Anyway, he spoke today at the McGraw Hill Media Summit* and it went a little bit like this.
One thing: A Borat sequel pends. UPDATE 2/9: Turns out Rupert got a bit ahead of this one. As this Variety story reports, and a News Corp. spokesman confirms, no deal's been inked.
(*Obligatory Disclosures: The McGraw Hill Companies, which puts on the Media Summit, is BusinessWeek's parent company. The gentleman who interviewed Murdoch at the conference, BusinessWeek's editor-in-chief Stephen J. Adler, is my boss. This last sentence is only here so that this disclosure paragraph is substantially longer than the rest of this post.)
02:46 PM | Borat, News Corp., Rupert Murdoch | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
February 05, 2007The Super Bowl, Its Ads, And The Fuzzy Line Between Pro And Amateur
The Doritos consumer-generated ads (please, someone invent a better term than that) that ran in the Super Bowl were not among my favorites of the game. But thatâ??s not the point. The point is this: they didnâ??t seem out of place, they didnâ??t look chintzy and cheap; they werenâ??t measurably stupider or clunkier or worse than much else around them.
Add TV ads as one more place where the line between â??professionalâ?? and â??amateurâ?? is revealed to be an artifical construct. We learned this in movies and music in the 1980s, when an explosion in indie film and indie music proved conclusively that there was much more good stuffâ??in some cases, the best stuffâ??out there that was either escaping the attention or was simply ignored by the major labels and big studios. (Or, to be charitable, there was more talent out there than the existing distribution system could accommodate.) We learned this a while ago about political commentators. No serious reader of the better bloggers out there can doubt there is more top-tier commentator talent than there are jobs for them at places like Newsweek and the New York Times. We are learning it now about producers of short video.
I doubt that weâ??re going to see a massive influx of such adsâ??ones actually produced by fans, as opposed to the ones aired by Chevy and the NFL, in which fans came up with the concept, which were then produced by ad agenciesâ??if for no other reason that the superstructure of the ad world has proven slow to match changes in how people behave. (Also, there is a risk involved in going totally consumer-generated, which marketing executives who live in terror of getting fired may not wish to take.)
But I donâ??t think that one can argue convincingly that consumer-gen attempts wonâ??t work.
I recommend checking in on my BusinessWeek colleagues Burt Helm and David Kileyâ??s Siskel/Ebertesque Super Bowl ad review, but some of my impressions:
The Best: Budweiserâ??s: Slap-fight and gorillas; Cokeâ??s fake-videogame, Mr. Hadley, and ; David Letterman/Oprah on the couch (a CBS promoâ??thereâ??s no reason why broadcast companies canâ??t play in the top-tier of Super Bowl ads); E-tradeâ??s â??fingerâ?? ad in the second half; NFLâ??s funeral march; Blockbusterâ??s mouse ad.
The Bad: Flomaxâ??s deathless line: Hereâ??s to the guys who want to spend â??less time in the menâ??s roomâ??; GoDaddyâ??s â??everybody wants ot work in marketing; Jessica Simpsonâ??s Pizza hut spot; Salesgenie; both Sierra Mists ads; almost any ad involving sports stars that had to deliver dialogue.
Not As Bad As Everyone Else Seemed To Think: Garminâ??s fake monster movie.
The Disappointment: Kevin Federline and Nationwide, which, as BWâ??s Burt Helm points out, was much funnier as a storyboard.
UPDATE 2/6: Seth Stevenson's ad wrap for Slate.com is hilarious. Also, he reminded me how good the Frito-Lay "Who's winning? We all are" ad was and how totally awful Sheryl Crow's Revlon ad was.
09:56 AM | Advertising: Good, Super Bowl Ads | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
February 02, 2007Seattle Official Registers Calm And Deadpan Hilarity In Aftermath Of Aqua Teen Hunger Force Guerilla Marketing Kerfluffle
From an Associated Press article piece published yesterday concerning the lavishly chronicled Aqua Teen Hunger Force hubbub:
"In this day and age, whenever anything remotely suspicious shows up, people get concerned - and that's good," King County sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart said. "However, people don't need to be concerned about this. These are cartoon characters giving the finger."
Added Bonus: The headline, which reads "Aqua Teen' appeared in nine cities, only Boston panicked."
10:18 AM | Advertising: Egregious, Advertising: Good, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, The Stupidity of the Market | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
February 01, 2007Liz Smith Bites The Hand That Feeds
"I love magazines more than anything. I think they're even more important than newspapers, which are generally pretty inept."
--Syndicated gossip columnist Liz Smith, whose column appears in scores of newspapers, introducing Lewis Lapham, as the longtime Harper's editor was inducted today into the Magazine Editors' Hall Of Fame.
05:35 PM | Newspaper Agonistes | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
January 31, 2007The Difference Between Boston and New York, I Guess.
When I saw a version of this image, in blue and green colored lights (and with a strategically placed "censored" sign--image may not be entirely safe for work), on a billboard at night in lower Manhattan, I thought it was about the coolest ad I'd ever seen.
When a bunch of them turn up in random locations in Boston, it practically shuts the city down.
UPDATE 2/1: Link fixed; Gothamist cites media reports that randomly placed LED devices bearing that image also removed from various New York locations.
05:50 PM | Advertising: Egregious, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, The Stupidity of the Market | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Time Inc.'s Next Launch?
. . . may be a health and wellness Web portal, assuming some focus group results turn out OK.
I can't help but think this interesting move, should it happen, is partly driven by defensive concerns. The company's got lots of women's magazines that touch on health issues, from Real Simple to, uhm, Health. And execs in and around Time Inc. have told me that one reason the company sold its Parenting group of magazines is that competitive Web plays--specifically Johnson & Johnson's babycenter.com--in the (small-p) parenting space had taken a severe toll on the (large-P) Parenting properties' bottom lines.
Had Parenting staked out Web turf the way the proposed health.com might--well, Time Inc. might still own that unit.
I'll have more to say about Time Inc. later this week.
04:41 PM | Time Inc. | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
January 29, 2007An Unsparing Look By The Los Angeles Times On How Lousy Its Web Strategy Is
I actually like the Los Angeles Times, but I admit I haven't given a whole lot of thought to its Web site.
An internal committee has, though, and unlike most internal committees, they are decidedly unsparing in their assessment. Mediabistro's FishbowlLA (once and future disclaimer: my wife is mediabistro's founder-CEO) has said committee's lengthy, self-flaggelating exegesis here.
Some excerpts:
The website's own research demonstrates that latimes.com is virtually invisible in greater Los Angeles.
By some measures, the site is losing traction even faster than the newspaper. Latimes.com reports that traffic is growing and has reached 5.1 million unique visitors and 73 million total page views per month. But ComScore Media Metrix, an independent traffic monitor that uses an array of indicators, says overall traffic to the site dropped 9% in September, compared with the same month a year earlier.
Visits to nytimes.com were up 10%, at Yahoo News 15%, at AOL News 11%. Overall, traffic to news sites grew an average of 4%, according to ComScore.
(...)
The home page is visually unappealing and difficult to navigate. Search results are often off-target, and the site fundamentally fails to meet the needs of visitors. Consequently, time spent at latimes.com -- a key measure of traffic quality -- is dropping rapidly and is now among the lowest of all news sites. As measured by ComScore, the average length of a visit to the website -- 11.9 minutes -- is less than half what it is at Yahoo News or nytimes.com and one-third what it is at CNN.com or MSNBC.
How can this be? Why does one of the nation's leading newspapers have such a feeble online presence?
(...)
On the Web, if you are not first in posting a story, you don't exist. We are rarely first. One recent morning, a hay truck caught fire on the Hollywood Freeway and sent thick black smoke billowing into the sky. Trapped commuters who saw only the plume thought it might have been the work of terrorists. Nothing appeared on our website throughout the day. In fact, we told our readers nothing of the incident until the following morning.
You get the idea.
Somehow, though, I doubt this is a good time to ask for funding from Tribune.
09:51 AM | Los Angeles Times | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
January 26, 2007More On Atoosa
Iâ??ve gotten a surprising volume of emails and comment about this weekâ??s columnâ??about the future plans of ex-Seventeen editor Atoosa Rubensteinâ??and since I have more space here than I do in the magazine, I wanted to spin out a few more thoughts about it, and share some more quotes from Atoosa that couldnâ??t fit in the magazine.
There is something very New Yorkâ??and specifically very-the-too-tight confines-of New York mediaâ??about Atoosa. Sheâ??s an uber-insider creation of the sort that can only spring from an outsiderâ??s mindset, and from the way an outsider can sometimes understand a culture better than those who live within it. (Atoosa was born in Iran and emigrated to the U.S. as a young child that didnâ??t speak a world of English.) And, of course, being an outsider can breed outsized ambition.
â??Remember: I am a two-sided serpent. One side is all about helping the girls, and the other is a business person . . . I want to create something that cuts through all of the clutter, gives leadership to this new audience the way Oprah did for her audience.â??
Spending an afternoon running around to appointments with Atoosa means you witness a performance. And make no mistake: Atoosa gives very good performance. I remain uncertain if her notions about her future company are prescient or patently absurd, but I do know itâ??s impossible to spend time with her, at least in the way I did, and not enjoy her company, and the general spectacle of Atoosa! The Show. (Side note: While I have a lousy track record with predictions and thus wonâ??t lay down any bets on her ultimate success, I would hazard to say that itâ??s probably dangerous to be standing between Atoosa and what Atoosa wants.) Also, the wackiness of Atoosa is readily apparentâ??hello Psychic Kitty!â??but she has pretty astute observations about what is going on with media right now. Some of this sheâ??ll likely share with retail and media clients as a consultant of sorts, though she repeatedly stresses she didnâ??t leave magazines to consult.
â??This audience [is] injuring every industry it comes into contact with. The audience is 13 to 30, essentially the digital generation. I see what they did to music. I see what they did to magazines . . . Every industry they hit-- banking, real estate, they are going to create a Jet Blue or a CosmoGirl in every one of those categories. They consume information differently.â??
This is why Atoosa thinks the next Oprah will be built online, at least at first, and not on TV, and why she thinks she has a good shot of becoming that person. These days, the conceit of a person becoming a lifestyle brand is, of course, wholly familiar. Since 2000 Iâ??ve had people describe this to me from figures both credible (Martha Stewart) and comical (Kiss bassist Gene Simmons, auteur behind the short-lived magazine Gene Simmons Tongue. Which is a magazine I hope you never suffered through, but about which I wrote one of my favorite pieces for my former employer Advertising Age).
Itâ??s also interesting that a media figure whose entire persona was tightly wrapped up in magazines, who insisted in private conversations until very recently that magazines retained a kind of primacy for her young women audience, has decided that, well, young women arenâ??t that engaged by magazines as a medium anymore.
Sudden thought: The magazine world is skewing more and more female as men read turn to mags lessâ??what happens when this generation of girls grow up?
â??In the picture in my head, I thoughtâ??I am the really interesting and cool department store salesgirl. But everyone is at Abercrombie, or American Eagle, or the mall. They want to come see me. Their heart was with me, but they would be like . . . â??I never read your magazine any more.â??â??
Hence, it's time to start something new. (She perceives that sheâ??s getting out of magazines at just the right time.) This something new is a media brand that promises, in part, to be built up from a social networking model. Of course, Atoosa describes the media play in slightly differently terms.
â??Thereâ??s Big Momma.â?? (Thatâ??s Atoosa.) Thereâ??s the sisterhoodâ??â??this is the community of women who right now avidly comment on Atoosaâ??s blogs and, presumably, will eventually network with each other. â??Thereâ??s [potential Web property she discussed with me on the grounds I do not divulge its details]â??â??which would be â??the freaky brother. And Psychic Kitty. It all comes together as a family.â??
â??I work hard, you know. You can say my blogâ??s annoying, you can say Iâ??m ugly, you can say Iâ??ve got hairy arms. But Iâ??m not dumb. Iâ??m not dumb, and I work really hard.â??
â??Iâ??m all about â??vive la difference.â??â??
UPDATE Jan. 29: Check out the very extensive trademark claims for the word 'Atoosa' that Big Momma Holdings applied for on January 2. Among them:
IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Sound recordings, audiovisual recordings, DVDs, downloadable sound recordings, downloadable video recordings; downloadable electronic publications, namely books, magazines and newsletters, all of the foregoing featuring information on personal empowerment, success, self esteem, personal relationships, inspiration, fashion, beauty, health, fitness, college and school, and technology; downloadable ring tones, wallpapers, screensavers, graphics and music via a global computer network and wireless devices
(snip)
IC 025. US 022 039. G & S: Clothing, clothing accessories, headwear and footwear
IC 035. US 100 101 102. G & S: Marketing consulting services for others, namely, assistance with branding strategy and message development, product positioning, naming, pricing and packaging, target audience prioritization and communications planning; business development consulting services; online retail store services
IC 038. US 100 101 104. G & S: Internet services including streaming of audio visual content featuring advice and entertainment on topics of personal empowerment, success, self esteem, personal relationships, inspiration, fashion, beauty, health, fitness, college and school, and technology over a global computer network; providing electronic bulletin boards and virtual chat rooms via text messaging and the internet; mobile media and entertainment services in the nature of electronic transmission of media content
(snip)
IC 042. US 100 101. G & S: Computer services, including providing information via a website featuring information on topics of personal empowerment, success, self-esteem, personal relationships, inspiration, fashion, beauty, health, fitness, college and school, and technology
IC 045. US 100 101. G & S: Personal growth and lifestyle consulting services in the area of parent/child relationships and parenting
07:07 PM | Atoosa Rubenstein | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Media Math Of The Moment: Time Inc./Time4 Media Edition
Time Inc, purchase price for the Times Mirror (soon to be renamed Time4 Media) magazine group, December, 2000:
$475 million
Likely sale price* of entire Time4Media magazine groupâ??not including This Old House and Golf Magazine, which Time Inc. is retainingâ??plus its two Parenting Group magazines and related businesses, January, 2007:
Approximately $225 million.
(*: precise sale price undisclosed, but this is roughly what sources close to the situation say.)
05:22 PM | Media Math, Time Inc., Time Warner | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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