Top Ten Things to Look for This Upfront

A humorous look at what to expect in this year's upfront.
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WSJ Online to Launch Media & Marketing Edition

"The Online Journal's Media & Marketing Edition will provide the Journal's deep, authoritative coverage of advertising, marketing, media and entertainment, conveniently located in one place and updated 24/7," said Todd Larsen, president of Dow Jones Consumer Electronic Publishing. "The edition will provide media and marketing professionals with the analysis, perspective and insight for which the Journal is known."

The edition will launch mid-may and be priced the same as WSJ.com: $79 per year or $39 if you subscribe to the print edition.
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Cinema Advertising Up to $200 Million

Now we know why it takes at least a half an hour for the movie to actually start once you sit down in the theater. Previews started getting more prevalent and longer and now there are more ads to contend with as well. As one who is in the ad business, I can't argue with the "captive adudience" effectiveness of this form of advertising but as a movie-goer, I hate it. Marketers should at least try to make the ads work within the medium rather than just slapping up a modified :60 [via MediaPost]
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PIB Shows Gaps Between Fast Growing Magazines and Their Industries

Drug and health ad pages are up but brud and health sales are flat or down. Home furnishing ad pages are up but furniture sales are down. Auto magazine ad pages are up but car sales are down. What's going on here? [via MediaPost]
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Barry White Gets Pissed at the Copywriter During a Recording Session

Love out takes. Mack Simpson over at Adverb is a copywriter in Texas. He works on some pretty well known accounts. He found some outtakes from a recording session for a radio spot for Paul Quinn College in Dallas Texas. The college was able to get Barry White to do voice over. As with most recording sessions, things did not go all that smoothly. Barry gets a bit pissed at the copywriter. Give it a listen here.

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A Great Spot From Honda

Here's an advertisement that makes the inner workings of a car actually appear interesting. I'd love to know exactly how they got the domino effect to actually work. UPDATE: Read about how they did it here.

[via adland]

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Michael Jackson's Home Movie Sweeps Event

OK, everyone has just swallowed one too many pop culture pills here. The viewers for watching this crap. The networks for shoveling it our way. And the Freak himself for revealing his odd and wacked lifestyle.

Why can't he just go back to being a singer?

If you care, it airs April 24 on Fox.
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Disney Wastes No Time in Capitalizing on Iraqs Newfound Democracy and Commercialism

Courtesy of Viralmeister
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Slate Columnist Rob Walker Rips the New Humvee Commercials

A good read for all of you who are sickened the the fatness and largesse of America and the obscene lengths we go to to seem cool.
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Not 18-49? We Don't Care About You

Brian Lowry of the LA Times laments the increasingly common practice of advertisers and media outlets targeting only the younger demos following outdated myths that the older generation is brand loyal and therefore useless to an advertiser.
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