The Publishers Information Bureau has just released its annual ad page counts for 2003 and they are down again for the third year in a row. Pages were down one percent but revenues did climb 6.3 percent. Profit is another story.
Zenith Media Senior Vice President, Director of Print Media Steve Greenberger says magazines have to start selling themselves again. "They've been whining a lot, when what they need to do is get out there and aggressively show what it is about magazines that consumers like. There's no sense that magazine advertising is a must-have."
Henry Copeland, founder of Blogads, the blog advertising service, scored big this week with 123CCTV. 123CCTV, a security camera company placed orders on 75 weblogs. It's Blogads' biggest order to date and a sure sign that weblog advertising is headed towards accepteance outside the confines of the blogosphere.
Always good for humorous use is that favorite male-requested activity asked for when things just get too built up. In this viral ad for British car maker MG, reverse streotypes are put in place and it's the man who asks the woman for help when his car has a little difficulty. But is the car really suffering difficulty or is the man just in need of a little relief?
In last week's episode of Donald Trump's reality show, "The Apprentice" the men and women's teams competed against each other to come up with an ad campaign for Marquis Jet. Donny Deutsch, acting in typical big brand advertiser mode ("oh, direct mail doesn't work"), chose the female team's submission which featured phallic symbols of Marquis Jet aircraft. While Marquis Jet passed on those, the private jet company, in an strange "contrived reality becomes actual reality" moment, will air a TV spot created by the women this week on KVBA-TV in Aspen and Vail Colorado spending $100,000 over the next month.
FOX has announced it will air a second edition of the semi-hit, "The Simple Life," which featured Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie acting dumb in front of country-folk. After "The Simple Life Reunion," where Paris and Nicole acted quite normal and appreciative of what they had learned while living with the Leding family, it won't be easy for the two to appear all that dumb again.
Expected to be watched by 30 million fans, NBC is bringing in two million dollars per thirty second spot in the finale episode of "Friends."
As television viewers move to other media, advertisers are hesitant to spend a lot of money there except for the Super Bowl, which still brings in the viewers and pads the network with large quantities of ad dollars. With just two weeks left before the big game on CBS, only one 30-second ad, priced at $2.3 million, remains unsold in the first half.
Joe Cappo retired Monday as a senior vice president of Crain Communications Inc. He is a former publisher of Crain publication Advertising Age, and former world president of the International Advertising Association. He also is a former advertising columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Daily News. Cappo has a new book out called, "The Future of Advertising: New Media, New Clients, New Consumers in the Post-Television Age. Cappo pines for the old days:
These were heady days in the advertising business. With the exception of 1971, when cigarettes were banned from television and radio, advertising expenditures grew steadily. An expansive glow radiated over the industry for decades. It was the place to work for hordes of young people who would sacrifice anything to get a job in advertising.
Young men with Ivy League educations would take jobs in the mail room, hoping to get the attention of higher-ups so they might migrate into the media or the creative department. College-educated women would take jobs as receptionists, at pathetically low pay, hoping against hope to move up into the professional ranks or maybe only find a husband in the business. (This is not a sexist remark but a candid reflection of the times.)
This was the era of the legendary three-martini lunch. It actually was mostly legend, but in a few cases, it was harsh reality.
Whether it was Ratazzi's in New York or the Wrigley Building bar in Chicago, ad people had their favorite watering holes.
Mazda has launched a webmercial that shows the transformation of the new Mazda RX-8 into the car of the future. Of course, there's a tie-in with Hasbro's Transformer toys to go along with the promotion. Smart. Get kids to play with the Mazda RX-8 Transformer for, say, 10 years immersing them so deeply in the brand that when they are actually ready to drive or buy a car, all they'll want is the RX-8. The actual RX-8 will be a letdown since it won't be able to do all the cool tricks the toy version can. Or maybe it will. I lot can happen with cars in ten years.
Today, Howard Stern had great fun playing and replaying and replaying and playing again, a clip of Howard Dean in which, following the Iowa Caucus, he yells out, like a WWF announcer, the names of the states he plans to win in the upcoming primaries. In the middle of his rant, he lets out a strange (for a politician) AC/AC-like scream which, of course, caused Fred to set the entire rant to various musical backgrounds, most of which were AC/DC. Other candidates were discussed but clearly, Dean received the best coverage.
UPDATE: Right Magazine has a Jonathon Strong remix of Dean's antics. Thanks to Gawker.
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