As expected, The New York Times is discontinuing TimesSelect, a paid subscription service for some Times content, such as Maureen Dowd, and so forth. The Times says it will realize more revenue by making the content free and swimming in the resulting ad bucks, and so, with that admission, the subscription model online gets a little closer to death's door. I think the Internet would have been better off if more content was actually paid for—if for no other reason than, in the consumer's mind, all of the free content available cheapens the whole idea that any content has monetarily value—but on the other hand, TimesSelect never seemed like it was going to be much of a product. Not only are decisions by content providers usually arbitrary in terms of what should be free and what shouldn't—which makes it hard to determine the content's real value—but, since TimesSelect was available free to any print subscriber, the revenue base for the online product had to be small. Even if newspapers seem, at times, to be withering on the vines of the very trees used to print them, anyone so interested in the Times' premium online content was still probably a print subscriber. Lots of those people still exist, even now.
Ad Age doesn't do the "push" news emails often, but this one was worth it: Andy Berndt, co-president of Ogilvy New York, is joining the dark side ... uh ... I meant Google, to start something that would consult on creative and account services, just like ad agencies do (although it would consult with agencies as well, per Ad Age's story). That said, I don't really believe that Google is the dark side. I believe not being smart about the future of advertising is the dark side, and it's pretty hard to accuse Google of being dumb about that. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE: Google's Tim Armstrong explains why Google this whole Andy Berndt led Creative Lab thing-a-ma-jig is definitely not an ad agency.
If you've missed reading Randall Rothenberg ever since he stopped writing his column for Advertising Age, you can stop your crying now. Randall, now head of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, has started writing what he calls a clog: "It's a column! It's a blog!" at www.randallrothenberg.com, with the title "I, A Bee—Buzz and Pollination from the Interactive Advertising Bureau." (Maybe he should streamline the shoe/beehive metaphors?) His first entry is about the interactive program at VCU's AdCenter, and it starts with this provocative lede: "If you’re a fabulously successful interactive entrepreneur whose last six startups have made a killing in the market and you’re looking for a new place to park some cash, Mike Hughes wants your money."
This news flash may not mean much to you, but it means a lot to me: Adverganza is now also available at the URL Adverganza.com, so you can erase that adverganza.blogspot.com thing from your memory bank, should you desire.
I've ripped these visuals off from a column in the current issue of Forbes entitled "Big Brother." (I spent way too much time on Friday scanning Jobs' big speech earlier this month looking to recreate it myself, but to no avail.) Anyway, the two pictures—one, of course, of the classic Apple spot "1984"—make for a great juxtaposition, and illustrate the point that there's something increasingly cult-like and scary about Apple. Written by Daniel Lyons (aka fake Steve), the column says "... the flip side of Apple's success is that Apple has started to seem scary. Jobs' ambitions go way beyond making computers and gadgets. He's the most powerful figure in the music business and is maneuvering toward dominance in the movie and TV business as well." You can read the whole column here (free registration required). Of course, I've gone on the record as saying that I thought all those people who had to buy the iPhone the nanosecond it came out (and pay too much for it) reminded me of that 1985 Apple spot, "Lemmings."
rtising Age:
This just in from Azerbaijan: the country will be represented at next year's Cannes Advertising Festival, which "was opened in Azerbaijan after long-lasting talks." This was big news on the Web site of APA, which, from what I can tell, may be an Azerbaijani entertainment rag. Another top headline: "Price of tickets for Elton John's concert to range from 30 to 800 manats."
Even though I chastised DDB earlier in the week for only getting up one lousy post on each of their blogs (they still haven't added any posts since then BTW), I'm really not picking on the agency this week. It just so happens that now it's its turn—in my system of mostly alphabetical order—to be the subject of one of my posts about agency Wikipedia entries. As agency entries go, this one is relatively long (about 700 words), but accurate? The entry, which comes up fourth when you Google "DDB", omits some pretty basic things, not even mentioning its central role in the creative revolution or the revolution itself, and there are no pictures or links to its work from that time. As one example, it doesn't describe the 1959 VW Beetle campaign (at right), except to say that it was the no. 1 campaign of all time according to Ad Age's "The Century of Advertising" in 1999. It also points out that "You Deserve a Break Today" for McDonald's was no. 5 on the list—without mentioning that that campaign was created by Needham, Harper & Steers before the "Big Bang" merger that created Omnicom Group. In fact, its reference to the merger of DDB and Needham doesn't mention that whole part about BBDO at all. The strongest part of the entry deals with the recent history that wouldn't have existed had it not been for the earlier history, giving exhaustive detail on what awards the agency has won since 1998. Funnest factoid I could find: that the agency's role in the Lyndon Johnson commercial "Daisy", an ad which some attribute with helping Johnson defeat Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election, landed Max Dane (he's one of the Ds in DDB, young 'uns) on President Nixon's Enemies List. In that, from what I can tell, he was the only ad executive so, um, honored. Picture via Stay Free!
You simply gotta read this story in The New York Times today about a former advertising executive, who, now says he is happily working at a Starbucks in Bronxville, NY and living in an attic apartment across the street, rather than in the imposing tudor elsewhere in town in which he grew up. A former JWT creative and son of The New Yorker's Brendan Gill, the story isn't entirely as it seems. He's written a book, “How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else,” that has been optioned by Tom Hanks, though he claims he still wants to work at Starbucks, even as potential riches flow in. In a video accompanying the story, shot, mainly, in his patio-furniture decorated apartment, he says, with utmost sincerity, "I've gone from stuff, to lack of stuff, and the surprise—the great surprise—is how happy it makes me."
Fortune has posted three short videos of an interview the magazine's Geoff Colvin did with Procter & Gamble CMO Jim Stengel. You can see them here, here and here, and read a text version--which talks about what he thinks of ad agencies--here. There's no extremely new ground in any of this, but, hey, I make it a habit to listen to guys who command $6.7 billion ad budgets. Also in the current issue (which has Ralph Lauren on hte cover): an interview with Ogilvy & Mather CEO Shelly Lazarus although, inexplicably, there's no link to it. Is it because she talks about the success of P&G rival Dove?
Where do you think Novartis got the idea of asking consumers to create viral films to promote the flu? Get it? Viral? Flu? It's late at night, what can I tell ya? Anyway, starting on Saturday, Novartis will launch a contest asking "aspring filmmakers" (well, at least they're honest about who might enter this) to make short films about how the flu affects them, how it spreads and why you should get nominated. Yeah, of course, this effort is called FluFlix.
I'm running an item on this new campaign (scroll down) mostly because the spot pictured above and that you can see here features Googy Gress (at right), New Canaan High School, class of '76. (I'm not as old as Googy, mind you.) It's one of four commercials breaking this week that focus on the undeniable creature comforts of La-Z-Boy. Via RPA. I'll probably never let myself buy a La-Z-Boy, but I love reclining in them when I'm at other people's houses.
Over at Silicon Alley Insider, they're on online ad market death watch, reading numerous tea leaves and coming away with the conclusion that, based on the subprime mortgage collapse and other factors, the industry is in for a downturn. The latest signal is an announcement by online ad network Burst Media, which said early today that a couple of key clients have cancelled expected campaigns due to budget constraints. It then goes onto say, solemnly, "The 2000 ad crash began exactly this way: anecdotal reports of weakness from minor players that were dismissed as 'isolated' and 'company specific'." The part of this line of thinking I'm buying is that the financial services sector is bound to pull back on the dancing aliens it uses to sell exotic mortgages. However, the current online ad market differs from 2000 in some extremely substantial ways. By the time of the dot-com bust in the first half of 2000, the market was overhyped in a way it isn't now—advertisers were pouring money into the medium even though they had scant evidence that it was working. They also hadn't yet gotten religion about the fact that consumers, were, in fact, changing their media habits. This time around, clients realize that for all its warts, this is ultimately the most accountable medium that has ever existed, and with new, digitally-driven consumer media habits clearly entrenched, even if a downturn in ad spending happens, it's doubtful that advertisers will retrench by putting money allocated for online into other media. It will be the other way around. I should also point out that the posts I talked about above are written by Henry Blodget, who has a very personal incentive to get calling a downturn in the online ad market right.
Oy. So I was reading on Mediapost that Vaseline has a new campaign called, "Skin Is Amazing," but it doesn't mention that one of the stars of the campaign is Dave Navarro, with all the tattoos and stuff. He "actually uses Vaseline Intensive Care to help my tattoes heal." Who knew? I suppose this is brilliant, in its own way. It's a little convoluted to get to the Dave content, but go to vaseline.com, click on the link it presents you and then click on the Navarro pic. Via BBH.
I guess a few eyebrows have been raised by Organic's new strategic consulting practice, since, as the lead to Ad Age's story says, "Omnicom Group's Organic wants to work with clients of WPP, Havas, Publicis and others." There's nothing unusual about clients working with agencies from multiple holding companies, of course, but what makes this different—if not entirely new—is that Organic is proposing to sit between clients and the agencies who actually execute the campaigns. It's not as though Organic is working on Tide, while another agency works on Pampers. There are probably agencies out there who see this new unit as so much dot-com hubris, but what I've always enjoyed about interactive shops is their disdain for the ad industry's tried-and-true practices. As some of you know, I spent 2000 as the head of communications at Organic, and became deeply immersed in Organic's insistence that it was more akin to the McKinseys and Bains of the world than to, say, BBDO. But it wasn't just Organic that was doing this—it was the whole interactive agency category, and, having been in and around traditional agencies for years who tried, desperately, to describe themselves as partners to their clients, it was enjoyable to see a bunch of companies who were truly trying to position themselves as such. Were these attempts always credible? No. And will this one be? Not necessarily. But where Organic may be onto something is that digital shops are still way smarter than most agencies and clients about interactive. The problem with traditional agencies trying to say the same thing is that they are no more experts than their clients are when it comes to off-line marketing. But as Organic's strategy consulting initiative goes forward, you can expect a lot of resistance from the agencies to which they hand the strategy down. It may not make a whole lot of sense, but if there's anything agencies are good at, it's expending endless time and energy on defending their turf.
So, as stated earlier, I was in DC yesterday on business. (I needed a nice, long, uninterrupted block of prep time so decided to take the Acela rather than the Delta Shuttle.) Among the announcements from the conductor was the plea, "If You See Something, Say Something," which I also later saw in a truncated version—"See Something, Say Something"—on a poster in Union Station. Yes, it was a direct ripoff of Korey, Kay & Partners' "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign for the MTA, which launched back in 2002. I know Amtrak is cash-strapped and all, but can't they think up their own anti-terrorism tag line? Sheesh.
I won't be posting anything in the morning because I have to go to DC for the day, so I'll leave off with my observations on DDB's new blogs (or DDBlogs), which Brian Morrissey over at AdFreak was a bit lukewarm about the other day. OK, so the blogs, which launched on Sept. 4, are about to enter into week two, and still carry one post apiece—which strikes me as more than underwhelming, particularly for the beginning of a blog project. I mean, the bloggers aren't even supposed to have lost their charming, if misguided, enthusiasm yet! While clients may be relieved that Messrs. Bob Scarpelli, Jeff Swystun and Frank Palmer—who authored the posts—haven't gone off the blogging deep end and instead been spending their time on client business, it's time for some other DDBers to step up to the plate. In fact, you would think they would have been lined up, and ready to go, at the blogs' launch. So before this whole thing becomes woefully moribund, I'm asking someone at DDB to post, and stream some work you like—or don't like. Tell us how a trend in the broader world (like, say, lead-filled import toys!), fits into the broader context, of, I don't know, world views on lead. I was going to say the agency should send links out, but in trying to link to the posts themselves, I just realized that they can't send links out. The URL for every part of the site, blogs area, or no, is the same. For shame! Of course, I should point out that DDB is not alone in being lazy (there, I said it) about updating its blog. Hill Holliday last saw it fit to post way back on Aug. 27. Meanwhile, however, Organic's Three Minds and Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam's "Think Global, Act Stupid" were both updated today, and Naked's House of Naked was last updated on Sunday. What does that tell you about who might be taking this new media stuff seriously, and who might not be?
This Q&A with Carat's Sarah Fay seems like it got somewhat lost in the shuffle last week—it appeared on Thursday, and was one of the first Fay has done since getting the big promo, which now means she runs the on- and off-line sides of Carat USA. There are two insights worth noting here: that Fay asserts that merging other on- and off-line media agencies is being "widely talked about" and that when asked what she thinks is "one of the biggest challenges facing the media industry right now," she says, "The disaggregation of creative and media. " You may not agree with Sarah, but the interview is certainly worth a look.
Yesterday's retail adventure was at Target, where I had an epiphany that was, frankly, so slow in coming that it probably doesn't rate as one. Let's set the stage: I was buying something large for my husband's birthday today, but, when I got to the cash register, the UPC code on the item was missing. My mind immediately went into "prepare for massive delay" because, of course, someone was going to have to find the item, figure out what the UPC code was and get the price. And, then, as I waited there, I thought, "Why, in this day and age, does finding the right price and UPC code have to involve someone physically finding the product?" Shouldn't the cashier be able to type the product name into her keyboard, and get the price and SKU? (And shouldn't all of that information be completely cross-referenceable?) Of course, what unfolded was the usual. Some worker was commandeered to walk to the aisle 50 yards away, find the item, and then come back to the cashier. She was carrying a calculator-like device in which she'd input the UPC code, and then, she held it next to the cashier, who typed it into her keyboard. We all go through this routine all the time, but, hey, what year is this? 1985?
File this under posts I wish I'd thought of first. Critical Mass vp of experience design David Armano, whose blog is Logic+Emotion, ran the following list of ten questions for agency execs the other day:
Occurred to me that if I'm going to have the temerity to run lists of other people's Facebook friends on this blog, I should, by way of full disclosure, say who my Facebook friends are. So, let's get this out of the way and move onto posts full of meaning: Stewart Alsop (he wanted to friend me after my post about Julie Roehm's Facebook friends—I don't know why. He's an FOJ, BTW), AKQA's Tom Bedecarre and Molly Parsley, AdPulp's David Burn, Kipp Cheng of the 4As, a college friend, Avi Dan, Mediapost's Nick Friese, fellow Pelhamite and Nielsen BuzzMetrics exec Max Kalehoff and his lovely wife, Laura, former and current Adweekers Marla Kittler, Brian Morrissey, Tim Nudd, Manuela Oprea, Kathy Sampey, Carly Tushingham, New York magazine guy Jay Wilkins and Nancee Martin (not just because she works at TBWA—we went to high school together). Not impressed with my voluminous list of contacts? You shouldn't be. I've been too busy to work all that hard at my social networking; I mostly passively accept people as friends who hunt me down. That would seem to imply that if I just worked at it I'd have an endless universe of friends, but what if I found out I didn't?
When I first read this post in Gawker yesterday, I thought they couldn't possibly mean that George Lois. I mean, does the George we know really hang out with Tommy Hilfiger, let alone write books with him, and have a party with him during Fashion Week? Well, maybe I underestimate the guy, but apparently, yeah. Tommy and George (well, on the cover it says Tommy Hilfiger with George Lois) celebrated the publishing of their book, "Iconic America: A Roller-Coaster Ride through the Eye-Popping Panorama of American Pop Culture." Oh, wait. Looking at the cover I discovered that they do have a lot in common even if George Lois was never known as a fashion plate—both have a flair for self-promotion. Look closely (in fact, you don't even need to look all that closely), and you'll see that the Hilfiger logo is there in the upper right hand corner. And, although it's a more obscure reference, that picture of Muhammad Ali as Saint Sebastian in the bottom right is from one of George's classic Esquire covers of the 1960s.
Just noticed this new (?) feature on the Mediapost Web site: a detailed look at weekly product placement, on TV. Compiled by iTVX, the video snippets currently on the site show placements for Visa (shown at right in a scene from "The Dead Zone"), Windex, Bud Light, Cadillac and Breyer's Ice Cream. As the video plays, it tallies up how long the product was on screen, and rates the quality of its screen time at that moment. The only problem—which I hope they work on—is that the interface is way too complicated (anyone care to guess what a dK Factor is?), and not every data point seems to be delivered, like the promise that it will tally the dollar value of the placement as though it were a commercial. Still, it's worth it for the clips alone, particularly if product placement is your gig.
Not that I normally trade in tawdry Hollywood gossip, but I just heard the news that Drew Barrymore has been dating Justin Long (aka Mac). And this is according to that most reliable of gossip sources, People. Apparently they are co-starring in He's Just Not That Into You, along with this obscure actress named Jennifer Aniston and "seemed really into one another over Labor Day in Vegas." If that's not confirmation, I don't know what is. If Mac keeps on hanging out with babes like this, it's only so long before he gives PC the old heave-ho, I guess.
Thank Tim Nudd over at AdFreak for noticing the unfortunate connection between this Hennessy ad touting a 90-second online film called "The Lost Weekend," and that other "Lost Weekend"—the Oscar-winning 1945 film directed by Billy Wilder featuring the harrowing drinking binge of a-nowhere-near-recovering alcoholic. Didn't anyone at the client or agency notice? Or did they notice, and not care? (The fine print on this poster reveals that Berlin Cameron United is the agency, Ewen Cameron the writer.) As a commenter to AdFreak's post said, "Why not do a heartwarming story about adoption and call it 'Rosemary's Baby' while you're at it?"
Rather than regale you all with stories of our hellish trip to Staples this evening to buy book covers for our fourth grader's textbooks (summary: that was hard), I'll tell you what I found in one of those textbooks. Right there, in New York: Adventures in Time and Place, on page 300, is the sheet music to "I Love New York" words and music by Steve Karmen. Of course, the textbook doesn't actually mention Wells Rich Greene, but ad agencies are used to that, and there is at least somewhat of a good reason that a jingle is in the middle of the textbook: Then governor Hugh Carey named it the official state song in 1980.
Well, social networking ain't everything. Or at least it wasn't enough to save Business 2.0, which received its death notice last night and will publish one more issue before officially becoming a dot-bomb. It went out in a way that befits Web 2.0—the first report came last night on Brad Stone's New York Times blog. They're sitting shiva right now over at the "I Read Business 2.0 —and I Want to Keep Reading" Facebook group, but even it seems to indicate that the loyal supporters who garnered headlines when the group first got started had thrown in the towel by the time the publication was officially closed. The group stood at 2000 members as of July 29th, after about two weeks, but only gained another 325 or so over the course of August. (I know it's vacation time, but a magazine's life was hanging in the balance!) Not that anyone is asking, but the idea of a magazine built around the new economy seems like an anachronism to me. My husband happened to bring the current issue home from the office last night, and—as it has before—the issue seemed oh so 1999. The new economy is simply the economy now.
OK, so the headline is an overstatement. But it probably shows what a cruel person I am that I actually find it laughable that many traditional agencies still haven't managed to build a decent digital capability. Yeah, I've been in this game since G.M. O'Connell was putting the final touches on the original Zima.com, but how could an entire industry—that I hope no longer prides itself on being cutting-edge—be so out of it? But the industry's attempts to catch up, a mere 13 years after zima.com, are all the news these days. So add to the hiring of Colleen DeCourcy by TBWA, yesterday's news that Mullen hired Ross Dobson, a former Digitas exec who had most recently been working for an agency in Little Rock, as its fourth managing partner—to oversee direct and digital. Keep those hires coming, folks.
You may have read that Google dodged yet another of the trademark suits lobbed against it by companies claiming that it's illegal for other companies to "buy" their names as a keyword term. This time around, the loser was American Blinds and Wallpaper Factory--which dropped its suit after four years--but no matter who is doing the suing, these plaintiffs have always seemed fundamentally out of it. Though I noticed that the company does, in fact, buy its name as a keyword these days, it always seems as though the way most of these companies must end up suing is because they were once so naive about search advertising that it wasn't until a corporate higher-up Googled the company name that they realized another company could "buy" their name. But I've long felt that to term this kind of media buy as purchasing another company's name is essentially a misnomer. What the advertiser is buying is an adjacency to its competitors name, which is no different than a Ford buying a billboard next to a Toyota dealership. But the lawsuits continue. Next up on the court docket? American Airlines.
dweek:
During the car ride home from Massachusetts, my husband suggested I read this free story that ran on Friday in The Wall Street Journal about the failed turnaround of Wendy's. For people in the ad business, let's cut to the chase, which can be found in paragraph 36: "As an 8-year-old, the red-headed Wendy Thomas posed in braided pigtails for the picture that now adorns Wendy's 6,600 locations. At the suggestion of her sister, Ms. Farber, executives arranged for Ms. Thomas, now 46, to do a television screen test in the company's corporate kitchen [Ed. note: in spring of 2006]. Chief marketing officer Ian Rowden says executives gave the screen test 'very, very, very serious consideration,' but no 'Wendy' campaign ensued. This spring, the company launched a television ad featuring a young man wearing a wig of red, braided pigtails. Wendy Thomas says she took the spot as a personal affront." Ad Age has now picked up on the Journal's story, with a twist: Wendy's says that the "That's right" campaign from Saatchi has done more in eight weeks than the old campaign did in 18 months; the story also points out that the Thomas family's influence is waning, with it owning only 15 out of about 6000 restaurant and having a minimal share in the company. Who knows what putting Wendy's on the block will do for its agency relationship, but for now, look for more guys to run around in red wigs, I guess.
