Tying Up Loose Ends With 'Oprah,' 'Mad Men,' Wine Clubs and More
It is time again to ask 20 questions about advertising, marketing, the media and popular culture.
Is there anything more annoying than commercials that pretend a made-up word or phrase - say, "holisaleabration," heard in current spots for A.& P. and Waldbaum's supermarkets - is so difficult to pronounce that the announcer is required to repeat it incessantly?
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AOL to Produce News, Videos by the Numbers
AOL is putting the finishing touches on a high-tech system for mass-producing news articles, entertainment and other online content, the linchpin of Chief Executive Tim Armstrong's strategy for reviving the struggling 25-year-old Internet company after Time Warner spins it off next month.
Mr. Armstrong's goal is to make AOL, which has been losing visitors and revenue, a magnet for both advertisers and consumers by turning it into the top creator of digital content. He hopes to do so in part by turning some media and marketing conventions on their ear, and potentially blurring the lines between journalism and advertising.
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From CVS to Costco, Retailers Put the Screws to Brands
Coke, Energizer Ditched in Price Fight, CVS Bills to Make Up Profit Deficit
Marketers are facing the litmus test of whether their brands truly are indispensable as retailers show a growing willingness to boot even major, well-advertised brands to improve leverage, margins and lower prices.
Costco's recent decision to strip Coca-Cola products from its shelves in a pricing dispute is the highest-profile sign yet that the age-old battle between marketer and retailer is escalating, due to the growing power of private label, looming package-goods deflation in the face of falling commodity prices, rising pressure on retailer margins, and softening volumes. Facing those factors and armed with data from loyalty cards, retailers are getting savvier about which brands to keep and which to lose.
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BBC figures show popularity of iPlayer viewing via iPhone and PS3
Almost as many people are accessing television via their iPhone or PlayStation 3 as via a Mac computer, BBC data has revealed.
The vast majority of television requests came from PCs, with 76% of television watched in this way during October.
But the BBC figures showed that 7% was requested from an iPhone or an iTouch device, compared with 7% from a Mac and 6% from a PlayStation 3. The remaining 2% was via Wii or other mobile devices.
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Viral Loop' shows how viral marketing boosts start-ups
Adam Penenberg's latest book, Viral Loop, is catching.
Penenberg, a professor of journalism at New York University, dizzily taps into the energy of the entrepreneurs who over the last decade and a half created some very successful Web-based businesses -Facebook, PayPal, Hotmail, to name a few. Their mode of operation: viral marketing, a method of product promotion that relies on getting customers to market an idea, product or service by telling their friends about it, usually by e-mail.
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Brandweek: A Marketer's New Worry: Are My Ads Retweetable?
For some time, publishers of editorial content have included tags that let readers retweet, Digg or add stories they like to their Facebook page. In the near future, that same functionality is coming to ads.
Federated Media has announced a deal with TweetMeme that will let marketers attach a retweet button to their ads. Meanwhile, Digg, which has run Diggable ads on its homepage since August, is planning to export those ads to other Web properties in 2010, according to Chas Edwards, publisher and chief revenue officer at Digg. AdMob, the mobile ad network currently being acquired by Google, is in the process of adding hooks to video ads that would let users share an ad they like on Facebook or Twitter.
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The BRIEF Bonus
First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
Epictetus
Some of the most striking images from around the world
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