Posted by: David Kiley on October 07
Old Navy has tapped Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Miami to take over its ad creative. The unit of Gap has pulled its business from Deutsch/LA last year, and took creative in-house while it farmed media planning and buying to PHD, AKQA, Starcom, JL Media and Carat for media buying.
That didn’t work out so well. Crispin Porter will handle creative only and will debut its first work next year. Indications are that Crispin will deliver work that takes Old Navy back to its roots as a store for families and value-seeking women shoppers in their 20s.
The Miami agency, after a hiccup last year when it lost its high-profile Miller-Lite business, and Orville Reddenbacher, is doing well, having netted Microsoft’s rebranding campaign, as well as the retailer. The agency is also enjoying the benefits of being credited with a big chunk of Burger King’s resurgence.
Posted by: David Kiley on October 07
What recession Hyundai?
While General Motors is pulling out of high profile ad buys to cope with its shortage of cash, Korean automaker Hyundai is stepping in wherever it can.
Hyundai, which has been advertising heavily in high-traffic political/election/debate programming, has now purchased six spots in next February’s ABC’ telecast of the Oscars. GM, which has taken a big package of ads for several years, is skipping the 2009 telecast.
Last January, Hyundai advertised its new Genesis luxe car in the Super Bowl, and is mulling advertising in the big game this January. GM has already said it is pulling out of the big game to save money.
Posted by: David Kiley on October 01
McDonald's has become the poster brand for the credit crunch. But should it be?
Both Presidential candidates have repeatedly used the example of McDonald's franchisees not being able to get loans and lines of credit to, for example, install McCafe coffee making equipment in their stores. TV pundits and legislators have also turned to McD's franchisees as the main vehicle to communicate the dire need to pass the bailout legislation.
I guess there is nothing more "Main Street" than a Mickey D's.
Using The Google, I came up with 3.1 million hits for "McDonald's credit."
But, reports now indicate that Mickey D store owners aren't having quite so many problems getting credit. Bank of America, for example, has said it is not freezing or denying credit to McD's franchisees, though a letter from the fast food giant to its operators had said so. GE Capital has said that it is tightening its credit requirements for restaurant operators. But that would seem to invite more business for B of A, as McD operators are actually considered low risk borrowers.
Maybe all this talk of the poor McD franchisees will draw some sympathy business from Main Street.
Posted by: David Kiley on September 29
It’s hard to believe that advertisers and Sirius XM can’t agree on some sort of audience measurement system for satellite radio subscribers.
Advertisers say that any system thee company pays for itself won’t be accepted. But there is no burning desire for Arbitron to spend the money to do a third party audience measurement for one provider.
It would seem that there is a good incentive for both Sirius XM, advertisers and media agencies to get some kind of rating system. The key would seem to be allowing Sirius XM by way of its own satellites to track what people are tuned to in an aggregate fashion. In other words, the ability to read how many people are listening to CNBC, Fox or (right wing) The Patriot during morning and afternoon drive.
This can be done on a sample basis. But I would think the technology would allow a more quantitative approach that would not violate privacy.
There are some 18.5 million satellite radio subscribers. People willing to pay for monthly radio service has got to be a valuable advertising demographic.
Have a third party entity gather the data at least on a trial basis and let media buyers examine the results.
Now that Sirius and XM radio are combined, one would think that CEO Mel Karmazin will try and rationalize some of the high-priced contracts that were so expensive when XM and Sirius were bidding against one another.
Regardless of Karmazin’s insistence that Howard Stern was worth a $500 million contract, I’d have to argue against that logic. Stern had almost nowhere to go in terrestrial radio. If XM hadn’t been out there as a competitor, Stern would have signed for lots less. The two services had been bidding against one another for Major League Baseball, NBA and NFL games as well. It’s hard to believe those contracts won’t be much cheaper to renew, if they are renewed, when they lapse.
Sirius XM has a long way to go with advertisers before it catches up with its terrestrial competitors, however. According to its second-quarter earnings report, advertising revenue for the company for the first half of the year was $16.7 million, an increase from $15.9 million during the same period in 2007. That's only about 3%-4% of revenues.
As a long-time Sirius subscriber, I will make a few seat-of-the-pants observations about the service.
Most of my in-car listening is CNBC, CNN and Fox TV feeds.
There are waaaaaay too many music offerings. Who wants to listen to someone else’s programming when you can listen to your own ipod?
The Kid’s channels are addictive to small kids. It’s a battle not to put Kidstuff on when I ride with my six-year-old son.
It’s fabulous on a long trip.
Continue reading "Sirius XM Should Be Able To Get Ratings"
Posted by: Burt Helm on September 27
Last December I wrote about Catalog Choice, an environmentalist-backed website that helps people stop receiving unwanted catalogs. The upstart site created an uproar among direct mailers last winter after it sent them requests from 300,000 people in just a couple of months of existence. Many major catalogers refused to remove the names the site submitted. The Direct Marketing Assoc. (DMA) sent an email to its members telling them to “JUST SAY NO,” to Catalog Choice’s requests.
Now Catalog Choice appears to be gaining traction. Williams Sonoma, L.L. Bean, Crate & Barrell, and 207 other companies have agreed to honor the site’s removal requests since December. Catalog Choice now has over 1 million users.
The site just signed up too many people to ignore, says Hamilton Davison, of the American Catalog Mailers Assoc., which voted unanimously to endorse the site last week. “We wanted to be assured that they would respect consumers’ privacy,” says Pat Conolly, Chief Marketing officer of Williams Sonoma, adding that after nine months of evaluation, he's now confident the site will. The DMA, which offers its own suppression service, still won’t endorse Catalog Choice, but now recommends merchants decide on their own whether to participate. Other catalogers, like fruit merchant Harry & David, still won’t say whether or not they honor Catalog Choice’s requests.
