BusinessWeek Online -- Brand New Day

McDonald's Is Poster Brand For Credit Crunch

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 10:24:29 -0500

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...

Sirius XM Should Be Able To Get Ratings

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:30:11 -0500

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...

Catalog Choice signs up Williams Sonoma, L.L. Bean, and More

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:56:31 -0500

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...

Texting Surpasses Calling Among Cell Phone Subscribers

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:14:00 -0500

Nielsen just released data showing that U.S. wireless subscribers now send and receive more text messages than mobile phone calls. As of Q2 2008, the typical subscriber sent or received 357 text messages, compared to 204 phone calls. While the...

Seinfeld/Gates Ads Not "Pulled"

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 10:22:06 -0500

The word spread late last week while I was away that Microsoft “pulled” TV ads featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. Based on talking to Microsoft officials when the campaign broke, though, the transition of the campaign to an ad...

Check Out the 2008 Best Global Brands

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:14:44 -0500

Today we’re releasing our 8th annual BusinessWeek/Interbrand Best Global Brands ranking. There are great online extras this year, including a sortable version of the table linking to financial data, videos, and more stories. This year’s theme is marketing in an...

Dueling Campaign Wall Street Ads: The Lesson is "Keep It Simple, Stupid."

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 09:17:47 -0500

Looking at today’s economic ads from both Barack Obama and John McCain is a study is the difference between message and content. Obama’s new ad, which runs two minutes, is dreadful. Obama is shown in what we are supposed to...

Microsoft Gates/Seinfeld Ads: Storytelling That's Catching On.

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 08:54:07 -0500

I may be in the minority, but I think the new Microsoft ads featuring company founder Bill Gates and comedian Jerry Seinfeld created by Crispin Porter +Bogusky are hitting the right chords. The first ad, which showed Seinfeld coming across...

McCain Camp: If It Sounds Like It Could Be True, Then It Must Be

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 12:50:39 -0500

You should know there is a problem when www.factcheck.org calls your campaign out for a misleading ad called “factcheck” that purports to use the non-partisan organization’s ad vetting apparatus to say that the other guy’s ads and rhetoric are...

EU Wants Women To Feel Empowered To Scrub Floors

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:22:40 -0500

Imagine my surprise when I began reading The New York Times article about sexual stereotyping in ads that women want us to think that they are just as able to tackle a dirty floor as a man. Huh? Again….say...

Advertisers Trying To Get A Head

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:23:07 -0500

Airports, of course, are increasingly canvases for all kinds of ads. People are captive, so it's hard to click away. I confess that I probably noticed more of Toyota's "Moving Forward" campaign in airports than in any other media...

Obama Camp Uses The "L" Word To Describe Palin Claim

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 12:29:23 -0500

Up to now, the McCain and Obama campaigns have been just feisty complained about one another's ads, using words like "distortion," "Misleading," etc. But when it comes to the McCain/Palin campaigns continued boosting of the story that Alaska Governor Sarah...

GOPers Beat Obama in TV Ratings: Helped by Timing and NFL

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 11:21:02 -0500

If TV ratings for political convention speeches is any indicator, voter turnout in November should be sky-high. The GOP presidential nominee John McCain had a viewership last Thursday night of 39 million, edging Democratic counterpart Obama (38.4 million), and McCain's...

NBC News Management Guilty of Brand Mismanagement and Neglect

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 10:07:00 -0500

The debacle inside NBC and MSNBC that has resulted in Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews dropping their election coverage anchor hats for those of commentators comes as a result of colossal brand mismanagement at the network. MSNBC has climbed...

38 Million Watch Obama

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:36:49 -0500

Almost 38 million people watched Sen. Barack Obama's acceptance of the Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday night, according to Nielsen Media Research. That figure, which includes both broadcast and cable networks, is nearly twice the four-day average of the 2004...