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Toyota Motor Corp.’s luxury division is seeking national magazines willing to allow Lexus to provide cars in order to illustrate stories in “groundbreaking” ways, says Lexus division VP of marketing, Deborah Wahl Meyer, according to AdAge. While Lexus is actively pursuing print product placement, the company would not pay for placement or make advertising conditional upon placement, a spokesperson for the company says.
GM, Ford Motor Co., and DaimlerChrysler’s Chrysler group have claimed they are not pursuing print product placement, though if a magazine comes knocking with a need for a car, they’re happy to make that happen. “But it’s not part of our media buy,” says Ford spokesman Dave Reuter.
While industry watchdogs view the practice with alarm, the total value of product placements in magazines is on pace to grow 17.5 percent in 2005 to $160.9 million, MediaPost recently reported.
The American Society of Magazine Editors opposes product placement in magazines, according to the Society’s executive director, Marlene Kahan. New guidelines, with additional rules on product placement, will be published later this year, she says.
All sectors of the media business will suffer from the weakened economy in 2008 and 2009, with a slump in local advertising particularly hurting newspapers and local TV, according to a new projection from Goldman Sachs.
Broadcast nets will experience…
The New York Times is shuttering its International Herald Tribune site; NYTimes.com will soon host the international news normally reserved for its sister website.
The move is not about cost savings, but rather about growth, NYTimes.com general manager Vivian Schiller…
Unilever’s Vaseline set forth on an unusual research project in a small town in Alaska. Setting up a storefront, the company began giving away free bottles of lotion and asking recipients to name the person who had recommended they come…
Meet the Press, the show hosted by Tim Russert for 17 years before his death last June, is beginning to slip in ratings.
Last month, CBS’s Face the Nation pulled ahead of Meet the Press for the first time in two…
Bloggers collectively create nearly one million blog posts each day, and half of bloggers believe blogs will be a primary source of news and entertainment in the next five years, according to Technorati’s 2008 State of the Blogosphere Report, MarketingCharts writes.…
Wal-Mart and Costco reported same-store gains in September, with sales rising 2.4% and 9% respectively. Sales at Target stores open at least a year fell 3%, writes Retailer Daily.
Below, fiscal results from the discount retail giants:
Sales of food and…
