In July, Calvin Klein’s CK One put male and female models on a stage built to look like a huge CK One bottle above the Times Square Hard Rock Cafe.
The Calvin Klein team estimated they got $12 million worth of media coverage and direct marketing impact from the day-long event which cost $500,000, according to a Marketing Sherpa case study.
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With ABC’s Dancing With the Stars set for Thursday nights starting in January, competitors are considering midseason moves, Reuters reports.
Fox is considering moving American Idol to Thursday to grab a greater share of movie marketing dollars studios lavish on the night. NBC may follow suit with My Name Is Earl, which has emerged as primetime’s top-rated comedy in the coveted adults 18-49 demographic.
The jockeying for position is a continuation of a trend first triggered at May’s upfront period, when several networks made bold scheduling changes while the network that once owned the night, NBC, has stuck with a shaky lineup that has only grown weaker this season.
Several ad agencies are in discussions with TV networks about exclusive sponsorship deals that will cut back the number of ads in a particular sponsored program, Mediaweek reports.
Philips Electronics recently struck such a deal with CBS’ 60 Minutes, in which the client was the only one to run ads; the amount of ad time was reduced by about half. The client paid a higher rate-as part of a multiprogram ad package-and CBS received what it normally gets for a full spot load in the broadcast.
Infinity Broadcasting bought all 24 full-page ads in the Oct. 31 issue of Advertising Age to promote its new programming and the lineup of hosts who will succeed Howard Stern on Jan. 3, after he moves to Sirius Satellite Radio, The New York Times reports.
It’s also taken over the home pages of adage.com and adcritic.com, and has bought ads in Creativity and Point.
The Advertising Age buy was inspired by Target’s purchase of all the ad space in the Aug. 22 issue of The New Yorker. The American Society of Magazine Editors scolded The New Yorker for violating society guidelines when it published its Aug. 22 issue sponsored by just one advertiser without including a note explaining that the advertiser did not influence the editorial content.
Overall, industry insiders found Targets takeover wildly innovative or alarmingly shocking.
Edmund Scientific, a cataloger that sells science-related tools and toys, has branched into retail sales, opening four mobile units inside high-traffic areas of four shopping malls, DM News writes. The units, in kiosks of about 150 square feet, sell 100 of the best sellers from the catalog in order to test the multichannel strategy.
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To compete in the local information and ad market being tapped by Google, Yahoo and other internet companies, Gannett plans to next month introduce banner ads on its newspaper websites that can be expanded into online versions of local weekly newspaper ad circulars, writes the New York Times (via MarketingVox). The service, called PaperBoy, was created by Gannett unit PointRoll and would give national advertisers a way to reach online readers with promotions tied to neighborhood stores. Christopher Saridakis, PointRoll’s chief executive, said the company had signed 20 percent of the nation’s top 50 advertisers. “And we’ve been selling it for just about a month now.”
Yahoo will launch two music video services on November 1, illustrating the web’s growing influence - and soon-to-be dominance - in music video media, according to a Reuters/Billboard report, writes paidContent (via MarketingVox). One service, focusing on mainstream acts, will daily feature the debut of a music video - mostly world premieres - to be available online exclusively at Yahoo for 24 hours. The other service is StopWatch, which will highlight emerging acts, and each week it will recommend one of three videos based on a user’s music-listening history and stated preferences.
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This year is shaping up as the newspaper industry’s worst year from a revenue growth perspective since the recession, according to a report from Goldman Sachs, and meaningful growth in 2006 is “very unlikely,” Mediapost reports. National advertising and the retail category have remained essentially flat, while print and online have shown positive gains of 4 to 5 percent.
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National CineMedia, a joint venture of AMC Entertainment, Regal Entertainment Group, and Cinemark USA, is launching a repackaged and rebranded pre-show in December, AdAge reports. The newly rebranded show is part of a trend in theaters to make the 20-minute promotions/ad package more appealing to audiences that some say are increasingly skipping the pre-show advertiser messages.
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During a London speech at the Internet Advertising Bureau’s Engage conference, Bill Gates predicted the eventual demise of paper at the hands of silicon, writes The Guardian. Celebrating his 50th birthday, he said that by the time he’s 60 we’ll all be connected to the internet all the time, carrying paper-thin devices that will allow us to access entertainment, education, and information, and that will render newspapers and magazines redundant. These devices will also interact with our environment.
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The value of network sweeps is diminishing as at least five major cities - New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco - are using local people meters, Mediaweek writes. With that in mind, broadcasters have said they are relying more heavily on regularly scheduled programming for the period, rather than special events - though some key events, including ABC’s American Music Awards and a Barbara Walters special, and CBS’s Country Music Awards and the disaster miniseries, Category 7: The End of the World, will be running.
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The availability of HD radio, which both iBiquity and Entercom executives said would increase dramatically in the second half of this year, is still scarce, and will miss the holiday buying season, writes Mediaweek. Only six HD radio models are currently available - five after-market car radios and one high-end home system.
Disney’s Little Einstein’s is the latest in its string of shows catering to the preschool crowd, and it premiered on Oct. 9 to 737,000 kids ages 2-5, Media Life reports. That number falls short of Nickelodeon’s Go Diego Go premiere last month, but was still the highest-rated premiere ever for the Playhouse Disney programming block.
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The Takeover Panel, a U.K. regulatory body that monitors takeover activity, has said that WPP Group and its potential private equity partner, Hellman & Friedman, have until noon on Nov. 25 to make an offer for Aegis Group, AdAge reports.
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A survey of 860 b-to-b marketers released last week revealed that marketers believe in-person events are one of the most effective marketing tactics, B to B reports. The American Business Media survey results showed that 63 percent of respondents said events were most effective for lead generation, and 61 percent said they were most effective for brand building.
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