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Four new balloon characters will join the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade this year, according to The New York Times: Mr. Potato Head, Scooby-Doo, JoJo from the Disney Channel’s JoJo’s Circus, and Dora the Explorer, the parade’s first Latina character. The parade sees more than 2.5 million viewers lining the route from Central Park West to Herald Square, with more than 50 million watching on network television.
Increasingly, marketers are seeing the parade not simply as a way to reach a wide audience, but as a way to launch a promotional campaign, introducing a new character to the parade - such as SpongeBob Squarepants last year - to coincide with a major movie release. But perhaps more important, marketers see the parade as a way to make a statement to retailers and licensees that a company is in the business of franchising, writes Chief Marketer.
For example, the Disney Channel was able to get JoJo toys into the Toys ‘R’ Us holiday catalog because of the parade, and a 200 percent increase in sales has already resulted. According to Adam Sanderson, senior vp, brand marketing for Disney ABC Cable Networks Group, Disney’s association with the parade will be leveraged in ongoing deals with licensees and to win over potential advertisers.
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…
