While Sony Picture’s The Da Vinci Code opened last weekend at the box office, a mini-industry surrounding the controversial book/movie has been in the making for several months, encompassing cookbooks, video games, walking tours of the Louvre, pornography, with even more ‘Da Vinci’-branded products to come, writes The New York Times.
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Carr Knowledge recently had a tough time placing a large billboard buy in Nashville, Tenn., for Surprise Parties, a company which hosts parties for women to sell sexual aids and products to enhance romance between couples, writes Adrants.
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Marking the first integration of iTunes Music Stores to websites run by radio stations, Emmis Communications and Apple iTunes have combined forces to bring fully integrated iTunes to the websites of Emmis R&B/hip-hop stations WQHT (Hot 97) New York and KPWR (Power 106) Los Angeles, writes MediaWeek.
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MasterCard announced Friday a public-private partnership with the state of Florida that will allow the storm-stricken state to use the credit card giant’s signature “Priceless” tagline as part of a print campaign meant to encourage Floridians to be more prepared for hurricanes, writes BrandWeek.
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Dramatic changes in Spanish-language television have media buyers reevaluating these networks, but the bright outlook for ad spending at the upfront remains constant, writes Media Life.
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The Senate voted late Thursday to raise fines for TV and radio broadcast indecency tenfold, to $325,000, putting an end to over 15 months of congressional inactivity on the issue, writes Media Life. Currently, the FCC can issue fines up to $32,500 for each violation of decency standards.
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Paris-based yogurt maker Groupe Danone’s most recent step in a country-by-country media appraisal that started last year has placed its U.S. media planning and buying account into review, Adweek reports. Last year, the company spent $75 million on domestic ads, per TNS Media Intelligence.
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Wal-Mart has signed consulting firm Select Resources International to manage the advertising review it announced earlier this month, in which incumbents Bernstein-Rein and Omnicom Group’s GSD&M both plan to defend, writes Adweek. Last year the retail super giant spent some $570 million in domestic measured media, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus.
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In an effort to create new forms of entertainment for people already inundated daily with media influences, Digital Chocolate is focusing exclusively on developing simple, unique and entertaining applications and games for mobile phones, writes The New York Times.
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According to the Direct Marketing Association’s first quarter of 2006 Quarterly Business Review, positive economic growth continued for the eleventh consecutive quarter, with a revenue index of 59, but the first quarter index dropped from the fourth quarter’s index of 68, writes BtoB.
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With 90 percent of RSS users choosing to read the entire feed content in the aggregator environment, whether they’re using full text or partial text feeds, publishers may want to consider advertising at the feed reader or aggregator “point of consumption,” according to Pheedo, an RSS marketing and analytics business, BtoB reports.
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