St. Joan saysA church in the Chicago area, St. Stanislaus Kostka, is running an outdoor campaign through the summer and into September, stringing banners up beside expressways offering “advice” from the saints during the season of construction and highway delays, according to ABC 7 Chicago News. One banner claims, “St. Joseph says construction takes patience.” Another had St. Jude offering an alternate route.
Dow Jones, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has announced the creation of a committee to reassess the way it delivers its news across all its print and online publications, The New York Times reports. Paul Ingrassia, president of Dow Jones Newswires and vp of news strategy for Dow Jones, will lead the company wide project. Ingrassia will work with colleagues from The Journal as well as MarketWatch, Barron’s, The Wall Street Journal Online and Dow Jones Newswires to pinpoint the most efficient way to deliver business news and information across all media.
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CNN president Jonathan Klein spoke today at CNN’s Television Critics Association tour presentation, telling critics that CNN is moving closer to three goals it set last year: to gain momentum coming out of Larry King at 10 p.m., to increase morning news share with American Morning and to refresh its approach to covering politics with The Situation Room, according to Broadcasting & Cable.
NBC’s America’s Got Talent once again bested Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance on Wednesday night, reports Broadcasting & Cable. Talent was the No. 1-rated show on any network, with a 3.5 rating in the 18-49 demo between 8-10 p.m.
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XM has created a dedicated automotive marketing group, Radio World reports. XM says 2006 is a staging year for volume growth in 2007-08, with annual factory-installations of its radios expected to double in the next two years.
Pete Coors, Chairman of Coors Brewing Co. and its beer pitchman, was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol, AdAge reports. Coors, 59, was cited for having a blood-alcohol level above the legal limit and also for rolling through a stop sign. Pete Coors frequently appeared in Coors ads urging responsible drinking and, on its website, Coors says it supports “more severe consequences” for drunk drivers.
WPP and social-networking service LiveWorld have formed a joint venture (named LiveWorld-WPP) to provide online community and social networking services - blogs, buddy lists, message boards, chat rooms and community sites - to major brands worldwide through WPP’s global networks, reports AdAge (via Marketing VOX). The two companies have collaborated in the past, most recently on Dove’s “Campaign For Real Beauty” from WPP’s Ogilvy Interactive unit.
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Citing an overall weak advertising market, Tribune Broadcasting’s stations, the core group of CW Network, says advertising in the second quarter dropped one percent, and the third quarter will also dip into the low single percentage digits, MediaPost reports.
Email marketers have yet to adopt widely accepted best practices -except those required by the CAN-SPAM Act, according to an EmailLabs study (PDF). Inclusion of a working unsubscribe link, required by the CAN-SPAM Act, was the only best practice to be universally adopted.
The company analyzed whether emails incorporated best practices, such as a design that takes into account the preview pane and blocked images, and whether or not they included a link to a profile update, a link to a privacy policy and a forward-to-a-friend button, among others. The top three most widely ignored practices involved including a subscription or administration center, providing a site-search function in the email itself, and including a forward-to-a-friend link.
Millionaire real estate investor Clinton Reilly plans to file an antitrust lawsuit today in the hopes of blocking McClatchy’s planned sale of the San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times and Monterey Herald, writes the AP. The lawsuit names MediaNews Group, the Hearst Corp, Gannett Corp. and Stephens Media Group as defendants. McClatchy, which acquired the three papers along with the rest of Knight Ridder’s papers when it purchased the company in March, reached an agreement to sell the papers to MediaNews - with backing from Hearst and the other publishers - in late April.
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DeutschMedia has won the media planning portion of Circuit City’s U.S. account following a review, beating out Omnicom’s OMD and WPP Group’s Mediaedge:cia, Adweek writes. Circuit City began its search in May. The company will continue to handle media buying in-house.
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Nearly three-quarters (73.6 percent) of summer travelers say they will use the Internet to help plan their summer vacation, according to a recent Burst Media survey of nearly 3,000 web users 18 years and older. Use of the Internet to plan summer travel grows as reported household income increases - going from 64.5 percent of respondents reporting incomes of $35,000 or less, to 82.9 percent of respondents reporting incomes of $75,000 or more.
