Did you see the bit on HLN about bedbugs infesting firehouses in Albuquerque, New Mexico the other day? What caught my attention wasn’t the bugs, which are popping up all over the place like Tea Party candidates. Nor was it the fact that the Firefighter Wives Auxillary Association went to a national high end mattress [...]
Archive for the ‘PR and News’ Category
Does al-Qaeda’s magazine Inspire accept advertising?
Posted: October 12, 2010 in Business, Media, PR and NewsTags: 2010 magazines folded, 2010 magazines launched, al-Qaeda magazine, Inspire, Mediafinder.com, Samir Kahn
Magazines come and magazines go. In the first 9 months of 2011, 110 new magazines began publishing while 127 closed up shop, according to this Oct. 11 press release from MediaFinder.com. (Both numbers are down from the same period last year, when 259 launched and 383 folded.) But of all the new launches this year, [...]
Tough love from Google and the US Post Office
Posted: December 3, 2009 in Business, direct marketing, Media, PR and News, Value for ValueTags: death of journalism, First Click Free, First Click Free policy changes, free content, free news, Google, USPS
Two seemingly unrelated news items about the US Post Office and Google caught my attention today. The first was an article in DM News that said that the US Post Office is intending to penalize mailers who don’t “meet US Postal Service standards for updating mailing lists, according to Jeff Platt, director of solutions marketing [...]
How to Make Scrapple Less Appetizing
Posted: October 8, 2009 in Business, Media, Misleadership, PR and NewsTags: Hoovers, Jones Dairy Farm, Ralph and Paul Adams Inc., Rapa Scrapple, Rape Scrapple
Have you ever eaten Scrapple? It’s gastronomically ghoulish, made up of pig or hog offal (liver, heart, head, and anything else left over) that’s smashed into a mushy paste, sliced and then fried on a grill slathered in fat. I know, I know, you’re wondering what could possibly make something that good tasting that’s also [...]
How to save the NY Times?
Posted: June 9, 2009 in Branding, Business, CRM, Integrated Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Partnerships, Media, PR and News, Relationship Marketing, Value for ValueTags: Amazon.com, Business, dead trees, Kindle, Marketing, micro-payments, newspapers, NY Times, Old Gray Lady, save the NY Times, technology, value
News outlets make news. But to make money, they wrap that news in advertising. Anybody else see a disconnect? As we all know, advertising revenues are down as advertisers shift their dollars to more attractive media channels. And not every newspaper, least of all the NY Times, will be saved by the influx in erotic [...]
What does global warming have in common with junk mail?
Posted: May 19, 2009 in Business, Directed Advertising, Marketing, Media, Misleadership, PR and NewsTags: Anthony Watts, Business, climate change, direct marketing, Evan Jones, Global Warming, surface stations, testing, US Historical Climate Network, USHCN, Watts Up With That
To a direct marketer, testing is vital. But it’s important to know exactly what you’re testing. If you’re not careful, what you think your test is telling you may not be what it’s saying at all. It’s not just in direct marketing and business that testing matters, as you’ll see in a minute. Evan Jones, [...]
Does anybody else hate the new CNN news crawl?
Posted: April 1, 2009 in Branding, Business, Marketing, Media, PR and NewsTags: AC360.COM, Anderson Cooper, BBC News, Business, cable news, CNN, CNN.COM, FOX News, MSNBC, new CNN news crawl, news bomb, news crawl, news ticker, Rick Sanchez
I recently shattered my right arm at the shoulder and spent two painful weeks on the couch. I mostly watched cable news, as the opiate cocktail I was on for pain precluded reading or anything else requiring actual concentration. And while I’m normally a fan of the bloodsport that is cable news, merrily flipping between [...]
Special Report, Breaking News or Scam?
Posted: March 11, 2009 in Business, Directed Advertising, Misleadership, PR and NewsTags: Business, CNN, DRTV, fake "breaking news", fake "Special Report", financial institutions, House of Cards, Jim Cramer, Mad Money, mortgage lenders, paid advertisement, TMU, TopDot Mortgage
Have you seen the new commercials that look and feel like cable news programming? I’ve seen at least three different variations for three different advertisers. The one I see the most is the most innocuous: it’s for the “Mucho Money” show, a Jim Cramer “Mad Money” rip-off selling Optimum Online and related services. I say [...]
Darwin, Domino and the Theory of Media Evolution
Posted: February 13, 2009 in Business, Marketing, Media, PR and NewsTags: advertising, Architectural Digest, Business, Charles Darwin, Conde Nast, Darwin's 200th Birthday, Domino, House & Garden, Marketing, Media, Theory of Evolution
In honor of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday yesterday, I’d like to talk about survival of the fittest and the evolution of the media landscape. A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post called The Magazine as Metaphor. I talked about the three segments of magazines that added the most new titles in 2008, with [...]
