• by August 26, 2003

Grey Picks Up Kmart, That's The Good News?: The team at Grey Advertising and its media shop MediaCom have got to be optimists - or gluttons for punishment. Or, maybe times are still so hard that even a beleaguered retailer like Kmart looks like a plumb new business win. How else to explain Grey's successful pitch for the chain's advertising and media account. And Grey was not alone. It bested Interpublic's Campbell-Ewald and Initiative Media units. And those finalists were pared down from a list of five participating in the frenzied review, which was initiated after Omnicom's TBWA/Chiat/Day and OMD units split with Kmart, the third largest U.S. retailer and the largest retailer ever to file for bankruptcy. Among other things, the Grey units will be responsible for media planning and buying, TV and radio campaigns for the estimated $200 million to $250 million assignment. That's down from billings of about $270 million in 2002, the year Kmart filed for bankruptcy protection. Grey chairman Ed Meyer provided the obligatory statement saying how excited the shop is "for the opportunity to re-position and strengthen Kmart as a premier brand," but that task includes some extra baggage. Among Kmart's most important lines is its exclusive merchandising deal with Martha Stewart. And Martha's product - not to mention her brand reputation - isn't exactly flying off the shelves these days. So credit Grey with two tasks in the Kmart win. Or is it three. Besides staging the reposition of two troubled brands, Grey's MediaCom unit must find ways of assuring media vendors that they don't have financial liability for Kmart's media buys.

Liberating USA: Now that John Malone's numbers-crunching Liberty Media Corp. has taken a pass on Vivendi Universal's U.S. entertainment assets because of its assessment of the "expected transaction value," you've got to believe General Electric's free-spending NBC unit has got a lock on it. It seems Liberty, which already holds a significant investment in Vivendi, would prefer to let NBC unlock the value of those than to control them itself. In any case, we at the riff will be relieved when it's all over and the unit, including USA Networks, once again is controlled by a USA-based outfit. It's not that we hold any umbrage against Vivendi's French management, it's just that it never seemed, well, right.

All The Spam That's Fit To Link: It turns out we were right after all. SoBig is a viral marketing campaign waiting to happen (Real Media Riffs, Aug. 22). Or so reports The New York Times in a story alleging the real scheme behind SoBig is to launch an unprecedented spam campaign via a hijacked network of personal and corporate computers. The Times should know. It seems their systems were so impacted late last week that staffers were actually told to go home. Ethics and legalities aside, you've got to admire the ingenuity and enterprise of these hackers, not to mention the delicious irony as they commandeer computers of unwitting users - possibly even including those of the Times itself - for a colossal e-mail marketing campaign. By doing so, experts believe the spam solicitations will be able to bypass traditional fire walls and find their way into personal inboxes.

Fair And Balanced And More Than A Little Thin-Skinned: It seems Fox News can dish it out under the guise of journalism, but they're not very good when it comes to being on the receiving end of the First Amendment. Citing the amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech, as well as freedom of the press, a U.S. District Court judge ruled in favor of author and comedian Al Franken, whose new book features an image of Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. Fox claimed the image constituted a copyright infringement, but the judge ruled the book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," is really just a parody and therefore is protected from such charges. But what really got Fox News chief Roger Ailes' goat was Franken's reference to "fair and balanced," which is Fox News' current slogan.