Dan Ciccone

Articles by Dan All articles by Dan

• ESports - Time To Unionize in Marketing: Sports on 09/06/2016
  

  This past week, ESPN published Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg's remarks on Call of Duty's eSports efforts. He attributes much success to the pro players - "They give you the momentum of a story: a beginning, middle and end. Those narratives are what fuel an interest in sports. People love watching the best players in the world play the game they love."

• What ESports Athletes (And LeBron James) Know About Content Marketing in Marketing: Sports on 12/01/2015
  

  Picture this: a superstar athlete enters the arena to thousands of screaming fans, millions more watch at home, legions following along on second screens or live-weeting the experience - high stakes, high engagement. You wouldn't be faulted for calling to mind an image of LeBron James, but you wouldn't be inaccurate in thinking of a superstar competitive gamer like Seth "Scump" Abner, either.

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• DoubleVerify Confirms Misrepresentation Of X's Brand Safety Measurement by Colin Kirkland (MediaDailyNews on 04/16/2024)
  

  So what happens when a company like DoubleVerify offers grossly inaccurate reporting information and costs a platform millions of dollars? Just a shrug and "oops, sorry, we'll try to do better?" MediaMatters isn't fairing so well with its botched claims over the last 6 months either. The watchdogs need a watchdog.

• Flap At NPR As Staffer Criticizes An 'Absence Of Viewpoint Diversity' by Ray Schultz (Publishers Daily on 04/10/2024)
  

  Berliner gave specific examples about NPR not following up on stories, not investigating stories or claims, and basically just repeating whatever nonsense political hacks were feeding them. The fact that MediaPost just refers to this as an internal flap vs. doing its own journalism reinforces Berliner's point that the media has become lazy and driven by politics vs. finding the truth.

• Consumers Have Much To Learn About EVs by Tanya Gazdik (Drive Time on 04/08/2024)
  

  Consumers aren't worried about the ride or the comfort of an EV - they're concerned about not being able to drive freely, a lack of charging stations, and having a 10 hour trip take 2 days because the average EV needs 8 hours to charge fully. I don't know anyone who owns an EV who doesn't have to rent a car when they want to take the family on a trip because they don't want to waste half their vacation looking for charging stations and then waiting 6+ hours to fill up the car.  Whether the test track is 90,000 sq feet or 200,000 sq feet, it doesn't change the reality of the moment. And those who do their research actually understand that EV's are worse for the enviornment than hybrids. All you are doing is swapping out carbon monoxide for thousands of pounds of toxic, difficult to mine, difficult to dispose, raw materials...and you're still getting most of your electricity to fill these batteries with fossil fuels that are powering these homes. EVs in their current state are not a one size fits all and consumers understand that. 

• Consumers Are Doing Great, But Your Highest Spending Cohort Might Not Be... by Corinne Casagrande (Marketing Insider on 04/03/2024)
  

  Corrine - do you have a source for this information?  Inflation has increased by double digits since 2021 - groceries for HHLD staples like eggs, meat, and fruits and vegetables have seen increases upwards of 30%.  Rents, along with utilities have increased 20% as well.  These prices are not coming down. Seems like the government and the press want to look at monthly inflation to say how low it has become while ignoring how staggering it was for 2+ years. And according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (a government entity), a good percent of wage growth has come from government social benefits - not by the private sector - and this just drives up the national debt. These numbers and stats being thrown out are way out of context and consumers are getting fed up with the media and politicians telling them that their lives are better than they think they are.

• Mark Penn, No Labels And The 2024 Election by Richard Whitman (Mediapsssst on 04/04/2024)
  

  If you look at government entity reporting, like the Bureau of Economic Analysis, an agency of the Department of Commerce, there is a very different story than what is presented. HHLD debt has increased almost 5% and average credit card debt has increased by 16.5% over the last couple of years. Unemployment amongst 16-24 year olds is almost at 10% and we are an at all time high of people who have dropped out of the workforce. Disposable income has increased a paltry 1% with inflation averaging double digits for the past three years, and younger people and those lower on the economic scale are getting hit twice as bad. These are facts that the mainstream press and the administration conveniently ignore as they keep telling the American people that they just don't know how good they have it. Don't believe your empty wallets - "trust us." That's a hard campaign platform to run on.

• Consumers Are Doing Great, But Your Highest Spending Cohort Might Not Be... by Corinne Casagrande (Marketing Insider on 04/03/2024)
  

  How are "consumers doing great" with every government entity economic indicator showing softer consumer spending and disposable income growth? Barely hovering at 1% with disposable income decreasing with high interest rates and wages that have not kept up with inflation.  Middle and especially lower-income HHLDs being hit the hardest.  16-24 year olds unemployment is more than double the national average. Average household debt has increased 5% and credit card debt has increased over 16% over the last couple of years. We are seeing record numbers of people just dropping out of the job market. There seems to be this constant reporting of good news when it comes to consumers and the media and administration telling consumers that things are better than their empty wallets are telling them.

• NBC News Meanies Gang Up On New Girl by Adam Buckman (TVBlog on 03/29/2024)
  

  Jeff Toobin fired from CNN for pleasuring himself on a zoom call - then rehired. Brian Williams demoted on NBC for lying about events, then moved to MSNBC. Donna Brazile, working for CNN, was caught giving advance notice to the Clinton camp in 2016 about a debate question and was fired, only to be hired by ABC News. Andrea Mitchel on NBC/MSNBC has a career of fabricating lies and is occassionally asked to apologize. These are the high standards legacy news outlets stand for. Ronna McDaniel has never been fired or convicted and anyone who expected her to say anything negative about Trump or any other republican given her position with the RNC is delusional.  Every member of the RNC was her constituent and will continue to be her constituent.  She has stated publicly that Biden won the election, but she believes there were problems with the process in 2020. Chuck Todd tries to claim this isn't about ideology, but it has everything to do with ideology and then MediaPost and all the other news outlets scratch their heads wondering why Americans increasingly distrust the media.  Example after example of the double standards and feigned and flawed moral high ground from the media elites. She wasn't hired to anchor NBC Nighly news.  She was hired to offer a viewpoint - an inside baseball look at what may be going on and interpreting events as they unfold heading into the 2024 election.  If she's on a panel and is going to debate with those on the left, what was the harm?  Wasn't that the whole point?  Rachel Maddow or Chuck Todd should have been anxious to debate her instead of cancelling her. This isn't NBC News - it's a casting for High School Musical.

• The Ad Game Shifts Budgets To Game Ads by Joe Mandese (Planning & Buying Insider on 03/26/2024)
  

  Interesting that not a single video game publisher/representative participates, but there is all of this advice about how to advertising in the industry while ignoring how complex and diverse ad placements can be.

• Oprah And The Blame Game by Barbara Lippert (Mad Blog on 03/20/2024)
  

  So much focus is on drugs and exercise and mental health - when is someone going to do a mini-series about how the food in the States is absolute garbage filled with sugar, salt, chemicals, and preservatives that are literally banned in other countries? We keep blaming people when we should be blaming the food and our government that allows these addictive poisons into our food.

• With U.S. Prices Rising At Less Than Half The Rate Of The Rest Of The World, How Will It Impact Budgets? by Joe Mandese (Planning & Buying Insider on 03/04/2024)
  

  @Ed.  Agreed. Also - deflation for dying mediums in the U.S. does not = good investment either ;)  I'd be curious to see audience loss compared to deflationary pricing and how they match up.

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