• Media Metrics: Still Too Close to Call
    Fall brings great sports rivalries like the World Series and college football. But one rivalry as compelling as any Red Sox/Yankee pennant race or Michigan/Ohio State game is being waged in consumer electronic stores across the country every day: Blu-ray vs. HD DVD.
  • Column: The New Next -- It's Not Business as Usual
    At one time, you could make a distinction between Suits and Creatives, but the line that divides those worlds is quickly vanishing. Instead, the fields of account and media planning are merging with creativity and moving into a new, more strategic and smarter direction.
  • Proof: Consider The Consumer
    I'm a baseball nut. I love the game, and can find a baseball metaphor to explain just about anything. But ever since Michael Lewis's 2003 book Moneyball revealed how Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane was using statistical analysis to transform the management of the sport, baseball has become a particularly apt basis for comparison to marketing.
  • Column: Productivity -- The Drone Becomes a Din
    The conversation that is today's media will challenge everything we know about marketing. Among the most significant changes in store is this: Everybody gets punk'd.
  • Column: Insight -- Beyond the Focus Group
    Sporting the potentially ambiguous job title of director of consumer insights, I'm fascinated whenever I see anyone else in the industry with insights in their title. I always ask them what it means for them. After all, someone can't walk into my office and just ask me: "I'd like two insights, please!"
  • Free Agent: A Cart With No Horse
    In the pressure to be (or at least appear) current in today's onslaught of new-media opportunities, many in our profession are finding themselves making or receiving channel dictates like this - which is fine, as long as one critical criterion has been met beforehand: the core idea has been cracked.
  • The Talent: Time to Get Off Your ##!!
    In early August Susan Nathan departed Universal McCann, becoming the 14th senior research executive to exit from a top tier media agency in the last four years. The string of departures also raised the question of whether such agencies were devaluing hard analysis.
  • The Biz: A Rational View of Value
    The idea of auction marketplaces for media has grown in popularity over the years. The argument seems simple enough. If you have a large, openmarket where both buyers and sellers can communicate easily with one another, working with full disclosure, the absolute, true value of inventory can be determined.
  • Plugging Away: Attack Of The Clone Pitches
    Here's a pitch an agency like ours gets all the time from middlemen; we get them so often they not only sound the same, they are the same: "I am excited to announce that White Flower Entertainment will be working with Hyde Park Entertainment on their new feature film project, "Other End Of The Line."
  • Column: The Buzz -- Teens and Their 'Zines
    Are print magazines still relevant with teens? This seems to be the question on everyone's mind these days. Do teens read books? Do they care about newspapers? Is everything going digital? I think, and certainly hope, not.
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