For the second consecutive year, a finalist in the Business Media category - Wired magazine's campaign for Xerox - took Best in Show during Media magazine's 4th Annual Creative Media Awards Tuesday night in New York. The campaign, which was done in collaboration with Xerox media shop Mediaedge:cia, marked the first time a major magazine turned its cover over to a user-generated media campaign. To demonstrate the custom print capabilities of Xerox's iGEN technology, the campaign enabled magazine subscribers to upload their own images to create personalized versions of Wired's cover. Wired's 2007 Best in Show comes a year after Bradley & Montgomery took Best in Show honors at Media's 2006 Creative Media Awards for a business media campaign that adapted electrical outlets in the Indianapolis International Airport into a new business advertising medium for client Chase Commercial Banking. The other winners in the 2007 Creative Media Awards categories include: Consumer Magazines: Mullen for Mass Mutual Life Newspapers: OMD for the Australian Edition of Hasbro's Monopoly Online Media (Search): Fallon for Sci Fi Channel's "Eureka" Online Media (Branding): TM Advertising for Texas Tourism Email: Spark Communications (formerly Starlink) for the American Medical Association Outdoor/Place-Based Media: McKee Wallwork Cleveland for New Mexico's Tobacco Use Prevention and Control (TUPAC) program Television: MindShare for Unilever's Dove Radio: MerryMedia for ABC's "Ugly Betty" Interactive/Enhanced Television: Campbell-Ewald for the U.S. Navy Multicultural: Starcom for Procter & Gamble's Always Branded Content/Product Placement: Coca-Cola Co. for the "The Extreme Diet Coke and Mentos Experiments" Research/Consumer Insights: MediaVest for Coca-Cola Co.'s Sprite Media Plan: Goodby, Silverstein & Partners for Anheuser-Busch's Rolling Rock Communications Channel Plan: Smith Brothers Advertising for Heinz Ketchup Creative: OMD for Frito-Lay's Doritos
Moving more into off-TV media platforms, NBC Universal will begin selling advertising in video games through a deal with major video game advertising seller IGA Worldwide. With this deal, NBC will expand its media packages to advertisers, as well as being able to promote NBC's own networks and cable shows. At the same time, it gives IGA Worldwide a broader media reach through NBC's media properties. NBC will now be a part of new video game products from major video publishers, such as Activision and Electronic Arts. Major video game advertising companies, like IGA, strike deals with publishers for representation. Other bigger media companies have been doing similar deals. Microsoft acquired video game advertising company Massive Inc. last year. More recently, Google bought in-game ad firm Adscape Media. NBC said in its release that in-game ad spending is expected to grow 33% a year over the next five years--faster than online advertising. IGA Worldwide has done in-game campaigns for 20th Century Fox, Discovery, FHM, Hawaiian Airlines, Intel, Jeep, MTV, and T-Mobile. The company, in part, is backed by GE/NBC Universal's Peacock Equity Fund. In a statement, Nick Johnson, vice president of digital media sales for NBC Universal, said: "We will now, in addition to TV, Web and mobile, be able to offer marketers a whole new opportunity to reach a highly engaged and ever-growing audience." On Monday, NBC made a deal with Arena Media Networks, in which NBC will provide content clips to a 10-minute in-stadium video network from NBC Sports, NBC News and NBC Entertainment. As a part of that deal, NBC will be able to sell advertising space on those networks. Recently, NBC has started up other out-of-home media joint ventures with supermarket and taxi networks--an effort to expand its array of media platforms, particularly helpful for its local TV stations.
Boca Raton, FL -- For the second year in a row, The New Yorker has captured the top spot in the American Society of Magazine Editors' best cover contest, taking Cover of the Year for its "9/11 Tightrope-Walker," which appeared on Sept. 11, 2006. The announcement was made by ASME executives on Tuesday during the closing ceremony for the American Magazine Conference. ASME also announced winners in a number of other categories. The New Yorker cover presents the viewer with the surreal spectacle of a tightrope-walker floating in empty white space, with no visible context. Prompted by curiosity, the viewer flipping through the magazine would encounter another cover, on the third page, showing the same tightrope-walker in mid-air above Lower Manhattan, floating between the footprints of the destroyed World Trade Center--a reference to Philippe Petit's dramatic 1974 tightrope walk between the two towers. Last year, the magazine won cover of the year for a cover published shortly after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, showing members of the Bush Administration apparently oblivious to rising floodwaters in the Oval Office.
In the latest example of what could lead to so-called "cable bypass," ESPN's NBA games this season will be simulcast live on the Web. And it's not just a few less appealing ones, but every game carried on ESPN and ESPN2, including the playoffs. The games will be available on ESPN360.com, which the network has turned into a hub for streams of live events--available free to people whose broadband provider offers the service (17 million homes). The network has split off highlight clips and broadcasts from other ESPN shows--some formerly kept behind a wall at ESPN360--to ESPN.com. ESPN360 also archives games (including the NBA) for replay viewing. Two pre-season games aired on ESPN360 last Friday. Games will similarly be available on ESPN Mobile TV. On-air, ESPN will offer games on Wednesdays and Fridays this season, with a bucket of doubleheaders. Some cable operators have raised issues about cable bypass--where content normally reserved just for cable subscribers, such as live ESPN games, migrates to the Internet. That could lead to some subscriber defection. It could also raise questions as to why consumers pay high fees to ESPN if its programming is distributed elsewhere. (ESPN does try to differentiate the streams on ESPN360 from the network in some fashion.) ESPN's regular-season games begin tonight. ESPN will also offer the NBA Finals next spring on TV on sister network ABC.
New research suggests that when TiVo subscribers opt into special TiVo long-form advertising for a new TV show, a huge percentage will end up sampling a full regularly scheduled episode. A report released by Integrated Media Measurement Inc. said of the TiVo subscribers who go to TiVo's special "Showcase" area, 42% went on to watch the show. IMMI tracked promos for shows on ABC, NBC and CBS during the six-week period leading up to the fall television premieres. IMMI can determine viewership because it provides its research panel members with special mobile phones, which are carried everywhere. The mobile phone can determine an audio signal--from television, radio, and movies--and relay that information back to IMMI to determine the size of audiences. TiVo's Showcase has been a longtime promotional vehicle of the digital video recorder company, where advertisers use long-form advertising, anywhere from two to four minutes in length. Early in its history, Showcase was used by a number of entertainment advertisers. Recently, it has been expanding into doing deals with more general TV advertisers. Last year, it made a media agency-wide deal with GroupM's agencies, MediaCom, Mediaedge:cia, and Mindshare. TiVo has also been encouraging its subscribers to use the Showcase area. Last December, it signed up General Motors, MasterCard Worldwide and Burger King, The Weather Channel and Court TV in a special promotion. Once TiVo viewers have completed screening a recorded program, a screen asks them whether they want to watch the TiVo Showcase or other special long-form promotional videos.
Rick Smith is leaving Newsweek after 37 years, vacating both his editor in chief and CEO roles. Smith had been editor in chief for 24 years, and CEO for 16. Thomas Ascheim--previously general manager of Nickelodeon, owned by Viacom--is moving into the CEO spot. John Meacham will continue as editor. Smith's announcement included news of other management changes. Ann McDaniel, an executive vice president at the Washington Post Company, has been named to the new role of managing director at Newsweek. Publisher Greg Osberg has been named president of Newsweek--replacing Harold Shain, who is moving to sister publication Budget Travel as president and CEO. In his memorandum to Newsweek staffers explaining his decision, Smith conceded: "It is no secret that Newsweek is operating in a challenging business environment. The advertising market for all general-interest magazines is difficult, and postal, benefit and other costs continue to rise. But we have met similar challenges in the past, and we will again." In the first three quarters of 2007, Newsweek's ad pages fell 8.5% and rate-card revenue dropped 3.8%, compared to the same period in 2006, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. In the first half of 2007, newsstand sales fell 9.3% to 100,092, per the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Finally, according to data from Mediamark Research and Intelligence (formerly Mediamark Research Inc.), Newsweek's total audience has declined in recent years, from 21.3 million in spring 2002 to 18.4 million in spring 2007. To revitalize the magazine and spur reader interest, Newsweek recently introduced a major redesign, beginning with its Oct. 22 issue. The magazine got a new look, including less visual clutter, longer articles, fewer images and clearer headings. The redesign represents an attempt to scale up the magazine's intellectual content, and also introduces three new columns on food, parenting and technology. The redesign follows a similar move by competitor Time, which also involved more text, fewer images and a clear, tighter design in general.
Dodge will serve as the exclusive sponsor of a Family Circle-branded holiday special, with syndication deals covering 80% of the country inked so far. The half-hour program, called "Easiest Holiday Party Ever," will also be streamed on Better.tv, a broadband channel operated by Family Circle-magazine owner Meredith Corp. IMG, the one-time predominantly athletic representation company looking to move deeper into entertainment, is syndicating the show. It will air at various times on stations from Nov. 16 through the holidays. Personality and author Sandra Lee will headline the show, with recipes and other tips derived from Family Circle. The initiative also represents another move on Meredith's part to transform its fleet of magazines into multi-platform brands, partly via its new Meredith Video Solutions group, an in-house production company. The program marks its second nationally syndicated show. Meredith does own 13 local stations that give it a backbone for syndication. In addition to serving as sole sponsor, the Dodge Caravan is expected to be integrated into the show. Viewers will be able to log on to Family Circle's Web site to win a Caravan and cash, a promotion to be plugged in the November issue of the magazine.
More than 10% of U.S. homes are receiving HD channels, according to new data from Nielsen. The research firm said that 11.3% (12.7 million) of the 112.8 million U.S. TV homes not only have HD sets, but have activated the service to receive the more pristine feed. Some 13.7% of homes have HD-compatible TVs, so the "turn on" rate is significant. The country's largest market, New York, has almost one in five homes (17.5%) receiving HD channels. And the vast majority of New Yorkers who have bought the expensive HD-compatible sets are ordering packages with the channels (18.1% have the sets, 17.5% have the service). The considerable distribution of homes with HD service is good news for cable operators. They can charge more for HD service--and perhaps more so for DirecTV--which is betting it can gain subscribers by promoting a second-to-none lineup of HD channels, a predicted 100 by year's end. It's unclear whether the growing rollout of sets receiving HD channels will prompt more advertisers to shoot commercials in high-def. Except for events such as the Super Bowl, some have balked due to higher costs, among other issues. Ads not shot in HD that appear on HD channels can potentially have a negative effect, since they don't always fill up the entire width of the screen, and the picture and sound quality differ from the programming. Los Angeles tops New York in the number of homes with sets that can receive HD channels with 20.4% (1.2 million), but only 965,000 homes have the channels piped in.
The median age and income of magazine readers have edged steadily upwards over the last five years, according to an analysis of data from Mediamark Research and Intelligence, LLC, covering the periods spring 2002-spring 2007. The two related trends contain both promise and peril for consumer magazines, which boast an increasingly affluent audience, but also face the long-term challenge of recruiting younger readers to maintain audience size. An analysis of 97 leading consumer magazines revealed that over the last five years, 72 saw the median income of readers increase, with 47 of these increasing by $5,000 or more, and 18 increasing $10,000 or more. Over the same period, the median income of the adult population at large increased by about $4,900; thus, about half of magazines at least kept pace with the general population, another one out of six at least doubled the growth rate, and roughly one-third showed slight declines or remained flat. However, statistics don't do justice to some of the more spectacular increases at individual titles: among the standouts, Barron's rose about $29,000, Elle rose $15,000, Elle Décor rose $22,000, Harper's Bazaar rose $28,000, Outside rose $16,000 and Travel & Leisure rose $17,000. The rise in income is probably related to increases in the median age of readers at many publications, where mags have again outpaced the population at large. For comparison, the median age of American adult men increased 1.2 years and women increased 1.5 years from spring 2002-spring 2007. Among the same 97 titles, 52 saw the median age of their readers increase by two years or more from 2002-2007 (in cases where the magazine targets a particular gender, the median age of readers of that gender was used). Within the group that increased by two years or more, 10 titles increased by over three years, and another 16 increased four years or more. The magazines that saw the biggest increases in median age include Ladies' Home Journal (5.0), Marie Claire (4.9), House Beautiful (5.8), Esquire (5.0), Men's Journal (5.8), and Motor Trend (5.7). More modest increases were seen at Family Circle (3.8), Field & Stream (3.3), Good Housekeeping (2.8), Harper's Bazaar (3.0), Inc. (3.7), Maxim (2.9), Popular Science (2.9), and Rolling Stone (3.3). Only seven titles out of the 97 reviewed saw the median age of readers decrease. The most notable declines came at Entrepreneur (down 4.2), Star ( 6.1), and Us Weekly (4.8). The median age of readers at Elle, Cosmopolitan, Health, and Vanity Fair all declined a year or less. In this group, Elle stands out because the decline in median age was accompanied by a big increase in median income.
The last Monday in October brought little ratings change to the networks. The top two networks had identical ratings to those of a week ago: ABC grabbing a 4.6/11 and CBS a 4.1/10. Those are Nielsen Media Research live-plus-same-day data. NBC was just a tick down off of a week ago at a 3.3/8, down from a 3.4/8. The only real change came from Fox--which went into early rerun mode with repeats of "House" and from "K-Ville." This pushed the network down 32% to a 1.7/4--down from last week's 2.5/6, when it ran fresh episodes of "Prison Break" and "K-Ville." Why the reruns so early in the season? With a shortened World Series--Boston's four-game sweep of Colorado --Fox needed to vamp a bit until the high-profile November sweep programming begins. The top-rated show of the evening--ABC's "Dancing With The Stars"--drifted back a bit to a 5.2/13 from its 5.5/13 of a week before. But ABC's new comedy "Samantha Who?" kept to its surprising high levels: 4.5/10, the same versus a week ago. Even ABC's 10 p.m. show "The Bachelor" climbed to a 3.6/9 from a 3.3/8. NBC's two rookie shows slipped a bit: "Chuck" went to a 2.8/7 from a 2.9/7,and "Journeyman" landed at a 2.2/6 from its 2.4/6 a week ago. Two mainstay 9 p.m. shows didn't really move much: CBS' "Two and a Half Men" and NBC's "Heroes" had identical numbers--4.9/11--virtually the same numbers as a week ago. CBS' "CSI: Miami" won the 10 p.m. time period again with a 4.6/12. For is comedy lineup, the CW put up similar numbers as a week ago--a 1.0 rating/2.4 share versus a 1.0 rating/2.5 share. MyNetworkTV's "Celebrity Expose" two-hour block earned it a 0.3/0.8 versus its 0.4/1.0 of a week before.
Scare Tactics By Jack Feuer Here we are on Halloween, and it's fitting -- and chilling -- that media agencies once again face the terrifying specter of Lee Clow talking about media. There he was in L.A. last week, announcing at a creative conference put on by his house organ Adweek that he's plotting to convene a "Media Arts Festival" in Cabo San Lucas. Numerous attempts by Old World agency leaders in recent years to turn back time and rebundle media have failed. But as the declaration by TBWA's ancient, undead leader demonstrates, their thirst for media agency blood is undiminished. This is not a new fear, of course. Clow's been talking about media creativity for at least a decade. At the beginning of this century, OMD had to compete with one arm tied behind its back until John Wren forced its creative siblings to give up media planning. John Dooner tried to turn Initiative into a eunuch almost from the agency's birth. And Crispin, the smirking superstar of mainstream U.S. advertising, became the irritating industry icon it is today by doing what planners and buyers at SMG, GroupM and many other finest-kind media thinkers routinely do -- and frequently better -- on a daily basis. But now these attacks are getting more subtle and sinister. Now you now hear creatives routinely bloviate about "media arts," rather than simply plead with marketers to re-integrate the media function into full-service agencies. In fact, the new tactic is to outdo each other in demonstrating media planning prowess. My friend Nigel, a fully credentialed creative type, was seriously pissed off at Clow's announcement last week. Not because he disagreed with the idea, but because Nigel wanted to do a media arts conference of his own. And he's far from alone. Fortunately, media agencies have new weapons to counter this frightening new threat. Communications channel planning, for one thing, which allows best-of-breed players like MediaVest, struggling competitors like Universal McCann, and even also-rans like MPG to position themselves as smart thinkers rather than simply efficient buyers. And new communications planning boutiques, like Naked, have the sharp minds and quick reflexes to chop up creative-agency competitors. In a fragmented universe, a full-service shop is a Frankenstein monster. It's a bloody nightmare and bad voodoo. Or Deutsch. Anyway, the point is you've got to stay alert. Keep holy water by your bed, silver bullets in your gun and never, ever, dismiss that bump in the night. It could be Campbell-Ewald, just back from Baja, coming to steal your business.