Ohio and Florida have two markets each among the top 10 in political spending this year, according to a new report. Both are major swing states in the presidential race and have hotly contested senate races generating spending. Cleveland, the country's 18th-largest market, has drawn $17.7 million through June 24, according to a Wells Fargo report. That places it just behind Los Angeles for the most political ad dollars this year. Also in Ohio, the Columbus market, the 34th-largest, ranks 8th in most spending with $10.6 million. In Florida, Tampa, the 14-largest market, ranks 4th with $12.2 million and Orlando (market 19) comes in 9th with $10.4 million. In Ohio, incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) is trying to fend off a challenge from state Treasurer Josh Mandel (R). Cleveland has been experiencing a rush of dollars lately, making it the country’s top market with political dollars from June 4-24. In Florida, Sen. Bill Nelson (D) is trying to hold onto his seat. California, where Los Angeles has brought in $20.2 million, has a senate race with incumbent Diane Feinstein (D). Other top 10 markets through 24 this year include New York in third, Washington in 5th, Milwaukee (where statewide recall races buoyed spending) in 6th, Las Vegas in 7th and Philadelphia in 10th. The Los Angeles and New York markets should help the stations owned by the four major networks. Fox has six stations in the top 10, while NBCUniversal and CBS have four. In Cleveland, the four stations affiliated with the major networks are owned by Gannett, Scripps, Raycom and Local TV.
While Rupert Murdoch may be distancing himself from his newspaper properties to avoid charges of undue political influence, the general trend is actually heading in the opposite direction. The wave of acquisitions sweeping the beleaguered newspaper industry threatens the editorial independence of some publications. It’s not news that newspapers are in a fairly desperate state in the U.S. and some other parts of the world. From 2005-2011, total U.S. newspaper advertising revenues plunged 52% from $49 billion to $24 billion, and the medium is headed for another round of losses in 2012. In this dire financial situation, many corporate owners are eager to divest themselves of properties whose diminishing profitability could vanish altogether in the not-too-distant future. That opens the door to potential buyers with motives that are less than noble. Of course, newspapers have always influenced business and politics. In the 19th century, most U.S. newspapers were founded as mouthpieces for political parties, a history that is still reflected in names like the Tallahassee Democrat or The Republican of Springfield, MA. Well after the professionalization of journalism and enshrining of objectivity in the early twentieth century, most big newspapers still have an opinionated editorial board that airs their views in the op-ed pages. Nor is it uncommon for supposedly objective reporting to carry an ideological tinge. But the latest round of deals, with newspapers going for rock-bottom prices to buyers with overt political agendas, represents a new level of adulteration. The most prominent example of this is the recent acquisition of The San Diego Union-Tribune by real estate developer Doug Manchester, who has openly stated that he intended the newspaper to be a “cheerleader” for a new downtown stadium, which would also “call out [opponents] as obstructionists.” The paper’s new CEO, John T. Lynch, told The New York Times: “We are doing what a newspaper ought to do, which is to take positions. We are very consistent -- pro-conservative, pro-business, pro-military -- and we are trying to make a newspaper that gets people excited about this city and its future.” Since Manchester took ownership of the newspaper it has investigated public agencies that get in the way of the stadium project, including the Port of San Diego. In early June, it fired Tim Sullivan, a longtime sports columnist who had criticized the stadium plans, on the flimsy pretext that he wasn’t on board with the publication’s new media strategy. Indeed, the real threat to editorial independence doesn’t come at the national level -- where overt meddling is likely to attract unwanted attention, but at the local and regional level -- where real vested interests are at play and newspapers are simultaneously at their most vulnerable. On the other side of the political spectrum, despite his protestations to the contrary, it's not hard to imagine Warren Buffett’s oft-stated views trickling down into some of his newly acquired properties. His decision to buy the Omaha World-Herald was widely lauded as civic-minded hometown boosterism, but the fact remains that the city’s daily paper is now owned by the city's richest businessman -- who appears in its pages with some regularity, occasionally in connection with local policy debates. The phenomenon is not limited to the U.S. Australia's largest newspaper publisher, Fairfax Media, is fending off a takeover bid by Gina Rinehart -- the scion of a mining dynasty who is also the country's richest woman, with a fortune of $18.6 billion. Critics are afraid that Rinehart could turn Fairfax properties -- including the Sydney Morning Herald -- into corporate mouthpieces in her fight with the Australian government over mining regulations, especially its planned carbon tax. Fairfax has been afflicted by the same technological and financial forces that humbled its U.S. counterparts over the last decade. in June, the company announced it would cut 22% of its staff, trim its newspaper sizes, close some production facilities, and begin charging for digital access. The company predicts an 8% drop in revenues in the second half of the year.
Hampton Inn is taking its “Feel the Hamptonality” campaign to movie theater screens this summer in time for the peak travel season. In a first for the hotel category, the Hampton chain is using 3D ads in films starting with the new 3D “Spiderman” movie, which bowed Tuesday to record box-office numbers. “We really try to reach our audience in new and unexpected ways,” said Anna Harris, director of brand marketing for Hampton Inn, which is part of Hilton Worldwide. Hampton’s 3D cinema campaign, orchestrated by media shop OMD’s Los Angeles office, will hit 6,000 screens via National CineMedia’s ad network this summer and fall. It is expected to generate a minimum 5 million impressions, said Kyle Zvacek, group director, strategy at OMD. “But given the numbers we’ve seen so far for “Spiderman” we think we’ll surpass that,” Zvacek added. Other movies that the Hampton 3D campaign is targeting include “Hotel Transylvania,” which hits screens in September, and Tim Burton’s “Frankenweenie,” which debuts the following month. Those films should deliver the Hampton Inn target of families, 25-54 travelers and Millennials, seen as an “emerging traveler group,” said Zvacek. “TV takes a little bit of a dive [in the ratings] in the summer and we believe this is a great way to enhance the campaign,” which also features national cable network ads and online and social media elements, said Harris. The Hampton Inn Facebook page references the ad and encourages fans to see the movie. For the now, the client has converted one TV ad from its recently launched “Hamptonality” campaign. It’s the so-called “Leisure” that promotes a fun family weekend getaway. Others may follow, per Harris. “We did some slight re-editing and made it a little stronger and compelling” for the 3D audience, Harris said. “It draws you in and you feel like you’re going through the actual journey process as you watch.” While some advertisers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars or more to produce cinema-specific ads for theaters, converting a 2D TV ads to 3D can cost under $50,000, which is a cost-effective way for a challenger brand like Hampton Inn to use the cinema ad platform. According to Kantar Media, the hotel chain spent $30 million last year on ads. Just how effective will the Hampton Inn cinema campaign be? A custom research study, commissioned by NCM, will measure ad recall, likeability and future purchase intent, as well as comparative perception of the 3D spots versus the national 2D television campaign. “We think there will be more engagement” via the 3D ads, Harris asserted. “The nature of 3D,” she added, brings an enhanced aspect to messaging that better enables the viewer to “experience the essence of the hotel during that journey.”
The short-lived CW reality show "Remodeled" is getting new life as a branded interactive show on DirecTV.Sony Pictures Television and TV interactive company BrightLine say they are launching "a branded channel experience."The show will get some summer exposure on the CW starting July 9, re-airing all its original episodes, as well as new unseen shows. During its initial run back in the spring, the show averaged around a lowly 700,000 overall viewers and a Nielsen 0.3 rating among 18-49 viewers.For its DirecTV deal, "Remodeled" -- about entrepreneurs looking to pool the resources of small modeling agencies -- will have interactive elements, such as allowing viewers the ability to recreate some of the featured models' favorite hairstyles using TRESemme products.DirecTV viewers, on its Channel 111, will see custom, BrightLine-produced promotional commercials featuring the models from the show, encouraging them to visit Channel 111 for more.Paul Fisher, chief executive officer of The Network and star of "Remodeled," stated: "Now viewers can take their interest in the lives of models a step further by learning some styling secrets from the stars of 'Remodeled,' as well as learning about their lives outside of the show."
There were more media deals in the first half of 2012 -- but at lower cash-flow multiples.There was a 6% rise in the number of media and marketing acquisitions, according to New York-based investment banker Berkery Noyes, to 834 deals for the first six months of 2012. The total value of transactions was up 27% to $31 billion.Despite this improvement, deals were made at lower financial metrics than for the same period in 2011. The average price of these deals came in at 1.2 times the median revenue versus 1.8 times in 2011. In addition, the average price of media deals was 7.8 times cash flow -- earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization -- for the first half of 2012 versus 10.0 in 2011.Marketing was the most active industry segment for first-half 2012, accounting for 262 transactions. Of these, 47% were digital marketing deals, with WPP Group the most active purchaser.Berkery Noyes says the number of "Internet media" deals declined 2% -- but were still nearly 20% above the last six months of 2010. Deals for exhibitions, conferences and seminars witnessed the largest price rise in total volume -- up over 85% versus the same period a year ago.Those "entertainment" deals had a 24% rise -- the fourth straight year of growth. The biggest transaction was Lionsgate’s acquisition of Summit Entertainment for $700 million. Video games, part of the entertainment category, climbed 30%; social gaming deals were up 50%. The biggest of these was GREE International proposed deal for Funzio, a mobile game developer, for $210 million.Evan Klein, managing director at Berkery Noyes, stated: “Of the many possible means of monetizing social games, enticing users to purchase virtual currency and other rewards continues to be the most lucrative model for generating revenue.”
The FCC has fined a small cable operator for continuing to offer the Fox and NBC affiliates in the Baton Rouge, La. market shows in violation of retransmission consent rules. Bailey Cable TV kept the stations on air without a carriage deal for over a month, bringing a $30,000 penalty. Bailey can appeal the ruling, where fines are for $15,000 per station. A call to the cable operator, based in Mississippi, was not immediately returned Friday. Three-year carriage deals for the stations expired at the end of 2011, but Bailey did not take them off on Jan. 1, 2012. A new deal was reached on Feb. 3. According to the FCC, Bailey does not dispute the facts, but believes the FCC should only be assessing it for one violation and not two, which brings a “double penalty.” The Communications Corp. of America (ComCorp) runs both stations. It owns the Fox station (WGMB) and operates the NBC station (WVLA) for Knight Broadcasting of Baton Rouge. Consultant Duane Lammers negotiated carriage deals for the two stations. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has suggested the bureau may look into rules that allow for shared services agreements, where companies can negotiate package deals that can give stations leverage. ComCorp negotiator Lammers works with Silver Point Capital, which owns both ComCorp and Granite Broadcasting. As the WGMB and WVLA owners pursued action against Bailey Cable, the cable operator’s executive David Bailey suggested ComCorp was looking to use the FCC as a “tool to negotiate a dramatic increase in rates that are unacceptable in the private marketplace.” According to a filing by ComCorp, David Bailey sent an offer to the company on Jan. 4, 2012 that ComCorp rejected because it was not “consistent with marketplace conditions.” ComCorp owns or operates 25 stations in 10 markets in Lousiana, Texas and Indiana.
Aegis Group has acquired the search and related digital marketing assets of France’s WGarden, the holding company has confirmed. Terms weren’t disclosed, but Aegis said that the asset value of the acquired properties totaled $8 million. The deal strengthens Aegis’ already sizeable media presence in France. According to media agency tracker RECMA, the company’s billings there exceed $2.6 billion, which is close to 35% of the market. Aegis indicated that WGarden assets will be folded into its iProspect operation, making it “one of the leading search and performance marketing specialists in France.” The company suggested part of the appeal of the acquistion was the network of offices that WGarden has established across France, along with local client base it has developed. The search specialist has done work for clients such as Longchamp, Adecco and Monoprix. Aegis said the asset integration would be completed in the third quarter of this year. Founded in 2007, WGarden established itself as a leading provider of search services in France, with a particular focus on search engine optimization. More recently, it added capabilities for social media search. Like other holding companies, Aegis has made a priority in recent years of expanding its digital asset portfolio. In fact, consolidation within the digital agency space has picked up steam in the last couple of weeks. First, WPP announced that it was buying AKQA, one of the last major independent digital shops. Then, In the wake of that deal, word surfaced that Omnicom was in discussions to acquire another independent digital agency, LBi. Analysts have also suggested that SapientNitro is a potential acquisition target, but no word yet has emerged about specific talks.
USA Today is among the publishers that are moving early into the mobile space, with more than a dozen properties spanning the mobile Web and apps, smartphones and tablets. As the newspaper industry grapples with the digital transition, mastering the mobile landscape will be a key part of that effort. MediaPost caught up with David Payne, SVP and chief digital officer at Gannett Co., to discuss how the company’s flagship newspaper is keeping up with the audience shift to connected devices. MP: What has been USA Today’s approach to building out its mobile presence, especially when it comes to apps? DP: Consistently, USA Today either gets into that first wave of application development -- often we’re invited into that process as new operating systems are developed -- or if we’re not invited into that early wave, we’re immediately on it. The strategy has been to push out product as fast as possible, native to the application, and avoid trying to port one thing over to another platform. The most recent one was the Kindle Fire, where we had a team develop specifically for the Fire, and got that out in time for Christmas. MP: How many downloads have USA Today apps had to date? DP: Across all of our products for tablets and smartphones and tablets, we’re at about 14.5 million downloads. The majority of our traffic and downloads are on the iPhone and iPad. We have 4.7 million users across all our mobile platforms. There are more people using our mobile products on a daily basis than looking at the [print] newspaper. MP: What difference do you see in use between tablets and smartphones? DP: They’re completely different platforms, particularly when it comes to monetization. That really is the ultimate question -- how do we translate the growth we’re seeing in these products to revenue growth? The tablet has the potential to take television share, a larger proportion of the display market and the print market, radio and so forth. We’re already developing really interesting video, social, branding and direct-response units inside that one platform. When you get to the phone, that can be more of an activation device, or a facilitator of m-commerce. It’s going to be a platform that we run a lot of ads on. Those two divergent paths with mobile require two different strategies. MP: Is the tablet the main focus for USA Today when it comes to mobile? DP: From an ad standpoint, two data points are becoming more defined. The tablet is largely a product being used at home, a little bit at work, and generally being used on Wi-Fi. People are consuming news content early in the morning, late at night and on the weekend. And that lends itself to a different type of ad strategy, in addition to the screen itself being large enough for people to shop for products. MP: Given those differences, are you trying to sell advertising across platforms? DP: We’re definitely doing the cross-platform sell as a way to reach people at different times in different places. The industry is not quite there yet in selling different messages synchronized with behavior. We’re selling Olympic packages against all products and platforms now. MP: Earlier this year, Gannett adopted a metered subscription model for the digital versions of its local newspapers. Could that model be extended to USA Today? DP: The current plan is to stay with an ad-supported model. MP: What proportion does mobile advertising contribute to total ad revenue for USA Today? DP: We’re in the same place as anybody, with the possible exception of Weather Channel, in that 10% to 20% range. MP: What’s in the pipeline? DP: We’re actually in the process of relaunching all of USA Today, about eight new products coming out in the next couple of months. We’ll push out a new iPad app, a Windows 8 product, a newly designed mobile Web product, a new release on the iPhone, and an update to the Kindle Fire. MP: How do you see the outlook for Windows 8 on the desktop and tablets? DP: We’re really excited about that because of the distribution opportunity you have with Microsoft; it still owns the work marketplace. We have an extraordinary amount of distribution and use of news content at work. With the Windows 8 platform, you also have touch-enabled applications, which really start marrying the tablet with the desktop.
Hey, do me a favor and read this. It's just a leftover from Cannes, a little nugget destined for Chapter 8 of my new book (which is still untitled and unfinished but will totally change your life, like atomic energy and cup holders). But you should do this because the subject is fascinating in its own right. It's about how to get people to like you. Without, you know, bribing them. As counterintuitive as this may sound, but a fact long since enshrined in the literature of psychology, is that human beings will identify with those they have been called upon to assist. This is called The Ben Franklin Effect, named after the inventor/publisher/diplomat/lothario/C-note star who first described it. As the story goes, Franklin had a fraught relationship with a rival legislator -- basically, the guy refused to even acknowledge him -- and this our famously fraternal founding father found frustrating. So, as he related in his autobiography, and as I cribbed from Wikipedia, Franklin forged a plan: Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire of perusing that book, and requesting he would do me the favour of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately, and I return'd it in about a week with another note, expressing strongly my sense of the favour. When we next met in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death. What Franklin had exploited was the psychological reaction to cognitive dissonance. His rival felt antipathy toward him, yet being a gentleman, fulfilled Franklin's request. This caused conflicting, or dissonant, emotions for the guy; he had just helped the man he loathed. And so, to reconcile the inner conflict, he had to cease loathing him. No more cognitive dissonance. Lifelong friendship. "I'm quite convinced it all boils down to minimization of cognitive dissonance," says Adam Ferrier, consumer psychologist and cofounder of the Australian agency Naked Communications, who raised the subject in a Cannes forum. It was one of those remnants from Psych 101 that sounded, coming from Ferrier's mouth, freshly relevant. After all, for most of advertising's history, marketers burned ad fuel to persuade, persuade, persuade. Or at least to impress, impress, impress -- which, as my book eventually will prove once and for all, is unsustainable. "Actually changing behavior through rational or emotional persuasion is quite cumbersome and not particularly effective," Ferrier agrees. “And the effect is often very short-term. Hence, if you don't keep persuading, people don't keep buying.” On the other hand, seeking help from your various audiences obliges them to align their thoughts, feelings and actions along Ben Franklin lines. "Getting them to act is going to be a more effective way to change their attitudes toward their brand, and to change their behavior," Ferrier says. “You can have the relationship start by asking someone to do you a favor and invest something of themselves into you. If they want ownership, give them more ownership. Get them into your brand and your business as much as possible. Let them become co-producers of your brand and they become more loyal.” Of course, as the man astutely observes, “Unilever can't call you and say, ‘Mate, would you help me move my flat?’” There are other ways to get positive action from the public. Naked won an Australian Effie with an initiative for Jarrah, which is a brand of flavored instant coffees that was struggling against the category leader Twinings. Everybody in the category sampled like crazy. You couldn’t open your mailbox without instant coffee packets tumbling out. So Naked persuaded Jarrah to tell the public no dice. If you want a sample, you have to go a Web site, fill out a form and choose your own damn flavor. Then, and only then, would they send it to you. They were so inundated with requests they had to discontinue the offer early. Sales went up 11%. And stayed there. Hmm. It’s an impressive result, but the underlying psychology also sounds a bit manipulative -- in exactly the sort of way that consumers have long thought advertising to be, even though it’s frequently too impotent to nudge market share up a single freakin’ point. Is this, then, the smoking gun -- a case wherein understanding the human response to cognitive dissonance is exploitive, like the barroom pick-up artist’s trick of getting the women to buy a drink for him? Unsurprisingly, Ferrier says no. “It’s not in anyone’s interest to hoodwink the consumer. If you don’t return that favor, your newfound relationship isn’t going to last very long. Just like any relationship, there has to be reciprocity and a positive and continual value exchange between both parties.” In which case, thanks for reading to this point. My turn to reciprocate. Next spring, when that book my co-author and I are slaving over finally materializes, there will be plenty of other cool stuff to contemplate. So do me another favor? Read that, too.