Mediaweek
Once-invincible men's mags like Maxim, Stuff and FHM are facing sales plateaus and now, competition from new two titles. Time Inc.'s OfficePirates is actually a Web site, launched last week, that offers what Mediaweek calls "cubicle humor" (jokes about work?) via videos and photos. Hachette Filipacchi Media's Shock, set for a May 31 launch, will offer content online and in a print magazine that will initially start monthly and then go to a weekly. Shock will focus on "horrific and awesome images like car crashes and tidal waves." Ugh. Meanwhile, Maxim is upping the bar with a redesign that will …
BusinessWeek
Conde Nast’s GQ has partnered with m-Qube to provide its readers with original mobile content, beginning with its March issue. GQ Mobile will provide subscribers with information on events, giveaways and private sales. The service will differ from mobizines that Conde Nast is launching in Great Britain; GQ Mobile’s content will have more of a business than an editorial focus. The timing for the launch is ideal: according to researcher Ovum, $17 billion was generated in revenue from mobile content last year and that number is expected to soar to $78 billion by 2007. …
WSJ (paid subscription required)
With the ever-changing media landscape comes recognition of the role media buyers play in advertisers' lives. The annual American Association of Advertising Agencies' conference, to begin tomorrow in Orlando, intends to highlight this fact by covering topics including "How to Sell Non Traditional Media Ideas to Your Clients" and the "Shape of the Modern Media Organization." Advertisers are moving ad dollars traditionally spent on TV ads to more nontraditional platforms such as podcasts, blogs and cell phones, making the role of media buyer more significant. Roughly 1,350 people have signed up for the event, breaking the record attendance of 1,345 …
Baltimore Sun
People still reach for their hometown newspaper first for local news, according to a study of consumers' news habits by market research firm Outsell Inc. A majority--61 percent--of 2,800 consumers surveyed look to their newspapers as an essential source for local news, events and sports, followed by television (58 percent) and radio (35 percent). Television is consumers' top choice for national news, while they "prefer the Web as the best route to news and information about health, personal finance and trave," says the Baltimore Sun. According to the story, "'the interactivity and personalization afforded by the Internet' has not only …
Reuters
Digital Brand Integration made its debut during an episode of the CBS series, "Yes, Dear." A box of Kellogg's Club Crackers was digitally placed into a scene for twenty seconds, unbeknownst to most viewers. The company behind this latest form of stealth marketing, Marathon Ventures, added StarKist Tuna and Chevrolet into other CBS shows and is poised to ink a deal with Fox. This serves as a way for brands to subliminally show their brand in a TiVo and DVR-ruled world. Pretty soon, the stars of the shows need not show up for work. Someday, maybe they'll be digitally added …
WSJ (paid subscription required)
Lifetime is in trouble, notes an analysis of the channel in The Wall Street Journal. In need of a hit show to boost its ratings, which have shrunk almost 20 percent over the last four years, the cable network also recently weathered a fees dispute with distributor EchoStar Communications Corp. The settlement of the conflict was reportedly favorable to EchoStar because Lifetime lacked the viewer base to complain to EchoStar about its temporarily dropping Lifetime. To address the channel’s problems, it recently hired new programming staff, including Susanne Daniels, a former WB Network executive who developed "Gilmore Girls," and …
NY Times
Tomorrow Cooking Light is opening a kiosk restaurant in Chicago featuring food prepared only from magazine recipes. Called Cooking Light@foodlife, the restaurant will be run as a joint partnership with Chicago-based restaurant company Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises. The two companies will also debut a take-home food line of Cooking Light recipes. Martin S. Walker, a magazine publishing consultant, has his doubts about the viability of the restaurant. "I'm not sure that it's the wisest money-making venture in the world," he notes. "As a stand-alone, well, [restaurants] are like magazines. Most don't make it."
Ad Age
Talk about hitting the bull's-eye on this campaign. Target really railroaded the strict International Olympics Committee advertising committee and found a way to get its brand plastered throughout the Olympic games despite the fact that it wasn't an official Olympic sponsor. The retailer wrapped seven of the nine trains on the Bardonecchia line, which brought people to athlete housing as well as such events as the giant slalom. Italian "greeters" welcomed riders on the train in both English and Italian, and the brand scored valuable airtime on various local news programs and the "Today Show."
Ad Age
For everyone who has been touting the enormous, undeniably tempting benefits of the emerging on-demand, as-you-like-it technologies, the results of a new survey may prove somewhat unnerving. There's lot to be said for DVRs, video iPods, and iTunes, but when it comes to TV shows and movies, it turns out that most people would prefer to experience them in a very old-fashioned way--on TV sets."In this PC and iPod generation, consumers still want to watch TV shows and movies on a TV, whether the programs are broadcast or downloaded," said Stewart Wolpin, senior consulting analyst for Points North Group, which …
Mediaweek
Comedy Central, which has dared to be daring in an era when noncomformity sometimes has not been rewarded, will once again travel the unconventional route when it introduces "Samurai Love God," an animated series intended for mobile devices. "The network plans to launch eight two-and-a-half minute episodes of 'Samurai Love God' sometime during the first quarter of 2006," says Mediaweek. "The story follows the adventures of a sexually charged Samurai hero, to be voiced by 'Daily Show' correspondent Ed Helms. However, the biggest name attached to the project is the ubiquitous porn star Jenna Jameson, who will provide the vocals …