• by John Gaffney , June 25, 2003

Mixed Message: Like a lot of people, I was surprised and impressed by the candor of remarks made by C.J. Fraleigh, executive director of advertising and corporate marketing at GM, at yesterday's Ad Watch: 2003 conference. But I think he's sending a mixed message. Fraleigh basically told the agency-heavy gathering that the days of paying through the nose for an upfront process that doesn't guarantee a better audience quality are over. Other agency people and brand people have said that too. However, GM was part of the upfront process this year, which is the psychological ploy that the networks are playing masterfully. That ploy, built on a foundation of truth, says that if you want to access mass audiences, the networks have a limited amount of inventory for you to do it. So come and get it. If anyone can break out of that, GM can break out of that. Fraleigh certainly indicated that he would like to, and he warned all media players to step up their creativity to earn their portion of the GM business. That may happen, and it has happened on the cable TV and magazine media fronts, in my opinion. But networks are still playing a strong hand. Even C.J. Fraleigh knows that.

Fixed Message: I found it interesting that The National Society of Newspaper Columnists adopted a "Code of Conduct" Sunday at its conference in Tucson, Ariz. According to Editor and Publisher, parts of the six-paragraph text include: "I will never take advantage of my position to achieve unwarranted personal gain not available to others or use my column to settle personal scores. I will disclose potential conflicts to readers whenever possible... I will never make up a quote, a source or a story when depicting true events. But I will reserve the right to engage in parody and satire." Talk about coming clean. This sounds like something straight out of the Boy Scout handbook.

At The Buzzer: Jack Griffin, who will leave Parade to take over Meredith's magazine group, inherits a tight ship. Jerry Kaplan has been in the forefront of magazine marketing and developing creative advertising programs. Kaplan has announced his retirement at the end of the year.