• by October 7, 2003

THE COURTS GIVETH AND TAKETH AWAY. Two court rulings are having profoundly different effects on investor confidence of two major media companies. Shares of AOL Time Warner - soon and smartly be known as just Time Warner - took a hit after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that big cable operators must open up their broadband backbones to competing Internet service providers. The development comes as a double whammy for Time Warner. First broadband begins to erode AOL's dial-up subscriber base, so the company readies a plan for AOL broadband that would leverage the backbone of Time Warner's Road Runner service. Now the courts have ruled cable operators must open their broadband lines to competing services. Another court ruling dismissing a stockholder suit against the management of Martha Stewart Omnimedia had the reverse effect, driving Martha's shares up and giving the beleaguered style diva a new lease on non-criminal life. In fact, her attorneys have filed motions to dismiss the federal government's criminal charges against Stewart's alleged acts of insider trading and obstruction of justice. Stewart is scheduled to go on trial Jan. 12.

MINI HAS MAXI EFFECT ON MAGAZINE SUBS. MINI Cooper, the tiny car that's so big on PR and promotion, is also enlarging an old magazine advertising format: Business response cards. The idea was to draw attention to ads for the diminutive automobile running in the Spring editions of popular men's magazines, but the strategy proved to be a boon for the magazine's own response cards. The print ads featured a photo of the MINI Cooper with the headline: "Makes Everything Else Seem A Little Too Big," which ran adjacent to an oversized business reply card. Instead of the 4.25 by 6 inch standard cards, these oversized versions measured 7.25 by 10.25, nearly the size of a standard magazine page. "We got results beyond what we could have imagined," said Steve Sapka of MINI agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, which created the ads and came up with the media strategy. While the ROI isn't in yet on the ads affect on MINI Coopers, Sapka says the oversized magazine subscription response cards generated some 5,200 magazine subscription requests "and an estimated $185,341 in revenue for the publications." Since MINI footed the bill for the production of the cards, the ad buys were a bonus for the publishers and just maybe developed a whole new concept in circulation marketing.

WHAT KIND OF BEVERAGE ARE YOU READING TODAY? The Riff occasionally finds media press kits to be full of bull, but the trade promotion-minded folks at Fast Company have taken that concept to a new extreme. To draw attention to their September issue, the fast-thinking magazine marketing team utilized a three-sided folding card depicting top business magazines by energizing beverages: Forbes ("the same old buzz," according to the Fast Company copywriters) was a cup of Joe. Fortune ("cooler version of the same old buzz") was a can of cola. And Fast Company? A can of Red Bull, of course. And just to prove it, they included a few cans of Red Bull and a some Power Bars in the press kit.