• Real Media Riffs - Friday, August 16, 2002
    And Ken Lay Will Chair The Panel Discussion On Accounting: Gerald Levin, the former CEO of AOL/Time Warner, will be a keynote speaker at the fifth annual Middle Market Conference -- Mergers, Acquisitions & Finance, organized by the Los Angeles Chapter of the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG).<
  • Real Media Riffs - Thursday, August 15, 2002
    Housekeeping: Last year, Media Magazine hosted a very successful and insightful Forecast 2002 conference, which centered on the internet. Now we’re getting cocky and we’re adding a day for “offline” or “traditional” media, what ever you want to call it. What ever you call it, we’re calling it Forecast 2003. It’s at the Yale Club, NYC, Wed. Sept. 25. Breakfast and lunch will be served; cocktails to follow. The overall theme is changes in the foundation of all media.
  • Real Media Riffs - Wednesday, August 14, 2002
    Deep Thoughts On Magazines: I feel like pseudo-new age guru Jack Handey on Saturday Night Live, when I say that “it’s OK for your book to be down 10 percent in this economy. It’s OK.” Hey, it’s not OK or even acceptable to see anything but growth on the P&L. We all know that. But I keep looking at Publisher’s Information Bureau numbers every month and I keep seeing an entire industry somehow dodging a warhead. Year-to-date, the latest PIB report says, tech, apparel, financial services, and travel have dropped double digits over last year.
  • Real Media Riffs - Tuesday, August 13, 2002
    Gimme Rock Hard Abs, Hiking Boots And An Armani Suit To Look Good In: Let me get this straight. You take a men’s magazine that has carved a unique niche in terms of content and audience. You grow it to the point that your last issue jumped from 54 pages last year to 73 pages this year. In fact you’re running revenue 29 percent ahead of last year in a crap market.
  • Real Media Riffs - Monday, August 12, 2002
    Local Heroes: This is supposed to be a time of transition in the media business. And the hometown daily newspaper has been portrayed as the loser in this game of targeted demographics, interactivity and new age branding. Well, guess what? Punditry has lost again. The latest Nielsen outlook says local newspapers clocked an eight percent growth rate so far this year, easily outpacing any other media.
  • Real Media Riffs - Friday, August 9, 2002
    Hey, Call Jesse Ventura. This Can Work Over Here, I Tell Ya: According to Ananova news service, an advertising campaign against moaners has been launched in Austria. It is aimed at stopping people grumbling about the country's economy and making things worse by eroding confidence. Billboards feature the slogan "No more moaners" and an image of a miserable face with a red line through it. The campaign is the brainchild of the Austrian advertising industry and Chamber of Commerce.
  • Real Media Riffs - Thursday, August 8, 2002
    Kids Should Be Seen And Heard: What a brilliant idea. If you want to know how to use advertising to decrease smoking among kids, why not ask kids? Hey, I didn’t think that idea would work either, when I first heard it. I was never a smoker, but if you asked me how to advertise the fact that I shouldn’t drink beer when I was 17, I’d have cooked up some kind of wiseass response.
  • Real Media Riffs - Wednesday, August 7, 2002
    No Omnibomb Here: Even thought they’re the big bully on the block, you gotta love yesterday’s Omnicom quarterly earnings announcement. Get past the fancy-shmancy goodwill amortization crap and settle for the clean fact that revenue rose 10 percent because their ad agencies kicked butt. You gotta love this for two reasons. First, it means that DDB, TBWA and BBDO drove new business and squeezed current clients in the midst of an economic downturn. Not easy to do, and that’s a fact you may see illustrated by the end of the week as other agency holding companies report.
  • Real Media Riffs - Tuesday, August 6, 2002
    Matter Of Trust: The Pew Research Center has quantified what we already knew: Consumers are “annoyed” with the media. Don’t trust it. Less than a majority trust Rather, Brokaw or Jennings. Less than half even think the news media is professional. Here’s the big problem, though. I’ll bet the same survey would show the same about corporate America.
  • Real Media Riffs - Monday, August 5, 2002
    Real Advertising: Ain't no big secret by now that you can launch a brand in today's environment without a big time multi-million ad effort. Starbucks has gone a long way with partnerships, PR and in-store marketing. So has Amazon. Movies, books and records are launched all the time without a major print and network effort.
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