The hype surrounding native advertising, sponsored content and/or promoted content is deafening. Online publishers, faced with diminished digital ad dollars and un-engaging ad creative, have turned to marketing-driven content that natively mimics editorial to invigorate reader engagement and revenue. Suddenly, a cottage industry has risen to help commercial entities come off as, well, less commercial. […]
Content is King, Distribution is Queen Read More »
Staples Center Star Turn (Photo: Harry How/Getty Images) Nowhere was the wall between editorial and ad sales as high nor as impenetrable than at mainstream news organizations. Who can forget the maelstrom that erupted in 1999 when one esteemed journalistic enterprise the Los Angeles Times blurred those lines by publishing a 168-page special Sunday magazine
Media Walls Crumble: Brands Benefit Read More »
Many marketers toiling in the new media and communications paradigm view a campaign’s virality as the holy grail measurement of success. The bar to achieve such digital and social nirvana, however, is higher than ever given the firehose of content gushing from myriad sources. Did you know that YouTubers upload 72 hours of video every minute
Shell-Shocking Creativity Read More »
As the Facebook IPO frenzy crescendos, the media pendulum has swung from fawning friendliness to sudden skepticism catalyzed by one giant automaker’s decision to pull its $10 million ad budget from the 900-million+ strong social network. Interestingly, and mildly reminiscent of its defiant public posture during the government bailouts of its rivals, Ford Motor Company
Facebook Advertising: To Like or Not to Like Read More »
So it’s settled (or so I thought). The forward-thinking marketing maven’s media universe was neatly divided into three categories: paid, earned and owned. This was codified in a Forrester post a couple of years back, and updated (by me) to include “shared” media – not as a fourth category, but rather as the desired outcome
Facebook’s Story Time Read More »
Class Action I’ve been looking for a reason to write about Capital One for the longest time. No. I’m not a customer, nor will I ever become one. My distaste for the nation’s “10th largest bank in terms of assets” stems from its inane and pervasive Viking-themed advertising. “What lies in your wallet?” It’s unclear
What in Your Wallet? Nothing! Read More »
TIME magazine, The New Yorker, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, CNN, The New York Times ABC News… A PR home run? Hardly. These are just a handful of the bigger-branded media outlets that weighed in on TLC’s new reality show “All-American Muslim.” Would they have done so had home improvement retailer Lowe’s not bowed
What’s the best way nowadays to thrust your unknown brand into the public spotlight? For one brand in the ultra-competitive vodka category the answer seems to have emerged during a marketing creative session in which the participants apparently helped themselves to a more-than-generous sampling of the product. The result surfaced above New York’s West Side
Sen. McConnell (R-KY), Chief Obstructionist There was a time when the PR industry took it on the chin for its supposed lack of transparency. Specifically, groups like PR Watch and others chastised our brethren for failing to disclose who’s paying for the hand-out video picked up and used in broadcast and cable news programming. It
Full-Disclosure Filibuster Read More »
Adweek reports today that a team from WPP has landed creative duties for Mazda North America, besting three esteemed ad agencies including “Omnicom Group’s DDB in Los Angeles (with sister shop Organic), MDC Partners’ Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Miami and Boulder, Colo. and the incumbent, independent Doner in Southfield, Mich.” In all honesty, I
