NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Are ad networks and exchanges the friend or foe of traditional magazine companies? That was a key questions being debated at a Manhattan Yale Club panel discussion organized by Context Web's Adsdaq. IAB president Randy Rothenberg, who moderated the event, emphasized that the controversies surrounding the issues of ad networks and exchanges had long been relegated to the backroom of mainstream media companies. But the size, power and potential of ad networks is now forcing it into the open.
Fred Danzig joined Ad Age in 1962 and retired from his post as editor in 1995. He and current Ad Age Editor in Chief Rance Crain talked with executive editor Abbey Klaassen on the eve of Ad Age's 80th anniversary about what it was like to cover marketing in an era of so much change.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- German luxury brand Audi is a refreshing change from what most of the news in the auto business has been about lately. The Volkswagen subsidiary has pumped up its U.S. advertising budget by 20%, increased its market share and been surprisingly successful in marketing "clean diesel" models against competitors' hybrids. In this eight-minute video, Audi America CMO Scott Keogh recaps the company's strategies at the same time he wags his finger at what he portrays as the hopelessly bland marketing of U.S. domestic automakers.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Although they get all the press, phones aren't actually the only devices that make up our rapidly expanding world of mobile communications. Laptops and portable game consoles are also being widely used by on-the-go consumers. And companies like Yahoo and Google are paying close attention to that. Both sponsored expansive free wifi services for the holidays. Yahoo's blanketed Times Square, while Google's took to the airports and skies beyond.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Are marketing and media giants ignoring the fact that their primary communications channels are based on environmentally "toxic" pixels? And are some of these companies engaging in "tree washing" or "gray washing" as well as "green washing?" These intriguing issues were at the center of this week's Sustainable Media Climate Symposium in Manhattan. Don Carli, director of the Institute for Sustainable Communication, enlightened many by quantifying how the carbon footprint of electric-powered digital media is nearly as large and environmentally onerous as that of the notorious paper-making industry.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Adversity, a program that educates minority students about opportunities in the advertising business, had what seemed like a tight partnership with The One Club. And, the group and its director, Julius Dunn, were well liked throughout Manhattan's advertising community. In fact, in October, JWT held a party for Adversity in the agency's New York headquarters office. But shortly after that, The One Club suddenly announced that it was ending its partnership with the group. In this nine-minute video interview, Mr. Dunn discusses that split.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Although still widely thought of as just a food marketing giant, Kraft Foods is ratcheting up its already-substantial activities as a serious magazine and web content publisher. Its innovative moves in this area are one of the reasons that VP for Global Media Services Mark Stewart was honored as an Ad Age Media Maven this year. In his remarks at Wednesday's ceremony, he underscored Kraft's determination to do even more of what it formerly depended on traditional magazine publishers to do.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- While no chief marketing officer has an easy job these days, few face as challenging a task as Jeffrey Hayzlett. He's CMO at Kodak, a company that has suffered one of the century's most stunning implosions. With its product lines decimated by the digital revolution, the film and camera equipment marketer that employed 145,000 people in 1988 now has less than 20,000. Hayzlett's job is to market the crippled giant back to technological relevance. And he's as much a cheerleader as he is a formidable stage presence in that effort. This video is an excerpt of one of his latest performances.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Can you imagine a business card or a print magazine page that can actually send an e-mail or facilitate the transaction of an online sale? Those are concepts that Livescribe CEO Jim Marggraff is working on. The Company's Pulse Smartpen -- which is a real pen containing a full-powered, internet-accessing computer -- is a tool that makes such actions conveniently possible. And the growing popularity of the under-$200 device among college students is creating a significant national audience for new sorts of print-based digital experiences.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Even as his advertising offensive against arch-rival AT&T continues to be the talk of the industry, Verizon CMO John Stratton took to the podium to explain why the "Maps" campaign was necessary. In this seven-minute video, he recaps Verizon's entire nine-year marketing history. In it latest move, the company abruptly threw out its prepared holiday ad campaign to replace it with the results of a data survey it commissioned of its own and AT&T's national G3 footprint.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Social media is playing a major role in accelerating the decision cycle of consumers who patronize ski resorts. As a result, one of the country's largest such companies -- Vail Resorts -- has abandoned its long-time advertising strategies and practices and built a new in-house marketing operation that uses social media and other digital venues to constantly engage skiing enthusiasts in real time. CEO Rob Katz explains the dramatic changes.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In the 47-year timeline of Wal-Mart's history, few years can match 2006 for marketing chaos. In January of that year, Julie Roehm, an edgy Chrysler marketing executive, became Wal-Mart's SVP of marketing communications only to be dismissed twelve months later. Wal-Mart named Stephen Quinn the new CMO with a mandate to return the company to its traditional marketing vision. In this program, Mr. Quinn, now riding atop one of the recession's most successful retail operations, reflects on what was learned during those those troubled days of 2006.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Putting a humanitarian spin on his remarks to an ANA audience, Wal-Mart CMO Stephen Quinn defended his company's massive expansion of is private-label brands. Earlier this year, the retail giant sparked a controversy in the food marketing industry when it unveiled a revamped "Great Value" brand line that includes more than 5,000 items in 100 grocery categories. Mr. Quinn said the effort was rooted in the company's desire to help customers who couldn't otherwise afford adequate food for their families.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- A growing number of big marketers have circumvented the middleman and launched their own mainstream media and entertainment properties. The revolutionary development that has moved them into direct competition for audiences with traditional media companies. But are these projects just novel anomalies -- as some suggest -- or a powerful trend that will ultimately reshape the very media business itself? Ad Age editor Jonah Bloom addresses the issue in his talk at the ANA annual conference in Phoenix.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The London-headquartered WPP Group is the world's largest advertising holding company with annual revenues of $14 billion. Its sprawl of holdings includes iconic ad agencies like Grey Worldwide, JWT, Ogilvy & Mather, and Young & Rubicam. During the last few years, CEO Martin Sorrell has been been orchestrating the reorganization and reinvention of the global marketing services giant. And in an appearance at the New York Ad-Tech conference, Sorrell spoke at length about China and his world strategy. This video is an eight-minute segment of those comments.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Along with being the world's largest advertising holding company, WPP Group has built itself into the fourth largest business research company -- trailing only Thomson-Reuters, Bloomberg and Nielsen. One area of market data in which CEO Martin Sorrell has taken a particular interest is that regarding cost cutting by large marketers around the globe. He warned the recent Ad-Tech conference in New York about the long-term results of today's draconian cuts in marketing service budgets.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- No other subject has become as much of a hot button in the ad industry as procurement. Marketers' ROI mania and growing use of procurement officers to purchase marketing services has pushed down agencies' operating margins. But has it gone too far? Speaking at the ANA Annual Conference in Phoenix, Ad Age editor Jonah Bloom questions whether the process has lost a sense of balance and is ignoring the crucial need of agencies to invest in the services, technology and talent required to promote brands in this fragmented age.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- How is Eddie Murphy playing an invisible role in the new push to diversify ad agencies? Former agency account exec Lincoln Stephens is both an example and an evangelist of this Hollywood phenomenon. A year ago Stephens abruptly quit his Chicago agency job, moved back to his hometown of Dallas and, on a shoestring budget, personally launched a program to recruit, train and motivate college-age African Americans for advertising agency jobs.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- When Rob Belgiovane set out from his Australian agency for the China Ad Festival in Nanning he expected to fly into a small town near the Vietnamese border. Instead, he found himself in a city the size of New York that remains largely unknown to westerners. And the sprawling metropolis was a dramatic example of the wide open market for retailers and agencies that China has become. Ad Age Hong Kong Bureau Chief Normandy Madden was on hand to record Belgiovane's startled impressions of the world's new wild west of advertising.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In 2004, when he frantically danced his way into the public consciousness, the oddly engaging Mr. Six became one of the country's best-known brand icons. But in late 2005, the amusement park company's new management dumped the campaign, calling its creative concept "misguided." This spring, as Six Flags slipped into a bankruptcy reorganization, the dancing octogenarian was back again with a vengeance. SVP of marketing Angelina Vieira Barocas discusses the turnaround in thinking as well as Mr. Six's future
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- WPP Group CEO Martin Sorrell not only thinks the contraction of the newspaper and magazine industry will continue, but that it NEEDS to continue. In keynote remarks that opened this week's Ad-Tech in New York, Sorrell cited the over-capacity of supply and inventory as a major problem holding back the re-stabilization of the media business. He also predicted that ad agencies would be getting "very much more involved" in the development of content and that the lines between advertising and editorial are going to get "much more blurred" than they already are today.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- In past jobs, Jim Harris has been a proponent of "hyper-local" marketing strategies that takes place in the lobbies of office buildings. So it's no surprise he's made that an anchor of the new Wall Street Journal Office Network. As CEO of that three-year-old company, he oversees a broadcast network of digital screens in more than 800 upscale office buildings in fifteen cities. And this past year, his company has posted a 100% increase in revenue and become a case study in how to boost sales by pairing digital screen ads with in-building product demos.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- MasterCard was an early mover in the apps space with its ATM Hunter and now, as the company celebrates the twelfth year of its famed "Priceless" ad campaign, it's brought out a new app to match called "Priceless Picks." In this video program we take both apps for a live-action, on-screen test drive and chat with MasterCard Worldwide CMO Larry Flanagan.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Fiery race car crashes, exploding oil refineries, policemen getting shoot in the chest at point-blank range -- are just some of DuPont's new social media tools. Fearing that it's losing touch with young professionals who don't read traditional media, the chemical giant developed a a social media strategy anchored in viral video. Digging into its archive, the chemical giant pulled out some of its most spectacular product test and demonstration footage. And this become the core of a series of three-minute programs hosted by video blogger Amanda Congdon and distributed widely across online video sites.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Do adolescents require special new protections against digital marketing techniques? In her talk at the Children's Advertising Review Unit Conference, Ellen Wartella cited new findings that suggest they might. The regulations for children's' advertising developed in the 1970s are based primarily on television viewing. But today's digital communications have completely changed the marketing environment. Ms. Wartella is a professor of psychology at the University of California and a CARU advisor.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Nielsen executive, book author and Ad Age columnist Pete Blackshaw is astounded by the number of brand managers who still have no coherent strategy for dealing with negative blog posts. The customer service guru was keynote speaker at the Children's Advertising Review Unit Conference. But during the Q&A, audience members seemed more interested in tips about how to deal with negative blog posts -- than children's advertising issues.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The flap over Self magazine's heavy photoshopping of its recent Kelly Clarkson cover flared anew at last week's Women at NBCU breakfast. The event kicked off the network's new advertising sales initiative around health issues. Dr. Nancy Snyderman, moderator and chief media editor at NBC News, opened a panel discussion by highlighting the national problem of body image, anorexia and bulimia among young women. Self editor-in-chief and panel member Lucy Danziger defended her publication's controversial image enhancement.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- LinkedIn may be the least glitzy of the major social media sites but it's also one of the most successful. Launched in 2003, it's been making a profit since 2007 and, despite the recession, some of its ad categories continue to sell at CPMs of $50 or more. In this eight-minute interview, founder and chairman Reid Hoffman discusses LinkedIn's current operations.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Graphics software giant Adobe, which has shifted 74% of its entire advertising budget to digital venues, is making similar changes with its product launches. CMO Ann Lewnes cites two reasons for abandoning traditional product launch strategies: high cost and limited reach. The latest launch of Adobe's CS4 suite of creative programs went completely digital. And the difference, according to Ms. Lewnes, was quite dramatic.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Although Sherwin-Williams was the first paint company out of the gate with a consumer iPhone app, competitor Benjamin Moore PRed its own app into a top hit with the media. Speaking at the Ad Age/Applicious recent "Apps for Brands" conference, Moore's director of product development used his own success to underscore the importance of launch PR strategies in the new world of apps marketing.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- On-screen and in-lobby advertising have become ever more important to the movie theater business in the last decade. In 2008, Cinema Advertising Council member chains -- which control 82% of the country's screens -- took in nearly $600 million in ad revenue. And as they work to expand that further, they're seeking new ways to sell their lobbies to marketers.
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