March 30, 2009
The New York Review of Books has published the first draft of history: an anatomy of President Barack Obama’s first 30 days in office. The article starts off with Obama’s work habits: He works into the night, after he’s tucked in the kids. If you’re a cabinet member, he drops by your desk unannounced to ask how this or that project is coming. (You’d better have an answer!) And Saturday afternoons are hours-long strategy sessions with Read More
March 27, 2009
The economy is violently disrupting businesses and lives. When the world re-settles, will you still be standing? That’s the question RPR is asking with a new educational campaign called “Survive & Thrive.” Beginning Monday, March 30, RPR invites businesses to visit SurviveandThriveRPR.com, where the agency is offering a collection of how-to marketing guides for excelling in this difficult economy. Drawing from its 20 years of multi-disciplinary marketing experience, RPR’s guides share low-cost, high-impact solutions for public relations, web advertising, branding and integrated marketing. Read More
March 26, 2009
On the heels of an announcement that over 120 newspapers have closed their presses since January 2008, the Los Angeles Times is taking the fight to its competition. Like a political candidate clawing for votes as Election Day (or in this case, more layoffs) near, the Times has turned to the oldest trick in the book: a smear campaign. The March 25 issue of the Times features an ad for, well – the Los Angeles Times, on page seven of the Sports section. Its headline reads, “Hey, radio, listen to this,” and it then tells readers that even if they ran radio spots during both morning and drive times on 21 top stations in L.A., they still “won’t reach as many college-educated adults as a single ad in the Los Angeles Times.” Read More
March 25, 2009
The next phase of sponsorship for huge corporations is to get small. As short as an instant message on your iPhone. Marketing through Twitter and Facebook, the social media websites, was in force at last week’s South by Southwest independent music festival in Austin, according to this New York Times article. Brands such as Levis and PepsiCo attempted to sway music fans through events and then get them Twittering to each other.
(Twitter has a maximum character count of 140 for individual posts. And Facebook recently redesigned its pages to compete with Twitter.)
“Having a name on a banner now, if that’s all you do, it’s become wallpaper,” Frank Cooper, PepsiCo’s vice president for portfolio brands said. “We’re past the world where Read More
March 25, 2009
The W Hotel and Residences Hollywood, set to open this November, landed quite the coup when the New York Times recently wrote about the luxury property’s pitch to movie studios to bring press junkets back to “Tinseltown.” Typically, a junket is a weekend-long event involving reporters, publicists, cameramen and film stars who get together to promote new movies. Read More
March 24, 2009
The future is closing in on print media faster than ever. Just yesterday, CNN.com reported at least 120 newspapers in the U.S. have shut down since January 2008, and more than 21,000 jobs at 67 newspapers have vaporized. The Rocky Mountain News and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, both history. The Tribune Company, which owns several major newspapers including The Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, is in bankruptcy. And now, The San Francisco Chronicle is reported to be the next major daily to go.
The Hot Sheet wonders: where does this leave magazines? Read More
March 12, 2009
In this challenging economy, marketers must justify every penny they spend. And it isn’t just about the quantity of people they attract; it’s about zeroing-in on the ‘right’ people. Google is now elevating its online-advertising model to include behavioral targeting. According to AdAge.com, the company has launched a “beta test of ‘interest-based targeting,’ which lets advertisers target web users based on where they’ve been surfing across the internet.” Read More
March 11, 2009
Comedy Central “Daily Show” host John Stewart’s confrontation of CNBC “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer on March 12 was rare TV event: CNBC, represented by Cramer, was publically shamed for its role in the international economic disaster. On a tabloid-ish level, it was almost cringe-worthy to see Cramer utterly back down in the face of Stewart’s indignation. Not only did Cramer concede virtually all of Stewart’s points, at several times he looked like he was about to cry. But more significantly, Stewart expressed what few – perhaps zero – mainstream media personalities dare to say: Wall Street, abetted by the “financial media,” has helped plunge the world into Read More
March 11, 2009
Terranea, the new $475 million resort situated on the 102-acre former Marineland site along the Palos Verdes Peninsula set to open in June 2009 – will create between 600 and 900 jobs ranging from management to service positions at the one-of-a-kind Los Angeles County resort. Terranea is managed by Destination Hotels & Resorts, a subsidiary of Los Angeles-based investment, development and management firm Lowe Enterprises. Read More
March 9, 2009
At the end of another sobering New York Times housing story, Vikas Bajaj points to research saying Los Angeles housing market will hit bottom before other major U.S. cities – and therefore recover first. The Trading in contracts index tracks home commodities futures in 25 metropolitan areas, “suggesting that home prices will fall about 15 percent this year and hit bottom in 2010, according to Radar Logic, a firm that created the index on which the trading is based.” Its data show that Read More
