Brand Central Station

The desire to seek something better is a natural human desire.  After all, who doesn’t want something better?  But humans are also naturally reluctant to change.  It’s the constant alure of something better pulling against the security of something we know that creates tension in the workplace (and, often in our personal lives as well).

Nowhere is that tension felt more than in the sometimes tempermental relationship between client and agency.

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New York City (June 14, 2010) -AdMedia Partners is pleased to announce that it acted as exclusive financial advisor in two recent transactions:

Denali Marketing, a fast-growing full-service marketing agency with a focus on loyalty, merged with OLSON, an independent, privately held agency. With the addition of Denali Marketing, OLSON is now one of the top 10 independent full-service marketing agencies in the United States, delivering one of the most comprehensive integrated offerings in the country. The merged companies are forming a new specialty discipline of OLSON called OLSONdenali. In an interview with the Star Tribune, OLSON founder and Chairman John Olson said, “The combined firm expects to do $50 million in revenue this year, up from Olson’s mid 30’s in 2009.” AdMedia advised Denali in this transaction.

Prior to this transaction, AdMedia advised OLSON in its partnership with KRG Capital Partners, a Denver-based private equity firm. This partnership assisted in the recapitalization of OLSON, critical to the management’s plans for continued growth and completion of a successful merger with Denali Marketing. AdMedia advised OLSON in this transaction.

These back-to-back transactions underscore the ongoing growth opportunities for marketing services agencies, which are attracting both strategic and financial buyers, thereby creating attractive valuations for differentiated business models, demonstrated track records and strong financials.

AdMedia Partners is a leading M&A advisor that provides middle market mergers and acquisitions advisory services to digital and traditional media, marketing and information businesses. Founded in 1990 and located in New York City, our firm has completed over 175 transactions worth over $7 billion since 1999.

For more information on AdMedia Partners, look them up on the web at www.admediapartners.com.

Chicago (June 14, 2010)—Recent research from Mintel suggests that Hispanic women feel underrepresented in the beauty and personal care aisle. Over half of survey respondents said they would like to see more personal care products designed just for them and 64% would like more hair care products created specifically for Latinas.

“It can be a very daunting task for companies to hone in on the specific needs of their Hispanic customers,” says Leylha Ahuile, senior multicultural analyst at Mintel. “Latinas come in a variety of shades, so a wide range of products must be developed to cater to every pigment and hair type.”

Hispanic women are especially concerned with the box or bottle their favorite products come in. Eighty-one percent of Latinas surveyed report that they would like to see more personal care products with bilingual packaging. Younger Hispanic women are more inclined to express a desire for bilingual packaging than their older counterparts.

“Hispanic consumers often look at bilingual packaging as a way of being acknowledged and respected by a brand, not because they are unable to read English,” notes Leylha Ahuile. “The lack of Spanish-language packaging has the potential to make these women feel ignored by manufacturers.”

Latina women are younger than the average US female population, and 62% of the Hispanic female population has yet to enter their peak earning years (35+). As a result, Mintel believes Latina purchasing power is definitely on the rise.

Please join Leylha Ahuile for a FREE webinar on June 16 at 2 pm CDT as she presents, “Marketing to Today’s Latina.”

Register here: http://tinyurl.com/26ood6p

About Mintel
Mintel is a leading global supplier of consumer, product and media intelligence. For more than 38 years, Mintel has provided insight into key worldwide trends, offering exclusive data and analysis that directly impacts client success. With offices in Chicago, New York, London, Sydney, Shanghai and Tokyo, Mintel has forged a unique reputation as a world-renowned business brand. For more information on Mintel, please visit www.mintel.com. Follow Mintel on Twitter:http://twitter.com/mintelnews

They say the fasted way to kill a bad product is with good advertising.

I suppose it was just a matter of time before the Mancrunch stunt finally raised enough hackles in the gay community to motivate a few curious bloggers to do the legwork necessary to find out what was really going on.  Kudo’s to Lyndon Evans for writing a blog post that provides a fairly concise summary of the whole affair.  A second post debunking the Mancrunch controversy, written by Alex Blaze, provides even more sordid details on the site, its ownership and makes a direct connection between the site and other online dating sites of questionable moral values (i.e. these other sites promote affairs and secret/discreet relationships focusing primarily on sex).

(NOTE: Both links go to sites with gay content and may be considered NSFW in some situations.)

And here’s one other thing of note – it looks like this stunt (and the ensuing controversy) isn’t a first-time experience for Mancrunch’s ownership (represented by Bridge & Tunnel PR’s Dominic Friesen and Elissa Buchter).  As pointed out in a piece appearing in Tuesday’s LA Times (by Dan Neil), another site represented by Friesen and Buchter – AshleyMadison.com – ran the same gauntlet last year, generating tons of press and web links in the process.

The tv guys have caught on, as Mr. Neil reports in his column:

Martin Franks, executive vice president of planning, policy and government affairs at CBS, told Reuters: “A whole cottage industry has grown up out of trying to make use of network turndowns. . . . They’ve found a loophole in an otherwise well-intentioned process.”

So what’s the point of this whole exercise?

It’s all about search engine placement and creating as many in-bound links as possible for the lowest possible cost.  Because search engine placement means traffic and for web sites that charge desperate people a monthly membership fee – traffic means big bucks.  If you were searching the Internet for this kind of site, you would find over 2,000 stories about Mancrunch listed before the first link to a competing site.

Mission accomplished.

It’s too bad they had to hijack the Super Bowl to do it.  But for those of us not in the targeted demographic, we’ll hardly notice.  None of these marketing shenanigans are going to impact the telecast of the game – unless the Mancrunch people have a “Heidi moment” planned for the fourth quarter.

UPDATE: 02/03 @ 10:00 pm – Popped back into the office this evening and found a link to an article covering this issue that included an interview with me.  Big thanks to Michael Tripplet at Mediaite.com for taking the time out of his day to call me and talk about this entire situation in more detail.

I have to admit, I’m a natural born skeptic.

And when I received a news release yesterday about the brewing “controversy” over the Super Bowl spot submitted to CBS by Mancrunch, I had my doubts.

As I’ve noted in my other post on this subject, I tried to confirm a few facts in the previous story and wound up leaving messages or missing late-night call backs.  Today, however, after being approached by Mancrunch’s PR guys for a second time, I submitted some questions (in bold) that were quickly answered by Mancrunch’s spokesman, Dominic Friesen.  What follows is the entire exchange, verbatim – and after that, my thoughts on this entire thing: (more…)

Echoing around the media blogosphere today (at over 1,700 5,000 18,000 posts and counting) has been the news that CBS Television is “considering” a television spot from a reputed dating site for homosexuals called Mancrunch.  And when we say “considering” we take that to mean they’ve received the commercial and, presumably, an order to air it in the Super Bowl for a couple million bucks – but the spot is going through a review by someone in the the Broadcast Standards & Approvals department of the network.

In the meantime, Mancrunch has turned on the publicity machine – generating maximum buzz by getting the red meat journalists at FOX News to bite on the story and proclaim that CBS is considering airing the gay dating site ad during the Super Bowl.   That, in turn, has lead to posts on the Huffington Post, LA Times and several other news sites to continue giving the story gravitas.

This is all great for Mancrunch and, I suspect, of very little consequence to CBS.  And why is that, you might ask …

… because as of this point in time, none of this “news” is confirmed.

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Editor’s Note: This is the first guest post by a contributing writer to the Brand Central Station Blog.  Mary Ann Johnson is a member of Team Position2, experts in search and social media marketing and sent us this post on behalf of the team.  You can learn more about Position2 by visiting their web site.

by Team Position2

Social Media Monitoring has become a hot topic of discussion over recent times. A brand makes or breaks its name by its users.

With the huge outbreak in the online media and platforms like, blogs, forums, microblogs and different types of social networking sites people have an effective place to express their opinions and influence others. In the online world people own the brand. Social Media Monitoring is to keep track of all the conversations happening in the online world.

Social Media Monitoring is all about figuring on what the objectives are, listening, refining the talks, analyzing and taking action.

Social Media Monitoring and analysis can be used by a brand to improve a product, get feedbacks, customer service, market research or any marketing and communication.

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Besides when you’re at an all-you-can-eat restaurant, of course.

The answer is when you’re trying to drag your business (or your client) into the realm of social media and/or online marketing (no, they’re not exactly the same thing – but that’s a topic for another post at another time). 

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For decades, advertising agencies and the media have operated under a shared myth about what they do. The canard runs something like this: “Create brilliant advertising that gets people’s attention, run it in enough places the consumers can’t get away from it and eventually you’ll see your share of market increase as a result.”

When it came to generating measurable performance, agencies and the media gave lip-service to “Return on Marketing Investment” and other things that sounded very measurable and analytical; but the hard truth of the matter was that advertising has always been a fairly imprecise endeavor – and everybody was fine with the smoke and mirrors of it all.

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There’s probably no consumer product that has done more to ruin the moral credibility of the advertising profession more than cigarettes.  After all, there aren’t any more credible arguments that can be made against the dire health warnings issued by doctors, governments and just about everyone else who DOESN’T SMOKE.  But people still do it.

There’s no denying that nicotine is one of the most addictive drugs out there – but it’s the advertising and the image created around the act of smoking that has drawn people in for generations.

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There’s a tug-of-war going on between traditional marketers and those who consider themselves on the vanguard of the social web. This post by Mitch Joel, about the end of THE BIG IDEA, is indicative of this battle.

Some consider it “old school” to pitch THE BIG IDEA to a client when, in the age of the Internet, the individual is the thing and success is only, really attainable through the successful implementation of a succession of smaller, more highly targeted and customer-reponsive ideas. Big ideas are a thing of the past and should be relegated to Mad Men (or Bewitched, I suppose). It’s all about the small ideas that can make a difference.

On the PR side we see the same thing happening. Big media, newswires, mass audiences are breaking down (either as part of their own strategy or by circumstance) into smaller, more focused publications, distribution channels that often bypass reporters and editors and go straight to the people who have the need to know. It’s the triumph of small over big.

Or so it might seem.

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I’m not sure why clients never understood this … but when it comes to getting the best out of their ad agency or PR firm for the least amount of money, clients turn from being “marketing partners” into “general contractors from hell.”

I an’t tell you how many times I’ve received RFP’s from clients that read more like a purchase order for gravel than a request for our best thinking on a tough marketing assignment.  I’ve always wanted to respond: “Thanks for the bid request – we have a sale on four-color ads this week but we’re a little short on brochure ideas, can we arrange for a two-for-one swap?”

Now comes a study commissioned by Jones & Bonevac that reports at least 30% of marketing agency staff time is ineffective or wasted due to poor communications from their clients.

See, it was just as we suspected … it’s all the clients’ fault.

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