Brand Central Station

In a recent post on B2B Magazine’s web site, Stephen Brill, L. Gordon Crovitz and Leo Hindery announced the launch of Journalism Online, a company designed to help newspapers, magazines and other media get paid for content distributed online.

And publishers of every print media could use the help.  Magazine revenue dropped nearly 25% this past quarter. Newspaper and other medias are down big, too.

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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…)

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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(Editor’s Note: This is one of my favorite blog posts – not just for the comments it generated but for the way it addressed a re-occuring theme: that, somehow, PR is dead and Social Media killed it.  C’mon people.  Get over it.)

I’m going to try and infuse something that’s been missing from this whole “Social Media is killing PR” meme that seems to be sweeping through the Blogosphere/Twitterverse lately. 

A little common sense.

This maelstrom has been whipped up, primarily, by PR’s and journalists/bloggers working in the technology space.  And the echo is practically deafening.

While there have been plenty of valid points raised about the nature of public relations, the profession’s current and future place in the enterprise, the role of blogging and other Web 2.0 apps in brand building, sales and CRM – I’ve come to one major conclusion:

Social media “experts” need to get over themselves and PR people need to stop looking over their shoulder to see who’s trying to do them in.

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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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Most businesses employ a direct marketing strategy of one type or another … but the success of a direct marketing program depends on more than just creative execution.  More than almost any marketing discipline, direct marketing is as scientific and statistics-driven as any.

That’s why knowing where to go for help is so important.

One of the Listservs I belong to posted this list of DM resources (special kudo’s to Andy Russell on the SmallShopNetwork Listserv (smallshopnetwork@yahoogroups.com).  Of course the list is incomplete, so any additions you can make to it is welcome.  Hopefully, you’ll find this list to be a useful resource in the future:

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Certainly there will be some companies, somewhere, who will step in and take up the available inventory … but as the New York Times reported on Friday, some of the larger brand advertisers have found the heat in Glenn Beck’s kitchen a little too hot and have pulled their advertising following the right-wing commentator’s comments about President Obama late last month.

Con Agra, Geico, Progressive and Proctor & Gamble all pulled ads – or shifted ad spending on FOX following the controversial remarks.  Con Agra went as far as to issue a statement on Beck’s statements:

“We are firmly committed to diversity, and we would like to prevent the potential perception that advertising during this program was an endorsement of the viewpoints shared.”

Other advertisers kept their buys on FOX but distanced themselves from Mr. Beck’s show in particular.  According to the article in the Times:

Other companies also said their spots had been scheduled during “Glenn Beck” by mistake. Ads for Procter & Gamble and S.C. Johnson appeared on a weekend repeat of Mr. Beck’s program by mistake, Fox acknowledged. Progressive said that its advertising order had specified “no Glenn Beck,” but Fox said it had bought a block of time with the channel that included Mr. Beck.

One of the issues raised by the article in the Times, however, centers on exactly how the attention of these advertisers – and their resulting media spending decisions – were brought to bear.  Some credit has to go to ad mogul Donny Deutsch who also serves as a talk show host on FOX’s rival, MSNBC.  Deutsch named names of brands who advertised on Beck’s show and rightly pointed out that corporate leaders often don’t know exactly where every ad dollar is going, so if angry consumer reached out to the companies who advertise on shows like Beck, those advertisers are likely to respond.

I found it more than just mildly humorous that Duetsch’s co-host couldn’t believe that the CEO’s of company’s like Chrysler and Campbell’s Soup don’t watch Beck’s show or have any idea where their ad dollars are spent.  Deutsch, plowed on – condeming neither FOX or the sponsors but urging consumers to action.

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(Company press release)
 Drink Me magazine launches its first issue this month in San Francisco. Published by Open Content, Drink Me is the only lifestyle and entertainment publication about drinking and bar culture created for enthusiasts.

“Thirty months in the making, we’re finally here,” says Daniel Yaffe, president of Open Content. “It’s been a long and exciting road. We hope our readers take time to explore and enjoy as we offer up all the alcohol culture one could ever ask for, bottled up and ready to drink with a little tag that reads, ‘Drink Me.’ Welcome to our world…”

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Who is Susan Boyle?  Not many of us in the US watch ITV’s “Britain’s Got Talent” television show on a regular basis.  But nearly 20 million of us have caught Susan Boyle’s performance on YouTube.

Susan is a frumpy, 47 year-old spinster who has never married and has spent the last two years of her life taking care of her ailing mother (who has since passed away).  When she walked out on stage as a contestant last week, everyone in the audience – from the judges to the fans – expected to watch a classic “reality TV moment” when an unattractive, somewhat abrasive boob goes down in flames in front of the entire country on live television.

Ms. Boyle told Simon Cowell (yes, the same obnoxious know-it-all from American Idol) that she wanted to be a singer but had never had a chance to perform in front of a big audience until that night.  She was obviously flummoxed by the size of the 4,000-strong crowd and had problems recalling details about her home town (Blackburn, West Lothian in Scotland).

There were sniggers and eye-rolls and nervous coughs.  The music started and we all (even those of us watching at home or on-line) were ready for disaster.

Boy, were we all wrong.

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The marketing news site ADOTAS caught my eye with this article on the growth of local news sites earlier this week.  While dozens of companies have been trying to develop the sites to tap into local ad dollars, there are some problems.

The lure of billions of advertising dollars (an estimated $32B will be spent by 2013, ADOTAS reports) is attracting developers but the big problem is content.  Will these local sites be able to afford the reporters, et al, neccessary to provide relevant (and readable) content local news consumers will want?

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An ad promoting NBC’s edgy, new copy show, “Southland” has set journalistic purists and other media watchers on edge by not only appearing on the front page of the LA Times but showing up in the guise of a newspaper article strategically placed next to a display ad for the show.  The article/ad was designed to look like a report about the series’ hero.

While running ads on the front page is nothing new for the LA Times (they’ve been doing that since 2007), this is the first time the paper has run mock news article on page 1.

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