MarketingInsideOut.com

I guess they figured that since they’ve been selling other companies’ music for years, why not start their own label. It’s been rumored for months and Wednesday it was official. Paul McCartney left Capitol Records, after 43 years, to become the first artist to sign with Hear Music, the label being created by Starbucks in partnership with Concord Music Group.

The announcement was made Wednesday during Starbucks’s annual meeting in Seattle. Sounds like the arrangement is a one-album deal with McCartney retaining rights to the master recording. McCartney said he was impressed with Hear Music’s push to use Starbucks’ 13,500 retail outlets as part of its sales plan.

The arrangement is the latest sign of how various retailers of all types are seizing opportunities to set up direct relationships with musical artists, circumventing the record labels’ longtime lock on talent.

Does anyone else find it ironic that McCartney started in a basement and ends up in a coffee shop?

First…Gene Simmons thinks he’s created the first-ever “ass”vertising campaign to promote Season 2 of his A&E show. Wrong Gene.

Assvertising is so passe.

Although the image at right (via Adrants) could bring new meaning to the term. The cheesy faux-transparent skirts and built-in thongs are apparently used in cheap porn flicks to titillate men who can’t afford to put mirrors on their shoes.

Second…now there’s uniform-vertising via AdFreak. Apparently this company thinks it’s a brilliant idea to put ads on uniforms. I can just see it now. A big old ad for Tampax across the local grocery store checker’s chest.

Enough already! It’s bad enough uniforms are so hideously ugly and unflattering, but to putting an ad on them just adds insult to injury.

These coasters for the Mumbai Police were printed using a special invisible red ink, which spreads only when moistened. So when you put your beer on the coaster and then lift to drink, you are looking at a face that appears to be bleeding. The graphic visual combined with copy that reads “Just a reminder: Drunken driving kills” certainly gets the message across.

From Ads of the World

Lessons learned the hard way…

1) Email lives forever.
2) When you tangle with a company that hires lawyers by the dozen, be prepared to get bit.

According to a story in the New York Times, Wal-Mart asserted in court filings that Julie Roehm and Sean Womack engaged in a sexual relationship during the agency review process and extended their visits with DraftFCB to spend more personal time together and to promote themselves to the agency as job candidates.

Wal-Mart backed up its assertions with what it said were e-mail messages sent by Ms. Roehm and Mr. Womack, both married, from their work and private accounts.

“I hate not being able to call you or write you,” Ms. Roehm wrote early last fall, according to an e-mail message Mr. Womack’s wife provided to Wal-Mart. “I think about us together all the time. Little moments like watching your face when you kiss me.”

…Wal-Mart said in the filing that Ms. Roehm and Mr. Womack had lengthy career discussions with Tony Weisman, then the global growth officer of Draft FCB, and that those discussions had tainted the agency review process. Wal-Mart also asserted that Ms. Roehm shared internal company e-mail messages with Mr. Weisman and Mr. Draft, the chief executive of Draft FCB.

Mr. Womack wrote e-mail messages to Mr. Weisman signing them “Sean and Julie” that discussed the two leaving Wal-Mart to work in a venture with Draft FCB, Wal-Mart said in its filing. In one message cited, he said they would want an equity stake and discussed timing: “What do the next 60-360 days look like for your guys? When will it be too late?” he wrote in August.

According to a Wal-Mart’s spokeswoman, the company didn’t initially intend to release all the gory details, but when Roehm sued them, all bets were off. And to make matters worse, Interpublic (the parent of DraftFCB) got pulled into it by having to provide copies of e-mail messages to Wal-Mart for the inquiry

This whole thing is embarrassing for everyone involved.

I managed to somehow wrench my back and because the only comfortable place I’ve found is my husband’s recliner, I’ve found myself watching more TV than normal. As I watched this amazing spot for the first time last night, I assumed it was for IKEA or some hip retailer.

But no. It was JCPenney. My mind raced. What? JCPenney…of the polyester Penneys? My mind could not reconcile the beautiful imagery, music and sophisticated concept of this spot in connection to the JCPenney I knew growing up.

Turns out I’m behind. I flipped back and forth during the Oscars so I never saw the new spots unveiled that evening. And I completely missed the stories about JCPenney’s rebranding efforts. Plus, since I haven’t stepped foot in a Penneys for over 20 years, I probably wouldn’t have paid much attention to any news about them.

But, the spot is striking. Gorgeous. As are the other ones I found in the new “Every Day Matters” campaign created by Saatchi & Saatchi…like this and this.

The new spots are magnificent. But obviously, if the shopping experience doesn’t live up to the sophisticated image portrayed in the spots, it won’t work. Or fool anyone. As AdAge’s Bob Garfield pointed out:

The hard part is having customers walk into their Anytown Mall JC Penney stores and not feel as if they’ve been totally suckered. It’s all well and good to mystify the relationship between consumers and goods with romantic imagery, but that all backfires if the mystique is instantly obliterated at point of sale. This requires more than upgrading the chain’s merchandise; it means simultaneously softening and energizing the JC Penney shopping experience — a miracle far beyond the capacity of an ad campaign.

But if indeed, they have made substantial changes in the merchandise and store experience, this campaign just might work to get shoppers to try JCPenney again.

Dairy Queen has launched a new national TV ad, and is generating big buzz over its out-there commercial as well as an advergame that lets players navigate a hot air balloon for a chance to win a $25 gift certificate. Considering the reaction on YouTube and AdRants, the new spot is a hit with viewers.

The spots are an extension of a marketing plan launched in 2004 and tout the restaurant’s new FlameThrower Chicken Sandwich and original FlameThrower GrillBurger. Inhaling as they speak (I guess because their sandwiches are so spicy), one of the three diners accidentally exhales, and flames shoot out of his mouth–and then, each one in turn can’t help but exhale and flames shoot out everywhere.

Definitely over the top, but the spot is pretty funny. Given the concept, the advergame could have been so much more compelling.

Grey did the television. Launchfire did the advergame.

According to ad tracking firm TNS Media Intelligence, the nation’s 50 biggest advertisers cut their spending on “measured” media such as TV, print and Internet display ads by 1.5% in 2006 — though U.S. ad spending grew 4.1% overall. While some of the decline may reflect cutbacks in spending, it likely signals that big companies such as Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson and General Motors are reallocating some of their ad budgets to new Internet ad venues which aren’t measured by TNS — such as paid-search advertising, social networking and online video. At the 4As media conference, P&G CMO Jim Stengel told the audience the marketers must make a major “mindset shift,” rather than simply trying to keep pace with changes in technology, if clients and agencies are to flourish in the rapidly changing world of digital commerce

According to a story in AdAge, Johnson & Johnson is shifting larger parts of its 2007 marketing budget from traditional media to digital media. J&J’s measured-media spending plunged $250 million, or 22 percent, in the U.S. last year – pretty much in line with a forecast that the consumer-products giant would move 20 percent of its marketing budget into unmeasured media, such as search and other direct marketing. Much of the cut occurred in J&J’s national TV budget — which accounts for 60% of the company’s total ad spending. For the second year in a row, it has announced that it will sit out the TV upfront.

Overall, J&J reported global ad spending fell around 10% to $1.9 billion last year, even as sales rose 6%. But their US measured-media spending fell twice that fast, suggesting a big portion of its marketing budget went to unmeasured media.

J&J is also putting some money to a centrally controlled innovation fund that its brands can tap by using nontraditional media.

This is a fresh approach.

For UK based Innocent Drinks “Hello, we make lovely natural fruit drinks like pure fruit smoothies and fresh yogurt thickies. Everything we produce tastes good and does you good.”

Perhaps unlike robot suicide and suicide averted by a car, fruit-suicide is acceptable.

AdWeek published a story yesterday that addresses the very issue I pondered in my post last week regarding ABC’s interest in a TV show staring the Geico Cavemen.

Agencies have long been under the constraints of work-for-hire agreements and as such they don’t maintain rights to their ideas. In a digital era where the lines of content distribution blur across advertising and entertainment channels, those ideas are easily repurposed and the agency that created the idea is often cut out.

For example, McCann Erickson’s Staples ad campaign (the easy button) resulted in Staples ringing up $7.5 million in unanticipated sales from the novelty item. The roaming Gnome statues, spawned by the Travelocity campaign are being sold for $19.99 each. The agencies that created the ideas…get nothing.

From the AdWeek article:

Attorney Doug Wood, a partner at Reed Smith, New York, said, “If you look at the typical agency contract, it says: ‘Ad agencies transfer the ownership of all ideas and concepts to their clients.’ [Clients] can say, ‘The agency can’t use that idea anywhere else. It can’t control where I, the marketer, use it, how I use it, whether I use it at all.’ There are exceptions, but generally speaking, they hold fast to the idea that ‘you’re my agent and I don’t [pay to] retain you and then give you additional royalties and license fees. You’re like buying a pencil. Just because I use you for another purpose doesn’t mean I have to pay for you again.’”

“As advertising has become increasingly about content, agencies are no different from industries like publishing, motion pictures, video games, music, etcetera,” said Tom Finneran, evp, 4A’s agency management services.”

Joe Lawson, The Martin Agency copywriter behind Geico’s cavemen, who is writing the ABC pilot, needed client permission to do that.

Industry creatives are still second-class citizens when it comes to after-market use of their ideas.

Even their partners in producing work—musicians and photographers—retain ownership rights to their work.

Agency compensation issues aside, the question remains: What is the impact on industry creative people as a result of antiquated practices involving the ownership of intellectual property?

Very simple and powerful outdoor execution for Penline Stationery — Strong Tape.

From Ads Of the World. Created by Euro RSCG, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia