Crain's Chicago Business takes a closer look at the city's advertising scene. You can tell by the title of the article that the perception is it ain't too good there: Dream of Chicago ad revival is dashed: The city's ad agencies, decimated after years of losing headquarters and major accounts, seemed poised to regain their fizz when local player DraftFCB Group aced out Madison Avenue in winning the Wal-Mart Stores …
Big Media Wants One Of Those You Tube Things
Wall Street Journal is reporting that four major media companies--News Corp.'s Fox, Viacom Inc., CBS Corp. and General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal--might join to create a video web site able to compete with Google Inc.'s YouTube. Nate Anderson wonders if the Big Guys can properly design such a site. In their own attempts at creating Internet delivery services for their TV shows, the networks have often done a nice …
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Contrary Media Models United By Profitability
Reflecting on recent turmoil in the executive suites at AOL, Newscorp and CBS Interactive, John Battelle sees an industry grappling to find itself in the brave "New Media" world. Here's what he believes the big guys are thinking: 1. Interactive is now a very important, profitable, and growing business. 2. We can't afford to not view this as strategic to our future. 3. We need someone running theses sites who is not …
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Don’t Stop Believin’
Kansas City sheep hater, John January, wants ad guys and ad gals of this land to remember why they got into the ad game. That's right, for the love. I think we can't help but love it. I think we ended up in advertising because we have always loved it. Didn't you like commercials when you were a kid? Don't stop loving advertising. Don't stop believing that good work is best for client and audience. Don't stop taking …
Homeowners Don’t Have A CLUE, But Insurers Do
This is really only tangentially related to advertising in the sense that we are constantly shown happy/safe/it's-all-gonna-be-alright imagery from insurance companies in their advertising. But I didn't know this: Insurers now keep records on the history of your home and use that info to deny you coverage. MSN MoneyCentral has more: Insurers increasingly are using a huge industry database, called the Comprehensive …
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Another Spin For CBS Records
According to Los Angeles Times, the legendary label that once featured A-list recording artists like Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, Tony Bennett, Miles Davis, Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen is rising from the ashes. CBS Corp. plans to revive CBS Records — a vestige of the glory days of the now-troubled music industry — with an eye toward the Internet age. In contrast to the lavish excesses of the music business of the …
Remote Locations Difficult To Manage
Network World reports on the difficulties faced by offsite workers and their managers. IBM’s efforts to create a flexible work environment have been so successful that 40% of its 330,000 employees work from home, on the road, or at a client location on any given day. But a few years ago, the company realized that as its staff became more distributed, employee morale was weakening. In the region Dan Pelino inherited …
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Merge. Spin Off. Merge. Spin Off.
Troubled Chicago conglomerate Draft FCB is planning to open up "an offshoot that would, if all goes according to plan, become a separate, independent full-service shop that would be part of the same parent holding company, IPG," according to Lewis Lazare of Chicago Sun Times. Lazare says the new agency is being created to handle accounts that present problematic conflicts of interest resulting from the merger of …