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I am sick and tired of everyone picking on this year’s Super Bowl ads. For the most part, I think they were terrific, and, in fact, a significant step up from last year. Read the rest of this entry »
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In August of 1967, when my parents left for a much-needed vacation from their hectic lives in our native New Orleans, our uncle came to stay with my brother and me.
Our uncle was very cool. I mean he was from California. Not just California, but Los Angeles. Hollywood, in fact, because he had even had bit parts in movies. He was actually the Marlboro Man in a television commercial. On top of all that, unlike his scholarly brother—a politically active rabbi—our uncle was a sports fan.
On Thursday morning, while reading The Times-Picayune sports section, our uncle announced that New Orleans’ NFL expansion team would be playing its first preseason game in Louisiana that Saturday in Shreveport. He asked if we wanted to make the drive to northern Louisiana and watch the Saints make their home-state debut. Read the rest of this entry »
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One of the few enduring benefits of the dot-com crash—or so it seemed—was the disappearance from offices of Razor scooters, or their equivalent. The contrived wackiness that characterized the heady days of the New Economy had by every indication gone the way of the untold millions invested in start-ups that never made a nickel. A decade later, such accoutrements of the modern office suite (foosball tables were another) seemed to characterize a moment in business history notable for hubris, excess and New Age-inspired kidspeak, if not outright baby-talk. Read the rest of this entry »
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With half the band dead and the radio full of auto-tune, the video-game series “Rock Band”—a big Christmas seller this year—has ignited a most unlikely Beatles resurgence. Once again, which no one could have predicted, people are literally drumming along to Get Back and strumming along to Yellow Submarine. Not just young people, either. Old geezers are getting into the act, which might or might not be a good thing. (One can always avert one’s gaze.)
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The December 18 opening of James Cameron’s “Avatar” seems to have garnered a tad more ink and airtime than the death, only hours before, of the film star Jennifer Jones. This comes as no surprise, of course, though it is disheartening to see how little attention the passing of this talented actress received. Few moviegoers who actually saw Jones’ work when it was new still survive; the films for which she was best known—“Duel in the Sun,” for example, and “The Song of Bernadette”—were made in the 1940s. Read the rest of this entry »
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Last night I met my weekend golf buddies at the club for our annual holiday dinner. Just take a guess as to what was the major topic of conversation. Right, Tiger Woods. How did you know?
It’s hardly just us talking about him, of course. George Will is comparing Tiger’s antics to those of Babe Ruth on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” Meredith Viera is rolling softballs at one of the PGA star’s one-time lovers on “The Today Show.” And there, on the cover of Newsweek, is Tiger with his standard, give-nothing-away smile, which few of us suspected was concealing quite so much. Read the rest of this entry »
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Nestled like one more delicious muffie among others, Panera Bread finds itself listed among Ad Age’s top 50 brands. We have Panera’s lettuce “innovations” to thank for this august honor—that and, apparently, its use of china plates. These changes prove, according to Ad Age, that “not everyone is unemployed.” This connection, of course, must be inferred, and one only hopes the Conference Board does not count improvements to the offerings of leafy green vegetables in “fast-casual” restaurants in the compilation of its Index of Leading Economic Indicators. Read the rest of this entry »
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Washington Post news item, December 2, 2009:
Newseum trims its staff once again
29 employees have lost their jobs
The Newseum, one of Washington’s newest attractions, has trimmed its staff for the second time since reopening in its new, larger location on Pennsylvania Avenue NW in April 2008.
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Interference, Inc., practices “guerrilla marketing,” Adweek reports. The New York City-based firm manages, thereby, “to break through the media landscape with real-life events.” Since the firm’s best-known work consists of staged—and in one notorious case, costly and ill-advised—pranks, you have to wonder exactly what Adweek thinks “real-life” is. Read the rest of this entry »
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Ad Age is attributing the success of Zipcar to “word of mouth” marketing, a position to which the trade pub seemed wedded at least since last January. That’s when one of its reporters asked Zipcar’s chief marketing officer (dreadful title!) how important word-of-mouth was to the company’s marketing strategy and she, the CMO, dutifully responded, “Very.”
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