Hey, remember that funny old thing called TV?

By Todd Wasserman

Does TV advertising work? Opinions varied, but most CMOs gathered at an Advertising Week panel hosted by Fast Company on Wednesday agreed that yes, it does work quite well.
  "It still works, but not by itself," said Beth Comstock, CMO of GE. "You need other things to activate it. There's a whole media ecosystem to get your story out there." Barry Judge, CMO of Best Buy, agreed. In fact, he's so sure it works, he was promoting Best Buy's in-store TV network, Best Buy On, which launched a year ago and has its own upfront in December.
  The lone dissenter on the panel—which also included Yahoo! CMO Elisa Steele and Ben Edwards, IBM's vp of digital strategy and development—was Mark Crumpacker, CMO of Chipotle. But Crumpacker doesn't have much of a choice. His boss, CEO Steve Ells, doesn't believe in it. he "He never thought it was important," Crumpacker said of Ells's view of TV advertising. "He's actually asked me, 'Should we advertise at all?' "

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Published on September 29, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (16)
Filed under Old Media

Magazines, newspapers and radio say reports of their demise are greatly exaggerated

By Lucia Moses

Traditional media are still valued for their quality content and ability to amass big audiences, but they're increasingly undermined by their limited ability to target their audience, negative perceptions among advertisers and uncertainty about technology's impact on their future.
  Those points got wide agreement at Advertising Week's three-part panel "Are Legacy Media Going the Way of the 8-Track?" The panel brought together advertising and media execs from magazines (above), newspapers and radio.
  For magazines, technology has been a foe as well as friend, panelists said.
  Advancements in printing have helped magazines get to newsstands faster, while e-reader devices stand to transform how publications reach audiences, said Mark Ford, president and group publisher at Time Inc., predicting that an e-reader that would be a "game-changer for the magazine industry" was only 18 months away.
  Yet in addition to expanding their workload, the Web also has forced magazine employees to adapt their culture and content to a new platform, others said.
  "It's a cultural change, and I'm not sure publishers have their hands around what that means," said David Steinhardt, president and CEO of Idealliance, a nonprofit alliance designed to promote best practices in media.

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Published on September 22, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Filed under Old Media