I think it was some famous economist — either John Maynard Keynes or Ice-T — who once said, “I’ll never go broke, I got property.”
That may be true, but only if you haven’t leveraged your real estate and can afford the increasing taxes which are likely as state and local governments look to tap any revenue source they can find.
With record foreclosures, plummeting prices and an overhang of supply in the housing market, another real estate crisis also appears to be imminent.
Builders are warning a new financial catastrophe may be looming in the commercial real estate market.
If the story sounds …read more

Publishing giant Conde Nast announced today it would be phasing out a number of magazines from its portfolio. Two of the magazines on the chopping block include Gourmet (the oldest food magazine in the country) and Cookie, a family magazine no one ever heard of.
Also jilted by Conde Nast: Modern Bride and Elegant Bride. The company vowed to continue publishing its other bridal magazine entitled simply, Bride, which will henceforth be published monthly instead of the six times per year it had been previously issued.
The closings come three-months after Conde Nast hired management consultants McKinsey & Company to review …read more

Did you ever get the impression old line media types just don’t understand the Internet? Or even advertising in general, for that matter?
The following ad for the New York Times website appeared on my screen as I was browsing through the Interwebs yesterday.
Like me, I’m sure you’ll appreciate it’s targeted focus on a narrowly defined group of likely NY Times readers. You know, people who give to Harvard, think about taxing soda and kill wolves for fun.
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Hey, that’s me!
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Look for other niche ads which look to sign up to falconers, nuclear physicists and crafters who work …read more

After being roundly criticized here at Behind the Buzz and elsewhere for their new commercial, General Motors and the ad agency which created the spot, McCannErickson, have responded to the criticisms.
Their basic response has been to assert less is more, lack of credibility promotes trust and that the commercial is so boring it’s compelling.
Call it the Cartoon Strategy. There hasn’t been this much attempt to create a positive spin since Looney Tunes introduced the Tazmanian Devil character back in the 60s.
McCann Erickson maintains the ad “tested well” with consumers. Unfortunately, “testing well” doesn’t appear to be translating into car …read more

The people at vitaminwater have a bold new program.
And it has nothing to do with the unique way they user only lower case letters and highlight the typeface in the name of their product.
They’re throwing down the creative gauntlet (or maybe just giving their flavor-inventors some time off) as they let you, the consumer, design the next big thing in vitaminwater land.
Utilizing a “flavor creator lab” on Facebook and a white-coated female avatar who speaks with a Bogart-style lisp, the folks at vitaminwater have pretty much reinvented their entire web presence around the program which gives water lovers …read more

CBS and Pepsi are planning to implement a new technology which will allow them to put video ads in your print magazine. Because the seventy-five subscription cards which fall out of every issue aren’t aggravating enough.
The ads will be featured in an upcoming edition of Entertainment Weekly. CBS will be pushing some of its new shows and Pepsi will be marketing a diet cola for men in a joint venture estimated to cost more than a million dollars for for an ad in 100,000 copies of the 1.8 million circulation Hollywood gossip magazine.
Perhaps the only thing more disturbing …read more

Kingfish Media, in partnership with Junta42 and Upshot Institute, is conducting a short survey of marketing executives. If you handle the marketing for your own company (or work in marketing for someone else), they’d love for you to share your perspective.
The survey takes just a few moments (it’s 20 questions). Kingfish Media will be compiling the data into an ebook to shed some light on the current and ever-changing marketing trends. The goal is to show marketers how they can use the hot trends to better craft their new business pitches.
The Kingfish Media survey asks questions about the most …read more

The WNBA is the Abe Vigoda of professional sports — no one can believe either the league or the veteran actor is still alive.
Despite NBA commissioner David Stern’s hectoring that everyone should watch women’s basketball and failure to do so makes you a sexist jerk, the league keeps limping along with the NBA continuing to throw major marketing dollars at a 13-year “project.”
The WNBA certainly gets points for creativity.  The Phoenix Mercury recently signed an advertising deal with LifeLock to give LifeLock’s corporate logo the most prominent billing on the Mercury’s uniforms.
LifeLock is a software company that offers identity theft …read more

Managing your website’s ads isn’t easy. It’s oftentimes time-consuming and requires a lot of tweaking while trying to optimize the ad content, formats and layouts to reap the most revenue. And with hundreds of ad networks to choose from, decisions can be difficult.
Ren Chin, marketing vice president for Yieldbuild, says that publishers should consider three major factors in their overall strategy for bringing in advertising revenue – ad network selection, ad layout and reporting.
CNET/ZDNet recently featured Chin on their Whiteboard video series in a segment was entitled “Online Ad Strategies.” Check out the video for tips and details.

BuzzGain launched in public beta today. This online service helps companies keep track of the public perception of their products by finding and engaging in online conversations that impact their business.
Users can see how their products and services are being discussed on news websites, blogs, Twitter and other media. There are three main components – Listen, Learn and Analyze.
The Listen section allows you to search for specified keywords. The Learn tab features a list of websites, blogs or social media that have featured content related to your campaigns. The Analyze section offers graphs, charts and other metrics to show the …read more