editorlisa

Season 4 of MAD MEN is premiering an hour ahead of air in Times Square. Consider yourself informed/warned.

Rupert Murdoch, Neel Shah, and the Short Pants

NewsCorp, where every day is April 1st.

Fred's Tumblr Scraps: "Positioning" MTV. 1987.

Positioning MTV: Music Television

Throughout most of the 80s, our original, in-house, MTV creative team had established all the original vocabulary (written and visual) for the channel. In April 1983, Alan and I resigned and set up Fred/Alan as the media’s first “branding” consultancy and advertising agency. Bob Pittman was a smart and shrewd competitor; he signed us right back up. MTV Networks was our first client.

But, by 1987 we were being driven insane by a raft of new employees who thought they had the secrets of MTV in their heads, and kept telling us how to “improve” our work for them. The problem was, each and every one of them had a different version of what was right. Alan and I suggested we write up the definitive (yeah, right) “positioning” document so we were all singing from the same (that is, ours) hymn sheet.

Results: “MTV vs. Normal TV” became the common thinking around the network for quite a while and became an ad campaign:

“TV or MTV?”

We wanted to keep “I Want My MTV” (which we hadn’t written, but had developed as network executives). But marketing executives of the 1980s were already infected with the virus they have today. “Why stick with something that works? We want to put our own ideas out there. We need something new!”

A master class on Branding. (via emilgh)

my latest project: the season 2 promo campaign for MAN SHOPS GLOBE

Indifference is a sin on your wedding night and in marketing.

Peter Liguori, COO, Discovery Communications

More people watched the series finales of Mr. Belvedere and ALF than the number of people who watched the series finale of LOST.

Chris Cantwell (via mikehudack: bliptv)

All that proves is that there are more idiots than intellectuals.

You realize this is comparison is wildly unbalanced, right? It completely disregards differences in cable distribution & penetration between 1990 and today, the quantity of national cable programming channels, not to mention the fact that disruptive technologies like DVRs and internet video didn’t exist in 1990.

And not to get all defensive about LOST, but in the age of disruptive TV technology, which I’m defining as the 10 years since Tivo was invented, only 8 series finales had ratings better than LOST. (Beverly Hills 90210, Friends, Frasier, NYPD Blue, JAG, Everybody Loves Raymond, Will & Grace and ER, if you’re wondering.)

There’s no money in poetry, but then again, there’s no poetry in money either.

Caterina Fake

via marsbot

Crowley -- a 33-year-old who's always in a sweatshirt and wears an eyebrow-length mop of Justin Bieber-like hair...

Now you need a publicist and a stylist.

Downloadable LOST labels for all your Dharma Initiative needs

EPIC.

Nike’s new World Cup ad.

(via moderation:kerelcooper:idlewyld)