Diamond Sales Set To Skyrocket In Opposite World [Marketing]
Posted by CMAdmin
Here’s a preposterous contrarian strategy: Evil diamond merchant De Beers is more than doubling its marketing spending this holiday season, because they have “new research showing diamond jewelry will be the number-one gift for the holidays in 2008.” Oh really? Diamonds made out of compressed spam, boiled into a thin soup and served with watery Kool-Aid, maybe. De Beers says their ad campaign will be “philosophical.” That philosophy is egoism with a touch of apocalypticism. [WWD]
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LA Times Makes Fun of Variety for Losing Oscar Ads They Covet [Hollywood]
Posted by CMAdmin
LA Times columnist Patrick Goldstein used his blog yesterday for the entertaining purpose of viciously mocking Variety and its Hollywood fixture editor, Peter Bart. Mocking them for being poor! This column is awesome for the following reasons: because media outlets don’t usually air their dirty laundry like this; because Peter Bart and Variety certainly deserve the mocking; and most of all because Patrick Goldstein seems totally unconcerned that his own paper does the same exact thing he criticizes Variety for, and that that very thing keeps him employed. Ha:
Peter Bart wrote a column of his own (Headline: “Will fiscal funk trip kudo contenders?” WTF) bitching about the lack of Oscar-related ads from the studios in Variety. Patrick Goldstein appropriately tells him to shut it:
Anyone paying attention to the outside world knows we’re in the midst of a hideous global economic recession, with corporate profits plunging, the biggest U.S. carmakers teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and tens of thousands of everyday Joes being laid off from their jobs. But Bart, like most Hollywood insiders, lives a life of privilege, putting those nice Campanile lunches on his expense account. So when he hears that GE’s hurting or Sony’s having a tough time, his reaction? “Hankies, please.”
Ha ha! He just told Peter Bart to shut up. And also told him his magazine is poor. Goldstein even gets a quote from Harvey Weinstein about why studios should buy lots of Oscar-related ads, then goes on to dismiss it:
Imagine how you’d feel if you were one of the hundreds of employees that’s been laid off at a media conglomerate, only to see that your company’s film division still has plenty of dough left to run Oscar ads in Variety or the New York Times or my newspaper.
Of course, the LAT started its section “The Envelope” for the same exact purpose: to get Oscar ads. But whatever. Dude has balls! He can go into porn when he gets laid off because his newspaper didn’t sell enough Oscar-related ads to pay his salary. [LAT]
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How Hard is Janka’s Wood? [Because We’re Immature]
Posted by CMAdmin
Imagine our delight when we found this sentence while reading a New Yorker story about gourmet beer: “Wood experts rate a species’ hardness on the Janka scale—a measure of how many pounds of force it takes to drive a half-inch steel ball halfway into a board.” It sets up perfectly a lowbrow joke: of coursesuper-aggressive date-a-holic Paul Janka would have a last name that refers to measuring the hardness of wood, right? So we did some research to estimate where on the Janka scale Paul’s personal wood would actually be.
Balsa—the thinnest, softest wood—rates at about 100. Eastern White Pine’s a 380 and Hemlock is a 500. Those are all fairly soft woods.
Brazilian walnut is one of the hardest woods, at 3684. Ebony rates a 3220, and red oak is at the low-middle end, with 1290. Which wood would compare to Paul Janka’s hardness most accurately?
We’d guesstimate—a very uneducated guess—somewhere around the hardness of sycamore. Look it up.
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Times Keeps Financial Hope Alive [Newspapers]
Posted by CMAdmin
The New York Timesfolded Play magazine yesterday, which actually had good editorial content but bad business prospects, because many of its advertisers were auto companies, and they are all crumbling and taking the media along with them. On the plus side, the NYT business section actually hired somebody yesterday! (David Segal, from the Washington Post). The paper’s special magic investment fund dedicated to Biz section hiring is obviously paying off. At least the good editorial=weak advertising equation has a flipside: the vapid T fashion mag lives!:
As for the other magazines, including T and T Style, [Times Magazine editor] Marzorati says “at the moment, there are certain tiny adjustments for the main magazine” but there “won’t be any major, major cuts for the other magazines.” Every publication — except Play — is making money, although “they aren’t making as much” as before, the editor said.
They’re doing important work over there. [FishbowlNY]
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Ted Stevens Remains a Senator [Crime]
Posted by CMAdmin
Good news for Ted Stevens: the convicted felon and United States Senator from the Great State of Alaska won’t face an embarrassing expulsion from the world’s greatest deliberative body. GOP Senator Jim DeMint totally promised this morning that he had enough votes to expel Stevens from the Senate, and then, in a close-door conference meeting, everyone decided to just wait until the votes in Stevens’ reelection race are all counted. Stevens is currently down a thousand to his Democratic challenger, so hopefully Alaska voters will save Stevens’ Senate colleagues the trouble of doing the mind-bogglingly obviously right thing. [Roll Call]
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How Leno Dissed Chris Matthews [Celebrity Science]
Posted by CMAdmin
Chris Matthews is becoming the Rodney Dangerfield of TV news hosts. Even his NBC colleagues at the Tonight Show give him no respect. Host Jay Leno just last week led with dashing Matthews competitor Anderson Cooper of CNN, who was first to sit on Leno’s couch and got extra time to chat after a commercial break. Matthews? He came out last night after a segment called “Things We Found On eBay,” two turns on the couch by self-styled redneck Larry The Cable Guy AND after a special skit involving Larry. Then Larry insulted Matthews by with a joke about “The Chris Matthews Show,” not realizing the program is known as Hardball. Leno awkwardly tries to salvage the situation in the clip after the jump.
Chris Matthews is becoming the Rodney Dangerfield of TV news hosts. Even his NBC colleagues at the Tonight Show give him no respect. Host Jay Leno Though Matthews is a frequent guest on Leno, his fall to the show’s least enviable quarter-hour comes at a touchy time. Fellow host Keith Olbermann shot past him in the MSNBC pecking order and then had the nerve to mock him on national television. Some feminists accused him not only of sexism toward Hillary Clinton but also promoting domestic violence. At least Matthews had the good humor to start laughing at his situation at the end of the clip above. He may lack the polish of career TV journalists like Olbermann and Cooper, but the longtime Democratic political aide probably has the grit to make it through the minor humiliations of the moment without further loss of temper.
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Salesman Is Insufficiently Familiar With Vanity Fair Writer’s Work [Mistakes]
Posted by CMAdmin
There’s nothing easier than hating on dumb young telemarketers and their annoying sales pitches. Though it is possible to summon some sympathy for the unfortunate Bloomberg sales caller who mistakenly thought that Vanity Fair contributing editor Seth Mnookin was a Vanity Fair PR person. Outrageous! Doesn’t this anonymous business services salesman read Seth Mnookin’s stories?
Seth just had a big story in Vanity Fair about Bloomberg, so he was surprised enough to transcribe the entire message he got:
“Hi Seth, [name] calling from Bloomberg. I just wanted to give you a quick call, I was actually forwarded your information from one of my colleagues and I definitely understand you’ve been a contributing editor at Vanity Fair for some time and provided a lot of insight on Dan Brown’s book and a lot of details that events that have occurred at The New York Times, but the reason that I’m calling is that we’ve actually been reaching out to a lot of public relations firms showing them the great tools that we have on Bloomberg to scan for news content relating to Vanity Fair or of course its peers as well so I definitely want to reach out to you and see if you were possibly interested in taking a look Bloomberg. I’ve met with a lot of other publishing firms also, AMI [American Media, Inc. - publisher of The National Enquirer, Flex, and Fit Pregnancy] being one of them, and thought that you as in, as a PR representative at Vanity Fair would definitely benefit from a lot of tools that are on Bloomberg also, so definitely feel free to give me a call and I will follow up with you. Again my direct again is 212-xxx-xxxx, and again we’d be more than happy to stop by and provide you with a little demonstration of all the news functionalities that are available. Again, [name] calling from Bloomberg.”
Okay, that’s pretty convoluted. And embarrassing. But where is your spirit of Christian charity this holiday season, Seth Mnookin? Are you secretly upset that your beloved Boston Red Sox suck big time? AW YEA. [Seth Mnookin; pic via I Want Media]
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Elizabeth Wurtzel Not Too Upset About That Whole ‘Not Passing The Bar Exam’ Thing [Controversies!]
Posted by CMAdmin
Yesterday we noted that Prozac Nation author and now Yale Law School grad Elizabeth Wurtzel didn’t pass the bar exam, which she took back in July. Some commenters were very mad! that we! would point this out! And others seemed a little more meh about it. Actually, maybe the most meh about it was Wurtzel herself who, when told about the post by the New York Observer, didn’t really seem to give a shit:
“Wow, really? I had no idea. I didn’t even see that. That’s interesting,” Ms. Wurtzel said of the report, with an awkward half-smile. “It’s a weird test. I think when you go to a different school than Yale you are better prepared for it. It was definitely hard. I guess when I should have been studying, I was kind of having a good time.”
So there you go, no harm done! Plus there’s like another one in February, so maybe now she has more incentive to study and we’re not monsters just little needlers like Nelson Muntz or something.
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Shep Smith Yells About His Poor Gardner [The Panic Of ‘08]
Posted by CMAdmin
Shep Smith’s on-air response to an email flame broke several rules for fighting effectively on the internet: Don’t give attention to a troll; don’t let your opponent know when he’s gotten under your skin; don’t defend when you could be attacking. As such, the Fox News host’s mounting rage against his small-fry critic doesn’t deliver the same satisfaction as his other recent smackdowns. An especially ill-advised tactic: Trying to convince emailer “Mr. Fuentes” with an argument about the plight of Smith’s “lawn-care maintenance guy.” Since, you know, Señor Fuentes will surely understand an economic argument if it’s translated into gardening terms. Click the video icon to watch. [via Johnny Dollar]
Shep Smith’s on-air response to an email flame broke several rules for fighting effectively on the internet: Don’t give attention to a troll; don’t let your opponent know when he’s gotten under your skin; 
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The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy [Advertising]
Posted by CMAdmin
We’ve been hard on Common, the “conscious” Chicago rapper who spends an inordinate amount of time making ads for damn near everybody and then coming up with weird justifications for how he’s still keeping it real. Now his new TV ad for Zune, the off-brand iPod that Common called “a representation of me,” is out. And he’s pulled godfather of the beat Afrika Bambaataa into the advertising web along with him! This, along with The Roots signing on as Jimmy Fallon’s house band, is pounding my capability for sincere outrage into a sense of zombie-like acceptance. Watch the full ad below and surrender:
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