They seem to have a thing for sports beloved by French-speaking people

The NHL -- a sport always played indoors -- may be coming to the Outdoor Life Network, the channel best known for bringing us the Tour de France. Lynne Kiesling theorizes that "hockey plus cycling offers a portfolio that gives each fan sufficient coverage during their respective seasons that they are willing to keep the subscription even during the off-season." I see. A tag team approach to maintaining audience numbers. It's just nutty enough to work!

Punk'd: The art world edition

Via PYLB, I learned something important. A "secretive 'guerilla' artist" can be so secretive that he refuses to be photographed yet not so secretive as to eschew the services of a media spokeswoman or resist displaying his own press clippings. Now those are some brand-building skills.

Don't get me wrong. I like the guy's work. Even if the feeling's not mutual.

Jane post-Jane

Jane Pratt may be going to Sirius Radio, meaning Jane magazine is losing an editor -- and perhaps its advertisers: "Fashion advertisers such as Donna Karan and Marc Jacobs are already said to be getting skittish...and that can't be good news for a magazine that has been flat this year."

But are advertisers nervous because of Pratt's absence or because the demo of the publication is surprisingly underage? "The mag this year had to forego liquor and tobacco ads because it was found that a large segment of its audience falls below the legal age for consuming the products." I don't think this is the audience Fairchild was hoping for. Nothing kills cache faster than a Clearasil ad.

Can we all fit into The Gap lounge?

Instead of creating genuine buzz among teens and twentysomethings, The Gap's watchmechange viral seems primarily to garner the the attention of business writers. Still, it's worth reading about if only for a very thorough listing of Gap's patently bad decision-making over the past few years and the news that stores will now have "a lounge area to encourage lingering and mingling." Lingering at The Gap? Sure. Because it's just so very, very hard for twenty-five year olds to find places to gather these days.

No wonder that buy-out talk was just a rumor.

Does this count as new media?

Ads printed on eggs. Of course, not a good media choice if you're targeting vegans.

There's a term for that

Right there in the middle of a story about Wal-Mart's latest TV spots, a brilliant new term is coined: "concept envy." Finally. 87% of advertising can now be properly diagnosed.

Nice

Your results may vary but David Brooks claims Americans are getting nicer: "America is becoming more virtuous. Americans today hurt each other less than they did 13 years ago. They are more likely to resist selfish and shortsighted impulses. They are leading more responsible, more organized lives. A result is an improvement in social order...." Of the many reasons cited, rap seems to have been overlooked.

Keep your eye on the ball

Mark Silveira points out a very good ad.

Move him to the sleeping porch, it's so much more comfortable

A Southern writer takes to his bed. Maybe someone should take him a pullet. Or at the very least, some sweet tea.

"We stuck a steeple on it, and you'd never know it wasn't always a church."

The Wall Street Journal recently called Dallas' office real estate market "the worst in the country." But say it with me: there are never problems, only opportunities. Our abandoned commercial properties are now being saved by churches.

Their brains are fried

Our nation's greatest minds cannot figure out why people don't buy wool sweaters in July. Hurricanes? Terrorism? Or the knowledge that all that crap will be marked down two months from now when you really need it?

Oh. And if you're in Texas, happy tax-free weekend! Remember: yes to $99 shoes. No if they're $100.

There really was a valley. And it really was hidden.

The history of Ranch dressing. Pine-Sol and Clorox play crucial roles.

Fine. Keep your CDs.

Another day, another record company doing something to piss me off. Is there any other industry so arrogant that it both ignores quality AND harasses its consumers?

Share your thoughts, as long as they're our thoughts too

You know you can't curse like a sailor but did you realize you can't be, well, honest? At least if the online retailer is editing customer reviews. "While more sites recognize the potential for product reviews to build customer trust and loyalty, many are fearful that negative reviews might annoy manufacturers or hurt sales." That kind of thinking is almost quaint, isn't it? A true vestige of a past era. But the smart ones are learning: "Manufacturers also see product reviews as a tool to gain direct customer feedback, instead of using focus groups."

Does Splenda have some splainin' to do?

What's an artificial sweetener to do? You try to build a little brand awareness but then your competitors go and call bullshit on you. It's a class-action cluster. And it's a real problem: should competitors be allowed to cripple you with expensive lawsuits? Should they be able to harass you into not advertising? And why didn't I go to law school so I could get rich off of all this?

TV's newest new newsy news show

There are the concerned few who really want to help but for others, it's simply too much fun to criticize new Current. It's not the concept so much. No, what seems to irritate everyone most about Current is that it's trying "way too hard to be 'down' with the kids." Interesting. Of all people, Current staffers should have known that cool is out.

I hope Current evolves into something interesting, fun and totally exploitable for advertising purposes. It's got potential. But so far, I think I've seen the format before. It was called Hot Dog.

Viral marketing, this and that

She keeps her clothes on and still this is quite shocking -- because it's from the formerly conservative people at Procter & Gamble. What's going on up there in Cincinnati? Oh. That.

Like William Hurt in Broadcast News, I don't know what crosses the line if the line keeps moving

The Caffeine Goddess tackles the subject of product placement in magazines and highlights this AdAge quote from a very self-assured Jane columnist: "I want readers to know my content hasn’t been dictated by advertising."

Oops. Too late.

I hardly have a good memory. Still, just in the past few days -- just while avoiding actual work to read the usual blogs -- several remarks seem to indicate that content is, let's say, shaped by advertisers. There's this Glenn Reynolds reaction to a Richard Posner article on blogs in which Posner argues the NYTimes, in order to "finance its large staff depends on advertising revenues and hence on the good will of advertisers.... These dependences constrain a newspaper in a variety of ways."

Or in a KausFiles post about Chrysler, there's this throwaway line: "Mercedes reliability did go to hell under Schrempp. The AP story run by WaPo ignores this rather important factor. (It's not the sort of thing newspapers are comfortable saying.)"

You say "comfortable." I say "dictated."

Reynolds himself asks "when did you last see a local paper do a big expose on car dealers or grocery stores?" Well, a local Dallas station did try reporting on Ford but when faced with losing ad dollars, they used their sister newspaper to repair the damage. And we're not even talking about magazines like InStyle or the lifestyle section of local papers, which are pure, pure product placements. (Aren't beauty editors, when not stocking their own shelves with swag, merely ad facilitators?) There may be real ethics to hash out here, but there's a lot of alarmist, self-important rhetoric that gets in the way. Hell, even ads get in the way. Yesterday, AdRants invited readers to comment on Gawker's unappealing sponsored date placers but to read the comments, you have to scroll past a Hewlett-Packard ad that looks just like, you guessed it, a regular AdRants post.

I guess it's good in a way. It's progress, right? After all, we've come a long way from the advertorial.

Coke, at long last, proves to be aptly named

Coca-Cola has plans for a new drink, one that "is said to burn 50 to 100 calories just by drinking a 12-oz. serving" and will be marketed to "active lifestyle consumers." Finally, the perfect endorsement deal for Lindsay Lohan.

Lesson: Disney-hating is not a business plan

The live-action side of DreamWorks is not doing well either. David Geffen claims that content "is too expensive to produce," Well, yeah. Another possibility: old, unimaginative, out-of-touch studio executives are too expensive to retain.