Jaffe Juice

The first meeting between John Wren and Joseph Jaffe

It was actually when I crashed a party and ended up meeting his daughter. He's a pretty forboding character, but once you get to know him, he's a real sweetheart.

The real story is this communal marketing play, which allows consumers to "crash" the trailer of wedding crashers and create their own version using uploaded pics and some minor retouching (you can click to view my version if you are so inclined)

Given the recent string of box office misses which have put the movie biz in the proverbial toilet, what we are witnessing here is two-fold:

LA30 breaks into the top best selling business books

Today I'm proud to say that my book, Life after the 30-second spot, broke into the big leagues: (Amazon rankings)

1. It hit #226 in all books

2. #30 in top selling business books (Tipping Point is at number 29)

3. Was the second fastest growing book - up 3097% today

To all Jaffe Juice readers who have already purchased this book, thank you so much for your support. Please be sure to e-mail me your reviews once you've finished the book...I'll post 'em to the blog

Not bad for a book a month old!

"You can't buy this kind of publicity"

Yeah that's what OJ and MJ both said!

So as it transpires (surprise, surprise), meshing hot chicken burgers and "that's hot" won't win any Effies or Grand Prix's any time soon.

As reported in Ad Age, the Paris Hilton - Carls Jr tie-in boosted the equity of only one brand: Paris Hilton. Same store sales for the 4-weeks ending 6/20 were up a "poultry" 1.7% (0.7% for Hardee's)

After a conference call with analysts, here's the real ROI "takeaway":

At least one analyst has downgraded CKE shares after the company reported lower-than-expected earnings yesterday despite higher sales.

Advertising Limbo

Universal McCann's Bob Coen lowered his 2005 US ad spending prediction from 6.4% growth (or $280.6bn) to 5.7% (or $278.7bn) 

He also lowered his national totals from 7.4% increase (or $178.2bn) to 6.5% (or $177.9bn)

(for more, visit Mediaweek)

This was hot on the heels of yesterday's Ad Age AdWatch conference, where TNS Media Intelligence forecasted a moderate 3.4% increase in US Advertising spending for 2005 (to $145.3bn)

The TNS caveat is that their numbers only include media they measure - so for example, their Internet increase of 7.6% growth does not include paid search (which would essentially double it) Coen, on the other hand, has a 15% increase for Internet ad spending.

Personally, I would take the word "Intelligence" out of the TNS name until they figure out how to be truly inclusive/comprehensive, but I guess it is a good relative measure/benchmark (just like Nielsen....!)

JMD to Havas - Greenbacks are better than Frogs' Legs

Update on the Bald and Egotistical Soap Opera a.k.a. Havas: Jean-Marie Dru has decided to stay with TBWA. Maurice - expect a knock at the door.

Who said there wasn't loyalty in the advertising business.

Donkey's Kong

In an old Jaffe Juice (article) from February 2004, I predicted (as absurd as it sounds) that advertisers may soon begin advertising their advertising.

I've seen this a couple of times already, but nowhere as clearly as on my TiVo today (see pics), where - through a TiVo showcase - consumers can pre-set their TiVo's to record the "world premiere preview" of King Kong, airing simultaneously on NBC, Sci-Fi and USA networks. We're talking about the trailer...we're talking about an ad...a 3 minute ad.

It's pretty cool, if only it wasn't overlapping with Six Feet Under!

Welcome AOL x2

A double whammy welcome to AOL who (better late than never) joined the "big leagues" last week with the beta launch of AOL.COM - which looks pretty damn good. It's a big deal as the big 3 are now truly on the same page with respect to being able to offer mainstream marketers a standardized product that has both the left brain (media) and right brain (creative) brand ingredients.

It expands the category, partially addresses Bob Garfield's Chaos Theory and and for better or worse, firmly positions AOL, Yahoo! and MSN as the online equivs of ABC, CBS and NBC.

Drooling over LA30

With thanks to Nick Stoyanoff from AOL, a mobile snap from my visit last week to the folks over at Doner in Motor City.

I am pictured slobbering over a pile of my books (it's really quite obscene, but I've never seen so many of my books in one place before!)

I had the opportunity to address the predominently creative-infused crowd on the subject of "Creativity on the Net - It's not a paradox anymore" and it was really motivating to see the whole agency really passionate and excited about the prospects and potential that lies ahead.

R Kelly throws the ailing music industry a frickin' bone

...maybe not the best analogy, given current charges against RK, but an unbelievably cool example of creativity as reported by USA Today

Here's the exec summary:

• Trapped in the Closet is a 5 track story or 5 part track on his new album TP.3 Reloaded, which is a serialized story/drama about a dude (R Kelly) who wakes up in a bed with a strange lady the morning after a wild night of partay-ing.
• Hubby comes home. R heads to the closet, armed with his Beretta. Hubby proceeds to closet
• End of track 1 (cliffhanger number 1)

The full story is on 1 CD and a second CD contains a 17 minute video, which mirrors the audio story.

Sure, folks will no doubt download it (legally or illegally), but all in all, a very cool way to keep the R Kelly brand fresh and even inject some life into the disc biz (even if only for die-hard RK fans and/or dial-up consumers)

Meal Combo 5: Advertising, Child Pornography and a Pepsi (and supersize that please)

LA Times reports on what they call "odd ad placement" whereby PepsiCo, Georgia-Pacific and State Farm pulled their advertising on Yahoo! when they found their ads running adjacent user generated chat rooms discussing child pornography/sex with kids.

The article inadvertently raises several key questions/comments:

1) Accurate or inaccurate match?: Was this a product of a flaw in the contextual/behavioral targeting methodology e.g. keyword "children"

2) (How) should portals/communal oriented publishers accept advertising in less controlled environments (huge Pandora's Box) - from blogs to "spaces"?

3)  Is this being overblown and in the grander scheme of things, a one-off? Remember the example of a hard liquor brand (I think it could even have been ABSOLUT) that ended up sandwiched in a news article about a drunk driver who killed a pedestrian?

Make no mistake, it's completely unacceptable, but surely as the technology evolves, so too will these erroneous anomalies.