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FT: Tough guys behind a hard sell





August 1, 2011 8:29 pm

Tough guys behind a hard sell

By Courtney Weaver

Top billing: Bruce Willis has helped Trust National Bank improve brand recognition through an ad campaign

Trust National Bank was a midsized Russian lender with a big problem. Created out of the remnants of Menatep Bank – a $29bn organisation that went bust during the 1998 Russian financial crisis and saw its former owner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, imprisoned in Siberia – Trust wanted to increase its popularity and brand recognition.

As Dmitry Chukseyev, the bank’s vice-president of communications, recounts, there was just one man for the job. And that man was Bruce Willis. “You need someone stable, understandable,” Mr Chukseyev says, explaining why the bank decided to make the Die Hard star the face of a two-year campaign.

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While Mr Willis cultivated a tough-guy persona in his most famous films of the 1980s and 1990s, he adds, there was always a character underneath the veneer that movie-goers could relate to. “In all of his films, Bruce is brutal but he’s doing it with a smile and a sense of humour.”

Never mind that the 56-year-old Mr Willis has no connection to Russia, let alone its banking sector. Since November, a series of billboard ads has run across Moscow featuring the star with tag lines ranging from: “Trust: it’s like me only a bank”, and “When I need money, I just take it”.

According to those behind the campaign, the association has worked. “Some people think it’s a mistake, some think it’s genius. But what I can tell you is that Trust, which was outside the top 20 banks in terms of awareness is now in the top five,” says Pierre-Emmanuel Mahias, chief executive of the Moscow agency Young & Rubicam and a consultant on the campaign.

Global reach

The use of celebrities in advertising has only taken off in Russia over the past five years but local brands look to global celebrities rather than local ones.

“Your average Russian consumer, certainly in Moscow and St Petersburg, watches international movies, watches international news, travels abroad, consumes international brands,” says Richard Bonner-Davies, an executive at McCann Worldwide and former head of the group’s Russia operations. “There aren’t too many Russian celebrities that are able to stand on the global stage.”

Capital Group, a property developer in Moscow, says it decided to use model Naomi Campbell as the face of a new apartment complex because as a “global celebrity”, she gave the brand a more elegant and high-powered air. The fact that her boyfriend runs the company may also have helped.

According to a study done by Millward Brown, the research affiliate of WPP, about 13 per cent of Russian television ads used celebrities last year (out of a sample of over 400 ads) – compared with 7 per cent in 2009 and 2 per cent in 2005. While Hollywood stars have gained greater prominence, most groups continue to rely on local celebrities. To wit, Vera Brezhneva, a 29-year-old pop star, is advertising everything from deodorant to banking products.

Since its contract with the star began, Trust has also regularly ranked as one of the five fastest-growing institutions for both deposit and credit card growth, despite being only in the top 30 by size.

In Moscow, Mr Willis is one of a handful of ageing stars who are enjoying new face time despite quieter Hollywood careers. Sylvester Stallone appeared three years ago in a BBDO-produced commercial for local vodka brand Russkii Lyod (“Russian Ice”), while in recent weeks more than 400 Moscow billboards, some several stories high, have been plastered with the faces of Steven Seagal, Kevin Costner and Dustin Hoffman, to attract attention to a children’s charity concert in July where all three were expected to appear as special guests. (Mr Hoffman ended up pulling out of the event.)

An event by the same charity in December attracted the likes of Sharon Stone, Goldie Hawn and Gérard Depardieu who clapped along to an unexpected performance by Vladimir Putin, the prime minister and former president, singing Blueberry Hill .

Hamish Pringle, author of Celebrity Sells, says Russian advertising campaigns present the perfect vehicle for former A-List stars who peaked before it became acceptable for big-name stars to do sponsorships in their home market – a trend that only took off ten years ago.

“The stars like Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone and co. were before that era ... Now that they’re not so hot most western brands probably couldn’t find a place to use them.”

Russian companies, he adds, “may simply not have the budget to afford today’s A-listers”, making older stars a more affordable option.

Mr Chukseyev says Trust decided to start working with Mr Willis after surveying hundreds of 25-to-55-year-old urban professionals in cities such as Moscow and St Petersburg, and asking them to identify male celebrities with whom they had positive associations.

Out of the stars – both Russian and foreign – Mr Willis was the best known, with 97 per cent recognition. Close behind him was Arnold Schwarzenegger then Jackie Chan, Mr Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Mr Seagal. Brad Pitt came in a distant eight place, while Johnny Depp did not even make the top 10.

“Bruce is not like some of the new stars, but the new stars are not as well-recognised nationally in Russia,” Mr Chukseyev says. “Every Sunday there’s a Bruce Willis film on Russian television.”

The actors of his generation also help advertisers reach the coveted 25-and-over middle class demographic, who would have first seen Die Hard as students and consider Mr Willis to still be cool in his late 50s.

“Culturally we like strong types and assertive characters,” says Turkhan Makhmudov, managing director of BBDO’s Russian operations. “For a generation [that grew up] 15 to 20 years back, those were the symbols of American culture and American society for our public. We like to see them as the models of the western heroic man and masculine character.”

Kevin Costner and Dustin Hoffman have been used to promote big events such as this Russian charity gala

Perhaps no one embodies this macho character better than Mr Putin, who happily poses shirtless on fishing and horseback expeditions. His sex symbol status last year inspired a group of 12 female journalism students to dedicate a naked calendar to him, while this summer a separate group of girls launched a “Tear off your clothes for Putin” campaign ahead of his potential run for president.

“The classic picture of Putin is with his shirt off, wading through a swamp with a gun in his hand. You could tie a red necktie around his head and he’d be Johnny Rambo,” says Adrian Goldthorpe, a strategy partner at Hello brands and veteran of the Russian advertising market. “Most Russian women like this type of man and most Russian men aspire to be that kind of character.”

Oleg Yasenov, marketing director at Synergy, says the vodka group decided to work with the real Mr Stallone after BBDO suggested it choose a Hollywood star of Russian descent from a list that also included Natalie Portman, Harrison Ford and Milla Jovovich. Mr Stallone, whose grandmother was born in Odessa, was an easy choice, he says. “We needed to show physical and moral authority.”

In the commercial, Mr Stallone drinks Russkii Lyod and fights off thugs before the tagline appears: “There’s a bit of Russian in all of us.”

Working with such Hollywood stars is not cheap, Mr Yasenov admits. Trust was reported to have paid Mr Willis $3m to use his image in its ad campaign.

Mr Chukseyev, however, argues that for a once top-billing star the price tag was almost a bargain. “Look at the amount of money Hollywood spent to create Bruce’s mega star image over the past 20 years,” he says. “We think we actually got a good deal.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011.

FT: Fitness guru who fed America’s hunger for healthy living

 

Fitness guru who fed America’s hunger for healthy living

By David Gelles

Published: January 28 2011 23:46 | Last updated: January 28 2011 23:46

Self-improvement, that restless striving for a better life, is as central  a tenet as any to the American psyche. In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin implored citizens of the new nation to be frugal, industrious and modest. A hundred years later the writer Henry David Thoreau sought the optimum balance of solitude, study and nature, in his book Walden. There is no one correct formula, but people keep searching for it nonetheless.

In the 20th century, this impulse for self-improvement collided with capitalism and celebrity. The pursuit of well-being, now more populist and commercial, was perhaps best embodied by Jack LaLanne, the compulsive exerciser, calorie counter and motivational speaker who came to be known as “the godfather of fitness”. LaLanne, who has died at the age of 96, pioneered healthy living during a career that spanned different industries and the media, and helped establish the multi-billion dollar fitness market.

Born Francois Henri LaLanne in 1914, to French immigrants in San Francisco, California, he grew up like most boys – with an appetite for sugary foods. When he was 15 his mother took him to hear Paul Bragg, a popular nutritionist at the time, speak at a women’s club, where the impressionable teen heard about the benefits of eating well and exercising.

The transformation was instantaneous. “I became a voracious reader and I absorbed everything that would help me to improve myself,” LaLanne said. His favourite book was the medical tome Gray’s Anatomy, which informed his knowledge of human musculature. LaLanne began lifting weights for hours every day and took to a lean, bland diet. “If it tastes good, spit it out,” he liked to say.

After graduating from high school and earning a chiropractic degree, he opened a health club in Oakland, California, where he encouraged visitors to drink fruit juice and use devices of his own design to stretch. In an era before fad diets and modern gyms, such methods came across as dubious at best. “People thought I was a charlatan and a nut,” he said.

Yet LaLanne found a following. His network of gyms grew, as did his reputation as a good-natured and earnest trainer who delivered results. In the 1980s he licensed his network of more than 200 gyms to Bally’s Total Fitness, which took them over.

His looks did not hurt his mass appeal. Square-jawed, constantly smiling, with a shock of black hair and a perfectly sculpted body, LaLanne would have looked at home on the silver screen. His waist was small but his shoulders impossibly broad. “Your waistline is your lifeline,” he said. He took to wearing a short-sleeved blue jumpsuit, which became his signature outfit.

By 1951 he was well enough know to warrant his own television programme at the dawn of the TV age. The Jack LaLanne Show featured the host explaining health techniques and performing exercises, including his signature fingertip push-ups. It ran for 34 years, making it the longest-running exercise show in history.

He promoted a range of vitamin supplements, exercise equipment and household appliances. He wrote 10 books, including Fiscal Fitness: 8 Steps to Wealth & Health, helping to pioneer the business for self-help books. Just over a year ago, he celebrated his 95th birthday with his final offering: Live Young Forever.

After a first marriage failed, he wed Elaine Doyle in 1959. Ms Doyle, also a “junk food junkie” when she was a child, joined him in promoting the healthy lifestyle. With him  well into his 90s, the pair still exercised together regularly and, they said, had sex almost every night. She and their son survive him as does a daughter from an earlier marriage.

He mostly ate raw vegetables and egg whites, with the occasional piece of fish. He did not drink coffee, but took many vitamins. “Stay away from animal fats and processed foods,” was his dietary advice. “Read every food label, and if you can’t pronounce the ingredients, don’t buy it. Buying nutrient-empty foods is like putting water in the gas tank of your car.”

Once squarely in the public eye, he tallied up a number of improbable accomplishments. In 1955, LaLanne swam from Alcatraz, the island prison, to San Francisco, with handcuffs on. The next year, he swam across the treacherous Golden Gate Channel while towing a one-and-a-half-tonne boat. At age 60 he repeated his handcuffed swim from Alcatraz, this time towing a 1,000-pound boat. Ten years later, after most men his age had retired, he donned shackles and handcuffs and towed 70 boats from the Los Angeles harbour to a cruise ship 1.5 miles away.

For these feats, his impact on American health and his business acumen, he was recognised and idolised. He was a founding member of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness under President John F. Kennedy. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the bodybuilder turned actor and politician, met LaLanne on a stretch of Los Angeles coastline called “Muscle Beach” and remained close to him. Upon learning of LaLanne’s death, Mr Schwarzenegger said: “Now Jack, for so long the most energetic man in the room, can finally rest, knowing that he left the world a better and fitter place than he found it.”

“Life,” LaLanne once said “is like an athletic event. You’ve got to train for it. You’ve got to eat right. You’ve got to exercise. Your health account, your bank account, they’re the same thing. The more you put in, the more you can take out.”

Restless and uncompromising in his pursuit of fitness, LaLanne sought to improve his own composition and disposition – and America’s – for nearly a century. It was hard work, but it paid off. “Living is a pain in the butt,” he once said. “Dying is easy.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011.

FT: The new power of the press

 

Put excerpts here

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The new power of the press

By John Lloyd

Published: January 7 2011 17:50 | Last updated: January 7 2011 17:50

Jon Stewart, host of ‘The Daily Show’, business secretary Vince Cable and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

In the past year journalism, which in the west sees itself as beset by decline, has vastly increased its power. Three large developments have made the implicit, yet huge, claim that journalism, our way of knowing what is happening in our complex world, is essentially a matter of competing high-decibel political dispute and total transparency.

Taken together, these developments – the takeover of US politics by the broadcast media; the revelations about governments around the world from the WikiLeaks website, and The Daily Telegraph exposé of business secretary Vince Cable’s true feelings about the UK coalition government – ensured that the media ended the year with large victories over politics and politicians. What’s more, all three were claimed in the public interest. Yet it could as easily be said that they were morally indefensible. At the very least, each demonstrated that the line between public interest and moral indefensibility is thin and getting thinner.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

Britain: what lies ahead? - Jan-07

Being Marco - Dec-17

On the edge - Dec-17

Oprah Winfrey: out on her own - Dec-10

Arianna Huffington: new media entrepreneur - Dec-10

Wangari Maathai: Africa’s green star - Dec-10

These journalistic innovations are seen by their champions as greatly expanding the scope and power of journalism. This is correct. But they can also be seen as three great reducers; each reducing the worlds it describes to simple formulas and ignoring a complexity that journalism, by its nature, already struggles to capture. What are the effects of these new sources of power? And can such power, used in such a way, really be said to be in the public interest?

. . .

Journalism began to exert real power from the mid-19th century and from the first its ethics were held in low regard. Fictional representations, such as those found in Charles Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844) and Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now (1875) were particularly scathing. Its ethical norms, fraught at the best of times, were and are most tested in its coverage of politics and politicians, subjects that lie at the core of the democratic mission it claims for itself. The two professions were bound to clash. They fish in the same pond, civil society, for the same fish – called voters by politicians, the audience by the media. Both now also fight, with increasing intensity, for the right to define the public interest.

The public interest is often defined as that which aids the citizen to be more fully a citizen – from information on votes cast and public money spent to revelations of state or corporate corruption. In more than 30 years of journalism, mostly for this paper, I’ve seen this concept develop; from a view that ferreting out as much information as possible was good for society (as well as for one’s career), to one framed in much more aggressive and polemical terms. In the labour and industrial correspondents group of the 1980s – a club of reporters covering British industrial relations and policies – three of my colleagues were Peter Hitchens, Trevor Kavanagh and Richard Littlejohn. As their careers moved from reporting to comment, each developed popular, highly charged newspaper columns that worked best when skewering ministers and other public officials, generally of the left. Their opinions expressed a depth of contempt that, in modern times at least, was unprecedented. But they became models to be followed.

During this period, investigative journalism became in some hands – John Pilger’s in the UK and Michael Moore’s in the US – not just revelation but condemnation. I was at a meeting of Guardian journalists when a distinguished investigative reporter, with a record of revelations that on any criteria were in the public interest, argued that British parliamentarians should, in principle, be regarded with suspicion. The public interest has, more and more, come to be defined as that which can be shown to damage public figures.

. . .

The first of last year’s great reducers did not begin its work in 2010 but did reach a kind of apogee then. In the US, a journalism of extreme polemics has, under the heading of free speech, progressively built broadcasters such as Glenn Beck and Jon Stewart into major political figures. Political discussions for broadcast, once characterised by polite if insistent interviewing, developed under ratings pressure into a forum in which “shock jock” presenters would encourage guests into frenzied mutual denunciation.

In August last year, Glenn Beck, the most prominent of the rightwing talk-show hosts on Fox News, organised a “Restoring Honour” rally in Washington for his followers, aimed at reviving pride in America and its values. In October, Jon Stewart, liberal comedian and host of The Daily Show, organised a “Rally to Restore Sanity” as a counter to Beck. The interventions by these two contrasting media figures into the nation’s capital, still the world’s most potent political centre, made for a quite unsubtle joint statement: these broadcasters, more than the parties or the leading politicians, perhaps even more than the president, represented the masses and their interests.

The effect of their prominence on politics is clear. It reduces government by comparison. The implicit message, especially from Beck, is that governance is a simple matter of political will. Once this is in place, reform can be achieved with ease. In this environment, journalism becomes a high-decibel slate of complaint and tenuous assertion, much of it directed at President Barack Obama. Its protagonists constantly assert that it is a way of holding power to account and, therefore, in the public interest. There is no question that these rival polemics have stirred up much public interest. But as representative politics is itself represented as a betrayal of a free people, politicians in the centre must worry that they are being displaced not just in rhetoric but in function.

. . .

In November, the WikiLeaks website, which earlier in the year revealed huge numbers of documents on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, published its latest data on the workings of US diplomacy. The material provided fascinating glimpses into the views of diplomats and those on whom they reported.

WikiLeaks, which was launched in 2006, is not journalism but it works under its rubric – of free speech, the benign effects of revelation, holding power to account – and it depends on established institutions, such as The New York Times and The Guardian for publication of its material. The ideology that inspires this not-for-profit “media organisation”, developed by its founder Julian Assange, also claims the high ground of the public interest. Officials and politicians, Assange has written, work “in collaborative secrecy to the detriment of the population”: the weapon with which to fight them is exposure. Yet in the case of the diplomatic cables, the revelations blew apart the convention that some diplomacy must be secret because it pursues ends that cannot be spelt out until all the actors involved are marshalled, separately and secretly, into the possibility of an agreement. Michael Fullilove, the Australian foreign policy commentator, argued that “with this dump WikiLeaks is not uncovering a particular secret; it is outlawing secrets altogether ... Would the world be safer, saner or more pleasant if nothing could be held in confidence? How could wars be averted in such a world? How could peace negotiations take place? Would news sources talk to journalists?” That last question is more than rhetorical: journalism has depended on a web of private comments, understandings and leaks. Without these, it withers.

Investigative reporting has been one of the strongest developments of postwar journalism, illuminating government deceit, corporate fraud and criminal activity. The reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein for The Washington Post in the early 1970s on the illegal efforts of Nixon’s White House to destabilise the Democratic party remains its defining moment: but through exposures such as The Sunday Times on the effects of Thalidomide in the 1970s, The Guardian on bribery scandals in British Aerospace in 2003 and The New Yorker’s revelations about abuses in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2004, there is a long roll of honour that has produced huge public revulsion and government reforms. Now, WikiLeaks publishes confidential information on the grounds that government is a conspiracy, and publication redresses the balance in favour of the public. By its sheer volume, however, it reduces investigative journalists to bit players whose job is to redact the output and provide context. More, it gives itself the right to decide what might or might not be dangerous for the individuals named or identifiable in the revealed documents. This is a perilous power to have.

. . .

WikiLeaks also sets a high bar for ordinary journalism – tempting it to shock and awe through more intimate revelation. Last month The Daily Telegraph revealed that Vince Cable, the business secretary, had given frank and pejorative assessments of his Conservative coalition partners. He also declared himself “at war” with media mogul Rupert Murdoch. These, like WikiLeaks, were undeniably interesting – but perhaps not as interesting as the fact that Cable’s thoughts were given to two young women reporters posing as constituents of his. Their journalism invaded a space assumed to be largely private – that occupied by MPs and the people they directly represent.

Journalists have used undercover disguises before. The most well known case is The News of the World’s Mazher Mahmood, who is known as the fake sheikh after frequently posing as a wealthy Arab businessman to embarrass and expose those under investigation. But the disguised intervention into the relationship between a member of parliament and his constituents pushes these tactics further into the upper levels of political power than Mahmood ever went. In doing so it asked politicians a question more urgently than before: to whom can I say what I think?

The newspaper, and others, argued that to know a senior government member’s private views is in the public interest, since it allows citizens to understand what the real tensions are within the government that they elected and pay for. The grounds for this view have been prepared – for politicians private space has already shrunk to a few defensible areas, such as family grief. But the Cable episode is still an innovation: editors and political writers have historically understood and accommodated some wriggle room between the public statement and the private sigh. Not now, though. The implication of the Telegraph’s journalism is that having its reporters lie about their identity is justifiable where it reveals that a politician’s semi-private statements clash with those made in public. The further implication is that private doubts, boasts and assurances ought always to accord exactly with public ones, and that when they do not it is shocking enough to require exposure. This definition of the public interest would hold that we – the public – should not only know as much as possible but as many facets of our representatives as possible. After all, everything that is private could be shown, under certain conditions, to have some public consequence.

In one view, both the revelations of WikiLeaks and of the Telegraph would, if they became the norm, encourage a more truthful public sphere. Conscious that everything was potentially transparent, we – and especially our leaders – would develop into super-rational beings uncomprehending of the notion of mendacity. Politicians would give the whole range of their thoughts on every subject, in support of their party or otherwise; officials would make public their plans at every stage; diplomats would reveal all conversations and the public would have the maturity to understand and take no unfair advantage of these disclosures. But no conceivable society could live in such transparency. It is more likely that a transparency culture simply causes a displacement of the semi-private into the wholly private – with public figures relying more on public relations to act as a shield, and turning an increasingly bland face to the outside word.

There is no question that WikiLeaks and Cable’s indiscretions engrossed a vast audience: Whatever you say about the public interest, they interested the public. In conversations about these revelations – especially those on Cable – I was struck to find that almost no one criticised the journalism that produced them. The interest was in the content. With this discovery journalism has struck a mother lode, which at a time of falling audiences, it surely needs. These innovations will not go away.

. . .

Journalism is, of course, a great reduction to begin with. Any journalist not too full of himself to admit it realises, sooner or later, that the trade demands a facility for simplification that squeezes the most complex events, trends and characters into a limited form with limited, stereotypical narratives.

Within that 1980s labour and industrial correspondents’ group, there was a self-deprecating joke, adapted from the concluding line in an old US cop series: “There are eight million stories in the Naked City,” it went, “and we can’t get one of them.” It was wry recognition of the smallness of our efforts in the face of a deluge of facts, claims, declarations, private discussions, secret understandings and contradictory data.

Despite these limitations, journalism has acquired a great power in our lives. But it is also embattled by technological change, the loss of long-profitable business models and the fracturing of audiences.

In its search for new sources of power and influence, it has produced a more reductive vision of itself, and of politics, than previously.

One common claim of the three great reducers I have discussed here is that the public can gain a greater grip on the actions that are taken in their name through being an audience for untiring media polemic and huge revelations. In different ways, each also holds conventional politics in contempt, either explicitly or implicitly. As such, they are all very much the product of contemporary media mores, even while they appeal directly to the classic, centuries’ old ideas that underpin journalism – the right to freedom of speech and the press, the duty to expose falsehood in public figures. In doing so they are redefining the relationship between political and media power, and giving a new and radical interpretation of how the public interest is served by journalism.

John Lloyd is an FT contributing editor and director of journalism at the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford

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FT: Hip barbershops in Los Angeles

Hip barbershops in Los Angeles

By Jim Shi

Published: August 6 2010 22:01 | Last updated: August 6 2010 22:01

Baxter Finley Barber & Shop in West Hollywood, Los Angeles

Geo F Trumper, the gentleman’s barbershop in London’s Mayfair, is steeped in tradition. A typical British grooming establishment, its mahogany-panelled private cubicles, worn russet carpet, and ancient olive-green shaving chairs evoke a century-long history of luxury wet shaves.

Yet across the Atlantic, and particularly in Los Angeles, the mood in a new crop of barbershops is quite different. In place of British formality is a more relaxed approach.

Take the new Baxter Finley Barber & Shop in West Hollywood. It sits just 500ft from the trendsetting fashion boutique Opening Ceremony; its interior walls are lined with bright white subway tiles; porcelain shaving chairs sit on wooden floors; and barbers are clad in gingham shirts rather than the prim waistcoat and tie typical of those in London’s West End. The menu of services is as straightforward as a cut or a shave, with not a mention of anything as intricate as a manicure or a back-wax.

At The Proper Barbershop in LA’s Mid-City the mood is positively hip. Modern and street art features in the salon alongside old-fashioned neon shaving chairs and tubs of retro hair wax. Vinnie Morey and Trent Magnano, the 23-year-old founders and trained barbers, encourage customers to indulge in a hot-towel shave or a real barber’s haircut while “relaxing with an X-Box, watching a funny movie, and having a cold beer in our back lounge.”

Eschewing London’s airs and graces, many of LA’s barbershops aim to deliver a more retrosexual, less metrosexual experience, drawing on their homegrown vintage Hollywood style. With the influence of television shows such as Mad Men, the US drama centred around a stylish advertising agency in 1960s Manhattan, men appear to be increasingly interested in the clean-cut, polished look of lead characters Don Draper and Roger Sterling.

Vinnie Malcolm co-owns The Shave of Beverly Hills. His barbershop’s key location at the base of the Golden Triangle, home to the William Morris talent agency, means that it attracts a lot of powerful men, many of whom seek a similar type of grooming service to that enjoyed by their fathers. “There is something visceral about the way the old-school feel returns you to your roots and your childhood memories,” says Malcolm.

“Barbering is very generational,” says Ross Klein, a brand officer at gift company Harry & David and a barbershop regular. “It’s rooted in what’s natural and unadorned. If you look at how a town was made up, and what was important culturally, there was always a fresh food market and a barber.”

According to the National Association of Barber Boards of America, the grooming business is in good health. 241,000 barbers were working in 110,000 barbershops in the US last year, the highest number in recent memory.

The resurgence of the barber trend has also proved convenient for businessmen, who have discovered a new networking venue. Klein says: “You’ll find that even though it seems unlikely to be able to conduct business with a straight-edge razor near your throat, it’s something that I think men do that’s different to lunch or having drinks. Between two men it seems to be an accepted social business practice.”

Music industry consultant Mike Lieberman, a former vice president at Sony Records, frequents a barbershop two to three times a week, and finds that not only does a professional shave keep his thick, coarse beard clean for several days, it has also proved an excellent tool for making business contacts. “At the barbershop you make contacts but it’s not forced,” he says. “You guys are sharing something that’s pleasurable.”

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Details

www.trumpers.com

www.baxterfinley.com

www.properlabarbers.com

www.theshavebeverlyhills.com

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Business Week: HSN's Fashionista

Features May 21, 2010, 11:00AM EST text size: TT

HSN's Fashionista

How CEO Mindy Grossman has taken HSN from ThighMasters and elastic-waist pants to Serena Williams and top designers

By Susan Berfield

It's 30 minutes to airtime, and Serena Williams—muscled, styled, economical in her movements—sits on a leather couch admiring her navy blue quilted flats. "These are incredibly comfortable shoes," she says. This is not the casual remark of a celebrity killing time in the green room. This is Serena Williams-as-saleswoman, practicing her pitch. Over the next 24 hours, Williams will be live on HSN (HSNI)—the television shopping service formerly known as the Home Shopping Network—for a total of eight hours, hawking pieces from her clothing and jewelry collection to women across America—some 15,000 bracelets, 4,000 flats, 1,900 pairs of jeans, plus sweaters, dresses, T-shirts, and handbags. Every minute she is on air will be measured in dollars, every hour will be scripted, product by product, to build momentum. When it's over, Williams is expected to have sold all of it. On HSN, celebrities have to produce.

The fact that Williams is here at all, linking her reputation to an outlet once known for pushing Suzanne Somers' ThighMaster, shows how far HSN Chief Executive Officer Mindy Grossman has taken the company. When Grossman was recruited for the job in 2006 by Barry Diller, chief executive of HSN's then-corporate parent IAC/InterActiveCorp, she told Diller that she would accept only if he gave her the freedom to turn the place upside down. She had an impressive background, which included nine years at Polo Ralph Lauren (RL), where she launched the Chaps and Polo Jeans lines, and six years at Nike (NKE), where she built up the women's apparel business. She wanted to transform HSN by making it more modern and tasteful: Maybe it would never be hip, it certainly wouldn't try to be edgy, but it could at least be relevant. "I got excited about what it could be, not what it was," she says during an interview at the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan. "There was not a lot of pride in the culture, and that was shocking to me, especially given where I had come from."

HSN and its ubiquitous low-fi cable channel had become a symbol of American consumption gone terribly wrong. The clothes were uninspired; the beauty products didn't live up to their claims; the gadgets arrived broken. It was a second-rate version of its main competitor, QVC. "I knew we had to move quickly," says Grossman, "on the things we needed to stop doing."

Within her first year at the company, she dumped about a dozen brands she had never heard of. Gone were the pants with elastic waists and anything that viewers could easily find elsewhere. Then she set out to create a studio environment that wouldn't scare off the designers she hoped to feature. For that she turned to Andrew Sheldon, a British television executive. He streamlined the sets, cleaned up the green rooms, hired full-time makeup artists and hair stylists, and modulated the hosts' presentations. "Before, there was a lot of finger pointing. They spoke too quickly and too loudly," he says. "Selling doesn't mean you have to shout 'Buy it! Buy it!' "

HSN is still only a fraction the size of QVC, which had $7.4 billion in 2009 revenue. (John Malone's Liberty Media Interactive (LINTA), which owns QVC, also owns one-third of HSN; under the terms of a standstill agreement that expires in August, it will have the right to buy more, or all, of the company.) But HSN is now a credible competitor, and just as important, it has achieved a measure of cultural status. "I've never tried to motivate my staff by saying we're going to be bigger than someone else," Grossman says. "I'm more a Mac than a PC."

Even during the depths of the recession, when many retailers' sales fell dramatically, HSN's grew, rising 3 percent in both 2008 and 2009. In the first three months of 2010, sales increased 9 percent, to $519 million, compared with 2009, and HSN shipped nearly 10 million items to customers. HSN's corporate parent, HSNi, which includes the shopping network and Web site as well as a separate catalog division, is a $2.8 billion business. Its stock has more than doubled in value since it was spun off from Diller's IAC (IACI) in August 2008, just before the retail economy collapsed.

Grossman, 52, is sleek and stylish, and she likes to pile on the necklaces and bracelets when she dresses. If women ask her for advice about accessories, she always says: "more." She calls HSN customers, herself included, "professional shoppers." More than 80 percent of them are women, and most are over 35 and comfortably middle class. Beyond that, what they seem to have in common is a desire to be soothed by the promise that what they buy will make them feel better: It's the psychology of acquisition at its most simple. HSN broadcasts live, 24 hours a day, 364 days a year (it goes dark on Christmas) to 93 million homes. Some 5 million people make at least one purchase every year; the best customers make six or seven more.

In order to attract more power shoppers, Grossman set out to persuade a whole new type of designer to create collections for HSN. Among those who have happily, if nervously, appeared on the network as a result of Grossman's coaxing are Naeem Khan, who designed the silver sequined gown Michelle Obama wore to the President's first state dinner, and Badgley Mischka, who dressed Helen Mirren in gray silk and organza for this year's Academy Awards. Grossman promised to protect them and their brands from ridicule and to present their clothes in sophisticated settings as she exposed them to an audience far greater than they could otherwise reach. She also charmed them. "It was the force of Mindy's personality and the changing economics that persuaded designers to work with HSN," says Christopher Marangi, a media analyst at Gamco Investors. "Her impact can't be underestimated."

Ever since Isaac Mizrahi signed on with Target (TGT) in 2003, all manner of luxury designers have collaborated with chains that cater to the masses. None of these partnerships compel the designers to engage so directly in the fundamental give and take of commerce as HSN does. "If they don't want to go on air, then they don't want to work with us—they're not passionate," Grossman says. "The whole idea is to bring more than just a product. It's to bring a voice. Their personality has to show through. I keep telling people that it's a trunk show in 93 million homes."

To court the fashion set, Grossman and Lynne Ronon, her head of merchandising, had to do some selling of their own. "I knew they would be concerned about their image," says Ronon, who was previously an executive at Burberry (BURBY) and Saks (SKS). At the beginning, meetings with potential designers were like job interviews for the HSN executives. Now, one recession and several well-publicized sold-out shows later, the power has shifted. "We say no more than we say yes," Ronon says.

Grossman asked Khan, whose sequined gowns can sell for $10,000, to create an exclusive collection for HSN in 2009. Khan then asked for the blessings of the heads of Saks and Bergdorf Goodman. "Luxury was in the doldrums," Khan says. "We were all asking: 'How do we keep our business going?' They need me as much as I need them. So they said, 'Fabulous. Just get a different name for the line.' "

For many of the designers Grossman has recruited, the stress is more acute and the concerns about image more pressing. They go on air anyway, having realized that in order to survive they must accommodate the marketplace. "Designers have to become more business-savvy, and that means tailoring assortments to specific retailers. They have to come to terms with that," says Kelly Tackett, a consultant at Kantar Retail.

When he launched Timeless by Naeem Khan on HSN in October 2009, Khan was apprehensive. "I'm not used to that kind of volume. I might [typically] cut 100 dresses, while they're buying 800, 1,000, 2,000 dresses. How am I going to sell all that?" In the first 10 minutes, 7 of the 10 styles of dresses, tops, and pants (priced $59.90 to $499.90) sold out. In his second appearance in March, Khan sold all 531 pieces of a silver sequin dress (price: $179.90) in 12 minutes. "The way I sell my clothes is the way I am with my wife and children," he says. "I race cars, cook, raise a family. Women love to hear that. You have a lot of pretentious designers out there. People buy your clothes because they like you."

When Grossman talks about her ambitions for HSN, she doesn't talk about a mere shopping channel. The experience, she insists, "could be empowering for the customer. She wouldn't just buy something; she would be inspired and engaged."

The source of that inspiration must be the style icons who appear on-screen. Grossman wants celebrities who are comfortable with the hustle of "sellavision," as some of them call it. She thought Williams would be a natural fit: "I knew Serena would love this and would be successful," says Grossman. "When she and Venus were kids, they used to pretend they were hosts on HSN. Even though she's a globetrotting athlete, her passion is fashion. One time I was talking her through all the fabric technology we had at Nike, and she said, 'Mindy, I really just care that it looks great.'"

Williams' selling coach at HSN's St. Petersburg (Fla.) studio is a lively executive named Christie Miranne-Seipelt who is priming her for her debut, a two-hour sale that begins at midnight. "Start with the bracelet. The up-sell is the matching necklace and earring set," says Miranne-Seipelt. She and her mother, Joy Mangano, a home shopping sensation in her own right, serve as the liaisons between Williams and HSN. Their goal is to match the tennis pro's more youthful, body-baring sensibilities with those of HSN's older, body-conscious shoppers.

A word about the bracelet: It's a woven metal and crystal cuff engraved with "Serena Williams First Anniversary 2010" (Williams launched her Signature Statement collection for HSN last April). It has been designated a "Today's Special," which means it will be mentioned or shown hundreds of times before Williams' visit is over. It's $29.95. "So, we're going to sell the bracelet with the necklace and earrings," says Williams.

"I want you to focus on the bracelet," says Miranne-Seipelt.

"You focus on the bracelet," Mangano says. "Connie [the HSN host] will weave in comments about the necklace and earrings. But the focus for you is the bracelet."

Williams tries out her pitch: "Wear it this way [with the clasp in front] and it's kind of rock and roll."

"You can talk to the fact that you're giving them a luxury look at such an affordable price," Miranne-Seipelt says. "Once these are gone, you're never making them again."

During each of Williams' five shows, Miranne-Seipelt watches the sales figures and gives instructions that the producer passes on to Williams and the host: "Go through the colors for the chiffon scarf. It's the last thing. The price is unbelievable [$19.95]. It feels like silk. The shrug feels like cashmere—lightweight cashmere. One thousand people have bought the jeans. Get those tonight. The dress is flattering on everyone. It's available in black, gray, cream. It was $99. Now it's $49.95. It's classic, it never goes out of style. Pick up the flats...."

The next day, after a two-hour sellathon that ends at noon, Williams lies curled up on the couch in the green room. She pulls a blanket over herself and mumbles, "Can someone get me something to eat?" She goes on: "These visits are getting harder and harder. At the beginning they were very easy. Now it's just not as easy." What's changed? "I don't know. It's like when you're first on tour, you're really eager to play the top players, you want to be the best, you're eager, eager. That's how I felt. Now I've played her, beaten her, let me relax."

During her 24-hour visit, HSN sold $3.25 million worth of products; Williams accounted for about one-third of it. The 1,900 pairs of jeans are gone. So are the maxi dresses. About half the shoes remain, though, and even Serena Williams couldn't sell all 15,000 bracelets. Thanks to her relationship with Grossman, she'll be back to sell another day.

Berfield is an associate editor at Bloomberg Businessweek.

FT: TV breaks out of the wardrobe department

TV breaks out of the wardrobe department

By Nicola Copping

Published: July 15 2010 23:57 | Last updated: July 15 2010 23:57

Back in style: the lauded show ‘Mad Men’ has revived a 1960s look

Betty Draper, a glacial blonde housewife, wears prim, wasp-waist dresses in lemon, peach and pistachio. Flame-haired Joan Holloway, a smouldering and voluptuous advertising agency secretary, prefers hourglass silhouettes, shift dresses in primary colours, and leopard print coats worn with killer heels. Together, they encapsulate the seductive sartorial charm of fashion’s most beloved television series, Mad Men.

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In September, the sumptuous early-1960s style worn by the show’s leading female characters will be available to all when Janie Bryant, costume designer on the show, launches Janie Bryant Mod, her own independent clothing collection, on QVC, the television shopping channel.

“Now is the time for me to come from behind the camera . . . to establish a direct rapport with the customer,” she says.

The timing could not be better. Ms Bryant’s collection will debut as the fourth season of the series airs on AMC television in the US later this month, when the characters’ costumes will veer subtly from the prim towards the progressive.

“We do get to see a different world this season,” the designer says, scanning through Betty Draper’s pastel-hued wardrobe in video footage released by the network to showcase the new look. “Characters are not so done up, there is a more mod lifestyle, a youth culture.”

At the same time that Ms Bryant appears on QVC to promote her collection, fashion boutiques will be filled with Mad Men-inspired clothing. Two of the most influential luxury brands, Louis Vuitton and Prada, have produced autumn collections replete with Mad Men leitmotifs: bosom-enhancing, waist-nipping, calf-skimming dresses at the former; full camel skirts, pointy-bra shapes and restrained Betty Draper classicism at the latter.

Ms Bryant, however, is not the first costume designer to break out from the confines of the television wardrobe department. The way was paved by one of the most influential costume designers of all time, Patricia Field of television series Sex and the City. When Ms Field collaborated with Marks and Spencer on a one-off, 35-piece collection in October 2008, the range made £1m in the first five days of trading.

Eyeing Ms Bryant’s merchandising potential, Matchbook Company, a US licensing agency, was appointed to develop and implement a licensing programme for the costume designer last October, two years after Mad Men debuted. The partnership found immediate success: Ms Bryant designed a suit in the style worn by Don Draper, the series’ swarthy male lead, for US men’s wear retailer Brooks Brothers – it sold out within two weeks.

As Linda Kearns, Matchbook’s marketing director, says: “Janie makes people look good for a living. Now she is able to go beyond actors and actresses and reach the masses.”

After the launch of Mod, Ms Bryant and Matchbook plan to develop a men’s wear collection and a women’s wear line for 2011 and 2012, while evening wear and home design will also be explored.

The two designers will not be the last examples of a television-to-fashion-trade trend. Although he is yet to launch a collection, Randall Christensen, costume designer of Dancing with the Stars, the US version of the British television show Strictly Come Dancing, is also signed up to Matchbook. “What we liked about him is he designs for all shapes and sizes, from size zero to size 18,” says Kristi McCormick, Matchbook’s founder.

The democratisation of luxury will also be instrumental to Ms Bryant’s success. The Mad Men aesthetic has plucked at the heart strings of women who yearn for clothes that suit curves.

As Hugh Devlin, a lawyer and brand consultant at Withers, the law firm, in London, says: “Mad Men is set towards the end of the golden age of haute couture, when women really looked fantastic and groomed. What the series has done is give real women a bit of fantasy.”

Now that fantasy can become reality.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.

FT: A real Mad Man

==

FT: A real Mad Man

By Katie Roiphe

Published: July 16 2010 17:34 | Last updated: July 16 2010 17:34

Jerry Della Femina and Katie Roiphe at The Campbell Apartment, New York

If I were truly dedicated to my research and had consumed three martinis over lunch, I’m pretty sure the room would be spinning. I would not be able to retrieve a single moment of productivity – or possibly even coherence – from the rest of the warm afternoon. But would life be more fun, more spontaneous, more joyful, more creative in certain crucial ways? Jerry Della Femina, the inspiration behind Mad Men, Matthew Weiner’s phenomenally successful show about the advertising world in New York in the early 1960s, thinks so. He remembers the era when martinis came with lemon peel instead of olives – because olives displaced too much gin. He says now that if he had three martinis, the paramedics would probably have to wheel him out. Della Femina, like the times, has changed.

One can’t deny that part of the allure of Mad Men to our healthy and upstanding modern selves is simply watching people light countless cigarettes and pour themselves big glasses of Scotch in their offices in the middle of the morning … all without guilt. As Della Femina says: “You can’t light a cigarette now because your child will say, ‘Stop it, you’re killing yourself.’ In those days, everybody smoked. I smoked four packs of cigarettes a day.” Della Femina wrote about those four-pack days in his 1970 cult-classic memoir of the advertising world, From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor, which the creators of Mad Men based their story on.

Della Femina himself is big, sweet and charismatic. He speaks in the Brooklyn tones of his childhood. He reminds me of Edith Wharton saying that she was going to “eat the world leaf by leaf”. Della Femina is definitely someone who eats the world leaf by leaf. His is one of those “American dream” stories, in which a poor kid from a neighbourhood one senator described as “the breeding place for crime in the United States” ends up owning a thriving business, a sprawling house in East Hampton, another off Park Avenue and many other fantastical things. One gets the feeling that this journey is one that he never stops marvelling over – and this quality of enjoying life’s bounty is contagious. Over lunch in New York’s elegant Gramercy Tavern, extra courses are brought to our table – asparagus pudding, scallops tartar, trout something or other – compliments of the chef, because Della Femina, among his many accomplishments, owns a well-known restaurant in East Hampton.

Della Femina has a superhuman amount of energy. He sleeps three or four hours a night; has five books going at once; writes a weekly column for a local newspaper in East Hampton; oversees his restaurant; and runs his advertising business, Della Femina, Rothschild, Jeary & Partners, which is his main line of work. “I want to die at my desk,” he says. He appears to view his success as a wonderful punchline to one of the universe’s more benign jokes. He did say to himself as a kid, “I’m gonna get out of here.” But he couldn’t have predicted that he would get out so spectacularly. His father exhausted himself working three jobs at a time, at the printing presses of The New York Times, operating the rides at Coney Island and as a soda jerk in a coffee shop – and his mother worked in a shop sewing dolls and dresses.

Though he learnt his work ethic from his parents, Della Femina might not have seemed the obvious choice for the kid most likely to skyrocket out of the neighbourhood. He had learning disabilities and did badly at school. He once got a 38 in a geometry exam and the teacher accused him of cheating to do even that well. But he read voraciously; he went to the library, took out 10 books at a time and devoured them – everything from pulp fiction to Hemingway. He points out that there may be a direct line from all that Hemingway to advertising copy, with its short, clipped sentences. “I have a small vocabulary which I move around fast,” he likes to say.

The ‘Mad Men’ television series charts the lives of advertising executives in the early 1960s

Della Femina first learnt about selling by working in big department stores such as Macy’s and Gimbels, selling bathrobes and toys. In one year, he had 22 jobs. By 20, he was married, had a child and got the idea in his head that he wanted to write advertising copy. In the early 1960s, he started sending ideas to one of New York’s smaller advertising agencies. Finally, the agency invited him in, and he offered to work for free. The partner said: “We have to pay you a token salary. How about $5,200?” Della Femina thanked him quietly, shook his hand and agreed to start on Monday. But when he got outside, on to lower Madison Avenue, he screamed with joy. “That ‘token salary’,” he explains, “was more than any Della Femina in the history of Della Feminas had ever made.”

This was one of the smaller, Jewish agencies. He says: “I worked there for two, three months and I was coming down in the elevator one night at 9.30pm and the new boss gets on and he says, ‘Workin’ late tonight, kid?’ And I said: ‘Ma nishtana halayla haze mikol haleilot?’ which is a Hebrew prayer meaning, ‘Why is this night different from any other?’ He gave me a $3,000 raise before the elevator hit the bottom.” Not every Italian kid from Gravesend, Brooklyn, could pull that off.

Jerry Della Femina reviews print ads at his advertising agency, Jerry Della Femina & Partners, in New York, 1969

When I ask him what made him a natural in the advertising business, Della Femina’s first answer is “lack of education”. But really it was both his rogue sense of humour and his connection to regular Americans. Someone told him he wrote like a wise guy on the street, and that was his thing: he spoke in the lingua franca, which some of his Ivy League colleagues from Harvard, Yale and Princeton had trouble doing. When he wrote lines such as, “Are you scared stiff your first color television set’s gonna turn out to be a $500 dog?”, he was thinking about his mother in Brooklyn.

But he also developed a reputation for being crazy. Once, just after moving to a larger agency, he was in a meeting with Panasonic. They said, “We need something to sell the Japanese.” And Della Femina said, “I’ve got it,” and everyone listened like he really had it, and he said: “How about ‘here’s something from the wonderful folks who brought you Pearl Harbor.’” The room fell silent. Everyone thought his career was over.

But that was his persona. He was wild. When I ask him, “Was it calculated, though, or just natural exuberance?”, Della Femina looks me straight in the eye. “I invented myself.” In other words, he carefully cultivated his reputation for being nuts. In new business meetings, he could always tell he had clinched the account, when the executive said: “You are not as crazy as I thought you’d be.”

The office was fun in a way that we can no longer imagine an office being fun. I ask if Mad Men is a glamourised portrait. As far as Della Femina is concerned, the show is tamer than real life was, or as he put it: “We made the Mad Men guys look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.”

Lest we wax too nostalgic for the early 1960s, Della Femina recalls some of the uglier elements of the period. When he first started making money, he bought his wife some fabulous clothes. She visited her parents in Brooklyn, proud of her success. Her mother opened the door and said, “you look like a Jew”. Della Femina also recounts being told he couldn’t work on the Ford account, because they didn’t want someone “of your kind”.

Of course, Mad Men owes some of its fascination to the archaic relations between men and women. The casual sexism of Sterling Cooper, with its men in suits calling their secretaries “sweetheart”, offers a certain frisson in our world of political correctness. And long after the era of Mad Men, Della Femina cultivated the spontaneity he saw in that time in his own business. In the new introduction to his memoir, he writes: “By 1965, the sexual revolution was on and the advertising business went wild. The atmosphere was sexually charged at my agency. I encouraged it because nothing got creative people to come in early and leave late better than the prospect of a sexual adventure.” For 25 years his firm ran a secret sex contest, in which people voted for the person they would most like to sleep with. The winners would get a weekend together at The Plaza Hotel, and the event lasted into the 1990s when sexual correctness finally took over.

The advertising business is less exciting to Della Femina now. “It’s different. There’s less risk-taking in writing or in art direction. People just basically sort of do their job.” Also technology shifted the business more toward the visual, away from sheer verbal cleverness. There used to be people sitting around with giant note pads and art directors with drawing pads … and there is none of that now. “A computer is a wonderful thing,” Della Femina says, “but it’s cold, and what comes out of it is sort of cold.”

. . .

Della Femina himself has remained a colourful figure. On moving to the affluent town of East Hampton, he quickly became involved in controversy. His grandfather had once run a fruit and vegetable pushcart in Brooklyn, and Della Femina opened his own store, Jerry and David’s Red Horse Market, to sell exotic fruit and vegetables. But the town required him to paint the shop in regulation green. Della Femina refused. A clash ensued. Later, he placed pumpkins outside it, and was told to remove them on the grounds that they were “advertising”. He said, “I am an advertising guy, and let me assure you those are not advertisements, those are pumpkins.”

This skirmish ended in a court summons and an arrest warrant. His lawyer called and told him that he had to turn himself in. He was advised that if he turned himself in to the court, it would be quiet, but if he turned up at the police station, he would be dragged through the streets in handcuffs. “What do you think I did?” he asks. And I knew. There were photographs all over of Della Femina in handcuffs. Later, he sued the town for wrongful arrest, and won. But he was too colourful, too successful, too splashy for the old guard of East Hampton. If they could say it now, they probably would say what Ford said to him years ago: they weren’t that crazy about doing business with someone “of his kind”.

In one of his newspaper columns, he writes about the hedge-fund guys stepping off their private planes for a weekend at the beach. They look so miserable. He wonders, how can they make all that money and be so unhappy? Della Femina is not like those people. Della Femina is happy. He is also still a mad man in the best and finest sense of the words.

Katie Roiphe’s controversial first book ‘The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism’ explored campus date rape. ‘Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Marriages’ was published in 2008. She writes for Slate magazine and is a professor at New York University

Jerry Della Femina’s ‘From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor’ is reissued by Canongate this week

.............................

‘Mad Men’: the story

When Matthew Weiner, creator of Mad Men, finished the script for the pilot episode, he said it was the best thing he’d written – a big boast, considering his record on The Sopranos. But as soon as Weiner’s seductive portrait of the 1960s ad world aired, it enthralled audiences.

Don Draper is creative director at Sterling Cooper, a Manhattan advertising agency; he’s also a philanderer with a hidden past. His wife, Betty, is an icy Hitchcock blonde, mother to their three children. The first series was set at the end of the Eisenhower administration, and Don and Betty embody the ideal of the era.

By the end of its third series, Mad Men had won millions of viewers, three Golden Globes and Emmys and moved from an era of conformity to one fraught with peril and possibility. What will happen next? The fourth series airs in the US at the end of this month and in the UK later this year.

Meredith Blake, TV writer for the Los Angeles Times

.............................

Life of Jerry

1936 Born in Brooklyn 1961 Junior copywriter, Daniel & Charles

1967 Founds Jerry Della Femina & Partners. By 1970, the company is billing $20m a year

1972 Plans takeover of Saatchi & Saatchi (fails)

1984 Sells his agency, but continues to work there

1992 Sets up new firm, Jerry, Inc. – and opens a successful restaurant

1994 Jerry, Inc. merges to become Della Femina, Rothschild, Jeary & Partners – where he still works today

.............................

This advertising life

Back in the 1960s, everybody smoked hard, drank hard and worked hard. How do today’s top admen (and women) behave?

Robert Senior, UK chief executive of Saatchi & Saatchi-Fallon group

Do we all smoke in our offices? No. Do I offer whisky to people who come in my office at 9am in the morning? No. Most people don’t have offices any more. The entire premise of creativity is friction and brokering opposing forces. That is what makes creativity interesting. And that is what the Mad Men narrative is about.

Advertising people are ambience managers. If the right context is in place, more interesting work develops. If the right ambience involves alcohol and excess, so be it. But the long lunches are a fraction of what they used to be. People are working harder.

Fernanda Romano, global creative director for digital and experiential advertising at Euro RSCG

Advertising is still a very male industry. If you look around for female creative directors, you won’t find many. It’s unfortunate. In the rest of the positions it’s a pretty even split. But on the creative side it’s still a bit of a boys club.

It’s a tough job. Women demonstrate their emotions in a certain way. People think you need to be a bit more distant from stuff to make the right calls, which I think is bullshit.

New kinds of agencies will continue to have the “cult of the creative director” but it will be creative director as editor, rather than that guy who is always grumpy, drinks whisky at 11am and is rude to people. That myth is totally being dropped, it just doesn’t work like that any more.

Benjamin Palmer, chief executive of digital ad agency Barbarian Group

Most of the time I am not in the office. I can work at a bar fairly effectively if I’m answering questions or writing e-mails. If someone has to crank on some code [for a website], they frequently will work from home for a couple of days in their pyjamas, and that’s cool.

Don Draper is trying to one-up his direct competition in New York. Today, we are trying to impress the internet. I don’t care so much if I win an award, I care if I get 4½ stars out of 5 on a social network site rating my work. In the new media world, clients are not as empowered as they used to be. Sleeping with one client is not actually going to win you the account. You’d have to sleep with six people.

Interviews by Tim Bradshaw, FT digital media correspondent

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.

marketing, advertising, mad men, emotional, apple iphon, kodak, carousel , wheel,

marketing, advertising, mad men, emotional, apple iphon, kodak, carousel , wheel, techcrunch

http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/10/apple-facetime-commercial/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRDUFpsHus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCzzh-nexpg

ST: Ad oomph for govt campaigns

Think

Home > Think > Story

Jul 4, 2010

Ad oomph for govt campaigns

Soft sell approach to promoting family values creates a buzz

By Tan Dawn Wei

The Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports is behind television commercials such as Filial Piety(above), Family and Funeral, which it uses to promote family values. -- PHOTOS: MCYS

View more photos

Madam Sally Chan was watching television one night when a short film about a patient son caring for his difficult but sick mother came on.

By the end of the three-minute clip, she was in tears. It reminded her of her relationship with her mother who brought her up single-handedly, but was sometimes testy in her old age. 'If she were still around, I would have liked to make amends for the times I lost my patience. But it's too late now,' said the 63-year-old housewife, whose mother died last year.

For the rest in more fortunate circumstance, the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS) is hoping this new soft sell will work.

It is the ministry and the National Family Council's latest campaign to promote family values, and this year's $1.6 million advertisement budget goes to filial piety.

Produced by advertising giant Leo Burnett, the soft-focus narrative, done to the stirring strains of an emotive cello- and piano-led soundtrack, is designed to tug at heartstrings. Hong Kong director Richard Tsui was roped in for the project.

Since its debut two weeks ago, it has managed to bring a red eye to more than a few folk.

Just as the Singapore leadership has hired public relations firms to help polish its image and make it a palatable brand name, its various bureaus have also cottoned on to the effectiveness of soft power.

Whether it is to promote strong family ties, to encourage people to be nice to others or to remind them that smoking kills, television commercials have become an essential public communication tool.

To help spread its road safety message, the Traffic Police first produced a TV commercial in 1990 to complement its anti-drink-driving campaign. It decided to go with a TV ad because, through its research of other countries, it had found that such TV spots were effective in conveying the message.

Since then, it has added more than 15 televised messages on road safety and courtesy to go with its other outreach channels, which include radio broadcasts, print and new media platforms.

Its newest TV commercial will be launched next week together with its Road Safety Outreach and Courtesy Campaign.

The Ministry of Defence (Mindef) has also been a big proponent of TV ads. Over the years, it has consistently pushed out slick works showcasing the nation's military capabilities in the name of inspiring pride and driving recruitment.

TV commercials for national campaigns started as early as the 1960s. The pioneers were those for the national courtesy and productivity campaigns.

But these government ad campaigns have come a long way from those nascent days of didactic commercials big on exhortation with spoof-worthy jingles.

By the 1980s, government departments were already looking to advertising agencies for help. The first was Mindef, which hired J. Walter Thompson in 1984 to help publicise its Total Defence concept.

The agency designed a campaign which included TV, radio and newspaper ads featuring a group of multiracial Singaporeans with the tag line: 'Total Defence... Because a generation's effort can be destroyed in days.'

Mr Anand Vathiyar, who heads boutique creative agency Up BrandBuzz, said government agencies are a lot more enlightened these days and understand that preachy doesn't sell.

He singled out MCYS' 2009 commercial directed by the late Malaysian film-maker Yasmin Ahmad, which featured an Indian woman talking about her Chinese husband's endearingly imperfect qualities, like snoring and farting in bed, at his wake.

The Funeral ad recently received two Gold Lion awards at the 57th International Advertising Festival in Cannes, France for direction and copywriting.

'This commercial probably did a better job telling people our Government is trying to do things differently, more than it actually did for relationships and family.

'It achieved a bigger objective than what its intended message was,' said Mr Vathiyar, who has produced award-winning commercials for the Education Ministry, Singapore Prisons and Singapore Customs, but was not involved in Ms Yasmin's ad.

Ms Yasmin's ad made viewers sit up and showed that even the authorities were willing to stray beyond traditional out-of-bounds markers.

It preached the importance of family by using death, focused on one's imperfections and featured a mixed-race married couple.

Ms Yasmin had previously directed another short film for MCYS, centring on a widowed father's relationship with his teenage daughter.

Dr Srinivas K. Reddy, professor of marketing at Singapore Management University, agrees, calling this trend a welcome change from the usual campaigns that are more prescriptive.

'These are very powerful messages. I don't think anyone would not be moved,' he said about the Filial Piety ad.

'This is ahead of the curve. The Government is sensing the problems that are potentially going to crop up, like caring for the aged, and taking a progressive move to say, let's put this on the plate so people can be aware of it.'

This series of ads which reinforces family values is also something that is unlikely seen in the West, where government TV spots take the form of recruitment ads more often than not, said Dr Reddy.

But ad agencies say working on government projects are no different from corporate jobs.

'Advertising is largely about bringing about change either in consumer purchase habits or perceptions, so in that way there isn't a radically new approach that's called for,' said Mr Farrokh Madon, executive creative director of McCann Erickson Singapore.

The agency is responsible for the new Youth Olympic Games campaign which includes TV, press and outdoor ads and a viral campaign online.

The tack was to make it inspiring, said Mr Madon, whose creative team decided to go with the theme of 'I Can'. The ad has resonated with young people, he said, with many giving it the thumbs-up on the official website and in messages to him on social networking site Facebook.

Even so, Filial Piety has drawn some brickbats from netizens, who belabour the state for spending millions on a campaign to indoctrinate the importance of family.

It also drew debate in The Straits Times' Forum, with at least one reader questioning if the ad promoted the right values. The reader pointed out that the son had disregarded his wife's feelings in a bid to appease his difficult mother.

Even Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong made mention of it last week, saying friction within a family is par for the course.

But how does one actually put a value on a public service message like this, or one warning of the dangers of drugs or drink-driving?

'If an ad can save even one life, then it could well be worth it,' said Dr Reddy.

[email protected]

Jul 4, 2010

Ads with impact

Don't Drive To Drink

The Traffic Police's TV ad last year gave a light-hearted touch to a heavy subject matter. A man on his way to a night out looks around the house for his car key but has to settle for a cab when he can't find it. Turns out, his responsible pet dog hid it. The ad took home the Viewer's Choice Bronze Award.

Red Shoes

Directed by the late Malaysian filmmaker Yasmin Ahmad, this predecessor to the Funeral ad tells of the relationship between a single father and his teenage daughter. He buys a cheap pair of shoes for her. Its heel comes off after a night of partying and she is upset. The next morning, she sees the shoes back on the rack, heel mended.

Teach

Commissioned by the Ministry of Education, this 2009 series of ads features Singaporeans reminiscing about the seemingly annoying quirks of their teachers. But it is also these quirks that have made a difference to the lives of these Singaporeans.

FT; Singapore dismisses attack on move to share TV content

Singapore dismisses attack on move to share TV content

By Kevin Brown in Singapore

Published: June 3 2010 03:00 | Last updated: June 3 2010 03:00

Singapore's media regulator has dismissed attacks from the industry on its plans to force television broadcasters to share content, claiming the proposals have been misunderstood and arguing that they will increase competition by attracting new distributors.

Toh kai Ling, the Media Development Authority's deputy director of development policy, told the Financial Times that content providers should welcome the new rules because they would increase the number of potential subscribers.

Ms Toh denied that the Singapore government had acted because of concern about the cost of English Premier League football, which is switching from the Starhub cable platform to the Singtel Mio internet-based platform after a bidding battle that forced up prices.

However, she said the rivalry over EPL underlined the potential for mass switching between distribution platforms as other exclusive content agreements expired, and raised the prospect that many consumers would need to acquire two set-top boxes and subscribe to two distribution platforms unless the rules were changed.

Ms Toh said Singapore's pay-TV market was uniquely fragmented, with only seven of 179 channels common to both distributors, while the island state was the only country where the top 16 channels by subscribers were all carried exclusively on one distribution platform.

"We don't see this getting any better, in fact we think this situation will get worse," she said.

The MDA proposals have been condemned by Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia, an industry group, which claims they undermine the legal rights of content producers and threaten the development of high-definition and 3D television.

Casbaa , which represents 130 major media organisations including BBC Worldwide, Disney Media Distribution and Sony Pictures Television, claims the proposed rules would undermine the rights of content producers and owners to negotiate freely on distribution contracts.

The US embassy in Singapore has also signalled unease, saying Washington was seeking "detailed dialogue" with the Singapore government.

Ms Toh said the new rules would not forbid exclusive contracts, al-though content would have to be made available to subscribers of competing distribution platforms at the same price as on the host platform. Ms Toh said the proposed rules would lower barriers to entry by ensuring that high-quality content was available to distributors or niche players seeking to enter the market without the resources to acquire exclusive content.

Ms Toh said the MDA was committed to the new rules, but would "rethink" if better proposals emerged to deal with the fragmentation and cost issues.

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