PR Firm Predicted Sony Release of The Interview via Internet

Excuse us for back-patting, and maybe it didn’t take a rocket scientist to predict within hours of Sony’s PR spinners announcing Sony was pulling the The Interview from distribution that Sony would do a walk back before Christmas and announce the film would be immediately available via the Internet.

But we were the rocket scientists who called it first..on Dec 17…leading to more than 4000 visits to this section of The JLC Group’s website within the hours that followed.

The North Korea Crisis That Never Was..other than in the minds of Hollywood publicity genie’s did serve as a great “gotcha” moment. Not Ashton Kutcher-style, but in the category of Orson Welles, whose top ranking  for historic stunts has now been taken over by  none other than Seth Rogen and his masters from Sony…

Here’s the take-away: those who guide corporate brands during times of perceived crisis, and more important, the CEOs who supposedly make the final decisions in times of turmoil should think longer and harder before pressing the send button on a global message they will likely retract within a matter of days. Unless of course the entire series of events was planned with stealth precision in the first place.

PR Firm Predicted Sony Release of The Interview via Internet

Hedge Fund Marketers Now Leverage Social Media Brand Burnishing Strategies

Social Media. Social Media holds the key to bringing your hedge fund to the next level and into the 21^st Century. The key to branding your hedge fund is appropriately using social media tools to promote your company. New data has been released that supports the use of social media by hedge funds. Below is some of the data released provided by HedgeCo.Net:

Monthly hedge fund mentions on Twitter recently reached a high of 80,000 Tweets, and have not fallen below 40,000 in the last two years, Thomas Walek, President of Peppercomm said of the $3 trillion hedge fund industry in a Q&A with AIMA.

• 66% of 2014’s largest 292 hedge funds are on LinkedIn, and 10% are on Twitter. Of these, six hedge funds post on LinkedIn at least once a month and seven hedge funds Tweet at least 10 times a month.


• Among the largest 285 global hedge funds in 2013, 14% launched websites in 2014.


• Among the 185 global hedge funds with $1 billion–$5 billion in assets, 23% had websites in 2013. By June of 2014, an additional 39 funds launched websites and 11 more moved from a closed site to a more open site.

“Reputation is built on a careful calculus of transparency, engagement and honesty. That’s happening now as hedge funds open up and take a few steps in that direction. It’s healthy and it’s good for the future of the industry.” Walek said. Media mentions of hedge funds are projected to reach record levels above 100,000 in 2014, up nearly five-fold over the last decade.

Many hedge funds have been apprehensive about using social media for many different reasons but employing a company such as the JLC Group to run your social media should relieve all tension surrounding the use of social media. JLC Group offers to the universe hedge funds who know what they know, but that doesn’t necessarily include best ways to burnish their brands, whether it be through website design or ongoing brand promotion. All of the JLC Groups consulting ensures that your hedge funds use of social media and websites are proper and compliant. If you are still apprehensive check out one of the many success stories on found on our website and start using social media for your own hedge fund today.

 

Hedge Fund Marketers Now Leverage Social Media Brand Burnishing Strategies

Corporate Marketing Advertising Buyers: Beware...You’re Not Making Impressions

For marcom gurus who also oversee digital ad buying to promote your corporate brand across the ethernet, there’s bad news for you courtesy of barking from the consortium of advertising firms that you likely pay lots of money to. As a side bar note, The JLC Group has long eschewed the notion of impression-based digital ad schemes. We go to great lengths to urge clients who insist on running banner ad campaigns on 3^rd party content sites to stick solely with PPC (pay per click) ad campaigns. The take-away from the below excerpt underscores the advice we’ve been providing to JLC Group clients for years.

As noted in a Dec 22 piece in the CMO Today edition of the Wall Street Journal by Suzanne Vranica, “..The American Association of Advertising Agencies sent a letter to some of its members on Friday saying it will “not endorse” the online advertising guidelines put out by the Interactive Advertising Bureau last week….

The guidelines suggested that online ad industry should aim to have their campaigns achieve a “70% viewability threshold” in 2015. That means when an advertiser runs a campaign online, 70% of the ads meet the viewability standard set earlier this year. For a display ad to be deemed viewable at least half of each ad must be visible on a person’s computer screen for a minimum of one second. For an online video ad to be deemed viewed, half of the ad should be on a users’s screen for at least two seconds.

Viewability, the ability for an online ad to be seen, has become a hot topic this year as advertisers bemoan the fact that they are paying for ads that are not being seen because the ads appear on part of a Web page that is never looked at by a human eye.

Google recently released data that showed over half of the display ads impressions in its research weren’t visible.

The IAB said in an open letter on Tuesday said that 100% viewability measurement is “not yet possible” because of the all the different types of ad units, vendors and measurement methodologies and that the industry should aim to have their campaigns meet 70% viewability. If a campaign does not meet that threshold, make goods—additional ads—should be given to the advertisers to make up for the shortfall, the IAB said.

The full article from the WSJ is here

 

Corporate Marketing Advertising Buyers: Beware...You’re Not Making Impressions

Sony Stages Best PR Stunt Ever With North Korea Plot

From: Seth Rogen, Film Actor, Writer & Director

To: Amy Pascal, Sony Productions

Warning: Please make sure that no hackers from North Korea or any place else can read this before opening below note:

We should talk re: biggest leak yet re my film The Interview and news media nonsense promoting risk of terrorism attacks at movie theaters made worse by a blog posting at marcom and PR advisory firm “The JLC Group …”

“Dec 17…Sam Goldywn and Jack Warner are rolling in their graves thanks to news media coverage of Sony-produced parody motion picture profiling North Korea and dictator Sum Dum Fuk aka Kim Jung-un.

The publicity machine is operating on all 8 cylinders it seems now that Sony has suspended the release of its holiday season hit one week prior to the scheduled release of the The Interviews, a film which the producers have banked on to be the next generation of Sacha Baron-Cohen’s spoof film profiling a Kazhakstan dictator  named Borak, which not including its sequel, has grossed more than $250mil since its 2006 release. Not chopped liver…

NK Dictator Sum Dum Fuk

After all, a parody film of a 3^rd generation, basket-ball-loving nutcase of a dictator who is better known in international diplomatic circles as the “King Crackpot of North Korea,” is destined to be a box office hit. We’re talking about a film that will be this generation’s “It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad World”, an epic comedy..

Let’s back up for a minute. Is it possible that  Sony and Seth Rogen-sponsored spin masters were enlisted to stage the entire series of events that have taken place this past week, starting with the headline story that Sony emails were hacked by North Korean cyberterrorism experts, and then revealing top secret e-mail exchanges about “Angela Jolie the bitch” and smart-ass jokes about President Obama?? And less than 3 days later, Sony announces that terrorism threats targeting movie theaters that show “The Interview” had first had Sony deferring to theater operators as to whether they want to show the film, but hours later, they announced they would officially suspend distribution to theaters, and that they have been passed on information about those threats to the FBI.

Here’s this PR Guru’s projection of what happens next: This whole thing was a set-up. Selling films on line is 10x more profitable than via theaters for companies like Sony.  No later than Dec 21, Sony will announce a “force majeure” event that immediately cancels the film theatrical distribution contracts they signed with theater chains due to” terrorism threats.” All distribution deals are canceled, and Sony will now sneak in (Tora, Tora, Tora-style) and bypass the distributors and the theatres and take the film straight to the web and pay-for-view at $19.95 per view. The ‘free publicity’ thanks to the hacking and then the threats surrounding the film is already reaching every corner of the globe. Instead of several millions, we now have hundreds of millions of people who want to watch this move. We can thank

CNN for that. Even the next James Bond film doesn’t get this much coverage. Sony is betting that worldwide sales from online will be $2billion during the first week alone, because everyone will want to see it before North Korea launches an attack against the United States… Think about the sequel rights value. OMG.

The preview trailer will be the best upsell: “Warning, your ordering this movie online or via your cable TV provider may result in North Korean spies learning of your location and sending short, fat Asian people in tight-fitting uniforms to your house. Do not feed them any snacks, they might explode.”


Sony Stages Best PR Stunt Ever With North Korea Plot

#Bold, Brash and Other Marcom Buzzwords From Madison Ave MadMen

#Bold is the new better buzzword, according to NYT’s Stuart Elliott in his Dec 5 column.

We get it; after all re-purposing evocative phrases for brand awareness is a contact sport for Madison Avenue ad grunts..and Stuart’s pointing to illustrative examples below demonstrates that Madison Ave is often compared to blind mice chasing after the cheese that smells the best..

On the topic of “bold” –we thought we’d newsjack Stuart’s column, if only because here at The JLC Group, one of us is going bald (easily confused for bold), another one of us is always being tagged (not to be confused with “hastagged” for being “absolutely ballsy” (see the advertising elements we’ve produced for clients) and as a salute to the silliness that Twitter incites via piling on to new phrases, this is to officially remind everyone that we’ve been bold long before it became stylish. Our firm was founded on the notion of being bold and to used tactics that help push client brands to places where they’ve never gone before..and would likely never go to without a bit of envelope pushing.

Here’s the excerpt from Stuart’s column (notice the highlighted element below):

FORTUNE, the saying goes, favors the bold, and so it seems does Madison Avenue.

The word “bold” has grown increasingly popular among marketers for a panoply of products, turning up frequently in advertising on television, in print, online and in social media.

No matter the category, whether autos, clothing, jewelry, makeup, packaged food or plumbing fixtures, “bold” is boldly — er, um, make that confidently and assertively — going where the word has not gone before.

A campaign for the 2015 Toyota Camry includes print ads that carry the headline “The bold new Camry” and the theme “One bold choice leads to another.”

In a commercial from Zales, an announcer suggests, “Declare your love boldly” with the Celebration Grand diamond, which, she says, “shines bigger and bolder.”

And ads for True Religion jeans urge men and women to “Be so bold,” a line that doubles as a hashtag. An online video series for Revlon, hosted by Laverne Cox, is titled “#GoBold.”

Also, magazine ads for New York Brand Texas Toast croutons propose, “Live a big, bold, flavor-filled life.” The Kraft Foods Group sells a line of meats named Oscar Mayer Deli Fresh Bold cold cuts. And a campaign for the Kohler brand of faucets and other fixtures asks homeowners to consider “The bold look of Kohler.”

Some uses of the B-word seem baffling. For instance, signs in the windows of Santander banks offer potential customers “bold rates” on business lines of credit. And just what is it that makes Movado Bold watches bold? The textured dials? The accents in bright colors like orange and lime green?

The ardor for “bold” is another example of a tendency among creative executives on Madison Avenue to go mad for a certain word or phrase, which then seems to become omnipresent.

“Hello” has also been popular of late, as in “Hello tomorrow” for Emirates airline, the Hello line of oral-care products and the “Hello sunny” ads for Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

And several brands, among them Burger King, Gap Kids and Olay, have been using themes and headlines that begin with “Be your …”

The reason “the same words or phrases keep recurring in marketing communications,” said Andreas Combuechen, chief executive of Atmosphere Proximity in New York, “all comes down to the fact we’re all creating in a connected world.

“No topic is local or even regional anymore, as social media has made every conversation global,” he added. “Today, a trending hashtag equals a homogenized culture where influential ideas seamlessly flow not just across borders but across brands.”

 

#Bold, Brash and Other Marcom Buzzwords From Madison Ave MadMen