PepsiCo Inc. is dropping a Gatorade drink named after Tiger Woods from its lineup, and television ads featuring the golfer haven't been aired since a storm of publicity erupted over his car accident last month and subsequent revelations about alleged extramarital affairs.
Mr. Woods has been at the center of a media frenzy since he crashed his Cadillac Escalade outside his Florida home Nov. 27, setting off a chain of events that has opened his personal life to scrutiny and led him to admit unspecified "transgressions." For nearly two weeks, news media have continued to closely monitor Mr. Woods and the comings and going of his family.
On Tuesday, Mr. Woods's mother-in-law was treated for stomach pains at an Orlando-area hospital and released. Barbro Holmberg, the mother of the golfer's wife, Elin Nordegren Woods, is staying with the Woodses during a visit from her native Sweden.
PepsiCo said Tuesday the move to drop its Gatorade Tiger Focus sports drink is part of a broader overhaul of its Gatorade brand that has been in the works for months, and isn't connected with Mr. Woods's recent troubles.
Advertisers haven't aired TV commercials featuring Mr. Woods since shortly after the scandal broke, according to monitoring data from Nielsen Co., which scans the prime-time, evening news, late-night and sports telecasts on major broadcast networks and 19 cable networks. The Golf Channel isn't included in Nielsen's tracking.
Most recently, Gillette ran a 30-second TV spot including Mr. Woods on Nov. 29, Nielsen said. That ad, which also features baseball player Derek Jeter and tennis player Roger Federer, aired eight times in November. It was the only ad including Mr. Woods that Nielsen recorded during the month, said Aaron Lewis, a spokesman at Nielsen.
It isn't clear what, if any, other commercials featuring Mr. Woods might have been in the works or slated for broadcast at the time of the accident.
Gillette, a unit of Procter & Gamble, hasn't pulled any ads, said Michael Norton, a Gillette spokesman. "We are running our media schedule as planned," Mr. Norton said. He said Gillette has one ad in rotation that includes Mr. Woods, and that he doesn't know when it is scheduled to return to the air. "We haven't made any changes at this time to our marketing strategy," he added.
PepsiCo said it is discontinuing Gatorade Tiger Focus and some other Gatorade drinks to make room for a new lineup of products focused on athletes and sports performance. A company spokesman said the new offerings will be released soon, but declined to provide specifics.
"We decided several months ago to discontinue Gatorade Tiger Focus, along with some other products to make room for our planned series of innovative products in 2010," Gatorade spokeswoman Jennifer Schmit said in an e-mailed statement.
Gatorade Tiger Focus hasn't been a strong performer; volume in the first 10 months of this year was down 34% from a year earlier, according to Beverage Digest, an industry publication and data service. Tiger Focus accounts for about 4% of overall Gatorade volume, Beverage Digest said.
Ads and promotional matter featuring Mr. Woods continued to run on sponsors' Web sites Tuesday. A section on the Nike Inc. Golf site dedicated to Mr. Woods continued to display Web videos featuring the golfer, as well as his line of apparel, balls and golf clubs. "Being the best takes dedication, patience and insight. For Tiger Woods, these are the pillars of his approach," the site read.
Representatives of Nike, Gillette, Electronic Arts and laser-eye surgery chain TLC Vision Corp. said Tuesday that their sponsor relationships with Mr. Woods hadn't changed. TLC Vision continued to feature Mr. Woods prominently on the homepage of its Web site.
Among other companies with which the golfer has endorsement deals, jet-rental company NetJets said in a statement Monday that it continued to support Mr. Woods. Sports-collectible retailer Upper Deck and phone giant AT&T declined to comment. Consulting firm Accenture and watch maker Tag Heuer, a unit LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, couldn't be reached for comment.
DUDE, WHERES THE CASH? Here's what scares Kutcher: "When I have a conversation with someone and they say, 'I'm not worried about monetization yet.' " | Photographs by Jill Greenberg
ON THE JOB Everyone at Katalyst has a role in the Katalyst HQ mockumentary Web series, including cofounder Jason Goldberg, left, and new-media director Sarah Ross, above right. This year's sponsor is Nestlé's Hot Pockets, below right.
I've walked into the middle of a swine flu outbreak.
"Here, put this on!" Ashton Kutcher bounds from around the corner in his loft-style Hollywood office, wearing a paper face mask and holding another one. "You can choose whether to wear it or not, but we all are. We can't afford to get sick!" Within seconds, I am surrounded by a fast-moving herd of masked Flip-cam marauders, filming my every move. Perched on the stairs. Popping out from the office kitchen. Uh-oh. "Seriously!" says Kutcher, with a goofy grin around his mask. "Swine flu!" He points to the mask in my hand. Punked and defeated, I put it on. "Awesome," he laughs.
I've walked right into an episode of Katalyst HQ, a Web-based video serial that puts the staff of Kutcher's production company, Katalyst, through a loosely scripted, hopefully funny parody of its workday. The current 16-week "season" is sponsored by Hot Pockets, the savory pastry item whose creators want us to "eat freely," unencumbered by a knife and fork. (Truly. The brand manager told me that.) The program is a collaboration between Katalyst; Slide, a Web company founded by Max Levchin of PayPal fame; advertising titan Publicis Groupe; and Nestlé, which owns Hot Pockets. It has been a huge hit, with millions of reposts of the videos on Facebook, each one reaching an average of 65 friends.
"There is nothing really like this out there," says an obviously thrilled Mike Niethammer, Nestlé's group marketing manager. Niethammer, who reviews the script concepts, chuckles at the report of my punking. "I did throw out a Hot Pockets mention," I say. "Nice," he laughs.
The Katalyst HQ series illuminates what Kutcher's production company wants to become: not just a home for his television and movie projects but also a go-to source for brands looking to deploy what's called "influencer marketing," a squishy hybrid of entertainment content, advertising, and online conversation that finds its audience via video, animation, Twitter, blogs, texts, and mobile. "Entertainment, really, is a dying industry," says Kutcher. "We're a balanced social-media studio, with revenue streams from multiple sources" -- film, TV, and now digital. "For the brand stuff, we're not replacing ad agencies but working with everyone to provide content and the monetization strategies to succeed on the Web."
Kutcher, 31, is not exactly the image of a business visionary. He's still best known for his eight seasons as Michael Kelso, the pretty-boy lunkhead from That '70s Show, and as the executor of cringe-worthy celebrity pranks on the hit MTV show Punk'd. (Not to mention his marriage to Demi Moore.) But his future, Kutcher insists, will be all about business. He intends to become the first next-generation media mogul, using his own brand as a springboard. "Punk'd is part of who he is," says Sarah Ross, Katalyst's director of new media. "We're using his brand as a syndication system."
If this all seems far-fetched, hang in there. Mask off, Kutcher holds forth nonstop on his multiplatform plans. He talks of Web trending, content pirating, and the fact that Twitter has yet to make any money. "If we in this industry don't figure something out, we're going to go the way of the music industry and be cannibalized by the Web," says Kutcher. "It's really a war to make money."
It's not just talk. Some 3.9 million people follow Kutcher on Twitter (@aplusk), and he has nearly 3.3 million Facebook fans. Those numbers have helped attract corporate clients beyond Nestlé -- including Pepsi and Kellogg -- and supporters such as Oprah, Larry King, and former News Corp. No. 2 Peter Chernin.
Kutcher and his partner, Jason Goldberg, spent the better part of two years courting the wizards of Silicon Valley, converting them from teachers and skeptics to friends and allies. For all their pranks, Katalyst's digital division can claim one thing most other social-media businesses can't: profitability.
The episode I walked into has a Thanksgiving theme, and Kutcher tells me he plans to let loose a live turkey in the office. "Then everyone will be worried about bird flu!" he says. This from a future media titan? Still, even if Kutcher turns out to be more style than substance and Katalyst doesn't become the Next Big Thing, Kutcher's experiment points toward a new model for the evolving media business that connects Hollywood, tech, and Madison Avenue. No kidding.
| |||||||||
I don't know. Seems like a weird move by such a conservative Pope.
Bring back JP II.
From today's Irish Times:Top of the popes; Pope cuts new CD for ChristmasARTS:TAKE SOME Gregorian chant, add in the sumptuous strings of the
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, top it off with the voice of Pope
Benedict XVI, mix the whole thing up in the historic studios of
London's Abbey Road, and what do you have? A Christmas chart-topper?
With its suspiciously New Age, sumptuously melodic feel, the Pope's new
record, Alma Mater, might indeed do well, writes PADDY AGNEWin Romehttp://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2009/1112/1224258652585.html
Colin Barlow, president of Geffen Records UK, at the launch in the Vatican on Tuesday, is making no predictions right now, but he does expect this record to sell “quite a lot of copies”. He thinks that in this time of recession times, Alma Mater offers a message of hope and inspiration.
So what is going on? Has this rather crusty, Teutonic old Pope decided to go funky? Well, no, not quite. What we have here are eight tracks which cleverly interweave Gregorian chant with rich modern orchestration, topped off by the Pope, who speaks on seven of the tracks and sings on the other. On track one, Sancta Dei Genitrix, the Pope himself explains just what this record is all about, saying: “Faith is love, and for that reason it creates poetry and music. Faith is joy because it creates beauty. The great cathedrals of the world are not medieval monuments but rather houses of the living where we meet God and we meet one another. Great music, like Gregorian chant or Mozart, is not something of the past for the Church, but rather something living which is an expression of the vitality of the liturgy of our faith.”
CHICAGO (AdAge.com) -- Get a bunch of longtime chief marketing officers in a room and you'll hear one thing for certain: lots and lots of questions about staying power. The Association of National Advertisers CMO Roundtable this past weekend was no exception. The group, comprised of Best Buy's Barry Judge, General Mills' Mark Addicks, Con Agra's Joan Chow and Fidelity Investment's Jim Speros, underscored the importance of transparency, relationship building and making sure you're right for the job in the first place.
First of all, Mr. Speros said, you've got to realize that the clock is ticking. "Velocity is key, because you don't have a lot of time to make a difference," he said. "You have to get in very fast and make relationships with the right people, understand the hot-button issues."
Mr. Speros said it's important to have representatives from all the relevant teams -- distribution, product, regulatory, legal -- and make sure they all have a seat at the table. Within that dialogue, he added, great CMOs can be indispensable as "the voice of the consumer within your organization."
Con Agra's Ms. Chow said she's also worked hard to support transparency within her department, keeping executives abreast of what's going on, and holding open meetings. "Our CEO [Gary Rodkin] didn't want to hear about commercials by seeing them on TV," she said of the state of affairs upon her arrival almost three years ago. Ms. Chow responded by setting an hourly meeting with Mr. Rodkin each week, giving a list of high-level projects or ideas. Her team initially worried that projects would be killed before completion, but it's been more about keeping the head honcho up to speed. "Even if he disagrees, he allows us to overrule him," the CMO said. And it's helped open up the conversation elsewhere in the c-suite.
Ms. Chow also said she gave Con Agra's CFO an open invitation to attend her meetings. He eventually joined them for a day in the field, and has now become a key advocate. When the marketing department started presenting social-media ideas, the executives asked to be trained in Twitter and Facebook. She also opened her doors to criticism. After finding an office freezer full of competitors' products, she started asking people why they weren't eating Healthy Choice, and why they hadn't told anyone before.
"If you can't inspire employees to be your brand champions, then you can't inspire anyone else," she said. Following sweeping quality improvements, Ms. Chow has conducted follow-up freezer inspections. While "there are still a few stragglers," she's helped spur a number of conversions.
All four CMOs stopped short of saying that the office should have full ownership of the P&L. While it's possible at package food companies, it would be unrealistic at Best Buy or Fidelity. Instead, Ms. Chow said, "You have to be accountable for your company's investment in marketing."
Mr. Addicks of General Mills took it a step further. "I see myself as the person who has to be a stopping point on a brand if it's not doing well," he said, adding that as CMO he also needs to know the areas of opportunity for General Mills.
Ultimately, the ability to keep a CMO job is in the marketer's own hands. But an important part of that is making sure you land in the right place. "Sometimes it's a matter of chemistry," Mr. Speros said, adding that cultural fits are important to evaluate before walking through the door. And ask yourself hard questions. "Ask if you're qualified, credible" for the position, he said.
Email
