Michael Learmonth
Jan 30, 2012
When Ridley Scott created Apple's iconic "1984," the company's board didn't want it to air. Newly hired CEO John Sculley, veteran of many a Super Bowl ad as CEO of Pepsi-Cola Co., agreed with the consensus: It's a waste to run an ad that doesn't even show the product. Apple ended up selling off some of its planned Super Bowl ad time and ran "1984" in the 60-second slot it couldn't unload. The rest, as they say, is history. The Macintosh did change the world as Steve Jobs said it would, and Apple is the most valuable company on the planet. The commercial also ushered in an era in Super Bowl advertising that we still inhabit: the ad as entertainment. That we expect ads during the Super Bowl to be as entertaining as the game itself can largely be traced back to "1984." But if that were the end of the story, we'd all still be watching high-concept minimovies directed by auteurs that made us think or feel different
Michael Learmonth
Jan 30, 2012
When Ridley Scott created Apple's iconic "1984," the company's board didn't want it to air. Newly hired CEO John Sculley, veteran of many a Super Bowl ad as CEO of Pepsi-Cola Co., agreed with the consensus: It's a waste to run an ad that doesn't even show the product. Apple ended up selling off some of its planned Super Bowl ad time and ran "1984" in the 60-second slot it couldn't unload. The rest, as they say, is history. The Macintosh did change the world as Steve Jobs said it would, and Apple is the most valuable company on the planet.
Jeff Jarvis
Jan 3, 2012
The New York Times raised its daily price to $2.50 today. I thought back to the penny press at the turn of the last century and wondered what such a paper would cost today, inflation adjusted. Answer: a quarter.
So, in inflation-adjusted current pennies, The New York Times today costs 10 times more than a newspaper in 1890. Granted, Today’s Times is better than a product of the penny press. But is it worth 10x? Should it cost 10x?
Jun 10, 2010
Many media properties have started to license their own brands in addition to their programs and franchises. This trend has been gaining traction over the past several years as media companies have come to the realization that consumers can and do associate their favorite TV and magazine brands with certain lifestyle or product categories.
Feb 2, 2009
How TV's most expensive commercials scored with USA TODAY's Ad Meter focus groups:
Dec 24, 2008
USA Today has made available its own
application on the Apple App Store, for the iPhone and iPod
touch. Designed and developed in cooperation with Mercury Intermedia of
Brentwood, Tenn., the USA Today app -- which is free --
allows users to browse and read stories from all the newspaper's
print sections: News, Money, Sports, Life, Tech and Travel.
Articles can be shared via e-mail, text message or Twitter, and are
automatically saved for later reading.
Davis Thinking
