Your guide to
highlights
from Ad Age
and Creativity
Josh Bernoff writes that
you—yes, you—have the
ability to innovate just like
Apple. And if you don’t do
it, someone else will
figure out how.
BE LIKE APPLE
Eminem’s music publisher has settled its lawsuit against Audi after the automaker aired commercials containing the song “Lose Yourself.” EMINEM, AUDI SETTLE AdAge.com ➜
P&G HIKES AD SPEND
MAGS HOLD GROUND
AdAge.com/digitalnext➜
P&G hiked its world-leading
global ad spending 8%, or
more than $700 million to
$9.3 billion, for the fiscal
year ended June 30,
setting all-time records.
AdAge.com ➜
Many magazines eked out
gains, or at least held their
ground in the first half of
the year, according to the
latest Audit Bureau of
Circulations report.
AdAge.com ➜
Fox-NBC: Program rivals
but promo partners
thanks to NFL, PepsiCo
An unusual deal between‘X Factor,’ Super Bowl
and the beverage giant is creating strange bedfellows
■ BY BRIAN STEINBERG bsteinberg@adage.com
FOX RUNS A PROMOTION tied to an
NBC broadcast, NBC runs ads featuring
the winner of a hot Fox property? Only
the TV’s biggest event and the weight of
one of the world’s largest advertisers
could spawn such an unlikely scenario.
Pepsi will link its sponsorship of
Fox’s “X Factor” this fall to its ads in
NBC’s 2012 Super Bowl broadcast,
according to people familiar with the
issue, meaning Fox and NBC will
essentially promote big-ticket shows
that run on each other’s networks in
order to help a big, mutual client.
Already, NBC has agreed to run a
Pepsi commercial featuring the winner
of Fox’s much-anticipated “X Factor” in
the Peacock’s Feb. 5 broadcast of Super
Bowl XLVI — just hours before it plans
to launch the second season of rival
song contest “The Voice.”
By running the ad, NBC will—
whether explicitly or not—nod to “X
Factor” during the top-rated gridiron
classic, but the commercial will not
include any logos or identifying marks
from the program, or make overt refer-
ences to the show, according to a person
familiar with the matter.
PepsiCo’s
long Super
Bowl
relationship
helped
break down
any
resistance to
the deal.
Between
2001 and
2010, it spent
$170.8M on
the big
game,
according to
Kantar.
See ‘X FACTOR’ DEAL on Page 26
Coca-Cola’s futuristic soda
fountain to get 2012 ad push
Freestyle machine’s 1,500 stores are driving foot
traffic and sales—and sending data back to HQ
■ BY NATALIE ZMUDA nzmuda@adage.com
COCA-COLA FREESTYLE has been generating buzz, sales boosts and foot traffic since tests for the futuristic machine
were first launched three years ago.
Now, as the next-generation soda
fountain reaches a critical mass—it will
be in 80 markets by year’s end—execs
are readying Freestyle’s first marketing campaign.
The fountain serves up 125 different
flavors of soft drinks, flavored waters,
sports drinks and lemonades and sends
usage data, such as what flavors are most
popular at what times of the day, to
Coca-Cola HQ. Already the beverage
giant is analyzing data pouring in from
more than 1,500 machines in restau-
rants including Wendy’s, Burger
King, Taco Mac and Five Guys.
While individual restaurant
customers have done marketing
campaigns using Coca-Cola
assets, the beverage giant is now
working with Ogilvy & Mather
to develop creative concepts for a
2012 marketing campaign.
Sydney Taylor, group director of
Coca-Cola Freestyle consumer
marketing, said that radio, outdoor and digital would likely be
the initial focus of any measured
media. “We needed to be at a certain
threshold to make [a marketing cam-paign] pay off for us, so that once we
Serves up 125
flavors of
beverages
See COCA-COLA on Page 26
WHY 500 CHANNELS MEANS 19
As the FCC considers new rules to grant access, networks stick
■ BY MICHAEL LEARMONTH
mlearmonth@adage.com
FIVE HUNDRED CHANNELS and nothing to watch, unless of course you’re
into pawnshops, weddings, cupcakes or
guys rummaging through attics, barns
or storage units.
It’s an exaggeration, of course, but
at one time the 500-channel cable universe promised a show for every niche;
indeed entire networks for many niches. What cable viewers instead got isn’t
an infinite variety of anything, unless
you consider the infinite (well, 19)
offerings in the pawnshop “genre” that
have hit the dial since “Pawn Stars”
made its debut on History Channel
two years ago. Oh, and cupcakes—lots
of shows about cupcakes. And hoarders. Most recently “Confessions:
Animal Hoarding,” because Animal
Planet couldn’t be left out of the fun.
Among basic cable’s other highlights? Tattoo parlors, dangerous/haz-ardous jobs, human trainwrecks , weddings, real estate and all kinds of things
going down in the swamp (“Hillbilly
Handfishin’,” anyone?).
It’s true that networks have been
ripping each other off since there were
just three of them, and no fewer than
14 Westerns landed on network TV in
the ‘50s and ‘60s, all a twist on the
genre defined by “Gunsmoke.” Indeed,
you could argue that the entire pawnshop oeuvre is no more than a few
twists on the old PBS battle ax
“Antiques Roadshow,” which itself
remains oddly addictive.
“Television has never been a particularly innovative medium; when a
network finds a successful concept,
they clone it over and over and over,”
said David Scardino, entertainment
specialist at RPA, who evaluates programming for Honda.
But the pace at which new programming concepts are copied and
devoured has clearly sped up, and it’s
no secret why: advertising. All cable
networks start out life appealing to a
demographic or psychographic niche,
and cable operators pick up channels to
create the widest possible variety for
their pay-TV offerings. Over time, two
goals become paramount: to get a bigger audience and to get a younger
