Bloodsucking at LAT

Just look at the past few months. :

 

Great insight into the business workings of the LAT, thanks for checking in.

 

VJ: This is a bad business decision, period. The revenue this piece of paper brought in will not come close to equaling the long-term losses caused by further destruction of the Times' brand identity.
Newspapers did not establish the editorial/advertising divide because of the idealism of their owners. As we know, those owners are piggy even by the lax standards of 21st century crony capitalism. They did so because it was good business to establish their news product as uninfluenced by commercial factors (Obviously, the word "relatively" belongs in that sentence).
Newspapers are kind of like banks. They had a valuable image as somewhat stuffy enterprises. When they attempt to be "edgy" and "think outside the box" they fail.

 

Hey, guys.

I don't give a shit what the advertising folks have to do to help our paper make budget out here in Podunk.

If we suddenly got sponsored by Yoo-Hoo, I'd walk around town drinking the stuff if I had to.

 

Dear PP: The logical extension of your thought is a newspaper with all ads and copy sent in by citizens. Don't think that won't happen.
Try to think about this from the point of view of the customer. Do you have faith in a product where the manufacturer makes it evident they'll do to said product to make a buck?

 

Honestly, I'd like to see some real research into how much this degrades the brand, rather than just assumptions. My guess would be that today's consumers are much more inured to advertising and it doesn't bother them. But without real studies, we're all just whistling in the dark.

 

I doubt the majority of customers care.

 

I'm going to agree with this. I think this is what "we" think. Not sure it's what anyone else thinks.

 

In my day job, I read a great many advertising and marketing journals-both trades like Ad Age and academic ones. It is what I have absorbed from that reading that led me to post what I did. It's not hard research data, but I have been exposed to the opinions of people who do study that data for a living.
In real world terms, what the Times did is not a disaster per se. But it gives LA residents one more moment to think "man, this paper is really going downhill fast!" When you blend this promotion in with the visibly lesser product the paper itself has become, it's a very dangerous mixture.
Sooner or later, someone will figure out how the Internet can support large news organizations. The danger with stuff like this is when that happy day comes, the LA Times will no longer be seen as a source of news worth paying for.

 

I get that the paper is just trying to make much-needed money and generate much-needed ads in any way possible, and, especially these days, can understand and empathize with the concept.

What I hate is that, by doing this, the Times essentially is showing that it has lost -- no, that it is giving up -- its position of power in the community, for a price. It is capitulating to the real or perceived power of Hollywood/the entertainment business/the advertiser, telling them, and the world, that the paper -- and, by extension, its reporters and its content -- can possibly be bought.

That's what happens when there is a price put on its brand that, at the same time, is being undersold by including it in an ad for a business to which the paper has previously been a critic, analyst and watchdog.

HBO realizes this. And now, so will every other advertiser, business and/or government entity.

Honestly, what other real value is being demonstrated to HBO by its even having the Times' logo on a huge full-page/full-section wrap-around ad that already was front-and-center and could be seen before, literally, anything else in the paper, anyway?

Below is another story for everyone to read about the ad:

http://paralleluniverse.msn.com/features/tv/true-blood-newspaper/?gt1=28140

 

Not defending it...And I get where y'all are coming from.
The ad wrapped the entire paper and was included in all rack sales (as a wrap) as part of the deal. Without the banner, there wouldn't have been any LAT identifier in any display that sells the paper (whether at the supermarket or at the racks.)
As part of my ongoing beating of my head against the desk, I too am part of every revenue generating quarum one can think of. And that includes seminars and reviews from Ad Age, J.D. Hill Inc. and AlterNETive consultants.
They're are all great and informative and the quest for Madison Ave. attention is worthwhile. I get it. I understand it. And on here -- and other more formals entities -- the buzz-phrase is "depreciation of the brand."
Well, fuck me. If there isn't a brand to depreciate, what fuck difference does it make?