Free Republic

For the Chinese, starting in early February, this will be the Year of the Rat. But on Madison Avenue, it's more likely to be the year of the cornered rat. The rise of the Web is forcing ad executives to reinvent how they create ads and even changing the way some ad companies are structured. But until now, few advertisers have spent more than 5% to 10% of their marketing budgets online. With the growth of online video and social networking, ad experts expect that percentage to jump significantly this year. Softness in the economy will also likely drive more...

Woodstock Creator Tells DA That Funds Have Gone Missing A $40 Million Shortfall Where did Norman Hsu get his money? That has been one of the big questions hanging over the prominent Democratic fund-raiser, as reports have surfaced about hundreds of thousands of dollars he made in political donations, plus lavish parties, fancy apartments and a $2 million bond he posted to get out of jail earlier this month. New documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal may help point to an answer: A company controlled by Mr. Hsu recently received $40 million from a Madison Avenue investment fund run...

The United States Marine Corps and JWT are honored to announce that "The Few. The Proud. The Marines." has been nominated BEST SLOGAN for the Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame. More than just a slogan, these three sentences represent what Marines are all about, epitomizing the challenge of becoming (The Few), and the reward of being (The Proud), one of the elite (The Marines). Suffice it to say, Few slogans convey such a Proud tradition. With your help, we now have the opportunity to immortalize these words as an American cultural icon. The Marine Corps will compete with 26...

Sen. John McCain has scored an early victory in the race to line up major financial backers in the New York area — the backyard of Rudolph Giuliani, his potentially strongest rival for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008. McCain has enlisted as one of his national finance co-chairs Lewis Eisenberg, a multimillionaire from New Jersey who served as finance chairman for the Republican National Committee. Eisenberg was sought after by Giuliani, according to a 140-page White House strategy playbook belonging to the former New York City Mayor, which was recently leaked to the press. The playbook outlined Giuliani’s secret...

Mountain View, Calif. IN many ways, Larry Page and Sergey Brin seem an unlikely pair to lead an advertising revolution. As Stanford graduate students sketching out the idea that became Google, the two software engineers sniffed in an academic paper that "advertising-funded search engines will inherently be biased toward the advertisers and away from the needs of consumers." They softened that line a bit by the time they got around to pitching their business to venture capitalists, allowing that selling ads would be a handy safety net if their other, less distasteful ideas for generating revenue didn't pan out. Google...

NEW YORK, June 18 (Reuters) - American companies spend millions of dollars every year on slick advertising to market products from beer to luxury cars, but a new book tells them; Your Marketing Sucks. Marketing expert Mark Stevens believes car makers waste millions of dollars on advertising, sees fast food company McDonald's Corp. (NYSE:MCD - News) as adrift and scoffs at beer ads in his book, to be published by Crown Business July 15. As Stevens sees it, companies fall victim to silky-tongued Madison Avenue ad agencies more interested in winning Clio awards -- the industry's equivalent of the Oscars...

Web sites geared toward gays earn profits, respect SAN FRANCISCO — At the height of the dot-com boom, Lowell Selvin ran an Internet company with a Web site boasting 2.5 million registered users — an audience a survey showed was both trendsetting and unusually loyal. Yet as often as not, Selvin came away empty-handed in meetings with potential investors. Many venture capitalists just weren't ready to stake money on Gay.com. "We got calls from analysts and reviewers saying 'Your metrics are incredible, but there were one or two partners in the room who were fearful, homophobic, or whatever and...

You know the old joke, "I went to a fight the other night and a hockey game broke out." Well, the other night, I tuned into a hockey game and smut broke out, all over. A confession: I don't ever watch 'regular' TV at home. It's not just that the quality of programming is poor (it is), or that I despise the politics of most of those involved in the industry (I do), it is the constant visual and verbal barrage of smut, sleaze and sex – and that's just the commercials. Having grown up in the '60s I am...

QUESTION: Isn't the devil behind all the confusion and fighting over Bible versions? ANSWER: Undoubtedly.