Filed under: Deals, Products and services, Marketing and advertising

According to the BBC this morning, Irish rock band U2 have signed a 12-year deal with Live Nation, Inc. (NYSE: LYV) on top of the band’s deal with Vivendi’s Universal Music Group. The deal will see the band consolidate previous arrangements and connections with Live Nation and includes merchandising, digital, and branding rights. U2 follows Madonna into an extensive contract with Live Nation, even though record releases were included for Madonna.

Financial arrangements between U2 and Live Nation have not been disclosed, but it would not be surprising to see the band enjoy a similar deal to Madonna, who reportedly signed for $120 million over 10 years. Both deals are part of a larger trend of so-called “360 degree deals”, according to the BBC, where artists “combine their recording, publishing and touring revenues.” U2’s lead singer Bono told the BBC as well that U2 and Live Nation had been in a “relationship for 20 years” so the new deal has been a long time coming.

U2’s move is quite unsurprising given the latest trends for artists, but it should be noted that record label Universal retained a relationship with the band. As previously stated, Madonna’s deal included Live Nation taking charge from Warner Music Group (NYSE: WMG) to release her new albums (after the upcoming release). The fact that Universal was able to keep U2 in some degree means that either a bigger deal for the release of albums was already in place, or the record labels are seeing the shift and making amends to keep artists in traditional outlets.

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Filed under: Starbucks (SBUX), Marketing and advertising

When New York City decided that chain restaurants would have to display calorie data on their menus, Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) seemed nearly excited about complying.

The chain was set to release the calorie data on Monday but has now decided that it will wait until the law goes into effect on April 15th.

The New York Say Restaurant Association is suing on the ground that — get this — requiring stores to post the calorie data violates their free speech rights. Good luck with that one.

It remains to be seen how much of an effect this will have on Starbucks — I’d bet that Starbucks and other upscale eateries will be more effected than fast-food chains because restaurants like McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) are already known to be unhealthy. A lot of people went to theaters to see a movie about how unhealthy it is!

But Starbucks doesn’t have that reputation, and its yuppie customer base could be turned off when it discovers that a Venti Double Chocolaty Chip Frappuccino(R) Blended Cr

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Filed under: Wal-Mart (WMT), Marketing and advertising

In an effort to beef up its image — which has taken a beating from union activists and the media — Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) has sought to portray itself as a company that has a good effect on the country in a broad way.

To that end, the company has been running ads touting the “fact” that it saves that average American family $2,500 per year.

But the National Advertising Division of the Council of Superior Business Bureaus is set to release its finding that the claim is misleading, promoting a statistic “for which the advertiser provided no support and, in fact, conceded that there was none.”

Apparently Wal-Mart pulled that claim out of a study it commissioned that found that its stores emphasis on low prices led to a 3% decline in overall prices. But the BBB found that the “implied claim” that consumers who shop at Wal-Mart will save $2,500 more than comparable families in the same area who don’t was misleading.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that Wal-Mart has used fuzzy math to conjure impressive statistics that can be used to imply things that the data didn’t. Earlier this month, I wrote about the company’s recent claim that “This month, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. will open 81 new stores and clubs across the country, providing jobs for 26,000 associates.”

Of course that statistic didn’t include the jobs that’ll be lost as volume at other stores declines from the force of competition. There’s nothing wrong with that — that’s capitalism. But Wal-Mart’s newfound obsession with its image has tossed the corporate spin machine into high gear, and the company appears to be willing to sacrifice the truth for impressive PR. In the long run, that will hurt it’s credibility, especially with so many critics all too eager to point out any misleading statements.

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Filed under: Analyst reports, Consumer experience, Microsoft (MSFT), Apple Inc (AAPL), Marketing and advertising

According to a new worldwide poll of professionals and students by online magazine brandchannel.com, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is the brand which has the largest impact on consumers and their lives. The readers were asked to state how these brands affected their behavior and view of the world. Microsft (NASDAQ: MSFT) lead the list of brands that consumers most wanted to argue with.

The survey covered people from 107 countries.

While the poll might not be the most scientific one ever made, it does show how Apple has built its image from being a niche Computer company in 2000 to being a provider of critical products for people nearly everywhere. Most of the credit for this probably belongs to the iPod. The product has sold over 140 million units worldwide.

The power of the Apple brand is also behind the reason the company could release the iPhone into a handset market which is already highly competitive and crowded with other, more massive brands.

The critical question for Apple, now that it has won the branding war, is what its next act will be.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

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Filed under: Products and services, Consumer experience, Marketing and advertising, News Corp’B’ (NWS), Media World

As Radiohead prepares to embark on a number of tours to promote In Rainbows, numerous contemporaries have weighed in and offered critical assessments of the way the album was released. In case you don’t remember, In Rainbows was the “little” album that stirred so much trouble after Radiohead decided to self-release it digitally before any physical version was available. It swiftly became the centerpiece of news and comments about the record industry, taking the promotion for the album well beyond the limited nature provided by the band.

A couple of weeks back, Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor told ABC News that Radiohead’s gimmick of self-releasing In Rainbows was insincere since the initial download-copies were such low-quality kbps and didn’t include artwork, despite his admiration about the method and marketing the band did for the album. Furthermore, Reznor does not see the record as opening a new revolution and does not feel that Radiohead should get the credit. Keep in mind that Reznor said these things about Radiohead as he was promoting his new album with NIN, Ghosts I-IV, that was released in the same way, but included better than CD-quality downloads, artwork, and a digital booklet.

Meanwhile, Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins recently told Rolling Stone that he felt the message Radiohead and other bands are sending to young artists was bad because they rely on “gimmicks.” Corgan felt that the In Rainbows release was more about publicity than the music and follows in the same vein as problems that plague many musicians of late, like the publicity that surrounds artists like Britney Spears or Amy Winehouse. Again, Corgan also revealed that future release plans for the Smashing Pumpkins will follow in the footsteps of Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, utilizing digital release and promotion over CD availability.
The fears both Reznor and Corgan have commented are not new, but do indicate that established acts with fanbases are aware that the method is not a plausible one for smaller, less established bands. Still though, these thoughts do limit the possibility that digital promotion and releases cannot be utilized to make listeners and consumers more aware of small artists. This is where tools like News Corporation (NYSE: NWS)’s MySpace can be fundamental. Unfortunately, at the end of the day that method and others like it still use the record industry as a guide to base how music will be distributed.

In the meantime, Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood told Pitchfork Media that Radiohead plan to enter the studio soon and record new material. Whether this means a quick turnaround and follow-up or not is yet to be revealed, but the band seems ready to please fans again, even if contemporaries brand them “insincere” or “publicity” driven.

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Filed under: Marketing and advertising, Burger King Hldgs (BKC)

Burger King Holdings (NYSE: BKC) has been a strong performer since its 2006 IPO, but as McDonalds (NYSE: MCD) has invested aggressively in modernizing its restaurants, Burger King is feeling the pressure to keep up.

Solution: The Whopper Bar. According to the Wall Street Journal(subscription required), Burger King will begin opening a new line of stores this year under that name, offering a wider variety of burgers and a hipper, more Gen Y-oriented atmosphere.

The stores and menu will be smaller but company executives told the Journal that the stores will include “as many as ten types of Whoppers such as the Western Whopper, the Texas Double Whopper and the Angry Whopper, a version topped with spicy onions. One menu sketch has a section called “Pimp Your Whopper,” where patrons can selected from additional toppings like jalapeno peppers, bacon and barbecue sauce.”

The Journal was also told that the company could possibly serve alcohol at some locations.

I like this idea: The Whopper is an extremely strong brand, and putting on the marquee and building a hipper brand around it should work well. Assembling the burgers in view of customers should bolster the company’s image (assuming it’s done in a classy way), and may help the brand appeal to a more affluent demographic turned off by the stigma of “fast food.” Hopefully they’ll open one near me.

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Filed under: Deals, Products and services, Consumer experience, Coca-Cola (KO), PepsiCo (PEP), Marketing and advertising

Just recently, I talked about a transaction involving PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP) and a foreign juice company. Now, it is Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) and a foreign coffee venture that are making some noise.

As Melly Alazraki reported Thursday, Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling and Illycafe SpA put together a joint venture to get some ready-to-drink coffees out on the global playing field. The venture, dubbed Ilko Coffee International, will start distribution of its products in April in ten countries. Coffee doesn’t interest me, but this venture does, since I own shares of Coke. Just like PepsiCo, Coke wants to do all it can to supplement its flagship carbonated soda brands with different beverage categories.

While I don’t like coffee, I know that it is a very popular drink around the world; in some respects, consumers are nearly religious about coffee (and teas, as well). According to Bloomberg, the value of the ready-for-consumption coffee market is $16 billion, and it is focused in the Asian territory. This international scheme is therefore a great way for American shareholders to capitalize on a weak dollar. Many consumer companies these days are being helped out by currency valuations.

I can only envision that this market will grow significantly over time, and that Coca-Cola would be smart to aggressively invest in it and leverage its world-class distribution system to grab as much share as it possibly can. Future growth in case-volume is going to be directly dependent on Coke and its capability to work with its bottlers to efficiently exploit opportunities such as these.

With its blue-chip marketing muscle, I’ve no doubt that Coke will be able to translate many of these kinds of deals, in conjunction with its already deep collection of beverage products, into quality cash flows and further increases in its annual dividend payout, which is the ultimate reason for being a shareholder.

Disclosure: I own shares of Coca-Cola; positions can change at any time.

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Filed under: Google (GOOG), Marketing and advertising

Google’s (GOOG) shares continue to be stuck below $500 where they’ve been since late February. Part of the reason for the fall is that comScore data showed that the number of people who clicked on ads at the huge search engine was weak in January.

It looks like the stock will drop again as “click rates” for Google ads rose only 3% in February when compared with the figures for the same month last year. According to MarketWatch: “Google reported 25% growth in paid clicks in its fiscal fourth quarter ended in December. But comScore data released last month showed flat growth in Google’s paid clicks in January.” Now, investors can ponder another piece of bad news.

The easy answer to the Google data is that a recession is slowing down advertising activity everywhere. Google carries millions of ads in its AdSense program, so it would make sense that it should suffer some fallout.

But, the answer may be more troubling than that. Readers of Google’s search pages might be discovering that the text ads next to the listings are from marketers trying to take advantage of people looking for information by clogging pages with related messages. As more people understand the system of targeting based on search results, fewer are willing to be sucked in by companies trying to reach them due to their behavior.

If the Google system of matching ads to search results is putting its customers off, that would be worse news than the effects of a recession.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

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Filed under: Fun, Internet, Utilities, Productivity, Web services, web 2.0

Facebook just launched a new feature called People You Might Know, which recommends — get ready for the surprise — people that you might now. Wow.

It finds these people based on “your existing connections”, but we don’t know how it decides the order of the list. Our guess: the more people you both know, the higher on the list the person gets put.

We didn’t recognize any of our first four recommendations (pictured above), but the profile we used to test the feature isn’t heavily used. In contrast, Harrison Hoffman at CNet seems to know or have met most of his suggestions. It would make sense that Facebook profiles used more heavily will produce superior results.

[via CNet]

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Filed under: Fun, World wide web, E-mail, Productivity, Google, Freeware, web 2.0

Ever wonder what your email behavior looks like on a graph? Because if you have, we’ve good news for some of you — well, those of you that use Gmail. Google coder Mihai Parparita just released a Python program called Mail Trends, which can show you various graphs of data extracted from your email account. You can examine your email behavior from various angles:

• Distribution of messages by year, month, day, day of week and time of day
• Distribution of messages by size and your top 40 largest messages
• The top senders, recipients and mailing lists you’re on.
• Distributions of senders, recipients and mailing lists over time
• The distribution of thread lengths and the lists and people that result in the longest threads

If you don’t use Gmail, fear not. The plan is to eventually release a version that works with other email services, though it is unknown when that version will see the light of day.

[via Googlified]

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