Canuckflack

McDonald’s rolled out their Arch Card gift card in style today, launching a major PR and marketing push for a product that’s been in some restaurants for months. The impact of the card on the corporation’s bottom line is immediately measurable:

The stock’s gone up 2.2%, to close at $33.71. That’s something you can email to the Board of Directors tonight. From the limo. Or the helipad.

The cards are being supported by a huge promotional campaign:

“McDonald’s will give away $22 million in promotional Arch Cards starting Tuesday to make a splash, including 5 million $1 cards handed out to Southwest Airlines customers at 61 U.S. airports through Dec. 13 and on board Southwest flights from Dec. 14-28.

Customers at McDonald’s restaurants can receive a $1 Arch Card from Nov. 29 through Dec. 5, while the cards last, with the purchase of Chicken Selects strips or a Premium Chicken Sandwich.” (AP/Chicago Sun-Times)

Does that mean McDos* has customer segmentation data that indicates Southwest fliers are also hamburger afficionados?

Or did they just notice that a lot of the people shown flying Southwest on A&E’s Airline seemed to be the fast food, low taste preference type of consumer?

*(McDos is a french nickname for the burger chain)

Technorati; promo branding public relations

Looks like some newpaper salespeople may be underestimating – or overestimating – their reader per copy number. By relying on an national average RPC* of 2.3, they may be overlooking much more favourable local readership numbers:

“… ABC and NSA … found a wide range in individual newspapers from 1.8 to 4.4 RPC. From this base, 38 daily newspapers confirm around 2.3 RPC — the national average — but 46 papers report a lower RPC and 153 papers show a higher RPC than the national average.

In other words, using 2.3 RPC to arrive at readership is only accurate 16% of the time. In the majority of these cases (65%), using the national RPC “underestimates daily individual newspaper readership by as much as 91%,” according to the report.”(Editor & Publisher)

These numbers might be a source of inspiration for some salespeople and publishers – if Goldman wasn’t forecasting a weak year ahead for the industry:

“The weak ad environment for newspapers has caused Goldman to scale back its 2006 growth forecast to 3.5 percent from 4.0 percent. … national ad growth would once again be weakest at 1.0 percent, followed by retail, 2.5 percent, and classifieds at 3.6 percent. The bright spot continues to be online newspaper revenues, which are projected to grow an impressive 25 percent in 2006. Despite this, online will still represent 5.0 percent of total newspaper revenues.(MediaPost)

Well, at least things are looking up for online and classifieds. Or should I say Craigslist?

*”newspaper specific readership estimate divided by paid circulation equals newspaper specific RPC”

Today we hear from a different retail species: the frustrated movie theatre employee:

“To the mothers who ask me if the crappy ass kid film you are seeing is good…you know it’s not. You’re just toying with me now. Spy Kids is not good. What do you want me to say? It has the beginnings of a resigned Felligni, but really the diplomatic pace is more akin with such classic tales as seen from Weir? No, I’m sorry. Even if I were to say “Yeah, it’s really good” the words from my mouth would burn a hole in my very soul. Don’t ask. Just don’t ask. You know the reason you’re going is to shut your kids up or buy their love. That’s all. That’s it. Suck it up. It’s very awkward, and I dislike lying.

Yeah, it’s great! And think about it, I’m an early twentysomething guy. There would most likely be something wrong with me if I got really excited about the movie your kid can’t stop hopping up and down about. OH MY GOD! Sharkboy changed my life in ways I can’t describe. Really. Except I’m lucky if I remember the name of the film you’re seeing. You just want validation. You want me to tell you that that thirty bucks you just spent wasn’t for nothing. Well it was and you’re just going to have to live with that. Next! “(Craigslist)

Now, in the past I’ve written some internal communications materials related to restructuring, and the “Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Adobe�s �FAQ� Regarding Their Acquisition of Macromedia” from Daring Fireball is accurate – and funny.

Q: What happens to the Macromedia brand?

Adobe A: Adobe recognizes the strong equity of the Macromedia brand. That said, it makes great business sense for a company the size of the combined company to align behind a single corporate brand. Over time, Macromedia products will transition to the Adobe brand. Adobe expects to keep and continue investing in key Macromedia product brands.

Translated A: The Macromedia brand is dead.

Thanks to Doc for the pointer.

There’s a hint of Harlequin romance novel in how the folks at the NASA Earth Observatory have described the latest iceberg to threaten Antarctica:

…At 122 kilometers (76 miles) in length by 28 kilometers (17 miles) in width, the bullying iceberg charged with great momentum towards the ice tongue, threatening to shatter the floating extension of the Davis Glacier …

In the weeks that followed, the iceberg rotated free, until finally it began to drift past the ice tongue into the Ross Sea. Just when it looked as if Drygalski might escape a collision, B-15A delivered a glancing blow, knocking the end of the ice tongue loose …

Is Tony Blair embracing the spirit of moblogging, or is he instinctively mimicking the professional athletes who whip out ready digicams to capture those special moments? At a campaign stop yesterday, several sea cadets instructed the Prime Minister on the use of a cameraphone. He then took a self-portrait of the group. At left, they examine the result.

And what about the photo opp itself? The one the actual, paid, photographers were covering?

“As a work of symbolism, it was a masterpiece, combining the underlying Olympic theme of the day with smiling children, a faint undertone of militarism – sea cadets being the closest Mr Blair will presumably ever go towards a George Bush-style appearance on board an aircraft carrier – and, in the cameraphone, technological progress. “He seemed a lot friendlier in person than he does on the television,” one of the cadets, Anthony Marland, 15, said later.” (Guardian, r.r.)

The AFP picture accompanying the Guardian story is much more compelling – but is copyrighted.

Credit for the photo above goes to Tony Blair’s Campaign Diary.

And I don’t mean the usual suspects cleanly edited by business-minded professionals: I mean the quirky and the amusing, the slightly odd and the informative. Something that stretches your normal listening habits.

Being old enough to remember a time before the ‘net (the 80s), I’ve developed two strategies for finding new and interesting radio programming:

The Random Radio Dial: For some reason, I am frequently awake at 4 or 5 in the morning. If the sky is clear and distant weather patterns are relatively stable, I can pick up distant radio stations on my AM dial. That means hours listening to Curtis and Kuby on WABC, Todd Wright AllNight on ESPN Chicago, even the monotonous WSB newsradio in Atlanta.

This strategy has some fundamental weaknesses, however. You can break the knob on the radio trying to dial in a long distance mono broadcast. The quality of AM radio today is a real damper as well. Why do all newscasters sound like they graduated from the Generic MidWestern White Guy School of Broadcasting, and why are they all reading the same AP morning hilites package? Also, relying on solar flares and rain patterns in the Carolinas is no way to program your audio habits.

The University/College Radio Station: The low power solution to the media oligopoly choking local radio markets. Sure, if you live more than ten blocks from campus, you may have to extend your radio antenna – out onto the roof and down the rain gutter. Then there are the endless requests for “listener support” and more volunteer help.

Oh – and the hosts are uniformly loopy. They may be experts in their field, but they drink coffee between sentences, make impromptu decisions to play the entire B side of Zappa’s Sheik Yerbouti to cover a run to McDonald’s – and then eat their Big Mac while conducting a phone interview with an agricultural reform activist speaking from a payphone in Poughkeepsie.

And who has the time to continually mark up the broadcast schedule (printed on thin newsprint in the back of the local alternative monthly) to reflect all the guest hosts, schedule changes, show cancellations (after one too many lengthy and beer-induced dead air episodes) and special benefit concerts?

Trying to reproduce this random subscription pattern has taxed my ipodder software – and transferred about 300 meg of lame programming to my hard drive. Thankfully, the pool of podcasts is still shallow enough that a tiptoe through Google is all it really takes – for now.

Have I mentioned how much I enjoy the Guardian’s minute-by-minute accounts of European football? A regular group of Guardian staffers sitting in the news room, watching BBC or Sky coverage of the match on a 14 inch TV – then relaying their acerbic and/or witty comments to dozens of readers around the globe through a continually updated page on the Guardian website.

Key to the accounts, however, are the constant interruptions from readers with their own opinion of the match, the staffer, or the weather in Milan. It’s football coverage like you would find in a pub.

And many of the observations are knee-bucklingly funny, like these two from Georgina Turner’s coverage of last week’s Man U – Italy match:

24 mins: “How does the crowd sound,” Eleanor Giles wants to know. Intoxicated, in a word: there’s a pretty good atmosphere. Things are just starting to settle down for United, but their forward play bears a vague resemblance to pigeons flying into glass buildings, at times.

54 mins: Has there been some kind of mass release-into-the-community today? It seems the entire sex offenders register is logged onto this game tonight. Huge Bridget Jones pants, no picture, now bugger off.

Or how about these from Barry Glendenning’s report on the Barcelona – Chelsea game:

6 mins: Jose Mourinho is looking very agitated on the bench and is scribbling away in his little blue notebook. Perhaps he’s writing a song, or has just thought of another superlative with which to describe himself in his post-match press conference.

15 mins: … It’s worth bearing in mind that perma-tanned bottle-blond Anders Frisk is reffing, so he likes to flash the cards around in order to get himself on the television.

18 mins: … I think the only thing Jose could do that would surprise anyone in England at this stage is to loudly declare that he’s not quite as competent a manager as Peter Reid or Gerard Houllier while walking around dressed in sackcloth and ashes and ringing a big bell.

And here’s Barry commenting on the quality of feedback flooding his in-box:

Most of what I’ve seen of Liverpool this season has been as unsightly as what’s left of Hunter S Thompson’s head, but any time I suggest that they’re anything less than wonderful I get hordes of angry Scousers sending in emails accusing me of being a Manchester United fan or a “cockney loving football newbie prick” (thanks for that Stephen Horner).

Now – just imagine if you could entertain a conversation like that with your local paper? Immediate praise, logical reinforcement or criticism as they publish – that’s what frightens the old guard hacks.

If your client truly trusted your judgement and expertise in generating publicity and media coverage, you too would be able to convince them to build something as whimsical as the yarn bus.

In February, Denys Arcand’s The Barbarian Invasions took home the Academy Award for best foreign language movie. Notwithstanding the oustanding acting, direction, cinematography and overall artistry, some part of Arcand’s success among the Academy can be attributed to a careful marketing and public relations campaign.

Canada takes steps to promote its cultural industries at every opportunity – and these efforts can help push the candidacy of a masterpiece like The Barbarian Invasions for honours in Cannes, Berlin and Hollywood.

“The Oscars are like a political campaign. It’s like getting elected as the mayor of a small town where nobody knows you. A lot needs to go into it,” Denise Robert, the movie’s producer and Arcand’s wife, told the National Post this weekend. (behind a stupid subscriber wall)

Telefilm Canada (a federal film funding agency), the Quebec provincial government, and Canadian diplomats abroad worked together to get out the vote. Components of their campaign included: