Madison & Vine
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Advance Praise for Madison & Vine “A superb analysis of the intersection of Madison and Vine. Donaton thoroughly explores it in a concise, well-documented style. This convergence is the future financial model of the entertainment and advertising industries.” —Mark Burnett, Creator/Executive Producer of “The Apprentice” and “Survivor” “Scott Donaton does more than lay out a road map of the future. He makes you smell the sweat on the upper lip of every advertising executive trying to save his bacon in the scary, dangerous intersection of our great- est cultural forces—advertising and the entertainment media that helps this nation sell itself to itself. This book explicates the inexplicable, sure, but it also fills your imagination with the metallic taste of fear that grips the buyer, the agent, the programming executive whose next car could be a used Kia if they don’t figure out what the hell is going on. A word to those who want some action in this crazily converging techno- centric world: read this book or be left behind.” —Stanley Bing, bestselling author of What Would Machiavelli Do? and FORTUNE magazine columnist “Scott Donaton was one of the first to call attention to this space and now he’s written the definitive book about the mutual benefit that happens when filmmak- ers and marketers collaborate.” —Harvey Weinstein, President, Miramax Film Corp. “Unique and insightful, Scott provides an insider’s look into the evolving business models of entertainment and advertising. Madison & Vine has forced execs to reconsider the power of branded entertainment and serves as a guide for all involved to wake up and create strategically streamlined marketing programs that make sure dollars deliver on ROl. That, or be left behind.” —Donny Deutsch, Chairman and CEO, Deutsch Inc. “Scott Donaton knows the most important thing there is to know about the media business and that’s what’s happening to the advertising business. The traditional advertising model, which has for so long ruled the media, is deconstructing—in fact it’s blowing up in our faces. This is such a frightening development that almost nobody has been willing to think about it— except Scott Donaton. In this sharp, witting, and pre- scient book, he imagines the future of our business. It’s a new game.” —Michael Wolff, author, Autumn of the Moguls, and Vanity Fair columnist “If you don’t work in the so-called media businesses, this book is a sharp, lucid, knowledgeable and enter- taining primer on one large swath of the near future— that is, why and how entertainment and advertising are being transformed (and in some cases rendered obso- lete) by new technologies and new sensibilities. And if you do work in the media businesses, this book might help you figure out what you ought to do with the rest of your life before it’s too late.” —Kurt Andersen, bestselling author, editor, and host of NPR’s Studio 360 Madison & Vine Why the Entertainment and Advertising Industries Must Converge to Survive Scott Donaton McGraw-Hill New York Chicago San Francisco Lisbon London Madrid Mexico City Milan New Delhi San Juan Seoul Singapore Sydney Toronto Copyright © 2004 by Crain Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. 0-07-145844-1 The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: 0-07-143684-7. All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners. 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If you’d like more information about this book, its author, or related books and websites, please click here. For Molly, Jack and Liam This page intentionally left blank. For more information about this title, click here Contents PREFACE ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv 1 Out of Order 1 2 If It’s Broke, Fix It 13 3 Heyer Calling 25 4 Everything Old Is New Again 39 v vi Contents 5 A VCR on Steroids 49 6 Dial It Up 61 7 TiVo’s Future 75 8 Movie Madness 83 9 Producing an Answer 89 10 BMW’s Powder Keg 95 11 Under the Hood 107 12 Stop the Music 119 13 Change That Tune 129 14 Driving Miles 137 Contents vii 15 Crossing the Line 147 16 The Connectors 157 17 Proof Positive 173 18 Six Simple Rules 177 EPILOGUE 183 NOTES 187 INDEX 195 This page intentionally left blank. Preface My earliest words on the convergence of entertain- ment and advertising were harsh ones. It was a topic I had brushed against a couple of times in my column, but never as directly as in April 2002, when I wrote a piece in Advertising Age that carried the headline, “When Advertising Mixes with Hollywood, Cheap Alloy Results.” “Marketers are hot on the idea of product place- ment,”I wrote.“They’ve convinced themselves that giv- ing it a new name (product integration) qualifies it as a creative concept rather than a recycled device from TV’s earliest days. In assuming control over storylines and media content, their motivation is not to have a more engaging dialogue with consumers; it is the fear that personal-video recorders will make 30-second ads ix Copyright © 2004 by Crain Communications, Inc. Click here for terms of use. x Preface obsolete. How do you connect to consumers who give you a brusque technological brush-off?” “Something is missing from the equation in the new marketing math: the consumer,” I also noted. The intention of this viewpoint piece was not to devalue the concept of alliances between the advertising industry and entertainment companies. Rather, the piece was intended as a warning to those who were headed into the space—to alert them that they couldn’t afford to lose sight of the audience’s needs in trying to satisfy their own. The media revolution that was underway was all about the empowerment of consumers. Already savvy and able to quickly detect blatant attempts at manipu- lation, they now also had the power to banish such fare, to easily reject any ads, movies, TV shows, or music offerings that seemed designed more to sell product than to entertain or inform. The column was also a challenge to the enter- tainment and advertising industries to be more creative in their responses to the immense changes that were ripping through their business models. Many early attempts at “product integration” were not organic in any way; they were uninspired, sore-thumb product placements that spoiled the TV shows and films in which they appeared. The advertising business was fac- ing incredible change, and its initial response didn’t seem worthy of the challenge. To my surprise, some readers interpreted the col- umn not as a caution but as a blatant rejection of the intersection of advertising and entertainment.