ChasNote

ChasNote’s Asia bureau chief passed through India over the holidays and was impressed with the indomitable persistence of the advertising sales community there.

Ads were everywhere, from the front page of the Times of India — Yahoo’s ad was the front page; news started on Page Two that day — to private cement fences in rural towns, like this one for Vodafone in Alleppey in the southern state of Kerala. Made me feel that Times Square isn’t taking full advantage of all its opportunities.

Among SAI’s list of 22 magazines kicking butt amid the recession, two of the titles are men’s body building mags: Muscle & Fitness and Flex. That surprised me….

I love this South African print ad for Windolene glass cleaner: “Brings out the best in glass.” From Ads of the World.

Those were the good old days, eh? When you could pitch cigarettes as the healthy alternative, and differentiate yourself from the competition by calling your tobacco “toasted”?

(Thanks, Digg!)

From PaidContent:

“The talks are no where near the formal stage and the idea for a cross-publisher ad net doesn’t seem to be serious at this point. There has been one round of preliminary discussions about the ad net idea and there’s the possibility of another, but nothing has been set yet. So take this with a large grain of salt.

“According to one unidentified Ad Age source, the ad net push is more a wish and expression of frustration than an actual framework. ‘We’re getting killed by ad networks’ Ad Age’s source said. ‘A lot of companies feel like, as consumer companies with a flood of online content, if we could just create some scale on our own and sell across it, we can get a lot better ad rates.’”

I hope it’s not serious, because I like magazines and magazine companies, and I hope they quickly develop ideas to save themselves. This is not one of those ideas. Some of my best friends are ad networks and all, but they won’t save publishing. Ad networks do not drive rates up, and, while ad networks are a nice supplement to other revenue streams, by themselves they cannot support the kind of high-quality, expense-intensive content that differentiates traditional publishers from commodity news.

There’s something magical and irrationally valuable about the content in Time or Vogue or Sports Illustrated. There are other sources of world news, models in fashionable clothes and in-depth sports coverage (respectively), but most of us are convinced these publications do it better. Maybe it’s the quality of the writing and photography, maybe it’s the access they have to their subjects, and maybe it’s just the fact that we’ve grown up associating those names with leadership in those content areas. Whatever the contributing factors, these magazines have built brands with readers around the world. It’s hard to explain the connection readers have to those magazines and the content within them. It’s subtle work. What’s made the business of publishing work is the ability of those magazines — their publishers and sales reps — to explain that magic to marketers, who are then willing to pay premium advertising rates to insert themselves in a premium conversation.

When you bundle up a few hundred magazine brands into a bundled-sell ad network, the “premium conversation” discussion — as well as the premium rates — goes out with the bath water.

Ad revenues at Conde Nast will down by $1 billion from 2008, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. More at SAI.

From SF Gate:

“Conde Nast Publications is closing Gourmet, the nation’s oldest food magazine, and three other money-losing titles as the high-end publisher tries to weather a devastating advertising slump.

“In addition to Gourmet, which had a circulation of 980,000 last year, the publisher is closing Modern Bride, Elegant Bride and Cookie, a parenting magazine. Earlier in the year it killed publication of Portfolio, a business magazine, and Domino, a lifestyle title.”

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(Thanks, Nippy!)

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I want to win a street that I can rename @ChasNote!

Above is a street in Palestine named after the Twittter handle of a non-profit patron. That and other examples of offline extensions of social-media ad campaigns at urlesque. ???? ????? ??????? ???

Quite a headline from Silicon Alley Insider. From the story:

“Michael Jackson tributes and book-a-zines have generated $55 million in additional newsstand sales for magazine publishers, providing one bright spot, however somber, amid widespread newsstand declines so far this year.

“‘Based on our estimates, we’re at about almost $67 million in Michael Jackson product,’ said Gil Brechtel, president-CEO of the Magazine Information Network, often called MagNet, which tracks data from wholesalers and retailers.”

Every time we get together — at ChasNote Tweetups, ChasNote smart mobs, etc — you all tell me you want more coverage of shoe advertising. Well, here you go.

Gabor: Fits Perfectly. And 29 other great print ads for shoes at Soft@lize.