From AMERICAN NEWSPEAK at http://www.scn.org/news/newspeak/ Celebrating cutting edge advances beyond Orwell's 1984 Written by Wayne Grytting

Special Achievements in Youth Outreach

Advertising Age recently saluted the "Marketing 100," the key ad executives whose ideas have helped build strong brands. Prominent amongst this select group was Victor Lindsley, who has navigated Newport Cigarette's "Alive With Pleasure" ad campaign for the Compton Partners. Newport has slowly risen to become our second most purchased cigarette thanks to its commitment to maintaining high ad spending while other tobacco producers have had "waffling ad budgets." But in our quote of the month, Ad Age goes on, citing industry analyst Roy Barry, to praise the fact that "Newport has a younger smoker profile than Kool, an elusive but important growth factor in tobacco marketing." Just how young that smoker profile was, they didn't say. But it would seem logical, the younger the profile, the more Ad Age would be singing praises... A further note, Seagram's Whiskey also won accolades for the "boldness" of its "groundbreaking" media campaign. (AA 6/30)

Newspaper Cooperation

While many complain the boundary between news and advertising is collapsing, others give awards for bridging the gap. The Newspaper Association of America and Advertising Age teamed up to present this year's Newspaper Marketing Achievement Award to the Seattle Times. Faced with increased competition in their eastern suburbs, the Times formed an interdepartmental team to meet the challenge. News reporters worked with marketing and advertising people to make their news coverage more relevant to the paper's marketing needs. Reporters not only wrote more Eastside news stories, but they created and participated in Eastside community events. Said Times corporate marketing director, Robert C. Blethen, "It's fairly unusual to have the involvement of the news department to go after a challenge like this...but that is how we are going about solving problems." We can hardly wait to see the next marketing challenge the Times news department will choose to "involve" itself in. (AA 7/21)

The Sucker Born Every Minute Dept.

Now that bottled water has become a fixture in yuppie households and a $4 billion market, a number of cities, like Houston and Kansas City, are planning to take advantage of the marketing for bottled water by bottling their tap water and selling it. Thanks to liberal federal regulations, Houston tap water could even be sold as "mountain fresh" or "glacier pure," according to Jenny Lane of the International Bottled Water Association. She reports, "Some of these terms are marketing terms" (and so are not to be taken confused with real words, I presume). In fact, 35% of bottled water on our store shelves is just municipal water run through a filter. For example, Yosemite Waters comes from a well in Fullerton, California, near Los Angeles. But thanks to advertising, we can all believe it comes from pure Rocky Mountain streams as we pay over a dollar a quart at the check out stand. (NYT 8/6)

Strike Harms Small Businesses

The strike by United Parcel Service workers, waged regardless of consequences to others, has strangled one of America's vital industries. Erotic film makers have not been able to get their products to our nation's X-rated movie houses and video stores. Ultimate Pictures, for example, has been unable to deliver "Sex Patrol." Fortunately, other producers like VCA, had contingency plans to meet orders for their newly released "New Wave Hookers 5," using more expensive transport companies. But VCA President Russell Hampshire exploited the situation superbly. "We tell customers they have to order more," he said, "because some transport companies have a minimum weight for shipments." But Ultimate Pictures is finding the lack of cash flow is affecting the production of their next features, which cost up to $180,000 to produce. Says producer Patrick Garbiras, "We were starting to cast for the next one, but now we're going to hold off. I don't want to spend all this money on a film that can't be distributed." Hear that, UPS. (AP 8/7)

Special thanks this week to Sam Windholz and Eric Manzer. Newspeak is posted weekly and you can get on a mailing list for it by e-mailing wgrytt@blarg.net and telling why your psychographics are right.