Tying Your Credit Card And Web Activity Together? Priceless.

Posted on October 28, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Forget the merger of Amazon and Google into Googlezon.

Here’s a combo that has more immediate potential for harm.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Using Credit Cards to Target Web Ads

The two largest credit-card networks, Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., are pushing into a new business: using what they know about people’s credit-card purchases for targeting them with ads online.

Their plans, if implemented, would represent not only a technological feat—tying people’s Internet lives with shopping activities—but also an erosion of the idea of anonymity on the Web. It’s an effort by the two companies to profit by selling access to the insights they gather about people with every credit-card transaction.

The Journal also provides this helpful graphic:

MasterCard says the pitch it made to advertising agencies earlier this year was just “exploratory conversations,” and that it “now is pursuing a plan to sell marketers an analysis of anonymous, aggregated data sorted into marketing “segments,” such as people with a high propensity to be interested in international travel.”

Regardless, MediaPost reports that the alarms have sounded on Capitol Hill, where Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) has contacted both Visa and MasterCard to ask about their intentions.

Both, of course, say they’re honorable.

Originally posted on the New! Improved! Sneak ADtack!

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It’s Good To Live In A Two-Daily Town (Occupy Boston Herald Edition)

Posted on October 28, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

The Boston Herald is totally preoccupied with the Occupy Boston protestor, as its 141 articles found search results indicate. And one story the feisty local tabloid absolutely owns first emerged in Thursday’s edition:

Occupy Boston expels 2 finance team members

Occupy Boston has booted two members of its finance team after accusations they spent money without permission and tried to set up a fundraiser with the city teacher’s union.The group identified the accused in a blog posting and in an apologetic letter to the teacher’s union. The Herald is withholding their names because they have not been charged.

(Somewhere in the Herald archives is a boffo doctoral thesis on the paper’s naming policy, don’t you think?)

Today brought the standard-issue follow up:

Occupy outcast fights back

An outcast Occupy Boston member labeled as a thief on the movement’s website is denying accusations he spent $400 in donations without permission and tried to set up a fundraiser with the city’s teachers union.

The accused, one of two people booted from the movement’s finance group, said he wants his name cleared and has begun mediation with his former fellow demonstrators.

“It doesn’t sit well with me,” the man, whose name the Herald is withholding because he has not been charged criminally, said by telephone last night. “People are going to be held accountable for their actions. If they don’t come to some sort of resolution, people are going to be held accountable for their actions.

The outcast goes on to say he wants his name that we don’t know cleared.  What we do know is that one of the Occupyniks “identified the other person booted from the group as the accused’s unpaid assistant.”

Protestors have unpaid assistants? Doesn’t that sort of run counter to the whole I am the 99% thing?

Just asking.

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A World’s Serious (2011 Edition)

Posted on October 28, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Well that was one for the ages, no?

The hardworking staff will leave the play-by-play of the St. Louis Cardinals’ knee-buckling victory in Game 6 of the World Series to others and go straight to the color commentary:

• Twice Fox sportscaster Joe Buck uttered those fateful words, “and the Texas Rangers are one strike away.”

• Twice they suddenly weren’t.

• Twice the Cardinals came from two runs down to tie the game.

• Twice they had the winning run on third and failed to bring him home.

• Twice local-boy-done-good David Freese came through in the clutch: two-run triple in the 9th, walkoff homer in the 11th.

• Twice as nice: Game 7 tomorrow night.

• Bonus twofer, via the AP’s Mike Fitzpatrick:

As Freese’s shot cleared the center field fence, Fox broadcaster Joe Buck reprised the famous call by his late father, Jack, on Kirby Puckett’s homer to win Game 6 of the 1991 World Series for Minnesota.

“We will see you tomorrow night!”

Nice tribute.

(Ring Lardner World’s Serious tribute here.)

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Arianna’s Adventures In Bizarro World

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Earlier this year the hardworking staff noted that two Democratic Party apparatchiks – Peter Daou and James Boyce – had filed a lawsuit against Arianna Huffington, accusing the Blogeteria Queen of stealing the idea for the Huffington Post from them back in 2004.

From the February, 2011 edition of Vanity Fair:

Daou and Boyce say that they were the ones who conceived of “a Democratic equivalent of the Drudge Report”—a shorthand description of what the Huffington Post is all about—and called it http://www.fourteensixty.com (for the number of days between presidential elections). According to their 15-page November 14, 2004, memorandum about “1460,” which Boyce gave Huffington before the December 3 meeting, the core objective of the Web site was to “use the potential of the Internet to the fullest extent possible to continue the momentum started during the [2004 presidential] campaign and re-organize the Democratic Party from the outside in, not the inside out.” Daou and Boyce say that they presented their general thoughts about 1460 at the December 3 meeting.

Arianna huffed back in an email to Daou and Boyce:

We never entered into any partnership or other agreement with you—either written or oral—concerning ownership of the Huffington Post. During all these years, you never shared in any financial obligation or risk relating to the Huffington Post. You never participated in any kind of management at the Huffington Post. You never shared in or asked for any financial or management information. Hardly a partnership.

Huffington subsequently told Politico, “We have now officially entered into Bizarro World.”

She has also officially entered the next stage of the lawsuit. From paidContent.org:

Two politicos who sued Arianna Huffington and her partner for stealing their idea for the Huffington Post will get to go forward after a New York judge refused to throw out the lawsuit . . .

Huffington and co-founder Ken Lerer filed to dismiss the suit but state judge Charles Ramos ruled yesterday that the plaintiffs could continue with their claim under a New York law that allows people to sue if someone steals an idea that is both novel and concrete.

The Huffington Post is both, the judge ruled, based in part on Huffington’s 2006 statement to Playboy that “There’s a tremendous advantage in being the first with something .. We were the first hybrid of news and group blog.”

The judge actually tossed seven of the eight claims the plaintiffs filed. Whether the remaining might precipitate a settlement remains to be seen.

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Scott Brown: I’m Not Oily

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Yesterday the hardworking staff noted the $1.9 million (according to Roll Call) ad campaign the League of Conservation Voters has launched against Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown (R-Is The Truck Gassed Up?) over his environmental record.

To refresh your memory:

 

Not surprisingly Brown has has stepped into the tree-hugger crowd,  posting a detailed defense of his voting record (Fighting Back with Facts) on his campaign website.

His video deconstruction of the LCV attack ad:

 

And his verbal dismissal of the LCV attack:

The League Of Conservation Voters (LCV) is a partisan organization whose goal is electing Democratic candidates. During the 2010 election cycle, the group spent $5.5 million in independent expenditures – 98% of which went toward aiding Democratic candidates. In the final weeks of the 2010 special election in Massachusetts, they spent $350,000 attacking Scott Brown.

Beyond their partisan nature, the specific claims in this ad are extremely misleading. The votes cited in the ad were bipartisan in nature; in all instances, Senator Brown had the same position as multiple Democratic Senators who believed that the votes would have been job killers. Last month, even President Obama came out against new proposed regulations from the EPA, citing the nation’s weak economy.

No response yet on LCV’s website.

We report. You deride.

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Let The $4 Billion Rumpus Begin! (Rick Perry Real TV Spot Edition)

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

After scaling a series of misleading videos out onto the Internet (like the drive-by Misleading, which neatly lives up to its name), Rick Perry has launched an actual paid ad campaign on TV.

 

Transcript of the ad (which is getting a $175,000 media buy in Iowa according to Politico Playbook):

As president, I’ll create at least two-and-a-half million new jobs. And I know something about that. In Texas, we’ve created over 1 million new jobs while the rest of the nation lost over 2 million. I’ll start by opening American oil and gas fields. I’ll eliminate President Obama’s regulations that hurt other sources of domestic energy, like coal and natural gas. That’ll create jobs, and reduce our reliance on oil from countries that hate America. I’m Rick Perry, and I approve of this message.

As MSNBC’s First Read has pointed out, that’s only 52,000 jobs a month, making Perry’s promise of 2.5 million jobs in four years sort of a lock.

Maybe he thought voters wouldn’t do the math. Division, after all, is his department.

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New York Times Op-Id Columnists

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Compare and contrast in clear idiomatic English:

Joe Nocera’s New York Times op-ed on Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography, and Times Op-It Girl Maureen Dowd’s take.

Nocera’s piece is all about what Isaacson was unable to accomplish (“In ‘Steve Jobs,’ Walter Isaacson has recounted a life — a big, sprawling, amazing life. It is a serious accomplishment. What remains for future biographers is to make sense of that life.”)

Dowd’s piece, by contrast, is a juicy jangle of the buzzy bits.

Talk among yourselves.

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League of Conservation Voters: Brown Out

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Scott Brown’s gone to Washington. And something’s gone horribly wrong.

That’s the opening line of this TV spot just launched by the League of Conservation Voters:

 

The rest of the script:

Brown sided with big oil — taking thousands from oil companies just weeks before he voted to keep their special tax breaks. And Brown voted repeatedly against protecting our environment and public health. No wonder Brown got a zero rating from the League of Conservation Voters. Tell Senator Brown enough’s enough. Ask him to support the “Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act.”

The ad has already caught the attention of Time.com, not to mention Hillary Chabot in Brown’s house organ, the Boston Herald:

Targeting the famous pickup truck

It was only a matter of time.

U.S. Sen. Scott Brown’s historic underdog win made his blue-collar pick up truck a national iconic symbol of his common man appeal. So it’s only fair that the truck takes center stage in the most recent attack ad against the Republican.

The League of Conservation Voters launched an advertising campaign today on cable and network channels in the Boston area. I saw the ad on WHDH Channel 7 this morning.

The ad features the truck zooming along while the driver — presumably the Wrentham Republican – tosses trash out the window into a river while his famed vehicle leaks oil.

“Scott Brown came to Washington portraying himself as a moderate, but his zero percent LCV environmental score proves he’s been anything but as a Senator,” said Gene Karpinski, LCV President, in a statement. “It’s past time that Senator Brown started voting to protect public health, instead of polluters.”

There’s also this from Elizabeth Warren house organ Blue Mass Group.

Nothing yet from Brown’s campaign website, but give it time.

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Correction o’ the Day

Posted on October 25, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

From Monday’s Boston Globe (pay up, yes?):

Editor’s note: A story in yesterday’s Arts section on visiting New York museums for free omitted information on the museums’ addresses and free hours. It can be found on Page 2 in today’s “g” section.

(Costly Globe info about free museums here.)

Talk about burying the leads . . .

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Product Place-mint In New Jason Reitman Film

Posted on October 25, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

From excellent Sneak ADtacknaut Jeff Francis:

[L]ast night I saw a secret screening of the new movie directed by Jason Reitman (Up In The Air). I thought of you and your Sneak Adtack site. The movie, “Young Adult,” contains excessive product placement, which made a lot of sense once I realized the director. However, where “Up In The Air” seems to use product placements that make sense in the plot of the movie, this movie crowbars just about every fast food restaurant possible into the scenes (Burger King, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell). Diet Coke and Maker’s Mark get their plugs as well as Mini Cooper, VW and Jeep. Even Staples gets a plug. In fact, there is one scene where the main character is driving down the street and there is about 30 seconds of close ups of the actress (Charlize Theron) that switch to business signs (i.e. zoom in on the Staples sign) and back and forth. It was pretty gratuitousness. Oddly enough, the movie is about woman who writes young adult novels, yet there is no PP for Barnes & Noble or any other bookstore–maybe they just couldn’t find any that still exist.

There was a Q&A with the director, writer (Diablo Cody) and one of the actors (Patton Oswalt) after the showing. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get passed the fanboys to ask a question about product placements. Also, the people I was with were very much opposed to me asking a question that didn’t include falling over myself to compliment the filmmakers.  Anyway, it was a pretty terrible movie, which made looking for placements more exciting than watching the movie.

I guess they are taking the movie on a tour of the country…don’t know if they are planning to come to Boston–the Coolidge would probably be the venue–but it might be worth paying attention for it. From what they said last night, this is the main way they are trying to promote the movie–touring the country with free screenings and Q&A sessions and then hoping the people who see it advertise for them on FB, Twitter etc.

Hell, there are four product placements in the two-minute trailer alone:

 

Note to Jason Reitman: Dial it back, wouldya?

Note to Jeff’s friends: Get some backbone, wouldya?

Originally posted on the New! Improved! Sneak ADtack!

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