Monday, March 07, 2011

That 'unsinkable' ship was once a brand, too

"Gannett: Repainting the deck chairs
on the Titanic."

-- Blogger Mark Potts, co-founder of WashingtonPost.com, in a post today where he writes about the untold cost of Corporate's much-ridiculed branding campaign: "Those are dollars that could have been used to keep Gannett's staffers from being furloughed, or to invest in interesting innovations and startups, or even to hire a few more reporters at the chain's staff-strapped papers."

Earlier: Stripped to a flying gas can, we start the final leg

5 comments:

  1. Based on an interview that Craig Dubow has just given to The Wall Street Journal, I believe this entire corporate brand campaign is costing many, many millions of dollars.

    Question: When does a "material" expense translate into a "material event" requiring SEC disclosure?

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  2. Jim: The following is from that The Deal piece you reposted earlier:

    "Company must raise $400 million between now and 2011 in a market where many bondholders would refer default."

    What ever happened? Was the magazine wrong?

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  3. Unless I'm mistaken, the company raised a bunch of that last year. Q3, maybe?

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  4. Am I hearing Harry Chapin in the background singing "I'm in the dance band on the Titanic playing Ne'er my God to Thee?"

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  5. Aside from The Farm's fee for taking boilerplate corporate branding and inserting the word Gannett - and advertising in other people's media - there shouldn't be much cost. All of the changeover labor is just tacked on to the crap we already have to get done, and the guidelines said to use up old paper before using the new branding.

    Now, I know of a couple Gannett signs out there that will eventually need replacing, but that will probably get stuck on the sites' expense sheet. Under 20 money.

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Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."

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