Tag: Media and Marketing

Latest Headlines

Louisville company stocks claw back losses from Friday’s rout; and Papa John’s apologizes over what it calls ‘extremely insensitive’ 9/11 promotion in Ohio

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 4:42 p.m.

Nearly all the local companies tracked by Boulevard bounced back from steep losses last week, when markets swooned amid growing concerns about the direction of interest rates. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which lost nearly 400 points Friday, closed up 240 points this afternoon, or 1.3%, to 18,325. The broader S&P 500 index ended the day at 2,159, up 1.5%.

Here’s a list of the 10 companies in Boulevard’s Stock Portfolio, with today’s closing prices:

In other news, Papa John’s apologized after a Cleveland franchise used an “extremely insensitive” promotion yesterday tied to the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. The promotion was called “9/11 Remembrance” and underneath a picture of pizzas it read: “Never Forget, In Memory of Those We Have Lost, United We Shall Always Stand! Enjoy ANY LARGE PIZZA for $9.11.” The corresponding promo code was listed as “911RMBR” (Cleveland 19).

Latest Headlines

KFC puts $218M U.S. advertising media buying account up for grabs; Papa John’s loses Rupp Arena rights, and more drama engulfs UofL Foundation

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 3:23 p.m.

KFC is looking for more bang for its bucks in a just-launched review of its U.S. spending for advertising and marketing across all channels, including print, broadcast, digital and social media. The review, which in theory could end with the chicken-chain keeping its current agency for the work — ad and marketing giant WPP’s MEC unit — doesn’t include creative work now being done by Wieden & Kennedy since 2015; that agency is responsible for the current campaign of rotating actors and comedians portraying a resurrected Colonel Harland Sanders. KFC’s U.S. division said it’s looking for an agency “capable of deploying innovative media strategies while leveraging cost efficiencies and maximizing return on investment” (AdAge). KFC just launched its latest Sanders TV commercials, featuring a fictional Kentucky Buckets pro football team.

PAPA JOHN’S has given up concession rights at Rupp Arena in Lexington starting this fall, and will be replaced by Hunt Brothers Pizza (Herald-Leader).

jack-daniels-150th-anniversary-whiskeyBROWN-FORMAN‘s Jack Daniel’s has unveiled a new version to celebrate its major birthday this year: Jack Daniel’s 150th Anniversary Whiskey, which is priced around $100 per one-liter bottle (The Whiskey Wash). Jack Daniel’s is the top seller among Brown-Forman’s 19 brands of spirits and wine.

UPS: Utah is giving UPS $5 million in tax incentives for the shipper’s plan to build a $200 million regional package operations center at a yet-to-be-determined site in the state that will create nearly 200 jobs (Salt Lake Tribune). UPS is the single-biggest private employer in Louisville, with 22,000 workers at it Louisville International Airport hub.

TEXAS ROADHOUSE is opening a Bubba’s 33 in east of Dallas in Mesquite as the Louisville-based steakhouse chain expands its new sports bar division. First launched in Fayetteville, N.C., in 2013, there are now a dozen Bubba’s locations, including outlets in Houston and Waco (Culture Map Dallas).

In other news: the University of Louisville board of trustees, escalating its battle with the independent UofL Foundation, today approved a threat to sue the foundation unless it accedes to demands to clean up its act. Board of Trustees Chairman Larry Benz said as many as 70 donors have called the university over the past few days to say they won’t give any more money unless the foundation shows that it is “clean” (Courier-Journal). Those donors’ threats followed similar ones last week by the James Graham Brown Foundation and the C.E. & S. Foundation led by Humana co-founder David A. Jones Sr.

Latest Headlines

KFC kicks off a new Colonel Sanders, and a pro football team to boot

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 8:02 a.m.

KFC: The newest in the TV commercials starring a resurrected Colonel Harland Sanders  imagines him launching a professional football team, the chicken-fueled Kentucky Buckets, in a 30-second spot that starts airing today to promote $20 buckets. The chain posted the commercial to its YouTube page yesterday, where it’s already been viewed more than 153,000 times. Check it out:

The commercial stars “Saturday Night Live” cast member Rob Riggle, the latest actor to portray the KFC founder. Earlier ones were played by Darrell Hammond, Norm MacDonald, Jim Gaffigan and, most recently, perpetually tanned actor George Hamilton, as the “Extra Crispy” colonel. The campaign featuring resurrected KFC founders started in May 2015.

When the Yum unit unveiled the campaign last year, many customers were skeptical or disgusted that the chain would revive its founder — a real person — from the dead, according to Business Insider. But the controversial move has paid off for the chain; in July, Yum announced the fried chicken chain had its eighth consecutive quarter of same-store sales growth, after a period of slumping sales (Business Insider).

KINDRED‘s Gentiva Health Services unit successfully advocated for a Medicaid rule change that could extend care to 18,000 people in Mississippi. Eligible patients in the state will now be able to receive home and community-based services — “waiver services” — at the same time as hospice services. “The old program was unintentionally keeping patents away from hospice care,” Mullins told Home Health Care News. “Patients would be forced to choose between their waiver services, like Meals on Wheels, or hospice care” (Home Health Care News).

Media and Marketing

CJ owner Gannett’s new head of investigative reporting: ‘They want someone who is exclusively focused on investigative work’

As The Courier-Journal’s owner advances on a takeover of the Los Angeles Times and more than 160 other titles, it has promised it won’t take a top-down approach to managing news at the company’s existing chain of more than 100 papers.

chris-davis-gannett
Davis

A big test of that pledge comes with one of Gannett Co.’s newest editors, Chris Davis, hired for a new position leading the company’s chain-wide investigative reporting. He joined the company in July from the Tampa Bay Times, where he edited two Pulitzer Prize-winning projects.

In a new interview, Davis talked to industry trade site Columbia Journalism Review about what he sees in the future for the CJ and Gannett’s other dailies. Here’s an excerpt:

cj-september-7-20176
Today’s paper.

What do you think this new position says about Gannett’s journalistic ambitions now and in the future, especially as the company continues to refine its strategy?

To me, it’s a clear signal that the editors here are putting journalism first, particularly investigative journalism. They could have hired all sorts of people, but they wanted someone who could come in and really drive the most important kind of journalism, which is watchdog and investigative work. I think it shows a clear commitment, and it was one of the reasons I was intrigued at the outset. They want someone who is exclusively focused on investigative work to be in a top-level position. I think that says a lot.

Read the full Q&A here.

The Jennifer Lawrence Diary™

In newest Dior ads, Lawrence brings star power to style

Oscar-winning Louisville native Jennifer Lawrence has been a spokesmodel for Christian Dior since 2012. The legendary French fashion house just released photos for its newest campaign for a fresh line of Diorever bags. (How much are they? Keep reading.)

Dior photo one 400

Dior orange purse

 

Lawrence, 26, just named the world’s highest-paid actress ($20 million alone for December’s sci-fi thriller “Passengers”), says the bags are “chic, stylish and cool,” according to Women’s Wear Daily. Photographer Patrick Demarchelier shot the fall campaign in a New York studio, the trade site reports, with minimal props, gray walls and slanted light casting shadows on Lawrence’s prominent cheekbones and off-the-shoulder cable-knit sweaters.

Lawrence Dior blue bag

Unless Boulevard’s crack fashion editors are mistaken, Dior describes the bag immediately above as one in Midnight Blue prestige calfskin, with the following details:

  • Reversible flap in Imperial Purple smooth calfskin, Cannage topstitching.
  • Silver-tone jewelry.
  • Adjustable strap.
  • Can be carried in the hand or on the shoulder.
  • Dimensions: 30 x 23 x 16 cm, approximately 12 x 9 x 6 inches.

The other bags appear to be so new, Dior hasn’t added them to its online catalog.

What do they cost? If you have to ask . . . actually, you’ve come to the right place! Boulevard believes these are priced around $3,400. Each. That’s according to Spotted Fashion.

But it’s not a Kelly bag

The ladies who lunch in Anchorage, Glenview, Prospect, and other luxe local redoubts will tell you the famous Hermès bag is the only way to go. Once known as the “Sac à dépêches,” it earned its better-known name after another actress, Grace Kelly, gave it a cameo role in an Alfred Hitchcock film. The backstory, according to Wikipedia:

Kelly bag
$21,935 with tax.

“In 1954, Hitchcock allowed the costume designer Edith Head to purchase Hermès accessories for the film ‘To Catch a Thief,’ starring Grace Kelly. According to Head, Kelly ‘fell in love’ with the bag. Within months of her 1956 marriage to Prince Rainier III, the pregnant Princess of Monaco was photographed using the handbag to shield her growing belly from the paparazzi. That photograph was featured in Life magazine.”

Grace Kelly and the Kelly bag
Rainier, Kelly and the bag, about 1956.

Naturellement, you won’t see Lawrence carrying anything near the paparazzi but Dior. Still, given her eye-popping salary, she could well afford any number of Kelly bags, which this year sell for between $10,000 and $20,000-plus.

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Related: From Louisville to Monte-Carlo, an $88,000 Memorial Day Weekend.

Media and Marketing

Tronc’s opposition to the CJ owner’s $900M bid for the Los Angeles Times, etc., is testing ‘just-say-no’ defense
CJ August 31 2016
Today’s front.

Named after Nancy Reagan’s anti-drug campaign, the “just say no” defense has had varying degrees of success, according to Steven Davidoff Solomon, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. “Yahoo used it to fight off a $44.6 billion bid from Microsoft eight years ago,” he writes in The New York Times. “Though some dispute how serious Microsoft was at the end, Yahoo’s initial rebuff looks like a clear mistake in retrospect, as its core business recently sold for $4.8 billion.”

Tronc logoThe risk in this strategy is that The Courier-Journal’s owner, Gannett Co., walks away instead of acquiring Tronc, leaving its rival newspaper publisher to wither like Yahoo or find its own path to success, Solomon says. And if you accept Gannett’s argument, that would effectively leave the CJ and all its 108 other sister publications in a less competitive position in a future dominated by digital media.

LA Times August 31 2016
This morning’s.

So far, however, Tronc appears to be winning. Gannett’s initial offer last April was $12.25 a share, or $815 million. It boosted it to $15 the next month, or $864 million. And a published report last week says Gannett raised it again, to around $18 — even as Tronc is holding out for something closer to $20.

But that report by industry watcher Ken Doctor said it appeared Tronc would ultimately agree to a deal: “It’s apparently no longer a question of whether to sell or not, but for how much.”

If it wins, Gannett would add the L.A. paper, plus the Chicago Tribune, seven other big dailies and 160 smaller weekly and monthly niche titles to its existing portfolio of 109 publications in the U.S. and U.K. It would also add 7,000 Tronc employees to the nearly 19,000 it already employs.