Aram Zucker-Scharff

Wired Taps Real Journalists to Push Further Into Native Advertising:

Brands want advertising that looks and feels like actual editorial content, and publishers are uniquely positioned to help. But how do they do that without selling out?  Increasingly, by creating stand-alone units. Onion has its Onion Labs, a serious branded content team that creates Onion-like parodies for brands.

No, Swiffer Can’t Put Rosie the Riveter Back in the Kitchen:

Attempting to prove that nostalgia always wins these days, Swiffer has created a marketing campaign that updates Rosie the Riveter for the Lean In era — and misunderstands the entire point of the feminist icon.

‘Nope. There’s no way anyone would be offended by that. No need to think that one through. Oh wait… oops. ‘

““The bundle is the Gibraltar of the media business,” said Tim Wu, the author of “The Master Switch,” a history of media revolutions. “It keeps the entire ecosystem alive, which is why it is so heavily and successfully defended. But there are hairline fractures beginning to appear, and you are seeing alliances shift.””

– At NYT, David Carr explains why the long standing ‘bundle’ system for delivering advertising on many platforms (especially cable TV) is now failing and why the consequences for TV may be immense. 

“Beginning today, because of the “CALM Act” (it stands for Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation), by federal law and accompanying FCC regulations, commercials aren’t allowed to be any louder on average than the shows they accompany. Thi…