Nascar has begun a new advertising push to attract young, urban and multicultural fans to augment their current audience of predominantly older, rural, white men, Stuart Elliott writes. Nascar hired Ogilvy Mather Worldwide, a sophisticated Madison Avenue giant, to handle a campaign that would include commercials in Spanish and emphasize online offerings like Nascar.com and the 2013 edition of Fantasy Nascar. The initiative will be formally introduced on Sunday during coverage of the Daytona 500 on Fox and will feature television commercials with drivers standing in dramatic poses making emotional statements for the camera.
Finally, Neil Genzlinger explains, the Esquire Network, an NBC property that will replace the little-known G4 channel, is going to define what a modern man is. Bonnie Hammer, head of NBC’s cable group, described the channel as “an upscale Bravo for men,” and the network’s general manager, Adam Stotsky, said it would define modern men as interested in more than “tattoos or pawn shops or storage lockers or axes or hillbillies.” Little is known about the Esquire Network’s plans for alternative entertainment, but proposed shows like “Knife Fight” (a cooking show that appears to be indistinguishable from the others on TV) and “The Getaway” (a travel show that may prove redundant when there is already a Travel Channel) seem quite similar to “the low-aspiration gunk” that pervades many cable channels, Mr. Genzlinger says.
First Response is advertising its pregnancy test and ovulation prediction kit for Spanish-speaking audiences for the first time, Tanzina Vega reports. The ads first aired on Monday on networks like Univision, Galavision, Telemundo and MTV Tres. They contain the same message as First Response’s English ads but feature Cynthia Olavarría, actress and the former Miss Puerto Rico. First Response will also introduce a microsite, TheFirstResponseDifference.com, to complement the commercials.
The Walt Disney Company announced on Monday that Hong Kong Disneyland had turned a profit for the first time, Brooks Barnes writes. The seven-year-old park made $14 million during the last fiscal period, not staggering but certainly an improvement over the $31 million lost over the previous period. The question for the future is how Disney’s mega-resort, planned to open in Shanghai in 2015, will affect the Hong Kong park.
“Argo,” “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Searching for Sugar Man” were the big cinematic winners at the Writer’s Guild Awards, Melena Ryzik writes. “Argo” has now swept the major guild awards, which includes producers and directors as well as writers, meaning that the film is a presumptive favorite for the coveted best picture Oscar.
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