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Spit-Take in Hollywood at Dog Treat Promotion

August 25, 2013 by

A few weeks ago, about 15,000 plastic-wrapped copies of The Hollywood Reporter arrived on desks here. Inside these special copies of the publication, which has a subscriber base of about 70,000, was a “gluten free” nutrition bar — seemingly no big deal, just another of the magazine’s advertiser-related giveaways.

The president of one television studio chomped into it, as did one of his subordinates. A senior publicist at PMK-BNC tossed the bar into a drawer and started eating it a week later for a snack. This reporter did the same thing.

It was dog food.

“Yes, we heard people ate the dog bar thinking it was for humans,” said a clucking Lynne Segall, The Reporter’s publisher. “On the plus side, it was gluten-free.”

The “stunt,” as Ms. Segall called the giveaway, was part of a $45,000 ad purchase by Dog for Dog, a pet food company backed by the comedian Chelsea Handler; the rapper Snoop Dogg, who now prefers to be known as Snoop Lion; and Ryan Kavanaugh, the chief of Relativity Media. For every item bought, Dog for Dog says it donates an item to a needy canine.

The TV executives and power publicist who privately acknowledged chowing down on the blueberry-flavored Dogsbars said they only glanced at the wrapper before taking a bite. (They refused to speak on the record, for the obvious reason.) Only when something didn’t taste quite right did they read the smaller print:

“All Natural. Gluten Free. Snack for Dogs.”

Ms. Segall sold the ad package as part of an issue dedicated mostly to pets (“Hollywood’s A-List Animal Actors: The Perks and Downfalls”). The cover of the issue, however, was given to a serious article titled “How Hollywood Helped Hitler.” Only readers who flipped inside would have noticed the focus on pets.

“People do sometimes eat the bars by mistake and then there’s a moment where they race to check the label,” said Rocky Keever, the founder of Dog for Dog. “But they’re all quality ingredients, like you’d find in your grandmother’s cabinets.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/26/business/media/spit-take-in-hollywood-at-dog-treat-promotion.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: , ,

Media Decoder Blog: TV Puppeteer at Center of Controversy Quits in Puerto Rico

January 9, 2013 by Leave a Comment

8:35 p.m. | Updated

The television personality who plays La Comay, a Puerto Rican puppet that started a media firestorm in November over comments on the air that concerned the death of a publicist, has resigned.

Antulio Kobbo Santarrosa, resigned Tuesday from WAPA Television, an independent network in Puerto Rico. He left after new guidelines were put in place to manage the content of the show, called “SuperXclusivo,” including recording it before its 6 p.m. broadcast time and staying away from offensive language.

Mr. Santarrosa’s contract includes a clause that prohibits “tortuous, illegal, obscene, offensive or distasteful remarks or conduct in connection with the shows.”

He and his sidekick on the show, Héctor Travieso, walked out of the studio after a disagreement with the network’s president, Jose E. Ramos, said a person with direct knowledge of the incident who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Mr. Ramos declined to comment.

The show, one of the island’s most popular, resumed production on Monday after a holiday break. After Mr. Santarrosa and Mr. Travieso left, the network replayed Monday’s episode.

In a statement posted to its Web site Wednesday, the network apologized to viewers, saying that Mr. Santarrosa had walked out “without consulting WAPA management.”

“SuperXclusivo,” which is broadcast five days a week from 6 to 7 p.m., a critical time slot for the network, was suspended indefinitely. The network said it would broadcast movies instead this week.

Calls for a boycott of the show began after La Comay (roughly translated as the Godmother) asked whether the publicist, José Enrique Gómez Saladín, 32, who was murdered in November, had been “asking for this.” In recent weeks, the show lost prominent advertisers, like Walmart and ATT.

The puppet was created by Mr. Santarrosa. “SuperXclusivo” has been on WAPA, which is owned by the private equity firm InterMedia, since 1999.

Mr. Santarrosa has had shows with similar characters on other networks, including Telemundo. It was unclear Wednesday whether Mr. Santarrosa would take the puppet to another network.

Tanzina Vega writes about advertising and digital media. Follow @tanzinavega on Twitter.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/controversial-puppeteer-resigns-in-puerto-rico/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Bobby Kotick of Activision, Drawing Praise and Wrath

December 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Mr. Kotick, the C.E.O. of Activision Blizzard, the world’s largest video game publisher, inspired a stocky, auburn-haired character named Money Sack, who, in a game created by a competitor and a former employee, wields a wide grin and an automatic weapon. In another video, Mr. Kotick pops up from behind a fortified wall, and in a husky, ominous voice says he’ll set the price of his biggest game, Call of Duty, to “your soul” — a dig at its cost. Then fiery lasers shoot out of his eyes, wreaking havoc on an apocalyptic fantasy world. In several online photographs he is depicted as the Devil, with red horns against a Hades-like background.

On this particular Sunday, it’s those Photoshopped horns that really irk Mr. Kotick. He is seated at a corner table in the cavernous breakfast room of the Pierre hotel, across the street from Central Park, shaking a leg nervously and whispering in a conspiratorial hush.

“Think about what it’s like for my dating life when the first picture that comes up is me as the Devil,” says Mr. Kotick, who is recently divorced. “You see all this chatter and you realize that they game the search results. These super-sophisticated 19-year-olds are smarter than our expensive P.R. firm.” (His publicist, Steven Rubenstein, shrugs sheepishly.)

Mr. Kotick, 49, has reason to be annoyed. Not since the music industry’s heyday has there been a business with such a wide disparity between the popularity of its products and its customers’ perception of the chief executive who made those products possible. Video games are among the most successful segments in the entertainment industry, and the disdain heaped on Mr. Kotick in video game blogs is second only to the admiration for him on Wall Street.

He bought the company that is now Activision in 1990, when it was nearly bankrupt and when analysts dismissed video games as fads. But in his 22 years as C.E.O. he has built Activision into a company with a stock market value of $12.7 billion, almost three times that of its top rival, Electronic Arts.

Mr. Kotick isn’t the most technology-driven executive. (He still prefers a BlackBerry.) And he doesn’t get into the weeds of creative storytelling; he leaves that to the studios Activision has acquired. But like David Geffen, who never played a musical instrument well but signed Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and the Eagles, Mr. Kotick has a knack for identifying hit after blockbuster hit. He wakes up each day thinking about those hits — some would say obsessing about them — and how Activision can lavish games like Call of Duty, Diablo and World of Warcraft with ever more bells and whistles to keep customers happy and ensure that the next release is a big success, too.

The latest edition of Activision’s biggest game, the shoot’em-up megahit Call of Duty: Black Ops II, was released Nov. 13 and had sales of $500 million in its first 24 hours and more than $1 billion in the first 15 days. That fell short of some analysts’ expectations but was nevertheless more than the total domestic box-office revenue of “Avatar,” the highest-grossing movie of all time.

BUT expensive, immersive games now face a challenge as free online games from companies like Zynga and Rovio compete for users’ attention. Retail sales of video games in the United States totaled $7.5 billion from January to October, down 26 percent from the same period in 2011, according to the NPD Group.

In response, Activision is doubling down on a handful of games with high margins. The strategy is to have customers pay $60 or more to traverse for hundreds of hours through story lines with orchestral soundtracks and realistic, hologram-like heroes and heroines. With each new version “we need more resources, more time, and our development schedule has to get longer,” Mr. Kotick says. “How do you make the games better each year?”

Developers of Call of Duty took the risky step of bringing the mostly historical war series into the not-so-distant future of 2025. David S. Goyer, co-writer of the story for “The Dark Knight Rises,” was a co-writer on the story for the latest Call of Duty. Trent Reznor, the Nine Inch Nails singer who won an Oscar for the soundtrack of “The Social Network,” did the theme song. Oliver L. North served as an adviser for the game, which features a virtual David H. Petraeus, the former Central Intelligence Agency director.

The Activision strategy relies heavily on the holiday season. “This is a nail-biting time for us,” said Brian G. Kelly, Mr. Kotick’s longtime business partner, who is co-chairman of the Activision Blizzard board.

In the three months ended Sept. 30, Activision exceeded analysts’ expectations and increased its earnings by 53 percent, to $226 million, or 20 cents a share, even as video game console sales declined slightly.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/business/bobby-kotick-of-activision-drawing-praise-and-wrath.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: , ,

Square Feet: South Florida Developers Poised for Birth of Casino Gambling

December 28, 2011 by Leave a Comment

But the mere possibility of casino gambling has already had an impact on commercial real estate in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties. The biggest single move came last May when Genting, a casino company based in Malaysia, bought the Miami Herald building, overlooking Biscayne Bay, for $236 million.

Genting released designs of what it hoped to build on the site: an extravaganza called Resorts World Miami, which in addition to a casino could have up to 5,000 guest rooms, 1,000 condominiums, 100 restaurants and luxury shops and a 3.6-acre rooftop lagoon that looks like something from “The Little Mermaid.” The project would cost $3.8 billion, according to Christian Goode, the president of Resorts World Miami. (The bill requires an investment of at least $2 billion per project.)

And last month, the CIM Group, a real estate investment company based in Los Angeles, bought a stake in a partnership that plans to develop Miami Worldcenter, a 21.9-acre mixed-use project in downtown Miami.

The partnership has received master plan zoning approval for a nine-block, 11 million-square-foot development that, according to its news release, “could easily accommodate a gaming component.”

The Miami Worldcenter site is now mostly parking lots and weeds. Plans for that development were announced in 2008, but the project was shelved when the recession hit. Sissy DeMaria, a publicist for Miami Worldcenter Associates, a joint venture between the South Florida-based Falcone Group and Centurion Partners, wrote in an e-mail that — unlike the Genting complex — “the Miami Worldcenter has all of its permits in place and is ‘shovel ready.’ ”

Already, the casino operator Las Vegas Sands has expressed interest in operating a gambling-based resort at Miami Worldcenter, Andy Abboud, the vice president for government affairs for Las Vegas Sands, wrote in an e-mail.

And Genting has continued its buying spree, spending several hundred million dollars on parcels adjacent to the Miami Herald site.

One of the purchases was the Omni, a mixed-use development that includes 1.5 million square feet — much of it a defunct mall — and a 2,700-space parking garage, where it said it could get a slot machine casino up and running in a matter of months.

Colin Au, a Genting principal, told The Miami Herald, “The Omni is what’s called a decorator-ready solution.” He said Genting was taking “a calculated risk,” in buying the properties before the Legislature has voted on the gambling bill.

Mr. Goode of Genting wrote in an e-mail that the company would develop Resorts World with or without gambling, but that the timeline would be “significantly accelerated” should the Legislature approve the casino component.

The Omni facility would resemble the Resorts World facility that opened at Aqueduct racetrack in Queens in October with some 5,000 video “slot machines” and electronic games, including baccarat tables managed by robotic dealers. Genting estimated that the proposed casino at the Omni would create 5,000 jobs, while its entire Resorts World project would create about 30,000.

But the mega-resorts could be bad news for established businesses in the Miami area, because they tend to provide their customers with everything they need under one roof.

“They’re going to be saying, ‘Here’s a free room, go downstairs and gamble,’ ” said Marty Z. Margulies, a prominent South Florida developer, explaining why other area hotels might lose business from gambling, rather than gain it.

The development of one or both resorts could also threaten the Miami Beach Convention Center, which at 640,000 square feet is considered too small for many gatherings. Genting plans to include some 700,000 square feet of meeting space in its Resorts World complex, while the Miami Worldcenter developers have floated the number 1.5 million square feet.

Either would be serious competition for the Miami Beach facility, which each year hosts Art Basel. It was once the nation’s fourth-largest center but is now the 27th largest.

In part to compete with the possible newcomers, Miami Beach is considering an expansion of its center. The giant firm Arquitectonica (which is also designing the Resorts World complex) was hired by the city to study the possibility of doubling the size of the convention center; its report estimated the cost of the project at $648 million.

It is unclear where Miami Beach will get the money. The city manager, Jorge M. Gonzalez, has been meeting with potential partners, one of whom, the casino magnate Steve Wynn, offered to pay the entire cost of the new center if he could build his own casino near it, according to news reports.

But just two weeks ago, the Miami Beach Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to oppose the gambling expansion. (The state law would require local approval before a casino can be built.) The vote brought cheers from a standing-room-only crowd, which included local business owners.

One major hotelier said the decision could put Miami Beach at a disadvantage. “If casinos are approved for the city of Miami, Miami Beach should have the opportunity to have casino gaming in a luxury resort right on the beach,” said Phil Goldfarb, the president of the Fontainebleau Miami Beach, which with 1,500 rooms is by far the city’s largest hotel.

Gambling’s effect on residential property values is another question. Properly planned, “casino development would enhance real estate values in South Florida,” said Philip Spiegelman, a principal of ISG, a realty company that provides marketing for large condominium developers. (Mr. Spiegelman has a partnership with the Related Group; that company’s chairman, Jorge M. Pérez, was one of the sellers of the Omni Center.)

But Diane Lieberman, a leading condominium broker in Miami and Miami Beach, said she did not think the arrival of gambling would have any effect on the condominium market. She said she and her husband, Alan Lieberman, learned that lesson the hard way, buying about 10 houses in Atlantic City when gambling became legal there. “The prices didn’t go up,” she said, adding that gambling “didn’t improve the area. It just added casinos.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=a2d0e42240e0606be8145626df98b5da

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