TONY OF ALL MEDIA

The era of dueling Hollywood trade pubs is over.  Variety reports that its parent company Penske Media Corp. has inked a deal with MRC to operate The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard and Vibe under a joint venture. The newly formed company will be called PMRC. The deal puts longtime rivals Variety and THR under the same roof for the first time ever, and also means that leading music pubs Billboard, Vibe and PMC's Rolling Stone will now be family.  Dick Clark Productions and other assets will be spun off under a second joint venture, charged with developing new content from brands across the company. (So you know what that means: more awards shows.) Tongues are wagging as to the ultimate fate of THR. Will Jay Penske continue to run the two trade titles as separate, quasi-independent entities (á la the old "joint operating agreement" of daily newspapers, where business operations are merged while the newsrooms continue to compete with one another) or will he fold Variety'...

It's been awhile since I hated on Vanity Fair, so here I go again, shooting a dead, unimportant, uninteresting fish in a barrel. Remember when this magazine mattered, when we anxiously awaited each issue to see which A-list star had made the cover, at one time the most valuable piece of media real estate in Hollywood? While Fashionista dubs  the October cover of VF featuring Elle Fanning a "must-read," others aren't convinced. Noting the well-mannered shot of Fanning posing by the seaside in a Dior gown with a couple of hoity-toity hounds, Roger Friedman of Showbiz 411 writes , "If you didn't know better, you'd swear it was Town & Country." He goes on to call the accompanying story "a nice People kind of cover, with no revelations." Of course it doesn't. Why should VF make news when it hasn't managed to do that in years under editor Radhika Jones? Even when Jones has tried to capture the zeitgeist — most recently, with last mon...

It's the kind of media attention money can't buy. Everybody's talking about Patagonia's hidden political message on the backside of a tag sewn into a pair of shorts, imploring customers to "Vote the Assholes Out." It's even become a trending topic on Twitter — what brand wouldn't want that kind of free advertising? Activism is, of course, nothing new for this popular marketer of outerwear, which has made headlines for giving a $10 million tax cut to environmental programs and for closing up shop on Election Day. Every news outlet from CNN to NBC, Yahoo, Vogue and People magazine carried approving stories on the company's clever clothing-tag stunt, but the conservative publication National Review was the sole news org I could find that put a spotlight on the lefty brand's surprising hypocrisy.  While it gets loads of press and the praise of devoted fans because of its p.c. bona fides, National Review reports that Patagonia also happens to be a...

Target is going beyond just paying lip service to diversifying its upper ranks. Today, Maurice Cooper starts at the Minneapolis-based retail chain as senior VP of marketing, where he will lead brand, category and promotional marketing efforts across paid, owned and shared media and oversee key campaigns including those around the all-important holiday shopping season. Previously, Cooper was exec VP, chief growth & experience officer at the fast-casual chain Wingstop and also served in brand marketing positions at The Coca-Cola Co. and Intercontinental Hotels Group. Target is just the latest company to make its C-suite more diverse. Another is Boeing, which last week  appointed  Ed Dandridge to senior VP, chief communications officer. Dandridge previously was global chief marketing and communications officer at the insurance giant AIG. Target and Boeing follow companies such as Apple, Nike and Netflix making high-profile minority hires in recent weeks, each putting its mon...

#rip #wtc #911

The award for the brand with the biggest balls of 2020 has to go to Krispy Kreme, which, even though Manhattan remains all but emptied because of COVID-19, still plans next week to open its flagship store in Times Square, normally one of the busiest neighborhoods in the world but where foot traffic is but one-tenth of what it was a year ago. (Although it should be pointed out that, even if it had wanted to pull out of the storefront, it probably couldn't have, as New York landlords have been particularly hard on retailers seeking to modify their leases during the pandemic. But, we'll still give 'em props for hanging in there.) There are features of the new Krispy Kreme store, as CNN reports, that we won't likely get to enjoy for some time — like the stadium seating in a giant doughnut box. And with the city still straining to get back to normal-ish, there probably won't be the once-anticipated mile-long lines around the corner on opening day, a phenomenon that, y...

Andrew Sullivan: 90s pinup Followers of ToAM (hellllllooooo? Is there anybody out there still?) can see I took most of the summer off from posting content here. Not that there hasn't been anything going on in media and marketing — it's just that, considering the bleak state of the world and the need to mind my own mental health first, I had to shut it down for a while. Took a road trip down South and a handful of trips to P-town and other sandy points dotting New England, finally finished up a couple of books staring at me from my nightstand for too long — oldies like Joan Didion's "The White Album" and Rex Reed's irresistibly titled "Do You Sleep in the Nude?" as well as newbies like my friends Chris Freeman and Jim Berg's latest collection of essays on Isherwood, Andre Leon Talley's takedown of Anna Wintour and comic Judy Gold's book about free speech. That, and redecorating my home/office about a dozen times because, well, if I have t...