Ivanka Joins SCOTUS, Marge Runs Out of Xanax: The Simpsons on Trump's First 100

OK, most of us are pretty sick of being reminded several times a day that Trump is closing in on his first 100 days in office, but The Simpsons, as usual, nails it. Favorite line, via Homer: "Marge, give the President of the United States some time. He's only 70 years old!" Depressingly, the bit reminds us that we're only 6.8 percent of the way through this national humiliation. Remember when life was simple and we didn't have to wake up every morning full of dread about what was going to happen at the White House that day?

'C'mon, Sweetie—We Are Just About Ready to Board Our American Airlines Flight!'

'Bait-dance': News Orgs Remember Dead Prince With Purple Flood of Cheap Clicks

CNN gives whole new meaning to stealing the pennies off the eyes of a dead man

Call it, "Bait-dance." Or maybe, "Controversy"? "Thieves in the Temple"? How about "Sign o' the Times"? Is there any more suitable way these days to honor a beloved, deceased icon on the one-year anniversary of his death than with a load of cheap content concocted for the sole purpose of making you click? Or if you're Morris Day, is there any more obvious opportunity to make people remember you your dear friend? Prince died a year ago today and every "news" organization is swooping in to take advantage commemorate his life and career—CNN, NBC, Fox, The New York Times, NPR, Variety, Billboard, People, the AP, The Guardian, TMZ, and on ... and on ... and on. No actual news, mind you. It all pretty much boils down to: Prince Is Still Dead, But We All Remember How Great He Was, So Here's to Driving Web Traffic and Pushing a Shit-Ton of Ads. Something tells me that somewhere, Prince is laughing his ass off over all this. Some of the best/worst piss-on-your-grave headlines today:

A Cover Shot on an iPhone Is Not Clever—It's What's Helping Kill the Magazine Business

So, the cover of the new Bon Appétit was shot on an iPhone. Yeah, that was completely new and different—when Billboard and Condé Nast Traveler did it. It's not that it's a bad picture, and I realize publishers need to do all they can to generate buzz and make magazines cool, but not only is this idea not novel or creative, it also happens to be terrible for the business of magazines. Why would you embrace something that's anathema to your very being? As Bon App's creative director explained: "We wanted to create something our readers could relate to. This is technology completely changing how the publishing and design industries are moving forward." Well, that's a depressing thought for those of us whose life's work is creating content that strives to be more special than what you'd find on a 14-year-old's Instagram feed. Really, this idea that something great can be done not just by talented, experienced professionals with the right training and equipment but by any random person with a phone and a social media account? (The current occupant of the White House comes to mind.) Yes, I understand this was just a "gimmick" and that the picture, while taken with an iPhone, was also done by professionals. But it's the principle. One of the things that print (or at least those magazines that still understand what their strengths are and execute on them) has going for it are the highest quality photographs, produced by phenomenally talented photographers, wardrobe and prop stylists, set decorators, lighting people, makeup artists, retouchers, photo editors, art directors and creative directors, many of whom I have been fortunate to work with over the years. Working with them and watching them do what they do so well has given me tremendous respect for them—and made me appreciate how exceptional their talents are, and how indispensable those talents are to the media ecosystem. It takes a small village and a lot of coin to make a great (and sometimes, a really terrible) photo. Maybe it's not such a surprise that magazines are using pictures taken with a phone when one considers how generally awful looking so many of them have become. Anybody who's read or advertised in a magazine lately can see that certain publishers are aggressively shaving expenses by way of cheaper paper stock, trim sizes that give them all the stature of a pamphlet, and dramatically scaled back photo shoots, which, admittedly, are not an inconsequential investment. It's just that, as a lover of print, I think they need to continue to be an investment. If you're going to do something, do it right, as the old line goes, and if you're going to publish a magazine, then do whatever you must to produce a good magazine or just give it up and start trading Bitcoin or go into pharmaceutical marketing or something. With some exceptions—like Time Inc.'s People, which slashed its cover price by a buck last fall to stop gushing newsstand sales—publishers have discovered that readers will actually pay more if you keep putting out a product that makes it worth the money (note that Condé now charges a steep $8.99 for a copy of The New Yorker—a magazine that, incidentally, has virtually no photos), while nothing will keep the public and advertisers away like gutting yourself in some vain quest for profitability. One more thing: What may be even worse than cheap visuals are the magazines that still pay for ambitious shoots—like a recent issue of Time Inc.'s Entertainment Weekly that featured Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn in fun set-ups on the cover and inside spread—but then slap those pictures on paper so appallingly thin and cheap that they needn't have even bothered. (They're called "glossies" for a reason, Mr. Battista.) I realize publishers are running a business that is in decline—but giving consumers and advertisers a substandard product can only hasten the descent. To paraphrase a certain someone near and dear to us all: MAKE MAGAZINES GREAT AGAIN!!

Gladiators, Crucifixions, the Ice Capades and Tyler Oakley: Why LIVE Is Still Where It's At

It's hardly a stretch to imagine that YouTubers like Tyler Oakley and Lilly Singh, with their multimillions of devoted groupies online, would also be a massive draw live.

But Mike Mills thought of it and you didn't. 

And now, the 40-year-old guy from upstate New York who once ran a magic store and whose big break came when he bet that the sketch comedy series Who's Line Is It Anyway? would translate to the stage—ultimately generating more than 500 shows and $30 million in revenue—has become the king of cross-media programming, working with social media stars and TV celebs like Dog Whisperer's Cesar Milan and Cake Boss's Buddy Valastro to transform their acts into live theater, as Forbes reports in a new profile of Mills.

We all know live is where it's at. Madonna's latest album was a notorious bomb, failing to produce even one charting single—a first in the 30-year-plus career of the pop tartare—and yet Billboard named her Woman of the Year for 2016. Why? Because even though her music sucks and her music sales suck harder, her Rebel Heart tour sold more than 1 million tickets worldwide, generating $170 million and cementing her standing as rock's most profitable live performer and her partner Live Nation's own personal ATM. As PricewaterhouseCoopers noted in its annual report on entertainment and media industry trends, "Touring and festivals are now the lifeblood of the music industry."

It's not just music, as Mike Mills understands so well. Comedian Kathy Griffin could make a perfectly comfortable living doing her top-rated TV specials and writing best-selling books—but she's hitting 50 cities this year, and selling out damn near every one of them. Meanwhile, traditional and digital media companies from Pandora to Vanity Fair, Fast Company to CNBC are expanding their events footprint. 

Some were way ahead of the curve—like Food & Wine magazine, whose Food & Wine Classic in Aspen (which I reported on while gorging myself about town last summer) has been bringing foodies together for three decades. And brand marketers like Kitchen-Aid, Lexus, Patron Spirits and Celebrity Cruises are now lining up to get out in front of all those fans. 

Ain't it fascinating that with all our eyeballs glued to mobile screens and society's generally antisocial leanings, getting thousands of people together in one space for shared joy—an experience as old as the gladiators, crucifixions and the Ice Capades—has become so trendy, and enormously bankable. 

As Mills told Forbes: "What you see on a screen will never compete with seeing someone perform live. When kids see someone onstage, it's like magic."

Move Over Pepsi: United Does a Nosedive

Another satisfied United Airlines customer

Don't worry—I'm not going to get all Jerry Seinfeld from the 90s and start ranting about the airlines. At this point, unfortunately, we've all become quite accustomed to the domestic carriers' crappy treatment of their passengers. Even JetBlue—the brand that, when it launched at the millennium, promised it would be different and which was, for a brief, blissful moment, as close to a pleasurable experience as one can get on an airplane these days—has gone the way of its more feeble brothers, squeezing rows in coach to within an inch of their life to make way for premium-class seating and nickel and diming us for checked bags and such.

But this business with United Airlines over the weekend—could it do anything more brazen toward murdering its own reputation and that of the whole industry?

You probably know the story by now—a doctor was forced to give up his seat to make way for a United employee, and when he (correctly) refused was pummeled and dragged off the plane, his fellow outraged passengers videoing the whole, shocking affair. If there's a god up there in those friendly skies, United will suffer a massive financial hit for this by way of a lawsuit.

But United should suffer even more—by losing the brand equity it has so carefully tried to build and the customers it's wooed with its slick marketing campaigns. (You'll recall that just a couple of weeks ago, United had already enraged everybody by kicking two girls off a plane for wearing leggings.)

The other airlines would do well to take note and correct their ways. But of course, they won't. Has any industry worked as hard or as arrogantly—even as it's spent billions on advertising—to damage its own standing in the eyes of the consumer?

The problem is not only United but all the commercial carriers. We all have stories about getting mistreated at the hands of some officious gate agent or flight attendant—probably in the past week alone. (And forget about the clowns who constitute the dreaded TSA.) Aside from the occasional early-morning fragile package handling of a badge-wielding, government-employed "security" moron, we have all routinely suffered as the airlines have overbooked us and packed us into airplanes like so many sardines and talked to us like we're children. It was bound to happen. Post-9/11, a record number of U.S. citizens are flying—to the tune of a mind-boggling 1.73 million each day, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Ah, the wonderful world of deregulation. We all know when air travel truly started sucking—back in 1978, when President Carter signed the Airline Deregulation Act, which effectively gave the airlines carte blanche. Soon, grand old carriers like Pan Am and Eastern bit the dust, while the way was paved for the likes of ValiumJet (er, ValuJet), the now-defunct discount airline that in the 90s infamously sent a few hundred passengers plummeting into the gator-infested Everglades after it mishandled cargo and set a plane on fire. Oh, well—a small price to pay for a $49 plane ticket I guess.

The public has paid and continues to pay the price of deregulation—but one group that's greatly benefitted from it are those who make ads for a living. More unfettered carriers means more fliers and more competition and more fare wars, all of which means more marketing. United, American, Southwest, JetBlue, Delta—all spend multimillions of dollars every single year on ad campaigns aimed at convincing you how different they are and how you should entrust them with your travel needs.

The only problem with this is, the public has actually flown, and enough at this point to know that these ads are short on anything resembling the actual customer experience and long on bullshit.

Some airlines don't even seem to be trying anymore—take American's infamous campaign last year, which seemed to blame you, the customer, for that awful flying experience. American was rightly ridiculed for that ad—but hey, at least give them credit for not attempting to paint air travel as a glamorous experience. If chances are you'll be seated beside someone wearing flip-flops and scarfing down chicken wings, it's not glamorous.

On occasion, airline ads can still be creative—those for foreign carriers anyway. There was Royal Jordanian Airlines' clever tweak of Trump prior to the election:

And after his Muslim travel ban blew up:

Earlier, there was this one for Norwegian Airlines right after Brad and Angelina split:

Back here in good old Murica, meanwhile, the United story will eventually fade from the headlines and our collective memory, and the airlines will keep on telling you how wonderful they are, and playing us, the flying public, for a bunch of dupes. But neither advertising nor brand marketers insulting the intelligence of their customers are the issue—the lack of governmental control over an industry on which so many citizens have come to rely is. That's not likely to change with a president who is the greatest advocate of deregulation in the history of the republic now holding the keys to the 737.

What a Week! Ad Bosses Hit L.A., Pepsi's Belly Flop, Shaming Schumer, And More!

Tryin' to keep this content fresh, people, really I am. But sometimes a boy's gotta pay the rent.

Traveled to L.A. this week for the annual convention of the American Association of Advertising Agencies (known to all of you as the 4A's, with apostrophe), where I ran into a lot of people I've known awhile (IPG's Michael Roth, 72andSunny's Matt Jarvis, Fast Company's Bob Safian, every ad reporter on Earth) and enjoyed meeting and listening to talks by a few others (Pinterest's Ben Silbermann, Facebook's Andrew Bosworth and MEC's Marla Kaplowitz, incoming CEO of the 4A's).

One of the hot topics was the advertiser boycott of YouTube over ads that pop up alongside objectionable content—Roth addressed it from the stage (contending that marketers, including IPG clients Coke and J&J, were right to take the stand, contrasting with more skeptical execs like WPP chief Martin Sorrell), while Google reps showed up to reassure the crowd it was working overtime to manage the issue, announcing that it had hired multiple third-party firms to monitor videos posted to the site. A lot of people still question how much of an impact that will have considering that 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

One of the better panels had to be "The Agency of the Future" —good stuff from heavy hitters like JWT's Tamara Ingram. Some of the funniest moments from the entire three-day program came by way of that session and Periscope's Liz Ross, who reminded 4A's attendees that numbers are not everything. "We are so in love with data as the answer," she said, "but algorithms don't understand love. If everything were based on an algorithm, we would all be perfectly matched with people and there would be no dating apps." Expect the entertaining, no-b.s. Ross to get invited to do more of these talks.

The most emotional moment was outgoing 4A's CEO Nancy Hill's tearful goodbye after nine-and-a-half years. Hill talked about progress made on issues like technology, measurement, ad blocking, and gender equality and diversity, while not shying away from the ad industry's darker moments, saying she was not "naive enough to believe that some of the alleged bad behavior we read about in the headlines isn't happening"—sexual harassment, racism and sexism among the behaviors she called out. But she stressed that, as an industry, "We are better than that."

The badvertising debacle that is that tone-deaf Pepsi spot with Kendall Jenner had people buzzing this week, not just in L.A. and the industry but everywhere. As with so many marketing flops, the big question was how something so awful could ever have ever snaked its way through the long creative process to make it to air in the first place. Sometimes advertisers boycott vendors to keep their distance from objectionable content—and sometimes advertisers are the objectionable content. It's going to be a long time before Pepsi lives this one down. There's no doubt that if there were an equivalent of the "Razzies" for advertising, Pepsi would sweep. (I was thinking up names for such a prize: "Badvertiser of the Year"? "The Badison Avenue Awards"? Someone on Facebook suggested my favorite, though: "The Garbage Cannes.")

A little busy since I returned on the redeye yesterday morning, I hadn't had a minute to catch up on other media and marketing news—till this evening, when I happened across this ridiculous  "controversy" over Amy Schumer's InStyle cover. Some designer nobody's ever heard of fat-shamed the comedian for wearing a white bathing suit. Really? Scads of magazines, including even the iconic Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, have featured women who aren't a size 2 on the cover. Some of the best ad campaigns around, from the likes of Ralph Lauren, MAC Cosmetics and Lane Bryant (whose marketing boss gave a terrific talk at 4A's), happen to feature models who think something more than a bag of airplane pretzels and a Diet Coke constitutes a square meal.

But considering the current climate—where you're nobody till you've attacked somebody in the most public, vicious way, preferably somebody in a less powerful position who never did anything to you, where women's rights are more under siege than they've been in decades and where, almost three months since the inauguration, Hillary continues to get the blame for everything—we no doubt haven't seen the last of this woman-hating crap.

To quote Harvey Fierstein's character in Torch Song Trilogy after learning his kid got sent home from school because of a fist fight, "How 50s."