Jaguar Land Rover Latest Brand to Lend a Helping Hand Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

Another case of a brand doing good during the coronavirus pandemic.

The automaker Jaguar Land Rover said it has deployed more than 160 vehicles globally to support emergency organizations during the crisis. More than half of the wheels were sent to the British Red Cross, which will use them to deliver medicine and food to vulnerable cases across the nation. Jaguar Land Rover has also offered a hand of support to the British government in the way of research, engineering, machine learning, AI, data science and other areas.

Other vehicles were distributed to Red Cross operations in Spain, France, South Africa and Australia. The auto brand said the models were available to be put to good use in the crisis because launch events they'd been earmarked for were postponed.

"Jaguar and Land Rover will do everything we can to support people in need around the world," said customer experience director Finbar McFall, who noted that the company's relationship with the Red Cross and Red Crescent goes back 65 years. "We can all play a part in helping the vulnerable during this global pandemic."

CMOs of Companies Like IBM, PepsiCo and LVMH Join Forces on Coronavirus Threat, as Ad Industry Braces for Slump Over Pandemic

All those ads and nobody to look at them. The ad industry is
bracing for a decline in 2020 revenue due to coronavirus.

It's not only the airlines, hotels, retailers and restaurants that are getting hammered by coronavirus — advertising, like those industries that feed it, are also feeling the pain. The ad-buying giant Magna, which prior to the pandemic had projected ad revenue to grow 6.6% this year, has adjusted its forecast to reflect a 2.8% decline in revenue, as the Journal reports. Meanwhile, as Variety reported, Google and Facebook alone stand to lose more than a combined $44 billion in ad revenue this year due to coronavirus.

A Magna executive characterized the current situation as unprecedented for the marketing community, commenting that the closest equivalent would be a combination of the Great Recession and 9/11.

In an example of brands doing good during the crisis, the marketing chiefs of nearly two dozen of the world's top corporations, including McDonald's, Shell, Anheuser-Busch, PepsiCo, Target, IBM, Tencent and LVMH, to join together under the auspices of the Association of National Advertisers to help the marketing community address the fallout. The execs are all members of the ANA's Global CMO Growth Council, which the ANA founded and which it jointly operates with the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The council is focused on brand experience and innovation, according to the ANA — two areas that have been greatly impacted by the pandemic.

Among the immediate goals of the group, which has been labeled the Global CMO Leadership Coalition on COVID-19, are identifying the most pressing issues faced by marketers, to help them make the best decisions; share their collective experiences with one another; and identify trusted sources of information marketers can turn to for support. The group launched last week with a virtual meeting attended by execs from the U.S., U.K., France, Switzerland and China.

COVID-19 and its effects may be unprecedented in our time, but pandemics and reactions to them are not unprecedented. Time magazine remembers newspaper ads from a century ago, during the Spanish Flu of 1918, urging citizens to wash their hands thoroughly and wear protective masks.

Time noted the many businesses at the time that sought to take advantage of the global panic, taking out ads to promote supposed flu remedies ranging from malted milk to massage therapy.

If only three dozen cans of tuna and a year's supply of toilet paper could do us some actual good.

More Americans Are Watching Streaming Shows During the Coronapocalypse, But Advertisers Aren't Rushing to Reach Them

From the Netflix series "Tiger King"

"TV streaming time in the U.S. went up 12% last week compared with the previous week, according to Wurl Inc. But even as viewing grows, advertiser demand is falling amid the sudden halt of much economic activity. SpotX Inc. said it saw a 16% increase in video ad inventory from March 19-22 versus two weeks earlier. Inventory for digital video was up 13% in the same period." -The Wall Street Journal

Another Magazine Goes Into the ICU: Hearst Converts Storied Pub to Occasional Pamphlet For Generation With No Attention Span

So, Hearst honcho Troy Young insists it's not because of coronavirus, but there are obvious parallels. Everybody's business is going south at the moment, of course, but magazine publishing — having already been in the ICU for some time now — got a head start to hell.

After writing about this business for so long, I suppose it shouldn't come as a shock or evoke any feeling of loss or exasperation whenever another magazine shuts down, or slices its frequency to next to nothing, or arrives in my mailbox as wafer-thin and bereft of engaging content as a visitor's guide to Plymouth Rock. But as someone who still actually enjoys the tactile experience of consuming news and information via print media, well, this just sucks that Esquire is going to 6 issues per year — particularly in the case of a publication with such a legendary pedigree and one that lately, under the guidance of new EIC Michael Sebastian, had become a stronger, more relevant read than it had been for a while.

Interestingly, around the same time I heard about the magazine's retreat, I got a promotional email inviting me to subscribe to TWO Hearst titles — Esquire and Men's Health — for the combo price of something like 5 bucks a year. I know I'm going to sound like a broken record here (not to mention as old as Methuselah), but how, as a publisher, do you expect to gain high-quality readers and attract likewise high-quality advertisers to reach those high-quality readers if you give away your product for less than a 3-course meal at the Waffle House (if you can find one that's not shut down yet, that is)?

I've only been making that point for, oh, a few decades now, but I still contend that, even in a world awash with free, mostly crappy content, people will still pony up for the good stuff — and as a publisher, aren't those the readers you want?

The New Yorker still gets that, as does The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and a few other periodicals charging a worthy price for what they sweat out — and the last time I checked, the circulations of those pubs were robust and growing.

These are companies that have figured out how to continue to make print vital even as they have built a formidable digital business.

So what's keeping other publishers from doing it?

Coronavirus, Content and Companies That Need a Course in Corporate Responsibility

With us media types (like everybody else) stuck working from home for the time being — or as I call it the other 24/7/365, working — I can't help but notice how many of us are resorting to that which we so often do when there's too little actual news to report: writing about ourselves. A number of journalists, including me, have stayed busy chronicling what other journalists are doing to produce and disseminate content against challenging odds, and just generally patting ourselves on the back for being "wartime reporters" — even though 99% of us haven't left the house except to walk the dog or buy more Fritos and gin. One of the most exhaustive such accounts comes by way of WWD, which details how People — the country's largest magazine in terms of circulation and, at almost 50 years old, the granddaddy of celebrity journalism — managed to crank out an issue with virtually everybody working from the kitchen table in their pajamas. As EIC Dan Wakeford notes, "We're much more proficient on Zoom, WebEx, FaceTime and Slack calls." Aren't we all, Dan, aren't we all.

On the topic of newfangled communication tools, though some people find them in poor taste, there are plenty of very funny memes floating around regarding this pandemic and our all working from home, while #WorkingFromHome continues to be a trending topic on Twitter. Here's the best one I've seen, perfectly summing up the predicament we're in:

As far as the content that's being produced by all those journalists is concerned, you've probably noticed that much of what's out there is light on actual information and heavy on those favorite old standbys at times such as these: speculation, sensationalism and scare tactics. If ever there were a time to stop indulging in the (admittedly highly snackable) feed of the Daily Mail and turn OFF those blaring, blustering cable news channels, it would be during this pandemic — though, totally unsurprisingly, the exact opposite is happening, with ratings for CNN, MSNBC and Fox News through the roof, as Forbes reports. And then there are those content purveyors like AARP, which, instead of trying to terrify older Americans and the rest of us, is putting out stuff that actually does the reader some good, like this helpful, common sense and science-based piece on how we can work to boost our immune systems. It's just one example of what makes AARP a truly kick-ass brand and a reliably solid source of information.

On the topic of brands doing good, those of us who write about business and brand marketing in particular have made note of the many companies working overtime to help out in this crisis. Like Tito's vodka, which announced this past weekend that it was going to start producing the life-saving hand sanitizer that is in such short supply. Meanwhile, 3M has picked up the production of respirators and Zara's parent company is distributing face masks to healthcare professionals. On the flipside, there are, as ever, those brands that can't seem to get out of their own way (or maybe take their heads out of something?), ones that appear to be following the same playbook as that Starbucks store that charged hundreds of dollars for cases of bottled water at Ground Zero when there were still pulverized remains of human flesh permeating the air of lower Manhattan, a stupid stunt that embarrassed the brand and for which corporate had to apologize. Among the businesses that could also use some pointers right now on how to not treat their customers like dirt? Well, there's United Airlines, Airbnb and Seamless, just to name three, as PR maven Drew Kerr points out. It's called corporate responsibility (or, just being a forthright, respectable business) — look into it.

Meanwhile, as the Journal reports, a number of brands are scrambling to pull or alter advertising content that once had seemed clever but that now can be filed under the "totally tacky and tasteless" category thanks to coronavirus. "Encouraging people to eat cheese dip with their fingers or suggesting they pull back from using social media in favor of bonding in crowded bars isn't the best guidance amid the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the globe," as Suzanne Vranica and Sahil Patel explain. On the other hand, maybe it's an opportunity for KFC to update that old brand messaging (something about fingers) toward doing some good in a newly germophobic world?

Mistress, the LA Ad Agency That Named a Conference Room After Monica Lewinsky, Eschews Racy Heritage for the Mainstream

The award-winning LA creative shop Mistress — which made a splash a few years ago with its work on Mattel's Hot Wheels and more recently when it partnered with Discover Los Angeles on its "Everyone Is Welcome" campaign following President Trump's travel ban — has now rebranded itself as The Many.

I suppose I can understand the agency wanting to make this change: The original, provocative name, dating back a decade, was inspired by its having done project work on the sly for brands working behind the backs of their AORs — like a dude cheating on his spouse with a mistress, get it? Considering the genesis of the business, it's probably not a surprise it's never shied away from taking risks with its work, which is why it's been able to attract clients like Netflix, TripAdvisor, PayPal and Coca-Cola and why Ad Age named it Small Agency of the Year three years running.

The repositioning signals that the agency is no mere side piece any longer. Explains founding partner Christian Jacobsen: "The Many embraces our cross-functional approach to work — we are many disciplines, many verticals, many creative solutions. It's about time our name caught up with who we are."

I first got to know Christian and his team several years ago when I was out there working on a story about ascendant LA creative agencies. Their first office, a somewhat ramshackle beach house in the grungy thick of Venice, looked like your typical startup: a large, open room jam-packed with young creatives and their slightly more weathered overseers, and teeming with plenty of creative energy (and little dogs running about, naturally).

A visit a few years later to their slicker, more industrial digs in Santa Monica signaled that they were beginning to move up in the world — but the spunk and spirit of the place were still every bit as evident. I remember being amused by the names they chose for their conference rooms over at the new offices. It's kind of a thing in the ad world to give one's meeting spaces names more clever than, say, "Conference Room A" — these are creative enterprises after all. Some do this to better effect than others, and Mistress did it better than anyone, naming its conference rooms after — what else? — famous mistresses. A couple of the more memorable ones, as I recall, were the "Camilla Parker Bowles" and the "Monica Lewinsky."

They'll be missed, as will one of the cleverest names for an ad agency ever.

What's the Real Reason Adam Moss Is Leaving New York Magazine? Because He's Not Allowed to Be a Journalist Anymore

When an editor as universally admired as Adam Moss leaves a thriving magazine like New York and its family of fabulously successful digital offshoots at the relatively young age of 61 — even though, admittedly, his is a business increasingly run by teenagers — all purportedly because he's tired or was reminded of the fragility of life after a bicycle accident, something smells fishy.

We are talking about the best magazine editor of our time, his successes having been well documented in the New York Times piece announcing the news. He is that rare editor who maintains the highest standards, produces stuff people actually want to read, wins awards for it, and who performed the herculean by spinning off that content into a stable of well-read and profitable websites. For those of us who write about the media business, reading that Adam Moss is leaving New York is like reading that God is dead. Reading it also makes you wonder, what's the real story? None of us is naive enough to think that people like this, people as mighty as Adam Moss, just up and "retire."

A closer read reveals the truth. Reports the Times:

And while he never shied away from the business side of the job, his management duties were outweighing the thrill of putting out a magazine. "In a lot of ways, it doesn't feel like the same publication or the same job," Mr. Moss said. "I get reports back about what sold at what price point and all that stuff, and I think, Wait, really, this is what I do for a living? You do spend less time worrying about getting the story right."

"This is what I do for a living?" It's a question more and more editors have started asking themselves.

Once upon a time, I ran features for a magazine. It was good journalism, and we got a lot of attention for it, and yes, it was also fun. Then that magazine got bought by some bottom line-obsessed goons who had no experience in journalism (nor expertise in anything that I could tell) and demanded that their editors and reporters be held accountable, revenue-wise, for everything they produced. Every reporter's clicks were scrutinized, every editor's stories judged against whether they were monetized — and editors were even forced to make sales calls, and had how much sales revenue they'd brought in tracked by software designed for that purpose. At one point, the idea was weighed of having editors' salaries tied to how much money they'd brought in. Let that sink in.

There are a lot of other news organizations being run, while not quite to that extreme, not all that far off either — where, like Moss says, journalists are now spending more time worrying about clicks and ad sales than producing quality journalism. Nobody appreciates that news organizations have to make money more than I do — in fact, I've been closer to it than most, having spent a career producing "listicles" and profiles of award winners against which congratulatory ads are sold, as well as advertorials and custom content, and working closely with the sales department on such projects. On more than one occasion, I've had to hold my nose and do my best from retching when forced to create content that was nothing more than a promotion, a free ad, for another division of my company. Businesses are in business to make money, of course. We all know that, and accept it. It's when there's no breathing room, or support or respect from the higher-ups, for actual journalism that it becomes untenable.

I once attempted to explain to one brainless twit I worked for — one of the owners of my publication — the importance of journalistic integrity and independence. His response? "We're not Woodward and Bernstein here, you know." No, I found myself thinking — more like Laurel and Hardy.

However, I was fortunate enough early in my career to have worked for editors who had me chase stories regardless of who it upset — including the publisher or owner. And I did, and we were threatened, and our lives were made a little miserable for a while. But we ran the stories anyway. And those stories had impact with our readers and led to real change in the real world. It happened because I had bosses with balls, who had courage, who didn't back down — even if it meant being threatened with their very jobs. I'm sorry to say, we just don't live in that kind of world anymore. We live in a world of ass-kissing and kowtowing and building "relationships," not of independent, adversarial journalism. Just look at the way the TV networks cower at this corrupt president and his cronies instead of standing up to them and feeding the shit they peddle daily right back to them. There are a few brave ones like Jim Acosta, but precious few. Did you see that story this week about NBC News telling its reporters not to refer to Steve King as a "racist," before backing down after everybody, quite rightly, erupted in a rage?

We are no longer allowed to call racists racist, or crooks crooks, or bullshitters bullshitters. Make nice, now. Be friends with everybody. Don't ruffle feathers or rock the boat.

Maybe I'm an idealist, or an anachronism, or naive, but whatever happened to fearlessness, and integrity, and the willingness to stand up to the powers that be in the world, including our own bosses, and tell the public the things that other people want kept hidden? Whatever happened to our business — a business where Adam Moss did great journalism and had fun doing it instead of being driven from the industry after having grown weary of staring at a spreadsheet and being given a stern talking-to after this year's "Reasons to Love New York" issue sold 15 fewer copies at the newsstand than last year's?

Remember what he told the Times: "It doesn't feel like the same job."

Is it any wonder the guy finally said enough?

What is this industry where Graydon Carter, the onetime impresario of the magazine world, can be driven into retirement too early because he makes too much money, paving the way for an unknown, untalented kid who is, issue by issue, destroying an entire franchise? Where Out magazine decides it's time for "new blood" and hires another child as editor to create a product that is totally unremarkable and unrelatable in every single way unless you ride a skateboard to work? Where all the content of Hearst's legendary magazines is now done on an assembly line of drones — cranking out dull, soulless content for one website that is virtually indistinguishable from the dull, soulless content of another?

I've always been in love with journalism, especially that which is produced by magazines. It's so painful watching it be destroyed.