5 Blogs Before Lunch

Bloomberg Acquires Businessweek...for the Price of a NYC Apartment

For a price tag of a New York City apartment, news service Bloomberg will acquire BusinessWeek from publisher McGraw-Hill Companies.

The price tag is reportedly somewhere between $2 million and $5 million, along with the assumption of the magazine's liabilities.

As context, $2 million right now could also buy you a rather ordinary 3 bedroom 2 bath apartment on the Upper East Side.

Reuters is reporting that the magazine, which could lose as much as $40 million this year, could be retitled Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

Bloomberg, of course, is controlled by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The company's chief content officer Norman Pearlstine, who will become BusinessWeek's Chairman said: "The interaction with Bloomberg News is going to be all pervasive. We will have editors from Bloomberg News and BusinessWeek working together.

Does Cleavage Belong in Automotive Advertising?

There was a time when beautiful women were used to sell cars. Whether scantily-clad and draped across the hood of a Pontiac, or part of the "Toyota Dancers" at the auto show, women were objectified in the marketing of automobiles for decades.

Then came the realization that women were making the majority of the purchase decisions for the family car.

Unfortunately, this fact seems to have been overlooked by the folks at UlsterTrader.com, a used car Web site in Northern Ireland.

The company created an outdoor advertising campaign featuring an image of the cleavage of a woman wearing a white bra with the headline: "Nice headlamps. What do you look for in a car?"

The British advertising watchdog organization, The Advertising Standards Authority, has banned the ad. The ASA said the poster "caused serious offense to some readers and was likely to cause widespread offense," the story said.

"We considered that the image of the woman's cleavage coupled with the strapline 'Nice Headlamps. What do you look for in a car?' was likely to be seen to objectify and degrade women by linking attributes of a woman, her cleavage, to attributes of a car, the headlamps, in a way that would be seen to imply a woman, like a car, was to be selected for those attributes," the watchdog said.

Source: BBC News and Weird Car News

Goodbye Gourmet, Cookie, Modern Bride and Elegant Bride. Conde Nast Makes Some Tough Cuts.

Gourmet, Cookie, Modern Bride and Elegant Bride are all being shuttered.

All are were Conde Nast publications. They employed about 180 people.

It is hard to imagine the world without these publications, but it seems like a sign of the times.

The announcement follows reports of ad pages at 14 of Conde Nast's 23 print publications falling by more than the industry average of 29.5% in the second quarter (says WSJ.com).

Gourmet. "the magazine of good living" has been around for 68 years, but will be gone soon. The transition leads to the question...who will replace the quality, professional content of Gourmet, and the others.

The Washington Post breaks-up with the L.A. Times, then partners-up with Bloomberg

The Washington Post and Bloomberg are teaming up to launch the Washington Post News Service With Bloomberg News, in January. The partnership will supply publishers with economic and political coverage. The news comes as The Post announced just this week that it will end its joint news service with the Los Angeles Times.

From the WSJ:
The venture -- called Washington Post News Service With Bloomberg News -- will be available beginning January and will stress political and economic coverage. In addition, the Post and Bloomberg will produce a business-news page for the Post's Web site, and Bloomberg will distribute Washington Post news through its Bloomberg Professional subscription service. That service provides data, analytics and news geared to financial-service professionals.

Sears and Kmart's Spyware Program To Gather Customer Data Shut Down By FTC

The objective seemed innocent enough.

Sears and Kmart wanted to better understand customer habits in order to serve their audience.

Unfortunately, something went terribly wrong in the execution.

The retail giants (both part of the same holding group) offered to pay website visitors $10 each to relinquish Internet browsing histories under the guise of a marketing survey. The idea was that they could take that data, and analyze shopping patterns.

Unfortunately, the data revealed far more information about consumers than Sears and Kmart needed, and a lot more than consumers knew they were giving up.

You see, the "research" involved installing software (essentially spyware) on consumer's computers. It transmitted the complete contents of a browsing session, even secure sessions to the folks at Sears and Kmart.

This meant that Sears/Kmart would have access to the contents of shopping carts, online bank statements, drug prescription records, video rental records, library borrowing histories, and the sender, recipient, subject, and size for web-based e-mails.

Talk about TMI (too much information).

Once this activity was discover, In walks the Federal Trade Commission, who, after an investigation, found that the two businesses, both owned by Sears Holding Management, hadn't adequately disclosed their data-collection program's scope and ordering them to destroy all the data they collected.

They essentially said that Sears and Kmart buried the information that would have told consumers that they'd be spied on, way too deep in a user agreement.

According to Ars Technica, under the settlement with the FTC, Sears has now agreed to destroy all data gained from the experiment and stop collecting data from any software still running in the wild. In addition, if it wants to do any tracking in the future, the company has committed to "clearly and prominently disclose the types of data the software will monitor, record, or transmit. This disclosure must be made prior to installation and separate from any user license agreement. Sears must also disclose whether any of the data will be used by a third party."

YouTube Still Searching for Profitability

YouTube has many measurements by which it could consider itself a success.

The company is far and away the Internet's biggest video outlet. comScore reports that In July, YouTube and other Google video sites registered a record 8.9 billion video views, accounting for 42% of all videos viewed online.

And, the founders should still feel good about the $1.65 billion they received from Google back in 2006.

But one success metric has proved illusive to YouTube--profitability.

Apparently, YouTube will not go into the black in 2009, notwithstanding a revised report that cut its estimated bandwidth costs from $360 million to $300 million for the year, according to a pair of Credit Suisse analysts. Per the analysts' projections, revenue for the  site will be $240 million this year, about $60 million short of the cost of bandwidth.

Or in the words of Maxwell Smart--"Missed it by THAT much."

Source: Mulichannel News

McDonald's Loses McCurry Trademark Suit in Malaysia

McDonald's has long been known as an avid defender of its trademark.

In fact, McDonald's has been criticized for its liberal use of the court system.

There was the McCoffee case, the McChina Wok Away suit, and the McMunchies trademark case (to name a few).

McDonald's contends it is merely protecting its corporate interests from undue attack.

But now, in a case of "you win some, you lose some," the owner of a small curry restaurant in Malaysia has won an eight-year trademark battle against the world's largest fast-food giant.

The restaurant, which was sued by McDonald's for use of its name which it claims it is short for "Malaysian Chicken Curry," (despite the logo that has a big "M", and little "c" like McDonald).

It is a blow to McDonald's who wanted sole rights to the use of the prefix "Mc" to protect its brand image, and fend off other attempts at McTrademark infringements.

The Malaysian High Court ruled Tuesday that the fast-food chain had no such exclusive rights and pay legal costs for the eight-year suit.

Source: Slashfood

Publicis Buys CRM Tool from...Unilever

 Publicis Groupe has purchased the French customer relationship management program Pour Tout Vous Dire from Unilever.

The deal licenses use of the tool to Unilever for five years,  to keep Unilever products represented. The Web-focused portal aims to forge and bolster relationships between consumers and brands.

From Brandweek:
According to the Paris-based holding company: "The goal here is to build a benchmark e-CRM platform for the group's clients that showcases brands and fosters interactions with consumers." The plan moving forward is to operate the property on an open architecture basis, allowing clients of all stripes to quickly tailor programs and messages.

It Looks Like eBay Finally Has a Buyer for Skype

It has been no secret eBay has had a FOR SALE sign up on the lawn of the Internet phone service Skype, which it acquired in 2005.

Skype was always an odd fit with eBay--two companies in decidedly different businesses who could not find a way to spin an association of brands.

It now appears that a deal has been struck to sell Skype to a group of private investors which include Netscape founder (and eBay Board member) Marc Andreessen's investment group. early Skype investor Index Ventures, and the private equity firm Silver Lake Partners are part of the deal.

How much eBay will receive to sell the company is currently unclear, but they were apparently hoping for around $2 billion.

The company was reportedly purchased for a price that ultimately topped $3.1 billion in 2005. EBay later wrote down $900 million of Skype’s value, after it became clear that the company was not a good fit with eBay’s main e-commerce and online payment businesses.

Source: The New York Times

Disney Buying Marvel. Captain America, Meet Hannah Montana.

In a deal that is reportedly one of the largest acquisitions in Disney's history, The Walt Disney Company is acquiring Marvel Entertainment in a deal valued at around $4 billion.

Looks like Spider-Man, Captain America and the X-Men may have some new dating opportunities with Snow White, Ariel, and Sleeping Beauty.

From The Wall Street Journal:

The move fits with Disney's stated strategy of driving revenue from popular content over time across multiple platforms. It also gives the company a boost with young male audiences, where Marvel's characters like Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Thor are particularly popular. Disney has shown more strength with females from its properties like Hannah Montana.