SocialChorus Blog April 2009 Archives

American Express Publishing Cancels Luxury Summit

by Greg Shove on April 30, 2009

American Express had already slimmed down their annual 2 day Luxury Summit (in Florida) to two, one day meetings in New York and Los Angeles, to reduce the cost of participating. But now, probably based on slow registrations, the event has been cancelled all together. This is a shame – from my experience it was the best event in the ‘luxury marketing’ space, and attendance in the past was always strong, in terms of breadth and quality of delegates. I hope the event returns (along with the economy) – but this can be tricky to pull off: once people live without an event (and the expense), they realise they can.

April 30, 2009 American Express, Luxury Summit

Luxury CMO Lunch with Tina Brown

by Greg Shove on April 29, 2009

Last month, I co-hosted a lunch with the heads of marketing of about a dozen luxury brands (including Prada, Zegna, Chanel and others) to talk about how high-end brands can deploy unique digital engagement campaigns that get noticed – and that actually work. My guest was Tina Brown, the founder and CEO of The Daily Beast, and a publisher in the Halogen Network.

Besides demonstrating how the Daily Beast has quickly built an audience of both affluent and influential readers very quickly ( short version: mix low-brow and high-brow in a well-designed, easy to ‘snack on’ content package), Tina also showed how luxury advertisers can engage with this audience (short version: not via IAB standard ads). For the last six months we, like many others including the OPA, have asked publishers to begin to deploy digital ad products that are more custom, integrated and impactful than the typical 300 X 250 banner. This is the future of online advertising and it’s starting to arrive now:

Luxury CMO Lunch with Tina Brown

April 29, 2009 Daily Beast

Congrats to Urbanspoon, Now Part of IAC

by Greg Shove on

Long before Apple featured Urbanspoon in their iPhone ads, we were fans of Ethan and the team at Urbanspoon, and their restaurant information service. So much so, that we asked them to join Halogen Network, as an anchor publisher in our Food and Wine channel. So, we think that IAC made a smart move, in terms of acquiring them this week – more on that here.

And we are pleased to have just signed a new, six-figure advertising partnership with a world-class spirits brand, that will use Halogen and Urbanspoon to roll-out a unique digital engagement campaign this summer. More on that later.

April 29, 2009 Urbanspoon

Another New Halogen Newsletter: The Cheat Sheet

by Greg Shove on April 27, 2009

We just launched another newsletter product – The Cheat Sheet: an end of week scan of what’s interesting or newsworthy, to help prep you for the coming weekend cocktail parties. Basically, we do the work for you, so that you can be both smart and entertaining when you are at your next dinner party. Click here for last week’s edition.

Looks like this – and ran last week with Frette as one of the first advertising sponsors:

Another New Halogen Newsletter: The Cheat Sheet

April 27, 2009 Cocktails, Entertaining

Is Apple the Best Advertiser on the Web?

by Greg Shove on April 24, 2009

I am sure many of you have seen this – great stuff from a company firing on all cylinders. And a good example of how to really ‘get beyond the banner’:

Is Apple the Best Advertiser on the Web?

April 24, 2009 Apple

Halogen’s Little Luxuries Newsletter Makes Its Debut

by Greg Shove on April 23, 2009

We have sent our first newsletter from Halogen Life this week – Little Luxuries; a week round-up of ways to spoil yourself, most of them under $250. So a recession-friendly source of lifestyle tips. Subscribe here to all of our new newsletters.

Halogens Little Luxuries Newsletter Makes Its Debut