The honeymoon's over

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Mar 21, 2000

The reason? There is still no end in sight to the strong demand for commercial time among marketers -- whether dot-com or not-com -- which has intensified their need to break through the clutter. One popular tactic is to sponsor so-called marquee programming like the Academy Awards, which draws large audiences even in an era of fragmented viewing patterns.

"Our belief is that high-visibility events, from the Oscars to the MTV Awards to the World Series, are the best way to keep our brand top of mind," said Dawn Hudson, senior vice president for strategy and marketing at Pepsi-Cola in Purchase, N.Y., a unit of Pepsico returning for a second straight year as the sole beverage advertiser.

"We were pleased with the ratings and the focus and attention our brand got" in 1999, said Hudson, who is deciding this week which new "joy of cola" spots for Pepsi-Cola by BBDO New York -- part of the BBDO Worldwide unit of the Omnicom Group -- will fill the three minutes of time the company bought.

To be sure, the Oscar ratings fluctuate like the hemlines of the dresses worn by the nominees for Best Actress. The numbers rose in 1998, when viewers tuned in to watch Titanic win 11 awards, then fell last year for the longest show ever. "How many years do you get a Titanic?" asked Marv Goldsmith, president for sales and marketing at the ABC Television Network in New York, part of the ABC unit of Walt Disney. "But even in the weak years," he added, "it's still the second-highest rated show" behind the Super Bowl.

They're back all four of them

BOSTON (NYT) -- History buffs will appreciate this factoid: The last time that Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young toured, Richard Nixon was president. "Yes, and when we were on tour, he got knocked out of office," says David Crosby, recalling Nixon's resignation due to the Watergate scandal.

That was back in 1974 -- the year that CSNY, one of the first supergroups, was big enough to book a tour of football stadiums. Nixon is dead now, but CSNY has miraculously returned for a reunion tour that no one -- except for a few hippie diehards -- really expected to see. It was infighting that broke up the group; talent was never the issue.

"We were good then -- and we're even better now," says a confident Crosby, "though we're not as good-looking. If you came to see the Backstreet Boys, you came to the wrong concert."

"I'm in hog's heaven," adds Stephen Stills in a separate phone interview. "This is so much better than any of us expected. I know people were saying, `Hey, those guys are going to creak their way along and almost make the vocal harmonies, and Stills will be flat, and blah blah blah,' but except for the odd senior moments when we have memory lapses as to words and things, we're having a terrific time."

Most reviewers have raved about CSNY's shows -- the chief (and sometimes only) complaint being that the shows are too long, up to 3.5 hours. But that's what happens when you combine the best of CSNY's output (much of it from 1970's Deja Vu album -- Teach Your Children, Helpless, Our House and Almost Cut My Hair, in which Crosby sings about letting his "freak flag fly") with songs from CSN's career without Young, as well as solo hits. The show typically opens aptly with Carry On and closes with Long May You Run.