SHE KNOWS BETTER

A recent internal staff memo from the food editor at www.sheknows.com should outrage management at the popular women's destination site.

Here's the damning excerpt from the memo ...

"We have a LOT of sponsorships going live across all channels and sites from now until basically forever, but the big ones for food are coming in June and July. The bad news is, our click-through rates are not as great as our impressions (which is not your fault). But we can help everyone out a bit if we get in the habit of clicking on any ads you see alongside your articles, on the site, in your section, ANYWHERE. Our advertisers are the reason we all have paychecks each month so it’s important that they’re happy. Literally all you have to do is click on the ad – you don’t have to stay on their site for a certain amount of time and don’t have to buy a thing. Just click! Click 100 times if you want to!"

Ouch!

HE CHANGED THE MEDIA BUYING WORLD

On June 12 2012, a veteran of the media buying world, Norman King (86), passed away.  Norman was the father of the first independent media buying service, having founded U.S. Media some 42 years ago.

Norman King upset the agency apple cart, dragging away media buying and upending the traditional agency commission structure forever.

On April 15, 1970, at the annual Television meeting of the Association of National Advertisers, Norman told what it was going to be like from that day on.  A 1992 tribute to Norman by Erwin Ephron, a legend in his own right, can be found here, a link to "Ephron on Media", where the story of Norman's meeting with the ANA is told.

Norman leaves behind his wife of 56 years, Barbara, son Laurence, grandchildren Allison, Daniel and Nicholas, and The Friars Club where he was a fixture for as long as they can remember.

You did good, Norman.

LEST WE FORGET

One hundred eight years ago on June 15, 1904, the General Slocum caught fire and sank in New York's East River.

At the time of the accident she was on a chartered run carrying members of St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church (German Americans from Little Germany in Manhattan) to a church picnic.

An estimated 1,021 of the 1,342 people on board died. The General Slocum disaster was the New York area's worst disaster in terms of loss of life until the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.

For a more detailed account of the disaster you can go here (Wikipedia).