That’s easy for him to say: Perhaps it’s my day to beat up “branding experts,” but this AP essay by Anne D’Innocenzio (basically a rehash of the WSJ piece mentioned earlier) contains the following classic fragment of ill-conceived punditry by someone I won’t embarass by naming:

(The unnamed pundit noted) that while the lighter-than-expected sentence “removes the worst of the stigma from Martha, it is by no means closure” because Stewart intends to exhaust her appeal. The best scenario for the brand would be for Stewart to complete her prison term immediately, he said.

Give me a break. Screw the brand. And screw the jackass-logic that leads some guy sitting in an air-conditioned office somewhere to suggest a 63-year-old woman spend even one night in a federal penitentiary for the sake of the brand when there’s a shot the conviction can be overturned on appeal or that new flexibility in sentencing guidelines will allow her punishment to better serve society’s interest.

In honor of Jeff Jarvis: As Jeff reached a certain demographic yesterday, I thought he might enjoy a letter-to-the-editor response to an earlier piece by Tom Hespos
that appeared on MediaPost.com regarding “aging and the influence of the Internet.”

Here’s a sample of Tom’s earlier essay:

Why do mass market brands try their best to forge brand loyalty at a young age? There are two main reasons: 1) A brand that appeals to older folks can count on less revenue over the lifetime of the consumer, simply due to attrition. 2) Consumers tend to form brand loyalties at an early age, and once loyalty is cemented, it becomes harder for a competitor to encourage switching behavior.

Today, a letter from Jon Currie was posted that displays how common-sense typically trumps branding-theory mumbo-jumbo.

Quote:

Hey Tom. I’m 57. Nobody wants my money. Too bad. I’m thinking about buying a new car right now. I live in a million dollar townhouse in Santa Monica and three other properties. My wife is 55; she just went back to school to become a principal to earn more money. Guess we’ll have to just save it all up. We just booked a vacation to Puerto Vallarta at the best hotel. Too bad e-commerce folks don’t want us. BTW, we just paid $200 bucks to see Simon and Garfunkel at the Hollywood Bowl with 10,000 of our best friends, all over 50. We all drove there in Beemers, Caddies, Benzes, etc. Your key demo was there too, providing valet service and serving us drinks. Marketers, just tell me who wants my money, I’ll show up. If you think I’m dead, so will your business be in 5 years. Us over 50’s control over half of the wealth in this country. Get used to it or lose.

While Jeff and I aren’t quite ready for AARP, we’re close enough to catch Jon’s drift.

How to get your weblog discovered: Steve Rubel, who, as we noted way-back-when, provides the best example we know for how to roll-out and promote a business weblog, reveals the secrets of his success in an interview with MarketingSherpa.com. Frankly, he won this weblog over when he flattered us with an interview that allowed us to pretend we should be included with the real luminaries he’s interviewed. The wheel keeps spinning. (Actually, I’m gushing with these compliments in hopes that Steve will move his link to this weblog to a more alphabetically appropriate spot on his blogroll.)

Separated at birth? Is it just this weblog? Whenever an article (like this gossip item in today’s NY Post) appears about the famous media executive pictured on the left, we can’t help but thinking it’s a file photo of the deceased entertainer-congressman pictured on the right.

( Okay. Anticipating an e-mail from a certain reader of this blog, we will save you the time and post this blogger’s photo for comparison purposes.)

Slumming? The New Republic profiles the upscale readership of US Weekly. Really. (Thanks, Sean)

Martha below: Martha gets five months and a bottom bunk. Developing. According to CNN, she was sentenced to five months in prison and fined $30,000.

Quote:

Federal Judge Miriam Cedarbaum also ordered that Stewart get five months of home confinement and two years of supervised probation after she is released. But Stewart will not be heading to prison immediately since the judge issued a stay delaying the sentence while Stewart’s lawyers file an expected appeal.

According to the AP report, before sentencing, Stewart asked the judge to “remember all the good I have done…. “Today is a shameful day. It’s shameful for me, for my family and for my company,” she said.

The rexblog is happy to supply the follow up sentence she was too polite to utter but obviously wants to say: “Shameful for a criminal justice system that lets off those Koslowski scumbags but convicts me.”

Fight on, girl.

Update: Mikey (and others) have asked why I think Martha should not get prison time. Here’s an earlier post on that topic.

“What was a close personal matter became an almost circus of unprecedented proportions,” she said, adding that 200 people at her company had lost their jobs as a result of the publicity surrounding her legal troubles. And in the plucky style for which the self-made millionaire is known, Ms. Stewart urged people to buy her magazine, and advertisers to keep purchasing ads. Meanwhile, she said, she will face whatever comes.

Here, we’ll help: Here’s a handy link to $28 subscription (you save 51%) to Martha Stewart Living at the rexblog magazine store.

And I don’t want to use this as a sales pitch for my company, but we love that company, we’ve worked so hard on that company, and we really think it merits great attention from the American public.

We hear ya’ll, Martha.

Unsafe at any speed? MediaPost’s Michael Shields reports on plummeting automotive advertising pages in Fast Company but fails to speculate whether or not circulation padding controversies may have anything to do with it.

Quote:

When it comes to the automobile industry, speed normally is a good thing. Just not when you’re headed in the wrong direction. That’s what the odometer watchers at Fast Company have come to realize during the first half of 2004, during which the magazine’s ad pages plummeted at high velocity, dropping 28 percent from the first half of 2003. This follows a successful run on the newsstand over the past year, where the magazine has been credited with surviving some tough times. Dan Rubin, executive vice president of Gruner + Jahr, blames Detroit, but adds, “It is a little misleading. The auto business really loves our book. Since there have been fewer launches this year [from auto makers], we do take a PIB hit.”

Is that “newsstand success” comment an inside joke or something?