Country Music Wins in Down Times...

You know the old joke: What do you get when you play country music backwards?
You get your wife back, you get your truck back, you get your dog back...

Well, as you might expect, in tough times like the current repo boom, the popularity of country music swells. Case in point? The CMA awards netted their best ratings in 11 years!

A sign of the times indeed. Our advice? Invest heavily in Wal-Mart, Sham-Wows and booze til things start looking up again.

Stop TiVoers from Skipping Past Your Ads!

OK, so over 30% of TV households have a DVR. The majority of those people are skipping past commercials. How do you stop them, and keep them riveted to your spot?

Basically, you've got about 3 seconds to capture their interest. Max. So says a new study by TiVo and Innerscope. Have them at "Hello," or lose them forever...
Read the study results here. ...and more at AdAge.
You can also check out TiVo's Stopwatch service to see how your ads fare at: https://stopwatch.tivo.com

Mellencamp on the State of Music

A long, but very well written and compelling article by John Mellencamp on the state of the music industry, and how the hell we wound up with the Top Ten filled with acts you and I have never heard of:
Read the article here, and then check out some of the truly original artists we're proud to work with at Coupe!

A choice excerpt from the article: "Record companies soon discovered that because of BDS, they only needed to concentrate on about 12 radio stations; there was no longer a business rationale for working secondary markets that were soon forgotten -- despite the fact that these were the very places where rock and roll was born and thrived. Why pay attention to Louisville -- worth a comparatively few potential listeners -- when the same one spin in New York, Los Angeles or Atlanta, etc., was worth so many more potential listeners? All of a sudden there were #1 records that few of us had ever heard of."

2009 Awards?? Already? Really?

Along with our friends at Leopard Communications, we've won some awards for 2009 already. It's only March! This is just silly. But we'll take it. Thanks to the Web Marketing Association for the recognition and for being so darned future-forward.
Internet Advertising Competition Awards 2009
IBM Unified Communications You're So Fired Video: Best Computer Software Rich media Online Ad
Covidien RMS Brand Story Video: Best Medical Rich Media Online Ad
IBM Mashups Video: Outstanding Rich Media Online Ad

The State of The Radio

Interesting article on radio advertising on AdAge today...
http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=135324

Coupe on Facebook

In our latest move towards the 22nd Century, Coupe is now on Facebook!
Check out the site and become a fan!
If you're a musician, you can post upcoming gigs, and we hope it will become a great place to network for everyone.

Old Navy Supermodelquins

We've had a blast recording the voices and doing some sound design and mixing for the new Old Navy integrated campaign featuring another great concept from our friends at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, "The Supermodelquins." Check out this write up in Ad Age and watch for the first of the TV spots tonight on "Grey's Anatomy," "The Office" and "Survivor."

CPB producers included Annie Turlay, Paul Aaron, Rick Fleenor, Christy Carter and Melany Fehrenbach along with Allen Richardson on the creative side.