A year ago, Primedia–then called K-III Communications Corp.–was shopping around its Pro Football Weekly as part of its Daily Racing Form operation, but a deal never jelled.
Then in November, Primedia pulled back Pro Football Weekly, while still trying to sell the racing newspaper.
Now it’s Pro Football Weekly, a Bannockburn-based firm that still is part of Primedia, that’s doing the buying.
Pro Football Weekly is acquiring Basketball Weekly, which will be merged into its Basketball News, launched earlier this year. The seller is Curtis Publishing in Miami.
Basketball Weekly, which has been around for about 30 years, was distributed only 20 times a year, despite its title. Basketball News is published 40 times a year.
What Pro Football Weekly wants is Basketball Weekly’s subscriber list of about 45,000. That, coupled with Basketball News, which has a circulation of 70,000, gives the combined publication a pretty good base, although there’s a duplication of about 10,000 to 12,000 between both publications. Sports junkies will read almost anything.
For the time being, at least, Basketball News will remain the title and Basketball Weekly will be put on the shelf, says Pro Football Weekly publisher-editor Hub Arkush, who had owned 53 percent of that publication prior to its sale to K-III in mid-1996.
How to milk a pitch: It looks like the two major milk marketing groups have compromised on what their creative focus should be, as both move closer to combining their ad efforts for 1999. The “milk mustache” campaign from the National Fluid Milk Processors Education Program (MilkPep) will incorporate the “Got Milk?” tagline that Dairy Management Inc. has been using. “Got Milk?” will replace “Where’s Your Mustache?” as the tagline in a new $100 million-plus joint ad effort that still needs approval by milk processors and farmers in August. “Where’s Your Mustache?” replaced “Milk, What a Surprise!” the latter definitely a yawner, which could put anybody to sleep, not unlike a warm glass of milk at bedtime. Additionally, a good chunk of MilkPep’s ad budget that had been exclusively in magazines will be shifted to TV, a move that won’t win many friends in the print industry. Then again, who will be the agency of record is still to be determined for this new campaign. Bozell Worldwide in New York has been doing the creative and placing the media on the “mustache” ads, while Leo Burnett Co. has been placing the media for DMI. The “Got Milk?” creative is from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco, whose client California Milk Processors Association has been licensed to DMI. Unifying the marketing efforts of any two organizations is difficult. But when processors and farmers are involved, plus management egos– described as “big time” by insiders at both MilkPep and DMI–a good deal of money and brainpower may end up wasted. Despite all the hullabaloo, including PR hype, on the alleged success of the “mustache” campaign, milk sales have been flat at best nationally after a near 20-year decline. Milk business has been up a bit in California, thanks to the “Got Milk?” campaign that debuted in 1994.
On the move: John Buehler, an account supervisor at Leo Burnett Co., and Cheryl Small, a senior planner at the agency, elected VPs. . . . Kathleen Berger to a group brand manager at Henkel Nutrition and Health Group, LaGrange. . . . In New York, Bernadette Haley rejoined Reader’s Digest as VP-publisher of its U.S. edition.
Carsons to Ohio shop: Proffitt’s Inc. assigned Carson Pirie Scott & Co.’s broadcast advertising to Ron Foth Advertising in Columbus, Ohio, a move that consolidates all broadcast ads for Proffitt’s units with that agency.
Strictly Personal: Birthday greetings to Michael Mudd, 47; Sharon R. Fulgenzi, 28; Mary Anne Jackson, 45; John McCarthy, 48 (Continental Air Transport); Tom Rivera, 64 (Woodfield Convention Bureau); Christine S. Pratt, 37, and Larry Schaffel, 65.
– Promotional calendars are old hat in this country, but you can get a peek at antique Chinese calendar posters bearing product information early in the 20th Century as part of an exhibition that runs through July 15 at Cindy Bordeau Fine Art (300 W. Superior St.). Promotional calendars in the U.S., which date back to the 1840s, are closing in on $900 million in annual sales, according to the Promotional Products Association International in Irvine, Texas.
