Annual compensation for CEOs is nearly always a thorny question. Not so ironically, every CEO wants to land on Forbes’ “Billionaire List,” but mention of annual salaries for public companies brings a corporate chorus of no comments or quick stage lefts - helicopter waiting depending on the benefits package.
Via WSJ (including the graphic): Larry Ellison, founder and chief executive of software maker Oracle Corp., topped the list of best-paid executives of public companies during the past decade, receiving $1.84 billion in compensation, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of CEO pay. Coming in No. 2 on the compensation list was Barry Diller, who received roughly $1.14 billion from IAC/InterActive and Expedia.com, the online travel site IAC spun off in 2005, where he remains chairman. Following Mr. Diller [was] Apple Inc.’s Steve Jobs with $749 million.
Over the past decade, Ellison has held strong in the face of Diller and Jobs, who’s comp is mostly in his stock and does not include Pixar/Disney transaction gains. Steve Jobs still remains the largest individual shareholder of Disney, which sums up what a superb brand strategist he is: Apple, then Pixar leading into Disney.
Calling itself “The World’s First Personalized Newspaper,” Hawthorne Labs has released Apollo on iPad only ($2.99 and going to $4.99). Founded by Google ex-coders for the most part, Apollo offers a cleaner, more laid-out version of NetVibes, Google News, AllTop, Newser, Yahoo!, HuffPo/Drudge - basically any of the news aggregators but with related clustering and more social modularity.
We’re looking forward to testing out, but check out the well-designed layouts below and the YouTube video (after the jump with its bumpy classical/techno, engineer-produced beat). These kind of news tech builds are somewhat generic in structure - an Apple, Facebook, Google, NYT or Demand Media should be able to duplicate, as it’s UI/UX with a good web crawler/recommendation engine.
However, what we still find missing, is who is aggregating the feeds? What is the POV that makes it interesting. If the recommendation engines and content clusters are dead-on for high-level, online readers then the results will be good…for that reader, but what about others with less disciplined RSS/news browsing. Who are the leaders or tastemakers of online content consumption that, frankly, are worth following.
Who is the voice of the NYT - we know the voice of Dealbook? Who is the voice of the LAT - we know the voice of Company Town?
Sony Pictures keeps on improving its marketing game online. With the upcoming “Facebook” film, The Social Network, directed by David Fincher, Sony’s domain choice in 500millionfriends.com is inspired branding.
Compared to all of the usual/uninspired studio domains, e.g., blankmovie.com, blankthemovie.com, blank-movie.com, blank-thefilm.com and the random .net absurdity, 500MillionFriends is welcome creativity/cleverness from a major studio.
The teaser below explores the hyperbolic yet real-life world of Facebook’s origins, with lines like: “Your best friend [Eduardo Severin] is suing you for $600 million dollars…” With a majority of Americans using Facebook (okay, 3-4 out of 5 Americans), how do the filmmakers take an everyday utility like Facebook, and market (then tell) a story that captures a blockbuster audience?
Transmedia is a reboot of saying multi-platform media or IP, but now tied to a hopefully valuable piece of IP real estate. It’s like adding interactive curb appeal to your content property. A little viral interest or insurance doesn’t hurt…
Transmedia content is also “bite-sized, buy-in for consumers” or “low-cost lure,” i.e., it creates additional interest beyond the basic trailer and press materials while telling a story.
Check out what Saban Brands is doing in this space with $500M - basically, significant backing on IP that has been exhausted, and needs a refresh in terms of 360 degree merchandising.
Labels had their lunch eaten by digital, same is happening (incrementally) with media studios. So, labels are doing 360 merch, which studios like Disney, Summit (Twilight Saga, anyone?), Warner Bros (”Why So Serious”) and Paramount realize adds significantly to their bottom line growth.
Complicating Demand Media, Yahoo!/Associated Content and potentially Aol/Seed’s algorithms and content milling plans, Google has a patent in play to harvest users’ searches for publishers.
Via FT: Google obtained a patent this year for a system that would help it identify “inadequate content” on the internet, based on comparisons of what people search for and what they find, executives who have reviewed the filing, said. The filing said data from the Google system could be sold to online publishers or given away for free[.]
Two relatively new resources for startup entrepreneurs looking for angel investments. AngelList springs from the VentureHacks group, while Open Angel Forum was founded by Jason Calacanis, after he challenged all of the angel forums and keiretsus who charged fees to startups seeking angels.
Via WSJ: Earlier this year, Internet entrepreneur and blogger Jason Calacanis started Open Angel Forum, which holds free pitch events in various cities where entrepreneurs selected from a pool of applicants can pitch to about 20 to 30 angel investors. [...] Another free service, AngelList, started in February by angels Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi, vets dozens of deals before highlighting the best ones in emails each week sent to a group of 200 investors.
These are open source solutions, like Y Combinator, for startups and angels:
With the recession clearing in digital media, the case is being made via PricewaterhouseCoopers that traditional media will drink more from the digital well, and be forced to take risks with their models.
This redrawing of the traditional/digital value chain will not change the conversion rate of digital dimes to analog dollars overnight, but it accelerates the conversion or transition process, and forces studios to get a “foot in the future,” as Bob Iger said recently.
Via THR: The biggest challenge in running a company as big and varied as Disney is “to maintain the balance between heritage and innovation.” Also tough is to resist those folks who want the company to invest in assets that are not “core or that don’t enhance the brand.”
[Iger] ”We looked at digital media and believed that there was a migration there by consumers whether we were there or not,” he said. “We didn’t want to be marginalized. We have to be where the fish are. [...] We’re in business with a lot of important third parties — theater owners, big-box retailers, satellite providers, TV affiliates — and this was deemed threatening. That was difficult to manage. But I felt it was important to do.”
With PwC’s new outlook, that equates to a validation of the digital subscription and download models. In addition with Blu-Ray and gaming consoles, more digital distribution gives the home entertainment market a slight upward bounce with, we suggest, strong social media marketing drivers.
Private equity is interested in the agency business, most likely because of their spin-off businesses in sports - is sports the new Hollywood model? - and less due to the changing value of talent in the media marketplace.
Via Deadline: Is this the beginning of the end of another Hollywood agency era? My sources tell me that, after months and months of negotiations with potential financial partners pursued by CAA, the agency has focused on KKR – Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co, the NYC-based private equity firm.
Via WSJ: The KKR investment would come at a tough time for Hollywood talent agencies, whose commissions have faltered. Plummeting DVD sales and the credit crunch have left studios cutting back on the number of shows and films they produce. This has limited work for actors and directors that agents represent, leading the agencies to explore new avenues of growth.
Robert Tercek - a friend, colleague and futurist - crafted a fascinating how-to on Transhumanism (i.e., “human enhancement”) movement marketing for the recent H+ Summit at Harvard.
Robert’s take was how today’s lifestyle gurus - Oprah (Tercek’s recent role was running digital media for her OWN network), Deepak Chopra, Tony Robbins and the like - all drive humanity forward with their respective and well communicated platforms.
Subtitled “Lessons for the Transhumanist Movement from the Self Help Industry,” the talk walked through media/culture’s take on transhumanism: from other political movement comparables to mass-culture film memes - 2001, Blade Runner, T2, X-Men, Gattaca, The Island and Brazil - and into other memes like unfair advantages (steroids), hybrid (larger-than-life animals) and into a self help outline (slide 47 onwards) that suggests humanizing the marketing around Transhumanism, so to speak.
From this morning’s 3D Next conference in Los Angeles, a diverse panel from Michael Stroud/ iHollywood on the future of 3D films.
The 3D industry that has created quite a boon for studios and exhibitors, while creating an area of potential upsell or backlash for consumers.
Panel: Next Steps for 3D Film: In the wake of the huge success of Avatar and Alice in Wonderland, 3D appears to have a secure future in cinema. The question is just how big: the appeal outside of kids, sci fi and horror remains unclear; and there’s still the dearth of theaters. An examination of the likely future.
Two amazing visual feasts from the upcoming World Cup sports brands. Nike’s “Write the Future” which is an otherworldly transmedia snapshot from the football (okay, soccer) world of fame with surreal pull-outs of all of the stars. Brilliant diversity of camera work and video storytelling hyperbole.
In a world where CEOs eschew social media sharing, Netflix’s Reed Hastings likes to share. Two recent strategy decks speak to Netflix’s desire to lead by standalone example: via company culture and the business opportunity that Netflix’s longtail and tv-driven consumption model with streaming has created.
The first deck on Netflix Business Opportunity was published to Slideshare five days ago and has 8.6k views; the second on Freedom and Responsibility Culture was published 10 months ago and has 404k views (here’s hoping a lot of HR directors use SlideShare).
The nature of really breaking out of the startup pack these days is becoming a viral or word of mouth (WOM) overnight success. Outside of Facebook’s social graph anaconda, Twitter has been parlayed forward by Ashton, Oprah, Britney and many of the other known-by-one-name celebs into the next Digg/Facebook/etc.
If American Idol is a barometer of talent - or Susan Boyle, an example of instant stardom (even if it took xx years to get there); then Twitter and now FourSquare are showcases of how to enter the media fray successfully.
Yuri Milner, Digital Sky Technologies’ CEO, continues to raise successive funds around digital investments, following money into Facebook, Groupon, Zygna and the recent April acquisition of AOL’s ICQ. With a new $1B war chest - or warhead - as its next stage of funding, DST will likely be adding $10-$100M+ to digital companies that do not have the same media cache as digital brands in the States.
Strong in the social space already, expect DST to pursue digital companies who are already profitable, partner well with the Facebook mothership, and scale very well.
Harvey and Bob Weinstein want to buy back Miramax, their parents’ namesake film catalog which they sold to Disney during the Eisner years for $80M.
With Ron Burkle’s Yucaipa and Fortress Financial backing them, the Weinstein’s had entered into an April exclusive buy with Disney for $625M.
However, Disney is reportedly reopening the bidding, including the Gores’ Platinum Equity Group.
Via LAT: The Weinsteins and Burkle had been in exclusive negotiations with Disney after beating out two other bidders in April: investor brothers Alec and Tom Gores and an offshore entity organized by troubled financier David Bergstein and his partner, construction magnate Ron Tutor. It’s believed that Disney plans to approach the Gores about restarting talks.
From the guys who brought you search, here’s the “Virgin Airlines” pre-flight animatic on Google TV - yes, their official two minute introductory video. This hardware/software jawdropper potentially open sources your TV, freeing you from multi-devices and esoteric program guides.
Plus, it kills the Apple TV and puts a general hurt on all set-top devices including indie notables like Boxee. I think Google has figured out TV - separate from their early Dishnet advertising beginnings - now to see what the ad ratios and overlays look like on your HD tv (those screenshots are thankfully not animated…yet).
Just when you thought IP/patent libraries and protection only covered technology - with allusions to Nathan Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures and its patent aggregating history - Haim Saban’s capital group has jumped into the brand valuation business, and it’s a rather ingenious play.
With enough capital to carve out real brands and bring them to life via transmedia (i.e., across all media), Saban is creating value separate from the media/technology base that most look at for in IP.
His recent “Power Rangers” buy-back from Disney allows his team to reinvigorate brands that, in this case, Disney bought from Saban.
DiCaprio has jumped on the “subconscious security” bandwagon with Warner Bros’ Inception film. Part Matrix reboot, part step-off from The Dark Knight for director Nolan, the film promises to create interesting comparisons between past Matrix travestologies (yes, a travesty in the trilogy mashup).
Christopher Nolan reinvigorated the cop flick with Memento, and of course reclaimed Batman from the Burton/Schumacher fiasco-sequels, but his latest WB initiative could create the next individual, filmmaker innovation, a la Peter Jackson, James Cameron and even Michael Bay’s box office reawakening with Transformers.
Annual compensation for CEOs is nearly always a thorny question. Not so ironically, every CEO wants to land on Forbes’ “Billionaire List,” but mention of annual salaries for public companies brings a corporate chorus of no comments or quick stage lefts - helicopter waiting depending on the benefits package.
