TCC Insights

New media gives old media a boost

By: Kellie Mazur, Administrative Assistant

“Couch potato” used to mean something bad. But lately TV viewers are multitasking. Many of us are fully engaging in social media while we watch our favorite shows.

Google+, The Other Facebook

 By: Lisa Cialfi, Account Coordinator

After just a few days on Google+, I’m really impressed. The new social media site is Google’s answer of the widely popular Facebook, and I think it has a lot to offer users.

I Don’t Miss Cable

 By Joe Sweeney, Associate Creative Director

For the last few days, I’ve been on quite a binge, full of meth, guns, Mexican gangsters and the dad from “Malcolm in the Middle.” I’m talking about season three of “Breaking Bad,” of course. The latest installment of the pulse-pounding, fish-out-of-water drug lord drama just came out on DVD, and after devouring it marathon-style (and cursing uncontrollably at a brutally unresolved season finale), I’m positive that it’s the best series on TV.

Old Navy Sways, Spike Follows

By Drew Shields, Creative Intern

Whether or not the Vacay Sway is your dancefloor move of choice, Old Navy has been making moves in the world of television advertising by teaming up with mobile app company Shazam earlier this year.

Since its inception, Shazam's music identifying and tagging app has solely been focused on saving individuals from the mind-wrangling torture of trying to figure out the name of the song that's playing overhead while you wait for your oil change. The Old Navy team-up, which allows you to shop the items from the commercials right from your smartphone, is just the first play in Shazam's full-court press to expand its tech beyond simple redirects to iTunes and Spotify and into the realm of non-music marketing.

Photoshop of Horrors

 By Joe Sweeney, Associate Creative Director

The art of retouching can be a beautiful thing – undoubtedly, it opens a lot of doors for us so-called creative types. Because of the wonders of photo manipulation, nothing is off limits in a brainstorm. Want to attach a laser cannon to the top of an economy car? That’s doable. (That’s a real suggestion from a recent concept meeting, for the record.)

But, like any powerful thing, retouching is often used for evil. If you’re interested in how human beings actually look, then you might as well never look at another magazine again. And when I think about all of the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot hoaxes, my heart breaks (still believe you’re out there, Sasquatch).

I Met The President

By Bob Travers, Principal

On Saturday, I had the good fortune of attending the 126th annual white tie Gridiron Dinner in Washington as the guest of Stan Lipsey, publisher and president of the Buffalo News.

For those who may not be familiar with it, the Gridiron Club and Foundation is one of the country’s oldest and most highly regarded journalist organizations. Annually, it hosts a dinner roasting many of our national political leaders. This year it was the first appearance by President Obama. Every US President since 1885, except Grover Cleveland, has spoken at the event.

The evening began for me with a small cocktail party hosted by Lipsey at Washington’s Renaissance Hotel which is where the Gridiron Dinner took place and where everyone from Buffalo stayed. Also attending the cocktail party: Robert Gioia, president of The John R. Oishei Foundation; Doug Turner, retired Buffalo News Washington correspondent and a member of the Gridiron Club;

It's All Art, Baby

By Sue White, Production Design Supervisor

As much as Lady Gaga never thought she'd be asking Cher to hold her meat purse at the MTV Video Music Awards, I never thought I'd find myself at a Lady Gaga concert. Yet, here I was, thanks to a gift from my brother, taking in a Gaga concert last Friday at HSBC arena, ready to "just have a fun time." Now, I certainly am not president of the Gaga fan club, but I can appreciate her creativity, and passion and energy – clearly, she has an abundance of that. But the concert evolved into much more than just a "fun time." I was able to experience some effective guerilla marketing first-hand.

Get Real, Like Terry Pegula

By Jeff Bucki, Senior Copywriter

Like many long-time fans of the Buffalo Sabres, I was thrilled to watch new owner Terry’s Pegula’s introductory press conference. There is a lot of excitement about Pegula, and clearly much of it has to do with his wealth. The thing that got me charged up wasn’t his resources, but rather his passion for the team and the way he directly communicated this to the public.

All you needed to see was Pegula’s reaction to hockey legend Gilbert Perreault to get a feel for what this guy is all about. His voice cracking with emotion, Pegula unabashedly told Perreault, “You’re my hero.” The beautiful thing about this moment was how raw and sincere it felt. As they say, you just can’t script stuff like this. It was magic. Right there, Pegula had won over even the teams’ most jaded fans. And he did it by being real.

Changing of the Guard for a small country (and the media coverage)

By Carolyn Human, Account Manager

Nearly 6,600 miles from Buffalo, New York is a small country in Central Asia that you’ve probably never heard of called Kyrgyzstan. You may know the country that borders it to the North, Kazakstan, thanks to the Sacha Baron Cohen movie, Borat. Kyrgyzstan is making a name for itself this week with a major uprising and overthrow of the government.

There are a couple of things we can take away from this world event. First of all, you may not realize that the United States has a military base in the capital of the country, Bishkek, which is vital to our operations in Afghanistan. Because of the importance of those operations in the past year, more people have taken notice of the little country.

I would infer that partially because of the military base interest, the media coverage of the events in Kyrgyzstan in the past few days has been incredible. I know this because I’ve been following the “happenings” in Kyrgyzstan since 2004. That’s when my brother was assigned to teach English in a small village called Akman through the Peace Corps and I struggled to find any news updates about the country. One year later there was a revolution and the President was ousted. My family was desperate to find any information on the internet to make sure my brother was in a politically safe area. Our best hope for information was www.eurasianet.org or http://en.ca-news.org/ but we rarely got any pictures and were lucky if the information had been updated every 12 hours.

Blame Conan!

By Kathleen Anderson, Media Director

Conan O’Brien is not a victim.

The current Late Show circus is not because The Jay Leno Show failed.  It is because The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien did.

Jay Leno did exactly what NBC expected.  He delivered an audience of approximately 5 million viewers every night without the high production cost of scripted programming.  The network can produce a full week of Leno for the $2 million to $3 million price of a single hour of drama.  It may be bad television but it is good business.

No, Leno was never a prime time power house.  Yes, CBS and ABC silently cheered when NBC announced that they were making the change.  But to be clear, he was never expected to win the time slot.  A third place finish was still a financial success.  NBC knew exactly how this would impact their affiliates.  They didn’t care.  It was business.