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    Ye’s Website Selling T-Shirts With Swastikas Is Taken Down

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    A commercial for the shirts aired in some local markets during the Super Bowl, days after the rapper and designer called himself a Nazi on social media. The website was taken down Tuesday.Ye, the rapper and designer formerly known as Kanye West, aired a commercial in some markets during the Super Bowl that promoted a website selling a single product: T-shirts with swastikas.In the 30-second commercial, Ye appears to be filming a close-up of his face while lying in a dentist’s chair. “I spent, like, all the money for the commercial on these new teeth,” he said, smiling into the camera. “So, once again, I had to shoot it on the iPhone.”Ye then directs people to his online store, Yeezy.com, which was selling only one item as of early Tuesday: a $20 white T-shirt with a black swastika. According to Variety, when the commercial aired Sunday night, the website was selling a range of non-branded clothing, but shortly after it was selling only the shirt with the swastika.On Tuesday morning, the website for his store appeared to have gone offline, replaced by a message that said, “This store is unavailable.” A spokesperson for Shopify, the online platform that processes the website’s orders, said that Ye’s online store “did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms so we removed them from Shopify.”The ad aired days after Ye unleashed a rant on social media in which he called himself a Nazi and professed his love for Adolf Hitler. He later deactivated his X account.On Monday, the Anti-Defamation League condemned the commercial, writing on X that “there’s no excuse for this kind of behavior.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      How Going to Commercial During the Super Bowl Works

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      Television commercial breaks are the bane of every N.F.L. fan. They interrupt a game already riddled with stoppages, bombard viewers with come-ons and force fans and players in the stadium to stand around for about two and a half minutes, sometimes in the freezing cold.Yet commercials are the lifeblood of the N.F.L. Without them, broadcasters could not afford to pay the league billions of dollars for rights fees, money that goes to paying players’ salaries and much more.Most games have 18 commercial breaks. A few timeouts, like at the end of the first and third quarters and at the two-minute warnings, are fixed. The league and networks avoid taking breaks if a team’s opening drive of the game ends quickly, because they want fans to settle into the broadcast. If all goes well, the last commercials run at the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter.Most commercial breaks, though, are chosen in real time as league executives, network producers and officials on the field look for natural breaks in the action. Finding them is more art than science because every game unfolds differently, with long drives, three-and-outs, injury timeouts and coaches’ challenges.League officials sit in the press box during games and help determine when to take commercial breaks.Caroline Gutman for The New York Times“Our fans know that the commercial breaks are coming,” said Mike North, vice president of broadcast planning and scheduling at the N.F.L. “The whole idea from where we sit is to try to use those breaks to cover downtime: resetting the field after a score; if there happens to be an injury, hopefully a minor one; or an instant replay review when the referee goes to the sideline.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      The Best and Worst Super Bowl Commercials, Ranked

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      Here is our critic’s evolving survey of this year’s Super Bowl commercials, from best to worst.Here is my annual critical ranking of the Super Bowl commercials. This is the pregame edition, with all the available national ads that I could track down; the list will be updated after Sunday’s game.The trends so far? Nothing controversial, as you would expect, but also — and perhaps for associated reasons — very little creativity. It’s a bad year for ads; the ones at the top of this list aren’t much better than average. More spots than usual depend entirely on the appeal of a relatable celebrity (who is almost certainly male). Concepts beat ideas — there is a lot of fussy, overly complicated silliness and not much in the way of simple, effective storytelling or mood setting.(You may not see every commercial listed here during the game, and you may see commercials not listed here. The various broadcast and streaming platforms will carry different selections of ads, and some ads will only be shown in certain regions.)No. 1National Football LeagueN.F.L.The N.F.L.’s own feel-good promo, “Somebody,” is affecting in a highly produced, can’t-we-all-just-get-along manner. Its implicit endorsement of diversity and inclusion offers a muted contrast to the league’s decision to forgo the “End Racism” end-zone slogan.No. 2Stella ArtoisWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      ‘Wicked’ and the Merchandising Juggernaut That Eclipses ‘Barbie’

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      The new movie’s tie-ins are the logical endpoint for a Broadway show that always intended to be huge. The “Wicked” product line ranges from Mattel versions of Glinda and Elphaba, far left, to tumblers and Crocs, all sticking to the green-and-pink color scheme of the show and film.Mattel; Stanley; CrocsIt started with the dolls.As a longtime fan of “Wicked” who grew up collecting Barbies, I was immediately intrigued by the Mattel creations resembling Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo in the movie version of the Broadway musical. They were perfectly rendered in likeness and even sang snippets of “Popular” and “Defying Gravity.” I’ll admit, I coveted them.But that was just the beginning of the “Wicked” merchandise. Soon my Instagram and X feeds were inundated with pink and green collaborations. Some made sense in the context of both the movie and the stars. Why, of course Grande’s R.E.M. Beauty brand would feature a line of “Wicked”-inspired goods. She might as well promote both her performance and her entrepreneurial venture at the same time.Other “Wicked” products ranged from the functional to the positively ridiculous, but they all contributed to the sense that “Wicked” was absolutely everywhere, making it perhaps one of the most marketed movies in recent memory, surpassing even the hot pink inundation of “Barbie” last year.I discovered many of these via the X account Wicked News Hub, which posts every tiny update about the film and its promotional path. It is run by a lawyer in Manchester, England, who started it out of a love of all things Grande. (He asked to keep the identity behind the account private.) “Although I expected a lot of collaborations, from tracking ‘Wicked’ news over the years, even I was surprised by the incredible amount of collaborations and goodies,” he wrote in an email.There are “Wicked” versions of the TikTok-popular Stanley Cups, which according to some reports caused pandemonium when they were released in Target. They seem like your standard drinking vessel, but the film promotion capitalized on the fervor. There are “Wicked”-themed Crocs. (The Glinda ones have heels.) There are “Wicked” clothing lines for the Gap, H&M, Bloomingdale’s and Forever 21. You can buy “Wicked” Legos and “Wicked” Monopoly. There are even “Wicked” hair dryers. (The Mattel dolls weathered a minor controversy when the packaging accidentally bore the URL for a porn site, not the movie.)Starbucks has an enormous “Wicked” line that includes bedazzled tumblers and two themed drinks: Glinda’s Pink Potion and Elphaba’s Cold Brew. While getting a boring plain latte, I sampled the Elphaba, assuming the Glinda would hurt my teeth. It was minty.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Paramount Takes Promotional Stunt to New Level for ‘Gladiator II’

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      The studio plans to air the same 60-second trailer on 4,000 TV, radio and digital channels on Monday.For a snapshot of what movie marketers think it now takes to get the public’s attention — even for a sequel to a popular movie — consider the astounding stunt that Paramount Pictures has planned for “Gladiator II.”On Monday at 9 p.m. Eastern, Paramount will debut a final 60-second trailer for the film on more than 4,000 television networks, digital platforms, local stations, Spanish-language outlets and radio stations simultaneously.Based on average audience totals for a Monday evening, the trailer could reach roughly 300 million potential customers, according to Marc Weinstock, Paramount’s president of worldwide marketing and distribution. “We aimed to create a big moment to match the scope and grandeur of Ridley Scott’s epic film,” Mr. Weinstock said.The promotional tactic is known as a roadblock, and marketers have used them for decades. But the number of channels is typically much smaller. In what was described by Variety magazine in 2009 as the largest roadblock ever, Sony Pictures Entertainment simultaneously aired ads for the disaster movie “2012” on 450 television networks.Mr. Weinstock would not say how much Paramount is spending on Monday’s stunt. According to a “Gladiator II” producer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid conflict with the studio, the airtime was relatively inexpensive to purchase — about $2 million in total, with a spot during “Monday Night Football” as the most expensive. Wavemaker, a media agency, helped Paramount coordinate the effort.Marketing a movie used to require little more than buying ads on NBC on a Thursday night when millions tuned in to watch shows like “ER” and “Friends.” With the intense fracturing of the media landscape, however, studios have been forced to conjure up ever more provocative ways to grab attention. A single premiere? How quaint. Paramount staged “Gladiator II” red carpets in Australia, Japan, Ireland, France, Denmark and Britain in recent weeks. On Monday, a premiere in Los Angeles will involve the construction of a faux coliseum on Hollywood Boulevard.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Empire: Winnowed, but Still Weighty

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      The music mogul’s business portfolio has shrunk, in part because of multiple sex abuse allegations, but his wealth remains a critical factor as his criminal case unfolds.In arguing to keep Sean Combs in jail until his trial on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges, prosecutors have portrayed him as a lavishly wealthy, well-connected music mogul who would be well positioned to flee. In court papers, prosecutors cited media reporting that estimated his wealth at close to a billion dollars.But as Mr. Combs’s reputation has unraveled amid a wave of high-profile lawsuits and criminal charges, so has his business portfolio. Once a major brand ambassador and chairman of a media platform, he has been forced to withdraw from those roles. In June, several months before Mr. Combs was indicted, Forbes estimated his net worth at $400 million, down from $740 million in 2019.Mr. Combs’s fortune has been at the forefront of his public persona since the 1990s, when the success of his hip-hop and R&B label, Bad Boy Entertainment, meant he was known as much for his high-flying, champagne-popping lifestyle as the music he produced.One year ago, Mr. Combs, who is known as Diddy, was at the helm of an ever-growing portfolio: He was a record label founder, a liquor promoter, a cable TV and digital media chairman, a philanthropist and a fashion executive with a label called Sean John.Mr. Combs has gained prominence as a record label executive, a liquor promoter and the founder of a cable TV and digital media platform.From left: Theo Wargo/WireImage, via Getty Images; Stan Honda/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Revolt TV“He was a larger-than-life marketer,” said Dessie Brown Jr., an entertainment consultant who long viewed Mr. Combs as a model for building a career. “He always talked about being like a ringleader in a circus.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      How Levi’s Turned a Beyoncé Song Into an Ad Campaign

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      The denim brand was looking for ways to sell more apparel to women, and the megastar gave them a natural spokeswoman thanks to a song on “Cowboy Carter.”Kenny Mitchell, the chief marketing officer at Levi Strauss & Co., knew his team needed to move fast after Beyoncé released the track list for her album “Cowboy Carter” in March. Out of the 27 songs listed, one provided the denim brand’s marketing department with a huge opportunity: “Levii’s Jeans.”While in Paris to celebrate his wife’s 50th birthday, Mr. Mitchell was communicating across time zones with his team back at the company’s San Francisco headquarters to figure out how they could capitalize on the moment. When the songs dropped that week, Levi’s had landed on adding an extra I to the brand’s Instagram name, as Beyoncé had with her song.Still, Mr. Mitchell thought the brand could go further.“Once that album came out, it was obviously a moment where we said, Hey, maybe we can start to have some conversations about whether a deeper partnership makes sense,” Mr. Mitchell said.Soon after, Levi’s reached out to Beyoncé and her team. The two camps had already worked together on various campaigns and creative projects over the years. She had worn their jeans when she was a member of Destiny’s Child in the early 2000s, making Levi’s one of the first brands to collaborate with the group, and she continued to incorporate the brand in her solo career..What soon became apparent for executives at Levi’s after the release of “Cowboy Carter” was that Beyoncé could be the key to achieving one of the company’s top strategies: convincing more women to shop the brand.A third of Levi’s shoppers are women. The plan, executives say, is to bump that to 50 percent.Levi’s has tried several strategies over the years to appeal to women, including a line called Lady Levi’s.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      Cannabis Has Become Upscale Chic. I Miss the Old Red-Eyed Stoners.

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      Widespread legalization has created a polished new market for cannabis products — one that’s trendy, spalike and weirdly unfun.Last summer, in an effort to cut down my drinking after a particularly boozy vacation, I bought a case of cannabis soda online. The soda — called Lo Boy, by the brand Cann — was blood-orange-and-cardamom flavored; each can contained one milligram of THC and 15 milligrams of CBD. I’d drink one in lieu of a glass of wine while cooking dinner. On an empty stomach, it would give me the mildest feeling of euphoria — the equivalent of, say, a half a glass of wine — which faded after about 10 minutes.This suited my needs perfectly. I am in my 30s, and I can no longer handle a high dose of any recreational substance. The last time I tried a five-milligram THC gummy, I had the archetypal paranoid experience, and could calm down only by writing a detailed description in my iPhone’s Notes app of how terrible I felt as a warning to my future self. (Sample sentence: “There is a lag in my understanding of everything I am seeing and hearing, and in the space of this lag I feel an incredible amount of anxiety that understanding will never come.”) A Lo Boy’s low dose worked for me, and the sodas were sufficient to help me scale back on drinking — which, as I keep reading, is very, very bad for you.After the case was gone, I continued to be served ads for Cann on Instagram. Soon I was seeing ads for similar brands as well. (The algorithm seemed to think I was really sucking these things down.) There was Cycling Frog, with its twee mascot of a frog on a velocipede. There was Mary & Jane, whose ad for a product named Sunny asked: “What’s the microdose product that you and your book club have been taking?!” There was Rose Los Angeles, advertising a lychee-martini gummy with “Italian nipple lemon,” endorsed by the comedian Kate Berlant and modeled after a drink at a Los Angeles restaurant called Jar. The products came in flavors like blackcurrant, watermelon marjoram and yuzu.I was struck by the aesthetics of the branding: clean, bougie and firmly millennial. The Cann look, for instance, features elegantly bright colors; if you didn’t know better, you’d think it was an I.P.A. from a trendy microbrewery. Another brand advertised a gummy called Out of Office, which seemed to bank on customers being white-collar and deskbound: “Unwind like you’re on Vacay,” its website advised. Many ads stressed the wellness attributes of cannabis. Cycling Frog promised a “healthier buzz.” One brand was literally called Erth Wellness. Another, called Molly J., offered a picture of a box of gummies surrounded by bowls of almonds, blackberries, a handful of strawberries, a loose pear. The inside of the box — a gentle aquamarine — read “Chill is a state of mind.”These are the same virtues a certain strain of pothead has been advocating forever: that marijuana relaxes you, that’s it’s healthier than alcohol, that it soothes any number of ailments, that it comes from the earth. This argument may have received a yuppie makeover and a slick design update. But many of the selling points are the same as they were back when cannabis was just regular old weed, delivered to your door in a crinkled baggie by a shifty guy on a bike.As of this year, 24 states have legalized recreational marijuana, raising a fascinating new question: What does it look like to sell cannabis like any other product? As brands try to reach the maximum number of customers — including professionals who have, perhaps, aged out of mixing with dealers — their answer has, so far, resembled selling vitamins at an Apple Store. The dispensary near where I live in the Hudson Valley is bright, spare and immaculate. The staff members wear lanyards and are happy to answer questions. There exists not a trace of the head shop of yore: no novelty bongs, no Bic lighters adorned with pot leaves, no weird unlicensed drawings of Stewie from “Family Guy” smoking a blunt. All that stuff has moved to vape shops, which generally do not (or should not) sell weed but have nevertheless inherited the shelves of blown-glass pipes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      R. Peter Munves, Master Marketer of Classical Music, Dies at 97

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      As an executive at Columbia and RCA Records, he popularized the classics for mass audiences by applying the same techniques used to sell pop music.R. Peter Munves, a record company executive who revolutionized the marketing of classical music, died on Aug. 19 in Glen Cove, N.Y. He was 97.His death, in a nursing home, was confirmed by his son Ben.Mr. Munves carved out a moneymaking niche in what for much of its history has been a low-margin, struggling industry, selling classical music to mass audiences by applying the techniques of pop music marketing.In the 1960s, while at Columbia Records, he created a series called “Classical Greatest Hits” that packaged bits of Brahms, Mozart, Bach and other composers onto single LPs. In 1968 he signed the electronic musician Wendy Carlos to record “Switched-On Bach” — pieces by Bach on the Moog synthesizer.Both ideas were big hits, commercially if not with the critics. Time magazine reported in a 1971 profile of Mr. Munves that the “Greatest Hits” series “scored a solid bull’s-eye in the market and rang up $1,000,000” in revenues. The “Switched-On Bach” album, Time said, was Columbia’s “all-time best classical seller.”In 1968, Mr. Munves signed the electronic musician Wendy Carlos to record an album of Bach compositions on the Moog synthesizer. It was said to be Columbia’s best-selling classical album of all time.Columbia/CBSIn 1981 Mr. Munves produced an album that compiled 222 well-known themes from classical music. One critic called it a “marketing masterpiece.”Columbia/CBSMr. Munves went on to produce an album called “Themefinder” — a compilation of 222 well-known themes from classical music that the New York Times music critic Edward Rothstein called a “marketing masterpiece” upon its release in 1981, adding that Mr. Munves was “an inspired producer.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More