Market Basket (Finally!) Shows the Herald Some Love

September 4, 2014

It’s been a long, dry summer for the Boston Herald in terms of Market Basket advertising. From the very start of the Demoulas Slapfight/Market Basket Rumpus, the beleaguered supermarket chain has relentlessly bypassed the thirsty local tabloid, choosing time and again to run ads only in the Boston Globe.

It actually started last summer, when the Employees & Management of Demoulas/Market Basket ran this full page in the Globe:

 

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Then, facing an employee/customer revolt this summer because the board of directors had ignored the ad above and fired Arthur T., the new Market Basket CEOs ran this ad, also exclusive to the Globe:

 

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That plea, of course, fell on deaf ears, so the increasing desperate Arthur S. forces resorted to this full-page Help Wanted ad – again, just in the stately local broadsheet:

 

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That one really hurt, since Market Basket was essentially telling Herald readers: We not only don’t want you to shop here, we don’t want you to work here either.

Ouch.

But wait! Here’s what ran in today’s – yes! – Herald.

 

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(The two-page spread also ran in the Globe but why get technical about it.)

Hey, thirsty local tabloid: 2 Liter 7up or A&W Rootbeer 89¢. Drink up!

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Herald Gets Its Ads Kicked . . . Again

July 18, 2013

Do we detect a pattern emerging here?

For the third time in three weeks, Boston Herald readers have been snubbed by a full-page ad aimed at the local citizenry.

(First it was the Marriott at Tudor Wharf memorializing fallen Boston firefighter Stephen F. Minehan; then it was the Chicago Blackhawk saluting the Boston Bruins.)

Now it’s the Employees & Management of Demoulas/Market Basket, who ran this ad in Wednesday’s Boston Globe:

 

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Notice the ad did not mention Arthur S. Demoulas, the “other” member of the Board of Directors and the motivating force behind the power play, as the Globe noted here:

Market Basket CEO faces revolt led by his cousin

 

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At a typical corporation, the chief executive is expected to be beholden to the board of directors. But Market Basket grocery titan Arthur T. Demoulas asserted otherwise one day when some board members challenged his authority to spend money as he saw fit.

 

“There’s only one boss in the company,” Demoulas told directors in August 2012, according to a transcript of the board meeting. “There’s not two. There’s not three. There’s not five. There’s only one boss.”

For more than two decades, Market Basket has been anything but typical.

Even for the most contentious boardrooms, Demoulas’s statement underscores the strong-willed personalities in his extended family, which built the Market Basket chain into a regional powerhouse despite spending much of their time fighting one another. The latest battle again pits Arthur T. Demoulas against his cousin, Arthur S. Demoulas, who is moving to oust the former after finally gaining control of the board this year.

 

Excellent dustup, and well worthy of a newspaper ad war (the hardreading staff is hoping for an Arthur T. rebuttal in Thursday’s Globe.)

But apparently not in the Herald, which the Employees & Management of Demoulas/Market Basket deemed unworthy as an advertising platform.

Perhaps they don’t value the readers of the feisty local tabloid.

Or maybe it’s because of backhanded coverage like this in Saturday’s Herald:

 

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You tell us.

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