September 1, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

The city of Toronto wants to help residents get rid of electronic waste. Naturally, to promote the effort, the city needed to create an awareness campaign. They got one from Publicis, who wisely veered away from the mundane and expected flatness of municipal advertising and headed in a different direction.

I'm excited to introduce a custom-built survey with you, dear reader, in mind.

We've used Polldaddy in the past to ask some very basic questions, and that's been fun and somewhat revealing, but this new survey from Portland's FUSE deploys the firm's Intelligent Dialogue technology, which mimics a brief in-person conversation. The dialogue adapts depending on how you answer each of the following questions.

FUSE's Smart Surveys can be deployed in email, direct mail, telemarketing campaigns, on a Web site, or via smartphone and completion rates for FUSE's dialogs are two to three times higher than for traditional static forms.

Hat tip to Jeff Hardison and Joe Saylor at Portland high tech B2B agency, McClenahan Bruer, for bringing FUSE to our attention and providing AdPulp a free trial in return for feedback on the product.

Please contact us to run your own Advertorial in this spot.

September 1, 2010 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 0 Comments

We're approaching the 9th anniversary of 9/11 and tensions are already high over a proposed Islamic community center near Ground Zero. Yahoo! News reports on one attempt to promote more tolerance of Muslim-Americans.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released a series of advertisements today that will run on national television, clearly intended to counter some of the furor over the proposed mosque near Ground Zero. In one spot, a New York firefighter who was a first responder after the Sept. 11 attacks talks about losing a loved one before announcing that he is a Muslim.

It's a good effort, but I'm not sure advertising is gonna break down stereotypes and prejudices. Plus, I'm not sure the people who need to be watching and listening are paying attention. And is anyone else slowly getting desensitized to this kind of stark, black and white, talk-directly-to-the-camera confessional style of commercials?

September 1, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

[via Adfreak]

September 1, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

MINI agency BSUR Amsterdam, director Brian Beletic and Sway Studios of Los Angeles set out to creatively demonstrate the Countryman's dexterity -- a car that can both navigate urban environments and allow the imagination of the getaway seeker free reign.

So what do you think? Is your imagination primed and your heart set on a weekend in the country?

August 31, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

McDonald's wants to interest you in its new Angus Wraps. Ergo, it created a Mad Libs-style microsite where visitors make some random decisions that lead to a custom Angus Axiom.

What might one do with such a useless piece of digital drivel? Post it to Faceook and/or Twitter, of course.

By the way, an axiom is a proposition that is not proved but considered to be self-evident.

[via Brandfeak]

August 31, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Camille Paglia's writing is a pleasure to read. Her latest contribution to The Chronicle of Higher Education chops academia off at the knee.

Jobs, and the preparation of students for them, should be front and center in the thinking of educators. The idea that college is a contemplative realm of humanistic inquiry, removed from vulgar material needs, is nonsense. The humanities have been gutted by four decades of pretentious postmodernist theory and insular identity politics. They bear little relationship to the liberal arts of broad perspective and profound erudition that I was lucky enough to experience in college in the 1960s.

Having taught in art schools for most of my four decades in the classroom, I am used to having students who work with their hands--ceramicists, weavers, woodworkers, metal smiths, jazz drummers. There is a calm, centered, Zen-like engagement with the physical world in their lives. In contrast, I see glib, cynical, neurotic elite-school graduates roiling everywhere in journalism and the media. They have been ill-served by their trendy, word-centered educations.

Damn woman, tell us how you really feel.

Jobs, jobs, jobs: We need a sweeping revalorization of the trades. The pressuring of middle-class young people into officebound, paper-pushing jobs is cruelly shortsighted. Concrete manual skills, once gained through the master-apprentice alliance in guilds, build a secure identity.

Which brings me to the world of marketing communications. Is MarCom a guild? Or the opposite, a place for "glib, cynical, neurotic" liberal arts grads who, for whatever reason, did not go into law, publishing or insurance?

Lots of people think agencies provide a service, not a product. However, some of the best agencies believe the communications they make are, in fact, custom made products. Both points of view are valid. In the end, we serve our client's needs with the custom "products" we make. One thing I know for certain, you're not going to learn the art of making ads in college. It requires on-the-job training. Which brings us back to Paglia's guild concept.

The ad business figured out long ago that it needed professional finishing schools to handle the basic introductions to the guild. I'm now wondering if outsourcing the job to a school, or schools, was the best move. Some agencies have created schools within their own walls, but even there you have division. Who among us is willing to work hand-in-hand with the eager and highly skilled apprentices knocking on our doors?

August 31, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden is different. Like Oregon.

I don't know that I believe outsider claims from any Senator, however well meaning. The deal with being a Senator is that you're actually the ultimate insider and you're going to use that influence in ways you and your constituents see fit.

Anyway, the Wyden spot above is no great addition to the political advertising canon, I point to it because I'm forever fascinated by Oregonians who relish in their otherness.

August 31, 2010 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 0 Comments

Here's a guerrilla marketing stunt gone bad. From SFGate.com:

L.A.-based Davis Elen Advertising has taken responsibility for last week's advertising stunt for the Las Vegas version of the Mafia Wars online game.

The advertising company glued dozens of fake $25,000 bills to city sidewalks to build "buzz" for the popular game, produced by Zynga Game Network. Each bill had a link to mafiawarslv.com.

But neither City Attorney Dennis Herrera nor the city's Department of Public Works found the campaign amusing.

Herrera threatened to sue Zynga before Davis Elen came forward (now he is threatening to sue them.)

Hmmm...might I suggest artists' spray mount next time? It makes the bills peel right off.

August 31, 2010 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 5 Comments

Writing in Ad Age, CCO of High Wide & Handsome, Mike Wolfsohn, writes that when it comes to being a great hire for an agency, there should be more value given to creatives than just what's in their books:

Now that I'm in the position of hiring creatives, I'm convinced there's no correlation between the quality of a creative's website and his or her ability to contribute to an agency and its clients. Of all the freelancers I've hired, the ones with the best books have often been the least capable. Perhaps that's why they've invested so much time erecting a facade of talent.

And given the current economic climate, I'm probably not the only one who's less impressed by an art director's Flash intro or industry award than an art director or copywriter who can intelligently talk about a client's business. Sure, I love stunning typography and a clever headline as much as anyone, but they have no value in this business unless they're part of a thoughtful response to a brief. Someone who knows how to shift media strategies to reach new customers; reposition a brand in response to category trends; decrease the overall cost of an acquisition -- that's where the real value is.

I appreciate where Mike's coming from, but he's definitely in the minority of hiring managers. Dealing with creatives and their books is a quantity experience these days--everyone has a PDF or a site link they can send, so there's a deluge of submissions for any open job. So it's a large task for CD's to look for a real depth of knowledge when evaluating creatives.

I'd love to see creatives get a more thorough examination. And lord knows I wish more creative directors would be drawn to the total sum of business and ad industry thinking and writing I've done both on AdPulp and TalentZoo in addition to my portfolio. But it's still the shiny objects that excite most hiring managers.

August 30, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

Given that HBO walked away with 25 Primetime Emmy Awards, the most of any network for the eighth year in a row, last night, it might be a good time to pause and ask, "Why is HBO so damn good at what they do?"

Vanity Fair spoke to Michael Lombardo, president, HBO programming, to find out what's in HBO's secret sauce.

"We start with an unmitigated respect for writers and the written word. You can talk to any film or television writer and hear their experiences both in the big screen and smaller screen universe, and they'll give repeated examples where they feel like their voice got muzzled, muffled, muddled by input, rather than supported. What we're looking for is writers who have a distinctive voice, a unique perspective, a strong story-telling sense, to let them do their best work." That sounds simple, but film and television development is a notoriously tricky task, especially when it entails exhorting those same distinct voices to achieve their best. "Our approach with the writers [and directors and producers] we do business with, is to understand from them what they're trying to do with their show and keep them on course, and to challenge them when we think they're getting off course from where they want to be with the show. We're not a place that develops by consensus or by committee... That's why we don't 'focus group' our shows. That's just not the business we're in.... We're not looking to be shows that get the biggest number of eyeballs in the world, we're not selling ad space."

I can't help but wonder how much better advertising could be if we consistently brought HBO's respect for writers--and the work writers do telling brand's stories--to the fore.

[via Ed Cotton]

August 30, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Sometimes the music makes the ad. That's clearly the case for FreeCreditScore.com. A fact which makes a nationwide band search--which is a "been there, done that" idea--brand appropriate.

The summer-long search concluded with The Victorious Secrets, a band from Detroit as the winner. The band emerged as America's favorite in a competition that began with more than 100 hopefuls. The new spot debuts Sept. 12th during the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards program.

[via Salt Lake City Egotist]

August 30, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 3 Comments

This "virtual date" brought to you by Johnson & Johnson and BBDO Toronto.

August 30, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Scott Heiferman of Meetup speaks to Henry Blodget of Business Insider about his company and Meetup made the transition to a pay model.

"We have a product that's good enough for people to pay for," says Heiferman. I like the simplicity in that.

August 30, 2010 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

ConAgra Foods, which owns Chef Boyardee, is running two campaigns at once. The spots above from Venables Bell & Partners are running in conjunction with the "Obviously delicious. Secretly nutritious." campaign from DDB West, which launched last year.

[via Adweek]