We might all thank (or blame) Soprano's writer and executive producer, Matthew Weiner, for injecting some Hollywood-style glam into our industry's sagging self-image. I mean just look what he did for New Jersey and gangsters. His new series "Mad Men" will premiere on AMC in July. The show takes place in 1960 at Sterling Cooper, a fictional Madison Avenue ad agency. Marc E. Babej and Tim Pollak, writing for Forbes say …
Was It A ‘Bold Move’ To Crush Phil Leotardo’s Skull?
According to The Detroit News, the Ford Expedition's starring role in the finale of "The Sopranos" was not an official product placement: The scene in question begins with a lingering close-up of the Blue Oval badge on the grille of an Expedition that carries Phil Leotardo, a New York mob boss locked in a deadly feud with series star Tony Soprano. Leotardo gets out of the passenger side and is promptly shot in the …
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West Wayne Shape Shifts
In a bold move, Atlanta- and Tampa-based ad agency West Wayne, (you know, the place where Luke Sullivan once worked) has left the making of mere adverts to a lesser class of communications professionals. No longer ad men and women, West Wayners are now "friendship experts." [via Everything's Better With Brentter] …
The Rise Of Multimedia Reporting
Denise Spidle of Studio 55 in Naples, Florida Have you noticed that your favorite newspaper is diving deep into online video production? Industry trade mag, Broadcasting & Cable, has. In the race to capitalize on the popularity of broadband video, newspapers are continuing to take a page from TV stations’ playbooks by producing increasingly sophisticated newscasts and other Web programs. Although newspapers have long …
IPG Plays Matchmaker Again
According to Adweek, holding company IPG is combining two of its "regional" shops, hoping, as it has before, that the arranged marriage succeeds. In a deal quietly in the works for months, Dallas-based TM (formerly known as Temerlin McLain) will now absorb Seattle boutique Sedgwick Rd. "We've both been regional agencies for a long time," said Jim Walker, president and CCO of Sedgwick Rd. "What it takes [to succeed] …
DPC’s Concrete Jungle
Downtown Partners/Chicago has a minimalist, but well designed web presence. Having said that, I fail to grasp the significance of the darkness their imagery conveys other than polished concrete. I keep thinking Spiderman or some other superhero is going to swoop in, but that doesn't happen. Rather, a few pigeons make their way across the screen. What's your take? …
Chicago Advertising Blues
In today's Chicago Sun-Times, Lewis Lazare highlights a letter he received from a local post-production veteran: Copywriters were hired for the number of tattoos and piercings on their bodies rather than writing skill or cleverness. Chicago agencies brought people in from the West Coast and London to give their places a cool vibe, not to sell a client's products. Now the entire scene is disintegrating because …
Engadget Man’s Big New Idea
The New York Post is reporting that Downtown Records and Internet entrepreneur Peter Rojas plan to launch an online-only record label that will offer its music for free and generate revenue only through advertising and sponsorships. One source familiar with the project described it as a "curated YouTube or MySpace for music with an editorially driven filter." This source said RCRD LBL would feature a central …
The Dangers Of Typing Too Fast
USA Today's On Deadline blog shares a fascinating dispute between the stodgy old NCAA and a mainstream media company over the practice of live blogging. The NCAA had a newspaper reporter tossed out of the press box yesterday because he was posting updates on a baseball game to the The Louisville Courier-Journal's website. The NCAA argues in a memo that blogs are a "live representation of the game" that violate …
Now Entering The Post-Web 2.0 Space
Netscape founder and serial entrepreneur Marc Andreessen started a blog recently. One of his early entries claims there's no such thing as Web 2.0 and cautions against the use of such vague terms. Before the "Web 2.0 space", you had the "dot com space", the "intranet space", the "B2B space", the "B2C space", the "security space", the "mobile space" (still going strong!)... and before that, the "pen computing" space, …
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