If you have yet to join Ad Club Seattle, this spot from Creature might persuade you. …
First “X” Now “S”
Publicis Groupe is intent on helping corporations go green. As such, they've purchased Act Now, a pioneering sustainability consultancy in San Francisco. Effective immediately, Act Now will be part of the new Saatchi & Saatchi S network. The group's mission is to "activate corporate and consumer action on a mass scale to address environmental and economic sustainability." Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide Saatchi & …
Recession Proof Your Business with Sex, Guns & Booze
Drawing The Story Out Of The Brand
Shelly Lazarus, the CEO of Ogilvy & Mather, is speaking my language. "Brands are more than checkbooks to develop content. Brands are cultural artifacts that have inherent story values. We see ourselves as being both in the entertainment business and the product business." But she loses me here: "We can come up with a brand idea, but we can't do programming. We wouldn't start to even try." Why wouldn't we try? In my …
Google’s Stock Slides. Executive Team Says, No Worries.
In this day of quarterly numbers and short-term decisions, it's refreshing to see a company move counter to this trend. According to The Wall Street Journal, Google is such a company. Messrs. Brin, Page and Schmidt made it starkly clear in Google's so-called "Owner's Manual," filed as part of the company's IPO prospectus in April 2004, that they would not shy away from making big long-term bets at the expense of …
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MySpace Invites Developers to the Social
MySpace is now "open" for business. According to The Wall Street Journal, MySpace will formally launch the MySpace Developer Platform next Tuesday with a kickoff event and workshop at its new San Francisco office. The company said the program should result in innovations in how friends connect and communicate. MySpace already has informally allowed developers to create interactive applications known as "widgets." The …
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LesserEvil Takes On The Big Boys With A Great Story
If there's two things I love, it's sweet n' salty kettle corn and challenger upstart brands with great stories. Combine those and you get LesserEvil Snacks. The packaging caught my eye at Fresh Market so I picked it up, and the writing on the box was great. As is the fun brand story on their website: Here at LesserEvil, we are all about the snacks. We love to eat them. Love to share them. Love to think up wild new …
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Finding The Right Hook For A Political Ad
Steve Novick is a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Oregon. He was also born without a left arm. That doesn't seem to stop him much: Nice. …
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Digital Haves Have It Goin’ On
The fine folks at Zeus Jones in Minneapolis have put a nice slide together that reframes the debate around digital divides. …
Mad Women
Nina DiSesa, chairman of McCann Erickson, New York, and author of the new book, Seducing the Boys Club, says the ad world is still a sexist place. The most dramatic change in advertising since 1962 is that most of us have stopped smoking. She adds, "Forty years after women burned their bras to liberate their sex, only 2 percent of the Fortune 1000 CEOs are women. Two percent!" [via Adweek] …