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What’s The Carbon Footprint on This Back Slap?
This year, total entries at this Cannes International Advertising Festival grew 10.2% to more than 28,000. Every category is up, and the new design Lions attracted about twice as many entries as expected -- 1,126 -- so the festival had to scramble to add more judges to the jury. Americans aren't deterred by the weak dollar that has pushed delegate fees above $3,000 and room rates at the beachfront hotels such as the …
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My-Redesigned-Space
According to Brian Stelter of The New York Times, "the bloom has come off social networking’s rose." With a new design to debut this week, News Corp.-owned MySpace intends to do something about it. With an eye toward monetization, MySpace is being redesigned beginning Wednesday with a new home page, which will be less cluttered and more hospitable to advertising. The redesign, to be done by early fall, will include a …
Don’t Want To Be On Camera? Walk Away.
Michael Arrington of TechCrunch grills Chris Alden, CEO of blogging service SixApart, at Apple's iPhone 2.0 coming out party last week. It's good to see some tough questions from a blogger. And it's funny to see the culture of transparency (as represented by Arrington) bump up against Apple's closed-source reality. …
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Cozying Up To Small Batch American Rye
Shawn gave me a bottle of Templeton Rye, a.k.a. "The Good Stuff" last winter. We opened it tonight. It always fun when a microbrand has a special story to tell. Templeton Rye has lots of stories to tell--one story being that it was Al Capone's favorite--and the producers and old-timers around Templeton, Iowa are busy telling them on the brand's blog, on Twitter and on YouTube. Which makes sense, since this is the …
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Threading The Needle On Customer Empowerment
Threadless is on the cover of Inc. Jake Nickell and Jeffrey Kalmikoff, two north side of Chicago graphic designers figured out how to create community and a thriving business in the same move. Academics, venture capitalists and the entrepreneurs who read Inc. are paying attention. Threadless is at the vanguard of a new innovation model that is quietly reshaping a host of industries. Whether it's called user …
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TV Bites Digital’s Hand. Stitches Needed.
TBS isn't afraid to interrupt your flow. Not at all. According to Ad Age, TBS is using an "overlay" during episodes of "Family Guy" meant to promote "The Bill Engvall Show." Ad Age blames internet advertising for this development. TBS's chatty come-on offers yet another illustration of how consumers' growing comfort with the way content is designed and displayed in digital venues is starting to affect the flow of …
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Tim Russert, R.I.P.
photo by Josh Hallett I wish there was someone in advertising, or business in general, who would interview executives and management buffoons with the same relentlessness that Tim Russert interviewed politicians. I can't even count how many industry conferences and events I've been to where the questions asked of speakers or panelists were stupid and uninformed. NBC's Tim Russert dies at 58 of heart attack. …