Virginia Heffernan of the The New York Times Magazine had fun last week poking around some prominent banking and investment sites. In my fantasies, banks are never financial-services firms, and Bill Clinton did not sign the 1999 law that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, allowing commercial and investment banks to merge. It seems that the once-glorious Wall Street investment banks — Goldman Sachs, Morgan …
Milquetoast for Breakfast, Milquetoast for Lunch…
Agency execs are a conservative lot when it comes to pitching ideas. That's the latest news from a study by Menlo Park, Calif.-based executive staffing firm Creative Group. According to Marketing Daily, marketing executives--whose products and services are at stake--said they needed to push for more risky marketing strategies. Sixty-five percent of survey respondents who are marketing executives and 45% of those who …
Continue Reading about Milquetoast for Breakfast, Milquetoast for Lunch… →
You Can Have It Your Way At BK, But Not At The Polls
Politics is polarizing, arguably to a dangerous degree in this country. Burger King and their agency, Crispin Porter & Bogusky understand that and have turned this fact into cultural currency. BK customers interested in having fun with the race can download applications for Facebook or MySpace and then share their political opinions and debate "friends." That doing so in real life is more fun and more impactful is …
Continue Reading about You Can Have It Your Way At BK, But Not At The Polls →
Clash Of The Titans
Most people in advertising love Wieden + Kennedy. Most people in advertising love Starbucks. Apparently, the two don't feel the love for each other. Ad Age has the scoop: "Wieden always felt like it was a one-way relationship," said an executive familiar with the matter. "They felt like they presented a way to drive the brand forward, and Starbucks wasn't receptive." The agency wouldn't comment beyond its statement …
I Blog, Therefore I Earn
Tech journalist, Sarah Lacy, on why she doesn't run ads on her blog: Until I could find an advertising vehicle that valued my audience as much as I do, blogging would just be a loss leader for me—a hub for everything else I was doing and a way to solidify myself as a thought leader. After all, isn't a decade of industry experience and contacts worth more than pennies a click? BusinessWeek, Yahoo, or any organization …
We’re All Thumbs
I don't doubt these figures on mobile usage from C|NET and Neilsen, but I do find them somewhat stunning. For the second quarter of 2008, U.S. mobile subscribers sent and received on average 357 text messages per month, compared with making and receiving 204 phone calls a month, according to Nielsen. In the first quarter of 2006, Americans sent and received 65 text messages per month. The number of messages sent and …
Employment at Portland Advertising & PR Agencies Has Grown 37 Percent from 2003 to 2007
I had the pleasure of meeting Daniel Timothy Wood, Digital Strategy Director at PMSI, over coffee this morning at Jace Gace on SE Belmont. He mentioned a recent article in The Oregonian that lists several creative firms who have opened shop in Portland, some specifically to serve Adidas. The latest newcomers include Chicago marketing firm Tangible Worldwide and Boise-based Fuel3 Advertising, which announced its entry …
An Ad Guy’s Laundry
I just spent some time catching up on Steffan Postaer's recent posts to his blog, Gods of Advertising. Here's some of what I picked up: Creatives can be an insecure lot. Agencies need to reinvent themselves, sometimes every six to eight weeks. Steffan thinks the Caddilac spot with Kate Walsh is trying too hard. Steffan has a PR associate at Euro RSCG/Chicago look at his some of his posts before publishing …