Reporter Kate MacArthur of Crain's Chicago Business writes today:

McDonald's is giving its new advertising tagline a break in Great Britain.

The fast-food giant declared a two-week hiatus, to have ended Friday, for "I'm lovin' it" in the United Kingdom. Critics of the campaign from the outset have said the tagline could backfire in markets where poor service or the stigma of junk food make "I'm lovin' it" a tough sell.

To win over skeptical Britons, Oak Brook-based McDonald's Corp. launched a new campaign Oct. 15, dubbed "Changes." The campaign replaces the famous Golden Arches logo with a yellow question mark and carries the line, "McDonald's. But not as you know it." Aimed at jolting consumers from an image of the food cultivated by films like "Super Size Me," the effort preceded a direct-mail campaign to 17 million households touting more healthful menu items and smaller portion sizes. The campaign was crafted by the London office of Chicago-based Leo Burnett.

McDonald's executives concede that despite launching a sales juggernaut in the U.S., overseas consumers haven't fallen head over heels for the "I'm lovin' it" marketing. Yet leadership of the iconic brand is steadfast that its "Changes" campaign is merely the second phase of a two-part push. The first was to reinforce its brand among loyalists; now, it needs to change perceptions among those who aren't.

Once upon a time, the image of an everyday ad man was projected to the multitudes by the likes of Darren Stevens on Bewitched or the guys on Thirty Something. Now in this time of reality television, real CEOs are offering themselves up as fodder, as entities in the modern cultural brandscape. Today, Donny Deutsch is the face of the agency business, thanks in large part to his show on CNBC.

Should you require more of the inside scoop on Donny, Steve Fishman's New York Metro piece is an interesting read.

From Crain's Chicago Business newly released "40 Under 40":

Nicole Ertas, senior brand manager, joined Jim Beam Brands Worldwide Inc. in May 2002 and launched tequila into the cocktail age. She renamed little-known El Tesoro Silver tequila as El Tesoro Platinum, marketed it as a mixable liquor and watched proudly as it appeared as a product placement in two episodes of HBO's series "Sex and the City." Now, El Tesoro Platinum martinis are on bar menus across the country.

Ms. Ertas "looked at spirits in a whole new way. She said, 'What are we missing?' We were missing the whole cocktail trend," says Kathleen DiBenedetto, director of sales and marketing integration for Jim Beam Brands and Ms. Ertas' boss during the El Tesoro transformation. "She's a maverick in her thinking."

Adweek reports that Haggar Clothing Co. chief marketing officer Alan Burks made the Power 100 List of the most influential leaders of the men's fashion industry as ranked by DNR magazine.

Burks was noted for his role in shaping advertising and new ideas for business and licensing opportunities for the Dallas-based clothier. Working under an agreement with BMB Group Ltd., Haggar has expanded its presence in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Burks also plans expansion in Asia, the magazine said.

Haggar recently launched a multimillion-dollar campaign for a new line of wrinkle and fade-resistant clothing with television, radio and print ads created by Foundation Design, an independent Seattle agency.

from Ad Age: When the behemoth U.S. Postal Service found out that a young rock band had named itself "Postal Service," executives weren't happy. They sent a cease-and-desist letter to the band's label, Seattle-based independent Sub Pop Records.

But what began as an argument over name rights turned into the mail-delivering institution's first cross-promotional music deal. Sub Pop executives suggested that the USPS turn the musicians into marketing partners instead of adversaries. The USPS ultimately agreed to let the band keep using the name via a licensing deal, and will take advantage of the musicians' hipster cachet through some innovative co-promotions.

According to the company's home page, Leap Wireless is a customer-focussed company that provides innovative, wireless, communication services for the mass market.

According to Adweek, this San Diego firm moved their account from Sausalito's Butler Shine and Stern to Chicago's Element 79 without a review.

Excellent, now can someone please get to work on that bit of copy above? It does not reveal a thing. Leap, tell me who you are and what you do, please. In five seconds. Go.

You don't see a lot of English jokes in advertising. Perhaps the copywriters are mostly WASPs. Anyway, I found one. Rick Johnson Advertising in New Mexico has created an ad that both celebrates the English and denigrates them.

"Will consumer blogs bypass professional advertising agencies?" -Rance Crain* in Crain's Ad Age

The publisher of Ad Age considers consumers' power to shape brand images on their own today, in both positive and negative ways. He wonders if consumer-run sites will become more meaningful to brands than anything their ad agency or internal communications department might ever create. These are good questions.

I'd like to see consumer sites that help define what the brand really means in the culture. This will only help the brand in the end, and those charged with its care.

I also propose brands enter the conversation now. Find the bloggers in your midst corporate America. Then empower these people to become voices for the corporation. You will humanize your corporation in the doing. People like to buy from their friends. So be a friend, hang out for a while, discuss.

*Rance Crain's company publishes 30 magazines including Advertising Age, Electronic Media and Crain's Chicago Business. The company was founded in 1916 by Rance's father, G.D. Crain, Jr, and his mother, Gertrude Crain later served as company chairman.

Since it's election day here in America, I thought I'd go ahead and thank Diesel and KesselsKramer for providing us another, equally just, way to exercise our individual credit cards, I mean freedoms.

KesselsKramer, an agency that is deft at the art of camp, must be credited for sporting one of the more daring agency web sites. Each time one comes to this Amsterdam agency's home page, another cheesy pitch is there to greet you. One's first thought is this must be the wrong address. It's not the wrong address. It's dynamic content. It's also funny and insightful and a blueprint for brands that want to make their own sites worth visiting.

from Wired: China has closed 1,600 internet cafes and fined operators a total of $12 million for letting children play violent games and for other violations, the government said.

The announcement came amid a campaign launched in March to reduce or eliminate sex and violence in websites, video games and other material that Communist leaders consider harmful to public morality.

Investigators have inspected 1.8 million internet cafes looking for unlicensed operations or those that let children play violent games meant for adults, the Ministry of Culture said. China encourages internet use for education and business but bans sexually oriented content on Chinese websites and tries to block access to foreign sites deemed pornographic or subversive.

We will learn today where Pete Coors will be and what he'll be working on for the next several years. Will it be the interests of Colorado? Or the continued interests of the family business?

According to E.J. Dionne, writing in the Washington Post, the campaign hasn't been all that great for the folks back home at the brewery.

from Dionne's article: "Yes, it's tough having to sell beer and win votes from conservatives. At one point in the primary campaign, Coors said his brewery would change its health care plan so that it would no longer cover abortions. But, hey, Coors had to win a primary and he couldn't alienate right-to-lifers."

Luerzer's Archive has an updated web presence with excellent data base functionality. One factoid I pulled from the site:

Most appearances in Archive, by agency
Bartle Bogle Hegarty, London
DDB, London
Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, London
KesselsKramer, Amsterdam
DM9DDB, Sao Paulo
Mother Ltd., London
Saatchi & Saatchi, London
TBWA GGT Simons Palmer, London
Wieden & Kennedy, Amsterdam
D´Adda, Lorenzini, Vigorelli, BBDO, Milan
Fallon McElligott, Minneapolis
Springer & Jacoby Werbung GmbH. & Co. KG, Hamburg
Scholz & Friends, Berlin
Jung von Matt, Hamburg
Cliff Freeman & Partners, New York

And what might an American working in advertising extract from this list? One, that Archive is published in Europe. Two, that American creativity is not being expressed as widely or as freely as it might be.

from New York Times: The average circulation of the nation's newspapers fell in the six months ended in September, as new federal restrictions on telemarketing and a more conservative approach by some publications to counting paid readership put further pressure on an already struggling industry.

The losses were widespread, with two-thirds of papers reporting flat or declining circulation, including The Washington Post and The Daily News, according to an analysis by the Newspaper Association of America of figures released yesterday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

The average daily circulation for the nation's 841 daily newspapers fell 0.9 percent, to 47,711,751, for the six months ended Sept. 30, as compared with the period a year earlier, according to the newspaper association.

Two years ago copywriter Sally Hogshead asked in Creativity "Is your career kicking you in the nuts?" For those who would answer yes, she offered, "Kick back."

Here's how she charms: So what exactly is radical careering? It's the relentless dedication to having exactly the job you want -- no matter how daunting it might seem or how discouraged you might feel. You always have the power to revolutionize your career, at any stage, at any agency, in any economy. And with that power comes a significant responsibility: being accountable for your own success.

Read the remainder of this Hogsheadian manifesto.

IKEA is the latest in a string of marketers to deploy a faux web site to create buzz for their brand. Seattle agency, Wong Doody unleashed Skyhigh Airlines to make fun of high cost carriers (they have Alaska Airlines as a client); more recently Wieden + Kennedy's NYC office teased gamers with Beta-7, a faux fan site that drew a lot of attention; plus you have the kids in Coconut Grove toying with Burger King fans via various nefarious means.

And now the world has Elite Designers Against Ikea dot org. Here's where they are coming from:

"We are the Elite Designers. We design profound and beautiful furniture for those with wealth and taste. Which is why IKEA makes us furious livid and angry. Do their designs live, breathe and growl? Are they born from tears of pain? Do they gently touch the bottom of the human soul? Pah! Of course not, no more than weeds can attract a bee. The big blue place is odious, its affordable design is sickeningly shallow and we loathe it even more than we loathe football. Please join us in our unqualified hatred."

Van Den Puup, EDAI spokesperson

General Motors enters the blogosphere with GM Smallblock Engine Blog. I applaud the car maker's initiative.

Blogversations are a new, not evil way to market your products and services through discussions. Here's how it works:

1) We match advertisers with bloggers
2) Advertisers propose a topic or question (not an advertorial)
3) Bloggers accept or reject the proposal
4) If they accept, bloggers discuss the topic or question, and link to the discussion on their blog's front page
5) Advertisers truly engage audiences without doing evil; bloggers get paid for doing what they do best - blogging!

Advantages for advertisers:

Instantly build real engagement with tuned-out audiences. Leverage engagement to build credibility, authority, and authenticity for your brands. Provide consumers advertising that creates benefits - not that imposes costs and annoys.

Advantages for bloggers:

Leverage your authority and audience to earn money - without losing control over what you've got to say. Turn your ideas, criticisms, opinions, and reader share into money - and not muddy up your site with clunky ads in the process. Engage your audience with thought-provoking issues and questions.

Why We Don't Encourage Advertorials

Evil is a shortsighted strategy. If bloggers sell out, they lose readers; if they lose readers, we lose sponsors. The pie shrinks for everyone. That's why we don't want bloggers to sell out.

Political blog Daliy Kos, the work of one partisan man, has been attracting some 400,000 readers a day, the size of a large daily newspaper. I'm all for it, but I wonder what Kos's traffic will do now? On the other hand, I have no doubt that political humorist, Ana Marie Cox, will continue to be highly relevant since she busts on both sides with equal fervor.

from AdAge: WPP Group's J. Walter Thompson today said it has named Ty Montague executive vice president and chief creative officer and co-president of its New York office, a move that is meant to infuse the old-line agency with a jolt of nontraditional marketing energy.

Mr. Montague, 41, comes to JWT from independent Wieden & Kennedy, New York, where he was co-executive creative director and was one of the brains behind "Beta-7," a Blair Witch Project-esque four-month campaign for the Sega ESPN NFL video game.

Modern Marketing says, there is a new player in the media business. It is staffed by millions of people all round the world, creates mountains of varied content, is highly trusted by its readership, is growing exponentially and has a zero overhead.

It's called Citizen's Media or Consumer Generated Media and is the result of cheap, accessible digital publishing tools being available to a mass market for the first time.

Or as respected US commentator Jeff Jarvis puts it, "people now own the printing press and the broadcast tower and the barrier to entry to media has been blown away."

Blogs are the highest profile type of Citizen’s Media. To date they have been viewed as a niche activity pursued by navel-gazers and geeks. However, they are growing fast. Online blog monitor Technorati.com tracks more than 4 million blogs and adds 20,000 a day to its register.

The words, "I'm just browsing," have no place in the battle for desktop supremacy. For sure, Rob Davis is doing more than just browsing. Mr. Davis is young geek with big ideas. His latest is SpreadFirefox.com, a site where he not only spreads the word, he collects money to run an ad for Firefox in the New York Times. Correction, he collects a lot of money from a lot of people to run an ad for a firm he does not work for.

According to Davis, "I currently work as communications and marketing consultant for Minneapolis-based Haberman & Associates. The 12-person firm is full of fun, entrepreneurial over-achievers. I was brought in Sept. 1 to complement the firm's existing strengths for pioneering stories and grassroots advocacy with my experience in web-based organizing."

A reader in San Francisco pointed us to this post from Whisper Blog:

One of the branding lessons that can be taken from the 2004 U.S. Presidential election is that in the States, voters are consumers and candidates are brands. And just like consumers of Uncrustables, Budweiser or Volkswagen, they make emotional, not logical decisions.

The best way to get the consumer to make you their choice is with a singular top-of-mind emotional message, a message that allows you to own the conversation. Once that message has been established, all sub-messaging must work in the same direction as the main message.

The fate of the Democratic challenger in yesterday's election vividly demonstrated what happens to a brand that becomes bogged-down with multidirectional logical messages. If you need more proof consider this: there isn't a single human being on the planet, no matter how busy, who doesn't have the time to make a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and yet Uncrustables have convinced millions of American's otherwise.

Imagine if you actually had a product with a logical benefit and an emotional hook? You would own the conversation.

I understand our overly litigous society prevents a corporation like McDonald's from accepting unsolicited ideas. I also understand how 20th century this policy is. Larry Light, my man, the copy below is a big red STOP SIGN on the McD's web site--a site that needs to be scrapped and rebuilt on a better, more open, communications foundation.

Unsolicited Ideas

Thank you for your interest to share an idea for a product or service that you believe would be beneficial to McDonald's. Please know, however, that it is McDonald's company's policy not to consider unsolicited ideas from anyone other than our corporate employees, franchise owners and dedicated suppliers.

It's not that great ideas cannot come from our valued customers. Each year, however, McDonald's receives thousands of unsolicited ideas and proposals for products and services. Due to the mass volume of these unsolicited ideas and the business challenge of determining what is truly a "new" idea versus a concept that is already in development, being tested, or previously considered, we must adhere to a strict policy not to accept or review any unsolicited ideas that come from outside the McDonald's system of our corporate employees, franchise owners and suppliers.

As a result, we must decline your invitation to review your idea, and hope you can understand and appreciate our business reasons for making this company decision. We do, however, greatly appreciate your interest in McDonald's.

from ClickZ News

A new take on the social networking phenomenon hopes to create online communities around specific brands. Outburst, a new marketing unit from digital media and tech firm POPstick, aims to leverage consumers' natural affinity for brands and allow marketers to communicate with those fans.

Agency veteran Steve Dworin has signed on as president of the business unit. Dworin was formerly vice chairman of EURO RSCG. He earlier led NW Ayer as CEO, and Deutsch/Dworin as president.

POPstick describes its new service as "social network marketing." It offers an online dashboard through which brand loyalists can meet and share their enthusiasm for a given product or service. As with social networking services like Friendster, Orkut and LinkedIn , Outburst lets users create personalized profiles through which they interact with others. The new company has not yet announced any clients.

"This century will be won on intuition, emotion and networking. Who gets straight A+s in all these fundamental skills? Women." -Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide, Saatchi & Saatchi and author of Lovemarks

While it's not a blog, Kevin Roberts does keep a personal web site where he warehouses his speeches, press clippings, links and the like.

I like a book site where the first chapter, or first few chapters, are available to download as a PDF. Books are small investments. The free PDF is a prospectus.

The Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a leading civil rights organization is seeking an experienced writer with proven research, investigative, analytical and editing skills. This individual will produce major articles focusing on extremism, terrorism and hate groups for the Center’s quarterly Intelligence Report and will assist in editing the magazine and producing other research and written materials for the Center. Strong journalistic skills are essential and magazine writing experience is a plus. This is a full-time, permanent position that requires relocating to Montgomery, Alabama. Send a resumé, writing samples, two references and a letter outlining your qualifications to:

Human Resources
Southern Poverty Law Center
400 Washington Ave.
Montgomery, AL, 36104.

Not officially.

Officially, Mr. Wendy's gets the boot. Effective end of the month (via AdAge). Same-store sales dropped 5.8% in October. Don Calhoon, Wendy's Executive VP of Marketing, says Wendy's is "refocusing its advertising direction to more prominently position Wendy's food and heritage of quality."

Wendy's, you have the best burgers of the big 3 and the founder, the late Dave Thomas, was very well respected; not only in the fast food world, but within the circles of social change with the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. Why did you change your focus (away from the heritage and quality) in the first place?

Lewis Lazare reports today in the Sun Times that David T. Jones, a Foote Cone & Belding/Chicago group creative director is launching a new comic strip called "Art & Commerce." Some of the strip's action takes place inside a fictional mid-sized Midwestern agency called Corneigh & Foarste, a shop that made its name in the 1960s with an animated critter called Henry Hemorrhoid, who was always on the run from a giant tube of Simon hemorrhoid cream.

Jones drew a strip called "Emerson" for the school newspaper at his alma mater, Indiana University, often drawing on topical events at the school for inspiration. Jones says he liked the discipline he developed having to draw on a daily basis. What's more, it helped him get his first job in advertising. An ad agency recruiter thought his sample ads were only OK, but she loved his "Emerson" strip.

So now that he's fully immersed in the ad world, Jones said he longed to get back to doing a strip. Samples from "Art & Commerce," which he has submitted for consideration to ad trade publications, show Jones has developed a wicked attitude about the ad biz.

Chicago's Cramer/Krasselt has declined an invitation to defend its Moen business, reports Adweek. Yeah, those lifestyle shoots can be a bit rough.

from AdAge: In a new version of product placement, the WE Women's Entertainment network will open each weekly segment of this month's Cinematherapy show in the front seat a Pontiac G6 sedan.

The car model was recently the subject of massive media coverage after Oprah Winfrey gave a free G6 to each member of the audience of her season-opening show in September.

Mary Kubitskey, advertising manager at Pontiac, said that "with a new product such as G6 we must look for innovative avenues to raise the public's awareness and get them talking about the car."

Some Pontiac dealers criticized the carmaker in the weeks after Oprah's G6 giveaway, saying they didn't have either any or enough cars in stock to meet demand generated by that deal, according to Automotive News.

"The single biggest explanation for fragile brands is the swelling strength of the consumer. We've seen a pronounced jump in the amount of information available about goods and services. It's not just bellwethers like Consumers Union and J.D. Power, established authorities that unquestionably shape people's buying decisions, but also the crush of magazines, Web sites, and message boards scrutinizing products." -James Surowiecki, staff writer for The New Yorker, and author of The Wisdom of Crowds writing in Wired

In short, this is why I suggest that brands make friends with their customers. To do this, they need to conduct multiple ongoing conversations. Think of it as a party, this new world embracing the customer.

The owner of Best Buy Sux is tiring. The same cannot be said of the corporation under attack.

"I am still debating what to do with the site... I may be interested in just having someone else maintain it for me. That sounds like it may be the best thing, (unless someone wants to pay me good money for it, LOL!!!).

I may be closing down the site really soon.  I simply don't have the time or drive to keep it open anymore. The cash is getting to be too much as well...

Copywriter and author, Bob Bly, wrote a piece for DM News about how blogs are little more than vanity publishing with no real future for brands.

Bloggers are, of course, hacking this man's argument to bits.

See:
The Copywriter Who Didn't Get It
Steve Hall's rant or
Rick Bluner's critique.

Bog Cargill of Yellowfin Direct Marketing in Boston points out on his blog, A Fine Kettle of Fish, the number of brands jumping on the winner's wagon. He rates Metamucil's entry the best of the lot.

CONGRATULATIONS BOSTON ON YOUR WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP.
LET'S HOPE IT BECOMES A REGULAR THING!

Adweek published a near book-length article today about corruption at Grey Global Group's New York office. The centerpiece of the article reveals how the print production department was lavished with expensive gifts by vendors, particularly Color Wheel, a print shop. It goes on to describe a viscous billing cycle, where the vendor has to cover their gift costs by inflating the price of their services, which are then passed on to unsuspecting (no more) clients.

Advertising as a profession has long been viewed by the public as a field with no moral compass. Thus, it may not surprise many to learn that two Grey creatives wanted to hook up with some ladies of the night while on a shoot in Paris. The Color Wheel executive traveling with the horn dogs wasn't sure if this was an expense his firm could cover, so he phoned the boss in New York for approval.

The boss said, "Whatever. If they're going to be happy and it's going to keep them happy, do it.'"

Cingular Wireless has merged with AT&T Wireless. New TV spots from BBDO New York--and their newly hired creative chief from Fallon, David Lubars--are now running. One spot features "The Weight" by The Band.

I understand why Cadillac uses Led Zepellin. The people looking to buy once listened to the world's first heavy metal band. And they can imagine themselves doing so still, especially while stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway.

Cingular's use of "The Weight," on the other hand, perplexes me. Is this song even known to the target audience? Perhaps, they've seen The Big Chill on DVD. To me, the use of this track, which is the most memorable aspect of the commercial, conveys that the new Cingular is for old farts.

On Saturday, AdPulp received a tip from Asa Bailey, a Brit excited by his firm's hijacking of domain name, ogilvymather.co.uk. I fail to see the significance, for O+M uses ogilvy dot com for their worldwide web presence.

This morning, I see Marketing Wonk has picked up the non-story.

So what is a modern marketer to do? Buy up every possible domain name that might relate to their brand? What a waste of time.

"Oh, you ask, what's a blog?" -Catharine P. Taylor writing today in Adweek

Is advertising a home to cutting edge creative people busy developing new and better ways to reach an audience? Or is advertising the province of self-important yes men (and yes women) focused on little more than preserving their place in the world?

Given that the industry's trade journal of choice felt the need to publish an ABCs of blogging today, I'd have to say signs point to the latter.

Five months after David Lubars departed Minnesota for Manahttan, Paul Silburn has been hired to head Fallon's creative department, reports AdAge.

Silburn is well-known for his work on brands including John Smith beer, Adidas and Lockets throat lozenges. In 2000, while at Publicis' Leo Burnett, London, he was the art director and copywriter for a John West canned salmon ad in which a fisherman fights a grizzly bear for the best salmon in the river. The TV ad made its way around the world via e-mail, an example of viral marketing.

Fallon became a pioneer in branded entertainment and the use of the Internet as an ad vehicle with its BMW Films effort a few years ago; an online film effort for Amazon is breaking soon. Mr. Silburn said he plans to lead efforts along this line.

Fallon is "getting into interesting areas of advertising beyond" traditional TV ads, he said.

"I read blogs, I think about blogs, I shake my head in wonderment at the bloggers' seeming indefatigability. But, more to the point, I shake my head in disappointment at how, in taking advantage of the Web's freedom to post a perspective, many of them fail even to aspire to the pursuit of perspicacity. That is, they publish because they hear 'something' from 'someone' who is 'reliable.' Sorry, not good enough." -Owen Youngman, Tribune V.P.

What?

Mr. Youngman, blogs are not newspapers. They are personal expressions. Take this blog. One might find much of the information we share here on his or her own. But in most cases it would be naked data. It's the opinion of the writer that makes a blog interesting reading.

Seth Godin--blogger, marketing guru and author of several famous books--had another in a long line of great ideas last summer. With the help of some smart and motivated interns, Change This was born. Change This publishes manifestos that call for positive social, cultural or economic change.

Today my manifesto, New Tactics | New Tools: Marketers Embrace the New Democracy of the Web is now available on the Change This site. And I must say, they make really nice PDFs in which to showcase one's thinking.

The Change This team, minus Godin

James W. Walter, an eccentric millionaire from Santa Barbara, Calif., who over the years has financed programs promoting voter registration in low-income neighborhoods and prison reform, has recently taken a growing interest in the investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks. In fact, Walter is so interested he opened his wallet to the tune of $3 million in order to finance a national ad campaign pressing for the reopening of the investigation by the independent Sept. 11 commission.

Speaking with a NY Tines reporter, Walter said, "It just isn't possible that 19 screw-ups with box cutters pulled this whole thing off."

"As the election campaign unfolded, operators of some of the internet’s politics-oriented blogs, no doubt high on the perfume of many "hits" and their own developing sense of community, envisioned a future when they would diminish then replace the traditional media as the nation’s primary source of political news and commentary.

The public is now assaulted by news and pretend-news from many directions, thanks to the now infamous "information superhighway." But the ability to transmit words, we learned during the Citizens Band radio fad of the 70’s, does not mean that any knowledge is being passed along. One of the verdicts rendered by election night 2004 is that, given their lack of expertise, standards and, yes, humility, the chances of the bloggers replacing mainstream journalism are about as good as the parasite replacing the dog it fastens on." -Eric Engberg, formerly of CBS News

Hugh over at Gaping Void has been carrying the torch for the idea that "Branding Is Dead." It's a hot topic, if the long list of comments he generates is any proof.

Here's my favorite response to Hugh's claim:

"You're making an assumption that branding is all about advertising so that if you do shitty advertising you're not branding. Nothing can be further from the truth, in my opinion. Branding is what your customers ultimately decide you are as a brand. You're a brand even if you don't think you're a brand, only the business you get defines what kind of brand you are. Award winning advertising doesn't mean squat if you attract people in the door and the staff pisses in their boots. The assumption you make that everything is dead is also suspect. Nothing really dies, it just morphs and shitty marketing, advertising, PR and the like goes by the wayside as customers vote with their feet and take their word-of-mouth to the marketplace." -Alain Jourdier

At the risk of sounding totally out of touch, I watched my first complete episode of MTV's Pimp My Ride last night. The show is hosted by rapper and Columbia recording artist, Xzibit and showcases the work of West Coast Customs, a Los Angeles body shop.

In a nutshell, the show's producers find the worst rust buckets on the street, Xzibit shows up and let's the vehicle owner know their ride is about to be pimped, or in a more commonly used vernacular, undergo a makeover.

West Coast Customs, nor any firm for that matter, could ever pay for this type of positive brand exposure. It's basically a 30 minute infomercial, but one that's hip and refreshed on a weekly basis.

Just weeks after the term "Third Screen" entered the marketing lexicon, Motorola debuts a short film exhibit from renowned cinematographer, Edward Lachman of "The Virgin Suicides" and "Erin Brockovich" fame. All in effort to hype their new 710 camera phone.

Research suggests that worldwide revenue from mobile information and entertainment is expected to grow to $39 billion by 2007.

Lachman in Telluride, CO

from the PBS web site: FRONTLINE takes an in-depth look at the multibillion-dollar "persuasion industries" of advertising and public relations and how marketers have developed new ways of integrating their messages deeper into the fabric of our lives. Through sophisticated market research methods to better understand consumers and by turning to the little-understood techniques of public relations to make sure their messages come from sources we trust, marketers are crafting messages that resonate with an increasingly cynical public. In this documentary essay, correspondent Douglas Rushkoff (correspondent for FRONTLINE's "The Merchants of Cool") also explores how the culture of marketing has come to shape the way Americans understand the world and themselves and how the techniques of the persuasion industries have migrated to politics, shaping the way our leaders formulate policy, influence public opinion, make decisions, and stay in power.

According to Crain's Chicago Business, Kraft is rumored to be preparing sales of its Altoids and Life Savers candy brands, which could reap about $1 billion. The Northfield, IL-based food marketer is preparing to split from corporate parent Altria, and several lesser known brands are also slated to be sold off as part of the corporate restructuring.

I wonder what the valuation for Altoids would be pre-Steffan Postaer. I've said before that the ad biz is bloated with overpaid egomaniacs who add little value to their clients' bottom lines. Then there are cases--rare as they may be--where the agency adds such value to the brand it cannot be accurately calculated.

Ask yourself this, had you ever heard of Altoids before Postaer and his former Leo Burnett team got the assignment to reinvent this brand?

It seems to me that after the sale is final, Kraft ought to reward Postaer with a vacation home, a yacht or free Mac and Cheese for life. Something.

Olson + Co, a Minneapolis agency with the Detroit Pistons on the client roster, has received four diamond encrusted NBA Champions rings, each worth $15,000.

Speaking to Adweek's Tim Nunn, agency president John Olson joked, "They obviously lowered their standards as to who gets a ring."

In the five years it has had the account, the agency has built attendance with a campaign touting the team's (and its fans') blue-collar work ethic, even going so far as to make tickets look like time cards. In fact, the organization took to the campaign to heart to such a degree that the tagline, "Going to work," is emblazoned on the rings of players and agency staffers alike.

from USA Today: A new strain of spam soon could have consumers spitting mad.

"Spit" - spam over Internet telephony - is beginning to surface as more people make phone calls over the Internet instead of regular phone lines, security experts say.

Marketers can program their computers to send 1,000 voice messages a minute over Internet-telephony technology, according to one recent test.

Web-based phone systems ensnared in spam will "trash voice-mail systems," says Michael Osterman, an independent Internet researcher. "You can easily delete 100 spam text messages. But try to weed through a voice-mail system filled with 100 unsolicited pitches. That's a pain."

It appears that the outrageous sums required to attend Penn, Cornell, Princeton, Columbia, Yale, Brown, Harvard and Dartmouth may actually be well worth the investment.

from NY Times: Nestled between the articles in Harvard Magazine or Princeton Alumni Weekly are advertisements for $20,000 watches, $150,000 cars, investment advice and high-end retirement communities. As the magazine tells advertisers: "Want millionaires? More than half of Harvard Magazine's readers qualify."

The 930,000 readers in the Ivy League Magazine Network, a marketing bloc formed to sell national advertising in nine publications, make up one of the most affluent groups of readers in the United States, with a median household income of $136,000, far more than the national figure of $51,000.

One of the more fascinating aspects of Frontline's "The Persuaders," which aired last night on PBS was the close up look at Republican pollster, Frank Luntz. If you watch the news at all, you've seen this guy's spin, I mean work.

Luntz advised his political cronies, I mean clients, to say "climate change" not "global warming" and "death tax" not "estate tax." He helped Newt define his "Contract With America" and Dubya with his "healthy forest initiative."

Here's what he has to offer corporate America:

"I am amazed at how eager the CEOs of the biggest companies are today to communicate as effectively as possible. They want to know that they can talk to a shareholder one-on-one, not just through their head but also through their heart. They want to know that they can reach their consumer not just on an intellectual basis, but on an emotional basis. In fact, I'd argue that CEOs, with all the corporate scandals that have taken place, are more interested in effective communication than even political people, because corporate people are interested in the bottom line, and so for them good words, good phrases, good presentation matter more than anything.

If we're getting information from 200 cable channels, if we're talking to 200 people a day, there are so many different messages that are cluttering our heads. It's the same way in corporate America. If a CEO speaks and no one hears it, it doesn't matter. And so they're looking for people like me to help them cut through the clutter, to help them explain and educate why their product or their service or their company is better. And the challenge for CEOs is that they generally came up through the ranks by being good numbers people. And I have seen 99 out of 100 cases, if you're a good numbers person, you're a bad language person."

Stanford Law professor and Creative Commons guru, Larry Lessig, has quite a following. Rightfully so. Borrowing from his thinking, a student group on campuses around the country is now advocating for an open source economy.

"The mission of the Free Culture movement is to build a bottom-up, participatory structure to society and culture, rather than a top-down, closed, proprietary structure.

We believe that culture is a two-way affair, about participation, not merely consumption. We will not sit at the end of a one-way media tube and buy things until we look like the people on Friends. With the Internet and other advances, the technology exists for a new paradigm of creation, one where anyone can be an artist, and anyone can succeed, based not on their industry connections, but on their merit.

We refuse to accept a future of digital feudalism where we do not actually own the products we buy, but we are merely granted limited uses of them as long as we pay the rent.

We won't allow the RIAA and the MPAA to cling to obsolete modes of distribution through bad legislation and market dominance. We will be active participants in a free culture of connectivity and production, made possible as it never was before by the Internet and digital technology, and we will fight to prevent this new potential from being locked down by corporate and legislative control. If we allow the bottom-up, participatory structure of the Internet to be twisted into a glorified cable TV service -- if we allow the established paradigm of creation and distribution to reassert itself -- then the window of opportunity opened by the Internet will have been closed, and we will have lost something beautiful, revolutionary, and irretrievable.

The future is in our hands; we must build a technological and cultural movement to defend the digital commons."

The Independent reports that the US Army and Chicago manufacturer International Truck and Engine Corporation are jointly developing a replacement for the venerable Humvee troop transporter, from which the Hummer was derived.

Last week, prototypes of the so-called "Smart Truck 3" were displayed at a trade show in Las Vegas. The commercial version will not have the electronics designed to detect anthrax, the Kevlar armouring on the underside, the night-vision cameras and the 25-inch LCD touch-screen computer monitors, but at 8000 pounds, the vehicle will be just as large.

Sales promotions tend to be distracting from the brand promise. For instance, a sweeps that awards one winner a trip to Disneyworld may appeal to a brand's core target, but in most cases it has nothing whatsoever to do with the product or service offering the pie-in-the-sky vacation.

General Motors, with the help of McCann and campaign spokesperson Suze Orman, is taking a different approach. For a limited time consumers who qualify for a low interest, or zero interest loan, can lock the rate in for their next vehicle purchase from GM, provided they buy again within three years.

from Business Week: Ask David Sifry when his little San Francisco startup called Technorati will turn a profit, and he laughs contagiously. No, Technorati, which tracks Web logs, or blogs, and will soon offer blog searches, is a long way from turning a profit. But it has big-league venture-capital backers like Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Mobius Venture Capital, and they're willing to wait as blog entrepreneurs cast around for a good business mode.

The independent-minded blogging community may be chagrined to see, however, that the most obvious money in blogging is in the software that helps big companies establish and manage corporate blogs, as well as software that culls data from the ever-growing blogosphere. It's much like the early days of e-commerce. While e-tailers were spending and spending to build their Web sites, e-commerce software makers were raking in the cash. To use an analogy to California's gold rush: It wasn't the miners who got rich, it was the people who sold the picks and shovels.

Some may question the wisdom of introducing holiday-flavored sodas, for they do sound disgusting.

-Turkey & Gravy Soda
-Cranberry Soda (okay, this one sounds good)
-Mashed Potato & Butter
-Green Bean Casserole
-Fruitcake Soda

Yet the latest offering from Seattle's Jones Soda Co. is already sold out (in three days time). Maybe all those carb avoiders are loading up on this liquid meal alternative.

Not since the high-flying days of David Thompson have the Denver Nuggets had any real star power on their roster. That changed last year, thanks to Carmelo Anthony's outstanding rookie season.

Now, Nike and Mr. Michael Jordan are preparing to launch the player's first shoe--the Jordan Carmelo 1.5--and signature clothing line, available in stores the day after Thanksgiving, according to Brandweek.

Steve Hall reports that McDonald's Japan has ditched the iconic Ronald McDonald in favor of a couple of "McHotties," one male and one female.

Maybe an outing to McD's is something special in Japan. Never been there. I have been to a McD's in Berlin, however and I was shocked to learn they sold beer and that the quick service restaurant was popular among hipsters out on dates.

Kris Oser reporting in AdAge writes: In its quest to be close to consumers wherever they are online, HP has bought the rights to tens of thousands of search engine keywords, according to the company's interactive global brand marketing chief.

Speaking yesterday at the AdTech Conference at the New York Hilton, Mary Bermel said HP has recognized there has been a marketplace revolution and that consumers now control advertising content. She said the company has made sweeping changes to address that new reality and she warned that other marketers ultimately had no choice but to do the same or be left behind.

The intense focus on owning search engine terms is only one part of the tech giant's overall new marketing strategy for consumers who expect the marketing message to be always available when they want it and always as personal as possible, she said.

Online, HP increasingly spends time listening and talking to people on Web journals, or blogs, and chat rooms, she added. Bloggers are influencers, she noted, and HP pays close attention to the "neighborhood affect" they have on the community of people who visit blogs.

Microsoft understands the power of blogs very well, she said, referring to a brand-enhancing blog Microsoft's engineers operate to casually discuss products with customers. HP supports its own engineers and tech staffers running their own blogs, Ms. Bermel said.