December 1, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 6 Comments

New management at a client usually means changes in marketing tactics or switching agencies.

But in the case of Six Flags, the changes will be more drastic. The new management team includes Daniel Snyder, who made his fortune in junk ma--I mean direct mail. He's now the owner of The Washington Redskins, where he once charged admission for fans to see the team practice in training camp.

Ad Age has more:

Mr. Snyder further argues in filings that Six Flags’ advertising and marketing had no clear message; targets only one of two key demographics; is expensive and lacks co-branded marketing. He also said the company has too few strategic concession relationships, and those are with tired and dated brands not recognized by children.

Mr. Snyder wants to target mothers and young children as well as teens; use more targeted, direct marketing and sell category-excusive rights to food items with name-brand food marketers. He also proposes renaming rides and attractions with paid sponsorships and to charge fees for exclusive “official sponsorships” with “more modern” brands like action sports, movie celebrities and musicians.

Six Flags' current agency is Doner, but you can bet that won't last. I pity the poor agency who has to go meet with Snyder and present a marketing plan. They'll definitely have to kiss his ring--of course, that wouldn't be a Super Bowl ring.

December 1, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Lewis Lazare: There's been an amicable divorce at Ebel Signorelli Welke/Chicago. The three partners who formed the agency in 2002 have split up. Bob Ebel has left the advertising business altogether to become president of Elmhurst-based MyLife Home Health Services, an organization providing in-home health care to the elderly.

Creative leader Bob Welke also has left ESW to become CEO of Blue Horse/Milwaukee, an ad agency that had until recently been owned by ESW. But ESW has sold Blue Horse to Welke and the 30-person agency's executive committee. Welke has relocated to Milwaukee.

Jim Signorelli now is chairman and CEO of ESW in Chicago, where he intends to focus on building the shop into an agency specializing in "transaction-driven marketing." The agency's current client roster includes KFC, Taco Bell, PLS Financial Services and its newest account, Oberweis Ice Cream and Dairy stores. "We have a great deal of expertise getting people in stores," Signorelli said. "We are all about ROI and cost per leads, while Blue Horse has more of a brand orientation."

With Welke's move to Milwaukee, Signorelli is bringing on board Phillip Lanier as ESW/Chicago's new chief creative officer. Lanier started his career at Chiat-Day in Los Angeles, and later met up with Signorelli when they both oversaw the Arby's account at W.B. Doner.

Blue Horse dates back to the mid-1960s. Its flagship client is American Family Insurance. The agency also does public relations work for Wal-Mart and U.S. Cellular and work for several B-to-B accounts. Blue Horse has about $30 million in billings, but Welke hopes to begin to add new business.

December 1, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

USA Today: Millions of anglers, hunters and target shooters are shelling out billions of dollars on gear, from $300 fly-fishing rods to $10,000 shotguns. Outdoor retailers such as Cabela's are expanding nationwide, opening superstores that attract legions of shoppers and tourists. Outdoor trade shows are drawing more exhibitors each year.

Many of the enthusiasts are baby boomers in their peak earning years — and their kids are joining them, according to industry groups and marketing reports.

"People are spending more on outdoor sports than they ever have," said Michael Callahan, senior vice president at Cabela's, the No. 1 U.S. hunting-and-fishing retailer.

From 2003 to 2004, sales of hunting and shooting products surged 8% to $2.9 billion, while fishing gear sales rose 2% to $2 billion, reports the National Sporting Goods Association trade group. Anglers and hunters spend tens of billions of dollars more on lodging, travel and other costs, according to industry groups and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Cabela's, Bass Pro Shops, Gander Mountain and other retailers are huge attractions.

Some of the "destination" megastores boast forest and waterfall displays, gun and archery ranges, museumlike dioramas of wildlife and huge aquariums. At the Silverton Casino Hotel Lodgein Las Vegas, tourists flock to a Bass Pro Shops Outdoor Worldstore that resembles a frontier hunting lodge from the 1800s.

Customers drive hundreds of miles to shop at Cabela's 13 vast stores. Picture a Home Depot and Disneyland for hunters and anglers, where they can buy canoes and kayaks; antique rifles for $250,000; women's swimwear; and kids' snow parkas. There's even a $43,000 log cabin that outdoorsmen can assemble themselves.

Eight more Cabela's stores are in the works.

December 1, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 1 Comments

Here's an amusing article out of today's Cleveland Plain Dealer, entitled "Confessions of a Nielsen Family," in which columnist John Horton recounts his family's week of watching TV and writing down what they watched.

Seven days of chronicling viewing habits taught me this: The remote control is a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands, and we have 10 of them between me; my wife, Debbie; my daughter, Lindsay, 7; and my sons, Brian, who's almost 5, and Jack, 1.

Where it went wrong, I can't say. When our house first received the diary, I thought about clicking on some high-quality, educational programming just to encourage the networks to air more of it. Maybe linger a few hours on the History Channel, or get lost on Animal Planet.

I seem to recall my family was asked to do this 20 years ago. But with billions of ad dollars at stake, and with advertisers questioning the efficacy of network and cable TV, is this still the primary way they measure the TV audience? Can't they get any more precise info without asking busy, random families to write stuff down?

December 1, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Washington Post: "My Consult" is a Web-based second opinion service offered by e-Cleveland Clinic, the facility's Internet service. Patients who have received a diagnosis of any of more than 600 life-threatening or life-altering conditions can request an electronic consultation with a Cleveland Clinic doctor. For $565, a physician provides a written second opinion and a treatment recommendation -- all within five to seven working days of receiving a completed request.

"We've been working on this program now for about three years," said C. Martin Harris, executive director of e-Cleveland Clinic. "It really came from the fact that as an organization we have been focused on providing high-quality patient care."

"As we thought about that from a patient's perspective, it became clear to us that we had to think beyond the four walls of our institution and start thinking about delivering services to where patients spend the majority of their time."

A Web-based second opinion allows patients to consult with medical experts regardless of where they are located. This service could be particularly helpful for people living in rural areas or overseas, and it also could benefit patients with complex medical conditions.

December 1, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Forbes: The Shanghai No 2 Intermediate People's Court yesterday ordered two Chinese companies to pay more than 300,000 yuan in compensation to Hennessy Cognac for infringing the French company's trademark, the China Daily reported.

Zhuhai Xiangmutong Trading Co and Xiamen Golden Huanya Food Co, a bottling company, have been ordered to pay compensation, cease infringing the Hennessy trademark immediately and publish an apology in a local newspaper, Xinmin Evening News, the paper said.

The court heard that the two companies had been bottling and marketing a drink claiming to be a French cognac under the trademark Hanlissy.

The court found that the names Hanlissy and Hennessy are similar in appearance and pronunciation and this may confuse consumers.

December 2, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

According to Adweek and his own press releases, Ernie Mosteller, an author and creative director who founded production houses in New York and Florida, has launched an advertising agency in Galveston, Texas, called Tangelo Ideas. The agency identity was inspired by Mosteller's youth spent on a citrus farm in Florida.

Author of a book on advertising entitled Use a Stick (available for free download), Mosteller worked as a creative director at Filmworks in Miami and later at Image Point.

“Formulaic thinking doesn’t move business anymore,” says Mosteller. “And formulaic structure leads to formulaic ideas.”

Asked why the Houston/Galveston base, Mosteller is matter-of-fact: “I like the island culture in Galveston. And Houston, the fourth largest city in the country, represents huge creative potential. Traditionally, the top creative agencies in Texas have been located in Dallas and Austin. But that’s about to change.

December 2, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Ad Age: Lowe Worldwide founder Frank Lowe emerged from retirement today with the surprise announcement that he is setting up a new advertising agency with Paul Weinberger, who resigned as chairman of Lowe London. Mr. Weinberger is expected to take with him Lowe London’s biggest account, the $75 million Tesco supermarket business he has overseen for years.

The unexpected move from the eccentric Mr. Lowe, who is 65, comes three months after the expiration of a non-compete agreement with Lowe parent Interpublic Group of Cos. that prevented him from taking Lowe staff or clients for two years after his retirement at the end of 2003.

"If Keith Richards can still play rock and roll then Frank might be able to do the same," said an Interpublic executive.

He started his own London agency, Lowe Howard-Spink, in 1981, and built Lowe into an international network, renamed Lowe & Partners in 1990. Interpublic, already a minority shareholder, bought the remaining 64.6% in 1990.

December 2, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

ShoreBank Pacific, a Washington State chartered, FDIC insured bank, is the first commercial bank in the United States with a commitment to environmentally sustainable community development. We believe that long-term community prosperity goes hand-in-hand with a healthy environment.

Through our lending programs, we support individual and community efforts to bring together conservation and economic development. With each loan, we provide information on conservation improvements that can increase the value of the borrower's business.

ShoreBank Pacific helps borrowers:

Use energy efficiently;
Reduce waste and pollution;
Conserve natural resources; and
Plan for the long term.

[via Iconoculture]

December 2, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Wired: The spyware wars are over - and spyware has won.

Back in 2002, Gator was one of the most reviled companies on the Net. Maker of a free app called eWallet, the firm was under fire for distributing what critics called spyware, code that covertly monitors a user's Web-surfing habits and uploads the data to a remote server. People who downloaded Gator eWallet soon found their screens inundated with pop-up ads ostensibly of interest to them because of Web sites they had visited. Removing eWallet didn't stop the torrent of pop-ups.

In a June 2002 legal brief filed with the lawsuit, attorneys for The Washington Post referred to Gator as a "parasite." ZDNet called it a "scourge."

Today Gator, now called Claria, is a rising star. The lawsuits have been settled - with negligible impact on the company's business - and Claria serves ads for names like JPMorgan Chase, Sony, and Yahoo! The Wall Street Journal praises the company for "making strides in revamping itself."

Apart from plush new offices at the northern edge of Silicon Valley, it's remarkable how little the latter-day Claria differs from the old Gator. It's true that the company has toned down its most aggressive tactics. Journalists, watchdogs, and regulators seem mollified. For the most part, though, the company is in the same business as before, courting the same customers and selling a product that does the same thing in the same ways.

CEO Scott VanDeVelde doesn't deny this. "I don't feel like there's a need to wipe the slate clean," he says. "Our technologies are dead center of where the market is going."

December 2, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Sky Showbiz: Actress Selma Blair has landed an endorsement deal with Chanel.

According to Glamour, she will be the new face of Chanel Vision, promoting the high couture giant's range of stunning specs.

She's been snapped in many a glam Chanel frock, both new and vintage. Last year she chose Chanel for her wedding dress when she married Ahmet Zappa - son of the late and legendary Frank.

Chanel's Karl Lagerfeld took the snaps for the new spec ads.

Selma said: "I have a lovely relationship with Karl... It's different to be shot by him. I'm so comfortable in front of him.

"Sometimes when I work with other photographers, they say, 'Give me more Selma, more, more.'

"But they don't really know who I am. With Karl, he's capturing something that's more - my personal flaws, the way I am as a girl, not a model."

December 2, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

According to Ad Age, Comcast Corp. President CEO Brian L. Roberts’ total compensation for 2004 was $33.5 million, making him the highest paid media executive in the magazine's survey.

Roberts and his rival James O. Robbins, president-CEO of Cox Communications, who was paid $29.4 million, beat out such well-known luminaries as Sumner Redstone, chairman-CEO of Viacom, ($28.3 million) and Rupert Murdoch, the chairman-CEO of News Corp. ($23.6 million). Walt Disney Co. President-CEO Robert Iger made $11.9 million. Mel Karmazin, with his move to Sirius Satellite Radio, was paid $14.3 million in 2004.

Out of the publicly traded magazine companies, the highest paid executive by far was Harold McGraw III, chairman-CEO of McGraw-Hill, with $16.7 million. Meredith Corp. Chairman-CEO William Kerr took home $4.41 million, while newcomer Susan Lyne, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia president-CEO, made $4.29 million.

E.W. Scripps President-CEO Kenneth Lowe earned $6.23 million to top the newspaper pile; Gannett Co.’s former President-CEO Douglas H. McCorkindale made $5.84 million; and Lee Enterprises Chairman-President Mary Junck was compensated with $5.24 million. Tribune Co.’s former Chairman-CEO Dennis J. FitzSimons took home $4.72 million. All of those smaller players beat out New York Times Co. former President-CEO Russell T. Lewis’ $2.35 million, and Dow Jones & Co. Chairman-CEO Peter Kann’s $2.9 million.

December 2, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 3 Comments

Spike Jones at Brains On Fire points to this twisted identity story from Fort Collins, CO.

The owners of the Drunken Monkey are considering changing the controversial name of their bar - and they want the community to help.

The Old Town bar, 151 S. College Ave., is named for a Kung Fu movie and decorated like a beach cabana - complete with an outdoor deck, swings hanging from the ceiling and a tree house.

The idea for the contest came from Carey Hewitt, owner of The Cupboard in Old Town, who has objected to the Drunken Monkey's name since it opened in early October.

Hewitt, who has owned The Cupboard for 33 years, also led the opposition against the Purple Martini, a Denver-based bar that leased a space and wanted to open in Old Town. A liquor license for the bar was denied last week after two days of public testimony.

Since it opened a couple of months ago, its name has created a storm of controversy among Old Town business owners and residents who say they’re embarrassed to take visitors through downtown.

Chip Steiner, executive director of the Downtown Development Authority, thinks changing the bar’s name is a terrific idea. He thinks the Drunken Monkey is a degrading name that does nothing to help the downtown area.

“It’s very damaging to the downtown image and its reputation,” Steiner said. “It’s just a bad, bad name.”

December 4, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

The writer must make the product itself interesting. Otherwise, a great part of his ingenuity and inventiveness will be used in devising tricks which lower the efficiency of advertising, rather than raising it. -Rosser Reeves

Babej has been reading Rosser Reeves' classic, Reality In Advertising. From the quote above, it does not sound dated. Evidently, the business was filled with artistes then, like it is now. Hence, the need for a man like Reeves, who could reign the monkeys in.

In other news, Hadji Williams, author of Knock The Hustle tells us his book is selling well. And that he's getting hate-mail of the “you’ll never work in this town again” variety, sent by trifling corporate ad industry types.

December 4, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

I wondered when a brand would utilize Flickr in an ad/pr campaign. We now have an answer, and the answer is Visa.

Julia Mancuso, a Visa blogger

Journey to Torino is a blog written by six Olympic athletes and one moderator/host. The blog also features a podcast and a Flickr link from the sidebar.

Cammi Granato, an ice hockey player for Team USA says:

My first experience on the ice was on the studio rink when my mom enrolled me in figure skating lessons. I was dressed in a tutu and had pom-poms attached to my white skates. Little did my mom know I was more interested in the action on the rink beside it. During the lesson, mom would finally realize I wasn’t on the ice with the other figure skaters – instead, she’d find me in the other rink with my nose pressed up against the glass watching hockey. “I want to play hockey mommy."

So, she's not Frank Deford. It's still a great move by Visa to go to market with a real blog written by real people. JTT also offers comments and trackbacks, another nod to the audience and sign that the Visa team behind this project really gets it.

[via Micropersuasion]

December 5, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Reuters: Google Inc.'s search for revenue beyond its wildly popular pay-per-click advertising system has everyone from publishers to phone companies unnerved by the seemingly endless scope of the Web leader's ambitions.

Nowhere is this more closely felt than Madison Avenue, where the advertising industry sees Google encroaching on turf ad agencies and media buyers have considered their own for much of the past century.

Seeking to diversify its revenue base, Google has begun offering advertisers a set of free marketing analysis tools to help customers boost how much they spend on text ads carried by Google.com or affiliated sites. It is selling ads in print publications and expected to move into branded, graphical ads.

These moves, which some see as competing with systems offered by independent companies and ad agencies themselves, has provoked grumbling among many in the advertising industry.

"From a consumer perspective, Google is all good," Merrill Lynch analyst Lauren Rich Fine said in a recent note to clients. "However, Google is starting to attract negative publicity (tied to) its foray into other mediums."

His argument that Google's encroachment into other businesses, including the large advertising agencies, drove Google shares down 4.7 percent last Monday, its biggest percentage loss in a year.

The stock has since recovered most of its losses, closing at $417.70 on Friday.

December 5, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 0 Comments

According to this story in the Washington Post, BellSouth was none too pleased with the city's idea to offer free Wi-Fi throughout the city.

Hours after New Orleans officials announced Tuesday that they would deploy a city-owned, wireless Internet network in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, regional phone giant BellSouth Corp. withdrew an offer to donate one of its damaged buildings that would have housed new police headquarters, city officials said yesterday.

City officials said BellSouth was upset about the plan to bring high-speed Internet access for free to homes and businesses to help stimulate resettlement and relocation to the devastated city. Around the country, large telephone companies have aggressively lobbied against localities launching their own Internet networks, arguing that they amount to taxpayer-funded competition. Some states have laws prohibiting them.

Greg Meffert, the city's chief technology officer and a deputy mayor, said he is saddened that BellSouth finds the city's network so objectionable.

"It's a once-in-a-century opportunity to truly show the entire world what can be, instead of just what is, and help write future history in the process," Meffert said. "It's a damn shame they don't see that."

I think it'll be very enlightening to watch New Orleans' attempts to rebuild itself after Hurricane Katrina. Companies and their brands have the opportunity to do lots of good and make a lot of money, too. Or they can look like shameless profiteers.

Don't get the headline reference? Click here.

December 5, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

Newsweek: In "First Descent," a new snowboarding documentary that opens in limited release this week, mountains are everywhere. You'll have to look a little harder to spot the Mountain Dew.

But not too hard. Mountain Dew, after all, didn't just pay to have the soft drink in the movie. It financed the entire project, which follows five snowboarding icons. (A rep won't comment on the budget.) Experts call it "branded entertainment." How better to control screen time for a product?

But John Galloway, VP of sports and media for Pepsi-Cola, says that less is more in this film. Pepsi-Cola, which owns Mountain Dew, wants to build buzz by association. "Our goal is for this to be the seminal movie of snowboarding—we didn't want to go overboard with the product,'' he says. Product shots are subtle—a snowboarder's helmet, for example, shows the logo.

Still, media experts aren't so keen on the idea of a company's bankrolling a documentary, with say over the final cut. "It's like going back to the 17th century, where you had to please the patron," says Mary-Lou Galician, head of media analysis at Arizona State University.

Watch the trailer on Apple.com.

December 5, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Associated Press: A coalition of American churches joined farmworker advocates Thursday to urge McDonald's Corp. to pay more for its tomatoes to help boost the wages of tomato pickers.

The National Council of Churches request comes after the Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers announced their campaign last month to pressure the fast-food giant to pay more for the fruit.

"Every so often there comes a moment that holds out the promise of making the world a significantly better place, if only we take action. Today the McDonald's corporation is presented with one of those moments," Council General Secretary, the Rev. Robert Edgar, said in a statement.

A call requesting comment from McDonald's was not returned Thursday.

Florida pickers harvest about 90 percent of the nation's domestic winter tomato supply.

The council, which represents about 35 Christian denominations, supported the Coalition of Immokalee Worker's four-year boycott to pressure Yum! Brands, the parent company of Taco Bell, to pay more for its tomatoes.

Louisville, Kentucky-based Yum! agreed in March to raise its price, an increase that was to be directly passed on to farmworkers.

December 5, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

NYT: Ai Miyazato, known as Ai-chan earned her 2006 L.P.G.A. Tour card with a record 12-stroke victory over Libby Smith and Lee Ann Walker Cooper at the L.P.G.A.'s Qualifying School at the Legends Course in Daytona Beach, Florida.

The L.P.G.A., enjoying an influx of young talent with global appeal, can now look at Miyazato as another potential star and as a future rival for Annika Sorenstam, Paula Creamer, Michelle Wie and Pressel.

Miyazato is already a legend in Japan. She has several endorsements there, including one with Japan Airlines, and is a mainstay on television commercials.

"Ai-chan was already famous when she was a junior," said Sonoko Funakoshi, a freelance golf journalist who works in the United States and covered Miyazato's victory Sunday.

"Since Ai-chan, women's golf in Japan is expanding and expanding. It's bigger than men's golf."

December 5, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

On NPR last week, Jeff Jarvis was asked whether, like radio and TV before us, the internet and blogs are naturally forming into networks.

He said, “The internet kills networks.”

Jarvis is the director of the new media program the City University of New York’s new Graduate School of Journalism. Professors like to make sweeping pronouncements. Big whoop.

But Jason Calacanis begs to differ. For him--the co-king of blog networks--this latest Jarvisism is a big deal.

I'm so tired of Jeff Jarvis claiming to be a huge expert on blogging. What has Jeff done to become such a huge expert on bloggging? Sure, he runs a decent personal blog, and has done so for a long time? However, Jeff is tapped as this expert on the business of blogging and he's never made any money from blogging (except maybe what About.com paid him).

Why a guy who just cashed a $25 to $35 million dollar check from AOL, is worked up about Jarvis, it is hard to say. Is the proof not in the pudding?

December 5, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 3 Comments

On Friday, W+K London rolled out a new 120-second spot for Honda.

Directed by Stink’s Ivan Zacharias, the spot follows a Honda test-driver (who lip-syncs the song “The Impossible Dream” by Andy Morris) as he gets on a Honda Monkey bike that morphs into other Honda vehicles, including the 1965 Formula 1 Grand Prix-winning car, the new BAR F1 automobile, and a powerboat.

As the spot wraps and the song ends, Garrison Keillor says in a voiceover, “I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

[via Adfreak]

December 5, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 3 Comments

Bruce Nussbaum: Michael Bierut of Pentagram fame has cut through the blather to raise a really fascinating--and funny-- issue in Corporate America. Everyone loves design but no one wants to call it design. Top CEOs and managers want to call design something else--innovation. Innovation, that they are comfortable with. Design, well, its a little too wild and crazy for them. So they call it innovation.

I've been seeing this phenomenon for some time now--ever since design took off as a strategy and way of thinking inside big corporations. The same managers who are perfectly comfortable talking about "vision," whatever that is, don't like to talk about "design." Innovation, however, connotes measurement, control and has a kind of engineering tonality to it. So "innovation" is accepted.

As for me, I think that if managers are uncomfortable with the term design, they should call it a "banana." Bananas are beautiful, functional, organic, unique, measureable, portable, pleasurable and provide a delightful, emotional experience to consumers. Bananas embody what CEOs and managers are struggling to achieve in using design to create new products and services.

Yes, it took the legendary designer Michael Bierut to make me have this epiphany. Banana. Wow.

[via Incite By Design]

December 5, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

As protestors get creative with their continued attacks on Wal-Mart, it pays to look back in American history at protest campaigns with like-minded goals. Ben Price of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), has written eloquently on the anti-chain store campaigns of the 1920s and 1930s.

With Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward corporations trying to squeeze local merchants with their mail-order version of retailing, community reaction was visceral. People organized boycotts and catalogue burnings. Their outhouses were stocked with a new brand of illustrated toilet paper. The stigma of buying through the catalogues was so great that the Sears Roebuck Corporation promised its customers that all transactions would remain confidential and products would be shipped in unmarked packaging. The inside cover of the Sears Roebuck sales catalogue told buyers "As some of our customers, especially townspeople and business houses, request us to ship our goods in plain packages or boxes, leaving off our name and address, so that no one will know what they have bought or where the goods come from, we have decided to make every transaction strictly confidential."

When chain store corporations came to town with their absentee ownership, money vacuums, uniformly inferior products, and low wages, democracy activists pressured newspapers not to sell advertising space to them. Community based merchant associations tried to force chains to sign minimum "fair-trade" price contracts and pressure manufacturers not to sell directly to the chains. Chain store opponents petitioned state legislators to use tax laws to block the chain stores, and to impose levies high enough to put them out of business. Like the people they represented, many state lawmakers joined the chain store opposition, believing it was their obligation to reflect majority will to govern over the institutions of commerce in their communities.

Independent radio stations and newspapers treated communities to diatribes against the chains, warning that they threatened to destroy a cornerstone of American democracy, the independent businessperson. William K. Henderson used his radio program, based in Shreveport, Louisiana, to lambaste the chains. He told his listeners:

"We have attempted to bring to light the ruinous and devastating effect of sending the profits of business out of our local communities to a common center, Wall Street. We have appealed to the fathers and mothers—who entertain the fond hope of their children becoming prosperous business leaders—to awaken to a realization of the dangers of the chain stores’ closing this door of opportunity. We have insisted that the payment of starvation wages such as the chain-store system fosters, must be eradicated. We have importuned those who labor to join in striking down the chain system in every form and character."

December 5, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 0 Comments

Ad Age has an article pondering the future of the company.

“These are the death throes,” said Alex Tamayo, VP at Media Contacts, the interactive buying unit of Havas’ MPG. He noted that while TiVo has put a brand name on time-shifting, it’s struggling to gain subscribers and is being outpaced by cable operators who are aggressively rolling out their own DVRs.

In fact, TiVo’s new developments came the same week that the 8-year-old company reported, as part of its third-quarter results, that it had added during the period 55,000 net new stand-alone subscriptions -- subscriptions independent of an agreement with a multichannel video provider such as DirecTV. The total was substantially lower than the 103,000 new subscriptions in the year-ago quarter.

TiVo’s also still reeling from a blow earlier this year when DirecTV began marketing its own branded interactive DVR, leaving the future of DirecTV’s relationship with TiVo unclear.

Excuse me. I have to go xerox something on a Ricoh copier.

December 5, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 4 Comments

Rangelife points to this story from Focus on the Family (a misnomer if there ever was one):

Focus on the Family has fired its banker; Wells Fargo because the bank is among the largest corporate contributors to homosexual causes.

In 2003 alone, Wells Fargo gave $2.1 million to more than 95 non-profit agencies serving the homosexual community. That brings their total giving since the 1980’s to more than $14 million.

Focus on the Family is sympathetic to the homosexual community but opposes the radical agenda by activists. The ministry will be switching all its banking to First National Bank Omaha, described as a family-friendly institution. Wells Fargo declined to comment.

Wells Fargo has won several awards for recognizing the GLBT community including scoring a perfect 100 on the Human Rights Campaign’s “Equality Index.”

December 5, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

IFOCE: Japan's Takeru Kobayashi consumed 67 Krystal hamburgers in eight minutes to win the 2005 Krystal Square Off World Hamburger Eating Championship in Chattanooga, TN.

To the amazement of the more than 2,000 fans gathered in Chattanooga for the event, San Jose's Joey Chestnut was in front of Kobayashi for the bulk of the contest. At one point Chestnut led by as many as 6 Krystals but finished 5 behind Kobayashi, losing ground in the final seconds of the Square Off.

This year's square off offered a whopping $22,500 purse. Kobayashi took home the top prize of $10,000 cash, the Krystal World Champion's Belt, the champion's crystal trophy and the title of Krystal Square Off World Hamburger-Eating Champion.

For American eating fans, however, the story was 21-year old Joey Chestnut. He is the first eater to ever lead Kobayashi through a contest and to be well within range to beat him.

[via A Hamburger Today]

December 5, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 1 Comments

The spot opens at the counter of a pizza place. Behind the counter is a middle-aged worker. The customer, a bald midget, stands in front of the counter, ready to order. He is in a hurry.

CUSTOMER: "Quick! What makes Pizza Pan pizza so unique?"

WORKER: (He spends 20 seconds going on about fresh dough, fresh ingredients, fast delivery, etc.) "Did ya get all that?"

CUSTOMER: (Holding a cell phone) "Oh, I'm sorry. I was on the phone."
(He is then hit in the face with a cream pie.)

So memorable, and so bad. Such is the nature of local advertising. Does it have a future in our fragmented media world? It's the focus of my new column on Talent Zoo.

December 6, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Lewis Lazare: "Peace" is the central message in two new public service spots being released this month from Romani Bros./Chicago for Rotary International. The campaign tagline, as it was in an earlier campaign spotlighting Rotary's efforts to eradicate polio, is "Humanity in Motion."

The more arresting of the two new commercials is "Symbols," a well-edited montage of unusual peace symbol imagery. A second spot called "Peace" features people from all over the world simply mouthing the word "peace" in their native tongues. Toward the end of the commercial, a voiceover announcer notes Rotary provides scholarships to students interested in promoting world peace.

Though the "Peace" spot looks as if it was shot in many different locales, Romani partner Bernie Pitzel said most of it was filmed within a two-block area in downtown Los Angeles. Ah, the magic of modern film making.

Rotary is a worldwide organization of business and professional leaders that provides humanitarian service, encourages high ethical standards in all vocations, and helps build goodwill and peace in the world. Approximately 1.2 million Rotarians belong to more than 31,000 Rotary clubs located in 167 countries.

December 6, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

After considering this New York Times report on Google's corporate culture, it certainly makes me wonder why we settle for so much less in the ad biz.

Google, like I.B.M., says that it is forging a corporate culture in which success depends on performance.

But while I.B.M. is an old company that has revamped the social contract with its workers, Google is writing a new one from scratch.

Some of Google's benefit and compensation practices resemble I.B.M.'s. The retirement plan is a tax-deferred 401(k) program with employee savings matched by company contributions, as it is for new employees at I.B.M. starting this year. Annual bonuses at Google range up to 25 or 30 percent, as they do at I.B.M.

Yet Google portrays itself as a special place, starting with its company motto, "Don't Be Evil." And its programs and perks for employees are unusual, even by the often-generous standards of young Silicon Valley companies in good times.

Meals of all kinds, painstakingly prepared by company chefs, are free at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., a modern corporate campus known as the Googleplex. Other amenities there include children's day care, doctors, dry cleaning, laundry, a gym, and basketball and volleyball courts. Maternity or paternity leave is 12 weeks at 75 percent of full pay. There is also up to $500 available for takeout meals for the entire family after a newborn arrives, courtesy of Google. Shuttle buses (with wireless Internet access for working while commuting) ferry employees to the Googleplex from throughout the Bay area.

And the big perk: the company's engineers are given 20 percent of their time to pursue their own ideas instead of company assignments.

Show me an art director or copywriter who has ever been rewarded with a 30% bonus. Please. I want to hear about it.

December 6, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

I have a saying I'm particularly fond of. "If you're thinking it, someone else is doing it."

Over the past few years, my mom and I have discussed a business idea that seems like it may have legs. An evening gown rental business, where we make haute couture affordable for the night.

Today, I discovered a firm that's already doing it, albeit for hand bags.

Direct marketer, From Bags To Riches, will lend you the bag of your dreams for one month, then you can return it for another equally dreamy one. And so on.

December 6, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Hollywood.com: Academy award-winning actress Kim Basinger has been enlisted by Italian fashion designer Muiccia Prada to model her new spring/summer Mui Mui collection.

Basinger, 51, who was a successful model before turning to acting, is the latest middle-aged female star to be chosen by highly acclaimed fashion houses, including Madonna, 47, and Demi Moore, 42, who both starred in recent Versace campaigns.

Muccia chose Basinger for the intellectual sensuality she has, which is quite unique.

December 6, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Adweek on Yahoo! News: The rebirth of online advertising and its growing respectability as a creative medium is attracting more traditional creative talent to interactive agencies. But many Web-shop executives are skeptical about how well creatives steeped in traditional advertising can adjust to the interactive medium.

"What's happened in the last year is the Web's gone from being a curiosity to being mainstream media," said Chris Wall, co-chief creative officer at WPP Group's Ogilvy & Mather in New York. "The investment will get bigger, and the production values will go up."

Still, interactive is an inherently more complex medium, said Bob Greenberg, CEO of Interpublic Group's R/GA. While the agency has hired traditional-agency creatives, Greenberg said he doubts that most with long careers in TV or print can thrive in a medium that values inbound messaging as much as outbound. "Generally speaking, I would not be looking for creative people from [traditional] agencies because I think their background is too limited," he said.

Other interactive executives echo Greenberg, cautioning that while interactive needs storytellers, it also has a steep learning curve. "You need to know the medium in order to communicate through the medium," said Lars Bastholm, ecd at independent AKQA. "Many really don't."

Greenberg predicts the emerging digital media world will force traditional creatives to learn the language of the Web. "They're going to have to do it," he said. "They just don't know it yet."

[via Not Billable]

December 6, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

Seth Godin would like to see ad execs empowered by clients to actually move the needle, as opposed to the typical dancing around it, most of us do now.

What a shame that some of the smartest people in our field aren't allowed (by their clients and by their industry's structure) to get behind the scenes and change the product, the strategy and the approach instead of just annoying more people with ever louder junk.

Of course, I agree with Seth. But I find his notion hopelessly romantic. In a world where MBA-toting clients clearly know best when it comes to art direction and copy (skills not taught in B-school, strangely enough), just getting an idea that has not been ruined by committee sold in and produced, is about as much as any of us can hope for.

December 6, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 1 Comments

Ad Age reports on Tyson Foods' new "Giving Thanks" booklet, which features all sorts of faith-based ways to say Grace.

“People are not just buying our products, they’re buying us and they’re spending more and more time looking on the Internet and elsewhere to find out, ‘what does this company stand for,’ “ said Bob Corscadden, Tyson’s Chief Marketing Officer. Consumers researching Tyson are likely to find on the Net a chronicle of Tyson’s long history of accusations of labor violations and illegal political gifts. So a little religion couldn’t hurt.

Tyson has been developing the Giving Thanks at Mealtime booklets (roughly 25,000 have been sent out since the program’s kickoff in late August) for the past two years, taking its time with consumer research and working with Mr. Miller and others to determine that prayer books would indeed please rather than put off would-be purchasers. Although it has looked to tie to some faith-based organizations, “teaming with any one religious group could alienate other groups. It’s a sticky wicket,” Mr. Corscadden said.

You can download it directly here.

December 7, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

NYT: Nielsen Media Research is rolling out an ambitious, expensive effort to provide data to help measure the effectiveness of outdoor advertising.

The data is collected by an Npod, a device resembling a cellphone, weighs 1.4 ounces and is equipped with a global positioning system. The Nielsen Outdoor unit of Nielsen Media Research had 850 consumers in the Chicago area carry one for nine days during the summer of 2004, tracking their movements past outdoor signs.

The participants' travels - on foot, in cars and on trains - were plotted on maps showing the locations of outdoor signs, thus indicating who passed by certain billboards, posters on bus shelters and other signs. The device tracks exposure to the outdoor ads but could not determine if a person actually looked at or read them.

The multimillion-dollar effort by Nielsen Media Research is indicative of a trend that is remaking the advertising industry as marketers demand better methods to determine the effectiveness of their advertising. The goal is to finally provide a reply to the old complaint, attributed variously to the merchant John Wanamaker and the soap magnate Lord Leverhulme: "Half my advertising spending is wasted. I just don't know which half."

Advertisers spend an estimated $5.5 billion a year on outdoor advertising in the United States, according to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, a trade group. And through the first nine months of the year, the association reported yesterday, ad revenue rose 7.9 percent from the period a year ago, more than had been predicted.

December 7, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Lee Gomes for WSJ: In the standard theory about technology blogs -- which was the conventional wisdom until a few months ago -- mainstream media were out of touch, elitist or simply ossified, and they would soon be supplanted by a grass-roots army of bloggers working intently at their laptops to speak truth to power.

The reality is that while there are now as many tech blogs as stars in the sky, only a tiny fraction of them matter. And those that do aren't part of some proletarian information revolution, but instead have become the tech world's new elite. Reporters for the big mainstream newspapers and magazines, long accustomed to fawning treatment at corporate events, now show up and find that the best seats often go to the A-list bloggers. And living at the front of the velvet rope line means the big bloggers are frequently pitched and wooed. In fact, with the influence peddling universe in this state of flux, it's not uncommon for mainstream reporters, including the occasional technology columnist, to lobby bloggers to include links to their print articles.

Consider a blog like TechCrunch, which chronicles the new breed of Internet start-ups known as Web 2.0 companies. The blogger behind it, Michael Arrington, is sufficiently influential that entrepreneurs in search of a write-up will make pilgrimages to his house to give product demos.

The fond hope of these entrepreneurs is that among his 12,000 readers will be a venture capitalist or (better yet) someone with a checkbook at Google or Yahoo.

[via Micropersuasion]

December 7, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Jake Dobkin, publisher of Gothamist, has had it with corporate graffiti. In fact, he says, "Corporate Graffiti Sucks Balls."

I've written about this so many times on Gothamist that I'm worried about sounding like a broken record-- but apparently the big corporations have not gotten the message. This week, Sony Playstation graffiti pieces have been popping up like cancer all over Manhattan. The pieces are sometimes drawn by hand-- others are wheat pasted to walls all over SoHo and NoLIta. It's clearly a large campaign, and deserves a thoughtful, measured response. Here's mine: corporate graffiti sucks. Sucks! Sucks! Sucks!

December 7, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 3 Comments

Ben Metcalfe: Mena Trott (co-founder and president of Six Apart) gave, in my opinion, a badly toned and way-off-base speech at the Les Blogs conference in which she requested for more civility in the blogosphere. She appealed to bloggers to be kinder in their commenting, and think about the feelings of the person they are communicating with.

I found it very jarring on many levels. For a start, this was a European blogging conference – and one of the underlying challenges I took away from it was how we mediate the different cultural approaches to blogging across the different European countries. And that’s before you factor in the various different American cultures too (there were more Americans at this conference than anyone other than the French!).

How people comment and how people relate to one another on the blogosphere is a cultural issue – and it seemed strange for Mena to be advocating what sounded like a very ‘West-Coast America’ approach to a conference of Europeans. Europeans are, if anything, known for their frank exchanges during conversation – certainly more than the Americans.

December 7, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 4 Comments

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Hadji Williams' Knock The Hustle is one of the best books about advertising ever written.

But for a free sample of how insightful a writer Hadji is, check out his guest column on Talent Zoo, in which he explains just how multicultural advertising goes so wrong sometimes. Here, Hadji talks about what often happens when multicultural agencies take on projects on behalf of "general market" agencies:

The agency (oftentimes begrudgingly) takes the gig, knowing full well the surest way to do hack work is to bite someone else's idea, which is exactly what they've been asked to do. What often follows are a couple of frustrating meetings with the client/AOR where the targeted agency explains that the general market’s insights really don't apply to their particular community and that they’d be better off doing fresh creative/fresh strategies all together, to which the AOR/client often responds, "Yes, but for the sake of synergy, let's stay on message, okay guys? Thanks."

Eventually, the ethnic agency spits out something and into the review process it goes. The AOR/Client sees it. They're uncomfortable with some of the language and the imagery. It's unfamiliar to them. Why? Because as with as least 80% of white Americans, The Client/AOR Folks live in virtually all white neighborhoods (according to the US Census Bureau as of 2003). These concepts are concepts are pretty foreign to them.

December 7, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 5 Comments

High Jive brings attention to this horrid controversial call for entries from The Art Directors Club.

Damn.

What’s up with the advertising business? Advertising Week and the Effies promoted events with sexist imagery. Now an allegedly prestigious organization goes for cheap racial laughs.

An industry that has traditionally excluded Blacks shamelessly bites the culture without hesitation. How typical. Or stereotypical, to be more accurate.

December 7, 2005 by Shawn Hartley | Permalink | 4 Comments

AdPulpian, Thomas Hawk, point us to this experiential marketing stunt by Starbucks in San Francisco.

"Today as I was crossing the Embarcadero I noticed that this gentleman had left his coffee on the roof of his car. Midway through the cross walk I turned and pointed at him and he just waved at me. I ran back to the other side of the crosswalk and approached his window as he wasn't getting what I was pointing at. When I got close enough to speak to him I told him that his coffee was on his roof. He looked at me and said, "I know, Happy Holiday's from Starbucks!" At first I didn't get it, it didn't sink in, so I told him again, your coffee it's on your roof and again he looked me square in they eye and said, "yes, yes, I know, Happy Holidays from Starbucks." It was at this point that I realized that the coffee cup was permanently affixed to his roof and that he was an advertisment in disguise. "

December 7, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 4 Comments

From Reuters:

Coca-Cola Co. the world's No. 1 soft drink company, on Wednesday said it will launch a coffee-infused soft drink called Coca-Cola Blak in various markets around the world in 2006.

A Coke spokesperson said Coca-Cola Blak will be a mid-calorie drink, similar to Coca-Cola C2, which was launched in April 2004 and contains half the sugar, calories and carbohydrates of regular colas. The formula for the new beverage is expected to vary based on local tastes.

Good lord. What's in the water down at Coke's Atlanta headquarters?

UPDATE: You may not see it on your computer, but according to Coke's own website there's a little accent mark over the a, as in "Blāk." Since the mark is not on Reuters' press release as it appears on Yahoo news, it caused me a bit of confusion. I now see the sheer brillance of Coke's marketing.

December 7, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

[via Idle Type]

December 7, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Nick Denton's got a new blog. One with some pretty lofty ambitions.

Welcome, internet, to The Consumerist, the latest title from Gawker Media. The Consumerist loves to shop, and is reconciled to utilities, but hates paying for shoddy products, inhumane customer support, and half-assed service.

Each week The Consumerist will guide you through the delinquencies of retail and service organizations. The Consumerist will highlight the persistent, shameless boners of modern consumerism — and the latest hot deals, discounts, and freebies around.

Join us. You’ll tell us when you’ve been royally screwed by yet another company, and we’ll channel your rage. Together we will storm the revolving doors of faceless corporations to call them naughty words for genitals, and they will begin to fear us.

The Consumerist. Capitalism is broken. We’ll help you fix it.

[UPDATE] PR Week has an interview with Joel Johnson, editor of this new Gawker blog. He says he's not a Marxist.

December 7, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Dean Gemmell has seen enough fancy schmancy self-congratualtion fests. He and his cohorts at Black Lab Five in lovely south central Michigan have whipped up their own damn award show, and it's decidedly Pabst Blue Ribbon. Or should I say, Iron City?

I've grown so weary of all the crap award shows. And embarrassed because such a glut makes our industry look so stupid.

So we've decided to take matters into my own hands and create our own el-cheapo show. Hopefully, it's the show to end all the crap shows. Not legitimate ones just the shows that have the word "Pegasus" in them.

Any agency, company or individual is allowed to submit up to three pieces of work that was produced any time between January 1st, 2005 and December 31st, 2005. No agency, company or individual is allowed to submit more than three entries.

The cost to enter each piece of work is $5. Thats right. Five bucks.

December 8, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

Lewis Lazare considers the changes underway at Euro RSCG Chicago.

According to several sources familiar with developments, Euro RSCG has decided, in essence, to fold what had been a strictly delineated consumer ad unit into a new entity that blends the digital, direct, data and advertising units at the shop into a more seamless shop headed by newly anointed president Mark Blankenship. For the last two years, Blankenship has presided over Euro RSCG 4D, a robust and profitable direct marketing unit inside Euro's Chicago office.

The resulting entity would be Euro RSCG's new version of an integrated ad agency, capable of providing the marketing communication a client requests, excepting, perhaps, public relations.

Euro RSCG/Chicago creatives, sources said, might be required to work on creative for a direct marketing assignment, as well as more general consumer ad work. "Clients everywhere are looking for a higher level of branding and creativity," said Ron Bess, regional director of Euro RSCG's North American operations.

Whether Postaer would choose to remain for long in what looks to be a dramatically restructured Euro RSCG office remains to be seen. Late Wednesday, Postaer insisted the new structure is what he envisioned all along. "We want to be a tight arsenal of marketing services," Postaer said.

Sounds to me like Lazare is having a hard time buying that people who make TV commercials and print ads for a living would deign to do a lowly direct mail piece or consumer promotion.

I come from the marketing services world, although I have done time in traditional and b2b shops. So, it's not hard for me to believe that an agency like Euro RSCG would one day wake up to the fact that so-called "below-the-line activity" is where all the action is. This is not news. It's been true for some time.

December 8, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Philadelphia Inquirer: Attention, pastors: You have just four weeks remaining to work a lion, a witch or a wardrobe into your next sermon.

Walt Disney Pictures is so eager for churches to turn out audiences for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which opens Friday, that it's offering a free trip to London - and $1,000 cash - to the winner of its big promotional sermon contest.

The only catch is that the sermons must mention Narnia, based on the hugely popular children's books about four British children who walk through an uncle's magic armoire into an enchanted kingdom.

Hollywood has been doing this sort of thing since The Ten Commandments in 1956, when Cecil B. DeMille had study guides sent to schools.

With Narnia, producers have an epic that works both as religious allegory and secular fantasy.

The question is whether Narnia can capture both audiences - combining the box-office power of The Lord of the Rings with The Passion of the Christ.

[via Adfreak]

[Additional Material]

December 8, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Decent Marketing: We all know how a lot of corporate-themed events and experiences turn out fairly cheesy and silly. So I was a little skeptical when I read about the Absolut Ice Bar in London in the November 28 issue of Fortune magazine.

"Since it opened Oct. 1, London's Absolut Ice Bar has been drawing locals and tourists alike to the 23 degree lair [-5 C for you international readers], where the walls are lined with ice blocks from Sweden's Torne river and drinks are served in ice glasses. But don't worry about bundling up -- patrons are given silver coats and black gloves a the door. The effect of everyone clad in the same cloak is oddly democratic, and inside the frosty bar the mood was warmer than most hip London night spots."

Some reviewers have found it a little frustrating -- apparently there have been long waits. But others have praised the concept and the experience. As blogger Cherryl Aldave wrote, "there's nothing worse than being drunk and hot ... puke fest waiting to happen." I guess she has a point.

I haven't been there, but I do like the various ideas that have been woven in, like offering everyone special coats and gloves. And from what I can tell from the pics I've seen, it's not plastered with Absolut logos other than one over the bar. That's the best idea of all.

December 8, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 2 Comments

Jennifer Rice: An effective brand keeps its promises. Advertising should communicate the brand promise, and operations should fulfill it. Everything should work together. Think Apple, probably the most coherent brand on the planet.

I'm probably going to take some heat for this, but I personally don't believe that a traditional ad agency can do an effective, unbiased job at brand strategy. Their primary sources of revenue are ongoing campaign development and media; the up-front strategy project is a means to an end.

The brand project deliverable from an agency is an ad campaign. The project deliverable from an independent brand strategy firm is a set of recommendations for every aspect of the business -- including the internal culture -- to bring it more in alignment with the open market opportunity.

Don't get me wrong; the really good account-planning agencies do fantastic work in creating highly relevant, effective ads that reposition brands in a more positive light. It helps when the company is already delivering a positive experience but perhaps hasn't figured out how to communicate it effectively. Yet I also strongly believe that since the ad agency is an outsider with no influence over operations, they cannot initiate or effect a fundamental brand shift when it's necessary... unless they're working for a client who understands how to translate the agency's strategy into operations, and has the clout to get it done.

December 8, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 1 Comments

I suppose "Don't Be Evil" is a pretty good corporate mantra to have, if you must have one.

But as USA Today points out, the Google backlash is starting.

Lauren Fine, a media analyst at Merrill Lynch, warned in a Nov. 28 research note that the launch of services like Google Base classified advertising could tarnish its do-only-good reputation. "As Google's newer businesses start to encroach on some otherwise profitable business models, we have to ask how they define evil," Fine wrote.

It's an interesting article, especially when compared to what the New York Times wrote about just the other day. I suppose evil is in the eye of the beholder. I use Google all the time, so it seems relatively un-evil to me. But if Google is replacing Microsoft on the Evil-meter in the minds of many, will someone come along and replace Google?

December 8, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

Mark Babej likes Off Soho Suites' approach to attracting customers.

What really caught my eye was the idea of putting the hotel’s positioning right on the awning. Mystique: null, and some word-smithing might be in order, too. But while other hotels (even of the budget persuasion) try to outdo each other with cliché promises of charm and romance, the Off SoHo Suites focuses on a relevant and compelling value proposition. This approach to messaging stands out from category clutter. I’d even argue it’s creative - though certainly not by conventional standards of creativity.

December 8, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

Product Shop NYC: Spike Jonze produced one of the best Nike commercials ever, so it's no surprise that the GAP wanted him to direct a commercial for them. His GAP commercial, titled "Pardon Our Dust", which is promoting a massive remodeling of GAP stores, is scored with Edvard Grieg's revolutionary masterpiece "Peer Gynt Suite".

While the executives were okay with the concept of customers and employees demolishing a store (and who hasn't wanted to trash a GAP store), they opted to not use "Peer Gynt Suite" and instead opted for some boring piece-of-shit twangy-pop song. The entire atmosphere and attitude of the video is changed because of the altered music. All of a sudden, the commercial seems kind of tame and ironic and comical, rather than angry and brilliant.

December 8, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 0 Comments

I wish I had taken an anthropology course in college. Because in a communication business like advertising, it's important to understand people, their backgrounds, their formative experiences, and their current perceptions, all of which affect the way the way they make purchasing decisions.

I truly believe human beings are basically groups of tribes, and not merely in an ethnic sense. That's why David Barreby's Us and Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind caught my eye.

I've got it on my nightstand, and I'm slowly working my way through it. Looks promising.

And what's a new book without a companion blog? Check out Us and Them: The Blog.

December 9, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

BSandS riding high in a Mini

If you read all the way to the bottom of this NY Times article on Butler Shine & Stern's Mini Cooper account win, you will find this nugget.

Ms. Hardy and Mr. McDowell (Mini USA marketing execs) notified Butler, Shine's employees that they won the review in a nontraditional way: A bulldog was sent into the agency's office, wearing a collar decorated with clues to the decision written on replicas of California vanity license plates.

Some of the clues: "W8ZOVR," for "Wait's over"; "GR8JOB," for "Great job"; and "RURED E," for "Are you ready?" - to take on the account. The final mock license plate invited the agency's employees to join the Mini USA executives at a nearby restaurant for a party.

"The dog was great," Greg Stern, chief executive at Butler, Shine, said in a brief telephone call from the restaurant. "Very creative, and very surprising."

After being left at the prom by the prettiest agency in class, it looks like Mini wants to prove they're a fun client to work with.

December 9, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 2 Comments

From today's New York Times:

More than ever, Americans do not trust business or the people who run it.

Pollsters, researchers, even many corporate chiefs themselves say that business is under attack by a majority of the public, which believes that executives are bent on destroying the environment, cooking the books and lining their own pockets.

Many executives, while acknowledging the public antipathy, adamantly dispute the criticism. They note that some companies were more helpful than government in the wake of the tsunami in Asia and the Gulf Coast hurricanes. They argue that they are disclosing more financial information, and have cracked down on unethical behavior.

James R. Houghton, chairman of Corning, said he felt little animosity in Corning, N.Y., even though his company had cut thousands of jobs there. "Maybe I'm in an ivory tower, but I think society realizes that 98 percent of businesses are doing the right thing," he said. "The press doesn't write that, because it's the world's most boring story, and because business does a really lousy job of promoting itself."

I know we've got some PR people who read AdPulp. What do y'all think? Is more/better PR needed? Or is there just an inherent nature in people to hate the big guys?

December 9, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 3 Comments

A man, who has chosen to remain annonymous, has created Hire Me Google, as a way to attract attention to his cause.

A lot of people want to work for Google. I’m one of them. In order to increase my chances of ever getting noticed (let alone hired) by them I have to stand out. This website is my attempt to do so.

I’ve wanted to work for Google for a long time but until now I’ve been busy with my studies. However, I’m now only one year away from completing my Master’s Degree in Computer Science at the Technical University of Munich. Upon my graduation I’ll be needing a job and for me this seems the perfect time for me to start working for Google.

Is Hire Me Goodby dot com, Hire Me Crispin dot com and Hire Me Wieden dot com next? Someone better jump on those domains. Quick. And if it works, we'll be expecting our normal fee. Thank you.

December 9, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 3 Comments

I loathe Worst Buy. These feelings stem from the fact that they charged me an unspeakable 15% "restocking fee" when I returned a laptop computer I had in my possession a mere 18 hours. It's a fine I refused to pay at the time, yet bill collectors still call me, hoping I will come through. I won't.

So it pleases me to see this lawsuit, even though it's meant to correct another of this heinous company's traits.

USA Today: Six former and current employees of Best Buy have sued the electronics retailer, alleging the company has purposefully excluded women and minorities from top-paying jobs as part of a culture catering to white men.

The civil complaint, filed in a San Francisco federal court Thursday, seeks to be certified as a class action so it can potentially represent thousands of women, blacks and Hispanics who work in Best Buy's 731 stores nationwide. The Minneapolis-based company currently employs about 114,000 workers.

Cheryl Chappel, who is black and who recently transferred from a Best Buy store in Chico to another in San Diego County, said she has been trying to be promoted to a better sales job for more than two years only to be rebuffed because of her gender.

"I was told by several managers that I didn't need to be on the sales floor. I was told females can't sell."

The complaint paints an unflattering portrait of Best Buy, alleging the company has identified white people, especially men, as its most desirable customers.

The lawsuit claims Best Buy created four hypothetical stereotypes to identify its most promising prospects.

The list includes: "Barry," a white man with a six-figure income eager to buy expensive equipment; "Ray," a white man who likes high-tech gadgets, even though he can't always afford everything he wants; "Buzz," a younger man fixated on video games; and "Jill," a stay-at-home mom married to Barry.

Best Buy spokeswoman Dawn Bryant says the suit misconstrues the retailer's effort to fulfill the divergent needs of its customers.

December 9, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 0 Comments

I knew the trend of advertising in video games was catching on, but the product range is getting quite interesting. As Reuters reports:

When BP Lubricants USA wanted to raise the profile of its high-performance Castrol Syntec motor oil with ever-elusive young male consumers, it followed them into a popular racing video game.

Like its peers, the unit of BP Plc needs to be where males aged 18 to 34 have gone after leaving traditional media outlets like magazines and television in droves.

"We have to look for new ways to reach these guys," said Michael DeBiasi, the marketing director who oversaw the campaign.

The Castrol brand's integration into Electronic Arts Inc.'s "Need for Speed Most Wanted" game appeared in the form of billboards, Syntec car engine upgrades and signage in garages, and as Castrol-branded Quick Lubes.

December 9, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 0 Comments

Wal-Mart's critics have found religion in their battle against the nation's largest retailer. First, they made a movie available to church groups to stimulate discussion. Now comes the next crusade, as ABC News reports:

WakeUpWalMart.com on Thursday unveiled a religious-themed campaign Thursday asking shoppers whether God wants them to buy things from the Bentonville, Ark.-based company.

The 30-second TV spot, starting Friday in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Texas, is part of the latest seasonal-themed campaign against Wal-Mart. The TV ad starts with a picture of a Bible-like tome and an off-screen narrator who says, "Our faith teaches us 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.'

"If these are our values, then ask yourself: should people of faith shop at Wal-Mart this holiday season?"

For those of you who don't live in God's country, You can watch the spot by clicking here.

WakeUpWalMart.com is largely backed by the United Food & Commercial Workers union, so both Wal-Mart and their critics will no doubt have the financial means to keep the holy war of words going.

December 9, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Japan's Corporate News: JCB, a leading international payment brand and the largest credit card issuer in Japan, is celebrating its success with the JCB LINDA Sweet card featuring a refreshing citrus-based fragrance. The number of cards to be issued is limited to 20,000, and applications will be accepted starting December 10.

JCB has recently started offering the scented card option to all of its issuing partners worldwide, and issuers in the Philippines and Taiwan are considering adding a scented card to their product line-up. The JCB scenting technology allows the creation of many different fragrances for enhanced design possibilities, increased functionality, and even to convey a unique personality and mood. The fragrance lasts for at least 3 years.

December 9, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Yahoo continues to acquire Web 2.0 companies. Today, it's Del.icio.us, the social bookmarking site.

According to Tech Crunch, Yahoo now owns the two most important tagging properties on the web - flickr and del.icio.us.

Greg Yardley speculates that Yahoo paid between $30 to $40 million for the company. His thinking considers that Union Square Ventures, the VCs that backed Del.icio.us in the first place, would need a 10x return on their money to justify a sale.

[via Micropersuasion]

December 9, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Allen Michaan, owner of the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, California, posts his political views for hundreds of thousands to see. The theater's marquee faces the MacArthur Freeway (I-580).

The Flickr page where these images are housed is maintained as a public service by David Gans, author, musician and longtime host of the syndicated radio program, "Grateful Dead Hour." He is also an Oaklander.

December 10, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 0 Comments

Other than Jordan Buntain's Copywriter Xmas Card, I haven't come across too many new agency/self-promo Christmas e-cards/virals/online movies this year. Maybe I'm just out of the loop.

So, if I have to hear "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" this time every year when I go into Walgreens, I think it's fine to dig up some ghosts of Christmas virals past.

Like my personal favorite, Chris Christmas Rodriguez.

And don't forget Ad Guy.

If you've run across some new ones this holiday season, post 'em in the comments section.

December 10, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 6 Comments

The CA Advertising Annual arrived on my doorstep the other night. I recall how much I used to look forward to pouring poring over of the industry's finest work displayed therein. For me, those days are gone. I'm not exactly sure what happened. I guess I finally let go of the idea that I would someday see my own work in CA. Don't get me wrong. I still examine the winning entries. I just do it with detachment, like I'm a spectator. Maybe it's because I put my journalist's cap back on, and that's how I see things today. Maybe it's just the realization that the ad world, as seen through the trades and various award shows, is not the world I inhabit. The fact is, very few people do live in that world. Even people who work at the best agencies, are in many cases, anonymous tools. It's not like the entire creative department gets in to CA (or jets off to Cannes every spring). One or two teams get in. Everyone else is a spectator to one degree, or another.

So, what is there to see in this year's edition?

One of my favorite campaigns is The Martin Agency's work for The Onion. Sure, the bar is set absurdly low with a client like this. Nevertheless, Martin's work is pretty sharp. Here are some headlines from this copy-driven campaign:

GIVE THE GIFT THAT WILL MAKE HER SAY, "I SAID EARRINGS, YOU ASSHOLE."

READ ABOUT THE WORLD THAT'S PASSING YOU BY AS YOU MASTURBATE.

IT'S JUST A NEWSPAPER. YEAH, AND GANDHI WAS JUST A MEXICAN.

WE FIRED OUR FACT-CHECKERS AND PASSED THE SAVINGS ON TO YOU.

ALWAYS POLITICALLY CORRECT. EXCEPT FOR THE STORIES ON RETARDS.

We have Martin's Rob Katzenstein, the copywriter on The Onion's business, to thank for these lines. Sure many of us had similar in-your-face spec. campaigns in our books at one time. Perhaps, they're in there now. But Katzenstein managed to get his "tattoo parlor" aesthetic in to CA. Nice work, if you can get it.

December 10, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 2 Comments

Last January, I attended Blog Walk 6.0 in Evanston. There were some impressive people in the room that day, but I particularly liked Tom Sherman. He was young, brash, smart, cynical, unaffected and angry (and I imagine he still is).

After a recent hiatus from blogging, he returns with panache:

Okay, so I haven't written in my blog in about two months. Everyone's been hassling me about it: people online, my dad, I think the security guard at my company mentioned something lately. Whatever man. Let me tell you why I haven't been writing lately:

Tom Sherman is boring and busy.

I haven't even been keeping up on other people's blogs. I think that maybe I'm too cool for blogs now. I'm pretty much testing that theory out, and testing out the theory that real life is better than blogs. I'm also testing out the theory that you shouldn't write blog entries at 1:30 in the morning when you can't think straight and your normal standards for quality of writing are in the dumper.

He goes on to make several observations. Here's one:

I'm supposed to get a $50 rebate check from SBC but those assholes are claiming it's going to take "10-12 weeks" and then "2 weeks" for processing after that. What kind of bullshit operation are they running? What kind of shit is that? I mean take the fucking form out of the fucking envelope and mail me a check. Three and a half months my white ass.

Ah, candidness. It's a breath of fresh air.

December 11, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

NYT: Amanda Congdon is a big star on really small screens - like the 4½- inch window she appears in on computer monitors every weekday morning or the 2½ inches she has to work with on the new video iPod. Ms. Congdon, you see, is the anchor of a daily, three-minute, mock TV news report shot on a camcorder, edited on a laptop and posted on a blog called Rocketboom, which now reaches more than 100,000 fans a day.

What makes Rocketboom so different from most of the other video blogs, or vlogs, that have popped up in the last year or so is that the daily episodes are consistently entertaining. With Mr. Baron, 35, the designer who created the site and films the episodes, Ms. Congdon, 24, has fashioned a quirky, charming persona, with an inventive take on the news that is closer in spirit to Letterman than CNN.

It's not just cool, though, it's prescient. The vlog has been up and running for 14 months, but it's only in the last two that Web video has become new media's favorite new medium - since Apple Computer's iTunes online store began stocking vlogs, calling them video podcasts and making it easy to download them for free viewing on the new iPods. In fact, the day Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, introduced the video iPod to developers, he showed a playlist of video podcasts on his computer. Rocketboom was at the top.

In case you're wondering, it has occurred to Mr. Baron and Ms. Congdon that they just might be sitting on a gold mine. At a cost of about $20 an episode, they reach an audience that some days is roughly comparable in size to that of, say, CNN's late, unlamented "Crossfire" political debate show. They have no background in business, but Jeff Jarvis, who tracks developments in technology and culture on his blog, BuzzMachine.com (and who has served as a consultant to The New York Times on Web matters), pointed out to them that they might be able to charge $8,000 for an interactive ad at the end of the show, which would bring in about $2 million annually.

December 11, 2005 by Shawn Hartley | Permalink | 0 Comments

Yahoo announced on Sunday that will partner with Movable Type to offer a custom blogging solution for small business.

Yahoo will effectively act as the preferred provider of Movable Type for small business users, taking advantage of its scale and efficiency, Anil Dash, vice president of professional products for San Francisco-based Six Apart, said in a phone interview.

Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo said it will offer commercial blogs based on Movable Type as part of its existing small business Web-site management service.

Yahoo provides customers with a unique Web address, blogging tools and business-class e-mail services with spam and virus protections for less than $12 a month.

December 12, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

USA Today: A group of three private equity firms is expected to announce today a deal to buy food chain operator Dunkin' Brands for about $2.4 billion, a source familiar with the matter says.

The three firms involved are said to be Bain Capital, the Carlyle Group and Thomas H. Lee Partners.

The Dunkin' Brands management team is expected to stay in place, the source said.

French beverage company Pernod Ricard is selling Dunkin' Brands — which includes Dunkin' Donuts, the Baskin Robbins ice cream shops and Togo's sandwich stores — as part of its $14.2 billion purchase earlier this year of British rival Allied Domecq.

Dunkin' Donuts, the largest brand in the unit, is based near Bain and Thomas H. Lee's hometown of Boston and claims to be the largest baked-good chains in the world, with more than 6,100 shops in 30 countries and expanding rapidly.

December 12, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 0 Comments

Thanks to Steve Hall at Adrants for pointing us to the Sow's Ear Award contest.

The Sow's Ear Award contest is being conducted by Hedquist Productions in Fairfield IA, which explains their pig obsession. Currently, there are 3 produced radio spots on the Sow's Ear Award Website. Rewrite the spot, and if your spot is picked, you'll get to produce it and get to use their VO for an upcoming spot of one of your own clients, along with some other goodies.

One of the reasons radio advertising gets a bad rap is because it's chock full of bad local spots. The 3 finalists you can rewrite in the contest are perfect examples of that (and in a nod to my TZ column last week, one features a singing kid who can't sing, and one is a obnoxious local furniture retailer).

So here's your chance to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear--rewrite a bad radio spot and show how radio advertising can be good if it's done right. Personally, I think any copywriter who can't write a decent radio spot isn't much of a copywriter. Hate doing it, dread doing it, fine--but don't tell me you can't do it. Few people in the ad world are good enough to get paid to pick and choose what types of ads they want to write.

December 12, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Business Week: Can a car company really be called green? Sure, the notion may seem far-fetched. But if anyone can, it might be Toyota. The Japanese auto maker has gotten great mileage lately out of its Prius gasoline/electric hybrid. Toyota has sold over 400,000 of these fuel-sippers and is now expanding its hybrid lineup by at least 10 other vehicles.

Less well known are Toyota's efforts to reduce emissions from smokestacks as well as tailpipes. In the past 15 years, Toyota has cut its carbon-dioxide emissions in Japan to 1.78 million tons annually, from 2.12 million tons, while globally, C02 emissions per car produced are down 15% since 2002.

Yet, plenty of people question Toyota's green credentials. In October, Bluewater Network, an environmental group, launched an ad depicting Toyota CEO Katsuaki Watanabe as a wolf in a sheep costume. The group complains that Toyota's hybrids don't have much better fuel economy than regular gasoline engines and that Toyota's fuel economy per vehicle has worsened as the company has increased the proportion of larger vehicles it sells in the U.S. Toyota has also received brickbats for opposing -- along with Detroit auto makers -- tougher fuel-economy standards in the U.S.

And while Toyota may be a leader in cutting emissions from production, it still has plenty of room for improvement. In fact, even as Toyota's CO2 emissions have fallen in Japan, they've climbed worldwide as Toyota makes more cars. Last year it emitted 6.4 million tons of CO2 equivalent, up from 5.9 million tons in 2001.

[via Jalopnik]

December 12, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 2 Comments

In a new essay over at MultiCultClassics, HighJive makes some very keen observations about the reaction to our posting about Saab's "Born From Jets" campaign and other blogs who've taken on the issue:

Now, it’s hardly extraordinary for bloggers to critique new campaigns. But this Saab story is a little different. As pundits posted comments, rebuttals started to pop up. The opposing viewpoints gushed over the new ads and cars, reading suspiciously like the writings of Saab brand managers, Saab advertising agency executives and Saab dealers. It almost looked as if the people responsible for “Born from Jets” were firing counterstrikes.

David first wrote about the Saab campaign in October and we're still getting comments about it. Time and again, we've implored marketers to get involved in the blogosphere. I suppose we're getting a taste of our own medicine. Although with the ability to post anonymous comments, we can't always tell a brand fan from a brand manager.

December 12, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Author and journalist, Randall Rothenberg, writing in Ad Age:

Personal production technologies help realize a vision many of us have been propounding for years: that all companies, no matter their core field, will have to have expertise in two businesses: their own, and the media business.

Hear hear.

December 12, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 2 Comments

MSNBC: More than 1,000 TV writers want their benefits to catch up with scribes of comedies and dramas, and about a dozen of their representatives interrupted a discussion with the entertainment presidents of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, UPN and the WB at the Waldorf Astoria last month.

They dumped leaflets on hotel’s banquet hall tables and Susan Baronoff, an Emmy-winning writer for “Starting Over” and other shows, climbed onto the stage.

Representatives of the Writers Guild of America say reality show employees don’t have the health and pension benefits of colleagues on scripted shows, aren’t paid enough for overtime and don’t participate in syndication profits.

It’s not the most comfortable topic for television executives anyway, since acknowledging all of the writers indicates there’s something less than real about reality TV.

“They make wads of money from reality,” Baronoff said. “It’s not a little genre anymore. It’s a behemoth.”

December 12, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 2 Comments

Hugh Fraser offers a podcast interview with Robert Scoble and Hugh MacLeod, together for the Geek dinner at The Texas Embassy in London.

December 12, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Kevin McKeon of Strawberry Frog was profiled by The New York Times last week. No, not for his wicked creative skills. The Gray Lady chose to chronicle his leave-the-city, return-to-the-city odyssey.

After a long winter (in Connecticut), Mr. McKeon was restless. "I never thought I'd admit it, but I miss being a big shot at my job," he wrote in his newspaper column for The Lakeville Journal. "And all that comes with being a big shot at one's job in New York. I miss having a reason to get dressed up once in a while. And having to look, on occasion, at least a little bit cool."

The article appears in the Real Estate section. Dan Shaw, the journalist, further reveals the McKeon's rental in Park Slope goes for $7000/month. Perhaps the family has two incomes or rich parents. The other possibility is McKeon brings home over $20,000/month.

[via Adfreak]

December 12, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Influx Insights: Le Pain Quotidien is Belgian bakery/restaurant chain with around 60 stores worldwide, it has US locations in New York and Los Angeles. Apart from bringing the European bakery tradition to the US, it also places a large emphasis on its communal table. The giant tables are focal points for the stores and are embedded in the brand's philosophy.

Communal tables are not new, but they have mainly been used in fancy restaurants, rather than cafes. They are also playing a role in the workplace. UK communication agency Michelades and Bednash was one of the pioneers of the trend, where every employee sits around the same table. Fifteen years later, there are now over 20,000 businesses in the UK that have similar benches.

In the workplace, where innovation and ideas are becoming increasingly important, environments that encourage collaboration and idea generation are going to be needed. The bench or table trend has yet to hit the US workplace, but it is surely just a matter of time.

December 12, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 2 Comments

As Brandweek reports:

More than 130 colleges and universities (mostly in the U.S.) have anti-Coke programs in place. At least 20 either have banned Coke products or axed exclusive contracts, per Campaign to Stop Killer Coke, New York.

The country's largest private school, New York University, banned Coke products last week. More are preparing to follow suit, including the University of Michigan on Dec. 31. Student activists want Coke to agree to an independent third-party probe of labor violations at its Colombian bottling plants.

Apparently, this movement is unrelated to recent efforts to curb Coke's presence in elementary and high schools. Although if you were to put the two together, it's very possible that nearly everyone under 21 in America can easily form a negative impression about one of the world's iconic brands.

You can find out more about the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke at their extensive website. Coca-Cola has responded to these allegations at its Coke Facts website.

Meanwhile, some early criticism is suggesting Coke's new advertising & marketing efforts isn't exactly, um, killer work.

December 13, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Lewis Lazare: DDB/Chicago scoured the world for months and on Monday came up with Michael Folino to succeed Bob Scarpelli as chief creative officer at the city's second-largest agency. Folino starts his new job in early January.

Folino's selection is risky for a few reasons. Folino did not grow up in the DDB culture, and the majority of his experience in the ad industry has been on the West Coast, where the agency culture is much flashier than it is here. But Scarpelli insisted Folino, 41, embodies two traits that are the bedrock of the DDB culture: creativity and humanity.

Folino certainly has the right credits on his resume, including relatively brief stints at some West Coast blue-chip shops: TBWA/ Chiat/Day in Los Angeles and San Francisco, Fallon's West Coast shop and the venerable Wieden + Kennedy in Portland, Ore.

Asked about his creative philosophy, Folino said he thought it best not to have one. "Every situation is different," he said.

Folino appears to have no major experience with fast food or beer accounts, which makes him an interesting choice, given that Anheuser-Busch and McDonald's are two of DDB/Chicago's biggest and highest-profile accounts.

Scarpelli said his first priority wasn't getting someone whose strengths matched the agency's major pieces of business. Also, sources familiar with developments said Scarpelli no doubt will continue to be the point man on Anheuser-Busch business, because he is the one with the contacts.

December 13, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

NYT: A full-page advertisement - set to appear in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call today - pleads with Congress to pay for stronger levees in the devasted city of New Orleans.

It also reminds the lawmakers that things are far from normal in a city where block after block remains ghostly and dark.

"Since the breakdown of the New Orleans flood protection system on August 29, 2005, we have lived like refugees in our own country," the advertisement says. "The residents of Lakeview and countless other displaced New Orleans communities are sending you this holiday wish in one voice - 'We want to go home.' "

The advertisement was born of desperation, said Nancy McSwain, who helped put it together. Ms. McSwain, whose Lakeview home took in over eight feet of water and has been looted three times since, is now living in a one-room apartment in Jackson, Miss.

The advertisement cost nearly $10,000, which was collected online from Lakeview residents, organizers said.

December 13, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

USA TODAY: USA TODAY will merge its newspaper and online newsrooms to create a single news operation, the newspaper and website's publishers announced Monday.

"What I'm basically here to tell you today is there no longer is going to be a dot-com newsroom. There no longer is going to be a print newsroom. There is one newsroom," USA TODAY President and Publisher Craig Moon told USA TODAY staffers. "I think it's a positive for the brand. I think it's a positive for all of you to be under an umbrella newsroom."

USA TODAY is the nation's top-selling newspaper, with a total average daily circulation of 2.3 million. USATODAY.com is among the most popular news websites, with 10.4 million unique visitors in October, according to Nielsen NetRatings. The newspaper and the website are published by Gannett.

December 13, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

John Battelle believes something big is going on with Alexa, and I'm inclined to agree.

Alexa, an Amazon-owned search company started by Bruce Gilliat and Brewster Kahle, is going to offer its index up to anyone who wants it. Alexa has about 5 billion documents in its index - about 100 terabytes of data.

OK, step back, and think about that. Anyone can use Alexa's index, to build anything. But wait, there's more. Much more.

Anyone can also use Alexa's servers and processing power to mine its index to discover things - perhaps, to outsource the crawl needed to create a vertical search engine, for example. Or maybe to build new kinds of search engines entirely, or ...well, whatever creative folks can dream up. And then, anyone can run that new service on Alexa's (er...Amazon's) platform, should they wish.

In other words, Alexa and Amazon are turning the index inside out, and offering it as a web service that anyone can mashup to their hearts content. Entrepreneurs can use Alexa's crawl, Alexa's processors, Alexa's server farm....the whole nine yards.

December 13, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 13 Comments

Adweek: MDC Partners' Crispin Porter + Bogusky is opening an office in Boulder, Colo., in July, said Chuck Porter, shop chairman, who disclosed the new venture at an agency-wide meeting this morning.

The decision to launch in Boulder comes after the agency's addition this month of the $400 million North American Volkswagen account. However, Porter said the outpost is not intended to service a particular existing or new client, but to offer agency staffers a lower-cost alternative to its Miami headquarters.

“It's critically important to keep great people and get more great people. It occurred to us that a great benefit we could offer is a choice of places to live,” said Porter. “This isn't about another CP+B office. This is just a different place for people in this agency to work from.”

Porter stressed that the Boulder outpost will not be anything like CP+B's 2001 expansion into Los Angeles, where the agency attempted to create a full-service office in Venice, Calif., with its own client base. In less than three years, it scaled back the operation to handle only media-buying.

“There aren't very many people in the world that wouldn't love either Miami or Boulder,” said Porter. “I think it will broaden our opportunities to get good people.”

Porter said the plans for July include 30-40 employees, mostly creative staffers, relocating to Boulder. Both he and agency partner Alex Bogusky will spend time in the new office, and they will also buy homes in the area.

December 13, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Dear brand manager, you don't "own" your brand, the consumer does. And here's what some consumers will do with it, if they so choose.

from Lifehacker:

Rather than use up strip after strip of scotch tape, or hit the mailroom for packing tape, take one of those FedEx airbill pouches, stick your hand in it like a mitten, pull off the adhesive backing, and voila! giant lint trap. Pat yourself down, and you’re good to go in about five seconds. (This also works wonders for getting pet hair off the couch.)

December 13, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

International Herald Tribune: If Walt Disney has its way, McDonald's Happy Meal toys could be replaced with portable media players that hold Disney movies, music, games or photos, according to a pending patent application.

Users could add files to the devices by earning points with food purchases.

The plan could work something like this: A customer enters a restaurant and buys a meal, receiving the portable media player and an electronic code that authorizes a partial download of a movie, video or other media file, which can be downloaded while in the restaurant, according to a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office application filed by Disney. Then, with each subsequent return, the customer earns more downloadable data, eventually getting an entire movie or game.

Earning a large file, like a movie, might require five trips - incentive for a customer to return to the restaurant.

The patent application follows efforts by McDonald's to enhance wireless capabilities at its restaurants. The company began outfitting its restaurants with wireless Internet connections in 2003, and since then has installed Wi-Fi services in more than 6,200 restaurants worldwide.

By continuing to install Wi-Fi capability, McDonald's may be gearing up for the portable media player to be a staple of its promotional lineup.

December 13, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 3 Comments

You know the Google Adwords we run on this site? Well, one firm just caught our eye with a creative use of text.

Crispin Porter is busy
Think Tank 3 A Modern Day Think-Shop
www.thinktank3.com

In case you've never purchased Adwords before, one needs to supply Google with several terms that people are likely to search for. In the case above, Think Tank 3 will be returned when one searches for Crispin Porter.

December 13, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

Ad agencies are kown for their creative workspaces and interior design. Art director, Derek Nelson, shows us his work place, the Dallas agency formerly known as Temerlin McLain.

See all the images from Nelson's t:m photoset.

December 13, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 0 Comments

From Reuters:

Visitors to New Orleans who once toured the graceful mansions of its Garden District or learned the history of its Mississippi River plantations have a new attraction: The Hurricane Katrina disaster tour.

Gray Line New Orleans will begin offering a "Hurricane Katrina Tour - America's Worst Catastrophe!" to show the ruin that befell the city when the storm hit on August 29, breaching a faulty system of river levees and flooding 80 percent of its neighborhoods.

Gray Line New Orleans normally organizes trips through the city's historic districts as well as its swamps and spooky cemeteries, but its business has been severely curtailed by the hurricane. The company said the Katrina tour was born of frustration over the government's slow response to rebuilding.

Looks like New Orleans is going to be a tough brand to sell--on all levels.

December 14, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

• Some bad news for Cramer-Krasselt/Chicago. Late Tuesday, the agency said it was terminating its relationship with fast-food chain Popeyes Chicken and Biscuits, because the account was no longer "profitable." The account was supposedly worth $7 million in billings to C-K. The agency said it is re-evaluating its client mix and reallocating resources.

• Weber Grill Restaurant has named Hoffman York/Chicago to handle an array of integrated marketing services. Initial efforts will focus on increasing awareness of Weber Grill's outdoor grilling experience through public relations initiatives.

• Leo Burnett has picked a new creative leader from within its ranks: Group creative head John Condon, 44, will succeed Cheryl Berman as head of a 200-person creative department at the city's largest and most legendary agency. Condon takes on the new job in March. Condon has spent the past 19 years at the agency -- the entirety of his professional career. For the past three years, he has headed the Burnett creative teams working on the giant Kellogg account, one of the oldest pieces of business in the agency's client portfolio. Condon also has done work for many other Burnett clients past and present, including McDonald's, Reebok, Toys R Us, Delta Air Lines and Nintendo.

[via Lewis Lazare]

December 14, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

USA TODAY: Investor confidence in PepsiCo finally put the No. 2 beverage maker's market capitalization ahead of Coca-Cola for the first time Monday.

Pepsi closed up 31 cents at $59.31 to give it a market capitalization of $98.4 billion. Coke closed down 36 cents to $41.15 for a market capitalization of $97.9 billion. The shift reflects Wall Street's ongoing taste for Pepsi's diversified portfolio of beverage and snack brands compared with Coke's focus on soft drinks.

Coke's stock appeal has waned vs. Pepsi's for nearly five years. And as late as the 1980s, Pepsi was a shadow of its larger rival. "Coke at one point had three times the market cap of Pepsi," says Caroline Levy, UBS beverage analyst. "It was the global consumer company. It doesn't have a lock on international anymore. Coke has suffered from its global exposure because it's heavily reliant on slow-growth countries such as Japan and Western Europe."

While Coke was busy building its global soft-drink empire, Pepsi grew its business through acquisitions — of non-carbonated soft drinks such as Tropicana and Gatorade and of snack makers by its Frito-Lay unit.

Today, Pepsi generates about 23% of its worldwide profit from carbonated soft drinks while Coke generates about 85% of its profit from carbonated soft drinks such as Coca-Cola and Diet Coke, Levy says. "Pepsi recognized much earlier than Coke that carbonated soft-drink trends were at risk and that they needed to pursue non-carbs as well as snacks."

December 14, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

If Squidoo is any indication, advertising is a popular topic. Currently there are 20 so-called "LensMasters," which is an optically-challenged way of saying the site features 20 so-called experts who maintain a page about advertising.

Some established bloggers are using their new Squidoo page to further market their offerings while providing a closer look at themselves, which in many cases is missing from their own site.

Here are three such examples:

Edward Cotton of Influx Insights

John Keehler of Randon Culture

Piers Fawkes of PSFK

December 14, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Ad Age: Time Inc. on Tuesday slashed 105 employees from its rolls, including some of its highest-ranking, most veteran publishing executives.

Richard Greenfield, an independent media analyst who follows Time Inc. parent Time Warner, called today’s developments very logical. “To scale down or to reduce your cost structure at a time when the revenue outlook is generally uncertain is the correct strategic move for Time Warner,” he said. “It also begs the question of whether they should be taking more aggressive structural action. Should the publishing business be separated?”

Billionaire financier Carl Icahn, who is aggressively lobbying to replace the Time Warner board, has made similar suggestions.

The move was part of another reorganization by Ann S. Moore, chairwoman-CEO, Time Inc., who last shuffled chairs in July, if not anywhere near so dramatically. Ms. Moore is under heavy pressure to keep Time Inc.’s earnings growing amid an uneven and hard-to-predict ad market.

In an internal staff memo today, Ms. Moore said Time Inc. will have another record year in 2005, with ad revenue up $100 million and total revenue up $225 million. “While we have challenges, we’re finishing a good year and there’s a lot to be proud of,” she said. An insider said Time Inc. will also, indeed, show earnings growth for the year.

The bloodletting was not entirely about costs; it also formed a smaller, more cohesive leadership group at the top that the company hopes will lead to more streamlined decision making.

December 14, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 9 Comments

Popular speaker and author, Tom Asacker, weighs in on some things he's been thinking about lately.

People believe that they are better than they really are, and they want YOU and your people and your business model to validate those feelings. If you're really smart, you'll make them feel even better about themselves and their decisions.

I wonder why, no matter how many times or in how many ways I explain this to clients, it seems to fall on deaf ears. Here it is again: Harley Davidson does not sell motorcycles. They sell identity. They sell esteem. They sell belonging. Ditto for Apple and Starbucks and the rest of the best.

Did you hear what one college woman said when asked why she kept buying her coffee at Starbucks even after the professor agreed to purchase it for her (exactly the way she desired it)? Are you ready for this? Are you sitting down? Here it is:

"They'd miss me at my regular Starbucks if I didn't stop in."

Self-worth . . . only $5 a cup.

December 14, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

Max Barry, who spent the best years of his life in the bowels of Hewlett-Packard and now writes thinly-veiled fictional accounts of it. His latest novel is Company. He works from home, but enforces a strict dress policy, requires that his desk be kept tidy at all times, and asks that he limit personal calls to less than two minutes.

Barry also has a web site where people can post ridiculous but true tales of Corporate Oppression. Here's one:

I work in an advertising agency, which essentially means that I can go drinking during the day and write it off as "research". A while ago we were pitching a critical campiagn to a BIG client, the biggest client this agency had. Most of our jobs depended upon keeping these guys happy.

So we were talking them through the boring direct mail part of the campaign when we came to the envelope colour. We had recommended orange... they decided that they liked green. We politely explained that the envelope was orange to ensure consistency with all the other elements of the campaign. They insisted that they wanted a green envelope.

Normally we'd stress why orange was important, but in the interests of keeping the client happy, we'd let them get their way. But something strange happened this time....this evolved from a simple debate to a fully fledged argument. Senior art directors presented their case, the creative director spent the next 48 hours in envelope meetings (at $300/hr!), the MD stepped in. All us lowly suits were made to work 20 hour days piecing together all the orange collateral we could collect from the past two years' worth of campaigns. Finally the agency paid for a shrink, who specialised in colour symbolism to present the case for The Orange Envelope.

Eventually we reached a compromise: green outside and orange inside. The client got what they wanted, and we charged them an extra $12,800 in head hours, so the whole thing was worth it.

[via Jack Cheng]

December 14, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Adweek on Yahoo: After nearly a decade on the periphery of the industry, Mark Fenske has been lured back to a staff position at Wieden + Kennedy. He'll initially team with creative director Hal Curtis on the agency's newly won Coca-Cola global "iconic" assignment.

Fenske, whose last agency post was an ill- fated seven-month stint as chief creative officer at now-defunct NW Ayer that ended in 1996, said he would be moving to Portland in the coming weeks. In recent years, the 51-year-old has been directing music videos and commercials, doing voiceovers, freelancing and teaching.

"I said yes to Dan [Wieden] on the basis of his asking," said Fenske from his office at VCU Adcenter in Richmond, Va., where he's been teaching since 2000. "He asked me what I'd been doing, and I told him I've been working freelance gigs; it's just that no one can sell what I write. He looked at me and said, 'I can.' "

[via Not Billable]

December 14, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 4 Comments

Our good friends at Talent Zoo are always looking for ways to bring great people together. And in that spirit, they've partnered with PerfectMatch.com, an online dating service.

It's just an experiment in co-sponsorships, but we all know that Advertising & PR people often marry one another, for some odd reason. So maybe there'll be something more to it.

Be warned, however: This offer may not apply if you live in Belarus.

December 14, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Christian Science Monitor: For a new generation of opportunists, other people's fast-food trash is their treasure.

Danielle is no stranger to diving into dumpsters. "You'd be amazed what they throw away at Trader Joe's, it's like whole meals over there," says the young nanny from the Philadelphia area. But when she heard that the garbage outside Wendy's restaurants had free airline travel in it, "it just seemed too good to be true."

Yet, on a recent icy December evening, Danielle and a friend spent nearly two hours digging through dozens of grease- and ketchup-smeared garbage bags outside two Manhattan Wendy's restaurants searching for soft drink cups with AirTran frequent-flier coupons printed on the side.

In all, the pair collected about 330 cups, more than enough for two round-trip flights for each of them. "It's pretty disgusting work, especially when you grab a handful of chewed meat," says Danielle, who asked that her full name be withheld to ensure that AirTran would honor her claim. "But it's about the only way I can afford to see my family [in San Luis Obispo, Calif.]."

Wendy's and discount airline AirTran are offering free frequent-flyer rewards when customers purchase 20- or 32-ounce soft-drinks. Coupons from the side of the cups can be redeemed toward airfare on the Orlando, Fla., airline; 64 coupons are worth a round-trip flight anywhere AirTran flies.

The AirTran promotion has already become the stuff of urban legend, calling to mind the California man who, in 1999, redeemed 12,000 pudding cups for 1.2 million frequent-flier miles. David Phillips, who paid $3,100 in all for the Healthy Choice pudding, became an instant cult hero and was the basis for a character in the 2002 movie "Punch-Drunk Love." He estimated he had earned himself more than 30 round-trip flights to Europe.

December 14, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 4 Comments

Guess how much this bottled water is going for in Japan. No, higher. No, higher.

Close, but no. It's going for $5.50 a bottle.

Japanese consumers are buying into the idea that deep ocean water “contains more nutrients and fewer pollutants than surface water” and are willing to pay $5.50 for a 1.5-liter bottle of it.

[via Reveries]

December 14, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 0 Comments

From Reuters:

Ford Motor Co. on Wednesday said it will run advertisements in gay publications, reversing a decision last week to pull all advertising of its Jaguar and Land Rover luxury brands from that sector.

In a letter to some gay, lesbian and human rights groups, Ford said it has decided to run corporate ads for all its eight brands, including its Jaguar and Land Rover luxury brands, in the targeted publications.

We certainly haven't heard the last of this. Every marketer who advertises in Genre or Out might incur some wrath.

I do, however, like The Daily Show's idea of a newly announced truck called the Ford Inseminator.

December 14, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 0 Comments

From The Wall Street Journal:

If you were a teenage girl worried about underarm odor, what kind of ad would make you go out and pick up some Ban deodorant?

It isn't a rhetorical question -- it's the query Kao Corp., maker of Ban, is posing directly to girls and young women in a contest that asks them to create advertisements that other girls will respond to.

The contest, publicized in fall issues of such magazines as CosmoGirl and Teen People, has drawn almost 4,000 entries. Readers ages 12 to 20 were asked to submit an image and fill in the blank in the company's "Ban It" slogan.

And get ready for this shocking quote:

And this same age group is the target audience most resistant to traditional hard-sell advertising. Bringing them into the ad-creation process should increase the odds that the resulting ad will hit home, marketers believe.

"Younger audiences have become incredibly cynical about advertising,'"' says Steve Thibodeau, an executive with Dotglu, a New York ad agency owned by MDC Partners, Toronto, which is creating the Ban campaign.

Converse, I understand. iPod, I understand. Folks will create ads for products they're passionate about. But why on earth would a teenage girl waste her time designing a deodorant ad? Like, omigod. As if. WTF? 8-)

December 15, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

NYT: Mortimer B. Zuckerman has pulled the plug on Radar magazine after just three issues.

Radar employees had just celebrated the publication of its third issue - surpassing the two issues it published in its previous incarnation in 2003 - and were scrambling to close the fourth.

Mr. Zuckerman, the publishing and real estate mogul who also owns The Daily News and U.S. News &World Report, said in an interview last night that Radar had failed to attract enough advertising to keep it afloat.

"It's too difficult a climate to start magazines in, given the advertising conditions for this period of time," he said.

December 15, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Hugh on why he does what he does:

I market Stormhoek to the Blogosphere not because I think it'll drive up the sales curve, but more because I think coming in contact with "Blogospheric DNA" is healthy for the brand. In return for letting me bore the Blogosphere to death with all my Stormhoek crap, I share my insights I learn along the way with them. I think it's a fair trade. And if they don't think so, they can go read someone else's blog.

Healthy in what way, Hugh does not say. I know from experience that most clients are concerned with sales, even if their agency helpers are not.

December 15, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

USA TODAY: Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that relies on volunteers to pen nearly 4 million articles, is about as accurate in covering scientific topics as Encyclopedia Britannica, the journal Nature wrote in an online article published Wednesday.

The finding, based on a side-by-side comparison of articles covering a broad swath of the scientific spectrum, comes as Wikipedia faces criticism over the accuracy of some of its entries.

Two weeks ago prominent journalist John Seigenthaler Sr. revealed that a Wikipedia entry that ran for four months had incorrectly named him as a longtime suspect in the assassinations of president John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert.

Such errors appear to be the exception rather than the rule, Nature said in Wednesday's article, which the scientific journal said was the first to use peer review to compare Wikipedia to Britannica. Based on 42 articles reviewed by experts, the average scientific entry in Wikipedia contained four errors or omissions, while Britannica had three.

"We're very pleased with the results and we're hoping it will focus people's attention on the overall level of our work, which is pretty good," said Jimmy Wales, who founded St. Petersburg, Fla.-based Wikipedia in 2001.

Unlike Britannica, which charges for its content and pays a staff of experts to research and write its articles, Wikipedia gives away its content for free and allows anyone — amateur or professional, expert or novice — to submit and edit entries.

Wikipedia, which boasts 3.7 million articles in 200 languages, is the 37th most visited website on the Internet, according to the research service Alexa.

December 15, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 0 Comments

From The AP:

Blockbuster Inc. stores in several states are quietly resuming late fees for customers who keep movies too long, rejecting the video-rental chain's national advertising of "No Late Fees!" because they can no longer keep popular movies on their shelves.

Randy Hargrove, a spokesman for Dallas-based Blockbuster Inc., said the decision to cancel the "no late fees" policy is made by independent franchises. About 4,600 company-owned Blockbuster locations will continue the program, he said.

Tom Barzizza, vice president of Flicks Management Inc., which owns 30 Blockbuster franchises in the mid-South, said it stapled notices to receipts for 30 days prior to the late fees' return. Some customers said they did not receive the notice.

Barzizza said it was important to reimpose the fees.

"It's a mechanism by which we can get customers to bring the movies back," he said. "Our business is all about availabililty. If somebody keeps a new release that's in high demand out for two weeks, that means it's not there for someone else to rent."

Blockbuster is obviously having trouble keeping up with Netflix, on-demand video services and all sorts of other competitors. Considering the big ad push they made when they introduced this program, are they damaging their brand?

December 15, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Washington Post: Bob Dylan -- singer, songwriter, former counterculture figure and voice of a generation -- has added another line to his rsum: radio DJ.

The enigmatic troubadour has signed on to host a weekly show on XM Satellite Radio, the D.C.-based pay-radio provider. Dylan will select the music, offer commentary, interview guests and answer e-mail from listeners during the one-hour program, which will start in March, XM said yesterday.

Dylan's hiring is not just a coup for XM, which is in a fierce battle for new subscribers with Sirius Satellite Radio, but also another score for satellite radio over conventional broadcasting.

XM's chief programmer, Lee Abrams, said his company talked with Dylan's management for about two years about the Grammy-winning artist becoming a host. XM declined to say what Dylan would be paid for the multiyear agreement. Howard Stern signed a $500 million, five-year contract with Sirius.

Abrams said that Dylan was attracted by the promise of a national audience, a commercial-free program and "total creative freedom" to air whatever he likes. Dylan also will broadcast from wherever he wants.

[via David Gans]

December 15, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Ad Age: T-Mobile USA has paid a $135,000 fine to settle a deceptive-advertising claim brought by New York’s Department of Consumer Affairs.

Last summer, the department took action against T-Mobile, as well as Sprint and Nextel, charging that while newspaper ads promised cellphone deals, the fine print contradicted the terms of the deal. Sprint and Nextel have since merged, and the case against them is still pending.

In a statement, T-Mobile said it “is committed to truthful and accurate advertising, and we believe our advertising fully complies with all laws and regulations. Although T-Mobile strongly disagrees with the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs’ claims, we were pleased to resolve the case and put this matter behind us.”

December 15, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 0 Comments

From the AP:

An estimated in one in 20 U.S. adults is not literate in English, which means 11 million people lack the skills to perform everyday tasks, a federal study shows. From 1992 to 2003, the nation's adults made no progress in their ability to read a newspaper, a book or any other prose arranged in sentences and paragraphs. They also showed no improvement in comprehending documents such as bus schedules and prescription labels.

The adult population did make gains in handling quantitative tasks, such as calculating numbers found on tax forms or bank statements. But even in that area of literacy, the typical adult showed only basic skills, enough to perform simple daily activities.

Sounds like bad news for us copywriters. Unless you're a professional athlete or a member of the lucky sperm club like Paris Hilton, how do you get through life if you can't read?

December 15, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 9 Comments

Mike Smock is a marketing strategist with more than 500 marketing campaigns executed in 38 industries over a 25 year career. Therefore, he is taken aback by Mark Fenske's claim that "nobody ever created a good ad writing to a strategy."

I don't get this. I never will get this. I am proud of the fact I don't get it. Look, advertising is not art. Advertising is weaponry in a battle for market share. If creativity helps me gain more share fine. If not then it is wasted sword motion. If you want to create art, if you want to be an artiste then get out of advertising and go be an artist. Write a screenplay, write a novel, go make another award winning music video but get the fuck out of advertising. God forbid if you work for me and try to create an ad without the strategy.

As we mentioned yesterday, Fenske is leaving VCU's Adcenter to rejoin Wieden + Kennedy on the agency's Coca-Cola account. Here's some of his wisdom:

There's not that much difference between a creative person at Wieden + Kennedy and one at Ayer.

Many people assume that a creative at one of the great agencies is an entirely different species from the people who work at the big flat-footed dinosaur agencies. I've been in both places. There's not that much difference in the way people think. People working at great agencies would love to believe they're just better than those other people. And unfortunately, too many younger people at big bad agencies do believe they aren't made of the same stuff people at Wieden and Goodby are. Crap. If you compared the thought processes, the avenues explored, the wild notions, the actual pieces of paper written on by creatives at big agencies with those of creatives at "creative" agencies, the similarities would be scary. The real difference is, when the big agency creatives have those interesting thoughts and ideas, they put them aside. They don't have support for them, or the culture to grow them, or the opportunity to fight for them, or the clients who'd buy them. They have no ground for their good ideas to mature in, so the confidence that comes from having your work praised never grows in them.

December 15, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

In her latest Talent Zoo podcast, Sally Hogshead interviews Avi Dan, 53, Global Executive Director for Euro RSCG.

Midway through the piece Dan says, "Clients can smell lack of passion like dogs smell fear."

Prior to joining Euro RCSG, Dan was at Berlin Cameron in New York, where his focus was on new business. The agency won the Coke Classic, Pfizer's Zyrtec, White Wave Silk Soy Milk, Pernod Ricard's The Glenlivet, Samsung and The Wall Street Journal accounts during Dan's tenure.

Dan, a former platoon leader in the Israeli Army, has also held management positions at Young & Rubicam, Saatchi & Saatchi and D'Arcy Masius Benton and Bowles.

December 15, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Friend of the AdPulpians, Max Riffner, a graphic novelist, designer and coder has gone pro. Blogger, that is. Pro Blogger.

I’ve become a professional blogger.

That sounds so weird to say. It’s true, though. After a year of lobbying, I finally convinced the day job to start a blog for one of our new businesses, Fun Expressions™, our scrapbooking supply business. I’m glad we (as a company) took our time and didn’t rush into this, because I’m not sure it would have been successful with some of our other business initiatives. With our Fun Expressions™ Blog though, I think the business is ready-made for online experimentation since the community in general is already there. Scrapbooking is a giant industry and has a large community supporting it. In the broadband age, people are sharing their scrapbooking experiences all over online.

Max works at Oriental Trading Company, Inc., in Omaha, Nebraska. Oriental Trading is an importer and direct marketer of value-priced novelties, toys, party supplies, favors, crafts, decorations, treats, and gifts.

Max was also kind enough to create a new logo for Leftover Cheese, my music blog.

December 16, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

USA TODAY: The best leaders have certain qualities in common.

First, there is an almost uncanny ability to see the big picture and make decisions with limited information.

Then there's that rare combination of caring and charisma that makes others willing to take a bullet for them.

But it is increasingly apparent that the quality most common to those at the top is their tendency to see everything through rose-colored glasses. Leaders, it seems, are more optimistic than the rest of us curmudgeons.

Survey after survey indicates this. When 50,000 workers were asked, 54% of senior managers said they viewed their organization as "healthy," according to a Booz Allen Hamilton survey released last month. But just 33% of middle managers and less than 30% of the rank and file echoed the sentiment.

To the rest of us, CEO optimism more often resembles a feeble grip on reality. CEO expert Leslie Gaines-Ross at Burson-Marsteller recalls one survey that asked CEOs worldwide if their companies could recover from a crisis. Ninety-nine percent said yes. "That is extremely optimistic," Gaines-Ross says.

December 16, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 2 Comments

People love their cars. So, it's only natural that our ill treatment of Saab and their sorry advertising would raise the ire in Saab's most devout brand evangelists.

Here's what Swade, a.k.a. Steve Wade, a Saab lover from from Tazmania Tasmania has to say about us:

What a bunch of self-important, egomaniacal bufoons!

What a bunch of tossers.

We could take it personally. Swade directs his venom our way, but in reality he's pointing to pieces we picked up from other interweb voices, and to the comments made in response. In short, he doesn't address the ad campaign's merits.

Ad people are talking about the ads on one hand, and car people are defending their favorite car on the other. It's amusing, if not misdirected.

December 16, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 6 Comments

I just noticed that Random Culture and Micropersuasion are both missing current content, back to Dec. 10th. So I searched Google for "Typepad problems." This is what came back from Netcraft:

Problems persist at the popular blog hosting service TypePad, with numerous users reporting that they are unable to access their blog management system. In addition, a number of TypePad users report that posts from the past three days have disappeared from their blogs. While TypePad-hosted sites are visible, service operator Six Apart says the TypePad blogging application is currently unavailable and describes the status of TypePad sites as "degraded." At one point blogs had to be restored from backup, which is why the most recent posts are missing from many blogs.

TypePad, a hosted version of Six Apart's Movable Type blogging software, has been a major beneficiary of the blogging boom. But that growth has brought challenges, and TypePad has experienced significant performance problems in recent months as its has outgrown its existing space and begun a transition to a new data center. Six Apart has issued a series of apologies for the poor performance, which has drawn complaints from business bloggers using TypePad.

December 16, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Adweek: The Illinois Supreme Court handed Altria Group's Philip Morris USA a significant victory today, overturning a lower court ruling that the tobacco company had misled smokers about the health risks of so-called "light" cigarettes.

The original decision said the company had "intended to deceive consumers" into thinking that its Cambridge Light and Marlboro Light cigarettes were somehow less harmful than regular cigarettes.

A Madison County, Ill., court in March 2003 ordered the company to pay more than $10 billion—$5 billion in compensatory damages, $3 billion in punitive damages and $2.1 billion in interest. That ruling came in response to a class-action lawsuit.

But the high court said there was no intent to deceive, as PM acted on the authority of the Federal Trade Commission, which had allowed cigarette makers to identify their products as "light" or "low tar."

December 16, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 4 Comments

I want to sympathize with the agency mentioned below, and support them for tossing a bad client. But it's bad form to vent when you're on a call with a reporter (although it makes for good journalism).

Adweek: Citing "creative and strategic differences," independent G&M Plumbing and quick-serve restaurant chain Del Taco have parted ways, the agency said.

G&M in Manhattan Beach, Calif., has handled the Del Taco creative account since 2000, according to agency principal and co-creative director Glenn Miller.

Miller explained that following "changes in Del Taco's marketing department"—most notably, the late October addition of former Hardee's vice president of marketing Sharon Fogg—"we have been less proud of what we were allowed to do."

"What we do is our brand," he said. "We have to make sure we're doing our best work, putting our best foot forward."

The Lake Forest. Calif., client, which operates or franchises 445 restaurants in North America, spent about $10 million on advertising in 2004, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus.

December 16, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

Wired: Electronics maker Siemens is readying a paper-thin electronic-display technology so cheap it could replace conventional labels on disposable packaging, from milk cartons to boxes of Cheerios.

In less than two years, Siemens says, the technology could transform consumer-goods packaging from the fixed, ink-printed images of today to a digital medium of flashing graphics and text that displays prices, special offers or alluring photos, all blinking on miniature flat screens.

"When kids see flashing pictures on cereal boxes we don't expect them to just ask for the product, but to say, 'I want it,'" said Axel Gerlt, an engineer at Siemens tasked with helping packaging companies implement the technology.

Siemens' paper-thin display -- composed of a polymer-based photochromic material -- is capable of displaying digital text and images when prodded by an electrochemical reaction powered by a low-voltage charge. When the electric charge is no longer applied, the chemical reaction is reversed, and the electronic ink is no longer visible -- which is how a flashing effect is created. The power source is based on commercially available, ultra-thin batteries. Electronic memory strips store the images.

Miniature displays in color could appear on consumer-goods packaging, including medicine vials, in 2007, with a resolution of 80 dpi, Gerlt said. Three or more images could flash consecutively, creating a crude animation effect or cycling through multiple messages. By 2008, the resolution could double, said Gerlt.

December 16, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 2 Comments

Consumerist user, Crispin B., is pissed at his bank, Chase.

I’ve been with Chase for a long time. I have money from the dot-com days. I’ve run a lot of that money through them - at one point just over a million dollars following the sale of my home. Did that earn me any respect? No. They treat me just like I was back in college, living from paycheck to paycheck. They’ve nickel-and-dimed me the whole time. Charges for this, charges for that, all the while providing me with piddling interest rates and crap customer service.

On various occasions I’ve deposited large checks issued from out-of-state brokerages, and they’ve held on to them as long as they could, milking, milking, milking. Deposit $60,000 and they’ll let you have $100 the next day. $400 the day after that. Have any of my checks not cleared? No, never. But they want to hold on to them as long as possible.

According to the Federal Reserve Board, the Expedited Funds Availability Act (EFAA), enacted in 1987, addresses the issue of delayed availability of funds by banks. The EFAA requires banks to (1) make funds deposited in transaction accounts available to their customers within specified time frames, (2) pay interest on interest-bearing transaction accounts not later than the day the bank receives credit, and (3) disclose their funds-availability policies to their customers.

Tiffany McKelvey at Chase's Internet Service Center has this to say about the federal law:

The Expedited Funds Availability Act (Reg CC) is governed by the Federal Government and it is not a bank policy.

December 16, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,
disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can't do
is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They invent. They imagine. They heal.
They explore. They create. They inspire.
They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
We make tools for these kinds of people.
While some see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world, are the ones who do.

[via Tom Asacker's eBooklet, "On Branding"]

December 16, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

[via News Designer]

December 17, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Ryan Carson for Signal vs. Noise:

Every successful business has a dirty little secret: They didn’t know if they were going to be successful when they started. They probably did their homework, researched the market and had a bit of experience. But there were no guarantees

I just finished a book about Google called The Search, by John Battelle. What I learned from the book is that it’s easy to look at a company like Google and say "Larry and Sergey are so impressive. They had a vision to change the world and they did it. I could never be like that."

The truth is, they had no idea if they were going to succeed when they started. What if Larry had said to Sergey, "Hmmm, I don’t know Sergey. Surely somebody has already figured out this search thing - and they probably know what they’re doing! We’re just a couple of college kids so let’s just play it safe and get good jobs at a stable company."

This is all very similar to when you realise that your parents don’t know everything. All the sudden it hits you that there are no black and white rules and that you’ve got to start figuring things out for yourself. Starting a company is exactly the same. All those people and businesses that you look up to and respect - they’re just like you. They don’t have some special magic expertise that helps them make good decisions - they have to figure it out for themselves and hope they make the right call.

Colorado born, Ryan has lived in the UK for six years. During that time he worked as a web developer before founding Carson Systems in early 2004.

December 18, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Taipei Times: In the late 1960s, Andreas Pavel and his friends gathered regularly at his Sao Paulo house to listen to records, from Bach to Janis Joplin, and talk politics and philosophy. In their flights of fancy, they wondered why it should not be possible to take their music with them wherever they went.

Inspired by those discussions, Pavel invented the device known today as the Walkman. But it took more than 25 years of battling the Sony Corp and others in courts and patent offices around the world before he finally won the right to say it: Andreas Pavel invented the portable personal stereo player.

In person, Pavel seems an unlikely protagonist in such an epic struggle. He is an intellectual with a gentle, enthusiastic, earnest demeanor, more interested in ideas and the arts than in commerce, cosmopolitan by nature and upbringing.

Pavel still remembers when and where he was the first time he tested his invention and which piece of music he chose for his experiment.

It was February 1972, he was in Switzerland with his girlfriend, and the cassette they heard playing on their headphones was Push Push, a collaboration between the jazz flutist Herbie Mann and the blues-rock guitarist Duane Allman.

"I was in the woods in St. Moritz, in the mountains," he recalled. "The snow was falling down. I pressed the button, and suddenly we were floating. It was an incredible feeling, to realize that I now had the means to multiply the aesthetic potential of any situation."

Over the next few years, he took his invention to one audio company after another -- Grundig, Philips, Yamaha and ITT among them -- to see if there was interest in manufacturing his device. But everywhere he went, he said, he met with rejection or ridicule.

Ignoring the doors slammed in his face, Pavel filed a patent in March 1977 in Milan. Over the next year and a half, he took the same step in the US, Germany, England and Japan.

Pavel declined to say how much Sony was obliged to pay him, citing a confidentiality clause. But European press accounts said Pavel had received a cash settlement for damages in the low eight figures and was now also receiving royalties on some Walkman sales.

December 18, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 2 Comments

Florida's Supreme Court forbade two personal injury lawyers from using a pit bull with a spiked collar to advertise their services because "there is no way to measure whether the attorneys in fact conduct themselves like pit bulls."

According to the ruling:

In this case we impose discipline on two attorneys for their use of television advertising devices that violate the Rules of Professional Conduct. These devices, which invoke the breed of dog known as the pit bull, demean all lawyers and thereby harm both the legal profession and the public’s trust and confidence in our system of justice.

[via A Clear Eye]

December 18, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 4 Comments

NYT: Rebuffing aggressive overtures from Microsoft, Time Warner has agreed to sell a 5 percent stake in America Online to Google for $1 billion as part of an expanded partnership between AOL, once the dominant company on the Internet, and Google, the current online king.

Negotiations between the three companies reached a fevered pitch on Thursday night when teams from Google and Microsoft were in separate rooms of the Time Warner Center in Manhattan and executives from the media company walked back and forth between them.

Finally, around 9 p.m., Richard D. Parsons, chief executive of Time Warner told Eric E. Schmidt, chief executive of Google, that he would accept Google's recently sweetened offer. Google, which prides itself on the purity of its search results, agreed to give favored placement to content from AOL throughout its site, something it has never done before.

December 19, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 4 Comments

Lewis Lazare: Talent Zoo, an ad agency headhunting firm that keeps tabs on hiring trends, often has insights we find to be on the mark. Its latest concern about a streak of "arrogance" in agency hiring these days struck us as worth sharing. Ragan Jones, associate vice president of recruiting, said:

In 2002, agencies could afford to be as picky as they wanted about hiring. They could demand pedigree and get it. In 2005, however, it is a candidate's market, but most agencies out there just don't get it. . . . Pedigree equates to experience working on big sexy accounts at big sexy agencies and graduation from a particular school -- basically being the perfect "on paper" candidate.

Unfortunately, the ad agencies that do not see what is wrong with hiring based on pedigree alone are affecting the industry in a way that could jeopardize the industry's future. Arrogance is killing this industry. Companies are willing to lose exceptionally talented people because they cannot see past their own egos or past a candidate's first job at a less-than-stellar shop. It is . . . shifting the power and success to a certain few ad agencies, like Crispin Porter + Bogusky and Strawberry Frog, that actually get it. These companies use their brains -- not their egos -- to make hiring decisions.

December 19, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

From the Marketing Trenches points to this great bumper sticker.

If you would like one, send $5.00 to these fine folks in St. Louis before their supply runs out.

December 19, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 2 Comments

AdAge.com published nearly 3,000 news stories and features on advertising, marketing and media topics in 2005.

"MCDONALD'S PLANS TO REINVENT EMPLOYEE UNIFORMS" is the most viewed story of the year. But you can't view it now, unless you agree to pay for it.

December 19, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

James Cherkoff finally got around to reading Kevin Kelly's Wired article, "We Are The Web," from last August, which is more than I can say.

His main point is that there are so many tiny, technological developments occuring that it's easy to overlook the resulting social upheaval. Obviously, Kelly puts it a thousand times more eloquently: "The accretion of tiny marvels can numb us to the arrival of the stupendous."

In an article destined to fuel a million powerpoint presentations he also nails the most surprising fact about today's web: "The deep enthusiasm for making things, for interacting more deeply than just choosing options, is the great force not reckoned 10 years ago. This impulse for participation has upended the economy and is steadily turning the sphere of social networking - smart mobs, hive minds, and collaborative action - into the main event." Or, if I might paraphrase the great Kelly-one: "Blogs, schmogs, this is where the real fun starts".

The question for us modern marketeers is how do we take part in massive online cultures where collaborative action is the driving force?

December 19, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

The Spunker has unearthed the most grotesque media placement known to man. Yes, it worse than the guy who tattooed an ad on his forehead. Worse than small towns selling naming rights to corporations. Worse than desperate mothers doing the same with their offspring.

These Dutch creatives have managed to attach airplane-style streamers to pigeons.

December 19, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Denver Post: In the teeming jungle of the blogosphere, most participants range somewhere between drops of dew and army ants - little noticed, soon to disappear. Josh Spear lounges high on a branch, waving his spotted tail: a leopard.

He's the prince of particular, the satrap of selection, the chief of choosing, this 21-year-old occasional University of Colorado undergraduate with a unique passion for the things that please him. When Spear likes something, he posts it on his popular blog, joshspear.com.

What happens next? The thing gets noticed.

About 5,000 people a day come to the blog for his daily take on cool, and they'll sometimes buy the fishbowl or vintage graffiti tie, or get involved in that effort to save a soon-to-be-destroyed modern house.

The recipients of Spear buzz dig the attention, and the sales.

Later this month, one of the largest advertising agencies in the world, Leo Burnett Worldwide, is flying Spear to its Chicago headquarters to address brand managers.

"They just want me to inspire and fuel their office with what I do, and my thoughts on what they do and how they could do it better," he says.

December 19, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

December 19, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 1 Comments

Charlotte ad agency Boone/Oakley is looking for a creative team. Literally.

From their website:

Think you have what it takes to work here? Before you answer yes, check out the entire site, it has numerous clues about the personality of the agency, and the people who work here. If you are still interested and have had a minimum of 5 years experience in advertising, forget about polishing your resume. Send us a tape/DVD, up to 5 minutes long, telling us why you think we should consider you for a position at the agency. If it's good we'll give you an interview, if it's bad, it will end up on the Web - somewhere. The open for hire positions are listed below. Anybody with less than five years experience will not be considered, so please save yourselves the time and effort - life really is too short.

Their work is good 'n weird, so anyone submitting a video oughta be, too.

December 20, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Lewis Lazare: After the ups and downs of the past couple of weeks, it looks as if the year will end on a decidedly upbeat note at Leo Burnett with Monday's news that the city's largest agency has won the $100-million-plus Washington Mutual advertising account.

Burnett succeeds Seattle-based Sedgwick Rd., which had been Wa-Mu's agency of record for the past 14 years. That relationship came to an end with the arrival last summer of Chris Matthews as Washington Mutual's new senior vice president of branding and advertising.

There has been talk that Washington Mutual wanted to pull back a bit from the aggressively cheeky work that had been its hallmark. Matthews, who came to Wa Mu from General Electric, declined to discuss exactly what the advertising game plan would be for Washington Mutual going forward, but he disputed the claim that the agency's previous advertising heavily targeted a younger demographic.

"I think people of all ages responded to the humor in our ads," Matthews maintained in an interview.

December 20, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

NYT: Users of Google's search engine will soon see something they are not used to on the notoriously spare site: advertising with logos and graphics. And the advertisers will not be limited to America Online, whose talks with Google prompted the change in policy, according to two executives close to the companies' negotiations.

As part of their deal, which is expected to be announced this afternoon, Google is providing AOL with $300 million in advertising on Google's Web sites, intended to use to draw Google search users to related content on AOL's sites, the executives said. That sum is on top of the $1 billion in cash that Google is to invest to buy a 5 percent stake in AOL (provided billionaire investor, Carl Icahn, whose group has a 3.1 percent stake in Time Warner, doesn't undo the deal).

Graphical advertisements, like the common rectangular ads known as banners, have been a feature of most commercial Internet sites for a decade. Google made a name for itself, in part, because it went without graphical ads in favor of small text advertisements linked to the topics for which users search. Google's simple pages, quick to load and easy to read, helped the site build a following, and text advertisements proved valuable to marketers looking for people interested in their products.

December 20, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 2 Comments

From Ad Age:

Although Pfizer has not yet selected an agency for its $110 million Lipitor account, the pharmaceutical maker today introduced an unbranded campaign for high-cholesterol awareness.

The push, from Omnicom Group’s Unit 7, New York, will feature spots that run on broadcast and cable TV using the tagline “My Heart Now.” The commercials will drive consumers to a Web site, myheartkit.com.

While pharmaceutical advertising is the bane of TV viewers, and a boon to stand-up comedians, the work will get more bizarre, and perhaps much more sinister, if drug companies start going "underground"--that is, not identifying their product and not revealing much about it.

December 20, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

'Tis the season to evaluate agency holiday cards. Adrants has not one but three such stories in the last day, alone.

Here's one that's more creative than all the rest. Chicago agency, Hadrian's Wall, sent out a card within a card. That is, they included a card from me to them inside my card. I mailed it back to them yesterday.

The most joyous time of the year is also the most hectic. That's why we at Hadrian's Wall are making your holiday season less stressful by taking one errand off your to-do list. This year, instead of scouring the stores looking for that perfect holiday card for us, simply seal the enclosed envelope and drop it in the mail. Then smile, knowing you can check off "send a card to Hadrian's Wall."

Like all great advertising, this idea relies on rock solid strategic insight. And it's the kind of thing I'm not likely to soon forget. Score another one for Kevin Lynch and crew.

December 20, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Spike Jones at Brains On Fire has some great advise for those interested in providing and/or deploying word-of-mouth marketing.

I think it’s important to keep in mind that this whole “Word of Mouth Marketing” thing is still in its baby stages. Anyone who tells you that they are an expert in WOMM is kidding themselves and you. Sure, there are those that are further down the path than others, but “experts” is a word that shouldn’t be throw around quite yet. Heck, even WOMMA – with all the headway they are making – is just turning one year old.

So, having said that, the second thing that is important to keep in mind is that WOM doesn’t happen over night. It’s not a quick fix. We get people calling us constantly saying things like, “I need some good word of mouth” or “let’s do a viral campaign,” and then when we explain to them that we can help them lay the foundation that will make it easier for WOM to take place, they look at us funny (sometimes).

December 20, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 2 Comments

The Telegraph: In a finding that will astonish many parents, academics at Bath University concluded that girls attack their Barbie dolls as a symbol of their rejection of the consumer society. "Barbie provoked rejection, hatred and violence," said Dr. Agnes Nairn, who led the research for the university's school of management.

"The girls we spoke to see Barbie torture as a legitimate play activity, and see the torture as a 'cool' activity," the researchers said.

The mutilation ranged from cutting off hair to decapitating and putting the dolls in microwaves.

Dr. Nairn said the children were aware that they were being exploited by "over-marketing and over-charging". While boys had feelings of nostalgia for Action Man dolls, girls saw Barbie as "babyish" and felt that rejecting the doll was a "rite of passage".

Barbie also symbolised excess because girls often had several versions of the toy, the researchers said. "Barbies are not special; they are disposable, and are thrown away and rejected."

December 21, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 2 Comments

Lewis Lazare likes The Ungar Group's self-promo efforts.

The Ungar Group/Chicago is one of the only ad agencies we know of that actually believes what it preaches to others -- namely, the importance of advertising to build a brand.

Unlike most of the city's ad agencies, to say nothing of those elsewhere around the country, the Ungar Group, though small, develops and runs ads that draw attention to the shop while also trying to explain why potential clients should seek out its services.

We wish more shops were inclined to create ads for themselves. It might jumpstart a new business environment around these here parts, while also suggesting Chicago ad agencies exist for some reason other than to channel profits into giant holding companies to which many of them are attached.

December 21, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 2 Comments

Michael Arrington of Tech Crunch loves BubbleShare, a new photo sharing site.

Toronto-based online photo sharing BubbleShare is just wonderful, and ridiculously easy to use. Their interface team deserves a gold star or something, because I don’t think I’ve ever used a site’s full functionality without consulting a single FAQ or other instruction.

The free service allows users to create albums of up to 100 photos each, with a permanent URL for sharing. Photos can be dragged and dropped to change the order, resized and a voice comment can be added. Comments are available for visitors as well as an RSS feed.

The only thing that BubbleShare is missing is photo tagging and tag search.

The site does benefit from a squeaky clean design and user interface, but no tagging seems like more than a minor oversite. Tagging is what made Flickr, Flickr.

December 21, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

NYT: In 2002, Blake Krikorian and his brother Jason were beside themselves. Their beloved San Francisco Giants were in a pennant race, yet Blake and Jason, two Silicon Valley engineers, were traveling so much that they missed many of the games on television.

Desperate, they signed up for a service that offered live audio and video of the games over the Internet, only to find that subscribers from San Francisco could not watch Giants games because of blackout restrictions.

The idea for Slingbox was born. The Krikorians decided to find a way to let cable and satellite television customers watch what was on their home televisions while they were on the road. After several years developing the product, their company, Sling Media, released its first boxes in July.

Just as TiVo and other digital video recorders ushered in the concept of "time shifting" a few years ago, the Slingbox promises to make "place shifting" a reality for households. By letting consumers connect with their cable or satellite hookups when they travel, Slingbox has the potential to splinter further the way television is watched.

For instance, even people living far from their hometowns could get a Slingbox, allowing them to watch their local television in another city or even country. Sling Media does not endorse this use of its device for fear of antagonizing cable and satellite companies, which may see it as illicit sharing.

December 21, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Toyota's “i-unit” is a union of driver and vehicle intended to expand human abilities and possibilities.

The body is built using environmentally friendly plant-based materials such as kenaf.

December 21, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

Humans have a deep need to create social hierarchies. We're a lot like wolves in that way.

Therefore, it's no surprise to see Always On and Technorati's Open Media 100--a list of new media movers and shakers. Seth Godin and Steve Rubel appear to be the only representatives from marketing, which is okay, since marketing is not the most important function in the world. Social software is much better represented, as it shoud be.

This list will evolve and change just as quickly as the Open Media Revolution continues to take hold. To our comrades we over-looked, don't fret.

This list, and other quantifying lists kept elsewhere, make me think. The truth is we all have our own lists, our own meaningful networks. AdPulp has certainly brought new people into my network. Big ad wigs like Ron Huey, Court Crandall, Kevin Lynch, David Oakley and Steffan Postaer are but a quick email or phone call away. That was not the case, pre-Pulp.

Rick Myers, the founder of Talent Zoo, is in his own category. Right out of the shoot he was there to support our efforts, not just with kind words. With money!

Then there are the bloggers: Tom Asacker, Marc Babej, Spike Jones, Evan Tishuk, Ben Popken, Piers Fawkes, Johnnie Moore, Steve Hall, Hugh MacLeod, Catherine P. Taylor, Dean Gemmell, John January, Tug McTighe and others. You kick ass!

To all, named and unnamed, I thank you (and I'm sure Danny G. and Shawn thank you) for your interest in what we do here.

December 22, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

In today's Chicago Sun Times, Lewis Lazare offers his gloomy year-end wrapup.

We'd love to say 2005 was the year the Chicago advertising industry impressively made its case on the global stage. But we would be lying. It was, in fact, another pretty exasperating year. New business was, for the most part, hard to come by, and, on the whole, agencies seem to have lost more than they gained.

And creativity? Well it was very much a hit-and-mostly-miss matter. What was lacking, in particular, was one locally produced commercial that could spark a loud buzz in the global ad community. One piece of work that would have signaled Chicago is now where it's happening.

But that didn't happen.

It's been said before, but it bears repeating: Chicago probably won't ever be ready to claim to be an exciting and important center for great advertising until the leaders at local shops find a way to dispel the impression this is a city that only knows how to do packaged goods advertising. Of course there's nothing wrong with doing such advertising (it pays a lot of bills), but it becomes a major drawback when that looks to be the primary reason most agencies are in business in this town.

Advertising used to be about flash. And drama. And heartfelt humor. And most importantly about impact. And, yes, selling too. But now, a climate of fear has all but done in those qualities that advertising -- and by extension the industry -- once embodied. Now it's all about fear. Fear that clients will suddenly pack up their billings and move elsewhere. Fear that the agencies won't make their bottom-line numbers. Fear that ad executives will be shown the door if they misstep too often and too egregiously.

It's a horrendous atmosphere in which to produce great advertising. And it seems to have put a major damper on creativity.

Lazare goes on to mention that Hadrian's Wall, Tom Dick & Harry, Fusion Idea Lab and Point B Communications have all held their own in the less than stellar environment he describes.

It seems to me Lazare longs for the glory days when dinosaurs ruled ad land. He's still evaluating TV spots and such, when he might dig deeper and examine fresh developments like the progress made by Chicago's own Word of Mouth Marketing Association.

December 22, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Adweek: Accor North America, operator of Motel 6, Red Roof Inn and other motel chains, has launched its first podcast ad campaign featuring longtime spokesman Tom Bodett.

The Richards Group, Accor's agency, developed the campaign.

"Podcasting is a new way for people to gather information based on their own preferences and timing," said Eric Studer, vice president of advertising and promotions for Motel 6.

Accor, based in Carrollton, Texas, plans to offer more podcasts in the future covering a range of topics, including tips on traveling with your pet, how to plan a road trip and how to participate in hotel franchising.

December 22, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 3 Comments

Good PR people today recommend that clients jump fearlessly in to the bloatosphere and join the conversation, as opposed to pretending it isn't happening. Nathan Lyst of General Motors has taken that advise to heart. Here's what he has to say in defense of his "Born from Jets" advertising campaign.

Thought I'd open myself up for direct assult and at the same time defend our choice in development of the "Born Form Jets" campaign.

I am the Saab Advertising Manager.

As for the strategic direction... "Born From Jets" is the most consumer relevant answer to the question; "Why buy a Saab?". Saab's aircraft heritage provides the foundation with which to explain the benefits of Saab's uniquely designed and engineered vehicles.

The initial creative was purposely designed to overtly establish the fact that Saab was literally "Born from Jets". This foundation is essential. We have found that once this fact is established it causes consumers to seek out more information. Whether through our website or through a visit to a dealership (both of which have seen increased traffic after the new creative started).

Based on the previous posts, I doubt I will be successful in changing your perspective on the campaign. Everyone's an advertising expert (or at least they think they are). At the end of the day the results speak for themselves.

I wrote to Nathan this morning thanking him for braving the AdPulp waters. I also explained that I fully recognize he may have a successful campaign on his hands, and that my judgment is limited to the quality of the creative product. We all know creatives judge work differently than clients, or even account executives. The question for me is, "Would I want this work in my portfolio?"

Here's the answer. I like the tagline. It delivers the brand's heritage positioning in a clean, easy-to-recall way. But the TV is weak. First of all, how many car spots are shot in the Utah desert? Too many. Second, the jets in the spot are rendered in a fake, if not cheesy, manner. They're flying too low to the ground and following, not leading, the car. Jets don't do that. Suspend disbelief, I know.

So for me, it's about poor production values and the lack of a big idea. For the record, I think Saab can come back with more creative executions of their strategy. In fact, I hope they do.

December 23, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 0 Comments

If ever there was a product that would benefit from some advertising or publicity, it's the Clear registered traveler program.

The Clear registered traveler program is the smarter way forward for airport security. It's the smarter solution for you, getting you through security faster, with more predictability and less hassle. It's basic risk management: someone who is screened in advance is less likely to be a threat than someone who isn't. That's the simple premise behind Clear.

Clear is fast, convenient and secure. As a Clear Member, you'll go through security faster. That puts you in control of your time and your travel schedule. Clear’s introductory rate is $79.95 for a one year Membership. You can lock in this rate by purchasing a two year membership for $159.90 or three years for $239.85.

Today's Slate has a story about the man behind Clear, Stephen Brill, a longtime reporter and media entrepreneur:

As Brill told Congress in early November, a study of the Orlando operations showed that "our members typically spent four seconds and never spend more than three minutes waiting to go through security, whereas non-members often spent more than thirty minutes."

Clear right now is available at the Orlando International Aiport, and you can bet there'll be more.

Happy holidays and don't forget to take off your shoes in the security line this weekend.

December 23, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 0 Comments

A couple of snippets from a larger story in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Coke will debut a host of commercials on New Year's Eve. Instead of a traditional tagline, each spot ends with a red-and-white graphic image of a Coke bottle, along with the sound of a soft drink being opened and poured. The spots all have a humorous element but nothing too edgy. The company, as it tries to revive sales of its core soft drink, needs to draw in young consumers, without tainting the tradition of the brand.

Several of the Coke Classic commercials are vignettes set to music. In one, there's a guy eating at an old-fashioned lunch counter. He sadly realizes his Coke glass is empty. He looks longingly at a man down the counter, who is taking a long sip. A pretty waitress in a pink uniform fills the first guy's glass. The words flash on the screen: "Free refills. It should be a law."

Coke Zero is also getting new commercials that play on the "zero" in the name. Coke Zero, a diet drink designed to taste more like regular Coke than Diet Coke , was launched in June. The first Coke Zero commercial was a remake of the famous 1971 "I'd like to teach the world to sing" spot. The remake featured G. Love and a bunch of young hipsters on a rooftop in Philadelphia singing "I'd like to teach the world to chill." The commercials were widely criticized for not communicating what Coke Zero actually is.

More recent commercials focus on a straightforward zero-calorie message. Those will continue to air, and the company is adding spots with humor. In one of the new commercials, there is a car wreck. The drivers start yelling at each other. A bystander points out the traffic light is broken, so both drivers saw a green light, leading to the wreck. The drivers apologize and shake hands. The hook is that instead of real dialogue, the actors are counting down from 20. The only way to guess at what they are actually saying is their actions and the tone of their voices.

When the conflict is resolved, they get to zero.

If you're looking to get attention, isn't it kind of a bad idea to slip this story into the news on a Friday right before Christmas?

December 23, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Adweek: While 80,000 blogs may be created every day, about one in five is spam, according to new research.

Umbria Communications, a Boulder, Colo.-based consumer-generated media monitor, found that 2.7 million out of 20.3 million blogs are spam, or splogs as they are sometimes known. It estimates between 10 and 20 percent of blogs are spam.

Spam blogs are sites created only for marketing purposes, often using stolen content via RSS feeds to trigger keyword-based ads from Google's AdSense and other contextual ad programs.

Splogs "could become a detractor to people using, enjoying and finding value in the blogosphere," said Howard Kaushansky, CEO of Umbria.

December 24, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

NYT: The diamond industry has long inundated consumers of bridal jewelry with forceful marketing messages, proclaiming that "A Diamond Is Forever" and dictating that two months' salary be spent on engagement rings.

Now the platinum industry, through an elaborate advertising campaign, is introducing its own message about marriage, complete with a special tagline: "Your Love Has Just Gone Platinum."

Platinum Guild International, the United States marketing arm of the platinum industry, wants to convince the soon-to-be wed that platinum, the priciest jewelry metalon the market, is also the most desirable.

The industry is focusing on bridal consumers who harbor more nontraditional notions of marriage compared with previous generations.

"What we found is that today's engaged-age couple really has a very practical and realistic attitude toward marriage and love," said Michelle Peranteau, marketing manager for the Platinum Guild International.

The "Your Love Has Just Gone Platinum" campaign will blanket the January issues of women's and bridal magazines like Vogue, Glamour and In Style Weddings. Men, who purchase the vast majority of engagement rings, have not been forgotten in the marketing pitch: the ads will also run in magazines like GQ and Men's Journal.

A poll last year by the wedding advice Web site TheKnot.com revealed that 38 percent of women prefer a platinum ring over gold or silver.

Platinum is also among the world's scarcest metals, according to the New York Mercantile Exchange, with most of the world's mines in two countries, South Africa and Russia.

December 24, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Ending a partnership that soured long ago, Microsoft and NBC announced yesterday that they would dissolve their joint ownership of the cable news channel MSNBC, with NBC taking control.

NBC has completed a deal to assume majority control of the channel immediately, with an 82 percent stake, and it will become the sole owner within two years, NBC executives said yesterday. The two companies did not disclose financial terms of the deal.

But the partners will continue their 50-50 ownership of the MSNBC Web site, which, partly as a consequence of its affiliation with Microsoft, is the most-used news site on the Internet.

December 24, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

USA TODAY: Albertson's is no longer considering a sale of the entire company, officials said late Thursday after CVS and other potential suitors withdrew from talks.

The nation's second-largest grocery store company said it will continue talks with "several parties" interested in buying its underperforming divisions.

Dave Parker, Albertson's vice president of investor relations, said in a telephone interview that the Boise-based company decided against selling the whole company because it had not received a bid it found acceptable.

December 24, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

NYT: New York City's creative sector - which includes architects, potters, filmmakers and clothing designers - has long helped fuel the city's economy because of its size and its role in drawing the wealthy to town.

But relentless inflation in real estate and health care costs are endangering New York's long dominance in the creative sector, according to a new report, as artists and companies migrate to less expensive cities eager to lure them.

20 years ago, New York was the headquarters for half of the world's advertising agencies, but is now home to fewer than a third, according to the report, written by the Center for an Urban Future, a left-leaning New York research group that analyzes urban policy issues.

While the city still is home to most of the American publishing industry, the number of jobs in that field fell 3 percent in the last decade in New York, while increasing in San Francisco, Boston and Denver. And from 2001 to 2004, the number of jobs in New York City's motion picture and sound recording industries declined by 36 percent.

Richard Florida, who has written extensively on the topic, has argued that a "creative class" attracts workers and industries outside of the creative world who want to live in a tolerant, heterogeneous culture. This combination stimulates the economy. At a recent conference, Mr. Florida put it simply: "When a place gets boring, even the rich people leave."

[via Gaping Void]

December 25, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

According to The New York Times, New Jersey's acting Governor Richard J. Codey unveiled the top five entries for New Jersey's tourism slogan last week and asked state residents to vote for their favorite.

The five finalists - "New Jersey: Expect the Unexpected;" "New Jersey: Love at First Sight;" "New Jersey: Come See for Yourself;" "New Jersey: The Real Deal" and "New Jersey: The Best Kept Secret" - were chosen by Mr. Codey from among nearly 8,000 public submissions.

Mr. Codey tried to separate the final nominations from the more snide and now rejected alternatives - including "New Jersey: We Will Win You Over," a slogan that the state paid a consultant $260,000 to come up with in October.

Residents can vote for their favorite entry by telephone at (609) 984-9893 or online at www.nj.gov/slogan until Jan. 1.

Adfreak's Catherine P. Taylor picked up on the story and suggested the state needs some copywriting assistance.

"The Late David Ogilvy" suggested, "New Jersey: You Gotta Problem With That?"

Here are some other ideas. "New Jersey - Pick An Exit. Any Exit." Or, "New Jersey - The Garden State...No, Really." Should the state want even better options, we'd be happy to provide them for one tenth the sum the aforementioned consultant was paid. Hey, it's Christmas. We're feeling generous.

December 25, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Tolga Büyükdoganay, an Art Director who moved from Istanbul to Austria in order to work for FCB sent us some of his award winning work. The above print ad for Unicef is particularly poignant. The body copy (care of Patrik Partl) says, "More education for girls in Islamic countries."

December 26, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 3 Comments

Chicago Defender: A billboard along the Dan Ryan Expressway touting radio shock jock Howard Stern's move to satellite radio next month has raised the ire of St. Sabina's leader, the Rev. Michael Pfleger.

The billboard, located on 86th and Lafayette, features a Black fist with the headline: "Let Freedom Ring and Let it be Rung By a Stripper." The ad promotes Stern's radio show moving from broadcast stations to satellite on Jan. 9.

"I am not surprised about Howard Stern, but am surprised with Viacom. The billboard is in bad taste."

Viacom, one of the world's largest media companies, owns MTV, as well as BET and UPN, the latter two networks that target African Americans. Viacom Outdoor, a subsidiary of Viacom, bills itself as "the world's largest out-of-home media company."

"Let freedom ring" was taken from a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the Black fist is a significant symbol in the African American community because it has long been seen as representative of "Black Power."

"To take this phrase made popular by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the fight for freedom and justice, and trivialize it in such a way is both disrespectful and unacceptable," Pfleger said. "As we prepare to celebrate Dr. King's birthday, we will not tolerate this kind of brazen disrespect. Howard Stern may have managed to push his craziness on cable, but we should not have to tolerate it in our communities."

[via Adfreak]

[UPDATE]

In related news, Adweek reports that Lamar Advertising, one of the nation's largest outdoor advertising companies, has refused an ad sponsored by the New York-based Coalition for a Secure Driver's License that shows an Arab holding a hand grenade and a driver's license.

Saying that the advertiser was playing on racial fears to get its message across, the Baton Rouge, La., operator of more than 150,000 billboards rejected the ad planned for display in North Carolina and New Mexico.

The advertiser was able to run the ads on billboards operated by Magic Media.

December 26, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 2 Comments

Steve Rubel of Cooper Katz, a NYC pr firm, sees a larger role for corporate blogs in 2006.

In 2006 blogs will play a bigger role in how companies find and retain key talent. Smaller companies that might normally have a tough time positioning themselves as cutting edge places to work will use transparency to compete for top talent. At the same time, large company bloggers who establish a foothold as subject matter experts will find themselves increasingly wooed. Finally, a small group of companies will turn their talent loose in the blogopshere to keep them motivated and engaged...and visible.

It worked for Rubel. No doubt about that. His firm created a business practice around his blog, which is clearly the exception, not the rule. But I'd like to see more of this type of thing, so I hope he's correct.

December 26, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Freelance Fred thinks Lexus is stretching a bit with its buy-your-honey-a-new-car spot.

t’is the season to hallucinate

I’ve read reports that the average American will spend under $700 this year for everyone on his or her Christmas list. And yet, the marketing people at Lexus seem to feel that some of us will go out and drop 40 thousand bucks on a Lexus for the significant other, and judging from the commercials, they expect this to happen as an impulse buy. Yes, that would make it a “December to remember” all right, if $40 thousand vanished from the IRA or college fund. Worse, though, would be the inadequacy a Lexus receiving spouse might feel for giving a sweater and matching scarf set. If the marketing people at Lexus think their commercials are legitimate scenarios, either they’re getting paid too much or they think it’s still 1999 — possibly both.

December 27, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

NYT: Shoppers looking to pick up Meg Wolitzer's latest novel, "The Position," on Amazon.com last week found the usual readers' comments and excerpts from reviews. They also found something unexpected: posts on the subject of literature from Ms. Wolitzer herself.

The entries were part of a new program called Amazon Connect, begun late last month to enhance the connections between authors and their fans - and to sell more books - with author blogs and extended personal profile pages on the company's online bookstore site. So far, Amazon has recruited a group of about a dozen authors, including novelists, writers of child care manuals and experts on subjects as diverse as real estate investing, science, fishing and the lyrics of the Grateful Dead.

David Dodd, the author of "The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics," used his Amazon blog to respond to comments from a reader who, in an online review of the book, raised questions about its completeness. The book includes 170 songs written by and for the Dead and 14 other songs of major importance to the band's performances over the years, but not all of the more than 400 songs in the band's repertory.

December 27, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 2 Comments

If you own a Hummer, don't be surprised if people give you the finger while you're out and about. There's a web site with hundreds of photos of people doing just that.

December 27, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

[via Kris Krug]

p.s. CMS = Content Management System

December 27, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Jason Calacanis, CEO of Weblogs, Inc. makes some interesting predictions for 2006. Read them all at his site, or read these two, cherry-picked for your pleasure.

13. The housing bubble will deflate/burst (it's much worse now than people are saying) and consumer confidence and spending will be moderately shaken. This will create a pullback in consumer advertising which will result in a cooling of the media/Web 2.0 space and another round of main stream media layoffs (think magazines, newspapers, etc).

16. Gawker will hit 20 blogs and get bought by Newscorp--Nick Denton will keep Fleshbot and retire for the third time before spinning the Fleshbot into an ipod video service claiming all the while that "there's no business in it."

December 27, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Marc Babej of Being Resonable recently asked Tom Asacker of A Clear Eye some pertinent questions. Here's one:

Q. You’re one of the few marketing writers who are every bit as passionate about retention marketing as they are to acquisition. Is retention marketing getting more respect now than it used to, and why?

A. Thanks for the kind words Marc. And let me modify your use of terminology slightly. I don’t believe the word “retention” has a place in 21st century marketing. To me retention means holding onto something that you own . . . that you’ve captured. One does not capture nor retain customers. Many marketing executives continue to respond to our complex, rapidly changing and increasingly uncertain markeplace with simplistic, cause-and-effect thinking. This is very dangerous. Just ask General Motors.

The marketplace is not a mechanistic, Newtonian model where you try to influence the behavior of chemicals in a beaker, balls on a pool table, or customers in a database. Appealing to customers (existing or potential ones) is a subjective blend of art and science, where you’re subtlety attempting to influence feelings (and thus, behavior). You’re dealing with the perceptions and actions of intelligent, curious, socially influenced human beings. People whose preferences change constantly, especially in the United States of Extravagance.

December 27, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Fast Company: There was a time when "working a hotel" meant fishnets and a miniskirt--now it's a laptop and a cell.

Hang out in a hotel lobby or bar, particularly a high-end one, and you're sure to see more people than ever running their entire business operations from a table over in the corner. "With a city-center hotel, it's hard to say who's a hotel guest," says Mark Sergot, director of sales and marketing at the Fairmont hotel in Chicago. Given the trappings of the free public space of a hotel, why not? Afraid of getting busted? Not only do hotel managers not mind, but most we talked to view the practice as a chance to enhance their bottom lines.

As the Fairmont's Sergot explains, "Folks sitting in the lobby are typically bringing the hotel revenue, be it the coffee in the morning or cocktails in the evening."

For the meeting holders, hotel lobbies have a lot of advantages over, say, Starbucks--or, more awkwardly, their own hotel rooms, which are bedrooms. "If it's a nice hotel with nice furnishings, it's a really comfortable environment," says Nathan Papadopulos, a marketing manager for Logitech, the consumer-electronics maker.

December 27, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Steve Hall of Adrants answered some questions today.

If you asked me in March of 2002 when Adrants was launched as a side project to fill time during a period of between agency unemployment if it would ever become a self-sustaining business that pays all the family's bills and would become, in March 2004, my full time job, I would have called you crazy. But, miraculously, that has become the case. Ten thousand people subscribe to this site's daily email newsletter and that number increases by 50-100 each day. The site is visited by 12-15,000 unique individuals each day and pumps out 25-30,000 page views per day. Seven thousand people subscribe to the site's RSS feed. And the numbers keep curving up. And to think I was excited when, one day, Site Meter indicated I had 100 people reading the site each day. Times have changed dramatically including the fast changing media landscape that made all of this possible. That and the powerful motivation that last unemployment check had on things.

It took Steve two years to turn his blog into a full time venture. We're only 14 months in to our project here, and we have a long ways to go to profitability. But it can be be done. Adrants is living proof of that.

December 27, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 2 Comments

From USA Today:

Advertisements have popped up on buses in Arizona and Massachusetts. New ones are set to appear in Michigan and Colorado.

Dozens more districts from Florida to Pennsylvania may join them.

"This will spread across the nation, because there's so much money that will come into schools as a result of doing this," says Daniel Shearer, director of transportation at the Scottsdale Unified School District.

The Arizona city just outside Phoenix began displaying ads on the sides of its buses last December. Advertisers include real estate agencies, a local toy store and an ambulance company. The district anticipates the ads will bring in $300,000 this year and up to $900,000 in a few years.

So what kinds of advertisers are going to buy space on the short bus?

December 28, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

USA TODAY: That many small businesses have grown tremendously thanks to Google's pay-per-click advertising is well known. The low cost of entry and the fact that advertisers only have to pay if an ad is clicked has brought hundreds of thousands to the new medium, with amazing success stories.

Less well-known is that many non-profits are also benefiting from search advertising. They are attracting more donors, and more people in need. And best of all, for them — it's free. Google provides the advertising space at no cost.

Google has given away $33 million in free advertising to 850 non-profits in the last two years, says Sheryl Sandberg, Google's vice president of global online sales. "We don't see any limit to this. We want it to continue growing."

To apply for Google Grants, groups must have a website and official non-profit status. A short application at http://services.google.com/googlegrants/application asks how Grants can help. Non-profits must compose a sample ad and address any affiliation with political advocacy groups.

That's a deal-breaker for many non-profits. Google will give free ad space only to non-religious and non-political groups, Sandberg says, because, "We want to be fair and unbiased in everything we do."

Google's stance means that groups such as Amnesty International, the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and Catholic Relief Services don't qualify. "It's not fair," says Paul Tillman, director of marketing for the Catholic Relief Services. "We help on the basis of need, not creed. That's a broad brush they're painting us with."

The decision on who gets in or out is made by 250 staffers at Google who volunteer to work on the project.

December 28, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Toronto Star: A gas attack in a St. Petersburg home-supply store on one of the busiest shopping days of the year sickened scores of people yesterday in an incident that police called likely motivated by a commercial dispute or blackmail attempt.

St. Petersburg police spokesman Vyacheslav Stepchenko said the gas appeared to be methyl mercaptan, which smells like rotten cabbage and is both naturally occurring and manufactured for use in plastics and pesticides. It rarely has long-lasting effects.

Seventy-eight people sought medical care: 66 were briefly hospitalized and sent home, officials said.

Most efforts to undermine competitors' sales in Russia's sharp-elbowed free market take the form of negative advertising or damaging rumours. Business-related violence nonetheless remains a feature of the cutthroat capitalism that enveloped Russia following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

December 28, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 0 Comments

From the AP:

Michael Vale, the actor best known for portraying sleepy-eyed Fred the Baker in Dunkin' Donuts commercials, has died at age 83.

Ads featuring Fred, who uttered the trademark line "Time to make the doughnuts," ran for 15 years until Vale retired in 1997.

The same campaign for 15 years? Good lord. These days, campaigns barely last 15 weeks. R.I.P., Michael.

December 28, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Brandweek: Eli Lilly and Co. agreed to plead guilty to a federal misdemeanor charge that it illegally promoted its Evista osteoporosis medication for the treatment of breast cancer and cardiovascular risk reduction.

The company also agreed to a $36 million fine to settle the charge.

The investigation into the effort began in July 2002. The government alleged that in 1998, certain Lilly employees promoted Evista for the prevention and reduction in the risk of breast cancer and cardiovascular risk reduction. The product is not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for either of these uses; Evista is approved in the U.S. for both the prevention and treatment of osteoporosis in post-menopausal women.

As part of the settlement, a civil consent decree will require Lilly to continue to have a compliance program and to undertake a set of defined corporate integrity obligations related to Evista for five years.

December 28, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 2 Comments

John January is stoked. He now owns the ultimate gadget and he has a full stomach.

So everyone at SHS got video iPods as part of our holiday time revelry.Yup. The whole damn agency. We also got hams. Spiral cut, mind you. As thrilled as I was with the iconic gizmo, I must tell you that I was incredibly thankful for that ham when I got home last night after a particularly festive party with particularly free alcoholic beverages. The Managing Partners (that's what we call the owner types) said the iPod bonus was because they really wanted us to put a focus on the changing trends of communication and entertainment. Maybe they needed to say that for tax purposes. But it was clear they were really rewarding the staff for working so damn hard this year.

What did your workplace cough up for Christmas? Hopefully, not another lump of coal.

December 28, 2005 by Shawn Hartley | Permalink | 2 Comments

Yahoo!, one of the key providers of mass-market RSS aggregators, finally took a step forward and published their RSS whitepaper, covering their own findings with RSS, based on their usage data.

a) Awareness of RSS is quite low among Internet users. 12% of users are aware of RSS, and 4% have knowingly used RSS.

b) 27% of Internet users consume RSS syndicated content on personalized start pages (e.g., My Yahoo!, My MSN) without knowing that RSS is the enabling technology.

c) 28% of Internet users are aware of podcasting, but only 2% currently subscribe to podcasts.

d) Even tech-savvy "Aware RSS Users" prefer to access RSS feeds via user-friendly, browser-based experiences (e.g., My Yahoo!, Firefox, My MSN).

e) My Yahoo! has the highest awareness and use of any RSS-enabled product.

Download the Whitepaper

December 28, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Adweek: WPP Group relationship marketing shop Wunderman said it has acquired Bridge Worldwide, an interactive agency in Cincinnati.

Bridge, which employs 120 people, will operate as an independent unit of Wunderman. Bridge is best known for online efforts for packaged-goods giant Procter & Gamble, which also works with WPP through its Grey and Landor Associates units.

"Bridge Worldwide's depth of online and healthcare experience complements Wunderman's, and we both share the same philosophies about the power of customer relationships and online dialog," said Wunderman chairman and CEO Daniel Morel, in a statement.

Terms were not disclosed.

December 29, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

NYT: AT&T became the country's largest phone company in November when SBC Communications, one of the original seven Baby Bells, bought AT&T, the old Ma Bell. Having absorbed its former parent and taken its name, executives at SBC are introducing a sweeping campaign to highlight the company's new aspirations.

The challenge is to refresh the venerable AT&T name, which in recent years has been better known for corporate missteps, layoffs and big losses. On New Year's Eve, AT&T will start blanketing the airwaves, newspapers, the Internet and thousands of billboards with its redesigned blue globe and the catchphrase, "Your World. Delivered."

"The ads are going to let people know they can count on us," said Karen Jennings, senior executive vice president for human resources and communications at AT&T.

"We wanted to embrace the spirit of optimism," said Roy Spence, the president of GSD&M in Austin, Tex., which developed the campaign with another agency, Rodgers Townsend from St. Louis.

December 29, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 5 Comments

Bob Parsons, CEO of domain name registrar, Go Daddy, chimes in on the "art" of TV advertising.

In my opinion, in order for a television commercial to be effective, it has to be polarizing. This week, "USA Today" published its annual list of top television advertisements for 2005. "USA Today" showed Go Daddy’s Super Bowl ad to be both the 4th most liked — and the 4th most disliked — ad. That’s about as polarizing as it gets!

We did get many complaints from customers, and would-be customers, about our Super Bowl ad. However, that didn’t keep people from moving their business to Go Daddy in droves, and hardly anyone moved away.

I suppose $9 registrations have nothing to do with his firm's success.

[via Adfreak]

December 29, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Pete Barrett's cover for the December issue of Creativity.

From the mouth of Mr. Bogusky:

We work like fucking lunatics. This one is legendary. Too much so, in terms of how people imagine it. And we really do work but we get to have so much fun--I think work is just a lousy word to describe what it is but it's the only one we have.

December 29, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Hugh MacLeod on his South African wine client, and how blogging helped move the needle:

Blogging doubled Stormhoek sales in less than twelve months.

I have been saying this for years, and still not everybody believes me: "Blogs are a good way of making things happen indirectly."

No, bloggers and their friends didn't start suddenly descending on supermarkets, buying the wine in large numbers. That's not how it works.

What happened is that by interfacing with the blogosphere, it fundementally changed how Stormhoek looked at treating their primary customers (the supermarket chains) and the end-users (the supermarkets' customers).

i.e. It caused an internal disruption, both within the company and the actual trade. Wine drinkers' basic purchasing habits didn't change because of the meme, but the meme allowed Stormhoek to align itself more closely with said habits.

You have to remember: there are hundreds of thousands of vinyards in the world, all trying to sell to the twelve or so mass market wine buyers in the UK. So you need a story that cuts through the clutter.

And the best stories have market disruption baked-in.

With the disruption, came a new and different story that the supermarket buyers and the importers wanted to hear. Telling the story made the sales process easier. With easier sales, the curve was raised.

So my advice with business blogs is not to think of them as sales channels, but as disruption channels. Much more effective.

I have to wonder if the success described above would have happened had it been someone other than Hugh behind the keyboard. Gaping Void has HUGE traffic, which the wine blog in question directly benefits from.

December 29, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Court Crandall has creativity oozing from his pores. He runs one of the best agencies on the left coast, writes (and sells) popular screenplays and now he's got a new children's book to his credit.

According to the book's publisher, "Hugville is a town full of unusual hugs. If you come to visit, learn how to squeeze a friend with the Octopus Hug, twist him with the Tornado Hug, and tickle him with the Monkey Hug! The friendly Mayor will guide you on a tour of Hugville, and he’ll even give you a turn at the Hug Jug!"

If you're wondering how Crandall came up with the Hugville idea, here's the story:

A few years ago, my oldest son started getting a little too old and too cool to want to hug dad much. The way I saw it, I had a choice: I could accept that we had made the inevitable transition from hugs to high-fives, or, I could make hugging more fun. I chose the latter, creating a series of crazy hugs that ranged from the Monkey Hug, where you scratch under your arms and pick fleas off each other to the Tornado Hug, where you, "Twirl through the room, then follow your hug with a dustpan and broom." Within a week, Chase was not only eager to hug dad, but requesting his favorite hugs and telling his friends about it. At the point other parents started asking me to explain the Octopus Hug, the Itchy Dog Hug, etc., I knew I was onto something.

December 29, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 2 Comments

To be honest, I wasn't blown away by the work in the new CA. And I blame Huey Lewis and Bryan Adams.

You see, I’m a huge fan of music—and I started buying records when I was 7 years old. To me, nothing will ever replace the music I heard in the few years when I was 13, 14 or 15—smack in the middle of the 80’s, which many older people considered to be a musical wasteland at the time. But damnit, I wanted my MTV, and I still wish they had World Premiere Videos. It’s not that I don’t like new music. The White Stripes, Franz Ferdinand, Madeleine Peyroux—all are good, but none of their CD’s get under my skin the way “Life’s Rich Pageant” did. Or “The Joshua Tree.” Hell, I’ll even cop to being a fan of “Reckless.”

Likewise, no recent ad has gotten under my skin the way Nike’s “If You Let Me Play” or the beautifully black & white Norwegian Cruise Lines ads with the non-linear, poetic copy did. For me, those were the seminal ads that showed me what was possible in advertising. I vividly recall seeing those ads, reading them, re-reading them, and aspiring to write something that would rise to that level.

It's the focus of my new column on TalentZoo.com

December 29, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 7 Comments

Alex Bogusky refuses to be cynical (see December's Creativity, or take my word for it). George Parker, on the other hand, does not entertain that particular daydream.

Many years ago, when I used to work for a particularly crazy woman in California, she made a statement that has stuck with me ever since... "Our job is not to create ads, it's to manage the process." I thought she was nuts, but as the years have passed, I've realized that as far as the fucked up ad biz is concerned: She was dead on. How many times have we sat in meetings that decided nothing, read briefs that stated the obvious, created numerous campaigns destined never to see the light of day, been kiss-ass nice to clients (and agency management) who you would rather drown in sewage? In fact, how much of your working life have you spent "Managing the process" rather than actually producing anything of worth?

December 29, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

Jeremy Hermanns of Tribal DDB was on Alaska flight #536 from Seattle to L.A. when twenty minutes after take off the MD-80 airplane tore a hole in it’s fuselage at 30K feet. Jeremy writes about it on his blog.

It's an interesting account, but what is hard to understand are comments on his blog like this one:

You come up with some very imaginative terms to describe the smell and what was happening. Can you explain to me, since when did jet liners start using AV gas? What was burning? YOu say and I quote “I knew something was terribly wrong. As the smell of acrid AV-gas and burning plastic filled the cabin”. Since the hole was far forward of the both the wings in which the fuel is stored and the engines for that matter, where did the smell of AV gas come from? No report of anything burnt was ever made, please explain the burning smell?

Do me one favore. I know you were involved in a terrible event, but don’t make more out of it than it was. Lieing about the smell of gas and burning anything in your blog only serves your own agenda.

By john on 12.28.05 7:58 am

What in the world could this atrocious speller be thinking?

Turns out this comment and others in this vein are coming from an IP address that belongs to Alaska Airlines. Unreal.

December 30, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

USA TODAY: The world's biggest chipmaker said Thursday it will scrap its 37-year-old logo and well-known tagline as part of a major rebranding that will emphasize its shift away from its core PC business and into consumer products.

The original Intel logo featuring a lowered "e" will be replaced with one showing an oval swirl surrounding the company's name.

The phrase "Leap ahead" will supplant "Intel Inside," which launched the Silicon Valley giant into public awareness and helped it build the world's No. 5 brand, worth an estimated $36 billion, according to consultancy Interbrand.

"The reason they are doing this is they need to move away from the PC to being a solution provider. The real growth for the next five years is cellphones, and for the next 10 years is probably consumer electronics, and Intel has done a really poor job of penetrating those areas," said Eric Ross, an analyst with ThinkEquity Partners, who has "buy" ratings on both Intel and AMD.

December 30, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Washington Post: XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. plans to introduce new technologies next year that will allow users to switch stations using voice commands.

XM, working with Kirkland, Wash.-based VoiceBox Technologies Inc., is designing a system that allows the driver of a car to control the radio by asking it to search by genre of music, for example. The system will then reply to the driver with several options.

The feature is part of a push into new services that will market the company as more of a computing-and-communications service for the car. Customers will be able to access the kind of information that usually would come over a desktop computer, including real-time traffic information, as well as other entertainment.

XM, which this week also said it would start broadcasting two of its channels in surround sound in March, had more than 5 million subscribers at the end of September.

December 30, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Wired: Pay-per-click is the fastest-growing segment of all advertising, reports the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Last year, Yahoo! alone ran more than 250 million individual listings, according to Michael Egan, the company's search-marketing director of content strategy. Yahoo! doesn't break out PPC earnings separately in its financial statements, but Goldman Sachs analyst Anthony Noto believes that keyword advertising accounted for about half of the company's estimated $3.7 billion in revenue for 2005. PPC is even more lucrative for Google. According to Noto, Google will end 2005 with $6.1 billion in revenue. About 99 percent of that revenue comes from keyword ads (over 56 percent from AdWords, according to the company's most recent quarterly financial statement, and 43 percent from AdSense), making Google a bigger recipient of ad dollars than any television network or newspaper chain. All of which is to say that little blue text links, a type of advertising that barely existed five years ago, are poised to become the single most important form of marketing in the US - unless click fraud ruins it.

If that occurs, the consequences will be felt throughout the Net. By splitting revenue with the sites that host the ads, search engines have become, in effect, the Internet's venture capitalists, funding the content that attracts people to the computer screen. Unlike the VCs who backed the boom-era Internet, search engines now provide revenue to thousands of wildly diverse sites at little up-front cost to them - PPC advertising is one of the few income sources available to bloggers, for instance. If rampant click fraud overwhelms the system, it will muffle the Internet's fabulous cacophony of voices.

December 30, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 12 Comments

From The New York Times:

While Bono tries to change the world by hobnobbing with politicians and Sir Bob Geldof plays host to his mega-benefit concerts, Willie Nelson has birthed his own brand of alternative fuel. It is called, fittingly enough, BioWillie. And in BioWillie, Mr. Nelson, 72, has blended two of his biggest concerns: his love of family farmers and disdain for the Iraq war.

BioWillie is a type of biodiesel, a fuel that can be made from any number of crops and run in a normal diesel engine. If it sounds like a joke, a number of businesses, as well as city and state and county governments, have been switching their transportation fleets to biodiesel blends over the last year. The rationale is that it is a domestic fuel that can provide profit to farmers and that it will help the environment, though environmentalists are not universally enthusiastic about it.

You can find out more about BioWillie at BioWillie.com, or for a more serious look at it, wnbiodiesel.com. Man, I'd love to work on this advertising account. It would be always on my mind.

December 31, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

Kentucky Fried Cruelty: Deciding to make a statement every time he’s asked for or signs his name, a 19-year-old PETA staff member—formerly known as Chris Garnett—has legally changed his name to KentuckyFriedCruelty.com, the same name as PETA’s Web site that gives the lowdown on KFC’s refusal to eliminate the worst abuses of chickens raised and killed to fill its buckets. The former Dover Plains, New York, resident and current Street Team coordinator of peta2—PETA’s youth division—has the official state papers and driver’s license to prove it. His parents—who have been supportive since he went vegan at age 15—were a little shocked at first, but although they insist on still calling him Chris, they’ve accepted the change.