August 1, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 2 Comments

From Bloomberg:

Atkins Nutritionals Inc., founded by the late diet guru Dr. Robert Atkins, filed for bankruptcy protection in New York as consumer interest in low-carbohydrate foods faded.

What's interesting here is that the Atkins Diet has been around since the 1970's. But the company got huge amounts of press a couple of years ago, and rode a fad. Meanwhile, dieters looking for the latest thing got on board. They weren't really believers in the science behind the brand, so the brand got diluted and suffered.

The more publicity Atkins got, the more it ultimately hurt them.

Is it better to remain a cult brand with loyal followers, or is it better to build a brand big and fast when the opportunity presents itself?

August 1, 2005 by Shawn Hartley | Permalink | 0 Comments

From Ad Age:

Mired in a stagnant $17 billion athletic-footwear market, Nike is trying to juice up its business by launching an upscale urban fashion line. Blue Ribbon Sports, which was the original name of the company that later became Nike, has been resurrected as an urbran fashion wear line.

The company has quietly introduced Blue Ribbon Sports -- the company's original name as coined by founder Phil Knight -- an exclusive brand of urban-themed clothing available only at such high-end retailers as Barney's and Fred Segal.

Full Story

It is interesting to see Nike playing catch-up for once, with Adidas already going upscale. How will the company that Michael Jordan built do with Blue Ribbon Sports?

August 1, 2005 by Shawn Hartley | Permalink | 1 Comments

You asked and we answered.

Introducing the Forums at AdPulp.com.

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

Lewis Lazare: Nobody loves a publicity stunt like Bernie DiMeo of DiMeo & Co./Chicago. Still, we'll take DiMeo at his word when he informs us he has named former Northwestern University star running back Darnell Autry as director of marketing for his boutique ad agency. Football fans may recall Autry was the offensive player of the year and a Heisman Trophy finalist in 1995, when he led the Northwestern Wildcats to their first Rose Bowl appearance since 1948.

Subsequently Autry played briefly with the Chicago Bears and the Philadelphia Eagles after leaving Northwestern. He also pursued his passion for acting -- appearing in several episodes of "What I Like About You" and "The District." Now, it appears Autry is looking to add some advertising expertise to his resume.

Always on the prowl for new accounts, DiMeo believes Autry will be of help on the new business front, thanks to his various sports and Northwestern contacts. Autry also is expected to do some work with DiMeo's account team for current clients, which include the Chicago Bulls and Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits local co-op.

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

Adweek: Jeff Goodby offered the following explanation when asked why his agency wanted Subway, despite indications that the client would likely resist the type of brand-image work Goodby is typically known for in favor of retail-focused, more tactical spots.

"Because I'm a stupid optimist," Goodby joked. "It's either optimism or masochism. You always think you'll get a hold of a client and figure out a way to find an ingenious place to go."

"Advertising people tend to believe that, given the right circumstances, everybody will like them," he explained. "It may be delusional and arrogant, but it's true."

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

The Telegraph: The president of one of the world's biggest advertising agency holding companies has issued a damning state-of-the-nation assessment that describes France as being in steep decline and his countrymen as "narrowed and stunted".

Maurice Levy, the head of the media giant Publicis, whose company owns Saatchi and Saatchi and has offices in 100 countries across six continents, said France had failed to get the 2012 Olympics because the world now saw it as a nation of perdants and "losers". For good measure, he described the 35-hour week as "absurd" and the wails of complaint that followed Paris's loss of the Games to London as "pathetic".

His forthright critique was published in the opinion section on the front page of the Le Monde.

August 2, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 6 Comments

Nothing like a little compare-and-contrast-T&A ads:

My new column on TalentZoo.com takes a look at both of these ads, and which ad campaign was, in my humble opinion, a riskier move.

August 3, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

According to USA Today, Bimba Rao and Abhijit Kakhandiki paid $880,000 3 months ago for a 1,150 square foot, three-bedroom, two-bathroom house on a shaded corner in Friendly Woods, a block over the Cupertino border.

The house was old and small and needed work. But they liked the neighborhood and the home's potential. The listed price was $750,000, so they offered $880,000 and wrote a personal letter to the owners explaining why they liked tthe house. Their efforts bested 25 other offers.

August 3, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

Brandweek: French sportswear brand Lacoste this week will launch a global campaign via French agency BETC, Paris, that embraces the brand's connection to 1930's French tennis champion Rene Lacoste in an energetic, modern way.

"This is a big campaign for us and we wanted to launch it in a really big way," said Sarah Penchansky, pr manager.

Creative consists of two-page spreads with an image of a racquet-wielding Rene Lacoste on one side and a current image, such as a young woman leaping through the air wearing a white skirt and vest on the other. The photos incorporate licensed product such as hats, bags and shoes for a unified look.

"All of these images are inspired by him playing on the court, which is the spirit of the crocodile," Penchansky said. "This is the first time we have used these images of him."

A French tagline, "un peu d'air sur terre," which roughly translated means, "a little air on earth," drives home the theme of air, energy and movement. "It's really different from our previous campaign, which was much more generic and not a lot of motion," Penchansky said. "This definitely embraces the feeling of Lacoste a lot more. It's levity, it's light, air and movement, and you can see that in all the images. Lacoste is movement. Our roots are in tennis. This definitely hits a nerve."

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

Room 116 points to Flickr user, Sem's image capture. Apparently, the super balls were released during the making of a new Sony commercial.

August 3, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Washington Post: Advertising.com Inc., a unit of Time Warner Inc.'s America Online, agreed to settle federal charges that the company offered free security software without adequately disclosing that it also came with adware.

Under a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, Advertising.com will be required to "clearly and prominently" disclose that consumers who install the program, SpyBlast, will receive pop-up ads based on their Internet browsing habits.

The FTC complaint charged that when consumers install SpyBlast—a software intended to protect against hackers—they are not required to read the agreement alerting users about receiving potential marketing messages.

Adware and spyware have become major nuisances for consumers. Both types of programs typically are installed with little or no disclosure. While adware is less dangerous than spyware, consumers complain adware programs bombard them with pop-up ads, slow their computers and are hard to remove.

August 3, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

W+K London has a padded concepting room.

August 3, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

"Advertising without posters is like fishing without worms." --The Hatch Brothers

Adfreak reports on the new KC Masterpeice print campaign from DDB San Francisco, made in conjunction with Hatch Showprint of Nashville.

Hatch Showprint, the oldest print shop in America opened in 1879. For decades it was the leading poster printer for circuses, vaudeville shows and sporting events. Today, it is best know for creating images of Grand Ole Opry stars, thousands of which line the shop's walls. Modern-day artists employ the same techniques that have been used since the 15th century.

August 4, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

Lewis Lazare: On Wednesday, the man responsible for orchestrating what may be the most embarrassing parade of ads ever to appear in the annual Super Bowl of Advertising finally took the fall for that debacle at brewing giant Anheuser-Busch.

Bob Lachky is leaving his longtime post as vice president of brand management to take on the newly created post of executive vice president, global industry development, in which he will represent A-B with alcohol industry groups nationally and abroad. A-B described Lachky's new job as a "promotion," but it clearly leaves him in a much less powerful position than he had overseeing advertising for all A-B beer brands.

A-B tapped an insider, Marlene V. Coulis, to replace Lachky. Coulis, a 13-year veteran of the brewery, becomes the first woman and the first Hispanic to head up A-B's marketing efforts. She had been vice president of marketing planning and research and customer satisfaction. But sources were perplexed by her selection. "She was a woman in man's club at the brewery and never had any real clout," said one Chicago ad executive who knew Coulis.

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

According to the New York Times, Martha Stewart will spend three extra weeks under house arrest after reports that she violated terms of her home confinement by going to a yoga class and motoring around her estate in an off-road vehicle.

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

Jennifer Whetzel of Sullivan Higdon Sink attended the 4As Planning Conference in Chicago and had this to say:

So the conference kicked off yesterday with a great incitation by John Hunt, the Worldwide Creative Director of TBWA/Hunt/Lascaris. He defined Account Planners as the intelligentsia of the advertising industry. He charged us with the task of being catalysts to fresh new thinking and the goal to set creatives free from the code of sameness.

He said the definition of a great campaign is one where the idea comes from a different place - it's not just a great idea or a great execution of an idea. He described planners as the one who helps creatives find that new place. Any thoughts from creatives out there?

Everyone's favorite blogging brand planner, Russell Davies, formerly of Wieden + Kennedy and currenly with Nike, saw things a bit differently.

John Hunt is talking now. Seems like a nice guy. Did quite a nice mock sermon thing, but entirely based in a very old world view of advertising - the creatives have big ideas, the account guys make them small because the client is unimaginative and the planners do lots of research.

Is it not possible that some clients are imaginative, some creatives are unoriginal and some planners don't want to do research?

Is it really true that creatives just need to be set free from the tyranny of dull clients?

Maybe once, but not anymore. Maybe a bunch of demanding clients are trying to get exciting work out of dull creatives.

That doesn't seem to be conventional wisdom among creatives but maybe they should concede it's possible and that would make them stretch themselves a bit.

August 4, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

Weblogs, Inc.'s Design Blog brings us this board from New Zealand’s Clemenger BBDO.

The billboard utilizes 12,148 aluminum pegs of various heights to cast shadows forming the grayscale image when the sun is out.

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

Brand Noise: Internet users from the ages of 12 to 17 say e-mail is best for talking to parents or institutions, but they are more likely to fire up IM when talking to each other, the nonprofit Pew Internet and American Life Project found.

Email is still used by 90 percent of online teens but the survey found greater enthusiasm for instant messaging.

Three-quarters of teen Internet users use instant messaging, compared with 42 percent of adults, Pew said. Nearly half of teens said they exchanged IMs daily, and some said they spent more than two hours each day using instant-messenger programs.

Half or nearly half of the 1,100 teenagers surveyed said they used IM to send web links or photos to each other, while nearly one-third said they had sent music or video clips over IM.

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

I like it when brands with heritage offer it up on their site. Here's a 1946 ad from Vespa, the Italian scooter company.

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

Robert Novak walked off the set during a live segment on CNN yesterday. He also cursed his nemesis on the left, James Carville.

According to the New York Times:

About two hours later, a spokeswoman for CNN, Laurie Goldberg, released a statement saying that the network had "asked Mr. Novak to take some time off." Asked later in a telephone interview whether Mr. Novak was being suspended from his work at the Cable News Network, Ms. Goldberg said, "We're characterizing it as a mutual decision."

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

I noticed in Adweek that Creative Director, Dave Damman, left Fallon for West Wayne in Atlanta.

The move reunites Damman with Bobby Pearce, WestWayne's executive creative director, who left Fallon in June to join WestWayne. The two have known each other for a decade, beginning as an art director-copywriter team at Carmichael Lynch in Minneapolis and spending the past two years as creative directors at Fallon. "We finish each other's sentences," Damman said of the relationship.

While that revelation is probably more than we need to know, what I find interesting is the idea that West Wayne is dedicated to making Atlanta a creative mecca. I got a press release on this from West Wayne and that's their word. Mecca.

I used to hear similar sentiments from colleagues of mine in Denver. And I think now what I thought then. Why is this a concern? Who cares what Denver or Atlanta are doing? I know it's terribly old-fashioned, but what matters most is the quality of work you're providing for your clients. One's market has little bearing on that.

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

I was invited to the Hadrian's Wall summer party. And I'll bet you money, Lewis Lazare was not. Nah nah na nah nah.

Okay, enough of that.

You've got to see how Chicago's most creative agency prepares a party invite. Go now. You'll be better for it upon your return.

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

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Just as commuters are catching up to the idea of satellite radio for their cars, former graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a next-generation radio concept that allows users to tune into music from iPods and other digital music players in nearby cars.

The idea, which the students developed for an unidentified "major automaker" last year, is called Roadcasting. Using it, you could tune your radio to music playlists coming from other cars within a 30-mile radius. Or you could transmit your own list of songs for people in other nearby cars to listen to.

Perhaps best of all, the Roadcasting software would learn what songs or musical genres you like. Using those preferences, it would sift through all the broadcasts available at any one time and choose the ones you should like best. Every time you turned on the Roadcasting apparatus, it would find an ad hoc radio station -- or create a mix of songs -- with your tastes in mind.

That kind of matching -- called "filtering" -- is what makes the idea special, and ties it to an important trend in how people are experiencing technology and culture.

The technology is largely theoretical but would probably work like this: Besides having traditional radios or CD players, cars would also have a Roadcasting feature. When it is turned on, it would search for all the digital playlists being played nearby, probably over some kind of mobile Wi-Fi network, the same kind of technology that allows you to flip open your laptop and check e-mail at a coffee shop or airline terminal.

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

USA Today: A podcast is a digital recording of a radio-style audio program that can be downloaded from the Internet and played on a digital music player. Many podcasters think the technology could revolutionize radio as TiVo did television.

Nic Harcourt of Morning Becomes Eclectic on KCRW

Record labels worry that listeners will pirate the songs contained in the downloaded radio shows. The result: yet another Napster-like standoff over piracy and music rights.

Streaming media is different from podcasting because it's not a recording, which makes it harder to pirate. A stream is essentially a broadcast that travels over the Internet instead of the airwaves.

Record and radio companies have struck a blanket licensing agreement for streaming based on traditional radio licenses. No such agreement exists for podcasting, which is why most podcasts are currently "talk radio" or feature bands on indie labels that want all the exposure they can get.

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

Boston Globe: When parents and baseball fans arrived at the state's Little League championship in Beverly on Sunday, they were met at the gate with a friendly welcome: Members of two Beverly baseball teams, ages 10 to 12, handed out baseballs imprinted with the Bank of America logo, packaged with peanuts and Cracker Jacks.

''Switch to Bank of America," one of the boys yelled.

''It's a better bank for better people," another chimed in.

Bank of America Corp., which last year signed a deal with Little League Baseball, Inc., to become its official bank, one of a growing number of large national companies that see a big payoff from marketing to children's sports teams. After years of haphazard and disjointed efforts, mostly by tiny local businesses, to penetrate youth sports, big national corporations, with their multimillion-dollar marketing budgets, increasingly are horning in on the action. Little League Baseball now has 15 national sponsors, up from about eight a decade ago.

''People care very deeply about the Red Sox and the Patriots, but the deepest affinity in existence is for their kids' games," said Bryant McBride, group vice president of team and youth sports at Active Marketing Group, which is implementing many of the national companies' youth sports marketing programs.

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

As we examine Hugh's latest creation, do we find truths neatly revealed? Or clever obfuscation?

First, terms need to be defined. "Madison Avenue" is an actual place, but it's also a blanket statement for any big, powerful ad agency. There are maybe 100 to 200 such shops in the U.S., of the 10,000 agencies in business.

"Real blog" is problematic, becasue what's real to one is fantasy or spoof to another. I can see where someone who deploys Moveable Type, Word Press or any other blogware on their site could argue that they have a real blog, whatever it's style or contents. For our purposes here, real means a blog with an authentic voice, or voices, where there's a genuine back-and-forth between users and those generating the content.

Here's a real situation. Marketing people on the client side have to get copy approved by their lawyers. In a regulated industry like beer or spirits, all copy goes through legal, everytime. Period. So, to relax that rule for the blog's sake is actually asking a lot. It's asking the client to rethink their approval process.

It is a maverick move to have a real blog. And that fact favors organizations with few layers, who can think on their feet and act fast. To do a customer-facing blog right, the brand team needs to empower an individual or a group of writers to act in real time on behalf of the company.

Those of us who bring marketing blogs into being do not ask much. Just that our clients rethink everything and learn to trust.

August 7, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 12 Comments

Two new books tackle the delicate art of getting and keeping a career in the advertising industry. I haven't gotten a copy of either of these (according to Amazon, they'll be available soon) but I plan to.

From the available-on-August 12 "Pick Me: Breaking Into Advertising and Staying There" by Nancy Vonk and Janet Kestin:

Making it in advertising is tough. Even with a degree and a terrific portfolio, it's hard to get a job. In Pick Me!, Nancy Vonk and Janet Kestin offer a primer for students and junior ad professionals who want to make their mark in advertising. The creators of "Ask Jancy," a popular online forum on one of the world's leading advertising Web sites, answer questions asked by up-and-comers in their trademark straight-talking style. Pick Me! covers everything from choosing the right school to creating a winning portfolio to getting the interview, landing the job, weathering office politics, and starting a successful career. The book also includes career advice from 14 ad industry superstars, including how they got their first jobs, what they look for in a junior ad exec, and what they know now that they wish they'd known then.

From the available-on-September 8 Radical Careering: 100 Truths to Jumpstart Your Job, Your Career, and Your Life by Sally Hogshead:

Do you want to become the most powerful, valuable, fulfilled version of yourself? If so, you're a careerist. Advertising and entrepreneurial rockstar Sally Hogshead reveals 100 Radical Truths for closing the gap between your current reality and your utmost potential, including: # 15: Aspire to be the dumbest person in the room # 31: You can be comfortable, or outstanding, but not both # 67: Mistakes are tuition # 96: Expressing your truest self is the ultimate competitive advantage # 100: Make your memoirs worth reading

With groundbreaking research and startling new ideas for success, Radical Careering will become the indispensable owner's manual to your future. Get ready to turbocharge your career with smarter goals, higher market value, and killer results.

2 incidental notes here: As a University of Georgia graduate, I do applaud the prodigious use of red and black on the covers of both books, but they're curiously similar. And Sally Hogshead is also one of the "14 ad industry superstars" featured in the 'Pick Me' book as well as being the author of "Radical Careering."

August 8, 2005 by Shawn Hartley | Permalink | 0 Comments

Our friends at Reginald Pike pointed us to their breaking creative for Old Navy's Back-To-School. Click the image to view the two spots.

Some of the shrieks emanating from multiplexes across America this summer won't be the result of blockbuster thrillers. Rather they will be caused by something a lot closer to home: the abject horror at realizing that back to school time is closer than you think.

A couple of spine-chilling spots from Old Navy put old horror film tropes to good use as less than gentle reminders. Directed by the Perlorian Brothers
and conceived by Deutsch, Los Angeles, the spots are a faithful homage
to the classic campfire-in-the-woods slasher film and the cold-blooded-killer-from-the- deep movies and promise to have teens running straight from campgrounds and beaches everywhere directly to their nearest Old Navy.

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

USA Today: A giant in the produce industry has planted the seeds for a ground-breaking California spa complex.

Dole Food of pineapple and packaged-salad fame is building a wellness center, spa and 270-room luxury hotel on 20 acres next to its headquarters in Westlake Village, Calif. The complex, about 35 miles northwest of Los Angeles, is due to open next summer.

The spa and medical facilities — a pioneering venture by a food company — will offer everything from massages to plastic-surgery recovery to a longevity test that measures a person's rate of DNA degradation. It is the brainchild of Dole Foods chairman David Murdock, a self-made billionaire in his early 80s who is passionate about health and anti-aging treatments.

"He wants to bring together the best nutritionists and health experts to be on the scientific cutting edge but also provide luxury and pampering," says Jennifer Grossman, director of the Dole Nutrition Institute, which will be involved with spa and hotel-restaurant offerings and send guests home with dietary prescriptions.

The complex was not dreamed up to extend the Dole brand, Grossman says. "For Mr. Murdock, it's a mission kind of thing. The branding is incidental. He is completely passionate about nutrition and how to promote longevity."

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

Promo Magazine: Crown Royal is partnering with NASCAR driver Kurt Busch this month to remind young people of drinking age that getting home safely should be a top priority.

A fleet of purple and gold Crown Royal No. 97 Ford Taurus' (replicas of the official race car) will offer bar patrons around downtown Indianapolis rides home. Some will be surprised to find the NASCAR champion Kurt Busch himself behind the wheel.

Crown Royal-branded taxi stands will be placed outside participating bars on Meridian Street today from 9 pm to 1 am with 10 cars rotating to drive patrons home (within a 20-mile radius of Indianapolis). Riders must be 21 or older.

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

Slate: There is a great Simpsons episode in which Homer, overcome by carbon-monoxide fumes, hallucinates that he is an Ottoman sultan. Though he is surrounded by gyrating concubines, the Simpson family patriarch is not satisfied. "I grow weary of your sexually suggestive dancing," he says. "Bring me my ranch-dressing hose!" Within seconds, the women are blasting him with a geyser of gooey ranch.

Homer's tastes are meant to reflect those of the American everyman, and in this case the Simpsons writers nailed it: Ranch dressing has been the nation's best-selling salad topper since 1992, when it overtook Italian. How did this simple mixture of mayonnaise, buttermilk, and herbs become America's favorite way to liven up lettuce?

In the early days, ranch dressing didn't seem likely to take Italian's crown. It was a strictly local delicacy—the pride of Steve and Gayle Henson, a couple who'd opened a dude ranch near Santa Barbara, Calif., in 1954. Visitors to the Henson spread, known as Hidden Valley Ranch, came for the horseback riding, but they frequently left with fonder memories of Steve's special dressing. The Hensons began to give their guests to-go bottles, and eventually they started a small plant where they manufactured packets of ranch seasoning for the retail market.

In 1972, the Clorox Company bought the Hidden Valley Ranch brand for $8 million.

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

New York Times: Google says its mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." But it does not appear to take kindly to those who use its search engine to organize and publish information about its own executives.

CNETNews.com, a technology news Web site, said last week that Google had told it that the company would not answer any questions from CNET's reporters until July 2006. The move came after CNET published an article last month that discussed how the Google search engine can uncover personal information and that raised questions about what information Google collects about its users.

The article, by Elinor Mills, a CNET staff writer, gave several examples of information about Google's chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, that could be gleaned from the search engine. These included that his shares in the company were worth $1.5 billion, that he lived in Atherton, Calif., that he was the host of a $10,000-a-plate fund-raiser for Al Gore's presidential campaign and that he was a pilot.

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

Net Imperative: Virgin has unveiled plans for its own digital music service to take on the likes of iTunes and Napster, set to go live in the UK on 2 September.

Powered by technology from MusicNet, Virgin Digital will be promoted via a multi-million pound investment campaign covering advertising, in-store marketing and online spend.

Working with the firm's entertainment retail business Virgin Megastores, the service offers a "pay as you go" service or monthly subscription, which allows unlimited downloads and access to a catalogue of more than one million tracks covering 19 different genres.

Features include internet radio, rip and burn software, music manager software and track sampling, along with an "ask the expert" service.

The service will be compatible with Windows Media Audio, and a range of portable music devises by Samsung, Sony, Creative and iRiver.

August 8, 2005 by Shawn Hartley | Permalink | 0 Comments

On the heels of this morning's pointing to Old Navy's new creative, AdPulp.com reader Stephen T. dropped us line for Carlton Draught's Big Ad.

Carlton's attempt at creating viral buzz is interesting to say the least, but we find their effort over-shadowed by the use of a Java applet requiring approval to run. In today's security conscious internet environment, someone should have thought through that part of the campaign.

A definite buzz-kill.

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

A few months ago I heard that Steffan Postaer's book was being shopped around for a possible film deal. Today Lewis Lazare reports the story may be made-for-TV:

Euro RSCG/Chicago Chief Creative Officer Steffan Postaer's first published novel, The Last Generation, has reportedly been optioned by the Touchstone & Medavoy producing team as a possible project for NBC. Postaer said NBC execs envision it as a series that could appeal to the same audience as the current hit show "Lost." A decision could come before Thanksgiving.

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

Back in the 70's, Al Ries and Jack Trout collaborated on a book called Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind, which has been widely praised for its innovative thinking.

These days, they've gone their separate ways, and each has a column out this week, where you can see their divergent points of view.

Al Ries contributes to Ad Age regularly, and invariably the point of every column is "I told you so" and "If only Client X and Client Y had listened to me they wouldn't be up shit's creek." His column this week is about why advertising agencies don't advertise. He's a little late to the party on that one: I wrote about the same thing 3 years ago.

Jack Trout, writing on Forbes.com, suggests that all is not lost in the ad industry, like Ries usually does, but suggests instead that agencies get back to strategic thinking--and do away with awards shows. It's a very interesting perspective.

August 9, 2005 by Shawn Hartley | Permalink | 2 Comments

Earlier this summer, Hardee's/Carls Jr. made headlines for their Carwash TV spot with Paris Hilton. But unless you are in the Midwest (for Hardee's) or the Western US (Carl's Jr.), you are missing some excellent creative being put out by both brands. The kind of executions that make art directors working as order-takers drool.

My favorite of the moment is Cow Shake (click the graphic), but the rest of their spots are live on the web:

-> Hardee's on TV
-> Carl Jr. on TV

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

New York Times: Think only politics makes strange bedfellows? Look what Procter & Gamble has wrought.

The company long ago split up its advertising, with Tide laundry detergent now handled by Saatchi & Saatchi, Bounce antistatic dryer sheets by Leo Burnett Toronto and Downy fabric softener by Grey Worldwide. But now the company has put the scent of Febreze, its household odor freshener for fabrics, into all three products. So which agency gets to trumpet that fact?

Procter's answer: All of them.

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

Adweek: The University of Florida has selected Fletcher Martin to provide the school's advertising following a review, the shop said.

The university selected the MDC Partners shop in Atlanta from 17 agencies that competed for the account, all but two of them in Florida. There was no incumbent. This is the first time the university has hired an outside agency to provide general branding for the school.

FM will create and produce broadcast and print ads for the Gainesville, Fla., school, in addition to helping the institution develop its public relations, market research, media planning, Internet and other communications programs.

The first work will launch next month when the university's football team, the Gators, begins playing its games. Television ads will air during the school's games, and print ads will be placed in the programs at the games.

FM CEO Andy Fletcher is a 1979 graduate of the University of Florida and has been on the school's Department of Advertising Advisory Council for the past year. The shop has hired students in the past as interns and employees.

"Everyone in the agency business has a dream client and the University of Florida has been mine," Fletcher said.

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

Ford Motor Company is offering four audio streams from their Mercury Radio page.

VW was first-to-market with this technology a few years ago, but the German automaker discontinued its internet radio station last year.

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

Female First: Busty beauty Pamela Anderson has ditched a personal appearance at US pet store Petco's 40th anniversary convention this week, because she learned the chain sells live birds.

Staff at the legendary pet store were thrilled at the prospect of bringing the former Baywatch babe on board for their celebrations, but they refused to bow to her bird-loving demands, reports PageSix.com.

The actress-turned-animal rights activist wrote to Petco boss Kevin Whalen, "I would gladly do the appearance if Petco pledges to end the sale of all birds, big and small, by January 2006."

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

Greg Storey of Airbag Industries wrote recently about how blogs are now being used to sell computers.

Last night I came across a back-to-college commercial for Gateway computer. Nothing any of us haven't already seen already: ultra low cost computer systems complete with a free printer, after a fifty dollar rebate. Except this time I caught a slight difference in the advertising message:

"...perfect for blogging or sending email..."

I can't be sure because I rarely read Adweek anymore, much to the disappointment to my college mentor I'm sure, but I'm almost positive that's the first time a computer company has used blogging as an activity that their products are perfect for. Amazing how in less than five years blogging has replaced gaming, video editing, and homework as the criteria of choice for purchasing a computer. Interesting.

Perhaps Six Apart should get in there and co-brand a Typepad/Gateway laptop, complete with a Lance Armstrong knock-off rubber wristband, baby-blue and stamped: TYPESTRONG.

One of the comments to Storey's post says:

Not saying they're going away, but the burning up part is the migration of the cool factor to greener pastures. Blogs were cool. Blogs were punk. Blogs were anti-establishment. Blogs will soon be completely mainstreamed, commercialized, co-opted, de-fanged. Something more interesting will come along. Once something has been featured in a Gateway ad it's no longer cool to those who care about cool, from the geek universe to the high schooler. It will take a while, but inch by inch more and more of those 14.1 million who thought they were doing something besides wasting their time will start to give up faced with the effort that creating a good blog requires. They'll be gradually replaced by corporate blogs and blogs from local news stations all sanctioned by the PR department and the marketing agency. The vibrant independent blogger will grow older and tired, and move on to other things, more rewarding financially and personally. I say bring it on, I'm ready for the next. This medium needs a kick in the pants.

August 10, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 4 Comments

So I'm sitting here watching "The Today Show" when a commercial for Purell Hand Soap comes on, with MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This" in the background.

Then it occurred to me that I just saw him a month ago dancing in a Nationwide Insurance commercial to "U Can't Touch This" implying "Hey, you too can go broke if you spend all your record royalties on parachute pants. So get Nationwide."

Clearly, using famous songs in commercials is pervasive, but many songs are being reused quickly for different brands. I'm wondering if the agencies involved care about that--and do the brands care? Does it dilute the message of the commercial or does it help to make a popular song the focal point of the spot?

August 10, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

eBay entered China through a $180 million purchase of Shanghai-based EachNet. Expedia owner InterActiveCorp paid $168 million for 52 percent of Chinese online travel agent eLong. Online retailer Amazon.com purchased Joyo.com for $75 million, and online job search leader Monster.com bought a 40 percent stake in ChinaHR.com for $50 million.

Now, according to CNET, Yahoo is prepared to pay 1 billion dollars for a 35 percent stake in Alibaba.com.

Based in the eastern China city of Hangzhou--about two hours from Shanghai--Alibaba's main China operations include a business-to-business e-commerce site; an online auction site called Taobao that competes with eBay in China; and a recently launched online payment system called Alipay.

August 10, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

Thanks to a pointer from Meta Cool, I now know to go to COSTCO for my next purchase of an original Miro, Picassso, Chagall, Toulouse-Lautrec or Leroy Neiman.

This limited edition lithograph, signed and numbered by the artist is fetching a cool $3999.99

August 10, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

People are increasingly using their cell phones--or handheld media centers, as the case may be--to create their blogs. The practice is known as Mobloging, or mobile blogging.

Nokia wants to make the process easier and more widespread. They've coined the term Lifeblog (a proprietary version of Moblog) and teamed with Six Apart, who have made their Typepad product Lifeblog-compatible.

Here are three Lifeblog examples, one from a supermodel:
Anina
Fishblog
Loic Le Meur's Moblog

August 10, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Want to be CBS's first podcaster? The network is searching for an amateur DJ to interview CBS stars and create a podcast about the new fall season. The podcaster will join the nation's top DJs at the CBS Radio Junket on September 10 in Hollywood to interview CBS talent for the podcast, which will be made available to millions via CBS.com and Infinity Broadcasting's San Francisco-based KYOURADIO, the world's first-ever podcasting radio station. For consideration, you'll need to upload a mock three-minute interview.

Thanks to Random Culture for the pointer.

August 10, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Bumper sticker courtesy of Idea Mill

August 10, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 8 Comments

Yesterday, on the 10th anniversary of Garcia's passing, Seth asked, "What Would Jerry Do?"

More than Campbell's Soup or American Airlines or CAA or Cisco or McKinsey, the Grateful Dead is the template for how organizations are going to grow and succeed moving forward.

No, not every element of who they were and what they did, but the idea of conversations and open source, the idea of souvenirs and emotion and live events and of remarkability. The Dead sells through permission marketing, spread their music through an ideavirus and yes, as long as we're slinging buzzwords, profits from the long tail.

The most important takeaway is this: They repeatedly did things that felt like huge risks, that challenged the status quo and that seemed, on their face, to give too much power to their audience. And in those moments, the Grateful Dead were at their most successful.

Seth also points to a New York Times article about how the JG and GD brands continue to earn millions of dollars each year from merchandise sales.

On Sunday, the city unveiled the newly renamed Jerry Garcia Amphitheater in John McLaren Park, near the blue-collar Excelsior District where Mr. Garcia grew up before moving to the better-known Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.

Backstage at the event, Mr. Garcia's older brother, Tiff, seemed to share his sibling's somewhat ambivalent attitude toward the marketing of celebrity.

"They're trying to do an Elvis on him, with all of the garments and merchandise and different items," he said. "But I'm not surprised."

Let's also consider what Hugh calls the best thing A VC has ever written. It's on the value of free.

Stewart Brand's famous qoute "Information wants to be free" has been the rallying cry of the open source software movement for years.

And I basically think Stewart was right.

Free is a great way to make money. You just have to know how you are going to get paid for being free.

Today, with digital distribution being something of a Wild West show, artists, writers, photographers, musicians, film makers and others are concerned about "giving it all away" on the internet. Yet, there's nothing to be concerned about (other than privacy rights). The idea is to build a fan base. Without that fan base you don't have Jack. So, do whatever you have to do to be totally solid with that the people who most vigorously support what you're doing. It's the old "give it away and see what comes back to you" trick. Bloggers and Deadheads know it well. Deadheads who blog know it even better.

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

Ad Age ponders the wisdom of advertising on consumer-controlled spaces.

Blogs require caution, but are much more predictable than chat rooms. "The blogs we would encourage people to advertise on have a small number of authors, one, two or three tops. In chat rooms, anyone can post," said Scott Rafer, CEO of Feedster, a blog and RSS search engine and ad network, who is building technology to monitor and filter blogs. The other major difference is that because the postings are predictable, the content can be monitored and controlled by automation or by human beings. If something objectionable is posted, an ad can be pulled within minutes, he added.

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

Market Watch: A pair of top venture-capital firms are putting their money where Adam Curry's mouth is. The former MTV VJ has secured $8.85 million in backing for his venture, PodShow Inc.

"There is little that gets Valley girls and boys as hot and bothered as when an Internet company gets funded by both Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers," Private Equity Week reported Thursday. Previous investments by the VCs have included Amazon.com, Netscape and Google.

Curry and his partner, Ron Bloom, are creating a network of radio-like programs which can be downloaded to PCs and mobile players. They plan to market to their network of podcasts to advertisers, figuring that aggregating programs the result will be a large audience.

Matt Kaye, a writer for Corante Web logs, said the investments are a sure sign Podshow wants to go public. "That's what KPCB does," he said.

Jason Calacanis, founder of Weblogs, Inc. is admiring of Podshow's new backing, but wonders about a payoff.

"How you could even spend $8M to make podcasting a real business is beyond me," he wrote on his blog. While advertising on Web pages is simple to do, he said, "Creating audio advertisements ... takes time, talent, cost, and you can forget about tracking it. Making podcasts is easy, he adds, making money from them is hard."

August 11, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 2 Comments

USA Today claims "Oil has yet to hit problematic height" in a headline today.

"At some point, high oil prices have to matter," says David Briggs, head of global equity trading at Federated Investors. "When Joe Six Pack has to start paying $50 to fill up his tank, you have to think they will stop buying Frappuccinos and bottled water."

It cost me $44 to fill my tank before work this morning. It would have been $48 if my tank was completely tapped. I think I'll stick with the bottled water and espresso drinks and look to drive less.

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

Derek Powazek is stoked about Flickr's new printed photo books, a product still in incubatory stages.

My first thought was, "Man, everyone's gonna want one of these." (Of their photos, I mean. Not mine. Besides you, mom. You might want one of mine.)

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

Forbes Magazine and its competitors can't simply sell to old white men in suits. Not if they want to grow revenue, that is. Yet, I question whether an ad that would be at home in Skateboarding is the way to go.

The ad from Merkley and Partners reads: No salary earning, old underpants wearing, billionaire on paper CEO. It's a new game. Forbes.com

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

ClickZ: Hostilities flared this week between the two best-known blog networks after comScore released a blog readership study that was co-sponsored by Six Apart and blog network Gawker Media.

Media buyers have been clambering for just the sort of demographic profiling it offers, and blog publishers should benefit overall from its discovery that the blog audience is both richer and younger than the overall Internet audience.

Yet the research has been challenged by several prominent bloggers, including -- most loudly -- Jason Calacanis, publisher of Gawker rival Weblogs Inc. Network (WIN).

Calacanis accused comScore of bias and inconsistency, pointing specifically to discrepancies between blog traffic rankings offered by the report versus those sites' own stats packages. He calls into question the number of sites published by report sponsor Gawker Media that fall in the top 20 sites ranked by unique visitors and visits. And he's particularly appalled at the report's rating of Gawker.com over WIN's Engadget.com.

On his blog, Calacanis has accused comScore of bias based on the personal relationship between Denton and the report's author, Rick Bruner.

Denton dismissed Calacanis' objections.

"I know it galls Jason Calacanis that his sites are about as memorable as Burger King franchises, and that none register among the top blogs, except Pete Rojas's Engadget," he said.

Denton added, "But Jason Calacanis misses the big picture. The study finally provides evidence for what we've all hoped for: that blog readers are younger and richer than average, and, one hopes, thinner."

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

New York Times: For the first time in the 80-year history of The New Yorker magazine, a single advertiser will sponsor an entire issue.

The Aug. 22 issue of The New Yorker, due out Monday, will carry 17 or 18 advertising pages, all brought to you by the Target discount store chain owned by the Target Corporation. The Target ads will even supplant the mini-ads from mail-order marketers that typically fill small spaces in the back of the magazine.

The Target ads, in the form of illustrations by more than two dozen artists like Milton Glaser, Robert Risko and Ruben Toledo, are to run only the one time in the issue. They are intended to salute New York City and the people who live - and shop - there.

"We try to do breakthrough things in many different places," Minda Gralnek, vice president and creative director at Target in Minneapolis, said in a telephone interview.

" 'Expect more. Pay less' is our mantra," Ms. Gralnek said, quoting the Target slogan, "and this is part of 'Expect more.' It's not ordinary."

August 12, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 3 Comments

TEQUILA\ was launched in Paris in 1986 by Jean-Marie Dru, President & CEO, TBWA\ Worldwide, and has since become one of the world's fastest growing marketing networks with 48 agencies in 34 countries. An Omnicom Group company and partnered with TBWA\ Worldwide, today TEQUILA\'s major clients include adidas, HP, Nissan, and Sony PlayStation.

According to Adweek, Jeremy Pagden is Tequila's new President and CEO. Pagden, 46, is currently CEO of Omnicom's The Integer Group in Golden, Colo., a post he will retain. No explanation was given as to how one man will lead two agency networks--Integer owns full service agencies in Dallas, Denver, Des Moines and Cleveland.

Perhaps this deal makes Integer part of the Tequila network? Jay?

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

Doritos wants you to stop procrastinating. Because "Doritos is all about making a statement and living life in the now."

That's why the snack food maker is taking part in the oh so Converse-like Fresh Films contest with Sony, and why they stand behind INNW.com, short for "If Not Now When?"

August 12, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

You know what? Awards are important.

They're good at attracting top talent, getting us some well deserved press and, if smelted down, providing the government with valuable munitions material.

We have San Francisco agency, Venables Bell, to thank for the above wisdom.

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

After reading Danah's study regarding the role of gender in web site design, Halley wonders why Dooce chooses not to link to her readers who maintain blogs of their own. My guess in Dooce's case is it may have been a design decision, since her blog is one of the cleanest on the web.

Other A-listers who do not maintain blog rolls include Ben Hammersely,
Seth Godin and Lawrence Lessig. There's nothing wrong with this choice, and it certainly prevents the awkward, "Will you please link to me" emails, which come in a bit too regularly for our tastes. Yet, the decision not to link does lend a certain aloofness to the abstaining bloggers.

It's important to note that incoming links effect a site's Google rank and Technorati ran--no trivial matter.

August 13, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 4 Comments

Photo by Jason Kottke

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

In a bit of good pr for Microsoft, Misbehaving and Popgadget both point to this Seattle Post-Intelligencer article on Arfa Karim Randhawa, a 10-year-old girl from Pakistan and the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional in the world.

Arfa, who has created basic Windows applications, such as a calculator and a sorting program, primarily in the C# programming language, received the certification when she was still 9, an impressive accomplishment in its own right, according to older programmers who have gone through the process.

Afra and her father were treated to a VIP tour in Redmond, including a meeting with Bill Gates. Previously unaware of the casual dress code at Microsoft, she said she had expected Gates to be wearing a suit but was surprised to find him in a casual shirt with the top button open.

"I expected that all the people would be here in suits," she said with a giggle, wearing a hat acquired during her earlier visit to the company's Xbox game studios.

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

Lewis Lazare: Leo Burnett's decision to resign the $80 million Morgan Stanley account was a big blow on several fronts: A blow to the agency that had worked on the business for 17 years, and a blow to the Chicago advertising community that looks like it will lose another prestigious piece of business to another market.

Just as significantly, the Morgan Stanley account resignation is a blow to the advertising industry as a whole, which increasingly is becoming a business about fleeting personal relationships to the detriment of the big ideas and memorable brand-building ads that should be front and center.

In the immediate wake of the Morgan Stanley announcement, Leo Burnett tried, understandably, to put the best face possible on the development. In an interview Friday, Burnett President Rich Stoddart said the agency thought long and hard about resigning the business after it learned on July 28 from Morgan Stanley's newly named head of global marketing, Don Callahan, that the account was going to be put into review.

"What happened here is, to some degree, a reflection of the price of change in the business world," Stoddart said.

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

Steve McKee, writing in BusinessWeek, makes an effective argument for marketers to be patient with their ad campaigns:

Companies have any number of reasons to feel the need to change their advertising approach, from fallen pitchmen to falling sales to (all too commonly) internal boredom with the "same old thing." But the companies with the strongest long-term track records do everything they can to maintain a consistent image in the marketplace, even as competitors come and go and consumer tastes shift.

I don't know when he originally wrote the article, but he cites BMW as a paragon of consistency by sticking with "The Ultimate Driving Machine" positioning, even though they're now dumping Fallon as their ad agency.

Still, he makes some good points.

August 15, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 2 Comments

International Herald Tribune: Five years ago, Brian Hoolahan started File-Reg because he decided there was a better way to "prove who thought up what, and exactly when." A former television producer, he said he began the company with a notion of creating a system for people in broadcasting to protect their ideas.

Eventually, Hoolahan established four computer databases - Music-Reg, Science-Reg, Media-Reg and Software-Reg. Users can register information from engineering designs and mathematical calculations to sketches, medical notes, screenplays, manuscripts, music and lyrics.

After a file is registered, a "digital fingerprint" is made and attached to a digital certificate with a time stamp that cannot be altered, Hoolahan said. Registration costs about 15 in Europe and $18 in the United States.

So far, Hoolahan said, he has not heard of anyone using the registration in a court case, but he noted that digital certificates had been used to negotiate private clashes. Recently, he offered a lifetime of free registration to a songwriter named Steve Wallace, who sued Britney Spears in May for copyright infringement and had protected his original song by mailing it to himself. With this method, known as a "poor man's copyright," the postmark provides the proof of date.

The power of electronic registration, Hoolahan said, is "proof that an idea exists in a certain moment in time." If there is a conflict later, he said, "The first thing a judge will ask is, 'Who thought it up first?' Being able to prove that is the hardest thing. It's not enough to say, 'It's in my computer,' because computer data can be changed."

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

Adweek: What happened to the dog days of summer, the time when nothing big happened in August and agency people took long overdue two-week vacations and spent Fridays on the golf course?

"No one I know can remember an August like this," said Mike Duda, director of business development at Interpublic Group's Deutsch, who said it is the busiest August he has seen in 10 years.

"The activity we're seeing now is what people expected 18 months ago, when we were coming off the worst three-year period in advertising in 60 years. And what I'm hearing more and more from clients this summer is that they're doing now what they wanted to do two years ago," said Duda.

"It has become unacceptable to say, 'I'm not here today,' " said Robin Koval, chief marketing officer and general manager of Publicis Groupe's The Kaplan Thaler Group.

While new-business chiefs feel harried this summer, the memory of the recession is fresh enough that they're not complaining too much. "The alternative is worse," said Koval. "Better to be here in the office."

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

I love Wi-Fi. It's great to surf the net anywhere you want.

But I can't understand the appeal of bringing in your Powerbook to a Krystal, which is offering free Wi-Fi access in all of its stores. Unless you wrap your laptop in some sort of protective compu-condom, it sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

Krystal is the South's version of White Castle. It's the greasiest place on earth. And I mean that in a good way.

August 15, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 12 Comments

Steve Hall of Adrants makes available a new ad from Nike that celebrates big butts. Given that Nike is a fitness company, one might think this approach incongruous. But from a strategic point-of-view, it makes sense to be inclusive of all body types. Sadly, from a creative execution point-of-view, this ad needs work.

Here's the worst copy sequence from the ad:

My butt is big...
It's a border collie
That herds skinny women
Away from the best deals
At clothing sales

Tyree left this comment on Adrants, which pretty much sums it up:

I like the ad in principle. Too bad the copy's overwrought and overwritten - a pallid echo of the great stuff they used to do a decade or so ago.

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

Ad Age editor Scott Donaton needed an idea for his latest column. So he wrote to 100 of his closest associates and asked them, "What keeps you up at night?" Here are some of the answers from the captains of our industry:

"Will consumers under 30 feel they should ever pay ANYTHING for content?"

"Clients who get way too involved in execution."

"Delivering on the demand for accountability."

"The trend toward conservatism and censorship in America."

"I'm up at night worrying that my clients are awake and watching the Donny Deutsch show."

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

Johnnie Moore and Adrian Trenholm point to Bessemer Venture Partners anti-portfolio. In other words, their miscalculations, which in this case cost them hundreds of millions (or more).

It's hard to imagine someone in advertising being this real. Can you imagine an ad agency showcasing their anti-portfolio? "Hey, look at all the truly stupid ads we've made!"

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

According to Money, Maxim magazine is getting in to tthe night club business.

With a radio station on satellite radio carrier Sirius and a number of consumer products such as bedding on the market, creating a nightclub with the Maxim brand was a natural progression, Stephen Colvin, the chief executive of Dennis Publishing, Maxim's publisher, told the paper.

"We feel that we have an understanding of how to translate the Maxim brand into a club or lounge experience," Colvin said in the Times interview.

Maxim currently has a paid circulation of 2.5 million readers and its typical reader is a 27-year old, with a preference for tequila and playing pool, according to the report.

To help get the project off the ground, Maxim will rely on Rande and Scott Gerber, famed club owners, who currently operate the Stone Rose at the Time Warner Center in New York City.

Maxim and the Gerbers are looking at Miami, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and New York as potential sites for the branded clubs, but no target has been set for the number of clubs that will open.

August 16, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 3 Comments

Today's Wall Street Journal (you'll need a subscription or pick up a hard copy of the real thing) has an interesting article on "econometrics" and its impact on the ad industry. Here are the highlights:

"There is no doubt in my mind that scientific analysis, including econometrics, is one of the most important areas in the marketing services industry," Sir Martin [Sorrell] says in an interview.

Econometrics uses statistical analysis to measure the relationship between different sets of events...To determine an advertisement's effectiveness, econometricians write an equation to measure the effect on sales of different factors, including the weather, price cuts, and advertising. For the advertiser, the purpose is to help decide which ads to run.

Sharing the stage with Sir Martin at an advertising conference last month in Cannes, France, was Chuck Porter, chairman of Miami ad agency Crispin, Porter + Bogusky. In response to comments from Sir Martin advocating a more scientific approach to measuring the effectiveness of ads, Mr. Porter said, "I don't understand what we're talking about." The audience cheered and clapped.

Basically, as clients face tougher and tougher competition, they're trying to justify every nickel they spend, so there's room for statistics nerds to come in and prove the ROI of ad campaigns. And as better technology lets us measure the impact of ads, the more power the statistics nerds will have. But creativity is always the X factor that can't be quantified.

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

Looking for an interesting application for Short Message Service, or SMS? Restaurant 11 in Amsterdam found one.

Developed by Dutch new-media developers Mediamatic, Playing Flickr lets visitors of Club/Restaurant 11 in Central Amsterdam call up pictures by sending in SMS (text) messages on their phones. The pictures in Flickr with matching tags appear on the surrounding screens so that while patrons dine the backdrop of the restaurant can be adapted to their personal wishes.

The possibilities this technology holds for event marketing are huge.

Thanks to Random Culture for the pointer.

August 17, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

Ad Age: Out of bankruptcy and under new ownership, "fresh Mex" restaurant chain Chevys has named Maiden Lane of San Francisco its advertising agency following a review.

The win was the first for the shop, formerly Gardner Geary Coll, since it changed its name to Maiden Lane this summer. Other contenders in the review included Amazon Advertising and Eleven, both San Francisco.

The chain has about 100 Chevys Fresh Mex restaurants, primarily in California and the Western U.S. and nine Fuzio Universal Pasta concept restaurants.

"We loved [Maiden Lane's] thinking, which focused on branding and the entire customer experience from the parking lot to paying the check," said Julie Koenig-Browne, vice president of marketing.

August 17, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 11 Comments

Medical News Today: Consumers who are very skeptical about the truth of advertising claims are more responsive to emotionally appealing ads than ones peppered with information, according to a new study.

The finding comes from work by researchers at the University of Washington, Seattle University, and Washington State University who examined consumers' responses to advertising, including brand beliefs, responses to informational and emotional appeals, efforts to avoid advertising, attention to ads and reliance on ads versus other information sources.

As part of the study, researchers showed consumers eight television commercials, half of which were defined as emotional, half as informational. For example, an emotional ad for Ernest and Julio Gallo wine emphasized a familial atmosphere at the winery and surrounding vineyards, while an informational ad for Joy dishwashing liquid showed how effectively the product removed baked-on foods.

"Highly skeptical consumers have likely become skeptical over time, in response to numerous interactions in the marketplace that have led them to distrust ad claims. Advertisers have developed strategies for approaching these skeptical consumers, including using emotional appeals, whose success does not require acceptance of informational claims," said co-author Doug MacLachlan, professor of marketing and international business at the UW Business School.

August 17, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

American Copywriter points to a broadcast campaign for the Utah State Fair. The spots feature Jon Heder, the actor best known for his role in Napolean Dynamite.

By the way, the film is set in Preston, Idaho, a short distance from the Utah state line.

In a related note, this quiz can help determine which Napolean Dynamite character you are.

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

I recently came across Debbie Millman's radio talk show, Design Matters, on Voice America.

Millman is a Managing Partner and President of the Design division at Sterling Group, one of the country's leading brand identity firms.

August 17, 2005 by Wade Sturdivant | Permalink | 0 Comments

Gotta love Chicago Sun-Times columnist Lewis Lazare's candor in today's column, regarding Sears recent shift of its entire account to Y&R/Chicago:

"Y & R sources said there were plenty of heated debates about Sears advertising between Y & R creatives and Sears' recently departed marketing honcho Janine Bousquette. To many in the ad world, this columnist included, she seemed a shockingly ditzy executive who was in way over her head."

I think I speak for all of us in the ad world when I say to feisty journalists
everywhere, "More, please."

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

AP: A rush to purchase $50 used laptops turned into a violent stampede Tuesday, with people getting thrown to the pavement, beaten with a folding chair and nearly driven over. One woman went so far as to wet herself rather than surrender her place in line.

An estimated 5,500 people turned out at the Richmond International Raceway in hopes of getting their hands on one of the 4-year-old Apple iBooks. The Henrico County school system was selling 1,000 of the computers to county residents. New iBooks cost between $999 and $1,299.

Officials opened the gates at 7 a.m., but some already had been waiting since 1:30 a.m. When the gates opened, it became a terrifying mob scene.

People threw themselves forward, screaming and pushing each other. A little girl's stroller was crushed in the stampede. Witnesses said an elderly man was thrown to the pavement, and someone in a car tried to drive his way through the crowd.

Seventeen people suffered minor injuries, with four requiring hospital treatment, Henrico County Battalion Chief Steve Wood said. There were no arrests and the iBooks sold out by 1 p.m.

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

USA Today: It won't be a snap to sharpen its image, but tonight Kodak begins a blitz of new ads and products designed to make consumers see it as a world-class digital-imaging company.

The opening shot will be hard to miss: Ads will air simultaneously at 9 p.m. ET on the major broadcast networks and selected cable channels and Internet sites.

The effort comes at a critical time. Kodak has been restructuring for a digital future for several years. Its EasyShare camera, rolled out in 2001, is the top-selling digital camera in the USA. In June, its digital product sales outpaced film-based products for the first time.

Many consumers still don't associate Kodak with digital products -- and those who do think of it more for the kind of snapshots in its trademark warm and fuzzy ads than for high-end (and high-margin) technology.

"In order to sell across the board ... we need to be cool, hip and with-it," says Carl Gustin, Kodak chief marketing officer. "We still need a little bit of emotion, but we can't live on puppy dogs, weddings and daddy's little girl."

August 18, 2005 by Wade Sturdivant | Permalink | 0 Comments

From The New York Times : In the last several days, accounts with spending estimated at more than $200 million have changed agencies, affecting brands in competitive categories like restaurants, automotive services and household products. And there will be more changes as reviews proceed for other accounts, with combined spending estimated at more than $1 billion.

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

The Guardian: Fancy having your name on a gravestone in Neil Gaiman's next novel? Or meeting your end at the hands of a zombie in Stephen King's latest? Or being immortalised as one of Sunny Baudelaire's "utterances"? Here's your chance. As part of a charity venture, 16 authors, from John Grisham to Dave Eggers, are offering readers the opportunity to have their name appear in their forthcoming books.

Fans will be able to bid on eBay in an auction designed to raise funds for the American charity The First Amendment Project, with the highest bidder for each author buying the guarantee of seeing their name immortalised in print.

Each author has stated on eBay precisely what it is he or she is offering, and the information and provisos stipulated by the writers provide one of the most intriguing aspects of the scheme.

The profits from the auction, which will run from September 1 to 25, will be donated to an advocacy project dedicated to protecting and promoting freedom of information and expression. The First Amendment Project provides free legal services to writers, journalists and artists on first amendment matters.

p.s. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise therof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

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

Tom Asacker writing on 800-CEO-READ this morning shares this pearl:

For the record I don't believe in the death of ordinary, or anything else for that matter. Take advertising. If I hear someone predict the death of advertising one more time, I'm going to throw up. Advertising is a huge brand enhancer. Sure, it needs to evolve to keep up with today's skeptical and sophisticated audience. But it is certainly not dying.

The key to brand success is to understand the desired feelings of your audience and deliver that feeling with unique and relevant products, services and communications. If you can bring your diet conscious audience those feelings through innovative packaging, then do it! If you can bring your beer drinking audience those feelings through advertising, go that way.

August 18, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 5 Comments

Joe at American Copywriter put up an excellent post today on focus groups and why they ought to be outlawed.

Mention the words "focus group", and every creative can feel the bile rising in the throat. We know what's coming. We'll be sitting behind a two-way mirror for a couple of hours, eating bad snacks, and watching a group of people casually trample the work that we've poured our very souls into. Once those plumbers and sales clerks take their places on the other side of the glass, they suddenly become advertising experts. And their opinions suddenly matter more than those of us who've been in the business for a long time.

Joe goes on to explain how famous author and New Yorker writer, Malcolm Gladwell, put the spank on focus groups recently at the AAAA Account Planing Conference in Chicago.

He launched into a one-hour rant on why focus groups lead companies toward bad decisions. His three primary points were:

1) Focus groups are biased to favor the known over the unknown, the familiar over the unfamiliar. Because creative ideas are new and unfamiliar, they will always test badly in focus groups.

2) Asking people to explain their feelings is asking them to explain a visceral reaction - something that happens in the subconscious.

3) Asking people to explain their feelings can actually change their feelings.

Gladwell also gave examples of wildly successful products that focus groups hated--Herman Miller's Aeron chair, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "All In the Family." See point #1.

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

Clark Sorensen makes awesome urinals. And he's happy to discuss commissions and requests of any kind.

This seems like an opportunity to raise the level of bathroom advertising by a magnitude heretofore unseen. I imagine Clark could fashion a urinal into a product-like shape. Better yet, a hotel or restaurant could simply commission the artist and become known for having the most inventive bathroom space in their industry.

August 19, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 10 Comments

From The Smoking Gun:

Claiming that its image and persona have been hijacked as part of a marketing campaign for Burger King's new chicken fries, the costumed heavy metal band Slipknot is threatening the fast food giant with legal action. In the below August 4 letter, the band's lawyers charge that Coq Roq--a mock metal band featured in new Burger King commercials--was created as a "look-alike, sound alike 'band' in order to influence the Slipknot generation to purchase Chicken Fries."

You can read the entire legal complaint and decide for yourself. Imagine the team of lawyers that put this together while trying to keep a straight face about the whole mess.

And is there really a "Slipknot generation"? I'm 33. What does that make me? Am I part of the "Dexy's Midnight Runners generation"?

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

Ad Age: The Kroger Co. has signed a deal with In-Store Broadcasting Network (IBN) to launch a TV network in 2,500 Kroger stores, according to the company.

Kroger, headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, is the nation's No. 2 grocery chain behind Wal-Mart; IBN, of Salt Lake City, Utah, provides in-store music and TV advertising services to supermarket and drug store chains.

Kroger says the new in-store TV messaging system will reach 68 million shoppers weekly, following an 18-month rollout. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Evan Anthony, vice president of marketing and advertising at Kroger, said he wanted to build a network from the ground up that would allow for customization by store, group of stores or other categories. He also wanted to allow the triggering of content by weather and day-part.

"I can think of my company as a media company now," he said.

August 19, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 3 Comments

Creative superstar, Sally Hogshead, has made a tentative entry into the bloatosphere with her newly unveiled Hog Blog.

The blog only has one entry at this point and does not allow comments, nor trackbacks. The site does have a forum to facilitate discussion.

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

Comcast is in deep doo doo.

According to The New York Times:

LaChania Govan said she got bounced around by her cable company when she called to complain. She made dozens of calls and was even transferred to a person who spoke Spanish -- a language she doesn't understand.

But when she got her August bill from Comcast she had no trouble understanding she'd made somebody mad. It was addressed to ''Bitch Dog.''

''I was like you got to be freaking kidding me,'' said Govan, 25. ''I was so mad I couldn't even cuss.''

Comcast reportedly fired the two employees involved in this PR disaster. But is that enough? Jackie Huba doesn't think so. The evangelist for customer evangelists says, "the brand needs to muster its collective marketing creativity and unleash a make-amends response that counteracts the negative buzz."

While too many corporate PR and marketing departments turn a bling eye to the power of blogs, and have no clue how fast and far a story like will spread, a quick look at Icerocket turns up 157 posts and it's still early in the story's lifecycle.

August 20, 2005 by Shawn Hartley | Permalink | 1 Comments

A new TV spot for Colorado-based sports and beverage company, GoFast set to air in Belgium.

TDA (Boulder, CO) is the ad shop. Click the image to view the video (1.6MB)

August 20, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 1 Comments

We like to blog a lot about high-concept advertising, but we tend not to pay attention to the fact that many media outlets get lots of money out of more mundane ads.

So this article in LA Weekly is quite interesting, suggesting that movie studios are thinking of drastically slashing the money they spend on splashy display ads for films, particularly in the LA Times and the New York Times:

All advertisers dearly love the 18-to-34 demographic, and the Hollywood movie studios are no exception. In their eyes, the newsosaurs aren't measuring up. Sources at the two Hollywood studios who are axing their movie display ads in newspapers gave me that information on the condition they not be identified. But, studiowide, it's on everyone's to-do list. "We're rethinking our newspaper ads and I mean, literally, on every movie. Everybody is," one movie mogul tells me. "The only people who read newspapers are older and elitist. Movies like Sky High don't need ads in The New York Times. But the studios did it because newspapers were seen as a necessary evil.

"But I don't think it's as important anymore."

Add to that the advent of Craigslist, the decline of in-paper classified ads, and the ability to generally get news and info anywhere and anytime you want. So what's the future of actual newsprint newspapers if readership keeps declining and advertiisng dollars go away?

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

Earlier this summer Vanity Fair's George Wayne probed the depths of The Donny for his Vanities column. Here are a few of the more revealing moments.

G.W. Your critics say you must decide. Does he want to create advertising? Or does he want to be in showbiz?

D.D. I actually think the two are related. If you look at the history of Larry King, he was a D.J. My background is the perfect training ground for a talk show about pop culture. Talking to interesting people, newsmakers--that helps with maintaining my edge as a top guy in the advertising business. I think it keeps me fresh.

G.W. Gosh, you are so buffed! You look like one of those Chelsea queens. Are you a Chelsea queen?

D.D. No, funny that you should say that, as I am very straight. But we do have a large gay population at this agency. We call them the GODs, "the gays of Deutsch." Any guy who is in good shape, or has any sense of style, is automatically assumed to be gay, but I am exceptionally straight. But I take it as a great compliment.

You know, what brand manager wouldn't want a self-annoited "top guy in advertising" with a great body on his or her business? After all, they're in need of someone with uncanny promotional skills, and The Donny has those in droves.

August 22, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 5 Comments

If you haven't seen this week's issue of The New Yorker, go to the newsstand and check it out. The entire issue features no other advertiser than Target, who commissioned a number of illustrators to incorporate its brand look and feel into ads without copy.

The result feels seamless: you're not really getting sold anything, and the bullseye becomes quite iconic in the hands of talented folks.

Of course, it helps that Target does all the other things right, from its merchandising mix to its clean stores. But Jonah Bloom, writing in Ad Age, nails it, and I've been saying it for years:

The smartest marketers have realized that if their advertising makes a unique statement, either in content or placement, it will spark a media and water-cooler conversation whose value will be tens or even hundreds of times the cost of the media buy.

Which reminds me: I once had a homebuilder client who said, "We want to be like Target." He really had no clue what he was talking about. He just knew Target was cool.

August 22, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 0 Comments

Well, this article in USA Today is a few months old, but strolling through CVS this weekend, I saw Wheaties multivitamins for the first time. Next to the "Total" multivitamins. I had no idea such products existed.

It is a very interesting brand extension, especially for breakfast skippers like me. Mostly, it's the packaging that stands out in a sea of multivitamin sameness.

Essentially, General Mills, maker of the cereals, licensed the brands to a company called Lenier Health Products, who makes the vitamins. Sure beats trying to build a brand from scratch.

August 22, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 1 Comments

...has to be this quote from the man himself:

"I have always regarded Shoney's Restaurants with the highest level of affection, having grown up with the concept," Freeman said in a statement, referring to his childhood in Mississippi and Florida.

[Client svp of marketing Dan] Dahlen worked with agency principal and chief creative officer Cliff Freeman when the latter was at Dancer Fitzgerald in New York. Together, they created the famous "Where's the beef?" campaign in the 1980s for Wendy's, where Dahlen was a marketing executive.

See this Adweek article or this press release for the details on Cliff Freeman's latest account win.

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

Living in the Hilton Head area, as I do, it's not everday I get to report local ad news.

Adweek: Brandon Advertising said it would provide all advertising, media buying and public relations for the Habersham residential development near Beaufort, S.C.

The independent Myrtle Beach, S.C., shop won the account without a review. Previously, the developer produced all its advertising internally.

Habersham is a planned development in the new urbanism style that is creating a new town of 850 homes on 285 acres along the Broad River in the coastal area of South Carolina.

Brandon will create print ads for the community that will begin running next month in issues of Coastal Living and The Wall Street Journal.

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

The Wall Street Journal is running an article on Wal-Mart's effort to sell more spirits. It's pretty comical.

Selling more alcohol raises complicated issues for a company that presents itself as a folksy all-American enterprise and an arbiter of social mores. In addition to banning risque magazines from its stores and selling sanitized versions of CDs with controversial song lyrics, Wal-Mart forbids alcohol consumption on company property and at company events. When Wal-Mart executives put business meals on expense accounts, they must personally pay for any alcoholic drinks. Some store managers have balked at the effort to promote liquor sales, citing local sensitivities.

Wal-Mart's corporate culture, which has long eschewed alcohol, complicates the company's hard-liquor ambitions. It bans the consumption of alcohol at all corporate events -- including a recent barbecue where Diageo won a vendor-of-the-year award. In recent months, Wal-Mart has, for the first time, allowed spirits makers, including Diageo, to display but not open their products at Wal-Mart events such as its big semiannual vendor meetings, say spirits executives who were present at one of the meetings.

Because Wal-Mart executives aren't allowed to drink on company premises, spirits manufacturers sometimes book hotel rooms in Bentonville or take executives to the few local members-only clubs that have liquor licenses to sample products.

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

A while back, I wrote about BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis and his problems with Dell's customer service, or the lack thereof.

He's finally got their attention:

While BuzzMachine frequently receives more than 5,000 visitors a day, one recent post--Jarvis' "open letter" last week to George and Chairman Michael Dell, excoriating the company for ignoring online criticism--was the third most linked-to post on the blogosphere on Thursday, according to Intelliseek's BlogPulse. The post was also either linked to or discussed by at least .01 percent of all blog posts written Wednesday, according to BlogPulse.

Davis added that Dell hopes that the improvements that the company has begun to initiate in its customer service department will also head off some of these issues. Starting in the fourth quarter of last year, Dell has opened more call centers and hired more staff, trained or hired more experts to resolve particularly technical issues, and reduced the manager-to-representative ratio at their call centers. Their online support has also been beefed up, Davis said, and a previously closed message board--the customer care board--has been recently reopened due to popular demand.

Other marketers had better start paying attention, too. The blogosphere isn't large, but it's full of Influencers who could help a brand, or hurt it. And why did it take so much chatter to get Dell's attention in the first place?

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

Constantinos Demopoulos recently wrote about Innocent Drinks' event marketing savvy.

Their annual Fruitstock festival sums up much about what is great about the company: amazing live music, a yoga tent, a flirting area, a charity cd, farmers market and other feel-good attractions contribute to produce, by all accounts, a very successful event and experience that reflects the vibe of the company.

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

Washington Post: When designing the new look for US Airways, America West executives turned their back on high-salaried Madison Avenue image consultants. Instead, they interviewed employees from both of the merged airlines: flight attendants, pilots, mechanics and executives.

The newly redesigned planes, which make their debut today, aspire to a brighter appearance than US Airways' current fleet.

The new look is part of a rebranding of Arlington-based US Airways as it heads toward its merger with America West, expected to be completed by the end of September, barring any objections from America West's shareholders and US Airways' creditors. America West is spending more than $18 million to paint the 200 planes in the combined airlines' fleet. It will take 18 months to complete the redesign, which is the first for US Airways since 1997 when it changed its name from USAir.

August 23, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 3 Comments

I, like many of you probably did, read last week about David Droga's departure from Publicis, where the 37-year old ad whiz held the Worldwide Creative Director post. The story didn't interest me all that much, until today when I happened to read Dean Gemmel's take on it.

This is a guy with the kind of job most creatives once dreamed about -- power, independence, gobs of cash, perhaps an assistant hired largely to deflect underlings and apply suntan lotion while sitting poolside at Cannes -- and he's decided that it's, er, not so great.

More telling is the fact that he's leaving to start a "non-advertising business." As in thoroughly unrelated to the current advertising agency business model. You know things are amiss when a guy who can pretty much write his own ticket takes a walk.

Droga said, "I'm having a great career, but I've spent it working under other people's models."

In other words, "I'm smart enough to see there's not an especially exciting future as the global creative director of a company restricted by a business model that has reached the point of diminishing returns. In fact, I'm too smart to waste my time hanging out here and trying to make it work."

August 24, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 0 Comments

Who needs Cialis or Viagra when you've got turtle eggs?

From The Seattle Times:

A campaign aimed at halting the illegal consumption of endangered sea turtles' eggs has run into trouble before it starts, with a women's group asking officials to block public-service announcements featuring a scantily clad model.

"My man does not need turtle eggs. Because he knows they don't make him more potent," Argentine model Dorismar purrs from posters in which she poses alternately in sexy bathing suits, skimpy shorts and an unbuttoned shirt and cowboy hat.

Hmmm...apparently turtle eggs are some sort of aphrodisiac. At least Mexican men seem to think so.

But seriously--it's an interesting example that if advertisers and ad agencies continue to venture into Hispanic marketing, they'd better understand their consumers. Soda-cracker-white American ad agency execs shouldn't automatically assume all the cultural norms translate from one country to another. Because if that was the case, Turtle Eggs would be on the menu at Waffle House, or Pfizer would be bottling them up by the bushel.

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

According to Adweek, a new print ad by independent McClain Finlon depicts Breckenridge Ski Resort snowboarders as members of an exclusive gentlemen's society.

Breaking in the October Snowboarder and Transworld Snowboarding magazines--as well as 20 x 24-inch posters--the full-page ad stars the Colorado resort's sponsored snowboarders, all of whom live and snowboard in the Breckenridge area.

Instead of their usual attire--baggy pants, T-shirts and cap-covered shaggy hair--the ad positions professional boarders Steve Fisher, Chad Otterstrom, Mike Casanova, Ryan Thompson and Todd Richards as perfectly coiffed members of a private social guild. Wearing prep-school sweaters, loafers and ascots, the athletes are shown lounging around a red leather club chair in Denver's historic Phipps Mansion.

Accompanying text describes the teammates as "upstanding lads" who spend their leisure time rescuing kittens and attending bake sales.

What Adweek fails to report is the growing dissatisfaction among Breck locals and visitors alike over the number of punks--many of whom happen to ride snowboards--that have infiltrated the town in recent years. From this new ad, it's pretty clear Vail Resorts, which owns the Breckenridge ski area, wanted to tame the boarding beast and make the area safe for skiiers again, both on and off the mountain.

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

USA Today: America Online, the world's largest Internet service provider, will pay $1.25 million in penalties and change some customer-service practices to settle an investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

About 300 consumers had filed complaints with Spitzer's office accusing AOL, a wholly owned subsidiary of Time Warner (TWX), of ignoring their requests to cancel service and stop billing.

The company, with 21 million subscribers nationally, rewarded employees who were able to retain subscribers who called to cancel their Internet service. For years, AOL had minimum retention or "save" percentages that customer-service personnel were expected to meet, investigators said.

An employee could earn tens of thousands of dollars in bonuses if he or she could dissuade half of callers from ending service. That led many employees to make it difficult for consumers to cancel or to simply ignore such requests, Spitzer spokesman Brad Maione said.

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

It's rare that I find French bashing humorous. But this French restaurant in Park City pulls it off.

The restaurant's tag line is, "French, without all the France."

The introductory copy on their site reads, "You'll find no poodles. No bidets. No bloody Jerry Lewis. Just one rapturous meal after another, served up in the coziest corner this side of the Seine."

My friends at BOWG, Salt Lake City, are responsible for this.

August 24, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 2 Comments

David Wolfe says enough with all this customer centric rhetoric already.

It has become fashionable to single out customers as the most important stakeholder. Customer centricity is a flawed concept. It pays patronizing homage to one category of stakeholders at the potential expense of other stakeholders. There is nothing neither noble nor pragmatic about being customer centric.

Rather than holding out one stakeholder group or another as the most important stakeholder group, fully developed Firms of Endearment (FoEs) give attention to the well being of the entire economic ecosystem in which they operate. While service to each stakeholder group is important, without a healthy economic ecosystem all are in jeopardy.

Peak performing companies will increasingly not be shareholder centric, nor customer centric, nor employee centric, nor self-centric. Their business models will be more holistic, more systems centric. The attention given stakeholders will be proportionate to a stakeholder groups' contribution to the well being of the economic ecosystem.

Things are moving so fast today, we now have heroic heretics like Wolfe denouncing new paradigms like customer centricism before many marketers have even heard of them, much less put them into practice.

August 25, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 3 Comments

Is it a wise move for clients to "expand their agency roster" and spread their work out among a bunch of shops that don't communicate with each other?

For better or for worse, we all think short-term now. To do project work for a client means the advertising needs to cause a quick, sudden splash, even if it's completely forgotten in a month or so in favor of some other campaign. Results? Effectiveness? No one in the ad world gives a crap, because we move on to some other project so quickly. Agencies who work on a project basis are essentially freelancers. And hired-gun freelancers care about the end result for only as long as they're paid to care.

It's the subject of my new column on Talent Zoo. Click on the link to read the rest.

August 25, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

Ad Age: The iPod is the latest media outlet Kraft Foods is using to lure people to buy its products.

Late last month the package goods behemoth began offering consumers the chance to download 100 of its summer recipe "hits" into the little-used Notes area of Apple's mobile digital music players. Promoted via its own recipe website, kraftfoods.com, as well as in weekly Food & Family e-mails to roughly 3.3 million consumers, the innovative approach is just one of many Kraft is eying to reach modern-day consumers.

"More and more consumers are out of home and away from their Internet connections and we need to determine how to get recipe ideas to them where they are," said Ian Smith, director of global digital marketing at Kraft. Whether through iPods, cell phones, Blackberrys or PDAs, he said, "you're going to see these new media get a lot more attention from us in the future."

Using the Notes feature means the recipes are stored separately from audio files and take up less than one megabyte of space as to not interfere with music downloads. Mr. Smith said that while most people see iPods as a tune player, it can actually store anything.

August 25, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

USA Today reports on retailers that have adopted blogs as a marketing tool.

The online retail industry is seeing opportunity in the blog boom. Retailers are creating blogs -- a term derived from Web logs, or online musings -- to promote brand awareness and sales.

For instance Bluefly.com, an online retailer of designer clothes, updates customers on fashion-related news through its blog Flypaper.

The blog "encourages them to visit often to check postings on styles, designers and fashion faux pas," says Melissa Payner-Gregor, CEO of Bluefly.com. The company's fashion spotters around the country post items on Flypaper, which launched in April.

Flypaper's customers typically have relied for fashion news on magazines such as Vogue. Now, they also have the blog as an information source, and the company has an opportunity for an interactive relationship.

It is potentially a lucrative one. A recent study by online market research firm ComScore Networks found that shoppers who visit blogs spend about 6% more than the average online shopper.

August 25, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

In June , Fortune (subscription required) ran a long copy piece on the state of the ad business. In this piece, Donny Deutsch comes out looking rather noble. So, while I've had fun making fun of The Donny in this space, today is Be Nice To The Donny Day.

On the shifting media landscape:

Unlike a lot of his peers, Deutsch doesn't mince words when he talks about what has happened to Madison Avenue. He says consolidation has come with a price. "A lot of the great independent spirit that has driven this industry has gone by the wayside," he says. He lashes out at his fellow agency chiefs for allowing clients to treat them like widget vendors. He fumes about media buyers who claim they understand the business better than their creative peers. "That's all bullshit," Deutsch says.

On penny-pinching:

Some procurement people are squeezing their ad agencies in ways that their marketing department associates never would have dared. Agencies have tried standing up to their clients' procurement departments, without much success. Donny Deutsch severed his ties with Pfizer after a dispute over how much the agency was billing the chemical company for salaries. Deutsch says his former client wanted him to reveal how much he was paying individual employees. "If agencies just refused, we could stop this," Deutsch says. "Yet agency people go, 'Okay, okay.' Then they can't figure out why they're down to a tiny margin business. It's this ridiculous cycle."

August 25, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

Flickr user, Olivander, shares a set of classic matchbook covers.

By the way, the reuben sandwich was likely invented at Omaha's Blackstone Hotel (pictured above).

August 25, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 2 Comments

John January at American Copywriter points to Business Week writer, David Kiley's latest blog entry on Brand New Day. The piece suggests TV spots ought not run more than two to three weeks, based on MediaCheck research. Given the average 30-second spot costs $400,000 to produce, this new piece of data will be a hard pill for clients to swallow.

Some forward thinking media execs believe they may have an answer.

The head of a big media buying firm told me he was looking at starting his own creative department to produce ads at a more affordable price than his clients' ad agencies could.

A decade or so ago, advertisers began stripping their media buying and planning chores out of full-service ad agencies because they could get better prices and greater effeciencies. Then, the media people were often seen as the least creative people in the agency next to the accountants. No more. Not only are media buying/planning firms increasingly running the show on an advertiser's account (because there is more creativity required these days to figure out how to get a consumern to actually see the ad) but they are, like Pac Man, about to turn back on the creatives at traditional ad agencies who used to scoff at "the media people" by cutting into their business of creating the ads.

Talk about revenge of the nerds.

August 26, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 1 Comments

Not ad-related, but amusing for creative people, nonetheless. From the CBC:

Hollywood writers have sued Fox Broadcasting and a reality show production company, charging them with violating California's labour laws covering wages, overtime and meal breaks.

The production company is Rocket Science Laboratories, maker of Joe Millionaire, My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance, and other well-known reality programs.

The suit was filed on behalf of 10 writers and editors. It claims that Fox and Rocket Science, the producer of seven reality shows on Fox, required employees to falsify time cards, failed to pay overtime and routinely required plaintiffs to work 12 hours a day or more.

Sounds like a rough life. If these writers aren't careful, Fox might move its production to Bangladesh. I hear reality-show writers there only get 75 cents an hour and are forced to drink Sanka as opposed to good coffee.

Why are Hollywood people still unionized in this day and age? I always did wonder what would happen if advertising people had a union.

And how much writing did "Joe Millionare" need, anyway?

August 26, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 25 Comments

Fast Company Senior Writer, Linda Tishler, sat down with BBDO's David Lubars and Phil Dusenberry. Here are some of the more poignant revelations.

Dusenberry says the ability to stop bad work is the only power a creative director really has, and boasts that his office was called the "quake zone" because of the fear he struck in even senior people. "The more they quake, the less they'll waste your time with work that's less than their best," he writes in his memoir, Then We Set His Hair on Fire.

"Our boss," Lubars says, "is the work. And it's a very mean and cruel boss who will humiliate you in public if you don't satisfy it. You must please that work and make it feel like you've given it your all.

Lubars: Creative helps drive where the media is going to go. It can't be done in an assembly line like a Ford plant from 1908. Sometimes you have a great strategy on paper, but it doesn't execute. So the creative and the strategy work together like in a DNA molecule. Media has to work like that, too. Media is now a creative job. It's not just, "How many exposures can I get for this amount of money?" It's also, "What delightful interesting places can I put my client in that are relevant but fit the creative?" It has to be woven together.

Dusenberry: My greatest fear about this industry is that the people who are in it now, and in the future, won't have as much fun as we had. We had a great time. It was just wonderful to create work, it was wonderful shooting it and producing it. Today the business is more of a dollars-and-cents game.

August 26, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

According to The Washington Post, David E. Lipson--a multimillionaire entrepreneur who was once chairman of Frederick's of Hollywood--wants to trademark "The Last Best Place," a phrase associated with Montana, where the tycoon has a ranch.

If Lipson has his way his various companies would have exclusive commercial use of "The Last Best Place" as a brand name. The phrase could be used to sell anything -- real estate, footwear, maybe a fruit drink.

"It is a normal business practice," Lipson said over lunch at his 37,000-acre ranch, called Paws Up, in the Blackfoot Valley. "You trademark your brands."

"We were amazed that all the rights to 'The Last Best Place' hadn't been trademarked," he said. "It was shocking."

Shock is what many Montanans felt when they heard about Lipson's effort to lock up commercial use of a euphonious and wildly popular slogan he did not invent.

The phrase was coined by William Kittredge, a well-known western writer, as the title for an anthology of stories, poems and memoirs about Montana that was published at public expense to celebrate the state's centennial.

"We just don't like big shots coming from someplace else and claiming they own something they don't," said Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a rancher himself, as well as the first Democratic governor of Montana since 1988. "Who is he? The Wizard of Oz? We don't think he is the Wizard of Oz, and I sure as hell ain't the scarecrow!"

August 26, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

A List Apart is a website "for people who make websites." Here's their latest t-shirt offering.

And while the graphic boldness is arresting, the copy used to sell the shirt is even better.

XHTML Fist Shirt

Whether you're walking the angry streets at dawn or bare-knuckle boxing in an alley behind your local bodega, nothing says "Let's debate Internet Explorer's handling of MIME types" (or soaks up blood) better than our XHTML Fist Shirt. Also suitable for wrapping fish. Hurry! This offer ends soon.

Thanks to Preshrunk for the pointer.

August 26, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Westword: I figured I was up for some experimentation.

I'm secure in my own identity and all, but I'm also a young guy in his prime. So why not try something a little risque? Truth be told, I was malt-curious. And the Nob Hill Inn on East Colfax Avenue seemed like the perfect place to conduct my own alcohol study: Is it possible for a man to order a Zima in a tough-guy bar and not get his ass kicked? That's a question that has existed, at least subliminally, within the deeply insecure psyche of the fizzy, mildly-citrusy-alcoholic-beverage industry ever since Coors developed the world's first "Clearmalt," back in 1992.

Don't be misled by its regal title: The Nob Hill Inn is a woefully classic Colfax dive bar that even the hipsters avoid. I've grown out my beard, buzzed my head and done push-ups in anticipation. With a beautiful Latina hootchie mama in tow and a short but well-built strong-arm man as backup, I sidle up to the bar.

"I'll take a Zima," I say loudly.

"Don't got it," answers the bartender, who sports a tattered Bubba Gump Shrimp hat. Two older women at the bar, who look like they spend their nights making out with steel manhole covers on Colfax, start laughing. At me -- or at least, at my expense.

So much for experimentation.

August 27, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Halley Suitt is not lovin' the Army's pitch. Given that she has a son, it's perfectly understandable.

Sometimes while watching the evening news on TV, I have to grab my head on both sides, and start screaming, because the things they say are so HORRIFYING, I think the evening news is being penned by Stephen King.

Yes, the evening news is Carrie or something.

Like tonight, they report that the military recruiting geniuses have given up on their usual hack-kneed pitch of trying to make young men join up to be heros and have fun -- (remember that old campaign "BE, ALL THAT YOU CAN BE" and the sexy pictures of war they used to sell you with?) and now they've determined that the reason young guys and gals aren't joining the military fast enough is their DAMNED PARENTS ARE TALKING THEM OUT OF IT. Can you imagine that?! Those meddlesome parents trying to keep their kids alive -- how dare they!?

So their new pitch is these mind-fuck commercials where the father is talking to the son about being "a man" or let me translate, how to become an alpha male moron and get shipped far away to get killed to prove what a great guy he is ... I mean was.

I have news for the news ... when you put on a segment about such an insane thing and really take no editorial position on the content, it's not news, it's advertorial and should have that slimey label on the screen. It was a nicely edited military recruiting video, being played during primetime.

August 27, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Clickz: Marsteller has rolled out a "Digital Check-up" service for clients, providing a snapshot of their efforts and positioning in the consumer-generated media space.

The service starts with Marsteller's own Digital Check-up, which provides a report card detailing what kind of a presence the client has in various online efforts and consumer-generated media. Assessment areas include corporate Web site audits, blog influence tracking and evaluation, search engine optimization, message monitoring, word-of-mouth/viral marketing, and "e-fluentials" online influencer targeting.

Once the client has an idea of what areas they need to address, Marsteller will recommend solutions from four partners who provide tools to create and monitor what it's calling "user-generated media." It's calling the group the User-Generated Media Alliance (UGMA).

Services include buzz marketing measurement from Intelliseek; word-of-mouth campaign development from BzzAgent; Search engine strategy and optimization from Converseon; and conversational character, or avatar marketing campaign creation, from Oddcast.

"As we went through the checklist, we found that we were good at providing many of the services ourselves, but that we weren't experts in all areas. That's when we decided to act as a sort of general contractor, and call in specialists for certain areas as clients need them," Nibley said.

Similar initiatives have been launched this year by PR agencies like CooperKatz, Omnicom's Ketchum, and Interpublic's MWW Group.

August 28, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

New York Times: Created in the fall of 2003 as a looser, music-driven version of www.friendster.com, MySpace quickly caught on with millions of teenagers and young adults as a place to maintain their home pages, which they often decorate with garish artwork, intimate snapshots and blogs filled with frank and often ribald commentary on their lives, all linked to the home pages of friends.

Although many people over 30 have never heard of MySpace, it has about 27 million members, a nearly 400 percent growth since the start of the year. It passed Google in April in hits, the number of pages viewed monthly, according to comScore MediaMetrix, a company that tracks Web traffic.

"They've just come out of nowhere, and they're huge," David Card, a senior analyst with Jupiter Research, said of MySpace. "They've done a number of things that were really smart. One was blogging. People have been doing personal home pages for as long as the Internet's been around, but they were one of the first social networks to jump on that. They've also jumped on music, and there's a lot of traffic surrounding that."

Even the founders seem taken aback. "I don't want to say it's overwhelming," said Tom Anderson, 29, who created MySpace with Chris DeWolfe, 39, "but I see these numbers coming out, I keep thinking, it must be a mistake. How can we pass Google? I mean, my mom knows Google, but she doesn't know MySpace."

One adult who has paid attention is Rupert Murdoch, the chief executive of the News Corporation, which agreed in July to pay $580 million to buy the site's parent company.

August 29, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

New York Times: Two and a half years after the music business lined up behind the chief executive of Apple, Steven P. Jobs, and hailed him and his iTunes music service for breathing life into music sales, the industry's allegiance to Mr. Jobs has eroded sharply.

Mr. Jobs is now girding for a showdown with at least two of the four major record companies over the price of songs on the iTunes service.

If he loses, the one-price model that iTunes has adopted - 99 cents to download any song - could be replaced with a more complex structure that prices songs by popularity. A hot new single, for example, could sell for $1.49, while a golden oldie could go for substantially less than 99 cents.

Music executives who support Mr. Jobs say the higher prices could backfire, sending iTunes' customers in search of songs on free, unauthorized file-swapping networks.

At the price of 99 cents a song, the share of the major labels is about 70 cents.

The Times piece makes no mention of Chris Anderson's brilliant analysis of this issue.

99 cents violates our innate sense of economic justice: If it clearly costs less for a record label to deliver a song online, with no packaging, manufacturing, distribution, or shelf space overheads, why shouldn't the price be less, too?

Surprisingly enough, there's been little good economic analysis on what the right price for online music should be. The main reason for this is that pricing isn't set by the market today but by the record label demi-cartel.

That wholesale price is set to roughly match the price of CDs, to avoid dreaded "channel conflict." The labels fear that if they price online music lower, their CD retailers (still the vast majority of the business) will revolt or, more likely, go out of business even more quickly than they already are. In either case, it would be a serious disruption of the status quo, which terrifies the already spooked record companies. No wonder they're doing price calculations with an eye on the downsides in their traditional CD business rather than the upside in their new online business.

Take away the unnecessary costs of the retail channel - CD manufacturing, distribution, and retail overheads. That leaves the costs of finding, making, and marketing music. Keep them as they are, to ensure that the people on the creative and label side of the business make as much as they currently do. For a popular album that sells 300,000 copies, the creative costs work out to about $7.50 per disc, or around 60 cents a track. Add to that the actual cost of delivering music online, which is mostly the cost of building and maintaining the online service rather than the negligible storage and bandwidth costs. Current price tag: around 17 cents a track. By this calculation, hit music is overpriced by 25 percent online - it should cost just 79 cents a track, reflecting the savings of digital delivery.

August 29, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 0 Comments

OK...I just love how bizarre news coverage of storms can get.

Yesterday, someone in the French Quarter dropped the F-bomb on Shepard Smith, live on FOX.

See it here.

Shep: "Why are you still here?"
Man: "None of your f--kin' business."
Shep: "Well, that was a good answer, wasn't it?...I'm watching two dogs drink out of a glass of ice water, and it's none of my business why they are still here."

August 29, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Washington Times: The Swedish unit of U.S. carmaker Ford Motor Co. is experimenting with a built-in breathalyzer and speed governor to reduce road accidents.

The breathalyzer is part of the seat belt mechanism, and before the car will start, the driver must blow below .08 percent or less with the belt buckled. All 50 U.S. states have adopted .08 as the legal limit, while in Sweden, the legal limit is .02, or the equivalent of one drink.

The test vehicle also is equipped with a special set of ignition keys that can be programmed to limit the car to preset speeds, which would enable parents to have control over inexperienced teenagers.

August 29, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 1 Comments

Random Culture points out that MTV has love for Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Much to my surprise, when I tried to visit the MTV Overdrive section of the site, I received an error that said, "PC users with Netscape, Mozilla or Firefox: you need to run Internet Explorer to use MTV Overdrive."

The biggest problem I have with this is that MTV is supposed to be on the cutting edge of culture, right? And this is something I would expect from a company who has no idea of what's happening online.

I'm a Mac user. Here's the error message I just received:

Detecting OS...

In order to offer a broad selection of full-length music videos on-demand and free of charge, MTV Overdrive uses Windows Digital Rights Management (DRM) to protect videos from unauthorized re-distribution.

Unfortunately, Microsoft's Windows Media Player Plug-in for Macintosh does not support Windows DRM. If DRM support becomes available for Macintosh, MTV will develop a version of MTV Overdrive that works on a Mac.

August 29, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 4 Comments

According to this AP story, redneck crooner, Gretchen Wilson, has received some unwelcome mail from Tennessee's attorney general.

The state attorney general wants the country singer who made the song "Redneck Woman" a hit to stop "glamorizing" the use of smokeless tobacco at her concerts.

State officials said Gretchen Wilson can be seen on concert jumbo screens pulling a can of Skoal from her pocket while performing her new song, "Skoal Ring."

That may violate the 1998 settlement between states and tobacco companies forbidding tobacco ads targeting young people, Attorney General Paul Summers said.

The landmark $206 billion tobacco settlement "provided that advertisements such as this would be and should be prohibited," Summers said.

The U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co., which makes Skoal, signed on to the tobacco settlement and agreed not to sponsor concerts under any brand names or enter into any sort of agreement with an artist to display or make reference to their products.

U.S. Smokeless Tobacco does not have an agreement with Wilson or any artists to promote its products, said company spokesman Mike Bazinet. Summers said his office is also contacting the company about the use of its products at Wilson's concerts.

According to this update, the performer will keep her can of Skoal in her back pocket from now on.

August 29, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 5 Comments

When the unmistakable opening guitar chords of Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'" popped up during a commercial break, I perked up my ears. Turns out Kaiser Permanente is using Dylan to promote its new "Thrive" campaign, encouraging people to adopt healthy habits.

But some people don't like it--as evidenced by this website, which is committed to exposing the 'truth' behind the ad campaign and other KP business practices. Among the things you can find on this site is a 50-page PDF brand positioning discussion, in which Kaiser admits it needs to change its image. Right off the bat, KP's research shows that "75% of people who are offered Kaiser Permanente probably or definitely would not consider us for their healthcare coverage."

Kaiser's agency is Campbell-Ewald, by the way. They don't have an easy task. It's no secret that Kaiser Permanente has had its share of troubles in recent years, and advertising can only do so much to fix problems that seem to be deeply rooted.

This is a fascinating study of a corporation, its PR and advertising efforts, and its active opposition. I originally just wanted to find the Dylan commercial to link to, but instead I stumbled onto the whole opposition website. Once again, the power of the Internet (and Google) reinforces the need for as much corporate transparency as possible.

I need to dig and find some more info about all this, and I'll update this post as necessary.

UPDATE: Yikes. Not only is the brand positioning discussion there, so is Campbell-Ewald's Creative Brief and the campaign's Logo Usage Guidelines, among other things. Much of this stuff has been on "Kaiser Thrive Exposed" for over a year now. According to the website:

there was no hacking involved. We found the first of the marketing materials on Google and that led us to the rest. None of the documents were behind the firewall, and all were easily accessible to anyone on the Internet. Makes you wonder if that claptrap HealthConnect system, which contains ALL of your personal and medical info, is secure. And since Kaiser has outsourced much of the work to India (causing many hardworking American IT folks to lose their jobs), WHO KNOWS what could happen? Can you say "identity theft" anyone?

Rarely have I ever seen a company's internal marketing documents be actively used against it so openly. Somewhere there's a leak no overactive bladder treatment could stop.

August 30, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 4 Comments

The Telegraph: They have been used to sell everything from washing powder to New Labour. But now it seems that even Madonna has woken up to the power of focus groups.

The most successful female artist in chart history has chosen songs for her next album after secretly trying them out on nightclubbers.

The tunes, with her distinctive vocals removed, were played in clubs from Liverpool to Ibiza throughout June. The reaction of the crowds were filmed and used by the 47-year-old mother of two to determine the final track listing for Confessions On A Dancefloor, her 10th studio album.

The idea of Madonna seeking affirmation for her work before it has been released has surprised many in the worlds of advertising and music. After all, she has sold more than 175 million albums and 75 million singles worldwide.

Claire Beale, the editor of Campaign magazine, said the research could be seen as a crisis of confidence for someone normally known for their business acumen.

"This is a new one on me," she said. "In the advertising world, creative people tend to distrust focus groups precisely because they can undermine originality and bring everything down to the lowest common denominator.

"Having said that, people in the advertising industry are becoming increasingly reliant on them because there is a growing lack of confidence about what people want.

"Madonna is obviously running her material past a very niche audience rather than a focus group. But it still suggests she feels a need for endorsement. Like a lot of people who work in advertising she is far older than her target audience. She may feel this is a useful way of reconnecting with a younger generation."

August 30, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

Podcasting News reports on Purdue University's launch of BoilerCast (a play on Boilermakers), a podcasting service that provides lectures in streaming format or as downloads.

"Many universities are experimenting with podcasting, but I'm not aware of any other university that is deploying a podcasting service on the scale that we are," says Michael Gay, manager of Broadcast Networks & Services for Information Technology at Purdue. "As far as I know, we are the only university that is offering both streaming and podcasting of lectures in this manner as a central university service."

Students and faculty will be able to listen to podcasts of some large lectures on campus beginning immediately. Any faculty member can request that their course be available via the podcasting service, which is called BoilerCast.

"Once the students have this set up, they don't have to revisit the Web site to get the content," Gay says. "The most recent lectures of the courses they've subscribed to will be downloaded to their computer - and possibly to their media player - automatically."

Thanks to Random Culture for the pointer.

August 30, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 4 Comments

Leo Burnett once gave a speech entitled "When To Take My Name Off The Door."

Today, as Adweek reports, the Leo Burnett name is going up one more time--in Detroit.

Leo Burnett Detroit is the agency which used to be called Chemistri.
Chemistri was the agency that used to be called D'Arcy Detroit.
D'Arcy Detroit is a shortened version of D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles.
D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles was a merger of two separate agencies, I think.

All of which can somehow be traced back to Adam and Eve, I suppose.

August 31, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

BBC: A Barclays bank advert showing a man suffering a bad reaction to a bee sting has been withdrawn for causing offence and distress to people with allergies.

More than 290 viewers complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), saying the TV commercial made light of a potentially fatal condition.

The bank, which withdrew the advert following the complaints but before the ASA ruling, said it was a light-hearted attempt to show people were more likely to be arrested abroad than to change their bank account.

Barclays has apologised and made a donation to an allergies charity - "as a gesture of goodwill".

August 31, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 10 Comments

Saatchi & Saatchi UK chairman and CEO, Lee Daley, appeared on a CNN program the other day. Here's a clip:

CNN: How will advertising be different in a decade?

Daley: I think the advertising industry as a whole will change very dramatically because of the change in the media universe. The advertising industry has grown up, essentially on the back on analogue technologies, and it's grown up around multi-domesticity.

We're going to be in a global media environment where basically we've got common platforms, we're going to have convergence of media platforms, content migration from pier to pier and across markets and I think that's going to change fundamentally the way global and local advertisers invest in content and communication.

That will mean a shift in the fundamental dynamics of the agency relationship, I think it is going to present great challenges to the economics of our industry, but potentially it will liberate our creative potential and agencies may well end up having assets under management creatively that they own and create and distribute themselves as well as having serviced based relationships. So, I think there are great challenges, but also massive opportunities for our industry to reinvent itself off the back of these technologies.

I think the potential is there for the advertising agencies and their clients to prosper exponentially if we embrace these technologies and liberate our thinking from the cataract of the analogue media world, which was a push world, and truly embrace interactivity. To truly embrace the capability of these technologies to build fundamentally different communication and marketing models and understand that these are truly global technologies that will integrate audiences around the world with common behavioral characteristics and aspirations -- that is astonishingly exciting in terms of the future of our industry.

August 31, 2005 by david burn | Permalink | 0 Comments

The above graphic is being used to promote the Word of Mouth Marketing Association's upcoming conference and new blog. And while it's beyond obvious that advertising is a target of much scorn from just about every corner these days, is it not paradoxical that a group advocating one form of advertising is degrading the category as a whole?

Popular lecturer, author and corporate advisor, Tom Asacker, makes the case in a comment.

So let me get this straight: "Consumers only cared about being part of something amazing."

Makes sense. And so, if the business model, product or service is amazing, consumers become engaged and word-of-mouth kicks in. Seems like stating the obvious to me.

And if the category is simply not amazing, then marketers should do what? Make it amazing? That makes sense too.

So then what exactly is WOMMA advocating? Making ordinary stuff remarkable or creating buzz around ordinary stuff? Because remarkable stuff doesn't need you, now do they?

I think I prefer the old days, when word-of-mouth couldn't be manufactured, or manipulated. But I probably just don't get it, being an ad guy and all.

August 31, 2005 by Shawn Hartley | Permalink | 0 Comments

AdPulp.com is undergoing some site maintenance this evening. Interruptions to the functionality of the web site should be minimal. However, if something does seem amiss, give it a couple moments and try again.

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August 31, 2005 by Dan Goldgeier | Permalink | 0 Comments

In The New York Times:

The American Express Company said yesterday that it would make changes to a campaign about Andy Roddick losing and finding his "mojo" after his first-round defeat at the United States Open tennis tournament.

George Parker over at AdScam doesn't mince words about the whole thing:

Having invested several gazillion dollars in a TV campaign featuring Roddick "Looking for his Mojo," you know first thing Wednesday morning the phones were glowing at O&M (AmEx's ad agency) and PMK/HBH (their PR agency) with AmEx marketing flakes trying to save their scrawny necks by getting out of all the TV and print buys.

This reminds me of the whole "Dan vs. Dave: Who's the world's best athlete?" campaign for Reebok back in 1992, and after months of hype, one of them ended up not qualifying for the Olympics.

Plan B. Don't Leave Home Without It.