The New York Times shares a story about Business 2.0's recent data fumble.

On Monday night, April 23, the magazine’s editorial system crashed, wiping out all the work that had been done for its June issue. The backup server failed to back up.

The recovery was made much easier, paradoxically, by a bane of modern business, litigation — or at least the fear of it.

“The text had all been copy-edited and sent off to the lawyers, so it had been saved as e-mail,” editor Josh Quittner said.

But the artwork, the page layouts, were truly gone, he said, and “our heroic art department had to rebuild all the art assets.”

Don't we all have like tales of machinery failure and chaos endured on the road to recovery?

Advertising is all about engaging consumers and interacting with them, right? Let's see just how much Chase Bank wants to engage with its consumers after this:

I loves me some YouTube. If companies can use it to get their message out virally, they also have to endure the flip side. However, there's more on the story here.

Researchers for the Service Employees International Union, which is battling the banking giant over its use of non-union security employees, found the documents out in the open. They were found in trash bags that were left outside several New York City Chase branches.

So there may be ulterior motives other than protecting consumers. I had to poke around Google News to get the backstory on who made the video. Whatever the truth is, Chase had better get on it.

According to Ad Age and other media sources, the Bancroft family, controlling shareholders of The Wall Street Journal's parent company , Dow Jones & Co., is considering a $5 billion buyout offer from News Corp., the international media conglomerate controlled by Rupert Murdoch.

Reports claim the Journal's newroom is buzzing with the news. And not in a good way.

The Independent Association of Publishers' Employees, local 1096 of the Newspaper Guild/Communications Workers of America, had this to say in a statement:

"The staff, from top to bottom, opposes a Rupert Murdoch takeover of Dow Jones & Co. Since the early part of the twentieth century, the Bancroft family has stood up for the independence and quality of The Wall Street Journal and has built it into one of the world's great newspapers.

"Mr. Murdoch has shown a willingness to crush quality and independence, and there is no reason to think he would handle Dow Jones or The Journal any differently. Despite our differences of opinion with current management, we strongly encourage the Bancrofts to continue to stand up for the institution's independence, and to walk away from this offer.

Dow Jones also owns Barron's and Market Watch. News Corp.'s only U.S. newspaper property right now is the New York Post, but the company owns several papers in England and Australia.

While there are books on creativity that may prove useful for a long time, books about media tend to have a shorter shelf life. Which is why I say go read Watch This, Listen Up, Click Here: Inside the 300 Billion Dollar Business Behind the Media You Constantly Consume ASAP, because next year it could be totally obsolete.

But right now, it's a great read. Written by David Verklin, the CEO of Carat, and Bernice Kanner, a noted marketing author (who recently passed away), you get a broad overview of today's media landscape and why it's changing so rapidly.

It's all here: From the Super Bowl, Nielsen Ratings to the impact of Google Adwords, Wikipedia, Second Life and Professional Bull Riding (seriously!), everything media-related is covered, and if you're a media junkie like me, there's a "hey, I didn't know that" fact on almost every page. Although I have to admit, the chapter titles are a bit of a tease: "Why Oprah Gave Away Pontiacs" and "Why Honda Hates The Internet" have more to do with the broader topics they hint at (product placement and online comparison shopping) than Oprah or Honda.

You're not going to get any magic answers or ways to develop better media plans from Verklin and Kanner. But it'd be hard to find a better overview of the right-here right-now media landscape than this book. As a creative, this is the kind of stuff I need to keep up with. I've always believed media people and creative people ought to work more closely together. Reading this book reminded me why: the future of the ad industry depends on it.

(Full disclosure: FSB Associates provided me with a copy of this book for review. Still, I'd recommend this to anyone in advertising who needs to keep up with current trends--in other words, everyone.)

The St. Paul Pioneer Press takes a look at Fallon's latest trials and tribulations:

Todd Riddle just got one of the top advertising jobs in the Twin Cities, as creative director at Fallon Worldwide's Minneapolis headquarters. So why are ad watchers already wondering how long he'll last?

The Twin Cities' second-largest agency has seen a lot of turnover at the top lately. Riddle is Fallon's third creative director in less than two years.

He succeeds Kerry Feuerman, who quit last week, just one year after joining the agency to replace Bruce Bildsten, who left in the fall of 2005.

One local adman, Greg Kurowski, president of Minneapolis-based Periscope, said the departures of talent and clients are linked. "The downward spiral of any agency is people, then clients," Kurowski said.

Riddle's promotion marks a change of pace from Fallon's recent top hires. Feuerman and Silburn were outsiders, hailing from Chicago and London, respectively. But Riddle is a five-year Fallon veteran. The agency also has named insiders to fill the posts of its recently departed chief financial officer and a few other senior-level executives.

Appointing Riddle signals an attempt to "stop the bleeding," Kurowski said, and encourages other Fallonites to stay.

Shepardson Stern + Kaminsky are the stars of a New York Times story about Delta's reconfigured brand position, now that the airline has emerged from Chapter 11 and its shares are scheduled to resume trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

SS+K was founded by partners with experience in elections and crisis communications. The agency, which is partially owned by Creative Artists Agency, was recently hired by Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, to advise his presidential campaign in areas that include reaching younger voters and using nontraditional media for persuasive purposes.

Showing off some of their finely-honed political savvy, Delta is partnering with The Conservation Fund, to become the first U.S. airline to buy trees to help offset carbon emissions associated with air travel.

"Sweet reel, but where's your web work?" queried the creative director, dismayed by the candidate's lack of a digital clue.

According to Ad Age, the above line of questioning is not fantasy, but a pressing credentials/personnel issue faced by agencies today.

(speaking at ad:tech) Bob Moore, chief creative officer at Publicis USA, said the agency doesn't hire people without digital in their portfolio, the hoped-for net effect being not two classes of creative but one. The challenge is getting people to think about it as a blank slate, he said, and "the irony that creative people are the slowest to recognize this is grating on me. Terribly."

We know all about people who actively resist advertising. In fact, we actively resist advertising. But here's a group of people who take things a step further by resisting product.

I Hate Crocs video care of Josh Spear

Donna Bogatin at ZDNet is reporting on the "much needed Citysearch facelift," unveiled earlier today.

Heralding the “next-generation” of Citysearch, the veteran IAC owned cityguide launched a bevy of trendy Web 2.0 social features and interactive services along with a new “cool” blue interface and rejuvenated tag line: “Live like an insider.”

One of the site's new B2B offerings (and potential revenue generators) is the ability to offer local merchants online video services from TurnHere. TurnHere will use its global network of more than 2,000 professional filmmakers to produce local merchant videos that tell authentic stories about local businesses and their owners.

Bradley J. Inman, founder and CEO of TurnHere said, “Local businesses and national advertisers with a local presence can benefit from our strategic solution for both efficient video production and broad Web distribution.”

I'm not sure what to say about this TV spot for a beer, but I can share with you an edited version of the press release I received about it:

Alcoholic beverage marketer Lion Nathan will unveil its latest campaign this weekend for Tooheys Extra Dry (TED), when it launches its HarvesTED .

Developed in collaboration with long-term creative partner, BMF, the advertisement is firmly anchored in the brand truth that has been the cornerstone of TED communications for some time – that the desire for the clean, crisp taste of TED is worth going to extraordinary lengths to be satiated.

National Marketing Director Paul Foster said “HarvesTED really is like nothing else beer drinkers have ever seen. It’s a weirdly wonderful cinematic mini film for TV, cinema and the internet that takes the desire and want for TED’s clean crisp taste to a whole new level by focusing on the care and attention that goes into ‘creating’ TED.

Commenting on HarvesTED’s fantastical farm, pod people, bizarre machinery and rockabilly quiffs, Executive Creative Director at BMF, Warren Brown, said: “It is an idea that is iconic, will set the bar even higher for beer advertising in this country and provide plenty of fertile ground for more innovative and unexpected ideas in the future.”

Wow, Mr. Brown is a true believer. I guess you need to be when you're in his job. Yet, there's a certain "hand me my Lion now" swagger here that I find annoying unappealing.

I'm a huge fan of Hugh MacLeod's cartoons. But this one's by far and away my favorite; it's hanging up in my office:

But the problem isn't limited to just the way we talk in ads. It got me to thinking why businesspeople, particularly in advertising, use phrases and language of war and criminal behavior in meetings, emails, and other parts of workaday existence:

Simply put, you can’t use the language of war or criminal behavior and expect people to like you. And you can’t spew that nonsense in meetings if you want to be taken seriously, or have your agency or your client’s brand to be thought of in a positive light.

I know, military expressions are pervasive in our lives. I’m not sure if it originated with Sun-Tzu, or World War II veterans returning home to become The Men In The Grey Flannel Suits, but somewhere along the line the language of war became the language of business and marketing.

You hear it every day in your ad agency or company, I bet: “It’s all hands on deck. We need to add some creative firepower. That is, if we want to execute some really killer ads. Got it? Alright everyone, lock and load!”

It's getting very hard for me to take people seriously when they say stuff like that. It's the focus of my new column on Talent Zoo. And be sure to check out their entire site, as it's been redesigned.

Like trippy animation? You're in luck then. Sao Paulo-based flip flop provider Havaianas has a multitude of it ready for veiwing on their various websites and on YouTube.

According to Wired, the U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer. The directive, issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction on troops' online activities since the start of the Iraq war. And it could mean the end of military blogs, observers say.

"This is the final nail in the coffin for combat blogging," said retired paratrooper Matthew Burden, editor of The Blog of War anthology. "No more military bloggers writing about their experiences in the combat zone. This is the best PR the military has -- it's most honest voice out of the war zone. And it's being silenced."

McD's is gonna be pissed to learn that the Japanese have coined a new McTerm. According to Mainichi, "McRefugees" describes a growing class of people who sleep overnight in Internet cafes, saunas and McDonald's restaurants for few hundred to a thousand yen.

On another front, McDonald's is fighting British dictionary publishers over their use of the term, "McJob."

The Oxford English Dictionary, considered by many wordsmiths as the gold standard for the English language, is one of those that will be targeted. It defines the noun as "an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector."

The word first cropped up two decades ago in the Washington Post, according to the dictionary. But executives at Oak Brook, Ill.-based McDonald's say the definition is demeaning to its workers and say theyll ask dictionary editors to amend the definition.

"Dictionaries are supposed to be paragons of accuracy. And in this case, they got it completely wrong," said Walt Riker, a McDonald's spokesman. "It's a complete disservice and incredibly demeaning to a terrific work force and a company that's been a jobs and opportunity machine for 50 years."

Roy McCrerey is an Atlanta-based actor who was recenly hired by Asheville Convention & Visitors Bureau to star in its "Five Day Weekend" campaign.

McCrerey told the Atalanta Constitution Journal that he only works two days a week. Actors...

"In my dream world, the jerk boss is going to be the guy who makes you come in on Wednesdays," said McCrerey

Maybe our message is a little crazy, but my response to that is our current situation is crazy. We need to fight crazy with crazy."

According to "the movement," work-obsessed Americans waste million of vacation days a year. In fact, the idea for this campaign may well have stemmed from Expedia's claim that 51.2 million Americans are vacation deprived.

Despite earning the least amount of annual vacation days, Americans will leave an average of 3 days unused—totaling more than 439 million in 2007.

Asheville's campaign is meant to be funny, which it is. Whereas Expedia is kickin' facts, as far as I can tell. Clearly, both entities stand to benefit from motivating people to get out of town more often.

Five Day Weekend has a blog and a Cafe Press storefront.

[via Brains on Fire]

In a move to more closely align digital marketing practices with traditional advertising, Publicis is moving pieces on a board.

Publicis Groupe announced it is aligning Modem Media, a digital firm it acquired as part of its recent $1.6 billion purchase of Digitas, with its Publicis ad agency. The new unit, called Publicis Modem, will create digital marketing services for the Publicis agency. Martin Reidy, former president of Modem Media, will serve as chief executive of Publicis Modem and assume the CEO post at the existing digital marketing agency Publicis Dialogue.

[Source: The Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.)]

USA Today brings some drama to its report on Yahoo's decision to put all its photo chips in Flickr's basket.

At Yahoo, Web 2.0 has won one battle with stodgy old Web 1.0.

Yahoo is shutting down Yahoo Photos — for years, the No. 1 or No. 2 most-visited photo site on the Web. Its users will be directed to move their pictures to Yahoo's hot upstart, Flickr.

Stewart Butterfield, who co-founded Flickr in 2004 with wife Caterina Fake, says the move is a "validation" of the central idea of Flickr: that photos in the digital age are very different from a physical print.

"We saw it as a means of communication and connecting with people," says Butterfield, Flickr's general manager. "People can take a picture and get immediate feedback from all over the world, and you can't do that with a printed photo."

In other news, Yahoo shares surged more than 17% in premarket trading on the rumor that Microsoft has asked Yahoo to enter formal negotiations for an acquisition that could be worth $50 billion. Yahoo's market capitalization was about $38 billion on Thursday.

Ethnographer and brand consultant Grant McCracken is in Mexico trying to "save marketing" by asking more of research.

I am here to advance my clients interests not by finding a hot button, but looking for a match between all of the cultural complexities of the consumers' life and all the things the brand and the product are or can become.

McCracken also provides an historical context for a deep understanding of consumer behavior.

Last December Jennifer Rice probed the depths and asked the kind of pertinent questions one asks on a long hike, or fireside with a particularly good pinot noir.

One thing I haven’t thought about until recently is whether I could make a difference in my own profession. Seems a bit odd in hindsight, but I’ve finally recognized that I’ve been suffering from cognitive dissonance: I believe that over-commercialization is leading to the demise of our society, and yet I’m in a profession of helping companies sell stuff that people don’t really need.

Hmm. That’s a problem. Somewhere down the line I subconsciously accepted the message that business isn’t meaningful. Looking back at some of my employers and clients, I can see how I could come to such a conclusion. I've been fortunate to work with some companies filled with passion and purpose, but I saw them as a rare exception.

And yet there are plenty of companies out there that do stand for something. They’re serving a need and making a difference. But typically these companies don’t need much branding help; their single-minded passion is the brand, and it fuels success.

While I constantly question the value of what I do in this business, I do not question the meaningfulness of business, or more to the point, the ad business. Business is a powerful tool for social change—in this culture, arguably the most powerful tool. Thus, something as simple as saying, "I'm going to fight for the truth," can make an impact. In other words, helping to move agency peers and clients off of platitudes like, "We'll tell 'em what they want to hear" to something more authentic is a big step. A big step made from lots of little steps taken on a day-to-day basis.

Over at The Huffington Post and cross-posted on Media 3.0, his own blog, Shelly Palmer takes a closer look at the new era of hypertargeted marketing:

Forgetting the privacy issues (formidable as they are), let's ask a few business questions about the value of hyper-targeted media. Is it really valuable? Certainly not on an individual basis.

Statisticians will tell you that, with the appropriate sample size and mathematical tools, it is relatively easy to predict what a population will do. However, it is absolutely impossible to predict what any individual will do. As you well know, when it comes to your personal decisions, past performance is rarely an indicator of future performance. So, we can predict that tonight in Manhattan, 5,437 dinners will be served at restaurants that feature Mexican food, but we can't predict who will eat them.

Even if you could predict, with a reasonable margin of accuracy, who would frequent these culinary establishments this evening, would it help you market to them? What would you do differently? Would your advanced knowledge of this particular behavior enable you to extract a greater share of wallet from this hyper-targeted audience? Probably not.

He raises an interesting point. The data wonks are asserting more control than ever, using new media to prove that ROI can be improved by reaching their targets more precisely. But all the hyper-targeting in the world can't overcome the notion that people are emotional, irrational, and make purchasing decisions for all sorts of reasons that we can't predict.

I've made many copies of my book at Kinko's and sent plenty of them via FedEx. So a merger of the two seemed fine to me. So how's it all going? The New York Times takes a closer look.

“We’ve got three cultures at play here,” said Brian D. Philips, Fedex Kinko’s chief operating officer.

But most see cultures at war. “At Kinko’s, there’s a thin veneer of professional folks riding herd on a vast platoon of semitrained people,” said James E. Schrager, clinical professor of entrepreneurship and strategy at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. “That’s just not the FedEx way.” A result, said Robert Boyden Lamb, a management professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University, is that “these cultures do not gel, they do not hook together at key points.”

Even [FedEx Kinko's CEO Kenneth] Mr. May, who has been with FedEx for 24 years and has run FedEx Kinko’s for two, acknowledges the vast gulf. “Kinko’s was a way station where you stayed a few years, but you build a career at FedEx,” he said. “The Kinko’s people are hip, they’re fun, but they needed oversight.”

Kinko’s workers, many of whom still tell tales of the annual picnics [the original founder of Kinko's, Paul] Mr. Orfalea gave for co-workers (he hated the word “employee”), describe an entirely different situation.

Kinko’s coddled its workers, they say, who in turn coddled customers. “I had cornrows and green hair, and no one seemed to mind,” recalled Sharon A. Robinson, once a worker at a Kinko’s in Laramie, Wyo., and now a product specialist.

It's an interesting clash of cultures. Kinko's has always been a bit unpredictable: the quality of the service has always depended on who's behind the counter, what time of day you go in, and how many clueless grandmothers looking for enlargements are in line in front of you. But FedEx's mission has always been more singleminded of purpose.

Do mergers like these strenghten brands or weaken them?

Did you know this was on the horizon?

The New York Times reports:

The next frontier will be the home. One company that wants to be the first to deliver a 3-D printer for consumers is Desktop Factory, started by IdeaLab, a technology incubator here. The company will start selling its first printer for $4,995 this year.

Bill Gross, chairman of IdeaLab, says the technology it has developed, which uses a halogen light bulb to melt nylon powder, will allow the price of the printers to fall to $1,000 in four years.

“We are Easy-Bake Ovening a 3-D model,” he said. “The really powerful thing about this idea is that the fundamental engineering allows us to make it for $300 in materials.”

Three-dimensional printers, often called rapid prototypers, assemble objects out of an array of specks of material, just as traditional printers create images out of dots of ink or toner. They build models in a stack of very thin layers, each created by a liquid or powdered plastic that can be hardened in small spots by precisely applied heat, light or chemicals.

Some ad agency will get a hold of this and do something cool with it. What would you do with it?

Guayaki Yerba Mate is an emerging beverage brand with interesting stories to tell about their organic, rainforest-grown, fairly traded product. Witness, the seven-minute documentary:

Guayaki also makes room for brand advocates and Mate heads to tell their own tales. Available from the brand's YouTube channel, "Out of my Gourd" appears to be a New Age-inspired consumer generated commercial.

The brand name Guayaki (Gwy-uh-KEE) honors the Aché Guayakí people. The Ache live in the sub-tropical rainforests of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, home of the yerba mate tree.

Variety is reporting on Google's new Revver-like compensation initiative.

Google-owned viral video site announced Friday that it will start giving a cut of ad revenue to some of the most popular amateur video brands on its site, such as lonelygirl15 and LisaNova.

They will get approximately the same revenue share from the performance of display ads around their videos as YouTube's professional partners, such as the NBA and BBC.

Though YouTube will consider including other producers, it's being very selective. Unlike Revver, the first video site to share ad revenues with producers, it won't include everyone who submits videos.

"It's very gratifying to see a year of hard work rewarded through our inclusion in the first revenue-sharing program on YouTube," said lonelygirl15 co-creator Miles Beckett.

According to The Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.), Publicis Groupe and Droga5 are diving deep into branded entertainment with a new website called Honeyshed.

But unlike other examples of the genre -- movies and TV shows created by marketers that aim to subtly promote a brand -- there will be nothing subtle about the programming on Honeyshed.

"It's about celebrating the sell," says Mr. Droga, creative chairman of Droga5, who describes the site as "QVC meets MTV."

"I think under the influence of the digital interactive world, society and consumers will be more difficult to reach and brands need a channel of communication that is different," says Maurice Lévy, Publicis's chairman and chief executive.

Speaking to Esquire last fall, Droga said, "People tolerate advertising to get to the content. Well, I don't see why advertising can't become the destination and the content."

The New York Times is doing its best to see through the pr machinations of a large adult beverage marketer.

Beam Global Spirits and Wine — which makes brands like Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark bourbon and Canadian Club whiskey — announced it would voluntarily adopt stricter rules to keep messages away from young people.

But the step is largely symbolic. Beam said that it would purchase print and broadcast advertisements only in outlets where at least 75 percent of the audience is above the legal drinking age. The self-imposed industry standards of the two major alcohol trade groups, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States and the Beer Council, is 70 percent. Plus, Beam’s products skew toward older drinkers.

In a way, since Beam makes neither beer nor alcopops, its move is somewhat akin to the Mini Cooper agreeing to fuel efficiency standards while sport utility vehicle makers remained mum.

Kids and babies. CNET via MarketingVox:

Around 90% of American kids under 2 and 40% of babies under 3 months are regular TV watchers, according to a recent pediatric study [conducted by the University of Washington].

Idiocracy, here we come.

Sally Hogshead has a new "Naked Career" interview up at Radio Talent Zoo. This time around Ms. Hogshead speaks to her hero Luke Sullivan, formerly of Fallon and West Wayne and now at GSD&M in Austin. That's right, two superstar copywriters engaged in conversation about the ad business. Give it a listen.

I could tell you all about it, but I prefer to do something else. Purely for your entertainment, I will endeavor to answer some of Sally's questions for Luke (even though I'm not Luke).

According to LiveScience.com, Grey and/or DraftFCB could rule the ad world if they moved into a cool, funky, open-air space.

A recent study at the University of Minnesota suggests that ceiling height affects problem-solving skills and behavior by priming concepts that encourage certain kinds of brain processing.

"Priming means a concept gets activated in a person's head," researcher Joan Meyers-Levy told LiveScience. "When people are in a room with a high ceiling, they activate the idea of freedom. In a low-ceilinged room, they activate more constrained, confined concepts."

Meyers-Levy and Zhu will publish their results this August in the Journal of Consumer Research. But Meyers-Levy thinks her study has wide-reaching applications outside the marketplace.

"Managers should want noticeably higher ceilings for thinking of bold initiatives. The technicians and accountants might want low ceilings."

Actually, I'm one of those people that believes the particulars of an agency's office space influence everything--overtly and subtly. What do you think?

Radar Communications of Boulder, CO has joined forces with Crispin Porter + Bogusky also of Boulder (and Miami), according to a May 7th post from John Winsor, Radar's founder and CEO.

One of the things that attracted us to join forces with CP+B was not only their fearless approach to advertising and marketing but also the way they approach business itself.

CP+B shares our passion for bringing clients exceptionally close to current and potential customers. Radar will join CP+B’s very talented Cognitive and Cultural Studies (Cogs) department to form Cultural Radar. The Cogs department has become known for providing CP+B clients with a unique perspective on understanding culture and what drives and motivates consumers, by engaging leading minds from outside typical planning culture including cultural anthropologists, sociologists and other engaged people from all walks of live that had a spirit for cultural exploration.

All of us at Radar are thrilled about this unique opportunity and look forward to combining Radar’s research methodologies of ethnography, storytelling and the powerful hybrid of anthropological and journalistic practices.

I didn't realize CP+B had a Cognitive and Cultural Studies department, nor did I realize that Radar was engaged in "a hybrid of anthropological and journalistic practices." I must say I find these type of developments within the agency world fascinating.

The Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.) asked Rich Silverstein of Goodby Silverstein + Partners some good questions on the heels of the agency's two huge account wins (Sprint and Hyundai). Asked how he reassures a smaller client (The Commonwealth Bank of Australia) that they too are important in the wake of such wins, Mr. Silverstein said:

We had a creative team camp out at San Francisco International Airport in front of Qantas Airways. They had sleeping bags and pillows, and we said to the bank, in a video email, "They are not leaving until you call us and tell us to get on a plane and start working for you." In one video we sent to them I personally complained "Please hire them because it's too expensive for me to feed them airport food." It was a way to show we care and to show them that the people that would be working on that account would not be people working on Sprint and Hyundai. ... There are two things agencies have to do, respect their long-term relationships, and they have to go after new business. No client wants an agency that is a dinosaur, and you have to be relevant. To stay relevant, you have to do new work for different types of clients.

So, Goodby's not above pulling stunts to please an account. Good to know.

When I first saw this billboard, I thought, "What cheesy pin-striped slick-haired lawyer dude thought this was a good idea?"

Then I read the story:

An all-female law firm is turning heads in Chicago with a new billboard and a blunt message:

"Life's Short. Get a Divorce.''

The billboard, sponsored by Fetman, Garland & Associates, Ltd., a firm that specializes in divorce cases, features the six-pack abs of a headless male torso and tanned female cleavage heaving forth from a black lace bra.

Actually, I prefer this billboard to your typical ambulance chasing, workers comp lawyer ads.

Chicago Sun Times ad columnist Lewis Lazare doesn't care for the new Sears campaign from Young & Rubicam/Chicago.

It's obvious to us hedge fund guru Eddie Lampert and company still haven't a clue where Sears is headed. Why do we say this? Because the campaign's new tag line -- "Sears: Where It Begins" -- is so hopelessly weak and non-specific. It's a collection of words that say absolutely nothing, primarily because the "it" meaninglessly hangs there, leaving us feeling frustrated as we wonder what "it" all means.

What's the big deal with a weak tag, you might wonder. Here is Lazare's read:

For us the tag line almost always says it all. Of course, some so-called experts in the advertising industry will argue the familiar advertising tag is but another outdated fixture in a rapidly evolving ad industry where "hip" is always happening in some cutesy online video or in television product placements, and all manner of unexpected guerrilla marketing tactics.

I don't know about you, but I find comedy in Lazare's scathing indictments.

How many verbal and visual cliches can you fit into a 30-second spot?

"This isn't the time to shrink..."
"It's a time to stand in strength..."
"If we lock our arms together..."

You couldn't write an emptier, more vacuous political commercial if you tried. All that's missing are little blond kids waving flags.

Clay Parker Jones is an account guy with a book. Sort of.

Jones says this about his approach:

Account Executives don’t usually have a book. But I’m not really a typical AE, as I’m sure you can tell if you’re a regular reader here. And I don’t like resumes, anyway. How could you possibly get your entire career, beliefs and feelings onto one page? Ha.

Jones, who studied Diplomacy and World Affairs at Occidental College in Los Angeles says, "I hope to someday own a magazine empire and a shoe company. If you’ve got either for sale (cheap) I’m interested."

Following the fashion industry's inner turmoil over the use of wafer-thin models, a major packaged goods company is now calling for heftier models in its advertising.

According to The Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.), Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch consumer-products company is joining the global fight against eating disorders.

"Unilever has adopted a new global guideline that will require that all its future marketing communications should not use models or actors that are either excessively slim or promote 'unhealthy' slimness," said Ralph Kugler, president of Unilever's home and personal-care division.

Unilever, which makes Dove soap, Lipton teas and Skippy peanut butter, said it won't impose strict criteria for models and actors, but all brand directors and agencies would be expected to use a Body Mass Index of between 18.5 and 25 as a guideline for models and actors.

BMI is a measure expressed as a ratio of weight to height. The World Health Organization considers anyone with a BMI below 18.5 underweight.

John Paul Gautier weighed in on the debate last fall by sending a size 20 model down the runway.

In the interest of being fair and balanced, here are a couple of spots for former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson:

Compare and contrast those with the pointless Romney spot I put up yesterday. If you're going to sell candidates like toilet paper, well, it's easy to see which brand sounds better.

We are starting to see some better production values in some of these political spots; perhaps that's because it doesn't cost much to throw the spots up on a website or YouTube as opposed to buying airtime.

You really have to play the AdAge video to hear how pathetic GM CEO Rick Wagoner sounded when speaking at the Newspapers Association of America convention.

While the accompanying Ad Age article refers to Wagoner's desire for more advertorials, which is laughable by itself, the video shows him explaining how GM products are no longer "on sale all the time" with a "deal of the month" such as cash back or incentives.

Then he said this:

What we are doing is promoting our scheduled sales events; our March Madness, our 4th of July event, our Year-End clearance and so on. When I say we’re “promoting our events,” it’s really the events first and foremost, as opposed to any incentives that we might be offering.

Wow. I'm speechless. And he's clueless.