According to The Wall Street Journal, Woody Allen filed a lawsuit Monday seeking more than $10 million from clothier American Apparel Inc. over unauthorized billboard and online advertisements featuring the actor and director dressed as a rabbi.

image courtesy of Curbed

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, alleges the Los Angeles clothing maker and retailer, without his permission, put up billboards in New York and in Hollywood, Calif., in May 2007 that featured an image of Mr. Allen, who is Jewish, dressed as a rabbi from one of his films.

The images also were displayed in advertising on American Apparel's Web site and in sponsored advertisements on other Web sites, the complaint said.

The complaint said the unlawful use of Allen's image for commercial advertising was "especially egregious and damaging because Allen does not commercially endorse any products in the United States of America."

Gas prices are out of hand and there's no ceiling in sight. We'll be looking at $4.00/gallon and up before GWB and his oil men buddies depart Washington next January.

The Washington Post has more...

"On April Fool's Day, the biggest joke of all is being played on American families by Big Oil," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., as his committee began hearing from the oil company executives.

"These companies are defending billions of federal subsidies ... while reaping over a hundred billion dollars in profits in just the last year alone," complained Markey, chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

Regulation? Taxes? NO WAY!

"Our earnings, though high in absolute terms, need to be viewed in the context of the scale and cyclical, long-term nature of our industry as well as the huge investment requirements," said J.S. Simon, Exxon Mobil's senior vice president. Last year the oil and gas industry earned 8.3 cents per dollar of sales, only a little higher than the Dow Jones Industrial Average for major industries, he argued in prepared testimony.

Tribune Company, the largest employee-owned media company in the nation, today announced it has changed its name to ZellCoMediaEnterprises Inc. or ZCMEINC. Zell, who made a fortune in real estate before deciding he’d like to dabble in an industry completely unfamiliar to him, announced the change in his record-setting 437th email to exhausted employees this year.

"Hell, I put $315 million into this thing, and we’re on the hook for $13 billion -- the least I ought to get is my name on the company’s stationery," said Zell, who remains chairman and CEO of the newly named enterprise.

Picking up on the "news," The Wall Street Journal notes that Tribune's corporate Web site, www.tribune.com, has been temporarily replaced with a version including a running "DEBToMETER," a "TipJar" labeled "Hey buddy, help a paper out?" and a rotating sequence of dog photographs—a wink, perhaps, at a controversy Mr. Zell stoked by uttering an obscenity at a staffer who suggested that the push for profit would replace serious journalism with puppy photos.

I appreciate that Misha Cornes of Organic has stuck his neck out by declaring that he's "over Twitter."

Her reasoning is sound:

Most people are not that interesting.

There, I said it. Overall, the culture of self-promotion embedded in most social media applications bothers me. I know that listening to "life between blogs post and emails" is supposed to bring me closer to my Twitter friends, but I don't want to hear about their minutiae any more than I want to report on my own. The time you spend away from people is what allows you to be interesting to each other again.

Twitter takes bite-sized content about three bites too far.

Have you ever read the transcript of a Twitter conversation? It's like reading the notes that get passed back and forth in class. If blogs are bite-sized versions of newspaper-length articles, tweets are one-liners. And as Gertrude Stein quipped, "literature is not remarks". I like to get the benefit of people's reasoned opinions, not their spontaneous outbursts.

Twitter feels distancing even as it connects me to others.

I think the main positive benefit of Twitter - promoting weak social bonds between loosely connected groups- actually allows people to maintain their space and reduces real intimacy. In this great article about the parallels between behaviors like friending and more ancient forms of oral communication, cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch notes that there's a "fundamental distance" to social networks. "That distance makes it safe for people to connect through weak ties where they can have the appearance of a connection because it's safe."

With Twitter, each of us shouts into the void to the community at large, rather than taking the risk of speaking directly to one another. Tweets, if you can consider them personal communications at all, are a declaration of existence rather than an invitation to engage in a conversation.

If we are to buy into Wesch's "fundamental distance" theory of social networks and Cornes' three-part analysis, the game's up. I know I'm tempted to buy it. Where are you in this debate?

Atlanta's Fletcher Martin has made a new spot to support Arby's "Doublers." It reminds me of Tide's talking stain spot, although that spot is more unexpected.

Joyce King Thomas, the chief creative officer at McCann Erickson Worldwide's flagship agency in New York had humble beginnings in this business--an encouraging fact for those who didn't go from Portfolio Center straight to Wieden + Kennedy.

According to Career Journal:

First Post-College Job: I was offered two. One was working for Caterpillar as a brochure writer. I did not want to move to Peoria. The other was for a recruitment advertising agency in St. Louis called Worldwide Advertising, writing help-wanted ads. The job was fairly menial in some ways. I'd have to take dictation of a help-wanted ad on the phone and then rewrite it. I also wrote the brochures and whatever other materials human resources used for recruitment. I did that for nine months.

Career Path: When I arrived (at Wells in New York in 1982), I was at the bottom of the barrel. They'd been forced to hire me by someone really senior in Dallas who had moved to New York and was running the office. But he wasn't running the creative department, and I had to be accepted by the creative department. Someone did try to get rid of me, but I managed to not let that happen.

Move over "Mad Men."

There's a new advertising agency-based TV show in town.

Variety and Gods of Advertising are both reporting that "Truth In Advertising," a show set in Chicago and written by former Leo Burnett employees, has been greenlighted by TNT.

Steffan Postaer says, "A few years ago, one of my best friends, John Coveny left Leo Burnett -not happily I might add- to join one of his best friends, Hunt Baldwin in pursuit of a career as screenwriter in Los Angeles.

By their own admission, they were running on vapors when the proverbial big break came."

TNT has ordered 13 episodes. Coveny and Baldwin are the head writers for the series and they are producing, as well.

Here's an interesting note from Adweek:

Hyundai Motor America last week assigned former national lead agency The Richards Group a "mini-campaign" for next fall through its Eastern regional dealers association, said Joel Ewanick, vp, marketing.

"I saw something we liked," said Ewanick, who declined to disclose spending on the campaign. "It suits our strategic and tactical needs at the moment."

A couple of facts for you:

- The Hyundai account was at Richards before it moved to Goodby.
- Ewanick worked at Richards as a Brand Planning Director before he was hired by Hyundai. He also worked at Porsche when Goodby was their agency.

C'mon guys. Get this crap worked out. You're killing the resale value of my Santa Fe if you can't move the brand forward.

Think you're having a rough time of it in the ad biz?

Well, you might feel better by peeking at AngryJournalist.com.

According to the awesome journalists at Breitbart.com:

The website was created by a former journalist who cut short his young career in the news business to work in political communications in Illinois. But he insists his decision to change paths was not driven by anger.

Kiyoshi Martinez, 23, who worked as Web editor for Chicago area community newspapers, said he was "disappointed" in his young journalism career about the direction of the industry.

In early February, the same month he quit journalism, Martinez launched his website after reading a study on burnout among newspaper journalists, which sparked his interest in knowing what was on reporters' minds.

Our friend, Catharine P. Taylor, wants the virtual you to go clubbing and then report back in the morning.

Check that. Coca-Cola wants you to do so. Catharine P. Taylor wants to report on the action, or lack thereof.

image courtesy of Mashable

Here's what she's saying so far:

...if you believe that one thing social media marketing needs is great apps from major advertisers, it's as good a place as any to start. Admittedly, the Burn Alter Ego (application) promotes Burn, an energy drink that is only available in Europe, Brazil and Morocco, but anyone is allowed to play.

Here's how it works: once you've downloaded the application and set up your alter ego, it goes clubbing (which sounds rather attractive to me because I don't get out a lot) and promises to post to its own blog in the a.m. Mine went out for the first time last night, and apparently spent some quality time using the Xerox machine to make copies of body parts (none all that naughty, unless you count my avatar's bum). Those who download the app receive this warning: "If reading about drunken nights, nakedness, and crazy decisions make you uncomfortable, delete this application and go back to your knitting." Cool! Well, I don't knit, anyway.

You can set up your avatar to go out with friends who also have Burn Alter Egos or meet new friends while it's out, and the more it goes out, the more options it will have in terms of wardrobe, furniture for the flat, and so forth. I've set up mine to find new friends mostly because I barely know anyone who has loaded it so far, but wouldn't mind it if a few of us Social Media Insider avatars went out together in the next few weeks to see what our blogs would report to us in the morning.

Stafford Green, Head of Interactive Marketing for Coca-Cola Europe, says, "It's creating a lot of funny confusion at our offices. People overhear that I went out last night with Eva and we partied in Paris with some beautiful models. And we have pictures on Facebook to prove the event! But in fact, it was actually our Burn Avatars, Eva'izzle and Stafford'elicious."

Entering the music business for the first time, The Clorox Company and its marketing communications partner, DDB Worldwide in San Francisco, recently released to the public "The Blue Sky Project: A Clorox Charity Collection."

"The Blue Sky Project," is now available for purchase on iTunes and 50+ other online retailers for $6.93.

Music from the CD includes original compositions from independent artists Iron & Wine, Amber Music, Singing Serpent and Andrew Rodriguez. The music was originally featured in Clorox commercials.

Half of the purchase price will benefit Music In Schools Today, a nonprofit organization that supports music programs in public schools.

Lisa Bennett, chief creative officer and managing partner at DDB San Francisco, said, “Music has played an integral role in much of the work we develop with Clorox, because of its emotional connection with an audience.”

Tarang Amin, vice president, Clorox Global Franchise, said, "Consumers were so passionate about the music they wanted to play it at weddings and dance recitals. This CD has truly been created out of consumer demand."

This is nuts. From Brand Republic:

Roger Makak (pictured), the creative ranked number one in Campaign Brief Asia’s recently released rankings, has been exposed as a work of fiction created by Saatchi & Saatchi Singapore.

Speaking to Media, Campaign Brief Asia publisher Kim Shaw said: "From our point of view we’re disappointed that this agency chose to use a false name for work done by someone else.”

According to Shaw, Makak is actually a nom de plume for the agency’s regional creative director Andy Greenaway, who said: “He does exist, but not in the form you might think. He goes bananas sometimes.” Greenaway added that more would be revealed in one week.

“I think they were trying to dupe the whole industry and then come out with some fantastic award concept at the end that would appeal to other ECDs,” said Shaw. “But, of course, because he ended up winning our rankings it’s come out very quickly that this guy doesn’t exist.”

Not sure who the guy pictured is, but wow. I wonder how many headhunters and award show-obsessed CD's saw this dude's name and said, "I've got to call this guy. With all those awards, he must be the next edgy rock star."

Brace yourself, big marketers are getting hip to text-message lingo. In ads that begin in two weeks for a new line of Degree deodorant for teen girls, Unilever is highlighting "OMG! Moments." Print ads running in magazines such as Seventeen and CosmoGIRL show "High School Musical" star Ashley Tisdale at a glitzy affair discovering that she has toilet paper stuck to one of her shoes.

"We wanted to show the teens that we understand them and know how they communicate with their friends," says David Lang, president of WPP Group's MindShare Entertainment, which created the print, TV and online effort.

The Wall Street Journal also points to "Paris Hilton's My New BFF" -- and its Web site is www.parisbff.com from MTV as another example of text messaging language making its way into pop culture.

Creative executives say not all companies can pull off a text-message campaign. "You never want to come off as the Dad that is making Nelly references to his 12-year-old as a way to look cool," says Bill Rosen, chief creative officer of Arc, a Publicis agency.

According to Ad Age, Zune Arts was born more than two years ago as part of an alternative marketing effort by Microsoft that invited emerging artists to create online art around social themes to help launch the Zune digital music player.

But since then the website has morphed into an online haven for emerging artists and musicians. While still part of the Zune family of marketing initiatives and still touting the "sharing" themes, Zune Arts now has its own goals and audience in the indie arts community.

"The value of this service is that they help ensure people who like to discover things, discover your content where they want to," said Glenn Cole, co-founder and creative director of 72andSunny. "To me, the mental image of what they do is that they're like the guys who put the Easter Eggs out in the yard when they're seven years old, and they do it really well. They could just put it out on the tree stump in the middle of the yard -- and some clients want a giant egg out in the yard that no one can possibly miss -- but I think [for other clients] the hiding makes their content feel more special when you finally find it."

In a Wired feature from last December, advertising and design critic Warren Berger, said, "They're creating pieces of art, content with viral potential, instead of just a 30-second commercial. It's very smart, and a good way to go."

Adrian Ho at Zeus Jones is reflecting on leading firms like Google that "don't really use advertising agencies and instead rely upon innovative business ideas to communicate their benefits and values to their customers."

Ho also mentions Alex Bogusky's 2004 claim that "everything is an ad" and wonders how ad people are coping with that news.

Rather than creating "communications objects" that help to grow a client's business, agencies who champion the idea that "everything is an ad" should instead be helping to magnify and extend the communication and marketing effects of the client's own business objects. This is a pretty unpopular perspective in creative and production departments because it means that you start with the client's idea rather than starting with something created from scratch. Perhaps this is is why most agencies aren't advocating it.

I don't know that it's a "not created here" battle. I think 99.9% of us are busy working to sell the communications plans and executions we're paid by our clients to create. Jumping into this new pool where "innovative business ideas" are king, is a bit scary and many of us likely question whether we belong in this pool.

What do you think, is product development (to give one example) an area where ad people belong?

[via Brian Morrissey]

From Creativity:

Paul Arden, an eccentric, revered creative responsible for some of the U.K.'s most popular advertising during his 14 years as Saatchi & Saatchi's executive creative director, died Tuesday of a heart attack.

Mr. Arden, 67, left Saatchi in 1993 to start a film production company, Arden Sutherland Dodd, but continued to influence younger creatives with his first book, "It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be," a best-seller published in 2003.

It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be is a great little read. I highly recommend it, and its follow-up, Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite.

Wherever you are in Ad Land, have a drink for our fearless leader, David Burn. It's his birthday today.

David runs multiple blogs, a twitter feed, works at a cool ad agency, and goes to tons of live shows to keep up on the latest bands. He's either got more energy than anyone I know, or he lives 30-hour days.

Happy Birthday big man!

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has always done a lot of traditional advertising. I remember seeing their commercials on TV when I was growing up. With renewed focus on the LDS church due in part to Mitt Romney's Presidential bid, the church is aiming to clear up misconceptions.

From Deseret Morning News:

The new print ad campaign features people who identify themselves and their quest to find God, describing a life challenge that sent them looking for meaning in the divine. "I felt so destroyed by my addiction to alcohol and drugs," writes Jovanny Vasquez, of Bronx, N.Y., in a two-page ad that appeared in U.S. News in the Las Vegas area in August.

Appearing alongside the image of a man dancing with a woman and two children, he continues, "I prayed with all my heart to find a solution to my life. I was at the point of losing my wife and family. The God I was looking for was a merciful God. I wanted to know how to be forgiven."

At the bottom of the page, the church's logo appears in large lettering, with the phrase TRUTH RESTORED underneath in smaller type, followed by mormon.org beneath them both.

The campaign, which has adopted a slightly different format for TV, radio, billboard and Internet advertising, has been running for about eight months in four different areas of the country that correspond to designated LDS mission areas: Las Vegas; Las Vegas West; Independence, Mo., including Kansas City and Wichita; and New York Utica, which includes Albany, Syracuse and Utica.

But it's not merely a matter of spreading the word. There's ROI here, too, as Scott Swofford, director of media for the LDS Missionary Department, says of early campaign testing:

He said eight months "is a pretty short time to decide whether the campaign is working," but the team will continue to analyze data on how it affected people who actually joined the church. "What we do know is that traffic to mormon.org increased from 200 to 300 percent from pretest levels. Of the referrals coming in, many of them are from that site, but we don't have specific numbers yet that say things have improved or changed.

"Whether the net result will be an increase in baptisms — we're still trying to figure out where that is."

Here's an Absolut ad running in Mexico:

The LA Times reports:

The billboard and press campaign, created by advertising agency Teran\TBWA and now running in Mexico, is a colorful map depicting what the Americas might look like in an "Absolut" -- i.e., perfect -- world.

The U.S.-Mexico border lies where it was before the Mexican-American war of 1848 when California, as we now know it, was Mexican territory and known as Alta California.

The campaign taps into the national pride of Mexicans, according to Favio Ucedo, creative director of leading Latino advertising agency Grupo Gallegos in the U.S.

Ucedo, who is from Argentina, said: “Mexicans talk about how the Americans stole their land, so this is their way of reclaiming it. It’s very relevant and the Mexicans will love the idea.”

Native Americans probably want to redraw the map even more, I suspect. And Lou Dobbs is now totally switching to Grey Goose.

Ad Age is running an article on the former chief operating officer at WPP's Alliance, David Caruso. Caruso has started a new agency, Acme Content Co., dedicated to branded entertainment.

"I felt in a big agency [branded content] still wasn't being treated with the respect and thought leadership that the other disciplines were," he said. "It was still sort of a black sheep."

Part of the value of having an independent shop in branded entertainment, he added, will be helping marketers find ways to evaluate the effectiveness of programs, the timing and complexity of which don't always lend themselves to assessment by the marketing-mix models favored by more analytical clients.

"I've seen so many great ideas that weren't packaged fully and die, because eventually some tough questions are going to be asked," he said. "If you can crack the P&Gs and Unilevers of the world, the less analytical clients will come a lot easier."

The article goes on to say Caruso speaks P&G's language, and that P&G's favorite acronym is "FSCIs" (for free-standing coupon inserts). I'm confused by this. First, I've always called them FSIs, not FSCIs. The "coupon" is implied. Secondly, what do FSIs have to do with branded content? Not much.

Can TV adjust itself to the realities of direct marketing? TV doesn't have much of a choice, experts say.

Advertisers continue to demand greater targeting and accountability as the growth in Internet advertising heats up competition for budgets.

Comcast and Starcom MediaVest now have some data to push things in that direction. Conducting a 16-month study, they found that households that had TV ads targeted to them were about a third less likely to change the channel than those that were shown traditional ads.

Sounds like a "duh" moment. But I'm sure it's important and all that.

[via The Wall Street Journal]

A few days ago I was wondering about P&G's FSIs and what, if anything, they had to do with content. In order to extend the dialogue on this topic, High Jive kindly clipped the following images from yesterday's paper and sent them AdPulp's way.

Here's what High Jive is saying about these content-infused FSIs:

P&G has been taking a “magalog” approach to their FSIs, attempting to make them feel like brochures. I know some people at Upshot in Chicago, one of the agencies where these things are produced. I have no idea if the public even reads or notices the “branded content,” as I suspect more people are only interested in clipping the coupons. Not even sure it’s right to call it “branded content.”

I'd call it "cause-related marketing" before I'd go to the "branded content" phraseology. Either way, it's more than a simple price pitch.

According to The New York Times, Charm!, a book written by a character on ABC's soap “All My Children” is doing well at retail, having sold 100,000 copies since its debut in February. The book also appeared on the New York Times best-seller list.

Naturally, a fragrance called Charm, which is a product of the cosmetics company in the novel as well as a plot point on the soap, will be on sale in Sears stores nationwide beginning April 14.

These are not the first instances of daytime drama brand extensions, according to Lynn Leahey, editorial director of Soap Opera Digest. Indeed, Kendall’s own mother, Erica Kane, who is played by Susan Lucci, produced the novel Having it All in 1997. It too was published in real life by Hyperion.

The Association of National Advertisers has once again asked 157 senior marketers what their top priorities are.

For the second year in a row, the number one response was integrated marketing communications.

Here's how CMOs and other senior marketers see their challenges:

1. Integrated marketing communications

2. Marketing accountability

3. Aligning marketing organization with innovation

4. Brand building

5. Media proliferation

6. Advertising creative that achieves business results

7. Consumer control over what and how they view advertising

8. Attracting and retaining top talent

9. Globalization of marketing efforts

10. Multicultural marketing

The creative professionals in our audience will, no doubt, be thrilled to see number six in that sub top-five slot.

Research in Motion founder Mike Lazaridis spoke to BusinesWeek about innovation, management theory and other hot topics of the business day.

Here's a small part of what he has to say:

If you really want to build something sustainable and innovative you have to invest in R&D. If you build the right culture and invest in the right facilities and you encourage and motivate and inspire both young and seasoned people and put them all in the right environment—then it really performs for you. It's what I call sustainable innovation. And it's very different from the idea that you come up with something and then maximize value by reducing its costs. But building a sustainable innovation cycle requires an enormous investment in R&D. You have to understand all the technologies involved.

I see a lesson here for the ad biz. I often think of ads as communications products. But we don't do traditional R&D in Adlandia (not on our own "products"). Maybe that needs to change. Don't we want to advance our thinking as the markets we serve advance? Of course we do. But is there one person inside your agency working on this challenge? Is there two, ten or twenty?

It's been said that an agency can't all of a sudden become "creative"—that its ability in that area is coded in the shop's DNA. If you buy that, then there's either a culture that spurs innovation at the agency, or there isn't. What do you think? Can the agency biz learn from RIM and improve its product via R&D?

Copywriter, blogger, cartoonist and marketing consultant, Hugh MacLeod, has a book deal.

His online manifesto, "How To Be Creative," has been picked up by Portfolio Books.

I am happy to report that I have just signed a book contract with Portfolio Books [a Penguin imprint] to develop it into a book. Portfolio, by the way, is the same imprint that publishes Seth Godin's books. We even have the same editor, and I'm told the book will have the same graphic designer that designed Seth's "Purple Cow".

Of course I'm excited and happy. Not only do I have a book deal, I have a book deal with a second-to-none, blue chip publisher. Big thanks and kudos to Seth for introducing me to them.

When Rex Hammock heard about the book deal, he said, "it was nice to learn that while it may kill you, blogging can also help you land a book deal."

Hugh is also considering making larger format art pieces and selling them from a gallery space in Alpine, TX, his recently adopted home.

No word yet on the size of Hugh's advance, but the PDF version of his manuscript has been downloaded over one million times, so I hope his publisher sent him a decent check.

Christian Lander, the writer of Stuff White People Like, recently landed a $300,000 advance. That kind of loot could go far in West Texas. It might even fund a storefront for cartoonish fine art by the author of a book on conjuring creativity.

American mobile marketing firms are looking to Asia and Europe for inspiration. They may have found it in QR codes, as mobile ticketing, payment, ID verification and other location-based uses are being invented for this technology.

But are the funny looking barcodes catching on in this country? The New York Times says no, not yet.

A company called Mobile Discovery, based in Reston, Va., is conducting the test at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland in conjunction with the university’s engineering school, whose students are helping to manage it. Students and other people affiliated with the university can download software to their cellphones and then can get campus bus arrival times, order magazine subscriptions, enter a sweepstakes sponsored by QVC and get text alerts from USA Today, among other applications.

But interest in the pilot project, which started Feb. 1 and will run at least through May 15, has been tepid, according to students on campus, in part because of the cellphone fees associated with it.

Catherine Vermeersch, a fifth-year engineering student, for one, does not share that vision. “Students don’t perceive it as practical,” she said. “Why would anyone actually pay for advertising?”

There's an easy answer to Vermeersch's question. It's not advertising people are paying for. Rather, it's information they want or need.

According to Adweek, Chrysler is introducing a new customer-centric corporate tagline: "If you can dream it, we can build it."

The campaign addresses topics, such as quality, fuel economy and safety. One print ad asks, "What exactly are the qualities of quality?" and features a lengthy essay on the topic that talks about "putting the customer back in charge." The new tagline appears at the end.

"[The campaign] is part of Chrysler's effort to listen to customers more than ever before," said Deborah Meyer, Chrysler's CMO. She said the carmaker's new customer advisory board has already garnered 5,600 online responses from people who are willing to tell Chrysler which designs and features they want to see in future cars.

Sarah Lacy, the BusinessWeek writer who caused a melee at South By last month, turns her attention from Facebook to Yelp for the moment.

Yelp's real Web 2.0 bragging right is its business model. Unlike many companies in its peer group, Yelp provides a compelling advertising platform. People go there intending to make a transaction—say, find a Thai restaurant in New York or an accountant in San Francisco. And it's always easier to sell ads to someone when you know what they want. Even on a search engine like Google, people are only looking to transact part of the time. Often, they go to get information. And on a social network such as Facebook, people aren't looking to transact at all; they're just there to connect with friends.

I like how Lacy breaks that down. Web-based business models are all clamoring for ad dollars, but how many of them have asked the hard questions of themselves? Like, "Will our users click banner ads?"

There are a multitude of ways to resist modern corporate culture. One can turn the TV off, walk to work or live off the grid. If one is an artist, there are even more options.

Chris Held is an artist.

Today’s highly refined marketing machine appeals to our personal hopes, wants, needs, and dreams to effectively entice us to the point of purchase. Advertisers have found such success by making many of the same promises offered by religion. Love, happiness, acceptance, and comfort are now offered by corporate America and made available in a pill, wrapped in plastic, or with free shipping. Religious organizations have quickly taken cues from marketers and now spew their everlasting-life-guarantees over airwaves and across billboards.

In the installation, Overstock [jáce gáce, Portland OR, April 2008], Chris Held unites the messages of product marketing and religious practice by creating a monolithic shrine to the modern commodity.

The exhibit runs from Apr 4th - 25th, 2008.

image courtesy of PortlandArt.net

[via Rob Walker's Murketing]

Steffan Postaer has been warming up on his blog, Gods of Advertising, for the past few months.

Today he put hot iron to flesh in a post about fear.

By definition the creative process is fearless. Scared people don’t make anything well except walls and weapons. Humphry Davy and Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb to put out a fire. They were looking forward, which is what creators do. Invention is the by-product of an open mind.

Postaer goes on to say fear destroys once it makes its way inside the agency. Which is a reality I'm sure we all know well.

Let me think...What do people in the agency business fear most?

1) That they'll be canned
2) That they'll be embarrassed in a meeting
3) That their peers are making more money than they are
4) That they've sold their souls
5) That they'll need to continue to do so to keep the money coming in
6) That someone's going to find out they're a hack
7) That all the late hours and travel isn't good for the family
8) That it's all a waste of time and talent
9) That they coulda been a contendah

I'm sure there are more. The point is don't sweat it.

[via Ernie Schenck]

The 30-second spot might be out of vogue at the moment, but that's not a concern when you work on a brand that's deep into lifestyle marketing. When you're on a brand like that, you can make an entire film. Without leaving the ad biz for Hollywood.

Fresh Creation points to one such film from Roxy, Quicksilver's womens line of surf gear.

Steve Hall at Adrants says, "who doesn't like to watch girls in bikinis surf, pose and frolic on the beach?"

Roxy's YouTube Channel also offers several other content nuggets, including an interview with surfer/musician Ry Cuming and coverage of The Happening at Bondi Beach in Sydney.

Perez Hilton is taking over. His site drew 2.8 million unique visitors in February, according to comScore Inc., making it the ninth-most popular entertainment-news site in the U.S.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the ubiquitous purveyor of celebrity gossip on the Internet, is now expanding his empire to the airwaves.

Starting May 5, the blogger, whose real name is Mario Lavandeira, will have his own twice-daily miniradio show.

"Radio Perez," marks the debut offering from "C" Student Entertainment Corp., a radio and mobile-focused programming provider.

"We're going to prove that [the blogosphere] is a place where you can find talent," said Andy Schuon, former head of programming at MTV and one of the backers of this new venture.

Hilton's radio show is part of a strategy that includes more television appearances; the release this summer of a feature movie, "Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild," in which Mr. Lavandeira stars as himself; a coming book; and a possible development deal with Warner Bros. Records.

Paul Ford is the author of Gary Benchley, Rock Star, a novel that was originally serialized on The Morning News, where he's a contributing writer. He is also an editor at Harper’s Magazine, an occasional commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered, and sole proprietor of Ftrain.com. He also writes Twitter posts of exactly six words each.

Chicago artist Pamela Michelle Johnson likes to paint still lifes of food items on large canvases.

From her artist statement:

In the American Still-Life series, Johnson takes on another fixture of contemporary American life, and does so with no apologies. When confronted with a six-foot tall canvas of enormous and precariously balanced hamburgers, waffles, doughnuts, or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches the viewer is forced to recognize that the work is about more than alluring junk food. Johnson’s fascination with the phenomena of mass-produced foods comes from viewing those artifacts of our culture as indicative of the state of the culture as a whole. Her goal is to invoke reflection on embracing a culture of complete and instant gratification while ignoring the consequences of our indulgences.

I totally hear all that and can't quibble. But as a fan of Pop-Tarts, PB&Js, waffles and the rest, I also see her work as in a lighter context. In fact, if I was a brand manager on Pop-Tarts, I'd be tempted to misappropriate the meaning behind the work for my own purposes (or at least buy the original work and hang it in Kellogg's offices). I mean, Johnson makes the product look good. Does she not?

[via Bad Banana]

"Transit," a short film by Steph Green

The Responsibility Project from Liberty Mutual is a microsite that builds on the brand's "Resonsibility. What's Your Policy?" ad campaign.

Here's how the brand describes it:

It all began when we ran a TV commercial about people doing things for strangers. The response was truly overwhelming. Thousands of emails and letters from people all over the country thanking us.

We thought, if one TV spot from Liberty Mutual can get people thinking and talking about responsibility, imagine what could happen if we went a step further? So we created a series of short films, and this website, as an exploration of what it means to do the right thing.

[via 3 Minute Ad Age]

[UPDATE] Just noticed that Ernie Schenck of Hill Holliday has a producer credit