Wal-Mart want to clear some things up. Hence, the launch of a new PR-driven site, TheRealWalmart.com and new TV spots that began airing on Saturday during the Kentucky Derby. According to The Wall Street Journal, the campaign is the company’s first purely image-based ad push in several years. WSJ also reports that Wal-Mart’s “energized differentiation,” [...]
I am a fan of Maria Popova’s. Chances are good you are too, as her site, Brain Pickings, gets more than one million visits a month. I like how Popova combs through offline materials to find things to feature online. It’s such a simple, yet effective, strategy. I am also interested in her reasons for [...]
B.J. Mendelson cares. He cares that high profile marketers are making shit up and that small businesses, independent artists and others are being hurt in the process. In his new book, Social Media Is Bullshit, the author makes his anti-case and he names names, pointing to Web luminaries like Seth Godin, Jeff Jarvis, Chris Brogan, [...]
Mark Zuckerberg knows how to strike a nerve. Which is odd, because striking a chord is how most men and women make a lot of money. Naturally, he stepped over the privacy line again. This time his prize purchase of 2012 — Instagram for just shy of one billion dollars — is at risk of [...]
Artist Stephen Glassman is tilting at windmills billboards. His vision for a living, breathing non-commercial space suspended above Los Angeles traffic is taking shape thanks to help from OOH Advertising company Summit Media. There’s also a Kickstarter campaign which seeks to raise $100,000 to structurally retrofit the first prototype billboard, secure licenses, permits, and insurance, [...]
House music, elaborate costumes and the high desert. Someone’s been to Burning Man. What was that? A new music video from Swedish House Mafia? Or a long-form ad from TBWA/Chiat/Day meant to sell Sweden’s favorite vodka mixed with grapefruit juice? I have to say, I’ve never seen such an elaborate effort to promote the Greyhound, [...]
“The image of Don Draper tumbling through space has been used since the show began in 2007 to represent a man whose life is in turmoil. The image used in the campaign is intended to serve as a metaphor for what is happening in Don Draper’s fictional life and in no way references actual events.” [...]
Although many brand managers and their lawyers will vehemently disagree, everything is a remix, a.k.a. mashup. They may also disagree that advertising is mostly pollution. But let’s listen to Banksy on the topic: Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to [...]
“If corporations are people, then Mitt Romney is Mitt the Ripper.” So says Colbert Super PAC, a political arm of Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert, a.k.a. the joke that’s isn’t a joke. The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive I love the language in this spot. “If you believe [...]
President Obama wants “Made In America” to mean something again. And it’s no wonder, when “Made In China” comes with as many human rights questions as it does. As you may have heard, over 300 employees at a Foxconn plant in Wuhan, China recently threatened to throw themselves off a building in a mass suicide. [...]
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