Marketers spend too little (if any) time considering the manufacturing process behind the brand. Which is a mistake. Our job is to find the essential truth in the product and reveal it in a powerful way to the public. But what if the truth is horrible? What if the truth is unlawful child labor practices? What if the truth is environmental and community degradation? And so on... Manufactured Landscapes, a feature …
Happy Customers Are The Best Ads
I'm starting to think those of us who work in advertising are forever relegated to promoting inferior products. This Wired story on Google's decided lack of advertising isn't helping. And how ironic is it that a firm which has sold $30 billion worth of ads to other companies since 2001, shuns the practice? It's not for lack of cash either. Google has remained frugal while accumulating $12.5 billion in reserves. …
Philly Purists Deflate Papers’ Inflatables
Since taking over The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News last year, Brian P. Tierney, a former ad man, has incresed the advertising budget at the papers to $14 million from $300,000. With money and Tierney's encouragement come ideas. One idea the paper had was to place a large inflatable honeybee and two large banners to promote the Jerry Seinfeld and Renée Zellweger film “Bee Movie,” scheduled for …
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Real Life Mad Men Taken To Task By Good Doctor
[via Bluffton Today] …
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Note to AT&T: Don’t Piss Ed Ved And His Buddies Off
Pearl Jam, a band famous for taking stands, is taking another. During last Sunday's headlining performance at Lollapalooza in Chiacgo, censors at AT&T's Blueroom deleted two lines from the live (but time delayed) webcast that were critical of President Bush. During the performance of "Daughter" the following lyrics were sung to the tune of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" but were cut from the webcast: - …
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Bottled Water Is Waste Water
Eco-warrior, poet and educator Gary Snyder asks that you know where your water comes from. Literally. He wants you to determine which lake or river it comes from and via which drainage. Of course, this is something every person knew as a matter of survival before the concept of modern plumbing. Now, Charles Fishman writing for Fast Company, updates Snyder's quest for the bottled water age. Bottled water is often …
Disposable Culture Revealed
426,000 cell phones are "retired" in the U.S. every day The photo above (zoomed in version) from Chris Jordan's "Running the Numbers" exhibition is currently showing at Von Lintel Gallery in NYC. Here's the opening paragraph of his artist's statement: Exploring around our country’s shipping ports and industrial yards, where the accumulated detritus of our consumption is exposed to view like eroded layers in the Grand …
Red, White + Blue vs. Red, White + Blue
WakeUpWalMart.com has launched an advertising campaign aiming to dissuade what it calls Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s core customers -- Southerners and conservative Republicans -- from shopping at the retailer. WakeUpWalMart.com, which was formed two years ago by the United Food and Commercial Workers union. The UFCW's tagline is "A Voice for Working America." The first ad to air criticizes Wal-Mart's ties to China. The ad …
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