Have you been following the Blendtec YouTube story? Adweek has. Blendtec, a small Utah blender maker, is a certified cult hit with the YouTube generation, with its product demonstrations drawing 15 million views since debuting in November. Without the marketing budget of larger rivals Hamilton Beach and Waring, it turned to something it's long done: test blenders by placing in them all manner of unlikely objects. …
Wieden Gets Served
The Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.) is running an eye opener this morning—a feature on how Nike is looking for better digital content, something Wieden + Kennedy has been unable to deliver to the sportswear brand's critical youth market. Industry executives say the move was a wake-up call to Madison Avenue. The message is clear: No matter how talented an agency's creative team or how well the client's …
PR: The Secret Weapon Of Admired Ad Agencies
I've often said that when it comes to marketing themselves, ad agencies are usually clueless and pathetically bad at it. A couple of recent stories have enlightened me as to how some agencies ensure that they maintain the reputations they have. When Adweek selected Goodby its 2006 Agency of the Year, Adweek devoted much of its article to Goodby's own determination to remake itself for the digital age: The agency …
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I Wonder Why, Dubai
The promo brochure for the Dubai Lynx Awards sets a real haughty tone for the new awards show, as written by Jonathan Harries, the global Creative Director of Draft/FCB: What if we had an awards show where we took all the good things from other awards shows, and none of the bad? If we said to people, “Bring your great ideas, your brilliant layouts, your mindblowing copy, your wonderful sense of design and editing, …
Online “Pigbook” Has 16 Million Users
Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.) writer Andy Kessler met with Mark Zuckerberg, 22, of Facebook for an interview at the company's Palo Alto offices. Kessler tries to hone in on the social networking site's peculiar "magic": Users have the ultimate control of who they hang out with electronically, and "only see the people that are in their networks" usually meaning the same college, "and the people that are their …
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Writers Take The Bait
Todd Anthony, a.k.a. Bullshit Observer, gets his Craigslist Crumedgeon on in this riff concerning lame job offers for writers: Here's the gig, it's a 30 page tri-fold brochure. Here's the catch: I don't have really any money. How about 300 clams? Does that sound fair? Oh, did I mention that I get to comment at every stage of the approval process until I see a stream of tears coming down your beet red face? Did I …
Tavelocity Makes Nice Gnome Space
Random Culture points to an article in Adweek today about brand icons on MySpace. Travelocity is the latest advertiser to seek out friends on MySpace through an ad icon. The company's Roaming Gnome mascot, introduced in 2004, has established a profile on MySpace (www.myspace.com/roaminggnome) that offers users special perks and deals when they add him as a friend. Ad icons have proven big draws on the social network. …
The Search Is On for Interactive Talent
New York City-based writer and editor, Jim Hanas, has an interesting piece in this month's Creativity about where the next generation of interactive creatives will come from. According to his article, and several others I've read, there is a dearth of talent avaialble. "We cleared out an entire generation of talent when the bubble burst, so the true believers and the ones who had enough talent to make it through have …
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