Simon Dumenco of Ad Age made me laugh this morning. Now that Web 2.0 seems, with each passing day, to be less and less magical -- what with softening click rates and the rising realization that it's going to be insanely difficult to effectively monetize social networking -- "Don't be evil" sounds increasingly hilarious. If anything, the old-media titans and new-media boy geniuses defining the future of the web are in …
Panic! It’s Not Organic.
Brandweek has an upsetting piece on greenwashing. Seventh Generation, Method and other leading personal care and cleaning brands may soon face lawsuits if they don't remove the word "organic" from their labeling and marketing by Sept. 1. The ultimatum comes following a recent investigation by the Organic Consumers Assn., which uncovered a potentially carcinogenic contaminant in various products. The OCA investigated …
Minimalism’s Far Shore Reached By Team of Boston Explorers
Modernista! decided to go modern with their agency self-promo site. So modern in fact, there's no there there. Just rollovers that redirect to Wikipedia, Facebook, Flickr and Google News. The Denver Egotist says, "Modernista!‘s new site is so smart it sickens us." I'm not sickened about it. I'm still trying to form an opinion. Maybe you could help. …
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Boulder Officials Like CP+B’s Brand of Creativity (To Say Nothing of Their Tax Revenue)
Adweek is running an article by Alex Bogusky, wherein he reflects on his welcome to the lovely hamlet of Boulderado. When we decided to move a portion of the agency to Boulder, Colo., a very surprising thing happened: The mayor's office asked to take a meeting. I was excited and a bit nervous. Boulder has done an amazing job managing its growth. Well, these people I admired so much opened the meeting with a great …
Pepsi Dewing It Again
According to Adweek, Pepsi-Cola North America is launching an original online series to support Mountain Dew this summer. The soda giant will serve as its own studio for a serialized action-adventure production from film writer-directors Shawn Papazian and Art Brown. To encourage online engagement, viewers will able to alter the storyline by selecting from a menu of options after each episode that take the series in …
Ad Age Does Digital
This week's Advertising Age is nearly entirely devoted to issues surrounding digital marketing and web advertising. I highly recommend it. There's a lot of good stuff to read, and the Ad Age staff did a great job covering as much of it as they could. It's both a high-level look at the state of digital as well as a dive into specific topics. Here's a bit of one article, written by Matthew Creamer: What you're about to …
WTF?: Buy Some Damn Print Already
I can't think of an online ad I like. Can you? Online content, sure. Brand supported online content even. But an ad? No. Generally speaking, online advertising is some weak shit. A fact which makes it all the harder to accept that valuable print vehicles are struggling to stay afloat because their lifeblood--print advertising--is migrating online. Case in point: No Depression, one of the nation's best music mags is …
Good Information Gets You High
Lee Gomes of The Wall Street Journal looks at the efforts by neuroscientists to understand what makes certain websites irresistible to the human brain. Clues are offered by research conducted by Irving Biederman, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, who is interested in the evolutionary and biological basis of the human need for information. Coming across what Dr. Biederman calls new and richly …