Matthew Creamer of Ad Age has thoughtfully laid out a five-year plan for agency growth. One of the things I find interesting in his assessment is the emphasis on User-Experience Design, a.k.a. UX. User-experience design is too often thought of as a digital-marketing task, ensuring that website and app development meet and ideally exceed usability standards. It needs to be something bigger -- much bigger -- if …
Find Your Way To Tolerance And Other Wonderful Places
Today, we must ask ourselves what is the difference between content and a commercial? Some say that content is everything, thus the innards or makings of a commercial. Though technically that is true, I don't define content that way. In a marketing context, content is the long-form narrative thread that customers connect with because it is enriching to do so. Here, let's use Expedia's "Find Yours" campaign …
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Facebook Doesn’t Want You To Be Lonely In The Vast, Dark Universe
This is a cardinal rule: DO NOT DEVELOP AN AGENCY STYLE. This is a cardinal rule because look and feel, a.k.a. style, belongs to the brand, not to the agency. Somewhere along the way, Wieden + Kennedy, one of the world's few great big agencies, forgot about the cardinal rule. How do I know this? It's evident in their work. Take, for instance, this new spot for new client Facebook. This spot has been …
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Be Fast And Fascinating (Or Be Gone)
How is technology impacting retail? Better yet, how are retailers adjusting to all the changes that technology-empowered shoppers are ushering in? Seattle-based retailer, Nordstrom, has created an Innovation Lab to answer these questions. Here's a look at some of the work Nordie's nerds are doing: The Innovation Lab was created with a simple mission -- to be fast and fascinating. According to ISITE …
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Is Your Agency Model “Perfect” For A Complex Age?
I had the good fortune to meet Faris Yakob at MIT in 2007. We were there to hear from Henry Jenkins and company on transmedia storytelling, and other developments at the edge. Today, Yakob works as Chief Innovation Officer for MDC Partners and New York agency KBS+. Here he is sharing some cogent thoughts on where the business is headed. I love what Yakob says about the agency model not being broken. I …
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Do You Love Making Print Ads? This Contest Is For You
"Print is dead" is one more bullshit line that people with digits dancing in their heads like to spout. To advance the cause of print advertising, USA TODAY is conducting a new print ad competition. The winner gets one million dollars in free advertising pages (for their client) in the national newspaper. Apparently, the contest was suggested by author and former Adweek editor, Michael Wolff. Wolff …
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Voting For The Better of Two Weak Candidates Is Far From Good Enough, But Do It Anyway
Are you planning to vote this fall? David Jones, advertising cartoonist and Chief Creative Officer at Third Street in Chicago, believes it's a great idea to do so. In fact, Jones and team remind that it's the price we must pay, if we feel like kvetching at a later date. "Our campaign celebrates complaining and explores the essential role that complaining has held in America," says Jones. The campaign …
W+K’s Roots Are Showing
UPDATE 10/6/12: We wrongly assumed W+K made the following Levi's spot. Please excuse our initial error and see the revised post for the correct credits. "Just Do It" is much more than a tagline. It's a platform, and an ethos so deeply embedded in Nike's core, that the brand doesn't even need to use the three little words anymore to convey the meaning in them. Take a look at this new long form commercial from …