Sally Hogshead has a new "Naked Career" interview up at Radio Talent Zoo. This time around Ms. Hogshead speaks to her hero Luke Sullivan, formerly of Fallon and West Wayne and now at GSD&M in Austin. That's right, two superstar copywriters engaged in conversation about the ad business. Give it a listen. I could tell you all about it, but I prefer to do something else. Purely for your entertainment, I will endeavor to …
Beam Exercises Restraint
The New York Times is doing its best to see through the pr machinations of a large adult beverage marketer. Beam Global Spirits and Wine — which makes brands like Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark bourbon and Canadian Club whiskey — announced it would voluntarily adopt stricter rules to keep messages away from young people. But the step is largely symbolic. Beam said that it would purchase print and broadcast advertisements …
QVC Meets MTV
According to The Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.), Publicis Groupe and Droga5 are diving deep into branded entertainment with a new website called Honeyshed. But unlike other examples of the genre -- movies and TV shows created by marketers that aim to subtly promote a brand -- there will be nothing subtle about the programming on Honeyshed. "It's about celebrating the sell," says Mr. Droga, creative chairman of …
YouTube’s Piggy Bank Open For Biz
Variety is reporting on Google's new Revver-like compensation initiative. Google-owned viral video site announced Friday that it will start giving a cut of ad revenue to some of the most popular amateur video brands on its site, such as lonelygirl15 and LisaNova. They will get approximately the same revenue share from the performance of display ads around their videos as YouTube's professional partners, such as the …
Taking Tea Where It’s Never Been Before
Guayaki Yerba Mate is an emerging beverage brand with interesting stories to tell about their organic, rainforest-grown, fairly traded product. Witness, the seven-minute documentary: Guayaki also makes room for brand advocates and Mate heads to tell their own tales. Available from the brand's YouTube channel, "Out of my Gourd" appears to be a New Age-inspired consumer generated commercial. The brand name Guayaki …
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Finding Purpose Harder Than Finding Money
Last December Jennifer Rice probed the depths and asked the kind of pertinent questions one asks on a long hike, or fireside with a particularly good pinot noir. One thing I haven’t thought about until recently is whether I could make a difference in my own profession. Seems a bit odd in hindsight, but I’ve finally recognized that I’ve been suffering from cognitive dissonance: I believe that over-commercialization is …
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McCracken Soaks It Up In Mexico
Ethnographer and brand consultant Grant McCracken is in Mexico trying to "save marketing" by asking more of research. I am here to advance my clients interests not by finding a hot button, but looking for a match between all of the cultural complexities of the consumers' life and all the things the brand and the product are or can become. McCracken also provides an historical context for a deep understanding of …
Yahoo! In Focus
USA Today brings some drama to its report on Yahoo's decision to put all its photo chips in Flickr's basket. At Yahoo, Web 2.0 has won one battle with stodgy old Web 1.0. Yahoo is shutting down Yahoo Photos — for years, the No. 1 or No. 2 most-visited photo site on the Web. Its users will be directed to move their pictures to Yahoo's hot upstart, Flickr. Stewart Butterfield, who co-founded Flickr in 2004 with wife …
