One advantage of rising through the ranks at a big time ad agency is the ability to buy nice shoes. Elizabeth Brady, senior VP-account director at DDB Worldwide, Chicago, takes it a step further. She makes her own nice shoes. According to Ad Age, Ms. Brady traces her interest in cobbling to her grandmother, who made sandals by hand and sold them to Saks Fifth Avenue, Marshall Field's and other department …
Technorati Has Company
Technorati is the de facto leader in blog search, but there's a bright new kid, with a much clearner user interface on the scene today. Blog search engines look at how many incoming links a site has. Technorati says Adpulp currently has 811 links from 304 sites. On the other hand, Sphere counts 1323 links. Clearly, counting links is an inexact science. [via Blogspotting] …
Dos Bistec Con Queso (On The Double)
According to Associated Press, the customer is not always right. Not in South Philly, at any rate. An English-only ordering policy has thrust one of Philadelphia's best-known cheesesteak joints into the national immigration debate. Geno's — which together with its chief rival, Pat's King of Steaks, forms the epicenter of an area described as "ground zero for cheesesteaks" — has posted signs telling customers, "This …
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Wendy’s Fixes It Fries
USA TODAY reports that Wendy's is dumping its cooking oil for a blend of non-hydrogenated corn and soy oil containing next-to-no artery-clogging trans fats. With the new oil — to be rolled out in the USA and Canada in August — a large order of Wendy's fries will drop from 7 grams of trans fats to 0.5 grams. "This is the right thing to do," says Kerrii Anderson, interim CEO. Wendy's move is expected to have vast …
Using Mass Media To Make The Micro Pitch
EuroRSCG/New York makes the small world nature of the agency business loud and clear in their new recruitment advertising. While there are 10,000 or so agencies in America today, the smallishness refers to only about 200 shops (and I'm being liberal with that figure). If you work in one of the other 9800 shops, and want to gain admission to one of the 200 small world shops, you better know someone. More to the …
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Cultural Hegemony Will Not Be Tolerated
To compete with Apple's mobile music player, you need more than a product or great advertising. You need a manifesto. SanDisc, maker of the Sansa e200, has one. Calling all free thinkers, contrarians, and malcontents. The time has come to rise up against the iTatorship. To resist the monotony of white earbuds and reject the oppressive forces of cultural conformity. Now is the time to break free from restrictive …
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Bring All Your Skills To The Table Or Get Out
Adobe hosts a conversation between Khoi Vinh, Design Director for NYTimes.com and Jason Fried of 37signals. The entire piece is worth reading, but here's one point I have to call out for all the copywriters in the audience: Q. You state (in Getting Real) that an information architect, for example, doesn't make sense for a small team. Can you elaborate? A. Sure. We don't think there's room for specialists on a small …
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No One Likes A Tattle Tale
According to Reuters, the British press is resisting moves by Yahoo that have led to the jailing of pro-democracy activists in China. The union representing journalists in Ireland and the UK called on its 40,000 members to boycott all Yahoo! products and services to protest the internet company's reported actions in China. The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) said it sent a letter on Friday to Dominique Vidal, …
