"Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiassen should be proud, there's finally a writer to carry on their tradition." - James Frey Michael Craven, an ACD at Crispin working on the Microsoft account has a new book out. It's called Body Copy, cleverly enough. According to Adweek, the novel tells the tale of a former pro surfer turned private investigator who investigates the murder of the famous creative director at Gale/Parker, a …
Good Ideas Don’t Die, They Get Cleverly Repurposed
Steve Hall of Adrants is involved in a new project with Blurb, Ammo Marketing and Henry Grey PR. It's called Killed Ideas. The project, in a nutshell, seeks to collect the best "killed ideas" from creative teams in advertising and publish them in a book. "I'll be vetting and selecting the fifty which will appear in the book so I'm kinda excited to be involved," says Hall. Beginning today, frustrated creatives can …
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Ad People Helping Ad People
As the economy made its turn for the worse last November, execs at Toronto agency Huxley Quayle von Bismark started receiving a mountain of resumes. Given that they are sensitive people, an idea popped into their heads. Just One Project is the result. According to The Globe and Mail and Ad Age, Just One Project encourages clients to put the agency on, you guessed it, "just one project." They in turn will put a …
This Is The Place (To Reach Key Influencers)
Would you like to reach a sophisticated audience of people working in advertising agencies, marketing departments and media companies? Great! We've spent the past four and half years creating content for this crowd, and it's a crowd with money to spend. Yes, even today. Here's a quick list of people, or firms, that stand to benefit from exposure herein: Photographers Advertising and Design schools Agencies looking …
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Palo Alto, We’ve Got A Problem
Randall Rothenberg's book, Where the Suckers Moon was instrumental for me at the beginning of my ad career, probably because the book's release (October 25, 1994) and my interest in the business coincided. Today, Rothenberg is President of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). As such, he's concerned with the lack of creativity in Interactive media. The four enemies of online branding: A direct-marketing culture …
My Self-Selection: Writer, Editor and Entrepreneur
The other day, I read a meditation on what it means to be an entrepreneur. Here are some highlights: What makes an entrepreneur different is that he assumes risk. He puts his money, his time, his success, and himself on the line for what he's doing. I was an entrepreneur in the past. Being a young entrepreneur didn't just change my life; it literally paved my way. I believe that entrepreneurs, and even …
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Oregon’s Culture Shapers Win Again
Phil Knight's Laika is big news in Portland these days. The animation studio's new film Coraline is doing well at the box office and people are also loving the marketing for the film created by Knight's old buddies at Wieden + Kennedy. In an Ad Age interview, Knight says W+K identified some 15 niche demographic "spokes," then set about courting the knitting aficionados, comic-book geeks, collectibles mavens, emo …
Simplifiers Want Instant Coffee, Starbucks Will Provide
Starbucks is about to introduce instant coffee. Is this a way for the Seattle-based conglomerate to grow income, destroy a brand, or both? After all, would a premium coffee company ever touch the instant category? It's like Odwalla offering its customers a Tang-like substance. In a Huffington Post advertorial, Howard Shultz of Starbucks quotes John Quelch, the Harvard Business School professor and marketing guru: In …
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