"Let's ditch these suits and kick it with those former Goodby guys in the old firehouse." Those may or may not have been the thoughts in the minds of Intel's CMO and CEO when they chose to work with Venables Bell & Partners in San Francisco on the technology company's core branding assignments. Here's a little of what's in Venables' head: The recession may accelerate the trend of large marketers looking for "more …
Question Reality
Jason Baer, writing on Marketing Profs Daily Fix, argues that there's a power struggle over social media and who will "control it"--the ad guys, PR, digital or the client. Baer believes there's "much at stake" and that ad agencies won't miss this ship, like they did with digital. I couldn't disagree more. For one, most "ad agencies" will miss the ship, since they don't see social media and content development as …
Shift Happens
Musicians Imogene Heap and Little Boots are active in social media. Their proficiency inspired Ian Tait to write about them, which in turn led Ed Cotton to ponder why brands and the agencies that assist them can't come up with something authentic to say. Somehow we've gotten into our heads that business should only talk when it has something to sell and beyond that there's nothing really that they can or want to talk …
Everyone Together Now: PULL!
I’ve spent most of my ad career serving large companies with equally large marketing budgets. These companies invest many millions of dollars pursuing all sorts of push marketing efforts. But that's not my concern at the moment. Recently, I've been realizing how much small businesses mean to me. My friends work in, and own, small businesses. And when these friends ask me about their web site or advertising, I …
Lines Are For Blurring
Brian Morrissey of Adweek looks closely at Panasonic's efforts to create buzz during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. Panasonic wanted to build cachet among Internet influencers for its array of tech products. As part of its "Living in High Definition" push, Panasonic new media consultancy Crayon recruited five bloggers to travel to CES on Panasonic's dime. Panasonic footed the bill for their …
Indie Design Collectives Way of the Future
Web developer, Brian Warren of Be Good Not Bad, has some seriously positive energy to share, particularly with people like him who freelance, consult or work in small agencies. Don't get me wrong. I'm under no illusions about the state of the world economy. But it's times like these I'm very glad I'm not working at a big company. Consistently I am finding that the smaller the company, the more stable and optimistic …
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A Pean To Incremental Profit
Adliterate's Richard Huntington sees a difference between accountability and effectiveness. I'm not sure I do, but let's go with his vision for a moment: ...the standard measure for return on investment would appear to be the difference between the cost of the campaign and the cost of reaching the same number of people in more conventional media. That is not a return on investment, that is the sort of haphazard …
Another Reason To Go Into Advertising: You Have To Learn Character Development Somewhere
A new TV show about advertising called "Trust Me," will debut on TNT on Jan. 26. According to Ad Age, former admen Hunt Baldwin and John Coveny are behind the new series. Of course, copywriters have long held that there's something else out there for them, something better, more creative, more fun and most importantly, higher paying. It's a never-ending source of fascination for certain grass-is-always-greener types …
