This month, the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta will host folks like Ani DiFranco, Shawn Mullins, and Suzanne Vega. But last night, it hosted Alex Bogusky, in an Atlanta Ad Club Event. Going in, I thought this would only perpetuate the dude's so-called "rock star" image. (I've always said there are no rock stars in advertising.) But it turned out to be a nice, informative evening. The whole thing was set up like an …
“Advertising Is Like Lettuce And Milk…It Must Be Sold Fresh”
London consultancy, Joined Up Company has been making short films featuring British brand and agency big wigs like John Hegarty, Hugh Burkitt, Sean Gogarty, Charles Vallance and others. …
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Score One For The Freaks
W+K hosted an event last week called Ignite Portland. A bunch of people stood up and spoke for five minutes on a variety of topics. I selected the one above because Keith Gerr looks as interesting as he sounds. When he's not appearing on YouTube, he's running Kemo Active, a brand actualization and invigoration consultancy. …
Dentsu’s Mad Man Called Out
Catharine P. Taylor points us to this salacious story in BusinessWeek: The former creative director of the U.S. arm of Japan's largest advertising agency sued the company Wednesday, saying he was duped into visiting a brothel and pressured to engage in other sexually explicit activities on company outings across the world and then was fired after he complained. In a lawsuit seeking unspecified damages filed in U.S. …
Have Content, Will Travel
Speaking at a conference this week, Beth Comstock, president of NBC Universal Integrated Media, said this a "golden age" of media. "It's a great thing to be a content company in the digital age," she said. "Content is always going to win." She also said media technologies can be considered mainstream once 40% of houses adopt them. That means video-game consoles, just over 40% by her account, are already mainstream …
Trouble Ahead, Jeffrey In Red
According to Adweek, JWT worldwide chairman and CEO Bob Jeffrey opened Nielsen Businesss Media's Next Big Idea Conference here yesterday with a broadside against current industry practices, declaring that in stressing "execution over ideas" agencies were responsible for "dumbing down" brands. "The relationship between the brands and their core truths are crumbling," Jeffrey said. "And we are all responsible for these …
Scary Good
We have a saying where I work, "It's our job to surprise and delight." It's something I've come to believe in. Much more so than the tired old, "I wonder if this will get me into CA" bullshit I used to run on. While this has nothing to do with solving marketing problems for clients, I was surprised and delighted to see this latest creation from Fusebox in Lincoln, Nebraska. For more on Fusebox, see …
Is There Anything Diddy Can’t Do?
According to Ad Age, Diageo has tapped Diddy, the CEO of Bad Boy Entertainment, to act as brand manager on its Ciroc vodka brand. Diddy will be in charge of marketing, advertising, public relations, product placement and events. Here's how he sees the opportunity: I didn't think there was a vodka whose marketing spoke to my lifestyle, that made me feel like I want to feel. I've branded myself as the king of …