Edward Cotton of Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners attended the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco recently. Here's a small sample of what he heard. Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google gave a short, but extremely smart talk at Web 2.0 conference about the most significant thing that the company has learned its short history. The answer was speed and this was an insight that …
Publicis Casts Its Lure
According to International Herald Tribune, French ad people are not as promiscuous as their cohorts in London and New York. Although, Maurice Lévy, chief executive of Publicis Groupe, is trying to change that. A round of musical chairs that is reshaping the upper ranks of the French advertising world continued last week when Maurice Lévy, chief executive of Publicis Groupe, named three executives to key positions in …
Welcome To Chicago, Ros
Lewis Lazare looks again at the fact that Chicago can be a tough town for advertising creatives. I'm careful to say, "cab be" not "is," for Chicago has plenty of ad luminaries, now and in the past. Ros King's first year at the helm of JWT/Chicago hasn't exactly been the smashing success she no doubt hoped when she took on the daunting task of turning around a local ad agency that has sagged badly in recent years. And …
The Joke’s On Us
How an Ad Agency Changes a Light Bulb. Q. How many account executives does it take to change a light bulb? A. How many would you like? Q. How many media people does it take to change a light bulb? A. I first need to figure how many people the light will reach, and then I can back out a number. Q. How many writers does it take to change a light bulb? A. Change! I’m not changing crap! This is bull**** - who said to …
Holy Shit, Those Damned Ad People Are At It Again
USA Today takes a look at the growing phenomenon of curse words and bleeping words in commercials, citing recent efforts by VW, Dodge and Comcast: Dodge: In a Caliber ad, a focus group of Muppet-like characters laments that the car does not make them "feel warm and fuzzy." Most distressed is little Binky, who exclaims, "It scares the (bleep) out of me." That's the reaction market researchers in the ad wanted for …
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Talk About A Seat At The Table
Irene Done points to this NY Post story about Miles Nadal--the brazen CEO of agency holding company MDC Partners. Nadal is calling on his shops to become the private-equity firms of the advertising world by investing in brands or companies - raising outside capital if necessary to get in on the action. "We're prepared to put up capital," Nadal said in an interview after sending a memo to his agency heads that hinted …
Find Your Internal Advocate (Find Peace Of Mind)
Spike Jones at Brains On Fire in Greenville, SC reminds us that great creative doesn't mean a thing if there's no way to sell it in. If you’re going to be successful partnering with a new client, you HAVE to have an internal advocate for your cause. Without one, no matter how good your ideas are, how phenomenal your creative is or how smart your strategy is, you’re doomed. Internal advocates are the men and women …
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The Last Retainer
Pat D'Amico, business development partner at Psynchronous Communications and former SVP/Group Director at Arnold Worldwide, calls his own fiction "a bitterly funny account of the rat-eat-rat world of advertising" in our comments. So let's look at the man's prose, offered semi-anonymously on a Blogspot site: Tracy DelAngelis was in the late stages of making a name for herself at Shaughnessy + Greene, which at …
