Agency compensation is a hot topic today. An industry that grew up on the billable hour has been looking for a new remuneration model for years, unsuccessfully for the most part. Some agencies want to tie compensation to performance. Others, like BBH New York, are willing to barter. For example, the well known creative agency recently accepted 12,000 cans of PBR as payment for work on the brand's new hard …
Legal Sea Foods Is A Safe Harbor for Wayward Stoners
A new ad campaign from DeVito Verdi for Boston’s Legal Sea Foods celebrates the legalization of marijuana in the Bay State. The TV and print ads play off the restaurant's baked, fried and smoked menu items. "Baked" and "smoked" makes sense. "Fried" is something that happens when you drink too much, work too much, and so on. The “Welcome to Legal” effort also includes dispensing free clam chowder from Legal …
Continue Reading about Legal Sea Foods Is A Safe Harbor for Wayward Stoners →
Five New Winners of the $10K Helen Lansdowne Resor Scholarship
Diversity is a talking point. Unless your company is actively doing something about it—then, it's a universal problem that we're slowly overcoming. One means of combatting inequality in the ad business is to find talented women, people of color, and people over 40, and help to support their efforts, wherever they happen to be in their career journey. Ad agencies were once talent magnets and they can be again, …
Continue Reading about Five New Winners of the $10K Helen Lansdowne Resor Scholarship →
Ad Age Names Several Small Agencies of Year; In Other News, Barton F. Graf To Close
Agencies rise and agencies fall. Let's start with the bad news. Barton F. Graf, the small indie agency in NYC, like Wexley School for Girls in Seattle (and other "hot shops" before it), is closing down. Jeff Beer writes about advertising for Fast Company. When learning of the closing of Barton F. Graf, he pondered what, if anything, it might mean for the industry at large. The ad industry is prone to …
“Joie de Hooha” Is Utterly Natural and Totally Achievable
Singing vaginas is not the answer you might expect, no matter the question. Yet, here we are, and in this case, it's a good answer because the Whole Foods shopper doesn't want rancid chemical solvents on, in, or near her body. That's why OrganiCare CEO and serial entrepreneur, Caroline Goodner, is battling industry juggernauts to provide a more natural and more effective alternative for yeast …
Continue Reading about “Joie de Hooha” Is Utterly Natural and Totally Achievable →
Thanks to Leo Burnett, Coors Light Is Now “Made To Chill”
Coors Light is cold. The brewery in Golden, Colorado has spent countless millions to make and remake this point, but mostly failing to explain what cold means to the beer drinker. For what it's worth, Coors Light is cold-filtered and the beer never gets to room temperature—it's delivered to the store in refrigerated trucks. Now, Adweek points to Leo Burnett’s debut campaign for the beer brand and how it speaks to …
Continue Reading about Thanks to Leo Burnett, Coors Light Is Now “Made To Chill” →
I Am An Angler, You Can Be An Angler Too
Fishing is one of my favorite recreational activities. Leaving the land and my screens behind to focus purely on the water and the fish in it is a physical and mental reprieve. For me and millions of people who love to fish, fishing is good medicine. Take Me Fishing TakeMeFishing.org, the website from Recreational Boating & Fishing Foundation, is sharing compelling stories that help motivate people to fish, …
Continue Reading about I Am An Angler, You Can Be An Angler Too →
The Denari’s Life-Saving Story Could Be Anyone’s Story
When the agency truly cares about the client, it shows. Witness the latest pro-bono campaign from Indianapolis-based Young & Laramore, which encourages Indiana driver's to register as organ donors. This isn't just any assignment for the agency. It's personal. Maggie Denari, wife of Y&L’s president Tom Denari is the recent recipient of a heart transplant, and the agency wanted to do something to demonstrate …
Continue Reading about The Denari’s Life-Saving Story Could Be Anyone’s Story →