I have accounts at over two dozen soc nets. You can feel sorry for me or you can build me a tool to help me manage the insanity. Fallon, which "believes the future belongs to generous brands," is doing the latter. Today the agency launches Skimmer, an Adobe AIR-based desktop application that serves as a dashboard for a person's social networks. Skimmer helps you manage your Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Blogger and …
In Small Agencies We Trust
Alex Bogusky is educating me about the business. No, he not advising me on how to improve my hair. He just reeled off four shops--all spin offs of Crispin Porter & Bogusky--that I'd never heard of before. They are: Stick and Move Toy Goodness Manufacturing Big Agency Defectors "Right now, our country needs these scrappy small-agency entrepreneurs to keep doing their thing, because they will indeed dig us out of this …
Genuine Engagement Via Custom Publishing
I love to see agencies produce high quality content for their clients. When a brand has an enthusiastic following (like Nike, VW or Apple) it makes perfect sense for the brand to push past advertising into editorial. That's what a select few clients and agencies are doing, VW and LaBov & Beyond being two. For the 12th consecutive year the Fort Wayne agency--which we recently profiled--is producing the Volkswagen of …
Continue Reading about Genuine Engagement Via Custom Publishing →
Why Asking May Be The Answer
Watching Jon Stewart grill Jim Cramer last week, I started thinking why more of us don't ask tough questions, particularly in the ad industry. In advertising, the answers to marketing challenges don't often come easily. You have to dig, to prod, to challenge conventional wisdom. And the beautiful yet exasperating truth is that there are always many, many solutions to a marketing problem. So be wary of anyone in the …
Two New Cogs In The W&K Machine
Tony Davidson and Kim Papworth are stoked. According to The Guardian, the ECDs at W&K/London just made partner. "If you want to be a partner at W&K you've got to be some kind of saint and some kind of crazy," said Dan Wieden. "No one exemplifies that more profoundly than Tony and Kim. They have raised the bar, broken rules, lifted hearts and shocked the world." It's the first time Wieden named a partner outside of …
Made To Stick: Worth Sticking On Your Shelf
When it first came out a couple of years ago, I went out a bought a copy of Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath. It's just been updated to include extra "sticky" advice, so if you haven't checked it out, now's a good time. Because the book is chock full of examples--from marketing ideas to urban legends that never go away. The Heath brothers dissect all these examples to …
Continue Reading about Made To Stick: Worth Sticking On Your Shelf →
Win the Influencers, Win the Game
Shiv Singh of Razorfish names 10 trends in "social influence marketing," a term his agency coined to describe what old timers simply call Word of Mouth. It's just that it's digital now, so the lexicon is expanding (not always in a good way). Here's what Singh and his colleagues see unfolding: 1. Social media usage will result in more influence. 2. The focus will shift to influencers. 3. Top-down branding will …
Girls School? Maybe. Reform School? Definitely.
Ad agency digs have long been creative, but creative within certain well heeled parameters. Lots of modern lines and Eames inspired furnishings. It's a refined creativity, not circus creativity. But there's an agency in Seattle that refuses to play by those rules, or any rules regarding the business and matters of taste. Wexley School for Girls announces it presence in a dramatic way. Creative spaces in advertising …
Continue Reading about Girls School? Maybe. Reform School? Definitely. →
