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Advertising News and Know-How
"Food insecurity" is a formal way of saying that people are hungry. And people are hungry all over this land of opportunity. Food banks, churches, and charitable organizations from coast to coast are addressing this epic American problem, which echoes through the decades. During the Great Depression, our citizens stood in bread and soup lines. Today, our citizens line up in their cars during the pre-dawn hours …
Continue Reading about TRISCUITS for ALL, ALL for TRISCUITS →
Winners and losers—America and its economy are full of them. Small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy, employing nearly half of the private sector workforce. But many small businesses are struggling to stay afloat. According to the World Economic Forum, geography makes a great deal of difference in the proportion of U.S. small businesses that have flipped their open sign. In the U.S. as a whole, data …
The sky isn't falling, but brand value in the ad agency sector is plummeting fast. Here's the latest news on this front from Japan. Dentsu will be restructuring its operations into four operating pillars after deciding to consolidate its brand agencies into six global brands. The new plans will come into effect in February 2021. Announcing the move, Toshihiro Yamamoto, president and chief executive officer at …
Continue Reading about Massive Consolidation by Dentsu, Another Glaring Sign of Things to Come →
When was the last time that you spent time with your closest colleagues in person? For many of us, the answer is last March. For me personally, I work most closely with two people in Omaha, a.k.a. "Joemaha." I have not seen either of them in person in three or four years, which is a stretch too long. At the same time, we've worked remotely as a team since the aughts, so we got this. Due to the disruption …
Continue Reading about Remote Workers Are Holdin’ It Together, In Advertising and Elsewhere →
When you watch cable news the narrative on every channel is a deep division between Americans. Yet, between the talking head-filled segments, the nation's biggest advertisers run their side of the story. Their side of the story is optimistic with a touch of realism. https://youtu.be/xi-V4JTnU3o Walmart will never be all we need to get by. But the world's largest retailer does carry hand-sanitizers and other …
Continue Reading about What’s In America’s Shopping Cart? The Red, White, and You →
In the ad agency business, we know that all the company's assets walk out of "the building" at the end of the workday. It's another way of saying that ad agencies don't have hard assets—that all the value is in the team. What about other fields like the restaurant industry...do restaurant owners and operators see their workers as critical to the enterprise, or as expendable cogs in the machine? For Chipotle …
Continue Reading about Chipotle Sends Its Workers Back To School (Tuition-Free) →
Small business is the backbone of the economy. Small businesses are also a radiating pain point during this devastating economic downturn. According to WBUR in Boston, earlier this summer, MassINC Polling Group surveyed 1,868 small businesses (defined as having fewer than 500 employees). Their findings show that 44% of small businesses lost at least half of their revenue, and 20% lost at least a quarter of their …
Access—you can't get there without it. In the advertising agency business, access has been afforded to the few. The industry is elite by design. The people on the inside ask those on the outside to "break-in," if they can. The entire set up is adversarial from the get-go. Yes, there's talk of a meritocracy for creatives and that's what it is—talk. In reality, aspiring creatives learn to mimic award-winning work …
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