Adpulp
Advertising News and Know-How
Elmore Leonard's recent passing prompted Bruce McCall to write a reflective piece for The New Yorker. McCall worked on Chevy in Detroit at the same time Leonard was banging out Westerns on his typewriter and working as a copywriter. McCall notes how common it is for real writers to find "safe harbor" in the ad business. A fat book could be assembled, just listing all the later-to-be-famous writers who …
Continue Reading about Are Copywriters Just Authors In Hiding? →
People are pissed about the food supply being tweaked by multi-national corporations in pursuit of profits. How pissed? Two million activists from 436 cities in 52 countries participated in Saturday's March Against Monsanto. According to AP, Monsanto, which calls itself a "sustainable agriculture company," maintains that its seeds improve agriculture by helping farmers produce more from their land while …
Continue Reading about People of Planet Earth Rise Up Against Monsanto, Putin Threatens War →
Wal-Mart want to clear some things up. Hence, the launch of a new PR-driven site, TheRealWalmart.com and new TV spots that began airing on Saturday during the Kentucky Derby. According to The Wall Street Journal, the campaign is the company's first purely image-based ad push in several years. WSJ also reports that Wal-Mart's "energized differentiation," an advertising term for the direction a brand is …
Continue Reading about Wal-Mart In A Battle To Redefine Its Brand →
I am a fan of Maria Popova's. Chances are good you are too, as her site, Brain Pickings, gets more than one million visits a month. I like how Popova combs through offline materials to find things to feature online. It's such a simple, yet effective, strategy. I am also interested in her reasons for choosing not to run advertising on her site. She favors a tip jar instead. According to this profile piece …
Continue Reading about Made Good Money, Five Dollars A Day, Made Anymore And I’d Move Away →
B.J. Mendelson cares. He cares that high profile marketers are making shit up and that small businesses, independent artists and others are being hurt in the process. In his new book, Social Media Is Bullshit, the author makes his anti-case and he names names, pointing to Web luminaries like Seth Godin, Jeff Jarvis, Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk and others as peddlers of a bill of goods. The Internet …
Mark Zuckerberg knows how to strike a nerve. Which is odd, because striking a chord is how most men and women make a lot of money. Naturally, he stepped over the privacy line again. This time his prize purchase of 2012 -- Instagram for just shy of one billion dollars -- is at risk of being dropped by its users like a one-ton anchor. The new terms of service announced this week allows Instagram the right to …
Continue Reading about Facebook Fumbles and Yahoo! Recovers →
Artist Stephen Glassman is tilting at windmills billboards. His vision for a living, breathing non-commercial space suspended above Los Angeles traffic is taking shape thanks to help from OOH Advertising company Summit Media. There's also a Kickstarter campaign which seeks to raise $100,000 to structurally retrofit the first prototype billboard, secure licenses, permits, and insurance, and pay for cranes …
Continue Reading about Transforming Cluttered Commercial Environments Into Open Breathable Spaces →
House music, elaborate costumes and the high desert. Someone's been to Burning Man. What was that? A new music video from Swedish House Mafia? Or a long-form ad from TBWA/Chiat/Day meant to sell Sweden's favorite vodka mixed with grapefruit juice? I have to say, I've never seen such an elaborate effort to promote the Greyhound, a drink I enjoy when miles from the nearest dive bar. Of course, the use of …
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