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According to their website Napkin Labs is "a community of Gen-Y entrepreneurs, engineers, designers, and generally brilliant individuals with a passion for developing great products and services." Napkin Labs is also the subject of a New York Times feature on "tapping the wisdom of the crowd." The paper reports that Napkin Labs, which typically charges $10,000 and up for a project that involves both crowdsourcing and …

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I Hate Steve Singer is the long-running ad campaign from Philadelphia jeweler Steve Singer, who in 1980 opened what was once the smallest jewelry store--8 ft long by 8 ft deep--in heart of Philadelphia's Jewerly Row, the country's oldest (and second largest) jewelry district. Writing on Open Forum, Rohit Bhargava notes that Singer's success with the campaign comes from it is very permanence and the fact that it …

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Whoa is the lowly banner ad that no one wants to see or click on. But let's not get all weepy just yet. According to Brian Morrissey of Adweek, help is on the way. ...tens of millions of dollars in venture capital is flowing into ad technology. Investors are betting that a market the Interactive Advertising Bureau pegged at $8 billion in 2009 can quickly grow five times or more with the help of better machinery. "If …

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As of Sunday night, season four of Mad Men season is underway. The first episode of the season is called "Public Relations" and it opens on a scene at a Manhattan restaurant where a wounded Korean War vet now working for Ad Age interviews a stoic Don Draper. Draper plays modest, and credits this feigned modesty to his Midwest upbringing. Another interesting storyline in "Public Relations" is the use of Portland …

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I'm not a parent, so I can't personally testify to how well advertising aimed at kids works these days. I'm sure it's a constant struggle for parents, many of whom I'm sure wished they wouldn't have to deal with companies aiming their products at kids. But I know that marketing and advertising fights back when it's under duress. So this article in the New York Times doesn't surprise me. A report to Congress from …

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Consumer packaged goods companies often have major blind spots in the way they target Baby Boomers. With a continued emphasis on either the 18-to-34 or the 18-to-49 demographic, companies are increasingly losing their connection with the 78 million Baby Boomers, Doug Anderson, SVP/research & development for Nielsen, tells Marketing Daily. "There is practically no segment or category out there where Boomers aren't a …

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What if all the crap your friends post to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. everyday came packaged in a slick online magazine? According to Fast Company, Flipboard was founded by Evan Doll, a former iPhone engineer at Apple, and Mike McCue. The company just snagged $10.5 million in startup cash from such luminaries as Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, former That '70s Show actor Ashton Kutcher, and Facebook co-founder …

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Sukle, recognizing that "frugality is en vogue like never before," is presenting new work for Denver Water. To demonstrate the proposition and lead by example, Denver Water and Sukle reused old billboards and placed a thin vinyl snipe over the existing art, using only 8% of the vinyl that a newly printed board would. …

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