Former adman turned blogvertiser, Hugh MacLeod, is hearing things. So a lot of clients have been recently asking their ad agencies, "So what can you do for us in Web 2.0?" And the agencies have been replying, "Lots! Lots and lots and lots and lots!" Bullshit. Ad agencies have so far been hopeless in this space. I don't know of ONE SINGLE piece of work coming out of a traditional ad agency in the last five years that …
Reynolds Wraps Up Your Valuables
Out-of-home by Saatchi & Saatchi, NY [via Adrants via Advertising for Peanuts] …
Fun + Awesome = Viral
Have you been following the Blendtec YouTube story? Adweek has. Blendtec, a small Utah blender maker, is a certified cult hit with the YouTube generation, with its product demonstrations drawing 15 million views since debuting in November. Without the marketing budget of larger rivals Hamilton Beach and Waring, it turned to something it's long done: test blenders by placing in them all manner of unlikely objects. …
Wieden Gets Served
The Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.) is running an eye opener this morning—a feature on how Nike is looking for better digital content, something Wieden + Kennedy has been unable to deliver to the sportswear brand's critical youth market. Industry executives say the move was a wake-up call to Madison Avenue. The message is clear: No matter how talented an agency's creative team or how well the client's …
PR: The Secret Weapon Of Admired Ad Agencies
I've often said that when it comes to marketing themselves, ad agencies are usually clueless and pathetically bad at it. A couple of recent stories have enlightened me as to how some agencies ensure that they maintain the reputations they have. When Adweek selected Goodby its 2006 Agency of the Year, Adweek devoted much of its article to Goodby's own determination to remake itself for the digital age: The agency …
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I Wonder Why, Dubai
The promo brochure for the Dubai Lynx Awards sets a real haughty tone for the new awards show, as written by Jonathan Harries, the global Creative Director of Draft/FCB: What if we had an awards show where we took all the good things from other awards shows, and none of the bad? If we said to people, “Bring your great ideas, your brilliant layouts, your mindblowing copy, your wonderful sense of design and editing, …
Online “Pigbook” Has 16 Million Users
Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.) writer Andy Kessler met with Mark Zuckerberg, 22, of Facebook for an interview at the company's Palo Alto offices. Kessler tries to hone in on the social networking site's peculiar "magic": Users have the ultimate control of who they hang out with electronically, and "only see the people that are in their networks" usually meaning the same college, "and the people that are their …
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Writers Take The Bait
Todd Anthony, a.k.a. Bullshit Observer, gets his Craigslist Crumedgeon on in this riff concerning lame job offers for writers: Here's the gig, it's a 30 page tri-fold brochure. Here's the catch: I don't have really any money. How about 300 clams? Does that sound fair? Oh, did I mention that I get to comment at every stage of the approval process until I see a stream of tears coming down your beet red face? Did I …
