"Clients get the advertising they deserve." I trot out that one a lot, and former Comcast CMO, Marvin O. Davis, explores the issue further in a great Adweek column: I recall an occasion when I was traveling with several company executives. Everyone was expressing their opinion on their favorite and least-favorite company commercials. When I mentioned a few ads I didn't particularly like, one exec was startled and …
The Chamber Is Working To Keep Republican Senators In Place
According to The Wall Street Journal, business executives represented by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce fear that Democrats, bouyed by heavy spending from organized labor, could gain enough muscle in the Senate to spark policies favoring increased unionization, higher taxes, more restrictions on trade and more regulation on the financial-services and housing sectors. So, the Chamber is spending money on tight Senate …
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Make the Sale, Then Go Paint Your Masterpiece
"Consumed" columnist, Rob Walker, takes on a subject today that has the power to upset, annoy and challenge people who build brands for a living. That's right, Billy Mays is the subject of an article in The New York Times Sunday Magazine. Pretty highbrow territory for the master of yell-and-sell. Walker points out that despite Mays ubiquity, he's not for everyone. Bob Garfield, a columnist for Advertising Age, …
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An Already Stressed Press Looks Around And Sees Nothing But Trouble
If you click into The New York Times "Business" section, as I just did, about all that's there on this otherwise fine Saturday is doom and gloom. For example: GM shuts down Janesville, WI plant as S.U.V. sales plummet drastically. A Harvard professor looks at the Great Depression and concludes that economists would not know if another one was coming. People are stuffing money inside their mattresses again. Pleather …
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Vinny Warren, Someone Ran Off With Your Concept
The party responsible: 60 Frames. [UPDATE] BusinessWeek spoke to Charles Stone III, the director of the original “Wassup” commercial. Stone says, Budweiser never owned the rights to the idea. He’d originally made it as a short film independent of the brand, and Budweiser had only leased the rights, paying a mere $37,000 for five years of use. Back then, people gave him a hard time about the low price. Now Stone, a …
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MoveOn Is Responsible for the Content of this Advertising
[CNNBC via ReadWriteWeb] …
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Brand Theater In Denton
According to The Denver Egotist, TDA copywriter, Joe Nafziger went the extra mile for the shop's Pizza Inn client. To celebrate the opening of a new store, he dressed as JoJo the Pizza Man and jumped fifty pizzas on a motorcycle. Why? “Because it just seemed ridiculous,” Nafziger says. I love the circus, don't you? …
Future Brand Managers Have Field Day
Chicago Tribune has a sobering report on a party that got out of hand at The Field Museum. Turns out, the perps weren't 8th graders from Cicero, they were students at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. Kellogg spokeswoman Megan Washburn confirmed that... "Students were vomiting on themselves and on the Field Museum floors." "Students were spitting at people." "Students passed out in high-traffic …
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