According to Adweek, Hill Holliday is stepping up to the advertainment plate by creating a new position for John Dukakis. The former governor's son will be svp, director of branded entertainment for the Boston-based shop. Baba Shetty, evp, chief media officer at Hill, Holliday, said: "These days we're not just buying media—we're often creating media, and branded entertainment is an increasingly important part of the …
A-Ten-Shun
Ed Cotton of Butler Shine & Stern is asking some pertinent questions. Can people stand watching a campaign evolve over time or do you have to have a quick hit? Surely, the ever- shrinking window of personal communication must be having an impact of broad scale communication? Can we even be bothered to see phases of a campaign build and roll out over a two-month period from tease to reveal and on? I think there's …
Can Interactive Shops Step Up?
It's been my experience when talking to interactive shops and looking at their work that they're more focused on executing ideas rather than brand-building strategies and initiatives that can be used across all media. They're good at what they do, but it's a niche, and they're not scrambling to hire the right people to change that. A new survey reported in Adweek seems to support that: Digital agencies are improving …
Sucking The Blood From “Product As Hero”
Kenneth Hein, writing for Brandweek offers us a new term for the advertising lexicon: Visual Vampire. Wendy’s red wig-clad ads are hard to miss. However, new research shows that the characters in pony-tailed toupees greatly overshadow the products featured in the same ads. “It is a visual vampire. There is high engagement, but when they show the food it drops like a rock,” said Lee Weinblatt, CEO of PreTesting, …
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Welcome to the Viral Superbowl
Someone on the brand team at Dr. Pepper is spending a lot of time on YouTube. And why not? There are learnings to be gleaned and talent to be mined there. Take singer-songwriter and distinctive vocalist, Tay Zonday. He's already an internet hitmaker, so Dr. Pepper wisely hitched a ride on his wagon, asking him to remake his "Chocolate Rain" vid (which has been viewed more than 11 million times on YouTube) into …
Outsourcing Outside The Box
So if an agency monolith like Publicis can outsource production work in the new world-new media-order, what about the rest of the creative jobs in advertising? At some point, when marketers ultimately look at the efficiencies they’ve achieved with third-world interactive servants, they may decide to that the writing and the art direction doesn’t matter so much as long as they’re mashed up quickly. The best and …
Digital Disorder Breeds Collective Intelligence
video courtesy of YouTube user, Michael Wesch When I was in Cambridge last month, I picked up the hardbound first edition of David Weinberger's new book, Everything Is Miscellaneous. I just started reading it, so I'll need to circle back in order to offer deeper analysis, but I can say "so far so good." Here's a pickup from his chapter "Social Knowing" that grabbed me: In a miscellaneous world, an Oz-like authority …
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‘Tis The Season For Ironic Endorsements
Today's Yahoo! home page prominently features an ad for American Express starring Tina Fey. I'd say she's got one less thing to worry about, given that's she raking in some nice endorsement cash while she and other, more starving WGA writers are on strike. …
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