I wanted to read about what NOT to do as an entrepreneur, so I picked up the latest Inc. Magazine from the newsstand. Jonathan Abrams, the founder of Friendster and the man credited with launching the social networking concept, is on the cover. Abrams took a beating at Friendster, but he's only 37 and he looks fit for the ring again. Which is good, since he has a new social service currently in gamma. I'd like to …
Culture Made In China
Aric Chen writing for Fast Company looks at the emergence of China's creative class. China is building a creative infrastructure at breakneck speed. You can sense it in the trendy restaurants and slick boutiques popping up in major cities--and in the gritty ex-warehouse and factory districts where imagination-driven companies are joining the cafés and art galleries that first settled in. Newsstands are brimming with …
Ask A Chola Wants Salsa Verde! Doritos For Everyone
Mask-wearing activist, Ask A Chola, operating somewhere in East Los, Califas, a.k.a. Aztlan, has some serious demands for the Frito-Lay Corporation. She claims there are under-served communities in America, and demands that Frito-Lay treat every Dorito-loving community with dignity. Or something like that. Visit Ask A Chola's MySpace page for more on her shadowy movements. …
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Ketchup Chronicles
Dan Burke of Dayton, OH recreates a scene for The NYT The idea that consumers will being to churn out brand advertising that regularly runs on prime time TV is a farce. Agency people, who fashion themselves as craftspersons uniquely qualified to make such work, have scoffed at the notion from the get go. Now the mainstream business press is starting to look more critically at the much ballyhooed trend. Today's New …
Julie Roehm Throws Some Gasoline On A Smoldering Fire
In politics, they call it the "Friday night news dump": Release a bunch of documents and news late on a Friday afternoon so no one really notices because, hey, it's the weekend and no one's paying close attention. So what happened this afternoon, right at the start of a 3-day weekend? Ousted senior vice-president of marketing communications, Julie Roehm, responds to Wal-Mart's allegations in a 42-page legal document. …
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It’s Memorial Day Weekend: I Could Use Some Baseball
Austin-based Door Number 3 is doing some nice work for Major League Baseball's Texas Rangers. One can also find TV spots from this campaign on the DN3 website. [via Ask A Copywriter] …
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Interweb Gold Rush Continues
The Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.) reports that Internet advertising has grown into a $16.9 billion industry. Lots of firms are scrambling for a piece of the action—WPP, Google and Microsoft have all made recent headline-grabbing acquisitions that speak to the ongoing industry shakeup. For decades, advertising has been a relatively simple process dominated by a clubby world. Long-established advertising and …
Water Dudes Get Rich
Associated Press reports that The Coca-Cola Co. has agreed to buy Vitaminwater maker Glaceau in a cash deal valued at $4.1 billion. The transaction is Coca-Cola's largest acquisition ever. Glaceau is an attractive acquisition for Coca-Cola because of its position in the enhanced water and energy drink categories, which Coca-Cola is betting will make up a large portion of the beverage industry's volume and gross …