Caffeinated posts from a copywriter/adgrunt. I write about advertising, design, astronomy, cooking, and pretty much anything else that strikes my fancy, including random bits of reference info for work purposes. You may also know me as 'that other gal' who helps run Adland. | make contact | RSS Feed | ATOM

Friday, August 27, 2004
[ :: adgruntie :: Stuff ]

+ Inspiral is asking its customers to log on to Inspiral.com for a chance to win a spokesperson spot plus $1,000. Users are asked to email in their name and why they love using Inspirals. They must be aged 19 or over. Brian Osterberg, the president of Intellx (which distributes the Inspiral), said: "We need young people talking about why Inspiral's patented spiral-action technology is the best thing since [children's TV character] SpongeBob and discount airlines; not old 'suits' trying to advertise condoms with tepid advertising gimmicks about how good they are."" I like the way they are thinking. Although, I've never heard of the brand. Maybe they need to do some branding as well to get their name out there before they start competing with the big boys.

+ Hidden points us to an article about marketers going after ethnic majorities - The new black over at the Guardian.
Monday, August 23, 2004
[ :: adgruntie :: Setting the pace ]

+ Pace is bringing back their "New York City" ad concept from the late 80s (?). From the press release: "The original ads featured cowboys threatening to "Git a Rope" for the chuck wagon cook for daring to exchange a bottle of Pace(R) Picante Sauce with a version made in "New York City?!", a tag line immortalized as a trivia question on the game show "Jeopardy." Today, Pace Foods launches an updated version of its popular "New York City" ads, a campaign with such strong recall that, more than a decade after it was created, consumers still recite lines from the commercials to Pace marketing teams appearing at sampling events across the country. The new ads combine an authentic western feel with contemporary appeal, poking light fun at the "cowboys" from New York City who have car alarms for their horses tied to the hitching post, and who "tag" cattle with spray cans instead of branding irons."

Sunday, August 22, 2004
[ :: adgruntie :: ad-creep ]

+ The LATimes has a great article on ad-creep and "stealth strategies" being used in advertising today, The pitch you won't see coming.(free reg req)

Robert Liodice, president and chief executive of the National Assn. of Advertisers, took the podium before a banquet hall of marketing execs recently to tell them what they already knew: Advertising is dead.
"Consumers don't want to be marketed to like some robotic object," he said, as if debunking conventional wisdom. "Rather, they want to be involved, engaged and, in fact, entertained."
In order to breach a consumer's "initial headset barrier" against advertising, he said, the sales pitch must be "embedded" in something more palatable, such as a TV show, a sporting event, a video game. It must woo with charm and empathy. Liodice laid out the strategy: "First, capture the consumer's attention in human, intriguing and emotional ways. Then, embrace the consumer. Get him or her to feel comfortable with you. Finally, make the sale without really selling. Let the consumer know, hey, we're always there when they need us."
In fact, advertising is more deeply embedded in our culture than ever before. Almost nothing is excluded from branding — not our cities, our museums, our schools. Even our private lives are being co-opted by corporations desperate to reframe their images as "authentic."
"Stealth" strategies are essential to disarm our cynicism, advertisers say. So teenagers are hired to study trends among their peers and develop ways to reach them — known as "peer-to-peer" or "viral" marketing. Actors are hired to shill product while posing as consumers in Internet chat rooms or on city streets — in the name of creating "organic" brand awareness. Logos and slogans are "seamlessly" integrated into the story lines of films, video games, even textbooks.
Consumer activists call this "ad creep" and predict an Orwellian corporate takeover of society. But advertisers herald this movement as the future. Soon, they say, advertising will so effectively impersonate the ideas we use to define ourselves that we won't even consider it selling.
"Advertising," says Jeff Hicks of the Crispin Porter + Bogusky agency, "will disappear."
And, consequently, virtually no experience will be commercial-free.

There's a lot more in the article. It's definitely worth the read.
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
[ :: adgruntie :: Oooohs & Aaaahs ]

+ Chaos By Design has some cool stuff to check out.

+ The Glue Society is an Australian creative hot house. Check out their swell work.

+ Caffeinated.com is live. Very Swank!

+ Is Ikea hiding a grin? Or is this just another case of culture clash? (hat tip to Clay.)

+ Commerical Lampooning - "Spoof ads have long been a staple on late-night comedy shows—Dan Aykroyd memorably touted the Bass-o-Matic, a blender that can turn fish into puree, as an infomercial announcer on Saturday Night Live in the 1970s. For advertisers and their agencies, a spoof offers proof that their ad has become part of the collective consciousness of pop culture. And in an advertising climate increasingly abandoning the traditional 30-second spot, the association is—to quote another oft-spoofed ad—well, priceless. "So much of what an ad is trying to do is establish brand identity, and a parody does that," says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. "A parody on Saturday Night Live is, in effect, another ad—one you didn't pay for that carries a lot more cultural currency."" (hat tip to Clay.)

+ PSFK have the dirt on a swanky way to turn your iPod into a boombox, but with much more class. Lots of interesting trend and cultural stuff to read- like this bit on old school receivers for cell phones by Pokia. I have to say, I think the Mayfair model is rather snazzy.

[ :: adgruntie :: Can I get a wha' wha'? ]

+ More companies embracing guerrilla marketing. "Le Tigre, the apparel manufacturer whose polo shirts with a sprinting tiger logo were hip in the 1980s, is embracing guerrilla marketing to mount a comeback. In June workers took to the dirty streets of 5 major cities and using cleaning solvent formed the company logo from the grime. At the U.S. Open tennis tournament next month, shirtless men and bikini-clad women will hand out free t-shirts and wrist bands with the Le Tigre logo." It's interesting that they seem to think that they only way to get attention is by having half-naked people pushing the stuff. But I guess when you can't come up with a good idea, nudity is always an easy way out. Their first idea from June I think was much better.

+ Track those ads- now made easier thanks to Ad-ID. "But advocates say the biggest benefits are yet to come, as advertisers invest millions more dollars into directly targeting consumers rather than aiming scattershot spending across large audiences. The system can accommodate multiple versions of ads, modified by city or even household."It's going to allow advertisers for the first time to precisely target individuals for whom the message has relevance," said Peter Sealey, adjunct professor of marketing at the University of California at Berkeley. "This way we can create on the fly a different ad for a different household."" Targeting is good. Definitely makes sense to try to get your message as targeted as possible. Of course the only down side is that you end up losing out on those perphial folks that may not be your true target, but depending on their changing needs might be.

+ Tunnel vision for Royal Caribbean- "In a first-of-its-kind commercial for Greater Boston, subway riders will see an ad for the Royal Caribbean cruise line take shape outside the windows of Red Line trains as they travel toward downtown Boston. Think frame-by-frame animation: 400 still images have been placed on a 1,000-foot stretch of tunnel wall, between the Harvard and Central stations. Timed so riders see 24 images per second, lights flash on and off as a train passes, transforming the images into a moving montage of cruise-goers snorkeling, jet-skiing, and rock-climbing aboard a Royal Caribbean ship." Different. Sure is an interesting idea...and I like how it makes use of the medium.
Monday, August 16, 2004
[ :: design :: Feast for the eyes ]

+ Design for Chunks. Check out the archives too.

+ The history and success of the Whiffle Ball- "Although the company doesn’t do major advertising — its only major media campaign was in the 1960s, when Ford endorsed the product in a TV commercial — the brand name has remained popular and in the public’s eye."

+ Design Times Square, "a project announced yesterday invites New Yorkers to pick their favorites among 39 significant examples of architecture and design in and around the Great White Way, as far north as 52nd St". Ballots are avaliable online at www.timessquarenyc.org. "Design Times Square mixes a lot of old with the new, acknowledging a racy history that goes back to such iconic constructions as the 1899 Republic Theater (now the New Victory), the clock tower Paramount Building, the Art Deco Cafe Edison and Sputnik-style Howard Johnson's, and the Depression-age Hollywood Theater, which became the Times Square Church ("Rent" is playing next door). In the future, though, each year's jury of design and architecture professionals will put only contemporary additions to the vote. Several of the most important visuals are underground, where murals by both Jacob Lawrence and Roy Lichtenstein decorate the subway station, or on the sides of buildings, such as Sol Lewitt's limestone installation at the Equitable Building and the patchwork colors of Arquitectonica's Westin Hotel."
Saturday, August 14, 2004
[ :: yummies :: Sad news ]

+ RIP Julia Child.


Friday, August 13, 2004
[ :: adgruntie :: Freaky Friday Flux ]

+ W+K London's blog points to an article from the Financial Times which discusses that in a study done, clients claim that their ad agencies don't understand them, that they are not the agencies most valued client, and that 29% claimed that lack of creativity was a problem.

+ New York Festivals Design and Print winners were announced on Wednesday. Check out the winners at their site. Not all winners are up yet, but there's enough to whet your appetite.

+ Olympics and advertising -"'Impossible is Nothing' is the theme for Adidas' campaign by director Lance Acord (cinematographer of "Lost in Translation" and "Being John Malkovich"), which harks back to earlier Games and triumphs. For example, in one spot, 13-year-old gymnast Nastia Liukin appears to be performing on the uneven bars alongside Nadia Comaneci, who is executing a perfect-10 routine in the 1976 Montreal Games. In another, Haile Gebrselassie, the Ethiopian 10,000- meter runner, competes against himself -- indeed, eight other Haile Gebrselassies -- which is what he's done often by besting his own records. The thought behind the ads, said Richard Bullock, the creative director of ad agency 180 Amsterdam, which created the ads with advertising agency TBWA, was, "What else could better exemplify the notion of 'Impossible is Nothing' than the achievements of Olympians?""

+ Olympic-Size TV Audience for the Athens Games? "What does $1 billion worth of television commercials look like? As the networks owned by NBC Universal begin coverage of the Summer Olympics in Athens, American viewers will find out. If, that is, they watch. In years past, it would have been heretical to doubt that huge audiences would want to gather in front of TV sets to see the Summer Games. But these Olympics are different from any others, for reasons that include worries about terrorism and dismay over athletes' failing drug tests. All that is leading many on Madison Avenue to question how eager Americans actually are to view 1,210 hours of coverage of all 28 Olympic sports planned through Aug. 29 - more coverage than for the previous five Summer Games put together."
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
[ :: adgruntie :: Brands as celebrity endorsers ]

+ Forget Madonna, Britney, Michael Jordan, Becks, and the like. You don’t need them as brand endorsers anymore. Not when you could have other strong brands substantiate your brand equity. Take MasterCard’s new print campaign from McCann Erikson. "They are revamping the approach and look of the print part of the campaign in an ambitious effort centered on teaming up MasterCard with well-known retailers - both the brick-and-mortar and dot-com varieties - whose brand names get equally prominent play in the ads." "The retailers shown in the ads, which are being paid for entirely by MasterCard, were chosen from among the largest where consumers use MasterCard, Ms. Thomas and Ms. Fuller said, as well as those that have promotional and other partnerships with MasterCard." They are going to be featuring 10 brands will be featured in their advertisements, including AT&T Wireless, Banana Republic, Gap, Hyatt, Kmart, Pier 1 Imports, Radio Shack, Shell, Travelocity, and Williams-Sonoma- with more to come. “The idea is to use one powerful brand to support another’s product. Examples include a deal to place Apple’s iPods in BMW automobiles, a description of Miller Lite beer as “the WD-40 of conversation”, and the promotion by General Mills of Hershey chocolate as an ingredient in Betty Crocker cake mixes”. The thing is, that last example is really more of a co-branding concept. An article from last year on trendwatching.com calls it branded brands. Read the article for some more on the subject. This idea is really using the brands to endorse another brand. The brand as the celebrity endorser. But the Miller Lite example is another interesting one. It's brands piggy-backing on the equity already established with another brand. Advertising agencies are increasingly using unrelated brand-name products to help sell the brands they are paid to pitch. (read this article for more, lots of great examples). This article calls it all co-branding, which I suppose is somewhat accurate. Although I think piggyback branding is better. It's the strengthening of your brand via the brand of something else. At least with MasterCard they are related in enough of a way that it's not so jarring, unlike some of the other examples out there. Although, as the NYTimes article mentions, the concept is very similar to the old Visa print ads by BBDO NY where small businesses were featured.

[ :: adgruntie :: ads gone bad ]

+ Tripp, "a luggage-maker, has been criticised for an advert that appeared to encourage people to steal from hotel rooms. The newspaper advert for Tripp's expandable suitcases read: "Now you can steal the bathrobe as well as the toiletries." The Advertising Standards Authority upheld 11 complaints that it encouraged people to break the law. The company said the advert was a "tongue-in-cheek" reference to the way people raid hotel toiletries."

+ Top 10 UK ads that made the news in July. "Martin Loat, director of Propeller Communications, said: "Controversy continues to be a factor that turns adverts into high-profile campaigns. It is rarely clear to what extent the publicity is planned -- whether the ad was created with the intention of being banned or whether the brand is genuinely surprised by the ban." Load said banned ad campaigns often made a greater short-term impact on the public consciousness than if they had not been so controversial. "It is a technique worth noting as it becomes increasingly difficult to achieve standout," he said."

+ Sunday Times "domination" ad called misleading by the ASA. "An ad for the Sunday Times that asked 'What turns businessmen on?' has been cleared of being sexist, discriminatory, irresponsible and offensive. But the ad, which prompted a string of complaints from the public, was deemed to be misleading because it used the word "businessmen" to cover both men and women.
The ad appeared in the Sunday Times' appointments section and claimed the paper was the most read publication among businessmen. After posing the question "What turns businessmen on?", the ad read "Domination". This prompted a rash of complaints from readers, who said it was discriminatory because it excluded businesswomen, was sexist and could encourage bullying and sexual harassment."

+ RIP. According to mediapost.com, Maxwell (Mac) Dane, the last remaining founder of legendary ad agency Doyle Dane Bernbach, died Sunday after a brief illness. He was 98. In 1949, he joined with Ned Doyle and William Bernbach to form Doyle Dane Bernbach, the agency whose work was renowned for its wry wit and credited with defining an era in advertising through such campaigns as 'Think Small' for Volkswagen, 'We Try Harder' for Avis, and 'You don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's Rye bread.'"

+ 'Guerrilla' marketing stalks Olympic sponsors. "Welcome to ambush marketing, where you can cover yourself in Olympic glory without having to pay a cent. The practice, also known as guerrilla marketing, describes how companies try to associate themselves with an event without paying sponsorship fees or steal the show from the official sponsor, particularly where that happens to be a competitor."

[ :: quarks and quasars :: meteors, life and pictures ]

+ Perseid Meteor Shower Peaks August 11th & 12th. "Every year during mid-August, when the Earth passes close to the orbit of Swift-Tuttle, the bits and pieces ram into our atmosphere at approximately 37 miles per second (60 kps) and create bright streaks of light. According to the best estimates, in 2004 the Earth is predicted to cut through the densest part of the Perseid stream sometime around 7 a.m. ET on Thursday, Aug. 12. Activity could be high for a few hours on either side of that time.The late-night hours of Wednesday, Aug. 11, on through the first light of dawn on the morning holds the promise of seeing a very fine Perseid display. The bright light of a Full Moon almost totally wrecked last year’s shower, but this year it will be a lovely crescent, about 31?2 days before New phase. Moreover, it will not rise until around 2:30 a.m. local daylight time on the morning of the12th, hovering to the east of brilliant Venus." Also check out the Top 10 facts on the Perseid meteor shower.

+ Life on Mars? The saga continues. "McKay said it is now clear water flowed across Mars. A lot of water, in fact. Furthermore, there may still be water spurting out onto the planet at certain times. "The same pendulum may be swinging back toward life," he said. "We’ll wait and see. These are exciting times." The Mars rovers represent an incredibly successful mission, McKay said. Moreover, they seemingly have "uncovered" a major find. He points to pictures taken by the rovers that show areas of the martian surface disturbed by the retraction of landing airbags. Patches of surface "acted as a cohesive blanket of some sort" when the airbags pulled back, McKay explains. "It wrinkled…and pulled along rocks with it. It didn’t simply crack apart like a dried-up crust." Why the soil reacted in such a manner remains obscure, McKay admits. "But one possibility is that this is the fossilized remains of a biological mat of some sort," he speculated. The mat would be made up of bacterial parts and pieces."

+ Are you a fan of the Hubble images? If you're looking for a fix of cool images from space, check out the pictures from the Cassini-Huygens of Saturn and Titan while it's out of order. The Cassini-Huygens has recently ended it's 7 year journey and is now in the orbit of Saturn.
Monday, August 09, 2004
[ :: adgruntie :: Say wha? ]

+ Millions in US wave bye-bye to overtime. Ok. So here's the part that made my jaw drop, "Reporters, photographers and other news media and advertising workers are among those who may be reclassified as exempt from overtime by being placed in a category of exempt workers known as "creative professionals." "For the first time, classifying them as professionals is discretionary," Anstandig said." I've never, in the 5+ years I've worked in advertising, received overtime pay. So I'm wondering which advertising workers they are speaking of. Because, I would hazard a guess (yea, I know that's dangerous) that the creatives were already a part of that "creative professionals" category. But I wonder why that was to begin with. I could so easily slip into a rant right here about multiple thousands of rounds of changes (ok, ok, I'm exaggerating, a little), last minute jobs that shouldn't have been last minute, and the like, which would eliminate the excessive need for creatives to work insane hours, but I won't. It's been too long of a day.

+ On a separate note, if anyone who comes along here has any links to weblogs/blogs/etc for ad agencies, please post them in the comments. I'm looking to get a list of them going in my links section. Thanks!


[ :: Adgruntie :: Movin' on up ]

+ Emap buys Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in a £52.5m deal and "plans to integrate it into its Emap Communications media business. The event, first held in 1954, was put up for sale at the beginning of July by the Hatchuel family, who ran the festival as a privately owned company.
The sale of the festival, which had operating profits of £7m this year, is reported to have come about after a disagreement between its owner and chairman, Roger Hatchuel, and his son, Romain.Derek Carter, chief executive of Emap Communications, said: "Working with the international advertising community, it is our intention to ensure the festival continues to reflect the rich diversity of this tremendously exciting market."" We'll see if change in ownership does have any affect on the show, but, it will probably take until next year's show to see how or what that will be. Here's some of the backstory to this news.

+ HipHop Admen - From the article:"Mr. Harrell, co-founder of the ad agency and talent company Nu America, is one of many former and current hip-hop producers and performers who have turned their attention away from the Top 40 and toward Madison Avenue. While hip-hop performers have been running marketing divisions as part of their business, Mr. Harrell and others are building successful full-service agencies with a roster of clients that they run apart from their other businesses. "We're going after leads and contending with the big agencies," Mr. Harrell said. Labeling Mary J. Blige as the "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul" is like labeling a product "cool," he added. "We can do that for products, as well." Some hip-hop admen are following the path to Madison Avenue laid down by entrepreneurs like Russell Simmons and Sean Combs, who was previously called Puff Daddy and is now known to fans as P. Diddy. Mr. Simmons is the founder of Def Jam Records, and Mr. Combs, whose ad company, Blue Flame Marketing and Advertising, part of his Bad Boy Worldwide Entertainment Group, has taken on outside campaigns for, among others, a fragrance for Calvin Klein called Craze...Emil Wilbekin, who spent 12 years at Vibe magazine in various posts, including editorial director, said that there was nothing unusual about music executives promoting corporate brands."This is part of a bigger picture about how urban America is changing, not only in the way advertising looks and feels, and the way the country looks and feels, but also how you reach this new consumer and get a piece of the pie," Mr. Wilbekin said. "That's all it is. They're being very smart business people.""

+ Boo to Adage.com for requiring registration, even if it's free, to access the articles. And boo to the Media Guardian for the same reason. This free registration thing is really very annoying. Unfortunately it seems like a trend that is not slowing down. It's bad enough when older articles require registration, but to make the entire site that way, well, it's just poopy.

+ Another lame attempt at using money as media. "In a promotional stunt using U.S. currency as a vehicle for marketing messages, an online coupon service is sticking circular ads on the reverse side of 16,000 quarters it plans to scatter around Minneapolis. Boodle, owned by San Diego-based Consumer Networks, will distribute the $4,000 worth of quarters in vending machine change dispensers, pay telephone slots, and on the street over the next few weeks to publicize its service. Ken Harris, partner in Cannondale Associates, an Evanston, Ill.-based strategic marketing and sales consulting firm, called the Boodle tactic "very creative" and noted that consumers picking up the quarters already will have gotten "their money's worth." However, he said, Boodle will get its 25 cents worth if the story is picked up by newscasters. "The target audience definitely is watching the news, and if it goes national, they've spent only $4,000 in quarters," he said. He added, "It can't lose even if they get negative publicity." Very creative? Hah. Please. This is nothing new, as mentioned in this January article at Adland.
Sunday, August 08, 2004
[ :: Adgruntie :: Lazy Sunday ]

+ Quiznos pulls black-oriented ads- "Denver's Quiznos Subs has stopped advertising on radio stations that emphasize hip-hop and rhythm and blues, the Washington Times reported Friday.The move followed an internal study showing such music is associated with a lifestyle the company does not want to be seen endorsing." Whatever that means.

+ Companies find they can't buy love with bargains. "Too many companies confuse selling clever gadgets at good prices with delighting customers. When so many products get cheaper every year, offering customers a great bargain will not necessarily win their loyalty. Someone else is bound to offer a better bargain, and besides, most customers have come to expect good deals. "Price has an effect on whether you buy or not," Dr. Fornell says. "It has less of an impact on whether you're satisfied or not.""

+ Yipes! Things to avoid when presenting to a potential or established client. From the article: "Little things do indeed count, as other executives learned from their own experiences. One executive left major portions of the ad presentation back at the office, while another placed presentation materials in a rented car, then took a different car to the meeting. A seemingly diligent ad executive tried too hard, apparently, and sprayed the presentation board with insecticide, instead of adhesive. A relatively unobservant executive didn’t recognize the client’s president when he walked into the building. An executive who didn’t attend to details “thought he had put the phone on mute — but had not — and was talking about the client.”"

+ Ad Icon, Smokey the Bear turns 60 tomorrow (8/9). And after 60 years, he's still relevant, even if his tagline has changed from forest fires to wildfires.

+ When the Olympic Games begin, Chevrolet’s long-running “Like a Rock” advertising campaign will be put to bed as General Motors Corp. embrases their new catchphrase, “An American Revolution" with a "blitz of 10 new commercials airng the 2004 Summer Olympics. Wes Brown, an analyst at consumer research firm Iceology in Los Angeles, says the slogan, "Like a Rock", has long outlived its usefulness. “There’s no doubt almost every consumer would recognize what brand goes with that song,” said Brown, “but it didn’t really translate into increased sales.”" I'm not quite sure how an American Revolution will translate into sales though. But who knows.

Friday, August 06, 2004
[ Creative, Schmative ]

+ "Marketers must market, creatives create" is a nice opinion piece on agency pitches. Here's an excerpt: "In the normal course of business the agency is selling access to its intellectual property, and like most intangible services it is consumed instantly - once presented the idea is gone and the agency can only hope to earn income if it can convince the client to pay for its peripheral products, such as production and media. In the pitch situation the message the agency sends is: “The creativity is worthless, we’ll just give it away.” For a business whose stock in trade is creativity this is sad – maybe even dare I say even STUPID." He also makes mention of the fact that by giving away ideas for free, it lessens the value of the product- ideas and creativity. Which is probably one of the many reasons why many clients tend to not value the creativity of agencies. In a related article, "Agencies need to buy some backbone", another author states "But pitches aide, another problem is that when they actually get the business, some agencies are so desperate to keep it that they will do anything the client wants. Or anything the client's wife wants." And that's quite true too. It goes back to something I'm sure I've said before about you wouldn't pay to go to a doctor for a diagnosis and then tell him he was wrong. And actually I can't really think of any other profession where it's acceptable to muck about the way clients do in advertising. Sure, they are the customer, and the customer is always right- to a point. Because letting them change the font, kill a concept because they don't like a color or are missing the point that their target audience might not like exactly what they personally do, leads creativity in ads down a very slippery slope. It shows a total lack of respect for what creatives do. Do other professionals get the same kind of "let me tell you how to do it" thrown at them? Let's see. Accountants? No. Firemen? No. Lawyers? No. Therapists? No. General Contractors/Carpenters/Plumbers? No. I think I could go on and on because I don't think there is a "Yes" out there. So why do we let this be the case? It happens to every creative- from the hottest agencies to the individual freelancer. There has to be a point where someone stands up and says "Wait a minute- WTF?" Of course with the economy still on it's way to improving, no one is going to do that. They will continue to be the patsies to the clients whims, no matter what the cost- just as long as it's not at the cost of losing the client. And I can see why one would have to do this sort of thing in the current climate. But then when do you stop? When can you stand up if you're always in fear of losing a client? There's something to be said for respect as well. And this chipping away at ideas- good solid ideas- as well as new business pitches where ideas are given away for free- s a lack of respect for what we do. Not that it's news of any kind. But who can you go in day in and day out, putting in 100% into something, when you don't have any respect for what you do coming back at you? It definitely makes it harder. It just creates more disgruntled workers. Overall the result is not good. Which is probably why there is popularity in sending in spec work to award shows. The temptation is too great and the great clients are too few. And a good majority of all this stems from the pitch- the gift of free ideas, the devaluing of an agency's and creative's most important commodity.

+ Ad Icon competition is heating up. came across this press release for the michelin man and this one for Mr. Clean. And Adland has the story on Charlie the Tuna looking for your vote.

+ Apparently CP+B's Subservient Chicken, Ugoff, etc has helped Burger King out. "Miami-based Burger King Corp. said its July results show U.S. systemwide same-store sales up 12.9 percent. The fast-food chain said U.S. franchise sales were up 12.4 percent and company restaurant sales were up 18.4 percent, year over year. July marks the sixth consecutive month of positive U.S. same-store sales, Burger King said." Proof that good creative is effective. :D

+ Adland reports on the reports of Forbes.com serving paid links within articles written by journalists. Just what is needed, another reason for the public to distrust advertisers, journalists, and media outlets. To me this seems like a cop-out. Is there no other way to reach your target than by manipulating the information from reliable sources? It's bad enough with product placements, advertorials in magazines and the like.
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
[ You should know ]

+ The Good Brand over at Fast Company take a look at "trends shaping the current branding landscape, identifying seven trends that are likely to influence the conversation for the year to come." They include these theories: "Brands will be authentic. The experience will be the expression of the brand. Brands will be hard-wired in our brains. The line between entertainment and brands will blur. Increasingly complex brands will require new organizational structures. Brands will create social and cultural values. America will be reborn as a more culturally sensitive brand." Fast Company also presents a branding challenge. "The Fast Company team has developed a list of aging brands that could use reinvention -- as well as some successful brands that could still improve further. Readers can choose to help reposition and rethink one brand -- or all of them." (hat tip to hiddden and Adland.)

+ Young people no longer believe TV ads. Have they ever? (free reg req for story)

+ Moveon.org spoofs BK's Subservient Chicken with Subservient President. And in related news, the folks at CP+B do another web site for BK- the Angus Diet, to promote their Angus burgers.