Steve McKee of McKee Wallwork Cleveland in Albuquerque, NM has a piece in Business Week. His advise to budding entrepreneurs: If you can't afford a marketing budget you can't afford to open your doors. Is this dinosaur think? Or is it spot on? …
Wearing Slacks With Flip Flops
From Ad Age: The Haggar Clothing Co., a department-store pants supplier bent on becoming a lifestyle brand, has hired Crispin Porter & Bogusky, Miami, in what it describes as an "unconventional partnership" that includes Crispin taking a minority equity position in the newly private Haggar. Haggar was delisted from Nasdaq after an investor group, led by a pair of private-equity firms, bought the company from …
American Knows Why You Fly To Mavs Games
How do you reward brand loyalty? If you own the Dallas Mavericks, you give your 20,000-plus season ticket holders a free flight on American Airlines. According to USA TODAY, Mavs' owner, Mark Cuban announced the perk during "Fan Appreciation Night." "We wanted to do something outrageous for our fans," Cuban said. The promotion could cost more than $3 million, assuming a $150 average ticket price and 20,000 tickets …
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Moosehead Goes Balls Out
From Lewis Lazare: In-bar product sampling, usually done with the help of a cadre of buxom babes, has been one way brewers try to spark renewed interest in certain beer brands. But Moosehead lager, and its ad agency Tom Dick & Harry Advertising, wanted to go a different route in the guerrilla marketing war to separate itself from competitors. So bar patrons in five markets initially are being introduced to a wacky …
Iowa Writer’s Workshop Grad Deconstructs McDonald’s TV
It's been a long while since I clicked by Cup of Chicha, a site I used to frequent. I certainly did not expect to find advertising criticism. But I did. Here it is: With “The Pinky,” my name for McDonalds’ latest TV ad campaign, advertising’s fascination with the hipster lifestyle comes to its final vulgar climax. Co-opting youth culture’s propensity for sign language (e.g., the finger-figurations for signing peace, …
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Support The Arts—Buy Modo & Modo
According to The Telegraph, the Italian maker of a small black notebook once used by Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse and Ernest Hemingway has put his company up for sale. Mario Beruzzi's company Modo & Modo sold 4.5m Moleskine notebooks across the world last year, half of them in the United States. The notebooks, which have a pocket for mementos and an elastic band to hold them closed, were made by a French company …
You WILL Watch The Ads
From the AP: In this era of easy ad skipping with TiVo-like video recorders, could television viewers one day be forced to watch commercials with a system that prevents channel switching? Yes, according to Royal Philips Electronics. A patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office says researchers of the Netherland-based consumer electronics company have created a technology that could let broadcasters …
7Up’s A Natural
From USA TODAY: Soft-drink brand 7Up this week announced that its original 7Up is now "100% natural" — following a reformulation to eliminate an artificial preservative. "Everything that remains in the can is from a natural source," says Kelli Freeman, marketing vice president. The label does not apply to the diet and other varieties. TV ads beginning May 8 will show 7Up cans as fruits or vegetables, being picked or …