Seems like more and more media people are getting tired of working for The Man. From The New York Times: The walkout highlighted the concerns of a category of workers who are sometimes called permalancers: permanent freelancers who work like full-time employees but do not receive the same benefits. Waving signs that read “Shame on Viacom,” the workers, most of them in their 20s, demanded that MTV Networks reverse a …
NYT Story On Branded Entertainment Takes A Stand
I really don't have a strong opinion on branded entertainment on TV--it's really nothing new. But this story in the New York Times, written by Louise Story, certainly has a odd tone to it: One of the more popular tricks — oops, I meant to say tactics — advertisers are using today is branded entertainment, which ranges from plopping a Pepsi can into a scene to writing entire television scripts based around Oreo …
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Testing The Merits of Pretesting
Every month, Steve McKee of McKee Wallwork Cleveland writes a column in Businessweek that puts in simple terms what real CEOs and marketing folks ought to know about advertising. This month, he takes on testing: Think about how a focus group works—people are invited in, fed a meal, and paid an incentive to offer insights and opinions that the sponsoring marketer can use. The pressure is on to contribute something of …
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 …
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 …
‘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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Medical Device Advertising: It’s Stenterrific!
If you're sick and tired of pharmaceutical ads on TV, wait 'til you get a load of the next trend: marketing medical devices directly to consumers. From The New York Times: The Cypher television spot might be mystifyingly vague to viewers who have never heard of stents, which are implanted in blood vessels to prop them open after blockages have been cleared. Cypher was designed for the vital network of arteries that …
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Sometimes You’re Just Trying To Slip One Past The Client…
Like some bored copywriter did with this Spirit Airlines e-mail blast. I laughed. Anyone ever try to pull something like this on an unsuspecting client? …
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