After I mentioned the StrawberryFrog ad that ran in Fortune magazine, I got a nice note from Peter Levitan of Ralston360 in Bend, Oregon. Peter mentioned that his agency too believes in promoting itself through ads, and he passed along a few examples that have run in Oregon markets. These ads use traditional print advertising to highlight the agency's non-traditional thinking. Click on them for a larger view. He …
Kurt Cobain Ad Causes More Headaches Across The Pond
Just so Courtney doesn't sue us, I won't show the Doc Martens ad featuring Kurt Cobain in heaven. It was only supposed to be seen in a British music magazine. But the International Herald Tribune has more on what happened next: The trouble began when an employee - disobeying instructions, Saatchi insisted - submitted the images to www.adcritic.com, a U.S.-based ad industry Web site. In the United States, the estates …
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A Little Venting
I guess that when you read a blog called Why Advertising Sucks you know what you're in for, but still it's some good reading. There's a perfectly well-timed and well-crafted rant entry: You won’t matter for however much people insist that you do because no matter what, someone else will do your job and since your full potential shall never be utilized, then no worries, because someone half as good as you can provide …
Google Acquires Companies–And Lots Of Power
This article in the San Francisco Chronicle examines Google's ever-increasing power, particularly in light of the company's planned acquisition of banner-ad and cookie monster DoubleClick: On Monday, Google said the Federal Trade Commission wanted more information about its planned $3.1 billion acquisition of online advertising company DoubleClick as part of an antitrust review. A few days earlier, a European Union …
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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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Hello, Hackneyed Techniques
In today's New York Times, Stuart Elliot takes a look at the handful of campaigns that use the word "hello." Among other “Hello” ads are commercials for Target discount stores that change the Beatles song “Hello, Goodbye” into “Hello Goodbuy,” a campaign for the National Marine Manufacturers Association that urges consumers to “Discover boating” with a song featuring lyrics like “Hello, hello, how are you?” and the …
Harry Potter and The Obtuse Client
Seeing the StrawberryFrog ad that has 3 paragraphs of body copy made me flash back to every client I ever had that would demand to see bullet points instead of sentences. And the Creative Circus student who presented me an ad with two paragraphs and dubbed it a "long copy" ad. So are people reading anymore? If the Harry Potter books are any indication, people still read. But as an industry, are we giving them …
Get Ready For Sicko
Here's a clip for the upcoming Michael Moore movie, Sicko: If you have a client that's in the insurance, healthcare or pharmaceutical categories, then somewhere in their PR and corporate communications departments, they're getting ready to go on offense against this movie. Whether you like Michael Moore or not, he gets people riled up. And that scares some folks. The New York Times examines the issues …