This Ain't No Disco is one of the more interesting entries in the new in '07 ad blog category. Here's some copy from their About page: It’s a well known fact that some agencies spend huge chunks of their hard earned money turning lifeless commercial spaces into bastions of creativity. These interiors provide insight as to the breadth and depth of their thinking and creative execution. They create spaces to envy. …
The New Oxygen of the Internet
BusinessWeek has a new video program called Digital Dish. Fred Wilson, aka "A VC," stopped by for a chat, which turned to soc nets and how some of them are bound to falter, if not disappear from the web altogether. Here's Wilson's response to that charge... "I think that you're missing one thing, which is that the web itself is becoming social. And the large social networks—whether it be MySpace or Facebook, Bebo, …
Time for Year-End Lists
'Tis the season for year-end lists of every variety. Time Magazine has 50 such lists, one of which--Top 10 websites--I'd like to take a closer look at. 1. Lemonade.com 2. AskSunday.com 3. Wink.com 4. TechPresident.com 5. GoodReads.com 6. MenuPages.com 7. DontForgetYourToothbrush.com 8. VolunteerMatch.com 9. Fatsecret.com 10. Indeed.com It's pretty easy to see the common thread here--services made possible, or made …
Media Resurrection
According to The New York Times, real estate tycoon, Samuel Zell, is shaking things up at The Tribune Company. After completing an $8.2 billion deal on Thursday that makes the media company a privately held operation, Zell made himself chief executive, announced a new set of directors and managers, and declared that the troubled company would look to raise revenue. He disparaged the conventional wisdom that the …
Retail Gets Webified
According to The Wall Street Journal, web-style consumer testimonials and other online conveniences are migrating to retail. Taking a page from the e-commerce world, companies including Cabela's and Staples are featuring endorsements from shoppers in their product displays. These testimonials are different from the Web version in one big way: While most Web retailers leave negative ratings and reviews untouched on …
Devotion To Sugar
According to the BBC, Orthodox Christians in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia are upset with Coca-Cola over the misuse of sacred images. "Coca-Cola uses all these Orthodox symbols in a blasphemous way," the complaint, lodged on 11 December, said. "Some images are deliberately turned upside down, including the crosses," it said. An inverted cross is considered to be one of the symbols of satanism. Coca-Cola officials have …
Picking Up The Pace
One of the things I'm constantly muttering to myself these days is how agencies and their clients need to speed up their creative development processes. Six months is a joke today, at least when it comes to digital. Six days is more like it. Of course, radical change doesn't come easy. Apparently, I'm not alone with this sentiment. Catharine P. Taylor also has some thoughts on it. What I wish for the industry (in …
Portugal Is Open for Business
According to The New York Times, Portugal is spending over $4 million dollars to rework and bolster its image in the international business community. Manuel Pinho, Portugal’s minister for the economy and innovation said that 19 percent of the country’s power comes from renewable sources like the wind or the sun, putting Portugal in third place in Europe, behind Sweden and Austria. That might come as something of a …