Todd Anthony, a.k.a. Bullshit Observer, gets his Craigslist Crumedgeon on in this riff concerning lame job offers for writers: Here's the gig, it's a 30 page tri-fold brochure. Here's the catch: I don't have really any money. How about 300 clams? Does that sound fair? Oh, did I mention that I get to comment at every stage of the approval process until I see a stream of tears coming down your beet red face? Did I …
Tavelocity Makes Nice Gnome Space
Random Culture points to an article in Adweek today about brand icons on MySpace. Travelocity is the latest advertiser to seek out friends on MySpace through an ad icon. The company's Roaming Gnome mascot, introduced in 2004, has established a profile on MySpace (www.myspace.com/roaminggnome) that offers users special perks and deals when they add him as a friend. Ad icons have proven big draws on the social network. …
The Search Is On for Interactive Talent
New York City-based writer and editor, Jim Hanas, has an interesting piece in this month's Creativity about where the next generation of interactive creatives will come from. According to his article, and several others I've read, there is a dearth of talent avaialble. "We cleared out an entire generation of talent when the bubble burst, so the true believers and the ones who had enough talent to make it through have …
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Miller Needs A Blue Collar Agency
Ad Age reports that Crispin Porter + Bogusky staffers will go back to drinking Fat Tire and other kind beers, effective immediately. "We just have fundamental differences over creative and strategy," Alex Bogusky, chief creative officer at Crispin, said in a statement released this afternoon. "And although we made every attempt to find common ground, the process of multilayered approvals of creative and strategy has …
The Proliferation of Niche Programming On TV May Not Be Sustainable
Bruce Springsteen once grumbled about having 57 TV channels, with "nothin' on." Now, the average American has nearly double that. The typical American home received 104 television channels in 2006, Nielsen Media Research said, up from 61 in 2000. In 1990, the typical number of channels was 33. Last year, viewers watched only 15 percent of the stations available to them for any appreciable length of time; in 2000, …
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Content Droplets
I like Scott Karp's take on disaggregation: All the focus on the digitization and online distribution of music — and now video — has been on piracy. But what if that’s just a red herring? You could argue that the most striking consequence of digitizing media and distributing it online is that all content is now available in a discrete, granual form. Music file. Article page. Video clip. Podcast. Photo. There are very …
Analyze My Dream
I had a weird dream the other night. Alex Bogusky--a man I have never met--came to my current workplace. He went through my book with the entire creative team looking on, then offered me a job at CP+B's Paris office. My cube was kind of small over there. …
I Salute Thee, Rothenberg
Randall Rothenberg is letting go of his Ad Age column in order to assume the helm of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. In his farewell piece, he delivers some delcious prose, the kind found in Where the Suckers Moon, his landmark book about Weiden + Kennedy's handling of the Subaru account. Although I was to the manor born, a child of marketers in a house guested frequently by creative revolutionaries, we baby …