Accoding to nycgo, legendary creative George Lois is the one ad man in America not secretly in love with Don Draper. I've been accused of being the inspiration for the lead of Mad Men (ugh!), the TV show [on AMC] about an ad agency in the '60s that depicts the exploits of cultural buffoons. So here's what a day in the life of a real Mad Man was like. I would arrive at my ad agency [Papert Koenig Lois] in the …
Fame Is An Ego Trap And A Needless Diversion from The Work
Edward Boches, Chief Creative Officer and Chief Social Media Officer of Mullen, recently remembered his former business partner Paul Silverman on his blog creativity_unbound. I really like what Boches says here: In his time crafting ads, winning awards and helping grow an agency, Paul was pretty well known. He didn't really work at it, but certainly enjoyed the recognition. However, there are many people in …
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Berman Can Relate
Cheryl Berman, former chairman of Leo Burnett and current principal of the new ad agency Unbundled, will be writing recaps of "Mad Men" for The Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog. In her opening salvo, Berman says she walked in to Leo Burnett 30 years ago as Peggy Olsen, but walked out as Don Draper. For the record, when she did descend and allow her feet to touch pavement on Wacker Drive, Berman had to sit on the …
Renny Speaks
Last week I posted about the launch of Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE)--a new project from Wieden + Kennedy and a loose collection of local technology innovators--after reading about it on Silicon Florist. Behind the scenes I also asked Renny Gleeson, W+K's digital ninja, what was up and invited him to comment here. He chose to write about it on his blog, Ouroboros, instead. So why hasn't W+K made a lot of noise …
Wherever You Go, There You Advertise
The website of Portland's Rosey Awards takes a few jabs at the culture and creative output of other cities around the country. All in jest, but there are some nuggets of truth in the jabs. So, in today's connect-from-anywhere world, can you really do great advertising from anywhere? Despite the rise of chain restaurants and strip malls, America is not as homogenous as you might think. I got reminded of that on a …
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Scattered Pictures Of The Smiles We Left Behind
Jon Fine of BuinessWeek argues that growth of "below the line" activity means marketers don't need their media partners like they once did. When it comes to advertising, marketer and media property were once partners. But that relationship, like so much else in this space these days, has gotten quite complicated. Fine also shares a cold hard fact of marketing communications life (yet one that's sort of difficult to …
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Pay To Play Or Go Away
Stephanie Clifford of The New York Times and Ian Schafer of Deep Focus made me laugh this morning. This is what did it: When Ian Schafer, the chief executive of the digital ad agency Deep Focus, won 10 Communicator Awards for the agency's work on Web sites, including one for HBO's "Flight of the Conchords," he was delighted. He was less thrilled when he received a note from the awards: If he wanted the actual …
One Day You’re A Creative Director, The Next You’re Not
Marc Colucci a director with Picture Park in Boston is the director of "Lemonade," a new documentary about laid off ad peeps finding their way in the New World Order. On Please Feed the Animals, Colucci says, "I wanted to be a part of this film so that I could help my laid-off friends and people like them to recover and deal with their newfound situations. And because of the candor of our subjects, this film will do …
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