Irene Done points to this NY Post story about Miles Nadal--the brazen CEO of agency holding company MDC Partners. Nadal is calling on his shops to become the private-equity firms of the advertising world by investing in brands or companies - raising outside capital if necessary to get in on the action. "We're prepared to put up capital," Nadal said in an interview after sending a memo to his agency heads that hinted …
Find Your Internal Advocate (Find Peace Of Mind)
Spike Jones at Brains On Fire in Greenville, SC reminds us that great creative doesn't mean a thing if there's no way to sell it in. If you’re going to be successful partnering with a new client, you HAVE to have an internal advocate for your cause. Without one, no matter how good your ideas are, how phenomenal your creative is or how smart your strategy is, you’re doomed. Internal advocates are the men and women …
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The Last Retainer
Pat D'Amico, business development partner at Psynchronous Communications and former SVP/Group Director at Arnold Worldwide, calls his own fiction "a bitterly funny account of the rat-eat-rat world of advertising" in our comments. So let's look at the man's prose, offered semi-anonymously on a Blogspot site: Tracy DelAngelis was in the late stages of making a name for herself at Shaughnessy + Greene, which at …
Dialogue Marketing Trumps Monologue Marketing Everytime
Friend of AdPulp (FOP), Tom Asacker wrote something I like a lot. Don't look for breakthrough insights in outdated processes like "inventory control" and "advertising." Instead, study those businesses that actually broke with conventional wisdom and discovered new ways to get closer and closer to the customer. And for the record, I am not saying "don't advertise." Not advertising is like winking at a beautiful …
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Hugh’s Give And Take
I haven't peered into MacLeod's Gaping Void in a while. Let's take a look, shall we? I was in the pub the other evening, trying to explain the difference between Web 1.0 ["Dotcom"] vs Web 2.0 ["Blogs & Social Media"] to a web neophyte friend of mine. The short answer: "Dotcom was about 'taking'. Web 2.0 is about 'giving'." The architecture of Web 2.0 is about people giving away their stuff i.e. "sharing". Whether its …
Talent Zoo Launches The Break Room
The ad world is filled with juicy gossip and wild stories. Talent Zoo has launched a new section on its website called The Break Room (accessible from the home page) where you can share your anecdotes and read others pertaining to the biz. Like this one: The account manager at the ad agency I work for always messes around with one of our senior copywriters in an empty office at different times throughout the day. …
Ad Exec Seeks To Improve Women’s Lives
Leo Burnett North America Chairwoman Cheryl Berman is leaving the agency to start an independent firm focused on marketing to women. Over 32 years, Ms. Berman was a fixture at the iconic Chicago agency, playing a role in landing more than half of the shop's current accounts and producing memorable spots for Hallmark, McDonald's and others. She was chief creative officer of Leo Burnett USA from 1997 until this …
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Why Do We Have To Be So Pushy?
Brad Berens of iMedia Connection spoke to Don Schultz of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Schultz is a noted expert in integrated communications. You have to understand that marketing organizations are designed to talk. They have never been designed to listen. So, when you start talking about dialogue, and interactivity, and you start talking about things like social networks, and that sort …