The following articles on Adpulp.com are my favorites of 2021. For me to like an article and recommend it, as I am doing here, the piece needs to contain more than news. For readers of Adpulp.com, the value is often in the news. Hence, our binary "Advertising News and Know-How" approach to the editorial product. A Book for ‘Ad People’ with Brains The Machines Have Moved In. The Machines Have No Feelings. …
Job Number One: Ask Good Questions and Take Good Notes
I started interviewing people when I was 18 years old and a freshman at Franklin & Marshall College. One thing I know about myself—I have a journalist's temperament, which I bring to the ad business, sometimes successfully. In this new collection of 18 interviews with 19 advertising professionals, there's a series of successful moments where people I admire and respect get a chance to wax poetic about life, …
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A Book for ‘Ad People’ with Brains
One of the best things about Adpulp.com is the people we meet. The site opens many doors and behind many of these doors are amazingly unique people with fascinating stories. My new ebook—Ad Brains: Conversations with Advertising's Icons, Rebels, and Rulers—captures some of these stories. Ad Brains is now available for $10 from Amazon.com, Kobo.com, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books, and Google Play. All …
The Year in ‘Pulp: Twenty Twenty
Disruption is an opening. It's also a closure. This was true for many people and many creative companies this year, as success stories ran parallel to the stories of business failure and industry-wide pessimism. Here on Adpulp.com, we put in much time and effort and saw positive results. We introduced the Emerging Voices series to help find, pay, and elevate new writers on the Marcom beat. We published four …
Make the Logo Better!
In the beginning, there was pulp. We took this excess fiber from the communications industry and made it into something. This is what our logo looked like in 2004 when the site launched and for many years thereafter. Thank you, Shawn Hartley. In 2017, I hired a designer in Portland who had recently graduated from the University of Michigan to make a new logo for the site. I wanted a different look and …
Ad Chatter, Edición 7: Longing for Summer and Some Sense of Normal
It's summer but it's like no summer we've ever known before. Due to the pandemic and resulting confinements, even the simple act of going to the park or briefly chatting with a neighbor are real pleasures and moments we now savor. The simple pleasures are not so simple when it's dangerous to be in public. Dan Goldgeier and I discuss... https://youtu.be/sjH7wz0ep0A Thank you for taking the time to hear us …
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Patrons Replace Programmatic, Banner Ads, Paid Links, Obtuse Advertorials et al
Do you pay for any/some/all of the content you consume online? There's no judgment coming, just an explanation of why it matters to the content producers, who in turn make it matter to you. Adpulp, and our Emerging Voices Project specifically, is supported by 11 patrons today. The goal is to reach 100 patrons and a sustainable monthly operating budget that will pay for two or more Emerging Voices feature …
I Am A Guest on Geno Schellenberger’s New “Breaking & Entering” Podcast
I've appeared on many podcasts over the years. This one turned out to be a fun conversation, and I thank the host Geno Schellenberger for the chance to talk about what advertising means and why it matters. Schellenberger is a recent graduate of the University of Illinois, the president of the student ad club there, and currently an intern at Edelman in Chicago. His talk show, Breaking & Entering, is aimed at …
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Ad Chatter: A New “Water Cooler” Discussion About Advertising
Yo, whassup? Have you seen Budweiser UK's new remix of the famous "Whassup?" spot from the late 1990s? In the following video, Seattle copywriter Dan Goldgeier and I discuss its merits, as well as the plusses and minuses of two other spots—one from Coors Light and the other from Etsy.com. https://youtu.be/J1uu8u_9q8Q Earlier this week, I wrote about how this is Etsy's moment, and I asked: What will you find …
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Ad Chatter (The Pilot)
Two advertising dudes pull up a chair and Zoom in. What do we talk about? Commercial outputs during pandemic times—not all are created equal. Push play to hear me and Seattle copywriter Dan Goldgeier discuss a spot from Farmer's Insurance that we both like, a new and different spot from GoDaddy, and two funny spots from Ramen Hero. https://youtu.be/5EhMGpKv-FU Dan Goldgeier first contacted me when I lived in …
