According to Portland Monthly, 3D designer Craig Winslow has turned a yearlong creative residency with Adobe into a fascinating new art project. Using a technique called projection mapping, Winslow takes clues from ghost ads on city walls and recreates the original ads on his computer to scale. Then he projects them back onto the wall. For the next year I'll be literally shining light on layers of …
The Macro Problems of Micromanaging the Creative Process
We've all been there: Watching a CEO or high-level client rewrite copy or play art director. Don't they have better things to do? Maybe not. CEOs and other senior executives call the shots, are accountable to many audiences, and more often than not, take it all personally because of their egos. For many of them, micromanaging a project is easier than laying out a big vision and letting others work towards it. So …
Continue Reading about The Macro Problems of Micromanaging the Creative Process →
House of Morgan Uses Socialist Imagery To Promote Responsible Capitalism
Morgan Stanley via The Martin Agency is repurposing the public works mural from the 1930s in order to promote itself and the same banking system that brought our nation to its knees. According to Adweek, the brand's new 60-second anthem and other elements in the campaign "echoes New Deal-era murals by artists like Thomas Hart Benton and Diego Rivera to illustrate, with a contemporary edge, Morgan Stanley's …
Continue Reading about House of Morgan Uses Socialist Imagery To Promote Responsible Capitalism →
Targeting Is Futile When Our Audience Is Everyone, Everywhere
"Opinions are like assholes. Everybody's got one." This little truism is especially true today. We're all critics, even when we're consumers at the same time. So can brands narrowly target an audience anymore, or will they hear about their marketing from everyone, regardless of whether they're the target? Case in point: The recent Mountain Dew "Goat" ads that were deemed offensive by almost -- but not quite -- …
Continue Reading about Targeting Is Futile When Our Audience Is Everyone, Everywhere →
PointRoll Blows An Opportunity By Sucking On Ad Age’s Cover
When I opened my copy of Advertising Age today, I was confronted with this coverwrap from PointRoll. I'd like to think that if I were to create an ad that, by simple virtue of its placement, would immediately command the attention of every Ad Age subscriber, I'd do something a lot less, well, sucky. There are some infographics on the back of the wrap. They suck a bit less, but the whole concept (and I use …
Continue Reading about PointRoll Blows An Opportunity By Sucking On Ad Age’s Cover →
Subtlety? FAQ That Ship.
So in the past two weeks, we've seen a couple of spots go for a disguised profanity joke. And they're getting attention. First, the Kmart "Ship My Pants" spot: And now, the Philips Norelco "I'd FAQ Me" spots: As I learned when I wrote this Talent Zoo column about cursing, clearly there's something about cursing, or the hint of it, that gets attention and publicity. But are these spots taking the …
