Our neighbors down the street here in Austin already have their holiday lights blazing in full glory each evening. They are violating the "Not before Thanksgiving" rule, but there are worse violations. People all over the nation are also preparing for the holidays inside their homes. According to Shutterfly's latest commercial, many are preparing to share their COVID-induced crafting with friends and …
Welcome to New York, The State of Respect
Advertising can't fix our largest societal problems. It can open eyes, hearts, and minds, without which no progress gets made. The following posters for the Metropolitan Transit Authority of New York contain some of the best poster art I've seen this year. The work from Conquistadors in Brooklyn also ranks as some of the best advocacy work of the year. With 228K dead Americans and 8.9 million more infected …
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What’s In America’s Shopping Cart? The Red, White, and You
When you watch cable news the narrative on every channel is a deep division between Americans. Yet, between the talking head-filled segments, the nation's biggest advertisers run their side of the story. Their side of the story is optimistic with a touch of realism. https://youtu.be/xi-V4JTnU3o Walmart will never be all we need to get by. But the world's largest retailer does carry hand-sanitizers and other …
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Disruption Alert: A Whole New Way To Buy New-ish Tech
Negligent waste and rabid consumerism are always in. What about refurbished? Can refurbished goods ever become cool enough to scale and compete with the shiny and new? Before you answer that, consider that Americans throw away 151 million cellphones every year, and that’s just a fraction of our annual electronic waste. To slow this pace of new device production and consumption, Back Market—a tech company that …
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Next Level Customer Care, Care of The “Buy Now” Blocker from Fifth Third Bank
Is it a bank's job to help its customers save money? The more customers' deposits remain in the bank, the more the bank can use the money to invest, so yes. It's also the right thing to do. But how? How does a bank move people to care about saving money, instead of spending money? What if the bank hacked the algorithms? What if the bank turned modern marketing on its …
In Toronto, Public Safety and Public Transit Are One
Waiting on a train and riding a train used to be a time to calm your mind, to think, or maybe read. It's slightly more nervewracking now that any enclosed space where other humans breathe is a health risk. Perhaps it's better in Canada. Canadians are such sensible, practical people. For instance, in the nation's largest city, it does seem possible to ride a commuter train to the airport without being exposed …
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American Made and Made To Make You Smile
The Escalade from Cadillac is a sexy ride. Sexy rides need sexy drivers, and now Caddy has one in Regina King. https://youtu.be/AjWQx6wOdzs Have you seen the HBO series, Watchmen? It's as good as anything on TV since The Wire. King plays a detective in the single-season series, and she's damn good at her job. She's also damn good at making the new Escalade look good. https://youtu.be/cgxudiaXJVc Humor …
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Car Buying Was Largely “Greek To Me,” Until Autotrader Made It Simple
Oh, how we sometimes long for the good old analog days. That is until we recall how cumbersome and annoying the car buying experience used to be. Thankfully, with the help of 72andsunny, Autotrader is finally making "car buying is easy." It clearly wasn't easy to get a good price on a vehicle in ancient Greece. Let's watch... https://youtu.be/0QYnzyedBNs The 30-second version is better. Also, it was not …
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