I call Adpulp, "The Chronicle of Bright Ideas," because I'm a collector and admirer of smart thinking and elegant doing. After a long week with my head inside a strategy deck, I'm now choosing to unwind on Saturday morning by reflecting more deeply on three articles in my queue. 1- "Brand First" Is the Wrong Position Steve Bryant is a storytelling weirdo at Article Group. He makes a great point about the …
Data Predators and Surveillance Capitalists Get “T Boned” at SouthBy
Legendary musician and music producer T Bone Burnett came to SXSW 2019 to slay digital demons. I highly recommend that you make some time to watch his keynote and/or read the text of his speech. It may shake you awake. There is so much to digest in Burnett's speech that no recap is going to suffice. I will pull a few gems forward for your consideration, however. Here's one...have you heard the name Edward …
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Fox News Still Has Viewers; Increasingly, Brands Don’t Care
Are advertisers responsible for the content that they financially support? The answer to this question has been "no," for many years, but that's beginning to change as the line between editorial and ad sales continues to blur. According to Ad Age, Fox News opened up its studios to advertisers on Wednesday to promote a message of transparency and trust at its first-ever upfront. In other words, the recent slate of …
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Can We Quit All the Quitting, Already?
When the content firehose drowns a person in noise and distortion, it's natural for the person to flee. To say enough already and quit. You may have heard that people have been leaving Facebook in droves. Some of your friends and family may have vacated the digital premises. Many Facebook users have begun to rethink their relationship with the app. In fact, a study conducted by Pew Research Center shows as …
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Escapist Fantasy or Effective Recruitment Advertising?
How do you get bored kids in dead-end McJobs to want to be part of something bigger than their present-day circumstances? For decades, military service has been framed as a way out and a way up. For kids who are not looking at college, the military offers training, pay, shelter, a sense of belonging and the promise of adventure. These last two attributes--belonging and adventure--are the two at heart of the …
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Anti-Brexit Advertising: Together We Thrive
With nationalism on the rise, globalism needs a champion. HSBC is ready to serve. "We are not an island" celebrates elements of British life that are indebted to the nation’s connections to the wider world. HSBC is one of the largest banking and financial services organizations in the world, with operations in 66 countries and territories. Therefore, their globalist message--created by the Wunderman …
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Resolutions Time: Facing Up to Facebook’s Perennial Series of Shortcomings
Facebook is dominant. Therefore, when Facebook goes off the rails, as it has again in 2018, it's a big story that needs more definition. Before we delve in, let's look back a few years... Did you know that the National Security Agency and the FBI teamed up in October 2010 to develop techniques for turning Facebook into a surveillance tool? The platform's privacy violations are in place by design. …
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Are You Hooked On Your Own Pixel Dust? You’re Not Alone.
Marketers love digital because they can track it, and then spend countless hours pouring over the data. Marketers love data because it makes for excellent graphs and great talking points in meetings. What marketers do not love is digital ad fraud, and sadly digital ad fraud is a problem with no solution in sight. Fraudulent, nonhuman traffic involvement in digital advertising in 2018 was estimated to incur losses …
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