Nielsen has been talking to shoppers in effort to determine how the economic slowdown is changing behavior. They found that nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of consumers are reducing their spending, up 18 points since June 2007. courtesy of Flickr user, Jim Forest “Consumers are altering their driving and spending habits at dramatic levels,” said Todd Hale, senior vice president, Consumer & Shopper Insights, The …
Walkin’ The Line
There are a lot of interesting points (and comment counterpoints) in this post at The Daily (Ad) Biz, talking about "below-the-line" agencies attempting to cross over. Here's a snippet: It seems that every company with a Photoshop license seems to think that they are an ad agency…like this partner agency that I am working with. They are a below-the-line/brochure shop and every time they present new creative, they …
Office Max Accepts Pennies
The lowly penny gets no respect. But Office Max wants to change that. To get the word out that pennies are currency too, The Escape Pod, on Office Max's behalf, sent a redheaded man armed with a suitcase full of pennies into the mean streets (and stores) of New York. See more "Penny Pranks" here. …
For Whom The Belt Tightens
According to Ad Age, Coca-Cola is looking to save between $400 million and $500 million a year by the end of 2011. And it's looking to find some of those savings in marketing. According to The Wall Street Journal, General Motors, the nation's fourth largest advertiser—they spent $2.1 billion last year—will also be making deep cuts. GM cut their ad spend by 24% from 2005 to 2006, and another 7.7% from 2006 to …
Ad Men. Circus Characters. What’s The Diff?
We're terribly late to this story, but it's worth picking up on. Did you know that Alex Bogusky looks to P.T. Barnum as an insipration? Yep. In fact, CP+B calls their attention-getting antics Hooplanetics, a term that simultaneously pays homage to Barnum while laughing at Tom Cruise and crew. Bogusky and friends even wrote a book about it. Sadly, the book was only made available for a short while. Amazon and all the …
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Canadians See Things Differently
For more on sexy Subes, see SexySubaru.ca. [via Globe and Mail] …
Free Personalized Radio, Anytime, Anywhere
According to Adweek, Pandora is scoring big with the release of its iPhone App. Pandora has streamed 3.3 million songs to iPhone users since the launch of its new mobile application, making it the third most popular such app for the red-hot device. As of July 14, the company had registered 180,000 new users, and more than 200,000 new stations had been created on the iPhone. Pandora executives claim that the company …
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Social This, Social That
Gareth Kay of Modernista! draws the distinction between social media and social brands. I don't really get the distinction, but I do understand the following passage. It means building brands that are inherently open, generous and want to include you. It means developing communication that lets you join the dots and complete the story rather than telling you what to do (in the same way at every point of contact). It …