Richard Huntington, Planning Director at United London, has some interesting things to say about advertising's capacity to hold truly big brand ideas. It is not the global shortage of quality ideas that concerns me most. It is the role that advertising plays in serving those ideas. In short, while a brand idea can never be too big, it may well be too big for advertising. Advertising has always liked to see itself as …
Average Is Good Enough For Most
Spike Jones is reading Cripsin's book, Hoopla. He says it's "a great self-promotional piece about the history of the agency." For Spike the best line in the book comes from an email exchange: “It astounds me how people are afraid of so many things, but mediocrity never seems to be one of them.” Right, because mediocrity is par for the course. To strive to be something else, something better, is to risk and risk means …
What’s The Point?
Sally Hogshead on one of my pet peeves: Most of us spend a lot of time on the material in the presentation, and very little on the presentation itself. But dumping your notes into PowerPoint slides is akin to serving Bobby Flay cuisine on dirty paper plates. …
Cliff Notes Concept Applied To Sitcoms
According to Stuart Elliott, Pepsi is investing in the emerging minisodes media category. Sony Pictures Television started offering 150 episodes of old favorites like “Charlie’s Angels,” “Diff’rent Strokes,” “Fantasy Island,” “T. J. Hooker” and “Who’s the Boss?” on MySpace last June. The original running times of 30 or 60 minutes have been shrunk to lengths of 4 to 6 minutes. Starting on Monday, the minisodes will …
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Widgets Are Us
Our friends at Talent Zoo supplied us with a new Jobs widget now on display to your right. Here's wishing ad peeps in need a happy and healthy job search. On a side note, Talent Zoo has been our number one corporate sponsor over the past three years. Aside from the fact that we get to bill them for services rendered, it's incredibly nice to have their support. Talent Zoo' blog strategy is pretty tight. In addition to …
Ranting For Dollars (Good Work, Steve!)
What do you get if you spend five plus years posting pictures of big breasted women and snarky commentary about ads and the people who make them? If you're Steve Hall of Adrants, you get an offer to sell a portion of your company and a market valuation of $750,000. According to Hall: Adrants will benefit from having an actual company with actual people behind it who will improve Adrants' infrastructure, sales and …
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Nutritional, Ethical and Environmental Information Needed
"It's high-time that the humble barcode is recognized as a practical and cost-effective solution to consumers' thirst for information." -Sion Roberts, director of consumer industries and retail at EDS Apparently, shopping carts are being fitted with computers that crunch data as you roll. [via Reuters] …
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Not Altoids, But Not Bad
Clara Williams, a Chicago-based jewelry boutique, has a new ad campaign care of Euro RSCG/Chicago. The Steffan Postaer-led team created the logo and advertising to reflect the upscale nature of the brand, while using tongue-in-cheek checkbox options to demonstrate the fun, versatile nature of the jewelry. Ads will run in Town & Country. …