(TrendHunter.com) Adidas, the #2 athletic footwear maker, is branching out into new arenas; creating films for social-networking sites as part of its annual spring marketing campaign and collaborating with hip fashion label Diesel in time for New York Fashion week.
As part of its overall “Celebrate Originality,” glo…
Last night at a West Hollywood Best Buy, Christina Aguilera turned (and perhaps lifted) heads when she made her first post-pregnancy appearance.
Someone famous (Ogilvy?) said that it was a good idea to make a habit of picking up magazines that are outside of your usual set. The ones below would probably work.
“Each issue of American Cemetery offers in-depth coverage of issues affecting the cemetery profession in today’s competitive business environment, including grounds maintenance tips, national and state association coverage, preneed, marketing, cremation, insurance computers/software and much more.“
Onion World, because “onions are the third largest consumed fresh vegetable in the U.S.”
Plumbing Systems and Design is “the official publication of the American Society of Plumbing Engineers, is the magazine for plumbing engineers, designers, specifiers, code officials, contractors, manufacturers, master plumbers, and other plumbing professionals.”
Railway Age “leads, instructs, reports and commands a $20 billion industry to review your products and services. Penetrate the marketplace with Railway Age, the publication that has written the book on the railway industry since 1876.”
Supply & Demand Chain Executive is “the executive’s user manual for successful supply and demand chain transformation, utilizing hard-hitting analysis, viewpoints and unbiased case studies to steer executives and supply management professionals through the complicated, yet critical, world of supply and demand chain enablement to gain competitive advantage.” Now with podcasts.
The web ads are ‘scary-smart’ because they figure out when and where to insert extra ad content, and for who.
“Microsoft Corp.’s online advertising researchers will spend this year teaching computers to be smart about sticking ads into video clips, and to be even smarter about targeting ads to specific Web surfers.
Microsoft showed off a handful of early-stage advertising projects at its headquarters Tuesday that may or may not turn up as part of Microsoft’s Web advertising platform.”
Social media junkie Alisa Leonard has a video of Google’s Brad Fitzpatrick, guru behind LiveJournal, Memecast and OpenID, describing the company’s Social Graph API which makes it easy to determine social connections on the web.
Always searching for a new place to drink coffee and talk about nothing, we decided to expand our horizons from our usual meet-up places.
This Friday we’ll be breaking in a potential new coffee hot spot in Downtown Kansas City. We’re going to meet at Perk Up! (1103 Grand) to have coffee and some tasty pastry deliciousnesses. Also on the agenda will be this year’s crop of Superbowl Ads, so come tell us what you thought about those horrid Sales Genie spots.
See you on Friday at 7:30.
That every copywriter has a screenplay in her desk is a tired, old cliché. If you’re one of those copywriters, or would like to be one, consider this insightful Adopt A Writer interview with Nina Bargiel, a Guild member with 17 episodes of Lizzie McGuire to her credit.
Q. What do you think would surprise people about your life as a writer?
A. People are shocked when they discover that I don’t drive a car made of gold and carry a handbag made from orphan babies. Being a writer means zero job security. Every job you’re at has a specific end, whether it’s when the show ends, when your contract’s up, or when the script is complete. You have to work on one thing and look for the next thing. It’s hard to ever sit back and relax because the rug could be pulled out at any time. A lot of people think that if you’re on a successful show that you’re set, you’ll just hop from show to show for the rest of your career. But it’s a lot like musical chairs, and depending on who you know, who’s working, your representation, and the current TV climate, you never know where you’re going to land. For most everyone there’s going to be lean times. My joke is that if you can live with fear, panic, and desperation and manage to be creative at the same time, this is the job for you!
Over the course of doing some research for an upcoming project, I’ve come across some interesting reading that’s been changing how I look at things. With the direction internet and the home are moving, the social space is all but gone. We have very few public markets left where people congregate, very few gathering places and points for socialization. While we rapidly adapt to changing environments and personal space, there is still that desire for socialization that runs through us, and when we get a chance partake in sanctioned socialization, we jump at it.
The modern Starbucks (or any local coffee shop, at that) and the Apple store are perfect examples – public spaces that are not so much a retail environment as a social environment. The way in which we embrace public spaces is fascinating. Brand Experience Lab has an interesting read on The Socialization of Real Estate here.
One of the most interesting, and possibly most telling ad-related things in regards to social spaces this past year was the introduction of in-cinema AudienceGames. The ways in which we act and react in a group setting is interesting, and seems promising on several different levels.
NewsBreaker Live, an AudienceGame promoting MSNBC, had some interesting results:
- 78% played the game
- 93% want more games in cinemas
- 86% prefer a game to an ad
- 71% unaided MSNBC brand recall
- 75% more likely to use MSNBC
Some poignant results that certainly speak to the “group” audience instead of the single viewer, which could give us more interesting applications and a changed target down the road. And any time a movie theater experience is enhanced, even via the group atmosphere, it’s welcome.
Technorati Tags: audience, socialization, movies, theater, beyond madison avenue
Since everyone loved the grody Lost Jaw campaign from Canada so much, here are a few more anti-chewing-tobacco ads. These ones are from Sukle Advertising + Design in Denver. (It looks like chew can be particularly dangerous if it???s comprised of scorpion and spider carcasses.) Sukle also handles the Denver Water account, which always has fun ads, like this spot with the drunk flowers. And who doesn???t like an ad agency that titles its blog Lunchmeat Underpants? Via AdPulp.
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NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — I'm going to cut right to the chase and start today's exercise by calling out The Economist. The magazine, supposedly one of our pre-eminent news sources, has been outpaced by In Touch and OK in its coverage of the battle over Anna Nicole Smith's estate. It hasn't yet weighed in on the tidal wave of controversy surrounding the Oscar-nominated song from "Once." It didn't provide its readers with a single update on Tom Brady's ankle bootie-wootie last week.
Today, she’s headed over to Datran Media to take on the role of VP of Display Performance where she’ll run the company’s new behavioral division along with its Site Lifter.
Man, it’s deja vu all over again.
From Adweek:
L.L. Bean has placed creative chores on its ad account into review, a company representative confirmed.
Consulting firm Select Resources International, Santa Monica, Calif., will help conduct the search for the Maine-based retailer, sources said.
Our friend Dean Gemmell at BlackLabFive had some interesting things to say a few years ago about why a iconic brand like L.L. Bean would possibly need an ad agency in talking with the previous consultants:
If L.L. Bean motors through two above average agencies, would it not be wise for a review consultant to suggest a different approach? The agency model is quite effective for many marketers, but old L.L. may not be among them. I’m quite sure their marketing department could handle working with several shops on different projects to reach their many different — hikers, skiers, canoeists, suburban Moms who go for walks — demographic groups. What’s more, they’re a catalog company that sends me a big, multi-page ad called the L.L. Bean catalog at least once a month. Will another series of ads from another ad agency be the solution? Sweet Nadira even mentioned that an invited agency would need direct mail capabilities. Please, lead me to the agency that will show America’s venerable catalog retailer how to do direct mail.
Check it out — a car that both flies and wheezes.
For men seeking rich older women, and older women hungry for pretty meat popsicles, check out Pocket Change.
I know David Burn already did a (very) brief post on this, but in case you missed it, this week was the launch of the new Adweek, or at least the new Adweek Web site. Like much of the ad blogosphere over the last six months, I’ve been giving my former employer what I like to think of as tough love, but in a post I wrote over at my own blog today, I actually said I think the new site is a step in the right direction. Go to the site, check it out, and tell us what you think. It’s a definite improvement over the old site, though, admittedly, if that’s the bar, it’s set pretty low. The more important comparison is how it stacks up to competitor’s offerings. Does this brand have a chance? If no one comments, than I guess that’s its own answer.
Even if it has been abandoned to the one-panel punch of newspaper corners, the comic book has survived as an art form that portrays the itching wound of
our civilization.
Even if it has been abandoned to the one-panel punch of newspaper corners, the comic book has survived as an art form that portrays the itching wound of
our civilization.
In particular, there’s a real chance that John McCain, who appears to be on the verge of wrapping up the GOP nomination, will see his presidential hopes crushed by a technology he helped make commercially viable.
Ten years ago, as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, McCain backed legislation that brought HDTV into millions of American homes just in time for the 2008 election.
The problem, from the point of view of McCain’s presidential campaign, is that HDTV is simply too good. The quality of the picture is so high that you can see every blemish and wrinkle on a candidate’s face – which is a serious problem for a man who will be 72 this summer, and if anything looks older than that.
Of course if Hillary Clinton secures the Democratic nomination she will face a similar problem. Although Sen. Clinton is more than a decade younger than McCain, her gender makes her even more vulnerable to being judged harshly on the basis of her appearance.
In a culture in which Hollywood actresses panic as they approach their 30th birthdays, we can be confident that a Clinton presidential campaign will have to deal with questions about such crucial issues as rumors of possible plastic surgery, as well as her makeup, hairstyle, fashion choices, etc. (I’m already dreading the 17 columns Maureen Dowd will dedicate to these subjects if Clinton should defeat Barack Obama).
As for Obama himself, the high-definition broadcast spectrum loves the man in general, and his skin in particular, which, in comparison to Clinton’s and McCain’s, is practically flawless.
All of which raises the interesting question of whether Obama’s skin is a net political positive for him, given that he is “black.” I put the word in quotation marks, because what counts as blackness is a constantly moving target in American culture.
I was reminded of this while watching a Super Bowl advertisement featuring the repulsively handsome Derek Jeter, shortstop for the hated New York Yankees, and alumnus of my own high school’s cross-town rival.
Jeter, who like Obama has a “black” father and a “white” mother, is someone who, if he were to be born in 2024 instead of 1974, would probably not even be considered “black” anymore.
Consider the words of Benjamin Franklin in 1751, as quoted by Luis Rumbaut in the Washington Independent: Franklin notes that “the number of purely white people in America is very small,” and that all of Africa and Asia are either “black or tawny.”
Franklin then adds that even in Europe there are very few truly white people, as “the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth.” He goes on to suggest that it might be best to try to keep America as white as possible.
Nothing is easier than to indulge in sanctimonious historical revisionism: after all, Franklin was merely expressing the conventional wisdom of his time and place. Indeed Franklin concludes with the admirably self-critical observation that “perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my country, for such kind of partiality is natural to mankind.”
The larger point is that in a country where Swedes and Germans were once not really considered white, Barack Obama’s future grandchildren may well end up becoming so – especially if their grandfather should be elected president of the United States.
For all those out their anticipating (dreading?) creating an ad for next year’s Super Bowl, Advertising for Peanuts already has the creative brief written so you can get an early start on what will assuredly be an industry masterpiece….
Advertising Agency: Dim Propaganda, São Paulo, Brazil
Creative Directors: Guilherme Facci, Michele D’ Ippolito
Art Director: Daniel Barrocas
Copywriters: Luis FelipeFigueiredo “Grilo”, Victor Martins
Illustrator: Leonardo Marsiglia
Published: February 2008
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
