NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — How fast, and how treacherous, are the currents sweeping over The New York Times? This September, its home page — some of the most valuable real estate on the web — will start automatically displaying links to competitors' takes on big news. That's not your traditional paper of record.
CHICAGO (AdAge.com) — While Starbucks is closing stores and McDonald's is focusing its expansion efforts abroad, Subway, by far the largest fast-food chain, with 22,000 U.S. locations, is adding 800 this year.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — In-house agency bars — seemingly a relic of 1960s Madison Avenue — look to be all the rage once again. We visit a smattering of hot spots where creatives, account managers and planners around the country are boozing nowadays.
BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) — Amid roiling financial markets, a who's who of blue-chip marketers are making moves to slash marketing spending, or at least apply tougher financial discipline to what they do spend. Among them are five major companies that together contribute more than $10 billion to the U.S. ad economy: General Motors Corp., Procter & Gamble Co., Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola Co. and Nissan.
Here's my advice: take vacation days. Take all of your vacation days. And take them as vacation days.
(TrendHunter.com) Flat-pack, pop-up and prefab are all terms that are becoming increasingly popular int he world of design and living. Prefabricated products go way beyond the shelves of Ikea; in fact, prefab homes — yes,…
(TrendHunter.com) One sunny day, designer Vanessa Marie Robinson thought of a clever use for her extra dry cleaner hangers. She just had so many of them that she decided to weld 47 of her coat hangers onto a simple steel…
(TrendHunter.com) Obama shoes are the ultimate must-have for the extreme Barack Obama fan! Obama’s famous “Yes We Can” slogan is printed in big, capital, white lettering around one side of blue shoe’s outer rim, while the…
(TrendHunter.com) Puey Quinones, one of the highly-celebrated designers in Manila, re-sparked creativity into 30 talented maximum security inmates in New Bilibid Prison.
After being taught by Quinones tailoring and dressmaking…
(TrendHunter.com) This WaterBoard exhibit has to be one of the coolest interactive exhibits I’ve seen. The design by Mark Burton titled ‘WaterBoard’, has a number of virtual streams of water falling down its surface.…
(TrendHunter.com) If it wasn’t at first glance just so repulsive, playing one of the dead arising to hand out brochures might be kind of a kick. This type of shockvertising gets a lot of attention to your product placement…
(TrendHunter.com) If you have to mess up your hair in a bike helmet, you should at least be as stylish as you can be while you do it. ”Brainwear for Smart People”, is what the Danish company Yakkay says of their ultra…
(TrendHunter.com) What looks like a giant auger drilling into this beautiful building is actually a stunning spiral DNA staircase.
The six storey staircase is the showpiece of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research…
(TrendHunter.com) Dreamy soft cashmere has made its way into undergarment fashions – bloomers to be exact. Luxury intimate wear brand Kiki de Montparnasse has added a modern twist to the styling of vintage bloomers, and…
(TrendHunter.com) Custo Barcelona mixed unusual textures and colors at the Mercedes-Benz Swim Week to show the designer’s signature style. Using Burned-out velvet was the crowd favorite.
The velvet designs were appearing…
(TrendHunter.com) Packaging is a necessary evil. We need it to preserve the items and keep them organized. However, once we open up our packages, and use the actual product, the packaging material is bound for the garbage…
Say what you will about Bob Garfield, but his column does get the attention of the ad industry. And this week’s column, An Open Letter to John Wren, will certainly get attention, as he addresses the CEO of Omnicom about some not-so-subtle gay bashing in this Snickers spot done by AMV BBDO in London.
The entire letter is worth reading, but here is the last part, which gets at the ultimate point:
Since you are the executive ultimately in charge of both TBWA and BBDO, I ask you: How could you be so insensitive, how could you be so shallow, and how could you be so mean?
This letter is to you, but it is equally to your colleagues throughout the industry. Are you so bereft, of ideas and simple humanity, that you must be reduced to stereotyping and bullying? That you must identify an “other” to ridicule, or worse? That you must build a brand on the backs of people who have harmed no one save for challenging a high-school locker-room standard of masculinity?
Stop the dehumanizing stereotypes. Stop the jokey violence. There is no place in advertising for cruelty. Pull the campaign. Do it now. Then tell your agencies how to behave. Or else.
The response and debate will certainly be interesting. Obviously, the issue of inappropriate or insensitive advertising is one that affects everyone in the industry. And does John Wren, a finance guy-turned-holding company honcho, care one whit about the ads his agencies produce?
(TrendHunter.com) The Dark Knight has dominated the box office with an opening weekend of about $155 million. This is good enough for the best opening weekend ever at the box office. The Dark Knight takes this honor away…
(TrendHunter.com) The PowerBlock provides a tidy compact solution to accommodate and organize all your unsightly chargers and other electrical outlets.
Not only that, it also elegantly masks the wall socket when you set…
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