Hasta La Creative!

Today is the 30th anniversary of San Francisco's Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, one of the most brilliant creative ad agencies in the history of the business. To celebrate, GSP decided to compile a "30 for 30" list of the best work it has produced across those three decades. "We reached out to a group of distinguished GSP alumni—creatives, strategists, media planners, producers, account leaders and others—and asked them to vote for their 10 favorite things produced at GSP in our first 30 years," the agency explains. All those top 10 lists were then crunched into a master list. The top 10 are ranked in order of popularity, followed by an alphabetical list of the 20 runners-up. "Got Milk?" dominates the top 10, placing three spots there, including the No. 1 overall pick—the classic "Aaron Burr" spot (posted below), which got four times as many votes as any other spot or campaign.

1. California Milk Processor Board, "Aaron Burr" (1993)

To say that "Aaron Burr" won our alumni poll by a landside is a bit of an understatement—it got four times as many votes as any other spot or campaign.

And that makes sense: it was the spot that launched a 20-year campaign and a 20-year client relationship, both of which are tremendous sources of pride for the agency.

Director Michael Bay (well before he was known as a big-time movie director) disagreed as to whether or not the spot should clarify who "Aaron Burr" was before the hero tries to say the name. Bay reluctantly got one shot of the painting with Burr's name—the last shot of the day as the film rolled out, making it potentially unusable. (It was the rollout that created the flashing you see in the spot.)

Producer Cindy Epps remembers looking at Erich Joiner and Chuck McBride and crossing their fingers, hoping it would be enough. It was.

Click through to the 30 for 30 site to see the rest—a great collection of classic work.

Last season, the persistent ad-agency-as-brothel metaphor on “Mad Men” ditched its figurative quality and became literal when a central and beloved character was pimped out in exchange for a big new account. But the selling of Joan Harris to a beastly Jaguar client wasn’t the end of that nasty meme.

Last night’s script threaded scenes from the rather rough Depression-era childhood of Dick Whitman into the late 1960s goings-on at Don Draper’s ad agency. The parallels are not subtly drawn. We see Dick and his pregnant mother arrive at a brothel run by her brother-in-law, who declares himself the “rooster” of the house. Sad, young Dick, with his electrified Lloyd Christmas haircut, is told by mom to “Keep your eyes down and mind your own business here.” It hits bottom when we receive the news that Don, as a boy, peeped his pregnant mother getting defiled by his brothel-tending uncle.

We flash forward in time to see the return of Herb Rennet, the Jaguar dealer client, whose cringe-worthy banter sends Joan to the bottle. Rennet keeps his eyes up, asking to be “shown the sights” at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce — a “kid in a candy store.” Corpulent, lascivious, none-too-bright ole Herb isn’t the only john around. After another adulterous romp with downstairs neighbor Sylvia Rosen, Don slips her a few bucks. The payment isn’t for services rendered, but it’s still skeevy, especially given Don’s background.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

It looks like CNN is gunning for ad dollars that typically go to networks like Nat Geo and Travel Channel, as the founder of 24-hour cable news broadens beyond its programming base.

New President Jeff Zucker has been trying to remake CNN into a network that’s essential every day rather than watched only during big news events.

“CNN’s new programming strategy lends itself to go after dollars that are not traditional news,” said Sam Armando, senior VP-director of strategic intelligence at Publicis Groupe’s SMGx.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Newsmodo, the new online platform designed to bring journalists and publishers together, is meeting with British news publishers this week ahead of its global launch.

Red Bull et Snap! Orlando ont demandé aux wake-boarders pro Mike Dowdy, Adam Errington et Dallas Friday d’accrocher des lumières à leur planche. Le spécialiste du light-painting Patrick Rochon a ensuite eu l’occasion de capturer les trajectoires des mouvements afin de créer des visuels splendides.

1. Understand how you want to use the technology and evaluate a vendor to make sure its capabilities match what you’re looking to get. This will likely mean doing more than evaluating a pitch deck, and moving into an in-depth demo or a hands-on test. “Most every company says the same thing: “We have the best tech, the best optimization and the best services,'” said Philip Smolin, senior VP-market solutions at Turn.

2. It seems obvious, but get as much information as possible up front about the tactics a vendor will use to reach your goals and their associated costs — including, for example, the price of ingredients such as additional data. If you don’t, the prospective partner could take a loss on a test to win the business, and adjust tactics once it is on your media plan.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

In the several weeks since returning to Federated Media Publishing as CEO, I’ve spoken to scores of brand marketers and publishers, as well as too many of the technology companies that make it their business to serve the media ecosystem (all have a tenuous grasp on some small parcel of real estate in Luma Partners’ increasingly crowded “Lumascape”).

Something troubling has jumped out at me. There’s an extraordinary asymmetry of information among these three important players in our industry, and a disturbing sense of distrust. Brand marketers don’t believe that ad-tech companies view brands as true partners. Ad-tech companies think brand marketers are paying attention to the wrong things. And publishers, with a few important exceptions, feel taken advantage of by everyone.

Here’s a representative sample of things I’ve heard:

Continue reading at AdAge.com