Hasta La Creative!

Phil Mooney has been in charge of The Coca-Cola Company’s archives since 1977. In his role as archivist, he has conducted numerous interviews for radio and television including three segments on the Today Show and appearances on The History Channel, the Food Network and CNN. He also writes “Collectors Columns” as a means to keep in touch with collectors and other interested parties.

Now (that it’s 2008) he has a company blog.

This is our first Company blog – but definitely not our last. We’re starting with the Company’s heritage – not just the history, but the love people have for Coke. We’ll talk about people who collect Coke memorabilia, the items they collect and the stories they tell. We’ll talk about recipes made using Coca-Cola and our other drinks. We’ll talk about what’s happening today with Coke – and how it relates to things from our past. And we’ll talk about the new World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta, which just opened last summer.

The most recent post on Coca-Cola Conversations offers behind-the-scenes information on the the making of one of this season’s Super Bowl ads.

Amy Jussel, Founder and Executive Director of Shaping Youth, is unhappy with the sexual innuendo implied in this outdoor board from Target.

What’s wrong with the ad can be debated, but there’s little to debate in Target’s response to Amy.

“Good Morning Amy,

Thank you for contacting Target; unfortunately we are unable to respond to your inquiry because Target does not participate with non-traditional media outlets. This practice is in place to allow us to focus on publications that reach our core guest.

Once again thank you for your interest, and have a nice day.”

I know it must be hard to engage with just any old customer, but companies are going to have to try a lot harder, or they will be consistently BLASTED on these here interwebs.

Evelyn Rodriguez is on her way to New Orleans. She’s using Twitter to keep her friends and followers informed about her journey across the American southwest.

This seems like a particularly good use of Twitter to me. Even in its condensed form, it’s a travel journal. Not Kerouac–he could never have been bothered with such short form–but it’s evocative text in real time, or mobile time to be exact.

Personally, I think this is where the best content is. I know many compose tweets from their desktop environment. I do it. But, for this micro-blogging medium, I like composing on the fly, and I like reading text composed on the fly.

I’ve invited three more highly accomplished marketing pros, writers and big thinkers to join the action here. I’m flattered and thrilled that they’ve all agreed to participate.

Please join me in welcoming real journalist Catharine P. Taylor, author, speaker and consultant Tom Asacker and author, speaker and consultant Annette Moser-Wellman to the party. Look for their bylines to appear here in the coming weeks.

Every “blog” should be so lucky.

Dabitch of Adland shares a funny tale on her personal site from the dark side of adbloggerdom.

A bloke from the UK calls, I can hear that he’s in a rather noisy spot, cups hitting tables and chatter in the background and he tells me that he has a blockbuster idea for a commercial that would sell every unit of Levis (or whatever) brand they had. It’s that great, it’s so great he almost doesn’t believe it himself, he’s got three outrageuously good commercial ideas and two great ones, and he wants me to tell him how to get them sold.

I didn’t know what to say to the poor chap who “saw my company on the internet at this internet café and thought I could possibly help him with contacts to sell his commercials”.

Strangely, this call is not out of the ordinary. The Swedish art director living in Malmö gets this treatment regularly.

It is a bit odd that this questions has been asked at least once a week recently. My reply is the standard; “animate it, stick it on youtube, hope you get lucky.” The people asking this sincerely believe that one hit commercial might make them rich for life, a bit like those people who dream of doing one novel and retiring. The truth is, a career creating commercials or novels never relies on one or three good ideas, but hundreds of thousands, and you have to work really hard for a long time before you get anything done. Ever.

I love that last bit. It’s so true. And so hard for the impatient to accept.

This Ain’t No Disco is one of the more interesting entries in the new in ’07 ad blog category. Here’s some copy from their About page:

It’s a well known fact that some agencies spend huge chunks of their hard earned money turning lifeless commercial spaces into bastions of creativity. These interiors provide insight as to the breadth and depth of their thinking and creative execution. They create spaces to envy. Places to shout about – loud.

No Disco showcases these creative places via agency-submitted photography, giving the shops a chance to show off a bit and letting potential clients and hires get a feel for these companies, prior to an actual visit.

Some other notables new on the ad blog scene in ’07 include Adverganza, the daily (ad) biz, It Grows on Trees, Bad Banana Blog, Annette Moser-Wellman, egglog and The Toad Stool.