Your parental guilt trip of the day.

Oh, how many times have I given my own children “the finger.” Thanks for the find Sir Ernie.

AC #69 Now Available.

The Thrity Rooms To Hide In Addition. John and Tug talk with Master Jedi Luke Sullivan about his new book Thirty Rooms To Hide In, creativity and getting out of advertising. It’s a great Sunday afternoon chat with almost no…

Your parental guilt trip of the day.

Oh, how many times have I given my own children “the finger.” Thanks for the find Sir Ernie.

AC #69 Now Available.

The Thrity Rooms To Hide In Addition.

John and Tug talk with Master Jedi Luke Sullivan about his new book Thirty Rooms To Hide In, creativity and getting out of advertising. It’s a great Sunday afternoon chat with almost no cursing and only minorly bothersome mouth sounds.

Give it a listen won’t you?

And stay tuned. ‘Coming in August 2011: The American Copywriter Reboot.

 

Click to preview book

 

AC #69 Now Available.

The Thrity Rooms To Hide In Addition.

John and Tug talk with Master Jedi Luke Sullivan about his new book Thirty Rooms To Hide In, creativity and getting out of advertising. It's a great Sunday afternoon chat with almost no cursing and only minorly bothersome mouth sounds.

Give it a listen won't you?

And stay tuned. 'Coming in August 2011: The American Copywriter Reboot.

 

Click to preview book

 

Your parental guilt trip of the day.

Oh, how many times have I given my own children “the finger.” Thanks for the find Sir Ernie.

Marketing is NEVER about absolutes.

I must be on some weird banner kick lately, but here’s an interesting one I ran across for HP Inks.

Hp

To make things clear, 25% of refilled ink cartridges fail. Original HP inks don’t fail.* So, in summary, you should buy HP inks because they work all the time.**

* When we say they don’t fail, well, they kinda do. But it’s only 1% of the time. Which is pretty close to not failing.

** Again, they only work 99% of the time. There’s that one, itsy-bitsy sliver of time (1%) when they don’t work. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Sometimes we’re dorky. Okay, most times.

Battlestargalacticalogo
A few of us here at American Copwriter love the show Battlestar Galactica. Love it. A whole fracking lot. We like the show so much that we’ve created a blog (whoisthe5thcylon.blogspot.com) to help discern who the final Cylon is. We’ll post some theories and break each one down with pros and cons. We’ll even toss in odds for each one. Yes, it sounds extremely nerdy, but it’s fun for us geeks.

There’s a submission form on the page where you can send in your own guesses. We’ll probably even publish a few of them, too. Check it out and tell us what you think.

Who knew Dillard’s had that?

While reading an article on Ink (Kansas City’s new alternative press newspaper), I encountered the following banner for Dillard’s.

Dillards

The banner is an animated GIF. Sometimes, when making an animated GIF, you’re able to specify how many times it loops before stopping. And on some of those occasions, we art directors have been known to forget to un-check that looping box — so that the banner will continue to loop.

I didn’t notice this banner until I was done reading the article — which meant that the banner had stuck on the frame of "DILLARD’S  Now available at Dillard’s…" Which led me to wonder, what exactly is available:

Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that in this oh-so-fun digital space, that your entire message may not be seen at one time.

MySpace. The next “Fucking Merlot.”

It’s sad when the shunning starts. Funny interpretation of Internet brands as your friends and neighbors.

Spotted at the one and only Dear Jane Sample.

For those who like to make up words.

Is blogging too much for you? Is micro-blogging too boggling to you? Has tumblr just opened another can of worms that you care to NOT look at? Really, sometimes, all we want (all we need) is one word to describe how we feel.

For those of us desiring just that, in comes Adocu — specializers of "nano-blogging." Here’s what Adocu says about their service:

adocu is a way to let your buddies and the world know what your doing.

Unlike other sites, your posts must be one word long. You can fit whatever you want in that word, just no spaces. That way it stays short and simple.

We like to call it nano-blogging 🙂

As you might have already figured out, Adocu (please ignore the your/you’re grammar mistake on their page, it was probably shortened to make a point) is perfect for all of us in advertising who LoveToMakeUpOurOwnWords — aka, URLs. Better yet, this is perfect for those of us that make up those one word/sentence tags (just take out the spaces!).

In any case, this is the latest craze that probably won’t take flight, but is interesting to check out.

Sorry, I suppose I could’ve just said: thisprobablywon’tgoanywherebutwhoknows.

Macs and creativity on multiple levels

Tip o’ the hat to Wegerer.

Photographers, we’ve got to find a better way.

Photographer
I don’t know about your inbox, but mine usually nets around 200 emails a day. A majority of those are work-related, some are from friends and a few here and there are from businesses (newsletters, notices, etc.). With [approximately] 200 emails sailing in, I rarely have time to read/respond to the ones that I REALLY want to.

These days, there’s a new beast adding to that volume — emails promoting the new shot from so-and-so. I knew that I was going to get an email, since I signed up at a few of our friends’ book showings. When the emails arrived, it was good to take a quick glance at work from friends I may haven’t seen yet.

Then, the emails kept coming. And then, even more arrived. So much so that I’m receiving about 15 emails a day from photographers from around the United States (maybe beyond). A majority of them are from people I don’t know and/or have never heard of. Either way, I KNOW I didn’t sign up for these emails — which I’m now calling spam.

I’ve recently chatted with a local photographer and have heard their recent troubles of connecting with today’s creatives. In a world where iStockPhoto and Shutterstock exist, our photographer friends are probably feeling the squeeze some.

I feel your pain. Really, I do. But we’ve got to stop sharing email addresses. It’s not okay. What makes it worse is that I’ve "unsubscribed" to about 20 of them already.

Maybe we should come up with a large web site, much like Flickr, that photographers are able to upload their shots and tag them, group them, etc. Also included on this site could be an RSS feed, maybe a featured artist section, too. Then when anyone is looking for a particular style of photograph, or a certain person’s work, they could go there. It could be the end-all, be-all spot.

Who’s in?

Gotta Love Those Hitler Metaphors

I usually tire of the YouTube videos friends send me, but this one is pretty damn good. I’d say it’s pretty tough to use Hitler in a funny way, so kudos to whoever made this.

Google Shows Us a Sunday SHS

Googlemap
Our friends over at BlogKC informed us today that Google has now included Kansas City in their Street View feature. Naturally, I had to see if Google cataloged all of the streets in the Crossroads. Sure enough, they did and SHS can be found if you navigate down to the corner of 20th and Central.

It appears that Google did their cataloging on a Sunday, since there’s hardly anything going on. It was also nice outside, as evidenced by the man in the shot wearing a t-shirt and the flowers that are in bloom. Navigating around the building, you might see the car of an extremely dedicated worker (ahem).

It’s super cool to see our city from this perspective and I can’t imagine what will happen if Google ever melds in some social networking with it.

Going WAY Beyond Batman Begins

_1179708837A while back I started to notice quite a bit of cool viral marketing going on for the next Batman movie, The Dark Knight. We’re talking microsites galore and massive user participation. On one microsite, users were asked to answer location-specific questions from across america to reveal a phrase. Then, after that, there was a chance to send in a photo of yourself dressed up as the Joker.

Today, over on FirstShowing.net, all of the previous viral marketing attempts have been chumped, big time. It appears that now the people behind this marketing campaign has taken their execution to a new level — physical items.

On December 3rd a new page appeared at whysoserious.com/steprightup with a hammer game and some teddy bear toys. Each toy had an address on it located in a number of cities around the US. The note on the game told people to go to that address and say their name was “Robin Banks” (get it, “Robbing Banks”) and they’d get something there. It was first come, first serve, and each location was a bakery. What they were given was a cake with a phone number written on it. Now here’s the best part: inside the cake was an evidence bag (complete with Gotham City Police printing) that contained a cell phone, a charger, a Joker playing card and a note with instructions.

If you’re not following along, the lucky few to receive the cakes now have a cell phone that someone will call at a later time. In essence, Warner Bros. is creating their own Joker army.

Damn geniuses.