- Agency vet Scott G shares his views on agency diversity including his overhearing an agency exec tell a recruiter "No blacks or Hispanincs."
- Geico's back with another one of those caveman commercials.
- Bill Green from Make the Logo Bigger goes much further than our usually brief, pat hand slap offered marketers for their over reliance on consumer generated media and tells clients to take the handcuffs off their own agency's creative and watch what happens.
- Mark Cuban says anyone who buys YouTube is a moron.
- Advertising Age reviews Advertising Week and determines it's the booze that made it a success.
- Al Ries, weighing in a year later, thinks the name change from J. Walter Thompson to JWT is dumb.
- We liked Yahoo's Bully commercial. Predictably, Bob Garfield didn't.
- Clear Channel offers ad units that are shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter and...well...shorter.
In a hilarious bit of satire, George Simpson tells the ad industry we should be very careful what we wish for when it comes to supporting minority-owned media as we knee jerk react to having our asses plucked like a chicken. George goes on to tell us minority groups have staged protests in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Detroit in reaction to ad agencies over reaction and subsequent purchase of every last bit of minority-owned media's inventory. Reportedly, commercial minutes on minority-owned television stations has risen to 49 minutes leaving only 2 minutes for actual programming.
Protesters are reacting angrily as the same over reaction seems to be occuring in monority-owned print as well. One protester is said to have said, "The News is like reading one of those fat fall preview issues of fashion magazines where you have to flip through a hundred pages of ads before you even find the table of contents. It took me over an hour to find the editorial page yesterday."
As agencies hurriedly ran to prevent their asses being plucked like a chicken in response to the New York City Council knocking on their door, media departments got very busy. One agency exec said. "We ran, alright, straight to our media departments--and bought up every pod, flight, column inch and pixel of minority-oriented inventory"
With MySpace so five minutes ago and podcasts already dead, it was only a matter of time before new student, that oh so Scientology-sounding Second Life, moved to the front of the marketing class and tongue wagging marketer and ad agency students took notice. Last week, student Leo Burnett hooked up with student Second Life to make an Idea Space for the agency's 1,600 creatives to interact in because, after all, in a digital world, no one wants actual human contact any more unless it's with a Second Life virtual hottie.
YesButNoButYes decided to check out Leo Burnett's home and did a search but came up with nothing except a resident who calls himself Leo Burnett and belongs to The BDSM Forum. Not exactly the sort of world the real Leo Burnett would play in but an important lesson learned for those attending the Second Life marketing class: make sure the world you are entering doesn't already have a person with your name who likes kinky sex. That is, unless you're into kiny sex as well.
- Adding to project work, Deutsch has reeled in the GM corporate account perhaps requiring Donny to take that Speedo off, spend less time with the Big Idea and actually do some work. Oh wait, does he even go into the office any more?
- MySpace and Facebook aren't the only games in town. There's Piczo, XuQa, Hi5 and many more that are gaining ground. Marketers: leave them alone at least for a little while, OK?
- For his new book about America's rock and roll landmarks, Led Zeppelin Crashed Here, author Chris Epting has out together a "movie trailer" style promotional video up on YouTube.
more »
 Dishing out some of the best diversity-related smack talk, New York City Councilman Larry Seabrook, in reaction to New York advertising agencies' failure to heed an invitation to appear at yesterday's minority-owned public hearings. said agencies "ran like chickens with their asses plucked clean." Well we all know agency folk are right up there with metrosexuals when it comes to trimming the privates, ass plucking is a new one on us. Agencies, advised by the AAAA's legal counsel, idn't show because they were told their earlier hiring arrangements with the Human Rights Council was enough to do the diversity trick. Like last minute preparations for a big presentations where "Fuck it. We don't need that. We'll just fake it during the presentation" is commonplace thought, agencies figured Advertising Week events would be a whole lot more fun than being grilled by a bunch of pissed off, pro-diversity city officials. Afterall, the Week's crucially important, all expenses paid, lavish luncheons and late night parties just can't be missed.
more »
Advertising Week has to begin somewhere and why not with strange looking tiny "BobCars" that carry messaging. Sort of like a mobile billboard, BobCars, owned, we're told, by Snap Marketing, are being used to hand out postcards with questions on them which they can answer online to win two free weeks of advertising on a BobCar. It's an Adholes thingy.
Usually when something becomes self-referential, that something realizes it's become a parody of itself and it's time to make some big changes. The advertising industry seems to be incapable of that and Wunderman's Career-O-Matic 3,000 (which we think we've seen before) reminds us of that once again. The device helps people find life after advertising because, after all, the industry is going though a paradigm shifting toilet flush as the :30 morphs into a MySpace page, commercials are now called "virals" and agencies (dot com) take their pants off in public so all can see what passes for strategic thinking is just a bunch of people running down the hallway self-importantly shouting, "Corner office! Corner office!"
We're not exactly sure this is something Minneapolis-based Colle+McVoy should really be all that excited about but since they sent a press release, apparently, they are. For some reason, they're very excited two of their creatives, Mike Caguin and Eric Husband, have returned to the agency for a third time. Returning from Butler Shine Stern and Partners ,Caguin explains the move back saying, "Why are we back? Simple, Colle+McVoy is doing great work and has lots of potential. And we wanted to get back to Minnesota." said Caguin." One does have to wonder about the other half of this equation - why would the pair leave Colle+McVoy three times in the first place since it's, seemingly, such a great place to work?
Just after writing an article about a recent piece of work for Slim Jim done by Crispin Porter + Bogsky, we received this email from an Adrants reader who wonders why Crispin has so much trouble giving credit where credit is due:
"I just think it's interesting that CP+B has so much trouble giving credit to those with whom they collaborate on their campaigns. I was just reading some coverage of the iMedia Connection Brand Summit and found the following sentence a little disturbing, 'CPB also created a GTI Configurator that let online visitors customize their GTIs with all the available features, after which they could take a virtual joyride with the beautiful German Engineer, Helga.' I'm pretty sure IQ Interactive actually created the Configurator."
more »
We love it when the media duel to beat each other to the punch with their email alerts. At 12:37PM, Ad Age tells us Progressive Insurance has handed it's $250 million account to Boston's Arnold. At 1:00PM, AdWeek tells us Progressive Insurance has handed it's $150 million account to Boston's Arnold. So which is it guys? $250 mill? $150 mil? That's kind of a big difference. Do tell. Progressive?
|
|
