- Marina Orlova examines Spring Fever on a segment of her Too Hot For Words show for Anastasia date.
- Renegade is rebranding as Renegade Communications and will become...wait for it...a 360 degree communications company.
- Swedish drink Festis offers you a chance to win free product if you can unbore grandpa with your webcam antics. Careful, ladies. Too much cleavage or thong could give the guy a heart attack!
- The lawsuit over the quality of its beef against Taco Bell has been dropped but Taco Bell isn't staying quiet.
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With the launch of community site Facebook Studio, Facebook looks to open dialog with marketers and their agencies about strategies and tactics which lead to better Facebook pages for brands.
Facebook Studio will include a Gallery of recent campaigns including those which were most liked, most shared and what page fans are saying. A Learning Lab will offer advertisers the tools they need to create campaigns on Facebook. A Spotlight section will allow for the searching of page work done by brands and agencies by region, category and other segmentations. An Agency Directory will allow for the rilling down through work by agency. And an Awards section will collect and award the best Facebook campaign/page work.
Will you Like Facebook Studio?
- Scottish entrepreneur Michelle Mone has waged war on size zero models by "flying the flag for real women" and choosing models of different shapes and sizes for her new Ultimo ad campaign.
- The story behind GroupMeh.
- Copywriter does penis pushup.
This is a conundrum we've heard millions of times before. A client comes to an agency and asks for "breakthrough" creative. Creative goes off and conceptualizes brilliance. It gets presented internally and everyone loves it. But just before it's ready to be presented to the client, someone, usually in account management (let's be honest here), says, "I like it personally, but somebody might be offended. Just tone it down."
And therein lies one of the biggest problems of the ad agency business. Agencies are asked and are in business to create marketing programs that, to use an overused phrase, cut through the clutter more than their competition can cut through the clutter. Sadly, many agencies are more conservative when it comes to risk taking than and health insurance actuarial agent. Which is to say, there is no risk taking at all.
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New York advertising agency Barker/DZP apologized Monday to local firefighter Robert Keiley for creating an ad which indicated Keiley he had been at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, when in fact he was not. Keiley joined the Fire Department in 2004.
Keiley, who also works as a model, was under the impression the ad would be for fire prevention when he agreed to the photoshoot. But his photograph appeared without his knowledge or permission in an ad for a local law firm that specializes in September 11 legal cases, with the words "I Was There."
"We deeply regret any offense to Mr. Keiley, other firefighters or anyone else that has been hurt by this ad," said Keith McKay, business operations manager for Barker/DZP. Agency president John Barker said Barker/DZP purchased the stock photo of Keiley and, in a statement, said, "At no time did we have any idea, or could we have had any knowledge, that the person in the photo, Robert Keiley, was an actual firefighter, much less a New York City firefighter. This unfortunate coincidence makes the ad into something we never intended it to be."
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If you attended SXSW this year, you know it was very different than prior years. How was it different? Marketers and agencies finally gave the conference credence and attended in droves. BlogAds did a bit of follow up analysis and concluded agency presence at SXSW has increased 1,000 percent.
Of the 100 or so agencies BlogAds found in attendance at SXSW this year, Leo Burnett tops the list with 56 (updated to 65) people at the conference. Rounding out the top 10 are Saatchi, Digitas, JWT, SapientNitro, BBDO, HUGE, Ogilvy, DraftFCB and R/GA.
The list also examines attendance in 2009 and draws comparison. The numbers are stunning. Two years ago, there were literally no agency personnel at the conference. This year, attendance was in the hundreds.
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If you tweet about Kraft Macaroni & Cheese today, your tweet could be in a commercial on TV tonight. Kraft and its agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, are monitoring Twitter for tweets that mention Mac & Cheese. Five tweets will be picked for inclusion in five commercial which will be written and filmed today. One ad will air during Conan and Lopez and the other four will be viewable on the brand's Facebook page.
Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Senior Brand manager Noelle O'Meara told Mashable the tactic may be repeated if today's efforts go well. She also said the immediacy of social media has nudged marketers ever closer to real-time marketing.
Get tweeting, people!
So what happens when an ad exec is unhappy with what he sees around him? He gets everyone in his agency to get behind his pet project for pro bono account work. And that's just what Paul Venables, founder of San Francisco's Venables Bell & Partners did when he became upset of the plight of public schools in Marin county California.
Driving around Marin you'd not necessarily realize there were many problems. It's a very upscale and beautiful area but the state has cut $55 million in school aid and things are not going so well on the public school front.
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- Burger King and Crispin Porter + Bogusky have ended their seven year relationship.
- The Chicago Sun Times has let go ad critic Lewis Lazare.
- A sex doll commits suicide in an ad all to promote a dating site.
- Super hottie Tehmeena Afzal is out with another video. This one's for a local car dealer and she's wearing less clothing than she ever has before.
In a SXSW panel entitled Branded Entertainment: Do Brands Hurt Good Storytelling Proximity SVP Matt Di Paola said there is a fine line between selling and story telling. Each can't cross too far over the line of the other. Branded story telling must align with the brand's business, not a creative brief. The partnership is much bigger than a simple creative project.
Making a distinction, Di Paola said Product placement is not story telling. Product placement is a media buy. Story telling is a deep partnership between brand and content.
Disrupt Group Co-Founder Shira Lazar Says ad agencies are the new studios. For content creators, Lazar said the relationship must go beyond just business. Successful creative relationships require more than the simple exchange of money.
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