What's a meatball sundae? It's the unfortunate result of two good ideas smashed together -- and the topic of Seth Godin's next book, which is generating much buzz on Hype Street at Advertising Week.
We couldn't go anywhere last night without hearing about it. Marketers describe Meatball Sundae as an invitation to approach web 2.0 as an opportunity to enliven company culture, even as passion begins to make way for bureaucracy.
Alternatively, Godin claims to see web 2.0 as a chance to "transform" the organization. Two sides of the same coin? Read about the book from the meatball-loving mouth itself.
If there's any category of marketer who has dramatically altered the way they market their product, it would be book publishers. Publishers have jumped head first into what online marketing has to offer. From using blog, to social networking sites to video to dedicated websites, the category has forever left behind its formerly staid marketing practices. Surely, they are not alone but they tend to stand out more so than others.
To market the book The Electric Church, a science fiction novel about eternal life via brain transplant into cyborg avatars (or something like that), has launched a BlogAd campaign and a site that takes you inside the church in a freaky sort of way. The creative includes interactive elements from the site. It's definitely simple but simple is more often than not all it takes to deliver a message.
We're firm believers in that if you're going to devote your life to something, even something as "banal" as advertising, you should commit. Let yourself go. Fall in love with it. Learn it inside and out.
After reading Adland over the weekend, we're thinking, here's a book that finally lets you do that.
It's really hard to find a book on advertising that doesn't come off as worshipful and jam-packed with debauched ad men and images of half-naked women, or overly critical and almost caustic. These are all attempts to simplify the profession and shove it into a box it doesn't really belong in.
We get a sense that author Mark Tungate has as much of a love/hate relationship with advertising as anybody. Without ignoring or embellishing those feelings, he examines the industry as a chartable landscape with a unique history.
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- Calling AMC's Mad Men, Dr. Ernst Dichter's The Hidden Persuaders and current motivational research "mostly bullshit," George Parker manages to get himself into Advertising Age and promote his new book, The Ubiquitous Persuaders which, if his past book, MadScam, is any indication, won't be bullshit at all.
- Magazines and newspapers aren't doing anything wrong. It's just that the ads inside them all suck.
- Hyundai's new campaign leaves behind the brand name hoping to leave behind associated cheapness.
- Has anyone else noticed how "bloggy" Advertising Age is getting and how it's now OK to "print" words like fuck and bullshit? We just thought we'd wonder publicly a bit about that.
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Here's a somewhat interesting read.
Young and Aitken's Profitable Marketing Communications encourages marketers to think about marketing the way Warren Buffett thinks about investing (yes, at some point they make that connection): as a quantifiable value-add, with a focus on targeting platforms as opposed to diversifying.
A few decent case studies (brands include Samsung and Unisys) are included, and emphasis is placed on measuring campaign ROI, which we hear lots about but don't see much of.
To get the most value for your buck you might want to skip straight to chapters 12 and 13 ("Leverage Your Employee Capital" and "Is Your Organization Marketing ROI-Fit?") which finally cuts the bull and gets into how you, too, can implement some of this advice.
The book concludes with "Happy investing," possibly its best instance of straightforward message delivery. In the end, it was a lot like reading Malcolm Gladwell, but not as funny, and Benjamin Graham, but not as informative.
Here's a jewel in TASCHEN's collection of pretty pictures to compile and push at a high premium. Advertising Now. Online is a compilation of internet ad efforts - mainly promotional websites - that have come to ornament the 'net in the last handful of years.
Featured campaigns include Burger King's infamous Subservient Chicken and Method's comeclean.com.
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Inc., a magazine that covers topics of interest to entrepreneurs (which means mainly profiles of each other), has just expanded its yearly Inc. 500 to 5000. Kind of. To save on glossy paper, the magazine is only doing the standard 500; the full monty appears online.
This probably started out as some sort of office bet:
"Stop joshing, Stan. There are not 5,000 companies worth mentioning out there. And even if there were, it would be killer to get all those copywriters to dredge up a profile for each one."
Or else a financial analyst was really hurting for something to do.
Anyway, check out the Inc. 5000 here. MarketingVox pointed out that Red Ventures, Charlotte and HydraMedia, Beverly Hills topped the Marketing and Advertising Top 100.
We don't know a ton about either company, probably because they're private-sector, but we do know HydraMedia is home to a classier set of chicks than most. A strange slant for this industry. Maybe they were onto something after all.
Okay. Paying homage to a font is either acknowledging an undervalued aspect of the cultural exchange, or else very clever fucking marketing. But how many typefaces do you personally know that has its own documentary and a show at the MoMa?
Yes. We saw the latter with our own eyes. Gawk at the marvel that is the Chicago Public Library ad. Note the rakishness with which American Apparel robs Helvetica of its innocence. Observe with what candor and personality it reports the names of the Beatles.
How can one disarming typeface be so multi-faceted? We thought it was perfection in simplicity, but it might be its 80 faces.
If you are a sucker (or a decadent postmodernist or maybe just a big font-fan) of exceptional proportions, nail a double-sided Helvetica notebook. But why stop there? Helvetica would be an awesome name for your firstborn. We're sure he (or she) wouldn't hate you at all when time came to do the resume rounds or apply for college.
See those ultra-luxe Camel No. 9's at left? Pretty, right? Well, Democrat Lois Capps of California wants you to know they're dressed to kill. And not in the sexy way.
The CA representative is the leader of a group that wants to get ladymag publishers to stop pushing these and other smoking ads. But editors have expressed apathy toward the campaign, with only 3 out of 11 responding to Capps' demand:
Vogue editor Florio says screw you, pass restrictions through Congress. Glamour states simply that while smoking is discouraged in its articles, smoking ads remain legal. And W, the Switzerland in all this, says it wouldn't mind engaging in a 'constructive dialogue' about the issue. (Maybe they just don't want to hurt her feelings.)
Capps screams "hypocrisy!" and marches on.
We wish we'd noticed this sooner. Jetpacks just celebrated his 365th post, commemorating a year since he began the blog we so enjoy reading.
To keep the seething throng happy, he's promised to add an "Open Mic Night" to his sidebar, through which he'll post homemade recordings open to "ridicule, scorn and derision." We just listened to the first one and felt chills.
Cheers, Jetpacks. And for all the awesome you brought us in the past year, we have decided to pay you in - yes! - groupies.
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