advergirl

Groundswell. A book about a movement.

I almost don't want to tell you about this book.

I laughed. I dog-eared a ridiculous number of pages. I found cause to clamor for a notebook to jot, nay, furiously scribble down an idea. I'm already retelling the stories.

It's almost too good to share.

I should back up...

In general, I think good marketers come from two basic camps. Statistics and experience. Or, how we can model and measure likely success vs. how we can learn from what's worked and hasn't worked in the past. Heady or intuitive.

Groundswell author's Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff are from Forrester Research. So, it was no surprise that they could write analytics well. Could  lay out an infinitely logical and actionable model for how to  do social media with your customer audience.

What was a surprise is what amazing storytellers they are and how willing they were to bluntly - sometimes harshly - tell it like it is.

Li and Bernoff start of by setting aside particular technologies and diving deep into the ways social media has changed us. Increasingly, they argue, we get what we need (news, reviews, shopping, etc.) from other people rather than from traditional institutions (like business or media).

Then, they systematically answer the questions a lot of digital immigrants ask in the meetings we've all sat in (over and over and over again):

• How does it work?
• Why do people spend their time on this?
• How is this going to impact - threaten / totally screw up / help - my business?

But, the best part is the back 2/3s of the book where Li and Bernoff dig into various strategies to tap into the groundswell with stories about the success and failure of brands brave enough to give it a try.

Some of them are parts of the story I never knew. Like the Mini marketing that we hold up all the time as so savvy and talky and in-the-tent started by listening to the (later named) groundswell online. Or how the awkwardness of the internal conversation become part of the impetus of P&G's broadly cited Beingagirl.com

And some reveal surprising results. Like how Blendtec's funny 'will it blend' videos (crunching up iPods and other odd things) popped sales of the absurdly expensive kitchen device 20%. Or just how much of Ernst & Young's recruiting is powered by Facebook.

And some were simply inspiring. Like the oft-told story of Circuit City's Blue Shirt Nation (btw - next time I talk about my home agency, let's remember - it's not self serving, I'm just an Orange Shirt) or the all-too-human ways execs at Avenue A / Razorfish connect with employees.

Every story is accompanied by the business plan behind it. Why it worked. What the ROI was. How to know if it's right for your audience.

You can probably guess which parts I dog-eared.

Chics Who Click: Which new women's site wins?

When a couple of media powerhouses launch competitive sites in the same month, it tends to make a little noise. Especially when they're both going after 40+ women. A demo they'd like us to believe is veiled in mystery, heretofore only defrocked by Lifetime and iVillage. A demo largely ignored by online marketers and jonesing for some real content.

Back to the powerhouses. We're talking about one of the founders of the Internet vs. the real-world lipstick mafia:

• Shine: Yahoo's latest attempt to win over the world with content comes to life in this editorial-style portal.


• WowOwow: By chics, for chics, this portal is the self-funded creation of Liz Smith, Lesley Stahl, Peggy Noonan, Mary Wells and Joni Evans.

Well, a month has gone by since the shiny new sites were unveiled. Plenty of time for a little investigation and trial and error.

What's working:

• Shine is smart to lead with thoughtful editorial. A big smart topic that is at once personal, female and thought provoking. Even women who love Oprah and Sex and the City have a conflicted relationship with their girly side. Leading with content and following with dish lets people get comfortable.


• WowOwow is making great use of its own real network. Offline heros - like Candice Bergen, Marlo Thomas, Lily Tomlin, Whoopi Goldberg - are creating fresh content for the site.


• I've come to really dig the Hair Day forecast on WowOwow. At first I thought it was vaguely insulting, but, really, it's chat-able and iconic and works for me.


• Shine feels like a magazine. The buckets of content. The reader feedback. It has excelled at taking an offline guilty pleasure and delivering it online completely intact.

What's not:

• WowOwow, meet Ajax. Ajax, Wowowow. It's easy to see the difference between savvy Yahoo and this group of newbies. The usability of the site is aggravating. Always more clicks. Even for easy little widgets and polls that should be included inline with the content.


• Shine's top nav is a little reductive considering the pop of everything else. They've designed it to encourage a full scroll. Which is interesting and oh-so-tabloid, but I think users are used to being able to increasingly limit their content to what's most relevant to them. That feels underplayed here.


• WowOwow strikes me as a little too reliant on community content. Everything is an open-ended question with a click to see what other people said. Couldn't we take some learnings from Twitter on this interaction?


• WowOwow gave up their above-masthead real estate to advertising. Ouch. Unless done incredibly well, that's a killer in editorial. And this snowy site is not done well enough to pull it off

Final word:
WowOwow walks away from some of the proven-for-a-reason principles of user experience. And community. And, for what? A 40+ Facebook group? Uh uh. 40 is the new 25. Your audience doesn't need Internet for Dummies.

Meanwhile Yahoo steps up the plate with one of the best sites I've seen from them. It's clever. Approachable. Content rich. Comfortable.

I hate to say it, but: I'm going with Goliath on this one. Go Shine!

Step into the Spotlight: Tsufit is Sark for Suits

What I love about business books is the anecdotes. The collections of a gratis illustrations from women who’ve been running the room for 20 years. The totally repeatable, wow I didn’t know that’s how they came up with that ideas. The insiders guides to the coolest trivia your industry has to offer.

Good business books are - quite simply - repeatable. And, particularly if you're new(er) to your career, can help you learn how to speak the shared language of industry and cultural metaphor.

So, I’ve enjoyed flipping through Tsufit's new book: Step into the Spotlight. It’s not exactly the kind of book you would sit down and read cover-to-cover, but more one that you keep handy for right after a painful conference call or one of those incredibly long networking events that seem to stretch as long as an average week. A quick flip will lead you to a little perspective, a fun anecdote or an exercise in figuring out, well, you.

And, all written in the chatty, playful voice of a woman who divides her career among executive coaching, book writing and stand-up comedy.

It’s incredibly reminiscent of what Sark did for everyday creativity. Her scribbly journals and stream-of-consciousness creative guides at once elevate playfulness and introspection, seeking to loose a little wild creativity.

Tsufit may be a bit more buttoned up, but you can quickly see that her message isn’t the words on the page, it’s what she wants to inspire in her reader. A little confident, sassy business savvy that feels like you found it yourself.

The Open Brand

With Adver-boyfriend off following his favorite NCAA team around the country this weekend, I had time to catch up on three industry books that have been tempting me from the bedside table. This week, I'll share perspectives on each of those, starting with:

By Kelly Mooney and Nita Rollins
Home agency: Resource Interactive

There are two schools of thought on the role of the 'expert' in consulting industries like ours: (1) it's our job to be the smartest guy in the room on our 'best at' subject or (2) it's our job to make our client feel like the smartest guy in the room.

Mooney/Rollins definitely fall in the latter. They've built a book that converges all the big ideas and groundswell of momentum around the social Web into a simple story on impact and action.

Kind of a Daring Book for Girls for CMOs

I say 'built a book' because it's the structure that agency wonks will be attracted to. A visual approach to the ideas and concepts we talk about every day (Come on, who among us hasn't taken a little real-work inspiration from one of Armano's quick sketches of clarity?), repeatable cases and solid frameworks.

For clients and newbies, it's all content.

A few of the ideas that got me scribbling notes in the margin:

After outlining the pitfalls of business-as-usual in a new medium, Mooney/Rollins lay out a New Relationship framework in simple Venn diagram fashion. The center is passion, overlapped on three sides by consumers, community and brand.

I love the idea that passion is the shared quality - the opportunity to build engagement (with people, with networks, with employees). At brunch this weekend, we were talking about the phenom coup Resource's PR team pulled off: Four paragraphs about The Open Brand in this month's cover story of Fast Company. When a friend - who, I should preface, knows everything about a million things I know nothing about - asked me what Fast Company is? And, to try to describe it now ... is, stalling. But, you probably remember when it launched, in the heydey of dot.com, when we were all rethinking work and what it means to find both delight and challenge in what we do every day, and essentially finding passion in work. I like to think that ethic has found its resurgence in the social Web.

The Open Brand also has a great information graphic on the motivations of iCitizenry, plotted on a continuum of everyday to elite:

• 74% are motivated by competence: "I can" (use Web tools for fun, learning and efficiency)
• 16% by collectivism: "I connect" (connect and share with people who have similar interests)
• 7% by culture change: "I am" (effect change that improves companies, products or the experience of others)
• 3% by celebrity: "I matter" (seek recognition or some degree of fame)

In a conversation (darn, I used THAT word) that has largely been shaped by the 1% Rule and other outcome-based frameworks, it's interesting to turn to the why instead of the what.

I digress. The framework is followed by a hall-of-fame of sorts of some of the loudest voices on the Web - from Kos to the diva of Amazon.com product reviews.

Someone I follow on Twitter - maybe Jaffe - asked (more eloquently than I am recreating here) is the Web creating more amateur professionals or is it simply giving us access to more true professionals. It's an interesting question for ad bloggers, but in the largest context of the social Web, it has another dimension: are there new 'careers,' new needs for voices and approaches (like the mega reviewers) that have essentially become the foundation of everything else?

That said, I think for most marketers, the challenge isn't in understanding the outlyers. They're relatively easy to learn about with various social aggregating tools and their own self promotion. Your agency can attack those (with some degree of grace or lumbering) the way they could any other opinion leader. The challenge is understanding the common person. What the key profiles of social behavior are and how those cross-index beyond age ... with a wider swath of loyalty and offline behavior.

I'm guessing the ethnographers at Resource save that level of detail for folks willing to spend a little more than $16.95...

Lipstick Jungle and Maybelline: When ad partnerships undermine editorial

This year’s choice for hot mid-season television formula is Sex in the City gets married and goes to the office. Combine several high-powered, hottie women execs with contentious, creative work environments and stressed out home lives and voila(!), advertisers line up like in the ultra-competitive days of the 1994 renaissance of sexy, smart doctor dramas. 

Tomorrow night will mark the third episode of one of the front runners of the mini powerful-woman genre: Lipstick Jungle.  And, at this point, I’m wondering if the ad partnership won’t be the downfall of the series.

I should preface with this: All television shows based on professions boldly simplify, cast unusually sexy characters (think of the “CSI”s with fully made up faces and low cut shirts scouring trash truck crime scenes or George Clooney still delightfully coiffed after a gory 48 shift) and are generally unrecognizable to people in the actual field.

BUT, still…

Lipstick Jungle’s marriage to Makeup Artist Chuck Hezekiah of Maybelline is a little reductive even for Prime Time. At each commercial break, he pops up with advice on how to get ‘the look’ of the exec featured in the last segment.

I’m not suggesting that the Ad Council should break in with a series on how to raise our young women, but,  when we take a relatively accepted convention (TV sexing up real-life humans) and make it driver of the story, well, it gets a little ugly. Afterall, they weren't exactly paying for ER with hair gel sponsors or CSI with tube top designers.

With such a prominent and potentially-controversial sponsorship, it will be interesting to see what part Maybelline plays in the success or failure of Lipstick Jungle.

Mail on Sunday: Lessons in the viral spoof

Great forward from local copywriter Steve Post:

Couple of great reminders in this ad:

• Cliches work famously in viral marketing - especially when they add a fresh twist (the remote control cars were a delight when paired with the lap dogs)


• As a culture we are perpetually uncomfortable with the too serious. It's why Saturday Night Live has survived longer than many of my readers have been alive - we like to make fun of war movies and awkward family events and coming-of-age boys earnestly playing guitar in the basement and ... it's a simple formula that can be executed very well (and, of course, very badly)
  


• I think this particular video has the strong possibility of breaking into the 'email forward' set. Those folks who don't read blogs, but will forward pictures of adorable dogs, warnings about the latest credit scam and 101 Ways to Know You're from Boston. If I can be a bit irreverent (and potentially outright inappropriate) for just a moment ... to crack the code of the emailers, you've got to make them laugh or make them pray. And this is a great laugh.
  

Finally, British humor I actually get.

Some major record labels make 40% of their revenue from ringtones

Wow, right?

I was listening to a story about hip-hop artist T-Pain last night and was reminded of just how important it is to think about 'marketing' - not just advertising - at this planning time of year. The trends that we use to shape brand experiences have powerful impacts on all sorts of larger marketing questions - from product development to operational planning.

Consider this incredible example about how shifts in audience behavior wildly changed the business sources for the Zomba record label:

• Artist T-Pain has a signature vocal style that has played a defining role in hip-hop and R&B music this year
• Four of his singles are in the Billboard's Top 10
• He owns up to 1/3 of the popular playlists on some R&B stations

But here's where it gets interesting for marketers:

• His top single has had 1.5 million digital downloads at $.99/each
• BUT - that same single has had 3 MILLION ringtone downloads at $2.50 - $3/each

Record execs call ringtones a personalization product. And, it's interesting, in an era when boom boxes and big stereos have been replaced with earbuds, maybe your ringing pocket is the last bastion of showing off your style through your favorite band...

Not to show my radical uncoolness at the end of a hip-hop post, but, as the aging rocker said, Times, they are a changin' (,marketers).

Transformers: Best Viral Toy on the Web

This one requires no explanation. You will love it. Your friends will love it. Your little sister and your dad will love it. I'm jealous.

BN.com: Are we ready for the local bookstore to relocate online?

Although I remain a devotee of Powells.com and my actual neighborhood bookstore, the AP's reveal of this curious statement by Marie Toulantis, CEO of bn.com intrigued me enough to go check out the site's makeover.

"We wanted our site to have more motion, more content and more interactivity, and to have more of a sense of community."

More motion? Is that what America is clamoring for online? Not ease of use, smarter interactions, more relevant experiences. Ok, well, motion it is. A dizzying amount of it thanks to my super speedy connection + a wealth of rollovers.

Anyway, I get the challenge BN.com and so many other ecomm and multichannel retailers are up against: Consumer behavior in online shopping today is not yet a “browsing” activity – it is more directed than in-store shopping (Marketing Sherpa, 2006)

• In-store Perception: Shopping at the mall is fun – whether I buy something or not (social)
• Online Perception: I go online to buy something particular (task)

BN.com is fighting hard to change this behavior and not only create browsing online, but to leverage the entire community bookstore experience:

• The site offers one-of-a-kind highlights, including "One on One" podcasts and a "See Inside" program that allow readers to browse through an interactive version of a book.
• "Live at Barnes & Noble" allows online visitors to view webcasts of readings at member stores if they cannot physically be there. Stephen Colbert of “The Colbert Report”, Alice Sebold and Richard Russo are all said to make scheduled appearances in the near future.
• The premiere spotlights an interview with Philip Roth and a review of his new novel, "Exit Ghost," by the president of the National Book Critics Circle, John Freeman.

In the past five years, the bookseller’s online sales have doubled. For a retail force like BN, that number is likely a disappointment.

The question remains - is the timing right to bring retail community online (when community-community online is still struggling for wholesale adoption)? Some would definitely say yes - the 30-somethings and the Gen Y-ers and Millennials behind them are as likely to hit the bookstore online as offline. I like this POV from Penn's MicroTrends (yes, the book I made fun of - what can I say? I actuallly love it)

"In part, it's the aging of the 30-somethings, who were the first generation to be reared on computers. Whereas 'entertainment' to their parents meant buying a ticket to a show, play, movie or ball game and watching the story unfold, this generation is more comfortable with entertainment that involves clicks, controllers and interactive narrative"

Adland: A Global History of Advertising

Back in J-school, a design professor told us that a full 25% of readers read newspapers and magazines from back-to-front. (To which, our agency creative director would respond – did you know that 78% of statistics are made up on the spot!?)

Anyway, I’m happily in the 25%.

In fact, my magazines and even nonfiction books quickly become a choose-your-own-adventure, notes-all-over-the-index, dog-eared mess.

So, true to form, when I picked up Mark Tungate’s new ad history book, I flipped right to the chapter on Chicago, then to Consolidation Incorporated (did you know: ‘Almost everyone in advertising works for one of five different companies’) and onto Dotcom Boom and Bust before even flipping through the index.

I mention all of this because: I really recommend this book.

It’s advertising history with a nostalgic, cultural lens. And, it’s written in a way that rewards browsing and ‘digging in’ alike. A couple of not-to-miss sub-chapters:

• Blood, Sweaters and Tears – Remember the impact of Toscani’s Benetton photography? Ads and images that still define the brand
• Lowe and Beyond – Including Frank Lowe, the hero of passionate, strategic account guys
• An Onomatopoeic Agency – That’s the one dog-earred by the creative director who stole the book from me
• And, Cornflakes and Cowboys – The history of advertising as written by Marlboro and P&G

An ominously titled Sir Martin Sorrell (yes, of WPP), in a top-billing review on the book’s front cover, calls Adland ‘immensely readable.’

As always, it’s more difficult to write short than long, but, yeah – here-here, Sir.

See the AdAge review

The ads we were raised to create

Brands of our childhoods.

Nostalgic.

Harkening simple memories of good times.

Or, at least uncomplicated times.

How glorious to sit in a workstart meeting, charged with boldly exploiting them to sell a completely unrelated product.

No, really. That sounds fantastic.

Like the Transformers.

The (cranky, snotty) boy my mom babysat growing up would hunker down in my dad's tan cordoroy La-Z-Boy at 3 every day to watch the warring robots. And, of course, we all watched, too ... biding time through the machines & GI Joe for whatever we were really waiting to watch.

Despite the luke-warm reviews, I'm still looking forward to the movie. And, although the too-obvious GM spots barely held me for the full 30-seconds, congratulations to the new Mountain Dew spot for hitting all the key tones for successfully playing a nostalgia brand:

• Fresh element added (not a direct lift from the story)
• Priveleged view (as with all great childhood stories, it's important that not everyone in the room can really see the magic going on)
• Unexpected environment (bring the icon into the brand's real audience / location / etc.)
• Playful (even if it was scary growing up, all kid brands should be fun looking back)
• Remembers the re-runners (even if you didn't see it the first time around, you still get it)

Now we know!

And knowing is half the battle.

Anyway, top five brands I cannot wait to have a movie made of ... a movie that I will parlay into advertisements for hams and 800-thread count sheet sets:

1. Smurfs. (Gargamel obviously needed softer sheets. And, Bigmouth could have been easily distracted by a nice ham)
2. Fraggle Rock. (Sing it with me ... down at Fraggle Rock)
3. Punky Brewster. (It could happen. Headbands are hot right now)
4. The Snorks. (I wonder if Al Gore will make them part of his movie ... in a post-Global Warming world, when we all live under water...)
5. Strawberry Shortcake. (It's only a matter of time until we're all trading scratch-n-sniff stickers again)

Radio City Buzz

Interesting Rockettes spot sent by an anonymous emailer ...

The feminist in me is definitely not thrilled by the dreamy-eyed girl ga-ga over the half-naked dancer

BUT - the ad girl in me thinks of the long lines outside of American Girl stores and knows this is a hit...

MTV recycles tired joke

Judging from the lace-bottomed leggings, big hoopy earrings and giant sweaters spotted on the tiny, emaciated bodies of marauding teenagers at the nation's malls, I'm guessing there is a vibe of "everything old is new again" in pop culture. After all, if you don't have old school photos of clam bangs, florescent t-shirts and jelly-braceleted arms, how could you suspect just how evil the 80s really were?

So, perhaps it's no surprise that MTV is recycling this boring old "walk into the wrong bar" business to sell their Rhapsody-knockoff: Urge. Really, the S&M clubs and dominatrixes of the world should seek PR council ... not only are they always forcing good kids into bondage in mass media, they also all look like crap.

Camera work is great though. Nice perspectives.

Agency: MTV On Air Promotions

This guy worked at an ad agency?!?

Uh, nice poster, adman. Boo.

Found at: AdFreak

Columbus' giant iPod

Drat. Scooped on actual local news by a national feed. How often does something blog-worthy actually happen in cBus anyway?

And, sadly, as I've been trapped in the 'burbs all weekend, I can't even speak to it firsthand, but local rag Alive (via MacDailyNews) is buzzing about a giant iPod smack in the middle of downtown.

The music is a live feed and synched with a tini little pod at the pub HQ. Peds can even go online to check out the song they just heard and vote for their favorite.

I believe this music monster replaced the very buzz-worthy Mini Cooper billboard featuring a diecast car in a slingshot with the tag "Goliath lost." That particular installation had huge fans. (Agency: Taxi?)

In related news - downtown is really becoming an advertiser's paradise. From the Nationwide "Life comes at you fast" buses to the huge billboards to a planned  "Times Square" development at Broad and High, our local agencies should be loving this ad-guy-friendly haven...

Stop music piracy

Copy: Nothing great comes easy. Please respect artists. Stop music piracy.

Agency: TBWA
Found at:  Ad Arena

History Channel editors

Most of you have probably already seen these (I'm a little behind this week), but still, I had to add these to my collection. Found at Ad Arena, these 2005 Clio winners have great stopping power.

Agency: DDB New Zealand, Auckland

 

Little guys are great advertisers

Great idea: Leagas Delaney used magnetic ads on top of cars to advertise a trucking magazine to long-haul drivers.

Found at: Advertising for Peanuts

Think that's cool? Check out this coffee cup.

Dead or Alive

"Get both sides. VEJA magazine."
Via Ad Arena

The Great Films Come to Canada

Just really enjoyable advertising:





Client:Canadian Filmmakers Festival

Agency: Gee, Jeffery & Partners

Authors as brands

I doubt many authors intend* to build a brand. At once an individual and a business, they're too busy trying to make money and write mind-changing books to worry about branding. Nonetheless, their success creates a brand. A way people know and experience them. What unique, compelling, and meaningful beliefs their awareness and reputation lend to their mere bylines.

 

In this month's Real Simple (yes, I read that - it's extraordinarily relaxing to look at and a nice reminder of all the things I don't have to care about ... like, I'm sure you can make a meatloaf with saltines and ketchup, but who would want to?), Rick Moody has a piece about fatherhood. A lovely, mushy, get-to-know-the-new-me, how-i-fell-in-love-with-kids-and-got-married autobiography.

 

He has slewn his brand.

 

This writer of dark and desperate lives lived in banal cul de sacs and ordinary times. This clever cynic who gave voice to characters exhausted by everything they were supposed to be, but had no interest in being. A curmudgeon toward cuteness - letting no puppy or baby escape with withering glance.

 

He was a 20-something writer. An unsustainable brand. At some point, that either becomes sad or has to evolve. But, then, like a child actor, where can he go from here?

 

Then, too, I saw an interview in last Sunday's New York Times with 73-year-old neoconservative Harvey Mansfield about his new feminist-bashing book Manliness. Now, to be fair, I bear little if any relation to this man's target audience, but, still, considering that he has quite a laudable gig as a professor at Harvard, I hadn't expected him to be so cavalier with his brand.

An excerpt from the interview:

Q: So your generally left-leaning colleagues are willing to talk to you?

A: People listen to me, but they don't pay attention to what I say. I should punch them out, but I don't.

Read the interview

 

*with the obvious exception of Ann Coulter.

Couple of great outdoors ... or, on doors

Agency: Menno Kluijn
via: Billboardom
(does it seem that I would have nothing to post without Billboardom?)

More on Bigumigu

Whimsical bookstore ad

This is quite possibly my favorite retail ad ever. What a wonderful play to the audience - all the romance and mastery and insider references that one would imagine of a bookstore in Prague. Expats flock.

See another at Twenty Four
Agency: Kaspen
Client: Anagram Bookstore

Taxi-tising

I want to move back to a city abuzz with aggressive cabbies and clotted traffic. What great opportunities for creative advertising.

Somehow I missed this last season - the guerilla word-of-mouth campaign promoting the season premier of The Sopranos. (via Ad Arena)

Very reminiscent of that great holiday campaign Starbucks left on top the cab in NYC.

And, then there's always the very, very smart HSBC BankCab.

What are we supposed to do in Ohio? Turn our buildings into big baskets or something? I think I'm going to see about (re)branding the livestock on the road to the Circleville Pumpkin Festival. Watch for a truly purple cow this Fall...

Jazz up your life

Agency: BBDO Portugal
Client: Publico, book publisher / collection of books on Jazz

The Onion. Yes.

Magazines are getting decidedly smaller

A would-be home chef (would-be were it not for time, cost, and absence of a glamorous tv-kitchen), I try all the new food magazines. The latest is Everyday Food by Martha Stewart. One I likely would have skipped except the second trial offer I got in the mail arrived on a day that I had no magazines to read...   

What a surprise. And, a disappointment. The pub is the size and shape of Readers Digest. And, the ads blur with the content in a hard-to-read, not-at-all-satisfying-to-hold experience.

But, as small as that is, imagine handling this mini. This new magazine format attaches a tiny magazine to a fast moving consumer product. The launch will be iLove magazine on a water bottle, followed by a magazine for men distributed on iced coffee.

Lots more pics here.

Bag-vertising

Not long ago, you probably saw the nailbiters shopping bag ad.  Here are two others that have previously made the rounds - One publicizing a new book by a Belgium crime writer and the other ... looks like a gym or other fitness brand.

More on advertising advertising...

The Newspaper Association of America's ad are as bad as the Magazine Publishers ads were good.

This is one of those situations where we have to wonder - how is it possible that in an agency talented enough to win a $50 million ad campaign + projects from category leaders like UPS and Miller no one killed this ridiculous concept?

The strategy - if the copy is any indicator - is to make advertisers think of newspapers as a relevant, effective medium to reach smart, affluent buyers - buyers who opt in to not only the print edition, but also Web and email tools. What about any of this creative says that? Carriages? Fish? 1776-era script?

via Adfreak

New York looks good all of a sudden...

From Threeminds - launch of a fantastically cleaned up New York magazine homepage. On the scroll, you'll find that it still gets overwhelming and the right sidebar seems to be a mismatch to the rest of the site, but - if nothing else - there is great accomplishment in their brand ownership of the "above the fold" content. Even well-designed sites have long since ceded the top of the page to big clunky advertisers who destroy the elegance of the page. New York has held its ground. Kudos.

Ripped-from-a-magazine

Really intriguing campaign from the Magazine Publishers of America, the industry trade org for consumer magazines.

MPA is buying up ad space to target advertisers with these torn pages and messages about print’s continuing relevance for both impressions and WOM.

I love the creative - great approach at catching eyes and building relevance. Although, while I do have a whole drawer of ripped-from-a-magazine pages, I rarely pass them on in paper form... I just find the content online and email it (obviously).

Mullen won the print campaign back in January and will roll out the second part of a three-year, $40 million campaign.

How creepy can a brand spot be?

View spot
Agency: Runt, a division of Untitled.
Client: Shots Magazine (London).

Ben Popken notes that the spot was "shot on the tippy top of the King Edward hotel in a ballroom left untouched for 30 years."