Space Head 

There are many options for the headgear you might use when trying to block out the inane conversations fellow train passengers have, even on the quiet car. I don’t know why he went to Susan instead of you. You’re probably lucky he didn’t just report you to HR. Stop talking!!! Of late, the bright white… Read more

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Dry Erase Dreams

Sharon drew a line across the giant white board. Then, she drew one down the left side. “What we need is a matrix,” she said. It sounded like a pretty good idea. “We’ll put the messages we need to send across the top, and the people we need to talk to on the side.” We… Read more

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Porkadise Found

Now that their recent scare with tainted food supply has passed, Chipotle has decided on another tactic to make me sick. Bad advertising. I submit Exhibit A.   Let’s dissect this ad a bit and see if we can figure out where things went wrong. Normally, I’d advise against using sepia tone on a food… Read more

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Fight On

Later in this post, I’ll opine on how I think a large conglomerate thought it would benefit itself to be represented by a boxing octopus. But first, this: I think one of the things advertising agencies are worst at is branding themselves. You can take a journey across the Internet and see how different companies… Read more

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X Marks the Lawsuit

There is a minor kerfuffle going on the the marketing world, where Exxon Mobil is suing the new cable network FXX for co-opting the interlocking X pattern of their logo. On its surface, this appears to be quite stupid. A spokesperson for the cable network even poked fun at the lawsuit: “We are confident that… Read more

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Budweiser’s New Beer for Scumbags

Something has been bugging me about the recent Super Bowl, and it isn’t the misguided chatter about how Eli Manning is now a better quarterback than his brother just because Tom Brady threw one bad pass and too many San Francisco 49ers were capable of intercepting him at the same time two weeks ago. No,… Read more

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Social – Google to pay you for going viral. You decide if you’ll pay your friends.

It looks like Google has found a way to make some money off of those YouTube videos that grab hold of the moment and skyrocket to infamy across the web. The good news is that they will be sharing the profits with the creators of these viral darlings. The bad news will likely come when… Read more

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Old Men in Liquor Ads

Seth Stevenson at Slate has a nice review of the Dos Equis ads that are finally getting national attention. I’ve highlighted what I think is the key to these ads below, namely that the spokesperson capitalizes on his dimensionality by admitting he doesn’t always drink beer. What I find more interesting is that older men… Read more

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I work in advertising

Sometimes, I forget how inconsequential my job is in the larger scheme of things. Don’t get me wrong, I like my job. I get to make cool ads for cool products and let’s be honest, advertising dollars are what make most of the entertainment and news in the world available. But, then I overhear conversations… Read more

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Time, Inc’s Made to Order Magazine

This is EXACTLY what the newspaper industry needs to start doing to stay relevant. Time, Inc is offering a magazine composed of content the reader chooses. In this case, you only get to select titles, but the content is selected by the publisher. In the newspaper world, you could select which sections you wanted to… Read more

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