If Advertising Isn't Driving You Crazy, You're Not Paying Attention

A little over a year ago my agency pitched an account.

The pitch process took 4 months, entailed 4 different rounds of presentations and included three different consulting companies -- one "search" consultant, one "fee" consultant, and one "production cost" consultant.

Halfway into the pitch process the ceo of the company got fired. They hired a new ceo. He had previously been their ceo but

Currency Across The Ecosystem

Stop the presses.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau, the Association of National Advertisers, and the American Association of Advertising Agencies, along with Bain & Company and MediaLink are banding together in the hope of  "Making Measurement Make Sense."

This should be good for a few laughs.

Apparently, what this fuster-cluck is all about is finding a way to take all the incomprehensible,

The Usual Nonsense

In a piece several weeks ago in Adweek called A Critical Turning Point for Online Video Advertising, a young lady who works for a "digital ad fulfillment company" laments...
"Consumer behavior has shifted, yet online video represents only 7% of the ad market"She further goes on to say...
"In 2010, it became overwhelmingly evident that online video sites had found the right formula for  delivering

Ego Disguised As Advertising

I did a little experiment the other day. I went back and watched Super Bowl spots out of context. In other words, I watched them two weeks after The Big Event.

My hypothesis was this -- in order to get a true perspective on the merits of these spots required me to view them out of the context of hysteria in which they ran.

Because the Super Bowl is such A Big Deal it's easy to lose perspective

Self-Hating Grown-Ups

If there is one thing that truly makes me sick, it's mature people fawning over youth.

I think it started in the 1960's when youth culture became an obsession. Condescending clergymen, misguided commencement speakers, and pandering magazine covers proclaimed the arrival of a new species of human. They were young, caring, involved, and committed. They were going to change the world.

They changed

Intro To My New Book

I recently spent several weeks away from this blog trying to finish up a new book I've been working on called 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising. Here is the intro to the book.

Introduction

The title of this book is 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising. But, as you'll see, there are actually 105. You paid for 101, but you're getting 105. Consequently, you owe me four contrarian ideas.

Slow Company

For some reason, Fast Company has taken it upon itself to publish some of the dumbest articles about advertising I've ever read.

The latest one is called Could 2012 Super Bowl Spots Double Their Impact As iAds?

The article's premise is based on a piece of junk research done by Nielsen (on Apple's behalf) that purports to demonstrate that...
"...Apple's iAds appear to be twice as effective as a