Arguing In Cyberspace

For those of you who like a good argument, I had a nice back and forth with some people on the Copyblogger blog. Copyblogger is a blog for people who are web marketers and want to learn how to do it better.The argument was motivated by a piece called "New Media Model For Creating Lifelong Customers" by Sonia Simone who writes one of the few literate web marketing blogs called Remarkable

Friday Is "Talk To A Naked Copywriter" Day

Here at TAC, we're always looking for better ways to inform and amuse. And, also, we're really tired of having to write a blog every day.So from now on, Friday is going to be Talk To A Naked Copywriter day. Here's how it works: Sometime during the week you, dear reader, send a question or comment about advertising to adcontrarian@gmail.com.TAC will pick one question or comment from those

Feel Free To Pull Your Hair Out

If you're full of shit, it's a great time to be in the advertising business.Advertising has always had a high bullshit factor. But recently we have risen to new levels of achievement.The ascendancy of "branding", "engagement" and "new media" means that nobody knows what the hell anyone else is talking about anymore. There are no actual facts, just mind-numbing jargon and fancy opinions.You can

Cliche Of The Week

If I have to read one more quote from one more brain-dead agency boob with the word “engagement” in it, someone’s going to die.The ”engagement” crowd is trying to convince us that the effectiveness of advertising is highly correlated to the level of “engagement” a consumer has in the surrounding content.Baloney. Ads have to stand on their own. Good ads are good anywhere. Bad ads stink everywhere.

Aren't We Lucky!

You're looking at social psychology professor Daniel Gilbert who directs a laboratory studying the nature of human happiness at Harvard. Dr. Gilbert’s “Stumbling on Happiness” was a best seller for 23 weeks and won the Royal Society Prize for Science Books last year.In an article in The New York Times on Tuesday, Dr. Gilbert said:"What we’ve been seeing in my lab, over and over again, is that

Three Secrets of Creativity

After 100 years in the ad business, I think I know the secrets to being a good creative person.Insomnia: Good ideas come at odd hours. You've got to be awake when they decide to show up.Fear of embarrassment: If you're not afraid of your friends making fun of your work, you'll never be any good.Will: A lot of people have talent. Only a few have the will to impose their talent. These people are

Z

$126,000,000 doesn't buy ya much these days.

The No-Cliche Guarantee

Here at The Ad Contrarian, we have been scanning marketing blogs and are fully fed-up with the jargon and cliches of web marketing. Consequently, we are now offering our loyal readers the only no-cliche guarantee available on the web! When you read TAC , you will never see the following terms:Search Engine Optimization (SEO)User Generated Content (UGC)WidgetGadgetWeb 2.0Anything x.xSurprise and

Newspapers And The Internet

Newspapers are dying and the internet is thriving. Most pundits think this is because the web delivers news faster and in a more interactive way. Baloney.People who are seriously interested in the news still read newspapers. Nobody with half a brain believes he's going to get better news coverage on a website than in a newspaper. The

Times Change. Principles Don't.

Every marketing genius in America is telling us that consumers have become resistant to marketing and advertising, right?Tell that to Apple and Toyota.Here’s what consumers have become resistant to: generic, undifferentiated products supported by smug, benefit-free advertising.We do not have a new breed of humans. What we have is a new breed of marketing people.This new breed has forgotten that

All Poop All The Time

Tuesday we had a post about doody.We had one of our highest readerships ever and the largest number of comments ever. It's pretty clear what you, dear reader, are interested in.From now on, the hell with advertising and marketing...welcome to The Chocolate Channel, where it's all poop all the time.Today's topic: Why does poop stink? (from Smelly-Poop.com)"Poop stinks as a result of the products

The Mysterious Mr. Morans

Our St. Louis office sent us this photo of one of their fellow Missourians.Memo To Self:New product idea --Spell-Check for Magic Markers!

The Real Poop On Marketing

A recent blog by ad broad got me thinking that we may be flushing millions of dollars right down the old crapper.It turns out that in marketing today, poop is some valuable shit.- A big-time Manhattan spa is offering a Japanese-style "Geisha Facial" which features all the goodness of real bird droppings.- Peter Jones, an upscale retailer in London, is offering the world's most expensive cup of

I Hate Art

There, I said it and I'm not sorry.I used to like art. But it's gotten too weird and too gimmicky. When it comes to art I'm a philistine (or as my friend Mikey says, a Finkelstein.)As you've probably surmised, I am talking mainly about contemporary art. Here at TAC Global Headquarters we have a saying: "If it's ugly, pointless and expensive, it must be art."Art does not, as its promoters claim,

Morons And Their Money

As we reported earlier this week, after conducting a 16 month study the geniuses at Comcast and Starcom MediaVest have concluded that people are more likely to watch commercials about products they're interested in. Astounding!In keeping with this insightful finding, I would like to propose the following research studies to Comcast and StarCom Mediavest:A 5-year study to confirm that sweaty feet

Internet Marketing Issues Cleared Up

Thanks to Jon Suson for turning me on to this clip.Finally, someone intelligent explains the key issue concerning online distribution of intellectual property.

Advertising Is Dead And It's Everywhere

Everywhere you look, there's advertising -- on buildings, buses, taxis, t-shirts, dry cleaning bags, sidewalks, hats, and urinals. Advertising, once just a minor annoyance, has now become unrelenting and impossible to escape.And yet new age marketing gurus like Seth Godin can't stop telling us that advertising is dead (see "Let's Buy Seth A Television.")TAC has some theories on why these people

So Bad, It's Good.

Okay, maybe it's not "good." But it will make you laugh.There is a certain type of advertising that is so terrible, it's actually good. Jay Tannenbaum had this spot on his blog last week and it gave me an idea.Please send TAC spots (or links to spots) that are so bad, they're good. I'll post 'em. But we've got to maintain high standards. Bad enough isn't bad enough.

Imagine What They Could Have Found If They Had 17 Months

Listen up people. Here is some astounding news from the frontiers of marketing science.On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that after a 16 month study Comcast and Starcom MediaVest have concluded that people are more likely to watch commercials about products they're interested in.Now you may be asking yourself -- 'what kind of frickin' idiots need a 16-month research study to figure that

The 8-Year-Old Existentialist

Guest blogger Leo Krinsky, age 8, provides our thought for today.LEO: Mom, what's the point of living if we're all going to end up dead?MOM: Uh...LEO: And what's the point of eating delicious food if we just poop it all out?MOM: Uh...LEO: Really, Mom, what's the point of any of this?MOM: Uh...

Dirty Books

My entry last week called "I Didn't Know I Was A Pornographer" reminded me of my first paid writing job. It was for a company in Greenwich Village that published dirty novels. This was before dirty books got promoted to "pornography." I was determined to be a writer and I didn't care what I had to write.There were four of us. The editor was a guy with colorful shirts and earrings. This was

Accidental Branding

Digital media genius Cory Treffiletti (not just a smart guy but, more importantly, a regular TAC reader) wrote a recent post about a new book he reviewed entitled "Accidental Branding".While I haven't read the book (it has not been published yet), it appears to be about something I have discussed here before -- that branding, to a large extent, is a by-product.Here's an excerpt from a piece on

Blogging Blind

I really don't know anything about blogging other than I write something and press the publish button.All that stuff about Trackbacks and Technorati and Feeds and Diggs and Stumblewhatever and who-the-hell-knows-what is a mystery. So I'm trying to learn.I was reading up this afternoon and I found that I've been insulting my readers by not responding to their comments. My feeling has been that by

Gutless Wonders and Bad-Ass Bedwetters

I have spent some time recently reading advertising blogs. For the most part they're a depressing lot. The bloggers tend to fall into two categories:1. Gutless wonders2. Bad-ass bedwettersThe "gutless wonders" are the most depressing. They are bullies who anonymously attack other people and their work, but don't have the balls to state their own names or show their own work.The "bad-ass