Sure To Fail

According to The New York Times, diving into the pool of idiotic online ideas this week is Coors Light. They are launching a "Code Blue" social media application on Facebook.“We talk a lot internally about ‘360-ing’ our innovations,” said Andy England, chief marketing officer at Coors Brewing...Wow. 360-ing the innovations.And what exactly is this innovation? It's the label that turns blue when

The First Annual TAC Pledge Drive

Here at TAC, we work hours and hours every day (okay, minutes and minutes on weekdays) to provide you with the kind of crabby, peevish, crusty, grumpy, and grouchy opinions you need to get your advertising day off on the wrong foot. And, in advertising, if it wasn't for the wrong foot, we wouldn't have any foot at all.Here's what we need you to do. See that silly orange thing on the right near

Don't Miss This

The Ad Contrarian was a guest blogger on Copyblogger yesterday. Be sure to check it out.

Everything You Need To Know About Branding On One Little Page

I’ve been accused of being brand illiterate, brand insensitive, brand averse, and otherwise ignorant of the power and meaning of brands.I plead kinda not guilty.My beef with the brand babblers is not about the importance of brands, but about how you build them.To get some ammunition for my argument, I decided to do some research. I went to Amazon and I typed in the word branding. Up popped 29,777

Our Thought For Today

I used to work with a guy who said, "In advertising, nothing very good or very bad lasts very long."I guess he never met George Zimmer.

You Can't Stop The Graph

"Ad Contrarian," people often say to me, "how come you're always so nonchalant while the rest of us are so aggravated?"I say, "Sit down my friend and let's talk." Then I light my pipe, kick off my slippers, and sit back in my rocker."We humans have been around this sorry planet for about 200,000 years. The planet has been around for 4.5 billion years. So what portion of the Earth's life have we

Rock 'n Roll Officially Dead

Over the years, the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame has made some inexplicable decisions -- Blondie (yuk), The Mamas and the Papas (triple gooey yuk), Leonard Cohen (rock 'n roll?), Miles Davis (huh?) But this year, they went too far. Apparently, for the first time, they let deaf people vote.Electing The Dave Clark Five to the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame is like electing Neifi Perez to the Baseball Hall

Jupiter

In case you think what you're doing is important

All The Lonely People

Is there anything more pathetic than "social media?"Way back in the old days, there were chat rooms. You went on line and talked with people you didn't know. It was like dialing random phone numbers and chatting with strangers.Now that people are bored with Facebook and MySpace, Twitter is all the rage. Following the pathetic lives of dorks, 140 characters at a time.TAC predicts that social

Million-Dollar Ideas -- Free Today Only!

As an ongoing service to our loyal readers, TAC has a few ideas that can make you lots of money. They won't make me a dime because I'm too damn lazy. Go ahead and use 'em. Just send me a check sometime.Supermarkets: Hey supermarket manager, you've got it all wrong. Why make things easy for your unprofitable customers and annoy the shit out of your profitable ones? Why have express lanes for

A Banner Day (Not)

On September 21, 2007, in a post called The Backlash Will Come we wrote the following:It's not going to take advertisers long to figure out that on-line display advertising has been a failure as an interactive medium (see Two In A Thousand.) It can't sustain its growth for long with a response rate under 2 in a thousand unless it's willing to take big cuts in cpm... It may not be this week or

You Can't Be Everybody's Girlfriend

Running an independent ad agency is hard. That's why there are so few successful ones. The reason it's tough is that the market for independent agencies has diminished radically. Not long ago Y&R had the largest share of the ad market in the US -- 1.5%. Today, five global holding companies control over 75% of the ad market.Big clients are constitutionally predisposed to big agencies. They believe

How To Annoy 40,000 People

I am a sports fan and a patriot. I go to lots of games. But if I have to sit through one more excruciating interpretation of The Star Spangled Banner I may never go back.If you are ever asked to sing the national anthem at a ballgame please follow these guidelines:Sing the melody. Songs have melodies for a reason. Your improvisations are not improvements. Trust me on this.Don't gargle. This

Talk To A Naked Copywriter, #2

Dear Naked C:I have been a Big Agency Art Director almost 5 years and I still can't figure out what account people do. Can you help? BAADDear BAAD,Good. Yes, I can help.The account person has a very important job. It is to keep the client occupied until the creatives can get around to doing the work.In this day and age, creatives have many more responsibilities than ever before. This includes

Worst Of The Web

My first nominee for worst use of the web, 2008, goes to Ritz-Carlton.Back in March we wrote a post called "This Film Is Rated T For Torture" about an abominable "web film" done by Ritz-Carlton.Well, they couldn't leave bad enough alone. They've released another one called "Last Night" and it's every bit as excruciating.These films, which had to cost hundreds of thousands -- if not millions -- to

The Unknown Secret To Successful Advertising

I am about to reveal the marketing secret that has made me fabulously famous, ridiculously wealthy, and internationally handsome.Drum roll, please...Target the heavy user, stupid.It is a simple idea that so few clients and agencies understand. The heavy user* in your category usually......represents only about 30% of the customers, but...probably represents about 70% of money spent in the

Online Advertisers: Don't Read This.

In our never-ending battle to poke holes in the holy religion of Online, we try to bring you real, actual facts. You remember them? They're not as easy to come by as glib, fashionable opinions, but they have the novel benefit of being true.Unfortunately, religions don't place much value on facts. So if you're a committed Online-ist or a Traditional-Advertising-Is-Dead Head, we recommend you click

Obama's Secret Weapon Revealed

According to some marketing geniuses, granola may be the secret behind Barack Obama's success against Hillary Clinton.The New York Times reports that political analysts have determined that if you like butter, white wine and Fig Newtons, you were more likely to vote for Hillary. On the other hand, if you preferred olive oil, granola and a latte you probably went for Obama.How about the general

Keeping America Safe For Advertising

TAC is on emergency field duty in NYC. Until we return on Monday we will, once again, leave you to contemplate The Ad Contrarian mantra:We don't get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product.

Conversation With A CEO

The following is an imaginary conversation between The Ad Contrarian and a company CEO.CEO: Okay, why did you drag me down here?TAC: I want to talk to you about advertising.CEO: I have a marketing department for that.TAC: Advertising is too important to be left to the marketing department.CEO: What's so important about it?TAC: It's your company's public personality. Nothing's more important.CEO:

I Love To Say "I Told You So"

On August 1, 2007, in response to all the "advertising is dead" idiocy appearing in every newspaper and trade publication, TAC wrote a blog entry called "The End of the World." In it, we said the following:It will soon become apparent that the advertising industry, far from dying, is in a substantial growth period. It will be re-energized, redefined, and creatively refreshed by the diversity of

Three Words

In a post yesterday, Seth Godin defined "great marketing" in four words: Make Big Promises, Overdeliver. In the blog he said, "If you can define great marketing in fewer words than that, you win."I don't know what I win, but I'd like to take a crack at it.There's a blues song that goes like this:Feelin’ goodFeelin’ goodAll the money in the world spent onFeelin’ good*The guy who wrote that lyric

Talk To A Naked Copywriter, #1

This is the first installment of a new feature here at TAC. Each Friday, a comment or question from our readers will be replied to by a naked copywriter.Dear Naked,When did so much science come into making a sale? When I was selling door-to-door newspaper subscriptions as a kid I was given a script to follow. When I followed it, I couldn’t sell a thing. When I went by my gut, I killed.The same

Schmoozefest '08

The advertising industry is having its annual schmoozefest this week at the the AAAA's 2008 Leadership Conference in Laguna Niguel, CA.Every self-important, overfed agency grandee will be there. There'll be lots of inane speeches about how advertising needs to embrace the future and how digital is changing everything (golly!)I once went to one of these things and felt like killing myself.There is