Challenge The Bastards

It's time for all you spineless ad ferrets to get up off your asses and defend yourselves.Yesterday we talked about a new study that laid bare as a fraud the ubiquitous story that TV is dying.Unfortunately, the effect of this story is not just that our newspapers and airwaves have been full of bullshit for the past five years. There have been real-world effects on the lives and livelihoods of

I Love The Web. There, I Said It And I'm Not Sorry.

Because I have not joined the Divine Church of the Internet, and I do not believe it has to vanquish everything in its path to prove its value, many of my readers think I don't like it.I actually love the web. I spend way more time with it than is either prudent or healthy.Here's an example of its power. About three years ago I wrote a book called -- you guessed it -- The Ad Contrarian. In those

Facts Still Matter: The Death And Life Of Television

The New York Times, March 26, 2009: “Even though people have the opportunity to watch video on their computers and cellphones, TV accounts for 99 percent of all video consumed in 2008..."This is a story about a story. A story that has been repeated so many times, in so many places, with so much zeal, that it has taken on a life of its own -- despite the fact that it is false.The theme of the

The One Question Every Client Should Ask And Never Does

Earlier this week in a post called "Clients Ask All The Wrong Questions" I said...Any agency person who's ever participated in a new business pitch has been asked this question: "What is the process you use to develop advertising ideas?"I also said...There may be a process for developing a strategy; there may be a process for developing a media plan; but there is no process for giving birth to an

Advertising And Evolution

Yesterday we started a 2-parter about the death of advertising. We talked about a dumb piece written by a Wharton professor.Today we're going to talk about a smart piece written by Bob Garfield of Ad Age. Bob doesn't actually come out and say that advertising is dead, but he does say, "the post-advertising age is under way." I'm not sure what that means, but he makes a much better case for a

Advertising Is Dead Again

This week there have been two major pieces about the death of advertising. One was very dumb, the other was very smart.The dumb one was by some professor at Wharton with credentials from Cornell and MIT.The smart one was by Bob Garfield of Ad Age. (Give me a wise-ass over a PhD any day.)Let's talk about the dumb one today and the smart one tomorrow.The dumb one is called Why Advertising Is

Clients Ask All The Wrong Questions

Any agency person who's ever participated in a new business pitch has been asked this question: "What is the process you use to develop advertising ideas?"

Any agency person with an ounce of integrity has answered thusly: "Schmuck, there is no process."

In other words, no agency person has ever answered that way.

There may be a process for developing a strategy; there may be a process for

5 Things I Hate About The Web

I love pizza. But I understand that there are things about it that are unpleasant. For one thing, it makes me fat. It also isn't terribly helpful to my general health.I also love the web. But I realize that it, too, has some pretty unpleasant consequences. Here are 5 things I hate about the web.1. The demise of newspapers: There are larger economic issues than just the web responsible for the

It's Not Just An eBook, It's A Free Book

The Ad Contrarian ebook is finally available. It's free and worth every penny.You can download it by clicking here.Some things you should know:1. It's short. You can read it in about an hour. Since most ad people have nothing to do now anyway, you can be done with it by lunch.2. I apologize to those who have been waiting patiently. Like everything ever created for the web, this has taken way

Worse Than Twitter

From Jason Headley:"If you're too fucking lazy to type: http://12seconds.tv/"

Where's The Advertising In Online Advertising?

I have an odd thought about online advertising. What if there's no such thing?What if it's really a whole lot of other things?Let's start at the beginning.In tv, radio or magazines, product marketing is primarily one thing -- ads. Sure, there is some product placement and some pr, but 98% of the "marketing content" is ads.On the web, it's different. There are social media. There are sites and

Ignore The Paperwork

I'm no David Ogilvy, but I've had a reasonably successful advertising career.One of my secrets is to ignore the paperwork. When I'm doing a creative project I never wait for the paper. When it comes, I used it for fact-checking, never for guidance.Often what happens in an agency is that you will meet with a client, you will talk about a project, and then someone will write up a brief and do the

Advertising Reflects Everything

Here in San Francisco we have something called "casual carpools." People line up, you pick them up in your car, and then you can cross the Bay Bridge in the carpool lane.I once picked up a crazy old lady who thought every license plate had a secret meaning. The whole trip she was trying to interpret license plates. "5JNU361. What do you think that means?"The advertising press is like that. They

How To Be A Happy Creative Director

Last week, The Denver Egoist and Scamp both had posts about what makes a good creative director. I thought I'd weigh in on this by re-posting some thoughts I published a few months ago -- not about how to be a good creative director, but how to be a happy one.Six things you need to know if you're going to be a happy, healthy creative director.1. Hiring is everything.If you have terrific people,

Online Advertising Is Like Communism

Every time you read an article or hear a talk about online advertising it always begins the same way:"The web is still in its infancy and we're just figuring out how to use it..."Right.Online advertising is like communism. It's never working very well right now, but it's always going to be great sometime in the future.Advertising Diagramed:Stop The Violence Or I'll Kill YouSixteen adults and

The 2 Most Important Words In Advertising

I've never been to ad school or art school.I've never taken a course in copywriting or design.I've never read a text book about marketing or strategy or account planning or media.So I have no idea if what I'm about to say is commonly taught in classrooms and how-to advertising books, or if it's just some heresy I made up.Creativity is very important in advertising. Strategy is very important in

What About The Research?

Last week I wrote about the Tropicana package massacre.The question I would love to have the answer to is this: What about the research?I've been around Pepsi people (the owners of Tropicana) and their kind, and I can assure you they don't wipe themselves without first researching which hand consumers prefer.Somewhere, I guarantee you, there is a very big deck that demonstrates conclusively that

Introducing Fritter. It's Even F***ing Stupider Than Twitter!

Here at Ad Contrarian global headquarters, we're always looking to improve the lives of our readers. Now we're developing something we think you're going to like. It's called Fritter. The idea behind Fritter is to enable you to waste enormous quantities of time publishing self-absorbed ruminations (just like Twitter) -- but the difference is, you can do it without involving others. (Kind of like

The Postmodern Ad Contrarian

It's a rainy Sunday afternoon and the basketball game isn't on for another couple of hours, and I haven't taken a shower yet because I've been writing all day, and I'm too lazy to finish the CD I've been working on or walk the dog, and I can't stand the thought of reading all the emails I've been ignoring all week, and my wife is at some ballet thing, and I'm saving The Times crossword for later,

My New Facebook Strategy

Half my Facebook friends I don't know. The other half I don't like. So I'm thinking about a new strategy for my Facebook page.It started a few weeks ago when I decided to cull my 'friends.'First I unfriended everyone who was using Facebook to Twitter. (Here's a tip. Nobody gives a shit that it's sunny in your fucking backyard, okay?)Then I unfriended everyone who used Facebook to bore the shit

Traditional vs Digital Smackdown

The subject of today’s sermon is going to be the effectiveness of traditional advertising versus some types of non-traditional online advertising. Before we begin, however, a few caveats:1. Don’t be afraid of the graph. I know ad people see a graph and their brains start to hemorrhage. Just be cool, I’ll explain it.2. I am excluding “search” from this discussion. I don’t know what the hell search

Research Proves Advertising Makes You Happier

Working in advertising may be a living hell, but apparently viewing it is a little slice of heaven.At least that's what an article in The New York Times reported yesterday. They quoted two new research studies that claim to prove that advertising actually improves peoples' enjoyment of television."In one experiment... New York University, had 87 undergraduates watch an episode of the sitcom “

The ROI On Bullshit

It seems that Twitter has now become an essential business tool.An article* appeared in AdAge last week entitled "When Calculating Twitter's ROI, Don't Forget Its Change on Organizations." The article began by asking the following question:"What's the bigger idea: social media as marketing stimulus or social media as a way to innovate business processes? "Personally, I believe the correct answer

The Two Elements Of Advertising

The natural world as we know it is composed of 117 elements. Some of these elements we are very familiar with, e.g. oxygen, gold, carbon. Some we have never heard of -- meitnerium, darmstadtium and ununquadium.Some elements occur naturally and are all around us. Nitrogen, for example, comprises about 75% of the air we breathe. Some we can only create for millionths of a second by smashing atoms