Big Brother Has Arrived, And He's Us.

You can find my latest stab at biting the hand that feeds me in Adweek today. Here's the link.

Things Other Than Blogging

I'm going to be spending the next several weeks with my computer turned off (okay, turned somewhat off) doing things other than blogging.  I will be posting intermittently, if at all.

Keep the faith, baby.

The Facebook Enigma

An online article from The Wall Street Journal yesterday called "Valuing Facebook's Ads" reinforces the nagging doubts I have about the value of advertising on Facebook.

Amazingly, Facebook has a 24 share of all display advertising on the web. This is more than twice the share of its next rival.

The problem, though, is that it only has a 9.5 share of display advertising dollars.

In other words

Beating Their Heads Against The Wall

For several years now, we at Ad Contrarian Global Headquarters have been ranting about the astonishing stupidity of marketers for relentlessly chasing young people and ignoring people over 50.

Just to recap the case:
People over 50 control over 75% of the financial assets of the US.
Baby boomers dominate 94% of all consumer packaged goods categories.
They purchase almost 40% of consumer packaged

Emotion Is A Response, Not A Stimulus

In the early to mid 90's, Toyota and General Motors shared a manufacturing facility in Fremont, CA. The plant had a line that built the Toyota Corolla and the (Chevrolet) Geo Prizm. It was the same vehicle, built at the same facility, by the same people. At the end of the production line some cars got the Corolla badge and some got the Prizm badge.

At one point, the Corolla sold for $1,500 more.

Funky Friday

Research or Baloney?
In Nielsen's "Three Screen Report" for Q4 2009, there was a number that confused the hell out of me.

According to their data, between Q1 2009 and Q4 2009, average time spent on the internet dropped about 10% from 29 minutes a day to about 26 1/2 minutes a day.

This seemed impossible to me. For this reason, I left the number out of my post about the report.

It turns out

A Book Called Dignity

I think you will enjoy a short video done by our staff in support of a book called Dignity. The book honors indigenous peoples around the world and celebrates Amnesty International's 50th anniversary. It was shot by Dana Gluckstein.


Credits:
Creative Director: Miles Turpin
Art Director: James Cabral
Writers: Desmond Tutu, Oliver Albrecht
Editor: Nic Bucci
Producer: Jay Cortez
V/O: Hugh

Facts Are Old School

I was recently told an interesting story by a business associate. A woman this guy knows is an executive at one of the world's most well-known corporations.

Although she is very high up, the corporation is so big that there are a substantial number of people at the corporate level who are above her in the pecking order.

Recently she made a presentation to the upper echelon of corporate

Champions

Congratulations to the World Series Champion San Francisco Giants.


(Only 15 weeks till spring training.)

The Politics Of Advertising

Tuesday is Election Day. Thankfully, we will be rid of some of the most awful, cynical advertising I've ever seen.

Political advertising has been horrifying for a long time now. But it has reached a level of nastiness and deception that I believe is unprecedented.

Politicians of both parties rarely even bother to state their cases any more. They just focus on driving up their opponents' "

The Friday Fog

Living In A Fog
As I suspected, my post on Wednesday called The True Cost Of Social Media created hysteria among the lunatic fringe of the social media set. These people have the reading comprehension of 2nd graders and analytical ability of toasters.

My point in the post was not that social media is worthless or always requires large expenditures of money. My point was that social media is not

The True Cost Of Social Media

The great thing about social media is that it is a way for nimble brands to do significant, effective marketing without spending tons of money. Right?

Please, don't make me laugh.

Just for the heck of it, let's take a look at the 28 most popular brands on Facebook and see what they have in common.

1. Starbucks
2. Coca Cola
3. Oreo
4. Skittles
5. Red Bull
6. Victoria's Secret
7. Disney
8.

Gossage Must Be Spinning

Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I am less than enthusiastic about the magic of web advertising and pretty impressed by the staying power of television.

This leads a lot of people to assume that I am a heavy user of television and an unenthusiastic web user. The truth is exactly the opposite. I actually watch very little television and spend way too much time on the web.

Last

Touched By A Genius

The horrors of the advertising business, a compelling National League pennant race, and an obsession to re-write every one of these goddamn posts five times, have conspired to give me a nice variety of unwholesome reasons for not doing any serious reading lately.

However, last week on vacation I picked up Philip Roth's Pulitzer winning novel American Pastoral. It is simply a work of amazing

Freakin' Friday

Bullshit Artists At Work
According to Bloomberg, Google (whose motto is "Don't Be Evil") cut its US taxes by over $3 billion in the past three years by using sneaky but legal off-shore tax gimmicks. That's billion with a b.

The report claims that Google's overseas tax rate is about 2.4%. Between federal and state taxes, my company pays about 45% of our profits in taxes.

Do you wonder why small

3 Secrets Of Creativity

After 100 years in the ad business I think I've discovered the secrets to being a good creative person.
Insomnia -- Good ideas come at odd hours. You've got to be awake when they 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

The Loud Get Louder. The Meek Get Meeker.

Not long ago, the only people who had to listen to my aberrant ramblings were the 90 or so people who worked with me. Now there are several thousand people who suffer my opinions four or five times a week. The internet is a great medium for opinionated loudmouths.

One of the problems, however, is that while the web serves as an amplifier for a certain type of person, it also serves as a muzzle

The Digital Dream World

My column, The Digital Dream World, can be found here today, in Adweek's online edition.

Attack Dogs On The Loose

As predicted here recently in Is The Pendulum Swinging?, web maniacs are going bonkers over Malcolm Gladwell's piece in The New Yorker called "Small Change."
From the Huffington Post to the most obscure dirty-basement bloggers, the digi-nutjobs are coming out in full force against Gladwell.
Gladwell dared to question the orthodoxy of web fundamentalism and is paying the price.
These people are

The Future Is Behind Us

Memo To Staff:
For several years now, we have been known as the agency of the future. How can we claim this? Because it says so right on our website!
It has not been easy being the agency of the future. But thanks to our commitment to empowering our empowerment, and tearing down walls, and breaking down silos, and updating our Facebook page, and Content Technology, Search, CMS, WCM, MRX, ECM,

Is Facebook Hurting Web Advertising?

I have another crazy theory.

I think Facebook is having a negative effect on the development of web advertising.

I think that most of us who do not have a vested interest in promoting web advertising believe that, with the exception of search, it has thus far been a disappointment. For obvious reasons, few of us are willing to stand up and say this out loud.

Nonetheless, I have very little

How Social Media Controls Everything

A reader has written to me and said,
"Dear Ad Contrarian, I go to marketing meetings every day. Often there are very bewildering slides presented. Just between you and me, I have no idea what these slides mean.  But all my bosses keep nodding their heads and saying, "Hmm, that's interesting."

I am afraid that if I don't have intimidating slides pretty soon, I'm going to be thrown out of the

I Hate The iPhone

Everything I Don't Need, Nothing I Do
I have been an iPhone user since its inception. As I've written before in this space, I hate the damn thing. It is the most unreliable, frustrating, crappy piece of shit Apple has ever made.

Unfortunately for me, everything else in my office is an Apple product and for the sake of connectivity I'm stuck with using the iPhone.

It has all the stuff I don't

Junk Research, Shabby Journalism, And Social Media

Recently, a colleague sent me an article from Fast Company called What Women Want: Facebook Ads!
 
The article was about the amazing ability of Facebook to influence female consumers.
"Businesses may have once had to guess how their ads are being received, but no longer..." ...is how Fast Company put it.

The article ran in January of this year and at first glance offers a pretty impressive

The Creativity Of Criminals

The songwriter Randy Newman once composed a song called "Naked Man." The song was inspired by a true criminal case.

A woman was walking down a street in New Orleans. Suddenly, a completely naked man came charging at her, grabbed her purse, and ran away with it. A few minutes later, and a few blocks away, the police nabbed the naked man with the purse.

At his trial, he put up an astonishingly

The Clients Have Won

Since I started in the agency business back in 1776, I've been aware of a subtle but undeniable tension between clients and agencies over who would control the culture of advertising.

Because the agencies make the advertising, they feel they should control the ethos. Because the clients pay for the advertising, they feel they should control it. Nobody ever comes out and actually says these

Ridiculous Old Idiot Jackass

On Monday I wrote that there are very few activities more futile than trying to talk sense to a zealot.

True believers don't need facts. They've already made up their minds. They know.

They don't practice critical thinking, they're already convinced. They don't have skeptical minds, they're committed.

So if all their friends, and all the authorities, and all the people they come into contact

Is The Pendulum Swinging?

I'm sure web maniacs must be having a hysterectomy over a piece in the New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell called Small Change.

Gladwell challenges some of the nonsense of social media zealots about the web's power to affect important social changes.

I am not going to waste your time by writing a crappy abbreviated version of it. Instead you should read it.

Also, I suggest you read "The Rise of

Take Me To Your Head Of The Office For Outer Space Affairs

Mazlan Othman, a Malaysian astrophysicist, is head of the UN’s Office for Outer Space Affairs. According to published reports, Ms. Othman is going to be responsible for co-ordinating mankind's response when extraterrestrials land.

Now, if you ask me, when the little green men come calling, they're going to talk to whomever the hell they want.

While the naive plans of the bureaucrats at the

The Results Are In

Here are the results from the poll we did last week. The results are listed in descending order from most surprising to least.

Question: Which of the "Top 10 Double Secret Facts" surprised you most?

1. (17.35%) TV viewers are no more likely to leave the room during a commercial break than they are before or after the break.

2. (16.69%) Baby boomers dominate 94% of all consumer packaged goods

The Religion Of Marketing

Societies go through cycles of tolerance and intolerance. We see this phenomenon most clearly in the areas of politics and religion.

The cycle is often magnified in highly stressed systems, like the old Soviet Union. There would be periods of Stalinism followed by periods of glasnost.

One of the interesting aspects of the phenomenon is that the most severe forms of intolerant orthodoxy are

Good News Friday

It's Friday and I have good news!

Good News For Gals
In case of emergency, just take your bra off!

This week a great new product was introduced called the Emergency Bra. It's a bra that turns into a gas mask.

That's right, you can't make this shit up.

"You have to be prepared all the time, at any place, at any moment, and practically every woman wears a bra," said the inventor of the

Analyzing Everything And Understanding Nothing

Sometime in the near future, advertising pundits will look back at the current era and reach the conclusion that we blew it.

They'll say we were focused on everything but the problem.

We had dashboards and metrics and click-throughs and webisodes and branded entertainment and a whole galaxy of new and used media outlets...but what we didn't have was very good advertising.

It seems silly to

I Heart NY

My favorite New York City joke goes like this:

A visitor to NYC is lost and walking down Broadway. He stops a New Yorker. "Excuse me," he says, "can you tell me where the Plaza Hotel is or should I go fuck myself?"

Last week, two of my partners and I were in New York for some meetings.

One evening, about midnight, on the way back to our hotel after a lovely dinner, one of my partners slipped

Just The Facts

Some digital genius in New York is trying to hitchhike his way to glory on the back of my Top 10 Double-Secret Unknown Facts About Advertising. He claims to refute "every one" of my 10 points.

What he is actually doing is not refuting the facts at all, but creating the usual excuses and explanations and digressions to account for the facts.

First he spammed my blog with a link to his brilliant

What Surprised You Most?

Last week, we ran a post called Top 10 Double-Secret Unknown Facts About Advertising. It was quite popular and was tweeted and re-tweeted a lot.

I am curious to know which of the facts surprised you most?

Please take a minute to click on the facts you found most surprising. You can select up to three.

You can also send this poll to others by clicking on the "Share This" button near the "Vote"

Wankfest 3000

If you're like me, you get about 5 emails a day imploring you to go to some horrifying conference about The History of Search Engine Optimization or some equally terrifying subject.

Usually, these conferences are produced by amateur bullshit artists like the 4As, and feature speakers who are also amateur bullshit artists -- like agency CEOs and digital masters of the universe.

But what if

Top 10 Double-Secret Unknown Facts About Advertising

As all AdContras know, the marketing and advertising industries have been hijacked by web-addled digi-maniacs who don't know a fact from a fart.

Those of us who like to operate our businesses on the basis of facts, not "buzz"' and baloney, are in an ongoing state of war with web marketing hustlers and their endless feedback loop of misleading information.

So, as a service to my loyal,

Advertising In The Age Of Hysteria

Today's post, Advertising In The Age Of Hysteria, can be found here.

Ad Contrarian Sells Out

The other day I did a little calculation of the benefits I have accrued from writing this blog.  Here's how it turned out:
Dollars earned...........................................................0
Clients won................................................................0
Fabulous tables at elegant restaurants.....................0
Invitations to be on "expert panels".........................0

The Amazing, Invisible TiVo Effect

 "...advertisers and television programmers must devise new strategies for combating the potentially disastrous effects of ad skipping." Jupiter Media
No technological development has created more hysteria and hand-wringing in the ad industry than the adoption of the DVR.

Over the past few years, the science department here at Ad Contrarian World Heaqdquarters has tried to counterbalance the

Friday Is My Day

Okay, But What Will The Fourth Half Be?
At some big Google supergeek festival yesterday, Master of the Universe Sergey Brin said he wants Google to become the "third half of your brain."

More Eco-Scammers
Last week we wrote a post called The Eco-Marketing Scam about the hypocrisy of "green" corporations. Well, they're not alone. Our civic leaders are apparently equally capable of eco-hypocrisy

Yet Another Crank Theory

If you've been alive more than 45 minutes you've probably noticed something -- people do really stupid shit.

I don't mean stupid like misspelling February. I mean stupid like shooting meth, or piercing their eyelids, or watching Entertainment Tonight. The kind of stupid that can kill you or turn you into a zombie.

If you look deeply enough into any one person's life, I'm pretty sure you can

Same Clowns, Different Circus

First I need to say that I don't know a thing about the break-up of Carmichael Lynch and Harley-Davidson.

Next, I'm going to pretend that I do.

Carmichael Lynch resigned the Harley-Davidson account last week. They had done terrific work for them for decades.

While the client didn't say, "the world is changing and these guys can't give us anything new," and the agency didn't come out and say,

Everything Is Backwards

The Value of Education
A study by the Bureau of Motor Vehicles in the state of Indiana revealed that drivers under the age of 18 who took a driver's education course had nearly four times the number of car crashes as those who didn't.

Good Thing Obama Didn't Run For Middle School President
According to ABC News...the Nettleton (Mississippi) Middle School has a policy in which...
"... only white

The Eco-Marketing Scam

Here at Ad Contrarian World Headquarters, we bow to no man in our appreciation of ducks and trees and beavers and lilacs and swamps and mud and bunnies and oxygen.

However, we also harbor deep suspicions about people who make a public spectacle of their supposed dedication to environmental purity. As far as we're concerned, the philosophical underpinnings of a virtuous life can be summed up very

Advertising's Final Solution

Good news!

We no longer need creative people in advertising.

We can finally get rid of those annoying, whiney, pains-in-the-ass.

According to The New York Times there's a new software program developed by an agency called BETC Euro RSCG,  that can generate advertising by itself.

But before we get to the software, let's talk about the agency for a minute.

Does an agency really need 8 initials

Does Your Brand Truly Care? Truly?

Last weekend I read a blog post in the American Express Open Forum. It was called Serving Is the New Selling: How to be a 'Brand Butler.'

That's right -- a 'Brand Butler.'

Here's what I learned...
"...customers expect that the brands they do business with truly care." Thank goodness someone in marketing finally gets it!

I want my brands to truly care about me! That's right, ME! I've had it

Leveraging Anxiety, Part 3

In the first two episodes (one and two) of this exciting story, we alleged that:
Creating client anxiety about the future helps keep us employed.
We maintain this level of anxiety by frequently declaring that something new "will change everything."
In fact, the things that are supposed to change everything generally have a modest effect on overall consumer behavior.
Then we asked the question

Leveraging Anxiety, Part 2

In Leveraging Anxiety, Part 1, we asserted that...
Part of what keeps us...employed is keeping our clients in a constant state of anxiety about the future....The more we can convince (them) that everything is changing... and they need us to interpret the changes -- the longer we stay in business. Consequently, every few years we come up with a new "thing that will change everything"Today,

Leveraging Anxiety, Part 1

Part of how we advertising and marketing hacks stay employed is by keeping our clients in a constant state of anxiety about the future.

The more we can convince our clients that everything is changing around them -- and they need us to interpret the changes -- the longer we stay in business.

Consequently, every few years we come up with a new "thing that will change everything" to get them

Why Is Advertising So Crappy?

Like most sensible people, here at The Ad Contrarian world headquarters we do our best to avoid advertising.

This keeps getting harder and harder.

Despite all the witless proclamations of new age marketing gurus about the death of advertising, advertising isn't just growing, it's metastasising.  Every click of a mouse brings us at least three ads. TV watching is at its highest level ever. Every

The "Give-Up" Strategy, Part 2

If you can't hit homers, declare that the object of the game has changed, and it's really all about good bunting. There are a number of popular beliefs behind new age, web-centric marketing thinking. They include the following:
The era of mass marketing & advertising is over
Markets are "conversations"
Consumers seek "relationships" with brands
The furtherance of this relationship is

The "Give-Up" Strategy, Part 1

Among my least favorite aspects of new age web-centric marketing philosophy is the idea that the "big idea" is dead.

According to Seth Godin
The secret of big-time advertising during the 1960s and ’70s was the “big idea.” In A Big Life in Advertising, ad legend Mary Wells Lawrence writes, “... our goal was to have big, breakthrough ideas, not just to do good advertising. I wanted to

6 Things A Creative Director Needs To Know

Here are 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 the advertising business isn’t that difficult. If you have mediocrities advertising is impossible. For your own self-preservation you must get rid of bad people and hire good ones. There is no other way to do good work and have a happy life.

The Conversation: Is Anyone Listening?

For the past few years, the marketing and advertising industries have been obsessed with the idea that marketing is a "conversation" and that consumers want a "relationship" with brands and companies.

Of course, being the dick that I am, I've gone out of my way to ridicule this obsession.

What if I said to all you conversation/relationship maniacs that most companies...
Dramatically

A Good Reason To End It All Now

If you are looking for a good excuse to stick a knife in your head, I can confidently recommend reading an article in Adweek this week called "Talking Tradigital."

That's right, tradigital. 

Apparently "tradigital" is the new Cringe-Inducing-Buzzword-Of-The-Week among the digi-drivel set. For sheer lexical horribleness, it will surely take its place right up there with "infotainment."

You Can't Handle The Truth

If The Wall Street Journal is correct, the federal government is covering-up its knowledge of the falsity of sensational accounts of "unintended acceleration" in Toyota vehicles.

Earlier this year, Toyota acknowledged that it had problems with floor mats that might interfere with gas pedals and condensation in pedal housing that might briefly cause a pedal to stick. It recalled all vehicles that

Doing My Twitter Homework

In my never-ending quest to educate myself on the many marketing marvels that Twitter affords, I decided to do a little homework last week.
 
I read an article called What Your Company's Twitter Account Says About You. Foolishly, I had never stopped to think about what my company's Twitter account might be saying about me. Here are some of the things I learned.
If your Twitter feed is "...mostly

Clownsourcing

There is no shortage of idiotic online schemes.

The latest one to draw the hysterical attention of the advertising trade media is "crowdsourcing." Crowdsourcing is essentially a way to get unemployed free-lancers to work for you on the cheap. If that's your idea of a good time, have at it.

I have it on pretty good authority that one of the first major ventures into clownsourcing has been a

The Power Of Old Media

At the beginning of July, before Apple offered the world free "bumpers,"  I wrote a post called Apple Playing With Fire.

The thrust of the post was that Apple had better deal with its antenna problem. At the time, Apple was doing its usual stonewall.

Then something happened. As The New York Times reported, on July 18th...
The iPhone’s antenna problems might have remained a dust-up between

Old Spice Campaign Smelling Better

Here at The Ad Contrarian world headquarters, we try to stay as far away from "Rate-A-Record" as possible.

If you want to know what some blognozzle (thank you, George) thinks about some ad, there are about a trillion blogs for that. I don't know what the hell this blog is about, but it definitely isn't about that.

Nonetheless, last week, in the course of writing about some results I saw

The Amazing Blindness of Marketers

One of the long-running themes of this blog is how the marketing and advertising world have lost touch with reality .

There are two major manifestations of this disconnection. As you might expect from an industry as confused as ours, they are contradictory.

First is the delusional religion of the shiny new object. It is a tendency to fall in love with whatever is new. It is a future-fantasy

Old Spice Numbers Smell Fishy

I've been on vacation for a while, but I've noticed a lot of web fuss about the Old Spice Red Zone After Hours Body Wash campaign. The one with that guy who looks just like me.

In case you've been even further from civilization than I have, the campaign has been an advertising and media sensation, winning major awards and poking its head into every corner of the social web.

Well, according

Emotional Connections vs. Logical Connections

I've been on vacation for a while and I know some of you need a little something to get upset about, so here's a little piece of past contrariana.

On many occasions I have poked fun at "branding," "brand babble" and their many incompetent practitioners. And while that is great fun, there are some serious points to be made.



There are a few product categories that are highly reliant on brand

The Omnicom-Google Deal

For years now (it only seems like decades) The Ad Contrarian has been warning* marketers about the questionable effectiveness of web advertising and the unprincipled, self-serving cheerleading for online advertising that has been going on in the advertising industry.

Now, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a major deal has been struck between Omnicom and Google worth hundreds of millions

Sudden Unintended Hysteria

The editorial board here at Ad Contrarian world headquarters is getting a little full of itself lately.

For the second time this week, stuff we have written has turned out to be prophetic.

In March, we posted 4 columns (you can read them here: #1, #2, #3 & #4) about the hysterical, inaccurate, irresponsible press reporting of alleged Toyota "sudden unintended acceleration."

Those if us with

Sometimes Even Bloggers Are Right

Here at Ad Contrarian World Headquarters there is no more pleasant surprise than finding out that something we've been howling about for years turns out to be right.

Those of you who have read my semi-brilliant book, The Ad Contrarian (which you can download free right here) know that one of the three principles I espouse is this:
"Advertising messages should be created for, and directed at, the

Apple Playing With Fire

On October 30, 2009, I wrote a post about the unreliability of the iPhone....
Someone left me a voice mail at 3:30 yesterday afternoon. It didn't arrive at my iPhone until 7:55 this morning. That's 16 hours and 25 minutes later. I'm really getting tired of this shit....Here's the thing, Steve. I don't need an app that tells me what my fucking sperm count is, or when Jupiter crosses the

Perfect Storm of Hysteria

Last year we witnessed a perfect storm of hysteria.

Unhinged "experts" and feverish media outlets conspired to enhance their self-importance in a worldwide hysteriafest called "swine flu."

The World Health Organization announced: "All of humanity under threat."

Here at Ad Contrarian World Headquarters, our Global Science Division was busy ridiculing these overwrought maniacs. We told our

Three Years Old And Still Not Potty Trained

Today is the third anniversary of The Ad Contrarian blog. It's nice to still be alive after three years.

Here are some thoughts from a post I wrote on the first anniversary of this blog. They're still true:
Ten days into it I thought I had run out of things to say. Apparently I have a bigger mouth than I imagined. Five Things I've Learned About Blogging This Year:
It ain't easy being

Crazy Blogger Uncovers Evil Sexist Plot

The web advertising bubble is out of control, right?

Anyone who looks at the facts about web advertising has to conclude that while there are some people who know what they're doing, most web advertisers might as well stand on the roof and make paper airplanes out of thousand dollar bills.

So the other night I had a thought.

What if this whole web advertising thing is a big, fat sexist

Social Media Guru Disses Social Media Gurus

You can put this in your "You Can't Make This Shit Up" file.

Here we have a a social media guru sitting beach side in Cannes -- at her fabulous corporate cafe -- talking shit about social media gurus.

She tells us that social media gurus are full of crap, then she goes on to give a tour de force performance in impenetrable, incomprehensible social media gibberish...
"...interface and

Just Wait, You'll See

Here at Ad Contrarian World Headquarters, we've been at war with the "new age" advertising crowd for almost 3 years now.

They still can't understand the distinction between the popularity of the web and the dismal record of web advertising. They think that because the internet has become pervasive, internet advertising must be similarly powerful.

They are wrong.

We all learned to ignore banner

Nielsen Buries The Lead

The advertising industry is so intent on pumping up (some might say pimping up) web and mobile video, they can't even see the real world anymore.

Nielsen's "Three Screen Report" (which reports on TV, web, and mobile screen usage) for the first quarter of 2010 has some astounding data about viewing habits. But you'd never know it from reading their conclusions.

Here are the facts I found

How To Be Fabulously Successful

People often say to me, "Ad Contrarian, how can I be a fabulously successful online copywriter like you?"

Well, I'm here to tell you that you, too, can be famous and make millions of dollars and have super-hot nymphos crawling all over you.

What's the secret to online copywriting success? First, you need some words. Words are the building blocks of writing! Without words, writing is a

Why Clients Are Always Confused

A few weeks ago I wrote a post called "Why Creatives Are Always Confused." Today, it's clients' turn.

I have been in the advertising business now for about 200 years.

One of my quests while serving this lengthy sentence has been to try to find some universal truths about advertising. So far I've come up empty.

If someone like me -- who spends 14 hours a day thinking about advertising -- is

The Value Of A Customer's Hat

Yesterday, we talked about my problems with a study called The Value Of A Facebook Fan: An Empirical Review produced by a company called Syncapse. It purported to calculate a value for Facebook fanhood. Today we'll discuss another problem with the study.
 
After 18 pages of charts and graphs and marketing babble that occasionally resembles English, Syncapse concludes that the average

The Value Of A Facebook Fan

This weekend I had the misfortune of reading a mind-numbing piece of work called "The Value Of A Facebook Fan: An Empirical Review" by a company called Syncapse.

I knew this report would be a lot of bluff and bananas when I saw the word "empirical" in the title.

Syncapse modestly describes itself as "a global leader in the areas of community building, technology solutions, and digital

Advertising Is A Good History Teacher

Advertising is a good history teacher.

One of the lessons our teachers and history professors always try to impress on us -- usually fruitlessly -- is that it is very tricky to judge the past by applying contemporary standards.

Advertising teaches this wonderfully.

A few days ago, one of my readers (CaliforniaGirl) sent a link to a post she had written.

The post was about past ads that

Social Mediocrity

As regular readers know, there are few things that make me more cheerful and insufferably smug than sticking pins in pathetic social media schemes.

Earlier this week, The New York Times ran a big story in their "Media and Advertising" section about a product for arthritic baby boomers called Elations. The story devoted a good deal of space to a social media program that Elations is engaged in.

A CMO I Can Love

It's rare that I read something in a trade publication written by a cmo that isn't a cliche-riddled jargon fest.

This week, however, I read a brief interview with Rick Bendel who is international chief marketing officer for Walmart in AdAge. In spite of his alarming title, he had some intelligent things to say that echo a post I wrote almost a year ago called "The Laziness of Global Advertisers

Pepsi Proves You Can Give Away Money

I know I'm like totally old school and out of it and a big old dinosaur, but I thought marketing was supposed to be about selling stuff. Silly me.

So wasn't I all red-in-the-face and feeling like a dork when I read an interview in BrandWeek with Pepsi's marketing director. The interview was about their much ballyhooed "Refresh Project" -- which, in my churlish opinion is a big cynical gimmick to

Let The Hysteria Begin

Well, it didn't take long.

Last Wednesday, in a post called The Amazing Social Media Swindle I wrote,
"The good news is that pretty soon social media marketing hysteria will go the way of podcasts and widgets, and we can all get hysterical about iAds." For once, I was prescient. Within 24 hours, the Wall Street Journal ran a headline story called "Apple's Next Disruption: Advertising."

Just

The Consumer Knows Nothing

There was a time when advertisers weren't afraid to make decisions. They would trust their judgment. They wouldn't be too timid to have an opinion.

Unfortunately, those days are gone. Now, every creative decision is made by "the consumer"-- i.e., research.

This would be fine if there was a reliable research methodology to determine advertising effectiveness. But there isn't. I've been

Advertising's Degenerative Disease

Last week, Apple surpassed Microsoft as the world's most valuable technology company.

I've never done work for either of these firms, but they seem so different to me it's hard to think of them as being in the same business.

I was trying to understand what made them feel so dissimilar to me. I think it's craftsmanship.

It seems to me that Microsoft is a company run by a businessman. Apple is a

The Amazing Social Media Swindle

If you need any further evidence of the insane hysteria the marketing industry has created around social media marketing, a very clever bit of research from Nation's Restaurant News ought to do the trick.

The magazine asked consumers and restaurant operators parallel questions about their use of social media (specifically Facebook and Twitter.) As they say, "...what we found was nothing

Philosophy Or Donuts?

Several years ago, a very sincere guy who ran a chain of donut shops came to see me. He wanted to do an advertising campaign.

"We're different," he explained. "We're a commune. Everyone who works here owns an equal part. We work cooperatively. It's a model for how businesses should be run. It's a vision of the future. I think we should do an ad campaign about it. I think people will really

Unreasonable People

One of the things web publishers are going to have to get used to is human irrationality.

This can be seen in the worldwide fuss over Facebook, Google and privacy.

Apologists point out that people put their most intimate details on the web and then get all huffy when publishers like Facebook and Google provide access to this information. Isn't this complete hypocrisy, they say?

Darn right

A Whole Lot Of Nothing

We think we're important.

We think our problems are monumental.

We have massive frustrations and grievances.

So I thought a little perspective might help us all have a nicer weekend.

First of all, let's talk about this place we live in.

We call it the universe. We've all heard about the hundreds of billions of galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars, each surrounded by who

Maniacs With Thin Skins

“He irritates the fuck out of me. He’s got carried away with his own scepticism about the internet and it’s become a self-fulfilling prophesy.” Another blogger, on the subject of yours truly.
The fun thing about being The Ad Contrarian is that it's my job is to stick my finger in the eye of conventional advertising wisdom.

Since conventional advertising wisdom is so, well, conventional, and

Why I Never Make Predictions

Diligent readers of this blog have probably noticed that the wily ol' Ad Contrarian almost never makes predictions.

The reason for this is simple: I hate looking like an idiot.

People who make predictions are almost always wrong, and usually wind up eating their words.

Here's a lovely case in point. I was going through some old stuff about the supposed "death of advertising" and came upon this

The Yellow And Brown Process

Clients love to believe that there is a method to the advertising madness.

A substantial component of success at winning new business these days is not about the effectiveness of the advertising you create, but how clever you are at contriving a plausible sounding process for developing your ideas.

There are processes for doing just about everything an agency does. But when it comes to

The Insanity Of Web Metrics

Last week I wrote a post called "Why Creatives Are Always Confused." It was the most popular post I've ever written.

The link was re-blogged and re-tweeted a million times.

According to the hit counter I use, visits to the site skyrocketed -- tripling my normal traffic every day for a week, and some days hitting 4 or 5 times the normal traffic. The blog went from 40th most popular ad blog to

Send In The Brand Babblers

There was a time in America when every problem was a communications problem.

If you couldn't get along with your husband, you weren't communicating. If your kid was incorrigible, you probably weren't on the same wavelength. If your boss didn't like you, you just couldn't get through to her. There were no problems of substance, just problems of communication.

The truth is, sometimes your husband

3 Oddball Ideas About Media

Okay, before we get started here, let's put our cards on the table. I know nothing about media planning or buying. I'm a copywriter. Nonetheless, as in so many other areas, I have strongly held, ill-informed opinions. Here are a few.

Never before has the science of media planning and buying been so precise. Never before has there been more data available, and more analysis done. Never before

The Web Advertising Dilemma

What if you picked up the telephone and instead of getting a dial tone you got an ad? You'd be angry, right? That's because the telephone is a medium of communication. When you are in the process of communicating, you don't want to be slowed down or sidetracked.

What if you picked up a dictionary and instead of finding a definition you found an ad? You'd be disgusted, right? Because a

Top 10 Music Moron Tweets

Here at Ad Contrarian world headquarters, we are often dismayed and alarmed at the amount of attention and respect that is given to entertainers. There was once a sensible age in which entertainers were called "fools."

Because they have contrived to become famous, they are often also assumed to have intellect, character and judgment. Gazing at the magazine rack at a supermarket check-out lane

Focus Group Friday

Morons And Their Focus GroupsAfter a year and a half of design, and 40 -- count 'em, 40 -- focus groups, the London Organising Committee of the 2012 Olympic Games introduced its Olympic Mascots this week.
These two monstrosities are called Wenlock and Mandeville (don't ask) and are supposed to help kids "engage with sport." Apparently this is a problem in London.

A design critic named Stephen

Why Creatives Are Always Confused

As you stroll the halls of an ad agency you often encounter people wearing baseball caps, wandering aimlessly and muttering to themselves.

We call these people "creatives." They are the ones who make the ads.

They are always confused. Here's why.

They are pressured by their leaders to do "great" work. But when they do, they usually get reprimanded for not being "on strategy."

They are

Is Bill Gates Still Stunned?

From FoxNews.com, January 2007
Bill Gates: Internet Will Revolutionize TelevisionDAVOS, Switzerland —  The Internet is set to revolutionize television within five years, due to an explosion of online video content and the merging of PCs and TV sets, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said on Saturday. "I'm stunned how people aren't seeing that with TV, in five years

When White People Run Wild

My daughter goes to school in Portland, OR and I've been spending some time there.

Portland is a lovely city with nice people. But it's an extreme case of what happens when white people are allowed to run wild without the palliative effect of other races.

First you notice that there are way too many bicycles clogging up the roads. And that every bicycle rider has one of those pointy-headed

Five More Things Everyone Is Wrong About

After about a hundred years in advertising, there are still things that continue to amaze me.
How much we don't know 
How the business is still driven primarily by legends and rituals
How specious opinions about advertising become facts when repeated enough times by self-promoting loudmouths at worthless conferences
A little over a year ago I wrote a piece called "Facts Still Matter: The Death

What Is Evil?

In my hometown, Oakland, CA a few weeks ago, Jin Cheng Yu, 27, and his 59-year old father were walking down a street.

For no reason, two men approached Jin and started punching him. When his father interceded on his behalf the two men beat him to death.

A few days later, the lawyer for one of the accused stated, "this is not a murder case...(my client) is not an evil person."

Really?

I wonder

The One Thing You Can Never Believe: People

From the Economist...
...one of the oddest and most consistent findings of television research: that people seem unaware of their own behaviour. In surveys they almost always underestimate how much television they watch, and greatly overstate the extent to which they watch video in any other form (See chart below -- TAC). In particular, they underestimate their consumption of live television

Nothing Human Works As Advertised

I'm astonished when people are surprised at the failures of capitalism, or socialism, or communism.

I'm amazed when people are stunned that Democratic policies don't work. Or Republican policies. Or liberal policies, or conservative policies.

I'm astounded when people express dismay that Wall Street is stupid, or government is wasteful.

I laugh when I hear people complain that economists were

Going Through Life Rolling My Eyes

"The new consumer psychology on the rise around the world is one of networks and prioritization, of explicitly pricing in consequences and externalities, and of giving more than lip service to being resourceful and vigilant about downside risks. This is the global zeitgeist now aborning." Run for your lives! There's a global zeitgeist aborning!
 
This lovely gobbledy-gook comes to us from a "

Not Following The Herd

A few days ago I was reading a blog I often read called "If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?" The post I was reading was called What Can Moneyball Teach Us About Advertising? It seemed to me that I had written a very similar post about the book "Moneyball" a few years ago. I went back into my archives and found that I had written it in July of 2008, but apparently never posted it. So I'm

The Power of Specificity

There are a lot of good Italian restaurants in my neighborhood. But I go to one regularly because I love the bread.

My favorite sneakers aren't the ones that look the nicest or absorb shock the best. They're the ones that are the widest.

My favorite recording isn't of the best song I ever heard, or have best vocal I ever heard, but it does have my favorite sax solo.

The point is -- like most

The Demise Of Advertising

One of these day I'm going to write a book about the demise of advertising.  It will start like this:
Once upon a time, advertising people decided that they no longer wanted to sell things. Instead, they decided it would be more fun to be amateur psychoanalysts.And so, instead of making ads about the attributes of the products they were selling, they started making ads about the imagined

Anyone Have The Daypart?

Thoughts Of The Week
Thanks to David Burn of AdPulp for my two favorite quotes of the week. (He didn't write 'em, he reported 'em)
"Decision makers in every business, from entrepreneurs to local business owners to executives at enterprise organization are learning to appreciate the prospectus of social media and its promise to materialize a brighter, more interactive and customer-focused

Battle Of The B.S. Artists

Okay Ad Contras, I have a question for you. Who's more full of it -- traditional advertising brand babblers, or new age digi-drivelers?

It's up to you to decide!

To prime the pump, I'm going to give you one example of each. First, a real sample of traditional ad baloney and then a real sample of new age web-blather.

Here's some nice traditional brand babble
"Brand Footprint utilizes sales,

Zealots, Maniacs, and Hustlers

I am frequently accused of being anti web marketing. I'm getting tired of responding to these accusations all the time, so I've decided that every few months I'm just going to re-publish this post from July 2009.

Here at The Ad Contrarian global headquarters, we've developed a reputation for being anti-digital media and pro-traditional media.

We are neither.

We have no personal interest in,

Bean Counter B*st*rds

My friends, I'm afraid our colleagues don't respect us much anymore.

Sure, they give us fancy titles (Chief Marketing Officer, Worldwide Creative Director) but they don't really seem to take our titles very seriously. (Why can't they respect our titles? Don't they realize we're only going to have them for 18 months? What's the harm?)

Lately, they've been asking to "see the stuff" before it goes

An Open Letter To Email Marketers

Dear Email Marketer,

I realize that it's not very expensive for you to send me email solicitations. Nonetheless, it is a waste of time and energy for you, and a source of irritation to me.

Since we are both busy people, and since neither of us is profiting from this effort, I thought I'd send you a list of things that I am not interested in. So here we go -- you may feel free to discontinue

Friday Follies

Fair Weather FansStarbucks has five times as many Facebook and Twitter fans as Dunkin' Donuts. What does it mean? Apparently not much. Dunkin' fans are 35% more likely to recommend the brand.*

Earthquakes Caused By Hotties
From Tuesday's New York Times
A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear immodest clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes. “Many women who do not

Who's Nielsen Trying To Fool?

Like most of you, I would like some reliable data about social media that I can take to my clients and say, "Look, social media isn't all hype. Here's some data to show that it really works."

Yesterday I finally thought I had some.

I received an email from Nielsen informing me that they were "releasing the results of an important new study."

The report is called "Understanding the Value of a

The Next iPhone

According to Gizmodo someone left a working model of the next generation iPhone in a bar in Redwood City.

Here it is.

For a much better look at it, and more info, go here.

I pity the poor fool who left it. Steve will not be happy.

Update: This is a bigger story than I thought. Check this from NYTimes.

Leo Burnett: Spinning In His Grave
Do not miss this post from The Grumpy Brit yesterday.

Special Pleading For The Web

“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets started on the proof.” John Kenneth Galbraith*Humans are funny. We are very reluctant to change our minds.

When facts don't match our beliefs we rarely change our beliefs. Instead, we re-arrange the facts.

We have all decided that the web is an awesome advertising tool. It has

No Personal Brand. No Lifestyle.

I'm tired of having a lifestyle.

Can't I just have a life?

And do I really need a personal brand?

Can't I just be a person?

If anyone out there is looking for a lifestyle or a personal brand, you can have mine. Just tell me where to send it.

Gravity And The Internet

Driving through Berkeley, it's not unusual to see a beat-up old VW bus with a bumper sticker that says "Think Globally, Act Locally."

Unfortunately, if there's one thing we humans are not good at, it's thinking globally. We have a tendency to think very locally.  I see it every July in San Francisco -- people from New Jersey, dressed in t-shirts and shorts, freezing their asses off because they

Does Marketing Make You Stupid?

It's amazing how quickly otherwise intelligent people become knuckleheads when exposed to marketing.

I am often invited by clients to attend confabs about sales and marketing. Over the years I have met many staff members of these client organizations. Some have been in sales, some in operations, some in finance, some in manufacturing.

As many corporations will do, sometimes these clients will

How To Criticize The Ad Contrarian

Criticizing a cranky loudmouth is an iffy proposition on a good day. But on an afternoon when my clients are all whiny, and my back is acting up, and I'm running late for opening day at the ballpark, it's just not a good idea.

So I was a little miffed on Friday when I read a blog piece called Debunking The Ad Contrarian.

It was written by a guy named Ilya Vedrashko who describes himself as an

Just The Facts

Just The FactsSocial media maniacs are very long on assertions and very short on facts. For a nice, reasonable, non-hysterical (not my style at all) look at some of the facts undermining the preposterous claims of many social media zealots, here's a link to a piece called Social Media: How Much Is Too Much? from Stoltz Marketing Group, in Boise, Idaho.

VolvoA year and a half ago we said...
..."

The Failure Of Web Advertising

We're about 15 years into the internet revolution as a mainstream phenomenon and by any measure internet advertising has to be deemed a major failure.

While the web itself has been a massive success (influencing virtually every aspect of our lives) advertising on the web is mostly a bad joke.

Fifteen years into its mainstream life, television had created scores of powerful consumer-facing

An Apology To Everyone For Everything

My last post was called "I Ain't Apologizin' For Nothin.'" Just to prove that this is a fair and balanced blog, today I'm going to apologize to everyone for everything.

In this day and age, it's more important than ever to be proactive. So I want to take this opportunity to apologize, in advance, to everyone for everything.

I now understand that as a Blogger, I have unique responsibilities.

I Ain't Apologizin' For Nothin'

In honor of April Fool's Day... just once I'd like to turn on a press conference and hear this:

I'm not apologizing to anyone for anything.

You don't like what I do? Tough shit.

I'm not apologizing to my fans. I didn't murder anyone. I didn't steal anything. I didn't commit any crimes. I screwed a few willing women. So what? No animals were injured. The majority of men and women do exactly

"Ground-Breaking" Baloney

It looks like online ad sales organizations are getting desperate. Their research is starting to look almost as dubious as traditional ad research.

Earlier this week I read a press release entitled .Fox Networks and comScore Reveal Ground-Breaking Findings About the Branding Impact of Online Advertising which claimed that...
".Fox Networks (pronounced “dot-fox”), the leading global online

Meaningful Relationships?

If you haven't seen it, an interesting piece showed up last week in The Harvard Business Review called The Social Media Bubble. It's by a guy named Umair Haque who is Director of the Havas Media Lab (do you think they have test tubes and Bunsen burners?)

The article is not about social media marketing (which is what I'm always going off about) but about social media itself.

His overall point is

"You First Must Learn How To See"

Last week I posted a piece called Reality At The DMV. It was about understanding who our customers really are by visiting the DMV and looking around.

One ignorant commenter wrote the following:
"My point is that the scum of the earth waiting in line at your local DMV is not our target audience for anything other than target practice."In response to that, a wise commenter named Rob wrote the

Reality At The DMV

Last week I had the good fortune to spend an hour renewing my driver's license.

Most people would consider a trip to the DMV about as appealing as listening to a 50-slide powerpoint about search engine optimization while wearing ski boots. But I'm thinking of making a monthly visit to the DMV a condition of employment for everyone on my staff. 

I want them to see what the people they're making

More Bogus Toyota Nonsense Exposed

For the past few weeks we've been commenting on the hysterical, irresponsible post-recall Toyota reporting (full disclosure: Toyota's a client.)

Over a two-day period a few weeks ago, there was a frenzy of media delirium over two stories. First the guy in Southern California who claimed his Prius got up to 94 MPH on its own and had to be stopped by a highway patrolman. Second the story of a

Gutless Ad Weasels

There is growing movement among self-hating ad people to declare failure and join the army of digital dimwits.

They have started to believe the "advertising is dead" nonsense.  They have accepted the fiction that there is a new breed of humans who don't believe anything that isn't on the web. They no longer believe that advertising is about persuasion, and think their job is to create "

TV Viewership At Highest Point Ever. And Growing

Being The Ad Contrarian isn't all merriment and high living.

Sure, there's all the money, and the women, and the parties...but there are also moments of loneliness and doubt. Okay, loneliness.

Once a quarter, however, I get to sit back and treat myself to a large pitcher of self-admiration. You see, every three months Nielsen releases something called it's 3-Screen Report. It shows us just how

If Apple Were Microsoft

I've spent a lot of time recently pissing off planners and digital strategists and account people. I think it's time I started pissing off brand managers.

First, let me acknowledge that in many, if not most companies brand managers have difficult, thankless jobs. I have no gripe with the work they do, or the pressure they're under.

My gripe is about advertising. In my career I've had the good

The Bride of Friday Follies

He's BackIn the past few weeks, Cold War era Russian singer Edouard Khil has become something of an internet sensation. We featured him here at TAC on Feb.26.

Someone did a very funny remix of his Trololo song.



No Cliche Left BehindLast week, we commented on new educational standards issued by the  National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief

Why I Do This

Here at The Ad Contrarian, we allow ourselves one crass, self-serving post a quarter.

Sorry, today's the day.

You see, writing this blog is a big pain in the ass. It has gotten me in way more trouble than it's worth. So from time to time I have to remind myself why I do it.

Once in while, something nice happens. Here's a letter I received yesterday.
Hello Bob, I happened to chance upon your

Stinkability

Yes, my friends, sometimes even bloggers are right.

About a year and a half ago, the brilliant editorial staff here at Ad Contrarian world headquarters commented on Bud Light's "Drinkability" campaign:
Their "Drinkability" campaign is awful. This is what happens when you let researchers into creative meetings.

"Drinkability" is not a word that an actual human being would use. Only an MBA would

The Amazing Power of Social Media

The executive staff here at Ad Contrarian world headquarters thought we had a pretty good understanding of the remarkable power of social media.

We know it can freshen your breath and create peace on earth, but we had no idea of all the other stuff it can do.

According to a post from several months ago on the blog Microgeist entitled What Does Social Media Make Obsolete? social media is in the

Crisis In The News Room

It's pretty obvious that the quality of the news we are getting has deteriorated seriously.  It may now have reached a point at which consumers cannot take most news sources seriously.

I spoke recently to a network executive -- a really good guy -- who made it clear that they no longer have the resources to do a satisfactory job of reporting. He told me that they used to have the money and

Prius Balloon Boy Update

Several hours after we posted The Prius Balloon Boy -- a story about how the incompetent,  irresponsible, gullible news media were perpetrating a Toyota Hybrid Horror Hoax -- the AP ran this story entitled Probe Questions Runaway Prius Story.

The thrust of the story is this:
A memo drafted for a congressional panel says that investigators with Toyota Motor Corp. and the federal government were

The Prius Balloon Boy

After being exposed as hysterical, incompetent buffoons by the "balloon boy" story a few months ago, you'd think our media brainiacs would be a little more vigilant in their reporting.

According to Forbes.com however, they've been taken in again by another con artist named James Sikes -- this time doing enormous, perhaps irreparable damage to Toyota (full disclosure, they're a client of mine.)

Friday Follies

A Close Shave In Florida
Megan Barnes was arrested in Florida last Friday after causing a two-car crash. 

She was on the way to meet her boyfriend and she "wanted to be ready." So she was shaving her pubic area while driving. Yes, you read that right.

But wait, there's more.

The previous day, Barnes was convicted of drunk driving. Oh, and she was also convicted of driving with a suspended

Brand Babble Meets Digital Drivel

A few weeks ago, in a piece called The Age Of The Complicator, Part 4  I said, "we have to remove the word branding from our vocabulary. It has lost its meaning... "

If you need further evidence, I urge you to read Time To Rewrite The Brand Playbook For Digital in Ad Age this week.

It's been a long time since I've enjoyed a piece of highfalutin' baloney as much as I enjoyed this thing.

The

Changing Behavior

If you've read my semi-brilliant book The Ad Contrarian, (which you can download free here) you know that one thing I believe is that advertising is more productive when it's focused on changing behavior, not attitudes.

I recently read a very interesting piece by a smart ad guy named Rory Sutherland. The piece is about Behavioral Economics and how understanding human behavior can make us very

Spin Citi

Last year, our generous representatives in Washington took 45 billion of our dollars and gave them to Citigroup so they could stay afloat.

Now Citigroup has a new online strategy for restoring themselves to that special place in our hearts for companies that really care about us.

A component of their strategy is a blog by their ceo -- some guy named Vikram Pandit (rhymes with bandit.) Pandit

Bummer For Marketers: We Gotta Do Something.

Here's some big news.

According to an article in Ad Age last week called Why Measurement Alone Will Not Lead To Better Marketing, stuff doesn't automatically get better because we measure it. Apparently, to make it better, we have to do something.

What a bummer.

I guess this means that taking your temperature doesn't make your sore throat go away. And a longer tape measure will not make you

In The Year 2015

If you're looking for a good reason to stick a knife in your head, I highly recommend an article in this week's Ad Age about the future of the agency business.

In a piece called What Will Agencies Look Like in 2015 we learn that, once again, everything is going to change! Imagine that. (Apparently, trade pubs stay in business by validating hysterical readers' fears that everything is always

The Revolting Taste Of Sour Grapes

A million years ago, FCB in San Francisco was the largest ad agency office west of the Mississippi. The guy who ran the creative department was named Mike Koelker. Mike did some incredible work, particularly for Levi's, when that brand was on top of the world.

I never worked for or with Mike, but I did have the good fortune to meet him socially. He was a very smart guy. One day a group of us

Friday Follow-Up

Me and The PrezLast month I gave my client, the President, some brilliant advice. Like many clients, he seems to be doing a great job of ignoring it. Worst of all, the invoice remains unpaid.

The Last Honest Man In WashingtonJoe Biden, caught on tape yesterday: "It's easy being vice president — you don't have to do anything."

Which reminds me of a great quote from former veep Nelson Rockefeller

Conversations About Brands. Really? Where?

On Tuesday, in 3 Out Of 4 Don't Trust Their Friends we commented on a study out of Edelman that found that 75% of the people they polled don't have a high level of confidence in recommendations about businesses or products made by their friends or peers.

For people who don't read The Ad Contrarian, this finding may have come as a surprise. To Ad Contras, nothing new.

This finding calls into

Social Media Marketing Ecosystem Explained

Here at The Ad Contrarian world headquarters, there's nothing we like better than a good ecosystem.

So when we came across* this awesome ecosystem for social media marketing, well, how do you resist that?

Now, we know some of you Luddites just aren't up-to-date on these things. So, as a service to our readers, we are publishing the attached chart of the social media marketing ecosystem which we

3 Out Of 4 Don't Trust Their Friends

Oh, boy. The social media marketing crowd are going to have a hysterectomy over this one.

According to a new study called "Trust Barometer"* done by Edelman, 3 out of 4 people do not trust their friends and peers as credible sources of information about products or companies.

Not only that, in the past two years, the number of people who trust recommendations from friends and peers has dropped

The Best Idea Is No Idea

Back in the middle ages, when I was a creative director, there was a period in which I used to hear stuff like this...
"We're going to shoot this over-cranked..."
"We're going to use stop motion photography..."
"We're going to take stills and hand-tint each frame..."As I broke the storyboards over the creative teams' heads, I would explain to the them that production was not an idea.

Then there

If Someone Finds My Brain, Please Return It

If you no longer have use for your brain, and you would like to use your cranial cavity for, say, storing Pop Tarts, I would suggest you read "Why Brands Are Becoming Media."

I tried to read the whole thing but my little gray cells started to melt and ooze out my ears.

It is a horrifying example of the kind of social media double-talk that makes me want to go into the street and kill people.

Free Is The New Stupid

In October 2009, Newsday, a popular newspaper in the NYC area, began to charge $5 a month to subscribe to its online content. Newsday has about 400,000 daily readers and about 450,000 weekend readers. After three months, Newsday's online content had 35 paid subscribers.One of the dumbest ideas to have come out of the internet is the idea that everything on the web should be free.

This idea has

The Age of the Complicator, Part 4

"There are a lot of great technicians in advertising. And unfortunately they talk the best game. They know all the rules... They can give you fact after fact after fact. They are the scientists of advertising. But there’s one little rub. Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art."  Bill Bernbach, 1947
As advertising and marketing have become

The Age of the Complicator, Part 3

Today we continue with Part 3 of a 4-part series called "The Age of the Complicator."

One of the reasons advertising has become so complicated is that we have lost confidence in the creative process.

Nobody trusts creative directors any more. They used to lead, now they need to be led.

We used to trust that they understood business. We used to trust that they understood what motivated people.

Web Bashing: It's Not Just A Hobby, It's A Lifestyle.

Attention "TV Is Dead" ManiacsLast week's Super Bowl was the most watched show in the history of television.

Attention Web Advertising Hustlers
In the past two years clicking on web ads has dropped 50%.
If that isn't bad enough, 85% of the clicking is done by 8% of the people.

The Amazing Power Of Web Advertising (Yes, This is Irony)The wonderful Google spot that everyone in advertising is

Yes, Someone Is Hiring

I rarely mix this personal blog with agency business, but once in a while it makes sense.

I'm proud to say that we are single-handedly leading America out of The Great Recession. How, you ask? By doing some hiring. Yup, that ought to do it.

We need some good people for our San Francisco office and I’ve been wondering, where can we find the most brilliant minds in advertising?

Hmmm...thinking..

The Age of the Complicator, Part 2

Yesterday we began a 4-part series called The Age of the Complicator. This is Part 2.

The art of advertising is really quite simple: Find something that makes your product seem more appealing than the other guy's and find an interesting way to communicate it.

Put a straightforward idea like this into the hands of today's advertising professional, however, and he will quickly turn it into a

The Age of the Complicator, Part 1

Today we begin a 4-part series called "The Age of the Complicator."

There are two kinds of people. Simplifiers and complicators.

I have spent my advertising career (now going on its 200th year) trying to find simplifiers and avoid complicators.

Next to talent, the most important quality an ad person can have is the ability to simplify.

Every ad problem is a mystery. There are a million things

The Obligatory Super Bowl Post

It's Super Bowl Monday.  The day when every half-wit in America gets to play creative director -- including bloggers.

In order to keep my contrarian credentials, I'm not going to talk about the advertising.

Okay, maybe just a little.

A few observations.
When does John Madden get back?
Loved Sean Payton's guts 
Carrie Underwood missed the note on "...brave" by about 30 yards
The Who? Really?

Bob And The Beancast

Here at Ad Contrarian global headquarters, our first order of business is to call 'em as we see 'em.

Last week I got account planners all aflutter and atwitter when I said planning needed to die. Honestly, I didn't think it was so harsh. In a previous post I said it was the planners that needed to die, not the planning. But that was back when I was young and opinionated.

Naturally, lots of

Who's Making Money From Social Media?

The hysteria over social media raises an interesting question.

Are agencies all drooling about it because it's good for their clients? Or good for them?

Another way to pose the question is this: Who's actually benefiting from the social media frenzy? Marketers or agencies?

Evidence of the efficacy of social media is pretty thin on the ground. As with all marketing crazes, there are a few

Who Needs The "R"

Yesterday was February 1st.

Every February 1st I have the same thought. Why the extra R in February? Why?

Nobody needs it. Nobody uses it. Most people don't even pronounce it.

January doesn't have it. It's not Janruary. So why February?

Isn't this month crappy enough without giving it such a lousy name? All it has going for it is President's Day and,  honestly, with the last few presidents

The Social Value of Maniacs

Regular readers know two of my prejudices:

1. Skepticism about the power of social media.

2. The importance of marketing to the heavy user in a category.

Unless you are competing in a high interest category (entertainment, sports, wine, etc.) the idea that people are going to find online social interest in your brand is likely to be an expensive pipe dream.

The stuff that most of us sell --

Marketing and The End Of The World

One of the unpleasant effects of the age of marketing is that politicians have learned the lessons of marketing all too well.

They have learned that it is important to reduce a message to its simplest possible form, e.g. "pro-life" or "change".

This is fine when you're selling peanut butter, but not such a good idea when critical issues of public policy are at stake.

In the debate concerning

The Midweek Philosopher

* Department of You Can't Make This Shit Up
In Piedmont, CA police found the dead, mummified body of Patricia Bostrom sitting in a comfy chair in her living room. Police say the last time Bostrom had been seen alive was 6 years ago when she was 82 years old. Bostrom's daughter, Sunny, regularly picked up mail at the house, planted flowers in the yard and paid the utility bills. She claims she

The Planning Controversy Continues

As I expected, I got a lot of push-back yesterday on my post about account planning. It seems to have come mostly from planners, which is also to be expected.

The comments seemed to fall into 5 primary areas. I'll sum up the crux of the criticism, then give a sample from a comment, then respond.

1. As a "creative chauvanist," how can I criticize account planning for being based on opinions...

5 Reasons Account Planning Needs To Die

As many regular readers of this blog know, I am a former science teacher turned copywriter, turned creative director, turned management bean counter.

Each of my incarnations has a little compartment in my brain. Consequently, I often look at ads like a science geek, or finances like a copywriter. It's very confusing, but it keeps me interested.

As a result of my background, I have a few

The Tweet Machine

If you have a Twitter account (yes, I am one of those wretched losers) you quickly learn how monumentally dull most people are.

I can't imagine that any sane person is pathetic enough to read all the Tweets he receives. But if you did, you would surely be driven to suicide.

So, I have an idea.

It's a way for the average brain-dead Twitterer to appear smart. Okay, maybe not smart, but at least

Dear Mr. President

Dear Mr. President,

Congratulations on completing your first year in office.

I know you've had a tough week.  As your trusted advertising counselor, I feel obligated to write you this memo because I think you're getting bad advice.

I know nothing about politics or policy. But I know something about human behavior. It's kinda my job. I think I know what's going wrong, and how you can fix it.

I

I Don't Know and I Don't Care

Yesterday I wrote
"It is possible that all the front-end work we do to find a suitable brand strategy is terrifically valuable and leads us to brilliant insights that inform our marketing decisions and make our advertising far more effective.  And it is equally possible that it is all a bunch of crap.
As far as I know, there's no scientific evidence either way."
The motivation for writing this

Admitting What We Don't Know

A few years ago I wrote a post for this blog, and a chapter for my book (it's free here) called "Precision Guessing."  The thrust of the article was that, despite our pretensions, advertising and marketing people know almost nothing about human behavior.

Of course, we pretend we do and we have invented a whole lexicon and area of practice (account planning) built around our supposed knowledge.

Marketing In The New Decade. It's All Different Again.

If you'd like to see what brand babble is going to look like in the coming decade, you can't do much better than reading a recent piece of gobbledygook from Adweek called, "5 Marketing Principles Brands Should Embrace in 2010."

We learn that in the new decade...
"Marketing becomes the product and the product becomes the marketing."
Oh, good. For dinner tonight,  I'll start with a little Ketel

Surge In TV Viewing

According to Reuters, a study by Deloitte released last month shows that the percent of Americans who...
"...ranked watching TV... as their favorite media activity,  (took) a 26 percent jump over 2008..."
This trend was predicted here at TAC over a year ago by the brilliant Susan Bandura who, in a guest post entitled Will The Recession Help TV? wrote...
"Now that even The Wall Street Journal has

Thinking Inside The Box

Last week I spent several days in a drug-induced stupor as a result of a dental calamity.

During one period of semi-consciousness, I had a moment of perfect perspective about our lives and our universe. Of course, there is no such thing as perfect perspective, but with the aid of powerful pain-killers, the mind can do marvelous things.

It occurred to me that we have lost all perspective on who

Ducks Deluxe

Sometimes success in advertising is not pretty.

A perfect example of that is Aflac. Personally, I have always hated that duck campaign. It reminds me of some annoying, gimmicky throwback to the 50's or 60's.

Nonetheless, it was very successful. As a matter of fact, in a category that is replete with advertising that is invisible, lame and ineffectual, it was successful beyond any reasonable

Tech Breakthrough Of The Decade

The new decade is only in its second week, and already science has produced a technological breakthrough that will be a boon to mankind for years to come.

The Ford Motor Company announced today that it will introduce a new feature in some of its 2010 model cars that will read you your tweets while you're driving!

This may very well be the most important technological breakthrough since Coors

Are You Sick Of This Blog?

It's The Heavy User, Stupid
For years, we here at Ad Contrarian global headquarters have been preaching that the key to marketing success in most categories is to attract the category heavy user (if you haven't already read my semi-brilliant book, you can download it here free.) An interesting article on how this idea affects media strategy is available here. (Via George Parker)
Biggest "End of

Conversation With A Creative Director

Recently I had lunch with a head creative guy at a successful agency who works on some very successful brands. I am not going to reveal his identity as his clients may be listening.

He had some interesting things to say.  I will be paraphrasing throughout.

First he said, aside from the paycheck, there are only two good reasons to work in advertising. First, to hang around with funny people. And

10 for '10

Since it's the beginning of a new year, and I'm on vacation, and I'm feeling expansive, and everyone's always telling me how negative I am, and it's a beautiful day, and spring training is only 6 weeks away, and I had a cocktail with lunch, I thought I'd try something new.

So here are 10 ideas that most ad people have never considered that might help us all be more successful in the ad biz in