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