Media Dropouts

Three brave souls have volunteered for Dr.A's Get-Happy Diet. They are Dotcalm, The Professor, and Uncle Susie.They'll be dropping out of pop culture for two weeks and reporting to us on how it's affecting them. The hypothesis is that they'll be less stressed and less anxious. We'll see.SUBSCRIBE TO THE AD CONTRARIAN

Dr. A's Get-Happy Diet

Last week, Dr. Adcontrarian explained (uh...declared, proclaimed, popped-off?) about how unprotected media exposure makes us unfortunate ad people unhappy.Today I unveil Dr. A's Get-Happy Diet. The good part is, you can eat all you want. The bad part is, you're going to drop out of pop culture for a few weeks. It will not only make you happier, it will make you realize how addicted you are to

How to Be Happy in Advertising

Dr. Adcontrarian is on duty today to help you be a happier ad person. Please have a seat.It's not easy being happy in advertising. It's a frustrating business. Modern life is filled with many horrors -- war, husbands, pizza with chicken on it. And we ad people are closely aligned with something uniquely anxiety-producing -- pop culture.Advertising used to be about discovering what consumers

Quickies, III

* Not sure it's the worst commercial of all time, but it's pretty damn close. Doc Pomus must be spinning. How come the Black guy is the only one who looks embarrassed? Your comments, please.* Nonetheless, TAC is not “media neutral”. TAC believes the :30 second spot is still the most powerful marketing tool ever invented. Yeah, I know. I don’t get it.* Please someone tell me one internet ad you

Amazing data from TiVo, II

Earlier this week, I presented data collected from TiVo (see Amazing Data from TiVo) that showed that the least-skipped commercials in June, as in previous months, were all either retail or direct response commercials. This will be shocking to almost everyone on Madison Avenue and not surprising at all to a small group of us who practice Performance Based Advertising (PBA). One of the three

Amazing data from TiVo

If TiVo is teaching us nothing else, it's teaching us that all the noise agencies make about "rewarding" viewers is just the same old baloney. Agencies secretly would rather be in the entertainment business (hey, so would I) and they are always looking for a reason to re-define advertising as entertainment, thus the talk about "rewarding" viewers. Data from TiVo-ers, however, is telling quite a

Bullsh*t

It is probably not a coincidence that the loss of confidence in advertising is concurrent with another trend in the advertising business – the unprecedented concentration of the ad industry into the hands of a few lawyers and accountants. A couple of decades ago Y&R had the largest share of the ad market in the US at a little over 1%. Today four global holding companies control about 75% of U.S