Son of Friday Filler

Last week I started something called "Friday Filler" in which I threw a few odds and ends together. People seemed to like it so I'm going to continue it. Actually, I really don't give a shit if people liked it, writing 5 posts a week is too damn hard.This Could Cost Him Votes In Berkeley.Reinventing Iconic Bullshit:Last week, McKinney in Raleigh N.C, won the Sherwin-Williams account. From

More Social Media Baloney

Remember TAC's first rule of research: Never trust a study done by an interested party.Here's a lovely example.The ClickZ Network reports that in a study released by Razorfish... "...many MySpace and Facebook users said ads on their favorite social sites have prompted them to buy something"Sounds promising, doesn't it? Just don't look too closely."Razorfish describes the survey respondents as "

Pols Not Spending On Web

Once again, the hype about online advertising has been proven wrong.At the beginning of this presidential cycle, pundits were gushing about how the web was where the action would be, and how online advertising would challenge traditional tv ads.Not even close.Back in January, a Lehman Brothers forecast predicted that this year candidates would spend as much as $110 million in online

The Smear Machine

Alan Wolk of The Toad Stool is one of my favorite bloggers. Today, however, I have to disagree with him on something.In a post last Thursday, Alan praised an hypothesis described by Arianna Huffington and attributed to Eric Schmidt, ceo of Google, that the internet is a kind of antidote for lies, smears, and general bullshit.The logic, in abridged form, goes like this: politicians and others have

Top 10 Bullshit Professions

I was thinking that maybe advertising was the world's number one bullshit profession.After semi-painstaking analysis and consideration, however, I am happy to report that advertising is way down at number eight.To develop this list I did two things. First I eliminated all occupations that are obviously scams -- like palm reader, astrologer, and economist.Second, I used only one criterion in

Friday Filler

Pepsi: Is spending 1.2 billion (yeah, with a b) behind a "rebranding" over 3 years. The first move is the introduction of new logos. If the rest of the "rebranding" is as shitty as this, it's gonna be a long 3 years. 1.2 billion on fucking Pac-Man?The Press:The idea of press neutrality is a joke. You don't have to be a McCain supporter to observe that the press has been drooling over Obama since

The Living Dead

If you read the advertising trades, the mainstream press, and the online pundits, you know that advertising is dead.Don't believe me? Check out the bibliography below. The People Who Always Get It Wrong are pretty certain about this.I wish I was as dead as advertising.It's not enough that just about every fucking square inch of the planet is covered in it, now we're finding new unimagined places