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