A colleague sent me this interesting site. Swarm, in their own words, “shows you what websites people are visiting, right now.” It updates every second, graphically showing which sites are more popular and less popular, It’s a cool idea, but unless it catches on bigtime it’s probably not going to be a very representative group of web users, since a Firefox application has to be downloaded and installed to track your web viewing habits.

So I’m obsessed with the issue of authenticity; so, shit. A couple months ago, I unloaded a bunch of brainmash over at CF, and then sort of let it ride. Or slide. Or slip in ‘n outta consciousness. At least in writing. But I still think about it daily, hourly, more. Just today, a friend told me that the Goog blog index is doubling every six months. It’s clear– blogs are the new black; they’re also the new leather bound journals with embossed monograms and sloppily dotted i’s. As part of AdAge’s 5-part Vegas series this past week or so, Greg Lindsay gave us The Unbearable Authenticity of Fakeness. If I had a cowbell, I’d ring it ’til I needed to buy a border collie. His discussion of the Guy Savoy Paris-But-Not experience and the new Playboy Club (”Most people have never been to one of the Playboy Clubs, but everyone has thought about what it should look like”) had me nodding like a bobblehead on vibrate. His conclusion: “Once again, authenticity is all relative.” Now let’s flash back to my CF post from early March: “I’ll back this up by repeating: authenticity is personally-defined and always relative.” Now pattern recognition isn’t always my strong suit, but I’m catching on to this one quicker than a bunny. At this point, I think even Baudrillard needs to add another layer. And a sitemeter. And a blogroll. Are blogs growing in popularity because people are finally embracing the fact that authenticity can just as well be captured in zeros and ones as it could be with quill pens and parchment? Relativity, huh? Who woulda thought?

Here’s BMA’s Top 25 Advertising Blogs for Week 6: 1 - AdRants - 9,401 (LW - 1)(-165) 2 - Werbeblogger - 23,107 (LW - 2)(-17) 3 - Media Buyer/Planner - 26,206 (LW - 3)(-776) 4 - Advertising/Design Goodness - 27,906 (LW - 4)(+110) 5 - Adverblog - 28,128 (LW - 5)(+704) 6 - ad-rag - 31,448 (LW - 6)(-2,267) 7 - AdFreak - 37,426 (LW - 7)(-1,322) 8 - AdJab - 40,963 (LW - 8)(-126) 9- AdverBox - 68,193 (LW - 9)(-7,393) 10 - AdPulp - 103,985 (LW - 10)(-1,700) 11 - Beyond Madison Avenue - 122,722 (LW - 12)(+11,060) 12 - Jaffe Juice - 126,401 (LW - 11)(+2,012) 13 - ….HOW ADVERTISING SPOILED ME…. - 131,347 (LW - 13)(+5,681) 14 - Advertising for Peanuts - 153,763 (LW - 14)(+4,220) 15 - Ad Blather - 180,252 (LW - 15)(-293) 16 - Designers Who Blog - 217,155 (LW - 16)(-37,003) 17 - Room 116 - 348,579 (LW - 18)(+15,429) 18 - Ad Hunt - 371,855 (LW - 19)(+49,519) 19 - AdverGirl - 372,338 (LW- 17)(-16,552) 20 - American Copywriter - 520,005 (LW - 21)(-7,441) 21 - Ads That Suck - 531,626 (LW - 20)(-50,953) 22 - Copyranter - 541,605 (LW - 22)(-17,930) 23 - The Hidden Persuader - 591,498 (LW- 24)(+10,421) 24 - Ernie Schenck Calls this Advertising? - 616,070 (LW - 23)(-68,459) 25 - Advertising Ourselves to Death - 693,625 (LW - 25)(+37,723) Well this was a pretty damned boring week for the Top 25, I must admit. The Top 10 stayed put, and only 1 blog, AdverGirl, moved more than 1-spot up or down. And we had no new blogs. AdHunt had the biggest move this week, up 49,519 spots. Advertising Ourselves to Death, also had a big jump. Next update will be next Monday. And if you want me to check out your advertising/marketing blog, feel free to email me a link and I’ll give it a look.

Naked Conversations has a great heads-up on The Pajama Market. The Pajama Market focuses on a different small-business every day, and how they have integrated blogs into their marketing mix. Everything from pubs, to resorts, to knitting companies are covered. TPM covers how each business is utilizing the blog, their favorite posts, and how effective they feel the blog is in helping the business grow. If you’re like me, catchphrases like ‘markets are conversations’ are good up to a point, then you need to see real-world examples of ideas being put into action. TPM gives us that, and shows what can happen when a business actually tries to COMMUNICATE with their community, instead of just advertising whatever stale one-way message you want them to hear. The Pajama Market definitely goes in the ‘I wish I’d thought of that’ file.

Did anyone NOTICE that the Dodge Caliber commercial has changed? It is the one with the cute flying fairy that changes everything to cute stuff. Like a building, a train. Then she goes after the dodge, and gets smashed into the wall. At that point, a tough guy walking his dog points at her and says quote “Silly Little Fairy”, and she changes him into clothes that may have suggested that she turned HIM into a homosexual. Actually, to me, he looked like a prep, and it was funny. CREATIVE. I guess someone complained, because the guy no longer says fairy at all. He just laughs. Wow. I think Dodge pissed someone off, but I think what is done is done, and it was a good spot. Just an observation that I had. If you watch hockey, you can catch it on OLN tonight - they run it all the time. JK

Everywhere. My job search has finally come to a close. It was between two positions, one agency, and one client side. I, JK19, have joined the dark side, and now am a dreaded “client”. The choice was simple. The agency business is getting tougher, and my role as an account manager has been getting even more tough as the years went on. When I started in this business, I was a partner. When I finished, I was a project manager. Sure, I went to a couple of bad agencies, but I refused to roll the dice again. It used to be - “Provide us with a recommendation for approval. Then execute” Now, it’s “Execute our recommendation.” It sucked. Sure, I wrote creative briefs, but I could have simply said: Do a half page ad for our client. They don’t pay, so don’t concept. Just give them two designs to pick from. Telling my creative teams to not be creative was tough for me - thats what we sell - CREATIVITY! Nothing else. And to have that taken away made no sense. Let me advise agencies, esp. smaller ones, please use a flat fee for jobs and eliminate time sheets. Time sheets suck. Like if a job is over budget, you will not finish it? Time sheets are a big waste of time. And never hire account managers to learn a client’s business with 3 hours max per project. You are asking for failure. It cannot be done. To build a lasting relationship with a client takes months, not hours. So I will try to post a little more about my experience on the other side. I think I will do well. I will expect great things from my agency partners, and will be tough on them. Ironically, the agency job was with Chevrolet’s agency of record. I think I made a good move. JK 19

Recently Jeremy said this:

I constantly get messages and calls from other bands, wondering how we’ve been able to successfully “market” the band to a huge audience, score 3,000 downloads of our new EP, and have a MySpace audience that ranges all ages across the entire world. The truth is, we’re not marketing. When we first started doing this thing and were making decisions about how we wanted to get our music out there, I knew that we wanted to use alternative distribution methods. Yes, we want to get a record deal, but the record deal is not the be-all-end-all for us. Instead of “marketing” to “fans”, we just stayed in contact and tried to turn each listener into a friend, a friend that could then join our little community and give us feedback on our music. We created a band policy to personally respond to each email and MySpace message that is sent to us, no matter how many we recieve per day and no matter how childish the message may be. My view is that if we listen to the community, then we can better understand what our community as a whole likes to hear, what they like to see, and then we can tailor ourselves to that a little bit. It’s not about creating more fans or holding market shares; it’s about a love of music and a connection via that love of music with people who will support you no matter what the cost. We started doing the community thing about six months ago, and the “results” have been fabulous. We’ve yet to play a single show under our new band name and haven’t played a show together at all in almost five years, but we’re still on the top ten of unsigned artists every single day on MySpace.

My knee-jerk reaction to Jeremy’s quote above was ‘I’m sorry dude, but that’s marketing.’. But then I wondered, the MySpace users he communicates with, do they consider it marketing? To them, he’s just a guy in a band that took the time to answer their message. He cared enough to make the effort to communcate with them, and try to make them a fan, and a friend. Is that marketing? Technically it probably is, but to his fans on MySpace, it feels like anything but. I’ve been enjoying the CNBC series American Made, which focuses on American entrepreneurs. This week’s episode chronicled Harley-Davidson. At one point, the interviewer asked Willie Davidson, the grandson of the co-founder, if the company believed in reaching out to their customers. His response (which I’m paraphrasing) was: “Oh sure, we stay in constant contact with our customers. We ride with them all the time.”. When Jeremy and Willie decided to join their community, did they stop marketing to their fans/owners? Technically, maybe not. But my guess is their communities don’t see them as marketers. They likely view Jeremy as a part of the same community of music lovers as they are, and Willie as a part of the same community of Harley lovers as they are. Marketer, or member. How do you want your community to view you?

Recently I had an opportunity to critique a few student books in person. And it struck me that it would be good to say some words and get a few opinions on what to do when someone critiques your book face-to-face. Things to do in a critique- Personally, when my book is critiqued, I smile and actively listen. And I try to match the conversational style of the person I’m meeting with. If people are very chatty I will talk and joke around with them. Other people are straight to the point in which case I’ll mostly stay quiet. And I’m always thankful for their opinions, whether I’m hearing “Your stuff is exceptional” or “You’re completely unprofessional” and believe me, I’ve heard both. Also, for a face-to-face critique I always write their name and agency down, and send a handwritten thank-you note. Alot of people don’t do this and it really helps you stand out. Things not to do in a critique- Don’t explain your ads unless asked-Alot of people like to give a running commentary on what the ad was for and/or what the strategy was. I’ve been advised against this, unless people ask questions. The quality of the work should speak for itself. Don’t air dirty laundry-I was in one critique where the young creative vented about how they were discriminated against at their internship. I’m really sorry if that happened but that’s not the kind of thing you should ever talk about to an ad person you don’t know. Advertising is such a small world, the person you’re venting to could be best friends with the folks you’re complaining about. And besides that it’s just not a good thing to do. Don’t bash the critiquer-In no way do I expect people to kiss my ass when I’m critiquing. I’m just one man with one opinion. I try to be nice but I’m also direct, because you can’t help anyone’s book by lying to them. One time a recent graduate showed me what was about the most “student-y” book I’ve ever seen. Booze ads, penis jokes, boob references, condom ads, easy assignments, it was all here. I told her “I think your stuff is funny and has some good concepts but it’s very student-y and not a lot of agencies will be comfortable with that” and she basically said “Forget you then.” So I just shook her hand and walked away. I hope that attitude works out for her. So that’s my thoughts on how to get critiqued. What do you folks think?

I’ve mentioned networking as a tool in the past, but I had an experience on Tuesday that led me to think about it again. I attended the One Show Student Gallery on Tuesday evening to check out the new work coming from the ad schools and to catch up with some of my old UT cronies. It was the number of UT people, or at least people who I’d known at UT, that amazed me. During my stint in Austin, I had three professors for my various creative classes and I knew of three others who had taught or were teaching other courses in the creative sequence. Half a country away from Austin, on that fateful Tuesday evening, I ran into five of those six people. And only two of them are still teaching at UT. One has moved on to head the advertising program at the University of Oregon and two others are now running the ad program at SMU. Both schools had an impressive display of student work on the gallery walls only a year after opening a true “portfolio program”. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly a network can grow and how valuable it can be. Each of those professors now has a group of students wandering out into the ad world. Each knows that they can refer those students to any of us who have already finished the program, and hopefully will be willing to share those names with us when the time comes. Then, of course, there’s the massive group of people that our professors meet throughout their teaching and creative careers. Just last night I found that one of my old teachers has a close friend at an agency that I’ve been dying to make in-roads with. The moral of the story: milk those connections for everything they’re worth. Offer favors when you can, and ask for help when you need it. And never, ever burn your bridges. This, and other feel-good moments brought to you by Danny.

Here’s BMA’s Top 25 Advertising Blogs for Week 5: 1 - AdRants - 9,236 (LW - 1)(-188) 2 - Werbeblogger - 23,090 (LW - 2)(-77) 3 - Media Buyer/Planner - 25,430 (LW - 3)(-865) 4 - Advertising/Design Goodness - 28,016 (LW - 6)(+1,306) 5 - Adverblog - 28,832 (LW - 5)(-750) 6 - ad-rag - 29,181 (LW - 4)(-1,986) 7 - AdFreak - 36,104 (LW - 7)(-841) 8 - AdJab - 40,837 (LW - 8)(+359) 9- AdverBox - 60,800 (LW - 10)(+1,326) 10 - AdPulp - 102,285 (LW - 11)(+1,343) 11 - Jaffe Juice - 128,413 (LW - 12)(+5,319) 12 - Beyond Madison Avenue - 133,782 (LW - 13)(+961) 13 - ….HOW ADVERTISING SPOILED ME…. - 137,028 (LW - 14)(-1,308) 14 - Advertising for Peanuts - 157,983 (LW - 15)(+2,180) 15 - Ad Blather - 179,959 (LW - 17)(+3,575) 16 - Designers who blog - 180,152 (LW - 16)(-13,214) 17 - AdverGirl - 355,786 (LW- 19)(+58,120) 18 - Room 116 - 364,008 (LW - 18)(-12,060) 19 - Ad Hunt - 421,374 (LW - 20)(+78,848) 20 - Ads That Suck - 480,673 (LW - 21)(+30,036) 21 - American Copywriter - 512,564 (LW - 23)(+5,067) 22 - Copyranter - 523,675 (LW - 22)(-12,954) 23 - Ernie Schenck Calls this Advertising? - 547,611 (LW - 24)(+33,256) 24 - The Hidden Persuader - 601,919 (LW- 25)(+45,783) 25 - Advertising Ourselves to Death - 731,348 (LW - UR) As with the Top 25 Marketing blogs, there was a bit of a shake-up at the top, as I decided to drop Wooster Collective. Nothing against WC, which I and many others love, it’s just that I didn’t feel that there was enough advertising content to continue to justify it being in the Top 25. Thanks again to everyone for their input here. Other than that, the biggest news was probably Advertising/Design Goodness breaking into the Top 5. In fact overall, the Top 15 was pretty flat, with the exception of Jaffe Juice, which had a nice gain. I will admit that I don’t spend as much time reading advertising blogs as I once did, now that I’m also blogging at the Viral Garden and Daily Fix, but I gotta say, I am really liking Advergirl’s blog. Focuses on advertising, but also throws in some marketing and branding news/commentary, so there’s something for everyone. And I’m not the only one liking what she’s doing, as she makes another strong move this week, up 58,120 points. But the biggest mover of the week was AdHunt, which shot up 78,848. Advertising Ourselves to Death, as expected, cracks the Top 25 this week, at #25. I think it’s interesting to note that Todd made the first Top 25 poll at #25, with an Alexa ranking of 1,076,373, and now is back at the same spot 4 weeks later, but his Alexa ranking has moved up to 731,348. I think this shows that your average blog grows traffic quicker than your average website. Next update will be next Monday. And if you want me to check out your advertising/marketing blog, feel free to email me a link and I’ll give it a look.

Last week I brought up the Junior’s best friend, portfolio reviews. I also mentioned my experiences at IHaveAnIdea’s Portfolio Night NY. I figured I’d follow that up with some thoughts on the One Show Portfolio Review which took place over the last two days. The One Show review is held every year in conjunction with the well known One Show awards as part of the organization’s Education Festival. In addition to two days of portfolio reviews, they also hold a college competition and a pitch competition. The college competition is based around an assigned brief given a couple of months in advance by the One Club. This year’s brief was for HybridCenter.org. I’ll stick to the portfolio reviews in my write up since I didn’t take part in the college competition. The One Show review is my favorite of the student reviews that I’m familiar with. They don’t try to over-organize the event, but rather let it unfold as it goes along. The event is laid out in a large room with about 30 tables. Each table seats one reviewer and a few juniors. Beyond that, its every man for himself. You pick who you want to talk to (each reviewer has a name tag that mentions their agency and their discipline) and you simply wait your turn. If you want to wait through a longer line to speak with someone specific, feel free. If you want to cruise through the shorter lines to get more feedback, that’s certainly welcome as well. I attended Thursday’s review session. This year’s review attracted more out-of-town reviewers than I’ve noticed in the past. I had the opportunity to speak with a CD from Olson in Minneapolis, an ACD from McKinney in Durham, a recruiter from Carmichael Lynch in Minneapolis, and a recruiter from Hill Holiday in Boston. There were also a number of local adland celebrities in attendance as well. I spoke with a CD from Wieden + Kennedy NY, a Sr. CW from FCB, a CW from SS+K, and another CW who’s agency wasn’t listed. I also noticed a number of creatives from Euro RSCG, Mother, Grey, DiMassimo, and R/GA. I spoke with eight people during the five hour review session. I heard from other reviewees who made it through as many as ten sessions. The reviewers were candid without being mean which is always refreshing. At least if you’re getting thrown to the sharks, you can do it with a smile on your face right? Some were willing to share business cards to allow juniors to keep in touch as their work progresses. Others were more accommodating and willing to deliver samples (mini books, cards, etc) to recruiters and/or creative directors back home if they thought your work was up to par. In my opinion, there is no better place to get some real-world feedback on how your book stacks up. The reviewers are seeing a bunch of books at once, which allows them to see what’s good and what’s not, and gives you the opportunity to listen in on some other people’s feedback as well (yes, they get to listen to yours too). For $60, where else do you get the opportunity to have those creatives come to you? And the “free” lunch doesn’t hurt either. If you’re a Junior just finishing school, or a even someone who’s looking for a change of scenery at the office, GO TO THIS REVIEW next year!

Well…..not really. This is a great story that shows that the internet makes the world thiiiiiis small. Last week a bulletin arrived on my MySpace page from Nettwerk’s Erin Kinghorn alerting me to a Music Marketing Seminar that Nettwerk would be running in Vancouver last night.

After minutes of cursing inanimate objects about why they keep Alabama so far from Vancouver, and why round-trip tickets there cost more than the 37 cents in my pocket, I post the news on The Viral Garden. In the true spirit of community, both Jordan and Ryan decided that they would attend the event, on behalf of the blogging community!

Jordan has an excellent recap of the night’s events at Tell Ten Friends. Here’s a portion:

Question period came, and in tandem Ryan and I confronted the issue that Mack was most interested in. As I mentioned, it was geared toward musicians, so our questions were answered as if we were, which was a shame. Ryan’s question was something to the effect of: “What kind of plan do you have for using blogs to spread the message?” What followed was an explanation about what a blog was, so I grilled them with the follow-up: “How have you as a label used blogging for promotion; have you focused any of your PR efforts on fan bloggers?” Sadly, I was instructed as to how I would go about doing such a thing, and not given the insider Nettwerk trade secrets. I didn’t have the resolve to keep pushing and get into the specifics of 100 CDs for 100 bloggers; it just wasn’t the right audience.Overall, It was great to see a label reaching out to unsigned artists and helping them advance their fledgling careers. It serves as hard evidence that they are striving to reach out to fans and the community to create a conversation rather than “pushing music on them.”

I think there’s some very interesting points to take from the panel’s reactions to these questions from the Canadian Dynamic Duo. First, the event was aimed at helping unsigned musicians market themselves, and I think it’s VERY telling that Nettwerk felt they had to explain what a blog was. And very scary. Nettwerk works with these up and coming artists every day, and if they felt that they might not be sure what a blog even is, suggests that the ‘blog-train’ isn’t rolling quite as quickly as we thought, at least not through the music industry.

But if that IS the case, the questions posed by Ryan and Jordan could play a big role in opening Nettwerk’s eyes to the marketing potential of blogs to promote their artists. Here they were expecting to field questions from artists about marketing their CDs, and then these guys come out of nowhere grilling them on using bloggers to help promote their artists! Hopefully it gave them something to think about after the smoke cleared.

As Jordan said, it’s a great move that Nettwerk is making to reach out to the music community and attempt to help those artists that need the help the most. A huge thank-you to Jordan and Ryan for stepping up and asking the questions that I would have loved to hear answered! And when Nettwerk decides to come to their Sync offices in Nashville with a Music Marketing seminar, the American camp can take over, as JD and I will carry the flag for bloggers

The Movie Marketing Master, Chris Thilk, has the lowdown on the new promotion that Technorati is running for Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Some of the details are that the movie will be advertised on the T’Rati homepage, search results for blog posts mentioning the movie will be featured, and Al Gore will be given a ‘Favorites Blog’ profile. Chris adds this about T’rati focusing on blog postings about the movie:

This deal will basically turn part of the site into an RSS aggregator for the community conversation that’s going on about the movie. It will not provide full post texts but push people back to the blogs the posts originate from, a great tactic. This is exactly the kind of thing I’ve talked about in the past in terms of providing a one-stop shop for what people are saying about the movie.

And not only that, if this campaign is successful, it will automatically raise the credibility of blog posts in general, and could lead to a string of similar promotions for really any product under the sun. Of course, in terms of this promotion, Todd at Advertising Ourselves to Death, has an even better quote: “Think the hope of tapping part of that huge audience won’t spur hundreds of people to write their own review of the film?” Yep yep. Here’s an even better idea, Paramount could give away prizes to the most-linked to posts about the movie. Oh I think Technorati has opened up a promotional can of worms with this one….

This past Friday, I attended the Beyond Broadcast Conference (Reinventing Public Media in a Participatory Culture) on the campus of Harvard Law School. Because the skies have been open and obnoxious ‘round these parts for the lastÂ…umÂ… 8? 12? 46?… days, the campus was a bit waterlogged, but the conference itself was fabulous. I urge you to check out the main conference site and as well as the accompanying wiki; everything was superwell-documented. You can get video streams of the lectures, attendee and speaker notes, and a truckload of Flickr pics. Hell, thereÂ’s probably free meatloaf on that site if you look hard enough. But hey, no promises, k? One highlight for me was Deborah ScrantonÂ’s talk on The War Tapes. She won Best Documentary at Tribeca a week or so ago, and I can clearly see why. The film is as funny and real as it is jarring and disturbing. I had a chance to view more of it later in the night, and I highly recommend taking a look. At the “Demos and Drinks” portion of the event, Wiffiti and I had a chance to show off. And yes, at this point I should probably clarify exactly what Wiffiti is, or IÂ’m certain to spark the same string of questions that I got from Mack yesterday as we were emailing back and forth (unless Mack is just, you know, completely cluelessÂ…). HereÂ’s a quick run-down [disclaimer– please excuse my canned-ness, and feel free to leave a comment and IÂ’ll hit you back with more infoÂ… itÂ’s definitely a concept to bandy, as itÂ’s interactive and oscillating by nature]: Wiffiti is a contraction of the words Wireless and Graffiti. Wiffiti enables users to send text messages to internet-connected displays in locations where people (used to) socialize such as cafes, bars and clubs. Wiffiti messages and screen shots can be viewed instantly on the location display or on the web, effectively networking the thoughts, poetry, ideas, rants, politics or flirtations of users “in the moment”. WiffitiÂ’s purpose is to extend and empower public expression and creativity in a socially responsible way, fostering an open and strong sense of citizenship and community. We hope that by capturing the “Word on the street”, Wiffiti will also help to keep the local conversation alive. The attendees jumped right in to participate, and this was definitely the right crowd in terms of age and special interest. ItÂ’s such a blast for me to see people adopting this medium (and its accompanying behaviors) and just having beachpails of fun with it. But really— I encourage your questions and commentsÂ… I love to talk about it (andÂ… umÂ… hear myself talk about it). As a wrap-up, I also had the opportunity to chat for a while with Michael Smolens, the founder of DotSUB. At its roots, DotSUB is an open source film-translation community. The best way to get the full picture is to poke around on the site and run the demo. And if you’ve ever wanted to watch the original Superman in Urdu… here’s your chance. And, fine, I don’t know if they have the Urdu version up yet, but you see where I’m going with this. Very, very cool.

Conspiracy Theory Alert!!! Visit www.avirginsplea.com to see a 25 year-old guy begging for help losing his virginity. Personally, I think this is all a scam. I think this guy’s making all this up to get publicity and get laid from tons of women. An actual 25 year-old virgin most likely has moral, religious, physical, or emotional reasons why they haven’t had sex, and would not be putting up a website advertising it. Just because somebody says they’re a virgin, acts inexperienced, and has a story about it does not make it so. SCAMMER! But rather brilliant, actually. Dude’s probably getting laid like a rock star now. And it gives him a great excuse if he sucks in bed. What do you folks think? Update: Okay well if you check the website now, there’s a big porno ad in it’s place, whoever created it admits it was all a scam, a “viral gone horribly wrong” and that Geoff never existed. Turns out I was half right. So to all those people who sent nasty comments to me on myspace I say this- Haha! I was half right! Unlike you all wrong people!

Here’s BMA’s Top 25 Advertising Blogs for Week 4: 1 - AdRants - 9,048 (LW - 1)(+78) 2 - Werbeblogger - 23,013 (LW - 2)(-984) 3 - Media Buyer/Planner - 24,565 (LW - 4)(-285) 4 - ad-rag - 27,195 (LW - 3)(-3,189) 5 - Adverblog - 28,082 (LW - 5)(+22) 6 - Advertising/Design Goodness - 29,322 (LW - 6)(+503) 7 - AdFreak - 35,263 (LW - 7)(-1,374) 8 - AdJab - 41,196 (LW - 8)(-1,002) 9 - Wooster Collective - 45,711 (LW - 9)(+1,340) 10 - AdverBox - 62,126 (LW - 10)(+2,151) 11 - AdPulp - 103,628 (LW - 11)(-1,581) 12 - Jaffe Juice - 133,732 (LW - 12)(+2,162) 13 - Beyond Madison Avenue - 134,743 (LW - 13)(+2,290) 14 - ….HOW ADVERTISING SPOILED ME…. - 135,720 (LW - 14)(+14,597) 15 - Advertising for Peanuts - 160,163 (LW - 16)(+15,282) 16 - Designers who blog - 166,938 (LW - 15)(-1,897) 17 - Ad Blather - 183,534 (LW - 17)(+10,163) 18 - Room 116 - 351,948 (LW - 19)(+107,235) 19 - AdverGirl - 413,906 (LW- 18)(+40,637) 20 - Ad Hunt - 500,222 (LW - 20)(+19,764) 21 - Ads That Suck - 510,709 (LW - 21)(+11,349) 22 - Copyranter - 510,721 (LW - 23)(+46,892) 23 - American Copywriter - 517,631 (LW - 24)(+65,120) 24 - Ernie Schenck Calls this Advertising? - 580,867 (LW - 22)(-29,165) 25 - The Hidden Persuader - 647,702 (LW- 25)(+18,547) The biggest suprise to me is the continual slides of Ad-Rag, AdFreak, and to a lesser degree, AdJab. I figured going in that Ad-Rag would be a solid #2, with AdFreak Top 5, and AdJab right behind. Instead, Ad-Rag is now on the verge of falling out of the Top 5, while both AdFreak and AdJab are about to get passed by Wooster Collective, which has been surging. After you get past the Top 11, most of the rest of the poll enjoyed an up week. ….HOW ADVERTISING SPOILED ME….has been on a tear, and if they can keep their pace for a couple more weeks, they could crack the Top 10. AdverGirl, American Copywriter, and CopyRanter all enjoyed big weeks, but Room 116 again knocked the cover off the ball. No new ad blogs this week, but I did note that Advertising Ourselves to Death made a ginormous leap in the Alexa rankings. One more big week will likely have Todd back in the Top 25 next Monday. Next update will be next Monday. And if you want me to check out your advertising/marketing blog, feel free to email me a link and I’ll give it a look.

This post reminds me how cautious I am of anyone that spouts off marketing buzzwords/phrases, while offering little/any discussion of the theory behind the ideas.(Yes I have my own in ‘joining the community’, but at least I am kind enough to bore you with examples of how this can/is being accomplished). Love this quote:

It is the job of all advertising to be as engaging and compelling as humanly possible. In fact, it is the job of all communication to get and keep your attention as long as required. The idea that we need to point this out, name it or even say it out loud is a serious indication of just how many people working in the marketing and media industry should “engage” in another line of work.

This guy ‘gets it’

That’s right! While Radio 1’s One Big Weekend concert will be raging this weekend in Scotland, it will ALSO be broadcast in the online game Second Life. I can’t decide if this totally rules, or is scary as hell.

So, this morning I’m watching the Today Show because I always watch the Today Show… and Mattie L. is doing this little segment on Mom’s Day Gifts, and they suggest the new line of Marc Jacobs “Splash” fragrances. A series of light, natural scents: rain, grass, cotton. Super. But, uh, remember when Gap created this exact same product line….um… about ten years ago? Same squarish bottles, same pale pastels, same blocky packaging. Well, apparently the entire Gap line was discontinued years ago because of flailing sales. So, for all of you coolcats who want your neck to smell like your lawn again, your secret weapon is back! And you don’t need to walk past racks of icky 100% cotton cable knit magenta sweaters to get it. [Appendix: What’s weird, though… is that perfume distributers are selling the Gap Crap for 250 smackers a pop. saywha?]

We love them. We hate them. We love to hate them. Award shows, of course. They’re constantly viewed as yet another excuse for the industry to pat itself on the back. There are so many award shows out there that we can hardly keep track of them anymore. What do all of these awards have in common? They’re all juried by industry professionals. Until now. In steps The Juan Show, which is juried by…Juan. He is the everyman. He’s just a normal guy who loves advertising (and doesn’t work in the industry). I had the opportunity to catch up with Juan to learn more about his ad show. Here’s what he had to say: Tell us a bit about yourself Juan.

Well, there really isn’t much to tell…my life isn’t that much different than anybody else. I was born a genius at the age of 4. That’s really all there is to know. I like pancakes and I enjoy a good game of bowling. My average is a 72.

So what’s your affiliation with the advertising industry?

I really know advertising and what makes for good advertisements. In fact, I’m what you might call an “ad man”. I think the advertising business could really use a guy like me – someone who looks at everything out there and tells people what’s what. I mean, if you ask me advertising is pretty cool…people should be talking about it.

What qualifies you to judge the merits of the work entered in the Juan Show?

I watch a lot of TV. After the cone accident I watched 38 days of TV straight. My mom said it would help me heal up nice and strong if I watch people on TV. Well, nine months later I finally got better but I never got over cone-fear.

What is the goal of the Juan Show?

I’d say it’s to let the people in advertising know that they’ve done a good job. I thought it would be great to create an award show for these people – so they would know their work was funny or kooky or whatever. Now if you ask me, even a commercial that isn’t funny can be great. But it better have a baby in it – babies make great ads. Like the other day when I saw that ad with the baby riding in a tire – I went out and tried to buy some but it’s hard to buy babies. Anyway, I don’t know what my goal is – maybe this will start a trend and there will be other advertising award shows that spark out of mine.

Are you aware that there are a number of professional organizations that run international awards shows in the advertising community?

I’m not following you on this one.

What are the criteria that you’re using to judge the work?

Well I’ve got a good explanation of what I like on my website (www.thejuanshow.com). But it’s pretty simple – I just know when it’s good. When an advertisement is good it just slaps you in the face…like WHAM you know? WHAM – that was a good ad. If it’s like BLAM then I have to consider if that was a good slap or a bad slap. And SMACK is like a really good spot. I’ve only gotten SMACK twice and both times I had to take a nap.

If you want to learn more about The Juan Show or to get information about how to enter your work, visit www.thejuanshow.com