David Armano over at Logic+Emotion would like to know:

What was the most significant event/aspect of 2006 in regards to marketing, advertising or user experience?

I personally have a little trouble with this question.  It's HUGE!  And I have trouble separating myself from it enough to look with an objective eye.  YouTube has certainly blown up this year, culminating in its purchase by Google.  Hell, Google has blown up even further this year, bringing itself beyond the search engine arena. 

From a more industry-specific point of view, we've seen smaller agencies make a come-back.  Which I love.  Just last night I was at dinner with a friend talking about small agencies and where they're headed (yeah, I guess that makes us bona fide ad nerds) along with the difference between her 12-man shop and mine at 250.

I think the reality is that we didn't see any huge single event in 2006.  In my mind, that event needs to be something that the general public could see, even if they weren't immediately aware that they were seeing it.  Some shift in the industry that was visible from the outside.  And I don't think we did.  

Even if we take that qualifier away and ask from an industry standpoint, I think something's missing.  Lots of account movement, as usual.  More small shops taking bigger accounts.  Cool.  But nothing to stop the presses over.

Maybe in 2007?

Stylestation has an interesting profile of Weina Scott, a 17 year-old entrepreneur who, along with a partner, just sold their personal creation to a major company for a cool $200,000 plus continued interest in the company. Now, there aren't many things at all that I regret about my "growing up" years, but this is one of them. I had my pursuits, and I went after them heartily. Unfortunately, none of them were pursuits that really ended up following me down the career path.

Weina Scott was given a book on html programming for her 13th birthday. From this, she taught herself how to create website and started building them for extra spending money. A couple of years later, she and a partner founded Switchpod, a site dedicated to hosting podcasts. The site which was later bought out for a hefty chunk. She and her partner maintain some control over Switchpod, and each earns a quick $40k salary for working half-time.

Weina's advice for budding entrepreneurs? If you are good at something, stick to it. Don't give up.

We've all seen little (sissy) dogs in little (sissy) purses.

Well now, thanks to the winner of a fierce copyright case brought forth by Louis Vuitton, we can now have dog-pillow purses, too.

Can you say "psyched"?!

Um, right.  

Haute Diggity Dog has successfully established its brand of Chewy Vuitton dog pillows and toys.  According to Startup Journal, we "people" are apparently fit to tell the difference between a gazillion dollar French purse and a stuffed chewy: 

"The fact that the real Vuitton name, marks and dress are strong and recognizable makes it unlikely that a parody — particularly one involving a pet chew toy and bed — will be confused with the real product," the judge, James C. Cacheris, wrote in a judgment early this month.

Well, no shit, huh?  I better start giving consumers more credit.  

 

[flickr thanks to nightmares_n_fairy_tales.] 

Grant McCracken over at This Blog Sits at the presents a terrific challenge to a basic marketing concept. He wonders if perhaps branding has defiantly romped right on past all of us mere marketers, overburdened and left hollow by the definitions we relentlessly pin upon it.

McCracken muses: I wonder if the concept called branding is not AWOL, an innocent making its way in the world, falling sometimes into bad company, pressed into service by the not very scrupulous or the not very bright. It’s as if “branding” fell off the back of a truck and is now circulating without guarantees or operating instructions. It’s as if this piece of gray matter went gray market.

McCracken’s questioning spurred me to add to the interrogation:

Have we stopped trying to define branding, thereby allowing it to become an all-encompassing, yet ill-defined catch-all?
[Hey, Jaynie, how many hyphenated words can you use in a row?]

Along the same vein, as we keep adding layers and layers of meaning to what we call branding, have we pushed it to cease to mean anything at all?

Have we let it loose, like a too-frisky pup, to bob and weave among the fields of new media and UGC, simply because we’re too lazy to see which of these new marketing dimensions actually constitute branding?

Or, simply, have we inflated the term so much that it doesn’t fit in its own pants anymore? A case of marketing language getting far too big for its proverbial britches?

What’s branding to you? If you can do it in under a paragraph, I will applaud you from my desk. And possibly hula dance.

Video forthcoming.

Adam over at AdJab pointed out a really interesting blog for anyone who’s into animation called Cartoon Brew. Amidst the copious sampling of animation at Cartoon Brew, is this post featuring a few of the newest animated commercials. A little further digging also reveals this spot for Lux Provocateur.

It takes the somewhat abused fairy tale convention to tell its story, but what a story it is. Great animation, soap that makes ya horny, what more could you ask for?

Gotta love advertising that can get a message across so effortlessly and interestingly. I love it when advertisers go this far to make the medium the message. It seems like I’ve seen work like this more and more lately. It’s nice to know that there are still some concerned with making things that, at the very least, make you stop to soak in a second look.

See more executions over at the Chaos blog.

Some of you may remember my rant about customer service, a term that I believe is officially an oxymoron. Well, as I was reading through Seth’s Blog the other day, I came across a post that fit the mold for another such tirade. Only I’m too tired to go on a tirade right now, so instead I’ll let you read Seth’s observations.

On second thought, my soapbox here is looking like it needs some company. Here’s my weekly customer service snafu. First let me preface: I had family in town for Thanksgiving. Since we weren’t sure we’d all be in the same place for the holidays, we decided to exchange gifts this week. And we decided this at the last minute. So last week I order a gift and pay extra for 2nd day shipping via UPS (who I HATE).

Fast forward to friday when the three of us go to leave my apartment for lunch and find a “we missed you” delivery slip from UPS. Yes, we were sitting in the apartment. The delivery guy couldn’t have been bothered to ring the doorbell though, so he “missed” us. I, of course, call UPS to fight with them about it, and they tell me that they’ll have the local station call back within an hour. Two hours later, I call back and get the same song and dance, only this time I’m assured that I’ll receive a call. Needless to say, I never got a call back. My family left town yesterday without the gift, leaving me to look like an ass, and to top it off, I got to pay extra for the shipping. I’m pissed.

Enjoy your holiday shopping.

on the industry and on McCann in particular. Not that I have a problem with that. Because they’re right.Gawker is sinking its claws into the “fake testimonial” realm and then ripping it to shreds, and they put McCann’s work for Microsoft on the chopping block as the lead example.

Here’s what they have to say about it:
“This year’s Microsoft “people_ready” campaign (Myself, I just bought some aardvark_ready software, and boy am I confused…) is a nice shiny turd of fakery–fake photo shoots of fake businesses full of fake people faking readiness for Microsoft software. Software for the people-ready business.â„¢ Yep. They’ve trademarked that exclusive patch of marketing hooey. This blatantly untruthful campaign is via creaky, bloated ad agency McCann worldwide…”

I found this flickr gem a little while back, and I’ve been mortified ever since.
And, for the record, I typically don’t use a urinal. Unless, you know, the line for the ladies room is ultra-long and I upsized my iced tea at lunch and I’m wearing light-colored pants in a non-moisture-wicking fabric.

But that almost never happens.

Anyway, the photographer comments that it was taken in an office tower in Berlin, with no indication that it’s any type of ad. Anyone know anything about this campaign, if it is one?

If not, someone please tell me what kind of sociocultural statement this makes.
I’m not yet ready to postulate. Not this close to a holiday.

I’m just saying… if there was a hot guy with a weird facial expression looming above the toilet in a ladies stall, I would hold it…
Regardless of the size of my iced tea.

First off, welcome to BMA on wordpress.  It’s a shame google never made anything out of blogger, but I’m happier than a pig in shit to be here at our new home.  And, yes, you’ve gotta love that Texas slang. Motorola has made one of those simple toys that’s just damn fun to play with, and it even clearly drives home the point they’re trying to make.  Motorola means color choice.  Didn’t think that before, now I do, and I got to make some internet art in the process.  Nice work, and not a bad way to kill a half hour. Via Diablogue.

Sorry about the downtime over the last few days everyone, but as you can see, we’ve been a little busy behind the scenes! We’ve moved BMA to WordPress in hopes that it will prove to be more friendly than Blogger. If you were a subscriber to the old format of BMA, I’m afraid you’ll have to re-subscribe to the WordPress blog, and we all hope that you’ll take a minute to do just that. We’re sorry for the inconvenience! This also means that it might take us a few days to learn our way around WP, so please bear with us if things aren’t quite so snazzy at first.

We’ve also got some new surprises up our sleeves, so please stick around. We’ll have them up and running as soon as we can.

Have a great Turkey Day!

In honor of Yahoo buying Bix.com today (think of it as an aggregator for contests), I’d like to share a wild billboard permutation found in San Fran. Oh, San Francisco, you and your wealth of organic produce and flashy lights… And that bridge is pretty hot, too. (Speaking of, didya hear that ye olde GGB is mulling over CORPORATE SPONSORS?! I do not lie.) A big flickr thanks goes to Barrio Dude. Technorati Tags: Beyond Madison Avenue, Advertising, yahoo, Bix.com, Golden Gate Bridge

Technorati Tags:
Beyond Madison Avenue, Advertising

As wine marketing grows ever more of a sizzlin’ topic, RadCru.com has a unique approach that just might be the ideal lure for wine enthusiasts. According to their site, RadCru is “an online marketplace that enables just one select winery per day to sell direct to the public…Each day RadCru and our winery partners will feature one select offering, often times a small batch boutique wine that is very hard to find in traditional sales channels.” The wines are available for one day only, at which point sales switch over to the next featured winery. You’re never tagged with any middleman costs, as the wine comes directly to you from the winery, not RadCru. What a smart model… serving up hard-to-find wines with a clean and peppy UI, reasonable shipping costs, and a dash of attitude (not snobbery). At its core, it’s an unuppity boutique with a defined focus and friendly messaging. As a bonus, they sell great wine. Their tagline: Small Vines, Rad Wines. Come on! Just that alone deserves a visit. Judging from the archives, it appears that RadCru launched in July of this year. And, as of today, I’ve become an ardent supporter. [Flickr thanks to forthebzez] Technorati Tags: Beyond Madison Avenue, Advertising, RadCru, Wine Marketing

It’s that time of year again. Award season. Entries are due for all the big shows in the next couple of months, and it’s the last chance you’ll get to have your ego stroked for this year’s work. Of course, this is always a point of contention throughout the industry. Do you enter the fluffed up award shows, or do you stand proud and shun their back-slapping (stabbing?) ways on the grounds that your good work speaks for itself? And then of course, if you do enter and win, what the hell do you do with the awards? Some creatives stick them on their shelves. Other agencies use them to make a statement by wallpapering their bathroom in Addy certificates. Then of course, there’s the Cliff Freeman way which is to nonchalantly pile them along the entry wall in the agency. All 2,639 of them. My take? I believe awards are a necessary evil for a lot of us. Maybe all of us. Take me for example, a young creative trying to make a mark in the industry. Awards help. They get my work out there and noticed by the industry big-wigs. The guys who are defining what the industry is becoming. They also get looked at by everyone else. The guy that I want to work for but don’t even know about yet. (I guess now I’ll just have to get out there and win a couple.) And what about the agencies? Well, we always talk about the “hot shops”. What makes a hot shop hot though? Awards? No, not directly. But awards create buzz. They get names noticed (mine, an agency’s, whatever). They get the new blood interested. All those kids who are still in ad school pouring over the annuals. Get them interested and you’ve got your pick of the litter when its time for new hires. So just think of the awards as a branding move for your agency. Or yourself. What better brands are there? Here, I’ll even save you two minutes: One Show, Art Directors Club, Clios, Cannes, D&AD, Addys, Andys Flickr credit to Kinho Pizzato. Technorati Tags: Beyond Madison Avenue, Advertising

According to Reuters, Comedy Central will be adding some YouTube-type functionality (embedding, for instance) to their soon-to-be-launched enhanced video site. On the surface, it appears Viacom took their toys back to their house, and aren’t letting the rest of the kiddies play with them anymore (in case you hadn’t heard, Viacom forced YouTube to remove any and all Comedy Central clips).

This could go one of two ways, either Comedy Central will keep dreaming that anyone really gives a shit about the network and force people who want to watch and share their content to go to their site to do it. It might work for awhile, but eventually, with a million other choices, why not just say screw it, and watch whatever you want to watch, wherever you like to hang out.

On the other hand, the article did mention on-going talks between YouTube and Viacom, which signals the possibility that Comedy Central is just attempting to make their content as easily available, in as many places as possible. If that’s the case, more power to them. Monetize where you can, but at the end of the day, you’ve just got to let go a little bit. Sure, you might lose a bit here or there, but as the old cliche goes, 100% of nothing is still nothing, and if your number one concern is protecting your stupid pet trick, then an easy road may be ahead. It’s not hard to protect something no one wants.

via marketing shift

Technorati Tags: Beyond Madison Avenue, Advertising, Comedy Central, YouTube

We all aim to create ads that spur a response. Well, this one succeeds… in the absolute worst way possible. Sure, it’s a PSA for ‘rents to keep an eye on their waterlogged munchkinheads, but that’s not who’s getting pushed the message. LOOK! Look at that poor 3-year-old trying to decipher the lifeless Flat Stanley at the bottom of the pool! Powerful idea… but straight-up shitty placement. Um, see… If the parents were in the pool, then this wouldn’t be an issue. [Big thanks to coolz0r.] Technorati Tags: Beyond Madison Avenue, Advertising

You know one of the things I miss most about school is the projects. When was the last time your CD handed you a brand and said “No brief. You have fifteen minutes to bring me something that will enhance this brand.”? It doesn’t happen. Because they don’t care. Realisitcally, most of us aren’t in the business of creativity. We’re in the business of making money. If creativity doesn’t enhance the value of the brand to the agency, chances are it isn’t going to come to light. At least not on company time. That’s why school is so much fun. It will probably be the last place where you get an assigment that has nothing to do with advertising, and yet has everything to do with advertising. The last place where “it’s not about what it’s about” (thank you DKM). So, for all you former ad school junkies who miss the action and the randomness of unbridled creative opportunity, take 15 minutes and do something with it. Technorati Tags: Beyond Madison Avenue, Advertising, Creativity

File this under annoying proof that almost all the good ideas are already taken. The Bravia Balls ad was simply magical. One of my favorite commercials of all time, top 5 even. But, guess who came up with it. Sony? Fallon? Try David Letterman. Fuck! So, what do you think? Does knowing they probably ripped off the ad from late-night television diminish it for you? For me, I’m feeling a little shell-shocked right now, so I’ll say yes short-term, and no long-term. Everybody is always ripping off something else, and advertising has been one of the biggest offenders, so you can’t really fault them for taking an idea, and making it grow. With that said, it’s inspiring to be in the presence of something truly beautiful and original. And that ad inspired a lot of us. I guess we can just appreciate that they stole a simple idea, and executed it almost perfectly. At the end of the day, we’re here to sell, so in that regard, I guess it really doesn’t matter. Kudos to Scamp for a great find. Technorati Tags: Beyond Madison Avenue, Advertising, Bravia

So it’s getting to be that gift giving time of year again and I’ve decided to start procrastinating early. So instead of actually buying this doodad I’m blogging about it. This toy is made up of 30 little magnetic pyramids. It comes with some instructions for playing games with it, bla bla bla. Most importantly it promises instant genius. Just found a brief on your desk that the AE will be bugging you for any second? Get your brain in hyper drive with these wee magnets. Maybe the client will even approve something this round. Got a partner who feels like dead weight every Monday, Wednesday and Friday? Surprise him/her with one of these. Who knows, maybe it’ll pay off with a trip to a fancy award show. Or, well, your partner will have read this as well and will bitch you out for implying (s)he is a good-for-nothing, you’ll never be able to work together again and both your careers will go down the crapper.

Find out for yourself. Buy one (or more) at: http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/games/8ca5/

Technorati Tags: Beyond Madison Avenue, Advertising