happy thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all! With this, my second Thanksgiving since starting this blogging thing, I thought that I would celebrate with this turkey of an ad:

I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did. And have a great holiday.

the revolution in modern communications

I had a minor emergency the other day. It could have been a major emergency but (I am going to go ahead and ruin the ending here) things worked out when it was all said and done. Before I give up any more of the story, let’s get right to it.

I had to make a trip into the office this weekend and, dutifully, I went, fully expecting that it would not be a long trip. It wasn’t. Or at least it wasn’t until I walked out of the office to grab a soda and snack at the deli down the street and realized, as the office door shut behind me, that my keys (including office key card) and cell phone were upstairs.

And, this being the weekend, I would have to wait until someone else came by before I could retrieve them.

Because of the revolution in modern communications, I had no option but to sit and wait and hope that the rain would hold off until some other poor sap turned up to put in a lonely weekend shift behind a desk…my cell phone, with all of its numbers stored safely inside (numbers stored so safely behind autodial and my contacts list that I know maybe three actual phone numbers anymore…and one of those numbers is 911) was beyond reach.

So I couldn’t call someone.

My cell phone, with its oh so necessary internet connectivity, was sitting at my desk next to my keys so I couldn’t e-mail or IM or leave a Facebook message or make a desperate plea over Twitter or in any way contact someone digitally.

Modern technology had brought instant communication to my fingertips and I had left the best that modern communication offers sitting on my desk.

With my keys.

I was distraught and then handled this emergency with the aplomb and clear thinking that characterize me in desperate situations. I assed my situation and realized that I was starving first and locked out second, walked down to the deli to get a sandwich and soda and then walked back to the office and waited it out. Eventually I was let in the office by the cute kid of one of the cleaning crew.

The day was saved.

And I, so I was never without the ability to contact people again, promptly velcroed my phone to my hand. It is going to be awkward to do certain things with such an arrangement and I definitely type slower, but after the terror of being rendered fully incommunicado by such a simple error I vowed simply “never again.”

What does this mean for advertisers? I don’t know. For that sort of analysis, you’re better off reading Alan Wolk take on the divergence of calling and data as represented by people who have two phones, one for each of those uses (I am one of those people, driven mainly by my work-provided phone that I use mostly for e-mail and my “home use phone” that I actually take calls one…in the sad situation mentioned above I had the bad luck to leave both of them at my desk. Go figure).

While you read, remember: divergence is the continual pattern of technology in the modern era.

There is a cult of convergence, but people tend to order their technology as they order their lives. And they don’t want one-size-fits all devices for their lives. They want specialization.

intel’s digital video face-off

My old art director partner from my days in New York was kind of a technology dork.

In many ways, I think that art directors have to be technology dorks…at least if they want to be good (which is similar to how copywriters, if they want to be good, need to read everything they can get their hands on). He is pretty good. Which is why, when I asked him to check out this site that Intel did for their new processor, with the crying-out-for-a-copywriter name Intel Core i7 Processor Extreme Edition, I guess that I wasn’t surprised that he thought it was pretty cool.

I didn’t really get it.

And thought that it was slow to get to the point.

But I am also not the target and too much technology talk bores me. He countered by saying that it was cool, in a Iron Chef sort of way, to see the hook, which was a 70 minute digital animation battle between two creative types on computers using the new processor and some mega-high-powered Adobe software that could eventually, if it falls into terrorist hands, turn the whole world into a scene from TRON.

Created by a company called Ignite Social Media, this is just the sort of targeted content that seems to grab the interest of those in the narrow consumer base.

And that is cool because, well, there are only so many people who will ever need, let alone buy, the products that are being shilled.

Also, because it sort of always comes back to me, I like any site that has a section specifically set up for bloggers.

It makes me think that these guys get it.

he’s the ecd, not jesus

There is nothing wrong with the Cult of Creativity that pervades ad agencies. I don’t say this self-servingly either, the fact of the matter is that creativity is each agency’s product and it would be strange if it weren’t celebrated. The Cult of Creativity is nice because, especially for the creatives stuck working late trying, again and again, to re-write a headline about XXXX, the adulation at the end of the tunnel (and, if it’s a good shop, the adulation in the tunnel…yes, sex jokes are hacky) makes it worth it.

Egos are a big driver of hard workers.

All that said, sometimes it all goes a little too far.

Like at Official Most-Favored Agency of the Daily Biz, Y&R, where the obsequiousness toward and belief in the amazingness of their ECDs has reached messianic proportions. Seriously. Barack Obama would be jealous of such fervent and unquestioning support.

There is a very nice young woman in the employ of Y&R New York who lived in my old apartment building (I moved and therefore feel like I can start to talk more about my life in ‘the city.’). I met her one day in the stairwell of the classic New York five-floor walkup as she despairingly considered her bags of groceries and the unhappy thought of walking up the stairs with them. I helped her out. I’m that kind of guy.

She and I grab a drink every so often and one time I even joined her at a Y&R happy hour (I justified it by calling it research and considering that there was at least the off chance that I could take home a drunk ad chick)…and it was at said happy hour that I realized that she was not the only one who regarded each and every ECD (that title is like VP at a bank, just thrown around at old-line agencies like Y&R) at the agency to be brimming with brilliance and cloaked in creativity.

It got so bad that I considered taking a vial of water, labeling it “water used in XXXX’s shower” and selling it on eBay.

It would be marginally sacreligious because of the obvious parallels with actual holy water, but these Y&R people pretty much consider that shit divine so why not? I might even make some money off of it.

peyton manning is priceless

I have always thought, without any actual corroborating evidence to support my gut feeling on the subject, that Peyton Manning is a lot like Hansel from Zoolander. Stick with me on this one.

The guy is in a lot of commercials. A lot of commercials. A lot. Really, a lot.

I can see him turning up to the set, meeting the agency people and sitting to talk to the client who is, of course, over the moon excited that they are actually talking to Peyton Manning. Not wanting to be “those people” who talk to him about what he is thinking during a two-minute drill, they ask him how he likes acting.

And he says something, with all the genuine feeling that he can muster, like, “I love acting, and I care desperately about what I do. Do I know what product I’m selling? No. Do I know what I am doing today? No. But I’m here. And I am going to give it my best shot.”

And he means it.

That said, I like Peyton Manning. I think that he is a down to earth kind of guy who is really funny given the right sort of script that plays off of his ability to play light self-deprecation for a laugh…which means that, though he may be a little bit played out, it kind of doesn’t matter. He is strangely able to move past the fact that he is in every commercial ever because he is pretty likeable. And good at being in advertising.

Even online advertising, like the current Mastercard work from MRM New York.

It’s an old concept, the personalized video from a famous person, with a famous person who is an advertising hooker, and yet it doesn’t fall on its face.

Peyton Manning comes off just like he always does…as a salt of the earth guy who is accidentally famous that you wouldn’t mind having a beer with. And the video is cut just right so it’s hard to tell at first that it’s one of those personalized videos and not actually cut that way.

I don’t really know what it is trying to sell, but when do you in a Peyton Manning ad?

Peyton Manning ads are about one thing: Peyton Manning. Who is pretty funny.

p.t. barnum marketing courtesy of dr pepper

The marketing geniuses at Dr Pepper (caution: post may contain sarcasm-like substance) came up with another one of those forgettable P.T. Barnum stunts they are famous for a while back, promising to give free Dr Pepper to everyone if the totally relevant Guns ‘n’ Roses ever finished their 17 years -in-the-making album Chinese Democracy.

Surprise, surprise, the album was not only released this year, but released on November 23rd!

And…wait…aren’t there 23 flavors in every Dr Pepper? By jove! Dr Pepper just cracked a big ol’ egg of marketing genius all over us!

Too bad all the marketing genius wasn’t put toward figuring out how to execute against this execrable idea…, as reported at Perez Hilton, Dr Pepper’s servers could handle the traffic and their site was unavailable for most of the day that consumers were supposed to be able to get their free soda.

I guess when they took up that new ‘drink it slow’ positioning, the whole company took it to heart.

(And yes, the above is the best joke that I could come up with. I am far too angry at this marketing ineptitude to be at all funny at the moment. I have admitted it. Let’s move on.)

One-off, stunt-y marketing ideas like this that do nothing to build the actual brand are the kind of marketing that comes from executives that desperately need PR because they are looking for their next job. Whether that is because, like a Julie Roehm, they are soulless corporate climbers, or, like Dr Pepper’s own Sean Gleason, because they know that they are about to be laid off, this sort of idea is soundbite marketing, devoid of an ounce of strategy. It gives bloggers, Oprah, etc something small to say about the brand, but it builds nothing.

It is hacky and cheap.

The fact that Dr Pepper wasn’t prepared for the response to their stunt is only the surface of a deep ineptitude that runs deep in their marketing department.

Good luck, Deutsch/LA. At least you know that you can’t do any worse.

keep your powder dry

The primary problem with two hour meetings, besides the fact that I get extremely uncomfortable sitting in a chair that long and end up squirming and then making sounds that sound like they may be farts because I am squirming (and then, because I want to replicate that sound I end up trying to replicate the sound which only makes the farting sounds louder and makes people look at me), is that I get nothing else done.

That nothing else includes blogging.

Of course, the reason for the two hour meetings is the wrangling over the direction of the brand that we are working on. Everyone has an opinion, of course, and getting your opinion to win out as the agency recommend is a long, painstaking process of many little battles of which it is important to win enough that your idea is alive at the end, where you can sink your entire advertising capital in to fighting for it.

Of course, that means that you need advertising capital left to fight for it.

So, unlike the crazy planner who was busy fighting over specific wording of a platform that may not even make final consideration by the agency, it’s best to keep your powder dry.

Keep that in mind, my friends. Keep your powder dry.

bmw is slip sliding away

I posted a while back about GSD&M losing the BMW account (based on a comment from an old BMW hand) and got a pretty immediate and very terse reply from someone on the corporate communications team telling me that I was absolutely mistaken and that in no way was the BMW account going into review, let alone shaky.

Since that time, I have heard from numerous sources that BMW was heading out the door.

These include the BMW old timer from the good old days, the ex-GSD&Mer who emailed, and the advertising sales gal who tried to chat me up in a bar (until she realized that I was creative and not media).

Most recently, I heard from a director I was working with that an RFP had gone out to his buddy at an agency to remain unnamed and they were struggling with staffing the pitch team appropriately in the middle of all of the concepting and production that they were doing on their current clients.

I can understand why I would receive such a quick response on my post…it’s just that the response wasn’t true.

Maybe it is early to start reporting on the account’s departure from the Austin-based agency, maybe the final severing of the ties hadn’t been done yet, maybe there are a number of circumstances that make it understandable, even right, for GSD&M corporate communications to say what they did.

But you can’t hide on the internet.

If things are going south, it’s best to just admit it and move on…because then there simply isn’t anything to see or talk or blog about it. Accounts come and go. It’s the way this business works.

It left a bad taste in my mouth that GSD&M tried to sweep it under the rug.

the hiatus is over

Apologies to all of my adverfriends for the break in posting…there has been a lot of stuff going on, both good and bad, that took all of my energy and sapped my creativity.  And during that time I realized that advertising is deeply unserious and therefore easy to put aside.

It’s also really easy to come back to.

Some of the things that took up my time:

1. Moving. I am no longer a New Yorker – it was time for a new agency and a new city. So I left.

2. Getting sued. That’s right, I had to deal with a frivolous lawsuit from a crazy ex-girlfriend.

3. Making it happen with the Pretty Account Supervisor. One word: BOOM.

4. Getting settled. I had to pack up, unpack, meet people, get in the groove at work, etc and so on. It took some time.

5. Pumpkin carving. I love Halloween and love carving pumpkins and, though this took up only an afternoon, it was an afternoon that I could have spent blogging.