Archive for May, 2009
Always so clever.
Ah Ikea, I used to love your furniture – especially once I graduated from college and wanted to buy “real” stuff for my tiny apartment. The fact that your design is boring as hell and the particle board products you make are cheap wasn’t even a concern until I reached the age of, oh, 25. […]
Filed under: Good Stuff | 1 Comment
Tags: advertising, good, print
Social media jumps the shark.
We’ve reached the end of Social Media: WD40 now has a “community” where you can “share your money-saving stories, photos and videos.” I’m not sure what’s scarier – that 466 people uploaded a story with a photo or that Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs has 82 views of his video.
Filed under: Are you kidding me? | Closed
Tags: ridiculous, social media, website
Ad Boy.
Characters in advertising have certainly evolved throughout the ages. From the RCA dogs to Tony the Tiger to the Pets.com sock puppet, they’ve helped build iconic (and sometimes not so iconic) brands. And that’s why Ad Boy: Vintage Advertising with Character by Warren Dotz and Masud Husain looks so cool. “The postwar, twentieth-century economic boom […]
Filed under: Good Stuff | Closed
Tags: advertising, book, characters, design, good
This kind of says it all.
Here’s another great anti-Prop 8 commercial for the Courage Campaign. Why weren’t these running before the election?
Filed under: Good Stuff | 1 Comment
Tags: advertising, good, TV
Permission.
NOTE: In lieu of the California Prop 8 ruling, I’m reposting this today. Please forward it to everyone you know. With all the outcry over the amazingly lame “Gathering Storm” commercials (which I won’t link to) and the Miss California debacle, the media has been missing the other side of the story – namely, that […]
Filed under: Good Stuff | 1 Comment
Tags: advertising, good, TV
Well, that didn’t take long…
Ten whole days after Dell launched the ridiculously condescending site for women, Della, they’ve completely revamped it to include things more important to women than the color choices. Oh there’s still some nods to “matching your lifestyle” and crap like that, but the product page has actual specs for a change. And what use to […]
Filed under: Are you kidding me? | Closed
Tags: ridiculous, screw-up, website
Nebraska gets what it deserves.
Ah, the fun and games that ensue when you offer control of your brand to consumers. Case in point: Nebraska. The Cornhusker state received four submissions for their new license plate and the Governor thought it’d be a good idea to have a contest to choose the winner. The problem is, all the designs sucked […]
Filed under: Are you kidding me? | Closed
Tags: contest, crowd_sourcing, design, screw-up
How to sell creative ideas.
It’s always kind of cool to pull back the curtain and see how other agencies do their thing. And we’ve all wondered from time to time “How the hell did they sell that idea to the client?” Well Denver agency Karsh/Hagan decided to spell it out for us. Most of the ideas are sayings we’ve […]
Filed under: Good Stuff | Closed
Tags: agency, wisdom
Look up the URL geniuses.
When suggesting a URL to a client, what’s the first thing you do? Look it up to see if anyone has it. Then you think through a few other URLs that people might type in and see what comes up, right? Well, apparently not if you’re the agency for the new Fling Bar from Mars. […]
Filed under: Are you kidding me? | Closed
Tags: screw-up, website
The Dog & Pony Show 
So true it’s painful.
If you’ve ever worked in advertising, you’ll watch this and wince. It’s so true it’s painful. You’ll be nodding along and muttering “Totally…” under your breath. Of course the big question is, how did we as an industry end up like this? Why do we allow clients to do this to us when a restaurant […]
Filed under: Commentary, Good Stuff | 2 Comments
Tags: advertising, clients, Commentary