2011

Reviews of 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising

The following are excerpts from reviews at Amazon. You can read the full reviews here.

Brilliant stuff, funny as hell.,
Stephen McGill
Stumbled across the Ad Contrarian blog a while ago and… it is by far my favourite blog. I grabbed this wonderful book as soon as I could as I wanted to have the best of Bob close at hand…. As a long time ad guy who cut his teeth on the work of Ogilvy,

The Year In Contrariana

Every year about this time the editorial board of The Ad Contrarian gets together for its annual year-end analysis. This consists of large plates of pasta, several pitchers of martinis, and an afternoon of irresponsible betting on bowl games.

Sometimes we even talk about the blog.

2011 was an interesting year here at Ad Contrarian world headquarters. Here are the highlights, as chosen by the

The Ten Amendments

Since Christmas and Hannukah are this week, I am publishing this guest post I received recently from a Very Important Being.

I am starting to get annoyed with you people. The universe is a large territory to cover and I’ve got a lot on my plate. I take my eye off you for a couple of thousand years and what do I find when I get back? You’re putting rings through your eyebrows and pineapple on

Comparing Apples and Amazons

My recent foray into publishing an ebook has been a real eye-opener.

I am a very big fan of Apple products. I believe they make beautiful products that are generally easy and delightful to use. The service in their retail stores is usually outstanding.

Dealing with "corporate" Apple, however, has been a complete nightmare. They are the epitome of everything that's wrong with the tech industry.

Advertising, Education, and Science

I love science. The reason I love it is that unlike marketing and advertising, science does not obediently accept the word of "experts."

In science, it doesn't matter what your title is, or how many awards you've won, or how many conferences you've spoken at, or how big your weenie is. If you can't prove your premise, you're done.

No proof, no dice.

Even today, Einstein's ideas about gravity

Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens had such an original mind that it was almost impossible to agree with him on everything. But even when you disagreed, you continued to be in awe.

I still can't get used to the idea that people really die.

“The wise understand by themselves; fools follow the reports of others”-- Tibetan proverb.

Just In Time For The Holidays -- Contrar-A-Thon!

I read an article in The Wall Street Journal last week that said the way to get a best-selling ebook is to sell it for 99¢.

Since it doesn't cost me anything to print the book -- it's just a bunch of electrons or pixels or something -- I thought, what the hell, let's sell it for 99¢ and see what happens.

So for the next five days, you can get my new book 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising

The Facebook Dilemma

As Facebook prepares to go public, they face some significant problems. Like most web-based businesses that don't sell anything, they need to find a way to monetize their user base -- in this case, a base that is both enormous and loyal.

They are obviously not the first to face this problem. The history of non-sales focused websites with large user bases achieving their assumed potential (as

Wrong Again

As regular readers know, I very rarely make statements about the future. The reason is simple. I'd rather make fun of stupid predictions than generate them. Here's a perfect example.

Over four years ago I wrote a post called "The Backlash Is Going To Come." I was about as wrong as I could be. In it I wrote...
It's not going to take advertisers long to figure out that on-line display advertising

Think Like A Prussian General

In his famous essay, Principles of War, Major-General Carl von Clausewitz postulated that one of the key principles of winning a war was to apply a preponderance of physical force and material advantage to a decisive point of conflict.

This principle is also applicable in marketing. Sadly, however, it is rarely understood these days. Instead, we are living in the era of "360-degree touchpoints."

The Gold Medal In Jargonomics

Congratulations to Sprint's CMO for winning The Ad Contrarian first Gold Medal in Jargonomics. He managed to cram a remarkable stinking, reeking heap of CMO double-talk into one sentence yesterday as he announced he had fired Goodby.

Before we get to the winning sentence, let's talk about the context. Apparently this ninny fell for the oldest agency gag in the book -- the "integrated network

Festival Of Shameless Self-Promotion

It has come to my attention that some of you have not yet purchased 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising. I'm afraid this is not acceptable.

Consequently, I have created, for your reading pleasure, a list of quotes about the book that will convince you of your need to read it.

First, some quotes from the reviews on Amazon:
"This is take no prisoners kind of stuff that is just superbly

First Comes The Sale. Then Comes The Social.

Now that I'm an Official Social Media Expert, I thought I'd give you a little lecture -- because that's what we Social Media Experts do.

The subject of today's lecture is this: Where does social media marketing fit into the marketing "ecosystem." See, now I even talk like a knucklehead.

Social mediacrats, agency trendsetters, and marketing conference blowhards have been assuring us dumb

TV Just Won't Stay Dead

It's been a long time since we checked in on the death of television.

In about 2007, as the economy was going into the tank and the ad industry was bleeding money our chattering marketing geniuses, pundits, and visionary journalists developed a "narrative" that television was dying. Of course, TV was being killed by the web. Why would we watch TV anymore when we had YouTube and Hulu and TiVo?

Keeping Poetry Alive

Allow me to tell you the fable
Of a story I followed on cable
'bout a fellow named Herman
Who had the girls squirmin'
Apparently this Cain was able

If you liked the poem, you'll love the book.

Random Thoughts On A Friday

Some Thoughts About Apple
The Steve Jobs book is terrific. Jobs was apparently a total pain in the ass and a complete dick -- as some brilliantly creative people are. (I only got to meet him once, for about 15 seconds.) Jobs was a walking, talking warehouse of contradictions. My only gripe with the book -- a little repetitious.
Why does Apple make things so hard? Last week my book 101 Contrarians

My Overnight Social Media Success

On Sunday evening I published a new book on Amazon. On Monday afternoon -- 18 hours later -- it was the 2nd best-selling advertising eBook on Amazon.

How did I do it? Social media.

But wait a minute, Bob. Isn't it you who is always throwing rocks at social media?

Yes, that's the same me.

So, have you changed your mind?

Not a bit.

So, you're a hypocrite?

Hypocrite is the term that people

The Paris Hiltonization Of Marketing

People like to talk about the things they spend money on. They are particularly inclined to talk about sexy things -- cars, electronics, movies. They are far less inclined to talk about mundane things -- butter, socks, gasoline.

This is not new. Chattering about what we purchase has been a regular feature of consumer society for a long time. It helps us define for others who we think we are.

101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising

I know what you're thinking.

"Wouldn't it be great if I could have the best of the wit and wisdom of The Ad Contrarian in one handy little eBook that I can read any time I need a dose of reality or just something to take to the toilet?"

Well, guess what? My new book 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising has just been published.

It is a measly $2.99 here at Amazon. That's less than Starbucks

Today's Subject Is Bullshit

Today's subject is bullshit.

It is an important subject because it is the material of which contemporary society is built.

The world today is swimming in bullshit. It is drowning in bullshit. It is submerged, inundated, and deluged with bullshit.

This is a serious issue. The most harmful force in business, politics, and education is bullshit.

The good news for us in the advertising and

Big Is The New Stupid

I don't like big things.

I think the ad business was a lot smarter and healthier before it became dominated by four global monstrosities. It wasn't that long ago (well, not to me anyway) that Y&R had the largest share of the ad market in the US at 1.5%. Now four holding companies have over 70%.

I worked for a publicly traded agency for 2 of my 100 years in the ad business. I had to. They

The Courage To Change Everything

A very funny and pitch-perfect video.

Congratulations to John St. in Toronto on a terrific piece of work.

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Advertising's Decade of Confusion

I've been in the ad business a long time. But I've never experienced a more bewildering period than we have been through in the past 10 years.

We thought we knew what this decade was going to look like. We thought we knew the script. Just about everything we thought we knew has turned out to be wrong.

We thought that interactivity would make advertising far more engaging. We thought that

How Did Amazon Become A Great Brand?

If historians are always arguing about how civilizations emerge, I guess us ad hacks can argue about how brands emerge.

Al Ries had a piece in Ad Age last week. The piece was called Let's Get Real: It's Not Marketing We Do Today, It's Branding.

The essence of the piece is that the function that was once called marketing should now be called branding. Frankly, I don't care what you call it.

Facebook And Advertisers

Facebook continues to be an astounding success with the public.

It is not, however, such an astounding success with advertisers.

One of the problems Facebook has is that the free part -- having a Facebook page -- is way more attractive to marketers than the paid part -- advertising.

Unfortunately for Facebook, you make more money selling stuff than giving it away. It's one of those pesky laws

Social Media Adoption Among Fortune 500

As a follow-up to Wednesday's speculation about The Future of Social Media, I am reprinting the conclusion of a study done at the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
The adoption of blogs, Twitter and Facebook in the 2011 F500 (Fortune 500 - TAC) appears to have leveled off with no significant change in the past year. Twenty-three percent (114) of the

The Future of Social Media

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