April 2012

Death And Advertising

As all ad contras know, the best way for a loudmouth meatball to grab some cheap headlines is to declare something "dead." The more absurd the claim, the better.

So if you want to be on the cover of Banker's Weekly, just make a speech declaring that money is dead. If you want to be published in Dairy World, write an article asserting that milk is dead. It doesn't matter that you have no facts

7 Things I Learned This Week

Last Friday I started something new called 10 Things I Learned This Week. It actually got some readership, which is rare for a Friday. So I think I'll milk this baby.

Here are 7 things I learned this week.
1. 73% of North Americans say they would rather give up their social networks than their TV.

2. In Portland, they are creating retirement homes for chickens.

3. Most depressing advertising

The Magical Power Of Advertising

One of the untold stories of the new age of marketing is the way it has lead us back to an old way of thinking .

Advertising was once thought to be magic. We had silly books like "The Hidden Persuaders" and dumb-ass movies like "The Hucksters" which propagated the nonsense that people were compliant sheep who were easily mesmerized by us diabolical ad hacks.

As time went on, a more realistic

It Didn't Take Long

On August 29, upon the retirement of Steve Jobs from his role as CEO of Apple, I wrote...
"...one of the first indications of whether Apple is capable of continuing its explosion of creative energy without Jobs at the helm may be found in its advertising. The product pipeline will take years to screw up. But the ad pipeline can be screwed up in no time...About a year from now...the

The Restaurant For People Who Don’t Like Food

In my hometown of Oakland, California, there’s a restaurant I hate.

It’s very chic, and popular with a certain type of person – a person who likes restaurants, but doesn’t like food.

Everything about it is unappetizing. It has a cheerless austerity that appeals to the guilty wealthy. The food is very artfully arranged twigs and pebbles. It’s as if the chef learned his craft working with Tinker

10 Things I Learned This Week

Since it's Friday and for some reason people don't read blogs on Friday, I thought I'd just make a list of 10 things I learned this week.

1. From Steve Harrison's book Changing The World Is The Only Fit Work For A Grown Man: legendary adman Howard Gossage never had more than 13 people in his agency.

2. People in their 20's "change" media 27 times an hour.

3. There was an unconfirmed report out

The Accountability Gap

If there’s one thing us ad hacks hate it’s accountability.

We are forever trying to find ways to inoculate ourselves from the nasty business of actually selling our clients products

We go through amazing contortions to move our clients away from hard, behavioral measures like sales, transactions, and customer counts to soft measures like awareness and attitude.

We are always on the lookout

Advertising's 10 Best Kept Secrets

In an attempt to restore some perspective to the overblown claims about online advertising and social media, a few years ago I produced a list called The Top 10 Double-Secret Unknown Facts About Advertising.

I have updated it and the Fine Arts Committee here at The Ad Contrarian has made a little movie out of it.

Feel free to spread it around. (This video is now posted on YouTube here.)

A Great Day In The History Of Literature

Regular readers will be happy to know that today is a no-whining day here at TAC. I am a happy dude.

My book 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising is no longer just a bunch of electrons bouncing around an Amazon server. It's now a real book with real ink and real paper.

You can find it here at Amazon. Of course if you prefer pixels, you can still buy the pixie version.

Even if you have the

Talking To Grown-Ups

I've spent an inordinate amount of time over the years railing about the silliness of marketers who are constantly chasing people with no money (young people) and ignoring the people with lots of money (people over 50.)

Today we'll leave that argument behind and talk instead about a different aspect of the problem: there isn't an adequate vocabulary for talking to grown-ups in advertising.

It's

Everything Not Previously Dead Is Now Dead

Guess what? Now marketing is dead, too!

First television was dead. Then advertising was dead. Then ad campaigns were dead. Then broadcasting was dead. Then copywriters were dead.

Now marketing is dead. And it's not just dead, it's dead in caps, as in, "Marketing is Dead."

This time it must be true because it comes from some genius who teaches at Stanford and writes for the Harvard Business

The Consumer Is In Charge. Really?

In my family's history, there were a pair of people who I find fascinating.

They were an aunt and uncle who were born in the 1920s. They grew up in deep poverty during the great depression. According to legend, their families were often to be found out on the streets of NYC with their meager belongings, having been thrown out of their tenement apartments. Then they would rent other apartments

Nobody Learns Anything

The very first post I wrote for this blog almost 5 years ago was called Aiming Low and was about marketers' unrelenting stupidity at targeting young people in advertising.

A few months later I wrote a piece about Pontiac mindlessly doing exactly that:
According to Ad Age, Pontiac is shifting its advertising efforts toward media that appeal to younger audiences such as video game tie-ins, Web

Stimulation Nation

We are addicted to stimulation.

Every bar has nine TVs going at all times. Every commuter is wrapped in an iPhone-induced cocoon of digital music, chat, or games. Every couch potato is checking his Facebook page while watching American Idol. Every retail store has music playing and screens fluttering. Every sporting event is a non-stop parade of videos, promotions, and giveaways. Every movie is