Februari 2014

Much Better Yellow Pages. Much Worse Television.

In One Sentence
It took me seven years (I'm a little slow) but I figured how to describe the web as an advertising medium in one sentence. Here it is:

The web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television.

You can quote me on that.

On Second Thought...
I've had second thoughts about my last post (The Epic Screwing Of Online Advertisers.)

The second thoughts are not about the

The Epic Screwing Of Online Advertisers

Banner advertising continues to grow at a blistering rate. Apparently, the only thing growing faster is the screwing of the people who buy it.

In the past we have documented the alarming fraud that is happening daily in online advertising. But an article in MediaPost's Marketing Daily last week makes everything else seem like small potatoes. To be fair, the following are someone else's numbers,

Why I Have A Blog, A Facebook Page, And A Twitter Account

People often accuse me of being hypocritical. They say I am constantly whining about online advertising yet I have all the online gizmos.

They say, "If social media is not an effective business driver, why do you have a blog, a Facebook page and a Twitter feed?"

Or, "If online advertising isn't a very good business driver, why do you have a website?"

The answer is, there are certain costs

An Open Letter To Book Publishers

Dear Book Publisher,

Hi. My name is Bob.

I'm almost done with my third book. It's called Advertising Needs Troublemakers.

My last book, 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising, has been the #1 ad book at Amazon for almost a year.

But here's the thing. I'm really lazy.

I don't feel like going through the agony of self-publishing like I did last time. It's a huge pain in the ass.

I'm also too

Okay, Sherlock, How'd You Do?

Yesterday I posted a problem to demonstrate the difficulty of understanding some purchasing behaviors.

Here was the problem:

I get The New York Times delivered to my home in the San Francisco Bay Area every morning. Yet when I'm on the road, I don't buy The Times on Mondays or Tuesdays. I do buy it, however, on Wednesdays through Sundays.

Pretend you're a marketing strategist, and see if you

Strategies And Mysteries

Today we have a mystery for you to solve. Get out your pipe and deerstalker hat. But first, the set-up.

Yesterday, Dave Trott had an excellent post about the limits of strategy.

I have always felt that in advertising, strategy is essential but it's not enough. The problem with most of our agency strategists is that they complicate the shit out of the easy stuff and screw up the hard stuff.

The Only Ad Bozo You Can Trust

As regular readers know, I consider people who make predictions idiots.

They almost always turn out wrong and they give smart-ass big-mouths like me wonderful opportunities to make fun of smart-ass big-mouths like them.

 Every now and then, however, I step outside my comfort zone and make a prediction. When it turns out wrong I conveniently forget about it. But when it turns out right, I

Wolfsangel Giveaway

Many thanks to the lovely Ananda, for hosting a giveaway of Wolfsangel: 1 signed paperback, and 2 e-copies.

The Joke Called Facebook Likes

A few weeks ago I wrote a couple of blog posts entitled The Slow Painful Collapse Of The Social Media Fantasy (Part 1) and
(Part 2).

The thrust of these posts was that...

"The idea that consumers were enthusiastic about having conversations about brands online, and they would activate their network of friends and followers to share their enthusiasms and create a socially transmitted tsunami

Cats Who Want To Be Dogs

Today we'll be chatting about one of my favorite subjects: stupidity.

Typically my stupidity rants center on digital stupidity. But today we'll be talking about good old-fashioned traditional stupidity.

A significant part of what I am doing these days is trying to explain to marketers the silliness of ignoring people over 50 (they are responsible for almost 50% of consumer spending, but are

The Danger Of Paying Too Much Attention

For a guy who writes relentlessly about the ad industry, I pay remarkably little attention to it.

I never read Ad Age or Adweek or Brand Anything. I read very few ad blogs or marketing articles. I could no sooner tell you who won a Gold Lion than I could tell you who won the Swedish lacrosse championship.

While I have tremendous respect for excellent work, I don't know who the great

Art, Demographics, And The Super Bowl

An article about Bruno Mars, the halftime performer at the Super Bowl, that appeared in The New York Times arts section last Friday is indicative of the role that demographic analysis is playing in our lives.

The piece had some information about Mr. Mars as an artist, but dealt substantially with demographics, and the way business decisions (disguised as artistic decisions) are made.

The

Double Giveaway

Many thanks to TB Markinson for hosting a giveaway of signed paperback copies of Spirit of Lost Angels and Wolfsangel.

Product Advertising And The Super Bowl

For the last few years, whining about the lousy quality of Super Bowl spots has become de rigueur among advertising observers.

While I hate to be non-contrarian, I'm afraid these people are right.

I'm sure there are a number of reasons for this. But I have a feeling that behind this phenomenon there's something going very, very wrong.

I believe that most agencies have bought into the idea

The End Of The $4,000,000 Spot?

And what a super bowl-full it was.

It had everything. Bad playing, bad ads, enormous wastage of money on celebrity cretins, Joe Namath's coat...

And then to top it off, the dumbest line of copy in Super Bowl history: "There's nothing more American than America."

The extent of this mess could mark the end of the $4 million dollar spot. Only kidding. Dumb advertisers will always need stuff to

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