April 2014

The Polluted Fountain Of Youth

Anyone who's ever had a parent knows one thing for sure: Old people think young people are idiots.

If you're young, your parents hate your music, hate your haircut, hate your friends, hate your language, hate your clothing... it's an inviolable rule of nature.

This is nothing new. It's been going on for generations. Ever since youth culture emerged about 100 years ago, every generation of

Lots Of Screwing But No Marriage

Well, the big news this weekend was that the honeymoon
between Omnicom and Publicis seems to be in trouble before we even get
to the foreplay.

According to The Wall Street Journal,

"...battles
over position and power are threatening to upend the slated $35 billion
"merger of equals" between advertising firms

Omnicom Group Inc. and

A Journey From Trad to Indie Publishing

Today on the Triskele Books blog, I interview author Ann Swinfen, as she talks about her journey from traditional to indie publishing.

Steve Jobs Hated "Branding"

Here at The Ad Contrarian Worldwide Headquarters, we have always taken a skeptical view of brand babble.

While we appreciate the value that certain types of brand equity confer, we are appalled by the misunderstandings and misrepresentations of how brands are built, and the dreadful lexicon of "branding."

Our views on the topic are summed up in a few little axioms we trot out whenever the

An Expensive Lesson In Web Strategy

Here at The Ad Contrarian World Headquarters we are well-known for believing that it is much more fun to identify problems than to offer solutions.

As a matter of fact, offering solutions is how we make money and the idea of giving them away free on a blog is just plain anathema to us.

Nonetheless, there are moments when we feel unaccountably generous and give million dollar advice away for

The Lifetime Value Of Stupidity

One of my all-time favorite dumb-guy marketing ideas is "lifetime value."

It is the fantasy that if you get a customer at a young age she'll stick with you for life. This nonsense is particularly popular in the automotive industry, where I misspent a lot of my agency career.

My conversations about lifetime value usually went something like this:

BOB: Why are we spending so much of our

Calling All Francophiles...

If you enjoy novels sent in France, you might want to enter the huge giveaway to celebrate the first anniversary of France Book Tours. Good luck!

The Power Of Sloppy

Have you ever wondered how McDonald's and Coca-Cola and Nike and Toyota and Apple and all the other enormous worldwide brands became successful?

For one thing, they were sloppy. They had to be.

They didn't have big data or precision targeting. They couldn't punch a key and immediately identify left-handed Lutheran dry cleaners who rode recumbent bicycles.

So they had to use mass media and

The Sadness Of Sameness

Here's what a once-great agency looks like when it turns its message over to jargon-monkeys.

This agency used to awe us with wonderful ideas. Now it can only bore us with the same dreadful drivel we've heard a thousand times before.

It's a very sad thing.

More on the Author Collective

Today on the Triskele Blog, I interview another author collective, Writer's Choice.

Hard Times For The Cult Of Social Media?

It could be that the social media zombies have had their day.

Frankly, it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.

Now, before the hate mail comes rolling in, let me state the obvious. There are some very capable, hard-working and talented people in the social media world.

But there is also a roiling cesspool of arrogant, insufferable charlatans who parlayed a few buzzwords into a career and with

My Talk At "Advertising Week Europe"

Last week I was honored to be asked by ITV to deliver their “Spotlight Lecture” at Advertising Week Europe, which was held in London.

It was a week-long conclave of ad, marketing and media people.

My talk was called “The Golden Age Of Bullshit” and was about the difference between the predictions of experts and the reality of the past 10 years.

The fellow introducing and interviewing me on

Talking Babies And Babbling Baboons

I am not a fan of either the talking animal or the talking baby genre. They've been done a million times and rarely have they been anything but awful.

However, every now and then someone does it well. They take a clichéd idea and make it into something good.

One of the cases in which talking babies were done well was E-Trade. Before I go too far, they weren't all gems. But some of the writing

The Power Of Precision Guessing

We know that consumer behavior is often irrational. That's why there are large market share differences among products that are essentially the same.

We also know that consumers tend to be pragmatic and don't like to throw their money around on crap. That's why so many new products fail.

So how do we reconcile these two seeming contradictions? How can consumers be both strangely emotional yet