Tak Tik Boom

Ads About Nothing

Here at Ad Contrarian world headquarters we have a little 2-word commandment: Be specific.

You see, we think that "1,000 songs in your pocket" is a better promise than "world-class MP3 player."

We think that "15 minutes can save you 15%" is more motivating than "get huge savings."

We think "$5 Footlong" is a better idea than "really cheap and really big."

We believe in being specific.

As

Are Brands Real?

A very interesting piece appeared last week in Ad Age about vacuum cleaner magnate James Dyson. The piece was called "James Dyson: I Don't Believe In Brand."
Here is the gist of the article:"There's only one word that's banned in our company: brand," Mr. Dyson said... "We're only as good as our latest product. I don't believe in brand at all." While I applaud Mr. Dyson's spirit and his disdain

Pepsi As Confused As Ever

As all ad contras know, one of the great pleasures of writing this blog is commenting on the ongoing clown show that is Pepsi.

In our last exciting episode, we bragged about our amazing prediction of exactly what Pepsi would do after the social media disaster that was "Refresh."

Now that we've had a look at a spot from the new campaign, it is everything we hoped for and more. Last year we said.

What Is Facebook Hiding?

I would like someone from Facebook to explain to us why they will not reveal click-through rates for ads on Facebook.
Since advertising is their primary source of revenue, and since click-through rates are a legitimate, recognized measure of online advertising effectiveness, it seems reasonable that they would do so.

Thus far, Facebook has gotten away with not revealing these numbers. They have

6 Things I Learned This Week

Here are 6 things I learned this week.
1. Annals Of Marketing: According to news reports, Osama Bin Laden was working on re-branding Al Qaeda before he was killed. Apparently he was all grumpy and depressed and thought Al Qaeda's image had been damaged (!) and was thinking about a name change.

2. According to the great George Tannebaum at Ad Aged, William Pace had the all-time record for

The Electro-Magnetic Theory Of Economics

First of all, have you ever seen a worse title for a blog post? If 9 people read this thing it will be a miracle. Which may be a good thing because I'm going off into hyper-space today.

I've never understood how an economy works. Why is business good one year and then stinks the next year? There are the same amount of people, and the same amount of money, and all of a sudden everything stops. I

Pepsi Follows The Script

Almost a year ago in a piece called There's Madness To The Madness, while having a great time kicking the shit out of Pepsi for their disastrous Refresh nonsense, I made one of my rare predictions...
"...when brands lose their minds and go off the rails, their next move is usually to snap back to their roots. With that in mind, here's the kind of campaign I expect Pepsi...to come up