Tak Tik Boom

Advertising And The Future Of Apple

After Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO of Apple last week, speculation about the company's future began immediately.
The consensus seemed to be that Jobs built a strong culture, hired smart people, and taught a way of thinking that will serve Apple well in the future. The story line went like this-- while Jobs will be missed, he is no longer essential to the future of the company and it will go on

Can't A Guy Get Some Rest?

I've been getting emails from regular readers asking why I've been such a lazy bastard. The answer is...um, I'm a lazy bastard.

See you after Labor Day.

When Advertising Was About Selling

I am on vacation, but I came across this story in Ad Age today thanks to George Parker. It is so revealing about the power of advertising, and is so contrary to the foolishness that dominates the ad business today, that I just had to reprint it. Hope you enjoy.

Mitzi Perdue on Frank: It Took a Tough Man to Choose the Right Ad Agency

Following End of Company's Relationship With Deutsch, Poultry

My Favorite Comment

I am on vacation and may not be posting for a while.

My post on Monday (called I Am Offended) about web bullying and free speech received a lot of interesting comments. In addition to the "official" comments posted on the blog, I also received several emails about it. My favorite was one I received this morning:
I'm 87 years old. I used to be art director for some small agencies, but became

I Am Offended

Last week I wrote a post entitled Invasion of the Talking Vaginas. It was about a campaign for Summer's Eve (what an awful name) in which human hands represented talking vaginas.

I ended the post with this comment: I don't hate this campaign because it's offensive. I hate it because it's done so witlessly.

That same day, an article appeared in The New York Times about the California Milk

Invasion Of The Talking Vaginas

There is an alarmingly awful series of commercial videos currently on YouTube for Summer's Eve.

For reasons of propriety I am not going to embed them in this post, but here are some links: Link #1, Link #2, Link #3.

The premise of this campaign is that your vagina (portrayed by a hand) is talking to you. Not being the proud owner of a vagina, it's hard for me to comment on the effect this

You And Me And Monkeys Throwing Darts

Here at Ad Contrarian World Headquarters, there are a few principles that guide us.

First, we never make predictions. The reason for this is that people who make
predictions are almost always wrong. It's way more entertaining to make fun of other people's stupid predictions than to have them make fun of yours.

Another is that we never trust experts. Again, their pontifications almost always