Tak Tik Boom

The Light At The End Of The Internet

On May 20th, on the subject of "native advertising," I wrote...

"Nobody seems quite sure what they mean by native advertising. But I
think I know what they mean. They don't know it yet, but they mean using
traditional advertising strategy on the web."
For years, while the cultural impact of the web has grown enormously, I've been skeptical of its alleged brilliance as an advertising medium.

Playing The Other Guy's Game

Over 20 years ago I left the agency business for the first time. We had sold our agency to a "global" network and after two years of working for them I decided it was not the life for me. I took the money and ran.

For three years thereafter I did creative services (mostly TV spots) directly for clients. In that three-year period I pitched against ad agencies half a dozen times. I only lost once

Advertising Industry Gives Up

I would like to be all outraged and upset by the announcement that Omnicom and Publicis are merging. But I can't. It is just the advertising industry's way of telling us that it has joined the parade.

As in so many other fields, the ad industry has discovered that it is way more profitable to provide a mediocre product to a lot of people than a high quality product to a few.

Just look at the

THE RISE OF THE AUTHOR COLLECTIVE

Today, in the first of a series of discussions with other author collectives, I discuss the value of author collectives for indie publishers, with Five Directions Press, on the Triskele blog.

Friday Follies

Sad But Funny
George Zimmer, recently dislodged founder and long time TV and radio spokesman for the Men's Wearhouse, had this to say about ad people:

"...what really drives
success, in my experience, is repetition and consistency, not
creativity. I think people who are in the [ad] business tend to get more
hung up on the creative aspects. They start to think of themselves more
as artists

What Are BDAs Really Good At?

Recently I was talking with the ceo of a tech company about doing some consulting for them. We were having a nice conversation when he said, “But, Bob, the one thing that concerns me is that we are a business-to-business company and you spent your whole advertising career doing consumer advertising and marketing."

I acknowledged the truth of the statement and then went on to use one of my

The 5 Dumbest Ideas About Online Advertising

The phenomenal rise of the internet as a medium of communication, information, and entertainment has given rise to some equally phenomenal conceptual flops about advertising.

Back in the day, online advertising was going to "change everything." It has changed nothing. Advertisers are still mostly doing on the web exactly what they did in traditional advertising -- bugging the shit out of us