My friend, the Advertising Council

The Advertising Council, a trade organization that coordinates the production of public service announcements which are created pro bono by advertising agencies around the United States, has its own MySpace page.

Fascinating, but I'm not sure I want to be its friend.

Who's a Smooth Canadian?

There's a fascinating article in this weekend's New York Times book reviews by Paul Collins. It's called "Smoke This Book," and it's making me want to have a cigarette... but I digress.

Cigarette ads used to be common in paperback books. And not just cigarette ads, but ads for other products. Collins tells us:

The story of paperback advertising started innocently enough: with babies, in fact. In 1958, the Madison Avenue adman Roy Benjamin founded the Quality Book Group, a consortium of the paperback industry heavyweights Bantam Books, Pocket Books and the New American Library. Despite the lofty name, the group’s real purpose was to sell advertisements in paperbacks, and its first target was the biggest success of them all: Dr. Benjamin Spock’s “Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care.” A 1959 Pocket Books print run of 500,000 included advertisements by Q-Tips, Carnation and Procter & Gamble. By 1963, a 26-page insert in Spock was commanding $6,500 to $7,500 per page, and ads were spreading into mysteries and other pulps as well.

Just when I thought I was getting used to the fact that cigarette advertising is still permitted in America, I hear something new. In Canada, it was banned in most forms of media more than twenty years ago, and today tobaccco companies aren't even allowed to sponsor events. No advertising of tobacco products is permitted at all.

Please don't cross me off your list!

This ad was placed in the New York Times this week by Consumer Reports, and while I don't dispute the truth of the message, I have always used gift cards I've been given for Christmas.

With glee, I might add.

I'm just sayin'.

The greatest thing since... sliced bread?

Seth Godin asks, what did people say before sliced bread was invented? Watch his video on the subject, recorded at the last TED conference. It will make you a better person.

Staking my claim

It's about time I claimed this blog on Technorati.

If the shoe fits...

Hey, I'm not the one saying Paris Hilton is vapid, they are:

Will CP+B open a Toronto branch?

Canadian company MDC Partners, an "agency network" (that's code for conglomerate), now owns 77% of Miami-based Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

For those of you who might have been living in an advertising cave for the last few years, CP+B is the agency that won, in 2003, the Grand Prix in four — count 'em, four — categories. That's right, all in the same year.

This commercial won the Grand Prix for Film that year, and remains in the Top Ten Greatest Ads ever:

A Few Good Creative Men

To really get the humor in these videos, you need to work in the advertising business. For those of you aspiring to, watch and learn something about how creatives feel about management, and vice versa.

First, Jack Nicholson as the overworked, misunderstood, and unappreciated creative:



Next, a terrifying suggestion: What if your copywriter taught the other people in your agency how to write? Click here to watch this shocking and tragic video.

Then, see if you can guess, by watching this video, what common complaints from clients drive creatives insane.

Finally, the classic most of you are probably not familiar with, Truth in Advertising.

This short film, which depicts what the world of advertising might be like if everyone said what they really meant, was originally produced in 2000 by Avion Films of Toronto, to be shown to a group of industry insiders at an awards banquet. It immediately became insanely popular, even outside the industry, and was widely circulated online. It's probably because it's been around so long that it's impossible to find a good quality reproduction. Here it is on YouTube, where it looks like crap but sounds okay. It's more important to listen to what they're saying than to see them clearly, anyway:

And that's why he's head of the hottest agency in the country

Recently Chuck Porter, Chairman of hot Miami agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, was the keynote speaker at the CMA's 10th annual Digital Marketing Conference in Toronto.

You know how everybody's always saying that digital marketing puts the consumer in control? Well, here's what Mr. Porter had to say about that:

"I don’t know when the consumer wasn’t in control," he said. "I don’t remember the time we could make anybody watch our TV spots... or read the ads we were doing."

(Quoted in Marketing magazine.)

Retailers and their creative agencies

Some results of an assignment I gave my students recently, to find an agency that does creative work for a retailer:

Agency: Periscope (Minneapolis)
Client: Target: This one is interesting. If you click on clients, then on Target, you'll see some samples of this agency's creative work for Target. But those aren't print ads. What are they, do you think?

Agency: Martin|Williams (Minneapolis)
Client: Staples
To view ads, click on work, then TV, then #7. Four very amusing TV spots, two of which include, for bonus points, cultural references.

Agency: Wieden + Kennedy (Portland, Oregon)
Client: Starbucks
They have a very confusing way of organizing their work, but it's a site well worth browsing.

Agency: Deutsch (New York)
Client: Old Navy
Click here for an Old Navy back to school spot.
Client: Ikea
Click on THE REEL, then the farthest right image in the bottom right corner is the Ikea television ad. Please, someone, tell me what the music in that one is?

Agency: Strawberry Frog
Client: Old Navy. Click showcase, then on the left should be a column of clients. Search and click on Old Navy. A small window should appear on the right of the column, and a clip of an guy serving clothes on a dish should appear, click that ad and it should enlarge. Click again on it to see the actual clip.

Agency: BBDO
Client: Ikea. Scroll column on the left to "The Works." You should be able to scroll on down until you see IKEA. Click on IKEA, and it should zoom to the commercial ad. Click on view, and you should be able to view the clip.

Agency: Ambrosi
They handle the preprint work for Bloomingdale's and Sears. I don't think it's the creative, though. What does "preprint" mean?

Agency: HEILBrice (Irvine, CA)
Client: Ralph's

Agency: Peterson Milla Hooks
Client: Target

What's wrong with Sean Combs?

I mean, it's a perfectly fine name, which I'm sure his mother was pleased to give him. First, he changed it to Puff Daddy, then P. Diddy, then... oh, I don't know, my head is spinning, and, really, who cares?

Now he calls himself just plain Diddy, and he's the new brand manager for Ciroc vodka. (Not to be confused with the brand new manager for Ciroc vodka.)

Said Sean, quoted here in AdAge (October 24, 2007): "I can't make 1 million people view nothing unless it's tagged to something they like. That's the only way people are going to pay attention to your content."

Such erudition.

I wonder if his sons call him Diddy or Daddy?

When a chicken in this neighbourhood gets angry, it will chase you down

Three talk-worthy Nike brand spots. Two were finalists at Cannes, and one won the Grand Prix in (I think it was) 2002.

Tag
Puddles
Angry Chicken

What does each say about the brand?