Digital CEOs take over creative discussion

I hadn't really looked at who the panelists were before walking into Stuart Elliott's CEO Summit on creative yesterday, so I found it notable that it had such a major focus on digital—and that the digitally literate seemed to have the most to say. (BTW, this panel was billed as "sold out" also, but there were plenty of seats in the room.) OK, go ahead and accuse me of putting the business in nice, neat silos, but from the digital side were Tribal DDB's Matt Freeman, Bob Greenberg from R/GA, Organic CEO Mark Kingdon, and—as what might be described as the bridge over troubled waters—Steve Hayden from Ogilvy. Then there was Y&R's Hamish McClellan, Deutsch's Linda Sawyer and Grey's Steve Hardwick. Surprise!—nothing was resolved concerning the ongoing debate about how to adjust to what's going on today, so I decided to just do a rundown here of the best sound bites:

Hayden: "[Google] is a very distinctive culture where they have an algorithm for everything. They probably have an algorithm for paper usage in the public restroom."

Elliott: "[The ad execs] who are impeding the progress [of the industry] are the same people who think 'Mad Men' is a documentary."

Hardwick/Elliott: Upon hearing Hardwick say that Grey wants to be "a tradigital agency," Elliott commented, "It's two, two, two agencies in one!"

Kingdon: "If you were starting over from scratch you wouldn't structure [agencies] the way they are today."

Hayden: "The Internet is vast, brutal and cruel and clients have to toughen up."

Things you didn't know about Martha Stewart

So, the allegedly "almost full" interview with Martha Stewart had a healthy crowd but wasn't almost full. (She's pictured at left signing autographs and below with Pat Mitchell, who heads the Paley Center.) I'm thinking that if I were to organize Advertising Week—a parlor game among us ad industry observers—that I'd not bill anything as "almost full" or "sold out." Half the people who say they're going to show up don't, and people who decide they want to go late in the game decide not to because they think there won't be a seat. We all know Martha's substantial back story, which was amply addressed during the interview, so I thought I'd just pull out a few factoids that you probably wouldn't have known unless you were there, or read this post:

—Kids refer to her as "Marthastewart" (one word).
—She has shopped at Kohl's at least once, and picked up the jacket she was wearing from Vera Wang's Kohl's line for a lo, lo $128.
—She's about to produce her first food line, in partnership with Costco, and the first product will be a smoked ham reminiscent of the ones from a butcher on the Lower East Side she had as a kid.
—She has a MySpace page.
—For her "own self-confidence," she has to come up with 5 or 10 ideas every day. "It doesn't have to be a complex thing. It has to be a good thing," she explained. Then she quoted Einstein.

Humor in advertising: it's actually funny

Speaking of Advertising Week attendance, doesn't it seem a little bizarre that Monday's panel at the Time Life Building featuring the inert Travelocity gnome as one of the panelists outdrew the one on humor in advertising yesterday morning that featured "Curb Your Enthusiasm"'s Susie Essman; Alan Zweibel, who was one of the original SNL writers; Robert Mancoff, the cartoon editor of The New Yorker and, oh, yeah, TBWA/Chiat/Day's Gerry Graf and Teresa Iezzi of Ad Age Creativity? Well, anyway... though one got the feeling that the non-advertising types on the panel had never seen most the ads that were screened, the audience—mostly made up of ad execs—must have found it gratifying to see how impressed Zweibel, Essman and Mancoff were with the state of humor in advertising today, particularly TBWA's weird-o-licious "Berries and Creme" spot for Starburst. " I wonder if I could have done that," said Zweibel. Which brings me to the above commercial. One attendee asked Graf if there was ever a commercial he let get produced even though he didn't find it particularly funny. He mentioned this one with the Skittles-serving beard. His initial reaction when it was pitched to him: "Oh, wow, a magic beard. That's great."

Media changes, but discussing it does not

The coolest thing about the CEO Media Summit at The New York Times headquarters yesterday was that it was at the new New York Times building, still somewhat under construction. Still, while everything surrounding the panel was new, the panel itself, which has been held every year of Advertising Week was one of those that you feel probably wasn't that different last year, or the year before, or the year before that. This is not, by the way, the fault of any of the participants, or the moderator, Stuart Elliott. You could see that the people who run media agencies—the five panelists, as the name of the panel implies, all had CEO in their title—are an incredibly smart, astute bunch, but, as it is with all of us, there's a degree of confusion about how to structure things going forward that escapes even the industry's best minds. Laura Desmond, CEO of Starcom Mediavest Group summed up the ever-shifting sands nicely, "Do consumers become our new clients and our clients become our new partners?" Good question. Now, if someone could just provide the answer. Picture via arcspace.com.

You missed the World Series of Darts!

The best seminar/workshop/panel I went to so far this week was yesterday morning's Mediaweek Conversation between my former Mediaweek colleague Michael Burgi, and Michael Davies, the television producer who brought "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and "The Power of Ten" stateside. And a completely one-on-one conversation it almost was, as only about ten people showed up. Now, looking back at the agenda, I can see why it was so sparsely attended. There were a total of 8 (eight!) seminars/workshops/panels going on yesterday morning, ranging from Craig Newmark's keynote about "The New Empowered Consumers" to the Advertising Research Foundation's seminar on word of mouth. If Advertising Week has been at times been accused of overscheduling, its organizers certainly haven't gotten the message that it still is. It's sad, though, because Davies, a Brit and sports fan, intermingled humorous anecdotes with insights on the collision of advertising, content and new distribution platforms. Oh, and then there's the World Series of Darts. The Series, which he hopes will be a huge success here, treats "these big, fat" dart throwers like WWE stars, and it plays overseas to crazed audiences both watching on TV and watching live—the people watching live doing dances and drinking lots of beer. The one thing that Davies admitted is missing is a domestic beer sponsor, something that he doesn't think will happen right away, since he claims that brewers here want to position their products these days as upscale. "That's not what beer is," he said.

Life among the advertising icons

Sorry not to post for much of the day. I was far, far from Advertising Week doing something, that, unbelievably, was actually more important than Advertising Week. Anyway, my last panel of yesterday was the famous—or infamous?—panel entitled, "Do Advertising Icons Drive Brands?" which promised "to integrate top CMOs and leading Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame Icons" and was moderated by Ad Age's Jonah Bloom. This may not be one of the questions that defines our times, but I wanted to find out: were they really going to put, say, Mr. Peanut up there with the CMO of Ford? Well, they weren't on the guest list, but here's what visitors saw from left to right (sorry I don't know everyone's names; they were not in the official program, and I'm sorry my picture isn't so great): A picture of the new, hot Mr. Goodwrench, a marketing executive from Mr. Goodwrench, the gnome from Travelocity, a guy from Travelocity, the Serta sheep, a guy from either Serta or its agency, the Maytag Repairman, Clay, and an executive from Maytag. Two Chik-Fil-A cows roamed the stage, often appearing to taunt Bloom, while the Vlasic Pickle stork and one dejected butterly from MSN looked on from the audience. No. You can't make this shit up. My favorite moment had to be when Bloom asked the panelists (those that could speak anyway) who their favorite ad icon of all time was. John, the guy representing Serta, replied brightly, "I gotta tell ya ... I've always been fascinated by the Ty-D-Bol man. He's a guy who lives in your toilet." Here, here.

Mixing it up at a packed MIXX

After the Ad Club of New York luncheon (see below), I decided to stop by the Interactive Advertising Bureau's MIXX Conference at the Crowne Plaza in Times Square, and though I sat through a fairly engaging panel on "Content without Borders" (I'm a geek—what can I say?), the most interesting thing about the conference was how completely packed it was. I ended up at the content panel—which may have had as many 150 attendees—because I was turned away at the door of the panel moderated by my former Adweek colleague Brian Morrissey on search, and there was one other session going on at that time besides. Let's do the math—that's about 450 people attending panels. I also had a good chat with former IAB chief and current iPhone owner Greg Stuart. I know he's doing something these days—I just don't know what.
But the following meeting of the minds, or addled brains, summed up the vibe at MIXX. I had a brief conversation/collision with Joseph Jaffe, and Morrissey, post-panel, at the top of the escalators, which is, I admit, a particularly dumb place to stand at a packed conference. Words of greeting were briefly exchanged. Morrissey pulled out his cell phone; Jaffe pulled out his iPhone, saying to us, "I hear Facebook got bought today. By Microsoft." (That's not true ... yet.) Then we all went our separate ways.

It's true. Schwarzenegger appears at Advertising Week

The first highlight of the Ad Club of New York's lunch honoring Bobby Shriver for his (Product) RED work was that brother -in-law Arnold Schwarzenegger dropped by. (I know my two pictures here aren't great, but but I'm a writer not a photographer dammit! In the one at left, you can see Arnold's profile and in the bottom right hand corner, Russell Simmons; and in the second you can see O. Burtch Drake in the bottom left hand corner, and, if you have really good eyesight, Arnold off to Drake's right. "O." is not a luminary, exactly, but pictured here to confirm that this was, indeed, an Ad Club event). Showing up was all Arnold did, but let's just say that the discernible buzz in the room made sightings of mere mortals like Ron Berger, Trey Laird and Tom Carroll a whole lot less interesting. Just think of what would've happened if Bono had shown up. (He only appeared by videotape claiming that he didn't come because Bobby is taller than he is.)
The second highlight, provided by Russell Simmons, came when he took the podium and claimed that a standard opening line when Shriver gets on the phone—and apparently he's on the phone a lot—is "Im working for the poor people. What the fuck are you doing?"
Shriver for his part, outshone even at his own event by the aforementioned Arnold, Simmons, sister Maria and cousin Caroline, said,"It's so great being [known as] Bono's partner, because growing up I was President Kennedy's nephew." For him, it was clear that the highlight was the—I believe unplanned—speech given to the audience by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the minister of foreign affairs of Nigeria, who just happened to be in town for something or other at the UN. She gave an impassioned speech asking the audience to help rebrand Africa, which she said Product (RED) was already doing by putting people in Africa to work. One thing I hadn't realized—and I'm sure this point had been lost on much of the audience—is that some of the products in the RED portfolio are actually being made in Africa, particularly some of these cool Converse shoes.
There was one thing I found annoying: For all the luminaries that were there it was troubling to hear the guys from Modernista!, who developed the advertising, simply referred to as "the guys from Modernista." Though Shriver made the audience recognize them a second time because they weren't in the room during their first chance to stand and wave, it would have been good to hear their names. OK, enough quibbling. I had fun and isn't life all about me having fun?

Adverganza's Monday morning picks, 09.24.07

I'm going to be doing a lot of Advertising Week stuff today but figured I at least owed you my Monday morning picks, wherein—chorus—I scan the headlines so you don't have to.

From Advertising Age:

—OK, so Andy Berndt is running an in-house marketing something-or-other at Google.
—The Dove "Real Beauty" campaign may need a shot of Botox.
—A story about Lowe New York continuing to suck.
—Did GSD&M really write Martin's new Wal-Mart tagline?
—Holy Mother of God! HeadOn sales up 234 percent.
—Bob Garfield sees problems with Macy's new celebrity-filled campaign—but, what the hell, still gives it three stars.


From The New York Times:

—No matter what you think, the Times says that Jonah Bloom did not kill the parade of mascots, no longer featured during Advertising Week. At least not alone.
—Everybody's watching DVDs of television series.

From Adweek (I'd show you the cover but it's a broken link on their site):

—What? Consumers are skeptical of advertising? So says a survey conducted by JWT and Adweek about what people think of advertising. There's no byline on the story, but I'm guessing it was written by Marian Salzman.
—In today's Art & Commerce, somebody goes on about the growth in online lead generation, but again, there's no byline.
—Brian Morrissey on whether what the Web giants really want to do when they grow up is be ad agencies.
—Now media agencies are hiring CMOs.
—Shockingly, Bobby Shriver doesn't give an exclusive Q&A on Product (RED) to Ad Age.
—Barbara Lippert thinks the new eBay spots are soooo 1999, but not necessarily in a bad way. (You can't see the spots at Adweek.com, but here's a link to them on YouTube).

From The Wall Street Journal (subscription required):

—Microsoft hires Burson-Marsteller (what? not Waggener Edstrom?) to tell people why Google's DoubleClick deal is evil.

From Mediapost:

—Todd Oldham is the new creative director at Old Navy.
—JWT says that women own more game consoles than men.
—USA Today will open a store at LaGuardia. Really.
—Another bump in the road for Nielsen's commercial ratings service.
—Now that NBC has left iTunes, Fox has jumped in.

A gallery of horrible agency house ads

So, I managed to scam a copy of the program for Advertising Week, and what I came away with was not so much a full understanding of every event being held next week, but a complete understanding of how unbelievably bad the agency house ads in the program are. (Sorry for the big gaps between each ad ... blame Blogger.) Now, I know that Lee Clow doesn’t break away from meetings with Steve Jobs to go make a print ad for the Advertising Week program, but, really, these agencies should be embarrassed they let this work out the door. While there were many ads in the program that were merely blasé, the four below each stood out in their own way. (The DraftFCB one, I admit, mostly for not featuring a lion. At least it has a concept.) I did the scans of each ad at Staples, and I admit the quality is poor, but maybe that’s somehow fitting. Read on and laugh—or cry.

AGENCY: DraftFCB

Description: A strand of DNA made out of lightbulbs with the following caption at the bottom: "What is in Your DNA? Welcome to Advertising Week 2007."
Offense: Moving away from that lion concept.



















AGENCY: Euro RSCG

Description: Rows of monkeys sitting at computers, under the headline, "If a million monkeys typed on a million computers for a million years, eventually they would come up with every great idea and line in the history of advertising. Here's to all the primates who've done it sooner."
Offense: Say what?














AGENCY: TBWA/Chiat/Day

Description: So banal and readily apparent it doesn't need one.
Offense: Apparently working overtime to dispel the notion that it is one of the best creative agencies in the business. And what does a picture of two people high-five-ing each other have to do with loving advertising? BTW, when you go to everbodyslovingadvertising.com you are met with this sentence, and this sentence alone: "You are a loser." How's that for celebrating the ol' ad biz?




















AGENCY: Young & Rubicam

Description: Picture of Groucho Marx, or picture of Ray Rubicam pretending to he's Groucho Marx. Hard to tell. It says Ray Rubicam on the bottom border of the picture, followed by equally inexplicable copy: "Advertising. Who knew?" The closing line: "Happy Advertising Week as we celebrate an industry that continues to amaze."
Offense: Where to begin? With a picture that really has nothing to do with the ad business, even it is Ray Rubicam pretending he's Groucho Marx? With copy that's only reason for being is to try to explain the inexplicable picture? No, the real offense is that this is the worst house ad I've ever seen, and that includes DraftFCB's infamous lion ad. At least, that, too, had a concept.

Think "advertising", think "false", "misleading", etc.

As a warm-up to Advertising Week, Max Kalehoff and Pete Blackshaw over at Nielsen BuzzMetrics decided to track what words people most closely associated with the word advertising based on tracking billions of online conversations. As the graph here shows, words like "false," "misleading," ""deceptive" and "subliminal" rank high, with lesser concentration on "spam," "bombarded," "fraudulent" and "soliciting." Ouch. Max, Pete and PhD's Erik Rabasca are hosting a Webinar about this at 12:30 p.m. today, which you can register for here. Luckily, their study isn't all bad news, though in the spirit of journalists everywhere, I've focused on the negative in this post.

We'll let fake Steve comment on NBC

So I wish I had something really pithy to say about NBC's new offer to let people download TV shows for free, as long as they have a Windows PC and don't mind that the shows include ads they can't skip. Thus, I'll turn this post over to fake Steve (as in the blog really written by Daniel Lyons of Forbes pretending that he's Steve Jobs). Says FS in a post that puts forth the argument against NBC's plan, while at the same time insisting that that FA (fake Apple) is thrilled with it: "Why are we psyched? Because this will let everyone see the kind of world that the media companies would like us to live in. And we're pretty sure people aren't going to like it."

When a sponsor isn't really a sponsor

This American Express ad, appearing today at nytimes.com, is more than a bit disingenous. (Click on anything after the home page and I believe you'll see it. ) The ad acts as though Amex is granting visitors a big favor by making the Op-Ed columns free this week. In fact, as we all know, The New York Times said it was abandoning its paid subscription TimesSelect product on Tuesday—without it being contingent upon direct advertiser sponsorship or anything else. Everyone involved with this ad should know better.

How to play around with a Google Gadget Ad

Per usual, Google got a lot of ink, and bytes, out of its announcement yesterday about its new Gadget Ads, which give brand advertisers and their agencies widgets in which to embed lots of interactivity, which can then be distributed throughout Google's AdSense network. I always find descriptions of these new online ad units confusing—including when I try to describe them—so the best thing to do if you want to know more is to go to the Google Gadget ads home page, where you can learn more about them and also play around with a live version of the Gadget ad I've pictured here. There's also a full page of Gadget case studies at this link.

And the winner is ... Jeff Swystun!

As you may have noticed, I've been all hot and bothered about the lack of posts on DDB's three new blogs, but I'm happy to report that Jeff Swystun, the agency's director of global communications, posted something fairly interesting on Tuesday of this week (go here, click on "DDBlogs" and then "Business Communications.") The agency is currently conducting a poll that sorta/kinda runs off the home page (go here and click on "Be Heard" in the bottom right-hand corner) about whether consistency in the way branding is communicating is becoming more important. Two-thirds of the 175 respondents so far say it is becoming more important, but what's more interesting is Swystun's discussion of how, while important, "it no longer means 100% compliance to confining guidelines." (As for Bob Scarpelli and Frank Palmer, authors of the other blogs, get thee to a keyboard. It's been sixteen days since your last post.)

Anyone seen the Wendy's helium spot?

Haven't been able to find a copy of this new Wendy's spot that shows people breathing in helium and has now created a ruckus with the NIPC (National Inhalant Prevention Coalition). Just as it supposedly is with marijuana leading to hard drugs, the Coalition says that if people find that breathing in helium is so enjoyable they'll start to experiment with inhaling other, more dangerous, gasses. Not sure I quite buy the logic, but I'd love to post the spot. If anyone finds it, let me know. In the meantime, I eagerly await a lawsuit over the red wig from the Society for the Perpetuation of Pippi Longstocking. BUT, WAIT, THERE'S MORE: My wish was just granted, mere minutes after I posted this. You can see the spot at this MySpace link.

Is this ad for Honda, or coffee achievers?

I really want to like this new Honda spot that features the ELO song, "Hold on Tight (To Your Dreams". Unfortunately, it reminds me of another spot from long ago—this excruciatingly funny (in an unintended way) spot for the National Coffee Association, that for me is, apparently unforgettable.

Good Macy's ads ... but too much Martha?

These new Macy's spots from JWT New York actually manage what no Macy's campaign I've seen has ever done before: give the store an actual identity. Of course, it relies heavily on celebrities to do so, ranging from the Donald, to Usher, to Jessica, to Martha Stewart. I've embedded one spot from the campaign, focusing on Martha and Usher, above. Here's the one conundrum I see in the campaign: true, Martha is launching a big new line of housewares with Macy's, but given her long-time (and continuing) association with Kmart, let's hope that when it comes to those next-day recall studies, people don't say these were ads for Kmart.

"Viva Viagra" has Elvis rolling in his grave

OK, so I guess this Viagra ad has been out for about a month now which, um, reworks the Elvis tune, "Viva Las Vegas." If the guy is still alive, he's wishing he wasn't—this is one of the most cringeworthy ads I've seen in years. And, if Elvis, is, indeed, dead, he's rolling in his grave. Never thought an ad would make me miss the guy at right, but now I'm thinking those were the days.

Halo 3 campaign looks for new believers

Mediapost has an extensive write-up this morning of the new campaign for Halo 3 from McCann Worldwide's Tag unit, which definitely seems an improvement on typical computer game launches— which preach to the converted—and aren't all that interesting to the rest of us because how exciting can streams of the game being played actually be? The Halo game series, which pits humans vs. aliens, is, in this campaign, being depicted as a war that has happened with real battles, history, and so forth. The 90-second ad above, which Brentter helpfully posted to YouTube yesterday, is low-tech; it consists of close-up shots of a diorama. Talk about old school! The site, halo3.com/believe, is said to include documentary-style videos and the like, though I couldn't get it to run this morning on Firefox, or Internet Explorer.

Chevy vaults too far with Volt ads

So let's get this straight. Hyundai is running advertising that doesn't include the car, and Chevrolet is running ads which focus on a car that doesn't exist. The spot above is for the Chevrolet Volt, the automaker's hybrid—which isn't even slated to go on sale until 2010. It's not a bad commercial, taken completely at face value, but the fact that the car is only a concept so far is so subtly put as to be completely misleading. If you hadn't read this post—and I hadn't read this story—we'd probably both think GM was actually selling the car now.

'Times' slams the door on TimesSelect

As expected, The New York Times is discontinuing TimesSelect, a paid subscription service for some Times content, such as Maureen Dowd, and so forth. The Times says it will realize more revenue by making the content free and swimming in the resulting ad bucks, and so, with that admission, the subscription model online gets a little closer to death's door. I think the Internet would have been better off if more content was actually paid for—if for no other reason than, in the consumer's mind, all of the free content available cheapens the whole idea that any content has monetarily value—but on the other hand, TimesSelect never seemed like it was going to be much of a product. Not only are decisions by content providers usually arbitrary in terms of what should be free and what shouldn't—which makes it hard to determine the content's real value—but, since TimesSelect was available free to any print subscriber, the revenue base for the online product had to be small. Even if newspapers seem, at times, to be withering on the vines of the very trees used to print them, anyone so interested in the Times' premium online content was still probably a print subscriber. Lots of those people still exist, even now.

Berndt leaves agency to start Googlagency?

Ad Age doesn't do the "push" news emails often, but this one was worth it: Andy Berndt, co-president of Ogilvy New York, is joining the dark side ... uh ... I meant Google, to start something that would consult on creative and account services, just like ad agencies do (although it would consult with agencies as well, per Ad Age's story). That said, I don't really believe that Google is the dark side. I believe not being smart about the future of advertising is the dark side, and it's pretty hard to accuse Google of being dumb about that. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE: Google's Tim Armstrong explains why Google this whole Andy Berndt led Creative Lab thing-a-ma-jig is definitely not an ad agency.

Randall Rothenberg's new clog (not a typo)

If you've missed reading Randall Rothenberg ever since he stopped writing his column for Advertising Age, you can stop your crying now. Randall, now head of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, has started writing what he calls a clog: "It's a column! It's a blog!" at www.randallrothenberg.com, with the title "I, A Bee—Buzz and Pollination from the Interactive Advertising Bureau." (Maybe he should streamline the shoe/beehive metaphors?) His first entry is about the interactive program at VCU's AdCenter, and it starts with this provocative lede: "If you’re a fabulously successful interactive entrepreneur whose last six startups have made a killing in the market and you’re looking for a new place to park some cash, Mike Hughes wants your money."

BBDO's AT&T ads may be better than most

I think BBDO may be onto something with this new AT&T campaign shot by Wes Anderson. The first thing that makes it so noticeable is the way the five commercials in the series were shot—each as one continuous sequence as sets move in and out to depict the different places each commercial's protagonist does business. The second thing that separates this campaign from the rest of this very tired category is how it gets across what is now a pretty boring idea—that people want to have their cell phone work in all of the different places they do business. In the spot above, an actor who moves between Hollywood, Broadway, Arizona, London and South America describes the place where he does business as "Holly-York-Izona-South-Ameri-Land." Is it a mouthful? Yes. But it's also a whimsical, memorable way to make a point. From what I could gather from the not all that clear press release last week, the next phase of the campaign will contain an e-commerce component where people can create t-shirts and coffee mugs based on where they do business, such as well HollyYorkIzonaSouthAmeriLand. Maybe that's a stretch, but I've seen worse. If you want to see all of the spots in the campaign, go here.

Adverganza now available as a dot-com

This news flash may not mean much to you, but it means a lot to me: Adverganza is now also available at the URL Adverganza.com, so you can erase that adverganza.blogspot.com thing from your memory bank, should you desire.

Is Steve Jobs really Big Brother?

I've ripped these visuals off from a column in the current issue of Forbes entitled "Big Brother." (I spent way too much time on Friday scanning Jobs' big speech earlier this month looking to recreate it myself, but to no avail.) Anyway, the two pictures—one, of course, of the classic Apple spot "1984"—make for a great juxtaposition, and illustrate the point that there's something increasingly cult-like and scary about Apple. Written by Daniel Lyons (aka fake Steve), the column says "... the flip side of Apple's success is that Apple has started to seem scary. Jobs' ambitions go way beyond making computers and gadgets. He's the most powerful figure in the music business and is maneuvering toward dominance in the movie and TV business as well." You can read the whole column here (free registration required). Of course, I've gone on the record as saying that I thought all those people who had to buy the iPhone the nanosecond it came out (and pay too much for it) reminded me of that 1985 Apple spot, "Lemmings."

Adverganza's Monday morning picks, 09.17.07

Wherein we/I scan the Monday morning headlines so you don't have to. I have a doctor's appointments in the morning—so as to preserve my immortality—so may not complete this post until lunchtime. But here goes:

From Advertising Age:

—Why people invested in old media should start drinking hard liquor.
—Hill Holliday finds life after Jack.
—If you care to find out what an anadiggie is, read this.
—Is OpenAd.net the killer app for global advertising?
—Bob Garfield is a fan of Wal-Mart's first spots from Martin.

From The New York Times:

—It isn't retailers and the media that are making you obsess about Halloween six weeks beforehand. It's you.
—The newspaper industry—not that it should be the judge—declares the magazine industry not dead: Page Six becomes a weekly magazine, The Wall Street Journal will launch a monthly.

From Adweek:

—How could Jenny Craig stick a fork in Valerie Bertinelli? Well, maybe the client isn't sticking a fork in her, but it definitely is puncturing JWT New York.
—At Dentsu, they don't talk about climbing Mt. Fuji ... they actually do it.
—Barbara Lippert disagrees with Bob Garfield about the Wal-Mart spots.
—Clients still don't think online advertising is accountable.
—Tom Messner drills deep into the ad blogosphere, but, alas, not deep enough to find Adverganza.

From The Wall Street Journal (subscription required):

—AOL discovers that the advertising industry is based in New York, not Dulles.
—Phew! There's a dropoff in sales of sugary drinks in schools.
—SpiralFrog, the ad-supported music download site, finally launches.

From Mediapost:

—A match made in promo heaven ... Hooters sponsors DVD release of "Knocked Up."
—Jim Beam puts the largest ad ever on the side of a casino in Vegas.

What we hear concerning The Delaney Report:

—Tom is sniffing around Dick's Sporting Goods and Mike's Hard Lemonade.

Hardee's boys hot for teacher

Well, it's good to know that teenagers way too young to ever have seen that Van Halen video, "Hot for Teacher," have this TV commercial for Hardee's and Carl's Jr. to watch. Touting the Flatbun PattyMelt burger, it makes ample use of the bun pun, as in the teacher's ass. Set to a fairly raunchy hiphop track, one can easily see why the American Family Association is all over this spot—as are tens of thousands of viewers on YouTube. (Yeah, I know this has been out there for a few days.)

The Azerbaijanis are coming to Cannes

This just in from Azerbaijan: the country will be represented at next year's Cannes Advertising Festival, which "was opened in Azerbaijan after long-lasting talks." This was big news on the Web site of APA, which, from what I can tell, may be an Azerbaijani entertainment rag. Another top headline: "Price of tickets for Elton John's concert to range from 30 to 800 manats."

DDB's woefully incomplete Wikipedia entry

Even though I chastised DDB earlier in the week for only getting up one lousy post on each of their blogs (they still haven't added any posts since then BTW), I'm really not picking on the agency this week. It just so happens that now it's its turn—in my system of mostly alphabetical order—to be the subject of one of my posts about agency Wikipedia entries. As agency entries go, this one is relatively long (about 700 words), but accurate? The entry, which comes up fourth when you Google "DDB", omits some pretty basic things, not even mentioning its central role in the creative revolution or the revolution itself, and there are no pictures or links to its work from that time. As one example, it doesn't describe the 1959 VW Beetle campaign (at right), except to say that it was the no. 1 campaign of all time according to Ad Age's "The Century of Advertising" in 1999. It also points out that "You Deserve a Break Today" for McDonald's was no. 5 on the list—without mentioning that that campaign was created by Needham, Harper & Steers before the "Big Bang" merger that created Omnicom Group. In fact, its reference to the merger of DDB and Needham doesn't mention that whole part about BBDO at all. The strongest part of the entry deals with the recent history that wouldn't have existed had it not been for the earlier history, giving exhaustive detail on what awards the agency has won since 1998. Funnest factoid I could find: that the agency's role in the Lyndon Johnson commercial "Daisy", an ad which some attribute with helping Johnson defeat Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election, landed Max Dane (he's one of the Ds in DDB, young 'uns) on President Nixon's Enemies List. In that, from what I can tell, he was the only ad executive so, um, honored. Picture via Stay Free!

Working at Starbucks better than working in advertising

You simply gotta read this story in The New York Times today about a former advertising executive, who, now says he is happily working at a Starbucks in Bronxville, NY and living in an attic apartment across the street, rather than in the imposing tudor elsewhere in town in which he grew up. A former JWT creative and son of The New Yorker's Brendan Gill, the story isn't entirely as it seems. He's written a book, “How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else,” that has been optioned by Tom Hanks, though he claims he still wants to work at Starbucks, even as potential riches flow in. In a video accompanying the story, shot, mainly, in his patio-furniture decorated apartment, he says, with utmost sincerity, "I've gone from stuff, to lack of stuff, and the surprise—the great surprise—is how happy it makes me."

'Fortune' talks to P&G's Jim Stengel

Fortune has posted three short videos of an interview the magazine's Geoff Colvin did with Procter & Gamble CMO Jim Stengel. You can see them here, here and here, and read a text version--which talks about what he thinks of ad agencies--here. There's no extremely new ground in any of this, but, hey, I make it a habit to listen to guys who command $6.7 billion ad budgets. Also in the current issue (which has Ralph Lauren on hte cover): an interview with Ogilvy & Mather CEO Shelly Lazarus although, inexplicably, there's no link to it. Is it because she talks about the success of P&G rival Dove?

Novartis to spread flu message virally

Where do you think Novartis got the idea of asking consumers to create viral films to promote the flu? Get it? Viral? Flu? It's late at night, what can I tell ya? Anyway, starting on Saturday, Novartis will launch a contest asking "aspring filmmakers" (well, at least they're honest about who might enter this) to make short films about how the flu affects them, how it spreads and why you should get nominated. Yeah, of course, this effort is called FluFlix.

La-Z-Post about La-Z-Boy

I'm running an item on this new campaign (scroll down) mostly because the spot pictured above and that you can see here features Googy Gress (at right), New Canaan High School, class of '76. (I'm not as old as Googy, mind you.) It's one of four commercials breaking this week that focus on the undeniable creature comforts of La-Z-Boy. Via RPA. I'll probably never let myself buy a La-Z-Boy, but I love reclining in them when I'm at other people's houses.

Is the up online ad market ending?

Over at Silicon Alley Insider, they're on online ad market death watch, reading numerous tea leaves and coming away with the conclusion that, based on the subprime mortgage collapse and other factors, the industry is in for a downturn. The latest signal is an announcement by online ad network Burst Media, which said early today that a couple of key clients have cancelled expected campaigns due to budget constraints. It then goes onto say, solemnly, "The 2000 ad crash began exactly this way: anecdotal reports of weakness from minor players that were dismissed as 'isolated' and 'company specific'." The part of this line of thinking I'm buying is that the financial services sector is bound to pull back on the dancing aliens it uses to sell exotic mortgages. However, the current online ad market differs from 2000 in some extremely substantial ways. By the time of the dot-com bust in the first half of 2000, the market was overhyped in a way it isn't now—advertisers were pouring money into the medium even though they had scant evidence that it was working. They also hadn't yet gotten religion about the fact that consumers, were, in fact, changing their media habits. This time around, clients realize that for all its warts, this is ultimately the most accountable medium that has ever existed, and with new, digitally-driven consumer media habits clearly entrenched, even if a downturn in ad spending happens, it's doubtful that advertisers will retrench by putting money allocated for online into other media. It will be the other way around. I should also point out that the posts I talked about above are written by Henry Blodget, who has a very personal incentive to get calling a downturn in the online ad market right.

Dave Navarro in skincare campaign?

Oy. So I was reading on Mediapost that Vaseline has a new campaign called, "Skin Is Amazing," but it doesn't mention that one of the stars of the campaign is Dave Navarro, with all the tattoos and stuff. He "actually uses Vaseline Intensive Care to help my tattoes heal." Who knew? I suppose this is brilliant, in its own way. It's a little convoluted to get to the Dave content, but go to vaseline.com, click on the link it presents you and then click on the Navarro pic. Via BBH.

Don't worry about strategy. Organic'll do it.

I guess a few eyebrows have been raised by Organic's new strategic consulting practice, since, as the lead to Ad Age's story says, "Omnicom Group's Organic wants to work with clients of WPP, Havas, Publicis and others." There's nothing unusual about clients working with agencies from multiple holding companies, of course, but what makes this different—if not entirely new—is that Organic is proposing to sit between clients and the agencies who actually execute the campaigns. It's not as though Organic is working on Tide, while another agency works on Pampers. There are probably agencies out there who see this new unit as so much dot-com hubris, but what I've always enjoyed about interactive shops is their disdain for the ad industry's tried-and-true practices. As some of you know, I spent 2000 as the head of communications at Organic, and became deeply immersed in Organic's insistence that it was more akin to the McKinseys and Bains of the world than to, say, BBDO. But it wasn't just Organic that was doing this—it was the whole interactive agency category, and, having been in and around traditional agencies for years who tried, desperately, to describe themselves as partners to their clients, it was enjoyable to see a bunch of companies who were truly trying to position themselves as such. Were these attempts always credible? No. And will this one be? Not necessarily. But where Organic may be onto something is that digital shops are still way smarter than most agencies and clients about interactive. The problem with traditional agencies trying to say the same thing is that they are no more experts than their clients are when it comes to off-line marketing. But as Organic's strategy consulting initiative goes forward, you can expect a lot of resistance from the agencies to which they hand the strategy down. It may not make a whole lot of sense, but if there's anything agencies are good at, it's expending endless time and energy on defending their turf.

Did Amtrak steal the MTA's tag line?

So, as stated earlier, I was in DC yesterday on business. (I needed a nice, long, uninterrupted block of prep time so decided to take the Acela rather than the Delta Shuttle.) Among the announcements from the conductor was the plea, "If You See Something, Say Something," which I also later saw in a truncated version—"See Something, Say Something"—on a poster in Union Station. Yes, it was a direct ripoff of Korey, Kay & Partners' "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign for the MTA, which launched back in 2002. I know Amtrak is cash-strapped and all, but can't they think up their own anti-terrorism tag line? Sheesh.

WalMart reinvents tag line, not much else

WalMart breaks what is really its first big effort from The Martin Agency today, unveiling its first new tagline in 19 years. Drumroll please—"Save Money. Live Better." OK, so it's not exactly rewriting advertising as we've known it, but what is interesting about the positioning is that it will feature factoids such as, "WalMart saves the average family $2,500 per year" and the B-roll about the campaign, above, also talks about how families are "forced" (by those big, bad other companies) to pay higher prices for gas and energy. Note there's no mention of healthcare there, but focusing on financial statistics seems like a direct counterpoint to WalMart's many critics. As for the spots, there are two currently posted on the new Web site for the campaign, savemoneylivebetter.com. (Click on the Wal-Mart TV link in the bottom right hand corner.)

Can someone at DDB post about something?

I won't be posting anything in the morning because I have to go to DC for the day, so I'll leave off with my observations on DDB's new blogs (or DDBlogs), which Brian Morrissey over at AdFreak was a bit lukewarm about the other day. OK, so the blogs, which launched on Sept. 4, are about to enter into week two, and still carry one post apiece—which strikes me as more than underwhelming, particularly for the beginning of a blog project. I mean, the bloggers aren't even supposed to have lost their charming, if misguided, enthusiasm yet! While clients may be relieved that Messrs. Bob Scarpelli, Jeff Swystun and Frank Palmer—who authored the posts—haven't gone off the blogging deep end and instead been spending their time on client business, it's time for some other DDBers to step up to the plate. In fact, you would think they would have been lined up, and ready to go, at the blogs' launch. So before this whole thing becomes woefully moribund, I'm asking someone at DDB to post, and stream some work you like—or don't like. Tell us how a trend in the broader world (like, say, lead-filled import toys!), fits into the broader context, of, I don't know, world views on lead. I was going to say the agency should send links out, but in trying to link to the posts themselves, I just realized that they can't send links out. The URL for every part of the site, blogs area, or no, is the same. For shame! Of course, I should point out that DDB is not alone in being lazy (there, I said it) about updating its blog. Hill Holliday last saw it fit to post way back on Aug. 27. Meanwhile, however, Organic's Three Minds and Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam's "Think Global, Act Stupid" were both updated today, and Naked's House of Naked was last updated on Sunday. What does that tell you about who might be taking this new media stuff seriously, and who might not be?