BogeyBlog

Yahoo! Semester Project

Here is our final Yahoo! presentation - Download yahoo20presentation.pdf . We presented this to a few people from their marketing department. This is mostly the creative from the presentation and requires an in-person explanation. The strategy was done mostly without PowerPoint. We suggested to Yahoo! that instead of using their brand as a vehicle for visionary products like Yahoo! Answers, Flickr, and Del.icio.us, these products should be vehicles for Yahoo!'s vision - Communal Wisdom.
We extracted this vision from a meeting we had at the Yahoo! campus with the Answers team. The basic thought behind this vision is this - If you had one question, would you rather ask an algorithmic search engine or everyone on earth. As long as time wasn't an issue, you would obviously get a better answer by asking everyone on earth. The internet is making advances and breaking down barriers like this every second. For example, Yahoo! Answers allows you to ask any question you want, and receive personal responses from people around the world. Also, Flickr and Del.icio.us aggregate information on the internet and rank it based on human needs and preferences.
In the future, the internet will add a layer of meaning and context to all the information it holds. We shared this vision with Yahoo! and they thought that this would be a great global campaign that Yahoo! could own as a company. The Yahoo! brand is about people, and Communal Wisdom is driven by people.

WSJ Article

Click on it if you can't see the whole article.

Youtube - Friend or Foe to "Old Media"

"Two days after Sumner [Redstone's] Viacom Inc. announced that it was suing YouTube to the tune of $1 billion (go ahead and put your pinky to the corner of your mouth like Dr. Evil) for 'massive intentional copyright infringement,' Sumner's CBS Corp. announced a deal to launch CBS Sports NCAA Tournament Channel on YouTube." - Fast Company.com

Mediaweek article

I wonder if this was a ploy by Redstone or a brilliant turn-around by Youtube?
This deal may have fallen through. There's nothing on Youtube.
If Youtube could pull this off it would be amazing.

How not to manage your relationship with your agency

That 'chimp' campaign from Cramer-Krasselt made Career Builder famous. C-K took them from the #3 job site to the #1 job site. Apparently that wasn't enough for CareerBuilder. First, they made C-K move away from the award-winning 'chimp' idea, then put them in review when they didn't hit another home run that made this USA Today poll. If they didn't want to be represented by chimps anymore, thats fine. That is a subjective cultural-identity decision, but this is no way to do business. Good for you C-K. Good luck to their next agency. Here is the Ad Age Article:

CareerBuilder Wrecks a Good Thing Over Poll in 'USA Today'

Cramer-Krasselt Scored Top Marks One Week; the Next It Was Being Reviewed

By Jeremy Mullman

Published: February 26, 2007

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) -- Cramer-Krasselt was asked to make CareerBuilder "famous," and, by pretty much any measure you care to use, the agency did just that. By the Chicago shop's reckoning, it helped the job site overtake Monster.com to become a market leader, nearly doubled its share of the online recruitment business and grew sales exponentially.

The ad that didn't make 'USA Today's' top 10.

Together agency and marketer won a number of awards for their chimp-centric campaigns.

So you can imagine how stunned the agency was when, late last week, CareerBuilder's VP-consumer marketing, Richard Castellini, walked into its office and told a team of C-K's senior managers that he was calling an agency review because the shop's Super Bowl offerings hadn't made it into the top 10 in USA Today's poll about the commercials. At least, that's how agency CEO Peter Krivkovich tells the story, and CareerBuilder, despite repeated requests, didn't want to comment.

'We trust America'
"Just a week earlier, he'd told us our performance report card would be at 100%," Mr. Krivkovich said. "He said USA Today is 'America's poll, and we trust America.' It seems all our insights, business results and ad awards mean nothing compared to a poll featuring 238 people from two states. There are a few times in your life when you have to tell someone to f-- off and mean it."

Cramer-Krasselt resigned the account on the spot rather than partake in the $60 million review as incumbent.

A spokeswoman for CareerBuilder confirmed the resignation and review but wouldn't elaborate.

The split followed a shift in campaigns at CareerBuilder, which rode its popular "Office Monkeys" for two years, an effort that spawned the Monk-e-Mail viral website that drew 13 million unique visitors.

For this year's Super Bowl, however, the marketer changed course, airing a series of high-concept spots set in a jungle in which meetings and attempts at promotions are viewed as potentially lethal hazards.

Lukewarm response
Lukewarm critical response followed -- the spots got three stars from Advertising Age and finished 16th and 27th in the USA Today poll.

There were positive metrics throughout the partnership, as CareerBuilder grew from the No. 3 job site to No. 1 during C-K's five-year run, although, as always, there's debate about how much advertising had to do with the brand's performance.

According to Morningstar analyst James Walden, CareerBuilder -- backed by the three largest U.S. newspaper publishers, including Gannett which owns USA Today -- had a built-in advantage over Monster because of its local-paper alliances. "Still," Mr. Walden said, "there's no question that they've done a very good job at building brand awareness."

Memo to staff
But according to a memo sent by Mr. Krivkovich to staffers, the mediocre showing in the USA Today AdMeter overshadowed that track record. "It's so ludicrious (sic.) and they are so serious about that poll it's almost funny," he wrote.

But it's not likely C-K is laughing. Losing one of its most visible accounts is not the follow-up the No. 5 independent envisioned in the wake of 23% revenue growth during 2006, its largest ever. Last year, C-K won creative duties for Corona beer, and it also landed midsize accounts such as Yellow Pages publisher R.H. Donnelley and Key Bank.

Drive-in movies for film pirates

How cool is this, you can download the coolest new movies for free, then upload them to the projector in your car to create your own drive-in movie experience.
Hey it could happen according to these two stories from Gizmodo:

In the middle of all this big talk about industry titans joining up with BitTorrent, and Amazon and TiVo and Netflix and Wal-Mart all starting to offer movie downloads, isn't it funny when some maverick interloper suddenly offers even better and more current movies than the big boys are offering? Oh yeah, and also with another key diff: they're free.

Not that we would encourage piracy or anything, but Movinflicks.com is offering a heckuva lot of links to movies—many of which you saw win Oscars last night—for free viewing, immediately and in all their full-screen glory. Find out more about our experience with the site:

The movies aren't actually offered in HD as they are purported to be, but we were able to get them to play back perfectly. Of course, now that we've mentioned this obviously soon-to-be-slam-dunked-by-the-MPAA service, it will quickly be overwhelmed with traffic and ultimately brought to its knees.

But the site is just providing links to the pirated movies, right? Well, that's illegal, too. Maybe linking to the linker is illegal, too. Uh-oh. You'll have to find Movinflicks.com on your own. Maybe even glancing at the Movinflicks.com site is illegal. Is that a knock at the door? – Charlie White

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Designboom, an international design competition, has just announced the winners of their latest competition, and this Drivin' driving cinema, which received the first place price in the "500 places" category (whatever that means), really captured our attention.

Designer Tim Thornton proposes sticking a projector in the front of a Fiat, turning it into a mobile drive-in movie theatre. Just pull up facing a blank wall, and voila! Instant drive-in. Sounds pretty cool to me, although the chances of this actually being implemented in a new car are slim to none. Modders? Make it happen. –Adam Frucci

Culture of Learning

In our Internal Brand Leadership class we have been learning so much about building a company culture. Every company thinks they are smarter than the competitor, so what is the difference? In many cases it is simply getting things done. Many companies who are smarter than their competitors are losing market share to them because they sit around thinking about the smartest thing to do. Below is an article from Fast Company, that speaks about creating a culture of learning where employees have the freedom to try new things and make mistakes. This article is based on a book by Stanford B-school professor, Jeffery Pfeffer. Google followed his strategy to a tee to create the culture they have today. He concedes that this is very expensive, yet it is very necessary. He asks some great questions and makes some great points:

Would you let a great talker perform heart surgery on you?
Doing means learning. Learning means making mistakes.
Talk ain't cheap. It's expensive and destructive.
Decisions, by themselves, are empty.
Sure, it's a measurement -- but is it important?
Make knowing and doing the same thing.

http://www.fastcompany.com/online/35/pfeffer_Printer_Friendly.html

My independent study - Rasmussen Reports

This is a tracking graph for the website that I am working on for my independent study. Rasmussen Reports is a public opinion polling site that focuses on politics, economics and other "water cooler" issues. Rasmussen Reports' polls are more respected than Gallup's or Zogby's. RR came closer than either of these two mainstays in predicting the last election (by almost five points). I am helping them add content to RR that fits their brand while also helping to increase revenue generated from advertising.

Rasmussen Reports

The Senior Artists Colony

      This is our final presentation for the expansion of The Senior Artists Colony from last semester. The original is in Burbank, California and it is a wonderful idea. It isn't a retirement home. It definitely is not assisted living. It is an apartment complex for independent seniors who want a place where they can take their craft seriously while socializing with other seniors who help to inspire their creativity. Whether they have done it all their life, or just haven't had time to develop their craft, this is a place where they have the resources to produce their ideas. If they are a playwright, their plays  are performed in their in-house theater by senior actors and actresses and broadcast on the colony network. They also have opportunities to take their craft to another level. One senior wrote a script that was produced and shown at the Sundance Film Festival.
    For this project, I thought we came up with a great strategy - Creativity doesn't grow old. I think it spoke to the mental capabilities of seniors versus their diminishing physical capabilities. For example, Van Gogh had glaucoma and Monet has severe astigmatism and cataracts, yet still painted some of their most famous works. We also found a great study that showed that leading a creative lifestyle helped seniors to stay sharp and not deteriorate as quickly as those who just helped around the community. I thought the creative was wonderfully designed with some great non-traditional ideas. Our group was great to work with as well.
Download SAC_V3.pdf

Imagination

Who said large corporations couldn't have fun. Imagination Theater is something pretty cool from BBDO/New York for GE. The best part is it is in-line with GE's brand strategy and tag - "Imagination at work."

This is particularly inspiring as I enter the work force.

This is the new one. It may be a little over the top, but it is imaginative.

On top of the world

This is what it looks like to stand on the top of Mt. Everest.

Download mteverest_panoramic.jpg for a closer look.

Shopper Blacklist

It seems that there is a dark side to a consumer-centric retail strategy. Best Buy along with some other retail companies are starting a blacklist to try and weed out scamming consumers that they think make up approximately 20% of their consumer base. I don't know if "firing" consumers is the best idea.

Shopper Tactics That Might Send You to the "Blacklist"

The following practices are among the most common and most offensive in the eyes of retailers. If you commonly engage in any of these practices, you may soon find that your next return is denied or your name has been added to a store's "blacklist" of bad customers.        

•     Buying a product, taking advantage of the product rebate, then returning the product for a refund.     
•     Buying clothing or another item, wearing it (or using it) once, then returning it (the classic example is the evening gown that's worn with tags on for a night, then returned).     
•     Buying an item and returning it with the intent of buying it at the reduced "open-box" price     
•     Buying clothing or another item with the intent of returning it later and re-buying it at a markdown price.     
•     Buying a product at a discount, such as from the store's selection of "loss leaders," (low-priced products stores lose money on that are designed to attract customers) then reselling it on eBay for a premium price.     
•   Finding rock-bottom prices on Web sites, then challenging stores to pay up on their lowest price guarantees.     
•   Taking up an employee's time to ask questions about a significant purchase with the intent to buy it elsewhere.     

Here is the rest of the article.

Martin Agency and MediaVest Win Wal-Mart's $580 Million Creative and Media Account

This is a big day for The Martin Agency. Caley Cantrell was account manager for the first pitch. I witnessed them practicing one of their presentations and they were great. Too bad Wal-Mart and Julie Rohm messed everthing up the first time, or they would have been able to work with Caley. She is now a full-time professor at the Adcenter. I just hope Martin isn't swallowed whole by such a large piece of business

True Innovation

A new category of cell-phone: brilliant-phone.
Every other smart-phone out there will be obsolete when this hits stores in June. As I said in an earlier post, Apple will probably do something better than we could ever expect. They did. It is all touchscreen and senses if you are looking at it wide screen or normal. It senses if it is close to your face so your cheek doesn't touch any buttons. Amazing. Here is Steve Jobs unveiling his new baby. Macworld 2007

My B-School article of the year

MARCH 26, 2006 
B-SCHOOL NEWS        

Creativity Comes to B-School

As more institutions set up courses stressing innovation, students are learning all sorts of techniques to help them think outside the box

Before you read this, take two minutes to draw a picture of your ideal home as you would have drawn it as a 5- or 6-year-old. Do it quickly. Don't think too hard. Just draw it.

That's one of the exercises that Jonathan Feinstein, a professor of economics at the  Yale School of Management, assigns his students in the course, "The Practice and Management of Creativity and Innovation."

Feinstein, whose book, The Nature of Creative Development, (2006, Stanford University Press) comes out in May, says that 9 out of 10 will come in with the same picture -- a square box with a triangular peaked roof, four windows, and a door in the center. More often than not, the similarities even extend to the semicircular sun with rays extending from the right hand corner of the picture.

AD CAMPAIGNS.  How does such an exercise help to prepare future managers? For starters, Feinstein says his course provides a setting for business-minded Type A's to think differently, to challenge their own assumptions about how creative people think, and then apply that thinking to their career.

The house drawing exercise demonstrates the age children are when they develop their idea of home, and how similar that idea is among people. Students then use the exercise to examine their underlying views of advertising campaigns, business models -- even the stock market -- and then attempt to see these things without the stereotypes.

B-schools are working to get students to think outside the business box. Professors say it helps people enhance their own personal creativity, as well as their management of others', because employers in the new economy value innovative and creative thinking as much as traditional frameworks and skills.

'IT'S NOT ENOUGH.' Innovation and creativity courses were slow to catch on but have spread like wildfire. Only 29% of MBA and EMBA programs have freestanding courses in creativity and innovation, according to a Kennesaw State University study released in November, but the number of schools offering these courses has doubled in the past five years, and nearly 92% of those that did not have a course or module said they were at least somewhat likely to offer one in the next five years.

Clearly, schools are trying to keep up with the real world. The best job candidates in the future will possess a creative ability that comes from working with different kinds of people on challenging projects, says Bob Sutton, professor of engineering at Stanford and author of the book, Weird Ideas that Work (Simon & Schuster, 2002). "If you just have an MBA, that's nice, but it's not enough," he argues.

ARTISTS WELCOME.  There is research suggesting increased reliance on creatively stimulated growth among leaders. Nearly three-quarters of executives surveyed by Boston Consulting Group in their 2005 innovation survey said their companies will increase spending on innovation, up from 64% in 2004. Almost 90% of the execs surveyed said that generating organic growth through innovation has become essential for success in their industry

Once associated with laziness or nonconformity, creativity in business today is all about differentiating a product or company. "Every brand has two or three competitors, so it's now a required skill to make sure you stand out and and stand for something," says Marcio Moreira, vice-chairman for global professional management for McCann Worldgroup, a marketing communications company.

Because it's something he looks for in employees, says Moreira, who manages much of the hiring for his global advertising company, he thinks every MBA program should have creativity as a required part of the coursework. Moreira points to his company's development of Mastercard's "priceless" campaign as a great example of creativity at work in business.

GAME GURU.  At Yale, Feinstein uses historical figures and life stories to shed light on the creative process that contributed to such groundbreaking research as Einstein's theory of relativity. Feinstein teaches students about authors like Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner, as well as artist Alexander Calder, to demonstrate that the creative process is just that -- a process just as accessible to them as to anyone else.

Instead of examining historical figures, marketing Professor Yoram Wind from the  Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania , turns to today's creative leaders -- from architects Bob Venturi and Denise Scott Brown to game designer and Sony Online Entertainment CCO Raph Koster.

Hearing from such impressive speakers reinforces the importance of the unstructured problems that all managers face. "When we look at leaders, they all have a high level of tolerance for ambiguity," says Nina Godiwala, a second-year student in the course. "A lot of MBA students are not very good at that."

COMIC BOOKS.  Sometimes, students need to get outside the classroom to think outside the box. B-school students in Professor Jim Patell's "Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability" course at Stanford head to places like Burma to examine farming and irrigation methods in rural areas.

Business students are put in teams with engineers, designers, education students, computer scientists, even literature students, to confront a major problem in the developing world. Then they design and build working prototypes to attempt to correct it. The course's first offering resulted in the creation of a company called Cosmos Ignite Innovations that produces low-cost lighting systems for developing countries.

Patell says the most important component of the course is learning that it's O.K. to fail. "If you don't get something the first nine times, then you're encouraged to get it on the tenth, because this is school," he says. "We're not expected to solve these problems."

Learning to see things from different perspectives often requires interacting with a mix of people. On Mar. 21,  MIT Sloan School of Business and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (SMFA) hosted "Twenty-First Century Visual Arts for Business Leaders," an intensive, one-day workshop that paired 12 Sloan students with master of fine arts students from the museum school. There were three components: digital animation, digital comic book storyboarding, and color.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS.  As if drawing a cartoon storyboard wasn't different enough, MFA students gave the B-schoolers a twist. Students were divided into teams of two. Starting at opposite ends of the storyboard, one team drew the first panel and the other drew the last without looking at what the others had done. Each time they completed a box, the teams switched positions, so that they never got to draw two pictures in a row.

The challenge was to create a coherent narrative that worked from beginning to end while escaping their linear thinking patterns. "My team drew a yogi meditating on a mountain, and the other team drew a bunch of fish jumping out of an airplane," says Corey Halverson, a second-year student at Sloan. "We needed to think hard about how to connect those two panels."

Halverson says he will use lessons from the day's workshop in his future career in television media. As companies seek more innovative employees, MBAs who have learned techniques for cutting-edge creative thinking might have an edge in the new economy.

Gangemi is a reporter with BusinessWeek Online in New York

Edited by Phil Mintz
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This is what the VCU Adcenter Creative Brand Management track has been about from day one. This is what it will be about through week 60 and for classes in the future.

MIT Sloan School of Business and the VCU Adcenter were the only schools who had two teams in the semi-finals (top ten) at the Innovation Challenge held at UVA's Darden School this past year. Darden was very unhappy when they had zero teams selected, even though they had entered the highest number of teams and were hosting the event.

60 Intense Weeks

Download cbm_overview1.doc.001.doc

Download letter_to_cmos.doc.001.doc

The Home Stretch

Here it is, my last semester at the Adcenter. So much excitement awaits... the threat of unemployment, my first class with Rick Boyko, trying to explain to every potential employer what makes a "Creative" Brand Manager better than a normal MBA, and my real life independent study with rasmussenreports.com. That is the beauty of this program, once you think you can handle the intensity of this program, you find out what intensity and pressure really is when you are about to be booted out into the real world. In this school we talk about innovative ideas every day... "What makes this idea innovative?", "What do we have to back up this innovative idea?", etc. Quoting The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier, "How do you know when an idea is innovative? When it scares the hell out of everyone." So, we are the first graduating class of this innovative Creative Brand Management track and we have the task of scaring the hell out of potential employers. I think I am accurately speaking for the seven of us when I say, "This task scares the hell out of us." And so begins the search for that open-minded company to take me in and take a risk on a young kid from "nowhere Virginia" with big ideas.

Polyphony by Russell Davies

Class dismissed. A great metaphor from one of the Adcenter's great board members.

"i_____"

"iPhone" is trademarked by Comwave (Tech Digest) or Cisco (gizmodo.com)

Maybe Apple can bully their way into the name.

'Tis the season to give your money away

"Last winter, Best Buy Co. reported a $43 million gain in fiscal 2006 from cards that hadn't been used in two or more years. Limited Brands Inc. recorded $30 million in 2005 revenue because of unredeemed cards."

"About 6 percent, or $4.8 billion, of this year's gift cards will go unused, estimated Laura Lane, vice president of unclaimed property services for Keane Co., a compliance and risk management consulting firm."

I had no idea figures were this high for gift cards. I am now 100% opposed to gift cards as a gift. At first I thought they were just thoughtless gifts, now it seems like someone is just giving their money away. I will never a give gift card again, unless I work for the company. That's just doing what's good for business.

Yahoo! news article

Give your money to charity instead of giving someone a gift card.

Is this "you" you? Or is it me? Anyways, Who's on first...

It's about time the people at TIME saw Scarface and read the blimp."The world is yours." Thank you Captain Cliché. Actually, it was a good idea for "person of the year," or is it "people?" I would like to thank all the self-publishing/production companies, consumer involvement strategies, on-line communities, every other "you" ..... am I missing someone...... oh well... Viva la Revolution.

What if...

I can 't wait for the iPhone to come out. This isn't it, but it looks like a pretty cool design. I'm sure Apple will come up with something even better.

Miracle House Project

This is one of my latest projects from the Adcenter. Miracle House is a hospital hospitality house in NYC. It began as a shelter for those coming to NYC for treatment for AIDS/HIV. So at the beginning most of their patients were gay men. Since the AIDS crisis has become more manageable in the US, they have had to adapt their mission statement to include hosting cancer patients who come to NYC for treatment. But, in 2007, the American Cancer Society is opening a 60 room hospitality house called the Hope Lodge that dwarfs Miracle House. So we proposed they focus their mission statement to include only gay and lesbian patients and caregivers. This is due to the fact that they have much brand equity with the gay/lesbian community considering that is where they started and those are the people who still attend their events. We presented this to this non-profit organization and scared the hell out of them. I will stand by the fact that it is the best option for their business. Anyways, take a look at this presentation.

Download miracle_house_presentation.pdf (Right-click, and Save Link As...it may take a little time, hang in there)

How Discounting Destroys Brands (Ad Age)

Retailers Make Same Marketing Mistake as Airlines

The Disaster of Black Friday's Downward Spiral of Discounts

By Al Ries

Published: December 11, 2006

Black Friday was its normal orgy of shopping this year, but many retailers seemed to go to new lengths to offer the deepest discounts.

This year's Black Friday saw more and deeper discounts than ever before. But are the big retail chains making the same mistake as the airlines industry? | ALSO: Comment on this article in the 'Your Opinion' box below.

Photo Credit: AP

'Doorbusters'
The Sports Authority had "6-hour doorbusters," with 25% off its entire stock. Toys "R" Us offered "Lowest prices ever" with 50% off and more. Sears featured "Insanely early Friday Specials." The first 200 customers in each store got a free $10 reward card.

The advertising orgy was Thursday. In Atlanta, for example, the local newspaper (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) carried 385 display ads (not including house ads) in addition to 40 inserts with 358 pages of advertising. America's retailers paid handsomely for the privilege of offering consumers these deep discounts.

Perceptions of high prices
Newton's third law states: "For every action, these is an equal and opposite reaction." What is the opposite reaction when a chain offers to sell its wares at deep discounts? Unfortunately for retailers, the opposite reaction, as far as consumers are concerned, is that "your regular prices are too high."

Is that what most retailers want to communicate? I think not. Most retailers want to communicate the fact that their retail outlets feature great merchandise at reasonable prices. Or as Macy's used to say: "It's smart to be thrifty."

Coupons, sales, special discounts for customers using membership cards and a host of price promotions have steadily undermined the idea that any particular chain is a good place to shop -- unless there is a sale.

Store sales are like crack cocaine. You get a short-term high followed by a long-term low. The only way to get high again is to have another sale.

The Circuit City customer who bought a 32-inch HD LCD TV set for $499.99 on Friday isn't going to buy another one on Monday at the full price of $899.99. Furthermore, he or she is going to be leery of buying any major appliance at Circuit City unless there's a sale going on.

Like the airlines' discount derby
Where is the discount derby headed? If history is any guide, it's headed in the same direction as the airline industry. It was the airline industry that perfected the high-low approach to marketing. High prices for consumers who have no other choice. Low prices for consumers who could find cheap fares on other airlines.

What happened in the airline industry can also happen in retail generally. As the Syms slogan says, "An educated consumer is our best customer." As consumers get educated about retailers' high-low strategies, they tend to move to chains that feature "everyday low prices."

In the airline industry, it was the "no-frills" airlines with their everyday low prices that undermined the high-low strategies of the major carriers. Last year every major airline (American, United, Delta, Northwest and U.S. Airways) lost prodigious amounts of money while Southwest made $548 million in net profit.

As a matter of fact, last year Southwest's 7.2% net profit margin was higher than the 6.7% net profit margin of the average Fortune 500 company and last year was a great year for a Fortune 500 company.
'Sale' mentality
What's tragic about the retail industry's "sale" mentality is the almost complete absence of branding in their advertising efforts. I leafed through the 358 pages of insert advertising in the Thanksgiving issue of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and it was hard to find any mention of what any individual store stood for. Nothing but sale, sale, sale.

Many chains today do almost no advertising except sale advertising. The furniture industry is famous for its "all-sale, all-the-time" advertising. Another heavy advertiser that does nothing but sale advertising is Jos. A. Bank. Its website sets the pattern:

• "Entire stock of top coats. 60% off."  
• "All pinpoint dress shirts. Now $29. Reg. $59.50."  
• "Entire stock of pattern sport coats. 60% off."

You can bet on it. The day a chain starts down the continuous sale path is the day the chain is headed for trouble.

Strong brands, little advertising
Strong brands do little sale advertising. I have never seen a Starbucks' ad offering two cappuccinos for the price of one. Nor have I seen an Apple ad offering half off on an iPod. Or have I seen a Rolex ad offering two watches for the price of one.

On Thanksgiving Day when all the other retailers were running their sale, sale, sale advertisements, Whole Foods ran an ad in the Atlanta newspaper with the headline: "Today we give thanks to all our local growers."

That's class. And that's a powerful brand.

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Why discount your brand? It just eats away at your brand equity.

Virtual Addiction?

Here is a Newsweek article about a man who filed suit a long time ago for wrongful termination from IBM. He was fired for "discussing sex" in a chat room during work hours. His lawsuit has been held up for years due to his health issues, but now it is being revisited due to the fact that "several psychiatrists and psychologists already say compulsive Internet overuse can legitimately be called an addiction. Among them is Dr. David Greenfield, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine and author of the 1999 book Virtual Addiction. He compares compulsive Internet use to alcoholism, drug abuse, or pathological gambling."

"Like alcoholics or those who abuse drugs, people who are addicted to the Internet use it to change their mood and feel better, says Greenfield. There are also many who can't stop using it, despite reprimands from work, disputes with family and friends, and other negative effects such as debt due to compulsive Internet shopping or gambling."

Excuses, excuses. When did the phrase "self control" leave the vocabulary of the courts. Sure, I am a blogger, but there are times to work and times to play. This is getting ridiculous.

Download newsweek_virtual_addiction.doc

Mike Hughes 2006 Adcenter Graduation Speech

This is a great speech from a great man. It is about life and advertising. I realize that as a future brand manager that only 10% of my time will be spent on advertising. But he speaks more about the power of ideas and how the Adcenter is training us to think of ideas that will change the business world. Also, keep in mind that this speech was before the Creative Brand Management track had a graduating class.
Download 2006AdcenterGraduation.pdf

Great Borat Article

November 19, 2006

'Borat' Lawsuits? What a Joke

By Mark Davis

The movie sensation known as Borat has divided America into three groups: those who have seen it and found it deliciously, subversively funny; those who have seen it and recoiled in shock; and those who have not seen it and are left wondering what all the fuss is about.

For the unfamiliar, the story is a series of encounters between an obliviously offensive TV "reporter" from Kazakhstan whose old-world prejudices mingle in a comic soup with the biases of unsuspecting Americans he interviews and thus unmasks.

Raunchy, controversial comedy is nothing new at the cineplex. So what makes this product of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen the stuff of talk shows and lawsuits?

It doesn't hurt that it is on the way to a perch as top-grossing comedy of the year, and deservedly so. If parody is an effective weapon for battling our social ills, this movie is a nuclear bomb aimed at bigotry and ignorance of several types. Whether it is Borat himself displaying his own stunning anti-Semitism or the Americans he encounters unwittingly revealing their own prejudices, every frame of this comic masterpiece is designed to do two things: make you laugh and make a point. It is succeeding mightily.

This modern brand of squirm-inducing comedy is surely not everyone's cup of tea. But for those with comic tastes that include the edgy and uncomfortable, this is the new benchmark.

The discomfort is not limited to the interior of the theaters running it. From South Carolina to Romania, lawsuits are hitting the moviemakers, adding to the tension and, I'm guessing, to next weekend's box office.

Part of the adventure of Borat is wondering which scenes are real and which, if any, are staged. Did the gun store owner really have a handy answer when asked which firearm is best for shooting Jews? Did guests at a genteel Southern dinner party gamely teach Borat the graphic finer points of toilet training yet vacate the premises as his black date arrived? Most vividly, is that a real ballroom filled with genuinely stunned conventioneers when Borat and his obese producer tumble through the room wrestling, naked as jaybirds?

The answers appear to be yes, yes and yes, and almost everyone has had a good chuckle about it since.

I said almost. The drunk Southern frat boys who welcome Borat for a segment of the road trip in their RV are stunned that they are caught on camera following Borat's every lead. When he praises the concept of slavery, they hit the bait like bass on a worm. "Minorities have all the power," blurts one in a beer haze.

That inebriation, their lawsuit says, was a calculated trick to get them to "loosen up" and behave in ways they otherwise would not. Did these boys not notice that no one bought this logic when Mel Gibson tried it? And besides, they signed releases. End of story.

So did the inhabitants of a Romanian village that serves as Borat's decrepit hometown. In their lawsuit, they say they were not in on the joke as he introduces characters from his sister ("No. 4 prostitute in all Kazakhstan") to the town rapist ("Naughty, naughty!").

More nonsense. What they feel they are not in on is the massive income this movie is racking up. The frat boys should have told everyone they were in on it all the time. The Romanian villagers should be happy for any thin dime left among their shanties for their time and trouble.

Meanwhile, Borat will spark additional cascades of guilty laughter, hopefully joined by the sound of these lawsuits being laughed out of court.

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These people should be more worried about revealing their underlying prejudices.  I do feel sorry for that little Romanian village. Cohen better have payed them some money.

I know you've seen it...

...but this is the best use of music in a commercial I've ever seen. I had to download this song. If you go to www.adtunes.com you can find the music from your favorite spots.

A Summer at Martin

This is what I worked on this summer at Martin. It ended up being a pretty nice spot. It was just a teaser.  Maybe that's why I think it is above average. No credit-card jargon.

As a lowly account management intern, I was responsible for researching what companies made orange-handled scissors. Sounds like fun, huh. I found that a company was actually trying to trademark the orange-handled scissors because it was symbolic of their innovative ergonomically designed handle. I did learn a lot about the legal implications of advertising. As you see, Martin and Discover either thought this company wasn't a threat or that the risk was worth the reward.

It was also very rewarding to observe the whole process. But I have definitely decided to look client-side versus agency side for employment.

Children See. Children Do.

Amazingly impactful. I like the version with Radiohead on Adcritic.

Good Luck Martin

Wal-Mart Chooses Select Resources for Review Redo

Consultancy Managed $580 Million Contest Last Time Around

By Matthew Creamer and Mya Frazier

Published: December 13, 2006

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Wal-Mart has hired Select Resources International, the consultancy that handled its recent ill-fated $580 million creative and media review, to manage its upcoming mulligan, according to executives familiar with the situation.

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Photo Credit: AP

Limited field of contenders
Most observers say it is unlikely Wal-Mart will open the review to a wide field, given that it wants to complete the process by the end of January. They say the field of contenders could be limited to the finalists in its last go-around. They were Interpublic's Martin Agency, WPP Group's Ogilvy & Mather and the incumbent, Omnicom Group's GSD&M. Wal-Mart has said DraftFCB will not be allowed to participate, but that Carat, the Aegis Group-owned company that won media duties, will be allowed to compete.
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This Ad Age article holds some pretty good news for my professor, Caley Cantrell. She was also my boss this summer when I interned at Martin. I helped on some of the research for the pitch and she was very disappointed when they lost. But it seems that TMA is back in the running. They came in second to DraftFCB, or as she would put it the "first loser." I hope they do well this time around. But I also hope, on the chance that they do win, that their agency isn't swallowed whole by such a huge piece of business.

PharmaSim Project

This is our presentation on our PharmaSim simulation. It was a brand management simulation where we were to manage a Cold medicine and make decisions on pricing, advertising, sales force, reformulations, line extensions and new brands.My group was running away with it until we made a bad reformulation decision. If we actually had an R&D department reporting to us they would have told us not to make this decision. Anyways, we learned a lot about the nuts and bolts of brand management. Download PharmaSim.ppt