I keep waiting for race car driver Danica Patrick to take the high road with endorsements and ads.
But there is this spot from Godaddy.com now.
Find more videos like this on AdGabber
I'll keep waiting.
It's worth noting the passing of actor Ricardo Montalban, who gave us one of the best "worst ads' of all time.
It's also worth noting that "rich Corinthian leather" was an invention of a Bozell copywriter, not something off the car's spec sheet.
D.C. lawyer Cyrus Mehri is coming. "Take cover, people. Take cover," is how Steve Hall over at Adrants sums up the feeling on Madison Avenue. Mehri, founder of Mehri & Skalet and the man who cost Coca-Cola and Texaco hundreds of millions in class-action lawsuit settlements, is going after Madison Avenue (see my story here). Agencies will likely become more inclusive as a result, a good thing. But right now I’m geeking out about how Mehri’s making his case.
We're already seeing the Mehri strategy emerge: He released a study, available here from researchers Bendick and Egan, which he says demonstrates quantitatively widespread racial discrimination in the ad industry. Not a bad start. Next, he's undercutting the work Advertising Agencies have already done on diversity issues. Scholarships and internship programs, he argues, wrongly blame Madison Avenue’s whiteness on African Americans themselves, as if they were somehow unqualified, when the real problem lies with how agencies are structured and run. This boxes agencies out of easy, comparatively economical responses like handing out more internships. Meanwhile structural changes aren’t just costly, but can (I’m sure Mehri knows) implicitly acknowledge guilt.
In coming months, he’ll be turning up the temperature on the agencies, enlisting the NAACP to ask agencies’ advertiser clients to help apply pressure on them make changes. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next, and how the agencies respond.
Goldman Sachs is searching for a new global head of brand marketing. Does this mean a Goldman Sachs ad campaign isn't too far behind?
According to a job description I got my hands on, Goldman Sachs is looking for a marketer with “15-20 years of experience creating…multinational marketing programs” who will, in the first year on the job, “actively participate, collaborate, and shape a messaging and brand strategy reflects today’s dynamics and the firm’s leadership role in helping to define it.” Leaving aside the awkwardness of that sentence, it sounds to me like Goldman wants a brand campaign to burnish its image during these troubled times.
The position is not actually in the C-suite (the official title is “Managing Director, Director of Global Marketing, Brand Marketing Group”) but instead reports to Goldman Sachs partner Lucas Van Praag, the bank’s worldwide head of communications. It comes with a staff of 15 people. The search is being conducted by recruiter Korn/Ferry International. No word yet on who the leading candidates are, or if there are any yet.
David May, who held the position prior to this, was moved out to run marketing and communications at Goldman’s investment management division in late 2008, according to a source at the company. Goldman Sachs wouldn’t comment, other than to confirm the existence of the job search.
It was a long year. We have recession that is flirting with Depression. The near collapse of the U.S. auto industry. The election of Barack Obama, the first African-American President of the United States; a man whose middle name is Hussein. Amazing.
Advertising is in a full-body battle with the digital-video-recorder and the consumer’s ability to skip over any and every TV ad.
Considering all the TV, outdoor, Internet and cellphone ads, the social networking and video ads, it is hard to choose one single piece of marketing communications that is the best; that transcends everything else in the marketplace for getting a message across.
But, in my opinion, there was one such effort.
This Will I. Am and Friends video, “Yes We Can," was self-directed by the music artist, not coordinated by or ordered up by the Obama campaign.
The reasons it is my “Best Message Creation of 2008,”:
1. Born from the enthusiasm for Obama by a talented artist, it captures enthusiasm in a rare way.
2. It is technically brilliant. The overlay of people speaking inside Obama’s own words was done flawlessly.
3. The use of celebrity is not beside the point. The passion for Obama, the product or brand in this case, is infectious not contrived.
4. Message delivered: Obama is cool because he inspires. He doesn’t inspire because he is cool.
5. It goes to show you that an ad done as well as this can hold eyeballs for almost five minutes.
Fox News racked up its seventh straight year as the most-watched cable news channel, delivering an average prime-time viewership of 2.1 million, 40% more than 2007, according to data released...
As I followed a link for a story about how diet soda can make people gain weight, I was somewhat surprised to find an ad featuring Oprah Winfrey's somewhat...
Every year, somebody sends me some fruit and candy from Harry & David or some such mail-order operation. Let me tell the world...NOBODY WANTS THIS! These boxes and baskets...
Public relations done well is as much a key ingredient to marketing and brand management as advertising. And often, it is a greater, more important ingredient than the ad plan....
The JC Penney "Doghouse Video" is just the right use of viral video from a big advertiser. Created by Saatchi & Saatchi, the long-form video has just enough edge that...
The Detroit Free Press reported today that General Motors, in its attempt to put forth a workable restructuring plan to keep it from going bankrupt, is looking at killing...
News, opinions, inflammatory meanderings and occasional ravings about the world of advertising, marketing and media. By Marketing Editor Burt Helm and Senior Correspondent David Kiley.
Advertising | Special Sections | MarketPlace | Knowledge Centers | Careers | Terms of Use | Disclaimer | Privacy Notice | Ethics Code | Contact Us | Site Map
Copyright 2000-2009 by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
