Category Archives: advertising

From the agency blog: Nine reasons the media revolution is really an evolution.

A recent arti­cle I wrote for my for­mer employer’s blog: Stu­dios are report­ing the biggest Memo­r­ial Day week­end ever.  Why is this impor­tant? The adver­tis­ing indus­try is con­sumed these days with arti­cles about the “chang­ing” media land­scape, detail­ing why it will never be the same. While it’s impor­tant that we keep up with the advance­ment

How to make a professional online video for your brand. Hint, it’s not with a Flip Cam.

Online video has been explod­ing over the last sev­eral years. And there’s an army of wanna be auteurs post­ing to YouTube and Face­book with garage qual­ity video aim­ing to meet the demand. This is great for per­sonal projects and just hav­ing fun. But it’s not the way to pro­ceed if you’re rep­re­sent­ing a qual­ity brand. How

The ad agency baseball team analogy — how agencies are really run

There’s an anal­ogy I’ve been toss­ing around for a few years to just about any ad pro that will lis­ten. And yes, there are excep­tions to my lit­tle the­ory so just take it for what it’s worth — a lit­tle fun. Most large ad agen­cies are like Major League Base­ball teams. I don’t mean cre­ative bou­tiques,

Why your advertising sucks part 9 — you’re bogged down in the technology

Back in the 50s, cut­ting edge adver­tis­ing was inspired by sci­ence and research. Agen­cies like Ted Bates stud­ied con­sumer behav­ior and attempted to manip­u­late con­sumers con­sumers into buy­ing prod­ucts with sci­ence rather than inspir­ing them thought­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion. For­tu­nately Bill Bern­bach and the cre­ative rev­o­lu­tion came along and showed us a bet­ter way in where the

Is social media changing the world?

New post at Kil­gan­non Says: We’re in the midst of some rather trans­for­ma­tive times. Espe­cially if you hap­pen to live in the Mid­dle East.  Some are cred­it­ing Face­book and Twit­ter as key cat­a­lysts that helped to over­throw a 40-year dic­ta­tor­ship in Egypt. This phe­nom­e­non has spread through­out the Arab world from Yemen to Bahrain and is

The end of the creative industrial complex

When Arcade Fire took home record of the year Sun­day, a lot of peo­ple made note that an indie upstart, not asso­ci­ated with a big label was able to write, per­form and pro­duce, all by them­selves, the best album of the year. Unlike the “Lady,” they didn’t need the big machine of pro­duc­ers, mar­keters, and

Camera tech for ad creatives. Or why “shoot it on HD” is the wrong answer.

The old moto was “shoot it on 35.” And if there were good folks behind the lens, you were vir­tu­ally ensured a decent neg­a­tive to make pretty pic­tures in post pro­duc­tion. “Shoot it in HD” has a lot less mean­ing. In fact, HD is a deliv­ery for­mat and not really a cam­era for­mat. And since

Why your advertising sucks part 8 — You don’t think it’s advertising anymore

There’s been a mass hys­te­ria in the blo­gos­phere for the last cou­ple years. Peo­ple are claim­ing that adver­tis­ing is dead, the world has changed, and the only way to truly com­mu­ni­cate a mean­ing­ful mes­sage to your con­sumer is to use social media. In this sce­nario, the for­ward think­ing Social Media agency or a Dig­i­tal Agency

2010 predictions. A look back.

Last year I went out on a limb and made some pre­dic­tions about the year to come. It has now passed. Well, what do I have to say for myself? Some of the pre­dic­tions were wrong, some were right, and some were easy. Let’s start with the easy. “The kids will still text at an alarm­ing

The long and painful death of the “writer” copywriter

It’s not new to com­plain about the craft of writ­ing being under assault. I’m sure when the print­ing press was invented monks every­where were curs­ing Gutenberg’s ter­ri­ble inven­tion. These days, writ­ers in the ad world are called upon less and less to be sim­ply pro­fes­sional and pro­fi­cient writ­ers. But I see this as less an