Still Here

Sorry for the absence of posts the past week. End of year craziness got the better of me. But I will be resuming tomorrow and through the end of the years.

Your patience is greatly appreciated.

Välkommna Svenskar

I've been getting a lot of traffic from Sweden these past few days, thanks to shout-outs from two Swedish blogs: åkestam.holst and APG Sweden

I have a soft spot for Swedes in advertising, so I'd like to welcome you all to the site.

Design Is The New Advertising - on MP Daily Fix

The other day, I came across a t-shirt that read “I’ll pay more for good design.” Now granted, I found it on a site I’d gotten from CoolHunter as I was looking for Hanukkah gifts, and the store was in Brooklyn and all that.

Read the rest of the post here

Dell Weighs In

Check out the Comments section on my post Dell and The Real Digital Revolution

Bob Pearson, Dell's Vice President, Corporate Group Communications, has weighed in and explained the company's dedication to design and their plans for the immediate future.

Very cool of him to stop by here and comment.

Added Value

Ever since the demise of the 15% commission, agencies have been looking for ways to monetize what they do and to add revenue. Because, as has been noted here many times previously, all too often, we're giving it away for free.

Anomaly, a fairly new agency in NYC, and generous sponsor of LikeMind has come up with a way to get some of our value back by going beyond the old print-tv-radio-digital paradigm for their clients and actually moving into the in-store experience.

Or, in this case, in-flight - the video above is a brilliantly done in-flight safety instruction video done for (now former or project-by-project, depending on who you listen to) client Virgin America.

And since in-store experience is what made Starbucks and Whole Foods what they are today, it's not a bad place to be.

Dell and The Real Digital Revolution

So the ad world is, predictably, all aflutter about Dell’s decision to award their $4.5 billion account to WPP, with the understanding that WPP will create a brand new global agency whose sole purpose is to service Dell.

Many have pointed out why having a one-client agency is folly, so I won’t go there, because in my view, it’s really irrelevant.

What’s going to be relevant, in the wake of The Real Digital Revolution, is how good Dell’s computers actually are. Specifically how good they are in relation to their competitors similarly-priced computers.

Because no matter how good the new Dell ads are, consumers are going to go online first before they buy one. And if CNET tells them that the HP machine is the better one, then that’s the one they’re going to get.

Dell is a perfect foil for The Real Digital Revolution because they’ve built their business by having the best machine at the lowest price, relying heavily on bulk corporate sales for profit. Corporate sales guys being far more influenced by facts and figures than by clever advertising.

In consumer land, they’ve only had one memorable campaign, the unintentionally brilliant “Dude, You’re Getting A Dell” series that lasted from 2000 to 2003. And I say “unintentionally brilliant” because I get the distinct sense that the casting of Ben Curtis as Steven, the “Dell Dude” was a happy accident. At a time (2000) when millions of tech unsavvy parents were going out to buy their children a computer, the Dell Dude promised them that their kid wouldn’t get stuck with the dorky machine, even if it was the cheap one.

But back to the new agency: the most they can hope to do is to maintain brand consistency. As McCann’s efforts for Microsoft have shown, there’s not much you can do when everyone thinks your product is crap. Apple’s ads work because their products do: people really like iMacs and iPods and the like. So the product lives up to the promise.

The ball is now in Dell’s court. If they want their advertising to be great, they need to ensure their products are great too.

Transnational Blueblood

click to view entire cartoon at host site

Hey. So a friend just turned me on to this hilarious series of cartoons from a guy named Pete Johnson who has a blog called "Transnational Blueblood."

They're brilliantly done snapshots of very recognizable types in our industry. The one above perfectly nails the relationship between general agencies and their online siblings.

Enjoy.

You can find the series here
here
here
here
and here
(NB: There are probably others on his site as well, they're not overly organized.)

Falling On Their Face(book)

So Facebook has been getting all sorts of not-very-good press these days thanks a new feature that lets you know what your friends are buying online. The bulk of the objections have been around the invasion-of-privacy aspect of it (it was all about opting out, rather than opting in, until they decided that wasn't working) and while I think that’s definitely crucial to its high annoyance level, there’s also the fact that 99% of the purchases my friends make online aren’t the least bit surprising. Someone bought a book at Amazon? Get out! A movie ticket on Fandango? You don’t say. And when I find out they’re downloading music from some place called iTunes? Wow. Knock me over with a feather.

Point being, all these messages are going to wind up reading like so much spam. There’s nothing interesting or newsworthy about them. And so there’s no reason for me to pay any attention. Which makes it a lose-lose situation. You’ve invaded my privacy AND you’ve provided me with a trough full of useless information in return.

Now I’m not actually sure what the purpose of Facebook is anymore, what with the zombies and werewolves and all those movie quizzes that somehow make it impossible NOT to send a challenge to everyone on your friend list, but I can tell you that this is not doing the whole idea of social media any favors. As it once again proves, Your Brand Is Not My Friend™.

Even if your friend is buying my brand.