Old vs. New Media
Bob Garfield Gets it Right
Monday, June 16th, 2008AdAge.com’s Bob Garfield nails Madison Avenue’s current woes precisely when he likens the industry’s annual Cannes outing to “Norma Desmond… preening for one last close-up, dwelling delusionally in its glamorous past.” Still, the Cannes Festival goes on, sure proof that you can never underestimate the degree to which institutional inertia can keep alive an industry […]
Earth to Online Ad Industry: Prepare for a Planetary Crash
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008Sometimes reality just creeps up on you and slams you with a 2 by 4, and this is exactly what seems to be happening with the online ad industry. Slowly, it’s dawning on people that you can’t run an industry on nothing more than hot air, whatever fancy names (”brand engagement, view-through conversions) you come […]
You Can’t Wake Up a Dead Man
Monday, May 5th, 2008I don’t know about you, but I’m getting sick of hearing about conferences where the advertising industry is issued an urgent “wake up call” to become digitally competent and leave its glorious but completely irrelevant past behind. But this is exactly what happened this week at Dana Point, as reported in The New York Times […]
Breaking News: Search Marketing Techniques Devised in 1930’s
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008Excellent article by Alan Rimm-Kaufman on the fact that today’s search marketing best practices are inherited directly from traditional Direct Mail techniques devised 80 years ago. Especially relevant is the “List-Offer-Package Rule” holding that Lists (the segment you’re marketing to) are the most important variable, followed by Offer, and then Package (i.e messaging). This basic […]
Dell + Da Vinci = Doubt and Delay
Friday, April 4th, 2008Back in December 2007, in an article entitled “Has Dell Lost Its Mind?,” I wrote about Dell’s “Da Vinci” project, which promised to rationalize Dell’s ad spending by creating an umbrella agency to replace 800 smaller ones. At that time, I criticized Dell for moving away from the “component” approach and “putting its eggs into […]
Old Media is Revolting (and New Media is Disgusting)
Monday, March 24th, 2008Who put the librarians and the statisticians in charge of advertising? Who said that publishers funding expensive content should be forced to supply this same content to low-balling ad networks that commodify their premium inventory? Well, nobody — and it seems that the big publishers are finally lining up behind an approach that will take […]