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Martha Stewart & Pine Brothers disrupt the Golden Globes and blow up Twitter!
I love this story. During the star-studded hype fest known as the Golden Globes there appeared this funky little commercial for Pine Brother’s “softish” cough drops, featuring none other than Martha...
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MLK’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is, among other things, great copy for...
Imprisoned, King set forth to writing… When I was in college, I took a course on rhetoric and debate in 20th century America. In it, we looked at numerous famous speeches made by famous people:...
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Richard Sherman goes off on national TV taking focus from game and onto...
Dude, it’s only a game… What are we to make of Richard Sherman? No doubt he’s a good football player, maybe even, as he unabashedly stated on national TV, “the greatest corner in the game.” By all...
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Snickers official sponsor of the Super Bowl because what is football without…...
Strange bedfellows… I pretty much like everything about Snickers. The peanuts. The nougat. Obviously the chocolate. It’s the classic American candy bar, a raunchier version of Hershey’s. Sort of like...
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Ode to a grecian formula. If not for advertising poetry might be lost to the...
Poetry is a dying vine clinging to the stinking roadhouse of pop culture. Verse and beat and alliteration are now 140 characters, the new haiku. On steroids. On advertising! Brand after brand after...
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The ads. The broadcast. The game. Superbowl XLVIII was perhaps the worst ever.
“Why the long face?” I would have preferred a snowstorm. Seriously. Watching the Superbowl was like watching the proverbial car crash. I gaped for a while and then moved on. Honestly, did the Denver...
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Viva La Corruption! Cannes is months away but the planning has already begun.
Are you ready for some ads! Now that the Superbowl is over (one can argue it was over after 12 seconds), Adland has already begun planning for the Mongolian Cluster F**k that is Cannes. Festival...
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Contrary to popular belief, creating stellar work isn’t the hard part....
I like to think I’m a good writer. I like to think I’m a good presenter. Alas, I still haven’t figured out how to sell a client a piece of work they do not want to do. Has anyone… really? Precious few...
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Rampant turnover in Adland: What does it mean and could it even be healthy?
Careers can be had in Adland but almost certainly not at the same company. Whether one resides on the client side of marketing or plies his craft at an agency, transiency is a fact of life. People...
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Has social media finally forced big advertisers to prioritize human relevance...
P&G will spend a hundred million dollars for you to push that button… In the paper version of USA Today, writer Bruce Horowitz gives megabrand, P&G the “early gold medal for social media,” in...
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Always wanting more: The pernicious committee in my head and how it relates...
Maybe they’ll listen to you… The other day I was riding home from a fantastic hike in the mountains, driving my wife’s convertible with the top down, on yet another glorious sunny day in Marin County....
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48 hours in Berlin: a creative conference in our year of transformation.
From my morning run in Berlin… I’m not going to lie to you. This post is likely to be scraggly. That’s because I’m in the 11th hour of a painfully long journey home from Europe and my mind is running...
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Arrogant, inspiring or even both: What to make of Cadillac’s polarizing new...
The new ELR. I got mine. The loud guffaw over Cadillac’s new anthem TV commercial, which like many of you I at first hated, has prompted me to reconsider my position… or at least modify it somewhat....
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A TV commercial for Facebook? What’s not to “like?”
Weird yes but “we are not alone.” I don’t know which ad agency, if any, created this ad for Facebook but I “like” it. A lot. In the news –somewhat controversially- for spending enough money to bail...
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Painfull yet thrilling, the advertising pitch is like a hurricane. “Post...
Like a Cat 5 in NY… I’m writing this on a malfunctioning computer attached to a malfunctioning human being on the long flight to San Francisco from New York. Regarding my computer: Upon pulling a wad...
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New orbit campaign abandons campy blond chick for Sarah Silverman (and her...
Orbit number one Orbit numero dos I’m not going to editorialize (too much) on Orbit gum’s new ad campaign, featuring comedienne, Sarah Silverman. It’s certainly watchable, though the brand and agency...
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Tales from the Adland: the new business meeting and the “chocolate teapot.”
Just add hot water… Time for a true and funny story and, as it happens, the learning of one my new favorite phrases: Chocolate Teapot. What the hell is a chocolate teapot you ask? I’ll get to that....
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Let’s be real. A good copywriter creates sweet myths because of and despite...
If the story is good does the truth even matter? Watch the above clip from Mad Men, where the inimitable Don Draper delivers a moving story to a group of silver-haired Hershey clients in a pitch for...
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Make no mistake, horror has gone mainstream but it’s also nastier than ever...
We’ve opened Pandora’s box… The Walking Dead season finale contained one of the most violent scenes I’ve witnessed in a film of any kind and it didn’t involve zombies at all. A ruthless gang of...
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An essay on losing it: why yelling and screaming is (thankfully) so rare.
A stranger yelled at my wife the other day in the park. She’d taken our terriers off leash and a pedestrian took offense. Apparently, this other woman didn’t just get mad, she was irate, letting loose...
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