2 days ago

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Nov 12, 2009

Submitted by Awolk from blog: The Hive Awards are now live!The Hive Awards started as a pipe dream, about a year ago, when I was looking at web award shows and realized that none of them rewarded things like user experience, content strategy or even coding. At least not on any significant level. What’s more, the awards that were being given out seemed t (Read More)

Nov 06, 2009

Submitted by Awolk from blog: "Your mother is just sitting there. Alone. In the dark. But that's okay, you're busy. You go right ahead and play Bejeweled Blitz. I'm sure she won't mind."Facebook has introduced a lot of boneheaded features over the years, but one that seems particularly insidious is the new configuration of the "Suggestions" feature, whi (Read More)

Nov 03, 2009

Submitted by Awolk from blog: One of the trends I’ve been keeping my eye on is the speed at which we seem to be headed towards a two-tier system of media consumption, with commercial free content available for those willing (and able) to pay for it, and ad-supported content for those who are not.It’s a trend that’s mirrored in other industries, from hea (Read More)

Oct 29, 2009

Submitted by Awolk from blog: Three random events transpired recently. Each fairly innocuous, in and of itself, but together they served to remind me how much the world hasn’t changed once you leave our particular neck of the woods. (Or the internet, as the case may be.)The first epiphany happened during a session with a client, when I was trying to exp (Read More)

Oct 22, 2009

Submitted by Awolk from blog: So it seems like both Bing and Google are in the process of cutting deals with Facebook and Twitter to use their databases for real time search.The result would seem to be a boon for Twitter and a potential land mine for Facebook.Most people tweet with the understanding that their tweets are public, searchable (on both sear (Read More)

Oct 20, 2009

Submitted by Awolk from blog: The Wall Street Journal' Kara Swisher reported yesterday that Yahoo! was moving its ad account from Ogilvy to Goodby. The news was greeted in ad circles with the usual schadenfreude and proclamations that golden child Goodby would “finally give them a good campaign.”If only it were that easy.Once again we have a case of a c (Read More)

Oct 15, 2009

Submitted by Awolk from blog: I’m convinced that when historians look back on the early days of the 21st century, they’ll concur that one of the major nails in the coffin of the broadcast television model was the decision to allow iTunes to broadcast entire shows without even the hint of a commercial break.Because it’s the rare consumer who doesn’t find (Read More)

Oct 13, 2009

Submitted by Awolk from blog: Time for another BeanCast podcast. This one featuring the lovely Åsk Wappling of Adland. Ken Wheaton of Ad Age. Bob Knorpp (our host) and John Wall of Marketing Over Coffee.Topics included the FTCs new guidelines for bloggers, the power of online reviews, is YouTube making Google more creative, and why users love pre-roll.I (Read More)

Oct 12, 2009

Submitted by Awolk from blog: Ad Age editor Jonah Bloom and I appeared on the same BeanCast podcast a few months back, and the result was an offer to start writing for Ad Age.My first column is this week and is online now:Niche Brands Should Embrace Big Market for Offbeat Content One of the wisest bits of advice I've gotten in my advertising career came (Read More)

Oct 02, 2009

Submitted by Awolk from blog: I don’t know Curt Detweiler. Never even heard of him until this morning when, catching up on my ad trades, I clicked on this article announcing that he’d been named to a senior creative role at McCann in San Francisco.There were over 50 comments attached to the article. But what was truly odd was that while most of them wer (Read More)

Sep 29, 2009

Submitted by Awolk from blog: Those of you who’ve been reading me for a while know that few things make me cringe like buzzwords, particularly when they’re used in place of simpler language that would make the writer’s point both clearer and easier to comprehend.
Buzzwords are the refuge of those who doubt their ability to lay out a cogent argument, who (Read More)

Sep 21, 2009

Submitted by Awolk from blog: Interesting piece in Brandweek about Subaru that confirms some of what I was talking about in the “Magic Advertising Words” post earlier this month.Seems that Subaru sales are up 4% in the midst of the recession, despite having what Brandweek calls a “mediocre ad campaign.”And the reason for that? Well, Subaru makes a reall (Read More)

Sep 17, 2009

Submitted by Awolk from blog: Anyone who spent time at a big ad agency over the past several decades is familiar with the notion of the creative “gang bang,” an exercise in futility wherein dozens of creative teams, both in-house and (high priced) freelancers spend a month of fifteen hour days and even longer weekends to try and “crack the big idea” for (Read More)

Sep 15, 2009

Submitted by Awolk from blog: “Why is an account guy coming up with ad ideas?”It’s a line I heard way too often during my years in ad agency creative departments because, you know, the two years spent in portfolio school clearly gave us a knowledge and understanding of funny and clever that exceeded that of the common man.That was-- and still is-- the l (Read More)

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