Latest MEDIA articles

Breaking The Contract

A few decades back, Texan Claudia Alta Taylor Johnson gazed down the highway and didn’t like what she saw.

Billboards blocked her view of the plains, of the distant hills, and of her beloved wildflowers. So she complained to her husband, President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who prompted Congress to pass the Highway Beautification Act, which placed limits on the spread of posters- or billboards as they’re popularly known- and preserved the views that Lady Bird Johnson loved so well.

How to Train Ideas to Come When They’re Called: Notes and Advice for Young People in Advertising PART ONE

In this article, I’m hoping to impart some useful information about advertising ideas and how one arrives at them. I’m hoping this information will bring comfort and peace and a touch more confidence. Not to you, of course, because I know that you personally have no particular anxiety about your ability to produce great ideas on demand. [...]

Are You Ready For The 3D Revolution?

3D or not 3D. That’s a question I believe the advertising industry needs to begin seriously asking – and answering with an emphatic “yes”. Here’s my top three reasons why:

• 3D technology has come of age
• 3D is the future of movie, television, gaming and mobile [...]

Digging In The Right Yard: The Viral Marketing Of It’s All Gone Pete Tong

There was little coverage to be found in the mainstream media upon the release of the independent mockumentary “It’s All Gone Pete Tong“. Not that it deserved to be overlooked. The movie, about an Ibiza deejay, Frankie Wilde, who has to deal with going deaf, is not your average party flick. Picking up awards at [...]

Why Product Placement Works

Nobody is surprised anymore that movies and TV programs seek payment for allowing brands to make appearances in programs. Just as journalistic war reporting has become ‘embedded’ with the military so too has brand advertising become ‘embedded’ with the mass media.
When the current movie “Sideways” eulogized pinot noir wine, USA sales of it for [...]

Clash Of The Titans - When Search Engines Collide

Billions of pages going to trillions. Most of the information available online is replicated again and again, then twisted, corrupted and re-entered. When one search question retrieves one million answers, the system fails — results have little or no value. Now that the titans of e-commerce have been identified, search engines are leading the way [...]

(Time) Sensitivity Training

A recent Radio campaign gave me a nasty headache. It broke so many basic rules that I had to bang my head on the desk repeatedly just to make sure I wasn’t having some dreadful nightmare. Sadly, it was all too real. Since misery loves company, I’d like to share with you what I heard [...]

Strategic Versus Tactica

It’s a war out there. Tactical commercials are dominating the airwaves like never before. Clients are using short-term ads to list things like: current specials; hours of operation; years in business; and parking details. Information like this is the cornerstone of tactical ads. The trouble is, tactical ads are disposable. The spots change constantly with [...]

Magic Words

I’ve worked with a lot of sales reps over the years. Many were wonderful. A few were not. The vast majority, though, have been pretty good. There is however one rep that will always hold a singular place in my tortured past. Whenever I was up to my neck in last minute accounts and needy [...]

The Enemy Within

It’s Monday morning. A client has just delivered a stinging load of venom into your sales rep’s ear. Apparently, his radio campaign was “a failure”. The sales rep, in turn, passes this news along to the creative department, the production people and anyone else within range. The questions are always the same: Who dropped the [...]