Brand Noise

Advertising is Getting a New School

According to Brooklyn Borough president Marty Markowitz, The High School for Innovation in Advertising and Media is slated to open in September 2008, and will occupy a building on the Canarsie High School campus.

The DOE plans to enroll about 108 ninth graders to start and in each of the next three years, which means that within four years, the school's total enrollment will reach 425-450, according to a DOE representative.

"The buying power of African-Americans is expected to exceed a trillion -- yes, trillion -- dollars over the next several years, yet they represent less than five percent of the advertising industry workforce," Markowitz said today, in a statement. "This school will go a long way in preparing our very talented and creative communities of color for exciting and very lucrative careers in advertising and marketing."

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Expectations of trained kids are so high. When these kids get out of school, we better be ready. By the time they reach their first jobs, they’ve already spent years creating ads, or so that's their story. What we need them to do in the workforce makes them take a few steps back to everyone’s chagrin. And then no one is happy. Their well-roundedness will be critical. It’s no good if the ad community does not get involved. If we want their first out-of-school thoughts to be “Who do I want to learn from?” We best step up to the plate.

(Photo: Mammoth Advertising.)

Final Word from Kellogg Super Bowl Advertising Review Panel

Well, now that the Super Bowl and its ad legacy are behind us, we can all be Monday morning quarterbacks.

Everyone seems in agreement: Many commercials that appeared during Super Bowl XLII took a satiric tack, spoofing movies, television shows, video clips, celebrity misbehavior and more...For the most part, it worked. The tone was a welcome contrast to last year’s Super Bowl, filled with crude and cartoonish violence.

Kellogg School Super Bowl Advertising Review panel awarded A's to four brands: Tide, E-Trade, Coke and FedEx. Tide-to-Go won with an "entertaining," "memorable" spot which "clearly communicated the relevant product benefit." Runner-up E-Trade's ad was "attention getting" and "funny." The panel thought Coca-Cola was particularly effective in connecting with their audience.

The panel had significant concerns about the advertising efforts for the lowest ranked advertisers: SalesGenie.com, CareerBuilder.com and GM's Yukon brand. Panel members said SalesGenie.com's ads were "offensive to some," and lacked a clear description of the site. CareerBuilder.com's "I Quit" spot received mixed reactions; members of the panel were "turned off" and found the spot "disturbing."

The 41-member Kellogg Super Bowl Advertising Review panel ranked each advertiser based on innovative criteria known as ADPLAN. The acronym, developed by Kellogg faculty, instructs viewers to grade ads based on attention, distinction, positioning, linkage, amplification and net equity. Unlike other reviews which may rank ads on likeability alone, the most entertaining spot may not be the panel's overall winner. This year, the panel members identified E-Trade which received an A, as the most likeable. The brand successfully connected with the audience and communicated its position.

Influencing Only Looks Easy

Somewhere between Malcolm Gladwell and Duncan Watts lives the truth in what we all hope for as influential marketing, like it or not. Part of their disconnect is in the interpretation by marketers who hope for a quick fix to get people to talk about their stuff. Critics are plenty. Malcolm talks influencers. Duncan talks timing. We see both angles as legit.

The problem? Social media is not a direct line. Just like the kids’ game “telephone,” information gets morphed as it moves from person to person. The product that gets moved through the grapevine has to be a strong one. Without a solid product to begin with—uh, ain’t nothing going nowhere. Essentially, if you have the right product to start with, position it correctly and introduce at the right starting place, then it can trickle and explode through the grapevine. That’s a three-step process, and it’s not easy.

Read more in Fast Company. (Photo: Ishiku)

Team of Three Collaborate for DVF Campaign

Diane von Furstenberg with the artist Francois-Marie Banier and the creative vision of David Lipman, featuring Natalia Vodianova, has created a campaign that infuses the spirit and distinctiveness of the eponymous brand.

Inspired by von Furstenberg's desire to reflect the DNA of the brand -- the power of women and their courage -- Banier produced some 50 black and white images of Natalia, and with strong brushstrokes, smudges, and spatters, he applied bold color and writing to each photograph to create layers of complexity, both visual and emotional.

Not too many years ago, Natalia Vodianova was a poor fruit seller on the streets of Moscow. Now she's one of the world's most in-demand models and married to a very rich, very handsome aristocrat, Justin Portman.

Known for his iconic portraits, painting and writing, Francois-Marie Banier's friendship with von Furstenberg dates back to the early seventies. Like von Furstenberg's designs and strong prints, the trilogy of talent developing this campaign was spontaneous and full of chemistry. Her role in the campaign, she contends, was simply to make introductions.

Good Aligns With Lifestyle, And So Begins Paradox

Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable:

Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug?

Borlaug, father of the “Green Revolution” that used agricultural science to reduce world hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history. Gates, in deciding what to do with his fortune, crunched the numbers and determined that he could alleviate the most misery by fighting everyday scourges in the developing world like malaria, diarrhea and parasites. Mother Teresa, for her part, extolled the virtue of suffering and ran her well-financed missions accordingly: their sick patrons were offered plenty of prayer but harsh conditions, few analgesics and dangerously primitive medical care.

The human moral sense turns out to be an organ of considerable complexity, with quirks that reflect its evolutionary history and its neurobiological foundations.

Dozens of things that past generations treated as practical matters are now ethical battlegrounds, including disposable diapers, I.Q. tests, poultry farms, Barbie dolls and research on breast cancer. Food alone has become a minefield, with critics sermonizing about the size of sodas, the chemistry of fat, the freedom of chickens, the price of coffee beans, the species of fish and now the distance the food has traveled from farm to plate.

That said...Many of these moralizations, like the assault on smoking, may be understood as practical tactics to reduce some recently identified harm. But whether an activity flips our mental switches to the “moral” setting isn’t just a matter of how much harm it does. We don’t show contempt to the man who fails to change the batteries in his smoke alarms or takes his family on a driving vacation, both of which multiply the risk they will die in an accident. Driving a gas-guzzling Hummer is reprehensible (hence Hummer HX), but driving a gas-guzzling old Volvo is not; eating a Big Mac is unconscionable, but not imported cheese or crème brûlée. The reason for these double standards is obvious: people tend to align their moralization with their own lifestyles.

Read the whole story.

(Photo: Dr. Norman Borlaug, in his wrestling attire as a young man.)

Publicis Ramps Up Planning in US

Publicis USA is overhauling its strategy-planning department, announcing a raft of hires with various backgrounds and new structure with an eye to better understand consumers.  (read the full article in AdAge)

It seems like the underlying story here is that agencies have to figure out what business they are in.  It starts with what role planning takes in building ideas and generating actionable insights.  A couple names here that I know - I've had conversations with some of these folks (really smart people) - but they have voiced to me in the past a definition of planning leaning as much to business strategy as to consumer insight. They are not alone - many planning departments have (and have had for some time) an identity crisis going on - what value do they offer and how is that value evolving with the agency and plugging into the work they do.  Reminds me of digital shops in the late nineties wanting to be more like technology consulting firms such as Accenture. Not a good move for agencies or clients.  Confusing - especially when it often did not integrate into the existing process of creative development the agency already had. 

The reality is that you can't do both - i know we all want to say that  we can - but fundamentally you can;t have credibility on both sides of the process equally.  Great shops need to be great at being creative - that is a big enough task under the new challenges of the marketplace. Advertising (and that word is certainly evolving) is about creative ideas - and the fundamental source of these ideas that result in messages, products and experiences is knowing more about people.

I'm glad to see more agencies getting in touch with this "knowing people" thing - but it only means something if the whole agency organism takes on that as what their fundamental value is.  Be creative and be in touch with people in ways that companies/clients can't be.  I remain optimistic.

What can we learn?

What business lessons can be learned post the leader of Iran’s speaking engagement at Columbia University? Denny Hatch gives us some takeaway points to consider. Here are five of them:

* Whether in business or private life, don’t act on information that has been filtered by others who may have agendas of their own.

* Always take the time to hunt down the original source of the information—the book, paper, memo, article, film, Web site or broadcast—and make your own judgments.

* In direct marketing, for example, the secret of successful list picking is to follow the trail to the original source of the names—the specific mailing effort, Web offer, off-the-page-ad or broadcast that those on the list responded to.

* “All data cards are guilty until proven otherwise.”
—Brian Kurtz, Boardroom

* “Always see a salesman once.”
—Franklin Watts

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(Photo: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on an Etch-a-Sketch.)

The Strategic Planner Hybrid: The New Breed

Serge DelGrosso, Lowe New York, Belle Frank, Young&Rubicam, Graeme Hutton, UNiversal McCann talk about the Strategic Planner Hybrid.  From ARF's Audience Measurement 2.0 in June 2007.

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Ypulse Tween Mashup

Anastasia is coming to the Big Apple with Ypulse's Tween Mashup September 28th at the Javits Center.  Some of the speakers presenting include Daniel Neal of kajeet, Molly Chase from Cartoon Network and Mattias Miksche of Stardoll.

Early registration ends this Saturday.

Adweek Interviews John Winsor

Radar Communications, John Winsor's research company, was bought by MDC's Crispin Porter + Bogusky in May and merged into the agency's research department, Cognitive and Cultural Studies.  Read more (Adweek)