Since last December Fallon Minneapolis and Crispin Porter + Bogusky have been battling for the $2-300 million Microsoft consumer products account. The Daily Ad Biz reports rumors are flying Microsoft has chosen Fallon. There's been no confirmation either way but wouldn't it be fun if waning poster boy CP+B took a hit? OK, that's mean. We'd never wish that on anyone. Well, maybe we would but not here. May the best shop (or the one that plays the game the best) win.
For an ironic peep inside the world of agency life, a new album, Straight Out of Winston, from Mullen Winston-Salem Copywriter "StrataG" (aka Joe Beutel) and others from the agency peers inside the walls of agency life rapper-style. Whether exploring the obsession over awards, the pain of writer's block, the illogic of "creating a viral," the war of art direction or the stupidity of focus groups, the album pokes fun at life as an advertising professional.
If you work in an agency, you will identify completely with the sentiment of this album. If you are a client and work with an agency, you'll get a good look behind
When it comes to targeting the elusive Hispanic consumer, Cilantro Animation has this to say: "Be prepared to offer more than just Hola!"
(Though we'd like to point out that strategy worked wonders for Dora the Explorer.)
But Cilantro -- which creates Hispanic cartoons like the one at left -- makes an interesting point. When we hit ad:tech Miami we were overwhelmed with a sense that the Hispanic market remains unimpressed with the way big media has (or hasn't) tried to reach out.
And indeed, a salsa-colored Hola! just doesn't cut it when you consider the range of ethnicities blanketed under what we breezily dub Hispanic: Mexican, Cuban, Peruvian, Venezuelan, Colombian, Ecuadorian, and others -- all with their own cultural customs, jokes and sensitivities.
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Check it out -- a car that both flies and wheezes.
Video of the levitating wonder was sent to us by Gear Factor to promote its "flying" brands campaigns. If conditions are right, the balloons can play outside, too. GF calls its work "ambient media." Ooooh.
Our enigmatic West Coast resource, who's really good at drumming up touchy rumours about the goings-on at TBWA\CHIAT\DAY, just sent us this Oakley spot by AWOL.
The spot depicts Shaun White's offseason life a lot less sexily than HP did. It's almost funny -- if you're thirsty for schadenfreude.
MORE IMPORTANTLY, the source quickly points out, agency AWOL is composed of Doug Mukai, Scott Wilson and Chris Dutton.
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To promote its fancy new renovated destinations, the Red Roof Inn's gone digital with 360i, its Digital Agency of Record.
360i will be working on Red Roof's online media and creative. We have yet to see either.
In the meantime, we can ooh and ahh at Red Roof's new logo, which comes complete with a casual roofy slant, and a typeface probably modeled after the handwriting of a fresh-faced yachter.
Tell us if we've gone mad, but the logo rubs us wrong. Because isn't it magenta?
Big difference between red (as in Red Roof) and magenta (as in Magenta). Way to make a fresh splash in the pool, Red Roof -- total incongruity between your logo and brand name.
Anywho, the logo has been published on the redesigned and "rededicated" Red Roof website. It will also appear on inns that have recently been renovated. 360i washes its hands of it; the logo, it says, was in place before the agency was contracted.
It's hardly been three days, and already the shoving match between Google and Microsoft over this -- not to mention the growing list of greed-sparked suitors for Yahoo's hand -- is really, really old.
To provide comic relief, Luckie & Company's Rethink Everything launched Yahoocrosoft. The site hosts a spoof news article where -- in some insane universe not far from our own -- Yahoo counteroffers to buy Microsoft for $44.7 billion.
We're hoping the article will at some point make way for spoofy cartoons, which can't possibly be far behind.
Advertising Age just named Tribal DDB Worldwide (the Quintippio guys!) Global Agency Network of the Year. This is the first time a digital shop's won over traditional houses.
Congrats, you crazy digital sauce-sipping kids you. As for everyone else? Well, Andy Berndt comes to mind.
Andy Berndt, once of Ogilvy and now of Google, got up in front of a bunch of marketers last week and said, "Google is not starting an ad agency."
MarketingVox (i.e. me in less knee-slapping form) compares this statement to that made by Google's Alan Eustace pre-Android. You know the one: "We're not doing a mobile phone."
Google may not be starting an ad agency, but you don't have to start an ad agency to make life hard for ad agencies. (And hey, maybe that's just what you slackers deserve.)
One more time: "Google is not starting an ad agency." Think about everything that sentence leaves out.
Show of hands if you believe Andy.
In support of his ongoing theory the advertising industry is filled with BDA's aka Big Dumb Agencies, George Parker has unearthed an interesting analogy that involves monkeys and classical conditioning. The net result of this exercise explains perfectly why BDA's (and most other big companies) can never get out of their own way and achieve greatness.
So if you want to laugh and, at the same time, realize that, yes, you too just might be one of those monkeys trapped in a perpetual hell of repetitive behavior without knowing why, give this a read.
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