Recently in Advertising Category

As a 2-year-removed college grad, an adherent to no particular religion (other than The Religion of Non-Stop Awesomeness), and a relative newcomer to the Facebook scene, I was surprised to hear the WSJ report that giving up Facebook for Lent was all the campus rage last year and has since spread to include the equally hapless older demographic (i.e., parents).

It's incredible to me that Facebook's has achieved "vice" status and that abstaining from it for little over a month now qualifies as honoring Jesus' 40 days in the wildernes. I mean, dude didn't eat, practiced strict abstinence, and resisted temptation from the Devil himself all in the name of his faith. And what are we doing? Why, 40 days without Facebook, of course!

Wait a minute. None at all? Cold turkey? Just like that? Does that mean I can't update my status hourly to tell all my 360 "friends" that "Alex Weaver is super psyched for the Snuggie Pub Crawl!" or throw a virtual snowball at some kid I went to kindergarten with?

Clearly I am not nearly as hooked as most. But I still find it ironic - nay, downright hilarious - that by abstaining from Facebook for Lent, college kids everywhere are basically freeing up time otherwise spent poking strangers to partake in activities that, piously speaking, they'd probably be better off giving up instead. (I've seen people driven to the bottle for less.)

Whatever the case, I can't find a more convincing proof of the power and persistence of social networking in today's society than the fact that people, both young and old, feel like giving it up actually means something. My question now is...

UPDATE! Seems I'm not the only one who didn't like the rebrand. Check it out here.

As the recession wears on, popular brands nationwide are putting considerable effort - and dollars - into rebranding strategies designed to make us feel better about buying the products we didn't used to think twice about ponying up for. Our taste in Pepsi may not have changed, they fear, but the "unemployment jitters" are quickly becoming fuel aplenty to get us through that all too familiar afternoon lull.

The question is: Do companies, in an effort to make consumers more comfortable with paying for "premium," actually make them uncomfortable by changing what was once familiar?

I think it might. It seems ironic to read, for example, that PepsiCo-owned Tropicana Orange Juice would shell out $35 million for a new ad campaign positioning them as America's "main squeeze."

I liked the old brand identity better; you know, the classic straw sticking out of the orange motif. It was visually appealing and clever and got the message across without a lame tag line or cap in the shape of a halved orange (though that is rather, um...peachy). But more importantly, it jumped off the shelf not because it was new and flashy looking, but because it was familiar. The new carton is nice, but by simplifying the design and deviating from their previous look, it has only made itself blend in more with the competitors. Seems to me in an effort to make purchasing their brand feel more comfortable (and therefore justified) to the penny-clutching public, all Tropicana did was water down their already juicy product and put themselves into a $35 million dollar hole in the process.

I guess in the end it squeezes down to one important question: In today's economy, is it smarter to rebrand a product in the hopes of making consumers more comfortable with its price, or to keep the familiar brand but devise a marketing strategy that convinces consumers that the same old good stuff is still worth the extra ducats?

I tend to favor the latter option, but I'd love to hear why you disagree.

Image Courtesy of poopface_productions (yes, it's really called that).

Talent Spotlight
Jack Goldenberg is a creative copywriter represented by agent Randi Martin in Aquent's New Jersey office who, since cracking into the industry over 30 years ago, has served as the creative muscle behind such influential product launches as the McDonald's Happy Meal, Cabbage Patch Kids, Pop Rocks candy, and most recently, the signature Barack Obama watch line. Today, Jack is a freelance copywriter who recently finished a two-year gig writing advertising for Bristol Myers Squibb.

I asked Jack a few questions about how he got his start in the creative industry, the stories behind some of the work he is most proud of, and some advice for those of you hoping to follow a similar path.

First of all, I had an African American Cabbage Patch Kid growing up I named Fred. I'm about as white as they come and grew up in Maine...very strange. But I guess I could say he was my first best friend...so thanks for reaching the masses on that one.

You knew a black Cabbage Patch Kid named Fred? I think I knew him. Was he different than all the other Cabbage Patch Kids? Wait a minute, maybe I'm thinking of snowflakes...

Now you've worked on some pretty amazing product launches from the Happy Meal to the aforementioned (and awesome) Cabbage Patch Kids to the Obama Watches. As a staunch Happy Meal supporter myself, can you tell me the story of how this product launch came to be?

The launch of McDonald's first Happy Meal was a long, long time ago. How long? It was back when cell phones had a huge cord and we had to walk 20 miles in the snow just to pick up our e-mail. But I digress.

The Happy Meal name came from a company in St. Louis and the idea for it supposedly came from St. Louis adman Dick Brams in 1977 (also known as the Dark Ages).

The problem was that the Happy Meal wasn't that successful, at first, to warrant making it a national product. I was Creative Director at the Frankel Company - a brilliant company that has been promoting McDonald's for over 30 years.

Since the local sales of Happy Meals were not that strong, Ray Kroc, McDonald's founder, wanted to put the Happy Meal in a bag instead of a box because the money McDonald's would save if they sold millions of Happy Meals was astronomical (I'm no math whiz, but we're talking well over $40.00 here).

I argued with Ray Kroc that they had to keep the Happy Meal in a box, not a bag because a Happy Meal was "an in-home reminder of the need to visit McDonald's." A kid would see the Happy Meal boxes he collected in his room every day and tell his parents, "Mom, Dad, We've just gotta go back to McDonald's. I need three more 'Star Trek, Star Wars or Spongebob' Happy Meals to complete my collection!"

In other words, the Happy Meal was designed to be viral, kid to parent, long before YouTube made its way onto computers and cell phones. Of course, we didn't know about the term "viral," to us it was just "word of mouth."

I then tried to convince McDonald's to use movie merchandising on the first national Happy Meal instead of the generic outer space or circus themes they thought would work. When they didn't believe me, I brought in Dick Wolf, then a a movie producer and currently of Law and Order fame, and Rusty Citron, a former talent agent and currently Founder and President of the Actors Hall of Fame, to speak to Frankel account executives and McDonald's promotion people about how a movie merchandising theme would make the Happy Meal collectible.

The deal was sealed when Coke got the rights to the first Star Trek movie and sub-licensed them to McDonald's.

I don't want to get political here, but I do want a new watch, so can you tell me more about the Obama Watches?

Obama Watches is the most recent project I've worked on. In December 2007, I wore a single Obama watch to a friend's party as a one-man viral campaign supporting Barack Obama. The next day, five friends called or e-mailed me (why they didn't Tweet me, I'll never know!) to ask where they could buy "one of those Obama watches. "

Now, we have 13 different Obama watches, sales in 47 states and 8 foreign countries and three of our Obama watches are in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution. I personally gave 5 watches to then-candidate Obama at the request of the Democratic National Committee.

We're going to make a 14th final Obama watch. While it will be a little less serious, it is sure to make dog lovers happy. I don't want to give away what the subject will be, but I will say that you'll be able to buy it at this site - www.firstpuppyoftheunitedstates.com - as soon as it goes live.

Good news for all you wannabe Mad Men (and Women)! There's now an alternative to getting into advertising: becoming an advertisement. That's right. Anyone with untouched skin space and no self-image issues can now create an online profile and pimp...I mean, rent your most personal space to hungry advertisers willing to shell out considerable coin for the services of a living, breathing billboard.

Sound ridiculous? Don't be too hasty to judge. Not only will this gig not interfere at all with your daily routine, but think of the implications - or rather lack thereof - for your diet. The rail-thin model look will be replaced by "rotund but resourceful," and your extra pounds will be worth their weight, or at least surface area, in new ad revenue.

Personally, I couldn't be more behind this movement. And though my forehead belongs to Aquent for the next 3 years ("Register with Aquent and this won't be you"), I do still have some available space left on my abs.

A couple weeks ago, Mr. Randall Rothenberg published a manifesto on interactive advertising creativity, which I missed at the time but discovered thanks to a post by Alan Wolk on whether or not creativity still matters.

Mr. Rothenberg's lengthy (by web standards - it took me minutes to read rather than seconds) manifesto is a well-written, informed, and impassioned defense of inspired creativity as the heart and soul of advertising, as that which not only gives it value but, more importantly makes it meaningful to the lives of real human beings. Against the rising tide of commoditization, he says, "We must stop acting as if we're selling schmattes, and start acting like the makers of magic that the best of us are -- and always have been."

Aside from pointing out that Rothenberg explicitly confirms my assertion that interactive design is a team sport - "There are several new skill sets creative agencies today must possess to attract, engage, and influence consumers -- Flash video development, software design, information architecture, animation, CRM, iPhone app design, and ActionScript development among them -- and no one individual will have expertise in all" - I would like to highlight one other critical point he makes: Great advertising is not aimed primarily at consumers; it's true "target audience" are the employees of the company that it promotes:

"This is perhaps the most important reason advertising creativity matters. It inspires the marketer. It encourages the sales force. It provides them, and all the other constituencies in and around the company and the brand, the faith that they will be able to sell the product in to the retailer, close the sales on the dealer's lot, win new commissions, and better their own lives. Great advertising is their rallying cry, the flag they march under. The mouseclick must be matched by their heartbeat."

Forget about the customer for a second. Does your creative work actually inspire your colleagues?

This post was written by Aquent's Alex "Dr. Love" Weaver. This is a picture of him.

With Valentine's Day hard upon us, I couldn't help but sit back and reflect on all the great matches that Aquent has made since its inception back in 1986. I'm not one to boast, but it seems that a broad swath of companies are just now trying to bust the marketing moves we made popular over the years.

Now I don't want to pat Aquent's collective back here, but if I did, I would probably talk about how Match.com and their "Love. Guaranteed." slogan is a total rip-off of the "Work. Guaranteed." ad campaign we were on about back in '89.

Then I would point a finger at Axe's "Dark Temptation" commercial and remind our loyal readers of the "Temp Temptation" fragrance we released back in 1996 to commemorate our 150,000th placement (though instead of Mr. Chocolate, our poster boy looked like this).

Finally, I would really, really have to thank Joaquin Phoenix's latest personal branding exploit for shedding light on what we've known all along: when you're the bomb at what you do, you don't need to do it any differently.

I would, but I won't.