Copywriting Tip: use less words

Susan Gunelius, who's written advertising and marketing copy for 15 years "for some of the worlds biggest companies," has words of advice for you, beginning copywriter.

Also works for non beginners. From this morning's MSNBC/Entrepreneur.com

San Francisco's Levi's Hires Nike's Agency for Creative Work

Wieden + Kennedy, longtime agency for the Nike brand has been hired by the once-great Levi's brand for creative work in the US, as seen in today's ADWEEK.
Undoubtedly, Levi's would like to regain some of its greatness and W+K has done incredible work for Nike over the past 20 years or so, building the brand into "the one to beat" in the product category.

Sure You Share Music On-line. Soon It Might Be Legal.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has the latest in preventing YOU from being the target of a lawsuit.

Tell your mother she can stop worrying.

University Will Launch Progam To Study Emerging Media

Indiana's Ball State University - famously the Alma Mater of David Letterman - has raised $17.7 million to fund a center intended to serve as "an area of academic excellence for the media industry."

This morning's MediaPost News Online Media Daily has the story.

Ball State, also famous for its "BALL U" t-shirts, is named for the Ball brothers who made their fortune manufacturing Ball Mason glass jars used in home canning of fruit and vegetables. Mason jars can still be seen today in supermarkets used as packaging, for example, Classico Pasta Sauce (though these jars are manufactured by the Atlas Glass company).

NYTimes Spoof Creates Laughs... and At Least One Howl

Web site joker.com - which is in the domain name registration business - recently launched a parody of a New York Times online edition (dateline "Saturday, July 4, 2009") that includes plenty of lefty new utopian "news" and "ads."

An American Apparel ad, for example, features the usual scantily clad woman (with breasts tastefully covered) in an ad that says "We've been very, very Naughty. But now we're unionizing our employees." At which point the model suddenly has a picket sign in hand that cries "I have a Voice, too!" And an ad for a Manhattan dermatologist says "for the price of the best tattoo removal in NYC, you can now rebuild a classroom in Iraq."

Well, not all of the satire is appreciated, apparently. DeBeers, those wonderful folks who bring us diamonds from (some think) African trouble spots, seems to have little sense of humor. MediaPost has the whole story on the DeBeers cease and desist order.

Meanwhile, Electronic Frontier Foundation (full disclosure, I'm a member) has it's lawyers on the job arguing against censorship and for free speech.

Why Advertising People Will Never Get Elected. But why do lawyers?

This morning's MediaPost Over the Line: a lighthearted look at advertising features an article Madmen = Badmen.

According to a recent (November 7 to 9, 2008) Gallup Poll, advertising practitioners are among the least well rated for honesty and ethics. The MediaPost article speculates that the over-the-top booze, butts and babes hijinks paraded on the AMC TV series Mad Men might have down-skewed the numbers for us ad folks. If the 'truth in advertising' bit in the article amuses you, you might want to rent the movie Crazy People.

As for the poll, I remember previous editions usually had us in the cellar, too. Once again we're nestled right in there with some of our clients, including business execs, car dealers, stock brokers (even Sam Waterston can't change that image) and, as always, lawyers.

Surprisingly, bankers are still in the middle range - sandwiched between journalists and building contractors (aren't those the guys that start the job and then don't show up for days?) - even in light of current events. I'm wondering if shadowy mortgage conspirators are seen by most people as having little or nothing to do with their friendly and rock-steady local ATM.

Top o' the heap: nurses, druggists, high school teachers, MDs, cops, clergy - in that order.

(Yeah, cops over fire fighters and ad people. Go figure.)

Tivo to Deliver Almost Immediate Gratification

Let's say, you're watching sports on TV. A commercial for Domino's Pizza spot reminds you that you're hungry. Used to be you'd have to dial the phone and wait to put in your order.
More recently, if you're a "heavy user" you might have the number in your cell phonebook and think that's innovation.
Got a Tivo? Soon all you'll do is punch a few keys and your favorite peperoni-topped favorite is on its way. Here's how.
Thanks to MediPost for the article.

Young Film-maker Says "Wassup!" for Obama

Charles Stone III made a short film in the late 90's titled True, in which he and a few old friends greeted each other with a hearty, and goofy, "Wassup!" Ever so True in that guys who are friends do things like this.

The film caught the attention of Anheiser-Busch agency DDB/Chicago who licensed the concept for a well remembered Budweiser TV spot directed by Stone, who still owns the intellectual property that is the film, the TV spot concept and the use of "Wassup!" as depicted therein.

Stone and friends are now shouting "Wassup!" in an online video for Obama that is still True, but with a far less goofy edge:



For your reference, here's the original Bud spot that caught America's eye in Super Bowl 2000.



Here's the whole story from the Wall Street Journal Online.

First There Was Speed-dating, Now it's gone Mass Media

I just got back from Washington DC to find this.

A former ad agency professional is looking for a mate, and is collecting donations to buy a Super Bowl ad, in order to snag one.

A little creepy? Yes. Bound to get attention? You bet! Note the "charity" aspect of this campaign - and she's already appeared on NBC's Today Show.

Looks more like PR than advertising to me.

From this morning's LA Times.

How Nike Launched a Shoe Made of Trash

Steve Nash of the Phoenix Suns took the court in this year's All Star Game in a pair of shoes made from assembly-line scraps from one of its Asia suppliers.

Here's a 3 minute video from AdAge.com in which shoe designer Kasey Jarvis tells the tale and shows the shoe.

Obama's Team Voted Better Than Steve Jobs' or Phil Knight's

At the Association of National Advertisers annual meeting marketing and advertising heavyweights named Barak Obama Ad Age's marketer of the year for 2008.

Yes, that Obama! That one!

And While We're Talking Politics and Advertising Today...

Here's the latest from ad agency, Granite Pass...
(As seen on AdRANTs Daily)

YouTube Won't Give McCain Camp Express Lane

The McCain Campaign wanted the video giant to review footage before taking it down.

Obama Campaign Seeks Young Male Voters Via Video Games

Or, as Jon Steele once (fairly famously) wrote, "Go fishing where the fish are."

Vote On a Spot That ABC Declined

Was this spot banned by ABC (Disney owned) because of politics?
How would you vote?
You may need to upgrade to Flash 10 (I did) to view.

When Good Ideas Go Bad

Contests that truly engage customers can build product interest and, if the contesting concepts are really strong, can also enhance the brand.

In the early introduction of Saturn the then-new GM division was trying to distance itself from all the cliches of the car business, including pushy salesmen, cold and barn-like showrooms and, especially, having to negotiate (AKA haggle) a final price.

The Saturn brand, on the other hand, was approachable, friendly, human. The showrooms they built looked - and functioned - more like living rooms than car dealerships, and the price on the sticker was the price you paid. No haggling allowed.

Ad agency Hal Riney & Partners called Saturn "A New Kind of Car Company. A New Kind of Car. " And meant it.

In order to get potential customers into showrooms - and prove that they meant it - they devised a contest that supported the promise while delivering another "brand touch point."

Drivers were invited to visit a nearby Saturn dealership (which they insisted on calling a "retailer") to register to win one of the new cars - and you would fly to the Saturn factory in Tennessee and help build your car. Yes, you would stand with workers and watch - and help - them build the car you won.

It was a huge success ten of thousands visited Saturn "retailers," got to look at the cars "up close and personal" and also register for the contest. A wonderful way of using a contest to both increase store traffic as well as underscore a key selling proposition.

I was reminded this morning how bad a contest can go.

Leading Hotels of the World wanted to draw attention to the fact that the innkeeper was 80 years old, founded in 1928, and it was time for a celebration. So they decided to field an online sweepstakes offering potential customers a chance to win two nights in one of the luxury hotels all over the world paying just $19.28 a night - and each hotel would have a winner.

Sounds like a contest that would generate some interest and it did. But for all the wrong reasons.

Suddenly Everybody Wants To Dance the HULU

The video serving website, hulu.com, came out of nowhere last spring to become a major player. What hulu offers is de facto video on demand for TV content from NBCU and Fox.

A few days ago I wrote "It looks like hulu.com (one of the parters in which is NBC), et al, are leaving their mark on main stream Television."

Maybe it's the future of main stream TV - from this morning's AdAge Mediaworks.

Dissembling: it's truthiness lite.

AdAge columnist, blogger and critic, Bob Garfield, has long pointed out that the only kind of advertising that isn't legally required to prove the truth of its claims is political advertising. And that's the water we're all swimming in today.

Here's Garfield's latest complaint.

Why Your New-Favorite TV Show May Not Be On TV At All

NBC is out thumping the drums among advertisers and the noise is all about full length digital programming produced to be shown exclusively on the internet.

Madison+Vine is an AdAge.com feature that that covers the intersection of advertising and traditionally Hollywood-type businesses. And, while this idea has been batted about now and again, this is the first time I've heard it proposed as a real opportunity for advertisers.

It looks like hulu.com (one of the parters in which is NBC), et al, are leaving their mark on main stream Television.

Makes MacTV look like not such a dumb idea after all.

Noun, Verb, Maverick

This today from Creativity magazine online:

"Spoofing for Obama

Goodby, Silverstein & Partners teams up with director Craig Gillespie for some political ad satire.

By: Jeff Beer Published: Oct 6, 2008

As the U.S. presidential campaign enters its final four weeks, the fight for political turf and key voters will reach a fever pitch and one key ingredient in that frenzied rush will be the role campaign ads play.

Ad folks have often applied their brand of persuasion to the political process, such as Hal Riney's award-winning "Morning In America" effort for Ronald Reagan's 1984 campaign. Goodby, Silverstein & Partners creative director Jamie Barrett recently teamed up with MJZ director Craig Gillespie (Lars and The Real Girl) for a series of "behind the scenes" spoofs aimed to question Republican campaign strategy with a smirk. For now the spots are primarily available on a YouTube channel, but Barrett hopes that's just the beginning.

Obama: Maverick | Full View »

Creativity spoke to Barrett about the effort, how it started, if we'll be seeing their efforts on TV before November 4th and more.

How did this come about?
The way it started is that Jeff Goodby, Rich Silverstein, a few more people from here and I have been pretty proactive for the last while in looking for opportunities to do something for the Obama campaign. Jeff and Rich have done some things for the Democratic Party in the past, but we're not an official party agency or anything. We just have energy for it and wanted to contribute to the conversation some how.

When did Craig Gillespie get involved?
This specific idea came from Craig. I've know him over the years and I think he got wind I was working on some Obama things and the agency was somewhat galvanized behind that so he reached out to me about three or four weeks ago. He was in the middle of shooting a TV pilot but said he'd love to do a behind the scenes Republican version of The War Room, that doc with George Stephanopoulos and James Carville from the Clinton campaign. He said he had all the ingredients – the set and actors, etc. – if we could come up with some scripts. So we came up with a dozen or so scripts and he ended up shooting five of them, amazingly, in about an hour and a half. They just shot them before a day of real shooting for the project Craig was working on at the time.

Will these be running on TV?
We're hoping so. They've been sent to various people within the Democratic National Committee who have some role in the campaign and, so far, we've got some good response. The political situation changes so quickly, it's almost asking, what's the theme of the day? We're hoping that one or more of these will feel particularly right to them. In the meantime we're pushing it online and just trying to engage as many people as possible.

Which spot best fits the climate right now?
I think the "Maverick" spot is clearly the one most of the moment, post-SNL, post-debate, so we're hoping something will happen. McCain has been throwing that word around for a while but I think with the debates and everything, it's sort of reached critical mass. So I think if this one was on the air right now it would tie in great. It just seems in the moment right now.

Is this the first time you've applied your skills to a political purpose?
I've dabbled a bit in the past but I think, like a lot of people who've been excited by Obama, I've been swept up in his campaign and thought there might just be a way to have a small voice through this advertising thing we do."