And the winner is… (best car Super Bowl spots)

I missed most of the Super Bowl, and had to watch the spots afterward to get my annual taste-test of advertising trends. There’s Adweek’s great coverage, USA Today’s ad meter, Ad Age’s Bob Garfield rundown, and many other opinions if you want to compare impact and effectiveness. Most agree that Go-Daddy captured the flag in [...]

Best of the Pre-released Super Bowl spots – 2

This Cars.com spot has a series of stunning precocious victories in the life of Timothy Richmond… and then links it to the fear we all have when trying to find and buy a car. Well produced, nice humor combined with pathos, holds attention until the branding statement … and then leaves a strong connection between [...]

Best of the Pre-released Super Bowl spots – 1

I love this Hyundai Sonata ad… strong visuals and music that create a question that holds our attention until the payoff punch. And very well written, with a strong branding statement about quality.

VW Volcano taps volcanic resentment among creatives

Here’s a new spot on YouTube… thanks to the Creative Intensive Network on LinkedIn, for sharing it, and Alexander Bickov for posting it on YouTube. I really love the storytelling that director Marcello Serpa of AlmapBBDO Brazil accomplished in only a minute seventeen seconds… but judging from the comments on LinkedIn, I’m in the minority. [...]

Appreciating the Audience

The most important part of successful communication is to appreciate the audience. Hillman Curtis styles it, “Eat the Audience”. It means to know, to have empathy for. It also means to honor, or value their perspective, their biases, and their preferences. And it means to understand and have emotional intelligence regarding how our own perspectives [...]

Starbucks: fighting a land war in Asia

When a person adapts to the times, they’re seen as progressive… becoming more “highly evolved”. When a company whose brand is as highly evolved as Starbucks adapts to the times, they run the risk of appearing shifty. That’s what Starbucks is facing, as has been widely reported in the press and blogosphere. At issue is [...]

Trader Joe’s DNA

Heather Snow contributes an excellent analysis of the Greenpeace attack on Trader Joe’s sales of red-list fish. I’m glad to see the effort to hold TJ’s accountable to a sustainable standard. I’d like to suggest a few reasons why Trader Joe’s is pursuing this unenlightened policy, and why what seems like a hip, green-friendly brand [...]

Branding Disorder

Thanks to John Moore at Brand Autopsy, my next summer book will be Obsessive Branding Disorder, by Lucas Conley. I always love to read stuff that validates my personal philosophies! Here are a couple of quotes from the Fast Company essay that spawned the book: A brand is a result, not a tactic. One cannot [...]

Back on Barack

No, I didn’t leave to join the Obama campaign. And no, I haven’t been recently released from the Hillary campaign either. I just got too busy to blog, too focused on client projects that were pressing and proprietary. Hopefully, I’m back. But I couldn’t pass up this little college marketing gem: a Brussels college that [...]

ObaMac

Millennial sensibilities appear poised to determine who our next President will be. All of the research has been showing us that Millennials are diverse, are brand oriented, are media savvy, and most importantly, public spirited and community oriented. So it shouldn’t surprise us that they’ll begin to flex those muscles in ways that will impact [...]