Leo Burnett Rules!

One of Leo Burnett's famous speeches, “When to Take My Name Off the Door”, circa 1967.

That's Right!

HMK

Mini Christmas Boxes Amsterdam

This is simply genius!

Found this over here: I Believe In Advertising.

That's Right,

HMK

Tougher Than It Looks

Smart stuff for Smart Car from BBDO New York, more from the good folks over at I Believe In Advertising.

That's Right,

HMK

Design Management App

These go out to my friends, colleagues and anyone else lucky to have a job but sadly stuck in the throws of the advertising agency world...

Chicago art director Tobias Lunchbreath has been creating some super wicked insightful and dead-on funny weekly infotoons for the smart folks over at Core 77.


Don't forget to fill out your time sheet!

Enjoy! More Lunchbreath.

That's Right,

HMK

Lying with (Advertising) Statistics

The smart folks over at Graphpaper conducted a study on the subway this Monday morning. They examined 50 people’s faces to see if they looked happy or sad. 15 looked happy, and 35 looked sad.

Can they say, then, that 30% of the commuters in the study were happy? Sure. But only if you trust their judgement in reading people’s faces. The numbers are a smokescreen — the real insight, the real magic, is occurring in their personal examinations of people’s faces.

Graphpaper's opinion is the linchpin of the whole “study”. If that one part of the process is unreliable — and you have no way of trusting that it isn’t — then the final numbers are also worthless.

Awesome lunchtime read: Lying With Statistics.

That's Right,

HMK

Think Big!

Check out the cool gallery of more Muffler Men over at: Neato Coolville.

I'm hoping to use one of these guys in conjunction with a project I'm working on...

Stay tuned.

That's Right,

HMK

Thanks to Mayor Todd Franklin

Destroy Them Before They Evolve

Nice concept and imagery for Exterminex from Saatchi & Saatchi, London. Art Director: Steve Carlin, Copywriter: Joel Bradley, Illustrator: Steve Carlin.

That's Right,

HMK

Thanks to 2wenty 4our.

Interestingness

Jeffre Jackson of the OIA talks about interestingness and why it's important for a brand to be interesting.

Known as 'the Socrates of San Francisco', Gossage was an unlikely advertising man. With a military background, he didn't start working in advertising until his mid thirties. In 1957 he started his own agency Weiner and Gossage which was an immediate success.

Gossage was known for his unique and forward thinking philosophy; that advertising should be involving for the audience. In other words that they should be rewarded for seeing and/or hearing the message. Gossage would say:

"People don't read advertising per se. They read what interests them. And sometimes it's an ad."

It's only now, in the era of the Internet and sit forward media that we are really taking Gossage's ideas to heart. Disruption is being seen as a bad thing whilst engagement is becoming more and more important.

One of Gosasge's pet hates was outdoor advertising and it's here that the internal conflicts of the man become most clear.

Something worth bearing in mind in this digital era: "Is advertising worth saving?" "From an economic point of view, I don't think that most of it is. From an aesthetic point of view, I'm damn sure it's not; it is thoughtless, boring, and there is simply too much of it."

That's Right,

HMK

Big thanks to Henry Lambert over at Trends.

Towards A Sustainable Communications Practice

Here's an excerpt from a nice AdPulp read that's more of a sermon than it is a rant from David Burn's article Towards A Sustainable Communications Practice.

I’ve learned some things in my ten plus years working in advertising. Perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned is that I’m ill suited for this business. Simply put, I have the wrong temperament. I lack all patience for the daily compromises that must be made. That’s what this business is, like politics, one compromise after the next. I also have zero interest in serving “corporate America.” I loathe corporate America. Note, I did not say I loathe business. In fact, I love business. Business with a higher sense of purpose can do a lot of good for its workers, its customers and the community at large. Take Patagonia. Patagonia doesn’t just manufacture outdoor clothing and gear to make money. Patagonia is not part of corporate America, they’re part of corporate Utopia. The company is a change agent on many levels. When the founder and CEO writes a book called Let My People Go Surfing, you know it’s far from business as usual in Ventura.

Let My People Go Surfing is the antithesis of the book most captains of industry keep near and dear. Their book might be titled Let My People Eat Shit Sandwiches, because that’s the primary diet in corporate America. The ingredients that go into preparing this dish include: incompetence, greed, poor communication skills, need to know power trips, headgames, meritless advancement, fear for one’s job and a commitment to maintain the status quo at all costs. What’s lacking from the menu: innovation, honesty, trust, instinct, real teamwork and a moral compass to name just a few.

All the agency politics aside, it all really does boil down to the Truth. I've been lucky enough to have spent only 2 of my 15+ years in the advertising working for an agency. For an industry that thrives on communication there's an amazing lack of it.

As far as my two years of dining on bullshit sandwiches, compromising everything I know to be real, true and factual all while playing "The Game" as the buzzword dropping big wig drones I worked for refer to it, David Burn's comment about incompetence, greed, poor communication skills, need to know power trips, headgames, meritless advancement, fear for one’s job and a commitment to maintain the status quo at all costs rings especially true for me.

Don Sexton, a professor of business at Columbia University, said it best in a recent Ad Age article: "Sizzle alone won't do it, you have to have the steak as well. Great advertising makes a lousy product fail faster." More on that here.



That's Right,

HMK