I studied all the facts and memorized the stats on the back on the cards. Then I dove even deeper. Baseball cards were uniquely responsible for me getting an “A” in geography my entire education because I was intrigued to go find out where places like Mobile, AL and Fresno, CA were. Remember, I was 8 when I started pouring all over my dad’s atlas’ and road maps to see where my favorite players came from. Needless to say, any geography teacher I shared this with was NOT impressed.
Last week the Detroit Lions, the NFL’s poster child for futility announced that they are finally up grading/refreshing their brand identity. If you’re not a foot ball fan, let me give you a bit of perspective on their plight. The Lions have not won an NFL Championship since Ike was president in 1957. They’ve never made it to a Super Bowl and in 52 seasons since then, they have only made the playoffs 9 times and and notched one post season victory. It gets worse. Last season the Lions became only the second team in NFL history to lose every game and the first to rack up an 0-16 record. Simply put the Detroit Lions have become the black hole of pro football.
I have to ask the question, has no one ever said to anyone at any time, if you know this is wrong, then why are you doing it given the risks far outweigh the benefits?
What Can You Pack Into A SNAPSIL? A great delivery system that is so unique in it’s product innovation, I believe that we will be seeing a lot of SNAPSIL for a very long time. Remember that you heard it here first!
SNAPSIL is a proprietary portion control sample and utensil that combines both an industrial design sensibility that makes so much sense and it’s tactile ease-of-use for a high level of functionality and flexibility. The promotional possibilities and opportunity SNAPSIL offers is the icing on the cake. This is an outstanding example of problem solving at it’s best and it richly deserves…
Torch Creative out of Dallas is really lighting up the Sports and Corporate Branding Identity Program category for the National Hockey League, The NBA and in categories as diverse as QSR, CPG, Social/Cause Marketing, Health & Wellness and Industrial. In business since 2005, in four years they have established themselves as one the top design firms with a very distinct approach to their work.http://www.torchcreative.com/
The two principals, Brad Bishop and Michael Thurman, both from Texas have done some terrific work for the NHL such as their efforts for the 2008 Winter Classic. www.torchcreative.com/work.html
One of the things that struck me as so impressive about…
Besides stupid people and abject nonsense, they’re a given. We all do things that don’t help our own cause and make what we normally do very fluidly, into a battle and a struggle. Shalu Wasu a creative consultant with a terrific website that offers some great “reminders” on how not to be your own worse enemy. It is a simple, effective read that will be useful: http://tickledbylife.com/index.php/15-elephant-tethers-that-stop-you-from-being-creative/
Here’s a taste of what Shalu Wasu identifies as the many things creatives use to tether themselves to failure:
1. What will people think?
2. But I’ve never had any great ideas!
3. What is the right answer?
4. I don’t…
Our intrepid friends Wallace & Gromit from across the pond are back again showing up in more advertising. After their highly successful Harvey Nichols fashion ad campaign, out of Bristol, England, NPOWER a British power company employed our two favorite chaps into service in December to raise awareness about their free insulation program available for seniors and the disabled in Britain. http://www.npowermediacentre.com/Content/Detail.asp?ReleaseID=2318&NewsAreaID=2
The two ingenious Brits have also popped up in Social/Cause Marketing in England with their own efforts, The Wallace and Gromit Foundation which is helping to fund pull-down beds for tired parents at children’s hospitals. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/7426713.stm Well done lads! Check out their efforts: http://www.wallaceandgromitteaparty.org.uk/
Finally, a…
Successful branding is all about “BEHAVIOURAL MOMENTS” that are a set of actions that happen in the real world that actually drive sales an repeat business. “Once you decide, We Are Not In The Image Business, We Are In The Behavior Business, It Empowers A Different Conversation About Everything.”
PRISM is an industry-wide Shopper Marketing initiative that was universally well-received, intended to measure in-store media on a par with other media using similar measurement standards.
10 – Our Troops all coming home ahead of time, safely and being appreciated for doing an impossible job!
9 – More Talented, Smart Creative people being rehired in Advertising
8 – The Ad Industry coming to their senses that Creatives are the muscle that drives our industry
7 – The economy rebounds from the current melt down as fast as possible!
6 – The price of gas continues to plunge and we’re paying under a buck a gallon by February and it doesn’t stop going down there… (Oil companies going under would make my millenium!)
5 – Wall Street Interlopers, Scum Bag Politicians, Predatory…
10 – More Jerry Seinfeld-Bill Gates Microsoft commercials (Give up, you suck!)
9 - More GEICO Caveman and GECKO commercials (Unwatchable)
8 - Any Advertising of any kind with Paris Hilton in it (Just go away already)
7 - Any Political Campaign ad or commercial… (I think we had our fill in 2008 to last a lifetime?)
6 - Any Politician saying “I approved this commercial.” (If you can’t put together a good tv spot,
how can you think you can run anything?”)
5 – Stop talking about “Change We Can Believe In” (and actually start DOING some of that change!)
4 – More New Brand launches…
With the NCAA College Bowl Game season upon us, 34 to be exact, the pervasiveness of corporate sponsorship seems as deep as ever. But in fact as Department Stores drop their backing of holiday parades and when clients like GM don’t renew their sponsorship deal with the New York Yankees, have we hit the bottom of the sponsorship well? It definitely appears that way…
The NASCAR world has been dominated by the news of teams losing sponsorships as opposed to celebrating the three-peat championship of driver Jimmie Johnson. No sport is immune.
Who do you think will be hit next with a sponsorship meltdown?
http://www.skinit.com/
When I watching my PITT Panthers lose their football game on Saturday, the highlight of my night was a commercial that caught my eye. That should tell you how crappy the game really was. Similar to the pro sports licensing concept that exploded on the scene five years ago, Fathead, SKINIT takes the same idea, but to a smaller arena: cell phones, gaming devices, laptops, DVD and MP3 players, digital cameras and camcorders, even tiny cellphone headsets.
The idea, which by the way I had 10 years ago and everyone said, “No Joel, no one will do that, it’s tacky!” Well I…
The NHL has traditionally done a really lousy job of marketing their product, their brand and their visual integrity compared to the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NASCAR and as a result they lag far behind as a major pro sports league with a seamless national base and are the poor cousins compared to the other when it comes to brand identity licensing revenues. In a word, they don’t get it and never will. They missed the chance to have the FOX Network do for Hockey what it did to take the NFL up to the next level since the 1990s and reinvigorate Major…
http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/episode209
The latest episode of Emmy-award winning drama series MAD MEN kicked off with everyone preoccupied with the news of Marilyn Monroe’s death. Remember this is August, 1962.
Roger Sterling comes into his office to find Joan Holloway lying down on his sofa, teary and moping about her death. Roger was only sad about the fact that Joan wasn’t there waiting for him and a little afternoon delight.
Don Draper and his wife Betty are still on the outs as a result of her kicking his lying, cheating ass to the curb. After Don’s daughter Sally calls the office to find out when…
Very often design people tend to think that if you are designing a something tropical, adopting a coconut tree mentality is the only thought space to possess. The typical response that creative people have is that everything that came before is a cliche that has been beaten to death with a stick.
Gromit on the other hand has that Miles Davis vibe going for him. Anything he touches, he instantly makes better and his own. Following in the footsteps (or his case, paw prints) of other British style icons like David Bowie, I see our sartorial superb, four-footed friend having a lengthy career at the vanguard of fashion and style that will run for a dog’s age.
I didn’t expect a very literal interpretation of the OKC team nickname “THUNDER” but when you launch a new new brand, the last thing you want to be is understated or look unprepared. Basically the logo seems rushed and under-developed. Two months isn’t a wealth of time in all fairness, to sink a winning shot before the buzzer when it comes to these situations.
I miss albums covers. As much for the music, as the artwork. CDs just don’t cut it on a lot of levels. Sure the music quality is impeccable but CDs as a delivery system has no emotional value. First of all they come is nearly impenetrable shrink wrapping. I believe that shrink wrapping is a conspiracy started by dentists because after trying to pick, peel or pull off the miserable vaccum-sealed plastic, we all resort to using our teeth and invariably wind up finding out how sensitive our teeth are! Nothing is more cold, impersonal and unsatisfying as a plastic case.
…
Last night’s fourth episode of Season 2 of MAD MEN kicked up the intensity level a lot on multiple levels. Its never any fun to be in the position where you have to make a major pitch knowing that you have no chance to win a client’s business. Finding out that another agency has the inside track and your participation is an exercise in shaking up the status quo really sucks and is demoralizing. Happens all the time. It gets worse every time you go through it. Being invited to the party and not getting asked to dance really sucks on every…
Simple and plain, big events need big logos. This expectation is reasonable, consistent and very attainable.
I happened to stumble across next February’s big game logo for the Super Bowl in Tampa. You’re kidding, right? This looks like it belongs on a hang tag for an irregular sized t-shirt in a bargain basement dump bin. Way too retail looking. I get all of the graphic elements here, but I find the layout far too basic and under developed. It has no potency as far as a symbol for an event of global proportions that the Super Bowl has become. No inspiring…
global brands entrust us with as the gate keepers of their visual integrity and builders of their brand architecture? We’re the branding bishops that enforce brand compliance with religious-like devotion. We take the irrelevant and make it relevant. We reinvent brands and services that have died many deaths and bring them back to life. We sell using intellect, emotion, spirit,relatibility, humor and logic. Our work is expected to be strategic, tactical, meaningful, engaging, experiential, dimensional, sensory, tactile and interactive. You can’t do any of this unless you are BOTH a business and creative person!!!
Future Olympic Games usually have their brand identity whipped into shape while they are still in the pitch stage waiting to be anointed by the IOC as an official host city. The next games after this month’s Olympics in Beijing will be the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. I like this Native Canadian Inuit rock formation art piece. I am also glad that this being the third time around for the Olympics being held in Canada, someone up there foun
d a few other colors to introduce into the main theme logo color palette… Long overdue. Nice move withe lower…
Let’s look at some more recent Olympic Games logos of the last 25 years. A definite improvement most of the time. In 1984 the Winter Olympic Games were held in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. This has a nice basic Nordic look and feel 
to it. Unfortunately any mention of Sarajevo never includes Olympic memories, just how the unraveling of the former Yugoslavia plunged into civil war in the 1990s. Sarajevo’s Olympic Stadium was used as a mass graveyard during that period. The city has a dubious history of world-altering events. It was here that a political assassination triggered the beginning of World War 1.
The 1984…
Last night’s second episode of season 2 of AMC’s MAD MEN made me laugh in regards to the Sterling Cooper ditching their small client Mohawk Airlines for a chance at getting the American Airlines account. It never fails to amaze me how ad agencies will rationalize their motivation for dumping clients and going after a bigger fish in the same pond. In 25 years, I have never seen the bigger fish turn into the panacea that the powers that be envision it becoming. More often than not, the “big fish” turns into a bigger headache and makes us wish we…
Wonder Woman is a major property at Warner Bros.’ DC Comics. She is the first female superhero debuting in All Star Comics in 1941. She would go on to become part of the Trinity at DC Comics, a trio of heroes that are considered the first greats of their kind: Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman herself. To this day, these three characters are three of the most recognizable superheroes ever, and the most influential. But despite having this top billing, the Amazon Princess is lacking a privilege that is thoroughly enjoyed by her counterparts: total market saturation.
If you haven’t noticed, I’m a…
I know…I haven’t posted this week. Don’t give me that look, I can’t help it. What? I’ve been really busy with a pitch coming up. Seriously, I have to fly out of town Monday morning. Yes, sometimes it gets hard to explain to loved ones the long hours and the missed birthdays…it’s a crazy world this advertising. And if it wasn’t so ingrained in our blood that we had to show three concepts (as fellow blog writer Jason Fox pointed out earlier), maybe we’d be a little more excited to show the one or two awesome ideas. Which thankfully, is…
These are the final Impressions that I am sharing about my experience at last week’s 2008 Licensing Show in New York City:
When Did Everybody Get So Snippy? Most distressing is the fact that at the show, the big players will not talk to anyone who saunters on up to their booth unless you have a prearranged booked appointment in advance. I kid you not! This is the David Spade – Saturday Night Live skit come to life in it’s worse form. The best that you can hope for is leaving your business card with some snotty pisher who asks you “and…
The 2008 Licensing International Expo just wrapped up last week in New York City and this show was marked by a few significant factors. These are more impressions that I came away with from this year’s Licensing Show:
Everything Old is New Again, and again, and again, and again… Enough Already! I have nothing against all things retro. I love Motown Music, I go to museums, enjoy archeology, and I had the good fortune to grow up in the 1960’s and the 1970’s. Two decades that have so profoundly shaped the future we now live in and benefit from, I feel fortunate…
New York Yankees,
and Cleveland Indians
were amongst the better examples of this brand extension.
version would…
