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Marketing

Truth In Advertising: Adweak’s New Video Series

Peter · June 10, 2015 · Leave a Comment

Adweak Tells It Like It Is

adweak   Twitter SearchI’ve been laughing along with Adweak on Twitter – @adweak – for awhile. I, and I hope you, need a bit of a humorous reality check about the occasionally pompous ad folk out there. No, not you, those other spophisticated ad folk.

Need an example of a Tweet that hits home? I owned a small agency. We often hyped how nimble we were. Here’s Adweak’s take.

Adweak ‏@adweak Jun 9

BREAKING: Small Agency Just Keeps Reiterating How Nimble They Are Throughout Entire Pitch Meeting

Of course, when I worked for the huge Saatchi, we hyped all about our BIG size and zillions of offices. Small is beautiful. Big is beautiful. Whatever it takes to land that new account.

Now, Adweak has branched out from under cover of Twitter to the world of videos (see below.)

But First, Who Is Adweak?

Well, they won’t tell. But, they now want some of YOUR money. So, I guess if you want some of their great writing + humor, they are willing to let you in. Here are two things they say on ‘their’ website. first what they are selling today and second how they tell their story.

The SELL: Adweak is branching out. While writing snarky tweets about marketing and advertising for nothing is fun, getting paid is even more fun.  To that end, we’ve launched AdweakWorks. We’re a creative team of writers, directors and producers available to work with agencies or directly with brands.   

If you want to work with us, click below. (Here is the link…)

The STORY: Adweak began many years ago in the form of a website very much like The Onion.  In fact we literally said, “We should do an advertising version of The Onion.”  So the Adweak.com domain name was purchased and within 24 hours our first edition was uploaded to the World Wide Web. We never really planned to publish new editions on a regular basis but the site started gaining popularity and we, for some reason, felt compelled to keep it going.  We published new editions on an irregular basis for several years and ultimately let Adweak just sort of fade away.

In October of 2013 we decided to resurrect Adweak in the form of a Twitter account.  But this time there was an objective beyond just providing comic relief to the marketing and advertising masses.

We wanted to see if we could do exactly the opposite of what every self-proclaimed social media guru advises and still be successful.  For instance, we don’t follow anyone.  We don’t retweet anyone and we don’t reply to anyone.   We post updates multiple times a day (we’ve even posted multiple times within an hour).  And we’ve never used a hashtag.  These are all ill-advised according to the social experts. We have over 8,000 organic followers and not a single one of them has been purchased.  In fact we haven’t spent a penny promoting @Adweak.

So is @Adweak a success? Here are the stats.

-Over 470k impressions per month.

-1.5k Retweets per month

-1.7k Favorites per month

In our humble opinion, that’s not bad considering the aforementioned social infractions.  And to us, it proves once again that people have, and always will, consume and engage with great content.

OK, Back To The Videos.

Here are two sweeties. First is what I’ll call social media roulette. The second is the obligatory exit interview — the one that HR makes you do (and, yes, that is a pissed off Portland copywriter). All can be seen right here on YouTube.

 

Who The F**k Is Arthur Fogel

Peter · June 7, 2015 · Leave a Comment

Who The F**k Is Arthur Fogel ??

He produced 7 out of the top 10 highest grossing worldwide rock tours (U2, Lady Gaga, Madona…). His shows raked in $6.5 billion last year. He is profiled in this movie.

(And, you thought that producing last week’s Facebook promo was difficult).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld049oJ4hAk

Overdone Ad Agency Design Fries My Brain

Peter · June 4, 2015 · Leave a Comment

Overdone Ad Agency Design Fries My Brain

Pinterest  Discover and save creative ideasI spend a lot of time looking at ad agency websites. I even have a Pinterest website that includes many (that’s it on the left.)

Soooo many are overblown, over baked, over jam-packed with copy and images. These websites also sound alike with about, work, process (‘our agency’s very own special sauce), client lists, photos of offices, contact pages, hip staff photos and long lists of services. Yes, I get it. These are logical sections. But doing what the other 4,000 ad agencies do is not very original.

I Am Beginning To Really Dig Minimalism

WalrusI am not yet sure what I really think about Walrus‘ approach (i.e. the talking walrus.) BUT… it is minimal and does not look like any other agency and there is a bit of humor which is sorely missing in the advertising industry, so I will give it a mighty WOW.

2 Minimalist Inspirations

[Read more…] about Overdone Ad Agency Design Fries My Brain

F*cking Brilliant Blog Headline

Peter · May 27, 2015 · 1 Comment

How to Get from 0 to 1 Million Visitors   Growth SupplyOK, Want To Se A F*cking Brilliant Blog Headline?

We see dozens of articles on how to craft smart blog headlines from SEO geniuses and clickbait gurus. Here is a great example of a must read headline from Growth Supply. It is on Medium which you should add to your reading list regardless of you agreement with me. Also, play with Growth Supply’s email submission system. Ali has got it down!

Why does this work for me? It asks a question. It is about the universal view that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Especially the greener sounding tech start-up vs. advertising. It delivers a bit of Schadenfreude. It has the F-Word, well used.

By the way, I left advertising in 1995 to found and CEO two internet companies. That did NOT f*uck up my life.

Ali Mese — Medium

 

Advertising Is Not Trusted

Peter · April 24, 2015 · 4 Comments

n-TRUST-FALLS-largeA  study by the 4A’s says that you – Mr. Advertising Man and Ms. Marketing Woman (I am excluding me because I am at the 74% level – see below) – are not trusted by the public. I’m shocked. Actually, I am a bit perturbed that the ad and marketing industry couldn’t beat out Congress.

These discomfiting findings are from a new survey from the 4As called “Sex, Lies & News,” which outlines Americans’ attitudes toward advertising; how much they trust the news media; and their attitudes on sex in advertising. The survey did not specifically ask about agencies, which create the advertising the survey says is not trusted.

Only 4% of Americans think the marketing industry behaves with integrity, and nearly half of consumers surveyed say they don’t trust any news source. “Consumers are getting more astute about the news media and advertising,” said 4As Chief Marketing Officer Alison Fahey. “But we found that only a small percentage of consumers trust advertisers and the media…Americans believe that integrity is at a low and that people are lying to them.”

The “Advertising Is Not Trusted” Chart

Not too much I can add to this… But, you’ll see how much “I” love myself.

Marketers and News Media  No One Trusts You   Media   Advertising Age

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