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r/Advertising Advertising School

Peter · June 21, 2021 · Leave a Comment

An Advertising School For You. Yes, You.

A few months ago I bumped into the r/Advertisingschool on Reddit. I’m like = this is a cool, smart, and free online advertising school. All of this, especially smart, being a good thing for the vast majority of advertising agencies who do not do any employee training – a thing from the higher-margin past.

Not to get too far into the old days. but, when I started in the business at my mega New York agency, I, along with my cohort group, had weekly training sessions. We covered how to communicate with clients, how to be strategic geniuses, how to write creative and media briefs, and how to present.

Those were the old days. Days before agencies curtailed training. Now with r/advertisingschool y’all got… Imagine… A free, smart set of courses that even an “I know it all” veteran can learn from. For example, watch the Digital / Social course on YouTube – its below.

Just Do It

I urge you: agency owners; employees from all groups and your “I wanna work in advertising” types to peruse and watch the sessions. Try one on for size. Here is the school’s description:

r/Advertising School is a free portfolio school hosted in Reddit’s r/Advertising community.

The 12-week program features courses from industry professionals alongside real assignments to promote diversity in the ad industry.

Yes, a course. BUT, BUT… you can watch the advertising school course videos at your own speed when you want.

Hey, just go here and check the videos out.

The courses include:

Digital/social
Strategy Account
PR
Media Planning
Design
Brand building
Portfolio

Watch the Digital/Social video as an appetizer… it gets cooking at about the 4:30 minute mark. I have been using and social media thangs since 1995, yes, true. I learned from this one.

The Best Super Bowl Commercial Ever

Peter · February 5, 2021 · 3 Comments

The Best Super Bowl Commercial – According To Mom

Back in the late 1980s, I ran the $60 million Northwest Airlines account at Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Worldwide. Northwest was a national and regional airline advertiser in the days when airlines advertised – alot. The airline competed with big-budget United, American, and a range of international carriers. All these airlines produced and ran expensive TV commercials. But, this Northwest TV spot was the best Super Bowl commercial – ever.

The commercial below was a part of the EFFIE and multiple creative award-winning “Asia Series”. The campaign included TV, radio, print, and out-of-home executions. The objective of the campaign was to grow Northwest’s transpacific business. At that time, Northwest was the leading airline flying to Asia and needed to maintain its leadership business.

The Asia Series was notable for two reasons.

The campaign utilized an early form of pre-internet content marketing. In addition to traditional advertising, we created long-form radio content, print, and even the use of telephones (800 and 900 numbers) all designed to provide detailed information on how to conduct business in emerging Asian markets. We viewed our business and cultural guidance as ‘information as a service’. Common today but not back in the 1980s.

We ran our TV advertising nationally and regionally. The Asia Series was supported by a multiple-execution TV campaign created by our ECD Pat Peduto and CW Paige. St. John, which was shot over six weeks in Thailand, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Tokyo. We ran a couple of these on the Super Bowl in select markets including New York, L.A., and Chicago. The spot below is without question the best Super Bowl commercial ever. Why, well, it’s a cool spot. But, if you go to the 13-second mark, right after the glowing elephants, you can see me crossing a Thai road. Yes, this was my rather brief turn as a businessman star in the best Super Bowl commercial – ever.

Well, at least it was according to my mom.

My 2020 In India + Mahatma Gandhi

Peter · January 1, 2021 · Leave a Comment

2020 In India

Namaste. I’ll get personal to start 2021.

Exactly 366 days ago I got on a 15-hour flight from Toronto to New Delhi. I was embarking on a 31-day trip that I had planned for at least 6 months after dreaming of India for years. I had initially thought that I was going to be traveling with my daughter and her husband. However, when our family was together at their home in Buenos Aires in October 2020 Mackenzie announced that she was pregnant. There went the family trip. I was now on my own.

I’d have to say that other than the birth of my granddaughter in June, that India was the highlight of 2020. I traveled from Delhi to a wedding in Jaipur to Udaipur’s lakes; Pushkar (where I did not think that sharing the often proffered marijuana milkshake was a good idea); mind-blowing holy Varanasi to the great crazy city of Mumbai and then back to Delhi. Because I had a plan to bring my ‘The People’ ethnographic photography series to India, I never felt like a pure tourist.

The highlights of my trip were the Jaipur wedding with my friends Nikhil Pandit and his wife (Nikhil has a highly recommended touring company); magnificent Udaipur (where on a lake boat I listened to the 4-year old girl behind me gently sing, Row Row Your Boat; Varanasi (I stayed wide-eyed in a hotel on the Ganges + the photo above is from one of the ghats) and cosmopolitan, and way complex Mumbai where my intro dinner with Satish Krishnamurthy of Sideways Consulting was like hanging out with an old friend.

Plus the highlight of highlights was my being invited to speak to college students at Mumbai’s ISDI School Of Communication and Delhi’s Sharda University.

Oh, oh, and eating everything on the streets. Everything. [Read more…] about My 2020 In India + Mahatma Gandhi

Borat Did A Video Just For For ME

Peter · December 3, 2020 · Leave a Comment

A Few Words From My Best Buddy Borat About My “Advertising Stories” Podcast

Borat helps me by asking… “What is make beautiful Advertising Stories podcast? People should listen.”

He also asked, “What you mean by telling your agency clients that they need to be unignorable? Yo want unignorable? You got me! A special gift for you, my American puppy.” Or… “Агенттик кардарларыңызга алар жагымсыз болуш керек деп айткыңыз келгендиктен, сиз жагымсыз болуп калгыңыз келеби? Мени алдыңыз!”

So… I obviously had to go to Almaty, Kazakhstan last week to find Borat to have him make a video for me and Advertising Stories. This was not an easy get. First, I asked my friend Quentin Tarantino to find and then ask Borat’s daughter Tutar Sagdiyev to see if Borat would be in town. Tutar then asked Borat if he would do me the favor of making a video promotion for my advertising podcast for the wonderful, podcast loving, people of Kazakhstan. He was interested in doing almost anything for the great United States – if I promised to arrange a lunch with him and Rudy. Mayor Rudy said, sure what the hell. I’ll do anything these days.

I flew for 42 hours from Mexico City to Frankfurt to Istanbul to Almaty. Borat and I shot the video in my hotel room at the luxurious Ritz-Carlton Almaty. I had a tub in my room – I mean in the bedroom itself – and he insisted that he bathe and eat blinis and caviar while I played Beatles songs before the shoot. A bit weird all around – but strangely refreshing. Subscribe to my newsletter and I will send you the picture of me and Borat in the tub.

You might ask “why did Borat do this for you?” My Kazak friend is thanking me for introducing him to Rudy Giuliani. And to prove to you, that even an advertising agency business development consultant can walk to unignorable talk.