Month: March 2006

You’ll notice over on the right sidebar is a section titled Other Notable Sites. These sites are, in my opinion, worth taking the time to visit on a regular basis, regardless of what your role in this business may be.

Ad Age Small Agency Diary – this “is a blog devoted to the daily realities of life within America’s small advertising agencies. It’s a frank discussion of the highlights, lowlights, challenges and controversies faced by agency executives in the trenches.” A good amount of what is discussed on this blog applies directly to what agencies in Idaho are facing this very day.
AdPulp – AdPulp follows the ins and outs of the marketing world. With their own observation and commentary, its a worthwhile read.
Adrants – “Adrants provides marketing and advertising news with attitude in the form of a website and daily email newsletter.” There’s no shortage of the attitude from Steve Hall et. al., but its well written, and right to the point.
Beyond Madison Avenue – Written with an outsider’s view of “Madison Avenue” marketing, it echoes the thoughts and opinions that a lot of us seem to have about marketing these days.

Now there will undoubtedly be others, but this should get you off to a good start.

There’s a quite good campaign going on right now for Franklin Building Supply. Anyone know who did the work on it? Anyone willing to take credit for it?

I know that I drive by a countless number of billboards on a daily basis, and I can’t really say that I remember what any of them say. I’d be willing to bet, however, that if I saw something like this, it would probably catch my attention.
(courtesy of American Copywriter)

So I signed up to attend the Be Your Own Media conference that was mentioned in a previous post. Received the confirmation email, schedule, map, etc. Figured I was good to go, right?

Wrong.

Got out to the BSU campus in Nampa, parked, etc. and went into the building. Once I got in there, what did I find? Nothing. No sign, no directions, no note on the door. Wandered around the first floor, still nothing. Went up to the second floor. Nothing. The end result?

I got irritated and left.

Moral of the story — the concept was a good one, but the execution was absolutely horrible. In its most basic form, the purpose of this event was to get people into the seats to listen what someone had to say. But they forgot to point out where the seats were. I know that my reserved seat sits empty today, I wonder how many others are…

I’ve noticed a trend in the Rockies in recent years — one or two shops will, without fail, submit an obnoxious number of entries into every award category that they can (with the accompanying entry fee, of course), thereby effectively “buying” that category. Does anyone else have a problem with this?

I, for one, think that shows such as the Rockies should be a showcase of your best work, not a chance to show off all of your recent work. Save that for your portfolio on your agency’s website. If all of the work that you’ve done over the past year is just that damned good, then by all means, enter away. If not, however, and you enter it anyway, then I’d argue that the agency in question is actually bringing down the level/quality of work that is produced locally. When judges are flooded with 15 entries from one shop, and one or two from a second or third shop, simple math says that the shop with the highest number of entries is more likely to win — even if the one or two “others” may have been better work.