November 22, 2008 • 2:09 pm
So the second book my friend Shane recommended was called “Where the suckers moon: The Life and Death of an Advertising Campaign” by Randall Rothernberg, the current director of the International Advertising Bureau. Since moving out of pure consulting into design I have been resisting the move into “advertising“. Despite working for a digital advertising agency (despite it’s ongoing transformation into a holistic brand experience agency). Where the suckers moon is a fantastic journey through the wonderful world of marketing and advertising projects. It picks up where Mad Men leaves off, the time when Madison Avenue ruled the world of advertising and takes you on a whirlwind journey through the maturation of an industry (both the Subaru car industry and the advertising space). Follow Subaru as they search for and select an agency. Follow the agency as it discovers that it’s not as simple as a great creative idea. Watch the politics and pressure of advertising unfold across a who cast of characters. The book is well written and takes you on a roller coaster ride towards a crescendo of doom you can feel building almost from Chapter 1. As a former Subaru owner (and someone who still remembers the “take the long road home” campaign, I found this book eye opening). What does this mean for me and my job? It sure helps understand not just the creative design teams, but the advertising people as well. High throughput creative concept generation … advertising production … versus application development versus mashups and integration … the business is changing fast. How to stay ahead and agile in this kind of down economy? Lean, fast, agile, high quality, and hurry up about it!
Filed under: personal improvement , advertising, book, growth, marketing
November 16, 2008 • 10:22 am
One of the great piece of feedback I got from my boss (and independantly from our COO) was that while I am close enough to technology and design I am not really in the advertizing and marketing business. Two weeks ago at the Forrester Consumer Forum I cornered the Organic traveling bard of the advertizing industry: Shane. Just Shane. I managed to pick over his almost photographic memory for books that would help ground me in the business. The first book I read on my quest to get closer to the advertizing business was “The medium is the massage” by Marshall McLuhan. O … M … G This book was written in 1967 and sounds like it was written this year. McLuhan’s vision for the future and linkage to the change from a mechanistic society to an information society is still directly relevant. As we move from an information society into a conceptual society, his message still resonates. Why have I not heard of this book before? Why did I not read this in university? Why has this been hidden from me, despite my design reading and exploration of the fields of visualization, visual thinking, creativity, and problem solving? Oh yeah, because none of those things are in advertizing. Some of my favorite quotes (several incredibly apropos of this particualr time and space):
Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.
The core message from the book can be boiled down into the following:
The past went that-a-way. When faced with a totally new situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past. We look at the present through a rear view mirror. We march backwards into the future.
And of course:
The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium / that is, of any extension of ourselves / result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.
Get this book. Read this book. Re-read this book imagining yourself (or like me your parents) in 1967. Think about it.
Filed under: advertizing , advertizing, design, future, marketing, mcluhan, medium, message, vision
So the second book my friend Shane recommended was called “Where the suckers moon: The Life and Death of an Advertising Campaign” by Randall Rothernberg, the current director of the International Advertising Bureau. Since moving out of pure consulting into design I have been resisting the move into “advertising“. Despite working for a digital advertising agency (despite it’s ongoing transformation into a holistic brand experience agency). Where the suckers moon is a fantastic journey through the wonderful world of marketing and advertising projects. It picks up where Mad Men leaves off, the time when Madison Avenue ruled the world of advertising and takes you on a whirlwind journey through the maturation of an industry (both the Subaru car industry and the advertising space). Follow Subaru as they search for and select an agency. Follow the agency as it discovers that it’s not as simple as a great creative idea. Watch the politics and pressure of advertising unfold across a who cast of characters. The book is well written and takes you on a roller coaster ride towards a crescendo of doom you can feel building almost from Chapter 1. As a former Subaru owner (and someone who still remembers the “take the long road home” campaign, I found this book eye opening). What does this mean for me and my job? It sure helps understand not just the creative design teams, but the advertising people as well. High throughput creative concept generation … advertising production … versus application development versus mashups and integration … the business is changing fast. How to stay ahead and agile in this kind of down economy? Lean, fast, agile, high quality, and hurry up about it!
