Read this piece below or download the nicely designed PDF (Taglines). It is ironic that a short bit of writing used to concisely convey an idea is called different names. These communication devices go by slogan, catchphrase, motto or tagline. For the sake of this piece and my preference, I call them taglines. Slogans possess a […]
Marketers and ad professionals are attracted to shiny new toys. They look to technology as a panacea for reaching and influencing buyer behaviour. Newspapers, radio, tv, the Internet, big data, social media, AI, and whatever is next. There is one thing missing in this equation. The fact is all great ads regardless of medium or […]
Two months ago, it was all about the Fyre Festival. Remember? Two documentaries came out nearly simultaneously. Netflix streamed the more cleverly titled, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened while competitor Hulu broadcast, Fyre Fraud. You would have to been trapped in your car in a blizzard for the month of January not to […]
During the 1964 Presidential election, Lyndon B. Johnson’s campaign approached the ad agency DDB for a particular type of television ad. The result was “Daisy”, sometimes known as “Daisy Girl” or “Peace, Little Girl”. It aired just once and is credited with tarnishing Barry Goldwater’s run for the oval office. It never mentioned him by […]
Spoiler alert…this may be for design nerds only. Imagine extremely recognizable and memorable logos. What comes to mind? An Apple. A Golden Arch. A Swoosh. What comes to mind when you hear Bauhaus? No, it is not an Oktoberfest pop-up beer hall. The Staatliches Bauhaus, commonly known as the Bauhaus, was a German art school that ran from […]
Life comes down to wants and needs. Those things we have to have and those we would would like to have. What we require and what we desire. Marketing is about setting up the want and need equation. Giving consumers the right amount of honest information in relevant and entertaining formats so they can make […]
Four years ago, I wrote the article, Branding Needs Rebranding. In hindsight, the title was a tad misleading because it covered the lack of differentiation and delivery between brand consultancies, it was not an indictment of the entirety of branding. I argued, branding is largely premised on differentiation, so shouldn’t the consultancies be different? Today, […]
This post originally appeared on HubSpot’s Agency Post. In 2007, I was brand new to the storied advertising agency DDB, having been appointed Chief Communications Officer. One of the first memos that hit my desk was a “heads up” that Doyle Dane Bernbach was going to be featured in a new television series. Creator Matthew Weiner had consulted […]
Some are instantly recognizable while others verge on being lost to history. The list is neither exhaustive or scientific, it is highly subjective like so much of branding. If you have some cool ones to add, let us know.
As my readers know, I am a huge fan of marketing history (to the point of being supremely nerdy). Over the past few years, I went back through the centuries to find great stories for my book, Why Marketing Works. That research missed a very cool tale that I am happy now to share. It […]