apocalypse now?

I feel like a broken record, but advertising has been in trouble for some time now. I knew it was bad in September while I was in New York. I knew it was awful a month ago when I emailed my resume to an agency hours after it announced a new account, only to receive an automated response that their disk crashed. And now there's today's AdAge article by Bob Garfield.

Here's part of Garfield's intro:

Chicken Little, don your hardhat. Nudged by recession, doom has arrived.

The toll will be so vast -- and the institutions of media and marketing are so central to our economy, our culture, our democracy and our very selves -- that it's easy to fantasize about some miraculous preserver of "reach" dangling just out of reach. We need "mass," so mass, therefore, must survive. Alas, economies are unsentimental and denial unproductive. The post-advertising age is under way.

This isn't about the end of commerce or the end of marketing or news or entertainment. All of the above are finding new expressions online, and in time will flourish thanks to the very digital revolution that is now ravaging them. The future is bright. But the present is apocalyptic. Any hope for a seamless transition -- or any transition at all -- from mass media and marketing to micro media and marketing are absurd.

The sky is falling, the frog in the pot has come to a boil and, oh yeah, we are, most of us, exquisitely, irretrievably fucked.

Advertising is infamous for its incessant evolution. Like Garfield, I suppose, my gloom has turned into sheer curiosity: what the hell is going to come out of this mess?

professional what?

There's something odd about this economic downturn - but I couldn't quite put my finger on it until I read this Wall Street Journal article.

In it, Burson-Marsteller CEO Mark Penn points out that the 64% of Americans who identify themselves as 'professionals' are hit harder than those employed in, say, the fast-food industry.

Bottom line: the stimulus package will create jobs, but not relevant ones for professionals who perhaps need it the most. Penn said it best:

We are totally unprepared for this new phenomenon. We have safety nets for the chronically unemployed, for the fast-food workers let go (oddly they may be the only ones keeping their jobs in this recession), and for the manufacturing plants that have been shuttered. The stimulus will create construction jobs galore. But we have nothing for the tens of thousands of displaced advertising creatives and newspaper writers and editors that are among the newly unemployed. They can't build roads -- all they learned how to do was to write ads and draft editorials.

To reach their target audience, great creatives use ideas to build a bridge.

If push comes to shove, will they trade thinking caps for hard hats?

moma goes to brooklyn

Photo courtesy of happycorp

New York's Museum of Modern Art has taken over the Atlantic Avenue/Pacific Street station in Brooklyn - by replacing ad space with reproductions of works from its permanent collection.

I'm all for exposing art to the masses, a la Transport for London's Platform for Art campaign. What's even cooler is the integration and thought process that went into such a well-rounded undertaking.

According to the Creativity article...

• Street teams handed out brochures and maps of the exhibit
• On the campaign website, visitors can download an audio tour for more info about 10 of the 58 pieces on display
• Calling a posted 1-800 number gives users additional information about the project and connects them with the membership department
  
• Typing in a three-digit code plays an audio track with artwork information
• Museum educators also offered tours of the subway exhibit

The exhibit, in conjunction with thehappycorp, runs through March 15th. If you're in NYC, be sure to check it out!

grammys portraits update

I e-mailed Rob Schwartz, Executive Creative Director of Chiat\Day's Grammys campaign (see my earlier post) and have great news. Here's his response:

Thanks for your interest. You are not alone. Lots of people keep asking. We are in the process of making posters happen. Hopefully they will be made available on the Grammys website soon.

Ask and ye shall receive!

portraits of inspiration

I haven't seen something this cool in a while: to promote this year's Grammys (on February 8th) TBWA\Chiat\Day has created portraits of artists like Lil Wayne, Rihanna and Thom Yorke entirely out of song titles that have inspired them along the way.

I wish I could share the portraits within this post because they are incredible, but unfortunately I'll just have to implore you to visit Creativity and to click on each artist's name above. Make sure you zoom in to get the full effect.

I am thisclose to e-mailing Chiat\Day to see if I can get my hands on a poster (or even just a print) version of the ad of Thom Yorke.

This is why I love advertising.

design in the future

Photo from ReForm School / Home Ec

Advertising Age's Lenore Skenazy posted an article today featuring a chat with futurist Richard Watson and his predicted trends that will affect marketing. I was elated to see Watson's second insight: physical design will become "infinitely more important."

Why? Well...

First: It's hard to get anyone's attention with an ad, so the product has to do the attention grabbing. Another reason for the ascendancy of product design: the aging population. If seniors can't open it, hold it, press it or use it, your product will miss a huge market.

One small step for marketing, one giant leap for designers everywhere.

a sign of the times

In response to the unstable economy, automaker Hyundai launched its unusual "Assurance Program" with ads from San Francisco-based Goodby, Silverstein & Partners yesterday.

It's simple: if you buy or lease a new Hyundai and within the next year lose your income due to a job loss, you can return your car for free. Sans penalty.

The tagline: certainty in uncertain times.

I like the idea. Or, at least, I'm trying to like it. It's a great gesture, one along the lines of when the automaker became the first in the U.S. to offer a 10-year/100,000-mile warranty in 1998.

But it feels like the buyer should be knocking on wood before signing on the dotted line. After all, it's hard to be enthusiastic about the prospect of losing your job. You know things are bad when the elephant in the room is not only addressed but also invited to carve the turkey and stay for dinner.

Kudos to Hyundai for making such a bold move. I'm curious, though, how their program will play out with consumers over the next year.

smells like...meat?

Burger King has been making headlines again, this time for the release of its signature body spray, Flame by BK.

Sold for $3.99 exclusively at Ricky's in NYC, Flame is described as "the scent of seduction, with a hint of flame-broiled meat." The sure-t0-be pop culture phenomenon sold out almost immediately.

At first I was kind of turned off. It evoked the classic caveman image of "Me. Eat. Meat." with lots of gesticulating and chest-thumping. But, in true Crispin Porter+Bogusky fashion, there's a method to this madness. I'm not part of the target audience, so it doesn't matter whether I like it or not. Beef-eatin', heat-packin' manly-men probably love this idea. If anything, it makes one hell of a gag gift.

Those who aren't a part of BK's target market are most likely, at the very least, disgusted. So disgusted that they'll channel their outrage into attention-grabbing headlines. Google "bk flame" and you'll find over one million hits. This clearly isn't Crispin's first time around the block. Flame by BK has (surprise, surprise!) even become pervasive enough to be parodied by PETA.

What's more, Flame by BK could make a second appearance come Valentine's Day. Cupid's arrows may prove no match for that intoxicating aroma of flame-broiled beef.

Still not sated? Check out this clip from The Today Show...