There’s an interesting piece on the Profero site on how companies that have chosen to take digital into their hearts could thrive in the recession:

Screens are everywhere—in bars, taxis, movie theaters, living rooms, city streets, in your hand, in front of you right now—and it’s making media increasingly fragmented. Yesterday we talked about how the ad business is being affected by this proliferation of media channels. “We have a story we want to tell, and we use different media channels and different touch points to tell it. We have to rely on the consumer to pull the story together,” said Robert Rasmussen.
However, the mark of a good campaign is not just narrative cohesion between these channels, but truly connecting them in an [...]

Eschewing the prevailing theory in advertising that one should never mention your competitor’s product, many companies are taking a page out of the political campaign season and going with attack ads or in the parlance of the industry, “comparative advertising” that do just that.  The trend towards negative marketing is being attributed to the downturn in the economy, forcing businesses to compete for a smaller pool of consumer dollars.
Although a dangerous proposition with plenty of potential to backfire, agencies tasked with creating these campaigns have found injecting humor to be the best method of ensuring success.  Additionally, the charges being [...]

A visually stunning new advert from Nike has come to our attention.  The ad was created by Darbotz, an Indonesian artist best known for his monochromatic and intricate style.  Though it may not come across in the video, it’s a promotion for a new version of the classic Air Force Ones.  The video is supposed to reflect the evolution of the brand and give a taste of the reinterpretation and remixing in the Sportswear division.  It was animated by Randy Rais with music by Arianjie.  Here’s the video:

[via Limité Magazine]

Taking a page from their customer friendly food service model, Burger King recently took “Have It Your Way” into the realms of D.I.Y. fashion.  A collaboration between 5 designers and artists tasked with reinterpreting elements of Burger King’s icons and logos culminated at an event held in Chicago on October 24th.  The gathering invited participants to take part in the studio creation process by silk-screening the final designs onto their own clothing in any combination they chose.  Essentially, a clever form of marketing that allowed Burger King to subvert their own image, while at the same time maintaining recognizable aspects [...]

MySpace and Viacom’s MTV Networks announced a deal that will partner them with Auditude, a technology firm that has developed a means of identifying whether uploaded video clips belong to a particular TV Network by recognizing unique electronic signatures.  Auditude approached these two companies with this technology, marketing it as a means of incorporating advertising.  Essentially, any content appearing on MySpace belonging to MTV Networks will be tagged, allowing either business the option of inserting ads.
This represents a significant change in attitude for both companies.  In the past, MySpace TV, the second largest video site behind YouTube, might have blocked [...]

Landing a job at a creative company itself requires some out-of-box thinking, but there’s no need to make things too complicated for yourself either.  Once you’ve identified your skills and the type of direction you’d like to head in, coming up with a thoughtful marketing plan for yourself says a lot to potential employers about the type of imagination that you’d bring to their firm.
Iain Tait offers 7 things to consider when seeking the next step in your career:

Get yourself a portfolio
Spend a bit of time making your portfolio nice / neat / test it / proof it
Be clear [...]

As pop-culture and celebrity gossip blogs continue to see increased traffic, particularly with the youth demographic, advertisers’ views on what counts as acceptable have started to change.  Given the uneasy economic climate and tightening budgets, it’s become increasingly important for mainstream brands to be mindful of where their ad dollars are going.  As a result, following the crowds, even if that means entering non-traditional venues on the web with less respectable material, makes a good deal of sense.  Despite the inherent logic of this move, some in the media still question whether this issue has more to do with negligent [...]

Japanese design company Muji wants to be clear with the latest message on their website: they are “not a brand.”  They simply develop “products with a view towards global consumption of the future.”  Curious.
On one hand, their vision is to be commended for offering an intelligent response to unchecked consumerism, where fads and cheaply manufactured goods are too often easily discarded when they go out of style or break.  To combat this trend, “MUJI aims to raise the standard of ‘enough’ to the greatest extent possible.” They plan on accomplishing this by creating universal products made with dependable materials and [...]

Famous frenemies WPP and Google are joining forces to the tune of $4.6 million dollars to fund a joint research project that establishes conclusively the ways online marketing impacts consumer behavior. Despite an often cited statistic that people spend 30 percent of their time online, current studies don’t show this activity translating into an equivalent amount of total spending on the web.  This inquiry will examine the ways offline and online interact and, one suspects, search for creative methods to bridge this gap.
Considering the fact that these two giants rely so heavily on the online space for generating their revenues, [...]

Internet culture whiz Clay Shirky gave some interesting insights into the biggest mistake of corporate branding. Shirky argues that advertising seek to perfect brands, and in doing so, fail to reach and speak to average day people. When a brand markets a perfect image, people are less inclined to interact with the product, because it doesn’t reflect their imperfect lifestyle. Brands that use a flawed, or ‘human’ marketing campaign reinforce and locate themselves within people’s lifestyles. The most promising direction now for brands, Shirky argues, is to use a raw and unfinished front, making their image far [...]

  
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The way we influence and interact through the internet is constantly changing. We’ve all witnessed how user generated content has brought new creative potential to consumers and opened up the doors of online collaboration. But while UGC’s impact on marketing and the way youth consume and create web content is significant, some believe it still has a long way to go. Screenplay’s Strategic Director Helge Tennø offers a compelling argument on the limitations of the current means for online collaboration, deeming them too rigid and presenting “artificial barriers” [...]

Gawker and Gothamist report that New York City is putting their subway advertising program into overdrive. First off are plans to wrap entire subway cars with ads (as graffiti artists did in the early days of the art form). The next public transport-ad scheme involves placing a series of ads inside subway tunnels that will create a rough animation as the car passes by. Also up for grabs are turnstile arms and pretty much any available surface.
Although you would hope that all this surplus cash would mean a reduction in fare (it will cost advertisers $95k a month to do [...]

LiveRail recently revealed their advertising platform for the iPhone, giving developers the option of adding short commercials to their applications, which would play whenever their app is launched.

The dairy lobby has always been a powerful force in America, but recently they saw their classic ad campaigns overtaken by cartoon characters that children more readily relate to.  These new school cultural icons easily sway children in purchasing choices.  The proliferation of SpongeBob snacks or Spiderman cereals drove Big Milk to form a modern marketing group known as “Milk Media.”  In the venture’s first deal, school milk consumption increased 34% after the implementation of Disney’s Doug into the milk campaign.  While milk has enemies, they certainly have fans in the federal government who wish to promote the milk alternative [...]