Have a look see:
Filed under: Uncategorized
December 12, 2009 • 3:05 am 0
The average American consumes 34 gigs of who-knows-what daily.
I take special interest in this story because it involves my undergrad school, UC San Diego, and because I think someone in advertising will eventually tweet about it. Accompanying the tweet is likely a line about “breaking through the clutter.”
Background
I’ll quote the original article to save us both the pain of a summary.
A report published Wednesday by the University of California, San Diego, calculates that American households collectively consumed 3.6 zettabytes of information in 2008..FULL NYT ARTICLE HERE
What kind of information?
The study measures bytes and words but does not differentiate between which bytes and which words. It converts everything to bytes and aggregates them to arrive at 34 gigs of information. But what kind of information? Under its measurement, “I have a dream” and “I can haz cheezeburger?” are counted as equal information. I think this report, much like the information it measures, is superficial and I don’t think we can draw any conclusions from it yet.
At 66 kilobytes, this cartoon is smaller than my blog post. Yet it contains more information about what I think of the study. This discrepancy is why I think bytes are poor measures of information.
Tuan is a Copywriting Grad Student at the Academy of Art School of Advertising, follow @copytuan
Filed under: Arts & Culture, Ideas, Industry news
December 10, 2009 • 6:50 pm 0
Brand Nation
Here’s a brand to consider: the entire country of China. It’s a brand that’s been struggling with image problems for decades, and has a target demographic that consists of just about everyone in the world. In this instance, the problem at hand is the fact that people only see China as a manufacturer of cheap goods, not ideas. Does advertising work when re-branding an entire nation? For outside countries to see China differently, China must actively change before our eyes. Real change; socially, economically, diplomatically, all of the above. And this is all in and itself advertising.
A good example of this is the 2008 Beijing Olympics. From the construction of the sporting facilities up to the dazzling opening ceremony, China seized the opportunity to position itself as a global force to be reckoned with. Sure, being in the spotlight brought out a lot of demons, namely China’s human rights issues, but sometimes the bad comes with the good. The Beijing Olympics was a product, PR event, marketing, and TV spot all rolled into one. It was part of a campaign to slowly re-brand an entire nation.
Yet, in the realm of world brands, another country is dealing with image problems: the United States of America. Once the team captain of the entire world, America has issues with its uncertain economy, foreign policy, among other hot topics. The Obama administration is trying to restore faith in a name that’s been tarnished by the previous administration. It’s a huge branding problem that could be remedied with this unique selling proposition: American ingenuity. Innovation has always put American products at the top of their respectable markets. In this ailing economy, we must believe that this is a time for big ideas. Unfortunately, we don’t. But let’s stay positive, and change this brand one innovation at a time.
Filed under: Uncategorized
December 8, 2009 • 1:23 pm 0
Agencies Abroad
Good day.
I wanted to share a video that a friend of mine sent to me after a conversation we had about the differences between European and American advertisements. The video below is for the American Company Wrangler and was made by the French firm Fred & Farid. They believe in ads as cultural endeavors. I read an article by the founders Frédéric Raillard & Farid Mokart, click here to read at your leisure:
While reading, I was intrigued by how balanced their perspective was on the differences between advertising in the world of the United States and that of, as they like to call it, the United States of Europe. America’s goal they say is “to write great new classical ads.” Whereas the United States of Europe seeks “to find great new genres of ads, a brand posture never explored before.” View the ad and see if you can identify the natural European smoothness that I felt when I viewed it.
Title: Stop thinking
Agency : FRED & FARID, PARIS
Brand: Wrangler Director: Yannis Rachid
Chief Creative Officer: Fred/Farid
Executive Creative Director: Fred/Farid
In Europe, ad land is playful and its boundaries are open whereas America’s rule-following background halts it from reaching its true creative Mecca. However, both have great strengths and achievements on their resume. If you mixed the two, you would have the perfect blend of
American dedication and European vigor thus creating new planets of possibilities. Why not shake hands on it. Put it there Europe.
Yvannia is a Senior Student Planner at the Academy of Art School of Advertising. Follow Fun @inFiveWords
Filed under: Advertising & Branding, Arts & Culture
December 5, 2009 • 1:43 pm 0
Gov Goes Viral
November 27, 2009 • 2:59 pm 0
Weekly exercise for copywriters.
Practice writing headlines that play off visuals. We may not get to use this skill much seeing how copywriting is getting the shaft. However, just because you don’t live by the ocean doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn how to swim.
So practice by writing cartoon captions for The New Yorker. Each week the magazine posts a new cartoon and asks its users to submit captions. The winning entries end up in The New Yorker magazine and website. If yours gets published, it’d make a good talking point in an interview (any Creative Director out there would like to confirm this?).
It’s also a nice break from class assignments. Since you’re doing it out of your own initiative, you’ll have more fun and be more creative.
Click here for the latest cartoons.
This week's captionless cartoon.
Good luck!
By the way, I got this idea from Roger Ebert and Dan Pink, though each recommends it for different reasons. Personally, I think it’s great practice for copywriters.
Tuan is a Copywriting Grad Student at the Academy of Art School of Advertising, follow @copytuan
Filed under: Arts & Culture, Competitions, Humor, Ideas, School related , Copywriting
November 24, 2009 • 12:45 am 0
Stand Strong, Newsstands.
Newsstands were once our browser bookmark bars. Shelves were lined with magazines separated by category. Cooking. Fashion. Current Events. Remember those days? As a kid, I would wait by the magazine rack and flip through the likes of Sports Illustrated and Disney Adventures as my mom stood in line at the supermarket. Each turn of the page would reveal something new and exciting. The essence of an issue was presented to us from cover to cover. We didn’t need to click back to the homepage.
Unfortunately, the magazine business is suffering since the Internet has become our new feeder of information. Last year, magazine sales have dropped 6.3% with declining ad revenue as one of the leading causes (USA Today). While magazines have been on a steady decline, newspapers have suffered even more. The question is: does print stand a chance in this age, as the Internet is blowing out the candles for Web 3.0?
As the old saying goes, if you can’t beat em, join em. Case in point: Vanish, the cover story of the latest issue of Wired that follows writer Evan Ratliff as he attempts to leave behind his identity and disappear. The twist is that Wired has asked its readers to find him.
Click to read the story.
What began as a typical news story turned into a full-fledged interactive reader experience. Equal parts journalism, investigation, and social experiment, Vanish breaks the fourth wall by allowing the readers to help write the story.
As Ratliff desperately tries to lose his trail, Wired readers respond to this huge call-to-action. Just like that, the internet community starts foraging Ratliff’s Internet footprint and discussing ways to find him. Thousands of Tweets and Facebook status updates are posted in a matter of days. The Wired inbox gets filled to the brim with leads and questions. Real time private investigators get involved. I take no part in this, but the culmination of this cat-and-mouse game appears in glorious CMYK on glossy pages in the magazine sitting right in front of me.
Because of this story, I have a new appreciation for print. Sure, the same text is available on Wired.com, but what was once a time-stamped story in a periodical now becomes a living, breathing entity unrestricted by 8.5 inches by 11 inches. A story can thrive in the corners of Internet forums, on the Facebook walls of your friends, or at the blink of a camera phone.
For print media to survive, it must re-invent itself and make journalism a dynamic experience for its audience. Things are happening right now. Information travels fast. People respond faster. Publications like Wired, Newsweek, and the NY Times are leading the way. Let’s hope the rest of the pack catches up.
Filed under: Arts & Culture, Nostalgia, Print, Viral
November 22, 2009 • 2:11 am 0
New tool: OmmWriter
One of the many perks of following Gareth Kay on Twitter is finding out about cool stuff like this new word processor.
I’ve been using it for 10 hours, an eternity in digital years. My copy hasn’t improved, but I didn’t stop to check my Facebook every 10 minutes either. It really helps you focus. It’s Mac-only for now, which shouldn’t be a problem in an art school.
Tuan is a Copywriting Grad Student at the Academy of Art School of Advertising, follow @copytuan
Filed under: Copywriting, School related
November 20, 2009 • 1:35 am 1
Ad students should rethink the competition.
Our competition is not with established creatives, not with other ad schools, and not with our classmates.
I think we face the biggest competitions from two places. The first comes from them:
Why would McDonald’s pay an agency, who then pays us, to create advertising if their fans can do it for free and, in most cases, better?
The second biggest challenge comes from brand haters:
7 High Tech Products and Their Cheap-Ass Ingredients (Cracked.com)
How can we compete with such brand bashing? They have the eyes of hundreds of thousands (the article was viewed approx. 900,000 times) and sympathetic communities on their side. And they don’t just write the usual misspelled rant. The above article is more interesting than most ads, and it is one of many. Whether the facts are correct or not, the damage is done and ad creatives may be helpless to fix it.
So here we are. We have fans that threaten our jobs and haters that make our jobs harder.
Well, don’t forget that we are fans of some brands and haters of others. We post stuff we love and tweet about stuff we hate. We already know how to bring positive or negative energy to brands. We just forget sometimes when we sit down to do ads.
If we want to compete against fans and haters, we have to become them, if we’re not already them.
Tuan is a Copywriting Grad Student at the Academy of Art School of Advertising, follow @copytuan
Filed under: Advertising & Branding, Arts & Culture, Ideas, School related
