Web 2.0 was purportedly given its name by Tim O’Reilly in 2004 to describe a more collaborative, interoperable and user-centered web. Today, we are somewhere in the midst of the social revolution. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are dominating the social landscape, while thousands of new technologies are popping up around the world at an astounding rate. So what’s next? And, what are the implications for marketers?
The Cruelest Cuts of All
I’m not going to lie—shooting TV commercials is fun. You’ve got twenty film crew people running around with lights and bounce boards and mikes, the director poring over storyboards, agency creative directors schmoozing nervous clients, make-up artists, and finally, art directors and copywriters—whose job is essentially done by the time shooting actually starts—grazing shamelessly at the buffet table.
Then of course, there’s the talent. Usually that means local professional actors. But sometimes—like in our recent spot for Lemonhead candy—it involves celebrities. In this case, Chicago Blackhawk stars Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane. On home ice, at the United Center.
Posted in Advertising and Communications, Branding, Client Industries, Creative, Food & Beverage
Tagged Blackhawks, Kane, Lemonhead, Toews
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Remaking European Films. Consistently bad idea?
A few weeks ago I was having dinner with long-time clients and friends in Paris when the subject of our conversation wandered onto films we had seen recently. A few days before I had seen “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” aka “Män som hatar kvinnor” and I thought it was excellent. I hadn’t read the book and will save comparisons vs. books for another blog entry. What I did like was the very patient approach to building a story around rich characters, very much like a novel. Those characters are real, they look real, they act real. They are believable. The film somewhat reminded me of La Femme Nikita for its intense, brutal action sequences combined with an actual story.
Posted in Creative, Digital, Discovery, Trends & Culture
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What’s in a name?
Some of you may be wondering how Norton Agency got its name. It’s kind of an odd story. Way back in 1987, the agency was founded as Norton Rubble & Mertz, after some of the most famous “second bananas” in television history. That’s the way we thought of ourselves — supporting actors to the real stars of the show — our clients’ business.
Posted in Advertising and Communications, Creative, People
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Enabling sales without PowerPoint
Sunday’s New York Times has an interesting article about visualizing information and the power of the visual presentation of data. We’ve been working a lot on this topic with our clients, implementing digital tools, like PitchBuilder, to change the communications dynamic in a sales call from the PowerPoint data dump to an interactive dialogue.
The bad news, I can’t find a parking space
The good news, I can’t find a parking place. I fly a lot. Almost every week for the last twenty years and have found that you can learn a lot about how the economy is doing from airport parking lots. Sometimes they’re full. And sometimes they’re empty.
Why are we here?
Somebody once said, “Advertising is a place where people who don’t know what they want to do, do.” Actually, nobody ever said that, but they should have. Because it’s true.
Some of us were inspired by advertising at an early age, perhaps by a Pepsi print campaign or a catchy cigarette jingle (“Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should…”). Some of us chose advertising because we had zero aptitude for, let’s say, open heart surgery. But whatever the reasons are, we are universally happy we’re not someplace else.
