Happy Birthday!!

The previous post is quite fitting, considering today is my compadre's birthday. (She brought Homemade Tiramisu and Caramel Puff Corn to celebrate!)

Happy birthday Christine! Hope you have a great day.

Orchid Mist

Pantone, the gods of color in the design world, have a cute collaborative site where you can find your colorstrology. As an Orchid Mist (Pantone 17-3612), I am determined, energetic and fun loving. Not too bad.

Congrats

To one of our most dedicated readers, a well-deserved promotion. Congrats!

Misrepresentative Lipitor Ads Pulled

About a month ago I blogged about Dr. Robert Jarvik's misrepresentation in the Lipitor commercials. Today, I was surprised and happy to read that Pfizer has pulled the spots after a year or so of controversy. Better late than never.

Truth in Advertising #3

Work from Friday does not disappear from your desk. Come Monday, it's still there waiting for you.

The Agency's Best Friends

There are a lot of perks from working at a fun agency, but one of my favorites is our Friday "Dog Day". Every Friday employees can bring their dogs with them to the office where they get spoiled rotten with treats and attention. The dogs love it, the employees love it and it's all around good fun. Take a peek!

New Lexus Ad: Somet ing to Write ome About?

Here's an interesting article from Slate about a new campaign from Lexus. Apparently Lexus has a line of hybrids (who knew?) that they're now trying to reinvent. I hadn't seen this spot. I like it (maybe because I love Wheel of Fortune), but I agree with many of the author's points. I'm interested to see how they'll extend the campaign.

Have a look at the spot yourself:

Lucky Lucky Clover

Because spring can't come soon enough, Christine is attempting to grow some clovers (thanks Target $1 bin)! Wish her luck!

Truth in Advertising #86

There are never enough chairs at a staff meeting.

A(n Unwelcome) Blast from the Past

Remember that commercial for HeadOn, the topical headache product you "apply directly to your forehead"? Of course you do. It was a TV sensation of sorts, an annoying, low budget, inescapable spot interrupting Wheel of Fortune with a penetrating message that created the sort of throbbing pain the product itself was intended to relieve. No wonder we were all running to the store shelves for our own bottle.

Immediately spoof-able, it was only a matter of time before a commercial parody ended up as a paid advertisement on cable TV. Here's the ad I saw last weekend.

Award Shows

There's no doubt about it. Creatives love award shows. Not only do they partially validate how you slaved over that headline or layout, and pushed the client to agree with your color scheme, but they provide a great opportunity to get a bunch of ad people together and have fun, win or lose (although winning is always preferred). Well, I'm off to one such event tonight. Wish us luck!

My Favorite Terrible Commercials

Scores of bad commercials squeeze their way into our television shows every day and while most of them are ignored as much as possible, there are a few you simply can't avoid. A classic example is the Charmin Whipple campaign, but there's a store in St. Louis that takes the modern day cake for terrible, but memorable commercials. Anyone who's spent any time in the city is sure to recognize them and their infamous tag.

Truth in Advertising #6

The color printer always breaks down at the worst possible time.

Attention Coworkers:

'Snow' Rest for the Weary

We're lucky to work for an advertising agency that understands when employees have to stay home on days like today when the weather makes it too dangerous for some of us to travel. The Midwest is in the middle of a huge snowstorm, but thanks to technology, we're able to check email from home and stay connected to our work and clients.

Speaking of technology, Adweek's last online poll of 2007 asked respondents this question: What was the biggest media/marketing story of 2007? I'm surprised that only 29 percent of respondents voted for Facebook and the rise of social networks. Another 27 percent answered the launch of the iPhone.

I would think Facebook should have the majority of the opinion. And I'm wondering if every move Steve Jobs makes is going to be hailed as the greatest thing since sliced bread.

In case you're wondering, other responses to the poll were things like the Hollywood writers' strike at 10 percent and commercials as content, 4 percent.

Truth in Advertising #18

Whenever Creatives travel on business, there's always inclement weather.

(How come it's not that way for Account Executives? Humbug.)

A Reason to Celebrate (with food)

Any holiday is an excuse to celebrate. Especially with food. Why not fatten up a bit on Fat Tuesday?
Find the Fudgy Mocha-Toffee Brownie Recipe here.

Super Ads

It's Monday after the Super Bowl, so you know what everyone's talking about. They're not talking about the Giants' thrilling upset. Or the lovely lavendar tie Joe Buck was wearing. They're talking about the ads, of course. The last figure I saw was something like $2.7 million for a 30-second spot during the Big Game. Yikes.

It seems like everyone's intrigued by the new ads that debut during the Super Bowl. Why is that? Every other day of the year, advertising annoys and disrupts and intrudes the average layman. For some reason though, commercial breaks during the Super Bowl are just as interesting--if not more so--than the game itself.

I'm not going to analyze every single ad from last night, but I would like to highlight my favorites. I invite you to weigh in with your opinions, too.



The Tide talking stain was my favorite of the night. They have a pretty cool Web site where they offer a talking stain ringtone and invite people to spoof their spot.

I liked the FedEx carrier pigeons as well:



I didn't like the dancing lizards. Or the talking baby. Bor-ring. And was it just me, or were there a lot more movie trailer commercials than usual?

Typography Rap

Back in college, I had this fantastic typography professor who also taught the History of Graphic Design to all junior Vis Comm majors. To help us keep our historical typographers straight he created a typography rap and performed a verse of it at the end of each history class for the first part of the semester. Memorizing it came in pretty handy on the midterm. A conversation at work recently reminded me of it and I managed to find a hand written copy of in my old notebook. I'm sorry to say that I don't have the mp3 version one of my classmates helped him record our senior year, but here's the written script. Any designer will get a kick out of it!

Typography Rap

In 1455 and this ain’t no hype
Gutenberg was gettin’ jiggy with movable type

He was printing in Germany in a city called Mainz,
And his first printed Bible had 42 lines

Two Germans went to Rome ‘cuz the food was better
And printed their books in the Subiaco letter

Jenson was a Frenchman, but in Venice he was cool
His type was called Venetian and will always rule

Aldus and Griffo worked in Venice for awhile
And the type they designed we call Old Style

Aldus was wild, he was phat he was free
With Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

The Frenchman cut punches of which he was fond
And cast the family we call Garamond

Baskerville was a man with a mission
He began the typographic transition

Bodoni was no phony, he was keepin’ it real
He made modern the ideas of John Baskerville

Serifs, who needs ‘em, we all got plans
Strip ‘em all away and we’ll call the type sans

A mnemonic device for your memory,
So you can download typography