Writing The Iceberg: Advertising And Content Marketing Depth

I was a junior in college when I took my first formal copywriting class. It was taught by the creative director at what was then one of the three largest advertising agencies in Nevada. We never hit it off. We never hit it off because he always presented himself as cool and aloof, even showing us the couch where he would nap away the afternoon at the advertising agency where he worked. The nap idea was a remnant of...

Content Marketing Is Changing Advertising, Not Killing It

Ten years ago, ClickZ published an article that claimed advertising is dying. It's been a common theme there for the better part of a decade. The most recent claim was made just a few days ago. ClickZ isn't alone. Fortune recently ran an article that cited the exponential growth of ad blocking and how some companies are trying to find workarounds that mitigate the impact (if you can imagine). Others are focused on...

The Most Powerful Brands Have Always Been Agile

Marketing and communication has a way of being reinvented over and over again, with each new and unapologetic rendition billed as a break from a seemingly blind and rigid tradition. Except they're nothing of the sort. Despite keeping things feeling fresh, most reinvention is historical revisitation. Take some of the recent discussion revolving under brands, with the key concept being that a brand must be agile, adaptable,...

What's All The Beef About The Naked Burger Ad?

With GoDaddy pulling its "Puppy Mill" ad, all eyes are now on Charlotte McKinney for Carl's Jr. to steal the top spot for most controversial Super Bowl advertisement this year. The advertisement, which will only run on the West Coast, features the top model bounding  through a farmer's market. What makes the advertisement "controversial" is that McKinney appears to be naked in the majority of the spot, thanks...

Five Qualities That Set Successful Commercial Writers Apart

Not everything poured into the content marketing boom has been beneficial for professional writers. While the boom created increased demand, it was also responsible for the influx of amateur writers and marginally proficient executives (assigned writing duties) who inadvertently cheapened the craft while simultaneously flooding the market with barely legible content. This isn't a criticism or complaint....

Did Millennials Change Advertising Or Just Roll It Back?

By some estimates, millennials now include about 74.3 million people in the U.S., which accounts for almost 25 percent of the population. They have between $125 and $200 million in purchasing power. Advertisers are just now beginning to understand that millennials prefer friendly and funny brands over serious and stodgy. Two in three like smart and witty humor and about 72 percent consider being smart as one...

When Everything Is Direct Response, Nothing Is Worth Measuring

Direct response has always been popular among marketers. The allure of it is simple and straightforward. An organization sends out, let's say, 1,000 direct mail letters with an offer and 10 percent of those who receive the offer respond. That is your response rate. That is your return on investment. I intentionally used the direct mail letter as an example because direct response used to be associated with mail. The...

Does Social Media Crap Deserve Its Defenders?

It didn't take long at all. Within 15 minutes after the Ad Contrarian posted Why Your Social Strategy Sucks, there was a buzz of affirmation and then dissention. Some people felt he hit the nail on the head. Others thought he was unfair, cynical, and very discouraging. "At least people try," they said. His contention was — much like television commercials, movies, books, songs, and paintings — about 93 percent...

Separate Advertising And Pubic Relations At Your Own Peril

Every time someone attempts to divide advertising and public relations into two distant camps, it makes my skin crawl. They always make it sound like both fields have to be at odds with each other, with cliché conversation starters like advertising is paid and public relations is pray. There doesn't have to be such a stark division. No one has to choose one over the other. After all, while it might be true that advertising...

Five Popular Content Writing Tips That Are Dead Wrong

With the proliferation of technology, some people assume that writing proficiency is increasing and not diminishing. This isn't the case. One recent OECD study shows that despite having higher than average educational attainment, adults in the United States are below average in basic literacy. How low? The United States ranked 16th out of 23 countries in literacy proficiency, with one in six adults scoring below...

Anybody Can Sell Lipstick. Few People Can Sell Hope.

If Charles Revson were alive today, I'm not convinced that the current state of cosmetic content marketing would impress him. Almost everyone in the industry is trying to sell makeup with it. He might even find it ironic. Before he revolutionized the cosmetics industry starting in 1932, everyone counted the same measurements that social media experts count today — impressions, shares, leads, and sales. He never...

Will The Next America Express A Culture Shift?

There are two interesting demographic anomalies being played out in the United States right now. And the reason they are interesting is that they aren't anomalies. They could be called corrections. The first demographic transformation is that the Baby Boomer bubble will be largely played out by 2060. In its place will be a rectangle, with each age demographic being almost equally represented. The second transformation...

Why Did Some Super Bowl Ads Swim While Others Sank?

USA Today released the results of its Ad Meter, an industry tool designed to capture public opinion surrounding Super Bowl ads. Nowadays, the popularity measurement is cited most often as an indicator of which advertisements won and which lost on their $4 million bid for attention. What's missing from previous years is a foil that some serious marketers once appreciated. For a few years, HCD Research attempted to...

Teaching People To Write Requires A Contradictory Approach.

"I have known writers who paid no damned attention whatever to the rules of grammar and rhetoric and somehow made the language behave for them." — Red Smith  Red Smith was one of the finest sportswriters in history. Not only did he receive the J.G. Taylor Spink Award from the Baseball Writers Association Of America, but he was also the first sportswriter to win the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Even...

Digital Advertising Will Become An Added-Value Function

If you want to succeed in advertising and marketing, the first best practice to learn is how to stop following leaders and learn to leap frog over them. Right. Innovation is the fundamental ingredient to market disruption, especially for marketers who track industry trends. Their play books look different. Right now, what some of these marketers and advertisers are telling me is that added-value content will always...