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Industry Races to Rev Up Revenue

Along with cost cutting, ad agencies are gearing up on the revenue front, hoping to wrest more project fees from new or existing clients. Landing projects, or limited assignments beyond what an ad firm has been contracted to do, not only offers a short-term boost, it can a give a firm the inside track to win more of a client's account.

Wall Street Journal

Walls of Separation

Many companies, brands and organizations are inadvertently building walls between themselves and their customers. It's unintentional, happened over time—but ultimately in this age of empowerment, customers feel more connected to each other than they do to your business or brand. Maybe it's always been this way—but it seems to me that it's getting worse, not better.

Logic + Emotion

20 Corporate Brand Logo Evolutions

Have you ever wonder how the first Apple logo looks in 30 years back? Did you know Volkswagen was Hitler’s idea? Or how the IBM logo changes over the time? Or where the Mercedes-Benz Brand And The Three-Pointed Star logo came from?

Instant Shift

What Is the Best Book Ever Written on Marketing or Media?

Last week one of our reporters asked me what books she should read on media and marketing. My response: "Where the Suckers Moon," by Randy Rothenberg. His account of Wieden & Kennedy's dysfunctional relationship with Subaru is the best behind-the-scenes report on the ad business that's ever been written.*

Ad Age

Pay recycling costs, stores told

"If retailers create unnecessary rubbish, they should help taxpayers by paying for it to be recycled."

BBC

'Breathtaking' Is One Word for Purported Arnell Pepsi Doc

Over the past 24 hours, adland has been abuzz about "Breathtaking," a 27-page document purported to be the thinking behind Arnell Group's recent revamping of Pepsi-Cola's logo. Littered as it is with marketing jargon, images of yin-yangs, mobius strips and Da Vinci's Vitruvian man, you'll maybe wonder whether Michael Phelps wasn't the only one hitting that bong.

Ad Age

Pepsi Gravitational Field

Failure

Honda.com

Thanks Nathan.

P&G feeling the squeeze

ut even P&G is feeling the squeeze during this recession. Spooked by rising unemployment, a bear market and crisis in the financial industry, consumers are pulling back even on necessities, buying less and using up what they already have in the house before buying more.

Cincinnati Enquirer

The 25th Anniversary Of Apple's "1984"

CNBC

Trend Briefing: Generation G

"Captures the growing importance of 'generosity' as a leading societal and business mindset. As consumers are disgusted with greed and its current dire consequences for the economy—and while that same upheaval has them longing more than ever for institutions that care—the need for more generosity beautifully coincides with the ongoing (and pre-recession) emergence of an online-fueled culture of individuals who share, give, engage, create and collaborate in large numbers.

In fact, for many, sharing a passion and receiving recognition have replaced 'taking' as the new status symbol. Businesses should follow this societal/behavioral shift, however much it may oppose their decades-old devotion to me, myself and I.”

trendwatching.com

Tap Dance

But if Flavor Options suggests that progress on the front lines in the marketplace is incremental, it also offers proof of just how resistant the marketplace can be to limits. At a certain point, you would think, the race to purity gets won; eventually, you cannot get purer than pure. And yet, just as you can never actually drive to the horizon, the end point of “new and improved” simply does not exist. That’s why the idea of selling filters that add something to water, even as they subtract something else, isn’t actually surprising at all — it’s pretty much inevitable.

New York Times

Work Ethic 2.0: Attention Control

It's time we upgraded our work ethic for the age we're living in, not our grandparents' age. Hard work is still a virtue, but now takes a distant second place to the new determinant of success or failure in the age of Internet distractions: Control of attention.

InternetNews

Disney Focuses on Boys

Walt Disney Co. is making a push to crack a market that few media companies have been able to conquer -- boys aged 6-14.

Next month, the company will launch a boy-focused entertainment brand called Disney XD, consisting of a new cable television channel, a comprehensive Web site with games, music, videos and social networking.

Wall Street Journal