The Client

A brilliant portrayal of client-designer relationships in real life situations. Yo ho, yo ho a designer's life is not for me. This is why I'll be sticking to the accounts side, so I can tell them who's boss!



For more hilarious accounts of clients behaving badly, check out http://clientsfromhell.tumblr.com/

Twitter Legitimized

It's been an exciting year to watch advertising tactics transition from 360 degree marketing towards heavy social media influenced campaigns. As an early fan-girl of Twitter, I loved watching the mainstream catch up. Early Nielsen reports showed that a negligent number of college students used Twitter. Now it's become the ultimate buzzword, with phenomenons like #Mileycomeback trending topics lasting for days and brands like Zappos.com reaching 1.5 million followers.

Now my dream agency, Razorfish, has released their 2009 FEED report that has got the internet all a twitter, pardon the pun. The face of the report, Garrick Schmitt, authored this Advertising Age article that peaks at the future of consumer experiences with a brand. I particularly enjoy how Red Bull has created an entire lifestyle, it seems, to suit their ideal consumer. Creating an experience campaign that focuses on social media outlets, with supportive traditional media, seems to be the innovative concept of the near future.

Every bird should get to fly

For anyone who doesn't live in Washington State, you should take a moment to watch this commercial. Both spiritual and uplifting, this ad for WA State Lottery created by Publicis in the West (one of the few larger agencies still pumping out great work) won the ADDY Award for 2009 Best in Show. Enjoy :)

Calling all Mad Ave worshippers!

Being that I'm majoring in advertising and have a love of fashion, its expected that I am a complete die-hard fan of Mad Men, the AMC drama about advertising agencies in the late 1950's. The name "Mad Men" comes from the start-up of advertising, real advertising, on Madison Avenue when men were the only ones who ran the biz. Those who have seen the show know what the women are often the ones pulling the strings.

So you can imagine my excitement when I saw an opportunity to appear on the show as a walk-on extra by entering a picture of your favorite 50's inspired outfit, a la Joan or Peggy. The show teamed up with Banana Republic to hype the premiere of Season 3, August 16th at 10 pm. All you have to do is go to BR and pick up a Mad Men-inspired style guide, and enter the code on their website along with your best outfit. Long live classic fashion!

Harmony Between Man and Machine

Prius has done it again. I am blown away every time I watch the new Prius commercials. They manage to be emotionally moving and inspiring at the same time. This clip shows the making of one spot including the vision behind it and logistics of using people to make the world surrounding the Prius. Its a little long, but starting at 4:10 you can watch the clip of "Harmony". Not only will they catch the attention of all those eco-friendly people out there, but hopefully the rest of the world through the beautiful imagery.

Welcome to My Closet

This will always be one of my favorite commercials due to the comedic play on gender differences and fantasies we all have. I'm still laughing after the 100th play. If you're not already familiar with this wonderful Heineken commercial, enjoy.

You Can't Win 'em All

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/tnt-cancels-trust-me/

I have to devote one post to one of my growing favorite shows that I recently found out was canceled. Trust Me depicted life in a fictional advertising agency RGM that boasts clients including Dove Hair Care, Bertolli, and Buick. Product placement was the obvious source of funding for the show, which would feature one product as a client for an entire episode. In this sense, the show was doomed from the start. The only people that could relate to the show were people in advertising because not many people can believe that advertising is stressful and harmful to your personal life. Since advertising is depicted as a glamorous career, audiences had a hard time connecting with the characters. Also, many people have a chip on their shoulder when they think about advertisers due to beliefs of subliminal messages and false advertising. The audience who watched the show could never relate to the problems of the people who lie to them everyday. The last few episodes of Trust Me gained 1.4 million viewers, which was too low of a number for TNT to cope with. Sadly, Trust Me got the axe along with many other creatively successful shows.