Monthly Archives: September 2010

Apparently, Most People Vacationed In Farmville This August…

For the first time ever, Facebook took the top spot for total time spent among major sites last month, beating Google and Yahoo.  ComScore reports that collective time amounted to 41.1 billion minutes: a considerable number.  By my always-suspect math, … Continue reading

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What Did Horses Do To Deserve This?

Looking at them idling in a pasture or carrying a policeman at least another shoulder higher than any crowd in the city, one naturally suspects horses must feel pretty good about themselves.  Even draft horses have a nobility, a power, … Continue reading

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Twitter, Pastor Terry Jones & An International Firestorm In Less than 140 Characters

Nothing brings home the raw immediacy of social media as powerfully as the ascendancy of an inconsequential Gainesville, Florida pastor with a congregation of fifty people who hijacked the international dialogue through a series of tweets. Think about that. You … Continue reading

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So Who’s GaGa Now?

I’m not a Lady GaGa fan. In general, I don’t follow royalty and the few times I have heard her music have been quite by accident. And yet, there she was when I flipped on my laptop this morning, in … Continue reading

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Two Facts–Draw Your Own Conclusion

This past week, I came across two separate items that beg for a third. First was yesterday’s research puff piece about a study from York University in Canada about student Facebook habits which concluded with the highly-viral quote that Facebook … Continue reading

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Adding Bursts of Color To Your Creative Diet

Doing something day in and day out changes your POV, altering the way you view your world in subtle ways.  If you make television ads for a living, you inevitably start thinking of stories in thirty second increments. That’s why … Continue reading

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Packaging, Positioning…and Produce.

A few weeks back, a client and I met for breakfast.  As the head of his food company’s advertising production, he touches dozens of brands every week.  Recently, one of his colleagues challenged him to help make a rather ordinary … Continue reading

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Government Ads: Lotteries? Yes. Tourism? Okay. PSA’s? No.

Creating advertising is tough; criticizing it is easy.  And yet sometimes, decency demands you point a finger when the whole damned deal goes horribly, desperately wrong.  In most cases, this results from a well-intended, inexperienced client mistakenly believing that the … Continue reading

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Happy Labor Day

Go on, take the day off. And in your spare time, check out this wonderful Flickr set of stylish WPA posters. d By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Element 79 d Bookmark It Hide Sites

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A Lovely Short Film For a Long Holiday Weekend

If you listen to NPR, you probably have heard of StoryCorps: the independent nonprofit organization whose mission is to record, share, and preserve the stories of ordinary American lives, stories that prove that there really is no such thing as … Continue reading

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