Old Spice and the Doom of Advertising

“To you marketers, the greatest burden of your generation will be the Old Spice ads.”

This was proclaimed at a lunch and learn some time ago, with some guy I’ve forgotten, but I will remember his words. The brilliant idea propelling sales and reinvigorating the old man brand into a modern essential of the iconic bro culture was a catastrophe because of its success. 

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Monopoly has a Debit Machine?

It wasn’t a dramatic discovery, but a disappointing one. Seeing a rudimentary debit system in Monopoly to assist kids by removing the almost desperately basic math required.

This has dug under my skin as I see more young workers unable to mentally compute basic change when I order a friggin coffee. Take $3.68 (because coffee is stupidly over priced) from $5.00 and what do you get? 

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Dear Febreze - What does Meadows and Rain Smell Like?

What the hell does cranberry and frost smell like? Or vanilla and moonlight? I’m not interested in how an air freshener borrows from Pocahontas to transport me into a whole new state of being. How does a fragrance, or anything else for that matter deliver on the expectation of altering our physical interpretation of reality? Particularly when I need it to remove dog odour, not promise me a voyage through 'blossom and breeze'.

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I Think I Feel More Confident...

Bad advertisements. The failure at charisma and transparency; those faked, or at best, sub-par emotional vulnerabilities that trudges into the TV screen to get you to buy out of fear.

Must be a new beauty commercial! Dove is at it again, playing with one of their recent beauty campaigns using fake patches that are supposed to make you pretty. Media blogs pounced like hungry kittens at how the advertisement portrayed women as dumb, I however want to pull out one particular component of the promo.

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Writing Content for the Web - Basics

When I’ve coached customers on building their own content for websites or blogs, there is a very straight forward approach I take. It works with beginner writers who are just trying for the first time, or experienced product experts who are just getting into web writing.

  • 1 topic per page
  • 3-5 headers per topic
  • 1-2 paragraphs per header
  • ....
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