An Ad Giants sponsored adventure.

Copyblogger offers a process for managing testimonials, complete with a loose acronym to help you remember it.

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Those danged savvy kids…Privacy as unique benefit…Some contextual amsuement…from frenemy to froe…Disconnect twixt agency and client visible to roughly the entire world…Advertising reflecting culture or just plain bad idea?..Graphic graphics…Possible solution for the paparazzi problem…Mac and Cheese Commodity Index soars.

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The Register reports that Hulu has had just about enough of this ad blocking stuff, so they’ve taken to nudging visitors with this:

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We ran across TruTV in our channel surfing the other day and locked on to the slogan — Not Reality. Actuality. After I recovered from distant memories of philosophy classes, I actually spent a little time thinking about it. The it’s-not-a-but-a strategy of sloganeering is time tested, of course, (I remember the slogan “It’s not a car. It’s a Volkswagen” came to mind every time I paid to have CV boots replaced) but this particular version from TruTV is a little more profound than most, and a little scary. Considering common definitions it would seem to be one of those distinctions without a difference. [Read more →]

A friend I worked with at an agency years ago went to the client side and excelled there for many years, leaving only recently to advance for another enterprise. On her way out, she left an informative and often amusing little memo with what I thought were valuable insights, including: [Read more →]

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Given the previous post about compensated brand ambassadors, it seems like a good time to contrast it with some nice uncompensated testimonial, in this case from Ad Giant Client Just Between Friends. I’ve long been a fan of real testimonials, even though my first experience with them was listening to mall intercepts of people sampling “New Coke,” a process that required listening to many, many hours of tape in order to get sixty seconds of positive comments.

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The Chicago Tribune has one of those stories that can make you feel old, even if you only graduated from college ten years ago. It’s about junior, Alex Covington, at Northwestern University who is also a brand rep.  What memories I have of college don’t involve compensated brand ambassadorhsip.  While my cynical friend thinks this this kind of activity marks the end of civilization, all I can do is imagine the conversation when Bernadine Dohrn compliments Ms. Covington on her sundress. I think that’s an SNL skit right there.

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