10.18.2006

Book Review: A big life (in advertising)

Just finished, A Big Life (In Advertising), an autobiography of Mary Wells Lawrence, a Bill Bernbach protegee from the early days at DDB who started her own agency, Wells Rich Green, back in the late 60s-early 70s. They did a lot of great, famous campaigns like "plop, plop, fizz, fizz" for Alka Seltzer and "I love NY." As somebody who has started a creative agency, it's a pretty inspiring story that I, personally, could really relate to. But even if you haven't started an ad agency, it's still pretty entertaining. Rather than bore you with details, here are some key takeaways (for me, anyway)...

Key Takeaways:

1. You need to have a serious ego to make it big in this business. It takes hubris.

2. At one point, she is talking about WRG working for Procter & Gamble. If you follow the ad biz, you know that P&G are known as brilliant marketing scientists who have an unbelievable track record of using methodical brand building practices to dominate markets for consumer packaged goods. According to Mary, however, P&G understands that breakaway ideas are real and don't always follow predictable models. To that end, they always keep "one or two of the more intuitive and instinctual agencies" on their roster. This resonated with me, because while Traction does have a great strategic process to uncover insights and opportunities for our clients, our work is definitely intuitive and instinctual. Blink validated that notion for me the first time, but it's great to have that validated again.

10.17.2006

Great week for Traction

- Just kicked off our first project with Bank of America.
- Was awarded the Web 2.0 Expo campaign from CMP Media this week.
- Presented our capabilities to Sun's corporate brand group and they emailed to tell me they loved us.
- Our largest client whose name I'm not allowed to mention is in overdrive.

How you like them apples?

A

10.02.2006

Lightfull in the news...

Traction's new client, Lightfull Foods, just got some ink in Business Week. Traction just helped them redesign their packaging as a first step toward helping them buid a brand for their tasty "Satiety Smoothie." And before you ask, it means you're full.

The User-Generated Content Chronicles: Netflix seeks a NetFix

Netflix is offering a million bucks to anyone who can help improve the quality of its movie recommendations by 10%. First I've seen a user-generated backend program, but I think it's smart as hell for them to challenge people. There's a lot of smart developers out there with wacky algorithms floating around in their head. I'm sure they approached a bunch of giant agencies who wanted to charge them way more than one million to make that kind of a leap. I think this is a good bet for NetFlix.