Anyone who has worked in marketing or advertising, particularly in packaged goods, has worked on a lot of new product ideas that were never a success in the market. Some products died in concept testing, some actually made it to prototype then test market in regional or local markets, and some made it nationally before… Read More »
If you ever doubted that the social standards in the world are changing and changing rapidly, just listen carefully to an oldies music station. It will soon occur to you that the lyrics might be incomprehensible to today’s young adults. Phrases like “you’re still living in a paper doll world” or even newer, Sheryl Crow… Read More »
One of the most important parts of effective communication is completing the Feedback Loop from the creation of the advertising all the way to the customer. If you read, Overcome AD-versity, you learned what goes into creation of the right message. After all that effort, you want to make sure the message doesn’t get garbled.… Read More »
Mr. Hepburn, our high school counsellor, gave us all career advice at our mostly blue-collar high school, Edmonds. He had us all do an aptitude test to help him give us that guidance. My test showed I liked to make up things and was good with communications. It suggested Journalism. On the other hand, academically,… Read More »
Working on Madison Avenue can be challenging. There are as many setbacks as there are achievements when you are playing the Ad Game. I thought it was something like a game of snakes and ladders. A work buddy of mine, Bob Sayles, and I decided to actually make a board game of it. I was… Read More »
Long ago people used to dry their clothes outdoors on a rope or wire called a clothes line. The clothes dried fine outside in the sunshine, maybe a little stiff, but fine and smelling like outdoors. But sometimes it rained. Or the wind blew the clothes off the line. Washing the clothes was also a… Read More »
I spent more than a year working on Jell-O Pudding’s advertising in the early 1970s when I lived in New York. My job was to come up with new advertising directions, back ups to those already running, and also to help with new product development. We got a new TV campaign running featuring Bill Cosby,… Read More »
One of my first major assignments in advertising was as the Account Executive on Jell-O Pudding at Young & Rubicam, a huge advertising agency in New York. I went to meet the client in White Plains for the first time a couple weeks later that summer and was surprised at all the varieties of pudding… Read More »
While in Venezuela, we received an introduction to make an advertising pitch to a lard company called Mavesa (Manteca Venezolana S.A. – which translates to the Venezuelan Lard company). Their principal products were lard, margarine, and edible oils. They also sold mayonnaise, but sales were not doing well. Mayonesa Mavesa was 5th in share behind… Read More »
General Foods maintained a large testing kennel in Kankakee, Illinois. It was close to their dog food manufacturing plant. During the 70s when I worked on their dog food advertising, they had a very successful dog food business. GF sold dry food: Gaines Meal and Gravy Train both dry; semi-moist foods: Gaines-Burgers (in several flavours),… Read More »