In this season of awards – no wait! … awards always seem to be in season. Doesn’t having so many awards for so many different things dilute the value of any award? We are just getting through Nobel Season. Soon it will be time for Oscars, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, Emmies, Grammies, Junos, ESPys and on… Read More »
How do you decide whether to believe a message or not? As reviewed in Chapter Four of Overcome AD-versity, there are three basic components to judging a message to be credible. The receiver of the message assesses the source’s expertise, trustworthiness and motivation. To do so, you have to read between the lines and read… Read More »
Every place, person and thing has a name, mostly applied locally and then eventually agreed upon by everyone else. When the US thought of appropriating and renaming the Gulf of Mexico, it was trying to change a centuries old agreed upon name. It didn’t work. It got me thinking about how we call places and… Read More »
It is true that you have to have enough money to produce the desired commercial well. But how much is enough? We are often asked how much of the budget should be spent on production versus media. There is no simple answer but there are some clear guidelines. The cost of production is the overhead… Read More »
Names are funny things. They are the nouns of our lives. Without them there would not be language. They create expectations and label us. They become our brands. We are often asked why we named our company Calexis and what it means. The truth is, we made it up. Our business is creativity. We create brand… Read More »
La publicidad no es solo un ‘negocio del espectáculo’; también hay mucho trabajo detrás de las cámaras que hay que entender antes de desarrollarla. Queríamos saber cómo mejorar las ventas de jabón para nuestro cliente, Procter y Gamble de Venezuela. Por eso le pedí a uno de sus vendedores que me llevara al mercado mayorista… Read More »
We buy media against demographics like age, income and education. And target our creative at that target. We are consistent and correct – right? Let’s check by starting with how well people perceive themselves. Take you for example. (Pull out a mirror or look at the graphic to the left.) Do you always “act your age?”… Read More »
We had launched a cereal with Wayne Gretzky on the box in 1984. It was a front page success in Canada. This was unusual because cereals are rarely launched in Canada alone. Usually we relaunched cereals that already had been successes in the United States, our huge test market to the south. Things had gone smoothly… Read More »
We started our little company in the early 90s and used computers as the core of our infrastructure. This was a quite unusual at the time; but, it paid off over the years. Slowly we added people. First there was an Art Director who had recently arrived from India. She had worked for a multinational… Read More »
There were many times when we presented commercials to clients who we felt wanted to make changes to make sure their input was included in the commercial. The one who pays the piper wants to call the tune and be recognized. So here is how we would describe a typical commercial: two women are discussing… Read More »