Is Abercrombie Just Plain Mean?

July 2, 2009

The Agency Spy site (from Media Bistro) picks up yet another story of (alleged) employee abuse by trendy clothier Abercrombie & Fitch. The store hires “hot people to mope around their ear-drum-destroying stores to ‘fold clothes’ (read: look sexy).” You’ve seen them: they stand there in tight t-shirts and low-slung jeans like sexy mannequins. So why was a young, attractive woman with a prosthetic arm banished to the stock room? She is suing Abercrombie, contending that the store felt her plastic arm violated its “Look Policy.” Look hot, but don’t have an imperfection. It’s not the first employee discrimination suit against Abercrombie. A 2004 complaint alleged minorities were discriminated against for not adhering to the company’s look.

More Dumb Ads That Look Like Porno

June 30, 2009

The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson writes this week about the latest spate of fast-food ads using sex. He includes Burger King’s new print campaign for the BK Seven Incher that is close to pornography. As well as new ads by Hardees and Carl’s Jr. (a company that has been targeting male eaters with sexy ads for years). The writer points out fundamental marketing mistakes here: “There’s this study that shows that overtly sexy ads don’t work on women. And these studies showing sexy ads drown out the product, diminish brand recall, and often don’t reap dividends even when the product is directed only at men.” So why do advertisers continue to push steamy commercials? The same reason why fast-food companies continue to push greasy new product: It’s just what they do.

Should Clean Energy be Big and Broad, or Small and Local?

June 25, 2009

In the current issue of Fast Company, acclaimed writer Anya Kamenetz argues that local, renewable power-windmills and solar panels on every roof-offers a cheaper, faster, and more effective way to update our energy system. This contrasts with environmental leaders such as Al Gore and politicians such as Senator Harry Reid, who call for: an “electric superhighway” (like the Internet’s information superhighway) as a top national priority. Read More

R. Crumb’s Underground

June 24, 2009

Cartoonist Robert Crumb elevated the comic book form to high-satire. On July 11, 2009, Grand Central Art Center at California State University Fullerton becomes the only Southern California venue to exhibit the Yerba Buena’s Center for the Arts traveling exhibition, “R. Crumb’s Underground.” The show includes early work, collaborations old and new, and the world premiere of his “spool” drawings. Universally acknowledged as the founder of the underground comic scene, Crumb gained cult popularity for his pioneering Zap Comix and stardom with the Terry Zwigoff documentary, Crumb. According to the museum, the show goes far beyond comics, show how Crumb’s “work has grown in philosophical complexity, and highlights his collaborative work, including intimate confessions produced with wife Aline Kominsky-Crumb.”

Mass Market, Mid-Century

June 24, 2009

Dwell magazine has its own line of pre-fabricated homes. However, starting at over $442,000 (not counting land!) they don’t quite achieve the goal of bringing sophisticated Modern design to the masses. But in 1955 one could buy a home designed by A. Quincy Jones (now considered an iconic Modernist) in Fullerton, California starting at $13,000, with a down payment of $1,250. Those days are captured in a Fullerton Museum Center show including beautiful works by famed photographer Julius Schulman (now 98 years old). “Forever Fullerton: Julius Schulman” rediscovers the 286 homes sometimes called Read More

Is It Art or Marketing?

June 23, 2009

The “cinematic” trailer promoting the new Beatles Rock Band game is excellent marketing because it’s so artful. Its animated 2:47 tells the Beatles story - from Liverpool’s the Cavern to the unresolved end of their career - in classic 1960s graphic style. On a purely design level, there is a dramatic shift half-way through from minimalist angles and monochromatic grays and beiges to opulent psychedelia, ending with The Beatles riding bizarre, blue elephant/rhinos to the edge of a cliff. But joined with Read More

L.A. Weekly Is in Decline (Says Declining L.A. Times)

June 19, 2009

James Rainy, media reporter for Los Angeles Times, tears into the L.A. Weekly in his latest column. He says departing Editor Laurie Ochoa (wife of the Weekly’s Pulitzer Prize-winning food writer Jonathan Gold… who is known to eat maple glazed bacon doughnuts) was more or less pushed out by the Weekly’s News Editor Jill Stewart. (As he put it, Ochoa “ceded control of news to Stewart.”) Rainy claims that reporting at the longtime alternative paper had degenerated into slanted stories that score political points through innuendo and shadowy unnamed sources. Rainy makes his claim using shadowy unnamed sources. There may be other errors in his logic. First, Read More

Get Ready for an E-mail Deluge

June 19, 2009

By 2014, consumers will be deluged with more than 9,000 e-mail marketing messages annually, according to Forrester Research Inc. of Cambridge, Mass.

Wow, 9,000 e-mails? If you do the math, 9,000 e-mails per year works out to nearly one per hour - 24 hours a day, seven days per week for the entire year. Read More

RPR Launches The Green Sheet, “Updates on Environmentally Responsible Marketing”

June 17, 2009

Continuing its thought-leadership in environmentally responsible marketing, RPR has launched The Green Sheet, an interactive blog offering news, updates and analysis on eco-friendly marketing tactics, business solutions and civic interaction. The Green Sheet complements The Hot Sheet, RPR’s popular creative marketing and design blog, as well as the agency’s presence on social networking site http://twitter.com/RoddanPaolucci. Read More

Most Twitter Users Never Tweet

June 16, 2009

Over 50% of those who sign up for Twitter, never “tweet,” don’t “follow” any other Twitter user, and have no “followers” of their own. The news - according to the latest report from HubSpot (PDF) - has somehow has not penetrated the onslaught of Twitter hype, and was reported instead on obscure sites like Ars Technica. According to HubSpot’s analysis of Twitter’s 4.5 million accounts, 54.9 percent of users have never tweeted and 52.7 have no followers whatsoever. BTW, Los Angeles Times marketing columnist Dan Neil has a fun story today about advertising agency Cramer-Krasselt’s new Cultural Dictionary “of the zeitgeist-iest words and phrases” they can find or make up. This includes a new name for the avalanche of posts one finds on Twitter: “Twitterrhrea.”