AT&T Throws in the AT&Towel

If you’ve turned on a television in the past six months, you’ve probably borne witness to the multi-million dollar bare-knuckle brawl between Verizon and AT&T. Now, at long last, we seem to have a winner, with AT&T announcing that they will drop their attack ads in favor of a rebranding campaign under the banner of “Rethink Possible.”

Olympics Take Gold in Unexpected Category

A funny thing happened on the way to the opening ceremony of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games. It became readily, painfully, thankfully apparent that the commercials at the Olympics would best their Super Bowl counterparts. Let’s take a look at some of the work from the Super Bowl, starting with a joint commercial for [...]

Minds Always Matter

Perspective. Marketers have lacked it since the beginning of time. That’s why we use surveys, polls, panels, neurological studies, and focus groups to try to find out what “real people” will think of our products. Before going further I should add that this problem is not unique to the advertising world. Have you ever tried [...]

The Enduring Power of a Great Idea

Dos Equis’ campaign for the Most Interesting Man in the World will likely go down as one of the best-liked and most effective campaigns of the year. Indeed, sales rose 17%, while the rest of the category dropped 11%. While this campaign may be new, the idea of using an aspirational-if-somewhat-ridiculous spokesman is not. Two [...]

Wendy’s Keeps It Real

Wendy’s just introduced a new campaign, designed by Kaplan Thaler, entitled “You Know When It’s Real.” But before getting to that, let’s quickly recap where they’ve been:Wendy’s built their brand over the past few decades with product-focused ads featuring the disarmingly relatable Dave Thomas, who founded the chain and named it after his granddaughter, Wendy. [...]