Pop Art Blog

Great book(s) review from the New Yorker about why consumers make stupid decisions . There’s a lot of “duh” statements in here — Consumers are effort-averse ? Really? — but stated in a researched, academic way. A few Halloweens ago, Ariely laid in a supply of Hershey’s Kisses and two kinds of Snickers—regular two-ounce bars and one-ounce miniatures. When the first children came to his door, he handed each of them three Kisses, then offered to make a deal. If they wanted to, the kids could trade one... Read More...

We're all big fans of Malcolm Gladwell over here. And so when I saw this article in Fast Company titled "Is the Tipping Point Toast?" I dug right in. If nothing else, I love a good academic smackdown. The article interviews a former prof who now works for Yahoo, and who refutes the "viral" theory behind a shadowy class we marketing folks call "Influentials." Along the way, he also coins my nominee for the marketing buzzword of the year: Wildfire marketing. But let's... Read More...

I bet you're not trying to be No.1. I bet you're making excuses. I bet there's someone in your company, or in your industry, who OWNS you. They've got the Midas Touch, and you're niggling about process documents and sweating out a 15 percent improvement. No? A new study on professional golfers suggests otherwise. Call it the Tiger Effect; it says in the face of a dominant force, people play for second place. They play it safe. From Slate.com . If money motivates, then the prospect... Read More...

So Fred Meyer's got this coupon where you get a free, frozen turkey when you buy $100 worth of groceries. And we ALWAYS spend $100 on groceries, especially the weekend before Thanksgiving. But we don't actually need a turkey, right? Nor do we have room in our tiny freezer. But a free turkey is a free turkey, so we took it. We figured we'd be able to find some organization who'd love it. Bang! A Google search for "Food Donation, Portland" turned up Metro's "Fork... Read More...

When I write, I use em dashes. A lot. At one point in my career, my creative director returned an article to me in which I'd used an em dash in EVERY SINGLE PARAGRAPH of a 700-word article. Clearly, I had a problem. Em dashes (or the long dash, like this: — ) are remarkable little devices that allow you to stop the flow of a sentence and redirect it elsewhere.They also can let you set off a thought in the middle of a sentence, not unlike how you'd use parentheses. Only, with an em dash, it's... Read More...

One thing I've loved about Facebook is finding old high school friends. People I haven't spoken to in ages, right? So when there's a "friend request," Facebook wants to know how we know each other. So I check the box "went to school together." But then there's these other boxes, right? "We hooked up." "We dated." And, in some cases (extremely rare, sadly, but that's another story for a different blog), that might be true. So, here's... Read More...

"Hey, we've got this comp due to the client in 30 minutes. Think you could knock out a headline for us?" (If you found this funny, you're a total ad nerd .) Read More...

Probably one of the best things clients get from typical brand pyramid exercises is the "who would your brand be?" But how do you use that information for copywriting? One of our interns this summer loved theater, and she simplified it well: Branding means writing in character. I love this copywriting short-hand because our culture's weird fascination with celebrity makes it easy for writers and clients to mimic a person in the culture, and to act out that personality when they're... Read More...