A lesson for marketing world from charmed life of Jade Albert. If you haven't met Jade Albert, you should. You will be charmed-plastic- bangles-around-your-neck, scarabs-and-stars-and-butterflies-dangling-from-your-wrist, gold-leprechauns-and-tiny-trombones-hanging-from-Fido's-collar charmed.Ms. Albert is a well-...

Landor tells Brother Curry's tale, barks up the right tree for brand. Landor associates is going to the dogs-voluntarily-and therein lies a big, wagging tale about the great benefits branding can bring to the world.The dogs in this story are those whose owners treat them to the occasional biscuit. The biscuits in questi...

Transparency makes it clear: Advertising a thing of the past. You might not think that outsourcing and advertising have anything to do with each other, but the former is booming and the latter suffering because of the same phenomenon: transparency.The increasingly free flow of information and ideas across all ma...

Many players in Plame Game; the big question stumps 'em all. "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome-and a special hello to all you prosecutors out there. It's time to play 'Source...or Consequences'-the game show where names matter and excuses count. Contestants, you remember the rules: Andy Warhol to the contrary, today e...

Saying goodbye to the VCR has us reeling in the years. We had a breakthrough out at the house the other day: We unplugged the VCR. Videotape, we declared (although the declaration was silent and implicit) would be one medium that would never unspool across our threshold again.The joy of the moment-no more...

Dear Joanne, a few things before getting down to business. Joanne Lipman, EditorUnnamed Business Media EmpireConde Nast BuildingNew York, N.Y.Dear Joanne,Congratulations on your latest creative challenge. I cannot imagine anyone better to lead the development of an integrated business-media un...

`Mad' resurrects the bygone era of really bad advertising. To all those pernicious gaps that separate mankind from the achievement of his full potential-the generation gap, the credibility gap, the gender gap, the missile gap-add one more: the stupid-advertising gap.That's right: Truly insipid advertising-the...

Post-ANA, industry needs a dose of truth and reconciliation. South Africa has a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, created to help the republic move past the searing and divisive decades of apartheid. Peru, Sierra Leone, Fiji, even Greensboro, N.C., have truth and reconciliation bodies, designed to allow them to...

The real reality of advertising is you can't measure the Great Idea. The most appropriately named treatise in the history of advertising, albeit for less-than-obvious reasons, was "Reality in Advertising," by Rosser Reeves. The longtime chief of the Ted Bates Agency, Reeves is revered as the godfather of the Unique Selling...

Simple route to Absolut success: `Don't be afraid to try new stuff'. Richard Lewis is an Absolut lunatic. How else to explain why a grown man of 52, with one daughter in medical school, another at Yale and a son in high school, would devote a year of his life to writing a book about vodka advertising?Perhaps because hi...

A time to give thanks that a thankless job is now history. In this season of Thanksgiving, I'd like to thank God that I am no longer a journalist.I am thankful that I do not have to assimilate complex information from multiple sources, reconcile the contradictions and deliver an analysis-all on a daily deadli...

Want cheap and easy resolution for the new year? Experiment. My new year's resolution consists of one word: Experiment.2005 was the year even reactionary CMOs were forced to confront the fact that the old ways would no longer ignite growth. Mass has become micro. Push has transformed into pull. The middle of th...

Beware of benign-looking objects at your door, and other lessons. It's only January 16, and I've already violated my three New Year's resolutions.1. Never pick up strange things left on your stoop. Last Monday, I awakened at 6:30 a.m., as usual, put on the coffee, as usual, and opened the door, as usual, and discove...

Riswold goes from 'idiot savant' to reinventor to retired artist. Jim Riswold has been called a lot of things in his nearly quarter-century career.Fabled director Joe Pytka called him "the idiot savant of advertising."Newsweek called him one of the 100 most influential people in American culture.But no one h...

Six things you should know about the immediate future. The world economic Forum was not the only event to attract VIPs to Europe's snow country in recent weeks. Hubert Burda Media, one of Germany's largest and most influential media companies, convened its second annual Digital Lifestyle Day in Munich late in...

In age of anonymous stars, only innovative brands draw a crowd. Advertising opportunities aside, this year's Academy Awards wouldn't seem to hold great meaning for the producers of consumer products and services. But the nominations are an ominous portent of the immensely difficult path forward for the companies that...

THE DILEMMA OF 'STAR BRANDING'. By Rothenberg_randall@bah.com(Randall Rothenberg).

Despite all the talk, ad and media shops still aren't truly integrated. On sunday night, I achieved a dream: I downloaded from the Web a copy of the Edward D. Wood Jr. psychotronic movie classic "Plan 9 From Outer Space" and uploaded it onto my video iPod. What does this have to do with the most recent American Association of...

The Good News in the Page Six Scandal? Newspapers Still Matter. Lost in the maze of Jared-gate -- the New York Post Page Six scandal, in which a gossip-column contributor is alleged to have attempted to extort cash from a billionaire in return for improved coverage -- is a startlingly counterintuitive insight:... By rothenberg_randall@bah.com(Randall Rothenberg).

Chasing Marketing's Holy Grail Into Cyberspace.
Marketers long have been on their own unconsummated quest, and their holy grail is integrated marketing: The two phrases together garner almost 10,000 Google references. Why (so goes the wish) can't we plan and join all marketing communications in a seamlessly woven campaign that can deliver to all-important segments messages relevant just to them, over the medium most likely to reach and influence them?

Reconfiguring Marketing and Media Services for the New Age.
Now that marketers and media have accepted the fact that disruption is upon us, what should they do? In a forthcoming report in Strategy & Business, John Frelinghuysen, Chris Vollmer and I propose five ways marketers, media and their marketing-services partners need to reconfigure themselves. Read the synopsis.

The Salvation of Newspapers: Online Local News Networks?.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- DotConnect Media is one of several companies attempting to transition newspapers to the Internet. It is a network of more than 1,500 newspaper Web sites rolled up from several acquisitions and purchased in March by Lee Enterprises, now the nation's fourth-largest owner of daily newspapers. Its goal is to create a national advertising medium out of inherently local products.

Developing Creative Staffers for the New Age of Collaboration.
With marketing's value chain growing both muddied and bloodied by new competition, what's the single greatest skill a new-wave creative director needs? No, it's neither a legacy quality like great copywriting talent, nor a more contemporary capability such as technological expertise. It's the ability to collaborate seamlessly across the boundaries of your own agency.

'Juicing the Orange': A Guide to Ad Industry's Third Revolution.
Advertising," Pat Fallon was saying, "is change management." He was not discussing a triumph, but a failure: His advertising agency's dismissal from the Miller Brewing account as part of an interview about his new book, 'Juicing the Orange.'

How to Become a One-Person Movie Studio in a Few Easy Steps.
I want the creative control of Spielberg. I want to exercise the vision of Shyamalan. I want to express my voice like Welles, paint visual pictures like Ford and provoke the audience like Hitchcock. Thus I followed the path of all modern auteurs: I bought a new Mac. My canvas. My palette. My future.

With the Right Set of Tools You Can Think Globally, Act Locally.
In the hands of Globalworks and other advanced marketing-services companies, the dashboard is a mechanism for marketing management. As most communications content becomes digital in form, it will be managed through networked systems that mimic the functionality of an airplane's instrument panel.

The Continuing Adventures of Beauregard Babcock.
I'm wandering -- well, my avatar, Beauregard Babcock, is wandering -- around the Club Extreme and Casino, a bustling nightspot. Beauregard is slender, has almond-shaped dark eyes, brown hair, a bald spot, and sports a white bowler and a rakish t-shirt that reads, "I love sheep." He is boyishly handsome, if I do say so myself. He should be: I created him.

Product Guru Peter Arnell to Co-Create Retail Businesses.
Peter Arnell has been unquietly unmaking the concept of marketing services ever since he burst into view in the late 1980s with such out-of-the-box ideas as fashion ads that didn't feature the products, city-inspired in-store installations and architect-designed teapots. No longer a boy wonder, he is proving to be as irrepressible a force as ever, emerging as an outsourced product-innovation guru. By rothenberg_randall@bah.com(Randall Rothenberg).

Dove Effort Gives Package-Goods Marketers Lessons for the Future.
Since the advent of the internet, many package-goods marketers have been holding back, wondering and worrying whether mass brands traditionally sold through mass media had a digital future. Ogilvy's famed "Campaign for Real Beauty" for Dove answers resoundingly in the affirmative. Here are four important points to learn from that campaign. By rothenberg_randall@bah.com

After 10 Great Years, a Farewell to the Readers of Ad Age.
And so it ends, not with a bang, nor with a whimper, but with a column. How appropriate. In 10 years, I have written some 300 columns for Advertising Age. Coming on top of the 250-odd columns I'd written earlier for The New York Times, this decade's worth of journalistic gymnastics should have hinted to all readers what ultimately happened: I fell in love -- with advertising, marketing and media and the people who are transforming them. By rothenberg_randall@bah.com(Randall Rothenberg).