When you design like Paul Rand,

your name speaks for itself.

Who is Paul Rand you ask? Well, in short, he's the designer who came up with some of the more iconic logos of the past few decades.

The advertising time machine.

Print ads from the last 100 years. Seriously. Well categorized, indexed and organized. And priceless. Very, very priceless. Do yourself a favour and check them out. See how things were done and perhaps 'source' some ideas for yourself. You'll be glad you did.

The movie. The business.

Art & Copy is coming to the silver screen.

Doug Pray has made a movie about another one of the world's oldest professions. And according to Wired, it ain't too bad either.

"Many of the ad industry’s greats appear as talking heads in the film. We meet Rich Silverstein and Jeff Goodby, the guys behind “Got Milk?” and the Budweiser lizards. There’s Dan Wieden and David Kennedy, creators of Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign. Phyllis Robinson and Mary Wells, the most influential women from the Mad Men era of the 1960s, talk about their respective achievements for Clairol and Braniff Airlines."

So. There you go.

Before Microsoft. After Microsoft.

“After Microsoft” tells the story of a January day in the late 90’s when the hill came to coincide with a global branding strategy.

After Microsoft has been exhibited as an installation piece, including a projection of the re-photographed view together with a voice-over. Following is the transcript of the voice-over:

The most distributed image ever is being phased out. What remains is a hill in Sonoma Valley, California.

Charles O’Rear used to pass that hill almost daily between his home in Napa and his wife, Daphne, who lived in Marin County. He always carried his medium format camera.

It was hard even to slow down on highway 12/121. But one day, it must have been in January, he pulled over. After about a month of rain the sun comes up, and there is beautiful green grass. The weather during the winter can change dramatically. A break in the storm. Intense blue sky with cumulus clouds. Maybe later that day it rained.

Blue was an important brand color already in ‘95. Clouds and sky being a common theme in many aspects of the product’s identity and collateral. Illustrating potential and opportunity.

Continuing the cloud theme, but with added grounding. The horizon gives a sense of scale to the image. Makes it possible to imagine being there.

Because of the danger of that road and where he was standing, he didn’t take a tripod. His camera, when handheld, needed to be shot at least at a five-hundredth of a second. Whatever that translates into on a sunny day. Probably 500 at 5.6.

With property prices in Sonoma reaching $75,000 per acre for bare land, most hills were being developed into vineyards or homes. On this hill grapevines had been planted. But in the early 90’s a Phylloxera bug infested the grapes and made them unusable. The entire vineyard had to be pulled out. For a few years the hill was covered with grass. Green at the time of the photograph.

Green was the second main color in the branding scheme and in the User Interface. Running late in the product development cycle. Looking for a nature shot. “The reality of real life”. The image matched the brand colors. It fell completely into place, in terms of sky, clouds, blue plus the green field.

By the time the image was purchased, grapes had been planted again on the hill in Sonoma Valley.

Let's do it.

The Birth of ‘Just Do It’ and Other Magic Words By JEREMY W. PETERS

TO the list of great copy writers in advertising, add an unlikely name: Gary Gilmore. Mr. Gilmore, the notorious spree-killer, uttered the words “Let’s do it” just before a firing squad executed him in Utah in 1977. Years later, the phrase became the inspiration for “Just Do It” campaign.

The episode might make you wonder about the genesis of some other offbeat ads over the years. Where does someone get the idea to write a jingle about Oscar Mayer wiener envy? And how exactly does one dream up a talking gecko selling car insurance? The revelation about the “Just Do It” slogan is one of many fly-on-the-wall anecdotes that the famous names of the advertising world share in a new documentary by the filmmaker Doug Pray called “Art & Copy,” to be released in New York on Friday. The film takes some of advertising campaigns that are most indelibly seared into the American consciousness — “Got Milk?,” “I (Heart) NY,” “I Want My MTV” to name a few — and examines their path from ad slogans to pop culture glory.

Liz Dolan, a former marketing chief at Nike, says in the film that the origins of “Just Do It” were not widely known or acknowledged. “That was not the version I heard when I arrived at Nike,” she said. “I’m sure they didn’t want anyone to really know.” Dan Wieden, who first realized that a slight tweaking of Mr. Gilmore’s last words might make a good slogan for athletic gear, said the resonance of “Just Do It” was completely inadvertent and unforeseen. “I like the ‘do it’ part of it,” Mr. Wieden, a co-founder of Wieden & Kennedy, says in the film, recalling the moment it dawned on him to use the phrase. “None of us really paid that much attention. We thought, ‘Yeah. That’d work,’ ” he says, adding, “People started reading things into it much more than sport.” “Art & Copy” not only examines how seminal campaigns were born, but also, in the case of “Got Milk” and others, how they almost died premature deaths.

Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein of Goodby Silverstein & Partners, the brains behind the milk ads and the Budweiser frogs, explain how both of those concepts almost never saw the light of day. In the case of the “Got Milk?” concept, people at Goodby, Silverstein thought it was lazy, not to mention grammatically incorrect. “It’s clunky. It’s not even English,” recalls Mr. Silverstein in the film, expressing his initial distaste for the idea. He later gleefully adds, “It worked!” Mr. Goodby tells how marketers at Anheuser Busch were ready to kill the frog campaign until August Busch III spoke up and said, “Those lizards are really funny.”

The transcendent Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef?” ads were also initially written off and nearly killed a week before they were set to go on the air, says Cliff Freeman, the slogan’s creator. Mr. Pray, the film’s director, said part of his reason for doing the film was to shed light on the people behind ads that — for good or ill — have left a mark on American culture. “Whether we like it or not, they have shaped our culture to a huge degree. And nobody knows where they’re coming from,”

Mr. Pray, a documentarian who has also directed commercials, said in a recent interview. “We know the captains of industry. We know the heads of G.M. But somehow that’s not true with advertising.” Shows like “Mad Men” on AMC and movies like “The Hucksters” are probably the closest most Americans have in the way of exposure to advertising executives. Some of the subjects interviewed or examined in Mr. Pray’s film — William Bernbach, George Lois, Mary Wells Lawrence — are the original mad men and women who shaped the era the television show depicts. The characters in Mr. Pray’s film, however, are a far cry from the martini-swilling hedonists portrayed on AMC. “I don’t think anyone could confuse me with those guys on the ‘Mad Men’ show,” Mr. Lois said in a recent interview, using a more colorful word to describe the characters. The advertising world in New York in the 1960s, he said, “was intelligent. It was sharp. It was irascible. It was thrilling. It was cultural provocatism.” “Art & Copy,” Mr. Lois added, is a nostalgic look back to a time when advertising had more cultural significance. “Back then, there was this driving need, this passion. It was like a crusade. Everybody knew something important was happening. We were changing the culture of America.” Mr. Pray said that the true believer, change-the-world outlook that Mr. Lois and others espoused about advertising initially escaped him. “I never really looked at it like that. I always saw it as just commerce,” he said. But by examining how resonant ads were made and seeing firsthand their cultural impact, Mr. Pray said he could appreciate them as more than just a way to move merchandise. “There’s a beauty to things like ‘Got Milk?’ or ‘Just Do It’ or ‘Where’s the Beef?’ — this incredibly simple writing that seems to kind of say more,” he said. “They seem to work on some kind of a different level that has nothing to do with the product.”

Remember when?

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Remember when you could buy pretty much anything through the mail? From meat to flamethrowers, miniature luggage to drugs. Ah the halcyon days of the past...

I can't for the life of me understand why I can no longer order these items for home delivery.

These guys remember those days and they've got some great ads to remind the rest of us.

We're global, but we're local

First it was corporations 'greenwashing' their products to make them appear to be more environmentally friendly than they were. Now, in that same spirit of corporate can-do, it's time for 'local washing', whereby a corporation makes themself seem like they're the same as that friendly family-owned place just down the street. Just plain folks trying to make an honest living, not a collection of executives in a boardroom with stockholders to answer to.

Here's an article from the San Francisco Bay Guardian about the movement.

Corporations co-opt "local"

As the movement to buy local gains momentum, chains try to get in on the action and confuse consumers

By Stacey Mitchell

news@sfbg.com

HSBC, one of the biggest banks on the planet, has taken to calling itself "the world's local bank." Winn-Dixie, a 500-outlet supermarket chain, recently launched a new ad campaign under the tagline "Local flavor since 1956." The International Council of Shopping Centers, a global consortium of mall owners and developers, is pouring millions of dollars into television ads urging people to "Shop Local" — at their nearest mall. Even Wal-Mart is getting in on the act, hanging bright green banners over its produce aisles that simply say "Local."

Hoping to capitalize on growing public enthusiasm for all things local, some of the world's biggest corporations are brashly laying claim to the evocative word.

This new variation on corporate greenwashing — local-washing — is, like the buy-local movement itself, most advanced in the context of food. Hellmann's, the mayonnaise brand owned by the processed-food giant Unilever, is test-driving a new "Eat Real, Eat Local" initiative in Canada. The ad campaign seems aimed partly at enhancing the brand by simply associating Hellmann's with local food. But it also makes the claim that Hellmann's is local, because most of its ingredients come from North America.

It's not the only industrial food company muscling in on local. Frito-Lay's new television commercials use farmers to pitch the company's potato chips as local food, while Foster Farms, one of the largest producers of poultry products in the country, is labeling packages of chicken and turkey "locally grown."

Corporate local-washing is now spreading well beyond food. Barnes & Noble, the world's top seller of books, has launched a video blog under the banner "All bookselling is local." The site, which features "local book news" and recommendations from employees of stores in such evocative-sounding locales as Surprise, Ariz., and Wauwatosa, Wis., seems designed to disguise what Barnes & Noble is — a highly centralized corporation in which decisions about what books to stock and feature are made by a handful of buyers — and to present the chain instead as a collection of independent-minded booksellers.

Across the country, scores of shopping malls, chambers of commerce, and economic development agencies are also appropriating the phrase "buy local" to urge consumers to patronize nearby malls and big-box stores. In March, leaders of a buy-local campaign in Fresno assembled in front of the Fashion Fair Mall for a kickoff press conference. Flanked by storefronts bearing brand names such as Anthropologie and the Cheesecake Factory, officials from the Economic Development Corporation of Fresno County explained that choosing to buy local helps the region's economy. For anyone confused by this display, the campaign and its media partners, including Comcast and the McClatchy-owned Fresno Bee, followed the press conference with more than $250,000 worth of radio, TV, and print ads that spelled it out: "Just so you know, buying local means any store in your community: mom-and-pop stores, national chains, big-box stores — you name it."

THE REAL BUY-LOCAL MOVEMENT

In one way, all of this corporate local-washing is good news for local economy advocates: it represents the best empirical evidence yet that the grassroots movement for locally produced goods and independently owned businesses now sweeping the country is having a measurable impact on the choices people make.

"Think of the millions of dollars these big companies spend on research and focus groups. They wouldn't be doing this on a hunch," observed Dan Cullen of the American Booksellers Association, a trade group which represents about 1,700 independent bookstores and last year launched IndieBound, an initiative that helps locally owned businesses communicate their independence and community roots.

Signs that consumer preferences are trending local abound. Locally grown food has soared in popularity. The United States is now home to 4,385 active farmers markets, a third of which were started since 2000. Food co-ops and neighborhood greengrocers are on the rise. Driving is down, while data from several metropolitan regions show that houses located within walking distance of small neighborhood stores have held value better than those isolated in the suburbs where the nearest gallon of milk is a five-mile drive to Target.

In city after city, independent businesses are organizing and creating the beginnings of what could become a powerful counterweight to the big business lobbies that have long dominated public policy. Local business alliances — such as San Francisco Locally Owned Merchants Alliance, Stay Local! New Orleans, and Phoenix's Local First Arizona — have now formed in more than 130 cities and collectively count about 30,000 businesses as members.

In San Francisco, the buy-local movement is strong. Voters and elected officials have erected bureaucratic barriers to new chain stores, and citizens have used those tools to fend off even respectable chains such as American Apparel, which earlier this year tried unsuccessfully to open a store on über-local Valencia Street. The San Francisco Small Business Commission runs a buy-local campaign that was created in December by such unlikely partners as the Guardian, Mayor Gavin Newsom, and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce (see "Shop local, City Hall," 5/6/09).

Through grassroots buy-local and local-first campaigns, these alliances are calling on people to choose independent businesses and local products more often. They also are making the case that doing so is critical to rebuilding middle-class prosperity, averting environmental collapse, keeping more money in the local economy, and ensuring that our daily lives are not smothered by corporate uniformity.

Surveys and anecdotal reports from business owners suggest that these initiatives are changing spending patterns. While the federal Department of Commerce reported that overall retail sales plunged almost 10 percent over the holidays, a survey in January by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (where I work) found that independent retailers in cities with buy-local campaigns saw sales drop an average of just 3 percent from the previous year. Many respondents attributed this relative good fortune to the fact that more people are deliberately seeking out locally owned businesses.

CORPORATIONS TAKE NOTE

None of this has slipped the notice of corporate executives and the consumer research firms that advise them. Several of these firms have begun to track the localization trend. In its annual consumer survey, the New York–based branding firm BBMG found that the number of people reporting that it was "very important" to them whether a product was grown or produced locally jumped from 26 to 32 percent in the last year alone. "It's not just a small cadre of consumers anymore," said founding partner Mitch Baranowski.

Corporate-oriented buy-local campaigns that define "local" as the nearest Lowe's or Gap store are now being rolled out in cities nationwide. Some represent desperate bids by shopping malls to survive the recession and fend off online competition. Others are the work of chambers of commerce trying to remain relevant. Still others are the half-baked plans of municipal officials casting about for some way to stop the steep drop in sales tax revenue.

Many of these Astroturf campaigns are modeled directly on grassroots initiatives. "They copy our language and tactics," said Michelle Long, board president of the San Francisco–based Business Alliance for Local Living Economies and executive director of Sustainable Connections, a seven-year-old coalition of 600 independent businesses in northwest Washington state that runs a very visible and — according to market research — very successful local-first program. "I get calls from chambers and other groups who say, 'We want to do what you are doing.' It took me a while to realize that what they had in mind was not what we do. Once I realized, I started asking them, 'What do you mean by local?' "

Examples abound. In Northern California, the Arcata Chamber of Commerce is producing "Shop Local" ads that look similar to the Humboldt County Independent Business Alliance's "Go Local" ads, except they feature both independents and chains. Spokane's "Buy Local" program, started by the chamber, is open to any business in town, including big-box stores. Log on to the "Buy Local" Web site created by the chamber in Chapel Hill, N.C., and you will find Wal-Mart among the listings.

But there's a huge difference — even on strictly economic grounds — between shopping at a local chain store and a locally owned store. Studies have shown that $45 of every $100 spent at locally owned stores stays in the community, helping other local businesses and supporting government services, whereas only about $13 of every $100 spent in chain stores remains local.

When the city of Santa Fe, N.M., decided to launch a campaign to encourage people to shop locally, the Santa Fe Alliance, a coalition of more than 500 locally owned businesses that has been running a buy-local initiative for several years, signed on. At the kickoff in March, the alliance's director, Vicki Pozzebon, emphasized the economic impact of shopping at a locally owned business versus a chain.

"After that, the city asked me not to push the $45 versus $13, but just say 'local.' " Pozzebon said.

The city's message, according to Kate Noble, a city staffer who runs the program, is that shopping at Wal-Mart is fine, as long as it's not Walmart.com. But Pozzebon said, "It has only diluted our message and confused people."

These sales tax–driven campaigns may well be doing more harm to local economies than good, according to Jeff Milchen, co-founder of the American Independent Business Alliance. "If you encourage people to shop at a big-box store that takes sales away from an independent business, you're just funneling more dollars out of town."

The irony of trying to solve declining city revenue by trying to get people to shop at the local mall is that the mall itself may be the problem. While many California cities are facing budget cuts and even bankruptcy, Berkeley has managed to post a small increase in revenue. Part of the reason, according to city officials, is that Berkeley has more or less said no to chains and is instead a city of locally owned businesses that primarily serve local residents. That creates a much more stable revenue base. Berkeley hasn't benefited from the temporary boom that a new regional mall might create, but neither has it gone bust.

Stacy Mitchell is a senior researcher with the New Rules Project (www.newrules.org) and author of Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses (Beacon, 2006). This story was commissioned by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN), of which the Guardian is a member, and is also running in other AAN papers this month.

If it ain't broke, don't f**k with it.

Pepsi vs. Coke.

Bear in mind that Pepsi spent a mind-boggling amount of money to come up with their newest iteration...

30 years of television ads

All in one place. Courtesy of Duke University.

From the site: "AdViews is a digital archive of thousands of vintage television commercials dating from the 1950s to the 1980s. These commercials were created or collected by the ad agency Benton & Bowles or its successor, D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B). Founded in 1929, Benton & Bowles was a New York advertising agency that merged with D'Arcy Masius McManus in 1985 to form DMB&B. Major clients included are Procter & Gamble, Kraft, Schick, Vicks, and Post, among others."

Ladies and gentlemen; the Rolling Stones

singing a lovely jingle for Rice Krispies

The sex, it sells.

Always has, always will. Sometimes subtle, sometimes hit you over head repeatedly (hello American Apparel!). Either way, it sells.

Rememberance and design go hand in hand

July 7 is a very emotional day for many people in London. Now, two years after indiscriminate bombings of innocent civilians, a memorial has been designed.

Here is a link to an interview with the typographer who helped on the design and construction of the memorial.

Design isn't all packaging and marketing, wayfinding and entertainment.

Goodbye Rosie

Rosie the Riveter has passed away.

ROSALIE KUNERT "ROSIE THE RIVETER" Age 86 of Burbank, Rosie passed on June 28th. She was born Rosalie Helen Merritt on October 2, 1922 in Hackensack, Minnesota. In late 1942 she relocated to Southern California where she began working at the Lockheed Airplane Factory in Burbank. Like many women during WWII, she took on previously male dominated trades such as riveting teams working on the cockpit shells of airplane bombers. It was here t hat she was approached for an interview to help promote and encourage women to take over vacated jobs for the duration of the war. She was initially singled out for her tall, statuesque appearance and bright auburn hair tied back in her polka-dot head scarf. They asked her to consider appearing in a promotional film about the war effort at home but she modestly declined not wanting to be singled out from the others. Regardless, the name was still officially coined. Another woman in Michigan was chosen and eventually "Rosie the Riveter" went on to become perhaps the most widely recognized icon of that era. Films, posters and even a song were used to encourage women to go to work in support of the war effort. Rosie was very proud of being a pioneer in proving that women could do the jobs known as "mens work", creating an entirely new image of women in American society and setting the stage for future generations. After the war, Rosie met and married Gerald John Kunert and they remained married for over 55 years before he preceded her to Heaven in 2001. The couple resided in Burbank, raising five children. To supplement their income during the sixties, she worked out of her house as a barber for the neighborhood with clientele reaching over 200 at its height. Most boys attending St. Francis Xavier and Horace Mann Elementary schools in this era will fondly remember the Bazooka bubble gum they received along with their parent's appreciation of the fifty cent haircuts. In 1968 she returned to the work force at
Miller Elementary School in the cafeteria and later was the Manager at Washington Elementary. She worked with the Burbank Unified School District for 16 years. Rosie was a very driven and creative individual and nothing seemed insurmountable with her "Can Do" attitude. Whether it was building a room addition to her home, painting on canvas, doing needlepoint, or applying her green thumb to her wonderful garden, no project was too large or too small. Despite her busy lifestyle she always embraced the nee ds of others before her own. She would drop anything she was doing to help those who asked. She was the most caring, trustworthy person in the whole world, never passing judgment on anyone. Rosie's unconditional love and strength will be forever cherished by all. She is survived by four children, Karen Walker, Rodney Kunert, Bob Kunert, Brian Kunert; three grandchildren, Jennifer Kunert, Kevin Kunert, Christopher Kunert; two brothers and one sister. Her eldest son John Kunert preceded her in death in 2 005. A graveside service will be held at Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills on Tuesday, July 7, 2009, 11:00 a.m. Supplementary to flowers, donations to the Alzheimer's Association at alz.org would be greatly appreciated. The family would also like to thank the staff at Belmont Village in Burbank. Their compassion will always be sincerely remembered.