A case of cause and effect perhaps? Our children observe a world filled with advertising and emulate it in their graffiti. Are they responsible for not understanding that only certain people can dump branding on certain walls? Advertising is branding and expression of the company. Graffiti is self-branding and self-expression of the individual. Does that make it wrong? The bit about graffiti as self-branding invoked a random, and not entirely ... Read full entry

Brad Howarth on comments by Mark Pesce and Mark Goldman at the Future of Media Summit in Sydney, yesterday. The issue as I see it however is that there are always two competing forces - meeting the needs of the consumer for good content, and meeting the needs of the advertiser to reach an audience. In the era of free-to-air television the equation is heavily weighted ... Read full entry

This week's "say what" moment is courtesy of Microsoft marketing executive, Brad Brooks, speaking about an advertising campaign intended to restore consumer confidence in the Windows Vista operating system, who is quoted as saying "software out there is made to be compatible with your whole life." "We've got a pretty noisy competitor out there," Brooks said of Apple whose "I'm a Mac... and I'm a PC," commercials criticize Windows ... Read full entry

The future of advertising by Maki at Dosh Dosh, includes billboards that will photograph people who look the ads they feature, and even display ads based on the perceived gender and demographics of a viewer. A billboard located at the street corner is watching you. A camera is embedded in the billboard and a computer analyzes the people who pass by it. It tells the advertiser how many people ... Read full entry

I guess an ad for tortilla chips is better than ads for Big Brother or Sex in the City, and who knows, the denizens of the Ursa Major star system, where the ad was targeted, may send a scout ship our way to sample these tortilla chip things. It could be the longest commercial break in history. Over a six-hour period this morning, high-powered radars in the Arctic Circle ... Read full entry

I didn't really want to mention the Sex and the City movie here (there's plenty of coverage elsewhere I'm sure...), but MySweetHeartTheFlirt insisted. After all, it's bad enough I'll have to see it... unless of course I can pull off a Houdini like escape beforehand. Anyway, aside from the girls, you'll also see approximately 70 brands, whether they be shops, cars, computers, or various (and many) other consumer products, ... Read full entry

Fun with brands - Jane's Brand-timeline Portrait An advertising account executive presents a typical Friday in her life by way of the logos of the various foods, software, computers, and various other products she uses or utilises. All that talk about brand perception got me thinking about how brands affect our daily lives. Have you ever thought about how many brands you use in a typical day? Well I did ... Read full entry

Social networking applications can pose security risks Your Facebook profile may be set to private, and you only accept friend requests from people you actually know, but still your private data can fall into the hands of undesirables by way of... applications. While the mind boggles at what might be here, one result of application harvested personal information appears to be targeted advertising, and high precision ad targeting at that. Jonathan Gaugler, ... Read full entry

Marisa Schmidt, a "couple therapist" has some super cool business cards which are bound to make her stand out from others in her field. Marriage counselling anyone? Via Advertising/Design Goodness.

Net Video Ads: Attention Vs. Annoyance Television viewers are apparently far more partial to adverts than those watching online video clips, who tend to try and avoid them. This is posing a creative challenge for advertisers trying to find a way to make more video clip viewers take notice of ads, rather than ignore them. "Users love free content and advertisers love to fill up every minute and pixel with the messaging, ... Read full entry