The Ad Contrarian

This piece appeared in Campaign Magazine UK one week after the riot at the Capitol in Washington DC There is nothing ambiguous about the role the marketing and advertising industry has played i...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2021/09/how-adtech-helped-to-radicalize-us.html

The recent alarming revelations of Russian hacking of 250 US Government agencies, which went undetected by our most sophisticated cybersecurity defenses including the military’s Cyber Command, ...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-inescapable-logic-of-ad-fraud.html

Last week I wrote a post that posed the question, "Is Creative Advertising Really More Effective?"  As someone who has been a lifelong advocate for the power of creativity in advertising, I a...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2020/12/part-2-is-creative-advertising-really.html

As long as I've been in the advertising business there has been a very large question smoldering under the surface of my skin: Does advertising that we deem to be more creative actually produce b...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2020/12/is-creative-advertising-really-more.html

 Today I am repeating my annual Thanksgiving post which I have run for many years. And, yes, that crack about Trump was there years before anyone could have imagined... Thanksgiving is my kind ...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2020/11/no-app-for-gratitude.html

Loudmouth ad weasels like me are always going off on the need for advertisers to abandon their addiction to short term-ism and focus their attention on the long term imperative of building their ...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-luxury-of-strategy.html

There was a time, not that long ago, when advertisers could reach just about everyone pretty easily. All it took was a lot of money and a simple media buy on a handful of TV, radio, and print out...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-mystery-of-modern-media.html

"By 2017, American companies had put at least $2.6 trillion into offshore tax shelters...Nike had $12.2 billion.... The company estimates that if its $12.2 billion was repatriated to the U.S., it...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2020/06/carnival-of-hypocrisy.html

I was rummaging through old blog posts and came upon this one from almost 13 years ago. Since no one read my blog 13 years ago, and I liked this post, I thought I'd re-post it. An article by Mal...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2020/04/puzzles-and-mysteries.html

I wrote this a few days ago but didn't post it because I felt uncomfortable about posting non-positive things during this unpleasant period.  However, after reading the great Mark Ritson's colum...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-seriously-imperfect-species.html

I sometimes listen to branding "experts" talk and wonder if they live on the same planet I do. I hear them say... Consumers want to “join the conversation” about brands. Consumers want to c...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2020/03/branding-and-grandstanding.html

For a good part of human history food didn't taste so good. That's why spices from the Far East were such treasured commodities in the West. In the seventeenth century sugar imported from New ...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2020/02/sugar-and-technology.html

I like to think of my new book, Advertising For Skeptics, as an undiluted bounty of heretical, unpopular, and aberrant thoughts about our industry. It is now available at Amazon . The past de...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2020/02/decade-of-delusion.html

One of the biggest dangers successful brands face is falling into the hands of dumbass marketers. Successful brands are usually created by an inscrutable recipe of hard work, good product idea...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2020/02/looking-for-problems.html

For the past couple of years, the advertising industry has been fixated on two themes: the creative side of the business has been preoccupied with "storytelling," and the media side has been hoo...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2020/02/storytelling-or-personalization-pick-one.html

Here are 29 ways the "move fast and break things" jerk-offs soiled our lives in 2019. 1. January : It was discovered that Facebook-owned WhatsApp was being used to spread illegal child pornogra...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2020/01/facebooks-year-of-disgrace.html

We have double torture this year. Not only are we ending a year, we're also ending a decade (pettifogging killjoys will take great pains to instruct us that the decade doesn't technically end un...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2019/12/imbecile-of-decade.html

It's holiday season which means it's time to give awards for the "_______ of the Year" Every advertising and marketing organization, publication, and media interest group is giving awards to ...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-annual-invisible-advertising-awards.html

Have you ever wondered why the highly touted marketing miracles never seem to work for you? Stick around. In recent years, copywriters, "branding" experts, "strategic" thinkers, and advertisin...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2019/12/advertisings-untold-stories.html

Let's do a little thought experiment. You've been driving all morning on a two-lane highway and you're getting hungry. You come to the small town of Nowheresville and at the intersection there ...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-problem-with-bubbas-burgers.html

Today I am repeating my annual Thanksgiving post which I have run for many years. And, yes, that crack about Trump was there years before anyone could have imagined... Thanksgiving is my kind o...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2019/11/no-app-for-gratitude.html

This week an old piece of mine from one of my books got some attention on Twitter when someone posted it. I decided to update it and repost it today. One of our axioms here at The Ad Contrari...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-six-stages-of-digital-delusion.html

Greg Stern is Chair of the 4As. Unfortunately for Stern, his chairmanship has coincided with the most unsettling, corrupt, and damaging era in the history of the ad industry. In recent years, ...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2019/11/greg-stern-needs-to-apologize.html

Email was fun, but we can do better. It's time for us to disrupt the entire personal communication ecosystem. We need to upgrade to fmail. Email was good for two types of things: 1. Receiv...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2019/11/upgrading-from-email-to-fmail.html

There's a very old business gag about losing money on every sale but making it up on volume. While the premise of losing on every transaction but making up for it with lots of transactions may...

http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2019/11/making-it-up-on-volume.html