October 30th 2019
Sometimes termed Gay Christmas, Halloween is all about malfeasance. Here are some new additions to our bad transit advertising collection which all seem to end up somewhere unexpectedly sexy, nasy or gross. Have a great Halloween, and I hope you have fun laughing at the ads we pass every day.
April 3rd 2016
Sure, Google is full of exciting projects – but how about using design to fix ‘the money door’ which drives literally all of its current profits? Wouldn’t that be at least as exciting as designing concepts for markets that don’t yet exist? If your design work follows the money or user frustration – then, at Google, all roads leads to Adwords.
December 18th 2015
My friend Alan asked, “have you seen that watch ad with Travolta? There are so many real and inferred meanings in its hard to even know what its about.” Yep, from NASA to Idina Menzel, here’s a not too serious look at an ad we both have seen too much.
November 10th 2015
Things can get crazy when ads end up on the subway. Here Suffolk University, Blue Cross and Bernie and Phyl’s all have put ads out there in ways that I suspect their print teams would have done more deftly.
June 15th 2015
The Apple Watch is a watershed product because it is a masterful consumerization of technology, and it begins to show how industries and our lives may change living among an Internet of Things.
February 2nd 2015
Nationwide insurance ran an ad that children die of preventable accidents couldn’t have been worse placed without being a parody. The sad thing is their long form ad (not aired on the Bowl) got it right.
February 1st 2015
Budweiser sponsors the NFL, a branded suite in a bordello and ads that sell their values but not their beer. This is how a half billion dollar ad budget ends up getting only a reported 4% share of drinkers 21 – 27. What’s up with that?
October 21st 2014
When we talk about “killing good ideas” this ad by the College Republicans should be exhibit A. Its a clever premise, but it does more harm than good even before the scathing counter-parody by Steven Colbert.
September 7th 2014
Advertising is a merging of customer experience, public relations, and art. But rather than ennobling clients, these brands have ads that suggest their clients are perhaps a bit lacking. Our clients are sub-standard, so is our reward programEnterprise’s customer experience is a one I hold up as an example at conferences on service design, but […]
April 25th 2014
Evil or not, Google is fearsome. Its staff, Priceline, Expedia and TripAdvisor know this. Sure they still work with Google. That’s the point — we’re most vulnerable to those we depend on and perhaps already trust too much.
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