outsider art

In New York, street performance can provide a lucrative living, if you know where to perform. And when. The Met Museum closes at 5:30 on Thursdays. At which point its steps turn into an impromptu theater packed with a willing audience of tourists, art buffs and pedicab drivers waiting to ferry them.

breakfasts of champion art directors

These sketches were tissue roughs for Post ceral boxes, created back when art directors could draw, though it wasn't called drawing then (illustrators did that) it was "comping", and required unlimited exposure to toxic markers and other items now stocked only in The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies. 

Guess "Digits" didn't make it out of focus group testing. Cannibals being a limited niche market and all. From the treasure troves of Dan Goodsell who displays more from his impressive collection here.

overpromise of metrics

There's a new app that purports to analyze your headline. Just feed in your line (20 words or less) and the analyzer digests it, swirls it around and spits out numbers that show how well it will resonate with consumers.

If you make ads for a living, or know people who do, you probably agree that this idea is ludicrous. Too much about writing a headline is immeasurable. How it plays off the visual, for starters. "Lemon" wouldn't have worked nearly so well if it had appeared for Sunkist, over a shot of a lemon.

The headline analyzer is, to me, a perfect example of the overpromise of metrics.

Metrics has become a big part of the ad business lately because so much of the business is shifting online. The overall budget for digital is predicted to double in five years while that for  traditional (you guessed it) is predicted to flatten. Part of the reason for this shift is metrics. "You can track it!" can sound awfully persuasive to brand managers wondering (as the saying goes) which half of their ad budget they're throwing away.

Ad Contrarian crankily observes that advertising now consists of two very different disciplines: (1) making ads and (2) making justification for ads. Ironically, the latter may ultimately prove more remunerative. A torrent of analytic apps are now available and many more are in beta, measuring not only rudimentary CTR and conversion rates but dwell time, trending, sentiment, chatter, shareability, influence. Sure, those analytics tell us something. But what they tell us depends largely on what we want to hear. Numbers can be made to say almost anything, as anyone who's been audited by the IRS knows. 

That's not to say that metrics aren't valuable. For one thing, they're often still key in selling clients on the idea of doing digital advertising, just as response rates once convinced them of the worth of doing direct. What analytics turns up can be endlessly fascinating. But, curious, isn't it, how often stats prove irrelevant, failing to influence marketing behavior. Managers can be quick to cite data when it supports their thinking; just as quick, if it doesn't, to explain it away. 

Which, imo, is the way it should be. Advertising is, and always will be, more art than science. Because its success depends on human persuasion, which has required skills of creativity since Eve sold the apple. Data can help point up what you should say, but how you should say it (and where and when) is an art. If advertising were a science, every widget-maker with a headline analyzer would be a global success.

how to know you're not in Manhattan

You find jumbo paks of lowbrow snacks in a grocery store . You never see shelves stocked like this in my neighborhood. Truffles? Yes. Organic popcorn? Twelve brands. Kumquats? Year round. But just try and find pancake pockets or peppermint stick ice cream or peanut butter with jelly swirled inside the jar. Pigs in a blanket? Try a specialty store. No wonder Manhattan was just found to be the skinniest place in the nation. (Not that all of us are so svelte. I was recently intrigued by a new way to see yourself thinner. In a mere 30 seconds!) 

One reason there are fewer supersize people is: no supersize groceries. Not that superstores haven't tried to move in. Target got close by setting up shop in a boat. Wal-Mart flexed its muscles here a few years ago but were soundly pummelled by union leaders railing against undercutting and community activists calling it a blight on their neighborhood. Wal-Mart threw up its hands and retreated to a suburb two miles away. Where bargain-starved customers were so glad to receive it, they stampeded the doors and trampled a Wal-Mart worker to death.

friday flashback: 1958 Kodak industrial

No one knows the exact origin of this marvelous 1958 documentary "How Film is Made." According to Dutch photographer Marco Boeringa who helped bring it into this century, it may have been an instructional for new Kodak employees and was probably used as a promotional to the general public as well. (Perhaps Don Draper viewed it in preparation for that Kodak pitch.) Unfortunately, the English soundtrack on the original 16mm was lost when it was dubbed in Dutch, probably in the early 60s. But if this hadn't happened, we'd have missed amusing subtitles such as "An invisible but extremely important characteristic of your film is it's purity and cleanliness." 




found on Twitter via @polaroidgirl and @holgajen

how WD-40 got its name

You probably never wondered where the name WD-40 came from, as it's one of those ubiquitous products, found in 80 percent of American homes, invisible until you need it for one of its 2000 uses.

As you might guess, it wasn't named by a copywriter. In 1953, scientists working for the Rocket Chemical Company (shades of George Jetson) were looking for a formula to prevent corrosion in missiles sent into space. They'd tried 39 formulas for water displacement until hitting paydirt on the 40th try. Apparently, having used up all their powers of invention on R&D, they named it using a code from their lab notes.

The stuff worked so well, employees began sneaking it home and soon they were selling 45 cases a day out of their car trunks to hardware and sporting goods stores. In 1969, a marketer took over the company and turned the brand into a household name. John S. Barry convinced the scientist management team to allow for an ad budget and free sampling: he sent 10,000 cans every month to soldiers in Viet Nam, grooming an army of loyal lifetime users. Annual sales increased from $2 million in 1970 to $91 million in 1990. 

Mr. Barry passed away recently, taking the formula for WD-40 to his grave. He insisted that the company never patent the product in order to avoid having to disclose the ingredients publicly. But rumors that it's fish oil are apparently unfounded. 

blast from the past (don't forget your luggage)

My husband brought in the paper this morning and I had a disorienting moment when I saw the front page laid out on the table. All the news fit to print on 7/21/69. First 3 pages were reprinted and inserted into subscriber copies, courtesy of Louis Vuitton.

What most interested me weren't the headlines which have been screaming from newstands for weeks. It was what was set in small type: the price of the paper (ten cents),  the poem on the front page ("Voyage to the Moon" by Archibald MacLeish) (Can you imagine a poem printed on the front page today?) and the description of the moon from Buzz Aldrin, who took that giant step right after Armstrong: "Magnificent desolation." 

I appreciated that interruptive ad content was kept to a minimum, limited mostly to a portrait of former spaceriders by Annie Liebowitz, with a link to a rather engaging website in which the legends are interviewed and conversation is encouraged. Smart marketing, Ogilvy.

And if the creative team over there is looking to extend, the journeys of Hemingway might be a good fit. It's just come out that he found his famous lost notebooks in a stored trunk he'd forgotten about, a trunk that Louis Vuitton custom made for him in the 1920s.