Once again, brands that thought they could borrow some magic from a celebrity find themselves swimming in confusion and controversy, like poor Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer's Apprentice . From AdAge : Within hours, Mr. Armstrong's endorsement empire fell apart as Anheuser-Busch, Trek, Easton-Bell Sports, 24-Hour Fitness, Honey Stinger, Oakley and other firms dumped the cancer survivor, even as some pledged to continue support of his Livestrong Foundation. Nike's livid. The US Postal Service is dismayed. I'm not at all surprised. Celebrity endorsements are a double-edged sword for brands. When the celebrity is hot and you're slicing the competition into prosciutto, life is good. When the celebrity trips and the brand falls on that sword, well, not so good. The foibles of even the most upright-seeming celebrities are eventually exposed and magnified by social media and the Internet, association with stars is a minefield for brands. Eventually someone's
I am continuously impressed, to this day, by the clarity and ingenuity of visual expression by Swiss designers. A quick visit to www.helveticbrands.ch provides a dose of inspiration for any identity designer who is stuck in a rut. And a review of the work of 60s Modernist Josef Muller-Brockmann not only inspires, but provides a whiff of nostalgia at the same time. It's an intoxicating combo. Muller-Brockmann did a lot of commercial work for clients such as IBM, but it's his public service announcement work that really sings the siren song for me. I imagine he did it for either nothing or next-to-nothing monetarily, but clearly his vision for the better world he was helping to create shines through, something all companies should strive to accomplish through the creative expressions of their brand .
In Ad Age today : Paul Leys, director of Ignition Factory East at Omnicom Group's OMD, said agencies and marketers alike have gotten a lot of mileage out of what's happened in the smartphone sector and believes e-reader will soon be offering up the same opportunities. "The platform is showing a lot of innovation for the print industry -- how you can read magazines and how social can be integrated," he said. "Just imagine being able to read GQ and see someone else on the other side of the country reading the same article at the same time and being able talk to them about it. Suddenly there's a different social aspect being added to e-readers. We don't know exactly what this aspect will be yet, but we are excited as there continues to be innovation in the platform." I have long believed that some sort of flexible, portable, and highly useful eReader would eventually come about, and with it a revolution in how we lived and worked. I've always
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