This Week in Aducation, October 23 October 27, 2009

Welcome back to “This Week in Aducation.” This week, in an industry-news-oriented batch of articles, Bob Garfield tears down a Miracle Whip advertising campaign, agencies bite back as client procurement teams try to juice raisins, and accountability trumps creativity during many agency selection processes. It’s an AdAge Extravaganza This Week in Aducation.

1. If Miracle Whip is Rebellious to You, You May Be a Douche Bag: Bob Garfield, Advertising’s loveable arch nemesis, comments on a few ad campaigns which he considers to be total baloney. He focuses on Mircale Whip’s new campaign which tries to position the mayonnaise as some kind of rebellion symbol by giving it a defiant, gen y edge. If many others share this wundercritic’s point of view, then it speaks volumes for the effects of a branding campaign that tries to completely reverse a mass audience’s perception of its product in one fell swoop.
2. The Dilemma of Measurement and Accountability: Phil Johnson discusses a trend among client-side businesses toward reprioritizing the characteristics of “winning agencies.” It seems that creativity and ingenuity are no longer the most effective points of differentiation for ad agencies, but instead, accountability and measurability are taking their places.
3. Fed-Up Shops Pitch a Fit at Procurement: Rupal Perekh represents a mass of agencies who are extremely upset by the number of RFPs they are receiving which focus on cost more than strategy. Even more interesting is the number of empassioned comments which reflect his sentiment exactly.

This Week in Aducation, October 9 October 9, 2009

I’m only including two resources in this installment. This is because the first one is long and contains numerous links which are very interesting, but is also an extremely important read for those of us in the digital advertising world. The second one is an interesting research brief which is simply a quick, helpful read.

1. Brand Measurement: Analytics and Metrics for Branding Campaigns: This is a post from Avinash Kaushik’s blog, Occam’s Razor. Mr. Kaushik wrote the book we’re reading in my Digital Metrics class and has had a long, illustrious career in web analytics. In my honest opinion, everyone in the world of digital measurement should read this blog once a day. And his book.
2. Where the Ads Are: This is the MediaPost research brief I mentioned above. It goes into detail about the importance of social media to advertisers. The sphere is getting more crowded as companies neglect other media for its sake.