Random commercial

Spend this amount, get elected?

Obama’s ad spending in top tier
Posted: 02:32 PM ET

(CNN) — Presidential candidates are sold in much the same way a new product is: with an expensive, flashy, and ubiquitous television campaign.

And according to advertising figures provided by Campaign Media Analysis Group, CNN’s consultant on ad spending, Barack Obama’s campaign has spent more money selling its candidate on television than most major brand name companies do selling their products.

The Illinois senator’s campaign is projected to have spent $250 million on ads in the past four months — a number that is equivalent to $750 million in a full year. Only AT&T, with a yearly advertising budget of about $1.3 billion, and Verizon, which shells out $950 million a year on ads, spends more than the Democratic presidential nominee. Most major companies spend far less, including McDonald’s ($588 million), Sprint PCS ($482 million) and T-Mobile ($404 million).

John McCain is projected to have spent about $110 million since the general election began.

–From CNN’s Alexander Mooney

Are Microsoft and Crispin copycats?

Microsoft's new ad campaign is titled "Life Takes Vista". Sound familiar? Back in February, Visa was rebranded with "Life Takes Visa". The AOR (agency of record) for Microsoft Windows is Crispin Porter + Bogusky while the AOR for Visa is TBWA\Chiat\Day.

Coincidentally, this is round two of Crispins clients directly-or indirectly-taking on TBWA\C\Ds clients. Apple is a client of TBWA\C\D. The first round was the I'm a PC vs. I'm a Mac ads.



Thanks to Lornie for the link.

update: I'd like to apologize to The Ranch readers for not verifying "Lornie" and the authenticity of the information before posting it. I'm assuming that's a basic rule of journalism.

Free PS brushes

From Austin-based Nathan Brown. Download these high quality brushes here. Be sure to click on "Related Posts" as well.

Burma PSA

Great idea. Even better execution.


CRISIS IN BURMA from Scott Denton on Vimeo.

Credits
Client: MTV/Burma Arts Board
Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Amsterdam
ECD/Copywriter: Carl Le Blond
Agency Producer: Brenda Bentz van den Berg
Production Company: Shilo, HANraHAN
Director: Shilo
Creative Director (Shilo): Andre Stringer, Jose Gomez

37 pictures the world must see

“I’m working on a story that the world needs to know about. I wish for you to help me break it, in a way that provides spectacular proof of the power of news photography in the digital age.”
-James Nachtwey

from TED e-newsletter.

The Hidden Cost of War

Very nice motion graphics and message. It reminds me of another anti-Iraq war motion graphics video that links the war to America's quest for oil that's on ihaveanidea. Does anyone know what i'm referring to?

Via It's Nice That and GOOD magazine.

TAG in Dallas

"A group of Texas Advertising students will be making a trip to Dallas to tour some ad agencies. On Thursday, TAG is hosting a happy hour. We'd love for you join us! Feel free to extend this invite to others (yes, even non-Texas grads!)

October 2, 2008 | 6-8 p.m.
Texas Land and Cattle | 3130 Lemmon Ave. Dallas, TX 75204
Appetizers and drinks will be provided!"

Levis 501 and Toyota short films

Levis UK has produced some HD short films. Warning: some of the short films are NSFW*. While the concept is interesting and very well-produced, I prefer it when the logo and company mention is more subtle i.e. Toyota's new campaign for the Tundra pickup featuring small town high school football teams.



*Not Safe For Work.

Turning your creativity off can be good for you

Tom Monahan is the founder and former ECD of Leonard/Monahan and now runs a creative consulting firm called Before and After. He's also the author of the best-selling Do It Yourself Lobotomy which interestingly enough you can read for free at Google Books.

There's a post on the Before and After blog about how turning off your creativity can allow you to be more creative.

I though this excerpt was insightful and it also echoes what Sean, Matt, and Maria taught us in Portfolio classes. I remember Sean's syllabus instructing us to watch movies, watch TV, read magazines, watch people at the mall (but not in a creepy way).

When you’re working on a problem head on, so to speak, it’s your conscious mind that’s doing virtually all of the work. Your conscious mind is what you’re processing on the conscious level - mostly your observations, knowledge and recollections. Even when you’re trying to imagine new things, what’s the raw material for the new thoughts? Stuff you know. I mean, you can only think about what you know, right?

Well, the conscious mind is quite disciplined by nature. It likes order. It likes to make sense of everything. This is a good thing most of the time. It keeps you on he right side of the road when you’re driving. It helps you deliver your work on time. But when you’re using this orderly machine to find new ideas, yes it can serve you, but it’s like a car in perfect alignment, whether you’re steering or not, it tends to go where it’s pointed. So your thoughts tend to be linear, therefore predictable.

There’s another side of your mind that is a lot less disciplined, much less predictable. That’s your subconscious mind. Where we can only process a mere seven or eight thousand bits of data a minute on the conscious level, we are processing literally billions of bits of data on the subconscious level at any given moment. That’s an absolutely immense well of possibilities to tap into...

Bringing this back to the main topic of this article - the on/of method of thinking - when you’re “not” thinking about something consciously your subconscious mind is free to toss around some ideas on the subject in that gigantic thought auger where anything goes. So when you’re not using the conscious linear method you’re simply more likely to have fresh combinations of data that materialize as new thoughts.