New Orleans is a great invention. The music, the food, and the people all combine to form this rich amalgamation—a unique stew of so many distinct and ultimately complimentary cultures. New Orleans teaches us that all culture is best when you mix things up. The town forces us to throw away our preconceived generalizations, and enjoy.
Wherever we go in the world, we find one recurring truth, and that is, people everywhere are generous, proud, and true. They will go out of their way to show off their town, and nowhere …

In his terrific book Proust was a Neuroscientist, Jonah Lehrer chronicles the premier of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Sergei Diaghilev, the impresario of the Ballets Russes, commissioned Stravinsky, knowing that he would create a work that would be so shockingly new that it would make both of them famous, if not infamous. He knew that art’s reason to be is to elicit reaction. And, he knew that a chord is capable of inciting an explosive reaction simply by changing one note, the way stable molecules can become volatile with …

Ever seen advertising so bad that you want to beat it up but you can’t because it’s advertising and it can’t fight back because it has no fists, no weapons and it’s not really alive so why bother?
I call that Nickelback advertising because every time I hear a song by that band , I want to beat it up. But I can’t because it only a song and it can’t really fight back for all the reasons I just described.
Here’s where I need help. How do I tell people at …

Reading the adland trade press gets tiresome sometimes.
Fear! Scream! Panic!
Everything is changing!
Such ridiculous hype, all in the name of attracting fearful readers.
Everything is not changing.
Technology is changing. Communication forms are changing.
But guess what?
Those things have always been in a state of change.
Ever hear of a kooky little thing called the Industrial Revolution? Or Morse Code?
What is not changing – despite what the shills who make their money consulting or publishing business books would have you believe – are people.
Years and years and years ago – when the Commodore 64 was …

In adland’s creative departments, if creativity is king then originality is most certainly queen.
You may come up with a brilliant creative answer to a brief completely, utterly and 100% honestly unaware that the same idea was used in Argentina in 1982.
It is truly your own original idea and it is dead.
If your Creative Director doesn’t say so then the community at large will.
It’s silly given that your consumer audience will neither know nor care that the same ad idea had already been done in a faraway land – originality has …

Listening to the re-release of the Stones’ Exile on Main Street I am reminded of two things: a) how incredibly awesome a record it is, and b) what suck-ass reviews it received at the time of its original release.
Rarely, it seems, is great and important work recognized as such in its own time.
(Witness the work and lives of so many of the great masters of painting if you need proof.)
So here is an Oscar prediction for the future, based on the immediate past.
I hadn’t yet seen this year’s winner, The …

When I first started doing ads, I would do my job like a 10-year old. Magic markers and construction paper. One time I went into a conference room to show the ideas I had for Hanes. I brought in a boom box and played the Kiss song, I Love It Loud. The chorus goes “Heeeeeeeeeey, yeah.” And I thought it would be cool if Hanes made a version going “Haaaaaaaaaaanes.” My creative director threw an empty Diet Coke can at me upon hearing this idea. That was the punishment for …

The brief for my next campaign is to get someone this pumped about IP telephony.

- Chris Soskin

jam it on the one……
(Video embedded)

- Shannon McGlothin

Enjoy.
http://rapradar.com/2009/09/23/dj-jazzy-jeff-vs-ll-cool-js-im-bad/ (Seriously, click, it’s awesome).