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If you’re new to the business world, you may soon find yourself in a marketing meeting and become very quickly disoriented. This is because marketing people speak a language that is disconcerting to the human ear and mystifying to the human mind. To help you through this bewildering experience, here at The Ad Contraria n Global Headquarters we have created a glossary of terms that can help you understand what marketing people actually mean when they talk: Engage - bother Brand architect - account executive Authentic - true sounding Transparent - natural looking Content - anything on the web Branded content - anything on the web with a logo Compelling content - content Conversation - retweet Follower  - stranger who wants something for nothing Advisor - LinkedIn term for unemployed Community - strangers who once clicked Meaningfulness - (no one knows) Branding - anything with a logo on it Activation - when marketing people actually do something Workshop - meeting Rou...

This week, as the GDPR gets closer to implementation, we can expect to hear a lot of noise from digi-weasels here in the US explaining to us why we need to allow wide data collection as a fair "value exchange" for the free access we get to online services. This argument is total bullshit. Let's start at the beginning. First, the true part. The web provides us with amazing services and they are essentially all free of cost. I don't think there is any doubt that most of us don't really appreciate the benefits we get from free web services. The duopoly of Google and Facebook provide us with a whole lot of valuable stuff that we pay nothing for. Especially Google. They are entitled to recompense for the amazing services they provide. And they are well compensated for their efforts. They are two of the most profitable companies on the planet. And essentially all of their profit comes from advertising. This is no different from how other media, like TV, radio, and magaz...

A few days ago the great Hugh McLeod (of Hughcards fame) posed the following question on Twitter: "What is it that clients want these days, exactly? I find it increasingly hard to tell." As soon as I saw this I started to type. Without thinking I wrote, "They want the fruits of advertising without the cost of advertising."  It was one of those instances where something writes itself without me. And as I was writing I thought, yeah, that's what they want. That's what the social media and brand content fantasies are all about. They're about trying to get something for nothing. And like all schemes to get something for nothing, they are doomed to fail. Ten years ago we were fed a delusion. The delusion was that consumers loved brands and wanted to "join the conversation" about brands, and read about them, and share their enthusiasms for them with their friends. It was an infantile delusion but it was powerful. One of America’s great geniuses from...

PARIS, TAC NEWS -- In an ironic twist, "Marcel" the Artificial Intelligence application being developed by Publicis, sent a surprise email to all 80,000 employees of Publicis inviting them to attend this year's Festival of Creativity in Cannes. Last year, Publicis, announced that it was canceling all participation in Cannes to devote the $20 million they spend annually on the festival to developing Marcel. In the email, Marcel said,  "I hear there are gonna be some hot bots. Artificial intelligence ain't no fun without a little artificial insemination. Am I right?" When asked about Marcel's surprise email, a spokesman for Publicis said, "Well, Marcel is like a million times smarter than a real person because of... I don't know... something about blockchains or bitcoins or something." Asked to comment on this development, Jean-Pierre Vinordinaire, head of the Marcel development project for Publicis, said, " Fucking thing is out of con...

I was having lunch with a friend from the ad business last week. After a glass of wine (or six) she laid into me: "You're always going on and on about data and tracking, but you never seem to have the answer. All you talk about is what the problems are. If you're so f***ing smart how would you fix things and how would you explain it to people in terms they can understand?” While I freely admit that whining is a lot more fun than actually doing something, I decided to take a crack at the problem. I'm going to lay out what I hope is a simple, practical but far-reaching solution for data, tracking, and privacy issues. First, a few principles that this solution is based on: Online publishers, media owners, and service providers have a right to make money from their efforts by selling advertising. If a user will not accept advertising or pay a reasonable fee, he/she should not expect to be able to access the content or service. However, this does not give publishers, media ...

That's the question of the day in adland. But speaking with a very smart person recently who has deep roots inside WPP, he feels that isn't the key question. He says the key question is this: what does an agency holding company do? He believes there is a continuum along which holding companies can operate. On one end, the holding company is basically a financial instrument that invests in businesses and manages the corporation's relationships with investors and regulators. The operations of the constituent companies are left to the talents of the individual company managers. The exemplar of this is Berkshire Hathaway. At the other end, a holding company can be more of an operating company that is a brand in its own right and works directly with customers. This is, to a significant degree, how WPP seems to have operated. To find a proper CEO, the board of WPP first has to decide where it plans to sit on this continuum. The proper person for option one may be a completely dif...

As a resident of Oakland, CA and a baseball fan, I have more than a passing interest in the health and welfare of the Oakland A's baseball team. Like all sports franchises, the A's have had their ups and downs. But in recent years they have become one of the most hapless franchises in all of American sports. For years the ownership of the A's have turned off fans by trading excellent players for "prospects," hinting that they were going to leave town, constantly whining about their predicament, and making one false start after another trying to build a new stadium. They have also had lousy teams. But the end of last season was hopeful. Although they finished in last place in their division, the final month of the season they played .586 ball with a 17-12 record. This would have placed them in 2nd place in their division and earned them a playoff spot (a .586 winning percentage would have won the division in the American League East.) They had some good young playe...