John Kuraoka, freelance advertising copywriter

www.kuraoka.com
(619) 465-6100
Ad Blog: news and views about advertising, branding, marketing, and copywriting
October, 2006

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October 31, 2006
We’re just one week away from Election Day, and the political advertising is in full swing. Here’s an article from the front page of my hometown San Diego Union-Tribune (CA), about automated promotional phone calls:
Advertising copywriter blog link

It’s easy to understand the economics of it; after all, it’s hard to resist reaching potential customers for 4-6 cents apiece. But you also can see why this particular medium, thankfully, hasn’t caught on.

First, recipients resent the calls. Nothing like irritating a potential customer to start the persuasive process, eh? Second, there’s apparently no hard research indicating whether people even listen to the calls, let alone act upon them. Third, there’s a good deal of anecdotal evidence pointing to the conclusion that people don’t remember the point of the message even when they do listen.

As much as we hate it, this isn’t a medium that needs to be regulated or legislated against. Because we’ve already decided to ignore it.

Hey, that’s a good bad line: “A medium deplored is a medium ignored.”
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October 30, 2006
User-generated video content has evolved into a giant online talent show. Here’s the story, from Mediaweek (NY):
Advertising copywriter blog link

Although it’s fun to see some of the freshest creative stuff in the world, this does not bode well for advertisers hoping to cash in on the user-generated content craze. Why? Because it means that participating users are increasingly in it for themselves – for the kudos, the recognition, the opportunity to go on to bigger and better things. In short, being exactly what award-winning ad agencies are frequently accused of being, only without the accountability. After all, you can’t fire your customers.

This works, when both parties gain. This breaks down, when it’s just a bolt-on tactic to a strategy that isn’t inherently conducive to user input and inter-user dialog. In other words, either you’ve got a brand community, with the means to be effective as a community, or you haven’t. Most brands, including many, many successful ones, haven’t.
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October 29, 2006
This Sunday, I have a continuation from my entry on October 26, about young people deleting their MySpace pages, this one from the Washington Post (DC) via RedOrbit.com (TX):
Advertising copywriter blog link

This seems to be the hot story in the press these days. I’m reminded of the line in Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent: “... the journalists who had written him up with emotional gush would be ready to write him down with emotional indignation.” Today’s hero is tomorrow’s goat, all for the sake of selling newspapers.

Although some of this is doubtless to increased concerns about security and privacy, especially among the technologically savvy, much of it is plain old-fashioned product lifecycle. As the MySpace kids grow up, they’re moving on to FaceBook and other social network websites that they find more relevant to their evolving lifestyles.

Anyway, online social networking isn’t going anywhere. But it will fragment into more relevant forms for individual markets. As an advertiser, it pays to look for emerging networks that represent the interests of the customer community as alternatives to what I’d call mass-media social networks.
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October 27, 2006
Beer tap handles as works of art and point-of-purchase. It makes sense. Here’s the story, from the Associated Press via Yahoo! News:
Advertising copywriter blog link

Why would the brewer who had, through the whims of the marketplace, trained customers to moo for their beer ever change away from his cow’s head tap handle?  This strikes me as an example of a small business getting scared of success.

I have another one, because it just made me go “yeah!” It’s about the power of Scooby-Doo on children, from the Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA):
Advertising copywriter blog link

Oh, how I understand. My own kids (aged six and four) have never watched a Scooby-Doo cartoon in our home (we own a television, but it sees maybe a couple hours use a week). They saw one episode at their grandparent’s house, maybe a couple times, and have one book which isn’t even a favorite. But, they both instantly became experts in Scooby-Doo and friends. One book and one video being mere fodder for the imagination, they too took to creating their own stories. The characters took on a vast repertoire of powers and personalities that went far beyond the original creations.

Anyone meeting them might have been excused for thinking that they sat around watching Scooby-Doo all day, when in fact most of their time at home is spent reading, playing, making small sticks out of long ones, bug-hunting, leaf-gathering, and creating vast books and art projects with messes that go on for days.

So, three conclusions. First, kids learn instantly, which is way quicker than grown-ups do. Second, rich media experiences entrench themselves deeper and faster than any study has shown, possibly because adults simply don’t have the cognitive tools any more to grasp the speed with which children learn. And third, that this is not a bad thing, in parentally controlled doses. It doesn’t take much to achieve cultural literacy.
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October 26, 2006
It was inevitable, really: increasing numbers of users are turning away from social networking sites because of privacy concerns and spam advertising. Here’s the story, from the Wall Street Journal via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA):
Advertising copywriter blog link

Well, this is what happens when advertisers simply leap onto a bandwagon instead of trying to understand what makes it go.

However, this is also part of the channel’s growth cycle. It’s happened before, to eBay, for instance. And, significantly, nothing has happened to knock eBay back down.

What will be interesting (and critical) will be the channel’s corporate response to user complaints about or reactions against advertising. After all, much like traditional media (and unlike eBay, at least in the beginning), advertising is the primary source of revenue for MySpace and its ilk, not the users themselves. They represent a social network in name only, a true virtual creation, because if you follow the money, you quickly realize that the community is owned by others.
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October 25, 2006
The California Cheese campaign has been a rousing success, as the Golden State’s cheese production begins to close with that of “America’s Dairyland” Wisconsin. Here’s the story, from the Associated Press via Yahoo! News:
Advertising copywriter blog link

It’s neat to read this brief case history, because it shows how much deeper the effort ran than just advertising. The campaign spans 25 years, beginning with teaching cheese-making to dairy farmers and culminating in ever-increasing sales.

And, almost incidentally, ads featuring happy cows. 
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October 24, 2006
Over at E-consultancy (London, UK), CEO Ashley Friedlein asks what the metrics are for so-called engagement marketing, in this blog entry:
Advertising copywriter blog link

I’d never thought about this issue because I’d been going along thinking that the metrics were the same as for any other form of advertising and marketing. You know, moving the needle in brand awareness or customer satisfaction studies, generating website traffic, improving conversion rates, increasing sales, that sort of thing. Engagement statistics aren’t the end; they’re the beginning. Most represent, to various degrees, reach and (perhaps) frequency, but by themselves tell you nothing about whether you’ve achieved anything worthwhile.

On the other hand, not every aspect of successful marketing can be measured separately, marketing itself being cumulative in the real world.
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October 23, 2006
Mountain Dew is repositioning, after deciding that the 13-year-old “extreme” position had become overused and irrelevant. Here’s the story, from BrandWeek:
Advertising copywriter blog link

I find it exciting that a major brand, and one that has gotten it mostly right over the past few years, is open to new possibilities in positioning and communication strategies. They’re looking to consumers, not the boardroom, for guidance – and that’s the smartest way to go with a youth-oriented brand.
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October 22, 2006
An entry on Saturday and Sunday? Well, I saw this in my hometown San Diego Union-Tribune (CA), and couldn’t resist pointing to it as an up-to-the-moment look at the increasingly fragmented media environment:
Advertising copywriter blog link

Key takeaways: the Internet isn’t so much replacing other media as forcing them to evolve, that one of the drivers of media innovation is the ability to track results, and that consumers are watching more television than ever before but are able to choose and control content like never before.

However, the central issue isn’t just about content. Content, as any web user knows, is everywhere. What matters, is relevant content packaged in innovative ways that offer intrinsic benefits beyond the content itself. In other words, what matters more than ever, is concept.

What a great time to be in advertising!
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October 21, 2006
Here’s a quick weekend follow-up on yesterday’s entry about Edelman and corporate PR via blogging, from WebProNews (Lexington, KY):
Advertising copywriter blog link

This pulls the pants off the Wal-Mart campaign that Mr. Edelman trumpeted in yesterday’s article. His rule, it appears, came back to bite his firm; not as much control was given up as claimed with a resultant loss of belief.

However, in the real world, does it matter? Ordinary consumers probably don’t care, and the Wal-Mart campaign was highly successful at achieving its objective of dominating the first few pages of search engine results. Will this news change that? Somehow, I doubt it.
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October 20, 2006
Corporate blogging remains a hot topic. Here’s a great Q&A session about corporate PR and blogs, with Richard Edelman of global PR giant Edelman, from the Financial Times (UK):
Advertising copywriter blog link

Here’s a key quote from Mr. Edelman:

“Blogging and social media are not guaranteed positives for the company. But that is exactly why the horizontal, peer to peer conversation is so credible. You give up control to gain belief.”

That last line is worth repeating: You give up control to gain belief. That’s not just the key to how social networking works, but it’s also the key to how to make social networking work. You have to allow yourself to be guided by your customer. That requires a tactical flexibility that just isn’t built into many corporate cultures, which is why most take a pratfall when they try to deploy new media or social networking components as part of their advertising or marketing efforts.
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October 19, 2006
I have three articles to comment on today. First, two quick follow-ups related to my entry on October 13th and my prediction last year that Lenovo would pass HP in the U.S. market in 18 months. This article from BBC News notes that HP may itself have passed Dell as the world’s #1 seller of PCs:
Advertising copywriter blog link

Sales leadership is a moving target. Yes, HP increased its share, but Dell also lost a bit. I’ll get defensively picky here, because things are so close, and point out that the BBC article is talking about global sales, and my prediction concerns US sales. Still, we definitely have a race here, and it’s an open question as to whether Lenovo can close the gap.

Next up is this quickie, also from BBC News, about Chinese companies developing brand names that are at times actionably close soundalikes to well-known Western brands:
Advertising copywriter blog link

This tactic harkens back to the cheap knock-off wristwatches of the 1960s and 1970s: you’d see dials marked “Rodex” or “Seikon” or “Umega” or “Bolova.” They generally weren’t even good enough copies to qualify as genuine counterfeits (an oxymoron, but you know what I mean). However, they obviously fooled enough buyers to make the game worthwhile, because many survive as a testament to the early days of industrialization and participation in the global marketplace. They may even become collectible, just as the Swiss fake “railroad watches” of a century ago have been cleansed of their dubious origin by time. But the world moves on, and now the Chinese watchmaking industry is making inroads under its own consumer brands (Alpha and Seagull, to name two that have taken somewhat different courses to market share). Lenovo (to ramble back on track) is pointed to at the end of the article, as a Chinese brand expanding successfully into the global market.

Finally, here’s an article from Media Week (UK), examining the rise of the media agency as creative driver for ad campaigns:
Advertising copywriter blog link

See, this is why the fragmentation of the advertising industry, while understandable considering egos, never really made sense for the client. Creative isn’t the name of a department; it’s a way of life – or, at least, of approaching the client’s problem. Hot creative shops always incorporated media innovations and tactics based on consumer behavior.

Far from being intimidated by a new source of creative thinking, I think most advertising creatives feel inspired by it. I know I do. Then again, I’ve always been something of a McLuhanite (Understanding Media). The medium is the consumer touchpoint, and it is the message environment. Here’s Marshall McLuhan: “All media are extensions of some human faculty – psychic or physical.” (The Medium is the Massage, with Quentin Fiore, 1967)

Now, how can that not be exciting and creative?
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October 18, 2006
It’s electioneering time again, when political ads dominate the media. What would happen if political advertisers took marketing lessons from traditional advertisers? Well, here are seven lessons they’d learn, from BusinessWeek.com’s Small Biz section:
Advertising copywriter blog link

The seven lessons, from Steve McKee, head of a boutique ad agency in Albuquerque, NM:

1. Don’t get so focused on the next sale that you sacrifice future business
2. In trying to reach new customers, don’t forsake your loyalists
3. Be careful when you raise the stakes
4. Don’t respond to the debate, change it
5. It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it
6. Beware the experts
7. Be aware that there is a bigger picture

These are great, and well worth reading even if only as reminders. They apply across the board to all advertising and marketing. Heck, they even apply, with teensy semantic tweaks, to everything from parenting to Life In General. It’s sound advice, to which I can add but two words: take it!
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October 17, 2006
Today I have something of a continuation from yesterday’s entry about targeting the market. This article, from Media Life Magazine (Herndon, VA), discusses localized online advertising:
Advertising copywriter blog link

Yeah, yeah, another article about local search. I was reading through it to see if there was anything new, when I came across this stopper. “Borrell” is Gordon Borrell, who runs an online ad tracking firm based in Portsmouth, VA:

Another trend Borrell foresees arising is the category killer. On the national level, Amazon is a classic category killer, as is eBay.

“We think that there will be one category killer in any given market. It will be the go-to site,” which everyone visits for whatever, news, local events, classifieds. It could be a newspaper site or a TV station site, or an independent, online-only site. It’s already happening in Boston and San Diego.

To the extent that it’s relevant to consumers, the San Diego online media market is still very much up for grabs.
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October 16, 2006
In pay-per-click advertising, targeting is everything, right? Well, yes and no. Here’s a PDF summarizing the findings from a study of 400 million online ad impressions, from online ad network BlueLithium, Inc. (San Jose, CA):
Advertising copywriter blog link

The study found that within certain behavioral categories, business and finance being one of them, ads that related directly to the surrounding content had a lower click-through rate than out-of-context ads. And, out-of-context ads also had a higher conversion rate, to the tune of 9-21%.

This points to a high level of distractibility among web surfers, and goes a tiny way toward validating the old mass-media format. More important (as a copywriter, anyway), it proves the interruptive appeal of an unexpected concept, and the value of having a strong selling process built into the online experience.

You can target an individual through creative as well as through media.
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October 13, 2006
Prediction update: a little over a year ago (October 2 2005), I predicted that Chinese computer brand Lenovo would knock off HP to challenge Dell in the U.S. market in 18 months. How is Lenovo doing, with less than six months to go? Here are the latest numbers, from the Dow Jones newswire via NASDAQ.com (NY):
Advertising copywriter blog link

There have been branding missteps, but dumping the IBM name early was not one of them (see my Ad Blog entry from six months ago, on April 12 2006). Lenovo correctly chose to invest in building its own brand, which meant the IBM logo had to go, the sooner the better. Furthermore, Lenovo could make a clean break knowing that the ThinkPad brand alone was strong enough to carry forward the momentum it acquired from IBM.

Missed opportunities? Oh, they abound. I think Lenovo could have better leveraged the ThinkPad and ThinkCenter brands. I think Lenovo was slow to respond to price-cutting, either by reinforcing the value of the brand or by developing and promoting comparable deals. I think Lenovo has failed to make the fullest use of the available retail channels in the U.S. while simultaneously not pushing its online sales operations as far as they should be pushed. That last one is the biggest one.

However, if Lenovo has made mis-steps, so has everyone else. HP now finds its once-sterling brand tarnished by a scandal at the very top. Sony continues to make a first-rate product with second-rate marketing support. Dell has stumbled. Gateway has all but vanished in terms of mindshare. Toshiba seems to be chugging along, the dark horse in this race, and the one I’d tag as most likely to make an effective move to counter Lenovo’s rise.

I’m standing by my prediction though. It’s a fair prediction – fair in the sense that I could be proved wrong. I think it’ll be close, very close. Which is a lot more than most marketing folks thought, a year ago.
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October 12, 2006
The use of celebrities in advertising is on the rise. Here’s a look at the trend, from The New York Times via the International Herald-Tribune:
Advertising copywriter blog link

In too many cases, the celebrity’s brand overshadows the advertiser’s brand. There’s no synergy to work with, only a coupling of a strong horse to a weak horse.

I think using a celebrity in advertising works better when the two brands are evenly matched, or, best, a skew toward the advertiser’s brand strength within the channel. A sterling example of the latter can be found in Target’s use of, say, Michael Graves or Isaac Mizrahi, applications in which the celebrity’s brand goes beyond advertising to become part of the advertiser’s brand. But now I’m talking about marketing, not just advertising.

Anyway, this all points, again, toward the wisdom of using a relevant B-list celebrity than a relevant A-lister. (For more on this approach, see my Ad Blog entries on December 20 2005 and April 11 2005.)
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October 11, 2006
A panel of top advertising executives convened in South Africa to discuss their views on agency-client relationships and big ideas. Here’s a report, from BizCommunity.com (Johannesburg, SA):
Advertising copywriter blog link

Speaking as a mere advertising copywriter, and certainly nowhere near the top of my field at that, my take is this: it’s not about the ads or the ideas. It’s about the consumers, and reaching them one-on-one with a personally relevant message in a way that gets their attention.

Sometimes, you achieve this through advertising. Sometimes you achieve this through social networking, events, or disruptive stunts. Very often, you achieve this through sustained good service, to retain the customers you have and turn them into independent brand ambassadors (or, as one panelist put it, “brand igniters”).

I like this quote, from Matthew Bull, chief creative officer of Lowe & Partners Worldwide: “The question isn’t whether or not creativity is relevant; it is the relevance of the creativity. Of course creativity sells, relevance is the key.”
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October 10, 2006
Continuing from yesterday’s entry, about slogan contests and the kinds of slogans that win them, is this award-winner from the Manassas Journal-Messenger (VA):
Advertising copywriter blog link

It’s for a historic shopping district called Old Town. There were 667 entries, 124 of which were submitted by one entrant. The winning slogan: “Old Town. New Attitude.”

That’s the kind of line that any copywriter would bang out the first few minutes of concepting and later discard, for very good reasons.

First, it sounds good, but means nothing. It’s a historic shopping district. Does “new attitude” mean that there are youth-oriented shops, a service approach makeover, or innovative marketing or tourism components? Nope. It’s the same stuff, with new people continuing it; a repositioning in word only.

Second, if tourists are generally impressed with the area (as the winner was), why on Earth would the key communication be that it now has an attitude different from that with which they fell in love? That risks walking away from the existing market while giving a new market no reason to act.

Which leads to the third reason: from a basic marketing perspective, there’s no point of difference here. A new attitude? Compared to what? The name of the place has been reduced to a mere set-up for a punch-line.

Could a professional do better? Oh yes. And probably at least 667 lines would be written - they just wouldn’t all be presented.

Would it make a difference? Probably not, and here’s why. All the merchants are behind this one. They’ve donated prizes. They’re involved. The city is involved. There’s a level of buy-in from all these key constituents that most ad agencies can only envy. So, yeah, the winning slogan lacks consumer relevance or emotional resonance. The clients in this case are happy with it, which means they’ll support it and promote it, which means it has a better chance of working than a smarter slogan that lacks the same broad support.

With slogans, success lies only partly in the concept. You also need consistent, long-term execution – and sometimes, the only way to get it is with an innocuous line.
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October 9, 2006
Kentucky has a recently minted state slogan: “Unbridled Spirit,” which locals are finding ripe for parody. Here’s the story, from The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY):
Advertising copywriter blog link

It seems to me that the slogan, which isn’t particularly good (and, as a pun, isn’t nearly bad enough), at least has the oomph to go viral a bit. That’s a good sign. It means residents are at least familiar enough with the slogan to get the joke when it’s parodied, although that could have been the result of media spending rather than creative resonance.

Also interesting, just as a cultural observation, is the jump to the entry form for the newspaper’s own contest for a Louisville city slogan. Well, non-professionals could certainly do no worse, but the results in the field might depend more on outreach and promotional support than on the quality of the line. Which is as it is with most slogans, really.
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October 6, 2006
On the one hand, this is serious; on the other, it makes me smile. The Mongolian government may register Genghis Khan as a brand that it can license worldwide. Here’s the story, from BBC News:
Advertising copywriter blog link

It seems like claiming exclusive ownership of Genghis Khan’s personal brand, however well justified, would be hard to enforce without, well, hordes of enforcers sweeping across the globe. But maybe it shouldn’t be. Goodness knows, it would be sad if Genghis Khan met the same fate as American historic icons Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, both abused shamelessly in advertising.
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October 5, 2006
Here’s a great peek into the minds of marketers, from yesterday’s Brandweek:
Advertising copywriter blog link

So what characterizes a creative marketing person? Here’s a relevant long snip:

... an ability to listen and discern; a preoccupation with the future; a skill for asking the right questions (and not being afraid to ask the wrong ones); comfort with risk, and with wielding authority; and a willingness—indeed, a zeal—to create something out of nothing. These were some of the building blocks of the marketing mind as we found them. There were, of course, so many more, and that very multiplicity was, in itself, its own factor. Marketers, we found, were literal sponges, soaking up the countless bits of social and cultural intelligence that's hurled at the masses each day in the form of everything from music to television shows, and then synthesizing them in a way that assists the development, growth and promotion of their brands.

I think the best and most-concise definition of marketing was from Lisa Hanley, brand director for Dr. Scholl’s Footwear: “How you make someone pick your product.” That’s so good I may well adopt it as my own.

On a lighter note, here’s some of the everyday detritus in my own office:

• a mannequin head and wig, desperately in need of a wash and style
• a pile of dusty awards, two of which are festooned with every “I voted” sticker I’ve gotten since moving to San Diego in 1989
• the Encyclopædia Brittanica
• a drawer full of watch parts and rudimentary watchbreaking tools
• several toy cars of varied scale, condition, and origin

I’m not sure what that says about me, besides the obvious aversion to housecleaning.
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October 4, 2006
And another one bites the dust: retail giant Wal-Mart shut down “The Hub,” its abortive attempt to cash in on the social networking trend. Here’s a brief obituary for the service, from PC Magazine via Yahoo! News:
Advertising copywriter blog link

Just like ESPN and its closed mobile phone/information/entertainment service (see September 28), this is another example of a large company trying to catch the wave and wiping out. The Hub was, to all appearances now, a MySpace with no credibility. And credibility is the metric by which a social networking component is measured by users.

Again, a good idea, cut short for lack of tactical planning.
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October 3, 2006
Continuing on from yesterday’s rant about advertising aimed at children, I just found this old, 14-minute podcast from BBC Woman’s Hour. It dates from almost exactly four years ago. In it, a politician who seeks to ban ads targeting kids faces off against a psychologist (and father of a 5-year-old child) who argues that exposure to advertising helps children develop critical thinking. Here’s the link to the page where you can download or listen to the bit in streaming audio:
Advertising copywriter blog link

The part where the kids are discussing their favorite ads is well worth replaying to get all of it. They are clearly seeing ads aimed at adults. The cunning that goes into their use of their pester power is also eye-opening. In all, they are fairly enlightened consumers, but they are older children.

I was very prepared to disagree with the psychologist arguing in favor of the ads, but in the end I felt he placed the blame squarely where it truly belonged: on the parents. And, I also agreed with the politician who argued that ads are inappropriate for infants and toddlers, even though the Swedish ban on junk food advertising aimed at kids proved ineffective at preventing obesity (see my Ad Blog for November 15 2004).

I am, indeed, even more radical than that; I think all television is inappropriate for infants and toddlers, doubly so when it’s not accompanied by parental guidance and age-appropriate commentary. I would no more leave a pre-school-age child in a room with a running television set than I would leave him (or her) in a room with a roaring fireplace or a heated oven. That’s because I think the damage from TV viewing goes beyond the ads. I think it trains the child for passive entertainment, and embeds the concept that satisfaction in life can be achieved through mindless consumerism.

Sometimes, I’m such a hippie.
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October 2, 2006
News flash! A new study shows that kids who watch lots of TV don’t do as well in school as kids who watch less TV! The more unrestricted the viewing, the worse the academic performance. Here’s more, from HealthDay (Norwalk, CN):
Advertising copywriter blog link

This key quote shows just how bemused pediatric researchers are by the mysteries of marketing:

“The majority of child-oriented food advertisements viewed seemed to take a ‘branding’ approach – focusing on creating lifelong customers rather than generating immediate sales,” wrote study author Susan Connor, from Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland. “Promotional spots on advertisement-supported and sponsor-supported networks took similar approaches and used similar appeals, seeming to promote the equation that food equals fun and happiness,” she said.

In other words, the result of this study is to prove what I said nearly three years ago, on November 13 2003:

As a parent of two small children, I appreciate the spirit of the regulation that bars ads from encouraging kids to pester their parents to make purchases. I really, really, really do. However, the truth is that that is what advertising to youngsters is about. Otherwise, there is no product advertising; only brand advertising – far more subtle and powerful and potentially subversive when aimed at a child who can’t make distinctions between puffery and reality.

The answer lies not in a return to a pester-power ad model. No, the answer lies on the other end of the communication, with the parents. Unplug the TV and raise your children. Quit counting on television for entertainment and education. Once mass media become the main source of entertainment and education in the household, not only is imagination smothered, but family time – your parenting time – is hobbled forever. Besides which, it’s entirely the wrong behavior to model.

And that is my issue with so-called educational videos and programming aimed at infants and toddlers, no matter what the child development experts say. I’m speaking here as a parent who is an advertising copywriter. I know how advertising and media work, and they’re just not appropriate for kids without parental guidance.

I’ve ranted on this topic so many times, a Google site search turns up three pages of results. See July 20 2006 for a list of about two dozen relevant entries about marketing to children.
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October 1, 2006
For your Sunday pleasure, here’s a drearily titled but cheerily concluded look at the advertising industry, from The Washington Post via the Kansas City Star (MO):
Advertising copywriter blog link

Yes, creatively speaking, agency consolidation simultaneously deadened big shop sensibilities and livened up the small shop front, thanks to the scores of creative and account teams that chose to sling their hooks elsewhere as independents.

But, the best time to be in advertising, is right now. That’s partly a Zen thing, but it’s also just plain business truth.
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Backwards in time to September 2006

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John Kuraoka, freelance advertising copywriter
6877 Barker Way
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