PHILADELPHIA – The ad agency Gyro Worldwide is now Quaker City Mercantile. They have a bold goal, namely to “recapture Philadelphia’s mighty industrial past and weave a new version of this greatness into its future.” The company will still do advertising, but will also begin making products, hence the”Mercantile” name.MORE HERE
Editor’s Note: The site is now sold out of inventory BROOKLYN – It’s the perfect moment for the craft-selling site Etsy.com, though calling it a “craft” site is kind of an understatement, as it has very little to do with the junk you might find at a typical non-juried craftMORE HERE
A plane is a plane, and if it flies, it looks like an airplane because it is an airplane. Unfortunately, that is not always true with commercial and private planes. Some airplanes, for instance have a nose too long, or a body too thin and narrow, giving the plane aMORE HERE
Wiley, Start With the Answer: And other Wisdom for Aspiring Leaders, by Bob Seelert, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken. $24.95 CEO autobiographies and the like are often out of touch, filled with overly obvious advice that would only be useful if you are the CEO. After reading one, you justMORE HERE
Clicks are not only destructive of the brand, all they do is help advertisers to beat down the price of advertising. In addition, it causes content to go for the lowest common denominator. “We are telling advertisers,” he said, “the worse content, the more you should pay.” MORE HERE
ATLANTA – The Coke bottle will go. After 12 years, more than 1,000 home run celebrations and countless family ballpark memories, the 42-foot-tall Coca-Cola Contour bottle standing high above left field will be retired from Coca-Cola Sky Field at Turner Field on July 2. A new one will replace it.MORE HERE
So you want to get in the restaurant business? What an awful time to do it. And you want to open a restaurant without capital? And you are unemployed? Your inner negative “no” says no, and people will laugh at you. You dare not tell that to the bank, orMORE HERE
An Ad Age piece by Al Ries on value pricing reminds us how crummy and proletarian the airline business has become, and how un-important branding is to particularly our American airlines. The story is called Variable Pricing is the Ultimate Brand-Destroyer. Reis’ point is that because of value pricing, consumersMORE HERE
PARIS – Yes, we all love the independent bookstore. And amazingly, it is still around. Here in Sarasota, Florida we have any number of them, some small with just paperbacks, others larger with antique and collectible books. What got me thinking about them was the closure of Brentano’s in Paris,MORE HERE
SARASOTA – Out on the Siesta Key beach yesterday, employees of Sarasota County’s Parks and Recreation Department were handing out race pennants that they were keeping in a Votomatic ballot box. The Votomatic became famous after the 2000 Presidential election in Florida, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American HistoryMORE HERE