Tag Archives: History of Advertising

The inside scoop on ‘Think Different’

If you have a little time (and tolerance for clunky writing) go read Forbes’ The real story behind Apple’s ‘Think Different campaign. The piece is written by Rob Siltanen who was the creative director & managing partner at TBWA/Chiat/Day. He not only pitched ‘Think Different,” but also wrote the rough draft of the script that became the iconic commercial.

“When the ‘Think Different’ campaign launched, Apple immediately felt the boost despite having no significant new products. Within 12 months, Apple’s stock price tripled.”

Ogilvy at 100

If you are at all interested in the history of advertising and its luminaries, you simply must check out AdWeek’s package on Ogilvy at 100 complete with a nifty comic, and a must-see David Ogilvy: Essentials which contains everything you need to know in just four minutes and includes this bit of brilliance:

“Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating. You know you can’t bore people into buying your product. You can only interest them in buying it,” David Ogilvy.

A brief history of marketing in Minnesota

Over at MinnPost John Renian has a post in tribute to Pat Fallon (who is about to be inducted in the Advertising Hall of Fame) and other Minnesota marketing greats. If you click over to the story you can read about Fallon, Carmichael Lynch, Campbell-Mithun, and a 1914 booklet printed by the UofM on how to plan an advertising campaign.

(and because it’s International Women’s Day, I have to tell you to make sure to read the comments)

Vintage Ad Browser

If you didn’t catch this yesterday, it will be the coolest thing you see on the Internet today. The Vintage Ad Browser has more than 120,000 ads from, “a variety of sources, including comic books, CD-Roms, websites, APIs, your submissions, book, magazine & comic book scans, and more.” The ads are categorized by topic (Celebrity, Coke, Future, Perfume, Office, etc.) and then within each topic categorized by decade.

The Ads go back to the 1800s all the way up the the 2000s. It’s an amazing collection. Be careful when clicking because once you start you might end up losing an hour or two. I just spent 45 minutes trying to an ad to demonstrate how awesome this collection is and got lost. . . It really is that cool.

Take a look at this one with Frank Zappa, easily my favorite so far. What’s your favorite?

How big do you want the logo sir? Art & Copy is a documentary about advertising

Holy crap do I want to see this. Sadly, it’s not playing in Minnesota anytime soon but eventually it will have to come out on DVD, right?

Dramatic shift in marketing reality

I’m posting this video not just because it makes a valid point to anyone who works in (or with) advertising, but because the animation is so well done.

Scholz & Friends: “Dramatic shift in marketing reality from Michael Reissinger on Vimeo.

(found via Web Strategy by Jeremiah)