Advertising Week 2009 Redux
By Donna Draper
Did I enjoy this past week? Sure. It's a weakness of mine. I love Madison Avenue.
For the last few years I've been away from the creative side of the business. My partners have been enjoying doing it. I've been fascinated how digital media has changed everything. You can measure almost everything.
Let me give you an example, one of our clients is Kleenex tissues. We're working on an Mobile App with iPhone that will pick up when you sneeze. You can download a widget which can track if you mildly sneeze, couch-sneeze consecutively or let go a "rip-snorter during flu season.
Depending on where you are, it give you the directions to the nearest location where you can buy a pack of tissues. For a slight premium you can even have it track the nearest pharmacy and/or ear, nose & throat specialist. We're negotiating right now with a major insurance company who will link their database up to what insurance plan each specialist takes
It will also geo-target the nearest acu-puncture doctor, massage therapist and classify them by type of massage from shiatsu to yoga.
Madison Avenue is now a business of Niche-based expertise in quark-sized markets. So when I met a company that focuses on doing one thing well with benefits, it was refreshing to see that their specialty has crossover effect into many different business categories. I met them at, where else? The Nokia party. They call themselves Casual Mafia. The two guys I met were Paulie Fiore and Josh Macuga. They were there with their entourage.
They see themselves as a comedy lifestyle brand. Think the Rat Pack of Comedy. They're comprised of writers, directors, comedians, studio, production...the works.
After seeing their work it made me feel that old familiar urge to get into the soul game; to dig deep inside myself for paradigm-changing concepts once again for contemporary culture. Media is great but what makes this business so special is creativity.
Check them out. I'm most interested in their creative process. Not because they are newsworthy, even if they are. But because there's a genius of an idea behind it.
We're looking to do a deal. You might think it's a stretch for Kleenex. We don't see it that way. Laughter is, after all the best medicine.
