"Grey was a symbol of what advertising used to be: very slow and not very nimble," says Tor Myhren, Grey Advertising's chief creative officer in a New York Times piece by Jonathan Vatner (2/10/10). It's a rather stark admission, made possible by Grey's recent move from 777 Third Avenue, which it had occupied for 45 years, to 200 Madison, the International Toy Center building. With this move, Grey left behind its traditional walled offices in favor of an open plan. Grey is hardly the first to make such a move, but for the agency, it's a big shift.

"We've created a faster environment, one that is more open and collaborative," says Tor. "This space reflects what's happening in the digital world." Designed by Studios Architecture, the new space provides "ad hoc collaborative spaces" with "long butcherblock tables." Elsewhere, there are standalone desks separated only by "low cubicle walls." As Alex Lubar, the agency's new business vice-president notes, "No more affairs and siestas. Or at least if you're going to do them you have to be more theatrical about it."

Grey spent a year prepping its people for this change, and has a psychologist, Dr. Joel Mausner, on hand to help everyone adjust. Joel plans to help employees mourn the old space, deal with any drawbacks, and "use the new space to its full potential." He says workers need "to reach a collective understanding of how they're going to behave differently." For Natalia Schultz, the agency's chief talent officer, the adjustment includes finding a place for her shoewear collection. At the old office, she had a closet, but now she keeps her shoes in the trunk of her car. She also notes a new house rule: "Tuna should never be consumed in the open plan," she says.

It took Canesta eleven years to create technology that can replace your remote control with your hand, reports Ashlee Vance in the New York Times (1/12/10). The key was in the development of 3-D cameras that add a "crucial layer of depth perception that helps a computer or TV recognize when someone tilts their hand forward or nods their head." At first, these cameras were as big as a desktop computer, but now Canesta has got the technology down to a chip about the size of a fingernail.

"We always had this grand vision of being able to control electronic devices from a distance," says Canesta's Cyrus Bamji. The vision is now reality: "Stand in front of a TV armed with a gesture-technology camera, and you can turn on the set with a soft punch into the air. Flipping through channels requires a twist of the hand, and raising the volume occurs with an upward pat. If there is a photo on the screen, you can enlarge it by holding your hands in the air and spreading them far apart and shrink it by bringing your hands back together..."

The result is "one of the most significant changes to human-device interfaces since the mouse appeared next to computers in the early 1980s." Hitachi is planning to introduce TVs equipped with the technology later this year, and Microsoft plans to employ it in a new videogame system, dubbed Project Natal. "Laptops and other computers should also arrive later this year with built-in cameras that can pick up similar gestures," rendering "today's touch-screen tools obsolete." And making it "impossible, try as you might, to lose your remote control."

Wild Bill's Nostalgia Center is celebrating its 25th anniversary, which is quite something considering it's a store that "doesn't sell anything anyone really needs," reports Hannah Vahl in the Middletown Press (12/14/09). The store actually had a different name -- Apple Core -- when Wild Bill Ziegler founded it as a gift shop on Main Street in Middletown, Connecticut. Since then, it's had several other names -- "Buffalo Bill's, the Beetles Store, the 60s store." But what hasn't changed is the insanely eclectic merchandising mix.

It's a mix determined primarily by happenstance (virtual tour here). Wild Bill "acquires much of his goods by getting out-of-the-blue calls about a large load of items, such as 8,000 sport jackets, 50,000 3D glasses, 75,000 posters and 10,000 picture frames ... Once a man driving by said he had a truckload of whale bones and whaling tools he had inherited from his grandfather." Wild Bill bought it all, and "managed to sell bones to Wesleyan University and Trinity College in Hartford, though a whale rib still hangs suspended from the ceiling of his store."

The whale rib is really nothing compared with what Wild Bill has got going on the store's facade. In addition to a mural of various pop-culture icons, there's a huge bobbing head featuring Wild Bill's likeness above the door. The mural got Wild Bill into trouble with the town, but he eventually prevailed, arguing that the mural was art, not advertising. "The town gave us a half million dollars of free advertising by fighting us, "he says. To celebrate his 25th, Wild Bill commissioned a sculpture "made of 1,000 animal traps and other metal objects" (image). It's yours for $500,000.

Television is alive and well for advertisers who innovate and collaborate. By Cindy Jolicoeur. (more)

New research uncovers keys to successful digital-media integration. By Jim Garrity and Kerry O'Connor. (more)

It seems retailers have decided that cash-register receipts are pretty darn hot as media, report Ilan Brat and Ann Zimmerman in the Wall Street Journal (9/2/09). As a result, even the smallest purchase can result in a receipt a foot long, full of coupons and other stuff. You'll notice this at Duane Read stores, where purchasing a pack of gum will come with twelve-inches of proof, and RadioShack, where "single-item buys" yield "19 inches of paper." If you buy just one thing at Kmart, you will likely get a receipt that's about two-and-a-half feet long. Granted, some shoppers appreciate the coupons, but others are just annoyed.

"You feel like you have a very special document in your pocket, when in fact you bought a Sprite at Best Buy," says Jack Britton, who now refuses receipts. But retailers see it differently. Home Depot uses receipts to advertise shopper surveys, and it's very effective. "Prior to 2003, we used customer-comment cards in store, and they got nowhere near the level of response," a spokesman says. NCR, the cash-register maker, also says that redemption rates for receipt coupons "can run as high as three percent, about triple the rate" for direct-mail or circular coupons.

Kroger uses the tapes to inform shoppers how much money they've saved, item, by item, with totals both for each trip and the year to date. Another two inches is devoted to notifying "shoppers if an item they'd previously purchased had been recalled." However, some retailers, like Walmart, are taking steps toward receipt reduction by testing "doubled-sided receipts." Lowes is reducing receipt length for a "one-item purchase to 5.5 inches from 7.2 inches." Apple, meanwhile, has offered emailed receipts since 2005. Good way to build a database, too. What do you think?

"We are focusing on shopper marketing as one of the next big growth areas in our business, after digital," says Hamish McLennan, ceo of Y&R Advertising, in announcing an alliance with Mars Advertising (Wall Street Journal, 4/14/09). Hamish must have been misquoted, because shopper marketing and digital actually are one and the same where big growth areas are concerned. And the biggest of those big growth areas can be summed up in a single word: Retail.

The reason, of course: Retail is where decisions are made and money is spent. There's no lag time between medium, message and return-on-investment. If driving growth is marketing's purpose (feel free to disagree with me about that) then it's just plain old common sense to spend money where the money is spent. Even more to the point, alert marketers know that success at retail is not a question of digital or retail, its about the convergence of the two.

The odd part is, digital gets all the attention and priority even though its ability to drive growth is an open question. Facebook, Twitter, Skype -- it's all very cool but nobody seems to know where the money is. Maybe we just haven't found it yet. Retail, meanwhile, is, was, and always will be about making the cash register ring. Does that happen online or offline? Yes. Does it reach consumers or shoppers? Yes. Is there life on Mars? :-) You betcha. What do you think? ~ Tim Manners, editor.

"American commercials go from the head to the wallet, British ones from the head to the heart, French from the heart to the head," reports Michael Kimmelman in the New York Times (2/19/09). Michael is actually paraphrasing an observation by Jacques Seguela, chief creative officer for Havas, the second-largest ad agency in France. "Clearly French commercials speak to French culture no less than French literature or music does," writes Michael, who also notes that while French ads are "long on sensuality, style and poetry, they are notably lean on facts and nearly allergic to the rough-and-tumble of commerce."

In France, advertisers aren't allowed to attack competitors and typically cannot include a direct-response phone number. Jacques Seguela says this is because "we have always had a very unhealthy relationship to money ... To us, money implies corruption, and moreover, because we consider ourselves the inventors of freedom, never mind if that's not true, we still consider advertising as a kind of manipulation ... This explains why television commercials started so late here -- essentially because leftist opposition saw ads as corrupting the soul."

It may also help explain why French president Nicolas Sarkozy, a conservative, enjoyed a "public relations coup" recently by ordering a ban on commercials on four "public television stations ... during evening hours." The funny part is, some believe the French actually like TV commercials but "prefer not to admit it." Stephene Martin, director of the French Union for television advertisements comments: "We're not a Protestant culture ... So we have difficulty accepting successful people and embracing advertising as a means of selling. And there has always been such a strong sense that the state should be responsible for public services, like television." ~ Tim Manners, editor.

It seems that Joe Isuzu is alive and well and influencing advertising strategy for Burger King. You're probably too young to remember Joe Isuzu (video). Back in the late 1980s, Joe became a pop-culture icon as a fictional spokesman for Isuzu automobiles. In the ads, he made outlandish claims ("It has more seats than the Astrodome!") while large-type disclaimers ("He's Lying") flashed across the frame. Well, Joe Isuzu is back in vogue, apparently, except without the humor.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Burger King is running a commercial in which it implies that its Whoppers are heavily preferred over the Big Mac, but never reveals any hard numbers to support its claim. And Burger King isn't alone -- witness the ongoing battle between Campbell and Progresso over who uses more MSG in their soups. Campbell started the fight with an ad claiming that consumers preferred its chicken-noodle soup because it is MSG-free.

Progresso quickly countered with an ad claiming that Campbell makes 95 other soups with MSG. Campbell said it's actually just 87 soups, that this is because it makes three times as many soups as Progresso, and that 124 of its soups contain no MSG. Undaunted, Progresso advertises that 7 out of 10 prefer the taste of its chicken-noodle soup anyway. As it turns out, the entire dispute could be irrelevant, given a recent FDA-sponsored study concluding "that MSG has no adverse health effects." Yeah, that's the ticket ... (your thoughts?). ~ Tim Manners, editor.

No sooner am I thinking that some marketing people still haven't gotten over the idea that "buzz" has any tangible value where the business of building brands is concerned (link) than Skittles launches a new website that is all about ... buzz. Skittles.com essentially aggregates unfiltered consumer-generated content from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Wikipedia. Mars Snackfood, makers of Skittles, says the idea is to better connect with its teenage targets who spend a a lot of time with social media.

Charlene Li of Altimeter Group thinks Skittles is hitting its mark, telling the Wall Street Journal: "They are getting so much buzz on it, it is unbelievable ... They are really showing people, this is redefining the way you think about brands." There may be at least a couple of problems with this, though. First, the Twitter "kids" seem more interested in creating mischief than in having a conversation about Skittles. Some of the posted comments are negative at best, and scatological at worst.

Second, it seems that much of the "buzz" is being generated not by the intended audience, but by ad-industry types, once again buzzing amongst themselves. I'm happy to contribute to that conversation by asking whether anyone thinks this "buzz" will either help Skittle build its brand image or grow its sales on a sustainable basis. I'd also be interested to know whether anyone else finds this kind of effort an affront to the young people it purports to engage. ~ Tim Manners, editor.