If you’re not shy about posting photos on your Facebook page of your last drunken brawl, consider this bit of research from Microsoft:  70% of employers have dinged people because of questionable material seen on social networking sites.  Read all about it, then go do some profile editing.

Rarely a week goes by at SVC that we don’t interview someone who’d like to break into advertising copywriting or art direction. We’re delighted to meet them, of course, as our ad classes have been one of the mainstays of our portfolio training for umpteen years.

However, we’ve noticed lately that aspiring ad creatives seem less prepared than ever to break into the field. Why? Because advertising has changed so drastically in just the past couple of years. The old style portfolio with a dozen funny or provocative print ad concepts just doesn’t cut it any more.

So what would we do if we were in your shoes?  These three things:

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If you added up all the Tweets, blog posts, workshops, books, and random thoughts floating around about social media, you’d quickly be buried in a landslide of excitement and, perhaps, opportunism.  It’s hard not to be terribly interested in the possibility of harnessing these tools for doing marketing good, and any time you can bring the consumer into the equation, that’s an enormous opportunity.

However… [Read more →]

This likely isn’t the first time you’ve read that monumental change is in the air in the advertising industry. With more people getting their news and entertainment on the web — not from a TV or newspaper — advertising spending (and effectiveness) is shrinking faster than a wet cashmere sweater in a hot dryer. Then you’ve got the now-ubiquitous iPod cutting the legs off broadcast radio, while everyone’s favorite home electronic device — the DVR — is zapping what commercials were actually making into your abode.

Now comes the news that Volkswagen is saying auf wiedersehen to the $60 million ad blitz it launched last year to support its GTI model in favor of (toy drum roll, please) the $500,000 the company spent on an iPhone app. [Read more →]