Advertising Balloon Company

After two decades as an ad critic at Adweek, Barbara Lippert, 55, joins Goodby Silverstein & Partners as its curator of popular culture.

“We’d always thought it would be interesting to have someone on staff whose job it would be to stay in touch with popular culture,” Mr. Goodby said, because of the interplay between advertising and pop culture, as well as “be our emissary and talk about the agency” at conferences, meetings and other forums.

According to Stuart Elliott, one of the last old media men standing on the ad beat, Lippert and Bob Garfield (who is now a consultant) laughed when they first became the ad critics for Adweek and Advertising Age. “Everybody laughed,” Ms. Lippert said, because the job was so unusual.

“Now, everybody’s an ad critic,” she added, “and neither publication has a formal critic.”

Another reality now is that “everyone’s an aggregator and a curator,” Ms. Lippert said. That may be, but few ads are worthy of curation or aggregation, that’s why we select just one or two a day for you to poke, envy, love, etc.

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According to BusinessWeek, Joseph Nunes, marketing professor at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, and two colleagues studied shifts in the styles of Louis Vuitton and Gucci handbags marketed in the U.S. before and during the recession.

“Everybody was saying, ‘the age of the conspicuous consumer is dead,’” says Nunes, so one might expect logos to shrink and brand identities to be more subtle. In fact, both companies “turned up” the prominence of their brands from January 2008 to May 2009, the researchers concluded. The study also examined the prominence of logos in advertising for other luxury handbag makers and found that none toned down their ads. One–Burberry–emphasized its brand further.

Anxiety about the economy did drive some rich consumers to cut back, even when they could afford to spend. Yet much of their frugality was symbolic, says Harvey Hartman, founder of the Hartman Group, a consumer research firm. They would “try to cut one thing, but they’ll spend more somewhere else,” he says.

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Writer, traveler and entrepreneur, Chris Guillebeau, doesn’t like AdSense, the Google product that lets publishers place ads on their site in return for a trickle of change.

Here’s a passage from his free PDF download, “279 Nights to Overnight Success”:

Guillebeau doesn’t run ads on his site, instead he sells Unconventional Guides in eBook form. One of his guides, “Empire Building Kit,” offers to show buyers how to build a successful lifestyle business in one year. Prices range from $149 up to $449 for kits that include case studies, videos, checklists, etc.

Guillebeau also sells travel guides, and advice on how to work for yourself, how to make it as a freelancer, how to use social media as a force for good, and how to make money as an artist.

In “279 Nights to Overnight Success,” Guillebeau advises Web publishers to ask their audience what they need help with. For instance, what can I, David Burn, do for you? Can I introduce you to someone, help you find a job, or provide resources that will help you do your job?

Guillebeau’s point is serve your audience’s real needs and good things will happen.

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