I think this ad found at Bored Panda is hilarious.  I wonder what this man would have done if his wife HAD burned the beer!  Again we see a beer ad where a woman is being subjugated to a cook/bartender.  He looks professional with his black suit and tie and she looks like his happy servant.  There is certainly an element of sexist advertising here and it seems many vintage beer ads play on this.  It’s as if the marketers are expecting men to drink beer and then act like jerks to their wives.  Or is it the other way around?  Were men so out of line in this era that marketers targeting their sexism?

Read the rest of this entry »

Vintage Beer Ad: Blatz Beer & Newborn CareWith today’s standards of newborn care, this ad certainly straddles the absurd side of advertising.  There are hundreds of books dedicated to different strategies and techniques of keeping a newborn happy and healthy.  There is even more literature concerning nursing and best practices.  When my wife was nursing, she not only stayed away from alcohol, but also excluded high fructose corn syrup, caffeine, and anything that wasn’t organic.  I am sure beer would not have made it to the I-can-drink-this list.

Read the rest of this entry »

Rosie the Riveter & Microsoft

“We Can Do It” Becomes “You Might Just Get Beat By A Girl”

Some ads are really just meant to shock and awe a potential customer into buying a product.  I think the audacity of this Xbox Live ad speaks to this.  Rosie the Riveter is an icon; a symbol of an entire generation of American women.  For those younger people who are not familiar with the significance of Rosie, she is the face of all the women who replaced the men in factories who went off to fight the Germans in WWII.  This poster was supposed to empower the women of the 1940’s. Read the rest of this entry »

Image Credit: Durapitchmound.com

On April 22, 2010 Alex Rodriguez ran across the pitcher’s mound on his way back to first base after a foul ball.  He should have known that he had just broken one of the unwritten rules of baseball.  Only the pitcher should touch the pitcher’s mound during play.  I’m sure sports fans remember the rant that Oakland pitcher Dallas Braden directed towards A-rod afterwards.  This got me thinking.  There are unwritten rules for just about everything.  Cell phones: Don’t text while having a face-to-face conversation.  Driving: Turn off your high beams for oncoming traffic.  Dating: never go out with a friend’s ex.  The list can go on and on.  As I thought more and more about it, I eventually applied the theory to work and began to think about the top few unwritten rules of PPC. Read the rest of this entry »

PPC Management Company vs In-House Hiring

Recently, in a PPC Chat, the merits of both in-house PPC management and hiring a third party PPC agency to do PPC management was thoroughly discussed.   By the end of the discussion/debate I was convinced the in-house argument didn’t hold water.  Since I work for DragonSearch, an agency, one would think I hold a bias, but I tried very hard to listen to the merits of in-house PPC management.  While there are certainly some good points to be made about in-house PPC management, an agency clearly has an edge.   In particular, there were at least six reasons why I think a company should hire a PPC management company over hiring in-house. Read the rest of this entry »