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The annual spending on men’s wear is up 70 percent since 1998. Here we go…

Check out the chart above, via here. There are other charts of interest in said post, but essentially, here’s a quick takeaway: around 1998, the total market for menswear was about $270 billion. This year? It’s going to approach $500 billion.… Continue Reading

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The median age of a TV viewer is now 54. Has advertising basically become a junk science?

I'm a white male, age 18 to 49. Everyone listens to me, no matter how dumb my suggestions are. — Homer J Simpson (@homersquotes) February 7, 2011 Amen, Homer. We were all taught to believe that the central idea of… Continue Reading

PBR and hipsters: maybe the best marketing is to avoid the big marketing, eh?

Check out that chart above, by way of Quartz here. PBR — which essentially barely advertises — is literally crushing the major light-beer brands, most of whom spend millions advertising. That makes no sense, though — right? We take these MBAs and we pay… Continue Reading

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Is Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods or soccer ultimately responsible for the best NIKE ad of all-time?

NIKE isn’t an official sponsor of the next two grand-scale global sporting events — the Winter Olympics, starting tonight, or the World Cup, starting this summer — but it’s really hard to talk about sports and marketing without talking about… Continue Reading

About 45 Northwestern Kellogg MBA students will be analyzing Super Bowl ads tomorrow night (yay ADPLAN framework)

That M&Ms “Anything for Love” ad was one of the big winners of last year’s Super Bowl — along with, you know, the Baltimore Ravens — when a bunch of Northwestern MBA students get together and evaluate the ads on… Continue Reading

Chipotle has a new TV show on Hulu called Farmed and Dangerous. Wait, what? Chipotle has a TV show?

The series rolls out on Hulu on February 17. But wait, why would a burrito company make an Internet/app TV show? Doesn’t that seem weird? Not entirely. First of all, there’s no product placement in the episodes of the show… Continue Reading

Scarlett Johansson, Daniel Defense, and how the banned Super Bowl ad culture seems to work

The above ad features ScarJo hawking SodaStream. It was targeted as a Super Bowl ad — considering it features a highly-paid movie actress — but was banned from airing by FOX, who’s televising the game. Go ahead and watch the… Continue Reading

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Facebook could potentially have a problem with this whole ‘teenagers leaving the site en masse’ thing

This won’t be a very long post, as I’ve already talked about the idea of leaving Facebook (which I’ve yet to do, although in the past couple of weeks, I’ve mostly just checked it once in the morning, said happy birthday… Continue Reading