Advertising Age - Lenore Skenazy

Tyler Perry's 'Madea' Offers Lessons for Media, Marketers

I just got back from a wildly popular place I've never been to before. If you're white, chances are you haven't either: Madea Land.

Want to Successfully Target Boomers? Aim for the Head

"Health from the neck up" is the new catchphrase, and the minute you stop to think about it you realize: Of course! Why did we spend so much time worrying about our thighs instead of our eyes?

Smartphone Apps Great for Marketing, Bad for Social Skills

Is it just my kid, or is every child over the age of 8 carrying around a smartphone that's making him dumb?

Future Food Items Might Be a Challenge for Copywriters

Upcoming food trends will bring us delightful new tastes in clever new packaging, along with confusing, contradictory claims as to why we should eat them and not all the other stuff coming soon.

Extinction, Innovation and the Sad Future of Iceberg Lettuce

Usually when you think about the future, you imagine all the cool new stuff we'll be using (or at least trying to use, before we go hunting for a low-tech, highly efficient sledgehammer). But as futurist Richard Watson likes to point out: The future is also about things becoming extinct.

Getting Consumers to Spend $150,000 With a Viral Effort

The college shopping process may take years, says Andy Beedle, CEO of agency abeedle.com. That's because the consumers are usually about 16 when they start shopping, and 18 when they -- or their parents -- buy.

You Call It Nontraditional Advertising, but I Call It Art

In an absolutely stunning campaign for the German Foundation for Monument Protection, Ogilvy Frankfurt placed life-size replicas of medieval statues around the city, right where you'd usually expect to find a homeless guy. Except instead of little signs saying, "Need money for food," the gnarled looking statues have signs propped in front of them that say, "My cathedral needs help."

Oatmeal-onomics: Lessons From Starbucks' Breakthrough

Now that Starbucks has found success with its oatmeal, you know that other marketers are seething with hot-cereal envy. Inevitably, they, too, are going to jump on the old-fashioned, down-home, frugal-yet-festive bandwagon.

Funeral Directors Get Creative as Boomers Near Great Beyond
For the first time perhaps since the invention of dry ice, the industry is getting creative. There are new marketing schemes, hearses, crypts, new ways of appealing to that age-old desire for serenity and to its boomer counterpoint, the desire for a good time. Everyone wants to make his or her death meaningful.

You Have a Face That's Perfect for Radio -- and Now TV!

Our culture is in an odd moment, fixated on the most beautiful of the beautiful but drawn at the same time to the realest of the real.

Want Some Parenting Tips? Start Watching 'Mad Men'

When eating candy is officially dangerous, our definition of danger has to change. It's time to give kids a little credit. And freedom.

Copywriting Lessons From 'Beowulf' and Mother Goose

Coca-Cola is a name bubbling over with mnemonic devices: alliteration and rhyme. The two devices don't have a lot of today's ad folk behind them. The fact is, alliteration is an amazing memory aid, and possibly the oldest one on earth.

Your Vacation Paradise Awaits on the Other Side of the Tunnel

"Aloha, baby!" That's what the ad says, complete with a picture of a giant wave. A campaign for Hawaii, right? Try "The Island Next Door" -- Long Island.

'Making Love' (Out of Nothing At All) May Be Good Reality TV

From thousands of hopefuls, the former editor of Psychology Today will create 10 seemingly compatible couples, just the way Yente the Matchmaker would.

Snacking Delusions Destroyed by NYC Calorie-Posting Law

In New York City, local law now requires restaurants with 15 or more outlets to post their sometimes shocking calorie counts. This info is changing the way our city eats. And soon, possibly, the way the rest of America eats, too.

Ladies Who Lunch Could Start Lunching on Dried Meat Snacks

Lately Jack Link's, the beef jerky leader, has been working on a radical new marketing niche, one that has helped net it several consecutive years of 18% sales growth. It's called women.

Multi-Tasking Is Killing Both You and Your Ad Campaign

If anything, multitasking is really sequential tasking: interrupting one thing to do another. That might not be so bad, except that a third of the time we're interrupted, we never get back on track.

Keep Targeting Kids and the Parents Will Start Targeting You

In 1983, companies were spending $100 million a year to market to children. Today they're spending 170 times more: $17 billion. Numbers like that make parents realize they cannot limit this media exposure by themselves. A movement builds.

Finding a Band to Dance With Your Brand Is a Fine Art

If you think the advertising world has been slammed by a hurricane of change, try hanging out with some music moguls for a while. Better yet, hang out with Aaron Walton, founding partner of Beverly Hills' Walton/Isaacson, as he hangs out with them. He's been mixing up both worlds since 1985, when he was Pepsi's liaison to a guy named Michael Jackson.

How I Ended Up on 'Today' Without Help From a Publicist

Watch out -- I'm viral. I don't really know how anyone can deliberately make this happen. But here's one gal's totally unplanned case study.

Au Bon Pain Crunches the Numbers, Comes Up With Lunch

Au Bon Pain, the 226-chain "fast-casual" restaurant found in airports, hospitals, college towns and office complexes, started offering small portions of tasty dishes just this month. Served in small, clear containers, $2.99 to $3.49 each, they're bright and fresh. But delectable as they may be, it's not the flavors that make this food so noteworthy -- it's the math.

Victoria's Secret Has Forgotten the Refined Art of the Tease

I'm trying to think of something trashier than Victoria's Secret, and all I can come up with is preteen pole-dancing classes at the Y, which I don't think actually exist. (Yet.)

Want to Unleash the Next Best Seller? Think Like a Dog

Dogs (and kids) are getting the short end of the stick, when they should just be getting the stick, period. But here's the big surprise. There is huge potential on the flip side: marketing doggie products to humans.

But Wait, There's More: How Infomercial Guru Gets His Ideas

Ever wonder how they come up with all those gadgets you see on infomercials? Me too. So I met up with the guy responsible for all of those, the impeccably dressed A.J. Kubani, founder of the 25-year-old company Telebrands.

What You Can Learn From the Wine Industry

By now, you may have heard about that wine study done in California. Participants -- very, very happy participants -- were given samples of a bunch of different wines that varied wildly by price. Or so they thought.

Savvy Lifestyle Site for the Disabled Is Off to Running Start

Disaboom.com is the first comprehensive website for people with disabilities and "functional limitations" (such as difficulty walking when the rheumatoid arthritis kicks in). I know -- it sounds unbelievable that there isn't another website already doing this, but there isn't.

Take the Fat Out of Your Food (Just Don't Tell Anyone About It)

Those of us who cannot afford a locally grown, organic pear for dessert -- or actually prefer a Hostess Cupcake -- will no longer find our health thrown to the winds, even as the Whole Foods crowd enjoys longer, skinnier lives. The package-food industry is going to save us. It has to.

Forget the Cute TV Critters; Starbucks Needs a Happy Hour

What Starbucks needs isn't an ad campaign set in fantasyland (however tastefully executed). Maybe what it needs is a real-world idea that could actually get people to buy and share more coffee: a Starbucks happy hour.

The Chubby White Dude Who Sells the Most?

It is time to salute the seasonal pitchman who has graced more ads, magazine covers, cards and kitsch than Kris Kringle himself: the Snowman.

Americans Long for a Chance to Rest, Replenish and Reboot

"People are tired of terrible," says anthropologist-turned-brand-strategist Cheryl Swanson. As a partner in the trend-tracking firm Toniq, she's a keynote speaker at this week's Future Trends, What Matters conference in Key Biscayne, Fla. One of the things she'll be discussing is the spreading phenomenon she's experienced herself: Whenever she reads the Times or watches the TV news, "I want to take drugs."