Darren Herman

I went to the IAB Ad Ops Summit yesterday here in New York.  The attendance was broken out as follows:  80% pubs, 15% agencies, 5% clients.  Not ideal as all sides of the equation should be represented when we’re talking about best practices and having an open conversation about them.
While I didn’t really find anything [...]

I’m a big Vineyard Vines fan (a la my summer wardrobe) and they just released this new Bull Market Tie for 2008.  Think of it as a rally cap for Wall Street.  If I wore a tie more, I’d pick one up.
Good stuff.

These guys came together for a great cause and their music is now up on YouTube.  Yukon Kornelius is a rock band put together for charitable purposes. It consists of Ed Robertson of the Barenaked Ladies, Stefan Lessard from the Dave Matthews Band, Adam Gardner from Guster, and drummer Eric Fawcett from Spymob. On January [...]

Such a genius business.  Extracted from the original interview.
And why do retailers love these cards? The economics work in their favor.
Now, there’s an interesting fact about these cards. Retailers love them over any other product they have in their store, because the cards themselves don’t take up any inventory.
They’re not activated until [...]

I’ve been a fan of Jeff for years and have met him on occasion at his year partner summits.  I agree with him on the point below, extracted from an interview on peHub.
What’s clearly not working, or, at least, won’t in the harsh economic climate we’re entering?
One interesting place to watch is the ad [...]

Note to all entrepreneurs especially at a time like this:
Innovation is more of a science.
Adoption is more of an art.
Don’t let the speed of innovation bring you too far ahead of the adoption curve.

ChangeThis :: I Am The Walrus: Lessons In Personal Branding from The Beatles
(tags: advertising branding beatles music)

I was curious to see how the advertising holding companies were weathering the financial storm.  The first chart shows YTD for WPP, Omnicom, MDC, IPG, Havas, and Publicis.

The second chart shows month to date (October) for the holding companies.

Looks like we’re seeing the start of a rebound?  In Dude, Where’s My Ad, an article written [...]

It’s been almost a year since I’ve posted about virtual goods, but read Mike Gowen’s recap of the Virtual Good Summit that occurred recently.  Here are some takeaways that are extremely important:

Teens expressing themselves may take more to branded items as they like to align with them.
People creating UGC are creating their OWN branded content. [...]